Mellette County, South Dakota
Family Histories & Biographies - Anderson Surname
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Anderson Surname
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Memories of Floyd Forrest Anderson
by Marilyn A. Shaw
(transcribed by RB, with permission from the Mellette County Historical Society, from "Mellette County 1911-1986" published by the Mellette County Historical Society)
Floyd Anderson came to Mellette County after World War I where he served in France with Arthur Siegmund, a childhood friend from the Gregory area and country school. (Following is a description of his arrival in Mellette County).
The winter of 1919-20 was a cruel one. Heard later the H & M was completely wiped out and that Mac was racking balls in a pool room. Mac had one weakness—he was lost as soon as he got out of sight of the house and always relied on a compass.
Alan and my sister Fern were in Gregory when I got back the latter part of October. They were sick of Mellette County and wanted to sell me their place.
Fay, Alan and 1 went out to look the place over and stopped at Alan's brother's place. George lived about two miles southeast of Alan. We arrived about dark on Halloween, and it was just beginning to spit snow. The next morning, snow was up to the bottom wire
on a three wire fence. That was the forerunner of a terrible winter. Since we couldn't get back by car, I caught a ride by team to White River, then rode to Winner with the mailman, Bert Humphrey. He had a stripped-down Model T and followed the ridges.
Since having decided to buy Alan's place, I had to start buying an outfit. Alan had some corn in the field that went with the deal. Dad and I attended most of the sales for several weeks. Finally accumulated the necessary items; four horses, two sets of harness and a triple box wagon. There were three banks in town and all of them were agreeable to loan me money. They lent me $2,000 just on my reputation. Prices were terribly high. Corn sold as high as $3.18 a bushel at one sale.
When the outfit was ready, loaded with machinery, coal and all my personal effects, I was ready to roll west. Horace Greeley once said, "Go west, young man, go west." I liked that advice but instead of heading into the setting sun, I really headed into snow banks.
It happened that I was loaded and ready to start out Thanksgiving Eve. The next day I said goodbye to old familiar places and the folks. I didn't realize when going over the hill, out of sight of the house, that it was the beginning of a new year for me. I did have a little
trouble talking my folks out of the idea of not having Thanksgiving dinner at home, instead of eating a cold sandwich on the wagon.
Making Colome the first night, I did have a hot meal but slept in the office of the livery barn. Made Wood the next day and arrived at White River about 1:00 p.m. the third day. After caring for the horses and having dinner, I bought some Lysol at the drugstore for
emergencies.
Was on the final lap about 2:30 p.m. It got dark fairly early and there was a hill on the north side of Cottonwood Creek about halfway to the place. Known as the Frank Day Hill, the steepest part of the hill angled to the northwest and it had nearly three feet of snow in the cut. The horses got down and broke the tongue out of the wagon. I had to give up the idea of getting the load any further.
Uncle Frank had given me a collie dog. Jack, about a year old, and I was trailing two extra horses, old Queen and Prince. It was plenty dark by that time but the stars were out. Getting on old Queen bareback and tying Prince onto the four-horse team, we started northwest. Poor old Jack was lame and he had quite a time in the deep snow. I saw a light about two miles away and inquired the way to the Alan Jerred place. They advised me it was about three miles north.
When the team got down and I jumped off the wagon, the bottle of Lysol in my left pocket broke on the wagon tire. I was wearing my old army trench coat. It had a heavy wool lining which absorbed and held the Lysol. My thigh began to smart and that evening I knew why. There was a big red round spot nearly five inches across, bright as a strawberry and really smarting. Got over it in about four weeks but carried a scar for years..
Old man Webb was still up when I reached his place, where the horses got their fill of water. The place was about one-fourth mile east of Webb's. After putting the six horses to bed, I went back to Webb's for supper and the night. I did have to hang my trench coat and trousers out in the air. If Webb had any varmints in his shack that evening they should have expired by morning. Lysol mixed 20 to 1 is a strong disinfectant and this was the pure guill.
The next morning, Webb got some material together, and I fed and harnessed my four-horse team. We trailed them back to his wagon and drove down to my broken-down outfit, six or seven miles. After shoveling many tons of snow, we got the tongue repaired and the load on the trail again. Got to the place about 5:00 p.m., where my housekeeping started in earnest.
