Montana DNRC Oral History Project______________________________________________________________________________

1. Interviewee: Dorothy Hahn2. Interviewer: Kris Ellis and Denise Thompson3. Date of Interview: April 13, 20174. Location: Hahn Ranch near Winston, Montana

Introduction

This oral history provides fascinating details about Dorothy Hahn’s experiences ranching near what is now Canyon Ferry Lake, as well as Winston, Montana. The interview highlights the struggles Montana ranchers faced in the late 1940s when the federal government built Canyon Ferry Dam and condemned ranches along the Missouri River. At 91 years old (at the time of the interview), Dorothy’s experiences span many decades and reveal how ranch life in Montana has evolved over time. The interview also provides an excellent look at the important role women have played in Montana’s agricultural and ranching history.

Interview

00:00:02 Kris Ellis: We are here with Dorothy Hahn this afternoon and it's April 13, 2017. We are doing this oral history for the oral history project for the DNRC conservation districts, From the Ground Up. If you can, start with your full name.

00:00:30 Dorothy Hahn: Dorothy M. Hahn.

00:00:40 Kris Ellis: What was your maiden name?

00:00:40 Dorothy Hahn: Whitten.

00:00:47 Kris Ellis: And the day you were born, and year?

00:00:50 Dorothy Hahn: I was born the 08/21/1925.

00:00:57 Denise Thompson: August 21, 1925?

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00:00:57 Kris Ellis: I think you told me your husband's name was Paul…and the names of your children?

00:01:15 Dorothy Hahn: Beverley.

00:01:17 Denise Thompson: Is that erly?

00:01:22 Dorothy Hahn: Beverly.

00:01:25 Denise Thompson: And she's the oldest?

00:01:26 Dorothy Hahn: Yes.

00:01:27 Denise Thompson: Is she your wisest?

00:01:31 Dorothy Hahn: Well, I can't say that… and then Charles and John.

00:01:48 Denise Thompson: And Charles goes by Chuck.

00:01:56 Kris Ellis: Did your husband grow up in this area, too?

00:02:02 Dorothy Hahn: Yes, he grew up in Townsend.

00:02:08 Kris Ellis: And you were born and raised out here, too?

00:02:08 Dorothy Hahn: No, I'm from Iowa.

00:02:16 Kris Ellis: Well, do you want to tell us where you were born and your parents' names?

00:02:21 Dorothy Hahn: I was born in Buffey, Iowa. My parents were...gosh I gotta stop and think. Marion Albert Whitten.

00:02:59 Denise Thompson: His name was Albert?

00:02:59 Dorothy Hahn: Marion Albert Whitten.

00:03:00 Denise Thompson: His full name was Marion Albert Whitten.

00:03:07 Kris Ellis: Is it Marion?

00:03:12 Dorothy Hahn: Yeah.

00:03:12 Denise Thompson: And what was your mom's name?

00:03:14 Dorothy Hahn: Mable Katheryn.

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00:03:28 Denise Thompson: And what was her maiden name?

00:03:33 Dorothy Hahn: It was Nordeen. Her parents were full blood Swedes. Her mother was born in Sweden and her grandmother was born in Sweden, I mean her grandfather.

00:04:08 Kris Ellis: And your dad, where was he born?

00:04:09 Dorothy Hahn: He was born, I have some papers in there.

00:04:25 Kris Ellis: That's okay, we can come back to that. Did they farm in Iowa?

00:04:30 Dorothy Hahn: No, my dad was on the railroad. He was a section foreman on the railroad. Mom was a housewife and mother to the kids. She stayed home. People didn't work out much then.

00:04:47 Kris Ellis: How many siblings did you have?

00:04:50 Dorothy Hahn: There was seven of us altogether. Six besides me.

00:04:57 Kris Ellis: Where did fall? In the middle?

00:04:59 Dorothy Hahn: I was right in the middle.

00:05:05 Kris Ellis: Can you tell us the names of your siblings?

00:05:08 Dorothy Hahn: There was Charles and Evert and Bob and Gilbert and Alberta. Is that six?

00:05:36 Kris Ellis: That's five.

00:05:38 Dorothy Hahn: Oops, I forgot somebody. Oh, Jack, he was the youngest.

00:05:49 Kris Ellis: Were you between Bob and Gilbert, then?

00:05:53 Dorothy Hahn: Yes, I was between Bob and Gilbert.

00:06:01 Kris Ellis: How did you end up in Montana?

00:06:02 Dorothy Hahn: I had an aunt here and I came out and visited.

00:06:09 Kris Ellis: How old were you then? When you were young you started coming out to visit?

00:06:13 Dorothy Hahn: I was nineteen.

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00:06:18 Denise Thompson: So you came out to visit your aunt and you never went back? You decided to stay here permanently and that's when you met your husband?

00:06:30 Dorothy Hahn: I married him and that was it. We went back twice in all the time that he was alive.

00:06:42 Denise Thompson: How soon after coming to Montana did you get married?

00:06:49 Dorothy Hahn: Three years.

00:06:51 Kris Ellis: Did you meet him right away?

00:06:54 Denise Thompson: Did you guys date right away?

00:06:58 Dorothy Hahn: No, it was quick.

00:07:05 Kris Ellis: Was he already a rancher? Did he grow up on a ranch?

00:07:08 Dorothy Hahn: Yes, he lived in Helena for quite a while because his father was at the business college in Helena. He bought the ranch down at Canyon Ferry Lake.

00:07:32 Kris Ellis: His father did?

00:07:34 Dorothy Hahn: Paul's father did.

00:07:35 Kris Ellis: What was his name?

00:07:36 Dorothy Hahn: SAD Hahn. Stephen Arnold Douglass Hahn.

00:07:42 Denise Thompson: They called him SAD, huh? Whereabouts where the lake is, was the ranch?

00:07:51 Dorothy Hahn: You know when you go up the hill to go to Winston, right there on the other side of Silos there is a road that says Hahn. You went right down there and you'd drop right down into the bottom.

00:08:08 Denise Thompson: And that's where it was?

00:08:09 Dorothy Hahn: Yes, we had eleven hundred acres. The government took it all.

00:08:15 Kris Ellis: When did you and Paul get married?

00:08:18 Dorothy Hahn: In 1944.

00:08:27 Kris Ellis: At that time you moved out to the ranch?

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00:08:31 Dorothy Hahn: We went right to the ranch. He was already at the ranch. Paul's father was killed out there by lightening in 1911. He wanted to be on a ranch and was only there about four or five years and he was killed. He was working on a fence. You know they say that lightening can hit two miles away and it can travel down that fence. There wasn't any lightening to speak of where he was.

