Ed's Day Wednesday
Dear FOLKS,
Each Wednesday I continue to share family information that was provided by my late cousin Edwin J. Ostrom. We now focus on stories and anecdotes regarding Ed's maternal grandparents, Reinert Immanuel Emerson and his wife Dora Elisa Nilson. We have learned of the records found for Reinert that I wrote earlier as a report. You can see this report by clicking here.
In recent weeks I have shared the memories of their children that I have found in their age order. You can read:
This week we will conclude the final part of the story written by Reinert and Dora's fourth child, daughter Lola Loella Emerson (1905-1995). It is not known when Lola wrote her story, but some suggest it was about 1970. These are Lola's recollections of growing up on the prairie of Torning Township, Ward County, North Dakota.
 |
| IMAGE: Lola Loella Emerson Ditch (ca 1923) From the reverse-side of the photo: "Myself and the grandest scenery in No. Dak. | Lola - 1923;" from the family photo collection of Edwin J. Ostrom. |
Our beloved Aunt Ida and Uncle Paul lived at Berthold about 35 miles away. In those days that was a long distance. What wonderful times we had visiting them, or when they visited us. On one of the stays at their house Esther, Edna and I decided to go calling on a friend who lived about three miles away. We abandoned the road and followed a coulee, which led to the place. With all its crooks and turns it was miles farther, but what care we for that, this was fascinating especially for me who knew nothing but the rocks and hills where I live. Here in this ravine were trees and foliage alien to me. It was enchanting where; wonders of wonders, wild strawberries grew. What a fabulous place this was. We ate strawberries, told stories, laughed and frolicked to no end. We had tea and cake at the friend’s house then followed the coulee back again. We walked miles exhausted, but my heart was intoxicated with the memory of it.
Esther and I decided to play a trick on her brother Ray, who had taken his girlfriend to a dance one night. We piled a lot of junk in the garage doorway so he couldn’t get the car in. Then we put a sign on the door, ‘KEEP OUT, SMALL POX.’ Not being satisfied with that bit of devilry we cooked up something else. We made a dummy and put it in his bed, and it was my task for two small girls to stay awake until they returned. However, we managed it and crept to the window to watch. The car lights shone on the ‘KEEP OUT’ sign and all the junk, Ray promptly tore off the sign and threw it away. Then when he noticed all the junk we could hear him mumbling. He sounded angry, which dampened our spirits considerably. We crept back into bed and lay very quiet listening. Soon his footsteps sounded on the stairs down the hall and into his room. Then more footsteps to another door, a knock and a whispered voice, “Ida, come and see what the kids have put in my bed!”
We didn’t make a sound and suddenly our door flung open and the dummy was flung into our room. The next day Ray acted as if nothing had happened so what we thought was going to be so hilarious had fallen very flat indeed.
Christmas at our house was plain and simple but what joy it brought us never the less. What hustle and bustle and excitement took place in that little house with all its occupants. We learned recitations; carols and short Christmas skits to enact on Christmas Eve, after all the evening chores were done.
Christmas trees were shipped in and since they cost money we couldn’t afford that luxury. Nothing daunted us. We created our own. I recall decorating Mama’s flowering maple, and one year her oleander with bits of tinsel, a few candles, some colored paper and popcorn. We stood beside it reciting a song. How we loved every moment of it. Occasionally we invited a neighbor for the evening. Most of the time, we were just the family. Our little program finished we would open our meager gifts. Often all we girls got was a handkerchief. Other years perhaps a little more. We were just as excited as if we had received expensive gifts. Now that I have a family of my own my mind wanders back to the simple Christmases we had, and I think of Mama and what she went through trying to make the Christmas season a happy time for her brood. With so little extra money, it must have been a problem to keep 13 children clothed and fed. In that dried out country with crop failure after crop failure, she always managed to make Christmas a beautiful time. Following our program and gift opening we gathered around our huge kitchen table for a delicious lunch of freshly baked buns, sparkling chokecherry jelly and canned peach sauce, a few nuts and perhaps an apple. A rare thing was an orange, plain and simple indeed, none-the-less I shall not forget the Christmases on the farm in North Dakota while I was a child.
