Interviewee: Edna Kiddle Perrett Davidson
Interviewer: Sharon Turner

Sharon Turner: We are interviewing Edna Kiddle Perrett Davidson today. Edna you were born in Stirling?

Edna Davidson: Yes

Sharon Turner: Did you tell me that you had a midwife at your delivery?

Edna Davidson: I don’t know, I was born at home.

Sharon Turner: What house were you born in, in Stirling?

Edna Davidson: Well it was a home that Uncle Del built for us.

Sharon Turner: Del?

Edna Davidson: Delbert Kiddle and he were on the south east corner. 

Sharon Turner: That house isn’t there anymore is it?

Edna Davidson: No, we lived there until I was about five years old. Dad bought a house west, it was Merlin Steeds and it
was a seven room home and that is where the rest of my sisters were born.

Sharon Turner: That must have seemed like a palace, a big house?

Edna Davidson: Yes, it was we had lots of fun in it; we really liked it there too.

Sharon Turner: Do you remember the old house?

Edna Davidson: Oh yes

Sharon Turner: What was it like?

Edna Davidson: It was just a little two roomed framed building.

Sharon Turner: Did it have a Kitchen and a bedroom?

Edna Davidson: Yes, I don’t remember too much about it other than it had a shanty on it. We have got pictures of us kids
standing there. We don’t remember too much about it. The bigger house we did, we had a flat, and I guess it was an empty
lot in front of it. We called it the flat, that is where all of the kids congregated and we had ball games and all kind of games
there. Played kick the can, run sheep run and all of this.

Sharon Turner: Did you break a window playing ball out there that close to the house?

Edna Davidson: No, it was away from the house, it was a lot joining to the house. IT had no fence around it or anything it was
just a flat that we called it.

Sharon Turner: Did you dad own that property?

Edna Davidson: No, but I think that there is a power house built there now. We went back to Stirling my sisters and me
about four years ago. Looked over the place and kind of reminisced on what we used to do there.

Sharon Turner: So tell me what you reminisced? What did you remember while you were there?

Edna Davidson: Well the coulee ran by the house and in the winter it was sure good skating up and down it. Dad used to cut
blocks of ice and we had a granary that had wood chips in it that we stored all of the ice in. It lasted until way in the summer.

Sharon Turner: How did they cup these blocks of ice?

Edna Davidson: They had a big saw. Just a big ice saw I guess and they would just start and cut big blocks of ice out of
there. Then there was a swimming hole past the place where all of the kids used to come and swim. So we had lots of fun
there. We lived there until we moved until Mountain View. I was seventeen then and had got most of my schooling in
Stirling. I only had to take two subjects in high school in Mountain View when I got there.

Sharon Turner: Was that to graduate from high school?

Edna Davidson: Well we only went to grade eleven. Then I got married. The old school house is that big old brick building
with the bell on top. It would ring at eight thirty and nine. At eight thirty you knew that you had a half hour to get to school.

Sharon Turner: That is nice; they gave you a warning bell.

Edna Davidson: Then at noon it would ring at one thirty. School was from nine to twelve and one thirty to four I guess it was.

Sharon Turner: That’s nice, you had an hour and a half for lunch, and I guess that is because some people had to go so far
to get home.

Edna Davidson: Ya, they didn’t take lunches in at all. You had to get home and get back.

Sharon Turner: Did some people come to school on horse back?

Edna Davidson: Yes, lots of them. In the winter my dad used to take us in the sleigh and all of the neighbour kids would ride
too, it was a big bobsled I guess you could call it. We would have bells on the horses, sleigh bells and of course kids knew
when he was coming and would run out and get in. We took them home at night again.

Sharon Turner: So that is the early version of the buss.

Edna Davidson: Yes that was, I mean he wasn’t paid to do it but he just took us kids and gathered all of the other kids up.

Sharon Turner: So where did these farm kids keep their horses? Was there a place to rope them up?

Edna Davidson: They must have had a place. I think that there was a barn across form the school where they kept their
horses and that. I am not sure about that because I have never ridden a horse to school. Maybe some brought in their
buggies too, I don’t know. My dad and mom never owned a car; transportation was always the horses and a two seated
democrat.

