LAST DAYS ON THE HOMESTEAD
"Oh, boy, we'll never get this done!" I muttered to myself as I stopped for a moment to wipe the sweat off my face. Try as hard as I could, I just couldn't keep up with Robert. He was 'way off down the row, far ahead of me, his machete swinging like a machine as he hand cut the corn we were harvesting. My job was to follow him, gather the corn stalks into bundles of ten or twelve stalks, and tie the bundles with a corn stalk. Then when we had enough bundles, we worked together to make shocks, using about a dozen bundles to make one shock. It seemed like an endless job, cutting and shocking that ten-acre field!
What worried us most, though, was that high school had already started in Hinsdale, and we were missing school! How could we ever catch up--especially, I wondered how I could catch up if I got started late in a strange school, my first year of high school? It bothered Robert, too, as he was a senior, and hated the thought of being behind in his studies. He was in a neck-and-neck race with one of his classmates to be valedictorian--the head of the class. Our sister Jean had already started on her second year, staying in Hinsdale with friends.
You see, this was the fall of 1932, and a momentous year for all of us. Dad and Mom had finally decided that it would be necessary to leave the homestead! When they first started out, in 1913, they had borrowed $1000 to buy horses, equipment, and building materials. Over the years, despite all their hard work, they simply had not been able to do more than pay the interest on the mortgage each year; the principal was unpaid. Those were terribly hard times. Part of that summer of 1932 Dad had been forced to work on the county roads, to pay the property taxes with labor, as many other men were doing. Now he was away teaching school on the South Bench, out south and across the Milk River. It was thirty or more miles in a straight line to the school where he batched during the week, and he could only come home on weekends.
Dad had located a farm two and a half miles out of Hinsdale that we could rent. But before we could move, we must cut the big field of corn! It represented the feed for our cows for the coming winter, and must be cut and hauled before snow fell. Thus we boys had the job of getting that corn cut and shocked, before we could hope to begin school. We had been promised that when we had the job done, we could start school.
You can imagine how I felt those days! Here I was ready to start in high school, in a strange town, a school with hundreds of kids, which seemed scary to me. The most students we had ever had at Richter school was seventeen! How would I get along with so many strangers?
Finally, almost six weeks into the school term, we finished the corn! The folks still weren't ready to move down to the new place. Accordingly, they arranged for the three of us Cumming kids to batch in a tiny apartment located upstairs in a remote corner of the school dormitory, in Hinsdale. The apartment had only a little gas plate, not a proper cooking stove, and there was room for our beds and almost nothing else. But it was a place to stay, and we got settled in quickly. Both Jean and Robert could do simple cooking, as they had batched the previous year, so we wouldn't starve.
In the meantime, the folks were very busy getting ready for the move to the rented farm, which we called the Burke Place. It had once been the homestead of a man named Billy Burke. He had been the husband of my third grade teacher, Mrs. Rose Burke. Billy had a bad problem with drinking, and had died young, I believe. Mrs. Burke made her living teaching school, and rented the farm out to various people. We were to live there three years.
Finally, about the middle of November, we were ready to move. I can still remember that last trip out to the old homestead. The job of loading the sad little load of furniture and other moveable things on the hayrack (because it held more than the wagon box), didn't take very long. We rounded up the cattle, put the chickens in coops, and were on our way. Dad had already hauled the corn and a lot of other stuff, on previous weekends. I drove the little bunch of cattle, walking most of the way to the new place--about twelve miles. It was very hard for Mom and all of us, going down that winding road to the "Point," turning for one last look at the old place, and then passing around the point and out of sight of our home for all those years. Although Dad went back once or twice later, doing the final clean-up of the move, I wasn't to see the old home again until 1946. By then all the buildings were gone, virtually without a trace.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
More Fun and Games on the Homestead
In about 1928, our Dad started using some very low-priced skiis (i.e. home made by the James boys) which he used for going across country to his remote school about 30 miles from home. Those were monstrous skiis, about six feet long, made of pine, and were rather wide. They had only a single strap which went across the arch of the one's foot. When he was home, on a week-end, I used to try my luck at skiing down hill.
I went one time, I remember, up on the hill in front of the house, where I wouldn't have to dodge any fences, though there were a few sage brush clumps, and some patches of bare ground, because it had been thawing. I made two or three fairly successful runs, not falling down more than a dozen times. Then came disaster! I was doing fine on my last run until I headed for and hit a patch of bare ground. Needless to tell you, I, or rather the skiis, came to a sudden halt. I didn't stop that fast, and in falling somehow knocked the knee cap on my right knee clear over on the side of my knee! Oh, my, how that hurt!
I couldn't even get up, but had to call for Dad, who was down in the barnyard, to come help me. He came, rolled my pant leg up and saw where the knee cap was. He simply pushed on it with his two thumbs, moving it back in place. Then, to my surprise, I could walk again, though the knee was awfully painful for many days. Did we go to the doctor? Oh, no--it healed up by itself. And I've never had trouble with that knee since that injury!
I mentioned neighborhood coasting parties. I think they were the result of our Mom's suggestion. For several winters, all the neighbors would get together by appointment, at someone's house, and we would all, old and young, go out coasting. I especially remember one coasting party at the Charlie Carter's. It was a beautiful cold, clear, moonlit night. You could literally see for miles, the light was so beautiful on the snow. We all went sledding on the hills north of their house, where there were great long swooping slopes. Some of the bachelor men from the area had come, too, including the James boys, Matt and Bill, and Magnus, the Norwegian brother of John Goodmanson. These fellows all brought their skiis, mostly homemade, and they had no fancy ski boots or poles to assist them. They had only single straps on their skiis, and crude willow sticks for poles.
