Chapter 46…
Congressman Charles from Iowa looked down the table and cleared his throat.
“Mr. McConnell, I am particularly interested in educational matters. I would like to know how your community managed its educational issues during the War. Few records have survived from that period. I would appreciate any light you can shed on this.”
“Well Congressman, I was in Grade Six when we were relocated and I was homeschooled up to that point,” John leaned back and recalled. “When we first came to Eureka, we were enrolled at the local schools. There were far too many of us for mother to homeschool on her own. I loved going to school and since we had kids in virtually every grade every year for about two decades, as a group my mother was able to ensure that we were listened to and had our needs met. The kids ran the spectrum from being learning disabled to card carrying members of Mensa…”
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” said the Congressman. “But what is Mensa?”
John laughed. “Today people are judged by the contributions they make and the skills they have. And while that was also true in the century prior to the War, most people identified themselves by saying that they were better than anyone else at something. Everyone had to be better at something. Everyone had to be incredibly special and being normal was considered a copout. For those who were extremely bright, there was a group called Mensa. Their intelligence was measured by something called IQ and to be a member you had to be in the top 98%. Problem was that often they were really bright about only one or two things and dumb as stumps about the rest of life.
“In our family it was Drew Cody who was a Mensa member. When it came to maths, he was scary bright. He loved nothing more than to play with numbers. But he was barely literate. He hated to read and it was a huge chore for him. But he was part of the Three Amigos and those boys covered for each other. It took a while for my mother and the teachers to see what was happening and they quickly got him into a remedial reading program. It took a couple years but he was reading just fine in the end.
“For some reason Eureka had a lot of older teachers, so none of them were called up. Instead, the school became a fee paying school. Some parents paid in wood for the wood stoves in winter. Some parents paid in food for the teachers. Some paid in jars or clothing or animal feed. Everyone paid something and the teachers were told that it was their job to teach. A board of parents was elected… naturally with everything else on her plate, my mother was one of the elected. The high school became a trade school and most of the skilled trades spent time and took on apprentices. I say most, because in the way of the world not even the end of the one we knew would make the self-centered generous.
“People like Old Mr. Fuller who repaired farm implements. He refused to take on apprentices. He was as hide bound, nasty and cantankerous as one could possibly be. He was the reason my mother and two others made the long trip east and north seeking skilled trades. There were a bunch of trades we were short and we were proactive in looking to fill the gaps. Of course initially the gaps didn’t show but we were short some pretty specific ones. For example we didn’t have a saddle maker. There had been one. A Mr. Earl Twist in Kalispell, but he had been called up. The Army isn’t generally given to short-sightedness and they snapped him and his tools up before anyone could sneeze. Further down Highway 2 near Marion, MT, by Little Bitterroot Lake was the Montana Pack & Saddle company. The Army stripped them of saddlees too. So we were desperately in need of saddle and harness makers. The Amish stepped up and helped here. They brought in their saddlees and cordwainers and took on English apprentices.
“We were also short on horses for the community at large. As war and the lack of electricity took its toll, everyone needed horses. So a big trip was taken down to the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center in Lovell, WY. Now those folks were not happy to have people coming in to take the wild horses and we understood that, but in a choice between wild herds and human survival, man’s generosity to letting wild animals be has never been a strong point. We used some of our last gasoline to make that trip, so it lets you know the importance we placed on those horses. We brought back 30 horses.
“Now one of those quirks about the CoKL Amish is that they rarely broke their own horses. They usually bought racehorses that were deemed unfit or too old to race. So they usually came broke to traces and often to buggies. So the couple, the O’Sheas maybe, at JM Performance Horse in Eureka – that woman was gold when it came to handling those horses. She really had a magic touch. They did the breaking. But the gem was a guy named Doc Hammill. He could train teams of horses and mules. I signed up for his clinics. It was a privilege to learn from him. It took time but they took those wild mustangs and we were able to put them to work but really they were still wild, so eventually they became community breeding stock and were allowed to run wild again.
