The Simple Lives We Live
Some of the most extraordinary stories don't come from celebrities or history books. They come from everyday people - your neighbor, your grandmother, the man who runs the corner store, or the woman sitting next to you at church.
On The Simple Lives We Live, we sit down with ordinary people to uncover the beautiful, hard, faithful, and fleeting moments that shaped their lives. Stories of love and loss. Of grit and grace. Of family, faith, and the simple days we didn't know we'd one day miss.
So please join me each week as we capture voices and memories that deserve to be heard and remembered. Because the truth is, ordinary people live the most extraordinary lives.
The Simple Lives We Live
Merdythe "Mert" Popiel & Rella Abernethy - Part 1
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In today's episode, I interview sisters Rella Abernethy (born 1937) and Merdythe “Mert” Popiel (born 1933), ages 88 and 92, about their childhood near Sentinel Butte, North Dakota. They share memories of their parents - a quiet farmer-rancher father and a talkative mother - and even a favorite joke their dad loved to tell. They describe country schooling at Westerheim, small class sizes, and life without electricity, running water, or early tractors. Chores included hauling water and coal, gathering eggs, gardening, and bringing in the milk cow. They recall simple entertainment: reading by kerosene lamp, playing card games, and listening to battery-powered radio programs. They also share Christmas traditions - oyster soup, stockings, homemade gifts, and community picnics. The sisters reflect on polio affecting older siblings, girls’ half-court basketball rules, early jobs, brief experiences with college and teaching, and eventually marriage and later work.
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_04Welcome 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_011937 for me and 1933.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_04Where were you guys born and raised?
SPEAKER_02I was born in Sentinel Butte in Hess's uh grocery store upstairs.
SPEAKER_04So not the hospital.
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_02Because the midwife lived there.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_02And 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_04That's okay.
SPEAKER_02Uh the midwife was Marie Hiss.
SPEAKER_04But you remember that.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_04How about you, Relative?
SPEAKER_01And 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_00Ellie Tristine. And my rella was after a neighbor lady.
SPEAKER_04So see, back then it wasn't going to a hospital still, right? It was your home, midwife.
SPEAKER_02Interesting. And I went into town with my mother when Rella was born. I went along with.
SPEAKER_04You went along with. Now, how many siblings? I want you guys to say their names in what order. So you can.
SPEAKER_01I have their birth years too.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_02You want to go ahead? Well, uh there was three boys and three girls.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so six six altogether, okay.
SPEAKER_02And Phil is the oldest, and then my sister Marlon and Rex, and then me, then Rella, and Jo.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Is everybody still with us today? No. Who has passed away?
SPEAKER_01All of the rest. Just us two.
SPEAKER_04You guys are the only two left. Oh, I'm really glad that we're getting this. Wow. Okay. So who were your parents?
SPEAKER_01Taylor and Evelyn Cook. Dad's name was Philip Taylor.
SPEAKER_04Philip Taylor, but everybody called him Taylor? ever till popular. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And 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_04Okay, okay. Talk to me about what they were thinking, your parents.
SPEAKER_02My mother was very talkative, and my dad was very quiet.
SPEAKER_01I had the same thing written down.
SPEAKER_04Give me some memory. Do you have any specific memories of them?
SPEAKER_02My mother was great for telling jokes.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_02And my dad hardly ever told a joke, but he had one that he always told.
SPEAKER_04Do you remember it?
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_04Okay, give it to us. Do you want me to? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02In 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_04Oh, 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_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04How 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_01I 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_04So was your dad farmer rancher? Is that what he did? Okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, 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_02No, they all tractors or nothing.
SPEAKER_04They they traveled by horse.
SPEAKER_01Uh 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_02There were people that had them at the time, but he did get a tractor when I was in high school.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, 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_01Yeah, 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_04So 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_02Oh 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_04Where did you go after that?
SPEAKER_02Back to Westerheim. Okay, and my mother was the teacher in my seventh and eighth grade.
SPEAKER_04Okay, talk to me about this place.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I've never heard it.
SPEAKER_02It's 20 miles north of Sentinel Butte.
unknownNorth of Sentinel.
SPEAKER_02And 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_04Okay. So you went to school, so they had a school.
SPEAKER_02And then they had school a mile away from the store to the east.
SPEAKER_04Did 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_02Sentinel Butte.
SPEAKER_04And there were no buses, so somebody had to tell you. Oh no, no. So did you get there?
SPEAKER_02Well, we just by then we had a car.
