Back to the Family Events.

            Julius was the son who stayed home and helped on the farm. He didn’t go on to High School so I suppose he was doing a man’s work by the time he was fifteen years old. Education was very important to the folks and they wanted us all to have the best that was available. Very few of the boys of that time, especially the farm boys went farther than the eighth grade but education can continue at home with the individual who wants to learn. He was a young man with a studious nature and always had a book or magazine handy to pick up when chores were done.

            There were cows to milk, pigs to feed, horses to harness up and hitch to the plow or the seeder, the mower or rake. He was never impatient, so kind to Ma and his younger sisters, did his work without shrinking so he must have been a good help to father.

            In the fall he hunted ducks when the birds were migrating back to the south land. Almost every day he brought some home for ma to pick, clean and roast. The soft down from the breasts was what she liked best for the nice pillows she made but she saved the wing feathers too and on stormy days when we couldn’t be in school she brought out her box of feathers and put us kids to work stripping away the quills and leaving the soft feathers. Of course, the delicious roast ducks, stuffed with a bread, sage and onion dressing was the best part of the whole operation, in my estimation. It was a welcome change from the salt pork and chicken diet of the summer.

Julius Herman Uglem in 1913

Julius also enjoyed fishing and the nearest fishing area was Lake Henry. He could go for a day with some of his friends or even go camping over night. The older girls in the family tell of them packing a tent and food for an evening and night of camping and fishing. There was a boat in the lake for rent that I remember called “The Merry Widow”. It was popular at school or Sunday school picnics.

            His best friends were Johnny Nelson, who later married sister Bentena, and Steven Karban. One summer he and Steven pitched a tent on the boundary line between the two farms under the trees and they slept out there all summer. So much cooler than a hot upstairs room but the mosquitoes must have been a problem. No spray for mosquitoes or flies in those days.

            The early teen years of the twentieth century before WWI were happy years for the young folks. There never seemed to be a crop failure to my knowledge, at least, and there were so many happy get togethers between neighbors. Some of them took place on Sunday afternoons after church services and noon dinner, others were in the form of evening parties.

            Johnny would drive over with his sisters Bertha, Anna, and Gunda, to play croquet in the front yard. The set was usually kept set up all summer as we all liked to play. Or if other young folks dropped in there were singing games like Skip to My Lou or Four in a Boat, to name only two of them. They were played to music, sung by the group and I suppose now we would call them Square Dances. But since dancing was a vice that was strictly very taboo they wouldn’t be called by such a name.

            One party I remember was at Johnny’s folk’s place and games were played in the upstairs of their huge barn. It must have been before haying season as the barn was empty. I think it was during the war, maybe the party was for the boys home on furlough. The reason I think so was because there was a nest of chicken eggs on a small pile of hay in a corner. One egg got broken, by someone who swung too wide, I suppose, and I heard a girl say “Oh! Somebody stepped on a nickel!” In those days of high prices eggs were 60 cents a dozen. The farmers had a little money in the bank those days and spent it on more land, or building new houses or out buildings. Some of those houses were really fabulous affairs, too.

            Julius always took the older girls along to these parties and it seems like all the young folks came in groups so I can’t remember anyone riding horses. There were some fancy “Top Buggies” and some nice horses too.

            About once during the winter there was a night party at our house. Mabel, Esther and I were just kids so were not usually included in the games but the “younger set” had fun in the kitchen playing “I Spy” or Hide the Thimble” and games played with paper and pencil. The older ones played Musical Chairs, Blind Man’s Bluff, Button Button Who’s got the Button, Crazy games of all kinds, but all fun. Usually there was oyster stew and many goodies for lunch and usually it seemed to be just my luck to have a bad cold so I couldn’t taste any of the good things that Tena and Sylvia had prepared. Then there was always some music before the evening was over, Sylvia at the organ as usual, and later the piano. Annie was also good at music by this time and was sometimes called on to play. I can remember the songs Bubbles and The Old Spinning Wheel especially from these days. It amazes me when I think back to all the songs we learned without the help of phonographs, radio or television. There must have been much more singing in groups then than there is now. There was sheet music, of course, and a song could be bought for ten cents. Another lovely song was Memories, and that song is still sung sometimes on the Lawrence Welk show.

            No hospitals in those days so all babies were born at home. She was often called the same time the doctor was summoned so it became only natural that she should be midwife as well, assisting the Dr in the birth. I don’t remember when we first got the telephone but it must have been about 1910 as I wasn’t in school yet.  The phones were on the wall, we cranked it to ring. If anyone called us they cranked two long, Karbans was a short and a long. Central was one long.