It was the first time I had ever seen anyone who was truly skilled doing down hill runs. I can still see Magnus flying down that hill in the moonlight, making the run without poles, and on only one ski! He looked like a bird, swooping from side to side, never falling once. He was by far the most skilled person there. It was his night to shine! He could scarcely say anything in English, but he could surely ski! Another time we went to the Emil Richter's-- "Grandpa" and "Grandma" Richter to most of us. They didn't have any hills to coast on, but we were pulled on a rope behind a car or a saddle horse, down the road which was well covered with ice and snow. They went so fast it almost took my breath away! Again I remember Magnus on his skiis, holding onto a rope behind a galloping horse, jumping over the clumps of sage brush, yelling at the top of his lungs, having a great time. Whoever it was on the horse was having a wild ride, too, weaving in and out among the big sage brush clumps; he rode even faster than we who were being towed behind the car!
That night was memorable for another reason. After we had had our fill of being pulled around on our sleds or skiis, we all went in the house, had some hot cocoa and sandwiches, and then played games--"winkum," "spin the platter," and POST OFFICE! I had never heard of the latter, and was so embarrassed when sent into a nearby bed room with one of the girls (I can't even remember her name!) that I didn't know what to do. Of course you know that I was supposed to kiss her, but believe me, I never touched her! I have never played post office since! (Well, not the formal game, you understand.)
What did we do indoors? As I've indicated in previous chapters, our house was quite small, so there wasn't room for any vigorous play indoors. But we could and did play lots of table games. Tiddledee Winks was a favorite, played on a blanket on a table, with little celluloid disks. By pressing on the edge of a disk with another "shooter" disk, and snapping the shooter off the edge of the disk you wanted to move, you could snap it up in the air, and, if lucky, into a little catch basin. Scores were kept on the basis of how many disks you could shoot into the basin. One could really develop some skill, a sort of "light touch," which made accurate shooting possible.
Another game we sometimes played on the table covered with a blanket was croquet. Our set had little wooden mallets and balls, and rather fine wire hoops which could be moved around, and were not fastened down on the blanket. It wasn't very satisfactory, because when a ball struck a wicket, instead of going straight through, it knocked the wicket galley west. But we played croquet quite a lot, anyway. It wasn't until years later that I realized that our set was actually a miniature set, and that regular croquet was played on a lawn with big balls and mallets! Of course there was checkers, one of our favorite games. Dad and Mom used to tell us of how they played checkers a lot in the years before we kids came along. When they first homesteaded they didn't get around to the neighbors much, and after a long day of hard work would often sit down to play a game of checkers. They had a cat who would sit on an apple box next to the table where they played, and who would watch the game carefully. Every once in a while, apparently thinking it was his turn, he would reach up with his paw, and move a checker. And he was careful to only move it just one square! I don't think he ever won a game, of course. I wasn't very good at checkers, but could often beat my sister Jean. Then when she would get frustrated, we would play "Giveaway" which was just the opposite of checkers. The goal was to get rid of all your men by forcing your opponent to jump them, before your opponent made you jump all of his men. Jean was good at that. However, I don't think it improved our checker game skills a bit.
Years later, when I was in college, I used to play checkers with a man across the street from where my parents lived, in Glasgow. I thought I knew something about checkers, but soon found out I didn't. He would start the game with only eight checkers, against my twelve, and still beat me badly every time! He surely knew something about checkers, though I don't know how he would have fared against another really good player.
The indoor games we played were mostly card games. My Mom was a staunch Methodist, from the time she was a girl, and therefore we could not have a deck of regular playing cards in the house, let alone play with them, because she thought they were evil. She and Dad had played some kind of card game with neighbors, before we kids came along, but I can't remember the name of it, though it might have been "Pitch." There was a big thick deck of numbered cards, and we kids sometimes just monkeyed around with them, not knowing how to play the game. But we did have cards to play "Old Maid," and "Authors," and "Pit." The latter was one of my favorites, and I loved the busy trading of cards, trying to get a corner on the market in some grain. That may have been a wee bit educational, I suppose.
Then Mom discovered the game of "Rook." It was played with a special set of cards, with four different suites of different colors, with the cards numbered from 1 to 14 in each suite. It was quite complicated, calling for careful estimation of what cards your partner and opponents might have (revealed by how they bid to declare trumps), and very good memory of what cards in each suite had been played. We all really enjoyed that game, especially our mother. I don't think Dad ever played Rook with us. I suppose I had more fun playing that card game than any other I ever knew. Many years later, when I was in the service in World War II, I discovered that the experience with Rook helped wonderfully in learning to play contract bridge! In fact, except for the different cards, the rules were almost identical! I don't recall ever mentioning this to Mom; I wonder now what she might have said had she known!
We had a few toys with which we played indoors, but not too many. I always liked to shoot things with a pop gun, and can remember setting up dominoes (aha--there's another game we played and enjoyed) as enemy soldiers and shooting them down. I didn't think the cork ought to be on a string, as they were attached when the popgun was received, so would cut off the string, and thus have something like a real shooting gun.
Reading was another fun activity. We didn't have many children's books to read or look at, but the folks had accumulated stacks of old National Geographics and other magazines, and we had lots of fun reading and looking at the pictures in them. I remember that the relatives in Wisconsin sent out whole bundles of old Sunday papers, with beautiful sepia colored pictures, comics (we called them 'funny papers'), and one feature which especially appealed to me. In each week's issue there would be a story about the "Little People," a mythical community of tiny little folks who lived in a little town. I read those so carefully, and knew the names of just about everyone in the town. For a time, at least, I believed the stories were true, and that there were such little towns and people. I would pour over those stories and pictures by the hour. Another type of printed material which captured our attention for long periods of time, especially just before Christmas, was the mail order catalog. We always received the Sears, Roebuck & Co., the Montgomery Ward, and I think it was Spiegel's catalogs, both the Fall and Winter and the Spring and Summer issues. The coming of the Fall catalogs would start us off dreaming of what we would like for Christmas. In each catalog there would be pages and pages of beautiful Christmas things, toys, dolls, just about anything one could want. Our folks usually set a limit for us to choose one gift, only one, which couldn't cost more than a dollar, as our chief gift. Also, we could plan on ordering less expensive things for our brothers and sisters. Oh, what careful thinking that took--all of it fun. Then about the first part of November, we had to give our choices to Mom, and she would make up the orders, sometimes from several mail order houses. Of course we didn't get to see everything she ordered, as we usually received the gift of our choice, plus something else she thought we would like or needed. Lots of our Christmas gifts fell in the latter category, items of clothing, or things for school.
