Interviewee: Glenn Adamson
Interviewer: Mark Durtschi 
 
Mark Durtschi: It is the 21^stof June 1996, presently we are in the home of Glenn and Rose Adamson. These are my wife’s parents. Right Now we are going to interview Glenn about his remembrances of Stirling and basically life in those early times. Dad if you could begin, could you tell me a little bit about your birth?

Glenn Adamson: Well I was the tenth one born out on the farm.

Mark Durtschi: Where was your farm located?

Glenn Adamson: A mile east of Stirling, just across the highway, straight over from Fourth Avenue. When I was born they told me that they considered some lot of what they were going to name me. They said that somebody suggested that well he is the tenth one, why not name him Tyvie but I didn’t get that I got Glenn. About a month after I was born my mother hadn’t done to well and she died when I was about a month old.

Mark Durtschi: What did she die of?

Glenn Adamson: Well they said that they learned later that the doctor that had been in attendance had been carrying a virus and they said that twelve women died that he had attended. Before they found out what was happening. My aunt Bertha Oler, my mother sister took care of me for I don’t know how long until dad called back to Utah. His sister, my aunt Molly, her name was Mary Jane Sykes at the time. Her mothers married name. She came up to Canada and got me and took me back down there. I lived with her and her family until just a while before I turned twelve she became ill and died. By then Ruhdell and Vaughn, my older brothers had been down in Utah for some time working at various places. They brought me back up to Canada in a Model T Ford. We had a nice trip coming back up. We stopped in Idaho and visited relatives, come through Yellowstone park and on up to Canada. We arrived at the border and the Canadian side wouldn’t let them take the old car across. I don’t know the full reason for that so we found a place in Sweet grass where they could leave the car and we came by train up to Stirling from Coutts. That was the first time that I got to see the rest of the family.

Mark Durtschi: Could you tell me a little bit about that first meeting.

Glenn Adamson: Well it was quite a meeting. I had known all along that I had family up in Canada and of course I did have another brother that had went up to California and Married there. He had visited Utah some time and I had seen him. That was Arvo. But the rest of the family was in Canada. Perhaps not to long after we had arrived back in Canada Claude, Louis, and Me. Claude was just older than me and Louis was older than Claude. We were outside playing around, Louis and me decided to have a wrestling match. We got all positioned to get a hold of each other. Louis reached out to get a hold of me and I ducked under his arms. Down on my knees I wrapped both of my arms around both of his legs and pushed him with my shoulder. Down he went on his back. Immediately I jumped up on his chest. He never got over that, he had to tell all of his buddies how that little devil took him down and sat on him. But there at the farm we used to go into school and then when school was out and sometimes during the week almost every Saturday kids from the town would come out to the farm. We would play games of Kick-the-Can, Pitch-the-Picket, Hide-and-Seek, and different games, we played a lot. It seemed to be the best playground for a lot of the kids in town to come out there and play. 

Mark Durtschi: Could you describe to me how some of these games were played? Why don’t we start with Kick-the-Can?

Glenn Adamson: Well Kick-the-Can we would dig a hole about a foot in diameter and maybe six or eight inches deep and the can had to be kicked into that hole. When whoever was it would place the can out and he would give it a big kick and it would go a long ways out. The rest of the kids had to run and get that can, come back and put it in that hole. If he could catch somebody and get a hold of them before they got that can in the hole then they were it. Then they had to be the one to catch somebody after it was kicked out again. That was Kick-the-Can.

Mark Durtschi: Pitch-the-Picket

Glenn Adamson: Well they had a stick, possibly and old broom or pitchfork handle. It was quite long, about as high as the kids would stand. That would be leaned up against the barn door. The one that was it would take it and give it a through out as far as he could. He would call on somebody to go and get it and bring it back. While he was waiting for somebody to bring it back the rest would run and hide. Then once he got the stick back he would lean it up against the barn door again and had to find the other kids. And get them before they could get in and get a hold of the picket before he did. If he caught somebody and got there first then they became it. This was repeated the same way. One time when Louis was it, he had been it for a while and I guess that he got tired of being it so he took the stick and rubbed it into a cow patty that was near by. He stood it back up against the barn door and went out and deliberately let the other kids come in first. Joe Proctor happened to be the first one to get in and grab the stick. We figured that he was going to through it out and call on somebody to go and get it but when he looked at his hands they were covered with cow pie. He took the stick and chased after Louis. Louis went over to the hay derrick and climbed up the ladder as fast and they could. Joe followed him up the hay derrick but he didn’t dare go way out on the point so he came back. On his way down the ladder he rubbed all the cow pie on the ladder as he came down. Louis didn’t come down that ladder; he slid down another pole to get down. Joe was it for the next time around.

