Let's Talk Wyoming -76 - Painting Wyoming in Autumn Hues - Football, Homesteads, and Faith

Brace yourselves for an adventure, as we journey through the wonder-filled realms of Wyoming! I'm your host, Mark Hamilton, and in this episode, we'll experience the vivid fall beauty of Wyoming, indulge in the rousing spirit of college sports and the charm of life on a homestead. Football enthusiasts, this one's for you; we're talking about the Wyoming Cowboys' thrilling face-off with Texas, and we're also acknowledging the incredible Cowgirl volleyball team's record-breaking streak. But, what's life without a faithful companion? Meet Luca, our 14-month-old Belgian Malinois - the latest addition to the Hamilton family, straight from a rescue in Poulsen, Montana.

Hold on to your hats, as we delve into the enthralling past with an inspiring story from the heart of Wyoming. Hear about the resilience and community spirit of Florence Blake Smith, a Chicago-born woman who daringly chose to establish a homestead in Wyoming. Her captivating tale paints a vivid picture of frontier life and the true spirit of a trailblazer. As we wrap up, let's reflect on a timeless passage from Matthew 5:3-11, discussing its contemporary relevance and how it ties in with the phrase 'Ride for the Brand' - a core principle of our Western ethos. Join me for this heart-warming and thought-provoking journey through Wyoming's unique lifestyle, weather, sports, and homesteading.

Transcript

Mark Hamilton: 0:19

Good morning and welcome to Let's Talk Wyoming. I'm Mark Hamilton, your host. Today. We'll be taking a look at our Wyoming fall weather. We'll be talking about our Wyoming cowboys. We'll also be talking about our new addition to our family. We'll take a look at a woman alone on her claim here in the state of Wyoming and finally, a little guidance in our walk in today's world. Thanks for joining us and we hope you enjoy the show.

Mark Hamilton: 1:00

We're going to look at Wyoming weather here on the 21st day of September. The month of September is coming to a close. Looks like fall is slowly but surely starting to settle in a little bit more. Every day. We've been pretty warm in the afternoons, cool at night. Overnight Last night we got into the 40s, 44 this morning when I got up. We're looking at some rain coming in and a little bit of a cool down. So we're starting that gradual trend down here in the state of Wyoming. But definitely fall is a gorgeous time. Threes are starting to change and looking at some of the long range forecast with El Nino and some of the effects it could have seen little different views on what we're looking at for winter ahead, but right now it's beautiful fall weather here in Wyoming Taking a look at Wyoming sports.

Mark Hamilton: 1:58

The Wyoming Cowboys had made the trip down last weekend to Austin, texas, taking on the University of Texas, ranked number four in the most current polls. Going off their defeat of Alabama the previous week, cowboys hung tough. Just really proud of the Cowboys. They came out and scored the first touch out of the game and they're kind of waiting for what's going to happen if Texas is really going to open the floodgates. At the end of three it was 10-10. Cowboys got kind of a bad call on a play down by the goal line, had to go for the field goal to tie it and then a couple plays happened that Texas speed got the best of our team and they did make some plays that they weren't making previously and they did score three touchdowns in that third quarter To make the final 31-10,. Texas takes the win. Cowboys, valiant effort, proud of the Cowboys. They had hostile crowd 100,000 people. It was kind of funny because the Wyoming fans they showed were clear up in the upper sections, the Bob Euker seat for people familiar with that phrase were up there in the nosebleed seats rooting for the Cowboys.

Mark Hamilton: 3:13

So Cowboys are back home this weekend as they take on Appalachian State and people are going. What type of team is that? Appalachian State has always had tough football teams and I saw this year they played North Carolina, a ranked team, into overtime, finally came out with a win and Matt Brown, who actually was the old Texas coach taken over at North Carolina, had made the comment that they didn't want to schedule Appalachian State again. Appalachian State had beat North Carolina last year. So Cowboys are going to have their hands full. They're definitely going to have to bring their A game. This is kind of one of those games that are coming off the Texas game and maybe a little bit of let down the week before you start conference play next week. So I'm looking for a tough one on Saturday night at the war Wyoming and Appalachian State. The other team we've talked about and I've mentioned before, the Wyoming Cowgirl volleyball team. They are 10-0 and really surprised me after I think I've said earlier after seeing them and that scrimmage up at Cody Wyoming they have done well. So they will start Mountain West Conference play so we'll see how they end up going on with their season Cowgirl volleyball 10-0.

Mark Hamilton: 4:36

Taking a quick moment for some personal news We've talked about a lot about our dogs here at our house and we had a German Shepherd that we lost back in May by the name of Duke and he was just an outstanding boy, and so I've been looking for a new boy and had looked a lot of pups and different things as far as what we should do to replace Duke. Now we did get Duke from a rescue up in Poulsen Montana Life-saving animal rescue up there LSAR. If you're ever interested in getting a dog, just look at that Initials LSAR life-saving animal rescue up in Poulsen Montana. Great ladies up there. How they run their rescue is that they have all the dogs, go to their members, take them in and take care of the dogs, and they do a great job. They just have quality operation up there. So I'd gotten to the point just about to get a pup and try and decide which pup to get, and I saw an ad that they had for a 14 month old Belgian, malwa, and I knew right away when I saw the name. They called him Lucky Duke. That must have been a sign when I saw that name Duke, and I thought there's an opportunity to rescue that boy and bring him home, and so I made the trip up.