Nolan Stetzer, from Trenton, New Jersey, and I had become good friends in France. His girlfriend had died when we were in the service, so to get away from things, he decided to come West and winter with me. He arrived about a week after I got there. His dad had been warden of the New Jersey State Pen and was killed by a convict trying to escape. The con's name was Diamond Jack.
We had a nice time that winter attending country dances, hauling wood and hay and picking corn.
Charles Shouldis, who lived about two and one-half miles southwest, maintained the community post office. One night we were heading home with a load of hay. Nolan wanted to get the mail, as we had a saddle horse with us. We were about a mile due east of the Shouldis place so I told Nolan to look at the country and pick out a spot on the ridge to the west and ride toward it. 1 knew when he got there he would be able to see the Shouldis light. About half an hour later, I saw a horse's head show up on the ridge. Sure enough it was Nolan, so lost he didn't know which way was up and he never did find the Shouldis place. He was tickled to see that hayrack, and rightfully so, as he would have been somewhat chilled staying out all night, which could easily have been the case.
Our car was at Gregory and we didn't get it for the first year, as we couldn't buy gas anyway. We always went horseback. We did make a slick sled, though. We put a tongue on a stone boat and the back seats of two Model T Fords, facing each other. Glenn Pepper,
Nolan and I drove to dances in style and there was no dearth of snow. Nolan stayed with me until late spring. He wrote to me about 15 years ago and he was still living in New Jersey.
Webb sold his little belongings to me—horses, harness and wagon, and left the country. Warren Atkinson bought his hay. He and his wife, Ruth, moved into the Webb shack. Warren had some cows and brought some of his mother's cows out to winter. They came from Gregory. I had known Warren for more than ten years. The poor chap thought he was a rancher and all he had to do was hunt coyotes and the cows would take care of themselves. This was not the case with the kind of cows he had, as they were Red Poll cows; the kind that stood around on the manure pile until someone let them in the barn and fed them. One day toward spring. Warren came over to my
house. The poor chap was crying. He said his cows were dying like flies and wanted me to come down. It was a pitiful sight. Seven or eight cows were down and never did get up. Out of the forty cows, seven or eight survived. The family moved in the spring and that was the last time anyone ever lived in the Webb house.
The chinook winds came in January and nearly all the snow inched. People began to be more cheerful. In March, the snowstorms hit again and it was really rough. The Montana ranchers who were wintering in Mellette County began to fold. There were ricks of cattle bones as big as hay stacks. Some outfits lost every head of cattle and sold the horses and outfits. They were completely broke.
Stan Callan had come down from Custer with 500 head. He told me about the train pulling into Okaton where he unloaded. There were no stockyards, hence no chutes, and they had to jump every head out of the stockcars, but the snow was deep enough to break the
fall. Also what a heck of a time he had trailing them the 25 miles south to feed them. On several occasions his cows might have eaten some contraband hay. Stan was an expert cow man and lost only one cow, a shorthair cow of a milking breed. Stan and I met that winter
and were good friends as long as he lived, although he became my brother-in-law six or seven years later. We went down to Cottonwood where Nolan and I were working some firewood out of a big tree. We heard a noise and looked up, and there sat Stan on old Colonel, who was the kind of horse that I imagined a U. S. Marshal would be riding and Stan looked like the other part of a U. S. Marshal. My problem was that it was: No. 1, illegal to cut green wood. No. 2. illegal to cut it on Indian land and No. 3, illegal to deal directly with the Indians.
Stan and I visited a few minutes and he asked me if we had seen any cattle but he didn't say "his" cattle, so I assumed he was working for the government. Several years later when we became acquainted, we discussed our first meeting. I told him how he scared the dickens out of me. He laughed and said I wasn't any more scared than he was, as the cattle he was inquiring about were his own.
Stan Callan's sister, Josephine Mary, came to teach in Mellette County. Roy and Myrtle King, parents of one of her students, introduced her to Floyd. They were married in White River with Stan Callan and a friend as witnesses. The first stop they made on their honeymoon was at Art Siegmund's gas station in Wood for gas.
