The Simple Lives We Live
Some of the most extraordinary stories don't come from celebrities or history books. They come from everyday people - your neighbor, your grandmother, the man who runs the corner store, or the woman sitting next to you at church.
On The Simple Lives We Live, we sit down with ordinary people to uncover the beautiful, hard, faithful, and fleeting moments that shaped their lives. Stories of love and loss. Of grit and grace. Of family, faith, and the simple days we didn't know we'd one day miss.
So please join me each week as we capture voices and memories that deserve to be heard and remembered. Because the truth is, ordinary people live the most extraordinary lives.
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The Simple Lives We Live
Still Saying Yes to Adventure | Milo Thompson
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In 1971, Milo Thompson was a shy guy who had never been farther than Fargo. Two hours before the plane left, someone talked him into a trip to Europe, and he's been saying yes to adventure ever since. Listen for the MG roadster that somehow came home with him, and how Pam ended up asking him out. Milo is proof it's never too late to say yes.
Welcome to the simple lives we live, where we open the little family photo emblems and dust about the stories that made us who we are. I'm your host, Kylie Simiano, and each week I sit down with everyday people to capture their extraordinary life experiences, the moments of love, lust, laughter, and resilience that echo through time. These are the stories that remind us of our roots, connect us to generations past, and show us that the simple lives we live are anything but ordinary. So settle in and let's listen back together.
SPEAKER_05Welcome back to the podcast, everybody. Today the quote is the best inheritance a man can leave is not money, but memories that feel like home. And today my guest is Milo Thompson. So thank you first for being here. And we also have his daughter, Laura, is gonna be helping with the interview. So if you hear somebody chirping in the background, that's probably her. So Milo, start us off by telling us how old you are.
SPEAKER_00I will be 80 in July.
SPEAKER_05Okay, we're gonna definitely take a picture after this because you do not at all. I'm really surprised that you're gonna be 80. And where were you born?
SPEAKER_00I was actually born in the in the old NP hospital in Glendive, Montana.
SPEAKER_05In Glendive, Montana. Okay. Did you did your family live here?
SPEAKER_00We lived in Beach the whole time.
SPEAKER_05You did live in Beach.
SPEAKER_00Yes, but we doctored in Glendive at the old at the old hospital, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Okay. How many siblings do you have?
SPEAKER_00Uh I have two. One has passed away.
SPEAKER_05Okay. Where did you fall in line?
SPEAKER_00I'm the middle child.
SPEAKER_05You are the middle child, okay. So who's the older sibling and the younger siblings?
SPEAKER_00Okay, my brother Jack was was born in 46, and he's passed away. He passed away in night in 2007. And my younger sister, Kay, was born in 49, and she lives in Calispell, Montana.
SPEAKER_05Okay, so spread out a little bit. Do you see her often?
SPEAKER_00Oh, about once or twice a year.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_00We talk on the phone.
SPEAKER_05It's great. That is why technology is great these days, because you can talk on the phone. Um, did you grow up in the country on a farm ranch, or did you grow up in town?
SPEAKER_00We we lived in town.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_00Uh in the southeast corner of town. Um and but we had a farm just uh mile west of the cemeteries.
SPEAKER_05Oh, okay. Okay. Did you always farm then? Just not like a homestead there.
SPEAKER_00No. Well, there was the the original Thompson homestead was there.
SPEAKER_05Okay, but you never lived there.
SPEAKER_00We know we never lived there.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_05Was it pretty dilapidated? Is that why? Or did your grandparents live out there?
SPEAKER_00Uh actually, uh no, my grandparents built a house in like 1906 in town. Here in town. And uh my uh my uncle Irv lived there and for a long time, but he had a very severe case of arthritis and moved in the 60s, he moved to Arizona. Okay, okay, and nobody lived there. Well, I don't know if anybody remembers Kai Trout. He was an oil man that lived in town, he lived there for a while.
SPEAKER_05Okay, but and nobody is is the house still there?
SPEAKER_00No, it's it's gone.
SPEAKER_05It is gone. Okay. Uh what were your parents like? Who are your parents? Okay. Maybe start there. Who were your parents?
SPEAKER_00Well, as long as we're the my dad was Goodwin Thompson, they called him Goody.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00And he he his parents were Henry and Ida Thompson. They came from Wisconsin in the 1910, 1908, something like that.
SPEAKER_06Okay.
SPEAKER_00Him and his brother. And uh there were no region, and Ida was no region. And uh there was nine nine siblings, five brothers, four daughters. And uh they farmed. It was sort of unique. Henry actually retired at 45. And the kids yes, and the kids took over.
SPEAKER_05I know I've never heard of such a thing on the city.
SPEAKER_00I haven't either. I've never heard of it. So okay, and dad he only went through about six, seven weeks of high school. He he had to deliver milk every morning, and it always made him late for school. So he quit.
SPEAKER_05Oh, that's awesome. He did okay without it though.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, he could he could do my algebra problems, no problem at all, you know, through college. And he didn't really have much high school, no, even no, so and he farmed and he was a carpenter, and he worked various jobs. Like he worked for Rysler Electric, or and then he worked at the the old uh super value store.
SPEAKER_04Okay, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So and my mother was a hogoboom.
SPEAKER_04Say that again.
SPEAKER_00Hogelboom, h-O-G-O-B-O-O-M.
SPEAKER_05Wow. And uh that seems like such an old-fashioned last name, doesn't it? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it comes from she was half Swiss, a quarter Dutch, and a quarter Welsh. They moved as the Reformation happened, and they came over about the same time to Wisconsin. Dad was uh Hogabooms were on the west side of Wisconsin, Thompson's were on the east side of Wisconsin's.
SPEAKER_05So they met in Wisconsin.
SPEAKER_00No, uh well, yes, they did, yeah.
SPEAKER_05They did, and then they moved here out here. Yeah, okay. Was it because of farming that brought them out here?
SPEAKER_00Yes, they had a they had a home homestead in Alpha, just uh if you know where Alpha is, it was a mile west and a mile and a half south. Wine rice is now have it. Okay, it's the house is rather dilapidated right now.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. But and so you said your dad retired at no, not my dad. Your grandpa, yeah, and then your dad took over the farm.
SPEAKER_00My dad and his brother Ted. Okay, so two of them two of them took over the farm, yeah.
unknownOkay, okay.
SPEAKER_00So all the brothers were basically except Irv, who went south, but uh his brother Ben had a farm north of town, and his brother Richard had a farm just south and east of beach where Hawks now live.
SPEAKER_05Yep, yep.
SPEAKER_00Yep, that was his farm.
SPEAKER_05Okay, so you guys had a big community of farmers within the family, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And they they worked together at at times and you know, brothers help them brothers, so yeah.
SPEAKER_05So what were your parents? What were your parents like? Were they strict? Were they very loving? Were they very different from each other?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, dad was pretty easygoing, but later in life he became an alcoholic, which you know changed things.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But mom she was pretty easy going too, and but uh when dad had his problems, she had to sort of take over and so do a lot of the things did your mom ever work? Yes, she she was uh librarian for a long time. And she uh worked up the old um the motel. She was that like the night clerk at the old Westgate Motel. Westgate, yes, okay.
SPEAKER_05Is that even there?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's still there.
SPEAKER_05It's still there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the building.
SPEAKER_05The building is but not about the function of it. Any talents that they had.
SPEAKER_00Well for a long time dad fixed uh small appliances in in our basement back in the days when people just didn't throw it away and yeah, he repaired toasters and mixers and irons and a little of everything.
SPEAKER_05How was he did he just figure that out or did somebody teach him?
SPEAKER_00No, I think he just figured it out.
SPEAKER_05He just figured out he had had a brain that worked like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's I think I picked up a little of it.
SPEAKER_05So what are some favorite memories with your sist uh siblings?
