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National Museum of Forest Service History

P.O. Box 2772 Missoula, Montana

59806-2772 406-541-6374

nationalforest@montana.com

A Non profit Corporation www.nmfs-history.net

John Gibson, Custer National Forest, sent the note below with the Rowe manuscript to Dick Guth in the Regional Office in Missoula, late 1970s (based on the routing slip form date). Mr. Rowe apparently wrote his story in 1972 based on his comment in the last paragraph of his story: ”Even today, 53 years, my mind turns back to the bald peaks, the Clearwater…”

The author, Mr. Rowe is 83 years old and lives with his wife in Billings, Montana. He was born in Fort Benton.

His first job, at 15 years of age, was at the Rainbow Hotel in Great Falls. After his adventure with the Forest Service in 1919, he returned to Great Falls and again cooked for the Rainbow. He later cooked at the Gerald Cafe in the same town.

Mr. Rowe then journeyed to Judith Gap and worked for a short time at the railroad depot.

He then moved on to the mining town of Butte, where he worked at the Butte Grill. It was there he met his wife. They later bought the Main Grill, on Main Street between Park and Broadway next to the Chequamegon Cafe. The couple operated the Grill for 11 years.

When they left Butte, they moved to Kalispell and bought the "New Sytle Sandwich Shop"--a drive-in on First Avenue West. They started with only $2.50 for supplies, buying very-.sparingly. Twenty years later they sold the drive-in and moved to Columbia Falls, where Mr. Rowe managed the kitchens and worked as a steward at the Soldiers' Home.

The Rowe’s have lived in Billings for the last 10 years, spending summers here and winters in either Tucson, Arizona, or in California with their daughter.

Forest Service Archaeologists Cort Sims, Idaho Panhandle National Forest and Sandra French, Lewis & Clark National Forest provided invaluable assistance in researching this article and locating the personal history of James H. Rowe. Sandra French’s research identified the authors first name.

Blue text indicates a note added by Cort Sims

NMFSH Catalog Nu. 2004.48.568

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COOKING ON THE FOREST FIRES IN 1919

By James H. Rowe, 1972

It was July Fourth, and I had arrived in Livingston, Montana, on a boxcar from Billings (the method of hitchhiking that was used before good roads and automobiles were abundant). There were lots of jobs available in Livingston, as well as in Yellowstone Park, but the wages were only $15 to $18 a week for seven days, and twelve hours a day, so I had decided to move along to Bozeman. But there was one thing I had to do in Livingston before I left, and that was listen to the heavyweight championship fight between Jess Willard, title holder, and challenger Jack Dempsey. My hero was little Jack Dempsey, 180 pounds--183 pounds, to be exact. The giant Jess Willard weighed 262 pounds.

In those days, the announcing was done from a window over the Western Union Telegraph Office (there were no amplifiers then), and the broadcast was by a loud-voiced man with a megaphone. The street was blocked with people eagerly waiting for the first round to start.

The announcer had been reading messages about the weather (it was an outdoor fight in Toledo, Ohio), the celebrities there, etc. The results were generally broadcast two or three rounds after they actually occurred, so everybody was impatient to hear the start of the fight.

A big man standing next to me was telling others around him how Willard would massacre Dempsey. I listened to him for awhile, then pulled my lone dollar out and told him that was all I had. He covered it, handed it to a man beside us, and, as he did, the announcer bellowed, "Flash Dempsey wins by a knockout!" I headed for the boxcars with two bucks in my pocket.

On the boxcar with me on our trip to Bozeman were five other knights of the road, bums, or just discharged vets coming home from the war--take your choice.

As we neared Bozeman, we noticed smoke from a forest fire to the north, so we immediately headed for the Forestry Office. It was a small fire, and they hired 14 of us to fight the blaze. It was a slow, crawling fire that had burned only an acre or two, so in a short time it had been extinguished, and the others left. I was kept on to see that the fire did not break out again, and it was really abed of roses.

