August 1977 The Cuts the Ropes

8-2-77 Clarence and Margaret’s

Susie went to Clarence and Margaret’s to help Margaret make root beer and bread. I went over at 11:00. Frank and Clarence came in from shopping in Hays. Matilda came over to be with her grandchildren.

We were talking about how hard it is to make a telephone call around here. Margaret said that Urban Rural gives pretty good service. “They’ll let you use it any time and they’ll get the message to you somehow. I didn’t even know that my aunt died until four days after she was buried. I really felt bad about it because I would have gone home for her. The message came in at the mission and I never got it. She said that they should put up a pay phone at the mission or the police station would be perfect because if anyone tried to vandalize it, they could be arrested right there.” Margaret said that she goes to Zortman to make phone calls because the phone at the mission is a party line.

Matilda said that once when she was young the priest that was here made all the kids in the church take a vow never to drink for their whole life. She said, well, at least I kept that. Frank said that Cecilia and Matilda went to the celebration at Poplar a few weeks ago. They set up their tent and made their beds for the evening. Then they went over to see a friend and his wife insisted that they stay the night at their house, so they did. That night, a drunk ran into their tent and ran through it. He flattened the tent, their beds, and the metal pole was bent. Matilda said God was looking out for her because she would have been dead if she hadn’t spent the night with her friends.

8-2-77 Clarence and Margaret’s

Frank was telling us about the Fools Dance. He said it was a religious thing.

Al prayed before he picked every person. He’d take his stick and hold it up to the sun and pray. Then he’d bring it down and touch someone with it. Boy, I really wanted to duck into the tent, but mom sure scolded me and told me I shouldn’t do that. Long ago, it was an honor to be picked. I don’t know about now. There were three people picked that I didn’t know. One was a Blood from Canada and a Sioux and one I didn’t know anything about. There were two Gros Ventre. Al gave all his directions in English. He can speak English. Some people knew who we were in there because they saw us walk into the tipi. Al was so old that he said he didn’t have all the things he needed so he let us go back to our camp and gather some things. He had the canvas for the hoods. I went back and got a blanket from Mom, and I needed leggings so I tore my saddle blanket in half because I figured I could always sew it back together again, but just when I was ready to walk out, Al said, you can’t take those out with you. That’s bad medicine. Frank said he dropped everything. He watched all of that be burned up and he kept looking back at his saddle blanket.

Margaret said that this used to be put on when the morale of the tribe was low and people needed to laugh. I asked why a cow was used and Margaret said that it used to be a buffalo. Frank said that when they were up at the beef watching it be butchered, they had to eat a small piece of liver. “After we got back to the tipi, a guy served us the meat. See, when they butchered the cow, I watched them do it. They really boned it. They held up a nice steak out of the leg and I was standing right there and grabbed it. It was a nice piece of meat. I didn’t throw it.”

When we got back to the tipi, they served us boiled meat. He started to serve it counter clockwise. Al said, that’s not right. It should be served clockwise. I told Frank that I heard that if you squatted or sat down that you wouldn’t get anything thrown at you, Frank said, that’s right, but if you’re running, we can.

Margaret said that they weren’t prepared for Catcher to dance for the first time. They didn’t expect him to like it, but the spirit really took him away and he enjoyed dancing. He didn’t want to leave. She said that they’ll have a giveaway for him at Christmas.

Frank said that there used to be two groups in Hays, the Mountain Crows and Black Lodges. They were competitive groups and they always tried to outdo each other. They used to dance for a week at Christmas. They’d dance until 4 in the morning. Then they would sleep all day until 4 in the afternoon and then dance again. By the end of the week, you were danced out but you always enjoyed it. They tried to outdo each other at giveaways and feeds and boy when the two got together there was sure a lot of food. Frank said that he thought Matilda was in one of the groups and her husband was in the other. They even used to compete at the Hays Fair.

8-13-77 mission gym

Susie and I ate at a table with Margaret, Clarence, Catherine, Sissie and Moses Nez Perce at the wedding reception.

Margaret said that a lot of people changed their names here.

