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Musselshell Valley Historical Museum

Annual Newsletter

Volume 3, Number 5                                                                            Spring 2010

 This year’s theme is “School Days”

MUSEUM ENTERS THE COMPUTER AGE

            Thanks to the generosity of Gary Sackett and many of his classmates, and other donors, the museum was able to purchase computers, camera, and other equipment, and to compensate the help required to properly inventory the contents of the museum. Work is currently underway organizing the museum inventory. Thirty-five years of donor gift contributions have been cross-referenced and correlated to assure accuracy. When the museum opens in May, the next phase of the project will be to physically locate each object on our inventory and write a description about it. This information will then be entered into the computer for preservation and future research activity.

ANNUAL MEETING TO BE HELD MARCH 14;

DUES ARE NOW DUE AND PAYABLE

            The annual meeting has been set for Sunday, March 14 at 2:00 p.m. in the museum basement. Election of officers and board members will be held at this time. Regular meetings are held on the second Friday of each month at 1:00 p.m. also in the museum basement. The museum itself is open each year from May through September from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. each day of the week.

            Dues are due and payable on February 15 of each year. Certificates of membership are issued on a yearly basis for $10 for the first year and an additional $5 fee will be charged each year following. A life membership may be purchased for a $100 one time fee for individuals and $150 for businesses. Payment for memberships may be mailed to the museum at 524 First Street West.

OFFICERS AND BOARD MEMBERS

Andy Rooney said, “A smile is an inexpensive way to improve your looks.”

MUSEUM EVENTS FOR THIS YEAR

The museum will open on Saturday, May 1 and close Sunday, September 26. The School Art Show will be the first display in the Art Room. It will remain up from May 1 until May 23.

Following the School Art Show, the class graduation photos from Roundup High School will again be exhibited. This show was very popular last season.

A pancake breakfast is being planned for Sunday, May 2, the day after opening day. This event was also well received last year and serves as a good money maker for the museum.

The annual Yard Sale will be held on Saturday, June 5 on the museum grounds.  Anyone having unwanted items is asked to donate them for the sale. This usually draws a large crowd and furnishes bargains for everyone! A hamburger lunch will be served at noon to add to the fun of this event.

Just a little humor…

A little girl had just finished her first week of school. “I’m just wasting my time,” she said to her mother. “I can’t read, I can’t write, and they won’t let me talk!”

ODE TO A GUMBO ROAD

By Larry Stanfel

We flew up one March from away down south,

To cowboy country in search for a house,

In butt-freezing cold and a snow packed scene,

Our hands were too soft, our horns too green.

We piled in her truck with the realty broad,

When our heads banged her roof, we gasped, “My God,

This ten-mile trail much ill does forebode.”

“Heck folks,” said she, “that’s your new gumbo road.”

A gentle rain, and a guy feels lucky

To drive that mush path in a swamp buggy,

Mud prison makes days a little bit slowed,

But, hell, that’s our life on a gumbo road.

Two inches of snow is merely a bump,

Till gale-force winds drift it up to your rump,

At spots like a trough, in those snow flows,

‘Cause that’s how the crew grades our gumbo road.

One wretched mile they did slope so to drain;

A strew of sharp rubble was the net gain.

Their work thus exposed a tire-killing lode,

A first-class mine field on our gumbo road

Got stuck going home with guests New Year’s Eve,

In tennies they freed us with hovels and heaves,

Drove back to town, a motel for abode.

That’s everyday crap on our gumbo road.

Two days of sixty, and then it’s all muck,

Marooned ten days; we can say that sure sucks,

Two old for much sex, our impatience showed

There weren’t lots of laughs ‘long our gumbo road.

Could we starve out there in the melt or the rain?

Though a friend said he’d drop chow from his plane,

Come Costco, come Wal-Mart, sell us a load

To hoard out there on that damned gumbo road.

Not that our thrills are from moisture alone;

When Jane rolled the truck, ‘twas dry as a bone.

Off in loose rocks, how the sage brush got mowed!

A total loss prank by our gumbo road.

Three folks on stretchers, that’s quite a good haul,

And, then, for good measure, in walked the Law.

Up to her gurney with tickets he strode,

For imprudent driving, which meant Gumbo Road.

