Once Upon A Sewer

“My childhood home”
Robert Midthun, 1982

Once Upon a Sewer, a Sodbuster’s Son’s Legacy
Copyright  2007 by MidZOOM Press. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of
America. Except as permitted in the Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be
reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval
system, without the prior written permission of publisher, with the exception that the
program listings may be entered, stored, and executed in a computer system, but they may
not be reproduced for publication.
Editor-in-Chief: Richard A. Midthun
Copy Editor: Kermit S. Midthun
Designer: Richard A. Midthun
ISBN Pending
First Edition: January 18, 2007
29359 Wagon Road

Agoura, CA 91301
U.S.A.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION ................................................................................................................................................... 5
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................. 7
PART ONE: MY JOURNEY FROM SODBUSTER TO CYBERSPACE .............................................. 9
Chapter 1: A Sodbuster's Legacy................................................................................................................... 11
Chapter 2: My Miraculous Life...................................................................................................................... 15
Chapter 3: Beginnings..................................................................................................................................... 25
Chapter 4: A Prairie School ........................................................................................................................... 33
Chapter 5: Boyhood Memories ..................................................................................................................... 37
Chapter 6: High School Days ........................................................................................................................ 43
Chapter 7: The Schnitzler Scholarship ......................................................................................................... 53
Chapter 8: The Bonds Are Broken ............................................................................................................... 59
Chapter 9: Out Of The Harbor And Into The Deep: Fort Peck............................................................. 69
Chapter 10: A Marriage Under The Stars .................................................................................................... 91
Chapter 11: Moving West .............................................................................................................................. 95
Chapter 12: Photo School—The Navy Way .............................................................................................103
Chapter 13: Secure The Navy—Back To Civilian Life............................................................................109
Chapter 14: A Call To Christian Service ....................................................................................................113
Chapter 15: Drinking Out Of A Fire Hose. ..............................................................................................115
Chapter 16: All-American Status At Last...................................................................................................121
PART TWO: REMEMBRANCES ...............................................................................................................127
Chapter 17: Mustangs And Broncos...........................................................................................................129
Chapter 18: Hogs Running Wild.................................................................................................................133
Chapter 19: Dolores Buys A Hog ...............................................................................................................135
Chapter 20: Where Has My Childhood Gone?.........................................................................................137
Chapter 21: All About The Froid All-School Reunion............................................................................141
Chapter 22: “Show And Tell”......................................................................................................................153
Chapter 23: The Joys Of Watercolor Painting ..........................................................................................157
Chapter 24: Goodbye, Father ......................................................................................................................161
EPILOGUE......................................................................................................................................................165
INDEX..............................................................................................................................................................167
Page 3
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to the most wonderful family a man could have in this world. These
dear ones not only have had the durability to live with me as I write these episodes but also to
listen to many hours of idle patter about the book I intended to write.
Sue Beisel Midthun, my daughter-in-law, is the beautiful person who came out directly and
said to me, “Boppa, either put up or shut up.” She laid down the gauntlet. I took it up!
To my patient wife Dolores goes the credit for encouragement, motivation, and the
willingness to share me with the computer for many hours. Richard, my son, patiently listened
to my tales, accompanied me on trips to the old farm in Froid, met the people, saw the land,
and felt some of the things that motivated me to express these personal thoughts and feelings.
His labor has resulted in this book being published. Barbara, my daughter, encouraged my
artwork and storytelling at every step of the way.
Brother Kermit, a distinguished diplomat, scholar, and a closest pal, has given me patient
encouragement and motivation in sincere understanding of the story he and I have
experienced. His copy editing has been a blessing.
The final dedication is to all my grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I want them all to
know and understand “what made Boppa tick.”
The book is divided into two parts. The title of the first part, "My Journey from Sodbuster
to Cyberspace," denotes the time frame for the story of my life, which began in a sod shack
on a Montana homestead and led to a career in the construction industry and use of modern
computer technology. I emerged eventually as a prominent consultant for the creation of
water transmission systems, concrete storm sewers, and irrigation and drainage systems. The
second part, "Remembrances," is a series of vignettes and anecdotes best recounted outside
the first part's timeline.
Please enjoy my artwork and these stories of the life and times of a Montana sodbuster
settler's son.
Robert A. Midthun, April, 2006
Page 5
INTRODUCTION
Dad, Aslag Nelson Midthun, emigrated to America from Norway in 1905, landing on his
uncle's farm in North Dakota. He earned his citizenship and homesteaded 160 acres near
Froid, Montana. Mother, Edith Marie Steenerson, was born in Minnesota of parents of recent
Norwegian ancestry. I am the second of six children and the oldest of three sons.
What I once regarded as my simple life on the Montana prairie homestead, in retrospect
has become complex indeed.
The very fabric of American culture was woven from experiences, bitter and sweet, of
others like me. Each decade of my life brought significant changes. The first ten years were
idyllic and filled with expectancy and happiness. Early childhood days were sweet and
hopeful. We were building something from the very arid and windswept prairie. There were
hope, love, dreams, and even a sort of ecstasy in the very simple life.
The second decade was fraught with pain and sorrow on the one hand while, on the other,
I sought the education that prepared me for leaving the family. Grim and ominous changes
created a far different pattern of problems and goals for each of my three surviving siblings.
Decade three featured my separation from the farm life and the beginning of a marriage
and a career.
The fourth decade led me into World War II, from which I emerged a mature person,
changed forever with a resolute and restless nature.
The career-building fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth decades carried me far beyond the
simple pattern of values derived from earlier rural life. This has been a continuing learning and
educational process.
In my eighth decade I have earned and enjoyed the privilege of having time to think.
Please share my thoughts and commentary on a rich and rewarding life that began in the
shadow of the Wright brothers and transitioned into the wonders of Cyberspace and the
Information Highway.
Page 7
PART ONE:
MY JOURNEY FROM SODBUSTER TO CYBERSPACE
Page 9
PART ONE: MY JOURNEY FROM SODBUSTER TO CYBERSPACE
“An old wagon”

Page 10
1
A Sodbuster's Legacy
I am almost as old as the airplane. I witnessed the transition from “steam and iron” to
modern diesel and electric rail. I remember my first radio, the entrance of television.
Vivid memories of World Wars I and II are mine. These and subsequent happenings grew
into the modern age of the computer and the World Wide Web.
Where it once took days to learn of happenings through a weekly newspaper, we now
know and see them occurring in real time. Never again will a “sodbuster's” son live through
such a succession of events and experiences. Mine is the rarest of privileges—to live, breathe,
grow, and participate in a history spanning such momentous changes.
Today, my recollections of being a dirt farmer's son raised on the high plains of Montana
are vivid in my consciousness, and, in retrospect, I have drawn drastically different
impressions as to their meaning. No longer am I self-conscious over my lack of college
degrees, nor am I ashamed of my heritage and roots. There is no other way on earth to gain
the rich experiences and memories. While I am not formally educated, I have gained an
abundance of knowledge and wisdom as the years have rolled by.
The buffalo skulls and bones that moldered and glowed in sunlight on the virgin
pastureland were but objects that my dad wanted me to pick up, pile, and burn. From my
childhood vantage point, I did not realize that such items were historical evidence of the
western expansion and Indian wars that had occurred only a few decades before.
A more pleasant task was the sifting of gravel in the dry creek bed that traversed our
pasture. I filled baskets with arrowheads and flint tools that Indians had left in their
encampment on the very ground beneath my feet.
Our prairie homesteads had vanished in a grid of barbed-wire fenced sections and quarter
sections. New red barns had replaced the log and sod buildings. Here and there, the few sod
house ruins that remained had been converted into tool sheds and storage buildings.
Every few miles stood a one-room clapboard school building with its belfry and cast iron
bell. Here farm kids such as I learned the three R's and battled the winter snow and cold, the
spring rains, and rising creeks and learned how to play “pom-pom-pull-away” and “antie-I
over.” There was neither running water nor indoor plumbing and electricity. Locally mined
Page 11
lignite coal fired the pot-bellied stove, and I recall carrying out two buckets of ashes for each
bucket of coal carried in to the school’s stove.
I complained bitterly at having been disadvantaged by such primitive educational facilities.
Now, decades later, I am so thankful for the country "schoolmarms" who actually taught me
how to read and love books, how to spell, and how to apply fundamentals of English
grammar. Believe it or not, I could name all the countries of the world when I graduated
from the eighth grade (June 1925). We had read and lived with The Literary Digest to whet our
tastes. Was I underprivileged? Certainly not by today's standards, when it is rather common
to procure a high school diploma and yet lack basic reading and language skills.
The Froid High School, like my grammar school, lacked refinement in the way of facilities.
There was no indoor plumbing, only outdoor toilets. Nevertheless, it produced during my
four years two future generals of the Army in World War II, an editor of The Chicago Tribune,
and a vice president of the Schick Razor Company.
Scholastics took the limelight. I competed in numerous scholarship contests, learned
public speaking, and actually won a gold medal for my original oration entitled "The
Constitution, A Guarantee of Liberty to the Individual."
By present-day social standards I was raised in poverty as an abused child. Wrong—while
my father had a red-hot temper and often struck me in anger, I quickly learned to read the
signals and obey his wishes. I simply kept my mouth shut around him. My parents normally
bought only coffee, sugar and other staples at the town's grocery. Meat, vegetables and flour
were abundantly available on the farm. I wore my Dad's cut-off overalls, and my sister wore
World's Best Flour sack bloomers; but we were well nourished.
Mother bought dozens of books at auction sales. We reveled in The Harvard
Classics, various titles by Alexander Dumas and Zane Grey, and even law books from a local
barrister's estate. In the long, frost-bitten winter evenings, we delved into things that no one
else in our neighborhood could even comprehend. Mother became someone respected and
admired for her wisdom and intelligence. She had been a grammar school teacher before
marrying Dad.
During World War I Mother bought a small hand-cranked grinder to make flour out of our
high-protein spring wheat. The ad read, "Even a frail woman can crank it." It was a wartime
patriotic duty for everyone to "do his or her own thing," and this seemed like a very good way
for a farm wife to aid the war effort.
I can recall many hours of effort spent straining every muscle to crank that grinder in order
to produce enough cracked wheat for a batch of bread. The grinder was bolted to a plank
suspended between two kitchen chairs. I had to sit uncomfortably astride the plank during
this process. Mother couldn't operate the grinder that long.
Neighbors acclaimed the bread she made as "the best bread in the county." We children
hollowed out a loaf, drenched it with freshly churned butter, and feasted each time she pulled
a dozen loaves from the big oven of the Royal Value kitchen range.
We took all this for granted. Fifty years later, on one of my few return visits to Froid, I was
surprised to hear so many compliments on her "best bread in the county." I treasure now the
memories which I had neglected so innocently as a child.
Mother was a frustrated normal school-trained teacher. She loved to teach from Webster's
Dictionary and spent hours with each of us urging us to strive for excellence. I loved the new
Page 12
CHAPTER ONE: A SODBUSTER’S LEGACY
words she taught me every few days. I became an avid speller. In seven years of grammar
school I excelled in "spell downs," where we lined up against the blackboard and remained
standing erect until a word was misspelled. Then we had to sit down one by one until a
champion emerged. For four of the seven grades in which I was a participant, I remained the
last one standing and won a silver pencil.
My first defeat was the word judgment. I added an "e" and heard the teacher say, "Wrong,
Robert. Sit down." This crushing defeat to my ego happened again the next year in the eighth
grade. The word was chastisement. I remembered that adding an "e" to judgment had been fatal,
so I omitted the "e" this time. I lost the prized silver pencil again! From that day forward, I
was determined to master spelling at whatever cost. I became the one who often was asked to
write important papers for professional associates because of my spelling and grammar skills.
I refused to learn shorthand and typing despite Mother's coaxing. She loved these subjects,
especially New Rapid Shorthand, an alternative to the then-popular Gregg system. Brother
Kermit succumbed to her wishes and learned to take dictation as fast as one could speak.
This skill, together with his excellent command of English and facile typing ability, earned
him a job with the FBI. He was so outstanding as a short-term temporary employee in Butte,
Montana, that Director Hoover summoned him to Washington, D.C., as a clerk in the Bureau,
allowing him to enroll in classes at George Washington University and to become a Special
Agent. Eventually, he transitioned to the Department of State as a Foreign Service Officer,
serving in many roles all over the world. After serving as chief analyst of internal Soviet
affairs for the State Department, he served as a civilian advisor in Viet Nam and an official in
SEATO before retiring. Mother's persistence and patience paid off handsomely for him.
The "good old days" I often speak of are the years from 1915 to 1925 that marked hope
and prosperity for my parents. They had purchased a 320-acre farm, crops were regular and
abundant, and they both had hopes and goals for the future. But in the succession of dry
years, hailstorms, and worse, tragedy would cast a pall of gloom over their optimism. Father
drifted into depression and cynicism. Mother had a child, Alice May, who developed a tumor
on the base of the brain. Mother struggled to provide Alice May with love and care without
electricity, plumbing, or running water. Our well was not even next to our house. Mercifully,
Alice May passed away in 1936 at age nineteen. Mother died at 61 and is buried alongside
Alice May, the two sharing one headstone.
I benefited far more than the younger siblings, as I escaped the life-struggles that they were
forced to endure. My recollections are of love and intimate companionship unknown to
them. There was no poverty. Money was available for more than basic needs. There was
laughter and a sense of community. This sharp difference in family life from my childhood
and theirs escaped my attention during the many years I was engrossed in my own personal
affairs. I thank God for such a special gift and apologize to my younger brothers for not
taking heed of their problems.
My marriage opened an entirely new and marvelous acceptance into Dolores' family. For
the first time I found a loving and unified group of in-laws and relatives of hers. They ranged
from Ph.D.s to an uncle who had never seen pavement. In between were musicians, medical
doctors, engineers, and ministers. They were tied to one another, not by the distinction of
wealth, but by love and respect. I shall always treasure 70 years of marriage to her, which
helped me learn how to live happily with others.
World War II and the Navy were maturing influences. In the war years I matured far
Page 13
beyond spelling bees and high school idols. Two years at the M.I.T. Physics Department
working as a naval officer under the supervision of Dr. Harold Edgerton opened new vistas
that enriched me mentally and financially in the decades after the war when I entered the
highly competitive field of business.
Business was a challenging field to me. I was naïve and applied honesty and loyalty to my
superiors in the same manner as if they were in the Navy. I did not recognize those few
individuals who used me to their advantage. I succumbed to the trite, old assurance, "If you
do this, Bob, I will take care of you when I become a . . ." I was slow to learn that many
executives delighted in devising clever ways to circumvent rules and contractual obligations. I
soon learned that one must keep a vigilant and constant perspective and rely on effort,
honesty and integrity—not hollow promises. Today I am not truly cynical, just aware of that
sort of person with whom business must be conducted.
In 1977, I was invited to join the consulting and construction management firm of Paul A.
Moote and Associates, Inc., of Santa Ana, California. At last I found someone who would
become my role model and best personal friend for the past 29 years. Paul is talented, God
loving, and honest. He says, "The greatest gift one can have is the privilege of having time to
think."
Now that I have had the chance to enjoy that special gift, please enjoy the following
chapters that track my journey from sodbuster to Cyberspace.
Our young family in 1914. I am 18

months old, Hazel 3 years old.
Page 14
2
My Miraculous Life
M ine has been a miraculous life. In retrospect, it seems that every obstacle or reversal
marked a change for better understanding and better times. I learned to persevere in
the face of adversity.
The Midthun family can be likened to a few human seeds scattered upon the western
prairies that sprouted, appeared promising, and then mostly withered and died. We children,
who survived the ordeal, are the tiny harvest that drifted into fertile grounds and yielded a
bountiful harvest.
Dad and Mother seldom volunteered information about their own childhood days, their
educational experiences, courtship, or marriage. Neither did they talk about our numerous
aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins. Our parents seemed to be interested only in our
scholastic efforts and achievements.
My first morning was on a sunny day in May. The doctor had delivered me in the sod
house on the Montana homestead claimed by my father. Dr. Collinson had come 12 miles
from Culbertson, Montana, by horse and buggy. Neighbors had boiled water and tended the
smoky kerosene lamps.
Mother must have endured intense pain in delivering my ten-pound body. There was little
to alleviate labor pains except a mask and drops of chloroform. Dad was not one to stand in
the delivery room. He kept a silent vigil outside. He looked after my 17-month-old sister and
cradled her in his arms.
Mother, Edith Marie Steenerson, was born in St Hilaire, Minnesota, the second of five
daughters of Knute and Ida Steenerson. She was of Norwegian stock also, but three or four
generations away from the "old country." Two of her five brothers were older. Conrad, the
oldest brother, was murdered. His fate was never discussed.
Page 15
Grandpa Steenerson was a six-foot-four, raw boned and bearded man who made his living
during early family years by selling the patent medicine "Hostetter's Bitters"1 from a horse-
drawn wagon. He piled the kids and the bottles of bitters on the wagon and worked
throughout several midwestern states. He eventually was elected as the first sheriff in North
Dakota Territory. His colorful career is documented in the Minnesota Historical Society.
One documented incident relates how he broke up an unruly mob by wielding a copper
lightning rod, breaking a few arms but quieting the mob.
Two great-uncles had prominent careers. Elias (Great Uncle Eli) Steenerson became a
wealthy real estate developer in both Minnesota and Texas, starting a large pink-grapefruit
growing operation in the latter state. Great Uncle Halvor was elected to Congress from
Minnesota and served for many terms.2 He was reputed by mother as having sponsored Rural
Free Delivery, the free-of-charge delivery of mail to rural homes and farmsteads that
originated as an experimental service in 1896 in Minnesota and became a permanent
nationwide service in 1902 with further expansion in 1913.3
Mother completed high school and attended normal school, where she earned a teaching
credential. She moved to Culbertson, Montana, taught elementary grades, homesteaded 160
acres, and met and married Dad. Their first child, Anne Hazel, was born in 1911 in the sod
shack Dad had erected on his claim. A clapboard addition was added to the sod shack in time
for my arrival in May 1913.
Dad, Aslag Nelson Midthun, was born in Øvre Årdal, Sogn, Norway, which lies at the head
of Sognefjord, the largest fjord in the country. He was the oldest of 10 children born to Nils
and Anna Svalheim Midtun4. In 1903 he immigrated to North Dakota, after finishing high
school, to work for his uncle Ole Svalheim. Dad was nineteen. In the next five years he
learned English and moved to Culbertson, Montana, to work on the Diamond Ranch
breaking horses.
The exact motivation for his leaving home is unclear. After all, he was the first-born son
and therefore the rightful heir to the family homestead. Conflict with his father seems to be
the main cause. On January 10,1910, he became a naturalized American. That same year he
homesteaded 160 acres of prairie land and married Mother, a local schoolteacher.
Dad was still learning English. Mother was a vivacious, fun-loving girl who had finished
high school and a year of normal (teaching) school. Her forte was shorthand and typing. So
my parents could be classified as typical young western settlers—the Scandinavian immigrant
and his teacher bride.
1
“The original ingredients in Hostetter’s Celebrated Stomach Bitters were: Modest amounts of Cinchona bark,
Gentian root, orange peel and Anise. The alcohol content, 47% by volume...”
http://www.fohbc.com/images/hostetters.pdf#search=%22%3A%20%20Hostetter%E2%80%99s%20bitters.%22
2
HALVOR STEENERSON, Congressman. B. Dane County, Wisconsin, 6/3O/1852, son STEENER & B1RGIT (R0HOLT)
KNUDSON. High school, Rushford, Minnesota; studied law In office and in Union College; law, Chicago; admitted to
bar 1878; began practice in Minneapolis, Minnesota 1878; practice in Crookston, Minn., April 1880; interested in
farming; County Attorney, Polk County, 1881-85; Minnesota's Senate 1883-85; City Attorney and member Board of
Education, Crookston, 1880-90; 58th to 67th Congress (1903-23); Ninth Minnesota District; law firm, Steenerson &
Neils. Died 11/22/1926. Excerpt from Who Was Who.
3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_free_delivery
4
Dad apparently added the “h” in our version of the family name when he registered at Ellis Island, New York in
1903.
Page 16
CHAPTER TWO: MY MIRACULOUS LIFE
Mother had also filed a homestead claim, some eight miles farther west. She traded it for a
team of horses, which, unbeknown to her, were blind and lame. Still, they became a welcome
addition to the Midthun homestead.
Prairie life was hard, but there were times of excitement as well. Both Mom and Dad loved
to dance. They played whist with neighbors. Both had "stars in their eyes" for a bright
future. They echoed the public relations ads of the Great Northern Railway that forecasted
prosperity. The branch line to the small farm communities passed within a half mile of our
sod house. No one seemed to realize that only a generation or two ago this territory
was known only to roaming Indian tribes that flourished along the Missouri River banks some
12 miles to the south.
Dad walked the 20 miles each day behind a "walking plow" turning over the ribbons of soil
that had been cleared of rocks and boulders. Neat fencerows bordered the field. Discing and
harrowing prepared a mulch in the sandy but fertile High Plains loam. The first crop of flax
was sown by hand and carefully reaped.
In 1915 they traded the homestead for some cash and a Maxwell touring car. Now they
could drive to McCabe or Froid in minutes instead of hours by horse and buggy. With the
settlement of more homesteaders came business entrepreneurs. There were farm implement
dealers, blacksmiths, weekly newspapers, and bankers eager to lend money at high interest
rates.
The happy pair with a 4-year-old daughter and a 2-year-old son were caught up in dreams
and promises of even more happiness. The homestead had given them roots. Five years on
the debt-free homestead with small but ample wheat crops, a garden, and a few hogs, chickens
and cows had provided a bare living. Now was the time to expand their horizon. They would
buy a larger farm.
The Ole Anderson 320-acre farm some eight miles to the north was an attractive sight to
the young family. It was for sale for $12,000 and could be mortgaged at 12 per cent annually
from the First Sate Bank of Froid.
Mother blossomed in the new 14 x 18 ft. kitchen with hardwood flooring, a large Royal
Value range, and an attached two-story ell with rooms for all of us. She loved the fact that the
kitchen once was a one-room public school.
I remember the red oilcloth on the kitchen table, the linoleum in the bedrooms, and the
thick featherbed mattresses that kept us alive in the sub-zero Montana winters. Native lignite
coal was abundant in a nearby mine.
Dad erected a 30 ft. windmill on the alkali water well 200 yards down the slope from the
bulky white house with the green trim. He added a barn with 10 stalls that could serve 20
animals: 10 cow stalls with stanchions and 10 stalls on the opposite wall for horses. A
granary, coal shed, pigsty, and a small blacksmith shop were clustered nearby. The yellow
outhouse was 100 feet east of the house.
A grove of 100 cottonwood trees, a cluster of berry bushes, and a small vegetable garden
were located north of the house. A dirt cellar beneath the kitchen was ideal for storage of
potatoes, carrots, and beets. It was cool in summer and ideal for cooling large pans of milk,
cheese, and butter.
Dad and Mom went to work energetically and with high hopes. Alice May was born on my
fourth birthday. Hers was a tragic 19-year destiny. A tumor on the brain occurred at age
Page 17
seven. A total invalid requiring constant care, she passed away paralyzed and blind at age 19.
Edith Blanche was born 2 years later, but died in infancy. Kermit was born in 1921, the last
child delivered in the kitchen. Elmer Elias, the final child, was the only one born in the Dahl
Hospital in Froid.
The thrill of their own farm and their high hopes for prosperity kept our happy little family
going until Edith Blanche died. Dad was not a businessman. He kept no record and purchased
expensive farm machinery that was never paid for. He had not expected cutworms, hail
storms, drought, grasshoppers, weeds and wild oats and rust (a fungus that killed the wheat).
With all this, Dad became morose and dejected. His hot temper grew. He was a severe
taskmaster to us. Mother's dreams of a rural social life faded under the burden of a disabled
child, whose care occupied almost all of her day. The well was 200 yards distant and the water
hard.
The wheat harvests were unpredictable. For seven years in a row, disaster befell our crops.
The livestock had to go as there was no feed or hay for them. I remember Dad working on
the WPA (Works Progress Administration). Mother would remove the canned beef doled out
in relief from the original tins and then re-can it in glass jars, so that her larder would show
home-prepared goods. Her severe pride did not allow for charity. She ignored the fact that
there were no steers to slaughter.
Being an eternal pessimist, Dad meekly and sadly submitted to hard times. He would pace
the fields each day looking for a miracle. Years of crop failures and poor commodity
prices eventually did lead to default on their mortgage and foreclosure. Subsequently, when
the Federal Land Bank was unable to find any buyers in those lean years, the farms were
offered back to the original owners, who by and large had remained on as squatters. Dad
bought the farm back for 10 cents on the dollar. With commodity price support during the
World War II years and soaring post-war grain and cattle prices, bountiful crops, and good
luck, he finally made a great deal of money. For the first time, High Plains Montana farmers
like Dad and Mom were debt free and prosperous. However, the prosperity was short-lived
for Mother. She died in March, 1947, after six months of hell on earth from stomach cancer.
Mother had lovingly devoted fifteen years of 24-hour daily nursing care to second daughter
Alice May under severe conditions—including daily washings in alkali water carried in buckets
200 yards "up the hill" from the well. Her back was bent and her arms were sinewy from the
exertion. Her mind withdrew into a shell of deep depression, solitude, and loneliness. Once
in a blue moon, her azure eyes would light up and a faint smile would appear after she had a
rare glass of wine.
For Alice May and the rest of us, she gave her life willingly with little or no recognition.
Mother and Alice May are buried side-by-side in the family plot in Froid and share a common
headstone. Whatever success I have attained in life, I owe a great debt of gratitude to
Mother. She inspired and encouraged me. She sacrificed for me intellectually in the same way
she sacrificed physically for Alice May.
Father was a complex little man, five-feet-six, with small hands and feet, a fiery temper, and
a mind filled with old European ideals. He never kissed a male child nor ever cried
visibly. His discipline was sudden and brutal. At times he was gregarious, jolly, and the life of
the party. This was in the presence of others, not with the family. He was an avid reader and
kept current on topics of the day. He loved to be important to others. He was a precinct
Page 18
committeeman for both Democrats and Republicans at the same time.

Dad never believed in taxes and never filed an income tax, as far as I know, until just a few
years before he died. When he did finally file an income tax return, not only was he not
penalized by the Government for failure to pay taxes (he kept no records), but he was given
Social Security retirement benefits! Figuratively speaking, he "fell in" and came out smelling
like a rose.
I remember my dad in the early years as an egotistical, outgoing, and overbearing man. He
loved to visit with others and actually sparkled and shone with wit and vigor. He had left
Norway as the oldest of eleven children, apparently after a bitter argument with his
father. The argument was just the final stimulus for his departure. He had rebelled against his
dad for a number of years. Grandfather Midtun was a rangy six-footer with a shock of hair
and a full beard.
Grandmother Midtun was five-feet-two and a petite lady. Dad had her genes, and he
resented being small: size-six shoes, size-six gloves, and a 38-inch belly. He had the temper of
a bantam rooster and loved to argue, often with prompt entry into fisticuffs.
Once, I saw Dad grab by the collar Mr. Renault, a six-foot-two métis5 (of combined French
and American Indian ancestry) neighbor and throw him upward and behind into a straw
stack. I saw him crawl out of his sick bed with influenza and rush outside in the snow and
bitter cold to attack Mr. Carlson, dressed in a large fur coat, for a provocation I never knew.
Dad was a fierce contender. When he whipped me, it was with fists, gritting of teeth, and
flashing eyes that made me fearful of my life. I never deliberately crossed him. Always, it was
my "inadequacy" that ignited his temper. If I didn't hand him the wrench he wanted, he
would strike me with a fist. His explanations, instructions, and commands while we worked
together on the farm often were not clear, but this made no difference. It was still my fault.
"I've never seen someone so old who is still so stupid," would be his chastisement—or, "You
are all "tums" (thumbs) and no brains."
In 1955, 8 years after Mother had died
at 62 from cancer, Dad married Betty
Swartzenburger, a three-times divorced
woman younger than my wife,
Dolores. Dad was a very poor business
man. Betty lived with him until the
prosperity and money waned. After he
suffered an incapacitating stroke that
required nursing home care, she wanted to
liquidate the farm for her benefit. Dad had
never probated Mother's estate. His
oversight was our family’s benefit. Under Dad and Betty on their wedding day, December
Montana law, she owned only one-third 16, 1955, Froid, Montana. Witnesses: Peggy
Cookson and Steve Rudolph.
5
The word Métis (the singular, plural and adjectival forms are the same) is French, and a cognate of the Spanish
word mestizo. It carries the same connotation of "mixed blood"; traced back far enough it stems from the Latin word
mixtus, the past participle of the verb "to mix."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9tis_people_%28Canada%29
Page 19
of the property. The four of us surviving Midthun children insisted that the only way the farm
could be sold would be to put the proceeds in trust for his care in the nursing home.
Frustrated by our decision, she divorced him and left for Los Angeles, California.
She lost her life in an accident with a gun. We suspect she had been drinking. Suicide was
a possibility. Unknown to us children, she had quitclaimed her share in the deed before she
left. One day in California, I received a letter written by stranger in Los Angeles, who had
received some clothes from the Salvation Army. He discovered the missing quitclaim deed in
a pocket. In simple, broken English, he wrote that such an important appearing document
should be returned to the rightful owner. The Ostby family, to whom we had sold the farm,
had kindly forwarded the letter to me. It was a miracle that assured us four kids a clear title to
the property and in turn the oil royalties.
I wish that I could have been a dear friend of my father and that I could have known a dad
and son relationship. He had moments of kindness and even love. But, his ethics and
lifestyle looked with disdain on men who hugged, dads who kissed their sons, boys who
cried. He never let himself have any emotional outlet other than a raging temper. I often
search my very soul for traces of those qualities, which on rare occasions have manifested
themselves in my own life. It took years for me to quit reacting to every problem, to curb my
temper, and to apply reason rather than emotion. My marriage brought me into a new family
relationship that was a model of kindness and forbearance based on God-given spiritual
values.
Dad had a stroke and died in a Billings, Montana, rest home in 1969. We children sold the
farm to our neighbors, the Ostbys, but retained the royalty income from a newly discovered
oil well near the farmstead.
Page 20
“Wagon, team, & dog”

Page 21
This photocopy of Dad’s Ellis Island immigration record, courtesy of the Ellis Island
Foundation, provides a glimpse back into time. When Dad arrived March 25, 1905 at Ellis
Island after passage on the steamship Baltic, he was just 19 years old, and his occupation
was inscribed as “laborer.” The Baltic had departed Liverpool, England, on March 15,
1905. His last place of residence was listed as Bergen, Norway, and his destination was
Church Ferry, North Dakota to stay with “Uncle Ole Svalheim.”
Page 22
The steamship Baltic, 1905.
Page 23
“A country church”
Page 24
3
Beginnings
M y early recollections are hazy, but I shall never forget my baptism. I sat in a high chair
in front of the nickel plate-trimmed potbelly heater in the front room. Rev. Hagen was
a stout, short Norwegian with a stiff and formal discipline. He was about to anoint me from a
cereal bowl of water that my mother had given him. At that very moment, I looked at the
brass nameplate of the heating stove and read aloud, "Superior Oak Heater!" In a moment, I
was out of the chair, my cute little Lord Fauntleroy pants were down, and my heinie was
blistered—then back to the baptism in Norwegian, a language the folks used only to keep us
in the dark.
One other day stands out vividly. It was the time we attended a church service in a country
school near the Bergstrom farm three miles south of our farm. The minister walked up to me
in the front row, laid his hand on my head, and said, "Robert is a very special boy, and we will
be hearing much from him in the years to come."
Someone snapped a Kodak and recorded the group on film.6 There I am in the front row
of the group together with the other children. I have a shock of unruly and tousled hair. I am
scowling into a sun that highlights the large white collar of my corduroy Lord Fauntleroy suit.
There are about two dozen persons in the group, posed in front of the building’s white
clapboards. The year is 1916. I am three-plus. Near me is my sister Hazel in her crisply
ironed dress with a brightly colored sash and with and a huge red and blue plaid bow in her
hair. She is a large five-year-old. Her features are stern. Even then, she was a no-nonsense
type of person, stubborn but energetic.
The adults are standing left-to-right behind us kids. There is big Jim Ostby, melancholy
Einar Bergstrom (later to become Jim’s lifelong enemy over some minor farm dispute), and
then Dad, all five-foot-six in stature. Funny thing. Jim, a six-foot-plus rangy man with a
6
Ed. Note: Sadly, this photograph cannot be located. Dad’s description includes colors. It is possible that this was an
early color image, since the technology was available at that time. A more likely explanation is that he remembers
the colors of items that remained in the family for a long time and were worn often through the ensuing years.
Page 25
deeply-etched, pleasant face, is in shirt sleeves. Einar and Dad are in blue serge suits and
wearing soft felt black plug hats. Their baggy pants are too long; my father's drape carelessly
over his black, high-topped kangaroo shoes. (Dad wore those very same shoes for dress for
twenty-five years.) Dad's coat was too large and hung halfway to his knees. The other men in
the picture were dressed from shirts and trousers to overalls. The women wore hats and long
dresses or skirts and frilly blouses. Mother had a black straw hat with a red artificial flower.
She had a sober expression that belied her outgoing and gregarious nature.
The group picture is symbolic. Here was a group of homesteaders turned farmers,
assembled for one of the few occasions where they were mutually friendly and cooperative.
They all were eagerly striving for the prosperity they believed would be theirs. I can only
remember one or two gatherings of this group in subsequent years to celebrate the Fourth of
July at a picnic in Jarshaw's Grove.
There is a special meaning of all this to me. I clearly remember what my sister Hazel and I
termed the "good old days." Father was optimistic and walked the fields daily in summer to
assess the wheat crop prospects. He enjoyed a new 1917 Overland Model 90 touring car that
had replaced the 1915 Maxwell. The light one-horse surrey was seldom used and sat fading
and rotting in the corner of the farm yard. He loved to dance, tell stories (some of them with a
bit of truth), and play Norwegian whist7, a popular card game in the area.
Mother was an avid club woman She was always meeting with other farm women in sewing
bees, cooking sessions, Ladies Aid,
and school activities. The house
on those occasions was filled with
farm women and often their
husbands. The red oilcloth table
cover was filled with goodies,
lemonade, pies, cookies, cakes, and
the like. Father was jolly when
these affairs took place and
enjoyed visiting with the menfolk
while the ladies were meeting in
the front room. She had a keen
sense of humor and a sharp
Hazel, Mom, & Dad.
intellect.
We subscribed to many popular
magazines including Redbook, Good Houskeeping, McCalls, The Saturday Evening Post, Capper’s
Farmer, The Country Gentleman, and The Farm Journal.
Father was short tempered. He didn't waste words. His rage was instant, and we all learned
not to ask him something twice, or sometimes even once. His reply was a slap across the face!
He always got his copy of the Norwegian weekly, The Decorah Posten of ved Arnen.8 each
7
"This game is very popular in northern Minnesota, where it is just called Whist. It is extremely similar to a
Scandinavian game listed in card game books under the name Norwegian Whist, the main difference being that in
Europe the meaning of red and black cards is reversed - red card for high, black for
low." http://www.pagat.com/whist/minwhist.html
8
“The Decorah Posten was a notable Norwegian language newspaper, published in Decorah, Iowa, United States. It
Page 26
CHAPTER THREE: BEGINNINGS
week, and this was one time not to disturb him.

