Richard D Etter. retter@bright.net

Richard D Etter.
retter@bright.net
U DUL H
7DOH R WK 3
ecollections of Richard Dean Etter
5
%orn at home on the old Luther farm ,
outside Wimbledon, North Dakota.
(My grandmother’s parent’s homestead) on June 21st 1926.
, was the sixth son of the family (so far no girls). This
farm is located 8 or 9 miles northeast of Wimbledon North Dakota
in Pierce Township, Barnes County.
We moved from there in the fall of 1930 – but I do have some
memory of events that took place there.
Fred Etter Farm. Grandmas claim Shanty in center.
1
:e had a gravel pit and I remember the trucks that
hauled the gravel – especially the “Diamond T’s” and “Reo’s” with
their chain drives clearly visible under the gravel box. I really liked
watching the jackrabbits and other animals from the window such
as a golden eagle that had a nest somewhere out by the gravel pit. I
recall that Dad bought a new 1929 Chevy truck that my Uncle Ed
Wright delivered. He drove it up from Jamestown North Dakota
with his wife (Aunt Audrey – my mother’s sister) following behind
in their car. It was a big event, and it must
have been a good harvest. I also recall
getting my finger caught in the car door. It
must have been mashed pretty bad because
my mother took me to town to see Dr.
Wanner – it hurt bad.
0y brother Bob was born in July 1930 –
I remember going with Dad to Jamestown hospital to get him and
my mother. I also remember this because when he came home I
got promoted from a crib in my parent’s bedroom to a bed upstairs
with my big brothers – Big, big deal! My sister Ora was born in
January 1929 – but I don’t recall that. Another sister had been born
in 1927 – but only lived a few weeks. Her name was Laura. I also
remember “helping” my oldest brother, Milton, haul water. Our
main well was in the gravel pit, a long way from the house. Milton
would take a “stone boat” and pull it behind the car. He would put
2 large wooden barrels on the boat to fill with water. On the way
back to the house, my job was to stand in the backseat of the car
and let him know if barrels were tipping or sliding off the boat.
One time, I watched the barrels dance around and slide off the
boat before I told him. He wasn’t very happy to have to retrieve
the empty barrels, return to the well, and hand pump another 60
gallons of water!
2
,n the fall of 1930 we moved 3 or 4 miles straight west to
what we always called “the Corner” farm. I started school in 1932,
my teacher was Miss Hesch – a wonderful person. I didn’t do very
well at first, until she figured out I needed glasses. Then everything
was OK.
'ad bought some wild mustangs from a ranch further
west. I was really excited watching my older brothers and Dad
break them for riding. One of them we called “Bird” became a
favorite riding horse and a very smart cow pony. We had her for
over 20 years. At about this time, Dad bought a “J.I. Case” grain
combine – one of the first in the county. It was a huge machine
with a 16’ cutting bar. It was pulled by a Hart-Parr tractor. We
later had a larger Case tractor.
Grandpa Etter, Dad, and salesman. Hart-Parr steam tractor.
3
, was very tiny – a fact which bothered me until I was
nearly 19 years old. My sister Ora, who was 2 ½ years younger
than I, was taller. This is probably what caused me to be teased by
nearly everyone and provoked me into some retaliatory measures,
such as sneaking up on the tractor platform while they were
threshing and releasing the hand clutch lever. This caused all sorts
of problems, like plugging up the maw of the thresher. When they
caught me, I would be tied up to the tractor wheel until someone
would deliver me to my mother. Other times if I was bugging
them, they would hang me up by the suspenders of my overalls on
a nail, or pin me up on the clothes line! If they were building fence
and I bothered them, they would lower me down in a post hole! As
I got older, my small stature was in demand for such jobs as being
able to reach down into gasoline tanks on cars, trucks and tractors
and cleaning out debris that was plugging the gas lines. Most
engines of the time were gravity fed gasoline instead of fuel pump
systems. I could also be lowered down a well in a bucket and
clean up down there. So there were trade-offs to being small.
0y brother Tom was born here in 1932.
,n 1933 we moved ½ mile north to another farm, where
we lived until 1941. I was now at an age where I was given chores
to do: pulling weeds in the garden, carrying water to the house for
drinking, dishwashing, hand washing, etc. Also, water had to be
pumped and carried to the chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, and any
animals that were in pens. We had a windmill that pumped water
into a large trough for the cows and horses.
4
2ur mother did all the inside upkeep of the house. She of
course recruited her children to help. We would paint floors and
woodwork, and varnish those that needed it. Mostly, I recall
painting walls and ceilings of the bedrooms. We used something
called kalsomine, a powder that came in small bags. You could
buy it in various tints such as
blue, green, pink or tan, and
mixed it with water. It was
inexpensive, and adhered to
plaster very well. The walls would
be a very light color. It was also
easy to apply and clean up any
splatters, making it suitable for
even the youngest children to try
their painting skills. It would also
be a good time to dismantle the
beds and air the mattresses. The
bed frames and springs were disinfected for bed bugs by using a
blowtorch. We also sprayed the
cracks in the floors and walls.
Fighting bed bugs was an ongoing
battle until the advent of DDT.
+elping mother on wash days was a big job. A large
copper boiler on the cook stove had to be filled. Another large tub
was filled with cold water for rinsing. Also all available buckets
were filled so she wouldn’t run out. We had a gasoline motor
driven “Maytag” washing machine with a wringer on it, so that
helped her a lot. It had a long flexible exhaust hose you could stick
out a window to get rid of the fumes. During and after the wash, all
this water had to be carried out again. Since water was scarce at
times, all the used water was put on the garden in the summer. In
the winter the clothes were hung on the clothesline just as in
summer. The clothes would freeze solid on the line. Care would
be taken on getting the clothes off the line and back into the house
without bending them, and breaking the fibers. Amazingly, when
the clothes thawed out, they were dry!
5
2ur
mothers teeth were very bad and a great
embarrassment to her when she was out in public. Since she could
not afford dental work, she would melt white paraffin and when it
cooled to a moldable temperature, she would form artificial teeth
to fill the gaps in her smile. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a
considerable improvement. It wasn’t until the mid ‘40s that she
could afford a dentist.
:inters were long and cold, especially the nights. I read
every book I could haul home from school and the tiny library in
the town fire station.
'ad had a contraption he made that we could braid rope
from balls of binder twine. He also made a knitting machine that
made tube socks – mother would have to make the heels and toes
for them.
0y sisters Carolyn and Joanne and my brother Jerry were
born on this farm.
2nce in a while we would all sit around the kitchen table
and clean wheat for breakfast cereal. A small amount of wheat was
put on several dinner plates. Then you took your fingers and slid
all grasshopper and bug bits, along with any stones and dirt off the
edge of the plate. Then the wheat was put in a large pan of water
for washing and any other foreign matter was skimmed off. The
cleaned grains were then spread out on cookie sheets and put in a
warm oven to dry. In the morning mother would grind the wheat in
our coffee mill, then cook it for breakfast cereal! Speaking of
breakfast food – we would buy oatmeal in large burlap bags. When
the oatmeal was cooked some of the fibers of burlap could be
found in your cereal – yuck! Also, we could buy puffed wheat in
large paper sacks that were perhaps 18” across and 30” high. It was
a nice relief from oatmeal. On very rare occasions, Mother might
buy some store bought corn flakes or Wheaties. (What a treat!)
Dad almost bought a machine that made puffed wheat – I think
Mother talked him out of it. Of course in the fall and winter, when
we had fresh sausage and bacon from the butchering, we had
sausage, eggs and fried potatoes for breakfast occasionally.
6
:e could play outside at night if the weather was right.
We would lay out a fox and goose ring in the snow. The fox would
stand in the middle of the ring and geese would attempt to run in
on prescribed lines to touch the inner circle without being tagged
by the fox. Many times, the northern lights would put on
magnificent displays for us, with shafts of white, blue, green and
sometimes reddish tints. Mostly it was just white shafts dancing
and shifting in the northern half of the sky.
2f course we played a lot of card games and board games
we made ourselves, such as royal rummy. While we were playing,
mother would be heating up the flat irons and maybe some rocks to
wrap up in towels for us to take to bed with us as foot warmers.
