Interviewee: Mike Clawson
Interviewer: Jon Duncan
 
Jon Duncan: Alright, today is July 22^nd 1997, my name is Jon Duncan. I am here with Mike Clawson, Mike why don’t you introduce yourself.

Mike Clawson: I am Michael Allen Clawson; I am the third son of Frank and Marie Clawson. 

Jon Duncan: When were you born?

Mike Clawson: I was born in Lethbridge in 1941 in the middle of the winter, December the 16^th.

Jon Duncan: Okay let’s start with your dad, what was his occupation?

Mike Clawson: He was a cowboy. Most of his life he was involved with horses, they were his number one love in fact we often thought that any one horse he loved better than his children. That was a definite thing; his ability with horses was phenomenal. It came natural to him and a lot of times he couldn’t understand why his kids who had been raised by him didn’t have the same intuition when it came to horses.

Jon Duncan: What was his favourite horse?

Mike Clawson: Well he favourite, I never knew his favourite horse. It was Mickey but the horse that was predominating in our lives from the time that I was born was named Trophy. He was eighteen hands high; he was one great big red horse. When they were trying to break a number of cowboys were badly injured and so they decided to sell him and my dad picked him up just before he was headed to the can. He took him home bound and determined that he could break it. One day after the horse ran him out of the carrel. Patrick who was at that time three years old wondered off into the carrel wondered off into the carrel and went up to this horse. The horse just shivered as he was there and my dad was afraid to go out. My dad was in the house and looked out and saw Patrick in the carrel and he was afraid to go out because it might spook the horse and he horse would turn on Patrick. So he sent Garry out, Garry coaxed Patrick out of the carrel. For years after that the only one that was able to ride this horse was my dad. But eventually he got wore down so that all of us rode him. One day in our move to Rosemary my dad was the lease rider. One day he came home and the whole back of the horse was covered with mud. I asked him what had happened, he said that he had jumped the horse to go across the creek and the horse had landed in quicksand. The horse realized that he was in trouble and instead of thrashing around like most animals would do when they are in trouble he stood totally still, which kept him from being sucked into the quicksand as quick as normal. My dad pulled the quick synch, jumped off the horse onto the bank, drugs the saddle with him. Then threw his lariat around the horse and then hollered at him. As he pulled as hard as he could on the rope, the horse sad backwards and threw his front legs around and got his front legs on solid ground and was able to pull himself out.

Jon Duncan: Sounds like it was a pretty good horse.

Mike Clawson: My dad took him to the Calgary stampede for nearly eighteen years. After he had picked up off all day long his partner who was Can Tailfeathers rode him in the Indian race. Many times he won on it. As a thurbred he had a lot of speed, he took him out on the ice where other horses would fall down, he never fell down. He was a phenomenal horse; he was one of the few horses in Canada that are in the hall of fame.

Jon Duncan: Okay, so your dad went up to the Stampede?

Mike Clawson: Yes, he was a pickup man for I think eighteen years.

Jon Duncan: What do you mean a pick up man?

Mike Clawson: That is the man that when the saddle bronk or the bareback bronks are bucking as soon as the time is up he rides in and picks the cowboy off the horse.

Jon Duncan: Alright, well let’s return to Stirling for a few more minutes. He was a horseman, did he raise how own horses?

Mike Clawson: Yes, he raised his own horses and was always dealing and trading in horses one particular fall he and Clarklund got the contract to round up all of the stray horses that were, some were wild, some were farmers horses that got away. As you are aware there were really no fences east of Stirling so it was one very big range and there were a number of them. They became a plague in the area because of the numbers. So they had a roundup. In the fall of the year which amounted to around 2500 head of horses. Once all the owners were contacted and claimed their horses, that heard dropped down to just over a thousand. They set out in late November; it was a very cold fall that year. They started out for North Battleford and they pulled into an early morning Medicine Hat and they had to cross the bridge to get across the river to head north. As they come around the turn to head onto the bridge there were three nuns walking up the road and they saw this thousand head of horses come bearing down on them. They knew there was only one way to go and they lifted up their skirts and jumped into the icy wet barrow pit full of water. Of course my dad said he couldn’t stop because he was on leave and they ran across the bridge and up the other side. They arrived in late December, in north Battleford. Then got on a train and came back home.

Jon Duncan: So east of Stirling the horses just ran free?

Mike Clawson: Yes

Jon Duncan: Sounds like it was a significant amount of them that were wild.

Mike Clawson: Yes, there were a number of horses that had been wild and that were the core. Of course horses were always getting away. Even the fences around each farmstead were usually pretty poor. So your animals got out sometimes on purpose. Sometimes the wire was down or something.

Jon Duncan: Did your dad have any village assignments?

Mike Clawson: I don’t think that he ever ran for office or anything like that but for a number of years he was the local policeman. I don’t know that it was ever a paid position but it was just assigned to him. He took care of some of the problems that you have something like our local bylaw officer. That gets us to another little story. About that time, this was about sixty years ago I guess, the local JP and village secretary and pound keeper, Bill Sykes. He revelled in catching stray animals which was usually your milk cow or whatever. He was not really well loved by people in town because most people had had a run in with him with their stray animals. One day my dad and a few of his friends decided that they would play a little trick on him. They took Bills cow and they painted it, they painted spots on this cow and then told him that there was a stray animal that should be taken care of. So Bill rounded up this cow and took it into the yard and started looking for the owner. It took him a couple of days before they finally explained to him that the cow he had in his pound were his own.

Jon Duncan: It sounds like he had a good sense of humour.

Mike Clawson: Well another story that was also quite good, one of his good friends and also a wheeler dealer horse trader. My dad had a horse that Clark had always wanted to buy but my dad always said no, he is just to good of a horse, I have got to keep him. So this went on for a number of months until one spring my dad went out on this hill and found this horse. It died of a heart attack or old age or something. He drove down and he said you still want to buy that horse for two hundred dollars. Clark said yes so he gave him the money but he had to have cash. Clark went and found the two hundred dollars and gave it to him. He said well where is the horse, my dad said well he is up on the hill over there, you will find him up there. So there was really quite an ordeal when he went up there and found the horse dead.

Jon Duncan: Okay, now where did your dad keep all of his horses?

Mike Clawson: He rented a pasture, wherever, whenever he could. He always seemed to be able to come up with some place to keep them.

Jon Duncan: Where did he get his hay?

Mike Clawson: Most of the time he put it up himself or he bought it. For a number of years when we were young we would put hay up on chairs and I remember for two years there was about two thousand acres of hay that we worked on at the airport. That was quite a deal. That was the time when the airport was really quite busy and so often we would feel the airplanes bearing down on you although they would land to the side of you; it made it kind of fun.

Jon Duncan: Okay, so you did this swathing yourself?

Mike Clawson: I did some of the swathing, the bailing, and a lot of the hauling. That is when you handled each bale two or three times by had before it finally got stacked. 

Jon Duncan: Where did your dad get his machinery?

Mike Clawson: He bought it.

Jon Duncan: So he had his own swather and bailer.

Mike Clawson: Ya

Jon Duncan: Did he have his own bailer too?

Mike Clawson: Yes

Jon Duncan: Okay, now before I go on want to talk about farming and so forth. Let’s turn to your mom. What was her occupation?
.
Mike Clawson: She was a homemaker. She didn’t have a job outside the home until after most of us had gone.

Jon Duncan: Alright, what was that job?

Mike Clawson: She worked in a hardware store; she worked in the distribution center in Cardston for many years. Wherever we moved she usually had a job.

Jon Duncan: She waited until all the children were grown?

Mike Clawson: Until most of them were grown.

Jon Duncan: Okay so, who cleaned the house?

Mike Clawson: She cleaned the house with help of her daughter. Probably more than anybody else I did a lot of that, she made sure that one of my jobs when I was young was patching up overalls. I got quite adept at putting patches on overalls. Cleaning and, Suzanne didn’t really like to do any housework so some of the brothers came to my attention several times that if my mother wasn’t home they would starve to death rather than open up the fridge and get food out for themselves.

Jon Duncan: So it sounds like you mom did the cooking too?

Mike Clawson: Mom did a lot of the cooking although my father in most cases was really an excellent cook. He loved to cook and always did an excellent job of it.
Jon Duncan: Alright, so tell me what a typical breakfast was like in the Clawson home?

Mike Clawson: Breakfast was usually made up of mush. That was our normal with lots of sugar and milk on it with toast. Toast was always important in our breakfast. We had eggs quite a bit and bacon now and then.

Jon Duncan: Where did the bacon and eggs come from?

Mike Clawson: Usually in the fall o the year my dad would go and buy a whole pig and have it processed. I remember many times earlier on when we did the butchering and everything right a home and did the pickling to make ham and bacon.

Jon Duncan: So you did the processing yourself. Where did you store it?

Mike Clawson: In the back room. Then years later of course we got a refrigerator, I remember when we got our first refrigerator, we thought we had died and gone to heaven. That was probably the single most important thing to have a refrigerator. After that we got a freezer. Before that my mother came up with every conceivable way of keeping milk cool and things like that that we just sort of take for granted now.

Jon Duncan: Okay, so where did the eggs come from?

Mike Clawson: We had chickens, we always had chickens.