Mark Durtschi: How about Hide-and-Seek, how did you guys play that?

Glenn Adamson: Well I think that it is quite well understood, the fellow that was it had to maybe lean against a building and cover his eyes then count up to a certain number. While all the rest run and hide. When he was up to that number he could go and try to find the kids. If he could find them and get back to that point again before someone else did, they were it. That was Hide-and-Seek.

Mark Durtschi: Okay I have got one more game for you, we hadn’t mentioned it on tape but you call it Pig in the meeting house. Do you remember that game?

Glenn Adamson: Ya, well that was similar to kick the can, we had the hole to put the can in and each of the kids would have a stick. The one who was it could take that can out to the edge of a big circle where each player had a little hole with their stick standing in it, the circle would be about ten feet in diameter I guess. Around that circle there would be holes and each kid had a stick standing in their hole. When he kicked the can a way out somebody had to go after it. If he could get them before they got back. He brought the can back and somebody would knock the can away and he would put his stick in their hole if he could beat him to it.

Mark Durtschi: Then what happened?

Glenn Adamson: Then the guy who couldn’t get his stick back in his own hole was it. It was up to him to knock the can out and try and get somebody else before they got it put back in the hole.

Mark Durtschi: It seems to me that in order for that game to work properly there had to be one less small hole then there were kids.

Glenn Adamson: Yes, that’s right.
Mark Durtschi: Was that a fun game?

Glenn Adamson: Oh yes, it was fun.

Mark Durtschi: Did it get brutal at times

Glenn Adamson: Well sometimes you got hit with a stick or the can that was kicked or whatever. Sometimes while they were brining the can in someone would take their stick out of their hole and try to knock the can back out again so he would have to go back after it again. While they had their stick out of their hole someone else would sneak over and stick their stick in the hole.

Mark Durtschi: What happened if the person who was it put the can in the center

Glenn Adamson: Then he had a choice of picking someone to be it.

Mark Durtschi: I know that while you were out there on that farm you did a lot more than just play. What were some of the other things that you ended up doing?

Glenn Adamson: We had chores to do, cows to milk. Help with the haying, and whatever came up. Picking rocks and different things, But dad was a pretty good carpenter. He had done quite a lot of custom carpenter work to. He built a garage just north of what used to be T.A. Spackman's store, which was a block north of our present day post office on that same street. He built that big shop just next to that store. It was for storage and other things, the shop that dad built and other various jobs that he had done. I don’t remember where and when but he was pretty good at it. Then there was the farming that he took care of to. He had horses to farm with. He had a pasture that was in the north end of his farm and a lane from where the house was down to that pasture. You would have to go down there and get the horses and bring them back to the barn. Harness them up and use them he had a buggy that he would hook one or more of the horses up when he wanted to go somewhere. In the winter time he would build a big sleigh similar to a buggy. sometimes we would go to church with the sleigh. Leave the horse in the school barn. Other times we would come to town in the winter time. I do remember one winter. Ray and Vaughn, my older brothers had taken the horses, they had a team that would hook on to that sleigh. They had taken them and come to town with it. On the intersection right by the church and the post office lots of people would go there with a team and a sleigh and whirl round and round on that intersection. It got so that that intersection was just like a sheet of ice. In the winter time snow would fall down there and get packed down and freeze. When Vaughn and Ray took the team one time to that place, they would get the team on the dead run and pull them around to make a sharp curve. The team would more or less just keep side stepping in the middle of the intersection and the sleigh would keep swinging round and round. This one time when they had it up there on a Saturday evening my dad went to get her out at their farm to bring her into the church and when the horses got right close to that intersection and they took off on the run and he couldn’t stop them. They hit the intersection and around they went. Nearly through them both out of the sleigh but they got quite a talking to after dad got home.

Mark Durtschi:What was it like going to church when you were a kid? How were things different than they were now?

Glenn Adamson: Well at that time the church was where the school is now. The church had built a building there that had a stage in it where portable. The benches in the church it had a basement where some classes could be held and others would be held in different parts of the auditorium where they were far enough away from each other to have a class. Others would go up on stage and pull the curtain and have a class there. There was a back room which was really a coal house but it had another part of it where you could hold a class in. One edge of the stage had a room where a lot of scenery would be stored. They would hold a class in that sometimes. They mix you up in different places.

Rose Adamson: The baptism place was somewhere in that area.

Glenn Adamson: Yes there was a baptism place in the back area off stage. Rose’s dad made some fixtures in the old church fairly close to the front where most of the people would be. There was a furnace with a steel gate over it. The hot air would come up out of that furnace and Rose’s dad made a big fan that you could hang from the ceiling that turned an apparatus that he built. One time he built a place that had a man holding a saw sawing back a forth, that fan, from the heat would make that mans arms go back and forth.