They sure felt good to go to sleep with, but if they came
unwrapped during the night, it would be a real eye opener to put a
bare foot on a cold iron in the morning! Sleeping 2 and 3 in a
bed made some real sibling bonding, believe me! Waking up in
the morning after a snow storm and below zero weather, with snow
covering your blankets and the chamber pot frozen over made for a
lot of fast action. You grabbed your clothes and ran downstairs to
dress behind the parlor furnace. Your shoes had been taken off the
night before and left near the kitchen stove to dry and keep warm
overnight. Later, usually after breakfast, you went back upstairs
and got the chamber pot and took it to the outhouse to empty. Then
you had to take it to the barn and clean it before returning it to your
bedroom. Every evening, all the kerosene lamps and lanterns had
to be filled and the globes (chimneys) cleaned. Kindle wood and
coal had to be brought up from the cellar. A lantern was carried out
and put in the chicken house to fool them into thinking it was still
daylight, so they would lay more eggs.
$nother activity for long winter nights was putting on
plays. My sister Ora and I would write up a story and make our
brothers learn some lines. Even the babies were used as props. We
would stretch a sheet across a doorway as a stage curtain. Our
parents and older brothers were our audience.
7
7his dry, cold weather could be used to shock your
friends and amuse yourself! Static electricity thrived in the very
low humidity. Everything you touched created an arc. In school
our desks were waxed, and that, combined with our wool pants and
rubber-soled shoes, allowed you to build up a super charge by
sliding back and forth in your seat. You could then get up and
walk up behind someone, especially a girl, or a teacher and
casually allow your hand to get within an inch or so of their
backside, WOW, and they couldn’t prove it was deliberate!!
(very winter we would get one or more blizzards. These
were terrible things to behold unless you were snug in your house.
To be caught out on the prairie was almost sure death. It wouldn’t
have to snow very much, for the wind would churn what snow
there was into fine particles not unlike talcum powder. It would
choke you if you faced the wind with no cover over your face. We
would use binder twine to run lines from the house to the various
out buildings, so we could find our way back if it got too bad. Most
people kept a lighted lamp in the window at night in case anyone
lost might see it. A good book to read about blizzards is “Candles
in the Window.” I have a copy – it’s about the March 1941 blizzard
that my brother Wally and I had a brush with. On Saturday March
15, 1941 Dad had taken the horses and the enclosed sled that
doubled as a school bus into town (Wimbledon) to pick up
supplies. He learned that a snowplow would be clearing the road
from town past our farm that evening. It was scheduled to leave
town about 6:30 p.m. Well, we had a truck with an enclosed box
on it that we used as a school bus when the roads were open, but
this truck had been buried in a snow drift about 2 miles north of
town since an early December blizzard. So Dad, Wally and I were
going to take the horses and sled to meet the snowplow at the site
of our buried truck. We figured the plow would get there around
8:00 p.m. Since we had no telephone we had to estimate and hope.
8
$ little before 7:00 p.m., Wally and I went out to the
barn to harness the horses. The weather was a balmy 35 degrees
and cloudy. We hung the lantern up on a rafter and we were about
to get the harness when there was a sudden crash of wind that we
thought was going to take the barn down. The barn shuddered and
squealed but remained intact. We immediately looked out the door
we had just entered – which was on the east end of the barn – and
saw a mass of churning snow. The wind was from the west to
northwest. We later learned the velocity of the wind to be between
85 to 100 mph. We couldn’t see the house or a light in the house
window. Wally took the lantern and we started toward where we
figured the house must be located. I tried to hang on to his coat, but
the wind and the choking snow was more than I could handle. The
storm smothered the lantern so he dropped it and hung on to me.
We missed the house but we bumped against a gatepost. The gate
was open, so if we had been a foot to the left we would have
passed through the gate and into miles of open country. We
followed the fence back to the garage, so we knew where we were,
but we still couldn’t see the house about 20’ away. We got our
bearings and made it to the door where Dad and Mother hauled us
in. We had snow under our coats and caps, under our shirts and
pants, inside our socks. It was packed between my glasses and my
face – no wonder I couldn’t see. We were very lucky, since it was
so late in the season, we did not have a line from the barn to the
house.
7he snowplow had just reached the outskirts of
Wimbledon when the storm struck, so they were able to turn
around and get to shelter. I might explain that this snowplow was a
huge Caterpillar with a sleeper cab, with heater and a bunk bed.
They could carry 2 days worth of fuel. In cold weather, they never
stopped the engine. With 2 men and a speed of about 4 miles an
hour, they plowed a lot of country road.
$nyhow, this blizzard howled with slowly diminishing
wind speed all through the night and into the next day, Sunday.
Monday it was calm enough for someone to get up the road to the
northwest to Henry Fehr’s farm – they had the only telephone in
that end of the county. The news wasn’t very good. Several people
we knew were not heard from. Later, we learned that the Taylor
boys from Dazey (three of them) had frozen to death, but had
saved their younger brother, Bobby, by digging a snow cave and
huddling around him. Bobby lost several toes.
9
,t was the middle of April before we could travel freely
again. (Needless to say we country children had to do a lot of
homework to catch up to the town kids.)
But winter wasn’t all blizzards. The wind blew almost constantly
at about 10-20 mph, which moved the snow around and gradually
drifted any plowed road shut again. Sometimes during a blizzard, if
the conditions weren’t too deadly, we would look out a window
and determine a place outside the house where a snow bank could
be enlarged by the strategic placement of tin roofing to catch the
drifting snow and build a snow wall just right for digging out a
cave or an igloo. If you place the obstacle just right, the wind will
do the rest.On nice days (above freezing) we would tie our sleds
behind the horse drawn school bus for a fun ride. On Saturday we
would take a play sled and tie it to a horse and go around the
countryside to where farmers had planted trees for a windbreak.
The jackrabbits loved to eat the bark off these young trees, so the
farmers baited the trees with poison. The jackrabbits ate the poison
and died. We picked up the dead rabbits and hauled them into town
and sold them for 25 cents each to a fur dealer named Floyd Linde.
\
)rom the time I was 12 years old until we moved to
Minnesota, I took my turn, as my brothers did, living with Grandpa
and Grandma Etter to help them on their farm. Their daughter
(Louisa, we called her Aunt Lizzie) who never married lived with
them also. She ran the farm very well. I would stay with them 3 or
4 months at a time. They lived about 3 miles southwest of our
farm, so in case of extreme homesickness, I could walk home for a
few hours. Grandpa and Grandma celebrated their 50th wedding
anniversary while I lived there. People came all day and far into
the night to celebrate with them. I didn’t realize until later how
much he was respected in the community. He had previously
retired from farming many years before and built the first electric
company to supply electricity to the community of Wimbledon.
10
,n 1930 he sold out to the Otter Tail Power Company of
Jamestown. Grandpa and Grandma later celebrated over 60
years of marriage. They raised sheep with a few cows for milk and
butter. They had large hay meadows to provide feed for the long
winter. They planted only enough grain (oats) to feed the sheep
and cows; the rest was pastureland. The hay was made into large
stacks near the barn. The stacks were fenced off, to keep the sheep
from eating into the bottom of the stack. This also meant that to
feed the sheep in the winter when they were brought in from the
pastures, we had to climb up on the stack with an ax, shovel, hay
knife and pitchforks. The ax and shovel were needed to get rid of
the snow and ice on top of the stack. Then you could use the hay
knife to cut into the firmly packed hay and loosen it enough so you
could lift it out with the fork. We cut and pitched enough hay over
the fence to feed them for that day. This was done about 6 a.m.
before breakfast. After breakfast we milked the cows and started a
fire in the water trough heater, so the ice would melt and give the
animals some water. The tank heater was basically a coal stove
with a snorkel, so it could breathe under water. After chores, I
changed clothes and cleaned up for school. I would watch out the
window to see if Dad’s horse drawn school bus was coming down
the main road. There were no trees to block the view and Dad had
a spotlight mounted on the bus. Grandpa’s farm was about a halfmile from the main road. When I saw the bus light get near the
Mahlke’s farm – about a mile away – I would leave the house to
intercept it. It was so quiet at Grandpa’s compared to the noisy
chatter at home. I guess that was why I had to have an occasional
break.