Jon Duncan: Were they raised at the house?

Mike Clawson: Yes

Jon Duncan: Okay so what was a typical lunch?

Mike Clawson: I don’t remember

Jon Duncan: What about dinner?

Mike Clawson: Dinner was the big meal of the day, mostly consisted of almost always potatoes vegetables. In the good years we ate a lot of meat and in the lean years we didn’t eat any meat. I remember one particularly interesting winter, when things were really tight. Were bought five or six sacks of potatoes and my mother put up about seventy quarts of green beans and that is basically what we lived on for about six months. She fixed the beans in every conceivable way. I am quite certain that to this day very few of my brothers will eat green beans.

Jon Duncan: So it sounds like you had a garden.

Mike Clawson: Most years yes, we did have a garden.

Jon Duncan: Who took care of the garden?

Mike Clawson: My mother and I mostly did the garden. In fact most years I was the gardener. I tended the garden and with the help of my mother and occasionally someone else but that wasn’t a high priority for most of my brothers. 

Jon Duncan: What types of vegetables would you grow?

Mike Clawson: Well our favourite was peas. I remember that it was always right around settler’s days that they were always ready to eat. We had beans, peas, corn, lettuce, lots of onions, basically the same type of garden that I have today.

Jon Duncan: It sounds like your mom preserved most of it in the fall.

Mike Clawson: Yes, when we didn’t have a garden there were always neighbours that were willing to share as long as we were willing to pick it. Many times I went with her to help her with this.

Jon Duncan: Where did your mom store the vegetables?

Mike Clawson: Most of the vegetables that we kept were bottled. She would process them on the stove. Now we know that probably that method wasn’t really as safe as we thought it was at the time. We all lived anyway.

Jon Duncan: What about the potatoes and carrots?

Mike Clawson: We had a store room some place, I can’t remember exactly where it was. I do remember when cans were available, we were able to switch from bottles to cans. We had our own canner it was a hand turned canner. We put the lids on the cans that way and then they were processed. We did that for a number of years.

Jon Duncan: You mom did bottles and cans. Who did the laundry?

Mike Clawson: Mother did the laundry, she did it every Monday. It took her almost all day to do it. I remember her complaint on any given Monday was that she had twenty one white shirts drying. Anyway, because there were seven boys and one girl there were always lots of shirts.

Jon Duncan: Did she have a machine to do the clothes?

Mike Clawson: Yes, we had a ringer washer for many years. It wasn’t until after I left home that they had an automatic washer. That was a big deal because I remember the first washer that we had was one of these one cylinder put type motors that was on the washer. I know how frustrating it was trying to get it started. Once you got it started it seemed to go but sometimes it took us an hour or two hours to get it started and of course we didn’t know anything about machinery. It was lucky to go, I remember when we were in B.C. and when were in Rosemary, I remember the hassle that it was. When we got an electric motor on the machine, which was a blessing.

Jon Duncan: Where did your mom get her soap?

Mike Clawson: When we were young I can remember them making it but that was when I was really young. She bought it, tide was her favourite.

Jon Duncan: Let’s talk about the house that you grew up in while you were in Stirling. How many rooms did it have?

Mike Clawson: It had a kitchen, living room, dining room, and it had three bedrooms upstairs on the second floor.

Jon Duncan: It was a two floor house.

Mike Clawson: Yes

Jon Duncan: Was there a basement too?

Mike Clawson: No, the water came from the cistern and we had a pump in the kitchen.

Jon Duncan: In the kitchen, what other appliances did your mother have?

Mike Clawson: Just the stove, then of course we had the refrigerator.

Jon Duncan: What type of stove was this?

Mike Clawson: It was a coal stove and in the winter that was really something because it was totally cold in the house and if the fire would go out during the night it would take about a half hour before we had any heat in the house. 

Jon Duncan: So the house was totally heated by the kitchen?

Mike Clawson: Yes There was one vent over the stove going upstairs and I remember my mother and dads bedroom was the furthest away from this vent and it got cold. We always had to have the doors open, the bedroom doors were never closed because of that in the winter time.

Jon Duncan: Who slept where?

Mike Clawson: My sister had one room to herself, all us boys slept in the other room.

Jon Duncan: Then your parents had a room to themselves. Was there a bathroom in the house?

Mike Clawson: No, didn’t have a bathroom

Jon Duncan: Where did the kids have their bath?

Mike Clawson: One a week when we brought in the round tub and we took our bath in the little room, we called it the little room, or the dining room. That was a ritual.

Jon Duncan: Which day of the week?

Mike Clawson:  Saturday

Jon Duncan: Saturday was bath night okay. How big was the lot of the house that you owned?

Mike Clawson: It was about two and a half acres?

Jon Duncan: What buildings did your dad have on the lot?

Mike Clawson: There was a great big barn and a garage, which was about it, toilet of course.

Jon Duncan: How often did the kids play in the barn?

Mike Clawson: Every day, that was the center of our play. We were up in the loft and down.
 
Tape 1 Side 2
 
Jon Duncan: Alright Mike we were talking about the bar and the kids playing in the loft when the tape ran out. Why don’t we start there?

Mike Clawson: Okay, we would play cowboys and Indians and we would cut rubber tubes and we would use those as our bullets with rubber elastics and we would fire would fire them from our gun and of course trying to hit the other one. They were thick and heavy so when you got hit you knew that you were hit. That was always a lot of fun.

Jon Duncan: So you made yourselves some guns and shoot rubbers.

Mike Clawson: Ya

Jon Duncan: Where was the hay stack?

Mike Clawson: The hay was in the loft, we put it up in the fall and it was probably poor quality with all of the running over it that we did but we had a good time.

Jon Duncan: These weren’t hay bales then?

Mike Clawson: No, this was loose hay and then we went to hay bales. In the early days we always had two milk cow and they were in the back of the barn and we would get a load of beat pulp which lasted maybe two loads would last the whole winter, so one room in the barn was full of it.

Jon Duncan: Who hauled the pulp?

Mike Clawson: My dad did.

Jon Duncan: Okay, did he work on any of the sugar campaigns? 

Mike Clawson: Yes, he usually worked in Raymond for a number of years and then he worked for my grandpa a number of years to that we were in Stirling.

Jon Duncan: What would he do for your grandpa?

Mike Clawson: My grandpa had a feedlot so he fed the cattle. Three or four years that is what he did.

Jon Duncan: Was this grandpa Brandley?

Mike Clawson: Yes this was grandpa Brandley. This was after we moved back to Stirling in 1950 I believe. We had previously been living in rosemary from 1944 to 1949 and from there we moved to Invemere in B.C. where my dad bought a ranch over there. Had he done nothing but hold on to this ranch he would have been a multi-millionaire. He sold it for a year later because of the isolation there and so far away from any church so this is one of the reasons why we moved back to Stirling. After we moved back to Stirling my dad started working for my Grandpa. This was in the fifties that you moved back?

Jon Duncan: Yes

Mike Clawson: He worked here at the sugar factory and then for my grandfather until 1954 when we moved to Conquerville on a ranch.

Jon Duncan: How long were you in Conquerville?

Mike Clawson: We were there for a little more than a year. From there we moved back to Stirling.

Jon Duncan: So you moved to and from Stirling quite often. What was the major reason for the moving back and
forth?

Mike Clawson: The place that we lived at in Conquerville was so old and so my dad lost his job there because of that and that is why we moved back here.

Jon Duncan: So was it mostly economics?

Mike Clawson: Economics was mainly the reason for it.

Jon Duncan: Your dad was going where he could find work.

Mike Clawson: Yes, where he could find work.

Jon Duncan: Let me ask you this, who did the milking?

Mike Clawson: We took turns, the three oldest boys took turns milking and then as we got older it shifted to you younger boys. Garry a good portion of the time got out of his turn by threatening or whatever. I remember that I did the major portion of the milking right from the time that I was six years old. Because I was the better milker, the reason for that was because Garry and Pat tried to dry up the cows. So that was kind of my aloft to do the milking because I could milk as well as my dad could.

Jon Duncan: What would your family do with all the milk?

Mike Clawson: Mother would let it rise and take the cream off and what we didn’t use she would make cottage
cheese out of it. We gave it away or sold it or whatever. Most of it we had lots of cream and we had lots of milk to drink.

Jon Duncan: Was there an irrigation ditch running past your house?

Mike Clawson: Yes, not only water for us but we would turn it in and that is how we would fill our cistern that way was irrigated the lot with it.

Jon Duncan: When you say irrigate the lot, for what reason was the lot irrigated?

Mike Clawson: Well most of the lot was pasture and so during the summer we irrigated it and then there was the garden and it was flood irrigation.

Jon Duncan: The house lot there was pasture for horses.

Mike Clawson: Yes, this was the in tow pasture.

Jon Duncan: So how many horses would you dad have in there at one time then?

Mike Clawson: Well it ranged anywhere from five to seventy. Our summers were spent mostly breaking and training horses, and selling them.

Jon Duncan: Sounds like your dad taught you a fair amount.

Mike Clawson: Quite a bit, although when it came to the fine breaking he was a little short on it. He kind of kept that to himself. We did the rough training but the fine tuning; he could take a horse out one afternoon and teach him the neck ring. When they came back it was just as though they had always know how to do it, I could never understand how he did it. He did pretty well all his own there.