I don’t want to lead anyone to believe that we never misbehaved. Many, many were the misdeeds we committed. I’m sure that quite often mother was tempted to throw up her hands and say, “I quit!” and that she and Dad felt like cleaning our clocks but good on several occasions. We ask God to forgive us our misdeeds, our cruel and careless words, fibbing and thoughtlessness. We can’t see and know what Mothers and Fathers have to contend with until we have families of our own. I thank God for my parents and their success in making decent citizens of us.
Dad was often discouraged with conditions during those long, dry years in North Dakota. He heard and read about new land in Canada waiting for settlers and often dreamed about going there. When the rains never came and conditions worsened, he announced, “I have decided to go to Canada and file on a homestead.”
Off he went after the fall's work was done. Brother Jim was old enough to look after things at home and with the help of the younger boys we could manage. We had a bachelor friend, an old man, who had many queer ideas but we knew him so well. Dad asked him if he would stay with us, which he did, but perhaps we’d have been better off without him. He had a ferocious temper and was jealous of almost anyone who came by and then again he could be as gentle as a lamb. On several occasions when we had company, he felt he wasn’t getting enough attention. He stomped out of the house going to the barn. He would be gone for hours, so some of us went to look for him. We found him sitting on a milk stool, pouting.
Occasionally he felt so badly he’d be gone for days. Then he returned being in good humor again. He was like a child in many ways. I often wondered if things weren’t reversed a little, instead of him looking after us, it seems we were always concerned about him. He played endless games with us when he was in good humor. For an old man he was quite agile as he climbed all over the haystacks with us playing ‘HIDE AND SEEK.’
He played another game with us that must have been very tiring for an old man. When the wind blew with force, as it did so often in North Dakota, we pulled our coat tails high up over our heads like a sail. The force of the wind catching in our sails sent us running till finally our feet couldn’t go any faster. We plopped down panting and laughing. This trick on skates really worked well. Old man Hammer ran and fell with us. He must have had a powerful heart.
In those days we had peddlers making the rounds selling this and that. One evening one came to our house driving one horse and a covered wagon. He was hungry and his horse was tired. He asked Mama if he could stay the night. One was never turned away from our door. Hammer was out at the barn helping with the chores. Mama told the peddler to put his horse in an empty stall in the cow barn and gave him a bushel basket to put oats in for his horse. Soon he returned and told Mama our hired man had dumped the oats in the hay. “Uh-oh!” Mama said, “his jealousy at work again.”
Hammer didn’t show up for supper and I expect Mama worried a little when he did appear. He was in a raging mood and immediately stepped up to the peddler and was going to hit him. We kids ducked under the table behind the sewing machine, scrambling like mad to get out of the way. But our brave heroic Mama saved the day. She stepped right between them and ordered, “Hammer, don’t you dare hit him!” Hammer’s fighting arm dropped and he sat down on a chair and covered his face with his hands. The peddler took another chair and not a word was said. We kids crept out of our hiding places all a-tremble and full of admiration for our courageous Mama. Soon Hammer reached in his pocket and took out fifty cents and tried to give it to the peddler as a peace offering. The peddler wouldn’t accept it so that was that. But if Hammer had hit him I fear there would have been a murder right there in our kitchen because he was a powerful man when aroused and the peddler was such a little man.
Mama didn’t feel too safe with Hammer around anymore after that episode so she wrote Dad about it and he promptly left his claim in Canada and came home.
We had an interesting time asking Papa all about his experiences in Canada. We loved to hear him tell about his cabin in the woods and his life there. He brought home a .22 rifle he gave to Geneva. She was such a proud girl to own such a fabulous and dangerous thing.
