Interviewee: Elwood Romeril
Interviewer: Jon Duncan
 
Jon Duncan: Alright, today is July 18^th, 1996, my name is Jon Duncan, and I am here with Elwood Romeril, Elwood why don’t you introduce yourself.

Elwood Romeril: Yes, I am Elwood Romeril; I have lived here all my life. I was born in Lethbridge in 1923. I was adopted. I have lived here all my life, we lived on a farm south of Stirling, a farm that my Grandfather settled on when he come up from Utah. I used to ride in to school every day on my horse, we had no school busses, and either that or we walked.

Jon Duncan: How far away was the farm from the town?

Elwood Romeril: It was two and a half miles from Stirling.

Jon Duncan: It was by the highway.

Elwood Romeril: Just south of highway 52.

Jon Duncan: Now who were your parents?

Elwood Romeril: Alfred Thomas Romeril and Christina Ander Romeril, My father was born in Louisten Utah, right close to the Idaho Utah border. Grandpa Romeril came up here first to look at things, he wasn’t too impressed but he went back and Grandpa Romeril by the way was a carpenter, he was a good carpenter. They decided to come back up so the whole family moved up there and that would have been the next year, 1889 was when they came. He settled on the farm that we had just two and a half miles south of Stirling. That quarter section of highway 52 is the quarter section that grandpa settled on. Later he turned that over to dad, and dad farmed that quarter. While he was farming that quarter he set up a Garment factory on the farm. My mother had worked in the Garment Factory in Augden Utah so she knew the rules. So they made the authorized garments but that factory burnt down, so dad rebuilt. He decided then to come into Stirling. It would have probably been 1925 because I can only just remember the fire, I remember the flames and that is it. I would just guess 1925 to 1926 we moved in and built the overall factory where Quan’s grocery store is now in fact I think that the cistern is still there behind the store. So he moved in, he couldn’t make it, didn’t have the capital to rely on he couldn’t make it so he sold out to DWG and we moved back out to the farm again and dad farmed from then on.

Jon Duncan: About how many years did he have the jean factory in Stirling?

Elwood Romeril: I really don’t know but it wasn’t that long. When I started school I was seven years old because I wasn’t big enough to drive the horse alone at six. At seven years old we were back on the farm. I would say maybe three or four years at minimum.

Jon Duncan: So the name of this company was the…?

Elwood Romeril: Alberta Knitting Company

Jon Duncan: Alberta Knitting Company, so it was only a few years in Stirling before he sold to the DWG.

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: They made overalls, jeans

Elwood Romeril: Ya, I remember the big overalls, in fact they made them for little kids to, the little big overalls. That’s what it was mainly; we didn’t have as many of the jeans. I say it was mainly the bibs with the straps over the shoulders.

Jon Duncan: So most of your childhood you remember out on the farm?

Elwood Romeril: Yes, out on highway 52 before that dam out there was made I used to play on those hills all the time, I was usually alone but I would have a friend come out from town. I had a little old fox terrier. He stuck with me all the time. That was what I did.

Jon Duncan: Just you and your dog

Elwood Romeril: Yep, There were a lot of coyotes; sometimes we would see them once or twice a week. Other times you would see them every day. One thing I can remember. The flume was in existence then, the flume that they built to bring water across the coulee. My little dog would go down there and you would hear the coyotes howling. I thought they were going to get him. I would watch out the window of my house and I would see them chasing him. They would chase him through the coulee to the trees by the house and then they would give it up and go back across the coulee. At times he would chase them back. He would high tail it back after them, they were just playing tag. Just one thought that I can think of when I was little, that I thought was interesting to watch.

Jon Duncan: Coyotes chasing this little dog around.

Elwood Romeril: That’s part of it, another thing I can remember, it involved my father and a lot of the people in town they would go on jackrabbit hunts with their shotguns. They would pick a section of land and just start walking together. Dad wouldn’t let me go, I wanted to go but he said no son you stay home. So after they got so close they would run the rabbit around in a circle, but it was close enough that they could shoot the rabbit without hurting the guy across the circle, they were probably a quarter of a mile away and they would start. There were just dozens of jackrabbits in those days. They would do that and get the pelts off of them. As far as I can remember the losing side, they kind of divided off into sides.

Jon Duncan: So they got the pelts for coats.

Elwood Romeril: I don’t know, I was small then so I really don’t know.

Jon Duncan: But they made a contest out of it, that’s kind of neat. Now your father after the factories were gone he farmed.

Elwood Romeril: That’s right

Jon Duncan: Just the quarter section?

Elwood Romeril: No, the forty acres grandfather owned, when he came from Utah, I don’t k now whether it was immediately after but the first forty he lived on, was where Leon Oar used to live just a mile and a half south of town. He settled there and then he built another home up on the quarter section but that was all I know about it. Then we had another forty acres our further and then the quarter section. Dad bought a quarter section of land just north of Stirling. So we had a half section plus eighty.

Jon Duncan: A fairly big farm then.

Elwood Romeril: Well it was big in those days but it wasn’t long before it was small because everybody was getting bigger. If you still owned a quarter section of land you were pretty well off. In my father’s time, the earlier years when they moved up here

Jon Duncan: Was that because they were working with horses

Elwood Romeril: Yes, when the canal was built, that was one reason why grandpa came up here was to work on the canal and to build the bridges and he helped build the flume. Another thing that I can remember about dad is when he started working on the flume across the coulees outside of Stirling, he would come in here to Maybutt and pick up the workers in a democrat and drive them out to work every day. At that time there was a hotel in Maybutt and men would stay there and then he would take them out to work every day.

Jon Duncan: This is when they were putting in which canal?

Elwood Romeril: Well we call it the CPR canal but it wasn’t that. What they did when they built the canal just east of Cardston.

Jon Duncan: The first canal from kimbo.

Elwood Romeril: Ya, that is kimbo, well they would take half their pay in strip they call it, which was land and that is how a lot of this land was paid for. That is how he paid for that quarter section because he worked it out. They didn’t have much money in those days.

Jon Duncan: When you dad picked these men up from Maybutt, what canal were those men building?

Elwood Romeril: Well it was the same one; it was when they were building the flume. The canal was pretty well finished but they were building that flume then. I don’t know how long it would have taken but it would have taken most of the season to build it.

Jon Duncan: That flume across the coulee you’re talking about.

Elwood Romeril: Ya

Jon Duncan: Now let me just ask for interest’s sake, what is a democrat?

Elwood Romeril:It’s not a wagon, it is smaller than a wagon the wheels are narrow gauge wheels. It has springs under the carriage on to the frame of the carriage. It would be easier riding because when you went over the bumps you wouldn’t feel them like you would on a wagon. That was a democrat; I think it had room for six in it.

Jon Duncan: Is that how your parents got around in Stirling?

Elwood Romeril: Mhmm

Jon Duncan: They had a democrat that they used.

Elwood Romeril: And we had a wagon, I myself used to drive into school with a two wheeled cart pulled by shafts on either side of the horse. I was only seven years old then. I had to drive in and unhook the horse, put her in the school barn and take her out a night.

Jon Duncan: Were you by yourself?

Elwood Romeril: Yes, of course I had a real gentle horse. Those carts weren’t heavy, I think that you or I could lift them easily but for me it was quite a tussle because the shafts on either side of the horse ran through loops on either side of the horse. Then I would have to do up the single after I get the shafts up in there. The horse that I had, I could crawl under her stomach, between her legs and she wouldn’t move. So dad wasn’t scared to let me come in then, so that is how I started coming to school. 

Jon Duncan:This is when you were seven wasn’t it?

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: Okay, so now we have talked a little about your dad, what about your mom?

Elwood Romeril: Well, I can remember she was really strict, I, like other boys, just liked to tease and get into things. She was strict with me and I am thankful that she was. She was good to me. She was a real good home maker, at making bread and making clothes, keeping things going. She was great that way. She would just stay at home and do the work. I never remember mother working in the field at all, maybe she did but I can’t remember that. She would cut my hair and do all the little chores around the house like feeding the chickens. When I got big enough, about seven or eight years old, they would send me out to feed the chickens. Dad would always feed the pigs. We had twelve cows to milk, in the barn. He would always milk and when I got old enough I would help him. But going back to mother, she was a kind person, she would help people whenever she could and do what she could for anyone. I remember going down to Augden with her when I was real small, I would say around five or six years old, I wasn’t very old. I wasn’t going to school, I can remember that long train ride going back to see grandma and grandpa down in Augden Utah. That was good because I had cousins down there and we used to play together. My mother found it hard when she came up here though because she was from the city. She found it hard to get used to things, I can remember that, otherwise just a home, house wife.

Jon Duncan: She must have felt so isolated out on the farm so far away.

Elwood Romeril: Yes, that’s it, nobody close. Our closest neighbour was a half mile away. Dad’s sister lived a little over a half mile down town. She was Henry Perrett’s wife. I called her Sarah Perrett, I know that they used to get together and walk to each others places. But it was hard.

Jon Duncan: Hard for everyone, okay, did you have brothers and sisters?

Elwood Romeril: Yes, I had one half-brother and one half-sister. Dad was married twice. That was his first marriage, that was Alfred and Mary Seely that was my half-sister, Alfred Romeril, he has passed away now but he was my half-brother. Remembering Alfred we used to, in the real cold days when I was just starting school he would bring me in on the saddle horse to school and come back at night and pick me up. They wouldn’t let me travel in the cold winter days, because I would freeze. Another thing that I can remember too about brother and sister when we lived out at the farm, we would wrap out heads right up at night. Pull the sheets and the covers right up over out heads. We had no furnace, just the kitchen stove. In the morning you would wake up and the blankets would be all covered in frost all the way around your mouth. That was all we had out, just our mouth. Wash dishes in the kitchen, that’s where we had to wash dishes would be froze. The water bucket for drinking would be frozen, so that’s what we put up with.

Jon Duncan: So who used to start the stove up in the morning?

Elwood Romeril: As far as I remember, dad always did.

Jon Duncan: He got up in the morning and started it to warm up the house

Elwood Romeril: Ya, he would start the fire and then go out and milk the cows and by the time he got back in mother was getting
breakfast.

Jon Duncan: So your brother and sister were a lot older than you?