Sharon Turner: What is a democrat? Is it some sort of buggy?

Edna Davidson: Yes, it is just a big buggy with seats. On Sunday afternoons my dad would take it for a ride out in the
country in it and it was fun. We had fun in it.

Sharon Turner: Did you wear the long dresses to the ground?

Edna Davidson: No

Sharon Turner: That was you moms era.

Edna Davidson: Ya, but I remember the first kind of long pants, they were half way up their legs I guess. They looked so
funny. Mom used to sew all of our clothes and knit all of our socks, out mitts and out toques. Made our coats out of old
coats that people would give her, she did the sewing. She sacrificed a lot so that we could have a new dress or something.

Sharon Turner: Where were your parents born?

Edna Davidson: Dad was born in England, Bruce Bridge England. Mom was born in Salt Lake City.

Sharon Turner: So your father’s family moved over to Utah?

Edna Davidson: Yes

Sharon Turner: Did they join the church in England?

Edna Davidson: My grandfather did, but my grandmother was baptised the same time that my dad was.

Sharon Turner: Well she made a big sacrifice then. She wasn’t a Mormon but she came with her Mormon husband to Utah.

Edna Davidson: I think that he came first and worked a year or two.

Sharon Turner: Then they came up to Stirling after they were married?

Edna Davidson: No, they both came with their parents to Stirling. Their parents were good friends. That is how dad met
mother and then they were married on the 17^thof November in 1909 I think it was.

Sharon Turner: Did they go down to Salt Lake to be married in the temple?

Edna Davidson: Yes, they were married in the Temple.
Sharon Turner: That is a long trip. Did they ever tell about that trip to go and get married?

Edna Davidson: No, they didn’t, I think they went on the train or something.

Sharon Turner: That is a long ways to go and get married but I guess that is the closest temple.

Edna Davidson: Yes, but dad failed a mission in Germany and they had no parse or Script they called it or passports or
anything. I think that he was put in jail a time or two, you couldn’t preach the Gospel. So they sent him to England and his
father got really sick and then he was called home. That is when he met mom. The first thing that he did was buy her a
piano.

Sharon Turner: Before they were married?

Edna Davidson: After they were married.

Sharon Turner: So she was very musical.

Edna Davidson: Yes, she was very musical. She loved singing and she played in an orchestra with her dad and she liked to
dance. Dad never danced but they would go to dances. He would let her dance and wait until she was finished and then
take her home.

Sharon Turner: He would watch her dance with other people?

Edna Davidson: Yes, and then bring her back home.

Sharon Turner: Did they go to dances after they were married and still do this?

Edna Davidson: Oh yes, the same. He never did take part and he never kept her from going anywhere. But he just didn’t go
with her a lot of the time. That used to bug her.

Sharon Turner: Did you kids pick up a musical talent?

Edna Davidson: All of them except for me. Louil he learned, he just played the mouth organ. But the rest of them played the
piano and they would sing. My sister really plays by music and the others by year and she can play most of anything. Mom,
after she went to Mountain View played in an Orchestra but this time she played the drums. So I had a sister that either
plays the piano or the drums. 

Sharon Turner: Did your mom teach the kids to play the piano?

Edna Davidson: A Lady in Raymond, they took very few lessons, I think they only had a bout three or so and Fey only about
that many. I guess that mom must have helped them, because they didn’t have too many lessons.

Sharon Turner: Did she play in any of the musical bands or any of the things that they had in Stirling like the dances or the
programs that they put on?

Edna Davidson: She could have done, she sang in the choirs and she liked drama. She was more outgoing than dad. She
liked anything like that and can understand why we kids didn’t.

Sharon Turner: She must have been an outgoing person.

Edna Davidson: Yes she was, she liked it. She liked to do things like that.

Sharon Turner: So who were your neighbours that lived around you when you were growing up when you were living in the
Steed home area?

Edna Davidson: Elma Spackman lived across the road from us. Fred Spackman, his sons are doctors in Cardston. So we had
them and the Michelson’s, the Zaugg’s. We were friends with the two girls there. My special friends were Beulah Brandley,
Zina Herget, Gertrude Tillich and Marry Anderson.

