“This old Grandma was Once a Little Girl.”

            Store bought toys were almost unheard of in my early childhood and I don’t think we ever lacked for things to play with as with ingenuity we made our toys. A corn flakes box cut down made a wagon, and there was cardboard enough on the sides to make four wheels and a tongue. We could never devise the means of making wheels that were sturdy enough not to wobble, tho! But the fun was in the construction and it lasted for awhile. From tiny boxes, like a jello box we made small wagons that we used for racing. In the evening when the dishes were done we made a slanty hill on the table by propping up the oilcloth with books and then we raced our wagons -- 1—2—3 Go! Sometimes it was simpler to just fold a paper into the shape of a sled and race them. Paper was a thing to treasure. Every scrap that could be used for writing or drawing was saved and thoroughly used. One of my precious possessions when I was four years old was a tiny white envelope about the size of one that holds a card on a bouquet of flowers that comes from the florist shop now. One day I asked sister Annie to do something for me. She asked “What will you give me if you do?” Whatever I asked must have been very important to me as I said without hesitation (In Norwegian, by the way) “I’ll give you my little envelope.” Then she laughed and said I didn’t have to give her anything. She was just teasing me and would do it for nothing.

            Some of the women’s magazines in those days had a page of paper dolls or other cut outs every month and we always looked forward to the next month’s issue. I especially remember one cut out, that was a little red Dutch wind mill. I cut it out and set it together and it set on our little dresser for a long long time.

            Who needed toys in the winter with all the snow to play in – we had a home made sled that Pa made for us and surprised us with it on a bright Christmas morning. It was so sturdily built and lasted many years.

            In the spring we had the cuddly downy ducklings and goslings to fondle and the baby chicks to feed. Then there was always a dog on the place, played with too much, I’m afraid, because they weren’t much good around cattle, except for the old dog, “Watch”. On bright summer mornings I used to slip out of bed early – before the folks were up, go out on the little back porch, sit in the corner with the cats and kittens. They would crowd around me & I sang to them and they must have liked it as they didn’t run away. My best song was “Red Wing”. The song about the pretty little Indian maid. Such trivial things are memories made of.

            The summer I was five years old Sylvia’s friend Agnes Haugslien from Lake Preston came to stay several days on the farm. She was such a friendly girl and seemed to enjoy the company of our big family. She was the only girl in the family and had a younger brother. When she was getting ready to go home she asked if I would like to stay with her a few days. I got permission and started getting some clothes together. Agnes asked if I had a doll or any toys I wanted to take along. I didn’t have a dolly except for a rag dolls we made and our paper dolls. We had no sooner got to her home when she told her mother I didn’t have a doll. The next morning we went down town and picked out a china head to make me a doll. She and her mother cut out a body of white muslin and stuffed the body, arms and legs with cotton. Agnes and I went in the back yard and picked a handful of pebbles that they put with the cotton in the body to make it firmer and they put sticks in the legs so she wouldn’t be limp. Of course she couldn’t bend her knees but what did it matter? She had bones and after I brought her home everyone must feel her body and hear her bones crunch. Agnes said now we must sew on her head but what shall her name be? She named her Lillian Victoria Lane, which she thought sounded very romantic. She wrote the name and date inside the head before sewing it on the body. They made two dresses, a gray calico apron, white petticoat, a one piece suit of underwear, white stockings, red crocheted bootees, a cap, and I think a blanket was also included. After a week I was getting homesick and I was happy to get home with my new doll. Esther got a doll about the same time and it seems to me it had yellow hair. Lillian’s hair was very black. The doll and her clothes are now in Dillon, MT in possession of my granddaughter Jolene Allen. She washed and starched her clothes, dressed her in her best, but we could find only one bootee. But some loss could be expected after sixty five years.

            A few years later Dad brought two dolls home for Esther and me. They had real hair and could close their eyes but were so fragile, their bodies were made of plaster, so we never played with them. I didn’t take this doll with me when I left home and I don’t think I even gave her a name. When we moved from the farm into town in 1920, the dolls were put in the attic and that’s the last I saw of them. It is too bad. They would have been very valuable by now, if they had not crumbled. The heads were made of material like china so were also breakable.

Esther Rosella Uglem in 1913

Since Esther and I were the youngest, we had the privilege of being the babies for a longer time than any of the others. When Pa came in the house after chores were done we hurried to climb on his lap – one on each knee. He had some special little jaunty songs for us, one I remember especially, was about a horse – one at a time he would give us a ride, then toss one off and catch up the other. Maybe he composed the song the song himself, and it was in Norsk, of course. Mama’s lap wasn’t big enough for both of us so Esther, being the baby got the greater share of the singing and rocking, which was only fair, as I had my rocking before Esther came. Julius used to tease her about being a baby and she’d say “I’m not a baby. I’m just the baby of the family.”

            I was six years old on Feb 20, 1912. Being six years old, I felt, I should be in school! I begged and pleaded with the folks until they gave in and let me go. I got a new tablet, pencil and a small box of crayons and with the First Grade Brooke’s reader from the stack of school books in the house I was ready to go. I went hopping along on a crisp morning with Mabel and Bentena ready for study, I thought. I don’t remember who the teacher was but she didn’t seem pleased to see a new beginner at that time of the year. I found my desk, laid out my new crayons in the pencil groove on the desk and began making pictures in my new tablet. The teacher came along, took my new crayons away from me and told me that isn’t what I was in school for. She didn’t look at me the rest of the day and told me not to come back, as she was busy enough as it was. Maybe it was a big school, I don’t remember. Anyway, I learned to read at home with the help from older sisters, both the First Reader and the Norwegian Primer. One line I remember about this book was “Kom Oxe Eil du haa salt?” meaning, Come, ox, do you want salt. What an ox had to do in a primer, I don’t know, when it should have had stories about puppies and bears and kittens. Maybe that’s why I remember that sentence. I also learned my numbers and could do simple sums so I was ready for school when fall came.

            In those days some of the boys went to school until they were 16, 17, or 18 years old, maybe going only a few months out of the year, when most of the farm work was done so it wasn’t easy for some of the young teachers especially if these boys tried to make as much trouble as possible.