I cannot remember a time when my Mother wasn't trying to teach us something. She was a
shorthand teacher using what was called the New Rapid System, but somehow or other I
missed out on it, though brother Kermit used it later to good advantage. When the local
lawyer died, Mom bought a good portion of his library that included The Harvard Classics,
many of the works of Alexander Dumas, and other great works of literature. She did the same
thing when the dentist passed away, and we then had a rather limited but often sought-after
“doctor book,” which all of us relied upon.
Dad had traded his 160-acre homestead for the 1915 Maxwell touring car. As I mentioned
earlier, we had moved from the old sod and frame shack into the two-story clapboard house
that came with the purchase of the Ole Anderson farm. Mother delighted in the 14 x 18 ft.
kitchen. The large nickel-plated Royal Value range had a deep reservoir to heat water and an
oven big enough to bake a dozen loaves of bread at one time. The kitchen had originally
served as a one-room school before the Andersons added the two-story ell with two rooms
downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs. There was a red and black oilcloth on the table to one
side, set with shining glass kerosene lamps. The large Superior Oak heating stove stood in the
"front room," as we called the space adjoining the kitchen. The other kitchen door opened on
the narrow, steep stairs to the upper story, where I was the master of the east bedroom and
Hazel of the west bedroom. Dad and Mom had the downstairs bedroom.
At an early age, I had the chore of carrying in buckets of lignite coal mined nearby to fuel
the front room heater. For every bucket of coal carried in, two buckets of ashes were carried
out. The stove was red hot in winter, but the area of warmth was only a five-foot radius
away. One register in the ceiling was supposed to heat the upstairs! Water froze in the
commodes during the winter. We were snug and warm in feather beds, but the first twenty
minutes in bed were torture. No wonder we were reluctant to get up in the morning until we
could hear the roaring draft of the heater downstairs or smell the aroma of ham and bacon
drifting up the stairwell.
There were severe thunderstorms in the northeastern Montana plains. I vividly remember
chain lightning striking the outbuildings with brilliant flashes of blinding light, accompanied
by hailstones the size of eggs that rattled the shingles and smashed against the windows. After
the house was set afire in one such storm, the Andersons had wisely installed lightning rods
on the house, the only two-story structure on the place.
The hopes and dreams of the A.N. Midthuns were dimmed each year that passed. There
was seldom enough grain, even in abundant crop years, to provide seed for the next year's
planting and pay the taxes and the interest on the mortgage. I would often go into the barn
and cry in sheer frustration over the hailstorm that took the crop, the lack of rain, the
cutworms that ate the seedlings, the wild oats and weeds that choked the wheat, or the "rust"
fungus that destroyed the stems.
Despite adversity, Mom and Dad tried to overcome the circumstances. Sadly, their solution
was founded by B. Anundsen and widely read by Scandinavian immigrants in several states. The Decorah Posten
ceased publication in 1972 when it was purchased by Western Viking.
Decorah, Iowa is today home to a sizable Norwegian-American population and Luther College, with more than
2,600 undergraduates, founded in 1862.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decorah_Posten
Page 27
was to abandon horse-drawn equipment and go into debt for "modern machinery." I was
eight years old when that huge pile of iron, the Avery tractor9, was driven into the front yard.
This veritable monster was so heavy that the 6-ft. drivers sank two inches into the virgin
prairie. It belched black smoke and made a thunderous noise with a pom-pom rhythm of its
two cylinders. Disaster personified was the theme of the
Avery. Its cast iron drive gears stripped their teeth at the
slightest error in shifting gears. The daily production of
plowed field was only a wee bit better than that of a six
horse team, and it ate fuel and oil like it was going out
of style.
I fell off the tractor and split my scalp. The scars are
still there. Some bumps on my skull lead me to believe
that I had also survived a fractured skull. Dad nearly
killed himself on the plow. A lever slammed across his
head, inflicting a four-inch gash in his scalp, despite the thick wool Scotch cap he wore.
Mother fainted when she dressed the wound. It healed without benefit of medical care.
Dad always had a great talent for doing precisely the wrong thing at the wrong time. It
began with the Maxwell, then the mortgaged farm, next the Avery tractor, and finally the
combine harvester. To follow was the 1926 Overland Whippet sedan10, a "European-
American" light car. What a joke of a car. I left home in 1929, so I was not present for the
future Kaiser and Frazer automobiles.
Dad had an equal talent for ignoring the necessities of life. He never dug a well close to
the house. Mother carried water 200 yards up a hill in buckets to wash clothes by hand in a
back-breaking washboard and tub. He was slow to accept Rural Electrification. The
beginning prosperity during World War II made these improvements feasible. Only after Dad
had married Betty Swartzenburger in 1957 did any of these things come to pass.
There are many interesting and untold facets to our family. I spoke earlier of the "good old
days" enjoyed by Hazel and me during our early years on the Anderson farm. Dad and
Mother were a happy, expectant, and optimistic couple with great hopes for establishing a
prosperous rural estate on the rolling plains. They were in their late twenties. Others in the
community felt likewise. There was much camaraderie and good fellowship. Farmers shared
labor, machinery, and good will. All worked extremely hard and paid little heed to hard times
and debts. In a sense, they were actually living true pioneer experiences.
For years afterwards, we bragged on the abundant crops of '24. We had so much wheat
that year that we had to build extra cribs in the farmyard to hold the grain until it could be
hauled to the elevator and sold. There were new clothes, and, for a few weeks, the Midthuns
returned to the "good old days."
There was an almost imperceptible creeping gloom as reality set in to the young hearts. In
our own family, Hazel and I were the only ones to live in an air of expectancy. Alice May
9
Ed. Note: The pictured tractor was likely similar to the one my father describes.
http://members.tripod.com/Rumelypull/TractorPICS1.html#3060
10
Advertisement shown on the opposing page for the 1926 Whippet Overland Coach courtesy of the Willys
Overland Knight Registry. http://clubs.hemmings.com/clubsites/wokr/gallery/96coa10.htm
Page 28
arrived on my fourth birthday. She was to become afflicted with a brain tumor and pass away
at age 19, after 11 years of total helplessness, paralysis, and blindness—a slowly
progressive decline that demanded and got all of my mother’s energies, mental capacity, and
physical strength. Two years after Alice May came Edith Blanche, who lived only 19 months
and died one winter night in my mother's arms.
So Kermit, eight years my junior, came into a family trapped in desperate and hopeless
circumstances. He never knew the ringing of happy laughter in the house, the fiddle music
and square dancing, the picnics and parties, and all the similar things that characterized the
"good old days."
Elmer, the baby, was born when I was 13 and a sophomore in high school. He was the
center of attraction for Dad, whom I shall always remember holding Elmer on his knee while
he ate at the kitchen table. Kermit, age 6, was left to shift for himself. Mother was several
years into her full-time preoccupation
with Alice May's problems. Dad and
Mom said few words to one another and
none of them kind. There were violent
arguments and debates. Fortunately for
Hazel and me, we "bached it" about 6
months of the school year in a rented
shack in Froid, thereby avoiding long
winter commutes in frozen weather from
the farm into town. Kermit was with us
in the first and second grades. This
removed us from the conflict and
depressing circumstances. In the months
we spent at home, Hazel stayed close to
Mother, helping her and defending her in
the family arguments. I spent as much of
my day as possible avoiding the others
and took care of chores or wandered
around the fields, daydreaming of how
and what I could do to get away from it
all.
Under these family circumstances, with
little or no money and constant bickering,
I hesitate to accuse Dad of being a child-
abuser. He had a violent temper, and the
blood would drain from his face as he
would grit his teeth to strike me with a closed fist. I dared not resist but would run away as
fast as I could to stay out of his sight. If I returned too soon, the abuse would continue even
more severely. Actually, I feared he might kill me, not on purpose, but in the spontaneous
course of events.
Hazel graduated with me. She went into a Catholic hospital in Butte, Montana, and earned
her R.N. the hard way, tending bedpans and slaving long hours each day over patients in long
wards. Kermit and I never really discussed his life on the farm after Hazel and I left. To this
Page 29
day, I suspect he never believed that there were "good old days," which still bring joyous
memories to my mind and heart and tended to mitigate the sorrow of the later days.
“Another view of the old homestead”

From L. to R.: Kermit,

Dad, Father, Kermit,
& Mom. & Mother
Page 30
Dad, age 67 and Elmer, age 27, May 1952.
“Our kitchen”
Page 31
“Rhoda School, District 62”

Page 32
4
A Prairie School
O ne September day, Mother and Dad packed my 6-year-old sister Hazel and me into the
rear seat of the horse-drawn spring wagon, announcing that we were starting
elementary school together. Accompanying us were a quart Mason jar of water, some
cookies, and two sandwiches. Mother had already taught us both to read and write. I had
learned the summer before in 1917. I was 4 months past my fifth birthday, and Hazel was 3
months shy of her 7th birthday. Nineteen months separated us in age. So began our next
seven years.
Dad wheeled the mile and a quarter along the rutted wagon road past the Jensen farm,
down Carl's Shack Hill, and across a dry branch of Sheep Creek to reach the shabby one-
room Rhoda School, District 62. Maude Helton, a strict and seasoned school "marm,"
entered our names in the roster. I, a bewildered boy leaving my parents for the first time, was
literally dragged to a desk by Hazel as our parents drove away.
Our parents started me a year early and Hazel a few months late so that we could walk
together. It was a wise decision on their part to start us in grammar school together, since the
Montana winters were rugged, blizzards were commonplace, and we would be safer as a pair
from coyotes and stray dogs. From then on, Hazel and I trudged each school day a mile and a
quarter from our farm, rain or shine, to this one-room country schoolhouse, carrying our
lunches and drinking water in small salt sacks. The Montana winters were harsh. Frostbite
was commonplace. Our Mason jars of water often froze solid those frigid days.
The teacher was Maude Heffner, later to become Mrs. Nolan Helton. She was a no-
nonsense person with pince-nez glasses and hair in a bun. She wielded a heavy device called a
“pointer” used at the blackboard, and kept in a firm hand a yardstick-length ruler. Her
discipline was severe. Some of the kids reacted, primarily those who had to go to school under
Montana law until they were 18 or passed the eighth grade. Many were full-grown man-sized
“idiots” with great physical strength, and from time to time they would be compelled to stay
after school as punishment for their bad deeds. On at least two occasions they tied her to her
chair after school and left to devise an escape. Of course, they were expelled, but that was
exactly what they wanted.
There were about 30 kids in the eight grades. We sat in four rows of hardwood desks, each
Page 33
row sized to fit a certain body size, with about eight seats per row, all screwed to the pine
floor. At the very front was a blackboard and on each sidewall another, smaller blackboard.
Two long benches for recitations were between the desks, and the blackboard with the
teacher's desk centered in front of them.
Right away I became a problem to Mrs. Helton, my teacher. With ability to read, curiosity
abounding, and nothing to do as a first grader, I listened to all of the recitations, read
everything on the boards, and even interrupted classes when someone was groping for the
right answer. This always provoked a scolding and, on second try, a slap across the open palm
with the dreaded ruler.
My other diversion was to put things in the braids of the Johnsen girl who sat ahead of me.
The teacher never caught me, but that redhead would slap the tar out of me at recess, being
smaller than she.
The second school year both Hazel and I were advanced, or “skipped,” a grade, and we
began to get into some more meaty endeavors. I liked to spell, and mother drilled us by the
hour on the lists. Each year I tried my best and occasionally won the school championship
spelldown where the entire school lined up against one wall and each of us took his seat when
he or she missed a word. The prize was a silver mechanical pencil that must have cost three
dollars.
Recesses were terrifying at times. We never let ourselves out of sight of the teacher or
cheerfully took part in the silly little games she supervised. The older "idiot" boys took keen
delight in taking away our lunches, holding us up by the heels, chasing us around the school.
They were almost a "gang" to us little fellows. We had to become cagey. After being hung
head down once over the toilet seat, I learned to keep away from this bunch. I quickly
learned not to go to the outdoor toilet during recess, when the “gang” was loose. Rather, I
would raise my hand to get permission to go during the school sessions. I could run fast
enough to avoid the older boys, as long as I had a head start.
I had one year that was extremely difficult, because the teacher, Mrs. Hansen, boarded at
our house. My parents, without question, repeated every punishment I got at school. I
learned a great deal about deportment that year.
We played outdoor games under the teacher's watchful eye. We had several kinds of tag
games and played a game with a tennis ball called "anti-I-over." We kids formed two teams,
one on each side of the sparse, faded school building. We would toss the ball from one side
to the other and try to capture players on the other team. Catching the ball before it bounced
on the ground allowed a player to run around the other side of the building to try to tag one
of the other team members. The other game was pump-pump-pullaway (also called pom-
pom-pullaway). We crisscrossed to opposite bases, tagging others as they passed. When all
were on one base, the game was won.
Some of the students were “half-breed” American Indian boys. They rode horses to
school and hunted small game off the school grounds during recess periods. It was
fascinating to me to watch them skin a rabbit and cook it in a tomato can over a small bonfire
of "cow chips" gleaned from an adjoining pasture.
The schoolyard was a 2-acre plot on one corner of a pasture. There was no well, no
electricity, no plumbing. Water had to be brought from home. The High Plains of Montana
had no timber but provided an abundance of soft black lignite coal. It was a great fuel, but
Page 34
CHAPTER FOUR: A PRAIRIE SCHOOL
the main drawback was that each scuttle of coal yielded two scuttles of ashes.
Education was confined to basic "readin’, writin’, and 'rithmatic." We concentrated on
geography, and always had a long spelling list to memorize. Our home literature, as I
mentioned earlier, included The Literary Digest, Country Gentleman, Cosmopolitan, and Capper's
Farmer. There was no reference encyclopedia, but we did possess a giant Webster's
Dictionary. Otherwise, we relied upon whatever the teacher brought. There was a portable
orthophonic Victrola. We would carefully hand wind it; but we had only 3 records to play. I
still reverberate to "Carolina Moon.”
The teachers were paid a very small salary, perhaps $40 to $60 a month. Board was
supplied by one of the nearby farms for $10, or so, per month. In those hard times, we luckily
recruited out-of-work professionals in addition to the usual normal school graduates. I
remember Harry Nail, a lawyer, who during the fifth grade enriched our minds with tales of
his legal experiences. Fortunately, the presence of this tall and muscular man stopped the
horseplay of the older boys that seemed to always plague many of the female teachers. He was
followed by a number of others, and in the eighth grade I was taught by Elizabeth Sorensen,
one of my schoolmates in the upper grades when I first started school. She was talented,
beautiful, eighteen, and became one of my first "secret heart throbs."
The one-room Rhoda School, District 62, with thirty pupils in eight grades, was not an
educational handicap. Each day I listened to eight grades recite. The teacher's words, "Rise,
turn, and pass," still ring in my ears, as each grade’s students would move from their
individual desks to the bench facing the large blackboard to begin a particular lesson.
In just seven years, at age twelve, I graduated from the eighth grade along with my sister,
Hazel. Mother's home schooling had definitely given us a head start. After listening to eight
grades for seven years, I now like to claim fifty-six years of grammar school education!
Geography as of 1925 was mastered. Most of the words in Webster’s Dictionary were familiar
and readily spelled. Two first-prize Eversharp silver pencils attested to my skillful spelling. We
memorized and retained a great many things, ranging from Shakespeare to Longfellow and
Hawthorne.
This would possibly be the last and most obscure place one would look for finding a
lifetime gem: a one-story frame building with two outhouses in the rear, standing
weatherbeaten on 2 acres of uncultivated, virgin Montana prairie. There was neither electricity
nor water, not even a well. The rusty bell clanged each school day at 9 o’clock as the teacher
stood on the front steps and pulled the bell rope. A lignite coal-burning furnace provided
warmth in cold weather, but there was no means of cooling during the scorching fall months.
The community often used the schoolhouse for social events. Pie socials, basket socials,
and the like took place, with baked goods provided by the ladies being auctioned off to the
community males by competitive bidding. The buyer would then sit with the lady whose tasty
food he had purchased. The funds were used to buy special things for the school, such as
books and magazines. Music was by fiddle or accordion, illumination by old-time mantled gas
lanterns, and merriment and sociability reigned.
During my early adult years, I honestly believed that my grammar school years contributed
less than a minimal amount of substance to my education. Apology and embarrassment arose
whenever I was compelled to admit that I earned my eighth grade diploma in a one-room
prairie school amid a settlement of Montana high-prairie homesteads.
Page 35
Now, in my twilight years, as I compare the quality of my early education with that of
present-day elementary schools, it is apparent that my self-styled primitive schooling actually
had equipped me with family values, a sense of right and wrong, and a grasp of the "three
R's," which are partially or wholly lacking in today's financially endowed urban schools.
How did I learn to read at age four? By my mother’s tireless repetition of letters and their
phonetic sounds. My father stimulated my perception in quite a different way: "If you ask me
that question again, I'll take you to the woodshed.”
My expert spelling ability, mastery of world geography, and facility with decimals and
fractions were basic skills that I now see as special tools which aided me in meeting and
exceeding competition in life's endeavors.
My last visit to Froid, Montana, July 1-2, 2000, revealed not even one trace of our school
on that 2-acre site where I had spent so many days with my sister. Gone were the fences;
waves of grass and weeds obliterated the wagon tracks that once we followed. It had become
a patch of greenery accessible only by memories from 75 years ago. I would have to resurrect
the old school and its clanging bell in watercolor or let the image fade into oblivion.
Thank you, Rhoda School District No 62, Froid, Montana.
“Barn & wagon”

Page 36
5
Boyhood Memories
T he style for us children in the summer months was to go barefoot. We gathered eggs,
watered the hogs and chickens, opened and shut gates, and weeded the garden. We had
to wash fresh dung from our bare feet after doing our barnyard chores. My humble beginning
as a “hick farm kid” filled me with a compulsive desire to learn how best to fit into society.
Farm boyhood experiences are indeed treasures in the true sense of the word. Present-day
listeners are intrigued, if not confused, when they hear me talk about wagon wheels singing on
icy, snow-packed roads or the rhythmic rattle of a mower sickle or my toasting of my chilled
feet by the oven of the kitchen range. I still smell the exhaust of the 2-cylinder, fuel-oil
burning John Deere tractor and recall its rhythmic “pom-pom” exhaust sound.
Father was always in need of help, so he trained us boys at an early age to harness and drive
a two-horse mustang team pulling the mowing machine. We also learned to ride the cultivator
or plant grain with a four-horse team on the 10 ft. drill. In my final years at home, I plowed
fields with the John Deere tractor and 3-bottom plow. When harvest came, I manned the 12-
ft. McCormick-Deering combine with 8-year-old Kermit driving the tractor.
Many times I dream of Buster and the Dahley mare, who towed the farm implements
around the field with poise and dignity. In springtime, they pulled the corn planter and
cultivator or the walking plow in the cultivated fields. Other times they were instrumental in
“breaking" (or sod-busting) the few acres of unbroken virgin prairie on the south quarter
section of our farm.
Two additional mustangs were added to this team to make a foursome for handling larger
implements like the Van Brunt drill for planting wheat. I stood atop its grain box braving chill
spring winds or fresh spring breezes. As I dreamed of great future happenings, I pretended
that the little valley in which I was working would some day be mine.
Despite all this, I was still a “hick” to the townspeople and their kids. Whenever city kids
came to our farm to play, they had no idea how to drive a team of horses, clean the barn, or
deliver a calf. Usually they didn’t have sense enough to close the gate to the pasture when
returning to the farm house. Who, then, do you believe were the genuine hicks?
When I was six, Dad bought a single shot Remington .22 caliber rifle for me. It had three
Page 37
ammunition choices, but I was never permitted to shoot anything more powerful than .22
shorts. Summer days often included my roaming over the pasturelands to hunt gophers.
Sometimes I'd see a jack rabbit, but it was a rare occasion when I could get near enough to
shoot one.
One winter day I had my chance. The ground was covered with snow, and the plowed
fields were blanketed so that only a few lumps of soil showed through. But, on top of the
straw stack, I saw rabbit ears. I approached quietly and carefully, dropped to one knee, aimed
and fired. Funny, I thought, the rabbit only shook its ears. I fired a second shot. Same
thing. Then, a third shot. The “rabbit” reared up and whinnied. Heavens sake! It was
Charlie, our white lead horse, and he was angry. I had been putting .22 shorts into his
topknot! Fortunately the bullets were so low powered and the horse’s hair so thick that it
frightened him more than hurt him.
The .22 rifle had a safety catch which I was supposed to use at all times. I often forgot, and
on this occasion I forgot one time too often, to my dismay. The barrel was heavy and
therefore naturally pointed downward. Being an ardent hunter, I cocked the gun and took
off the safety catch so I could fire it in an instant. I saw a gopher. The gun fired before I
could raise it to aim. Blood was trickling from my shoe. I had shot myself in the foot.
Luckily it was between 2 toes. I did not dare tell my dad. He didn't care about the wound.
"The foot will heal—the shoe won't!" So I carefully concealed the whole episode. Kermit,
one of my brothers, broke his arm. He didn't tell Dad either. It was a bit more difficult to
hide a broken arm, but he did his daily chores. No one was any the wiser. I think his arm now
has an extra curve in it.
Summers were uneventful times, and I spent many days and hours with a team of horses
cultivating the scrawny corn stalks that were trying their level best to overcome the weeds, the
cutworms and the hot dry spells between rain showers. These and the times spent with a
three-horse team on the sulky plow preparing the five-acre patch below the barn for planting
of corn, clover and potatoes. They were days of daydreaming.
I would take my little Remington single-shot rifle and wander about the 320-acre farm. My
mind would conjure up visions of what I would do to the farm and to the little valley in which
it was located. My daydreams helped disguise my main goal: to stay away from the house and
to avoid becoming involved in the cold war between Mother and Dad. Only now am I fully
aware that I scarcely knew either Dad or Mother. We seldom talked about controversial
episodes. Our family history has therefore had to come from relatives, and much of our
cultural heritage was never experienced while we were children.
Every week there were the chores of cleaning the cow dung from the barn and putting in
fresh bedding. There was the task of keeping the windmill pumping water into the stock
tanks. It seemed that there either wasn't enough wind or too much wind and water would
overflow the tanks and form mud puddles. My farther didn't like either condition and always
commented upon my ancestry or some other disparaging remark.
Forty acres of the farm were virgin prairie land. They sloped gently upward to the south.
We called this plot “the pasture.” Our favorite pond, a glacial pothole typical of the High
Plains, was at its center. Each spring the snowmelt filled the little slough. Soon it was waist-
deep, full of pollywogs, water snakes, and fringed with moss and reeds. I made a raft out of
railroad ties and poled about on its surface. The antique Edison phonograph with the
cylindrical records and large tin horn was sacrificed to provide a small spring-wound motor
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CHAPTER FIVE: BOYHOOD MEMORIES
for a miniature paddle-wheel boat. My dad and mother had no idea that the phonograph was
motorless because they were interested in tinkering with the battery-power Crosley radio. We
would listen until late into the night. The game was to see how distant a station could be
heard. We logged Chicago, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and Denver at times but only in
fragmented, static-ridden reception.
A branch of Sheep Creek also ran almost diagonally through this area, but there was
seldom any flow, except in the spring run-off or during a cloudburst. A hobby was screening
the gravel beds in the creek bottom for arrows, scrapers, clubs and tomahawk relics left by
generations of Indians long gone. A few buffalo skulls still dotted the area. There were a lot of
large badger holes. The badgers had been eradicated years ago as homesteaders settled the
land, but the holes remained. They were at least a foot in diameter and the chief danger to
saddle horses, which might stumble in one of them and break a leg. The banks of the creek
sloped gently, and there were still patterns of cobblestones arranged in circles for Indian tent
encampments.
It never occurred to me that these were historical sites in the virgin prairie. To me it was
the place where endless rocks had to be dug out by hard labor with pick, crowbar, and shovel
and then piled along the field perimeter. I spent many days each summer between age 10 and
age 16 removing the stones and hauling them on a "stone boat" platform of planks on 8 x 8
timber runners towed by a team of horses.
Finally came the day when Dad said, "Hook up the team to the sulky plow and break the
prairie." I had to figure out where and how to start. None of us ever asked how to do a task.
If we asked him, we always got, "How can you be so old and know so little?" We preferred to
get the beating for doing it wrong rather than asking him first. We became fast learners. I
used to ask a couple of kind-hearted neighbors who enjoyed showing and telling us about
things like this.
Dad never knew how I figured out how to start the 40-acre plowing job! Three horses and
a "walking plow" were used to "break" the prairie. The soil, impacted by generations of roots
and compacted by ages of lying undisturbed, was turned over and laid, roots-up in the
adjoining furrow by the specially shaped plowshare on the sulky. Each ribbon was about 20
inches wide and 6 inches deep. There had to be considerable moisture in the soil to
accomplish this, so we had only a few days at a time after summer rains to work the plow. In
order to plant the first crop, the sod had to be further broken up by disking, harrowing, and
cultivating. So the mere act of sodbusting was but the first of many steps.
The first crop planted was almost certain to fail. For some reason I never understood, Dad
insisted that the first crop be flax. What I never realized until years later in life was that I, like
the original homesteaders, was a "sodbuster." I am very proud now to have earned that
distinction. Often I would lie down on a hillside to gaze at the clouds, wishing and wondering
what I would do and where I would go when I decided to leave the farm. I knew that once I
severed the ties, I would be free but on my own in every aspect of life. It was exciting and
dangerous to think as I did, but my imagination told me to prepare for a permanent exit at the
earliest opportunity.
Page 39
The farmstead as it looked in 2000 under ownership of the Ostbys.

Photo: Richard Midthun
A view to the south from the farmstead.

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CHAPTER FIVE: BOYHOOD MEMORIES
A view back from the south to the farmstead.

Approaching the old homestead (center of frame) from the north. To our left
would have been the old Renault spread, where I was rescued from the runaway
buggy by my hero, Telesphore Renault. Behind us on the right (out of view)
would have been the mailboxes where I would travel daily in fair weather to pick
up the mail.
Page 41
Class membership display at the Froid all-school reunion in 2000.