Out there in the hills we were totally unaware of such a thing as chemical toilets. Had we known about its existence, perhaps, somehow we would have procured one. As it was we had to run out to the ice-cold privy. The ‘slop-jar’ was for the little ones and of course the older ones would use it at night. Tis surprising how we held off that chore till after dark so we could use the ‘slop jar’ in the warm upstairs. Consequently, there was the job of emptying said ‘slop-jar’ daily. This task always fell to us girls. The boys wouldn’t be seen carrying a ‘slop-jar’ around. It was Geneva’s turn one 30 below zero morning to empty the thing. The snow was deep and she didn’t relish the cold. She was about to empty it too near the house. Mama happened to glance out the window just in time to see Geneva preparing to dump it. Mama called to her to take it farther away. “How far?” Geneva asked. “Take it far away,” and in jest she added; “Take it way out to Peterson’s pasture.”
So Geneva clamped the lid back on, gritted her teeth and marched away. Mama resumed her sewing at the window and the rest of us went about our business when all of a sudden Mama let out a howl of laughter and shouted to us to come and see what Geneva was doing. We all ran to the window and there was Geneva out in the middle of Peterson’s pasture emptying the ‘slop-jar.’ We laughed till the tears ran, not so with Geneva. She returned with a grim face and no one mentioned the episode for days.
Our neighbor, Jacobson, had children the same age as we, so we visited back and forth having grand times. Sometimes when they came to visit us in the evening they stayed so late that we wished they’d go home. Ole was quite outspoken and often asked them if it wasn’t time they went home. We’d be embarrassed and glad at the same time, hoping they would leave. The strategy on Ole’s part was he didn’t want to go to bed till they left. He knew he wouldn’t miss anything.
James, Bill and Ole were cleaning out the barn one day when they found a piece of Dad’s cut-plug tobacco in a feed box. Impish James talked the other two into chewing some. They promptly took sick and vomited all over the place. I suppose James got the scolding he deserved.
We had a deep well and windmill close to the new barn. One fall day the wind was blowing with hurricane force. The new barn trembled and creaked. Dad and the boys were inside it putting in extra bracing. I was sitting at the kitchen window watching the tumbling weeds sail by. I noticed the roof of the old barn lift and soar away striking the windmill smack dab in the middle. It crumpled and collapsed not ten feet from the new barn. I was thoroughly shocked and numb for a moment. I could scarcely believe my eyes. I yelled, “There went the windmill!” The men inside the barn were making so much noise they hadn’t heard the crash. They were shocked and couldn’t believe their eyes when they emerged through the barn door.
So now something had to be done about pumping water. With such a deep well one couldn’t pump by hand. In due course a shed was built over the well with an engine installed, which was a nuisance in the wintertime. It was hard to start and had to be coaxed with hot water and priming, etc. However, after a few years this method was abandoned with another windmill gracing the place again.
To save on coal bills we picked cow-chips to burn in the cook stove in the summer. They made a quick hot fire and just as quickly died down again. Whereas coal kept the fire hot so long and cow-chips cost nothing. Free for the gathering. We even had fun doing that chore. We hauled them home in sacks in the wheelbarrow. We scampered all over the pasture gathering the dry ones and turning over the not so dry ones to be picked the next day and for the tubs-full of ashes these chips made. We lugged cow-chips in and ashes out, a real dusty business. In our pasture grew cactus, which cruelly pricked our bare feet. We went barefoot all summer and loved it. I still do. It was kind to Papa’s pocket book as there were so many feet to shoe.
Our dear friends and neighbor had a son, ‘Arthur’ who owned a most beautiful horse and saddle. He would ride over to our place and up to the door in full gallop and come to a sudden stop. We were really impressed, as he meant us to be. He and Papa would argue at each other in fun and played tricks on one another. Once when Papa saw him coming he grabbed a pail and hid behind a barrel of water that had been hauled from the well. Papa filled his pail with water. As Arthur rode up with a rush and a flourish Papa let him have the pail of water right smack-dab in his face. Arthur leapt from his horse, snatched up another pail and they emptied that water barrel on each other. We kids stood back and rooted for Papa, hopping and clapping and squealing with glee.
