SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome to the Simple Lives We Live, where we open the old family photo albums and dust off the stories that made us who we are. I'm your host, Kylie Simiano, and each week I sit down with everyday people to capture their extraordinary life experiences, the moments of love, loss, laughter, and resilience that echo through time. These are the stories that remind us of our roots, connect us to generations past, and show us that the simple lives we live are anything but ordinary. So settle in and let's listen back together.

SPEAKER_04 0:32

Welcome back. Today's quote is there simply are not many grand moments of life, and we surely don't live life in those moments. No, we live in the utterly mundane. We exist in the bathrooms, bedrooms, living rooms, and hallways of life. That this is where the character of our life is set. This is where we live the life of faith, and that is by Paul David Tripp. So I have two guests today, which I'm really excited because you guys are going to be able to visit with each other and remind each other of different memories. I have the beautiful Rella Abernappy and Mert Poppel. And I hear that that's not your actual name, but what everybody calls you. But we'll we'll call you Mert and you can tell us about how you got that nickname. But welcome, both of you. Thank you both for doing this interview. So excited because you before we started, you were telling me about a lot of things I did not know, and I've never heard. So let's start at the beginning. First off, how old are you guys? Um, like when's your birthday merge? Why don't you go ahead first? I'm 92. You're 92. And Rella, how about you? And I'm 88. 88. Okay, this is great. So, what year would that be for when you were born?

SPEAKER_01 1:46

1937 for me and 1933.

SPEAKER_02 1:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:52

Where were you guys born and raised?

SPEAKER_02 1:55

I was born in Sentinel Butte in Hess's uh grocery store upstairs.

SPEAKER_04 2:05

So not the hospital.

SPEAKER_02 2:06

No.

SPEAKER_04 2:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

Because the midwife lived there.

SPEAKER_04 2:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

And she lived on we lived a long ways from town, so my mother came into town to wait for me to arrive. And you just she just and then a doctor came, but I don't know who the doctor was.

SPEAKER_04 2:28

That's okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

Uh the midwife was Marie Hiss.

SPEAKER_04 2:32

But you remember that.

unknown 2:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 2:34

How about you, Relative?

SPEAKER_01 2:36

And I was born in the same place. Same place or Jake's building. And Marie was the midwife, and I was named after, my middle name is named after her.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Ellie Tristine. And my rella was after a neighbor lady.

SPEAKER_04 2:55

So see, back then it wasn't going to a hospital still, right? It was your home, midwife.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Interesting. And I went into town with my mother when Rella was born. I went along with.

SPEAKER_04 3:10

You went along with. Now, how many siblings? I want you guys to say their names in what order. So you can.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

I have their birth years too.

SPEAKER_04 3:22

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

You want to go ahead? Well, uh there was three boys and three girls.

SPEAKER_04 3:29

Okay, so six six altogether, okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

And Phil is the oldest, and then my sister Marlon and Rex, and then me, then Rella, and Jo.

SPEAKER_04 3:44

Okay. Is everybody still with us today? No. Who has passed away?

SPEAKER_01 3:50

All of the rest. Just us two.

SPEAKER_04 3:52

You guys are the only two left. Oh, I'm really glad that we're getting this. Wow. Okay. So who were your parents?

SPEAKER_01 4:00

Taylor and Evelyn Cook. Dad's name was Philip Taylor.

SPEAKER_04 4:04

Philip Taylor, but everybody called him Taylor? ever till popular. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

And our mother's name was Lucy Evelyn, but she did not like the name Lucy. She was never called Lucy. She was Evelyn. She was Evelyn. And she her maiden name was Northrop.

SPEAKER_04 4:23

Okay, okay. Talk to me about what they were thinking, your parents.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

My mother was very talkative, and my dad was very quiet.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

I had the same thing written down.

SPEAKER_04 4:39

Give me some memory. Do you have any specific memories of them?

SPEAKER_02 4:43

My mother was great for telling jokes.

SPEAKER_04 4:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

And my dad hardly ever told a joke, but he had one that he always told.

SPEAKER_04 4:52

Do you remember it?

SPEAKER_02 4:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 4:54

Okay, give it to us. Do you want me to? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

In uh the olden days, when a young man graduated from school, he always wanted to get a job. And one of the easiest jobs they could get was uh selling a subscription to magazines. So this young man, and that was door to door, and this young man went to the door and knocked, and he could hear somebody say, Come in, come in, come in, come in. But he didn't go in because they weren't supposed to just walk in. So he knocked again and all it just said, Come in, come in, come in. So he finally went in. And here in the living room was a parrot in a cage and a pit bull laying on the floor below the cage. And so he walked around. Anyone home? Anybody home? Nobody answered. But this parrot kept saying, Come in, come in, come in. And finally he couldn't find anybody, so he was going to leave when he got to the door. He turned around to the parrot and said, Can't you say anything else? The parrot said, Sick em. That wasn't what you remember that? No, I don't even remember.

SPEAKER_04 6:21

Oh, that's funny. That's funny. Well, how about your mom? You said she she was very talkative, told a lot of jokes. Was she very loving? How was she as a mother?

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:34

How what was their education at that point? Like, did your did your dad only have an eighth grade education? Was he able to graduate high school? Because that was more rare back then.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

I don't think he even went through the eighth grade. I don't think so either. I know he went to school. They went to school up, they lived in Mechanicsville, Iowa when he was new, because we had pictures of him with his second, third grade class. Okay. How about your mom? She went to some college after she got out of high school one summer and then taught at uh for just the summer and got an emergency or the certificate at that time and taught uh Nelson School that was east of St. Mabute a couple miles. And uh then she got married, so she didn't teach again until we were I was in the third grade. And uh then she taught for 25, 26 years. And she went to school summers then until she got her two-year teaching certificate.