Sharon Turner: In town you girls were all pretty close, you spent a lot of time together.

Edna Davidson: Yes we did, every Friday night we would take a cup of sugar and go over to Beulah’s place and make some
candy.

Sharon Turner: How did you do that?  You boil the Sugar in water and then what else did you put in it?

Edna Davidson: Vinegar and Nut butter and then you would poor it out on a platter. When it is cool enough so that you can
have it then you stretch it.

Sharon Turner: As you stretch it, it hits air and it goes hard.
Edna Davidson: Yes, it sets, if you don’t cook it too much it stays like a toffee. That is the way that I did it the last years. Yet

if you do it hard, it has holes all through it and you can break it off.

Sharon Turner: You would put flavouring in it?

Edna Davidson: Flavouring and food colouring, you could make it all colors.

Sharon Turner: So what would you use for flavouring?

Edna Davidson: Any flavouring that you wanted, you could get there flavourings that colored and flavoured.

Sharon Turner: So if you did a mint it would go green.

Edna Davidson: Yes and there was strawberry and raspberry and orange. Orange I really liked. You could get lemon too.

Sharon Turner: Did you make that at Christmas time too?

Edna Davidson: After I got married I would make it at Christmas a lot and Halloween. Those last few years I would make
batches after batch of it.

Sharon Turner: So you five girls would make up this candy and just eat it.

Edna Davidson: Ya, we would eat it, that was our party. That was our treat.

Sharon Turner: And you took turns at each others house?

Edna Davidson: Mostly it was at Beulah’s because her mom lived alone there and it seemed like that was the central place
and that is where we went most of the time.

Sharon Turner: Her mom was Eliza Brandley and her dad was Theodore?

Edna Davidson: No, her dad was, she was Lena Brandley.

Sharon Turner: Would Willford be her dad.

Edna Davidson: No, Willford lived next to them. I forgot what her husbands name was. He was gone; he had died when she
was quite young. With her mom being along she didn’t mind us coming there. Halloween parties.

Sharon Turner: Did you hang out at the school too?

Edna Davidson: Oh yes, at recesses, we were quite close. We have been until we got scattered, we still kind of keep in
track. We had lots of fun.

Sharon Turner: So you were telling me about teachers that you had, you had Teddy Brandley, who else did you have? 

Edna Davidson: I think that she taught us in the church not at school. I had Mr. Head, Mr. Stanley Gibb, he was a good
teacher I liked him. He was strict. Mr. Campbell she married the station agent in Maybutt and they lived just up at Glenwood
here. I think that they parted after their kids were grown. My dad, he used to be the water master in Stirling for years. We kids had to run and tell people when they could use their water.

Sharon Turner: This is with the irrigation Ditches. So what did he do in his job to get the water running?

Edna Davidson: Well they had to keep the ditches up. People had a certain time that they could use the water and then they
had to shut it off so that the other guy could use it. Us kids would run many errands for dad.

Sharon Turner: So what was his job, he had to clean out the ditches, keep them clean so that the water could run through
them?

Edna Davidson: Ya, and to tell the people when they could use it and keep a record of that and see that the water wasn’t
just wasted and run without people using it. He also was maintained the roads. Especially one road from Maybutt to
Craddock, it was a gravel road then but he used to drag it and it used to be heavy planks on that four horses would pull. He had to stand all of that time; there was no seat in the thing. He would come home so tired and dirty. I remember feeling sorry for him sometimes that he was so tired, in all kinds of weather, wind, cold and that kind of thing. 

Sharon Turner: That was just to keep it level?

Edna Davidson: Yes, just to keep it level.

Sharon Turner: What did he do in the winter time?

Edna Davidson: He didn’t do anything in the winter that I know of. I don’t know whether he even ploughed the snow off it or
what they did. The cars, of there was any used to make ruts and he would level it all out. But it was rough. It was hard on his
legs. He bothered with his legs a lot. And mom, she used to wash like every body else in the town with the scrub board.
Hang clothes up in cold weather and freeze you hands. To iron them you had to dampen down again and use the flatirons. I
still have got them.

