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THE FAIR ADVENTURE A
Tribute To My Parents “The
day shall not be up so soon as I, To
try the fair adventure of tomorrow.” —“King”
John,” William Shakespeare My parents, James P.
and Margaret Brennan, were products of the western movement.
Their grandparents had emigrated from Ireland and Scotland, settling in
Ontario and Nova Scotia, Canada. Their
parents had come to the United States in search of free land and work
opportunities. My parents spent most of their married
life in small farming communities in North Dakota and eastern Montana.
They were active in business, politics, church, and school.
Their home and hearts were open to all ages and all who needed help.
We three children thrived on their example of hard work, charity, and
good humor. I thought of my
father’s energy, enthusiasm, and optimism when I first read the quotation from
Shakespeare. To me, Mother exemplified the Perfect Wife in Proverbs:
…“She reaches out her hand to the poor,
and extends her arms to the needy...
Her children rise up and praise her;
Her husband, too, extols her . . . “ James Patrick
Brennan was born July 25, 1879 in Merrickville, Ontario, Canada, the son of Edward and Joanna Brannick Brennan.
He was one of 11 children and one of three who survived their parents. I know nothing of my
father’s birthplace except that it is a small town in eastern Ontario, south
of Ottowa and on the Rideau River. My
father finally returned there in 1949 and brought back pictures of the Brennan
home, a narrow two-story brick house. Two
unmarried cousins lived there at the time. Grandfather Brennan
immigrated to Pembina County, North Dakota, in the fall of 1879 with a large
group of Irish Catholics, including relatives.
The family followed the next spring, coming to Bathgate where he had
acquired land. The children then
included Amelia, Florence, George, Stephen, Victor, Edward and Jim.
Two daughters, Anastasia and Marietta, had died in the old home. I was 15 before I
learned that my father had not walked across Canada.
He claimed to have crossed the prairie “without shoes,” and my vivid
imagination had my hero on snowshoes, his feet wrapped in fur, his rifle slung
over the Hudson Bay jacket, his beaver cap frosted. (There must have been a picture of a French Canadian trapper
in an old book from home!) In
truth, Jim was the family baby in his mother’s arms and they traveled on the
railroad. Two more sons were
born in North Dakota, but I have no record of births and deaths.
The Brennan children were all good students and Florence, George, and
Victor attended the University of North Dakota. My father was about
12 years of age when George came home ill from the University, where had had
made a brilliant record. It must
have been “galloping consumption,” as it spread through the house like
wildfire. The younger children
became ill and Stephen was sent to cousins in California. The parish priest
took my father home with him and sternly ordered him to stay out of George’s
room and he later was sent to the farm under the care of Bill Caton, the hired
hand. How sad those days must have
been for the frightened boy, sneaking home to do the chores and wave at George
through a window! Was he altar boy
at the funeral Masses? We do know
that “tuberculosis” was a dread word to Jim forever after. The family
re-grouped. Florence was married to
Allen Baldwin of Bathgate and their daughter, Elaine, was born in 1894.
Mr. Baldwin died young and I never knew him.
Amelia married handsome, vital, Irish Archie M. O’Connor.
They lived in St. Thomas, North Dakota and had eight children. Jim graduated from
Bathgate High School at the age of 15, in 1895, one of two boys in the class.
His graduation picture shows a slender, solemn blond young man in
knee-pants, proudly clutching a rolled diploma.
Graceful young ladies recline in the front row and the photographer’s
studio was a bower of flowers. The solemnity belies
one memory our cousin, Brennan Briggs Davis, has of Jim. Jim told Brennan that he wrote a school paper about the Boers
and claimed they had been able to survive during battle by eating from the large
rings of salami they had draped around their horses’ necks! Jim left home at 17
to work in Dan O’Connor’s hardware store in Langdon, North Dakota.
My sister claims it was Dan who taught our father his neat and graceful
penmanship. Jim then sold White
sewing machines on the road, traveling at least as far east as Wisconsin. He kept Bathgate in
his heart. Jim never turned away
anyone from Pembina County. He kept
track of the Bathgate “boys and girls,” who remained young to him, and took
personal satisfaction in their accomplishments.
One I remember was Norval Baptie, the French-Canadian speed and figure
skater, who Jim claimed had perfected tubular shoe skates, which he tested on
the Tongue River. One adventure Jim
never forgot was when he met Amelia and Archie in St. Louis for the World’s
Fair. He was selling threshing
machines at the time and he and his boss were making a swing through the
Midwest. Years later, Jim told my
husband, Fred H. Taylor of Kansas, that after St. Louis they had set up their
tent at the annual Wheat Show in Wichita, Kansas, brought in a keg of whiskey
(to a dry state), and had done “pretty well.”
He had visited Winfield, my husband’s hometown, and had ridden a
short-lived interurban train south to Arkansas City. Jim was once
interviewed by his granddaughter, Kathie, for a high school assignment. He told
her of his homestead days in Bottineau County in north central North Dakota.
It was 1901, he recalled, and he had ambitiously filed three
claims—near Antler, one and one-half miles south of the Canadian border, one
on the Manitoba side, and a third in Sheridan County in eastern Montana.
He could make the Manitoba claim because of dual citizenship, the son of
a Canadian native who had become a naturalized American citizen.
(Periodically Jim attempted to gain an American passport as a
“derivative citizen” and finally accomplished that with his sister
Florence’s help in 1946. Jim told his
granddaughter, Kathie, that he was not much of a farmer so he sold hail
insurance on the side, walking among homestead shacks and sod houses before he
could afford a horse and buggy. They
also were necessary to the all-night dances in the country.
He later gave his shack to another Pembina County boy, Tom Hennessy, who
had courted and won the only single girl in the area. Jim may well have
ridden the stagecoach from Botteneau, the county seat, to Antler as the Great
Northern Railroad’s branch did not reach there until 1905. The original
settlers had “squatted” on Antler Creek in 1883, a year before the county
was organized. They found high,
rolling prairies from which the buffalo were diminishing but there was ample
small game in the coulees. They
planted small fields, using oxen, and traded freely on both sides of the border.
They used the “Canadian Trail” south to Minot, a railroad center, or
the trail east to Botteneau. Towns were formed as
each segment of the railroad was completed and land developers brought in groups
of immigrants from Europe and eastern states.
Wheat was king and credit was easy.
One of Jim’s stories from the Antler days concerned two young Irish
homesteaders. They were driving
home, each with a new grain binder. A
neighbor stopped them and asked what the binders had cost. Paddy said, “Sure, they cost us nothin’.
I soined Dick’s note and Dick soined my note.