Rose Adamson: There was a Santa Clause milking the reindeer on that one.

Glenn Adamson: He built another one that two or three reindeer on it pulling a sleigh. The reindeer were fixed so that that fan would make it look like they were sort of galloping back and forth, pulling that sleigh. It was quite a fancy thing and people really enjoyed seeing that at Christmas time. On the front entrance to that building there was a small room in which somebody would bring a movie and that machine would be run by electric power. They could show that film through a hole that would go into the main auditorium through a hole that was about a foot square. This machine would show that onto a screen that was up near the stage. That was silent movies which were different movies that you would see at that time that was much different. You couldn’t hear anybody talk but when they did talk it would be on the screen what they were saying. You could read what they were saying as well as the picture being there.

Mark Durtschi: Did a lot of people go to those shows?

Glenn Adamson: Mainly that was part of the financing of the place.

Mark Durtschi: So when you say that people paid to go to those movies the money raised went to the church.

Glenn Adamson: Well I am not sure whether the fellow who brought the film got part of it and the other went to the church. I don’t know exactly what the arrangement was there

Mark Durtschi: Now you have mentioned you held movies in the church. Was the building used for other things as well?

Glenn Adamson: Well yes, dances, in the main auditorium they had twelve inches that could be cleared away from the floor. You could play basketball on the floor. It had a basket that you could put up right near the stage and there was another one permanently up above the door that you would come in. There was a basket there, they had a lot of different performances go on there and there were times when if you didn’t have money enough to go to the movie that you could go up to the window and stand up on something and you could watch the thing and read what they say. There were times when we would go and do than when we didn’t have ten cents to go buy a ticket.

Mark Durtschi: Was there several kids outside doing that.

Glenn Adamson: Sometimes you would have five or six of them doing it yes. There wasn’t a lot that were doing that but sometimes there would be the odd one or two. I had done it myself. In later years when I was older, I was fifteen when Elodia Christenson come to me and asked if I could come and help with the plays that they put on. The plays that they put on, they would charge for them and that helped to finance the ward. I would help a little bit here and there. Dave Person was doing most of the staging when I first started there doing it. I learned quite a little from him. IN just two or three years I was doing the whole thing myself, painting sets for the plays that we put on, fixing up frame work to hold different things.

Mark Durtschi: So the first plays were in that church house weren’t they.

Glenn Adamson: Actually it was church house and the school to for a while. It was the first building for such purpose that was built. The brick school was built north of it right in the corner of the intersection, just north of that building.

Rose Adamson: When the schoolhouse burnt down they would have school in the church house.

Glenn Adamson: The used that church to substitute for the school. They had also built another smaller school in-between the two buildings. It had two rooms upstairs and two rooms down stairs. But that was a smaller building than the church but they were all used for the school.

Mark Durtschi: Let’s just go back to when you were a teenager and talk a little about how things were done. Things that were different before machinery came around, tractors and things like this. I am talking about how things were done when you had horses. Could you explain your wheat operation back when you were a teenager?

Glenn Adamson: Well it was all horse drawn machinery that was used to cultivate the land. For hay, we had a few acres that were planted to alp alpha, a horse drawn machine to cut that and a horse drawn rake to rake it up. With the rake us kids would drive the horses on the rake at different times. You would rake up around and around…
 
Tape 1 Side 2
 
Mark Durtschi: Okay you say that after was raked, and then what did you do?

Glenn Adamson: Then you used to same team and rake. You would go down the length of the field with one rake
going down one side and another going down the other side. Using the rake as you went along you would grab some hay and go just a little ways. You would step on the clutch and that would raise the rake up and leave a pile of hay. Then you would drop it down again and go a little farther. But you could do that without stopping the team. When it came time to haul the hay after they raked it up and that you would use pitch forks and put it up into the hay racks. When the hay rack was full we would pull up near the yard and into the barn yard, where the hay derrick was in the hay yard. You had a fork that had two big prongs. You would go down into the hay then pull a leaver in the top of the fork like a big U that you dropped the points down in. You pulled that leaver and down on the bottom end there was two fingers that would come up and lock the hay so that it wouldn’t fall off. They had a horse on a cable that goes up through the derrick and down from the top of the derrick to where the hay rack would be. The horse would pull that cable out and that would pull the hay up in the air. When the fella that was on the rack could get a hold of that rope that tripped that fork he would pull that and swing that derrick around so that the high point was overtop of the stack. When that horse pulled that hay up in the air the other end of that derrick was at an angle that the horse pulling that cable would swing it around so the point would go over the stack. It worked well that way. When he got it where he wanted it the one who was up there stacking would signal to drop it. The one on the rack would give a jerk on the rope and the hay would drop down on the stack. He would use the rope to pull it back and reload again. It worked well that way.