Sharon Turner: Do you really

Edna Davidson: Well they are mine; I got some when I got married because we didn’t have an electric iron then. 

Sharon Turner: I will have to buy some of those. I have been looking all over for them.

Edna Davidson: Mom used to have to ring the clothes out by hand, overalls and whatever else. Carry water from the ditch
to get warm ion the Stove and then empty it all by buckets too, the winter, melt snow. Then of course we had the outside
biffy and the inside plumbing. By the time that you got out there in forty below weather, you forgot what you went out for.
Then in the summer it was the bees and the hornets. Kids don’t remember those times but I certainly do.

Sharon Turner: Did you ever get out there and realize that the door had been snowed shut.

Edna Davidson: Oh sure, but dad was pretty good for keeping things open. He was very neat in everything that he did. He
tried to instill that in us kids. He knew right where everything was, they were put in their place after you used them and he
hardly ever lost anything because he was really knew where they were. He trained horses, broke horses for the Calvary in
Lethbridge. He would ride them down to sell them and ride back on the train. He hauled gravel.

Sharon Turner: Now this was in WW1 that he trained horses?

Edna Davidson: Yes, He used to haul gravel for the road to and there was a gravel pit north of Maybutt. And every day a
3:20 train would come in and I don’t know what time it came in the morning but I know that it came from Coutts at 3:20
because we would see it come in and hear the whistle. But one time when he was out hauling gravel a bad storm came in
and he was struck by lightning. This engineer saw him slump over the seat and it killed two horses and made him very sick
and black and blue on one side. He had his little girl with him June, she was just left sitting there and as soon as the train
got into the station he reported it and they went out and got dad and the little girl.

Sharon Turner: Where did they take him, did they take him to a hospital?

Edna Davidson: No, they took him home. I think that they had the doctor come and mom looked after him. It was a scary time,
I remember us kids all scared for him. We asked him lots or times if he was afraid of lightning and he would say not really
but I think that he did that so that we kids wouldn’t be too frightened of it.

Sharon Turner: How long was it before he was back to work after that?

Edna Davidson: It was months, during that time, or before then they had three of us. They all had typhoid fever, mom and
dad and May and I and Louell.

Sharon Turner: And you didn’t loose anybody.

Edna Davidson: No, just about lost Louell. But mom was in the hospital for two months and dad for one. So grandma Kiddle
looked after Louell. She pulled him through.

Sharon Turner: What would they do for it then?

Edna Davidson: I don’t know what they did. I guess it, for one thing had to keep your fever down, because with to high of a
fever would be bad on you.

Sharon Turner: Did that go through the town?

Edna Davidson: I don’t know weather it did or not then or how they got it. I really don’t know but they were sick and mom
lost her hair. But it came back curly. She had it cut like a boy. She dressed in her brother’s suite and they looked just alike.

Sharon Turner: Is that right.

Edna Davidson: I don’t know if there is much more to tell about.

Sharon Turner: What kinds of games did you play at school during lunch hour?

Edna Davidson: Hop Scotch, skip rope and then you always would have a verse that you would say and you would run in
and say it and come back out. 

Sharon Turner: Do you remember those verses? Can you repeat them?

Edna Davidson: I can’t remember some of them now, I would have to think. On was something like ‘Ella Ella dressed in
yellow, how many bells did she have’ and then she would have how many skips that you did.

Sharon Turner: Now what about chores. What kinds of chores did you do?

Edna Davidson: Dad was a farmer and he had pigs and chickens. You would have to feed the pigs and feed the chickens
and the cows. We didn’t have to milk cows, we were young. I certainly milked them a lot before I was married.

Sharon Turner: When you moved to Mountain View.

Edna Davidson: Ya, I used to milk them. Some times I would milk fifteen to sixteen cows by hand. My brother and my sister
would go on dates. Then they would do the same for me, they would milk my cows when I went. Then we herded sheep all of
the time.

Sharon Turner: Did you help your mom with the wash and carrying the water?

Edna Davidson: Oh yes, things like that. I guess we were kind of little to do chores.

Sharon Turner: You were seventeen here.

Edna Davidson: Ya, but I didn’t do too many chores here. When we came to Mountain View I help a lot.

