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We All Have A Story - This Is Mine

I am a product of 17th century immigration to British Colonial America. My forebearers landed in New England in the early 1600's and worked their way south. I was born in Alabama in 1942 but was raised in Idaho from the age of one and a half years old. I had an older brother and younger sister. My Dad suffered a serious burn injury to his foot at the Aluminum foundry where he worked in Alabama and he was rejected for induction into the Army at his physical exam at the start of World War II. That rejection played a huge part in his decision to move to Idaho in the "Far West," where he had visited as a young man after following the harvests across the mid-west during the Great Depression. There was something alluring about the "Wild West" in the family. Some of his wander-lust cousins and uncles had already made the westward trek. He visited some of those relatives in Wyoming and Idaho again in 1939 when my brother was 2 years old. My family moved to Idaho permanently in 1944; so, my earliest memories from the age of one and a half years old are of life in and around the little mining and ranching town of "May" in the Pahsimeroi Valley of Central Idaho.

May, Idaho was where one of Pop's best friends from Alabama had moved earlier, so our arrival was no coincidence. It was a time and place without electricity, telephones, or plumbing. I had no idea what those things were so I didn't miss'em. People talk about their palaces, and museums, and mansions, but the most "important and practical" architectural concept for modern civilization - after the simple shelter - had to be the "outhouse." Pop was a talented metal worker and welder and needed steady work, but tiny settlements like May, in the middle of nowhere, could not provide it, so we moved around quite a bit in his search for a good job. After my sister was born in 1946, we moved to Salmon City where we lived in an ancient and ramshackle 1880's log cabin with painted canvas ceilings located on Water Street near the Salmon River. After a couple of years, we moved south to Jerome where Pop had finally found descent work in a Machine Shop - and that's where I started and finished elementary and high school.

I started drawing with pencils and crayons on old paper sacks and my brother's school tablet when I was 4 years old in Salmon and started painting in oils about age 13 in Jerome. I drew and painted all manner of subjects, but throughout my early life, it never occurred to me that I would profess to be an artist. My Pop was talented in mechanical drawing and, deep down, wanted to be an artist himself so he encouraged me to go to Art School; so, naturally, I decided to go into electronics. After graduation from high school, I caught a Trailways Bus aimed at the bright lights of Southern California. Until I could afford my own place, I lived temporarily with my older brother and his young family, started college in Fullerton College that September, slept in the mornings, went to classes in the evenings, and worked from 12:00 midnight until 7:00am on the graveyard shift at Autonetics in Downey (we were paid for 8 hours as a graveyard shift bonus.) My department did the assembly and tests of a particular ICBM Inertial Navigation Guidance System. I started at the lowest pay-grade as a Utility Man, fetching tools and recording readings. It was a relatively new department, so the opportunity for advancement was expanding and I worked my way up to System Assembly and Test. Electronics was to be my life; so, to be a part of that production was a dream for me. I had use of only a self-taught education in basic electronics; therefore, much of what I learned was proprietary to the product with little general application anywhere else. It would be sort of like Army training on killing with the bayonet - not much legitimate application outside the military.

About the time that my life in college and work became settled and routine, I got a life-changing letter from the Jerome Selective Service Board, (AKA Draft Board) ordering me to report to medical offices in Los Angeles for my military pre-induction physical. I passed my physical; but, I did not want to be drafted, so I took a Military Leave of Absence from my job, drove through Mexico for a couple of weeks, sold my car in Albuquerque, and hitch-hiked home to join the Army. I was sworn in at Boise, went through Basic Training at Fort Ord, California, and spent a year on Boca Chica Key near Key West, Florida with Battery C, 512th Artillery, manning Hawk Missiles during the tail-end of the Cuban Missile Crisis. When the Battery Commander found out I was an artist, he kept me busy painting signs for the compound. I exceeded his needs by adding an illustration to each sign in a sort of "non-military" way. Since I could type, I was commandeered to be the Battery Clerk for a few months. After surviving two hurricanes and clouds of man-eating mosquitoes, I was rotated out of Key West, boarded the MSTS "USS General Patch" in Brooklyn Harbor, sailed into Bremerhaven, and spent the next two years in Butzbach and Giessen, West Germany. At the end of my term of service, I flew back to the USA to Fort Dix, was mustered out of Active Duty from the Army as an E5, Specialist 5. I bought a bus ticket to New York's LaGuardia Airport (no more free rides!) I flew to Detroit to visit an Uncle - and to pick up a new car that I had purchased while still a short-timer in Germany. I drove it home to Idaho, then back to California, assuming things would continue where I had left them and I could go forward in the Electronics Industry.

I returned to my job, got married to a hometown Idaho girl, had a pretty daughter, was still working for Autonetics, and was taking a collegiate home course in Electronic Engineering. Then, an unforeseen fork in the road popped up. Just as the bottom was dropping out of the entire military electronics field, Autonetics lost a large Military Defense Contract bid; so, I was laid off - along with many others. I searched all over Los Angeles and Orange counties for a job that fit my training in electronic test or audit. The waiting rooms for job applicants were packed and I found nothing that did not require a degree or a skill set unrelated to my experiences.

At every stage of my life from child to adult (except in Boot Camp) I was painting and drawing whenever I could. That compulsion continued. My wife worked in a bank office and mentioned to her co-workers that I had painted a portrait of our daughter with our dog. The next day, she showed them a Polaroid of the painting. Some asked if I would paint their children. Portraying people as they wished to be revealed is a tricky business. I was apprehensive, but I gave it a try, and thus started painting children's and adult portraits for money, charging $40.00 each for a 16" x 20" canvas. I guaranteed the likeness, and I sometimes added Fido or Kitty for free. The portraits were well received and affordable, so I stayed fairly busy. I painted portraits at the rate of about one a week. In time, the customer pool made up of friends - and friends-of-friends - and referrals by that chain of friends was eventually depleted. I went back to searching for a job.

I read meters for Southern California Edison and spent my days dealing with the inevitable disgruntled customers over their power bills (for which, it seemed, I was personally responsible) and fighting the equally inevitable backyard guard-dogs ranging from Schnauzers to Dobermans; I was attacked often and was bitten twice - by the dogs. Then, as luck would have it, due to seniority, Autonetics called me back to work - even as the layoffs continued. My short stint as an artist had taught me something positive for the future; I could work alone in a studio and muster the self-discipline to devote my time be an artist - i.e. I did not have to sit around awaiting the "muse." The creative adventure alone supplied my motivation and I enjoyed the process. I began to question my long held dedication to a career in Electronics. By the time I was recalled to work, we had made the decision to return to Idaho where I planned to build a log home and become a professional artist. I had been a student of American "old west history" for years and I took that as a helpful plus. What had been a suggested but discarded idea suddenly became a compelling desire.

Actually, it was a wacky and scary plan similar to jumping out of an airplane and constructing the parachute on your way down. It was not a course of action I would now advise for anyone to take because there is a difference between being brave and being ignorant. Here's why: when I decided to do this admittedly crazy thing, I lacked any serious experience or formal education in either art or the art business. I had never built a house, used a chain saw, or lived in temperatures so low that ordinary rubber and plastic shattered like glass when you hit them. I just winged it because I did not know it was probably impossible. Thankfully, my dream was not driven by logic, but by desire. It's an old, and often true, maxim that says, "Ignorance is bliss." Heck, I was swimming in bliss; but, bliss is a gossamer state of mind. Even though any idea of facing those facts and quitting was never an option, I still had a lot of practical catching up to do at the edge of the Sawtooth Wilderness.

For Autonetics, paying overtime was cheaper than hiring another employee and I worked all the overtime I could manage to help buy the land and save up funds to live on. We purchased two acres in the alpine Sawtooth Valley of Central Idaho 12 miles South of Stanley in a little unincorporated spot named "Obsidian" and moved onto the bare ground, making the last payment just before we moved. I had already designed a log home while still in California, and I built a scale model out of dowels using road gravel for the rockwork. I drew the plans and modified them as reality constantly tapped on my shoulder during both the planning and building processes. Driving a $250 beat-up 1957 Chevy pickup (it burned cheap 25¢ motor oil to the tune of a quart every 20 miles) I found, cut, and hauled in good dead-standing house logs, gathered local stone for the rockwork, and poured concrete piers to support the house. The first winter came with the piers, floor joists, and fireplace foundation completed - and a whole bunch of logs.

When our first snowy winter arrived and the nighttime temperature started dropping to well below zero, the work stopped on the new home until spring. Staying as caretakers for the winter at a neighbor's lodge, we set up housekeeping in a tiny three-room cabin with a two-hole outhouse and one frozen water pipe to the kitchen. The thermometer dropped to -52⁰ in December and nighttime temperatures of -30⁰ and -40⁰ were common that winter. The only heat came from the kitchen stove and a small propane heater that never shut off until the 40 gallon propane tank was empty - which happened more often than I had planned.

My first studio space consisted of a small corner in the 8-foot-wide main room near the outside door using an easel I built in California. Anytime anyone needed to go to the outhouse, I was out of business. I awoke one frigid morning after a howling overnight blizzard to find a small snow drift on the frozen living room floor that had blown in through the keyhole and doorframe. In that inauspicious state of affairs, I produced my first paintings as a professional and augmented my work in Western Art with some portrait orders I brought from California. There was no path open for me except to continue forward - ignorant or not. During that winter, I received my first commission from the Forest Service when I was asked by the Stanley Ranger to produce a pen and ink rendition of the "New" Stanley Ranger Station built a couple of miles south of town; the drawing was used on the cover of the brochure distributed at the official Opening festivities.

My wife waited tables in Stanley and I did odd jobs for neighbors and the Idaho Fish and Game Dept. during that winter and following summer to help with my really meager art income. I wrote to some bookstores in an effort to find data as part of my research. The late Bill Todd, Jr. of Seattle, who owned and operated Shorey's Bookstore, expressed an interest in my work and became my first agent and supporter. He had been born in a "Soddy" in North Dakota and knew the vista looking up from the bottom. In telling me his life story, he also supplied me with valuable advice, inspiration, motivation, and some important sales revenue. I had very little business knowledge and even less faith in my ability to put a value on any of my paintings. I was afraid of asking too much for something I enjoyed doing without any hard physical labor. When I sent him three painting to look over and assess - along with my suggested retail price - Bill said I was not asking enough and he doubled the price - and paid me accordingly. I was happy - but still leery. He sold every painting and he became my main source for rare publications on Old Western History and Native Americana. He bought many paintings from me and I traded a few to him in exchange for books. More than that, he gave me much needed confidence and fostered a comforting lifelong friendship between a master bookseller and a greenhorn artist laden with some modest dreams, but ignorant of the business side of art. Bill and LaVon Todd's friendship and investment, and the advise and investment by our friends Boyd and Alta Ellis, our Sawtooth Valley neighbors who ran The Wampum Trading Post a mile south of us; they all opened doors for me that otherwise might have remained hidden.

Life's struggle is not easy for beginning artists and their families, and it is especially difficult for those without credentials. One of the qualities taught to me by my Pop was the art of persistence. I passed that advice on to my kids and to everyone I met who felt stymied by fortune and circumstance. Hard work and determination coupled with the unbounded freedom of blissful ignorance provided some fruitful results. Stanley folks joked that the Sawtooths had 8 months of winter and 4 months of rough snowmobiling. I spent those long winters painting and the short summers working on our home/studio. The seemingly endless hours of peeling logs, cutting saddle notches, and lifting the heavy logs onto the walls to be fitted and spiked into place, eventually paid off as our house. After three summers of building, we moved into the 3/4 finished house before winter and found it comfortable, warm - and "home."

The second floor had my studio and a bedroom for our daughter. That third winter, my new studio also served as our bedroom and nursery for our second pretty daughter who was born in June. It was crowded, but I had a corner in the north side by the large north-facing windows where I set up my easel. I finished the downstairs bedrooms the next summer. The house was plumbed, but we had been hauling our water from springs in 10-gallon milk cans. That practice could no longer keep up with demand, so we had a well drilled. Happiness was running water - and a big firewood pile. I had no idea of how much wood we would need for a winter, but I discovered it the hard way. We had a few cords stacked but we saw the bottom of the pile in February and it was mighty cold. I went into the forest on an old Evenrude snowmobile pulling a sled made from an old car hood to find what I could. I hauled in logs for about a week. The shortfall never happened again; thereafter, I brought in 10 cords of firewood every fall.

We worked hard - both physically and mentally - and sacrificed a lot in the process of building our home and developing a career. We made steady progress - steady by jerks. Hard work in the studios started paying off and we received invitations and began traveling to Western Art Shows in Montana and the Northwest; thereafter, my work was selling well enough to give us vital hope - and give me renewed enthusiasm. I had determined to give it my best for at least 5 years; if it didn't work out by then, I said would try something else. All of life is a learning process, so no matter what your vocation - whether ditch-digging or brain-surgery - you improve your craft by continuous effort. Within the next 5 years, as my work continued to improve, it became easier for me to achieve my goal in any particular painting, and my production went up accordingly. My work attracted more galleries and collectors and soon we were making enough money to support the family on the "thick and thin" premise. When the wolf came to the door, we ate him. That is the nature of the free-lance art business. I was asked by art groups to hold painting seminars all around Idaho from Jerome to Salmon and that became an annual event for several years. Depending on the successes of Art Shows and of the galleries handling my work, much of my income came in large chunks and the time between chunks was indeterminate and undependable. Budgeting became an "art" in and of itself.

I know I have been very fortunate. I was 25 years old with a family when I made a life-altering decision to forsake my job and pursue a career as a full-time artist, eventually sending work to 13 different galleries in the USA, and opening galleries of my own in Obsidian, Challis, and Ketchum/Sun Valley in Central Idaho. I have always wanted my work to reflect my admiration and respect for Native American Nations and their cultures, the rigors and hardships of frontier life as it happened for early explorers, mountain men, pioneers, and cowboys in the sometimes stark, sometimes staggeringly beautiful, country that can overwhelm us anywhere in the "Old West" of America. We worked hard, it's true, but not a whole lot happens in a self-induced vacuum. We were guided and helped enormously by our families, some generous friends and neighbors, a very strong desire, some fortunate good-timing, and the fickle finger of fate that forever giveth and taketh away. "We got by with a little help from our friends!" If you are still reading this -Thank You! Omnia vera sunt - vita mea est.

Larry B. Milligan

DEDICATION

This site is dedicated to my beloved Mother, Lucile Sentell Milligan. She loved and cared for her family and spent 18 years helping me to grow up and survive. She never dreamed dreams for me to follow, but she gave me life and the freedom to follow my own dreams. After the death of my Dad and for 14 years, until the end of 2016, I acted as her principle care provider. She was born in January of 1914 at Bluegrass Settlements, Knox County, Tennessee, raised on a farm and graduated High School as Valedictorian. She was very bright but was not allowed to attend college like her brothers because she was a girl and the consensus of society during those times was that higher education for women was unnecessary. She was a kind-hearted and loving mother, worked hard all her life, and greatly enjoyed the company of friends and family. In her middle years, she worked for J.C. Penny Company and later Idaho Department Stores. She eschewed the need for aggressive competition, yet became an award winning sales person using her kindness and trustworthiness instead of "high pressure." She suffered from Macular Degeneration which gradually became a real hindrance to her starting in 2004. It curtailed her reading, cooking, her renowned quilting, and the many simple enjoyments and chores we all take for granted in our lives. Mom was forever a Tennessee girl and never lost her Tennessee accent and charm. She was an artist at quilting as well as life and one of the nicest human beings it has been the privilege of many to know. It was through her that I witnessed, and came to appreciate, the difficult process of aging and the battle to endure despite sickness and frailty; to hold one's own in the struggle with overpowering forces. She was gentle, but tough and brave, until the end.

Mom passed away peacefully on December 30th of 2016, three weeks short of her 103rd birthday. She is missed - mightily - even to this day.

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