In the spring of l938 I was out of money, going to school at the University of Washington. Fortunately I had a job as house boy in a fraternity house for board and room. The l929 Ford Victoria had already been sold and that money barely got me to the end of the spring quarter. My friend from Fort Peck days, Jack Fremon, had already departed, at the end of the winter quarter, to Los Angeles and the University of Southern California. Also, the construction crew with which we had both worked in Fort Peck had been transferred to Los Angeles and was now engaged in levee construction on the Los Angeles River. Los Angeles looked good to me. But there was a problem. (NOTE: The story ends here… but I woud speculate he met Naomi. )
ABOUT GUNS
by Robert R. Hughes (1915 - 2012)
Dad (i.e., T. S. Hughes - 1.6 ) had guns for a purpose, as did nearly everybody who lived in that area (Montana) at that time. Guns took care of coyotes in the chicken house, and skunks wandering around in the yard. Beef and Pork, ready for home butchering, were dispatched quickly and humanely.
A saddle gun was a necessity when riding the hill, checking on the cow herd. Maybe there would be a sick one. A rattle snake might be encountered anywhere. There were always loaded guns around the house; kids were taught to respect and handle them safely.
Dad had two Remington, lever action rifles, 25-35 caliber. One had a shorter barrel than the other; it was called a carbine. Ed 1.6.1) and I used to tramp all over the Fletcher Creek hills looking for deer, which were very scarce at that time, carrying those two rifles. I don't remember that we ever got a deer, but every once in a while we got to shoot at a rabbit or coyote. He also had a Remington, lever action, 10 gauge shotgun, which kicked like a mule. Anyway, I thought it kicked like a mule when I fired at a duck at about age eight. Squatting on my heels on a ditch bank, aiming up at about forty five degrees, I landed flat on my back in the ditch. It didn't have much water in it, fortunately. The duck came tumbling down, but the bad news was that I had to clean it. The house rule was, whoever shoots that stuff, cleans it.
The pride and joy of Dad's arsenal was his revolver, which he used for everything from stunning fish, (as described in Larry's A Fishing Trip With Grandpa), to killing elk at close range. I don't know when, or where, he got this gun. It came before I did, I think. On the style of a 45 colt, It looked like a 45 Colt, but it was really caliber 38 special - an extremely accurate, hard shooting weapon. His stories about what he had done, and could do with this gun, were almost as extensive as his fiddle stories.
In the summer between my junior and senior year in high school, I got a job for a neighboring cattle rancher, Millard Easter, at $l5.00 a month, plus board and room. A good part of my job was riding the fence. This meant going horseback along the drift fence which had been constructed to keep his cattle herd on their summer range. I had a little single shot, 22 caliber, Spanish made pistol that I carried to kill snakes. The coffee can, that I kept in the bunk house, got to be about half full of rattles when I bragged to Dad about what a good shot I was, and what a powerful little gun I had. His comment, "Well, that bullet goes so slow that the snake strikes at it. The only way you could miss is to be so far off that he couldn't reach it." I never bragged about marksmanship in front of him again.
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THE BIG WHALE
HUNT (Jan 2007)
By Robert R. Hughes
I suppose you have heard on the news about our big whale hunt out at Neah Bay. What you heard aint the way it was. This is how I saw it.
The Makah Indian tribe, who has a reservation out there, decided to revive a tradition. Their ancestors used to go out in dugout canoes, harpoon a Gray whale, which drug them around the ocean for a few days. Finally the whale would die and they would tow it back to shore, paddling all the way. The Makahs decided to revive the tradition and got permission from the Whaling Commission (whoever the hell that is). It was all going to be done just like their ancestors did. Yep.
They had the dugout canoe alright. That tradition was alive. They had been making canoes for museums and such so that part was traditional, or at least nearly so. I'm not sure about the paddles, looked to me like they had been updated a little. And if you think the harpoon was whittled out of a stick, with nice, shiny stainless steel available, you are a real traditionalist.
Anyway, a crew of young Makahs have been practicing for months. Their paddling was pretty good as they have inter-tribe canoe races every summer. I don't know how they practiced harpooning - use your imagination. They produced a couple of 90 year old tribal members who claimed to know all about how to cook a whale and all that stuff. You can use your imagination about that too - need one hell-uva barbecue grill, huh?
The protesters were getting ready too; they were cruising around in their million dollar cruisers, counting whales and talking to them in whale-eze. And by the way, gray whales are real tame and friendly, they have been protected and babied for forty years and not afraid of boats and people. One time, when Naomi and I were fishing out of LaPush, a gray whale came up right alongside our boat; we could have reached out and petted it. Naomi was astonished because it had barnacles all over its back
Okay, the whales arrived on their way north and everybody took to the sea - Coast Guard Cutters, protester boats of all types and sizes, support boats, a whole damn fleet; all following eight modern day nitwit Indian Braves paddling a 23 foot dugout cedar canoe. The paddlers were dressed traditionally, in rainproof parkas, wool pants and shirts - it was cold out there. I think their ancestors went out barefoot and in loincloths
They found the whales the first day but they were outside the area that the Coast Guard was supposed to keep the protesters out of, so they were successful in keeping the whales away from the harpooner and vice versa. Several harpoon casts were made with no results. In fact I think the only contact made that day was when a protestor boat ran over a whale's tail. The paddlers worked like hell, though, kept it up all day - chasing little spouts of water coming from whale blowholes.