Sharon Turner: What made it different, why did you work more in Mountian View?

EdnaDavidson: It was because dad was mostly farming. But we had pigs to feed and chickens and gather the eggs, turn the
butter for mom. We did the same in Mountain View when we come up.

Sharon Turner: Did you chop wood or was that you brothers job?

Edna Davidson: I guess that he helped some, but I certainly chopped wood when I was married. We had a pile of wood
bigger than the house. I used to chop a lot of wood. My husband helped his dad with the cheese.

Sharon Turner: When you got married did you move right here to Glenwood?

Edna Davidson: Not to Glenwood, to Mountain View

Sharon Turner: When you were married.

Edna Davidson: Yes, I had two children when we moved to Glenwood here.

Sharon Turner: You have been here a long time then.

Edna Davidson: Yes, about sixty years I guess.

Sharon Turner: Was Glenwood a lot like Stirling when you came here?

Edna Davidson: About the same, mom had asthma really bad and down there where it was hot and dusty she nearly died a
few times. They told her that if she got near the mountains where the air was not so dusty and hot that she would be okay.
So dad decided to come. 

Sharon Turner: Did it help her?

Edna Davidson: Yes, she never had asthma again. It was a blessing, it was really good.

Tape 1 Side 2

Sharon Turner: So your dad herded sheep and had cows and everything in Mountain View.

Edna Davidson: Yes, we girls helped him a lot. Of course Louell did to. I think that Louell went out some place to work, to
earn some money. So we girls helped a lot there. Of course I stayed in the house a lot and helped mom with the other girls.

Sharon Turner: Did you just have more interest in being indoors?

Edna Davidson: Yes, she was an outdoor girl.
.
Sharon Turner: So you learned quite a bit about the household chores.

Edna Davidson: Oh yes,

Sharon Turner: What other things did your mom teach you, did you learn how to do crochet and needle work?

Edna Davidson: She taught how to crochet. But I never ever knit. I have tried, and I just can’t get going on it.

Sharon Turner: Well crochet is faster isn’t it?

Edna Davidson: Well I don’t know, Embroidery, she taught us how to embroider.  To sew a little, but then when I had a family
of my own I sewed all of the kid’s things. So I did some of that, the kids learned too, some of them did.

Sharon Turner: Now how did you and your husband meet and fall in love?

Edna Davidson: Well at the cheese factory in Mountain View. Had to take milk into the factory and so us girls would take our
turns riding in with them. So my older sister went in the first day and she said oh well I saw a cute guy there. I said well you
can’t have him, so I went there the next day and sure enough he was there shovelling coal. Smiled and I thought well that is
pretty nice. Then about a year after that we kind of watched one another. About a year after that we started going together.
We went to a trends house. Do you know Hubert West at all?

Sharon Turner: There are some West’s in Stirling, they are from Mountain View.

Edna Davidson: But anyway we rode out to their place for dinner and then something happened, they couldn’t take us back
so we walked. Ned walked about eight miles that night out and back and made lots of trips after that by horse or walking.
We went together for six years before we were married.

Sharon Turner: When did you meet? You had to have been over seventeen because you were seventeen when you moved
there.

Edna Davidson: Ya

Sharon Turner: Holy cow, six years is a long time.

Edna Davidson: He is just two months younger than I am. So I am boss for two months of the year. He says that all of the
time. He decided that he had to have a house to live in before we got married. I didn’t agree but he did so he got this cute
little home.

Sharon Turner: So how old were you guys when you got married.

Edna Davidson: 24

Sharon Turner: Gosh that is a long time; I can’t imagine waiting that long.

Edna Davidson: We kept busy I guess, helping out folks and doing stuff like that.

Sharon Turner: Did he go out on a mission?

Edna Davidson: No, never had the money to go on missions then. There were very few that went on missions. He would
have liked to have gone and it he never went to school higher than grade eleven either. Money was scarce and people
were just hard up and just did what you could.

Sharon Turner: I didn’t realize that there was a cheese factory in Mountain View?

Edna Davidson: Yes, his dad for seventeen years ran it.

Sharon Turner: It is not there anymore is it?

