I remember when I was 3 years old, I was in Primary class in Sunday school. I still have my Sunday school cards with little bible versus on them and pictures of Jesus.

When I was four we went to Iowa. There were my Father, Mother, Clarence, Lottie, Dorothy, Clyde, Bert, Verna and me. We went a truck and touring car. I have a picture of us eating on the ground on the way down. There was a school teacher friend of Mother’s I stayed with a couple of weeks. She wanted to adopt me but I wanted my Mama. On the way back to North Dakota we found a baby jumper on a fence post. We had it for several years. We only had the car going back and a bread truck sideswiped us. We had stuff strung out all along the road.

We stayed on the farm with Grandma Hotchkiss till she died and then we lost the farm for taxes. We had a lot of fun there, sliding down the hill in the winter and playing in the clay on the side of the hill, picking wild flowers and we had a swing on a tree that was beside a small side hill we would swing out over the side.

We moved to Sanger when I was 5 ½. Dad built a log house where we moved the school was just across the road from our house. My brothers had to keep the snow shoveled from the walk in front of the schoolhouse. We had to carry water from the school well and when it went dry we had to carry it from the neighbors well or from the depot.

We went barefoot all summer. We lived a ½ mile from the Missouri River. Dad made a flat bottom boat he fished from. We lived on fish and venison or rabbits. Big snowshoe rabbits. We always had a big garden, besides a field of potatoes and one of corn.

My Uncle Jess lived with us. He was my Father’s brother. He sometimes herded sheep for farmers. He had a German shepherd dog and part wolf. He bit my sister Lottie on the breast (years later she got cancer in it and had to have it removed.) Dad and Jess took wolf out and got rid of him. They told us he had jumped in the river after a piece of bacon on a line and drowned. We later found his body. They had shot him.

I remember when I was seven, I had a birthday party. All the kids my age came. I got a little wooden wheelbarrow. I don’t remember the other gifts.

Before this when I was five I had whooping cough. My new baby sister died of it.

Dad sometimes went to the coalmines to get coal for the winter. We all went in the wagon. That is Mom and the little kids.

There was a mule we all rode. They had to put a tire around his neck so we could ride him otherwise he would turn his head and pull us off his back. He was gentle except for that.

We use to all get in the wagon in the summer or fall to get berries and plums for Mom’s canning and jelly making. We took all the pails we could find and filled them all. We put blankets under the trees to catch the berries as they had thorns on the trees. They shook the trees to loosen the fruit. I loved the bull berries. They were tiny red berries but real sour. Made good jelly. We also got plums, chokecherries and June berries. Also grapes. Purple ones. Mom didn’t have sugar for some of the choke cherry juice so she put it in beer bottles and capped them. They were put into the cellar and in the summer it got too warm and started to explode. We had juice all over the cellar. Luckily the cellar was made of dirt under the house. We also had a sod roof. Grass grew on it. It caught fire from the stovepipe one winter.

One summer the boys put their fish poles up on the roof and one of the kittens got a hook caught in her mouth. Mother cut it out with a straight razor. My brother Bert got one in the side of his foot and the teacher Mr. Cox cut it out with a straight razor too. Clyde had to pull him around in the wagon till it healed. He didn’t like that much.

We use to drive the town cows to the pasture, Bert and I. Dad got paid $.25 a cow each week. Bert use to have me play follow the leader. He’d jump over the cowpies and I’d step in them. My legs were shorter than his. Sometimes we’d climb on the cows back and ride them home. We loved to go to the pasture with Dad when just our cow was there. We all had shiny tin cups and he would milk some milk into our cups. It was mostly warm foam but we loved it. We also went with him to tend the fish bins. We would have fresh fish and June berries for breakfast with pancakes and fresh milk.

We didn’t have much money. Dad worked on the W.P.A.

When the boys went to our neighbors on the other end of town. Mom would blow through her hands to whistle for them to come home. One night she sent me after them when they didn’t come when she called and I took our dog Teddy with me. On the way back I was alone as the boys said they’d come later. I had Teddy on one side of me and the Great Dane from the Albers Ranch came on the other side. I was about eight or nine and sure scared. I held onto each of them all the way. While they growled at each other. When I reached the house I let loose of them and ran. The only reason Teddy growled was to be protective of me.

