- From “The Secret Life of Cowboys” by Tom Groneberg
POLSON - This much distance shouldn't separate a man from his horse, but Tom Groneberg has the perfect house on one side of Flathead Lake, and the perfect place to keep Blue on the other.
The horse, meantime, is many miles away on the west shore of Flathead, between Big Arm and Elmo. Chief Cliff rises across the bay, Wildhorse Island is off to the right, and Blue shares 110 acres with more than a dozen other horses belonging to the owner of the land.
The distance from house to horse is less than 15 miles as the crow flies. But it takes more than an hour to wind your way around Finley Point, out to Highway 35, then to the junction with Highway 93, through Polson, across the Flathead River, up Sunny Slope and out to Bob Ricketts' ranch.
Fifteen miles. An hourlong trip.
A 40-year journey.
It's been about four months since Groneberg last put a bridle on Blue, and on a sunny February day the horse is interested in the apples Groneberg has brought along, but not in being caught. The two do a dance in the pasture, a courtship of sorts, and Blue plays hard to get.
Groneberg's task is made more comical, if not easier, by Ricketts' big, people-friendly Oberlander horses, which follow Groneberg around as Groneberg follows Blue around. “Pick me!” the big tan horses with the blonde manes seem to say.
But it is Blue Groneberg wants.
It is Blue Groneberg needed.
If I had a good horse, I could give it my life. I could ride it for years. We could grow old together.
- From “One Good Horse” by Tom Groneberg
This is who Tom Groneberg is: He is a husband and father. A son. He is a hired hand. He is a writer. An author.
He is Chicago-raised, and can't think of a reason he'd ever return.
Groneberg came west after graduating from the University of Illinois, leaving Jennifer, his college sweetheart, behind, to find himself, to work at a dude ranch in Colorado.
He found more than himself. He found a place he wanted to fit in.
Groneberg returned, to ask Jennifer to join him, and together they have built a life in Montana grounded in the hard work of raising sons and cattle, the joy of horses, and the beauty and harshness of the land.
With it have come the hard lessons of life: The short-lived attempt at a master's of fine arts at the University of Montana. The long days with little pay on a ranch near Niarada. The tiny cabin near Eureka they purchased, with no electricity or running water, where they tried to make a home. The 9,500-acre ranch outside Miles City they bought and tried to run. The return to Polson, where they had married years before.
And then there is Avery.
The Gronebergs' son will be 4 in about three months, along with his twin brother Bennett. Tom and Jennifer also have an 8-year-old son, Carter.
But Avery was born with Down syndrome. He does not talk yet. He rarely walks, preferring to use his arms to propel him across the floor in a sitting position.
Groneberg's first book, “The Secret Life of Cowboys,” details his transformation from Chicagoan to Montanan. His second, “One Good Horse,” is part Part II, part not.
“If you look at the story,” he says, “it really should have been called ‘One Good Child.' ”
“Avery is not the son we thought we'd have,” Groneberg writes in the second book. “The family we once imagined is gone. Š Jennifer and I hold each other and we cry. We grieve for Avery, for his future. Or maybe our sadness is for ourselves, for the loss of who we thought we were. Š At less than a week old, Avery has been labeled, limited, his life foreclosed on, his future told by a crease in his tiny palm. Š I want this all to go away.”
“One Good Horse” weaves in and out of this painful time, blending it into Tom's relationship with the colt he has purchased, and blending that into a retelling of a true tale of the old West, “a time when longhorn cattle flowed north from Texas like a rust-colored river,” Groneberg writes.
“We Pointed Them North: Recollections of a Cow Puncher” is the story of Teddy Blue Abbott as told to Helena Huntington Smith. In “One Good Horse,” Groneberg retells the retelling. He uses his experiences on the back of a horse, of driving cattle - and his ability with words - to make Smith's “Dragnet”-like just-the-facts-ma'am approach a more personal story.
“I enjoy documentaries and nonfiction,” Groneberg explains. “The stories are so much more powerful. One of my favorite books is ‘House' by Tracy Kidder. It's about building this house outside Boston, dealing with the architects and builders, and I know it sounds boring but you read it and it's got this ‘Oh-my-God-what's-going-to-happen-next?' feel
to it.”
The only thing that really bothers me is that I never thought I would become this person. I never thought I would rely on chemistry to fix my emotions. I never thought I would sit down with my parents and tell them all of my weaknesses. I never thought it would happen now, not here, in Miles City. The pills heal my soul, but my heart is broken and mended and broken with every beat.
- From “The Secret Life of Cowboys”
Are you a cowboy?
Groneberg doesn't need to think about his answer. He's had years to think about it.
“No,” he says. “And I don't think I ever was.”
“I don't know what it takes to call yourself a cowboy,” he goes on. “It's like calling yourself a celebrity or a rock star.”
He dressed the part early on, but anybody can buy a cowboy hat, big belt buckle and cowboy boots. Groneberg is more comfortable in a baseball cap and work boots when he's mending fences, feeding cows or riding horses.
“I'm a hired hand,” he says. “I've been a ranch owner. But I'm not a cowboy.”
It was the 9,500-acre ranch that took the biggest toll.
“I was the worst boss I ever had,” Groneberg says. “In agriculture, the mistake you make today can haunt you for a long time. It can be five years later and you're still recovering. I took the setbacks way too hard.”
It didn't help that their second winter on the eastern Montana ranch was a horrible one, days on end of 40-below temperatures - that's with no wind chill figured in - that not all of their herd could survive.
“We lost 20 cows out of 250 before it warmed up,” Groneberg says. “Then on
April 4 another storm hit just as we started calving, and we lost a bunch of calves.”
Still, it's clear Groneberg was never sure of himself, even if the weather was fine.
