Tractors and Horses and History

 

Tractors and Horses and History

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What I really want is to talk about tractors and horses. But, I’ll start with history.

I almost got in a fight over history the other day. I came so close. I managed to stop my mouth just in time.

I’ve always liked history. Back a thousand years ago when I went to Northern, one could immerse oneself in one’s field of study, no minor, just lots and lots of history. So, I did just that.

In terms of the job market back then, it was pretty much a worthless field I plowed. In terms of learning to see the world around me, it was invaluable.

 One learns to take nothing at face value.  What you see is the surface. Black/White?  Either/Or? They don’t exist. Every person, place, thing, event can be, should be, looked at from several points of view.

What happened the other day that got me in hot water was just this. My friend, who is an astute thinker in most cases, made one of those dangerous black or white statements, concerning historical events, one sided. Immediately my mind flooded with a hundred points of both history and science with which to refute her words. I, foolishly, started with my first example. She cut me off, “I know I’m right. I read it.”

Well, shut my mouth. I know not to argue with that. Mostly, I was surprised. Astonished. I also am aware that we all have one or two narrow-minded tunnels and that I have my own.

Being able to see 82 different points of view around XYZ surely makes it hard to see my world in definitive, cut and dried statements. I wouldn’t trade my awkward multi-viewpoint ability for the apparent assurance that others seem to get with more simple points of view.

In a different field, out here on the outer edge of town, most plots of land have a tiny section for growing corn or cane or agave. Compared to a Montana wheat field, you might say, “Oh, you mean a garden plot.”

I do not spend my day hanging out the window to see what’s happening along the street. A diesel engine idling outside the window will draw me over to see what’s going on.

The latest tractor to catch my eye was not nearly as old as the one pulling the two-prong harrow in the lot across the street a few weeks ago. This one was old, minus most of the original color, had obviously never been sheltered in a shed, but still had discernable print.

I took the make and model number to my computer and found the tractor to be a 1975 Ford. Only fifty years old. This tractor had hydraulics to lift the harrow at the end of the row rather than a rope to pull it out of the ground. As soon as the field to the north of our wall was suitably tilled, the tractor took off, returned with a corn planter. At the speed things grow here, I figure next month I’ll see corn tassels pop over the wall.

I don’t know if anyone here in Oconahua still plows with horses. Probably so. I have only the limited view of part of my street. But many men ride horses to work. And, to the bar. And, for romancing.

The dappled gray, the brown mare and the burro across and down one lot have cleared that plot of every blade of green. I noticed a young man, about ten years old, at a guess, who moves the horses to a different place when there is nothing left to eat. With the rains, grass grows quickly. Three or four days later, the horses are back, mowing every leaf and blade.

Up the street two plots, there is a beauty of a bay mare, I’m fairly sure it is a mare. She’s awfully round so I expect to see a babe by her side soon.

I love that I get to see glimpses of the past. I cannot romanticize the past. When that Ford tractor was new, most of the men here worked up at the mines. When that young boy who moves the horses from plot to plot comes of age, he will probably go to University in Guadalajara. Everything changes. With change comes what we label good or label bad as well as 82 points between.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

July 10, 2025

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Pye, Pye, Miss American Pye

Pye, Pye, Miss American Pye

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“Our church has lost so many of our bakers this year that we may have to forgo serving pies at the Seed Show luncheon,” Bev told me recently. “We might have to substitute cheesecake or something.”

“No! No! You can’t give up pies.” I lined up my arguments. “It wouldn’t be the same. Pie at the Montana Seed Show is a tradition. Pie is expected. Pie is an institution. Besides, what about Arnold? He hangs out at the Seed Show just for pie. That’s what I’ve heard. Sometimes he has six pieces a day. That’s what I’ve heard.” I went into a state of minor panic. I really didn’t care about Arnold. I cared about me!

The Lutheran Ladies have served homemade pie at the Seed Show forever. Whatever else they serve is incidental; people show up for the pie. Why else would hundreds of people stand in a line which winds twice around the hall and through the cafeteria, if not for homemade pie. Once the Civic Association finishes serving breakfast, the Lutheran Ladies set out mid-morning pie and coffee. And they serve mid-afternoon pie and coffee until the pie is gone.