Next day was Sunday and the paddlers were too tired to make it. The protestors were in great shape though and they were out at the crack of dawn doing their thing.
Monday the paddlers got up early and sneaked out before daylight. Not a protestor in sight. A big old female whale came up right beside the canoe, giving the harpooner a chance to revive a tradition and make history.
His ancestors must have been really proud. He actually managed to harpoon a gray whale, traveling at the approximate speed of a drifting log, on the first try! Excitement! Float barrels (ancestors had lots of those) went out tied to the harpoon line. Paddlers jumped up and down in the canoe, hugging each other - the support canoes came up to help (to me they looked like 24 foot aluminum boats with 250 horse Inboard/Outboards) and the whale took off. Then came more tradition. The whale got itself shot three times with a 50-caliber rifle. The whale died.
Now it was time to get it to shore. I waited for the paddlers to make a go at it - they didn't even try. One of them put on his traditional wet suit and diving gear and went down and tied lines to the whale everywhere he could find something to loop around, like the tail. About six lines went to the power canoe and towing to shore started simultaneously with celebrating.
Towing took about 6 hours; celebrating is still going on. Tribes are arriving from all over the world to feast on the first whale taken the traditional way for over 70 years. There is one thing bothers me about this revival of tradition. There is a tradition out there that we need to watch. It's called the "The Taking of Scalps.”
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COPING WITH
TECHNOLOGY and HOW I DID IT AT AGE 80
By: R R (Bob)
Hughes, born Jan. 4, 1915
My son, who travels around the country giving lectures on technology in the educational system, sometimes connects, via the internet, to my computer with our Cu-SeeMe camera system. He often tells the audience about my achievements in the technology field and asks me to describe my background. I like to think that he is bragging me up a little bit but on the other hand, maybe it just proves that any dummy can do it. Anyway, not being real adept at the art of talking about myself, I thought I would put that part of the demonstration on a website so that any interested web surfer can decide for himself, or herself, about the dummy business. It pleases me if I can send a message that one's background and/or age is not necessarily an obstacle in the path of learning.
I grew up on a ranch in a big valley in the Rocky Mountains of western Montana. I think it was 1919, maybe 1920, when we moved onto what was to be the Hughes Home Ranch for the next 50 years. In the beginning, our "Home Ranch" was an arid, barren piece of land with 3 buildings: a house, a granary, and a chicken house.
World War 1 was just coming to an end when we moved there. I remember my mother taking sandwitches out to a group of soldiers who were walking the 16 miles, from where the railroad ended, to the little town where they lived. There were a few automobiles navigating the dirt and mud roads of the valley, but the soldiers and most of us ranch folk either made do with horses or walked. l started to first grade soon after moving there and walked the mile to the red brick school house. It wasn't bad in nice weather but a blizzard from the north in winter made it so miserable that I stayed home if my Dad couldn't take me in the buckboard.
Our water system was a well and hand pump, out in the yard, that froze up in the winter time. There was no water for irrigation yet but a big canal was in the process of being constructed which would soon bring river water up onto the bench where our ranch was taking shape. Thirty years later that desert was a lush farmland.
l think one of the most wonderful things resulting from the use of computer technology is what can be done with pictures. And, since mountains were the most impressive natural features of my youth, I like to show pictures of those mountains.. They were there, everyday, all the time. When you live in the mountains, they have a lot to say about what you do every day of your life. Following are a couple of pictures of mountains that had a lot to say about what I did, and when.
We called these mountains North and South Baldy. They are just a few miles west of our home ranch. As spring went into summer, we watched the snow line crawl slowly towards the peaks, leaving the ravines and gulleys with their little white glaciers while greenery grew elsewhere.. Note the letter "C" formed by ice and snow on "South Baldy", and the "14" on the north slope of "North Baldy". (The figure 4 in the 14 is only partially visible.) Most years it would be late July before the 14 appeared - it would probably last only a few days. When it disappeared we knew water in the creeks for irrigation would be scarce, and the weather would be hot and dry until autumn.
ANOTHER MOUNTAIN
Hunting wild game bordered on being a necessity at times and we did a lot of hunting on the Gravelly Range. .A favorite spot to hunt elk was in the Black Butte area. At 9500 feet elevation, the October hunting could be mean and miserable.
