Interviewee: Margaret Young
Interviewer: Jon Duncan
 
Jon Duncan: Alright today is May the 22^nd 1997. My name is Jon Duncan I am here in Margaret Young’s home; we are going to conduct an oral interview, Margaret why don’t you introduce yourself.

Margaret Young: My name is Margaret Young, I have been called peg many times before so feel free to call me that instead. . I was not born in Stirling I was born in Raymond on the twentieth of April 1917 in my grandmother’s bedroom

Jon Duncan: When did you com to Stirling?

Margaret Young: When I was ten years old. 1927 right after school was out.

Jon Duncan: Why did your parents come to Stirling?

Margaret Young: My father had an acreage that he took over from another man who had homesteaded it and he kind of took it on the same terms. By the time I was old enough to go to school my father thought, and my mother to that perhaps we might be missing out on a lot of the advantages that we could get from the church and the more organized branches of the church then the ones at that time. They thought that we were missing out on some of the advantages that we could get if we lived in a larger center and so we moved back to Raymond and my father sold his homestead. Then he was just clerking in a store, h had five children. He needed to have something a little more stable and live on a farm and his father was about to retire and so he found an opportunity to begin buying this land from his father.

Jon Duncan: Your grandpa’s farm was in Stirling

Margaret Young: It was just outside the village on the west side of town

Jon Duncan: Did your grandpa live in Stirling? 

Margaret Young: No, when they first came to Canada they stopped at Stirling and were there for about eight years, seven or eight years. My grandfather had come up in nineteen one or two in the wintertime because he heard about thins wonderful land in southern Alberta and he was kind of a cattle man and he was raised as a farmer in Mount Clement. He wanted to better his conditions, he had been on a mission to Norway after he had two children, when he came home he built his lovely home in Mount Clement I can imagine how his wife must have felt when he said that they leave that lovely home and start over in Canada. He came up to see the land, he said that he knew that he could stand it in the summer but he didn’t know weather he could stand the winters he came up to see the land and he loved the land around Magrath. He thought that maybe he might like to settle there but when they came up in nineteen three they thought it best to that they just as well settle in Stirling because they had to unload everything in Stirling anyway and then set out from there to find there land, there was land available close into the town and there was also a home available that they could live in and so they thought that maybe that was the best plan. After a few years of, he got a homestead out to rent them and make money on that and then he had two daughters that were old enough to work and also the academy was being built in Raymond, he had two younger boys and they were wanting to go to high school. He thought it best that they move to Raymond because it was only seven miles from the farm anyway. Maybe a little less than that because it was west of town 

Jon Duncan: So he moved to Raymond later on.

Margaret Young: In 1910 they built a big home there

Jon Duncan: Now what was your grandfather’s name?

Margaret Young: Adolph Erickson

Jon Duncan: Adolph Erickson and you grandmother?

Margaret Young: Elner Agusta Delin

Jon Duncan: Do you remember them?

Margaret Young: Oh yes, lived with them the year that I took grad twelve.

Jon Duncan: What were they like?

Margaret Young: Well they were always very nice to me of course. My grandmother was a kind of a special friend to me because she was interested in music and I was interested in music, at the time I wasn’t taking any lessons. She was determined that I was going to carry on because she felt that I had talent. So she used to send me copies of magazines that she used to subscribe for. She would say I think that you can play this one peg, try this one peg, I think that you can play this, have you learned thins one yet, and so on and I could just keep the music after, she kind of kept me going at it. She was always very kind to me; she helped me make my first dress, she helped me cut out a pattern for the very first one I ever did.

Jon Duncan: What kind of dress was it?

Margaret Young: Just a little print dress for school, I was in high school at the time. I could have worn it to school but I am not sure if I did or not. That was the first sewing that I ever did. My mother never did think that she had time to take care of me as far as the sewing department was concerned.

Jon Duncan: Your mother had a pedal machine a pedal sewing machine.

Margaret Young: Oh yes just a treadle.

Jon Duncan: Who were your parents?

Margaret Young: My Parents were Adolph Erickson and my mother was Ruby Stevens the Stevens came up to Canada in nineteen two, the Erickson’s came in nineteen three, both in the spring of the year. My parents got acquainted through an academy, my dad always used to go and play for dances he played the violin very well. My mother was quite popular with the young crowd, I gather she was anyway. He used to watch here and got interested in her, she like him I guess and they married in nineteen sixteen.

Jon Duncan: They met and married in Raymond?

Margaret Young: They didn’t marry in Raymond. They went to Salt Lake to get married.

Jon Duncan: They were married in the Salt Lake Temple. Then they came out to Stirling when you were younger.

Margaret Young: Well we had been on the homestead at first. They took me out when I was just two months old and they moved out there, they spent the winters out there. I think that the terms of the agreement were that they had to spend six months on the land, living on the place and then they had to improve the acreage each year. I don’t remember spending a full winter out there at all. I know that we rented a couple of rooms in a person’s house on the south end of Broadway. I think that her name was Mrs. Lamar.

Jon Duncan: And this is when you weren’t living on the farm.

Margaret Young: Ya we came in for the winter and then we would go out again in the spring, put the crop in and live through the summer.

Jon Duncan: How old were you when your father gave up the farmstead?

Margaret Young: About four, we didn’t last to long. We were out on a farm north of town, north of Raymond one summer and that was the year that I turned six, It was a late harvest that year and they didn’t get finished until rather late and so I went and lived with Stevens grandparents in Raymond to start school. I lived with them for about the first part of December before they ever got in there.

Jon Duncan: So your father actually farmed in a few different areas before in Stirling.

Margaret Young: I don’t know what his agreement was but I remember that we were out there that year and he was working for Uncle Helen Billet.

Jon Duncan: Tell me about your father, what kind of man was he?

Margaret Young: He was a good man, he was quite quiet he was very particular about how things were being done, and he was particular about his own person. His cloths had to look nice He was quit talented musically. I remember him giving violin lessons in our kitchen. Us kids would have to stay in the other room so that he wouldn’t be disturbed with his students.

Jon Duncan: Did he continue to teach violin when he came to Stirling?

Margaret Young: No he took one student for a while just because he knew the mother and father and she was anxious to learn how to play the violin he said that he would teach her son if she would teach me how to play the piano because she was good on the piano. We agreed but her son got tired of it quite soon and so I had to stop because we didn’t have enough money to carry me through

Jon Duncan: Was that your first time with piano lessons.

Margaret Young: No I had taken lessons in Raymond just before I turned seven. My teacher had just got married that year and she and Paul moved into two rooms in our neighbour’s house. It was really close so I could just run in and back. My dad knew her very well because they had played orchestras a lot not just concert orchestras but dance orchestras to. The next year she had a baby, Joyce was born and she didn’t want to take students that year so I had to get somebody else and it was that teacher that had turned me off. She was a lady from Magrath and she traveled on the train and came to the house once a week and she would teach all day and catch the train going back that night. So she could teach and go to peoples houses and teach them there.
Jon Duncan: She was a little harder.
Margaret Young: Well she was not as interesting person as Emma was she didn’t have the same ideas that Emma had about teaching. She thought that it was all business and technical exercises scales and hand position, and I wanted to play for fun.

Jon Duncan: Okay you later became a teacher yourself.

Margaret Young: Yes I did.

Jon Duncan: How did you teach?

Margaret Young: I tried to make it fun, I tried to find something in every lesson that I could say was positive for the student because you know I didn’t take lessons formally until I taught school and a man came down from Lethbridge and taught me in Stirling after school on the school piano because I wanted to know a little farther where to go. He got me ready for an exam and it was going to be a grade six exam with the London school which is about grade eight. Then we had a real bad winter in March in February and March and we had snow drifts that you wouldn’t believe this but right up to the to cross bars at the railroad tracks they couldn’t keep the tracks cleared up and they couldn’t keep the roads ploughed up and so he didn’t get down for five weeks to give me a lesson at that time, I was to sent my tape and he said well you know exams weren’t everything. Not to feel bad about it, but I really looked forward to seeing what level I would be at. I was quite disappointed that I had not got to do that so I carried on with it after I had a couple of kids.

Jon Duncan: Okay I want to return to your dad for a few minutes, what kind of father was he? 

Margaret Young: In those days they weren’t pushing the father image to much in a family I mean my mother was my boss my dad disciplined the boys in there area but my mother pretty well disciplined me. I don’t remember my dad ever going, well ya he did go against her wishes one time, when I was about fourteen I needed a new coat for winter and we didn’t have much money. We came into the juniors to shop and we looked a coats and I knew very well what price range I had to be in. So we were looking at coats that were twelve ninety five or so, these are old day prices of course. I just happened to be looking though this rack, I had seen three or four that would be fine I felt like I didn’t have a lot of choice in between them in that price range but all the sudden I came across this coat that cost seventeen ninety five and It was a green broadcloth coat and it was just absolutely gorgeous it had brown fur cuffs and it had a brown fur collar and it had little caplets over the arms and I thought if I could have that coat I would have everything that I would ever want. I knew that I couldn’t have it I don’t now if my dad had been late for the bank and he couldn’t get it cashed until Monday and so he had to come up again Monday. Now I don’t know weather he got hogs up to sell or what up but we weren’t really in on to much of what the family was we were kind of I guess protected from that but he had to come back Monday anyway. We couldn’t take the coat home today. He said so which one do you like and I said anyone of these four would be just fine I said that there is another one that I like but I don’t expect you to buy that for me. He said well which one was it and he showed me that Monday that he came home that he had bought me this coat. I thought that if he would sacrifice to that point for me, five bucks.

Jon Duncan: So he was a good father.

Margaret Young: Yes and he encourage me a lot with my music, he was called on quite often to perform a violin solo in church or the entertainments that we had back in those days everything was home made he was called on often to play. He had done a lot of playing in Raymond and so he started me out being his accountant I don’t if he didn’t know who to ask to be his assistant or if it was just handy because I was there so he started out choosing stuff that was quite easy I could handle it was about eleven years old and I accompanied him practically all the time after that and just the other day I got a card from an old friend that had gone to school with us when we were in Stirling and still in grade school and she said do you remember the Maybutt lunch pale kids because we all used to eat lunch up there for school. She said I can remember how you used to play the piano all the time for us at noon do you remember coming out to the school dances outside of town. I think that we went out to the Pengilly farm and did it, this was a Pengilly girl and she says you must have only been about thirteen then. I thought that I was much older than that at the time but when I got to thinking about it I must have been about thirteen at the time.

Jon Duncan: So you traveled all over town with your father.

Margaret Young: Ya and we used to do dance out in the country to.

Jon Duncan: Okay I have one other question about your dad. Did you work very often with him on the farm?

Margaret Young: No in our situation it was different. I had five brothers in a row after me. My mother and my father to felt that I was needed in the house and so I worked mostly with my mother inside and I helped with the garden and things like that. As far as milking the cows I never milked the cows at home. Mostly the boys had jobs that required getting the coal and kindling wood in and to feed the pigs and gather the eggs and this sort of thing anything that they could do out there because they had five boys and they had to keep them busy to. I never did driver the tractor or anything like that because there was always a boy that was around that was anxious to do that.

Jon Duncan: Once and a while you would go to the community pasture

Margaret Young: Yes I was known to drive the cows out not often in the morning but more often in the evenings when the boys would work out in the field somewhere. I loved doing that because I loved driving the horse we had a real good low riding horse

Jon Duncan: About how many cattle did you have?

Margaret Young: We didn’t have a herd of cattle we had a couple of milk cows and then the calves that they would produce, we never did have a heard that was big when we were little. After some of the kids got old enough to go he got a small little herd to go no a big herd maybe twenty head or something.

Jon Duncan: So during the summers you would go and pick these milk cows out from the pasture.

Margaret Young: They had a community pasture out at the lake I am sure that it is far different now than it was then. We could take the cows out like the first of May, as soon as it was good grass we would go out there and we were responsible to take them back out and come on home with them. We always went out to get them and I like that because I thought that riding the horse was fun so it was never really any work. We had an old tarp that we could put over us and the horse so if it started to rain to keep us dry.

Jon Duncan: How could you tell which cows were yours

Margaret Young: Well they were branded for one thing, other than that they you got to know your own cows. They would all come in a group, it was no problem. If they were in the heard we could spot them immediately just by the way that they looked.

Jon Duncan: I want to ask you about your mom what kind of women was she

Margaret Young: She was a great woman she was a really ambitious person and she was mostly all business she wanted things done and she expected up to do them she expected us to be decent people you know. She taught us how to behave and that we should do that to not be disrespectful to out elders and be respectful to her and we should mind her because she was our mother and we should mind our father for the same reason and we should mind out teachers as well. We got that lesson early. She was quite quick spoken; she was raised in a family of six boys. She was the only girl. There were times that it showed that in the way she talked to us. She was rougher than some of the girls that she must have grown with and played with.

Jon Duncan: Can you remember any examples.

Margaret Young: She was an awful lot of fun she loved fun, she was humorous and she had a tremendous amount of humour. That’s one thing that I think that carried us through, well my dad had a since of humour to and I guess that’s what carried us through the depression. She always had a quip for anything that we would say back to her; she was really quick on the trigger for a reply. And it was always something kind of witty. We had a lot of fun with my mother. In the house I imagine that they had fun with my dad to, although my dad was the quieter type. I wondered about what we would have to talk about when we first started going out to dances then I found that he was very easy to talk to and it was no problem. He would joke around sometimes but he was not quite as outgoing as my mother was. I minded her because she was my mother because she had taught me to.

Jon Duncan: Did you work with her around the house

Margaret Young: Ya

Jon Duncan: What kind of jobs did to have to do?

Margaret Young: Well as soon as I could make beds alone I worked with her until I learned how she taught me everything around the house and she was careful to do it. I was mixing bread long before I got to high school; I was washing dishes, and drying dishes. I started out drying dishes more than washing. I used to sweep and scrub the floor we always had to do it on our hands and knees. We used to wax the floors on the weekend and they mostly needed it to because we were living in only four rooms, and there was a whole crew of us. She had eight children by the end and by the time that we got the other house. We turned butter, I learned early to meld butter because we had more butter than we could use. We also had a separator and we used to make cream and we used to use the cream chicks for our groceries and that I mostly how we got along. In the fall, after the harvest they take wheat to the elevator. We would get a ton of white flower and get some pancake flower and cracked wheat cereal and that sort of thing. Bring it all back together and put it in a bin out in the granary to keep it.

Jon Duncan: So you stored your dried goods in the grain bin.

Margaret Young: Well mostly just the flower and those things.

Jon Duncan: Which store did you take the butter and the cream to?

Margaret Young: Fred Spackman had a store there when we were there and Eldon Peterson had a store when we were there and we used to go off to both stores and it didn’t make a difference. We used to patronize both stores.

Jon Duncan: Did your mom assign your brothers any tasks around the house

Margaret Young: Yes if they weren’t busy she didn’t having them do much housework, it seemed that there was a tendency of men’s work and women’s work in those days. Some of the men were not about to step into the women’s house and do anything. The babies were not the boy’s responsibility they were mostly mine, you know to change the diapers and that sort of thing but I never got in on the diaper washing she always handled that herself. But I could start the bottles and I could start the formula and do those kinds of things.

Jon Duncan: Was she musical also?

Margaret Young: She was far more musical than anybody believed that she was. She had a real nice voice, when I became choir leader I tried my best to try and get her to come and sing in the choir because we needed her. But she wouldn’t come. I don’t know weather she ever got heard or not but. People seem to think that we got our musical ability from our grandmother Erickson, but Grandpa Erickson was a real great singer to he had a lovely voice and they used to sing all the time. But my mom would never come and sing in the choir. My dad was presiding elder out there and she used to play for Hymns in church but I don’t ever remember her playing the piano much. We got our own piano when I was about seven
 
Tape 1 Side 2
 
Jon Duncan: Did your mom ever play the piano in Stirling at all?

Margaret Young: She never did play it out at all and I don’t recall that she ever played it out in public in Raymond. Now I have no idea how much practice that she had when we were at school but I didn’t get to hear her play very much after I started to take lessons. I think that that is a shame because if she was good enough to play Hymns when I was three or four you know. We had the piano for some years, but she didn’t ever play it in my presence.

Jon Duncan: Would she sing for the children?

Margaret Young: Oh ya she used to sing with us a lot and she used to teach us Nursery rimes and she used to play these little finger games when we were small. I did the same kinds of plays when I had kids to when I was working in the junior Sunday school. She could recite poetry by the yard, it is amazing the poetry that that women knew and later on in life she remembered scriptures the same way. It was just unbelievable the memory that she had. I think that they were required to do more of that kind of memorization in school that we were in school. And we were required to learn a lot more for memory then they do today, I think. She had a fantastic memory for everything that she had ever learned. I can remember her quoting pages of High Watch by Longfellow, and the lady in the lake, I can remember lots of work that she must have learned in school. It never ceased to amaze me. She would make up games that would keep us occupied or to keep us busy. If we were doing something together that was maybe not so pleasant. You know thing like let’s see who can get this done the fastest or let’s have a race. Like if we were shelling peas of something like that. Who can get ten corn cobs husked the fastest. It worked every time and we would work our heads of to see if we could do it. We had a lot of fun and she was very clever at writing stories and things of this sort. One time she did a kind of nonsense thing for the church, for the ward. It was just to take off on a lot of people in the ward, some of their idiosyncrasies that everybody was aware. She wrote a book of Mormon and it was a hoot we just really laughed at it, there had been all kinds of people that asked for a copy of that. I guess that my brothers and sisters all wanted a copy. She didn’t write poetry but she would do a couple of lines and then she would get somebody else to do a couple of line and then she would do a few more. We did a lot of that and we would put nonsense words to familiar tunes and so on, we did a lot of that when we were suppose to be working. We did a lot of giggling.

Jon Duncan: So your mom was fun to be with.
Margaret Young: She was a lot of fun, but when my dad got with her he was fun to. Because he was just as clever as she was in thinking up words and stuff like that. Yes we did have a good time together.

Jon Duncan: Did your family have a garden?

Margaret Young: Oh boy did we have a garden. A big garden always, we were always expected to work in the garden.

Jon Duncan: Your dad

Margaret Young: Everybody, although sometimes my dad wasn’t there very much but my mother kind of superintended it. He did the irrigating, we didn’t do the irrigating. But we were expected to gather the leaves for the meals each day. That was within my realm or work but I dint do all of it because if the other kids were around my mother would send them around and got them do dig the soil and that kind of work.

Jon Duncan: You all worked during the summer then.

Margaret Young: Yes we all worked and we kept the leaves because my mom was quite thrifty and she canned all the peas and she canned all the corn.

Jon Duncan: Where did you store all the potatoes?

Margaret Young: We had a little pit in the back of the house and it had one of these sliding cellar doors. You would go into the cellar and there were shelves all along the sides and we had bins at the bottom where we put all the potatoes, carrots, and beats and that sort of thing. She used to mostly pickle the beats and I dint remember having a lot of beats in there. She used to put the pickled one in jars. It seemed like the thing to do to have all of those new bottles there all nice and shiny and lined up there for winter and that was just something that we did. The shelves were kind of high up and then the pit was, it was just a dirt floor you see, he mad two or three sections and put the potatoes in one and the carrots and parsnips, turnips. I can’t remember but we had a near supply of onions like that but I can’t remember this now. We even bottled pork and we bottled beef and we bottled chicken

Jon Duncan: That was how you stored the meat?

Margaret Young: Well my dad used the cure the hams and the bacon for the pigs you know he would cure those in a great big crock and smoked salt and that gave it a good flavour. But if we killed a pig in the wintertime and it was cold we would leave it out, we would just leave it on the side of the house.

Jon Duncan: Now tell me what relationship did you have with your brothers

Margaret Young: Well on the whole I think that it was a very good relationship; I remember playing with my oldest brother until the next brother came along and was old enough to play with.

Jon Duncan: What were there names?

Margaret Young: My oldest brother was Edmond but we always called him Bill, my second brother was Lloyd and we gave him a nickname to but I can remember as a little child that when bill and I went out to the homestead we would take the eating catalogue and cut out the people, the models you know and. We would put cloths on them and use them for paper dolls. We would name them and do all types of things with them. Then when Lloyd got old enough so that he could walk and he could talk and bill could teach him this language. He would rather do boys games than I would play stick horses and they would take a pair of shoes and they would get this team of horses together and do that sort of thing. I was sort of out in the cold after that. But we always had fun with the horses; we had this little saddle horse that we loved so much. Everybody liked to ride her but of course we weren’t able to pile up on her because she wasn’t a big horse.

Jon Duncan: What was the horse’s name?

Margaret Young: Goldie, she was a little horse that my dad had bought just after we went out there and the first year we used a saddle horse of grandpas and I was a great big huge big boney creature, it had a perfectly white silver main and so grandpa always called his horse silver. She was very tall and I was only ten when we went out there my brothers were younger than that, eight and six. It was kind of hard for us to get the saddle up on her and it was hard for us to get up. She wasn’t as kid proof as Goldie came to be. We used her this one year and I didn’t like her all that much she didn’t have all that comfortable gate as Goldie had but she was a little Mar and it just seemed natural that we called her Goldie because she just gleamed in the sunshine. I think that that is how she was named that.

Jon Duncan: Your family just had the one saddle horse.

Margaret Young: Ya and we had her until we were all married and gone, my dad kept her. She was just like one of the family. He went out there one morning after they were just living on their own and found her tangled up in wire and he knew that she was sick and he got her untangled and brought her back to the stall and nursed her for quite a while but one morning he went out and she was dead. 

Jon Duncan: What about games that you played with your brothers in the yard.

Margaret Young: I didn’t play games with them very much. We had a basketball hoop on the barn and dad always made sure that they had a basket ball. It wasn’t uncommon for anybody that could walk of run to go after the work was done and dad would be with them and they would all play some basketball and shoot hoops. I can remember that they used to have a baseball diamond out between the house and the barn but I didn’t play with them much.

Jon Duncan: With the boys and dad.