Mark Hamilton: 6:11

It's a long trip up to Polson, Montana, nine hours up, nine hours back. Yes, I made that trip for a dog and got up there and picked him up, went on Friday and picked him up on Saturday again. That trip is just worth it to make that trip up and into Western Montana, this gorgeous country. Having lived about 18 years in Montana, it's just a gorgeous state, that western part, those mountains. And so got to go to Paulson and that's the first time I've actually been right to Paulson. It's right on the south end of Flathead Lake and gorgeous country. Up there They'd get to see a black bear by rolling an which is between Missoula and Polson, running across the fields out there. It's kind of a strange sight to see. And I got to Paulson, got up the next morning, went to pick up Luke, we have decided on a name and loaded him up in the truck and we started the trek home.

Mark Hamilton: 7:15

And just an outstanding dog. He has been just nothing but great with all the other animals, with the cats. He stays right by you. Right now as I'm talking, he's sitting here right beside me and he definitely is a shadow and I call him corporate security, he won't let me out of his site and so I guess I have a new friend that will be with me. Gonna have to take him everywhere.

Mark Hamilton: 7:47

14 months old, Belgium, Malinois. We did an EM-bar test. We sent it in. We'll find out if he does have any German Shepherd in him but he looks and acts just like a Malinois. So again, everybody's happy. We did have is a that's younger that female, and she got to the point that she was just getting too big for our older dogs. We have two little older dogs that were rescues and she's just absolutely in seventh heaven with Luke in the house. They play endlessly in the backyard and our morning walks are quite an adventure between the two of them. But dogs do make a difference in your life and there's a lot of them out there, a lot of situations that people are looking to place dogs and it's the time that dog will make a lot of difference in your lives. But we do have a new member here in the Hamilton house, pretty excited about how good a boy is.

Mark Hamilton: 8:55

Today in our history section we want to look at a story from Wild Historyorg by Rebecca Hine. A woman alone on her claim, a huge bull, probably the kingpin of the herd, pod the air, blew like mad and bellowed and acted like someone had stepped on his foot when he walked slowly nearer, swinging his head from side to side and kicking up clouds of dust and throwing them over his back. I too pod the air and blew back at him with a good copy of Bronx Chair. It had not occurred to me to become frightened, but I learned an hour later that nothing but the grace of God, who looks after fools and children, had been entirely responsible for my safety. That evening the men around the supper table at the neighbor's ranch admitted they would not go through the pasture of bulls except on horseback. It was 1921 and the person in this Wyoming pasture was Chicago-born Florence Blake. The owner of the bulls had assured her that they wouldn't bother her. The trek through the bull pasture may have been Blake's wildest adventure in three years' homesteading.

Mark Hamilton: 10:08

On her claim 57 miles south of Gillette, wyoming, in 1920, blake purchased the relinquished month of 640 acres meaning that it was claimed on which someone else had failed to prove up. She lived on it alone for seven months a year for the next three years, complying with the current law. Land law had gone through many changes since Congress passed the Homestead Act in 1962, starting in about 1869 with the Durban Brothers sheep ranching operation near Cheyenne, homesteaders had been moving to Wyoming hoping, as did others in the West, to take up government land at little or no cost and make a living from it. Seven new laws or modification of the original law were enacted between 1862 and 1916,.

Mark Hamilton: 10:59

When Blake ran into a young male acquaintance in downtown Chicago one early fall day and heard his tale of taking up claim in Wyoming, she determined to do the same. The most recent law affecting Blake's ambition was passed in 1912, and since she didn't have to live on her claim all year, she could spend the five coldest months in Chicago working to finance her endeavor. After the conversation, I couldn't think of nothing else but 640 acres of free open land and all mine. Some days, she reported, it looked more like an ideal vacation than a struggle, but of course I was looking through the wrong end of the glasses at the time, for even I was required to improve the land to the extent of $1.25 an acre. As friends, family and coworkers heard about Blake's plan, they showered her with food, clothing, furniture and envious questions. Her mother supplied eight heavy cases of canned and box food, and friends and neighbors added to her stock. For shelter, she purchased a 9x12 foot portable garage and had it shipped on a train a few days after her departure.

Mark Hamilton: 12:12

On March 21st of 1920, the Chicago Tribune reported that two sisters, mary and Nora Russell, had also filed on Wyoming homesteads and had traveled on the same train with Blake. She mentions them, though not by name. They arrived in Gillette in an April snowstorm. Low conditions kept Blake in town about a month, during which she worked at various jobs as an attorney secretary in a tiny office. She might have written a bestseller had I thought about it. What tales of infidelity, rape and wife beating I did here she continues. This was the great West. Life was supposed to be in the raw and plenty rough. I was only 21 at the time and wished for earmuffs, often to hide my confusion and what I was compelled to listen to.

