Annual reunions help recall good, old Somers times

Fay Eklund loved living in Somers so much that she started a reunion to keep close to the little town she first met in 1938.

On Saturday at noon, this year's version of the reunion continues with food, fun and lots of visiting at the Somers Fire Hall. This year's get-together honors the town's 100th anniversary.

Eklund, 84, has released the reins of organizing the event. But she hopes to attend to remember with friends the good, old Somers times.

"When I think about Somers, it was a wonderful time," she said with a smile. "You didn't have to be stylish."

Eklund discovered Somers' charm after her romance with Dallas Eklund caught fire. She married him at 17 and moved into a little house on the road that winds up the hill.

"We lived by Cross-eyed Johnson," she said with a laugh.

Eklund made a point to visit the bashful Swede with food and conversation - the underpinnings of Somers' social milieu.

Around lunch time each day, she would take a lunch in a bucket down to her husband at work.

"He worked at the planer mill, making fancy boards," she said. "It was a huge mill."

Between the Somers mill and Burlington Northern tie plant, Somers was known as a company town. But in Eklund's eyes, Somers was about the company of the people.

Eklund remembered that her mother-in-law, Louise Eklund, spent four hours making a trip to the grocery store that was a few blocks away.

"She stopped at every place she went by to have coffee," Eklund said.

For the men, the local pool hall served as the social hub. Women were not welcomed into their fold but a few dared to enter through the back door.

"I came in once and Dallas was madder than hell," she recalled with a laugh.

Eklund didn't need a bar or even a telephone to find companionship. When she got lonely, she would go outside and hail Louise.

"I'd yell 'Ma!' and she'd be on the other hill," she said. "She'd go to the clothes line and we would talk to one another from hill to hill."

Eklund's close relationship with her mother-in-law gave her an up-close look at the grandest home in Somers at the time - the yellow mansion that still maintains a regal presence above the town.

She would go along to help Louise, who cleaned the mansion known as "the company house" where the boss lived.

Eklund remembers beautifully appointed bedrooms and luxurious carpets. But she was most impressed with the greenhouse in the basement which kept the house in fresh flowers.

"The lady of the house let me go down there," she said.

The Eklunds had a touch of luxury in their own lives - a second, for fun, automobile. When Dallas was off work, the two would tour the town in their Model A Ford.

"I thought that was a humdinger of a car," she said with a laugh.

A drive around Somers didn't consume much gas. The town consisted of two grocery stores, a post office, a doctor's office, churches and a school.

Eklund and her family left the little town for the big city of Kalispell in 1948.

"My husband got a bigger job and I started having babies and babies and babies," she said.

But before she left, Eklund started the tradition of Somers reunions. The first gatherings were at a small church and then the school.

"We finally ended up at the fire hall," she said. "It worked."

The formula for organizing the event hasn't changed.

Around midsummer, Eklund said she would realize it was time to set a date for the reunion. Publicity consisted of a poster hung up at the post office, the grocery stores and other businesses in town.

The price of admission was a food contribution to the potluck dinner. Eklund and the other women would set out the food on a long counter in the fire hall kitchen.

"We had pies, cookies, cakes," she said. "The kids would go ape."

Eklund usually cooked up a huge roaster full of a main dish such as a stew with deer meat or a macaroni casserole. At the last reunion she attended, so many people came that there wasn't enough room for many to sit down.

"Some sat in where the engines were or in their cars," she said.

For entertainment, they sometimes sang or played cards. But mostly, they talked about old times and caught up on each other's lives while the youngsters played outside.

This year's Somers reunion follows the same, informal plan. For the last eight years, Fran and Howard Ruby have headed up the reunion which takes place every other year.

They expect to draw up to 150 people.

Fran Ruby said people come back to relive the colorful past when Somers was a melting pot of people making a living in the lumber industry.

It brings back the good, old Somers days when people kept the coffee pot on and the door ajar for visitors. Eklund feels fortunate to have called the little town home.

"I thoroughly loved my life there," she said.

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.