Interviewer: Mark Durtschi
Interviewee: Melva Hartley
 
Mark Durtschi: I am Mark Durtschi and it is the 30^th of July 1996. I am sitting in Melva Hartley’s home, she goes by Ted. As we go through this if I call her by name it will be Ted. First of all Ted has written up a short History that she would like to give now. Ted do you want to go ahead and read that now.

Melva Hartley: Okay, I was born in Wrentham to Leonard and Annie Nelson. My dad passed away in 1929 when I was eleven years old. My mother didn’t want to stay on the farm so her uncle Andreas Michelson said mom my sister Norma and I could come up and live in his house, in Stirling. His wife had passed away and it was a house full of men. Andreas, Cern, Grandpa, and Grant, Nelson were married but they would come down every morning, go into their fathers bedroom and get their orders for the day. It was a good home for us and we were treated well. It was a big house and lots of work; we lived there probably two and a half years when grandpa as we called him passed away. While down there I played with Ralph and Glenn, we played cops and robbers, swam in the coulees with them. Us kids in the neighbourhood would go to the park and play run sheepie run, go horse back riding and whatever else we could think of, just good clean fun. Grandpa Michelson had a horse named Dewie every morning he would harness Dewie to the buggy, go to Peterson’s store and down to Maybutt to loaders. Price what he wanted to buy at the store for that day, and then he would go to the store that sold it the cheapest, even if it was the first one that he visited. It was wile we were down here that we started doing hair. My sister Norma taught herself mores low hair, this was done with a curling iron, heat it by putting it in the chimney by the lamp then taking a strand of hair turning the iron one way and then the other. It made perfect waves. Grandpa passed away so mom bought mom and dads old home. It is the home that Johnny Gedrasik lives in only it was on the lot where Wilma Steed lives. It was built in the early nineteen hundreds. My life wasn’t to exciting, school, church, dances, etc. The day that there was a dance Norma and I would do hair practically all morning, no pay sometimes thanks. People came from all the little towns to the dances. We had children’s dances at Christmas and a primary Christmas concert was started a brain child of my sisters. This must have been in the 1945 of sixes, not much money but we didn’t know that you had to have money. Mom raised a big garden and most of our food. We had no cistern, so water was carried from the coulee about two blocks away until water came in the ditches in the summer. I would stop in at my aunt Mables a gallon of drinking water home. In the winter we melted snow. We learned to sew. We made all of our own cloths, I designed them and my sister cut them out. We sold them. When I was fourteen I worked on Al Hirschies cook car with mom. The alarm would ring early in the morning, time to get up and get breakfast four fifteen or twenty men. Big breakfasts and they worked hard. Lunch in the morning and afternoon beside the big meals at noon and at night, they did custom thrashing and you move from field to field. The cook car was a sort of kitchen on wheels. Elodea Christenson would put on plays and we got to be in them as young teenagers usually in the courses. I held a number of positions in the church, mostly secretary. I worked a month for Frank and Marie Clawson when there son Garry was born. I received the dollars for this. I bought the dress and shoes that I was married in and still had little money left over. Shoes were two fifty and the dress was five dollars. I married Albert Hartley in 1937, had six children, five girls and a boy. We made several moves before we bought our own home. From the Hartley home, where David Erickson lives now, to the Ougdon house. Five families lived there at the time and we paid five dollars a month for a big room. I started sewing for people. I started out selling for two dollars a dress and I think that I got up to five dollars. I made all of my kid’s cloths, sometimes new material and sometimes made over. I even made their coats out of old ones. Gardens were watered from ditches that ran through the town. You made a dam in the ditch and then rows down each row of the garden. Most of out food was canned from the garden. Potatoes were kept in the pit down in the ground. We could keep chickens, pigs, and cows in town. We had coal stoves, heated out wash water on them even in the hot summer. On wash day when we had a hot fire we would bake bread, beans, etc. Then on ironing day you heated the irons on the stove and in those days you ironed everything. Stirling was a good place to raise children, we knew everyone. We never thought of locking our doors. If you would go away for a holiday you would just walk out and close the door. I taught primary, Sunday school, the usual. I was secretary from 1966 to 1976. Things went wrong in my marriage so on the 3^rd of May 1970 I with Wendy and Kevin moved to Lethbridge. I feel that I still have a few roots left in Stirling. But the move to Lethbridge has been good. Wendy was fifteen and Kevin eleven, the other children had left home. Merna married and lived in Coutts, Dianne and Beverly in Lethbridge. We found a very kind man who Leo Stuts of Cardston whom I rented my house from, who let the rent money, go to our purchasing it. I babysat and took in sewing. I met the cant and Pat woods. I became a grandma to them. My mother and two sisters and numerous relatives lived in Lethbridge, who were all very supporting of me and we managed to become a part of Lethbridge second ward. I was secretary of the Sunday school for a number of years. Canning chairman for two years, taught social relation lessons for the relief society for two years, did the bulletin for ten years with the help of Wendy. Marge and Rex Cahoon took me under their wing. I worked in the temple in the clothing from the 6^th from January 1988 to the 1^st of June 1988 before it was renovated, then again when it reopened until October 1993. My life has been good, Wendy lives with me with her son Jonathan and takes good care of me. The rest of the children live relatively close with the exception of Kevin and he lives in Mississauga Ontario. I have fifteen grandchildren and nine great ones. My seventieth birthday was the last time that all the family was all together. They all have their busy lives to lead. I get to see them often just not all at once. I hope that this little history of my life proves valuable to those who might choose to listen to it. I want them to know that I have a testimony of the truthfulness of the gossiple. I know that I have a heavily father who loves me in spite of my short comings. I know that the church is true. The Holy Ghost leaves and guides me. The book of Mormon is true and I am proud to be a member of the church Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints. I am proud of my Children, I love them all dearly. And that’s it.

