Sid Workman Interview 
With David R. James
1/2001
Eureka, MT


David: Where were you born?

Sid: I was born up Pinkham Creek in a neighbor's house that used to be the Thatcher homestead was about 8 miles up Pinkham. My father was Charles W. Workman from West Virginia and my mother was Alta A. Kinney from Michigan. My father came out in 1902 and my mom came out in 1908 or 1910. She stopped at Whitefish, MT on her way.

D: How much do you remember from you childhood?

S: I went to the Pinkham school house for 7 years and one year in Eureka going to the 7th grade and started Eureka high school in 1934 and in March of 1935 our school burned down. I graduated when I was 21 and there were three others in my class that were over 21 years old. I have taken a year off here and there to work. I graduated in 1940. 

D: Do you remember anything about the Depression in Eureka?

S: The wages were very low of course, until Roosevelt started the New Deal, the Civilian Conservation Corps took anybody in high school on up to get the money flowing again. That got money started flowing here in Lincoln County. They were great!

D: Do you know anyone who participated in the CCC?

S: Yes, I had two brothers. I was too young at the time. There were camps all over the U.S. There was a camp in Rexford, Troy, Libby, there may have been anywhere around 200 in a camp. The army furnished all the clothes, and they had captains and colonels that led them. They would do projects that benefited the community like building the community hall. The WPA was another program. Alice's dad worked on the community hall, he was an expert with a two bladed axe. Someplace we have a picture of him putting in the rafters of the place. Those rafters were all poles, they had him up on those poles. That's the furniture building now. That community hall is built on the first site of the first Eureka school.

D: What type of work did you do after you graduated?

ERROR MSGS: I worked for the Forest Service, they sent me down to Libby and worked there seasonally. And then when 1941 came along everyone signed up for the draft for the service. I volunteered, I went into the service two weeks before I was drafted. I enlisted into the Army Air Force.

D: Would you like to tell about your experience in the service?

S: Its kind of a long one. I signed up to be a mechanic and went to Wichita Falls from here. And we got there we went to school for three days at Shepherd's Field and it was just being built and organized and they didn't have any MP squadrons so 300 of us were taken out of the school and made into Mps so that didn't turn out very good. So I thought the first chance I get I'm going to get out of here. As time went on I had to serve in the MPs until the following June they came up with this glider pilot program. So I passed all the physicals for that and shipped out to Columbus, Ohio and they had a glider pilot program going there, from there up to Wisconsin and kept on training for the glider pilot program and I washed out on the landings and after a while I was happy because a glider pilot only made one trip. They would always land behind enemy lines. 
From there I was shipped down to Illinois into a motor pool until the following June and they said we're sending replacements overseas and that was in '43. Alice and I was married in February of 1943 so we lived there at that time. I was sent from there to Syracuse, NY and I was there until they shipped us out to overseas. And from there to New Jersey and then to England. The only combat I saw was air combat.
I was in an air depot north of Liverpool about 40 miles and stayed there for two years working in the transportation department. Finally on Christmas eve night of 1943, we were advised that these airmen were going to drop gas on us and everybody that could had to get into these underground shelters and wear a gas mask for 12 hours. From 5 at night right on into the morning. And the Germans never came with the gas. That was in the Battle of Britain. I stayed there until the war was over and then they took our department and shipped them to Paris and started hauling material in trucks to Manheim, Germany making warehouses to rebuild Germany already that was during 1945. I worked for this trucking outfit, we trucked materials from Paris where we kept the materials under the Eiffel Tower to Manheim, Germany 365 miles one way. I did that until October when I had enough points I could go home. I came back home in Eureka then and Alice came back from Portland, Oregon in a shipyard where she worked as a secretary. And we've been here in the Tobacco Valley ever since really. About Christmas of 1945. I had been gone for about 2 1/2 years.

D: When you came back from the war what did you do?