Note that my class of 1929 list shows only 10 students. I recall 12
of us graduating. Unfortunately, no photos for our class were
found. Photo: Robert Midthun
Page 42
6
High School Days
F roid High School boasted about 60 students. Our schoolmates included two future
generals in World War II, a janitor's son who became editor of a Chicago daily, and a
banker's son who became vice president of a multinational corporation, and one sad character
who was hanged for murder. My classmate and sister, Hazel, was always just a tad better than
I. She was valedictorian. I settled for salutatorian.
High school proved to be a cultural shock for this twelve-year-old, with an ego that only
his mother could have built into him. Among other cultural equipment I took with me that
first day was bigotry. If you weren't Norwegian, you just weren't anything. Danes, Germans,
Swedes, Russians, and Native Americans were almost untouchables. I was smart, and my
personal pride and superior brains would carry me on through the next four years, I thought!
Alas! In Algebra I my first semester grade was 50 (grading on percentage), General Science
under “Prof” 0. Lloyd Gillespie was a 75. My ship had sunk! Thanks to some dire fears and a
sudden awakening that one had to study and understand each lesson before the next one, I
soon learned that effort was far more important than a big ego and feet firmly planted in the
clouds. In due time learning became fun! At twelve I was a hundred-ten pounder, not even 5
feet tall. Athletics was out for me. So was romance! Being small and two years junior to all
others in the class, I soon found my way to "glory" had to be with whatever brains I had!
My small world expanded further, since my sister Hazel and I had to bach in town each
school year during the months with the most severe weather. For the five school days each
week, we stayed together in a rented shack, cottage, or apartment. On those winter weekends
we were taken home in the sleigh with Buster and the Dahley mare prancing in the snow.
There were animated conversations over the coal oil-lamp-lighted table in the kitchen as we
recounted events of the previous week to our parents. Also we had the chores of laundry,
ironing and food preparation for the next week to perform.
In the favorable weather of early fall and spring, we abandoned the baching and commuted
to high school in the 1917 Overland touring car. It had no brakes, and there were two
methods of stopping and parking it. One was to "shoot a landing.” It was tricky to estimate
Page 43
when to slow down and how far the vehicle would coast before it came to rest against the log
in the parking place. The other was to cast a four-by-four timber beneath the rear wheel at just
the proper moment. Hazel was not too well coordinated, and she would have difficulty in
casting it in place while I screamed at her. She never leaned to drive. Perhaps these
experiences had something to do with that.
Dad had a peculiar set of values, to say the least, in choosing places for us to bach in Froid.
The first was a 10 x 12 ft. clapboard shack with a door, two small windows, and a potbellied
heater standing in a weed-covered lot across the street from the Jack Wulf residence, a large
two-story house on a couple of acres, complete with outbuildings, barn, well, and garden.
Wulf, who owned the Froid Mercantile Company, a general store, was a rangy, dry, taciturn
dry-goods man, who was as tough and crusty as the gnarled cottonwood trees along Sheep
Creek. Mrs. Wulf was mother's best friend. They liked to chat about intellectual things. Esther
Wulf was much younger than Jack, and her time was occupied in raising a family of ten
children. The Wulfs never owned an automobile. In spite of the large business and hard
work, they always seemed "hard up." There were some fine rugs, Haviland china, and good
furniture in the house, and the children were always well dressed.
When Jack died in later years, an amazing story unfolded. He was a bigamist, and his other
(legal) wife collected his entire estate. She had blackmailed him throughout his life. That is
why they lived so frugally. It was a very tragic thing. From what we learned as time went on,
all of the children were able to cope with the situation and eventually led normal and happy
lives.
Back to the shack. No icebox. No well. No fuel. We carried our own lignite coal each week
along with kindling to start fires. We carried one bucket of water at a time from the WuIfs’
well. It was very hard. Tea was bitter and funky tasting. When you washed your face, it felt like
you had a mask on. But it was wet. We divided the small room into two spaces with an old
blanket hanging on a wire. The stove was always on one side, and that occupant really had a
“hot time.” We lived simply. Mother sent roasts, bacon and eggs, and home-baked bread and
pies with us each weekend. The fresh meat was kept outside in a covered pail that stayed
frozen during the winter. In warm weather we would get some weenies or sausage or
hamburger from Albert Zelt's meat market. He was as bald as Yul Brynner, rotund, and
florid-faced. His handlebar mustache drooped sharply, and his German was interspersed with
few heavily accented English words. But he was friendly and often gave us "butcher's candy,"
a bit of weenie or sausage.
We slept in metal cots with sides that raised and lowered so that the bed could double as a
settee. The feather ticks kept us warm. We did not bathe. Sponge baths were the only luxury
we had when the shack was warm. Either drafty and cold or stiflingly hot, the room was never
moderate or comfortable. We never even considered that we could be suffocated by coal gas
from our little stove. Our studies were done on a card table beneath the drop cord bearing a
50-watt bulb. The electric power came from a town-operated “one-lung” diesel-powered
generator. By the time the current was carried to our location, it had lost so much power that
our little light flickered. In windstorms it would go out completely. We therefore reverted to a
coal oil lamp.
Those freshman and sophomore years were trying in the Wulf shack. It was very
depressing. We were on the edge of town, and our nearest neighbors were the poorest family
in Froid. The Finleys were good people, but lacking education and having a large family made
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CHAPTER SIX: HIGH SCHOOL DAYS
it impossible for them to provide a decent standard of living. We would take the leftover food
from each school week to them. I shall always remember the stunted, pale children and the
prematurely aging parents with sad, wrinkled faces.
Our home for the junior year was a rented cottage with its own well, cooking range, and
heating stove. There was no running water, and we did not connect the electricity. We divided
the cottage in two parts, with the Ostby boys, our farm neighbors, occupying the other
portion. They were very good friends and models of good behavior. Their father was active
in politics and for years was our senator in the state legislature. They were interested in sports
and all athletics. We had little in common during high school years, except for our friendship.
Kermit had turned six years old, and it was a happy thing to have him with us in town to
attend grammar school. The days of the one-room Rhoda school were past. The very first day
of school I witnessed him engage in a rough and tumble conflict from my second-story
window vantage. The high school was on the upper floors and the grammar school on the
ground floor. He had been backed into a corner. Fists flew and feet kicked. Pretty soon he
had subdued his assailants. Kermit was a tough little guy and very quiet by nature. His youth
had no "good old days" like mine. He had a keen mind and used it well. In later years we
would become fast friends, when eight years of age difference made no difference. At last I
would be able to understand his quietness and determination. Like me, Kermit had resolved
to leave the farm and Froid at the earliest opportunity.
For our senior year, Hazel, Kermit, and I occupied a very small apartment upstairs over the
large Olson residence. The Olsons were a respected and distinguished family. One son,
Clarence, was a colonel in the National Guard. His brother, Hardin, had graduated from
West Point. Both were generals in World War II. Their sisters were very pretty, well educated,
and intellectual achievers.
The Olson apartment was the first one that had modern plumbing, water, and electricity.
There was no bath, but that was no problem to farm kids who had their own Saturday night
ritual. We did not connect the electricity by meter, but short-wired the stub ends of the wires
that once were on a meter. Lo! We had power. Father bought a small hot plate, and we stole
the power to do our cooking. He got a great thrill out of his perversity!
I might add that we high school kids had little respect for the Froid electric system. The
parents of one of the kids had a barn in which the power wires and insulator were exposed.
We played a game to see who was the bravest by joining hands in a human chain. One end of
the chain would contact an exposed wire, and the other end would touch the remaining
terminal. The idea was to not let go. I can remember the surges of electricity through my
arms. It is wonder enough that we were not killed. But by standing on hay in the barn loft, we
apparently were saved. That gang was too sophisticated for me, a thirteen-year-old, so I chose
to spend my recreational time with another farm boy my same age named Donald Nordman,
who boarded with his brother during the school year.
Donald had fallen from a saddle horse as a youth, and it apparently had affected him
mentally. He was one who would climb the 80-foot windmill tower on their farm when the
folks were gone or who would ride yearling calves in the corral until they panted in
exhaustion. He dared me to duplicate his feats. I did. But I got severely punished when my
parents found out about it.
On one occasion I thought I was going to die. We were riding double on his spirited pony
Page 45
when we spotted their prize shorthorn bull in the pasture. We decided to tease the bull. In
Montana at that time, wheat was threshed in the field and the straw piled in a tall, loose, cone-
shaped stack. The residual grain in the straw attracted livestock, and the cattle would trample
the straw under foot to eat from the stack, leaving a tall, cupcake-shaped pile.
We chased the bull into the stack. He had difficulty running in the loose straw under foot.
The pony was agile and could wheel on a dime and bolt like blazes. We were having the time
of our lives.
Then as the horse bolted, I slid off his back and onto the straw. Donald perversely wheeled
away from the stack, leaving the bull and me at the stack playing "peek-a-boo" for real. I
would hear him snorting and puffing, and then I would run in the opposite direction. The bull
would reverse his path looking for me. It seemed like ages to me to play this exhausting tag
game. Donald just sat on the horse and laughed at me. I knew I'd have to let the bull gore me.
Just as I was about to collapse, Donald rode up and pulled me on board.
Donald controlled me, and I have never figured out whether it was his persuasive manner
or my weakness and willingness to find excitement in disobeying the rules of common sense.
For example, one evening we were downtown visiting the two pool halls where the local
townspeople played pan and poker. There were slot machines that vended tokens and
dispensed cheap candy. Once in a while we would have a quarter to squander (for weenies at
Zelt's).
On this particular evening, neither Donald nor I had more than a few pennies. We stopped
in the Liberty Theater lobby to get a gumball out of the vending machine. The machine
jammed. Donald said, "Robert, watch the door". Then he dismantled the machine and cleaned
out the forty-two pennies it contained. "Hey, Robert, we're in luck," he said. We went a block
to the Froid Mercantile and purchased two Nickel Nut candy bars and some pencils.
The theft was not unnoticed. Lyle Miller, a
fellow student who did janitorial work for
Gilbert Rogney, the theater owner, reported the
incident to his boss. Donald was in deep trouble
and was threatened with reform school and
other penalties. I lived in mortal fear, having
been an accomplice. Each day I expected
Rogney to confront my parents, and that would
have been traumatic, indeed. But he did not.
Rogney was the Great Northern Railroad station
agent at Froid. In the year to follow, I would
sneak around him every time I entered the
station. I would cringe when I took a load of
wheat to the elevator across the street, for fear
he would notice me. In adulthood I went to see
Mr. Rogney and told him I had suffered much
guilt over the taking of the money. He was
genuinely surprised and said, "Robert, we never
even knew you were involved!" What a lesson!
My high school portrait. What a friend I had in Lyle Miller, but I regret
Page 46
that I never knew him or thanked him for protecting me.

The Liberty Theater was the cultural center of Froid. It was a large, rectangular frame
building with a ceiling high enough and a floor wide enough for a basketball court. The same
space served as the National Guard Armory for company "L" of the 163rd infantry, Montana
National Guard. Drills were held each Monday night. When a movie was shown, the folding
chairs were set up. The small stage at one end was the site for many a school play or the
locale for a debating or oratorical contest. Prom and graduation took place here.
By age fourteen I was as tall as Dad, all of five feet six inches. I had become more muscular
and had a keen desire to earn some money. The National Guard recruited members from the
high school. So I fraudulently enlisted in the Guard at age 14 by stating I was eighteen. For
the first time in my life I had good wool shirts that fit, a warm overcoat, sturdy shoes, and an
income of a dollar a week plus two weeks encampment each summer in Fort Harrison at
Helena, Montana. Every three months I cashed my $13.00 check for thirteen drills at $1.00
each. It was "manna from heaven," that much money.
My heart was in the military life. I yearned for and dreamed of becoming an officer so that
I could have tailored breeches and shiny riding boots and a Sam Browne belt. The
commanding officer of "L" company was Leslie Stephens, a chiropractor from a nearby town.
His adjutant was Edmunds Geiger, the son of Froid's only dentist, Dr. J.C. Geiger. Edmunds
was also Leslie Stephens’ brother-in-law. Both of these men were excellent role models and
exemplary citizens. They were influential to all of the high school kids and, furthermore, were
college educated.
My trust in these leaders was implicit, and Fred Engler, an older man who had the rank of
sergeant, became almost my second father. I could talk openly and freely with him, something
I could not do with my own dad. Fred is one of the great men in my life. He was influential in
having me promoted to supply sergeant after only two years of service. I had charge of all
equipment, stores, uniforms, guns, ammo, and the like. It was the first taste of power I had
ever had. We went to our encampment in the first week in July. On the eastern slope of the
Rockies with an elevation 4000 feet above sea level, the mornings were nippy and frosty. The
sun was warm and afternoons were in the seventies, certainly a problem with choker-style
World War I uniforms, breeches, and wrap leggings. Discipline was strict.
The one incident that stands out above all others in my military life was a field combat
exercise of the three battalions of the 163rd infantry. We were advancing over the cactus-
covered arid ground. The method was called infiltration, in which we rose from a prone
position, advanced 30 yards, dropped to prone position behind some bush or obstacle and
fired blank rounds from our 30-06 Springfield rifles. When the rest of our company had
advanced 30 yards, we would repeat the process. In between advances we yelled to one
another and waited for the next command. The little guy next to me was a kid who had a lot
of spunk. He chewed tobacco and smoked cigarettes that he rolled. My dad would have
beaten me to death if I smoked, so I was an abstainer. He yelled, "Robert, have a chew" and
tossed me a small plug of champagne-cut chewing tobacco. I was a sergeant and could not
give him an excuse. So I bit off a chunk and tossed the plug back.
We made two more advances by infiltration. I became excited in the action and accidentally
swallowed my quid. Boy, was I sick! I turned green and began to vomit. The little guy laughed
hard, came over and took my rifle and stuck the bayonet in the ground and put my campaign
hat on the but. That was a signal to the medics that the ambulance was needed. Retching in
Page 47
agony, I remember the company advancing away from me in the distance. The ambulance
wheeled up in a cloud of dust. The medics placed me on a stretcher and took me to the
infirmary tent. I shall never forget the doctor's instant diagnosis: heat exhaustion. I am
thankful to this day that the truth was never evident.
Between twelve and sixteen I had changed from a towheaded, slender child into a more
adult appearance. Two things kept me from participating in sports. My parents took a dim
view of athletic events. Father would say, "Pish, damn fools play games." The other was my
slender body and lack of coordination, either of which would have kept me on the sidelines if
I had been permitted to enter sports. I weighed at most 120 lbs soaking wet. Even if things
had been different, my small rural grammar school had no semblance of organized sports to
prepare me for later athletic endeavors.
So when I entered Froid High’s freshman class, I knew which path to follow. My mother
and the talented schoolmarms of Rhoda School, District 62, had equipped me with a
knowledge and love for grammar, spelling, and the written word. I did excel in diligent and
meaningful lesson preparation and study. So scholarship was my natural desire, although my
initial commitment to that path was shaky.
Since we shared the same classes, Hazel and I were in competition from the very start. She
had a yen for English and poetry. We both did a lot of writing. She was a disciplined student
and carefully did her homework. She kept a diary in a code of letters and numbers that I never
could decipher it, even after hours of speculation and espionage.
After the first semester in high school, in which I garnered some fifty percent scores,
because I did not study and considered classes as a mere exercise for my brilliant mind, I, too,
became a serious student Barred from athletic competition, I concentrated on scholarship,
oratory and debate. Excelling in all three fields I soon earned my "niche" in the school.
Hazel and I were on the honor roll and were required to be in the building only during classes
and general assembly periods.
One most appealing and inviting temptation was the annual countywide scholarship
contest embracing the 12 basic high school subjects mandated by the Montana Board of
Education for sophomores and other upperclassmen.
This was my goal—to enter and win honors in the written tests on the subjects in my class
group. I won first place in geometry, English, and civics and second and third ranking in
many other subjects. This earned me a Scarlet “F” letter sweater. Our school colors were
cardinal and black. I now had recognition in the scholastic field, just as the athletes who
lettered in the various sports did on the athletic field.
Another high school challenge I enjoyed was stock judging. I took to it naturally from my
farm experiences and excelled. I earned many trips to other schools to represent Froid High in
these competitions. Often I traveled with the athletic teams, they to the physical and I to the
mental competition.
As a senior, I entered the Montana Oratorical Contest sponsored by The Great Falls Tribune,
a leading Montana daily newspaper. Each entrant had to write and deliver an oration of his
choice on one of several listed topics embracing the United States Constitution.
My subject choice was “The Constitution, A Guarantee of Liberty To The Individual?” It
was an easy win on the Froid High School stage, but my next contest at Wolf Point, the
county seat, would be against the runner-up, second place medallist in the previous year’s state
Page 48
contest in Helena.
Principal O. Lloyd Gillespie himself drove me to Wolf Point. He was a stern man and a
disciplinarian. His presence boosted my courage, and I won the gold medal, defeating
Bernard Geisen, the previous year's second-place medallist. I treasure the gold medal and am
very happy to have earned it.
My victory at Wolf Point meant that I would go to the state finals in Great Falls. Dad
wanted me to have a new suit for the event. Mr. E.E. Perlin's clothing store, next to the First
State Bank, sold Curlee brand ready-to-wear suits. We went in and tried on a few. Dad settled
on a size 36 blue pin-striped, three-button model. It had two pairs of pants, so he followed
Mr. Perlin's suggestion that one pair be tailored to fit Dad and the other to fit me. Both of us
were the same height, and the coat could be used by either of us without alteration. The coat
and vest, size 40, were right off the rack. The trousers were altered so that one pair was size
36, the other, size 28. The arrangement was that whichever of us had the priority occasion
would wear the vest and coat. The other would wear a white shirt, tie and the pants with
whatever dark jacket we possessed between us.
When I got the pants, I discovered, to my dismay, that the alteration was done in a manner
that placed the trouser creases on the outside of my legs. Perlin had merely cut a triangular
vee-shaped piece out of the trouser seat and closed the gap. Dad said, “Quit your bellyachin',
they're all right!”
That didn't bother me as much as the pink felt hat he got on sale for $3.. It was very pale in
color, but noticeably pink. Dad said, "Shut up, it's a good buy!" I had learned to shut up since
our knock down and drag out affair on the previous Christmas. Next came my first pair of
dress shoes, Oxfords no less! But they were bright yellow with rectangular eyelets, plaid laces,
and heels a peculiar shade of lavender. My new red four-in-hand tie had a few gravy stains
already built in. I figured that I could use my National Guard Dynashine cordovan liquid dye
to lessen the shoes’ visual impact, but I didn’t know what to do with the pink hat, except to
forget it or lose it. Eventually, I did just that.
My carping and suffering finally brought some attention from my father. He said, one day,
“If you don’t like that nice suit, ve’ll get you another vun for you.” I was thrilled and grabbed
the Montgomery Ward catalog. “No, not that,” he said. “Ve'll go into town (Froid).” “Dey
have lots of goods at the Froid Mercantile Company.” My heart nearly quit beating. Here we
go again. I knew that feeling deep down in my innards.
We went to see Jack Wulf. The “Merc” as we called it was a dark, pungent room with only
the front windows admitting any light. There were overhead fans that twirled lazily and large
glass domed light fixtures, illuminated with 20-watt bulbs. Hardwood counters that had been
worn and grooved with years of use, perhaps second hand when the store was built, ran back
about 30 or 40 feet along both sidewalls. To the right were canned goods, coffee, salt, beans,
crackers in a barrel, weenies in a barrel of brine, and crocks of butter traded by the farm
women (some of the butter was rancid, little was sweet, and everyone knew enough to ask for
Mrs. Swanson's butter, please).
The left side of the store had dry goods, including overalls with high backs, low backs,
jeans, caps, hats, bolts of flannel, gingham and terry cloth, harness gear and tack axle grease,
shovels, hoes, rakes, brooms, and so on. The farther one went into the store, the more musty,
dusty, and dark the merchandise became.
Page 49
When Dad and I entered the store, I just knew they didn't have any suits! I had never seen
such a thing. Wrong! Mr. Wulf said, “I've got a few suits in the back that I'll give you a real
good price on and which will be the right size for Robert.” I wanted to bolt out the door. I
dared not cry or gripe, because by father had a violent temper and wouldn't hesitate to beat
me with his fists in a white hot-rage. I was l-i-c-k-e-d again! Out came a slate-grey, homespun
garment with stripes faintly threaded through the fabric in shades of yellow and blue. The cut
was “ecstatic” for the gay nineties. The coat had five buttons and cute little lapels that
wrapped smartly under the chin of the wearer. “You only buttoned the top two or three
buttons,” Mr. Wulf said. He must have remembered his father's suit, I thought, to know about
that! The vest had small lapels, too! I secretly hoped the price would frustrate Dad. Six dollars
didn't! “Try it on,” asked Wulf? “Naw,” Dad said. “It’s the right size.”
But dad never noticed that I had remodeled the suit with scissors and a hot iron. I folded
the small lapels all the way down to the third button so I had a two-button appearing suit. I
cut the lapels off the vest, but that did not work, so I quietly threw it in the rag bag.
In a few months I had managed to corral $14.00 from odd chores at the local store, picking
turkeys for Mr. Wulf, and for similar tasks at 50 cents each! No hourly wage--just “tips.” The
sporty gray suit with the pin stripes that looked so good in the catalog finally came! It was a
dream suit that almost fit perfectly. Wide lapels, two buttons, neat vest. Wow! Then I sat
down to relax and savor the event. Alas. when I arose, I noticed that my image in the mirror
indicated I was still sitting! Now, I had a “stand-up” suit. Whenever I wore it, I was certain
that no one could persuade me to sit until the very last thing. Then home and back to the
iron. Many times my friends and family have asked me why I am so particular about my
clothing and my appearance. You have the answer.
The other thing I longed to have was a barber-shop haircut. For the big event in Great
Falls, I did go the Cosper's Barber Shop next to the post office, intending to get the "clippers
all around job." Its twenty-five cents price was more than I could afford, so it was Dad’s
"soup bowl style" with me sitting on an old beer case in the barn while he applied his
unmatched tonsorial skills.
When I finally went to Great Falls to compete in the state contest, I was photographed
with Governor John Edward Erickson on the steps of the auditorium. Dressed in my pink felt
hat and my new Curlee suit and wearing the yellow Oxfords with fancy laces, I must have
looked the "typical hayseed."
We met many other state officials, dined at banquets, and were housed in the Hotel
Rainbow. Some 5,000 souls crowded into the auditorium for the contest. It was a humbling
experience not even to place. I had had my chance and felt like the prizefighter who, after
losing the championship fight 20 seconds into the first round, told his mother the next day, "I
came in second."
I have warm and fond recollections of my honors in debate and oratory. In these four
years, I had accomplished many small successes. All of these brought attention to me by the
local banker, John W. Schnitzler, who would enable me to go to college. These pursuits
enriched my talents and earned me a great career in later years.
Page 50
“Meadows and fields in springtime”

Page 51
Dad and Elmer.
Page 52
7
The Schnitzler Scholarship
M y adulthood was sudden and final. High school graduation a few days after my
sixteenth birthday placed me in a tremendous quandary. On graduation night in the
Liberty Theatre, I delivered both the salutatory and valedictory addresses, since Hazel the
valedictorian was confined to her bed with black measles. Then and there, the realization
finally hit home that there was no way I could go on to pursue a college education. I had no
money. Mother and Dad were in a deep state of gloom, and a hostile mood prevailed. It was
cold war time.
That summer of 1929 was disastrous to the spring wheat crops for which the High
Montana Plains were noted. When crops properly materialized, the wheat brought premium
prices for its high protein content and its special milling qualities. However, 1929 was so dry
that we didn't even have hay for our three cows or our four horses. The wheat was brown
and stunted. It barely yielded enough to replace the seed, and certainly not more than a few
bushels to the acre for expenses. The crops were mortgaged. That meant we could not sell
any grain to our personal account.
In fact, our 320-acre wheat farm had already suffered seven years of complete crop fai1ures
from drought, hail, dust storms, cutworms, to name a few. One or a combination of these
wiped us out each year. We had to sell the livestock because we couldn't grow any hay or feed
for them. We kept the cow hoping that she would live and provide us with milk and cheese.
The chickens and turkeys shifted for themselves, living mostly on the pests that were eating
our crops.
Dad kept two teams of horses, and we scrounged and connived to find enough to keep
these alive. By August news of the impending stock market crash was in the press It didn't
matter to the Midthuns. We had no stocks, no money, and practically no hope. Our aim was
survival. Fortunately some public construction projects entered the picture, and Dad managed
to get work for his four horses and himself. He was paid $4.00 per day, and each horse earned
an additional $2.00. It was like manna from heaven! $12.00 per day! On top of this, a
governmental relief project provided canned beef in large gallon tins. It was not gourmet food
but was most welcome. Mother always had a lot of poise, and it disturbed her to open the tins.
Page 53
It was common knowledge to all who visited us that the beef was government issue.
Nevertheless, she got out the Mason jars, sent us kids out in the pasture with gunny sacks to
pick up cow chips for fuel, and then cold-pack canned the beef in our own jars. I never could
reason how she meant to hide this little ruse, as we had not one steer or calf to butcher but
only the one milk cow. I remember once Dad in a pair of new overalls with a roll of small bills
he kept in his pocket. This time he was our “Champ,” and his renewed spirits cheered us a
good deal.
Yet, just a few months previously at Christmas time, when I was still 15, my dad and I
had the final showdown physically and, for my part, mentally. This was the one and only time
I challenged Dad. He had struck a blow at Mother, and I grabbed him. His face filled with
purple rage. We were fighting in earnest. I believe he would have killed me if I had given him
the chance. The whipping I took was quite brutal. Somehow Mother stopped us. I was afraid
he would strike her, but he didn't. I feared for my life as I ran out of the house. In fairness to
Dad, I never saw him strike her, but I have seen him cock a fist and threaten her many
times. That day, I realized I would have to leave home forever after graduating from high
school, and as soon as I could think of a way to do it.
My parents were very downcast and depressed. So was I. There were many bitter tears in
my life then. I felt trapped. The good mind God had given me had been trained by a
persevering mother, and the little high school had whetted my desire to learn. It was years
later before I learned what an excellent job had been done on me at that time!
My sole assets were $25 that I had saved from cutting corn and doing odd jobs for Bob
Insteness, a neighbor who had a daughter but not the son he always wanted. He was a kind
and generous man (later to die in a mysterious barn fire, which many suspected was a
murder).
Buster and Dahley were my mowing team. One afternoon, after cutting some odd patches
of grain near the Renault place, I was trying to mow some Russian thistles (an obnoxious
thorny tumbleweed) in order to feed the cow. If we got them early enough, they were good
for two things: greens, that Mother could cook for a vegetable, and some fodder for the cow.
The wind always blew in Montana, and most days were partly cloudy and warm at sunrise in
early summer. By mid-afternoon, the temperature would climb to the high nineties. Little
wisps of straw and a lot of dust whirled in the "dust devils” that danced about in a perverse
and beautiful pattern. It was stifling on the mower.
My thoughts were that I would never escape a life of rural poverty. There wasn't even the
remotest chance to go to college.
It was too early for the customary hot tea, homemade bread, and homemade Norwegian
cheese (Gamel-Ost) which Mother always brought us men in the field. I shall never forget her
silhouetted figure, tired and bowed, as she plodded over the knoll. Her hair was blowing
across her face. Her gingham dress was torn and patched. She had hemmed it with a
mismatching material, probably from one of the World's Best Flour sacks. The heavy men's
shoes, turned up at the toes, seemed to be made of lead. As she neared me, it was obvious
that this was no ordinary lunch break. She gestured for me to come in from the field.
She was sobbing. Tears had stained her dusty face. "Robert, stop what you are doing," she
said. “Unhitch the horses. Bring them in or turn them loose. Come home at once."
“Why,” I asked? “What's wrong?”
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CHAPTER SEVEN: THE SCHNITZLER SCHOLARSHIP
"You must go to college,” she replied. “We have some cream and butter money you can
have for the ticket out of here. If you don't leave now, you will always be here!"
My heart leaped within me. My mind raced furiously. I tried to thank her, but she hurried
off, leaving me in a swirling state of elation, depression and confusion. Perhaps I could
somehow get an education. I would escape from the growing conflict between my dad and
me. In my later years I would realize that this was an unselfish and supreme sacrifice for a
mother to give her child. I still didn’t know exactly how I would pull it off, but I was
determined to find a way—somehow.
Dad had some qualities that I've always admired. One of these was to look after his family
by whatever means was available. I made a number of trips by Model T Ford truck to grain
elevators other than at Froid—McCabe, Culbertson, Bainville, all nearby in Montana, and
even Williston in North Dakota. Had he not done so, we would have been penniless. The
grain elevator managers were sympathetic to impoverished farmers and winked at receiving
mortgaged grain. They, too, were probably indebted to the local bank or the Federal Land
Bank that held the 12 per cent mortgages on their property. There was no love for the local
banker. Funny thing, my means of leaving home came through the kindness and provision of
the very self-same hated banker, Mr. John W. Schnitzler, owner of the First State Bank of
Froid, Montana.
Schnitzler was one of the founders of the town of Froid in 1910. He intended to open a
newspaper but wound up opening and owning the First State Bank of Froid. His keen mind
and business acumen, plus 12 per cent or more interest on farm mortgages, soon earned for
him personal wealth as a millionaire.
He knew how to enjoy his wealth. Small of stature and a dapper dresser, he lived well
with homes in Froid and also in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and with trips around the world
each year. Republican Party politics fascinated him. He was not only a State Senator, but he
also was a Republican National Committeeman. He loved to show off in a quiet but
noticeable way. His 12-cylinder Lincoln limousine was always parked at the curb in front of
the First State Bank. He hired loyal persons to work hard and do the "dirty work" of
collections for him. One never came before John Schnitzler to transact business unless it was
to his advantage.
The one tragedy in his life, as I learned in years to follow, was that the Schnitzlers could
not have children. He longed for a son to follow in his footsteps. I did not realize how close
I came to becoming a role model, if not that son.
Thanks to Mother, we children were motivated to scholarship and mental achievement.
She believed that the only way we could escape the sad destiny of farm life was to obtain an
education. I read at four, started school at five, completed the eighth grade at 12, and
graduated from high school at 16. My scholastic record at Froid High School was such as to
earn a bit of local fame for me as an individual. Mr. Schnitzler had a talent for selecting
people. A young man who earned his wings in the Army Air Corps at Randolph Field became
his personal pilot to fly his Ryan monoplane. It was similar to the aircraft Lindbergh piloted
for his famous flight. He hired brainy persons to run the bank and assist in his political
ambitions.
One day, when I was "bootlegging" a load of wheat to the Farmers Elevator, he passed my
wagon in his black limousine, stopped, and flagged me. "Robert, what are your plans?" I was
Page 55
almost shaking with fear and respect for this tycoon, who had spoken to me only a very few
times and then only to congratulate me briefly on winning a scholarship contest, a debate, or
an oratorical contest. I meekly said, "I don't know what I'm going to do, but I don't want to
become a farmer." To this he replied, "Come in and see me at the bank. I'll be expecting you
at ten o'clock tomorrow."
When I reached home, I decided not to tell my parents about the encounter. Dad would
have been very upset about the banker seeing me with a team of horses and a grain wagon
near the elevator. So I kept mum and spent a sleepless night. Next day, I told the folks I was
driving the Overland to the mailbox one mile away. I not only picked up the mail, but I went
on into Froid and to my appointment.
Schnitzler's pale blue eyes twinkled as he greeted me. His blue pinstripe tailored suit and
red silk tie were immaculate. I noticed his gold watch and chain across his vest. He had a large
signet ring and a chocolate leather chair behind the desk. The mahogany furnishings were a
sight I shall never forget. Right then he was becoming not only my hero but also my lifetime
salvation!
"Robert, I have a business proposition for you,” he said. “Please keep it a secret between
the two of us. I want you to do your level best to work your way through college. I will help
you only as a last resort, because I want you to become a self-made man. You are going to
have your own checking account here. Just sign my name and yours beneath it, and we will
honor the checks. Keep withdrawals as small as possible. Don't worry about the money,
because Mrs. Schnitzler and I want you to pay us back only when you become wealthy. Also,
Robert, I have set up a scholarship in your name at Intermountain Union College in Helena. It
is a $2,000 trust fund, the interest of which will pay your tuition. Is that okay?
"One more requirement, Robert. I will pay your way through graduate school in one of the
finest universities, yours to choose. But you must work for me after that, and you will be well
rewarded financially and in every other way befitting your station."
I signed the checking account, picked up the book of checks, and left the bank with tears
streaming down my face. I was walking on air! I had a solution for my desire to leave home.
My folks knew of the scholarship, because I was permitted to tell them. But the rest of the
Faust-like pact remained secret. Here is the point where adulthood began for me. It started
with "drinking out of a fire hose," an expression that was to characterize most of my adult life.
Page 56
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE SCHNITZLER SCHOLARSHIP
“Wagon relic”
Page 57
Our family when I visited in the years after college. Clockwise from top left: Dad,
me, Hazel, Mom, Kermit, Alice May, and Elmer.
Page 58
8
The Bonds Are Broken
M other with 2-year-old Elmer in her arms, Dad in his overalls and work shirt, invalid
sister Alice May (who remained in the two-door Whippet), and Kermit bade me
goodbye on the Great Northern station platform at Froid. Mother was only 44 years old, but
she had a tired look. Her arms were sinewy and muscular from taking care of an 80-pound
invalid and a two-year-old child.
Dad stood by, downcast with a sad countenance, and said very little. He did not kiss me
goodbye. Men never kissed or showed emotion. Men did not cry, so I reserved my crying
until the train was a couple of hours out and on the main line of the Great Northern.
It happened when I tried to eat my lunch. The cardboard box had a cantaloupe, two plums,
and a pear. Then I saw the cheese, bologna, and some of Mother's whole grain bread. She
had gone to great pains to give me the best she knew. I felt the pangs of sadness that she
lived with, and I was deeply aware of the sacrifices she had made so that I could actually fulfill
her dream of a college education her children.
The trip to Helena, Montana, was about six hundred miles long and would take some 30
hours of sitting in a day coach with the smell of coal smoke burning one's eyes. There was
grime, soot, and no ventilation. I never ate my lunch. I tried to give it to other passengers, but
no one seemed to want any part of it. During the night I slipped out between the cars and
passed it to the plains animals.
My maroon cardboard suitcase with rubber straps held a pair of baggy tweed pants, a pair
of corduroy trousers, some BVD underwear and socks, two shirts, and a sweater. I was
wearing the gray Montgomery Ward suit that didn't hold a press and bagged at the knees. On
my head was my pink hat and on my feet the yellow Oxfords that I had attempted to convert
to cordovan brown. The Dyanshine polish only streaked them. Dad said, "Shut up and wear
'em; the soles are good."
The monotony of clicking rails and the blinking lights at last put me to sleep. I was very
careful of my wallet with my $25 in cash. The Schnitzler scholarship and checkbook were
tucked inside my shirt. My cardboard suitcase was pressed close beside me in the coach seat.
It contained the sum total of my worldly possessions, and the least touch by an outsider
Page 59
would have awakened me.

