Coop's Corner: Vananda, MT .....again

Saturday, August 17, 2024

Vananda, MT .....again - 2024/08/15

I started the/this Vananda, MT story back in March of 2021 on my blog, there's sufficient background there of the why's and wherefore's.

Recently I've been going quite literally thousands of old film slides that both dad and dad's dad had shot over the years, keeping photos taken with my phone that were projected on the wall. I'm going through the 'keepers' trying to sort them into some sort of order. These Vananda-related photos are a good enough place to start and to share.

Probably in 1959....('57 Chev) Grandma Bea and Grandpa Allen took a trip West, their normal travel destination. Included in visits to Colorado and Utah, they passed through, on US 12, central Montana.

I of course do not know whose home this is but based on what I'm piecing together, this may have been where Gram and her sisters lived when they moved into Vananda after their ranch life failed? Somehow this house was part of the Beard past.

Great Gramp and his friend (later Uncle Harry) bought two half Sections from the Chicago Milwaukee St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. You can see what looks like a plateau, our grandparents always spoke of the Rimrock....

Representative of two half Sections, each 320 acres and north of Vananda. A full Section of land is 640 acres and is one mile square. I don't know that these parcels belonged to the family but would have been close....their land was roughly this far out of town and north of the railroad.

These 2 parcels, both without homes or structures are appraised each at just over $50K for a total of $100K/Section. An equivalent, non-built upon Section in south central Iowa near where the Beards had moved away from is appraised at roughly $1.5M today, far from the richest Ag land in rural Iowa.

The fact that we've got the Forester 16' travel trailer tells me this was in '67, likely on our way to or from Glacier National Park.

The bank was moved in 2003 to its new home in Forsyth, MT

In 1972 we took a trip out to Idaho to visit Avery where one of dad's cousins worked for the US Forest Service. We took my pickup, snowmobile trailer and two dirtbikes along but accompanying us were dad's folks....Grandma Bea that had lived in Vananda and Grandpa Allen that had met her there and done his courtin'. Their joining us had revolved around the fact that just west of Vananda that year, in Ingomar, there was going to be a Tri-City Reunion. School classes from Sumatra, Ingomar and Vananda would be present.

After exploring Vananda and learning more from our grandparents about their history there, our family of four headed on west to Idaho, the senior Coop's moved a town west to stay at rally HQ in Ingomar.

Scenes from Vananda in 1971....

Gramp bought the camper specifically for this trip, the '64 Chevelle was later mine and took me on my '78 West Coast winter, its 283 V8 and 3 speed overdrive the perfect traveling car.....

We setup camp between US 12 and the railroad tracks, right next to what may have been the depot?

From south of town based on where the school is sitting in relationship to town.

On the school steps, I was holding Gramp's metal detector....

I'm just not sure about this one, if Gramp moved away from downtown Vananda to the old homesite afterr we kept on towards Idaho or if this is where they stayed outside of Ingomar. If any of you know, please let me know.

In Ingomar, folks gathering for the reunion...

Grandma Bea, her 3 neighborhood friends, daughter Irene and younger sister Bernice.

Gram the teenage cowgirl...

The Jersey Lilly in Ingomar...

Current Goog' image....

4 comments:

mohessianAugust 17, 2024 at 2:44 PM
OMG. The late 70s and the hair. Doug, Doug, Doug......and even Kev! What did those Montanans think about that? !
: D
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redlegsridesAugust 18, 2024 at 11:20 AM
Dang Coop, quite the hair you were rocking back then!
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Others say....

"it was auspicious to approach any situation from a deferential, inquisitive place. Conceding that there is much to learn is the best blueprint for discovering something new." ----B. Fuller

The Man straightened stiffly above the block of salt fixed to the stake and looked at the young cattle ringed about him. The pasture was holding out well and the stock was looking good. This bunch would be ready to sell in another month, maybe sooner if the market was right.

A stir among the cattle down near the river brought him round to face the swinging bridge he'd built years before. Someone was coming toward him from the bridge. Someone in breeches, but it didn't look like a man, somehow. What was a woman doing in his pasture this time of night?