S: The first thing I did was I went to work for the J. Neils Lumber Company in Libby and Warland. I worked in Warland at this big camp for about 4 or 5 months. Then I just started logging, sawing logs and driving all kinds of machinery. I did that way up into the 60s and then I went back to the Forest Service. I finished out 16 years there, and with my service time I had 20 years in and I could retire.

D: Is there any experiences or stories you'd like to share?

S: Way back when I was about 3 years old my mother ran the school bus which was a team of horses and a sleigh in the winter and wagon in the fall/spring. I would get on there and ride the 6 miles to school. She would visit around the neighborhood until about 4 PM and then we'd go back home again. I was only 3 at the time. I can remember the rides on the wagon. Plus I can remember she would drive her horse and buggy into the city coming down the hill in to town and I would ride in a little box in the back where I could curl up and look out and I remember coming down the hill into town around Pinkham Avenue and having to put my hands over my ears because there was so much noise from the big steam engines that were running there where the mill was where Gwynn's Lumber is now. My father was always logging and he used horses and finally he went to work for the Forest Service and he was a packer and he did a lot of horse breaking, working with saddle horses, etc.

D: What kind of a social life did you have then?

S: The folks would go to the neighbors and the neighbors would come to our place maybe once a week or month or so and sometimes they'd roll up the rugs and have a dance and all the neighbors around that wanted to come would come. 10 miles some of them. There was enough home musicians, mostly violins, banjos, and once in a while an organ. I had a grandmother that liked to play the pump organ.

D: Do you remember what the living conditions were like?

S: In 1924 work here diminished, we moved the family over to Leavenworth, Washington and my dad worked in the woods there and I had a sister that was born there. Before that there were just two older brothers and me in the family and we came back to Eureka then and we moved into the homestead and we had to build more rooms, bedroom and a kitchen. We always had plenty to eat. I can't ever remember going hungry. Dad would always keep a few hogs to butcher in the fall, maybe a calf, and venison. In those days there weren't any elk or moose in the country. They just weren't here. We always had a garden and it seemed that the huckleberry patches never would run out. Mom would say that if we could get some huckleberries and some venison we could make it through the winter. We had a big family 9 in all, 7 boys and 2 girls. 

D: Do you remember how your mom prepared the meals?

S: She used a wood cook stove. We didn't have running water, we had to carry all our water with outside plumbing. Wash day she had these hand washers all the kids would have to take turns turning this old washing machine, about 20 minutes each direction. And she had this scrub board, every thing hung on the line. Another thing that was hung on the line was the cottage cheese. You know how they make cottage cheese? Put clapboard milk in a bag and hang it on the line and take a broom stick and whack it a few times and work it into cottage cheese.
One time we had a set of brown cub bears we caught. We had deer, a couple different fawns that we'd feed. My brother was hunting he was standing up against a tree about 18 inches through and he spotted a big bear and she kept coming closer to him, and he watched her and she began to rush him, but what he didn't know is that the there were her cubs in this tree he was leaning against. So she come flying over there, he shot at her one time and he was jumping all over, pretty nervous. She finally got up right close to him and stood up right next to him and he shot her right there in the chest and that was the end of the mother bear. The cubs over his head began squawking, crying like a baby calf. So he said we'd better do something about this so. He had a jacket on and he hung it on the tree and the cubs won't come on down past it because of the scent. That 'd give him time to go home and get some help.
He come down and got my dad, me and some of the smaller children went up there. And we had one old gentle horse we put a pack saddle on him with a box on each side so we could put a bear in each box. So he was pretty good with an axe and he chopped the tree down and my dad said when the tree starts falling you and I will grab each of the bear by the neck. I grabbed one of the cubs by the nap of the neck and the other one fell down with the tree and got knocked out. While the bear was out we tied his feet up and we put each cub in a box head first with his feet sticking up and we took them home that way.
On the way home one of the cubs squirmed around and stuck his head out of the box and bit one of the ears of the horse. I was supposed to poke a stick in there to keep them down, but I wasn't paying attention. Anyway, we finally got them home and we only kept them for about a year. We called them Amos and Andy. The one that got knocked out never got friendly, but the other one, Amos he would crawl up on your lap. They got away once after about a week, but when we went out looking for them they were up in this tree and when we brought a bucket of milk they came right down. We kept them around for about a year and a half and everyone came around to look at them. Finally, we tried to put them in a zoo, but nobody wanted them so we butchered them. I was about 12 years old during this time.

