Childhood Adventure Story (4-11-21)

        Lewis and Clark or Flynn and Jones

 

When I was a girl growing up in the “wilds” of Montana, I wanted to be just like the great explorers Lewis and Clark.  I mean, what self respecting Montana kid doesn’t want this---emiright!

I had the best friend on the planet, we did nearly everything together, and most of the time we were inseparable!   We lived in the ideal place for adventure and took every opportunity to trapse all over the  countryside, and summer time was the best!  Long days of no worries other than getting home before dinner!

Sure, there was some mischief and a bit of mayhem sprinkled with just the right amount of trouble making to be had.  That hillside was our secret garden, our shire, our forbidden forest, if you will!

One day as we were pretending to be great adventurers, we travelled the dangerous road from the Jones’s house to the water tower.  From there we could see all the way to the bottom of the hill and beyond, and when we turned to face up the mountain we had an idea as grand as our adventurous spirits!  There before us was uncharted territory!  This was our great chance.  We were convinced that beyond the sledding hill lay a mountain side of untouched land, just waiting for someone to claim it and make a name for themselves.  Who better than Alicia and Ryanne or Jones and Flynn!  

We had our knapsacks packed with water and some snacky type things, and of course notebooks and pencils to record our findings then away we went.  We ran down the now covered in wildflower  sledding hill and found a plethora of game trails to choose from that lead higher and higher.

We sketched the local flora and listened hard to hear any evidence of some great wild beast.  As we marched up the mountain when from not too far away we heard something rustling in the bushes.  Our bravery started to wane as images of bears and wolves and other scary beasts filled our heads.  We grabbed hold of each other and stood there on our trembling knees.  Then out of the bushes ran a wild rabbit!  

We dropped our arms to our sides and went into fits of giggling.  I  mean, who is afraid of a bitty bitty bunny rabbit!  Finally we stopped shuddering with laughter and once again continued on our journey into the unknown.  

The wind, that had once been a nice breeze, began to blow in earnest, and the once sunny sky was beginning to cloud over.  Alicia and I paid them little heed, after all, Lewis and Clark surely would have pressed on.

With each step the path got steeper and the forest became dense.  I was starting to be apprehensive, but there was no way I was going to be the first one to call it quits!  Explorers couldn’t be chickens after all!  So on we went...I think Alicia may have felt the same...we were both a bit stubborn, ya know!

At one point there was a dense thicket of brush and we again heard the scrabbly sounds of something, this time less afraid, believing that surely it was another bunny, only to have a large buck jump out and sprint across our path.  A half hour later we broke through the trees into a clearing.  It was filled with cows.  Our hopes of being the first humans to step foot on this land were crushed.  These cows were not wild, they were all branded and tagged.

There was only one thing to do, we had to go higher.  We skirted along the edge of the valley, around the herd of cows, no need to cause a stampede, ya know.  

On the far side of the cows we found a trail that looked promising and cautiously wearily journeyed onward.  We had been blazing these trails for hours now and the clouds persisted, the wind continued and then, to top it all off,  the big fat raindrops of a summer rain storm began to fall.  

We found a big tree to shelter under, and decided it was time to eat our yet untouched snacks. As we sat eating there was  the rumble of not so distant thunder that shook the ground.  We sat under the tree and saw the flashes of lightning overhead.  All of the sudden this adventure was becoming a bit too real.  We needed to decide, do we keep going onward and upward, or did this fearsome duo call it quits.

We looked up and down the trail waffling back and forth, when we again heard noise up ahead in the underbrush.  Was it another bunny or buck?  We cast our eyes about to see if we could determine the source of the ruckus that, added to the storm, was making us much less fearsome and a bit more fear filled.  There, up ahead, no more than 30 feet we saw something large cutting across the trail.  It was tan in colour, had four legs and stalked forward like a predator on the hunt.

That was it!  I was done, right there not more than 30 feet ahead was a mountain lion, cougar, puma whatever name you want to call it!  I jumped to my feet and started to scream down the mountain path, and by scream, I mean literally scream as I raced back blundering my way through the trees.