Divvil the cint we give him and we druv the boinders home.” Jim had a story
suited to any occasion, often told in dialect.
He was master of many. Jim threw in his lot
with the new town of Antler and was its first mayor when it incorporated in
1905. He wrangled a farm implement
dealership and in later years was a land developer, grain broker, banker and
self-taught auctioneer when he and a partner bought and sold bankrupt store
inventories. What this busy
bachelor needed was a wife with whom to share the good times. Margaret Belle Henderson had come to Antler from Pine City,
Minnesota in 1905 at the invitation of her sister, Mary, who was married to Dr.
E.A. Jesmer, a veterinarian. (Aunt
Mamie was a talented milliner and cook and the Jesmers had two sons.) Mother was employed
as a telephone operator for the local corporation and soon caught Jim’s eye.
A picture from that time shows a round faced young woman with soft dark
eyes and a mass of curly dark hair. It
was chestnut, Jim said, with red lights. She
was “light on her feet”. She
was gentle, with a ready wit and a winning smile. Jim offered a
stunning diamond in a high gold Tiffany setting when he proposed.
They were engaged when the stone made a satisfactory scratch on a
windowpane. They were married
January 15, 1908 on the stage of the Antler Opera House by Father Turcotte.
The nuptial Mass was early in the morning because they were to catch the
train to Minneapolis for a honeymoon. Lib
Brandes, Mother’s girlhood friend from Minnesota, and Leo Hennessy, a Bathgate
friend, were the attendants. Music
was furnished by Jessie and Tom Hennessy and the girls decorated the hall under
Aunt Mamie’s supervision. Mother told me a
country crony of Jim’s marched down the sheet-covered aisle in his muddy boots
to a front seat. She picked up her
skirts and followed him. (I have
never seen her wedding dress, nor a picture of my parents taken that day.) On the occasion of
their 50th wedding anniversary, Leo Hennesey, Jim’s friend, wrote
the Brennan grandchildren his version of the event.
Jim set the alarm for 5 a.m. in their room at the Savory hotel and
ordered a hot bath for the morning. He
kept Leo awake most of the night checking the clock, which hung from the
headboard. When the tub arrived,
Jim jumped in and scalded both feet. They
then fired up the Opera House stove to “at least 100 degrees.” The entire wedding
party accompanied the couple to the depot after a breakfast at the hotel.
(Mother must have cut a pretty figure in her floor-length black Persina
lamb coat, a gift from the bridegroom.) Jim
stepped up to the ticket window and grandly ordered “one round trip to
Minneapolis.” The agent looked at Mother.
She dug into her purse and ordered the same. My sister, Mary
Elaine, was born October 30, 1908. Some
time or other the family lived in a sod house on the homestead across from the
Canadian line from Dooley, so she qualified as a member of the Sodbusters
Society. Edward Thomas (Bud) was
born April 26, 1910. Mother spoke
often in later years of Bud’s difficult birth.
He was a large baby and the labor was long and difficult; the attending
doctor a “drunken brute.” Besides,
Jim was out of town that day. I was born May 12,
1917. The house I remember in
Antler was a two-story farm structure across the road from open pasture.
There was a barn for Bud’s pony, “Darkie.”
Jim ordered a two-wheeled “jaunting cart” which Bud kept filled with
town children. Mother was a
fresh-air fiend and Bud’s asthmatic condition called for drastic measures.
We camped on Antler Creek in the summer.
Once, returning to town with the cart loaded with camping gear, the pony
ran away and left Mary high and dry on a mattress on the road.
My father’s
stories of the years in Antler were filled with the high color of exciting
“deals” as only he could describe them.
He used a man’s accent or mannerisms when he mentioned his name. He was a natural born spellbinder, unafraid to tell a joke on
himself. How I wish I could recall
how Jim fooled those grain rustlers! Jim did things with
energy and flair. Pictures dated
1916 show him with two trainloads of farmers from Minnesota.
The banner on one car reads, “Buy Land in Bountiful, Beautiful
Bottineau County.” Jim is the
smooth-shaven young man in the center, wearing a tweed cap and holding his son. Jim was exempt from
the World War I draft but he was a good war bond salesman. Those were “boom and bust” days on the prairie.
North Dakota farmers found a small market after World War I was declared;
America’s entry brought great demand for their grain.
Later, there was another “bust.”
Farmers were over-extended and many lost their land.
The townspeople rode the roller coaster with them.
Jim was often, to quote him, “one buck ahead of the sheriff.” Mother claimed, when he said that, never to have known that
times were that tough and she certainly had enjoyed spending that dollar.
All of northern North Dakota was Jim Brennan’s territory in those days. I have found in my
father’s papers a note he co-signed in 1918.
On the back, in his flowing hand, was entered, “Note: Don’t endorse any more notes.”
He forgot that as
time went on and the emergency of the moment demanded an endorsement. Jim’s cousin,
George Laney, became his brother after the Brennan boys died. The Laneys had come to Pembina County from Merrickville on
the same train with the Brennans. Uncle
George was seven years older that Jim but they were much alike in temperament. George filed his own
claim in Pembina County and was a deputy sheriff before moving to Logan County
in central North Dakota. He was a
homesteader, sheriff, and postmaster, operated a livery barn and traded horses,
was a collection agent for private banks and receiver for the Bank of North
Dakota. He became president of the
Stockgrowers Bank of Napoleon, dealt in real estate and held farming properties.
When he died in March 1944, the Napoleon Homestead carried his obituary
on the front page, along with a three-column picture of this community leader. It showed Uncle
George as I remember Him—Stetson hat far back on his round head, shrewd eyes
behind steel-rim glasses and a dead cigar in his mouth. An Editorial in the
same edition said in part: “Old and young sought and received his sound advice
on business dealings, property values, business ventures, political move, civic
improvements….In a business deal, Mr. Laney seldom sought the man, they sought
him….He had a faculty of remembering names, faces and dates….He was keen at
conversations, sparkled with some Irish wit, and always had eager
listeners….He claimed never to have lost a penny on a personal loan to young
people who desired further education, to go into business or to build a
home….” No wonder George
Laney and Jim Breenan were so close! I have a hunch Uncle George found Jim a job
when we moved to Minneapolis in 1921. (Collection
agent for Northwestern Bank of Minneapolis?)
Jim traveled a great deal and Mother was left alone to cope with the
city. We rented a row house.
Bud was dreadfully ill with scarlet fever and I recall sitting on the
outside steps with him as he peeled the skin from his hands.
I broke my arm and a neighbor drove us to the doctor in his Maxwell car.
