Life On The Ranch

I am not sure whether this picture is of the ranch or not. There are several other photographs I have where my dad has the same clothing, and it appears to be at the ranch. I just do not recognize the buildings in the background.


But I have to remind myself that those pictures taken were during the late 30's and early 40's. There are not personal memories of the ranch that I remember until the late 50's, ten or twenty years later.


Dad always told the story that he drove the pickup to school in Snowville when he was in the third grade. My mom told me it was later, but I do remember that it was that early. School officials contacted my grandfather and asked him not to send my dad to school alone in the truck, but my grandpa told them that it was hard not to have him do it, since he drove it around on the farm any way.

My dad always told me that story, whenever I thought I was too young to drive the truck anywhere. I remember driving the blue wheat truck on the Interstate between the fields in what we called Nineteen and the ranch while hauling straw from the harvested fields.

I used the old Allis Chalmers tractor to load the truck with straw before returning with a load to the ranch, where I unloaded it in the stack yard by raising the hoist and jerking forward, so the load of loose straw from the Foster piles would slide out easily. In another picture from an earlier blog, there is a picture of the combine with the Foster Wagon in the background. It was that wagon that formed those large loose mounds of straw.

After the straw slid out, and there were usually four full Foster piles in the truck since the stock rack was up to load the truck with more feed, I would--with the hoist still partially up--put the truck in reverse and push the straw backwards into the area where we dumped the piles. The straw was all in a spot where we could feed the cattle when the snow covered the fall grasses.


Again, I not only used the tractor in the field to lift the piles and load them, but I drove the truck, able to shift through all four gears. I also learned how to use the double axle while shifting. My dad taught me how to do it, and working all day hauling straw helped me retain it. The drive on the Interstate was about five or six miles. The traffic then was not busy at all, but I did on occasion get strange looks from drivers of trucks and cars on the way to the ranch.

I did this job while dad did other work that I was too small to do like lifting heavy things. That would come later. And I will never complain, because it gave me a decisive physical edge on the football field. Farm boy weight training--I believe even today--was far better than the stuff they do now in weight rooms all summer.



This picture shows what was then the new "grainary." I can not find the spelling for it, but that is what we called it, and I tried to write it with every vowel in the final syllable, but then again, both the spell checker and my dictionary never grew up in Malad and Snowville.

The storage available was 10,000 bushels of wheat, a considerable amount then. Later my dad put in three additional ones, each with 6,500 bushel capacity. There were others as well.



This one stood high in the air. I always hated it. The ladder was at the side. Dad always told about Grandpa Cles, climbing to the top and dangling about while he greased the "elevator leg" at the upper right, leaning over and hanging precariously at the edge.



I never realized until later that my dad was as frightened by heights like I was. He never used the word "frightened." Dad always said it bothered him a bit. Grandma Liza had a horrible fear of heights. Once dad had me climb to the top with him, wanting to show me specific things we had to do with the shed. Two thirds to the top, I was dizzy and started to lose my grip on the ladder. Dad noticed I was going to drop. He climbed quickly, so that he was behind me on the ladder, both arms keeping me secure. We climbed back to the ground.

The old barn below was on the ranch when my Great Grandpa Ward purchased the tract of land in 1926. At the time it was the largest land deal in the history of the state of Idaho, and it included our ranch, land the Ward Boys--as my father called them--ran their cattle on during summers, and Rulon's place as well. My dad told me that Bar M Company built the old barn in the 1800's. That was the livestock company that Charlie Russell depicted in his picture The Last of the 5,000. Supposedly, the harsh winter in Montana one season bankrupted them. The picture shows a starving Texas Longhorn surrounded by wolves. The ranch was only a part of what they used for their livestock.


I remember how interesting it was inside. There were wooden sliding planks that slid shut on the inside. When I was young, I thought that it was to keep out bad weather, and that could have been too, but there was also an old rock building where settlers from the area would always gather in the spring when Native Americans were making their trek throught the area. This old building had small openings where a person could fire a rifle. During the fifties, my dad pushed the building down with a bull dozer. It became a spot where rattlesnakes collected.



The spring above the ranch was where Native Americans camped historically, or at least that is my theory. Before a huge flood, there were all kinds of arrow heads we could find near the spring. As I remember, they needed to heat the rock and expose it to water during the chipping process.


There was a huge spot where you could pour sacks of grain--either rolled barley or oats--into a storage area with a lid. Three stalls with small troughs for horses were also there. We saddled and unsaddled horses here until we bought Rulon's place. There was a barn on Rulon's. At the right side of the picture is the barn section where on the inside a small corral was. My Grandpa Cles broke horses in there. My dad told me only one horse was able to get my grandpa off him. And the horse did it my trying to roll over on its side. Dad told me that grandpa just stepped off as the horse knelt and began to roll.