The next afternoon at 4 P.M. the train backed the half-mile into the Helena Station at the
foot of Last Chance Gulch of gold rush fame. Tired, grimy, and confused, to say the least, I
scrambled onto the platform and into the station. By way of a wall map, I noted that it was a
good two-mile hike from the
station to the Intermountain
Union College campus, way out
east on Eleventh Avenue. The
steep grades out of the canyon and
onto the more rolling terrain
required a lot of energy. With
suitcase in hand, I trudged wearily
to the college. There were only
two buildings. On the north side
of Eleventh Avenue was the main
edifice, which housed admin
istrative offices and classrooms.
The girls' dorm was the other two-
“Helena or bust!”
story brick building, across the
street. There was an athletic field
on the campus, but no grandstand seating or other structures.
C. H. Crittenden, the controller and business manager, peered earnestly at me when I
approached the admissions counter. He was an austere person with narrow-rimmed glasses
and red-rimmed eyes, but he was cordial and welcomed me, taking my papers. I would have
to come in the following day to register, as this was a weekend day. He gave me a list of
rooms to rent, since there was no men's dorm. I selected one at 1821 Jerome Place in the
city's Lenox Addition. It was a half-mile from the college, up a nine percent grade. I
proceeded to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Collins and presented myself.
Collins was the Prohibition Enforcement Officer for the Helena area. They were splendid
people and accepted my ten bucks warmly and thankfully. There were two sons. The older
son was a junior at Intermountain, and his brother was a high school senior and respected
athlete. The daughter was a high school freshman. They had a Studebaker touring car. It was
long and almost impossible to shift into low gear. The transmission growled and groaned.
I went upstairs to my room. It was garishly wallpapered and had high Victorian windows.
The homemade quilts and the cotton spread reminded me of home. It was two hours before
I stopped sobbing and fell asleep. I was alone for the first time in my life. I had fifteen
dollars. I was hungry and tired, mentally and physically.
Rod and George Absher had the room next to mine. They were students at Intermountain
and very friendly. They invited me to ride to and from the campus in their Essex two-door
sedan. It had so little power and the motor spun so very fast that one would think it was a
racing car. Going downgrade was wonderful. Coming uphill was tedious and noisy. The
Absher boys' dad was a geologist exploring for oil in the Athabasca tar sands, eight hundred
miles north of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Holes were drilled in the soil and a burner was
inserted to heat and free the oil from the sands. The idea was to distill the vapor and recover
crude. I was in awe of these two rugged individuals and eagerly listened to their tales of
Page 60
CHAPTER NINE: OUT OF THE HARBOR AND INTO THE DEEP: FORT PECK
adventure.
The next morning Rod and George knocked on my door. They had meal tickets at the
dorm. My twenty-five cent breakfast of eggs, toast, and coffee tasted like a feast. At 4000-ft.
altitude, the cool, thin air was bracing. I rushed in to register and meet many kids, some of
them from Froid’s neighboring towns.
Intermountain Union College was a Christian school founded by the Methodist Episcopal
and Presbyterian churches.11 The curriculum was centered on preparation for the ministry,
with education a secondary purpose. Majors were offered in history, science, and music.
There were many musical groups, and students formed a glee club and a large choir. There
was always a musical group leading us at morning chapel.
My college goal was to obtain a bachelor's degree in something, probably math and physics,
though I knew it would be a struggle. I would then proceed with the Schnitzler plan. It would
be graduate school and on to a profession at some great university. But I also had a secret
alternative. I wanted to be in the military service and get a fine and free education at one of
the academies—first choice, West Point, second choice, Annapolis. It was my thought that
whichever opportunity was first would be the one to follow.
But the immediate problem was how to do this on $14.75 (after breakfast). Hamburgers
were 5 cents and milk shakes were 15 cents. I could make it for 20 to 30 days, I rationalized. I
needed a job fast. Having to work was a way to quickly mature a 16-yrear-old freshman. The
employment office at the college was helpful.
Many large Victorian homes had coal furnaces. These had to be stoked and fired at 5
o'clock in the morning and the ashes cleaned out each week. The usual pay was $10.00 per
month, and, if one were lucky, one could get three or four of these homes in the same
locality. However, I had never even seen a basement furnace, much less learned to stoke, fire,
and clean it. Here the Absher boys taught me one of the biggest lessons in my life. They
took me on their rounds for "show and tell" training and went with me a few times on my
own jobs to guide me.
One afternoon I spotted a sign in front of the Ford agency that read “Help Wanted.” I saw
the guys lounging on the street with placards, but it didn't register in my mind that they were
pickets. I knew nothing of labor unions, scabs, et cetera. The man in front motioned me to
the shop. A large fellow in greasy overalls said, “Kid, what do you know about Model T Ford
trucks? We service about 20 Model T city garbage trucks, and I need help real bad!”
That question was duck soup to me because my father and I had taken one in payment for
some farm work we did for a neighbor, and we considered ourselves experts. We kept it going
with a monkey wrench, some baling wire, used oil, and no money. The job was mine, if I
could “cut it," as he said. Up to that time I never had been employed by the hour. I merely got
tips of 50 cents or a dollar for a particular farm or grocery task.
I thought I was rich! The job was easy. They furnished a bucket of clean solvent, a full set
of tools, new parts, and fresh oil and grease. With the Model T all you did was clean the timer,
set the coil points, adjust the planetary bands on the transmission, clean up the magneto, and,
presto, a quarter-turn of the crank made it purr like a kitten.
11
Rocky Mountain College, Billings, Montana, is the present day descendant of Intermountain Union College.
Page 61
The pickets underestimated the young 5-footer from Froid when they waylaid me behind
the shop to beat me up. I saw them skulking about one afternoon and figured I'd have to
defend myself. A Model T axle is a fine weapon, about 24 inches long with a knobby gear on
one end and a nut on the other that made a perfect handle. I could swing it like a ball bat. I
wrapped this steel shillelagh in an old newspaper, tucked it under my arm, and slipped out of
the shop. Although it was during Prohibition, there was a lot of booze and home brew being
made. I had noticed the pickets had a supply and liked to stay somewhat plastered. The two
men who stepped in front of me to assault and torment me were unarmed, surly and
condescending. I had not heard such foul language since my Uncle Bob had tried to teach me
to swear when I was four years old.
I jumped back, grabbed my Ford axle, and made a swing like at a high curve ball, catching
one of the guys at shoulder level. I bolted, ran, vaulted over the wooden fence and was gone.
There was never any more physical challenge, only verbal, as they knew what I carried in the
paper sack. It wasn't booze.
The best job I had was cleaning a confectionery store, which entailed lighting the ranges
and candy vats. Joe Brady was a small, Jewish gentleman who had keen eyes that matched his
keen intellect. The building was about one hundred feet long and thirty feet wide, with a full
basement. The store fronted on Main Street, and the cafe and candy counters extended forty
feet or so back from there. The next room was the kitchen and confectionery, and the final
room was the chocolate-dipping room, where a dozen white-gowned girls sat on stools and
created some exquisite candies. It seemed unreal at first. I was given my board for doing
windows and mopping the floors. I was paid twenty-five cents per hour for helping Art, the
candy maker.
I was told to order from the menu but never steaks or chops or fancy desserts. And I was
to eat in the kitchen. Lizzie Rickman was the head chef. She would tell me to sit behind the
big range so as not to be seen by the Bradys, whose apartment was upstairs, and then would
come an elegant porterhouse steak. She had a teen-age boy who was on the high school
basketball team. Mr. Brady never caught on.
Art, the candymaker, drank a lot, but I wasn't aware of that problem for many weeks. He
liked me and taught me how to set up six hundred pounds of candy canes in the big copper
vats, wear the traditional goatskin gloves, and pull the candy on big hooks on the wall. I
learned how to color canes and put them through the roller dies that stamped out all sorts of
shapes. I helped make all sorts of candy: caramels, nougats, Turkish paste and such. Trays of
these were given to the girls for chocolate dipping each morning. It wasn't long before I
almost became nauseated from the smell of chocolate. I had to carry it up from the basement
in huge, fifty-pound slabs. The coconut also was in slabs and had to be shredded into wide,
flat strips that resembled noodles.
Mr. Brady had rare insight when he fired Art. He called me in and offered me forty cents
per hour if I would help him or his son at odd hours and on weekends. I jumped at the
chance, not realizing that Art's career was reduced to a shambles. Between Lizzie, who fed
me royally, and the good wages as assistant candymaker, I was able to save some money.
Carfare was a nickel. It was one and one-half miles to classes. I bought some roller skates and
thereby made the commute in a relatively few minutes, except in midwinter, when sidewalks
were icy. And each skating trip saved me a nickel bus fare.
It was satisfying to have enough income to pay board and room, averaging $35.00 per
Page 62
month. Most places I boarded at let me use the washing machine and ironing board in
exchange for simple chores like bringing in the milk, dumping the trash, and raking
leaves. The landlady didn't mind if we sat in the front room or joined the family for evening
radio broadcasts. In fact, we became virtual members of the families we boarded with.
Shortly after arriving in Helena, I had transferred my National Guard duties to the
Regimental Headquarters Company, where I met a diverse collection of interesting fellow
guardsmen during my college years. The Lay brothers built their own airplanes. Red Morrison
had a Lockheed Electra and flew supplies to Forest Service crews. The company skipper was a
prominent engineer. Their fellowship was beneficial and educational. One man, Howard
Firebaugh, operated a flight school using a Kinner Fleet biplane. On weekends I would go out
to the field and help with the chores of gassing up, washing the plane, and tidying up the
hangar. In return he gave me some "stick time," and one day I soloed! But that was all I could
do, as I had no spare cash for more lessons.
My enlistment in the Guard expired after my second year, and I did not reenlist. his was a
blessing in disguise. Years later, in World War II, the Montana National Guard would
become a part of the 4th Infantry, U.S. Army, and many of its personnel would be in the
Bataan Death March.
My first truly fortunate break was to board and room with the T. H. MacDonald family.
They were from Kalispell, Montana. Mr. MacDonald was the Assistant Attorney General of
Montana. Judge L. A. Foote was his boss. Both of them were on intimate terms with the
Governor. Mr. MacDonald's $3,000 per annum salary didn't cover the cost of a daughter at
the State University or the education of two younger sons. The board and room income was
necessary, and the whole family did other work on a part-time basis. Their son, Hugh, was
my roommate. He had just graduated from high school and was taking part-time courses at
the Catholic Carroll College in Helena. Yet, he worked full-time for the U. S. Weather
Bureau. He was bright, competitive, and aggressive. When I showed him my calculus
textbook, he had a keen desire to take up the subject; and, he did.
Mr. MacDonald was a very good golfer. He would spend hours on weekends teaching
Hugh, his brother, and me the fundamentals of the game. I had never even seen a golf club.
He also loved to hunt. He was a sportsman of the old school, giving game a sporting chance.
First day out in the field, I shot a dove sitting on a fence. My lecture, to flush the bird with
the dog and then shoot it on the rise, lasted a good 15 minutes, and he took the gun away
from me as an object lesson.
Through the MacDonalds I had some social exposure that now seems miraculous. Hugh
and I escorted the Governor's two daughters to the Governor's Ball. We borrowed the
formal clothes from fellows in the Intermountain Union College Glee Club. I met about all
the ranking Republicans in the legislature when they came to the MacDonalds socially. The
two years that I spent at Intermountain were without dates, otherwise. Simply this: I was too
poor! To boot, I didn't have any appropriate clothes. At school I wore parts of my National
Guard uniform—shoes, shirts, overcoat and such. My baggy tweed pants and black-and
white, diamond-patterned pullover sweater were my church outfit. The social events at local
churches were great for me. There was fellowship, young people (many high school girls),
and often a lot of food and refreshments. The events were well chaperoned, but there were
opportunities to walk girls home.
My stay at the MacDonalds ended rather abruptly, because of an offer I just couldn't
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refuse. One of the odd jobs that I was fortunate enough to have was that of night watchman
at the Barnett junk yard. It paid $5.00 per day! Harry Barnett was short and about as wide as
he was tall, it seemed. He had a gorgeous head of gray hair and a bristling mustache. He
wore his hat squarely on his head, as many Jewish men did. His businesslike manner covered
his real sensitivity as a kind and loving family man. His three daughters were married to
successful Jewish merchants. Benny, the oldest boy, was trying to get into show business in
New York. He was a big disappointment to the Barnetts. Their pride and joy was Sammy.
He was two years my junior and played a mean C melody saxophone.
One day, Mr. Barnett called me into his office to ask how I was doing in school and a lot
more questions, some of which seemed as personal as a dad would ask his son. Then he said,
"Bobby (he called me that), our house is so lonely with Benny gone and Sammy never having
time to be home. Would you come and live with us? We have a spare bedroom (Benny's), and
our cook will prepare food for you. We are a kosher house, and you can have kosher food
with us; or the cook will prepare whatever you like. But you will have your own special set of
dishes." This was to be one of the highlights of my life, as I now remember my stay at the
Barnetts' home. I tutored Sammy in high school math because I had mastered
algebra, trigonometry, and calculus in my two years at Intermountain; and it was the one way I
could show my gratitude to the Barnetts.
I had Benny's old bedroom, and the closet was still filled with some of his fancy suits. It
made my two pairs of tweed pants and two sweaters look like some rags that had found their
way into Benny's closet. The Barnetts must have noticed my lack of clothing, because one day
Mr. Barnett said to me, "Bobby, come with me and help me buy a new 'sutt' (suit)." I quickly
declined his invitation on the grounds that I had some studying to do. He insisted that I
postpone the schoolwork and come with him to Nifty Bill Christie's Tailor Shop.
Bill Christie's tailor shop was reputed to be one of the finest in the city of Helena.
Mr. Barnett insisted that the bolts of material be draped over my arm, “so that I can make the
best choices of material." It was boring, but I obeyed dutifully.
Two weeks later Mr. Barnett said, "Bobby, come with me to Nifty Bill's to pick up my
'sutt'." Again, I tried to escape what to me was a boring chore, but this time he spoke firmly. I
quickly jumped into the front seat of his Cadillac. When we arrived at the shop, I was
flabbergasted, to say the least. There was a new suit, new overcoat, a pair of dress shoes with
spats and a new hat, all my size and all tailor-made! I was overwhelmed and burst into tears.
At Intermountain I was a member of the debating team. My heart swelled with pride as I
countered my adversary in my elegant outfit in full view of the Barnetts and their friends, all
sitting in the front row of the college auditorium. My team easily won the debate. I was on
a thrilling "high" that evening.
One morning Mr. Barnett said, "Bobby, today I am going to the old gold mine to show and
sell the machinery to some Jews from the east. It is 60 miles up in the mountains, and I would
like for you to come with me. We will need all the cash I can lay my hands on. So, Bobby, if
you have any cash, I could use it today."
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I went up to my room and took the $40 I had saved from several weeks as night watchman
in the Barnett Iron Works junkyard and handed it to Mr. Barnett. I was perplexed that he
would want to borrow the small sum of $40 from me when the sale of the used mining
machinery would likely run into thousands of dollars.
The Cadillac sedan was comfortable, and we were at
the mine by midafternoon. We trudged about the
rusting hulks of old mining machinery, and there were
many heated and loud discussions between Mr. Barnett
and his customers. We adjourned to the old mine shack
for the actual closure of the business at hand. I had
never before seen so much cash in large bills, and it was
a learning experience that I shall never forget. The
meeting closed at 5:00 PM, and Mr. Barnett and I
boarded the Cadillac homeward bound.
As we drove away, Mr. Barnett said, "Well Bobby, we
didn’t do so bad. Here is $500 for your share, and I did
all right, too." I almost fainted. $40 had become $500,
and I had been an actual partner in a substantial business
deal!
It was Mr. Barnett's way of giving me some cash, and
My college portrait. my heart was filled with joy at the very thought of the
kindness of an Orthodox Jew for a Christian boy. To
this day, I still treasure the kindness of Mr. Harry Barnett in our spur-of-the-moment business
deal.
My secret benefactor, Mr. Schnitzler, who was now a national committeeman from
Montana in the Republican Party, kept in touch with me throughout those years. He sent me
cables from his Atlantic crossing on the Graf Zeppelin. I received postcards from him in
various parts of the world, and he usually called me at the college to get a first-hand report. I
shall never forget the time he invited me to his suite at the Placer Hotel while he was serving
his term as a state senator. It was a banking committee meeting, and there were prominent
Republicans and Democrats present representing banks throughout Montana.
The cigar smoke left a blue haze. The aged whiskey flowed lavishly. Mr. Schnitzler said, "I
have great pride in presenting my protégé, Robert Midthun from Froid. He is attending
Intermountain Union College on a scholarship arranged by me." Will Powers, Democrat from
Bainville, 16 miles south of Froid, stood up and greeted me with a warm handshake. The two
bankers were rivals in both business and politics. Mr. Powers said, "Robert, I am happy to
meet you; but, if you are John's protégé, why in hell aren't you better dressed?" He then
grabbed a hat and passed it around the room. "My fellows, let's buy this boy something to
wear," he said. I shall never forget Mr. Schnitzler's red face and tightened jaw muscles. After
Mr. Powers counted out and handed me the $120, I was both walking on air and terribly
embarrassed at the same instant. Just as soon as I thanked the politicians, I left. This had to
be one of the happiest moments in my college life. It was also one of the most awkward.
The most tragic moment came a few months later. Mr. Schnitzler and his pilot Albert
Hedburg died in a crash of his Travelair biplane on a mountain side in northern Montana.
That news ended my dream of fame and fortune. Within weeks, I received a telegram from
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the executor of the Schnitzler estate, demanding payment of $185 that had accrued from the
checks drawn on his account in nearly two years. I was terribly distressed by their demand. It
was then I made the decision to drop out of school in order to pay off this debt. I did, and I
did not again enter a college classroom for fourteen years, until I was a naval officer attending
nuclear physics classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Many years after Mr. Schnitzler's death, I chanced to meet his widow, a truly elegant and
caring lady. She asked me, "Robert, why did you drop out of college? John and I intended to
carry out his plan for you, and I would have done so after his death." I then explained to her
how the executor of the estate had threatened me with legal action and, as a result, how I felt
compelled to earn the money to pay off the debt. She wanted to refund the money with
interest, but I would have none of it. The matter was closed. I never realized how deep their
commitment to me really was. Nor shall I even speculate on what might have been my fate in
life had I been able to continue on at Intermountain Union College.
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“A farm reverie”
Page 67
The inlet side of the massive overflow spillway of Fort Peck Dam.
Photo: Robert Midthun
Page 68
9
Out Of The Harbor And Into The Deep: Fort Peck
M y life has been filled with surprises that emanate from small and almost trivial
pursuits. It is astonishing to me that so many things or events that I had not planned
or even anticipated ultimately shaped my career and brought success. I had planned on taking
college courses in math and physics that would enable me to successfully compete for an
appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point or the U.S. Naval Academy. This
goal eluded my every effort. I wound up first alternate on two tries. Things never seemed to
turn in my favor.
It was June, 1931 when my sophomore year at Intermountain ended. I had some of the
Schnitzler debt to pay off. It was very difficult for me to keep going. Mrs. Barnett had passed
away just a short time previously, and it was necessary for me to terminate the kindness of the
Barnett family. I decided to go back to Froid with the National Guard. During the
encampment I fractured my left ankle in a scuffle with another Guardsman The medics taped
it. It was so painful that I knew I could not work, much less stand. Injured, back at Froid with
no job, I felt condemned and trapped. It was now my choice, give in or get out. My stubborn
will said, “Get out of the harbor and into the deep.” But how and when?
Father and mother, Alice May, and the faded blue Whippet picked me up at the Froid
railroad station. Kermit, 10, and Elmer, 4, had stayed home. It was a cultural shock to see the
reality of poverty in my own loved ones: their grimy hands and faces, the tattered and ragged
overalls on the boys, shoes run-over and misshapen, and Mother's faded gingham dress. Dad
looked about the same, dressed in bib overalls, chambray shirt, and rough work shoes marked
by the odd miles and jobs they had traveled. I didn't dare cry openly, but my whole being
ached.
At the farm there was no Ted, our faithful shepherd dog. He had been crushed by an
insurance salesman's car. Kermit had grown what seemed like a foot. Elmer was bare from the
waist down, wearing only some kind of undershirt. There was the wash tub and washboard.
There were the coal oil lamps. I was intensely aware of circumstances both in Helena, where
by comparison I was living in luxury, and at my childhood home, which was a scene of
frustration.
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Somehow I fell into the old routine, I left the house each day and stayed away for hours,
often driving a team of horses pulling a cultivator or mower or a sulky plow used to turn over
small plots of ground. Sometimes I would take my rifle and wander around the fields, always
thinking how to rise above it all.
Mother, bless her heart, would wash my faded I cords and cotton undershirts so I could
play Sunday baseball with some other farm kids. Our team was the "Sheep Creek Ticks.“ We
played in the Hippe or Gangstad pasture with one old bat, an assorted group of tattered mitts
and gloves, and a few threadbare baseballs. She almost never went along with Dad and me.
There was Alice to take care of!
In midsummer Hugh MacDonald, my friend from the days when I roomed with his
parents, sent me a letter and an employment application for a job as “airways observer” in the
Helena branch of the U.S. Weather Bureau, where he was working. It paid $2.50 per day. It
was not a civil service job but a political appointment. Mr. MacDonald, the Montana assistant
attorney general and Hugh’s father, had arranged for letters of recommendation to a certain
federal judge in Havre, Montana, who would make the selection for appointment by Secretary
of Agriculture Arthur Hyde of the Hoover cabinet.
The politics were right. The job was mine! I signed up in Helena on August 18, 1931, a day
that became a landmark—my first career job. I was “out of the harbor” at last. Hoover would
be replaced by F.D. Roosevelt and his New Deal in the 1932 election. As a Republican
appointee, my way was getting more difficult each month. The economy program of a 15 per
cent pay cut for federal employees included me. My pay had been cut already to $2.00 per day,
and the 15 per cent was applied on top of that. There were some New Deal make-work jobs
that looked like heaven to me. One of these Civilian Works Administration jobs involved our
Weather Bureau office. Six persons were to be hired at $30.00 per week. ONE DOLLAR per
HOUR!
I was chosen to supervise the statistical records and assist this group. When I applied for
the job, I was laughed at and told, “You are a Republican. No dice.” This was a lesson I have
never forgotten. And to this day I have little or no use for politicians and political parties. It
was almost two years before I was able to find another job. It was a very difficult twenty-four
months.
As an airways observer, I had been required only to read weather instruments, pencil data
on reports, and telephone this information to the airlines. For the little typing I was required
to do, the "hunt and peck" style satisfied my needs. One day the meteorologist called me in
and said, “Robert, you will have 60 days to learn how to type or you will have to resign.” The
Weather Bureau will require every observer to pass a test at 45 words per minute and operate
a teletype machine. Horrors, I thought, but my pal and expert typist Hugh MacDonald came
to my rescue. He could type 100 words per minute. He said, "It's easy. I'll teach you in no
time." He gave me a typing manual and showed me how to place my hands on the keyboard
and keep my eyes on the notes to be copied. He took time each day to give me lesson
assignments. I worked every spare moment at the typewriter keyboard. In only three weeks, I
was doing 40 words a minute, but I had to look at the number keys (and I still do to this day).
Hugh sat in the back of the room where the Civil Service test was conducted, and I gained a
lot of confidence from his being there. I passed! Hooray! In later years, my own high school
son would learn touch-typing in two weeks one Christmas vacation. He wanted an electric
typewriter. He earned one. "Dad, if you could do it, so can I." There was no increase in pay
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for my newly developed skill. I simply had to continue almost to starve or to hope soon to
pass higher-paying Civil Service tests.
Wide angle view of “training barrier” that lines the channel directing water from spillway.
This was a "show and tell" example. There would be others and quite soon. In order to get
on a civil service register, I had to pass an examination if and when one was announced. One
day there was a notice on the bulletin board: Jr. Calculating Machine Operator, $1,440 per
annum. Again, only 30 days remained to learn how to run a calculator, and one had to bring
his calculator to the examining room in the Federal Building. We weather observers worked
24 hours around-the-clock. We knew everyone in the five-story building. A geologist in the
U.S.G.S., on the third floor, slipped me a pass key to the office, and every night I would go
down after my late shift to practice calculating on weather charts from our office. He arranged
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permission for me to borrow the calculator for the exam. I passed with something like a 72
percent grade, just making it!
Until then I had sort of drifted and somehow daydreamed rather than mobilized all of my
skills and instincts. From that time onward, miracles and surprises began to happen.
The telegram from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers offering me a job as junior clerk,
$1,440 per year, arrived on March 4, 1934. Fort Peck Dam, across the Missouri River near
Glasgow, Montana, and only 100 miles from Froid, was a multimillion-dollar public works
project. This would be the highest and largest earth fill dam in the world, and the lake behind
the dam that would back up the river for 12S miles. It took barely 10 minutes for me to run
into Western Union to wire my acceptance.
It was a moment of elation and one of pain. For the first time in my life, I would be able to
establish a normal and comfortable life style. On the other side of the coin, I would be saying
goodbye to some of my very best friends and to Betty, my girlfriend for two years, who had
been a wonderful companion. She, like me, managed on a very small budget, and we did most
of the things that did not require over a dollar—a milk shake, a hamburger and a show, a coke
and walk through the park, or many social functions at several of the churches.
It was early on March 15, 1934, when the Empire Builder pulled into Glasgow. There was
ice and snow on the platform, and the baggage handlers were bustling around the string of
cars, pulling the express hand trucks typical of midwestern stations at that time.
Surprisingly, I had about the same baggage that I took from home to Helena three years
before. I had eked out a meager existence and, while I owed no money, neither did I have any
money saved. I checked into the hotel a block from the station and tried to get a bit of rest
before reporting to the Corps of Engineers.
The multimillion-dollar Fort Peck Dam Project had overwhelmed the small county seat
city. Every building seemed active. Heavy trucks rolled down the streets, and cars were
everywhere There were crowds of people on the street at the employment offices of the
project. At the height of construction, 10,000 laborers were on the government payrolls.
The field offices at the damsite, 30 miles away, were under construction, and the Corps
leased about every building and warehouse in the city. I found the Civil Service office in a
ramshackle building two blocks from the city center. It was crammed with desks and crowded
with people. A Mr. Casner, a hyperactive, skinny individual with piercing eyes looking over a
very large nose, met me and hurriedly completed my papers. He said, "Go right over there to
that desk and go to work. You will be processing applications for laborers. You do type, don't
you?"
In that first hour I learned a surprising fact. Almost all of the executive and key personnel
in the Civil Service, were imported to Montana from Vicksburg, Mississippi. Julia Ragsdale,
whose husband was the top civilian engineer on the project, was in charge of all Civil Service
employees. We would break only 30 minutes for lunch and didn't leave the office until after
dark, sometimes as late as 9 P.M. I had to argue long and hard to get time off for a few hours
to rent a room. A very nice family about a mile from the civic center rented me a clean room
for $10.00 per month. I had to eat meals in local cafes and cafeterias. The typing I did was
filled with overstrikes and errors. I was on probation and worried that I would not be
accepted for permanent employment. The other task was to pull red tags off the files where
the reference vouchers had been returned. Even that was not one of my great skills. It hadn't
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taken Ragsdale and Casner long to see that I would not be a promising clerk. Then it
happened.
They asked me if I would like to be transferred and be appointed a N.I.R.A. (National
Industrial Recovery Act) labor relations inspector on the 356-mile power line the Corps of
Engineers was building to bring electric power form Great Falls, Montana, to the Fort Peck
Grading the top of the earthfill.

Dam. I almost jumped out of my chair. I was interviewed promptly by Mr. Geigel, the project
engineer, and accepted. What a job! Same pay, but $5.00 per day expense allowance and a
Plymouth sedan. My gross pay and expenses would amount to $270.00 per month. I would
live in about 15 different small towns as the 154-kVA power line was advancing. This was a
great experience. My job was to visit every worker every day to be sure he was getting the
right pay for the job he was doing for the general contractor. Sixteen men, the others being
electrical construction inspectors, would form a gang and a camaraderie that produced some
hilarious times and lasting memories.
In September we tied the 154-kVA power. transmission line to the bus bars at the Fort
Peck switchyard.. My good fortune had ended. I was back to $120.00 per month and would be
assigned to a new job. I was offered another inspection job on the 160 acres of steel sheet
piling being driven along the two-mile centerline of the dam. Being a Montana lad born only
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125 miles away, I knew the winter would involve many days well below zero temperature.
That and the earsplitting noise from the powerful McKiernan-Terry steam-powered pile
hammers going “ka-whoom,” “ka-whoom" to drive the pilings to refusal depths of 160 feet
turned me against becoming a sheet-pile inspector.
Another opportunity appeared, but it seemed unlikely to reach fruition. Tom Claggett,
project photographer in the Historical and Progress Section, needed a new assistant. In order
to transfer to photography, I had to show a certain number of months as a photographer.
This seemed impossible. After all,
my only experience in photography
had been using the little brown
Kodak camera that the Eastman
Kodak Co. gave to every child in
America who had a 12th birthday,
as my sister had been given in 1924
and I in 1925.
Tom Clagett was determined to
get a warm-bodied assistant to
carry all the gear and drive the car,
and he was a very resourceful
schemer. He took a liking to me.
This postcard was issued by the Great Northern Railway.
By the time he helped me complete
Apparently the government sold my image to them. the application papers, I had the
Someone added the clouds—way before Photoshop! required experience. My time on the
high school annual as editor and some work in college arranging class portraits was artfully
transformed into “photographic” experience and turned the trick. He was a transfer from
New Orleans, Louisiana, a southern gentleman, and a protégé of the Ragsdales. I passed.
Clagett was a sandy-haired, burly southern gentleman. He had a penchant for telling stories
punctuated freely with many southern idioms. He was active in the Army Reserve, Masons,
and many community enterprises. He was the Fort Peck correspondent to the Great Falls
Tribune and the Glasgow Courier, both daily papers. His willingness to teach me
photography opened many opportunities for moonlighting, and I was eager and willing to
help him. It was exciting to be "in on" every significant happening on the project, from
construction details to public relations affairs
This Public Works Administration project drew worldwide attention. Fort Peck Dam
would be the largest earth-fill dam in the world at 120 million cubic yards. It would take five
years or more for the fleet of four pipeline dredges and assisting inline pump boats to place
the hydraulic fill. The crest would span two miles across the Missouri, plus another two miles
of wingdam dike at the north end. Some ten thousand workmen would be needed, first to
construct the dredges in a boatyard, then to build miles of trestles, open a rock quarry 100
miles distant, and finally bring in electric power lines 286 miles from the rainbow substation at
Great Falls, Montana. A hundred-mile-long lake would be created, providing flood control
protection, improved navigation, and much-needed electric power.
The newly constructed government town of Fort Peck had some 300 houses and dozens of
dormitories to house workers. The neighboring small towns of Glasgow and Nashua provided
only a fraction of the additional housing, warehousing, and other services that would be
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required. Local landowners near the dam site opened boomtowns with saloons, stores, and
countless paper shacks for the workers, who numbered about 10,000 and who drove the
tunnels, manned the dredges, and operated the trains and several hundred trucks. Wheeler
was the largest and most publicized boomtown. It was notorious for the Wheeler Inn, owned
and operated by Ruby Smith, reputed to be from the Klondike. Joe Wheeler, a local barber,
founded the town of Wheeler on a quarter section of land that he owned near the dam. He
became a well-known public character.
Lesser boomtowns scattered about the dam site included Square Deal and New Deal,
named after the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt. There were numerous red-light districts,
the best known of which was called "Sleepy Hollow" and located just downhill from Wheeler.
Photography was now the vehicle providing the training ground for my later construction-
engineering career, but I would not realize this fact until years later.
The Fort Peck project drew worldwide attention. President Roosevelt visited twice, and I
prize a photo printed in the Saturday Evening Post showing me photographing the President
with an 8 x 10 view camera. We had dozens of visiting groups. Russian, Japanese, and
European dignitaries came. College professors visited the project.
A photo of me taking this image of F.D.R. with my view camera was published in the Saturday
Evening Post. Photo: Robert Midthun
Page 75
Two journalistic endeavors involved Clagett and me. For two weeks, he and I personally
escorted Margaret Bourke-White, famed LIFE magazine staff photographer, around the
project. Her photo of the massive dam face appeared on the very first issue of LIFE
magazine (November 23, 1936) that featured Fort Peck Dam. Ernie Pyle of Scripps Howard
News also covered the project. We spent a week with him. He wanted to cover not only the
construction site but also the surrounding boomtowns and their rowdy, roughshod life. It was
an experience to remember the rest of my life, and I was saddened to learn years later of his
death during World War II on Ie Shima, an island off Okinawa Honto, as the result
of machinegun fire from an enemy sniper position.
Three of us, Clagett, Paul Harper (the project historian), and I, pooled our dollars and
published the "Story of the Fort Peck Dam" at Christmas time. We had the publication
approved for release by the Army and printed in St. Paul by Buckbee Mears Co., the St. Paul
publisher of the Froid High School annual. (So, my experience as editor of the annual had
paid off!) The souvenir publication was a huge success. We sold 11,000 copies for fifty cents
each with a cost of seven and one-half cents per piece. My one-third share of the profits,
$1,500.00, resulted from my original investment of $100.00. I had a taste of wealth, and I
spent it freely and with great gusto!
A view of the outflow side of the spillway structure.