SPEAKER_04 7:41

So was your dad farmer rancher? Is that what he did? Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Yeah, interesting. And it was all, I mean, for all most of our lives it was horses that he yeah, they never had a any any tractors.

SPEAKER_02 7:57

No, they all tractors or nothing.

SPEAKER_04 7:59

They they traveled by horse.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Uh yeah, and they always didn't work, yeah, farm by horse, work the fields and oh little tractors you're saying, like they didn't have no okay.

SPEAKER_02 8:11

There were people that had them at the time, but he did get a tractor when I was in high school.

SPEAKER_04 8:17

Yeah, that was the first time we did. So did your mom do a lot of gardening and stuff when you guys were little? That was like what she child rearing, obviously.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

Yeah, it was always hard because she was teaching school too, so you know she had to wait until school was out to plant the garden.

SPEAKER_04 8:36

So summer was her time to do all of that. Okay, okay. How where did you guys go to school at for you guys? For you guys. I went or is it different?

SPEAKER_02 8:48

Oh yeah, okay. I went uh the first grade at Westerheim school where we lived. Okay, so talk to me about this, and then my older sister had to start high school, and my mother was very much for kids going to school. So then we moved into town. My folks had a house in Sentinel Butte. We moved in there, and I went second grade through the sixth grade in Sentinel Butte.

SPEAKER_04 9:21

Where did you go after that?

SPEAKER_02 9:23

Back to Westerheim. Okay, and my mother was the teacher in my seventh and eighth grade.

SPEAKER_04 9:29

Okay, talk to me about this place.

SPEAKER_02 9:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:32

I've never heard it.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

It's 20 miles north of Sentinel Butte.

unknown 9:38

North of Sentinel.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

And there was a uh all I remember of them saying there was a grocery store and a post office there. Right at yeah, just about a half mile from where we lived at a corner, and that is called Westerheim Corner. And the store corner, we always called it.

SPEAKER_04 9:56

Okay. So you went to school, so they had a school.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

And then they had school a mile away from the store to the east.

SPEAKER_04 10:04

Did they have a high school or was it just grade school? Just grade school. So once high school hit, then you went to Sentinel Butte.

SPEAKER_02 10:10

Sentinel Butte.

SPEAKER_04 10:11

And there were no buses, so somebody had to tell you. Oh no, no. So did you get there?

SPEAKER_02 10:17

Well, we just by then we had a car.

SPEAKER_04 10:19

Oh, by then you had a car, okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Well, yeah, but just the Model A when Yeah, it was the Model A.

SPEAKER_02 10:24

Right. Okay. And uh we would go to Sentel Butte and stay for the week. Friday night we went back out. To the farm, basically.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

Okay. Probably and I I was went first and second grade in Sentel Butte because that Marlon was still in high school. And Rex. After Rex graduated, then we moved out. So I was starting third grade at West or High. Our mother started teaching then the West High school. That's first she went back to teaching. And then I went through eighth grade there.

SPEAKER_04 11:01

And you guys both graduated high school. Okay. How big were the classes? And how about let's start with the West or West or High.

SPEAKER_02 11:13

I had there was two of us in the first grade. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

And how about there were two of us, Deanna Brown and I.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

I think we're the only ones in my class. There were, you know, ones above us and below us throughout the grades in that schools.

SPEAKER_04 11:33

Yeah. Now when you went to St. Laubeau, how big were the classes? I mean, because they weren't even very well, there was a few.

SPEAKER_02 11:41

I had the big I graduated with the biggest class that ever graduated from St. Loubi.

SPEAKER_04 11:45

And how many was that?

SPEAKER_02 11:47

18.

SPEAKER_04 11:49

That's actually pretty good size because that's bigger than what some of the beach classes are now. So yeah. What were your favorite subjects then when you were going through school?

SPEAKER_02 12:00

I don't know. Oh did you have any play I liked English and I didn't like math. I know algebra was terrible, but my mother taught me algebra. So that is how I got that.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

But otherwise, I don't know. Yeah, I there were I have to stop say eight or nine and eight in our class.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

And uh my favorite subject was math, and I love algebra was probably the best. And totally opposite, right? And as kids, we did a lot of reading because there wasn't anything else to do. We had sit by the kerosene lamp, is all we had.

SPEAKER_04 12:46

So I was gonna ask, so did you guys, when you were little, kind of off topic a little bit, but did you you didn't have the electricity running water or anything like that? I mean, we were talking, we didn't even have cars, so I would assume. Did you have the pump right outside the house? Did you have to go a little ways to get water? How how far was that for you guys?

SPEAKER_01 13:06

I think it was probably four, I don't know. Seemed a lot. We had to walk, and then we dipped it out with we dipped it out with a pail.

unknown 13:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:15

So did you was that somebody's chore to go get the water?

SPEAKER_02 13:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:20

Yeah. Was it usually one of the boys? Or did it change?

SPEAKER_02 13:25

See, Rex was five years older than me. So he kind of got a job away from home. So then it was up to Rill and I to do a lot of chores.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Yeah. And yeah, there's no electricity, so mom would make chocolate milk and put it in the pail and put it down in the well to get it cold. So we'd have done in the well. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 13:50

And that was so cold. It was amazing how cold that was.

SPEAKER_04 13:57

Electricity. It's so different from now. You know, we would never know how to make anything cold without it.

unknown 14:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:06

Going back to school, are there any particular teachers other than your mom that you guys can remember about that you had?

SPEAKER_01 14:18

I remember my first grade teacher's name was Murdoce. Olson. And I don't know where she came from, and I don't know what happened. She was just there one year. And then the second grade teacher was Doris Alston. And she married Edmund Kakoski, so she lived here the rest of her life.

