Neighborhood Stories---Scobey, Montana: Growing up in Small Town, Montana

By Larry Brasen Sr.

Larry and Betty have taught in several School systems, including small and large in Montana, Arizona and the U.S.V.I. Here Larry tells of growing up in Scobey, MT. His yarns involve other kids, adults he admires, and adventures he experienced. Through the art of story telling he manages to take you from quite young to a teenager in the back seat with Myrna. (Heh-heh)!!! Afflicted with a mild case of A.D.D., he describes the experience of "Day Dreaming" in class.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dry Heat Publishing, LLC
• Release date: Mar 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781736854839

Book preview

Short Pants and Hightop Shoes

THE RANT: This rant started out because of my mother.

Every time I see a guy wearing Bermuda Shorts I just try to avert my eyes. How ugly can a pair of legs from above the knees and down to the ankles be? I mean, Good Grief. Didn’t you ever grow up? Holy Cow! UGLY!!! I know I’m causing some people to be utterly pained with my statement. But how can I help it? Oh, by the way, for those of you who practice Political Correctness, can you get over it? I mean, Good Lord! No growing up for you.

And what about those terrible Tee-Shirts? I mean, you been there, saw that, got the Tee-shirt. That doesn’t mean you HAVE to WEAR the miserable thing! Those flabby or skinny arms poking out of the things they call armholes have got to be the ultimate in Ugly. Get out of kindergarten and put on real clothes. Pants that cover your hopeless shins. Shirts with arms that cover your bald flabbed out elbows.

And how about those Tennis Shoes. How plebeian can you get? I mean, come on man. Try on a pair of grown up shoes. You don’t have to do tassels. You can do laces if you have to. But tennis shoes? Oh yeah, you’re going down in the history of fashion flops big time. I saw a guy wearing tennis shoes with a tuxedo. Or how about the guy I saw on TV hiking in the desert in Bermuda Shorts, Knee socks and flip flops. You just can’t do that. 

This is how it all got started.

When I was a little kid, before going to First Grade (There was no kindergarten in that year in Scobey), the very height of fashion was to dress your little boy in Shorts with a bib, a short sleeved shirt, socks that came up to your shins and what I call high top brown leather lace up shoes. It was obligatory to have your little boy dressed in this fashion. If you appeared in public dressed otherwise, you as the mother could possibly face shunning on Sunday at the Lutheran Church. (Not really) Even at the age of five years, I had a real sense of wanting to be able to finally wear long pants in public during the summer. Oh My, My, My!!! How I hated to look down at my little chicken legs sticking out of those accursed short pants. Please God, let me just skip five and move directly to six with long pants and long sleeved shirts. But God and time both move excruciatingly slowly when you are dreading the wearing of Horrible clothes.

Oh, Larry, don’t you look just great. Are you looking forward to visiting the Ice Cream Bar down town. (Since the men in town had their Bars in which to hang out, the nicer Ladies had their Ice Cream Bar as opposed to a parlor.) What do you think you’ll be getting? Maybe a milkshake or a sundae? encouraged Mom.

I was just thinking about sitting in that booth we always sit in and not being the right size to eat my ice cream or milk shake. At five years of age you’re at the wrong size for just about everything. If I got up on my knees on the bench, then I could at least spoon the ice cream into my mouth. I had better not order a milk shake. They came in that glass with a pedestal for a base and then blossomed up and out into a three inch opening at the top. If I sat on my knees, I would still be too short to fit the straw into the glass. I would have to take it down from the table and hold it in my lap and the last time I did that it spilled. Well, we had to walk all the way down town because mom didn’t know how to drive. I could think about it on our way.

Scobey is subject to just about every kind of weather condition imaginable. The Old Timers say, If you don’t like the weather just wait five minutes. It’ll change that quickly. This was one of the hottest days we had seen all summer. We had been down town for the Fourth of July with the parade and everything. That had been over a month before and it had been hot. This was almost damp and hot.

We started walking North on the path (the streets were dirt and there were no sidewalks) in front of our house. Then we turned West at Gendrue’s home and headed toward the Catholic Church. A couple blocks later we hit Main Street. There seemed to me to be a lot of traffic on Main. I turned to mom and asked, Is something special happening? To which she replied, Well, Larry, we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?

We walked down Main Street to the Rex Theater where we crossed over the street to the Gorham Hotel and then North again til we got to the Ice Cream Bar. Two guys were in a booth and they got up and offered the booth to mom and me. I thought that was really nice. Mom sat down on one side and I clambered up on the other. They didn’t have a waitress so the lady behind the counter had to come over and take our order. The place was full of people. Everybody was talking but almost in whispers. I couldn’t help but feel like something unusual was happening but I had no idea what it was. Everyone would look out of the window onto the street and then start talking in those strange muted voices. Mom ordered a Cherry Phosphate and I had a Chocolate Sundae. Just as we were finishing our Ice Cream a strange sound started on the street. Then I realized what it was. It was the fire siren. But people had surged out onto the middle of the street. Someone started honking their car horn. Then two...then more...then all...the people started yelling at the top of their voices. All the church bells in town started ringing. People started dancing in the street. Everyone was hugging each other and laughing and crying. Outright sobbing…

Mother said to me, Larry. This is special. The war is over. We won. Try to remember this day, what we did, what we heard, what we saw. This is History!

At five I didn’t understand what it all meant, but I’ll never forget that afternoon on the Main Street of a dusty little country town in Northeastern Montana when I no longer really cared about Short Pants and High Top Shoes. 

THE TWENTY DOLLAR BILL

Summer time in Scobey, Montana in 1947 was about as good as life could get. It was get up bright and early, (no clock) hungry. I loved our cereal. It came in great boxes. I was old enough to read and boy, did the boxes have readability. The big old Shredded Wheat that didn’t even fit into the bowl had separator stiff paper dividers with Indian Scout stuff to learn about and in case you had been invaded by some unknown species of wild animal in the night, you could learn what their footprints looked like. Wheaties was the breakfast of CHAMPIONS!!! (If you ate Wheaties, you became a Champ.) Rice Krispies had the Snap, Crackle and Pop triplets. Man oh man, you could really hear them talk to you until it all went soft. Cheerios were magic O’s. No tellin’ what could happen if you ingested a few of them. Put the carbohydrate laden stuff in a bowl, pour on the milk, ladle on several teaspoons of sugar and Wow! You were set for the day. (Our Federal Government even told you how the Carbs were needed to form the basis of the food Pyramid). And you could send away for really nifty stuff like the Master Decoder Ring, the spring loaded airplane that could fly right off your finger, and assorted things like comic books in miniature, Magic words of Poof Poof Piffles, Make me just as small as Sniffles. (That was Mary Jane and Sniffles for those of you who don’t remember.)

After breakfast there was always the garbage if it needed to be emptied.  I was so excited when I got to be old enough to burn the garbage. I got to carry a book of matches with me out to the garbage and actually light it on fire. We had our garbage cans, two of them out in the alley. We all burned our garbage daily. (Not a