They were both born and raised in South Dakota and both had taught school alter attending two years of college, Floyd at the University of South Dakota and Josephine at Spearfish Normal. Their close friends were Cleve and Jessie Berry, the Art Siegmunds, Bill
Starkjohanns and Bill Chamberlains.
I, Marilyn, was born in White River hospital in 1928 when Dr. Saladay was in White River. They brought me home to the "loggic" with the sod roof. After Stan married Zeola Walker, they built a basement house for the Anderson family and Aunt Zeola and Stan had the loggic, as the men were ranching together. I remember it being a very loving relationship. My brother Dean was born in Winner 16 months later, and in 1933 Mother left the ranch in July to move to Pierre to live with Dr. and Mrs. Salladay because she was sure there were twins on the way.
Those were hard years and I sensed a hidden fear and earnestness in our lives. The dust and the weariness seemed to be all around us.
On July 27, 1933, we—my father. Dean and I—had gone to town, and were on the corner of the Strouse Drug Store when someone congratulated my dad on his twin boys. They had been to Pierre and had the news, which we were unaware of. Such excitement. Mr. Strouse's cigar was really puffing!
In 1933, the Depression took its toll in our lives; the ranch business could no longer support two families. My father then took a job with the FSA (farmer's Security Administration) in White River. I was ready to start to school so we moved on the other side of White River on the Terpin place. I was picked up for school by neighbors (once or twice in a wagon on skis with a cover over it and a stove to keep us warm). After school, I waited in Dad's office. His office was the same room in the hospital where I was born. I remember visits from friends at the Terpin place—Rose Berry, Gallaghers, the Roy Kings and the Hutchinsons, who had the fox farm.
As children, my brothers and I entertained ourselves playing in the dry creek beds using the flakes of mud to build houses and arrowheads to make rows of trees.
After my father was transferred to Brookings, South Dakota, for the FSA, I wrote to him that I had measured the dead grasshoppers around the foundation of our house at eight inches one given day. Mother spent a great deal of her time reminding us to watch out for rattlers that would come near the house for moisture. Several times they got into our basement. The world seemed to have very little color—everything was gray.
Oswald Jarl was a special person in my life. He would bring me banty chickens and dine with us. (it always amazed me that he ate the bones of bullheads.)
We moved to Brookings in 1936 and lived there for six months. We were fascinated with electric lights and running water and spent hours in the bathtub. We later moved to Lincoln, Nebraska.
I must add that during all those years my father kept Mellette County license plates on his cars and seldom wore shoes other than cowboy boots. His heart and soul were always in "Mellette County" where we returned for Christmas and vacations with Uncle Stan
and Aunt Zeola.
My father had many friends who were native Americans. On each visit we would look up his favorite. Chief Running Bird. Once he found him in Belvidere and those two had a brief dance in front of Mr. Pier's bank. We thought Dad had "flipped."
We return (as children of Floyd and Josephine) for nostalgic visits and have taken the children to the ranch, Cedarbutte Store (they don't sell the same items there anymore) and to Skee and Jan Rasmussen's where I can still hear the laughter of Cleve and Dad as they
cleaned catfish after a night of seining on the river, or the tales they told of bobcat hunting. It seems that people were so important to one another. The Depression years bound them together and those bonds remain. I think the colorless earth drew our attention to faces and personalities for our color. We intend to come for the celebration.
The children of Floyd and Josephine Anderson
by Marilyn A. Shaw
(transcribed by RB, with permission from the Mellette County Historical Society, from "Mellette County 1911-1986" published by the Mellette County Historical Society)
Floyd Anderson came to Mellette County after World War I where he served in France with Arthur Siegmund, a childhood friend from the Gregory area and country school. (Following is a description of his arrival in Mellette County).
The winter of 1919-20 was a cruel one. Heard later the H & M was completely wiped out and that Mac was racking balls in a pool room. Mac had one weakness—he was lost as soon as he got out of sight of the house and always relied on a compass.
Alan and my sister Fern were in Gregory when I got back the latter part of October. They were sick of Mellette County and wanted to sell me their place.
