Things I Remember

            Of course I don’t remember the trip from Summit to Lake Preston as I didn’t appear on the scene until 1906 and the trip was made in September of 1902. Sylvia says she remembers it well, being almost four, maybe five years old. She remembers the ride in the two seated buckboard – ma & four little girls, Bentena almost one year old, Anna about three, Sylvia, and Tena about seven. One of the boys helped drive the team and they stayed in the little town of Hayti in a hotel over night. The trip took at least two ½ days. The boys and Pa slept out with the livestock. One thing Pa failed to mention in his story was that they had a little puppy in a crate along with them in the buggy. His name was “Watch”. He must have lived to be quite old as I can remember him as being  a good watch dog and a good kid dog too. On the trip the family took food along. No stopping at “truck stops” in those days. I suppose the cattle grazed as they moved along. John must have been fourteen years old that summer, Pete thirteen. They walked every foot of the 100 miles. I hope they had good shoes. Maybe they were barefoot! I can recall all the shoe repairs that Pa made when I was small, shoes were resoled many times before they were worn out. Sometimes the shoe strings had many knots in them too where they had worn thin, broken, and tied together. We girls had button shoes mostly and it was a sad morning if we had mislaid the button hook. Those buttons came loose too and were hard to sew back on through the thick leather. Often times they got lost so then there were gaps with only the button hole left. I suppose I was in the sixth grade when the low shoes became common.

            Emil, Calmer and Julius also did their share of walking and driving cattle on that trip from Summit but being younger they sometimes rested their tired feet and legs by short rides in Pa’s wagon or the buggy. Seven year old Tena was the little mother to her younger sisters and was a big help with the baby who would have become restless and cross as they rode hour after hour over the dusty road.

Torsten Uglem in 1913

September was a lovely month to travel and the farm at Lake Preston was a beautiful scene to them after the prairie at Summit. The house was too small for the family but they were used to crowding up since the little four room house they had left at Summit was also too small. The trees, two lovely groves, one north and one south of the yard were at their loveliest, the maple and the oaks already turning color and the stately cottonwoods towering over all still in their greenery.   But in between the two groves was the best of all – the orchard with ripe red apples still hanging on the trees. They had never seen an apple on a tree before and oh! Such good eating! Exploring in the north grove they also found ripe plums and choke cherries that hadn’t yet been eaten by the birds.

            John and Pete had been on the Lake Preston farm that summer when they and Pa hauled two loads of machinery, staying to plow sixty acres and planted them to flax and millet. So they had looked the farm over but to the younger boys everything was new and they would like nothing better than explore the groves and fields but there was work to do. After penning the cattle they helped unload the wagon. First to be carried in the house was the cook stove. The stove pipe had to be fitted so a fire could be built. After two and a half days on the road Ma had cooking to do. Then the spinning wheel was carefully carried in. It had come from Norway on the same boat as the folks in 1887 and was a very necessary piece of equipment. This same spinning wheel is still in good condition and is being cared for by Benta in Lake Preston. A treasured family heirloom. Then the beds were set up, including the “seng-benk” (bed chair or bench) that went in the parlor with the spinning wheel. This was a home made bed, in two parts, at night the front half was pulled out, making it a double bed, in the morning it was pushed back, the bedding (a feather bed, most likely) folded up, making it a cozy settee during the day.

            Everyone were tired, hungry and dusty after the trip so a bath and change of clothes and a supper of possibly cornmeal mush with fresh milk and a sprinkle of sugar tasted very good. After evening devotions the family was ready for bed and good dreams in their new home. Tomorrow would be a good day to explore for the boys, but Tena and Ma would have a busy day. There would be clothes to wash, bread to bake and cleaning to do. A kettle of apple sauce would taste good with the fresh bread so the young ones hurried to the orchard to pick the nicest ones they could find for the sauce and apple butter that Ma would make.

            There was haying to do for the older boys to feed the stock over winter. Wood to chop for the kitchen stove, fences to mend besides getting ready for school.

            Pa says in his story the main reason they left Summit was that the school house was so far away. Here in the new home the Evergreen School was only a half mile north on the edge of two lovely groves of trees, mostly pine, giving the school its name. There were crab apple trees in one of the groves that were ripe and good eating. I don’t know if John and Pete went to school there or if they had finished the eighth grade in Summit. But there would still be four little Uglems trudging down the road to school. The Norwegian language was spoken almost exclusively in the family at that time but they learned fast in school and maybe talked together in the English language. Thus far, the family had lived in Norwegian settlements so they had very little use for another language. Many other pupils were also Scandinavian, maybe the first teachers, also, so I can imagine the language was used out on the playground too.

            West of the place and across the road was another thick grove of trees that extended a half mile south, planted by another early settler. How much these groves improved the scenery in this flat country, many of them never knew as they stayed only long enough to plant their trees, prove up their homestead and then sell out and move on.

            Within a few years another house was moved on the farm, joined to the house already there, making a roomy one of eight rooms, a large bedroom added to the upstairs for the boys and two bedrooms down stairs besides a pantry and another small room where the cream separator was moved to in the summer time.

            A cistern caught rain water for washing and cooking. The deep well water was soft, with a slight salty taste.