I stayed at a nearby ranch house, with two wonderful meals a day and a huge lunch to eat at noon while I was watching the fire. The fire was about a mile and a half from the ranch. The rest of the day I spent loafing and sleeping, occasionally visited by a sheepherder, who had his chuckwagon nearby. I was surprised at his knowledge, as most of the herders in those days were foreign-born illiterates, but this man was a mental giant. In our discussions, he covered almost every topic--from ancient to modern history, botany, archaeology, biology, various governments, and many other subjects too numerous to mention. The rancher told me he was a professor in an eastern university and, because of some emotional involvement with a female student, he had left the university, come west, become a sheepherder, and had been working for the same outfit for four years. ("Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its" fragrance on the desert air. ")

After a week, the Ranger came and took me back to town, paid me $0.35 an hour for ten hours a day, and bought me a ticket for Helena to report as a cook to the Forest Office, to be sent out to a small fire north of the city. The crew consisted of 14- fire fighters and the flunky and I to feed them. The flunky and I were installed in a cabin at the head of a deep ravine that had been cut out by hydraulic mining for gold many years before. It was miles long, and the canyon now

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had trees, bushes, and grasses growing as it gradually covered the inroads of man in his search for gold.

We fed the men in the morning, gave them a sack lunch, and when they came back at night had a hot dinner ready for them. We had plenty of canned goods, potatoes, onions, carrots, good coffee, and ham and bacon in the meat line. After the first day or two, the flunky and I became aware that we had a soft job with plenty of leisure after we got rid of the fire fighters in the morning. Incidentally, the flunky and I never saw the fire, not even smoke. So, looking over the shack, we found a large old crock that someone had left there, cleaned it up, then filled it with prunes, raisins, canned fruits, yeast, and water, and started a batch of wine. We put it out in a sunny spot and left it.

My flunky, I had found out, was the ne'er-do-well son of a rich Helena family. He was subject to epileptic fits and gave me instructions how to take care of him if he should have an attack that could come anytime. Several school day pals of mine in Great Falls worked for messenger companies whose main business was delivering dope to addicts, and it was very profitable until most of them acquired the habit themselves. From observing them, it was easy for me to see that he was a junky and had taken the job to try and kick the habit. There was no help in those days, so he had a rough row to hoe.

Down below us in the hydraulic cut, we found a prospector's pan and a rocker someone had abandoned, so now we spent our time, especially me, mining the 'placer gold, and each day the perfume bottle I had got a little more black sand and gold added to it.

We had a good stove in the shack, and supplies were plentiful, so, by making lots of sweet pastries and fruit sauces, it was not very hard to please the men, even if we had only bacon and ham in the meat line.

Finally, the fire was out, and we got our orders to give the men break- fast, and then pack our equipment for a truck to pick it up. After feeding the men, we got cheesecloth and strained our wine. It had set outside for two weeks in a sunny spot and was full of dead wasps, ants, bees, and just plain dirt. We were packing and drinking this awful stuff, and I was looking at my little perfume bottle of gold, estimating that I had about twenty dollars, when, without warning, my flunky made some terrible guttural sounds and fell over backward, cutting a deep gash in his head on the stove. He was foaming at the mouth, so I tore his shirt collar open, as his neck was badly swollen, shoved a stick between his teeth, and got a hold of his tongue. In a few moments, he had come out of the fit and remembered nothing about it. I patched him up, and we finished packing. In the uproar, my precious gold had disappeared, and my first and last mining for gold was a complete loss.

We returned to Helena. I was paid five dollars a day wages and a ticket to Missoula to report to the Forestry Service there. My cousin by marriage, Glen Smith, was one of the head men in Missoula in the Forestry Service at that time. Some of the men told me that I should look him up and possibly get a real soft job, but I didn't like to do this sort of thing, so I never met Glen until years later when I was in business for myself. Glen was an enormous man, very tall, and big with it. In 1924, I visited my brother-in-law, Jimmy Traynor, at Mystic Lake Hydroelectric Plant then under construction. Jimmy was the Superintendent, and he showed me where Glen had made a tremendous climb with two milk cans of fingerling trout and planted them in Mystic Lake, elevation 11,000 feet. Truly, the Forestry Service had real men in those days--it was, I think, in 1912.

I was put on the payroll immediately after reporting to the Forestry Office at $3.50 a day while waiting to be sent out on a fire. I could get a plain but good meal at a place called "Dinty Moore's," just off of Higgins Avenue down toward the Northern Pacific tracks, for from 20~ to

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30 cents. Everything was real cheap. I did some gambling at a place called "the Oxford," also played some pool there, and was enjoying myself thoroughly, but it soon ended, and the Head Ranger gave me a ticket to Avery, Idaho, to report to the Forestry Service in Avery.