$round Decoration Day in 1939, Aunt Liz wanted to go
up to Portal, North Dakota on the Canadian border to the high
school graduation of one of our cousins. High school graduations
were still quite a rarity among farm families. Since Aunt Liz had a
recent model of a V8 Ford, she also invited my parents and Aunt
Minnie Kneckt. My parents and Aunt Minnie were dropped off at
the farm of Aunt Minnie and mothers sister Edith and Ray
Anderson, north of Minot at Glenburn. Aunt Liz and I continued
towards Portal. It was a memorable drive, because we stopped to
eat at a restaurant. I had never eaten in a restaurant before. I got to
order from a menu! I recall I had a hamburger, and for dessert, a
banana split. A treat I had seen pictured at the T.P. Moores
Confectionary in Wimbledon, but never dreamed I would ever eat
one. They cost 20 cents!
11
$nyway, we got to Portal in time for the graduation.
After the ceremony we gathered outside the school, which was
right on the international border, and saw a Royal Canadian
Mountie patrolling the border on his horse. We spent the night at a
relatives house and started the journey home early the next
morning. What an adventure.
/ambing time came in late March. In preparation, we had
to build dozens of 3’x6’ gates out of 1”x4” lumber. This was so we
could quickly tie them together to make individual pens for ewe
and lamb. Once the lambs started coming they all came at once.
We would assist each ewe with the birth, clean the lamb’s mouth
and rub it dry with straw and get to suckling, and cut and sterilize
the cord. Then we put ewe and lamb in a pen. Sometimes if a ewe
had trouble giving birth I would assist. Since I was very small and
my hands and arms were small, I could, with Aunt Lizzies
directions, reach into the birth canal and rearrange the head and
feet of the lamb to ease its way. Otherwise I was unable to do
much except tie a length of twine to the lamb’s front legs and pull
the lamb. Sometimes the lamb died. If the lamb died we would
skin it and use the hide to cover another lamb where the mother
had died, or she had triplets and could not feed them all.
The
mother whose lamb died will only accept her and suckle a lamb
with the scent of her own lamb. This would cut down on the
number of lambs that had to be bottle fed – a time consuming
chore. At a later date, we would collect all the lambs and dock(cut
off) their tails. At the same time, all the male lambs were
castrated. The wounds were then sterilized and coated with tar to
keep the flies out. This would go on continually for days with
little rest and no thought of going to school.
*randpa had a German Shepherd dog named Karlo. This
was strictly a one-man dog. I, or anyone else, never even
attempted to pet him. He and Grandpa herded the sheep in the
summer time. There was a cousin of my mothers, named Clint
Barningham (us kids called him “Uncle” Clint – as we did all our
older cousins and friends). Anyway, Karlo especially hated Uncle
Clint and the feeling was mutual. I might add that Uncle Clint had
an artificial leg – he lost his leg in W.W.1. So Uncle Clint would
deliberately entice the dog to bite him. (Uncle Clint was careful to
be in a doorway in case something went wrong) When Karlo
jumped to bite him, Uncle Clint would stick out his artificial leg
(that had metal braces in it) and Karlo would bite and then howl
and cry in pain and run off for a few hours. But he never learned.
His hatred for Clint overcame his memory.
12
7he winter of 1936 was a terrible one. It didn’t snow
much, so the wind could only blow dirt around. It was a cold one.
It got down to 60 degrees below zero (wind chill hadn’t been
invented yet). And the summer to come was even worse. The dust
storms would darken the sky and the dust would bank up like black
snow. The temperature reached 121 degrees. That was 6 months
after it had been 60 degrees below. Most farmers did not even
harvest a crop that year. Did you know that when it is 60 degrees
below, if you spit or throw some water in the air it would freeze
before it hits the ground?
7he winds were seldom calm, summer or winter. The
winter winds kept the snow continuously on the move. Lying in
bed at night, I would listen to it moan or shriek, depending on its
velocity as it pushed against the house and under the eaves. The
fine powered snow would find its way around the windows and
settle on the blankets of our bed.
Some days when the wind blew 20mph or more on a clear,
sunny day, there would be a blizzard from 2 to 10 feet high which
could be very dangerous. Since it was clear, it would be cold.
This drifting snow quickly closed any road that had been plowed.
That is why the roads were seldom, if ever, plowed.
,n the spring our chicken hens would be ready to sit on
eggs for hatching. To supplement their efforts, we would send off
to a hatchery in Fargo for more chicks. They would be sent by
mail in cardboard boxes that were ventilated and packed with
excelsior, food and water. The mailman would deliver them, and I
don’t recall that there were any loses of chicks. These were mainly
Leghorn rooster chicks for fryers later that summer to feed the
threshing crews, and some for canning. We also had a kerosene
fueled incubator which could brood 48 chicken eggs or about 30
turkey or goose eggs. Later in the year, when the geese became
full grown, we had to clip their wing feathers to keep them from
attempting to fly away, especially the ganders(males), who would
be tempted to migrate with the wild geese.
13
6ummer days had a different set of chores, but it was a
welcome respite from winter. Wally and I herded cattle usually on
some rented land about a mile north of our farm. We would take
water and lunch with us. There wasn’t much to do except keep the
cows out of anyone’s grain fields. We would hunt for bird nests.
Most of the birds - killdeer, meadowlarks and of course pheasant
and grouse all had ground nests since there were no trees. We
didn’t bother the nests, we just wanted to test our skills at finding
them. There were a lot of Prairie Roses, Indian Paint Brush, Blackeyed Susan and other flowers to please the eye.
6naring gophers was also a favorite pastime. We would
make a noose on the end of a length of twine about 15’ long. The
noose was opened and placed on the gopher’s mound around the
opening. A little dirt was brushed over the twine to hide it, then
you would take the twine back from the hole and lie down on your
belly and wait. When the gopher poked its head out, you would
wait until you could see its forelegs before you jerked the noose
tight around it. We would lead them around for a while, making
sure they didn’t bite you. I suppose we killed them afterward, I
don’t remember. It was a cruel sport now that I think about it, but
gophers were a pest and ate a lot of grain.
3utting up hay was also a rather long process. We had no
alfalfa or clover, it was all wild hay with some russian thistle, and
an inferior sweet clover mixed in. We used a horse drawn mower
with a 5’ or 6’ sickle bar. We would mow all of one day and rake
it into windrows the next day using a dump rake. Then, using the
dump rake again, we would bunch the long windrows into larger
piles. At this point the overhead stacker would be moved into
place and anchored down. With a large horse drawn buck rake
(sometimes called a bull rake), you would gather as many piles of
hay as the rake would hold and push the hay to form the base of a
stack. After the stack base was made, you would then buck rake
the hay onto the teeth of the overhead stacker. Another team of
horses, or a truck, would operate the overshot of the stacker. One
man would stay on the stack to position and pack the hay. The
trick was to be sure the stack did not lean and was packed more
solidly in the center than on the edges so it could shed rain. The
hay closest to the barn was loaded onto hay wagons and put into
the loft by use of hay slings on the wagons and a pulley and
traveler system in the barn. When the barn was full, the rest was
stacked. This haying usually took up a goodly part of the summer
and sometimes interfered with our 4th of July celebrations. The
4th of July was right next to Christmas as the biggest day of the
year! There were parades, fireworks, carnivals, and lots of good
music in Wimbledon.
14
, was always fascinated with the story of George
Armstrong Custer, and when we studied him in our sixth grade
class, I attempted to change history a little. I did this by picking
soft stones from the fields and using a nail, or my jack knife, I
carved some fictitious dates and locations and signed Custer or
Reno names on them. They are still out there, about 6 or 7 miles
north of Wimbledon, North Dakota. Maybe the inscriptions have
worn off by now, but the fascination still lives. Peg and I, on out
post retirement journeys, have three times visited Custer’s
Battlefield in southeastern Montana. It gives me chills.