00:09:07 Denise Thompson: And that's what happened to him, huh?

00:09:11 Dorothy Hahn: He also designed the Great Seal of Montana.

00:09:16 Kris Ellis: Did you say his first name was Stephen?

00:09:20 Denise Thompson: Stephen Arnold Douglas. They called him SAD. He designed the Seal of Montana.

00:09:32 Kris Ellis: What was Paul's mother's name? Was she alive then too?

00:09:36 Dorothy Hahn: Yeah, Viola.

00:09:40 Kris Ellis: Did he have siblings on the ranch as well?

00:09:43 Dorothy Hahn: Not with him. He had a brother that had a ranch just above him.

00:09:52 Kris Ellis: What was his name?

00:09:54 Dorothy Hahn: I know what it is…

00:10:01 Kris Ellis: We'll come back to it.

00:10:05 Dorothy Hahn: Hume, John Hume Hahn.

00:10:08 Denise Thompson: John Hume Hahn, huh?

00:10:10 Dorothy Hahn: Yeah, he had the ranch until [unclear].

00:10:16 Denise Thompson: So he had his own little part?

00:10:18 Dorothy Hahn: No, he didn't own any. He didn't lose any of his place. He had his own ranch.

00:10:27 Denise Thompson: So his part didn't get flooded by the lake because it was up on Galsigory's? Higher on the hill?

00:10:38 Denise Thompson: Do you want to tell us about the lake taking the ranch and what that was like?

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00:10:42 Dorothy Hahn: Terrible. Terrible.

00:10:45 Denise Thompson: When you married him obviously you guys were living on the ranch. How long had you been on the ranch before the lake was going to built and you knew this was going to happen?

00:10:58 Dorothy Hahn: They kept saying they were going to take the land in 1948, but they didn't. They didn't get it until 1952. We had eleven hundred head of sheep. We didn't know where we were going to go. We didn't want to reseed any of the land, you know, some new alfalfa if they were gonna take it. Well, then they didn't do it until 1952, and we sold the sheep to Paul's brother. The negotiators came around in 1952, the negotiator and appraisers, three appraisers.

The place had been appraised before for $200,000 and the negotiator offered us $42,000. He said, "You can go to Dakota and buy you a place for that." We didn't want to go to Dakota. Anyway, they started trying to get us to change our mind. Three appraisers came around on the place and the one guy appraised it for $200,000. Then the negotiator didn't like that, so they hired an appraiser, there was only three of them qualified in the state of Montana to appraise for that type of land. And that fella, he appraised it at $200,000.

They still wouldn't change their mind. That negotiator, when he offered us $42,000, we wouldn't take it and so he went out and slammed the door as hard as he could slam it. Paul took those first three appraisers around on the ranch to show them where our land laid. We had a stream of water that went through our place that came from up there where the Cook Ranches, you know that warm thing, it never froze. We didn't have to chop ice for the cattle. We had cattle besides the sheep. We didn't have to chop ice for anything, and it was deep enough to take a canoe, and 17 pound trout in that stream.

Of course, we had a thousand inch right out of the Missouri River because it went through our place. Well when they went and condemned us because we wouldn't take the money. We didn't go to trial for two years. We bought the place where I live know. It was only 347 acres. We paid more for it than they offered us for eleven hundred. We had to pay for this place in six months. We had to borrow all the money for that. Well, then, we didn't get any money for the ranch until we went to court, and that was two years, 1954, before they went to court. We had a really bum jury. We had a logger, bartender, and chef, people that didn't know anything about it. They foreman of the jury, he was a man who was high up in the telephone company and had just moved from Denver, Colorado, and he'd never been on a jury and he didn't know how to hold out so we could get more money.

So, we ended up going to court and they awarded us $82,000 and we had to pay the lawyer $20,000. We ended up with $62,000 for our $200,000 place. We had a set of scales just like the ones they have at the stockyards, and they wouldn't let us take ‘em. They put the water over them. We had wire fences and they wouldn't let us take those, so they are all under the lake, and if anybody gets caught in that wire they will never get out. That wire never rusted. It was huge wire. It never rusted, ever. That was dumb. Of course they had to cut all the trees and stuff, too. You know, to think that we didn't get any money for two years. We sold our sheep so we didn't

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have an income there. The sheep went to the forest range in the summer time. We had a herder and a camp tender that went with them. But, that thousand-inch water right they didn't pay us for it, and boy that's worth a lot of money.

00:16:53 Kris Ellis: Did a lot of the ranchers try to fight it and end up being condemned?

00:16:58 Dorothy Hahn: Well, they gave all kinds of prices to everybody. The poor lady that had the little ranch just after you cross the bridge, she owned across the highway, and had a house there, just across the bridge. They scared her so bad, they said, "You'll have to go to California to federal court." But the federal court was right in Helena. That's where we went. They told us we'd have to go to California, too, but we didn't. She got scared and sold it for $25/acre. Terrible.

00:17:41 Denise Thompson: Do you remember how many ranches roughly were covered?

00:17:46 Dorothy Hahn: Thirty-seven ranches. It was terrible. That was the best land in Broadwater County. Real black soil. There were so many trees that went along the river. All those leaves built up...

00:18:13 Denise Thompson: Nice rich soil. A lot of compost, organic matter.

00:18:19 Dorothy Hahn: I know Paul, he worked up one piece of ground and put it into oats and it made 100 bushel to the acre.

00:18:29 Denise Thompson: Emotionally, how did you guys...I mean I know back then people just were tough and you'd just survive and work hard and stay optimistic, but what was it like? How did everybody work through that?

00:18:41 Dorothy Hahn: Just like you say, you had to be tough. But, it was hard on Paul, real hard on him. He even cried when we had our trial. You know, it just took away. We figured we'd raise our kids there on that ideal spot. There was hunting and fishing and we could make a good living for them.

00:19:16 Kris Ellis: How old was Paul when he was first at the ranch, when his dad bought it?

00:19:23 Dorothy Hahn: He was little. He was only twelve when his dad was killed. He was the youngest. Paul's father did that when he was eighteen years old.

00:19:39 Denise Thompson: Is that like a pencil sketch?

00:19:41 Dorothy Hahn: No, it's steel pen and ink. You don't make a mistake. You had to dip that ink.

00:19:50 Denise Thompson: We'll have to make sure we get a picture of that.