Edna Davidson: No

Sharon Turner: When did this one open and you guys come up here?

Edna Davidson: In 1940 something, I should remember the date that it opened.

Sharon Turner: How long were you married when you came up here?

Edna Davidson: About four years because I had two children. One was just little and the other was two years old or
something when we moved here. But he did very well; he took lots of prizes the first year.

Sharon Turner: Now back to Stirling, do you remember the parties that they used to have there. Were you there when they
did the old folks parties and the Christmas dances, the New Year’s dances and things like that?

Edna Davidson: Yes I was but I don’t remember too much about them. I remember going and having fun. But I don’t
remember too much.

Sharon Turner: What would Christmas have been like at your house when you were a child?

Edna Davidson: Well they made most of the toys. Mom mad rag dolls and dad would do some things out of wood. Made, I
don’t know whether he made us a little wagon an that but they were all mostly home made toys. You didn’t get too many.
Like the kids do now days. Never had any bikes or anything like that. For Christmas we would make these paper rings and
string popcorn and cranberries. We would use paper streamers. That is what I did when I first got married. I would have the
whole ceiling painted with streamers. Mom always made Christmas pudding, my sister makes it but I haven’t made it. I just
love it. It was more like a suet pudding. She always had this milk sauce on it. I bought some suet two years ago and it is still
in the fridge. Dad played games I guess.

Sharon Turner: Did you have a turkey dinner or would you have something else.

Edna Davidson: Mostly it was chicken. Because we had chickens, kill the old rooster

Sharon Turner: Did you stuff it?

Edna Davidson: You bet, I guess that some time we had a turkey.

Sharon Turner: Did you ever get into making chocolates.

Edna Davidson: Yes, I do every Christmas. I slowed down on it last year. I had a triple bypass so I have had to slow down on
a lot of things that I have done. But I make three or four batches or chocolate each year. I am going to quit that too I think.

Sharon Turner: I bet that kids and grandkids won’t let you. You will have to teach them how to do it.

Edna Davidson: I make lots of fudge; I have got a grandson that has taken over the stretch candy. He has made some and
sold it. Another grandson tried but I don’t know whether they gave up on it or not. The girls say, we have to learn how to
make your fudge so we can carry that on. I was going to say in Stirling things that I remember were the gypsies coming
around. And they used to come and beg for things. We were always told that they would snatch little kids while there
parents weren’t looking. Now I don’t know whether our folks told us that so that we would behave or what. But anyway
while we were there we would certainly cling to moms skirt and stay right by. I remember her feeding bum lambs with the

bottle and the nipple. They would coax for them.

Sharon Turner: You were telling me about that before, what is a bum lamb?

Edna Davidson: It is when their mothers reject them or when their mothers died or something and they are just alone and
they don’t have a mother to get their milk from. So you bottle fed it, mom did that a lot. Then another thing is you would sell
the wool and then she would wash a bat and card it to make quilts. I still have got the carders. When I was married I carded
a little too, the backs would only be about this big so you know.

Sharon Turner: Just a few inches square.

Edna Davidson: And then you would card it on there. But now you can buy the whole quilt.

Sharon Turner: Now with lamb’s wool in them.

Edna Davidson: Yes, but one thing about it now, you could wash these. The wool would shrink. Then your quilts would
shrivel up and that. I have got one old quilt that mom made. I never wash it.

Sharon Turner: You could dry clean it I bet.

Edna Davidson: I guess that you could in cool water maybe. I will have to try one of these times, but I don’t use it very often.

Sharon Turner: That is nice to have.

Edna Davidson: Then another thing, besides the gypsies, the Indians used to come around with their wagons and things.
Gather up bones rags, hides and horse hair.

Sharon Turner: What did they do with all of that?

Edna Davidson: I don’t know, sell them I think. I don’t know what they would do wit the rags and the bones but the hides
and the horse hair.

Sharon Turner: This is just like bones from slaughtering you pigs and cattle and that.

Edna Davidson: But we used to be afraid of them when they come around. They weren’t as civilized as us I guess.

Sharon Turner: It was not that nation yet when you were a little girl. No to long after the turn of the century, it was kind of
wild west.