SPEAKER_00Oh boy, that's I think oh I don't know. Just I remember when I got my 10, my three-speed bike, my mother, I'd I'd gotten a dog, a Dalmatian, and this Dalmatian was not the easiest to train. And my folks drive me. They said they would buy me a bike if I would get rid of the dog.
SPEAKER_05Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00So I got my bike.
SPEAKER_05Where did you where did the dog go?
SPEAKER_00I do not even remember.
SPEAKER_05Oh, okay. Was it like, oh, I gave it to my best friend?
SPEAKER_00Apparently I wasn't too attached.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, right. Do you remember what you guys did for pun as kit as a kid?
SPEAKER_00We played outside a lot. Uh the the signal come home was two beeps on the car horn.
SPEAKER_05That was oh, that was the signal to come home. Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_00And uh we built we built go-karts. Uh quite a few go-karts.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_00Got in trouble a couple times for taking the engine off the mower and using the wrong wheels that were in the basement that was being saved for something and later.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, but that's how you learned. Yeah, that's how you got to be so good with stuff like that, right? Not just your dad. So what were some chores that you had growing up?
SPEAKER_00Oh, of course, we everybody has to wash dishes and dry them.
SPEAKER_05No dishwasher.
SPEAKER_00Actually, we did have a dishwasher.
SPEAKER_05We did have a dishwasher.
SPEAKER_00This and we moved into our new house in uh like 1951-52, and there was actually a dishwasher, they put a dishwasher in.
SPEAKER_05Interesting. Was it one that you would hook up to the sink?
SPEAKER_00No, it was it was installed. It wasn't yeah, and it didn't, it wasn't a front loader, it had a top loader. You open the top like a deep freeze.
SPEAKER_05I think I've seen that before, but not many were made like that, I don't think.
SPEAKER_00And uh it didn't last very long.
SPEAKER_05Dad couldn't fix it either.
SPEAKER_00No, no, oh geez, it stayed in place, but it was more of a counter than anything. So we washed dishes. Uh other than that, just keep your room fairly clean.
SPEAKER_05Now, the house that you built and grew up, that your parents built and you grew up in, did you each have your own room? Did you have to share a room?
SPEAKER_00I shared a room with my brother.
SPEAKER_05You did share a room with your brother. Do you think that caused you two to be closer or were you not close? Because I don't know the relationship that obviously that you had with him, but um we were close, but not that close.
SPEAKER_00He was a different, he had a different personality. He was very outgoing. Okay, very he was into everything. He was a singer, he played in the band, he went to all the dances, everything, and I was more the the shy type.
SPEAKER_05More homebody. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that would be interesting that to share a room. And then your sister had her own room?
SPEAKER_00Yes, okay, yeah, and she was outgoing, she was a cheerleader, she uh played the organ and the piano at church.
SPEAKER_05Did you ever learn any musical?
SPEAKER_00Well, I took piano lessons for a year, and that didn't, and I they tried to get me to play the saxophone, but I conveniently forget to take it to the lessons.
SPEAKER_05So even you were like that as a kid, like there, you know.
SPEAKER_00I'm not musically inclined at all.
SPEAKER_05But you can fix things, so that's we all have our own talents.
SPEAKER_00That's right, that's right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Any favorite subjects in school or teachers?
SPEAKER_00History. I I loved history. And uh I guess my uh always liked um Mrs. Kohane, the English teacher, and coach Coach Vogie. He was a typing teacher and a basketball coach.
SPEAKER_05Okay. Did you play basketball? No, no, you did you do any sports?
SPEAKER_00No, no, I weighed about a hundred pounds, and and and we had a lot of we had like the Heckermans and Doug Johnson that were 6'3, 6'4, Dick Bars, and so no, I I stayed on the sidelines.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, you saved yourself from some injuries. Um, what was it about history that you loved so much? Was it the teacher that you had that made it interesting? Or did you just love history?
SPEAKER_00I just liked history and I still do. I read a lot of history, and I I look back now and you can see things that are happening now that happened before.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. I I do find it interesting to get a lot of your generation's take on things just because you have been through so much, you've seen things or how it's played out, or information you get or don't get, you know, and so and a lot of that goes into politics right now. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um, what were Christmases like right now for you?
SPEAKER_00Christmas was well, holidays was quite the I don't know what you call it, but like Christmas. We always went to uh the Thompson family, where uh they they had a big house, and Christmas Eve, everybody went and we had a basically a Norwegian holiday. It was uh okay.
SPEAKER_05So explain the Norwegian holiday then.
SPEAKER_00Well, we had sambackles, all the nor Norwegian type uh food, lefsa, and that, but we also had ham and turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy and that. But there were always all the brothers and sisters of their families except Irv, who was in South Dakota, who was in Arizona, uh came, and then like the two of the brothers were married to Ericksons.
SPEAKER_05Two sisters.
SPEAKER_00No, two of yeah, married two sisters.
SPEAKER_05So two sisters, okay.
SPEAKER_00And they had a bachelor brother, so he would always come. Oh nice, and then one of the others was married to uh, I don't remember what her last name was, but she was married to uh Anderson, and they came too, so there was usually anywhere from 25 to 30 people there.
SPEAKER_05Wow, yeah. And you went to your dad's parents' place?
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_05Okay, how did it did it was it big enough to help?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, it was it's still there in beach here.
SPEAKER_05Where's that at?
SPEAKER_00Uh do you know where Cheryl thinks Lund lives?
SPEAKER_05I'm gonna have to have my dad go drive me by it now and see how big it is. Because that's a lot, that is a lot of people, I feel like, for how houses were very they were a lot smaller back in the day, typically.
SPEAKER_00No, this was a fairly big house.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. So that was a huge gathering, really, with a lot of family and extended family. Any other traditions that you had with Christmases?
SPEAKER_00Well, we and that was Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day was always shared between my uncle Bai, who lives in Santa Butte, okay, and had the he had the gas station there for years.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00And one Christmas we'd be at his house, and next Christmas we'd be at my folks' house.
SPEAKER_05Okay, so you split like every other okay.
SPEAKER_00And if you uh if you had Christmas, then you had then the other person had Thanksgiving. Okay, and then Easter was always the other brother, Neil, and Agnes hungaboom, had Easter all the time.
SPEAKER_05Okay. So you guys really did split it up a lot as to who was there.
SPEAKER_00But it but it was it was split up, but you knew where you were going.
SPEAKER_05But you knew where you were going, yeah. Yeah. Any um, you said you talked about some of the meals that you had. Did you always go to church Christmas Eve, Christmas Day? Do you remember that or a certain we never went to Christmas church on Christmas Eve?
SPEAKER_00We were it was a good Lutheran family. Wait, Christmas Day, and I remember one time I have friends that were Catholic, and out of curiosity, I went to Midnight Mass. Oh, okay, which was sort of Christmas Eve, so everybody sort of looked at you like you're going to where?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. It's late, and you're tired at midnight mass.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Was it long that midnight mass that you went to?
SPEAKER_00They always are, because they all, yeah. I've been to a few of them. My wife was Catholic, so oh your wife was.
SPEAKER_05Okay. We'll definitely be getting into that here in a second. Then how were birthdays celebrated growing up? Were birthdays for you? Did your family make it a big thing?
SPEAKER_00Or uh no, it was there was always I don't ever remember having a party, but we there was always cake.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00So just more simple.
SPEAKER_05Any specific gifts that you got, whether it was Christmas or birthday, that stick out to you and that you really remember?
SPEAKER_00I think one of the things for Christmas is my brother and I got a gift together with a 22 rifle.
SPEAKER_05So were you big hunters?
SPEAKER_00We not big, but we did hunt, yes.
SPEAKER_05Did you hunt more?
SPEAKER_00Was it deer, birds, what kind of we we did birds, pheasants, and grouse, and deer, and antelope.
SPEAKER_05And antelope, okay. How about summers? What were summers like for you guys as kids? And how do how do you feel like they compare to summers now for kids?
unknownThat's tough.