Elwood Romeril: Yes, the time that he got married again was probably, Alfred was probably, just guessing maybe eight years older than I was. He would have been in his teens when I started school. I would say that he was eight years older than I was anyway because of the time that dad got married again.

Jon Duncan: So you really were just a child playing by himself in those hills.

Elwood Romeril: Ya, Gordon Romeril lived, that’s Uncle Charlie’s son, lived a mile south of old Glenn Adamson house out on the coulee. Uncle Charlie built that, we used to play together at times but not all that much. He would come up to my place or I would o down to his, I don’t know why we weren’t together much but we weren’t.

Jon Duncan: What did you get up to when you were together?

Elwood Romeril: You wouldn’t want to know. I can’t really remember what happened but there were a lot of rabbits out by uncle Charlie’s and I would go down there, Gord and I would go in and try and catch those rabbits. We did, we would catch them. I can’t remember what we did with them, I think that we had just turned them loose again but there were a lot of rabbits down there. Just like any other kids we would go down there trapping gophers. We would go up in the hay troughs and catch the pidgins. Just rambunctious if you want to call it that, just chasing, and we used to ride to school together too, he had a white pony and I had a little pony called tricks. We would race coming into school. 

Jon Duncan: You and George would race?

Elwood Romeril:  Gordon

Jon Duncan: Okay so we were talking about you and Gordon going into school, now you must have had a few school buddies that you would ride around with.

Elwood Romeril: Yes, if I could remember them Eldred Nelson, very good friends, Wilber Peterson, he moved away years ago, I think that he moved to brooks, Gordon, Ken Hogenson, they are in Raymond now. There are just a few that I can think of right quick. I used to ride around a lot with Joe Spackman, Ken Spackman too, they are not living here now either. Duncan Hardy, we used to be good palls, Phil Proctor.

Jon Duncan: What was school like?

Elwood Romeril: Well it was good, I enjoy school, after being left alone I felt kind of crowded with so many kids around you know. But It didn’t take me long to get used to that. I was soon used to it but right soon it bothered me because I had been so much alone. School was good to me; I usually did pretty fair in school. I don’t know whether it was because I tried to study. In the old school the first thing that I can remember is that big bell that they had. Every morning I could hear that, it rang at eight thirty and if I wasn’t on the horse by that time I was going to be late for school. But they would ring it at eight thirty and they would ring it at noon.

Jon Duncan: You could hear it on the farm?

Elwood Romeril: Yes, very clear. Of course if the wind was blowing from the south or something you couldn’t but even the west wind didn’t seem to bother. We could hear it.

Jon Duncan: They would ring it at noon and at the end of the day?

Elwood Romeril: Yes, they would ring it a four o’clock again but that was mostly to my attention up through the grades in school. I liked school. When I got in grade four the school burnt down.

Jon Duncan: You remember when the school burnt down?

Elwood Romeril: You bet, I was just jumping up and down because I knew I was going to get a holiday. I got up on the barn up at the farm and watched it burn. I asked dad to let me come in on the horse and he said no way, you stay home. So I had to watch it from there. The next thing I can remember was coming in to see if I could find any books because some parts of the school were really burnt bad and other parts that weren’t so bad but I couldn’t find anything really. All the part where my classroom was all gone, after about a week or so they made arrangements to have school in the old Ogden house and it is still standing over here, so grade three and four I think that I had school there for the rest of the year. I don’t know. Grade five I know met in the old church just south of the old school. From there I don’t know what the other grades did.

Jon Duncan: So they just put them where ever they could fit them. You remember them building the new school.

Elwood Romeril: Not too much because I was still on the farm, but I do remember they saved the school enough that they rebuilt on the old frame, and by the way that those old bricks were formed and moulded from the clay that came out of the coulees just outside Stirling. So they rebuilt right on the old frame. They laid the floors, instead of putting a pitched roof like they did before they put a flat roof on the new school. It wasn’t long then. They built a four room school just south of there because there was getting to be too many kids. Of course after that they tore it down and built the new school that is there now.

Jon Duncan: Okay so where they used to have the kindergarten when I was growing up was the fore room school that they built.

Elwood Romeril: Ya, It was an add-on because there wasn’t enough rooms in the old school. 

Jon Duncan: It was an add-on because there wasn’t enough room in the fifties that we have now.

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: Do you remember what kinds of subjects that you studied?

Elwood Romeril: Well I know that I didn’t like history. They called it history in those days, not social studies, it was more a real history it was different then the social studies. Arithmetic, it was alright, spelling, I enjoyed spelling, Writing, I could write pretty good when I was younger, I didn’t mind the writing exercises because you would take writing exercises and you would write you notes. If you scribbled in your notes you had to rewrite them, I can remember that and if you did something that you shouldn’t do they would make us go up to the blackboard and make us write a whole thing of ‘ill be a good boy’ or something like that.

Jon Duncan: That was your detention time?

Elwood Romeril: Yes, either that or ‘ill be the teacher’ or some phrase, I can remember that I had to do that a couple of times. Other subjects, I got pretty good marks in them like I said. English, I didn’t like the poetry, of course it is like that with everybody, and we have things that we do like and things that we don’t like. That is about all that I can tell you about it. When I got up in grade seven I passed as an honour student and again in grade ten. So I didn’t have to write my finals, those days they let us go about without writing out finals if we could get above, I think it was seventy five percent in every subject, on every thing.

Jon Duncan: With your friends that you had in school, what would you guys get up to?

Elwood Romeril: Do I have to say that, no I am just kidding, I can’t remember who was with us but two or three of us got together decided to set some firecrackers in school, inside. So what we did was take pieces of string maybe a foot long, we knew how long these strings would burn, we had that figured out. So we wanted the fire cracker to go off in ten minutes, we would get a piece of string a particular length and light it during recess and then just walk away, so about ten or fifteen minutes later, bang. Nobody was out in the hallway. The teacher would go out so while he was out there looking around we would put another fire cracker under his desk. I don’t know why we really did it but we got punished for it. But that is what I can really remember doing. It wasn’t very nice I know. Another time, I had better not say, I don’t want to incriminate anybody but another time a friend of mine, we had seen the girls go into the rest room. They had the restroom in the school itself after it had burnt down. Before it had burnt down we had the shanties lying down at the back of the school. After the school had burnt down we had those restrooms inside the school and we seen some girls go in the restroom. We had another friend with us; I don’t know if he was our friend after but we pushed him into the girl’s bathroom and held the door and wouldn’t let him out. Anyway we were mischievous.
 
Tape 1 Side 2
 
Elwood Romeril: Eldred and I would chase kids after school on our horses and we would go up and jump the irrigation ditches in town and run down the road with out horses and jump the irrigation ditches. We would race our horses, we had lots of races.

Jon Duncan: Sounds like Eldred was a good friend?

Elwood Romeril: Oh yes, It was said that we had the two fastest horses in town, I don’t know if we did but I know that he had a real fast one and he had mentioned it the other day when I was talking to him. He mentioned the racing, so he hasn’t forgotten it. But we would race our horses and we would have a lot of fun doing that. We would go on all day long trips on our horses.

Jon Duncan: Where to?

Elwood Romeril: We would go out toward the ridge or out north of the lake out here and just chase around riding. During those times we used to have some pretty good celebrations on the 24^thof July, it was always on the 24^thof July then. We would have a stampede. We would ask the neighbours if we could borrow the cattle for the day and we may get a couple head of steers or a couple calves over here. So we would get them all together and bring them into the carrels for the stampede the next day. We would do that on our horses and get those up and bring them in. Eldred used to do it more than I did and that was to drive the cows to pasture, everybody had a cow on town at a certain time every morning. They would ride those cows up and take them to the lake. Ya, take them out and bring them in the evening. I did do it some but not as much as Elder did. That was it; there is not much else that I can tell you about.

Jon Duncan: About when did you start working with your dad on the farm?

Elwood Romeril: As soon as I could drive a horse.

Jon Duncan: What did he have you do?

Elwood Romeril: Well we would plough our garden with one furlough plough, you didn’t have to drive it, and you could watch the plough. That was the first thing that I did, I would have been seven or eight years old then. That continued on and later on he would have us on a team and drive the hay rake with the team and later on with the threshing machines. I didn’t see too much of that because it was over before I got very old. I was just in my early teens maybe eleven, twelve, or thirteen. One day I can remember, it was a sad experience for me. Dad was just leaving the trashing machine with the bundle rack and I guess that I just got home from school but I ran and jumped in the back of the rack as hard as I could run to catch him because he was going back out to the field to get another load. He had a bundle fork lying with the tines up and I never seen it because I was watching him, when I got to the front of the rack they went through my leg. The tines went right through my leg and the other tine went up between my toes. That was a bad thing. They never took me to the doctor, in those days you didn’t go to the doctor, they put poultices on it to draw the infection out of it if I had any and took care of me right there at home.

Jon Duncan: It obviously worked out alright.

Elwood Romeril: Didn’t leave me with any ill effects at all but that was a bad one, it was really bad. Going on from there I cant remember driving horses so much on the binder, now the binder you know is where you cut the grain and make the bundles, then I would help him haul the grain, I would be with him hauling the grain and take care of the horses. All horses back then. Of course as soon as the tractors came in we had the tractors then.

Jon Duncan: Do you remember getting the first tractor?

Elwood Romeril: I think it was the first one, it was an old Rumley, and it was quite an old one, there was a trail of smoke going along with it, it burned characin just like what you burn in your lamps. It was a two cylinder and would sound like a john deer going along. But then from there you had the john deer which is a better tractor. Dad never did have a john deer and he always wished that he had had one. Because he got a Catamassi and it caused him a lot of problems. But then we went along and as times improved we got newer tractors, tried to keep up with the times.

Jon Duncan: What difference did it make to have a tractor on the farm?

Elwood Romeril: It was a lot quicker, it was a lot better machinery, a lot bigger machinery, I would say. With the horses all I can remember, the biggest thing that we ever pulled was the two bottom plough and an eight foot cultivator, that’s the biggest that I ever remember. With the tractors we went from ten feet to twelve feet. When we had twelve feet we thought that we were doing it, which was good. To think of what they have now a day we had nothing. But yet that is what we went through in those years. With the tractor we could do about forty acres a day but that would take us a good twelve hours a day, maybe more, probably fourteen hours to do forty acres. We had to really go steady all day long to do it.

