Frontier House, Episode 5: Family Affair

Episode Five opens with clips from previous episodes emphasizing some common themes. Or, as the narrator says, “learning to live together without 21st century distractions.”

Gordon Clune reiterates how he and wife Adrienne’s romanticism has been replaced by family unity. We see a clip of teenage daughter Aine and niece Tracy running wild in the woods. They’re wearing their shifts as sundresses, and have built their own fort in the trees, where they sleep every night. “The girls have gotten wilder since we’re out here – wild like in animal wild,” says Adrienne. Gordon says, “Teenage girls need a little bit of a breakout and it gives the family some separation.” It’s made a “fantastic difference,” in their quality of life, he exults.

The Brooks are enjoying their own pastoral idyll. Newlyweds Nate and Kristin cavort in their mountaintop meadow, singing “The Hills are Alive.” “It’s a love shack,” explains Nate. In a night scene in the Brooks’ cabin, Kristin tries to explain how unique their sense of privacy is out there in the middle of nowhere. She looks up in the middle of her explanation and catches the expression on cinematographer Will Edwards’ face, and collapses in laughter. (I have a pretty good guess which family was the most fun to film.) Outside, Nate introduces us to his family, “Nate, Kristin and the goats.” Kristin has fashioned her playclothes out of a bandanna top, and drawstring skirt. She and Nate sit on a log, surrounded by their two goats. The white one, Glowbug, cuddles next to Nate as he croons.

Glowbug’s Ballad:
Just me and Glowbug, sittin’ on a log,
Just me and Glowbug, she’s like a dog,
Me and my Glowbug, just hangin’ out,
Me and my Glowbug, make me wanna shout.

Kristin nudges Glowbug’s head towards Nate saying, “go into Daddy.” The goat obliges by tucking her head down into the crook of Nate’s arm.

Kristin talks about how she and Nate have a “heck of a lot less work to do.” She sympathizes with Adrienne Clune, who has to “cook constantly to keep the food supply up constantly.”

The narrator explains how frontier families often had six to twelve children. Nate likens frontier children to “slave labor” and they were worked to an extent that “we don’t think about working children today.”

”We’re wearing the shoes of our ancestors, but these shoes suck,” eight-year-old Conor Clune explains from his perspective. The narrator says that the pioneer lifestyle has cramped the California lifestyle of the Clune family. Tracy Clune also likens pioneer children to slaves. Twelve-year-old Justin Clune, a red-headed version of his mother, says he didn’t expect their experience to be a vacation.

On to the Glenns. The narrator tactfully says that Mark Glenn has found life in a one-room cabin with a wife and two children “stressful.” We see a typical exchange between Karen and Mark Glenn on the front porch of their cabin. They’re arguing about something. Mark snaps “shut up,” as he passes Karen, who is churning butter. Karen mockingly replies, “Ooh, that’s sophomoric.” Daughter Erinn says it’s not like Little House on the Prairie. She never has time to braid her hair like Laura Ingalls Wilder. Little brother Logan’s chores consist of caring for the livestock and hauling water. In this episode, we get to see Logan’s impish charm. “Work took over; work is my only friend. You met him yet?” he inquires of the cameraman. “Y’all are 20th century lackers.”

The narrator says that children as young as three were put to work. Justin Clune, his father’s right-hand man, demonstrates how he is digging an irrigation channel from their dammed-up creek to the garden. Dad Gordon worries that he’ll make them “hate this place,” by driving them too hard.

Crisis #1. The animals that Logan Patton is in charge of are the family’s chickens. He explains his role to mom Karen as being the “master of the company,” and he can’t let his company “go out of business.” (Logan sounds amazingly like Gordon Clune here, when Gordon was talking about his sales ethic being “every sale is a million-dollar sale.” Watch out, Karen. Logan might abandon the honest working folk and turn into a shifty city-slicker like Gordon Clune.) But there’s trouble brewing for little captain-of-industry Logan. One of his chickens is not laying. “If they lay, they stay,” he explains. Mom Karen makes the executive decision to downsize Logan’s employee base. In a family ritual kind-of-way, Mark carries the chicken down to the creek, the others following behind. Karen holds down the chicken on the chopping block, while Mark wields the axe. Back at the cabin, Karen soothes a distraught Logan. “I want her baaack,” sobs Logan over and over. Karen hugs him, “We can always get more chickens, can’t we?” (This is the idiotic response adults always make to kids at times like this. It’s never worked before, and it doesn’t work now.) “No one can replace her,” Logan protests. Karen finally snaps, “Quit it – it’s a chicken.”