Those mail order catalogs would get absolutely dog-eared, with our thumbing through them. We thought the companies were great, and there is no question that they did provide a wonderful service to isolated families such as ours. I don't think we ordered much from Spiegel's, but we were surely familiar with their catalog. In late 1945, when I was in the Air Force and stationed in Chicago, I was pleased to find that a lot of our Air Force surplus disposal business had to do with the big warehouses owned by (and leased from) Spiegel's. I felt rather at home going there!
When we were recuperating after having some illness--measles, mumps, scarlet fever or plain flu--we liked to make and fly little paper airplanes. Then pages would be torn from old catalogs (or from less important parts of current ones) and folded to make simple gliders which we threw about the room. We had lots of fun with that, and it was very inexpensive fun. Standard disposal of the outdated catalogs was to move them to the outdoor toilet, where they would be sometimes read, and otherwise put to good use. We never had, so far as I can recall, any store-bought toilet paper on the homestead.
Swimming was an idea of Robert's--one summer he thought we kids should all learn to swim. Since neither of our parents were swimmers, we had to teach ourselves. The closest swimming water was John Goodmanson's pond, nearly a mile south of our place. We got his permission to swim there, and wearing cut-off bib overalls and similar old clothes for Jean, the three of us would walk down to Goodmanson's, carrying old inner tubes to keep us afloat while learning to swim. The mud was nearly as deep as the water, and it was quite a trick to wade out far enough to reach water deep enough to swim in. Then to launch ourselves into the water, freeing our feet from the sucking mud, wasn't easy.
But with a partially inflated inner tube around one's waist, we could manage a sort of dog paddling which we called swimming. We really worked at that, and all three of us got so we could truly swim, even without the inner tube. It wasn't particularly cooling, since we had to walk back home again in the hot sun after our swim, but it was great fun. We boys usually had spent the forenoon working at something around the place, maybe hauling water to the garden with team and stone-boat, or hoeing in the potatoes or corn, or something like that, and we would enjoy an afternoon, or part of one, spent swimming.
After a year or two, we all bought cheap swimming suits, again from the mail order catalogs. If I'm not mistaken, in those days we could get an all wool swimming suit for a dollar or less. We had choice of colors,too-- either navy blue or maroon. The skirts of those suits came half way down our thighs, on both the boys and girls suits. The boys suits had big cut-out holes under the arms. Swimming trunks were unknown in those days! We proudly wore those suits for our swimming times. Sometimes some of the other neighborhood kids would come to Goodmanson's and swim with us. We had some dandy mud fights, I remember. Later, when we moved away from the homestead down to the Milk River valley, we did lots of swimming in the river, where there was plenty of water, even enough for diving. Then we learned to use other strokes than the dog paddle!
On rare occasions we would swim in Brush Fork, a creek about two miles east of our home coulee. That stream had some deeper holes, though still awfully muddy, in which we could at least get wet. I remember one time, in the hot summer, when we rode on horses over there with Ralph Carter (or was it Vernon Richter?). Robert and I were riding double on old Snip, our saddle horse. We all went in swimming, and then decided to play Indian--I think that was it, anyway. We left our clothes on the bank of the creek, took the saddles off the horses, and on that hot summer day rode bareback up and down along the hills of Brush Coulee, on a dead run, pretending we were young Indians. Riding bareback without clothes wasn't that much fun that day, as the horses got as sweaty as we boys did, and we all ended up with some pretty touchy thighs and bottoms from that afternoon. We never tried that again, though it was fun--for a while!
With that I will tie a knot in this blog--though I may come back later to the subject of fun and games. The real truth of the matter is that we were happy youngsters, not at all deprived from not having radio or TV or ipods, or whatever, those devices that modern children think so necessary.
I went one time, I remember, up on the hill in front of the house, where I wouldn't have to dodge any fences, though there were a few sage brush clumps, and some patches of bare ground, because it had been thawing. I made two or three fairly successful runs, not falling down more than a dozen times. Then came disaster! I was doing fine on my last run until I headed for and hit a patch of bare ground. Needless to tell you, I, or rather the skiis, came to a sudden halt. I didn't stop that fast, and in falling somehow knocked the knee cap on my right knee clear over on the side of my knee! Oh, my, how that hurt!
I couldn't even get up, but had to call for Dad, who was down in the barnyard, to come help me. He came, rolled my pant leg up and saw where the knee cap was. He simply pushed on it with his two thumbs, moving it back in place. Then, to my surprise, I could walk again, though the knee was awfully painful for many days. Did we go to the doctor? Oh, no--it healed up by itself. And I've never had trouble with that knee since that injury!
I mentioned neighborhood coasting parties. I think they were the result of our Mom's suggestion. For several winters, all the neighbors would get together by appointment, at someone's house, and we would all, old and young, go out coasting. I especially remember one coasting party at the Charlie Carter's. It was a beautiful cold, clear, moonlit night. You could literally see for miles, the light was so beautiful on the snow. We all went sledding on the hills north of their house, where there were great long swooping slopes. Some of the bachelor men from the area had come, too, including the James boys, Matt and Bill, and Magnus, the Norwegian brother of John Goodmanson. These fellows all brought their skiis, mostly homemade, and they had no fancy ski boots or poles to assist them. They had only single straps on their skiis, and crude willow sticks for poles.