Margaret Young: With the boys and dad. At the time that they were playing I would be helping with the supper or something like that.

Jon Duncan: Did you have any pets.

Margaret Young: My mother was not for having pets in the house and I never wanted cats in the house either. My dad did have a dog or two but the dogs didn’t come in the house we had a little entry on the back, we called it the shanty and the dog had a blanket in there. But they hardly ever brought the dog in the house, maybe some nights when it was really cold but it wasn’t very often.

Jon Duncan: Alright, well I am going to have to ask you about the house that you moved into?

Margaret Young: Our farm, well we just hated that place, not that we lived in any palace in Raymond, we only had a three room place in Raymond. When we moved out to the farm, the first time that I saw it I thought that it was just terrible. I didn’t want to move and my mother didn’t wasn’t to move out to the farm. She liked it in Raymond and she had lots of lady friends that she used to have club meetings once a month and they used to have a lot of fun. My mother used to go out working in the telephone office with do you remember Hauney Naulder, or Hauney Hedinger and those ladies were very best friends. She didn’t know anybody in Stirling and to move out to this farm she was not all that turned on. I don’t know when she saw the house, but I know when I saw it. They moved out during the Easter holidays to get this farm going but she left bill and I in town until school was out. One stayed with Grandma Erickson and the other stayed with my mother’s brother. But we came out one Saturday to see this house to see this farm and so on, we came down the road and there was this great big square house and it looked just like a jack lantern face with two eyes up here and two windows and two windows down here and a door right smack in the middle it looked like a long nose and there was flower beds underneath the windows and it just looked like a jack lantern face to me it had been a store down at Maybutt and the man that was going to buy that land had moved it on to this place, had bought it and moved it on to the place and he was going to live there and then somehow he couldn’t make the payments and they finally decided that they couldn’t carry on with it so that’s how come my dad got to but it at that time. We had a really windy spring and there was a great big sandbank blown in at the back and there was not a sign of a tree anyplace and it was really quite a sad looking thing, there was no sign of lawn grass it was just prairie grass that was in the yard and I didn’t think that that was going to be a very fun place to live.

Jon Duncan: Was it well insulated?

Margaret Young: No insulation, nobody ever had insulation then and there was no furnace. We had a kitchen stove and we had a heater that we put in the front room. My dad cut holes in the ceiling so that it would accommodate a vent about maybe sixteen or eighteen inches big. We just put those greats in there so that the heat upstairs. It wasn’t even fully lined up to the top of the stairs so it was cold. We made a lot of quilts we had lots of blankets and we managed. It must have been imagining that in the living room we had a nine by twelve Mongolian rug and on the sides there must have been a good thirty inches on the side of this rug and then the same or maybe a little bit more on the ends so I figure that It couldn’t have possibly been more than sixteen feet across it. But then we had a stairway out of that and the kitchen must have been a similar size and then upstairs there was a bedroom over the other one.

Jon Duncan: Where did people sleep?

Margaret Young: My brothers had two big rooms over in the west room and we had two double beds in the east room. I slept with another child all the time in there and then my mom and dad slept in the other one, we had a curtain at one time but of course for a long time we didn’t have anything when I first moved there. They were always disinterested in doing any thing to fix up thins house because they were going to build a knew house and then of course the crash came and then the depression came and you couldn’t sell your produce for anything and we just sat there for about ten years. Then in 1937 we built the other house and we had five rooms in there and a basement. We had two basement bedrooms then and a good big furnace room and a room to do kind of summer kitchen stuff. Canning and stuff like that would be done in the basement. We had five rooms upstairs but along as I was there they never did get the bathroom fixtures in we used to do our washing in there but along as I was there they didn’t finish it but I was old enough to be gone by then.

Jon Duncan: Okay so for a bathroom you had an outhouse?

Margaret Young: Ya they finished the bathroom just after I got married

Jon Duncan: So they had an indoor bathroom in the new house.
Margaret Young: About three years after I got up and out they got it all finished up. They got the living room painted and got rugs and chesterfield and everything they needed to finish it off. By that time he was the bishop of the ward so he was awful busy to.

Jon Duncan: Now in this old house that you moved into how would you keep food cold?

Margaret Young: We had a well out by the gate and it was about twenty nine feet deep and it had a pulley on it. We used to have a bucket with a rag overtop of it and lower it down to the waters level and it kept nice and cold. The well kept stuff cold

Jon Duncan: As a refrigerator, was the well used for drinking water to.

Margaret Young: Yes and it was very good drinking water but it was hard as nails, my mother refused to wash in it.

Jon Duncan: What did she use for washing?

Margaret Young: We carried water from the coulee up the ally in tubs and buckets and boilers and buckets. If we mad two or three trips we could get the wash day done.

Jon Duncan: Where did she heat the water?

Margaret Young: On the stove on the coal stove, in a boiler. When we were using well water at first she would put it on and then put lye in it and then she would and then all of the hardness would come to the top and she would skim that all off. We didn’t have soap flakes then we had soap bars. So she would chop the bar up into little tiny bits and put them into the boiler as it heated it would melt the soap as well so that would be the wash water for the first one and then she would put on another boiler half full and then she would boil all the white cloths. Wash day was quite a day.

Jon Duncan: Did it take the whole day?

Margaret Young: Pretty nearly from the morning until after school was out anyway. She would usually start with the wash when we went to school. But she was usually just mopping the floor and bringing the cloths in from the line. Because there were no washers no dryers, well she had a washer I wont say that she didn’t have a washer, she had a good Maytag washer and it had a gas motor on it but she had to put out the window every wash day.

Jon Duncan: So when did she get this washing machine? 

Margaret Young: Well very soon after we went out there, they bought it new and they got the gas motor on it. I suppose that she spent some time scrubbing on the board but it couldn’t be for very long. Because I seem to remember it being there most of the time

Jon Duncan: So she would boil the cloths and then put them in the washing machine. 

Margaret Young: No she would wash them first, she would do the whites and then she would put the whites in the boiler and then she would run the others threw and then she would put then in but she didn’t boil everything. She didn’t boil the collard cloths.

Jon Duncan: Okay where did you get the soap?

Margaret Young: Well I remember that we used a lot of soap bars like that but she made a lot of her own soap to? We would save the cracklings after we butchered you know we would render out the lard and use that for out shortening.

Jon Duncan: How did you make the soap?

Margaret Young: Well she did it on the wash boiler on the stove and they would stir it and stir it and stir it. Now they would cook it down until they could see that it would string down from the paddle and then they would take it out and put it in flat pans and let it cool and then when it was cool enough they would go thick you see and then they would cut it in bars and we used to put the bars out in boards and string them out and leave them for two weeks at a time or more until they were fairly dry sometimes we would put them inside the garage to dry but sometimes they just dried outside. Of course if it started to rain or something like that then we would have to worry but most days it didn’t rain back then in those dry old thirties so your mother would use pig fat and boil the pig fat. 

Jon Duncan: So your mother would use pig fat and boil the pig fat. 

Margaret Young: Yes and she would use lye and cracklings and fat yes old fat. I used to save all my drippings from frying meat and I would keep it in cans and when I had about or I would use tins about this high I would go downstairs and make it in a crock downstairs in here.

Jon Duncan: In Lethbridge.

Margaret Young: Yes and I would stir it up and I didn’t cook it at all but that made darn good soap. I would use it differently than she did because after it got hard you know I would cut it up after it was good and hard in the bars I would grind it in a food grinder and I would use it for flakes. I would just take a certain and I would take a certain amount of this and out it in a little plastic can and fill it up with water and the next day I would put it in my washer and it would be a darn good soap.

Jon Duncan: Did your family have a cistern in the old house?

Margaret Young: No we didn’t have a cistern we just used the well water. a\they carried a lot of the water from the coulee for washing and for bathwater to

Jon Duncan: When did they get a cistern?

Margaret Young: Not until after we got the new house. That was 1937.

Jon Duncan: They finally built a cistern then, how did they fill the cistern.

Margaret Young: I think that my dad had a water tank on the truck and he just brought it in.

Jon Duncan: So he never used irrigation water for drinking

Margaret Young:I  don’t know what he did; I really don’t know you see I was gone by then.

Jon Duncan: Well I want to change direction a little bit now I wanted to talk about you years in school. Who were some of the teachers that you remember while you were growing up?

Margaret Young: In Stirling, well I started grade six in Stirling I had had a special promotion on of the years that I was in Raymond. So I was only ten when I started grade six and I had Axey Spackman.

Jon Duncan: What was she like?

Margaret Young: Well bill had had her in his grade in Raymond the year before we left. He didn’t like her much he thought that she was really strict and she was strict but she was always very fair to me I never had any trouble with her. I never really knocked horns with her but one time there was this one kid that came from Magrath and lived there he was kind of a mischief maker, he wasn’t much for rules if he could help it. Anyway this one day he got dared to run downstairs ahead of the line and he did and right after recess, of course one day someone had went and told that they had done this and this was before she had come out to dismiss us and so she strapped those two kids afterwards and we were both in the same room because he was in five and I was in six and he had had her in four in Raymond so he didn’t like her very much and he said that I wouldn’t like her. She was all business she was a traditional old laced school teacher but she did marry shortly after that, she went down to California and lived there the rest of her life. But she was certainly a good old teacher and I herd that somebody asked her which one they should pick to teach school here in Stirling when we first went back when we first got out of normal and I was one that got the job and somebody had told me that they had asked Axey and she had said I was the one that would take her and that is all I know.

Jon Duncan: So Axey Spackman was your first teacher in school.

Margaret Young: and then Gerry Gibb was my next teacher.
 
Tape 2 Side 1
 
Jon Duncan: Alright we were talking about your teachers and we finished with Edward Gibb,

Margaret Young: Gerry Gibb, Gerald Gibb was his name

Jon Duncan: Gerald Gibb, what type of teacher was he.

Margaret Young: Well he was quite a new teacher and he was young and we thought he was very good looking and we were in grade seven and eight and so we really liked him. Maybe Kneethigh Head was my teacher in grade seven and Gerry was my teacher in grade eight.

Jon Duncan: So who was your grade seven teacher?

Margaret Young: Kneethigh Head he came from up the Cardston way and he was an older man but he was a good teacher. I believe that he was only there for a half a year; I think that Gerry came in the middle of the year. He was quite new from normal and we thought that we could get away with murder with him but he didn’t let us get away with much. He was good disciplinary.

Jon Duncan: So all the girls had a crush on him?

Margaret Young: Well no but we thought that it was nice to have a good looking guy in front of us. I don’t know if any of us were old enough to have a real crush on him, I know that I wasn’t. But I liked him and I thought that he was better looking then Kneethigh was.

Jon Duncan: Okay who was next?

Margaret Young: Then I went into high school and Don Marryl from Hillspring became our teacher and he taught us all three years of high school nine, ten and eleven. We didn’t have a grade twelve up to that time but when we got through grade eleven he figure that if we would give him fifty or one hundred dollars a student tuition extra that he would teach us grade twelve and just add it to the load I think that most of everybody did that but me but my dad had a lot of property in Raymond still and that entitled me to go to school for nothing so they arranged to have me live with grandma Erickson that winter and that’s what I did. The rest of them carried on with the grade twelve in Stirling.