Mark Durtschi: Now that you have read that to us I wonder if you wouldn’t mind talking a little bit more about some of the things that happened there.

Melva Hartley: Such as.

Mark Durtschi: Well let’s start out with the depression. Do you remember the depression years at all?

Melva Hartley: Yes

Mark Durtschi: You were just a kid then

Melva Hartley: We didn’t have any money; we just made our own fun.

Mark Durtschi: Were the depression years any harder than the years before that.

Melva Hartley: Well I don’t remember us not having money. Dad always had money; he always had three of four hard men hired.

Mark Durtschi: Thought the depression

Melva Hartley: Sure, all the time that I remember. They were usually Hungarian, They would come and dig rocks and work on the farm because they were raking land all the time. But when you got your land down there you paid not much money for it but you had to live on it so many months of the year in order to get the deed for this land. So dad, when they were first married they lived in Stirling but then he would go down to Wrentham every summer and farm and then go home in the winter. Then after Norma was born he bought more land and a bigger house so he moved the family down to Wrentham.

Mark Durtschi: Did you ever go to Stirling when you were really young?

Melva Hartley: When I was eleven years old. I was in grade six.

Mark Durtschi: So let me try and get this straight in my head. When you lived in Stirling and when you lived in Wrentham, from what you just told me it sounds like you lived in Stirling quite a bit also and in Wrentham.

Melva Hartley: Well I lived in Wrentham until I was eleven

Mark Durtschi: And you went to school In Wrentham also.

Melva Hartley: I went to school in Wrentham until grade five.

Mark Durtschi: Then your dad died when you were eleven.

Melva Hartley: Yes, then we moved to Stirling.

Mark Durtschi: No that is kind of interesting considering that today’s medicine technology that we have. Would you mind telling me about how your dad died?

Melva Hartley: Well he just got this awful pain and didn’t say anything. He was a tough man he just went down in the basement of the new house laid down on that bed hand when it got to bad he come in at night and took a big table spoon full of Epson Salt which was the worst thing that he could have done. This was one Saturday, on Sunday he woke up and he told mom I have got something kind of serious, better call the doctor. So they called Doctor Victor Spackman from Lethbridge up here and he came down. When he found out what was wrong he just loaded dad in the car and took off. Then it was a van Harlem hospital that they used for a nurses residence.

Mark Durtschi: He died there.

Melva Hartley: He died about on the Wednesday, 16^th of December.

Mark Durtschi: No doubt that life changed a lot for your family when he died.

Melva Hartley: I lost by best friend and I lost my dad.

Mark Durtschi: You say that your dad took care of you ever since you were a little baby.

Melva Hartley: He had done costume thrashing. There is a metal thing like this where the strawboard would sit. He would wire that some place else and I would sit on this.

Mark Durtschi: So he had you out on the field with you when he worked.

Melva Hartley: Yes, we stook grain, we poisoned gophers, we milked cows, I could milk with both hands.

Mark Durtschi: Your dad would milk one cow and you would milk another.

Melva Hartley: Well dad was busy in the farm so in the summer, dad would milk in the winter. Then we would take over all of those chores in the summer.

Mark Durtschi: It sounds like you have got real sweet memories of your dad. It must have been terribly dramatic for an eleven year old.

Melva Hartley: I was sick all the rest of that winter, nobody knew why but I knew why.

Mark Durtschi: Now when did you move to Stirling?

Melva Hartley: 1930, in the first part of July. He died December 16^th, 1929. So then we waited until school was out then we moved out.

Mark Durtschi: Which house did you move in?

Melva Hartley: The Michelson house that was mom’s uncle.

Mark Durtschi:This is the same house that is the Stirling history site isn’t it.

Melva Hartley: I would love to go through that house.

Mark Durtschi: Of course it hasn’t been opened yet.

Melva Hartley: But I would love to just, I know who lives there, I know them. I would just love to go through there.

Mark Durtschi: Do you remember what the house was like when you were a child.

Melva Hartley: Sure

Mark Durtschi: This might be terribly important for the history if you could us give us a look.

Melva Hartley: The porch went all around the east side and the south side, and then it opened into a big dining room. Off of the dining room there was what they called the parlour. Nobody got in there unless you were dead. It was just a room that the family did not go into, the furniture was just like new.

Mark Durtschi: So this is like in some modern houses where they say this is for company and that’s it.

Melva Hartley: Then there was a kitchen and the kitchen wasn’t too big, then there was the upstairs. Mom and I and Norma slept in one room, Grant slept out in the bay hall.

