Doesn't Cost Me Much to Live

Years ago, acreage, north of the current Munis Gravel Pit and just south of Andre Lane after the Fred Burr curve, was occupied by a happy man, named Sid Willis. My memory of Sid is him sitting in any friend’s house visiting and smoking a roll-your-own cigarette. Sid wore a large cuff in the bottom of his blue jeans and he would either put the ash from the burning cigarette into the cuff or flick it onto the thigh of his jeans and rub it into the denim. Sometimes the jeans were so well “ashed” that I am certain they would stand on their own. He loved to say, “It doesn’t cost me much to live…I feed myself, my horse eats grass and my dog eats horse turds” and then he would throw back his head and give a “Har Har Har” type of laugh. 

His Stetson hat had seen many years and the crown was sweat stained with many spots on the brim tattered. It was usually pushed back with his unruly hair hanging onto his high forehead. I so wish I had a of picture of this old codger to share with all of you. In Ray Ham’s book “Horses and Saddles” Sid is spoken of frequently as “Canner Joe” because he was the person that came when contacted to dress the dead animal. Sid then took the meat and bones to the dog food cannery. He also sold the skinned hides to the tannery for the making of horse hide robes. Ray said “Canner Joe was one of our local colorful characters. He was a clown in a way and didn’t even know it. One time he was in a saloon and a woman from back East was there and she was looking right at him, just cracking up a-laughing. He looked down to see if his fly was open; he didn’t know what she was laughing at. She finally stopped laughing long enough to say “ Where do you get those overalls with bow legs?” Ray goes on to say “Canner Joe was out to our place one night and he’d been drinking. We went out to the barn and he grabbed Smokey (wild buckskin colt) by the tail. Any other time, Smokey would have kicked him but this time, for some reason he didn’t. Canner Joe just hung on and laughed his goofy laugh, real deep: Yuk Yuk, Yuk.”

A story I have heard frequently is that the author Dan Cushman moved to Philipsburg to be close to his dear friend Sid Willis. This was supposed to be during the time Dan was researching the book “The Old Copper Collar” which was published in 1957. I found where Mr. and Mrs. Dan Cushman had a baby boy on March 13, 1953 in Great Falls and were expected to return to Philipsburg to live during the summer. The baby named Stephen James joined Bobby and Mary Lou. 

Sid lived in Granite county for more than fifty years before he was sent to the Cheyenne Soldiers’ Home in Wyoming. He lived in Wyoming for six months before his death at the age of eighty-four, during the first week of April, 1971. The house he lived in is still standing, though deteriorating rapidly. Each time I drive by I check to see if it is still standing. The chimney fell off a few years ago and I doubt the logs will stand up much longer 

 Born in England, where he received an inheritance, Sid came to the U.S. as a teenager. He served in the Army during WWI, then settled south of Philipsburg, buying the property with his inheritance. The obituary stated “there were no known survivors.” The funeral was conducted by the Wilson Funeral Home and pallbearers were: Ford Johnson, Bob McKinley, Adolph Andre, Forrest Merrifield, Barney Pickett and John (Pat) McDonald, with internment April 5, in the Philipsburg cemetery. This Sid Willis should not to be confused with Sid Willis the owner of the Mint Bar in Great Falls who was a friend of Charlie Russell.