It was the first time I had ever seen anyone who was truly skilled doing down hill runs. I can still see Magnus flying down that hill in the moonlight, making the run without poles, and on only one ski! He looked like a bird, swooping from side to side, never falling once. He was by far the most skilled person there. It was his night to shine! He could scarcely say anything in English, but he could surely ski! Another time we went to the Emil Richter's-- "Grandpa" and "Grandma" Richter to most of us. They didn't have any hills to coast on, but we were pulled on a rope behind a car or a saddle horse, down the road which was well covered with ice and snow. They went so fast it almost took my breath away! Again I remember Magnus on his skiis, holding onto a rope behind a galloping horse, jumping over the clumps of sage brush, yelling at the top of his lungs, having a great time. Whoever it was on the horse was having a wild ride, too, weaving in and out among the big sage brush clumps; he rode even faster than we who were being towed behind the car!
That night was memorable for another reason. After we had had our fill of being pulled around on our sleds or skiis, we all went in the house, had some hot cocoa and sandwiches, and then played games--"winkum," "spin the platter," and POST OFFICE! I had never heard of the latter, and was so embarrassed when sent into a nearby bed room with one of the girls (I can't even remember her name!) that I didn't know what to do. Of course you know that I was supposed to kiss her, but believe me, I never touched her! I have never played post office since! (Well, not the formal game, you understand.)
What did we do indoors? As I've indicated in previous chapters, our house was quite small, so there wasn't room for any vigorous play indoors. But we could and did play lots of table games. Tiddledee Winks was a favorite, played on a blanket on a table, with little celluloid disks. By pressing on the edge of a disk with another "shooter" disk, and snapping the shooter off the edge of the disk you wanted to move, you could snap it up in the air, and, if lucky, into a little catch basin. Scores were kept on the basis of how many disks you could shoot into the basin. One could really develop some skill, a sort of "light touch," which made accurate shooting possible.
Another game we sometimes played on the table covered with a blanket was croquet. Our set had little wooden mallets and balls, and rather fine wire hoops which could be moved around, and were not fastened down on the blanket. It wasn't very satisfactory, because when a ball struck a wicket, instead of going straight through, it knocked the wicket galley west. But we played croquet quite a lot, anyway. It wasn't until years later that I realized that our set was actually a miniature set, and that regular croquet was played on a lawn with big balls and mallets! Of course there was checkers, one of our favorite games. Dad and Mom used to tell us of how they played checkers a lot in the years before we kids came along. When they first homesteaded they didn't get around to the neighbors much, and after a long day of hard work would often sit down to play a game of checkers. They had a cat who would sit on an apple box next to the table where they played, and who would watch the game carefully. Every once in a while, apparently thinking it was his turn, he would reach up with his paw, and move a checker. And he was careful to only move it just one square! I don't think he ever won a game, of course. I wasn't very good at checkers, but could often beat my sister Jean. Then when she would get frustrated, we would play "Giveaway" which was just the opposite of checkers. The goal was to get rid of all your men by forcing your opponent to jump them, before your opponent made you jump all of his men. Jean was good at that. However, I don't think it improved our checker game skills a bit.
Years later, when I was in college, I used to play checkers with a man across the street from where my parents lived, in Glasgow. I thought I knew something about checkers, but soon found out I didn't. He would start the game with only eight checkers, against my twelve, and still beat me badly every time! He surely knew something about checkers, though I don't know how he would have fared against another really good player.
The indoor games we played were mostly card games. My Mom was a staunch Methodist, from the time she was a girl, and therefore we could not have a deck of regular playing cards in the house, let alone play with them, because she thought they were evil. She and Dad had played some kind of card game with neighbors, before we kids came along, but I can't remember the name of it, though it might have been "Pitch." There was a big thick deck of numbered cards, and we kids sometimes just monkeyed around with them, not knowing how to play the game. But we did have cards to play "Old Maid," and "Authors," and "Pit." The latter was one of my favorites, and I loved the busy trading of cards, trying to get a corner on the market in some grain. That may have been a wee bit educational, I suppose.
Then Mom discovered the game of "Rook." It was played with a special set of cards, with four different suites of different colors, with the cards numbered from 1 to 14 in each suite. It was quite complicated, calling for careful estimation of what cards your partner and opponents might have (revealed by how they bid to declare trumps), and very good memory of what cards in each suite had been played. We all really enjoyed that game, especially our mother. I don't think Dad ever played Rook with us. I suppose I had more fun playing that card game than any other I ever knew. Many years later, when I was in the service in World War II, I discovered that the experience with Rook helped wonderfully in learning to play contract bridge! In fact, except for the different cards, the rules were almost identical! I don't recall ever mentioning this to Mom; I wonder now what she might have said had she known!
We had a few toys with which we played indoors, but not too many. I always liked to shoot things with a pop gun, and can remember setting up dominoes (aha--there's another game we played and enjoyed) as enemy soldiers and shooting them down. I didn't think the cork ought to be on a string, as they were attached when the popgun was received, so would cut off the string, and thus have something like a real shooting gun.