Mark Durtschi: This is Grant

Melva Hartley: Grant young. Urban and Drese slept in one bedroom on the south.

Mark Durtschi: What were there last names?

Melva Hartley: Well Urban and Grant were young’s and the rest were Michelson’s.

Mark Durtschi: How were the young’s fitting in to all of this, because you are a Nelson right.

Melva Hartley: Ya but their mother was a Michelson.

Mark Durtschi: Okay

Melva Hartley: Grant was sleeping with his mother, she was dead. Woke up in the morning and she was dead and he had been sleeping with her all night.

Mark Durtschi: So there were three families living in that house.

Melva Hartley: Yes

Mark Durtschi: So it must have been a busy place. Grants mom died and you remember that.

Melva Hartley: Yes, see my mother’s mother and the mother to these Michelson’s is sisters. They each had a little girl born about the same time and they named them Annie. So Grant and Urban mother was Annie Young and then my mother was Annie Nelson. Annie Young died very early. Most of the Michelson just dropped over dead.

Mark Durtschi: From heart attacks, which did the cooking in that house with three women, did they take turns?

Melva Hartley: Mom did the cooking

Mark Durtschi: Your mom did the cooking.

Melva Hartley: Well she was the only girl and Norma and I, she would go to Lethbridge and leave me to take care of the bread or to cook a meal or two. But she was the cook. That is why she was told to come down there and live to take care of the cooking for them.

Mark Durtschi: And the other two women

Melva Hartley: What other two women.

Mark Durtschi: Well I just mean that there was Grants mom before she died.

Melva Hartley: Well no, they didn’t live there; they had a house of their own. The house that they have is where Doug and Helen Hartley live. 

Mark Durtschi: Okay so I got this straight here. Grant didn’t move over to the Michelson’s until his mother died.

Melva Hartley: When their mother died grandpa Michelson took over. They were just kids.

Mark Durtschi: Then there was Sister Michelson right.

Melva Hartley: Well Sister Michelson had died. 

Mark Durtschi: So it was just your mother, she was the only grown women in the house.

Melva Hartley: Yes

Mark Durtschi: Did you live there you whole growing year, from when you were eleven.

Melva Hartley: Well lived there for about two and a half years. Then Grandma Michelson passed away and we moved.

Mark Durtschi: So there was another woman in the home but she couldn’t d much.

Melva Hartley: No she had died years before.

Mark Durtschi: So you lived there two and a half years. Your mom was the cook and probably the mom to all those kids.

Melva Hartley: Well Grant and Urban were teenagers; Grant was the same age as me and Urban was the same age as Norma which was about fifteen or so. The rest were grown up men.

Mark Durtschi: Your mom probably did the wash to. All the tasks that a mom would do, it sounded like there were three women at first and they each played their part. 

Melva Hartley: No there was just men in the house so they said you can come up and live in my house.

Mark Durtschi: She was probably grateful for that.

Melva Hartley: Well ya she got a place to live.

Mark Durtschi: So after two and a half years where did your mom go then?

Melva Hartley: Well then she bought mom and dads old home. That is the one that Johnny Gedrasik lives in only it was on the lot where Wilma Steed lives.

Mark Durtschi: They didn’t have any social programs back then or at least I don’t think that they did. What did your mom do to make ends meet?

Melva Hartley: Well she had the farm.

Mark Durtschi: Did she farm it?

Melva Hartley: No my sister and her husband run the farm.

Mark Durtschi: That was in Wrentham right. So they gave her some of the proceeds from that

Melva Hartley: She just had it rented.

Mark Durtschi: Okay so what is your new house like.

Melva Hartley: It is up here in Lethbridge on the north side.  She sold it for $500 and they moved up here to Lethbridge on the west side.

Mark Durtschi: It is still there?

Melva Hartley: It is still there.

Mark Durtschi: How many rooms did it have?

Melva Hartley: It had three bedrooms, a front room, a dining room, a kitchen, and a bathroom.

Mark Durtschi: A bathroom

Melva Hartley: Well not a bathroom finished as such but that is what it was supposed to be was a bathroom.

Mark Durtschi: So it was not used as a bathroom.

Melva Hartley: No we used it as a pantry.

Mark Durtschi: There is your mother and you and what other children moved over there.

Melva Hartley: In this new home, there was my sister and her husband moved up there. There was mom and me and Norma and Hazel but when we moved to Stirling Hazel wouldn’t come because she had a boyfriend in Wrentham. She stayed with him.

Mark Durtschi: Did she end up marrying him?

Melva Hartley: Yes

Mark Durtschi: So during the depression years you were in the Michelson home. You mentioned to me before during our pre-interview about doubling up different tests on watch day so you didn’t have to use the oven so much.

Melva Hartley: Well sure you bake breads; you bake beans or anything that you can bake to keep for a few days. After the first few years we lived in the Hartley house and I had a washer then but then when we had to move from there you had to wash cloths on the washboard. After Kay was born we got an electric washer.

Mark Durtschi: Was it hard to get cloths clean on a wash board?

Melva Hartley: If you used a lot of muscle power.

Mark Durtschi: So do you think that you could get cloths just as clean as a regular washing machine.

Melva Hartley: My daughter that lives in Calgary used to always wash their stockings, her boys wore these sport stockings. She would always wash them first before she put them in the washing machine because they had to be snow white.