    When Tena wasn’t working out she came home and took over the house work, usually cleaning and I suppose scolding us kids for not doing things right when she was gone. We learned a lot from Tena and if we didn’t know how to clean a house properly it was our own fault. When she was home it gave Ma more time to spend outside in the big garden, or tending her chickens, ducks and geese. Also gathering wood for the kitchen stove, going by herself in the groves and dragging home huge dead branches that she broke up into kindling.

            Sylvia also spent her summers at home, sewing, cooking and cleaning. She and Tena were both expert seamstresses, seemed to sew without using a pattern and in those days with dresses that were tucked and frilly it was quite an accomplishment. They made their own confirmation dresses, white creations of gathers, tucks and ruffled yokes.

            When those two girls started spring cleaning we kids wished we were far away because we didn’t like all that upheaval. Mattresses had to be carried out in the sun and beaten and if they were straw mattresses they were carried out, usually in the fall. The old straw was emptied out and the “tick” was filled with fresh straw from the newly threshed straw pile. I think that Esther and I had a feather mattress on our bed. That also was carried out and aired. The front room “axminster” rug was rolled up and carried out on the grass in the front yard, there to be swept good then laid face down and we pulled it over the nice fresh green grass. It gave the carpet a bright new look. Then it was hung over the clothes line to be beaten with a broom or a wire carpet beater. In the meantime, the walls, windows and curtains had been washed or maybe new paper on the walls. When the rug was down on the floor again the room smelled fresh and oh! So clean!

            Before the rug could be taken up, tho’ the hard coal heater had to be carried out, or if the boys weren’t at home to help it was moved into the corner by the stairway. This made the room seem so much larger and furniture could be rearranged. It was such a cozy heater, three sides of the firebox was clear isinglass so the glow of the fire shone through and actually gave some light to the room. In the winter time, behind the stove was a warm place for our baths while the older ones were clustered around the hanging lamp across the room or around the table in the kitchen.

            In the front room, a book case writing desk that Pa had built stood in the south east corner. Above the desk part were two shelves that held the few books that Pa and Julius owned. There was Pilgrims Progress, Paa Glemte Vei (The forgotten way) a book written by Ole Rolvaag, author of Giants in the Earth and Peter Victorious. (I had a grand idea once of translating this book but I never got beyond the first page) Several other Norwegian books, the Bible, also Norsk, Bible History books, the Catechism and some books of Julius’ by Rex Beach and Jack London. They both wrote stories about Alaska and other Arctic areas, adventure tales that Julius liked so well. The writing desk part was hinged so could be opened up while in use and it had “pigeon holes” for important papers and letters. Below the desk there were two drawers that held other papers and necessary items.

            That wasn’t the extent of our library, tho’! In those days the State didn’t furnish free text books so each family had their own school library. Upstairs in the big north room our books were stored on a table. It contained a set of Brookes Readers from the first thru the eighth grad, some arithmetic books, a couple geographies, grammars, physiology and Hygiene and history books of the United States and South Dakota. At the beginning of each school year we selected what we thought we would need. Work books were unheard of, any extra work was written on the black board for us to copy and study. There were books on American Literature also, at home and in the meagre school library. By the time we were thru the “grades” we had memorized much of Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson, Whittier and others. Modern day poetry doesn’t seem to compare with these poets and authors, in my estimation.

             Our school library also contained some books for the lower grades, stories about Peter and Polly, Tanglewood Tales, a book on Greek Mythology, Lisbeth Longfrock, a story of a little herd girl in Norway, Heidi, the little Swiss girl, some of Louisa Alcott’s books and others. I think I read and cried over “Little Women” every year that I went to school.

Sylvia Matilda Uglem in 1913

Sylvia went on to High School and she told me once that she walked the three and a half miles night and morning, didn’t even want to carry lunch along. To make it in time for school she must have left home before full daylight and arrive home again about dark on short winter days. She graduated in 1915 and that fall she began teaching a school south west of home, maybe a two mile walk, and arriving at an ice cold school house wasn’t so pleasant.

