In 1987, the Bailey family celebrated their Ranch Centennial. The weather was perfect. It was a sunny day with big white billowing Montana clouds in the sky. Sunflowers were in bloom all along the highway on the way to the ranch. We thought Grandma Bailey must have had something to do with the day being so perfect. The whole family pitched in to contribute ideas and help put everything together. Egans got the old log house ready to display memorabilia such as albums, saddles, chaps,bedrolls, etc. . The log house was the original home of Alice and Henry when they first got married. Grandma Bailey’s uncle, Simon Snider built the house. Perry Kelly, a neighbor , put the shingles on the roof. While he was nailing shingles on, McRae’s went by with a herd of cattle. Perry got distracted watching the riders and forgot to put the stringer on for the next row of shingles he was starting on. Consequently, you can still see one double row of shingles, one on top of the other! Grandpa Bailey loved to dance so he had one wall built that was removable for neighborhood dances. Originally there was a separate building for the kitchen but that had been torn down years before. In 1987, Colstrip was bustling because the plants were in the process of being built. We hired a couple who owned a popular café over there to cater the food. There was a huge iron kettle over a fire in the middle of the lot that was filled with corn on the cob. The men lined an old wagon with plastic and then filed it with ice to be used as a relish table. Bailey Egan dug a pit and lined it with cottonwood. He let that burn down to red hot coals, then put roasts that had several layers of wrapping and tied with string in the bottom of the pit, and covered the whole thing with dirt. I think he left the roasts for three days. He wrapped eighteen 16# barons of beef . We went through ten 16 gallon beer kegs over the 3 days of set up to clean up. As people began to arrive , Bailey took his back hoe over and began to dig up the roasts. He attracted a crowd of onlookers trying to decide what he was doing. They were quite surprised when the packages of meat were brought out. . The Aunts, Pluggie Bailey Egan and Margaret Bailey Broadus, sat at tables to take care of the guest book since they knew everyone who came. Two of the young cousins, Lisa Egan and Molly Bailey met the cars horseback to show them where to park. An old time band was set up on a wagon to play music... Someone from Colstrip brought an ice cone machine that the little kids loved. Jack started up the old tractor that was used with the thrasher. When it started, the man who sold it to Grandpa Bailey years before was amazed and pleased. He didn’t realize it was still in use.. actually it’s used on our saw mill to this day. The men had cut shocks of grain, hooked up the thrashing machine to the hydraulic on the tractor and actually demonstrated thrashing seed. They also had the old saw mill set up and demonstrated how it worked. Around 500 people signed the guest book. It was an amazing day. Grandpa and Grandma Bailey had to be watching with pride.
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 16:08:25 +0000