In Avery, they gave us a pup tent and some blankets, and 16 of us crossed the river (heading south ) into the St. Joe National Forest. There were no roads, just trails in 1919, and we were sternly warned not to leave the trail, as, about two weeks before, a young fire fighter had left the trail to pick some berries that looked ripe; coming back, eating the berries, he inadvertently crossed the path. It was brushy under the trees and very easy to get lost. They found him five days later, hopelessly insane.

Towards evening, we arrived at the Round Top or Round Tree (I'm not sure which name is right) Roundtop Ranger Station Ranger Station. It was about a twenty-mile hike; -and we were tired and hungry.

I was introduced to the Supervisor of the St. Joe National Forest, a Mr. Sutherland, born in Scotland, with a heavy Scotch burr, which was hard for me to understand. This was not Roscoe Haines who was supervisor from 1916 to 1919. Haines was born in the United States and did not have an accent. I grew to know him real well during the summer months ahead, and I soon saw the wonderful bigness, understanding, and resourcefulness of this natural leader of men. He had been the Supervisor, or one of the head Rangers, in 1910 in the terrible fires of that summer that burned out practically the whole North Fork of the Flathead River, most of the timber between Kalispell and Whitefish, also part of Glacier Park. I loved to hear his stories of the dangers, feats of heroism, and hardships of that terrible summer. (Roscoe Haines was assistant supervisor during the 1910 fires on the Coeur d’Alene National Forest which at the time included the St. Joe National Forest). In Great Falls, where I' lived at that time, the sun was an angry red ball all, day, and it got dark about 4:30 in the evening. Looking towards the Rockies, they were completely obscured by the pall of smoke that hung over them. You would

Roundtop Ranger Station, St. Joe National Forest

Circa 1950s Idaho Panhandle NF Photograph

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feel something touch you, and it would be ashes from the fires 80 miles away at the nearest point.

Mr. Sutherland introduced me to his cook, Terry (I cannot recall his last name), and promptly informed me that Terry was the best sourdough cook in the entire area. I replied that I had made sourdough buckwheats but in baking pastries I preferred baking powder. Terry gave Mr. Sutherland a knowing look, and I realized immediately that I was not going to get any advice from Terry about the art of cooking on the forest fires. He wasn't even friendly with me.

We were given a good supper (Terry was a good cook), slept in our pup tents, then a good breakfast, and were on our way again to the Monumental Buttes Ranger Station (this is Jug Camp Ranger Station about 7 miles south of Roundtop), some distance from the main Ranger Station.

It was decided that were to remain there, waiting for a fire to break out. I was given a flunky, with 14 men to cook for. Plenty of provisions and a good camp stove--it would be a nice job. The main reason for this was that we were just a short distance from the Fish Creek Basin, which had the finest stand of valuable timber in the whole St. Joe National Forest. In case afire broke out there, they would have a crew handy to try and head it off.

Roundtop is located 10 miles south of Avery. The site of the Ranger Station was established as an administrative site in 1912. It was used as a Ranger Station and then a Work Center, before being abandoned and the improvements removed in the 1980s. A trail and phone line ran from Avery almost directly south to Roundtop.

A packer kept us plentifully supplied with food, so I settled down to the grim task of showing Terry up. From hunting trips before the war into the Rockies west of Great Falls, I had learned that active men in the outdoors craved sweets, the more, the better. I made doughnuts, assorted cakes, fruit pies, and even got lemons and coconut (grated) and made lemon, coconut, and chocolate cream pies. The men, with nothing to do, picked huckleberries, caught trout, and

Jug Camp Cabin 1924

Idaho Panhandle NF Photograph

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even shot a small deer. The Forest Service had good knives, so it was not a hard job to butcher the animal.

Somewhere along the line (probably cooking in the Navy), I had learned that certain canned milks, when put on the hot stove and heated until they puffed up, then thrown in the creek to cool, could be whipped like cream. So, I added fresh huckleberry shortcake and pie with whipped cream on them to the menu. About four days later, Mr. Sutherland rode

in at suppertime and stayed to eat. He displayed no astonishment at the variety of pastries but, better yet, exhibited a tremendous appetite for them. He was back again the next night and every night until, the fourth day, he moved over from the Round Top. I had defeated the sour- dough king, but from other Rangers I surmised that I had made an enemy of Terry.

