History Lesson

I have been reading others' blogs and noted that some use their blogs to document personal history.  I liked that idea so I am going to do a bit of that today.  I thought I'd start with 1978, when we married.

Today, I am showing a picture of our very first home.  Mike and I married at age 20 in Montana.  Not long after we were engaged we found out that Mike's Dad had cancer.  He became very ill and by the time we married we'd modified our plans and decided to live in Turner, MT so that Mike could help his Dad with the farm. 

The interesting thing about this house is that my parents had been living in it for much of the previous year.  I didn't grow up there but of course stayed there with them when I came home for college breaks that year.  They moved out just a week or two before we got married and moved in. 

We paid $40 a month to rent this mansion.  No, that wasn't a typical rental price even then, but this was a town of less than 100 people only 12 miles from the Canadian

Border.  I don't think there were many people looking for a place to rent there!

The upstairs had no heat but we only lived there for the summer so that wasn't a big deal.  Mike went out to the farm each day so I was home alone to do the homemaker thing.  Wow!  Was I ever a great housekeeper!  I washed the floors every single day.  I scrubbed walls, gardened the beautiful garden my Mom had planted before she moved out, and did a LOT of cooking.  Mike finally had to clue me in that I did not have to cook such big meals for him.  I had thought farmers needed to eat a lot I guess.  I'm sure his Mom was feeding him well at lunchtime on the farm also.  Well, he did not go hungry that Summer!

While living there I took in 2 wild kittens from the farm.  They were mostly white but each had a tiny spot on them.  I called them Spot and Dot.  That seems pretty lame now.  I enjoyed them, but we were just foster parents as they were to eventually go live with Mike's cousin and his wife.  They kept me entertained that summer.

This was the view from the front of that house.

We only lived there for a few months and then we moved to Havre, MT to get jobs for the Winter.  We'd been gone from this house about a month when we discovered Mike's wedding ring was missing (obviously he didn't wear it much).  The last place we remembered seeing in was on the dresser when we were living at this little house.  So, we went back and got permission to go inside.  No one was living there.  Sure enough, on the floor near where our dresser had been, hidden behind the floor length curtains, we found his ring!  Mike really doesn't care to wear jewelry and to this day does not wear that ring, but I am still glad we found it.

So, that is where our married life began.  In my memory it was a sweet and simple time of getting used to life together.  We laughed a lot but this is also where we lived when grief first flooded in.  Mike's Dad died just a month after our wedding, leaving an unfillable hole.  I didn't know anything about helping Mike through that, but at least we were together.

So, that was a brief trip back to 1978.  We'll save more history for another time.