Mark Durtschi: How many people did it take to run a haying operation like that?

Glenn Adamson: Well basically there had to be three, one to lead the horse, one to put the ting in the stack, and one to be up on the stack to stack the hay.

Mark Durtschi: Wasn’t there a couple of others out getting the hay?

Glenn Adamson: Well sometimes yes

Mark Durtschi: If you had enough people

Glenn Adamson: Yes, some of my older brothers were away working but there was usually Claude, Louis, dad, and me, sometimes there would be others. Sometimes out sisters would help, maybe leading the horse or something.

Mark Durtschi: When that hay derrick wasn’t in use you guys used it as a play toy to do you?

Glenn Adamson: Somewhat yes.

Mark Durtschi: I wonder if you would like to tell a couple of those stories.

Glenn Adamson: One thing that my older brother has done. My brothers had a habit of letting that cable down and then putting a long sticks about two and a half or three feet long; fasten the center of that to that cable. That cable hung way down from a forty foot up to the top of the derrick. You could get quite a swing with that, sitting on that stick that was fastened on there. One time they got Jenny to come out and got her on there and gave her a swing. While they were swinging one of them when to the place where there was sheep and let the buck sheep out. He was kind of a mysterious buck. They had her down low enough so that when she was down swinging he would have to stand on his hind feet just a little bit and hit that tree with his head. They gave her quite a ride and they got quite a kick out of it. Lots of times I was on that thing several times swinging, so were the others. You could have quite a swing with it. I don’t remember too much about that but Mary was sitting on that one time. The horse was hooked up to it at the time. It was Claude or Louis that got a hold of the rope and lifted her way up in the air. Of course it swung around quite a ways and she kept getting higher and higher. They got her so high up there and she was hanging onto that cable that was between her legs and her hand got into the pulley a little bit. I don’t think that it injured her to much but it gave her quite a scare.

Mark Durtschi: On a bit more of a serious not I wonder if you could tell me about your grain harvesting operation.

Glenn Adamson: Well dad had a binder; of course he had a horse drawn drill to do the drilling. He had a binder that was bulled by horses. You would ride on the binder and it would cut the grain on the cutting board. The grain would go up into the binding part and be bound into bundles. Each bundle automatically had a chain on it and that wheel that was running on the ground that would turn the wheel. That tied the knot around these bundles and arms that kicked these arms out onto a carrier. It would keep going and keep kicking bundles out until it had maybe four bundles or more on the carrier then there was a controlled area that you could control with the foot to dump that carrier. After the whole thing was bound like that we had to go into the field and stook those bundles. After the field was all cut we would go in and pick those bundles up and stand them on end against each other and make stooks all over the field.

Mark Durtschi: Was that grain cut green?

Glenn Adamson: A little bit on the green side yes.

Mark Durtschi: So you stoked in and it stayed there for a little bit while it continued to dry?

Glenn Adamson: Yes But they were all stood on their ends, heads up, against each other. And you would have maybe eight or ten bundles. Every body in the area was doing it the same way. Sometimes we worked for other people, stooking grain. Later after it had plenty of time to dry and was ready you would go with the hay rack and haul the bundles into where they would have a thrashing machine. A thrashing crew would bring a thrashing machine and several different people with teams and wagons. They would haul the bundles to this trashing machine and pull up along side of the trashing machine; they would throw the bundles into a long place with chained bars to throw the bundles up into the separator. It had a mechanism where they would just go in and turn with knives on and they would cut the string and it chopped the grain up somewhat. It would go through a cylinder, some like what the combines do, thrash it out and the grain would come out the back end of the separator and there was eventually be a big stack of straw. The grain would come up from under the cives that took it to an elevator that would take it up into the air and dump it into another spout that would go down or up into a bin. Another place that came down into a Y that you could switch from one end to the other they would take sacks around that Y. They filled one and then filled the other. While one was filling they would fill that sack up and the sacks would be moved. Basically they didn’t do much of that with sacks in my time. When I was in Utah I saw a lot of that being done. It would fill the sacks and pack them go up a stairway and dump them in a bin. The grain would come up that spout and into a wagon with a wagon box with a bin.

Mark Durtschi: Did you just use man power then to shovel the grain into a bin.

Glenn Adamson: Yes, some of them had had to back up or pull near a bin and shovel the grain into a bin.

Mark Durtschi: There was no augurs or anything like that back in those times.

Glenn Adamson: No not in those times but it wasn’t long until then.

Rose Adamson: Dad had a square bin; I don’t know how high that picked up grain from the thrasher.

Glenn Adamson: Ya some of them had that but some of them when they would take the hay rack that was hauling these bundles and they would stack big stacks of bundles. When the thrashing machine would do all different farms, they would place that machine with the end of it that you could get up on it and place these movable things that was so wide so it would drive right into the machine. 