As you stand in the lunch line, listen to the conversations around you. The merits of pies are debated, discussed, decided, studied and re-decided. “I want blackberry this time.” “Not me. My favorite is chocolate meringue. I hope they’re not out.” “Mmmm. I like apple.” Finally the line moves forward into the serving area and there you are, standing in front of at least fifty delectable slices of pie. The choice is overwhelming. Just as you decide on peach, the man in front of you snatches up the last slice of peach pie. “Dang napple-snapples.” Now what. Oooh, the coconut cream looks rich and, well, creamy. You point, “That one.”

I can’t imagine being at the Seed Show without a slice of pie. In my consideration, cheesecake is not a viable alternative. Now I make a mean homemade cheesecake, fresh and high and light and rich. It is expensive to make, takes forever and dirties every dish in the cupboard. And I’ve had cheesecake at a few doings, fundraisers for one event and another. What Bev was talking about as an alternative to homemade pie was the insipid cheesecake made from the easy-squeezy store-bought mix. I won’t say they are inedible but they don’t make me want to go back for more, especially when they are topped with plops of glommy pie filling straight from the can.

Pie is considered as American as the Fourth of July. But, actually pie is universal. Historical evidence points to numerous versions of “pye”, mostly filled with meat, as in four and twenty blackbirds. But during the early lean and hungry years in the colonies our pioneer mothers turned to baking pyes with the simple foods at hand. They lopped the tops off pumpkins, scooped out the seeds and stringy stuff, filled the pumpkin bowls with milk and set them on the open hearth to bake. In later years they added spices and put them in a grain-based “coffin”. The first pye pans these pioneer women devised were round “to cut corners”. Flour was expensive and less flour was needed to make a round crust. These pans were flat and shallow so the “pyes would go a long way”.

“There’s got to be a solution,” I told Bev. “I’ll become a volunteer Lutheran for a day and help bake pies. I bet you can find several others in the community willing to pitch in and help you through this desperate situation. How many pies do you want me to make, two or twenty?”

Yesterday I donned my Lutheran apron, the one I wear when I roll out lefse, and made two apple pies. I like a fat, fruity pie with a thin flaky crust, even though they always bubble over in the oven. After I baked the pies and let them cool, I wrapped them tightly so they wouldn’t lose moisture and popped them into the freezer where they will be safe until the Seed Show. Then I had to clean the oven.

Later this week I’ll bake a couple rhubarb pies and next week I’ll make Juneberry. As a lapsed Catholic helping out the Lutherans, does this doubly fulfill my obligation for Lent? After all, I’m baking them, not eating them. At least, I’ll abstain from pie until the Seed Show when I plan to stand in the slow-moving line along with everyone else, thinking about which pie most makes my mouth water. I sure hope somebody bakes peach.

Easy as pie. Crisis averted. Well, yes, but I will have to clean the oven again.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking at my back door

February 21, 2013
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Dear Santa, I’ve got a hankering. . .

Dear Santa, I’ve got a hankering. . .

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I generally accept what is rather than focus on what isn’t. But every now and then I get a hankering to have a man around the house. The way I figure it, it’s like a disease, neither all pervasive nor life threatening. It’s more like a nebulous yearning for someone with whom to share experiences, someone to whom I could hand a “honey-do” list. My wanting comes and goes, doesn’t stick around long; often months pass between attacks.

Maybe the approaching Holiday season is a factor; another could be that I continue to be disabled after eight weeks with my wrist in a brace. Might even be that this onslaught of desire was triggered when bulbs in three overhead light fixtures burned out within days of one another. With my broken paw, I can’t drag in the ladder and unscrew the globes to change the bulbs, a simple task that ordinarily I would have finished before you could say “Snap!”

Over the years I have found that if I talk about a problem, I can laugh about it and get on with life. So when my daughter phoned, I said, “I’m having an I-want-a-man attack.”