Jon Duncan: This was ploughing or cultivating?

Elwood Romeril: This was with the cultivator, ten foot cultivator. Another thing too, with the horses you needed two sets of horses because your one set would wear out so we would turn them out in the field for two or three days a week and let them recover. Then we would switch over to the other set, they would do much better and you can’t get them too tired, you have to give them a chance, it was hard on the horses too.

Jon Duncan: So you basically helped your dad on the farm until you took over

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: Okay now, let me change direction a little bit and ask you about the depression, do you remember it?

Elwood Romeril: Not to much, I can remember mom patching overalls and then patching the patches. I can remember us eating boiled wheat for breakfast we would grind our own flower, we had a little grinder, that wouldn’t happen too much though but we did crack out own wheat with that same machine, we would set it up to crack the wheat for cereal. And then we would take the wagon in the fall and haul a load of wheat up to Magrath it would take us all day long to haul our flower back, trade our wheat for flower and that is how we obtained our flower. As far as the depression is concerned we just got by on what we had, that was all. Hardly ever can I remember going into Lethbridge, you would go in once and a while but you had your own flower, you had your own produce, you had your own potatoes, all this and I think that all we ever bought was some sugar or something like that

Jon Duncan: You raised your own animals on the farm?

Elwood Romeril: Yes, we always killed the beef, always needed that and maybe if you needed more you would kill another before spring. You would always kill you own, never even though of buying a piece of meat. But we never starved, we got along good.

Jon Duncan: Sounds like you had plenty of food.

Elwood Romeril: Well maybe we didn’t like what we had, too much of the same thing, but we always got by. There was always meat on the table and at that time they would boil all of the meat to keep it. Kill the beef and keep it. I can remember those canning beef for maybe two days, they would cut it all up and keep it in jars then, then boiling it for so long and we always had the meat.

Jon Duncan: So they didn’t freeze it back then.

Elwood Romeril: Didn’t even have freezers.

Jon Duncan: Not even an ice house?

Elwood Romeril: We had an ice house but, but it was all boiled and it was all cooked and put in bottles. With the ice house, we used that mostly just for making ice cream or something like that and if we would kill a beef or something like that or a lamb or a sheep we would keep it down the well in the summer time to keep it. We had a rock well up by the farm it was quite deep; I would say ten or twelve feet. We would let that stuff go right down next to the water. In those wells that was cold. Really cold water, we had good water on the farm too.

Jon Duncan: It was good drinking water down there in the well

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: So that is how you got your drinking water

Elwood Romeril: That’s right

Jon Duncan: Your one of the fortunate ones, many people said that the water was pretty bad around there.

Elwood Romeril: Yes it was, Uncle Charlie’s was bad, I could hardly drink it, I would go up to his house to visit and I would hate the water. We had a good well, we were lucky I guess.

Jon Duncan: So let me go back to the farm, I wanted to ask you what kinds of crops that your dad and you grew?

Elwood Romeril: Right at first, as soon as I came in it was wheat and barley. That was it; I can’t remember growing anything else. Later on we got into sugar beets; I think it was 42, probably 42.

Jon Duncan: During the war

Elwood Romeril: Yes, we started raising sugar beets; we raised sugar beets for years and years.

Jon Duncan: The whole farm was sugar beets?

Elwood Romeril: No, because we started with only ten acres and did it all by hand. Everything by hand, you skinned them, hoed the wheat’s, you irrigated it all by hand. We would make ditches through the fields to irrigate it. Getting them up you had a beet plough. Just plough them and you would through the beets in big piles. Then you would come along with a beet knife and chop the tops off. Come along with the truck and shovel all of the beets onto the truck.

Jon Duncan: Haul them off to Raymond?

Elwood Romeril: Yes, They had to bead them down here but we never did, we hired Sheridan Jacobs to haul them.

Jon Duncan: What do you mean by bead them?

Elwood Romeril: Well they had a dump out here to take the beets from farmers and it would unload the wagons, you would unload the wagons and it would elevate them up into the rail cars.

Jon Duncan: So this was over in Maybutt there?

Elwood Romeril: No it was just out by Todd Adamson’s place, right out here on the highway, just south of where the road hits the highway, just a couple hundred yards south of that they had the beet dump there

Jon Duncan: The farmers come in, dump them, put them in the rail cars and then there they went.

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: But at your farm you had Sheridan Jacobs.

Elwood Romeril: Yes, he hauled them, he had a trucking company. He used to teach school here but he had to quit so he went into trucking. He had two trucks and he would haul the beets, but I had to help shovel them. My dad would help him.

Jon Duncan: Shovel into the trucks there, now you actually mentioned before that you had several German POW’s working with the sugar beets.

Elwood Romeril: Yes and they would bring them out in groups of ten there would be three guards with them. The first year they brought them out from Lethbridge as far as I can remember, the next year we had the POW camp on our farm and they camped there for the summer, until after the wheat harvest. We were told then not to get to close to the prisoners, not to get within arms length of them. Because if they wanted to grab you they could really make it bad on you but we didn’t have any trouble with them, there were a lot of real good kids there. By kids I mean that they were sixteen, seventeen years old.

Jon Duncan: These prisoners?

Elwood Romeril: These prisoners were. They were good kids and it amazed me how many of them could talk English, and good English, a lot of them could talk pretty good English. If you could be good friends with them and that then they would do a good job but if you got on the wrong side of them they would thin the beets too much. It was war time and they knew it and they knew that we were enemies. But if you had an officer in the bunch then you really had to watch what was going on. The guards would stand with one on either side of the field and one would walk the field with the crew. At that time we had ten acres of potatoes as well and we hired them to pick the potatoes up off of the ground after the plough and plough them out. We had them there, we had them in our beets, our other crops we didn’t use them, and we didn’t need any help because we handled it ourselves.

Jon Duncan: Did you ever get in any trouble with these POW’s

Elwood Romeril: I remember that one day they got a little upset with us, I can’t remember the details on it but they had a meatloaf and they didn’t want it for dinner. It was a nice chunk of meat and it was done well and they threw it out in the dirt and wanted me to go and get them beef steak I guess but I brought them a big chunk of bologna and that didn’t suit them. That day they came up to the truck, I wasn’t in the truck or by the truck then, I was working in the tractor but they opened the door of the truck and slammed it as hard as they could and it shattered the window. They got even I guess, they felt that they had gotten even. They laughed at me because they knew that I couldn’t do anything about it, they stood and laughed at me. I didn’t try to do anything; I just passed it off and let it go. Otherwise I can’t really say that we did have any trouble with them. They were on the farm; I think that they were there for two years. Then they moved them over toward Raymond and we had to haul them to this side of Raymond. We had to go over and get them and haul them there, to whichever field we were working on. That was an experience though.

Jon Duncan: You would have turned twenty in 1943

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: Did you have any war service?

Elwood Romeril: No I didn’t, that time you could get off if you were the only son and your dad had more than a quarter section of land and we had a half section plus two forties. All of the two forty acre pieces were irrigated. So I got off on that account plus my medical, I didn’t pass my medical. I was sent a medical by the government and asked to report and I did. They never asked me for another medical after that but I didn’t mark up to where I should have been at that time and then later on I had an operation to correct it.

Jon Duncan: Your service was on the farm then?

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: Do you remember the rations?

Elwood Romeril: We had sugar rationed, I can’t remember how many pounds but we had rationed cars. Each time you bought five pounds of sugar you would tear a coupon out if you ran out of coupons before the end of the year that was it. Same with gasoline, I can remember gasoline coupons, got 120 gallons a year.

Jon Duncan: Okay so we were talking about gas when the phone rang there.

Elwood Romeril: 120 gallons of gas a year for cars and trucks, as far as tractor gas was concerned we could get what we needed for the farm.

Jon Duncan: Purple gas

Elwood Romeril: That was purple but for the orange gas or the other marked gas we couldn’t. 120 a year was all that we could get. We had our coupons and we really watched out coupons. And kind of rationed ourselves each month knowing about what we might be able to spend but think of it, ten gallons a month but we got through with it. Coffee was rationed but that didn’t bother us. I can’t remember what else was rationed right now.

Jon Duncan: Would you trade your rations for coffee?

Elwood Romeril: Well it would have been the same thing. They are all little booklets, you had one for sugar, one for tea or coffee, one for gas and you would tear the coupon out of it, you only had so much each book. If you used it up at the end of July you went without the rest of the year. But that is all you were allowed.

Jon Duncan: Do you remember the end of the war, what it was like in Stirling?

Elwood Romeril: I really don’t, I know that we were really excited about it. Really happy really celebrating, its really good its over, its really good its done, no more killing, no more ration cards. But being in the farm on the weekend you would come in to town for church and talk about it. I can remember the headlines on the newspaper ‘the war is over’ that was how we celebrated it, just happiness within ourselves knowing that it was done.

Jon Duncan: How did you feel about the war overall?

Elwood Romeril: Well it was a very sad thing because we didn’t have news like we do today, if something happens in Europe today you will know about it by this evening. But we didn’t have that privilege as much, we had the radio and that was the quickest news that we had but very often a lot of the news that come out of relatives being killed, you didn’t know it for a few days after. We didn’t really have the television to show us what was going on, we could imagine what was going on. That was it made us wonder if everything was being stated was true but one thing that I do remember is one of my friends who came back, his name was Stanley Awesland was due to be in Diep. They let him come home from three weeks to a month. We were out hunting pheasants that day. That brings to mind another thing that was rationed was ammunition. We were allowed so much center fire ammunition; I think that we were allowed about a box of shotgun shells every year, that’s all we had. I remember that we were very careful when we went hunting; we made sure that we were going to get some game shot. Anyway Stanley told me a lot of what was going on over there and he was one happy boy that he didn’t have to go over there. After we had found out what had really happened and how many of them had got killed, like I say it was a sad thing. I didn’t like any part of it. We knew that Hitler wanted to rule the world, we knew that and that was another thing that made us boil inside, if you want to use that phrase that this man was literally tearing the world apart but thank goodness he didn’t get his way.

Jon Duncan: Now were you living on the farm during the war or had you moved into town by then.

