Frank and Dorothy Vanek began raising their family of six children on Bull Creek, near Brooks, Montana. Following several years of hail and drought, and hit by the failing economic climate in the United States, by May, 1933 they were broke. The only means of survival seemed to be "go west."
So, west they went. Loading the family of six children, their household belongings and a few chickens into their 1923 Ford Model-T truck, they moved across the Continental Divide, across Montana and to beyond Sandpoint, Idaho to a tiny hamlet called Vay. There, Frank hoped to support his family by cutting and selling wood to city folk.
The course they chose was hard indeed. Frank was born and raised a farmer and he knew nothing of felling or cutting trees, or of tree species or the proper tools to buy. And with the advent of other fuel supplies in Spokane, the major market for cordwood, Frank soon realized he'd have to move his family again.
Leaving Vay, Idaho, they rented a cabin on Blue Creek, in Sanders County, Montana, near the Idaho border. Their kids walked 1-1/2 miles to River Echoes School, and Frank walked seven miles round trip to Heron and back to earn $1 a day working for WPA.
By March, 1935, they bought land with a crude cabin on it. A former owner had planted an apple orchard. Bordered on the south side by the Clark's Fork River, the 160 acres extended across Hwy. 10A [Hwy. 200 in 1990] and up the mountainside. From here Frank cut and sold cord wood in Clarks Fork, Idaho, hauling hundreds of cords a year. In time he managed to buy a school bus and successfully bid for the school bus route to Noxon.
Like Frank, Dorothy had been raised on a farm not too far from Lewistown, Montana. During her final year of high school she took Normal School classes and when she graduated, she was a certified teacher, licensed to teach in any Rural School. When hard times hit, forcing them and thousands of others to change lifestyles, Dorothy was a good helpmate to her husband. She willingly made the move from their farm and never looked back.
The twins, Loren and Lois, brother Art, twins, Jerry and Julian, and little sister, "Margie", played hide and seek, mumbley-peg and marbles, were favorite games. As they grew older, fishing, hunting provided hours of excitement and challenge. Picking huckleberries with Frank, gardening and, later on, 4-H activities kept life full and enjoyable. Frank and his sons bucketed all of their water from a spring alongside of the highway, carrying sloshing pails up a steep slope to their house.
Frank's bus was the major source of transportation, not only for students, but also for people needing to go to town. Anyone could catch a ride to town on school buses. Men played cards at Marion's Tavern. Women visited friends and donated their time in the school or church, until school let out and the bus took them home.
Frank and Dorothy raised their children according to Frank's Catholic religion. It wasn't always possible to get to Clarks Fork to church, but all of them took catechism and were confirmed. Sons served as altar boys. Dorothy studied and eventually also joined the Catholic church.
The old 'swimming hole' in the Clark's Fork River, where all the kids swam during the 1930's. A half-mile west of the Heron bridge.
Frank was an avid gardener. He also loved to fish and it was he and his sons who first brought home a pail of Kokanee salmon one fall day during the early 1930's. This was the first anyone knew of a spawning run of 'silver' salmon in the lower Clark's Fork River. Word spread fast. Soon everyone was hiking or driving to the Heron Rapids to snag the leaping salmon during their upstream migration. Within a short time a neighbor began charging 25 cents a carload for fisherman to drive across his land to get to the Heron Rapids. The popular annual fall salmon-snagging event reoccurred every fall for almost twenty years, until the building of the Cabinet Gorge dam during the 1950's.
The three older children had graduated from high school and left; Loren (1944) to the navy, Lois (1944) to Kinman Business School and Art (1945) to the army, before Frank was finally able to begin building the home he and Dorothy had dreamed of. Felling trees on his own land, he cured the logs and hauled them to Emil Dettwiler's sawmill where he had them cut into squared timbers.
Frank's 1923 Ford Model T truck was versatile, transporting whatever was necessary, whether it was the family, cordwood or the hundreds of cedar posts he hand-split and sold. During one short period, when the school bus broke down, the "T" filled the role, carrying students eleven miles from the west end to rendezvous with another bus.
When she was 70-years-old Dorothy still said she would never have returned to the farm near Lewistown, Montana, and was content with the full life they had in western Sanders County, raising their family.
It wasn't easy, bucketing all the water and not having electricity, but Dorothy and Frank managed. Thanks to venison, fish and their large garden, plus huckleberries that grew wild on the mountains surrounding their valley, they always had plenty to eat, a secure roof over their heads that they owned, and their clothes were clean and adequate. No one in their generation expected nor wanted more than to be honorable and good and raise a healthy family ~~ which they succeeded in doing admirably well.
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