The Emersons - An Interview with Ray

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 the memories have included those of their children Ruby, Geneva, Lola, Ole, Alice, Ivene and Vivian. These you can read through the following links:

• Ruby's story by clicking here
• Geneva's story by clicking here
• Lola's story (Part One) by clicking here, and (Part Two) by clicking here
• Ole and Alice's stories were combined here
• Ivene's story (Part One) by clicking here, and (Part Two) by clicking here
• Vivian's story (Part One) by clicking here, and (Part Two) by clicking here
• Verola's story (Part One) by clicking here, and (Part Two by clicking here

This week we take a deviation from the format of the previous stories. In September, 2007, cousin Ed traveled to Alberta, Canada to get better acquainted with his Canadian relatives. In particular, Ed spent four days with his Uncle Ray Emerson. During this visit Ed taped numerous conversations and upon his return home, he transcribed these conversations. 

Today we'll begin with Part One of this interview. This isn't intended as a tutorial on how to conduct a taped interview. He does share some good ideas on how to "document" the conversation. Ed didn't follow along with a set of published questions for an oral history interview, but I am sure he had some questions already formulated that he wanted to ask. Then too, as you'll see, occasionally Ray would take the lead and suggests changing the visit by going fishing. It is fun to witness the exchanges between these two individuals.

IMAGE: "Ray's Barn" - Ed photographed this
painting while visiting Ray.

Ray Emerson Stories - Part One

Told on tape to his nephew, Ed Ostrom 

September 11 thru Sept 14, 2007

Ray Irwin Emerson b.1912

  

Tape-Side A dated 9-11-2007; 123’ etc. represents the location on the tape for reference. [edits by Ed]

Ed: This is Sep 11^th, 2007 approximately 4:30 pm. I’m at my uncle Ray Emerson’s farm house south of Eaglesham, Alberta, Canada. We’re sitting at his kitchen table with a tape recorder. 

1.  Journey to Canada

Ed:  Everybody wants to know the story of how you got to Canada.  

Ray:  7’ We left North Dakota in the fall of 1928. We came up to Canada, the three of us: my brother Ole and myself and a neighbor boy from North Dakota, Pete Andresen. The three of us came out and stayed together. When we came up the Larsons were already here. We stayed with Larson’s and helped them do some building on their house. Then the three of us went and lived in a cabin for the winter. I think it was three days before Christmas we moved into the cabin. 15’ We had a lot going there. We had boxing gloves and we had a punching bag so we had quite a time.

Ed:  How did you find and acquire this property? 

Ray:  Well in those days you could go get a quarter [quarter is a surveying term referring to ¼ of a section or 160 acres] and homestead, ay. I wasn’t quite old enough so my brother Ole filed a proxy for me and then it was a $10 homestead fee. So this place I’m on now where I’m talking to you, I paid $10 for it.

2.  We had return tickets. 

Ed:  27’ Another story in the family is that when you came up, your brothers went hunting and left you for two weeks, all by yourself.

Ray:  Well…

Ed:  And you wanted to go home but you didn’t have enough money.

Ray:  We had return [train] tickets. When we came up here we were going to look, to scout, so we had return tickets. Some of the Larson’s were back in North Dakota and they got Ole some return tickets to go back. They gave one to him and of course I had mine left. But it ran out. I think it ran out in December sometime. The ticket is only good for so long and then you had to use it before it ran out. I was awfully tempted to go back but the neighbor talked me out of it and to stay here. Of course after that I couldn’t go back and I didn’t have any money to buy another ticket. It was 17 years before we went back to North Dakota again. It was hard times and things were tough and you couldn’t get nowhere.

3.  Grubbing Trees

Ray:  We got into grubbing trees and trying to open land. When James [Ray’s brother] came up he shipped a 1020 McCormick gang tractor and then we did lots of breaking with that. James and I custom broke land all over the country. 43’ Then he got a better outfit, a John Deere, and we worked pretty near all night and day. We had no lights on the tractor but in the summer here you can work till midnight. So I worked till midnight and then James started at 3 a.m. again. We broke land for all the neighbors.  The neighbors only needed to clear or break 10 or 15 acres. There was a lot of hard work but we were young and tough I guess and thought that work was alright. We had to work because there was no other way. They relied on you because there weren’t many people here.

4.  Stack Threshing

Ray:  The same with threshing in the fall. We pretty much threshed the whole country. We got lots of custom work over the years for all different fellas. 55’ 

   I remember one time we were trying to grow alfalfa seed. It was a good price. We did good on it up here. You can’t beat it for hay. We did a lot of alfalfa threshing. 

   We slept in every granary and chicken house in the country. We had a big bed role packed tight. We did lots of custom breaking and threshing because we had one of the few machines…ay. 

   We stacked the hay. We didn’t finish up stack threshing one year so we finished up the next. It’s a little bit difficult because when the winter was hard and they had their little stacks on a side hill or something, you had to get the separator level. You had to make it level with dirt. It was hard to level up the machine. My job was to run the separator and I threshed for years and years.   I got to know an awful lot of people all over the country. We did lots of custom work all over and then of course you had your own work to do too. 73’ Oh yah, but what else could we do? You try to get a setup of your own and that’s what we did, ya.

5.  Elsie

Ray:  I met a daughter of one of the homesteaders that moved up here. She was rather young but I liked her pretty good. She was quite a bit younger than I but anyway we got married. We had three boys and one girl so that’s our family. All in all, we’ve had our ups and downs but we still came out fairly good. It wasn’t easy, that’s for sure. It’s not easy anywhere I suppose. Lots of ‘em got a lot worse. One thing we had was pretty good health. In the later years now we have a little problem but…

6.  Tom Ostrom

Ed:  Did you know Tom Ostrom?

Ray:  I didn’t know too much about him. I never knew how far the Ostroms lived from us in North Dakota. I never did know them real good down there.

7.  Stay Warm

Ed:  How did you stay warm in 30° below weather?   