Fay, Alan and 1 went out to look the place over and stopped at Alan's brother's place. George lived about two miles southeast of Alan. We arrived about dark on Halloween, and it was just beginning to spit snow. The next morning, snow was up to the bottom wire
on a three wire fence. That was the forerunner of a terrible winter. Since we couldn't get back by car, I caught a ride by team to White River, then rode to Winner with the mailman, Bert Humphrey. He had a stripped-down Model T and followed the ridges.
Since having decided to buy Alan's place, I had to start buying an outfit. Alan had some corn in the field that went with the deal. Dad and I attended most of the sales for several weeks. Finally accumulated the necessary items; four horses, two sets of harness and a triple box wagon. There were three banks in town and all of them were agreeable to loan me money. They lent me $2,000 just on my reputation. Prices were terribly high. Corn sold as high as $3.18 a bushel at one sale.
When the outfit was ready, loaded with machinery, coal and all my personal effects, I was ready to roll west. Horace Greeley once said, "Go west, young man, go west." I liked that advice but instead of heading into the setting sun, I really headed into snow banks.
It happened that I was loaded and ready to start out Thanksgiving Eve. The next day I said goodbye to old familiar places and the folks. I didn't realize when going over the hill, out of sight of the house, that it was the beginning of a new year for me. I did have a little
trouble talking my folks out of the idea of not having Thanksgiving dinner at home, instead of eating a cold sandwich on the wagon.
Making Colome the first night, I did have a hot meal but slept in the office of the livery barn. Made Wood the next day and arrived at White River about 1:00 p.m. the third day. After caring for the horses and having dinner, I bought some Lysol at the drugstore for
emergencies.
Was on the final lap about 2:30 p.m. It got dark fairly early and there was a hill on the north side of Cottonwood Creek about halfway to the place. Known as the Frank Day Hill, the steepest part of the hill angled to the northwest and it had nearly three feet of snow in the cut. The horses got down and broke the tongue out of the wagon. I had to give up the idea of getting the load any further.
Uncle Frank had given me a collie dog. Jack, about a year old, and I was trailing two extra horses, old Queen and Prince. It was plenty dark by that time but the stars were out. Getting on old Queen bareback and tying Prince onto the four-horse team, we started northwest. Poor old Jack was lame and he had quite a time in the deep snow. I saw a light about two miles away and inquired the way to the Alan Jerred place. They advised me it was about three miles north.
When the team got down and I jumped off the wagon, the bottle of Lysol in my left pocket broke on the wagon tire. I was wearing my old army trench coat. It had a heavy wool lining which absorbed and held the Lysol. My thigh began to smart and that evening I knew why. There was a big red round spot nearly five inches across, bright as a strawberry and really smarting. Got over it in about four weeks but carried a scar for years..
Old man Webb was still up when I reached his place, where the horses got their fill of water. The place was about one-fourth mile east of Webb's. After putting the six horses to bed, I went back to Webb's for supper and the night. I did have to hang my trench coat and trousers out in the air. If Webb had any varmints in his shack that evening they should have expired by morning. Lysol mixed 20 to 1 is a strong disinfectant and this was the pure guill.
The next morning, Webb got some material together, and I fed and harnessed my four-horse team. We trailed them back to his wagon and drove down to my broken-down outfit, six or seven miles. After shoveling many tons of snow, we got the tongue repaired and the load on the trail again. Got to the place about 5:00 p.m., where my housekeeping started in earnest.
Nolan Stetzer, from Trenton, New Jersey, and I had become good friends in France. His girlfriend had died when we were in the service, so to get away from things, he decided to come West and winter with me. He arrived about a week after I got there. His dad had been warden of the New Jersey State Pen and was killed by a convict trying to escape. The con's name was Diamond Jack.
We had a nice time that winter attending country dances, hauling wood and hay and picking corn.
Charles Shouldis, who lived about two and one-half miles southwest, maintained the community post office. One night we were heading home with a load of hay. Nolan wanted to get the mail, as we had a saddle horse with us. We were about a mile due east of the Shouldis place so I told Nolan to look at the country and pick out a spot on the ridge to the west and ride toward it. 1 knew when he got there he would be able to see the Shouldis light. About half an hour later, I saw a horse's head show up on the ridge. Sure enough it was Nolan, so lost he didn't know which way was up and he never did find the Shouldis place. He was tickled to see that hayrack, and rightfully so, as he would have been somewhat chilled staying out all night, which could easily have been the case.
