MY EARLY YEARS
1921 UNTIL 1927

I was born in a sheep wagon in Wyoming it took me a while to figure how this could have been. I have a birth certificate signed by Nurse---------------of Douglas Wyoming.. I cannot think of any way my mother could have gotten to Douglas. In those days traveling nurses and midwives frequently delivered babies in the home. This the only way I can explain it. My mother could not have traveled to Douglas Wyoming to have me. On reading my birth certificate it appears that my Dad may have delivered me. We will never know for sure.

A picture of my Mother and I when I was only a few months old

Of course I have no memory of those very early years. However I do remember a story Dad used to tell about the line camps he ran. They were occupied by an Indian who checked fences and looked after sheep in the immediate area. It was always a big day when Dad visited the line camp where he would stay overnight and then move on. He told of one night just before the old Indian served dinner (a pot of beans and peaches mixed together) that a scrawny old camp cat feel into the bean pot! The old Indian picked it up by the tail, shook the beans off, threw it out and served dinner. Dad sort of lost his appetite but ate anyway because he didn’t want to hurt the Indians feelings!

They also told the story of Mom’s cooking. Having been an orphan she had never learned to cook but Dad was a good cook. Mom started learning to cook but never became a very good cook.

As the story goes Dad came back to the sheep wagon one evening and piled in the center of the table was a large stack of crumbs and small pieces of something. In the center of the pile Mom had stuck in a stick with a little sign on it saying DONUTS. Dad said her cooking didn’t improve much but she quit crying so often.

I don’t know why but we seemed to drift farther and farther West during those very early years. My younger brother Robert Leroy McPherson was born on Christmas day 1922 in Casper Wyoming. I don’t know if Dad was still herding sheep at time. I do remember my Dad shooting elk from the wagon and stringing them up on poles in front of the wagon. He would slice meat with a broad axe. It kept pretty well because he only did this in the cooler months.

Sometime shortly after Bob was born we moved farther West to Yellowstone National Park where Dad drove a stage coach for the tourists. About all I remember of this period is Dad coming home with stories of bears etc. frightening the tourists. I do not know what we lived in. I just can’t recall it.

In about 1923 or 24 we moved to Butte Montana. We rented a boarding house and Mom cared for the boarding house and Dad worked in the mines. Two memorable things happened there.

The first was that somehow Dad was injured in a mine accident. It crushed his hip area and he suffered from hip trouble the rest of his life. It was much worse in the early years but did improve later on.

The second thing was an earthquake. It shook the building so bad that one of the miners who was taking a bath at the time got so scared that he grabbed a bar of soap and ran down the street naked. Must have taken many years for people to get over laughing about that.

My sister Shirley was born in Helena Montana not far from Butte.

Shortly after that we moved to a scout ranch a few miles north of Butte. We lived there several years. Dad ran a logging operation during the winters and the scout camp in the summers.

This place was really something. There was a huge Central log building . We lived in it and the cook, maid and several of the loggers all lived there.

I don’t know who built it, but it was equipped with a huge wood burning central heating system in the basement and used Cyanide gas for lights and cooking.

There was a large tank of some kind buried in the yard. Periodically they would clean it out, refill with hundreds of pounds of cyanide pellets and then seal it up. Don’t know just how it worked but water dripped into the tank creating gas. As the pressure dropped more water would drip in. I can’t remember how frequently it had to be refueled but it ran quite a while.

One of the loggers and the French maid became very close but I fell in love with her. As they were sitting on the couch I would insist on sitting between them. She didn’t seem to mind, but he did!

Bob and I were about 5 or 6 at the time and we were in almost constant trouble of some kind:

One incident I remember occurred when we were in the springhouse used to store and cool milk and food. There was a concrete sided channel from one side to the other about two feet wide, three ft. deep and ten feet long. Someone had put a very large lake trout in it. He was about 30 inches long and blind from bumping his eyes on the walls.

As you entered the spring house some stuff was on the near side and more on the far side. For some reason I jumped across the channel to the far side. Bob tried to follow me, but fell into the channel. The trout thought that anything that hit the water was his food. He bit Bob on the cheek and left a pretty big bite. The scar is still on Bob’s cheek. He is the only person I know that has a trout bite scar on his cheek!

On another occasion we came across a 5 gallon jug of carbolic acid. We didn’t know just what it was so I told Bob to smell it. He did and it burned a red ring around the end of his nose. It eventually healed and is no longer any more that a memory.

On a third occasion Bob and I were walking on a trail out in the woods. We came across a little cub grizzly bear, it climbed up a tree. I left Bob there to keep it up the tree and ran home to get Dad to help us catch it. When I told Dad what I wanted him for he jumped on a horse, threw me up behind him and we raced back to the location. Both Bob and the cub were still there and thankfully mama bear hadn’t shown up. Dad sent us both home following us on his horse and lectured us on bear catching!

One last bear story, on one of our walks in the fall, we saw a dead bear laying on the road. Like any healthy young boy, I ran up to it and kicked it. It let out a grunt, got up and walked off. It was a large male grizzly bear. Apparently it was just full of berries and sleeping it off. In any case he didn’t bother us, just walked off,