SPEAKER_00Well, we didn't we always took swimming lessons.
SPEAKER_05You did take swimming lessons.
SPEAKER_00Yes, okay. And we and we'd go to the pool, but uh early on, you know, we played trucks and you know, did all that kind of stuff and had bikes and played the dirt. Yep. Okay, and later on when I got older, I would I spent some time on the tractor that when I was like 13, 12 and 13. Dad was working in the uh In super value in the grocery store.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00So the and in those days you didn't have continuous farming, you always had you know summer follow.
SPEAKER_05Oh yes.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And so they would he would take me out to the field before eight o'clock so he could get to work and set me up. And I would farm until noon. And usually mom would bring something up for lunch. And then I'd keep going until he got off work and he'd come and get me. If I were if I finished a field, in those days we didn't have hydraulics. And I was I wasn't heavy enough to get the equipment out of the ground, you know, with the levers. So I wouldn't sit in the shade under the tractor until someone showed up.
SPEAKER_05So they did not have and maybe well maybe I have a lot of videos from when my group was young videos of them the umbrella. Is that what you had to is that what the tractors were like?
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_00We we didn't always have an umbrella. We never had a cab.
SPEAKER_05Great, great.
SPEAKER_00And that's probably and I did not wear caps or hats. And that's probably why I have skin cancer now.
SPEAKER_05Oh, that's not I mean, yeah. At what age then did you start working? Is that kind of your first job working?
SPEAKER_00That was pretty much my job through high school.
SPEAKER_05Through high school, yeah. Okay. Um you said you didn't play sports growing up and you weren't musically inclined. Did you do any other groups? Um, I don't know if they even had other groups like things like that.
SPEAKER_00I did play Junior Legion baseball once.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_00Uh the year I graduated from high school, they uh I don't know if you heard the name Jack Berg. He ran the Legion Club and was a big baseball fan.
SPEAKER_06Okay.
SPEAKER_00And a bunch of us had gotten together and were up at the ball diamond just playing catch-in ball of that, and he drove up and he looked, watched us for a while, and afterwards he got out of the car and came over and said, Why didn't you guys come meet me here tomorrow? About this time, and uh so we did, and he had gotten hold of Bud Sonic and he formed a junior leader baseball club team. Oh so we played junior lead baseball that summer.
SPEAKER_05Did you enjoy it? Yeah, where did you play teams from? St. Bellville called her, Calva.
SPEAKER_00Weeble had a team, uh, Belfield had a team, Bowman, Richerton.
SPEAKER_05Uhways did play a lot of teams from around the area. A lot of places had teams.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that in those days it seems like every small town had a baseball team.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Baseball was big, especially for kids. That was the one long the summer that you could do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they had the junior legion and then they had the the city team, where the the older the college age and even older than that played baseball. And it was quite a they even you know, like Galva and Weebo and a lot of those towns had the same.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_05It is interesting to think that Galva said like they had their own, you know, when you're from the area now and everybody goes to one school and it's still a small school, and you can barely form enough for say for basketball for a city and a JV team. And not that long ago, Galva had its own high school with enough kids for our city team. It's it's kind of sad to think you bring all these together and we still don't have enough for uh right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you know. Well, my graduating class was 44. There was 44 kids from Beach.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, did you only go to this grade school down here? Is that the grade school?
SPEAKER_00No, I was in the last class that went to the old grade school.
SPEAKER_05Really?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, when we got done, they tore it down.
SPEAKER_05Was that all in one building? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00No, just the grade school.
SPEAKER_05Just the grade school. And this one was built around now.
SPEAKER_00Is that correct? Yep, they built it around. They they actually we would watch the the seventh and eighth grade were on the upper floors in a big room, and we could see them building the gym, and they actually pulled the shades so we would wouldn't pick wouldn't be distracted. And then of course, you know, it was shortly after I graduated high school that they tore that one down too.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so all different buildings and from what you where you went. Talk to me about the vacations that you had growing up.
SPEAKER_00I think the we didn't go on many vacations, and they were pretty sparse. We uh we went to the south, went to South Dakota to the hills one time and Mount Rushmore. And we we stayed in motels that had kitchens, okay, and brought our own food.
SPEAKER_05And I think like a like a little kitchen in the room that you could okay.
SPEAKER_00But there were quite a few motels like that then, back in those days. And but and then the only other vacation we went on, we went once to Cook City. If you up, we never went into the park. We went to Cook City, and then we would hike up and fish in some of the streams and so what kind of fish were you catching up? Trout. Trout. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Did you eat it?
SPEAKER_05Did you cook it?
SPEAKER_00Yes, we cooked it when we came back. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05How about um Europe?
SPEAKER_00Europe? That's an interesting story.
SPEAKER_05It says when you were young. How old were you when you went there?
SPEAKER_00I let's see, what was I? Well, that was 1971. So uh what would I mean? 26? 25.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00And uh I was working at the Little Missouri. Some friends of mine had built the Little Missouri, the Marmons, the Kiplys, Hudson's. And uh sort of interesting there. They told me I had a job, so I came back. I was going to school at Utah State in Logan, Utah. Okay, and I came back and got home about four o'clock, five, uh, three o'clock in the afternoon, and said, I'm gonna drive down and make sure I got a job. Well, I got to Madora and walked in, and they handed me a hammer, and I worked until 10 o'clock that night.
SPEAKER_04You had a job.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I had a job. So, but uh we were that was an interesting time when we worked. Um Donnie Marman was sort of the head of all us young guys that were working, and he was he was very organized. At 4 o'clock, at 4:30, you stopped work and cleaned. And at 5 o'clock, if you were riding with him, you better be in the pickup. Because he was leaving. But uh the European trip, we I was working at the Little Missouri, they'd they'd sold it to a gentleman, Zeke Lazarinko from Watford City, and I was working for him. And Tommy Hudson came up one day, well, before that, his son Craig, I don't know if you knew Craig. Craig was a year younger than I was, two years younger than I was, and we were good friends. We've been friends for since well, we all went to college and we did things together. And uh one day the little the okay chloral, which was right next door here. I hate to admit it, but Craig and I were doing a little day drinking. You were young, yeah, and he was said, You ought to go to Europe with me. Now I said no, and he so it ended up uh Miller, Mrs. Miller, Bud, not Bud, but uh Don Donny Miller's wife had a photo theme. Okay, and Craig talked me into getting my passport photo taken, and I sent in, got my passport. That was in late July, and about the middle of end of August, Tommy Hudson came one day and I was working, and he said, you know, Carlin and I are a little worried about Craig going by himself. Would you go with him? And I said, Tommy, I can't afford to go to Europe. And he said, Well, I'll give you the money. And I said, Abs, no, I will not. And he said, Okay, I'll loan you the money. So within a about a three-week period, I decided to go to Europe, and I had to get some shots, so I went to Glendive and got some shots. And I said, now I need documentation. And the doctor there said, Well, I have to send this to Helena, and then they'll have to send it back to you. I said, Well, I can't, I'm leaving next week. So I don't know what I was gonna do. So came the day I was gonna fly out of Bismarck, and I we drove to Bismarck, and I went to the state capitol, went up to the health department, and the receptionist was there, and I told her my plot. And she said, I don't think there's anything we can do for you. And then this voice from this room next to him said, tell him to come in here. So I went in, and it was the head of the North Dakota Health Department, and uh he said, Tell me what you're doing, so I told him. He said, I'll sign it. So he got out a card, signed everything, and two hours later I was on the plane.
SPEAKER_05So right place, right time, like yeah, everything just fell into place.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, how long were you in Europe for?
SPEAKER_00I left the first week in September, right after Labor Day, and came back the second week in December.
SPEAKER_05I was thinking you were gonna tell me a week or two.
SPEAKER_00No, it was uh just about three months.
SPEAKER_05And what did you all do?