2nce or twice each summer, sudden storms would catch
us. You could see the clouds begin to grow in the west – you could
see for many miles across prairie. But by the time we realized it
was going to be a storm with high wind and lots of rain, we didn’t
have time to round up the cattle and get home to shelter. The storm
cloud would run all across the western horizon – it would be white
at the top and very black at the bottom. It would appear to roll like
a vacuum cleaner brush, kicking up the dirt and debris ahead of it.
When it hit, the winds would be from 50-70 mph. After a few
minutes the rain would start and the wind would decrease to
probably 10-15 mph. After the wind died down, the rain felt good
– even the cattle seemed to enjoy it. The windmill was a casualty
of these summer storms on more than one occasion. The windmill
stood at the northwest corner of the barn. When the mill would
blow over, it would graze the side of the barn as it fell. I don’t
recall that it did much damage to either the barn or the windmill,
but it was a major task to get it upright again.
$t the height of the drought, as if we needed anymore
pests, the grasshoppers came – in hordes! There was not much
greenery for them to eat, so they attacked about anything nonmetallic. They ate the paint off the buildings, shovel and ax
handles, the canvas aprons on our binders and combines, even the
fence posts! They could turn the sky almost as dim as the dust
storms. If there was any bright spot, it was that the lack of rain had
already killed the crops. The Federal Government provided
sawdust, laced with poison that we spread on the fields. It killed
millions, but made no noticeable difference in their numbers. I
don’t know what it did to the birds that fed on the grasshoppers.
15
, usually got out of bed very early on summer mornings,
as I still do. It started getting light around 4:00 am. It was worth
getting up and going outside to watch the dawn break and the
sunrise. If the weather conditions were just right, the mirages
would appear in the northern and eastern sky just above the
horizon. The towns of Dazey or Hannaford would appear in the
sky – sometimes upside down. Those towns were 10 and 15 miles
away. It used to frighten me sometimes, but I couldn’t get anyone
to get up and watch with me except my sister Ora. Clifford Jarvis
and his wife were out in their yard one morning (they lived over a
mile from us) and I could see and hear them talking as though they
were 200 feet away. Other strange and unexplainable images
would appear – a silo or a house that I didn’t recognize.
$t least once a summer on a Sunday, we would all load
up and join our cousins, the Knechts (Mother’s sister’s kids), at
Spiritwood Lake – it was great to get to play in water for as long as
you wanted. They also had a big slide there. Did you know that
you could take a waxed paper wrap from a loaf of store bought
bread (that’s what bread was wrapped in then) and go to the top of
the slide and sit on this waxed paper and you would get the fastest
ride down that you ever had?
2n another Sunday, in late summer, we would all load up
in the back of the truck with buckets and sacks and go down to a
branch of the Sheyenne River to pick chokecherries and wild
plums so Mother could make jelly and plum butter for the winter.
We would also pick wild hops for Grandpas beer! It was a long
hard day, but I always enjoyed it.
Some Sundays, Mother would fix us a little picnic lunch and just
us kids would walk about a mile or so northeast of our farm to a
grove of trees called “The Tree Claim,” so-called because the
original homesteaders had a choice of proving their claims by
either plowing the land or planting so many acres of trees on their
claim. This was the only woodland in sight. We had a great time
exploring and climbing trees.
16
2ur parents went to town shopping on Wednesday and
Saturday nights. If they drove the car, only half of us kids could go
with them because of space. So half of us would go on Wednesday
and the other half on Saturday. Wednesday nights they
would block off Main Street and drag out a band stand
for the local German band to perform. My Dad and my
uncles used to play in the band. They played Sousa
marches and other patriotic tunes. After the band
concert, a movie screen was erected in a vacant lot and a
traveling man with projector and films (hired by the
local merchants) would show a cartoon and some very
forgettable movies. Sometimes it was a western, which
made it ok. As we left for home, we would pick up a
hand packed carton of ice cream from the Land O’Lakes
creamery to take home for those who had to stay home.
It was pretty soft when it was eaten, but very good. On
Saturday night the other half got to go and since there
was no band concert or free movies, we got a dime to go
to the local movie house run by Bill Moulder. The ice
cream was also taken home for those left behind. If we
didn’t have money for a movie, we would explore the
empty grain storage elevators. We would climb a ladder
inside the elevator to the top of the bins and chase
pigeons from their nests – a dangerous and foolhardy
pastime! There was a livery stable that we could play hide and
seek in, since there were few horses being put up there in the
summertime. If we could beg a nickel from the folks, we would
head for the Land O’Lakes creamery where Aunt Edwina Knecht
handled the ice cream business. For that nickel she would build a
3 dip cone of the best ice cream I ever tasted.
17
2n one of those Wednesday nights, when it was my turn
to accompany my parents and some of my siblings – including my
sister Ora – to Wimbeldon for the band concert, followed by free
outdoor movies, we stopped at Uncle John and Aunt Minnie’s
house before going uptown. In those days newspaper headlines
did not usually sensationalize murders or any gory crimes, but the
grownups began to discuss a story they read in the Fargo Forum
newspaper concerning a woman who was startled by a man
entering her bedroom though a window. It frightened her so badly,
she had a heart attack and died. The rest of the story I do not know,
but Becky (Aunt Minnie and Uncle John’s daughter), Billy
(Beckie’s brother), Ora and I listened to what to us was a very lurid
story. Later, Billy, Becky, Ora, our parents and I all went uptown
to hear the band concert, after which our parents went to the
grocery store and back to Uncle John’s. Us kids stayed for the
outdoor movie. After the movie, Billy and I ran on ahead of the
girls and hid in some tall grass and weeds along the sidewalk
leading to my Uncle’s house on the northeast side of town. When
Ora and Becky came chattering by, Billy and I sprang up from the
tall grass with arms waving and the most unearthly scream we
could muster. Well, the girls went berserk! They fell, they
scrambled on all fours, and then took off for the house screaming
horribly. Billy and I stood dumbfounded, thinking we had gone
too far, and perhaps we had scared the girls to death! We waited
around outside for some time before going into the house because
we were sure the girls had told on us and punishment would be
swift and certain – but nothing was ever said, it was almost
disappointing – our best effort yet, and no punishment! The girls
survived.
18
Another great place to play while in town, Mores’
Livery Stable.
19
,n the long summer evenings after supper, we would play
stick ball (with a rubber ball), tag you’re it, kick the can, hide and
go seek, Ante-I-Over and other games until dark. Occasionally,
Dad and Mother played stick ball with us. In those days of almost
zero light pollution, you could see the millions of stars, including
the Milky Way. You could also see the airport beacons at
Jamestown and Valley City. If the cloud cover was high, you
could also see the beacon from Fargo, 100 miles to the southeast!
Do they still have those sweeping beacons at airports?
$nother night time activity was tuning the radio to as
many stations as you could find and logging them. This was only
done, of course, when our parents were gone. We were not
suppose to run the batteries down. We could pick up stations as far
away as Mexico, Del Rio Texas, Des Moines, Chicago, and our
Saturday night special, The Grand Ole Opry from Nashville! We
had a crank up model 78 rpm record player and two records I’ll
never forget. “La Poloma”, the Dove, and “Button Up Your
Overcoat”. I forget what side two was of “La Polomo”, but the
second side of “Button Up Your Overcoat” was “Three O’Clock in
the Morning.” I suspect there were other records, but I don’t
remember them.
'uring the summers of 1935 and 1936 when it was so hot
and dusty, Mother would hang wet towels and sheets in the
windows to cool the air and remove some of the dust. As I
mentioned previously, the temperature rose above 120 degrees in
the summer of 1936. Many people fell from heat stroke. We were
not allowed out during the middle of the day. On the worst days we
stayed in the cellar where it was cool. Perishable foods were kept
in the cellar or lowered in buckets down the well. You could even
get jello to set if you put it in the well.
20
2n the rare instances when we got a rain shower, the
younger children were allowed to strip and go naked in the rain.
The older ones, including our parents, wore bathing suits or just
stood outside fully clothed. Blessed rain. If it was a thunder and
lightning storm, it was too dangerous to be outside. The lightning
struck our house on two different occasions. Usually it struck the
combine, which was a huge metal target that would create a great
sound. Speaking of the dangers of lightning – there was a man
whose only name I recall hearing was Sanke (pronounced Sanky).