SPEAKER_04 14:37

Did she continue to teach or was she done after that?

SPEAKER_01 14:40

She taught some after that.

SPEAKER_02 14:47

I don't remember any teachers that really I'm not sure. Your first one was my first one, I remember, was an older lady, and her name was Mrs. Phillips. I was in the first grade in Westerheim school, and I was left-handed, and she made me write with my right hand. So I write with my right hand.

SPEAKER_04 15:08

Are you still pretty dominant with your left?

SPEAKER_02 15:10

Like more than I do a lot of things with my left hand.

SPEAKER_04 15:13

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 15:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:15

Was it big for them to always want some, always want kids to write with their right hand?

SPEAKER_02 15:20

I guess so. There was another girl in the school too that was left-handed and she wrote bottom side up.

unknown 15:26

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

And never she never did change her.

SPEAKER_04 15:30

Right? When it smeared.

SPEAKER_02 15:32

Oh yeah, she she would turn that. I don't can't remember. She'd turn the paper, she'd start up here at the top of the page, and she would write bottom side up. I can still see her doing it.

SPEAKER_04 15:43

Interesting. The things we remember. Yeah. Was there any? Um when you look back at school, first off, did you both enjoy school? I did. Both enjoyed school. Did you do a lot of? I feel like education has changed a lot. Was were there more projects? Were there more, was there more recess? What did you what made you enjoy school so much?

SPEAKER_01 16:11

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 16:12

I think it was being with the other kids because we never you know went any place.

SPEAKER_04 16:18

Yeah. Otherwise we were just at home.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

It wasn't like that. And yeah, and we always were out every and we just had our 15-minute recess in our yeah. I know noon hour, we we'd I always think we went to across to the cemetery a lot of days and w wandered around the cemetery to see all the names. Yeah. Oh yeah. We had read all the stones. And mom always made us walk. We couldn't step on the graves. We always had to stay on a certain place. And yeah, we knew all who who they were and what they'd done.

SPEAKER_04 16:54

And oh, that's interesting. Yeah, kind of knew their stories and stuff. Um, Mert, before we get too far into some other things, I want you to tell me how you got that nickname. What is your actual name?

SPEAKER_02 17:07

My name is Murder.

SPEAKER_04 17:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 17:09

And when I was in the sixth grade, my mother lived in a big house, and a lot of high school kids stayed with us and went to high school. And there was a girl by the name of Clara Franzine, and she said, Why don't we start calling Murder Mert? Because nobody could remember how to pronounce my name. And I've been that ever since my folks even called me Mert.

SPEAKER_04 17:38

So they had called you Murder before. That would be a hard change, I would think, to all of a sudden start calling my own child something.

SPEAKER_02 17:47

Well, Rex was always Bud.

SPEAKER_04 17:50

What was that?

SPEAKER_02 17:52

I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 17:52

Because Rex is a pretty easy name.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

If I didn't have an awful hard time calling him Rex. Yeah. And I don't think we called him Rex until he went to college.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

When he yeah, when he got married. When he got married with his wife, she didn't. She called him Rex. They called him Rex. And our oldest brother, Phil, was junior all his life. He was junior.

SPEAKER_02 18:17

The cooks made had nicknames for everybody.

unknown 18:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

That was kind of their thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:25

Because it wasn't even like middle names, it really was just nicknames. No, it was just a nickname.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Yeah, with dad's sisters, there was an Aunt Mary, and she was always Aunt Minty. Yeah. And Aunt Frances was Fanny.

SPEAKER_05 18:40

Oh cute.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

And Minty? And that's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_02 18:43

I don't know what was Bessie's name. I don't even know what I'm saying. I don't think they nicknamed her. Her name was just nickname either. Which one? Algie. Oh yeah, and Aldi. These were my dad's sisters. Okay. Minty. Minty. Yeah, that's really you know, Mary is so short, you wouldn't think they'd stay with Mary, but no, they called her Minty. And we called her Minty all the time. Now, what chores did you guys have growing up?

SPEAKER_01 19:12

We always had to do dishes. The chores. The chores. We had to gather eggs. And we had in the summertime, we had to shop green. Dad would uh had um uh make bundles.

SPEAKER_02 19:27

We had to uh get the coal in when we came from school. We'd have to go to the coal shed and bring in chunks of coal so we'd have coal for the night.

unknown 19:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:43

Yeah, always dishes. You didn't have a dishwasher. And then you had to go and get water.

SPEAKER_02 19:47

You know, these things about we didn't do too much water hauling when we were in school, it didn't seem like it was a lot of water hauling when in the summertime when my mother washed clothes or did canning.

SPEAKER_05 20:02

That was a lot of clothes.

SPEAKER_02 20:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:06

Did you always you said the um when you were talking about the cold milk and stuff? Is that down where you guys would put all the um canned vegetables and things like that? Where did you keep all of that? Did you have like a root cellar?

SPEAKER_01 20:22

There was a cellar under the house, yeah, and they would put potatoes and canned things down there.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

Potatoes and canned stuff was in the cellar.

SPEAKER_04 20:30

In the cellar. How was there some other ways that you preserved some things, some food, like flour? Or how did how did all that get preserved?

SPEAKER_01 20:42

We didn't, I don't think we saved anything at all. I know they put uh melons in the oat bin.

SPEAKER_02 20:51

You know, to to ripen and for the winter.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

Okay, but uh I don't know. Well, we didn't have a lot of a lot of different kinds of food, I don't think, either.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

We didn't, it was not you know and my dad wanted the vegetables always creamed, he was a fussy eater, and like cream peas and cream string beans. And that was really hard for me to get used to not having cream on vegetables.