SPEAKER_00Just sightsee or yeah, basically Craig Craig left a week before I did. Because I couldn't get everybody.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. Okay, so he had already been there then for a week.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and so we said, okay, we gotta meet someplace. And Brita Mikelki was a teller at the bank, and she had an uncle that had from Norway that had come over here in the 30s and worked on a ranch near Roundup, Montana, but the dirty 30s, he so he went back to Europe, to Norway, and lived in a little town on called Ulvik Hardungar on the Hardunger Fjord. And we said, okay, that's where we're gonna meet. So I flew from Bismarck to Detroit to London to Hamburg, took a train from Hamburg to Oslo, and the train from Oslo to a little town, and then from there a bus to Ulvik. And uh yeah, I'd never been out of farther than Fargo.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, well, and and there's no cell phones. Like, let's remember, there's no cell phones, there's no way to contact your friend to make sure.
SPEAKER_00So it was it was a learning experience, and yeah, uh I did have help. The the ferry from Denmark to Oslo, the train cars got put on it, and and I drew we could get off, and I so I was standing there, and this gentleman walks up to me and says, uh, don't get me wrong, but I got a question to ask you. Okay. He said, This is a duty-free ferry, and I can you can buy cigarettes here with no tax. And he said, and I he said, if you he said, it looks like you haven't been here for a while. And he said, Do you know how the trains work? And I said, No. So he said, if I would buy him two cartons of cigarettes, he would give me the money, buy the cartons, and he would show me how to read the train tables and give me actually a book with train tables in it. So that's what I did, and that was my first learning experience on how to get around Europe. So I made it to Ulwig, and the next day Craig showed up. Yeah, and we went from from there to Oslo to Copenhagen to uh well, Sweden, Copenhagen, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, France, Spain, Portugal, back across Spain, Italy.
SPEAKER_05And Craig's dad loaned you the money to do all this. Where did you all stay?
SPEAKER_00We stayed in youth hostels.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00And the other place how we stayed was we would go to, we never had a really planned itinerary. We we would go to a when we were thought we were done with the one time city, we would go to the railroad station and say, where do we want to go next? And we'd look for a train that was leaving around 10 o'clock at night, that was headed where we wanted to go, and we'd go, wait, and when they brought the train up, we would get on the we had euro passes, first-class euro passes, and we would in Europe, you know, the trains are in compartments with six seats in each one. Okay, and we would get in one of the compartments that was empty, pull the shades down, turn out the lights, and sit there. And hope that nobody else would get on your and then we could sleep on the train.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and not have to worry about finding a place to put that in pretty smart.
SPEAKER_00In those days it was Europe on five dollars a day, the book was.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00And when I figured it out, if I didn't put in my Europass and my uh airline tickets, I made it on $7.50. $7.50, yes.
SPEAKER_05Try doing that now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, the the last the last time I looked at the book, it was Europe on $85 a day. And that was a number of years ago.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_00Didn't you say you would like buy a loaf of bread and uh yeah, we would uh a lot of times we would just bread in Europe is fantastic. I mean, it's nothing like here. So we would buy a loaf of bread, a jug of wine, a small bottle of wine, and maybe some uh salami. And that's what you can do with it, yeah. And a lot of times you'd get into a one of these compartments, and there'd be other people there, and you shared with everybody.
unknownInteresting.
SPEAKER_00So even though you didn't never knew them, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Everybody shared. Um how old were you in that? You said 20.
SPEAKER_0025.
SPEAKER_0525. Going back to when you were a kid, were there different ambitions or dreams that you had when you were younger of what you wanted to do?
SPEAKER_00I think I always wanted to be a doctor or dentist, but after going through school, I wasn't my grades weren't anywhere close to being something like that.
SPEAKER_05So doing that. Who um who in your life influenced you the most when you were growing up?
SPEAKER_00I have to probably say my mother.
SPEAKER_05And in what way?
SPEAKER_00She was always things got tough, but she always worked it out. And you can always, there's always a way.
SPEAKER_05When um okay, I want you to talk about your wife. Who did you end up marrying?
SPEAKER_00Okay. I married Pamela Schmidt. She was from Fargo. Her uncle, Fritz Schmidt, ran the variety store here for years. But that isn't how I met her. I came back from Europe and went back to work at the Lom. And the owner, Zeke, who I got to know really well and became almost like family. So I came back, and it was in like March and April, and he started talking about getting hiring waitresses for the summer, and I said, Well, you know, you ought to let me try and look at do some interviewing. And he looked at me and said, No, I don't, I already got one picked out for you. So I didn't ask any questions. And come the end of June or end of May, his niece, Pam, shows up. She had just got back from she spent the the year studying at in Mexico City. So anyway, we I hate to admit it, but she asked me out.
SPEAKER_02She asked you out. She got tired of waiting for you when you die.
SPEAKER_00So and it just uh it was sort of the shy small town boy meets big city cheerleader.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. And so she asked you all what was your first date?
SPEAKER_00We went to a movie called Going Home with Robert Taylor in Bellfield.
SPEAKER_05Any dinner?
SPEAKER_00No, we didn't just the movie. Just the movie after the movie. We went up to the top of the amphitheater and watched them do some, they were practicing. It was like a day or two before the opening musical, and so we watched that.
SPEAKER_05Now, how old was she at the time?
SPEAKER_00Let's see, I was at that time, I was 26. She was I was 25 and she was 20. She was five years younger.
SPEAKER_05Five years younger. She has a gut, Sash. That's awesome. Can you tell me a little bit about her?
SPEAKER_00She was sort of the opposite of me, opposite of tracks. She was very outgoing, talented, very smart, was wrote poetry. When she came back. She went back to uh she went to UND and got a degree in social work. Uh we were married the next year. She well, we were talking here a few days, a few a month or so ago about how people popped the question or asked.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I said, you know, I never did. It from not from the start, but probably from six months in, we talked about it. And it was just a foregone conclusion. We're gonna get married. And so I I gave her a ring at Christmas time, but it was never a surprise, will you marry me? It was we're gonna do this.
SPEAKER_05And I'm glad she didn't have to ask you at the right, you know. Um, so she would have been about 21.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, when she we when we were married, she was 21, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Okay. So going back to high school, I hate to rewind a little bit, but you graduated and then you had talked about college. Where did you go to college?
SPEAKER_00Well, the first year I didn't go to college, I worked a year before.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_00I uh I worked at uh the PV elevator, which was the elevator with the big cement things.
SPEAKER_04Yep, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh worked for a man named Ray Popel, and at that time we did there was lots of feedlots around.
SPEAKER_07Okay.
SPEAKER_00And we had a roller mill where we rolled grain for feed. And so I worked there for about a year. And uh there was a lady called Ruby Kipp. She was head of the draft board, and she called my mother one day and said, uh, if your son doesn't go to college, he's gonna be drafted next month. So I enrolled at uh at that time it was called North Dakota State School of Forestry.
SPEAKER_02Where was that at?
SPEAKER_00In Botnell.
SPEAKER_02In Botnell, okay.
SPEAKER_00It's it's changed its name about four times since then.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00And uh through the roller mill and that, I'd got to know Bill Kiply because his dad had a pretty good sized feedlot. And his folks wanted him to go to college too, so he went with me.
SPEAKER_05What did you study?
SPEAKER_00Oh, I studied college there, it was forestry.
SPEAKER_05Forestry was just general, okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And is that what he studied too, since that was kind of the college, or he studied just biology. Okay. What were you hoping to do with that? Or was it simply just to stay out of the draft?
SPEAKER_00No, it was I thought I'd be a forest ranger or something like that.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_00And so we went to two years and made a lot of it was at that time, it was what we call a suitcase college. There was probably 400 kids going there, and 300 of them left every weekend and went home. So there was a core group of us that stayed that got to know each other very well. And uh, well, I probably should tell the story.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, you got a story to tell them.