SPEAKER_04Oh, by then you had a car, okay.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, but just the Model A when Yeah, it was the Model A.
SPEAKER_02Right. 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_01Okay. 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_04And 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_02I had there was two of us in the first grade. Okay.
SPEAKER_01And how about there were two of us, Deanna Brown and I.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01I 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_04Yeah. 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_02I had the big I graduated with the biggest class that ever graduated from St. Loubi.
SPEAKER_04And how many was that?
SPEAKER_0218.
SPEAKER_04That'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_02I 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_01But otherwise, I don't know. Yeah, I there were I have to stop say eight or nine and eight in our class.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01And 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_04So 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_01I 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.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04So did you was that somebody's chore to go get the water?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Was it usually one of the boys? Or did it change?
SPEAKER_02See, 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_01Yeah. 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_02And that was so cold. It was amazing how cold that was.
SPEAKER_04Electricity. It's so different from now. You know, we would never know how to make anything cold without it.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04Going back to school, are there any particular teachers other than your mom that you guys can remember about that you had?
SPEAKER_01I 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_04Did she continue to teach or was she done after that?
SPEAKER_01She taught some after that.
SPEAKER_02I 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_04Are you still pretty dominant with your left?
SPEAKER_02Like more than I do a lot of things with my left hand.
SPEAKER_04Interesting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Was it big for them to always want some, always want kids to write with their right hand?
SPEAKER_02I guess so. There was another girl in the school too that was left-handed and she wrote bottom side up.
unknownOh.
SPEAKER_02And never she never did change her.
SPEAKER_04Right? When it smeared.
SPEAKER_02Oh 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_04Interesting. 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_01I don't know.
SPEAKER_02I think it was being with the other kids because we never you know went any place.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Otherwise we were just at home.
SPEAKER_01It 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_04And 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_02My name is Murder.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_02And 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_04So 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_02Well, Rex was always Bud.
SPEAKER_04What was that?
SPEAKER_02I don't know.
SPEAKER_04Because Rex is a pretty easy name.
SPEAKER_02If 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_01When 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_02The cooks made had nicknames for everybody.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02That was kind of their thing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Because it wasn't even like middle names, it really was just nicknames. No, it was just a nickname.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, with dad's sisters, there was an Aunt Mary, and she was always Aunt Minty. Yeah. And Aunt Frances was Fanny.
SPEAKER_05Oh cute.
SPEAKER_01And Minty? And that's what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_02I 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_01We 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_02We 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.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, always dishes. You didn't have a dishwasher. And then you had to go and get water.
SPEAKER_02You 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_05That was a lot of clothes.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Did 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_01There was a cellar under the house, yeah, and they would put potatoes and canned things down there.
SPEAKER_02Potatoes and canned stuff was in the cellar.
SPEAKER_04In 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_01We didn't, I don't think we saved anything at all. I know they put uh melons in the oat bin.
SPEAKER_02You know, to to ripen and for the winter.
SPEAKER_01Okay, 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_02We 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_04Yeah, especially if that's how you've always we always had that, yeah. So you always had milk then.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah, we always had milk and butter cows? We had to make butter, we just had one milk cow.
SPEAKER_01Just 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.
unknownGet her at night.
SPEAKER_02Yes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04We're so spoiled now. Like we just don't know. You just don't think that you guys want to.
SPEAKER_02And 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_04Why was it super easy? Was it that hard?
SPEAKER_02Oh, 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_01I had to ride the rake.
SPEAKER_04What 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_02Well, 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_04So a lot of wind.
SPEAKER_01So 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.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01I've never heard of any of the games. No, and I don't see any of them.
SPEAKER_02You had to have a certain special card for each of those. They were each a game.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_02But they were cards.
SPEAKER_01And 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_04Are those songs?
SPEAKER_02No, they were programs. They were programs.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_02Henry, 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_04What were Sundays like? Like an ordinary day. Yeah. We still worked. Did you did you go to church on Sunday?
SPEAKER_01Wasn't there a church? No, we'd have to go clear into Sentinel Butte. So we never went up to town.
SPEAKER_02In 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_04So what brought him to North Dakota?
SPEAKER_02His dad came to North Dakota with horses and he worked on the railroad down. And then he sold teams to the make the railroad.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_02And then he had to work on the railroad and show them how to use these teams.
SPEAKER_04So born the horses that kind of happened up here.
SPEAKER_02Well he broke the horses.