SPEAKER_04 21:24

Yeah, especially if that's how you've always we always had that, yeah. So you always had milk then.

SPEAKER_02 21:30

Oh yeah, we always had milk and butter cows? We had to make butter, we just had one milk cow.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

Just the one milk, yeah. She usually had her calf, and we'd have to go out. That was one of the chores, go out and bring the cow. We had to go and get the milk cow. And then he dad would shut the calf up in a different place for the night and milk the cow in the morning. Okay. So and then we'd have to go and get her at night.

unknown 21:53

Get her at night.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:57

We're so spoiled now. Like we just don't know. You just don't think that you guys want to.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

And I know one time I had to help my dad uh with haying, and I had to ride the rake. I mean, a huge piece of machinery, and you could hardly sit on that rake, and you had to pull these levers and let make the windrow, you know, pull up that.

SPEAKER_04 22:22

Why was it super easy? Was it that hard?

SPEAKER_02 22:26

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was hard because you had to hang on to the seat to stay sitting in there. Gain a lot of muscle. You guys don't need to work out doing all these tracks. But I only did that one summer. Yeah, and then I must have done it the next year.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

I had to ride the rake.

SPEAKER_04 22:45

What are some of your earliest memories of growing up? I would love to hear about the games that you guys played, or if music was a big thing, um, things like that.

SPEAKER_02 22:58

Well, we played a lot of hide and seek, I think. And we played it out, played outside a lot. A lot of that. And there were no trees in our yard. We had absolutely we were in the Badlands.

SPEAKER_04 23:12

So a lot of wind.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

So there was no trees. And in the wintertime, we played a lot of cards. They had a lot of card games like Rook and Flint and Pitt.

unknown 23:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

I've never heard of any of the games. No, and I don't see any of them.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

You had to have a certain special card for each of those. They were each a game.

unknown 23:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 23:35

But they were cards.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

And I don't even remember how to play them anymore. I wouldn't know either. Um we had a radio that was battery operated, and we never got to listen to that, it was only for the news, except that we got to listen to uh O Henry and Fibber Magee and Molly.

SPEAKER_04 23:54

Are those songs?

SPEAKER_02 23:55

No, they were programs. They were programs.

SPEAKER_04 23:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

Henry, Henry Aldrich. At night we could listen to those programs. Let's see, I can't even remember now what the names of them were, but you named the ones that I remember too.

SPEAKER_04 24:11

What were Sundays like? Like an ordinary day. Yeah. We still worked. Did you did you go to church on Sunday?

SPEAKER_01 24:20

Wasn't there a church? No, we'd have to go clear into Sentinel Butte. So we never went up to town.

SPEAKER_02 24:26

In the summertime, there would be a preacher that would come back to the West Iron School. And I and then they'd be there for several days, and we'd have a prayer service or whatever you want to call it. And we'd always have to go. My dad wouldn't go, but he said he had enough church when he was growing up. He grew up in Iowa and his mother made them go to church all the time.

SPEAKER_04 24:57

So what brought him to North Dakota?

SPEAKER_02 25:01

His dad came to North Dakota with horses and he worked on the railroad down. And then he sold teams to the make the railroad.

unknown 25:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 25:15

And then he had to work on the railroad and show them how to use these teams.

SPEAKER_04 25:21

So born the horses that kind of happened up here.

SPEAKER_02 25:24

Well he broke the horses.

SPEAKER_01 25:25

I think dad was born down, I mean, when they got to North Dakota in Ammons County. Yeah, he was born in North Dakota. Okay. And yeah, and then named Selfridge, was it? Um Eureka. I'm I don't was there a it was that Selfridge. Yeah. Um and he did a lot there his our grandpa cook we never I yeah, he was but uh he built a hotel in Bowdoin, North Dakota. Ran that for many years after, and dad was younger. I mean he was a child then.

SPEAKER_04 26:05

So Sundays weren't anything special. It wasn't like the day of rest, it was just another day of chores and we'd sometimes have special company on Sunday.

unknown 26:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 26:17

And we always went to church on Easter Sunday. On Easter Sunday, we always went to church, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:23

Did your dad go on Easter Sunday or did he stay home?

SPEAKER_01 26:25

I don't think he went. I know mom said, you know, he doesn't go to church, but he's probably better Christian than all of us.

SPEAKER_04 26:33

Yeah. Yeah. What were what were Christmases like when you were little? Because now with trees, did you always do the candles? No. Did you even have a tree?

SPEAKER_01 26:48

We had a tree. We did have a tree. Yeah, they went to the bathroom and cut down a small house that we lived in.

SPEAKER_02 26:53

We lived in a very small house out in the country. I still can't imagine how we I don't know how they put that tree in the house. Three rooms.

SPEAKER_04 27:03

Three rooms. Small rooms.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

Small rooms. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:07

So one for your parents, one for girls, one for boys, or how did you make it?

SPEAKER_01 27:11

Oh no, three three rooms.

SPEAKER_04 27:13

Oh, just kitchen, just three rooms.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

One bedroom. One bedroom. Just our parents.

SPEAKER_02 27:19

And three of us girls slept in a it was called day bed. You folded it up and it was a Davenport in the daytime.

SPEAKER_05 27:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

And then you unfolded, and that's what we slept on in the living room. And our brothers slept on the floor.

SPEAKER_04 27:38

In just an outhouse, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what my my mom remembers. Yes. Yeah. Outhouse. And uh even my my father-in-law, he remembers because there was 13 of them, and they only have one bedroom. So it was you would go and you grab your mat. Each had a mat and a blanket, and they would spread out on the living room floor. That's what it was. So yeah. So one bedroom that your parents had, you guys slept on.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

And this room that we slept also had the dining table where we ate all the time, the dining room table and the pot-mellied stove.

unknown 28:13

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_04 28:14

And so, yeah, where would you put a tree?

unknown 28:18

What?