SPEAKER_00Okay. In 1967, when I graduated from Bahotano, it was the night before graduation, and one of the people, friends, had worked as a janitor part-time, you know, as student, and he had keys to the building. So we about one o'clock at night, we went over to the gymnasium, which are all set up for graduation, and we turned all the chairs around backwards.
SPEAKER_04Did anybody notice this?
SPEAKER_00In the morning they did. Okay, and they so they had to turn them all around.
SPEAKER_05So that was your kind of sense of humor, your yours, and your friends. How many were in on this?
SPEAKER_00Oh, I would guess we had probably a dozen or more.
SPEAKER_05Did they ever figure out I don't think it had to bend who had a key?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't think they even tried because they knew it was graduation, everybody was leaving.
SPEAKER_04So what are you gonna be doing, right? Oh, that's funny.
SPEAKER_00The only other thing that happened up there might be I was on the student council as a representative from the theatrical group, and uh we sponsored a dance one night, and someone happened to spike the punch, and then they didn't have enough sense to get rid of the bottle, they just stuck the bottle under the table, and of course it was caught, and I was brought up before as a student console. It was your responsibility. Well, they kicked me off the console, but they they didn't kick me out of school, so did they ever find out who did it? I don't think so.
SPEAKER_04No, but you got the consequence.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, oh geez, it wasn't that bad. Student council wasn't a big thing then, so so you ended up going for two years, you said yeah graduate.
SPEAKER_05Did you ever use that degree, that education? No, you didn't.
SPEAKER_00Not really, not really.
SPEAKER_05So then you went and you were working in Medora?
SPEAKER_00Uh then to well immediately I went down to a forestry summer camp at Utah State. It was out in the woods. And and I'd come back and I'd work on the in the summer in Madora for the foundation. For the foundation, and that was until 69, and that's when 69 was when the little mole was built.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_05Any other what other jobs did you have?
SPEAKER_00Oh. Let's see. I worked at the Little Mole, and then my wife worked for the National Park Service.
SPEAKER_02She was uh So she didn't use her degree.
SPEAKER_00No, she didn't use her degree either. She got a job in the office at the little at the National Theater Roosevelt National Park as an office assistant. And then she there wasn't much advancement there, and so there was an opportunity of at Crater Lake, Oregon. It's uh, I don't know if you know Crater Lake, it's uh a big lake, it's a volcano that blew up years ago and formed a caldera. And there's the one of the deepest lakes in the United States is there, it's over 1800 feet deep.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00And she got a job there, and we moved out there, and in that spring, that was in October, and that spring I went to work for the Forest Service. Well, the forest that I was on the Wainema was an old Indian reservation that they had bought, the government had bought back. And they a number of different entities had done logging on it, and at that time they figured there was like four to four and a half miles of road for every square mile of forest. So my job to begin with was we mapped those roads. We either drove them, and those were days before GPS. We had little electronic speedometers so we couldn't get it accurate. But then the ones we didn't couldn't drive, we walked. And then we take area photos and mark where the roads were on the area photos, and then that uh fall they kept me on, and I transferred those roads on the aerial photos to paper maps, and they would be sent to up to Washington, um Seattle, to where the government mapping they do quadrants, which are certain size maps, and they would transfer what we found onto those maps. So that lasted for two years, and then they hired me as the forest sign coordinator, and I had to sign all those roads. And some of them were put up on posts, and some of them were nailed to trees because they had made a decision on which roads they were gonna obliterate and which ways they were gonna put into uh storage and which roads they were gonna use. Wow. So so they did that.
SPEAKER_05Did you like that job? Yes, I did. Yeah. Do you did you use any of your education from forestry school to be able to do that job, or is that a job that you could have just done?
SPEAKER_00I used my my drafting because we I took two drafting courses in Botano, so I I used that and uh surveying. We did surveying. Okay.
SPEAKER_05So you did get some use out of those, yeah. How long were you there in Oregon?
SPEAKER_00In Oregon. We moved back in we moved out there in 77 and moved back in 83.
SPEAKER_05So how many kids did you end up having?
SPEAKER_00I had three girls.
SPEAKER_05Three girls. So were some of them born?
SPEAKER_00Laura was born here in 77.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_00Lindsay was born in Oregon in 80, and then when we came back, Alexa was born here in '84.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we when we moved out to Oregon, we were driving out there. And I don't know if you've ever been to Oregon. Western Oregon is the Rocky Mountains, trees, mountains, all that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_05Is that where it's really rainy along too? Yeah, that's what I think of what I think.
SPEAKER_00And Eastern Oregon is high country desert with big sagebrush in that.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00And we got about a hundred miles into Oregon, and my Pam looked at me and said, if this is Oregon, I want to go home. She and my name with the colour. No, she not anything. So, but when we got to uh Crater Lake, she and Crater Lake was a experience. It was 600 inches of snow in this winter. The snow, we lived in a three-story building. The snow came up to the windowsills of the second story.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_05But they was that common for that area? That is common for that area, okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And but they plowed the roads every day. But if you went any place, you had to be back by seven because that's when they quit plowing. So, but uh the thing about is that we had friends, everybody there was about our same age, and most of them had kids the same age as ours, and we've made maintained those friendships up until now.
SPEAKER_05Really?
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_05Do most of them still live there or are they all dispersed as well?
SPEAKER_00They're all all dispersed there. One lives in up near Glacier, and one lives the summers in Washington and the winter's in Arizona.
SPEAKER_05So I'm gonna backtrack again because I want you to talk about um your wedding.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's another interesting story.
SPEAKER_05Well, I love it.
SPEAKER_00We uh we picked the date, it was August 23rd, and in June we made an appointment with the priest.
SPEAKER_05Because she was Catholic.
SPEAKER_00She was Catholic.
SPEAKER_05You guys got married in the Catholic Church.
SPEAKER_00We uh made an uh appointment with a priest at Holy Spirit in Fargo, and I took time off from work, and she did too, and we drove down there. Saturday morning we went to the wherever the priest lives, you know, the parsonage, and the lady said, He's gone on vacation. So, okay, so we went and did something else, and came wedding day, where I've got my tucks on, and we're at the church, and Pam comes running in in her blue jeans and shirt, and she said, Come with me. So, okay, so I went with her, and we were being married by her dad's uncle, who was a Monsignor. Okay, and so we went to this office and he said, Is it true that I understand that you haven't had any instructions? No, not a bit. Oh well, and he sort of hemmed it on. He finally said, Will you raise your kids a Catholic? And I said, Sure. He says, Okay, and he signed everything, and we got we got married.
SPEAKER_04Oh my gosh, you've kind of been lucky to have like the right people at the right time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's a lot of luck.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, wow. So, other than that, did you um for your wedding, did you guys have the reception, the dance, all of that, or was it simple? We had a little reception in the church uh like basement or community room, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay, and then they had a a bigger one for not a bigger one, but one for family at her folks' house.
unknownOh wow.
SPEAKER_00And uh that went good until about 11 o'clock. We decided to it was time to go, and we couldn't find her dad. And we looked. Finally, we found him and his brother Richard. They were both you might say they both had been inviting and probably both of them were fairly well shot, laying in the backyard looking up at the sky.
SPEAKER_04That's awesome.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so and the next morning we I we forgot my the camera, so we stopped by the house, and both of them were not in good shape.
SPEAKER_05They were hurting that next day. So that was her dad and the dad's brother.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, okay, he her dad had nine brothers and sisters also. Okay, so another big family, and they were just a little story off shoot. Uh they all served in the military during World War II. And Christmas Eve 1946, I think it was, or 45, which probably 45. All five brothers showed up at the house and surprised their her folks.
SPEAKER_03So that's pretty amazing. It was that is really amazing. Did they come to Midnight Matt? Or did they came to the house? No, they came to the house.
