Linda Erickson, Brown’s Gulch History

Oral History Recording of Linda Erickson

Interviewers: Aubrey Jaap & Clark Grant
Interview Date: November 8th, 2019
Location: Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives
Transcribed: October 2022 by Adrian Kien

[CHATTER & SETUP]

[00:03:09]

Jaap: So it's November 8th, 2019. We're here with Linda Erickson. Linda, I would like you to start, I guess, by talking about how your family got to America and specifically how they came to be in Montana.

Erickson: Well, my great-grandfather was in the Army and he didn't like, I understood, the czar, but now I think it could have been Kaiser Wilhelm. And he went AWOL and was supposed to have swam a river and probably, I think, went back to Leipzig. So then they decided he had a job waiting in Glendive on a sheep ranch, and if he could get there, he had the job. So I think in about 1906, he came to Glendive. And from what I understand, the ships sailed out of Hamburg. And so that's what I know. And then in 1908, she came with an eight year old and an eight month old and they sailed on the President Grant out of Hamburg. And she came by herself to Ellis Island. And how she got to Glendive, I suppose, by the train. But I wonder how she ever with two kids made the connections.

Jaap: Yeah, you don't often think about, you know, you think of them coming to America, but sometimes you don't think of them getting from the east coast to Montana. Because that's such a journey in itself.

Erickson: Yeah. And I don't know when the railroads might have went into that area, you know. So they stayed in Glendive and then they must have decided to come to Butte. I know she did talk about, and I'm sure the cabin or whatever they lived in wasn't very well built because one time she lifted the lid off the sewing machine and there was a rattlesnake curled up in the sewing machine.

Jaap: Oh my gosh.

Erickson: And there were rattlesnakes, they had to watch the kids because there were rattlesnakes out around. And then I think they came to Butte.

Jaap: Do you know about what year that might have been?

Erickson: Well you know, 1910, 1911. They lived in the Dowland apartments and they went to St. Mark's Lutheran church and he worked at a quarry at the Nine Mile. So I'm thinking that they might have been quarrying granite for some of these buildings. I think he worked his mines a little bit, but he didn't like that.

Jaap: Did he say why?

Erickson: I don't know. But I was saying that I think that they homesteaded the property maybe 1912 and moved out to German Gulch. And in my mind, when I'm listening to everybody talk, I think they moved out there because people did not like the Germans and that would've been in around 1917 with the Sedition Act. And I think from where they came from, because Leipzig was in east Berlin that they wanted to get away and live a quieter life. So he homesteaded and moved up to German Gulch.

Jaap: Did they ever talk about it? Was anything ever said to them or was it maybe just a general feeling of the time?

Erickson: I think it was a feeling because the Lubick's were here and they said that their parents took them 15 miles up a creek out of Helmville. And they lived a quieter life, but a lot of them didn't want talk about it. My grandfather  said, "We will speak no more German. We are Americans now." So they didn't carry on the language. They might have spoke to each other.

[00:07:48]

Jaap: At home, but not, not. Yeah.

Erickson: And their daughter had a really hard time in school because she was eight years old and she only knew German. So she had a very hard time in school. Kids teased her and their daughter that would've been.

Jaap: So what did they do up in German Gulch then?

Erickson: Well, in German Gulch they had what would be in your yard? I don't know how I know how big it was, because that's where I lived, but they raised potatoes, turnips, rutabaga, carrots, and they brought them in and sold them to Safeway and also friends would come out. Can you imagine, because it was horse and wagon, and I don't believe there was that many little cars, but they would come out to German Gulch and they would buy vegetables from them. They had chickens, turkeys, cows for milk and beef. And then my grandfather hunted and they ate a lot of deer and elk and she canned it. So they were, you know, living a subsistence life.

Jaap: And was it just the family that ran the farm and everything?

Erickson: Just him and her. And my grandmother, when they moved out there was 13. So I could figure out because if they came, when she was eight and she was 13, when they moved out there, it would've been about 1908 when they came to America. So that would've been 11, 12, 13, when they moved out there and that was all the schooling their daughter got.

Jaap: Just those five years.

Erickson: And she would go and gather the cows at night and bring them in to be milked and they grew their own hay and that's how they lived.

Jaap: Did they just have the daughter?

Erickson: They had the son. There was like I say, eight years difference between the daughter and the son. And he rode his horse to, I don't know how to explain it to you, it'd be about three miles west of Ramsey. There was a section of land that was set aside for a school and it was the Dawson schoolhouse. So he rode probably two miles to the Dawson school to go to school by himself.

Jaap: And in the winter?

Erickson: In the winter. And the only transportation they had in the earlier years was the wagon and the team. And then I don't know if you want this story now, but their daughter and son-in-law was supposed to come to their house for Thanksgiving dinner, but they couldn't get the little old Model-T up there. So great grandma and grandpa hooked up the team to the sleigh and she put the turkey in the sleigh and they went down through what we call a section of ground down to their daughter's. And they had Thanksgiving dinner. It was tough. Snow was deep up German Gulch.

Jaap: How many families were out at German Gulch?

Erickson: Them and down the road was a fellow named, Leo and Annie Benz. And Leo Benz was a prize fighter.

Jaap: Okay. I was gonna say the name is very familiar.

Erickson: You've heard the name. And he was mean, he was really a mean man. He had these German shepherd dogs that he kept on chains. And like when grandma and grandpa would go by with the team of horses, they would, you know, lunge at their team. And they had a few difficulties over that. And one time Annie Benz walked up to when mom and dad and I were living there, walked up to mom's and he had pulled the braid right out of her head. He was an abuser too. So Leo Benz.

[00:12:19]

Jaap: I think that might be a different side of the story than you usually see in the papers.

Erickson: You see a really good story about what a prize. Yeah. I have the pictures, I think they're in here of him and the article from the paper of their neighbor. And then down the road a ways was Mr. Peterson and they raised, not the Petersons from Fairmont, but another Peterson and they raised sheep. So there really wasn't neighbors.

Jaap: And all these properties were I'm guessing kind of spread out?

Erickson: Well, kind of contiguous. You know, there was the property line. Because they were homestead.  What is it, 360 acres? Yeah.

Jaap: Did they go to town often at all?

Erickson: You know, I asked my aunt the other day. I said, well, you know, you moved my grandmother, her great-grandmother and her daughter out there. And what was the social life? I guess people came, like I said, when they could, how much they went to town, but it was an all day trip to bring the wagon and the team and come in to Butte for supplies.

Jaap: Would they stay in Butte then and then go back the next day?

Erickson: They did the all day trip. Yeah.

Jaap: You do wonder about the social life. If there's only a few families out there.

Erickson: Well, they talked about the two German Meeting halls, one on Main Street. And I don't know where they said the other one was, and then they had a singing group on the top of the Masonic temple, and I think, well, by moving out there, I don't think you ran to town to sing. So they were pretty, but her son had in later years, her son had eight children. And a lot of times when school was out her daughter's kids and her son's kids would all, I can't imagine, go stay with her. There was no running water, no indoor bathroom. No. You know, water had to be packed from the spring. And so there'd be, you know, 10, 12 kids staying with her.

Jaap: Oh my gosh. They must have worked all day and all night. I mean really with the such a small, really kind of a small family on that land, having to do all that labor.

Erickson: Yeah. Well, the kids, the grandkids would come and help, you know, and her son-in-law helped dig the potatoes.

Jaap: Do you still live out there?

Erickson: I do.  My grandfather had a runaway with the team and the mower. They thought that ground bees bit the horses.  And the team ran away. And I guess he was really beat up, black and blue and was in bed for, I don't know how long. And she was taking care of him and that was in the summer. And then in November he was gonna take turnips up the road to feed the cows and he didn't come back and she went looking for him and he had passed away. And so they thought back then maybe it was from a blood clot from how beat up he was. So he died in 1943 and she stayed out there till I believe 46 by herself with a car battery powered radio, hauled all of her water, her wood, and took care of her cows.

Jaap: And this was your grandmother?

Erickson: Great grandmother.

Jaap: For three years by herself.

Erickson: Yes.

Jaap: Strong woman.

Erickson: I know. And then she couldn't do it anymore. So my dad and his brother who would be her grandsons bought the place and she moved to Silver Bow homes and lived on, she didn't have a lot of money. She lived on old age pension, it was called back then. So I can imagine what she thought when she had running water, plumbing.

Jaap: It must have been quite the treat.

Erickson: Electricity. Because there was no electricity. So we didn't get electricity till 1954.

