Her Dream Ranch

Oil on Canvas
20″ x 16″
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Morris Ranch
Sitting in Helen Morris’ comfy, modern living room made it seem impossible we were inside what was once a two-room log cabin.

Helen’s parents, the Belvederes, married young in Tacoma, Washington. Her dad, born in Italy, was nineteen years old while her mom was just fourteen. Both died in the great flu epidemic of 1918 when she was just twenty-two months old. Helen, with one of her brothers, was adopted by locals. Another brother and sister were raised by folks living in other parts of the country, but the four, as adults, remained a family by having reunions whenever possible. Helen is now the lone survivor.

In 1904 her adopted grandparents bought their farm on Highway 40, and here is where she grew up, although, unfortunately, nothing remains except a hay shed. Each day, when Helen walked the ten-mile round-trip to school, she passed a ranch with a log cabin directly facing Highway 93, with a picturesque barn and tiny log cabin tucked behind a magnificent tree. Helen dreamed of owning this ranch.

When she was but eight, the Morris family moved into the farm across the river. In need of milk they sent their twelve-year-old son, David, to purchase some. The children struck up an instant friendship, and by the time they finished playing and he moseyed home, his mother, fearing the milk had soured, was furious!. Inseparable in both grade and high school, they became engaged in their senior year and married on their common birthday, November 24th. Both thought it fitting that Thanksgiving often fell on that date, for they indeed were thankful of their mutual love. On Christmas day, 2008, Dave died after a long siege with Alzheimer’s.

Dave knew of Helen’s aspiration of owning the ranch on Highway 93, which then was a quaint, quiet, country road, not the multi-lane artery between Kalispell and Whitefish it is today. When, shortly after their marriage, it went on the market, they snatched it up. The chap that owned it, a Mr. Dewar, was a strange, unfriendly sort of old hermit with a talking parrot. They discovered the one-room log house was the original homestead, where he and his mother lived until in 1904 he built the two-room cabin with its attached outside kitchen. The parrot was much friendlier than its master, and when the Morrises went to look at the house, it answered the door bell. Unfortunately the bird never learned to limit its body excretions to a confined area, and when old Dewar begged to include the bird as part of the sale, Dave and Helen declined. Thanks to the bird’s nasty habits, many areas of the inside had to be gutted and replaced. This is now the largest ranch within the city’s limits, and here they raised Tennessee Walking Horses and Black Angus cattle.