Interviewee: Leroy Erickson
Interviewer: Jon Duncan 
 
Jon Duncan: Alright today is May 20^th1997. My name is John Duncan and I am here with Leroy Erickson. Leroy why don you go ahead and introduce yourself.

Leroy Erickson: Ya my name is Leroy Erickson and I lived a few years in Stirling and I guess that’s why Jon is interviewing this morning, here to talk about some of the things we didF back then, when we were young.

Jon Duncan: That’s about it. Roy, when were you born?

Leroy Erickson: June 22 of 1916

Jon Duncan: Who were you parents?

Leroy Erickson: My father was Arthur Erickson and my mother was Elisabeth Adams

Jon Duncan: Alright Leroy, well lets start with your dad, tell me what kind of person he was?

Leroy Erickson: Well my dad was a, he came to Alberta with his parents from Utah in 1903 and he was about ten years old. He arrived in
the spring and there was a big snowstorm and in 1903 the cattle and the horses and everything else got lost and his granddad and some
of his brothers, he was the eldest said try and find them. They found some of them dead and buried in the snow along the way to
Montana. It was a real set back and two of the pioneers were living in Stirling at that time and it was a real setback and I remember that
well. My dad’s father was Edward Allan Erickson and his mother was Belate Seely. They both came from Utah.

Jon Duncan: Do you remember them well?

Leroy Erickson: Oh yes, I remember them well. My granddad had a moustache a long moustache and his homestead and my dads
homestead were only a mile apart. Dads homestead was a mile mark of a mile east of the east end of Tyrell’s lake. Grandpa’s homestead
was a mile east, but he also ha a house in Stirling and he had four or five new cows and that’s more or less where he lived. He grew a big
garden, but he would come down to the farm and in the spring to plan a crop. He a two white horses and a wagon. When I new the day
was coming I would always look up the road to the west and then I saw them. A half mile away I could see them coming right up the road.
He would reach down and pull on the brake on the wagon and I would climb up on the hub of the wheel and he would take my hand and
pull me right up and we were sitting up on a nice high spread seat on the wagon. He would reach into his pocket and he always ha
peppermints and white sherbet chewing gum. That was a habit that runs right down through my family to this very day. All of my children
and even my grandchildren carry white peppermints in there pocket. That just goes to show you that something that kind of inherited and
goes down through a family.

Jon Duncan: So you helped your grandpa with the farming?

Leroy Erickson: Well I was just a kid. He would come down and put the crop in and then go back to Stirling because he had to make milk
his cows all the time. He was a great guy I have heard people in Stirling say that whenever it snowed in the winter time my grandpa had a
kind of snow plough mad out of about twelve inch plank, it was made in a V and whenever it snowed he would hook up a horse and he
would go up town and he would clean all the sidewalks so that the kids going to school didn’t have to walk out of the deep snow. I never
realized that myself until the last few years I’ve been told by several different people who lived in Stirling and went to school there about
my granddad Edward.

Jon Duncan: He would plough the snow.

Leroy Erickson: Plough the snow and clean the sidewalks.

Jon Duncan: What about your grandma?

Leroy Erickson: She came from a family, the Seely family was a big family in Stirling, and her dad was my great grandfather Moroni. He
was paralyzed, he was in the bed all the time, he was a veteran on the Indian war in the United States, and he received a pension and he
chewed tobacco. He had a spittoon a ways away from the bed, he was in the bed most of the time and he didn’t always hit the spittoon. He
was a veteran of the U.S. Indian war so his children who was my grandmother, Belate. She had to, everything that they ate came from the
cows in the barn, and the pigs, and chickens, and the garden. I remember her kind of pickles and her kind of cakes and her kind of meals.
The house that they lived in, I think Lineman Hardy lives in that lot now, but there was a little attic upstairs all the bed were her favourite
bed and her favourite pillows. I remember when we stayed there that I would go upstairs and the minute I got into that be I would just
about disappear I just slowed down and a soon as the light went out you could hear the mice running up and down between the two by
fours in the attic. We could catch them I guess but they got to make a living.

Jon Duncan: Tell me something, I am curious about these mice, did people have a lot of cats.

Leroy Erickson: Sure they had cats but they didn’t let them in the house like they do nowadays. Dogs and cats are animals and they
should be outside where the animals are. Everybody had a dog then you had to have a dog then to help bring the cows in. People had
cats because you had to have barns and hay and you had greeneries, you had wheat in the barn yard. The cats stayed in the barn yard
where there suppose to stay and when you were milking the cows some of the cats would come and stand at the cow and we would squirt the milk in there face, that’s how they got the milk when you were milking the cows.

Jon Duncan: So cats and dogs were pets or not?

Leroy Erickson: No not really, well some of them might, but not one of them would be a pet. Some of the cats around the barn were
turned around; they got all there living from the gophers in the pasture. I still believe that cats and dogs were brought up to be outside
where they had to fend for themselves, not running around in the house getting cat hair all over everything.

Jon Duncan: So did you spend a lot of time at grandma and grandpa’s house?

Leroy Erickson: Not too often because they lived in Stirling and our farm was twenty miles away. But on May the 24^thor July 24^thof that
year dad had tried to get us on the buggy to go up to Stirling for the celebration day and then we were staying at grandma and grandpas
for a couple of days.

Jon Duncan: Was this on May the 24^thor on July the 24^th

Leroy Erickson: July 24^th. That’s the day that the church always celebrates July 24^th.

Jon Duncan: Pioneer day, was that a big celebration in Stirling?

Leroy Erickson: That was a big celebration, it was the big celebration because as far as I know because we didn’t get to go any other
place. July 24^thwas a big celebration. I remember we were one year; we were staying with someone up there overnight at my cousin’s
place we got up there early in the morning, about seven o’clock in the morning we could hear a band playing. We still lived at the farm at
that time. We ran up to the schoolhouse and up on top of the schoolhouse there was a little red fence going around. A little square
platform up there and the band was playing music, George Oler was the band leader. Their music was the best all over town. I remember
that well. Just down the below school house was a little community hall. They had a band that played until ten o’clock, and by the trees
there we would set up planks and canvases. I bought a pop up at the high school; you could buy a pop for five cents. I can remember I
had ten cents and I bought a pop for five cents it was white soda pop and I didn’t know how to drink it kept coming up through my nose.

Jon Duncan: Did they have a rodeo on the 24^th?

Leroy Erickson: Not then that was early days. They had a parade and there are still some families would dress up they still had pioneer,
take the dog and the cat put them in the wagon, put the baby in. Representative of the pioneers in Salt Lake City that character followed
right in to Stirling. Of course there were a lot of young guys that rode on horses. Some dressed up like Indians and some didn’t have a
shirt on. They would hoot and holler like they were Indians, sometimes they would pick up one of their girls put her up on the horse and
she would scream like she didn’t like it. That was the feeling of the people, everybody had a good time.

Jon Duncan: Now after you moved to Stirling did you participate in some of these parades?

Leroy Erickson: Ya, I rode a horse once or twice in the parade I don’t really remember dressing up to much, when we moved to Stirling I
was twelve years old and I had never been in town before so I was kind of a shy guy. Took me a while to get used to town, I wasn’t an
active participant like some of the other guys that were raised there.

Jon Duncan: Now you lived on a farm near Tearon with you parents and you brothers and sisters. Tell me what the farm was like?

Leroy Erickson: Our farm was a rocky land and our farmstead where the house was out of one hundred and sixty acres there were only
about sixty acres that were farmable. The east half of the farm consisted of kind of a lake bottom and over on the east side where the
pasture was rocky and dry and when the grass was chewed down by the horses and cows close to the earth, the hill was covered with
Indian circles, rock circles, there must have been thirty of them. It was a place as I look back what it looked like to the Indians as they were
parked there all in the top of this hill and there was a nice lake bottom of water. But in our years down there sometimes that lake was absolutely dry and the land was rocky. My brother and I were always picking rocks. I said to my dad one day, how come you picked out this piece of land with all these rocks. He said well I will tell you son I came from Stirling one day, two or three of us one day we were about nineteen years old looking for a piece of land to homestead and we come here on our saddle horses and we had a spade with us and he said that the land was up to the belly of a horse and here was a nice lake of water and he said we were only two miles away from the bit
Tarrels lake and he said we got off of our horses and dug the shovel into the soil and the soil was good, good top soil. So this is where we
staked out claim and when the grass diapered and we started to farm it then we found out that we had all the rocks.

Jon Duncan: Now where there some alkali patches on the farm to?

Leroy Erickson: No not to much the lake bottom would be dry and so the alkali went out into the lake was dry you would have alkali in the
lake bottom. But we tried, it was doubled, dad tried to in some dry years he would try to put some seed on the side because there was no
lake. But he never could get the lake to dry in the grumble. The when the rains came then the lake would slowly dry up, today that lake
has got lots of water in it because now it gets irrigation. The Tarrels Lake itself went totally dry for three or four years there was nothing
but great big alkali field and when the wind blew the alkali would twist and go up into the sky. But now Tarrels Lake is controlled with
irrigation water and they planted trout in there and Tarrels Lake raises great big trout and I could never imagine that lake having trout in it
but it had until this day. Tarrels Lake had trout.