She said, “I have the cure, Mom. Let’s not even talk about the state of the commode. But remember the nasty build up of whisker stubs around the faucets? The top left off the toothpaste tube? Smelly socks slung under the bed? Or dirty shirts tossed on the floor, nowhere near the hamper? Besides, just think about it, Mom. In pioneer days, you would have been in the grave long before now. Your man would have already used up a younger woman, looked around and said, ‘next.’” My daughter is real cheerful that way.

Sure, my house stays neater than if I weren’t the only person rattling around in it. Sure, the only muddy boot tracks are my own. But at times I would trade.

Work is my best friend. I looked around for a one-handed chore to distract me. I needed to whip my fresh pumpkin pulp into a puree and had just the day before unpacked my new food processor. I’ve never had one so I sat down to read the instructions and watched the video that came with it. I scrubbed all the parts and put my new machine together, dumped in the chunks of pumpkin, plugged it in and flipped the switch. Nothing happened. I emptied the pumpkin, washed the bowl again, checked everything out and turned it on empty. No go. Just in case I missed some secret step, I watched the video twice more. I memorized the manual. Back to the kitchen for another attempt. Nada. I studied my machine carefully. It is brand new. It can’t be defective. I realized that if I have to send it back, I’d already recycled the shipping boxes. They were the perfect size in which to send Christmas gifts to grandchildren.

At a certain point, when it seems like everything I touch falls apart, I’ve learned to stop for the day. It is hopeless to continue efforts in futility. I know to do something different, like grab a book or take a walk. So I set aside the processor project for morning, slapped together a sandwich, heated a mug of hot chocolate and snuggled in to watch “The Full Monty”.

Early next morning I called the manufacturer. A nice young man named Dan said he’d help me. First he had me get a pen and push a black dot on the back of the base, sort of a reset button, I suppose. Then he asked me if I had a credit card.

“I used the credit card to buy this machine that won’t work, you fool,” I told him.

To his credit, Dan laughed. “Please, just get a credit card. Now put the bowl in place on the base. In the shaft on the back of the bowl, there is a slot. Place the credit card in the slot and while pressing inward, turn on your processor.”

“Hot dog! Can you hear it working?” I said. “Thank you, thank you, a million times, thank you.”

I’m in love. No, silly, not with Dan. With my food processor. With my new little kitchen wonder I pureed my pumpkin pulp, mashed my persimmons, chopped pecans, sliced carrots, shredded cheese and made salsa.

It can’t change a light bulb but it won’t muddy my floors. Sure a man is a handy thing to have around if you train him right. But as a consolation prize, a food processor is nice.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

December 20, 2012
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That Which We Carry With Us

That Which We Carry With Us

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This is a poem. A poem that was pushing at me to be written. I sat down to write it. This is what came out. A prose poem.

I ask myself, “Why did I move back to Montana?” I fish the waters for an answer. Sometimes I haul in a trout or a salmon. Often my line hooks seaweed or a sucker. I would like a rational answer. Even to my mind, decisions based on the smell of bruised sage, the open bowl of forever sky, the gathering of elk at Slippery Ann or the first crocus at Snake Butte do not seem rational.

Good sense would have anchored me in Washington, in the community where I carved a niche of belonging, where I came into my maturity, raised my kids, developed my talents, earned respect. But something elusive compelled me to come full circle, to return to my earlier place, my native ground.

Even clockmakers know that time does not run in a straight line. Time is a wheel, a circle, rolling ‘round and ‘round. We try to bury the past. The past still happens. It never leaves us. The wise elders know. Sit and listen to any old-timer tell his stories. Even my four-year old granddaughter knows this. Somewhere in the middle, we lose it.

It is the stories. It is those who know our stories. The people who know our goodness and who know our failings. The people who knew my Dad, my sister, my husband and his family. The people who knew me then. When those people are gone, our stories live on. Those stories live on in the stones, in the dirt, in the rush and lap of the river. That is what is important, the stories. In them we are known.

We often feel alone. We pretend nobody knows us. We don a mask to get us through each day. We try to hide our warts. We fear if people see the warts, we will not be loved. We reveal more story by what we hide than by the words we choose. But someone listens. Someone hears. Someone loves us.