Jon Duncan: Tell me about PMU?

Mike Clawson: When I was seventeen or eighteen I believe I got this idea we could make a fortune collecting pregnant mares urine. We said well we have to have a barn. So I said okay we will build a barn. We went to UFA co-op and we got the lumber and for 2300 dollars we built a barn. We took the old barn from the old place and we took a chainsaw and we cut it, it was a two story barn, we cut it in pieces and moved the walls and put a roof on it. Put stalls in it. It had six sliding doors in it and it had a capacity for fifty two horses. With their harnesses on them we collected urine.

Jon Duncan: What was this urine used for?

Mike Clawson: It was for making estrogen. We were contracted from Arist Organics, there were a number of other people that were in the same business as us and my dad bought a truck. We would pick up their barrels along with ours and we took them to Medicine Hat and from there they went on transport to Manitoba.

Jon Duncan: How successful was this invention?

Mike Clawson: Well it was quite good. We did reasonably well for two years but the company had expanded faster then their market would allow so after three years our contract was dropped. So my dad had to turn to something else.

Jon Duncan: Another thing that I want to ask you about. What was your first job?

Mike Clawson: I think my first job was working for one of the local farmers. I think it was DeLoy Clark, I say that was one of my first jobs although I had done other things. In fact I worked for almost every farmer in the village Ferris Zaugg, the Brandley’s, I picked rock for Cal Brandley. My first job I guess you could call it was for LeLoy Clark and I was driving his tractor for him and feeding his pigs at night. I summer followed him for the first year and that was a ten hour day, six day a week and every day I put forty five gallons of gasoline in the john deer D, three gallons of water and a gallon of oil. Then the following year I put his crop in and when that was finished we would go and chop feed for the pigs and clean the barns. I did that for seven dollars a day. It was a reasonable wage, especially for a boy thirteen years old.

Jon Duncan: What did you use the money for?

Mike Clawson: That was my spending money for the year.

Jon Duncan: Okay, I am curious; did kids get out of school for harvest?

Mike Clawson: Sometimes, mostly we just took the time off to work.

Jon Duncan: Okay, you also drove cattle to the community pasture.

Mike Clawson: Ya, when I was ten Patrick and I got the contract to pick up the milk cows from in town by that community pasture patrons. So at seven o’clock we left our house and by nine o’clock we were back. We started out at Lyman Hardy’s picked up his four or five cows. Went to Albey Wrights, went to Darryl Nelson’s dad, Lindn, and picked up his two cows and so on. We ended up at the North West part of town taking the Michelson cows. I think that we had about thirty two cows that we took out there and at four o’clock we brought them back in again.

Jon Duncan: How much did you get paid for that?

Mike Clawson: Two dollars a month per cow. It was excellent wages for boys that were ten years old. 

Jon Duncan: How long did you keep this job?

Mike Clawson: Every summer for two years, every day. The last year that we had it was in 1952 and it rained every day. By the end of the summer we said we wound never do that again because we got wet every day. That was the year that the crops weren’t harvested, only a few acres of it were harvested that fall and most of the crops were harvested in the spring because they were so wet, Millions of mosquitoes.

Jon Duncan: So that wasn’t a good time to heard cattle.

Mike Clawson: That wasn’t a good time.

Jon Duncan: Alright, another thing that we should talk about. Did your family have a radio in the home?

Mike Clawson: Yes

Jon Duncan: What were some of the programs that you listened to?

Mike Clawson: All of the green hornet, the shadow and when I was really young there was an hour show, it was
deluxe radio theatre. I remember listening to that quite often, it was probably my favourite.

Jon Duncan: Okay, did you listen to much hockey?

Mike Clawson: No

Jon Duncan: Alright, what about a television?

Mike Clawson :In 1952 we got our television and that was a few weeks after CGLH came on the air. I remember we were totally fascinated just watching the test pattern. The test patter came on a half hour before any program in the afternoon. But the TV in our life changed the whole perspective. For some of us I think it was really a deterrent.

Jon Duncan: What do you mean it changed your perspective?

Mike Clawson: Well we watched TV, which was out activity. That became the center of our social life was the television.  I remember in grade twelve the rest of my family were into doing homework so I went up to my mother and dads bedroom, put on two or three coats and did my math 31 which was trigonometry and Analogical geometry. I was taking it by correspondence which was probably the stupidest thing that I ever did in my life because I spent more time on that subject than the other six subjects that weren’t really important at that.

Jon Duncan: Did you pass your math 31?

Mike Clawson: I passed my math 31 and I did pass the other six to with a little work of summer school on the English.

Jon Duncan: Okay, did your family have a car?

Mike Clawson: Yes, I remember the first one that we had in 1944 we had a Model T Ford and then we had an Asics and they were terrible cars to get started. But once you got them started they seemed to go really well. I remember when I was six we were out on the lease and my dad wanted me to drive the vehicle and I couldn’t hardly see over the steering wheel and press the gas at the same time. I thought that I was doing a great job. I know that he was concerned that I was going to run into the river or something. I didn’t even know that that was a problem. Anyway, then we got a jeep and we had it for a number of years and then we got a Fargo truck, a blue one that we had for quite a few years. Finally Garry and Heber rolled it trying to run over a pheasant but that is another story.

Jon Duncan: What do you mean it is another story?

Mike Clawson: Well Gary was a hot rod driver and he was a great mechanic, the experience that he learned at home from fixing things was invaluable to him when he was older. But it was very expensive for my dad because a lot of things that he tore apart he never did get fixed.

Jon Duncan: Now when did you get your drivers licence?

Mike Clawson: I got it when I was sixteen.

Jon Duncan: How often did you get to drive the car after you had your licence?

Mike Clawson: At that time Gary had left for university so there was just me and my brother Pat, we were old enough to drive at that time. So he and I were supposed to get it every other weekend. I claimed that he got it far more than I did. When it was my turn to have the car he was forced to come with me but then he had his turn with the car I was never allowed to go with him. So it was quite a deal. My parents tried to be very fair with us, most of the time it worked that way.

Jon Duncan: Did you have electricity in the home?

Mike Clawson: Yes, as far as I can remember we always had electricity.

Jon Duncan: What about a telephone?

Mike Clawson: I remember when we got the telephone. Our telephone was always used a lot.

Jon Duncan: Why?

Mike Clawson: All my family loved to talk on the phone and make long distance calls.

Jon Duncan: How much did the phone cost a month?

Mike Clawson: Well I remember one year we averaged forty four dollars a month, most of that was long distance calling which was close to a quarter of the families income. It was an expensive thing and it was abused by a few of us.

Jon Duncan: Alright Mike the nest thing that I want to talk about, you had a number of grandparents in Stirling as well. Which ones do you remember? 

Mike Clawson: Wilfred and Louie Brandley were the grandparents that we grew up with. That is my mother dad and mother. Also were Wilfred’s father who had recently died and his fourth wife, her great grandmother that I met at several times but she was sick in bed at the time that I saw her. She died when I was really quite young. Then there was Teddy Nelson was my grandfather’s half sister. She was a wonderful lady. There were the Proctors; they were also great uncles and aunts. Then there was my grandmother’s mother Bertha Oler, my mother’s first cousins that also lived here in Stirling.

Jon Duncan: So you had quite a bit of family. What do you remember most about your grandpa Brandley?

Mike Clawson: He was big, he was six foot one. He had very big hands. In 1951 he built a new home and we helped with it and they moved into it. For most of my growing up years I spent quite a bit of time with them in their home. My grandmother was an excellent cook. Everything that she made was very tasty. I remember that she was probably a better cook than my mother although my mother was quite good. She loved to bake and every birthday she always made a special cake, there was a double or a triple layer of cake that was seeded with pennies and dimes and quarters. That was part of the treat of the cake was to find the money in the cake.

Jon Duncan: How often would you say that you get together with all of the relatives?

Mike Clawson: Quite often, we had the Brandley’s which there would be my mother’s three sisters and their husbands and families. The parents Heber Perrett and his Wife who was my wife aunt had the largest family in town at that time and ours was the second largest. We had eight kids and I think they had nine. We had a great time together; we were frequently at each others place. We had gatherings five or six times a year which involved the Brandley’s and then my dads side of the family which included all of the Clarks and the Hardy’s.

Jon Duncan: Which house would they be in?

Mike Clawson: The Brandley’s would meet at Winfred and Louie’s. The Hardy and Clark gatherings we met at Raymond Hardy’s which is where the Livingstone house is now.

Jon Duncan: Alright, the family would get together, what were some of the activities?

Mike Clawson: Eating was the main activity that they had. They always had lots of food but there would be al sorts of games and horseshoes, baseball, softball, and volleyball.

Jon Duncan: Did they play many cards?

Mike Clawson: Rook was the card game and if you couldn’t play Rook you weren’t really part of the group. I learned at a young age how to play Rook quite well.

Jon Duncan: What was Christmas like?

Mike Clawson: Christmas was always a big time, with lots of food.
 
Tape 2 Side 1
 
Jon Duncan: Alright, we were talking about family get together when the tape ran out. My next question was this, what were Christmases like?