I glanced back to see that my fearless companion was right on my heels, ashen white and yelling just as loud.  We didn’t bother worrying about the cows in the clearing.  We just busted through and right on past as we sped toward safety.

Finally the trees thinned,  we could see the water tower and Saunders house. We collapsed on the ground, holding the stitches in our sides.  Out of breath, eyes wide with fear, we sat in shock for a long time.  

We had just been in throwing distance of what was most assuredly not a bunny, not a deer, not a cow, but a real life mountain lion!  We had narrowly escaped this exploration with our lives.  

The rain had stopped and the clouds passed as we sat. The sun came out and our resolve and excitement somewhat returned !  This had to be recorded!   We pulled out our trusty notebooks and pencils and began to write!

Where those records are now, who is to say--all I know for sure is, I no longer wanted to be Lewis or Clark.

That is the end….of this adventure anyway!

Ryanne Leavitt

Childhood Adventure

4-2-21

Carrie Keiser 

I’m not sure what year it was, but we (Ryanne and I) had Char and Holly Foust over for a week I think it was.  I remember that we spent a lot of time in the camper playing and listening to a lot of Chicago’s “You’re the Inspiration”.  I think Clancy was hanging out with us too. One afternoon we decided that we wanted to go for a walk, like to Frenchtown. Its several miles(7 miles) but we were all up for an adventure especially since Holly had “acquired” some money (50 bucks!). By acquired I mean that she lifted it from her brother Wayne’s,  pocket. 

We headed up the long driveway and on down the dirt road to the Frontage Road. We walked, played and ran our way all the way into Frenchtown.  When we arrived, Holly treated all of us to treats and candy for the walk back home.  At some point on our walk home we got tired of this adventure and someone we knew was driving by in a pickup. They stopped and gave a ride in the back to Fred’s Lane.  We finished our grand adventure.

My Un-adventure Adventure

By: Myrna Flynn

This is a pretty lame adventure. It was 1951 or 1952, but it was an adventure for me. We took We book a family (plus my friend, Margaret Butte), road trip to see my brother, Jim who was in the Air Force and stationed in Sacramento, California. (It is the only family trip that I can remember for sure. Although, I think we might have taken one to Yellowstone a few years later.)

We went highway 101 along the coast the way down.The first time I had ever seen the ocean. Had fun wading in the surf and finding seashells. I found a starfish. I decided it was a good idea to keep it./ (Can you imagine what a dying starfish trapped in a hot car smells like?) I had taken off my new moccasins on the bank and wore flip-flops down to the beach. After we had driven a few miles, I realized I had forgotten to switch the flip-flops for my moccasins. We went back but they were gone.

We continued on, stopping at the redwood forest. The trees were really big! Finally, we arrived at the air base. Back in those days, with a pass you were allowed to enter. I do not remember how long we stayed in Sacramento, but we did go to see the sequoia tree that you can drive through. I do not recall that we did go through it. I thought the redwoods were big, but these were bigger. There was a stump of one that was the size of a small dance floor, about 12 feet in diameter. We also went to Yosemite National Park and wandered around.

Then it was time to head back home. We went on inside highway back, stopping in Klamath Falls, to visit family there. Margaret and I were alone at my cousins. Why we were alone there I can not remember. Three of my cousin's friends burst into the house and scared us half to death. The rest of the trip was uneventful, except for stopping at Oregon's Multnomah Falls.

And That is the end of my un-adventure adventure. (Please realize that the farthest I had even been from Springdale was to Spokane with Uncle Roy and Grandpa in a truck with a load of lumber to sell. Uncle Roy always brought me a hot dog and almost every time I took a bite, the hot dog would go springing out the end onto the ground.)

Story Slinger Project

Childhood Adventure

Daren Flynn

3/29/2021

When I think of childhood adventures, I see in y mind's eye, a used full size Schwinn bicycle. Then memories begin to take me back to the time when riding that bike provided me with adventures aplenty.