Kristin Brooks tries to imagine her fate as a young pioneer wife, dealing with issues of pregnancy and childbirth. “It’s terrifying to picture being pregnant out here, having the baby out here. What do you do at that crawling stage?” A night-cam clip shows the cabin overrun by mice. Karen says they’re all over the floors, the walls, the shelves, “it’s disgusting!” The narrator says that one out of five children didn’t survive infancy. (Women’s stories and poetry of that time habitually dealt with the death of their young children. In a letter to a friend, Harriet Beecher Stowe explained it as, “holding your children lightly.” If a mother cared too much, she only suffered more when a child died.) Kristin morbidly speculates what Nate would do with her body if she were to die in the dead of winter in childbirth.

But, the narrator brings us back from these gloomy thoughts with reassuring statistics. “Country life was safer for children in the 1880s than life in the cities,” although injuries from sharp tools, hot stoves, and large farm animals were common.” Antibiotics would not be invented for another 60 years. Conor Clune has been cut across the top of his foot while helping Dad and his older siblings saw a log. Mom Adrienne scolds him for not wearing his boots. Sister Aine cheerfully shows off her own injured foot, holding it up to the camera for a better view. She says her feet are “all scratched up and cracking and my big toe feels like it’s going to fall off.” The Clune kids gather around Conor and cheer when Gordon extracts a huge splinter from his son’s leg.

Crisis #2. We see a more alarming hazard at the Glenn farm. Mark and Karen spot a bear in the distance, feeding on a cow carcass. Karen very preachily explains that she’s glad they got a “visual” on the bear so that the kids know it was real. “They can see it; they can see what it’s doing and they can understand that you have to be careful. These are strange and wild woods that we live in.” She mocking intones, “It’s not some nice little farm and it’s (not) such a controlled setting that something can’t happen.”

The Clunes have their own bear encounter. A brown bear has moved in on Tracy and Aine’s fort next to the cabin. The bear gazes longingly up at the treehouse, while the Clune’s dog barks from a safe distance. “I’m not sleeping there tonight,” Tracy vows. Adrienne Clune admits that she doesn’t use their outhouse late at night anymore.

Tracy and Aine try to find other ways to amuse themselves. They line up some empty bottles and tap them to make music. Tracy tries out Uncle Gordon’s pipe on the swing, and stuffs her camisole Dolly Parton style for one of the family nightly camcorder sessions. The narrator says they have “frontier fever.”

The wildlife is getting to the Brooks, too. “Get the mice out of our hoooouse,” Nate and Kristin warble to the camera, in spooky, green night-cam vision. But the best joke of all comes when Aine Clune demonstrates how uncomfortable she is in her tight corset. “You won’t believe what it’s done to me.” There’s a closeup on hands unhooking the corset, exposing a very hairy chest. Surprise! It’s Gordon, wearing a ribbon headress, mugging to the camera. “My name is Olga. I like to make hay,” he trills in mock-Swedish, rolling his eyes. “Would you like to make hay with me?”

Paradox of all paradoxes. We finally get to the main event of this episode: school. The adults have “invited” local schoolteacher and expert Judy Harding to Frontier Valley to help the families set up a school. Ms. Harding, a very pretty blond-haired woman, arrives wearing a bright blue hat decorated with flowers, a blue-flowered skirt, and an elaborate white shawl. Mark and Karen Glenn and Gordon and Adrienne Clune are meeting with Ms. Harding to hear what she has to say. Judy Harding has been a teacher for 25 years, and was asked to research public education in Montana for the series. Right off the bat, she brings up the issue of interracial education in frontier schoolhouses. This, despite the fact that Nate and Kristin Brooks have no children and are not even at the meeting. Harding tells the Clunes and Glenns that “no children of African descent could go to your public school.” Karen Glenn goes for the bait. “We have an African-American family right here!” The Clunes and Glenns earnestly insist that they would want “them” educated along with their children. (This scene is another bizarre juxtaposition of pioneer mentality and modern 21st century reality. There are no African-American children in Frontier Valley. The families would obviously include them if they were, and the producers are just making an issue of a non-issue for their own purposes.) Mark Glenn really gets steamed-up, “Do we decide if Nate and Kristin’s kids can go to school? Yeah. Is it gonna be against the law? Probably. But, it’s still our community – why the hell did we leave and come up here if we’re gonna have somebody come up here? If we’re gonna have somebody tell us what to do against what we feel!” (Somebody, please rescue me from this pointless quagmire.)