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In addition, I pasted Ernie Pyle's articles on a sheet of poster board, photographed it, and
sold two thousand postcards. Souvenir literature, postcards, group photos, news writing, and a
guide service kept Clagett, Harper, and me in ample spending money. The guide service was
an escorted tour of key stations on the project. The trip lasted an hour, and the fee was $2.00
per car. The guide got a buck, and we kept the other. The guides were young inspectors and
engineers who had time to spare, a good knowledge of the project, and a need for a few extra
dollars. Bear in mind that the average laborer's wage at that time was about $5.00 per day, so
there was a waiting list of would-be guides to work for us.
For a few months’ time I lived a lavish life with my new-found affluence. I purchased a
nifty Ford V-8 coupe from the estate of a local football coach for $490.00 cash. The money
was withdrawn from my postal savings account, which paid 2 percent interest. The postmaster
gave me the money all in five-dollar bills. When I counted them out on the table at the Ford
dealership, I nearly grabbed them back and told the man to keep the car. With wheels I was
emancipated. Now I was a completely self-sufficient individual and mobile. My life as well as
my lifestyle would change dramatically and rapidly. I fell in love with the cameras and was
excited at each new event on the project, such as launching the first dredge, starting the four-
mile-long tunnels, or blasting trainloads of riprap from Snake Butte (the quarry near Harlem).
More memorable to me than these construction firsts was the parade of visitors. F.D.R.,
Bourke-White, and Pyle were just the most famous of the many who inspected this one-of-a
kind project for its day. It was exciting and interesting.
There were also sad times. I was shooting a crane on a 65-foot trestle placing a girder for
the next span when a cable snapped. Down came the steam crane, girder, and all in a cloud of
dust, fire, and steam at my very feet. Another time, I was at a tunnel face when the entire face
of Bearpaw Shale caved in, killing several workmen. I was just out of danger.
In retrospect, the valuable experience gained at Fort Peck was beyond photography. I had
learned by osmosis a great deal in the field of engineering. Not only had I photographed all of
the laboratory tests, but also I had interviewed many engineers for information to include in
the technical captions. And I had assisted them in co-authoring articles and papers for
engineering journals. Many of the engineers, unknown at that time, became world famous for
their work later. I had received a technical education far beyond my comprehension at the
time. Photography was the medium. Hard work, lots of luck, and a rather indolent boss
helped me further my ability and skills.
I was out of the harbor and into the deep.
Page 77
An aerial view of the main dam structure looking westward with Milk Coulee Bay in the foreground.
Just out of view to the right would be the intake for the spillway. Photo: Robert Midthun
Page 78
A welder at work.
Page 79
Page 80
Another aerial view showing the spillway and outflow channel running north northeast.
Page 81
This is the outflow channel for the powerhouse turbines, looking southerly to the east end of the
dam. Photo: Robert Midthun
Page 82
Above and to the left, some

shots I made of the engineers
and other officials involved in
this record-breaking project
Unfortunately, I don’t have
any record of their names.
Photos: Robert Midthun
Below is the U.S. postage

stamp issued in honor of the
Fort Peck Dam project.
Margaret Bourke-White’s now
famous photograph graced
the cover of the very first
issue of Life Magazine.
Page 83
Power transmission lines constructed with the dam.

Page 84
A view of the spillway control towers under construction, looking westward with the dam running
lengthwise into the distance and the yet to be filled reservoir to the left in the background.
Page 85
“Angles, lines, & symmetry”

Page 86
“Study in light and shadow”

Page 87
“Hoist gears”
Page 88
A spring day near the Fort Peck dam site.

Page 89
My glamorous Dolores at age 18.

Page 90
10
A Marriage Under The Stars
M y marriage to Dolores Angeline Bradford on December 22, 1935, provided new

adventures and a most happy home. Her sister, Vera Newland, and her brother-in-law,
Clarence (C.D.) Newland, owned and operated the Green Hut Cafe, a government concession
in the village of Fort Peck Dam. It was an oasis of elegant dining. The Newlands were well-to
do and highly acceptable socially in the official community. They entertained often and
graciously. They were favorites of the military and civilian officials of the Corps of Engineers.
There was a shortage of acceptable females, and perhaps 5,000 single men were looking for
companionship and dates. I was one of these and often whiled away an odd hour or two
sipping on a Coca Cola in the Green Hut.
Vera Newland had told me that her younger sister and a girl companion were coming from
Las Vegas to visit them. Her recent high school graduation photo showed an 18-year-old
“dream gal” with raven tresses. I could hardly wait to meet her. So I spent more than the
usual casual time at the Green Hut soda fountain. Often, I was in the company of a friend or
fellow worker.
My lucky day was in September on Friday the 13th. My workday ended at 5:00 o'clock. I
locked the photo lab and drove my black V-8 Ford coupe to the Green Hut, hoping to get a
chance to see, if not to meet her. I picked up Freddie Anderson, a lanky six-footer friend with
a blank expression, and off we went to the Green Hut.
We were on our second Coke, when, lo and behold, two beautifully dressed and tanned
girls entered. It was Dolores and her best friend, Pauline Honrath. They were having a spirited
conversation and were oblivious to our presence.
Dolores was about to address a card at the small oak table near the entrance. As Dolores
was getting ready to sit down at the table, Pauline unintentionally took away the chair, and the
beautiful Dolores sprawled on the floor.
I rushed to her assistance and said fatefully, "You fell for me like a ton of bricks." There
Page 91
was instant anger and uncomplimentary words. I knew I had "blown" it. Summoning all my
reserves, I said, "Let's go out to dinner and dancing. I know just the place, the Los Angeles
Club, near Glasgow. Pauline, you and Freddie are welcome to join us."
I shall never know just how I persuaded this dream gal to give me a second chance.
Luckily, I was one of the very few young bachelors who owned a car. Mine was a year-old V
8 Ford black sport coupe with a chrome hound on the radiator cap and bright yellow wheels.
So we shoved off, Pauline having to sit on Freddie's lap in the single-benchseat coupe. She
was precisely the opposite of Freddie. She was petite, feminine and very pretty. He was
gangling, awkward, and a very poor conversationalist.
My energy and imagination were flowing at full
speed. I was thrilled to have the beautiful Dolores
by my side. My former girlfriend, who lived 500
miles away, had told me when I opened the topic
of a possible engagement, "I don't want to leave
my room now that my mother has fixed it up." I
then realized that whatever romance had existed
between us was gone.
When we arrived at the Los Angeles Club, I
had to help Dolores out of the car on the driver's
side, because Pauline and Freddie were
untangling and debarking from the passenger
side. As I took her in my arms, I said, "I want to
marry you." She surprised me with the reply,
"Ask me later, I'll think it over."
Hoagy Carmichael's new hit, "Stardust," was
playing as we entered the club. Dolores had a
very pretty red dress. So the band, seeing her on
the dance floor, switched to "The Lady in Red,"
another popular tune. We had a wonderful
Pauline Honrath’s high school senior photo. evening. (Pauline never did tell us how she fared,
but it must have been a boring evening for her.) I managed to get a date for the next day, and
we dated every night except one for the next 3 months until our wedding on Sunday,
December 22nd.
Dolores kept stalling me on my proposal. This went on for weeks, and it was frustrating for
me. In November, winter had already come to Fort Peck, Montana, and the rising water in
the lake behind the dam was frozen over and crusted with snow.
One evening date, I drove out on the ice and began "spinning" the little coupe on the ice. I
told her I would keep this up until she agreed to marry me. Torn between being late to come
home to her mother by enduring the scary auto ride or consenting, she said, "Yes."
Dolores honored her word and made me commit myself to honoring it also. Before
meeting me, she had promised another man to go with him to a dinner dance in the recreation
hall where Stan Kenton's big band had booked. So I grudgingly agreed and jealously
consented, but I attended the dance and was very much in evidence, to her dismay. For over
60 years, I have been the target of her scorn for that act.
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CHAPTER TEN: A MARRIAGE UNDER THE STARS
My adversity had become the setting for the happiest marriage imaginable and a wonderful
family that would be ours.
Only a short while before midnight, on December 22, 1935, our wedding party of three cars
crossed the world's largest earth-fill dam that formed the bridge between Valley County on
the north and Garfield County on the south. This was the culmination of several hours of
confusion resulting from the fact that Dolores and I had obtained our license in Jordan,
Montana, an inland town off the railroad. Montana law decreed that one had to be married in
the county that issued the marriage license.
There were ten thousand workmen on the Fort Peck Dam Project. Housing was non
existent. We decided to keep the marriage a secret until we could find a place to live. So we
went to the obscure ranch-country county seat that Sunday morning and aroused the Clerk of
Court to obtain the license. Near sundown, we returned to Vera and C.D. Newland’s home in
the government town of Fort Peck.
We had planned on a Christmas day affair, but the Newlands quickly changed our minds.
Christmas day would be so busy that they could not attend. I didn't need urging to call the
Baptist minister 30 miles away in Glasgow to ask him to come out to Fort Peck and marry us.
He arrived about sunset. We chatted for a while before he asked for the license. His
surprise exclamation was, "I cannot marry you here with this license." So I frantically got on
the phone and tried to reach the Clerk of Court in Valley County. No avail. I did reach the
District Attorney, but he confirmed the fact that my Garfield County license was valid only in
that county.
Fearing that my eighteen-year-old fiancée was slipping through my fingers, I asked him in
desperation if my license would be valid anywhere I might find a patch of Valley County.
Hooray! I could be married anywhere in that county so long as I was certain to be in that
jurisdiction. Being the project photographer, I chose the nearest survey marker as the site, and
we all drove there.
The three cars pulled off the dirt survey trail (now submerged 250 feet in Fort Peck Lake)
and, with headlights aglow, we exchanged our vows under the stars. This was, and always will
be, the supreme moment of my life.
At midnight, we caravanned back to the Green Hut Cafe to celebrate. Dressed in our best
attire, we attracted instant attention in the restaurant. The marriage was public knowledge.
My roommate, an engineer who also was a special correspondent to the Associated Press, put
it on the wires. Next morning the daily newspapers in Montana carried the feature story,
"Stars Glitter down on Northwest Pair." I received letters, telegrams, and many other
congratulatory messages as a momentary celebrity.
This notoriety helped us find a furnished apartment in Glasgow the next day, and we began
the 30-mile round trip daily commute in subzero, snowy weather.
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“A winter dawn”
Page 94
11
Moving West
O ur days at Fort Peck were interesting and exciting and afforded us a few luxuries
hitherto beyond our grasp. Dolores and I were always invited to the Newlands’ social
affairs and, in turn, to the officials’ homes when invitations were reciprocated. We rubbed
shoulders with a colonel from Kansas City (whose name I cannot now recall) who was in
charge of the Missouri River Division and a number of large projects for the Army Corps of
Engineers. T.B. "Tip" Miller, a multimillionaire contractor from St. Paul, was another social
contact.
There were many others who were influential, but to a lesser degree. It was in the era of the
big dance bands, and the Recreation Hall at Fort Peck hosted cabaret dances with now
famous orchestras: Ted Fio Rito, Paul Pendarvis, and the like. The military officers carried on
their usual social and cultural affairs and there were stage plays and charity affairs of a wide
variety.
Lest I give the wrong impression, the cultural and social events were limited to the
"reigning few." Beyond the 386 houses on the federal townsite of Fort Peck were hundreds of
shacks and dwellings of the laborers and workmen. The "boom towns" included Wheeler and
New Deal and many other squatter communities. There were roadhouses, red light districts,
and saloons of every sort, reminiscent of the Klondike or the Gold Rush days of early
California. Crime and gambling were rife. Law and order were difficult to carry out. The
government city of Fort Peck had only one native tree, and a man hanged himself on that tree!
The social and work environments left deep impressions that were to follow and affect me
the rest of my life. By 1938, Dolores and I were restless. Fort Peck Dam was nearing
completion. It was time to move on.
Vera and C.D. had already left town to start a new restaurant in Washington state. As he
had done before at Boulder, Nevada, and here in Fort Peck, C.D. Newland was building a
new Green Hut Cafe at the construction site of the huge Grand Coulee Dam in Coulee Dam,
Washington. This massive concrete structure would harness the mighty Columbia River,
providing flood control and irrigation water for the fertile downstream plains and
hydroelectric power to the Pacific Northwest. Woody Guthrie would sing about the project.
A famous photographer, Ben Glaha, visited Fort Peck on a special assignment from the
Page 95
Department of the Interior at Boulder Dam, Nevada. Dolores, Vera, and C.D. knew him well,
and he was not only a friend of the family but also an avid customer of the former Green Hut
Cafe in Boulder City. Ben was to be assigned as chief photographer of the Central Valley
Project in California and was seeking photographers to assist him at Shasta Dam near
Redding, California.
The introduction by my vivacious and beautiful wife led to a fine interview and to a formal
transfer between the two Cabinet departments. The opening was mine!
Glaha would arrange the inter-department transfer at my expense, and it would be
processed early in 1939. That alone was a miracle for which I shall be forever grateful to
her. Then came days and weeks of waiting for the papers to come through.
This photo shows the intact dam during construction. The disastrous landslide would occur at the far
eastern end, located top center in this image. Photo: Robert Midthun
Dolores was pregnant with Barbara and undergoing prenatal care in Glasgow, Montana.
We didn't want her and the baby to be stranded in Montana, so she went to live with Vera and
C.D. in Washington. She would have Barbara in Spokane, Washington, at the Deaconess
Hospital. I would remain in Fort Peck with our dog Snooky until my transfer came through.
Little did we realize that eight weeks would elapse before that occurred.
My final days at Fort Peck were lonely and stressful. There had been a failure of the nearly
Page 96
CHAPTER ELEVEN: MOVING WEST
completed dam when 11 million cubic yards of hydraulic fill in the mass of the dam slid one-
half mile into the rising reservoir. The Corps of Engineers was trying to set a world record in
completing the dam. Every day I took progress shots of the operations. Huge pipeline dredges
were cutting deep channels in the Missouri River flood plain and pumping the mixture of
earth and water at the rate of several thousand cubic yards per hour. The two-mile length of
the 200 ft.-high earth fill was almost a plastic mass. The bulldozers working on the berms
occasionally rode standing waves ahead of and behind the powerful railroad locomotives as
they pulled many cars filled with quarried rock boulders used to face the upstream slope of
the dam. The fill had begun to quiver.
The slide occurred only a half-hour after I had driven along the upper berm to the south
abutment. My 16-mm movie camera was in place and running. I saw the mile-long railroad
tracks on the berms slowly start to twist in morning sun. I realized then what was happening.
My camera recorded the event. I took still photos, too. I rented an airplane to take aerial
photos. It was a disaster I shall never forget. Entire locomotives, freight cars, and pump boats
and their crews were swallowed up in the mud. I knew many of the men who lost their lives
that day and were never found. They are buried there to this very day.
The slide took the lives of 8 men. For engineering details, visit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Peck_Dam. Photo: Robert Midthun
In the days following the massive failure, all my photographic operations were closely
Page 97
directed and censored. I never saw the 16-mm film I shot, nor did I get any explanation from
top brass why it had been confiscated.
The investigation of the slide and soil mass was very thorough. Dr. Arthur Casagrande of
Harvard was employed to study the area and recommend reconstruction methods. I worked
closely with him and his aides. The slide area was investigated by drilling 36-inch diameter
cores at dozens of locations. The earth was frozen by means of brine pipes sunk in a circular
pattern around the proposed holes. The large cores were cut with a calyx drill, removed, sawn
in half, and then aligned in a storage area. My job
was to photograph the cores and also to go down
in the holes on a bosun's chair with an electric
floodlight and a camera to photograph the
texture of the walls. The holes were up to 200
feet deep. Sitting on a 2 x 8 plank, 24 inches
wide, suspended at the end of a cable attached to
an Air Tugger winch, I photographed about two
dozen holes. Each time I was in mortal fear of a
cave-in. Hazards were shorts in the electric line
that stung my hands and arms and caused sparks
to jump to the wire suspension cable, and the
uncertain skill of the Tugger operator. I had
arranged that should I jerk on the signal line, he
was to reel me up at full speed.
It was New Year’s Day in 1939. Capt. Richard
A view of a fracture line associated with the Lee had ordered me out to photograph more
slide, taken by me on one of my subterra
nean adventures.
frozen holes. I went down 185 feet and
completed first assignment. On the next, pebbles
kept dropping on my hard hat, startling me, and sparks were arcing periodically. On the way
up, I determined never to repeat the event. He ordered me to go down again.
"By your leave, sir, I am through doing this,” I said. “I am joining my wife and child in
Washington." Capt. Lee had a serious speech defect; he stuttered badly. He said something
about insubordination, turned, and walked away. I knew I was through at Fort Peck. It was
only a matter of days until my transfer would come through. A new chapter would begin, and
I could hardly wait.
Barbara Ann, our first child, arrived at the Deaconess Hospital in Spokane, Washington, on
Saturday, January 28, 1939. As I recall, the hospital bill was about $10/day and the physician's
bill was a hefty $50. I passed out cigars and celebrated her birth outwardly, but inside I was
lonely and missed Dolores terribly. Until now, we had not been apart for even one night in
more than three years.
It was 10 degrees below zero, and a brisk wind blew small, dust-like patches of snow across
the pavement as I headed for Spokane on March 3rd in our two-year-old 1937 Ford V-8
Tudor. Snooky was in the back seat and up front, too, as the mood struck her. The journey to
see Barbara Ann and Dolores was long overdue. I had my transfer papers in hand, a few
dollars in cash, and faced some 900 miles of driving. I would drive straight through, stopping
only to get hot coffee and rest a few minutes while I gassed up. Snooky was grateful for these
not too frequent stops.
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The snow and wind cleared during the evening. Stars hung so low in the sky that I could
almost touch them. My heart was bursting with joy, and the moon lit up the snowy landscape
like a fairyland. In just hours, I would be on the winding road from Spokane to Coulee Dam
and to my six-weeks-old daughter, whom I had not yet seen. The trip seemed to take forever.
In late afternoon I rolled through Grand Coulee, a squatter's village, then past the world's
largest concrete structure, Grand Coulee Dam, and at last into the parking lot at the Green
Hut Cafe. Dolores, baby Babs, and Bebe, my mother-in-law, were sharing rooms above the
restaurant. I dashed upstairs two steps at a time, burst into the room and, then, as is my usual
suicidal tendency, uttered these words that haunt me even to this day: "She's so little!"
Actually, she had gained a good bit of weight in the six weeks. Dolores and Bebe looked at me
in disgust. I didn't ask Snooky what she thought. She was displaced by a child and made no
effort to hide her scorn, but she would not harm Babs.
The Newlands were our "symbol of security" throughout this trying period and all through
our later lives. Their generosity will be remembered as long as I live. There were a few days of
R and R and then off to California. I had to report in Sacramento, California, on March 15th.
Snooky, and Babs in her crib, shared the back seat of the compact two-door. Dolores and I
traded driving chores and occupied the front seat. We had very little in the way of baggage,
and all of our clothing was intended for cold climates. We had had Snooky for at least two
years. She was spoiled rotten and was very jealous. She loved to retrieve any object, from a
ball or a match to a 4 x 4 plank. In time, we would train her to growl when she heard the
word “Hitler” and to bark when she heard “Roosevelt.”
It was near zero degrees Fahrenheit when we left Coulee Dam. It was 100 degrees
Fahrenheit in Sacramento. We were far from ready for that warmth when we pulled up to the
Old Federal Building at 7th and K streets after our three-day drive. Awe-struck best described
me as I gazed about the California capital. I had never been out of Montana, Idaho, or
Washington before, except on our 1936 honeymoon to Los Angeles via Yellowstone and Las
Vegas (where Dolores had graduated from high school in 1934).
Next day we drove the 180 miles back to Shasta Dam, and I performed my first day's work.
The Bureau of Reclamation offices
were in the government town
named Toyon, about six miles from
the dam site and some 12 miles
north of Redding on highway 99.
We were deeply disappointed that
no federal housing was available.
We had to shift for ourselves to
locate a place to rent in the
"boomtown" of Central Valley on
the outskirts of Toyon.
The “Tandy” cabins were rustic
and ramshackle and featured knotty-
pine board for interior trim. We
settled for one of them. I shall never An old snapshot of our neighbors at the Ganim
like knotty pine. The facilities were cabins.
minimal, and Dolores had to wash
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diapers and take care of the baby under the most adverse conditions. The neighbors were an
odd lot of young people, and we were tired, lonely, and more than slightly afraid. Somehow
we managed to live as only strong-hearted youngsters can under such primitive conditions.
She still remembers the strange young lady next door. There was little fellowship.
Within a month we located some new cabins on a hillside above the Tandy shacks. They
were small, one-bedroom affairs, but they had water, electric lights, and gas. They were
comfortable. Our landlord, Phil Ganim, was an odd but kind man. Dolores, looking at his flat
head, once said, "Bob he looks like a worm." It rained a lot in northern California, and on
rainy days the hillside was too slippery for the little Ford. The red dirt typical of the region
made a sticky mess. One didn't make tracks but rather took them with him!
In a relatively short time we were offered a small, one-bedroom government cottage in
Toyon. It was the nicest place that we, as a young couple, had lived in. The rent was modest,
and electricity was very cheap, a boon since it was used for heat. The houses were designed in
the Denver, Colorado, offices of the Department of Interior by an older, unmarried architect.
We counted eleven doors in the small house. One hallway had five doors which, if all doors
were closed at once, formed a 4 ft. by 4 ft. cubicle. A large screened porch was attached to the
rear. We made a second bedroom out of it and settled in. In due time we would be assigned a
newer model with slightly more room.
Tiring of the small house, we managed to purchase a two-bedroom house on South Street
in Redding. It was a dream house to us. We moved in and purchased some additional
furnishings on credit. The house payments became a burden, and I worked part-time at
Montgomery Ward store in Redding to help ends meet. Each Saturday I earned $10 selling
hardware. With my earnings I purchased an Ironrite ironer (also popularly called a “mangle”),
and this helped Dolores with some of the handwork.
When the house payments finally became an almost unbearable burden, we put the house
up for sale. The ad ran only one day in the Redding paper, when the one and only couple to
look at the house decided to buy it on the spot. I was in the Naval Reserve and attending drill
that night. When I came home, my bride was in tears. She had $2,500 in paper money and was
a nervous wreck. But we were elated and moved back to Toyon, some $2,000 richer from the
profit on our house. The Ooleys were the new owners. They owned a tavern and paid cash. A
few years later, their payoff made it possible for us to reestablish our G.I. loan and move into
a nice home in Stockton.
The massive, 602 ft. high Shasta Dam, nestled in the rocky walls of the Sacramento River
canyon, was a photographer's dream. The project officials were so different from the military
regime at Fort Peck. We mingled with top brass on a first-name basis. Many unique
engineering feats were initiated, and there was a variety of activity over a 30-mile range from
the headwaters of the future lake to the dam site. It was a wilderness region on three beautiful
rivers, the Sacramento, the Pit, and the McCloud. Mt. Shasta rose 14,000 ft. skyward in the
40-mile north horizon. I was excited, challenged, and thrilled to have the responsibility for
documenting this great project in black and white, color, still, and motion photography.
My first week on the job brought tears of apprehension. I had the misfortune of having my
primary camera smashed in falling from a cliff. With fright and fear, I rushed back to the
office with the pieces, fully expecting to be chastised and even fired. But Ralph Lowry, head
construction engineer for the dam, was almost fatherly with kindness and understanding. He
listened to my sad tale and then said, "Get busy and have a replacement here as quickly as you
Page 100
can."
There were hundreds of visitors to the project. National radio broadcasts were often
scheduled from the construction site. I remember one episode especially, because a radio
reporter, Chet Huntley, almost forgot his lines. Famous novelists, writers, and magazine
people who needed an escort were often turned over to me. Seeing the possibility of a full-
time public relations job just handling visitors and journalists, I applied for and was promoted
to Public Information Officer. A diorama of the Central Valley Project and an adjacent
grandstand with public access facilities were built. We registered more than a million visitors
each year.
My heart was not fully separated from the photographic duties, but the extra $50 monthly
income more than soothed my longings—until Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 1941. Having
been a one-time National Guardsman and having been influenced by Reserve Army Captain
Tom Clagett, I could not see America at war without my participation.
The armed services were anxious to recruit photographers. The U.S. Naval Reserve quickly
accepted my application, and, to my surprise, offered me a commission as ensign even though
I had not finished college. The rigorous physical standards overwhelmed me. A skin rash on
my back caused some concern, and I had to change shirts twice a day for several days in order
to pass their requirements. My having only 28 teeth instead of the normal complement of 32
was noticed also.
Being a civil servant with a 3-A draft deferment on a vital civilian project, I may never have
had to join the military. Also, being a father, I could have obtained a deferment. Dolores, in
the later years of our marriage, revealed deep resentment over my volunteering for naval
service. She still believes to this day that it was my old childhood dream of getting an
appointment to Annapolis that selfishly caused me to become an officer. Despite my best
arguments to the contrary, she will likely carry that view all her days.
“A Chinese store out west”

Page 101
A portrait of me in the photolab taken by one of my buddies.
Page 102
12
Photo School—The Navy Way
M y commission as ensign, AVS, USNR, dated October 1, 1942, put me into that
organization as an aviation specialist in photography and came with orders to report
to NAS, Pensacola, Florida, for training at the Naval School of Photography. Nearly a year
had passed since Pearl Harbor, and I had made countless trips to San Francisco for medical
tests, oral examinations, and interviews before boards of officers. One delay was caused by a
scandal in which a celebrity supposedly had given a Studebaker car to the officer in charge of
personnel. I am almost certain that naval intelligence people had looked thoroughly at my
application papers, inasmuch as I would receive a commission without a college degree.
We sent our household goods and furniture to storage in Redding, California. Dolores and
Barbara went to Coulee Dam, Washington, in our 1941 blue Pontiac Metropolitan sedan. The
Navy travel request authorized $0.09/mile from Redding to Pensacola, from which I had to
purchase tickets, sleeper-car berth, and food. It was a long way to travel, and I remember the
good feeling I had as the clicking of the rails totaled up mileage earned and a small profit over
my actual expenses. My minimum layout of uniforms, purchased at ship's service store on
Treasure Island, California, in the San Francisco Bay, consisted of a hat, gabardine raincoat,
one "dress blues," and two khaki service uniforms.
Trains were crowded with military personnel and civilian passengers. While I had a
reserved seat with a berth, I could not bear to see mothers with small children standing in the
aisles and between the cars. They welcomed the invitation to use my seat, and I stood most
of the time, sitting only when I managed to get a seat in the diner.
After reporting to the Air Station Administration Building No. 18, I was somewhat
surprised, if not shocked, to find out that I would have to spend four weeks at the Marine and
Navy indoctrination unit rather than start classes at the photography school.
My hair was cut short. All insignia were removed from my uniforms. We wore issue
sweatshirts and pants and began rigorous athletic drills at 4:30 a.m. One hour of free time was
ours every other day. Dolores sent me registered letters, and this meant that I had to run to
the station post office and then back to the barracks within that one-hour interval. There
Page 103
would be no relaxation for me.

