In the Holzworth tradition (shared with the Great Santini), we set off from Billings before the crack of dawn. However, dawn did catch us partway to Miles.
Among several objectives, we intended to stop coming or going at the Evelyn Cameron Museum in Terry, Montana. The little town of Terry (Pop. 600 or so) figures in the family history as the place where grandfather Dudley Howard Bell died of the Spanish Influenza hauling a wagon load of sugar beets to the railhead in September 1918 and again when Dick and Doris Holzworth eloped on her 18th birthday (January 30, 1937) and got married there by a justice of the peace. We knew about the museum from the website, and we wanted to see full scale prints of the famous photographs many of which can be viewed on-line. I also wanted to purchase a copy of Photographing Montana by Donna Lucey, a purchase I had not done on-line thinking that perhaps the museum would get some small benefit if I purchased it in Terry instead. I did not think about the absence of a sales tax in Montana, but if I had, that reason would have been at the top of my list.
Terry fit into the return trip following a quick drive through Fallon Flats, where the church of my father's childhood had been moved from Marsh. The church, typical of Montana, had the lights on and the door unlocked, though no one at home. A high school girl waiting for the yellow rural school bus couldn't tell us much about it, mainly because she went to a different church up the road a piece. Her eyes widened when we asked about a notorious murder that happened 70 years ago. I imagine she had something out of the ordinary to report at dinner that night.
We arrived in Terry a little before noon on Veterans' Day, but learned at the gas station on the edge of town that only the Post Office, a federal building, was closed. Everything else -- schools, banks and businesses -- swapped Veterans Day for the day after Thanksgiving. More time that way for hunting, gathering and stuffing.
We got directions to the museum, probably saving 30 seconds of driving time. Basically Terry consists of a few more streets than the number of cross-hatched lines you need for tic-tac-toe. We went to the door of the "World Famous" Evelyn Cameron museum and found posted "If door is locked, go to main museum building" with an arrow pointing to the right ---->. Posted on the door of the main museum. hand printed in heavy black permanent marker: "OFFICE HOURS OPEN Most Days About 9 or 10 Occassionally as Early as 7, But SOMEDAYS As Late as 12 or 1. WE CLOSE About 4 or 5, But Sometimes as Late as 11 or 12, SOMEDAYS OR Afternoons, We Aren't Here At All, and Lately I've Been Here Just About All The Time, Except When I'm Someplace Else, But I Should be Here Then, Too." Directly below the printed hours, tacked to the door I saw a neatly typed list of the museum directors and their home phone numbners. How nice and folksy, I thought! I called the first three, all of which had interesting and imaginative voice mail greetings, all ending in something like "Gone deer hunting, be back at the end of the season." I put my cell phone away, looked around for the hidden camera or laughing locals, saw none and walked back to the car.
Amazon.com got my book order when I returned to DC. The book arrived 4 to 5 days later and qualified for the "free shipping" treatment. All packages arriving in the mail excite a childish glee no doubt conditioned in a Pavlovian way during my formative years by the annual anticipation associated with gaily wrapped packages magically appearing under a tree that should only have produced pine cones. Freed of its corrugated restraints, the book revealed the beginning of a wonderfully crafted narrative of Evelyn Cameron's life as a rancher and photographer during part of four decades as the 19th became the 20th Century in Prairie County, Montana. Beautifully illustrating the biography, prints of a hitherto unknown archive of photos invited the eye to move through the book at a faster pace than reading, in an ordered way, would allow.
My eye caught the caption under a congregation -- upwards of fifty men, women and children -- standing in front of a church built just like the one we had seen less than an hour before in Fallon Flats. Here stood the entire 1920 congregation of the church that my father's step-father built. Somewhere in that crowd also stands my father, grandmother, aunts and uncles. One thing leads to another, and within a few days the Montana Historical Society has been enlisted to photocopy and send all Marsh, Fallon Flats and other pictures of the German-Russian community included in their collection of over 1000 Evelyn Cameron photos, one set to me and another to my Aunt who must also be frozen in time in front of that church and may be able to name nearly everyone captured there with her.
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