And there were less conspicuous ways then for winter to get
the best of you.
Like bedbugs.
"Just about everybody got bedbugs in the winter," says Ron Brister, chief curator of collections for the Memphis Museums System. Bedbugs were particularly prone to infest bedding made of feathers, corn shucks and other organic materials.
As if the mere thought of bugs in the bed weren't disgusting enough, the little offenders bit, hence the expression, "Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite." (The "Sleep tight" part of the phrase came from tightening ropes that held the mattress in place.
"From the bedding, they would get in your clothes, and they would spread from house to house as you went visiting. They were more common in the winter because it's harder to bathe and clean your clothes," Brister said.
Depictions of the "good old days" always seem to include a pot- bellied stove or glowing hearth surrounded by ruddy cheeked children and serene grownups.
It's just another urban myth, Brister says.
"People would be amazed at how wet and cold and dirty people were. Wood-burning fire places were used, and later in the century, coal fires replaced the wood fire because of the ease of obtaining fuel. Coal smoke is a bilious yellow color, so I imagine the city was filled with sulphurous smoke and soot was all over the place."
Keeping a baby dry was no mean feat during the winter, adds Jeanne Crawford, director of the Woodruff-Fontaine House in Memphis' historical Victorian Village.
"I remember a cousin of mine born in about 1880 talking about children. No one wanted to hold a baby because they were always wet. It took forever to dry the clothes in front of a fire."
In those days, there was little difference between the temperature outdoors and indoors.
"As 20th century people, we bundle up when we have to go outside between heated cars and offices," Brister says. "But a hundred years ago it was the opposite. They dressed for the weather and peeled down if they could."
No question our ancestors felt the cold, and sensation of constant warmth was unknown. Still, they probably adapted to the climate better than we do today.
"If you're exposed to cold or heat, the body will do what it has to do to defend against either," says Dr. Clark Blatteis, professor of physiology and biophysics at the University of Tennessee. "After a while the body becomes habituated, or used to the cooler environment."
Author Mary Winslow Chapman recalls a chilly childhood.
"It never occurred to me that you couldn't be cold," said Mrs. Chapman, whose Raleigh, Tenn., house was built in stages between 1875 and 1900. Cold nights are described in "The Dwelling Place," a novel by Mrs. Chapman's mother, Anne Goodwin Winslow:
"You'd take a hot brick that had been in the fireplace all day, then at night you'd wrap it up in umpteen blankets and put it in the bottom of your bed, and it would still be warm even in the morning."
Company in the winter was scarce, Mrs. Chapman said, perhaps because of experiences like this guest's, also from the book:
"The next morning when he came down, he turned his back to the fire. My grandmother said, 'Oh, Mr. James, I'm afraid you were cold.' He said, 'I had a little trouble buttoning my collar button, but I warmed my fingers over the candle.'"
However stiff one's fingers, there seemed to be no end to all the inventions for warming the feet.
Brass footwarmers filled with hot coals were used in carriages. "Pigs," or ceramic jugs filled with hot water, were popular in the tuberculosis hospitals, Brister said.
And you might have left home without you mittens, but not your potato, Mrs. Crawford says.
"I remember my father saying he would be given a hot potato to put in his pocket while he walked to school, and he could shift the potato from pocket to pocket as each hand got cold."
So cheer up. This winter wasn't so bad, after all.
RUBY BEGONIA
By Del Freeman
"Marry me, - anyone."
My husband, David, and I need a wife. Somebody who is organized enough to help us locate our stuff. Actually, David thinks he's entitled to another one because my father never delivered on the two chicken/one goat dowry for me. One thing we know is I can't do the job because I have no organizational ability. I'm constantly scrounging for crumpled pieces of paper that have my most important, vital notes which I think I may have left or lost.
Somewhere. If i weren't such a professional slob, I'd try to organize some of this mess, but I'm too busy trying to find my most important, vital notes. I come up with great plans which I abandon without implementation in favor of other great plans for finding my stuff. The fact that none of the plans ever come to fruition doesn't bother a true world class slob like me. I have unbounded admiration for people who can open a drawer and flip through to an actual file folder, neatly labeled, containing whatever they are looking for. I also hope they all get huge, ugly, hairy warts on their noses. I have file folders, too.
It's just that I have them in my home and my cars, old pocketbooks, and all those mysterious places people are trying to help me remember when they ask, "Where did you leave them?" My father always told me to call lost things. "Where is that stuff?" I'd mutter, and he'd say, "Call it." Stuff almost never answers but I guess he thought it would give me something to do besides annoy him. I also believe that if one of anything is good, a gross is better. I'm working on the theory that if I can't find the first file folder full of crumpled, vital, most important notes, I may be able to locate the back-up.
So far, that hasn't happened and I keep making more folders, which means there is even more stuff I can't find. I keep buying bigger purses and briefcases because the smaller ones are too full of stuff to close. I estimate that soon I'll need a forklift to transport the receptacles that might, if I would clean them out, reveal the whereabouts of my most vital, important notes.
David says if I didn't shop maniacally I wouldn't have so much stuff. He claims I'd buy excrement if I could get a two- for-one deal. I tell him only if it came in some really drop- dead, killer wrapping. I don't shop for things as mundane as groceries, either. I shop for silver leather skirts and sequin tops that hang in my closet and never get worn because nobody invites me to silver leather skirt/sequin top affairs. Besides, I make a rather incongruous appearance in a silver leather skirt and sequin top, carrying my Samsonite overnighter from which little pieces of crumpled paper escape and float downward. I have shoes to rival Imelda Marcos and I have no room for them. If I get invited to a guerilla warfare conflict I may have to buy combat boots, but I have at least one pair of everything else.
I don't believe in shoe boxes, either. I pile all my shoes haphazardly into a basket inside the closet and then I stack bags of shoes on top. Before I go anywhere, I have to sit on the floor in front of the closet, holding one shoe, cursing and mumbling things like, "I know you have a mate. I wouldn't buy just one shoe." Harkening back to my father's advice, I periodically call it. "Are you in there? Come to mama!" David has good-naturedly accepted the fact that if I am sitting in the floor in front of the closet, I am talking to my shoes, and he no longer screams from the next room, "What are you mumbling? I can't hear you." In fact, sometimes when I am speaking to him he doesn't listen because he claims he thought I was talking to my wardrobe.
MONTANA FACTS
Compiled and written by Robert A. Chadwick
LAND:
Area: 380,847 sq km (147,046 sq mi)
Rank: 4th.
Capital: Helena (1980 pop. 23,938)
Largest city: Billings (1984 pop. 69,800)
Counties: 57
Elevations: highest--3,901 m (12,799 ft), at Granite Peak and lowest--549 m (1,800 ft), at the Kootenai River.
State legislature: 50 senators, 100 representatives.
STATE SYMBOLS:
Statehood: Nov. 8, 1889
Admitted: 41st
Nickname: Treasure State
Bird: Western Meadowlark
Flower: Bitterroot
Tree: Ponderosa Pine
Motto: Oro y Plata ("Gold and Silver")
Song: "Montana."
MONTANA:
Montana, one of the Mountain states, ranks fourth in size but is among the ten least populous of all the U.S. states. Bordering it are the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan on the north; North Dakota and South Dakota on the east; Wyoming on the south; and Idaho on the west and southwest. Montana stretches for about 885 km (550 mi) from the ROCKY MOUNTAINS and Continental Divide in the west to the rolling plains in the east. The name Montana comes from the Spanish word montana, meaning "mountainous region." Among the state's nicknames are "Treasure State," "Big Sky Country," and the Indian designation, "Land of the Shining Mountains."
LAND AND RESOURCES:
The western third of Montana is rugged and mountainous, and the remaining eastern portion consists of rolling plains. Granite Peak, Montana's highest point, rises to 3,901 m (12,799 ft) in the Beartooth Range near Yellowstone National Park; the lowest elevation, 549 m (1,800 ft), occurs in the northwest, where the Kootenai River crosses into Idaho.
PHYSIOGRAPHIC REGIONS:
Montana contains parts of three major physiographic regions--the Great Plains, a small section of the Middle Rocky Mountains, and a large section of the Northern Rocky Mountains. The GREAT PLAINS in eastern Montana have a general elevation range of 600 to 1,000 m (2,000 to 3,300 ft) and a deceptively flat-to-rolling overall appearance. On closer inspection, however, it is apparent that they are broken by small mountain masses (the Sweetgrass, Judith, Little Snowy, Bear Paw, Little Rocky, Highwood, and Crazy mountains) near the eastern edge of the Rockies and by the angular outlines of mesas, buttes, gullies, canyons, badlands, and naturally sculptured rock outcrops characteristic of a semiarid climate. The Middle Rocky Mountains rise west of the plains and include a small section of the Yellowstone Plateau, along with the rugged Absaroka and Beartooth ranges. The parallel ranges of the Northern Rockies, separated by narrow canyons, form a 322-km-wide (200-mi) belt of rugged mountains in western Montana.
R
IVERS AND LAKES:
Montana rivers drain toward the north, east, and west. A small area in the north central part of the state drains to the north by way of the Saint Mary and Belly rivers. Lands east of the Continental Divide drain into the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean through the Missouri-Mississippi river system, and lands west of the divide drain into the Pacific Ocean by the Clark Fork and Kootenai rivers. Montana's principal river is the MISSOURI. Its source is at Three Forks, where the Jefferson, Gallatin, and Madison rivers unite. It flows eastward, where it receives its major tributaries--the Milk, the Musselshell, and, east of the state border, the YELLOWSTONE. Flathead Lake is the largest natural lake, and Fort Peck Lake on the Missouri River is the largest of many artificial water bodies created for irrigation and production of hydroelectricity.
CLIMATE:
January temperatures range from -12 deg C (11 deg F) in the northeast to -6 deg C (22 deg F) in the southwest, but in unusually cold years the average may be -18 deg C (0 deg F). Winters usually bring short-lived cold spells of high winds, blowing snow, and colder temperatures, interspersed with mild periods of chinook weather--warm, dry winds that evaporate the snow cover to the east of the Continental Divide. In 1954, Montana experienced the coldest temperature of any state in the conterminous United States when a low of -57 deg C (-70 deg F) occurred at Rogers Pass, northwest of Helena. July temperatures average between 23 deg C (73 deg F) in the southeast and 18 deg C (64 deg F) in the southwest. The hottest temperature ever recorded in Montana, 47 deg C (117 deg F), occurred (1937) at Medicine Lake. Precipitation, concentrated in late spring, is spare, averaging 380 mm (15 in) over most of the state, with extremes of more than 2,540 mm (100 in) in exposed mountain areas and less than 178 mm (7 in) in the south central areas. Severe hailstorms occasionally strike in summer. Droughts, blizzards, and unexpectedly early or late snows are other climatic hazards.
VEGETATION AND ANIMAL LIFE:
Most of the plains are treeless and where not farmed are covered with a natural vegetation of buffalo and blue grama grasses, giving way to sagebrush and bunch grass in drier areas. Aspen and cottonwood trees grow along the river valleys, and stands of ponderosa pines top some of the upland areas. In the Rockies, conifers extend up to the treeline. Spruce, Douglas fir, and tamarack are common in wetter areas and lodgepole pine in drier locations. Higher elevations support a low-growing alpine vegetation, with a profusion of wildflower blooms in early summer. Montana's most distinctive animal, the buffalo, was wantonly slaughtered before 1894 and is now found only in the National Bison Range in the Flathead Valley and other protected areas. Other animals found in the mountains are bobcats, coyotes, lynx, mink, puma, and such larger game animals as elk, deer, bighorn sheep, moose, and grizzly and black bears. Eleven national forests and 20 federal and 18 state wildlife refuges protect the state's natural resources.
MINERAL RESOURCES:
Montana has rich deposits of gold, copper, lead, silver, zinc, manganese, and other metals in the Rocky Mountains. Vast deposits of coal, petroleum, natural gas, and bentonite underlie much of the Great Plains. Especially valuable are the coal deposits in the Fort Union coal formation found under the entire eastern fourth of the state and extracted by strip mining. Abundant runoff and snowmelt from the mountains provide sufficient surface water for irrigation and hydroelectricity; additional water resources are available from aquifers.
PEOPLE:
One of the least populated of all the states, Montana has a population density that is less than one-tenth the national average. From 1960 to 1970, 58,000 more people left the state than entered, and the population growth rate was less than 3%, well below the 13% national growth rate for the decade. The period 1970-80, however, saw a reversal of this trend, and Montana experienced a growth rate of about 1.3% annually, higher than the national rate, and a net in-migration of 38,000 (1970-79). White ethnic groups account for about 95% of the population, with Norwegian, German, and Canadian ancestries predominating. Most Montanans are Protestants, but the largest single religious group is the Roman Catholic. The HUTTERIAN BRETHREN live in 23 colonies in the state.
The Indian population in 1980 numbered 37,270, most of whom lived on 7 reservations--the CROW and Northern CHEYENNE in the southern plains; the SIOUX at Fort Peck; the ASSINIBOIN and GROS VENTRES at Fort Belknap; the Chippewa-Cree at Rocky Boy; the BLACKFOOT in the northern plains; and the FLATHEAD in the Rocky Mountains. The black population is one of the smallest in any state. Only about half the population is urban. The largest cities are BILLINGS and GREAT FALLS, each with a population of more than 55,000, and MISSOULA, BUTTE, and HELENA, each with more than 20,000 residents.
EDUCATIONAL AND CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS:
Montana had about 575 public elementary schools in 1981, including many serving small rural school districts; more than 200 public secondary schools; and 16 public and private institutions of higher learning. The state's major museums are the Montana Historical Society Museum in Helena, the Charles M. RUSSELL Museum and Original Studio in Great Falls, the Museum of the Plains Indian and Crafts Center at Browning, the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, the World Mining Museum in Butte, and the Western Heritage Center in Billings.
HISTORIC SITES:
Historical markers identify the 3,122-km-long (1,940-mi) Lewis and Clark Trail of the early explorers. The Custer Battlefield National Monument commemorates Custer's Last Stand against the Sioux and Cheyenne in the 1876 Battle of the LITTLE BIGHORN. Big Hole National Battlefield marks the 1877 victory of the NEZ PERCE Indians under Chief JOSEPH, and Chief Joseph Battleground State Monument commemorates the chief's surrender. Chief Plenty Coups State Monument preserves the home of this famous Crow leader along with ethnographic materials of the Crow people. Saint Mary's Mission log church and pharmacy are remains of Montana's first permanent settlement. Ghost towns at Bannack, Elkhorn, Virginia City, and Pony recall gold-rush days.
COMMUNICATIONS:
Montana has 71 commercial radio and 12 such television stations. The most influential of the state's 11 daily newspapers are the Montana Standard of Butte, the Billings Gazette, the Great Falls Tribune, and the Missoula Missoulian.
ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES:
In the 19th century, Montana went from a fur-trading and Indian community in the early years, through a gold rush in the 1860s, on to become a major producer of copper, lead, silver, and zinc in the 1880s. After the removal of Indians from the plains in the 1870s, cattle and sheep ranching took over the grasslands of the open range.
In the 1900s, waves of homesteaders fenced the range and began farming, but because of severe droughts beginning in 1917, many farms were abandoned. Expanded irrigation facilities, greater use of strip farming and other techniques suited to the semiarid conditions, and national price-support policies introduced after the 1930s have all aided agricultural recovery. In the 1950s, eastern Montana experienced rapid growth in the petroleum and natural-gas industries, and the 1960s, '70s, and '80s have brought new wealth from tourism and strip mining of coal on the Great Plains.
AGRICULTURE:
In 1980, Montana ranked 33d among the states in farm income, with farmers receiving $747 million from sales of livestock and livestock products and $660 million from crop sales. Beef cattle, sheep, and lambs, important since the 1880s, are still raised in large numbers, but Montana also now produces substantial numbers of hogs and pigs. Wheat is the chief crop, and in 1982, Montana ranked fourth among the states with its output of 183.6 million bushels. Other crops are hay, sweet cherries, barley, oats, sugar beets, and alfalfa.
FORESTRY:
In 1977, Montana ranked fifth among the states in total forest land, which covered 9,136,395 ha (22,559,000 acres). The sawtimber net volume in that year was about 97.3 billion board feet. The principal woods cut are ponderosa pine, larch, and Douglas fir; lumber, plywood, pulp, and paper are leading wood products.
MINING:
Traditionally a mining state, in 1981, Montana ranked only 20th among the states in mineral production, with output valued at $1.91 billion. Copper was long mined at Butte and was for many years the principal state export, but most of the copper mines were closed in the early 1980s. Petroleum production, concentrated in the Elk Basin, Cut Bank, and Williston Basin fields and Bell Creek, near Broadus, amounts to about 31 million barrels. Most coal is extracted from strip mines in the eastern coalfields, with large operations at Colstrip. Production of bituminous coal totaled 27.9 million U.S. tons in 1982, or 25 times the amount produced in the mid-1960s. Vermiculite, talc, and tungsten are also mined.
MANUFACTURING:
Montana's sparse population, small labor supply, and high transportation costs to other parts of the nation restrict industrial development to the processing of raw materials and agricultural commodities. In 1976 value added by manufacture amounted to only $771 million, placing Montana among the ten least industrialized of all states. Metal smelters are based at ANACONDA and Great Falls (copper and zinc), East Helena (lead and zinc), and Columbia Falls (aluminum); petroleum refineries at Great Falls, Billings, Laurel, and Cut Bank; electronics at Bozeman; food-processing plants at Billings, Missoula, and Great Falls; saw mills at Columbia Falls, Bonner, Kalispell, and Libby; and pulp and paper mills at Missoula.
TRANSPORTATION:
Major transportation routes follow--as in the past--the Missouri, Yellowstone, and Clark Fork river valleys. The major highway routes are interstate highways 15, 90, and 94, and major rail lines are the Chicago, Milwaukee, Saint Paul, and Pacific, and the Burlington Northern railroads. Water travel is minimal, and access to Fort Benton, a flourishing head of navigation on the Missouri River in the 1860s and '70s, is now impeded by Fort Peck Dam. Major airports are at Billings and Great Falls.
TOURISM:
Montana's tourist attractions include GLACIER NATIONAL PARK and YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK; Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area; vast mountain and wilderness areas; excellent hunting, fishing, and camping; and dude ranches, ski resorts, and annual rodeo events. Bozeman, Missoula, Whitefish, and Red Lodge are tourist centers.
POWER:
Most power in Montana is hydroelectric, with major sites at Great Falls, Columbia Falls, and Fort Peck, and the Hungry Horse, Canyon Ferry, and Libby dams. Four steam-generating plants used coal as a fuel in 1977, including two of megawatt capacity at Colstrip. Two power plants to be located at mining sites are planned for construction in the eastern coalfields. In addition a high-voltage power transmission network, opposed by environmentalists, is planned to transport the power westward across the Rockies.
GOVERNMENT:
In 1972, Montanans approved a new constitution, effective as of July 1, 1973. It replaced the outdated and overly amended constitution adopted in 1889. Executive power rests with the governor, assisted by a lieutenant governor, both of whom are elected to 4-year terms. The bicameral legislature, which meets biennially in 90-day sessions, is composed of 50 senators (elected for 4-year terms) and 100 representatives (elected for 2-year terms). Two elected officials go to the U.S. Senate and two to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Montana's political outlook is evenly balanced between conservative and liberal factions. Although considered a liberal state nationally, Montana has historically been dominated by conservative industrialists on state and local levels. Growing urbanization has brought increased local liberalism.
HISTORY:
In the early 1700s, Indian tribes, including the Blackfoot, Sioux, Crow, and Cheyenne who had been displaced from lands farther east, began moving into Montana, pushing local tribes--including the Flatheads, Shoshoni, and Kutenai--westward toward the mountains. The first recorded visit by Europeans occurred in 1805, when the explorers Meriwether LEWIS and William CLARK, accompanied by their Shoshoni Indian guide SACAJAWEA, ascended the Missouri and Jefferson rivers to cross the Rocky Mountains in 1807, Manuel Lisa established the first fur-trading post on the Big Horn River. Many trappers and traders, the so-called MOUNTAIN MEN, soon followed. Lisa's post, along with others, was destroyed by hostile Indians. Montana's first permanent white settlement did not appear until Father Pierre Jean DE SMET founded Saint Mary's Mission in 1841.
Gold was discovered in 1858 at Goldcreek in small amounts and in larger amounts in the 1860s at Grasshopper Creek (now Bannack), Alder Gulch (Virginia City), Last Chance Gulch (Helena), and Confederate Gulch (Diamond City). The resulting gold rush brought a large influx of white settlers and ushered in a colorful decade, replete with stories of fortunes made and lost overnight, murderous road agents preying on stage coaches and miners, corrupt sheriffs, and citizens' VIGILANTE groups. In 1863 western Montana, which had been successively part of Oregon and Washington territories, was united with eastern Montana, previously part of the territories of Louisiana (1805), Missouri (1812), Nebraska (1854), and Dakota (1861), in the Idaho territory. In 1864 separate territorial status was achieved, with the capital first at Bannack, then Virginia City, and, after 1875, at Helena.
In the 1860s stockmen began trailing cattle northward from Texas, copper mining began, and conflict with the Indians intensified. In the Sioux War of 1875-76, the forces of Lt. Col. George Armstrong CUSTER were annihilated at Little Bighorn, but government troops subsequently subdued and removed the hostile Indians to reservations.
Railroads crossed the region in the 1880s, further stimulating cattle and sheep ranching and indirectly setting off a fierce struggle between cattle- and sheepherders for priority grazing rights. In the mountains copper king Marcus DALY developed Butte Hill from a rough silver camp to a vast industrial complex of copper mines, mills, and smelters. Political life came increasingly to revolve around copper and Daly's bitter rivalry with two other copper kings, William Andrews CLARK and F. ("Fritz") Augustus Heinze. On Nov. 8, 1889, after 5 years of effort, Montana became the 41st state.
From 1909 to 1918 homesteaders arrived by the thousands to fence and plant the range with grain crops. Favored by unusually abundant rainfall, the farms flourished, but a series of dry years beginning in 1917 forced abandonment of many homesteads. In the DEPRESSION OF THE 1930s, many mines closed. Since then greater diversity and stability have been introduced in the state by the development of irrigation facilities, tourism, and petroleum and coal resources. Copper's dominance has been broken, and coal mining holds great promise for future economic growth. Strip mining of coal began in the 1960s, but is strongly opposed by Indians on whose reservations much of the coal is located. Environmentalists are seeking to preserve and conserve water quantity and quality, reclaim mined-over land, prevent air pollution from mining operations and mine-mouth power plant emissions, and protect scenic amenities from damage wrought by the construction of reservoirs and high-voltage transmission lines.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
- Bradley, James H., The March of the Montana Column: A Prelude to the Custer Disaster, ed. by E. I. Stewart (1961);
- Dimsdale, Thomas J., The Vigilantes of Montana (1953; repr. 1976); Farr, - William E., and Toole, Kenneth R., Montana: Portraits of the Past (1978);
- Federal Writers' Project, Montana: A State Guide Book (1939);
- Hamilton, James M., A History of Montana: From Wilderness to Statehood,
ed. by Merrill G. Burlingame, 2d ed. (1970);
- Howard, Joseph K., Montana: High, Wide and Handsome, new illus. ed. (1959);
- Johnson, Dorothy M., Montana (1970);
- Malone, Michael P., and Roeder, Richard B., Montana: A History of Two Centuries (1976);
- Spence, Clark C., Montana: A Bicentennial History (1978);
- Stuart, Granville, Pioneering in Montana: The Making of a State, 1864-1887 (1925; repr. 1977);
Toole, Kenneth R., Montana: An Uncommon Land (1959; repr. 1977).