Judy Harding finally steps in and puts an end to the emotional uproar she’s created. The schoolteacher consoles Mark that he does have the right to do that. Frontier families could make the decision to have a “private school.” They’d have to pay for everything themselves, but they could do what they want. The adults then get down to the nitty gritty of the task. When asked what her salary would be, Harding quotes 1880s wages, noting that male schoolteachers were paid more than women. This relevant issue causes Karen Glenn to comment that “some things never change. Men still make more money than women.” The final issue deals with the school building itself. A large abandoned shed has been found in Frontier Valley, which can be remodeled as the schoolhouse. The narrator says that frontier children sometimes walked fifteen miles to attend school.

The Glenns and Clunes visit the building and discuss how it can be remodeled. They only have one week in which to get the building ready. Although he has no children to attend the school, Nate Brooks volunteers his carpentry skills. The other adults promptly tell him about the racist 1880s laws that would keep his children from attending the school. Later, Nate, the voice of reason, says that although he’s sure racism was common in 1883 in Montana, they’re not 1883 couples. “We’re living an experiment.” When wife Kristin hears about the issue, she is struck by the fact that the children who would be discriminated against are her children. Nate says that racism and stereotypes are still there, but they’re subtle.

The adults get to work cutting out windows and building a floor. We hear what the kids think about this new development. Erinn Patton says the good thing about school is that she won’t have to churn butter until Saturday. Justin Clune says he needs a little trip away from the cabin because “everybody is going a little crazy out here.” Impish Logan Patton jokes that the adults have to “work some muscle up” now instead of just the kids. He proudly shows off his arm muscle. Adult Gordon Clune says that they have 7 or 8 weeks left in the project, 5 of them taken up with school, and to the kids, it’s a vacation. Erinn Patton hilariously insists that, “the kids are always workin’ around here,” thumping her fist on the table. “It’s just gonna fall apart!”

First day of school. Teacher Judy Harding arrives at the schoolhouse early, dressed in a flower sprigged white calico dress and matching sunbonnet. (I have the feeling that she has assembled all her own clothing for this project. For one thing, everything fits perfectly.) After inspecting the room, she declares everything “perfect.” The narrator tells us what schoolteachers were typically like in 1883. Good teachers were hard to find; standards were low, and teaching certificates were not required. Seventy percent were women; some of them only 15 years old. It was one of the few respectable jobs open to single women.

Harding says she always wanted to teach in a one-room schoolhouse before she retired, and this experience is like a dream come true.

The Patton kids set off, mounted on one of their horses. The Clunes travel on foot. Harding sets out a mug and slate for each child on the benches they will sit at, then goes outside to ring the bell. The Clune kids arrive looking very clean and neat. The girls wear aprons over their bright skirts and camisole tops. The boys were their Sunday-best felt hats.

The teacher starts out the lesson as it would have been taught in 1883. “Every morning, they start with a memory gem,” Ms. Harding explains. She writes, “No one believes a liar,” on the chalkboard. She plays the guitar while they sing “Fare Thee Well.” Since there is a wide range of ages in her classroom, she breaks the children into groups of two: a teenager and a younger child. Tracy Clune is paired with Logan Patton. Tracy and Aine make flash cards to teach the younger kids with. Tracy compares her school in California with her frontier one. “We had 4,000 kids at my school and each classroom had 30 to 40 kids in each class.”