When I was growing up, when I felt sad or in distress, I ran into the woods along the Milk River and climbed into the crotch of a huge cottonwood and nestled hidden in the branches. Nobody could see me. Nobody knew I was there. I cried or daydreamed or planned and they are all the same thing. I held my sadness close to me. I didn’t want it to show.

Years later, before my Dad sold the farm, I came home for a holiday visit. Dad took me aside and quietly told me, “Your tree came down in a storm. You might want to walk out to say good-by before I haul it away.” I cried and cried, not for the tree, but that my Dad knew. My Dad had kept my secret.

I wrote my first Montana poems in Chicago. I wrote my best Montana poems in Poulsbo, Washington. I pulled my poetry from a bag slung over my shoulders, a bag filled with each sense memory, each life experience. Often I pretended my bag was empty. I did not want to look at what I carried, at what weighed me down, slowed my step. I closed my eyes to the root of my sadness.

The mind pretends but the heart knows. For me, here beneath the slant of autumn sun, there is no room for pretense. My stories surround me. I listen. I learn. In each story is lodged a piece of me. I am not alone. Each story also holds a piece of you. Each story heard lightens my burden. The circle turns.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

September 20, 2012

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And Another One Bites the Dust

And Another One Bites the Dust

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This week Victor Miller died. ‘Most everybody in the state knew Vic. He was a former mayor of Harlem, a Blaine County Commissioner at two different times, talented drummer who nearly achieved national fame, a tireless storyteller, and a man with a heart as big as he was. And Victor was a big man. Victor was my friend.

It was a hard week for me. Every morning I walked down to City Shop for my usual coffee with the boys before work. I wanted to hear the report on our friend in the hospital. Victor was one of our coffee regulars. He called us his “kitchen cabinet”.  He often said we kept him sane. We agreed. His empty chair haunted us. His oversized coffee cup hung on a nail on the wall, untouched.

When I got back home, I flitted from task to task, from kitchen to garden to shop and back around in circles again, finishing nothing. Heaviness like a black cloud had settled around my shoulders. My friend was dying.

I’m not family. Usually when I visited with Vic, it was with the boys at coffee. But I relied on him for advice, for the history of some of the issues I had to deal with, to better understand my role in Harlem City government and for words of encouragement.  Unlike many of our mutual friends, I didn’t grow up with Vic. I vaguely remember that fat little boy standing on the street corner wearing overalls when I was a “sophisticated” high school girl.

I first got to know Victor when a friend of mine married him. Vic was a serious musician at that time, making a name for himself with his drums. When I came to Harlem to visit my Dad I always walked across the tracks to visit Vic and Cynthia. We’d hang out and play pinochle until the wee hours when I’d walk back home through the snow. They came to visit me in Washington. A photo I treasure is of his family and my family, our arms around one another, sitting crowded on the steps of our house in Poulsbo, the shadow of the photographer stretched across the lawn. When Vic and Cynthia’s marriage reached its end, Victor still kept in touch with me, if only through his famous Christmas Letters. He mailed CDs of his music to me. And then when I moved back to Harlem, there was Vic, holding out his hand in friendship.

The Victor all of us knew was a performer.  As his friend Richard said, when Victor entered a room everyone knew he was there. He knew how to hold the crowd, to entertain. At home he treasured his solitude but in his public life, Victor was always on stage, whether behind his set of drums, chairing a meeting, or sitting around a conference table. Victor could tell stories that started with point A and wandered the map to point Z, then wrap up the story where he started. Along the way, he dropped nuggets of wisdom and humor.

Maddening at times? Oh yes! Could he ever work himself into a snit! Stingy? Uh, let’s say careful with money; both the taxpayers money and his own. A story Victor would tell on himself is that when he traveled he carried empty toilet paper rolls in his luggage. In the hotel bathroom, he left the empty roll and packed away the full one. When he told the story, I didn’t believe him.  His best friends assure me the story is true.