One night right after supper, my flunky and I decided to go up to the lookout at the summit of Monumental Buttes (A cabin was built on South Butte in 1919), an elevation of 8,200 feet above sea level (6898’). The elevation at the Ranger Station was around 5,000 ft (6200’). It was about 2 1/2 miles, maybe three (about 1 ¼ miles from Jug Camp to South Butte), to the summit. My flunky, a college kid, and myself were in fine shape and actually dogtrotted a good part of the distance to the top. We got there as darkness set in, and, to the east, looking towards Montana, a circle of fire could be seen in a perimeter from north to south.

The lookout man told us that the vast circle of fire stretched more than 900 miles from north to south, was burning practically uncontrolled, and the Rangers had to keep close watch on the movements of the fires, as a crown fire could destroy a crew of fire workers in just a short time if they got caught by a fast-moving one.

After two weeks of an ideal existence, the bad news came. A big fire had broken out on Foehl Creek (this could have been Foal Creek) (Foehl Creek is the correct, Jug Camp is at the head of the Foehl Creek drainage), and a large crew was being rushed in to fight it. I was to have three more cooks and four flunkies working for me, and I was to be in charge of feeding the crew, order from the packers, and, most of all, try and please the crew of fire fighters. With nothing but ham and bacon in the meat line, it was really going to be an almost impossible task.

Bright and early the next morning, we started out walking with our pup tents and blankets, with the packer and his string of mules loaded with food and the cooking utensils--a Ranger, and Mr. Sutherland to teach us how to put up our first camp. We were happy as we walked through the scenery of this beautifully forested St. Joseph National Forest.

We had been ascending steadily for a long time and had now reached the top of the divide almost to the timberline. Below us was a fairly large patch of smoke, but there was no wind. As we were looking at it, flames began to come up and spread, and almost before we knew it the flames were moving at an almost unbelievable speed down the valley. The sound was like 50,000 steam engines letting off steam at once, or the sounds of a volcano in eruption. Mr. Sutherland came over to me. He told to watch it closely, as very few people in the world had seen a perfect crown fire, and this was one. In just a very few minutes, it had run its course about six miles down the valley. It had created such a draft that huge pieces of wood were thrown at least 200 yards in front of the fire, and flames would break out in front of the main running fire. Every living creature caught on the ground and many driven into it by the smoke and heat were completely destroyed. Rodents and other burrowing animals might have escaped, but it was hardly probable, as we could feel the intense heat high on the mountainside, at least a mile and a half above it.

As we headed down the trail toward the place we would set up our first large camp, I lost my nerve completely. With about two and a half years of hotel-cooking at the Rainbow Hotel in Great Falls, cooking in the Navy, and my two soft jobs with small crews in the Forest Service,

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from places that I had had plenty of equipment to work with and a great variety of foodstuff, now I would have to cook over open fires, with only ham and bacon in the meat line and as many staple foods as the overworked packers could get in to us--absolutely no fresh meats, as the distance was too far from Avery, and there was no way to refrigerate it.

But, regardless of losing my nerve, I realized that my crew and I had a job to do, mainly, feeding a large crew of hungry men. We were to be supplied with bread and old-fashioned toasters, so we would have toast for breakfast. It either had to be bacon or ham, fried for the morning meal; mush, either oatmeal or cornmeal, sugar added, and a solution of condensed milk and water mixed together. It was palatable, and the men were always hungry. For fruits, we had dried prunes, apricots, peaches, and apples. To round out breakfast, we had fried potatoes, which kept a couple of flunkies busy peeling and slicing them--they got faster every day. Sometimes we had a treat--eggs scrambled with a lot of condensed cream to make them go further. This seldom happened, but when the men got some eggs they really appreciated every bite. Our coffee we cooked in huge coffee pots; after it was well-boiled, we settled the grounds with cold water, added enough condensed cream to color it slightly, and enough sugar to give a trace of sweetness. This was one thing the fire fighters would not stand to be shorted on--they wanted lots of coffee.

I should have mentioned that the dried fruits of that day had to be soaked ahead, and then cooked until tender.

