Dear Bill, 

You have asked mom and me to write down some of the things as they were during our lives 
before you were old enough to start remembering for yourself.  I will try to give you a 
synopsis as i remember it.  In so doing I will probably write a lot of words as they sound 
to me, not as spelled by Mr. Webster. I will try to be authentic and use correct dates to 
best of my knowledge.  You seem to be interested in history, we have two books here you 
might enjoy reading.  1) History of Sully County. 2) Dakota Panorama: Both books are well 
illustrated with pictures of how it was "a way back when". 

And so, with no further preface, I will jot down a few things as they are remembered by me. 

Dad.    



I was born on June 17, 1909 an assume I was welcomed to Okobojo South Dakota with a 
slap on the butt to make me squall so that the air way to my lungs would open and allow 
the air to flow in.  I'm not sure if a doctor was present or not.  Most cases of childbirth in 
the early days were taken care of by a midwife, especially in the outlying communities. 

Now as this early stage of my life is mostly black I will move on to a deferent subject. 

In 1883 Okobojo Township was opened for settlers.  Among the many who came that 
year to file on claims were J. W. Glessner and John S. Green.  They came with their 
families.  John and Josephine Glessner had five Children – George, Kitty, Charley, 
Margaret and Hal.  John Green and his wife Sarah had three boys – William, Hugh and 
Charley. 

William (Will or Bill) and Margaret (Madge) were later married (July 24, 1902) and had 
three children – Frances (Cathy), Willis and George.

The John Green family came from Illinois and settled near Olivet, Dakota Territory in 
1875, where they lived until moving to Okobojo Township in Sully County in 1883.

As I remember hearing about it they moved from Olivet with Oxen and wagon with some 
farm equipment.  The Glessner family came from Waynesburg Ohio where John had had 
practice as a jeweler, dentist and undertaker but no farming.  It was rough going for all of 
the new settlers for the first few years but there is no object in my trying to describe their 
up and downs.  The important part is that they made it.

I do know that the main fuel was buffalo chips and twisted hay and if lucky a load of 
wood from the Missouri river about 20 miles away.

I'm not sure if the Greens had a frame house the first year or not.  But it seems to me that 
Glessners lived in a dug-out or it may have been a sod shanty.

Now lets take a look at Okobojo.  The Okobojo Valley lies about twenty two miles north 
of Pierre.  If we were to start at the townsite of Okobojo and go east to the source of the 
Okobojo Creek, which runs through the Valley we would come out about eight or ten 
miles east and maybe some south of Gettysburg.  The creek empties into the Missouri 
river about eighteen miles west and south of the Okobojo townsite.  

Before the dirty thirties came along and before sully lake dam was built the Okobojo had 
running water most of the year.  Before the white man arrived the creek was a watering 
place for buffalo and Indians.  Some of the old buffalo trails were still visible when I was 
growing up.  The word Okobojo, so I have been told, means "Valley of Nettles".  This is 
an Indian name and was so named by them.  

I can remember bunches of nettles growing along the creek bank.  If you put your had on 
them they would sting and small blisters would appear.  We kids used to dare each other 
and then get stung for our bravery.

The Valley is not wide.  Maybe half a mile at most and is not too fertile for vegetation.  
The reason for this is the alkali spots.  

The buffalo used these spots or beds for salt licks when they would come for water.  In 
later years I've seen cattle and horses lick these alkali beds when salt was not available.

I probably should mention that Fort Sully was less than twenty miles from Okobojo.  The 
Fort was located west and some south overlooking the river.  Okobojo was where the 
Army freight wagons crossed the creek going to and from Pierre.  There was a stone 
crossing just east of where Binkleys house now stands.  The bridge that you and 
Minnietta named "Rattlesnake" wasn't built until years later.  

Fort Sully was located in Sully Co. in 1866 and abandoned in 1894.  Sully County, of 
course, was named after General Sully who was in charge of the Fort.  The Fort was built 
to accommodate four companies of Cavalry.  So you can see that when the settlers came 
in '83 they were not exactly alone on the open prairie.

At one time Okobojo had a hotel, two stores, printing office, livery stable blacksmith 
shop, a town hall and several houses.  But never a saloon.  At least I never heard of one.  
Pierre had several that could be reached and that must have been enough.  

Well, by now I should have grown to the point of remember a few things so we will 
move ahead to 1914 or 15. 

We lived one and a half miles north east of Okobojo on a 160 acre farm.  Pa had 
purchased the farm from his dad somewhere around 1901 or 02 and this was where the 
folks lived when they were married.  

The house (drawing) set back in the north west corner of the quarter section.

A few cottonwood trees had been planted a little east of the house but otherwise the land 
was bare.  About twenty five feet south of the house was a cistern.  This was filled with 
water by hauling the water from Okobojo with a team and wagon with a water tank.  This 
water was used for all household purposes except when snow was on the ground.  Then 
we would melt snow in the boiler or tub and use for washing.  Later on a cistern was dug 
on the north side of the house and eve troughs were installed on the roof.  Rains kept 
water in the new cistern most of the time and it was piped into the kitchen where a pitcher 
pump would draw water from the cistern.  We even had a sink with a wash pan!  This 
was up-town living!  

In the south east corner of the yard, about fifty feet from the house, was a root cellar.  
This cellar was probably 12'x14' and 7' or 8' deep.  It was covered with logs that had 
been hauled from the river.  The logs were covered with a layer of hay and then the dirt 
that had been taken from the hole was piled on top of the hay.  Of course, a vent pipe was 
put in, doors installed, a stairway dug out and it was ready for use.

The cellar also had shelves for canned goods (home canned), a bin for potatoes and a 
place for turnips, carrots etc.  These cellars kept things like cream and butter cool in the 
summer.  Sometimes during the winter when temperatures went below zero and stayed 
there for long periods a lighted lantern would be set on the cellar floor.  This usually kept 
things from getting frosted. 

About a hundred yards south of the house was the barn.  It was modest in size but big 
enough for a couple grain bins and a half dozen horses.  On the south was a leanto for the 
cattle.  This was surrounded by a board fence or corral.  On the north was another leanto 
that was used for a buggy shed.  In later years the model T was kept there. 

The barn had a haymow which was filled during haying season and hay was stacked 
along the west side.  This made feeding easier and also kept the winds from being direct 
on the livestock.

A corn crib and chicken house were between the house and barn.

Below the barn about a quarter mile was a pond.  This generally held water the year 
around and was where the livestock watered.  In the winter holes had to be chopped 
through the ice.  Pa and Willis would do the chores while Cathie and I were getting ready 
for school.  I was too young to be much good as a wrangler. 

Pa had bought the printing office (The Okobojo Times) in 1910 and made enough along 
with the farm to hire a man during the growing and haying season. 

On days that ma worked at the office (which was quite a few) we would all go to 
Okobojo.  Pa, Ma and Cathie would work on getting the paper out and Willis and I would 
play with the town kids unless school was in session.  Maybe I should tell you something 
about the printing office.  My best judgment is that the building was about 20x32.  The 
front door was on the north end.  As you walked in the cupboard for printing supplies was 
to your right.  To the left was a desk and big safe.  Next on the left or east side of the 
room was the old Washington Press.  This took the rest of the room to the back door.   

On the west side were the type cases, stone and a job press.  The type cases, of course 
were where the type was set by hand for the paper.  The stone was a table with a flat top 
of polished stone.  Smooth as a tombstone.  The forms, each holding enough type & plate 
for one page of the paper, were put on the stone.  There were two.  All of the local news 
and many adds were set by had but much of the material that filled the forms was pre-
printed plate that came shipped in boxes.  This plate was one column wide and could be 
cut to fit anywhere it was needed.  All material to be printed was placed inside the forms 
and locked in with the coigns.  The forms were then placed on the press platform, locked 
in place and you were ready to print.  We had from 200 to 250 subscribers to the Times.  
The printing procedure went like this:  The printer stood on the west side of the press and 
his "devil" (that was generally me after I got tall enough to ink the type) stood on the east 
side.  The devil used a roller about fifteen or sixteen inches long made of soft rubber.  It 
was about three inches in diameter and had a handle on each end.

He also had a table about eighteen inches square with printers ink on it.  He would get ink 
on the roller by rolling on the table then turn left one quarter turn and roll the roller over 
the type.  The type was now ready for the paper. 

The printer who had already placed the ready prints (paper to be printed) on the stone and 
had one of them secured in the exact spot on the underside of the cover which always 
faced up when the press was open, would fold the cover down and the paper would lay on 
the type.  He would then turn a crank which would carry the forms and cover under the 
press.  He would then reach over and pull a big lever that would bring a weight down on 
the cover and the paper would be printed.

Then he would turn the crank back raise the cover to its  slightly past upright position, 
remove the paper from the type and lay it on the table to dry.  This process was repeated 
until the printing was finished. 

In the meantime the one who was folding papers would have some ready for the 
addressor who would address them by hand.  Then someone (probably me) would go to 
the store, which was also the post office, and get a mail sack.  Maybe even a bottle of pop 
or a candy bar.  The out-of-town papers were put in the sack and it and a stack of papers 
for the locals would be taken to the post office.  I remember one paper in particular.  It 
was addressed to Oscar Olson the Canada and it had to have a one cent stamp on it.  

I don't think we kids know a week had a Thursday in it until we went to school.  I was 
always Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, PRINT DAY, Friday and Saturday.

I suppose most people view the four seasons in many different ways.  To some the 
seasons mean vacations and gaiety.  To others they mean more hard work and heartaches.  
But to all they forewarn of the expectations to come.  To a small boy with his dog the 
seasons look different.  They seem to entroine in their entirety and open into a 
wonderland of adventure.  

I don't remember how or when we got Curly.  He was a black and white curly haired 
Water Spaniel pup when we met.  

My brain doesn't have a record on file of Curly as a pup except one; one summer day we 
were all down by the pond and Pa picked Curly up and tossed him into the water.  Old 
Hinie (he was the old dog) jumped in to get Curly.  But Curly needed no help and they 
swam to shore side by side.

Curly was my dog.  He wasn't allowed in the house but when I was out of doors Curly 
was most always with me.  

For me to try to pick out any certain time or season and describe it would be foolish 
because everything sorta runs together and jumps from one year to another.

Winters were different than they are now.  Well, maybe the winters weren't so much 
different from a weather viewpoint but they were much different from the machine age 
viewpoint.

Horses were still the main standby for transportation and for evening entertainment if you 
wanted music you got it from a piano, violin or maybe a phonograph.  But why stand out 
here in the cold.  There is about eight inches of snow on the ground and its beginning to 
snow again so come on in and set your overshoes behind the kitchen range.  That's the 
range to your right.  In the dim light of the kerosene lamps the top of the stove glows red.  
Ma is frying beefsteak and potatoes and the oven has a pan or two of baking powder 
biscuits in so supper will soon be ready.  The wash pan is to the left of the stove so get 
some warm water out of the reservoir attached to the stove and wash up.  We will eat on a 
round table in the kitchen.  

Now that supper is over follow me into the living room – Well this room is really the 
dining room.  Those double doors on the south side separate the living room from the 
dining room but in the winter we live mostly in here.

Yes that is a big stove, it's a hard coal burner.  Stands a good five feet tall and you can 
see through small isinglass windows on the three sides.  You can watch coal burn.  
Sometimes just a cherry red glow and sometimes you can see fingers of flame flicker 
through the windows.  The coal, about the size of walnuts, is poured into a magazine 
from the top.  The coal burns with an even heat and the room stays comfortable night and 
day.  We like to dress by it in the mornings.   It holds about five or six gallons of coal and 
it is my job to bring coal in from the bin.  I carry in soft coal and kindling for the kitchen 
range too.

What's that large horn on the tripod? Come over here and we will take a look at it.  This 
old brass horn is for resonance when we play this old Edison phonograph.  

Yes, that's it in the box 

I'd say this horn is about three feet long, about twenty inches in diameter at the large end 
and tapers to three fourths of an inch where it fastens on to the needle assembly with a 
flexible rubber hose.  

This box which houses the working parts of the old Edison is about ten inches wide, 
probably twelve or fourteen inches long and lets say ten high. We'll take the lid off and 
see a horizontal polished cylinder about four and one-half inches long.

This cylinder is turned by a hand wound spring in the bottom part of the box. The records 
are also cylinder shaped about two and a half inches in diameter and fit snug on the 
cylinder. The machines turned on by a little lever, the needle placed on the record and we 
have music coming out of the big brass horn 

When we tire of the Edison, Ma may read stories to us.  We also play checkers and 
carom.  Ma doesn't allow cards in the house.  That is, cards with kings, queens and jacks.  
We have a card game called Authors that we play a lot.  Each card has a picture of the 
same Author such as Dickens, Mark Twain, Longfellow etc.  There are four pictures of 
each author with three of his works written under the picture and at the top.

As an example we will say you have three pictures of Mark Twain in your hand.  You 
still need Huckleberry Finn to make a book of four so you can lay them down.  When it is 
your turn to play you will ask one of the players for Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.  If 
he has it in his hand he will give it to you and you have a book to lay down.

Sure, lets play a game or two. 

Well, you sure did have beginners luck but it was fun.  Now we'll have an apple and 
donut and get ready for bed.  

Yes these are good apples.  They're Jonathan.  Pa buys a barrel of them every fall and 
puts them in the cellar.  

Yes the donuts are homemade.  Fried in Suet; that's the choice fat from beef.

You have to go to the toilet?  O.K.  slip into your coat and overshoes and lets go.  The 
backhouse (sometimes known as the chick-sale, privy or outhouse) is about one hundred 
feet northwest of the house. 