Vic loved meetings, maybe because each meeting gave him a stage, but more, I think, because each meeting presented an opportunity to improve the community, albeit in tiny frustrating steps. A couple times I hitched a ride with Vic to meetings across the border in Canada and on those trips, one-on-one, captive in a car, I got to know a different Victor. This Vic was more sober, serious, personal. He opened a window into his soul and gave me a peek at the essential man. I cherished those times. I thank you for that, Vic.

Above all else, Victor was a deeply spiritual man. He lived every moment of his life hard, full speed ahead. He agonized over issues. He lost sleep when his friends were in trouble. He tried to hide his vulnerable heart behind a shield of garrulous loquacity. He laughed. He cried. He loved. He hurt. In other words, he was human.

Good-by, Vic, I’ll miss you.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

August 23, 2012

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Celebrating Family, Aunt Mary and Southern Indiana

Celebrating Family, Aunt Mary and Southern Indiana

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My bag is packed. Soon I will be on an airplane with my cousin Shirley from Harlem and my cousin Maxine, who lives in Helena. Our destination is Louisville, Kentucky. We’ll pick up a rental car, cross the Ohio River and drive the winding River Road to Elizabeth, Indiana and out into the country toward Laconia and our Aunt Mary. We go to join with Indiana family to celebrate Aunt Mary’s ninety-eighth birthday.

When I return to Indiana, I return to my first home, to a reunion with Indiana kinfolk, and to refresh my love for southern Indiana.  Southern Indiana is different from the flat land of the industrial north and the agrarian center of the state. Geography here centers along the rugged hills above the Ohio River, the red clay countryside, dotted with tobacco fields, small subsistence farms and tiny towns. The land makes the people and these people are warm hearted and friendly.

Traveling with my Montana cousins is a bonus. Uncle Jim was the first of our family to discover Montana. My Dad, Paul, followed a few years later. My northern cousins and I did not grow up together. By the time my family moved to Harlem, they were off to college. I was still in junior high. Our travels to reunions with Indiana family have given us a chance to know one another. On the road we exchange our own family stories, compare notes and speculate about our fathers’ growing-up years.

Our Aunt Mary, a gentle lady, has long been the family matriarch. When she was a child, her farm family always had food but no money. She wore clothes to school made from my Grandmother’s dresses and cut-down coats. But she and every one of her siblings finished high school. Graduation from high school during the Great Depression was a major accomplishment. After graduation she married my Uncle Paul. They bought a near-by farm in the hills near the Ohio River and raised ten children.  Aunt Mary is the repository of our family history. She holds a wealth of community stories, and is murder at the card table. This week she marks her ninety-eighth birthday.

On Saturday, family and friends will gather at the grade school cafeteria. All Aunt Mary’s children, grand-children, great-grandchildren and great-great- grandchildren will be there, along with many nieces and nephews and their families. We’ll fill up on mountains of fried chicken, steaming corn on the cob and Aunt Dixie’s famous coconut cake. We will swill gallons of iced tea, partake of hugs and kisses all around, pose for hundreds of photos and afterwards collapse back at Aunt Mary’s brick house on the hill.

There we will do what we all do best—talk, eat and play cards. We’ll ask questions and soak up the clues to family mysteries.  Aunt Mary thinks it is her job to feed us more than we can eat. We will revolve around the card table where sweet Aunt Mary, showing no mercy, regularly whomps our butts, no matter what the game. Even when we deal from a stack of five decks, Aunt Mary knows where every card lies, who played what and which card has not yet been played.  During our last visit we Montana cousins struggled to learn the rudiments of Euchre. This year we intend to master the game.

We’ll talk family. And we’ll talk politics. Or perhaps I should say we’ll listen politics. Aunt Mary knows the history of every president, who was in Congress, what bills were passed, the goofs and the goods on all. This woman with a high school education regularly shames us with her knowledge and her memory.      

We’ll spend time with our Indiana cousins, cementing those bonds more tightly. This year my Indiana cousin Shirley and I have arranged to spend special time renewing our own ties. Although only two years my senior, when I was a rather lost little girl, Indiana Shirley took me in hand and taught me family values of responsibility and service; basic tenets of life.  Through distance and time we drifted apart, so I am excited to have this chance to reconnect with her.