Athletic directors were professional sports figures who had volunteered for duty with the
Navy. Mine was Lt. Ted Cook of tennis fame and husband of the great lady tennis player
Sarah Palfrey Fabian. In the early hours of the morning, we would lie face down and arch our
backs so as to let us rock our bodies. I was neither limber nor athletic and couldn't do it well
enough to please Ted Cook. He would kick me in the ribs and yell some disparaging words.
The morning run took us across a gully, over various tire and lumber hazards, and through
a maze of crooked paths between bushes and trees. The athletic directors kept a stopwatch
timing record of each day's run, a fact that was unknown to me. Priding myself on being
resourceful, I would dash to the gully in the dim dawn light and crawl a couple of hundred
yards at right angles to the track. Then, when I heard the "thundering herd" approaching the
gully, I would dash out and join the crowd on the home stretch.
Ted Cook was impressed that I, a 28-year-old man, was consistently coming in with the
first third of the group and not showing undue exertion. I shall never forget the morning
formation in readiness for the run when he stood face-to-face with me and said, "This
morning I am going to run with you. I want to learn how you older fellows perform so
well.” My heart almost stopped, and a cold chill ran up my spine. I kept up with him, but it
was one of my life's biggest challenges, and I was far from refreshed at the finish. He had
punished me enough and did not inflict any additional exercises. To this day, I wonder
whether or not he knew of my little trick. Anyhow, his “chaperoning” of my run
had worked. I no longer cheated in my routine.
Photography school lasted four months. About 200 photographers, comprising all ranks
from seaman to Navy captain, were enrolled each month. I was in Class 6-43, Starboard
Wing. What I had learned or knew in eight years of civilian employment had been essentially
self-taught. This would be my first formal training in the classroom and in the field under
experts from career naval personnel and prominent civilians serving as uniformed
instructors. Classes were from 7 a.m. to noon and field assignments on the station or in the air
each afternoon from 1 to 5 p.m. In the evening, we did lab work and printed our shots.
Upon completion of my indoctrination and athletic training, I sent for Dolores and Babs to
live with me during those four months of photo school. She made the rugged drive from
Coulee Dam to Pensacola over icy mountain roads and into long, desolate stretches with a
four-year-old in a car that had no heater. She had only one flat, and that was in a service
station. Tires and gasoline were rationed. In all the years of my service, we managed to drive
the Pontiac on original tires. They had been recapped often and logged over 80 thousand
miles of road wear.
The formal training expanded and distilled my knowledge. I loved it immensely and did my
very best. On April 1, 1943, in graduation formation on the parade grounds, I was shocked to
hear Lt. Cdr. Bill Harlow, commanding officer of the photo school, announce that
Ens. Robert A. Midthun of California was to be commended for graduating at the top of his
class! Tears welled in my eyes, and I was excited beyond all imagination.
The orders handed me thereafter were to "report to NAS, Kodiak, Alaska for further
transfer to Fleet Air Wing Four." My excitement waned rapidly. It meant that Dolores and
Babs would have to travel once more alone in the Pontiac on well-worn tires all the way to
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CHAPTER TWELVE: PHOTO SCHOOL—THE NAVY WAY
Coulee Dam, Washington, while I would be heading for Alaska via Norfolk, Virginia.
Dolores, Babs, and I drove to Mobile, Alabama. From there they headed for Coulee Dam
and, by the grace of God, made it without event but with plenty of hardships.
On my way to Alaska, I was suddenly ordered to “Naval Air Station, Norfolk, Virginia, to
Photographic Squadron Two (VD-2 Navy designation) for temporary
assignment.” Comdr. McElroy, who headed VD-2, welcomed me aboard and handed me a
new set of orders. Alaska was canceled. Now I was to report to NAS, Quonset Point, Rhode
Island, for further transfer to AirAsDevLant, a top secret antisubmarine R & D unit, whose
mission was to clear the Atlantic of U-boats.
Dolores was flabbergasted when I called her with the news. Yes, I wanted her and Babs to
come to Rhode Island. I had found a two-story duplex in Yorktown Manor near the air
station. With a little friendly persuasion and skullduggery, I checked out tables, chairs and
beds from Navy stores to furnish the place.
Again she drove across the continent—from Washington to Rhode Island. Babs and her
mother Bebe accompanied her. A General Electric engineer who worked on the Grand
Coulee Dam turbine generators accompanied them and helped with the driving. He was
headed for his family in Pennsylvania. They arrived at Yorktown Manor and had a hectic
several hours finding me. It was wonderful to see and have them with me again!
AirAsDevLant had a complement of 129 officers and 200 enlisted men. I was one of four
ensigns (soon to be junior lieutenants). I never had met, let alone worked with, so many top-
rate professionals. They came from the Navy, universities, and industry. Cdr. DeFlores,
inventor of 100-octane gasoline, would soon be promoted to rear admiral and head the Office
of Naval Research. Nelson Aldrich, grandson of John D. Rockefeller, was in charge of
personnel. John Meyer, administrative assistant to Capt. A. B., Vosseler, our skipper, was
senior partner, J.P. Morgan, and Com. Charles Lockhart, who was married to Kitty Du Pont,
handled all Du Pont charities and served on our team. On and on, it seemed each one had a
pedigree except me. Oh yes, our librarian was novelist and author Roark Bradford.
The work was so secretive that many of the experiments could only be photographed by a
commissioned officer (usually me). My special projects involved intimate interfacing with
Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientific staff, primarily Dr. Harold E. Edgerton,
inventor of the strobe light for high-speed night photography. Another project took me to
the Ladd Observatory of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. A civilian
cinematographer, Gordon Avil of the Jam Handy Corporation, was a special assistant in slow-
motion photography of aircraft rockets. AirAsDevLant was commissioned to develop a new
aircraft solidfuel rocket by uniting the work of British and California Institute of Technology
rocket developers.
Our pilots included highly decorated officers who had served in the RAF and had in turn
come back to the Navy when America declared war. Our mission soon expanded to include
training of Navy squadrons in the tools we had developed. Frequency-modulated radio
sonobuoys could be dropped in a pattern about a submerged enemy submarine to relay its
position to aircraft overhead. Although many of these secret inventions have been publicized
in journals and magazines since the conclusion of hostilities, I am still bound by an oath of
secrecy that I took some 60 years ago. I shall let it rest there.
The Atlantic antisubmarine war was well under control by 1944, and I longed to get some
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sea duty. My application for an aircraft carrier billet was denied, and I was again ordered to
stateside duty as photographic officer for VD-2 Photo Recon Training Unit in New
Cumberland, Pa.
Dolores and I packed to drive to New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, on Christmas Eve in
1944. We found a small upstairs apartment in a red brick rowhouse in nearby Harrisburg. I
not only paid rent but also stoked the furnace for landlady Mrs. Rousch. We shared the
apartment with two other Navy officers and their wives, thus filling all rooms to the limit.
Dolores was about 4 months pregnant with Rick, and it was a very trying time for her.
With lots of trying and looking, we
eventually found a three-story duplex
close to the base. The owner was a very
kind and gracious businessman. He let us
have it for 35 dollars a month. Hospital
corpsmen from the base often visited us
and brought goodies such as butter,
candy, and medicines for colds. When I
was away on temporary orders, the shore
patrol would keep an eye on my home.
They were wonderful friends.
Each month a new fighter squadron
would come from the Pacific for
photographic training. The pilots were
seasoned veterans with a yen for a little
fun. They often took the photo
assignments very casually. One day I
announced to a group of pilots, "It is easy
for me to tell who are the best and most
skillful pilots by the manner in which you
bring back your photo assignments. This
is a test of your piloting skill." All ears
perked up, and I had the most eager and
competitive photographers after
that. They would keep the engine oil off
the camera lenses, see that full magazines
A clipping, unfortunately truncated, from the base
were on the cameras, and hang around newspaper.
the darkroom long enough to view one
another's pictures.
On May 8, 1945, my thirty-second birthday, the war in Europe ended. On August 17,
1945, the Japanese surrendered. All officers with combat decorations were eligible for
immediate release from the Navy. I had earned only American Theater and WWII Victory
medals and a Letter of Commendation ribbon. The squadron would promptly be
decommissioned. The aviators and planes were gone. But I was given the Administrative
Command of closing the remainder of the base.
Now I had a son, Richard Alan, born July 8, 1945, in Harrisburg Hospital, and a six-year
old daughter. Dolores's mother had not come to Pennsylvania with us this time. She had
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CHAPTER TWELVE: PHOTO SCHOOL—THE NAVY WAY
returned to Coulee Dam. Dolores decided to fly back to Spokane, Washington, with our two
children. Vera Newland would meet them and take them to Coulee Dam. It was a harrowing
trip as Dolores tells it. Long delays enroute as the DC-3 laid over in frequent stops. The
sound of sick and crying kids, the worry of traveling 2,500 miles alone, and the lack of money
were a burden almost too great for her to bear.
My brother Kermit, freshly discharged from the Air Corps, joined me for the long drive
home in the Pontiac with no heater. We wore purloined flight suits and face masks. We went
by way of Froid, Montana, to see Mom and Dad. It was a cold and brutal journey over the
frozen highways of the Northern Plains.
Thus ended both my Navy duty and my professional photography career. Photography had
provided me with an excellent education, not only in its technical aspects but more
importantly in what I had learned from the subjects I photographed.
“Solitary lighthouse.”
Page 107
Page 108
13
Secure The Navy—Back To Civilian Life
A fter our short vacation rest with the Newlands at Coulee Dam, Washington, ended, we
headed back to Redding, California, and Shasta Dam. "Welcome back, Bob, we have
saved your old job for you," the personnel director of the Bureau of Reclamation informed
me.
There had been a couple of small administrative promotions for the position during the
three and one-half years of my absence. I was not only the Public Information Officer but
also had charge of the security guard force on the project. Once again, I lectured every hour at
the grandstand overlooking the massive concrete structure that had risen a couple of hundred
feet in elevation. The curve of the dam glistened in the sunlight, and the 460-ft. high, crimson
colored head-tower radiated a web of half-mile long cables over the site, enabling the delivery
of concrete, forms, men, and materials to the huge structure.
A million visitors a year poured down the
winding approach road to see the sights and hear
the lectures. Authors, reporters, writers, and
photographers came in a steady pattern.
Politicians and celebrities found the dam
irresistible. With completion of concrete
placement, Shasta Lake began to rise. A boat
concession was granted, and the National Park
Service and Forest Service operated large barges
on the lake.
Among the celebrities given the "royal
Dolores performing in a skit for a grammar
treatment" were members of congress, politicians school fund raiser in Toyon, California.
like Jimmy Roosevelt, Earl F. Warren, our Photo: Robert Midthun
governor, and members of the state legislature. With no money in the federal budget for
entertainment of such persons, it was a collateral duty of mine to raise funds from individuals,
Page 109
chambers of commerce, political groups, and others. We even collected beef from ranchers
for barbecues on the barges.
These activities were no small task left only to me. During my absence a district manager
layer of bureaucracy had been added. This afforded a higher level of supervision of the project
apart from the construction engineers. Each of the several district managers was selected for
political savvy as well as management skill in public and legislative affairs.
When Shasta Dam was completed, I was transferred from the Sacramento Valley District
to the Delta District at Stockton, California. It was a substantial promotion in salary and
scope of work, but most unappealing to me. I was expected to favor the liberal Democratic
regime in Congress and to help in every way I could think of to promote their candidates. The
last straw for me was being asked to help elect Helen Gahagan Douglas to Congress. Her
opponent was Richard Nixon, a Republican. I decided to leave federal service after 20 years all
told, including my navy years. Unlike photography, which challenged my imagination and
creativity, public affairs became increasingly boring.
It seemed to me that finding employment would be a snap, because I knew hundreds of
prominent persons and dozens of contractors. Was I surprised when not one of these leads
would do more than listen quietly and then say, "We cannot use someone who has never
managed money, operated under a controlled budget, or worked in a business.”
My employment opportunity came in a routine slip tucked in a life insurance billing for a
policy I had purchased some ten years previously from California Western States Life
Insurance Company. It read, "If you are between 28 and 40 and are interested in earning
more money than you are now doing, call this number." I did. It seemed like a good way to
launch a career. Three months training in selling the product, a 90-day draw for expenses and
income, and no obligation to pay back any shortfall in earnings worked for me. My strict
minimum-salary requirement of $350.00/month was accepted by management.
With my "canned speech" presentation and a system for finding leads and getting sales
interviews, I was able to earn more than my budgeted draw and even more than my $466.60
monthly Civil Service pay. In fact, I had earned over $10,000 in cash and deferred renewal
commissions by the end of my 90-day probation.
Long hours, many disappointments in closing sales, and the uncertainty of income often
brought periods of depression. I can still remember coming home each day and having my 11
year-old son ask, "How many 'apps' today, Dad?" He knew that "apps," or applications, meant
cash earned. The company taught us that constant effort at a steady and intelligent pace
would pay off handsomely and not to worry about a few dry spells, because there would also
be periods of abundance.
Two years passed and I began to question my wisdom in pursuing the insurance career
further. Dolores was unhappy and uncertain. She was also tired of a tight budget and lonely
evenings. A bright light appeared in the form of her cousin, the Reverend Sam Bradford,
minister of a large church in Denver, Colorado. Again, Dolores had come up with what
seemed like an excellent solution to our dilemma.
Dr. Sam Bradford suggested that Beth Eden Baptist Church, of which he had been pastor
for many years, could well use a business manager to coordinate affairs of the 1,800
membership, including a weekly TV program ("The Baptist Hour"), a Bible College, and a
summer camping program.
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CHAPTER TWELVE: SECURE THE NAVY—BACK TO CIVILIAN LIFE
Dolores' dad had been a Baptist minister. Shortly after Dolores and I were married, I took
a lot of interest in her testimony and began to look into church membership. In March, 1936,
I accepted Christ as my savior. Until then I had held back, perhaps in rebellion to her always
urging me to study scripture and become a practicing Christian. It was my immaturity at its
worst.
Now that we both were most unhappy in life insurance sales as a career and very frustrated
over our quality of life and lack of money, I was game for an escape. We prayed about my
going to Denver and interviewing for business manager at Beth Eden
“Saloon and wagon.”

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“A study of form, texture, and light”

Page 112
14
A Call To Christian Service
C al-Western Life management was shocked at my resignation, since I was one of their
most promising agents. They could not understand why I would relinquish claim to
several thousand dollars of renewal commissions that would be mine as time passed.
Nevertheless, I had decided to leave the insurance business with no "ties to apron strings"
that would weaken my Christian witness. I was going to Denver.
The little 1937 junker coupe that I had bought from Mr. Fife across the street for a
hundred bucks was the vehicle that took me the 800 miles. My interview went well, and I was
hired by Beth Eden at the remarkable salary of $500/month. Dolores and the children
followed soon in our 1949 Mercury. We found a rental and settled in.
It was exciting, indeed. There were constant meetings with deacons and trustees and with
staff employees. It was a vibrant congregation with lots of music and a flair for the
dramatic. There were 200 men in the Men's Bible Class. Many were top executives in major
enterprises. The youth activities were many and well attended.
My first building project was to remove the sloping floor from the old sanctuary and
convert it into a basketball court and gymnasium. I was expected to be there night after night
to supervise the volunteers. There was great fellowship in this project, but not for Dolores
and the children.
With no prior experience, I found myself in charge of a 5-times weekly TV broadcast. My
spot was a five-minute update on news of interest to the Christian community. There was
always some unexpected problem and always a last-minute solution, thank God. Financing of
the broadcast was undertaken by a gentleman who owned the largest mortuary in Denver. His
weekly gift to the Baptist Hour was $750.00. He was a Presbyterian and did not even attend
our church. We were very thankful for his generosity.
Dr. Bradford had founded Rockmont Bible College in Denver many years before my
time. Political differences with the college board caused Dr. Bradford to resign his ties. Now,
he was attempting to found Baptist Bible College, using the church buildings as the founding
location of the new school. With practically no funds whatever, and with only three dedicated
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church members having Bible college degrees, the new college was announced. There were
only a half dozen youngsters who enrolled in the first freshman class. I remember with great
admiration two young men from a small southwestern Colorado town who gave themselves
fully and ardently to the new institution.
The summer camp in Coal Creek Canyon, high in the nearby Rockies, was a cluster of
dilapidated stone and frame structures. There were rodents living in the dormitory buildings,
and the site was overgrown with weeds and brush. It was remarkable how this nondescript
place blossomed after our hard work completed its restoration. One hundred or more kids
were brought up each week in June and July. Donations and contributions had to be raised for
expenses, and that was no mean task. Pastor Bradford "twisted a few arms" to balance the
ledger.
Almost immediately upon my taking office, I became aware of several small but tightly
organized and controlled groups competing for leadership in the congregation. I was
expected to break up these cliques and weld them into unity. It was not only difficult but
practically impossible. Again in my life, I realized that a great injustice had been done in
hiring a business manager. I soon discerned that the real need was not to have a
manager efficiently handle business and finances, but to have a recruiter draw as many church
members as possible into volunteer tasks with spiritual goals. The business manager was also
expected to be a manager of the congregation.
Sadly, I realized that I must resign. After just one year, I left Beth Eden and returned to our
home in Stockton, California. With some humiliation, I approached Cal-Western asking to be
reinstated as an active agent. To my surprise, they welcomed me with open arms, reinstated
my renewal commissions, and even paid me for renewals that had accrued during my year's
absence. The elation and excitement did not last long. Very soon we were once more in the
same old rut.
The search for a new job began in earnest. Dolores had taken a job as sales clerk in a
major department store to help us meet expenses. Our budget was so tight that we had little
or no spare funds for new clothes, much less for recreation.
The newspaper ad by United Concrete Pipe Corporation recruiting a manager for its
Stockton plant immediately appealed to me. During my photographic career, I had worked on
many projects wherein United was prime contractor. With a bad case of pneumonia, I
interviewed at the Stockton Hotel. After two later sessions, I was taken to the home office in
suburban Los Angeles for the final interview and hired at $700/month. So began my
"drinking out of a fire hose." Photography had equipped me with all of the right answers, and
Cal-Western sales experience was just "the ticket." The Company needed a man who could
meet people and obtain business. There were plenty of manufacturing people who could
make the product once the sales orders were executed.
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15
Drinking Out Of A Fire Hose.
T he new concrete pipe plant manager's job was a true challenge. I had made dozens of
photographs of pipe installations manufactured and produced at my plant. I could rattle
off performance statistics until the "cows came home," but my professional training and
manufacturing skills were nil.
Nevertheless, I was selected from some thirty applicants, as I later discovered, on the basis
of the excellent sales record I established with the insurance industry. It seems that since the
pipe company had had such good results from recruiting U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
engineers as managers, they more or less assumed I was an engineer also. Funny thing, no
one asked me about my Bureau experience, only about my sales ability. "We have plenty of
people who can make pipe, but we need someone to promote the products and bid the jobs
so that the plant can operate," they explained to me.
The vice president of sales conducted the initial interview, and I was taken to Los Angeles
headquarters for the final interview by the president of the company. He never asked me a
question. He spent an hour telling me how great he was, how he was the largest individual
stockholder in United States Steel Corporation, and how he had worked his way up from
a shop-floor machinist to a multimillionaire industrialist in just a few years with only an eighth
grade education. He was handsome, with a shock of white hair and ruddy complexion that
glowed from his expensive blue suit. His company car was a Cadillac convertible. His only
handicap was his 5 ft. 6 in. height. I realized why his desk was elevated, and I sat at a lower
level on a very low couch.
Before he said, "Glad to have you aboard, and good luck!," he called in his son, a Stanford
University student working in a summer job, and had him show me his $300,000 stock
portfolio. As a follow-up gesture, the vice-president of sales reduced my $12,000 salary by
$100 per month. He would be my corporate boss, a man who had avoided World War II
service by being in an "essential industry." A rugged ex-pro-football player, my new boss had a
serious inferiority complex. He seemed to have no more reason to be with the company than
I. All of us reported to the president, and personnel management consisted of pitting one man
against another. Salaries were secret, and one never knew just what was the status of any other
Page 115
key official. I look back on my corporate time as being just another animal in the "circus"
under an egotistical and ruthless animal trainer. Later on, I was to be privy to the workings of
the corporation in a system that made the Mafia look like a "pushcart operation."
I returned to Stockton and was assigned to Fred Quinn, a 25-year vice-president of the
company, stationed 38 miles away in Modesto, California. He had responsibility for the eleven
so-called "small" plants in California, Utah, and Washington. This was the name given to the
plants that produced culvert pipe and small-diameter concrete irrigation pipe for the Bureau
of Reclamation projects.
He had no jurisdiction over the company's pressure-pipe plants like mine at Stockton,
which manufactured large-diameter pressure pipe for major projects such as the Hetch
Hetchy aqueduct from Yosemite Park to San Francisco or the East Bay Municipal Utility
District aqueducts some 50 miles long between Pardee Dam and Oakland. I realized what was
before me in the new career when I first unlocked the gate to the forty-acre site with its idle
steam locomotive cranes, the 300-ton concrete batch plant, and all of the rusting iron. There
were cows grazing in the plant. A squatter hurriedly herded them out.
Fred was in his fifties, a quiet and stern western type, from manner of speech and dress to
administration of his domain. He had a depth of experience that held me in awe. We spoke
very little. Fred showed me around the area, discussed production operations, and
indoctrinated me in company policy. The bookkeeper actually clued me in on the product and
the pricing.
With the backing of the home office in Los Angeles, I used my sales skills, honed in the
insurance industry, and my personality, polished from working in Reclamation project public
relations, to quickly get our pressure pipe specified in new projects and entered in bids. This
pleased the company, because they lacked people who could do that part of the promotion
while 400 miles from the Los Angeles home office.
In three months time, I had succeeded in obtaining the first manufacturing contract at
Stockton, and I wisely chose “old hands” from employee rosters of similar facilities to staff
this plant. Needless to say, the days were too short and the work and learning were endless,
week in and week out.
Fred died out in the field from a ruptured aorta. I was shocked and dismayed. He had been
my symbol of security and confidant. Fred had noted my insecurity and had wisely assured me
that all would be okay. I was acutely aware that I now was on my own, a greenhorn 400 miles
from the home base and doubting that I would marshal the skills and self-confidence to carry
on. But my fears were short-lived.
We were seated at the dinner table one Sunday shortly after the funeral. It was the
company president on the phone. "Bob, are you prepared for a shock?"
"Yes" I said, knowing that I was about to be fired. "Shoot!"
"We are giving you Fred's 11 plants. Get off your ass and start digging."
The fire hose seemed like an aqueduct. I was speechless, and worried. All eleven small-
plant managers had at least 15 years time with the company. I had been asking them naive
questions. Now they looked at me with sneering smiles, as if to say, "You won't last long."
One by one, the plant managers were summoned into Fred's old office. When each one sat
down, the conversation was brief and to the point. I knew that each of them believed himself
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN: DRINKING OUT OF A FIRE HOSE.
to be better qualified than I. "I just want to tell you two things," I said. "First of all, I will be
outside the plant getting work for you to produce. You will be responsible for everything
behind the gate, and I expect you to improve your quantity and quality. The second thing, I
set your salary, and I want you to be well paid for using your skills. We are now a team with a
new coach, and I'll do my part."
Fred's management style had allowed no interplant visiting or communications between the
managers. I encouraged the opposite. To offset jealousy and strife between managers, I said,
"It's like playing golf. Each of you will be judged solely on your own plant's performance.
Helping one another with ideas and exchanging equipment will help each one of you. You are
not competing with other plants, only with your own fifteen-year production record."
We increased our sales the first year by 30 percent and our bottom line net profit by 20
percent, and all plants were in the black. Hired in June, promoted in August, I received no
change in salary until my first anniversary. Then my salary was doubled. I was told to buy a
new car, but not a Cadillac, and I wisely chose the top of the line Chevy with air and a phone.
The "little giant" president liked that very much and bragged to the other executives that "Bob
didn't buy a Buick, like you, and he drives many more miles!"
In that first year, I had learned the rudiments of concrete design, studied the engineering
textbooks my son brought to me from Stanford University, and learned a great deal about
specifications. I was well known in the industry, had attended national conventions, and had
been sent into Canada to investigate the possible purchase of an existing concrete pipe plant. I
was given a virtually unlimited expense account. United Concrete Pipe Corp. kept a suite of
rooms in a major San Francisco Hotel for entertaining guests. The dinners and events
sponsored for city officials paid off handsomely. Because the brightest city engineers were
often from Asia and not extensively trained in American social and cultural behavior, they
were often passed-by for executive promotion. Those moved forward were often the less-
qualified, mediocre talents, but they were the politically and socially savvy ones. The Asian
employees had no opportunity to learn Western cultural behavior as applied to business. I
provided a mechanism to correct this in our frequent business soirées.
One day I was called to the home office for an important meeting. The vice-president of
sales took me aside after we finished lunch at the Jonathan Club, a prestigious, private
businessmen's haven. To my amazement, I was introduced to key executives of the five major
competing concrete pipe plants. It was called "administered pricing," and each company had
an established share of the market, based upon the many years of manufacturing experience.
Because any one or two of the concrete pipe companies had production capacity to satisfy the
market, it was agreed that each one would adhere to an established percentage share.
Production and promotion (marketing/bidding) records were kept but not shared. It was the
gentlemen's agreement that sales records would be pooled and from them the shares
determined.
The group assured me that administered pricing was legal; for instance, gasoline stations of
all companies had identical prices, etc. With a comfortable salary well above anything I had
experienced and with a family to support, I eagerly grabbed the new fire hose for another
drink! My immaturity and the ego of the position I held blinded me. Had I the opportunity to
retrace my steps, that meeting would and should have been my last one.
In retrospect I can safely say the concrete pipe industry made the Mafia look like a pushcart
operation. With growing executive skill, I guided my 11 plants well and even opened a 12th
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one to service the Kaiser Steel plant at Napa, California. Our products were of highest quality
and were manufactured with the latest technology. The list of projects included several
engineering marvels of the time: the Hetch Hetchy aqueduct from the Yosemite valley to San
Francisco, California's first aqueduct; the South Bay Aqueduct from Tracy to Livermore,
California; and the Russian River Aqueduct. The smaller plants installed hundreds of miles of
irrigation systems for the lands opened by the Bureau of Reclamation in the western United
States.
United was owned by the largest U.S. producer of cast iron pipe, U. S. Pipe & Foundry of
Birmingham, Alabama, which had purchased it from the three original Slavic owners. The
president of the company was a dynamic man, an eighth grade dropout, who had become the
largest individual stockholder of U.S. Steel Corp. He, in turn, recruited executives to staff the
corporation from his friends in the various steel and petroleum companies. They were a well-
informed and aggressive group who knew how to run large businesses. Their contacts with
our major competitors in the steel industry gave our firm a front row seat in the competition
for the large aqueducts which had been traditionally built by the steel companies using welded
steel pipe with coal tar enamel lining and coatings.
It was the greed of the five major concrete pipe companies that drove the steel industry to
the wall and forced the latter to refuse to share this lucrative market with the smaller concrete
pipe companies. It all came to a head in a series of anti-trust lawsuits filed on behalf of all
cities that had been customers of the steel and concrete companies. Many of us in the middle
management group were subpoenaed to testify before the federal grand jury. The cities won
the lawsuits, and the defending companies paid heavy anti-trust penalties, often with triple
damage provisions.
Monday, November 6, 1965, was the day two men walked into my office and confronted
me with a surprising dilemma. My options were to (1) resign or (2) be fired. There was a
modest severance check and a cashier's check for my retirement fund contributions. I said,
"Fire me." My ten-year contributions to the pension fund were in my hands—I had lost my
pension. The two home-office goons took my car keys after having me clear out my personal
belongings. I called a cab and went home.
I had taken the last sip out of the fire hose and was a sadder, wiser, and unemployed
executive. My leaving was under a cloud, since I had been granted immunity for my grand jury
testimony; and, like the others in middle management, we had cleared our personal slates. All
of us in the middle management group were fired or resigned. All of us were blackballed in
the concrete pipe industry. No other company could or would have touched any of us.
Before the week had ended, Quinn Wire and Iron Works, a concrete pipe machinery
manufacturing company in the Midwest, offered me a job as general manager of their 85 year-
old industry. In California, my plants had set production records using their machines and
forms. We had innovated and invented many cost-cutting methods and improvements. I was
a logical and natural man for the job. To boot, I was to be given a small percentage of the
profits of the business in addition to a salary.
A major competitor in the machinery bushiness two years later purchased our factory, and
I was out of a job again. This time it was by my request. I had been offered an excellent job in
the new group, but I wanted to return to California.
My manufacturing experience had topped-off a wide and thorough knowledge, and I
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN: DRINKING OUT OF A FIRE HOSE.
was free to pursue once again in California a career that I vowed would be honorable and, to
my surprise, would lead me eventually into honest "gut-level" competition with my former
employer, United Concrete Pipe Corporation.
“Summer day”
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16
All-American Status At Last
A fter returning from Iowa to Stockton, California, I was employed in short order by
Beall Pipe and Tank Corporation of Portland, Oregon, as a salesman for steel pipe
conduits with the western United States as my territory. I loved the job and the corporation
executives. This position further rounded out my practical and engineering pipeline
knowledge. Now, at last, I had gained valuable experience in almost all types of pipe used in
the waterworks industry. However, Beall used only Japanese steel stock in manufacturing
their line of welded-steel pipes; and, with sudden sharp price increases by Japanese steel
suppliers, Beall was forced out of business.
For a third time in fewer than 5 years, I was again unemployed. At 57, it was becoming
more difficult for me to face unemployment. This was the real world. There was no way to
rationalize failure, despite the fact that the company, not I, had failed.
Catching my breath, I took a quick inventory of the situation—with dismal results. My
liquid cash was down to only $10,000. My brilliant and talented Phi Beta Kappa son, Rick,
was midway through Stanford University School of Medicine. I owned nary a stick of real
estate and was paying stiff rental fees on our modest apartment. The gold 1962 Cadillac
sedan was showing fatigue. I would soon have to tap the modest savings for another shot at
med school tuition.
This was the time for fervent prayers set in motion by positive action. I went into
immediate action. There was one possibility that dawned on me as if by magic. The cast-in
place concrete pipe industry, formerly my fiercest competitor, had made a positive impact on
the concrete pipe market in just 15 years since an enterprising man conceived the idea of slip-
forming the pipe directly in a shaped trench by a continuous extruded monolithic pour. What
a clever idea! It should have been advancing by leaps and bounds, but a severely critical
publicity campaign from the precast (factory-made) pipe industry was almost defeating the
new product.
The cast-in-place concrete pipe (CIPCP) industry was owned and promoted by patent
owners who issued franchises in the western United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Union of
South Africa. As long as the patents were in force, the business grew at a steady pace fueled
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by license fees issued to private entrepreneurs.

The word was out that an industry leader was looking for a chief engineer to help take their
business out of their business-as-usual mode and into a new, bold growth phase.
Up to that time, the promotional strategy of
the CIPCP industry had been very
passive. Their counter to the precast industry's
criticism was to present the results of nationally
recognized engineers' field tests and load-bearing
demonstrations. To this reactive defense, the
brilliant precast product engineers only needed to
stress the fact that CIPCP had no steel-
reinforcing cage. This seemed to effectively close
the matter in the minds of many municipal,
county, and other governmental engineering
staffs who were to be the new customers of
CIPCP.
The contest was at a virtual impasse. The
At age 61, I begin a new career as an CIPCP promoters had no positive and
engineer.
convincing answer to refute this lack, other than
to repeat—and repeat again—physical demonstrations by large overloads on the CIPCP
product with never a distressed conduit; i.e., there had never been a failure. This lack of
credibility in the CIPCP product was especially harmful for the industry's attempts to enter
the lucrative market for large-diameter concrete pipe systems.
In my former 10 years with United Concrete Pipe, I had devised every engineering trick
that I could imagine without effective results, to block this product. In those 10 years, I lost
90 percent of my smaller concrete culvert and storm drainpipe volume to CIPCP. These
smaller-diameter products never did need any steel-reinforcement in their design. CIPCP had
the clear advantage, but the market was small, primarily that of farmers needing crop field
irrigation and drainage. In the larger diameter product markets, CIPCP product had never
been a competitor. No governmental engineer wanted to stake his career on big pipe with no
internal steel.
Now I found myself asking for employment as chief engineer for the CIPCP system
inventor, Mr. G. D. Williamson of No-Joint Concrete Pipe Co. I intended to be the one to
break the impasse to industry-wide acceptance of this new technology.
Both Mr. Williamson and I were well acquainted from the bitter strife I had caused him
over a previous 10-year period. He was taken aback that I had nerve enough to ask for such
an important job. His patent would expire in fewer than 2 years. The franchises would no
longer be viable then. This was my key point. With my earned "All-American" status in the
broadest phases of the precast industry, I could gain access to the highest governmental
agencies and unlock the doors presently closed to the innovative CIPCP product.
I was hired and given a choice of basing operations in either Atlanta, Georgia, or Los
Angeles, California. My $15,000 salary was modestly small, but the opportunities seemed
limitless.
The southern California franchise owned by Neill Johnson became my base of operations.
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CHAPTER SIXTEEN: ALL-AMERICAN STATUS AT LAST
He was one of the finest men I had ever known, and we soon became fast friends. He lacked
formal academic training, but Neill demonstrated zeal, abounding energy, and the personal
insight and wisdom that accounted for his million-dollar-plus net worth.
In Hawaii, a territory franchised to another operator, I soon became acquainted with
Walter Lum, a nationally recognized consulting engineer in soils and, more importantly, in
soft-ground tunneling. Walter was brilliant in his knack for simplification of difficult
problems. He showed me that CIPCP was not a concrete pipeline laid in a trench and then
backfilled with mechanically compacted earth, but rather a "concrete lined soil tunnel" placed
directly against the undisturbed earth walls of its shaped trench. This concept triggered my
development of the static and dynamic engineering analysis that would eventually convince
governmental engineers throughout California that our product was as good as, if not better
The process of cast-in-place pipe manufacture underway. The central slip form, about which the pipe
is formed, is being positioned for the next segment. The whole machine is pulled forward, leaving
freshly formed, continuous pipe in the trench. Photo: Courtesy of the Moote Group
than, steel-reinforced pipe in load-bearing capacity as well as durability, when used with the
correct soil. We had always held the advantage in cost.
It was my good fortune also to have become personally acquainted with Dr. Rolf Eliasson,
a Stanford professor and member of a prestigious New England sanitary engineering
consulting firm. He had been a special consultant to United Concrete Pipe on the larger-
diameter conduits and aqueducts. There are many others I should name, but suffice it to state
that "show and tell" contact with many brilliant minds gave me an insight and a solution to
promoting CIPCP. The correct concept of a concrete-lined-soil-tunnel, together with sound,
established soils engineering principles and a sound quality-control procedure, finally broke
the CIPCP sales log jam.
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When the patents expired, there was an opportunity to move the CIPCP industry from a
proprietary status to one of open competition from many individual operators. Mr.
Williamson in his 90s passed away just about coincidentally with the patent expiration. He was
a man who enjoyed his CIPCP "toy," making millions of dollars while pursuing his hobby. His
real wealth came from manufacturing precast concrete pipe, ranching and rice growing, and
investing in savings and loan banks.
My miraculous good fortune took another all-American upturn when Neill Johnson sold
his CIPCP business. In 1977, I was invited by Mr. Paul A. Moote, a prominent southern
California civil engineer, to become an associate in his newly formed construction
management consulting group, Paul A. Moote and Associates, Inc., of Santa Ana, California. I
would become the fountainhead for the CIPCP phase of the Moote group's business.
At last I had found someone who would become my role model and best personal friend
for my final career years. Paul is talented, God-loving, and honest. He says, "The greatest gift
one can have is the privilege of having time to think." Paul Moote generously helped me to
become a world-class expert in cast-in-place concrete pipe. During my years of association
with Paul, I was invited to sit on a prestigious national committee of the American Society of
Civil Engineers as an honorary member. To assist the firm's growth, as well as the industry's
improvement, I developed novel, computer-based spreadsheet engineering tools and became
an early adopter of Internet technology to reach these ends. Through our multi-year, mutually
beneficial association, I was able to reach the apex of distinguished and long career.
Today in retirement, I prize the national recognition of being an expert in the design,
manufacturing, and installation of slip-formed, cast-in-place concrete pipe and the financial
security it has afforded me. Through the twists and turns of life, I truly have traveled from
"sodbuster to cyberspace."
With this, my legacy is concluded.
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CHAPTER SIXTEEN: ALL-AMERICAN STATUS AT LAST
“A quiet winter morning”

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PART TWO:
REMEMBRANCES
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PART TWO: REMBRANCES
“Horses in the pasture”