A lot of it was because of the mission, the schools and the government because of record keeping. These people only had one name, but they were changed so that they would have a first name and a surname. Like Mary Gone’s father; he was Gros Ventre Johnny. He didn’t have a first or last name. But Mary became Mary John. And Clarence’s grandfather was Cuts the Rope, and his son became Frank Cuts the Rope. Since the names have been changed, a lot of people don’t accept the original names. Sister Giswalda calls me Mrs. Cutty but I keep telling her that my name is Cuts the Rope. Sister Giswalda just won’t accept the change. The Gones name used to be Returns to War. It was changed to Gone, because when someone returned to war, they were gone.

There was a lot of pressure to change the Indian names from the schools, mission and government. We named our son, Catcher after one of his relatives but we also had to give him a baptismal name, Donald Francis. We never use that name and Clarence, and I have been talking about changing it back to just Catcher.

I was talking to Jack Plumage once. It was around 1969 and he was going to school in Missoula, the University of Montana. His name used to be Many Feathers, but it was changed to Plumage. He said that this made him mad and he wanted to change it back to Many Feathers but he never did. His sisters changed it back though.

The mission was really strict when the Ursulines were there, before 1936. The Ursulines came from France, and they had the very strict French tradition. They weren’t only strict at the mission, they were tough everywhere. You had to be in school with hands folded, eyes down and students had to be submissive and subservient. They forced this strict tradition on the people here, but it was confusing and rough on these people because they taught them one thing, Christianity, and they practiced another thing with this strict French Ursuline tradition. It sure confused the people here.

8-9-77 trailer

Late this morning, Clarence and Moses Nez Perce came up to visit. Moses had a cup of coffee with us, but he was very quiet. They were here for a few hours.

Clarence said that the Gros Ventre language has just about disappeared. “My parents spoke Gros Ventre in our home sometimes. I heard it, but I was young and I wasn’t interested in learning it.” Moses said that his parents spoke it in the home too. He can understand it, but he doesn’t speak it. “I was too young and I didn’t care. I couldn’t learn it.”

Clarence said that they lost a cow last night.

I don’t know what she died from. She had a calf and now we’ll have to bottle feed it. We had another orphan before that we got bottle fed. You’d never know it. She grew up pretty big like the others. The cow that died belonged to Catcher. She was almost like a pet. He doesn’t know about it yet. Now we have 18 cows left. Tootsie has four steers grazing on our land. Boy, they’re nice. That’s the best meat there is, grass fed steers. I’m going to deal with Tootsie and try to get two steers from her. As soon as we get the basement finished, I’m going to buy a freezer, and we’ll put it in the basement. Then we can butcher a cow whenever we need the meat. We’ll just fill up the freezer.

I asked Clarence about their land.

We have 500 acres of grazing land, and we have 200 acres in wheat. We share crop our wheat land. There’s a farmer who lives just south of the reservation. He’s white and he farms our land. He takes care of our wheat field just north of the house. We get about a third of the profits from this wheat land.

Clarence said that he likes deer meat.

It takes a little time to get used to, but it’s good. Antelope is too wild for me, but if you can get a standing shot at an antelope, it’s not as wild tasting. When they’re running, it makes the meat taste wild. Even for a deer, if you get one on the run, the meat tastes more wild. You have to take care of wild meat right away too, you can’t let it stand for too long, and you have to gut it out real good and right away. That’s one of the problems around here. These guys don’t take care of the meat fast enough. They let it sit in the back of the pickup for a while and then they’ll hang it up and let it hang overnight and butcher it the next day. They should take care of it right away. They let it stand for too long and that’s why the taste is too wild. This is the best time for deer meat. It is not as good in October and November. During rutting season, the meat isn’t as good. You guys should get a couple of deer for yourselves, and it would last you all winter. One of the stock inspectors could inspect the meat.

Clarence invited us out to their house and said that if we wanted to hunt on his land we could do that and when Susie’s dad was here, he could come too. “You can shoot birds out here and on Lake 17, too. There’s a lot of geese and ducks. But there aren’t any fish in Lake 17 because it is too shallow.”

Clarence said that there didn’t used to be hardly any Gros Ventre at the River District.

Most of the Gros Ventre were at Hays. This is where we’ve always been. The districts are mixed now, cause there’s a lot of intermarriage, but Hays still is mostly Gros Ventre and Lodge Pole is mostly Assiniboine. The Agency used to be mostly Assiniboine, but now it’s mixed and everyone uses the services up there, like the PHS hospital. But now the low rent housing up there in the River District is still mostly Assiniboine. The French Cree settled mostly in Hays and there was a lot of intermarriage between them and the Gros Ventre. The Assiniboine didn’t intermarry with the French Cree for a long time, about two generations, but they’re intermarrying now. (Those in their late teens and 20s – a few cases of intermarriage between Assiniboine and French Cree). That’s pretty recent.