Jon Duncan: So this farm was it a dry land farm?

Leroy Erickson: Dry land farm.

Jon Duncan: No irrigation at all, the house was it on the farm.

Leroy Erickson: No the house that we just had a little garage, a little house which ended up to be a garage. My older brother was born in
that house, which was a garage. But in about 1915 my dad and mother built a new house and so I was born in 1916 in the new house and
that house is still sitttin there on that land, it do nest look much like a house anymore. But to me it was a nice white house and it had an
ion kitchen and a dining room and a small living room downstairs and mom and dad had a bedroom.

Jon Duncan: There was an outhouse out in the back?

Leroy Erickson: Oh yes, we had an out house, where we put all the old catalogues. We always got entertained by reading the

catalogues in the outhouse.

Jon Duncan: Tell me about you parents, your mom and dad.

Leroy Erickson: There were five brothers and one sister. Dad was the oldest his name was Arthur and then Labar, then Laphy, Ralph,
and George. His sister’s name was Ada and she married Angus Anderson, he was a farmer who had a farm only two miles from our farm.
What else did you want to know?  

Jon Duncan: What was your dad like?

Leroy Erickson: He was a Norwegian, we are Erickson’s and we are Norweigen. My dad and all of his brothers I guess that they took
after their father. The always had horses they were horse men, in those days all of your farming was done by horsemen. My dad was a
good horseman and he repaired the harnesses and he broke the horses he knew how to take a wild horse and break him. He was a neat
man, he always wore a stetson hat whenever he dressed he had a stetson had and I believe that all of his brothers. Now a stetson hat is
one of the best hats that you can get, in those years. He wore black shoes and they were a special type of shoes, nowadays we wear
oxfords but he wore shoes that were a special brand and he always kept them shined up. He was neat. I remember him in those days they
had cuffs, they wore cuffs on their wrists that were made of leather. They started at the wrist and they were about eight inches long. Dad
always had a pair of gloves in his pocket. I remember him, he was fussy when he did go some place, but back in those days if you went
somewhere you either rode a horse.  

Jon Duncan: No did you ever help him farm?

Leroy Erickson: Sure, ya we helped on the farm, we milked the cows and fed the chickens and picked rocks and picked the potato bugs
and did what we needed to do we had to get up in the morning, we walked a mile to school. So we would get up about six thirty in the
morning and when my dad was working in the fields we would get on a saddle and go down to the pasture and round up the horses and
bring them in and then he would saddle them up and feed them and we would go in for breakfast, we would milk the cows and the go to
school. Sure we worked on the farm.

Jon Duncan: About what age were you when you began working on the farm?

Leroy Erickson: Well I don’t remember but I was twelve years old when we moved to Stirling so we were milking cows and stuff when we

were bi enough to do it. Good boys can help their dad a lot when they are nine ten eleven. You are probably better than a hired man, you
know what to do.

Jon Duncan: So the first school that you actually went to was near the farm.

Leroy Erickson: Tarralys Lake, one mile. It was a rural school with about fifteen students from about grade one to grade eight. The first
few years that we went to school the school teacher lived with us in our house. Later they built a little home beside the school and she
lived there. She or he, in most cases it was a lady. Most of the kids that went to school came from much farther than we did and they
would come to school in a buggy, or on a horse. We lived only a mile away we walked

Jon Duncan: Even during the winters.

Leroy Erickson: Ya in the winter. It was very seldom that sometimes they would cancel school. The country then was a lot of drifting and
there was the fences beside the road and rock piles and if it snowed it drifted and the roads would clog right up. So they cancelled school.
I remember that dad took us in a bobsleigh sometimes.

Jon Duncan: So when you were twelve your family moved to Stirling why did they do that?

Leroy Erickson: Well we were finished grade eight and no more high school, Stirling was twenty miles away and that is why we moved to
Stirling. It was very important to mother, I remember her telling dad that we have got to get those kids where there is a high school. So
that is why we moved. Worked up there and didn’t get moved until about the middle of September. We lived in a house right close to the school. And I was to start grade nine and I couldn’t get in because they didn’t have room in the school. It took about a month or so before
they could make arrangements for me to go to school. The first day that I went to school they had a geometry exam and I never had done
any geometry. And I got four.

Jon Duncan: So it was an adjustment for you to go to school there.

Leroy Erickson: Ya it was an adjustment we weren’t used to a whole lot of people there and we were probably about 150 people in the
school at that time. We were born and raised in the country. I remember when I started going to boy scouts I was twelve years old and so I
got into the scout program and there were lots of activities in town then we got to go to church. We had never been to church much
before that and it seemed like two or three hours that we had to listen to people talk about things that I didn’t know anything about.

Jon Duncan: What were the churches services are like back then?

Leroy Erickson: Well they were good they were strong families and in Stirling everybody that I knew was pretty well all members of the
church. There were just a few odd families. All of the activities of the communities evolved, the church dances, church programs, church
drama, and church basketball. Once you got into the activities it was great. You learned a lot which you wouldn’t have learned if I hadn’t of
learned if I hadn’t of participated in things like drama and stuff.

Tape 1 Side 2

Jon Duncan: Okay now we are talking about church services now I wanted to ask you had church services during the week as well.

Leroy Erickson: No we had the MIA which was for the young people, was on a Tuesday, so that’s when we would go to the general
opening of the MIA and we would disperse and go to our scout meeting that was pretty well the only other church service other than
Sunday. On Sunday it isn’t like it is today we went to Sunday school at ten o’clock and then we weren’t to a sacrament meeting a seven
o’clock at night and there were other church meeting such as the feast hood and choir practice and so on two of the older people were
pretty well involved in church all day Sunday.

Jon Duncan: Now who was you Bishop?

Leroy Erickson: Bishop Fawns was the first bishop and he had been a bishop for twenty five years. He was the first Bishop, A. E. Fawn.

Jon Duncan: What do you remember most about him?

Leroy Erickson: Well he was a big man and my father in law was Niels Peterson and he was a checkers player and so was the bishop. I
can remember bishop fawns going to my father in laws place lots of afternoons and they would play checkers for a couple of hours he was
a big man he had a little farm outside of Cranbrook he had only one son. He had three or four good looking daughters. I remember him well he was a big man.
Jon Duncan: You have had many bishops over the years, how has the role of bishop changed from then to now.

Leroy Erickson: Well it seemed to me that in the smaller towns the bishop was kind of a leading man he was the mayor and in many
cases the leading man in the town and they stayed in the office for years and chanced their cancellers a lot. But when a bishop gets
older, today our bishops are all young men. They are young enough and are proficiently men most of them, doctors, lawyers, and highly
educated. They fit right in with there children’s activities. I see a lot of difference in bishop roles today than in bishop roles then. Of course
the times have changed. Today I just marvel when I see our bishop today, bishop waycock is a small man and when the choir sings he
gets up and sings with them. When the kids are taken on a scout trip they all go, they have vans and they go. There is a lot of difference
and the wards are organized differently. They have money do this and do that. It is a lot different than it was then.

Jon Duncan: Were there many youth activities when you were growing up.

Leroy Erickson: Well there was a scout work for the boys and basketball. Stirling is a basketball town so is Raymond and Magrath I can
remember in the winter times on Saturdays we had to get the janitor to open up the old hall and they had never had a fire in the furnace
and we would play basketball on Saturdays and it was so cold that you could hardly put your shoes on. Basketball was the activities and
in the summer we rode horses and rode around and we used to go out to the lake where all the cows were and ride the calf’s around, had
lots of fun on our saddle horses.

Jon Duncan: That was what you would do for fun.

Leroy Erickson: Well you guys today have got a car and in your spare time you will get in your car and go somewhere. We went on our
saddle horses so if we had an afternoon off when the berries were ripe up on the ridge which was about fifteen miles away. I remember
my brother and I hooking up a team of horses to a wagon and throwing a couple quilts in and we went out on the ridge we took a 22 out
there and picked barriers and that was our summer holidays. We had enough Saskatoon’s for mother to put up thirty or forty quarts of
Saskatoon’s that was out holiday and we enjoyed it.

Jon Duncan: So you actually went camping up on the ridge and picked berries.

Leroy Erickson: Yep, now there are no berries up there you get pretty well the cattle cleaned it off and what the cattle don’t get there are
huderite colonies all around they go up there and clean them off. They go up there and you can hardly find a Saskatoon anymore.

Jon Duncan: Okay now I want to go back a little bit, you went back into town when you were twelve years old. Was this a house that you
had built?

Leroy Erickson: No we rented a house from Vern Spackman. He had moved out and we rented it or something. It was right by the
school.