Ray:  Oh it got down to 40° below but we had lots of wood and we had these little air-tight heaters. They only cost about 5 bucks at that time. You could heat quite a building with them. Our shacks weren’t that big. When we went to the bush logging, a lot of times we would cut tamarack posts for all our fencing and then we would build a little shack. You had these little air tight heaters and you made out alright, sure. Guys would sleep out, in one of those sleeping bags, right in the snow.

Ed:  Did you do that?

Ray:  No, I didn’t do that but guys had done it. I know one guy he told me that he had gone out to Dutch?? hills. He laid in his sleeping bag and it snowed at night. He said when he got up, a moose had just about run over him. He could see the tracks of the moose on either side of him in the snow. It snowed and covered him up. The moose missed stepping on him, ya.

Ed:  Uuh, a thousand-pound moose??

Ray:  Yah, I suppose some of ‘em are.

8.  Hunting

Ed:  How about hunting, did you hunt?

Ray:  Oh, we did a lot of hunting. It was a little safer huh when a couple of guys went out hunting together. If we got a moose or two, well then the whole country, neighbors and all, would get a part of it. We would give some to everybody, so everybody had meat, eh!

9.  Sharing       

Ray:  It was really good in those early days as we shared so good ay. People would help each other so good. If you were building a house or something, everybody would come and help you. There was no money and nobody asked for any pay. It was a good bunch of guys, that’s for sure. When I built this house here, we had two cement mixers, two wheel-borrows and guys were mixing. Then we planked it just to the edge so we could dump it in the forms. Oh, yah they kept er going, I’ll tell ya. So people were so good to help. People worked together good, really worked together good. They were a really good bunch of guys.

Ed:  Dad said when all of you siblings farmed, you would work one farm and then the next and so on. 

Ray:  Yah we did that. We were good together and with the little equipment we had, we’d prepare and harvest the other guys crops together ay. People co-operated good in those early days. When we had to corduroy a road over some soft spots, you know there was always someone to help do it. 

  

10. They Figured I’d Never Stay 

Ray:  I come up pretty young. They figured I’d never stay. They thought I’d get homesick and go home because of my age. The early days were a little hard, that’s for sure. You couldn’t get something you own down there in North Dakota. The only way you could, was up here where you could get land for 10 dollars and have something of your own, you know to start yourself. 148’ What are you going to do, just stay idle and work for someone else all your life? Most guys don’t want that. They want to be their own boss. So over the years, we’ve done alright. We’ve made out alright, that’s for sure. 151’

11.  Moose Pretty Smart

Ed:  Were their tricks to get moose, like say you always know moose would go this way or that…

Ray:  They go up and of course they always circle and come back and lay so if you’re tracking ‘em they’ll get the scent of you on the wind. Then they get your scent and away they go. So you stay so far away because they are pretty smart I’ll tell you.  

12.  Thank Dad and the Animals

Ray:  They were a tremendous help. If it wouldn’t have been for the game, the moose and stuff we just couldn’t have survived. It would have been pretty tough because to start with we had no livestock or very little livestock. Dad included I think a cow or something and seed and some little stuff like that with James when he shipped up a carload. But you know dad had a hard time of it too. He had a big family and he had a hard time with it too. Oh, they were good the folks. Mother and dad came up with Stuart Ditch, Dorman’s father, and visited with us years ago, not too long after we homesteaded up here.  

13.  Batching it

Ray:  After long we were batching it. Mother got quite a kick watching us cooking.

Ed:  Oh Dora came up?

Ray:  Mom and dad, my mother and dad.

Ed:  Uh. Reinert and Dora?

Ray:  Ya, my parents. They came up and then Ditch came up ‘cause Lola was here so they came up together and visited with us. Mother got such a kick watching us batching and cooking. That’s something we had never done before. Oh yah that was pretty nice for sure. But now that’s all history you know, they’re gone.

14.  Reinert & Martin Scout

Ed:  You mentioned this afternoon at lunch that your dad Reinert and somebody else came up to look at this country in 1926.  

Ray:  That was Dad and Martin, Geneva’s husband.

Ed:  Oh, Martin came up?

Ray:  Yah. 186’ They went to Spirit River and Dad found out they couldn’t get water. That scared him off right now because he had trouble getting water in North Dakota. You spend quite a bit to get water and water means so much. In those days we didn’t know much about these dugouts [a pit dug in the ground that fills with melting snow or surface runoff]. When we first started we dug ‘em with horses. When 4 horses slide in the mud, you are a long time digging them out. When the road crews built roads, they had big equipment and that’s how I got mine dug. They used all the dirt on the road and I got a heck of a good dug out ay.  It’s deep and I don’t think it will ever go dry. I think 25 feet, that’s pretty deep ya.

Ed:  You couldn’t dig them that deep back then?

Ray:  No. Oh, no, no. The road crew had a bunch of these scrapers with an extra push cat that was pushing ‘em out ay. They’d load the dirt and help ‘em push out cause they’d have a steep bank. I think I got 600 bucks from the outfit for the dugout. Ya. I got some fish in there now too.  

15.  Want to Fish?  

Ray:  You want to fish a little? 207’

Ed:  I actually brought a fly-pole along.

Ray:  Oh you do uh?

Ed:   I can’t catch fish very good.

Ray:  Uh.

Ed:  I, I’ve tried it but…,

Ray:  Oh I’m the poor fisherman.

Ed:  You are too?

Ray:  Oh yah. I don’t have patience. 

Ed:  Oh you don’t?

Ray:  I’ve got to catch ‘em right now, ay. If I can’t catch ‘em right now, heck with ‘em. 212’

Ed:  Maybe that’s what I have. You don’t have patience and I just can’t catch ‘em.

Ray:  Oh well I guess it works. Sometimes they get biting good and other times they don’t, ay. I got fish food and once in a while I feed ‘em a little. We buy fish food, throw it out and it floats ay and then you can really see ‘em.

Ed:  If I caught one, would you eat it?

Ray:  Oh, 218’ ha ha sure.