Now, we would have to get the men off to work with a lunch, and that was really a tough one. We had a variety of three sandwiches: boiled ham, fried bacon, and cheese. We gave each man two sandwiches. Once in a while, we got an apple or an orange, but very seldom, as we were to learn; after we were in camp, I came up with a solution that kind of pleased the men. It was to give the men dried fruit to chew on, and, as it took quite a while to chew the dried fruit, they were kept from getting over-hungry by chewing the really dried fruit of those days. One man was to be appointed to take a coffee pot for each separate working crew. We gave them plenty of coffee and condensed cream, so we would not be bothered with complaints over the lack of it. Once in a while, I would find time to make some doughnuts, which were always a treat.

Now, walking along the trail and nearing our first camping site, I began to figure the variety we could get with our supplies for the main meal, the evening meal. In the meat line, the old standby was pork and beans; and, having done butcher work, I could bone out hams for ham and cabbage if I could get the cabbage. A stew could be made of any vegetables we could get and made more tasty with a flavor of cheap gallon catsup; then the old favorite, pork and beans Navy style, and that was about it in the meat line. Every day, mashed or boiled potatoes would be on the menu. Any vegetable we could get would be warmly welcomed. For desserts, boiled custard made of tapioca, rice, or just plain vanilla custard, would furnish some sweetness. If the packers were not too busy, maybe we would receive some No. 10 cans of fruit, which would be a real luxury. To round out the meal, we would serve tea and coffee for dinner.

The Ranger and Mr. Sutherland picked our first camp site about four o'clock in the afternoon, and, with the Ranger showing us, we built a background of stones, drove two forked poles firmly into the ground, and put an iron bar in the forks of the poles. Our equipment was large square metal cases, each holding enough utensils for 50 men.

We knew that the crew coming in would be really hungry, so all 16 of us got the camp set up and went to work getting out the first meal. Because of lack of time, three of us sliced bacon, so the first meal was fried bacon, mashed potatoes, a vegetable, canned gallon fruit, bread and butter, with lots of coffee. Because in the Navy in the large cantonments we served cafeteria style, I adopted this way of serving the men, and, when the crew of 125 men arrived about six

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o'clock, we fed them in a very short time. The crew that had come from Monumental Buttes with me helped clean up the first night, and I can truthfully say that through the summer us cooks and flunkies never had time to set up our pup tents, as we worked from when we could see in the morning until we couldn't see at night. The most disheartening thing of all was, after we were all finished with the evening meal, to have 40 or 50 new men come in who had been without food for several hours. Somehow or another we fed them, and they were grateful.

Getting breakfast out with my new crew the next morning and getting their lunches ready was a nightmare, but they were finally on their way, and I had a few moments to talk to my crew and line up the jobs for each of us.

One powerful looking young fellow with strong hands I gave the chore of cutting bacon, as there was no sliced bacon in 1919. One huge colored cook told me straight out that the only cooking he had done was at home, so I put him in charge of keeping the fire up, slicing bread (no bread was sliced by bakeries in 1919), and stirring the pots hanging over the open fire to keep them from scorching on the bottoms. The third cook, who had some experience, was to work with me on the cooking. Two flunkies were to keep potatoes and vegetables peeled. One was to work cutting wood, and the last one, a jack of all trades, opening cans, putting boiling spuds on the fire, and ~any, many more chores. After each meal, we were all to work cleaning the pots, dishes, etc.

I put everything I could think of in my requisitions, hoping to get the works and knowing that an overworked crew at the Forest headquarters in Avery would do the best they could for each camp in this huge area. I knew the crew craved green stuff, and, as the packers could not deliver to us 50 miles away, I put in an order for all the bulk onions I could get. We peeled and sliced them and put them down in vinegar, water, salt, and pepper, and this was really a lifesaver for our evening meal-- they couldn't get enough, no matter how many we fixed. It really saved our lives, as our favorite title was “belly-robbing S-of-B's." In a few days, my crew had changed from amateurs to a bunch of pros. They learned their jobs so efficiently that it more and more amazed me. Americans can really adapt themselves to new conditions.

The cafeteria style of serving the food worked out perfectly. We picked out a level place, built a long bench, lined up the food with a cook or flunky behind each can or pan of materials, the coffee last, and we could really feed them quite fast, for working under unusual conditions. We might have been the first to try this on forest fires.