He had a beautiful stallion that he traveled with to breed mares for
the farmers. The stallion pulled a two-wheel sulky with Sanke
sitting in the sulky. One day lightning struck and killed them both.
I don’t know where he was from, but whenever we wanted a mare
bred, he showed up. If it hadn’t rained for a long time, all the
sloughs and ditches were completely dry; then after a pretty heavy
rain, thousands of toads would suddenly appear. We almost
believed my older brother, who said it rained toads. Of course, the
standing water in the sloughs and ditches released the toads from
where they had buried themselves before the previous rain had
dried up.
,n 1938, Dad went to Minnesota and bought a farm. My
brother Frank had gone with him. Frank told stories of the woods,
the green grass and the creek that ran through the property. It
sounded like heaven to me! On subsequent trips they brought back
maple syrup and maple sugar candy as well as birch bark and truck
loads of firewood for kindling. The wood kindling made it much
easier to start a fire under the very poor quality lignite coal we
used. It was to be three long years before we moved to Minnesota.
Why the delay? I still don’t know.
2ur mailbox was one-half mile away and I was usually the
one sent to fetch it. Mother quite often had letters to mail so she
would give me the letter and 3 cents to give the mailman, or you
could just leave the letter and the money in the box and raise the
flag. We could send a mail order to Montgomery Ward on Monday
and receive our goods by Friday, great service! Did you know you
could order baby chicks by mail and they would be delivered alive
and well – or your money back!
21
7he rains started to return in the late 1930s, so we had
more hay to put up for the winter, and the oat and wheat crops
were of a much higher yield. Although we used the combine on
the wheat, we always used a threshing rig for the oats. We would
set up the threshing machine next to the barn and make a large
stack of oat straw, which was excellent for use as bedding for the
cattle stalls and also was an emergency food source for the horses.
The pigs found the oat stack a great source of food also. Any loose
kernels of oat that found their way through the machine and were
blown into the stacks would filter their way to the bottom of the
pile. The hogs would tunnel their way under the stack and eat the
oats. They could stay under there a long time, until they got thirsty.
'uring the height of the threshing season (most farmers
still threshed rather than use the combine) there were straw stacks
all over the countryside. Since there was no market for straw at
that time, it was burned, usually at night so you could see if the fire
tried to spread into the stubble. You could stand outside at night
and see a dozen or more fires burning all at the same time.
+aving a threshing crew on the farm meant a lot of good
food on the table. Listening to the hired hands was quite
educational – if you know what I mean! After the wheat harvest,
Dad would take one truckload of wheat to the flour mill in Valley
City. For each 3 bushels of wheat, he got 100lbs of flour. He also
traded wheat for sugar, puffed wheat and that infamous oatmeal
with the burlap strings in it! After harvest, when we had depleted
our stock of fryer chickens, canned meats, and other stores used for
the harvesting crews, we ate alot of potato soup. This soup would
be made with onions and boiled cabbage, beets and turnips. We
also had a variety of apple and plum butter, choke-cherry jelly, and
other preserves to put on the abundance of bread that we ate with
every meal. Milk was also served with dinner and supper. I recall
my mother always smelled of coffee and fresh bread. This diet
would see us through until butchering time in November.
7here was one man in town who was not thrilled about
combines – Tom Morrow, who ran a grocery store. The two men
who ran a combine replaced about 10 men on a threshing rig, so he
lost a lot of grocery sales. I recall him talking about it. After the
grain was harvested, came silo filling. The corn was cut, bundled
into shocks, then hauled to the shredder, which chopped the stacks
up and blew them into the silo. The chopped corn then fermented
and was a high quality supplement to hay in the winter. Next, the
hay that had been left in stacks out in the field was hauled in. What
wouldn’t fit in the hayloft was stacked next to the barn.
22
Herman, Henry and Adolph Etter in threshing crew.
,n the late fall, we would bank the house for winter. This
meant putting tar paper all around the house from the ground up to
the bottom of the windows, leaving an opening on the south side of
the house at the basement windows so coal could be scooped into
the basement if we ran out before spring. The tarpaper was then
covered with loads of horse manure from the barn. Horse manure
was a great insulating material and doesn’t smell too bad. In the
spring we hauled it out to the garden for fertilizer.
6ometime around Thanksgiving was butchering day.
Several hogs and sometimes a young steer were slaughtered. A few
neighbors came to help. Dad would rise very early and start a fire
outside by the slaughtering site. He had a large metal tripod with a
40-gallon black cast iron pot hung by chains under it. The fire was
under this pot. A platform was built of saw horses and 3’x8’ panels
called “car doors” (so called because they were used to block
railroad freight car doors). The railway discarded them after use
and we got them. When the crew was ready for butchering, the
hogs were shot and their throats cut, sometimes Dad would be
ready with shallow pans to catch the blood. This was later added to
some of the less choice cuts of meat and made into a dubious
delicacy called blood sausage. I’ve eaten it, it’s not bad. Two men
with meat hooks inserted in the tendons of the hog’s back legs
would lift the hog onto the platform. A large wooden barrel was
23
leaned up against one end of the platform and filled with hot water.
Then, the men would lower and raise the hog in
the hot water just enough to loosen the bristles, but not enough to
cook the hide. The hog was then scraped to remove the bristles. (I
still have a pair of hog scrapers we used.) Next, the hog was hung
up in the barn doorway upside down and gutted. The heart, liver,
kidneys and bladder were saved. The liver was checked for signs
of disease – I don’t recall how this was determined. The lungs and
most of the entrails were discarded. We saved some of the
intestines and stomach along with the bladder for stuffing
sausages. After the hogs cooled, they were split down the middle
and the head removed. The head would be boiled and the meat and
brains removed to be used later in making headcheese.
7he split carcasses were taken into the house where it was
warm enough to use a knife properly. Dad had a case containing
different types of knives, bone saws and a “steel” for sharpening.
These utensils were not used any other time of year. Both men and
women began cutting the meat into hams, roasts, ribs, loin, bacon
and parts to be ground into sausage. The fat was removed and cut
into small pieces to be cooked and rendered down into lard. We
would jack up one rear wheel of the truck and run a belt off it to a
large meat grinder. After the sausage meat was prepared, it was run
through the grinder and was then ready to be seasoned and put in
the sausage press. The sausage press was used to force the
prepared sausage meat into the casings made from the cleaned and
boiled intestines.
0eanwhile, us younger ones were cleaning the intestines.
Using two small pieces of wood between the thumb and the index
finger, we would strip the intestines, which had been cut into
usable lengths. After much stripping and washing, they were
boiled and turned inside out for more stripping and washing until
ready for filling. The bladders were similarly prepared for the large
round summer sausages. The sausage and hams were smoked in a
small shed we had, then hung on the rafters in the cellar. The
sausage press was also used to press out the lard from the fat that
had been cooked down. The part that was left after all the lard was
pressed out is called cracklings. We would eat a little of it, but it
was too rich. We fed it to the chickens. The steer was handled
differently. It was skinned then dressed out and cooled. It was then
cut up into steaks, roast, ribs, etc. We did not make hamburger.
The meat was put in a metal box we had outside to freeze. The fat
on the beef was removed and used for making tallow candles. So
24
we had a lot of good meat for Thanksgiving, Christmas and
through the winter. Of course, the turkeys were always available.
The first few meals after butchering consisted of a lot of liver and
liver sausage since it does not keep well. Those neighbors who
helped with the butchering took home some of the liver, plus
sausage and other cuts of meat.
2ne Sunday, we visited our Knecht cousins, who were
living in town at that time. Several of us, I believe there was Frank,
Wally and I plus cousins John and Billie, climbed up an empty
grain elevator to catch pigeons. After we caught a number of them,
we decided to take them out to a place about half mile east of town
to a place called Mud Lake, with the intention of building a fire
and cooking them. There was a patch of willow and cottonwoods
to supply a small amount of kindling and cooking wood. We built
a fire, plucked our birds and impaled them on sharp sticks to hold
over the fire. I remember they were pretty tough eating so I believe
we didn’t cook them long enough. There were a couple of hoboes
camped there, so we shared with them. I suspect they continued
cooking the pigeons after we left.