Yes it is cold out here and the wind is sharp.  Boy! Some one left the door open!

I'll strike a match and you can brush the snow off and locate the catalog.

You have bib overalls on?  Well, here, I'll hold your coat.  Boy, I'm freezing!

You think that page was a colored one?
Could be.  Here's your coat lets get back in where its warm.

We will sleep upstairs.  There is a register in the ceiling over the stove to let heat into the 
upstairs rooms.  This helps take the chill off.  We will soon be warm because the bed has 
a big feather bed on it and lots of quilts. 

We will undress down to our long johns and jump into bed, sink into five or six inches of 
feathers and we'll soon be warm as toast then on the dreamland.

Many happy memories come from that old farm house on the prairie.  Also some that are 
not so happy.

Grandma Glessner died on March 15, 1915 in her home in Okobojo.  After her death 
Grandpa stayed with us most of the time. 

My recollection of these years is pretty peace meal so we'll not spend too much time 
other then in a general way.  One thing you might be interested in is a funeral.  I don't 
remember the details but Willis filled me in on it a few years ago and this is how it was: 
Grandpa Glessner died on February 12, 1920 in his bed in the front room (living room) of 
our house.  He was 80 years old and probably caught the flu or a bad cold and just 
couldn't get over it.

Aunt Kitty had come from Pierre to help take care of him and on the night he died Aunt 
Kitty and Willis were setting up with him.  Grandpa wanted some grape juice and Aunt 
Kitty was giving it to him with a spoon.  He strangled on the juice and in the weakened 
condition didn't come out of it. 

Pa called John Crawford who had the telephone office in Okobojo and he got on his horse 
and came to the farm.  When John got there they got an old door, layed grandpa on it to 
keep him straight, put penneys on his eyes to hold them shut, folded his hands across his 
breast and covered him with a shirt.  The doors were closed to keep out the heat and there 
grandpa stayed until the undertaker arrived with his hearse pulled by horses.  He was then 
placed in a coffin and taken to the cemetery and buried.  The undertaker may have had a 
motor driven hearse but with the snow and cold it was safer to use horses.  This may 
seem like a "Gunsmoke Movie" where they carry them out to Boot Hill in a big black 
hack.  But that's the way it was, not 200 years ago, but only fifty five.

Pa was never a hunter.  He didn't own a shot gun and I never saw or heard of him 
shooting a duck or a prairie chicken.  But he taught Willis and me how to handle a gun.  
The only gun we had in the house was the old 45-70 Springfield rifle.  Pa would stand 
Willis and me up side by side and Willis being four years older than I would get the 45-
70.  I would have to settle for a broom or if lucky, a wooden gun.

Then we would go through the manual of the arms from top to bottom and from bottom 
to top.  We would right sholder arms and march into the kitchen do an about face and 
march back.  If we get out of step we would have to sing "Hay foot straw foot hay foot 
straw, say goodbye to your dad and Ma, say goodbye to your sweetheart too if you don't 
walk along like the others do"

Then we would be put through the firing positions.  When the command came – "Make 
ready" 

 The broom stick would point toward the floor.  I would take an imaginary cartridge from 
my belt.  "Load" – I would place it in the broom stick and close the breach.  "Aim".  The 
broom straw would press to me shoulder.  "Fire!" I'd hear a snap as Willis pulled the 
trigger the Springfield and I'd holler Bang!  We drilled night after night.  And we 
learned.

I don't know how old I was when I got my first rifle.  Probably eight or nine.  I would 
spend hours looking at guns in the catalogs.  I finally found a .22 rifle in Savage for less 
than five dollars.  It was a Stevens "Little Scout".

The folks intended to buy me an air rifle but with Willis' help we talked them into 
ordering the Little Scout.

When it came I was the proudest kid in the territory.  .22 shorts were fifteen cents a box 
so Willis and I did a lot of shooting at cans and bottles.

One day when I was home from school for some reason I decided to go rabbit hunting all 
by myself.  All by myself, that is, except for Curly.  I told Ma I was going.  

It was a nice sunny day with eight or ten inches of snow on the level.  This patch I 
wanted to hunt had a few corn stalks left in it and quite a lot of thistles to hold the snow.  
It was a foot or two deep in some spots and was loaded with rabbits.  The field was less 
than a quarter mile east of the house. 

I got my rifle and Curly was right at my heels.  We started over the hill.  We hadn't gone 
into the field very far when Mr. Rabbit jumped up, took a few more hops and stood up to 
look around to see what had disturbed his nap.  I had already made ready and loaded.  All 
that was left to do was cock the hammer, aim and fire.  I did and Mr. Rabbit collapsed.  

I was in ecstasy and Curly was ecstatic.  Curly beat me to the rabbit.  My hunt was over.  
I got the rabbits hind legs over my shoulder and started toward home with the head and 
ears dragging on the snow.  I have killed many rabbits since then.  But never has there 
been such a red-letter day in my hunting career as the day I brought home my first rabbit.

Most generally trips to Onida or Pierre in the winter were avoided but sometimes it 
would be necessary to get another load of coal.  Pa would hitch old kid and lee (they were 
the team of horses) to the wagon, and leave home early in the morning.  Sometimes it 
would be after dark when he got home.  Ma would always put a lamp in a window  and 
we kids would keep running out in the cold to listen for the wagon wheels in the snow.  
Its really quite a thrill on a clear night to hear the iron wagon wheel tires turning in the 
snow.  You can hear them for almost a mile away.  The jingle of the harness along with 
the high squall of the wheels going through the snow is a sort of music.  You may hear a 
coyote howl and get an answer from his mate but the sound of a wagon wheel going 
through cold dry snow is a sound that's hard to forget.  As they came closer to home it 
seemed as if the horses increased their speed a little and the temp changed as the wheels 
sang faster and louder. The horses were tired and ready for a feed of oats and hay and Pa 
was ready for supper.  

One winter we got lost for a short time in a blizzard.  When there was plenty of snow we 
generally went in to Okobojo with the team and bobsled.  On this particular day the wind 
came up and we had a blizzard.  We kids came over to the printing office after school and 
Pa and Willis hitched up the team.  The bobsled had a double box with hay in the bottom 
box.  We were dressed warm and had a cowhide robe and blankets.  We started for home. 

When we got a short distance north of the schoolhouse all landmarks disappeared.  We 
were in a while void; an emptiness of blowing snow.  Old Kid and Lee wanted to go in a 
different direction than Pa did but when he pulled on the lines to turn them they obeyed.  
After then of fifteen minutes the schoolhouse loomed up straight ahead and just over the 
hill was Okobojo.

I don't know what pa thought or what he said.  He turned the team around and if he did 
say something it was probably "I was wrong old boys, take us home."  They did.

My imagination tells me that the hard coal burner glowed a little brighter that night and if 
possible the beefsteak and biscuits may have tasted a little better.

Rabbits were plentiful in those days but were of no commercial value.  It was the custom 
of communities to have a rabbit hunt and oyster feed at least once during the winter.  Two 
men would be appointed the captains and in turn would choose up sides.  The hunt would 
probably run for a couple weeks.  Because the rabbit had no value only the ears were kept 
and turned in at the end of the hunt. 

The losing side (least ears turned in) paid for the oysters.  Everything else for the feed 
was donated by the families.  A popular way to hunt was with a team and bobsled.  As 
before mentioned Pa was not a hunter, but he would take Willis and me out and get a few 
rabbits with the .22 Little Scout and the 45-70.  I think we had the shotgun (that old 12ga. 
Stevens that willis still has) before the rabbit hunts faded out.

The night of the feed people would pile into the wagons and bobsleds and come for miles 
around.  The old hall was a warm, gay and lively place.

I never could eat fresh oyster soup until I was grown up, but there was always plenty of 
sandwiches, pie and cake so I never went hungry.  The folks didn't go to dances so when 
the fiddler came out and the floor was cleared for dancing we would watch for awhile and 
then load up and go home.

And so the winters came and went.   

As the sun moved farther north and with the help of milder winds melted winter into 
spring, it became a brand new ball game for Curly and me. 

It was nice to get out in the warm sun and watch the snow drifts shrink and bare spots 
appear on the higher ground. We would watch the water start to trickle down the hillsides 
into draws where they would form rivulets then move on to another draw until they 
became almost rivers in themselves as they rushed on to the Okobojo to be carried to the 
Missouri and on and on.  There was a washout in the pasture that was three of four feet 
deep.  When water ran into this washout it made a falls about three feet high.  I liked to 
watch it in the springs.  The clean, pure snow water would cause a foam to rise a couple 
of feet high and then break off in chunks and float on down the stream.  Yes, a traveler of 
the world who has seen Niagara and other famous falls would not glance twice at this old 
washout, but to me it was one of the wonders of springs.  About this time of year ducks 
and geese were on the move heading north.  Curly and I would watch them day after day.  
The flight seemed endless.  I generally carried my Little Scout and wasted a lot of .22 
shells shooting into the low flocks but never did hit a duck or goose.  

As the days grew warmer and the last of the snow drifts were all but melted we school 
kids would start looking for Ester lilies.  This lily is the Pasque, which is South Dakota's 
state flower.

We were never able to find a Pasque anywhere but on the north slope of a hill.  The north 
slope just back of the school house was loaded with them every spring.

After the buds formed we would run out at every recess and noon to see who would be 
first to find a flower.  After they were in bloom the teacher always had a fresh bouquet 
and many flowers were carried to our homes.  Later on, generally in May, the blue bell, 
Goldenrod and what we called Spider Lily would bloom.  Spider lilies were my favorite 
flowers of the prairie.  The flower is deep purple, about the size of a nickel and grows 
five or six inches high with slender leaves and fuzzy stem.  

The goldenrod and blue bell are pretty and look nice in a bouquet.  But the spider lily was 
more special to me.  Covered with morning dew or wet from a warm spring rain they 
would appear to me as if parading in the grass like pre-school girls in high heeled 
slippers, wearing velvet like gowns of enchanted chlorophyll.  We would always try to 
gather wild flowers to place on the graves on decoration day.  Decoration Day, or 
Memorial Day as some call it, was always a must at our house.  Pa tried to have the corn 
all planted by May 30th but planted or not that was the day to honor both the dead the 
living.  Generally we went to Pierre, after our own in the cemetery had been duly honored 
with flags and flowers, to attend the memorial exercises there.  

Before we had a Model T we went with the team and wagon.  Probably the day before Pa 
would sometimes dress in his Army blues and March in the parade carrying the 45-70.  
His Army blues had been altered to accommodate his waist line and a patch or two to 
cover holes where mice had chewed, but he marched as straight and proud as the day he 
enlisted in company A of the First South Dakota Volunteers. 

There were enough of the Civil War soldiers left to make a good showing in the parade 
and with the Guard (Battery "C" I believe) who hadn't been exposed to World War I yet, 
it was a good parade.  I enjoyed watching the parade and joining in singing the Star 
Spangled Banner but when the speakers began to drone I would try to find entertainment 
elsewhere.  And so we learned the true meaning of Memorial Day.

It seemed that summer always came in good and strong after Memorial Day.  Curly and I 
preferred to look for birds nests on the prairie but some times we had to work – well I 
did, at least part of the time – I would have to pull weeds out of the onions in the garden 
and hoe some in the beans, peas etc.  Curly spent most of that time looking for mice and 
chasing butterflies and grasshoppers.  

Cathy spent a lot of time working at the office so I got in on picking beans & peas quite 
often.  Sometimes when the potatoes stated to get some size (about the size of golf balls) 
we would dig up a few hills and have new potatoes and garden fresh peas cooked 
together in a cream gravy.  That's a real good dish.  

Sometime Curly and I would locate a bird nest in the late spring and watch it as the eggs 
hatched and the birds grew and left the nest.  Sometimes a nest would have two birds and 
sometimes four.  When the little birds heard us coming they would stick their necks in the 
air and open their mouth.  When a bird does this he looks like he was all mouth.  We 
would dig worms and feed them.  Don't know if the old birds like it or not but it sure 
saved them a lot of work.   When they were all feathered out we could see the old birds 
teaching the young ones how to fly.  Then as summer moved to a close they would fly 
away.

Another pastime was looking for buffalo horns.  There wasn't too many left but we 
would find one once in a while.  They were pretty well scaled and weather-beaten but by 
using a piece of glass to scrape with, in a few days we would have a shiny black horn. 
Whish now I had kept a couple but never did. 

Pa had a well (shallow well dug by had) dub in the south west corner of the pasture.  
When it proved to have enough water for the livestock he built a water trough.  The 
trough was about three feet wide, two high and probably ten feet l9ong.  Maybe twelve.  
Willis and I had to pump the water so one hot day when we got it full we decided to go 
swimming.  Of course the folks didn't know this.  We shucked our clothes and climbed 
in.  In a week or two we could "dog paddle" and that is how and where we learned to 
swim.  Doubt if Scott would approve of this method but it worked for us.

When the folds found out we could swim a little we were allowed to go swimming in the 
creek at Okobojo.  I've showed you where the old swimming hole was but it's all filled in 
with mud now.

Fires are always a nasty thing and in the summer of 1919 a bad one occurred at Okobojo.  
Hal Glessner's barn burned.  He l0st a team of horses that were tied in the barn and three 
or four calves that must have been in the barn to get away from flies.  The worst part was 
two small boys that almost burned to death.  Hal wasn't home.  His wife Bulah was home 
with the kids.  