[00:17:07]

Jaap: That's fascinating.

Erickson: So my mom and dad for two years lived down at her daughter's. That would be my dad's mother in a cabin. And then when they bought the place, my dad and mom and I moved up to German Gulch and my uncle was in West Virginia. So my dad and mom took it over and improved it. And so that's why we're there.

Jaap: So were you born here in Butte then?

Erickson: I was born in Butte.

Jaap: What age were you when you moved out to German Gulch?

Erickson: Two. We moved from Miles Crossing up to German Gulch. So yeah, that's where their daughter married Miles from there.

Jaap: And so direct relation to . . .

Erickson: Yeah, we were just all out there. Yeah. So I was there till I got married and then, well, my parents got a divorce and so Jack and I took over the ranch and we're back there. We've been there now since 1976. So we took over in 1971.

Jaap: So, and then do you guys have children?

Erickson: Yes, we have three.

Jaap: Do you think they'll take it over?

Erickson: I don't know. Dave, our son, Dave lives just down the road from us. We gave him some land and he built a home. He owns Water, Environmental Technologies. And my daughter's in Beaverton, Oregon, and my son, Brian is in Juneau, Alaska, and we had another little girl that passed away at six months old.

Jaap: Oh, I'm sorry.

Erickson: So we had four children.

Jaap: Is it hard to think about your family being on that land for so long possibility of maybe your family not being on that land?

Erickson: Oh, it breaks my heart. Yeah, because it's a real treasure. It really is a treasure. It has a lot of fresh water springs. What my dad did is he had the place and then there was a fellow by the name of Carl Gillespie that ran the Leaky Roof at Nissler. Have you heard of the Leaky Roof Tavern?

Jaap: I don't know if I've heard of the Leaky Roof Tavern, but the name sounds familiar.

Erickson: Okay. So he had that and he bought Mr. Benz's place and then he also bought a section of land. And so then he wanted to sell all of that. And my dad and mom bought it and added it to the Fall place. So they had a bigger place and more place to grow hay. And, you know, more pasture for cattle and stuff. So yeah, that breaks my heart. Yeah. I don't know what they're gonna do with it. We have left the whole place to them and emphasized that we hope they would be able to get along and we have left them money to keep it going and hope that they would, that's what we ask them to do. Respect how long it's been in the family and treasure what a piece of property it is. What'll happen, I don't know.

[00:21:20]

Jaap: So you mentioned that you were wondering about the social life of your grandmother growing up there. So since you were so little, how was your social life growing up?

Erickson: Well, I was an only child and so I had two sets of grandparents and three great grandmothers. So I grew up with older people. And then I had two aunts who were seven and nine. So I was like their little doll baby. They thought I was the best thing.

Jaap: They just loved you all over.

Erickson: So I would see them, but then we had friends come and I went to Ramsay school. And we belonged to 4-H and I learned to drive when I was 11, so that I could drive down to the neighbors and catch the bus. Mom and dad would leave for work and I would get myself ready for school. And I could drive down by Stauffer chemical with some neighbors and I'd leave my Jeep there. And then I would catch the school bus.

Jaap: And then you'd take the school bus home and get back in your Jeep and go home?

Erickson: Yeah, that's really fun. And then if you were a farm kid, you could get your driver's license at 14. And so then I got my driver's license and I could drive myself  Butte High School.

Jaap: That must have been pretty great. Yeah. Being the only person that could probably drive to school.

Erickson: You know what? It was really great, but if you got stuck along the road, there were no cell phones and nobody to call to help you. You were just stuck. Stuck or walk. I was told do not take any rides from strangers. I wasn't supposed to ask for any help from anybody so I think I grew up a little bit on the independent side.

Jaap: So you went to Butte High School?

Erickson: Butte High School. Yeah.

Jaap: When did you graduate?

Erickson: 1961. So now we've got the class of 61 meets once a month at Christina's. Yeah, in our old age we've got a group together to do that. We've been doing it now about five years. So that's kind of fun.

Jaap: So what'd you do after you graduated?

Erickson: Well, I got married and my husband worked for the state of Montana and we got transferred to Townsend and then to Three Forks and then back to Butte. And then when the parents were divorced, we took over the ranch and we lived in town for five years and run back and forth, doing all the work and then decided we can't do this anymore. So our daughter was a senior in high school and the boys were five and seven or five and twelve. And so we decided to make the move and they went to Ramsay and she finished at Butte High. So we had cattle, 90 head of cattle, and that was our lifestyle, our hobby, our exercise. We really put our heart and soul into it because we had some debts of my parents to pay off. So we worked hard and did that and now we got rid of all the cattle and we were leasing out the pasture to Doug Butori from down by Fairmont. Yeah, Doug and Michelle.

[00:25:16]

Jaap: I'm kind of jumping around. So going backwards a little. So a lot of people moved out of Butte to German Gulch. You know, that World War I time. How about World War II, during that time? Did they ever talk about that or since they were already out in German Gulch, did they?

Erickson: Well, World War II then, and they did get their naturalization papers and everything, but World War II, he wanted to change the spelling of his name from P-H-A-L-F to F-A-L-L. And they would not let him do that until after the war was over. And in here, I do have their naturalization papers and I have their immigration, what boat they came on. I don't know if they both came on the President, was it Cleveland? Did I say? Or I didn't really read his to see. Yeah.

Jaap: And did he want to change the name to be more American?

Erickson: I think so. I think so. This is all her family in Germany. And also she left all of her sisters, all this family, she left to come to America. Her sisters. And in east Berlin, they had to be very careful what they wrote in letters, because they read all the letters and what she sent in packages. She would send different things and then she would write and ask, "Well, how did you like whatever? They never got what she sent.

Jaap: Really.

Erickson: Yeah. So, but this was her family, her mother and her dad. And their last name was Friedrick and her sisters, I don't know if she had any brothers or not. But look how stoic he is. This is her mother. And they told me that women in Germany, these were called aprons. Julie Buckley told us the other day, those were aprons.

Jaap: Was that interesting talking to Julie? Was it interesting just to hear her perspective of some things?

Erickson: Oh yeah. Well, she didn't really want to talk too much because she said that she has some painful memories. Some of them suffered a lot worse when the Russian Red Army came. They were running ahead of the army. And some of them suffered worse than others. I don't know how these did that, but look at the plane.

Jaap: Is that them on a plane? Are they relatives?

Erickson: I don't know who's on the plane. I don't know. But she left her sisters, you know, and I just think it must have been really hard times, hard for her to do. These are postcards and things. I think she had traveled a lot. I think they were wealthy enough that they went on holiday.

Jaap: And Nicole had mentioned to me when they came over, something like have their own cabin or something on the ship?

Erickson: Well, she did. She had enough money, I think, to have her own state room. Where a lot of people were in the bottom of the boat. And when you came, you had to have a sponsor, I guess, to go get your citizenship and that. And you've probably heard of Fritz Apostel that used to have Beef Trail Ski, well, they were friends of the Apostel's and the Apostle's sponsored them and so they were good friends with Apostel's.

Jaap: Did they go skiing out at Beef Trail?

Erickson: No, they had army skis. And they had a strap about this wide and you put your foot in it and they would hike up the hill past their house, which was a pretty good hike if you've ever been to German Gulch. And then they would ski down. And they had the ski poles and yeah. So, maybe you'd be interested in, he decided to, it was the moonshine days. And he was doing moonshine in the basement. They put up one house. And he was doing moonshine in the basement and their son smelled smoke and woke them all up. And it was October and the first house burnt. So it's October. So you take the team and we still had the great big, long wagon that hauls logs and you go up and you saw all your logs and you start a house in October. And the house that they built then was a house mom and dad were living in and is still there, but it's got white siding now and a red metal roof.

Jaap: The amount of work went into that, you know, you think now how hard things are. Clark, you're not cutting your own timbers, are you?

Erickson: Building a house, are you? Oh, let's see. Well, she did walk up to the Beal Mountain mine and cooked up there. And that's like nine to 10 miles behind the ranch. Have you heard of Pegasus gold mine?

Jaap: I've heard of it, yes.