Elwood Romeril: We had moved into town, we moved into town in 1936, dad built the house that Sparks are living in now

Jon Duncan: On that corner where Randy Nelson and Shelly Adamson live.

Elwood Romeril: That house was built in 1936 and I could give you a little history there. I mentioned that at the start that Dad had an overall factory and when he went out of business he tore that factory down and kept all of the lumber, took the nails out one by one. Took the lumber back out to the farm and built the house out at the farm. After he had decided to move back into town he took that house down again moved all that lumber and took all of the nails out again and built the house that sparks are living in now. That house as it stands now is sixty years old because it was built in 1936 but it was used two different times before that. So that shows what we had to do those days to go along and make it go we never used new lumber or new nails. I can remember straitening nails.

Jon Duncan: So you could use them in the house in Stirling. Where did you live while you were building this house?

Elwood Romeril: Dad had put two granaries together out at the farm. I think that they cut a whole so we could walk between them but one granary served as a double bedroom, I remember that Alfred and I slept in the one bedroom and Marry then was married and Dad, Mom and the other one slept in the other one. The other granary was the living room and kitchen. So we put up with that for the year. I can’t remember exactly how long it was but I think it was over a year before he got that house done so we could live in it.

Jon Duncan: When did you get electricity?

Elwood Romeril: Well they had electricity in town that was when we moved in 1936. We never had any sort of electricity when we lived out on the farm. We had a radio out at the farm but we used batteries for that. The first electricity that we had was when we moved into town. They wired that house for dad when he built it.

Jon Duncan:  In the town

Elwood Romeril: Yes, the one that Sparks are living in.

Jon Duncan: So you did have a radio out on the farm, so you did have that kind of contact but not much else

Elwood Romeril: That’s right

Jon Duncan: What were you using for lights and stuff out there?

Elwood Romeril: Lamp, that was what we had, it seems to me that they had a gas lamp too but I can remember the canola oil lamp much better than the gas lamp

Jon Duncan: You must remember then the difference between the two

Elwood Romeril: You had to have the lamp right next to you where you were reading. You didn’t get off and on another chair, you sat around the table to get enough light. You wouldn’t be able to get enough light to read out in the corner of the room.

on Duncan: Not much better than a candle then

Elwood Romeril: That’s right

Jon Duncan: So electricity was really something

Elwood Romeril: Oh, ill say, you bet

Jon Duncan: Now you got your electricity, did you get some appliances in the house?

Elwood Romeril: I can’t say right off, in those days you never had dishwashers, you had clothes washers, you never had dryers and that sort of thing, I am sure that dad bought an electric washer when he moved in I am sure that he did. Out on the farm we had a little gasoline motor under it to run it. You would have to crank that up. I can remember that popping away while mother was doing the washing. Then you would run it through the ringer, get them as dry as you could and then hang them out on a line outside to dry. In the winter time they would freeze solid. It would surprise you how much they had dried when the freeze dry. It would take the moisture right out of them. You would have to hang them up, we had a string across the room in the house and hang them over that and let them finish drying.

Jon Duncan: Okay, so when did you get your first TV?

Elwood Romeril: It was in the early fifties

Jon Duncan: You were married then, you remember what that was like, and do you remember what it was like getting your first television?

Elwood Romeril: We thought it was something, we watched them in Lethbridge in the stores.
 
Tape 2 Side 1
 
Jon Duncan: Okay so we were talking about your television that you saw in Lethbridge and decided that you

Elwood Romeril: Ya, we watched it in the stores, we decided to get one but they were all black and whit then, no color. It was years before we got a color television. When we got it set up we had the neighbours in to come and watch it. It wasn’t to long after that Mother and Dad got one too. That is the first that I can remember of it. People were investigating it at the time and it was really different about that time then I got really interested in it and I took a course in Devry. Devry was in Toronto at the time and not in Calgary so all my correspondence then was in the ride to Toronto I wrote my test and that, I took about a week to get the information back and after I passed one section and wrote the test they sent me another section out and then I wrote the test on that and sent that back. They gave another section to study up on so I got so that I could work on televisions and fix them, that was interesting but I still stuck with the farm and I kind of dropped that fixing televisions because it cost a lot to have a lot of the circuitry stuff so I just kind of let it go. Of course color started coming in and I needed more training I didn’t really feel fore more training, I was interested in the farm at that time. But I have always been interested in Electricity and Frawl Oler assisted me and told me what to do and I wired my own house.

Jon Duncan: The house you live in now?

Elwood Romeril: Yes, I wired that. And from there I got a job later on in Lethbridge and learnt it then. I would be comfortable wiring a house now, it wouldn’t bother me. Anyway with electricity, like I said it is something I have always been interested in and I remember taking it a step further on my job in Lethbridge at Bendix is where I learned it. I learned it on the job and I had enough learning where I could have went and wrote my exams and got a ticket and got my license but I didn’t do it. But I have done all of my electrical work.

Jon Duncan: Let me ask you this, when you first got that TV, what was on, what could you watch?

Elwood Romeril: Well I can remember the westerns you know there were all the western shows that you could see. I can’t really remember.

Jon Duncan: Had there been sports?

Elwood Romeril: Ya, there had been sports on. You could see the skating, the hockey, and the football

Jon Duncan: Were you much interested in the sports

Elwood Romeril: Yes, I used to play hockey a bit but not as much as some of the others did but I liked playing hockey when I did play. We would play Raymond or different towns

Jon Duncan: Was that just after school or was this a school team?

Elwood Romeril: You could call it a school tea mi guess but I didn’t do it much. There again I backed off, it was kind of rough and I didn’t like roughness. What I did I like. I used to skate a lot. We would skate out in the coulee, out south of Stirling, follow the coulee out on out skates, way out there and back.

Jon Duncan: What was your favourite hockey team?

Elwood Romeril: Toronto Maple Leafs

Jon Duncan: They were the ones, they were it.

Elwood Romeril: There were only the six teams at that time, and they were the only team in Canada. Well Montreal Canadians were too but Toronto was the one that I yelled for.

Jon Duncan:  Do you still like hockey?

Elwood Romeril: I sure do

Jon Duncan: Is Toronto still your favourite?

Elwood Romeril: Well I kind of switched to Calgary, I like Toronto too, and I still do. Sell like your younger years it kind of stays with ya. It never leaves.

Jon Duncan: Okay well, maybe we will change gears al little bit here, move back somewhat. What can you tell me about meeting Zelma?

Elwood Romeril: The first time that I can really vividly remember seeing her she used to work at the Bingham’s store, its Quan’s store now but it was Bingham’s at that time. She would come down and work there; she lived with Alva, that’s her brother. She had her Brother Roy living here too; he was working for Albert Brandley out here on this farm east of Stirling. So she had the two brothers and that was the first time that I can really remember seeing her walking home. When I first met her, this is going back to the war years now, but we had to go and sign papers and that to get ammunition and then we would take that certificate whatever it was at that time. You couldn’t buy ammunition right out of the hardware store, they had an ammunition bar as such and you had to go upstairs, I think it was above the dairy in Lethbridge, anyway you had to go up there and Roy at that time I knew him good because he lived here. Zelma was with him then and he introduced her to me and we talked for a few minutes and I bought my shells and Roy was buying some. So we just bought them and talked for a few minutes and that was it. After that happened Roy invited me to go up hunting with him after big game, after deer or elk, whatever we could find. So I went with him and we stay at the house up there up at Beezer. At that time someone was working in Cardston and visited with her for a few minutes so I got a chance to talk to her again, get a little better acquainted. After that in the next winter she come down and stayed down here during Christmas holidays and so Roy invited me out to have a card game out at his place just out east of Stirling here. So we went out there and had a real good time and things went well and we got a little bit more aquatinted. I asked her to go to the show in Raymond so the next nine or so after we went to the show in Raymond and that’s how it all started off. I blame Roy for this because I went hunting for deer but I got Zelma instead. Roy played a joke, he is always a prankster anyways he is just a fun guy that’s all. So at night I went out and I had that old Ford, that’s all I had to drive then so I went out there and left it and went out to Zelma’s, Roy disappeared. He jacked the back end up, put some blocks under the wheels and when I went out to leave I couldn’t go, the truck wouldn’t go, and I couldn’t figure it out. Finally I looked up and he was standing in the window laughing at me. I knew what he had done so, it was just a good joke but that is how I met her and from then on we dated steady. She was working in Cardston and she would be home on the weekends so I would visit her on the weekends.

Jon Duncan: Cardston was quite the travel wasn’t it?

Elwood Romeril: Yes it was, it was just a gravel road at the time. The highway that we have got now out to Cardston was being built the year that we were going together.

Jon Duncan: So how long did you go before you got married?

Elwood Romeril: Well we got married in July, I met her, well like I said when I really got interested was in December.

Jon Duncan: About seven months or so.

Elwood Romeril: Ya

Jon Duncan: Where were you married?

Elwood Romeril: In the temple in Cardston

Jon Duncan: What was the date?

Elwood Romeril: The 25^thof July 1946

Jon Duncan: 1946, so the year after the war

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: So you were married and you settled in Stirling

Elwood Romeril: Yes and the first house that we lived in was just a granary

Jon Duncan: Where was this?
Elwood Romeril:Right where I am now. So Roy again, bring Roy in on it again, he by the way spent the first year in that old granary and all he had done was just put a ceiling in it with Donna-Conna, if you know what that stuff is, its kind of like particle board, and all he did was put a ceiling in it. The two by fours were there, everything. Wasn’t lined or nothing. So I hooked onto that and pulled it on down to where my house is. That shop that I have got out in the back is it. We moved out and lived in it for the first winter and the next spring I built that room on to give us a kitchen and bedroom instead of a kitchen and bedroom all in one. So I added that on until I built the house that I am living in now. We just got by, did what you had to do to live.

Jon Duncan: What was it like living in that little granary?

Elwood Romeril: Well it was different than living in a home because you are used to having a fairly good place at home, you had to step back and say well here it is that’s what you’ve got. Then next year I guess that I added on and panelled the walls.

Jon Duncan: Did you have insulation?

Elwood Romeril: No insulation

Jon Duncan: Did you have a floor?

Elwood Romeril: Yes, ya it was up off the ground good. We lived in that for four years I guess.