Now gumbo’s more soft that dung of all sorts,

But once it dries out, it’s harder than quartz,

To clean the garage, I picked and I hoed

To blast off deposits from our gumbo road.

The washboard segments help coffee’s spilling,

And rattle right out any loose fillings,

Yes, shake off some weight in desiccate mode;

There’s never dull rides down our gumbo road.

Roadway permitting we plow out to Church

With a gush, a squish, a buck or a lurch.

Wife says of my shoes, “You look like a toad,”

(It’s just a bonus from our gumbo road.)

At a motel one night—not much, then, I think,

The girl at the desk gave a laugh and a wink;

“In ‘color of car’ you wrote ‘mud’ for a code.”

I said, “One can’t tell, ‘cause of our gumbo road.”

Keeping cars clean is a Houdini trick;

Sometimes the pick-up’s got mud a foot thick.

Beware tailgaters, lest you get blowed

By portable chunks of our gumbo road.

A knock late one night disrupted our ease.

A snow-covered trucker barely could wheeze,

“I’m ready to drop; my rig and my load,

Are ditched miles down on your damned gumbo road.”

If they love grass so much, these herds of kine,

Why do they block when I slalom through slime?

The cows and calves sprint, but one needs a goad,

For two tons of bull in our gumbo road.

Cattle don’t vanish when temperatures drop;

Fast food consumers still need a new crop.

Steer wisely, greenhorn, else tires might exlode

From hard-frozen poop on our gumbo road.

Home from the airport, that night weren’t we tired?

But blizzard had come; bang! We were mired.

For once the cell worked, we fin’ly got towed;

Score one more point for that sly, gumbo road.

We needed a room, one wet night it looked,

But Jehovah’s Witnesses had ‘em all booked,

With bad words a-plenty we drove back and dozed

A few winks in the truck on our gumbo road.

We’ve got a group for complaint submission,

Polite folks say, “The County Commission,”

But answers they gave, our faith did erode,

They said get used to that BLANK gumbo road.

But we whined and pled and called, and we wrote,

So after the wreck they took partial note

And gave a share of the gravel they stored

To cover one stretch of punk gumbo road.

That’s where it is; should we move back to town?

We’ve lived in ten states and the world around,

But first seeing our place, we know we just glowed,

No pun—but we’re stuck on that gross gumbo road.

Editor’s note—This poem was printed in Trader’s Dispatch and is reprinted here with the author’s permission. Larry Stanfel has a Ph.D from Northwestern University, belonged to several faculties, including the University of Florida and Colorado State and was frequently a consultant to the Department of Defense. He and his wife, Jane, live northeast of Roundup.

            Jane is an accomplished artist specializing in historical Montana subjects. She has exhibited at the Musselshell Valley Historical Museum and currently has a showing at the Hochaday Museum of Art in Kalispell.

THANK YOU

            Once again we wish to thank everyone who makes it possible to run our museum. We so appreciate the guides who take people through the facility and actually give them a living history lesson! We thank Shirley Brillhart and Peggy Peterson of the RSVP for scheduling the volunteers who do this important work.

This year we lost a faithful guide, Peggy Jones, who passed away unexpectedly.

Special thanks to those who remember us with memorials and donations and to those who gave to the museum through the MUD Drive.

            Thank you, thank you…

Do you remember…?

…When the Bungalow Café was the favorite hangout of the high school crowd?

…When Vicar’s Drug was a full service drug store with a soda fountain? (A great  

   place for an ice cream soda or a sundae.)

…When Roundup had two movie theaters?

…Newsreels before the movies?

…Telephones on party lines?

…45 RPM records?

…Jitterbug dancing and “wringing the dishrag”?

…Washing machines with wringers?

…Wearing poodle skirts, saddle shoes (they were hard to polish), and penny

   loafers?

…Black Jack chewing gum?

…Candy cigarettes?

…Milk delivered to the house in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers?

…Packard and Studebaker cars?

…Headlight dimmer switches on the floor?

…Using hand signals for cars without turn signals?

…Drive-in movies? (Roundup had one near the Sealey sawmill)

…Ice boxes that took real chunks of ice?

…Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards?