A HORSE NAMED DORIS

Dick, and his brother Jakie, gentled horses and did some farming, mostly wheat and sugar beets. Most of the farming in that dry region required irrigation from the Yellowstone River or one of the few creeks that did not dry up during the summer. Average rainfall (including snow)was less than 20 inches a year, drier than the Sahara Desert. There were no large pumping stations, sprnkler systems or drip watering devices. Irrigation meant manually damming the ditch and using siphon tubes to suck the water out to each row in the field.

By contrast, gentling horses must have seemed like playtime. One of the horses, Dick named Doris after a girlfriend that is not the Doris that he married. He probably dressed pretty much like he appears in the picture, basically a working cowboy's gear. Family legend has it that Dick ride the horse named Doris in a Fourth of July parade in 1933 when the Doris that he married first noticed and met him.

Dick was twenty at the time, and Doris just sixteen, but already graduated from high school. Grandma Bell kept a close watch on her small flock, and it is not entirely clear that she, at first, approved of Dick, even though he came from that same strict Lutheran upbringing that produced Dudley Bell.



During one notorious evening when Dick was over to a family dinner he, characteristically, voiced the opinion that a lemon gelatin dessert made by Grandma Bell with Jello and Graham Crackers (with a lot of butter and sugar) “tastes just like kerosene.” Somehow the courtship survived this ordeal. Dick and Doris continued to see each other, especially at barn dances where her older brothers were playing and her older sister could keep a watchful eye. As for the dessert, it survived too as a Holzworth family favorite (including Dick), restructured with raspberry Jello, but known only by the name “kerosene”, something of a puzzle to guests served up for the first time.

Everyone knew, or suspected, that Dick and Doris would marry soon after she turned eighteen. In fact, on January 30, 1937, her eighteenth birthday, they eloped to Terry, Montana, and were married by a justice of the peace. The marriage remained secret for a short while. In those days, a married woman was not supposed to work. Doris continued to live at home while Dick went about setting up in a farmhouse to be shared with Jake and Rosie on a tenant farm near Sydney.



Dick and Doris moved in with them in the spring. The sharing arrangement barely lasted through the summer. Too many cooks repeatedly spoiled the broth. Immediately after Terry was born on December 8, 1937, Dick and Doris moved on to a tenant farm near Fallon, Montana. Dick farmed and also worked on the construction of a major irrigation ditch, putting in dawn to dusk days from planting to harvest. In 1938, they bought their first new D4 Caterpillar tractor. At some point along the way, Dick acquired another favorite horse named Chief.



They “lived in a 3 room house heated by coal heater & range – no running water or electricity – thot we were lucky to have gasoline lamp & iron – plus a gas washer the next year.” Things were touch and go for awhile after Terry was born. The country doctor used a forceps without either skill or finesse. Terry recovered nicely in a fairly short time. Grandma Bell lived on the farm with Doris and Dick for a while, but soon moved back to Glendive because she could not get used to Dick’s habit of making an announcement about going somewhere 30 seconds to a minute before departure time.



“In ’39 we bought the Middlestadt farm buildings ($300) & moved them to West Glendive on a 1 acre plot in ’40 – Virg. Born Aug. 15, 1940 before the house was ready – so lived around plasterers etc.” How do you move a house and other farm buildings? Just figure it out and do it, the Holzworth way. Dick jacked them up off their foundations, braced them and got some wheels underneath them, then went for a Sunday drive to Glendive. Archimedes redux.

In 1940, “Dick started building stock water dams plus farming.” Built dams is an understatement. Busy as a beaver, he built stock water dams over much of Eastern Montana and the Western Dakotas. By the time of Pearl Harbor, his work was deemed essential to the war effort, which made him ineligible for the draft, and a classification that also prevented a voluntary enlistment, much to his chagrin. Dick became the “best dam builder” in the region.



Pat was born on January 22, 1942. In the summer of 1943, the family of five went along on the dam building circuit, living in a trailer, sometimes moving twice a day. Mom’s account: “Cooked for 3 or 4 tractor operators & hauled our water along in 50 gal barrels.” It took a lot of cooking to fuel the little construction company. Either then or a little later, Terry came up with an imaginative way of categorizing hunger: "I am long hungry like a banana, not round hungry like an orange." Terry also remembers doing a lot of fishing that summer. "One time we caught more bullheads in an evening of fishing than we could ever eat, more than a hundred as I recall. And I always had a 'scraped' place next to the trailer to play in while we were on the job."



Terry got his first electric train while the family still lived in West Glendive, and the first family pet, a black terrier named by the name of Scottie, also arrived. Terry also pioneered the usual childhood diseases, doing a double with measles and chickenpox in the same school year. By second grade, Terry had developed decided opionions about his teacher and did not hesitate to tell Mom that he would not go back to school if he had to stay in her class. Mom eventually won the argument, but only after walking him back to school "several times."

The business side of things continued to go well. Mom's note: “1944 we bought the Sample house in Glendive & fixed the upstairs for mother.” The price: $10,000 paid in cash, about 33 times the price paid for the Middlestadt farm buildings and a clear indicator of how well the business was going. The Sample house appeared on postcards as one of the premier residences in Glendive, then still a major railhead and switching yard. With all the extra rooms in the Sample house, Grandma Bell and Dick’s niece Dolores, the daughter of his beloved sister Martha, joined the family. Delores mvoed into town to go to go to Dawson County High School. Doris and Delores became close friends.

Mom probably needed all the help she could get from both Grandma Bell and Dolores to keep control of three very active kids. In addition to the usual scapes and bumps, there were some near escapes from more serious things. Terry took a tumble when playing on a moving ladder in a store. Pat lost control of a sled and got a nasty cut and bloody nose. Pat also decided to express her artistic side one day by writing her name in giant crayon letters on the hallway wallpaper. She "just knew Mom & Dad would be so proud that I could write my name at the age of (3?-4?). Wrong!!! Bug Mistake -- HUGE!!!" She was more than a little disappointed when Mom and Dad were not fully appreciative of the effort. Terry, and either Pat or Virginia, were occassional sleepwalkers. Terry would put march about the house as though he was playing in the band. One of the girls picked strawberries in her sleep. Dad talked to them. "Are you have a nightmare?" Answer: "Yes" Dad: "Do you want to feed it some hay?" These events were great entertainment for the kids that were awake.

The piece de resistance came about one spring day when Terry wanted to ride around on his scooter. His version of the story: "One spring I decided to fire up the Doodle Bug but it would not start. I thought it was maybe too cold in the garage so I poured some gasoline, pobably an inch or so in a metal bucket thinking I would have a fire that looked like a kerosene stove or something. Wnen the match hit the surface it went Whoosh!!!!!! and flames went nearly to the ceiling. No I kept the doors closed to keep the heat in so smoke filled the place pretty quick. I needed to get that fire out in a hurry so I threw a small piece of 2X4 in trying to douse it. That tipped the bucket over and now I was in deep shit. I ran for the house and as I did so Grandma came out to see what was up. Mother called the fire department and Grandma calmly found a blanket and beat the remaining flames out as the fire ran out of gasoline. The fire department came to make sure it was out and I was branded a fire bug by one of the older boys in the neighborhood for a while. Needless to say I was totally embarassed but learned a valuable lesson. My ego sustained the most damage through this exercise. Of course the older boy assured me that my parents would have to pay the full cost of the fire department response out of pocket."




“1946 Dick merged with James D. Fogg in Miles City – building roads & a hospital in S.D. – Donna was born April 1948.” Uncle Richard Christle, who had awarded some WPA work to Dick when he was getting started, advised against going into the road construction business. He thought the risks of losing the performance bond and the engineering required to meet specs far outweighed the potential rewards. Nevertheless, Dick and Doris decided to give it a go.



In 1949, the children were 11, 9, 7 and 1. A fifth child, Duane Allen, died the day after he was born on August 17, 1946, most likely because of complications during delivery that could have been avoided with better hospital care. Terry had already begun to show the aptitude for music that would eventually equal or exceed the markers set by Kenneth and Gerald. No child of Doris had to endure the torture by violin. Somewhere along the way, the family had acquired an upright piano and a saxophone. Terry took to the saxophone and was already playing far above his peers. That same saxophone would serve as the introductory instrument for Virginia, Donna and David. Pat took to the piano, later played the accordian and even had a certain famous routine with a ukelele.



All of the children went with Doris every Sunday to the Methodist Church in Glendive. They also went to a Bible school day camp in the summer. Terry, Virginia and Pat went to grade school where they all did very well, each of the younger children being reminded without respite what good students the older Holzworths were, in that way setting high expectations for the next one coming along. Each of the siblings, however, had already begun to find his or her own niche.

