THE SIDERIUS RANCH

In 1900 in Modersville, Michigan, Peter Siderius arrived into this world. He was the second of 14 children born to Everet Siderius and his wife, Gertrude De Boer, both immigrants from the Netherlands. In 1907, when land was opening up in Montana, the family moved to Kalispell, where, as a child, Peter helped the family financially by delivering their farm's milk and other products around town and to the Flathead Reservation.

Another responsibility of Peter's was to run and fetch the midwife when his mother was delivering a child, so the size of the family suggests he was probably the greatest sprinter of all time, though apparently undiscovered.

Sadly, it was also his duty to summon his aunt when baby sister, Susie, passed away.

Pete's education stopped after the eighth grade and was replaced by work as a logger at the Somers (MT) Tie Mill – their output was for train tracks, not necks – to help support his family until he was 29. That was when he fell under the spell of a charming school marm, Louise Johnson, who had grown up in Idaho. One night he gave her a ride on a load of wood he was driving, which does not seem a highly romantic date, but it worked magic on them. That year they were married at the First Presbyterian Church in Kalispell and then moved to Somers.

Pete's station in life did not change a bit – he continued manually bucking railroad ties at the mill – though as a married man he did it to support his own family, not his parents'.

To elaborate on his labor, Pete carried and loaded 500 ties per day, each weighed about 150 pounds, and a load for him was between 300 and 400 pounds. 75,000 pounds of wood moved each day; that amounts to 37.5 tons, so we see what a pittance of work was memorialized in the song "Sixteen Tons." Peter Siderius did that for 25 years before the company bought a forklift for him to operate. That machine was developed in the early 20th century, and he likely wondered how it took so long to filter down to his job.

Louise and he had six children that survived, and when he retired in 1965, they moved to Bigfork. Of course, they did other things, as well, and the ranch we visited in 2009 was one of them. Originally homesteaded in 1893, it has changed hands many times and been in the family since 1940.

The attractive barn was built in 1918, and children that grew up there had fond memories of climbing up into it to annoy the resident ram. Dangling down something on a rope to attract its attention – like a red cape for a bull – they would jerk it up as the animal charged, butted its head on the concrete wall, and staggered away.

With all the amusement it provided the kids, the ram may be said to have had the last laugh – or bah – for one day it succeeded in smashing a hole completely through the barn well. It is easy to guess who got the blame for the damage.

Of all the landowners our project allowed us to meet, Tom, Peter's son, and his wife, Terry, were among the most congenial. They treated us as family members and not only shared their history but also a steamer trunk full of precious photographs.

Readers of this series will remember our Christmas offering, the children in the snow with their sleds and a firearm. The little girl pictured was Terry's mother, and the Hockaday Museum in Kalispell used that painting in the announcement it mailed for Jane's 2010 exhibition there. Terry and Tom attended that opening, presented the artist a huge bouquet, and wanted every painting of their ranch.

Before we consign the trunkful of photographs to memory, there is another of Mrs. Siderius' family connections that embraces a rousing tale and features one of Larry's most cherished of the paintings, for its marvelous, muted tones and for the simple grace, elegance, and beauty of the subject.

Terry's great-uncle was a man named Frank G. Doll, born in Sweden in 1865 and like many another immigrant awarded a phonetic, but incorrect, spelling of his surname, Dahl, when entering the U.S. This is what comes of letting the government run things.

From Minnesota he and several countrymen struck out for gold mining in Alaska, and their experiences there are remembered in a book, Klondike Saga: The Chronicle of a Minnesota Gold Mining Company, written by Carl Lokke and available from the University of Minnesota Press, 1965.

Back in the U.S. around 1900 Frank and his brother, George, homesteaded in what is now the Lost Trail Refuge in Montana. A web article on Pleasant Valley mentions Frank Doll and his wife, Josephine, on the east side of Medicine Lake, but for unknown reasons that marriage did not endure.

The Doll brothers formed a land company and for a time traded in homestead properties. Medicine Lake, so-called when Native Americans had possession, is known today as Dahl Lake due to the family's operations.

When Selma Peterson, born in 1873, traveled from Minnesota to visit her brother, Oscar, at Kalispell, Frank met her, and the painting title tells the remainder of the tale; Frank Doll soon married his doll. He remained a man of business; in Kalispell the couple operated the famous Dillon, in its heyday the city's elite hotel, which was subsequently razed.

Thanks to the atmosphere of this modest, but powerful, painting, however, Selma will remain always as youthful and fresh as the day her adventuresome husband first saw her.