Broadus VIII - The Unfair Mayor

Broadus, with a population of 800 was bay far the largest town in the county, and therefore, the county seat. This meant that Broadus was the location for the county fair, which was a really big doings. They had all of the 4-H barns and display buildings. Our church decided we want to sponsor a Christian literature booth. So I went to the county agent and signed up for the booth and paid the fees. Piece of cake!

On opening day of the fair we set up our literature table, and we were in business. Quite a number of people stopped by to look at the literature and to chat with us. We were able to tell them that we were beginning a new church in the town. We also invited them to the gospel sing in the city park that evening. 

Early in the afternoon a gentleman (cowboy) came up to the booth asking who was in charge. I said that I was. He said, "I want you to take your booth down and clear out immediately." I guess he got right to the point. I told him that we would not, and that we had gone through the proper channels to get the booth. He got huffy and raised his voice and insist that we take it down. I said "No." By now a crowd was gathering around to see what was going on. So, he looked around at the crowd, and in even a louder voice ordered me to take the booth down and get out. I said, "No."

Then this cowboy said to me in a voice that he knew everyone could hear, "Do you know who I am?" Being provoked I said, "I don't care who you are, we went through the proper channels and the booth stays."  He said, "I'm the mayor of this town." I said, "this is a county building, so the booth stays." And the booth did stay.

Then he said, (and by now I could smell the alcohol on his breath) "I understand you intend to have a gospel sing in the park." I said, "That's rights." He said, "Well, I'm mayor and I'm not going to let you have it." I said, "We have the right to assemble. We'll have it."

And we did have the gospel sing. And it was well attended. I think the mayor and his loud voice helped us out. Even more interest was shown in our church as a result of these events. But these were nervous times.

Our front room (church) did fill up. But Mr. Rogers, our landlord didn't like it. Next time I will tell you about the "turning point."

Broadus VII - Big Country - Small World

Broadus is located in southeastern Montana. Miles City is 80 miles to the northwest. Belle Fourche, SD is 110 miles to the southeast. Sheridan, Wyoming 80 miles to the south. And the North Pole is to the north. There are little tiny towns scattered around. By towns, I mean intersections with names. Some of these intersections have a post office and/or a gas pump. All of them have a run down building, dust, and sagebrush. There are millions of acres like this, and thousands of square miles. You can seldom see a house from the main road. Every so often we would drive to Miles City just to be in civilization.

Well, I told you about our trip to Boyd and how we went off the road at a cattle gate. Well, that kind of messed up the car. So while we were in Miles City we pulled into a dealership. They had a nice white, '65 Pontiac Bonneville for $900. They gave me $300 for my old car and I drove away with payments of $43 per month. This was 1972, and that was a lot of money. We had faith. This was a beautiful car with strato bucket seats, four seasons air conditioning, power seats, and a 421 cubic inch engine. It used ethyl. That was no problem because ethyl was only 32 cents a gallon. And believe it or not, I got 21 mpg on the highway. This was sheer luxury. 

So, we bought the car and drove it straight home. Entering Broadus from the west was the residence of one of the families that attended our church. We decided to stop there and show off our car. When the lady of the house came to the door (Mrs. Grant), she said, "How do you like your new car?" I said, "How did you know we bought a car?" She said, "The postman was here a few minutes ago and told me about it." I said, "How does the postman know we bought a car?" She said, He was delivering at the dealership when you were in there buying it." I thought that the Pony Express was never that fast. I wondered what else everybody in town knew about our lives.

This is kind of the way it is in these small towns. Somebody knows about every breath you take, all the groceries you buy at the store, whether or not a skunk lives under your house, whether or not you shot the skunk, and if you did, they know exactly where you buried it. They even know where the empty shotgun shells landed. I think they all work for the CIA.

Next time I want to tell you about the "unfair mayor."

Broadus VI - The Roads

When the major city for hundreds of square miles has a population of eight hundred, not too much attention is given to the quality of roads. US Highway 212 was a good road..... well..... kinda. It was blacktop, but it was rough. At least there were no potholes. The road to Miles City, eighty miles to the northwest was also paved and okay. The road going south to Biddle was paved, but you had to drive around the potholes. And they did, going about 85 miles per hour. There was no speed limit in Montana at this time. It was on this road, going south to Biddle that I had a deer leap over the hood of my car at night when I was traveling about 70 miles per hour. There was no time to be scared. The deer missed and we kept going. Such an idiot I was. But I didn't learn. And this wasn't the worst of it.

