Hinsdale, Montana
Lela at the Hinsdale ranch, circa 1935.
Lela told of how at the end of the 1933-34 school year the family moved to a ranch west of Hinsdale, Montana, where Percy would manage the ranch and Pluma would cook for the hired help for the next two years. Lela remembered the pantry table where her mother practically “worked herself to death.” The cook stove was never without a soup or stew simmering on the back burner, bread and buns in the warming oven, and roast beef or baked beans and ham in the oven.
Lyman and Bob had plenty of chores to help with during the school year as well. One chore was to hitch a trailer onto their dad’s old Buick and haul tanks of water from a neighbor who had an electric pump. In the winter they would cut ice from the frozen Milk River to keep the root cellar cool in the summer months.
Lela remembered that her parents “almost killed themselves working on that ranch. It was minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit for more than a month and that was the year they had spinal meningitis; a couple of kids in the area died from it.”
Lela had no memory of her mother expressing her feelings: “she was just always there and fed us.” The family was sustained physically by home-grown foods: meats, butter and milk, and produce from the bountiful garden that Pluma and Percy grew in the yard of this Hinsdale ranch. “We always lived well and we never went hungry.”
Lyman and Bob had plenty of chores to help with during the school year as well. One chore was to hitch a trailer onto their dad’s old Buick and haul tanks of water from a neighbor who had an electric pump. In the winter they would cut ice from the frozen Milk River to keep the root cellar cool in the summer months.
Lela remembered that her parents “almost killed themselves working on that ranch. It was minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit for more than a month and that was the year they had spinal meningitis; a couple of kids in the area died from it.”
Lela had no memory of her mother expressing her feelings: “she was just always there and fed us.” The family was sustained physically by home-grown foods: meats, butter and milk, and produce from the bountiful garden that Pluma and Percy grew in the yard of this Hinsdale ranch. “We always lived well and we never went hungry.”
The land near Hinsdale, Montana, where Percy managed a ranch in 1934-37. The buildings are no longer there, but in 2014 a neighbor still recalled playing with Lela who had “a tall brother and a short brother.” Photo by Gary Ball.
Hinsdale, Montana. Photo by Gary Ball.
Hinsdale School, circa 1930s.
Their faith in God sustained them spiritually even though Pluma never went to church in Opheim or Hinsdale. Lela said that her mother was ashamed of her clothes and had no money for fabric to sew new clothes for herself.
The family still knew how to have fun together, whether it was walks outside of town exploring the countryside, going to a school dance, having a picnic, or sitting together at home playing table games and drinking hot chocolate. The love for one another the children had learned from their parents sustained them emotionally.
Both Lyman and Bob found paying work on nearby ranches the next two summers before they left home. They finished high school in Hinsdale; both were popular guys with their good looks and ease on the dance floor. Bob got attention on the football field and was the valedictorian of his graduating class. Lyman was a year and a half older but graduated the same year as Bob as he had lost a school year when the family had gone to Oregon and he’d stayed behind at the Rock Creek farm to care for the livestock.
The family still knew how to have fun together, whether it was walks outside of town exploring the countryside, going to a school dance, having a picnic, or sitting together at home playing table games and drinking hot chocolate. The love for one another the children had learned from their parents sustained them emotionally.
Both Lyman and Bob found paying work on nearby ranches the next two summers before they left home. They finished high school in Hinsdale; both were popular guys with their good looks and ease on the dance floor. Bob got attention on the football field and was the valedictorian of his graduating class. Lyman was a year and a half older but graduated the same year as Bob as he had lost a school year when the family had gone to Oregon and he’d stayed behind at the Rock Creek farm to care for the livestock.
Hinsdale School Graduating Class of 1936. Bob Haverfield is third row furthest right, and Lyman Haverfield is fourth row center.
Ruth and Nathan Goodrich, around the time of their marriage in 1935. This photo was taken at the Fort Peck dam where Nathan worked.
Lela said that the most memorable time at the Hinsdale ranch home was when Ruth married Nathan Goodrich on Christmas Day, 1935. The Goodrich family farmed north of Glasgow but during the drought years, Nathan got work just south of Glasgow helping to build the Fort Peck Dam, one of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal projects. Ruth and Nathan met in Glasgow where Ruth had begun her twenty-five year career in obstetric nursing.
Edna Fern wrote, “We all loved Nathan from the first time we met him—he shared our faith and our love of music. He could sit at a piano and play tunes for hours. He was a quiet, gentle man and we could feel how much he loved Ruth, and she him.”
Edna Fern wrote, “We all loved Nathan from the first time we met him—he shared our faith and our love of music. He could sit at a piano and play tunes for hours. He was a quiet, gentle man and we could feel how much he loved Ruth, and she him.”
Lela (left), Lyman (second from right), and Bob (right) at the Hinsdale ranch, 1935. The others are unidentified.
L. to r.: Lela, Ruth, and Pluma holding her first grandchild Ronnie Goodrich, age seven months, 1937.
Rear, l. to r., Edna Fern, Pluma, and Ruth; front, Lela, circa 1936.
In the spring of 1936, Edna Fern returned from her studies in Nampa, Idaho, to her family, now on the Hinsdale ranch. “I agreed to do the dishwashing for my mother as she cooked for many men. My hands became sore again but I had to keep on with the job because I said I would stay until harvest was done in the fall. That summer, two high-school boys called on me a lot and that kept life interesting. No one could afford to go anywhere that cost money so we made fun by just visiting and hiking around the countryside. We had too much excitement one day when Lyman drove our Dad’s Buick through a garage window on Main Street. I helped pay for the window to be replaced from my meager dishwasher earnings because we wanted to keep our parents from knowing what had happened. We feared that they wouldn’t let him have the car again.
“When fall came, I was eager to get away from the dishwashing and any other work needing to be done on the ranch. I’d been living in sizeable towns for a few years and wanted to get back to that way of life so I headed off to the nearest sizeable town, Glasgow. It was familiar to me and not too far from my parents’ so it would be easy to visit them if I got homesickness, which I had many times over the years since I went off on my own first to finish high school in Springfield and then to Spokane and Nampa. My family had a lot of history in Glasgow and Ruth was living and nursing there as well. At last I’d be living close to family again.”
“When fall came, I was eager to get away from the dishwashing and any other work needing to be done on the ranch. I’d been living in sizeable towns for a few years and wanted to get back to that way of life so I headed off to the nearest sizeable town, Glasgow. It was familiar to me and not too far from my parents’ so it would be easy to visit them if I got homesickness, which I had many times over the years since I went off on my own first to finish high school in Springfield and then to Spokane and Nampa. My family had a lot of history in Glasgow and Ruth was living and nursing there as well. At last I’d be living close to family again.”