Houses where we lived in Carter County

 


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 four herself, my mother Mildred, Harvey, Sylvia and Chet. Over the years we had a lot of fun at the grandparents’ ranch.

My first memory was at a house we called the Alfred Cline place, on the southern end of the Ekalaka Hills toward the western end of them. I thought of it as a great big place but from other people’s accounts it was just a one room cabin. It had a great big, floor-to-ceiling potbellied stove that I remember very well. I have told you something about this place before so I will not risk being boring and tell you again. That would have been in 1941.

The next place I remember was a place we called the Briggs place; it was owned by my grandparents and was just south of them on the other side of the road. It was a log cabin and probably just a one room affair. The thing I remember most about this place was when I fell in the floodtime creek and would have drowned if Mother had not waded in and rescued me. There was an old well in the yard with an open pipe on it and we kids loved to yell into the pipe and hear the echo come back.

My favorite place was the Opeechee Park place. My friend Jesse LaBree calls it the Kinsey place. It still stood the last time I was there. I had lots of adventures there like getting my temple slashed open, milking a cow for the first time and discovering that my sister Martha had three engorged ticks on her belly button. I have told you about some of this before.

This place had an old orchard on it with long neglected fruit trees. We were not there for any of this fruit to get ripe but I did eat some green fruit and got a little sick. While there, my mother taught school sometimes so we had a babysitter, Shirley Gundlach who lived next door. As a four-year-old kid I was fascinated to see her paint her toenails. To me she was the most beautiful girl in the world. I later saw her as a high school girl when I was in grade school and I didn’t change my mind.

The only other place that I remember before moving to Ekalaka was the Fauver place. It was through a swale in the hills just to the right of Camp Needmore. Just across a garden area from our house a forest ranger named Halverson and his wife lived. They were very nice to us and we encountered him many times over the years. Once my dad was cleaning a gun and shoved the rod clear through his hand. I had to go over and get Mr. Halverson to help. Another time when I was a teenager I went back to the Fauver place to help the owner worm sheep. I think his last name was Senrud.

Just before moving to Ekalaka in 1944, we lived in a place called the Russell Boggs place. I really should remember it but I don’t. My sisters, Dorothy and Bertha, had to ride a horse, double, to school in Ekalaka every day. Because of the bad winter Mother took them out of school and taught them at home. I don’t remember a thing about it. I think it was out on the Chalk Buttes road.

We moved to our first place in Ekalaka in 1944. I looked at it the last time I was in Ekalaka and couldn’t believe how small it was. We had a lot of experiences, both good and bad there.

Charles and Richard were born in 1945 and 1947 respectively and our brother Freddy died shortly after we moved there. We experienced many blizzards there. I had a lot of fun exploring Chapman’s pasture and the surrounding country. This house was by the dairy and the cemetery. And of course I went to a big chunk of my school there.

In my early teen years, Dad bought 152 acres with a house on it from Odis Harkins. Of course we called it the Odis Harkins house. We only lived there a few years but it was a wonderful part of my life. I explored the hills around there and really had a good time. It is the house that your sheriff lives in now. There were lots of rattlesnakes there.

My dad always had a big problem, in the old days they would have called it being fiddlefooted. In 1956 he sold this place and bought a wrecking yard in Miles City. So much for our sojourn in Carter County.

I did tell you earlier that not all of our time growing up was in Carter County. When I was just a baby, Mother and Dad tried to move to Washington but it didn’t work out. My sisters, Dorothy and Bertha, got to see the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. I really hated it that I didn’t get to see or at least remember it.

I really loved Ekalaka and my time there. I hope that all of you appreciate it as much as I did.

 

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