Ed:  Really.

Ray:  Really.

Ed:  I could maybe cook it. 

Ray:  Well that’s neat. Are you a good cook?

Ed:  Well, ya I cook it’s edible.

Ray:  Ya.

Ed:  How about you, do you cook?

Ray:  I have to now.

Ed:  Oh ‘cause Elsie is gone taking care of Irwin?  

Ray:  Kind of in a way but not much. June, Raymond’s wife, brings meals over.

Ed:  Oh. 

Ray:  That’s nice of her. That’s for sure. When you don’t feel good and you’re kind of crippled up, it kind of makes it hard, ay.

IMAGE:  Ray said, “Let’s take a break from storytelling
and go fishing.”  We walked to his pond but first
 Ray and I raked seaweed.  

16.  Ray and Shingles

Ray: With this, with this what I’ve got, ay…its…

Ed:  Yah, the shingles. 228’

Ray:  Shingles yah. It’s sore. It makes it hard.

17.  Norwegian Forbidden

Ed:   Do you, could you speak some Norwegian?

Ray: No.

Ed:  You have no knowledge?

Ray:  Uh uh. You see the folks, the older ones, they all talked Norwegian when they were young at home. Dad and mother quit it on account of us kids in school. It would be so much easier to learn using English. I never did learn it, but Ole and William and other guys, they spoke Norwegian ay.

Ed:  You were the youngest boy weren’t you?

Ray:  Oliver was.    

Ed:  Oh, Oliver, OK.

Ray:  ya

18.  All Nationalities

Ed:  When you did this work around here, and for the neighbors, were they Norwegian?

Ray:  Well they were different, everything: Englishmen, Frenchmen, all nationalities.

Ed:  It was multi-cultural then? 246’

Ray:  Ya. Oh yah. It’s really mixed up. But around here there were a few Norwegians like Larson’s and Tony Amundsen and ourselves but there were lots of Frenchmen and Germans. Everything came up here and took homesteads ay. 

IMAGE: According to Ed Ostrom, while visiting, Ray said
“Let’s go see Wayne.” On arrival Wayne asked me, “How’d you
get here?” I said, “Ray drove.” Wayne said, “What? He’s not
supposed to drive at his age.” Edwin J. Ostrom's photograph.

19.  All Trees

Ray:  We broke land for all of them. 

Ed:  Plus your own. You must have been busy. I just can’t imagine that.

Ray:  No. Yah. When you look at this land now, you see these big fields here but one time there were all trees and windfalls, old trees that fell over. 258’ There’s a difference between today and then for sure.

Ed:  Just solid trees then?

Ray:  They had big fires that had gone thru there at different times from lightning strikes or something so there was a lot of dead wood there, dead falls too. One time a wild fire started way up west and the Smokey River stopped her. They didn’t have equipment to fight the fire that day so it just burnt. 

Ed:  Why didn’t you just burn the trees out instead of working so hard? or wouldn’t they burn?

Ray:  No, they wouldn’t burn.

Ed:  Oh.

Ray:  They’re too green so that wouldn’t work. We grubbed them up and piled them in piles ay and then you burn ‘em ay. Like a stack of logs there.

20.  Got a notion to Immigrate.

Ray:  What else do you want to know? 

Ed:  274’ OK. Where did the idea to come up here originate? Was it James? 

Ray:  Well no. Some of the Larson’s had come up. You see they came up and homesteaded so that’s how we got a notion we were going to come up too. We worked for the Larsons. He was a carpenter and a blacksmith. He had two trades and he did a lot of fixing for everybody. If a guy had a broken cycle, he’d weld it for ‘em. Larson did a lot of blacksmith work. 

Ed:  Larson, was that Ruth’s father? [Syver Spurgeon Larson and daughter Ruth Larson, who would marry Ole Emerson.]

Ray: Ya.

Ed:  So he was already in the area.

Ray:  He came up and homesteaded. They lost their land in North Dakota.

Ed:  and they lived near you?

Ray:  ya, in North Dakota. They weren’t too far, well, yah, they were about 4 or 5 miles I think from us. We didn’t know so much about them because you didn’t know the people that very far from you. And then of course we were young too. We knew the Larson’s had come up here and were staying here so we came up and lived with them and helped them with building things 296’ like a big barn. It was a pole barn. We helped them and then we had a place to stay. They fed us and then they helped us build a shack for Pete so we lived in that then. I think we moved in just before Christmas sometime the three of us.

21.  Have it out.

Ray:  We had boxing bags and gloves and the Larson boys would come over. There weren’t many places to go much in those days. We had some real boxing matches. 

Ed:  Did you?

Ray:  Oh ya. Yah, I’ll never forget one time, Pete Anderson, Ole [Emerson, Ray’s brother] and I lived together in the shack.  Pete, he was kind of grumpy company in the morning, anyway so we decided we were going to have it out. 311’ 

Ed:  [Laughing.]

Ray:  [Laughing.] So we put the gloves on. Oh, he meant business, I’ll tell you. He put the gloves on and I got him right square in the nose. The blood started to run. Man that was the end of that. I was a little faster than he was.  

22.  James’ Saw mill

Ray:  In the winter we kept busy because we were hauling logs, sawing and stuff. I was looking for some pictures of the mill but I couldn’t find them. They are pictures of the sawmill we had over here at Ole’s.  

Ed:  I have a photo of the mill.

Ray:  You do?

Ed:  Ya.

Ray:  Is that right?

Ed:  I may have it with me. I’ll look. 

Ray:  Oh that’s alright.

Ed:  Cool. What do you remember about the mill?  

Ray:  Well I worked on it all the time.

Ed:  So you helped too.

Ray:  Oh ya. Oh sure.

IMAGE: James Emerson's sawmill, Alberta, Canada. Original
provided by James' daughter, Sheryl. This copy is part of
Edwin Ostrom's family photograph collection.