00:19:54 Dorothy Hahn: He's even got it executed by SAD Hahn on it, with a steel pen and ink.

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00:19:59 Denise Thompson: You can see why he was so talented.

00:20:02 Dorothy Hahn: He did that one over there, too.

00:20:05 Denise Thompson: We'll have to make sure we get pictures of that. That's really cool.

00:20:07 Kris Ellis: Did Paul and your kids inherit that artistic ability?

00:20:12 Dorothy Hahn: Paul could draw, and Dusty used to be able to, and John could draw, but he hasn't done any for a long time.

00:20:27 Denise Thompson: John is her son, and Dusty is Chuck's son. What was it like coming to this ranch and settling here from being displaced and having to buy this? What did everybody feel about that?

00:20:47 Dorothy Hahn: Down there at the other ranch that was flooded, we were there by ourselves. You know, we had a good wide spread. But here, we had good neighbors and stuff, but it was just different.

00:21:07 Denise Thompson: You didn't feel so secluded; it didn't feel as private here?

00:21:11 Dorothy Hahn: Yeah.

00:21:14 Denise Thompson: Plus, it was less acres.

00:21:15 Dorothy Hahn: Oh, yeah, we had to buy a lot more acres to run our cattle on.

00:21:20 Denise Thompson: So you originally bought, you said, three hundred and some acres here at the original...

00:21:20 Dorothy Hahn: Yeah, here and down to the river, and a little piece across here.

00:21:39 Kris Ellis: You ultimately bought more around, or connected here.

00:21:44 Dorothy Hahn: We bought up Beaver Creek, the old Whitehead place.

00:21:48 Denise Thompson: They bought some ground up Beaver Creek which is up by Winston.

00:21:53 Dorothy Hahn: There was seven hundred acres up there. At one time we owned Kimber, Kelly, and Whitehorse. Paul had that and when they sold that to John Hume. His brother had that and he sold it to Galsigory. Then Galsigory sold it back to us and we sold it for $8,000 and we had to pay $50,000 to get that back.

00:22:58 Denise Thompson: You had to pay $50,000 to get it back?

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00:22:58 Dorothy Hahn: I mean because we wanted it.

00:23:06 Kris Ellis: You kept it for a while then sold it.

00:23:08 Dorothy Hahn: We sold it because we weren't going to have the sheep, see. Then they ran the sheep there in the spring and the fall.

00:23:15 Denise Thompson: So you said you sold it for eight and then bought it back for fifty.

00:23:19 Dorothy Hahn: We had to pay $50,000 to get it back.

00:23:21 Denise Thompson: How may years later was that, roughly?

00:23:24 Dorothy Hahn: I don't know.

00:23:27 Denise Thompson: A couple decades?

00:23:32 Dorothy Hahn: It was at least around 25 years later.

00:23:44 Kris Ellis: So when you came down here then, did you do sheep down here, or just cattle?

00:23:51 Dorothy Hahn: No, I just kept five little ewes and then kept buying a few more and we ended up with around 200 here.

00:23:59 Kris Ellis: Was it mostly at that time because you didn't have the place for them?

00:24:07 Dorothy Hahn: We didn't have a place. We didn't know where we were going to go. We looked at different places, but they weren't what you wanted.

00:24:18 Kris Ellis: Ultimately, did you run more cattle than sheep here after you moved here?

00:24:28 Dorothy Hahn: We just ran a few head of sheep and cattle. Of course, we increased our cattle by now.

00:24:33 Kris Ellis: So, it's still primarily cattle?

00:24:38 Dorothy Hahn: Cattle, and then they raised grain and hay.

00:24:44 Kris Ellis: Who is all here working the place now?

00:24:48 Dorothy Hahn: My two sons Chuck and John, and my three grandsons Cory, Dusty, and Buck.

00:24:59 Kris Ellis: Does everybody live here close together?

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00:25:04 Dorothy Hahn: Yeah, we don't live very far apart. And they get along good and everyone helps out each other. Different ones have different jobs.

00:25:22 Kris Ellis: So, two of your four kids are involved with the place?

00:25:25 Dorothy Hahn: Two is all the boys I have. I have another grandson but he's on border patrol up between Washington and Canada.

00:25:42 Kris Ellis: Does your daughter ranch as well?

00:25:45 Dorothy Hahn: No, she's seventy. She just turned seventy-two.

00:25:59 Denise Thompson: What did she do most of her life? Take care of the kids and have her own family? Her husband worked for fish and game, right?

00:26:08 Dorothy Hahn: Yeah, for twenty-five years until he retired and then he worked in Helena. Bev was a nurse at one time at St. Pete's.

00:26:26 Kris Ellis: When you first moved out here at nineteen did you work for a while?

00:26:29 Dorothy Hahn: No.

00:26:33 Denise Thompson: You just lived with your aunt? What was your aunt's name?

00:26:38 Dorothy Hahn: Pearl.

00:26:38 Denise Thompson: What was her last name?

00:26:47 Dorothy Hahn: Trying to think.

00:26:57 Denise Thompson: That's okay we can come back to it. Where did Pearl live?

00:27:10 Dorothy Hahn: She lived out in the country.

00:27:20 Kris Ellis: Did she have a ranch or a farm?

00:27:23 Dorothy Hahn: Gab, I can't think of what her...

00:27:35 Denise Thompson: It will come to you.

00:27:40 Kris Ellis: I guess my real question is, when you married Paul, was that your first real exposure to ranching? How was that?

00:27:48 Dorothy Hahn: I took to it like a duck does to water.

00:27:54 Denise Thompson: I can imagine.

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00:27:56 Dorothy Hahn: Of course, I lived in a little small town. We had a few things, but I never was on a ranch or farm.

00:28:09 Denise Thompson: So, it was an easy transition for you to become a ranch wife.

00:28:12 Dorothy Hahn: I could do anything.

00:28:15 Denise Thompson: She still can do anything. She still cooks lunch for all of the guys everyday.

00:28:25 Dorothy Hahn: But now I just do John.

00:28:28 Denise Thompson: But, up until what age were you cookin' for everybody at lunch?

00:28:34 Dorothy Hahn: Oh, probably eighty-something.

00:28:42 Kris Ellis: So, when you guys first got married then, did you have sheep right away?

00:28:52 Dorothy Hahn: He had taken over their ranch. Paul was a lot older than I am. He only went to the eighth grade because he didn't want to go to school any longer; and his mother let him quit and not go to high school. But, boy I tell you, that guy could do anything. He bought himself a welder and a book and taught himself to weld.