Jon Duncan: In that Granary

Elwood Romeril: Ya

Jon Duncan: So when you put paneling in there did you put in any insulation.

Elwood Romeril: No, didn’t know what it was then. In fact my house when I built that it had two inch insulation between the studding’s, that’s all we had that’s all it’s got. I guess I added on in 1976 and that’s got the full insulation. Going back to that granary, there was no insulation, we would just have to sit around the stove and keep warm.

Jon Duncan: You used the stove to keep the place warm

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: Was it hooked up to electricity?

Elwood Romeril: Oh yes

Jon Duncan: What about a bathroom?

Elwood Romeril: Outside, had one of these little round tubs to bathe in. You warmed the water in a bucked on the cook stove and pour it in there, go in there and take your bath.

Jon Duncan: Wow, did you build a bathroom into the first house that you built?

Elwood Romeril: Well that wasn’t all that long ago, well I guess it was, fifty years. Dad had all of that stuff in his house too and we knew what we had to have there. It was all framed in, I framed the bathroom in

Jon Duncan: You had some sort of water system in the house that you built.

Elwood Romeril: No, not at the time, I put the plumbing in myself too. I used to carry all the water over from Lyman Hardy’s. On wash day I think I would carry about ten buckets of water.

Jon Duncan: Lyman Hardy’s cistern, he let you use his water.

Elwood Romeril: Yes, so I used that for the first year and then I built a cistern and got my pressure pump in. I went to work and asked a lot of questions and learned a lot of things and built the house myself. The inspector came down and said looking good so I guess I did a good enough job. But like I said we did it ourselves or it didn’t get done.

Jon Duncan: So if you were using Lyman’s water, where was he getting it from?

Elwood Romeril: The ditch we filled from the ditch we put this water treatment in, I can’t remember what it is.

Jon Duncan: Chlorine

Elwood Romeril: It wasn’t Chlorine it was javex I think, so many tablespoons to a thousand gallons I used to know but I forgot.

Jon Duncan: Did you have a ditch running in front of your house

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: Did you use the water there for anything?

Elwood Romeril: We used it for gardening and then of course fill the cistern too, after I made the cistern.

Jon Duncan: What did you make your cistern out of?

Elwood Romeril: Cement, I got the frames, cribbing they call it and put it in poured it

Jon Duncan: Okay so the ditch ran in front of your house on the boulevard

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: Where did it go from there to get into the cistern?

Elwood Romeril: I had a ditch

Jon Duncan: You had a ditch right to the cistern

Elwood Romeril: Yes, all we would do before it got to the cistern we had a block and quite a big set of gravel and make it run through that gravel before it ran into the cistern. I had a pipe that ran from that gravel pit into the cistern and the water would go up there and seep through the rocks and into the cistern.

Jon Duncan: Acted like a filter?

Elwood Romeril: Yes, that is the entire filter we had. It would probably take us a couple of days to fill the cistern.

Jon Duncan: Did it work well as a filter

Elwood Romeril: Yes and no, we would clean our cisterns every year if there was any water left in them when we wanted to fill them we would pump it all out and clean the cistern down good before we would put fresh water in it.

Jon Duncan: Okay I see and also you would use the fresh water to irrigate your gardens.

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: Was there any special method to this flood irrigation

Elwood Romeril: Nor really use the shovel and turn the water out of there. Let it run in out of the ditch.

Jon Duncan: How did you get the water to run just into your place did you have to shut the ditch

Elwood Romeril: Yes, you would have to shut the ditch off and run the water back but the ditches were surveyed and the ditches running down the streets were the main laterals. The secondary lateral you would run off into your yard, you would stop the main stream and it would back the water up and the water would go down. I don’t know who surveyed these ditches because that was all done before I can remember. But those ditches were done and we would have to clean those ditches out with our shovel and that but they all had ditches running into their yard like that.

Jon Duncan: Was it a yearly task to clean the ditches?

Elwood Romeril: Yes, that was a usual thing on the farm too I would shovel ditches two or three block long and just shovel it out and scrape the weeds out of the bottom and later on we got the ditchers out at the farm but here we never did, it was always shovel work.

Jon Duncan: You maintained your own ditches, what was the water quality like.

Elwood Romeril: Well we didn’t even think about it, back then you see the water didn’t go through any dams, that ridge reservoir wasn’t there and the Jensen reservoir wasn’t in it, it come direct right from the river right to our house. Yes it was a bit royally but we didn’t have any storage so where it could get contaminated. Yes, maybe it could get contaminated a bit because the cattle where it went through a farmers field but nothing like it does now where it sits over winter or cattle our drinking out of it all the time so it comes right through the canal right to Stirling  

Jon Duncan: It was pretty good water then

Elwood Romeril: It was, I used to lie down on my stomach and get a drink and think nothing of it

Jon Duncan: The water was that good

Elwood Romeril: Well it didn’t make me sick, ill put it that way, yes it was good. Little better royal in it but that’s all

Jon Duncan: You remember the new water system that they put in?

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: How did you feel about this new water and sewer system?

Elwood Romeril: I felt good about it because we always had to fill our cisterns we never did appreciate it. Of course at that time before that went in we started hauling our drinking water in from Lethbridge in our truck. We had thousand gallon tanks. We filled our cistern with Lethbridge water later on 

Jon Duncan: Was the water quality starting to get bad?

Elwood Romeril: Not only that but we started to realize that we needed to be more careful. We started hauling our water from Lethbridge so that saved us hauling tanks and tanks of water from Lethbridge. We had to haul from north Lethbridge; they never had an outlet here on the south Lethbridge like they have got now. So we really felt good about the sewer system and water system going in sure it left us in a mess for a few months but that was great.

Jon Duncan: So you supported.

Elwood Romeril: You bet, ill say

Jon Duncan: Let me go back to your family, we got off on a tangent there, and your first child was?

Elwood Romeril: Lyone

Jon Duncan: She was born?

Elwood Romeril: 1947

Jon Duncan: Your other children, what were their names

Elwood Romeril: Gloria, then Fred, then Tony, Sherry and we adopted Debbie and Maloney

Jon Duncan: The history book mentions Valorie Smith

Elwood Romeril: Valorie Smith was, this was quite a story in itself. She needed help and we worked through Bishop Hogenson wit this. Sherry and Valorie are very good friends, really good friends and they were associated with each other a lot after we decided that maybe we could help Valorie. Sherry asked us to see if we could because she was concerned about it. So we went to bishop Hogenson about this, Valorie was in need or help, she wasn’t living at home at the time and he said you answered our prayer. He said I have been praying about that. He said I didn’t know what I was going to do for her. Well that was then and I went to church one morning, he called us into the office. We had mentioned it so he called us right into the office and talked to us. He didn’t even let Valorie go home, she was living with a family down north part of Stirling, I can’t remember their names but they weren’t LDS so he told Valorie to go home with us and she lived with us until she was married. She went to school in Ricks and met Jeff, that’s her husband. We are really close as we call her kids our grandkids. Valorie passed away a few years back. She had heart trouble or some sort, I can’t remember the names that they used but she passed away. Left a baby and two young boys, that was quite a story in itself, the way that it turned out. So Valorie lived with us probably four years I would say.

Jon Duncan: She was like another daughter to you

Elwood Romeril: That’s right

Jon Duncan: You did have a big family you and Zelma

Elwood Romeril: Seven and not only that we invited the Leamonite Children in too, we had them for several years different ones.

Jon Duncan: Working with the Leamonite program and the Church

Elwood Romeril: So that filled out house up

Jon Duncan: Lots of kids, so what was it like raising kids?

Elwood Romeril:There were problems like everybody I guess. Like us when we were kids I guess, they get into things they shouldn’t. I can’t remember being particularly bad kids, they listened to us, sometimes no but most of the time yes. We were a close family visiting each other all the time, phoning us, keeping in touch with us. Of course we have got Fred and Gloria right here but the others are close, in Lethbridge or Taber. Tony went to school and is down in Missouri, he is taking up Quior practice. But otherwise we are all close.

Jon Duncan: What were the kids doing around home, were their chores for them to do?

Elwood Romeril: You bet, garden work, milk the cows, clean the barn, and haul the water, you bet. They each had their turn; each had their job to do. I was one of those people who didn’t believe in doing it myself when someone else could help. And if you don’t teach them to work when their young they are not gunna do it when they are older

Jon Duncan: So Fred and Tony, would they help you on the farm?

Elwood Romeril: Yes they would help on the farm too. They all had to learn, when the boys got bigger they were out running the combine, running the trucks you name it.

Jon Duncan: Milking the cows at the home, did the girls and the boys do the same types of things.

Elwood Romeril: Well the girls didn’t help on the farm much or do any of the heavy chores I left that up to Zelma, let them help her in the house. Maybe go out and get the kindling or something, because we had wood stoves back then but none of the heavy work like milking cows or anything. Although milking a cow wouldn’t have hurt them. But they did more of the other stuff around the house, keeping the house clean and mopping or helping with the washing, that sort of thing.

Jon Duncan: Okay so we were talking about the kinds of chores that your kids did at home. Raising them, they are all grown up now aren’t they?

Elwood Romeril: You bet they are

Jon Duncan: You got grandkids coming along?

Elwood Romeril: Yes and great grandkids too

Jon Duncan: Great grandkids already?

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: What’s it like to be a great grandfather?

Elwood Romeril: Makes you think that you are getting older, I don’t know like I said it makes you thing that you are getting older, its not much different from going to see your grandchildren with their children. I am happy that these grandchildren can see their grandmother and grandfather because I never seen my great grandparents. I knew my grandparents but not my great grandparents so they are getting a generation on me now which is good of course they are quite small yet too, they may not remember it. But it’s great.

Jon Duncan: There was one thing that I forgot to mention before; you had mentioned that you had the old school barn where they had the old horses in.

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: Where was that Barn?

