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One of the things that I enjoyed the most while growing up and going to school in Ekalaka was engaging in snowball fights. New snow did not hold together well enough to make a snowball so you had to wait for awhile. Of course, you couldn't walk on new snow either, but had to wait until it hardened. Once when I was very young, probably 8 or so, I went over to Mr. Taylor’s house to do his chores. It was April 6th, Easter Sunday, and it had snowed up to my upper chest the night before so I had to make my way through this new s...
We always had a carnival come to town, usually in the middle of the summer, during the early days in Ekalaka. Everyone looked forward to it and enjoyed themselves thoroughly when it came. Of course there were the carnival rides, I don't believe that we had tilt-a-whirls and things like that in Ekalaka, but we had the Ferris wheel and of course the merry-go-round. My experience with the merry-go-round came very early, at probably age 3. I wanted to go on and Mother put me on, only to have to rescue me when I cried. Later, I...
We had quite a discussion on Facebook awhile back about my grandma, Lena Coon’s, blindness, so let me tell all of you the story about this and other things. My grandparents, Lena and Fred Coons, homesteaded near Belltower around 1910. My mother Mildred was born in Malvern, Iowa in January 1910 and moved to Belltower as a very young baby. Maybe Grandma had sight problems before this, but as far as I know it started in the late ‘30s or very early ‘40s when my uncle Chet Coon ran into a fence with their International picku...
All my life I have seen people rooting for their team or players and have done so myself. My earliest memories are going to the high school football and basketball games as a grade schooler in Ekalaka. That would have been in the 1940s and the early 1950s. We had some good teams and players back in those days; we still hear from Loyd Townsend, one of the premier athletes back then. Loyd played for many years on the town teams, including basketball, as well as refereed. Two others I remember are Ross Caton and Billy Jo...
Fishing was a big part of our life growing up in Ekalaka and Carter County. I have told some of my fishing stories before, but I don't think that I have ever written a story about fishing, so, here goes. Grandma and Grandpa Coons kept a good supply of fishing stuff on the porch of their wonderful home. When us kids visited, we helped ourselves to willow poles and various other fishing supplies. We usually went fishing in Box Elder Creek, though, sometimes, we went in the reservoir by their house, which we referred to as the...
I don’t remember when I first met Ernest Tooke. I don’t believe that he went to grade school in Ekalaka, but I might be wrong. So when I arrived at CCHS, as a freshman, he was a junior in the same grade as my sister, Bertha. I’m sure that I knew him before that. Of course, everyone knew the Tookes, Feek and Faye and all the others along with their families. Ernie, as we called him then, was definitely one of the boys and a very popular one at that. All of the guys liked him immensely and he was very much a ladies man as we...
Every once in a while, after I tell my daughter, Brenda, a story about Ekalaka, she tells me; “You should write a story about that!” This is what happened with this story. I was telling her about this salesman, Lee Bair. Later I realized that he was the only salesman that I could remember, so I will write about him and also some related things. Lee Bair only had one leg, but had a wooden or other prosthetic leg. He walked kind of stilted but got around very well. He lived either in Camp Crook or around there. He was a sal...
My Father, Lee Lavell, was a most unusual character. Some of you older people in Ekalaka knew him or of him, but I am going to tell you something about him that probably none of you knew. He just did it and never told anybody except his family about it. Numerous times while I was growing up, Dad brought a down and out man home with him. Usually it was Barry Doby, who lived in a tiny house down a ways toward town from us. Barry Doby, I don't know if it was spelled this way or as Bary, used to get drunk once in a while and...
Upon reading the latest Sykes-Belltower history in the Eagle, I am reminded once again about the great debt that we owe to women and how important they are in our history and indeed to our present. Two ladies stood out in this story. One was Marguerite Goeders, standing only 4 ft. 2 inches, she magnificently did all the work required on the homestead while her husband worked in their blacksmith shop. The other was Mrs. Kingsley who walked through the snow and inclement weather to deliver mail just to make a living. I suspect...