Our mail wasn’t delivered to mailboxes in those days. We had country post-offices and had to go for it. I can recall three of these places; Pitts, Grelland, and Drady. Often two of us would go for the mail. One hot summer day Mama sent Alice and I for the mail. In those days we wore those stiffly starched bonnets to protect our faces from the hot sun. On our way home a black cloud appeared. We hurried as fast as we could but the storm was bearing down on us. In moments it was raining in torrents. Our bonnets went limp and flapped across our eyes. We hadn’t the sense to remove them. We wandered around quite lost and crying wildly when over the hill came Papa with the buggy. We climbed aboard with joyful hearts, sloshing mud and water all over the place.
One day I was going to be very brave and go for the mail all by myself. A real tomboy of a girl lived there. She had once sent the dog on us. With fear and trembling I approached the house keeping a wary eye out for the dog. I picked up the mail and then ran as fast as I could imagining the dog was right behind me.
My two older sisters, Ruby and Geneva, played together. I was sort of a lone wolf, too young to join them in play and too old for Alice. I would sneak quietly upstairs to play with my doll and on one occasion I placed a chair at the foot of the stairs so Alice couldn’t come up. She was the same nuisance to me as I was to the two older girls. However one time she managed to get through the barricade and came creeping up the stairs. I scolded and uttered angry words at her, with tear-filled eyes she started back down again. She lost her footing and tumbled down, landing on the chair, cutting a deep gash in her lip. The Doctor was summoned. A doctor in our house was a rare thing indeed. To we children it meant certain death. The doctor arrived and Ruby, Geneva and I fled to the sanctuary of the haystack. We prayed and pleaded with God to let Alice live.
We didn’t go near the house till the Doctor had left. With fear and dread we silently entered the house fully expecting to find Alice cold and silent in death. What joy to see her smiling and happy in Mama’s arms with a bandage plastered to her lip. We each in turn hugged and caressed her. One of us, I don’t recall who, carried her over to the mirror so she could see herself. She promptly reached up and wrenched the bandage off. She wasn’t going to have any part of that! Nothing drastic happened and in a few days she was fine again, but she still bears that scar. Needless to say I have suffered remorse over that episode. I can still see her backing down the stairs crying her heart out because I wouldn’t let her play with me.
We spent hours of a hot summers afternoon wading and wallowing in the shallow, muddy waters in the slough on our farm. Our bodies would be caked with mud, which necessitated a bath before we could dress.
Geneva and I were sent one day to this slough to fill the water barrel. Mama used it to water some trees she was trying to grow in that dried out country. It was a hot day. Our bodies needed cooling so off comes our clothes. We took turns climbing up into the rim of the barrel and jumping down into its cool depths.
Water was splashing merrily when over the hill comes our neighbor with team and buggy. The road went right by our slough. Geneva promptly dropped into the barrel. There wasn’t room for both of us. What was poor naked me to do? I had to act quickly so I squatted down and kept slowly moving around the barrel till he passed by. I finally rose up and peeked into the barrel. Geneva was still under the water! I reached in and grasped her hair and hoisted her up. She had stayed there so long that I thought she had drowned. She sputtered and gasped for air for a moment and then we had a good laugh.
Geneva was fascinated with Papa and his chewing tobacco. She decided to find out for herself what was so good about it. She chewed away for a while with a wry face and must have swallowed a little for she became very ill. Ruby decided to doctor her and gave her a teaspoon of vanilla to fix her up with even worse results.
Mama gave us Norwegian children’s books to read so we wouldn’t forget the language. One favorite story was ‘The Raven and The Huney’ (The Fox and the Hen). After going to bed at night Geneva would proceed to tell the story ‘The Raven and the Huney’ all in a mixture of Norwegian and English which would bring forth gales of laughter. Papa would boom at us, “Onga!” meaning children. He’d scold us in Norwegian. All would be quiet for a while and Geneva would begin her tale again. We stuffed the corners of the quilts in our mouths so Papa wouldn’t hear us laugh. Finally sleep would overtake us and all would be quiet.
We had one of those pot-bellied heaters with icing-glass windows in the door. We gathered around it on cold winter mornings to dress and on Saturday nights the washtub was placed behind it for our weekly baths. What a chore this must have been for Mama, getting out clean clothes, scrubbing dirty necks, ears and elbow. With the modern conveniences of today one can shower or bathe every day if he is so inclined, but we had to resort to the washtub and didn’t know anything different.