SPEAKER_04 28:19

Where would you put a Christmas tree?

SPEAKER_02 28:20

Yeah, where do you put a Christmas tree? We had it. I know we had it.

SPEAKER_04 28:24

What did you use to decorate it?

SPEAKER_02 28:25

Was it just we just put kind of uh that silver tensile around it? Oh we didn't have any lights or anything on no candles or nothing.

SPEAKER_04 28:34

Okay. Do you remember what it was like to see a Christmas tree like actually decked out for the first time? Like to see one with lights?

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:43

Do you remember that? No, I don't ever remember that.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

We always had a tree at school too.

SPEAKER_02 28:48

Yeah, we did at the school.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

And they would we would make you know paper changes.

SPEAKER_02 28:53

We made kind of those lanterns. Yeah. We folded paper and cut strips, and they would be a lantern about that high.

SPEAKER_04 29:02

Um, do you remember Christmas Eve, Christmas Day? Did you always tend to celebrate it one day more than the other?

SPEAKER_01 29:11

We always had oysters to every Christmas Eve, and neither one of us can remember that we had anything else. Anything else? Because we didn't really like it. We didn't really like it, but we'd drink the milk. That's we'd have to have the milk. We didn't have to have any oysters. And then the oyster crackers.

SPEAKER_02 29:30

And then my uh dad's brother and his wife and daughter would come on Christmas Eve because he liked oysters too, and she didn't like to make it. And every Christmas Eve. Yeah, yeah. Every Christmas Eve they were there.

SPEAKER_04 29:47

Christmas Eve they were there. Do you remember any specific traditions other than the oyster soup that you guys would do that you had? Was there like certain music that you listened to, books that you read, anything like that?

SPEAKER_01 30:05

No. We always hung our stockings. It would be just a brown stocking.

SPEAKER_02 30:09

A brown stocking we hung up behind the heater on the wall.

SPEAKER_04 30:15

Did it did you actually get stuff in the stocking?

SPEAKER_01 30:19

Always a lot of peanuts and candy and nuts and an orange or an apple.

unknown 30:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

And um I said I couldn't remember much for gifts, but I I remember after you mentioned it.

SPEAKER_02 30:34

Uh one year my mother made a table and chair for Rel and I. A table and two chairs.

SPEAKER_04 30:42

Like a small table or an actual size table?

SPEAKER_02 30:44

Well, one that we got. Just a little for little kids, you know. Now, where did we put that table?

SPEAKER_04 30:51

How did she make it?

SPEAKER_02 30:52

Well she made it. She went she every night she'd be out in the coal shed. And we didn't pay attention, but that was from Santa Claus. Then we got that from Santa Claus. That's about the only thing I can remember. Then I one year uh Aunt Fanny sent the dolls that her girls quit playing with and gave us great big dolls for Christmas.

SPEAKER_04 31:22

Had you had a doll up until then? I think I had a doll. And I remember one.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

My last one was one that had magic skin, felt like real skin.

SPEAKER_04 31:33

Oh, really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

Yeah. And I remember one of the first I one of the gifts that I'd gotten, our oldest brother Phil, when he was out of high school, he wanted to be in join the service, and he had bad eyes, so he couldn't pass the physical. And so he went to Alaska and worked. But he sent us all gifts, and I he sent me a pair of pink pajamas with feet in. And I just and I got a pair of ice skates.

SPEAKER_04 32:04

So was ice skating day when you guys were little to go out and ice skate skating in the winter. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:10

Did you have like a pond nearby?

SPEAKER_02 32:13

Not nearby. No, we had to walk a little ways.

SPEAKER_04 32:16

We did.

SPEAKER_02 32:17

Yeah. And it wasn't visible from the house.

SPEAKER_04 32:21

It's kind of scary. If you think about it, like an eye on you or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 32:27

And I said by the time we walked over there, we were already cold. And then the ice would be covered with snow.

SPEAKER_04 32:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:35

By the time we got that scraped off, we were and we didn't we put the skates on at the dam.

SPEAKER_04 32:42

So you'd wear boots. Did you have boots? Galashes.

SPEAKER_01 32:45

We had overshoes. Rubber overshoes overshadows. Overshoes. You had overshoes.

SPEAKER_02 32:52

Yeah, the buckles.

SPEAKER_04 32:53

The buckle. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

Oh, one time we had them with zippers on them. Yeah. Oh, that was that was really uptone.

unknown 33:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 33:03

Well, how about birthdays? Did you guys do anything?

SPEAKER_01 33:06

Were birthdays a big deal, or we always had a birthday cake, but yeah, we had birthday cakes. But that was about all. Never had a birthday party or got presents. The one year when we lived in St. LeBute, there was a neighbor lady, Agnes Hugo, that lived just in the same block. And we would walk down and when we weren't in school with well, I wasn't in school yet.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

Yeah, you weren't in school.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

But we'd go visit her every day. She had no children. Yeah. The one day I she had made me a birthday cake when I was five, I think. I think so. And so and it was in March, so it was icy and snowy. Snowy. So I came, she had me take it up to the house, and it was on a glass pedestal plate.

SPEAKER_04 33:57

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

So I carried that up to the house.

SPEAKER_04 34:01

You didn't drop it.

SPEAKER_02 34:02

Mom ran out and oh, she screamed, R was carrying that cake. She ran out to get her to help her carry that cake. All decorated and candles.

SPEAKER_01 34:17

Oh glass cake.