Shortly after we moved to Broadus, a lady took me to Belle Creek, a little oil town about thirty miles to the southeast across the gravel. The road was rough, twisty, and hilly and she had her foot on the floor. I was hanging on, sure that God had brought me out there to die. But she taught me how to drive on these gravel roads. So I learned by her example. I was no slowpoke and no wimp.

So one day I took Audrey and our daughter, Rana, down to Belle Creek in our '57 Dodge. This car had it all: push button transmission, V-8, and was pink and white. So I am motoring along as fast as I dared to go (not quite as fast as the lady in the previous paragraph). So I'm flying over the gravel and coming to the crown of a hill. When I got to the top of the hill, the road disappeared. The big, long hood on my pink Dodge blocked my view of the road, so all I saw was the hood of the car and sky. So instinctively I felt that the road went to the left, so I turned left. And sure enough the road was there. But now I was going down this hill going about 60 miles per hour, and at the bottom of the hill a flock of sheep stood on the road. So now I am pushing my foot through the floor trying to stop. I'm thinking, what will I do if I kill this rancher's sheep. But God was with us, the sheep started jumping out of the way as the car came skidding toward them. You'd think I'd learn my lesson.

It was just a few weeks later we were going to a place called Boyd to hold a Bible study. Boyd is actually a place where something used to exist. This, too was about 40 miles over a gravel road. Audrey was holding Rana, our baby, in the passenger side of the front seat. The Lutheran pastor and his wife were in the back seat. I was driving slower now, well, a little slower. A cattle gate is a series of pipes laid across a road that is in line with a fence. It is intended to keep cattle from escaping over the road where the fence gaps open for the road. Anyway, I was going about 50 mph when I went over the cattle gate. The car didn't touch the ground again until we were in this field. We bounced up and down and rattled around and kept rolling over the rough field until the car finally came to rest just a few feet from a cliff. I looked over at Audrey and was relieved to see our baby still sleeping. I looked in the back seat and the Lutheran pastor and his wife hugging each other. His glasses had been knocked off. But they, too were okay. Well, maybe a little shaken. We made it to Bible study on time. I paid more attention to cattle gates after that.

Wait until you hear about our car. Next time.

Broadus V - Easter Sunday

I mentioned in "Broadus I" that our front room was the church and our kitchen was the fellowship hall. Well, now it was Easter Sunday and we were expecting a pretty good crowd of about forty people. By now our little church had grown and several families were attending each Sunday. We had pews in the front room that had been donated by the church in Miles City, MT, only 80 miles away (the closest city). We also got a pulpit from somewhere. When we had forty people, we were packed in. But this didn't happen very often. 

So this Easter Sunday we were to have the service followed by a pot luck dinner in our fellowship hall. This meant that almost everyone had to sit in a pew holding their plate while balancing their drink on their knee. 

Well, the only problem was, it was earlier this week that the skunks had stunk up the house. Although the odor had faded quite a bit by now, it was still quite prevalent. But this was the only place we had to hold church. I was almost hoping that nobody would come. But they did come. We had record numbers. Our front room was full.... and.... and.... it was getting warm in there, which brought out the skunk smell even more. When people came in, I pretended that everything was okay. So did they. We started the service and began to sing. It was really hard taking those deep breaths between phrases of the songs. I nearly gagged. I could taste the skunk smell on my tongue. I gagged through five or six songs. Preaching was no better. But, surprisingly, Everyone seemed to sing very spiritedly. I guess they were just happy to have a church.

Afterward we had our pot luck dinner. I'm telling you, fried chicken just doesn't taste the same when everything smells like skunk. I noticed that several people took their plates outside. Yet, through all this, no one mentioned the odor. Believe me, we didn't store any left overs in Tupperware either.  All-in-all, it was a pretty successful Sunday.

I hope you weren't reading this during lunch. If you were, be sure to wash it all down with a good strong cup of hot coffee. Maybe scalding your tongue will kill the taste.

There is more tomorrow.

Broadus IV, Solving the Skunk

Having a family of skunks live under our house was a little unnerving. I knew it was a family because I saw them out and about at night. Two large skunks and three little ones. I don't know if the cat got any of them or not. But we did worry about another cat getting under our house and having another episode of the skunk smells.

So I called our landlord, Mr. Rogers, and explained to him that we had a family of skunks living in the crawl space of the house, and they kind of stunk up the place. Mr. Rogers said, "I've got something that will help get rid of them, I'll bring it in tomorrow." So the next day Mr. Rogers showed up with a 4-10 gage single shot shotgun, you know, the kind where the barrel breaks away from the stock. He said, "Do you know how to use one of these?" Fortunately, I did. (Hunting with my dad and military training did have some value) Mr. Rogers also handed me six shotgun shells. Five skunks, six shells, that should be enough. 

