Follow in His Footsteps
The Adventures of My Father
by
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One Sunday afternoon on April 18, 1880, past mid-afternoon, a terrible storm came out of the southwest. Black clouds full of thunder and lightening rolled up, as I watched through a window. The clouds appeared to be crisscrossing in movement and forming deep tunnels of greenish blackness, and then the wind struck in fury. The air appeared full of boards and branches. A large shade tree in the front yard was uprooted. The rain poured down in torrents in the constant glare of lightening and peeling thunder. Then, as the lightening ceased, the darkness came on quickly. A half-hour later, we heard the steel-shod hoofs of a horse on the Procter Road. We stood in the lighted open door and the rider shouted to us that he had come through a path of havoc and that many of our neighbors were dead. Then he sped on into the night, bringing the disaster news to others. Father saddled and rode away to render what service he could. He returned just before dawn with stories of tragedy and destruction. This was the famous Marshfield Tornado that left no house standing in Marshfield, and cut a narrow swath of destruction for more than a hundred miles. I saw the forest trees - oaks two feet in diameter, twisted off a few feet above ground, the stump looking like a sheaf of splinters, but the majority of them were uprooted and all spread in a tangle over the ground. The freakish pranks of the tornado were almost unbelievable. For instance, The Rastofers just sat down to supper. The tornado took the house clean away, but disturbed none of those at the table. William and Marion Holst, my uncles, were courting Kate and Mary Meyer. The Meyer house was taken away, the roof of the smokehouse removed, and Marion was taken up and deposited standing in a barrel of soft soap in the smokehouse. "Give fools their gold, and knaves their power; Let fortune’s bubbles rise and fall; Who sows a field, or trains a flower, Or plants a tree, is more than all. Whittier Butte, the richest hill on earth became the ugliest with craters, ore dumps, polluted lakes and no trees - a depressing landscape. Beneath the surface is one of the richest mineral deposits in the world - but on the top is barren mountains and treeless terrain. The financially ambitious entrepreneurs known as the Copper Kings included W. A. Clark and Marcus Daly. These men were much involved in the history of Butte. Butte was a tragic place. The great hill was topped with mines. The mountainside was densely settled. Mr. Clark had his residence there. No spear of grass then grew in Butte, but the lawns around the Clark mansion were made of rugs of grass dyed to represent the vivid green of lawns. "W. A. Clark’s home was a three story red brick in the style of the 1880's with white stone ornamentation, small porticos with slender columns and elaborate gingerbread decorations . . . " In the mountains, some ten miles away, was a great recreation center maintained by Clark for the people of Butte. At the foot of Main Street stood the great parot smelter belching forth arsenic- laden smoke. Almost daily someone died of arsenic poison on the streets. The town was as dirty and drab as Mary MacLane pictures it in her book, "Of Selfish Memory," and the great red-light district was almost as active by day as it was by night. Whorehouses from mansions to hovels occupied two streets. Half-nude women sat on the windows or walked their beats, soliciting. "And so there is Butte, the promiscuous - the Bohemian, and all these are the Devils’ playthings. They amuse him, doubtless. Butte is a place of sand and barrenness. The souls of these people are dumb. The man who made the beds and kept the camp in order came to me and asked if I had a bedroll. I did not have one. He said there were no vacant beds in the bunkhouse, but that he would give me a bedroll and I could go to a cabin in the forest for the night. He brought bed and candle and showed me the trail into the forest. He told me that the cabin was about two miles away, standing close to the trail so that I could not miss it. I entered the forest, and the way was dark and the trail was narrow. The tangle of fallen trees among the thickets kept me to the trail. The darkness increased as I progressed into the forest. I had about decided that I missed the cabin. Surely I had come more than two miles, on this, my first trip into the mountains. I imagined that the dark forest was infested by mountain lions, bears, wolves and other vicious animals lying in wait for me. At last I came to the cabin close beside the trail. The door was open - a hole of blackness, darker than the darkness around. I lit my candle and entered. The cabin was bare; no bed, no chair, no chest or table. The door had fallen off, the window was gone. I picked up the door and leaned it by one corner against the opening. It presented no impediment against the predatory animals that, in my imagination, infested the forest. I spread my blankets in the corner farthest from the door and went to bed. I had hardly fallen asleep when I heard a sound in the cabin that brought me to wide awake attention. There was a tump, tump, tump. I could stand the suspense no longer, yet I feared to move to find the matches - to light the candle. Then the sound ceased. Had the monster left the cabin? It was like some big animal walking across the floor. Now it came toward me. It was standing at the foot of my bed. Any moment now would come the attack. No, it was walking away. Back and forth in the cabin went the tump, tump, tump. Then I found the matches and lit the candle.