D: Did you hunt year around?

S: No, we kept to the seasons. Before when my dad first came he could get tags for 6 deer. In those days once you got 12 years old you could get a license so we had plenty of licenses around. Sometimes we would have 10 or 12 deer before the end of the season. We didn't have any freezer and mom did a lot of canning. If you got one froze then they would keep for several months. She would always say she need 100 quarts for our family. We all had to take a turn at helping at the butchering and canning.

D: Do you remember anything about Prohibition?

accommodation in SopotS: Yeah, Prohibition was tough on everybody. There was homemade moonshine scattered all over in this country to supplement your income. The railroaders, the ones the worked on the trains they would meet the moon shiners at the depot. And the trains were coming fast and furious in those days, there were about 4 or 5 passenger trains coming through town each day in those days. You could get on a train here to Libby and come back in the same day. Everybody would get involved in it in some way or another, it really wasn't a business. Just small operators, they might make 5 or 10 gallons of whiskey, they all had customers to buy it. Railroaders were great customers cause they had a pretty good income. Some people would take the train up into Canada and come back with a pack sack full and come back into Eureka. 

D: Is there anything that you'd like to talk about?

S: Just some of the changes. When I was born the Quirk Ranch were the big cattle people in these parts and their cousin at the '69 Ranch. The ran 700 or 800 head of Herefords and there were lots of cattle back in those days. The cattle industry in general isn't near what it used to be. The sawmill industry was much bigger when I was a kid. When mills started cutting 2 X 4s there must have been 50 mills scattered around Lincoln County. There were several stud mills, one in Rexford, two in Eureka, one in Fortine. When the railroads were on there were plenty of ties being sawed and a lot of them were cut by axes, hand cut ties. That was big income around here for a number of people, especially during the Depression. When we had to lose the railroad that was a real letdown. Because of the dam and the tunnel. All the mail went by trains in those days. They wore guns to protect the mail in case of robbery. When the mail went to the air that made a big difference. When the diesel engines replaced the steam engines that was a big deal around here. 
The logging process changed a lot. In the mid 40s the big machines replaced the horse logging. Lots of changes in the loading of the logs with the horses. Everything was crosscut. Two men would use a 5 1/2 or 6 foot saw together as a team. There was always one guy that was designated to take the saw once the tree started falling so they wouldn't fight over the saw. Then the chainsaws came in. With the old chainsaws they made so much racket that you couldn't hear the tree falling so you had to pay attention for the tree cracking. The timber is being harvested so much faster now because it is so mechanized it could be why the federal government isn't putting up the timber for sale as fast they used to. 
School burned down and the building of the gym at the school were big changes. When the railroads were coming through there were three hotels in downtown Eureka. One called the Montana Hotel which burned down in the winter of 1947-48 and it was really cold that night, about 20 below. They had an oil furnace in it and this oil furnace blew up about 12 or 1 o'clock at night. My mother worked there. There was a man nameDugas, a great big heavy set fella about 300 lbs.; he owned this horse and beautiful carriage and he would pick people up who wanted to go downtown people died in that fire, three were basketball players with the Browningvoyage Glasgow basketball team. The whole team was staying there, but only three died. They stayed the night after the game because it was so cold. One old guy was working on the railroad car and he said it was a little too cold for him and he was going to stay just this one night in the Hotel. When the fire started I knew the fire chief real well. He was George Davis and I had just started working in the woods and I had a brand new axe. When I saw the fire I ran over to see how I could help. I lived over behind where the Gambles store went it. The old fire chief saw me coming, and he had a restaurant just north of where the Mountain Gift Shop was (and where Lucky Lil's is today and he had a bunch of cherry trees growing between the Hotel and the restaurant. He saw me coming with my new ax and they were trying to protect his restaurant and he said, "Come on Sid and chop down those cherry trees!" I chopped three down as quick as I could and then he decided that his business was ok. We've always had a dry goods store in Eureka. Everything was down on the flat on main street, there were three or four bars, and there was a bar in the Hotel; of course, they didn't do much business after prohibition.
We had one guy at the time who was the town cop and water commissioner and everything was in his hands. His name was Enos Campbell and he had a big blue roam horse and he had a night stick on his saddle. Never carried a gun, and he'd take care of the whole town. In several of the stores downtown he would have pistols hid in there so when he needed a gun he would go into this store or that one, but he never carried one.