At the back was a large corral where grandpa penned the wild horses he roped on Sundays. The large Holmgren ranch north and west of our ranch had over 80 sections of land, and at one time there was a herd of wild horses. Some were from old abandoned army stock. Holmgrens did not like them on their ranch, since a horse eats a great deal more grass than a cow, and in desert country where we ranched and farmed, that was not good. They did not mind grandpa roping them. It was a better way to get rid of them.

The best ones were kept on the farm, and Grandpa Cles sold the rest.



This picture shows what the fence was like, although this one was certainly meant for sheep. The one behind the barn had taller, sturdier posts, but like those here, they were planted close to each other and joined by wire and made even more stable with long pine poles or even discarded rusty pipes from the waterline that had been replaced with newer pipe.



Dad always told how he and his friends crept close to the fence to get a look at the wild horses. They would squeal a high-pitched scream, their ears layed back and their eyes wild with rage. The horses with teeth bared, would bite at them and even strike at them with their front legs.

I heard one person from Malad tell a story about buyers who bought a truckload. On top of the Holbrook divide, a horse reared and pawed its way partially over the top of the truck's cattle rack. It was striking and scraping the top of the cab with its front legs. It frightened both men, but it scared one more than the other. He soiled his pants.


This picture at the right shows the cedar post corral at the ranch. Dad is at the left, and Janice is in the wooden high chair that Cles and Lydia sat in occasionally at the ranch.




I would imagine that the reason they used a fence like this was for sheep, an animal that can crawl though almost anything. And the family made its money on sheep in the beginning.


Dad told me once that Great Grandpa Ward and his brother were fist fighting once in a corral like this on the ranch in Snowville. They were in the seventies at the time.

One story a man from Pocatello told about Great Grandpa Ward was that while tending sheep in the mountains south and west of Poky, grandpa handed him a rifle. The man was eight or nine at the time. Grandpa picked up a club, telling a boy that he would crawl into the bushes to drive out the bear. The boy was to shoot it when it came out into the open.



Our family was interesing. The fact that they were rough and original makes me proud to say that I am a Ward, but it just isn't that, they worked hard and they were noted for honesty and character--at least those from the Jesse Nicholas Ward clan. That was my Great Grandpa Ward. The members of the family who settled in Cherry Creek were much the same way, but we never liked the one who was Great Grandpa Ward's partner--the religious but dishonest one.

My dad was an exceptional farmer. The ranch always looked like an oasis, and the land was in good shape. Unless there was a severe drought or other adverse conditions, we had very good crops.


But one thing dad always did was keeping in touch with government programs that would help to control soil erosion, a problem that damaged a few sections because of the severe storms and the nature of the land. The mountains were high, and the plants--due to desert conditions--were sparse, so water from storms would run fast making deep cuts in the fields.


This picture shows the dams we built to prevent erosion. After one of those severe storms, dad and I wanted to see how they worked. My Annie came with us. She took my hat for the picture, and as we walked toward the truck, a rattlesnake "lit up." That sound still raises the hair on the back of my neck, whether in a movie or on a television show. Even thinking about the sound evokes a shudder in me. I killed many snakes, but this one crept under the truck. Dad pulled forward, but when we looked for it, it had crept back into the thick winter wheat. This picture is at the field we called Nineteen, the best land on the farm.


This is another view of Nineteen, before the dams. Dad and my sister Ann are on horseback--dad on Old Black and Ann on Pansy. Both animals had the same mother, a mare that was of those wild horse roots I talked about earlier in this posting.

The buckskin Pansy was horrible. If the saddle cinch was to tight for her liking, she would groan, kneel down and roll slowly until you would step out of the saddle. And she would bite too. Pansy would walk up ever so gently, smell your hands and arms, and as soon as she was close to your stomach or side, she would bite. One of her little "love tokens" left a blood blister. I told dad once that I was going to strap old deer horns we had in the barn to her head and turn her loose during the deer hunt. In Utah, having antlers--whether real, imagined, or duct-taped on your head would have been fatal, for man or beast.


The scene in this picture certainly happened after moving cattle to Nineteen. With fields in summer fallow and without crops, plenty of pasture was available. There was only one problem: water. Without a well or a waterline from the spring at the ranch, we always had to haul water to fill a storage tank positioned below a truck ramp and above a cattle trough.

I did that job often when I was very young. It was not complicated. We would load the large white water tank in the back of the wheat truck after taking out the end gates, used to haul wheat. Placing railroad ties and some planks at the on the sides kept it from sliding out when we raised the hoist a bit to make the water drain well.