Jon Duncan: So the first house you rented did your parents later build a house.

Leroy Erickson: We moved there and then we rented another house. It was a house that my great grandpa Seely, he died and she died,
we lived there for a while. Then my dad built a house right there on that corner where that white house that they are going to have for a
museum is sitting there in Stirling. Where the rock is, right there, there are five acres there, my dad bought that, and built a house. right
across east from that museum, where all those carrels are. Five acres and it was out of town.

Jon Duncan: Okay so that is eventually where he ended up.

Leroy Erickson: Ya

Jon Duncan: So tell me about the house there. What was it like?

Leroy Erickson: It was just a rectangle house. It had a kitchen, my dad and mother’s bedroom, and a big living room. But it had a small
cement basement in it and upstairs was all open. There was just the rafters coming down, there was no insulation. It was big there was
lots of room. By brother and I had a room and my two sisters had a bed up there. It wasn’t for a few years until we put a petition between
the two bedrooms. In one place just at the top of the stairs there was a floor there and in the fall of the year everybody the, not only there
but when we went to town as well. In the fall of the year my dad would always kill a beef and pig. The pigs we cut them into quarters and
salted them down and they were laying there on the floor salted down. The flower there would be three, four hundred pounds of flower.
There would be a hundred pounds of white sugar and there would be in twenty pounds bags would be oatmeal and that was all lying on
this floor just upstairs was the winter supply. Of course down in the basement would be canned stuff. Upstairs was all open and when it
got cold weather the snow and the ice would come dragging down

Jon Duncan: Inside the house. 

Leroy Erickson: Ya, you know the frost on the nails, you shingle a house and the nails will go through and hold the shingles on but the
nails will come down and when there is cold weather they frost up turn white and it will all be white.

Jon Duncan: Okay so it was cold out there.

Leroy Erickson: Ya but I didn’t matter we wore all legged underwear. On once you jumped into bed it was warm, it’s okay.

Jon Duncan: Now how many coal stoves did you have in the house?

Leroy Erickson: We had two we had the kitchen and then the heater. But the minors went on a strike in the winter time one year just in
that fall of the year when everybody was suppose to get the coal. Some people had coal bins in there bins, the ones that had money and
the ones that didn’t could only but a ton or two at a time didn’t have coal and they dang near froze. I remember my dad saying we always
had to have twenty ton of coal in the coal bin for the winter. We had enough coal but we had to go easy we had to help somebody out. My
dad says that’s enough we will buy an oil stove. That’s what miners do to themselves that’s what unions do to themselves they can’t just
like safe right now. They will never catch up and that’s what happened. The coal miners would go on strike and then the oil burner stoves
come then another couple of years the miners were out of a job. They shut the mines down. But I remember the first year that we had an
oil stove in Stirling. So then we just had to cook stuff over the oil stove.

Jon Duncan: Where was the oil stove?

Leroy Erickson: It was in the living room.

Jon Duncan: So where did you store the oil.

Leroy Erickson: Outside in a tank, in a gas barrel you had a line it was out on the west side of the house. You had a copper line, you put
it up on a platform so that it would siphon and in cold weather sometimes it got so darn cold that it wouldn’t hardly siphon.  

Jon Duncan: So was this oil stove a step up for you.

Leroy Erickson: Oh defiantly.

Jon Duncan: Was it a smelly?

Leroy Erickson: Well if you were careful and kept your lines clean you never noticed it. At least I don’t remember, it provided a nice
uniform heat I remember that.

Jon Duncan: I haven’t asked you about your mother. What was she like?

Leroy Erickson: She was a small lady, she only weighed about ninety two pounds maybe ninety six pounds and her dad and mother
were of English ancestry and her mother kind of inherited that he went back to Utah and took a business course. She had taken a piano
fairly good. She was really good she even taught school at Tyrell’s Lake the odd time when they couldn’t get a teacher. She was a pretty
sharp little lady. She was a business head she always kept a journal and always kept clippings out of a newspapers and stuff. She wrote
all these journals in all these little black and red books. When she passed away there must have been forty or fifty of them and I gathered
them and gave them in a story farm and gave my brother and sister each a copy. I learnt more about the world from mother’s journals.
You know when you are young and living on a farm there was no communication like there is today there wasn’t even radio and so what
happened on the other side of the world you never heard about. I didn’t believe that there was a place such as a London England and a
bunch of these things and I thought that is a bunch of bunk, but mother kept in her journal everything. We had a bad summer, wheat was
worth about thirty cents a war was declared in Europe john doe got killed, the horses ran away and all the things that mother wrote about
the world and she kept clippings about the world and stories and I would read them. I learned more about the world from mother’s journals
than I did from anywhere else. I knew that if she said that we went to Salt Lake City and we did this, I knew that it was done. Otherwise I
didn’t know. That is entirely different from the young people today they see too much. Immediately if something happens on the other side
of the world we know it.

Jon Duncan: I want to ask you did they have a piano in the home for her to play.

Leroy Erickson: We didn’t get a piano until later years in Stirling, when my sister got old enough for piano. Mother and dad got a second
hand piano. But that wasn’t until; well my sister is younger than me you know so when she got to be about sixteen. I guess that that would
be in the late thirties.

Jon Duncan: Who taught your sister to play?

Leroy Erickson: Mother. She never was a real great piano player but mother taught her.

Jon Duncan: Did you have a garden in the home that you mother worked in or your dad worked in.

Leroy Erickson: Well we had a garden there but you couldn’t raise to much you could raise potatoes if you had rain in the spring you
would get some radish and some carrots. But in Stirling we had irrigation we had a garden. Mother put up lots of vegetables and fruit.
When winter come we had, everybody raised a garden there and we had a milk cow and had a pig and chickens we were pretty well
independent. You had to be during the depression you couldn’t get a job and that is how you survived.

Jon Duncan: Who raised the garden?

Leroy Erickson: Well us kids, I was twelve years old when we moved to Stirling and we didn’t have a garden the first couple of years that
we rented but when we built a house I was fourteen and my brother was sixteen. We would help mother plant the garden and irrigate it
and do the whole thing. Dad was away working most of the time. So we had a big garden.

Jon Duncan: So it was mom and the kids.

Leroy Erickson: Mom and the kids that took care of the garden.

Jon Duncan: Now I want to go back a little bit but the garden on the farm, you weren’t able to raise much.

Leroy Erickson: Nope but we always planted. We always planted. We raised potatoes and carrots. If we got a rainy spring or planted
early we could get some lettuce and some radishes and some years we would get beans, some years we would get peas but it was dry.
When we were in town we raised everything.

Jon Duncan: Now how did you manage to get enough water on this dry land?

Leroy Erickson: We had a caragana hedge. We had lots of snow it seems to me like and the snow in the winter would drift on the east
side of the hedge and it would go halfway across the garden so if there had been four feet of snow next to the trees it would taper off like
this and so when spring came it took three weeks or so more before that soaked into the ground so the west side of the garden was
always the best. Sometimes there was enough moisture there to raise a good garden.

Jon Duncan: So you depended on the snow.

Leroy Erickson: That is why the government encouraged everybody to grow trees. Put trees around your yard in the field anyplace
because it acts like a snow fence. The snow would build up on the east side and you would get the moisture.

Jon Duncan: So it was the government that encouraged.

Leroy Erickson: Well in later years the wind was drifting away. Then they came up with a program that I think survives to this day. If you
apply now to get trees next year you can get fine trees and different trees and.

Jon Duncan: Shelterbelts.

Leroy Erickson: Shelterbelts right.

Jon Duncan: So did you have many trees on the farm then?

Leroy Erickson: Two we had two little trees, the country was bare there were no trees but in town, in Stirling, where they had the water
they had the trees.

Jon Duncan: So it was just the caragana bushes.

Leroy Erickson: Ya we had caragana’s they’ll grow.

Jon Duncan: And two little trees on the farm, now when you came in you were able to raise a garden, you had lots of trees around the
house, and did you also have an orchard?

Leroy Erickson: We had five apple trees on those five acres. Fiver crab apple trees were there. They had lived there before and they
were big trees and some years they were just loaded. There were three types one was a mid sized red crab and the others were good for
putting up and were sweeter they had kind of a yellow crab. They were just loaded with apples, we couldn’t use them all I remember dad
selling them to the hudedrite colony down south. They had come down on a little wagon by a bunch of young girls who sold them for ten
dollars for each tree. I think that there were three trees left and we kept the others. Three trees that he got for ten dollars each and they
had picked all the apples.

Jon Duncan: What did you mom do with the apples?

Leroy Erickson: She put them up one was a kind of pickles, she made spiced pickles out of the yellow ones. The others were just put up
as food.

Jon Duncan: So you bottled the apples

Leroy Erickson: Bottled them yes and made apple sauce

Jon Duncan: What about your water, where did you get you water when you were on the farm?