            The last day of school the next spring there was to be a picnic at the school house. It was a windy day, she spent the forenoon cleaning the schoolhouse, burning old papers in the pot bellied stove. It seems that the stove didn’t have a damper so the fire got very hot. Fear almost paralyzed her when she looked out and saw fire in the straw that had been used to bank the building that winter. She looked up and saw the roof was blazing. She ran to the nearest house to get help and in a short time a crowd was there. All that could be saved was the book case and books, a few desks and the men managed to pull free the new porch that had been built the fall before. Poor girl, she felt so badly but the patrons came to her in consolation and told her not to cry about it. They needed a new schoolhouse and now they were going to get it. By that fall the new building was up, the first new school in Baker township.

These years weren’t all fun on the farm. There was planting, haying and harvest, tedious work compared to the way it is done today. The hay was pitched into the hay rack with heavy forks, hauled home to the barn where it was then stored in the barn’s “upstairs” by means of a pulley and big fork that took the whole load at once as the horses were hitched to the rig that would lift it up and swing it through the big barn door. The hay that didn’t find room in the barn was stacked by hand near by.

The grain was cut with a binder that tied it in bundles. The twine for this came in large balls, all packed in a gunny sack, tied securely with heavy rope. These ropes were ideal for swings for us kids and there were many tree limbs in the grove that were just right for a swing. If we had an extra long rope we could have a higher swing and there were limbs just right for them too.

To get back to the harvest, the grain was then shocked and left to dry before it was hauled home and stacked in tall tapering round stacks to be ready for threshing. It was a great day when we saw the thresh machine come in the yard, pulled by a huge steam engine. Threshing from the stacks didn’t take as many men as the shock threshing did, when the bundles were loaded and hauled in at threshing time.

We kids liked to visit with the “water monkey”, the man who hauled water in a large tank to keep the engine running. The man who kept the fire going to keep the water hot was too busy but we could talk to the water hauler as he filled the tank at the windmill. Sometimes this big event happened when we were in school and it made us feel like we missed a celebration.

After harvest the corn was cut and shocked, later hauled home and stacked, some of it was picked by hand and stored in the corn crib to fatten the pigs for market or butchering. Farming on a small scale by today’s standards to be sure but they were just as busy and the work was harder.

I remember the big wooden barrel churn that was kept in the cellar. It was turned by a crank and the whole barrel went around and around. Every so often the bung (or cork of some kind) had to be removed to release the pressure of air or gas inside. When the butter came there seemed to be a dishpan full. Ma had a wooden butter mold, maybe it made a two pound round pat of butter and when she slid it out of the mold it had a flower design on the top. She sold some of this butter at the grocery store in town. Later we had a stoneware churn that operated with a dasher and it was a job us kids could do, whether we liked it or not. Sometimes it took so long for the butter to come, or so we thought.

The fresh buttermilk was good for drinking and it was also cooked until it was thick and brown. This was called Prim Ost Ma also made this cheese from the whey after she had removed the cottage cheese.

We kids liked the cottage cheese mixed with cream and sugar and maybe some caroway seed stirred in it. This plant grew wild around the place and we stripped the seeds off in the fall when they were ripe. The folks liked to set a small stone crock of cottage cheese in a warm place to ripen, thus it became “gammel ost” but oh! What a smell it had. Maybe it was like lutefisk, tho! You can’t tell by the smell what it is going to taste like.

Did you know there was a time before peanut butter? Well, I can remember when it first came on the market. Ma used to buy it by the pound, the grocer laded it in a flat wooden boat shaped tub and it was served from this tub at the table. I don’t suppose it compared in quality to Jif or Planters but to us it was a welcome treat, a change from apple butter, jelly and cheese. Tena, being the type of cook she was, found a recipe and made a batch of it. The peanuts had to be ground several times to get fine enough and I think she mixed the ground peanuts with butter to make it easier to spread. Tena was a very good cook.

The family was home for the Holidays one year that I can remember. It was seldom now that we could all get together. On New Year’s Day, I think it must have been 1914 we had an appointment with the Photographer to have our pictures taken. We drove to town in three rigs. What I recall most clearly about the event was that I wouldn’t let Sylvia cut my hair. I was eight years old, Esther six and we both wore out hair in a bob. Mabel was ten and had her hair in braids, pinned up. Being as stubborn, independent and willful as I was, I refused to have my hair trimmed. Esther was a good little girl and on the picture her hair was cut even with the tips of her ears. I got my way, so my hair is almost shoulder length and I liked it that way. I wanted to be a big girl like Mabel, so I suppose after that it was allowed to grow so I could have braids, too.