23.  Ray, Ole & Pete Cook

Ray:  When we were batching like that, one of us Ole, James or myself would take turns making breakfast. One would make breakfast, one would make dinner and the other one supper. There were also other guys hauling logs so you fed them guys too,  huh. 335’ Yah, you didn’t turn nobody away, everybody is just like your neighbor, huh.

Ed:  What did you cook?

Ray:  Lots of turnips. I got a picture to show you. [Ray got out a photo with him driving a horse drawn wagon over-flowing with turnips.] A whole wagon load of turnips that we’re putting down in the cellar.

Ed:  How did you cook ‘em?

Ray:  In the early days here, there were no worms and they were real good.

Ed:  So you would just eat a raw turnip?

Ray:  Oh no, no. We cooked ‘em.

Ed:  Oh.

Ray:  I cooked ‘em and of course we had potatoes and stuff. We always put in a garden so you had potatoes too.

Ed:  Oh. What would be a typical meal you prepared?

Ray:  347’ Oh, simple, potatoes and meat likely. Ole’s wife was pretty good. When we had crews she made the pies and things like that. But the men made the staple cooking. 

24.  Ray Made Pies

Ed:  Did you make pies?

Ray:  No. No, not many but a few for sure. We would go trapping down south on horseback and try to get a deer. While riding we’d run into where blueberries grow eh. Sometimes there are beautiful patches. We’d stop and pick a capful of blueberries, go home and make a whole pie.

Ed:  Did you make the crust?

Ray:  Oh yah. Sure.

Ed:  What did you use?

Ray:  We had a kind of a rolling pin. We’d make up the batter from sourdough. I prefer sourdough. 368’ We made sourdough hotcakes. Oh, I like those.

Ed:  Oh?

Ray:  For sure. Brett Larson and I made sourdough. We had a small griddle and you could put three on. They weren’t very big.  We were cutting logs down south there. We had a race on, a race of who could eat the most pancakes for the money. I ate 25 and he ate 23. 375’ All we had was a little sugar. We’d make a little syrup out of sugar. It was mostly water because we didn’t have much sugar.

25.  Eggs

Ed:  Did you have eggs on your hotcakes?

Ray:  No. When I was out and run into a duck nest, then I’d sneak that.

Ed:  Duck eggs…how is it?

Ray:  Well they are alright but the trouble is, they would be a little ripe if they had been sitting too long and then they’re not so good. You don’t know until you open ‘em, eh?  

Ed:  Did you open them and there’s a duck?

Ray:  If there’s a duck in it you don’t take it. 392’

26.  Spring Trapping

Ray:  I’ve done lots of rafting. When I was trapping in the spring I used to row in open water on a raft. You spike together a few logs with a cross piece on top. You’d use a pole and shove because it was shallow ah. It wasn’t very deep and then you’d get muskrats in their houses and stuff, shoot ‘em in the open water. One year we had over 500 muskrats.

Ed:  Pelts?

Ray:  Pelts yah.

Ed:  And then sell ‘em?

Ray:  Well that’s what…sure trapping. That was the way we could make a living. I’ve done a lot of trapping. 

Ed: What else did you trap?

Ray: We trapped anything but there weren’t too many martins or weasels. We’d also get squirrels but they didn’t weigh very much. 

Ed:  How would you trap a squirrel?

Ray:  Well we’d shoot ‘em most of the time.

Ed:  and then pelt ’em?

Ray:  Yah, put ‘em on stretchers. Oh, yah, if it wouldn’t have been for a lot of that stuff we just couldn’t live ay. Lots of animals were here. We lived off the land, that’s what we did really. 

Ed:  No electricity?

Ray:  Yah. But lots of guys had gone out and no one lived any better than that. Oh yah if it wouldn’t have been for the moose and the deer and the animals ay beavers…there wasn’t much beavers at that time…but now there’s getting to be more beavers 426’ and muskrats and weasels and stuff like that. That’s what we trapped.

27.  Elsie and Ray Trap lines

Ray:   Elsie, my wife, had a little trap line and I had another one. Hers was a little shorter but we both had a trap line.

Ed:  Oh yah. She too?

Ray:  Oh yah.

Ed:  Who was better?

Ray:  Well, I ain’t ashamed but I think I was a little better.

28.  Boil Traps 

Ed:  Dorman (Ditch) talked about a trapping trick. You can’t get human scent on any traps so you use gloves.   

Ray:  A lot of times, for coyotes, you boil the traps in bark water ay. You want to get a wood scent on ‘em not a steel scent.

Ed:  Boil your gloves??

Ray:  Boil the traps to get off scent because coyotes have a keen nose, them fellows. 442’

29.   Smart coyote, ya.

Ray:  Coyotes. I got a horse one time, an old horse. I shot it and made strychnine pills. We went to the ranger and told him about the coyote problem. He said he didn’t have time to ah, so I said why don’t you give us some strychnine and we’ll look after it.

Ed:  What’s that?

Ray:  It’s poison, a real bad poison eh.

Ed:  Oh, it’s a chemical.

Ray:  In little pellets. 

Ed:  Oh. 

Ray:  Little pellets it comes in. We took some lard and put strychnine in the middle and made a little pellet. I’d put it by the bait ay and go down on skis and check on it. I saw the pellets were gone so I followed the coyote tracks on my skis and couldn’t find any coyote. I found out after a while that they were packing ‘em off and dropping ‘em. 466’ Smart, you know the rascals. I thought that something was wrong with the scent. They were packing ‘em off and spitting ‘em out. Oh yah, they are smart. A coyote, he’s smart, ya. They’re hard to trap.