Mike Clawson: We always had a Christmas tree. In the early years there were real candles on it which we lit for about ten minutes and then blew them out. I remember our first Christmas tree lights. For twenty years we used the same strand of lights. My mother always baked a white Christmas cake along with a brown Christmas cake. It was full of nuts and cherries and stuff like that. That was one of the things that were an important part of Christmas. She always had me mix it for her and that was my contribution to Christmas.

Jon Duncan: Was this always a time that the family got together?

Mike Clawson: Christmas always involved dancing. Christmas dances, the high point of the Christmas season. That was one thing that we did in the village of Stirling right from the time that I was twelve we held hundreds of dances. They were very successful dances. Everybody came and they enjoyed.

Jon Duncan: So who taught you to dance?

Mike Clawson: A number of people, one of the things that were a highlight when I was in high school we had dance contests. I guess I was eighteen at the time, I am not sure but my sister came up to m and said well how about you dancing with me in this contest and we won it over about two hundred couples and we won the competition.

Jon Duncan: What time of year was this?

Mike Clawson: This was in the winter time, close to Christmas.

Jon Duncan: Back to Christmas for a second here, how many gifts would you usually get?

Mike Clawson: We usually got a couple of gifts and a stocking full of treats and we always got far more than what I think my parents could afford. I always complained to them that they were spending too much money on Christmas. There were lots of gifts and always gifts from grandparents.

Jon Duncan: How did the family celebrate New Years?

Mike Clawson: I don’t remember.

Jon Duncan: Ws it a big deal?

Mike Clawson: No, New Years was not as big as an occasion. In fact they usually celebrated New Years and we stayed home. Until of course we got older and then we were up all night.

Jon Duncan: Alright, I want to talk to you about your teenage years now. Let’s start with schooling, how many years of school attend?

Mike Clawson: Well up through Grade twelve, I graduated from Stirling in 1959.

Jon Duncan: Who are some of the teachers that you remember most?

Mike Clawson: Miss. Stapley was the prominent teacher in my school years. She taught me in Grade three, grade four, grade five, and grade six. Then Mrs. Jackson taught us in Grade Seven. In grade eight we were in Conqureville and Mr. Blantry was my teacher there. In tenth grade Hash Me was our teacher there. We didn’t learn much that year. In grade Eleven Mr. Shlanka and Mr Lanchucka was the Principal. I really liked Mr. Lanchucka; I thought he was a very fair and good man. The basketball coach was Mr. Christensen; I think he was the grade five and six teacher at that time. I didn’t play a great deal the first year and that was the year that the rest of the team won the provincial championship. The next two years we played an awful lot of basketball and each year we won lots of tournaments but we lost the last game in the provincial championship, but we came in second.

Jon Duncan: So Stirling had a good team with Mr. Christensen

Mike Clawson: Very good team, most of the people that we played were always taller than us. But Richard Nelson was our center, Myron Eaves was the point guard, we had an excellent team.

Jon Duncan: What position did you play?

Mike Clawson: I played forward, we switched around.

Jon Duncan: How many years did you play basketball?

Mike Clawson: Three

Jon Duncan: Okay, were there other sports that you played?

Mike Clawson: My favourite was volleyball, we played in the church league and I don’t know, for eight years we were always number one in the stage and most of the time we won the regional playoffs. We played soft ball and I pitched and played second base and outfield. I liked softball.  I did reasonably well at it.

Jon Duncan: Was this also a church league?

Mike Clawson: Ya, I never went south with the boys because I worked and thought it was more important to make money. But I did have the opportunity; I could have gone with the team.

Jon Duncan: Where was this?

Mike Clawson: When we played all church in Salt Lake

Jon Duncan: So your tea was that good then?

Mike Clawson: Ya

Jon Duncan: Back to school for a minute, what subjects did you prefer.

Mike Clawson: Social Studies was my best subject, I did quite well in science. I got by with English. Math I had to work at.

Jon Duncan: Who taught Social Studies?

Mike Clawson: Good Question, Mr. Shalanka taught social Studies and I can’t remember who else.

Jon Duncan: Why did you like Social Studies so much?

Mike Clawson: I was very interested in it. I didn’t realize how interested I was in it until my last year of graduate school. I took an economic geography, there were three hundred and fifty people in the class, final test mark I got an A++ and I had never got anything close to that in my years of school.

Jon Duncan: Was this the highest mark?

Mike Clawson: Ya, so that told me probably I should have been involved with something like that, that would have been an interest. That is part of the reason why I went into agriculture is because I did much better in agriculture.

Jon Duncan: Is that what you studied in University?

Mike Clawson: Ya

Jon Duncan: Which University was this?

Mike Clawson: Brigham Young University

Jon Duncan: How long were you there?

Mike Clawson: I was there for four years the first time and three years the second time.

Jon Duncan: What do you mean the first time and the second time?

Mike Clawson: Well I got my bachelors and graduated in 1969, and then in 1972 I got my masters degree.

Jon Duncan: Okay so you have a M.A. at this time.

Mike Clawson: An M.S.

Jon Duncan: Alright, now how did you decide to go off to BYU?

Mike Clawson: Well my brother had gone there and I wanted to leave home, I wanted to go south, tuition there was the cheapest. It was more than I could afford but I went anyway.

Jon Duncan: Were there any other kids from Stirling that went?

Mike Clawson: Yes Dennis Mertz and I went together and we roomed together. The very first place that we stayed, we stayed one year in this old house and we were the young freshman and all of the others were older, most of them were return missionaries or that vintage. One was an actor and his name was Worsly. Every morning he would come down and there was a mirror in the living room, every morning he would stand before the mirror and he would recite this, Don’t Shoot, Don’t Shoot, I’ll marry your daughter, is that your daughter, Shoot. Garry Boughy who has become the Athletic Director at the University of Lethbridge, he was another one of our roommates. He was a return missionary and in the spring of that year he met a lady who we all thought was really to nice for him. But he ended up marrying her and they have been married for about forty years. The other one was Darryl Teal, he thought that he was the man of the world, he was from Utah, and the thing to not about he is that almost every night he talked in his sleep. He would come up with some of the wildest conversations that you would ever hear. So the next morning we pinned him down to what he had said in his sleep and he denied ever doing whatever he said. The first year of university was very hard for me financially. Courses were hard, I was in mechanical engineering and I decided that that wasn’t really what I wanted to do so I left school, went on a mission, and then went back again.

Jon Duncan: You say it was financially difficult, how did you manage to pay your tuition and other expenses? 

Mike Clawson: I had enough money to pay my tuition, and then I lived very frugally. I think I did get along student loan but I am not sure. I did later on but I don’t think I had a student loan that year.

Jon Duncan: What year did you enter BYU

Mike Clawson: In 1959

Jon Duncan: Was this the year that you graduated from high school?

Mike Clawson: Yes

Jon Duncan: Let’s go back to high school for a few minutes, who were your best friends in highs school.

Mike Clawson: Reed Hardy and Blaine Hirschie. Blaine was a year younger than me and Reed was my cousin, we did a lot of things together, all three of us.

Jon Duncan: What types of activates would you get up to?

Mike Clawson: We were involved with sports but we went to parties and dances and stuff like that.

Jon Duncan: Did you ever get up to mischief?

Mike Clawson: No, I do remember one day it was in the spring of the year. There were two girls that had been going steady with other boys for a number of years. One was Karen Hogensen and the other was Sharon Hirshie, Blaine had just gotten a new car. There were very few cars in the village. In fact he was probably the only one in the village who had his own car. The girls wanted to go for a ride and we decided that we would take them out to the graveyard and put them over the gate and then jump in the car and run. We were just having fun at the time and when we were coming back into town the jealous boyfriends saw them with us and we were sworn enemies from that point on. It took a number of years for one of the boyfriends to get over that jealousy. They didn’t have anything to be jealous of but they thought that they did.

Jon Duncan: Did kids every play pranks on the teachers?

Mike Clawson: In grade nine, that was a terrible year for that very thing. Mr. Shalanka was our teacher, we were basically made up of a grade of boys, and we had two girls in our class. In high school we only had one and that was Irene Kenishicka but we did everything that was unacceptable. In the middle of winter we would open every single window in the room and these were huge windows. We were there shivering and freezing and the teacher would come in and we would wrap the binds tight. So he would put the window down and go to put the blind down and the blind would fly all apart. We thought that it was kind of fun but in actual fact it was kind of mean and he hated it, he had good reason too. We were the same in church too. We were a hard class to handle. Most of us were pretty mild compared to most other kids our age.

Jon Duncan: How were students disciplined?

Mike Clawson: They got the strap. Mr. Lanchucka strapped us quite regularly. Some got it much more than others.

Jon Duncan: You say quite regularly, for what?

Mike Clawson: For disobedience, for doing something wrong. We were called in quite often, in all the years of
school I think that I got the strap once. I was considered no discipline problem at all.

Jon Duncan: Okay, what was Halloween like?

Mike Clawson: Halloween was a lot of trick or treating, of course the object of most of the tricks was to tip over the outhouse. To this day I have no idea why it was such a thrill to do that. A number of times people missed the hole and stepped in and almost got buried. That was part of the thing to do. We didn’t burn bales that came later. Minimal amount of damage, we didn’t do an awful lot of damage.

Jon Duncan: So toilet tipping was the big thing.