Leroy Erickson: We hauled it, we had a well that was eighty foot deep but we used the water for the cattle. We had a pulley and a rope,
you have seen them with a bucket on each end of the rope and pulled it up and put it in the water trough. That well would go dry in the
summer and then on a dry summer me and my brother would take the horse, we usually had enough water to water the cows, we would
take the horses to Tyrell’s Lake once a day. Then we had a cistern, the ground down there in the country you can hardly dig a cistern it is
white and hard. With your picks and your shovels you dig a cistern, we had a round cistern, and then you would take chicken wire, I can
remember my dad making them. You hold up the chicken wire and you would make some spikes and just get this little round iron stuff and
bend them and drive it in to the dirt and it would hold the chicken wire against the dirt. You would mix up plaster and plaster your cistern
and then haul drinking water to my house in a water tank. We would borrow my neighbour’s water tank and haul some water. After you
filled the cistern in the fall that had to last you all winter, you just used that water for cooking and drinking. We would haul the water from
the well in to the house for washing and it was horrid water it was alkali. It was horrid water. But then they mad home made soap. When
you killed a pig you took the fat put lye in it and make home made soap. These great big bars of soap and you would use that in the
house, to cut this hard water.

Jon Duncan: So you mom made all your own soap.

Leroy Erickson: Made all our own soap.

Jon Duncan: The water for washing came from a well and drinking water was in the cistern.

Leroy Erickson: Yes and it came from there were two or three farmers that had good water and they let us haul it. But we had to borrow
a water tank from the neighbour to go and get it.

Jon Duncan: How much time did you have to fill the cistern on time?

Leroy Erickson: Maybe three times.

Jon Duncan: Three times a year.

Leroy Erickson: You just had water like it was cold.

Jon Duncan: It was so dry up there. But when you came into Stirling there was an irrigations system there. Did you also have a cistern?

Leroy Erickson: Ya we had to build a cistern, and while we were watering the garden we had a little ditch and we dug down a hole in the
ground about five feet deep and we filled it up in the bottom we put rock and gravel and then sand up on top. We had a ditch and we had
a little stream of water that ran into this ditch. The water would filter up though the gravel and the sand, and then on the top it would run in
to the cistern. So while you are watering the garden for maybe half a day or three quarters of a day you had a little stream of water like
that running into the cistern. That filtered it; it ran through the rock and then the sand. We had a big cistern and we filled it twice a year

Jon Duncan: Just with the ditch water.

Leroy Erickson: Everybody in town they had a filter. They made their own filter and some of them were a little different. We had
something that we put in, choric, what was it?
It was kind of a salt.  The ditch water though sometimes was muddy but after it went through the cistern you would pour that on it and it
would run to the bottom of the cistern. The next time you would get down and clean the cistern.

Jon Duncan: Who had to clean out the cistern?

Leroy Erickson: Well us kids, you would just through a little ladder down and one kid with a rope ad a pulley and the other would go down with a fire shovel. 

Jon Duncan: When you would water the garden and fill the cistern what kind of irrigation methods did you use?

Leroy Erickson: We just made ditches. The gardens there were wide they were wide gardens and so we would just make burrows and
bank it up depending on how it sloped just to make sure that every row, bank it up and over there it was kind of high and build it up so.
Get all of the plants and some of the rows where it was just right just cut down on water. Make sure that it all soaked up good and move it
to the next place.

Jon Duncan: So it was flood irrigation.

Leroy Erickson: It was controlled, we just let it soak down the rows and it soaked out you know. We didn’t turn it on, we didn’t have water
all over the rows, and you could walk down the rows. You could tell what you have to have and how long it will last.

Jon Duncan: So in these gardens you had these little gardens and ditches along the rows for the water to run down.

Leroy Erickson: Yep

Jon Duncan: Did you also water the trees?

Leroy Erickson: Ya water the trees

Jon Duncan: Now how many trees did you have around the house?

Tape 2 Side 1
 
Jon Duncan: Okay I just asked you how many trees you had around the house.

Leroy Erickson: Well on the west side it was all trees it protected the house and the yard pretty good from the strong winds.

Jon Duncan: So these trees were mostly used as shelter belts.

Leroy Erickson: Well in town everyone had trees around their gardens and their house for protections and to help the garden. There
were a lot of nice trees in Stirling.

Jon Duncan: So let me ask you, when it came to your turn to do the watering when it was your families turn who did the irrigating?

Leroy Erickson: Well we had to get a water turn, everybody in town had to tie in for water and so we had a big garden and if we were
allowed to water it maybe for only twelve hours so on that day we had to go three blocks up town to where the main ditch was lift up the
head gate and take out our shovel and clean out the ditches. Follow the water from the main ditch to our ditch and clean the ditch, you
only had so many hours. We were all ready for it we had dug the ditches down to the garden and water.

Jon Duncan: So was it the kids that watched the water?

Leroy Erickson: Ya it was the kids that would do it.

Jon Duncan: Now you said that most times your dad was away working, where did he work?

Leroy Erickson: Well he worked for the government on the roads, on the gravel roads. He had a team of horses and a grader and those
was gravel road and a lot of the gravel had to be replaced, he did this with a team and a wagon. Shovel; load up his wagon the kind of
wagon that the bottom was made out of two by sixes. He could just turn it on edge and hit the right par on the road and unload the gravel
without a shovel. In later years he had a group of men named scrapers and teams and they did some road work for the government. The
farmers twenty miles away used to try to farm so dad wasn’t home to much he was busy trying to make a living.

Jon Duncan: So he was either graveling roads or working on the farm. So most of the work around the house in Stirling…

Leroy Erickson: My brother and I we milked the cows and fed the pigs and when my brother got older he stayed down at the farm and
that was my responsibility. I just did it and that was part of living and learning.

Jon Duncan: Who cleaned the house?

Leroy Erickson: Mother, and when my sisters got older they would help.

Jon Duncan: Who cooked?

Leroy Erickson: Mother was the cook.

Jon Duncan: What was your favourite meal?

Leroy Erickson: Well I don’t know, I don’t know but it was all done from the vegetables and the grain and the eggs that we raised, that we
produced. We didn’t go to the store, we didn’t have the money. In the fall of the year dad would get the sugar and the flower and the
cheerio’s and we didn’t have to go to a store. As long as you had salt and pepper, mother made bread; she baked the bread and good
bread.

Jon Duncan: How many times a week did she bake bread?

Leroy Erickson: I think maybe twice a week when we were all home and then I think that that tapered off as we got older, once a week.
Of course she made cinnamon buns and good stuff like that every once and a while, bacon powder biscuits that was part of the meal.
Back in mothers day they made everything.

Jon Duncan: Who kept the stove going for her?

Leroy Erickson: Well in the mornings we kids had to get up fairly early and we would take turns, I remember coming down the stairs in
the winter time and the house would get cold. On the old cook stoves there was a reservoir with water. In the winter time sometimes the
reservoir, the top would be frozen.  To make the fire you just shook the grates. The ashes just went down in to the ash pad and then you
would have wood kindling that you would peal some of the wood in small kindling or newspaper. Small pieces of wood and then get the fire
going and put the coal on top. Take the ashes out and dump them outside.  Of course when you had the oil stove you kept it going.
Nobody froze to death. It is sure nice now, I had forgotten about those things.

Jon Duncan: Now I want to change directions here just a little bit, when you were growing up in Stirling, who were your friends?

Leroy Erickson: Lyman Hardy still alive, Diane Adamson, Darwin Oar, Urban Young, some of those fellows are gone. A lot of the older
guys are all gone. All of the Zaugg brothers knew all of them. I think that Lyman Hardy was probably my closest friend; he still lives in
Stirling, him and his wife. He is a good guy he never did get in to trouble. He never went to Halloween like the rest of us, never swore,
nothing else. I had come from the country and he was raised in the church all of his life and I was a country hick. Him and I are still good
friends. I played basketball so everyone my age, I was well acquainted with them and I get along with people. I still go to Stirling, when they
have their days or have their breakfasts. Stirling had changed a lot, a lot of young people and there are two wards. But it is still a good
town, basketball town and it was a good place to be raised.

Jon Duncan: What did you guys get up to at Halloween?