Mary took ballet lessons and Mother said later that sentimental Jim had
wept at her recital when she appeared as the butterfly with the broken wing. We moved to New
England in 1922 where Jim was collection agent for the Slope District of the
Bank of North Dakota. Again, I feel
George had something to do with this as he had worked there in 1920 for the
Northwestern Bank; then was appointed receiver for five closed state banks and
was a district manager for the receiver until 1926.
He moved from New England to Bismarck when named state receiver. At my age I was
unaware of the depressed economy of those years, but I knew Jim was away from
home much of the time. Mary was a
high school sophomore and won a first place medal in the state oratorical
contest, reciting “The Revenge” by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
That was a proud day for Jim who had never forgotten his own elocution
training. The new girl in town,
petite and red-haired, acquired two tough champions in the school, Tootie and
Peepee, who accompanied her to and from school.
Bud had his own cronies. Mother
taught me to write with my right hand and we had a canary for company.
Jim trundled a doll buddy home on the train for Christmas. I was beginning to
become aware of the world outside our home by the time Jim became Manager and
later President of the Farmers & Merchants State Bank in Savage, Montana, in
1923. The Ulland, Mealey,
Carley Company, a Minneapolis banking firm controlling several banks in
Minnesota, North Dakota, and eastern Montana, offered Jim $200 a month, a
sliding commission on paper he collected, a house and authorization to buy a new
Ford automobile, to be paid for out of commissions.
He was to liquidate the bank. It was summer and we
were staying at the town’s only hotel until Jim’s predecessor could move his
family out of the bank’s house. We
arrived on a Saturday and the cowboys came into town that evening.
They shot up the main street in their enthusiasm and Mary and I watched
from the hotel room window. Like the early
homesteaders, we found a broad, level valley on the west side of the Yellowstone
River and an endless expanse of benchland above the open Indian and buffalo
prairie reaching far to the horizon. Across
the river were the badlands, rough with deep coulees, dotted with eroded and
barren sandstone, which changed color with the changing light.
The river’s shallow shoreline was green with native trees and
undergrowth. It was subject to
flooding and constantly cut new channels. The Lower
Yellowstone Irrigation Project had begun in 1907 and the first water was turned
into the ditches in 1909. The
canals ran for nearly 70 miles between McKenzie County, North Dakota and the
Intake dam southeast of Savage. Construction of the
project had caused a mild boom in the valley and land prices sky-rocketed.
Banks and other loan agencies had over-extended credit.
Production on the land, settled by inexperienced farmers, was not enough
to carry the debt load of project construction; there was a post-war depression
and drought on the benchlands. Jim
found that nearly half of the original settlers had lost their farms. One of the first
things he did was recruit North Dakota wheat farmers to rent the bank’s 12
farms on a crop-share basis. He
knows as much about irrigation farming as they did.
He had a Russian tenant on one of the farms. Jim would urge the fellow to open the ditches.
“Chim, I dink better I vait. Might
tomorrow, it vill rain,” was the usual response. Next, through a
cooperative effort, the valley residents obtained a new contract with the
Reclamation Service whereby the annual payments on construction charges were
based on percentage of the value of crop production, averaged out over the
years. Two schemes did not
work out when Jim tried to lure east side ranchers to Savage. He brought one of the up-river ferries the Marietta, to
Savage and attempted to make it operable with used parts. He started a pontoon bridge, which some other visionary had
tried in 1915. The river took them
both and the ranchers continued to cross on the ice in the winter or take their
trade elsewhere when the ice went out. There were dryland
bank farms above the ditch and Jim thought he could bring them under water with
a used steam engine and rotary pump. He
scrounged the countryside for engines, parts and pumps.
He supervised construction of the ditches.
It was not, according to Jim, much of a success. Undaunted, Jim
turned to electricity but that operation was not economically feasible either
because of the cost of power at that time. In 1949 he
represented Montana’s Governor John Bonner at the dedication of the Savage
Pumping Project, first of 26 planned for the Yellowstone.
He officially broke the ground and gave one of his finest speeches.
He traced the history of the valley and held a grand reunion with old
friends. He closed the speech
with a poem he had composed, probably in 1928, which Jim said had been written
for “a little girl to read in school.”
Well, as I remember, it was written as a foreword for the Savage High
School annual the year our friend, Alice Lauer Hart, was editor. Jim had worked on it at Grandmother Henderson’s desk on the
Sheridan County farm while the “little girl” carried glasses of “home
brew” from the kitchen to quench the Muse. “Oh, bountiful Valley of Plenty, Snuggled down between forest and hill, Your charms will attract me forever, Though my path may lead where it
will.” “I love each bend of the river, As it surges on down to the sea, The echoes ringing oe’r the water, Are calling and calling to me.” “The fields that lie along the
wayside, Are enriched with the gifts of the
soil. The labor’s that made it an Eden, Has reaped the reward of its toil.” “Now leaving the Yellowstone Valley, I’ll see no more the pathways I trod, Loved by the light-hearted children, Lit up by the smile of a God.” We had gone on to
Dooley to visit my grandmother following dedication of the Missouri River bridge
(completed in 1934) near Culbertson. Jim
made the introductions and Senator Burton K. Wheeler (D-Montana) was one of the
speakers. (That must have been a
fine, loud oratorical competition!) All I remember of
the ceremony was that we showed credentials at a locked gate, crossed the bridge
on a scary one-way route with loose planks and the Fort Peck Indians were in
full regalia. We ate our picnic
lunch in the shade of cottonwood trees on the river bank; I had too much warm
cherry pop and was car sick; sticky raspberry candies on the car seat stained a
fancy new suit Mother had made for Mary’s return to the university. Jim had a powerful
and dramatic voice, which he played like a musical instrument.
He was a popular speaker in the valley and was for many years announcer
at the Richmond County Fair in Sidney. He
could be heard clearly in the last rows of the grandstand even before the public
address system was installed. He
delighted in introducing politicians and special guests, never failing to find
just the most flattering, humorous, personal reference. His formal speeches
were well-written, occasionally a bit flowery and old-fashioned in presentation,
always tempered with his quicksilver Irish wit. His political campaign style was more relaxed and he was a
master at warming up an audience for the main speaker. I can still hear his
strong rich voice rolling through the Holly Sugar Co. factory warehouse in
Sidney when he spoke at the dedication in 1925.
I can also hear that one sharp word that carried a child out of her chair
and to the kitchen at dishwashing time! Jim did not like
conducting foreclosure sales during the Savage years, but he did them well.
(The Sidney Herald observed in a 1956 interview that Jim could “hang
out his auctioneering shingle anywhere and make a go of it.”)