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17
Mustangs And Broncos
S ixteen years on the 320 acres of broken prairie have enriched my life with many tales. Six
decades later the tales have taken on a patina of exaggeration, humor, and tragic comedy
that molded my life.
The personalities of the draft horses that plowed the fields, sowed the wheat, and reaped
golden waves of grain are vivid memories. Mustangs only a few generations removed from a
cross-breed with wild Indian ponies and heavy draft horses came in bays, blacks, sorrels, and
palominos with sharply contrasting manes and natural gaits that ranged from clumsy, plodding
draft horses with extra large hooves to dainty, high-stepping prancers.
Charlie and King were the lead pair on a six-horse team. Charlie was a light gray with a
white mane. King was coal black with a white star on his forehead and white stockings. They
were large and feisty and seemed to enjoy being the pacesetters. Little wonder that Dad, only
five feet six inches tall and a mere 150 pounds, had many sleepless nights from restraining the
big guys with taut reins.
Behind Charlie and King were four assorted and individual broncos that seemed to emulate
the spirit of the lead team. There was Jack, the comedian. He had broken into a grain bin as a
colt and foundered himself. He had gorged on pure rye grain. For a few days he groaned in
agony and drank water like he was in the Sahara Desert. His gait was stiff, and for the first
half-mile in the field he literally shuffled along. Next to him was the Dahley mare, named for
the man who sold her to our dad. She was black with white-trimmed nose and feet and an
attractive, shiny black mane. Her feet were trim, and her gait was almost that of a saddle
horse. The Dahley mare was an all-around gentle and talented athlete. We just started calling
her Dahley for short. She served in the team hookup and was excellent on a two-horse team
mowing grain or pulling a hayrack or wagon. Whenever a saddle horse was needed, she was
chosen.
The horse next to the mare on the six-horse team was Buster. Buster was a shiny bay,
plump, with black ears, tail, and mane. Buster moped around the barnyard, ate constantly,
and enjoyed life. He changed into a spirited charger as soon as the harness and bridle were
fitted. He was one of my favorites. When I mowed hay in the summer time, I always chose
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PART TWO: REMEMBRANCES
Buster and Dahley. The five-foot cutter of the McCormick mower sang a tune for all of the
22 one-mile rounds we traveled around the hay field. We paused only for one hour during the
middle of the day to water the team and get a bite of lunch.
Each of the horses had a strong will. They rather reluctantly sallied forth in the early
morning to do their work in the fields, but they eagerly hurried home at the close of the day. I
recall one very vivid impression that none other than Jack left with me. I believe he really
meant to destroy me!
Jack and I were sent to get the mail from our RFD mailbox a mile and a quarter away. I
was about 9 years old, and I rode bareback on his sleek bay back. Jack, who had stiffened
ankles, put on a great act. He would stumble along a step at a time, turn his head, and try to
nip my bare leg. He had the bridle-bit so firmly held in his mouth that my jerking did not
affect him, other than to stimulate his ornery disposition. About every hundred yards, he'd
pull over to the shoulder of the graveled road and nibble at whatever plants he could
find. Then, without warning, he would heel around and try to bolt for home.
It took a good hour to get him to the mailbox. On the return trip, I think he believed he
was a racehorse. What a ride he gave me: stiff-legged trot, a rough lope, and an awkward
gallop. Jack wheeled into the farm gate and headed for the barn.
The barn was a rambling wooden building with a large sliding door in each end. I was
terrified when I realized that he was intending to go through the barn. Though appearing
high from a ground level approach, the top of each doorframe was too low for a rider to clear
on horseback. Jack headed for one side of the open door as if not only to bash my brains out
but also to scrape my leg as he passed through. I dropped the mail and threw both arms and
legs around his neck, hanging upside down and screaming wildly. Funny thing, as soon as Jack
cleared the far barn door he stopped abruptly.
My father heard my screaming and came running to the scene. He was white with rage, first
at me, saying, "You are so dumb," and second at Jack, "I'll show you what it is to have a
rider." For the next hour, Jack and Dad did a good imitation of a cavalry charge. The air was
blue from the array of expletives, and Jack was frothy with sweat. They charged up to the
open barn door, and Jack applied anti-lock brakes, stopping "on a dime." All well and good.
I never rode Jack again after that. For a couple of days, I was scarcely seen or heard. I knew I
had my punishment coming "for being so dumb and knowing so little."
My greatest near-catastrophe was the runaway that occurred a few hours after my fourth
birthday. Buster and Dahley were the buggy team used by my visiting uncle Bob to get the
mail. He invited me to go with him.
In the wee hours of May 8, 1917, Mother gave birth to my third sister, Alice May. From
my upstairs bedroom with an ear glued to the register in the floor, I heard Dr. Munch console
our mother as she called out in agonizing pain and heard the neighbor women calling for
boiling water. As the sun rose that morning, the moans and screams suddenly stopped, and
the doctor called us downstairs to see the beautiful 8-pound girl. Worn and tired, the
neighbor women and the doctor departed to get some rest.
Dad, who usually got the mail himself, had his hands full taking care of my 5-year-old sister
Hazel while completing a multitude of extra chores. There were cows to milk, livestock to
feed and water, and many more chores to finish that normally were left to Mother and us kids.
Uncle Bob (Robert Steenerson) was visiting us a few days before reporting to the Army as
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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: MUSTANGS AND BRONCOS
a draftee in World War I. A romantic fortune hunter and a chronic boozer, Bob was an
imposing six-feet-four-inches tall figure. He could spin yarns about his travels, mostly when
"tanked up." Under it all was a lazy, mean-spirited individual who loved to tease us kids. Only
the day before, he was teaching me how to swear in return for which he promised me a sack
of hard candy. Mother caught him in the act. She flung me over her knee, and, as she paddled
my bare behind, I remember biting her in the leg. Then I really got it—the razor strap. To
Uncle Bob she fired off sharply some words about ". . . getting shot in the war."
Today Uncle Bob was different. “Alex, I'll hitch up Dahley and Jack to the buggy and get
the mail.. Robert can go along for company,” he offered. Dad readily assented, knowing that
the camel-colored Dahley and the bay and black Jack were unusually gentle, if not downright
lazy. When Dad harnessed the team and hitched them to the spring buggy for Uncle Bob and
me, he overlooked a most significant fact, that neither Buster nor Dahley knew Uncle Bob
with his gruff, rough manner and heavy hands on the reins. Furthermore, the team disliked
anything other than a wagon or a farm machine. It was almost inevitable that their Indian
pony heritage was to be triggered, and they intended to show Uncle Bob who was boss.
Uncle Bob used the short buggy whip with a rawhide thong on its tip to start the team on
its way. Buster and Dahley shook their heads angrily and snorted in response, and I could feel
their deep resentment by the way they arched their necks and broke into a trot. The graveled,
graded road was strange to them. They preferred the softer shoulder, since they were unshod,
and this irritated him.
Our rusty galvanized mailbox was in the middle of a row of assorted-sized boxes with red
flags and located on the southwest corner of the crossroads. To the right was the Renault
place. Telesphore Renault was a métis (a French/Indian mix), and his wife a full-blooded
Sioux. Dad always referred to him as the "breed" and to her as his "squaw." They had many
children, only 160 acres of prairie with about 100 acres tillable, and they owned a number of
sprightly Indian ponies. One of these Mr. Renault named Dan Patch, after the famous
racehorse of that day. The Renault men and boys were horse lovers. They never used saddles
or bridles. They guided the horses with a single hackamore (a halter made by wrapping the
tether rope in a half-hitch around the horse's nose) and often a surcingle (rope around the
horse’s body just behind the front legs). The horse and rider were as one. The ponies
responded promptly and obeyed voice and hand-slap commands. I owe my life to the bravery
of Mr. Renault and the speed and daring of Dan Patch.
As the buggy drew into the crossroads, Uncle Bob halted the team and jumped onto the
ground, dropping the reins, probably while in some kind of an alcoholic fog. Buster and
Dahley had never known slack reins. Believing they were free, they wheeled right, bolting in a
gallop down a steep grade, and then dashed into the adjacent gully on the Renault farm,
smashing through a barbed-wire fence. I screamed in utter terror as I bounced high above the
light buggy seat and crashed into the floorboards, breaking them. The screams further
panicked the horses. The buggy seat flew off, and the flimsy vehicle began to shed bits and
pieces over the ground.
It happened in moments, but, to me it was hours of terror. Then I heard a voice, "Hang
on, Robert, I'm coming to get you." A backward glance showed Mr. Renault on Dan Patch,
only a couple of yards behind the buggy. I could feel the moisture from the pony's distended
nostrils and hear his breath like compressed air escaping from a vessel. The next moment,
Mr. Renault vaulted like a gymnast over Dan Patch’s head and into the wrecked buggy. He
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clutched me in his arms. There were no reins in the buggy. He had no way of stopping the
runaway, so he leaped from the bouncing wreck onto the weeds, while shouting to me, “Hang
on, we are getting out of here.” It was all over!
Both of us were covered with blood from a gash in his arm that ran from the wrist to the
elbow. I had never seen such a wound or so much blood. Speechless and dazed, I clung to
him as he wrapped the laceration with a bandage torn from his shirt. He carried me the 200
yards to the nearby roadway, where we both sat on a big rock. Soon a big, black Mitchell
touring car came down the road. They put us in the back seat and drove us back to the farm.
Mother, crying and hysterical, met us at the gate.
Meanwhile, Uncle Bob had discarded his lethargy and had run home, arriving before we
were rescued. As we turned into our gate, Mother was crying and literally crawling along the
driveway. Dad had taken off across the north quarter to find the team and bring the rig back..
In a half-hour he appeared. Except for lathered bodies, the old “plugs” were the same docile,
plodding plow horses. The buggy was a total wreck. It never was used again except as a
plaything for us children. We would push it up a hill near our well and then coast a hundred
yards down the slope.
Dad was frightened and furious, but most thankful to see me safely returned in the black
Mitchell touring car. I could not hear what he said to Uncle Bob, and I am glad I didn't. Bob
left next day in response to his draft notice for World War I. I never again heard Dad refer to
the Renaults as "the breed and his squaw." To this very day, Mr. Renault is my special hero.
“Mail call”
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18
Hogs Running Wild
F or many years I have regaled my family and friends with tales about life on the family
farm. One day, my brother Kermit and I entertained the Commanding General of the
Strategic Air Command in Omaha, Nebraska, by telling him about the night on our boyhood
farm when the “hogs broke out of the pen." Otherwise, it was a dull dinner meeting with
twelve potential career diplomats seated at the huge round table. They were the elite group in
training for ambassadorial posts and other equally high career diplomatic posts.
Kermit, a member of this group, had invited me to visit him for that evening in Omaha. I
was living in nearby Iowa.
Even the red wine failed to spark anything other than polite, "intelligent" conversation.
"Mutt" (as I called Kermit) impishly smiled and then said, "Bob, let's talk about the night the
hogs broke out." We did. And they laughed.
The old farmhouse was on top of a rolling southerly slope. About a hundred yards down-
slope was the pigpen and hog house. For whatever reason, perhaps rooting beneath the board
fence, the hogs broke out of the pen and were roaming up the slope. It was night and the
moon was full. Dad heard the grunts and squeals from his bedroom window. Clad in his blue
chambray shirt and long underwear in which the slept, he dashed outside and commanded all
of us to round up the escapees.
If you have ever been "touched" by a 200-pound hog at full gallop, then you know how it
is to collide with a giant bowling ball. My sister, two brothers, and Mother came to the
battlefront. We circled the strays and began moving them downhill in the moonlight. But one
of the older animals decided he would bolt through the line and caper around the farmhouse.
I was down the slope. I have the recollection of looking up to see my father, shirttails flying
and silhouetted against the full moon, sprinting after that one seemingly airborne pig.
All of a sudden, Father's pitchfork flew out of his hand, and he flipped horizontally, falling
semi-conscious to the ground beneath the clothesline that had "chinned" him. Mother was
screaming, “He's dead! He's dead!" It was hilarious, but none of us dared to laugh. Father was
now standing erect and in a temper-rage and far from dead.
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“A sleepy farmyard”
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19
Dolores Buys A Hog
O ne day Dolores came home excitedly saying, "I have bought a hog, and you can
butcher it and make hams, just like on the farm." I was astounded and dumbfounded.
Actually, I had never done more than stand by and watch my farther do it. But, the hog was
ours out on Frank Walker's small-acreage farm in rural Redding, California.
Frank was an old acquaintance of Dolores from Boulder Dam days. He had a small
orchestra and played regularly in small clubs in the area. Dolores had paid him $12.00. Now
it was my turn to "fish or cut bait."
Mr. Cooper was an aging, wizened Missourian who worked as a janitor in the government
offices. He had lost four fingers on the left hand and two on his right hand. With both
thumbs intact and the remaining stubs of fingers, he did admirably as a janitor. I said,
"Mr. Cooper, have you ever butchered a hog?"
"Yes," he said, so I made him a proposition: "If you will help me butcher a hog, I will give
you the liver, some pork chops, a ham and five dollars."
Next Saturday morning just after sunrise, we drove to Walker's farm. I had my .22 rifle,
some bullets, and a couple of large butcher knives. The plan was that I would shoot the hog
in the forehead to knock it down. Cooper was to stand by with the knives and then rush in
and “stick” the animal, so it would bleed rapidly and completely.
He said he was ready. I aimed the rifle at close range and pulled the trigger. Cooper had
one knife in his teeth and the other in his best hand. The hog dropped as planned, but
Cooper could not maneuver the knife. The animal raised up again. I had to do everything by
myself—shoot and stick the hog.
What seemed like the worst three minutes of my life thus far were but a prelude. The
worst was yet to come. Near the killing site we had a fifty-gallon barrel of water leaning at an
angle and resting on a bed of hot coals. The scalding hot water was letting off vapor.
Everything looked good.
The hog weighed about 150 pounds. Cooper and I dragged the animal over to the barrel,
lifted the carcass, and lowered it into the barrel. But Cooper let go of the pig, and it
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disappeared into the steaming water. The plan was to quickly immerse the pig and pull it out
so that we could scrape off all the hair. But I had to get it out of the water by myself and the
animal was partially cooked by the time I managed to get it out.
Cooper did help dressing the animal, as I didn't know a kidney from a liver or lungs from
intestines. The finished carcass was a sight. Partly skinned, with some patches of bristles still
remaining and a kind of pinkish and gray blotchy texture. It was noon when we stacked the
pieces in his small truck and took them home.
He was delighted with the head, the feet, the liver and a few pork chops. Now I realized I
had another problem that I wasn't fully confident in performing. Dolores wanted bacon and
hams. We had two 20-gallon crockery vessels that looked okay. I put the pork in, layer by
layer, with copious quantities of smoked salt between them. Fieldstones were added on top
the compress the contents. About a month later we removed the rocks and looked at the
product. It looked normal and smelled good from the smoked hickory salt. We baked a ham
and served it at a dinner for a few friends. It was excellent. But what an ordeal!
That was the one and only hog-butchering in my whole life. I have taken a lot of flak over
the years for this episode, and I promised myself that it would have to be my butchering
"swan song." So be it
“Stone barn in winter light”

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20
Where Has My Childhood Gone?
F or years I had related many tales to my family and friends about the early days on the
farm. The personalities of the horses that we used to till the soil, plant the grain, and
harvest crops; the cattle, pigs, and fowl that provided our daily fare; the smell of the barn on a
cold winter's day when steamy warmth drifted out the open door and the chickens fluttered
down from their perches high above the livestock; and the restless noises from cows with
udders aching and asking to be milked It was a shock, indeed, as my son Rick, brother Kermit
and I approached the old place in July, 1985 on our first trip to a Froid all-school reunion.
Kermit and I had last been there together at the end of World War II in the winter of 1945. I
had gone once again in the winter of 1969 to bury my father. Rick, a young doctor, had never
been there, but he wanted to see his father's "roots.”
The old house, needing paint when I lived in it in 1931, was shabby, weathered and alone.
It had been repaired, modified, and patched. The cellar was no more. The old yellow outhouse
was gone. No garage existed, and the coal shed had long since become kindling. It was
impossible to find more than a trace of the old gray shiplap barn that housed some ten horses
and a dozen cows. The windmill and pump had been replaced with an efficient electric pump
on a new well that no longer yielded a peculiar kind of mineral water with unbelievable
laxative properties. The old red granary that slouched over a foundation of large rocks was
evident only in the remaining rocks that now seemed small, but were rather frightening when
as a lad of ten I found myself wedged between two of them on a "spelunking" childhood
venture.
There was a shiny metal shop building with modern tools to repair tractors and machinery
parked in neat rows, and large a few large pickup trucks were standing in formation. Where
once we grew potatoes, cucumbers, peas, and carrots and picked gooseberries and currants
from the bushes in the garden, now glistened a green, waving stand of hardy spring wheat.
Not a living creature was in sight, only green growing grain, alternating with patches of fallow
ground. The fences had disappeared. The big red barn to the east and the pale blue house in
the cottonwood grove, the Insteness place, was gone. Only a dilapidated, crumbling heap of
weathered wood remained of the Jensen farm to the west. But most of all, where were the
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fences? In the distance the other farms on the horizon were no more. The one-room school a
mile and a quarter away was gone. Even the road was gone. The present economy of the
wheat country seems to be only a few direct routes along graded and graveled roads.
And then I realized--the days of my childhood memories had been erased, even "sanitized."
The countryside looked like a crazy quilt of green and fallow ground. Farmers now lived in
the small towns, drove pickup trucks, flew airplanes, turned satellite dishes to the sky for news
and entertainment, had college degrees, and used scientific methods and genetically improved
crops.
Suddenly I thought, "Where is the junk pile? That has to be where my fondest and dearest
recollections can be revived!” And so it was! Jim Ostby who now farmed the "old place" took
us to a nearby ravine. There was the rusting hulk of the old combine my brother Kermit, then
8, and I, then 16, took into the fields to harvest wheat. Nearby stood the corn planter which
had distinguished itself long ago as the centerpiece of a quarrel, feud, and destruction of
friendship with one Sid Hardy, who had returned it in a condition less than satisfactory to my
dad.
Mother’s yellow Monarch range was there, rusting, but still elegant in the tawny weeds. I
remembered how we used to drop the oven door, put our feet literally into the oven during
the cold winter days when the temperature dropped to -30 degrees Fahrenheit, even colder at
times. There was the McCormick mower with its 5 ft. cutter bar that used to sing as I made
hay in the summer time riding behind Buster and the Oakley mare, two mustang draft horses
descended from Percherons and Clydesdales, but whose ancestry had been diluted by several
generations of Indian ponies. I once stood atop the Van Brunt drill with its disks and grain
box that we used to plant our grain. I stood high on top of the grain box and guided four
other mustang-types down and back across newly plowed fields. I remember the raw brisk
north wind, the low flying stratus clouds, my beet-red face, and hunger pangs that gnawed
deep into my insides until mother brought out a dish of hot soup, cheese, and delicious
homemade bread. On my recent visit, old timers told me they remembered her for the "best
bread in the county."
I looked around and found the old Oliver sulky plow with its once shiny moldboard, now a
rusted pile of junk. This was the plow that I used to "break" the virgin prairie remaining south
of our barn. Father had never tilled that piece of ground because it was literally "paved with
rocks," ranging from head size to two ton boulders. Removing the rocks had been my lot for
several prior summers during vacation, and the fence line was lined and supported with them.
It was tedious work, breaking the ground. The plow share would hit a buried stone, the plow
would buck like a bronc, and I would land on my back in the hard sod furrow while the
faithful old nags, dying for a rest, would stop in their tracks and immediately drop their heads
in sleep.
Jack was a shiny bay with black mane and legs. He had broken into the granary one day and
foundered (gorged himself on rye grain) leaving him crippled and lame. But dad said he
wouldn't run away or stampede. Charlie was coated with a camel-like colored hide with
bleached mane and tail to match. At 12 years of age he was no longer frisky and liked to
match his laziness with that of Jack. Between the two of them was the Dahley mare, a
chameleon-type of black and white coloring, who acted exactly like the other horses in the
team. When dad took the plow horses out on the two-bottom gang plow, he had Charlie and
King as the lead team. That team paraded and pranced along the fields, and father, a small
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CHAPTER TWENTY: WHERE HAS MY CHILDHOOD GONE?
wiry man of 150 pounds, had just about all he could handle in going 22 miles per day around
the fields, all the while holding them back with taut reins. It was an equal shock to learn that I
was one of only two living males from my high school class of 1929. In the cemetery, I paid
my respects to my old friends and playmates of yesteryear: Irving, Leland, Ray, Leo and all the
others.
Yes! I know where my childhood went! Its symbols are the junk pile and the cemetery. Its
reality is within me, and only within me. That is why I tell my story.
Top row left to right:
Van Brunt seed drill,

old wagon wheels and axles.
Middle row L to R:
The Royal Range,

combine harvester,
harvester reel.
Bottom row L to R:
More wagon parts,

the harvester sickle.
Photos: Robert Midthun
During our visit to the old homestead, we found remnants of our childhood still present.
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Rick snapped this picture while I was waiting for my official

class of ’29 photograph.
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21
All About The Froid All-School Reunion
O n July 1st and 2nd, 2000, Froid, Montana celebrated the entry of this small
community’s schools into the 21st century. A major portion of the town spent two
months’ time and a great amount of volunteer labor to make the two-day affair a gala event.
More than 90 years had lapsed since the founding of the town with the advent of the Great
Northern Railroad branch line running north from the main line at Bainville, Montana, some
16 miles distant. This opened a vast territory on the High Plains to settlers.
Under strong promotion by the Great Northern Railroad Co., hundreds of immigrant
pioneers, like my mom and dad, filed and improved their homestead claims, married and
settled down on their own acreage, and began to grow the finest milling-quality spring
wheat. I recall taking many 60-bushel wagon loads to the Farmers Elevator. It was a slow
process, to break the soil into root-filled ribbons of sod, pulverize and harrow it, and plant the
initial crop of flax as a precursor to the fine quality Marquis amber-grained wheat.
Fifteen years earlier, my son Rick and I had attended my 56th all-high school reunion, class
of 1929. Now he was taking me to my 71st anniversary as a very special gift. He organized
the trip and was my driver, bodyguard, and physician. We have complete videos and photos
of the trip along with memories that have compelled me to write this essay as a final tribute to
my life of 93 years.
The flight from Los Angeles, California, to Denver, Colorado, was on a luxurious 747
airliner. The second leg, from Denver to Williston, North Dakota, was in a small Beechcraft
1900 turboprop airliner that bounced about in the fleecy clouds.
There I met my brother, Kermit, whom I had seen only once in the past 15 years, and I
was looking forward to meeting my youngest brother, Elmer at the reunion in Froid. I hadn't
seen Elmer for even more years. He was driving from Salt Lake City by way of Helena, Great
Falls, and Wolf Point, Montana.
This would be the first meeting of Kermit, Elmer and me in 31 years. Each of us left the
farm in Froid upon graduation from high school. When I headed off to college in 1929, Elmer
was 2 years old, and Kermit was an 8-year-old third-grader. It was two years later that I finally
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had enough money to spend a brief vacation at home. Our paths went in diverse directions,
and fate decreed that our career paths would differ and not cross again for another 31
years. Kermit had retired from the United States Foreign Service, and Elmer had retired from
the U.S. Civil Service, where he had worked as an economist and land expert. Except for the
few days we had shared company in those intervening years, we were virtual strangers. It was
exciting, and my mind raced to and fro over what they would look like, have to say, and how
we would react to one another.
Kermit drove the rented car the 60 miles from our Williston, North Dakota motel to Froid
on July 1st. As we turned off US Route 2 to Montana 16 at Culbertson, my heart began to
pound. In just 14 more miles we would pass the cemetery plot where Mother, Dad, and our
two sisters were buried. And, in
only two more miles, we would
be in Froid, a town that had not
changed its population of 500 or
so since 1910. (The standing
joke for this stable population
status is that whenever a woman
has a baby, a man must leave
town.)
Yes, there was the Farmers
Elevator, where I had hauled
dozens of wagonloads of wheat
with Buster and the Dahley mare,
or hauled oats to grind for
feeding our horses. The grain
dust was like an itching powder,
and I could almost feel it
Kermit and I pose before leaving for the first day of our
reunion.
again. The other town elevators
Photo: Robert Midthun were gone, but a new one, the
Farmers Union elevator, now
stood in their place.
We entered on Main Street, just across the railroad tracks, and the old brick First State
Bank building was unchanged except for a new sign and name. Across on the other corner
was the one-story frame building I once knew as Buck’s Grocery, now bearing the name of
The Mint, a beer hall. On the northeast corner of the intersection was another familiar
building I once knew as The Farmers Market.
Further up Main Street were the Congregational Church and the Norwegian Lutheran
Church, where I attended Dad’s funeral in 1969. I recognized the Liberty Theater that housed
during my time “L” Company, 163rd Infantry, of the Montana National Guard. There, once-
upon-a-time, I had advanced to the rank of supply sergeant and had earned a dollar a week,
which comprised most of my spending money in those days.
Two blocks beyond the theater was the barely recognizable Geiser house, home of Froid’s
only dentist. When the dentist died, Mother bought his library at an auction sale, and we
pored over the volumes on many long winter evenings. We really enjoyed the works of
Alexander Dumas, and my sister Hazel and I took keen delight in acting out his colorful
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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: ALL ABOUT THE FROID HIGH ALL-SCHOOL REUNION
characters before our Rhoda grammar school classmates, who appropriately judged us
eccentric.
Gone were the large two-story frame dwellings that housed the town’s grocer, banker, and
printer. Present were dozens of small prefab
residences and numerous rigid frame
buildings. Streets were numbered and signed, and
the high school I knew had been replaced by a
new brick gym and school building.
My brother Elmer was the only Midthun born
in a hospital. It was a pleasure later to
photograph him standing in front of the Dahl
Hospital, virtually unchanged in some 80 years.
There were trees along the streets, now that My brother Elmer stands before his place of
the town had a water tower. I saw nothing else birth.
that I would remember, such as the old shack
Hazel and I had bached in during winter months. Froid was in the 21st Century with a new
face and a new personality.
We registered at the “new” Froid High School, filled with milling graduates. Elmer's name
was not on the register, and we believed him to be a late arrival. After all, he was driving
hundreds of miles from Salt Lake City, Utah.
We decided to cruise around town while waiting for Elmer to arrive. Kermit drove, and
Rick sat beside him. I was in the back seat, peering out the window to see what I could
The present version of our old home bears little resemblance to what exits
in my memories.
recognize. Not much existed that had withstood the ravages of time. Froid now had a water
system, sanitary sewers, commercial electric power, and dozens of prefab homes on numbered
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streets. There was not even a hint of familiar houses, outdoor toilets, wells and cisterns, and
coal burning furnaces that were standard features of the townspeople's two-story frame
structures when I was in high school.
On the way out of town as we turned east on the country road, Kermit let out a yell. This is
where the Ostby Maxwell sedan skidded and rolled over on our way to school in 1927.
He was six and began his schooling in Froid by living with the Ostby boys and us in a small
rented house owned by the Shoemaker family. Kermit hurriedly dashed out of the wrecked
car and took off for school. He did not want to be late.
I had a sprained wrist. Marion Ostby crawled through the broken plate-glass window
holding the steering wheel in his hands and saying, “The car! The car!"
My sister Hazel had gone through the cloth fabric in the sedan’s top and was lying prone in
the ditch with both legs pinned down by the inverted car. With some help from the Ostbys,
we lifted the car enough to free Hazel. She regained consciousness and stood up, but, to my
shock and horror, not erect. She stood with both feet turned on their sides. She soon regained
a normal stance, and she and I walked the half-mile to the school, leaving the Ostbys at the
wrecked car.
Almost all of the small farms had disappeared. Only the unpainted crumbling remains of
the old Holley house were still standing.
Three miles more, and we were at the Renault corner where I had survived the horse and
buggy runaway at the age of 4. Our right turn soon took us the ½ mile distance past the
Renault farm and finally to the white two-story Midthun farm house, now owned by the
Ostbys. It was like a picture book and did nothing to stimulate my memories. The decades
had erased reality and replaced it with remodeled buildings and green foliage.
Glenn and Vivian Ostby met and welcomed us. They invited us in the house for a
Pepsi. Again, I felt no recollection of the old
home I knew. It had disappeared years ago, being
replaced by a newly painted and remodeled
house. Now trees formed a grove nearby. And
we learned that Elmer had been there that
morning. We knew we would find him at the
Froid reunion banquet that evening. So we went
back to Froid and the gymnasium for the
banquet. There he was, with his grandson. It was
only the third time I had seen him since 1929,
when he was a two-year-old.
Next day Elmer and his son, David
From center clockwise: Jim Ostby, his son, &
Kermit help me recall old times in what used
Midthunder, returned to Froid, and they invited
to be our oil lamp-illuminated kitchen. us to a tour of the surrounding area. We drove a
Photo: Robert Midthun crazy pattern of section line roads, as there were
no well-marked country routes. Some of the
sights were the old Rhoda School site and the original homestead (where Hazel and I were
born in a sod shack that Dad had erected). It was now only a green wheat field.
Gone were the Nordman farm and the Dahley School. We did see the Dane Valley Church
that had been the centerpiece of the local Danish settlers when I was a small lad.
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Back to Froid and a short stop at the Mint bar, where we said goodbye to Elmer and David
Midthunder. They were going back to Wolf Point to pick up Cynthia, Elmer's wife, and David
Eagle Cloud, his grandson, for their trip home.
With Rick and Kermit in the front seat and me lounging in the back, we headed east out of
Froid on our return to Williston. We decided to return on the back roads via McCabe and
then to find Sugar Top, a family-honored landmark near Culbertson, where Mother, Dad, and
I often went to harvest choke-cherries and climb that "mountain."
On the way, we passed our manicured and remodeled farm, noted the Russian olive trees
near the house, and were almost dazzled by the clean, white paint on the old house. There
were no outbuildings left from my childhood. New prefab sheds and buildings had replaced
them. New hay stacking machinery dominated the farmyard.
I fondly gazed at the pastureland where I had cleared rock and broken soil as a young
lad. It was here that I became a true pioneer breaking the virgin prairie. Then we passed the
two McCabe oil wells that have given us small royalty checks each month since they were
drilled in 1969.
The old Ostby farm was still there to see, but the Bergstrom farm, the Blowers' place, and
the country school were gone. We had to wind about on country trails and work our way
south and east as best we could. The fences were gone. The old landmarks were gone.
Eventually, we turned onto a familiar road that ran westward to Highway 16 and Froid.
Lo and behold! We came upon what was once the town of McCabe. All that remained
was a boarded-up country school and some abandoned buildings. Here my dad bought his
John Deere tractor and other farm equipment. The big grain elevator on the branch line
railroad was gone. I almost wept from the sad memories. Now we had our bearings and
headed for Culbertson, hoping to intercept Sugar Top.
Just another five miles on better country roads, and there it was—Sugar Top in all its
grandeur. Funny thing, it was far too small to match my recollections. Besides, the roads
around it that seemed too steep for our Model “T” truck to safely navigate had somehow
flattened dramatically. How fickle are the memories of childhood!
After a few snapshots to memorialize our rediscovery of Sugar Top, we drove on to
Culbertson and the motel in Williston, where we bade goodbye to Kermit and prepared to rest
overnight for the return flight to Los Angeles next day.
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A fallow field makes me think of the virgin prairie of my childhood.

Page 146
From left to right: Elmer, Kermit, and I enjoy the reunion evening ceremonies in
the Froid High School gym.
The grain elevators are the most visible landmark of Froid.

Page 147
This building used to house the Bank of Froid where Mr. Schnitzler laid out his
proposition for me one day long ago.
The entrance to the property of one of our neighbors evokes distant memories.
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On our way home through McCabe, Kermit approaches an abandoned

schoolhouse with the two outhouses out back, one for girls and the other for
boys. Photo: Richard Midthun
Rick, my son, and Kermit flank Mr. Ostby and his son for a group shot at the side of our
old home.
Page 149
A lonely relic of a farmhouse reminds us of the changes that have occurred in

rural America.
One of the McCabe field oil wells that has provided us a small income stream
over the years.
Page 150
Success in our search! Sugar Top rises from the mists of time in the
background between us.
One last glimpse of majestic Sugar Top before heading home.