Erickson: Well, that's where Beal Mountain mine. And it's named Beal Mountain because there was a Dr. George Beal and he had a cabin up there and they were friends. He was a German.  All in here wherever I have it. Oh, there's Mr. Benz. Back here is all about German Gulch. Mr. Beal and Mr. Edwards and tells how the miners used to get off at Durant Canyon. The Durant Canyon ticket offices at the mining museum. And they would walk up, I got to think, well, Beef Straight. There's Norton Creek, German Gulch Creek, and Beef Straight Creek. And they all come together and they come down the canyon into where Durant was and where the train stopped. And they would walk up to the mine. And I do believe when I'm thinking about it, that maybe that's why there were a lot of Germans up at Beal Mountain mining because they wanted to get away from the mainstream. Because it was a lot of Germans. And then the Chinese went up there and they supposedly had little brushes and they would brush around and they would get enough gold filings for money.

Jaap: But yeah, the Chinese kind of faced a similar type of situation.

Erickson: And there's a cemetery up there. A Chinese cemetery. Because when they put in Pegasus gold, they had to have archeologists come in and make sure that they didn't disturb those Chinese graves. And I guess they found some little shards of dishes and things like that. When they first moved to German Gulch, this is the tent put up alongside of an old cabin.

[00:33:56]

And look at the dresses. And this was up behind where they built the house.  And I think this is interesting because in his obituary, all the pallbearers were, I think, they're all German names. This fellow used to live at Silver Bow. This fellow used to come visit the ranch all the time. I remember those two people. So here's their passenger record and he did come on the President Grant and departed out of what would that be? CUX, Haven. I don't know how you'd pronounce it, but I'm not sure if she didn't come out of Hamburg. Now there, that says 1909. So those dates in there, I don't, because I have no one to ask.

Jaap: Yeah. Sometimes those get a little fuzzy.

Erickson: This is their daughter. They came on the President Grant out of Hamburg, but he came out of that other place.

Jaap: So did he save up money so he could bring her over? Or why did they kind of stagger coming over? Do you know?

Erickson: I don't. I think if he went AWOL, in my mind, I think maybe he wanted to get out of Germany. Yeah. And they thought he should get out. And maybe then she, and I think our parents, it looks like they were better to do people and maybe they helped with money.

Jaap: Fascinating.

Erickson: I have no one to ask.

Jaap: I know.

Erickson: And they didn't wanna talk about any of it. You know, they really didn't wanna talk about it. So that's, you might have seen him. And then, you know, he was such a stinker and then later years his sister came and she asked if she could put his ashes on the property.

Jaap: Oh, really?  What'd you guys say?

Erickson: Well, we said sure. But you know, you're like, okay, I have Leo Benz over. Yeah. This was her knitting needles. Oh, well she was a great knitter and crochet. And when she went to the Silver Bow homes, we had to go there every Christmas Eve for herring salad, which was potato salad with mayonnaise and pickle juice and pieces of pickled herring.

Jaap: Did you like herring salad?

Erickson: No. And stolen bread that had mace in it. That wasn't really great either, but we all got, the kids got mittens, knitted, mittens. The men got knitted socks and the women got a pair of pillow cases with a crochet edging, every Christmas. So this was her in her later years up at what would've been her house. But my mom and dad, you know, remodeled everything. But that was her. Then him, this is where the garden was and their cows. And so I managed to get this was her with my other great-grandmother. So I managed to get a lot of papers and this was her daughter and husband and the three kids. And then these two came 10 years later. So, and that is her daughter and her husband and my great-grandfather pitching and the women pitching on hay.

Jaap: I can't imagine moving to a place where you're buying a piece of land and really starting from scratch.

Erickson: And this was her daughter and son-in-law at their 48th anniversary. So I don't know what else to tell you. This is more story about German Gulch. This is 1908.

Jaap: So when was German Gulch established? Was it kind of around then, when your family moved out there?

[00:39:08]

Erickson: I don't know. I think a bunch of Germans went up there and started looking for gold and they took $13 million of gold out of there. And I don't know what over time span that was. There's a sign up there, a forest service sign that tells all about it. I'll have to go up there in the summer again and look, but yeah, 13 million in gold and this tells all about it. And then too, during the WPA days, him and her left, excuse me, they set up a tent up Skalkaho and they were building the Skalkaho road and they went up there to work and make some money.

Jaap: So did they have a hard time do during the depression then? Were they affected by that?

Erickson: Yeah, I think so. But they were pretty self-sufficient because they had the root cellar, the chickens turkeys, the cows, they had a pig, so I think, you know, food wise and they went and got all their own wood and probably not a lot of cash money.

Jaap: But had a roof over their heads.

Erickson: The daughter and son-in-law, they had a hard time during the depression. But they too had chickens and milk cows and everything at Miles Crossing.

Jaap: So anything specific they had that went on difficult during the depression or?

Erickson: Well, he was also making moonshine, him and his buddies and he ended up going to jail for three months. She was down there, they were more like in a cabin for those days. And she had three little kids and his buddies that didn't go to jail, brought them food and helped them till he got out of jail. Yeah. Oh, wow. But that went on all, you know. Yeah. Because they were making some money.

Jaap: Yeah. Not an uncommon thing. I don't think.

Erickson: No. That was up at Elk Park and out at Buxton and up Brown Gulch and everybody was making moonshine.

Jaap: So you mentioned your herring salad. Are there any other foods or anything that your family made?

Erickson: Oh, well I told you stollen, which was like a dryer bread with golden raisins in it. Yeah.  They ate a lot of pork and they ate a lot of creamed. That was the Germans. They liked creamed, you know, cream potatoes and peas, and grandma would fry cabbage, shred it, and fry it and then simmer it in milk and butter. Everybody ate what there was to eat. There was no yuck, I don't like this or that. You didn't even say you didn't like anything, you just, but they made, you know, about head cheese. They boiled the head of the pig and they cleaned off all the meat and then they put it in loaf pans. And I don't know what the jellylike stuff was, but they'd let it set up. And that was lunch meat. They put eggs in crocks and they had, I can't remember what the substance, but it's a jellylike stuff and it was like a preservative back then. They'd put those in crocks and then I told them now she would fry the pork chops and you'd put the pork chops in a crock. And you took all the fat from the pig and put it in the oven and you melted it slowly. And then you poured that over your pork chops, another layer of pork chops, more of the fat.

Jaap: The pork chops are cooked before they go in the crock?

Erickson: Yeah. Okay. And then all that went down the well, because down in the well, hand-dug well, was cold and all that went down in the well, and then they had a smoke house and they smoked the hams and they smoked the bacon. And I watched them kill the pigs. They used to, ah, they'd hit the pig over the head to stun it. Then they would take a knife and they would slit the vein and they would collect the blood and they made blood sausage.

Jaap: You don't like blood sausage, I'm guessing?

Erickson: No.

Jaap: The face you made.

Erickson: I have never tasted it. But then they got the fire going and they had a big 50 gallon barrel and they had a tripod and they'd hang the pig. And with the pulley, they would dunk him up and down in the hot water bath and then they laid them out and they had what was called pig scrapers. They were like an Alaskan Ulu knife. And they would scrape the sides of the pigs. Because you scraped the hair off.

[00:45:21]

Jaap: And the hot water was just a kind of?

Erickson: I guess, to loosen up the skin so the hair would. But I remember them putting it down and bringing it up and putting it back down in the hot water.

Jaap: So back to the pork chops. Then when you wanted to eat the pork chops was the fat just the preservative? So would they take the layer of fat off then and reheat up the pork chop?

Erickson: And I don't know if they took that fat off because actually that was lard for baking bread and for making pie crust. And Grandma had a cupboard that had a bin and you put your flour in there and it had a handle you turned and it let the flour down for you to measure. And then she had a silver bucket with a lid with a handle that turned and when she made bread. you turn the handle and you got all the ingredients mixed and you mix that and you let it rise and then you punched it down again, and then you put it in your pans and you let it rise again. And they had the wood stove, kitchen wood range and it had warming ovens. And so you probably put your bread close to that so that the heat would make the bread rise. So they didn't have time for entertainment.

Jaap: Absolutely not.

Erickson: But this guy played the fiddle and my great aunt in Buxton played the piano. They all played by ear. A fellow by the name of Johnny Paige played the banjo and they would all get together at somebody's house and have a house party. And the men would bring the alcohol and the women would bring the sandwiches. And they moved the furniture and they all danced. There was a place, I don't know if you know about it, but over at Buxton, it was called the Bucket of Blood and it was a dance hall type and they'd all come in their wagons or their sleighs with heated bricks. And they would all go to Buxton and they'd party and drink. And the Bucket of Blood was because a lot of the guys would end up getting in a good brawl. You know, of course, you got that now.  But you'd have them settling their differences. And the kids, if they got tired, they'd just lay them on the floor or on a bench or whatever, and the kids would all . . .Yeah. And with the horses and the sleigh, then they'd have to pack up and go, well, probably from the Bucket of Blood to these folks' house was probably three miles over the prairie.