Edna Davidson: My dad used to herd sheep for his dad when he was ten years old and he had a bunch come over on their
horse’s war whooping like they do. They just said to him where is your dad. He just said over the hill. They just turned and
went. Dad said that he was scared, because they used to scalp people. It used to scare the women; they would come
around and peek in your windows and that. Thank heavens that they don’t do that any more.

Sharon Turner: That is scary.

Edna Davidson: It was scary then. I really remember the gypsies and the Indians coming in Stirling there.

Sharon Turner: Were the Indians and the Gypsies dressed in their traditional costume.

Edna Davidson: Yes in their tradition, The Indians and their long braids and that. They look more civilized now then they did
then. There used to be lots of tramps. Dad in Stirling had a steed barn; it was a big red barn. I think that it is still there. They
used to want to sleep in it at night. They had not place and dad was kind hearted and he would let them but he would tell
them not to smoke. To many had come and they didn’t obey so he got so that he didn’t take the chance of them lighting up
the hay loft. We used to have lots of fun up in the hay loft.

Sharon Turner: What would you do up there?

Edna Davidson: Hide, we would play hide and seek and that. I remember they just had a hole in the roof there and they
would drop they hay down to the horses. I fell down there once and just about broke my back, we had to be carful. The pitch forks and things, we had to watch that. We had to clean the cow sheds out and they used to have stalls and the gutters that you used to have to clean out and keep. We did that for our dad.

Sharon Turner: Did you put that on the garden?

Edna Davidson: I don’t know what he did with it. I would imagine that he hauled it off to the fields or something.

Sharon Turner: Your dad was really busy if he farmed and carrel and grate the roads.

Edna Davidson: Yes he was, he kept busy all of the time, in the later years he got rheumatism in his hands. He said if I don’t
keep going they will tighten up. He was a hard worker and a good provider. He was good as he could. He was good; he was
kind hearted and really helped mom out as much as he could. He took us kids for rides. When he hauled grain to he would
haul grain from Stirling to the elevators and we would ride in the big grain tanks and things you know. Run and meet home
while he was coming home and he would always stop and give us a ride. He was happy to see us and give us a ride. They
were good memories. We liked Stirling and we hated to leave, especially when we got older and left our friends. They came
up to Mountain View and see us a couple of times. Of course if you hated to leave your boyfriends.

Sharon Turner: Did you have boyfriends in Stirling?

Edna Davidson: Yes

Sharon Turner: Who were your boyfriends?

Edna Davidson: Farrell Oler, we were together quite a few years.

Sharon Turner: Do you think that if you stayed there that you probably would have married him.

Edna Davidson: I likely would have done. He sure was sad when I left to come up here. We both were for a while. Then you
get kind of weaned away.

Sharon Turner: Did he come up to Mountain View to see you.

Edna Davidson: Yes, it is a long way and he couldn’t understand why you couldn’t stay out later. But dad and mom said
come in at a certain time and we tried to obey. I got some nice lover letters from him. But when I got married I had to get rid
of them. My husband is still, I don’t talk about it, I couldn’t talk about it.

Sharon Turner: Does he get jealous?

Edna Davidson: Ya,

Sharon Turner: You could say well I married you; you are the one that I love.

Edna Davidson: So we don’t talk about that much. I have got a picture or two that I never show. Like I said to him well you
don’t need to feel jealous, both of them are gone now.

Sharon Turner: Oh, now you only said Farrell Oler, now who is the other one?

Edna Davidson: Well it was Amy Zaugg’s Husband, Eldon. It was just mostly him, Farrell. We had lots of fun together, went
places together and we went to chin lake together.

Sharon Turner: Did you go up there for swimming?

Edna Davidson: No, we just went down there one celebration day or something. Didn’t get back in time with the car and his
brothers fought him out good. So I hope that my husband never gets this tape.

Sharon Turner: Now where was your husband born and raised?

Edna Davidson: In Mountain View

Sharon Turner: Is that right, he was here a long time.
Edna Davidson: They lived in B.C. for a few years, he Started school in B.C. His dad, it was hard times and his dad went over

there for cutting logs and things. Several people went over there and did that to have money to feed their cattle. The used
to have to put up bull rushes for the cattle. They had Straw mattresses and sometimes they would have to take the straw
out to feed the cattle.

