THE LACKEY RANCH

When reminiscing about the Matson's, we brushed across the Lackey family, for William and his wife were homesteaders on what later became Emil Matson's ranch.

William insisted that his family live in his backyard, as he expressed it, so when their son, Burley, married Esther, they bought a place a few miles – even backyards are large in Montana – from his parents. Driving a mile west on Big Wall Road from its intersection with North Gage, one finds a gumbo track heading north to a cluster of buildings, and that was where they bought.

It is a beautiful setting nestled under a high hill with large rock out-cropping and a magnificent view of the Snowy Mountains. It came with a two-story, homesteader's wood house as well as out buildings, a little utopia – excepting a small detail; the water tested unfit for human or animal consumption. Burley and Esther were told never even to use it on their garden.

At the time there was good water on Griffith's Ranch, and it was from there they hauled it, not an easy task. However, Esther loved flowers, and she created a magnificent garden next to the house. Trees were planted around it, and under her care they grew huge and strong. Years later, on the third attempt at a well, they finally struck potable water beneath one of their fields.

They sided their house, added a basement, and welcomed three sons, Morris, Willie, and Pete, into the world. The boys even had their own bunkhouse, which was a short walk from the main house and a closer journey to the open-air toilet. ( Who knows what home improvements might have been required had there been daughters, too.) Their sleeping room also had a blemish; no source of heat. Each night in winter the boys trudged to their frigid cabin, kicked off their boots, and jumped into their cots. In the morning the boots had to be ripped off the floor, to which they had frozen tightly overnight.

In the pattern of Grandparents Lackey, Burley and Esther wanted their sons living close to them, but Morris, working in Missoula, married Dorothy and moved to Oregon.

Willie married Rosemary, a divorcée, and they hauled an old homestead house next to his parents' home, where he could be their right-hand helper. Unfortunately, happiness was short-lived, for poor Rosemary became ill and died when just 37-years-old. Thereafter he remained a loner, working the ranch when times were good and in other places when money was tight. When he contracted cancer, Willie moved to Oregon, where Morris' son cared for him until his death. To honor his wishes, his ashes were brought back to Montana and interred on Emil Matson's place, the site of his grandparents' homestead, a place of fond, youthful memories. His little, fenced gravesite remains there.

Brother Pete married Audrey and lived in Roundup. In summers he helped farm the Beckman Ranch, another future number in this series, and always was home for branding, haying, and combining. In winter he worked for John Deere in town, and Audrey passed away just a few years ago.

When we visited the Lackey Ranch, the houses had furniture and books from the last renters, not to mention droppings from the present, feathered residents. The homes were slowly but surely collapsing into their dug-out cellars, windows were broken from springtime storms, and the once-modern siding had fallen off in many places to expose the original boards. No one ever did get the decent water into the house or bothered to install indoor plumbing, without which there was no reason to maintain the structures. The large barn, which held most of the animals, still stood strong. The magnificent roses and flower gardens died and disappeared with the winds years ago, and the towering trees looked like fearsome, ghostly creatures hovering over the decaying houses. The ranch is now just a small part of a larger cattle operation, but the tales of this family are vital episodes in Montana's history.