We had finally got a semblance of order and sense to our camp and settled down to a routine that at least kept the workers fed, when, just at noon, the Ranger rode in and told us the fire was coming up on us and to tear down our camp immediately, as packers were coming to move us. As speedily as possible, we had it torn down and packed and were quickly moved to a new location. Then the same deal--get the new camp up in a hurry and get dinner for the hungry men that had to be fed. This was to occur about once a week during the summer. But my crew were really pros now and could turn out a marvellous amount of work.

We were camped near a strip of burned out timber, which, the Ranger told us, was the scene of the crown fir~ that killed somewhere between 30 and 64 men in 1910. Each story I heard set a different number of men killed, but I am sure it was over 30. (This is a reference to Storm Creek Camp northwest of Avery, where 27 men died during the Big Blowup August 20-21, 1910. This is about 22 miles north of Foehl Creek)

That night the smoke was heavy, but we had gotten used to that. About 10 o'clock that night, the Ranger woke us all up and told us to follow him up the mountain, as a crown fire was moving our way, and to take nothing but our pup tents and blankets. It was a bright full-moon night, so we were able to see where to climb up the mountain. He led us all to safety, but our

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camp burned up, and the packers trying to retrieve some of the food and equipment got the mules' feet burned so bad that some of them later had to be slaughtered. A story came out in some newspapers that the Ranger had led us to a cave and saved us by putting wet sacks over the mouth of the cave. It must have been someplace else, because we were safe up high on the mountain. (This appears to be confusion between the fires in 1910 and those in 1919. The cave story sounds like the story of Pulaski and his crew during the 1910 fires.) Those Rangers sure knew their business.

Inside of a day and a half, we were settled in anew camp and still managing to supply the men with food in quantity, if not in quality.

One flunky was not a very good worker, and after our last ordeal we were all tired. I sent the boy to a dead patch of wood to get needed fuel. He took an axe, with a sullen look, but we all looked that way so I didn't pay any attention to it. After about half an hour, I could not hear the axe, so went to investigate. He was sound asleep, and I was tired. I gave him a kick and told him to get to work or quit. He picked up the axe, still acting mad, and I started back to camp. I heard a cry, went back, and he had nearly cut his foot off with the first swing. I hollered for the Ranger to come with the first aid kit. He slashed the shoe off and went to work, and inside of an hour he had him on a horse headed for Avery. I never heard of him again, and, when leaving, I inquired about him at the Forestry Office, but they withheld information. I still wonder if it was as bad as it looked.

Another thing developed that caused a lot of timber to burn up. It seemed pretty senseless to me. A lot of I.W.W.'s {Industrial Workers of the World) came in on the fire fighting from Spokane and the Coast. They intended to work only a few days, which was bad enough, but on leaving, when they got a few miles from camp, they would find a coulee with the wind in the right direction and start anew fire, so small fires were burning all over the country. It was a bad state of affairs-- resources wasted that this country will need some day. Their excuse was that it put more men to work.

It was due to these mounting numbers of fires that a lot of extra work was put on me and my hardworking crew.

We had noticed that our bread supplies were not as big as they should be, and we started to use Dutch ovens to make a kind of biscuit preparation to eke out our bread supply.

The packer showed up one day with some new equipment. The Ranger explained to me that, due to the fact the packers had to travel further because of so many fires blocking the trails, for a while we would have to make our bread in this new type of equipment called reflectors. They were about 10 feet long and collapsed. When open, they became a 10-foot isosceles triangle, with short legs on the open side facing the fire. Long legs attached to the back end of the triangle made the shelves that held the baking pans even with the fire.. The inside was a very bright metal to reflect the heat. For the bread to rise, reflectors were set about IS feet from the fire. When raised to the front side, the bread had to be turned so that the back loaves got the benefit of being closer to the fire. When raised, the bread was moved about five feet from the fire, and when the loaves nearest to the fire were almost fully browned, the pans were again reversed until the bread was fully baked.

Now I was faced with the problem of the dough rising after it was mixed. The yeast was dried, and, as I had had experience only in using Fleischman's ready to use brand, I had to resort to memory of my mother's use of dried yeast in bread making many years before. From the evening meal, we saved the potato water and, when it was cool enough not to destroy the yeast germs, I immediately mixed the yeast that I had dissolved with the potato water and flour, making a soft dough, then put it near the fire to work. The fireplace was added to then; at each

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end, we put containers for equipment, emptied, then filled with water. The big square pans held skillets, pots, forks, knives, cups, and plates, for SO men, so they were plenty large for our purpose.