30.  Muskrats in the Spring

Ray:  Our main trapping was muskrats in the spring. In the winter we’d do a little squirreling. But in the spring of the year when the ice was thawing, it was muskrats. We had lots of them. 479’. We came out with a packhorse carrying over 500 skinned rats.  We thought we were going to get rid of ‘em and ship ‘em out. We got to a neighbor’s place and the buyer was there running around. All these smaller outfits, oh, they had 20 or 30 rats. Of course with this big bunch of rats he was getting interested. He dumped ‘em all on the floor over at my wife’s folks place. He had ‘em all over the floor and he was sorting ‘em out and putting a price on ‘em. He’d write down how much he would give us. He wrote the number on a piece of paper and handed it to us. He wasn’t talking to the rest of ‘em ay. We’d tell him no; we weren’t satisfied with the price so he came up a little. He claimed he lost money on that. With a big lot like that you could bargain pretty good because he’d have to go to an awful lot of people to get that amount of muskrat hides. 505’

Ed:  Skunk. Did you have skunks?

Ray:  No, there were some skunk early here but I haven’t seen a skunk now. 

31.  Chemicals on Grain

Ray:  Like this here poisoning of grain. We used Suristan in order to control rust in the grain heads. We used it to treat the seed of the grain and that took care of it. Spilling of grain, that’s what done away with a lot of our chipmunks ‘cause they’d eat the grain. 

Ed:  They’d eat the seed grain and then it would kill ‘em?

Ray:  Well look at all these guys that’s spraying all the chemicals on the grain on this land here, to ripen it.  

Ed:  To ripen it!

Ray:  Well ya.

Ed:  That speeds it up?

Ray:  Well, if the grain is laying down they spray it so they can harvest it. What are they doing? And the people are eating it.

Ed:  Uh

Ray:  It shouldn’t be allowed. 528’

Ed:  So they are spraying a chemical on the grain to make it not rot. 

Ray: Yah

Ed:  Harvestable.

Ray:  Ya. It’s laying down and with the chemical they can harvest it. Then they make flour out of it. 

32.  Ray grew up with no chemicals

Ed:  I was thinking that you, my dad, Geneva, etc. were fortunate to grow up without all the chemicals that are out there now.  Maybe I’m doomed to croak.

Ray:  [Giggles]

Ed.  To croak early. You wouldn’t have to suffer.

Ray:  Not as much anyway.

Ed:  Kids now are growing up with those chemicals. 545’

Ray:  I don’t think that the younger generation is like we were, ay, when we were young. It seemed like everybody was so healthy. Well now kids of all kinds are sick, kids all over the place, sick kids.

Ed:  Yah, hyper-active kids on Ritalin. There’s a whole bunch of that in the States.

33.  Pet Coyotes

Ed:  Do you ever remember raising or having pet coyotes in North Dakota? I have a photo of it. I think you’re in the photo. 

Ray:  Oh ya, ya. We didn’t have pets. We dug ‘em out of a den, eh and then of course we were holding ‘em; each one of us. 

Ed:  Have you seen that photo?

Ray:  Yuh. 

Ed:  OK, yah. My mom [Alice] has that photo.

IMAGE: Emerson Kids & coyote pups. Rear: James, Bill, Geneva,
Ole, family dog. Front: Ivene, Verola, Vivian. Wind seems to always
blow in ND. Photograph from the Edwin J. Ostrom collection.

34.  Can’t find Albums

Ray:  Yah, I think I have one of ‘em here. I was just looking thru the albums before you came. I wanted to show you some of the pictures but I can’t find ‘em. Ain’t that something. There are some pictures I’d like to have you see.

Ed:  Oh yah. I’d like to see them too.

Ray:  Yah. I was looking thru the albums and I don’t know who they are. We have so many albums ay.

Ed:  Maybe Elsie can find ‘em whenever she comes back. 575’

Ray:  She could yah. 

Ed:  She could find ‘em.

35.  Elsie and Irwin

Ray:  Well I expect they won’t be very long. Once they move Irvin to Grande Prairie she’ll be coming home. I talked to her this morning and then Allen likely will bring ‘em. So it will be nice if Allen could come.

Ed:  It would be nice to meet him. I vaguely recall seeing… was it Allen? I think I saw Allen at Geneva’s, uh at Ruby’s 100^th birthday.

Ray:  I ain’t sure.

Ed:  I thought I saw him there but maybe not.  

Ed:  585’ [Fiddling with the tape recorder.] There now we’re doing it.

Ray:  Yah.

36.  Guns

Ed:  The gun, the kind of gun we missed that. I forgot to turn on the tape of the part where you, Ray were talking about the gun. 

Ray: To start with we had an old 8 mm Army gun. I think it belonged to Ole. Ole had got it. James had a .22 special so then we used that a lot for hunting.

Ed:  I remember you said you shot a deer up close.

Ray:  Oh yah. I was riding on my horse and hunting and there was a nice buck deer that jumped up ahead of me. He stood up and then I got up real close and shot right over him. Too close, I guess. Yah, I was disgusted that time. So I didn’t do more hunting that day, I rode right back to the shack. Yah, that was the end of it. You have your days, I guess, for sure.

Ed:  Did you bring a rifle up with you when you came up first from ND?

Ray:  Yah I think ??? must have come up. No we didn’t, when we first come up. See some of this came up when James shipped up ay.

37.  Pure Canadian

Ray:  610’ Dad gave us I think a cow and a calf he sent up with James for Ole and I. Dad also sent us odds and ends of things he gave us to help us out. 

Ed:  Was that called an emigrant car [1]?

Ray:  Yah and they got cheap. I believe you could ship [via train] all the way from North Dakota to here for about 60 bucks, 60 dollars I think. You see with all this land up here, they wanted immigrants because they weren’t getting taxes on none of this stuff. They wanted to get it settled up for sure. And we, us younger fellas, how could we start up back in North Dakota? Who would you get land from? You had no money to buy anybody out. The only way we thought we could get a start was to come up here. Now I’m a pure Canadian.    

Ed:  And all of your kids are here

Ray:  Oh yah,

Ed:  And your brothers and hardly any of them moved back to the states.   

Ray:  No, no.

Ed:  You must like it. Well then you became a citizen? 

Ray: Oh yah. Then so many years go by and you go before a judge. He asks you some foolish questions like how many provinces are there? These kinds of stuff you know and the judge said, 555’ I forget just what he said now but he said you must be from America or something because you didn’t know nothing about Canada.