Elwood Romeril: It was just straight across the road from the Post Office, where the post office is now, right on the laneway. Not right in the land but right next to the lane. And right on the Corner had a big old carrel to tie our horses in. We had a nice old barn there for the horses; I think that would hold probably five or six horses with stalls. They had the manjor; we would come in with out horse and tie our horse up. And always bring a bag of oats in for the horse for dinner. Then we would leave them there all day. Nobody would bother then and they never seemed to have any problem. The one time I had a problem with my horse, during the day. I was little then so didn’t tell me how to take the saddle off just to loosen the synch a bit so it wouldn’t be tight on her. So I did that and I guess that I loosened the saddle to much and when I got to the barn after school the saddle was underneath her. So I got up to her by her shoulder so that she wouldn’t hurt me, wouldn’t get excited. Calmed her down and undid the synch on the saddle but as I released the saddle I guess she got scared. She backed up a bit and kicked the side out of the school barn.
 
Tape 2 Side 2
 
Jon Duncan: Okay so we were talking about the horse kicked in the barn door.

Elwood Romeril: Yes, right next to where the door was. The saddle fell I guess and that scared her and she kicked the boards out of the barn.

Jon Duncan: Did any thing like that happen again?

Elwood Romeril: No, we lived through all of those kinds of things. Other times it was scary times with the horse, getting them hooked up and riding them and that. One day it rained hard and I got on my horse and as usually I kicked her in the ribs and I was going top speed. She slipped and fell with me and knocked me out, I didn’t know anything until eight o’clock that night, the other kids who were with me put me back on my horse and hung on to me and took me home. That happened right where Thelma Perrett Corner is now. Another time the horse shied and I wasn’t very big those years and my legs weren’t long enough to hang on. Another time a horse shied and I fell off on my head. I got home and I wouldn’t take my cap off. Mom says what has happened to you, nothing. Come on something happened, what it is. Finally she got earnest about it and looked and she could see blood on my head. What had happened well I cut my head but I didn’t want her to see it I didn’t want her to know that I had got thrown off the horse but somebody always got thrown off a horse or got bucked off or had problems.

Jon Duncan: Cars have the same kind of thing, why not a horse. That reminds me; let me ask you about some of the cars that you had. Your father had a car, is that right?

Elwood Romeril: Yes, a Model A Ford.

Jon Duncan: His first car was a Model A Ford, about when did he get that?

Elwood Romeril: I think he got it in 1928

Jon Duncan: So you were just young then

Elwood Romeril: Ya, I can remember him when he drove it home; I thought that was really it. Just a sedan, Model A Ford, grey in color, I can remember getting in it and going for a ride, that was pretty nice. 

Jon Duncan: How long did he have that Model A FORD?

Elwood Romeril: For years and years. He had it after we moved in town, and that was in 1936 so eight years and then after that we cut it in half, took the back end out of it and made a truck out of it. Cut the back end out and moved it up front to make it like a cab, went down to mertzes and had it welded together and then made a little box on the back of it to make a little truck.

Jon Duncan: Just for on the Farm

Elwood Romeril: Ya haul a few things around

Jon Duncan: When you got older is that the car that your family still had?

Elwood Romeril: No I cant remember, dad I don’t think ever did have a car, he got a truck, a half ton and from then on he just owned half tons. I can’t remember him ever having a car. For me, I got a car but then I had a half ton too.

Jon Duncan: Is that when you bought your first car when you married Zelma

Elwood Romeril: No I had that car then, it was a tearraplane they called them, they were handsome cars. They don’t make them now. The company no longer exists; I called it a terrible plane because I had so much trouble with it. it was just a coupe, just two doors and there was just room for two people or three people. I had that for a couple of years or so and then I got rid of it and got a sedan. I think that the sedan that I got was a 1938 Plymouth, I think it was. 

Jon Duncan: I think you said earlier that when you were dating Zelma you still had that Model A.

Elwood Romeril: Well we had that then yes but I also had this other car that I had just mentioned. So when I went to go see her I would use the terraplane. The Model A was just a car turned into a truck

Jon Duncan:You still had that then; you had that for quite a while.

Elwood Romeril:That would have been forty six, so 1926 to 1946. It was still running pretty good too because that was in the winter time.

Jon Duncan: This was the winter of 1945

Elwood Romeril: No

Jon Duncan: Or was it 1945-1946, so there were no rations then anymore

Elwood Romeril: No, rations went out right quick after the war, all the center fire ammunition that was being used, they didn’t need that anymore. And they weren’t shipping sugar and that sort of stuff to the troops anymore. We had gas all we needed then because they didn’t need gas for the war machine.

Jon Duncan: I want to switch I guess again and talk about some of your occupations throughout your life. You spent most of the time on the farm.

Elwood Romeril: Yes I did, I went to as long as I can remember when I was ten or eleven years old I stooked twenty five acres a week for dad because he was working on his thrashing machine so I would go home after school and go out and stook a bit, it took me a couple of days to do it but I did it. I was used to horses at that age I wasn’t scared of them or anything, always with them. Otherwise farming until we got the first tractor was all horses and it was all farm work. I can’t remember much of anything about the factory that dad had in town because it was too little then. But after we got the first tractor we just went on from there and I got used to it year after year and just kept at it. As I got older after we got married I rented quite a bit of land, I rented land from John Orson, from Henry Perrett, from Wayne Hartley, and I rented quite a bit of land, mostly for sugar beets

Jon Duncan: Oh really, so how much land was this?

Elwood Romeril: We ended up with eighty five acres of sugar beets. When we quit raising sugar beets we were raising eighty five acres. I had about half, forty acres for me and forty acres for dad probably. But the land that I was renting then beside the sugar beet land, I probably was renting a quarter sections of land or more plus what we were running. So we probably had close to a section of land all over Sothern Alberta because we would have a piece here and a piece there. We did a lot of road renting which I didn’t care for because if we had had it all in one piece it would have been a lot better. You said before that you had other jobs that you did before besides that we had other potatoes on the farm; I worked at the sugar factory for a few campaigns out on the flumes. Keeping the beets going into the factory, making sure that the flumes didn’t flood, it wasn’t a hard job, you might have figured that it was but it wasn’t too bad because you had these big loaders pushing these beats into the flumes. We had a high pressure hose, eighty pounds or better on them, they were and inch and a half hose and you could blow the beets out of the flumes and dislodge them. Beside that I got a lot of jobs in Lethbridge wherever I could get them. Whatever I could get, besides the farm I kept farming. I worked at Bendix, mobile home for about ten years and still farmed on top of the farm, I would have lost the farm if it hadn’t had been for that because I was in debt a lot and I just had to get another job. I lived off the money from the job and all the money on the farm paid off all of my debts, I got out of debt that way. Other than that I guess that I did end up being a janitor at the church and worked there for, well right at first even before I worked at Bendix I worked two years at the church. Right after I got married I got a job at the school for a year and then after about ten years I got the janitor work at the church. That is when I retired and rented my land out and then I totally retired then well I have sold part of it and I am still renting the rest of it.

Jon Duncan: Which parts have you sold?

Elwood Romeril: Well I have sold to Marley Hirschie 170 acres out on this other land I still own the original forty and I don’t want to sell it because Grandpa owned it, sentimental I guess. When you get thinking about it, it is all irrigated, if anything real bad happens it might be a foolish thing to say but it might be a life saver some day, you never know. I told the kids that I don’t want them to sell it; I want them to keep renting it. I said that if some day you like it will come in handy.

Jon Duncan: So that forty acres that you have is irrigated land so tell me, you farmed all this land; you farmed dry land and irrigation, what is the difference?

Elwood Romeril: Well the dry land is like it says, it is dry land it depends on the rain storms and its a lot easier then irrigation, with the dry land you drill it in the spring, and you harvest it in the fall. In a forty acre area of dry land you would probably two days out of the whole year. With forty acres of irrigation you would probably spend weeks, I don’t know how many weeks, irrigating and everything else. For hay you irrigate it, you cut it you haul it and as soon as it’s hauled you irrigate it again for another crop. With the dry land you don’t get near as much returns, the returns aren’t there but it’s a lot easier.

Jon Duncan: The return is lower dry land but the labour is also

Elwood Romeril: It’s nothing there, three days and forty acres at the most. Because you would drill it one day, take another day to swath it and another day to combine it and that would be it

Jon Duncan: Now the quarter section that you had our south of highway fifty two was that irrigated.

Elwood Romeril: Part of it, part of it was, I irrigated all of it before I quit with the pump. I had sugar beets on all of it before we sold it to the highway fifty two. In the early days you could have irrigated probably twenty acres of it.

Jon Duncan: This was just flood irrigation?

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: Now you said that you quit sugar beets after a while, why was it that you quit sugar beets?

Elwood Romeril: Well the main reason was that the factory went out over at Raymond.

Jon Duncan: What year was that?

Elwood Romeril: Oh heck I don’t know

Jon Duncan: Was that the sixties, seventies?

Elwood Romeril: Seems like it would be the seventies but I may, could have been the sixties, I really can’t tell you.

Jon Duncan: That’s the main reason that you quit.

Elwood Romeril: That was the main reason and dad was getting older too, he had to take it easy. But that was the main factor; a lot of people when that factory quit a lot of people quit raising beets in this area. Because we would have had to haul out beets to Coaldale, and we weren’t about to do that, it cost too much.

Jon Duncan: But you dad was still alive when the sugar beet factory closed.

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: What happened to Stirling when the sugar beet factory closed?

Elwood Romeril: Well quite a few worked from here but some of them moved to Lethbridge and got other jobs. It hurt pretty bad, a lot of them were transferred to Picture Butte, I don’t know if any of them were transferred to Taber or not. Darwin Oler he had to go to Picture Butte, Alan Oler, he had to go to Picture Butte, and there are several more that I could name if I had time to think about it that had to be moved on so that they wouldn’t loose their jobs. It hurt that way, but it didn’t hurt as much as it hurt Raymond, it really hurt Raymond when that went out because there were a lot of people that kind of depended on that. It was good because it was another industry that was there to help the people.

Jon Duncan: So how did it affect you as a farmer?

Elwood Romeril: Well we had to change and do things different that’s all, we had to irrigate the wheat. And get a bigger bushel on the acreage. Time went to cattle; I had about twenty head of cattle at that time. Just had to do things different yet stay with the farm.

Jon Duncan: Where did you keep the cattle?

Elwood Romeril: Out on the farm where highway fifty two is. All the coulee there had been pasture but once we took the pasture off of there they had the whole quarter section to run on.

Jon Duncan: Okay well moving on why don’t we talk a little bit about the church in your life, the affect that it has had on you. You’re a member of the LDS church.