We four older ones often spent evenings at our neighbor, Peterson, and later the Millers, playing cards. Our favorite at the time was a game called ‘Bunco.’ It was played with special cards and we had great fun. One such evening I was the last one coming down the stairs. After getting dressed I left the lamp lit whereupon fire-loving Ray crept up the stairs, held a piece of paper over the lamp till it caught fire. He loved to see the flame but it soon burned his fingers. In desperation he threw it landing under the bed catching the bedclothes on fire. In fright he called Ole to come upstairs immediately. Ole spread the alarm. Papa grabbed a couple of pails of water and up the stairs he flew dumping both pails onto the bed.
On returning home we found our bed sopping wet. Papa said it served us right for leaving the lamp lit, and of course I had to take the blame for that. Ray loved fires. He would lie on the floor on his stomach for hours in front of the heater watching the glowing embers as they fell in the ash pan.
One chore we hated was filling the coal pails. Our coal shed was a lean-to on the south side of the house. It wasn’t weather tight. The snow sifted in and we often had to shovel snow off the coal. It was a dusty, dirty and chilly job.
We were so proud of our sister Ruby when she became a teacher. I was prouder still when Papa let me go all by myself driving May and the buggy to fetch Ruby home from her boarding place on the weekends. Ruby was very modest, so neat and trim about her person. Whereas, I couldn’t care less. She nagged me about being so un-lady like which bothered me not one iota. I had no intention of ever being a lady. She scolded me endlessly about the way I sat. She was ashamed of me, which she definitely had a right to be. I drew my feet up into the edge of the chair. I enjoyed sitting that way. (Have to admit that I still do) One day I was sitting thus against the east wall of the house and sort of dozing when I heard directly in front of me, ‘I see London, I see France.’ With a leap I dropped my legs and stared into the grinning face of our neighbor boy. I fled into the house, my face aflame with shame and embarrassment.
Ruby said, “I hoped something like that would happen. That should cure you of that habit.” What better cure indeed. In those days no woman or girl wore slacks, an unheard of thing. Thanks to slacks, now I can sit in my favorite position again.
I had a dear girlfriend, ‘Leota Hillesland’ who lived in town. Frequently she came out to our place to spend the night with me. We walked miles up and down our country road engaged in envious talk about our older sisters having boyfriends. (Boys hadn’t begun to take notice of us yet.) Then we would console ourselves with ‘Oh, well, their time is going and ours is coming.’ This dear friend was married years before me and died when her first child was born. There were flower girls at her funeral and I was one of them. It was a sad affair indeed.
Around about this time I became fearfully shy. If a boy looked at me or tried to talk to me I became tongue-tied and if I managed to speak, nothing ever came out the way I intended it. I said and did the silliest things and then hated myself to no end.
At the age of sixteen, I went with a neighbor girl in the fall, hauling bundles in threshing time. We were the two of us with one rack. We learned to pile our rack up with bundles as high as the men and we got quite adept at maneuvering them head first into the feeder of the separator. We worked at this all through threshing and made some money. We also did some stack threshing, which was more difficult. We had to keep steady pitching until the stack was finished; whereas with a team and rack we could rest while driving to the machine.
The country lost its romance when the combines came. We just loved taking lunch out to the men at four o’clock. While the men were eating we’d climb up on the loads and pitch bundles.
Our schoolhouse was only about a mile and a half from our house. It served as a community hall as well. In it we recited, sang and performed all nervous and a tremble, the short plays at our Christmas concerts. We loved every moment. We always had refreshments following. Papa never attended as he took on the job of staying home and boiling the wash-boiler full of coffee. Then a couple of the boys would fetch it in a cream can. What a glorious time we had.
And then our socials, which we had all kinds, and were forever cooking up new ones. We had basket, pie, necktie, shadow, toe and cap socials and of course we girls would be in hopes that our best boyfriend would make a first bid on a basket or whatever. The other fellows would immediately figure it was his girlfriend’s basket and would think, “Ah ha, that must be his lady love!” We’ll make him pay dearly for it and the bidding would go on at a merry clip. What fun and excitement!
