Life when my father was in the hospital.

I have already told about mother getting a hired man through a government plan which didn't prove to be wise or that she could afford. We children all had our chores but also had our fun times together. We would climb on the hay stack & try jumping from one stack to a lower one, then taking the fallen hay to fill the horses & cows mangers so their meal would be ready for them when they came in from the pasture. Later our farm land was rented to a neighbour, Bob & Alma Banks this neighbour was a real help during dads illness. The Banks family lived a mile or so south of us, with very small baby. He was a returned soldier of the war so was getting financial help in farming. Later I worked for them when I finished school.

We kids would get the cows into feed to help with evening & morning chores. Mother milked the, cow. I am not sure how many milk cows we had at this time. Clara & I did the dishes, Cliff with Ralph were a real help with the morning & evening chores. They had to get the school horse ready to drive the 4 of us two & a half miles to the a school, called Dixie school. Ralph was not yet school age. He was at home, company & help for mother. Clara was born on July 27 the year of our bad hail storm & was born a month early. She started school the spring after she was 6 years old. Three of us went by horse & buggy to this school, & Cliff looked after the horse, I helped with lunches. One of our neighbour kids drove 2 Sheltan ponies in a cart to school. Their father had built a small barn back of the school barn for their ponies. We all had to take the feed for our horses in the back of the buggy for their noon meal. There was a bad accident one day when the Russian children went to get their ponies to go home. They were both dead & blowted. I will never forget that sad sight. Every one was crying for those kids great loss. We were told later that their hired man had taken the oats for their feed out of the wrong bag. This was a bag their father had poisoned oats, to put down the many gopher holes as the gophers were multiplying by the thousands & eating the newly planted grain as it came up.

I remember another time when another family visited us their daughter, Iris Neilson she was older than I. She went with us & her brothers to kill gophers in the pasture. The gophers were eating our pasture grass & gardens, so the municipality had given farmers some posien to control their population. Iris was to help & guide us with the use of these fire cracker or some called gopher bomb. These were to be lite & quickly push down the gopher hole then quickly close the hole, the fumes were to kill the whole family of gophers living there, there where usually several families in each hole. All of both families of kids were there. As Iris lite the fire cracker she didn't get it in far enough & it back fired starting the dead dry grass fire. The pasture was dry & there was a strong wind. Iris quickly told us to take off out coats to beat the creeping flames out. We all worked hard putting the fire out, fortunately the wind dropped so we got the fire out with out too much grass being destroyed. My nice coat smelled like smoke for days. An other memory is of Cliff taming one of the steers after chores by getting on his back, he got to be quit tame while it was tied in its stall or led to water. He had Clara & I come out to help him hitch it to this piece of a old washing machine, a galvanized sheet with a board on one end which he attached a rope, He brought the steer out to tie him to our metal like sled. He told me to jump on with Clara who was already seated at the front holding the board. Then he would grab the reins & we would all jump on & have a ride. As Cliff came back to get on the steer took off, I fell off & Clara hung on & away our once tame steer raced out threw the gate into the pasture, Clara still holding on, Cliff & I running behind. The steer stopped at the foot of the hill, puffing looking back at us running to rescue our sister. We took the now tame steer back to the barn. We never tried this again.