Mark Durtschi: Could you tell me a little about the thrashing crew?

Glenn Adamson: Well basically the thrashing crew worked for the fella that owned the machine. He would have different ones hired with their teams and their wagons to come and be thrashed. I had done some of that I run one of those teams one of those times and ran different places around the countries with bundles waiting to be thrashed. There were several different thrashing outfits that would be in the area

Rose Adamson: My dad had a thrashing machine.

Glenn Adamson: Ya he had a thrashing machine, Rose’s dad did.

Mark Durtschi: Now that house that you lived in out on the farm, it was quite a unique place. Could you tell me something about it?

Glenn Adamson: Well it wasn’t a big house. It was just a house with two rooms, end to end, downstairs. Up above with a sloped roof, there were two more rooms but only one of those rooms upstairs was finished up and plastered. The other room was still open to the rafters. It had a roof and walls but wasn’t finished up like the other rooms. Everyday when it was bedtime us kids had to go out side, climb a ladder up into the room that wasn’t finished and go through that room into the other room that was finished. That is where we slept. In that room there was a hole about eight inches in diameter in the floor where you could put a stove pipe up through. The heat would come up through the cooking range, which was directly down below us. That was what little bit of heat we had come up through that hole in the winter time. We had lots of bedding. We got done alright.

Mark Durtschi: Now when you were a kid out there, there were a few of your older brothers still at home. Your dad wasn’t there so much because he was out earning money to feed the family. There was no mother because your mother did a month after you were born. What was life like for you out there as a kid on the farm?

Glenn Adamson: Well I had brothers and sisters Vera and Mary were still there. Jenny had been married before I came up from Utah; she was up in Mountain View. Vera and Mary were there and they were good house keepers. We had a bedroom downstairs where they slept. The other room was a kitchen and dining room all in one. It also had a fold up bed that you would pull down and that is where dad would sleep. One or two of us kids would be with him, when we were smaller. We would sleep there and the rest would go upstairs. They would have to go outside and up around the ladder and in. It was alright. We didn’t know anything better so we had done alright.

Mark Durtschi: What kinds of things did you eat there?

Glenn Adamson: Well we always had chickens and sheep, and pigs, we would have pork, chicken and eggs. We had garden stuff. We did have to come up to Spackman’s store to buy some things of course. We had cows to milk; mostly it was just the one cow.

Rose Adamson: I’ll bet that you didn’t have prepared cereal.

Glenn Adamson: No, no prepared cereal, we would have oatmeal or something. I didn’t have much to do as far as preparing meals then, I was too young then anyway.

Mark Durtschi: Did you have a root cellar out there?

Glenn Adamson: Yes, I had a root cellar that had a square hole about like that and you could go down a bit of a ladder there.

Mark Durtschi: So two and a half feet square.

Glenn Adamson: There was a lid that would go on it. Then later they built kind of a stairway down into it, similar to the cellar that we have here. We had a cistern just out to the side of the house a little ways. We would go out there and put a bucket down in there and get water out of it. Eventually we put a pump on it. For a while I remember just a bucket that you would drop down and get water in it.

Mark Durtschi: Now that cistern was uniquely constructed. Can you tell me how your dad made that? 

Glenn Adamson: Well it was built before I came up; I didn’t see him build it. But I know that he dug a big round hole, I don’t know just how but I guess it must have all been from hand. Then he had straight walls all the way around it. He had a cement cover on the top of it that had a lid that you could lift up. He put a cement floor in it and then he plastered, he was good a plastering stuff. He plastered all the walls all the way around. In the summer time we would go to the pond just north of the house where in the winter time we would skate on it. But that is where sometimes we would get water for washing or different things and it was an irrigation ditch to keep it full and put water in it. 

Mark Durtschi: So you say that’s how you filled your cistern?

Glenn Adamson: Yes we had a branch from he irrigation ditches that would come over and fill the cistern.

Mark Durtschi: With all that farm work that you did, you used horses?

Glenn Adamson: Yes

Mark Durtschi: Do you remember your horses very well.

Glenn Adamson: Yes, especially the one team that dad had. Bob was a he horse and Ruby was a she horse. They were the ones that would pull the sleigh or pull the wagon or whatever. There was another old black one, you could ride Coon. I think that he had five or six horses. He had four or so that he would use for farming but I don’t know just what it took for a different influence. I think it was four on some of the machines that he pulled.

Rose Adamson: That’s what dad used some of those horses for.

Mark Durtschi: Could you describe for me a little bit how the land was prepared in the spring for planting and using horses?