Leroy Erickson: Well I don’t know where I dare tell you that Jon. I’ll tell you one thing that we did though was, there was a vacant lot on
the north end of town and there was a family here from Lethbridge that was called shirts and they had honey bees around, they had a
bunch of honey bees on this lot. Some of us kind of liked honey, I remember one time four or five of use on the horses, my brother was
one of them, we were on separate horses and we decided that we wanted some honey and so we went down to the lot where the
honeybee lot was. One of the secrets of keeping the bees from waking up and getting kind of mad, somebody had a package of
cigarettes and you lit up a cigaret and you would just blow smoke In the top of the bees hive. You would go down and take out a frame
and we had a treat of honey. We couldn’t eat it all, he had one left and my brother and I took it home and hid it in the barn, this was on
Saturday night. The next morning on Sunday morning there was an older family that lived down there. He had four of five little kids and
they went to Sunday school in the morning. The bees were mad, the kids got a couple of stings from the honey and of course the story
got out at church that whoever stole that honey, they were in trouble. The church fathers met and they sent the word home to find out
who those kids were that got the honey. So when we got home mother asked us did you boys get the honey. We said no it wasn’t us. So
we were out working in the garden and dad came home from the farm and was down in the barn and mother had told him. Dad was in the
barn and he hollered at us, “hey boys come here” so we went over to the barn. We had the little milk stools that we sat down he said “sit
down, sit down on the stool,” we sat down on the stool and he said, “mother tells me that somebody was stealing honey last night,  the
older kids got stung. Were you boys out on your saddle horses last night.” We said yes. “Did you go down there in the honey?” Yup. He
said did you have any honey left over, he liked honey you know. Yup. He said where it is, he had already looked, and we had it down
between the two by fours. He went over and got it, took it out and tasted it and said here have some honey. We said we don’t want it, he
said have some honey! Now he says I don’t want you guys doing that now those little kids have to pay for what you have done. He said
you know that you have done wrong and said don’t do it again, by the way I wont tell mother. I am sure that he did, he was a good dad.
When we got into trouble at school and got a strapping he said you will get one when you get home. My sister, once and a while we would
get a strapping for some little thing, and she said “dad Roy got a strap.” He would take me down to the barn and give me another one.
The teachers back in those days were the leading roles in the community and the parents backed them up. I am glad that my dad could
control me because he gave me a strap every once and a while because he loved me. Now a days parents can’t do that, but he loved me and he taught what was right and wrong and that is the way that it should be today but it isn’t.

Jon Duncan: Now when you were a teenager you were also on several basketball teams. You won the championships one year.

Leroy Erickson: Ya we had a good high school game and we played intermediate, we were not only playing high school we played with
an intermediate team, that was older men that were out of school. About twenty two, twenty three, we won the intermediate tournament in
Alberta the same year that we won the church championship. We had a chance to go to Salt Lake City with the church and we didn’t go to
the. We didn’t set the finals in the Mman we gave that to Cardston, they were second. I think that it was 39 that we went to Salt Lake City.
Two car loads, for country kids we were staying in hotels and course down there in the states. These teams that we played against were
collages and they were great big men and the first night we played Wyoming and we got beat by about twenty thirty points but they ended
up to be the champions, we only played two nights we got beat both nights but they had a big parade. We were the Canadians amongst
all these American teams, they assigned us a little girl to be out hostess and we carried the flag and were treated as royal. The second
gamer for a while there we had them jumping, we had a good time. Some of the guys had people down there and went and visited them Virgil Selk, Darwin Oler and I stay in this hotel all the time. It was a great experience. 

Jon Duncan: What position did you play?

Leroy Erickson: I was guard. Our main players were Eric Peterson, Devin Erickson, Fred Spackman, and Glenn Adamson.

Jon Duncan: So you played with Glenn Adamson, Virgil Selk.

Leroy Erickson: Lyman Hardy, Devin Erickson, Fred Spackman.

Jon Duncan: Who were some of the teams that you played around here.

Leroy Erickson: We played New Dayton; well the stiff competition was always between Raymond and Magrath. We went down to Shelby.
We went to some of the school down across the line. We went to, the first time or two that I ever got to Calgary was through basketball. Edmonton had a champion girl’s team, they were champions of Canada. We had them come down here once and beat them, went up to
Calgary and beat them there. They were tall girls. We went to Hillspring, and Glenwood and all of the little towns. Sometimes we would go
on a bobsleigh. Basketball was a great part of our lives, in those years. In the winter months we were playing basketball two or three times
in a week. It was great.

Jon Duncan: So these champion women from Edmonton, the men played them actually.

Leroy Erickson: Ya, they came down, they were big tall girls, and they won the Canadian championship. We were a hot little team, of course we had a little shrivelled up basketball floor that these people weren’t used to. Strange team come, it was pretty hard to beat us guys because we were used to it. They were used to shooting an orange ball and they couldn’t get away with that. We were a good team, we beet them in Calgary. We played a high school team up there, Crescent Heights, and we beat them.

Jon Duncan: So in Alberta you did pretty well.

Leroy Erickson: We did pretty well. Of course Raymond and Magrath in the high school, we didn’t do so well in the high school. They
always had a better team. We played with them to give them good opposition. And Lethbridge, Lethbridge was always in the high school,
we came to Lethbridge a lot.

Jon Duncan: Was there a swimming hall in Stirling.

Leroy Erickson: No, down the coulee and out at the CPR dam. CPR had a water tank in Stirling. I don’t know that that dam is still there,
they had a dam out south of town about mile and a half, big cement dam and it backed up the water. It was good swimming. You could
stand up on the concrete and it was a good swimming pool. No swimming pools.

Jon Duncan: Did you go swimming much as the dam?

Leroy Erickson: Oh yes, we rode out horses out there. It was about two miles.

Jon Duncan: What about skating?

Leroy Erickson: Skating was just on the odd pond. There was no hockey then. We would just shovel off the ice with shovels, make a big
board and handles and clean the snow off. We would skate a night, have skating parties, usually make a bonfire. I didn’t know anything
about hockey and everyone else we played a couple of overshoes for goal, a broom, a ball or something. So I never did have the
opportunity to learn hockey, but I knew how to skate.

Jon Duncan: Where did people skate?

Leroy Erickson: On the coulees, down there. They finally made a fence; this was after I was moving away. Right straight in the big
Ogdan house in Stirling on the east side, they made a wooden fence. I think that they flooded that in the fall but I never did skate there
because I was older and gone. It was after my time that they started having hockey rings.

Jon Duncan: There was one other question that I had regarding you younger years. What kinds of games did you play as a child?

Leroy Erickson: In the rural schools in Tyrell’s lake, we would run. The school house was on the boarder and the fence on the south
side of the fence was about sixty yards away. Something that we called a game, you had to go on one side and one guy in the middle and
you tried to make it to the other fence, if you go caught you were it. When we had a softball we played a softball game. Sometimes we
would only get one or two softballs and a bat at the first of the season. We didn’t really have any equipment and so we were running
around. We were pretty fast on foot. Later when they started having the country fairs in New Dayton and rent them and that where they
were people took vegetables. He took there prised calf and their prised horse for this fair and they had races for the kids they would give
you a nickel or two if you won. I remember coming home from those country fairs and having thirty or forty cents in my pocket. I got so in
the later years going to school, a mile, I used to run. And so when I went to Stirling and got into competition there I was a miler. I would run
a mile race and won a lot. I won pole vault in the school competitions. I was a pretty good athlete. I could run a long ways and I was pretty
fast. 

Jon Duncan: Know it was 1929 when you moved to Stirling, that was the start of the depression. So I want to talk about the depression a
little bit with you. Now what was it like to grow up in this time?

Leroy Erickson: Well the only thing was that we didn’t have any money. You couldn’t get a job, so the only time that there was work on
the farm would be in this spring some farmers might hire someone to help in the spring. In the fall of the year the grain had to bee stooked
and then it had to be thrashed so when the trashing and so when the thrashing machines went around they had to have men with teams
and wagons to haul the grains to the thrasher. That was the time when young fellows in these towns, if they had a team and a wagon you
could always get a good job, a good worker. You could get a job stoking the grain with the farmers and so. So we would get a job stooking
for a few days and you would get paid two three dollars a day, then when the stooking was done then the thrashing came along and you
got a job with the thrashing machine. Thrashing machines then they had to have a crew and they had to have am man for each wagon
and then they had the feel pitchers to help load and at the machine you had an extra man hired. I didn’t have a team and a wagon so I
was a spike pitcher which was heavy work. Every load that came in I had to help the guy and I would clean up, I would get a dollar a day
extra. The guys that had a team they would get two dollars for the team. The cook core went with the thrashing machine. When you
finished thrashing on this farm the wagons went to the next place. The cook core was a cook the meals, she mad the meals, breakfast,
dinner and supper. Sometimes we had a great big tent to sleep in and we would through the straw in there and we had quilts to lie on and
sleep and you would go from farm to farm. You would get paid good wages. Four or five dollars a day was good wages. You had lots to
eat, when it rained you couldn’t work but they were great days.

Jon Duncan: So you worked on a thrashing crew during the depression years.

