A Short Season: Story of a Montana Childhood

by Donald M. Morehead, Ann Morehead

Overview

A Short Season is Don Morehead's bittersweet story of growing up on a Montana ranch during the 1940s. In 1941 his parents eagerly took up residence on a ten-thousand-acre sheep ranch in northern Montana. The entire family was soon caught up in the natural rhythm and grueling work of ranch life, meeting those challenges with energy, patience, and humor. The driving force behind the ranch and family was the father, Bill Morehead, the "hub around which activity spun." Don especially was drawn into his father's world, rarely leaving his side, and becoming known as his "small partner." When his father died suddenly in 1948, Don was left with lingering, irreducible grief and loneliness.

Replete with marvelous details of ranching life, Don Morehead's story is also a sobering and moving meditation on childhood and the special relationship that can develop between father and son. Morehead returns us to the quiet surprises of the first short season with our parents and helps us better understand the inevitable sadness of moving on.

Don and Ann Morehead live in San Francisco.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803282445
Publisher:	Bison Original
Publication date:	04/01/1998
Pages:	190
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.44(d)
Lexile:	1350L (what's this?)

About the Author

Don and Ann Morehead live in San Francisco.

Editorial Reviews

"This marvelous memoir, smelling of the sheep camp and open country, movingly recalls the author’s growing-up years through a full cycle of Montana seasons. His detailed and tactile story evokes swift, sharp remembrances—even for this misty-eyed Basque sheepherder’s kid."—Richard W. Etulain, author of Reimagining the Modern American West: A Century of Fiction, History, and Art

Richard W. Etulain

A married couple now living in San Francisco, the Moreheads have created a short memoir of Don's childhood on the 10,000-acre sheep ranch his parents owned and operated from 1941 to 1948 on the Blackfeet Reservation in northern Montana. Told with candor and sensitivity, the story recalls not only a brief wartime period when most farmwork was still done by horses and humans rather than machinery but also the familiar tale of a family thrown off balance by the exigencies of wartime. Central to the memoir is the close relationship between the son and his father, William, who encouraged Don to take an active part in running the ranch. From a distance of half a century, Morehead re-creates a childhood of hard work among the hired herders and shearers, close-to-home adventure with his sister, Donna, and learning the lessons his loving father knew would make him self-sufficient. When his father died of a burst appendix at age 37, Morehead poignantly admits, the ten-year-old son suffered an emotional wound that was slow to heal. As much a frozen moment of time with America on the threshold of the Atomic Age as it is a personal story of an American childhood, this book is a warm and winning backward glance.Charles Nash, Cottey Coll., Nevada, MO

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