Glenn Adamson: Well you would have to work the land all up with a cultivator and all he had the drill that he would pull with the horses. He would get the land in shape and use the wagon to put wheat in it to haul next to the drill. There was quite a bit of the land that he had planted alp alpha and he would raise hay on that for the horses in the winter time. There was pasture for the summer time to.

Mark Durtschi: You mentioned a ditch; you must have irrigated at least the alp alpha. 

Glenn Adamson: Oh yes we irrigated the alp alpha and the pastures some to. Basically the wheat land was a bit rolling hills and that wasn’t irrigated.

Mark Durtschi: So the alp alpha ground was a little flatter.

Glenn Adamson: Oh yes

Mark Durtschi: Could you describe how they used to irrigate back in those days

Glenn Adamson: well it was mostly just flood irrigating in those days.

Mark Durtschi: How did you do that?

Glenn Adamson: Well you would have a ditch that come near the land and a head ditch alone one end on the high end of the field. Turn the water out a place or two and let it flood out on to the land and you would make some small ditches to give a little extension to where you could irrigate. There were ditches that might get filled in while working anyway. Basically most of it was dry land, other than the alp alpha. Sometimes some of the grain you could irrigate but most of it you didn’t irrigate. It was dry land.

Mark Durtschi: As a kid you worked for several other people you worked for several other people, could you tell me a little about this.

Glenn Adamson: Yes well one person that I worked for was named Willford Brandley and I would go up there and do whatever. Sometimes I was picking rock. His farm was half a mile or so I would work doing whatever it was that he had, maybe cleaning up around the bin. I know that one time my dad had pigs. He had a special call that would bring the pigs in when he wanted to feed them. He had pens for them but sometimes he would let them out depending on what it was he would want. His special call was Woo Wee! He would really let it out. When I was working for Willford Brandley I was up at his farm about a half mile away and I could hear dad calling pigs at home. There was one time that the sow that we had had little pigs and she was running free with her pigs and she disappeared. We didn’t know where she was. Dad said well the Hogenson’s were the neighbours to the north of us and he had a lot of pigs, a lot more then we had.
 
Tape 2 Side 1 
 
Mark Durtschi: My name is Mark Durtschi and we are talking with Glenn Adamson again about some of the different things that have happened in his life. Now you mentioned on your other tape just a little bit about the plays that you were encouraged to help with the scenery. Could you again describe in detail, as much detail as you can about how you first got hooked up into making scenery and how it progressed into being just about a life long thing.

Glenn Adamson: Well I think that I was just about fifteen when Elodia Christenson, who had been directing plays quite a lot, she talked to me one time and asked me if I would come and help. I told her sure I would go. At that time Dave Person, local fella then, who had done most of the scenery, making up scenery for several plays especially during the winter time? I helped quite a lot there and actually continued helping there and I took over doing all of the staging. Making the scenes and making the sets. Going to all of the practices to find out just what had to be done. Several of the plays that we had done were what helped to finance the ward. At the time they were put on in the old church which had a stage and was where the school is now. It was a pretty good place to put on the plays.

Mark Durtschi: Did they have curtains in that old white church for the stage?

Glenn Adamson: Yes, it had a curtain that you could draw and close off the front and then they had curtains that went clear around the back part of the stage, just for whatever. But in the plays I had to make sets that sometimes, one especially one that the back part of it. Behind the picket fence there was a little gate, behind that on this canvas set I painted a church. And the church was the background for part of the play. That was the play that we brought a car on stage, it was an old model T sedan, the one with the glass windows. A two seat sedan and in order to get it in we had to take the body off. Cut the body in two pieces, cut down the middle, each side we would cut down through the middle and take it in threw the door to get in the building and the running gear we had to tip that on edge and slide that in, and then we put it back together on stage. We had it off stage and then during the play it was marked as a taxi. During the play we had the sound of a motor start running and the care come on stage, and stopped in front of the church.
Mark Durtschi: How did you make the motor sound?

Glenn Adamson: It was an old sewing machine that when you would run it would make quite a noise, similar to a motor. It sounded like an old motor running.

Mark Durtschi: So you had someone backstage just pumping that like crazy.

Glenn Adamson: Ya. It sounded a lot like a motor. I only ran for just a little while. And then it would shut off. It was quite a stage that we had to have for that. And with the different acts in the play we would have to change the set a little bit. Pull the curtain between acts and make some changes so that it was like a different place. For years after David left I had to make scenery. When we got to the amusement hall across the road which was south of the road then, which is gone now gone. On stage we had a room where we would store scenery that I had built, the settings that we had were just panels that would reach almost up to the ceiling. They would be four feet panels that we could put together and then enclose the stage as if you were in a room. We had real doors that we could put up that would open and shut like the ordinary doors of a house. One play that we had I had to fix up a window. That had the glass in it. That was in the back part of the stage. A lot of that kind of stuff was stored in that back room off stage.