Reading was another fun activity. We didn't have many children's books to read or look at, but the folks had accumulated stacks of old National Geographics and other magazines, and we had lots of fun reading and looking at the pictures in them. I remember that the relatives in Wisconsin sent out whole bundles of old Sunday papers, with beautiful sepia colored pictures, comics (we called them 'funny papers'), and one feature which especially appealed to me. In each week's issue there would be a story about the "Little People," a mythical community of tiny little folks who lived in a little town. I read those so carefully, and knew the names of just about everyone in the town. For a time, at least, I believed the stories were true, and that there were such little towns and people. I would pour over those stories and pictures by the hour. Another type of printed material which captured our attention for long periods of time, especially just before Christmas, was the mail order catalog. We always received the Sears, Roebuck & Co., the Montgomery Ward, and I think it was Spiegel's catalogs, both the Fall and Winter and the Spring and Summer issues. The coming of the Fall catalogs would start us off dreaming of what we would like for Christmas. In each catalog there would be pages and pages of beautiful Christmas things, toys, dolls, just about anything one could want. Our folks usually set a limit for us to choose one gift, only one, which couldn't cost more than a dollar, as our chief gift. Also, we could plan on ordering less expensive things for our brothers and sisters. Oh, what careful thinking that took--all of it fun. Then about the first part of November, we had to give our choices to Mom, and she would make up the orders, sometimes from several mail order houses. Of course we didn't get to see everything she ordered, as we usually received the gift of our choice, plus something else she thought we would like or needed. Lots of our Christmas gifts fell in the latter category, items of clothing, or things for school.
Those mail order catalogs would get absolutely dog-eared, with our thumbing through them. We thought the companies were great, and there is no question that they did provide a wonderful service to isolated families such as ours. I don't think we ordered much from Spiegel's, but we were surely familiar with their catalog. In late 1945, when I was in the Air Force and stationed in Chicago, I was pleased to find that a lot of our Air Force surplus disposal business had to do with the big warehouses owned by (and leased from) Spiegel's. I felt rather at home going there!
When we were recuperating after having some illness--measles, mumps, scarlet fever or plain flu--we liked to make and fly little paper airplanes. Then pages would be torn from old catalogs (or from less important parts of current ones) and folded to make simple gliders which we threw about the room. We had lots of fun with that, and it was very inexpensive fun. Standard disposal of the outdated catalogs was to move them to the outdoor toilet, where they would be sometimes read, and otherwise put to good use. We never had, so far as I can recall, any store-bought toilet paper on the homestead.
Swimming was an idea of Robert's--one summer he thought we kids should all learn to swim. Since neither of our parents were swimmers, we had to teach ourselves. The closest swimming water was John Goodmanson's pond, nearly a mile south of our place. We got his permission to swim there, and wearing cut-off bib overalls and similar old clothes for Jean, the three of us would walk down to Goodmanson's, carrying old inner tubes to keep us afloat while learning to swim. The mud was nearly as deep as the water, and it was quite a trick to wade out far enough to reach water deep enough to swim in. Then to launch ourselves into the water, freeing our feet from the sucking mud, wasn't easy.
But with a partially inflated inner tube around one's waist, we could manage a sort of dog paddling which we called swimming. We really worked at that, and all three of us got so we could truly swim, even without the inner tube. It wasn't particularly cooling, since we had to walk back home again in the hot sun after our swim, but it was great fun. We boys usually had spent the forenoon working at something around the place, maybe hauling water to the garden with team and stone-boat, or hoeing in the potatoes or corn, or something like that, and we would enjoy an afternoon, or part of one, spent swimming.
After a year or two, we all bought cheap swimming suits, again from the mail order catalogs. If I'm not mistaken, in those days we could get an all wool swimming suit for a dollar or less. We had choice of colors,too-- either navy blue or maroon. The skirts of those suits came half way down our thighs, on both the boys and girls suits. The boys suits had big cut-out holes under the arms. Swimming trunks were unknown in those days! We proudly wore those suits for our swimming times. Sometimes some of the other neighborhood kids would come to Goodmanson's and swim with us. We had some dandy mud fights, I remember. Later, when we moved away from the homestead down to the Milk River valley, we did lots of swimming in the river, where there was plenty of water, even enough for diving. Then we learned to use other strokes than the dog paddle!
On rare occasions we would swim in Brush Fork, a creek about two miles east of our home coulee. That stream had some deeper holes, though still awfully muddy, in which we could at least get wet. I remember one time, in the hot summer, when we rode on horses over there with Ralph Carter (or was it Vernon Richter?). Robert and I were riding double on old Snip, our saddle horse. We all went in swimming, and then decided to play Indian--I think that was it, anyway. We left our clothes on the bank of the creek, took the saddles off the horses, and on that hot summer day rode bareback up and down along the hills of Brush Coulee, on a dead run, pretending we were young Indians. Riding bareback without clothes wasn't that much fun that day, as the horses got as sweaty as we boys did, and we all ended up with some pretty touchy thighs and bottoms from that afternoon. We never tried that again, though it was fun--for a while!
With that I will tie a knot in this blog--though I may come back later to the subject of fun and games. The real truth of the matter is that we were happy youngsters, not at all deprived from not having radio or TV or ipods, or whatever, those devices that modern children think so necessary.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Great Teachers at Richter School
I must not end my account of my days at Richter School without giving credit to the fine teachers who taught there the seven years I attended. As the many years have gone by since I left the school in 1932, I have come more and more to appreciate the hard work and long hours those teachers put in to get us country kids off to a good start. I've already recounted my first two years, when Miss Woodward was teacher.
Our school was always small. The largest number of pupils we ever had, I think, was seventeen. That was when I was in the third grade. That was quite a handful for one teacher, you can be sure. So far as we youngsters were concerned, though, it was 'the more the merrier.' Our teacher that year was Mrs. Rose J. Burke, an older lady (widow of a pioneer homesteader), and well experienced in teaching small schools. We all liked her. The Carter family I mentioned earlier had moved into the community, and their seven children were all new to us. Sadly, I was the only student ready for the third grade, while two of the Carters, Ralph and Dortha, were ready for the fourth grade. Mrs. Burke, by adjusting my studies somewhat, had me study and recite with Ralph and Dortha, so that I finished both the third and fourth grades that year. Whether that was good for me, or not, I really don't know. The studies were easy for me, but having moved ahead by a year, I think I did lack social maturity in later years, especially when in high school. At any rate, I thought it was a great year. Ralph and I became good friends, very competitive in the games we played. Of course, when spring weather came, I was as anxious as anyone to be free again, but we Cumming kids would always be looking forward to school long before it began in the fall.