SPEAKER_01I 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_04So 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.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01And we always went to church on Easter Sunday. On Easter Sunday, we always went to church, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Did your dad go on Easter Sunday or did he stay home?
SPEAKER_01I 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_04Yeah. 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_01We 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_02We 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_04Three rooms. Small rooms.
SPEAKER_01Small rooms. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So one for your parents, one for girls, one for boys, or how did you make it?
SPEAKER_01Oh no, three three rooms.
SPEAKER_04Oh, just kitchen, just three rooms.
SPEAKER_01One bedroom. One bedroom. Just our parents.
SPEAKER_02And 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_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And then you unfolded, and that's what we slept on in the living room. And our brothers slept on the floor.
SPEAKER_04In 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_01And 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.
unknownOh, interesting.
SPEAKER_04And so, yeah, where would you put a tree?
unknownWhat?
SPEAKER_04Where would you put a Christmas tree?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, where do you put a Christmas tree? We had it. I know we had it.
SPEAKER_04What did you use to decorate it?
SPEAKER_02Was 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_04Okay. 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_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Do you remember that? No, I don't ever remember that.
SPEAKER_01We always had a tree at school too.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we did at the school.
SPEAKER_01And they would we would make you know paper changes.
SPEAKER_02We made kind of those lanterns. Yeah. We folded paper and cut strips, and they would be a lantern about that high.
SPEAKER_04Um, do you remember Christmas Eve, Christmas Day? Did you always tend to celebrate it one day more than the other?
SPEAKER_01We 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_02And 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_04Christmas 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_01No. We always hung our stockings. It would be just a brown stocking.
SPEAKER_02A brown stocking we hung up behind the heater on the wall.
SPEAKER_04Did it did you actually get stuff in the stocking?
SPEAKER_01Always a lot of peanuts and candy and nuts and an orange or an apple.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01And um I said I couldn't remember much for gifts, but I I remember after you mentioned it.
SPEAKER_02Uh one year my mother made a table and chair for Rel and I. A table and two chairs.
SPEAKER_04Like a small table or an actual size table?
SPEAKER_02Well, one that we got. Just a little for little kids, you know. Now, where did we put that table?
SPEAKER_04How did she make it?
SPEAKER_02Well 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_04Had you had a doll up until then? I think I had a doll. And I remember one.
SPEAKER_01My last one was one that had magic skin, felt like real skin.
SPEAKER_04Oh, really? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. 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_04So was ice skating day when you guys were little to go out and ice skate skating in the winter. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Did you have like a pond nearby?
SPEAKER_02Not nearby. No, we had to walk a little ways.
SPEAKER_04We did.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And it wasn't visible from the house.
SPEAKER_04It's kind of scary. If you think about it, like an eye on you or whatever.
SPEAKER_02And I said by the time we walked over there, we were already cold. And then the ice would be covered with snow.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02By the time we got that scraped off, we were and we didn't we put the skates on at the dam.
SPEAKER_04So you'd wear boots. Did you have boots? Galashes.
SPEAKER_01We had overshoes. Rubber overshoes overshadows. Overshoes. You had overshoes.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the buckles.
SPEAKER_04The buckle. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Oh, one time we had them with zippers on them. Yeah. Oh, that was that was really uptone.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04Well, how about birthdays? Did you guys do anything?
SPEAKER_01Were 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_02Yeah, you weren't in school.
SPEAKER_01But 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_04Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I carried that up to the house.
SPEAKER_04You didn't drop it.
SPEAKER_02Mom 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_01Oh glass cake.
SPEAKER_04Is that probably one of your favorite birthday cakes that you have?
SPEAKER_01I'm sure. I'm sure. Yeah. And it was an angel food, I think. I think it was, yeah.
SPEAKER_04So angel food cake seems to be the big one that was made a lot. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And 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.
unknownI don't.
SPEAKER_02I miss the mix. I never made them.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, Marlin always made the home.
unknownOh mean.
SPEAKER_04So what were summers like as a kid? Was it more work? Was it a lot of help with the gardening?
SPEAKER_01We had to go and help weed the garden.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01And 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_04Do you remember what was in it?
SPEAKER_01I don't. It had a name, but I can't think of what it was.
SPEAKER_02What'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_05Interesting.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. 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_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01And 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_02I hate it. I said, I don't like just eating fruit cocktail because it reminds me of those boiled grapes.
SPEAKER_04I bet it does. Yeah, a little PTSD from some of that stuff. Like, you know.