Bill Glessner, about four or five years old, his cousin Roy Bagby, about the same age got 
hold of some matches and climbed up in the haymow. 

On this particular day Pa had stayed home to work around the farm and I had driven ma 
(she couldn't drive a car) to the office in the model T. Grandpa Glessner went to Okobojo 
with us and sometime in the afternoon he was looking out the window toward Hal's place 
and he exclaimed Hal's barn's on fire!
The only men in town were a crew of four that were building the new schoolhouse. 
I rushed out and cranked the old Ford and went up to get the men.  One of the men said, 
"let me drive". I slid over and we went to the fire.
We met Bulah and the two boys coming to meet  us.  She was crying and screaming and 
the boys were a mess.  Bills right hand was almost burned off and his face arms and body 
were badly burned.  Roy must have got out of the mow fist.  He was badly burned too but 
not as bad as Bill.
We got them in the back seat of the car and I headed for town with them.  The men went 
to see if they could save anything from the fire.  
I drove up in the front of the telephone office where Bulah's sister lived and we got the 
boys into the house.  
Bessy (Bulah's sister) went to the store and got cotton for bunting and Vaseline.  She 
spread Vaseline over the burns then wrapped them up in the cotton and somebody took 
the boys to the Pierre hospital.
I guess it took the doctors & nurses almost all night to get the cotton out of the scorched 
flash so they could do something for the burns.  
I don't know how the boys lived but they did.  Don't know what happened to roy but bill 
lives in Ft. Pierre.  I think have met him.  As he few up his hands improved.  The right 
hand never got to where he could do much with it but the left hand and arm developed 
like steel.  He couldn't get in the service during the war so he worked in oil fields from 
California to Alaska and I guess he was as tough as any of them and tougher than most.  
One thing that burned in the fire was grandpa Glessner's Ford.  It was one of the very 
early ones and never did work good.  It had a windshield but no top or doors on the sides.  
Just open spaces to get in.  it was a four cylinder motor but had two blocks.  Two 
cylinders each.  Wasn't much value at the time but would be an antique now.  
One morning I went out in the pasture with willis to catch a saddle horse.  I don't know 
how old I was  - probably seven or eight.  I guess I was going to walk around the horse to 
head him off so willis could catch him.

I was taught to look before I stepped but that morning I stepped first and looked later.  
When I looked down my left foot was real close to a big rattlesnake who was all coiled 
up.  He must have been asleep.  I took off like a rocket.  Crying telling.  I think willis 
guessed what was the matter.  Then we went back and killed it with some rocks.  I've 
killed lots of rattlers but never came that close to stepping on one before or since.
Sometimes after a hot day it would be nice to sit out in the yard.  This was especially 
pleasant if a light breeze was blowing and the moon was full and scattered clouds were 
drifting through the sky.  I would often lie on the grass, or maybe a blanket, and watch 
the clouds change shape.  With imagination one can see strange sights when watching 
clouds and on one particular night my imagination must have been going great.  I saw a 
picture I've never forgotten.  An old woman was bending over a camp fire; a tepee was 
close by and as the cloud slowly moved she seemed to be stirring something in a big 
kettle.
I suppose ma had been reading Longfellow's Hiawatha to us and to me this was the 
wrinkled old Nokomis preparing supper for Hiawatha.  Anyway it made an impression 
that has lasted a long time.

Harvest was never a big deal for us.  We had only a small acreage of small grain.  Mostly 
wheat & Speltz.  Probably forty acres of wheat and ten or fifteen acres of speltz.  It was 
cut with a header and put in stacks.  The header, in some ways, was like a modern 
windrower, but instead of making a windrow on the ground, the straw was elevated into a 
header box or barge and was then stacked in small stacks about three feet apart in the 
field.  The reason for stacking it close together was so when the threshing crew came 
later in the fall the threshing machine could set so the feeder would be between two 
stocks and the men could pitch into the feeder from both sides.  I believe most of the 
larger outfits used binders to cut the grain.  This way it had to be shocked.  During the 
threshing the bundles were hauled to the machine and so eliminated moving the threshing 
machine so often. 

Either method was a lot of hard work and so the combine was invented and is here to stay 
until some one comes up with a better idea.  

As days drew shorter and nights got chillier it was time to wrap up the activities of 
summer and put them away.  School began; garden produce of the root variety was dug 
and put in the cellar; threshing crews went to work; ducks, geese and cranes started their 
trip south; prairie chickens were seen in flocks; hunters hunted; rabbits turned from 
brown to white; ice appeared on water tanks and ponds; the coats on livestock thickened; 
winds had a sharp edge and we probably got a new pair of shoes and overalls.  Fall had 
arrived. 

Hal Glessner was an ardent hunter.  He was as long as he lived.  I've heard ma tell how 
Hal would bring home geese when he was a boy.  I remember her telling how he brought 
home ten or twelve big geese one time.  Guess he kept the family in meet most of the 
time during fall and spring flights.  

The Glessner boys generally had wild game in lunches they brought to school.  It was a 
common practice to trade a part of your lunch to someone for part of his.  This way I'd 
get a piece of duck, goose or prairie chicken quite often.  

Threshing was always a big day on the farm.  Neighbors generally traded work during the 
season.  On a small rig it might take three of four wagons to haul the grain to the bins and 
a good husky shoveler who would stay at the bin to help shovel.   There were no farm 
elevators to make work easy then.

It would take at least four pitchers on the stacks plus the machine operator.  Quite often 
two or three neighbor woman would come to help cook and visit.  Threshing time was 
when the women had a chance to get out and talk it over with a neighbor.


Kids came too.  Some old enough to help and some still the age when they needed help.  
So it wasn't uncommon to have twenty or more for dinner and maybe supper too and all 
of them hungry.

Some of those meals were simply out of this world and It seemed that each of the woman, 
when it came her turn, tried to outdo the others in preparing the meal. Sometimes you 
would think a table would collapse.  It might be loaded with fried chicken, boiled ham, 
roast beef, mashed potatoes, gravy, creamed peas, corn, baked beans, jelly, pickles, 
bread, biscuits, salads and always a couple different kinds of cake and probably two or 
three kinds of pie.  If I have left out anything you name it.  It was probably on the table or 
close by.
We kids might not get to eat at the first table but we never had to worry.  There was 
plenty left.  When the threshing machine was running I liked to stand in the wagon and 
watch and feel the grain pour in.  There was a hopper on the machine that held one half 
bushel.  When it weighed out 30 pounds it would open up and trip a tally that counted the 
number of bushels of grain threshed.  In a good year it would fill and empty so fast that it 
was almost a continuous stream of grain going into the wagon.  (30# was for wheat of 
course)
A big fan blew the straw through a long tin pipe.  The pipe was probably twenty feet long 
and a foot in diameter.  When threshing was done there would be a big pile or two of 
straw to be used for bedding at the barn and was a good place for the cattle to feed.  

The school generally put on a program in the hall at Halloween time. Two or three 
schools would prepare programs and put the kids on display.  We would speak our verse 
or act in a play so the grown folks could see what progress we were making.  Afterward 
would be a box or pie social.  The woman and girls would bring lunch in a box and the 
men and boys would bid on them.  The highest bid getting the box and eating lunch with 
it's owner.
Some of the young men in the community would go as high as $10.00 on a box if they 
thought a certain young lady had brought it.  Sometimes this worked and again the girls 
might work up a deal among themselves and carry in some one else's box and the 
flowering young man would find he had bought some old lady's lunch or a your school 
girls.  The socials were fun and all seemed to enjoy them.
After Halloween it would soon be thanksgiving.  If we didn't go some place on 
thanksgiving we would have some neighbor family to our place. 
And so the four seasons would appear and then disappear. 
We moved to Okobojo in the late summer of 1920.
When grandpa Glessner died he had four quarters of land and his house and five or six 
acres of land in Okobojo.
Charley and Hal got the farm land and Aunt Kitty and Ma got the house in town. I don't 
know if George, who lived in St. Louis Missouri, got any thing or not. Aunt Kitty sold 
her share of the town property to ma.
Pa got a carpenter or two to do some fixing on the house including a new shingled roof.  
He also built a woven wire fence around the place which is still there. 
Living in town was close to the printing office and Pa decided to run for representative to 
the state legislature from Sully Co. He ran on the independent ticket (he was a die-hard 
republican) and won the election.
Elections can be heartbreaking.  Dr. B.M. Hart ran on the republican ticket and was so 
sure of winning he had rented his suite of rooms at the St. Charles Hotel in Pierre and 
Mrs. Hart had her gown for the Inaugural Ball.  He was Onida's doctor.  When we went 
to Okobojo I expected to have the run of the town and go with the "wild bunch".  I did a 
lot of the time but if I had home work to do I stayed home. 
One night I was out with the gang.  It was a pitch black night and we were throwing rocks 
at a cook shack (old style trailer house) that was down over the hill to the east of town.
The family who lived there was named Gould.  Mr. Gould got out of the shack without us 
seeing him and sneaked up behind us.  One of the gang saw him and hollered run.  We all 
took off but when he hollered "stop or I'll shoot" I froze where I was.  The other fellows 
got over a fence and into a weed patch and were safe.  Mr. Gould got his lantern and took 
me home.  For me it was like walking the last mile.  
When we got home he told pa what we had been doing but said I wasn't the one he was 
after and didn't think I should be punished too hard.  I got off without a licking but was 
restricted to quarters for a week or two.

Maybe you would like to take a look at the Okobojo Store.  It was on the north side of the 
street and the door was on the south.  The main part was probably forty feet long and 
twenty four feet wide.  I can remember when it still had the hitching rail outside to tie 
saddle horses to.  The board walk in the front was about a foot high.  Big glass windows 
on each side of the door let in plenty of light.  When you walked in the counter was to 
your left.  Setting on the counter as you went in was a show case made of glass.  This was 
for candy, gum, Cracker Jack, cigars and cigarette papers.  Next was a scale to weigh 
bacon, cheese etc.  Next came a vacant place for waiting on the customer and then 
another showcase and coffee grinder on the end.  
On your right was the hardware, and misc. items.  Rope was coiled up in sacks in the 
basement.  The rope was then run up through a hole in the floor and a knot tied in it.  If 
you wanted to buy rope it was pulled through the floor and measured to the length you 
wanted.  Then cut off, a knot tied and it was ready for the next customer.  Canned goods 
was shelved on the left.  A big pot bellied stove stood a little north of center.  The post 
office was on the east.  More show cases stood on the north and west with ample room to 
walk behind.  This was the dry goods and knick-knack department.  Bolts of gingham for 
dresses, and oilcloth for table caners were kept here.  You could also buy a pair of 
overalls, jacket, shirt or red or blue handkerchief.  (bandannas)
Just west of the stove was a door leading into the storeroom.  A barrel of vinegar, sacks 
of flour, canned goods ect. were here.  For people who had cars there was a wagon tank 
on blocks, of gasoline in one corner.  The gas was drained from a spout into a five gallon 
can and with a large funnel to assist was carried out and poured into the gas talk chich 
was (in model T's) under the front seat.  
Lets go back and have another look at the grocery counter again.  For lack of chairs and 
other posterior support the counter was used to set on.  This was especially true during 
the evenings when men gathered to spin yarns and eat peanuts.  
The front of the counter was marred by spurs warn by cowboys and would-be cowboys 
until it was pock-marked from end to end.  Not all of the boys owned a pair of spurs so 
sometimes those who had would share with us who hadn't and when the opportunity 
came we would don one spur and sit on the counter and get in a few good licks to further 
mar the already disfigured face.  Those old spur marks were still there in the early 40's 
when I last saw the old store.  
One secret the store kept for years was two bullet holes in the floor just a little south of 
the store.
As the story was later told to me a drunk came in one night and ordered Ike McGannon 
(Uncle of the store owner I knew) to dance.  Well, Ike was a Scotch Irishman and I guess 
he told the drunk to go to hell.  Whereupon the drunk put a couple of well placed bullets 
next to Ike's feet.  
It was sometime in the 1930's that Beryl McGannon (the store owners son) heard the 
story, found the holes and dug the dirt out. 

In January 1921 Pa went to Pierre the session of legislature.  During the session I spent 
several days in the State Capital with him.  Had I been two years older I could have been 
a page.  Only seventh grade and older could qualify.  I was in the fifth.  However, 
sometimes one of the legislators would give me a note to get him something from the 
supply room and I would hasten to comply.  I didn't do this often.  I suppose it would 
have been called "moonlighting without honor".  But it gave me the feel of being a page.  
I was in Pierre, and of course in the halls of the capitol, the night the House and Senate 
adjourned for the season.  I've joined in with high school students when everyone seemed 
to go wild after winning a basket ball game and we would join hands and perform a snake 
dance through the streets and then rush a picture show.  That night in the State House 
when the gavel fell and ended the session the legislators began to yell and throw 
everything that was loose.  They were yelling, laughing and slapping one another with 
hands or rolled up news papers and seemed to be having a wonderful time.  I was inside 
the chambers and enjoying every bit of it.
I felt someone grab my by the neck and seat of the pants and I was put out side.  I was 
wondering in the halls when Pa found me a few minutes later.  He asked me who put me 
out and I told him it was Len Oldaker.
Pa took me by the hand and we went looking for Oldaker.  We didn't find him.  Probably 
just as well we didn't.

Pa was an easy going man.  He very seldom got angry but that night his adrenal glands 
must have over flowed.  I have often wondered just what would have happened if he had 
found Mr. Oldaker.

