Transitions by Mike Hormek - HTML preview

Chapter 1

We did not have to pretend we were cowboys and Indians. We were the real deal. We made cap pistols and their makeshift bows and arrows from willow branches. I had cowboy boots, blue jeans, a belt buckle, and a hat. They had their war paint of dye or makeup and moccasins.

Growing up on a Native American reservation in Montana as a white boy or Wasichu, the face of the white man in the Lacota language was interesting at best. I could not imagine growing up in a crowded city such as New York or living on the prairie of Montana in a shack, as my Dad lived most of his life with no companionship but a pet coyote and maybe a dog or two. The reservation is on the Missouri River, where Lewis and Clark camped and observed wolves, thus the name Wolf Point.

My two young Indian friends, Merle and Frank, were full-blooded Sioux Indians. Both had the same mother, Mary. I knew their stepfather, Freddie, but I did not know their natural fathers. Freddie and I became good friends. He was a full-blooded Indian raised on the prairie. I asked him once, "Did you ever scalp anyone?" He just laughed.

The Sioux and Assiniboine were peaceful, although they defended themselves when threatened. My Indian friends and I often took turns staying overnight at each other's homes. At my father's ranch, we slept under the stars in sleeping bags. For entertainment, we played cowboys and Indians in the haystacks. In the winter, we hunted snowshoe rabbits. In Montana, we took hunting courses as young as eight. My father and I hunted together, and I shot a high-powered rifle at eight years old.

Some years, we had a bumper wheat crop and nowhere to store it. We had a large barn where we spread a canvas and put the excess wheat on it. However, the sparrows roosted in the rafters and pooped on the grain. Therefore, we had to get rid of them. Merle, Frank, and I used our B.B. guns and a flashlight and hunted sparrows in the rafters at night. The cats loved us.

Other than farm and ranch activities, there needed to be more to do. There was a swimming pool in town, but I could not swim. We had school picnics at the Lewis and Clark Park on the river. I can still smell the hamburgers and hot dogs cooking, the noise of volleyball play, and the clink of boys throwing horseshoes. We had ballparks and softball league teams, in which I was not a participant.

As time passed and personalities changed, it became apparent Frank and Merle were of a different cloth. Frank was a free-spirit where anything goes. While Merle became studious and considered life seriously, Frank was never mature. We will discuss their legacies in future chapters.

In retrospect, my childhood was just OK. It may have been better if I had not been an only child and had siblings to play with. It also would have been better if my father were younger. He was 61 and 58 when I was ten. Oh! Then, there was my mother's continuous illness. She had numerous tumors that required several surgeries, so she dumped me at a cousin's place on the river. The girl's cousin was on a trip. She was mean. We fought like cats and dogs. I was homesick and missed my mama, as I was a mama's boy. If Dad wanted to spank me, she would step in and take the hit. I miss her. We had a connection, but not so much with my Dad.

I was the honest Dennis the Menace when I was young. I remember a woman my mother told me was Miss Townsend, who would keep me at times. She played with me once, taking out her false teeth while holding me. It scared the hell out of me. When she put me down, I remember crying and on my hands and knees and crawling across the floor to get away from her.

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When I was five, my Dad took me for my first haircut. The barber called me Billy because my Dad's name was Bill. The haircut was non-eventful. The eventful part was yet to come. I liked to play make-believe. I wanted to play barber and wondered who I would use to test my skills.

"How about our black cat?" I thought. After I cut off all the hair, I applied hair oil. What I did not realize was the turpentine burned its skin. It took off screaming into the woodpile, and I did not see that cat for a while. That was also my first whipping. My second was when my Dad was sleeping. He snored with his mouth open, and I put a rubber play mouse in his mouth, and he didn't like it.

We lived on the prairie 40 miles from civilization. I remember snow drifting over the house, so getting out took a whole day. There was a year around when I was six or seven and when the winter was so bad we ran out of food. We had cows, and we could not feed them. There was a haystack where the cows could feed. When a cow got on the stack to eat, she froze. The next cow stood atop her to get to the hay and froze. When the snow melted in the spring, we found layers of cows piled on each other.

