The Bullpen and the Pot Belly Stove
When earthquakes rocked Helena for months on end and residents continued to camp in their backyards, even as winter approached; when mining was in decline and five of six children in Butte were malnourished; when the banks had failed and the country was in Depression; the winter of 1935-1936 blasted into the Northern Great Plains with a vengeance.
The Ed and Dora Gruber ranch was located northwest of Toston on the Missouri River, not far from the headwaters at Three Forks. Several miles west, near Radersburg, parents John and Julia Gruber lived on the homestead. With a family of seven boys and two girls, the tiny farmhouse was bulging at the seams. Ed and the oldest son, Jack, found discarded railroad ties near Lombard, the old railroad town several miles upstream. They built the ties into a large raft and, Huckleberry Finn style, floated downriver to the ranch. The railroad ties were used to build a shelter into the side hill. Perhaps because his brood was approaching enough boys for a baseball team, Ed proudly named it the Bullpen. With the addition of a small pot belly stove, the boys had a new bunkhouse.
In late January 1936 blizzard conditions and below zero temperatures moved in. All travel stopped and schools closed. With Dora in Butte for health issues and Jack, now 17, working for the CCC, the family of nine moved into the Bullpen to wait out the storm. Alice Virginia, 14, cooked for them on the tiny stove. When it came time for the bread dough to rise, one unlucky person would be asked to vacate his seat by the fire. Meals consisted of beans or bread and milk gravy, a vegetable, and sometimes, cheese. Wild game was rare.
Bob, one of the younger boys, celebrated his 10th birthday in the Bullpen on Feb. 4, 1936. A few days later, temperatures plummeted to 35 below zero. Because the single thermometer on the ranch met its demise in a boy’s experiment with a match, the family didn’t know how cold it was. However, most thermometers would have reached their maximum anyway. Feb. 13 began four days of temperatures averaging 15 below and night temperatures exceeded 40 degrees below zero.
On Valentine’s Day Grandma Julia, on the homestead, lost her battle with cancer. Because the Radersburg cemetery ground was frozen solid, the county assisted with her funeral and used dynamite to blast a hole for her grave.
When a calf was born in the barn, Ed rescued him from freezing with a warm bath and a place by the stove, and returned him to his mother.
The last week in February, after nearly a month in the Bullpen, temperatures rose above freezing, Dora returned from Butte, and the little farmhouse returned to life. The following year, when the Radersburg school remained closed, the family rented a place and attended school in Toston. The older children attended high school in Townsend.
In a few short years, six of the seven Gruber boys enlisted in WWII. Frank, the youngest, was in high school. Five brothers returned. Brother Bill died in prison camp on Bataan in the Philippines.
Generations later Bob Gruber visited the old place in Toston with sons Roger and Jeff. Buried in the rubble was the tiny wood stove that heated the Bullpen and fed the family in 1936. It had found its way from the Bullpen to the Toston house. Today the pot belly stove enjoys a lofty retirement in Bob’s dining room, decorated with his collection of baseball hats.
Bob will celebrate another birthday on Thursday, Feb. 4.
Congratulations Bob Gruber!