SPEAKER_04 34:19

Is that probably one of your favorite birthday cakes that you have?

SPEAKER_01 34:23

I'm sure. I'm sure. Yeah. And it was an angel food, I think. I think it was, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:28

So angel food cake seems to be the big one that was made a lot. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:34

And they made them eggs. They made them. You had to have a dozen eggs to make an angel food cake and stir it by hand. A wire whip. Wire whip. My mother made them all the time. My older sister made them. I don't make them.

unknown 34:48

I don't.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

I miss the mix. I never made them.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

But yeah, Marlin always made the home.

unknown 34:54

Oh mean.

SPEAKER_04 34:55

So what were summers like as a kid? Was it more work? Was it a lot of help with the gardening?

SPEAKER_01 35:02

We had to go and help weed the garden.

unknown 35:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

And I remember we had to uh kill the uh spray the butcher chickens in the yeah, and the potatoes. You always got potato bugs. Oh, and mom had a poison mixed up with water, and then we had to take these weeds with big leaves and then dip them in that and then shake them over the potato plants to kill the did it work? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:30

Do you remember what was in it?

SPEAKER_01 35:32

I don't. It had a name, but I can't think of what it was.

SPEAKER_02 35:35

What's the name of it? It's kind of white. It was bug poison. And it killed those bugs on the on the potatoes.

SPEAKER_05 35:44

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 35:45

Yeah. The one thing I always Jerry Reichert left me some, that was my niece's husband, left me some grapes the other day, and he said, be sure and boil them before you eat them. We told when uh our oldest brother and sister, Phil and Marlon, were, Phil was about six and Marlon too, I think, they got infantile paralysis, which is the same as polio. And uh they anyway, they were very sick, and I the doctor had them uh had mom give them something called melons food that was a powder that you mixed with water, I guess. And melon food's food is what they Melon's food. Melon's food.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

And he said, do not let them have any fresh fruit unless it's peeled or or boiled. And uh then there was another boy in St. LeBute that had this polio at the same time, and he was better, so he walked to the grocery store and bought some grapes. And on the way home, he ate them, and then he got had a relapse and ended up passing away. So we never this other boy did from eating from raw because there was poison, you know, spray on that, and the doctor said you can't wash it off, you have to boil them or peel, boil or peel. So if anybody brought us grapes, mom would boil them.

SPEAKER_02 37:16

I hate it. I said, I don't like just eating fruit cocktail because it reminds me of those boiled grapes.

SPEAKER_04 37:24

I bet it does. Yeah, a little PTSD from some of that stuff. Like, you know.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

And they thought that they got it from being they had gone swimming in an old pond. And so we thought the stagnant water is where how they got it. And so we never got to go swimming, never knew.

SPEAKER_04 37:45

Really?

SPEAKER_01 37:45

No, because the water might be because a potential yeah, right.

SPEAKER_04 37:52

Were you said that it was the older two that had polio? Yeah. Did they just stay home and get better? Did they have to go somewhere? Did they have to be quarantined or anything like that?

SPEAKER_02 38:04

No, there was no other children in the hall in our folks' house. They only had the two children. So and uh they went to this Dr. Lyons, but I don't think they ever stayed in the hospital.

SPEAKER_01 38:18

I don't think so either. They didn't have to be quarantined, so it's okay.

SPEAKER_04 38:22

That's interesting. Growing up, did you guys play any organize sports when you were in high school? Because they would have had girls' sports for you guys, and it was it ended for a little while, and picked it up again.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

Now what uh sports sports. We knew they had basketball when I was in high school, didn't they? Yes, yes, and it was did you play football?

SPEAKER_02 38:45

I played basketball, yeah. And then they had to wear a uniform with a skirt on it.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

It couldn't be in shorts, and it was half court, there were three guards and three three forwards, and so you were only went to the half line.

SPEAKER_04 39:06

Yeah, okay. Norma said something about this, and as I got to thinking about it, I was like, I should have asked more. So you didn't go past the half-court line. No, you were. I'm like, isn't that dodgeball? Like, what were the rules then?

SPEAKER_01 39:22

If you couldn't guard and you couldn't you could bounce the dribbling was only two bounces, is all you could dribble. Two two dribbles. And and you would try to keep the forward from making a basket. The forwards were the only ones that shot. And uh they would just shoot, you know, till they made a basket, and then it would go back to the other side, or else somebody would get it and throw it.

SPEAKER_04 39:46

Where was the basket located? Was it each end? It was on each end, but yeah, you could pass that.

SPEAKER_01 39:52

Yeah, the our forwards were on the other end, so if you got the basket, you threw it. You got the ball, you threw it to them.

SPEAKER_04 39:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

That's so different.

SPEAKER_04 40:01

So you could I don't even know that we can call that basketball or how it's played now. You know, it's so different.

SPEAKER_02 40:07

Well, different girls weren't supposed to run that much, right?

SPEAKER_04 40:11

Or be physical, yeah, yeah, right?

SPEAKER_02 40:14

So be so active, you know.

SPEAKER_04 40:16

Yeah. So was there was there cheerleading at that time too, or did we not have cheerleading on other days? So there was basketball, there was cheerleading.

SPEAKER_02 40:25

Yeah. Rella was a cheerleader. Yeah, okay. All four years.

SPEAKER_04 40:31

Yeah. What else was there for what could you do track?

SPEAKER_01 40:36

No, just fired, I guess. You know, there weren't any other sports.

SPEAKER_02 40:40

Oh, when I was in grade school, they used to have what they called a play day. And we'd come up to beach and so they had that back.

SPEAKER_04 40:49

And it was like schools against each other, right? Or no, no, no, it was just you just participated in everything. Okay, so it wasn't like a set of view versus being.