00:29:28 Denise Thompson: How old were you when you got married? Twenty-two?

00:29:35 Dorothy Hahn: I was about nineteen.

00:29:37 Denise Thompson: I thought that's when you came out here.

00:29:41 Dorothy Hahn: I guess I was eighteen when I came out.

00:29:43 Denise Thompson: Okay, so you got married at about nineteen. How old was Paul?

00:29:51 Dorothy Hahn: He was twenty-six years older than I am.

00:29:55 Denise Thompson: He was twenty-six years older? Wow.

00:29:59 Dorothy Hahn: You wouldn't know it. All his life he was just like a young man, and wiry. He only weighed 125lbs. and he ate really good; but he had exercise. Because, at that time when you irrigated you had to move little dams down the line. He had to dig out the ditches for flood irrigating.

00:30:35 Denise Thompson: What did your parents think about you marrying a Montana rancher that was twenty-six years older than you?

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00:30:42 Dorothy Hahn: Well, they thought it was fine because they met him and they liked him. He was always good, and he never swore, and he had patience galore, and he never drank. He smoked for several years, but he had a cigarette in his mouth and he was looking out the window and he said, "This is ridiculous." He quit cold turkey. He said it just takes will power.

00:31:16 Denise Thompson: How old was Paul when he passed away?

00:31:17 Dorothy Hahn: Eighty-three.

00:31:21 Denise Thompson: What happened, a heart attack?

00:31:23 Dorothy Hahn: He had emphysema. He worked in the dust and wouldn't wear a mask. Of course, he smoked, but he quit in 1965 and he never died until 1982, so you know that had been a long time. Loading grain and all that stuff, you know, too. He worked other dust stuff. But anyway, you don't have to put this in there, but Paul fell and broke his hip here in the house and went to Helena and had it fixed. The second day he sat in the chair and he was 83 years old. And then he wanted a sleeping pill. I was in there, I stayed there the whole five weeks he was there. By golly, the doctor said, "What sleeping pill is he taking?" and I said, "I can't remember the name of it right now." So he gave a prescription for him, and he gave him too strong, you know, only weighing 125lbs. And besides that, Paul started hallucinating. He didn't even wait until...it would have worn off in the morning, you know. It was morning when he was hallucinating. He put him right into ICU, put him on that respirator that goes right down through the voice box and they never got him off of that. The nurse that was on ICU she said, "Wish I could of talked to you, I would have said don't bring him in here." She said, "My grandmother had that and that is the most horrible thing."

I stayed with Paul's niece in Helena. Every night I'd stay there until 8 or 9 o'clock then go over to her house. And the next morning they called and said you gotta come over here because his lung has collapsed. I hurried over there and he had pulled it out. And so they said, "Do you want us to put it back?" I said, “No.” And his lung inflated itself. And then they called me another morning and said his kidneys are quitting. I get over there and pretty soon they start working. And then there was something else. I can't remember what it was, but it started working. They had just done so much stuff wrong, and that was terrible. When he was dying, his doctor, the one that sent him in to ICU, he couldn't stand to be in there because he thought a lot of Paul. He sent another doctor to be with us when he died. He would have lived because he was tough. You know, to go through that surgery, and came through it perfectly.

00:35:01 Kris Ellis: When he first met you what did he see? What did he fall in love with when he met Dorothy?

00:35:08 Dorothy Hahn: I guess he said, "They broke the mold when they made you."

00:35:10 Denise Thompson: That's for sure. People still say that today about Dorothy. She's probably the most popular person in our county to be honest with you. Everybody knows Dorothy.

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00:35:27 Dorothy Hahn: And I don't know all of them.

00:35:28 Denise Thompson: I know, but they know you, don't they?

00:35:30 Dorothy Hahn: Because of what I've done in the community.

00:35:33 Denise Thompson: Very community minded, very giving, very hard working, fun and humble and optimistic.

00:35:44 Dorothy Hahn: I'm real positive and I never worry. I figure everything is going to be alright. When I broke my hip four years ago, it'll be Fourth of July night; they couldn't believe how fast I recovered. After six months, I never even used a cane.

00:36:05 Kris Ellis: You're tough, too.

00:36:09 Dorothy Hahn: Yeah, I never cried either. I laid out here in this yard. It was Fourth of July night and Bev brought me home and I was supposed to drive up to her place to see the fireworks. It was so nice I thought I'll go water my rose and then I'll walk around because it's really nice out. I walked out that way and a cat tripped me right in front of the tree on that hard ground. I laid there an hour before Chuck came, and another half an hour before the ambulance came. I never cried, I just laid there and watched the fireworks in town. I might as well enjoy them.

00:37:01 Kris Ellis: Did you have your first child right away when you moved to the ranch?

00:37:17 Dorothy Hahn: She was born in November of 1945.

00:37:27 Kris Ellis: Did you work outside with Paul from the beginning, and kind of change when you had kids?

00:37:38 Dorothy Hahn: I took my kids with me. On the tractor fender was a box built and then Bev could be in there. We had a little tiny steering wheel on there. When we were haying down at the other ranch we had a sheep wagon, you know. We pulled it out in the field we were working in and they could take a nap in it, or play outside with their toys. I remember one time Bev was out and I was picking up the hay out in the field and bucking it in to Paul. She went out there, I left a little hunk of hay.

00:38:34 Kris Ellis: Showing you what you missed. Pointed to it.

00:38:39 Dorothy Hahn: Those kids were the best kids. They didn't fuss or anything.

00:38:47 Denise Thompson: I remember you telling me you would cook breakfast and go work out in the field and then come back in and cook the lunch then go back out into the field.

00:38:57 Dorothy Hahn: I fried chicken and even made pie.

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00:39:03 Denise Thompson: In addition to working in the field and keeping the house up and the kids up.

00:39:08 Dorothy Hahn: In the summertime I canned til' midnight at night. Up at five every morning.

00:39:18 Denise Thompson: On average in the summertime, you maybe got five hours of sleep?

00:39:22 Dorothy Hahn: Even in lambing time. See, Paul would check the cows and I'd check the sheep. We had them in the shed over here. I'd think I can get those lambs in and get back to the house, but there'd be some trouble, so I'd have to help get that leg straightened out so they could have it. I could set up a 145lb. ewe on her rear end and suckle a lamb. I could lift 80lb. bails at one time, too. Can't pick those up now, they weigh 1,800!

00:40:02 Denise Thompson: What has always been your favorite part of ranching and farming?