He bent over the salt again; maybe if he paid her no heed she'd go on past and let him mind his own business. He heard her footsteps come nearer and stop. "Good evening," she said.

Her voice was smooth with book learning but friendlier than most, and somehow almost shy. When he made no answer she went on, "I've been sitting on your swinging bridge....I thought I'd like to say thank-you...." Her voice stumbled a little, then she tried once more.

"You are Mr. ____". His name sounded strange in her voice, but she went on to tell her own.

"That's what they've called me the last sixty-eight years," he said, looking past her face to the hills fast darkening under a single star. "I reckon the woods are free for those that like to walk there."

The unfamiliar voice laughed a little. "That's what Emerson said: the grove belongs to the man who walks in it with an open heart....On that basis I guess I've owned part of your woods for a good many years.....". She made a final effort. "I've always wanted to thank you....."

Something deeply hidden stirred in him. "There's a stump up there, in the notch of the woods", he said slowly, "that before the timber grew so tall you could stand on it and see all over this country."

He kept still a minute, remembering, then, "I used to stand up there an' look at things, an' wonder how they come to be like they was, an' how the hills was created, an' all the things in Nature.... I told my wife I guessed all the religion I ever had I got standin' on that old stump, a-wonderin'..." He turned his face away from her.

She helped him out. "I know about that, a little. This afternoon I saw......." Her account of a thing she had really taken time to look at eased him, and he answered with telling of the badger den at the foot of the swinging bridge.

When she had gone, he turned to watch her. After a moment she stood clear and unmoving against the sky. You could hear the sounds of the river where she stood. She was one that could stand still long enough, he thought, really to hear what a body was saying, or a river.

Then she walked down the farther side of the slope and was gone. ------Margaret Snyder from A Chosen Valley

Fall was the end of harvest, end of the growing season, a burst of color and sun-warmth before killing frost turned the land gray and cold. Fall was a moody time, full of both life and death, a time when we were reminded of the power outside of us, reminded that the seasons happen to us. We do not invite the change to come.-------Ben Logan, from The Land Remembers

When you get those rare moments of clarity, those flashes when the universe makes sense, you try desperately to hold onto them. They are the lifeboats for the darker times, when the vastness of it all, the incomprehensible nature of life is completely elusive. So the question becomes or should have been all along, what would you do if you knew you only had one day, or one week, or one month to live. What lifeboat would you grab onto? What secret would you tell? What band would you see? What person would you declare your love to? What wish would you fulfill? What exotic locale would you fly to for coffee? What book would you write? ------- Ben Tyler

We were also cautioned about journeying far from home. As an example of the dangers, the town had a badly crippled lady named Lucy, who as a girl had traveled to New York City. As she traveled along a sidewalk, sightseeing, she was struck by the outstretched hand of a suicide who had leapt from high above. Her spine had been shattered and for the rest of her life, she was to walk bent forward at the waist, tapping the sidewalk with two black canes. Whenever the subject of travel to a big city was raised, someone would say, "Just remember what happened to Miss Tripp." ---- Ted Kooser, from Local Wonders

"Steamboats are like wedding cakes without the complications...." ----Mark Twain

"It's not about having lots of money, it's about having lots of options......." -----Chris Rock

As the very proud father of three former ponytail wearers, hopefully I can get away with this....."For the past few years it's been fashionable for young women to wear ball caps and to snap the strap on the back under their ponytails. I like the looks of that, their shiny ponytails jauntily swinging, but it's hard not to think of the rear ends of horses. There's a piece of harness called the crupper that goes just under a horse's tail to keep its nose down. If the horse lifts its head to look for a way out of whatever predicament it's in, the crupper tightens and hurts the horse. But it's foolish for parents to think that a ball cap might keep a young woman from running away. Anybody can see they're made for running." ------Ted Kooser, Local Wonders

"I tell the guy's girlfriend that the only difference between the book's main character Phaedrus and myself is that I am neither brilliant, tortured or insane, she looks at my bike and there is an uncomfortable silence." --------ahendepe (a.k.a. Vermin)