Elwood Romeril: Okay, well let’s start off with when it was built. I was just a little guy then, I can remember running over in that corner where the church stands and playing marbles, pretty quick that was gone because they built the church there. I have always been told that it was right to go to church, always told to do the things that I should do and remember the heavenly father. So I think that I have held out pretty well. I paid my first tithing to bishop Fawns.

Jon Duncan: Do you remember bishop Fawns?

Elwood Romeril: Oh sure, I can remember that I paid him a nickel. My dad says you have five dollars; you go pay the bishop your nickel. I can remember that very plain. He was a kind man, I really liked him, and he was a fine fellow.

Jon Duncan: He was the bishop for quite a few years.

Elwood Romeril: Ya, thirty some years, was it?

Jon Duncan: Ya

Elwood Romeril: Yes, I won’t forget that, it has been in my mind. Scouting, I was active in scouting. I liked scouting but later on something kind of turned me against it. I don’t know why but it was one of our camp outs and things didn’t go good. One of the leaders from one of the other wards, it was a stake thing, probably a couple of hundred boys there and something went wrong. I can’t quite put my finger on it but something turned me. I tried to support it, I have been in the scout committee, and I have been a scout master. I was an assistant to Goldie Tillic who was an assistant to Lloyd Hirschie and then I was scout master for a few years. I was in the scout committee and helping to raise funds for them. Going on from there I was secretary in the Deacons Coram, a secretary in the Teachers Coram, and in the Priest Coram. In the priest Coram dad was the supervisor of the home teaching at the time, and he would give me the responsibility of a forth of the town to make sure that the home teaching got done. So you can see how much he depended on me and trusted me. I saw to it that that part of town was taken care of and reported back to him. I was secretary of the Elders Coram for a time and I was counsellor for a time and I was president of the Elders Coram for about three or four years. After I was president of the Elders Coram I was assigned the seventies at the time I was ordained to seventy, at the time they didn’t have an Elders president so, I don’t know who the stake president was then but anyway he told me to be acting president of the Elders Coram until they got a man in position. So I was a seventy and I was the president of the Elders Coram. I wasn’t in the seventies very long until I was sustained to be one of the seven presidents, there were seven presidents at that time.

Jon Duncan: In the stake?

Elwood Romeril: Yes, so I worked in that for I would say three or four years and then I was ordained the high priest.

Jon Duncan: When they released the entire stake seventies you were made I high priest?

Elwood Romeril: That could have been though I am not sure but anyway I was ordained the high priest, Marvin Hogenson ordained me high priest when he was in the stake presidency. Then I was assigned to be, after a few years I was put in as high priest leader, I was there for four and a half years I think it was. I am now working in the church in capacity of the PFR which is the public building representative to the stake to make sure that the building is kept up to the way that it should be. The canning supervisor for the Stirling first ward now, we must remember all of those other times that we have been talking about there wasn’t two wards, there was just the one ward when I was the Elder’s president, seventies, the high priest there was two wards. I am also coordinator for job listings, what they call that now, I can’t put my finger on it. So I got the three jobs.

Jon Duncan: You have always been actively involved in the church.

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: Did you have a chance to serve a mission

Elwood Romeril: Well I don’t wasn’t to say no but as far as a foreign mission is concerned I think I didn’t have a chance because dad didn’t have the money. At that time he did want to go to the church for funds. It was during the war when I was that age and if I had left on a mission I would have had to have gone to war. So he didn’t want that so those two conditions existed. But I was on a two year stake mission. Alva and I were companions.

Jon Duncan: Alva?

Elwood Romeril: Write, Alva Write and I were companions. We had to serve two evenings each week, I think it was four hours each evening and then all day on Sunday. We had to be out and teach the Gospel, just the ordinary mission.

Jon Duncan: What part of your life was this?

Elwood Romeril: It was right after I was married. I could look it up alright but it would have been around that time, forty six, forty seven, forty eight.

Jon Duncan: As a missionary in the stake area.

Elwood Romeril: Ya, we had the Stirling area, the north Stirling area. The farms which included right down to Wrentham but then there was another set of missionaries for Wrentham in the East.

Jon Duncan: Do you remember the amusement haul going into the old church.

Elwood Romeril: Yes, the early one

Jon Duncan: Ya

Elwood Romeril: Well the early church was on the east side of the street, where the school is sitting now. As near as I can remember that there was just a stage and an auditorium to it. They had dividers for class work and that. When you had classes they had dividers set up so you would be in your corner and have a class there. It wasn’t long, I can’t remember too much because of my age but it wasn’t too long and I can remember this other church. The church was the first built and they still used the one on the east side of the street for dances and that sort of thing but then we had the church for class work. In 1940 they built the recreation haul and tore the one on the east side of the street down. I helped on that, I worked on that building. Dad worked on it, everybody worked on it and helped build it at that time. It was the responsibility for the wards at that time to build a third so we all worked on it and got that built. Then I served as custodian there for a couple of years, years ago. Before I was put in as custodian the last ten years, which was a very good thing that happened. At first those two buildings weren’t joined together, they were separate so in the sixties I guess it was they joined the two buildings together and put the bishop office, relief society rooms and the kitchen in. to join the two buildings together 

Jon Duncan: An addition through the middle.

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: What about that building that used to be behind the old church?

Elwood Romeril: It was a scout hall; they brought that in from McNally. Brought that in and used it as a scout hall. When I was scout master I used to use that for the scouts.

Jon Duncan: Was that always for the scouts?

Elwood Romeril: Yes, I can’t remember it being used, well I should take that back, on Sundays they would have classes there because I can remember taking a teacher training class in that building.

Jon Duncan: No let me ask you, the bishops office used to be in his home was that right?

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: So you would just go and see Bishop Fawns, Bishop Erickson at their home?

Elwood Romeril: That’s right

Jon Duncan: What about this bishop store house, was that still running when you were young?

Elwood Romeril: Well I can’t remember too much about it, the first I remember of it was being in Raymond.

Jon Duncan: The bishop store house was over in Raymond

Elwood Romeril: Yes, and we would go over there and can corn, can peas, can vegetables, of any kind and I can remember working in it. We would take out corn over and husk it and cut it off. That was a lot of work then because they didn’t have the machines to do it. They had to do it by hand. 

Jon Duncan: Was this when you were still young, as a teenager?

Elwood Romeril: I would have been a teenager then

Jon Duncan: Working in the store house in Raymond, so the store house in Stirling wasn’t around that long, wasn’t used that long.

Elwood Romeril: Well I really cant remember that much, being out on the farm I think that I missed out because talking to people like Eldred, could talk to him. He lived in town and I lived out on the farm and I missed out on that kind of stuff, I just cannot remember that great. I can remember the post office being down here just across the street from, well just this next block here.

Jon Duncan: Where John Tanner has his house there?
Elwood Romeril:Well not quite that far it was a little up on the slope a bit. I can’t remember much about that but that I can remember.

Jon Duncan: That is where you got your mail too?

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: Okay so whenever your parents came into town to pick up the mail there

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: Okay I guess going back to the church for a minute. Now Stirling has always had a lot of Mormons, predominantly Latter Day Saints but there have been others. How do you feel about those other people who aren’t?

Elwood Romeril: I always got along good with them, my neighbours out at the farm weren’t LDS and we would talk for hours sometimes. Japanese people were good, the other people were good, people in town, and I got along good with them. I had no problems with them. I didn’t push Mormonism on and I don’t think that you should.
 
Tape 3 Side 1
 

Jon Duncan: So we were talking about the church and your perceptions of?

Elwood Romeril: Well other denominations, I will sit and listen and talk to them about it and then I will bring in ours. Well you believe this we believe it this way, what do you think is right. I have had really no problems with anybody in town that way at all. As far as LDS people are concerned if one of them is non-LDS and in trouble we’ll help them just as quick as I would help you out.

Jon Duncan: So religion really isn’t an issue here.

Elwood Romeril: Well I have heard that it is but it hasn’t been from me or my family. I have heard that it’s been an issue and I was involved with a man when I worked in Lethbridge, he lived in Maybutt and I had better not mention the other name but there was a man involved with him and tried to get him to sign the church. It just turned him right off because I used to ride to Lethbridge with him all the time and I had some pretty good discussions with him. He says that if that hadn’t had happened I would have joined but if you push too much that is what happens.

Jon Duncan: Okay so there was some tension there but you really didn’t feel that.

Elwood Romeril: I didn’t feel it no because he didn’t feel it with me and I didn’t feel it when we were talking and riding together. I wouldn’t push it on to him. If he wanted to talk about it then fine I would talk but I haven’t found it. At least down our part of town I haven’t.

Jon Duncan:You said earlier when we talked that you remember the hutterites coming into Stirling. 

Elwood Romeril: Well I was pretty young but I can remember them getting off of the train and I suppose it would have been the Wolf Creek because they are the oldest colony here but I cant remember seeing much more than seeing them getting off and getting into their wagons.

Jon Duncan: What about the Mennonites?

Elwood Romeril: I haven’t had much to do with Mennonites. I had more to do with them when I farmed out there, I new them better but I got along okay with them. But they are religious people and they are good people of course I know that they have got different outlooks in life then we do but again I don’t hold that against them. I can talk to any of them. Doesn’t bother me to talk to them at all, I don’t feel that I am talking down to a person like he is lower than I am, I am talking to him, I have never felt like that. In fact I have even told them so when I have discussed religion; I say that I am no better than you are if I don’t live better.

Jon Duncan: Right, did any of the Mennonite or Hutterite Children attend school with you?

Elwood Romeril: No, not that I can remember. I don’t think so.

Jon Duncan: They entered in later on?

Elwood Romeril: Well that is the group that is down south, they were entered into the picture when Zelma and I were married.

Jon Duncan: They came to the Stirling area later on

Elwood Romeril: Yes

Jon Duncan: Okay, now Elwood, who are the bishops that you remember the most in Stirling?

Elwood Romeril: Well I would say Leaf Erickson, possibly Lyman Hardy. Leaf Erickson was bishop when I was custodian; I was custodian for about two years while he was bishop. We got along well, when things weren’t going quite right I could help him a lot. I respected him, I know he respected me. We used to discuss things together to try and make the building work better. But I cannot say much more than that because everything just went fine and he was a good man. I enjoyed working with him. Of course when he was bishop I was the Elders President then. As far as Lyman is concerned he is another man that I really respect as bishop. Worked with him well while the building was being renovated a lot, I can remember him and his advice and his wisdom that he had while working with that

Jon Duncan: While you were janitor of the old church did it still have the flooding problem?

