Old Missoula

Live and let live is Jessie Mikus’ motto

By Jo Rainbolt – An Elephant in every yard column

When Jessie Johnson Mikus was a little girl, she saved nickels for a teddy bear. But nickels were few and far between, so she didn’t get her bear.

“My aunt got me a teddy bear coat which disappointed me terribly. Of course I never let on. I was fortunate to get that. My folks were poor. I still like teddy bears, as you can see,” Jessie said, pointing out stuffed bears perched on handmade pillows in her living room.

Two-year-old Jessie was the youngest of three children when her Norwegian-born parents, John and Anna Johnson moved from their Hamilton, Wis., farm to the lumber mills of Montana in 1904. “Mother was carrying a child when we moved, so the fourth was born in Bonner. There were 11 kids in all,” Jessie said.

Bonner was forested from the Bonner School all the way into town and lumber mill employees lived in frame houses provided by the Anaconda Co, she recalled. “My Uncle Jim was a millwright and lived in a tent. It was kind of a tent house, boarded halfway up and log pillars inside. In later years we moved into a frame house. My mother started a laundry in Bonner, she worked so hard.”

Anna Johnson was a good business-woman who managed household expenses shrewdly enough to purchase property in Milltown, Jessie said. The family moved there when Jessie was 10, and when she was 14 they moved to Missoula which Jessie considered “awfully big.”

The family lived on River Street, near the neighborhood where Jessie lives now. After finishing eighth grade at Willard School, she went to work, trying her hand at different jobs.

In the early 1920s a railroad worker named Ben Wing came to live with his widowed mother on River Street. “The neighborhood got a ballgame going and I got into it, he was there, too,” Jessie explained.

One thing led to another, and the couple was married in 1923. Ben worked as a bartender and then for a railroad company until the late 1920s, but when the Depression hit, he lost his job.

Even though Jessie now owns her own home and works full-time as a seamstress for Good Will, she remembers what it was like to be poor.

“It was a terrible time, nobody knows unless they went through it,” she said. “There wasn’t any work . . . We were kind of not eating good at times. For awhile we lived on pancakes.

“I know my husband didn’t want to look at pancakes for years,” she added with a laugh.

Jessie said the only way many Missoulians survived was by helping each other. “Once in awhile my husband would get a chance to move furniture for Hans Jenson. He’d make 50 cents and he’d give me a quarter. I’d buy three pounds of hamburger, use a pound to make a great big rice dish, make enough for the neighbor lady and her family too. When her husband made 25 cents, she’d make enough for my family, helping each other we got through.”

Jessie relates tales of the depression in the same cheerful, that’s-the-way-things-are tone that she generally uses.

She said she was raising three children during the Depression and had to stop nursing the baby because she wasn’t getting enough to make milk.

“The baby was really hungry and I didn’t have money to buy milk,” she said. “I went to Community Chest and the woman there told me they weren’t giving any milk. A banker’s wife got wind of it and contacted the men in charge of Community Chest. They were fellows from the university and they called and asked if they could come over and talk to me right away.

“I had just washed clothes when they came in,” she continued, “and I was so embarrassed, clothes hanging all over and that big old washing machine in the middle of the kitchen floor. They told me to get a paper and pencil and write down what I needed. I was flustered, couldn’t even find pencil and paper, I asked if I could write it on the back of an envelope.

“They were awfully nice to me, but I wouldn’t want to go through a time like that again. The next day there were four quarts of milk on the front stoop, all I wanted was one quart, for the baby – the rest of us could get by – so I cancelled the rest.”

Jessie said the old pensioners who were supported by the county received $30 monthly and some food supplies. “They sometimes got bacon and one time it was rancid so this old guy gave it to me and said maybe I could use it,” she recalled. “I rendered it down and made soap out of it, it was hard to buy that too. I almost ran out the whole neighborhood and myself, too, it smelled so bad, but it made nice soap.”

Apparently Jessie’s homemade bread smelled better than the bacon. Everyone made their own bread, she said, and at one time housewifes were all having trouble getting it to rise because the wheat was not right. “Ordinary yeast wasn’t strong enough, so I made a starter from potato water, yeast and sugar and the bread was beautiful, the whole neighborhood wanted the recipe,” she said.