Our teacher in my fifth grade year was a young woman, a Norwegian, from Glasgow-- Sigurd Vegge. She was young and pretty, and all of us boys fell in love with her. I know that we had a lot of visitors that year-- young fellows just happening to ride by would stop to visit school, to get a drink of water and possibly get to talk to the teacher after school. The word really got around.
As usual, there was a community "box social" held at the school that fall, sometime near Hallowe'en, I think. All the farmers wives and daughters carefully prepared decorated boxes (each filled with a substantial lunch for two) for sale. The greatest secrecy was maintained so (supposedly) no one would know to whom a particular box belonged. Miss Vegge's box was especially sought by some of the young men in the area. The boxes were auctioned off in the evening. We had a big crowd and the bidding went higher and higher, especially as Miss Vegge's box apparently had not yet been sold. I don't remember who finally bid the best price for her box, but I know there were a lot of disappointed fellows! I had to eat with one of my sisters, I've forgotten which!
That same year the younger brother of John Goodmanson, our Norwegian bachelor neighbor who kept the school supplied with drinking water, came to visit and help John, who had had a stroke. Magnus, the brother, had a totally different last name; it wasn't Goodmanson at all. They explained that in Norway when a young man went to work for a neighboring farmer, he took that name, or some variation of it, as his second name. Anyway, Magnus was one of the several suitors who liked our new teacher.
For several months of the year Miss Vegge stayed at our house, as there was no other suitable accomodation for her in the community. I still don't know how we managed, as our small house simply didn't offer privacy at all to someone like a teacher. But stay with us she did. She often curled her hair with one of the old-fashioned curling irons which were heated in a kerosene lamp chimney, and the smell of scorched hair would go all over the house.
She had her "bedroom" (really, just a corner of the living room, screened off with a sheet) and we kids were required to vacate the premises whenever she had company. Sometimes we would quietly sneak into the attic upstairs above the room, and watch her and her company through convenient knot holes in the ceiling boards. I can remember sitting up there, having trouble keeping my snickering from being heard, while the two would sit and talk. With Magnus, who came sometimes, it was a quiet evening, for he would scarcely say a word. Miss Vegge once told our mother that she didn't know what to do--he wouldn't talk, or play cards, or do anything. He just sat and looked at her!
We were always much concerned not to bother Miss Vegge any more than we could help. One time in the spring, when the weather was fairly warm, my mother and I were milking the cows out in the lane in front of the house. This was fairly early in the morning, and Miss Vegge was still in bed. My younger sister, Mary, hearing us talking together as we milked, came to the front of the house, right in front of the window, and shouted to us to be quiet, so we wouldn't wake Miss Vegge! Needless to say, she was thoroughly awake by that time!
It was when Miss Vegge was teacher that I had my first experience in shooting a pistol. Someone had convinced her that she ought to be able to protect herself, so she had purchased a tiny .22 revolver. She brought it to school one day, with some shells, and let us older boys take turns shooting at fence posts in front of the school. I loved it, and from that day wanted to own a pistol of my own! But that was the only time that I know of that she brought the gun to school. Having firearms around the school house was forbidden, and I think someone on the school board probably told her not to bring it there again.
She was also the teacher who first talked to us children about good eating habits. One morning, early in the year, she asked how many of us had eaten pancakes for breakfast. Now that was one of the staples of life among the homesteaders in those days, and we Cumming kids were proud of our mother's pancakes, and how many we, especially our Dad, could eat. So we told her that we had had pancakes that morning, with salt pork, and how Dad had eaten a dozen or so. Then she proceded to tell us how indigestible pancakes were, how they weren't good for us, and so on.
We kids were really upset about it, and told our parents all about what she had said. Poor girl, when she came to our house to stay that winter, she found out more about pancakes! Miss Vegge only taught at our school one year, and I don't know whether she continued in teaching after her year at our school. Later she married a farmer who lived near Glasgow. Years later, she came to the the funerals of both my mother and father, and we were able to visit a bit again. She was, or is, a fine person!
I can remember so well our teacher in my sixth grade year--Mrs. Ruth Putz. She was a little whiffet of a person, wouldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds soaking wet. On the first day of school she sort of danced back and forth up in front of us, telling us of all the exciting things we would be doing that year, including having a Maypole dance in the spring. Of course we country kids had no idea what that was, or whether we were interested in doing anything of the sort.
Then she began calling on some of us to answer questions, to see where we were in our studies. I remember that my friend Ralph Carter was a bit slow in answering, and she came down the row of seats, had him hold out his hand, and gave him a sharp smack across the palm with a ruler. I thought it was terrible, and could hardly look at her, I was so angry. It took several weeks for me to get over that; I thought she was awfully unfair. Ralph had always been slow in speaking, and he wasn't trying to be smart or anything.
But as school went on, we all found that Mrs. Putz was really a good teacher, and we all learned a lot that year. She rented a little shack next to John Goodmanson's house to live in. Her husband and their little three year old boy would come to the shack some weekends, and sometimes to school. The boy was just a little fellow, but very clever.
Before the year was over, Mrs. Putz had enlisted me to climb up into the attic to get down the Christmas decorations (that sort of proved that I was a "big" boy now), and also asked me to be guide on nature walks we took on Fridays. Once the whole school, with me leading the way, walked far to the east, about three miles or so, to Brush Fork, the next large creek east of our Black Coulee. There we had our lunches, and talked about various trees and shrubs. That was a highlight of the year, so far as I was concerned.