00:40:07 Dorothy Hahn: I always enjoyed it all. I really liked lambing. I liked those little lambs.

00:40:17 Kris Ellis: You said Paul's brother had the ranch close, did you run the cattle and sheep together?

00:40:25 Dorothy Hahn: No, he was on his own. All he had was sheep. He never had any cattle?

00:40:33 Kris Ellis: Was there anything that was hard for you to do?

00:40:37 Dorothy Hahn: It all came easy. I could do anything. I had one hundred laying hens. I delivered eggs house to house for forty years every Friday night. We had milk cows and I churned my own butter and made my cottage cheese. When John was a senior, they had PTA still going then, so I always went to PTA. They made me chairman of the cookie committee. Well, one day I said to two ladies, (I knew they were going to PTA)

I said, "Are you going to PTA Monday night?"

"Yeah."

"Well, would you make some cookies?"

"Well don't look at me I work eight hours a day," they said.

I got to where I made the whole bunch myself every time. I would come in from the sheep shed and I would mix up a batch of cookies and I'd cook supper. While supper was cookin,' when I sat down at the table, then I'd put the cookies in there so I'd have fresh cookies to take for the PTA. I went to PTA for twenty-two years. You know John was ten years younger than Bev, so I had kids in school for a long time. I thought, “you gals think you are working hard.”

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00:42:33 Denise Thompson: What would you say has been the hardest part of ranching and farming?

00:42:35 Dorothy Hahn: Trying to get some money out of ‘em. Because the buyer will come and offer you a price for the calves, and then what does he do when you won't take the price, and so he goes out and goes to leave. Paul used to say, "I've got to go in and talk to Dorothy about it." And they'd say, "What do you have to talk to her for?" He said, "Because we're in this together." Boy you didn't get much money a long time ago. Nine cents a pound for the lambs.

00:43:16 Denise Thompson: Do you think that things are better now?

00:43:19 Dorothy Hahn: No, on the ranch it isn't. The prices aren't right for what you have.

00:43:27 Denise Thompson: And for all the expenses.

00:43:31 Dorothy Hahn: Nowadays a tractor costs a fortune, a combine costs a fortune. If you break down those guys charge a lot of money for labor to work on ‘em, and you can't work on a tractor. They are computerized and so you can't work on them.

00:43:53 Kris Ellis: When you moved over here you were saying the land wasn't as good. Did you do anything in particular,[unclear], to bring the land up to be more productive?

00:44:33 Dorothy Hahn: We've done irrigation efficiency and minimum tillage and cover crops to help keep our soils healthy. For conservation, we really call it conservation and caring for the land and animals stewardship. Because that is what we are, stewards of our land and animals. We did a conservation easement on our property in 1998 up there on Kelly and those. If we sold that no one could build but one house. I tell you, this is bad the way people are selling their ranch land to subdivisions. It is absolutely ridiculous. That gal at the commissioners, what's her name? Nicole Brown, she thinks we should have more subdivisions. Some of the biggest challenges in conservation comes in dealing with growth in the area. Meeting the need to deal with regulations and then the impact of more people that do not understand the role of agriculture. We've tried to involve young school age kids in some of the different aspects of our operations in hopes of planting the seeds of knowledge of how important agriculture is.

00:46:57 Kris Ellis: Can you give an example of when you've had some kids come in?

00:47:03 Dorothy Hahn: We've had some younger ones that have changed irrigation pipes. They just help with different things occasionally, if they need somebody extra.

00:47:19 Denise Thompson: When you used to have your sheep didn't the school used to come out here? Didn't one of the classes used to come and tour?

00:47:24 Dorothy Hahn: They came and saw everything. They even got to try milking the cows. The got to see how the sheep were sheared. We had some pigs then, and chickens. A lot of them were kindergarteners and first and second graders, too. They got to see the sheep sheared. They

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came on the day we sheared sheep. They got to see the calves and they got to feed a lamb on a bottle. They did that for several years.

00:48:20 Denise Thompson: Anything else on your paper Dorothy?

00:48:26 Dorothy Hahn: Oh, and we passed the message on to our children by involving them in all aspects of what we did on the ranch. They've all helped with everything.

00:48:43 Denise Thompson: Did you, or do you have any hobbies that didn't involve the ranch life?

00:48:50 Dorothy Hahn: Well, I used to do quilting, but I don't now. I don't know.

00:49:07 Denise Thompson: You go to a lot of basketball games.

00:49:08 Dorothy Hahn: Yeah, I go to basketball games. For eleven years I helped with the reading program at school and mentored a little girl for three years.

00:49:20 Denise Thompson: I know you go to the rest home on a regular basis, right?

00:49:26 Dorothy Hahn: On Sundays.

00:49:26 Denise Thompson: You go to the rest home every Sunday?

00:49:28 Dorothy Hahn: Yeah, the one on the hill and the new one, too.

00:49:31 Denise Thompson: All three of them? And you do that every Sunday? How long have you been doing that?

00:49:36 Dorothy Hahn: About thirty-four years.

00:49:41 Denise Thompson: And how old are you?

00:49:43 Dorothy Hahn: I'm ninety-one right now.

00:49:45 Denise Thompson: You could be older than some of the people you visit.

00:49:48 Dorothy Hahn: That's right. I am, quite a lot older.

00:49:52 Denise Thompson: What do you attribute your good health to besides good genes?

00:50:01 Dorothy Hahn: I cook my own food and I drink vinegar and water. That really helps ya.. I don't know. You know, those people who've been sick in the nursing homes and stuff, before they close it down, I never catch a thing. Those kids in school have bad colds right in my face and I never caught a one. Getting out and being active and having a positive attitude makes

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a lot of difference. Of course, I always made pies for the silent auction at school, I mean when they had their football homecoming.

00:50:59 Denise Thompson: You make pies for any fundraiser.

00:51:00 Dorothy Hahn: Guess what? I'm going to serve you a piece of strawberry pie.

00:51:05 Denise Thompson: Today?

00:51:06 Dorothy Hahn: Yes.

00:51:08 Denise Thompson: Thank goodness. That was the second reason I came out here. The first was to see you, but the second was hoping to get a piece of pie.

00:51:23 Kris Ellis: Talking about all the development out here, other than the conservation easement, are there other things that you would like to, or see other ranchers or farmers doing that are good ideas in terms of countering that, or at least helping those people understand what your lifestyle is like?

00:51:47 Dorothy Hahn: I think several of them are trying to do a good job of taking care of their land. And they try to irrigate it and keep it from drying out too bad. But now up in the hills we have to just depend on the water that comes down from the snow melting, or a good rain. A lot of times April and May, we've gotten rains in June, too. That really helped.