Jon Duncan: So you actually finished school in Raymond.

Margaret Young: I finished the last year in Raymond.

Jon Duncan: Was Sullen Low one of your teachers?

Margaret Young: Yes that year in Raymond.

Jon Duncan: He taught in Raymond

Margaret Young: Ya that year and then I finished my normal and I came over and he was principal in Stirling so he was my first principal.

Jon Duncan: Okay, when you began teaching. What were your favourite subjects in school?

Margaret Young: I enjoyed literature. The English and I don’t remember disliking anything particularly I wasn’t all that interested in some of that grade twelve math like with trigonometry I wondered what use I would make of it. I wasn’t antagonistic to taking it but I seemed to be able to grasp it alright. I figured if it was a course I would take it I wanted to articulate and make something of my life if I could. But I seemed to do well in the English area. I don’t remember killing myself working at school I used to try and get my assignments done I was quite diligent because I didn’t want to come to trouble with any of the instructors. My mother always stressed that we ought to do what we are told to do and I tried to do that. My dad always stood behind us to, he wanted us to do right but I just remember hearing more about it from my mother.

Jon Duncan: How important was education in your family?

Margaret Young: It was important we were expected to get thought our grades.

Jon Duncan: What type of relationship did your parents have with your teachers?

Margaret Young: Well as far as I know we didn’t have the conferences that we have today and I don’t think that they were nearly as involved with the teachers as parents are today as the parents would like to have the teachers today. I think that it is a good thing to cooperate together and to deliberate occasionally together to see how they are coming along but we didn’t get any special favours from any of the teachers because our parents would stand behind the teachers and we were expected to follow what they told us to do and we didn’t have anybody fail as far as I know. I know that bill took two grades and one in Raymond to before we came out to the farm.

Jon Duncan: Okay later on after you finished grade twelve you went off to normal school.

Margaret Young: The next year.

Jon Duncan: Which normal school?

Margaret Young: Calgary

Jon Duncan: Why did you decide to go to normal school?

Margaret Young: Well to be honest it was because it was the thing that I thought that I would enjoy the best which I could be trained for me one year and then get out and make a living.

Jon Duncan: How did your parents feel?

Margaret Young: I think that they thought that it was good two that I should go in and do that because they had a whole flock of kids that they had to educate and there was no way that they were going to be able to send us each to university.

Jon Duncan: What about tuition?

Margaret Young: I didn’t have to pay any tuition because I went to Raymond and I lived with my grandparents I don’t know if they made any arrangements but they may have taken some Saks flower from our own supply maybe they took garden produce but grandpa always had a great big garden so I don’t think that he needed it.

Jon Duncan: So there was no tuition in Raymond

Margaret Young: No because my dad still owned property there I could go for nothing.

Jon Duncan: What about Calgary?

Margaret Young: That was one hundred dollars 

Jon Duncan: Who paid for that?

Margaret Young: They did

Jon Duncan: Your parents

Margaret Young: Yes I hadn’t gone out to work at all at that time. I had just worked around home. I know that we did beat’s the last two years that I was home, as a family we did ten acres. But we never got paid anything for it, the kids didn’t. But we were taken care of s your mother and father paid your tuition and they also paid the other expenses. My rent and we took a lot of stuff. I got a girl from Cardston to room with me that I didn’t know from Adam and they were about in the same boat that we were we both took about a hundred pounds of flower we both took a hundred pound sack of potatoes, we both took vegetables, bottled fruit, this sort of thing and we lived a cheaply as were could and I don’t think that they could have paid more than four hundred dollars for that whole years education, cash. We came home once before Christmas and once at Christmas and once at Easter time and then final home by the end of April I think that it was.

Jon Duncan: By train

Margaret Young: By train I came up by bus a Christmas time we came on a train excursion because it was a real cheep rate about thanksgiving time or a little after thanksgiving I think at that time we were still having thanksgiving in November. I cant remember for sure but It was in the fall and we found out this really cheep rate and we decided if we were real careful we could have that trip back and we could still get through the month.

Jon Duncan: So you spent one year in Calgary, what happened next?

Margaret Young: Then I took a job in schooling in Stirling. We had to come home at Easter time because we had to do our practice teaching during that week and I went out to a Huderite colony out south and west of New Dayton and lived with a catholic lady and she became a dear, dear friend to me.

Jon Duncan: This was during your practice.

Margaret Young: My practice, he said that we had to be a week I think that it was just one week, could have been two.

Jon Duncan: When you came to Stirling what subjects did you teach?

Margaret Young: I taught grade five and six I was given grade five and six, I wanted grade one and two. But my good friend got one and two. Teachers were a dime a dozen that year nobody had to worry about getting a teacher that year there were teacher’s real cheep and we were quite worried that we might not get a job, that year there happened to be five of us that went to normal and all wanted to teach in Stirling and my husband was one of them. Mr. Marl’s brother in law was another one of them and then there was the Proctor twins and Helen Brandley. They had these two make it scenes a one and a two and a five and a six. We both wanted the one and two so they gave the one and two to Cathleen they were twins they were Cathleen and Virginia they gave her the grade one and they gave me the five and six we needed experience you see and that was what was holding us back. So they gave the grade one and two basically to the twins and Cathleen could be the teacher but Virginia could help her with seat work and with marking and with whatever else she needed her to do and while she didn’t spend a lot of time in the classroom she did quite a bit of work and they divided the, I guess that she must have been in the classroom most of the time because it was good experience and then the next year Virginia could say that she had experience and that she went to a country school and took it over. They asked me if I would take the other lady and I said are you offering me the job myself or are you saying that I cant have the job if we both don’t take it and he said oh no I could have the job if I want it by myself so I said that I am not willing to take her. I just always wondered how I got the brass to say that because I just cant imagine me turning her down because she was far more dominating of the two of us I just felt that maybe she would just rule over me and I wouldn’t be able to open my mouth I said I am sorry but if I could have the job without her then I am now willing to take her. So that year she went to BYU and then the next year she got a job in welling. At the welling school I always felt kind of funny about that.

Jon Duncan: Later you went to BYU also why was that?

Margaret Young: I just went to BYU in the summer to get some music courses because they ask me the first year the grade seven teachers said I don’t know anything about music but I would teach your art if you would teach my music. And I thought well I might need that. I didn’t feel that I had any capability in art at all so I told him that I would do it. After that year then they asked me if I wouldn’t take the high school music class also and I wasn’t sure how to go because I had mostly been self taught up to this point. But I figured that I could get the rudiment books and figure out the theory part and I knew that I could play the stuff and I knew that I could sing the stuff, I could read music well enough so I wasn’t going to teach myself but I thought for extra interest that it might be a good idea to find out how they did it in collage so I went to a summer school in 1937 and learned how they did it. I went down to a summer school in Edmonton the first year because you got an intern certificate and you had to get a summer school behind you belt so you could have a permanent certificate so we had to go there that first year and then the second year I had my permanent certificate. I went down to the Y I had Leroy Robertson as a consular there and he guided me into what I needed to have and I had a lovely summer there.

Jon Duncan: That was in 1937

Margaret Young: That was in 1937. In thirty six I was in Edmonton.

Jon Duncan: How many people in Stirling Usually went to BYU?

Margaret Young: Well not very many although the year that I started to teach my brother was old enough to go so I gave him twenty five dollars a month to go to school down there that year instead of paying my board at home. That Is where we stared we got seventy dollars a month for ten months, nothing in the summer, and I paid him twenty five and he went to school on.

Jon Duncan: So there were only a few kids that went to BYU.

Margaret Young: That year he went and his very good friend Dr. Fred Spackman in Cardston was his pal and he went that year to but the other real good friend didn’t go. I don’t know how many went, I know that Helen went the first year I taught she went, Helen Brandley. I know that Marie Clawson went for at least one or two years but grace did never go. Not a lot of my friends went.

Jon Duncan: Carl Young also began teaching in Stirling.

Margaret Young: He didn’t begin teaching in Stirling, he taught out at Mammoth for the first three years. Then the next year, it was an all Japanese school, he had about twenty or twenty three students. So he had to teach them to speak English although their siblings that were older already knew how to speak English, just a little bit. The little ones in grade one didn’t know how to speak hardly any English because they spoke Japanese all the time at home. They caught on really fast. But he was there for three years and then it had gone into the Warner school division, St. Marie’s school division or something. Anyway they told Carl that they were going to transfer him to Etna because they needed him out there and they were going to give this school to somebody else. I think that Dale Earl took it over then and Carl went out to Etna to teach, at first they were just in a draftee old barn but they were building a new school and in the fall just before Christmas they moved into it. He was the senior teacher because he taught seven, eight, and nine.

Jon Duncan: This was at Etna.

Margaret Young: This was at Etna yes. He taught there and we were going to get married and we planned to live in Etna. Then they asked him to come into Stirling.

Jon Duncan: So yow were actually going out with him before he taught in Stirling

Margaret Young: I was going out with him before we ever left for normal. I dated him before I ever went to grade twelve. The year that I was taking grade eleven at home he was taking grade twelve in LCI. He came home expecting to come home the next year when I was going to grade twelve and he couldn’t find enough work to get one hundred dollars of tuition. So he stayed home that winter and got enough money for his tuition. When he goes up there he didn’t have to pay it because his father had been killed in Vimy Ridge, when they found that out they gave him his hundred dollars back. 

Jon Duncan: Okay so you actually attended normal school with him

Margaret Young: Yes I did.

Jon Duncan: Well when he came to school in Stirling to teach, what grades did he teach?

Margaret Young: He took seven and eight, if he taught some high school I don’t know but he taught seven and eight.

Jon Duncan: So did you spend a few years teaching together.

Margaret Young: No they wouldn’t let me teach after we got married. I had to give up my job.

Jon Duncan: Why was that?

Margaret Young: Because during the depression they were trying to make sure that each family had only one income they wouldn’t let you teach if your spouse was employed and so I had to give it up. But they came begging to me when the war got on the way, when it got on the way right after we got married. Carl enlisted in 1942 and it was then that they came pleading to me to come back to school. I never would have had any trouble teaching after that. I only taught while he was gone and I stayed home with my kids until they were ready to go to school.

Jon Duncan: So you taught for a few before you married Carl. During the war they relaxed the rules.

Margaret Young: They had to because they didn’t have any men in the country, they had to many people going into war work, a lot of people enlisted and some people went to the cities where there were factories and they could get work that way. There were just no teachers, no man teachers at all. So they asked me if I would please come and teach grade seven and eight in 1943. I had a little boy that was just eight months old when school was suppose to start. But they also had a polio scare so they delayed it for a month in all of southern Alberta. So I didn’t start until October. I got my sister in law whose husband was also going over seas to go to war and she had a little new baby in September so she came and lived with me that winter and took care of my two little kids during school time and her own little girl.

Jon Duncan: What was her name?