I don't know for sure how old I was when I first laid eyes on that prized two-wheeler, but I remember where I was. I think I was almost seven when I discovered the bike up in the rafters of the woodshed behind our house in Cheney, Washington. It was supposed to be a surprise birthday present, But I found it ahead of the big day. 

A full size Schwinn bicycle and a small, seven year old boy are not a good match, size-wise. I was barely able to reach the peddles straddling the frame with the seat rubbing my back. 

Having never ridden a bike before, my first cycling adventure did not end well. I managed to mount the two-wheeler, by myself as I recall, sitting on the frame and got my feet on the peddles. This was accomplished at the upper end ozone incline on the sidewalk next to our house. Off I went and somehow the bike remained upright, although wobbly and on a zigzag course which ended abruptly by coming in contact with a large tree. Th resulting collision damaged neither the Schwinn or it's novice rider.

After mastering the skills necessary for keeping the bicycle upright and navigating so as to avoid contact with trees and other stationary objects, I enjoyed many hours of adventures riding my sturdy and trouble free Schwinn bike.

My best freind and I often rode together as we explored the city and learned riding skills and tricks. Tricks like standing on the seat, riding with no hands and even riding backwards while sitting on the handlebars. Once when his bike was broken, he took his sister's bike without her permission. We were riding around town and having a good time. We began riding in circles and goofing off. His circles and mine were separate but did come together... in a head-on collision. My Schwinn sustained no damage, but sister's two-wheeler was not so lucky. The bent front wheel rendered the borrowed bike unrideable. After a long walk home, he had so explaining and some apologizing to do.

There was a day when I decided to skip school. I rode my faithful bicycle around town all day hoping no one would report me, but alas, I was caught and reprimanded so severely that that adventure was never repeated.

The school that my brothers and I attended was located near the college and was uphill from the business district as well as our home. Sometimes after school I would give my brothers a ride home on my bike and at times another boy as well. That would require one to sit on the handlebars, one on the frame in front of me and third on the back fender. This was a good way for four boys to get home from school and it was kind of an adventure, but the last time I did it, it was a genuine memorable adventure. We were going down hill and our speed was cruising. It was time to slow down to make a right turn at a busy cross street that would point us toward home. I peddled back to apply the brakes. Nothing! No brakes! What should I do? There was nothing I could do but make the turn by cutting across a yard and then on to the sidewalk heading toward home. The years was a good two and a half or three feet above the elevation of the sidewalk with a concrete retaining wall. We flew off that wall, landed hard on the sidewalk, stayed upright and all three of my passengers and I rode it out and arrived home safely.

For at least a year after that unforgettable adventure, I rode my Schwinn without the benefit of brakes, rubbing the heal of my shoe against the wheel to slow down.

My adventure producing, second hand Schwinn Bicycle  outlived my childhood. It was the only bike I had until well into adulthood.

By: Aaron Leavitt

Adventure was in the air as a child, drama and challenge at every turn. Winter was certainly no exception, our driveway would drift over and we’d make snow caves, or sled down the hill, or explore the old machinery still here and there. So many days full of stories. One winter in particular there was a stack of straw bales down at the corner of the field our house was on. That put it somewhere between a quarter and a half mile from home. It was a good one too, one ton bales, the big ones, 3-4 levels high, and just a little loosely packed. If you explored a bit and didn’t mind wiggling through funny spaces (and getting straw everywhere) you could climb nearly to the top, through the inside. My two brothers and I (the three oldest siblings) had been exploring there a few times and had a blast, even though we’d come home straw covered and a bit itchy (I’m sure Mom loved that). 

On this particular day, Bethany had come along too, she was probably about 4 at the time. We’d been climbing and exploring for a bit that afternoon, enjoying the day, and the tiny bit of snow on the ground. We’d clambered up a level or two already looking around, and then it happened, Bethany wandered too close to one of the gaps that she hadn’t seen, and slipped in. By the time we’d grabbed her, her head was below foot level, and we just had hold of her hands. It was enough to stop her sliding further, but we were stuck. She was wedged in pretty good, and we couldn’t get her back out despite several intense efforts. And letting her down didn’t look promising either, just black yawning darkness below. And we weren’t about to let a haystack eat our sister. After a brief, very earnest conference it was decided that the only course of action was to run for help, as the oldest and the fastest I was elected for the job. So, with my sobbing sister, and two valiant brothers left there I scrambled down and started the run.