SPEAKER_00That brings up another story. When uh Alex Lindsay was born, we decided to come home for Christmas, but we didn't tell anybody. So we drove all night, got to here, and went to my folks' house, and they she said, Well, Kay and Dana, my sister, they won't be here until the day after Christmas. So we said, Well, then we're gonna go to Fargo. And we'll we'll come back for because they were gonna have Christmas afterwards. So we didn't tell anybody we're going to Fargo. So we got to Fargo, it was like 11:30 or even 12, so we knew where everybody would be, midnight mass. So we uh went and stood in the back, and when they did communion, Pam took the baby and went up and walked behind her her dad and tapped him on the shoulder.
SPEAKER_05Oh my gosh, what a great surprise. Because he hadn't seen the baby yet. No, no, so wow.
SPEAKER_00No, the baby was seeing she was born December 4th, so okay, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Very little yet.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Where have you you lived in Oregon? You said where else have you all lived?
SPEAKER_00Uh that's Madora, Oregon, and back to Madora.
SPEAKER_04Okay. We lived in Dickinson.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, we lived in Dickinson just when we came back from Oregon. We lived in Dickinson just for a short time. I at that time I I went to work, that was another job I forgot about. I went to work as a travel agent. Oh which I really enjoyed. Okay, because I enjoyed travel, but uh for AAA travel in Dickinson. And I started right after Christmas, and about that was during the big oil boom, and we were doing a lot of business, and the oil boom busted in July, and our business dropped and almost nothing. And so they gave me the chance to go to, they said you can go to Minot. I went to Minot and worked for oh, probably three weeks in Minot. And I was trying to find a an apartment, and the apartments were all terrible. And finally I asked some guy, one of the renters, I said, How can you rent something like this? And he said, Well, we've got the Air Force base and they have no choice. And I thought, boy, that's really sad.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So then you were like, so then I go back to then I said, No, I'm I'll I quit that job, and that's just shortly afterwards, and I went to work for as the uh chief of maintenance for the city of Madora. And they had just built the community center, so I was in charge of that. Is that what you've done now for no I worked there for 13 years, and when we came back to Medora, Pam got back on with the Park Service and became their budget analyst. And in 1997, I positioned opened up in the park, and I applied for it and got it. And it was uh called a maintenance mechanic, which I did all the carpentry, electrical, plumbing, that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_05Did you like that one?
SPEAKER_00Yes, I do. I like everything. That was about Well, in 1990, I had designed our house. I drew up the plans for it. And then the Marman brothers threw up the outside. And then I finished it off. And so then I went to work for the park. And in about five years, the park foreman retired and they hired a new guy, and he was not the greatest. So he moved on, and I said, you know, I'm not going to put up with another one. And so I applied for a job and got the I was a maintenance operation maintenance supervisor for the next until I retired in 15.
SPEAKER_05So you've been retired for the last almost 11 years.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05What do you do with retirement? Because most people don't just sit there. I mean some do.
SPEAKER_00Some do, but immediately I went out to the golf course, and one of the people that worked with me at the park, Theresa Roberts, said, You ought to go out there. I work she worked out there too. And so I didn't work the full summer. I worked this the spring until they got their summer help. So I would uh I did a little of everything I mowed, and uh a couple years into it, I was there for a total of eight years. And we rebuilt, we built three new holes and rebuilt two more. And I helped do all the uh for the irrigation systems, the electrical and the piping and that. So you're still doing well, I I don't do that anymore. Since I've been diagnosed with some cancer, I I didn't go back this year.
SPEAKER_04When were you diagnosed?
SPEAKER_00Uh about a year ago.
SPEAKER_05About a year ago. So still doing a lot of stuff with that.
SPEAKER_00Um medications.
SPEAKER_05Just medications.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I've finished chemo and uh I do checkups every three months, and then in June I will be doing radiation.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00So it's under control.
SPEAKER_05Under control. I want you to talk about your wife. When did when did she pass away?
SPEAKER_00Yes, she passed away in June 15th in 19 in 2003.
SPEAKER_052003. And she was sick.
SPEAKER_00Yes, she had uh leukemia.
SPEAKER_05How long did she have that? Or do we know that she had it? I should say two years.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it started in 2000. She uh she started uh having she was bleeding quite a bit. And so they said she the doctor said, Well, you need to have a hysterectomy. So the the doctor that was going to do the hysterectomy came in, looked at everything, and said, I'm not gonna touch you. Something else is going wrong here. So he sent us to Bismarck, and it was like two days, and they said, Yeah, you have acute leukemia. And so he said, Well, what are our options? And they said, Well, you can we can treat you here, or you could go to Mayo, and we said, We're going to Mayo. So we headed to Mayo, and they the doctors there put her on some medications, and we set up a treatment program that started um a month later, and we came home, and you were in Minneapolis, right? And Lindsay was in Bozeman, and Alexa was a senior in high school. So we went down, got made some arrangements, went down, and they did chemo on her. And we were there for probably four weeks or so, and then at the end of four weeks, they said almost, yeah, because it was the first part of December, and they said, Well, we're gonna, and in the meantime, they had tested her brothers and sisters for a match for bone marrow, and it turned out one of her brothers, Craig, was a perfect match. So at the end of the chemo, they said, Okay, we're gonna start the transplant, bone marrow transplant next week. And we said, wait, we we gotta go home and arrange some things. So we ran home, we're home about three days, got things set up for Alexa and for my job and her job, headed back, and so it started like the first week in December, and first they killed everything, and then they did the transplant, and we were there until mid-March. We stayed at a place called the Transplant House, Gift of Life Transplant House. When she was in the hospital a lot of the time, but that's where, and then when she could get out, that's where we stayed, which is a fantastic place. And then we came back home and everything was doing well. And I went to a training in South Dakota, and Alexa called me and said, Melvin has passed out, she's on the floor, and she's covered, cabulcing, convulsing, and so we rushed home and we she went to Bismarck. No, they took her to Dickinson, and Dickinson. We called Mayo and Mayo said, get her down here. So we took her back to Mayo, and she had developed chicken pox. So we were down there for, I don't know, a week or so, and we came back, and she started losing the use of her legs, and the chicken pox had affected the nerves for a lower body, and she got Gilliam Barrae. Yeah, so we went back, went all the way back to Mayo, and we spent another four or five weeks there, them trying first trying to figure out how to take care of her, and they finally said, Okay, we're going to, the last thing we can think of is we're going to filter her blood. And that worked. So we came home, and then in November or December, right after Christmas, we were doing some treatment in Bismarck. And we went and some of her lymph nodes were getting bigger. So we immediately went back to Mayo, and Mayo said, it's nothing more we can do. So basically, she she lived at home, she that's where she wanted to be, and took care of her, and she passed away in June. One of the amazing things about it was that the Park Service had a program where you can donate annual and medical leave to someone. And between the two of us, over 1,200 hours of medical of leave was donated to us.
SPEAKER_02That is amazing. Wow.
SPEAKER_05That's I feel like something that should be talked about more of being able to do that.
SPEAKER_00Yes. I after I built mine back up to you're limited to I think it's 240 hours of sick leave. And I used very little just for that purpose. And at the end of the uh end of the fiscal year, I would go to the list of people who are were fighting cancer and I donate all that extra leave to them. Oh that's awesome.
SPEAKER_05Wow.
SPEAKER_00It's payback.
SPEAKER_05It's yeah. What's that been like since she passed away?
SPEAKER_06It's it's been lonely.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Does it ever get better?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah, it gets better.
SPEAKER_00It's uh I think Madora is sort of in a unique situation where there's not a lot of senior citizens there.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00So my backup is is small. I have a couple really good friends that they have they're in the same position. That's they they don't have a spouse, and we sort of look after each other. Yeah, we make phone calls, and if someone has a doctor's appointment, they we haul them.
SPEAKER_05That's nice, yeah. So because I'm sure it's hard too, Laura for you because you want to help, but you also have little ones that you're running after and everything like that. So and you guys are in Gulf, correct? So not far, but far enough.