SPEAKER_02 40:59

No, it wasn't teens or anything. No.

SPEAKER_04 41:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 41:02

And you have to you could sign up and participate in anything. I know I would do broad jumping.

SPEAKER_04 41:08

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:09

Because um, I was a jumper. I jumped a lot.

SPEAKER_04 41:13

So and you still had skirts then, right? Like you couldn't wear pants yet?

SPEAKER_02 41:18

You know, I think we could wear pants. Yeah, we did. We we had slacks then. In high school, we could in high school. Well, I think in the break, we could wear jeans. When this was in the later grades, and we wore jeans out to the farm, yeah, out at the country schools.

SPEAKER_04 41:32

But for the play day, we could wear pants and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 41:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 41:36

Yeah, I don't ever remember that we didn't. Any vacations that you guys took when you were little?

SPEAKER_01 41:44

Any vacations? We never went on a vacation. No. The most we ever did was go to Fourth of July. We usually went, uh, but all the neighborhood would get together for a picnic and go to the Medora. Yeah, or to Medora.

SPEAKER_04 42:02

A lot more community events back then that people really looked forward to when it was a big thing.

SPEAKER_02 42:08

Or we'd have a picnic at in some grove of trees. See, my mother was from Minnesota and she really missed the trees.

SPEAKER_04 42:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:18

I don't know how many trees she planted, and they never would grow. Well, of course, we had to all haul a pail of water to them, and that's true.

SPEAKER_04 42:26

That's true. And it was we have a lot of videos that um my they're from the raw side of when my dad was little and well before my dad was even born. And it's all these families getting together, like you said, middle of nowhere, and they were for picnics, and that's what they did all the time. We had so many of these old videos. I'm like, who had the video? Who was making the video? But um, they're really fascinating. That's the one thing I'm like, wow, people really did get together. Got together a lot, and you could tell it's tons of families because it's tons of men sitting together, smoking their cigarettes, all the women, and the tables laid out with the food, and the kids running around playing, and you just don't see that much anymore. But I love that there was such a good community presence of people to get together, and it really looked forward to that because it probably didn't happen, but maybe on Sundays, I wouldn't.

SPEAKER_02 43:31

I don't remember what day it ever was on, but no.

SPEAKER_01 43:36

And we might have on Sundays, it might have been on Sunday, yeah, for picnics.

SPEAKER_04 43:40

The day of rest, yeah, quite as much, maybe. Yeah, I don't know, and there wasn't dates on those videos back then, you know, so I don't know as to like what day it is, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:52

The one time I know you mentioned that we went to Shorts Ranch, wasn't it? In with Matt Brown driving the truck and we All rode in the road in the back of a truck.

SPEAKER_04 44:02

Oh fun. I mean we're gonna run that now, but yeah, it was it was fun. Yeah. Did you well nope that probably did well? Maybe you guys did behind horses, but like sledding in the winter. Did you do some sledding, maybe pulled by horses? Because I mean, obviously, when I was little, I remember getting pulled. We didn't have pickups, you know, and we did once in a while.

SPEAKER_02 44:26

Our brother Rex would pull us on the sled with the horse.

SPEAKER_04 44:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 44:31

But just a single horse and a s and a little sled.

SPEAKER_04 44:36

Like a little tobacco? Was it more of the old school tobacco?

SPEAKER_01 44:40

The old sleds with the metal. With the metal. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:44

And we did a lot of sled riding.

SPEAKER_01 44:47

Take them to the top of the hill and ride down. In the summertime, we had an old, we always called it a buggy. There was the only thing left was just the four wheels and the frame.

SPEAKER_04 45:00

Really? That was all that was left.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

Yeah, but it was a regular buggy when we it had a tongue on it. We'd pull it to the top of the hill, and then we'd sit on the wooden axles, I guess, or whatever. Just imagine how dangerous that was. Right. Somebody would hold the tongue to kind of steer it, and we'd ride down and pull it back up again.

SPEAKER_04 45:22

That was so much fun.

SPEAKER_02 45:23

Oh, it was a lot of fun. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:25

Yeah. Yeah. But you found things to entertain yourself and to have fun.

SPEAKER_02 45:28

Yeah. And then we had uh cousins that lived in Minnesota, Harold and Evelyn Cook, and they had twin boys. And when they came, they wanted to climb buttes. And that's all we did. The whole two weeks they were there, we climbed buttes.

SPEAKER_04 45:44

So we went over two weeks.

SPEAKER_02 45:48

Yes. And and of course, I'll never forget the boys' mother from Minnesota. She'd say, Now you be careful of snakes. You be careful. She was scared to death of snakes.

SPEAKER_01 45:59

She would have a fit when she'd see them at the top of the butte. Because we've climbed these clay buttes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:05

Well, we had a lot of buttes around, and then we'd go over to our uncle where they were visiting, and they really had a lot of buttes. And then there was away from their buildings. Do you remember the buttes there? That was the giant table and chair. And it was, it was just, yeah, we had like a table, and there were two chairs to sit. There was actual stools sitting?

SPEAKER_04 46:32

Well, they were beats rocks. Yeah, rocks. But it looked like it was just made for just sitting in it.

SPEAKER_01 46:37

It was just, you know, made the nation.

SPEAKER_02 46:40

But yeah, we called it the giant table and chair.

SPEAKER_01 46:43

We played there a lot, but we had to walk through one whole pasture. Yes, we had to walk a long way.

SPEAKER_02 46:53

I can't remember of ever being tired of walking. We walked all over the place.

SPEAKER_04 47:01

How did you? I'm just seeing this. How did you stay warm in the winter? What were some of the things that was it warming potatoes and in the bottom of the bed? Or how did you all stay? Or even on trips into town, did you not take many trips into town in the winter?