We would put a garden hose to fill the tank. That took a good portion of the day, so often we did it during the night. That way we could take water twice, once early in the morning and a second time in the evening before sunset. The drive to Nineteen "Holler," the word our family used for hollow, was only about thirty minutes from the house--five to six miles on the Interstate and a three or four more miles through a series of three gates along gravel and dirt road that led to the fields.

Arriving at the trough, you would drive up to the top of the ramp, back down slowly toward the storage tank, and raise the hoist before putting the truck in gear and turning off the engine.

After taking the lid off the top of the tank in the truck, you put the large hose in the bottom storage tank. After turning the valve counterclockwise, it took about twenty minutes to unload the water. There was a float on the trough that regulated the level, but sometimes sediment would create a problem, allowing all of the water to run out on the ground: a reason why we also took two loads of water to cattle a day. Although the float would fail to work occasionally, it was a risk to have thirsty cattle in the heat of the day.



The picture at the right shows the front of the old house. Grandpa Cles built this part, which was the kitchen and porch areas. The living room and bedrooms were there earlier. I have no idea how old that part was, but the nails had square heads, and it was extremely old even in the early 50's.

You can see the gravel around the foundation. Planks keep the gravel in place and prevent it from getting onto the lawn area. I always thought that the gravel was just a walk area, but in this picture it appears to be set up to allow water to run away from the house and to prevent animals from burrowing under it.

At the right side of the picture was a metal sheet in place, large enough for a person to crawl under the house. Given the little "critters" that slithered and crawled in the area, nothing could have persuaded me to do that.

When I was in high school, a skunk went under the house. Occasionally during the day or night, something would scare the skunk and the horrible smell would rise into the house. Dad had an idea, he built a small fire near the manhole at the side, and with a gasoline lawn mower, he blew smoke into the house. Instead of smelling like skunk, we now smelled like trappers in fresh tanned leather on the frontier. A week later, the skunk returned. Dad bought mothballs. They told him that would drive the skunk from under the house. And yes, everything and everyone then smelled like mothballs. I don't remember how many boxes we used to throw into the crawl space, but the smell still makes me sick. The skunk smell would have been better. By the end of the summer, the skunk left. I suppose life was too busy in his home under us for any creature to be happy.


This is a picture from the late 50's. I am guessing that I was eight or nine. Relatives sometimes visited us. Aunt Rochelle was here on this day. Kim and Penny are at the left. Aunt Rochelle had measles when she was pregnant with Kim. The family always felt it affected him physically. Kim had vision problems and was extremely frail as a child.

But it didn't keep him out of the Nam. The draft and draft boards were merciless in those days. If local boards didn't like your family, there was no such thing as a 4-F rating, which a person with disabilities would get.

The Viet Nam experience must have affected him, although I didn't see him much when we were in high school. He was the same age as I was.

When I returned from Germany, having been there from '72-'74, Kim was in a fatal car crash. He was driving with friends in his new pickup truck. The circumstances were very strange.

Members of the family talked about drug use and even his having sold drugs. Aunt Rochelle had me speak at Kim's funeral. I think they buried him in Samaria. Seeing Kim at the viewing will always haunt me, his thin face bruised so badly.

I hate those funeral viewing things. The whole tradition seems so barbaric. Personally Iwould prefer a Viking sendoff. You put my body in a Viking boat, surrounded by wood soaked in tars and fragrant but flamable oils. After setting the boat adrift and letting it go forty to fifty feet into the lake, archers fire flaming arrows while Swedish babes in braided pig tails weep. That's my idea of a viewing.

This picture also shows the gravel below the window, but it also has the plank set further from the house. It explains why I thought it was just a path. That is what we used it for when I lived on the ranch. My guess is that over time the gravel spread a bit into the lawn, and we placed the plank further away.


Trees surrounded the house, providing it with incredible shade from the summer heat. The lawn also had a thick stand of small-leafed clover. I still miss that look. We even had that on Bannock Street. Today no one wants clover in their lawn. Even if you had it, it would disappear as soon as you put Weed & Feed on it.

This is a picture of the west side of the house. You can see the cellar. It is also the "old" section. Dad is in the picture, and I am pretty sure that Grandpa Cles is behind him. He looks so young in this picture. Again, I am guessing that someone took this shot in the late 30's or early 40's. It is about fifteen years before my grandpa suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 48. Hard work took its toll. And filterless Camels did too. I miss him still. He was the most incredible grandpa.

You can see the trees in this picture, mostly poplars reaching high and wide into the sky. They were huge by the time I was a young boy.

I still remember the sound of summer breezes in the leaves. It sounds like waves washing on a Pacific beach. And I remember the night wind that would come down the ravine where the spring was, billowing the curtains ever so gently and cooling the house, heated by the summer sun and cooking.

The final picture on this posting shows my dad. I am almost certain that this is the back of the old house on the ranch, but the porch and cellar seem a bit different.