Another time I tattled on the boys for smoking behind the barn. They wouldn’t let me smoke. Dad sure tanned them all including a neighbor boy Charlie Dumm. His Mom came up to the house to find out what it was all about and Charlie got another spanking from his Mom. He had lied to her.

On the 4th of July, the big boys from town would climb up on the water tower and set off the big fireworks.

We used to go down to the Missouri River with Dad when he set his fish traps and play in the river. He made traps out of willows. Sometimes he hung sour wheat or bread dough in the traps. The fish could get in but not get out. We had a lot of fun in the river and climbing the huge oak trees or going to the stockyards and walk on the boards high above the ground.

We had a town hall where they held dances and programs for the school. The kids would go to the dancehall after the dance the next morning and find money under the boardwalk in front of the hall. Sometimes they’d find as much as $5.00 in change. We spent it all on candy; for our Mom’s too. There was an old store building next to the dance hall. The gas pipes in front weren’t capped. One day Roger Smith, who had red hair and freckles, dropped a lit match in it to see what was in there. It exploded in his face. Luckily he had a doughnut in his mouth so he didn’t inhale any gas fumes. But when he got out of the hospital he didn’t have any more freckles. He was lucky to be alive. I remember some of the ladies tried to wash the black off of his face and took some skin too.

I once swiped a jellybean from a box of them on the counter in the store. Florence Bagley caught me and said she’d call the sheriff. I was scared. I didn’t know what a sheriff was. I was only seven. After that she said if I wanted candy she would give me some. So I told all the kids in town and we got free candy from her. I had a crush on her brother when I was four and he was fifteen. His name was Gerald.

Ours was a small school. The teacher lived in the basement of the school. Sometimes his wife would lead us in singing and we had a little band with sticks and cymbals and drums and horns you tooted in. I played sticks.

I had my name in the newspaper as the only one in school not to miss a day of school and not late once. Of course we lived across from the school so it wasn’t hard to do. I also had the most stars for good work. It only lasted for the first two years.

When Dad built our house of logs, he put sod on the roof and left one top log longer than the others so we could swing on it. We didn’t have any trees around the house or schoolhouse either. The logs were hauled from the woods by the Missouri River that flowed past our town of Sanger. In the winter the boys and girls would skate on the ice, play crack the whip and sometimes drive the car on the ice and pull toboggans and sleds hooked together. Dad took the wheels off the wagon and put long ski like runners under it to slide on. We had hay in it to sit on. Lot’s of fun. We used barrel staves for skis.

When I was ten my sister Verna and I were taken from our home and put in a children’s home in Fargo, North Dakota. I was ten and she was seven. I was there off and on till I was fourteen. They sent me to foster homes. The first one was a preacher’s home. They had a fifteen-year-old daughter. She used to get me in trouble with her lies. I sprained my ankle falling down a snow bank back of the school. I was sent back to the home. The next time I didn’t get along with the farmer’s wife. I was eleven. I had to baby sit a three-year-old they had adopted from the home. Next I went to a place with two little boys. Chuck the five-year-old was always into my things and I had to take care of the 10-month-old baby. We went to see her folks in Minneapolis and I learned to skate on the ice. The man worked for the greyhound bus company. So we went half fares. I ran away from there on a dare. I was thirteen and dumb.

When I was fourteen they sent me to my married sister Charlotte in Iowa. I had to do most of the work. She was P.G. and lazy. Her husband wouldn’t leave me alone. Tried to kiss me and one day he hit me on the butt when I was bent over. I slapped him and he beat me up. I cussed him all the time. When I got a chance I ran away from there. Charlotte my sister gave me $.28 to go almost five miles for a bottle of clorox so I kept on going. I got a ride with a couple of Greek boys in a truck. They gave me a silver dollar when they dropped me off. They were going the other way.

Then a couple of men in a truck hauling ice. They were getting it from a company cutting it out of the river. After they let me off, three old men picked me up and took me to the next town. Then an old lady and her husband took me to a town and drove me to the YWCA I heard them saying they were going to go to the police. So next morning early I left. The night before the girls were having a party and brought me some cake and Jell-O and milk.

I had several rides after that till I got to Wyoming (Cheyenne). I was walking along, when a bunch of dogs came after a little dog. They were growling. All at once a big dog came along and growled at them and they ran away. The big and little dog went away alone.