The meat was still good, so we butchered what we could and gave the rest to the Indians.

The winter was so bad that all we had to eat for a month was sugar and lard sandwiches. We survived because airplanes dropped food by parachute. At that time, we could not get to the main highway. We had no electricity, only a 24-volt battery system with a wind charger. You had to strike a match to see the light bulb. Because of the remoteness, there was no school.

My Dad Was a Genius. He home-schooled me until I was eight and could get me into school.

He spoke eight languages and played six musical instruments, all self-taught. His speech was fluent, without any accent. It was remarkable, as he could not speak English when he entered the USA from Russia via Canada. There is some benefit to living in a shack on the Montana prairie alone for 50 years.

I could not do that.

Dad got Mother and me into town when I was around eight so I could attend school. We hun-kered down in a hotel for the first year. Then Dad moved the house from the prairie into town and added some rooms. Dad commuted to the farm and stayed with us on weekends. We still raised a garden on the homestead. There was no working water well then, so we had to transport water for the garden by loading water in a barrel and transporting it by hand in containers.

We were traveling on a train to North Dakota. She was always worried we would not have enough to eat, so she packed a travel bag full of sandwiches, oranges, apples, cookies, and pastries.

There was enough to feed everyone in our coach car. I wouldn't say I liked traveling by train in winter because the car was always so cold. I can still smell the sauerkraut in Mom's family's house. They were of Austrian and Ukrainian heritage, so traditional dishes were typical. The kids slept on mats on the floor, head to toe. The room was always full. I had so many cousins I couldn't count them. Later in life, I discovered my mother had a girl out of wedlock, a half-sister.

My mother had a big family, seven brothers and sisters. I visited whether I wanted to or not.

Wedding and funeral gatherings were a big deal and lasted several days, with lots of drinking and dancing by the adults. We spent most Sundays at Mother's sister's farm or ours for Sunday dinner.

My cousin was my age, only a few months apart. We had lots of fun on the farm, riding horses, hunt -

ing, and fishing. He raised a family of eight children. He was an expert mechanic and won several Montana contests for transmission repair. He could disassemble and put back together a transmission blindfolded. He had schizophrenia and ultimately took his own life since the government was coming to take his farm. He sat up at night with a gun at the window, but no one ever came. The family planned on taking him for treatment shortly after Christmas Day. The entire family was there, including the children. He ate a hearty dinner, had dessert, and excused himself. A shot rang out outside. He used a shotgun on his chest. He was so full of life. I spoke to him just a few days before. I had no clue and figured he was the last person who would take his own life.

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Speaking of cousins, I can't let this story go without talking about my cousin, who they call Smiley. He stayed with us during his high school years. I was ten years old or so. So he came home one day and said to my mother:

"Aunt Polly, can you fry me some eggs?"

"Why, what's up?" she asked.

"The coach said I needed some protein, so eggs are a good source."

"I will pick some eggs when I finish my chores," she said.

Mother proceeded to fry him some eggs. To appreciate what happened, you would have had to have been there. He was a big boy, probably over six feet, and well-built. As I recall, their mother fried him 26 eggs in one sitting. He probably got his protein along with unexpected consequences because, as it turned out, he became constipated.

He ate ex-lax by the handful and missed school for several days. We did not have indoor plumbing in the middle of winter. Several trips to the outhouse must have been uncomfortable. Smiley was a character. He always wore dress clothes and black and white sports shoes. His hair was always well-groomed and oiled and slicked back. His manner of dress stood out. He always smiled while talking, thus the nickname. He always drove a Cadillac. He made me nervous when I rode with him, especially when I was in the back seat. While driving, he would ultimately turn around to speak. His mother mistreated him when he was young because he was nervous and frequently stuttered. He was a fun guy.

Another significant childhood occurrence was when a friend of my Dad's purchased a television, the only T.V. in town. His wife was British, so Queen Elizabeth's coronation was a big deal, and we watched it on television, which was quite a first. Our entertainment devices were crude by today's standards but were state-of-the-art in those days. I remember a radio that Dad had that ran on a car battery. Dad had to bring in a battery at night or have a spare to run the radio. I am trying to remember which.