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“A summer afternoon”
Page 152
22
“Show And Tell”
T his is my frank and honest admission of the things that I did, or believed I had to do, in
order to find employment and survive. They could well fall under the general heading
of "show and tell."
The show and tell concept is an ideal way for children to learn and understand new
concepts and tasks. When a child watches another accomplish a task, then he or she duplicates
the process and in turn reports or demonstrates to the teacher and class that understanding
has been accomplished.
When I was eighteen and on my first job, I found out that I had to master typing with a
proficiency of 40 words a minute in fewer than 30 days or lose my job. Hugh MacDonald
saved my bacon. He gave me a typing manual and showed me how to place my hands on the
keyboard while keeping my eyes locked on the notes to be copied. I worked every spare
moment at the typewriter keyboard. In only three weeks I was doing 40 words a minute, but I
had to look at the number keys (and I still do).
Next, when I saw an advertisement for a Civil Service test for Junior Calculating Machine
Operator that had a starting salary of $1,440.00 per year (less 15% for my non-Civil Service
status), I jumped at the chance. Although I had never been within a few feet of a calculating
machine, my newfound confidence and self-esteem urged me to learn that skill, just as I had
learned to type. An engineer friend in the U.S. Geological Survey office, next floor above,
slipped me an office key so that I could practice on his machine in evening hours. He
volunteered also to teach me several shortcuts. My above-average passing grade soon earned a
telegram from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers offering me employment as a Junior
Clerk/Typist at the Fort Peck Dam Project 590 miles away on the Missouri River in
northeastern Montana.
After I reported to the new job, I was assigned to a clerk/typists desk in Personnel, and I
never saw a calculator again! It was very apparent to me that my lack of expertise with the
typewriter placed me near the bottom of my clerical group. So, when an opening for an NRA
Labor Relations Inspector opened, the Personnel Director immediately found the opportunity
to get rid of me. Both of us were happy, and I got a good sendoff from Personnel to the Chief
of Inspection.
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The NRA job put me on the road building a 288-mile 154-kVA power line from Great
Falls, Montana, to the Fort Peck Dam. The $120.00 monthly salary plus a $5.00 per day
expense account was like manna from heaven. For the first time in my adult life, I earned
more money than the bare cost of living.
In five months we had built the high-voltage line to Fort Peck and tied it into the bus bars
at the substation. There were no more NRA Inspection jobs open, and I could not qualify as a
construction inspector with my clerk-typist status. It was time for the third episode of show
and tell.
On the bulletin board I noticed a new position for an assistant to the project
photographer. Common sense compelled me to be indoors in Montana's below-zero winter
months. I interviewed for the position, but inwardly knew I did not have the qualifying
experience. How could I once more beat the system, so to speak?
Tom Clagett, Project Photographer and soon to become my future boss, took a liking to
me and helped me make an application acceptable to the Civil Service requirements. With his
clever mind and knowledge of government "gobbledy-gook" coupled with an exaggerated
account of my work on the Froid High School yearbook and the Intermountain College
annual, I barely squeaked by. Clagett was a good teacher. He was also a rather lazy person
who let me take over just as rapidly as I wanted. I learned photography by his show and
tell, derived in turn from his own informal on-the-job experience. I remember how he taught
me to time developing or other stages of the darkroom work by whistling stanzas of "The Star
Spangled Banner." My education was far distant from a formal, academic setting.
But, this humble, serendipitous beginning in photography brought me eventually into
intimate contact with every aspect of the projects at Fort Peck and Shasta dams, from field
construction to public relations. I had to interview the engineers to get caption material.
Being a high school honor graduate, I already had excellent command of grammar and
spelling. In short order I not only interviewed engineers for photo captions but was
soon enlisted by them to edit, rough-draft, and even at times ghost-write professional
technical papers.
Importantly, each author patiently coached me on the substance of the papers. Many of
these engineers later became top men in their respective fields. I was not immediately aware of
the mass of information that I had accumulated or the understanding of complex problems
that was mine. My photography and public relations experience, together with news and
technical writing, made me one of the best-informed officials in the organizations I served.
Some of the foremost engineers in the U.S. Government had taught me well.
My intimate knowledge of concrete mixes and their applications, as well as modern
construction machinery and methods, was gained by years of actually seeing and doing these
tasks with my cameras. My sense and skills at problem solving had developed from the
photographic on-the-job, show-and-tell training. I had become a well-versed engineer by
"show and tell."
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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: “SHOW AND TELL”
I never deliberately used deception in succeeding interviews, but I answered important

technical questions with a clarity and skill that masked the limits of my actual experience. It
was only after a job interview for the position of plant manager with United Concrete Pipe
Corporation at a much later time that I was hired as essentially a knowledgeable and
competent engineer.
Page 155
My grand prize-winning composition for the weeklong art class given by Rex Brandt.
Page 156
23
The Joys Of Watercolor Painting
D olores and I moved to Southern California in the spring of 1970 and settled in Santa
Ana in a rented apartment in the Tennessean, an elegant apartment complex owned by
Tennessee Ernie Ford. My job as chief engineer of No-Joint Pipe of Southern California was
an easy 40-mile commute in the green Volkswagen the company furnished me.
Dolores had chronic health problems that kept us home a lot, and she also spent a good
deal of time in Stockton, California, helping our daughter Barbara with our grandchildren.
Bebe, her widowed mother, also lived with us and had her own bedroom downstairs. She was
crippled by arthritis
Babs (as we had nicknamed her in infancy) and her prominent dentist husband, Wes
Chalmers, had sunk deep roots in Stockton. Babs had risen in her nursing career all the way
to the directorship of surgical nursing for St. Joseph’s Hospital in Stockton. Wes was
president of the Stockton Rotary Club.
My spare time when Dolores was absent was largely spent swimming in the Tennessean
pool. Once in a while, I would browse a builder's supply store adjacent to our complex. My
interest was drawn to the art supply counter, as I had a keen interest in several watercolor
prints on our walls that were brought from our little flat-top residence in Lincoln Village, a
suburb of Stockton, California. Dolores and a decorator turned that small 3-bedroom cottage
into the most attractive and homey place I had ever known. The decorator supplied the three
watercolors that now hung in our living room.
It occurred to me that I might find an interesting hobby and pastime in buying a few
brushes and a watercolor outfit to duplicate the small, colorful paintings. My photography
experiences and my engineering training provided an excellent base from which to start. I
purchased several Foster Art Books on watercolor painting, color mixing, and old barns, as
well as several sheets of watercolor paper and a few cheap brushes.
Friends commented favorably on my crude efforts. I became addicted and kept working
with watercolors whenever the notion struck my fancy. Some two years passed, in which I had
not made more than casual copies and a few sketches. Rick had graduated from Stanford
Medical School, completed his internship at Harbor General Hospital, and had married. He
Page 157
and Carolyn came to an amicable divorce and parted company. We met Suzette Beisel, his
new girlfriend and now his wife.
Sue took a real interest in my artwork. I gave her a couple of paintings, and she encouraged
me to take watercolor painting more seriously. Another stimulation was caused by Babs asking
for several paintings to show and sell at a Stockton Rotary Club auction. To my amazement,
several of my paintings were sold for $75, some for even more!
Sue actively promoted my work and encouraged me, acting as my agent in matting,
framing, and selling my work. She bought me a dozen art books by famous watercolorists and
sent me dozens of ideas for paintings. I carried a small camera with me in my work and shot
barns and water tanks and landscapes by the score, then put them on paper.
Sue and Rick gave me a birthday gift of sessions of on-location painting with the famous
watercolor artists Rex Brandt and Joan Irving in Corona Del Mar. This not only afforded
firsthand instruction but acquainted me with many local artists and, for the first time,
provided valuable insight into the art world.
Since 1974, my brushes have produced perhaps 3,000 paintings and earned me a following
in the Conejo Valley where Rick and Sue live. I made 80 paintings for a new medical building
in Thousand Oaks, California. Granddaughter Lauren and I spent many happy days each
summer showing our work in art shows. The cash register often rang into the range of several
thousand dollars in sales in each 3-day showing on the sidewalks of Thousand Oaks,
California, on Conejo Valley Days or at special showings at the home of Sue and Rick in
Westlake Village, California.
Even in my engineering career with Paul A. Moote and Associates, Inc., clients asked me to
do series of paintings of historic properties purchased and then demolished for new condos.
It has been a real joy to become enriched and noted for my artwork. My paintings hang in
hundreds of homes, even in far-away lands where collectors had moved.
My accomplishments in watercolor could only have happened with the constant
encouragement and promotion by Suzette Midthun and Dr. Rick. They have been generous in
donating art supplies and equipment, paying for workshops with famous painters, and giving
me a Macintosh computer with graphics and painting programs.
Thanks to all my family, my paintings will continue to be seen long after my days on earth
are over. May God bless all who have shared my joy in watercolor painting.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: THE JOYS OF WATERCOLOR PAINTING
My granddaughter Lauren helps me make

sales at my art show in Mission Viejo,
California in 1989.
“Sails at Newport Beach harbor”

Page 159
Page 160
24
Goodbye, Father
D ad left his large, traditional Norwegian family to claim the brass ring on the western
homesteaders’ merry-go-round. He never realized that there was neither a brass ring
nor a merry-go-round waiting for him on the plains of eastern Montana, and he stoically
persisted in a fruitless pursuit. The starry-eyed pioneer of early years on the homestead
became in time a sad, morose, and defeated soul.
The late afternoon December sun's rays filtered through gray stratus clouds. My body was
cold, my spirits low. December 12, 1969, could well be my last visit to my birthplace, Froid,
Montana. I had come here only four times in forty years, now to bury my father, Aslag Nelson
Midthun. This was the last of the Midthun family in Froid. “Will I ever come back,” I
thought.
A small mound of faded clay marked the open grave in the native-prairie cemetery plot that
already had received two of my three sisters and my mother. Only a few sprigs of buffalo
grass poked through the snow-draped native prairie where, a few hours before, laborers had
chiseled Father's grave from the reluctant, frozen sod.
The cemetery was treeless, a five-acre patch of prairie marked with steel posts and hog-wire
and liberally sprinkled with a couple of hundred markers and weathered tombstones. This was
the final home for many others, who, like my father and mother, had broken the virgin prairie,
braved the cold, drought, hailstorms, and blizzards to homestead a quarter section of land.
They also had planted flax and then wheat and borne children in makeshift, sod claim-
shacks. Their hardships and struggles, with rare exceptions, had passed unnoticed. The
cemetery headstones silently held the stories of hopeful, rigorous, and often tragic lives.
The 16 ft.-square Midthun family plot was surrounded by a variety of small granite and
marble headstones and markers. Many had been badly eroded by severe winters and hot, arid
duststorms. Others were tilted awkwardly or flattened in mute testimony to the hardships the
forgotten residents endured. Our plot was spare but tidy.
Edith Blanche, age 19 months, was the first to occupy the Midthun plot. Fifty years had
passed since that cold, moonlit night when I heard Mother's soft sobs from beneath a shroud
of homemade patchwork quilts, as the horse-drawn sleigh carried us home over snowdrifted
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dirt roads. Little "Eda Bant" had a heart attack in Mother's arms on the way home from a
festive evening at a neighbor's home.
Subsequently, Mother quietly lapsed into long, silent moods of grief, ate sparingly, and
focused her unselfish love almost totally on Alice May, our pretty, but frail, three-year-old
sister.
Edith Blanche's funeral marked the end of what my sister Hazel and I often referred to as
"the good old days." The card parties, Ladies Aid meetings, parlor games, and days of visitors
ceased abruptly, never to return to our once happy household.
The blow that took the last of Mother's quiet manner struck just two years later. Alice May
was stricken with a brain tumor that left her lame, blind, and paralyzed. My "birthday sister,"
Alice May, was born on my birthday, May 8, 1917, and mercifully slipped away at age
nineteen.
Mother had given fifteen years of 24-hour nursing care to Alice May, including daily
washings in alkali water carried in buckets 150 yards "up the hill" from the well. Her back had
become bent and her arms sinewy from the strenuous physical exertion. She gave her life
willingly, although she never received even a semblance of recognition from Dad or others in
the family. Silence transitioned into deep depression. Only “once in a blue moon,” after a rare
glass of wine, would her sad blue eyes gleam and a faint smile cross her lips—but only briefly.
The dual marble headstone in front of me bore the names of both Mother and Alice
May. It was Mother's dying request that she be buried next to the child to whom she had
literally given her life. Cancer claimed Mother at 62. She pleaded in vain for me to visit her in
the final days, but I didn't respond to her repeated entreaties, because I had erroneously
rationalized that I could not afford the time away from work. That careless omission has
pained me these many years.
Strains of Mother's favorite hymn, "The Old Rugged Cross," reminded me that I was
standing by my father's open grave. The young minister's voice brought me back to reality as
he read the 23rd Psalm. I stood alone in the family section of the funeral group. None of the
other three surviving children had been able to come. Sensing my loneliness, the handful of
townsfolk behind me moved forward and surrounded me. Tears flowed freely from my
eyes. At last I didn't care that Father had always considered it unmanly to show emotion.
The wonderful group or neighbors and friends took me back to the Lutheran Church
basement where there were tables filled with sandwiches, cake, and coffee. I was amazed that
a few aged seniors who remembered me as a youngster were now regaling me with tales about
Dad's life and achievements.
Perhaps the greatest revelation was that I was actually a "sodbuster." I earned that title the
summer I broke 30 acres of virgin prairie in our pasture. An aging classmate said, "Robert,
you, too, are a sodbuster and son of a pioneer."
Grandchildren of my closest boyhood neighbor drove me to the old farmstead that
evening. The rutted snowbanks alongside the unpaved gravel road were sentimental reminders
of the winter days when my sister and I "bached it" in a small wooden shack in Froid during
high school days, because it was too chancy for us to make the daily five-mile trip.
The familiar farmsteads were gone. Only rotting ruins remained. The barbwire fences that
had enclosed the farms and kept the livestock properly contained were gone. It seemed as if
the area had been denuded and sanitized. As we turned south on the last mile home, the
Page 162
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: GOODBYE, FATHER
mailbox where I used to get the Sears catalog, The Country Gentleman, and the weekly Froid
Tribune was gone. There were no mailboxes at all!
Over the last rise in the rutted road, I was shocked to see our old, ell-shaped two-story
house standing in shabby contrast to the crisp blanket of moonlit snow. The house stood
about a hundred yards from the front gate.
In the headlight illumination, a gleaming pair of eyes flashed a brief reflection, as a five-
point buck bounded out of sight! I had never seen a deer on the farm and was so surprised
and shocked that I shouted in amazement. With the removal of fences and livestock, deer
were free to migrate northward from the Missouri River willow breaks. Bits of grain and
fodder gleaned from harvest fields were a bounty now for deer and Chinese pheasants.
Using flashlights, we entered a house that had stood unoccupied for the last five years
while Father was in a convalescent hospital. Vandals had trashed my upstairs east bedroom.
Artifacts and boyhood mementos had been torn and sprayed with paint. This was the room in
which I lay for many days in 1918, hovering between life and death, in the influenza pandemic
that claimed half of our neighboring farmers.
I cried again.
Dad and Hazel in the kitchen at home,

September 30, 1948.
Page 163
EPILOGUE
A love poem to Mimi, my lovely wife of 70 years.
We shared our wedded lives in daily deeds and thoughts,

from young life’s passion, joy, and glowing splendor
to later times, still bright, inspiring, and hopeful.
Now, to deepest love our hearts must surrender.
True, the years have raced by. Fondest family memories are kept
spun tightly in our intertwined hearts that beat as one.
Still youthful, our spirits soar to fight through misty clouds
of time and some sorrow that try to hide our guiding sun.
All these precious moments, a loving gift of God,

have woven tightly our union as man and wife.
With misty eyes we see the bright fabric of our lives and stand
in final readiness for His gift of eternal life.
Page 165
INDEX
Air Tugger winch, 98 Bradford, Sam, the Reverend, 110

Alexander Dumas, 12, 27, 142 Buggy—my life threatening ride., 15, 17, 130, 131, 132,
Alice May Midthun, 13, 17, 18, 28, 29, 59, 69, 70, 130, 144
162 Bull, Shorthorn—escapade around the haystack., 46
birth, 130 Bureau of Reclamation, 13, 63, 70, 99, 109, 115, 116,
Anderson, Freddie, 91 118
Anne Hazel Midthun, 16, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 33, 34, 35, Buster, 37, 43, 54, 129, 130, 131, 138, 142
43, 44, 45, 48, 53, 130, 142, 143, 144, 162 Butchering a hog for Dolores, 44, 54, 135
Antie-I-over, 11 Butte, Montana, 13, 29, 77
Aqueducts, 116, 118, 123 Cadillac convertible, 64, 65, 115, 117, 121
Årdal, Øvre, Sogn, Norway, 16 California Western States Life Insurance Company, 110
Arthur Casagrande, 98 Candy making, 62
Aslag Nelson Midthun, 7, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, Cappers Farmer Magazine, 26
25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 33, 37, 38, 39, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49,
Carlson, Mr., 19
50, 53, 54, 55, 56, 59, 69, 70, 107, 110, 129, 130, 131,
132, 133, 138, 142, 144, 145, 161, 162, 163 Carolina Moon song, 35
Avery tractor, 28 Casagrande, Arthur, 98
Baching in town during the winter, 29, 43, 44, 162 Cast-in-place concrete pipe, 121, 124
Bacon, 27, 44, 136, 153 Central Valley Project, 96, 101
Bainville, Montana, 55, 65, 141 Charlie, 38, 129, 138
Bank, First Sate Bank of Froid, 17 Chet Huntley, 101
Baptism, 25 CIPCP, cast-in-place concrete pipe, 121, 122, 123, 124
Barbara Midthun Chalmers, R.N., 5, 96, 98, 99, 103, Civil Service, 70, 72, 110, 142, 153, 154
104, 105, 157, 158 Clagett, Tom, 74, 76, 77, 154
Barn, 17, 27, 37, 38, 44, 45, 50, 54, 130, 137, 138 Clarence (C.D.) Newland, 45, 91, 93, 95, 96
Barnett family, 64, 65, 69 Coal, 12, 17, 27, 34, 35, 43, 44, 59, 61, 69, 118, 129,
Beall Pipe and Tank Corporation, 121 137, 144
Bebe Bradford, mother of Dolores, 99, 105, 157 Collinson, Dr., 15
Bergstrom Columbia River, 95
Bergstrom farm, 25, 145 Conrad Steenerson, 15
Einar Bergstrom, 25 Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army, 72, 73, 91, 97, 153
Beth Eden Baptist Church, 110, 111, 113, 114 Country Gentleman Magazine, 35
Betty Swartzenburger, 19, 28 Crosley radio, battery-powered, 39
Betty, my girlfriend, 72 Culbertson, Montana, 15, 16, 55, 142, 145
Bill Christie's tailor shop, 64 Dahl Hospital, 18, 143
Billings, Montana, 20, 61 Dahley, 37, 43, 54, 129, 130, 131, 138, 142, 144
Blacksmith, 17 Dams, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 92, 93, 95, 97, 99, 100, 103,
104, 105, 107, 109
Boomtowns, 75, 76
Shasta Dam, 96, 99, 100, 109, 110, 154
Page 167
INDEX
Boulder Dam, Nevada, 95, 96, 135 Froid, Montana, 5, 7, 12, 17, 18, 29, 36, 44, 45, 46, 47,
Dan Patch, 131 48, 49, 55, 56, 59, 61, 62, 65, 69, 72, 76, 107, 137,
141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 154, 161, 162, 163
David Eagle Cloud Midthun, 145
Furnaces, stoking and cleaning, 61
David Midthunder, 144, 145
G.I. loan, 100
Decorah Posten Norwegian weekly, 26
Ganim cabins, 100
Decorah, Iowa, 26, 27
Glasgow, Montana, 72, 74, 92, 93, 96
Deed, quitclaim, 20
Gold medal, 12, 49
Denver, Colorado, 39, 100, 110, 111, 113, 141
Good Houskeeping Magazine, 26
Diamond Ranch, 16
Governor of Montana, John Edward Erickson,
Dolores Bradford Midthun, 5, 13, 19, 91, 92, 93, 95, 96, Democrat 1925-1933, 50
98, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 110, 111, 113,
114, 135, 136, 157 Graf Zeppelin, 65
Donald Nordman, 45 Grammar school, 12, 13, 33, 35, 45, 48, 143
Dr. Collinson, 15 Granary, 17, 137, 138
Drill Grand Coulee Dam, 95, 99, 105
Calyx, at Fort Peck Dam site, 98 Grand jury testimony, 118
Drill, Van Brunt, 37, 138 Great Falls, Montana, 48, 49, 50, 73, 74, 141, 154
Edgerton, Dr. Harold, 14 Great Northern Railway, 17
Edison phonograph, 38 Hackamore, 131
Edith Marie Steenerson, 7, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, Halvor Steenerson, 16
26, 27, 28, 29, 33, 35, 38, 44, 53, 54, 55, 59, 69, 70, Harold Edgerton, 14
107, 130, 131, 132, 133, 138, 142, 145, 161, 162
Harry Nail, grammar school teacher, 35
Elias (Great Uncle Eli) Steenerson, 16
Harvard Classics, 12, 27
Eliasson, Dr. Rolf Eliasson, 123
Hawthorne, 35
Elizabeth Sorensen, 35
Helena, Montana, 47, 49, 56, 59, 60, 63, 64, 69, 70, 72,
Ellis Island, 16 141
Elmer Elias Midthun, 18 Hogs, 17, 37, 133
Ernie Pyle, 76, 77 Honrath, Pauline, 91
Farmers Elevator, 55, 141, 142 Horses
Farmstead, 20, 162 Buster, 37, 43, 142
Fauntleroy pants, Lord, 25 Charlie, 38, 129, 138
FBI, 13 Dan Patch, 131
Federal Land Bank, 18, 55 Jack, 44, 49, 129, 130, 131, 138
First Sate Bank of Froid, 17 King, 129, 138
Flax, 17, 39, 141, 161 the Dahley mare, 37, 43, 54, 129, 130, 131, 138, 142,
Ford automobile, 55, 61, 62, 77, 91, 92, 98, 100, 157 144
Ford V-8 coupe, black, 91, 92 Hugh MacDonald, 70, 153
Fort Peck, Montana, 69, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 91, 92, Indian(s), 11, 17, 19, 34, 39, 129, 131, 138
93, 95, 96, 98, 100, 153, 154 Insteness, Bob, 54
Frazer automobile, 28 Intermountain Union College, 56, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65,
Fred Quinn, 116 66, 69, 154
Freddie Anderson, 91 Controller C. H. Crittenden, 60
Froid Mercantile, the, 44, 46, 49 Iowa, 26, 27, 121, 133
Jack, 44, 49, 129, 130, 131, 138
Page 168
INDEX
Jensen farm, 33, 137 Kermit Steenerson, 2, 5, 13, 18, 27, 29, 37, 38, 45,
John Deere tractor, 37, 145 59, 69, 107, 133, 137, 138, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145
John W. Schnitzler, 50, 55 Richard A., M.D., 106, 121, 137, 141, 143, 145, 157,
158
Kaiser automobile, 28, 118
Robert Alexander, 5, 13, 25, 46, 47, 50, 54, 55, 56,
Kangaroo shoes, 26 65, 66, 70, 104, 130, 131, 162
Kermit Steenerson Midthun, 2, 5, 13, 18, 27, 29, 37, 38, Midthun family, 27, 28, 53
45, 59, 69, 107, 133, 137, 138, 141, 142, 143, 144,
145 Midthun, Aslag Nelson, 7, 16, 161
Kerosene lamps, 15, 27 Midthun, David Eagle Cloud, 145
King, 129, 138 Midtun, 16, 19
Kitchen, 12, 17, 18, 27, 29, 37, 43, 62 Midtun, Nils and Anna Svalheim, 19
Knute and Ida Steenerson, 15 Midthunder, David, 144, 145
Ladies Aid, 26, 162 Missouri River, 17, 72, 95, 97, 153, 163
LIFE magazine, 76 Model T Ford truck, 55, 61
Lignite coal, 12, 17, 27, 34, 35, 44 Moote, Paul A., 14, 124, 158
Longfellow, 35 Mower, 37, 54, 70
Lord Fauntleroy pants, 25 Mt. Shasta, 100
Los Angeles, California, 20, 39, 92, 99, 114, 115, 116, Mustangs, 37
122, 141, 145 Nashua, Montana, 74
Lum, Walter, 123 National Guard, 45, 47, 49, 63, 69, 101, 142
M.I.T, 14 National Guard, the, 45, 47, 49, 63, 69, 101, 142
MacDonald, Hugh, 70, 153 Naval Reserve, 100, 101
Margaret Bourke-White, 76 Navy, 14, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109
Maxwell automobile, 17, 26, 27, 28, 144 New Cumberland, Pa, 106
Maxwell touring car, 17, 27 Newland, Clarence (C.D.), 45, 91, 93, 95, 96
McCabe, Montana, 17, 55, 145 Newland, Vera, 91, 107
McCalls Magazine, 26 Nifty Bill's tailor shop, 64
McCormick mower, 130, 138 Nils and Anna Svalheim Midtun, 16
McCormick-Deering combine, 37 No-Joint Concrete Pipe Co., 122, 157
Métis, 19, 131 Nordman, Donald, 45
Midthun Oil wells at Mc Cabe, Montana, 20, 145
Alice May, 13, 17, 18, 28, 29, 59, 69, 70, 130, 162 Ole Anderson farm, 17, 27
Anne Hazel, 16, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 33, 34, 35, 43, 44, Ole Svalheim, 16
45, 48, 53, 130, 142, 143, 144, 162
Omaha, Nebraska, 133
Aslag Nelson, 7, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 27, 28,
Ostby family, 20, 25, 45, 138, 144, 145
29, 33, 37, 38, 39, 44, 47, 49, 50, 53, 54, 55, 56, 59,
69, 70, 107, 110, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 142, 144, Outhouse, 17, 137
145, 162 Overland automobile, 26, 28, 43, 56
Barbara Chalmers, R.N., 5, 96, 98, 103, 157 Overland Model 90 touring car, 1917, 26
David Eagle Cloud , 145 Øvre Årdal, Sogn, Norway, 16
David Midthunder, 144, 145 Paul A. Moote, 14, 124, 158
Dolores Bradford, 5, 13, 19, 91, 92, 93, 95, 96, 98, Pauline Honrath, 91
99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 110, 111, 113,
114, 135, 136, 157 Pearl Harbor, 101, 103
Elmer Elias, 18 Pensacola, Florida, 103, 104
Page 169
INDEX
Photo school, U.S. Navy, 103 Sheep Creek, 33, 39, 44, 70
Photography, 74, 77, 100, 103, 105, 107, 110, 154, 157 Sheriff, 16
Pigsty, 17 Shorthand, 13
Pink Hat, 16, 49, 50, 59 Silver pencil, 13, 35
Plow, 17, 28, 37, 38, 39, 70, 132, 138 Snooky dog, 96, 98, 99
Plow, sulky, 38, 39, 70, 138 Sodbuster, 5, 11, 14, 39, 124, 162
Pom pom pull-away, 11 Sodbusting, 37, 39
Prairie, 7, 11, 16, 28, 35, 37, 38, 39, 129, 131, 138, 145, Sorensen, Elizabeth, 35
161, 162
Spell downs, 13
Virgin prairie, 11, 28, 35, 37, 38, 39, 138, 145, 161, 162
Spokane, Washington, 96, 98, 99, 107
President Roosevelt, 75
St Hilaire, Minnesota, 15
Principal of Froid High School, O. Lloyd Gillespie, 49
Stanford University, 115, 117, 121
Public Information Officer, 101, 109
Steenerson
Public Works Administration, 74
Conrad, 15
Quinn Wire and Iron Works, 118
Edith Marie, 7, 15, 17, 18, 27, 29, 107, 161, 162
Quitclaim deed, 20
Halvor, 16
Quonset Point, Rhode Island, 105
Knute and Ida, 15
Rabbit, 34, 38
Elias (Great Uncle Eli), 16
Range , Royal Value, 17, 27
Robert, 130
Redbook Magazine, 26
Stockton, California, 100, 110, 114, 116, 121, 157, 158
Redding, California, 96, 99, 100, 103, 109, 135
Stove, Superior Oak, 25, 27
Renault, Telesphore, 19, 54, 131, 132, 144
Strategic Air Command, 133
Republican Party, 55, 65, 70, 110
Studebaker automobile, 60, 103
Reverend Sam Bradford, 110
Sugar Top, 145
Rhoda School, District 62, 33, 35, 36, 45, 48, 143, 144
Suit adventures, 25, 49, 50, 56, 59, 64, 115
Richard A. Midthun, M.D., 106, 121, 137, 141, 143,
Sulky plow, 38, 39, 70, 138
145, 157, 158
Superior Oak Heater, 25
Robert Alexander Midthun, 5, 13, 25, 46, 47, 50, 54, 55,
56, 65, 66, 70, 104, 130, 131, 162 Superior Oak heating stove, 27
Robert Steenerson, 62, 130, 131, 132 Surcingle, 131
Royal Value range, 17, 27 Svalheim
Royalty income, 20, 145 Ole, 16, 17, 27
Ruby Smith, 75 Tandy shacks, 99, 100
Rural Electrification, 28 Telesphore Renault, 131
Rural Free Delivery, 16, 130 The Country Gentleman Magazine, 26, 163
Sacramento River, 100 The Decorah Posten Norwegian weekly, 26
Sacramento, California, 99, 100, 110 The Harvard Classics, 12, 27
Salvation Army, 20 The Literary Digest, 12, 35
Saturday Evening Post Magazine, 26 The Saturday Evening Post Magazine, 26, 75
Schnitzler, John W., 53, 55, 56, 59, 61, 65, 66, 69 Tom Clagett, 74, 101, 154
School marms, 33 Toyon, California, 99, 100
Shakespeare, 35 Tractors, 28, 37, 145
Shasta Dam, 96, 99, 100, 109, 110 John Deere, 37, 145
Page 170
INDEX
Travelair biplane, 65 Whippet automobile, 28, 59, 69

United Concrete Pipe Corporation, 114, 117, 119, 122, Whippet sedan, 1926, 28
123, 155
Whipping, 54
Van Brunt drill, 37, 138
Whist, card game, 17, 26
Vera Newland, 91, 107
Williamson, G. D., 122
Victrola, portable orthophonic, 35
Williston, North Dakota, 55, 141, 142, 145
Walter Lum, 123
Winch
Watercolor painting, 157, 158
Air Tugger, 98
Wedding by the roadside, 93
Windmill, 17, 38, 45, 137
Wedding day, December 22, 1935, 92
Wolf Point, Montana, 48, 49, 141, 145
Well, alkali water well, 17
World War I, 12, 47, 131, 132
Wesley Chalmers, D.D.S., 157
World War II, 7, 12, 13, 18, 28, 43, 45, 63, 76, 115, 137
Wheat, 12, 17, 18, 26, 27, 28, 37, 46, 53, 55, 129, 137,
WPA (Works Progress Administration), 18
138, 141, 142, 144, 161
Wulf, Jack, 44, 49, 50
Wheeler Inn, 75
Zane Grey, 12
Page 171

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“My childhood home”

Robert Midthun, 1982

Editor-in-Chief: Richard A. Midthun

Copy Editor: Kermit S. Midthun

Designer: Richard A. Midthun

First Edition: January 18, 2007

29359 Wagon Road

MY JOURNEY FROM SODBUSTER TO CYBERSPACE

“An old wagon”

Our young family in 1914. I am 18

committeeman for both Democrats and Republicans at the same time.

“Wagon, team, & dog”

The steamship Baltic, 1905.

week, and this was one time not to disturb him.

“Another view of the old homestead”

From L. to R.: Kermit,

Dad, age 67 and Elmer, age 27, May 1952.

“Rhoda School, District 62”

“Barn & wagon”

The farmstead as it looked in 2000 under ownership of the Ostbys.

A view to the south from the farmstead.

A view back from the south to the farmstead.

Class membership display at the Froid all-school reunion in 2000.

that I never knew him or thanked him for protecting me.

“Meadows and fields in springtime”

Dad and Elmer.

would have awakened me.

Grading the top of the earthfill.

A view of the outflow side of the spillway structure.

Above and to the left, some

Photos: Robert Midthun

Below is the U.S. postage

Power transmission lines constructed with the dam.

“Angles, lines, & symmetry”

“Study in light and shadow”

A spring day near the Fort Peck dam site.

My glamorous Dolores at age 18.

M y marriage to Dolores Angeline Bradford on December 22, 1935, provided new

“A Chinese store out west”

A portrait of me in the photolab taken by one of my buddies.

would be no relaxation for me.

Secure The Navy—Back To Civilian Life

“Saloon and wagon.”

“A study of form, texture, and light”

by license fees issued to private entrepreneurs.

“A quiet winter morning”

“Horses in the pasture”

“Stone barn in winter light”

Top row left to right:

Van Brunt seed drill,

The Royal Range,

More wagon parts,

Photos: Robert Midthun

Rick snapped this picture while I was waiting for my official

A fallow field makes me think of the virgin prairie of my childhood.

The grain elevators are the most visible landmark of Froid.

On our way home through McCabe, Kermit approaches an abandoned

A lonely relic of a farmhouse reminds us of the changes that have occurred in

One last glimpse of majestic Sugar Top before heading home.

I never deliberately used deception in succeeding interviews, but I answered important

My granddaughter Lauren helps me make

Photo: Robert Midthun

“Sails at Newport Beach harbor”

Dad and Hazel in the kitchen at home,