SPEAKER_00She's good, and uh, I mean, she helps me quite a bit, and uh and have uh Pam's brother and her his wife. Uh when I had my knees replaced, they came out and spent a week.
unknownOh, wonderful.
SPEAKER_00They they live in Minneapolis.
SPEAKER_05Okay, and where is your sister at?
SPEAKER_00My sister's in Calisbell.
SPEAKER_05It's in Kalisbell, you said, okay.
SPEAKER_00She she taught at a beauty school in Bismart in Billings for years, and he was uh X-ray tech, and then he and then he also did like PET scans, the nuclear medicine type thing, and they both retired, and their only daughter lives in teaches in Calisbell, so they moved up there. Yeah, but they're happening.
SPEAKER_05What are the moments that you miss her? Do you find you miss her the most? Is it more in just like the quiet evening when there's nobody around or no?
SPEAKER_00Actually, it's when I'm driving in the car and certain songs come on that triggers memories.
SPEAKER_05You saying that I have a question that kind of goes along with that. What are what's something today that takes you back to earlier years? Whether it's songs or smells or I don't know.
SPEAKER_00You know, there's there's music and someone told me once that uh when you lose a spouse, you should always go back once a year to some place where you've been together.
SPEAKER_02So have you done that?
SPEAKER_00Not a lot, no.
SPEAKER_05But what were some of the places that you have been?
SPEAKER_00Oh, Yellowstone, the Black Hills. Uh we went to, I of course I wasn't back there, but uh we went to Cozumel in Mexico once. And I I can I have this memory, I can remember places where I've been real just very clearly.
SPEAKER_05And the smell, the feeling, yeah, the air type thing.
SPEAKER_00And I of course I love travel.
SPEAKER_05So have you been able to do a lot of that since retiring?
SPEAKER_00Yes, my Alexa in Minneapolis is uh executive secretary for Rotary International, Area 5950, which encompasses all of Minneapolis and down south into Rochester in that area. And she called me one day and said, Dad, I know you like to travel. There's this group, this Rotary Club, that I think you should join. It's a Zoom, it's a virtual, it's all Zoom.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00And so I looked into it, and it was very interesting. It's a group of people that like to travel. And uh well, they have a its uh motto is we we travel, we serve people, and we have fun. And so I joined, and it's I think it's a group of people that obviously have some money because they they're traveling all the time, but there's a hundred and fifty-five of us in the club. Wow, yeah, wow, and uh there there's travel opportunities all the time.
SPEAKER_05Do you meet on Zoom every twice a week, twice a month? Twice a month, okay.
SPEAKER_00Okay, and we have a half-hour chat room before the meeting, and they put you in different chat rooms so you meet different people. Oh so yeah, it is.
SPEAKER_05It's very and are most of them around your age, or what's kind of the age.
SPEAKER_00Well, Rotary International does sort of the upper end of the movie age, although there are younger people in it that are that like to travel and are involved in Rotary.
SPEAKER_05Okay, so that's great though to have different resources like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and it's you know, there's people that I've got to know, so it's yeah.
SPEAKER_05What's an important life lesson that you've learned?
SPEAKER_00I think just hard work. It's it all pays off. Although sometimes I think I worked too hard when my kids were younger, not enough days off.
SPEAKER_03So what do you think on that one? I think he worked really hard in the summers. We didn't see him a lot in the summers in Madora because it was so busy, but during the school year, it was always him that came to like our games, who took us to gymnastics and basketball and dance, and because he had a lot more flexibility in the winters, so I didn't I felt like he was always around, and we would go to work with him too, yeah, because it was Madora, so I think we have to walk everywhere, right? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05So I guess I don't he was busy in the summer, but random question: what made you decide to send the kids to school in Beach versus South Park Belfield at that time?
SPEAKER_00Bellfield was not known as a very good school.
SPEAKER_05Okay, okay, because that would have been the other one, yeah. The other choice in a sense.
SPEAKER_00Billings County doesn't have a high school, right? So their district has to pay any tuition, or you can enroll in actually any high school.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_00We've had kids go to Sydney, we've had kids go to Watford City, a lot of Billings County, Kildare, Bowman, Belfield, South Art, Beach.
SPEAKER_02So what made you guys decide for Beach? Well, Lindsay went to Dickinson.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Oh, Lindsay did go to Dickinson.
SPEAKER_03Alexa and I came to Beach. There was a bus to beach.
SPEAKER_00There was a bus to Beach at that time. And and Lindsay was she started doing gymnastics when she was really young, and she was on the high school team. Was she a seventh grader? Yeah, probably. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So yeah, if you're doing gymnastics and you're going that way anyways, okay. That would make sense. But you liked beach, Laura.
SPEAKER_03Well, my friends were already in beach, so okay. That's why I wanted to go to beaches because I already knew people there. So just curious.
SPEAKER_00And I think some of Alexa's friends were going to beach too.
SPEAKER_05What's something you always wished you did but never got around to doing?
SPEAKER_00I've done a lot of them.
SPEAKER_05That's good.
SPEAKER_00You know, I always wanted to take a hot air balloon ride, and I've done that.
SPEAKER_05So heights are not a thing.
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_05I don't I can't really if you could go back and give yourself a piece of advice, what would it be?
SPEAKER_00I think addition my own personal feelings, but make more time for my family.
SPEAKER_05What's one thing you would want people to remember about you when you're happy?
SPEAKER_06Hmm. Good question.
SPEAKER_00And that I'm dependable, that uh that I care about people. I was a EMT for 40 years. So I still have people that older people in Madora that call me. Can you come up and look at someone? Even though I I retired a year ago.
SPEAKER_05So there's probably a lot of stories you can tell on just that. I can't even imagine. Yeah, there I think it oh, I always say it takes a special person to do that because you never know what your day is gonna be and what you're gonna come up on.
SPEAKER_00So sometimes you there are things you have to laugh about, and one always comes to mind. And I know there's HIPAA.
SPEAKER_05Oh yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so we won't use any names, but uh this was back before HIPAA even came. So there was a an old rancher that lived north of town, and he one night he passed away sitting in his chair, and no one found him for a little while. And they called me, and at that time he was the foreman at the park, Melvin Haynes, and we had a a raised opurban as an ambulance, and it was so pretty much all open, and so we went up there and uh he was passed away, and Riga Morris had set in. So we got him on the cot, which was sort of hard, and we it was by the it was 20 below zero that night.
unknownOh my god.
SPEAKER_00So we got him on the cot, and like I say, it's all open, and we're headed into town, and we had the smell was not the greatest. We opened all the windows, 20 below, and as I looked in the rearview mirror, there was just hand waving at me. So we stopped in Vedora and got a can of room deodorant and and and headed to Dickinson. But you know, sometimes you know things aren't they're tragic, but they there is some fun and funny things in it.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um thing that I have not asked about though is historical events. Moon landing, memories around some of that stuff.
SPEAKER_00Okay, moon landing. The Little Missouri. It was the first year Little Missouri was open, 69. And I I don't know if was it a Sunday? We we lived in the basement, the call the the boys, as we call it.
SPEAKER_02Oh, sure.
SPEAKER_00And I had a 19-inch black and white portable TV. And we had ravi dears, and we took tinfoil and made it bigger than and that's what we watched the moon landing on. It was very grainy and lots of static, but I love the tinfoil too, because that's like so stereotypical about that time.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_05Anything else about historical events or any other memories that you would like to share, whether about your kids, your siblings, a wife?
SPEAKER_00Nothing that comes really. Do you have any suggestions?
SPEAKER_02Oh, your first car.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. Sorry, that was on the list that I my first car was a it was a 1952 MG T D roadster with the fenders and everything. Two two stood two-seater, open. Uh it was sitting on a lot in Glendive. At that time it was Christophulli's, and they had a like an antique, well, what it was secondhand store. That's okay. And there was this car, and then I don't know if you've seen those little looks almost like a bun and the front door opens.
SPEAKER_05I've seen that.
