Distinctly Montana Magazine

51 w w w. d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m the Big Hole was named after the range rid- er's father. Every Sunday, they would all ride to his grandmother's cabin for a big dinner she would cook over the wood stove. He said it was a highlight of the week for them all. As we are talking, I tell him that Butte isn't well known for running cattle, and he says you wouldn't really know that folks had done it unless you talk to someone who grew up with it. His grandmother's father walked up from California and worked in the mines to save up enough money to buy the homestead. He can remember his grandmother telling him that her dad herded four two-year-old steers into Butte from the Highlands through the Basin Creek Reservoir and sold them for $50.00 apiece, the going price back then. Dave says his grandmother remembered when Lincoln was assassinated; all the mine whistles in Butte as well as the church bells went off. His great-grandfather and great-grandmother bought 160 acres, and then William A. Clark acquired it from his great-grandmother illegally. She was so mad that she went over to the grandstand at Clark Park with an axe and started chop- ping away at it until the cops had to be called. The Butte Civic Center now stands on that same land. He tells me that she still, wherever she is, believes that land is theirs. I tell Dave she sounds like a feisty woman, and he says she was a little ball of fire like his great uncle Tal Johns, who was the flyweight champion of the Northwest in boxing. Dave says he recalls there was a saying in Butte: "They could throw Tal out of the bar by the seat of his pants, but if they wanted to fight him they couldn't lick him." I ask how he came about owning a dairy farm outside White- hall, and he tells me how he wanted to be around horses and cows, and his dad would always drive over that way every week- end and wanted to move due to less snow in winter. After look- ing at farms in the area, they settled on where he is still living, 64 years later. The only way you could be a full-time farmer back then was to dairy, and in 1959 there were over ten dairies from Waterloo to Whitehall. My parents became close friends with Dave over the years buying milk from him, and said that before the state regulations there would be a line out of the barn to buy the milk for a dollar a gallon. Dave has certainly had some near misses, as does anyone liv- ing on a farm or ranch. I ask him about the time he bought a mo- torcycle too big for him and what happened in his field. His brow furls as he thinks about this for a minute and says, "Oh…that." He laughs and says that he was in one of his fields irrigating with the bike and it tipped over on him, pinning his leg. He started waving for help and the meat inspector heading down the road slowed down, looked at him waving like mad, waved back, and kept on driving. He eventually had to call his brother and ask him to come out and get the bike off him. There are many mis- haps like this that Dave recounts and we are all amazed how he came out unscathed. He not only ran a dairy farm but had a shoe repair busi- ness in Butte. He would run the dairy during the day before driving into Butte to work on shoes until around 10 o'clock at night. He was also a leather maker, and my dad brings out a beautiful sheep- skin scope cover Dave made for him. I ask if he made the vest he is wearing and he says he made it over 15 years ago, and it still has hardly any wear on it. "I guess once I think about it, I have had a pretty good life. Just sailing through it with good health, and it was exciting." * * * As I listen to our recorded conversation for the article, I have to smile at the stories that span decades but feel like they hap- pened yesterday. Stories of hunting the Tobacco Roots outside Whitehall, being pinned by his own garage door, to how he ac- complished so much with only one eye, the other having been lost when while falling down the stairs playing with his brother at the tender age of three years old. One of the last things he said, while walking back to his car, was a question: he asked me with a smile if I danced. I told him that, sadly, I don't, but that I might be willing to try, if only for a moment here in the driveway. As he took my hand and tried his best to show me how to dance, I could tell that none of the other men at the dance hall can hold a candle to Dave.

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