Margaret Young: Donna West Erickson. She was my second brothers wife, he married her in 1942 and he was already in the service because he and Carl went up together to enlist, they went in the end of July. I think that it was the end of July 1942 or else it was the end of august I am not sure which; I think that it was July though. Lloyd was getting shipped overseas; before they went they decided that they were going to get married first. They just decided it real fast; Norman Hicken married them in his home. Because by the time they decided they couldn’t go to the temple because they didn’t have any days to go. He was only on leave a few days at Christmas time. So they went over Christmas Eve to get him to marry them, he wouldn’t do it unless he came home and told the folks. Nobody went over they just sent them back and told them to get married. I think that they were kind of disappointed to think that they would reload like that you know. Also they were fixing up their house to the point that they could live in it, they had a new cook stove ordered to come in that day. They wanted to get it set up before Christmas Eve was quite there. It had had a misfortune to fall off of Sheraton’s truck, Sherit Jacobs’s truck and broke it. They had to get another one down and they didn’t get it until Christmas Eve. They were just in the troughs of getting this cook stove up and they didn’t get it. They didn’t come until about eight thirty at night anyway. They didn’t come over to tell them about it.

Jon Duncan: Your brother.

Margaret Young: And his fiancé.

Jon Duncan: So your parents didn’t go.

Margaret Young: They didn’t go because they didn’t have any heat in their upstairs. They wanted to get the stove up so they could have Christmas dinner then next day.

Jon Duncan: So in 1943 you began teaching again.

Margaret Young: I taught to grade seven and eight that year, I had forty five kids in that classroom.

Jon Duncan: You continued until the end of the war?

Margaret Young: No I only taught that year and then I taught until November of the next year. By that time they had grounded Carl, he couldn’t get his commission because he got air sick and couldn’t go up in the planes. So all he was, was a sergeant, they gave him the rank of sergeant, having worked with cadet squadrons and teaching some of the younger guys coming in, aircraft recognition, mass and this kind of stuff that he was used to in high school finally he wanted to get transferred to the army to see if he couldn’t get over seas and he couldn’t do that. So finally that discharged him because he didn’t feel that he was being useful at all. That he could do a lot more for the country if he was at home teaching school, so that his wife could be home. So he came home and took over the class room and I didn’t teach again until well quite a while later when I moved up here.

Jon Duncan: Now you did teach music

Margaret Young: Yes I taught music, I was there all the time in Stirling, I don’t remember if I taught a music class the year that I taught all those kids in grade seven and eight. I may just have taught the grade that year. But I certainly taught music here.

Jon Duncan: Now why did you choose to teach music after you got married?

Margaret Young:Well just because people needed lessons and I just hated to turn them down. I guess that I was crazy, but I just had a hard time saying no to people. I figured that they wanted me to teach them music that I should do it.

Jon Duncan: Did you have a piano in your home.

Margaret Young: Oh yes we got the piano the year after we were married. I taught the first year, I went around to people homes and taught at there homes. I don’t know if I told you tins or not but my husband was quite against me teaching. He figured that he was the provider and he would provide for me and I didn’t need to go to work. But I really wanted to go to work. Because I wanted to have some money of my own, I had had seventy dollars a month for four years and that felt good to me, I did not want not to have a penny. We had had to get started there was no money left in his check for me to have any personal income any personal allowance even so I asked him if I couldn’t please do this because people were really still clambering for me to take them, the parents had no problem with it they wanted me to come to their homes that first year and then we got to the point that we thought that we could put a down payment on a piano and I just played the rest of the monthly payments on it. People were glad to come to my house after I had the piano; I had more than five students. I was still just teaching for fifty cents a lesson. But it was enough that I could make my Christmas payments and still have enough money for a Christmas present for my husband.

Jon Duncan: So how did you convince Carl to let you teach?

Margaret Young: Well I told him that I really wanted to do it and please let me do it. If he had had any money to give money he would have given it to me. But I knew that he didn’t have because we had figured it out carefully together. Out of $990 a month, on starting out we were radio, we were paying for the cook stove, time payments on a car, we were paying eight dollars a month rent, and a lot of these things you know. We were on time payments by as much as we could have and he just didn’t have any money left. He was quite miserable because he didn’t have any money left in his pocket you know. He was a man he had had his own life and he was used to this and he was quite miserable because we paid all these debts off by the end of the month we didn’t have anything left over. That really bothered him. So after a while he kind of adjusted to it. He was very patient Ill has to say that because it must have been monotones to come home to that piano banging everybody’s mistakes night after night after night. But it turned out to be a good business for me at home because then I was home with my little kids until they were ready to go to school and I was home when they came home right after school. So they could talk to me for a minute.
 
Tape 2 Side 2
 
Jon Duncan: Okay so you spent several years teaching music in your home. I want to go back just a little bit here, when did you marry Carl?

Margaret Young: 1939 July the 26.

Jon Duncan: Right when you finished teaching.

Margaret Young: Yes

Jon Duncan: And soon after you began teaching music lessons

Margaret Young: Yes I took about five students that I had for a couple of years. I took them at their homes. I had taught them on the school piano after school the two years before that. I got permission form the school board.

Jon Duncan: So you actually began teaching school while you were still a teacher.

Margaret Young: Yes for two years I taught in there I think.

Jon Duncan: When did you decide, changing topics a little bit, when did you decide that you were going to marry Carl.

Margaret Young: I don’t know, about 1938 I think.

Jon Duncan: While you were in normal school.

Margaret Young: I think that maybe the fall of 1937 I decided that I was going to marry.

Jon Duncan: And you had been waiting for many years already.

Margaret Young: How old was I when Roberta was born. I was twenty; I had been dating him off and on, off and on from fifteen.

Jon Duncan: So when you were fifteen that’s when you.

Margaret Young: That’s when we had our first date was when I was fifteen.

Jon Duncan: What did you do on dates?

Margaret Young: Go to a dance.

Jon Duncan: Dances were the popular thing.

Margaret Young: They were the popu8lar thing to do. He didn’t have a car so we couldn’t get around much unless we could get a ride from someone else. But we mostly went to dances, but you see that fall that very first fall he went to grade twelve here in town, he played on the LCI basketball team and lots of his weekend were tied up in town. Then the next year I went to Raymond and he went to visit Stirling. I was involved with the high school dance band so we didn’t see a lot of each other but we did have the odd date. By no means steady dating on either one of our parts. But I used to right to him during the week. The mail service was very good from Stirling to Letbridge and from Stirling to Raymond. We would get our letters back and forth each week and we were quite steady writing those two years and then the next year we went to normal together. I saw him often and I had the odd date up there with other people but he did to, I went with him more often than not, let’s put it that way.

Jon Duncan: Over the years you became closer and closer. How did he propose?

Margaret Young: I don’t know, I don’t whether he did or not, he told me that he loved me one Christmas eve. We were just down at my house and just sitting around the kitchen table. I don’t know where everybody else was, whether they had all gone to bed or not but, but he had expressed the fact that he was in love with me, and I said well I think that I love you to but I don’t think that I am not sure. He was defiantly not ready to get married at that time. I don’t know what point it was because it has been so long ago.

Jon Duncan: So it was some time after that that you got married.

Margaret Young: Yes it was some years after that. He had a word of wisdom problem, his mother brought him up of coffee and he had a real hard time getting rid of it. I told him that I wanted to get married in the temple. It came to that; he said that he always wanted to have a temple marriage. I said well it doesn’t look like you wasn’t to have a temple marriage or you wouldn’t be drinking coffee still. He decided that he would quit but he had a hard time. It was the year that he went out to Etna to teach that he finally gave up the habit. He was really lucky to have gone to that place because there was a good understanding bishop up there. He used to work in the ward a home but there wasn’t as much to do at home. As they gave him to do up here, the responsibilities and things, he tried really hard that year to give up coffee. But it was quite a struggle. When he figured that it was done with then he talked to the bishop, he made him and Elder. You tell your Bishop at home that I would give you a recommendation. So he came home and talked to bishop Bronson and he gave it to him, so we got married that summer.

Jon Duncan: You were married that summer that he came home from Etna. What was it like?

Margaret Young: We didn’t have a wedding, we just had a lovely shower, I had a lovely shower, but we didn’t have a wedding reception as such they just were not holding them at that time. I never knew what a wedding reception was like until a girl got married that was about six years younger than me and she had a reception and that was about the first one that I had been to in my life. Because it just wasn’t common to go into the expense during that time, during the dirty thirties, they just weren’t doing it.

Jon Duncan: You just traveled up to Cardston to the temple; did your family come with you?

Margaret Young: My mom and dad went. I didn’t really know what to expect. He had taken me over to Magrath a few years older because the party ark lived in Magrath. He wanted his blessing; I thought to go with him at the same time. And I did. I was really glad that he would initiate this. He wasn’t as active in the church as I was; his family wasn’t as active as I was. We had that together, when I went to the temple I didn’t care whether anybody went with me I just wanted to get married. That’s what I told the folks, they weren’t happy about me marrying him because his family didn’t do a lot to recommend him as far as the church work was concerned about this. I think that bishop fawns was a little concerned to that he was very kind and loved Carl, a lot. I new that after all these years that If he said that he was going to do something that he would do it and I didn’t need to worry. I just decided that I would go to the temple with him and get married. My mother wanted to go and that was okay, although she did quite a lot to talk me out of going. But I said mom I am twenty one now and I am going to go, twenty one twenty two I can’t remember. I said I am of age now and I have decided that I am going to do this, I am sorry that you don’t like it, but I said he is good to me. And I think that we can be happy together. She didn’t say anymore again, she turned around and just helped everything that she could to make it good for me. I think that we made four quilts before I got married and we carted the wool and pulled the wool off the pelts we washed it, we picked it and quilted it and everything. All four of those quilts were mad out of wool. Well right shortly after that they started having nylon, and danker on them and it sure was a lot easier to do it that way. But we quilted all that wool. Then we had quilting beats and she had to. We had two quilting beats and she had two on at a time and the ladies just came at eight o’clock in the morning and stayed until the quilts were done she made a great big meal like they used to in the pioneer days and that was the most satisfying thing that could have ever happened to me. Now you can’t get people to come like that to quilt on a bet. Not in this town you cant.

Jon Duncan: So those quilting bees were held before the marriage just to get some stuff together for you and Carl.

Margaret Young: Well I think that they used to have quilting bees back whenever people needed quilting bees you know if they needed quilts supply of quilt they would come down and sometimes it would only take a day to get a quilt done.

Jon Duncan: When you married Carl where did you live in Stirling?

Margaret Young: we lived in the two front rows of Navel Spackmans house and that was situated just about, directly across from where the school sits now it’s about on the south parking lot of the church and we had two front rooms, and the outhouse.

Jon Duncan: How long did you live there just though the term about the following may?

Margaret Young: I don’t think that it was quite a year because we moved as soon as school was out we moved into a house down behind Proctors place, the proctors old place across from the park. And that was a house that his uncle owned but his uncle was not living in it. And so he was renting it. Carl rented it from his uncle for twelve dollars a month for the whole lot that had a barn and it had a chicken coop and it had a pasture out in the back and it had a big garden spot. The house was about five rooms but no bathroom, still had the little outhouse.