My Native American friends, Merle and Frank, had personalities that went in different directions as teenagers. Their mother, Mary, tried desperately to keep them together and on the right track.

She worried about Frank because of his wayward ways, but Merle was no problem. She ensured their clothes were presentable for school. I remember their pants and shirts were always clean and pressed, and their shoes shined. Merle's legacy was that he was well-educated, had a good government job, and died doing what he loved. He wore an Indian bonnet and danced traditional dances during annual pow-wows. On the other hand, Frank had an alcohol use disorder, spent every penny of his income, and probably died on the streets in Montana. The last time I saw Frank was when I was home on leave from the Navy. He was outside the same bar he patronized for years. He still had his most valuable possessions: his clothes and Italian shoes.

"Hello, Frank," I said.

"Hi Mike," he replied.

"Can you spare me a twenty?"

"Now, Frank," I said."I have not seen you for several years, and borrowing money is the first thing out of your mouth. What's wrong with you?"

The mother did her best with both kids, but genealogy sometimes takes precedence.

Merle and Frank's stepdad, Freddie, was a funny character. He claimed he fought in Custer's last stand, but I doubt it because the timeline did not fit. Nevertheless, I enjoyed his company. He was al -

ways cracking jokes and enjoyed describing obscene gestures in Indian sign language. He probably made them up because I could not verify. He taught me much of the Sioux and Assiniboine languages I retain today.

When I was a teenager, I had the misfortune to get the Asian Flu, which killed over 116,000

people. I was home in bed and was feeling better when I went downtown to get a milkshake at the local

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drugstore. I fainted on the stool and fell off. I awoke several days later, and the doctor told my parents that I would not make it. Still, it was a long struggle to recover. I awoke several days later. Expectations of recovery were not reasonable, but it was a long struggle to recover. I could not eat and lost significant weight. Intravenous feeding sucked. I spent nearly three weeks in the hospital. Anyhow, in my room was a Native American; they say he was close to 100 years old and could not speak English, and visitors told us that he did fight in Custer's battlefield and survived.

I witnessed the events first-hand, which I will document here. Alcoholism was rampant on the reservation. Oil money and leases supported many of the Native Americans. The white business people, in my opinion, took advantage of their vulnerable situation. They had no motivation to succeed, although some government contracts employed some who would work. At least ten working bars were cashing the checks as they came in randomly, whereby each individual could support their habits until another check came in. Later in this story, I will tell about a white man who had several shoe boxes of

"hold" checks as security for bar drinks, which must have been thousands of dollars. He would pick them up as bar tabs when his crops came in in the fall. When the significant money ran out, the Native Americans and some white men, as well, bought cheap wine and assembled behind the elevators, sitting down and drinking, allowing teenagers to dispose of bottles that still had wine on the ground. They would shoot the bottles with slingshots and then take off running. I would not participate in that non -

sense. Underage teens also solicited these individuals to buy liquor or beer for a fifty-cent tip. Still, other sources of income existed for them to purchase cheap wine.

On Tuesdays, a train brought surplus commodities for the Native Americans. It was a bag of what appeared to be military surplus: cheese, dry potatoes, canned goods, flour, and who knows what.

Farmers would come into town and buy those goods from the Indians for a dollar or two. They then could buy wine. Malnutrition was evident among the children.

Another incident occurred while I was on the reservation. Eventually, the mud huts with dirt or sawdust floors diminished. New Hud houses are called "projects." Copper was used extensively in those homes. Several were "cannibalized" of the copper and sold to buy liquor. I do not know the outcome as many of my friends did not live in the "projects."

Acute alcoholism did not exist just in the Native American community. Remember the guy who would use "hold" checks as security for buying drinks? I worked for Ivy one summer and did not realize the extent of his illness. Let's review the cycle. He woke up around six a.m. to get ready to work the field with a tractor. He had no breakfast, only sixteen ounces of straight Vodka. Then he put a fifth of Vodka in a gallon milk jug and filled the rest with apple juice. Then he went to work. He left the jug in the truck, and pretty much every round of the field, he stopped and took a swig. So, he consumed sixteen ounces plus a fifth without food. Next, he went home, showered, and hit the bars. During the evening, he drank another fifth of Vodka. So now he had two-fifths plus 16 ounces, nearly 70 ounces per day--with no food. He ordered a sandwich before he went home and ate it before bed. I don't know how he did it.

