The Ride of Her Life - Fanny Sperry Steele

By Bennett Owen

If there are no horses in heaven, I don’t want to go there. -- Fanny Sperry Steele

Credit: Cowgirl.net

She was a stunning beauty with long braided hair, a warm and engaging personality…and an iron will…make that Steele. And when that fanny sat in the saddle, it was by God gonna’ stay put.  By age 25 Fanny Sperry had already made a name for herself throughout the west but it was her performance at the inaugural Calgary Stampede in 1912 that cemented her standing as a western legend, riding ‘Red Wing,’ a hellacious bucking bronc that had stomped a cowboy to death just four days earlier.   

Credit: geocaching

Here’s a description of the ride, courtesy WILD WEST Magazine:

Red Wing came straight out of the chute standing on his hind legs. He bucked…hard! He sidestepped, circled, head down, head up. The crowd exploded as they watched Sperry's waist-long black braid flounce up and down to the rhythm of the horse under her. She heard the 10-second whistle blow and jumped to the ground. She knew this magnificent sorrel had given her the ride of her life. 'GIVE THE LITTLE LADY A NIIICE HAND!' said the announcer.

A hand and a $1,000 dollar paycheck, a custom saddle and a gold belt buckle. In all, a pretty decent payday considering that ride lives on as one of the best in rodeo history.

Fanny Sperry was born in 1887 at the base of Sleeping Giant Mountain near Helena, Montana.   Her mother, Rachel, taught all five children to “ride as soon as they could walk” and as a child, Fanny and her brother made sport of rounding up the wild pintos in the surrounding foothills and then riding the roughest ones.  By age 15 she was performing in ‘Horse Shows,’ the precursor to the rodeo. 

In 1913 she met and married Bill Steele, a champion rider and rodeo clown and they spent their honeymoon…rodeo-ing, with Sperry Steele riding as many as 14 broncs in a single weekend and earning a reputation of ‘gluing herself to the saddle.’

Credit: National Cowboy Museum

The young couple started up a Wild West show, touring with Buffalo Bill Cody.

Credit: PatchesWorld.org

In addition to her horse and bull riding skills, Sperry Steele was a steel-eyed marksman who would shoot the ashes from her husband’s cigar.

Credit: PatchesWorld.org

She also became a fashion icon for her ‘divided’ skirts with a front panel that allowed her to ride astride and keep a ladylike appearance…always a consideration, especially when ‘sticking to the saddle like a cocklebur’ atop the infamous “Midnight” in Madison Square Garden.

Credit: BirchStreetClothing.com

The Steeles eventually went into ranching near Lincoln, Montana.

Widowed by 1940 she kept the ranch by herself for nearly 30 years, breaking horses, and saddle guiding hunters into rough country.  In 1975 at nearly 90 years of age Fanny Sperry Steele became one of the first three women inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame.  And as she edged toward the century mark, Steele summed up her life thusly:   “…to the cowboys I used to know, to the bronc busters that rode beside me, to the horses beneath me, I take off my hat. I wouldn’t have missed one minute of it.”   Now that’s one heck of a ride.

Back to School Part Two – Putting One-room Schools to the Test

By Bennett Owen

Credit: Pictoscribe - Moseying Back to The Wild 

I don’t know about their self-esteem but it appears the rural eighth graders ‘back in the day’ actually knew a thing or two when they left those creaky clapboard temples of learning. For a truly humbling experience, check out this document that purports to be the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in Salina, Kansas.

Credit: alansheaven

The actual exam is extensive but for brevity’s sake I’ve provided a quick overview along with some helpful hints:

Grammar:
Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.  – I fail that with every post at My-West.

Arithmetic:
Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent. - I find absolutely no interest in that.

US History: 
Give the epochs into which US History is divided.  – That’s easy. The pre and post wireless Internet eras.

Orthography:  (yes, I had to look it up too!)
What are the following and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?  - I think a diphthong is something Lady Gaga wears.

Geography:
Describe the movements of the earth. -  That’s what happened the first time I kissed Rita Grand.

Health:
Where are saliva, gastric juice and bile secreted?  -  Hey, let’s keep Washington, DC out of this.

Credit: JohnsonCreekHistory.com

At any rate, here are some people who most likely could have passed that test with flying colors:

Herbert Hoover  - the first US president born west of the Mississippi, Hoover attended a one-room schoolhouse in West Branch, Iowa – He spent much of his youth with his pioneer uncle in Newberg, Oregon.

Laura Ingalls Wilder – Attended a one-room school in De Smet, South Dakota, the basis for her Little House on the Prairie books.  She also taught at one-room schools beginning at age 17.

Grant Wood – One of America’s best-known painters taught at a one-room school in Iowa in the early 1900s.

Clifford E. Paine – designer and engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge attended Peachbelt School in southwest Michigan.

The Graduates of the “One-Armed School” – The wives of atomic scientists transported to remote Los Alamos, New Mexico in the early 1940s, started up a one-room school in a log cabin for their kids.  Early estimates put the pupils’ average IQ at 150.  The local joke was that anybody who couldn’t make the grade at school could always qualify for a job at Los Alamos labs.