Did we have the Maypole dance? You bet we did. Mrs. Putz and her husband put up a pole down in the coulee west of the school, and we all helped make long streamers of crepe paper for the maypole. We practiced quite a bit, each of us holding a streamer, and marching round and round the pole, inter-weaving our streamers to make different designs on the pole. It was really quite interesting, we had to admit.
When the day came for the public showing of our Maypole, though, if I remember rightly, we didn't have such good luck, got mixed up, some streamers broke, and it was more or less a disaster. But Mrs. Putz was game,and didn't let it bother her. She was the first teacher we had who got us kids at the Richter School involved in county school activities. She drove a little Ford sedan, and one wet, rainy Saturday in the spring, when the roads were terrible, she took a load of us youngsters (four or five) all the way to Opheim, a trip of over seventy miles, to take part in a scholastic meet there. I think it was too wet (it rained most of the day) to have the track events, but we did well in the scholastic tests, and enjoyed it a lot. That sort of paved the way for our taking part in the scholastic and track meets held in Hinsdale in the years that followed.
Mrs. Putz later became County Superintendent of Schools, an office she held for many years. I don't know, but I'll bet a lot of teachers were afraid to have her come to visit, as the Superintendents did in those days. She had very high standards of teaching, and was a real blessing in our county. I don't think I ever saw her again after she left our school.
Viola Woodard (only now it was Mrs. Floyd Richter) came back to Richter School and was my teacher for both my seventh and eighth grade years. She was such an encouraging teacher. When I complained that there were no more books in the school bookcase for me to read, she pointed to the whole shelf of the World Book Encylopedia, and had me read that. Sometimes she would quiz me on something I had read. She also encouraged all of us in competing in the annual track and scholastic meets held in Hinsdale.
In the spring of 1932, Mrs. Richter coached me in preparation for the 8th grade exams required of all the graduating 8th graders in rural schools. (Town kids didn't have to take the tests, probably because someone thought the town schools were superior!) She promised me a dollar for each exam in which I achieved a score of 90 or higher. There were eight exams, and that promise cost her $8, the most money I had ever had at one time!
I feel that it was a privilege, not a hardship, to attend a small country school, with the kind of teachers I had had. I know that we homesteaders' kids certainly received a good start at Richter School.
I must not end my account of my days at Richter School without giving credit to the fine teachers who taught there the seven years I attended. As the many years have gone by since I left the school in 1932, I have come more and more to appreciate the hard work and long hours those teachers put in to get us country kids off to a good start. I've already recounted my first two years, when Miss Woodward was teacher.
Our school was always small. The largest number of pupils we ever had, I think, was seventeen. That was when I was in the third grade. That was quite a handful for one teacher, you can be sure. So far as we youngsters were concerned, though, it was 'the more the merrier.' Our teacher that year was Mrs. Rose J. Burke, an older lady (widow of a pioneer homesteader), and well experienced in teaching small schools. We all liked her. The Carter family I mentioned earlier had moved into the community, and their seven children were all new to us. Sadly, I was the only student ready for the third grade, while two of the Carters, Ralph and Dortha, were ready for the fourth grade. Mrs. Burke, by adjusting my studies somewhat, had me study and recite with Ralph and Dortha, so that I finished both the third and fourth grades that year. Whether that was good for me, or not, I really don't know. The studies were easy for me, but having moved ahead by a year, I think I did lack social maturity in later years, especially when in high school. At any rate, I thought it was a great year. Ralph and I became good friends, very competitive in the games we played. Of course, when spring weather came, I was as anxious as anyone to be free again, but we Cumming kids would always be looking forward to school long before it began in the fall.
Our teacher in my fifth grade year was a young woman, a Norwegian, from Glasgow-- Sigurd Vegge. She was young and pretty, and all of us boys fell in love with her. I know that we had a lot of visitors that year-- young fellows just happening to ride by would stop to visit school, to get a drink of water and possibly get to talk to the teacher after school. The word really got around.
As usual, there was a community "box social" held at the school that fall, sometime near Hallowe'en, I think. All the farmers wives and daughters carefully prepared decorated boxes (each filled with a substantial lunch for two) for sale. The greatest secrecy was maintained so (supposedly) no one would know to whom a particular box belonged. Miss Vegge's box was especially sought by some of the young men in the area. The boxes were auctioned off in the evening. We had a big crowd and the bidding went higher and higher, especially as Miss Vegge's box apparently had not yet been sold. I don't remember who finally bid the best price for her box, but I know there were a lot of disappointed fellows! I had to eat with one of my sisters, I've forgotten which!
That same year the younger brother of John Goodmanson, our Norwegian bachelor neighbor who kept the school supplied with drinking water, came to visit and help John, who had had a stroke. Magnus, the brother, had a totally different last name; it wasn't Goodmanson at all. They explained that in Norway when a young man went to work for a neighboring farmer, he took that name, or some variation of it, as his second name. Anyway, Magnus was one of the several suitors who liked our new teacher.
For several months of the year Miss Vegge stayed at our house, as there was no other suitable accomodation for her in the community. I still don't know how we managed, as our small house simply didn't offer privacy at all to someone like a teacher. But stay with us she did. She often curled her hair with one of the old-fashioned curling irons which were heated in a kerosene lamp chimney, and the smell of scorched hair would go all over the house.