We had two large mixing bowls to make the bread dough in, so immediately after supper was over and the dishes all done, and everything lined up for breakfast, we took the two extremely large mixing bowls they had packed in for us, dividing a hundred pounds of flour between the bowls, adding half of the working yeast to each bowl; then, warm water, salt, a little sugar, two cans of condensed milk to each bowl and finally some warm bacon grease to each mix.

After kneading the dough for awhile, we scraped it loose from the lining of the bowls, greased the bowls with bacon grease, then kneading both pans some more, and, finally, greasing the dough so it could rise easily, we covered both bowls with a clean piece of canvas firmly fixed so it would not blow off. Then I explained to the boys that "any time anybody got up during the night, to push the dough down to normal again; as long as it was pushed down every so often, it would not sour the bread, and, to keep it reasonably warm, add a little wood to the fire.”

The next morning, as we had to build up the fire to turn out breakfast, we put the two bowls of well-worked dough in the shade of a pine tree. After the crew was gone for the day, on the stump of a large tree a board nailed on to it, I molded the bread into large loaves, putting them immediately into the well-greased pans, the bread rising and baking in the manner already described. The bread came out so good that we

made a batch' of soft biscuit dough and turned out another addition to the meals; each day, as soon ~~ the bread was baked, we not only made various hot breads but made dried apple and apricot cobblers, rice and bread pudding with raisins in it. I divided this work among the four cooks, and they learned so fast that they even got to make the bread. We even made cheap cakes every two or three days, which were appreciated by the fire fighters. The crew even left off the "belly-robbing" expressions and just called us "sons-of-B's." This helped to raise our morale.

My colored cook asked me one day if I knew how to make real Southern cornpone. I told him, "No," but that, if he wanted to, to go ahead and put a batch in the reflectors. He must have got his recipes mixed up, for that night the hot bread was so hard that when some cook told them who made it, they all bombarded him as he ran out of camp. I had to go and find him in the forest, which was easy, as he was scared of the numerous bears in this region and never went to bed without an axe at his side. When I got him back in camp, I told the fire fighters how hard he worked to feed them and how his good nature had helped us bear up under the daily grind. Most of the boys apologized, and soon he was his old happy self once more.

I had a little accident at this time, which was very painful to me. I had been feeding a little chipmunk, and, when he came to eat the food, I would run toward him at top speed. He would scamper away but return immediately, as though daring me 'to chase him, so it became a regular game, and every day it was the same routine, but this day I was care- less. I was putting the food where some enterprising beavers had cut some real small saplings, and their roots stuck out of the ground about six to eight inches in length. As I ran toward the chipmunk, my foot caught on a sharp root and sent me sprawling on another root, which hit a lower rib on my right side. When I was able to stand up, someone called the Ranger, and he found out that I had cracked the rib, but it hadn't broken completely. He did a wonderful job of wrapping bandages, and taping me up, but at night, sleeping on the ground, I had a hard time getting much rest for several days. But each day the pain faded a little, and in about ten days I wasn't bothered with

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it anymore. I still fed the little squirrel every day, but he was disappointed because he was not being chased anymore.

And now we were up to the middle of September. The nights were colder, a small amount of rain fell, and each day the fires became less of a hazard. As I was getting $6.85 a day, it had totalled up to what I had made up my mind would be enough to go home with, dressed up, arid money in my pocket--"over $300.” No cooks were allowed to qui t while the fires were at their peak, but now, if we could get a replacement, we could go. Mr. Sutherland had almost become a god to me, as I have yet to meet a man I have respected half as much as him, so I hated to tell him I was going home.

When I finally did, he told me that he had recommended me to the St. Joseph Timber Association and that they had a wonderful job for me--to be in complete charge of one of their largest camps--and the wages would be $187 a month with board and room, a phenomenal wage in those days. But I hadn't been home for two years, and I was homesick, so I decided to go home. Mr. Sutherland told me that he was adding a ten dollar bonus to my wages, and this made me feel very proud, as a bonus was practically unknown in those days.

