P a g e 4 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 fall into the rocks would get you into the doctor. Fortunately, we were never seriously hurt and soon abandoned the slide, took it down and went on to other things.” In the three years their family were on Webb Mountain, they experienced some rainstorms that kept all four of them busy. One such storm demonstrated to young Ted the importance of the lightning protection on the lookout. “About noon one clear sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, the gable mounted lightning rods began to hum, soon getting louder and louder until they buzzed like a bad continuous electrical short. A few hours later thunderhead clouds began to form in the southwest beyond Libby and the Cabinet Photo Courtesy NMLA Webb Mountain and Wimpy, the family Woody, from Ted’s cover page of his memoirs. Mountain range, and you could see an occasional lightning strike. The lightning rods began to form an electrical charge that soon became visible about the size of a volleyball. It was an iridescent gold color and made a noise you could hear from several hundred feet away. It would move up and down and horizontally along the rods, all the time being discharged through the ¼” wire system. I remember Dad saying don’t touch anything metal in the lookout. We knew we were in for an all-night lightning storm and recording of strikes. The clouds continued to form, more and more strikes could be seen but too far off for us to begin registering, being in the southwest districts of Libby and Idaho yet. As the storm system moved toward us, the discharging of lightning from the clouds must have lessened the charge in the lookout and the gold static ball left us alone, but now we began recording the strikes at hand. There were too many strikes for one person so each of us took one exposure only and that became our responsibility. There were so many strikes at the same time it was nearly impossible to record the altitude and we could only identify the azimuth before the next person had to record their azimuth in their exposure. The alidade wheel was constantly moving for several hours before the storm subsided. Several strikes were recorded that appeared to set fires.” When Ted was fourteen, his father got a job on Black Butte Lookout, where the family stayed until his dad died in 1964. Later in high school, Ted worked for the Forest Service spotting and putting out fires. One memorable time, he and another firefighter got sent on a small night fire. After putting a line around it, they were too late to leave. “We only had one sleeping bag. It was a paper sleeping bag you know those things? They kept some of the breeze off you and about all it did. So, we were sitting around one little hot spot there that we can kind of stay warm. Finally, we got cold and we got tired and we both tried to crawl into that sleeping bag together. We made it but it was not very comfortable.” Later in his teens, the Forest Service wanted Ted to staff Pinto Point Lookout, but he was dating
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