She had her "bedroom" (really, just a corner of the living room, screened off with a sheet) and we kids were required to vacate the premises whenever she had company. Sometimes we would quietly sneak into the attic upstairs above the room, and watch her and her company through convenient knot holes in the ceiling boards. I can remember sitting up there, having trouble keeping my snickering from being heard, while the two would sit and talk. With Magnus, who came sometimes, it was a quiet evening, for he would scarcely say a word. Miss Vegge once told our mother that she didn't know what to do--he wouldn't talk, or play cards, or do anything. He just sat and looked at her!
We were always much concerned not to bother Miss Vegge any more than we could help. One time in the spring, when the weather was fairly warm, my mother and I were milking the cows out in the lane in front of the house. This was fairly early in the morning, and Miss Vegge was still in bed. My younger sister, Mary, hearing us talking together as we milked, came to the front of the house, right in front of the window, and shouted to us to be quiet, so we wouldn't wake Miss Vegge! Needless to say, she was thoroughly awake by that time!
It was when Miss Vegge was teacher that I had my first experience in shooting a pistol. Someone had convinced her that she ought to be able to protect herself, so she had purchased a tiny .22 revolver. She brought it to school one day, with some shells, and let us older boys take turns shooting at fence posts in front of the school. I loved it, and from that day wanted to own a pistol of my own! But that was the only time that I know of that she brought the gun to school. Having firearms around the school house was forbidden, and I think someone on the school board probably told her not to bring it there again.
She was also the teacher who first talked to us children about good eating habits. One morning, early in the year, she asked how many of us had eaten pancakes for breakfast. Now that was one of the staples of life among the homesteaders in those days, and we Cumming kids were proud of our mother's pancakes, and how many we, especially our Dad, could eat. So we told her that we had had pancakes that morning, with salt pork, and how Dad had eaten a dozen or so. Then she proceded to tell us how indigestible pancakes were, how they weren't good for us, and so on.
We kids were really upset about it, and told our parents all about what she had said. Poor girl, when she came to our house to stay that winter, she found out more about pancakes! Miss Vegge only taught at our school one year, and I don't know whether she continued in teaching after her year at our school. Later she married a farmer who lived near Glasgow. Years later, she came to the the funerals of both my mother and father, and we were able to visit a bit again. She was, or is, a fine person!
I can remember so well our teacher in my sixth grade year--Mrs. Ruth Putz. She was a little whiffet of a person, wouldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds soaking wet. On the first day of school she sort of danced back and forth up in front of us, telling us of all the exciting things we would be doing that year, including having a Maypole dance in the spring. Of course we country kids had no idea what that was, or whether we were interested in doing anything of the sort.
Then she began calling on some of us to answer questions, to see where we were in our studies. I remember that my friend Ralph Carter was a bit slow in answering, and she came down the row of seats, had him hold out his hand, and gave him a sharp smack across the palm with a ruler. I thought it was terrible, and could hardly look at her, I was so angry. It took several weeks for me to get over that; I thought she was awfully unfair. Ralph had always been slow in speaking, and he wasn't trying to be smart or anything.
But as school went on, we all found that Mrs. Putz was really a good teacher, and we all learned a lot that year. She rented a little shack next to John Goodmanson's house to live in. Her husband and their little three year old boy would come to the shack some weekends, and sometimes to school. The boy was just a little fellow, but very clever.
Before the year was over, Mrs. Putz had enlisted me to climb up into the attic to get down the Christmas decorations (that sort of proved that I was a "big" boy now), and also asked me to be guide on nature walks we took on Fridays. Once the whole school, with me leading the way, walked far to the east, about three miles or so, to Brush Fork, the next large creek east of our Black Coulee. There we had our lunches, and talked about various trees and shrubs. That was a highlight of the year, so far as I was concerned.
Did we have the Maypole dance? You bet we did. Mrs. Putz and her husband put up a pole down in the coulee west of the school, and we all helped make long streamers of crepe paper for the maypole. We practiced quite a bit, each of us holding a streamer, and marching round and round the pole, inter-weaving our streamers to make different designs on the pole. It was really quite interesting, we had to admit.
When the day came for the public showing of our Maypole, though, if I remember rightly, we didn't have such good luck, got mixed up, some streamers broke, and it was more or less a disaster. But Mrs. Putz was game,and didn't let it bother her. She was the first teacher we had who got us kids at the Richter School involved in county school activities. She drove a little Ford sedan, and one wet, rainy Saturday in the spring, when the roads were terrible, she took a load of us youngsters (four or five) all the way to Opheim, a trip of over seventy miles, to take part in a scholastic meet there. I think it was too wet (it rained most of the day) to have the track events, but we did well in the scholastic tests, and enjoyed it a lot. That sort of paved the way for our taking part in the scholastic and track meets held in Hinsdale in the years that followed.
Mrs. Putz later became County Superintendent of Schools, an office she held for many years. I don't know, but I'll bet a lot of teachers were afraid to have her come to visit, as the Superintendents did in those days. She had very high standards of teaching, and was a real blessing in our county. I don't think I ever saw her again after she left our school.
Viola Woodard (only now it was Mrs. Floyd Richter) came back to Richter School and was my teacher for both my seventh and eighth grade years. She was such an encouraging teacher. When I complained that there were no more books in the school bookcase for me to read, she pointed to the whole shelf of the World Book Encylopedia, and had me read that. Sometimes she would quiz me on something I had read. She also encouraged all of us in competing in the annual track and scholastic meets held in Hinsdale.
In the spring of 1932, Mrs. Richter coached me in preparation for the 8th grade exams required of all the graduating 8th graders in rural schools. (Town kids didn't have to take the tests, probably because someone thought the town schools were superior!) She promised me a dollar for each exam in which I achieved a score of 90 or higher. There were eight exams, and that promise cost her $8, the most money I had ever had at one time!
I feel that it was a privilege, not a hardship, to attend a small country school, with the kind of teachers I had had. I know that we homesteaders' kids certainly received a good start at Richter School.
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