Jon Duncan: How long did you feel about these houses that you first lived in?

Margaret Young: Well the first one was not vary satisfactory because the rooms weren’t big, which didn’t matter that much because we didn’t have that much furniture. But I had a bedroom suite and a bedroom chest, we were given a dining room suite with a small cupboard and his uncle Dave built us another little cupboard to match it that I kept other kitchen things in like my spices had to go in the drawer, dish towels, table cloths, and we had a little section for pots and pans but that was all we had you see. She used this from room for a front room and I don’t know what she did with the furniture. We took it and we lived for a year, we bought a little cook stove and as I said we were making payments on that and payments on the radio that were no bigger than this.

Jon Duncan: Six inches by four inches

Margaret Young: Well maybe eight maybe four inches high and four inches deep, that’s about it. That was all in the Spackman’s house.
Jon Duncan: were you happy to move into the bigger home?
Margaret Young: Oh yes, but we didn’t use all the rooms. But we did board their daughter because she wanted to come down to Stirling to go to school, lived up in Tatervill and had to ride a buss up there. They wanted to have her come down and go to school there. So she came and lived with us and babysat our first child.

Jon Duncan: This was the daughter of Carls Uncle. What was her name?

Margaret Young: Pauline Person. But she only stayed the one year and then she went up there and I guess that the system was a little better up there, she lived at home after that.

Jon Duncan: Okay so you lived in this second home until you left Stirling?

Margaret Young: No I lived in the second home until Carl enlisted. Then he built me a little three roomed house, the first part of Jack Hickens house, he built that house. It was just barley up and he had to go, so every time he came home he would put insulation up or something like that, no he didn’t put insulation in. But we papered it and we had to paint the kitchen, well in fact we didn’t have the wall board up at all and as he came home on leave he could do whatever he wanted. If I could paint a little I would and if I couldn’t I would wait until next time.

Jon Duncan: So it took quite a while for this house to be finished?

Margaret Young: Yes, yes in fact the year after I taught school I had the kitchen cabinets put in.

Jon Duncan: How many children did you have by this time?

Margaret Young: I had two little children, I had one while we moved in, but I had Blake about four months after that. Well January, five months, Six months.

Jon Duncan: Well I want to talk about WWII for a second, what it like was to have Carl leave?

Margaret Young: It was just dreadful, just dreadful. I didn’t think that I would ever see him again. I hadn’t had a lot of experience in wars but I knew that a lot of people got killed in wars. He was really anxious to be patriotic and get over seas, I just thought, you know, he will never come back to me. That was the only reason that we got the house is because I said that it would be a lot better for me to have two children than one to raise alone and I wanted to get pregnant really bad especially after he was going to go. I got pregnant, finally in the summer. I said that I thought that it would be a lot better, if I had a little house to raise my little boy in and hopefully another one, another little child. I was hoping for a girl because then I would have one of each. So he sold the car and we bought lumber and we went as far as we could go, Dave worked with him, didn’t charge him a cent, he was just their to help and guided him through it. So we just finished the houses that we were able to and he never did make much money in the air force because his rank was only a sergeant and so on. Well as my brothers got their commissions right straight and went into air crew and went into aircrew, two of them anyway. One of them didn’t get over seas because he enlisted later because he was younger. He never did see any action.

Jon Duncan: So this is a difficult time for you though

Margaret Young: It was really difficult yes but I was really glad to have a house such as it was because id just didn’t know what to expect of a husband after that. I didn’t think that he would be unfaithful to me or anything like this but you hear a lot of stories about war widows and so on and about men and their discouragements over seas and everything.

Jon Duncan: During this period you just spend a lot of time with you mom or you’re Dad?

Margaret Young: No they drove us to Letbridge just to put him on the train to go because it thinks that my brother went at the same time. So we went out with mother and dad and Carl and I and Lloyd. I remember that I bawled all the way home in the back seat of the car. I just decided that I had to do what I had to do I had garden stuff to get in and he left me with twenty chickens, he got chickens that year. To raise these chickens and I had never killed a chicken or gutted a chicken in my life. I knew that I could pick them I had picked enough chickens; I didn’t think that I could. Tom Fisher that was carls nephew who was living with his mother, he was about fifteen or sixteen years old then and he said that he could kill the chickens no problem, he locked after that and I looked after picking these chickens and I would do as many as I could handle in a day you know, we had to carry the water at that time. I had to get it hot with the boiler and then dunk the scalded chickens and pick the feathers out so I could only do a limited number a day. I had the boiler to boil these chickens all I had to do was bottle them because I had no other way to keep them we didn’t have a fridge or a deepfreeze or anything like that at that time. I guess that that is the way that I did it. I did some every week until we finally got them all take care of. Then I had to carry the bottles all back down to the basement to store them in because I had no basement underneath that house.

Jon Duncan: That is where you stored you vegetables, your Broccoli, and bottled foods. Where was her home?

Margaret Young: Just across it was that house that is just west of Hickens house. Only just across the gardens, but.

Jon Duncan: So Carl actually built you a home right next to his mothers.

Margaret Young: Right next door. They wouldn’t sell him a piece all the way down the lot, they acted like they just couldn’t spare him any land to build a little three room house on. So they just gave him this little corner piece it was just by the ally across the ally from Gary Bartons house. We didn’t own it, we had room for a barn at the back and that was all, right beside the corner of the house there was a little flower clock the back part they owned, just after that they made that big reservoir, and wrecked it up anyway, so it wouldn’t have mattered. But we paid them for that corner; I don’t remember how much money because I didn’t get in on that. He was kind of dealing with his sister at that point.

Jon Duncan: So when you first got married you got a car.

Margaret Young: Yes we decided that we needed a car.

Jon Duncan: What kind of car was it?

Margaret Young: Well he got a car, he got a little Nash 29 Nash the first year that he started to teach it was just a used car and it had a canvas top convertible type with a rumble seat in the back. The kids used to get a real kick out of riding in that rumble seat in the back. This tom and his younger brother used to like to come to town with s some times to go and see a show.

Jon Duncan: Is this Raymond or Lethbridge.

Margaret Young: This was Lethbridge, when we went to Lethbridge to see a show he always took his mother and he always took these two kids when the weather was warm and also they could ride in a rumble seat. Then he drove it up to mammoth the second year, after the first year that he bought this little flipper to commute to school, well not commute because he stayed all week. In the winter he got snowed in and he couldn’t get out. So he walked in once. In big drifts and stuff, but he was gone about five weeks that time and he ran out of food out there so he went over to the hudderites and got some frozen potatoes and a great big liver. Lived on that so finely came back to town and carried his stuff out, two suitcases. 

Jon Duncan: Which school was he teaching at when he got snowed in?

Margaret Young: Mammoth, that was eight miles away from the house and he got snowed in for five or six weeks. 

Jon Duncan: This was the car you had when you got married?

Margaret Young: No he turned that car in and got a Ford car, it was a two door. It was a nice little black car and we started to pay payments on that. But he got a nicer car than that he got a Maroon car, Ford car with four doors I think right shortly after that. It was that car that we sold to get the money for the house, I have no idea how much money it would have cost, and I don’t remember that.

Jon Duncan: Did you drive it at all.

Margaret Young: Oh yes, I drove my dads car before we got married.

Jon Duncan: When did you learn to drive?

Margaret Young: When I was about eighteen. I was just home one night and I needed to get the mail and it was getting late and I had a whole bunch of kids. I just said lets all get in the car and we will go and gat the mail. I don’t know where the folks were that even had a car. But they weren’t home at the time and so I just went out and got the mail and came back home again. Thought nothing of it, they found out that I had done it. You mean that you put all those little kids in the car and then went out there and you have never driven a car in your life. I said I did it right, I said I did it just like the rest of you guy do it. I did it just the same as you and it worked, I didn’t go anywhere else. I just turned around and came back home. So after that, that was my initiation.

Jon Duncan: Did you have a telephone?

Margaret Young: Not out to dad’s farm, we did never have electricity when I was home either because the line stopped up at that hill. Just across from where the first swimming pool was on the corner of the park, the west corner of the park. We had to but our own poles and extend it down to our house if we wanted it. We didn’t have the money to do that. When they got the new house Delco plant with batteries in the basement then they had electricity.

Jon Duncan: What about with Carl, did you have electricity when you were with Carl?

Margaret Young: Oh yes, we were uptown then. So we had electricity all the time.

Jon Duncan: What kinds of appliances did you have?

Margaret Young: I didn’t have any need for a vacuum cleaner because we didn’t have any rugs. I got an electrical washer a new beanie washer the year that I had my first baby. And of course I always had an electric iron after I got married. We had a toaster; I can’t remember when I got my first mixer. I could have had it in Stirling, I am not sure.

Jon Duncan: You did have some electrical appliances, kitchen utilities and so forth in Stirling. Did you have a telephone in Stirling?

Margaret Young:  I did in the little house, but not at first, not in the rented houses. We got a phone in the little three roomed house.

Jon Duncan: Was it a party line?

Margaret Young: Yes, yes it was a party line.

Jon Duncan: Who did you share with?

Margaret Young: Oh gosh I don’t know but there were eight or nine on the line. It wasn’t very satisfactory and I remember we didn’t have it very long because they soon changes to dial phones and we had until we left there then.

Jon Duncan: Now you bought a radio with Carl, I just want to ask what kind of programs you listened to.

Margaret Young: Well I used to listen to the noon hour programs because they were the soaps you know. I sometimes listened to them in the morning before he went off to school, he would turn on the radio and we would get a weather report. I would listen to those until he went to school the happy gang came on in the morning, and I used to watch them, it was a good humorous little show. The people were quite talented that performed on it; there was a nice violinist that would play a nice solo. Robby Grimsby that used to do the trumpet player, Bob Thurman that did a lot of work in the army bands and after the war to. Then I listened to the ones in the afternoon I didn’t have time to do much more than that because I would be prepared to take piano students at four o’clock. So I didn’t have all afternoon to sit and listen to that

Jon Duncan: Did Carl listen much to Hockey games?
 
Tape 3 Side 1
 
Jon Duncan: Now did Carl have a favourite team?

Margaret Young: I would have to say that it was the Toronto maple leafs but he did get to respect the Montreal Canadians later on because there were some excellent players there.

Jon Duncan: Did you have a favourite team?

Margaret Young: I guess that I would lean towards the Toronto maple leafs if any. But I could leave Hockey a lot easier than Carl could, he really liked it.

Jon Duncan: Did you ever watch the games in Lethbridge?

Margaret Young: Yes, yes, but I can’t remember what the Lethbridge team is called now. I remember the trail snow getters won the cup one year, and he was really excited about that. The name of the Lethbridge team just escapes me now. In spite of the fact that he was a basketball man himself and had been coaching with those high school kids all those years. He did enjoy hockey at that time of his life.

Jon Duncan: Did you go with him to Lethbridge.

Margaret Young: Oh yes, to watch the games yes.

Jon Duncan: Why did you go?