38.  Questions

Ray:  I haven’t thought for a long time about these questions you’re asking. If I had the questions in advance, I’d have time to think about them more. 

Ed:  OK. [Good reason for another trip to see Ray.]

39.  Had to Make it

Ed:  You said before that if you needed something you had to make it.

Ray:  Oh yah I made all that. I made a rocking chair, a high chair, I made all the stuff. You couldn’t afford to buy things, you made ‘em. I wish I had some of that stuff now, just for a keepsake eh? But you give it away to other people and then now, later on, you don’t have it. I took old wooden TVs with nice wood and made cabinets out of ‘em. I’ll show you a couple of ‘em here. 

Ed:  Oh sure. You still have them?

Ray:  Oh ya. I’ll show them to you.

Ed:  You had the tools and everything to do that?

Ray:  Well, I’ve got some tools yah.

Ed:  A drawknife?

Ray:  Oh ya.

Ed:  How’d you learn woodworking?

Ray:  You picked that up from here and there. You keep on and you make something and every time you see you can improve on it. The more you make the better it gets because you see where you can improve every time.  

696’ [End of tape side A dated 9-11-2007]

40.   End side A begin side B [tape dated 9-11-2007]

Ed:  0’ It’s Tuesday 9-11-2007, about 4:30 in the afternoon. This is Ed Ostrom and I’m at Ray Emerson’s house and I’m recording Ray talking about what he used to do.

Ed:   It’s Wednesday, September 12, 2007 about 8 a.m. and my uncle Ray and I are having breakfast here of Canadian toast and Canadian oatmeal. Ray made the toast and I cooked the oatmeal.   

41.  Cooking Complaints

Ed:  When you cooked for James, Ole, Stuart and Pete, did they complain about the cooking?

Ray:  If they complained they had the job so…they were pretty careful for that. yah. 

42.  Stuart and Lola

Ray:  12’ Stuart and Lola stayed with us for a while until they got something on their own homestead; then they moved over there. But for a while they stayed with us.

   I remember. Oh ya, I shouldn’t say that I guess; I had a dog and they thought that I had given their dog to a neighbor woman of ours. I was bringing the dog over and then of course Stuart, he got so mad that I was giving his dog away. Oh he was mad, I tell you. After that we didn’t get along too good anyway. No.yah well. 

IMAGE: Lola (Emerson) and Stuart Ditch's cabin, with
family standing out front in Alberta, Canada. Photograph
from the family collection of Edwin J. Ostrom

43.  Cooking

Ed:  Back to cooking, Ray, you said you were very careful to not complain much when you are eating somebody else’s cooking.  [sound of utensils clashing together. Ed and Ray are eating breakfast.] That’ll pick you up.

Ray:  Oh.

44.  Wise Coyotes

Ed:  You were trying to get rid of coyotes and you were hiding something? 27’

Ray:  Well, no but we had bait ay. We had an old horse we took and then I made these pills and put some strychnine in ‘em. The coyotes picked up the pellets and packed ‘em around. I was on skis and I’d see from the coyote tracks in the snow that they were in there. I’d follow the tracks all over and never could find any coyote and finally I found out that they were spittin’ ‘em out. They packed ‘em for a ways and I guess they must have sensed there was something strong inside of the pills so they spit ‘em out. They’re pretty smart eh? 34’

45.  Coyotes Yelping

Ed:  This morning I think I heard coyotes. 

Ray:  Oh you could, ya.

Ed:  I heard ‘em yelping

Ray:  That means they had pups. 

Ed:  I could hear while sleeping in the van.

Ray:  Oh ya. Oh sure. 

46.  Wolves

Ed:  You called Wayne Emerson last night 37’ to come over and visit but he was out dealing with wolves on their lease property.

Ray:  The wolves are on the lease land where they have cattle. The wolves are hitting real bad down there killing the cattle. 

Ed:  Is it because wolves would rather eat cattle than moose?

Ray:  They will take anything that is handy. And there are more cattle down there to get. I expect you know they don’t run as fast as a moose.

Ed:  Oh ya. Have you seen wolves?

Ray:  Oh ya. I did. Years ago when I’d bring cattle down there I took two old horses down, killed ‘em and put poison in ‘em. But you kill too much with that strychnine. You kill so much, birds and everything else ay, and I found a bear. Strychnine is kind of hard to get a hold of but if you know a ranger you can get it from him. They don’t want to have to look after trouble and they couldn’t care less. Then you have a lot of people that want to protect wild animals you know. 57’

47.  Good Eyes

Ray: So how we doing?

Ed:  [If you notice Ray isn’t using reading glasses.] Do you even need reading glasses to read? 

Ray:  Well a lot of times I can do without. The eye doctor gave me glasses. But I don’t use them that much. 

48.  Record while working in Kitchen

Ed:  I’ll just record while you’re working. [Ed is carrying the microphone while following Ray around the kitchen.]

Ray:  Oh. [laughing ]

IMAGE: Ray Emerson is his kitchen, dishes now all done.
Photograph in the family collection of Edwin J. Ostrom.

49. Ray’s Horse Mack

Ed:  You just talked about Mika or Micka! 

[Ray is standing next to the open door of the refrigerator trying to open a paper half gallon of milk June brought over the day before. June is the wife of Ray’s son Raymond. They live on adjacent property to the south.] 

Ray:  Mike!

Ed:  Mike.

Ray:  Mack, Mack my saddle horse. He was a good horse. He was such a good walker. 65’

Ed:  Yah, you can keep talking while you’re cleaning. [Ray is washing the breakfast dishes in the sink. We had Oatmeal and toast.] If you think of something just talk.

Ray:  Oh. We’ll leave it for now. [Dishes are clanging.] We’ll clean up here.

50.  Cross Country Skis

Ray:  Well we made our own cross-country skis out of birch to start with. Later on we had boughten [store bought] skis. I think they were made out of oak. Yah I made lots of miles on skis, that’s for sure. [sounds of dishes clanging]

IMAGE: Ray on his wooden cross-country skis. His
red-wall and white-trimmed barn & farm buildings in
the background. From the photograph collection of
Edwin J. Ostrom.