Mike Clawson: Ya, it was the big thing.

Jon Duncan: Was there someone in town that you liked to tip the most?

Mike Clawson: Yes, Elder Zaugg was always one that we loved because of how extremely unhappy he got with us.

Jon Duncan: What would he do?

Mike Clawson: He would shoot off his shotgun. Sometimes it came a lot closer than he had anticipated it would. Bran Finley for one got hit with buck shot.

Jon Duncan: Alright, now how often would you date when you were in high school?

Mike Clawson: Very often, I had a date almost every weekend.

Jon Duncan: What was the typical date?

Mike Clawson: The typical date was going to the show or going to a dance, going to a ball game or whatever. That was the thing to do, in our generation you dated a lot and that was probably my downfall, I dated far more than I should have, all the way through until I was over thirty.

Jon Duncan: Different girls

Mike Clawson: Mostly different girls yes, around four hundred of them.

Jon Duncan: You’re claiming four hundred then.

Mike Clawson: Probably more than that.

Jon Duncan: Alright, where was the movie house?

Mike Clawson: We went to Raymond in the early days but most of the time In the Paramount theatre, that is where the best movies came and that is where we saw all of the good movies were in the paramount theatre in Lethbridge.

Jon Duncan: How much would it cost for a ticket?

Mike Clawson: I can’t remember. It wasn’t overly expensive.

Jon Duncan: How often would you go to a movie?

Mike Clawson: We would go to a movie once a month.

Jon Duncan: Alright, one of the big days in Stirling has always been the 24^th of July. What would go on during that celebration?

Mike Clawson: Well the parade, we always had the parade. Then there was in my earliest recollection there was the rodeo, which then was given to races or Jim Canna. There were always different kinds of foot races which I was never all that great at but my mother, brother, and my sister Pat always were very good runners and won several races.

Jon Duncan: Did you participate in Rodeo?

Mike Clawson: Yes, a little.

Jon Duncan: What did you do?

Mike Clawson: In Brooks a rode a saddle Bronk and Bareback Bronk. But it frightened me so much that I didn’t do it very often. It wasn’t the riding of an animal, it was the up there before a bunch of people. I didn’t like that. I did barrel racing and really when I was out of high school I did Jim Canna Stuff, I really liked that.

Jon Duncan: Okay, did your dad participate in the Rodeos in Stirling?

Mike Clawson: Yes

Jon Duncan: What was his major event?

Mike Clawson: He usually helped put it on, when he was that old.

Jon Duncan: So what events do you remember of these rodeos?

Mike Clawson: Well it was the grease pig, catching the grease pig that was one of them that were part of that, the calf roping, the horse races, and the steer riding. I should tell you, this is personal but it still comes to mind, I couldn’t have been very old. The Selk’s had a very fast race horse, her name was Ester. My dad had trophy, who he thought was one of the fastest horses in the country. Weldon was riding their horse and Gary was riding trophy, I was on a palomino that we picked up in B.C. So the race started. They had a hard time making the first turn so it ended to with me having the slower horse winning the race. That was just one of the funny things where by far the faster horses didn’t win.

Jon Duncan: What do you mean they had a hard time getting around the first corner?

Mike Clawson: One of them veered off, I don’t know whether it was Ester or Trophy but they veered off and went off this way and my horse took the inside track and won the race.

Jon Duncan: Lets move on then and talk about your LDS mission that you served a year after you went to the BYU.

Mike Clawson: Yes, I came back from BYU and Bishop Lyman Hardy called me into the office and said we would like you to go on a mission. I told him well you know that was fine but my brother pat was on a mission in our family, we couldn’t afford to send another. I came home and my mother said well of course you are going on a mission. So with the help of my grandfather that is how I went on a mission. I was in the mission home in December, I left in December after working at the Sugar factory I lined it up in Tahiti a week before my twentieth birthday. It was cold here and it was warm there and for the first week I had a hard time even staying awake. It was a total change of climate.  

Jon Duncan: This was in 1961?

Mike Clawson: 1960

Jon Duncan: Aright, now how long were you there?

Mike Clawson: I was there for two and a half years.

Jon Duncan: What do you remember most about your mission?

Mike Clawson: Total different lifestyle, water was everywhere compared to land here, I was land locked Canadian. I don’t think that I had ever seen the ocean until I got to Tahiti or Hawaii or wherever. We flew from Salt Lake to Las Angela’s and from Las Angela’s to Honolulu then an overnight flight from Honolulu to Tahiti. We were one of the first planes that landed in Tahiti with a runway. The runway had just been built a couple of months before I got there. We were one of the first people to land on it. Before that they had always had amphibian planes land in the Lagoon and that is how they did it. That was when major tourism also started in Tahiti because of the airplane availability.
 
Tape 2 Side 2
 
Jon Duncan: Alright we were talking about your mission when the tape ran out, why don’t we continue from there. Now you had a couple of close calls on your mission, can you tell me what happened there?

Mike Clawson: Well our mode of transportation on this particular island was a canoe. These were plywood Outrigger canoes with a fine and a half environs motor on the back. We built a little house on the front, I was sitting on this house and my companion of the day was Mokuie Try. He was a pearl diver, an excellent swimmer and I was from Stirling so you know what kind of a swimmer I was. I was sitting on the top and we were coming around the island, the wind was blowing that day and there were about five foot waves so I wasn’t paying to much attention. All of the sudden I looked up and I saw water above me. It happened that fast. As I came to the surface of the water there was river canoe heading off slowly in the distance and here we were. We were about a half mile from shore. Almost instantly he said lets swim for shore. He took off, he stripped off his clothes and away he was gone. Here I was with a rain coat and the rest of my clothes on and instinctively I took two or three strokes towards shore. Each time I took a stoke there was a wave come over top of me and in a very short time I panicked and I knew I was going to drown. There was no doubt in my mind. I was totally exhausted. I said I have got to get these clothes off, that is the only way that I can survive. I was in the middle of getting my clothes off and out of nowhere there was this speed boat that saw me there in the water and the drug me in. Once I was in the boat life had begun again. So we raced out after out outrigger canoe which was almost on a reef at that time in fact as we pulled in behind it and I jumped into it I couldn’t go further ahead, I had to put it in reverse to back it away from the reef. I headed to shore where our lodges were. I pulled it up and there was a highway by the beach and there was this girl riding down the road. She looked at me and she said what is this; Mormon Administer got himself drunk and fell in the ocean. Just at that time my Companion came up the road with all he had wrapped around him was this rain coat. I started laughing and she laughed. He didn’t think that was all that funny. Anyway that was that instant, I should have drowned, but it wasn’t my time.

Jon Duncan: Alright, you also had a run-in with a shark?

Mike Clawson: On the island about seven hundred miles North West of Tahiti we went fishing almost every day. Not only to get fish for ourselves but for other people and we went fishing in a snorkel is what it was with a spear gun. As I was swimming along I came to a bank of coral which was really dark. Down below this bank of coral was this white sand bar. I was just kind of watching these different kinds of fish that would swim from the dark coral and they would literally change color as they went across the sand they blended in with the sand and they looked just white. Then when they would get into the dark they would become dark. I was watching this and down below me was this huge shark. He was about twelve feet long and he was searching for food too. So I was swimming along with him there and we came to another across this white sand and knew it was a red snapper, a totally red fish. He was in this hole of coral and the second that I saw the fish the shark saw the fish and the fish realized that there was no way out and that shark moved just like a bolt. That fish only just had time to change direction just once and he would hit it. He made a barking noise. This brought ten other sharks. Here I am, these sharks are fighting over this fish and their tails are fanning the water and it is just kind of an explosion. I knew that I had better get out of there. So I took off and I will always remember how rapid this takes place, it is just instantaneously. There is nothing, it is tranquil and then all the sudden there are all of these sharks. The speed of these sharks is phenomenal.

Jon Duncan: Alright, tell me about your experience with the typical American tourist?

Mike Clawson: The typical American tourist came there and they were forty to forty five, the came as couples, they were usually older than that. If they were males they were usually looking for girls. I remember this one tourist came up to me and he wanted me to find him a girl. I said you are a lot more experienced than me, I said why come to me. He said well you live here. I said well I am here as a missionary I am not in the business of finding girls for you. He was unhappy with me but anyway I got on this boat and I would be dang’d if this same tourist wasn’t on this same boat with me. He said I found a girl. I said that is great. He said I gave her parents three hundred dollars and she is mine as long as I want her, she will cook and clean for me and everything else. I said well that is good to know. Anyway we were on this boat and I was eating food, they gave free food at the captains table, so as we were sitting around the table there were a couple of people from Paris, there was this American and his so called girlfriend and there was a couple of ladies. Anyway the captain and I were the only ones that spoke English, French, and Tahitian. We translated for a while and after a while they were starting to make fun of each other. So we said no more, it was mainly a fight between the Frenchman and the American. So anyway one of them said well you got less than what you paid for. It turns out that it was not a girl but a man that was dressed as a girl. Which we had quite a few of in Tahiti, if you didn’t live there than you wouldn’t know this, it was a great pleasure when he came back and claimed that he had been cheated. We all laughed at him but anyway that was the reputation of the Americans.

Jon Duncan: Another story that you have is regarding Tautah.

