Chapter 1 - Moving to Montana

After my wife Mary died of cancer in June, 1984 I moved to Kalispell, in a glorious valley in northwest Montana circled by high mountains, near Glacier National Park. I told friends that I selected this place out of desire to live in a beautiful, remote place near the mountains. Deep down, I was running away from death; I needed to start life over and hide my grief for a while alone, to recover strength far away from the spell of death. Mary was from the West, and we had smiled together at Montana on past vacation trips. Her spirit was there in the beauty of the mountains.

If there was some lesson for me to learn from Mary’s death, it was to help me know the misery that people go through, for I was to find later that Indians as a class often suffered great poverty and despair, and I was able to perhaps better comprehend their situation. Without Mary’s death, maybe the story I am going to tell you would never have happened.

Both of us had been lovers of horses, and the first time we met we were sharing the pleasant smells of a barn. I was a CPA in Columbus, Ohio who operated a boarding stable as a side line, and it was a second marriage for both of us. To a horseman, the Big Sky Country of Montana sounds like heaven on earth. It was the right place to go.

Before leaving Ohio I had a verbal agreement to sell my home (a condominium), and contracted for the sale of my accounting practice. I hoped to live the life of an outdoorsman, and to have a horse or two to ride in the mountains with a fresh start and a new life.

My children (from my first marriage) were grown and on their own. They seemed to have little need for me on a daily basis. We had become less intimate with each other through the alienation of divorce and my loss of custody (when they were children) in the days before joint custody was even thought of. There was no way to recover those lost years. Before leaving Ohio, I sold my Cadillac but kept the Jeep.

Every man should have a Jeep sometime in his life. Jeep’s haven’t changed much in fifty years; the Army got it right the first time. I had a metal bracket made that would bolt onto the front bumper and hold the front of my canoe while the back rested on the Jeep’s hardtop. With a Jeep and a canoe, I should fit right into Montana; I was already starting to look out of place in Ohio. CPA’s in Ohio just don’t call on their clients while driving a Jeep.

I had no worries about earning a living. I had enough money coming in to live for about two years, and had brought some work to wrap-up for former clients which would take a month or two. I planned to continue with accounting, and design computer programs for CPA firms. I had vague thoughts of writing computer programming books or of work in the area of public service. It was time to question old values and make a fresh start, something that most of us do at various times of personal unrest.

My financial situation looked good. Selling the house in Ohio allowed for buying another in Montana, and selling my accounting practice would provide the capital to start again as a self employed professional. Although the “Condo” had been in Mary’s name, I provided the down payment, made all of the monthly payments and Mary’s will left it to me with the furniture and contents. Her two daughters, Ann and Julie, were given cars, a mobile home, jewelry and other things of hers (and ours) before Mary died. Mary felt this was a fair division, I agreed with her and so did her daughters, who were present during these discussions. I would find out later that her daughters would have a change of ideas after Mary was dead, and they would not honor their mother’s final wishes.

In a previous trip to see my mother and brother in California soon after Mary died, I bought a cozy log home on three acres of woods in the Flathead Valley, across from forest lands with a dirt road leading into the mountains towards a remote place called Strawberry Lake. It was a dream come true, to cut my own firewood and keep a horse or two.

Moving to Montana was a party. A friend of mine, Don Billman, my son Andy, and a former employee Brad Ewart were all sold on the idea. We ended up with two U-Haul trucks, one pulling a trailer and the other pulling the Jeep, plus Don driving his Volkswagen Van. This was our “adventure in moving” and really great fun.

I drove the large truck, Andy and Brad took turns driving the small one, and Don brought up the rear in his Van. We had portable CB radios so we could talk to each other on the road. I covered some of their out-of pocket expenses, but these were volunteers who wanted to help me as well as be part of the adventure. They were contributing friends, not paid helpers.

We traveled as cheaply as possible, sleeping at night in sleeping bags under the trucks. It was a game to see if we could get free showers at truck stops, and with Don’s strong love for McDonald’s, we looked for Golden Arches all the way from Ohio to Montana. A landmark stop was at the highly advertised Wall Drug Store in South Dakota, where we slept under the giant plastic model of a Dinosaur. It was a good company, we had beautiful country to see, and each day was better than the previous one.

We were surprised when we reached Yellowstone National Park in early October to find snow on the ground. Friends from Ohio, Donn and Gayle Griffith, have a cottage in West Yellowstone, on the edge of the park, and on impulse we phoned them back in Ohio. They guessed what we were after, and warmly offered the use of their cabin where we spent two nights. We took a break from McDonald’s, and had real beds to sleep in. There was a roaring wood fire for warmth, and a place to park the trucks while we backtracked to explore Yellowstone Park. The bears were hiding, but we saw steaming geysers, elk, deer and lots of buffalo.

When we pulled into Kalispell two days later, my real estate agent and good friend Jan Tow was waiting for us with a key to my new log cabin, where our crew spent about two days unloading and getting me settled. Old friends from the First Community Church “couples circle” in Ohio had sent a surprise gift, a ceiling fan for the cabin, which Don installed for me. The fan would circulate heat from the big steel wood stove.

I call it a cabin, but it was a family size house with a cathedral ceiling, a sleeping loft and a porch across the front and one side. The lower floor was more than a basement because it had ten foot ceilings and most of it was finished. There were two bedrooms on the main floor, and with the loft and full basement enough room for a large family. The logs were huge, making the walls several feet thick so the sheer mass provided good insulation. There was enough roof overhang outside to shelter a winter’s supply of firewood, and with my own woods there was no shortage of fuel for the stove.

The crew made a side trip to see Glacier National Park, then there were farewells as they headed back for Ohio. I took son Andy to the airport in Kalispell, and Don and Brad left for Ohio in Don’s Volkswagen Van. I was alone, starting my first Montana winter.

It wasn’t long before my financial life started to crumble; everything that could go wrong did. First, the proceeds from the sale of my home in Columbus were threatened. To make a long story short, my stepdaughters disagreed with their mother’s will, and tried to take the house.

I defended Mary’s will but the cost of lawyers, the delay and the loss of my verbal sales contract ate away at the value of the property, and having Mary’s children fighting over her final wishes was a sad experience. Mary had been generous with them, but it was “in their best interest” to try to get it all, as one of them said very coldly.

I had a net loss on the Ohio property after attorney’s fees, and Mary’s wishes were destroyed by the greed of her daughters. The loss of a personal house, and the attorney’s fees to defend it and my wife’s will, are not allowed as a tax deduction which added bitterness to the pill. I should have learned a lesson about avarice (greed for money), but I did not. Later I would discover that the Indians have a special name for avarice. They call it the white man’s sickness.

The second catastrophe was the loss of the sales price from my accounting practice. I had received a down payment, with the final amount to be measured by the next year’s revenues. The buyer had a heart attack and related surgery during tax season, so he was not able to provide services to my old clients. I was told this later (when the final payment was due) so there was nothing I could have done about it. The final payment did not amount to much. There was no evil intent in this, just misfortune.

The sum total of these little disasters was that I had lost my wife, my home and my business all in the same year. This is not said to solicit your pity, but to explain the abrupt change in my circumstances. I was not really broke, but no longer “comfortable,” and needed to get a job. There was no capital that I could use to start another CPA practice of my own.

My past career in accounting had been relatively successful. After graduating from Ohio University, I had landed the one job I really wanted, with the international accounting firm, Arthur Andersen & Co., in Cleveland. With that basic training behind me, after about two years I moved to Columbus to become the Controller of a group of construction companies, and about six years later moved on to larger things with Volkswagen.

At the time that Volkswagen was taking the country by storm as the first really large automobile importer, I was Comptroller (the German term) for the distributor that had the exclusive market for Ohio, Kentucky and parts of Indiana. I created a computerized accounting system that took the best features from U.S. automotive accounting, and combined them with the mandated German accounting structure, no mean feat in those days when computers were not so “friendly”. Volkswagen sent its financial people from Germany to see what I’d done, and borrowed from my creation for all VW distributors, world-wide.

That relatively “showy” job led me to a position with the Reader’s Digest in New York, where I designed and implemented a new international accounting system, again using creative computer development work to accomplish that task. DeWitt Wallace, the founder of the Digest, liked my work and I was assured a good future. I liked living in the Westchester County area, but my first marriage was failing and my wife insisted that she could only be happy if we returned to Ohio, which I agreed to as a possible solution to our problems. She had become an alcoholic, and I was willing to try anything to solve that problem.

Back in Columbus, I decided to start my own practice as a CPA, and continued with that for some eighteen years. The first marriage ended in divorce, and my second marriage was to Mary, who died about ten years later, which then resulted in my decision to head for Montana.

The money I had counted on to get established in Kalispell was not coming in. I had no income and the capital from Ohio that I needed to get started in self-employment had disappeared. Instead of rebuilding a new life for myself in a relaxed way, I was in trouble. There was no choice but to abandon my dream of the mountains and head for the city to get a job immediately.

I sold the cabin as fast as I could (again, a nondeductible loss) and headed for my Mother’s apartment in California. I had to sell the furniture and large items in haste at an auction, and rent a trailer to move out of Montana to hunt for a job. Now everything I owned would fit in one large U-Haul trailer.

It is strange when breaking up a household, to learn the things people keep and the things they let go. In one large waterproof box, I carried away a brand new saddle that had never seen the back of a horse. That working stock saddle, you know the kind I mean, was the best one I had ever owned. It had made the trip from Ohio with me, destined for the back of a western horse.

You’ve seen the movies, where a cowboy loses his shirt and heads down the road, but you know there still is hope ahead and another horse somewhere, because he carries a prized saddle slung over his back. It’s the one thing a cowboy won’t part with.

The auctioneer didn’t see that fine Crites working saddle, kept safe in the box with Mary’s braided reins, blue nylon halters and old leather things that carried the sweet smell of horses.

In a small box I kept were two gold bands, engraved inside with initials and dates and carrying the promise of forever more. They were left from a time when the words “till death do us part” were just poetry, with little real meaning. There was my sheriff’s badge, number M-16, with a horse on the star to show I could ride. When you’re a mounted policeman, nothing less, you get to carry the flag in all the parades.

And in that small box was Dad’s gold watch, a gift from the hand of his own Dad the day that they sold the farm oxen. Dad was gone, but the watch that he had received on his 21st birthday was something of his you could see and hold.

The tax effect was ruinous. The loss on the cabin was again not deductible, nor the moving expense, nor the loss on household goods. The tax system is not designed for the benefit of those who become poor.

While in Montana, I had applied for several jobs, including one advertised by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Billings. I also knew about an opening teaching at the Indian junior college on the Blackfeet Reservation in Northwestern Montana, and went there to see about the job just before leaving Montana.

At Browning, Montana I met Conrad LaFromboise, Dean. I was strongly impressed by the quality of this man who wore his hair in Indian braids, and by the goals of the small college. Their facilities were pitiful, but the young Indian students I met were bright, inspired and really trying. Pay would be $9,000. annually, with no fringe benefits or insurance of any kind. I was impressed by the mission of the college. Inside the front cover of the booklet describing the college is this statement:

“The Blackfeet Nation sleeps in the shadow of the Great Rocky Mountains. It is the last encampment of a proud and mighty people who once roamed the prairies of a vast land which was called the Big Sky.

“Driven here by a force, we watched an endless flow of persons come and go - persons sent as servants by the Great White Father in Washington, who came to serve, but only served themselves.

“Suffering their diseases, enduring hunger and starvation, deprived of our precious freedom, still we survived, but the greatest loss of all was to our pride and dignity.

“So, like the mighty grizzly bear who, when Fall approaches, goes into a winter sleep, we went into our sleep. Now, the winter of our suffering is over and we arise, refreshed with due strength, declaring to all men that we shall form a new government, a new way of life, recapturing our pride and dignity and fostering our culture and our heritage.

“Then the last encampment of a proud and mighty people shall be the homeland for all Blackfeet Indians that shall endure for as long as the sun shall rise and these mountains cast their shadows, and the Blackfeet Nation will live in peace and harmony with our brothers and our neighbors forever.”

My emotions said “do it,” but reason cringed at the miserable pay and living conditions. I would have to share a prefab shack with another middle-aged teacher, and there was no future in this dead-end job. The college library was almost nonexistent; the buildings were tired mobile homes that needed repairs. Browning is a rural ghetto of collapsing buildings, faded federal promises, broken glass and dust.

When the school had been promised it was a bright hope. Congress had reduced the money needed to run the school, and then cut it again. The Indian’s capital had been the buffalo, and they had been most wealthy. We took the buffalo, and never replaced it with anything else. The people hold their heads up, but they have little hope to escape a life lacking comfort and opportunity.

The fall session was about to start, and the white teacher who had been hired backed out at the last minute. There really was a need for me, and I was offered the job even though I had never taught school in my life.

It hurt to tell Conrad that I would not take the job, and I am still sorry about that. These people needed help through no fault of their own, and were doing their best to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I believe I could have done some good, but at the price of my own destruction. I was not willing to do it; I lacked commitment. This was a lesson to me. There is a huge difference between meaning well and doing well. The gap is immense, and most people never encounter it.

To do well can not be done without great cost, and most of us are not willing to pay the price. Bleeding for others is at the loss of your own blood. I had never gone down that road before, and was not ready to take that on in Browning. Sure it would be a public service and would have social value, but I wasn’t ready for the sacrifice.

So, with this all behind me, and the U-Haul trailer behind the Jeep, I headed for California. In my middle fifties, how wonderful it is to have a mother who accepts me with skinned knees, no job or whatever. She does not always approve of what I do, but still I am accepted.

Mom has an apartment in a pleasant group of apartments for the elderly, or as they say in California, “restricted as to age,” in Thousand Oaks. The city is just beyond the outer limits of Los Angeles, and has warmth and beauty with no smog and not quite so many people. Attractive as it is, still to me it falls short of the beauty and wilderness that is Montana.

Jobs were good in California, and after a month or so I was working for a local CPA firm. The pay was good with a bright future. The work was conventional, mostly tax work for the wealthy. Several of the clients I handled were political appointees who had ties to the Reagan administration. They owned horse farms or estates in the Santa Barbara area, and had been appointed to pleasant jobs in Washington. Money flowed in easily to them from all directions. They, like me, were good Republicans.

The earlier application pending with BIA in Billings now resulted in a definite job offer. There would be a cut in pay to less that half of what I had earned in Ohio, but unlike the job in Browning, I could support myself. There was no hesitation, the decision was instant and came from my heart.

I phoned my new supervisor, Bill Benjamin, and said I’d come after appropriate notice to the local CPA firm. After the Browning experience I wanted to do what I could to make life a little better for Indians, and Montana appealed to my sense of adventure.

Back to U-Haul again. I loaded my boxes into one of their trailers one more time and started on the road from California to Montana. I reserved twenty dollars for the slots in Las Vegas, and planned to stop there for a subsidized dinner and to drop my quarters into the machines. Like most people I never win, but this time I managed to quit while I was ahead and actually pocketed well over a hundred dollars. Good fortune was smiling and the world looked good. There was a new life and adventure ahead.

I’d done a lot of driving on the first stay in Montana, and managed to put over 40,000 miles on the Jeep in just one year, mostly on unpaved roads looking at the scenery. While on solitary trips I had developed the habit of driving with few stops the first day, and then sleeping along the road when I became tired, either on the ground near the Jeep or curled up inside, which isn’t easy when you’re over six feet tall.

With that plan in mind, after leaving Las Vegas at dusk, I left the freeway in Nevada and turned onto U.S. Route 93, which heads directly north towards Montana. This is remote desert country, but there was no traffic and I could look forward to some beautiful scenery at dawn. And then, wham. One of the trailer tires had a blowout, and the trip came to a screeching halt, thirty miles from nowhere late at night.

U-Haul provided no spare tire, and the rim was bent so there was nothing I could do, except drag the load off the edge of the road and wait. I could not raise any traffic on the CB radio, and after the first hour only one truck had passed, and it did not respond to my attempt to flag it down. The best I could do was to unhitch the trailer and head for the nearest mark of the map, the village of Alamo, Nevada.

I found a motel with a pay phone, where I could call the U-Haul hotline. They told me a wrecker was on its way from a few miles north of Alamo, and I should stay at the motel where I could be located. The wrecker would bring the trailer to me with a new tire installed, and I could just check in at the motel. In the morning I would find the trailer ready to go, hitched to my Jeep which I was to leave at the front of the Motel parking lot so the wrecker could find it.

The trailer had a secure padlock, and with no traffic on the road and the wrecker on its way, I wasn’t worried about theft, so I went to bed around midnight. At three in the morning I was awakened by a phone call from a wrecker service in Los Vegas. Now the story was entirely different. A wrecker was just starting out from Vegas. Again I was advised to stay at the motel and wait for the wrecker to bring the trailer to me.

At dawn the wrecker arrived, but the trailer had been abandoned too long. The lock had been cut off, and the trailer was now half empty. Most of the things I had owned were gone. I spent most of the day with a very considerate Sheriff’s Deputy, Gary Davis, trying to inventory what was left and determine what was missing. I came up with a loss of well over twenty thousand dollars, which included all of my clothes (even the dirty laundry had been taken) and the personal effects of a lifetime.

Gary was sympathetic, and from my own police experience as a volunteer Sheriff’s Deputy back in Ohio years earlier, I could tell that his investigation was thorough and professional. Gary visited the scene of the crime, and found the padlock that had been removed with a bolt cutter. He found tracks that showed that a truck had backed up to the trailer, and apparently the thief just transferred the bulk of my load into his vehicle. Gary took several photographs, and checked for fingerprints on the lock and on the remaining goods in the trailer.

The small box was gone. The rings would be melted, Dad’s watch sold at some antique store, and my sheriff’s badge would be trashed. If you go fishing, look around for a good 4 H.P. Evinrude outboard motor. If the serial number is 0317052 you have my permission to snatch it for me, because it belongs on the back of my canoe. If you go places where there are horses and see a fine Critesworking saddle, look on the bottom to see if “Henry” is printed there. You let me know, and I’ll get there if I have to walk. There will be blood in my eye and hell to pay, and that roping saddle will come back home with me.

I felt pretty glum about the loss. If that thief had been caught, I would have gone for his throat. But there was no use in crying over spilt milk. Alamo has remote beauty, marred only by the purpose that the federal government has found for this wilderness. This lovely land is used for testing hydrogen bombs, designed to melt the flesh of men, women and children whose opinions about religion, government and economics may differ from yours and mine.

It was time to go, so I told myself that at least I had a lighter load, and the things that people pack in boxes are not so important. I’m not sure I believed that myself, but it did no good to mourn the loss.

If I had known what was up ahead, would I have turned back to California? No. Life is an adventure and there was more of that waiting for me than many people have in a lifetime. I got back into the Jeep and headed North for Montana.

Throughout this book the term white man is used as Indians use it, to mean outsider. The term includes Caucasians, African Americans, and people of all “races,” nationalities and ethnic origins who are not Indian. When used as a collective singular such as “the whiteman,” it means, from the Indian perspective, those who oppress us.