The Winter of 1964 & 1965

Beings I was born in 1934 I had a real good memory of the winter of 1964 and 1965.

I bought a place of my own in 1965 over between Ekalaka and Baker on Lame Jones Creek (4000 Deeded, 1640 Leased). I paid $15 per acre for the deeded.

The summers of 1960 and 1961 were dry but it went to raining in the fall of ‘62. We were wet until ‘79.

I started neighboring with the people; them with tractors and me with horses. I always liked to have plenty horses — saddle horses and teams.

When the fall of ‘64 hit, it started snowing the first week in November (a lot). Then we had a real bad storm around Thanksgiving.

The place I bought was from two older people. It had two rooms, a telephone, one oil burner stove in the living room, and a coal and wood cook stove in the kitchen.

We were married in 1957 so by ‘64 we had 4 kids; a boy age 6, twin girls age 5, and a little girl. We all slept in the living room — us in one bed and the four kids in little bunk beds.

We weren’t complaining. We thought we had the world by the tail.

Then the worst storm we ever went through hit in the middle of December. It was 32 degrees below zero for 3 straight days and 3 straight nights. When it finally broke, everything was so still and so weird.

We saved most of the cattle, but some froze up. Prairie chickens (sage hens) were all that was left of wild animals. East of us towards Baker and North Dakota it was even worse.

The National Guard came in from West Yellowstone and blew everybody out so they could stock up with fuel, groceries, etc.

January started out about 30 above zero, but the snow on the level was deep and hard. Thank God for my horses.

The rest of the winter wasn’t all that great either. It was about the 10th of April before you could get around with a pickup.

The bad part was that we started calving early — another hard lesson learned. I just hope nobody young or old ever has to go through a storm like the winter of ‘64 and ‘65. It was long and hard on both animals and people.

If anybody is in doubt about this article, just visit with my children. They will dang sure remember.

Adiós,

Emmett