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About the Book
My father, John Holst wanted to write a book about his life. After he died, I found parts of a manuscript, notes, letters, photographs and much reference material. I put this puzzle together. He tells most of the story, but I add my comments or explanations. My husband Gordon and I crossed the country, following in his footsteps -- going down the old roads, interviewing relatives and local people, browsing in libraries and searching in museums. So, my father and I are writing this story. I am a white-haired old lady of 75 now, but I remember so clearly how I listened to his stories in front of our fireplace and as I grew up I became his typist for most of his writings. So I knew him well. The first part of the book tells about life on a farm in Missouri as seen through the eyes of a young lad who loved every flower, tree and stream, but who dreamed of adventure and travel. He left his home when he was twenty and rode a freight train west, working along the way. In Idaho, he worked as a teacher, newspaper editor and gold miner. He was principal of the school in Gibbonsville and taught school in Salmon during the years 1901 to 1907. He spent his summers prospecting and mining in the gold fields in Idaho in 1902 to 1904. He then went to Montana and made many changes in the educational system in that state. After heading the School of Agriculture, Mechanical Arts and Home Economics of Montana State College, he left and went to work for the Indian Service in the Interior Department under Harold Ickes. John Holst experienced a terrible cyclone, a hovering UFO on a mountainside, being lost in the mountains with no food, an encounter with a mountain lion, serious illness and love for many women. I grew even closer to my father as I wrote his story, and miss him still. -Barbara
About the Author
Barbara Maltby was born in Bozeman, Montana in 1925. John Holst, the subject and co-author of this book was then head of the School of Agriculture, Mechanical Arts and Home Economics of Montana State College in Bozeman. The family later moved to Washington DC where Mr. Holst was employed by the Department of Interior in the Office of Indian Affairs. Barbara was educated in the public schools of Maryland. During World War II, she worked for the State Department and airfields in St. Croix, Virgin Islands and Bartow, Florida. She married Gordon Maltby who was an electrical engineer employed by General Electric, and they had three children. Barbara was a housewife and mother for many years and did volunteer work in the school system, a taxpayers association and pursued her hobbies of writing, genealogy, camping and travel. The Maltbys traveled a lot in Europe, Bahamas, Mexico, Canada, Africa, Greece, Egypt and all over the United States in a small camper. They lived on a boat named the Rubaiyat in Miami for a few years, as they wanted to lead full and exciting lives. When they retired, they planned the "Follow in His Footsteps" trip reading John Holst’s memoirs to help them go down the old roads, talk to the old-timers, walk through ghost towns, and visit museums and libraries. John Holst died in 1961, but it was as if he were traveling with Barbara and Gordon, telling them where to look and how it used to be. They took photographs along the way to put beside the old photos from the early days when John Holst was walking and riding across the West. Mr. Holst actually wrote most of the book, but Barbara weaves the story of their trip in 2000 as they try to follow the footsteps taken so many years before, bopping to understand her father’s quest. The book results in a tapestry of historic value, interwoven with a spirit of adventure and a search for the meaning of life and love.