Occasionally we danced following our socials but not too often as dancing was considered a sin and so many of us weren’t allowed to take part. Mama was very much against dancing. In those days we danced in the schoolhouse or at someone’s home. We begged Mama to let us go. She said, “You know how I feel about it but if you must go, I trust that you know how to act.” With that trust in us we made sure that we behaved well.
As we grew older we ventured farther a-field. There was an abandoned sheep ranch about ten miles from our place, an enormous distance as the trip had to be made by team and buggy or wagon. There was a big old house on this sheep ranch. We had many a good time at this place. Poor Mama, she must have worried herself to no end until we returned and were safely in our beds.
There was very little drinking amongst the young folks in those days. We never thought of taking liquor with us, as they do today. Of course there were the odd ones, but they kept it well hidden so Mama had no worry on that score. She had instilled in us an aversion to liquor and our family would never think of imbibing. I expect my brothers did when they grew up and left home. My brother James had a special aversion to liquor. He was invited to a stag party serving liquor. They tried to force him to drink. He came home early in a raging mood and told us all about it. He had to get out of there before he killed someone, as they weren’t going to force him into anything he didn’t want to do. They never bothered him after that. Mama was very proud of her son.
North Dakota had long-eared jack rabbits. They were so numerous that the community put on rabbit hunts. Most of the men and bigger boys took part. The women gathered at a schoolhouse with a kitchen to cook huge batches of oyster stew. After the hunt the men made short work of the stew.
Norwegians have the distinction of being a stubborn lot. Papa was Norwegian and had his share of stubbornness. We had a Hereford bull that Papa wanted to sell. A neighbor, George Nesson, came over one day wanting to make a deal for the bull. They couldn’t agree on a price as Nesson thought that Papa was asking too much. They argued back and forth for some time, and then Nesson suggested they split the difference. Papa wouldn’t even do that. Nesson shook his head and said, “You know, Mr. Emerson, you’re so stubborn that if you fell in the river you’d float upstream.” Mama went into peals of laughter.
This bull wouldn’t stay inside a fence. If he felt like going somewhere, he worked his way out of the pasture and went visiting. He was a very docile animal, but looked fierce as he had long sharp horns. Some neighbor boy came over to report that our bull was at their place. William and Ole went to fetch him home. The dog followed and home they came, both boys hanging on the bull’s tail galloping over the hills with the dog yipping in glee. Many time they had to fetch the bull home.
Holidays were almost unheard of when I was a child, especially for the farmers. Occasionally, someone went to see a relative as Mother did. She was yearning to go back to Minnesota where she was born but of course, there was never any extra money. Yet, somehow, she managed to scrape up enough to go, taking the youngest, ‘Estelle,’ who was just a baby. We had fondly nicknamed her ‘Tootsie.’ She hadn’t commenced talking yet, but when they returned she learned to say a few works and oh my, were we proud of her! Ruby and Geneva took over the running of the house while Mama was gone as they were old enough to be responsible. They bossed the rest of us to no end.
We had a mule named Scott. Like our bull, we couldn’t keep him in the pasture. He jumped the fence, going out as he pleased. He walked so much faster than other horses pulling machinery in the fields. I often asked to disk or harrow. My arms ached at night from pulling on Scott’s rein trying to hold him back with the other horses.
Our Holstein cow named Daisy craved cloth. Something was lacking in her system. When clothes were on the line we had to watch for her. We often caught her chewing on the clothes. Once when Ruby was milking she removed her apron and hung it on a post. She was playing with her doll so she had several safety pins stuck to her apron. She happened to look around and there was Daisy swallowing the last piece of the apron, safety pins and all. We were sure we would have a sick cow on our hands, but it didn’t seem to bother her one whit.