Leroy Erickson: Oh ya, Well one year we didn’t have a crop. Me and two other guys from Stirling, when Christenson had an old car we
went over to brooks, that was irrigation, I got a job on a thrashing machine over there. We just went over there and we would sleep in a
skating rink at night and we would go up town and try to get a job with the farmers. Then we went to the sugar factories and lined up there
for two three years. At night three shifts, eight in the morning, four in the afternoon, and midnight and try to get on. There were men lined
up, fifteen or thirty at every shift trying to get a job. I can remember a Forman and pointed, you in the red shirt, this big husky guy. I went
three years to Picture Butte for two weeks until we ran out of money and had to come home. Then finally I got a job. Once you got a
steady job you worked. My first job I got thirty seven cents an hour. I worked with a pair of boots and overalls and I was jumping into a kick
in the beast. I worked for that company and ended up with one of the best jobs and worked for them four forty five years.

Jon Duncan: So your first job, for thirty seven cents, this was at Picture Butte

Leroy Erickson: Picture Butte, thirty seven cents an hour.

Jon Duncan: Was this during the thirties that you got this job in Picture Butte?

Leroy Erickson: No, I didn’t get that job until thirty eight, first year I got married. For the campaign job for three months I got off. Then the
next year I worked for three months in the fall. Then I guess that they decided that I knew how to work and they gave me a steady job.

Jon Duncan: So the year that you got married was the year that you began working on the sugar campaigns. That was at Raymond and
Picture Butte.

Leroy Erickson: That was Picture Butte; I never did work in Raymond.

Jon Duncan: Now let me ask you this did your family raise sugar beats at all?

Leroy Erickson: No, we only had that dry land farm, that’s all. But I worked for Leave Erickson and helped him with his sugar beats. One
year to help me out in the summer he gave me five acres of beats and I helped him plant his crop in the spring and then used his horses
and cultivated his beats and helped him so he gave he five acres. So I had five acres of beats of my own and I made alright that year.

Jon Duncan: And that was just so that you would have some spending money.

Leroy Erickson: Ya well then every year then I helped with beats for different farmers.

Jon Duncan: Around the community.

Leroy Erickson: Yup

Jon Duncan: Did you also help haul the beats in the fall?

Leroy Erickson: No I never hauled them.

Jon Duncan: One event that I want to talk about with you is the 1935 election, when William Aberheart became premier. What do you remember about that?

Leroy Erickson: Well out high school teacher was a good teacher, he was…
 
Tape 2 Side 2
 
Jon Duncan: Okay we were talking about Sullan Low

Leroy Erickson: Ya well he was the principal of the Stirling high school. He was also out basketball coach in high school. He was a good
teacher, he was a good coach. So he was running as a candidate for social credit and so in the fall of the year about the time that school
started, he wasn’t there too much. Two or three times a week he would get in his car and go to the town and around trying to get in as a
social creditor and he did. He got nominated, and voted in, so we lost him as a teacher. He ended up as the representative of the social
credit government in the dominion government. He was a good man.

Jon Duncan: Did most people support the social credit?

Leroy Erickson: Sure, we did. The social credit theory was that you could create script, money, and give people a job and get ahead. To
prove it I had the opportunity, me, Roy Seely, and Boyd Nilsson, four or five of us guys in Stirling, they decided to improve the road
between Stirling and Raymond and the decided that they would hire a crew and to build roads then you would use horses and scrapers.
The road from Stirling to the steed forum in Raymond needed building up and we got jobs for the summer, it was hot. It was so hot that
the horses couldn’t work so we went to work at four in the morning, about five in the morning when we got out there, for five hours and
then we would come home and rest the horses and then go back in the afternoon. We worked eight hours ad day we worked there for a
couple of weeks and when we got paid we got paid sixty dollars in script money. It was nice stiff money and it looked like dollars. People
said that you can’t spend it, it is no good, and nobody will take it. So four of us hitch hiked to Lethbridge and we didn’t put the money in
out purse we put it in our shirt pockets so it stuck out. The Greek people they had some restaurants and the Jews would have stores in
Lethbridge. We went to Greek stores and bought new shirt, new overalls, new boots, new gloves and we went to White Lunch which was
owned by a Greek and we bought out dinner. You could buy a full meal then with soup and everything for thirty cents. Then we went to
the capital theatre to the show. The girl came, when we handed her the money she said, what’s this. She said I cant take this so there was
a little action backstage and pretty quick the mayor of Lethbridge who owned the theatre, Shackleford, he comes out here and says well
boys what is it you want. We said we want to go to the show and this is out money. He says that money is no good; he said if you start
using money like that this country will go to pot, that money is no good. We said you might think that it is not any good but look at our new
cloths; we had everything on brand new. Well he says, that’s phoney money but Ill take one of them for a souvenir. He says give them a
ticket. So we went in. That money that we had, sixty dollars, the way that it worked, when I got home that week I didn’t have much money
left over. But on Saturday what I had, if I had twenty dollars left over I went to the post office and I put a three cent stamp on those dollars
so that would cost me sixty cents to put that on and I could spend that money during the week. If I owed you twenty dollars, I paid you
twenty dollars, you could pay that to your brother, you could pay the neighbour and if you went around town to everybody that owed
money and pay off you debt. At the end of the week if you had five dollars left, it only cost you three cents each which is fifteen cents. So
in thirty three and a half weeks the dollar was paid for. It would have worked, social credit promoted that what made you buy in Alberta.
Everybody tried to buy things that were made in Alberta. So everybody went social credit. I was always social credit. Now I am reform.
Manning is an honest man and you can believe what he says. I am still a social credit.

Jon Duncan: Did your family have a radio in the home?

Leroy Erickson: Well we bought one when we got to Stirling. I can remember Rogers’s radio is a big one. Cost ninety five dollars, ninety
five dollars is just like a thousand now. It played pretty good. It was nice looking.

Jon Duncan: So were you able to listen to William Aberheart on the radio.

Leroy Erickson: No, well I don’t really remember that. They didn’t use the radio so much as a promotion as they do now. The guys that
are running, like Sullen Low, they all had a car and they drove around and had public meetings. Not everybody had a radio. So if you
wanted to speak to everybody in Stirling you would put a sign up in a public meeting Friday night. And then people would go.

Jon Duncan: Did the whole town come out to these meetings.

Leroy Erickson: Well pretty well all the voters, the mothers and fathers, I believe that they were all social credit.

Jon Duncan: So you had a radio in the home, what kinds of programs did you listen to?

Leroy Erickson:Well they had music. They weren’t in to much for advertising. You had news and you had music, you didn’t have all of
this. It took a few years before these advertising outfits took over. They had Amos and Andy, which was an old program. They had some
good musical programs and then you had good orchestras then. Eastern Canada, what was that show they had in the mornings, they had
some good programs.

Jon Duncan: Did you listen to the hockey games much?

Leroy Erickson: There wasn’t too much hockey. Well they had hockey but some people from Stirling used to come up to the hockey
fans. I don’t know much about hockey, I wasn’t interested in it. It wasn’t developed like it is now. You used to play hockey in the winter and
basketball in the winter. Now it’s almost June, they are out playing hockey. Football, and basketball, they are still playing basketball in the
United States. Before the season didn’t start until October, when we went down in April, now it is all commercialized and they are playing
basketball and hockey almost twelve months of the year. Crazy in my mind.

Jon Duncan: Going back to the depression just for a few minutes here. Were there many hobo jungles around Stirling? 

Leroy Erickson: Well not around Stirling. When the train went by, it was covered with men traveling from eastern Canada to the west.
And they were walking the highways looking for a job. They couldn’t find a job. Then the Alberta government set up some camps. Building
roadways one was the Warner hill which was one mile north of Warner, which would be nine miles from our farm. They set up camps there
and men who were unemployed, they had wheelbarrows and shovels and they cut down that hill with wheelbarrows and shovels. A few
teams they set up a camp and they gave them there meals, there shoes, cloths, and a few dollars a month. But they had enough money
to go out and buy cigarettes. There were several places like that and this gave them a place to go, when the war broke out, all that was taken care of.

Jon Duncan: Now did you ever ride the rails?