SPEAKER_00Yes. They had one of those sitting there, and they wanted $300 for both of them. Well, one each. And I talked my parents into letting me buy that MG.
SPEAKER_02How old were you at the time?
SPEAKER_00I was still in high school, probably a junior.
SPEAKER_02Do you still have it?
SPEAKER_00Well, I don't. There's a story that goes to that. I had it. I sold it so I could go to college. Sold it to Mark Nelson, who was the head guy at that time it was Gold Seal in Madora. About a year later, I bought it back from him. Then I got short of money again. So I I sold it. And at that time I sold, I had a small boat, a horse, motorcycle, and a car. And that car. I had a different car too. But I sold everything but my main car. And I sold it to Larry Koba.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_00And so he had it. And I get in touch with see him once in a while at school reunions and stuff like that. And I knew he still had it. And one day, Laura's husband, Michael, called me and said, Do you say that he still has? I said, Yeah, it's Larry Coba. Well, it turns out that his family rents land from Larry down in down by Alpha. So he called Larry and asked him if he would be willing to sell it. And he said, Yeah. So was it Michael and Millie?
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_00Went, took a trailer and went down there. He lived in outside of Minneapolis. Thinking, when we were in Oregon, we bought Pam bought a car. It was a 1960 MGA yellow roadster. And we brought it back here and then we we sold it. And Michael thought that was the car. It was yellow. So when he got there, here was this red car. And he said, No, that's not the and well, Larry said, Yeah, this is the one he owned. So they brought it back and they surprised Laura with it for her birthday.
SPEAKER_02So you guys have the car now? Oh that's so great.
unknownOh cool!
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's really a neat car.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05How special. So can't get rid of it now.
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_05Do you know where the yellow one went?
SPEAKER_00I I know, and the last time I heard about talked to someone that knew his brother-in-law had bought it. It was sitting in a field up north of Williston, so it's probably not in very good shape. I was just gonna say, yeah, not in good shape.
SPEAKER_02So anything else that you would like to share?
SPEAKER_00Not no. Any suggestions? Anyway, no, it's been a good life.
SPEAKER_02Any regrets?
SPEAKER_00No, I always sometimes you know how you think, well, if I could do this, but then if you did that, something else wouldn't happen. So no, I I can't say. You know, I I wish Pam could have lived longer. She would have loved doing in the last few years. I've through this rotary club, I've gone to Egypt. We had a two-day two-week trip to Egypt. We did a service, we do a service project on each trip, and that one we financed. There's a people in Egypt, they get liver cancer because they they use a lot of the stale water and canals, not for food or anything, but for like washing and that. So there was this hospital in rural Egypt that we got a rotary grant for, and we trained 20 nurses and paid for 40 patients to be treated.
SPEAKER_07Wow.
SPEAKER_00So then we we went to Alexa and her husband, Nate, and I went to the international convention and we stopped off in Thailand for like six days, and then went to Singapore for the convention. And then last spring I went to Brazil and was on a boat. We were actually on the Rio Negra, the Black River, which is a contributor to the Amazon. We actually took the boat down into the Amazon and turned around. But uh that was it's a just a like a traditional boat for that area, and it's two decks, the top deck is totally open, and that's where we slept on pads.
SPEAKER_02That's interesting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it it was very it, and uh the bottom has one cabin, and there was a lady that was handicapped, and we let her and her husband have that, and then there's a kitchen and three bathrooms and three showers, and then an open area.
SPEAKER_04Way bigger than I would have thought.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and well, it's not very big.
SPEAKER_05I'll show you a picture afterwards, but yeah, but they're able to get a lot of things in size.
SPEAKER_00They're not they're not big showers, so but uh and we replanted some Wahine Forests and we released some endangered turtles, and we always take school supplies, and so we dropped off school supplies at three different indigenous villages.
SPEAKER_05That's gonna be really almost humbling to see schools like that compared to Yeah, it's surprising though how good some of them are.
SPEAKER_00I mean, it's nice, they're well kept.
SPEAKER_02Really?
SPEAKER_00They're the centerpiece of the community. So and I just got back from Cuba.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, well, Laura was like, oh, he's in Cuba.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And we I took uh a suitcase and a half full of medical supplies down there to they have the government runs a lot of the hospitals, well, all the hospitals and so on, but they're short of equipment and materials, and there's independent clinics, and so we dropped off supplies at two independent clinics, and then the surgeon at this hospital said he needed innovation equipment stuff. And it just so happens that I dropped by the ambulance in Madora and they were cleaning out some excess stuff, and they had quite a bit of it, so I appropriated that. Yeah, and then the Dixon ambulance, you know, just they went from being a private to the fire department, and I knew who had run it when it was private, so I contacted him and got supplies from him. So I ended up taking a suitcase and a half of supplies down.
SPEAKER_05So much of life has been your life, I feel like in particular, has been so much of the connections that you have made with people around you.
SPEAKER_00So we spent uh six days in Cuba, great days, not a lot of power. The power was off about 30% of the time. But the food was fantastic. We had I ate lobster three days a week. But two medium lobster tails, rice and beans, and a boiled Cuban sweet potato, a beer, and a cola was eleven dollars.
SPEAKER_02So how could you not eat yeah, we could not eat lobster all the time?
SPEAKER_00So, but uh the people were great. I never felt in danger at any time, and uh there weren't any street lights, they'd shut them all off because of the power shortage. So you'd walk in darkness back from supper, and people would be on their porches because the power would be out, and so a lot of solar panels.
SPEAKER_04How many of you went down there?
SPEAKER_00There was six of us. Six and well, and then the the lady that puts these tours together, so there were seven total from the United States, and then we had two guides that were very, very, very good. A lot of history on Cuba. Different slants than what you get here sometimes.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, oh, but that's why I even think interviewing so many people of what they um what was actually going on, say in their world, and what we hear about now, whether it was World War II or Great Depression, things like that, it's interesting to get their take because they lived through it versus just learned about it from a book and we regurgitate what we have learned usually through school, but when you go and you you know hear about it through other people, it's it's different, not always what we learn.
SPEAKER_00Something that comes to mind when you say knowing the right people or the right thing coming up. I was born on the 22nd of July in 1946, it was a very hot period, and they'd painted the windows shut at the hospital.
SPEAKER_04Wow.
SPEAKER_00But because I was a newborn and my brother Jack was two years old, we got on the ration list and we got a fan, a little portable table fan, which we had for years, and we got a new refrigerator. Got put to the head of the so yeah, things happen.
SPEAKER_02Um anything else you want to share?
SPEAKER_00No, just uh you know, I lived 20, 30 years with three with four women. Yeah, and it was all it was all good. So it was all good.
SPEAKER_04That's awesome.
SPEAKER_00And I'm very proud of my daughters. And my grandkids.
SPEAKER_05And your grandkids. Yes, I have eight grandkids. Eight grandkids.
SPEAKER_00Four boys, four girls, and they're all fantastic.
SPEAKER_05Do you get to see the ones here a little bit more than? Yeah, yeah. It's still nice to have them close.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But I see the ones from Minneapolis quite like Easter, we're we're meeting in Fargo.
SPEAKER_05Oh, that's great.
SPEAKER_00And they usually come on the 4th of July, and they come right after Christmas. They they go to his parents' uh Christmas Day, and then they come out here.
SPEAKER_05And that's okay. You get to see him, that's all that matters. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh, so I think they all like me, so that's all right.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I'm sure they do. I'm sure you spoil on the mistake. Oh, yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00You gotta that's what they're for.
SPEAKER_05Right, absolutely. Well, thank you, Milo. I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_06Well, thank you.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Simple Lives We Live. I hope this story reminded you that everyday life holds beauty, meaning, and lessons worth sharing. If you enjoyed this conversation, please take a moment to follow the podcast and leave a review and help some more people discover these stories. If you know someone with a story worth telling, read them. I'd love to hear from you. You can connect with me on Instagram at the simple minds we live.