SPEAKER_01And 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_04Really?
SPEAKER_01No, because the water might be because a potential yeah, right.
SPEAKER_04Were 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_02No, 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_01I don't think so either. They didn't have to be quarantined, so it's okay.
SPEAKER_04That'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_01Now 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_02I played basketball, yeah. And then they had to wear a uniform with a skirt on it.
SPEAKER_01It 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_04Yeah, 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_01If 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_04Where was the basket located? Was it each end? It was on each end, but yeah, you could pass that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, 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_04Okay.
SPEAKER_01That's so different.
SPEAKER_04So 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_02Well, different girls weren't supposed to run that much, right?
SPEAKER_04Or be physical, yeah, yeah, right?
SPEAKER_02So be so active, you know.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. 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_02Yeah. Rella was a cheerleader. Yeah, okay. All four years.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. What else was there for what could you do track?
SPEAKER_01No, just fired, I guess. You know, there weren't any other sports.
SPEAKER_02Oh, 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_04And 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_02No, it wasn't teens or anything. No.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_02And you have to you could sign up and participate in anything. I know I would do broad jumping.
SPEAKER_04Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because um, I was a jumper. I jumped a lot.
SPEAKER_04So and you still had skirts then, right? Like you couldn't wear pants yet?
SPEAKER_02You 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_04But for the play day, we could wear pants and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I don't ever remember that we didn't. Any vacations that you guys took when you were little?
SPEAKER_01Any 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_04A lot more community events back then that people really looked forward to when it was a big thing.
SPEAKER_02Or we'd have a picnic at in some grove of trees. See, my mother was from Minnesota and she really missed the trees.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I 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_04That'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_02I don't remember what day it ever was on, but no.
SPEAKER_01And we might have on Sundays, it might have been on Sunday, yeah, for picnics.
SPEAKER_04The 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_01The 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_04Oh 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_02Our brother Rex would pull us on the sled with the horse.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_02But just a single horse and a s and a little sled.
SPEAKER_04Like a little tobacco? Was it more of the old school tobacco?
SPEAKER_01The old sleds with the metal. With the metal. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And we did a lot of sled riding.
SPEAKER_01Take 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_04Really? That was all that was left.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, 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_04That was so much fun.
SPEAKER_02Oh, it was a lot of fun. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah. But you found things to entertain yourself and to have fun.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. 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_04So we went over two weeks.
SPEAKER_02Yes. 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_01She would have a fit when she'd see them at the top of the butte. Because we've climbed these clay buttes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, 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_04Well, they were beats rocks. Yeah, rocks. But it looked like it was just made for just sitting in it.
SPEAKER_01It was just, you know, made the nation.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, we called it the giant table and chair.
SPEAKER_01We played there a lot, but we had to walk through one whole pasture. Yes, we had to walk a long way.
SPEAKER_02I can't remember of ever being tired of walking. We walked all over the place.
SPEAKER_04How 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_02Or we would go to Pelantons a lot in the wintertime for a party. Do you remember that?
SPEAKER_01I remember going there, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And we'd go in the team and buggy, and mom would heat up bricks.
SPEAKER_04Was it bricks? Okay.
SPEAKER_02Bricks. And and wrap them, and then we kept our feet warm.
SPEAKER_01And 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_04Lots of did she make a lot of quilts? Did she always have a lot of quilts?
SPEAKER_02We 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_04Yeah. And I the house wasn't?
SPEAKER_02Pardon?
SPEAKER_04The house wasn't?
SPEAKER_01Well, 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_02And yeah.
SPEAKER_04Oh my god.
SPEAKER_02She'd take rags and poke them around the window. Interesting.
SPEAKER_04How 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_02Well, 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_01The Dairy Queen and Beach or in Glendive?
SPEAKER_02In 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_04So you had a full day.
SPEAKER_02Was I ever tired when the day ended?
SPEAKER_04And so that was right after you graduated.
SPEAKER_02That 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_01How 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_04And 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_02I I went one summer.
SPEAKER_04One summer.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_04Where did you go?
SPEAKER_02Dickinson.
SPEAKER_04Dickinson. And what did you what did you study for? Or were you like, I didn't know what I was doing?
SPEAKER_02So 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.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um 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_04And then you both went to college.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. We had the two girls.
SPEAKER_04Okay. What did you study?
SPEAKER_01Teaching.
SPEAKER_04Teaching.
SPEAKER_01And 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_03Thank 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.