I asked Clarence what he thought about the Catholic Indian Congress. I asked him about the community’s relationship with the Church, the bitterness about the mission’s role in Gros Ventre culture loss, yet the strong ties to the mission by these same people. I also asked him what he thought about the people who refer to the ‘traditional religion’ as traditional Catholicism and not the Indian religion. What the thoughts and feelings were about the traditional Gros Ventre religion after Catholicism was brought in.

I don’t come to church as much as I should, but I’m a Catholic. Almost everyone here is Catholic. I’m pretty traditional, too. I like the things the old way. There’s been a lot of changes in the church, like with this Congress. I don’t go as much as I should now. There are a lot of other people here too who are Catholic, but they don’t come to church very much either. We pray at home. Our family prays a lot. We pray at home when we have the need, when we need help or when we have some kind of trouble. Because of the church, we Gros Ventre people lost a lot of our language and culture. We’ve lost a lot and the mission was part of the reason for it. The government, too. But still people have strong ties to the church. People feel something strong with the mission. It was tough on my parents and grandparents. They went through the toughest changes. For the people in my grandparent’s generation, they were the real Indians. They still did things the old way. They had the Gros Ventre religion. But the changes were real strong with the people in my parent’s generation.

My mom went to school here at the mission, the boarding school. It was tough for them in the boarding school. They had to accept Christianity. They didn’t know anything about it and they didn’t even know English when they went to the schools. They must have been pretty confused. They had no choice about being Catholic. But still these people have a strong tie to this mission and church. It is hard to understand. It is confusing.

I think a lot sometimes about the priests who first came here. I wonder if they even thought about the religion here. The Gros Ventre had their own religion. They were real religious people, too. They prayed all the time. I think a lot about whether these priests ever gave any thought to our religion. Like the pipes down there (he pointed to the log house and to Janette Warrior’s where the two pipes are stored). I think a lot about those pipes, too. They’re our religion. They’re our whole heritage. Those pipes are all of us. I feel close to those pipes. I wonder whether the priests ever thought about those pipes. They were how we prayed. We didn’t pray to the pipes. It is like the cross or other symbols. We prayed through those things to the Creator. We had our own religion before the priests came here.

The Jesuits were the first ones here. That’s why everyone is Catholic. If some other groups came here, people would have had a choice about religion. But it was all Catholic. This whole reservation is Catholic. At least it used to be all Catholic. Now some people aren’t, but even today most people are Catholic here.

All these other churches on the reservation are recent here. They’re new.

I went to the Catholic Indian Congress and I wanted to help. I offered my truck to use. Margaret want to help, too. But to tell you the truth, I wasn’t that interested in it. There were a lot of people at the Congress, but there weren’t that many people from Hays. Most people from here went up to help or they went because they were curious. They wanted to know what was going on at the mission, but they went once and they didn’t go back. We were there on Sunday afternoon, and that was enough for me. This new thing is too different. People don’t like it. Only some people go to these things, but most people from Hays don’t like it. I just couldn’t get enthusiastic about it. The music was good, but I’m not going to start singing and clapping my hands.

I knew this Congress was important to Father. He talked about it all year. I just couldn’t get enthused about it, and a lot people felt that way.

I asked Clarence why the Assiniboine were more traditional than the Gros Ventre. How they were able to retain more religion, culture and language than the Gros Ventre, even though the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre were on the same reservation the same amount of time.

Clarence said that the Assiniboine did have more language and cultural traditions than the Gros Ventre.

The church has always been here in Hays and the Assiniboine didn’t have much to do with the mission. The mission didn’t have much effort with the Assiniboine. There are only a few Assiniboine in Lodge Pole; not that many people live over there. Most of the Assiniboine lived along the Milk River and at the Agency. There’s these districts. They even vote that way, the Hays, Lodge Pole and Agency districts. The Gros Ventre always lived in Hays and the Assiniboine always lived in Lodge Pole and the Agency. Now it’s changed some. There are some Assiniboine in Hays and Gros Ventre in Lodge Pole and the Agency. We all use the services at the Agency like the hospital.

