Flashback Friday - We did our courting on horse back.

And that was in Sparta. Mama had a little house right in Sparta. Dick’s grandparents lived way over on the breaks above Powder River at Deer Flat.
It was at least 5 miles or more around the road, but over the hill it was about 2 ½ miles. His dad, brother and sister were living there, because his mother had died and his dad was paralyzed.
I didn’t even know him. I think I’d seen him a time or two, and gee he was handsome. He was 6 foot 2.
There weren’t many girls in the country, and he wanted to take somebody to the dance. Anyway he was up at the Sparta store and Mama’s little house was down across the road about 100 yards or maybe more. I packed water from the spring up there closer to the store. So I was out there getting ready to go to the spring. This fellow stood up and walked out on the store porch and yelled, “Hey, you.”
And I said, “Me?”
“Who else is there?” He was being brusque or real smart-alecky. Dick wasn’t really brusque or smart-alecky; he was leading up to something there.
He said, “Are you going to that dance with me Saturday night?”
I said, “Well, I don’t know.”
“Well, who does?”
I thought, "You goon, you goon."
I said, “Oh, I guess so.” I wasn’t too anxious, you know. I didn’t want to appear that I was ready to do hand springs. He was conceited enough. Oh, he was a good looking guy.
So I went to that dance with him. Dick would ride over from the ranch horseback. There were 2 big barns right in the middle of Sparta right across from the store. That had been a livery stop when the stage went through. He would put his horse in one of those barns and we’d walk from there up to the dance hall. The dance hall was the grange hall. It had originally been a dwelling house… anyway they’d set the partition over until it was just a little kitchen and it was big enough for a dance floor. Not a big dance floor but big enough to dance in. We’d have 2 squares for square dancing or a Cantrell or whatever you’d want to call it. Anyway we’d go up there and dance until morning.
There wasn’t much else to do besides dances and parties but there were quite a few of us young folks in the community at the time so we had something going. The adults were adult enough to know we needed some kind of entertainment. And they had lots of dances; they were all in the grange hall. And there were house parties too. That was the way we courted.
We hadn’t gone together very long when he decided I had to go home with him and spend the weekend over to the ranch. He’d come after me and bring an extra horse and we went horse back. Dick was a big man. You wouldn’t pile 2 people on one poor horse. Any place we went we went horse back, because that was our way of traveling. After it snowed he brought a sled otherwise we were horse back.
Grandma didn’t let me help much. I don’t think his grandmother approved of me but he didn’t seem to mind. She was afraid I was going to marry her grandson. And I did.
I didn’t asked Mama what she thought of him. She would have to have her own opinion. But I don’t think she disapproved of him.
He was the only one in that whole bunch that was earning a dollar. He was working for 30 dollars a month. A dollar a day herding sheep. And there wasn’t any other work. There was nothing else happening. This was before Roosevelt took over as president. This was the depression. Anyway, he’d come to see his dad between what they were doing with the sheep. It was in the fall of the year. They brought them in out of the hills.
He herded sheep and kept the ranch going with a dollar a day. And he got his room and board with his herding sheep. So he had to go back as soon as lambing started. He had to go back to Milton-Freewater. He went back over there and worked for the same sheep outfit for three years in a row. But then he’d not come home until after he got back out of the mountains.
When he had to go back to work I stayed with Mama and the boys.
He wrote letters. They weren’t very long, but they were interesting. They were romantic. He wrote about once a week. He never got where he could mail them. I think his camp tender or someone took them out to mail. He was out in the boonies with the sheep until the grass dried up.
We started going together in the fall when he first came back to Sparta. I think he was 22. I was 18. He was 4 years older than me. His birthday was the 8th of October. Mine was the 31st.
Anyway the girls were scarce in Sparta. And I was lucky. He said he was lucky too. But I don’t know. He always acted like he was. He was a good husband and a good father. And I’ll love him forever.

(Dick McCumber in front of Sparta Store in the late 1950s)