D: Do you remember what the drive from Kalispell to Eureka was like?

S: Until 1929 the road came right down into the town on the old highway (Pinkham Road). We always called that the South Eureka Hill. That was the old highway right on up and on to Whitefish. During the year 1929 they cleared land, right of way, on both sides of Dickey Lake. My dad would take the ride on a fast horse to Kalispell in a day. And he would follow the Stillwater River all the way, but that was before they had any railroads through there. I've heard some people say that they could make it from Kalispell to Eureka in 7 or 8 hours in a model T doing about 25 miles an hour and figure on getting stuck during the winter and spring when the ground was soft. I knew a gal that made the trip in 4 or 5 days because they got stuck so often. That was Mrs. Roy Rhodes. Orville Carpenter's wife was with her on that trip.
On a side note, I've known Addie (Irwin) since 1929. Her husband was a janitor in town. (Addie Irwin is now sitting with us.)

D: What would you consider to be the best day of your life, and worst day?

S: When I heard the war of over in Europe in 1945. That was a happy day. It was about 2:30 in the morning when I found out about it. At that time I was in England and then I went on to France after that. I was in Doolittle's outfit at that time. He was the head of the 8th Air Force and he had just taken over this air base that I was on. That was the happiest day, I'll put it that way.

D: How about the strangest person?

ERROR MSGS: I knew a guy by the name of Bill Kelly, he owned a piece of land out here by Glen Lake and I was living in Eureka at the time and I had a model A truck. He wanted to move into town and he hired me to haul all his stuff and he says I'm going to have lunch for us. "You don't have to bring anything for lunch", he says. When lunch time came he had a roll of summer sausage (pretty small) and a box of crackers. And he reached down into the pocket of his trousers and brought out this shiny knife. He said I carry this knife all the way from West Virginia and I'm looking for a guy and when I find him this knife is going to cut his throat. And that is the same place that Phyllis Moen lives in now. That was his home that he moved into. That was probably the weirdest person.
I got an answer for the worst day. My dad had a old pack string of government mules. First part of July and he was hauling from the old ranger station up in Pinkham. And he was going to lead this string into Rexford, about 18 miles. It was 5 in morning and he says, "Why don't you go down and take your white horse go up and run those mules into the coral here while I'm getting breakfast. When they see you coming they start running and they run down off this hill. It had rained that night on the dusty trail and it made just a gooey mess. My saddle horse started to trot on behind the mules and all of a sudden his feet went out from under him and down he went. I fell down off the left side and still had the left hand reign in my hand. My foot got caught in the stirrup and there was no way I could get out. I managed to get him up slowly, but if he would have panicked that would have been the end of me. I figured that was the worst day of my life cause I thought I was a goner!

D: How about an embarrassing moment?

S: By golly, I think I'd have to think on that one I guess.

D: Any major decision you make that influenced your life?

S: One was when I got washed out of the glider pilot school. After I found out what happened to them, I was tickled to death!

D: Any catastrophic events you can remember that occurred in this area, besides the burning of the mill and school?
S: There was a terrible flu epidemic in 1918 that came through here.

D: Would you like to share any of your philosophy or give any advice to future generations?

ERROR MSGS: Well, just be patient and kind. Patience is the best thing I can think of that everybody should have.