2nd of Four Parts
Vol. 19, No. 02, Wednesday, January 10, 2001
BVD: What was Lincoln like when you first moved there?
TJK: The town itself to me doesn’t seem that much different. I don’t notice that much change. But there has been some, like the new school, the library, and a few new businesses. Maybe I would notice the changes in the town more if I were interested in it, but since I’m not, I don’t notice much of those changes.
I am interested in the surrounding countryside, and that has changed a lot because aside from logging and road building, an awful lot of people have moved in there. For example, Stemple Pass Road. There were far fewer places along Stemple Pass Road, and most of them were just log cabins. Not modern log cabins, but ones that must have been built decades and decades ago, and the few year-round residents were real old-timers, another culture, not modern people. Stemple Pass Road at that time looked like a bit left over from the old frontier days.
If you go down Stemple Pass Road today, you’ll see these fancy, pretentious, modern things that really look out of place in the woods. But the very few cabins that existed before were not pretentious. They weren’t modern. In fact, once when my parents came to visit me in the early 1970s, we drove along Stemple Pass Road and my mother, who is bourgeois to the core in spite of her background, asked in a sneering tone “Who are these people who live in these places? Are they just drifters or what?” They weren’t drifters, but stable old-timers, retirees. But they weren’t concerned about status and the appearance of their homes. They were old-fashioned enough so that they didn’t care whether their houses had an appearance of middle-class respectability. So, by my mother’s standard their homes looked shabby.
You can see how Stemple Pass Road has changed and similar changes, I think, characterize a lot of the country around Lincoln, because a lot of places where there are cabins now, there were no cabins when I got there.
BVD: Your cabin looked right at home—harmonious—with its surroundings in the woods. Did you use plans to help you with the building of it or did you plan the building yourself?
TJK: I just planned it myself.
BVD: And you built the cabin yourself?
TJK: I had a little help from my brother, but very little. The amount of help he gave me was insignificant. Mostly I did it myself.
BVD: How long did it take you to build it?
TJK: It took me from the beginning of July 1971 until I think late November. But the work was interrupted by some trips I made to Great Falls for various purposes. Much more important, it was interrupted when I scalded my foot. On August 1, 1971, I was so clumsy as to knock over a pot of boiling soup. It poured right down into my sneaker and scalded my foot so badly that, on doctor’s orders, I remained inactive for about 5 or 5 1/2 weeks.
BVD: I’m curious. Did you have enough light in your cabin? Was it light enough in there?
TJK: In the winter?
BVD: Anytime.
TJK: Yeah. It was light enough. Except for when it got dark outside, of course.
BVD: Who were the people you first met when you came to Lincoln, and who were your neighbors?
TJK: Well, obviously, the realtor. But, the first people whom I knew socially when I moved onto my property were Glen and Dolores Williams, who still own the cabin next to mine. They never lived there permanently. It was only a vacation home for them. I was always on friendly terms with them, but I never became at all close to them. And, Irene Preston and Kenny Lee. They were, what we call, colorful characters. He used to have some interesting stories…
BVD: And when did you meet the Lundbergs?
TJK: I think I first met Dick Lundberg around 1975, because until that time I had a car, later an old pickup truck. But after about 1975 I had no functioning motor vehicle, and that was when I started riding to Helena occasionally with Dick. I think I met Eileen in the late 1970s or early ’80s.
BVD: So, these people you met were the people living in close proximity to you.
TJK: Yeah. Glen and his wife, as you know, were living just below me, and I also met Bill Hull and some members of his family. Aside from clerks in stores and so forth, those were the only people I got to know until, oh, probably into the’80s. When Sherri (Wood) took over the library, I started to get to know her. Eventually I got to know Theresa and the Garlands. I got to know them by going into their store. So, I didn’t really get to know people there to any significant extent for the first 10 years I was there, or more.
BVD: What about Chris Waits?
TJK: The first I met him would probably be somewhere around the mid ’80s. I don’t remember. He used to sometimes pass me on the road. I may have taken a ride from him once or twice—I’m not sure if I ever did at all. But I know he used to pass me on the road and say hello, and that’s the only acquaintance I ever had with him, except once I was at this yard sale at Leora Hall’s, and I talked briefly to him there. See, I pretty much spent my time in the woods and kept to myself, and so, really, had no occasion to meet anyone except the people living in the immediate area.
BVD: I see. He didn’t really live in the immediate area. About Leora Hall’s yard sale, where you briefly talked to him: in his book, Waits claims that you bought silver or silver-plated flatware there. But Leora Hall has said that you positively did not buy any silver or silver-plated flatware, because she didn’t have any for sale. She does, however, remember seeing you there and even remembers the specific items bought. Any comment?
TJK: I’ve never bought any silver-plated or silver flatware from Leora Hall or anyone else.
BVD: Well, let’s move on then. Did you follow routines in your life?
TJK: I didn’t really have routines, but certain activities—such as cooking meals or fetching sticks for kindling—tended to fall into routine patterns.
BVD: What was an average day like for you in Lincoln?
TJK: That’s a very difficult question to answer because I don’t know that there was an average day. My activities varied so much according to the season and according to the tasks I had before me on a given day. But I will describe a representative day…