“I had problems managing the ranch,” he says. “It was all too much for me. When do you put the bulls out? When do you cut the hay? I'm better at having someone say, ‘Put the bulls out. Cut the hay.' ”
After two summers working at the dude ranch in Colorado - the second with Jennifer with him - Groneberg knew his future was in the West, but where?
The creative writing program at UM brought Tom and Jennifer to Montana, and while that didn't work out, Montana did. So they roamed, from Missoula to Polson, Polson to Troy, Troy to Libby, Libby to Eureka, Eureka to Miles City, and finally Miles City back to Polson.
“Jennifer didn't want to move from Miles City,” Tom says. “She was sick of moving and wanting to put her foot down. I said, ‘Why'd you have to pick Miles City to put your foot down?' ”
But both agreed, if there was one place in Montana they knew they wanted to be, it was near Flathead Lake. Of all their moves, Polson became the first place they ever moved back to.
As they sold the ranch, Tom came across a book by someone he'd attended graduate school with at UM. He says he had envisioned a nurturing environment of colleagues helping each other in the master's program, but instead found the program cliquish and filled with politics and egos - his own included.
But this book got him thinking.
“It was by one of the few guys I got along with, and I thought, ‘If I'd stuck it out Š he was the path I chose not to follow. He was what I might have been.' ”
And so the decision was made. Tom would not only return to being a hired hand.
He would also return to writing.
These days, it's called ‘gentling' or ‘starting' or ‘training' a horse. ‘Breaking' conjures up images of bloody ropes and whips and wild-eyed fear. But some part of me wants a fight. I want to go toe to toe with something, to grit my teeth and strike back, to make up for all of the times last summer when I had to take what was handed to me. But that isn't fair to the colt. None of it is fair.
- From “One Good Horse”
Writing - so different from ranching.
“Writing is all in your head,” Groneberg says. “Ranching is all body, and you can get by without too much thinking.”
And another thing about writing: “The minute you're done,” Groneberg says, “you're unemployed. You're always trying to sell yourself to someone.”
The one thing graduate schools never do, Groneberg says, is teach you how to make a living at writing.
He wrote freelance articles, and came up with two 40-page proposals for books, one on rodeos, the other for “The Secret Life of Cowboys.” Then, one-page query letters where writers pitch themselves and their book idea in a few words.
He started sending the letters to literary agents, 10 agents at a time. When he'd get five rejections, he'd send out 10 more.
Finally, 25 stamps in, agent Jane Dystel of New York called.
“She scared the hell out of me,” Groneberg says. “She reminded me of Joan Rivers on the phone. She's Judge Judy, and I'm more Jared from the Subway commercials.”
If interest was expressed, Groneberg expected it would come for the rodeo idea. But Dystel liked the proposal for “The Secret Life of Cowboys,” and asked to see more.
She sold the manuscript to Scribner, which later bought “One Good Horse.”
Groneberg isn't sure what to make of the covers on his two books, but has come to terms with them.
“The Secret Life of Cowboys” has two photographs. On top, a landscape of treeless green hills and deep blue skies he says could have been taken most anywhere on the ranch back in Miles City, except it wasn't. On the bottom, a supermarket aisle, a shopping cart, and a cowboy sticking his head in a door in the frozen foods section.
“I didn't like it at first,” Groneberg says. “I don't know what it means.”
“One Good Horse” shows a picture of the head of a white horse, which is fine, except Blue is not white. A picture of the real Blue is on the back flap, under Groneberg's photograph.
“White horses sell better than dark ones, maybe,” Groneberg says. “I guess if the idea is to sell books, I can live with that.”
There are so many things I don't know about what the future holds for any of us. I may never get another chance to write my sons a letter on their birthdays, telling them how much I love them. So I will tell them now. Be strong. Be proud. Keep trying. Work hard. Go slow if you need to. Never apologize for being who you are. Don't be a victim. Remember that life is not always fair, but it is good. Success is measured by the size of your heart. Know that, in this life, you were loved as much as anyone can be loved Š.
It's okay if it ends like this.
I am done.
- From the last page of “One Good Horse”
What he can't live without is his family. There is Jennifer, who is taking her well-earned turn, working on her own book, part memoir, part how-to, about raising a child with Down syndrome. It's called “A Road Map to Holland,” which takes its name from an essay by Emily Perl Kingsley called “Welcome to Holland.”
“I felt I had a lot to say about being Avery's mom,” Jennifer says.
“Welcome to Holland” says that raising a child with a disability is like taking a long-planned vacation to Italy, getting off the plane, and discovering you've been deposited in Holland.
“The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease,” Kingsley writes. “It's just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.”
And there are Carter, Bennett and Avery, sons representing two trips to Italy, one to Holland.
Blue, the colt Tom Groneberg bought and trained himself, gave Groneberg an escape from a life that kept throwing curve balls.
“I didn't know I needed him, but I did,” Groneberg says. “I expected a rodeo, but that didn't happen. I thought I wanted a knock-down, drag-out fight. I had so many things I was dealing with.”
“He'd come home,” Jennifer says, “almost disappointed that things were going so well.”
But Blue was the horse he needed, Groneberg says. Like he needs Jennifer and Carter and Bennett.
And Avery, who links them all - the horse, the man, his family - in a way no other child could have.
“Avery is the son I didn't know we needed,” Groneberg says.
Despite his end to his second book, Tom Groneberg is not done. He is, in many ways, at the age of 40, his secrets laid bare and his horse now trained, just beginning.
Reporter Vince Devlin can be reached at 406-319-2117 or at vdevlin@missoulian.com.
Photographer Kurt Wilson can be reached at 523-5270 or at kwilson@missoulian.com.
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