Jaap: So that would take a while to get back. Right. I mean that's yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's amazing.

Erickson: I know, but that was their, you know, some of their entertainment. And after he died, then she lived at Miles Crossing by herself for a couple, three years and they all knew my husband's uncles. And they were all friends in their younger years. So one of my husband's uncles came courting my grandmother. And so Jack and I decided, well, his uncle became my grandpa and my grandma became his aunt.

Jaap: I love that.

Erickson: We were way grown up when all that. So we never thought anything like that would ever happen. But they all played their instruments by ear. They had never had music lessons.

Jaap: So was music a big part of your life then?

Erickson: I tried piano for three years and I didn't do very well. I didn't do very well. So I don't know what else you want to know about the German Gulch people, that's, you know, that's about all I know. Well, this is their son when he was in his eighties. And I just have, he was with the Boulevard Fire Department. He was also on the Butte school board. And he worked for Conoco down by Triple S. [Inaudible] plant, and then they moved him to Spokane. Okay. So they're in Spokane or the kids. All his kids now are like in their eighties. All of his kids are alive. There was, I think, eight of them, some of them are, two of them are my age. But the older ones are like 88 to 90.

Jaap: Wow, that's pretty amazing.

Erickson: So really? What else do you wanna know?

[00:51:05]

Jaap: Well, Clark, do you have some questions you want to ask real quick?

Grant: I do. I was hoping to clarify a little bit. So Paul Phalf and Emma, those are your great grandparents.

Erickson: Great grandparents.

Grant: And so one of their children is your grandmother.

Erickson: And that's her, Elsa. Okay. And she's Elsie.

Grant: And she had a daughter and that's her mother?

Erickson: No. She had Jay, Fred and Frank and Louise. And then she had my aunt Dorothy and my aunt rose and my aunt Dorothy is the only one left alive up in Great Falls.

Grant: Okay. And so what I'm wanting to hear about is your father. I want to hear more about your parents, I guess.

Erickson: Well, they nicknamed John Fred, because he was named after my grandfather, Buck. My dad was Frank, after one of his uncles. And they called him Chuck.

Grant: Buck and Chuck.

Erickson: Buck and Chuck.

Jaap: I love that.

Erickson: So my dad was Frank Chuck.

Grant: Okay. Yeah.

Jaap: Nothing like a good nickname to really confuse things.

Erickson: You know, way back then, you know? Well, he was, his mother died when he was about 11, so he was raised with a bunch of cowboys and spent a lot of time breaking horses at Miles Crossing and taking his fiddle and down the Deer Lodge valley and partying and horseback partying. He was more cowboy than, yeah. And so it's fitting that he probably would give these kids these nicknames.

Grant: And Paul Phalf, he's pretty well known up there.

Erickson: Their son. My great grandparents' son. Well, he just volunteered at the Boulevard. They lived out on the Boulevard and worked for the Conoco. And then was on the school board for Butte.

Grant: And so probably it was called German Gulch before these folks went out there.

Erickson: I think so. I don't quite know when Beal mine.  I don't know.

Jaap: Well, I think even like, I know Chinese people are out there pretty early, I think. I guess we have a map that's 1897 and it's got a big German Gulch. So yeah. I'm curious though, when it was really first settled. Interesting.

Erickson: Well, I think this probably tells you if you don't wanna record what I'm saying. Well, the name of this gulch or branch of the Columbia river was bestowed in this manner, a party of eight men, all of whom had their, what, nativity in south Germany and who had heard of gold discoveries at Bannock and Alder Gulch started from Peace river in British Columbia. And after their arduous travel and strenuous times at Cottonwood now known as Deer Lodge. They were informed by James and Grandville Stewart that gold had been found at the head of the Deer Lodge valley. So Miles Crossing was actually in Deer Lodge county and later they put it and down like where Doug Butori is into Silver Bow county. So near the mouth of the canyon of the little Deer Lodge river. Well, now it's Silver Bow Creek. And so it tells about who the party was.

Jaap: You have some German prospectors then.

Erickson: Yeah. But I know that my grandfather at Miles Crossing panned enough gold, three miles west Ramsay, panned enough gold to make a wedding ring and go to New Brunswick and bring back his girlfriend.

Jaap: That's a great story.

Erickson: That was in 1870. And he had horse hair braided in the inside of the gold band. Oh. So, so you know, gold was discovered at Silver Bow. So all the way down to Miles Crossing, I don't know how much gold. Who knows.

Grant: This man sounds like he had some lively times.

Erickson: He was a character.

Grant: Can you tell us more about him?
[00:56:54]

Erickson: What I've got that I think you guys would really be interested in is I have the history of his father coming from New Brunswick, down the Ohio river to St. Joseph, Missouri, and connecting with a wagon train. And he was 21 years old and this fellow with wagon and the mule said he would take him, if he would work for. So they came across in Nebraska, the La Platte river to Fort Carney, Wyoming, from Fort Carney down the Stillwater, like Big Timber into  Bozeman to Virginia city. And he did that in 1866. And he's one of the original Sons of the Montana Pioneers. And so he stayed in Virginia City. And when he got there, he met three of his brothers from New Brunswick that he did not even know were there. He was one of, I think, 11, 12 siblings. So that was his father and then he came to Silver Bow to Miles Crossing in 1870, and there was no railroads. There was no polluted creek. It was a beautiful little valley down there. I have a big album of his life. If you're ever interested in talking about him. Because mainly today is my great grandparents, which is his in-laws.

Jaap: So can I just ask something that you just mentioned? So you've said before, you know, as an un-polluted creek, so did your family talk about, as the mining was kind of ramping up in Butte, the effects that they felt in their areas, would you tell me a little bit about that?

Erickson: Okay. So, what I know, I came here and I was shocked because there was a lawsuit in 1898 against Anaconda Company, his father and a bunch of ranchers from, because it was called Deer Lodge county at that time and ranchers from the other side, like the Fairmont side, had a lawsuit against the company and they lost, of course, but these pictures start to show this gray sledge coming into the grass. And they lost the case. Well, what's happened in these later years is, you know, you know how polluted it is. The pollution in some places was eight to 16 feet deep. Well, he used to grow 300 ton of hay. And so they all noticed their hay production going down because the pollution. When it flooded, when Silver Bow Creek flooded.

Jaap: Contaminated all that farmland.

Erickson: It ruined their meadows. I don't know if I should tell you guys this, but in these later years, they're cleaning up the creek. So they came to Jack and I, and they needed clean dirt to dig out the old dirt and put in clean dirt. So they polluted my great grandfather's property and they bought dirt from us to clean up what was his property. How sweet is that?

Jaap: Oh, really?

Erickson: You know, never did I ever think the day that we would benefit by having clean dirt to clean up my great-grandfather's property.

Jaap: That's interesting.

Grant: You just never know.

Jaap: Only took them a hundred years to get that. Yeah. Yeah.

Erickson: And they had some of the top people from the Anaconda Company come out, all the, you know, the mineral chemists and whatever, and oh, no, they were not doing any pollution. But someday, if you guys are ever interested that is some history not to let go. He wrote that he could have wrote so much more a diary of his trip from New Brunswick.

Grant: His father?

Erickson: His father, and he could have wrote, oh, so much more, but I've got the pages, they've been run off and copied of what he wrote. So it's something that shouldn't be lost. It shouldn't be lost. So they're gonna microfilm this?

Jaap: We're gonna scan that. So we'll scan it and we'll have this history here for people at the archives to use, which will be lovely.

Erickson: Well, my dad came up and he gathered a lot of this from up here.  He copied all this on German Gulch. It tells about Mr. Edwards and Mr. Beal.

Jaap: Oh no, one of those. Okay.

[01:03:26]

Erickson: They had a lot of cabins up there. And Mr. Beal's cabin, it was just a wooden bench slab. And he had all of his doctor instruments. We used to go look in the window and we'd never go in. We'd never touch a thing. And then one year, we know too, the Forest Service burnt down all of his cabins. They burnt down Mr. Edward's cabin. They burnt down a cabin up at Pinedale. They went in and they burnt all those cabins. And why they did that, I don't know.

Jaap: That's wrong.

Grant: This is interesting. "A victim recovered after a man was hanged for murder."

