We Sell Our Store and Move to Richwood • Chapter 6

Chapter 6 • We Sell Our Store and Move to Richwood

Nels Peterson's new barn in 1919

Dad had the store about two years. He did not really like being a merchant. He liked working outside better, so he traded the store to W. Rice for eighty acres of land in Riceville Township. He also had forty acres in Richwood in the woods at Section 15, Range 41, where the boys cut wood. So Dad bought another forty acres from Berg plus twelve acres more, so he got land up to the old Stage Road that went from Detroit to White Earth. Here is where he built his house and barn in the year of 1916. He built a shed barn for temporary use the first year and he bought about ten cows that fall.

We moved into the house in October 1916. He sold his Model T car to Ed Fingalson for five hundred dollars, which was a lot of money at this time, but car prices were going up. Since he was building, I guess he needed the money more than the the car. He later built a big hip roof barn, with a big haymow, hay carrier, and manure carrier and all the conveniences.

Nels Peterson's house in 1920. Dena Peterson and her chickens

The house was just a shell, with flooring boards and building paper on the outside. It had all the windows in. We went up a ladder to sleep upstairs. In the middle of the living room he had seed grain sacks stacked to the ceiling for his next years' seed. As the winter progressed, we put in the partitions and lathed the wails during the evenings by kerosene lamps. One night the saw jumped while Frank was sawing a pile of lath and he sawed his forefinger very badly. It was sure chewed up, but Mom fixed it up, and it healed up fairly nice. There is still a scar on his finger after all these years.
The first night we came from Callaway, we took to the woods to explore. We found a spring below the hill where water came out of the ground, so Dad dug a hole and put a barrel in it and we dipped water for the house and watering the cows. Then not far away was a big high cranberry bush with bright red cranberries, we picked them and Mom cooked them for sauce. They were very good, but also very tart.

Pelican Valley School in 1918: Anderson's, Erickson's, Malvick's, Nordgulen's, Peterson's, Engstrand's, Olson's, Beaulieu's, Tovson's and Miss Helena Heuters, teacher

Next morning Frank, Lawrence, Myrtle, Andy and myself started out for school, one mile away. We were a little scared, wondering how all the new kids would treat us. There were around forty-five kids or better in this new school, which had been built that summer (Pelican Valley School). I knew some of them from Number 15, the Fingalson's and Anderson's, but we got along real good with all the children. Helena Heuters was our teacher for two years.

Helena Heuters, Teacher

Pelican Valley School, Dist. 116 Richard Twp., Becker Co., Minn. May 29, 1918 …… Helena Heuters, Teacher …… OFFICERS: Erick Anderson, Clerk Nels Peterson, Director W. V. Seek, Treasurer Anna G. Rogstad, Co. Supt. …… PUPILS:
Nora Anderson Agnes Erickson Irvin Fingalson William Anderson Ernest Erickson Arthur Fingalson Adelia Anderson Freddie Nordgulen Olive Engstrand Lawrence Peterson Raymond Nordgulen Oscar Tooson Ethel Anderson Myrtle Tooson Edward Engstrand Carl Erickson Andy Peterson May Fingalson	Myrtle Anderson Jeneva Anderson Elsie Peterson Vernon Anderson Elmer Malvik Frank Peterson Carrie Erickson Myrtle Fingalson Lyman Engstrand Walter Malvik Roy Nordgulen Myrtle Peterson Ralph Nordgulen Christan Olson Arthur Malvik Alfred Fingalson Marie Tooson Harry Engstrand

We always had a Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas party at our school, big programs, and basket socials to raise money to buy nice things for our school, pictures, etc. We sure enjoyed having these big programs as the schoolhouse was so full of people, they could not get standing room for any more. Some had to stand in the back stairway.

The next spring Dad drove twelve miles out to his 80 acres west of Callaway with his team and wagon and machinery to put in his crop. He had a little house and barn there and flowing well, and rebuilt a new granary, so he stayed there all week. On Saturday he drove home again, till he got the crops in. When haying time came, Dad, Frank and I went to hay. I was 14 and Frank was 13 years. So we helped Dad put up his hay, and I was cook. What a cook! I made ham soup and it was so salty we couldn't eat it. We lived on eggs and pork and potatoes. He planted a small garden out by the granary so everyday we would sit on the water tank and wash the carrots in the ice water that flowed from the artesian well. The carrots were so sweet and crisp. The stove was a small cast iron cook stove.