Photo from "Madison Valley Trails and Trials"
TECHNOLOGY
"Technology" - probably the word was in the dictionary, but we had no cause to look it up - we didn't even have indoor plumbing or electricity.
If I'm not mistaken, electricity came to our ranch about 1930, and if wiring an old house for electricity can be classified as technology, I guess it began for me when my brother and I wired the house. There were no codes or anything that had to be complied with; but we considered ourselves fully capable since my brother had successfully completed a correspondence course from a school in St. Louis. We tested carefully - if no sparks or smoke flew, it passed.
The US Postal Service brought all our news from the outside world. Mail would come by train to where the railroad ended and from there it had to be transported over mountains to be distributed in the valley. In the winter time, the roads would block with snow and my Dad sometimes had the job freighting groceries and mail in with horses and wagon. He could detour around the snow banks and make his own road out through the fields - if everything went right we might get an answer to a letter in two or three weeks. Now I get a message from my nephew in Virginia in a couple of seconds. Wow!
lt seems to me we had telephones before electricity came but I could be confused on that. The early phones were a box that hung on the wall that had a little crank on the side and a horn that stuck out the front to speak into. Everybody yelled - really, the person you were speaking to was a long ways away. To call somebody up that was on your line, you grabbed the little crank and turned it rapidly, pausing as needed to make long and short rings. We had an eight party line, meaning that there could be as many as eight parties hooked onto one phone line and each had a distinctive ring to answer. I remember our ring was two shorts and a long. One long ring connected to “Central.” Central could ring up and connect you to parties that were not on your line. The privacy policy was a joke - you were not supposed to listen in or speak when other people had the line - but our telephone system soon became the equivalent of modern day instant communication. In fact, there were one or two ladies on our line that you could call up and get details on any news that you might have missed that day. I remember one time my Dad called the Doctor because a minor accident had resulted in a gash in my mothers nose that required a stitch or two. By nightfall, the news was all over the valley that Tom Hughes had cut his wife's nose off with an axe.
Communication technology took another giant leap when radios came to the valley. We didn't have a radio on our ranch as early as some of the neighbors, but I can remember slogging through the snow, with my parents, to a neighbor's house on Saturday evenings to listen to "Old Time Music" from Calgary, Alberta, the only station that could be received. The radio sat in the middle of the kitchen table along with a whiskey bottle (the neighbor was also a "moonshiner" and made his own refreshments) with an antenna wire going up through the attic and then up a tree. That was high tech stuff, in those days. Our world really widened a few years later, when we got our own radio and could get more stations and news of the outside world.
I never saw a computer being used until after I retired. Our son had shown me a thing that he was studying in college, made of tubes and bulbs and switches, which had no practical application at all as near as I could tell. It took up the whole top floor of a building and I was sure I'd seen the design in a Rube Goldberg cartoon. Anyway, about 25 years later, when I was 80 years old, he passed along what he called an obsolete computer. Said he was getting a new one. "Ok, what does it do?" "You can type letters on it.” Sure, why not? I had taken typing 62 years ago in high school, and the skill had probably got better with age.
"Oh, anybody can type with this, it isn't a typewriter, it's a Word Processor. You can delete a mistake and type in the correction without using an erasure, and nobody can tell the difference." That did it. With all that training back in high school, no problem!
I spent the first year exploiting the delete and retype accommodation and finally graduated from two words forward, one word back, to where I could type a whole paragraph complete and have to make only two or three corrections. About that time, I was informed that my son and daughter had ordered a new computer for me. They had more confidence than I did in my ability to master technology. Learning to type even reasonably well had just about used up my stubbornness.
The new computer came, so did new problems. What on earth is this lingo computer people use? The instructions might as well have been written in Greek. Since I couldn't make head nor tail out of most of the instructions, I decided just to go ahead, decide in advance what I wanted to do and keep experimenting until I found out how to do it. That worked great - I found that after I learned how to do something, I could also understand the instructions. I made a policy to learn at least one new thing every day - sometimes it took two or three days.
Computer technology can be extremely frustrating to beginners. That's fine, go ahead and get frustrated. Take five, and then try again. When the blankety blank thing gets contrary, and goes its own way, which it will, it's ok to shout at it. That may scare your dog, but the computer is going to patiently wait until you figure out what it is doing.
Those who possess typing ability have a headstart, without a doubt. However, the computer mouse is probably the smartest little rodent that ever infested a household. You will be amazed how far you can go with only the mouse and hunt and peck typing.
Sometimes you will get in a situation where even a smart mouse can't find the way. This is when you need outside help. You will be able to do the basics, like e-mail and web surfing, without a lot of assistance, but, if at all possible, try to capture somebody who can be reached without spending two hours pushing buttons up the telephone ladder - and is able to converse in dummy language. My own experience in the electronic world has been immeasurably aided through having a son who understands that memory isn't always on a chip made by Intel, and that mistakes are the honest result of effort. In conclusion, with help like that, anybody can do it.