00:52:23 Kris Ellis: What's the biggest difference, are there any trends that you are seeing, drier, or different changes in what people are doing out here in terms of agriculture? Are people doing more cattle for some reason or more sheep? Any of those trends you see in over all your years of being in agriculture, both good and bad?

00:52:57 Dorothy Hahn: I think some run too many cattle on their place because they don't have the grass. Others are doing a good job. I don't know. Some of them, they just don't seem to take care of their place like they should. And of course, weeds get started and that's bad.

00:53:35 Denise Thompson: Are you guys really proactive on the weeds? Or do you just have to throw your hands up at some point?

00:53:42 Dorothy Hahn: Chuck goes and sprays the weeds. Gosh, I was just thinking about along the railroad, they used to always burn that right-of-way off all the way along here on both sides. Now, they don't do that at all. There's a lot of weeds along there, too. That doesn't help. They would come out with the water, too. The one time they burned, and there is a culvert up here a ways, and by gosh the fire went through there and burned one of our haystacks across the road. One of our best stacks. They had water there, they could have stopped it, but they had to get the fire engine out to save another stack.

00:54:43 Denise Thompson: What do you think has maybe been one of the best farm or ranch improvements that has been a real benefit to the land or to ranchers? Is there something that

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stands out to you that has been a really good positive change in what people do? I know that Chuck has been really proactive on the cover crops or the pivots. We've got AI in cows, you know, those sorts of things. What do you think has been, maybe a few of the best changes that have been made or learned or changed in how people do agriculture?

00:55:41 Dorothy Hahn: I think taking care of their livestock is real important and feeding the right thing. You've got to feed them some supplements sometimes. We do that. To make sure you are feeding them enough hay, you know. Especially when they calve. Be watching it and going checking them every little bit to see if there is any troubles with the calves coming. I think it's better that we calve a little later now because we are closer to grass. I think these people who calve in January, that's pretty tough in Feburary, because you get bad weather and then it takes a lot more hay, too.

00:56:59 Kris Ellis: Do you grow all the hay you need here?

00:56:59 Dorothy Hahn: Oh yes, we sell hay.

00:57:03 Denise Thompson: And they also have a trucking company.

00:57:03 Dorothy Hahn: And we have the grain, too. Last year why we got that hail at the rodeo time. That wasn't good.

00:57:19 Denise Thompson: Do you think it's important to diversify and do a lot of different things to make a ranch work?

00:57:26 Dorothy Hahn: I think sometimes you're better off to have more than one thing, because if one thing fails you're done.

00:57:34 Kris Ellis: When did you go into trucking? Is that something Paul did?

00:57:41 Dorothy Hahn: It was after he died. There have been several years, but I don't know how long. They have truckers that own their own trucks but get authority from the ranch. Most people don't have authority to go out of state, and Chuck has all that. He gets it in at Helena.

00:58:07 Kris Ellis: Are they all hauling grain?

00:58:10 Dorothy Hahn: They haul hay and grain and different things.

00:58:13 Denise Thompson: They can haul other stuff, too. I think I saw them hauling rock one day.

00:58:23 Dorothy Hahn: They hauled some lumber, I think, too. I saw an outfit out here with stuff on it.

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00:58:30 Denise Thompson: So what would be your legacy, do you think, Dorothy? What do you think you would leave? What is your legacy going to be? And, what do you hope it would be?

00:58:45 Dorothy Hahn: I'd just like to see them continue to be ranchers and take good care of the land and make a pie once in a while. John makes pies.

00:59:03 Denise Thompson: I love that. What is your favorite pie?

00:59:06 Dorothy Hahn: Any kind. I asked Chuck one day, "What is your favorite pie?" He said, "hot or cold." You know, being nice to people and trying to help where it's needed.

00:59:25 Denise Thompson: That's good.

00:59:28 Dorothy Hahn: And people appreciating what I do.

00:59:36 Denise Thompson: Let's see, I had another question for you. What was it? So, how do you handle hardships? Obviously, you've had ‘em in your life. What's the magic trick to dealing with hardships?

00:59:52 Dorothy Hahn: Just think things are going to get better. I don't worry about what comes up because some of the stuff you can't do anything about anyway. You might as well just go on with your life and do the best you can. I can go to bed and go right to sleep and wake up and I got three more hours, Yipee, right back to sleep. You know, that does a lot for you.

01:00:21 Kris Ellis: Never a day, though, when you just want to stay in bed?

01:00:23 Dorothy Hahn: No, I want to get up and do something. I like to keep busy. It's just one of those things. You know, I'm a good Christian and I know that God has been with me, that the Lord has been with me lots of times and saved my life. I've had some pretty close calls.

01:01:00 Kris Ellis: Going back to your relationship with Paul, why were you such a good team? Were you different [unclear] in the way you interacted?

01:01:13 Dorothy Hahn: No, we worked side by side, never a cross word. My kids said it sure was nice that you and dad never argued. And we didn't. We always talked things over, whatever we were going to do. I'd go to Helena, I'd tell him what I was going to buy and he'd say, "You don't have to tell me, because you don't overspend." And I didn't. I told my kids the same thing. We went to town. I said, "Now when we go to Helena you don't ask for a thing because we have to pay our bills first.” Paul always said, "They gave us credit and so we pay them on the 10th and then we go to Helena and borrow." You know, because your money didn't come in until the fall. The kids never fussed. If I had a little dime or something I could spend we'd go to the ten-cent store, Woolworths, and they had some little ten-cent stuff like those paddles with the rubber and the ball on it. They could have one of those. But, they never fussed. One day we were in the clothing store that began with a W. Gosh, Montgomery Ward, we were right there were the

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dresses were and Chuck was just a little guy and he looked underneath there and he got a silver dollar. Somebody had left it.

01:03:19 Denise Thompson: What were a couple of your fondest memories growing up as a child or on the ranch with Paul and your kids. Looking back on your life what are some of your fondest memories?

01:03:37 Dorothy Hahn: When I was a kid, part of that was hardship because it was during the depression. My dad didn't even have the money. He was on the railroad and they cut him down to three days work a week. He couldn't even buy me a winter coat and so I had a heavy sweater with a lining and I wore that to school in thirty below. I always enjoyed my mother and father and my siblings. We did stuff at our place. We didn't run all over town or anything. I used to box with my brothers, the three older ones, and I threw the punches so fast all they could do was laugh. I high jumped and I pole vaulted with one of those bamboo poles.