Anna Maria Uglem in 1913

On the picture Annie is wearing a cap because the fall before she had surgery on her brain. This took place in Minneapolis and two tumors were removed. Her head was shaved and her long dark brown hair was made into two “switches”. Ma liked to have one of these wound in with her own hair and formed into a nice big “pug” on the top of her head. She looked so nice then as her hair was quite thin but still the dark brown color. Even I used to wind the switches in my own hair when I was in the eighth or ninth grade.

Annie was a victim of epilepsy, and the brain surgery didn’t help. She was unable to go beyond the eighth grade but continued her studies at home. I think she had more determination than any of us, and memorized whole Psalms and other parts of the Bible besides poetry she loved along with the study of the Catechism.

As for talent, there too she had us all beat. She enjoyed playing the organ and later the piano – the day we got the piano, which is a story I will tell later, she was the first one to try it out and that night it was so hard for her to go to sleep for the joy that in her, she got out of bed at three in the morning to play some more.

Her other talents were drawing, painting with water colors, embroidering, sewing and tatting. She drew and painted mostly pictures of birds and flowers. She loved nature, searched for the first flowers in the spring and hunted bird’s nests. She knew the shape and color of every bird’s egg and could climb into the tallest cottonwoods to reach a nest. She would carefully remove just one egg, not disturbing the nest in the least. By punching a hole with a needle in the end of each egg she could blow out the inside thus saving the shell. They were carefully saved for her collection. Ma would keep her supplied with fine white material like batiste or nainsook and she made handkerchiefs for gifts at Christmas. She hemstitched them and some had tatted edges. Today I have a small tatted doily she gave me and I regret that I don’t have any of her paintings.

She longed to go to school but her health was failing. In her late teens the folks took her to Redfield, to what was called “The School for the Feeble Minded”. She was far from that but she needed nursing care and there was a school for those able to learn. So she was happy to be going away to school and really made herself useful there. She wrote happy letters home, telling of her classes, the ways she helped the other girls, and best of all, that she played piano for chapel. She was also able to help with cooking and cleaning at the times she felt good. Tena and I visited her once, or I should say I went there once with Tena. She went to see her quite often. She was happy to see us, showed us her room, her needlework and introduced us to her friends. She never asked to come home, her school was her home and her work by this time. Her health gradually failed and she died while in her 20’s, is buried at Lake Preston in the family lot with the folks and John.

It was about in 1915 that the family received a telegram from Perkins County saying that Pete was gravely ill after an emergency operation for appendicitis. No hospital closer than Mobridge or Dickinson so a doctor was called from Hettinger and the surgery was performed at the Lundeen ranch. Not exactly under sterile conditions as in today’s hospitals but the operation was a success. If he had been moved to the nearest hospital he might have died on the way. I’m sure the doctors of that day realized the risks they were taking in these at home surgeries but what else was there to do? The folks stayed until he was out of danger and back on his feet again.

Another at home surgery was performed about this same time in our own kitchen. Ma had two fatty tumors removed from her neck. Mabel, Esther, Bentena and I were sent out to herd cows along the road and Tena and Sylvia had been told by the doctor that they would have to help him. They were only teenagers, too much to expect, and Sylvia told me once that it was too much for her, she couldn’t take it but Tena stood by and helped. That operation, too was a success, even tho’ performed under such primitive conditions.

It was the job that we kids had all summer, this herding cows along the roadside to save on the grass in the pasture. Sometimes it became very tedious, other days we were kept busy when the cows got cantankerous and wanted to run, or stray into the grove along the roadside. One day I can remember in particular, the day we saw our first automobile! It came tearing down the road from the north at least ten miles an hour, a red monster, trimmed richly with brass and making a dreadful racket. The driver honked the horn – a rubber like balloon on the side of the car that he squeezed to make the sound. The cows panicked and headed for home, us kids in full pursuit. I think the owner of this car was either Peter Holland or Mr Brennan. I wonder if it was a Hudson, Hupmobile or Studebaker, or some other make we never heard of since.

Other early makes of automobiles that are now no more were the Reo, Overland and Maxwell, and maybe others that I can’t recall. I don’t know for sure what year Pa bought his first Overland but it was before the war. I think it had side curtains that snapped on and I believe when he bought the second one a few years later it was a Sedan. Of course the Model T was the most popular car on the market and it wasn’t long before the gas buggies were so common that they didn’t frighten horses and cattle any more.

Now I must tell about the day we got the piano. In the morning dad told us he had to go to town with the wagon to get some freight and we kids should take the cows out to the roadside again. He hadn’t told us before that he was expecting any freight, but I suppose Ma was in on the secret. This was the summer of 1915.