Mark Durtschi: Talking about snow white, how did you do your whites?

Melva Hartley: Put them in that washer wash them, boil them, those that could be boiled. The sheets the pillowcase anything that was white was boiled.

Mark Durtschi: Did you boil them for a while.

Melva Hartley: We boiled them for quite a while, maybe ten fifteen minutes.

Mark Durtschi: Did you use regular bar soap or did you use line.

Melva Hartley: We used B&G laundry soap. It was a bar soap. Then they finally got to the granulated soap and we used that. You wore your cloths until they were worn out, you didn’t have too many outfits.

Mark Durtschi: So we are talking about the depression again. You were telling me that during the depression that many people kept their lights turned out because they couldn’t pay the bill.

Melva Hartley: Yes, so you went to buy caraceen lamps. Michelson’s never had their lights turned off because he had money.

Mark Durtschi: A lot of your friends did.

Melva Hartley: Mostly everybody did. I don’t remember when they were turned on again probably not until the 1940s.

Mark Durtschi: So people went maybe as long as ten years without home electricity.

Melva Hartley: It was back to the old pioneer days.

Mark Durtschi: So they put their brand new electric washing machines away and brought out the scrub board again.

Melva Hartley: Well there probably wasn’t to many that had electric washing machines.

Mark Durtschi: But they were available.

Melva Hartley: Yes you could buy them then. Beatie and Maytag were there then.

Mark Durtschi: You mentioned that they work their cloths until they were worn out.

Melva Hartley: When I was married I used to wash about every other day. You didn’t change your cloths everyday because it was too hard to wash all of those cloths.

Mark Durtschi: You waited until they got dirty.

Melva Hartley: And the water was scarce.

Mark Durtschi: You had to haul it

Melva Hartley: You had to haul it so there weren’t just one people in there at that time. The whole family went through

Mark Durtschi: Is that the way that your family did it?

Melva Hartley: Sure

Mark Durtschi: They shared the same water?

Melva Hartley: Sure, then after you were finished with that washing and the bathing you would take that water and pour it on the vines for a drink of water. You didn’t waste anything.

Mark Durtschi: Everything could be reused.

Melva Hartley: You killed you chickens you would clean the feathers and make pillows with them. You made quilts shared the sheet, washed the wool. In fact I have got one bat up in my attic that I corded. Don’t know what good it is because you wash them and they shrink. We canned soup; we canned pork and beans, canned pickles.

Mark Durtschi: What sorts of things did you buy at the store?

Melva Hartley: Well not too much, not too much.

Mark Durtschi: Very self sufficient.

Melva Hartley: Yes, you had your chickens you had your pigs. Bought maybe baking powder and a few things like that. You rendered your own lard, had cows. When we were in Stirling you would have to go down to the park and play. There was a Charlie that used to come down and play with us, he lives in Raymond. We would be down at the park and I would think, got to go and milk that cow. So I would go around these boys and growl a little and say that I have to go and milk the cow. So Charlie came up and milked the cow for me. Every time that I see him I say remember when I used to con you into coming in to milk the cow for me. Yes, he would say.

Mark Durtschi: Tell me about some of the fun things that you did when you were a kid?

Melva Hartley: Well we just played run sheepie run, skated in the coulee.

Mark Durtschi: You mentioned a story about sleigh riding with the Selk boys.

Melva Hartley: Well ya we would go out to these parties, but how I got my ankle broke. He came up to school with a water sleigh, no sides on it, just what they used to put water barrels on to haul water. But down at that corner where, I don’t know who lives there now. Right down Main Street from where Gedrasik’s live, it was just a sheet of ice. It was fun to go down there and then stop the horse and the sleigh would whip around.

Mark Durtschi: Did you do some of that to?

Melva Hartley: Everybody fell off of it and landed on my ankle. So I was swung around when they were on my ankle. My leg was swollen

Mark Durtschi: Up to you knee.

Melva Hartley: Every color of the rainbow. That’s when I didn’t like Harold Selk anymore because as soon as we stood up there he started saying, I didn’t do it, and I didn’t do it. I said who the hell said that you did.

Mark Durtschi: Was he driving the team?

Melva Hartley: Ya it was just one horse, we just took one horse onto it. It was fun up until that happened. But we would just stand there and keep our balance.

Mark Durtschi: You were standing on top of it?

Melva Hartley: A whole bunch of us kids.

Mark Durtschi: Oh, I was taken for granted that you were sitting down.

Melva Hartley: No you would stand up and then when it turned around everybody got over balanced and fell, I was at the back of the sleigh and they landed on my foot like that.

Mark Durtschi: Did it actually break or did it just sprain it really badly.

Melva Hartley: Well it broke my foot but I think that I just sprained my ankle. I was on crutches for a long time. Kids used to come down and take me up to church or else I would walk there on the crutches.

Mark Durtschi: I have herd stories that that intersection was so slick that you couldn’t walk across it.

Melva Hartley: Ya it was just a sheet of ice.

Mark Durtschi: Was there so many kids doing this that you had to wait your turn or…?
 
Tape 1 Side 2
 

Mark Durtschi: The kids, was there more than one sleigh.