2ne time, when Wally and I were herding cattle, I don’t
recall just where, we weren’t getting along too well for some
reason. Anyway, he kept teasing me and finally he slapped my
horse, “Maggie” who was normally a very gentle creature. Well,
Maggie reared and dumped me off. I was too short to get back on
her without the aid of a fence and there were no fences, so I had to
walk the rest of the day. When we got home, I was determined to
get Wally in trouble. In telling my sad tale to our Mother, I became
agitated and began sputtering about how I had told Wally to “twit
it” and how when he smacked Maggie that “Maggie jamp” (not
jumped). With that, our Mother, Dad and all who listened burst out
laughing, leaving me embarrassed and Wally off the hook. It
became forever the story of “Dickie and his twit it and Maggie and
her jamp.”
$t least one Sunday during the summer, an airplane
barnstorming team came to Wimbledon in a meadow just
southwest of town. It was a free event – thank goodness – so there
was a large turnout. They made their expenses by charging for
rides, fifty cents or a dollar according to how long you wanted to
go up. They did aerobatics with lots of stunts, but the thing that
impressed me most was they would release rolls of toilet paper to
stream down from the sky! Talk about waste! We hardly ever had
anything but Montgomery Wards catalog in the outhouse!
25
$bout a week after school let out (Memorial Day),
Vacation Bible School would go into session at the local Methodist
Church. I didn’t mind too much since it got us out of chores at
home for at least a half day. The problem was that the annual
Farmer’s Union picnic always was held on Friday of the third
week in June, which coincidentally was the last week of Vacation
Bible School. Now Col. Kribbs, our church schoolteacher, wanted
very much for me to have perfect attendance at his class, as did my
Mother. Since this picnic date fell on or near my birthday, it was a
no-brainer that I would opt for the picnic, with a little selfadvertising of my birthday, I could count on an extra helping of
desserts at the picnic. Fortunately, I was too young to participate in
my older brothers and their friends’ practice of waiting for the
parents to go inside the Hemp school where the picnic was held to
have a meeting. This left unguarded a small keg of beer that had
been set up in a shady spot awaiting the men at the end of the
meeting. I don’t recall the older boys ever having been
detected at
drinking or acting badly. After the meeting and the picnic meal,
there was a baseball game between the married men and the
bachelors. There was a lot of bachelor farmers and hired hands at
that time. The women would supervise games between us kids. A
good time was had by all.
,n about 1935 or 36, Dad built a gravel hauling box to
put on his White Motor truck. It had a bigger capacity than any
gravel truck around at that time. He leased it and himself to the
W.P.A. for their road building projects. I talked him into letting me
go with him one day. Since I was fascinated with stones, shells,
etc, I spent the day on the banks of the gravel pit out of the way of
the trucks and the loader. I was so tired after that day, that Dad had
to carry me to the truck, take me home, and put me right to bed. I
believe I was so exhausted. What a day! It took me another day of
rest to recover my strength. I think I had forgotten to eat that day.
2ne day a salesman came by the farm, peddling soap.
While he was talking to Aunt Lizzie, he asked her name. She told
him Louisa, and he told her that was a beautiful name. She told me
to go help Grandpa bring the sheep in from the pasture. I did as I
was told, although Grandpa and Carlo had never needed help
before. Aunt Lizzie was in very good humor for the next several
days, and there were extra bars of Castile soap under the wash
stand!
26
*oing into town with Grandpa in the Model T was a real
experience. He was over 85 years old and the car was
unpredictable, in that it “jack-knifed,” which is to say when you
turned the steering wheel one way, it tended to keep going in that
direction too far before you could correct it. Luckily traffic was
light to nonexistent on that road so no harm came to anyone, but
we did explore some ditches along the way. We would stop at the
bank and at H.M. Strouds real estate office on business and then he
would give me a dime to spend at T.A. Moores confectionery
store. The things you could buy for a dime! You could get a small
scoop of red hots, a very tart pill sized candy, for a penny. You
could chose from among “guess whats,” a candy kiss with a purple
inside the wrapper, a sucker, a tootsie roll, etc. For 2 cents you
could buy miniature versions of regular candy bars. If you wanted
to satisfy yourself in one ultimate moment of self-indulgence, you
could buy a chocolate malted milk, 10 cents! What Grandpa did
at the bank and Strouds, I never knew. On the way home, when we
turned into his driveway, the Model “T” would jackknife right into
the gatepost. Grandpa would cuss a little in German, back up and
go on to the house. It’s the only times I heard him cuss.
$nother source of income for us boys was to collect
unusable or broken pieces of zinc, (from the sieves used on the
combine and thresher) also brass from broken gas tank spigots and
other fixtures, plus stray bits of copper, aluminum etc. We would
save it up for our next trip into town to sell to Floyd Linde, who
bought everything from scrap to hides. I also recall my Dad and
older brothers taking a wagon out across the unplowed prairies and
picking up bones. Some bones were the remnants of the buffalo
that were long since gone. These were sold to button
manufacturers and for export to Japan. In spring, just before
planting, we would go out into the fields, each of us equipped with
a small bucket of poisoned grain and spoon. Spreading out across
the field, we would put a spoonful of the grain into each gopher
hole. I suppose this killed alot of gophers, but there always
seemed to be plenty left. Some of our neighbors would hire us
boys to cover their fields as well. It was another way of making a
little spending money.
2nce a year I would answer an ad from the Cloverine
Salve Co. and receive about 20 cans of their salve to sell at 25
cents per can. It was a good product and easy to sell. Best of all, I
could keep my share of the profit in cash and send them theirs. I
tried selling “Grit” magazine once, but it doesn’t work when you
are a country boy with a lot of distance between neighbors.
27
, used to collect small stones, bones and other items
including indianhead pennies and arrowheads. I kept them in a
cigar box that I buried in the bank of the ditch along the road
behind the barn. In the spring of 1941 after the big blizzard, we
suddenly moved to Fingal, North Dakota and I was unable to
retrieve my treasure. The road was subsequently regraded, so my
treasure lies forever buried.
, never really knew my three oldest brothers, Milton,
Harold, and Raymond very well until later in life. They were
always working away from home and only occasionally came
home. Milton, I recall, worked out west on such projects as the
Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state and the Fort Peck Dam in
Montana along with seasonal farm work. Harold and Ray worked
on local farms and ranches, as did Frank and Wally later in the
thirties. Harold, Ray, and Frank joined the “Three C’s” – Civilian
Conservation Corps in the mid Thirties. Harold went to Cloquet,
Minnesota. Frank went to Winona, Minnesota, and Ray went to
South Dakota. They were paid very little, and more than half of
that was deducted from their pay and sent home to our parents. It
helped to buy groceries and other staples. Of course, Frank and I
worked together on Grandpa’s farm.
+arold was in demand to work neighbors’ farms when
they were ill or had to leave for some reason. Harold had a
reputation for being dependable, honest, and a hard worker.
Sometimes, if the farm owners were gone, he would take me with
him. I enjoyed that very much since he didn’t expect too much of
me as far as working was concerned and he could cook up some
new and unusual meals!
5ay was a hard working and hard playing guy. Always
a lot of fun to be around. He and Frank could get in trouble easier
than you could think was possible. They probably would not like
me to relate some of their pranks, such as castrating tom cats.
28
0y cousin Willis Etter(Uncle Fred’s son) and I were quite
close when we were about 8 to 13 years old. He was a year or so
younger than I. I stayed overnight at their house occasionally.
They lived on Grandpa’s old homestead farm with the large house
and barn, plus the grain elevator with its huge single cylinder
engine that powered the system of distributing the grain to the
correct bins. There was also a machine shop that held a lot of
marvelous things, including many horseshoe magnets. We played
with these magnets and let our imaginations run a little wild. One
of the pastimes were rolling old car tires. We thought that if we
arranged these horseshoe magnets inside the tires with the correct
distance between them and fastened down so they could not
actually touch, but still mightily attract the next magnet – we
would have the ultimate power – perpetual motion. It didn’t work,
but we had other things to do though.