He was not trained in the current rapid-fire style.
He joked and visited with the audience and greeted his friends as they
arrived. He needed space in which
to pace. He had a retentive mind
and a quick eye. He wheedled.
He instinctively knew when to stop the bidding. In fact, Jim was so
good at selling that he often sold himself.
He came home one bitterly cold day with a full-length buffalo coat and
matching gauntlets. We knew it was
buffalo because it had been improperly “cured” and the dark hump hair was
intact. He brought Mother a broken
cream separator with repair parts but she had no cow.
Jim then bought a cow. Bud
named her “Azuba” for a classmate and he and Mother were in the dairy
business. Jim usually
succumbed to some sad little household item in an attempt to ease the farm
wife’s anguish. He bought Mason
jars—how he dragged home Mason Jars! Of course, Mother
needed them to preserve the produce country friends brought in to “Chim.”
(What do you do with two grain sacks of cantaloupe, all ripening at once? It might have been
on the 1928 trip to Dooley when Jim found a litter of freshly weaned pigs for
one of the bank farms. My uncles
built a cage for the top of the Essex trunk and we started home. Rain stopped us in Sidney and everyone but Bud and the pigs
stayed at Ball’s hotel. Bud slept
in the car at the Burleigh-Kinkaid Motor Co. garage to keep the babies company
and they cried all night. He sulked
home. My sister remembers
with much distaste the arrival of 17 live domestic ducks for which there was no
pen in our yard. Tender-hearted Jim
Brennan could never wring a little duck’s neck, nor yet use a hatchet.
Delegated to kill and clean were Grandmother Brennan, Mother, Bud, and
Mary. Grandmother
announced that hot paraffin was to be applied for the plucking and she set up an
assembly line in the basement. Duck
down sticks and spreads. What I
can’t recall is how we disposed of the carcasses.
Perhaps Jim brought company home for dinner because he knew there would
be plenty to eat? Years later I
complained to Mother about the “nifties” with which my husband was
cluttering the house following forays to antique shops and garage sales. She advised me, in her wisdom: “Don’t fuss, dear.
It could be women.” We recalled the
auctioneering days in Savage and wondered who was now enjoying the records, all
in Swedish, which she had found in the Victrola cabinet from one sale.
She fondly remembered that Jim then had started collecting Hanny Lauder
and John McCormack recordings for his musical Scotch-Irish wife. My legacy from those
early years in Savage was the companionship I shared with my father as we toured
the valley, first in the bank Ford and then in the heavy low-slung Essex.
We bounced down gravel roads, in and out of farm yards and out to fields,
through small towns to call on merchants or proprietors of “blind pigs” (Jim
knew them all), across wild pasture to count a herd of grazing horses. I learned geography,
geology, history, mathematics, and literature.
Jim knew the words of countless Irish ballads (it was Mother who knew the
right key). I learned human nature,
I hope. Everything Jim saw reminded
him of something he had learned before. Everyone
he met was a friend. Each
experience was to be relished and remembered. One reason I spent
so much time with my father was because Mother was so active in the community.
St. Michael’s Catholic Church across the street from our house was a
mission of Sacred Heart parish in Glendive, and it was Mother who fed the Pastor
and his ferocious dogs. It was Mary and Patricia who helped her clean the church.
It was Bud one November 1, who was instructed to remove an antique car
from the church roof. (“Some
smart bozos figured out how to get it up there last night.
You and your friends can get it down, Bucko!”) Mother taught
catechism class. She was clerk of
the school board and champion of apprehensive young teachers. She was president of the Home Demonstration Club and helped
to organize 4-H clubs and a Girl Scout troop.
Jim deeded a piece of land to her along the river near Burns and “Camp
Margaret” was born. She helped
establish a swimming pool with muddy water diverted from the main irrigation
canal. She was secretary of the
Savage Community booth at the county fair. Mary was a member of
the first graduating class of Savage High School and then went off to the
University of Montana at Missoula. She
pledged Tri Delta and her freshman roommate recalls she eventually became
president of nearly every campus organization.
She graduated with honors. Bud was the budding
entrepreneur. He paid me cash (a
quarter a month) for helping to deliver Azuba’s milk from the Ford truck he
drove with such abandon. The cow
earned a Hershey bar if she would walk up the boardwalk steps to Emil
Nietschke’s beer parlor-barber shop. Bud
hauled grain one season and nearly died from asthma.
He sold popcorn at the movie house while Minnie Anderson pounded out
stirring accompaniments to the silent films.
Jim finally acquired an interpreter for the Mexican beet workers when Bud
studied Spanish in high school. He
was known as “Skeeter” and he pole-vaulted in a sweat suit and a black derby
hat. The farmers and
townspeople hung on in those years, helping each other.
Jim negotiated a contract with Gedney Pickling Co. of Minneapolis in an
attempt to add more cash crops. Savage
housewives worked at the cucumber sorting tables; Mary was bookkeeper.
We swam in the washing vats. Jim
brought in a carload of lambs to be fattened for market.
It was 1927, the year of the May 12 snowstorm when drifts reached our
garage eaves. One sick “bum”
lamb was brought home to our ice house; then moved to the kitchen for bootleg
whisky and hot packs; finally to the basement, where it died in the coal room. The Sidney Chamber
of Commerce approached the Holly Sugar Co. in 1924 about building a processing
plant, as the few sugar beets grown in the valley were being shipped to Hardin
or Billings. The company agreed to
build if 10,000 acres could be committed to beets. They gave Sidney and the surrounding communities four days in
which to contract acreage. Teams worked day and
night up and down the valley and came to a banquet at the Albert Hotel in
Fairview on Saturday night with more than the required acres contracted.
The Company representative congratulated them, but warned there might be
no factory if the Democrats won the next election. Jim said in his 1949
Savage speech that those present were amused by the warning, as there was only
one team, “Bud Meisenbach and one other who could positively be identified as
Democratic.” It was the visionary
Jim Brennan who predicted at the factory dedication at the Yellowstone Valley
would become a center for livestock feeding.
(Jim preferred the term “long-headed” to “visionary.”) The sugar company
soon needed more beets to keep the plant running efficiently, and the valley
needed more and better irrigation farmers. Jim gave credit to
John W. Haw, director of agricultural development for the Northern Pacific
Railway, for fostering the concept of the Lower Yellowstone Development
Association. It was organized in
1927 with the avowed purpose of bringing into production those farms that had
been abandoned, to commit more land to irrigation, and to improve the farming
practices of the project. H.E. (Bud)
Meisenbach, Sidney realtor and insurance agent, was secretary.