Mark Durtschi: Would you use the same scenery for different plays?

Glenn Adamson: Same scenery for a lot of different plays. If they were suppose to be taking place in a house or whatever but sometimes when it was an outdoor scene I had to make special bets to match up for outdoor scenes.

Mark Durtschi:For many of these years did you make the scenery yourself, was there anyone else to help you?

Glenn Adamson: No I made pretty well all of it myself that’s for sure. That was after David was gone and I had grown up a little more. Some of our plays we took to Raymond to show, we took to Lethbridge to show. On especially we had that was called ‘Dust’ and it was about what one of the church members had wrote about southern Utah and the bad dust storms that they had down there. The drought and so on and this play were about that.

Mark Durtschi: Can you tell me about the scenery and the different things that you did to make that play a success

Glenn Adamson: Well that play dust, we had to reproduce dust for the play we had to reduce the sound of the wind blowing and the dust storm and the rains storm that came later. For the dust I made a little bellas and then I went down to the grain elevator in Maybutt and gathered up a bunch of dust that was lying around and I put that inside this bellas. Then in the play when they were talking about the dust storm somebody would open the door to go out on stage and blow the dust threw the door a little bit. It was very effective, then when the rain came, we had made a wind machine we called it, it was made with a couple of wood discs about two and a half feet apart. Round discs about a foot and a half in diameter, we put three quarter inch board bars about two inches wide each all the way around in those, kind of like a barrel with thin disks on. There was a crank with a handle on it which I could turn with my hand and laid a canvas over the whole thing. I had it fastened so that it wouldn’t prolong. When the wind started I would start the crank and you would and hear a whine like the wind coming. The faster you turned it the higher pitch it would be. When the rains came in the play, I had a potato sprayer full of water. I would be behind the set and spray water onto the glass window. It would run down the window into a trough that I had fixed at the bottom of the window and the drip off into a bucket. You got the whole sound from it with the rain falling on the windows and into the bucket. If they opened the door to go in or out I would shoot just a small spray of rain through the door, it was pretty effective. With that play we were in competition with other plays in the stake. We won for the stake and then took our play to Salt Lake. Where they had a lot of other plays and other things coming

Mark Durtschi: How well did it do in Utah?

Glenn Adamson: There was no judgement as to which was best, it was just a show of all of them. The fella that was in charge of the whole thing was a fella from BYU. I talked to him and each place that put on a play or a performance; it was all interviewed prior to the actual playing of it. It was put on and he witnessed it. But it wasn’t being judged for a best play they were just showing it. He talked to me once the play was put on and he asked me where you got that video of the wind blowing. I said that’s not a video I said that is a wind machine that we made. He had to go and see that wind machine. The dust to, he was impressed with that. He told me, just when he was talking to me, that yours was better then any of the rest of them. But there was no judgement as to which was the best. They all put on their own performance. Some of it was a musical performance or something; others had a play or some such thing.

Mark Durtschi: So it sounds like you were very busy behind stage.

Glenn Adamson: Yes, I was always behind stage, doing whatever needed to be done. I had made the set and we took our wind machine and our set with us. The doors and the windows we took with us to Salt Lake. But for the set, like the back of it and all was just drapes that were there permanently that we used, we had the window and doors and had the same affect. It worked out good.

Mark Durtschi: Up here you had walls from all of your different sets?

Glenn Adamson: Yes, at home I had made the canvas things that were right up to the ceiling near the stage, about four feet wide and you could tie them together and make the whole wall around the stage. When we showed it in the school here, on stage, Jerry Gibb was one of the school teachers at the time, he was a Raymond fellow. After the play he came and told me, that was realistic, that gave me hay fever. He was sitting in the audience.

Mark Durtschi: How well were the Stirling plays took on when you took it to other places, you mentioned Raymond and Lethbridge in particular?

Glenn Adamson: Well I think that out play was as good as any of them.

Mark Durtschi: Was there a lot of people who attended them in different areas?

Glenn Adamson: They were received very well.

Mark Durtschi: Is there any other towns that you took them too besides them?

Glenn Adamson: I think that was all, in Raymond of course in the stake house a lot of people could come. Lethbridge we went to the church there, they had a big hall where quite a crowd could come. But it wasn’t in competition it was just putting them on for the public.

Mark Durtschi: What are some of the other plays that the town put on?

