Aired Aug 13, 2025
I wanna again welcome you to the 4:05 coffee break. Boy, it is hot out there. Get your cup of coffee, glass iced tea, cool, tall glass of lemonade. Let's see what's happening and find a shady spot. Spring wheat, $5.27 a bushel. 550 pound steer calf $4.07, top end. Butcher hog in Iowa, 55ยข a pound, and a 100 pound fat lamb in Billings, a dollar 84. But guys, there's more, much more. So lots has happened since yesterday's program. If you remember, yesterday I gave you a small account from a man who lived here in Malta, Montana by the name of Al Schultz, a story that dated back some 157 years.
OK Solberg:Right? Okay. As soon as yesterday's program ended, Mark Pankratz called and told me he heard the story and informed me that his wife, Therese, is a relative of Al Schultz. Well, shut the front door. Do marvels ever cease.
OK Solberg:So now I need to hook up with Therese and learn more history of her family, and I'll have more to share here on the 4:05. But besides that happening, I was having coffee with the boys yesterday. And in the conversation, it was mentioned that a circus elephant died while performing in Malta, Montana, and it's buried in the local landfill. Now, I'm not gonna dig up the landfill, but I would like more information so I can dig deeper into this subject. I'd like to find out if there's an article about that.
OK Solberg:See, if there's a missing person, you go to the police and put an out an APB, all points bulletin. I'm asking you. I'm putting out an APB to the listening audience, if you remember having a circus in Malta and an elephant died. What year? Which circus?
OK Solberg:Now several people that have asked remember one in Trafton Park down near the Boy Scout Building, but I wanna know the exact circus when the elephant died. So you let me know. Not just any circus. The circus when an elephant came to his demise and they buried him in the landfill, the dump, out South Of Malta. I'll go do some more research in the PCN archives if you find that for me.
OK Solberg:But I did have an hour to kill yesterday, and I went to the library. And I found a picture of an elephant in the July 3rd edition of the PCN from 1958. This elephant was alive. Under the picture, it reads, baby boo stops traffic. Strutting her stuff in the above picture is baby boo, a member of the Barnes Circus entourage.
OK Solberg:The picture was taken in front of Buttery Foods in Malta, where the elephant stood for a while last Wednesday morning. Interesting. But there's more, much more. I see the July 24 edition from 1958. You know, I'm not just gonna look at one paper.
OK Solberg:I'm gonna keep looking, see if there's something else. From the July 24 edition 1958 that there's a front page article that reads, early day Harb settler buried at Polson. Well, guys, since I was raised in Harb, I had an interest, and I needed to read the article. The article states, friends in the Harb community received word last week of the death of John Erickson, who homesteaded in that area in 1915. Guys, you know why I find that interesting?
OK Solberg:I'll tell you. Because in 1953, my father Ingwald purchased Emil Akerlund's farm where Emil homesteaded, and he bought it from Emil, and on the hill there in Harb, just up from our front yard, was lined with old time farm equipment, steel wheeled tractors, buck ranks, cultivators, and such like that. Well, when the above named John Erickson found farming a challenge in the dirty thirties, he asked Emil Akerlund if he could store his equipment there until he returned. Emil said, sure. And that equipment was my brother and sister's play yard when growing up.
OK Solberg:The equipment was still there through the seventies. Some disappeared in the eighties, but there's still some of it up there today. Interesting proof of the hardships of the depression years. But also in that paper dated 07/24/1958, listen what I found in the Harb news. And I quote, little Timothy George Bruckner arrived early Sunday morning to make his home with the Harvey Bruckner family.
OK Solberg:The little fella has two brothers and two sisters who are all smiles over his arrival. Now who in the world could this Timothy George Bruckner be? In the same hard news article, in the next paragraph it reads, I'm not kidding, Mr & Mrs Ingwald Solberg have named their new daughter Evelyn Irene. This little lady has two sisters and one brother who are very pleased to have a new sister, end of quote. Guys, that's my little sister that we now call Evie, who's a retired English teacher in the Seattle area.
OK Solberg:All fun, fun, fun when I can go and research the old Phillips County news. I'll close with a bible verse. Remember the former things, those of long ago. I am God and there is not another. I am God and there is none like me.
OK Solberg:Isaiah 46-9 Oh, yes. Remember the former things. So until next time, as you go out there, remember now. Don't be bitter.