The girls claim that Terry had it easy, being the oldest and a boy, ergo Dick’s favorite. Terry would probably beg to differ, the girls having no idea of the pressure to perform under the close supervision of a perfectionist who constantly and loudly insisted “Goddammit! If you are going to do something, do it right!” The girls did have a point, though, that Dad spent more time with Terry tagging around behind absorbing all of that mechanical reasoning and problem solving that would eventually serve him extraordinarily well as a civil engineer.

As Terry once put it, “When I got to college, and I saw how the professors analyzed problems, I said to myself, now I know two ways of doing the same thing, but the first way (Dad’s way) usually made a lot more sense from the practical and economical point of view.” During one summer of college, Terry and another engineering student who ranked very high in academics, had a paying job of painting signs on the roofs of buildings meant to be visible to small aircraft. Terry was bemused by the inability of the math whiz to come up with a practical solution to the layout of the signage.

Nevertheless, one wonders if the drive to excel in music, something outside Dick’s sphere of influence, might have been fuelled in part as an escape to a happier place.
All of the children took to the water, Terry so much so that his high board diving may have caused some permanent hearing problems. Virginia and Pat developed an early love of horses and horse-back riding, a passion that remained with Pat forever after.

Virginia developed a fierce competitiveness in almost everything she did, absorbing by osmosis that single minded willfulness that drove Dick. Virginia did not start talking until Pat arrived on the scene, at which point she became, almost instantly, very chatty. She picked up from Mom a love of sewing, embroidery, crocething and knitting, all of which were undertaken somewhat competitively, i.e. how much could she do and how long could she do it – a work ethic embodied by Dick.

Pat was more of a tomboy during the Glendive years, with a flair for acrobatic tricks on swings and monkey bars that sometimes bordered on the reckless and truly dangerous. Pat also seems to have been the primary beneficiary of Dick’s “horse whispering” abilities. The family pet almost always became, in some way, her pet. She was able to elicit remarkable responses from every dog that she had a hand in training, including the incredible Roxie who seemed to be talking (“Hello", "I love you” but not, as I recall "What is your name?") and doing better than Trigger with numbers. More about Roxie when the family moves to Salt Lake City. Pat, quite wisely and sanely, opted out of the overachiever syndrome that had taken hold, early, fast and furiously, with Terry and Virginia.

Board games, card games, picture puzzles and puzzles of other kinds were a big part of playtime and relaxation for kids and adults. Everyone learned to play pinochle a fairly early age at first looking on and "helping" Dad play his cards, then later playing alone. No prisoners were taken in any of these games. Curiously, everyone of the kids learned to deal and play cards left-handed.

During these years and later summers when the family returned to Glendive, one or more of the kids spent time on Aunt Martha and Uncle Bill's farm near Fallon. They had a white mare named Spitfire that Pat and Virginia both vividly remember getting to ride a few times bareback. The farm also had artesian water, brought up by a hand pump, that had a very distinctive taste. With all the things to do and all the Siegle kids to do them with, the farm was a fun place to be.

Dick gave each of the children a nickname that stuck for life, at least within the family. Dad used only the nickname. Terry became Butch, Virginia became Ginny Gay, Pat became Skrachi and Donna became Baby Doll. Pat's name orginated from her special relationship with diaper rash when she was a baby and probably would have been spelled as Scrathy if anyone had ever thought to write it out. The present spelling comes from Pat's e-mail address. Donna got her name by begging for a pair of pajamas decorated with baby dolls. She got the pajamas and the name. When Terry was born, Aunt Lucille lobbied for the formal name Richard Terrance Holzworth, arguing that he would need it as an adult. Terry always went by Terry, and Dad never called him anything but Butch.

Dad also had a standard rule for deciding when one of the children was ready to drive: Legs had to reach the peddles and had to be able to see over (or through) the steering wheel, roughly 10 to 12 years old. Even before driving age, however, all of the kids began to learn by sitting on Dad's lap and, from time to time, holding the wheel or turning on the blinker. Terry wrote, on the occassion of Mom and Dad's Golden Wedding Anniversary: "I have always been proud of becoming an 'operator' at the age of four on the D-4! [mid-size Cat tractor] I also remember the first time I began using the steering clutches, was it the TD-14, even though you told me to just go forward and reverse. Of course, we both still tell the story of the time the TD-14 stalled when we were moving and you came back to rescue me."

In 1949, the family moved to Miles City, but that is another chapter.