And finally, if a kid has to go to school, it really should be in places like these:

6. Mesa Schoolhouse, Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

Credit: DQmountaingirl

Credit: DQmountaingirl

5. The Old Schoolhouse, Jefferson, Colorado – Built around 1901

Credit: wikipedia.org

4. Schoolhouse with the Hearst Castle in the Background.

Credit: KatRya

2. Grafton Schoolhouse, near Zion Park, Utah – One of the most photographed structures in the western US.

Credit: motionblur

1. Calf-A, Dell, Montana – Originally built as a schoolhouse in 1903, it is now a café with some of the best pies in the western United States.

Credit: My-West.com

Credit: My-West.com

Send us your one-room school photos and anecdotes!

Credit: t.magnum

Back to School Part Two – Putting One-room Schools to the Test

Back to School: A Room With A Few

By Bennett Owen

A room with a few:

- Pupils

- A few desks

Fruita Schoolhouse, Capital Reef, Utah. Credit: Bills Travel Journal

- A few books

Credit: My-West.com

- A few grades – as in one through eight

Oldest schoolhouse in Montana, it served duty in Twin Bridges, Montana, but now resides in Nevada City, Montana. Credit: oldmantravels

- A few outdoor privies – one for boys, one for girls

And lots and lots of borderline juvenile delinquency. A basic fixture of our western heritage, the one room school is truly a trip down memory lane ... though to hear my Uncles tell it, it was more like a five- mile slog through heavy snow, muddy spring roads and untold, often cunningly creative diversions.  As the old saying goes, “in my day we had to walk 20 miles to school, uphill both ways.” And getting there was half, if not all the fun.

Fruita Schoolhouse, Capital Reef, Utah Credit: Billstraveljournal

The accounts of rural school life are surprisingly uniform. Teachers were often little older than the students they were instructing, the older kids tutored the youngsters, who benefited from listening in on the drills they would be subjected to a year or two down the road. There was also the added workload of fetching firewood, toting drinking water and myriad other daily chores.

Adobetown Schoolhouse, Virginia City, Montana. Credit: Sunni J.

It’s what the kids were up to when the teacher wasn’t looking that really makes for interesting reading, including some rambunctious boys who cornered a packrat and thought it would be funny to put it in the teacher’s desk drawer. Here’s my Uncle Jules with ‘the rest of the story …’

“After about an hour as the schoolroom became quiet, Miss Kelley could hear a noise in her desk drawer. Upon opening it out jumped the packrat. The teacher shrieked and literally had a heart attack! Aunt Wilda was summoned for first aid and Dr. Lee was called. Miss Kelley did survive but I don’t know the fate of those two boys.”

It’s strange how my uncle Robert’s eyes twinkle when hearing this story.

Polaris schoolhouse, Montana Credit: Montanaheritageproject

One-room schools were often a ‘Room With a Pew’ as well, doing double duty as a Sunday go to meetin‘ place of worship.

One-room schoolhouse and church is now a Daughter’s of the Pioneers Museum Torrey, Utah. Credit: My-West.com

In 1919 there were 190-thousand one-room schools operating across America. That has dwindled to about 400 as this school year gets underway. In our neck of the sagebrush, the Polaris School still opens sporadically … whenever a dozen school-age kids or more are living in the valley.

Sulu schoolhouse, Sulu, Montana Credit: Patrick_h

Do your homework because tomorrow’s post includes an eighth grade graduation test from 1895. The results WILL shock you. Hell, I could barely understand the questions!  In the meantime, here’s how one western teacher handled her unruly students:

Walter Bruening – I’ve Been Working on the Railroad

By Bennett Owen

Walter Bruening, Great Falls, Montana

Walter Bruening, the world’s oldest man, has died. He visited earth for 114 years and spent 97 of those in Montana. In the year that he was born in Minnesota, scattered Indian skirmishes were still being fought on the Montana plains.

On the War Path Atsina Edward S. Curtis, c. 1908. Courtesy of the Library of Congress

Flathead Camp on the Jocko River Edward S. Curtis, c. 1910. Courtesy of the Library of Congress

That same year a contingent of black soldiers gathered in Montana...they would soon embark on a cross-country bicycle trip from Missoula to Saint Louis…testing the efficacy of bicycles in mountain combat.

Image Courtesy of "Montana's Buffalo Soldier's Bike Ride to Missouri"

It would be decades yet before his life would be touched by the wonders of electricity, running water, radio and automobiles. At age 16 he went to work for the Great Northern Railroad, laboring 12 hours a day, seven days a week to earn $25 per month. If the song were about Bruening it would go, “I’ve been working on the railroad all the live-long century…” for he spent the next 51 years of his life doing so…a job that sustained him and his wife through the great depression and two world wars.

Image Courtesy of AllPosters.com 

Courtesy of the PTA Transit Authority

It would be pretty hopeless for a man to live so long and not acquire some wisdom along the way. Here’s some from Bruening and it’s worth pondering:

• Embrace change, even when it slaps you in the face
• Eat two meals a day because that’s all you need
• Work as long as you can
• Help others
• Accept death

Now do yourself a favor, but be careful, it may take up your whole weekend. Follow the link to the Great Falls Tribune page documenting Bruening’s 114^th birthday. You’ll find an amazing timeline, historic photos, videos…in all a fascinating 20^th century history lesson worthy of a Pulitzer.

Exceedingly strange that but for his longevity we would never have had the honor of seeing a glimpse of the extraordinary life and times of a simple man.

Image Courtesy of joseflebovicgallery.com, (c) David Plowden
Great Northern Railway Freight Train, West Of Havre, Montana, 1968/later printing. Silver gelatin photograph, titled, dated and signed in pencil verso, 24.1 x 31cm.