Lilies from an old hobo

Holm, Alsted share Easter tradition

MOSES LAKE — Moses Lake real estate agent Susan Alsted knows it's Easter every year when she receives a flower from an old hobo.

For years, Alsted has received an Easter lily and a card from longtime Moses Lake businessman Monte Holm, currently the subject of a mural in progress depicting his life, including as a youth who left home and traveled the countryside during the Great Depression. That mural is expected to go up on the Moses Lake Post Office wall May 13.

The tradition began while Alsted was working as a cashier at Boyle's Plaza, where Holm would come in to trade.

"I just knew him as this man that just counted his pennies to pay for those vegetables and the few things that he bought," Alsted recalled. "I just thought he was extremely poor."

"It was Easter time, and I was looking at the Easter lilies, and this nice young girl was there," Holm recalled, noting his intention was to purchase the flowers for his wife, Ruth. "I told her, 'Which is the prettiest?' She finally picked out which one was the prettiest, and I said, 'That's yours, Susan.' She says, 'You can't afford it. You are so poor,' and she was serious when she said this. She said, 'You don't have money to buy meat and groceries, and you're not buying me no Easter lily.'"

Alsted finally relented, but she was bothered. Alsted's husband asked about the flower, and she told him an old hobo came in and bought it for her who couldn't afford it.

"Dave said, 'Who is the fella?'" Holm said. "(She said), 'I don't know, but they call him Monte.' I guess he kind of laughed and said, 'Well, he can afford it.'"

Every year since then, for at least 30 years, Holm has sent Alsted an Easter lily, always with a card signed "From an old hobo that can't really afford this Easter lily." She has saved all of them.

"They're just memories that money can never buy," Alsted said. "He's never missed a year. Easter wouldn't be Easter without Monte and I, and our little story here. They've been very special throughout the years for me."

In explaining why he participates in friendly acts like the Easter lily, Holm said he found out going through life that there are three things a person should always be aware of and do — be honest, work hard and be good to people.

"Most people fall down on item three something terrible," Holm said.

When he was 15 years old, he heard there was work in Minneapolis, he recalled, so he hopped a freight train on a flat car in the wintertime, at a time when the climate was 40 degrees below zero. When it stopped, both his feet were frozen. They wouldn't take Holm at the hospital, but he was allowed to stay in jail for several weeks to thaw out his feet, and eventually he moved on to Minneapolis, where he stood on the bread lines all winter.

"When you're in a bread line, you're outdoors most of the time," Holm remembered. "Oh, it was cold. My poor frozen feet. I would get up, get something to eat and get back in line, and stand outdoors with those frozen feet. I decided when I stood in that bread line, 'If I can ever afford it, I'm going to be good to people.'"

Holm eventually made his fortune trading and selling scrap metal.

Alsted said she and Monte have a "special friendship that comes along once in a lifetime. Monte is just so real and just so special. There's only one Monte, and we all know that it's a great woman behind any great man, otherwise he would not be great, so Ruth is special."

"It's good to have friends," Holm agreed. "That was quite a day … I liked the girl and she liked the Easter lily so well, and I figured she should have one every year."