Elwood Romeril: Yes and I had it flooded out, In fact I had it flooded out the morning Lyome was born. I had been up late that night and concerned about things and how they were going for Zelma in the hospital. I got word that she was fine and everything was fine. That made me feel good and I went up to the church, I think it was a Sunday morning too. It was flooded. What had happened overnight was the irrigation had come into town and either I or somebody else had forgotten to pug that pipe going into the basement because they had a pipe going into the basement into a pump so they could irrigate. It was a pump so that they could pump the water back out. Why the had the pump in there I do not know but the water went in through there and flooded the basement. That was a heck of a morning; I was sweeping water and sweeping water. Couldn’t get it ready for classes, all of the basement then was linoleum so it wasn’t as serious as it would have been with carpet. I was sweeping and sweeping, I can’t remember but I think that some of the priesthood was helping me but I can’t remember.

Jon Duncan: How did you get it out?

Elwood Romeril: Just bucket it out. Well we would shovel it out too, I can remember opening the coal shoot in the coal furnace, and they had coal furnaces back then too. Sweeping it back into the coal room and bucketing it.

Jon Duncan: That was because the irrigation ditches running through town.

Elwood Romeril: Yes, the irrigation water would come in over night and that pipe hadn’t been plugged.

Jon Duncan: Was that the main cause of this continual flooding?

Elwood Romeril: As near as I can remember it was because after that boy I watched that, I really watched that and made sure that that plug was in, I never did care for that because that plug could get knocked out so easy. Being up in plain sight in the ditch, and if you didn’t drive it in tight some of the kids could come along and kick it out too.

Jon Duncan: Which side of the church was this plug on?

Elwood Romeril: The north side, there was an irrigation ditch running down the north side of the ditch,

Jon Duncan: On the north side of the road then.

Elwood Romeril: On the north side of the road going west

Jon Duncan: The ditch wasn’t on Quan’s side?

Elwood Romeril: There was a ditch there too

Jon Duncan: There were ditches on either side?

Elwood Romeril: Yes there was, you bet, we had the ditches all over

Jon Duncan: Ya, Stirling must have had quite a few ditches every where

Elwood Romeril: Well they had to, being surveyed like that they had to irrigate everything.

Jon Duncan: Were they continually putting in new ditches?

Elwood Romeril: No, they would just clean them out

Jon Duncan: Use the same one

Elwood Romeril: Because they needed to repair, restructure sure but I can’t remember it happening that often.

Jon Duncan: Well I guess to finish off; I want to talk a little bit about your feelings about politics, about government and so forth, what is the role of government in your life?

Elwood Romeril: Well I have never been involved in politics never been involved in Government. Which we have been told to but I haven’t done it. I haven’t wanted to get into government; I have tried to put it behind me. I shouldn’t do that but I have done it. I tried to get local government. I haven’t done much either. As far as government for the province we have out likes and we have our dislikes. We have the policies that agree and that disagree. All in all I don’t think things could have been much better or different then they had been. They had pretty good wisdom in what they have done. I can’t really say that I would have done it different myself but I think that we have had pretty good leaders in the government; I think that we have been lucky. I hope now that things aren’t turning wrong because I have my doubts in the back of my mind that the government is getting too much government, this is what I don’t like now. The government has been taking away to many things, when I was growing up we tended to ourselves. Things got along fine, we didn’t need to have someone govern us and tell us how to govern ourselves.

Jon Duncan: There is too much government now.

Elwood Romeril: I feel that there is yes.

Jon Duncan: Did you ever go on any political party?

Elwood Romeril: Well yes I joined the reformed party but nothing comes of it and I never paid my dues for the next year, other then that I haven’t done.

Jon Duncan: What about voting, have you always voted?

Elwood Romeril: Yes I have, I have always voted and I voted for the man not the party.

Jon Duncan: So you are not a party person?

Elwood Romeril: No, if I feel like there is a good man in there I feel that he should be in there rather than worry about what the party represents.

Jon Duncan: That’s all levels of government?

Elwood Romeril: Yes, I feel that way.

Jon Duncan: Let me ask you this, how do you feel about being a Canadian?

Elwood Romeril: Well I feel good about being a Canadian,  I have lived here all of my life and I wouldn’t want to be anything else although I can trace my history back to Utah and probably get my U.S. citizenship I have never wanted to. I wouldn’t say that I haven’t thought about it but I have never really seriously considered such a thing. I am proud of being a Canadian. I hope that every body else feels that way because we have helped to develop a country and I don’t think that there is any better place to live really.

Jon Duncan: It really is a good place isn’t it.

Elwood Romeril: You bet

Jon Duncan: Are your feelings as strong for Alberta or stronger?

Elwood Romeril: Well I think that they are stronger for Alberta, I haven’t traveled east much but I have traveled all over B.C. I have traveled up North West Territories and I have traveled in the states. I have never felt at home until I can get back in Alberta.

Jon Duncan: Alberta is home

Elwood Romeril: That’s it, in fact Sothern Alberta. Alberta yes, my feelings are very strong for that.

Jon Duncan: One last question, Stirling has changed over the years, and you have seen a lot of those changes

Elwood Romeril: That’s right

Jon Duncan: What are some of the major ones that you have seen?

Elwood Romeril: Well for Stirling it has been changing over the years, there are a lot more people here then there used to be the growing up period in Stirling is still growing up. I can remember a house being on a corner and another house being on another corner, probably had two and a half acres to roam around in, in Stirling. But it is not that way now; one difference that I can see is taking education. We have still got out grade twelve here and they had grade twelve when I grew up so that is not all that much change. I can remember hauling gravel out of the gravel business. You would have to tip the planks on the bottom of the wagons to unload it. Each wagon, they would just haul enough for each wagon. That’s all but now we have got pavement.

Jon Duncan: That must have been quite a chore to haul that much gravel.

Elwood Romeril: It was

Jon Duncan: Where was the gravel pit?

Elwood Romeril: It was out at Brandley’s east of Stirling. Burt and Harbey are Farming it now. I can remember the wagons; they had dozens of wagons it seemed like hauling it.

Jon Duncan: They would do this every year.

Elwood Romeril: Well when they would need it, the wagons would just keep going around and around. They would load the wagons and kind of drive in under an elevated place. Dig a tunnel down there for the wagons to go under. And the slip scrapers are what they loaded them with come up over the wagon and dump the gravel into the wagon.

Jon Duncan: So how did they grade the gravel over the road?

Elwood Romeril: Well I think that they had little graders pulled by horses, with the blade. Have four head of horses on it. I can remember them using it, something similar to today only not very big.

Jon Duncan: That would be a big change in Stirling, how they had done them.

Elwood Romeril: Oh yes, if the people who used to work here could come here now they would appreciate it

Jon Duncan: Seeing all of the improvements

Elwood Romeril: They would really appreciate it. The school, we have got a big school, a good church, can see that Stirling is growing up.

Jon Duncan: Here is a change that took place, the ward was split

Elwood Romeril: Right

Jon Duncan: Early eighties or something like that, what did you think about that?

Elwood Romeril: Well at the time I didn’t know what to think but it has been a good thing. In one way it hasn’t because we are strangers because we don’t visit back and forth like we used to I mean I used to home teach up here. You used to home teach. I come down this end of town and feel like a stranger. I didn’t even know that they were building across the street yet.

Jon Duncan: It kind of separated the town.

Elwood Romeril: So that way it kind of separates the town but otherwise it has been a good thing because there would really be too many people here now. You know when I was younger, your age; we had a big ward here. A really big ward and then the people moved out and it has come back in and grown again.

Jon Duncan: Why were the people moving out?

Elwood Romeril: Well I don’t know, other than work, they had to go to Lethbridge or Calgary to go to work. The farms were not carrying the people the way that they were earlier. And a lot of the kids didn’t want to farm. So they moved on. That is the only reason that I can think of.

Jon Duncan: The railways have changed over they years too have they

Elwood Romeril: Well the narrow gauge, I can’t remember the narrow gauge railway. Dad used to tell me about it but I can’t remember. They come in from the narrow gauge from Utah. But now they have got the main line. The railroads just haven’t changed that much because I can remember the one going to foremost, one going to Raymond, Lethbridge. This was the hub.

Jon Duncan: Stirling was the main junction, was it fairly busy out there at the junction out there?

Elwood Romeril: Well we had a train every day to Cardston. I am sure that there was a train every day to Coutts and I am sure that there is yet. As far as foremost I couldn’t tell you how often that was but I know that they had a train every day to Cardston, up to Cardston and back again. Every day to Lethbridge, they had a passenger car on that train but you don’t really see passenger cars anymore.

Jon Duncan: Did you travel much to Lethbridge

Elwood Romeril: You would go up to Lethbridge every once and a while on the train, I can remember going to Cardston on the train, different times. Because Zelma’s relatives are up there, they had that after we were married.

Jon Duncan: Oh really, still running from then, how much would it have cost to go up there and back

Elwood Romeril: It seems like it was two and a half to go to Cardston and back.

Jon Duncan: That’s not too bad At least today it wouldn’t

Elwood Romeril: No it wouldn’t.

Jon Duncan: The trains aren’t even really around now

Elwood Romeril: No there not, what do they go, once a week to Cardston, other than that.

Jon Duncan: Well Elwood we talked a lot, we had a lot of things to say and I want to thank you for your time.

Elwood Romeril: Well thank you

Jon Duncan: Lots of good stories

Elwood Romeril: Get my eyes wide open now, that is what every family needs. Just do it at home, not have you guys come and do it, just do it at home. Because I think that you get more out of speaking on tape then I think you do from writing it on paper. Because there are more things that come out you know.

Jon Duncan: Yes and the main thing is that your kids and grandkids will always be able to hear your voice.

Elwood Romeril: That’s true

Jon Duncan: Well I guess we will call it quits then

Elwood Romeril: That’s good then

Jon Duncan: We will shut her off

Transcribed By Clinton Dovell