SPEAKER_02 47:20

Or we would go to Pelantons a lot in the wintertime for a party. Do you remember that?

SPEAKER_01 47:27

I remember going there, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:29

And we'd go in the team and buggy, and mom would heat up bricks.

SPEAKER_04 47:35

Was it bricks? Okay.

SPEAKER_02 47:37

Bricks. And and wrap them, and then we kept our feet warm.

SPEAKER_01 47:40

And she once, I suppose, when it was really cold, once in a while, she'd warm those up, the bricks up and wrap them in a towel and put them at the foot of the bed. Yeah. When we went to the bed, always felt so good.

SPEAKER_04 47:53

Lots of did she make a lot of quilts? Did she always have a lot of quilts?

SPEAKER_02 47:57

We had we had them, but I don't know that she made. When we went in the buggy, we always had a lot of blankets with us. I remember it would be off cold.

SPEAKER_04 48:12

Yeah. And I the house wasn't?

SPEAKER_02 48:14

Pardon?

SPEAKER_04 48:15

The house wasn't?

SPEAKER_01 48:16

Well, I remember meeting it. I'm sure it was, but I we had this pot-bellied stove and we'd pull our chairs up around that stove and put our feet up there. Well, yeah. Yeah. And I said I remember, you know, they had probably no insulation. And I remember mom taking old underwear, old men's underwear, and poking it with the knife in around the windows when they when the wind would come blowing through.

SPEAKER_02 48:45

And yeah.

SPEAKER_04 48:46

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 48:47

She'd take rags and poke them around the window. Interesting.

SPEAKER_04 48:54

How old were you both when you started working? Like what was your first job? How old were you? Or did you not work until you left after like after you graduated? Maybe your job was helping at the house.

SPEAKER_02 49:09

Well, I uh my oldest brother Phil lived in Glendive, and I went to Glendive and worked at uh Woolworths. First I I got a job at the Dairy Queen, and then this was like in 1952, maybe 50, maybe the winter of 51, because I graduated in 51. And uh I got a job at Dairy Queen. Then in the October, late October, it closed for the winter because they served everything outside, you know, through a window. So then I got a job at Woolworths for the rest of the year. And so I liked that, and then I didn't want to go back to the Dairy Queen because they wanted me back. But when I was working there, the lady that ran the Dairy Queen got the mumps. And her husband came down to Woolworths and asked if I would come and help him out because she was Was that the Dairy Queen and Beach?

SPEAKER_01 50:18

The Dairy Queen and Beach or in Glendive?

SPEAKER_02 50:20

In Glendive. And so I would work at Woolworths till six o'clock, and then I'd go to the Dairy Queen and work till nine o'clock.

SPEAKER_04 50:28

So you had a full day.

SPEAKER_02 50:30

Was I ever tired when the day ended?

SPEAKER_04 50:33

And so that was right after you graduated.

SPEAKER_02 50:35

That was after I graduated. And then I uh I worked there for a long time at Woolworths. And I had to decorate the windows. Can you believe that? I had never heard of such a thing in my life. And then that was what I had to do, and I never forget I was decorating the window. And Joy Carlson and Jim Brown and another boy that were in high school in Sentinel Butte skipped school and came and they sat there and watched me decorate that.

SPEAKER_01 51:16

How about you, Roll? I didn't have any jobs while I was in high school. I remember the eighth grade. I uh my sister Marlon, her husband lived up around SquawgApp, and they worked for a lady who was a widow. And she was going to build a new house, and she had three little kids. Marlon and Jim lived in another house on the place. And so she wanted someone to come and help her with the housework and watch the kids while the house was being built because she had all these carpenters to cook for. So I spent the summer that was right before I started high school. And then I had enough money to buy clothes for school.

SPEAKER_04 52:00

And then in school, while you were in high school, you didn't work. I didn't know just helped out at the house and like helping the parents and things like that. So after high school, did you guys go to college?

SPEAKER_02 52:15

I I went one summer.

SPEAKER_04 52:16

One summer.

SPEAKER_02 52:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 52:18

Where did you go?

SPEAKER_02 52:19

Dickinson.

SPEAKER_04 52:20

Dickinson. And what did you what did you study for? Or were you like, I didn't know what I was doing?

SPEAKER_02 52:25

So just I was going well, I was going to teach, and I did teach for one term, and that was all. I didn't really care for that.

unknown 52:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 52:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:35

Um I worked right out of high school at the FSA office or ASC then. And then and the uh soil conservation office. When they finished it, they we had a certain project at the ASC office. And when that was finished, then I worked for the soil conservation. And then I was married in September of that year after I was out of high school. And we lived in Glive and I worked at a bank up there. And then we moved back to the farm and lived there until about four years, and then we both went to college in Dickinson.

SPEAKER_04 53:16

And then you both went to college.

SPEAKER_01 53:17

Yeah. We had the two girls.

SPEAKER_04 53:19

Okay. What did you study?

SPEAKER_01 53:22

Teaching.

SPEAKER_04 53:22

Teaching.

SPEAKER_01 53:23

And we both taught, or we both went for two years for the two-year teaching and then went back every summer to finish. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 53:34

Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Simple Lives We Live. I hope this story reminded you that everyday life holds beauty, meaning, and lessons worth sharing. If you enjoyed this conversation, please take a moment to follow the podcast and leave a review. It helps more people discover these stories. Do you know someone with a story worth telling? Reach out and let me know. I'd love to hear from you. You can connect with me on Instagram at the Simple Lives We Live. Until next time, may you find joy in the ordinary moments and gratitude in the Simple Lives We Live.