I don’t remember a ton of the details, but I do remember how sure I was that everything rested on me. And just how long that run looked back to the house, uphill the whole way (not just hyperbole, it really was). So I ran, as hard as I could. Lungs burning, legs burning, from the inside of my little 9 year old brain, an all out heroic effort, a Marathon level effort, all the way back to the house and frantically through the front door.

Looking at it now, I can just imagine my Mom and Dad sitting in the kitchen as an extremely out of breath little boy burst through the door, and the effort it had to have taken to figure out what I was so upset about. Suffice it to say, my parents were mobilized, Bethany was rescued, and everyone came home safe to be cuddled up in warm blankets. All was well, at least until the next adventure. 

We’ve continued to tell that story so many times over the years, it always makes me smile at the sheer scale of the drama the world holds in the eyes of our kiddos. And that matters, because all these years later that story still resonates with us, and reminds us that stories and memories have power indeed.

A Childhood Adventure

About the time I was five years old, our family lived in a small house on the top of a small hill in Great Falls, just up river from where Lewis and Clark had to begin portaging around the terrific Great Falls of the Missouri in 1804.  

My sister Sharman, who is 13 months younger than me, was my constant playmate and evidently we got into all kinds of mischief together as we were discovering the world around us.  Falling down stairs and out of beds, discovering that keys would disappear down flushed toilets, whether mud pies from the alley tasted better than the mud pies made in the front yard, and who knows what else that I cannot remember—most of them painful, no doubt.

Sharman and I had some great little cowboy and cowgirl boots that we thought were the best things to stomp around in—and we learned from each other that they were sharp kickers.  We also had some straw cowboy hats that were made of woven straw and painted red with white characters like lassos and pinto ponies drawn on them.  A favorite toy was a little toy red wagon that would hold one kid or the equivalent of a kid’s weight in toys.  

With all of this outfitting, Sharman and I decided to go for a walk one day down the hill and across several streets to where we knew the grocery store was.  At the store we could get those long packages of string lollipops—lime and strawberry and root beer flavors.   And so off we went down the hill.  It was our first official running away from home.

This was at the time when my mother was expecting her fourth child and Mom had recruited, as a live-in helper, her younger sister who had graduated from high school the year before.  Evidently it was Aunt Doris’ turn to watch the three children. She was also being courted by a high school chum who was working in Great Falls and so both of them had easy access to telephones and those long conversations young people can have courtesy of Ma Bell.

How long Sharman and I were gone unescorted has been a matter of family debate, but it was long enough for short five- and four-year-old legs to get about five blocks away from the mighty Missouri River—all the way down the hill and starting the harder, slower trek pulling the wagon on the level.   

Aunt Doris was the one who found us and the search party, which had spread three directions, was called off.  We were picked up in the family car and taken home for our naps, joining the third child who was not yet fully bi-pedal and so we had left him behind.    

—Cary Holmquist, Frenchtown, Montana.

Once I lived at the dump.  Not in the dump—at the dump.  Not just any dump either—no, this was the dump that Crum built.  Over the river and beyond the bridge, down in the bottoms…in a mobile home—one with wheels.  

The next-door neighbors had daughters, Jodell and Jane—and goats, nanny goats with kids.  We extracted milk from them in the most tortuous manner—by milking them.  Oh, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t torture for them but for us….yep.  Lots of kicking and tipping and stepping and most likely cussing or at least shouting, maybe even crying.  And for what?  The nastiest tasting, “milk” with clumps of “cream” floating on top.  Even with chocolate added it still gagged me. We never knew where we would find the goats or what they would be doing.  I remember one day when Dad went out to go to work and the goats were on the car.

The neighbors had a dog too. Notice that I said “had”.  One day while walking across the railroad bridge to school, Janet and I found the dog in two pieces over one of the rails.  She was understandably upset.  But it didn’t stop us from walking to school that way.