Erickson: And this is Dr. Beal. And Dr. Beal, there's a gal I know that he would go to their house. They were good friends. And the wife would say, "Well, George, how about staying for dinner?" "Oh no. Mrs. I can't." "Oh, George, how about a potato?" "Well, maybe just a potato." And then they'd have peas. And my friend said he'd line all of his peas up on the knife and get 'em lined up and then he'd eat these peas. And after he would leave, their mother would say, "Only George can do that. Not you kids." Yeah. This is years and years later, we got to talking and she said, "Oh, Linda, George Beal used to come to our house." I didn't know him. But, you know, that was fun to hear. Their mother didn't want them to get bad manners from Mr. Beal.

Jaap: That is funny. That is funny. Whose glasses?

Erickson: I have her glasses.

Jaap: Your great-grandmother's glasses? Oh, that's neat.

Erickson: I don't know. I was going to get rid of them and then, you know what, I couldn't.

Grant: I like those.

Erickson: I couldn't.

Jaap: What's in the?

Erickson: I think it's a locket and it opens and that was in her stuff.

Jaap: Is it just a design on the front?

Erickson: I guess. The professor from Bozeman couldn't, he had his magnifying glass and I thought maybe, you know, it could have been her initials or whatever.

Jaap: It's not symmetrical. So it's feels like it's something.

Erickson: Oh, let's see. This is another copy of that. I just had some notes up here, How they got off the train and then they rode the horses up German Gulch to the Beal Mine. Actually, I don't know. I don't really need this one if you guys are interested in it just for yourselves. It's another copy. I just made those notes that, so I don't know what else I could tell you.

Grant: Well, I had a couple other questions just about your own life. And I was curious, you know, you kind of grew up with Butte at a distance, you know, even though you were coming to school. And so I was just curious how you would describe Butte from your perspective in the mid-20th century.

Erickson: Oh, you know what? We only got to come to town once a week.

Grant: Once a week?

Erickson: Once a week. And mainly visited with my mom's parents. They lived on Walnut Street. And I mainly grew up with older people, family dinners. Well, we went to the United Lutheran church. Do you know where that is? On the corner of Broadway and, I believe, Idaho. So right across from the St. John Episcopal. So all of the family went to the Lutheran church, but my grandfather, you see in here, he went across the street to the Episcopal church. And then the United Lutheran merged with the Emmanuel Lutheran and became Gloria Day Lutheran. So we went to the Gloria Day Lutheran church.

Jaap: Did you usually come into town on Sunday then or something?

Erickson: Not too much. No. You know, just because you didn't run to town like we do now. And we had a 1944, I believe, army Jeep.

Jaap: Is that the one you drove to the bus stop?

Erickson: No, that I drove a little half cab. Have you young people saw the 1944 army convoy Jeeps? So my dad bought one and it didn't have a cab on it. So he built a plyboard cab and in the back he drilled a hole, probably a size of a quarter or more, and it was a clutch and that is what we had to drive because we needed that kind of a vehicle in the winter to get in and out of there. I would like to show you what the snow was like when, twice they had to bring D9 Cats to open our road to get us out of there. Yeah. So we got the plywood cab and we got the hole that you go like this, so you can look out to see what's behind you. And my mother drove that for, she was so mad at him when he came home with that, he traded in there 1942 Chevy coop for an army recon.

[01:09:58]

Jaap: Oh, that is great.

Erickson: And that was our vehicle. It wasn't very warm.

Jaap: Not quite made for cozy passengers, is it? Not its purpose.

Erickson: No. So, yeah.

Grant: I'm curious about your education at Butte High too. What can you tell us about going to school?

Erickson: Oh, I had a good education at Butte High. But I think that I didn't get active in very many extracurricular activities because of where we lived and you needed to get home. And I think being an only child and I was used to living out there, you know what, when school was over, I just wanted to get in my Jeep and go home. One time my dad bought a brand new Jeep and he had this army recon parked and I backed up to go to school and I put the tailgate of the brand new Jeep into the edge of the flatbed box on the recon. And so I thought he would just get a new tailgate, but he went and he had my Jeep painted Butte High purple. So he pretty well knew where I was.

Jaap: Not too many people were driving around in a purple Jeep.

Erickson: No, I was mortified.

Jaap: That was your punishment wasn't it?

Erickson: I think so. Most kids would be totally thrilled, I guess, with a Butte High purple Jeep. I could have killed him.

Jaap: But all people want to do in high school usually is blend in.

Erickson: I guess he thought that would, you know, be an attention getter. Yeah. So to my parents, my mother worked restaurant work, but she worked for Les Wait from Wait Oil down off of Excelsior. I asked my dad if he would manage the skyline service station, which when you come in on the highway and you go on Iron Street, it was just off to the south. And it was a truck stop. So then my mom and my grandma took over the restaurant. So yeah, we were working and my mom and they had bunk rooms for the truckers. So my mom not only was running the restaurant, but we were doing all the sheets and the laundry for the bunk rooms.

Grant: When would that have been?

Erickson: Well, let's see, that was about 1957, 58. And then I can't remember just how long then the interstate went through and bought out. Oh yeah. Les Wait was pretty smart. He put his truck stop pretty close to where the interstate was gonna go through. And then they tore all of it down, bought him out, tore that down. But I worked out there for my mom, dishwashing and yeah. And then I just worked the ranch when we moved out there. There was a lot of work and had the kids to the bus and somebody to pick up the kids. And I worked for the tax appeal board for 17 and a half summers, listening to complaints about their taxes, recording that and doing transcripts. And that was a good job. And I was only two, well, let's see what it was, three hours in the afternoon when I could go home and get on the tractor and hay. And it was a good job for that. I didn't need a full-time job.

Jaap: You had one at home?

Erickson: Yeah, I did. I did.

Grant: Did anyone ever win their appeal?

Erickson: Yes.

Grant: Okay.

Erickson: Yeah. And you know, the neat part, on my 40th birthday, the Anaconda Company came before the tax appeal board. And on my 40th birthday, we got bussed out to the pit and we got to tour the pit and we had a, you know, a talk. I thought that that was unusual. That's something you don't do on your birthday. Go with the board and the Anaconda Company people and look the operation over and, well, that was, gosh, I can't remember what year.  I started there in 79. I went back to vo-tech too for a year for secretarial course, and that's where I got that job and it worked out just good for me.

Grant: What'd you make of the pit?

Erickson: Oh yeah. Well, you know, just, you never got to go tour the pit.  Most women aren't too interested but it was, yeah. And I got to learn about all the different sections of Butte, the Gillman edition. I didn't know there was additions. And a lot of people were helped and if you didn't like what the board did for you then you could appeal further to the state tax appeal board and they would come in. I'm not sure if they've done away with that now or not. I don't know. But anyway, that's what I did.

Grant: I wanted to ask you what do you think people should know about raising cattle in Montana?

Erickson: Oh gosh. Well, there's a big movement right now of fake meat. You know about fake meat? Burger King is, yeah.

Grant: Grown in the lab.

Erickson: Oh gosh, that just upsets me. I don't think that's good, but . . .

Jaap: That's interesting how you say that because farming has evolved into such a different beast really.

[01:16:43]

Erickson: Agriculture is the largest, you know, economic driver in the state of Montana. I'm really for agriculture and I'm against extreme environmentalists. And what some of these ideas that are out there. You could probably turn that off, but do you know that Miss Montana isn't even from Montana?

Jaap: Oh, really.

Erickson: She's from California, but the reason she got to be Miss Montana is because they own a cabin. And now she's speaking out against beef and she has like 10,000 followers on YouTube. And that just.

Jaap: But it is kind of that spread of . . .

Erickson: And the agriculture people are having a fit. We are the largest economic thing in Montana.

Grant: Well, I'm curious too about the practices, you know, of running cattle and, you know, what can you tell us about that? The act of actually doing it. The work itself.

Erickson: Oh, it's like I said, it was our lifestyle and our exercise and our hobby, you know. It was a 24, 7 job, calving out cows and, you know, just putting up hay, but we liked what we were doing. I married a city guy, but his parents came from, or his grandparents, came from the Milky Way Dairy at Silver Bow and they pedaled milk like a lot of dairies you might have heard of. And so he knew a little bit, but not much. So I was this country girl who wanted to go to the city and he was the city guy that really liked the country. And my grandfather, my mother's father was a great mentor to the two of us because he had worked on a ranch up the Wise River and he kind of knew more than we did. And then my mother was there and it was a small operation. So we knew what we were doing. Branding and taking cattle to the forest service. And my kids learned a good work ethic.

Jaap: Yeah. Tough work. The little bits I've heard about it before.