We had a ‘cellar,’ we never used the word, basement. The cellar had salamanders, another word we never used. To us, they were lizards. In trying to eradicate these lizards Geneva used a coal bucket and a lantern, as we had no electricity. She sat quietly on an upturned pail on the cellar floor waiting for the lizards to come out to the light. She flicked them into the bucket one by one with a stick. She stayed until the bucket was almost full. She emerged from the cellar with her bucket alive with slithery contents, take it outdoors down below our hill, tip the bucket a bit and as the lizards crept out she chopped off their heads with a hatchet. That would seem to many to be a grizzly ordeal but it didn’t bother Geneva. She enjoyed this sport.
One winter morning after a night of nasty blizzards, Geneva was sent down to the cellar to fetch something. With no light she groped around and stepped on something soft. She gave it a kick and as it moved away she could see it from the light upstairs. She came dashing up the steps yelling, “A skunk, a skunk!”
Papa hurried down and immediately came back up carrying the skunk upside down with its foot in a trap. He ran through the kitchen with it and threw it outside which wasn’t a very smart thing to do. He should have killed it but he wanted to get rid of it fast before it let go of its bomb. It crawled under a shed nearby, letting go of its spray. Papa picked up the .22 and shot it. What a stink we had around there for a long time.
The belief is that if you carry a skunk upside down it can’t spew its stink.
All hated the job of sharpening mower sickles. We had to take turns, turning the grindstone for Papa. While doing that chore Papa moved the grindstone in the shade of the house, which helped some but was still a hot tedious job. We tried every excuse to get out of that task. I know I did, as it seemed such a long drawn out affair.
There was always a baby in our house. The endless job of washing diapers fell to us girls. It was one of the hated jobs we made a game of. Alice stood behind the tub of soaking diapers pretending to be an auctioneer. She’d hold up a soiled diaper and yell, “what am I offered for this beautiful diaper?” Mama would come around the corner of the house and say, “What’s going on here, you’ll never get those diapers washed with all that tom-foolery!” We grimly set to finish the distasteful job. Pampers were unheard of in those days.
I can think of so many jobs, like churning butter, I thoroughly disliked. We had a barrel churn that was turned with a crank. It had a cork near the bottom you had to remove now and then to release the gasses. When the cream finally turned to butter there was the job of working and washing the buttermilk out. Ah me! I could never do this job to Mama’s satisfaction. I lacked the patience for that long tedious chore.
In North Dakota we had potato bugs, another hateful chore. We trudged along the potato rows with tin cans picking up the bugs and dropping them in the cans. They had a nasty odor too. If they weren’t picked off, in no time there wouldn’t be a leaf left on the plants. We picked potato bugs every day during their cycle.
Papa liked his fields clean of mustard weeds so once or twice each summer he marshaled us all together to pick. We began at one end of the field spaced about 25 feet apart. We walked the entire length of the field picking up all the mustard we could see. We did this when the mustard was in bloom so we could easily see it. Then at the other end we discarded our armfuls of the weed. What a hot, thirsty and tiring job that was! We probably made a game of that too!
Our little house on the bald prairie wasn’t like the warm cozy homes of today. To keep the cellar from freezing up completely during the winter, we banked the house in the fall with horse manure and straw. The men hauled loads of manure and banked it up below the windows. For a few days the whole place smelled like a barn, but would soon freeze solid and the smell would disappear and then in the spring came the job of removing said manure. That was a job I really like doing. Somehow it was such a pleasure to clean the place up again.
So, we grew up. I finally acquired a boyfriend and got married. I thought that all my little troubles had ended, only to find that they had just begun.
BUT THAT IS ANOTHER STORY.
That concludes Lola's story. So many fond memories that she shared with us. I am glad that cousin Ed had a copy and I appreciate those that helped bring Lola's stories to us.
Thank you for stopping by; I hope you enjoyed today's post. I look forward to starting the next set of stories by another of Reinert and Dora Emerson's offspring.
-- -- --
The URL for this post is: http://homefolktales.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-emersons-according-to-lola-part-2.html.
Please comment regarding this post by clicking the URL above and then use the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Or contact me by email at dsteff4246[at]gmail[dot]com. I hope you have a good week.
Copyright (c) 2016, Darlene M. Steffens. All rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment