Our own family heritage, as well as the histories of others who grew up in our area and write about familiar places and family names, intrigues most of us. In Honyocker Dreams, author David Mogen, who grew up in eastern Montana and graduated from Froid High School, traces his family history of hard times and hopes, and in the process gives us a fascinating view of Montana along the Hi-Line and how small-town Montana has changed over the course of years. Mogen tells his story through the memories of family members as well as discussing his own experiences and recollections of his boyhood in eastern Montana.
Mogen’s parents came from diverse backgrounds. His mother grew up in the Plentywood area, the product of a homesteading culture, while his father grew up on the Tongue River near Ashland, a product of the ranching culture. His father later earned a teaching degree and moved his family from town to town along the Montana Hi-Line. Mogen traces these moves, and in the process talks about his own experiences growing up as the teacher’s kid. He also gives us glimpses of his father’s boyhood life, his mother’s upbringing, and stories told by various family members and in the process weaves together family history and memories in a fascinating, well-written book. Mogen touches on not only the hopes and disappointments of the homesteading culture, but also brings to life the world of the cowboy and the native American as well.
Mogen’s book shows that regardless of the generation, people’s life experiences shape and mold them in unexpected ways and affect the way they interact with others. Experiences often determine what choices a person makes, the path a person chooses to follow, and his or her outlook on life. The world is multi-dimensional and influences us all, whether we’re ranching, farming, teaching or engaged in any other profession. Mogen lets us see the world as it appeared to his father, his mother, other relatives, and to himself. Everyone faces difficulties and choices as we move through life.
Because his father’s teaching job often meant that the family moved to a new location relatively frequently, Mogen spent his boyhood in various towns along the Hi-Line. He reminisces about small town life, including time spent in Whitewater, Frazer and Froid. Mogen considers Froid his home town as he played on the high school football team and graduated from Froid High School. He discusses some of his experiences while living in Froid, which makes for interesting reading.
Mogen also ruminates on ‘boom and bust’ as several of the small communities experienced a boom time before the slow dying away of the community. We come to realize through his meditation on boom and bust that again, regardless of the generation, we all share in the boom and bust syndrome both as individuals and as a culture. Each generation experiences boom or bust in one way or another and each generation deals with similar difficulties, sometimes disguised in different forms, whether it is the acceptance of a person or culture or dealing with the disappointments and obstacles that life hands us. We are all products of our experiences, family and community.
Through his book, Mogen brings out the importance of our memories, our family heritage and what it means to us. As Mogen concludes, “Our heritage comes to us in many ways – as money and property; as old books and pictures we stow away….But most fundamentally our heritage comes to us through the stories we remember and create….perhaps we in America especially need to preserve these stories of this generation that is passing away, this generation that witnessed the closing of frontiers that their parents and grandparents opened to them, that survived the Depression and shaped the world that we ‘Boomers’ – a word that evokes this frontier tradition of boom and bust- were born into after the great war that changed them and the world.”
“As we and our children and grandchildren enter this globalizing new world….we must carry with us the stories we need – like the Lynches packing what they most cherished to take to their new home across the sea, or like Grossmutter Heisler saving her father’s seeds from Minnesota for their homesteading journey, or like my great-uncle Gene’s mother Mary Ground preserving the old oral story about Iniskim.”
Mogen has written an excellent, thoughtful memoir. He will attend the Sunrise Festival of the Arts in Sidney, Saturday, July 9, sponsored by Books on Broadway. Plan to visit with him and check out his engrossing memoir, Honyocker Dreams.
Other authors who will attend the festival, sponsored by Books on Broadway, include Dean Hulse, now from Fargo, who wrote a book on the North Dakota farming community of Westhope; Butte native Christy Leskovar, and New Rockford, ND native Paula F. Winskye.
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