A few months ago I talked with Orril Fluharty by phone. You wouldn’t think that a hard line would cut out like a mobile phone but it did. Despite the bad connection, we had a good conversation.
The reason I haven’t posted my interview with Orril is because it wasn’t really a good interview. For some reason, as I said above, my phone kept cutting out; one time the line went dead. I called him back and we picked up where we left off.
He wanted me to come down to La Honda for pancakes but I couldn’t make it in time. He talked about the town he was born in, Eureka, Montana where his family had a small farm with cattle and a five-acre garden.
“My father was an alcoholic,” he said, “and my mother was Carrie A. Nation.” Carrie Nation represented the powerful Temperance Movement, a group that abhorred strong drink. The marriage couldn’t last.
Orril loved his older sister. The fact that she was growing weaker with a serious case of asthma made him love her more. When the doctor said she had to get out of Eureka, he was the one to take her west to Washington state. He was 14 years old.
—more coming–