Sharon Turner: That is desperate times. Was that in the 1930s?

Edna Davidson: Yes it was. And before that, before the thirties, we came to Mountain View as in the dirty thirties. This was
when Ned was growing up that they did that. It was hard times.

Sharon Turner: Now you were married in the thirties.

Edna Davidson: Yes

Sharon Turner: What was it like for you guys in the thirties, was it really tough for you?

Edna Davidson: Well he worked for his dad on the farm. I think that the first year we raised two hundred and something
dollars but money went farther then. Before I was married I worked, housecleaned for different people. I got ten dollars a
month. With those ten dollars I bought a hat and a dress and a purse and some shoes.

Sharon Turner: Holy cow.

Edna Davidson: I have collected a few pages every year out of the catalogue. Farrell had one of 1913 and I have got that
one. He gave it to me. I have been collecting, just for the styles.

Sharon Turner: That is good to hang on to.

Edna Davidson: That is the year that I was born, 1913 you see. I got a big box of different styles.

Sharon Turner: You didn’t collect the whole magazine.

Edna Davidson: Just a few pages out of them.

Sharon Turner: That is really neat, you could see the changes.

Edna Davidson: They used it in the relief society one night here, the different years and the different styles. It is
interesting. The hats, there were really some fancy ones in those days.

Sharon Turner: Did you wear big fancy hats.

Edna Davidson: Not big fancy ones like that but just they used to be made out of mole hair a lot of them that you could see
through. I had one that I thought I looked great in. I wonder why.

Sharon Turner: Now you haven’t moped very far, you went from Stirling to Mountain View, Mountain View to Glenwood. So
you must still have a lot of these old things?

Edna Davidson: Yes, I kept a lot of like the old ringers, like when mom got her ringer I got one of those and then they went
to the punch, to punch clothes. The scrub board, the iron, I am a hoarder when it comes to these things.

Sharon Turner: That is important though because I love antiques and I have been looking for those irons for a long time.
You don’t know how difficult it is to find some of these things so it is a good job that you are a hoarder.

Edna Davidson: This white table and chairs I what we got when we were married. We got that for our little home and the
little stove, I have got it out in the shed. The little coal stove and a bed, then we bought a dresser from mom.

Sharon Turner: Well good for you for hanging on to it. That is good to hang on to those things.
Edna Davidson: I have clung onto them. You would think that I know where it was.

Sharon Turner: How big was the house when you were married?

Edna Davidson: It was just a little two roomed one.

Sharon Turner: Did it have a wood stove?

Edna Davidson: Yes

Sharon Turner: That is the one that you have out in the shed out here.

Edna Davidson: Yes

Sharon Turner: Well I hop that your family appreciates you keeping those things for them.

Edna Davidson: They do and they are clinging them. I think that I am pretty well told what we did in Stirling.

Sharon Turner: One thing that I like to do before we close the tape is ask you if there is something that you would like to
say to your grandchildren who might listen to this in the future, what would you like them to know?

Edna Davidson: It stay close to the church, they will have more blessings doing that than anything. That is one thing that my
dad when he kind of got inactive that he always paid his tithing and always helped with the welfare things. He saw that we
all got to church and things like that.

Sharon Turner: Why do you think that he didn’t go if he was so dedicated in all of these other things?

Edna Davidson: I don’t know why he turned in, whether it was his work, although he never worked on Sunday. I don’t know
what turned him, I never found out, I should find out I guess.  I was trying to think that if you just stay close to the church
and do what you should and pay your tithing and do things like that that you will get along better. And be kind and good to
everybody.

Sharon Turner: Those are goo things for them to know.

Edna Davidson: I always try to teach the kids to never make fun of anyone and those that are having a hard time, be a friend

to them. I think that is important too.

Sharon Turner: Those are important things for them to know. Well I sure appreciate you letting me do this but I am going to
turn it off for now, but I am not going to put it away because if you start telling me more stories I am going to turn it back on.

Edna Davidson: Okay

Transcribed By Clinton Dovell