Remember When

40 YEARS AGO • JUNE 20, 1978

SINCE I LAST WROTE FOR THE LEDGER continued

By Harry L. Billings (AKA Peanuts, TFHS Class of ’29)

Eber and Barbara (Britton) Hoyt were very small. Their uncle and aunt, A.S. and Mabel Ainsworth, were awfully good to an undersized kid from the reservation. When I had chicken pox and later the mumps, Mrs. “A” insisted I stay with them while she nursed me through those childhood afflictions. Also many were the times I enjoyed wonderful Sunday dinners at the Ainsworth home. This house is located west of the Power Park and now is the residence of Dr. Randy Lovell.

Horsemen Were Fierce

In those days we didn’t play football because there was no football field. Some years later Ainsworth Field, named in honor of A.S. who was chairman of the school board for many years, was developed. This field is located west of the Town Pump and was the high school football and track field for years. We did have basketball. Our most fierce rival was the Horsemen of Plains who, liberally sprinkled with Vacuras, Johnsons and Walkleys, and a fellow named Wes (Mike) Scott, were almost impossible for our teams to overcome. In those years, however, the “Mr. Big” in western Montana basketball were the Ronan Chiefs with such all-state caliber players as “Frenchy” Roullier, Ken Egan and “Slim” Clairmont, joined by several others. It was probably a vile canard, but rumor persisted during the late twenties that the three Chiefs named above played a minimum of six years high school basketball before graduating.

H.O. Ekern

The late H.O. Ekern and wife, Ruby, had the drugstore and soda fountain, and it was a great hang-out for high school kids. H.O. later on was a state representative, and also operated the local motion picture theatre. I believe Ekern had the Rex Theatre built in 1939.

C.H. Stanclift had the hotel. He, like the elder Bert Macho, did not believe in spoiling youngsters by paying any more than a minimal hourly wage for labor…as I recall, up to 10 cents an hour.

Perry Heater Sr. was sheriff, having beaten the republican incumbent, Joe Hartman. Old Joe Hartman scared the hell out of me from the time I was a little shaver. My folks had only to remind that he, with the fearsome handlebar mustache, was always nearby. That worked wonders on my behavior.

Bob Iff, A Fishing C.C.

Bobby Iff, father of Ed, Bud and Bob Jr., was a county commissioner. He was no bigger than a minute, but he was forceful and able, and a fighter on behalf of the principles he believed in.

W.A. Barto was president of the First State Bank. Severe in appearance and wedded to the old ways of banking, he would hardly fit into the “we’re here to help you get what you want” attitude of present day bankers.

In those days I was always hungry and with the passage of time I built up a very rewarding “cake-and-cookie circuit.” In addition to Mrs. Ainsworth, there were Mrs. Jim Adams, the elder Mrs. Dolson, Mrs. Grace Prongua, Mrs. Clarence Hellman and Mrs. Dick Ouellette, among those good providers.

Most of the kids in my generation at TFHS were full of hell. Not much different than present day teenage delinquents. We didn’t have automobiles, but we had imaginations and at times were holy terrors. It is wise to reflect once in a while when we are moved to be critical of present day youngsters’ behavior. Thinking back, we were often the object of castigation because of devilish activities. In other words, you latter day apostles of virtue, law and order, etc., come clean – I didn’t cause all that trouble alone.

Those years spent in the dorm were great despite an occasional black eye, bloody nose or unseemly long periods of being forbidden to leave the campus. They were the beginning of my dream of returning here to live – a dream partially realized in 1952 when we bought acreage up Prospect Creek, and fulfilled in 1974 when we retired to this most beautiful part of Montana which to me has always been “God’s Country.”