Janet was in the 8th grade about 4 years older than I.  Barbie dolls were a big thing then and Janet was a resourceful, reuse-recycler back in the day before it was a real thing.  She collected several cardboard boxes to construct a house for our Barbies. She cut holes for doors and windows,  took plain white paper and using crayons of various colors created wall paper. She furnished the rooms with her homemade beds, couches and tables.  She made curtains—the whole works! The rooms nested inside each other for easy storage and transport  I was so impressed. We played for hours with those dolls and the boxes.

 

While we lived there, I attended the end of the 4th and beginning of the fifth 5th grades at Cold Springs elementary school.  While in the fourth grade, I got in trouble one time and had to stay in at recess or maybe it was lunch.  I wasn’t alone and I don’t remember what I did to deserve the detention but I surely blamed the teacher because I had a great idea that we should put tacks on the teacher’s chair.  No one else was in to that idea—I put the tacks on the chair and someone took them off.

But in the fifth grade—I was one of the privileged students in Mr. DeNeve’s class.  I don’t remember how I broke into that exclusive group—it could have been exemplary behavior or it could have been exemplary grades or maybe it was incentive.  But there I was part of the group to design, construct and occupy a space ship on the playground.  We met clandestinely while the other students slaved away at their homework for several days until the unveiling.  On that day, those of us who had labored diligently and secretly snuck out before the rest of the class and entered the ship.  The show was on! We made all sorts of alien noises and I think we even had flashing lights.  In the end, it was rather anticlimactic—I don’t think we fooled anyone.

Then there was the day that would go down in Flynn Family History becoming almost legendary.  It was the spring of 1970 and the Big Rain.  The rains came down and the floods came up, the rains came down and the floods came up—lapping at the back of the house.  That morning started like any other.  I got up, got dressed, went to school, came home for lunch—walking across the railroad bridge, of course.  Only when I got there.. the landscape had changed and it wasn’t just the river’s shore line.  My house was...gone. Not there.  I rubbed my eyes in disbelief.   

The neighbor lady, Yvonne McArthur, was on guard, watching through her window  for me.  She brought me into her kitchen and over lunch which was accompanied by—you guessed it—chocolate goat’s milk with lumps of nasty chunky goat cream swirling lazily on top—she related the story of the relocation of my house to Big Sky Trailer Court a 

few miles further down the road.  

I thought about not telling Sean about the new bus stop but then realized that he too was an abandoned child.  

(copied just as written.)

Leyla Tabor 

My Story

April, 11, 2021

I went to Aunty Vanessa and Pokey and Fraja's house in North Carolina. it was fun. I got to go to the Light house. I did not get to get close up. I went to the beach and I found a bunch of seashells. I flyed on there air playns, and I ate in the airplyn. I plad some videyo games and I saw a alagater, a lislred, and I plaed with Fraja.

Anders Holmquist writes about Declan Tabor 4-11-21

Declan said he got bit by a spider; looked, well, could barely even see it, so I didn't think serious. Let him sleep on the futon since he said it happened in bed. Hopefully whatever it was doesn't bite Leyla too. Didn't think it likely and therefore not worth waking anyone up.

A Childhood Adventure

Jemma Tabor

I got to hold my baby brother for 10 minutes then I gave him back to my mom.

Childhood Adventure

Vanessa Holmquist

Once we were living to what seemed to us, like in the middle of nowhere. My brother and I decided to go on an adventure. There was road that seemed to go off into the woods. Curiosity ate at us, so we decided to follow it. For what seemed like eternity, we finally saw where it ended. There was this little field. And in the field, there were a lot of junk. Cars, engines and who knows what else. Just has we were about to go in. A man came out of nowhere. Which scared us half to death. He asked us what we were doing. We replied with a we are just exploring. At the time I did not know the danger we could have been in. Lucky for us, he told us to go on home. (I don’t really remember what he said.) But he didn’t have to tell us twice. We ran straight home like we were about to get murdered. The End