/ater, Willis went on to Catholic Seminary and studied
his way to the Priesthood. I joined the Navy and studied
electronics. I recall Willis’ mother, Aunt Anna, was a warm, and
quite conservative woman. Onetime I was there she was cooking
for a large harvesting crew. She liked coffee a lot and always had
a cup standing by. While the crew was eating and drinking coffee,
they started to complain that the cream for their coffee was
curdling when they added it to their cups.
After some
investigation, Aunt Anna discovered that what she thought was a
forgotten cup of cold coffee was instead a cup of vinegar she had
poured back into the coffee pot!
8ncle Fred was a multi-talented man. He was very good
at the fiddle and taught me to dance a jig, and he could tell some
great stories.
, n the old claim shanty that still stood, there among the
other artifacts were the wooden yokes used on the ox teams that
pulled the wagons to the claim after unloading from the train at
Dazey. All their belongings from Wisconsin were in the wagons.
The oxen were in fact, several cows and a bull.
29
*randpa Phillippi came to stay a few days at a time
occasionally. He always had some candy stashed away to pass out
to us kids. He also was an expert wood carver. He would take a
block of wood and whittle us out various puzzles and toys.
Grandma Phillippi had died before I was born. Grandpa Phillippi
died in 1945 while I was in the service.
7he move to Fingal was tough on me; I had no friends
there, the school was different and we had left many things behind.
The only bright spot was that soon we would be moving on to the
lakes and pines of Minnesota!
30
+RPHPDG
7R\
DQ
*DPHV
:e had an unlimited supply of rubber inner tubes to
make slingshots. The only hard part was in finding a tree crotch to
supply the rest of the weapon. We could not go to the tree claim
for just this purpose, so whenever Dad would go to collect our
small amount of kindling wood, we would stock up on suitable
pieces. We also had plenty of leather patches to hold the shot.
5olling old tires was another great time killer. We had a
great selection of them.
:alking steel barrels was an exercise in agility, leg
strength, and balance. We had a lot of barrels, from oil, tractor
fuel, and sorghum, ranging in size from 15 to 60 gallons. Another
use for the barrels was to lash several of them together and make a
raft to float in the sloughs after the snow melt in the spring.
0aking shadow puppets on the wall with your hands was
another pastime, if the kerosene lamp was bright enough. There
were instruction books on how to position your hands to make a
variety of shadows.
$ combination of school projects and home entertainment
was Ivory soap carving. An Ivory soap cake was an ideal size for
carving, and easily molded with almost any tool with an edge, a
pocket knife was the preferred tool. It was quite easy to carve a
recognizable form of a cat, dog, or whatever one might envision.
%oys shop projects at school in grades 8, 9, and 10 were
usually practical, useful items such as fly traps, brooder pens for
newly hatched chicks, plus the usual book shelves, ashtrays, and
cutting boards.
31
2nce, during a snowball fight at lunch time on the
northeast corner of the Wimbledon School, a large group of boys
were attacking a single boy. It seemed to me to be unfair, so I
joined him against the impossible odds. I soon received a very
hard snow(ice) ball square in my mouth and began to bleed
profusely. I left the battlefield and went inside the school to the
single drinking fountain in the main hallway. A teacher found me
leaking blood all over everything as I was trying to rinse my
mouth. To my horror and embarrassment she took me to the
“girls” restroom to clean me up! I don’t think anyone else saw me
there.
3laying marbles was another favorite pastime, especially
in spring. I had a small draw-string bag of perhaps 15-20 marbles,
including a steelie, a large glass shooter, a number of glass marbles
and some “commies”(clay marbles). I was not allowed by my
parents to play for “keeps”, only for fun.
$cross the street on the south side of the school was the
basement of an old house that had either burned or was turned
down. At any rate, in the spring of the year we would move some
large stones and other objects to reveal a nest of garter snakes.
Dozens of them! They were the perfect thing to terrorize the girls!
Of course, the teachers soon put a stop to it! Alerted, no doubt, by
the screams of the girls.
:ith an empty thread spool, rubber band, and 2 kitchen
size wooden match sticks, you could assemble a mobile toy that
would give some entertainment on a rainy summer day or on one
of our interminable winter evenings. 1st, thread the rubber band
thru the hole in the spool. On one end of the spool you put half of
a match stick thru the loop of the rubber band. Next, pull the
rubber band tight on the other end of the spool and insert a full
length match stick into that loop. Wind the match stick until the
rubber band becomes very tight inside the spool and pull the match
stick down until 3/4 of the stick is on one side of the rubber band
and 1/4 on the other side. Hold the spool and stick tightly, then set
it on the floor or a table and release. The spool will take off rolling
quite rapidly! A properly applied lubricant, such as lard or soap,
would enhance the speed of the spool .
32
6tring and button hummer. With a piece of string about
3 feet long, run it thru the button and back again thru the other
hole. Tie the string together to form a complete loop. With a
finger in each end of the string loop and the button in the center of
the string, you would hold one end still and wind up the string with
the other hand. When properly wound, you would gently pull your
hands apart and back again as the buttons spins. This would
generate a nice humming sound.
&omb and tissue paper music. I’m sure you know how to
make these, and the music, too!
33
Photo’s and inserts from old family pictures and newspapers of the
time. The Fargo Forum, and The Wimbledon News.
-- Part Two --
Gopher Trails
The move to Minnesota
,n the fall of 1941, after the harvest and all the hay was in the barn,
Dad finally sold out and we were ready to go to Minnesota. Wally stayed
behind to keep an eye on the cattle and machinery.
:e had a “White” truck with a long wheel base and a grain hauling
rack on it. We loaded all our household goods on it, using the mattresses to
build a snug space next to the cab of the truck so Ora, Bob, Tom and me could
ride in back. After everything was packed in the bed of the truck. Dad poured
oat and wheat grain to supply the feed for cows and other animals to be bought
in Minnesota - these grains also kept the load from shifting. This was early
November, but it was unusually warm, thank goodness. Dad, Mother, Carolyn,
Joanne and Jerry rode in the cab. The back of the truck was covered by a
tarpaulin which we could open enough to stick our heads out and see the
countryside. We traveled very slowly. What is now a five or six hour trip took
us nearly two days!
+aving never seen any woods except in the city parks of Valley City
and Jamestown, plus the well managed Tree Claims - the large amount of under
brush and the dead falls were quite a shock.
7hree or four other families from North Dakota had preceded us to
Minnesota, so we did have some friends already there. This was a big help at
school. My younger brothers and sisters walked about a mile and a half north to
a one-room country school. I walked about a mile and a quarter south to catch a
school bus to Ogilvie High School.
:e had only been there a month when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor,
which we didn’t hear about until the next day when I went to school! When I
got home that evening and told my folks, we immediately started to fill the truck
with a load of wood. The next day, Dad sold the wood and bought a radio, and
the various batteries and antenna necessary to operate it. My brother Ray was
already in the Army and was soon sent to the South Pacific, so we need to keep
up with events. My oldest brother, Milton, enlisted in the Navy Seabees unit,
Harold joined the Army Air Corps, and Ray was already in the 164th Infantry.
Frank went in the summer of 1942. Wally was the next to be called, but he had
lost two fingers in a feed mixer accident, so they wouldn’t take him at that time.
By the time they would take him, I had already joined the Navy. Due to the
Sulivan Law they would not let Wally join because five sons of the same family
were already serving. Later, two more brothers, Bob and Tom, served during
the Korean War. Tom made it a career, retiring from the Air Force.
, loved the woods, spending most of my free time exploring or just
wandering, always in a different direction, getting to know where the various
species of plants and trees grew. Years later, I received calls from my brothers
and sisters asking where the moccasin flowers grew or where to find the High
Bush Cranberries or Gooseberries, or Blueberries or where the flying squirrels
nested and played. My fondest dreams from the prairie days of North Dakota
were realized here.