Our car was at Gregory and we didn't get it for the first year, as we couldn't buy gas anyway. We always went horseback. We did make a slick sled, though. We put a tongue on a stone boat and the back seats of two Model T Fords, facing each other. Glenn Pepper,
Nolan and I drove to dances in style and there was no dearth of snow. Nolan stayed with me until late spring. He wrote to me about 15 years ago and he was still living in New Jersey.
Webb sold his little belongings to me—horses, harness and wagon, and left the country. Warren Atkinson bought his hay. He and his wife, Ruth, moved into the Webb shack. Warren had some cows and brought some of his mother's cows out to winter. They came from Gregory. I had known Warren for more than ten years. The poor chap thought he was a rancher and all he had to do was hunt coyotes and the cows would take care of themselves. This was not the case with the kind of cows he had, as they were Red Poll cows; the kind that stood around on the manure pile until someone let them in the barn and fed them. One day toward spring. Warren came over to my
house. The poor chap was crying. He said his cows were dying like flies and wanted me to come down. It was a pitiful sight. Seven or eight cows were down and never did get up. Out of the forty cows, seven or eight survived. The family moved in the spring and that was the last time anyone ever lived in the Webb house.
The chinook winds came in January and nearly all the snow inched. People began to be more cheerful. In March, the snowstorms hit again and it was really rough. The Montana ranchers who were wintering in Mellette County began to fold. There were ricks of cattle bones as big as hay stacks. Some outfits lost every head of cattle and sold the horses and outfits. They were completely broke.
Stan Callan had come down from Custer with 500 head. He told me about the train pulling into Okaton where he unloaded. There were no stockyards, hence no chutes, and they had to jump every head out of the stockcars, but the snow was deep enough to break the
fall. Also what a heck of a time he had trailing them the 25 miles south to feed them. On several occasions his cows might have eaten some contraband hay. Stan was an expert cow man and lost only one cow, a shorthair cow of a milking breed. Stan and I met that winter
and were good friends as long as he lived, although he became my brother-in-law six or seven years later. We went down to Cottonwood where Nolan and I were working some firewood out of a big tree. We heard a noise and looked up, and there sat Stan on old Colonel, who was the kind of horse that I imagined a U. S. Marshal would be riding and Stan looked like the other part of a U. S. Marshal. My problem was that it was: No. 1, illegal to cut green wood. No. 2. illegal to cut it on Indian land and No. 3, illegal to deal directly with the Indians.
Stan and I visited a few minutes and he asked me if we had seen any cattle but he didn't say "his" cattle, so I assumed he was working for the government. Several years later when we became acquainted, we discussed our first meeting. I told him how he scared the dickens out of me. He laughed and said I wasn't any more scared than he was, as the cattle he was inquiring about were his own.
Stan Callan's sister, Josephine Mary, came to teach in Mellette County. Roy and Myrtle King, parents of one of her students, introduced her to Floyd. They were married in White River with Stan Callan and a friend as witnesses. The first stop they made on their honeymoon was at Art Siegmund's gas station in Wood for gas.
They were both born and raised in South Dakota and both had taught school alter attending two years of college, Floyd at the University of South Dakota and Josephine at Spearfish Normal. Their close friends were Cleve and Jessie Berry, the Art Siegmunds, Bill
Starkjohanns and Bill Chamberlains.
I, Marilyn, was born in White River hospital in 1928 when Dr. Saladay was in White River. They brought me home to the "loggic" with the sod roof. After Stan married Zeola Walker, they built a basement house for the Anderson family and Aunt Zeola and Stan had the loggic, as the men were ranching together. I remember it being a very loving relationship. My brother Dean was born in Winner 16 months later, and in 1933 Mother left the ranch in July to move to Pierre to live with Dr. and Mrs. Salladay because she was sure there were twins on the way.
Those were hard years and I sensed a hidden fear and earnestness in our lives. The dust and the weariness seemed to be all around us.