We took the cows out early in the morning on a lovely summer day. Our eyes kept turning to the north, the road that led to town, watching for Pa and the wagon. About the middle of the morning they came into view and we could see a high crate or something like it in the wagon. What could it be! It never occurred to us that it might be something for the house, but we supposed it could be a piece of machinery, but why the secrecy? We even guessed it might be an animal in a cage, a calf or pig – surely not a wild animal! Oh! What curiosity! As the outfit turned in the driveway we were maybe a quarter of a mile away so couldn’t see the shape too well. Since Esther was the youngest we decided she should be the first to go home and find out. The cows were turning toward home for their noon drink of water so by the time Esther came running back we didn’t have very far to go before our turn came. She came at top speed yelling, “It’s a piano! It’s a piano!” You can be sure we hurried the cows along. How could we have the patience to wait until they were ready to go by themselves?

By the time we got the cows in the fence by the tank and ran to the house the instrument was unloaded and in the front room. While unloading it, the piano tipped on its side but it was a well made piano. No harm done. Pa told us then that he had personally chosen this instrument by its tone and rich mahogany finish. I’m sure we took our turns all afternoon trying it out. So different to play from the organ. I forgot to say that Pa had been in Minneapolis and had gone to this certain music store. There he had one of the clerks play every piano in the stock room and the old “Mendenhall” is the one he chose. The name of this make is as obsolete as those of the earliest cars. Our piano tuner, Lawrence Stokes looked in an old catalog at one time but didn’t find it listed. He has always praised the tone, quality, and condition of this piano so Pa really chose the best one of all. It has been my piano since 1926.

When Sylvia started teaching she bought it but left it at home as she went to North Dakota a year of two later and couldn’t take it with her. Besides, what would Mabel, Esther and I have done without it? The organ had been traded in on the deal, I suppose.

            Sylvia began buying the popular music of the day so our stock of music gradually grew and our playing improved. After she and Tena went to North Dakota, Tena to keep house for Calmer and Emil, Sylvia to teach, more of the housework fell to we four youngest girls so we had to learn to cook and clean besides washing dishes.

Tena stayed there for about two years, Sylvia maybe a little longer. At that time there were schools in North Dakota that were kept open only through the spring, summer, and fall because of extremely cold winters. Also the distance children had to attend school had something to do with it. There was a time when she went from a summer term to a winter school, thus teaching the year around. She did manage a summer term or two of college at Valley City while in that state.

At this time John was also teaching, I think his first term was in the High School at Letcher, S.D. then he, too went to North Dakota, teaching there for many years, at Judd, Barton, Dunn Center, Watford City, Temvik, Rhome and maybe others before he came back to teach in South Dakota. That was after I was married and living in Perkins County. He taught until his retirement, quite a record for anyone’s book.

At least once during every summer a small band of Gypsies would go by on the back country road going past our place. Where they were headed for, the Lord only knew. They traveled in covered wagons, the dogs trotting alongside. We kids were a little afraid of them as we had heard stories about them kidnapping children.  But why they should, we couldn’t figure out as they seemed to have plenty of their own.

One family I remember especially. They had only one wagon and camped south of our place for the night. About supper time a woman came walking to our house and asked Ma if she could have a pail of “skinned” milk for her baby. Mama got her a pail of fresh milk – not skimmed, I’m sure. She thanked so politely and said “I’ll bring your pail back in the morning and if I don’t you can hang my hide on the nearest gooseberry bush.” That remark really was amusing to us – to think of a Gypsy hide hanging on one of our little gooseberry bushes, as we were sure she wouldn’t bring the pail back. And she didn’t -- in the morning they were gone. It was only a gallon syrup pail so it was no great loss. I can’t remember that any caravan ever molested us in any way and as far as I know, nothing was ever stolen. Their dogs barked all night, keeping our dog awake and bothering our slumber too.

            Whatever became of the Wandering people? Did they become absorbed by the cities, settling down to a life we would call normal, or are there some families still on the road, only not as far north as the Dakotas? They seemed to disappear about the time of the First World War. Some of them were maybe financially able to go back to their homeland in Europe before the war became too serious. This woman who came and begged for milk must have been a native of United States, though, because she spoke our language perfectly. I have read that many of their tribes were people of wealth and they had their King and Queen same as any independent nation. They must have had some way of communication with other tribes and it seems they had a central meeting ground where they spent their winters. I never envied those homeless people.