2 / MAY 2022 PRIME
Sam of all Trades By Will Barrett - PRIME EDITOR S
am and Rita Jackson have lived in Belgrade in the same home for 40 years, they even bought the neighboring lot to retain some privacy. The couple met in Sheridan, Montana at the local bowling alley where Jackson’s brother and Rita had worked as pinsetters. Jackson wasn’t too fond of bowling, but he started to come around more often once he met Rita. Soon after they
started dating. Together, they raised five kids, who gifted them 14 grandchildren, and 19 greatgrandchildren. Having grown up in postdepression Whitehall, Jackson didn’t realize how little his family had. “The only ones who had more than we did were the doctors’ kids, and the druggists’ kids,” he recalls. He had six
siblings, and his mother made his clothes out of the town doctors’ old suits. Shortly after high school, the couple married. They eloped in 1960 in Idaho, and when the newlyweds returned, Jackson’s mother threw them a reception. About her mother-in-law, Rita recalls, “she loved me, and my mother loved him, so everyone was okay with it.” Jackson even admits with a laugh that his sisters
might have liked Rita a bit more than they liked him. Jackson and Rita had five kids, and in 1970 he and a friend bought some property to raise feeder pigs for extra income. After a couple years, he bought out his friends share, and continued on for another five years, all while helping Rita raise the kids. Raising the kids was mostly Rita’s doing,
