Shepherd Butte

From a Cold, Hot Sandwich, by (Richard) Lee Phillips

Tall gabled house on the prairie sod,
Adorned with ash and pine and elm,
With lawn and roses and white fence,
I envy your tranquility.

The blue-berried juniper, scrub cedar,
Chokecherry and thornapple
Grown in the coulees - untended - unwanted.
Spikey soapweed, delicate yellow bell,
    lush sweet pea
Entwine roots with tough prairie sod.
The white bloom loco
Bowing in the wind
Nodding at the whiteness of Tossing wild onion tassles.
All things pass but the sod and the grass.

copyright

Origins of Hardee

My Grandfather was named after Confederate Lieutenant General William J. Hardee.    Grandpa Hardee's dad was from Kentucky.  His parents died at a young age, and his two aunts were in charge of him at the plantation that he was to inherit.  The aunts kicked him off the plantation, taking the land.  He found his way to Zortman, Montana.  My grandfather was one of many boys, and they were wild.   Hardee's brother George took a blasting cap and hit it with hammer.   The explosion blew off his finger and metal flew into my grandpa's eyes.  He never could see well at night after that.  Another time, a brother was injured and my grandfather had to ride the family horse at gallop many miles to get a doctor.  The horse was wind broken from the experience, and not worth much after that.

Grandpa Hardee suffered from seizures.  He said that he would not get married until he stopped having the seizures.   He met the love of his life, Anna Conn Forder, and he stopped having seizures. They were married. They were married during the Great Depression and had a hard time surviving.  They moved from Montana to Idaho, where they nearly starved to death.  They lived on potatoes that winter.  The money ran out and Hardee took his shotgun to the store.  The store keeper wouldn't extend credit before, but he would when Hardee had a shotgun in his hand.  The money was repaid.

Hardee the Inventor

My Grandpa Hardee had a brother.  The brother had an affair, and from that affair there was a son named Harold.  The brother would never acknowledge Harold.  At one point, when Harold was in his teens, he came to live at the Phillips Ranch, which was located between Salem and Waltham, up at Shepard's Butte, all of which were just a stone's throw from Highwood, MT.  Harold slept in the bunkhouse above the garage, sharing the room with the potbellied stove with my dad.

Well, my Grandpa Hardee fancied himself as an inventor.  During the winter months, after the crop had been harvested, and his machinery had been fixed, he liked to hunker down in his shop and invent stuff.  One of the years Harold lived there, Grandpa Hardee invented a snow sled with sail.   You have to live around Great Falls Montana to fully appreciate how windy that area is, like Chicago which is famous for it's wind.  At one time I saw a ranking where it was windier than Chicago.  In other words, perfect for a wind sled.

My dad said Harold was a little slow, but willing to try anything. So the sled was made with the sail attached.  Dad said that day the wind was blowing very badly, with high wind gusts.  Harold hopped on the sled, without much thought.  Harold never did think much through.  The problem with Hardee's inventions was that there was always some flaw that didn't come out until after the invention was being tested.  The fatal flaw in the sled's design was that there was no way to steer the sled (or break either).  Harold hopped on the sled, and a huge gust of wind came along.  The sled made a 90 degree turn and was headed straight for the barbed wire fence.  Harold was frantically trying to shift on the sled to change its course, but of no avail.  The few spectators were screaming at him to bail off the make shift, jerry-rigged sled, but it was going at a high rate of speed.

Dad said Harold looked slack jawed heading to the fence.  It was a spectacular crash, with Harold becoming enmeshed in the barbed wire.  Harold spent a few days in his bunkhouse bed recovering from his wounds.  Dad stoked the pot-belly stove to keep Harold warm.  That was one of Hardee's many failed invenventions. 

The socialist in the upper highwood mountains

My mom was raised outside Highwood, Montana, on upper Highwood creek (or crick, as we call it in Montana).  It was the 1940s.  There were few farming families that lived up that crick.  Come election time, the families went to the Upper Highwood School and voted.  There were six married couples that voted.  Then there was this bearded wild man that came over Baldy Mountain to vote.   One of the farm wives ran the polling booth.  She always tallied the votes.  There would always be 12 votes for Republicans and one vote for a socialist.  Everyone in that community knew who voted Socialist and the tongues would wag.