F.L. Cooper, later a sugar company field man, was the first outside
representative. Cooperating in the Association were the Northern Pacific and
Great Northern Railways, the Holly Sugar Co., the Reclamation Bureau and
enthusiastic valley businessmen. The
sugar company pointed out that the beet industry was well established in
Colorado; that experienced farmers could be found there; that Montana’s low
land prices would be attractive. Jim replaced Mr.
Cooper in 1928, traded the Essex for a four-door Buick and began the most
satisfactory–and productive–time of his life.
The Association paid him $200 a month and expenses. Between 1928 and
1931 Jim drove nearly 50,000 miles a year, sometimes making weekly trips.
He colonized nearly 100 families in those years, settling them all along
the project. Only two did not make
it. “They
all got rich, but I didn’t,” Jim said in a 1960 interview. The “Brennan”
flair was evident when the buyers brought their families to Montana in caravans,
56 persons on one trip and 52 on another, flags flying from their cars.
Jim was interviewed in Hardin on one of those trips and he pointed out
that both the little and Big Horn valleys could enjoy the same colonization and
he would like to do the job “if some other agent doesn’t beat me to it.” Jim revealed in his
Savage speech that he was not popular with the merchants and bankers of the
Brush, Colorado area. He
“scouted” before he approached a farmer, avoiding those whose place had a
slipshod appearance. Those who came
to Montana soon taught good irrigation practices to the early settlers;
livestock feeding became an important adjunct to the beet crop, and the valley
was a center for championship seed corn and purebred livestock. In
time to come, the Yellowstone truly was Jim’s “Bountiful Valley of
Plenty.” Jim went back to
Sidney for the Golden Jubilee of the Lower Yellowstone Project (about 1951),
gathered his ex-Colorado friends for a banquet and organized a section in the
parade. I accompanied my
father on one of his Colorado trips in June, 1929 while Mother was in Missoula
for Mary’s graduation from the University.
Ira Hagler, one of Jim’s prospects, was returning to Brush with us.
It was the rainy season. Near KayCee, Wyoming
we were stopped by a flash flood in a dry wash.
Cars were lining up on both sides. Jim
recalled the Buick salesman had demonstrated that the running engine would not
stall when water was poured over it. He
boldly drove into the water and we sat there until someone came along with a
cable long enough to pull us out. We
spent that night in crowded KayCee, drawing a room in a house with a chemical
toilet on the porch. I disappeared
after breakfast and returned with a sack of groceries.
Ira never forgot that I was not about to miss another meal. Jim’s expense
account shows, in my writing, that the Buick’s tires were wearing thin and it
was eating oil. The final notation
is in his handwriting. We arrived
in Savage June 13 and the next day he reported to Mr. Meisenbach in Sidney.
Supper that night was 50 cents in Savage “Wife away from home.”
He started out again on June 15 and the speedometer read 34,538 miles. Mother’s part in
the colonization venture was to stay home and care for the house and family and
to feed the farmers when Jim brought them to Savage. He had this superstition of long standing that no deal would
succeed unless she fed the customer a good dinner. Once she planned for six and 26 appeared.
Some stayed with us, including a wife and children who spoke no English. Grandmother Brennan
died in Bismarck in April 1929, and Jim was in Colorado. He met Mother in Bismarck and Grandma was buried in St.
Thomas on April 17. Joanna Brannick
Brennan was born in Ontario in 1840, I believe, to Canis and Bridget DeWier
Brannick (lovely old Irish names!). Their
farm was named Karnock-on-the-Rideau, according to her obituary.
Her name is spelled “Johanna Brannick” on the certificate of her
marriage; Jim’s baptismal certificate shows “Branick,” and a typed copy of
her will is signed “Joanna.” She and Grandfather
were married January 21, 1864 at Holy Cross church in Kemptville, a town very
near Merrickville. Edward was the son
of Patrick and Margret Mally Brennan, and also born in Ontario. Like the Brannicks, his parents were natives of Ireland.
He died in St. Thomas in 1907 at the age of 68.
I know nothing about him and I have often wondered which facets of
Jim’s personality came from his father. After his death,
Grandmother made her home in St. Thomas with Amelia or in Bismarck with Florence
and made long visits to us at different seasons of the year. She comments in a letter to Amelia about a George Washington
birthday celebration when I chided the teacher for omitting the pledge to the
flag. There is a picture of her
holding a bouquet of Mother’s flowers. Another,
in which Florence posed her a la “Whistler’s Mother” without cap, showed
off her best black silk dress. I
was in awe of her. Joanna stood slender
and tall and was fastidious in her dress. She
wore mourning for her family as long as I knew her. Her knee-length drawers and full-length petticoats were
fashioned of fine white fabric and trimmed with hand-made lace. She had heavy long brown hair, slow to gray. Grandma never used
nicknames, except for Jim. Children
were to be seen and not heard, especially at the table.
She was fiercely religious and prayer was constant.
She had stoically accepted God’s will in the decimation of her family.
Mother remarked she always arrived at our house with a funeral shroud,
which she had made. Hers was the
first scapular medal I ever saw. Indomitable seems a
good word for Joanna. Cousin Elaine
Baldwin Derby recalls walking to Mass with her, prayer books in hand, looking
neither left nor right. A fastener
on Grandma’s drawers failed and without missing a step she shuffled to a
secluded area between two buildings, stepped out of the offending drawers,
stuffed them into her muff, circled back to the sidewalk.
They proceeded to church without comment. She undertook to
teach the household arts to the family tomboy and presented me with a tatting
shuttle. She chose a white layer
cake as my introduction to baking. She,
Mother, and Mary all added the baking powder.
I started again. I know now the steel
in Joanna had been forged by tragedy and I regret I had not been closer to her. Mother’s
grandparents had also fled the old country during the “bad” times. Her
parents could never afford higher education for their children but they gave
them a warm family life and the will to survive.
There was music and laughter in their home. Margaret Belle
Henderson was born April 8, 1883 at Pine City, Minnesota, the daughter of Thomas
A. and Sarah Bergan Henderson. She
was one of eleven children and one of the seven who survived their parents. Her father was born
December 15, 1840 near Glasgow, Scotland, the son of John and Mary Anne
Henderson. He was one of six
children. The family moved to
Charlo Station, New Brunswick, Canada when Grandpa was about two years of age. He sailed “around
the Horn” to California as a young man of 20, then worked his way across the
country to Stillwater, Minnesota, where there were friends and relations from
the province. There he met Sarah
Bergan, a young Irish girl with sharp dark eyes and curly black hair.