01:04:52 Kris Ellis: So you were quite active your entire life. It wasn't like the hard work on the ranch was...it was just a different type of hard work.

01:05:02 Dorothy Hahn: I also delivered papers all through high school. My papers didn't come in sometimes in the wintertime until nine o'clock at night. I lived in a small town and they took the papers from Fairfield where it was published to the little towns. The roads were so bad they couldn't hardly get through. I would deliver those papers at nine o'clock at night in a blizzard when I couldn't hardly see the hand before me. I walked up to every door and handed them the paper. I had to walk clear out towards the cemetery and clear to the other end of town and all the streets this other way. It was a small town, but there was a lot of streets.

I cleaned house for a lady on Saturday and I got fifty cents. I babysat from eight o'clock in the evening until two in the morning and got fifty cents. I did ironing for a lady and got fifty cents. After I graduated, I graduated valedictorian, but there was not money for me to go to college. I could have had a $100 scholarship to the business college, but I didn't want that. I wanted to be a nurse or a teacher. Well, so I just went to work at a grocery store and I worked eight in the morning til' ten at night and got eight dollars a week. I had to do everything. There were no marks on the cans how much it was. You had to remember all the prices. They were on the front of the shelves. You had to cut the bananas with an [unclear] knife because they came in on a big stalk. I had to cut meat because the boss had to go to a bigger place to get meat and vegetables and fruits and stuff. The hind quarter he'd cut off, so there was roasts. The round stakes, I had to throw that great big thing up on the meat block, and cut it with a knife and saw it with a saw to get a slice of meat. They had that longhorn cheese, they called it. I could cut a pound as slick as a whistle. People would call an order in and I would just count on my fingers how many things they wanted. I could put it up without ever writing it down.

01:07:50 Kris Ellis: Great memory.

01:07:53 Denise Thompson: I know Chuck does, he has like a photographic memory.

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01:07:57 Dorothy Hahn: So does Dusty. Dusty just got back from Texas. I think he was down there for the stock growers.

01:08:09 Denise Thompson: Did you guys go on vacation? With the ranch, with your family and kids, when you got older and got married?

01:08:19 Dorothy Hahn: No, we only went twice because we couldn't go and leave the ranch, because Paul and the milk cows and all that stuff.

01:08:27 Denise Thompson: Where did you go twice? Just back to Iowa?

01:08:29 Dorothy Hahn: Yeah. When my sis graduated and when my mom died.

01:08:47 Kris Ellis: How did you and Paul meet? [phone ringing.]

01:09:01 Denise Thompson: We're back to recording on this one. So what were your fondest memories with your children on the ranch?

01:09:26 Dorothy Hahn: We used to always go to the Ringling Brothers Circus in Helena. That was great. They had another circus, but I can't think of the name of it. They had the smartest elephants. It was a well-known one. When the kids were young, we went to the outdoor movies.

01:10:00 Denise Thompson: You mean the drive in theater.

01:10:04 Dorothy Hahn: That way the kids could stand up in the seat or do whatever they wanted to do. But, they didn't have to, because that screen was so big. Gosh, what else did we do...We took ‘em to the river to fish through the ice. When the fish weren't biting we had the sled there and we would pull them around. When they were old enough, we had skates for them and we skated. A lot of people came from Helena to go fishing and skating. One Lutheran minister in Helena, he always came fishing through the ice. He would not even get his clothes changed, he brought them with him and he'd change ‘em there. The one time he came back to the house and he was sopped. He'd fell through the ice. He got out and Paul said, "Did you pray?" And he said, "HELL no, I didn't have time."

They enjoyed that and there would be lots and lots of people who'd come and fish. The people who had Jorgensen’s, they also were the chefs at Montana Club. They would come out and fish there and they would fish in the creek, the waterway that didn't freeze. They would do that. They hunted because we had lots of deer and pheasants. I raised five hundred fryers down at the other ranch that flooded. Most of them went to the Montana Club because they catered to parties or picnics. Paul and I would kill a hundred twenty-five one day. Our well was spring water and we had a porch around two sides. It was nice and cool and so we'd fill those tubs with ice cold water and put them in that. The next morning we'd do seventy-five more and took ‘em to Helena. After we were up here I had a hundred fryers. Paul and I would butcher those. When the kids got older they helped because I just couldn't do ‘em a few years ago. But I could dunk eight in the water and pick ‘em in fifteen minutes. You get the water just the right temperature and boy, you just took a hold of that leg and off comes the feathers.

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01:13:32 Kris Ellis: So how long did you have them here?

01:13:36 Dorothy Hahn: After we moved up here we just had a hundred, but that was in 1952 we moved here. I just quit raising those, probably fifteen years ago.

01:13:55 Denise Thompson: What's your favorite meal to cook?

01:14:02 Dorothy Hahn: Potato salad, fried chicken, some kind of Jell-O salad, probably a pie of some sort. I can't think of what else I'd go with. I like cookin’ steaks, too. Steaks and mashed potatoes and gravy and maybe some scalloped corn.

01:14:46 Kris Ellis: Did you always have a big garden?

01:14:47 Dorothy Hahn: Oh yeah, we had a big vegetable garden. I canned lots and lots of stuff. I always bought peaches and pears. I still do that. I still get peaches and pears and make my own peach pie filling and all that stuff.

01:15:11 Kris Ellis: Did you ride horses a lot?

01:15:13 Dorothy Hahn: Oh yes. Paul and I had to. After we bought the place up on Beaver Creek, we had a forest permit up there. When the kids were in school Paul and I had to go up there and we could only take so many on the forest, so we had to cut those out. When there were no tags in the ears you had to know which calf belonged to who. I knew those cows and calves like a book. We'd do that and we'd ride for seven hours to get them up there and get back to the vehicle. I rode a lot of different times then. But, after the kids got older why then I didn't have to do that. I always worked in the fields all the time. After Bev turned eleven she took care of John. He was born a year before. I didn't go the field that year and then she did it. She would cook the meal. She had the whole big meal cooked when we came in. She made the gravy after we got here. Boy, I'll tell ya' those kids they did everything. Chuck was raking hay when he was nine years old with a tractor.

01:16:56 Denise Thompson: What do you think, if anything, people underestimate about women in agriculture?