Someone close to me told me recently that my last two stories in the Eagle were hurtful to the descendants of those that I wrote about. If I have hurt anyone by my stories, the last two, or the ones before that, I sincerely apologize. I especially apologize to the brothers and sisters of Tootie Boggs. I truly thought a lot of Tootie and honestly didn’t think that I said anything bad about her or anybody else. The potentially bad things that I said about her happened in the second grade. I really like to write stories for t...
Bananas are a wonderful fruit. They are easy to peel and eat; most people like them although some more so than others, of course. My wife Joanne, usually called Jo, took a notion that she didn't like them some years back. She thought that she saw a worm in one, dropped the peel on the floor, and then threw the whole thing in the trash. I had never heard of a worm in a banana before. I told this story to a friend and he told me that when he spent time in Panama with the National Guard, he had seen worms in bananas. I thought...
There were a number of colorful characters hanging around Carter County in the early days, probably still are. When I first thought about writing about this I figured that I would have a wealth of persons to talk about but after thinking more didn't come up with many. It is probably because my memory of those days, especially people, is getting weaker. Well, I will do my best. The first person I think about is Ernie Funk; I couldn't come up with his first name but my brother Charles said it was Ernie. He moved from down...
I was saddened to read in the Eagle about the passing of Tootie Boggs. My brother Charles had already told me about her when he saw it online in the Miles City Star. Tootie was a real friend and fixture in the lives of all of the Lavell children. !thought about writing this as a letter to the editor but decided to make a story about it instead. Tootie was born in 1933, approximately a year before my oldest sister Dorothy. When we moved to Ekalaka from the country in 1944, the Boggs’ lived right down the road from us. T...
Growing up in Ekalaka and Carter County, I always had a lot of chores to do. I first milked a cow and retained the milk, at the age of 4 and that was pretty much my job from then on. We always had a milk cow and sometimes more than one. One time my Dad brought home some goats and I had to milk them. That didn't last long because they were hard to milk and none of us liked the milk. We even had a cow at our first house, in Ekalaka. we kept her in Chapman's pasture. Often, I had to pump water for her from a very hard to pump...
I had to do a lot of chores when I was a kid and teenager in Ekalaka. Despite that, my favorite thing to do was to explore the hills and forest behind and around our home. Sometimes I went with other boys from town and sometimes I even went alone. It was believed then, that at the age of ten a boy could have a .22 rifle, usually a single shot, and I had one at that age. I saved up my money until we could send away for it in the catalog, Sears, I guess. It was a Stevens as I recall. I usually took it with me. Gun safety was in...
When I read in the Eagle about our Ekalaka school lunch system getting an award from the state it reminded me of my experiences with Ekalaka school lunches. Congratulations to all of the workers and to Eric’s mother who heads it up. We didn’t always have what we called hot lunches during my time in grade school in Ekalaka. They kind of came and went according to the money available. We never had anything like that during my high school days. I really don’t remember whether we had to pay for them but I suppose that we did....
We never actually lived on a farm or ranch during my stay in Ekalaka and Carter County but I spent a lot of time on my grandparents farm. In a sense, we lived on a farm also because even on the 4 acres at our first house in Ekalaka or the 152 acres on the second, we always had a milk cow and horses plus sheep, goats, pigs and of course, chickens. In recent years, I have heard kids complain bitterly about being bored. To the best of my recollection, I was never bored on our small farms or on my grandparents larger one. All of...
We lived in numerous houses in Carter County and some out of it when I was growing up. Some of them, I do not remember so I will tell you about only the ones I do remember. We do have some writings by my mother called, The Travels and Travails of the Lavell family where she enumerated all of our houses. I am not going by that but by my memory. I was born in my grandparents’ house on Boxelder, near the Belltower store and post office. My grandmother, Lena Coons, was a midwife and helped a lot of women bear babies. She had f...