Mark Hamilton: 12:59

When the rose became passable, blake hired two trucks, one for her portable house and the other two to haul a stove and lumber for her cupboards, a floor and an outhouse. The Chicago man who sold her the portable garage house to be assured her that it could easily be assembled by a woman. However, three Husky men needed an entire day to assemble the house, laying to an outhouse. The latter had no door and a good view of the nearby pumpkin buttes. In a few weeks Blake had settled into her routine. Tending to her garden, hauling water from nearby spring and various cooking experiments kept her busy.

Mark Hamilton: 13:36

She went for a walk every morning. I would sit cross-legged on my pet rock and watch the sunset behind the bighorn mountains and listen to the many birds settling down for the night. The metal arcs were singing their sweet song of the day, the hills were covered with wildflowers and the air was so good and so sweet. The garden she would pour to was a big pain in the neck. Rabbits ate it promptly as it appeared above the ground. She put up a fence, but with no plumbing in the house. She never realized how few cups of water in a bucket can hold until you have to walk a couple hundred yards to the edge of a draw, climb down a steep bank and fill your bucket and climb back up, only to have it slosh over and lose half of it as you climb back up. A friend later gave her a 10 gallon cream can, and any company, probably mail, was always willing to make a few trips to fill it. Her nearby neighbors, a ranch family of seven, lived two and a half miles away and became her steadfast friends. In addition there were dozens of ex-soldiers on claims that year. I met many of them and they proved good friends and indeed they were always willing to bring my mail from Savageton and to see that I had plenty of wood and coal for my big box besides the stove.

Mark Hamilton: 14:55

Savageton is a hamlet 32 miles south-south west of Gillette Passerby is. Usually cowboys or ranchers also stopped at Blake's house to offer a ride into Gillette. They often bought her groceries and asked if she needed anything. In fact, residents of the whole region appeared to have showered her with care. Men constantly invited her to dances almost always lasted all night. If they stopped by to visit her, they brought food and often cooked it, helping with kitchen cleanup after the meal. In her turn, blake always helped her neighbors when asked, but loved her small homestead so much that she stayed there.

Mark Hamilton: 15:34

As much as possible Required to improve her land, she hired a man to plow and seed 40 acres of wheat. He must have planted bird seed. The crop failed not only because the birds ate what little came up, but because the ground was rocky I later received credit for my effort. She added but no money. It was a dry summer. At the end of her second year she dropped 320 acres from her claim because she couldn't afford to improve that parcel. Although each year during her five months in Chicago she earned enough to finance her Wyoming time, that money mostly covered basic expenses. Still, she could somehow afford trips to Yellowstone National Park, devil's Tower and a ranch she called the Horseshoe Ranch, a working ranch west of Sheridan Wyoming, near the Eaton's Dune Ranch, some of whose staff and guests she met Occasionally. The Gillette News or Campbell County Record reported on her activities and short notices in their Neighborhood News section near the end of each October.

Mark Hamilton: 16:37

When she had to leave soon, the nights were getting awfully nippy and I wore my flannel pajamas, my brother's wool socks and my bathrobe to bed. I did that because the house was so cold in the morning I wasn't thought out enough to build a fire. The stove was too small to allow her to bank the coals, but she figured out a quick way to start a fire before getting back in bed With the house getting warm. Sometimes I slept on soundly and when I would again wake him. The sun would be well over the hill to the east, the fire out and shack almost as cold again.

Mark Hamilton: 17:12

Blake emphasized that she didn't mind the various privatizations because life in Wyoming was so much more pleasant than in Chicago. Near the end of her third year she became engaged to Archibald Smith, a resident of Gillette and a former rancher in the area. The couple settled in Cheyenne where Arch had been appointed commissioner in charge of the Dairy Foods and Oil Division for the Wyoming Department of Agriculture. After five years in Cheyenne, florence Blake Smith proved up receiving the patent to her homestead. The following year, she wrote, our baby girl was born and my cup of happiness was indeed full and overflowing. Then, in 1962, florence Blake Smith published her lively memoir of her years on her homestead near Salveston the Cow Chips and Cactus. By Florence Blake Smith, the homestead in Wyoming.

Mark Hamilton: 18:08

Most people are definitely hearty souls and they are what made our state of Wyoming what it is today. And finally, I want to share something that I came across on Sunday in the town of Basin Wyoming, and this was outside the old Catholic Church, and it's about the Beatitudes and I'd like to share those today. I think they all apply to us every day of our lives. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comfort. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Mark Hamilton: 18:49

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, and they shall be satisfied. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness's sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God. And blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. And at the bottom of this passage from Matthew 5, 3-11, blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you. Because of me, rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. Good's to ponder here in these times that we're facing. Thanks for joining us today and we hope you enjoy our podcast. Just as the code of the West, we ride for the brand and we ride for Wyoming