Melva Hartley: No he was the only one who would come to school on a sleigh.

Mark Durtschi: Okay, like that Adamson boys, they tell the same story. Maybe they weren’t there at the intersection at the same time.

Melva Hartley: No, I don’t remember the Adamson boys being there. That was probably after my time because they were younger.

Mark Durtschi: Could we talk a little bit about the dances?

Melva Hartley: Well I am sure that other people have talked about those dances.

Mark Durtschi: They have

Melva Hartley: Ya, well they were just dances.

Mark Durtschi: We haven’t talked much about the different bands though.

Melva Hartley: Well I don’t remember who the first bands that played there were but as far as I remember they were called the Knights of Room. They were the Greeno boys and that from around New Dayton. But that was after they built the new recreation hall. When we went to the dances in the old church, I don’t remember really who played in the orchestra

Mark Durtschi: What kinds of music did they play, do you remember.

Melva Hartley: It was a good old time. They played MUSIC in those days.

Mark Durtschi: So there was nothing really very fast.

Melva Hartley: Well they did the polka. 

Mark Durtschi: Okay so that was about the fastest thing in those days yes.

Melva Hartley: Square dancing, they didn’t do too much of it at those dances. They always had a stampede in Stirling. When Hirschie started a stampede, every July we would have a stampede in Stirling. Kids would come up from New Dayton and all over and ride in the stampede then they would come to the dance and dance with us.

Mark Durtschi: Was that during Pioneer day.

Melva Hartley: Ya, it would be about the 24^th of July.

Mark Durtschi: That was a yearly event, the stampedes; they don’t even have those anymore.

Melva Hartley: Ya we had good stampedes.

Mark Durtschi: It was just a regular rodeo right.

Melva Hartley: Yes, Glen Hirschie was the one who started it, Marvin’s Dad

Mark Durtschi: You say that you got a quarter to go to the stampede.

Melva Hartley: Yes, grandpa Michelson would give us a quarter when they had the celebration.

Mark Durtschi: What were some of the things that you could buy with that quarter?

Melva Hartley: Ice cream, watermelon, penny candy.

Mark Durtschi: How did they get ice cream there, isn’t this before refrigeration.

Melva Hartley: Ya but you had big canvas things around this carton of ice cream and ice in there.

Mark Durtschi: Was this locally made or did they go to Lethbridge to get it.

Melva Hartley: Lethbridge

Mark Durtschi: Could you tell me some of the different events in the stampede.

Melva Hartley: Well they would ride horses, wild cow milking.

Mark Durtschi: Wild cow milking?

Melva Hartley: Sure they would set the cow loose and you would try and catch it. You would milk into the pop bottle. The one that got the most milk in the pop bottle would win.

Mark Durtschi: They don’t still do that do they?

Melva Hartley: I haven’t been to a stampede for years so I don’t know if they do or not.

Mark Durtschi: Sounds like a fun event.

Melva Hartley: They would have steer riding, the same as horse races.

Mark Durtschi: You mentioned it very briefly in the story that you read about cooking for the thrashing crew which your mom. You mentioned that you were only ten or fifteen years old.

Melva Hartley: Ya

Mark Durtschi: That’s a young teenager, what were some of the things that you cooked there?

Melva Hartley: Meat, potatoes, and gravy, vegetables, bread, cookies, cinnamon bun.

Mark Durtschi: You could cook all of that in the cook wagon?

Melva Hartley: We sure they had a little tiny stove. It was just a little stove, the oven was little.

Mark Durtschi: Based on what you are showing by your hands, maybe a foot and a half wide.

Melva Hartley: You made bread everyday because they ate a lot.

Mark Durtschi: How many loaves of bread did you make in that tiny oven?

Melva Hartley: Well you kind of had to bake a pan full and then take it out and put another in.

Mark Durtschi: Could you get more than two loaves in that oven at one time?

Melva Hartley: I don’t remember, maybe about four.

Mark Durtschi: Okay

Melva Hartley: But for breakfast you had bacon and eggs and hot cakes and porridge, of course they had coffee. Some drank coffee the rest had milk.

Mark Durtschi: So they were fed real well.

Melva Hartley: You bet they were fed well.

Mark Durtschi: Did you stay right out there with the men; you obviously didn’t sleep with them?

Melva Hartley: We slept out in the cook car and then out in the tent. We slept in the cook car.

Mark Durtschi: You and you mom

Melva Hartley: The cook car was a long narrow building; they had a long table on that side, a little couch over here for us to sleep on, a few cupboards there.

Mark Durtschi: This was for the Michelson thrashing crew.

Melva Hartley: This is for the Hirschie

Mark Durtschi: The Hirschie thrashing crew. Some of the pictures in the Stirling history book are of that outfit.

Melva Hartley: Sometimes as we moved we would be making bread and baking cakes. 

Mark Durtschi: During movement.

Melva Hartley: Oh ya because you would probably get there in a half an hour and you had to have supper ready.

Mark Durtschi: Did you cook with coal in those ovens? Did you keep it going all the time to?

Melva Hartley: Yes

Mark Durtschi: Just about 24 hours a day almost.

Melva Hartley: Well after supper you let it go out.