On July 27, 1933, we—my father. Dean and I—had gone to town, and were on the corner of the Strouse Drug Store when someone congratulated my dad on his twin boys. They had been to Pierre and had the news, which we were unaware of. Such excitement. Mr. Strouse's cigar was really puffing!
In 1933, the Depression took its toll in our lives; the ranch business could no longer support two families. My father then took a job with the FSA (farmer's Security Administration) in White River. I was ready to start to school so we moved on the other side of White River on the Terpin place. I was picked up for school by neighbors (once or twice in a wagon on skis with a cover over it and a stove to keep us warm). After school, I waited in Dad's office. His office was the same room in the hospital where I was born. I remember visits from friends at the Terpin place—Rose Berry, Gallaghers, the Roy Kings and the Hutchinsons, who had the fox farm.
As children, my brothers and I entertained ourselves playing in the dry creek beds using the flakes of mud to build houses and arrowheads to make rows of trees.
After my father was transferred to Brookings, South Dakota, for the FSA, I wrote to him that I had measured the dead grasshoppers around the foundation of our house at eight inches one given day. Mother spent a great deal of her time reminding us to watch out for rattlers that would come near the house for moisture. Several times they got into our basement. The world seemed to have very little color—everything was gray.
Oswald Jarl was a special person in my life. He would bring me banty chickens and dine with us. (it always amazed me that he ate the bones of bullheads.)
We moved to Brookings in 1936 and lived there for six months. We were fascinated with electric lights and running water and spent hours in the bathtub. We later moved to Lincoln, Nebraska.
I must add that during all those years my father kept Mellette County license plates on his cars and seldom wore shoes other than cowboy boots. His heart and soul were always in "Mellette County" where we returned for Christmas and vacations with Uncle Stan
and Aunt Zeola.
My father had many friends who were native Americans. On each visit we would look up his favorite. Chief Running Bird. Once he found him in Belvidere and those two had a brief dance in front of Mr. Pier's bank. We thought Dad had "flipped."
We return (as children of Floyd and Josephine) for nostalgic visits and have taken the children to the ranch, Cedarbutte Store (they don't sell the same items there anymore) and to Skee and Jan Rasmussen's where I can still hear the laughter of Cleve and Dad as they
cleaned catfish after a night of seining on the river, or the tales they told of bobcat hunting. It seems that people were so important to one another. The Depression years bound them together and those bonds remain. I think the colorless earth drew our attention to faces and personalities for our color. We intend to come for the celebration.
The children of Floyd and Josephine Anderson
Early Experiences
As told by Hazel Anderson
(Transcribed, with permission from the Mellette County Historical Society, from "Mellette County 1911-1986" published by the Mellette County Historical Society)
We lived at Winner the first two years we were married, on one of Martin's father's
places. We had lots of friendly neighbors. One that lived about a half mile across the creek
was expecting her baby. She said that her mother was to come and stay with her. Well, one
night there was a knock at the door. It was none other than the neighbor asking if I would
come over and stay with his wife while he went after the doctor. I bundled up my baby and a
bundle of diapers to accompany him. At the door stood a horse. The neighbor held my baby
while I mounted and then handed me the baby. He got on, and off we went across the steep
creek. I quickly entered the house while he got into his car and took off for Carter. There was
a bridge over the creek on the way to Carter.
The little mother-to-be was having pains real often. Luckily I had started nurses training at
the Emmanuel Hospital at Omaha and had assisted in a few baby arrivals. The baby came and
I bathed her before the husband and doctor arrived. The doctor unwrapped the baby and
found that she was O.K. Then he went to attend to the mother. I made some coffee for them
and when the ordeal was all over, the husband said he would take me home by car. He would
go around by the road. I was thankful to be home again.
I had another experience very similar to this after we moved to Mellette County when we lived where the Jarls live now. One night Ralph Adams asked me to stay with his wife, Clara, while he went after the doctor. After he left, Clara showed me where she kept the baby's clothes. She had everything ready for the baby. Clara was so brave. She is really a wonderful person. Ralph came back about daylight alone. I said, "I thought you went to get a doctor," and he replied that the doctor was gone.
Martin and I first moved to Mellette County in 1917. We had bought 320 acres of Indian land. Martin came up in the summer to dig a well and build a 30 x 40 barn, fence a corral and build an 8 x 10 shack. He had found an old cast iron stove in the ditch near the creek, it had a nice big oven, four lids on top but only three legs. So Martin sawed a post for the fourth leg. I baked all my bread and cakes in that oven. We didn't have a table so I put my round wash tub over a nail keg and this served as our table. We had one chair, a bed, an orange crate nailed to the wall for my cupboard, and another one for the water bucket and dipper.
Martin had bought 15 yearling calves and one cow. He put up a lot of hay and stacked it near the barn. He was planning to build a house, so one morning he got up early to go to Winner by team and wagon for lumber. He told me to watch the calves in the corral so they wouldn't get out. I watched and fed them plenty of hay but they were thirsty. When I milked the cow all was well. Later on I heard a noise and when I went to investigate, the calves had gotten the gate open. I could barely see the last one disappear over the hill.
I ran back to the house, bundled up my little Beatrice and hurried over the hill. I was sure I could turn them homeward after they had had their fill of water. The sky clouded over but I'd hurry up one hill, crawl through ditches. Finally I gave up. It was just hopeless. My baby was crying and I was all tired out. I sat down and cried because I didn't know which way was home. So I thought, I'll howl like a coyote and then Arthur Runningbird's dogs will bark. I tried again and again but the dogs did not bark.
Luckily our dog was with me, so I said real crossly to him, "Go home." He had a white breast and one white foot and the tip of his tail, so I could see him. He started down the trail in the opposite direction that I would have gone. I was sure he was wrong but after a long walk 1 fell over a spade where Martin had started to dig for our new house. As I got up I could see the tar-papered shack. My dear dog had taken us home. I gave my little Beatrice some bread and milk for supper, and I gave Fido a slice of bread with butter on it. Martin got home almost morning. It was hard for me to tell him about it. He saddled up in the morning to go find the calves. They hadn't gone very far from the water.
In the winter of 1930, we had a lot of snow. There were large drifts that filled every draw, and the prairie was covered with hard-crusted snow. One Friday afternoon, I was getting anxious about the children who were away to school. My husband, Martin, said that the only way possible to get them would be on horseback. It was snowing and the northwest wind was blowing and drifting the snow. As it was getting late, he said that he would go after them in the morning. I was uneasy all evening. About nine o'clock we heard a noise as if someone was sort of stumbling, and there were our two children. The teacher, Mrs. Redman, had told them to go to the place where they stayed during the week. This they did and when they arrived they were told that they would have to pay extra if they stayed over the weekend. So the kids walked back to school and started for home, which was nearly five miles. Phyllis was so cold she cried, so Chester removed one pair of his overalls and put them on her. (In those days, girls did not wear jeans like they do now.) It is a wonder that they ever found the way home.
We sold out in 1919 and moved back to Bristow, Nebraska, then on to Omaha. Martin had a good job and we rented a small house. Then our banker at
Belvidere wrote to us and said that the man who had bought our place was not meeting his payments, so we had better come back and take the place back. So we gathered up our belongings in an old truck, and Martin drove it to Winner. I went by train to Winner, where we met and went back to the old house that Martin had built. It was a mess. Most of the windows were broken.
Beatrice was in school by now and the nearest school was eight miles away. That year she stayed with the Hal Whites and went to Cedarbutte. If the weather was bad she would stay with her Aunt Martha (martin's sister). Then the next term she and Chester stayed with the Butterfields.
There was a school east of Petranek's. We had several meetings trying to get the board to move the school to a more centrally located place, but it was
voted down each time. So Martin and Joe Petranek measured the school house, went up to the west line of the quarter, built a foundation, jacked up the school and moved it to the west line. Even then we had five miles to school. Petranek's, Juran's, Crume's and our children went to school there. In 1926, they built the Runningbird School. The first year I lived in an old log house west of the school with the children during the stormy January and February months. I was so eager for the children to have an education. The next year we had a bus that picked up the Tompkin boys, our children and the Starkjohann girls. I shall always remember, and be ever grateful to, a noble teacher that we had by the name of Laura Patnoe who instilled a love for education into her students. All of our children graduated from high school and went on to college.
Hazel, Martin and Phyllis
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