So for the next several nights I stood by the back door to watch for them to come out. That's where they burrowed in, next to the back door. My plan was to see them come out, flip the back light on, step out of the house and open fire. The first and second nights went well. I shot one adult and one kitten (baby). I buried them in the field next to the house and they didn't smell. 

The third night was a little complicated. I saw them come out of their den under our house, run alongside the house and head for the highway. So I grabbed the shotgun and quickly followed. These little critters can really run. I chased them out to the highway and then along US Highway 212 to the south east. I chased them for a couple of blocks when suddenly the adult stopped, turned around, aimed it's tail straight at me. Luckily, I was out of it's range. I pulled up with the shotgun, but it was too dark to see clearly. But I fired anyway. I missed. Now the skunk chased me back to the house. I must have looked like a fool running lickity-split with a skunk on my heels  and a shotgun in my hand. Well, I made it to the house with no special perfume on me.

Two nights later I shot her and buried her in the field with the rest of her family. I didn't put any crosses up either. I had no shotgun shells left. This chapter of our lives was over. Well, maybe not quite over. I have to tell you about Easter Sunday...... next time.

Enjoy your coffee and stay away from the skunks.

Broadus III, Smelly Tupperware

The house we rented in Broadus had no basement, but it did have a crawl space, if you could call it that. There was no way to get into this crawl space, and once you found the space, there was no space to crawl.

One night, Audrey and I both woke up to some weird sounds. We heard real loud and high pitched, "eeeee - eeeee - eeeee" that last for out a minute. Then we hear real loud "meeeeeoooooowwww." You know the sound of a cat fight. This repeated itself a couple of times. We knew that a cat and some kind of animal were having a fight, but it sounded like it was coming from inside our house. It was kind of unsettling.

Soon, we were to know exactly what had happened. A powerful skunk smell invaded the entire house. Audrey and I began coughing and and nearly choking on the smell. We quickly got up to check on our daughter, Rana, who was sleeping in another bedroom. She was less than a year old. And, even though it was winter, and cold out, we opened all the windows in the house to air it out. But for a while the odor got stronger and stronger. There was only one thing to do. Since Rana was sleeping so well, which was unusual for her, we put on our winter coats and went for a long, cold, in the middle of the night walk. When we got back, Rana was still sleeping, and the smell had only slightly diminished.

The next morning I inspected around the foundation and found where a family of skunks had burrowed under the foundation to live in the crawl space. I wondered how many were under there. Unfortunately, a stray cat thought it would be a nice place to get warm, too.

There's more to this story, which I will tell you later. But over time (several weeks) the house did air out. But my wife's Tupperware was ruined. We washed it over and over. We scrubbed it. We tried to air it out. But it had absorbed the skunk smell, and that smell would not go away. I don't remember how many years we kept that Tupperware hoping the smell would go away. But every time we checked, the smell was still there.

Well, this is enough for one day. I'll write some more on this tomorrow. And just so you know, this is a true story and nothing in in has been embellished. 

Enjoy your coffee, and have a good night.

Broadus II, Rain in Our Bedroom

I told you in "Broadus I" about our house. We had this huge master bedroom that was actually an addition to the house. There was a big picture window that gave us a wonderful view to the junky back yard that was all grown up in weeds. Of course, we had no lawn mower. So the weeds stayed. 

Although, in the summer, temperatures reached into the 100's, in the winter it did freeze. When building the addition on to the house, our bedroom, they forgot to install any type of heat. And, the wall heater down the hall did not work. So, we woke up many mornings with our bedroom freezing. It was kind of like camping out in the winter. Then during the day as the sun shined in through the window the temperature would rise above freezing. We spent most of our time in the kitchen next to the wall heater that was working. 

One morning, I woke up to ice cold water splashing on my face. It was quite a shock. Then Audrey woke up experiencing the same thing. As we looked around we could see rain coming down inside our bedroom. The roof was there, the sun was shining, but it was raining.

During the night it got so cold that frost had formed on the nail heads that fastened the sheetrock to the rafters. When it warmed in the morning, the frost melted, and it rained. I guess they forgot the insulation, also.

I approached our landlord about getting the heater fixed. He loaned us a little plug in heater for the bedroom.

I'll have to tell my grandkids that these were the "good old days."