Working together for the past 60 years

SWAN VALLEY – When seventh-grader Karen Clothier from Salmon Prairie met eighth-grader Dale Conley of Big Fork at a 4-H meeting she told her girlfriends he was the cutest boy there. They worked side by side starting in the Clothier hay field and from then on with all their different businesses based from their home on the Swan River. That spark continues through friendly banter and laughter for the Conleys who have been partners in life for 60 years of marriage and raised four children.

After their first meeting, it wasn't until the high school dances in Condon and Swan Lake that they reconnected. When Karen was a junior and Dale was a senior at Big Fork High School, they sat beside each other during study hall. Despite the rules against candy, Dale usually had a few butter rums in his pocket and would always share a piece with Karen.

One day, they skipped school with another couple and drove over to Polson.

"We drove around the lake," Karen said. "We've been together ever since."

They graduated in Big Fork High School classes of 1958 and 1959. They went together for four years before Dale proposed. He brought the rings one night when they were going to a dance at Swan Lake.

"That was about it," Karen said. "I felt sorry for him," she added and smiled.

They were married "at the hitching post" July 21, 1961 in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Dale was 22 and Karen was 20.

"You think you know someone after going together for four years," Dale said. "You don't know them at all until you get married."

They lived near Echo Lake, Montana during the first year of their marriage. Dale worked at a mill in Creston while Karen stayed home with their first child LaRae. They lived in a small log cabin for $10 per month rent plus electricity. They packed 10 gallon cream cans of water from the Echo Lake Café, that Dale's parents opened in 1960.

The Conleys returned to Salmon Prairie. In 1962, they purchased property from Karen's parents that she had always dreamed of owning.

"I always thought why in the devil didn't you build down by the river. We had to haul water from the river for a long time until he finally dug a well," Karen said. "I always said some day I will be living over [across the river]."

The Conleys lived in the Salmon Prairie School teacherage while they built their home. They didn't have electricity while they were building so they ran a hot wire by horseback from Clothier's place across the river.

Karen recalled the first winter after they moved in, she, Dale and LaRae slept on a roll-a-way bed in the main room.

"You could still see your breath when that stove was red hot," Karen said.

After bouncing between working at the mill in Creston and for a few loggers in the area setting chokers and skidding logs with a cat, Neil Meyer offered Dale a job up Cold Creek pulling 2X4 boards out of his scragg mill. He made $4 per hour compared to the $2.95 he was making running a D6 Cat. Dale said they would cut 8,000-10,000 board feet a day.

"That was a lot of hard work," Dale said. "I thought if I have to keep doing this the rest of my life, I'm not going to live very long. I was working my butt off."

Trying to find a career that was more fitting, Dale decided he would like running the school buses for the new high school in Seeley Lake. Karen was agreeable to the idea since he was the breadwinner.

Dale took a day off work and went to Missoula. He learned he had two weeks to put together a bid before it closed.

"I thought oh boy, how am I going to do this. I ain't got no money, I've got to buy a bus and bid on this thing," Dale said.

He got advice from bus contractors in Ferndale. They named themselves Conley Transportation and put in the bid at $8,740 for the first year contract. Since they didn't have a phone, they put down their neighbor's telephone number as the contact. His neighbor relayed that Missoula County called and said they got the bid since they were the only bid.

The Conleys found a 48-passenger, 1964 Chevy for $7,580. Family friends Dick and Leva Williams loaned them the $2,000 for the down payment.

The next challenge was figuring out the schedule and routes. Dale had it figured out within the first week.

"I tried to be at every stop within a minute so the kids knew exactly what time I was going to be there. That is the way I ran that for 35 years," Dale said.

Dale and Karen welcomed their second daughter Lynda on May 27, 1963. While Karen stayed home with the children, she also took care of their cattle.

"My summer job was keeping track of cows," Karen said. "My mom would babysit."

They built their herd up to 65 head at its peak that roamed open range from Cold Creek to Piper Creek. They put up 12,000 bales of hay in the summer from land all across the valley.

"It seemed like we would be going up and down with our balers and tractors and someone would see us and they would say, 'Hey, do you want to put this hay up?' 'Hey would you stop and bale my hay, my baler is broke down,'" Dale said. "And then every spare minute we had to ding with buses to get them ready for inspections."

Karen also rode her horse in O-Mok-Sees every weekend in the summer around the area. Her older sister Dixie won the Northwest Trophy in 1969 and Karen won the title in 1970. Dale told her he couldn't continue traveling with her every week because he wasn't getting anything done.

"So I decided to quit," Karen said.

For the first seven years running the busses, Dale worked at Rovero's Garage between routes. He would pump gas, fix tires, cut glass, sell liquor, electrical and plumbing supplies and "anything else that needed to be done."

"It was a good education working in there," Dale said.

Conley Transportation expanded to include the Swan Valley Elementary School in 1969 after purchasing it from Eunice Hultman. They ran two routes at the elementary and two routes at SSHS. They had seven buses to cover all the extracurricular activities, regular routes and one spare. Karen and her oldest sister Leita drove the Swan Valley School route.

Karen shared the story of Dale returning from a bus route one night. She said he came in "all fire, messing around and dancing."

Dale said with his hands up ready to box, "I'm going to go a few rounds with Cassius Clay."

He was patting her, egging her on, until she turned to play his game and then "Smack! I just hit her and blood was squirting out," Dale said. "She didn't even cry, her eyes wept but she didn't cry."

Instead Dale said he cried, "I was so ashamed of myself – it was all in fun, I was just digging around."

Karen said through the laughter, "I was hoping both eyes would be black because I had to be a bridesmaid the next day."

In 1971, SSHS Principal Kim Haines hired Dale to work as a study hall proctor for $2 per hour for eight hours a day. Later he worked as a special education assistant as well as a substitute when needed. He worked at SSHS for 28 years.

Since Dale worked long hours driving sports trips, Karen took up painting. LaRae and Lynda were older so she met with the schoolteacher who was an artist. She started painting landscapes and wildlife.

Conleys welcomed their son Owen Jan. 8, 1974. That same year Dale decided he wanted to build a garage. Because concrete from Kalispell was so expensive, they opened D & K Ready Mix in 1975.

They were getting 50,000 pounds of cement three times a week in the summer. It only took them 12 minutes to batch a load working together. They each drove and batched and they only had employees part of the time to drive the third truck.

"It was a good job. We would get up at 5 in the morning and get home at 10 at night seven days a week," Karen said sarcastically. "And here I ended up pregnant. I don't know how that happened."

Karen remembers a job where the customer kept saying, "'Put her over here Molly.' 'Back up over here Molly.' I was pregnant and the temper was getting pretty hot," Karen said laughing. "Dale got there just in time to save him. I said if he calls me Molly one more time he's going to find out where I'm going to put that concrete."

Dale agreed that a woman driver showing up surprised a lot of people but most of them were really good customers and helped her with the chutes, the only thing she needed help with.

"We poured mud from Big Fork to Kozy Korner purt near," Karen said.

Their fourth child LaNette was born in October 1977. They got a notice in the spring of 1978 that they could no longer get the cement so they had to shut down D & K Ready Mix. To keep Karen busy, she said Dale bought her a café to run.

"He was so thoughtful. We didn't have much else to do," Karen said. "He's a good husband. He'd find me jobs."

Dale knew his wife was a good cook and while the Hungry Bear Steak House had opened, "there was no place that you could go and just get a hamburger."

They opened The Pastime Kitchen April 1, 1987 on Highway 83 across from the Swan Valley Centre.

"His favorite things are BSing and eating," Karen said and laughed. Dale added, "Past time – perfect name for it."

They purchased the furniture from a restaurant in a Missoula for $1,700 and loaded it up. They used what they wanted and sold the rest to a guy in St. Regis for $1,700.

"I got all my money back," Dale said. "Our little café was fixed up really nice and handy."

They were open for lunch and dinner. They made all their own French fries, hamburgers, deep fried chicken, milk shakes and pies.

In October 1987 while on a hunting trip, their oldest daughter LaRae, her husband Ted and another couple were killed when a train struck their vehicle near Dodson, Montana.

"It was just a horrible deal," Dale said.

The Conleys continued to run the café from April 1 through hunting season. After eight years, it was too much. They sold it to a couple from San Diego, California.

While the Conleys had dreams of building cabins or storage units on the three acres the café sat on, in the late 1980s they donated around a third of an acre to the Swan Valley Fire Department to build a fire hall on the south end of the property.

"They needed a place right on the highway," Dale said. "We talked about it and said let's give them that property on the point."

Dale pitched the idea to Rollie Matthew of Matthew Brothers Construction and the fire chief at the time.

"When I mentioned that, I think within the week he had guys working on that volunteering and they built that fire hall before I ever got it surveyed. I had to give it to them then," Dale said and laughed. "I wished I would have given the fire department more land."

After more than a million and half accident free miles, Dale retired from bus driving in 1999. Owen and his wife Dana now own and operate Conley Transportation running routes for SSHS, Swan Valley School and Seeley Lake Elementary.

When they weren't working, the Conleys loved to dance and would go to dances in the area almost every weekend in the early years. They danced to everything except the jitterbug.

"I thought that was the dumbest thing to grab hands and jerk back and forth and swing around. I never was coordinated to stay in step for that stuff," Dale said and laughed. "But we were pretty good waltzers and fox trotters."

Karen said there were a few dances where Dale "had his feet planted and got to talking with his buddies." After several times asking him if he was ready to come home she said, "If you don't want to come home, you stay there," and she left. While sometimes he would crash with friends, one night he walked from Condon to Salmon Prairie at 2 a.m. in cowboy boots.

"Instead of coming in the house, he went to sleep in the camper," Karen said.

"Nothing ever to contemplate a divorce, we just disagreed pretty regular [in the early years]," Dale said and smiled.

Dale also played the harmonica, drums and accordion. He belonged to the Northwest Montana Accordion Players for many years. They would travel around to play in the area. There were 17 players when he joined and when he quit there were more than 40 players that would show up to play.

In the later years, they also traveled a lot in their motorhome to go sightseeing and gambling. Karen said they hit the jackpot in Elko, Nevada quite a few times.

"We were too busy to get a divorce," Karen said.

Dale added, "Too many irons in the fire to squabble about anything."

The Conleys agree what made their marriage work was they worked together, communicated and listened to each other.

"We weren't bossin'," Karen said. "He didn't tell me too much what to do or how to do it. If we have ideas we always thrash them out and never go to bed mad. And we have had some discussions."

"We conversed back and forth. She had a lot of good ideas on whatever project we were doing," Dale said.

Karen said working together is the best advice she would offer to other couples.

"Communicate with each other," Karen said. "Perseverance. We've had our problems. I always say I had two sets of wedding rings, two families and the one husband. We've got 12 grandkids and nine great grandkids."

"Work together and love each other," Dale said. "Communicate and be friends." He added, "I always told her if you don't behave you're going to die young, missy."

"Of course he was a perfect angel," Karen said smiling. "We've had a good life."

Dale added, "Mostly working together side-by-side."