Mr and Mrs George Eliassen family; Vella, Leonard, Vera, Vida, Harry, Elsie and Annabelle, Ival, Floyd and Gladys at Height of Land Lake

The Eliassen family lived across the road. They were a big family. Leonard played the violin and the girls, Vella, Vera and Vida, each played the organ. Then we danced in their living room, Polkas, and Waltzes, till the house shook. I slept all summer with the girls at their house. There were Ival, Floyd, Gladys - they were the youngest. Mrs. Eliassen sure had a bunch of wild kids there! We sure had some good times at their house. The girls all had boy friends, but my Dad wouldn't let me go with them to barn dances. He kept me pretty well protected. One night it was a full moon and we went to the schoolhouse. The windows were unlocked, so we crawled in a window, opened the organ, and danced around the school house seats and sang songs in the moonlight. Then we closed the windows and walked home.

We had skunks under our house, but they never bothered us. You could hear the little one playing under there. They would bump the floor, but they will never smell up their own residence, where they have their young. Behind the house was a big gravel pit, and we saw a lot of big bull snakes in the yard, but never paid too much attention to them. One day Frank and I went back to the pit and there were hundreds of big snakes, three feet long, laying in the sun and crawling around. We killed many of them that were not down in the pit. One snake had a lot of babies in the grass and when she saw us she swallowed the whole bunch to protect them. I had never seen this before. They say skunks eat snakes. Well, they had plenty there to eat, and you would never get me to go near that pit again.

When we were haying, Frank would stack the hay, Dad pitched it up on the stack, and I drove the horses on the sweep rake. Every once in a while I would hit a gopher mound and would break off a seven-foot tooth. Then Dad would have to replace it before the next day. We put up many tons of hay on the prairie, and in the fall, he would haul it home on the wagon, or in the winter, on the sleigh. Sometimes if he went on the days we were home, we would go with him. Or I would do the barn chores, water the cows down in the slough out of an open well curbed up. It would be all ice around it, so I had to be careful not to fall in. lf it was cold, the cows would fight to hurry up and drink. When they got through, home they went with their tails in the air. Then we covered the top with a sack filled with hay to keep it from freezing up for the next day.

Rudy A. Peterson, WW 1 Navy, 1919

On October 15 1917, we had a big snowstorm, it turned cold, and the snow never left that fall. Dad had his grain in stacks, waiting to be threshed. Then in November, we got a few nice days, so the threshers came back to thresh. Frank and l had to help, too. I was supposed to help a neighbor lady cook for the threshers. They got started threshing, and then it rained again, so all the men were in the house waiting for the rain to stop. Cooking in her house was a bad deal. She had cats and kittens all over the house. They used her flour sacks for their toilet, and everywhere else, and flies. Things were bad all around. I tried to cook things that were fit for the men to eat, but I think most of them went home hungry. Like we did. We finally got the grain threshed that fall.
We were there three summers to raise enough feed for the cattle, but Dad soon got more land opened in Richwood. Frank and I helped him shock all of the grain on the eighty acres. Shocking barley was awful; we used forks and it sure scratched us real bad.

One summer morning, out there on the eighty, I looked to the northeast and I saw a mirage. I had gone to the flowing well to get water for lunch, and saw this mirage in the sky. There was a large blue lake and green forests all around it with a haze rising. from the lake like a fog. There were other pastel colors blending into the mirage. This could have been White Earth Lake in the mirage. This is the only mirage I ever saw in my lifetime, and it was beautiful. A mirage is seen when the lower strata of air is a very different temperature from the higher strata, so that the sky is seen as reflection.

When Rudy came home from the Navy, he walked the fourteen miles out to see us at the eighty. We were sure glad to see him, and he told us all about his Navy experiences. His ship was marooned on a rock in the Armada Islands for months. By the time they got it lifted off and at sea, the war was over, but he had put in his time.
Then in the fall of 1919 Dad sold the eighty after farming it for three years. He had cleared thirty acres of land at home to feed his horses, cattle, and chickens, and he always raised a few pigs for our meat. One summer evening, the cows broke off a fence post out by the barn, so we were all out there to put in a new post. Mom was there, too. She had the hammer in her hand waiting for Dad to get the post in. He was swinging the axe to cut something off, and the axe come back and hit my mother's wrist. Boy, did the blood shoot out of the cut! Dad grabbed her wrist and held it tight to hold the blood back. We went to the house and got a stick and bandage to make a tourniquet to put on her wrist to stop the blood till it clotted. When it had formed a blood clot, he put a bandage on it, and it healed just fine. She had a scar there for sometime, but in those days they did not run to the doctor even when they should have.

Leave a comment on the genealogy page.
Previous Chapter	Contents	Next Chapter