We will pile into cars to visit King’s Cemetery where many of the Ashton family pioneers are buried.  It sits above Tobacco Landing, a post established by our merchant ancestor. We’ll go on to the Dogwood Cemetery where my Grandmother’s family rests. Far from morbid, these tours of the countryside graveyards are joyful. They trigger memories and elicit more stories.

Indiana is the first country I loved. It holds my first family. It nurtured me. I’m going home for a visit. Happy Birthday, Aunt Mary.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

June 14, 2012

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Five Dollars

It was a five dollar day with five dollars being good value.
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Five Dollars


We drove south out of Dodson, up onto the plateau and out toward the mountains. We passed the turn off at the long dirt road to the place where I used to live, a life-time ago. I recognized the same barbed-wire gate. Sun dappled the hills. A slight breeze teased the grasses. A perfect day.

Signs marked “Auction” pointed us in the right direction. Oak pallets, each heaped with an assortment of goods, snaked across the field. Beyond the pallets, lined out like an old-soldiers honor guard at a funeral, slumped dozens of derelict cars and pick-ups, trucks, tractors and machinery. Stacks of lumber, tools, wire, boxes and bins of parts and nails and bolts flanked scattered outbuildings.

I signed in and received the number 100. A good omen. I wandered over to the row of pallets where the auctioneer hawked trash and treasures. I didn’t spot anything I wanted, but, feeling mischievous, I started a bid at two and a half. I was certain somebody else would pick it up from there. Three. Then four. The bid went to five. Why not? Okay. Seven-fifty? Going once. Twice. Sold for five dollars. Gulp! I had just bought a pallet. I had not intended to buy it. I had no idea what was on the pallet other than a large brown boxy thing and an old pressure cooker minus the petcock and handles.

While the auctioneer proceeded along the row, I stopped to paw through my acquisitions. Within moments, I sold a box of dishes and a box of assorted car parts. That paid for my pallet. Soon I had sold or gifted everything but the cooker and a box of canning jars.

An hour passed before I bought another pallet; again, for five dollars. It was heaped with odd dresser drawers, minus the dressers. Some old wood. A mix of cabinet doors. A sturdy box with dividers for storing all manner of things. It could have lived in a tool shed, a kitchen or an office. But what did I really buy? The dresser drawers will be raw material for art projects. Wait till you see what I can do with a dresser drawer.

I set a limit to my bids based on what I could spot in the jumble on the pallet. And no matter how much I desired a particular treasure, I recognized when someone else wanted it more.

An auction is a bitter-sweet place to spend the day. It is a book of somebody’s life, easily deciphered but just as easily misunderstood. This ranch was probably homesteaded, in the last wave of homesteaders, if I read the pages right.

I looked out over the hills. Something within me yearns for this life, isolated as it is, out here on the flat with the snow-covered Little Rockies directly south and the Bear Paws a notch over to the west. I lived out here during the sixties, snowed in every winter. We farmed with horses and an obsolete tractor. We had no running water though we had a good deep well. We had no bathroom facilities. We had no money but we were rich in living.

My friends dragged me away to take a break from my heavy spending. We sauntered over to the cook wagon. Replenished with a generous bowl of hearty beef stew, we marched back into the fray.

We watched buyers haggle over the old car bodies. Much as I might covet an antique auto to restore, if I hauled a junker home I could do no more than watch it continue to rust. The auctioneer, like a mother hen with chicks, herded his brood around some large sheds. We ended up by the ruins where a fire had burned down the main house.

Oh. That answered a lot of questions. A woman I had noticed before, hanging on the fringes of the auction, told me that her uncle had died in the house fire. He was ninety-three. She grew up on this farm. The pain of her loss was reflected in her eyes.

Around the edges of the debris surrounding the burn stood several old stools. Some had three legs. Some had four. Some had legs each a different length. Some legs faced different directions on the same stool. This was not the work of a craftsman. But I recognize treasure when I see it. I piled up six of the stools and bid on them. I’ll paint them each a different color and plant them in my back yard. I’ll surround them with pots of petunias. Five dollars well spent.

Sondra Ashton
Havre Daily News: Home Again
April 22, 2010
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