Glenn Adamson: I don’t remember now, one of the plays that we put on was Aladdin. Out local high school kids took a lot of parts in that. Myron Eves was Aladdin. Suzanne Clawson was the princess in that. Bennie Fife was the genie. It was really a nice play it went over good. In that play Aladdin had the genie move the castle, I made a castle that was separate from the rest of the scenery but in front of it, a rock wall that I had made an imitation of. Behind this rock wall was the castle and then there were drapes behind that. In the play, while Aladdin had the genie tell that castle to move way off stage, I was behind the castle and I picked it up high enough that I could move it clear off stage. It worked out pretty good we had a lot of good reports of that one too. We had a setting where it was suppose to be in an underground setting and I had to pain settings for that. I had lights coming from the ceiling and some from the ground up, on stage we had a bunch of the kids, and it was high school kids hiding behind these stag lights where they couldn’t be seen. During the performance they came out and did a dance on stage, that went over pretty good too, of course that was just a part of it but it was part of the play.

Mark Durtschi: You evidently did the plays for them until they quit is that right?

Glenn Adamson: Yes, I think pretty well until they quit.

Mark Durtschi: What are some of the things that conspired together to make sure that the plays were no longer conducted.

Glenn Adamson: Well I think that TV coming on with stuff made quite a difference, where they could stay home and watch things. I don’t know, maybe the financing of the ward wasn’t quite as important, it was taken care of differently. Financing the ward is what a lot of the plays did at that time too. I think that that made quite a difference.

Mark Durtschi: That first person you told me about, Elodia Christenson, did she do the plays all the way through just like you?

Glenn Adamson: Yes, she was the director and sometimes she would suggest what we might have that I would fix up for the scenery part of it.

Mark Durtschi: So she was in there for the long haul also then.

Rose Adamson: She was in it for years.

Glenn Adamson: Years and years, in fact until she was unable to do so, when she got sick and died.

Rose Adamson: wasn’t she something to do with the drama director or something.

Glenn Adamson: She was chairman of the drama committee for Alberta

Rose Adamson: And something for the dominion.

Glenn Adamson: Yes, represented drama in the dominion for stuff.

Mark Durtschi: Was there anyone who thought the years had a lot to do with the plays besides you and her?

Glenn Adamson: Well I don’t know of any that were there for as long or as much but quite a few of the people who acted in the plays were in different plays at times. Some of the same characters, Charlie and Henry, here is a picture of Henry Perrett and Teddy Nelson, was a part in the play. This was also presented in Salt Lake City, we took down there

Mark Durtschi: When you were younger you were really a great amateur boxer. Boxing here in Stirling was a pretty big sport especially when you were much younger. Could you give us an interdiction into the boxing in Stirling as well as you becoming a boxer?

Glenn Adamson: Well the grain elevator operator at the time was Frank little down at Maybutt; at the grain elevators down there He could come up, when I was just a kid and in the basement of the old school which was the old brick school at the time. There was room there where we could do a little training in there. Some of the other kids my age, he would help us out a bit and he would show us how to box and so on. Then we had the boxing vault in the old hall where we had put on plays, it was where the school is now. I boxed in that.

Mark Durtschi: That was the church house?

Glenn Adamson: It was the original church house, where the school is now. It had a stage that you could box on and the crowd would be in the auditorium part. There was a time when they fixed up a ring in the auditorium because it was all benches that could be moved back where you wanted them. Basically that’s what it was like when I started. I boxed on of the kids in town and won, then I represented our area and went to Cardston for the Sothern Alberta eliminations, I boxed up there and I boxed in the hundred pound class and I weighed ninety three pounds at the time. I won one fight out there and I had to box another fellow out there and I lost that one. The next year I was still boxing and I boxed in the hundred and ten pound class, it was a year later. I won up there of course you didn’t go any place after that, the next year after that I boxed in the hundred and eighteen pound class. I won that. I quit and was out working after that. During that time of out training we would go down to the grain elevator, even when I was just a kid and my brother Ray was grown up and he was boxing. Wilfred Tinic was grown up, he was boxing a bit. But in the grain elevator there was the office room where we would spar in or box in as training. I had to box with them big guys when I was just a little guy really. We had done a lot of training down there. Frank little was the grain elevator operator and he was our coach. It was during that time that I had went to Cardston for the Sothern Alberta boxing.

Mark Durtschi: How many kids, during those first years that you were boxing, how many kids were boxing in Stirling?

Glenn Adamson: the first year there was three or four. Then some of the older kids came and boxed to.

Mark Durtschi: Is that when boxing first came to Stirling?

Glenn Adamson: Pretty well yes, because Frank Little had boxed professionally and then he was grain elevator operator and he was training us.

Mark Durtschi: As the years went by and after the community had had boxing for a couple more years how many kids were in it then.

Glenn Adamson: Not too many, all I remember, the first year we went to Cardston, Ray boxed and I boxed. That was when I was still a kid, but I don’t remember anybody else from Stirling going up there. But Ray was in a hundred and twenty six pound class at the time.
 
Transcribed By Clinton Dovell