This reprint of the Maxwell story caused Dr. LeVere Anderson, born and reared on a farm five miles southwest of Wetmore—now established in Miles City, Montana—to bring the matter of that Indian fight to the attention of the Miles City Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber was at that very time sponsoring a homecoming jubilee—and after an exchange of letters between Miles City and Wetmore, Andy Maxwell, then living in Santa Ana, California, was invited to be the Chamber’s honored guest—but he was unable to make the trip. Andy Maxwell died at Santa Ana in 1941, at the age of ninety-nine.
Our New Temporary Home
Earlier in this writing I mentioned the fact that our family had three years on the Hazeltine farm. My older brother, Charley, contracted “quick consumption.” There was a prevailing notion that the scent of new pine lumber and fresh country air would be helpful in effecting a cure. So my father made a contract with Charley Hazeltine for the erection of a new house under the cottonwoods on the hill near the old log-house which had been the home of father of the Hazeltine brothers—with a three-year lease on 40 acres of farm land.
The new house had plenty of exposed pine lumber and fresh air all right. It was a box-house made of barn-boards, unplastered, with sleeping quarters in the loft, comparable to the hay-mow in a barn, reached by a ladder from one corner of the ground-floor room. On occasions, snow sifted through the cracks in the loft, covering my bed completely. The lower room was more closely built, which was living room, kitchen, and sleeping quarters for my parents—and the babies. There was a standard sized bed, and a trundle bed—the latter shoved under the regular bed in the daytime, and pulled out to the middle of the room at night. It was a replica of many another home of that day, only the others could have added protection of plastered walls. Then too, it was Dr. Thomas Milam’s belief that Charley would show improvement in the new home with the coming of spring. But, come time for the swelling of the buds of those old cottonwoods in the spring of 1879, the “Grim Reaper” beat the carpenters to the finish. Charley had died before the new house was ready for occupancy. And that made long lonesome hours for me on the farm. Charley had an enviable record as an exemplary boy—and, try as I might, I have not been able to follow wholly in his foot-steps. But I am sure that my memory of him has helped to make me what I am.
Roses The Girls Didn’t Get
Reference has been made to my Rose Garden. I have grown them, you might say, as a hobby—and for the pleasure of giving the flowers to my friends. Bushels of them have gone in the past to the Cemetery on Memorial Day, and not a few to sick rooms, to churches, and to local society functions.
The fame of my Rose Garden has traveled far—to California and to Florida. Proof: The two little girls of Shady Mitchell, a Tennessean, who conducted a general store in Wetmore some years back and lived across the street west from the school grounds in the house now owned and occupied by Prof. Howard V. Bixby—in their school work at their new home in Orlando, Florida, wrote in collaboration a theme, beginning: “There was a man living in our town in Kansas who grew roses just to give them away to his friends—” This is the extent of the essay which has been relayed to me—but I’ve no doubt that Verda Bess and Marjorie Lou acknowledged having been the recipient of roses from my garden. I don’t think I ever permitted a little girl—nor a big one either, for that matter—who stopped by to admire my roses, to go away without a bouquet.
And particularly have I been pleased to supply the girl graduates of our splendid Wetmore High School at Commencement time. Last year—spring of 1947—the garden did not show promise of early bloom of quality flowers, and I got the girl graduates some beautiful long-stemmed “Better Times” red roses, ($7.85 per doz.), from Rock’s in Kansas City. I planned to make this an annual contribution, whether at home or away, as a sort of commemoration of the fine Rose Garden I once owned. The garden is now owned by Raymond and Marjorie McDaniel.
Before leaving in the fall for California, I told the girls I would send them roses by air mail—but, through an oversight of someone, I was not apprised of the date of the 1948 Commencement. And this was one time when the girls, through no fault of their own, (except possibly trusting another than a member of the class to do the notifying), missed getting some really high-class graduation roses—roses grow to perfection in California—which I think was more of a disappointment to me than perhaps to anyone else, unless it should have been my niece, Alice Bristow-Tavares, who was to have supplied two dozen extremely beautiful long-stemmed Etoile de Hollande red roses from her climbers. A Fresno florist had been engaged to pack them for mailing.