Margaret Young:He wanted me to go, mostly, I could have left him but I won’t say that I didn’t enjoy them. Most of the time I just went to be company to him. He wanted me to go. We used to do movies on the same basis a lot of times he would want to come to Lethbridge to see a show I thought that it was utterly ridiculous to get a babysitter in and I should probably be staying home with my kids. But we did see a fair number of movies

Jon Duncan: So you came to Lethbridge to watch movies and  hockey games.

Margaret Young: We would come to go shopping once a month they always just gave me this check and you had to come here to cash it. There wasn’t any connection to Raymond either we could get the check cashed up here.

Jon Duncan: So you came to movies to hockey games usually because he would want to.

Margaret Young: He pretty well initiated it

Jon Duncan: You would prefer to stay at home.

Margaret Young: Well I was gone an awful lot from home doing just public work in the town of Stirling itself I mean I used to practice with an awful lot of people. Practice with individuals and prepare for individual numbed on programs that was our main form of entertainment. We both used to take part in some of the plays that Elodia used to do. And one of us would be gone and the other one of us would be gone he got left with babysitting most of the time. I am not saying that I used to enjoy them. I am just saying that he liked them and I used to like to go because he wanted me to go with him, I like being with him lets say that.

Jon Duncan: So what part of the hockey games did you enjoy the most?

Margaret Young: Well I used to make a noise when our home team made a goal. I used to get excited when everybody would pile up in these big gang fights. I may have liked the hockey games more than he did because I liked the fights so much; he thought that I thought that that was the best part of the game. But I did get down to a statement one time that I wish that they would just get down to business and obey the rules. He just laughed; he used to like to tease me anyway. I don’t know if he really meant it.

Jon Duncan: Well you have spoken quite a bit about the social life in Stirling, I just want to ask you about something, and you worked with Elodia Christenson a lot of the time, how did you help her?

Margaret Young: Well we were drama director and music director of the MIA for several years together. She used to do her drama thing and she would be in three act plays in the winter for certain groups. And she did it as a fund raiser also I think for the church because before we had a budget system in the church each organization was required to make their own money. They made it which ever way that they could and mostly the only way that they could do it was to put on an entertainment of some sort, at Christmas she liked to do a plangent some times which involved music as well as the drama and so she would always ask me if I would work with her. I enjoyed working with her and sometimes she would ask me if I would work behind scenes and help with the make up and I could do that. Sometimes I took on a part of a play if she had a part that she thought that I could do, I used to really enjoy that. Later on she started to use Carl in her plays and so on. But one time I had an experience one time that was very unpleasant and unfortunate because it was the time that we were both working in the mutual together and she decided that I should do the music that she wanted to do individually on her stage and I should be backstage to do it. I was not the music director at this time, I’m sorry, they had another music director. She wanted this music director to get a chorus of people to sing Christmas carols as a quire out in front of the stage. She wanted me to be back behind the stage to do the accompanying for any individual numbers that she wanted to carry on in the play. She didn’t consult with the music director which she should have done, to see if it was alright for me to be involved in this and this music director got really hurt, she didn’t figure that I had any business with this as long as she was the music director. I said well I didn’t ask to do it, Elodia asked me if I could do it, how you could be up here to do this and then be back here to play this piece. Besides that she didn’t play that well, she wasn’t really an accompanist she could conduct and she could sing but she wasn’t really an accompanist for the music that she wanted. She was hurt anyway and I told Elodia you didn’t go through her and she is hurt. She said well I can’t help it if she is hurt, she is doing the work that she can do and you know that she can’t. I said I know that she can’t but she wanted to be asked to have a choice. She said well you go ahead and do it and I will deal with her.

Jon Duncan: What were some of the productions that you helped put on in Stirling.

Margaret Young: Oh dear I can’t really remember. I have got pictures but I can’t think of what they are. We did one ‘man of the hour’ about the first play that we put on when the recreation hall was built. It was before they joined it all together, it was just a building y itself. We prepared this as the opening thing for that building because we needed the money and it was that time of year. I had a major role in it and it was a three act play, I think that it was called ‘man of the hour.’ When I was music director and she was drama director of the MIA we did the ‘opera of Martha’ it was just a small opera. We also took part in it; she wanted us to take a part in it. But she also wanted me to be responsible for taking the music to the chorus line and all the principals. I can’t remember who ended up playing with that but I know that Cathleen and I had the leads. We had a bit of a brawl about something but we did resolve it and the show went on and everything turne4d out alright. It wasn’t all easy and on the whole she was very competent to work with, very competent.

Jon Duncan: Elodia

Margaret Young: Yes, and she was very willing to give her time in that capacity. I can recall in my life time that she did a lot of teaching and things of that sort or even or even executive positions in the church when I got up to the point that I was doing this but she did give an awful lot of her time with this. She was very generous in giving readings and coaching other people. She also coached people for a festival. They would come up to Lethbridge and they would do well. She would make costumes and she would do anything that she had to do, she loved her family as much as the rest of us.

Jon Duncan: Now how many productions did you and her put on in a year?

Margaret Young: It varied, it varied. I know that I started to do a play with her once and had to drop out of it. And I felt really bad about this but it was a health reason and I couldn’t carry on with it. She ended up getting her sister involved in that part. It always hurt me that I hadn’t been able to carry on and do it but I just couldn’t. After that I didn’t do many parts. I got more children and my husband was getting awful busy and I couldn’t carry on with it.

Jon Duncan: Okay, were these plays performed in other towns as well?

Margaret Young: Yes, we used to go to Milk River and we went to Magrath with this Christmas play. I think that we could have gone to Raymond but I am not sure. I know that we went to Magrath with that Christmas thing and took the quire and all. We went out to rent them once with the show but what on earth it was I can’t remember. I think that we took Martha to something else to but that could have been to Raymond.

Jon Duncan: So you did travel with these shows.

Margaret Young: Sometimes, sometimes, it seemed like kind of a waste not to travel when we were so desperate for money to run the organizations.

Jon Duncan: Where there other groups that came to Stirling.

Margaret Young: I guess so, I can’t remember, I don’t remember Raymond or Magrath ever coming with a show. But of course they had better stages.

Jon Duncan: What were some of the big events that happened in Stirling thought the years?

Margaret Young: Well they always had a big Christmas pungent, usually they had it a church. It was a religious sort I remember putting on one of those in the old, old church hall. Before they ever build across the way, that little whit building that was there first. It was about the time when the bells range or the chimes rang and it was a real nice Christmas. About the Christ child being born and this sort of thing, it was a beautiful pungent to, that would probably have been the firs one that I had saw there. Whether I had a part in it I am not sure. I remember that it was very good. She like to do those things often she liked to something special for Christmas and she nearly always did a three act in the fall and a three act after Christmas sometime. We used to take part in the mutual drama competitions that they used to have in mutual. I remember that we went over to Raymond one time with burnt toast what that was about I don’t know but we used to compete with the other wards in the stake to see who had the best ones. Frequently people would quall over this because everybody wanted to be the judge and be the best. Gradually the church just kind of phased them out and it was probably a good thing I think in that way, but on the other had we did a lot of polishing on the competition events that we had prepared. We used to do the dancing competitions, Cloe Boyden and her brother Ed Peterson used to be the dance directors and they just worked their heads of with this to have it be really top notch for these competitions and they would send a duty cater out from Salt Lake and that was very special. I used to get in on those and I used to have quarrel competitions that much my dad, I can remember my dad getting those ready he would take a course, he would do that but that was when I was younger. When I was in Raymond in grade twelve I did a short story competition with people that would be about my age now I guess and I didn’t win it because my good friend Cathleen in Stirling was competing from the first ward and I was competing from the second ward that year going to grade twelve. She beat me. I didn’t care because I felt real good because I felt that I had tried my best and I got a story that appealed to everybody, it was kind of a tear jerker. I could hardly give the story myself without crying myself, without my voice breaking and I had the audience crying like crazy. So I knew that I had reached the audience and I didn’t care if I won or not. But they said that the main reason that she had won was because she had a better class story than I had. I got mine out of the early release magazine and she had told the story of ‘the other wise man’ which is more of a classic story.

Jon Duncan: How old were you when you did this.

Margaret Young: I must have been sixteen.

Jon Duncan: Sixteen alright. So tell me why the seventeenth of March was so important.

Margaret Young: Well we always celebrated the seventeenth of March with a big release society birthday party. Because I believe that that was the date that it was organized, they always used to have it be a big couple affair. They would have a big meal, they would have a program and then they would dance until they couldn’t dance any longer. One o’clock maybe. It was always a big deal because they mostly had all of the ladies in the ward make a new print dress to wear to that party so that was one thing and they kept it that way for years and made it special, so that everybody came in a new print dress and that everybody came dressed the same and they used to get a kick out of it. They used to have a program after the dinner, and then they had the dance after. So it started about six in the evening and everybody was involved in the thing one way or another, it was a nice evening. They did it in a similar fashion for years.

Jon Duncan: What about the old folk’s parties?

Margaret Young: Well they were a big thing to. They used to invite all the people from the homestead country from Warner and New Dayton and all around there. They invited all those old folks in to because they knew all of our old folks. They would do the same thing there. They would do an afternoon program there, then a dinner at about five o’clock, then a dance until about ten or eleven, and then it would end. They catered to a lot of people at that time they tried to make it really special.

Jon Duncan: Did you ever participate in these programs and celebrations?

Margaret Young: I participated in them constantly. Sometimes I would have six or eight numbers that I would have something to do with on any given night. Practicing before that was just tremendous. Because it had to be good, I belonged to two or three little singing groups and it depended on who got asked. You know how many times that I had to do it.

Jon Duncan: So you were quite involved in the social activities in the community

Margaret Young: I think that one reason that I was asked to play so much was because it was during the depression. People didn’t have much money and if they wanted to sing something they didn’t have the music for it. They didn’t come to Lethbridge to buy it they said well maybe they can play it. Many times they could play it if they heard the tune and so they would go that rout were as if more people that could have played by ear I probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to play so much. So you could see that it was a wonderful experience for me, as far as development is concerned. It was also very time consuming, very time consuming.

Jon Duncan: You did this during your teenage years

Margaret Young: Yes from about the time I was about fourteen, fourteen was how old you had to be before you could go to dances. I played for my dad at these old folks parties two or three years before I was fourteen. Nearly every year he would be asked to go and participate with Raymond’s old folk parties. I would of with him over there, for several years I did this. While it didn’t take my dad the time to go over there, we practiced together he was a great guy to me with my music, because of this.

Jon Duncan: Where you ever involved in political activities?

Margaret Young: I can tell you that when Aberhart went into power, that Sullen Low was my principal that year he had taught me the two previous years in Raymond and he knew about our ladies trio that used to sing together. He got us to go with him when he went campaigning for office because he was campaigning for office because he was campaigning for the social office that same year with Mr. Aberhart.

Jon Duncan: So you traveled all around southern Alberta.

Margaret Young: I went all over southern Alberta, I went to places that I didn’t even now that existed that year. We went up to Rentlog, we went to Sundial, Out to Madin School, and I knew that that was there we also went to all the little towns around Coutts. Sung at their political rallies, we even went to the Alberta sugar factory, in Raymond on a tour to take primer Aberhart through he did end up getting to be primer, he was quite a prominent primer in Alberta.