The narrator says that with the children in school from 8 to 3, the rhythm of homestead life has changed. Here, we see the effect that an empty house has on the two families. Karen Glenn feels lonely and bereft. “When you love ‘em too much like I do, it’s very, very hard to cut those apron strings.” But, the Clunes are reveling in their new privacy. They lie in a heap of cut grass and gaze up at the sky. Gordon says it’s the “first time in three months we’ve had the cabin to ourselves.” He turns to Adrienne. “It’s nice rolling in the hay with you.”

Crisis #3. More trouble at the Glenns. “I’ve gotten so spoiled, having Erinn and Logan around here all the time. I’m gonna miss them so terribly and it’s selfish of me. It’s very selfish. I understand that, but they’re my comrades, they’re at sometimes my best cheerleaders, my supporters. And to me, that’s devastating. It’s like I lost my best friends.”

The kids celebrate the end of the school day by pitching cow patty frisbees in the pasture by the schoolhouse. The Clune girls take a dip in the creek by the cabin. Tracy says she hated the first day of school, because it felt like “preschool and kindergarten put together.” She was embarrassed to sing “Polly wolly doodle all the day.” Aine grins and says she thought it was fun. Tracy pats her on the shoulder and laughs, “you would.” Logan Patton deadpans, “It was a good day; it was a good outhouse. I broke it in; did the first one in it.”

Crisis #4. The Glenns eat outside and discuss the school day. Or rather, Karen and the kids talk, Mark mopes. “I think our philosophy on raising children come between the two of us. I don’t think I wanna be anybody’s stepfather. It’s just a really bad position to be in and it’s one I don’t think I wanna be in anymore. We’ve always gotten along, with just her and I. But there are too many variables in life. You can’t be alone with somebody, especially when you marry a woman with two kids.” Karen says, “It’d be nice if it was a four-member team, but it’s a three-member plus one team, and he sets it up like that. He likes me, but he doesn’t like bein’ around the kids. Cause, I’m not a me, I’m a mom, with two children. That’s the package. And if he can’t take the package, he can’t just have one piece of they toy out of the package.” (If Karen wants a little perspective about how her point-of-view conflicts with Mark’s, she might want to review her “I am the glue” speech in Episode 3.)

Two weeks into the school term, teacher Judy Harding gives the kids a lesson in archaeology. The students sift through dirt from an Indian settlement, looking for evidence of human habitation. They find arrowheads and charcoal, evidence that the inhabitants built fires. Logan Patton says that school wasn’t boring, it was the “funnest thing in life.” Harding also gives the children guitar lessons. The Clune girls love learning to play the guitar, especially since they don’t have to “learn how to add anymore.” At lunch, the kids pretend they’re eating cheeseburgers, and reminisce about cokes, doughnuts and candy. Tracy laments that she misses “hot guys,” and can’t remember the last time she saw one. Conor Clune brings home a tomahawk he’s made, which his surprised parents ooh and aah over. Mom Adrienne says she’s never seen her kids so enthusiastic about school before.

Gordon Clune takes son Conor fly fishing. Conor talks about how much he enjoys his dad’s company here in Montana. Back in California, he was usually in bed by the time Gordon got home. Now, Gordon “teaches me a whole bunch of more things.” Conor says he wants to be just like his dad when he grows up. Gordon says the kids appreciate him more, he appreciates them more, and he just “loves them tremendously.”

Tracy and Aine entertain the adults by singing ballads to their guitar accompaniment. Gordon remarks that he and wife Adrienne are “probably overly preoccupied with each other in the 21st century and the children were more secondary.”

Crisis #5. The Glenns have been taking care of the Clunes’ horse, and Karen now wants them to pay. (How the Glenns have come to care for the Clunes’ horse is not explained. The Glenns took in the Clunes’ larger animals when the Clunes were building their cabin, but they made a big stink about the Clunes taking back their milk cows as soon as it was built. Why wouldn’t the horse have been returned, too?) Gordon has refused on the grounds that the Glenns have been riding it. His solution is to wipe out the debt by giving Mark and Karen a bed he has built. “This way more than compensates for my beholdingness to Mark, and not to anyone else. I’m making this for Mark. If Mark wants to give it to her and say he built it – good for him. Maybe he’ll actually get to test out the spring action on this sucker. I doubt it though. I doubt anyone will want to.” He and the kids carry the bed past Karen and Erinn, who are milking their cows by the front of the cabin. Mark calls out a quick hello to Karen and keeps going. Karen watches the procession with her mouth open. “You just never know what’s gonna happen around here, do you?” she says aloud.