Next morning we went down to the E. C. Lee saddle shop in Pierre and looked at saddles.  
About every time I went to Pierre I would in o the saddle shop and watch them work.  
The workshop was in the rear of the store. 

Saddle trees were ordered in different shapes and sizes from the factory and then covered 
by the saddle maker.  Leather was soaked, then cut and fitted to the pommel, seat and 
back.  Saddle horns were sometimes made of nickel or silver but most of them were iron.  
These iron ones were covered with leather.  Then the skirts, fenders and stirrup straps 
were attached and it looked like a saddle.
Lee saddles were world famous during this era.  This was because he made the Cooper 
Contest Saddles.  The original contest saddle was made to order for Kenneth Cooper who 
lived west of Ft. Pierre and was the "Casey Tibbs" of his day.  The swell or pommel of 
this saddle came out on both sides of the horn [drawing] so a rider could get his knees 
under them.  This saddle was disqualified in later years for contests.  
Bridles, chaps etc were also made in  the shop.  In fact if it could be made of leather this 
man could make it.
Well, we looked the saddles over and came up with a used cooper-contest for forty 
dollars.  Pa tried to buy me a pair of boots but couldn't find my size.  We even went to F. 
Pierre but still no luck so I went home and rode with shoes.  


Page 52 left blank

In the summer of 1921 the folks planned an overland trip to the Black Hills.  I was to go 
along and Willis and Cathie were to stay at home with curly.  A woman from Pierre by 
name of Mrs. Radcliff and family were to come to Okobojo and stay while were on our 
trip.  
I had gone to the hills with the folks a few years earlier by train and remembered seeing 
Chief Red Clouds saddle at Rapid City and the graves of Wild Bill and Calamity Jane at 
the Deadwood Cemetery but this time we were going by car and would, according to 
plan, see it all.
Pa got camping equipment, including a barrowed tent ready and Ma looked after the 
cooking utensils and grub.  I checked on wrenches, tire tools, spark plugs, tire patching, 
an extra timer etc.  Pliers, bailing wire and a screw driver were essential for running a 
Model T.  And of course, a set of transmission bands.  To me it took a long time coming 
but they day of departure finally arrived.  It was the merry month of June.  We drove into 
Pierre and on down to the boat landing.  There was no highway bridge across the 
Missouri at Pierre at that time so we drove on to the ferry and were piloted across to the 
Fort Pierre side.  We were on our way.
We got on the graveled road to Rapid city (I believe highway 14 at that time was know as 
the "Black and Yellow Trail") and went over the Ft. Pierre hill only to be met by more 
hills and then more hills.  About the only things that has changed from then to now, as far 
as roads are concerned, is the road is now hard surface.
A few miles out of Ft. Pierre the road ran parallel to Scotty Phillips buffalo pasture.  It 
was a hot quiet day and a few buffalo were close to the fence at one place so we stopped 
to look them over.
They paid very little attention to us.  They seemed to be more interested in the flies that 
were always present during the summer or were just taking it easy and trying to catch a 
snooze away from the main herd.  
Off to the north a half mile or more was the main herd.  The prairie appeared to be black 
with buffalo and they seemed to be milling around.  I suppose they were trying to keep 
away from the flies.  
I don't have any idea how many may have been in this herd but there were many 
hundreds.  That was the only time I ever had the chance to see this famous herd.
About 1926 or 27 the buffalo were rounded up and shipped from Ft. Pierre by railroad to 
various parts of the country.
Clouds were starting to gather in the north west so we drove on.  We got as far as a 
country school house close to Hoyse and camped for the night.  School houses were 
always open to the public in those days in case of bad weather.  There were especially 
nice to get into in the wintertime.  
We had supper and waited out the storm.  It didn't have much wind but it did rain hard 
but by morning it was all over and the sun was bright wand the day was quiet.  We 
packed up got back on the gravel and continued west.   At Wasta there used to be a hill 
that was noted far and wide to be a tough one for cars to get up.  When the highway dept.  
went to work on it years later it was cut down to size and now it is nothing more than a 
long ascent that tourists travel at seventy per. (ok I'll settle for 55).
Pa was a little worried about the hill but we had no trouble as I remember.  Sometimes 
with a model T, especially if the gas was low in the tank, when you came to a steep hill 
you might have to go up in reverse.  This was because there wasn't a gas pump to force it 
and in order to get the gas tank higher than the carburetor it would be necessary to back 
up.
Transmission bands also had to be changed from time to time, and here again if the clutch 
band wore out you could turn around and finish going up a hill backwards. If the brake 
band gave out going down hill you could use the reverse for a brake.  If they both wore 
out you would either take a wild ride or jump.  We got to rapid and found the camp 
ground.  The tent fastened to the side of the car something like the one on your VW 
Camper.
I don't remember if it was the first or second night that the wind blew and it rained.  
Sometime during the storm Pa had a stroke.  He didn't say anything until morning.  Hw 
was dragging his left foot and couldn't use his left arm.  Our vacation was over.
We got him to a doctor as soon as we could and the doc confirmed it.  
People were friendly and helpful and Ma soon found a man to drive the car back to Pierre 
($25).  I wanted to drive it back but of course they wouldn't let me.
Pa spent the day in bed and that night when the train left Rapid for Pierre were all on it.

Pa didn't respond too fast to the doctors treatments.  They didn't have the know how to 
combat hypertension that they do today, and along with the flare-ups of malaria (Pa got it 
in the Philippines) he had a not too comfortable summer.  He did get back his speach and 
the use of his arm but couldn't do much at the office.
Winter came and went and In July 1922 Pa and Ma decided to go the Hot Springs where 
Pa could be at the Battle Mountain Sanitarium.  
They took me with them and we got an apartment in a house close to the sanitarium.  
I moped around for a week or so and then got a job shining shoes in a barber ship.  It was 
a basement shop just across the street north of the Evens Hotel.  The shop furnished all 
equipment.  The price of a shine was fifteen cents and I got five cents of it plus the tips 
where were not many.  I didn't make much but it gave me a little spending money and I 
stayed with it until we went back home in November.
In September I started school the seventh grade.  It was different than the Okobojo school 
but I got along OK and was liking it by the time we left but was ready to go back to 
Okobojo when the time came.
Thanksgiving Day was a pleasant one.  We ate dinner in Pierre at grandpa Green's.  Pa 
was in good spirits.
The folks had heard of a new treatment they thought might help Pa.  I think it was some 
kind of steam bath that was given at a hospital in Chamberlain.  
Ma wanted him to go the day after Thanksgiving.  Pa had always been superstitious 
regarding Friday and wasn't' too hep about it but finally agreed to go.  Cathie was 
teaching school about five miles north east of Okobojo that winter and Ma had gone back 
to running the Office.  On December 7th Pa had a massive brain hemorage and died 
before Ma got to chamberlain. 

The rest of the winter passed as other winters had before.  The neighbors may have 
dropped in a little oftener and the young folk came to skate as usual.  We had some gay 
skating parties on the creek and our house seemed to be the gathering place.  The old 
swimming hole turned in to a skating pond in the winter.
When we had parties we tried to pick a moonlight night and it would be a Friday or 
Saturday night.  If snow had fallen to cover the ice to any depth us younger "bucks" 
would spend the afternoon cleaning it with scoop shovels and by night it would be in tip-
top shape.  We would gather a good sized pile of wood from dead branches along the 
creek and even steal a few chunks from wood piles if necessary.
When the skaters gathered a fire would be lighted.  Sometimes songs would be sung 
around the fire but mostly we just skated. 
Occasionally we would skate cross-handed with one of the girls but it was more fun to 
show-off skating backwards and cutting figure eights all by yourself.  When the fire 
burned down to a good bed of red hot coals we would start roasting marshmallows and 
wieners.  It was also a good time to toast toes that had become chilled.  
To young hearts most everything seems beautiful and these occasions were no exception.  
To me the moon seemed to shine just as little brighter.  It may have been it was jealous of 
the fire's reflection on the ice and so tried to drown it with its brilliance. 
Curly didn't skate but was generally on hand to pick up dropped marshmallows and 
wieners.  When the fire burned out and the moon dropped to the wets we would call it a 
night and go home.  And this how we enjoyed the valley in the early 1920's 

As I can remember it nothing worth writing about happened during 1923.  I was in the 
eighth grade that fall and Cathie started college at Huron.  She worked for her board & 
room her freshman year.  I was graduated from the eighth grade in the spring of 1924 and 
needed someplace to go to high school so arrangements were made to move to Huron.
Ma figured if she could find a big enough house to rent she could put Cathie and me 
through school by taking in roomers and boarders.  This she did.  Cathie paid off with 
dividends but, as has generally been the case with me, I was somewhat of a 
disappointment.  But more on that later.  
In the spring of '24 Ma and Willis went to Pierre one day and came home in a new Ford.  
In those days you could have nay color you wanted as long as it was black.  The car 
didn't have a self starter on it and the tire rims were not demountable.  But I was used to 
cranking and a 30"x3" tire was easy to change.  And that is just what you did when you 
had a flat tire.  You took it off, patched it and put it back on.
I believe the total cost of the Ford was $295.00.  Don't remember what the trade in was 
for the old Ford. 
When they drove in the yard with that new Ford it shone like a majors freshly polished 
boots.  I fell in love with it at once.  Sometime when we had a rainy day I'd go out in the 
garage, put the side curtains on (for effect only) and travel vicariously all over the world 
and back again.  
The month of June arrived.  Cathie was home for the summer and I was relieved from 
some of the type setting at the office.
Willis & I were building a new out-house.  The old one was getting rickety.  It may have 
been better as it was than the new one we built but our intentions were good.  The new 
one didn't last long enough to find out.  We finished our project about noon on June 14, 
stood back and surveyed it and called it good.  We ate dinner than got in the new car, 
picked up George Lumley who was Willis's Okobojo chum and went up to the old farm.  
A bachelor by the name of Clarence Moon lived there.  We spent the afternoon shooting 
the breeze and rolling a few cigarettes out of Moon's Tuxedo tobacco.
As the afternoon wore on clouds began to gather in the north west until they became a 
menacing black and green.  It was almost six o'clock so we started home.  East of 
Okobojo are three small hills, well, actually they are more like dips in the road because 
the road had been graded and about six feet of dirt had been built up in the bottom the 
two of the ravines to make travel easier. 
We were just topping the last knoll when the rain hit.  The model T stopped.  I got out 
and foolishly tried to crank it.  I was soaked before my feet touched the ground.  I ran 
back and got in the front seat.  Willis was driving and Geo. Lumley was in back.  What 
happened in the next four or five seconds is a blank.  I know what happened but I don't 
know how.  I heard the windshield crash and there was a heavy weight on my ribs.  My 
head and shoulders were sticking out from under the right front door and the rest of me 
underneath.  It was hard to breathe.   All at once the weight came off me and I crawled 
out.  Geo. had been thrown out of the car and when he saw me he lifted it up and I was 
free. 
Its a good thing Henry Ford made the Model T simple.  For the most part it was just a 
motor, five wheels, including the one used for steering, with a piece of tin wrapped 
around it.  Willis was under the other side in about the same position I was and when 
Geo. lifted the car off me it balanced on Willis.  But Geo. had him out from under before 
I got to my feet.
I suppose the wind was blowing close to a hundred miles an hour and the rain was a 
torrent.
We were protected some by the six foot grade we just dropped over so we got in a huddle 
to decide which way to go and what to do.  We started for home.
We crossed a woven wire fence in the ravine and the wind took over.  It knocked us 
down and we were tumbled and rolled in the water and mud like so many corn cobs.  
Willis managed to stay with me but Geo. got lost from us in the heavy rain.  Willis and I 
went on alone.  
A family by the name of Flansburg lived about a quarter of a mile a little south and east 
of us so we headed for their place.  We crawled, rolled and slid and finally made it.  The 
Flansburg family were in the cellar and we gave them quite a surprise when we opened 
the door and tumbled down the stops.  They found room for us to sit and asked where in 
the world we had come from.  They were advised.
It was probably ten minutes after we made our unannounced arrival that the door opened 
again and Geo. flopped into the cellar.  We were glad to see him.  
It seems that even in a near tragedy something or some one turns it, at least in part, to 
comedy.  Geo. began to tell his tale.  It was a good one.
According to his version he had been taken up into the air and deposited on the highest 
hill that was covered with the most rocks in the vicinity.  From the hill top he had been 
rolled and slid to the bottom without missing a rock.  According to Geo. he had been 
forced to swim the creek twice. He finally got within a hundred yards or so of the 
Flansburgs but decided the struggle wasn't worth it so when he came upon an old plow he 
laid down beside of it to die.  
The angel of death didn't arrive because, as Geo. continued, it started to hail.  When the 
hail stones began to bounce off of him he discovered he was very much alive.
With the bee like stings from the hail plus a lot of help from the wind he had made it to 
the cellar in record time.  
By the time Geo had finished his story the storm was over so we went top side.  My ribs 
hurt and I could hardly get up the steps of the cellar so Flansburgs took me in the house 
and put me to bed.  
Willis & Geo headed for the town and found it a wreck.  The houses, store, school house 
and printing office were still standing but smaller buildings were gone and the town hall 
was a pile of scrap lumber in the street.  
Everything but the house at our place was gone.  Ma had gone out to put the little 
chickens in before it rained.  When the rain and wind hit the chicken house collapsed and 
she was pinned under one side of it.  After everything else in the yard blew away the wall 
was lifted off of her.  Except for a few bruises and a smashed nose she wasn't hurt. 
Cathie was in the house.  She tried to hold the big window in the west side from blowing 
in.  She couldn't.  She got out of the way just in time and ran to the kitchen door on the 
east side.  She couldn't get the door open and while she tried to the brick chimney blew 
off the roof and landed just in front of the door.  Then the door opened and she got 
outside and found ma.  By this time everything loose had blown away but a couple small 
trees.  They crawled over to them and hung on until the storm was over.
Next day was Sunday and I was brought home.
When the storm had hit I was wearing garters to hold up my socks.  I had a good 
jackknife in my pocket along with thirty or thirty-five cents.  When we got the the cellar 
all my pockets were inside out and my garters were gone.  Well, not quite gone.  They 
snaps were still on the socks but the part that went around my legs had been torn off.  
That was some wind. 
I think I was taken to Pierre on Monday and got my ribs taped up.  The doctor figured 
three had been cracked.  Willis may have had some cracked too.  But he wasn't as fussy 
as I When they got the ford out of the ditch it wasn't hurt much.  The windshield and top 
were ruined but otherwise there was just one little dent in a rear fender.  It must have 
been turned over in the air and came straight down.  With a new top and windshield it 
was good as new.  One life had been lost.  A man about fifteen miles south east of 
okobojo was killed by a flying timber.  A man north west had a broken leg.  Otherwise it 
had been a lucky storm. 
 The rest of the month of June & July was spent getting windows fixed, cleaning up and 
building a make-shift out house.  A new top and windshield were put on the car and most 
everything seemed pretty well back to normal.  We had a sale and sold the horses, 
wagons and some of the farm machinery which wasn't much.  Ma sold the printing office 
to John Crawford, paid any bills that were still outstanding and we were ready to go to 
Huron.
I haven't mentioned curly much since we moved to Okobojo.  I suppose its because I was 
growing up and Curly was getting old.  But he was very much a part of the family until, I 
think, 1923.  Curly had been run over by a car and this along with old age was making it 
hard for him to get around too good.  One day he just simply disappeared.  We never 
found hide nor hair of him.  Sometimes I wonder if he didn't know what was happening 
and just took off for part unknown and never returned. 

One semi cloudy day in August Aleck McGannon (store owner) backed his old Ford 
truck up to the door and we loaded it with household goods for the trip to Huron.  Willis 
went with Aleck in the truck and Ma, Cathie and I took the car.
We had a good trip as I remember it and arrived at Huron an hour or so before the truck 
and furniture.
The house was a three story affair and had ten rooms.  six bedrooms upstairs and one on 
the ground floor.  The six up stairs were for rent and were occupied most of the time 
while were there.  The house was heated with a coal furnace and the type of heat was hot 
water.  I slept in the basement most of the time.  It was my job to shovel coal in and take 
ashes out. 
We got the furniture in place but what we had didn't fill much space so Ma and Cathie 
shopped the next few days and put beds and dressers in the rooms upstairs.  By Sept. 1st 
Ma was ready for her new adventure of running a boarding house.  She got along good 
and it lasted for three years. 
Willis went back to Okobojo where he worked most of the time.  He did spend one or 
two winters with us and worked at Armour's packing plant but most of the time he was in 
or around Okobojo.
I started going to the Methodist Church and began to get acquainted through the Epworth 
League (MYF).  I consider it one of the best places I ever got into.  I recommend a 
church as the best place for all young people.  It doesn't hurt the older ones either.
I got off  on the wrong foot in high school and never did get in step.  Lots of the students 
went out of their way to help me get my work done but I just wouldn't put my mind to it. 
Guess I figured an education wasn't necessary to play a fiddle by ear and live in 
Okobojo.  And that was what I wanted to do and where I wanted to live.  I learned 
different but by that time it was too late. 
I don't remember when I met Walter Blake.  He was a freshman too and one day after 
school we walked home together.  He was smaller than I and had thick black hair.  His 
father was dead and his mother had married again.  She was Mrs Howard Perkins and 
worked at the front desk at the Huron Clinic.  Blake and I became the best of friends.  He 
didn't go to church.  He liked to play the fiddle and had a set of drums.  We had a lot of 
fun at both his house and ours.  But I think more at his house because there were no 
roomers to disturb.  
Some evening Mrs. Perkins would have a few friends n and Blake and I would get to 
playing on the drums and fiddle.  Then they would roll up the rug and dance for an hour 
or so.  Blake's mother most always baked a cake or pies during these sessions and we 
would eat them while they were hot.  What little dancing I know was learned at these 
parties.  They were some good times. 
Clarence Kooyman was another good friend of mine.  He was five years older than I but 
that never made any difference.  We spent a lot of time together.  He went to the 
Methodist church and I guess thats how we came to be so friendly and find so much to do 
together. 
I sang in the choir and attended services both morning and evening along with Epworth 
League which was just before the evening service.  I just as well admit that one of the 
reasons for my church regularity was because of a girl.  We finally got together and went 
steady for about a year.  
In high school about all i took part in was boys glee club and mixed chorus.  Had some 
good trips out of the that and was in for the three years I was in Huron.   
When the first school turm was over I went looking for work.  The first job was at the 
Royal Hotel.  I had to get up at four in the morning and go to the hotel and build the fire 
in the cook stove.  I didn't like the hours so I quit to take a job at the depot cage.  Here I 
mopped floors.  
Lots of trains were running then and one morning the girls at the counter were having an 
extra heavy run of customers.  One of the (the girls) got me to work at the counter.  This 
was my most embarassing moment but proved to be the best break I ever got.  I stepped 
up to some women and asked what she would have.  She said she would take a dozen 
fried cakes.  What do you think old country boy George did?  He went to the kitchen and 
put in an order for a dozen pan cakes.  One of the waitresses saved the day and got the 
old girl a dozen donuts.  She never knew how close she came to getting twelve pancakes 
in a brown paper bag.  
That afternoon the boss paid me off.  The first and only time I ever was fired.  A day or 
two after this chagrin experience I got a job painting at the State Fair grounds.  I worked 
there for two summers and probably painted on every building on the grounds.  It was 
outside work and I liked it.  
We would quit painting at least a week before the fair started.  I suppose one reason for 
this was to make sure the paint was dry before the crowds arrived.  
Then i got a job on Feed & Forage.  When people would bring in stock for the fair they 
would need hay, straw and grain.  Two flat-bed wagons were used to deliver and I 
worked on one of them with an older man.  He drove the team and I unloaded the feed.  
Of course, if we had a big order he would help but most of the orders were a bale here 
and a sack of oats or corn there.   The man I worked with liked horse races so if 
something was going on in the afternoon we wanted to see we would pile the bales on the 
wagon a little higher, drive over by the race tracks, climb on the bales to see over the 
fence and watch.  Got to see a lot of the fair this way. 
I had a pass to get in to the grounds so I never missed a night on midway.  I liked to go to 
Machinery Hall.  This was where the new cars were on display along with the latest 
machinery of all kinds.  In later years the 4H clubs took over Machinery Hall and new 
machinery was exhibited out side.  
Parking was not a problem then because so many came by train.   Both the CNW and 
Great Northern ran special trains during fair week and people came on them by the 
thousands.  
When the fair closed school started.  Pheasant season opened in October with the season 
open all day and a limit was seven birds.  Three could be hens.
I winged as many birds then as now.  But there is and was a difference.  I could run them 
down with ease.
One day Blake and I decided to go duck hunting.  He had heard Lake Byron was loaded 
with ducks.  I don't remember if we had our car or his.  When we got to Byron the shore 
line in one spot was covered with bodies & heads sticking up.  We walked, we stooped, 
we crawled on hands & knees and then on our bellies.  When we looked over a rise in the 
ground we were face to face with a thousand mud hens.  After that most of my hunting 
was for the ring neck.
I remember when the first stop & go sign was installed in Huron.  It stood in the center of 
Dakota Ave.  and third street.  It was four or five inches square and probably five feet 
high.
The words STOP were printed on two opposite sides and the word GO on the other two 
sides.  The sign itself was attached to a spring in the concrete so if a car hit it it would 
bend over.  There was a light in the top so the stop & go could be read at night.
Before the big 3 & AMC took over the car business there were a lot of different kinds 
manufactured.  Some that i can think of now were; Auburn, Buick, Chevrolet, Cord (a 
front wheel drive), Dodge, Durant, ford, Franklin, Hupmobile, Hudson, Jewett, Lincoln, 
Maxwell, Morman, Nash, Oakland, Overland, Oldsmobile, Packard, Reo, Star, 
Studebaker and Wyllis Knight.  These were the cars that the sop sign had to face and it 
took quit a beating at times.  
Chain stores were just getting started in the 1920's and Red Owl and Gambles both 
opened stores in Huron while we were there.  Gambles was a good place to buy repairs 
for the Model T. 
In 1927 Charles Lindberg crossed the atlantic in the Spirit of St. Louis.  This was a big 
day in Huron.  Of course there were noTV's and very few radios so a crowd gathered in 
front of the Huronite building and watched and listened to the news as it came over the 
AP wires.  Lindberg had just done what most everyone thought impossible. 
Cathie was graduated from College that spring.  She, like Minneatta, was an A student 
and graduated with honors.  She was Pow-wow princess which is a top honor of Huron 
College. 
I, on the other hand, was bitter with the whole high school system.  I had fiddled while 
Rome burned and was a year behind the class I started with.  I'd been a fool and still was.  
Ma would have stayed in Huron two more years to put me though high school but I 
wouldn't listen when school was out we all packed up and moved back to Okobojo.
Did we find it the same as when we had left it three years before?  
Of course not.  When one goes back it is never the same.  You can wish and pretend with 
all of your might but it is never the same.  
When we got back to Okobojo the old house was about the same as we had left it.  It had 
been lived in by a family by the name of Handcock and had been kept in fair condition.  
Handcock was running the store.  Aleck had moved the post office into a small new 
building where he spent most of his time.  A new town hall had been built.  There were a 
few new faces around the community but otherwise everything was about the same.  I got 
a job working on the haying crew at the Garrett farm about 5 miles west of town.  They 
had several hundred cattle so putting up hay lasted most of the summer.  
Ernie Garrett did the mowing and raking and Geoff Garrett had the stacking crew.  It was 
a good place to work and I earned some money that summer. 
Everything went along good until school started and then I got restless.  It didn't seem 
right to see other kids going to school and me not going.  When I got through at Garretts 
it was almost time to pick corn so got a job at my uncle Hal Glessners.  
Picking corn by hand is no easy job.  Hallie Glessner and I did the picking.  I don't think 
we got started until November and by that time it was cold.  We would be in the field 
with our teams and wagons before daylight on and if frost or snow was on the corn stalks 
we would be wet, that is our arms and pant legs would be wet,  in just a short while.  If 
we stopped to rest our mittens would freeze so we kept husking corn and throwing it in 
the wagon pretty steady.
If we worked hard we could each get twenty five or six bushels by noon.  Then we would 
take it home and unload it, eat dinner and rush back to the corn field.  By dark we would 
each have another load.  And so it went until Christmas.
In the meantime Ma had written to Brookings inquiring about the South Dakota School of 
Agriculture (SDSA).  Willis had gone there one winter so we knew a little about it.  I 
could go the first of January and get out the last of March.  I talked Hallie into going with 
me.
School at Brookings was much different than high school.  I liked it.  It was like College.  
Where and when you did you studying was your business if you got it done O.K. if you 
didn't you got a goose egg for a grade.  I got pretty good grades for a change.  
Some classes didn't have much studying.  In blacksmithing we made things out of iron 
that we heated in a forge then beat it out on an anvil until it turned into a log chain, bolt 
or chisel.  We learned to weld.  Not with a torch but with a white hot piece of iron rod 
and a big hammer.  In Mechanical Engineering we worked on motors, tractors and 
machinery.  In Dairying we tested cream and made cheese and ice cream along with the 
study of dairy cattle.  In Butchering we killed and butchered cattle, hogs and sheep.  Then 
we learned the different cuts and how to cut them up.
The Aggies were in Junior ROTC.  I enjoyed this.  The first year and maybe the second 
year too we wore the old wrap leggings and flare pants.  And the coats were the old style 
that fastened tight around the neck.  Every year the companys in both Senior and Junior 
ROTC would have one day when they would compete on campus to see which was the 
best drilled company.  I was in Company G and when the maneuvers were all over we 
were tagged the winners.  I don't think the College ever lived it down. 
I remember the Captain complementing our Company.  He said that in spite of the bitter 
cold we stood like veterans.  I suppose the reason for this may have been we were either 
scared or so cold we couldn't move.
Most of the Aggies roomed in private homes.  We came and went as we pleased.  
Breakfast was generally a fig bar and a cup of coffee.  Noon and evening meals were at 
the College Cafeteria.  The meals were good.  
 There was a small hamburger joint up town that we went to quite often in the evenings.  
The cook had a big pan of hamburger rolled in balls about the size of golf balls.  These 
would be placed on the hot grill then flattened with a large spatula.  The buns he used 
were not quite as large as buns we buy now at stores but they were ample.  Dishes of 
relish, pickle, onion, catsup and mustard were on the counter and you could use any or 
all.  The price of the hamburger was five cents.  He sold them by the hundreds.  
In the fall of 1928 I went back to school for the full six months then stayed home during 
the time of '29 & '30.  When i went back in the fall of '33 I was a senior and twenty one 
so I had to pay my own tuition.,  It wasn't much.  Maybe thirty dollars a semester.  It was 
a good school term and I enjoyed every minutes of it.  I was top Sergeant of my 
Company and had lots of fun keeping a clean and well dressed unit.
One of the highlights of the year was the junior ROTC edition of the Military Ball.  It 
was held in the Aggie's old North Building. We had decorated the room in Purple & 
White (class colors).  It was a formal affair and everything was in order from the punch 
bowl on up.  
By this time the school year about over and graduation was coming soon.  Ma & Willis 
were planning to attend the graduation but a last minute snow storm put a stop to that.  
they couldn't get there.
The morning of graduation was blustery and cold.  I was going to ride home with 
"Shorty" Erwin who lived across the river and we were all packed and ready.  He had a 
Model T roadster with side curtains so the trip wasn't too cold.  We weren't used to car 
heaters at that time.  We got our "sheepskins" (they were sheepskin), said a few good 
byes and started west. 
West of Huron we got stuck in the snow and had to stay in Miller all night. 
Next day we got to Okobojo about noon.  Had dinner and Shorty went on home.  I think 
that was the last time I ever say him.  He was killed in a motorcycle accident that next 
summer.  
Well, I finally had the equivalent (or more) of a high school education.  I was ready, and 
felt like I could, meet the world on its own terms.  
Cathy was teaching in Minneapolis, had been for two years, and with a little financial 
help from her I had had an enjoyable school year.  
I got pencil and paper and began to plan my future.  Even down to prices I would get and 
what it would be spent for.  There was no way to lose.  Well, that is, there was no way to 
loose on paper.  It's amazing how foolish a person can be without even trying.  
The decade of the "roaring Twenties" was over but repercussions of the 1929's crash 
were rumbling louder and louder as banks continued to close their doors and the trusting 
customer discouvered his life savings were gone and he was broke.  I don't rememver the 
exact year that the bank in Onida folded.  Ma had over a hundred dollars in it but less 
than two hundred.  One day Alex McGannon told her he had a tip the bank was going to 
slose.  He was going to Oneda and she could go along if she had money in the bank and 
wanted to get it out.  She went and drew out what she had.  Next day the doors didn't 
open.  She had been one of the lucky ones. 

The springs of 1931 didn't look too bad.  Willis had a pretty full line of (IHC) 
International Harvester Co. machinery including a Farmall tractor that he got new in 
1929.  I was fresh out of a State College that knew all of the answers (too bad I didn't) 
about farming so how could we lose.  We rented extra farm land and went to work.

Tractors didn't have lights on them then so daylight to dark was as long as we worked. 

Willis had a mail route that went from Okobojo to Little Bend.  The trip was made three 
times a week.  I think he got fifty four dollars per month for this job.  Probably not 
counting wear & tear on the car & tires it didn't cost much over a dollar to make the trip 
but it was sure no money making job.

We were milking cows too and may have been getting eight or ten dollars a week from 
cream.

Well it looked like a fair crop.  Not a bumper crop but a fair one and even with prices of 
wheat under a dollar per bushel we might make some over seed and fuel bill.

Then the hot winds came up from the south and flying with the wind were grasshoppers.  
They took care of the harvest and didn't leave us much.  In fact they didn't leave us at all.  
They stayed on for eight or ten years more. 

1932 was a good crop year but no price.  It rained so much that the grasshoppers couldn't 
eat everything.  They were building up a population to destroy us when the years got dry.  

I had 80 acres of barley in 1932 that made 40 bu to the acre after the grasshoppers took 
about 20 bu per acre.  The price of barley was eight cents per bu.  So I piled it on the 
ground and filled the front room in the old house on the farm.  Also had wheat in the 
dining room – that was the room where the hard coal burner used to be – wheat was less 
than fifty cents on the market.  

One of our neighbors wanted a few bushels of barley.  We got a bu. Basket and stroked 
20 baskets for him.  He gave me twenty cents a bu. And hauled it himself.  

1933 came along and it stayed dry.  The grasshoppers took everything. 

 In January Willis got married and in the late summer I took a trip to the west coast – 
Oregon – to visit my Uncle C.B. Green.  I had about thirty hogs that would weigh from 
200# to 250#.  They had been eating 8 cent barley and were in good shape.  I sold the 
hogs for three cents a pound and had about $200 to play with.

Willis had bought a 1930 Plymouth.  It was a good car.  Had good tires and looked sharp.  
I was to take it on my trip west.  Hallie Glessner was going with me. 

Our trip went good until we got almost across Montana then a piston broke and went 
through the block and we were afoot.

We got the Plymouth toed into a little town (can't think of the name now), left it at a 
garage and went on to Oregon.  We rode in a truck to Walla Walla, caught a ride on to 
Spokane and rode the cushions on to Portland.  Hallie wanted to ride the box cars but I 
wouldn't do it.  More people traveled by box car than any other way.  Before the car 
broke down, we would watch the freight trains.  They were loaded with people, men, 
women, children.  Box cars, flat cars, gondolas.  People were hungry.  Some had lost 
their homes and all were looking for a handout and a job.  It would have been an 
experience to have ridden the freights but I have never been sorry I didn't.  We got to 
Portland and stayed with uncle Charley's a week.

One day he took Hallie & me to Sea Side.  That's about fifteen or twenty miles from 
Portland nad is the end of the old Lewis and Clark trail.  The road is built up on the beach 
at Sea Side and cars drive out, turn around a pole or monument at the end of the trail and 
start back.  I would have liked to have driven around it in the Plymouth but had to settle 
for a walk around and a dip of my hand in the Pacific Ocean.  Many years later I dipped 
my finger in the Atlantic when we were in Boston.

We had a real nice day with Uncle Charley at Sea Side and then it was time to be moving 
on.
 
Hallie went on to California.  I went with him to the R.R. yards and watched him get on a 
freight headed down the coast.  He made it O.K.  I saw him twice after that.  He joined 
the army and stayed in until he was killed at the Battle of the Bulge in Dec, 1944.
 
I left Portland the next day by bus and went to Spokane and then on to the town the 
Plymouth was in.  I remember eating supper in Spokane.  A small eating joint around the 
corner from the bus depot.  It wasn't Spokane's finest I'm sure.  It may not even have been 
the worst joint in Town.  But it was cheap.  I got hamburger, steak, potatoes, bread & 
coffee for 15 cents.  It was a good meal and I was glad to get it.
 
I got off the bus where the Plymouth was and went to the garage.  The man in charge said 
he could give me $25 for it.  Twenty five dollars was better then nothing so I sold it and 
traveled on.  
 
Laurel, Mont. is a few miles out of Billings.  One of Pa's old buddies lived there so I 
stopped to visit a day or two.  Howard Boyles was his name.  He worked for the rail 
road.  He took me panning for gold one evening.  He went quite often and generally 
found a few flakes.  Just enough to keep him wanting to go back.  This time I was with 
him he thought he found Platinum and he really got excited.  It turned out to be some no. 
Six shot.  It showed up pretty heavy in the pan and he thought he had it made.  Next night 
he took me to Billings and I bought a ticket on the North Coast Limited and started for 
home.  It was the smoothest, nicest train ride I ever had.  I was switched somewhere 
along the line to the Hiawatha on the Milwaukee to go on to Aberdeen.  The Hiawatha at 
that time was a crack train but the N. C. L. was superb.
 
When I got back home I gave Willis his $25.  He said he was glad it was the car and not 
me that got cracked up.

The twenty five made a down payment on a '29 Model A Ford and we were back in 
business again.
 
This part isn't clear to me anymore seems like he bought a Model T coupe but guess it 
really doesn't make any difference.
 
Herbert Hoover had lost the election to Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal was on 
its way.  Where the Government had once depended on the people it now was evident 
that people were becoming more and more dependant on Government.  But this is all 
history that is allready in the books so why should I add it here.  One of the first work 
projects we had at Okobojo was a road graveling job.  This was done with horses and 
wagons and men.  This was where we learned to lean on a shovel, smoke a camel and get 
something for nothing. 
 
At first pay checks were mailed to the worker.  This gave him a choicer of spending the 
money in Okobojo, Pierre or Onida.  Onida soon changed this and checks were held at 
the County Court house.  You had to pick them up in person.
 
This gave the Onida merchants first chance.  Onida had a city liquor store and several 
beer joints.  Many a pay check never found its way to a grocery store.  If it hadn't been 
for basic commodities handed out some families wouldn't even have had beans on the 
table that night.
 
For the most part I believe most of the money went where it did the most good.  Food, 
clothing etc. but it opened a loophole for the parasite and he has been living in heaven 
ever since. 
 
Once of the projects at Okobojo that still stands more than forty years is the Okobojo 
Dam.  It furnished work to quite a few men.  
 
I worked with a team on a dump wagon for a while and then bought an old Chevrolet 
truck that almost got me killed.  For about a hundred dollars more I could have bought a 
later Model Ford that would have stood the test.  The Chevy was a long wheel base and I 
figured it would be better for me after the dam was finished.  
 
The motor was good and so were the tires.  We took the cab off and built dump boards.  
This worked good during the mild fall weather and I handled dirt pretty steady.
 
The trucks were loaded by an excavator pulled by a big Cat tractor.  When the ground 
froze the excavator would rip out big chunks and it would be necessary to lower the 
elevator so the chunks would not go through the plank floor of the boxes.
 
One cold morning I was waiting my turn to go under the elevator.  I had the old truck 
warmed up and reved up and every thing pointed to go.
 
I put her in super low and eased under the elevator and gave the signal to go.  I was 
almost loaded when the truck stopped.  Every thing else kept going for three or four 
seconds.  I flopped over in the seat and was covered with dirt in the first seconds and in 
the next two the elevator took the top half of the steering wheel and the windshield.  
Some workers rushed over the drag by my body out of the mess but I crawled out on my 
own power.  We got the old truck pulled out of the way and I went to work with a shovel 
and hauling rocks I don't remember which.  I never used the truck as such again.  Some 
years later I made a tractor out of it.  Got large wheels off of an old International Truck.  
It had all kinds of power but not much traction.  Still later I traded the original hind wheel 
on a new Maytag washing machine for Mom.  She still had it when we moved to 
Redfield.
 
By 1934 the grasshoppers had the situation pretty well in had.  The only greenery they 
would allow us to have was thistles.  don't really know why they didn't eat thistles but 
they didn't.  Nothing else did either unless it was a matter of starvation.  The best time to 
cut and stack thistles was when they start to turn red at the tips.  That is when they seem 
the stickingest too.  They weren't to hard to mow but were miserable to stack.  To keep 
your legs from getting raw you needed boots up to the knee or as close as possible.
 
Sheep wintered pretty good on thistles but cattle needed a little straw or hay.  But lots of 
cattle got through winters on almost pure thistles.
 
Henry Groseclose had a joke about how he wintered his cattle on a daily ration of one 
thistle and two snow balls.  I wasn't' too far from being a fact. 
 
Grasshoppers became a way of life.  They got in the house at every opportunity.  They 
were everywhere.  If you looked down you saw grasshopper on the ground.  If you 
looked up on most any day you could see them moving in the air as high as you could 
see.  If you got in the shade of something the hoppers were there too.
 
I've seen hoppers so thick on the shady side of the telephone poles and fence posts you 
couldn't put a finger on the post without touching a grasshopper.  If a water jug with a 
cork in it was set out in the open the hoppers would chew the edges off the cork and in a 
few days you needed a new one.  If pitchforks were outside the hoppers chewed the 
handles until they were rough and hurt the hands.  Same with shovels.  
 
1934 was in extra dry year too.  The Government set up a cattle buying program .  Feed 
was almost impossible to get for lots of farmers so they sold either all or part of their 
stock to the Government for $20 a head.  I worked on this project in '34.  When the cattle 
would come in to Onida they would be penned and then shipped in box cars.  Sometimes 
a local buyer would get a nice fat animal for $21 but most of the farmers told the buyers 
to go to hell and sold to the Gov't.  for $20.
 
One day Alex McGannon and I had charge of loading out a car of cattle from Onida to 
Pierre to unload them when the train got there.  When we unloaded there was one with a 
broke leg.  We went out to an indian camp east of Pierre and told a couple of them that a 
cow was in the stockyards with a broken leg.  We said we would be up town for a half 
hour or more and when we got back it would be OK with us if the critter with the broken 
leg was gone.  We went and had a beer or two and when we returned to the yards the cow 
was gone.  One thing I didn't like was supervising the killing of calves.  The reason for 
this was to try to save the cow by destroying the calf.  Yes, feed was that scarce. 
 
Some dug ditches and buried the calves and some butchered and ate what they could of 
them.  I don't remember what the Gov't paid for the calves but was probably eight or ten 
dollars a head.
 
I didn't have to kill any calves.  Two years of abortion in my cows had taken care of that. 
 
One day Lee Sargent came though Okobojo driving four or five nice white face cows and 
calves.  He was taking them to Onida to sell for $20 a head to the Gov't.  I said "Lee I've 
got some Jersey & Holstein mixed cows that are worth as much in Onida as your good 
herefords.  How about trading?"
 
We traded.  I was on the way to some good cattle.
 
Willis & Lucille had moved out of Okobojo and were living north east about six miles on 
what was known as the Halsher place.  He had bought some Holstein cows and was 
trying to make a living milking cows.  The mail route had been lost to Sam Smith who 
bid it in for $48 a month.  Sam turned it over to his bondsman about three years later on 
and went to Utah to work in the copper mines. 
 
I was getting some work as a township committeeman on the new Gov't. AAA program.  
I got the model A because I could make the final payments on it and Willis bought a 
Model T coupe.  It may not have been just that way but I'm close.  Things get hazy 
sometimes after forty years.  

The fall of '34 was almost like any other except for the dirt storms and dry weather.  
Schools started on schedule and the little darlings were given the same chance to learn 
the A, B, C,'s as their parents had before them.
 
A country teacher got about forty dollars a month and paid room and board out of that.
 
I heard that the new teacher at the Ross Green school was staying with Willis & Lucille 
so I made it a point to have business up there one afternoon.  I didn't need an excuse 
because I was at his place two or more times a week anyway.  I just wanted to find out if 
this teacher was a buck-toothed blond with scraggly hair and glasses.
 
Just in case the above description didn't fit I had on gabardine britches with a good flare 
at the side and 16" boots.  The lace type.
 
The three of us Greens were out in the yard watching the wined blow when the school 
mom arrived.  I took a quick look and began to kick a piece of dirt - I think it was dirt.  
Then I was being introduced and I took a long look.  I saw a very pretty face with dark 
brown eyes and even teeth framed by dark brown wavy hair.  All of this sat on top of a 
body that also met with my approval.  We had supper and during the evening I ask her to 
go to a dance on Saturday night.  Six months later - March 15, 1935 - we were married.  
That was forty years ago last Saturday.  I still watch for her to come from school.  I think 
its time she retired but she is like the politician.  She keeps saying "Two more years".   
Her face has been framed with silver for more than a few years but when she gets herself 
all "dolled" up she's still a mighty nice looking woman.
 
As for crops and grasshoppers 1935 was just a rerun of '34.   The dust storms may have 
been getting worse.  It didn't pay to plant a crop.  If it rained enough to bring it up the 
grasshoppers took it and if it didn't come up the wind blew it away.  The Government 
paid for planting Alfalfa & clover.  Very little of it ever grew.  A grasshopper always 
waited for anything green to come out of the ground.
 
Sometimes the air would fill with dust and there wouldn't be a breath of wind present to 
cause the dust to rise.  It was some sort of static electricity that seemed to lift it right out 
of the ground.  Fence lines became covered with dirt that drifted in like snow.  Windmills 
became electrified and people would get shocks when they turned on the mills or touched 
the pump handle.  But life went on and we even had fun.  Seems that there were more 
card parties and dances to go to than when times where good.
 
I got some work from the A.A.A. as a committeeman.  It wasn't steady work but paid 
well when I did work.  There was land to be measured on every farm in the County and 
sometimes the farms I had to measure would be twenty miles or more from home.
 
When we first started, our way of measuring was crude.  We had a wire rod attached to 
the left front wheel of our car in such a way that be tying a red cloth on the rod we could 
sit in the sear and drive along the edge of the field and count each time the wheel went 
around.  The wheel was calibrated in so many feet and inches.  This was the way we got 
our first measurements.
 
The next year we had odometers welded to the axel in such a way that a wire could be 
attached to the wheel and each time the wheel turned around the counting was automatic.
 
This worked slick.  In fact it was so easy that the next year the Gov't. made us use 
walking A.'s with the A we had one hand free to fight mosquitoes so the next year this 
was discontinued in favor of the wheel.  This took both hands to push so we were at the 
mercy of all bugs.  Uncle Sam seemed to be satisfied.  
 
When the school term ended in the spring of '35 I thought it would be nice to have a 
better car to go see my in-laws.
 
We found a 1934 Chev.  I was a good car so we traded in the Ford and signed the papers.
 
I met my in-laws and we went back to Okobojo after a week or so at Haughton.
 
In Okobojo we fixed up half the house for us and Ma had the other half.  I think this may 
have worked out for a while if hadn't had a stroke.  This upset the apple cart for all of us 
and it never got turned right side up again.
 
Mom taught the Okobojo School that winter.  When the weather got cold I went up and 
built the fire at the school house every morning but it didn't make up for the extra work 
mom had to do after she got home.  Somehow we got through the winter.

When spring came in '36 it turned out to be another re-run.  I wanted a new Chev. pickup 
- The price was $650.  We had paid $450 for the car the year before and were offered the 
full $450 on the trade for the pickup.  It might have been $400 but it was a good offer 
which ever it was.  Mom wasn't to eager to trade but we did.   That red pickup was my 
pride and joy for the full four years we had it.  Just a year or so ago I dreamed I had it 
again and it was in good shape.
 
Mom was pregnant.  Expected time of the event was July.  The last part of June went by 
with me not too far from home.  Sam Smith had a new Ford.  I was to use it when the 
time came for the trip to St. Marys at Pierre.  Bertha Bunch was ready to go along day or 
night.  For a change something good was about the happen.  We were full of excitement 
and hope.
 
The baby was born shortly after midnight on July 4th.  I was there.  I heard a good 
healthy cry and heard Doc Morrissey say its a boy.
 
Then I saw one of the Sisters take Doc aside and point to the babys back.  The baby was 
removed from the room immediately.  Mom was taken to her room.  Doc told me the 
baby wouldn't live over a few hours or maybe a day.  He said not to tell Mom.  He would 
tell her next day.  I went to her room.  She was kind of grogy but happy.  She wanted to 
talk but I told her to get some sleep.  I would see her later in the day.  Its hard to pretend 
when your world has just caved in .  Bertha was waiting in the lobby.  I told your and we 
started home.  
 
I suppose it was 3 or 3:30 when we got to Okobojo.  I didn't' go to bed.  Just sat out in the 
car and waited for daylight.  then drove up to where Willis and Lucille lived and told 
them.  
 
That afternoon I went back to Pierre.  The baby was dead and Mom had been told.  A 
name was needed so we gave him the name George.  Mom, of course, was in abed so 
couldn't go to the funeral.  It amounted to a few words graveside at the Okobojo 
Cemetery.  I used Sam Smith's car again and carried the coffin and rough box in the back 
seat.  I don't remember who rode with me but I think it was Willis.  A few friends were at 
the Cemetery and then it was over.  Over that is, for everyone but mom and me.  
 
Every thing dried up that summer too and what didn't dry up was eaten up by the 
grasshoppers.
 
The Government had a project going at the Little Bend.  Two truck loads of men were 
brought out from Onida every morning to work and then taken back at night.  A lot more 
of us went in our own cars.  The superintendent of the project was a good democrat by 
the name of Victor Steffen.  We had grown up not far apart and he was about a year older 
than I.  Vic was going with Dorothy at the time and was at our house quite often.  So 
when a "straw-boss" job opened up he gave it to me.  It was one of those important jobs 
where you stick one thumb in your mouth and the other one in your hip pocket and every 
five minutes change thumbs.
 
Work in the bend consisted of cutting and stacking weed, building check-dams and as in 
all government projects - goofing off.
 
One of the workers caught a bull snake one day.  He put a pinch of snuff on the snakes 
tongue and it killed the snake in a matter of seconds. 
 
A day or two later a red head by name of Pete Smith caught a rattle snake.  He gave the 
rattler the snuff treatment.  It took a little longer but death came in a matter of minutes.
 
Another thing that lived in the Bend were big grasshoppers.  These hoppers had no wings 
and were about eh size of a mans thumb with legs to match.  They weren't very 
destructive because they couldn't fly and weren't in to large numbers. 

Summer moved on into fall and the feed situation was critical.  We just didn't have 
enough to winter on.  Willis and I took a day or two and looked in the Redfield-Huron 
area for feed but didn't have any luck.  Then all four of us went to Aberdeen & Haughton 
and stayed a day or two at Spencers.  No luck there either.  I was ready to give up and sell 
for what every the cattle would bring. 
 
Willis made one more trip to the Watertown Brookings area and found a place at Clear 
Lake to winter.  I didn't want any part of it and said so.  It was too far away and would 
cost $450 dollars if all went as planned. 
 
I had a chance to sell my cattle for Seven hundred dollars.  I wanted to sell and put the 
money in the bank and buy cows back in the spring.
 
I guess my buying two cars in less than two years must have spooked mom and she sided 
in with Willis and Lucille and so I gave in and the cattle went east for the winter.

In the meantime a school teacher was needed in the Bend and mom was offered the job.  I 
thought teaching would help get her mind off the past summer.  I was wrong.  Rest would 
have been much better. 
  
We moved into a house in the Bend close to James Sutton's and near Loren Shaw's.  We 
had plenty of wood to burn and even though the house was full of cracks and holes we 
kept warm most of the time. 
 
I was superintendent of election in Okobojo township that November and the day before 
election it started to snow.  I had the ballot boxes with me at the Bend. 
 
We decided to wait until after school was out on Monday and then drive to Okobojo.
 
As soon as we got out of the river bottom the wind was blowing and the snow was 
drifting.  The roads were getting blocked and we had a tough time getting about fifteen 
miles to Geoff Garretts place.

We stayed there all night.  Next day with the help of Garretts we made it to Okobojo by 
noon and held the election.  That was a hard winter.  Lots of now and it stayed cold.
 
We went to Haughton  for Christmas and took the long way around and stopped off at 
Clear Lake to see how Willis and Lucille were wintering.  They weren't having a picnic.  
They were having enough to eat because they had butchered the fattest steer in the heard 
which was mine.  I suppose at the time it was worth maybe forty dollars.  If they would 
have given us a quarter of the beef it wouldn't have been quite so bad but we got a piece 
of flank which isn't much good except for boiling. 
 
After Christmas it kept snowing and every one in the Bend was snowed in for quite a 
while.  One day Jim went to Onida with his '33 Chev truck.  About seven or eight of us 
went along to get supplies,.  Part of the roads were open to one way traffic but part of the 
time we were going through fields and pastures.  We who rode in the truck box got a little 
cold but we were dressed warm and no one really suffered.  We got home with our 
treasures about dark or shortly after.  It was a good feeling to be home.
 
With exception to the night the log school house burned nothing much happed that winter 
until later in February.
 
Mom drove the pickup to school and a couple of kids rode with her.  One morning they 
parked in the regular place by the school house, got out and started for the door.  One of 
the kids looked up and said "Where is the school house? - Then mom looked.   It was 
gone.  Just chard pieces in the snow.  
 
The house we lived in had two rooms so one was used for a school room the rest of the 
year with exception to several day interruption in February.

One morning about 2:O'clock mom started having pains.  She was pregnant but nothing 
was scheduled to happen for three months yet.  But it was happening.  I dressed and went 
after Helen Shaw.  Shaws lived around a curve and rode up the road a piece.  To put it in 
a more understandable phrase would be about two blocks away.
 
Helen came in, sized things up and went home and got Loren up.  He got Jim Sutton up 
and about 3 or 3:30 A.M.  they started out in the old Chev truck to get a doctor.  
 
They finally got to Okobojo and Bertha called Dr. Morrissey at Pierre.  He started out on 
what turned out to be the farthest he ever traveled on one doctor call.  Eighty some miles 
round trip.  They got to the Bend about 11 O'clock.  When I saw Doc the tension left me 
and I sat down and bawled.  There were several woman there doing everything and 
anything they could but the guy we all wanted to see was Dr. Morrissey.
 
He took the baby and then came out and drank coffee with me and talked.  The baby 
would live only a few hours at most.  Mom was OK.
 
After the baby died (she was named Hazel) some of the women wrapped her in a blanket 
and put her in a box.  I believe it was a large shoe box.  Next morning Ed Hughes went 
with me and we took her to Pierre where the undertaker took care of the legal end of it.  
Then we went back to Okobojo where she was burried beside her brother.
 
The rest of February passed and so did March.  April began to melt the snow and ducks 
and geese flew north.  Farmers were planting small grain for the hoppers to have later 
on.  Spring had come and the feeling was good.
 
Willis wrote that he would be ready to start moving the cattle and horses to Clear Lake 
for shipment on the 25th or 26th and would like Ted Warne and me to come help him.
 
I think it was the morning of the 25th that we headed for Brookings in the red pickup.  It 
was a beautiful morning.  The cold winter was behind and it seemed that maybe things 
were turning out OK after all.  The cattle and horses had wintered good and our prospects 
of having grass were promising.
 
By the time we got to Huron the weather had closed in and it was misting.  When we 
reached Brookings it was snowing.  The wet snow and rain broke telephone poles like 
toothpicks and broke telegraph wires too.  The only communication in or out of 
Brookings was by radio.
 
I think it was about noon on the 27th that we got started for Clear Lake.  Well, the cattle 
all made it through the storm.  They had been in a barn and had been fed about 100 
bushels of the farm owners seed oats.  It may have been more than 100 bu.  The price of 
the oats was $100 above the original $450.
 
Willis had two horses and I had two.  All four were dead.  The temperature wasn't cold 
but the snow so fine and wind so strong it suffocated ever thing that was outside.  The 
livestock loss through out the country ran into the thousands.
 
If I remember right Ted and I stayed all night and then headed home the next morning.  It 
would be at least a week before the cattle could be moved to the stock yards.  I had to see 
about getting more feed loan. 
 
The next few years may have been a little better.  Seems that they would have to get 
better before they could get any worse.  The hoppers were still taking the crops but we 
were getting enough prairie hay to feed the cattle through the winters. 
 
Hitler was all ready to take Europe over and we were selling all the scrap iron we could 
dig up to Japan.  Japan was getting ready to give it back to us made into bombs.  
Grasshoppers were starting to sing their song; "In this wheat by and by".  Before we 
realized it April 23, 1939 was upon us and we had a new problem; William Harry Green.
 
I don't remember why I wasn't on had for your arrival but I wasn't.  I went to Pierre the 
next day to take a look at you.  Like everything else on the farm you looked hungry so 
figured you'd fit in so we might as well keep you.  Turned out to be one of the three best 
things we ever did.
 
Out cattle were doing pretty good and I needed a bull so got a loan and bought a 
registered white face.  Bought him at a sale at Selby.  That is, I had a trucker buy him for 
me.  
 
Dorothy had been teaching up near Trail City, west of Mobridge.  On the day of the sale 
at Selby I went to Trail City and got Dorothy and her belongings in the pickup .  I 
remember it rained hard on us most of the way home.  Dorothy could hardly wait to see 
Will Harry (that was you).  You were about a month old by then.  You hadn't become 
boss yet but you were working on it.
 
That summer the Government went all out on a program of poisoning grass hopper,  
Farmers had been poisoning hoppers on their own land and it had been doing some good.  
The idle acres were the problem.  And there were thousands of acres of unfarmed land.  
The county was divided into three divisions.  Each division had a supervisor who had 
several crews that would be out spreading bait.
 
The bait was either sawdust or bran that was mixed with molasses and arsenic.  This was 
poison to anything that ate it.
 
The spreaders were on the same principle as an end-gate seeder; The bait fell on a fan and 
was scattered behind the wagon or trailer.  If it was spread thin enough on the ground it 
didn't get in the livestock feed and not too many cattle were lost from poison.
 
I was given one of the supervisor jobs and we were taken to Aberdeen where each of us 
got a new government pickup to drive.
 
The spreading was to be done early in the morning before it got hot and dried up the bait.  
Also as a rule there would be less wind then.  I'd be out on the road by 4:AM and always 
found the crews at work.
 
One morning I stopped along a field that had been poisoned a week or two before and 
went down in the road ditch.  Grasshoppers were three or four inches deep.  You could 
have shoveled them up by the truck load.  This really kill the hoppers but when the wind 
blew they would fly in from different fields miles & miles away so we didn't get rid of 
them until the rains came and the hopper got a little red bug under the wings that finally 
killed them off.

When the spreading was finished we turned the pickups back to the Government.  Did get 
a picture of you and me sitting on the running- board.
 
Ma was in N. Carolina so in the fall of 1940 I traded the pickup off and got  a 1937 Chev 
2 dr.- It was the first car you ever drove alone - from all outward appearance it was in 
good condition.  Mom, you, me and Willis and Lucille started for Greensboro.  When we 
hit the hard surface roads the back tires wore out as fast as we could put more on.  They 
didn't wear out.  What happened was the first owner of the Chevy had ran over a rock and 
hit the rear housing of the differential.  It sprung it just enough to put the wheels out of 
line but not enough to notice it on dirt or gravel roads.  But those paved highways worked 
like a grindstone on the rear rubber.  I don't remember how many tires we used on the trip 
but it was at least four. 

We stayed about a week in Greensboro.  One day Willis and I each drove a truck for 
Jack.  He had a car load of 2 gal cans to unload.  It seems like it was Prestone.  The 
blacks loaded the trucks and all we did was drive.
 
It would have been a pleasant trip if it hadn't been for the tires and then you got sick on 
the way home.  We got a doctor for you in Iowa one night and he took water away from 
you and put you on 7up and you came out of it in pretty good shape. 

We were all glad to get home.  Willis & I had to sign up for the draft right away.  We all 
knew we would have to fight Germany.  The only question was when. 
 
We moved half a mile east of Okobojo to Uncle Charley Glessner's farm.  That gave me 
good range for my cattle and things began to look pretty good.  Prices were going up a 
little and crops were coming back.
 
Then Charley wanted me to sell my cattle and go 50/50 with him on sheep so I moved off 
his place.  Back to Okobojo.
 
The fall of 1941 was at hand.  Minnietta made her appearance on October 28.  Grandma 
Spencer was at Okobojo helping out while mom got back on her feet.  The wood was in 
for the winter and for a change there was feed enough to winter the cattle. 
 
November along with Thanksgiving was past.  We were anticipating Christmas in under 
three weeks.  Minnietta was asleep in her basket in the front room and you and mom were 
taking a nap.  Grandma and I had the radio turned on and were enjoying the program.  
The date was December 7th.  I was probably having subconscious thoughts of Dec. 7th 
nineteen years before.  The announcers voice was crisp and clear - "We interrupt this 
program to bring you the following: Pearl Harbor has been bombed by Japanese war 
planes"  Grandma and I looked at each other.  We both knew that the U.S. was once more 
at war.  
 
I would like to have had a new car but couldn't afford it.  I did get a new set of tires 
before they were rationed.  They were Gamble tires and they lasted through the war.
 
1942 came in and everything was on war time basis.  I lost some of my farm land.  Didn't 
have a tractor and machinery and couldn't farm with horses.  Lost grassland too and was 
getting discouraged. 
 
It was the last part of July or first part of August that I was in Sexauers Elevator at Onida 
talking to the manager.  I had purchased a sack or two of geed for the pigs and was 
feeling pretty low.
 
The manager said "I know of a job open in a Peavey Elevator.  It's at Agar".   I knew 
enough about an elevator to drive in one door, watch someone else unload my grain and 
then drive out the other side.
 
He talked to me for a while longer and told me who to write to.
 
I wrote a letter to Walt F. Lytle at Huron and in a few days got an answer back wanting 
an interview.  The war was calling in all of the good men so Peavey was groping for most 
anything.  I was hired at $100 per month.  No training.  Here's the books get busy - good 
bye.  It wasn't quite that back but almost.
 
I was to go to Agar.  That way we wouldn't have had far to move.  Ended up by going to 
Houghton.  I had it figured that the farther we got from Okobojo the better off we would 
be.  Willis had joined the army and had given some things to Kennedy's that I should 
have had and could have used. 
 
We moved into Grandma's house at Houghton and lived with her and Robert until almost 
spring.  Then we got a chance to get a real nice house.  In the meantime I sold the cattle 
to a buyer from Houghton.  After paying the feed loan and income tax I believe we had 
about two hundred dollars left.  That is a lot of money for ten years work isn't it?
 
I liked it at Houghton.  It was then and still is a duck & goose hunters paradise.  Robert 
and I had a read good duck hunt one afternoon.  It started to snow and I closed up the 
elevator and Robert and I took off.  He had a 16 double and I had the 16 you have now.  I 
had been lucky to get a case of shells from Spiegel Catalog.  Eagle brand shells and they 
were good.  You may remember some of them.  
 
Robert got in a good spot in a cornfield and had read good luck.  As I remember it he had 
twice as many ducks as i did but we had a lot of fun getting them.
 
Everything that winter wasn't a pleasure though.  One cold night we had to take Minnietta 
to the hospital at Britton.  She had infection.  We hadn't been in the hospital fifteen 
minutes when she went into convulsions.  That's a nasty sight.  Nurses and a doctor were 
there in a matter of seconds.  She stayed in the hospital a while, maybe a week.  Doc got 
the infection stopped and she started to gain and got OK.
 
I think it was March when we moved into this nice house.  It had a furnace, indoor toilet 
with batch, electric lights, hard-wood floors, etc.  It would be OK with me if we still lived 
in it.  But no such luck.  Peavey sold the elevator that summer.  One day Lytle came in 
and told me he had just sold me out of house and home.  It was quite a shock.  I ask if he 
had someplace for me to go.  He said no.  Then as an after thought he admitted Broadland 
was open.  But he said it had a mill and he didn't think I had enough experience to handle 
it.  I though I could.  He called Minneapolis and Mt Carlin (General manager) told Lytle 
to put me in.  Said they needed every man they could get.  Well, in almost a year I had 
leaned a lot about running elevator.  I sure hated to leave Houghton but I just couldn't 
turn down the $125 I'd get at Broadland.  
 
I'm going to back-track here for a ways.  When moms folks sold out and moved into 
Houghton mom was at the sale and bought a team of horses.  I don't remember how we 
got them to Okobojo but do remember how we got them back to Houghton.   The horses 
(both mares) were being pastured at Earl Kennedy's and I wanted to get the horses sold.  
Got an offer from a man at Houghton so got a trucker by the name of Bill Fry to go 
get them.  Bill Fry was the father of mom's girl friend Helen.  I'm sure you have heard 
mom talk about the things she and Helen Fry used to do.
 
Robert went along with Bill to get the horses.  On the way back to Houghton, it was late 
at night, Bill stopped the truck the highway some where east of Bawdle, got out to check 
on the load and got run over and killed.  Some think he may have had a spell of some 
kids and fell in front of the car just as it was passing.  Anyway he was dead and Robert 
had to get word to the sheriff.  As I remember hearing about it the car that ran over him 
didn't stop but some one else came along and went for help.
 
We got the horses to Houghton and got them sold.  My farming career had come to a 
close.
 
I think it was July when we moved to Broadland.  Just before the harvest got a good 
start.  The eight and a half years we spent in Broadland were years of hard work for both 
mom and me. But it was a good community and we had lots of friends.  
 
War time rationing didn't hurt us much.  We always seemed to have plenty.
 
In June 1944 Carl Better brought me a telegram.  I was in the mill at the time.  It said Ma 
was dead.  She was in Greensboro at the time.  Willis was with her at the last.  Then he 
had to go back to Ft. Benning.  Cathie brought the body back to Pierre by train and burial 
was in the Okobojo Cemetery on June 17th - My birthday.
 
In December 1944 word came that Hallie Glessner had been killed in the Battle of the 
Bulge.  This, of course, was a shock but in time of war you learn to accept such things.  
Never get used to them just learn to accept them.  I got acquainted with Howard and 
Bessie Morris and Howard invited us out one Sunday for dinner.  After that we spent a lot 
of Sundays together as you will remember.  We did a lot of pheasant hunting.
 
We joined the Grange and had a lot of good times there too.  Pot luck suppers and Oyster 
Soup suppers.  The war was on and boys were leaving for induction quite often.  Maybe 
that is why we were all just a little closer together.  Everyone had plenty to eat.  If we had 
had lots of money we couldn't have purchased new appliances or cars.  Every thing we 
geared to fighting Germany and Japan.
 
I've always said that Minnietta started all that mess with Japan, then four years later 
Jeanette came along and put a stop to it.
 
August 15, 1945.  It was probably around eight o'clock PM when mom and I started to 
Huron.  Jeanette was wanting to join the "end of the war" celebration.  When we drove 
into Huron there was toilet paper from one end of town to the other.  Some one would 
start a roll and throw it.  Someone else would pick it up and throw it again.  New York is 
famous for ticker tape parades to celebrate something.  Well, Huron celebrated with toilet 
paper.  Jeanette was in a hurry.  She never had been in a hurry since.  Mom wanted me to 
stick around.  Dr. Saxton (he was my doctor from '24 to '27) said I could stay.  I had to 
put on a gown and mask, and then stand back where I couldn't see anything.  Jeannette 
arrived.
 
Sometime after that you had your appendix out.  Robert and I brought you home from the 
hospital in Howard Morris's Plymouth coupe.  The roads were icy and Robert drove 
faster than I would have but we got home in good shape.
 
Later on mom had a major operation and another one after we got to Redfield.  We 
moved out of Broadland in March 1952.  The Grange had a little party for us.  It turned 
out to be the whole darned community.  I had expected a few Grange members but the 
Hall was packed.

When it was time to get up and say thank you I couldn't say a word.  I think my throat 
had a tennis ball stuck in it.  Mom took over and made a nice little talk and I stood by her 
speechless as a giraffe.  The people around Broadland were a swell group.
 
When we made the grain cut off it was 30° below zero.  Allan Stevenson made the cut-off 
for Walt Lytle. It was the first time I had ever seen him.  
 
When we were ready to move Claus Meidema and a man by the name of Osman backed 
up their trucks and loaded up the furniture.  They moved us to Redfield and wouldn't take 
a cent.  I finally got them to take enough money for the gas.  It cost P.V. two hundred and 
fifty dollars to move the new manager in from North Dakota and he cost them more than 
that before he was through.
 
When we left Broadland of course we left Rusty with Herb.  He had a good home as long 
as he lived.  

We also had a cat.  I went with one of the trucks and mom brought the car.

I put my foot down and told mom the cat was to stay in Broadland.  That was before I 
was convinced that Jeanette had taken over as boss.  
 
I'm sure you remember the first time you drove the car alone.  You probably remember 
that better than I do.  It was the old '37 Chev.  It was over by the coal sheds between the 
two elevators.  I took Minnietta by the hand and we walked over to the house.  I asked 
you to bring the car.
 
Then we went to Grand Island and looked at cars.  This was 1948 and cars were still hard 
to get.  Going to Grand Island I can still see the trains pass us by.  I'd look in the rear 
view mirror and see a smoke in the distance.  In a few minutes a train would catch up and 
pass us by.  We were traveling about forty or forty five and I suppose the trains were 
going seventy or eighty.  I loved those old dirty stinking steam engines.  Just a few years 
later they were all replaced by diesels.  
 
We all had a pleasant ride home in the '46 Chevy.  Well, Bill, this brings everything up to 
where you can take over.  Yes, a lot has been left untold but what has been written is 
pretty much the way it was.  
                                                         Dad
 
P.S.
Oh yes, just one more entry. While growing up at Okobojo I was always elated to be 
know by the business men of Pierre and Onida as Bill Green's boy.  I was equally 
honored one night at a Redfield Chamber of Commerce meeting.
 
All of this came about because of a basketball game between Redfield and Doland.  Bill 
Green had made a basket with only a few seconds remaining in the game.  This basket 
made Redfield the winner by the narrowest of margins.  The Chamber President, Mr. 
Holgate, took me by the arm and introduced me to a group of business men as Bill 
Green's dad.