Mark Durtschi: Was there enough coals to keep it going in the morning.

Melva Hartley: No you put paper and wood on it. It was hot; you didn’t want a fire in there.

Mark Durtschi: I was just thinking lots of times fireplaces when you get up the next morning and there are still coals.

Melva Hartley: Well in the winter when we lived in out homes and had coal stoves we would put a big lump of coal in and in the morning you just shook it up and started the fire up again.

Mark Durtschi: What were your hours like, working in that cook car?

Melva Hartley: From about four or five in the morning until nine or ten at night. Before you got all the dishes washed and put away.

Mark Durtschi: Then Saturday nights you would come into town and have your bath, go to church on Sunday. Monday you would be back at it again.

Melva Hartley: Back at it again on Monday.

Mark Durtschi: How long did you do this?

Melva Hartley: Two or three weeks probably. It depended on the weather. You know if it was nice and sunny so they could keep going. But if it was rainy weather, and they couldn’t thrash them then
we would go out.

Mark Durtschi: What was the logistics of feeding the men, did they walk up through the cook car or did you take the food out and they ate outside. How did that go?

Melva Hartley: There was a big long table; there was a bench at the back and a bench on the front.

Mark Durtschi: This is inside?

Melva Hartley: Yes

Mark Durtschi: They sat inside to cook car when they ate?

Melva Hartley: Yes, there was a big long table and benches.

Mark Durtschi: If your cook care is anything like our cook car that we have in the back, it wasn’t very big.

Melva Hartley: Well no, the cook cars were all about the fame and it was like that.

Mark Durtschi: So there was enough room in there to have your stove, you cupboards, your shelves.

Melva Hartley: Well they didn’t have much cupboard space.

Mark Durtschi: Maybe two and a half feet, three feet. But you didn’t have much cupboard space. I suppose that you used the table afterwards.

Melva Hartley: To prepare the meals yes

Mark Durtschi: Then you would clear everything off. That is really interesting. How did they move that cook care around, did they use horses.

Melva Hartley: Yes

Mark Durtschi: One team

Melva Hartley: Yep

Mark Durtschi: That same cook car you said went out to the Hirschie’s 

Melva Hartley: I am sure but I am sure that it is out there some place.

Mark Durtschi: I bet they used it in the summer time because it was a lot better to keep the house cool. 

Melva Hartley: Yes

Mark Durtschi: Can you tell me about the weenie roast that you had when you were a kid?

Melva Hartley: Ya well we would be down in the coulee skating and Drace Michelson would come down and bring us some wieners and we would roast some wieners. 

Mark Durtschi: You did this quite a bit.

Melva Hartley: Yes

Mark Durtschi: Some of the other town kids did them show up to?

Melva Hartley: No, just the Michelson’s 

Mark Durtschi: Just a family thing

Melva Hartley: Just Ralph, Glen, and me, I was a tomboy.

Mark Durtschi: So the parents didn’t really get involved.

Melva Hartley: No

Mark Durtschi: Just the kids

Melva Hartley: Just us kids, we would build a little campfire down on the shore of the lake and then we would go on skating somewhere.

Mark Durtschi: Did this happen quite a bit?

Melva Hartley: Yes

Mark Durtschi: That you would have the weenies along with the skating.

Melva Hartley: Yes, Drace was good to us. That is when we coaxed him into going and giving his skates to come and skate with us. So he did. And that night he died.

Mark Durtschi: Amazing that you can’t feel guilty over that.

Melva Hartley: We did, we thought that if we never coaxed him into skating he would have never died. He was a good guy.

Mark Durtschi: Did he do pretty well on the skates?

Melva Hartley: After all of those years that he hadn’t skated ya

Mark Durtschi: Of course there is nothing to feel guilty over it is just kids.

Melva Hartley: But we did at the time. But then see when he died they didn’t take him up to have him imbombed or anything. They just took him in this parlour in the house

Mark Durtschi: The parlour that no one could go in?

Melva Hartley: That no one could go in unless you were dead. They laid him out in there. Put ice in court sealers and packed them around him so he wouldn’t spoil. When they were ready to burry him the buried him.

Mark Durtschi: Any idea if the parents made the casket for him?

Melva Hartley: No they bought the casket.

Mark Durtschi: They bought the casket. I have heard stories that there was always someone who stayed away from the body. Did that happen in that case, do you remember?

Melva Hartley: I know that a lot of people felt that they needed to sit with the body until it was buried.

Mark Durtschi: So he was kept there

Melva Hartley: He was kept there for a couple of days.

Mark Durtschi: And then he was taken to the funeral, and of course from the funeral to the Stirling Cemetery.

Melva Hartley: That Stirling Cemetery is fixed up quite nice now isn’t it? That’s where I am going to be buried.

Mark Durtschi: Is it, ya It is nice.

Melva Hartley: That’s were my mom and dad are buried. It’s a lot for two people and there are only two there. So I will be buried by the side of them.

Mark Durtschi: Well don’t fill it up to fast, what happened at the Michelson family. Obviously there was a major change when he died.

Melva Hartley: Then Cern got married. Drace had died. Grant enlisted in the war, that was the Second World War. Urban must have left home to and then Cern got married.

Mark Durtschi: Is that about the time that you and your mom moved out.