The next day my relief showed up, a real tall, skinny, middle-aged man, who immediately started to expound the virtues of a can opener he had invented. He showed it to me and told me it was so perfect that he could remove the bottom of a washtub with it. I had the reflectors set up, setting back from the fire, raising the loaves. I started to tell him how to operate them and to be sure to raise the loaves enough. He told me he had plenty of experience in operating them and shoved them up to the fire. One of my cooks got me to one side and told me to make tracks, as he had worked as a flunky with him and he sure knew how to operate that can opener, as that was all the cooking he ever did-- opening cans--and, as soon as the Ranger found out, they would phone and head me off and bring me back.

In no time, two other young fire fighters and myself were headed for Avery, 40 or 50 miles away. We dogtrotted a lot, and about. 6:30 or 7:00 p.m. neared the Main Ranger Station. Just as we sighted the Station, we noticed a bunch of young grouse that seemed to be very tame, so we killed four of them, one apiece for us and one for Terry. We sure made a mistake. When Terry saw the dead grouse, he hit the ceiling. They were his pets that he had fed all summer, and now we had killed them. He threatened to have us all arrested and numerous other dire things, but, after apologizing several times, he finally told us to clean them, and he cooked them for our dinner. He wouldn't eat his, and we didn't enjoy our supper at all.

Soon we were on our way again, and, as I had told the boys with me that I wanted to catch the noon train for Missoula, we kept dogtrotting till dark. After it got dark, when going through a thick grove of trees we would be unable to see and had to kick the side of the trail to keep from losing the path. At last, we came to a tumbledown cabin beside the trail and stayed until we could see plainly. Now we made good time dogtrotting along or walking fast, so we arrived in Avery about II o'clock with time to spare and, as I got paid off in the Forestry Office there, I bought a ticket to Helena. When I got there, I found a cheap room.

I had always wanted a tailor-made suit so inquired in some pool hall who was a good tailor and went to a shop run by two very old men, who measured me carefully and told me I would have a perfect fit. This was Monday, and they would have it ready by Saturday. Waiting for my new suit, I bought new shirts, underwear, socks, and shoes--in other words, the works. But, as I wanted to go home dressed up, I continued to wear my old clothes.

There was a streetcar running out to the Broadwater Natatorium, which was at one time the largest hot springs swimming pool in the world. It was a very beautiful building with an arched roof made of several different-colored glass panes and was really one of the most beautiful

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buildings I had ever seen. Years later, it was to burn completely down, gutted so bad that it could not be restored. It was a real calamity, as it would have been a mecca for tourists for the next hundred years. Inside, the hot springs bubbled from rocks set like a geyser builds up. The water was hot near the springs and colder as you got further toward the other end, so it was perfect for everyone. You could rent a bathing suit, so every day I came out to swim.

The second day, I met a girl that I knew that I had to get acquainted with. I did, and immediately started to hand her a line--I was going to the University of Michigan and had spent the summer with surveyors mapping contours of mountains around Yellowstone Park. (I am 76 years old now and have never been in the state of Michigan.) She believed me, and every day I got there first so she would not see my ragged clothes, and with my hair cut I looked respectful enough. And we made a date to go to the dance together Friday, but luck ran out on me, and when I came into the swimming pool area, immediately she saw a bum instead of her imagined college boy. I stayed in the dressing room a long time, and, when I finally got up enough courage to come out to the pool, she was gone, and my romance was ended. I guess I deserved it.

Saturday, I put on clean new clothes and went to get my suit. It cost $80, a tremendously high pr-ice. I guess the old tailors had not made a suit for a young man in thirty years. The suit would have been wonderful on a fifty or sixty year old businessman, but it sure looked funny on me. I only wore it a few times and then traded it to an older man about my size.

The next day, I got home to Great Falls and found my mother's address. She had been in Alabama during the war. She had not heard from me for over six months, and I thought she would be surprised, but, when she opened the door, she looked at me for a moment and then said, "I thought you would be along any day now." The greatest compliment a mother or father can give a son or daughter is to have full confidence in their ability to take care of themselves. I was gad to be home.

Even today, after 53 years, my mind turns back to the bald peaks, the Clearwater, and numerous other streams, with the water crystal-clear, and deep pools where the big trout lurked, the beautiful stands of pine trees, and just momentarily I would like to be back to that summer of 1919. But, "the moving pen has written and moved on."