1963

         Pictures from an old photo album

My family in 1963.

We are posing in the living room of our friends, Mark and Florence Harshbarger. 

Every Sunday we drove to Montana for church, leaving our home in North Dakota at 10:00 am and arriving in Montana for a 10:00 church service. 

The Drawbond farm where Dad worked that summer was in the north western corner of North Dakota while the Harshbarger farm was in the north eastern corner of Montana. A 

 Two states divided by a time zone .... a person is continually doing math in one's head. Will that event be ND time or MT time?

Today it's better to have a watch when we visit instead of trying to rely on a cell phone for the time. A cell phone keeps on searching for cell service. Sometimes it picks up service from  a tower in MT, other times it will find service from across the line.

I  wish someone in my family would  have kept a journal. Did we take some furniture along for the year in ND? Maybe the two houses we lived in were furnished and we only took clothes and basic necessities packed into this trailer. 

Or was this a later trip?

Piecing together the interesting events of that year reminds me of the puzzles we've been working on at Mom's  house this winter and spring.

Asking questions of people who remember,  looking at old pictures, and coming  up with even more questions...

This picture was developed in 1966. Ladina and I are older than one and two. Were we on a family camping trip? Going west to visit friends? 

When I asked Ellis he wondered if we were traveling to Glendive MT for North Central Conference summer meetings.

You can still visit this friendly cow today if you take the right exit off I94 as you travel across ND.

I'm sort of surprised that we didn't stop and take pictures with our family when we traveled the road back to visit Grandpa and Grandma Harshbarger. 

It's sort of hard to believe that Ellis and I met when we were infants. He was three and I was two that summer. 

After the seeding, summer work and harvest was finished at the Drawbond farm we moved to the town of Grenora and rented a house. Dad worked at a gas station pumping gas. 

We moved back to Graceton in the spring of 1964. The reason I know this fact is because Trenda was born May 5, 1964 in Baudette MN.

This morning I  found  out that Tillie Drawbond went home to sit at the feet of Jesus. She was 102 almost 103.

We will be making a flying trip to Coalridge MT this weekend for Tillie's funeral.