01:17:06 Dorothy Hahn: I just think they don't believe all the stuff they do. Boy, I tell ya' agricultural women, most of them, there are some that never worked in the field, but most of them have to help out some way or another. I've done everything. I even ran a little D2 Cat and I rode the binder and I helped get the shocks in. I also buck raked the hay up to the stack and then put it on the stacker and then I pulled the stacker to Paul. He moved every fork full of that hay because he wanted to know when wintertime came where he was going to start taking it out. He made a neat stack.

01:18:09 Kris Ellis: Was it always just the two of you, or did you have hired help sometimes?

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01:18:15 Dorothy Hahn: They had hired help for the sheep. You know when they went to the forest where they had to have a sheep herder and camp tender. We would go up about every ten days and take food, you know the necessities that they had to have. They had cut a bunch of the lodge pole pine and so we'd take the truck and they'd get that loaded on there. I'll tell you, sometimes we didn't even make it around the curve with that. They didn't turn quite as sharp as they do nowadays.

01:19:04 Kris Ellis: Were they cutting the pine to clear more places for the sheep?

01:19:08 Dorothy Hahn: The forest service marked it. They would mark it where we could take it out.

01:19:17 Denise Thompson: If you told a city person that you are connected to the land they would look at you and say, "what do you mean?" What does it mean to be connected to the land?

01:19:26 Dorothy Hahn: They hammer me.

01:19:28 Denise Thompson: They hammer you to the land?

01:19:37 Dorothy Hahn: You are there to take care of the land, to see that it produces, and that you have grass and so forth for the cattle. Also, a lot of times you have milk cows so you can make your own butter and cottage cheese. Women are just as important. A lot of women have worked just like the men.

01:20:11 Denise Thompson: Do you think things are different today from in the olden days as far as a woman's role? Or do you think women are just as involved as they were in the old days?

01:20:27 Dorothy Hahn: I don't think they are as involved as much. So many of them have a job off the ranch nowadays. I enjoy the ranch. I never felt like I was overworked. I was very knowledgeable on other things outside of the ranch, too.

01:21:00 Kris Ellis: You were talking about how smart Paul was, and you obviously were always interested and eager to learn new things. How did that help with your relationship and with your ranch? Where you a step ahead of trying out new things or new practices? Did I ask too many questions at once? Pick a question.

01:21:35 Dorothy Hahn: I think that Paul was one to try and do things, and make things better for me, too. But he also was just amazing what he could do with only an eighth grade education. He was, you know, had worked hard and knew about a lot of things. He wasn't afraid to try something new.

01:22:04 Kris Ellis: Was there something that you guys had before you neighbors? Say, in terms of equipment or use of sprays or anything you did ahead of the curve?

01:22:19 Dorothy Hahn: I don't know. When we moved up here a lot of them had already been ranchers, too. Paul would try new things and it worked. He even built the chicken house out of

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ties. You can't believe this, but the roof, he put some cement and then he put sawdust on it and I tell you that chicken house was as cool as could be in the summer and warm in the winter.

01:23:07 Denise Thompson: Was that here, or at the place at the lake?

01:23:09 Dorothy Hahn: Other place, because the chicken house was already here.

01:23:12 Denise Thompson: Did you move any of the building?

01:23:17 Dorothy Hahn: No, they put them up for bid and some guy from White Sulphur bid a few dollars more than we did, so they got them.

01:23:28 Denise Thompson: That's horrible. Can you think of any good thing of the lake? When you look back, I know it was really hard because you lost your home and land and ranch. Can you think of any good things with the lake being there?

01:23:47 Dorothy Hahn: It's for recreation. You know, to think they took 37 ranches is ridiculous. Better not put this in there.

01:24:09 Kris Ellis: It might be the best part.

01:24:12 Dorothy Hahn: No, because Hubert White.

01:24:14 Denise Thompson: That's my grandpa. That's okay.

01:24:18 Dorothy Hahn: Howard Wallace, no, Howard somebody, they both went back to Washington. They said they were going to go back and talk against having it. They didn't. I think that your grandpa wanted to sell the cement.

01:24:45 Denise Thompson: He was a water developer for sure.

01:24:49 Dorothy Hahn: Of course that electricity doesn't go right here, does it? It goes to California, I thought.

01:24:56 Denise Thompson: I'm not sure about that Dorothy, I don't know.

01:25:02 Dorothy Hahn: My husband said that instead of building that big lake they could have gone up here at Toston and started and built little dams all the way down and they would have had the power and saved all those ranches.

01:25:23 Kris Ellis: That was one of the biggest challenges you had in your lifetime. With your sons and grandsons going forward, what do you think will be their biggest challenges?

01:25:45 Dorothy Hahn: It's going to change, I'm sure.

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01:25:47 Kris Ellis: You mentioned all the equipment that it takes these days, and the computers and technology.

01:25:58 Dorothy Hahn: That's sad because you know when you have to put out so much to have somebody fix your equipment it costs a lot of money. The parts are so expensive too. It used to be that you fixed your own stuff and it was real simple. Paul could work on the equipment and Chuck could work on the equipment until he got these tractors now. They bought those second hand and they cost a fortune. You know, people don't realize what little you get from selling livestock and grain and all the expenses you have. The seed costs a lot of money, and then you gotta do some spraying and that costs ya’. We even have an airplane do some, I think.

01:27:09 Kris Ellis: A lot of the women who've talked on this project have been concerned about some of the trends and the gap between urban people and ag people, that they feel it's a real threat to the lifestyle. You are optimistic; do you think it's going to work out? Do you feel like your lifestyle is threatened? Will your grandkids have to defend, or do more education of people?

01:27:50 Dorothy Hahn: I don't know. They better not put on so many regulations because that's tough. This is not about the ranch but, just like making the pies, they said we couldn't make the pies at home to sell.

01:28:10 Denise Thompson: For the bake sales.

01:28:13 Dorothy Hahn: So, I went with three other gals to Helena to the legislature and I never thought about writing down a note, but the other three had notes and they spoke first and then I spoke. I told them, "I have never been sick from a pot luck, but I have from a restaurant." I said, "A lot of those restaurants the waitress comes out and brings the food and on the way back she picks up those dirty dishes, which she should never do, and takes them to the kitchen. She doesn't have time to wash her hands. She goes right out there and picks up another dirty dish and then she takes the money. The money is the dirtiest thing there is and she never washes her hands in between times.” I said, "We should be able to make pies at home." And by golly they passed it and the governor signed it. One of the legislators said, "Did you bring a pie?"

01:29:46 Denise Thompson: Do you want to tell us about some of the stuff around your house and I'll take a couple pictures, if you're okay with that? Then we better try some of that strawberry pie!

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