They were married in Duluth, Minnesota in 1872. My grandmother was
born February 14, 1853 at Dalhausie, New Brunswick, the daughter of Mathew and
Mary Ann Burke Bergan who were natives of Ireland.
(Mother’s memory placed Dalhausie near Fredericton, the provincial
capital, but the map shows it is far to the north on Chaleur Bay.
Unfortunately, all of the Henderson records were lost on the Montana
homestead.) The Bergans
immigrated to the United States when Grandma was seven years old. The story of that migration follows in Mother’s own words: “Before they left
Canada, her father had sold all the property he owned.
He placed the proceeds, all in gold, in a money belt around his waist.” “A man who had
worked for them in Canada showed up on the boat after they were on their way.
They had no knowledge of his having decided to travel with them.” “After they
arrived by boat in New York, the father and this man went out to arrange
transportation to their destination in Minnesota.
The family remained on the wharf where they had landed. Neither the father nor the other man, were heard from
after.” “The mother and
all the children were stranded there. They
think the father met with foul play. The
boat companies (sic) and the railroad arranged for transportation of the mother
and the 8 small children to Stillwater, Minnesota.
My grandfather’s two nephews met them at Stillwater and assisted them
in getting started housekeeping. Some
way they grew up and each went to work as soon as he was old enough to help out.
They never heard of their father again.” One of those nephews
was Will Bergan, who kept in close touch with Sarah and her family.
A letter he wrote to Mother from California in 1935 closed with, “I
know it will please you that I don’t forget your Mother in my prayers, and at
Easter I prayed for all of you.” Grandmother’s
sister, Mary, was Sister Mary Bernadine, a member of the “Brown Franciscan”
order who became a noted builder of hospitals, convents, and girls’ academies
in Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, and Arkansas.
Mother said Sister had knocked on the convent door at 16 years of age and
told the Mother Superior she would work hard to stay there. Aunt Mamie and
another daughter were born in Duluth and then the family moved to Pine City,
where they lived for 35 years. (I
have no recollection of ever visiting Pine City, north of Minneapolis and close
to the Wisconsin border.) Grandpa
was a surveyor for lumber companies and Grandma a practical nurse and mid-wife.
They, too, had their tragedies. Sophia drowned at
the age of three; Sarah died at three of a brain tumor.
John and Alexander (Sandy) would have been in their early teens when
Grandpa took them on business to Hinckley, a few miles north.
They were trapped in the woods during the great fire of 1894 and the boys
suffocated. Aunt Mamie was
married to “Doc” Jesmer (a veterinarian) in 1893 and later moved to Antler.
Mother followed her in 1906. Tom
stayed in Pine City; Bill was in Duluth, and the three bachelor sons who
accompanied their parents to Montana in 1908 or 1909 were Orin, Leonard and
Allen. Grandpa was in his 60s and
crippled from a timber accident. They filed on a
claim in the neither far nor eastern corner of Sheridan County about 25 miles
from Plentywood, the county seat. Their
land ran to the Canadian border. Jim
said Grandpa bought a mean old white horse to help move their equipment and the
language used to control the animal was “beautiful”. Uncle Orin drove a team of oxen from the railhead at Crosby,
North Dakota, with lumber for their shack, which they built high on a hill.
They dug a well at the bottom of the hill.
They saw the founding of Dooley, their supply town, when the Soo Railroad
built a branch west to Whitetail. My grandfather was
an old man when I knew him, fun to be with.
He was entertaining and spirited. They
had an old Victrola and he pounded his cane to the tempo of the music.
He taught me the Highland fling, using his dress canes as swords crossed
on the floor. My feet had to be as
light as “heather on the hill.” Orin had left the
farm for World War I action and stayed in the service.
Len and Al were running the farm the summer I was sent there for an
extended stay. Grandma had her
chickens and turkeys; Grandpa supervised everyone.
That was a long season of losing at Casino beside the Coleman lamp, which
hissed like Grandpa as he counted the score. I contracted to herd
turkeys for the price of a pair of red sandals I had seen in Hans Stenseth’s
store in Dooley. Breakfast was
oatmeal porridge with heavy cream and brown sugar and toasted homemade bread.
Grandpa and I would then let the turkeys out and head for the wheat field
west of the house. Our rest stop was a small pond (buffalo wallow) where there
was a family of ducks. The wheat
was turning yellow, the sky was clear of clouds, and we could see for many
miles, both sides of the border planted to grain and only three houses in sight. Tilling that high
prairie was hard work. The plow
turned up heavy rocks, which my uncles cleared from the fields and piled in each
corner. They used a crude horse
drawn sled to carry the rocks and I was allowed to ride on it. Len was the slender
one with dark hair, sensitive, and kind-hearted.
He was musical and self-educated. Al
was the brawny one, the baby of the family, and slightly spoiled.
He had a young man’s loud impatience and a raucous sense of humor when
I knew him. They
worked hard through “boom and bust” and “bust” again under isolated,
primitive conditions. They were in a hail
belt and if the drought did not take the wheat, the grasshoppers or hail would.
I walked with Len one day after hail had flattened an entire field of his
spry step was slow that day. Harvest,
if they had one, was a community affair. Church services were
few and far between in that sparsely populated area where gophers outnumbered
people by the thousands. Father
Wilhelm rode in one day on his shaggy pony, “Barney”, and said Mass at a
homestead across the line. I was
alone in the yard and when he strode up in his purple habit and sandals, his
long white beard flowing, I thought he was at least an Apostle, if not God. He celebrated Mass at a sewing machine covered with a white
cloth. Another time, Grandma took
me into Dooley for Mass. It was in
the schoolhouse and the ladies laid paper on the oiled floor for kneeling.
The teacher’s desk was the altar. My grandfather died
at the farm on July 20, 1925 and we went to the funeral. The services were in the farmhouse and he was buried in the
Dooley cemetery. He had joined the
Catholic Church on his deathbed. My fiercely
independent, free-thinking grandfather who had taught his children their
catechism and finally succumbed to his wife’s daily prayers. Len and Al married
and began their families, but the drought and depression finally defeated them
and they left the home place, Len to the timber country of Oregon and Al to the
shipyards in Seattle. Grandmother died at
out home in Sidney on July 20, 1933 and we took her back to Dooley and that
barren cemetery on the edge of town. My memories of Aunt
Mamie are from around the dining room table in Savage.
She would appear after homework, dishpan of popcorn in hand, and primed
for a game of Whist. She was
“feisty” like her father, and preferred to win.
There would be much banter and slapping down of cards.
She hummed old tunes as she planned strategy. She was rheumatic,
diabetic, and heavy. She wore
elaborate hats of her own creation perched on a mound of crisp, pure white hair.
