English Creek - Ivan Doig

by Ivan Doig

  I could not have created my version of the Two country in the period of this novel without the newspaper files and other local historical material of several northern Montana public libraries. I’m much indebted to Choteau Public Library and librarians Maureen Strazdas and Marian Nett; Conrad Public Library and librarians Corleen Norman and Steve Gratzer; Great Falls Public Library, librarians Sister Marita Bartholome, Howard Morris, and Susan Storey, and library director Richard Gerken ; Havre Public Library and librarian Bill Lisonby; Hill County Library and Dorothy Armstrong; Valier Public Library and librarian Sue Walley. And my appreciation as well to Harriet Hayne of Dupuyer, for sharing the taped interviews done for Dupuyer’s remarkable centennial volume, By Gone Days and Modern Ways.

  The Forest History Society provided many otherwise unavailable details of the lives led by U.S. Forest Service rangers and their families. Great thanks to my friends there for being so attentive to my needs, whether I happened to be on premises or at my typewriter in Seattle: Kathy and Ron Fahl, Mary Beth Johnson, and Pete Steen. Much of the 1930s background for this book derives from the holdings of the three principal repositories of Montana history, and Pm grateful to the staff of each. The Renne Library of Montana State University at Bozeman; librarians Minnie Paugh and Ilah Shriver of Special Collections, and archivist Jean Schmidt. The Mansfield Library of the University of Montana at Missoula; librarian Kathy Schaefer of Special Collections, and archivist Dale Johnson. The Montana Historical Society at Helena; Bob Clark, Patricia Bick, Ellen Arguimbau—with particular thanks to reference librarian Dave Walter, who unflinchingly fielded query after query in the years I worked on this book.

  For their generous encouragement and for rescuing me whenever I got lost in their specific fields of expertise, my thanks too to Montana’s corps of professional historians, particularly Stan Davison, Bill Farr, Harry Fritz, Duane Hampton, Mike Malone, Rex Myers, and Rich Roeder. And I know of no other state with a published heritage of such quality and quantity as that of Montana: The Magazine of Western History; my gratitude to M0ntana’s editor, Bill Lang, for his skills as well as his friendship.

  The University of Washington Library, my home base for this and my other books, again was an invaluable resource. I owe thanks to the Northwest Collection’s Carla Rickerson, Andy Johnson, Dennis Andersen, Susan Cunningham, and Marjorie Cole; to Glenda Pearson of the Newspaper and Microcopy Center; and to Barbara Gordon of the Forest Resources library. For vital guidance into the historical holdings of the U.S. Forest Service, I’m indebted to Maggie Nybo of Lewis and Clark National Forest headquarters in Great Falls and Raymond Karr and Jud Moore of the information office at Region One headquarters in Missoula. And I owe specific and special thanks to Charles E. "Mike" Hardy of Missoula, both for loaning me his personal collection of fireline notebooks, cookbooks, etc., and for his cataloguing of the papers of Harry T. Gisborne, longtime USFS forest fire researcher, at the University of Montana archives. I emphasize that while I have drawn from the fire descriptions of Gisborne, Elers Koch, and a number of other Montana foresters of their generation, the Flume Gulch fire is my own concoction.

  I benefited greatly from listening to two career Forest Service men as they "pawed over old times” : the late Nevan McCullough of Enumclaw, Washington, and Dahl Kirkpatrick of Albuquerque, New Mexico. My thanks to Mike McCullough for arranging that joint interview.

  Many of the details of my Gros Ventre Fourth of July rodeo are due to the diligence of Kristine Fredriksson, registrar of collections and research at the ProRodeo Hall of Champions & Museum of the American Cowboy in Colorado Springs.

  Vernon Carstensen, as ever a fund of ideas, brought to my attention the Montana origins of the famous dust storm of May, 1934, which Ihave appropriated for my Two Medicine country, and was a valuable sounding board about the Depression and the West.

  Special thanks to my first and best friend in the Dupuyer country, Tom Chadwick; his driving skills delivered Carol and me to much of the landscape of this book.

  My wife, Carol, has been the first reader of all my books. This time, camera ever in hand, she also became geographer of the Two country and architect of the town of Gros Ventre. My debt to her in all my work is beyond saying.

  To my agent Liz Darhansoff, and my editor, Tom Stewart—thanks for making English Creek possible.

