P a g e 3 G h o s t T o w n s a n d H i s t o r y o f M o n t a n a N e w s l e t t e r The Most Fantastic Times I Remember By Ted Clarke Ted Clarke was born in Eureka, MT but lived mostly along the west Kootenai. He went to the Rexford School, which was relocated when the Kootenai Dam went in. Eventually his family home was inundated by Lake Koocanusa. They relocated to the new Rexford town, and Ted’s dad, Ed, worked as a school bus driver in the winter and for the Forest Service in Rexford in the summer. Ed’s first lookout job was in 1955 at Webb Mountain Lookout, above Eureka. For eleven-year-old Ted, this was a new experience that has stayed strong in his memory. It was his first time with pack trains, hauling water from a spring his dad developed a quarter of a mile below the lookouts, sleeping on the lookout’s wood floor with younger brother Dave, and learning to help with lookout duties, like using the alidade, taking the weather, and watching for storms. Photo Courtesy NMLA Photo Courtesy NMLA Ted remembers his dad building a cold storage box out of flat rocks with screens on two sides to store butter, milk, cheese, and other foods because they had no refrigerator. The box was still there in the ‘80s when Ted visited the lookout. Mother Pearl, Ted, Dave, family dog with water packs, and homemade rock cooler. Ted and Dave spent much time at the lookout gathering huckleberries and morel mushrooms, making pets out of “chuckamucks”—golden ground squirrels, crows, learning to play pinochle, and playing with their dog. They also found many ways to keep themselves occupied. They always had slingshots in their pockets, and they fished Boulder Lake, near Boulder Mountain Lookout. They also developed their own “slide.” Said Ted, “One summer, I don’t know which one, maybe in 1955, Dave and I made a slide out of some of the old #9 telephone wire strung through the trees and now abandoned. ..The single line ran down the east face of the lookout and somehow got to Rexford for the communication link. My Dad hiked the line for a while doing some repair, but found a bull moose had gotten tangled in the line and died during the winter or spring. In any event that was the demise of the #9 link. We began using a short-wave two-way radio from then on. A remnant 100’ piece of #9 was salvaged and tied to a tree uphill and the other end to a tree downhill. Before attaching the wire, we’d run the wire through a piece of ½” galvanized pipe about 12” long…that was what we’d hang on to. By starting at the top of the slope and hanging on to the pipe we’d let gravity take over and slide the 100 feet, dropping into a pile of limbs at the bottom tree. If you dropped too early you would fall in the rockslide and seriously hurt yourself. If you didn’t drop into the brush pile at the bottom you would slam into the tree…. either the tree or the
4 Publizr Home