HAPPY NEW YEAR

Oil on Old Barnwood

Q; What's wrong with this Montana New Year's Eve Party?

A: It lacks women!

Q: Why does it?

A: Because there weren't any!

Well, at least not so many back in the early 1900s. Not every eastern girl was a Rachel Schroeder that would jump on a train at the drop of a marriage proposal and head out to the rigors of the Wild West to give birth to Fannie Sperry; or the young woman teacher heading to Chester in 1904 that braved a train and stagecoach safari and mud streets and sod houses to come out here

and pound a little learning into the young roughnecks growing...