Leroy Erickson: I didn’t ride the rails but I walked the highways. When I was about nineteen, one year the crop was no good in our area
and Roy Ogden and I decided, we were about nineteen; we started walking the highways to Taber. Taber had a camery, worked twenty
four hours ad day. We got down there and tried to get a job and we couldn’t get one. We slept along the highway at night and of course
we weren’t carrying a big pack like some of the hobos. Then we went to Picture Butte and they were building a sugar factory, we tried to
get a job there. We couldn’t do it. My uncle had a tent in his back yard; we slept there a night or two and had meals with him. Then we
headed west, we got to Lethbridge hitch hiking and then to Fort MacLoud. We got out on the highway at Fort MacLoud, we didn’t really
know where we were and of course we didn’t have a pack, we were young. We got up between Fort MacLoud and pincher creek; there
was nothing out there but tourists. There were tourists and of course then they had their tents and that all over the top of the car and
along the sides. They were tourists and they gave us a ride. We got out there and there was nothing. Finally there was an old CPR
station and there was a man and his wife. As soon as we knocked on the door he said, you boys go back to Calgary. He says what are
you doing out here bumming a meal. They gave us some bread and a piece of sausage and we hit the road again. Ten, eleven o’clock at
night we were out there on a truck and we come along a transport and he stopped. He had a sign on the windshield that said no riders.
He opened the door and said get in boys, he says what are you doing out here. We said, well we were hitch hiking. He said the next town
is Pincher Creek in forty miles. See that sign, no riders. He says I shouldn’t have you guys in here but I have been driving for so long that I
can’t stay awake. When I saw you two guys I knew that you would accompany me, he says get in. He took us right to
Pincher Creek and at the top of the hill he says you have got to get out. So we got out. When we were walking downtown a big white
bulldog came out after us and we got downtown. We had enough money; you could buy a meal for two bits. Pincher Creek was a booming town. There was lots of pay up there and there was a big contractor that did road work was out east of town, we spent the night there sleeping in the car and watched two or three fist fights. Next morning we hiked out to this camp. He had about twenty-five or thirty men and a whole bunch of horses, he had a farm to. We went in with a meal and had dinner then we asked the Forman for a job. My friend Roy, he got a job milking the cows and grinding oats for the horses. So I went to head back out on the road and the Forman hollered at me, he said hey kid, can you drive horses. Yes I said I can drive horses, he said can you drive ten head, I said yup. So I drove ten head of horses and cultivated doing farm work for a week or two. Then he said, lets put you on the highway, you can tack a pick of them ten horses. Six horses and then you’ll be on the highway. So then I was doing roads for a while. We were getting twenty five dollars a month. But we had a contract deal and if one of us quit the other went. One morning when they were harvesting the horses one team ran away with a wagon and hit the side of the barn where Roy was milking the cows and he came out all covered with milk. He says I quit, I quit, just come on Roy I quit. I said I don’t wasn’t to quit. We had a deal he says. So we quit, hitchhiked to Waterton lakes. So we had a little experience but they would pick us up and give us a ride where the regular bums that had a big pack and unshaven and all that. So people were looking for work, they were roaming the country. When we got home, about three weeks after we left, when we left I had about three dollars in my pocket and he had about seventy five cents. When we came home we had about fifteen dollars and a little experience.

Jon Duncan: So when was it that you got married, how old were you. 

Leroy Erickson: I got married in thirty eight and I was born in sixteen.

Jon Duncan: So you were twenty two years old, it was a local girl.

Leroy Erickson: Ya, Alta Peterson

Jon Duncan: Now how did you get together with her?

Leroy Erickson: Well we were in the same grade in school, at the dances, the parties, and other stuff. She was a good dancer. I guess
that we were in drama and stuff together and I didn’t take her out to much. In the summer time I worked out of town and I would come back
in the fall. I started dating her and taking her to dances and she was a good dancer. I fell in love with her and we got married.

Jon Duncan: Now, where did you learn to dance?

Leroy Erickson: Well in Stirling, they had kid dances in Stirling, I don’t know if they still do. The primary on Christmas and new years
when ever they had a party, they would make a little music and teach the kids how to dance So then they had kid dances. Fourteen and
under, they would always have a Santa Clause on special. But the older kids, who were fifteen and sixteen they always went to the kid
dances in the afternoon and danced with their little brothers and sisters and the school. When I was fourteen and fifteen I went to these
and learned to dance. Then when we got older, we always went to the kid dances in the afternoon and then there was a dance at night.
You couldn’t go to the dance at night; I think that you had to be fourteen. So we started dancing at night in Stirling and Raymond. All the kids in the LDS church are good dancers and they still are. They knew how to dance and it would give you a chance to hug the girls and have a good time.

Jon Duncan: So could you keep up with Alta then?

Leroy Erickson: Ya, she was a good dancer.

Jon Duncan: You were both pretty good then

Leroy Erickson: Not only that we always went to dances. Then in our later years we went to the square dance club. Then we began
going to Mason Arizona for several years we danced on their square dance. We would get up at ten every morning and every day of the
week we would go dancing on a different course. Yes we were dancers. Then when I lost her, I still go to their senior dances. My dad was a dancer and my mother, they used to come home from the dances in Raymond in the sleigh or the buggy, they used to come home and they would win the waltz. I can remember my mother saying dad would always say hurry up, hurry up; he was the first one into the dance and the last one out.

Jon Duncan: Now were their many school dances.

Leroy Erickson: Ya there were quite a few. There were three country schools, Tarryls Lake, Independence, and Kessler. They were
about six seven miles apart. So all the activities from the farm activities went on at the school, if there was a spelling match they all went
there. Then if there was a track meet, you would have a track meet in the summer. You would have you Christmas programs, there was activates between the country schools.

Jon Duncan: As a teenager did you did you go to other school dances like Raymond or Magrath.

Leroy Erickson: I didn’t have a car, some guys did but I didn’t. We went to Raymond; Raymond had a cement pavilion there by the
Japanese church, they had dances there in the summer on this pavilion. So usually in the summer four or five of us guys, if we could rake
up a car, we would go. We couldn’t get around like they do now days.

Jon Duncan: So most of your transport was your horses,

Leroy Erickson: Ya we went out to a school house out on the ridge, me and another guy, with a horse and a buggy. The old
schoolhouse we didn’t get out there to the dance, we got lost in a snowstorm but we did find the schoolhouse and finally got back to
Stirling.

Jon Duncan: Know le me ask you this, you got married in 1938, when did you move away from Stirling.

Leroy Erickson: 1938, I got a job in the fall at the factory and then I came back to Stirling and lived in the winter. I was still playing
basketball, the year we went to thirty nine I was married and had finished my campaign and back to Stirling when we went to Salt Lake
City. I did those three years then move to Picture Butte.

Jon Duncan: Was that 1941

Leroy Erickson: Ya 1941

Jon Duncan: That you moved away to Picture Butte. That was because of work?

Leroy Erickson: A steady job.

Jon Duncan: Well let me just ask you about your marriage. Was there a big reception?

Leroy Erickson: Well I was working; her parents had a farm a craddock, a big farm. I had helped him put the crop in out there. With her
brothers I was staying in a granary there. Alta was in town, they had a house in town, of course we planned of getting married and one
windy day when I couldn’t work she said that you had better ask my dad if I can get married. It was a windy day in a little old house so I
come in from outside and I went to her dad and he was a quite, sensible man. I said you know Mr. and Mrs. Peterson that Alta and I want
to get married. Her mother didn’t like me. Her mother says, NO! NO! You can’t marry my youngest daughter. She threw quite the conniption and I stood there, finally her dad said, mother he says, calm down. If Roy and Alta want to get married he says we will let them get married. She had a sister and a brother, he was a school teacher Alvin, and he was the only who had a car. So we set a date, they came down and we went to president walker, he is the president of the stake. He had a coup, an old coup him and her, her sister and Alvin and we phoned him. We got there and it was a family reunion at president walker’s house. The table was all set there were kids all over and it was just time to have dinner. He says okay sit down, he sat us there he said to the grandchildren this is a special day. He says we have got Roy and Alta Erickson here and they are going to get married. He said we are going to have dinner and then we are going to have the marriage. We sat down there and we had dinner with the walker family and afterwards we were married and when we went to go and get back in the car to go back to Stirling. Then had tin cans and shoes and everything wired on to the car. There were two or three families followed us to Stirling and we had a great wedding.

Jon Duncan: That was the wedding.

Leroy Erickson: That was the wedding. My parents weren’t there to need to rehearse

Jon Duncan: So it was just one day that it was to windy to work that was the day.

Leroy Erickson: Ya that was the day that we proposed. Then in the next day or two we got married. Then you see we moved to Picture
Butte and her brothers gave me a bed. I bought a kitchen cabinet and a table and four chairs for ninety-nine dollars.

Jon Duncan: How did you move there?

Leroy Erickson: A truck

Jon Duncan: You used a truck

Leroy Erickson: Ya my brother had a little truck.

Jon Duncan: So actually right after your marriage you moved to Picture Butte and you cam back to Stirling. After the campaigns is that
how it worked?

Leroy Erickson: Ya for three years after I got a steady job.

Jon Duncan: Okay where did you live in Stirling when you were married to Alta?

Leroy Erickson: We lived in the back room of her mother and dads house. The next year I came and I bought a two and a half acre lot
with a house on it with one room downstairs and one rooms upstairs for $315. Someone had lived in it and it was full of bed bugs. We
backed up an old car in there and a hose and run it with the exhaust going for a few hours. We tore all the paper off, there was papered
around the windows and doors. Put sulphur on the stove then we papered it and painted it and moved in. We never had a bed bug. I had
a two and a half acre lot with hay on it and potatoes and a root cellar and out roast potatoes. Then I got a job driving truck for hauling gas
from Turner Valley and Calgary so I hauled gas in the summer times until the campaign started, then I would go back to Picture Butte. So
we had a little house, had two and a half acres and we didn’t have a washing machine. Nobody had electric washing machines then they
all had gas but in the Eaton’s catalogue you could buy a washing machine for ninety-nine dollars. You would pay about two dollars a
month and I thought well I’ll get one; I’ll buy my wife a new washing machine. When I bought it my mother and my aunt and everyone
couldn’t figure out how a young guy like me and Alta had a washing machine.