51.  Doing Dishes

Ed:  Well, Ray right now is doing dishes. He’s cleaning up after a breakfast of Canadian oatmeal, Canadian whipping cream and Canadian toast with butter and jam. It’s very good. Ray made the toast and I cooked the oatmeal and chopped up some bananas but I don’t think Ray likes bananas.

Ray:  No I’m not too fond of ‘em. Oh I eat ’em a little once in a while but I’m not too enthused over ‘em for sure. 80’

52.  Nobody Has the Time

Ray:  It’s the old history.

Ed:  Nobody has the time.

Ray:  No. Well, I guess and there are those kind of people, some couldn’t care less and others do, eh. 

Ed:  Well, I’m glad you’re talking Ray, I love it. 

Ray:  Well, I’m talking about something anyway, yah.   

53.  Talk to that thing

Ray:  They ain’t used to that. When other people come, you talk to people instead of that thing. 87’ [Ray is referring to the recording microphone.]

54. Bloat

Ed:  About bloat? From hay?

Ray:  Hay? yah. We had problems with bloat sometimes. We’re feeding alfalfa hay mixed with bloom grass and then you have to use a needle and punch ‘em to let the gas off or else they die. So I punched quite a few of ‘em. I punched a lot for myself and for the neighbors too. 

Ed:  They’d blow up?

Ray:  Oh yah they’d blow way up and their stomach would get just as hard as a rock “pertnear” and if you don’t punch ‘em or do something they die, real quick.

Ed:  How would you know they needed to be punched?

Ray:  Well it’s when they blow up like that you can tell by their stomach ay. Then they’re lying there in agony and discomfort. They lay down and get up and lay down get up. Oh no, you could tell pretty quick. But you get used to it. 100’ 

55.  Snuff in ND

Ray:  Some of the boys would come over and play in the barn ay. We played a lot in the barn and they’d have snuff along. I took some one time, a boy had some and I got sicker than a dog.  

Ed:  Was that the end of it!

Ray:  Ya

Ed:  …for you?

Ray:  Yah. I never needed snuff anymore, that’s for sure.

56.  Moonshine

Ed:  My dad, Tom, would talk about moonshiners but he didn’t want it on tape. He said the Emersons will find out. But his first cousin Harvey Roberts who lived next door [160 acre properties, east of Douglas, ND.] would talk about moonshiners. What do you remember about moonshiners?

Ray:  Well we made quite a bit up here, ourselves. 

Ed:  You did?

Ray:  Oh ya, you couldn’t buy it ay. So you made it. Oh yah we had barrels sittin’ in the bush here. When we’d get ready to run, we’d get quite a crew together and have quite a party. Ya, I guess there ain’t too many that didn’t make a little moonshine. 

Ed:  Well, what did you use to make the moonshine with?

Ray: You could use some wheat and sugar. 119’ That’s what we used mostly.

57.  Barley Beer

Ray:  When we made barley beer we’d take a couple of sacks of barley and soak in the slough and then you take and spread it out on a flat place, a little grain or something and then let it grow, when it got two or three inches of leaf on it ay, you’d have to pull that all apart and dry it. Then you ground it up. Next you put it in the barrel and put some straw on top. Then you put some willow sticks in there and then you pour the hot water on there. And then you see it run out. It made dandy beer. That was real old time beer making, yah. We learned a lot of that from old man Larson, eh. 

Ed:  Was that Ruth’s father?

Ray:  Yah. Yah. Ya. Ole’s wife’s father.

58.  The Larsons

Ray:  They were pretty good. We were associated an awful lot with the Larson boys in the early years, for sure. We worked with them and we ate with them and of course that’s where we stayed when we first come up. The three of us we stayed with them and helped them build a house and a barn and stuff and then they helped us build a shack on Pete’s [Anderson] place. We lived there the three of us, Ole and Pete. I think we moved in just before Christmas.

59.  Year Moved Up

Ed:  What year?

Ray:  Oh gosh.  

Ed:  Was that ‘20?

Ray:  I got to do a little thinking; ’29 probably uh? ’28 you see. No it would be fall, in the fall of ’28. Is that what it was? I expect it was late in the fall of ’28 or the first of ’29.  143’ Somewhere, ya.

60.  How to Build a Log House

Ed:  Yesterday you mentioned building a log house? What kind of wood did you use and what kind of pegs?

Ray:  Oh, we used birch pegs ay. And then we would have dovetail corners and you’d have dividers where you’d measure how much you had to cut. When you had made your dovetail cut, then the other one, you laid it on top. Then you used your divider to find out how much you had to take out of the other log to match the other to, you know, to get the dovetail ay.

Ed:  What kind of logs?

Ray:  Oh, mostly spruce, spruce logs ya. I had some jack-pine but they were mostly spruce logs. When you went and set out for a building you made sure you’ve got nice and straight logs, ya. At first we started to hew with a broad-axe, we’d hew in a ways, and then you used planes. Larson made two-men planes, worked by two men. They were about 4 inches wide. Two men would work together to plane. One would pull and the other would push.

Ed:  Side by side…or?

Ray:  Yah. One guy would be pushing. And then when you went the other way, one is pulling and the other is pushing. You’d take quite a bit of wood off, Larson made quite a wide blade. Of course old man Larson he’s so good. He could make all these things ay. 166’ He was a blacksmith and a carpenter. Some of those ol’ Norwegians from the old country, by golly they had to know their stuff eh. Many of the carpenters up here were from Norway, like Ted Heimdahl and Tom Knutson, who built James log house. [James has a photo dated summer 1933 of his almost finished log house with these two carpenters standing in front.] They were good carpenters and that’s all they done eh. They built lots of houses around here. 

Ed:  You mentioned that log houses were so well built you could roll them over and they’d stay together.