Melva Hartley: Well that was after we moved out. Cern was a good cook and a good housekeeper. When we moved down there Cern had been keeping house and it was as clean as any women had ever been keeping house. He cooked he made cakes and everything.

Mark Durtschi: Well that is kind of surprising you se because he was also a farmer and very busy outside

Melva Hartley: He farmed, yes and then he married, then they lived in that house. I was in it once after they were married. I used to tease grant, he was a big awkward boy. I would tease him and he would come after him and I would run upstairs. Well I kind of got even with him because when we would come back from playing run sheepie run or anything, there was a bush inside the gate in the Michelson house. I would come in through the gate hand he would jump so I would make one leap onto the porch and onto the floor so he deserved me to tease him.

Mark Durtschi: Because he teased you.

Melva Hartley: But we were treated well down there, it was a good home for us. Grandpa Michelson would say ‘I do have some good kids’. I managed to get supper one night and we were going to have liver and onions, I cooked the liver in one pan and the onions in another. He came in and said well you could have cooked it in the same pan. Well I wasn’t very old and wasn’t used to cooking for all those men.

Mark Durtschi: Do you remember any peculiar things about Stirling that had to relate with the war?

Melva Hartley: Well when they would leave they would have a big party for them when they would leave. I had a cousin who went, Darryl Spackman. He was shot down, was a prisoner in the German camp for a year or two. Some of the kids got killed of course.

Mark Durtschi: At these goodbye parties were feelings often tender?

Melva Hartley: Well we just had a good time.

Mark Durtschi: He was the guest of honour. Sometimes they had them for two or three people didn’t they.

Melva Hartley: Ya, Dale Spackman’s and Ray Adamson was the same night. Ray got killed. Dale survived. Dale was a pilot. He got shot down and said to his gunner get ready to jump because I am jumping. They landed in the ocean and were picked up by the Germans. Of course a lot of things were rationed. We had ration books and you could buy so much of this and so much of that.

Mark Durtschi: Did that affect your life much or did you have just about as much sugar as you would have used anyway.

Melva Hartley: Well ya, I didn’t notice any difference because we didn’t eat much sweet stuff. But we had enough sugar to can fruit and that. Gas was rationed for cars; of course mot many people had cars so that didn’t bother them.

Mark Durtschi: Was there any feelings at those parties that maybe these boys won’t come home?

Melva Hartley: I don’t remember, I am sure that there parents thought about that. You always thought that maybe they won’t come back and they thought the same thing. I mean Dale was about nineteen years old when he signed up. It was kind of a feverish thing that people just thought that it was wonderful. They just got into the feverish thing and joined up.

Mark Durtschi: A lot of patriotism

Melva Hartley: Sure

Mark Durtschi: Would that be a translation for that?

Melva Hartley: I think so, but then they just got caught up in this. I don’t know just what it was but they were just like I have got to join. Of course a lot of them are drafted at a certain age. If you had a farm or farmed they didn’t take you until the end, until they got short on men. But if you were a farmer or had some important job that kept the country going then they didn’t draft you.

Mark Durtschi: You mentioned before about the Ogden house. You mentioned in your reading that you lived in the Ogden house.

Melva Hartley: Yes

Mark Durtschi: Can you tell me about the different things that the Ogden house was used for?

Melva Hartley: I told you

Mark Durtschi: Ya you told me but we didn’t put it on tape

Melva Hartley: Oh it wasn’t on tape; well I know that it was used as a pool house at one time and when the Stirling school burned. They used it for a school, for the lower grades. That’s all I remember. A lot of people came over from Europe to work I guess and it was just full of those people. German and Hungarian, there was just a bunch of them in there.

Mark Durtschi: That was when it was used for an apartment.

Melva Hartley: That was when we first moved to Stirling.

Mark Durtschi: Who did you pay your rent to?

Melva Hartley: Well Bill Eze

Mark Durtschi: Bill Eze

Melva Hartley: His mother married an Ogden but then they lived in Stirling so they lived in the Stirling house.

Mark Durtschi: So they lived in one of the apartments at that time. So it stayed as an apartment building until the Sealy’s bought it. Then they turned it back into a home again

Melva Hartley: Yes, well they got money from the government to fix it up.

Mark Durtschi: He has his history site now.

Melva Hartley: That porch up high went across the front part of the house. That is how it was built because he married a girl from the south and he told her that when they married that he would build her a home just like those. He did. It cost about fifteen thousand dollars.

Mark Durtschi: This was much money in those days

Melva Hartley: There was good wood in it, fancy doors, and fancy floors. It is still a wonderful home.

Mark Durtschi: Wild horses, you were talking to me about wind horses.

Melva Hartley: Well ya it was all just open country. Nobody farmed it, nobody lived on it, but there were a bunch of horses that just. You heard about these horses down in Medicine Hat.

Mark Durtschi: You were the first one who told me.

Melva Hartley: Well there just used to be a bunch of horses that were down there, they just lived there year round. If anybody wanted a good horse they just went down there and caught it and it was their horse.

Mark Durtschi: They probably didn’t catch to easily did they?

Melva Hartley: Well you would go down on a saddle horse and you would lasso it.