“There were so many things to learn just to allow us all to survive. For the first couple of years, most of those learning trade were girls. The young men continued to be conscripted as they turned 18 and that made it a challenge. As men came back maimed, they had to be trained too. We ended up with some fine cobblers and weavers with boys who had lost a leg. Initially the guys thought weaving was for sissies but when it was pointed out that most weavers in the UK in the 1800s were former soldiers, it took the sting out of the sitting.
Soon we had apprentice farriers too. There were six of those and they were all sent to the MSU Farrier School. It was an 11-week program followed by a one-year apprenticeship. Over time though, our biggest problem became getting the materials for the horseshoes, and not the skilled farrier to make them. We also had young people apprentice as vets. They too were worth their weight in gold.
“Life was never identical but it was good. We all had purpose and were busy. Everyone could read and write. Letter routes were continued. The cost of a letter was an egg. So the post office workers also traded eggs. Theft of mail became a hanging offence, so the mail carriers were rarely if ever touched.
“Now I’ve made it sound like my mother was the center of all this but she wasn’t. Or rather she was but she wasn’t alone. There were seven or eight churches in Eureka, plus the Amish bishops. So the Church Council played a big role in social event and spiritual issues. Then there was the existing political infra structure – Mayor McDoyle and his four person council, a JP, a Sheriff and two patrolmen, and of course the dogcatcher. Mom played a role in the Community Council as a part of the School Board. She loved it.
As I said it was a busy a fulfilling life. Or at least it was until the fourth year of the War. That was when some troubling diseases began to make a comeback. The first was influenza. I think they finally decided it was an H1N1 variant, regardless it hit hard. Fully a quarter of the community died and that changed everything again. Many fled the area taking it with them, which is likely how it reached us. Others shut their doors and died at home. It hit the children hard. We lost Samuel and Inga to the flu. Samuel had been a real joy – a bright energetic kid who took life as it came. Every day was like a bowl of ice cream to him – rich, sweet and fulfilling.
“It seemed to take everyone a long time to come back from that and as a community it took us time to find our feet. Into the recovery came our first problems. We had heard about the Bosozoku, the violent run tribes, from others who came through, but they had never come here before. They were simply destruction on motorcycles. Soulless… they torched houses, killed children in front of parents, slaughtered animals, ruined gardens… they were destroyers. They never stole. It was their code. They paid for what they took but they left the rest in ruins. They were often followed by the Kaminari Zoku – the thunder tribe. They stole. Mostly they stole women, enslaving and selling them down the line. They targeted the Amish communities because of the skills of their women. We sent the Sheriff and his posse out after them and they were able to recover some girls but not all. The other’s disappeared into the maelstrom of the War.
“Amos Yodder lost his three youngest daughters in one of the Kaminari Zoku raids. The youngest was recaptured but the oldest two were gone. I should say though that about forty years later a man came through the area looking for the Yodder family farm. He was directed out there and met the frail 98-year old Amos. We heard later that he had been Esther Yodder’s oldest son. She had been sold to a man down in Alabama. He had married her and she had raised-up nine children for him. This grandson had brought back his mother’s prayer cap as proof. He stayed for a bit and went home again. I don’t know if they stayed in touch.
“Between the War, the flu, the Bosozoku and their devil kin the Kaminari Zoku, we were a small remaining group. The population was probably only 1/3 of the pre-War population maybe even only a quarter. So if there are few records about education, I am not surprised. I am intrigued that there are any. It took about ten years for the systems to come back, until that time, most kept their children close and taught them at home.”
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Notes:
Earl Twist is a real-life saddle maker in Kalispell, MT. He can be reached at 406-752-4650 and is located at 55 Parklane Drive.
Montana Pack & Saddle of Marion, MT -
http://montanasaddle.com/
Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center of Lovell, WY -
http://www.pryormustangs.org/aboutus.shtml
JM Performance Horse of Eureka, MT -
http://jmreining.com/
Doc Hammill Horsemanship of Eureka, MT -
http://dochammill.com/
MSU Farrier School -
http://animalrange.montana.edu/horseshoe.htm
The Bosozoku and the Kaminari Zoku are Japanese motorcycle gangs. Their names translate as given. Membership in them is illegal.