Ray:  Oh ya. Some of them were built well, that’s for sure. Ya, and that’s out now. I don’t think there’s a good new log house. It would be nice for some of you younger guys now to look at them and see how they were built. Maybe I could take you up to the old building left up here at Bert’s [??] place to look at. We’ll try it anyway.

Ed:  When you did the dovetail corners, did you angle them so the building locked together by gravity?
Ray:  Ya sure, and then you’d use your divider. You see, from that when you laid 185’ the log on up, then you knew how much to take off the other one, so they fit pretty tight, pretty good.

Ed:  Then would you shave the top of the log so that it would drain out?

Ray:  Well of course it was round like that, so there wasn’t much danger of that.

Ed:  Did you cut the top and bottom of the logs?

Ray:  Eh?

Ed:  Did you shave any off the top of the log.

Ray:  Well you cut the ends for the corners kind of straight ay. I’ll take you up to one of them up to Larsons so you can look at it. 

Ed:  OK. Then you can explain it.

Ray:  That would be the best way.

Ed:  Alright.

Ray:  ‘Cause it’s kind of hard to tell a fellow the way it was done. You can see it and then I can explain as you are looking at it.  Oh I’m sure there are some log houses up there. We’ll go up there after a while, we’ll have a look and see. The fellow that is there now wouldn’t mind.

Ed:  What part of building a log house or structure were you best at? What did you like to do? 

Ray:  Oh I don’t know. I didn’t mind doing any of it really. You had to do it, to learn it if you wanted any buildings. It was great in the early days. We helped each other. We worked together so good, which they don’t do any more, eh.

IMAGE: Details of log house construction. This is
James Emerson's house; he is second from the
left, others are unknown. Photo from Sherryl, his
daughter and in the Edwin J. Ostrom collection. 

IMAGE: Corner of Lola Emerson's log house showing
construction details, original from Lola's son, Dorman.
From the Edwin J. Ostrom family collection.

61.  How Much Land

Ray:  Each man, he wants everything for himself and never gets enough. Eh, that’s people huh. Yah, they never get enough. And land, look at all the land some of these guys got.

Ed:  Well, how many acres does Doug, uh Raymond, mentioned yesterday at lunch, they farm 800 acres?

Ray:  Well, with hay and stuff, probably in there somewhere, with all of our land. And then we got a government lease down south here, too for a pasture. 

Ed:  How big is that?

Ray:  Well that’s a half a section; two quarters there. And then the other two, Irwin has in that section. 

62.  Cattle

Ed:  How many cattle do you & Raymond run?

Ray:  Well I’m not sure just how many cattle we have now. I suppose they have 3 or 400 head or more, with the calves and stuff.  I don’t know if they know themselves exactly, how many they really have. They are not easy to count either because they are milling around. They are hard to count 225’ until you run ‘em thru a chute or something, where you can count them one by one. Last year they shipped out two big liners [??] you know. This spring they keep the calves in season and gave them some grain and then feed them all round-bales that drop in the feeders. It’s not that big a job to it anymore. Everything is done with levers. 

63.  Where do the cattle go?

Ed:  Are the cows sold?

Ray:  Oh ya, if they are old and some of their teats have gone bad or something. That happens sometime. Then of course they get a little old and crippled and don’t raise very good calves, they are called cull cows, so you take ‘em and get rid of ‘em, you ship them out. 

Ed:  So then you basically produce…uh. You sell the calves? 

Ray:  Yearlings.

Ray:  Well they’d be a little bit older than yearlings because they are born in the spring and sold later in the fall so they are a little over a year and a half.

64.  Cattle Types

Ed:  What type of animals do you raise, mostly what?

Ray:  Mostly Hereford cattle, ya. 249’ and we had some Angus, and an Angus bull too. We have some Angus cattle in there too now. We didn’t used to but now we do. They are good cattle; you know for fattening. They are good cattle. Angus is a pretty thrifty animal. 

Ed:  Thrifty is what sense?

Ray:  Thrifty in that they don’t take too much feed and they are easier to keep ay. They don’t get sick that much. A little hardier animal huh. 259’

65.  Bulls

Ed:  Do you have your own bulls or do you bring them in?

Ray:  Sometimes you gotta get other bulls because you don’t want them to get related and that’s no good ay. A lot of times we get trained bulls from some other guys who raise bulls. You gotta replace your bulls ever so often. 

Ed:  Do the bulls go out into the fields?

Ray:  Well, yah you turn them loose when you want them at a certain breeding time ay.

Ed:  When is that?

Ray:  Well that’s about oh mid-June, first of July, somewhere in there. Otherwise your calves come a little too early in the winter and you don’t want that. You move your calves and cows out in the spring ay so that’s why you hold your bulls for the right time.    

Ed: So the bulls just sit around. I saw some out in the field here. They just lay around?

Ray:  Ya, ya. There’s two or three out here yet. Three of ‘em I think. And you know when the breeding season comes, they go to work. 

Ed:  They go to work…[laughing.]

Ray: Ya

Ed:  Do you bring the cows in, kind of confine ‘em a bit?

Ray: No, you turn some bulls right in with the cows. 

Ed:  Must be interesting to see that huh? 282’

Ray:  Oh, ya. Down on our lease here, as soon as a cow gets in heat, well then the bulls are there. When three or four bulls are  after the same cow they get into quite a bit of fighting over the business. ya.

Source:

1.) Wikipedia contributors, "Colonist car," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Colonist_car&oldid=715406532 : accessed 09 August 2016).

It was fun to read this. I felt a part of the conversation when I'd read of giggling, laughing, clanging of the dishes. It is also worth noting that at the time of this interview Ray Emerson was nearing his 96th birthday. This was an amazing conversation given that fact. I realize that by following Ray and others to Alberta, Canada we wandered away from life on the prairie in North Dakota. But Ray's story is an important one to tell too.  I want to thank Cousin Ed and his family members for helping to bring these stories to us. Hope you too enjoyed this post and that you have a good week. See you next time and thank you for stopping by.

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