  One of my first memories, a few months before my sixth birthday, is of hearing my parents and their neighbors discuss the radio news of the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in April, 1945. Thus it is very nearly forty years now that I have been listening to Montanans. But never with more benefit than during the writing of English Creek. By interview or letter or phone, and in some instances by conversation and acquaintanceship down through the years, the following Montanans have lent me lore which in one way or another contributed to this book. My deep thanks to them all. Bozeman: Jake and Eleanor Mast. Butte: Lucy Old. Bynum: Ira Perkins. Chateau: A. B. Guthrie, Jr. Conrad: Albert Warner. Corvallis: Helen Eden. Deer Lodge: Frank A. Shaw. Dapayer: Lil and Tom Howe. Flaarville: Eugene Hatfield. Forsyth: James H. Smith. Frazer: Arthur H. Fast. Fort Benton: Alice Klatte, C. G. Stranahan. Great Falls: George Engler, Ted Fosse, Geoffrey Greene, Bradley and Joy Hamlett. Hamilton: Billie Abbey, George M. Stewart. Havre: Charles M. Brill, Edward J. Cook, Elmer and Grace Gwynn, Frances Inman, Frank Lammerding, Howard Sanderson. Helena: John Gruar, Eric White. Hogeland: Adrian Olszewski. Jackson: Kenneth Krause. Malta : Fred Olson, Egil Solberg. Missoula : Henry J. Viche. Peerless : Ladon Jones. Superior: Wally Ringer. Valier: Jim Sheble. White Sulphur Springs: Joyce Celander, Tony Hunolt, Cliftord Shearer. Wisdom: Mr. and Mrs. Fred Else.

  My inspiration for “The Lord of the Field” in Beth McCaskill’s Fourth of July speech was Montgomery M. Atwater’s article "Man-Made Rain," written for the Montana lVriters’ Project during the WPA era. Similarly the “Subjects under discussion . . . by U.S. Forest Service crews" was inspired by the versatile Bob Marshall, "A Contribution to the Life History of the Lumberjack," Pulp and Paper Magazine of Canada, May 21, 1931. The observation that a forest fire at night resembles a lighted city is from Elers Koch, in Early Days in the Forest Service, Region One. The theological survey joke is told by Hartley A. Calkins in that same volume. The analogy of a wedge of cool air thrusting between a fire and its smoke, and other rare eyewitness descriptions of a forest fire blowup, derive from H. T. Gisborne’s article on the Half-Moon fire in The Frontier, November 1929.

  During three summer stints of research in Montana and throughout the rest of those years of delving for and writing this book, many persons provided me hospitality, information, advice, encouragement, or other aid. My appreciation to Coleen Adams, Margaret Agee, Pat Armstrong, Genise and Wayne Arnst, Robert Athearn, John Backes, Bill Bevis, Gene and Hazel Bonnet, Merrill Burlingame, Harold and Maxine Chadwick, Juliette Crump, H. J. Engles, Clifford Field, Howard and Trudy Forbes, Glen Gifford, Sam Gilluly, Madeleine Grandy, Carol Guthrie, Vicki and Chuck Hallingstad, Gary Hammond of the Nature Conservancy’s Pine Butte preserve, Eileen Harrington, John James, Carol Jimenez, Melvylei Johnson, Pat Kelley, Bill Kittredge, Dr. Jim Lane, Sue Lang, Becky Lang and Joel Lang, Marc Lee, Gail Malone, Elliot Marks of the Nature Conservancy, Sue Mathews, Ann McCartney, Nancy Meiselas, Horace Morgan, Ann and Marshall Nelson, Ken Nicholson, Peggy O’Coyne, Bud and Vi Olson, Gary Olson, Judy Olson, Laura Mary Palin, Cille and Gary Payton, Dorothy Payton, Patty Payton, Dorothy and Earl Perkins, Jarold Ramsey, Bill Rappold, Marilyn Ridge, Jean and John Roden, Tom Salansky, Ripley Schemm, Ted and Jean Schwinden, Annick Smith, Gail Steen, Fay Stokes, Margaret Svec, Merlyn Talbot, Dean Yaupel;John Waldner and the other members of the New Rockport Hutterite colony; Irene VVanner, Donald K. Watkins, Lois and Jim Welch, Rosana Winterburn, Glen Gifford, Sonny Linger, Ken Twichel, And the people of Dupuyer, Montana.

 

 

  or reading books on Archive.