My Mom is Assiniboine. My mother’s father, White Plume, was Gros Ventre and my mother’s mother was Assiniboine. So, my mom was Gros Ventre and Assiniboine. My father was a full blood Gros Ventre.

The mission was always in Hays and so they had more to do with the Gros Ventre. They didn’t have hardly anything to do with the Assiniboine. The mission effort with the Assiniboine is more recent, like in the last ten years. The Assiniboine didn’t go to the mission school. For a long time, the mission school was the only high school around here, but the Assiniboine didn’t go to the mission school. They went to Flandreau and to Harlem. So, they didn’t have as much influence from the mission as the Gros Ventre did.

The mass used to be said in Lodge Pole every once in a while. But mass was said in Hays all the time and all the big holidays were in Hays. Midnight mass and Easter mass was always in Hays, not in Lodge Pole. Mass over there was nothing like it is here. That’s why the Assiniboine had more language and traditions than we do.

Now there’s been so much intermarriage that these districts are more mixed. Some Assiniboine are here in Hays and Gros Ventre are at the Agency and some in Lodge Pole. Funny that Hays and Lodge Pole are so close to each other, but they never had anything to do with each other.

The whole reservation is Catholic. Those other missions, like that one down there (Christian Missionary Alliance) are new, and there’s just a sprinkling of those that go to these missions anyway.

The Indian religion for the Gros Ventre is gone. But there are some people who are interested in the Gros Ventre religion. Our parents knew the Indian religion, but they didn’t practice it. I guess they felt that they just couldn’t combine the Indian religion with Christianity. They kept them separate and they were told the Indian way was wrong and that Christianity was the right way and they were forced to give it up. But they still knew their religion.

Jim’s father was a medicine man, and he cured and doctored people. (I said that he ended up teaching Catechism in Gros Ventre at the mission). Clarence said, “That’s right, he did. A lot of people gave up the Indian religion because they had to, but they never forgot their religion. They were forced to give it up and take on Christianity.”

There are people now who think they are practicing Indian religion, but they’re not. No one knows enough of the Gros Ventre religion to practice it. Going off to pray in the boonies isn’t Indian religion. There are other people, like Gordon and Willie Bradley who are interested in learning about the Gros Ventre religion. I have a lot of respect for them. They want to practice the Indian way, but I don’t know how they’re going to learn it or who they’re going to learn it from. No one knows enough. I’m interested in the Indian religion too.

The Indian religion saw all of nature as something sacred. It was all the Creator. Some people don’t like it when people smoke pipes and pray. They don’t like to see that. They say it is gone. The Indian religion is gone. Why bother to try to bring it back. It can’t be brought back. It’s like the Congress, a lot of people don’t like to see that either.

Those pipes mean a lot to me. I think about them all the time. These priests missed the whole point of those pipes. They never even thought about those pipes. These pipes are everything to the Gros Ventre. They mean everything to us. It’s what we Indian people are all about. Me and Moses are just letting those pipes sit down there. Don’t think it doesn’t bother us. It does. It bothers us a lot. But we can’t do anything about it, because we don’t know anything about the pipes. We can’t do anything because there are strict rules about those pipes. If they’re not treated the right way, bad things can happen to us. The bad things that happen in this community could be because of the way these pipes are being treated now. The Gros Ventre didn’t lose their religion. It was never forgotten by these old timers. They just didn’t pass it on to their kids. But they never forgot it. They just couldn’t combine the Indian religion with Christianity. When they took on Christianity, they just stopped practicing the Indian way. They didn’t mix the two religions.

A lot of people are set in their ways here. A lot of these old timers and a lot of people my age don’t want to change our religion. There are strong ties to the mission. But even though the church has changed a lot in the past years, these people aren’t going to change. Changes in religion have to be gradual. The religious changes should be gradual but even then, a lot of people don’t want these changes.

Father wants things his way, but people won’t do it his way just cause he wants it that way. He comes here and opens his arms and thinks that people will change to his way, but they won’t. You know, it happens a lot around here on the reservation like with different positions here. Like with the BIA superintendent or positions on the school board or like the priest at the mission. New people come in one of these positions all the time and they’re not always the right man for the job. That’s the way it is with Father. He’s the wrong man for the job. He wants to make changes in the church that most people around here don’t want (Charismatic Renewal). He wants us to do it his way. Some people around here will do anything to please Father but not me. And a lot of other people won’t do it this way. They won’t change just to please him. I’m a Catholic and most people here are Catholics, but a lot won’t change to please Father.