Jon Duncan: So you met William Aberhart.

Margaret Young: Yes, that day, I never got in to a conversation with him but I did meet him.

Jon Duncan: What were these politicians like?

Margaret Young: Well they were just men that had convictions and they wanted to run. I thought that William Aberhart was a good man. Basically I think that he had the interest of the country at heart. I think that Ernis Manning did to. I think that Preston Manning has a good attitude, I don’t think that he is going out with any wrong motives I feel that some politicians do.

Jon Duncan: So you support the party today?

Margaret Young: I guess I tend to lack their principals, yes. I don’t know who for sure that I am going to vote for but it could be reform. I don’t know that I have to be on the winning team.

Jon Duncan: What were some of the speeches like?

Margaret Young: Oh he was a very dynamic man he was a very dynamic teacher, he really stirred them up. He stirred the public up and I think that they had a lot of confidence in him When he went in what prominent position was it that he had

Jon Duncan: I think that it was treasurer.

Margaret Young: It was a very important position. He did a good job, I can’t remember it being treasurer but I don’t know for sure. I know that he stayed there in the school until after Christmas. Then he retired from his position and they hired another principal.

Jon Duncan: So was he popular in Stirling?

Margaret Young: Yes he was very popular, particularly that first year that he went in and he got the boys all fired up ion basket ball. It really took off after Sullan went in there.

Jon Duncan: No who were the other two women that you were with in this trio.

Margaret Young: Cathleen and Virginia Proctor. One became Virginia Baker and the other became Cathleen Brandley.

Jon Duncan: Just a few more questions that I have, when you were a teenager, who were your friends.

Margaret Young: Well Cathleen and Virginia Proctor were my friends because we were in the same grade at school and we were just three days apart in birthdays. They were the first people that I met in Stirling that would be in my classroom. Their folks were very friendly with my folks because they had known each other in Mount Pleasant. Before they ever came to Canada, and we all sang and lived down the same street and we just became really close friends.

Jon Duncan: So Cathleen and Virginia.

Margaret Young: Then there was Unis Hardy. Who was Lyman Hardy’s younger sister? She just lived up there on the corner, the next corner the house with the big veranda in the Ray Hardy home. She was a grade behind me, behind all three of us but she was still in our mutual class and our primary classes. So we were friendly there, the Brandley girls Helen, Marie, and Grace all three.

Jon Duncan: So you had a large circle of friends.

Margaret Young: Well yes we were close friends there and then we had other kids that did productions with us in the MIA classes. There was an Aredale Larson I think that she married a Roland down Warner way. There was a June Oler that has moved away now and there was Dorothy Oler, who was Francis’s younger sister. Alta Peterson was one of them to she married Roy Erickson That was also Elodias sister. Alta was the youngest, she was about my age. She had passed away now.

Jon Duncan: Let me ask you this, with your friends what sorts of activities did you get up to.

Margaret Young: We mostly did musical things. We did musical things and dance numbers and stuff. We had Marian Proctor who was the second oldest daughter in the proctor family. And she loved music and grammaticism; in fact she took her degree out in dramatics. She was also very knowledgeable about music and she used to do a lot of work there she came to the MIA teacher one year and a lot of us were you know could sing and liked doing it. She was just crazy about it and she liked costuming and stuff like that. She would teach us a song and dance routine for when ever we needed them and we did all kinds of things like that. We did a Japanese operetta once in beehive class. We did an Irish program for the seventeenth of March once. We did a sailing over the house main and that sort of thing. We did a gypsy thing once and all sorts of things. We did a song and a dance and we would be costumed so she went in for those things. We had a lot of fun doing it. I have some good memories and some bad memories about them. Mostly they were good.

Jon Duncan: Did the girls do many sports?

Margaret Young: Not in the group that I was in. I remember that we used to go out and have a softball game the odd time a recess. It didn’t seem that my group was all that interested even the ones that we not the close friends didn’t seem like they went in for sports to much I remember that every one summer they would ask me if I would like to play soft ball I said yes I would.
 
Tape 3 Side 2
 
Jon Duncan: So you went to the first practice of the softball.

Margaret Young: I caught a ball and dislocated my thumb; it was practically the whole summer getting better. So that ended that. I never got involved again.

Jon Duncan: Sports weren’t a big thing.

Margaret Young: Girls sports were not a big thing I Stirling as far as my recollection at all. I think that they got in to it later though. We used to go skating for sport but there again we didn’t have a good facility and we had to clean off the ice. There was no place to get warm and to put on your skates and it faded for me after a while. When I got old enough to go to dances it was a lot easier to go to dances.

Jon Duncan: Did you go to dances in a lot of other communities?

Margaret Young: Ya we used to go to Raymond when we used to go. I never went to New Dayton much. Some of the girls used to go out to Warner or New Dayton and have a good time. But I didn’t ever go there much.

Jon Duncan: Well why don’t you tell me about the bathing beauty contest

Margaret Young: Well my only involvement with the bathing beauty contest was that I had started, when I taught school, to create some enthusiasm in an acidic class that I was teaching in grades seven and eight. That maybe people like us could do something to make the town better. We had a good brainstorming class one day and the thing that they thought that we needed most was a swimming pool, we worked at that for a while and decided that there were things that we could do. I said well go home and talk to your parents and see what they think. They all came back the next day all wound up about doing this and somebody had offered a calf to auction off and someone had offered handwork, and someone had offered several different things that we could sell rathel tickets for. When we got a little fund together we were going to take it down to the town council and present it to them and tell them that we wanted them to go ahead with this. We would help as much as we could. We made about two or three hundred dollars and we put it in the bank and they took care of the funds for us. Then quite a short order after that the lions club was formed in Stirling and Carl became the secretary treasurer of it. I don’t know how they got wind of it, but he knew that we had made this much money. Other members of the lions club had to of undoubtedly known that we had started something. They were thinking of projects and the decided that the swimming pool was a good idea, they became interested in it. Whose idea it was, I don’t know and who had this suggestion, I don’t know, but they ended up having quite a substantial amount of girls participate in a bathing beauty contest. They were all anxious to help get the swimming pool, they were all nice girls and they all wanted to do what they wanted to do. They weren’t particular about who won it; I don’t think that there was any problem there among the girls. We sold votes and as the time came close for the combination they decided to keep a record of who had the most votes this day and who had the most votes next week and so forth. I got to be quite an interesting contest, family became very interested in it and they started to campaign for their own family member. It ended up that there was quite an excitement at the end.

Jon Duncan: So who were the main contenders?

Margaret Young: Well it was the Peterson family were sponsoring Barbra Christenson because she was in the family. Of course another Christenson family were sponsoring Grace Christenson and they both thought that they had done a lot of campaigning and felt sure that their candidate had won it. But when we made the final count it was Grace Christenson who won it and Barbra didn’t win it. Her uncle was so sure that they had enough votes that they came and demanded a recount of the votes.

Jon Duncan: Who was this?

Margaret Young: Eldon Peterson, so they did recount and my husband was very concerned because he was the secretary treasurer of the lions club and he was right in the middle of this count. He had his committee go over in a Sunday afternoon and recount those ballots, there hadn’t been a mistake made, Grace was the winner. I don’t remember that there was nay animosity between the girls at all. I don’t think that this other lasted at any time. He just wanted to be sure that things were done fairly. He felt quite strongly that there had been a mistake made, he was good about it after the second count.

Jon Duncan: So one Christenson family was able to get enough votes ahead of the other one.

Margaret Young: She ended up winning. I guess that her uncle just did extra campaigning.

Jon Duncan:So in this contest paid for votes rather than just a secret ballot. That was a way to raise money for the swimming pool.

Margaret Young: Yes and it turned out to be very profitable actually. I would hate to quote the amount because I might be wrong after all these years it wasn’t my immediate responsibility.

Jon Duncan: So they only held a beauty contest once.

Margaret Young: To my knowledge, that is all that we were involved with. They had a big deal connected with it to, they had a parade in their swimsuits and they had a parade in their evening gowns. I don’t remember if they had a skill testing question or a public speaking ting or what they did there but they made a big thing out of it. I guess that they must have had a dance.

Jon Duncan: So Grace Christenson won.

Margaret Young: Grace won it yes.

Jon Duncan: Beauty queen, the last thing that I think I want to talk about is your reasons for leaving Stirling.

Margaret Young: Well I think that Carl’s position was secure enough but I think that it was a money thing. We had built this little house and he had come back from the war and he was happy to teach there and there were people saying that Carls shouldn’t be paid extra because he had his home there. That didn’t make sense to us id didn’t make sense to Carl defiantly he figured that if every other school teacher in the province was getting an increment he should get an increment to. I don’t know weather they ever denied him these increments or if there was just talk about it. But he was a little bit worried about it so he wondered if we should leave, he didn’t want to leave because his mother was living right there. He felt like he could be a help to her, and he was a help to her. All of the sudden they came and asked him if he would come to Cardson to teach and they game him a thousand dollar higher salary than they were giving him in Stirling and so we went and when they told them that he was going to go they asked him if they could buy his house. He said yes and they wondered how much he wanted for it and he said that he had paid forty five hundred for it. And so they gave it to him. They weren’t prepared to dick around with the labour or anything else that we had added. He figured forty five hundred and that is what he sold it for. They would use it as a teat rage that was their plan. So we found a place in Cardson and went up there and when they got up there they kind of wanted him in a triumberage situation where there where three people that were looking after the administrative part of the school. After he got there and figured out what was going on he realized that he was going to be the axe man of the three. He was the one that was going to be in charge of this and somebody else was going to be in charge of that. He was the one that was going to have to take the blame you might say for anything that was going to go wrong. He was realty good in the disciplinary area because he had a manner that was a little bit on the firm side and he had eyes that if he looked at you, you knew that they meant you better do it or else. He had that happy facility that a lot of us maybe don’t have and therefore have more trouble disciplining to start with you know people like that. We got along well in Cardston and they used him in the church and they used him in the local and they used him in the president of the principals association and who knows what else. I hardly saw him up there. I had a baby the next day after we had moved up there and we had stayed there and both of my children said we never seen dad much while we were in Cardston because he was never home. When we wrote out histories every one of our kids that were old enough to realize it said that they don’t remember dad being around home much. I think that that was one thing; they were expecting an awful lot of him having him in the church and the school and responsible for supervision it was just unreal. So he found out that there was going to be a change in the Stirling school and they also found out that they raised there salary schedule and it would be to his advantage to go back so he applied and they were happy to have him com back to Stirling and we taught for two more years there. but he had the opportunity at that time to get in on a land deal with the veterans land act and he realized that he was a little disillusioned with teaching and he better plan to be a little more permanent in case he didn’t want to continue his teaching or couldn’t get a job or something like that later on. So he went in to that and taught for the two years there and then went to grassy lake and we didn’t ever go back, to Stirling after that.

Jon Duncan: Well alright I would like to thank you, Peg for the opportunity to come over here. I think that we have had a very good chat I know that I have learned a lot. I think that we will call this the end.

Margaret Young: Okay, that’s fine.

Transcribed By Clinton Dovell