Jon Duncan: So that was one of the first appliances that you bought her, was a washing machine.

Leroy Erickson: Ya

Jon Duncan: Okay so you actually owned a lot in Stirling for a couple of years there, you had a garden and a house.

Leroy Erickson: Yes

Jon Duncan: Where you planning on staying in Stirling?

Leroy Erickson: No I was looking for a job; as soon as I got a job I was gone.

Jon Duncan: But you needed a place to stay.

Leroy Erickson: I lived in the back room of her parents and there was interference between family. I am an independent guy and I always
was. So I was looking for a place

Jon Duncan:Okay…
 
Tape 3 Side 1
 
Jon Duncan: How did you refrigerate things?

Leroy Erickson: Well I remember when mother wanted company or had a special dish that she had prepared to eat on the farm. If she wanted to keep it for a while we would put it in buckets and with a rope we would lower it down into the cistern, just above the water. That kept pretty good. On the thrashing machines, the cook car had things that she had made and wanted to keep until meal time there were big boxes about four or five feet long and two feet wide attached underneath the cook car between the wheels on either side and when they were set down on the field they would usually dig a hole in the stubble in the shade of the cook car, they had big closed in boxes. If she made pies of something for dinner or wanted to keep the butter or crème from going sour. She would set them in there in the shade and that would cook off at night and pretty well had food all day.

Jon Duncan: Did you ever own a refrigerator?

Leroy Erickson: Well not until after the war.

Jon Duncan: After the war.

Leroy Erickson: Ya and veterans had the first chance. Washing machines and all that stuff they just started making them after the war again. I was a veteran. But my wife had a brother Eldon in Lethbridge and he had an appliance store. So he told my wife that when she and I got the money and when he got the next refrigerators in and washing machines that we could have them. We didn’t have to wait to long.

Jon Duncan: So there was actually shortage after the war at this time.

Leroy Erickson: Well everything was rationed and nobody had anything. So here all the veterans come home. They were all married and
they were allowed to grab so much for every month that we had put in to give them a start. Demand was just too far ahead of the supply.
You just had what you took. They hadn’t made automobiles from nineteen; I don’t know when they quit making automobiles I guess about
forty. In forty-six someone that I knew bought a brand new 1946 dodge and it was the exact duplicate of the 1942 dodge. So the demand
for cars was great. Second hand cars were, there was a lot of dealing so in 1945 when I come home, and I wanted a car. I was looking for
a second hand car. I had a chance to but a 1936 cheve so it was nine years old. The price that they could sell them for was $350 but he
wouldn’t sell it. So I paid, this kid that had it was pretty cheep, I paid three hundred dollars but I had to do it under the table, I had to fill out
a form and I paid him $350 and give him $250 extra. In 1945 my first car was a 1936 cheve that I paid $600.

Jon Duncan: So did you have an ice box before a refrigerator?

Leroy Erickson: No

Jon Duncan: Never had an ice box.

Leroy Erickson: No I didn’t but some of the older people, my wife’s folks had an ice house on the farm. I remember putting up ice in the
coulees and in Stirling. The older people had sawdust and straw and they kept ice so we could make ice cream in the summer time.

Jon Duncan: But your family never had one.

Leroy Erickson: No we never had a nice house. It wasn’t until after the war that we got a fridge.

Jon Duncan: Okay, the last thing that I want to talk to you about Roy is the car, the cars that you remember you parents having. When
did your dad first have a car?

Leroy Erickson: 1922 he bought a model T ford from Warner and I think that he paid $600. It was a black, it had windows, and it was a
nice shiny black car. Dad always had trouble driving the car so my brother, he was old enough. But that was the first car that we had. The
roads were all gravel and dirt then but they were high you could go almost anywhere with a Model T Ford. The next car that he got was a
1928 Model A Ford. They were good cars. Real good cars but we could hardly afford to drive it. You could get a license for three months
and then if you didn’t have any money you couldn’t drive it until you got a licence again. We never could afford to put antifreeze in and so
they always put water in it, in the winter time you would always have to drain it when you came home at night and in the morning
sometimes you would have to put straw and something underneath the crank case to warm up the oil to get it going. But they were good
cars, the Model A Ford.

Jon Duncan: Did your dad keep it running during the depression.

Leroy Erickson: He ran it some of the time; he ran it in the summer when we could afford it. We never could afford new tires, when you
got a flat tire you carried you patching kit with you. When you got a tire that got a crack in it you would take another old tire and make a
liner or a boot and put it over that boot so that after you had that tire for a bit you had two or three boots the tires were almost square. When you had a flat tire you took out the patching can and it was cold patching. Then he come out with another patch that you could put it on and scratch it with a scratching tool and take a match to it. It would sizzle and it would give you a good patch. Enough to go to Lethbridge and when you had two or three flats because you didn’t have enough money for a spare, but they were good cars. I wish I had one of them now, I see some of them renovated and put in parades. They are good cars.

Jon Duncan: Now you say that there was one time when you dad drove right into a gate.

Leroy Erickson: Ya, he had to Model T Ford and he went to town with Elic the bachelor to buy the car and he brought it home and he
stayed for a meal. He lived four miles away and so we all got in the car to take Elic home. We got him home and got back to the farm and
someone had shut the gate we drove up to the farm and he couldn’t find the brake and he said wow and went right though the gate.

Jon Duncan: Okay did you have a tractor on the farm?

Leroy Erickson: Well we didn’t have a tractor until tractors were coming in. Dad decide to get a little formal, I think that it was a little ford
or something over at Coledale. Se we sold four head of horses and we went up there one Saturday, we went and tried to get this tractor
started. It didn’t have a battery in it. We couldn’t get it going, anyway once we got it and started heading home. We thought that we could
never get that thing to run. So he had to get somebody else’s horses to help to put the crop in. The next year we bought a 1530
Mccormick deering, a used one, it was a good tractor. So we eventually got rind of the horses.

Jon Duncan: Did he use the tractor during the depression years at all.

Leroy Erickson: Well this would have been the last part of the depression. Ya I guess that we got rid of the horses, thirty-nine, maybe it
was early forties. I think that maybe it was around forty, forty-one. The depression was kind of over.

Jon Duncan: Okay so you actually used horses thought the depression.

Leroy Erickson: Yes

Jon Duncan: Well I think that is about it. I think that we have had a good visit here, and you have told me a lot of things, I have learned a
lot. I would like to thank you a lot for your time.

Leroy Erickson: Well you are quite welcome. You know what I think Jon; I think that I lived in the best period of time in this whole world.
Because I had the experience of going through the depression, I had the experience of learning how to work. I had the experience that if
you want a drink of water, you don’t have to get it out of the tap you can dig a well. Then I had the experience of getting a steady job. I
had the experience, I went in the navy I was a volunteer in the navy for a couple of years. When I came back from the navy, during that
time I had started to buy a house and when I got out I went back to a steady job, at that time we didn’t pay income tax. I was working seven
days a week and I helped pay for my house. I didn’t have an automobile until I was thirty-two years old. Then when I did get one it was a
second hand thirty-six cheve. I appreciated that when all of these things come, then after the war we had the money to buy a washing
machine and all these things for my wife. I lived in plenty, now everything is taxable, there are wars on and everybody is trying to get the
other guy. I lived, I think in the best period of time in this whole world. I am still living. I got four more years to go to the turn of the century
and I am looking forward to it. I feel sorry for the young people today, they are taxed to death and they are getting to the point where you can’t get jobs because everything is computerized. All your machinery in the factories where we used to work, it took labour but now you have got a computer board and one man sitting there and all of your motors and your pumps and all of your tags, everything is controlled by that computer and the guys cant find a job. They are in the banks, if you go to the bank and the computer don’t work, I was in the bank one day a while back, and I don’t know if I was going to deposit money or take some out. But all of the sudden all the girls started looking at each other, the computer had stopped. They couldn’t take a deposit or pay anything out. Man can go to the moon and he can do everything but he can’t find a job for our young people. It’s getting serious. In all these towns right here in Lethbridge you have got these kids breaking in at night, they are breaking in to the stores, they are stealing cars and the police can arrest them, and the crocked layers get them off. I read a short thing, you may not want to put his in, I read a short thing the other day I think that it was in Churchill. They ask him about what they needed to do get the countries back together and living right again, he said the first thing that you need to do is to kill all the lawyers. I almost agree with him. Don’t put that in or ill be in jail.

Jon Duncan: Alright, thanks a lot Roy, this has been an excellent visit; we have had a good long chat. I think that I will turn this off. 

Leroy Erickson: Alright

Transcribed By Clinton Dovell