30 YEARS AGO

Thursday, September 27, 1990

Bits and Pieces

The old Cache Creek Telephone number 427-5424 will soon ring no more for Irvin and Belva Lancaster. Following the sale of their family ranch, they sold operating equipment at auction on Saturday, September 22 and were hauling household goods to Miles City on Sunday, where they will make their retirement home. Irvin was born on Cache Creek in 1919 and, later, he and Belva bought the ranch from his parents and raised their children there. Neighbors wish them good health and good luck and not too much longing for the old familiar horizons as they adjust to city life. The Tri-State Livestock News is preparing to publish a feature story on the Lancaster Ranch and family this week or next.

Mrs. Ray (Freda Russell) Hall, centenarian and celebrity of the Ledger and Conrad area, visited for several days with Charles and Shirley Russell and family on Doyle Creek. Charles is Mrs. Hall’s nephew. Family and friends agree that it was a rare and moving experience to see this spry and gracious woman, remembered with deep regard and love through the years, and to visit with her.

The Ledger Post Office and Mrs. Hall’s Country Store are “right inside my front door,” she says, (where they have been since 1942) and “it is a great pleasure to be there to hand out mail to the friends who can’t make it to the office during official open hours.”

She had made pineapple and zucchini preserves the day before her trip here and continues in something like 90 years of good cooking and canning. “I enjoy cooking a good noon meal every day because Idell eats that meal with me when she drives in from the ranch to keep the post office open for a few hours. “Idell” is Fern Idell Moore, her daughter.

Mrs. Hall visited Bob McCurdy in Broadus and toured the museum, and Shirley Russell held an open house for friends who came to visit. She was 100 years old in March, 1990 and the Doyle Creek Russells drove to Ledger for the community celebration in Conrad. Mrs. Hall was married and living in South Dakota when her parents and family moved to Doyle Creek in 1915. They visited here often through the years so her friends would date back that far, if any were still alive. The Halls lived on Doyle Creek for 14 years before moving to Ledger.

She accompanied her son Floyd and wife Doris who went on to South Dakota to a family wedding, arriving on Thursday and planned to leave with them on Tuesday of this week. JeriLyn Russell, attending Black Hills State College in Spearfish, drove home to see her aunt Freda on Thursday and returned on Saturday late afternoon, accompanied by Kassie Askin. The Russell home was a beehive of activity in young people coming and going, much like the Hall home once was, and Mrs. Hall was obviously enjoying them very much.

Broadus 1990 spring graduates going to college in Spearfish include Stacey Alderman, Tyrone Robinson, Brad Capra, Tawny Gaskill, Lisa Rizor and Tara McClure, as well as JeriLyn and Kassie.

Shawna Rhodes completed her contract as a nanny for a family in New Jersey and returned to Broadus where she accepted a position as nursing aide at Powder River Manor in May. The aide work is very hard and nursing homes have constant staffing problems in that department.

U.S. Geologists Bob Meade and John Moody of the Denver office are doing their usual September mapping and logging of streambed changes in the Powder River from Moorhead to Broadus. Sediment content of the water and water level are also measured locally, on a daily basis from spring ice break-up to the end of September. George and Hugh Fulton serve at Moorhead and Rick Weisser is currently doing the chores from the Broadus bridge site. River data is on file at the Broadus library. The Meade-Moody maps of the river as it flows through deeded land are much easier to identify with than the usual aerial photos.

Mrs. Lyman (Anne) Amsden visited her daughter and family, John and Julie Riley, son Jerry and small daughter Elizabeth at old Coalwood Sunday afternoon. Mrs. Amsden is a reading counselor at St. Labre, and commutes from her home in Broadus.

Joe Stuver took his nephew Billy, seven, on a weekend camping trip to Tongue River Dam. Two long days of fishing, with some nice catches, left them both momentarily sated with the sport.