Erickson: I know one time, Jack took Dave, who does the water, environmental, and they were gonna go down and feed the cows. And, of course, Dave had to get out and open the gate. And Dave said, "I'm sick of this. I'm not gonna do this anymore." Typical 12, 13 year old, he was, "I'm not doing this" and blah, blah, blah. Jack said, "You're fired. You can walk home." Well, you know, it wasn't a big, big deal, but Jack got mad at him and says, "You can walk home."

Grant: You're fired. That'll be all.

Erickson: You're fired. With kids, you know.

Grant: I wanted to ask a little bit too. I just have a couple more questions. What do you miss most about your relatives that are gone?

Erickson: Well, I grew up with all older people and all my older people are gone. I have one uncle on my mom's side and he's 84 and he has pancreatic cancer. And my one aunt on my dad's side, this Miles family side, and she's 86. And I really miss all those guys, because she says to me, "Linda, you and I are the only ones left that can talk about, you know, any old times." And you feel like the younger generation don't, you know, they'll be sorry like we are that we didn't ask more questions.

Jaap: But in the moment, yeah, you don't always realize.

Erickson: And maybe they won't, but you know, I just thought, gosh, when all this stuff started coming to me and I started putting it together and I realized how neat it is to know where you came from and their hardships. I miss my older relatives. I do because my three kids. Well, Dave's here, but Jackie's in Beaverton and Brian's in Alaska, Juneau, Alaska. So you miss your older people. And about 33 years ago, I went to Fairmont to an aerobics class, water aerobics. And Grace [inaudible], I'm sure you might have heard of her. They were very active in the Red Cross and that, and she became ill and I was just one of the exercises and she said, "Linda, would you take this over till I get on my feet?" Her and my mom went to high school together and I said, "Well, Grace, I don't know what I'm doing."  And she said, "Oh, you'll be just fine." So I've been down there 33 years and we do every Tuesday and Friday morning.

Grant: Is she back on her feet yet?

Erickson: No. She passed away. She never could come back. And then the people said, "Oh, Linda, don't quit. We love this." And so most of the people that I had at the beginning, they're all gone. I got a whole new, I don't know where they hear about it, but they keep coming. I got Anaconda, Phillipsburg, Deer Lodge, Butte and Georgetown Lake. They just love it. So we're still there.

[01:23:02]

Jaap: I love that you're still doing it. It's good.

Erickson: Yeah. So that's where we were today. And they pay me a dollar and I giggle because they talk more than they exercise. And I said to them, "Well, for $1, I'm the best psychiatric place you could go to." They really have met and made good friendships. We all have. So that's been a really fun thing. I just love it. Yeah. It's warm water. I don't wanna bore you guys.

Jaap: No, you're not. You're not at all. Not at all.

Grant: I wanted to ask, what have you tried to impart to your own children? You know, and given the work ethic of all these people you came from?

Erickson: Well, I don't know how we raised them. They were good kids. No real problems. And they like where they came from. Being out there, they could drive, things had changed. And then my daughter worked at Safeway on Massachusetts as a box person. And so did my youngest son and then Dave worked at Eggers, from the time they were 16 and they learned about getting along with people and just how to communicate with people. So they weren't as isolated, I think as, as I was. They like coming home. They love the place and they've just turned out to be good people, good, productive people. My daughter  loves it. She's the director of volunteers for the city of Tualatin. And she works with little kids on volunteer projects, the developmentally disabled. Intel and Nike demand that they're people volunteer. And she works with a lot of those people. And the two boys went to Montana Tech and their Tech educations have really, and they worked and we helped them, but they paid their way and they came out of Tech debt free, you know, back then, I think it was $350 a semester. You had three semesters plus books. When Brian was up there, I think it was 600 for a half. And so their Tech educations have done them really well.

Grant: What do you make of the work going on at WET?

Erickson: Oh, well, Dave's doing, he's doing, they're doing very well. There was five Montana Tech kids and Dave and his wife, Elizabeth and Josh Vincent started it. And now I think they're up to around 50 employees. They're some good paying jobs in this county. They're doing very well. And they invented septic net. Do you know about it?

Grant: No, I don't.

Erickson: Well, it's a septic system that takes the nitrates out of septic. So it makes it groundwater friendly. And they have a building out at the TIF and they put them in like around the lake where maybe there's five houses and everybody can go together and put one of these systems in and it's a fee to maintain them, you know, over the year. But it makes septic, takes nitrates out because south of Butte is a real problem. Because those houses have been there for so long. So they invented that. And my daughter-in-law maybe, you know, Elizabeth, she's very active on the creek coalition cleanup. And my youngest just was asked to be the general manager of a Hecla mine. It's called the Greens Creek on Admiralty island, 80 miles from Juneau. So he's the general mine manager, like you would be here at the Berkeley. And he oversees 400 and some employees. So they've done well. They complain about that they went to work too early, but.

Jaap: You did well.

Erickson: You know, they're doing good. They're good.

Grant: Do these environmental problems in Butte concerned you much?

Erickson: Well, you know, at the time that all started, it was you needed jobs. It was the depression. I don't think those men like Clark and Heinze really knew what they were doing to the environment. You needed jobs. But they created a big mess. But you know, they're cleaning it up. I think, myself, that there's only so far you can go to. You're never gonna make it pristine, back to what it was before they ever started. But people were starving and they needed jobs, but they also used those people too, with the low wages that they paid them. You guys know the history. It hasn't changed. Same thing's going on today. But you know, like I said, we kind of benefited from the creek cleanup.

Jaap: Yeah. That's pretty funny how that kind of came back around. Isn't it?

Erickson: You know, I wish I could talk to my grandfather and my great-grandfather about that. Years ago, like my grandparents at Miles Crossing, you know, they'd take all their garbage in their cans and oh, they went over the bridge rail into the creek. Everything went into the creek. Dead calves went in the creek.

Jaap: That's not unique to here. Yeah, that happened everywhere.

[01:30:06]

Erickson: So I don't know. I just think I'm glad they're doing what they're doing and making 'em clean up more. But you're never going to fully get it back to what it was. I'm glad that they're redoing the water. If they can do that.

Grant: So I just had two more questions. One is about Montana. One is about Butte kind of speaking generally. How do you think Montana has changed in your lifetime?

Erickson: Oh, well it's growing. I don't, I think, you know, we're getting more people, we're getting more people from other places that's gonna change our political dynamics, change because usually they move, say from California to get away from whatever, but then when they get here, they want everything to be the way it was, where they left. I do think it'll change your political dynamics. And I do think agriculture's under attack. This new Prairie Alliance, American Prairie Alliance that's buying a lot of land in the Eastern part of the state and they want to bring in a lot of buffalo, fine. But, yeah, they're buying up a lot of land and they bought up some big ranches and the agricultural people think that they're trying to push agricultural families out and just take over the land. And that is another reason my grandfather left Germany is because only the rich could hunt and only the rich could own land. And that's another reason they left because of suppression. And you see that. I don't know what you guys do.

Jaap: That's interesting. Yeah. Hunting and fishing when there's so much private land now and sportsmen.

Erickson: You know, I think too, he wanted to be self-sufficient and be able to grow their own food. And because there was suppression and control over food and land to grow food. And I do remember them talking about that. Only the rich were allowed to hunt.

Jaap: And then how do you eat?

Erickson: Yeah. How do you take care of yourself if you have to? Yeah, so I think that was another reason they left.

Jaap: They generally didn't leave if they were doing okay. Usually there's some force that . . .

Erickson: And I'm not too sure. They said at that workshop that that war was seven years and it was actually the Germans that started it against the Russians. And then the Russians, the red army retaliated against the Germans and the Germans were, they were running for their lives. And so, you know, not all Germans were doing that, so maybe they brought it on themselves. I don't know. And I was shocked to hear 6 million Germans, it was a second largest migration in the world and 6 million Germans migrated to the United States. And everybody thinks that it was more the Irish, but that's, and I think they left this was, what did, she said about 1888 in that area that this big migration took place. Did you guys know that?

Jaap: Well, my family's German and it's kind of funny, but I don't know all the details. I should know, and I've looked part of it up, but yeah, they immigrated from Russia, but there's now a bunch of Germans from Russia, but they farmed in the Dakotas. So I like it when you talk about the peas and potatoes with cream, because my family always has done creamed peas and potatoes. My grandma always loved cucumbers with cream.

Erickson: Well, I wanted my friend to come up here and because her family in the late 1880s went to North Dakota.  But then they went back to Minnesota and her grandmother and grandfather lived with her mom and dad and five kids. And so she knows quite a bit about that era, more than I do. I didn't know in the 1880s. But she had to go to hunting camp with her hubby and she wanted to come so bad. But you know, she knows a lot too. And she said her husband's father was very suspicious of people and kind of wanted to stay out of the mainstream. But she said, my family wasn't like that. So I think it's because the professor said the borders kept changing and then Julie Buckley started crying because she said it brought back some pretty bad memories. She said nothing bad happened to her, but she remembers what a hard time her parents had. So I think it depended on where you were.

Grant: Well, my final question, I'm just curious what you see in Butte today compared to, you know, when you were younger and what do you see for the future in Butte?

[01:36:44]

Erickson: Well, it's growing. I hope it doesn't get like Bozeman and Missoula. We keep trying to improve it. Like I said, I didn't get to spend much time in town. Like I didn't really, I listened to my classmates and they went to the shows and I went to a few shows. My grandma took me, but as far as running around with neighborhood kids, you know, I had three neighbor kids out there, but you didn't, my parents were too busy trying to, trying to improve on the place and work eight hour jobs. And they were, you know, so my grandma would take me to the movies and things like that. I don't know what to say about Butte right now. I'm really upset. What in the world are those railroad containers doing sitting on Front and Montana street parking lot.

Grant: By Safeway?

Erickson: Yeah, what an eye sore. Are you from Butte?

Grant: No, I'm from Arkansas.

Erickson: Oh, okay. What do you think about Butte? Are you going to Tech or?

Grant: No, I work at a radio station here. I'm endlessly fascinated with Butte.

Erickson: I like Butte.

Grant: Yeah. All the history. I love the buildings.

Erickson: We need a little more shopping.

Jaap: Basics would be nice to be able to buy here.

Erickson: Well, like for Christmas.

Jaap: Christmas. Yeah.

Erickson: But I was out to Walmart and there's boxes and boxes of stuff that they're getting ready to unpack. So I think they're . . .

Jaap: The store that has everything and nothing all at the same time, you know?

Erickson: No, I think people are trying very, very hard to improve Butte. And I find, I think that it's a lot of people that have moved in here that are working hard, new eyes, new perspective, the younger people, like the 20 under 40.  That was heartening to see that, you know, they're productive. It's not like you see on the news every day where people aren't very productive. I don't know what else to tell you.

Grant: I appreciate your time. You may not realize it, but you told us quite a lot,

Erickson: I hope it's useful. Did everybody else talk this long?

Grant: This is on the shorter side.

Jaap: The ones we did the past two weeks, those were those were three and a half hours or something.

Erickson: Really?

Jaap: Yeah. They were very long. Those were the longest ones.

Erickson: Oh, ok, that was the Lubick's?

Jaap: We haven't done the Lubick's yet.

Erickson: How about Scheidecker?

Jaap: Don?

Erickson: Yeah.

[01:39:56]

Jaap: I haven't called Don yet. I should get him here.

Grant: We've had Irene though.

Jaap: Oh, I wasn't here for Irene. But yeah.

Grant: It's the same family.

Jaap: It's Don's wife. Don's wife worked here, you probably knew, she worked here for quite a while.

Erickson: Well, was it last August when they had the brew fest at the Finlen. German Octoberfest. Yeah, we came in and I talked to Dave. I said, you know, why don't you stop up? They're gonna show a little film and whatever, but I don't know what was wrong, but anyway, it just went, click, click, click, click, and pictures went by so fast that they couldn't seem to get it slowed down to show the pictures. Well that's all I know about them, but I think if you read that newspaper, I gave you, you'd find it really interesting.

[01:40:54]

Grant: I wonder how much gold is still on the ground up there, you know?

Erickson: Well, Pegasus, should know. And they left a mess. And they had even lined the pit, so it wasn't supposed to be leaking. And that's something too. When Dave was 14, they asked him if he'd like a little summer job to go to German Gulch for Pegasus. And take core samples. And so he would ride his motorbike up there. And take a lunch and spend the day doing core samples. And I don't know if that made him instrumental in wanting to go to Montana Tech and be a geologist.

Grant: Probably had an impact yeah.

Erickson: So he did that for the summer that he was 14 or 15 years old.

Grant: That's a cool job.

Erickson: I don't even remember what they paid him, but yeah. He was in seventh heaven. Because he had his motorbike. He could be in the mountains and those two boys, as soon as they got done in town and they were finished with their jobs, finished with school, they didn't hang around town. They terrorized the whole back country on their motorbikes and I never worried about them. Off they went. Yeah. And eventually they came home. You know, they just were up riding the trails and they love it all back there.

Grant: That's a great way to grow up.

Erickson: They didn't need to be in town. They played a little football and basketball, but you know, after sophomore year they said, I don't wanna do that. So they just liked being out around there and they liked, Dave was much calmer with the cattle and Brian would like to kick them all over the place. And the funny part too, now, Dave, he says, "Well, mom, I thought we had a lot of cow manure." But since he's been with Water Environmental Technologies, they've been working in Kennewick with the pollution of dairy farms. 10,000 cow dairy farms. And he says, "Mom, I thought we had cow manure." He said, "You cannot believe." And what they're working with, the Washington state dairy farmers had the Washington government legislature pretty tied up and there's an 80 mile radius under the ground of plume of cow pollution. And it's working its way around Richland and down to the Columbia. And so Dave, their company has been instrumental in figuring out, you know, lining the pits that they store the sludge in and figuring out, they put it through sprinkler pipe onto the crops and like they were oversaturating. So that's going in the groundwater. So they've figured out just how much they need, you know, but 10,000 cows and there's 22,000 cattle dairy farm operations, where you used to have all these little farmers who had 200 cows, right? Yeah. Or 400 cows.

Jaap: A piece of land can only accommodate so much waste.

Erickson: And so they've been working on that with the EPA and trying to get, and dairy farmers were really protesting these big corporate. Yeah. And, but they are making headway on byproducts and make, you know, stopping it from going in the groundwater.

Jaap: It's like the exact same thing. The parallels are really interesting to me. That's really interesting.

Erickson: When you think about down in California, they were working on one and I think that's the 22,000 one. And so years ago, there weren't any houses around. Well, they put all these subdivisions in and the people are having a fit because there's so many flies, they can't open their doors, their windows, they can't even put their garage doors up. Well, you got 22,000 cows in the heat of California. That's not a good mix. So he works on projects like that. He even got a call from, well, I told him, I said, "God, Dave, they're gonna be calling you from New York to Wisconsin. That's a big dairy country in Wisconsin." He got a call from Pennsylvania. I said, you're gonna be traveling all over. The governor of Hawaii called him and he went to Hawaii. Because they have to ship all their milk in. They wanted to put a dairy farm on some island there in Hawaii. And they finally, with Dave's help and advice, said no, because with the rain that's in Hawaii and the ground seepage with all the lava rock, they were sure that this would all be in the ocean. So they've put a stop to that. But they have to ship all their milk. So that's different jobs that they work on.

Jaap: That's really interesting because I didn't really know exactly what all.

Erickson: Oh, they do all kinds.

Grant: I bet he stays busy.

Erickson: You know, he is. And it's just been a really neat thing to see that you've got three Montana Tech kids and then they had two others and now they have up to 50 employees that they have work for. So that's all I know, guys.

[01:48:06]

Jaap: Well, thank you, Linda.

Erickson: I hope it was okay.

Jaap: Do you have more to talk about Miles Crossing? Would you want to schedule another visit to talk about Miles Crossing?

Erickson: You know, I would maybe. Well, would you do like January after . . .

Jaap: I can make a note and I'll call you?

Erickson: Yeah, because I don't think you guys would want to let all that history go. And all it is is in an album. And, you know, I just think with his diary and Jack and I went to Fort Carney and if you could see the picture of how the Fort, they have postcards and pictures out of the Fort was, and when we were out there walking on the grounds, it was just like, you got the shivers. To think that your great grandfather was there. And they held them up at Fort Carney because the Indians were uprising and they wouldn't let them go on until they thought the Indians calmed down. Then from Fort Carney, they started out on the Bozeman trail.

Jaap: Interesting. It's really a fascinating story. I'll make a note. I'll call you after Christmas, if that works. Coming up quick.

Erickson: You've got you probably have more time too, after the first of the year.

Jaap: I'll call you. Yeah. If that works, I'll call you.

Erickson: And I'll bring my other album. I don't know. How did I have that?