Mike Clawson: Yes, she was a Tahitian lady that was a member of the Church. In her youth she started to work for this Chinese gentle man who had come from Hong Kong with his family but not his wife. She was their cook for a number of yeas and then she started living with this gentleman. They had adopted a son but she felt that she had made some decisions that were eventually going to send her straight to hell. So one day me and my companion were tracking in this area and we came across her. She was out was her clothes and we started asking her if she was interested in what we had to say. She said yes and we could go back that evening we would be happy to talk to you. So we went back to her small little house that evening and her common law husband at that time was a mechanic. He had been a teacher in the Chinese school for a number of years in the village but had retired from that job and then he was a decent mechanic. He didn’t speak very much Tahitian. Of course we didn’t speak any Chinese. He listened to the lessons because she wanted him to. We got to the third lesson and we came back and asked her about her situation and so she explained it to us. I said well we will do what we can. So the next time I was in the big city of Popake we went to the Chinese councillor and we met with him and it was interesting. We started speaking our pour French to him and he said why we don’t speak English, of course we thought that is a good idea. He spoke very good English which was to our surprise. He said so what can I do for you, we told him the situation that there were these people that we had and we wanted them to get married so that they could be baptised. He explained to us that the French did not recognise Chinese weddings. Although he had been married in China, they didn’t recognise that so he could marry this lady if everything was alright. It would have to be okay by the Chinese community. He would get in touch with the representative in the city of Utorowa which we were at. So a month went by and I thought well nothing is ever going to happen. I was in this one store this one day and the owner came up to me and said I hear that you are wanting to have these two people married. I didn’t know what to say. He said well we see nothing wrong with that and so we posted the bands and within a week or so married and baptised. From that day on Tautah had said that we had made her, although it was thirty seven years ago, or forty I can’t remember now I remember her telling me how we had totally changed her life and until she died she was that happy every day.

Jon Duncan: So this was a special event.

Mike Clawson: Yes, we had many of those but that is one that I remember. I was there for a little over a thousand days and I could tell you a story for every single day I was there. That is how different and exciting it was to be there.

Jon Duncan: Were the Tahition people receptive to the gospel?

Mike Clawson: We didn’t have any problems speaking with them about it. On a given day I would give ten first discussions, in fact that was my record. I did on one day give ten first discussions. We taught a lot of people and we had lots of success.

Jon Duncan: Alright, now when your mission was finished where did you go?

Mike Clawson: I came back here to Stirling and I worked for my grandfather for that year. That fall I went to B.C. and I worked in the saw mills that winter. Then a year later I went back to school again.

Jon Duncan: After you went back to school that is when you finished your bachelor’s degree?

Mike Clawson: Yes, I switched my major to agriculture that is the study of dirt and plants.

Jon Duncan: Okay, now one question that I have, Vietnam was going on at the time. How concerned were you about this conflict?

Mike Clawson: Let me tell you a little story about that. A lot of the people that I went to school with were in ROTC and the lady that I was engaged to be married to her brother was also in ROTC and he went to Vietnam as a second lieutenant. He was in Vietnam for just under seven days, his first patrol off he was shot. His sister became the only child in their family then. I remember the experience that their family went with. He came and visited with us before he went to Vietnam, just a week before he went. I really liked him; in fact I probably could have liked him better than I did his sister. So I remember them sending the flag that came back with his coffin and their parents were from New York, upstate New York. So he was buried there and I remember the traumatic time that his sister went through with the funeral and the burial. It was the next summer that I went back to their home and visited with her folks. They took a lot of time to get over that death.

Jon Duncan: Were there many protests at BYU?

Mike Clawson: No, there was very little. People were being drafted; a lot of them used their educational exemption to keep from being drafted. The resented me for not being eligible for the draft.

Jon Duncan: A little friction there.

Mike Clawson: A little

Jon Duncan: How did you feel towards draft dodgers?

Mike Clawson: I didn’t have much empathy for them, I though that they should serve in the army. I was I guess Vietnam was although it was a different kind of war I remember the Second World War and how important that we felt it was to us. Of course wars are different but feelings weren’t different.

Jon Duncan: You were born in 1941, what do you remember about WWII then?

Mike Clawson: A lot, I remember us being rationed, going without, my father signed up for the war but they wouldn’t take him because he had a family. But he would have gone.

Jon Duncan: So your perception of WWII was that it was a different type of war than Vietnam?

Mike Clawson: Ya

Jon Duncan: What about Korea?

Mike Clawson: Korea, it was a war a long ways off but we were much more emotionally involved in that one than we were in Vietnam.

Jon Duncan: Alright, so a more recent wars, not all that long ago was the gulf war. What are your feelings towards that?

Mike Clawson:It was a war that I wanted us to win. I believe that the rational for going and fighting and thought we would win because of the superior firepower. But as I look back you say did the U.S. need this as more of a political ploy to use up all of this equipment they needed to get rid of so that they could get new stuff.

Jon Duncan: What is your take on the United Nations then?

Mike Clawson: The United Nations to me was a poor excuse, I feel that in most cases it was a waste, but they could be much more effective. When I was in Tahiti I knew of the good things that the United Nations had done for the world. For instance they sent a scientist down there several scientists and they had a big insulation right where I was. But what they had done is their research was the copra crop was being eaten before it was even harvested by a huge amount of rats. They had no way of getting rid of the rats because they were protected up in the trees and they would jump fro one tree to another. The people would go to knock down the coconuts and they would be totally empty. Production had dropped down by maybe a tenth of what it would be normally. Through the research they found that these rats had to come down at least once a year to grass. Once they knew that they said well how we can stop them from climbing back up into the tree. By putting a sixteen inch band of aluminum around the truck of each coconut tree they prevented them from jumping up on the trees. Within a number of years they had banded almost every coconut tree in Tahiti.

Jon Duncan: So the United Nations did serve some purpose.

Mike Clawson: That was their research and they proved, well it changed their whole economy. That was their number one income until the tourism began in Tahiti back for exported dried coconut.

Jon Duncan: Alright, now you left the Brigham Young University back in 1969 was it?

Mike Clawson: That was when I graduated the first time. Then I came and I started in 1970 on my master’s degree and finished up in 1972.

Jon Duncan: Okay, so you didn’t have much of a break in-between. What was your master’s degree?

Mike Clawson: It was in soil fertility. My thesis was on nitrogen fixation in non leguminous plants.

Jon Duncan: Who did you study with?

Mike Clawson: His name was Raymond Farntruth; he was the third highest paid professor at Brigham Young University when I first started working there. He was one of the long time professors and he was my mentor.

Jon Duncan: Describe your studies, what was it that you did exactly?

Mike Clawson: We did original research; this is how I got onto this particular subject. He went to a graveyard in Morgan Utah which was up west of Augden. They were digging around this grave headstone of his relatives and he saw this sage brush and as the dug it up it had great big red nodules on it. He thought that he had found something interesting so he brought it back to the lab and they plated it out and found these bacteria. You were not supposed to have those things on non leguminous plants, which the literature said that legumes are the only things that have Rhizobia in them. Well he said to me you need to help me with this. Hamond, who was older than me started working on this, we plated it out and proved that it was Rhizobian bacteria and that it fixed nitrogen and that is what my thesis was on.

Jon Duncan: Now you had quite a time in your oral defence?

Mike Clawson: Well everyone has a difficult time, for me this was a little different. When we were in this room and as you know all of us have to. They may have changed the rules since I graduated but you had to defend your thesis. In this defence they could ask you any question that they wanted on anything that you may have taken during your collage career, especially in your major area. So the first one to ask me questions was the animal science professor who I had had some courses from, for a half hour he asked m e hundreds of questions and I answered every one of them. I was going really well. Then the next professor asked me questions, which went really well, the next professor and then the department chairman. I thought things are fantastic, I have got to the sixth man and he tore me one side down the other and by the time that he was done with me I was nothing but a pile of pudy. So they asked me to step aside. I got thinking about the years of school that I had put in. I said if I don’t pass…
 
Tape 3 Side 1
 
Jon Duncan: Alright we were talking about your master’s thesis when the tape ran out. You said that they asked you to step outside.

Mike Clawson: And so I said to myself if I don’t pass here I have totally wasted perhaps the last ten years of my life. After about an hour my major professor came up and he apologised to me, he said that problem wasn’t between you and that professor; it was between me and him. He said we had to get that squared away. After we got that away I am happy to inform you that you have made the grade, you have passed. That was probably the most exciting time of my life.

Jon Duncan: So what year was this again?

Mike Clawson: This was in 1973

Jon Duncan: 1973 you graduated, where did you go from there?

Mike Clawson: At that time my brother had been phoning me every week telling me that he needed me to go and work for him. He had been living in Organ and he was subdividing some land and developing it for housing. He wanted me to come and help him with the road building that they were doing. So that is when I started working for him. I worked for him for two years before I came back here to Claresholm and started working for the department of agriculture.

Jon Duncan: Okay so before you got a job with the department you worked in Organ. Alright, when did you get married?

Mike Clawson: I got married in 1974 on August the 22^nd. It was a month after I had started to work in Claresholm for the department of agriculture.

Jon Duncan: So where did you meet your wife?

