My memories of Ekalaka and Carter County

I haven’t written anything for the Eagle for a long time. I am full of stories but most of them are to short to make a good story. And as I am getting older it is harder for me to write and to remember things. Anyway today I want to tell you of my memories in general of the whole area. I was really not there very long but it is powerful in my mind.

As I remember, the population of Ekalaka when we were there was 902 and the population of the whole county was around 3,300. I understand that Ekalaka is now less than 400 and the county is 1,300. Of course when the Lavells left Ekalaka in 1956, we took 8 people off of that population.

Tom McCamish told me several years ago that there were a lot less sheep in the county now than there used to be. Back then everybody had sheep. Mexican shearing crews would come through and they would zip through 700 or 1,100 sheep in no time. I guess that doesn’t happen today. There would also be custom combining crews come and they would get your harvest done very quick. Do they still come through?

The main thing that I remember is completely different now. There were lots of farms and ranches up and down the county and they all had cows which they milked. There was a creamery in town down near where the fairgrounds are now. I think that it was Peck’s Creamery. People would put their cream out by their mail box in a cream can. The mailman would take it to Peck’s Creamery and he would make butter and probably other things out of it and return the clean can via the mailman to do it all over again. This would certainly not be allowed today for health reasons but I never heard of anyone getting sick. So there were cream cans lined up all along the road by the mailboxes.

My Dad, Lee Lavell made his living for a number of years by buying, trading and selling horses and other livestock. He would go to the ranches, see what they had and make whatever kind of deal he could. I went with him sometimes. It was the custom then that if someone visited with you at mealtime that you fed them. So of course if you were visiting you tried to get to the best cooks house at lunch time, we called it dinner then. One time I was back there for my 50th reunion, a lot of years ago now. I visited Jim Carroll’s place to speak to Ann Price Carroll to tell her that she was welcome at our reunion even though she went to Sacred Heart HS. After all she was with us in grades 1-8. Anyway Jim said come on in to dinner, used to be supper, after all this is Montana.

A lot of places had Windchargers that were charging glass batteries. It was really a very nice system with 32 volt electricity. When, the REA came in about 1953 everybody got rid of those systems. My Dad bought a lot of the glass batteries and I helped him tote them out to put on a truck. One time I had just got a nice new parka, I set one of the glass batteries down on the edge of the truck, it broke and spilled acid all over the front of that new coat. I went ahead and used it anyway even though it looked terrible.

I didn’t tell you how Charley Ewalt used to run horses in the byways and lanes of Carter County. You saw those horses, you said oh those are Charley Ewalt’s.

I hope that you are interested in my memories of old Carter County. I really enjoyed my time there and I would like to go back again one more time.