There are a lot of people who see what’s going on around here. There are some people who put on an act. Some of these people at the mission who go to the prayer meetings and who were real involved in the Congress, they put on an act when they’re around the mission, but when they leave there and go away, they do things different.

Father doesn’t understand all of this. He’s the wrong man for this position here. Not many people from Hays went to the Congress. He has good intentions. He means well with what he’s doing, but it isn’t what people want. The people here want the traditional religion of the church, not this new thing that Father wants.

Our parents didn’t forget their religion, they just didn’t practice the Indian religion or pass it on. Jim’s father was a medicine man, Stiffarm. He had a lot of power; power to cure. Afterwards he gave up the Indian way. The mission changed a lot of these people. They believed that the Indian way was gone and didn’t practice it or pass it on.

They had their own religion before Christianity. It was forced on them. I don’t know if a lot of people think like me. Sometimes I think that I think differently from other people around here. I think a lot about the Indian religion. I’d like to know more about it, but I don’t know if I can. I don’t know who could teach me. Who knows about it.

I guess the Congress was a good thing in some ways. It did get people together. There are still some Indian people who still practice the Indian religion. I don’t know what they do, but I do know they practice the Indian ways. I have a lot of respect for them. I know that Andrew Gray (Jenny’s husband who is deceased) could tell you what he does, but I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know. He was Assiniboine. But some people try to practice the religion, and they really don’t know anything about it. They shouldn’t.

It wasn’t really until the volunteers came to the mission that they started to spend time in Lodge Pole.

We were talking about the road up to Whitecow Canyon and how tough it was up there. Clarence said that he used to go to school here at the mission in a wagon. Moses Nez Perce said that Father McNabb would come around and pick up all the kids in the wagon and it got pretty cold too. “He didn’t miss very many days either. There had to be a lot of snow on the ground before he decided not to come out or 40 below zero. Then they started to pick the kids up in the back of a pickup, no matter what the weather was like, and sometimes it was pretty cold back there.”

Clarence said that there used to be a lot more old people around here.

They’re gone in just the last few years. A lot of these old people don’t always tell you things they know. Some of them know a lot about the traditional ways, but they say they don’t know, but many of them do. A lot of them just don’t want to talk about it. Some of them learned not to talk about these things. They were taught that if they didn’t know about something they shouldn’t talk about it, and it goes for the pipes and the ceremony of the pipes. Some people want to share their stories. They like to tell their stories, but some people don’t want to share their stories. They’ll say they just don’t know nothing about it. My mom is that way sometimes.

8-24-77 Clarence and Margaret’s

We took Susie and her family out to meet Clarence and Margaret. Clarence was home with Catcher, Sissy and Matilda. Clarence said that Margaret was teaching at Urban Rural.

She’s teaching a one month summer course and then she’ll be teaching for ten months during the year. It is a teaching methods course. The School Community Council is hiring for the director’s job for the Title IV programs and Margaret applied. She finally decided that she would rather teach than be the director. Since Margaret has been teaching, I’m at home most of the day with the kids. Most of the time the kids are outside playing and I can paint here in the living room.

Clarence had between ten and fifteen paintings in the living room that he had painted within the month. He had a painting of two mallard ducks, a bear in a stream, a stag in a stream, a trapper on a horse leading another horse in the stream, a snow scene, a cabin at night – another snow scene. Tipis in a snow scene. A cabin, tipi and woman working a hide in the background. Deer in a snow scene. Cattle on the hills looking outside his window. The paintings were beautiful. Matilda was looking at the painting with the log house, and she said that it was her house.

My husband built that house and we raised our kids there. I’ve been feeling good lately and I enjoy coming out to see my kids and my grandchildren. And I like to come out here and to see the Bear Paws. I like to look at these mountains. Frank stays with me at home. He’s up at the Agency today working on the commodity program. (Frank is on the council and is responsible for determining eligibility).

Clarence said that there were two tipi rings next to the house. He pointed to the spot about ten yards from their house. He said that when the house was being built that the stones got messed up and were all moved. It was a good spot for them just above the creek.

When we left, Clarence pointed to the west and said that Chief Joseph came through this area. He crossed the Missouri River at the Cow Island. Steve Bradley, Willie’s great grandfather was working a freighter for the army at the time and helped Joseph cross the river. Clarence showed us the coulees that Joseph went through on the way up to the Bear Paws. They were just west of this land.

8-26-77 trailer

Frank came up to the trailer to visit. We had just finished dinner – Susie and her family, and Bob Hogan. We offered Frank dinner but he said he was eating all day because his mom fixes so much food in case someone comes to visit them.

He said that his mother needs an insulin shot every day for her diabetes. Usually, Ida, Clarence, Margaret or Cecilia give it to her. “I just can’t give it to her. It’s sort of funny that I can give shots to the cattle or my horses, but I can’t give it to her.” Matilda told him that she wasn’t an animal. Frank laughed.

He said that he wasn’t going to be on the council anymore after November.

My term isn’t up but I’m going to get out of the council. Someone else can run and take my place. I can’t devote enough time to the council. And I want to spend more time on my art, on my work. The council isn’t going to take care of me when I’m old, but my work will. I want to spend my time developing my art. Another reason that I’m getting off the council is that I have to spend so much time taking care of my mother and sitting with her. She’s really something else. I took her home a couple of days ago and I left her alone at the house for a little while. I went down to the Hays turnoff, and I was painting the sign down there for Bruce’s store (Diamond B Liquor and Groceries). When I got to the word, liquor I decided to stop. Frank laughed. After I quit, I went home to check on mom and to see how she was doing. She was gone. I looked all over the house for a note, but I couldn’t find one. I went and got Nucky’s kids, and they looked all over for her. She had hitched a ride up to the mission to go to Ginn Stiffarm’s wake. I told her the next time she decides to leave like that to at least leave a note for me so I wouldn’t get so worried. I asked her why she didn’t just come down to get me at the sign where I was painting. I would have driven her up to the mission. It was much closer than where she walked. She said that she didn’t want to bother me.

I complained to Frank about the Whitecow Canyon Road because he’s on the tribal council and I thought he might be able to tell me something about the plans for the road. I told him it was in such bad condition, it is full of holes and rocks. The road is ruining our bus and I pick up about 30 or 40 kids up there for both the mission and the public school and it is also dangerous for them. When the bus goes up there, the seats start to bounce, and the kids bounce up and down. I’m afraid they’ll fall off and get hurt. And it is a long road from the Hays road up to the turnoff and from the Whitecow turnoff around the canyon houses. I wish they’d fix it.

Frank said he agreed that the road was real bad.

I hate to go up there in my car. What’s real bad, too, is that the road is slanted down real steep on both sides of the road. And in the winter, that road is going to be real bad. The turn is so sharp, too, and if you miss the turn, there’s a very steep hill there. We have a new Indian Action director, and he’s in charge of the roads. They should call Indian Action, ‘Slow Action.’ The road situation on the reservation is sure a mess. The old Indian Action director made a terrible mess out of the paperwork, and he wasn’t getting anything done. The road crew spent almost all summer working on the Three Buttes Road. But the new director is straightening out the mess with the paperwork, and they should be getting much more done on the roads now. As soon as they get this paperwork figured out, they’ll get to the other work and then they’ll do the Whitecow Canyon Road.

Susie said that she heard from Charles that HUD was paying for the road from the houses to the turnoff, but they weren’t going to pay for the road from Hays past Granville’s and Bruce’s to the Whitecow Canyon turnoff.

Frank said that there used to be a lot of Mexican Nationals that would come up to this area to work. “They worked on the best farms picking beets and they did topping. They were sure good at it, and they could do it all day. They’d go back to Mexico with a lot of money. It wasn’t that much here, but a dollar’s worth a lot more in their money.”

This is one of my favorite of Clarence's paintings. The light he captured in this painting is really fantastic. I interpret this as a painting of the mission at night with a full moon. Perhaps it was a depiction of midnight mass. It was done before the old school burned down and before the new school was built ... which also burned down.

He also did pen and ink drawings. Clarence was an exceptional artist.

Frank published this book of humorous western cartoons in 1976. During the time we were in Hays, Frank was selling this book all over the west. Frank worked in a number of different media, including painting and drawing. Frank also had exceptional talent. And he had a wonderful sense of humor!

Frank and Clarence's father was an artist, and they both credit Frank Sr. for their artistic skills.

There were a lot of Cuts the Ropes in Hays and Susie and I had the opportunity to become really good friends with almost all of them. Matilda was the matriarch of the family and she was so loved by her children, her grandchildren and also by the community.