Jaap: I think it was in the bottom next to the glasses. There's another opening. Yeah. So I kept this map that he gave us, the professor gave us that. And then I kept this article because I thought that was pretty good to put in here.

Jaap: Yeah. That's great.

Grant: Lines are always changing.

Erickson: That's what he said. Yeah. Were you in on his talk?

Grant: No, I wasn't.

Erickson: Well, he said like, and we talked about it because there was two halls that I mentioned where the Germans met and none of us know it, but we kind of think maybe some of them, one might have been German Catholic because of the Martin Luther, Germans stayed Catholic, but Germans went Lutheran. And so we were wondering why, if that could have been one was the order. [inaudible] that was the Finns.

Jaap: Herman was one

Erickson: Herman. Herman was one and they didn't know what the other one was.

Jaap: No, I don't think we have anything on it.

Erickson: And then I don't know if she told you, but they found all the German song books in the top of the Masonic temple. They would go to the third floor and have singalongs. They loved to sing. See, my great-grandmother missed out on all that.

Jaap: And there was a Liederkranz society. Did they talk about that at all?

Erickson: A little bit.

Jaap: I don't know a lot about them, but we have photos of them. But I don't know.

Erickson: So that's all I have.

Jaap: But they must have left for a reason.  They must have felt . . .

Grant: Left Germany.

Erickson: Well, I think when he went AWOL, because he didn't agree with, I thought it was the czar, but I don't know the difference between the czar and Kaiser Wilhelm, was he the czar?

Grant: Pretty much.

Erickson: Was he?

Grant: Yeah. Okay.

Erickson: So he didn't, he didn't agree with him. Somebody said, I think your great grandfather was a rebel.

Grant: If you are going to go AWOL, you must be.

Erickson: I asked my aunt, you know, if they seemed compatible because, and she said, "Yeah, they seem to really care for each other."

Jaap: Your great grandfather and mother?

Erickson: Yeah. So maybe she was totally happy out there. I don't know. Yeah. I have one picture of her in here in front of the cabin and she's in her wool pants and shirt and she's holding two chickens.

Grant: Life is good if you have a chicken in each hand.

Erickson: Yeah. You know, maybe that's all they cared about. Maybe they didn't care if they lived in town.

Jaap: Well, there were so many politics in town around that time. It really was over the top.  It's amazing the amount of things that happened in that, you know, five year period, kind of.

Grant: You had Marshall Law too in 17.

Jaap: In 14 you have, you know, the Miners' Union Hall.

Erickson: And they said they put 250 Germans in the Deer Lodge prison.

Grant: Well, there you go.

Erickson: Because of the Sedition Act. And if they made some wrong statement  and somebody would turn them in, they would send them down to the prison. And so I have a feeling that's why they wanted away. And then you might have heard them say that when Governor Schweitzer was in office, he pardoned, what, 70.

Jaap: Something like that. I don't know the exact number, but yeah, he did pardon them.

Erickson: Even though they were dead. But to clear their names. So I really think, and when you talk to Lubick's. Their family took them up some creek, 14 miles out of Helmville in a cabin. So I kind of think that's why they were afraid.

[01:54:05]

Grant: Well, rightfully so.

Erickson: Maybe they deserved it. It's like everything today, the normal people take the blunt end of what the politicians and the higher ups are causing and then they were afraid. I didn't tell you, so he got a car. I don't know if it was a Model A or Model T truck and it had a crank in the front. And when you started it, you had to turn the crank to get it going. Well, I guess he didn't take it outta gear. And he used to deliver produce to Southside hardware. And it jumped the sidewalk and hit the building and the window. And then one time he was coming out of the yard and he drove it in the pond. And another time at his daughter's, he drove it off the side of the bridge. There were no rails on the bridge. And he drove it off the side of the bridge.

Jaap: Is this all the same vehicle?

Erickson: Yeah. so you know, he didn't know how to drive.

Jaap: Don't get in the car with him.

Erickson: Yeah. Can you imagine?

Grant: When it went off the bridge, was it done?

Erickson: I do not know what happened after that, but that's couple stories. And then, you know, my grandfather liked to drink this one, him, and I guess they were drinking wine and he started throwing up. Well, he was throwing up red wine and grandma thought it was blood. And she thought grandpa was dying, her Paul was dying because, you know.

Jaap: And then you look back.

Erickson: Just silly stories like that, that she thought he was dying.

Jaap: What did she do? Did she just panic?

Erickson: I don't know what they did. That's something I don't know. And then I was born with this ear that sticks out. So Grandma Fall knitted a cap for me to wear because she told my mother that would pin my ear back. And then they said that when I was born, he was down at Miles Crossing and he had a glass of wine and he says, "Here comes my great granddaughter bouncing over the tracks!" Over the railroad tracks, they were bringing me home from the hospital and I was his first grandchild. And I said, well, maybe in Germany, they raised their arm to the grandchildren. I don't know what they did.

Jaap: Oh, that's funny. And the red wine. Yeah. My great grandpa drank red wine a lot too. Yeah.

Erickson: Was he Italian?

Jaap: He was German.

Erickson: See, I have Italian, a lot of Italian and a little Scotch and a little English and the German. The Miles Crossing people were supposed to came to Canada from England. And why they came? I don't know. Well to get away from the King of England. And taxation. And that's what I think.

Grant: Well, thanks for your time today.

Erickson: I didn't take up too much.

Jaap: Oh no, this was wonderful.

Erickson: I said to the girls, I'm not really into this. I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing. Oh, well, you know, it's like being in Butte high school with those old maid school teachers that we used to have. I think those memories come back to make you nervous. Because they were very serious. It's not like school teachers in classrooms today. They're more kid friendly. Maybe a little too much kid friendly.

Jaap: Yeah. Sometimes.

Erickson: Do you have children?

Jaap: I have three kids. Yeah, three girls, so.

Erickson: What school are you at?

Jaap: Hillcrest. My oldest is nine, so you're just starting fourth grade. Yeah. She's just starting to hit that kind of weird age between little and becoming a, I mean, she's only nine, but you can already see the little grown up in her.

Erickson: Between stuff. I'm glad I'm not raising kids today.

Jaap: It's different certainly. Yeah. With everything. Yeah.

Erickson: And there's so much material things that they need. We said really all of us were poor, but we didn't know we were poor. We had nice clothes and what we needed, but now you gotta have . . . those little kids last night, the news commentator was interviewing. Did you see that? Were they nine year- olds? And every one of them had a cell phone. They had their own cell phone. And they said, "What do you all get for your birthday?" And the one kid said, "Stock certificates." We never even knew what a stock certificate was back then.

[02:00:06]

Grant: I still don't.

Erickson: Stocks certificates. And I can't remember if he said to McDonald's. I think it was, he wants stock certificates to McDonalds. I know who thinks of that. We never even got talked to about stocks or stock certificates. No, my husband was a senior in high school and his aunt Sadie Erickson was the government teacher and she did a class seminar on stocks and investing. And that's where he learned. I didn't take that class. So I never heard anything about it. But our family didn't have any money to invest.

Grant: Exactly.

Jaap: I don't know much. I don't know much about that stuff either. Nate certainly doesn't he, now he has, but it took him a while for me to talk him into just getting a debit card with his bank account. You know, that was a push for me to say, you should really get a debit card.

Erickson: Well, you should see us with the computers and things, because we grew up without them. And now I went into the hospital yesterday and on the desk is a computer. And if you want see anybody in the offices, you need to check yourself in on the computer. And I'm like, you gotta be kidding. I have an iPad, but I do not know any of this. And then my daughter, she said that out there where they do the volunteers and they have every age group, they decide to check all the volunteers in on an iPad. Well, she says, "Mom, the people of your generation, some of them are intimidated. They don't know a thing about iPads or what to do." So she said she had to talk to her boss and say, "We need to take these people under consideration because they might even decide not to volunteer."

Jaap: That is true.

Erickson: Because it's so intimidating. And there's a lot of my friends that are savvy because they worked those kind of jobs. But there's a lot of us who say, you know what? We really don't want to get into all of it that like you kids.

Jaap: Now they make little coding games. I just saw, I didn't know what they were. I had to ask Nate what they were, but they're little coding games for kids to learn to code like their children's toys now. But they figure that's what your jobs are gonna be. So why not give a five year old, and I don't know how the games work, but computer coding instead of, yeah. It's different. Yeah. Things are always changing.

Erickson: And if you don't get them into it, they're behind. I can see where they're really, really behind.

Grant: I'm fine being behind.

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