She used Mrs. Stewart’s bluing to prevent if from yellowing. She worked as a cook
at the Savory Hotel in Antler after her husband’s death. Her son, Frank, had enlisted in World War I and stayed in the
service. Another son, Fritz, had
been dragged to death by a horse in his early teens. The hotel work was
difficult and took its toll of her health.
She came to us when she was disabled.
She was a great storyteller when she was well. Aunt Mamie married
Gus Schiller in 1930, a widower and United States Custom officer, in Antler.
He was a good German Catholic and good to Mamie.
He died in 1935. Aunt Mamie moved to
Helena in 1942 after my parents had sold their home and Jim was working with the
Montana Employment Service. He soon
set her up in her own apartment as he found her constant “big sister”
attitude oppressive. She never lost
her love for a good fight and I often indulged her when Mother resisted.
It kept the circulation going. She died December 8,
1954 at the age of 80 and Mother did not fail to note it was the Blessed
Mother’s feast day. She is buried
in Westhope, North Dakota. “Maggie”
certainly was Sarah’s daughter, sensitive yet practical, loving and
charitable, a good housewife. Their
humor was “pithy” and displayed at surprising moments.
Each was a match for her volatile, charming man. Mother learned from
Grandma that food, clothing, and money were to be shared. Jim always said our house was marked by the legendary gypsy
“X” as the best place in town for a handout. One drifter, a good
worker and raconteur, showed up in the fall at out Sidney house and spent the
winter in the basement. Mother
outfitted him as best she could when he decided to hit the road in the spring.
He stopped by the Earl Varco house on his way out of town and asked for a
suit jacket. When Mrs. Varco
brought one of Earl’s to the door, he remarked it didn’t match Jim
Brennan’s trousers very well, but he would take it.
He was “Mrs. Brennan’s bum” from them on. (If Jim Brennan was
the kind to give a stranger the “shirt off his back”, then Maggie would have
it freshly starched and ironed.) Mother liked flowers
and her artistry was displayed in the Savage and Sidney gardens where there was
ample water. Grandmother struggled
with a garden on the homestead. Mother
liked to set a pretty table and the Big Four and One More, my Savage social
club, learned to decorate with a theme. Grandmother
always kept a neatly ironed white cloth in the closet for the priest’s visit. Christmas was
special in our home, as it had been in Sarah’s.
For weeks our kitchen and dining room would be smothered in preparations.
Mary and I agree that Mother made the best fondant ever.
Every neighbor received a plate of cookies and candy.
(There was always extra for the bachelors and children.
Jim would remember at the last minute.)
There would be a candle in the window to “light the Christ Child’s
way”. Mother immediately
became involved in the community when we moved to Sidney in 1932.
She was president of the Woman’s Club and helped to start the school
hot lunch program. She was
president of the District Council of Catholic Women.
She volunteered to conduct a study program for young converts when Bishop
Edwin V. O’Hara started the Lay Apostolate program in the Great Falls Diocese.
She served up her faith with luscious desserts and gained lifelong
friends. Bud returned from
driving Mother to a Council meeting at a rural parish and immediately rewrote
his Baltimore catechism: “Who
made the World? Bishop O’Hara.” Mother reproved him gently. The Henderson’s
all loved music. Mother and Mamie
recalled every song from their childhood and the boys knew uproarious ballads.
Mother sang hymns to the Blessed Mother as she worked around the house
and she carried her rosary in an apron pocket. The Henderson girls
were good seamstresses and Mamie’s millinery creations were often spectacular.
Mother fashioned delightful ensembles for Mary during her college years.
The dress form stood in a corner of the dining room and Bud practiced new
dance steps with it. Needy Savage
babies were given full layettes; cunning outfits were designed for her
granddaughters. Mother was not above
her small “irreverencies,” as Jim would have said.
I attended an extended ordination ceremony in Iowa with her and when the
celebrant intoned “Ite, Missa est,” Mother turned to me with a wink and
responded heartily, “Deo gratias!” Jim obtained a job
with the Chicago Joint Bank Stock Corporation in 1931 when his work was finished
with the Lower Yellowstone Development Association.
We moved to Atlantic, Iowa, his headquarters for collecting outstanding
notes. It was the loneliest year of
my life—so lonely I received excellent grades and a letter of commendation
from the principal. It was the depth of
the Depression and even Jim’s charm and wile could not pry much money from the
Iowa farmers, whom he found to be in better circumstances than many of his
Valley friends. It was
disheartening. He gave up in less
than a year. Mary had accepted a
teaching position with Sidney High School; Bud was with the Montana Highway
Department in Glendive. We moved to
Sidney and rented a house large enough for roomers. Jim finally found a
job selling cars for Kreis Motors. He
set up an auction yard in a vacant lot and I was his clerk.
I hated it. Defeated farmers
brought in sad machinery and stood stolidly while Jim tried to squeeze a dollar
out of someone. We would drag home,
dusty and depressed, and even Jim’s spirits were noticeably dampened. Somehow the family
found enough money to send me to the University of Montana, where I kept a
scholarship for a year. I could
even join my sister’s sorority. I
wanted to study journalism and it was one of the few times that I dared to defy
my father. Journalism was hardly a
“lady’s occupation,” as his experience had been limited to hard-drinking,
tobacco-chewing publishers of small town weeklies (well, not Charlie Hurley of
the Sidney Herald who gave me my firs job!) My parents were
ardent life-long Democrats, usually registered in a Republican county.
They were activists. Jim
campaigned; Mother canvassed the block.
She formed Democratic Women’s Clubs; Jim charmed the ladies.
Campaigns were heady times. Jim had been a
popular mayor in Antler, so his defeat in a run for sheriff of Bottineau County
was a bitter disappointment. His
Icelandic farm friends in eastern Bottineau County had been convinced they
should not vote for a Roman Catholic. Jim
was so frustrated he banked the whole house for winter by himself. I can imagine the angry recitation of each traitor’s name
as each furious shovel of dirt his the foundation! My first awareness
of Jim’s interest in politics was when a large colored photograph of Alfred E.
Smith appeared in the Savage bank lobby. I
knew nothing of the Happy Warrior, except that he was Catholic, and looked just
like my Papa. I admired the generous nose and ears, the light intelligent eyes,
the high brow. Bud always said it
was “God, the Pope, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt” in Mother’s book.
My parents hailed President Roosevelt’s New Deal with cheers and
defended him to the bitter end. They knew from first-hand experience that drastic measures
were needed to change the economy. Jim had found that
he alone could not find a job for every down-and-outer he met on the street.
