On Jan. 2, Irene Daley celebrated her 104th birthday with guests and family at a party at Buffalo Hill Terrace.

Still trim and mobile, Daley said most people guess she is in her 80s. She said she has no idea how she has managed to live so long.

Daley said she couldn’t attribute her longevity to never drinking or smoking.

“I did it all,” she said with a laugh.

Her life started in 1908 when she was born Irene Hafdahl in Owantonna, Minn., when horses and buggies still ruled the rural roads. Her father worked in a creamery.

“He was a butter maker,” she said.

She attended the first two grades in St. Peter, Minn. When she was 7, her adventurous parents decided to stake their claim on part of the west.

“They had some friends that had been out to Montana,” she said. “In those days, you could file on a homestead, and then live there a certain number of days and then it was yours.”

Her parents sold some possessions, rented a railroad car and they headed for Montana with their grubstake of two horses, a cow and some farm implements. After off-loading from the train at Miles City, they traveled four days to reach their homestead 100 miles north of the town.

Her father had made arrangements to have a two-room cabin built before they arrived.

“The whole thing wasn’t any bigger than this,” Daley said, motioning around her compact apartment.

Things did not go smoothly for the couple who arrived with a lot of enthusiasm but little farming knowledge. Daley said her father only erected a single-wire fence around his crops.

“It was really natural land, and Dad had plowed up acreage and he planted corn. Well, when the wild animals got a taste of that ..,” she recalled. “My dad was young, and my mother was young, and it was all new.”

After two years, her folks decided their daughter needed to go to school. They moved to Brockway, which Daley describes as “a little burg 30 or 40 miles east.”

Her father got a job, and the family blended into the community.

“I remember every family living in Brockway,” Daley said. “We used to have such good  times.

“Never had any money. We made do. One bicycle for the whole town. All the kids in town played together.”

Her dad built a creamery and prospered for quite a few years. Then a huge spring snow storm struck, wiping out most of the dairy cattle.

“The creamery was doing really well, but that ended it,” Daley said. “Then we moved to Circle, three miles away.”

After high school, Daley had a choice of women’s careers of teaching or nursing. She opted for the shorter course of becoming a teacher although she later regretted not going with nursing.

She first attended teacher training in Miles City, where she paid for her room and board with a local family by taking care of their children. Her first teaching job in Circle was a bad experience.

“I knew about as much as the kids did, but that’s about all. I couldn’t make it,” she said. “At Christmas time I went to Dillon and worked for my room and board while I went to normal [teacher’s] school.”

After two quarters, she took a trip to Polson to visit relatives on her way back home to Circle. She thought the country was beautiful.

“I had a blast,” she said with a chuckle.

In 1934, Daley got a position in Big Arm teaching about a dozen kids in a one-room school house. She taught for two years for $50 a month.

“With that $50, I paid $20 for room and board and I made a payment on a car,” she said. “It was a Chevy.”

During that teaching job, Daley met her future husband, Forrest Daley, on the night before a Fourth of July celebration in Polson. They had their first date the very next night.

 She described him as a very nice-looking young man who had just graduated from college in Bozeman. After dating for two or three years, they got married in 1937.

“We argued from then on about which night I met him,” she said.

About three years into their marriage, Forrest raised the money to build Daley’s Tire Shop in southwest Kalispell. As was common in the day, family quarters were built as part of the shop.

Just a year after starting the business, Forrest was tapped for the impending war as a lieutenant in the Army. Daley was very pregnant and had one toddler, Marcia, at home when Forrest was sent for training.

“I was so big. I just waddled along,” she recalled.

“You know, I didn’t know I was going to have twins until Saturday, and the next Monday they were born. Oh, Forrest was surprised. You can imagine.”

She had her hands full with a toddler and the new-born fraternal twins Bill and Tom, especially when Forrest was sent for two years to the Pacific Theater.

“I washed all those diapers by hand,” she said.

 After the war, the couple resumed running the tire shop. They lived in the shop for 10 years.

Daley said they decided to move to a house when Marcia was a sophomore in high school. Her daughter was embarrassed about living at the back of a tire shop, even though their quarters were quite nice.

“Whenever she had a date, she would meet them down on the corner,” she remembered. “We thought that was enough [reason] to move.”

Daley and her husband bought a home on Eighth Avenue East, where the family thrived. She said she became less involved in the tire store and more into cards.

“I turned to bridge,” she said.

After Forrest retired, the two traveled around Canada and this country, including Hawaii, until Forrest died in 1994. Her son Tom and daughter Marcia now live with their families in Oregon.

Her son Bill has died.

“All things change,” Daley said with just a note of wistfulness.

Now in her 104th year, she said she couldn’t think of any advice to share. Daley joked that she was always the last one to learn life’s lessons or take advice.

She had some thoughts about longevity, which she achieved without the benefit of good genetics. Both of her parents died relatively young in their 60s.

Daley said she avoids taking medicine except what her physician prescribes. She has always eaten just “good plain food” and still selects “the very simplest” among meal choices at Buffalo Hill Terrace.

“I don’t know why I’ve lived so long, but I feel good,” she said.

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.