Mark Durtschi: Did you by any chance go on any of those expeditions.

Melva Hartley: No I was to young.

Mark Durtschi: Could you tell me a little bit again about making soap and how your mother used to do it?

Melva Hartley: Well they always killed pigs and then they would cut the fat off. Off the skin of the pig and the fat would be sometimes that thick between the meats

Mark Durtschi: Three inches thick

Melva Hartley: So they would take that and then they would render it and put it in the oven. And melt the grease out. They called it cracklings. That is what they would put into this big kettle to make their. They would put Lie in there and whatever else, I don’t know. They would put it on the stove and boil it and boil it. I remember mom putting a spoon in there and making kind of a thread and it was done. So then you would take this kettle out and leave in until it got cold and hardened. You would dump it out and cut it into bars. 

Mark Durtschi: So your mother left it in the same pot that she cooked it in.

Melva Hartley: Yes, then you would put it on top of a building or some place to dry.

Mark Durtschi: So she made the soap from the cracklings, what did you do with the lard?

Melva Hartley: I used it to make pies and cookware. Sold it and she used to make great big crocks of lard to people up here in Lethbridge. 

Mark Durtschi: What are some of the different ways that they preserved meat?

Melva Hartley: You canned it in bottles, or you put it in brine and that was made by putting salt in a solution and making brine with salt and water.

Mark Durtschi: Is that the way that your family always did it or did they mostly can it.

Melva Hartley: Both, they made sausages, my dad made the best sausages. They put them in these little sausages and then you fried them. You put them in this big jar and then you melted this lard and poured it over them. When you wanted to use them you dug down in the lard and got a sausage out.

Mark Durtschi: Did you ever do that with pork?

Melva Hartley: I didn’t do it

Mark Durtschi: Did your family do it?

Melva Hartley: Yes

Mark Durtschi: So your family did do it. They cooked pork and put it in.

Melva Hartley: The same with sausages, it was delicious. 

Mark Durtschi: Do you have any recollection of how long the sausages would stay good.

Melva Hartley: It would stay good until you took it out and used it. You would put that down in you cellar. Nobody had basements they just had the cellars out in their yard.

Mark Durtschi: Aside from your preserved meat like this and potatoes, and carrots. Did you put anything else down there?

Melva Hartley: Sure our milk, cream, and butter. 

Mark Durtschi: Do you remember how long the milk would stay good down there?

Melva Hartley: The milk would twice a day

Mark Durtschi: Did you make cheese also?

Melva Hartley: No

Mark Durtschi: Did you used to?

Melva Hartley: If we didn’t drink it all we fed it to the calves, pigs.

Mark Durtschi: There are two more things that I want to talk about and that are the church in Wrentham and your dads influence in the LDS church?

Melva Hartley: Ya he figured that we had better have a church so he figured that we needed a church. Leave Erickson said that he mugged the people in Stirling Bishop fawns until they sent elders down.

Mark Durtschi: Do you remember how many families went about; you say that they held it in the school house.

Melva Hartley: There was a Westergreens, Marge Nurks family that is probably about it. The Erickson family, the Brandley family. 

Mark Durtschi: So that’s five

Melva Hartley: That’s about it.

Mark Durtschi: Small group in the school. When they protected a sacrament in those days it was a little different from now. Could you describe that?

Melva Hartley: Yes the water was in one glass and you passed that around and everybody took a sip of water. So you would sit on the front of the bench so you could be the first to take the swallow.

Mark Durtschi: Why was that important to you?

Melva Hartley: Because I didn’t want anybody else’s germs.

Mark Durtschi: Your mom felt that way to obviously.

Melva Hartley: Well she didn’t sit on the front bench, just us kids. Just us kids would sit on the front bench.

Mark Durtschi: Did they just use one glass?

Melva Hartley: In Stirling they had the separate little glass. I don’t know when the graduated to that in Wrentham. As far as I know they never did get the little glasses. When I lived there but after of course they did, when my dad died they were in the process of making an old stool. But see I never went down there.

Mark Durtschi: As far as the church ran there in Wrentham, you say that Bishop Fawns sent elders down there. Were they in charge?

Melva Hartley: Well they kind of overseen that it was done right. Ya in a way they did but. Dad and John Hirschie kind of took charge to.

Mark Durtschi: Your dad wasn’t really the branch president or anything like that.

Melva Hartley: Well John Hirschie was.

Mark Durtschi: John Hirschie was the branch president.

Melva Hartley: Alan Erickson and my dad were the only ones that Baptised. Alan Erickson was a very slow man. And by the time that I was to be baptised I knew that Alan Erickson was going to baptise me. I knew that he would get me down in that water and I would drown before he would get me out.

Mark Durtschi: Your father baptised you though didn’t he?

Melva Hartley: No Alan Erickson did. Down in a coulee, down in Hirschies.

Mark Durtschi: In the summer time?

Melva Hartley: In the summer time.

Mark Durtschi: Did everyone get baptised in the same place

Melva Hartley: Always in the same place. I had to be in a coulee that there was a dam in that made enough water.

Mark Durtschi: Did they use and existing dam or did they sometimes build their own.

Melva Hartley: The people that owned the places usually built the dam.

Transcribed By Clinton Dovell