”I try to avoid her as much as possible,” Gordon explains. “I just keep my distance, but I do have interaction with Mark and we do kind of get along. We’re not best friends or anything, but we do kind of get along.”

Gordon find Mark out by the cabin and lays the bed in front of him, explaining how the bed is constructed, what kind of wood it’s made from, etc. They exchange cordial goodbyes. As they’re leaving, Karen asks, “What are you up to?” Gordon keeps walking, saying that he “gave Mark something.” Karen remarks to Erinn that Gordon, “Plays by some set of rules that are just bizarre. Because, when you’re straightforward…” she searches for the right word. Her confidant pipes up, “instead of stupid?” Karen laughs and agrees. Karen remarks to the camera that “no one has said anything to me, and I think I deserve that.” At this point, she’s more puzzled than angry. “Oh well, it was a nice gesture; it was real sweet.”

Mark Glenn explains his part in their feud with the Clunes. “This has been goin’ on between Gordon and Karen since Virginia City. It’s been goin’ on between the two families. Christ, I can’t even eat supper without havin’ a Clune conversation. They’ve got this, or they’ve got that, or where did they get it or they’ve got this nicer thing. Christ, I’m so ashamed. Sometimes, I get caught up in it, too. It’s all been positioning. It’s all been ‘who’s better than who.’”

Now, Karen gets to being angry. Karen confronts Mark back by the cabin. Mark describes the bed incident by saying everyone was “gracious,” especially Gordon for making the bed. Karen counters with a smile, “No, he did say it was for you. He was very clear about that.” Mark blows up at Karen’s implication. “That kinda comment right there is stupid! I probably can’t build a bed that good. What does it matter?” Karen shrugs. Erinn watches all.

Karen explains to the camera, “My mother always told me, ‘Don’t waste your time hating anybody, because the only one that it hurts is yourself. They usually don’t feel the pain.’ That’s true, because it’s probably a waste of a lot of good energy, and just angry tones towards Gordon. That didn’t hurt anybody but myself. It does change my perception of the man. I can’t say that we’re gonna be chums, but I can say that I can be softer. I’ve been a bit rough; and a bit harsh and I’ve probably enjoyed some of his follies, maybe a little too much and so I don’t know that it will change the relationship, but it has changed me.”

Back to the schoolhouse. In Sept. 8, 1883, a major event occurred that revolutionized life in Montana. The Northern Pacific railroad linked the continental United States, making information and goods more available. Teacher Judy Harding points to a large map on the wall, showing where the rail lines ran. To demonstrate the significance of the event, she presents each table with “one beautiful orange.” This is the first citrus fruit the children have eaten in five months. They relish every drop, licking their fingers after eating the delicacy.

Logan Patton is celebrating his own life event, his ninth birthday. Karen has a big surprise planned for the day. But first, he gets a bath in the washtub. Karen complains that his hair stinks as she scrubs him off. Logan says, “It’s a signal; it shows my personality.” He then asks Karen what Indian name she would call him if he was one. Before she can answer, he offers his own suggestion, “Eagle Eyes.” (My teenage daughter thinks Logan is adorable, “so cute and naïve!” If Conor Clune is everychild, Logan Patton is everyone’s endearing scamp.) Karen suggests, “boy who talks too much.” Eagle Eyes holds a sponge over his peepers, complaining like kids everywhere, “Ow! You did that on purpose!” “How about boy who smells like dog?” laughs Karen. Exasperated, Logan turns to the camcorder. “Mama, give me a real name – I’m trying to be serious.”

Paradox #2. It’s Logan’s birthday. Karen, Erinn and Logan wait on the front porch, playing question-and-answer with Logan as he tries to guess what his surprise is. As the present approaches, they move down to the yard, Erinn covering Logan’s eyes. Karen cries, as the narrator explains how the “railroad” made it easy and cheap to travel out west. It’s all a tie-in to explain how Grandma, the birthday present, got there.