There was a limit to the mortgage paper he could slip into his hip pocket
as he paid the interest out of his own billfold.
The staples in Mother’s cupboard could not possibly cover the needs of
every hungry family they knew. They campaigned
faithfully for FDR in every election and Mother kept the letters of appreciation
they both received from the National Democratic Committee and Roosevelt campaign
headquarters. Jim was a “Minute
Man” in the last campaign and Mother grieved as if for kin when President
Roosevelt died. Jim ran for the
Montana House of Representatives from Richland County in 1934, the same year
Mary’s beau, Kenneth H. Harstad, filed on the Republican ticket for
Superintendent of Schools in Dawson County.
Mary and Jim crossed county lines to campaign.
Ken was defeated. Jim won over David
J. Lewis of Sioux Pass, a three-term Republican. Democratic Alfred Anderson of Sioux Pass, my summer boss at
the Soil Conservation Service, defeated the venerable W.A. Kemmis of Sidney for
the Senate. The Democrats had a
strong majority in the house that Twenty-Fourth Assembly and Jim was soon
aligned with a progressive farm-labor coalition.
Among the familiar faces in the chambers was that of Senator William B.
Hennessy (D-Pondera), one of the Pembina County boys and a brother of Leo and
Tom. Committee
assignments reflected Jim’s interest: Counties
and townships; irrigation and water rights (handling projects like the one at
Savage); highways (Jim was interested in building a road to Circle by way of
Lambert and Richey); banks and banking (“Because I was such an outstanding
success as a banker, I guess”); fairs and expositions; public morals and
reform (vice chairman). He wrote Mother that
he had not as yet obtained a job for a friend, but the chairman of the
employment committee assured him he would place him.
(Snyder Olson got the job.) Jim introduced a
bill in February that would have created the Bank of Montana, similar to the
institution created by the Nonpartisan League in North Dakota.
It did not find whole-hearted favor by any means. Helena’s
earthquake struck in 1935 and I was concerned about my father when the tremors
were felt in Missoula where I was attending the university.
He called late that night from Great Falls to assure me that “urgent
business” there had spirited him to safety by bus. (“Agile” describes Jim Brennan.) He enjoyed the
camaraderie on the House floor. When
Carl A. Ahlgreen of Lake County presented a resolution that the Polson Dam be
completed, Jim remarked that Lake County hoped to get a “dam by a power site,
but still hasn’t any power by a dam site.” Jerry J. O’Connell
of Butte, a Democrat, had represented Silver Bow county in the House in 1931 and
1933, won a spirited campaign for the two-year term on the Montana Railroad
Commission in 1934. At issue were
utility and carrier rates. Mr.
O’Connell recommended Jim as an auditor for the Commission after the 1935
session, stating, “Eastern Montana deserves recognition and Brennan has a fine
record of fighting for the common welfare of the state.”
Jim was back on the road—for a time. Governor Frank A.
Cooney died in December 1935 and the President Pro Tem of the Senate, W. Elmer
Holt (D-Custer), succeeded him. Lieutenant-Governor
Cooney had become Governor when John E. Erickson resigned in 1933 to take the
United States Senate seat of the late Thomas J. Walsh. Running against
Governor Holt in the 1936 Democratic primary, were Roy E. Ayers, H.L. Maury, and
Miles Romney. Mr. O’Connell was
running for the United States Congress in the First District. Mr. Ayers and Jerry won both the primary and general
elections. The
state board of examiners (composed of Governor Holt, Secretary of State Sam C.
Mitchell, and Attorney General Raymond Nagle, all Democrats) passed a resolution
in August 1936 stating they would no longer approve salary claims of
“legislators or candidates for seats in the legislature who are holding state
jobs.” They also would refuse to
approve employment of legislators or candidates for seats by any “state
department, board, commission, or institution.”
Jim was out of a job! Jim
served a second term in the legislature and his committee assignments in 1937
were an interesting mixture: banks and banking; House employment (chairman);
equal suffrage; fairs and expositions (vice chairman); insurance; and public
safety. It
was as a member of the latter that Jim introduced the bill creating the Montana
Highway Patrol and licensing of drivers. Montana
residents past a specific age with a clean driving record were exempt from
taking the test. Young men whom Jim knew
soon wore Highway Patrol uniforms. Jim
was in his 70s when he was involved in a minor traffic accident in downtown
Helena. The investigating officer discovered Jim had never taken a
driver’s test. He flunked. He
sheepishly admitted later that in the temper tantrum that followed, he had
roared, “You Pontius Pilate, you! I
created your job!” He
hired a driver to take him to Great Falls, where he passed the test.
(One of the eastern Montana “boys” happened to be regional officer
there.) Jim
gave a stirring tribute to the “mother of my children” while addressing
equal suffrage. He knew mother was
in the balcony, conducting her usual poll of “yeas and noes” before they
were registered. He supported the
Greater University appropriations bill in 1937 when the University of Montana
students flooded the capital corridors in a lobbying effort.
Jim pointed out that each Montana family would pay no more than 25 cents
in additional taxes to support the system.
Mary and I were mentioned as two reasons that he would. Jim
joined two former Republican legislators, Senators Ray L. Carroll of Roundup and
Representative B. J. Garrison of Reichle, after the 1937 session in the State
Insurance League to lobby for new laws regulating insurance companies in
Montana. Jim
served as Chief Clerk of the House in 1939 when the Helena Independent-Record
recognized the former legislator as being “prominently identified with
legislation on topics of interest to farmers.”
(He was Chief Clerk again in 1941 and Sergeant-at-Arms in 1959 or1961.) It was not by chance
that my parents became dedicated Democrats.
Tom
Henderson gave his daughter his political philosophy: “The greatest good for
the greatest number.” Politics in
Minnesota were often fragmented, with business interests, farm-labor groups,
Populists, Socialists, Democrats, and Republicans competing for power as the
population increased. Minneapolis
and St. Paul had long been powerful financial centers for western expansion,
controlling credit on the prairies. The
immigrants who poured into the state, eager for the rich farmland, were
unaccustomed to American business practices and politics.
They took their voting privileges seriously and were courted by all
groups. Grandpa
was an avid reader and preferred the more liberal tracts and newspapers, such as
Plentywood’s “Producers News.” Arthur
Townley’s Nonpartisan League ran hot and heavy in Sheridan County as it did in
North Dakota and Minnesota. Grandpa
quoted political jabs with great glee. Rebel
through he might have been, he was disciplined by hard work and hard times. He felt free to criticize and vote as he wished.
His pleasures were simple—a rousing political discussion, an occasional
glass of homebrew or a sip of good whiskey, a game of cards, and music. |