Mike Clawson: I met my wife a BYU and she went back to California and I went back to Organ. I was going to marry other people and she was too, that fell through for both of us and we started seeing each other again, long distance and we got married.

Jon Duncan: So this is Donna, now how did you propose to Donna?

Mike Clawson: I would rather not say that, she proposed to me.

Jon Duncan: Alright, was this still long distance?

Mike Clawson: She came up to visit one day and I was out digging water line back home. She was sitting on the tractor with me and she said are you going to marry me or not. I said I guess we will.

Jon Duncan: Were you in Claresholm at this time?

Mike Clawson: No, I was in Organ. It was almost a year later before we were married, we were married in Oakland Temple.

Jon Duncan: Okay so you had moved back up to Alberta but you went to California to get married?

Mike Clawson: Ya, this is just a trivia thing but I got on a flight from Spoakhan to San Francisco. I was wearing a black and white sports jacket. I had got on a plane and ninety eight percent of them were all black. I was with that group and apparently she didn’t see me because we passed right beside each other in the airport. I was there and had to get to the register in the county office before it closed and she was frantic so she paged me and we were there with about fifteen minutes to spare.

Jon Duncan: So after you married, where did you life?

Mike Clawson: We were married and about a week later we were in Claresholm, in a town house on the west side of Claresholm. I really enjoyed that time, that was one of the best times of our lives was there. Then the next spring in march we were transferred to Foremost and we spent five years there and I got a job in Lethbridge working for the same department as a district agriculturalist, I was there for eighteen years. I lost that job with the streamlining that took place in the department. I was successful in getting a job in foremost. I was there for three years and as this interview is on this date, last week I was successful candidate for a new job in Lethbridge, which I start on the first of September. 

Jon Duncan: Alright, so now you are headed back to Lethbridge again.

Mike Clawson: Ya

Jon Duncan: So when was it that you came back to Stirling?

Mike Clawson: I came back to Stirling in the October of 1978. 

Jon Duncan: Was this when you first started driving into Lethbridge.

Mike Clawson: Ya, we lived in the four-plex for a year. We built our house and we moved into it in February of 1979 I guess. That was sixteen years ago.

Jon Duncan: Alright, so what is this new job that you have now in Lethbridge?

Mike Clawson: My title is special crops specialist. Those are exotic crops, potz crops, lentils, beans, peas, hemp, and any ones other than canola, wheat, and barley.

Jon Duncan: Alright, I want to spend some time talking about your occupation as a crops specialist. You have got your education and so forth. Over the years, what has been your responsibility?

Mike Clawson: My major job function is to advice farmers that was my major job function and as district agriculturalist, which is the name that we had until three years ago when the names changed and the specialists was more in one area. I work with Agribusiness and farmers as and an advisor and we do research on different crops and stuff like that so we can provide information.

Jon Duncan: Do you have your own research field?

Mike Clawson: No, we rent that from either the station or farmers, it is given to us by the farmers as their contribution. It is cooperative effort where fertilizer and chemical companies assist with products or money and the farmers do the same. We do the work. 

Jon Duncan: Are there any special projects that you have worked on?

Mike Clawson: Yes, one of the ones that I worked on last year, we were looking for three million acres in British Columbia, and Saskatchewan are covered with plum moss was the production of range dramatically. We were doing some test plots to see what we could do to get rid of these. Chemical spray doesn’t don’t kill the plum moss. We were looking at renovating using a twisted spiked cultivator and then using straw cover. That is what we have been doing this last year, it looks to us that it is quite economical to do the straw cover.

Jon Duncan: Alright, now a question arose in my mind some earlier. When you were talking about working for Deloy Clark you were talking about doing summer fall. I had always thought that farmers were trash farmers. What is the difference between summer fall and trash farmer.

Mike Clawson: They are the same. Trash farmers worked the soil and leave the trash on the surface. Summer following, all summer following is killing the weeds. Summer following uses two years accumulation of water to produce one year of crop.

Jon Duncan: Okay so the summer following for Deloy wasn’t breaking the soil up.

Mike Clawson: No, it was just cultivating it to kill the weeds.

Jon Duncan: Okay, we talked about club mosses. Were there any other special techniques that you worked on for farming?

Mike Clawson: When I first got to foremost there were a number of varieties of cereal that they used that weren’t producing well. So what we would do is we would do test blots on a farmers field to demonstrate which variety you would get the most variety out of. I remember that was one of the first ones that we did and we realized that park wheat was not the best wheat for Sothern Alberta; we should go with another variety. Just as a job function a farmer called me in and he said my winter wheat is really looking terrible, I think I should plough it up and plant spring wheat. He had four hundred acres of it and after looking at all of it I said leaves it in and you will make more money. He disagreed with me and I said okay you work up twenty acres and you put it into spring wheat and we will compare that yield with the yield that you have. The fall came and he came in to see me and he said you just saved me $64 000. He and I have been friends ever since.

Jon Duncan: Alright, there have been a number of renovations over the years that have improved farming. What do you think have been the most important ones?

Mike Clawson: Going to direct seeding, farmers are not working their fields seven or eight times in the spring a lot of them are just seeding directly into the summer. This is especially important in the brown soil zone where moisture in ten years out of eleven is always limited by moisture. Chemical fallowing, spraying the crop and then seeding into the next year, it keeps the stubble, it catches as much snow as possible and makes it available for the crop. Another one is earlier seeding; we found that if you are going to grow canola in this country the earlier seeded crops do much better. Over the years it has kept more farmers farming. Fertilizer use, very necessary when you have continues cropping. Continues cropping isn’t always the answer but our half crop and half summer fall contributed largely to our alkali problems that we had. That didn’t show up until twenty five or thirty years after we broke up the land and started farming it.

Jon Duncan: Alright, what implements is the most important thing?

Mike Clawson: For years farmers used one implement. It was called a disc seedier.  They summer followed with it and they seeded their grain with it. We got them away from that. The one way seeder buried the trash. What we want to do is to keep the trash on top. The best way to do it is to not cultivate it at all.

Jon Duncan: So you have moved farmers away from cultivation completely now?

Mike Clawson: We have moved them away from as much as they would have. I still feel that some cultivation is necessary

Jon Duncan: How easy has it been for you to get your message out to farmers?

Mike Clawson: Extremely easy, there is a group of forty percent of the farmers; they are what we call the early adapters. There on top of things, they want their operation to be right at the head of the trend rather than waiting. Those are the farmers that we work with. They recognise the asset that we can bring to them.

Jon Duncan: Okay, now one thing that I forgot to ask you, who acted as your employer?

Mike Clawson: The government of Alberta is my employer.

Jon Duncan: Alright, the nest thing that I think we should talk about is your family. How many children do you have?

Mike Clawson: Donna and I have seven children, which is a very large family by today. The reason that we came to Stirling and continued to live here is the fact that we thought that they would have a better chance of growing up with good influences but we felt that way. People in Stirling as an average have larger families and we were just part of that.

Jon Duncan: Alright, what has it been like for you to have been a father?

Mike Clawson: For the most part it has been really fun, my kids have been for the most part reasonable. My oldest daughter Tiffany was always fun to have in the house. It has been more difficult for making good decisions since she has left home than while she was here.  Lindsey also, Chris, all of them, pretty good kids, the hardest kid to live with is Donna.

Jon Duncan: What did you do with each other for fun?

Mike Clawson: We took them to the playground. I always spent on Sunday after church an hour to hour and a half with them on the playground. They enjoyed that; I would swing them as high as I possibly could. We took them camping. We have always been involved with them in sports. We have always had a horse, or horses. That is really has been important to their development. One of the things that we haven’t had in town is a dog. It is just the fact that we always thought that the neighbours would be less friendly if we had one.

Jon Duncan: Did you have a pet when you were growing up?

Mike Clawson: Ya, we had dogs and cats; my wife is allergic to cats so we never had cats.

Jon Duncan: What was your pet’s name?

Mike Clawson: We had a number of them but the one that I remember was our dog named blue, he wasn’t blue. We did everything with him, he wasn’t what I would consider a fun dog but he fought bulls. When the bulls were in the rodeo he kept the bulls away from the riders.

Jon Duncan: Going back to your children, what have you expected them to do around the home?

Mike Clawson: Everything and help their mother to keep the house clean. The girls do the cooking. Tyler has turned out to be really a good cook. He can make bread cinnamon rolls, whatever. Christopher doesn’t do any cooking except for himself. I have taught them to make gravy which I think is important, I think that all of them can make gravy. They won’t starve; I think that by the time they leave home that they may be as good a cook as you are who knows.

Jon Duncan: Do you raise a garden today?

Mike Clawson: Yes, we have always had a big garden. We freeze the beans and peas and the raspberries, strawberries, and the corn.

Jon Duncan: Who helps out with the garden?

Mike Clawson: They help me with the planting, very little of the weeding, but they help with the harvesting of it.

Jon Duncan: So you do most of the weeding yourself?

Mike Clawson: Yes

Jon Duncan: Now how do you discipline your children?

Mike Clawson: Poorly, we use different bribes that have been the most effective.

Jon Duncan: Has discipline changed from when you were a child?

Mike Clawson: Well it was different in my home. I don’t know that other peoples methods have changed that much. My father disciplined me and Patrick once with a quart. I swore that he would never touch me again because he hurt me so bad, we deserved it, he believed in the laying on of hands. Some of us didn’t need very much after that.

