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Montana Memories: Mitch Allen
FIREFIGHTER—Mitch in his firefighter outfit. Photo: Mitch Allen They had saved the money earned working for their father at his wholesale fruit and vegetable business, and had rebuilt a Model T Ford. School was out and they were well-prepared for a big adventure. Mitch and Frank Allen had heard of the wonders of Glacier National Park in Montana. Late in June, 1925 they started out from Manhattan, KS. Mitch was 17 and Frank was 22. They were equipped for car repairs, camping out, and feeding themselves. Mitch had a pocket Kodak, and their mother insisted on sending postcards along to mail home. They followed the road maps they picked up at service stations. Their first stop was Boulder, CO where they celebrated July 4 with relatives. Traveling west and north toward their goal, they stopped in Steamboat Springs for the hot springs baths—their first. The car broke down several times, and they were short of cash when they reached Belton, MT. They stopped at the only grocery store in town, and the friendly grocer said they could park their car behind the store and camp there. They asked about work in the area and he directed them to the Forest Service Park Ranger who was looking for temporary help to control a fire. They were hired for one day only at the fire site. Mitch recalls they rode for two hours in a World War I Liberty truck to the fire site. They were given mattock axes, their only tools, and were shown how to cut the underbrush in order to build a fire belt around the threatened area. They were to be paid 30 cents an hour for a 10-hour shift, and wound up working for 10 days. The camp cook fed them well with hot meals, canned fruit and Pet Milk. They camped out. One vivid memory is being awakened by an explosion and seeing a tall pine tree flame up on the horizon above the campsite. When they were done, the two young men retrieved their car from the friendly grocer. After all that work, Mitch never did see the interior of the park! Instead, they headed west through Idaho and Washington. Mitch was driving when the brakes burned out going down a steep grade. Ultimately, they reached San Francisco and San Diego, CA. where relatives took them in. Between them, they had $35 left from their fire-fighting pay. Their father wired them $75 for the return trip to Kansas. Mitch finished his senior year and then enrolled at Kansas State University. He received a degree in Civil Engineering in 1930. He had met and married Lucile Correll, daughter of a Kansas State History Professor. His first job was with a Des Moines, IA construction company and they moved 13 times in three years while Mitch worked on Federal Works Administration jobs, several in Colorado. The Allen's moved east in 1936, and Mitch worked in Pittsburgh, PA for a year. Then they moved to Long Island, NY where he worked 10 years as superintendent of a fabrication plant, that furnished material to the Brooklyn Navy Yards. Kansas called them home in 1947, so they brought their children—John, James and Judy—to Wichita, where Mitch opened Allen Welding Equipment, Inc. He retired in 1986. Still vivid in Mitch’s memory today are the mountain roads where they backed the Ford up steep grades to feed the engine from the gas tank under the front seat; the exploding evergreen at Belton; the grandeur of the many mountains he photographed with his tiny camera; and the sweetness of Pet Milk which he first tasted before that summer of the fire. In 1992, Mitch’s son, Jim Allen, and his two grandsons—Mitch II and Stuart—traveled some of those Montana miles when they made a cross-country bicycle tour. They started at the Pacific Ocean in the northwestern corner of Washington, and finished at the Atlantic in Maine, followed by Jim’s wife in the family car and hauling a trailer, carrying on the family tradition of camping out. About the Author of Montana Memories: Larksfield Place resident Pat Taylor, a native of North Dakota, was raised in eastern Montana. She was graduated from the University of Montana Journalism School in 1938. Pat was employed by the Great Falls Tribune from 1939 to 1951 as a reporter and editor, covering local and state news. One special assignment was a 1944 tour of Air Force installations sending lend-lease planes from Great Falls, MT to Nome, AL. In 1951, she married Fred H. Taylor, a Kansas attorney who worked as an oil man in the Rockies until they moved to Wichita in 1967.
Copyright
© 1999, 2000 Pat Taylor. "I,
Witness to History" and logo are trademarks of Wesley Retirement
Communities, Inc., d/b/a Larksfield Place. All rights reserved.
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