I remember a day in the winter when we were watching T.V. Ivy sat near a window. The snow was deep, and a horse stared at him in the window. He was either hung over or drinking. I don't recall, but he hollered and jumped up. I laughed.

So how did it turn out? Well, he saw stuff crawling on the walls at some point. Hallucinations often occurred during heavy alcohol abuse, which led to an emergency visit to the E.R. His doctor told him the next time he would see him would be on a slab. Incidentally, the doctor himself was a person with alcoholism whose hands shook, and he still performed the surgery. He was the doctor who delivered me to a morgue. "How is that?" folks asked. Turns out it was once a hospital but now is a morgue, which makes for a good story.

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So what happened to Iver? Well, he tried cold turkey, and he got the D.T.'S, delirium tremors, a severe complication of alcohol withdrawal involving sudden and severe changes in the mental or nervous system. He said rats were crawling on his walls, a rare case now, with fewer than 200,000 cases reported. He made another trip to the E.R. This time, the hospital held him for treatment. The last time I saw him, he had overcome his addiction. He still patronized the same bar with his friends but only drank coke, which had to have been harsh. I also worked for his brother Bobby Jo, and that's another chapter in the saga of the Wasichu.

During my teenage years, we built a house closer to town where I could attend school. We only had 80 acres and retained the 640 acres on the homestead. That was all left of the 10,000 acres my Dad had during the Depression. Some exciting things happened there. We lived near a railroad track. A couple of things happened. The railroad was south of our house, around a mile or so. The school bus could not cross the tracks for whatever reason, so I walked across the south 40 to catch the bus. I had to walk through the yard of a grain elevator right under the elevator manager's window. His wife and my mother were friends. She called me Billy. She was English, so tea was a big deal. We connected because she had no children. Anyway, when I got off the bus in the afternoon, she frequently invited me in for pie and ice cream. The pie would be cooling in her window, and I could smell it when I got off the bus. Wow. What memories.

The railroad had what they called Gandy Crews, which worked on the rails. They had a rail car that was a sleeper to go from job to job. Frequently, hobos hitch rides on the boxcars and get off to beg for handouts. One day, my folks and I came home to find a gentleman eating at our kitchen table.

“Who are you?” my Dad asked.

“I am traveling on the train,” he answered. “I am going to Chicago to look for work.”

"OK," you can eat, but you have to leave."

My mother made him a sandwich, and he was on his way.

"We need to start locking the house," Mother told Dad.

We had no indoor plumbing, so Dad bought our outhouse on the homestead. I always wondered why there were two stalls. Was it a "his and hers?" Or was it just a way for government bureaucracy to award superfluous contracts? There was WPA, "The Works Progress Administration," to provide jobs during the Depression. I don't know if this was an original or a duplicate, but it worked. Sears and Roe -

buck's catalogs worked but were not extraordinary by today's standards. My point about the outhouse is this. A tornado came over the house. We had no storm cellar, so we sat it out in our truck. We watched the barn blow up, and the outhouse went up like helicopter propellers spinning into oblivion. A six-by-six post lodged between the spokes of a drill and split in half. A month later, we had a storm cellar.

Dad moved the homestead from Cottonwood to town in the next year or so. He added to our home as the original house was shotgun style with a large front room, a combined kitchen and living room, and one bedroom. So, during school months, Mom and I lived in town, and Dad would come in on weekends. We still had livestock to deal with. I remember a summer when we heard an airplane buzzing around overhead. Suddenly, the engine stopped. My Dad said he thought the plane went down.

Sure enough, it went down head-first in the back 40. When we got there, the pilot's head exploded, and brains were scattered everywhere. I can still visualize the scene. The rumor was the pilot was a crop duster who impregnated an Indian girl while he was married.

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