During the Depression, Jessie was involved in the Moose Auxiliary. “I became a senior regent in the Moose,” she noted. “We were all going a little hungry but we didn’t tell anyone. Moose members would collect and give canned goods to those who were really destitute.”

Jessie said it was possible to buy things on credit during the Depression, even though nobody had money to pay the bills. “That’s how people got in debt, we all had such good credit, like now. I’ve always been a saver because of living through the hard times,” she added.

Jessie knows about hard times. Her oldest daughter died at age 12, and two years later her fourth child – a first son whose birth was celebrated by the Moose drill team – died after falling off the porch on his tricycle.

Another son and two more daughters were added to the Wing family, but in 1949, when her youngest child was six, Jessie’s husband became ill and died on Mother’s Day.

Jessie devoted herself to her children. She hadn’t gone out for a year when two friends convinced her to go to a Moose meeting, she said. The meeting was interrupted by a frantic phone call from her married daughter who was caring for the children. Then the police came and picked up Jessie and told her that a child molester had almost kidnapped her youngest daughter.

“Whew, I had to go down to the police department and look at the man who almost raped my youngest daughter, if looks could kill he’d be dead. The I decided if my kids couldn’t even go out on the street I’d go to the Moose Heart.

“I stayed for 20 years, long after my kids graduated.”

Jessie explained that Moose Heart is a Moose-sponsored “child-city” near Aurora, Ill. “They take children, or children with their mothers, no fathers. It’s a real city with post office, laundry, grocery store, all-denominational church,” she said.

Jessie fit right into Moose Heart. “I worked in the reception hall, helping new children get adjusted,” she said. “They’d stay with me 10 days. And I had the fun of outfitting them in all new clothing, 12 pair of underwear, eight socks, six dresses . . .”

Older children learned practical skills while earning high school diplomas, she said. “The kids grumbled about having to work, and they could hardly wait to leave. When they graduated, guess where they wanted to come back to? Yup, Moose Heart.” Jessie added that her son and daughter got married in the Moose Heart Church.

Jessie had her own style in dealing with kids. “I never had any problems handling kids,” she said. “I wasn’t one of those who said, ‘You do it or else’, I made it seem as if they were doing it on their own. Oh, I had a lot of friends over there.”

Jessie explained that most mothers left their children at Moose Heart and if they found jobs outside they were supposed to help support the children. “Moose Heart is the best place in the world for children who need a home,” she said.

After her children graduated, Jessie married Bill Mikus of Illinois. He built a new home and Jessie said they had 17 happy months together before he died unexpectedly.

Jessie then retired from Moose Heart and came back to her Missoula home on Alder Street. “I could have stayed on, but I had an invalid sister who needed a place to live,” she said.

Proud of her 50-year Moose membership, Jessie also noted she has never missed a general election since she reached voting age. “A lot of people aren’t interested in voting, but I am. I serve on the election board and was judge of election when Roosevelt got it,” Jessie, a Democrat, said proudly.

She believes going to church is important also. “It doesn’t make any difference which church. We have almost every religion in the world in our family,” she said.

Jessie’s four daughters – Betty Cline, Beverly Solum, Deanna Sharbono and Mabel Lance – live in Missoula and her son, Robert Wing, lives in Illinois.

Rich Johnson, a former co-worker of Jessie’s at Good Will called and suggested I interview her. He described her as a person always wiling to help anybody out.

“I believe in help, and in live and let live,” Jessie commented.

 

The above article appeared in The Missoulian on October 15, 1979.

https://www.newspapers.com/image/348736552/?terms=%22ben%2Bwing%22

 

Jessie Wing Mikus was born in 1902 in LaCrosse County, Wisconsin, and died in Missoula in 1993. She is buried in Missoula City Cemetery.

Her obituary, from The Missoulian (7/22/1993), noted the following:

“Jessie enjoyed helping those less fortunate than herself. She spent many hours taking friends to the store or to appointments of various kinds. Her life was spent for others, whether they be children, disabled, elderly, family, friends, acquaintances, or strangers.”