Karen’s mom has traveled from Tennessee to see her daughter and grandkids. Karen is overcome with emotion, and sobs on her mother’s shoulder. “You like your present?” she asks her son. Mark comes up and affectionately calls his mother-in-law “old woman.” Inside the cabin, Logan tells Karen, “It’s the best birthday present I could ever have.” Grandma has learned her lesson from the Cheese Nips debacle, when she sent the family a boxful of forbidden supermarket goodies. She presents Logan and Erinn with handmade slingshots, then gives Logan a wooden checkerboard, and trucks. The narrator reprovingly remarks that frontier children would never have gotten so many toys. Birthday presents in general were not popular until after the turn of the century.

Karen and her mom have a heart-to-heart about Karen’s homesteading adventures. Karen says she thought mom would “feel real good about it,” because of her experiences growing up at home. Mom explains that at first, she thought that Karen wouldn’t make it because of what she was used to having, but once she thought it over, “you would do it or kill yourself tryin’.” Karen laughs and nods her head. “I’m stubborn; where do I get that from?” Mom answers, “I don’t know, must have been the milkman.” (Karen’s mom reminds me a lot of my husband’s family. His grandmother lived for more than 60 years in a 3-room house made of creek rock in the wilds of Indiana.)

Erinn and Logan revel in their granny’s presence, cuddling and hugging. Erinn says it was “so fun,” having her grandmother there, “like a taste of home.”

School’s Out. At the end of five weeks, the school term has come to an end. The children put on a typical 1880s end of school celebration – singing songs and reciting pieces from memory. A wooden platform has been constructed outside the schoolhouse, with sheet curtains across the front. The parents and the Brooks put on their Sunday best for the occasion. First, the kids sing a song they have written about Frontier House to the tune of “Frére Jacques.” Instead of “ding, dang, dong,” they sing “work, work, work.” They also sing “My Darling Clementine.” A panning-for-gold skit is acted out by the boys. Gordon Clune says how proud he is of them and they’re better human beings as a result of their experience there. Nate Brooks talks about how neat it is that the kids have come together. Before, there was a division between the Clune and Glenn kids, but “kids are always the first ones to mend the fences.”

Inspired by the kids’ school experience, Karen initiates a get-together for the women. They meet at the Brooks’ cabin for a traditional sewing circle. (This is one of the most attractive domestic scenes in this series for me. Along with the vision of Adrienne Clune’s magnificent breads and pastries arranged on her kitchen table.) Kristin Brooks has made a pan of gingerbread for the occasion, which Karen Glenn is very impressed by. “How did you get it so nice and light?” she asks. Adrienne and Kristin sit down and get out their sewing. Karen remarks that sewing is “one of those female skills I have none of.”

Commenting later to her camcorder, Karen makes another honest and very revealing admission. “It’s real hard sometimes. I go to Adrienne and Gordon’s cabin, and she’s made these lovely curtains, and Kristin’s cabin is so cute and quaint and she’s got it decorated real sweet. Sometimes, it hurts – here I’m practical and plain, back home I was pretty plain and practical. Some things never change. I just wish I could have one day where I was the beauty queen.” (Here, Karen reveals the insecurities that drive her. She sees the Clunes as being more genteel than she is, and automatically thinks they’re patronizing her. Her resentment and aggressive nature drives her to attack them. Karen feels even more inadequate when Adrienne demonstrates domestic skills that Karen longs for.)

It’s now two weeks from the end of the Frontier House project. The narrator describes this time as, “lessons of the frontier coming to life.” The kids each explain what they have learned.

Erinn Patton says she could “live in the wilderness” now. Conor Clune says the show’s producers picked people to see who could survive. “I’d say we’re hanging on by a thread.” Justin Clune says he wouldn’t waste food now because he knows what it’s like to be without it. Tracy Clune says she and Aine can walk in the dark now without being scared. Aine says the experience has brought them together as one through hardship. Logan Patton wraps up the episode by saying, “I’ve discovered imagination.”

Next episode, the Frontier House finale.

Melinda Smith is a technical illustrator and writer with a background in graphic arts. She and her family live in Cincinnati, Ohio. can be reached at tremme@eudoramail.com.

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