:hen Dad bought a herd of dairy cows, it became my chore not
only to help milk them twice a day, but to go out in the woods and meadows to
find them twice a day! Cows, being herd animals, stay together very well and
one cow becomes “boss”. whom all the others follow, so we put a bell on the
“boss” cow to make it easier to track them down. At first I would ride Bird, our
North Dakota cow pony to go after the cows since she could pick up their scent
in the event the lead cows’ bell didn’t ring. Trouble came when we would be
riding down an old logging trail in the woods and she would pick up their scent,
take off from the trail into the woods and leave me hanging from a low branch,
or dazed on the ground! If I didn’t recover in time, Bird would have them all
rounded up and headed back to the barn herself, while I came straggling after. I
soon decided it was better for my health to just walk. Bird could not convert
from a prairie horse to the woods! Since fences on the backside of our property
were very old or non-existent, the cows would wander far back in the woods for
no apparent reason. There was plenty of grass closer to home. But, their
wanderings expanded my knowledge of the woods, creeks, and beaver dams in
the area. In mid-spring, when the grass was high enough to let the cows loose,
another problem arose, swampy areas. We had a creek that split our farm from
east to west. In normal times it was very narrow and shallow, but in the spring
with snow melt and rains, it became deep and wide. Of course the perverse
nature of our cows caused them to swim across the swamp to a meadow on the
other side. To round them up I would walk around the creek and swamp by
using the road on the east side of our land, crossing the swamp that way and
then taking a logging road to the south side of the swamp to the meadow where
the cows were. If I could get them headed back to the logging road and out to
the main road to the farm, I would stay dry. Otherwise, the cows would see me
and decide to take a short-cut and swim back across the creek and swamp –
in which case I would grasp the tail of a cow and let her tow me across -- cold!
6ometimes in the evening, after chores and supper, I would take a .22
rifle and walk back to a beaver dam where there was an old elm with low
branches that were easy to climb. I would sit there quietly and soon the deer
would come to drink and the beaver to work on their dam. When the moon was
bright enough, it was quite a sight! I’m not sure why I carried the .22 - it
wasn’t powerful enough to protect me from any real danger.
2n my Sunday outings in the spring or fall, I would take a burlap sack
and a small shovel or trowel so I could dig up any interesting tree or flower to
take home and transplant. Some of the grew! Even today, some of the trees you
see in the front yard of the people who now own the place were the ones I
planted from 1942 to 1947!
n the summer we made a lot of hay. Some of it on natural small
open meadows that had never been mowed before, which is to say that the
ground dwelling inhabitants such as hornets took a strong exception to being
disturbed! I have been known to abandon the horse drawn mower while the
horses took off in their own direction until the mower they were pulling got
hung up on a tree or stump. If you were bright enough, you brought along a
small can of gasoline and hunted out the nests of bees or whatever, and burned
them out before you mowed.
ne of our hay meadows was several miles north of our farm on land
Dad bought from the state for about two dollars an acre. It was land the logging
companies had let go back to the state for taxes owed after they took the trees
from it. To go this far to mow hay we would hitch the horse to a hay wagon,
then tow the mower and dump rake behind. We would take water for ourselves
and the horses, plus enough food to last the day. We would mow enough hay
in the morning to rake in the afternoon. On the second day we could start
hauling the dried hay home to stack next to the barn. This was pretty wild land
with alot of wild honeybees. We would locate their nest trees and in the fall
when it got frosty at night, we would go back and rob the poor bees of their
summer’s labor. Also in this same area was a string of beaver dams. In the fall,
wild ducks used these ponds as resting and feeding places. In between the dams
the pheasants and grouse also fed. So, for really good hunting you could walk
the string of dams and shoot game birds on the land, and waterfowl over the
dams. It added alot to our sometimes meatless diet before cold weather, deer
season, and hog butchering time.
peaking of hunting, "Deer Season," was an event that called for the
release of all high school males for at least three days or as long as it took to
bag a deer. This was during WWII and meat was scarce and rationed for city
people. Strangely, there are more deer now than there were then. Since
gasoline was rationed to three gallons a week to city people, and the love of
deer hunting was fierce, the city people would save up their coupons and car
pool to come about seventy-five miles north of the Twin Cities to hunt. This put
them right around where we lived, so we had to make sure our cows were kept
close to the barn and we watched our backsides while hunting.
lso in the summertime we raised several acres of green beans, partly
as a patriotic thing – the government asked us to - and we could use a good cash
crop. My younger brothers and sisters can give you a better description of this
type of labor than I can, because I went to the U.S. Navy that year. They say it
was back breaking, stiffling work in endless rows of beans. It makes you
appreciate migrant labor.
ur mother was a berry picking woman. She could pick strawberries,
rapsberries and blackberries faster and cleaner than anyone I knew. She didn't
get on you to be fast or clean, just pick whatever was in season. Between the
berries of the woods and produce from the garden, she would can and store over
a thousand jars for the winter, all this witout electricity, running water, or gas
stoves! We were pretty much self-sufficient except for salt and pepper, coffee,
and now in Minnesota, flour and sugar.
round the edges of the garden we grew rhubarb, dill, and
horseradish. Maybe some other herbs, I don't recall. There were butternuts to
gather in season.
n the fall of the year I could mix partridge hunting and butternut
gathering into one great day of pleasure, especially after Dad allowed me the
use of his 12 guage Browning Shotgun. I almost always gathered more nuts
than birds. It wasn't until many years later that it was determined that I had
inherited my mother's tremors, known as "Essential Tremors." This was a
condition that caused me extreme embarrassment at times, even in the Navy, and
also made me a very poor marksman!
bout a quater-mile back west from the house was a two to four foot
deep pool of water in the creek. The depth depended on the season, but it was
the best place to cool off and even take a bath. On Saturday nights we boys
took soap, towels, toothbrushes, and clean clothes back there to bathe. The girls
had usually preceded us. This was in preperation to go to the dances at Ann
Lake. The dance was the big event of the week in our part of Minnesota. It
was an event for all members of the family and community. The music was
created by local residents who could play a guitar, piano, accordion, sax, drum,
or whatever! My Dad and Mother liked to Waltz and Fox Trot. Ora taught me
the basics of dancing, but to this day, I can't follow the rhythm very well.
fter harvesting, deer season, and butchering, we made sure our
firewood supply would carry us through the winter. For the first time in our
history, we could go into the woods and harvest our very own Christmas Tree!
That first winter in Minnesota was very mild in terms of snowfall and
temperature, "Thank God!" We were not prepared at that time for what we
experienced in later winters.
n summers I was hired out to run farms for friends who were
tempoarily disabled or had died due to accident or illness. This usually meant
milking ten to twenty cows twice a day, and mowing, raking, and hauling hay.
It also meant driving the woman of the house to wherever she had to go. The
grocery store during the day or the hospital at night, since most women did not
know how to drive a car.
n the winter, on extremely cold nights, -40’ or more below zero, the
Aspen (we called it popple) and sometimes the Birch trees would explode and
split themselves with a sound like heavy gunfire in the woods.
had a small trapline in the creek and swampland on our place, and
back to the east on state land. I baited traps mostly for muskrat and weasel. The
weasel turned winter and was quite valuable. The muskrat rarly were worth
more than 75 cents, skinned, stretched, and dried. On the east end of my line
was a schoolmate named Jerry Betlack. We entered the service in the summer
of 1944, I in the Navy, he in the Marines. When I came home for Christmas
that year, he was dead - killed on his first beach landing in the South Pacific.
utting trees in the winter for lumber was a necessity regardless of
how cold it was. It had to be done in winter because it was the only time the
ground was hard enough to get the logs out. The ground was always too wet
and soft after the spring thaw. We kept our axes and saws in the house
overnight to keep them warm and we would sharpen them every night. After
chores in the morning, we would hitch the horses to a large bobsled made
especially for hauling logs and head for the days logging site. We would clear
off a small area to build a fire, for keeping ourselves and the axes warm. At 20’
or 30’ below zero, the metal in the saws and axes would be brittle. If you hit a 30’ tree with an equally -30’ axe, the axe was as likely to shatter as the tree
would. To keep yourself dry, it was also important to take a long pole or
branch and rap strongly on the tress you were about to cut, to dislodge the frost
and snow from the branches. This kept the snow out of your neck!
n the spring was maple syrup gathering. We only tapped maybe forty
treesand made a few gallons of syrup for ourselves and friends. It was a new
experience and I enjoyed it. Starting a sawmill came next, we sawed logs off
and on all summer. Next was plowing and putting in crops, mostly oats. These
were things endured, but I lived for my free time to roam the woods.