Jon Duncan: So why is it that your method of discipline is different?

Mike Clawson: It is really not that different. It is just that I am such a wimp. I should have probably been stricter; my wife says that I should have been stricter. But that is just how I operate.

Jon Duncan: Another thing that I want to talk to you about regarding your years here in Stirling. What types of hobbies have you had?

Mike Clawson: Fishing, we have always played basketball with the kids, the older of them, done a little horse back riding. As part of my hobbies we have raised bees, raised feedlot cattle and done some farming.

Jon Duncan: Where do you farm?

Mike Clawson: Well I don’t farm now but I used to farm out south of here. We rented pasture, we rented dry land farm, and rented the feedlot space.

Jon Duncan: Were you able to make money at this?

Mike Clawson: A little money never lost money. But we didn’t make much.

Jon Duncan: How many acres did you dry land farm?

Mike Clawson: 480

Jon Duncan: What crops?

Mike Clawson: What and barley and canola.

Jon Duncan: Alright, this dry land farm was south of Stirling?

Mike Clawson: Yes, and I also rented the same amount of acres from my brother in Cardston, farmed there for two years.

Jon Duncan: Where would you go fishing?

Mike Clawson: We went fishing out at cross coulee, at ridge reservoir, St. Marie’s, the best fishing that we had was in the river below Waterston dam and that area. However my one so called fishing trip we went to northern Saskatchewan. That was probably the most successful of any; we would catch and release perhaps a hundred fish a day. 

Jon Duncan: Where did you learn to fish?

Mike Clawson: When I was really young.

Jon Duncan: Who was it that taught you?

Mike Clawson: My dad and the missionaries. Recently I went the people that I went with were fisherman and I learned from them, Ken Bunnage and his brother Jet Bunnage and Dennis Fletcher.

Jon Duncan: Alright, what is your most memorable fishing story?

Mike Clawson: I don’t have one. I was lucky on occasion and snagged a fish but anyway we went to La Ronge Saskatchewan and we had each a pair of us had a canoe. There were ten of us all together so we had five canoes. We were fishing in the Churchill River. We threw our lines out this one particular day and as fast as we could throw the lines out we caught a fish, took it off the hook, put it back in and caught another one. It was just phenomenal fishing. Most memorable fishing that takes us back to Tahiti. I took out a group of investigators along with my companion and I said where do you want to go fishing today, I said well lets go fishing in the pass, that is where the water flows into the river. So we dropped our anchor, my companion had been in the mission field probably a week. I said you don’t know how to fish so I want you to get under snorkel and paddle around here and learn how to dive. He had to have the spear gun. I loaded the gun and he pulled the trigger and almost shot me in the belly with it. I said be more careful. What we did, there were little sharks but still mean sharks. Here are the fish over here and we lay down here on the rocks and as the fish came up we would shoot it, bring it to the surface and put it in the boat. As we were doing this we saw him shoot at a fish, he missed the fish but the shark took after him. He panicked. He got the rope coughed around him and pulled off his mask and lost a fin. So three of us dove at the same time, two of us grabbed him, the other one shot at the shark. The spear bounced off the shark but it got him away and we laid him over the side of the boat and the water run out of him. He was totally sick of which he should have been from swallowing all of that water. A few minutes later I said to the boys we need to take him back in.
 
Tape 3 Side 2
 
Jon Duncan: Alright mike we were talking about your fishing story in Tahiti and the tape ran out there. You hauled this missionary back into the boat. What happened next?

Mike Clawson: Well he was hanging there really sick looking so we headed back to shore and when we were almost there he got up in the boat, mad, threw out his fins his guns and his snorkel and said I am never going fishing again. We stopped the boat, one of the guys got out, retrieved his equipment. I told him to sit down. So we got back to shore and the next day I was going out with another investigator looking for fish and I said do you want to come along. I said well them you are going to have to stay here all by yourself. He decided that he would. So we went out and I had bought a hundred and fifty foot of cotton rope and I put a hook on each end. He had fifty feet out over his side and I had fifty feet out over my side. Our friend was driving our boat. He had a fantastic tug on his line. In fact he took off out of the boat. I leaped for him and caught his feet and told the guy to stop all at the same time. He came back and two of us lifted him back into the boat. He had wrapped the rope around his hand. Had I not grabbed him or at least not hung onto the rope. I would have never seen him again. We pulled him in, undid the rope around his hand. It was all that the three of us could do to lift this great big fish into the boat. It was this long, at least six and a half or seven feet.

Jon Duncan: What kind of fish was this?

Mike Clawson: It was a tuna. In fact the side of the boat was tilting a little bit but that was food for the village for a couple of days. We cut it all up and handed it out. He was my companion and a few weeks later president Hankly was in our mission. The fishing president, President Hankly and I were sitting around that kitchen table after our meal. He said by the way to the mission president how is this father doing. He turned to me and said this is his companion here. He said well I kind of want to know because there was a matter of the law or the church would get him and the church won.

Jon Duncan: It sounds like this missionary had some interesting times fishing.

Mike Clawson: Interesting times, he grew up quite a bit while he was my companion.

Jon Duncan: Alright, another thing that you have done in Stirling quite a bit in Stirling is coach baseball, why did you do it?

Mike Clawson: I did it because they asked me too. My son needed a coach. So it has been really good for both of us. I have helped him a little and we have had a really good team last year and this years team wasn’t quite as good, we did win a few games and now he is on the all star team that goes to Regina here next week.

Jon Duncan: Which son is this?

Mike Clawson: This is the youngest son Courtney.

Jon Duncan: Alright, you have been involved in a number of years in the field called kinesiology, what was that exactly?

Mike Clawson: That is where you do muscle testing to look for a weakness in the magnetic field of the body. You find a weakness and you try to correct it, that’s the basics. This will show up so that you can do a diagnosis of person’s problems on themselves. It is really a far better way for some things. Actually what happened is that my dad went to a seminar put on by a group of these people that were testing horses. My dad and I had a stud horse that had a limp on his right front leg, he had it for years. We had been to the veterinarian many times but they said he would just have to live with it. These guys said well we will test your horse. My dad said well the horse isn’t here. He said well we will test without the horse here. They said this bone right here on his foot is out and that is why he is limping, if you do this and this that will fix it. My dad did that and the horse never limped again. That is what got me interested in it so we took a number of courses in it and worked on several hundred people and had been quite successful with it. What we have enjoyed is that we had another dimension to our own. I worked on our kids when their backs are out or sprains. It has been really good. One of the ones that we did is our daughter Miranda had some really bad burns. So we put this to use and she had no scarring because of it.

Jon Duncan: Alright, so this is a healing process of some sort?

Mike Clawson: It is a way to diagnose problems and ya.

Jon Duncan: What is it based on?

Mike Clawson: It is based on an old Chinese ancient art of medicine. It combines acupressure and things like that, and common stuff that we have picked up over the last two or three thousand years. 

Jon Duncan: Do you still see a doctor at all?

Mike Clawson: Yes, we go to the doctor in addition to that.

Jon Duncan: So this is an added benefit.

Mike Clawson: Added benefit, we understand for instance when the dentist tells you that as long as you brush your teeth and have healthy gums you won’t have any problems with your teeth. For them to say that is like me selling waterfront property in Stirling. It is not true. There are other things involved, nutrition is far more important that we realise.

Jon Duncan: So is nutrition involved in this as well?

Mike Clawson: Yes, say for instance you come to me and you are taking these pills, I can test the pills and your body will tell us whether these pills are actually good or harmful for you, what rate to take them and when to take them, how long to keep taking them.

Jon Duncan: Alright, you say that you have practised this with your family, also with people in Stirling?

Mike Clawson: Well we did it originally quite a bit with everybody, including your family as a matter of fact. We found that it was too time consuming, we could do it every night of the week and we said no, we don’t have the energy or the time. But it is something that now we just kind of do it occasionally.

Jon Duncan: Alright, the last thing that I want to talk to you about, I want to find our some of your political views. Now you have served in the village council for a number of years and on a number of occasions you have been the mayor. Why don’t we start there? Why did you decide to run for the village council?

Mike Clawson: A man by the name of Lynn Hirschie said that it was my duty and that I was less a person if I didn’t run for council because the finances of the village were in really deep trouble taxes were really high. So I did run and became a councillor only to find that yes our finances were in terrible shape, our taxes were much higher that the surrounding area, and so we bit the bullet for the first few years and we actually had to borrow money to pay our bills. We got a letter from the province that if our finances didn’t shape up that they would take us over. If that had happened they would have just increased the taxes to make up for it. We thought that we could do a better job. One of the exciting things was to get us into good financial shape and it took us about four or five years to do that and then the other exciting thing were to bring piped water into town.

Jon Duncan: That was a major infrastructure change. Now how did that come about? 

Mike Clawson: Well we our reservoir system was inadequate and we knew that we had to do some upgrading and the suggestion of our engineers at that time was to make another water lagoon. I didn’t think so. So every engineering group that came to us I asked the question, could we pipe in the water. All of them told us that it was a horrendous cost. Except one, he said that we could probably do it. That was originally my idea but as soon as we discussed it the whole council was in favour of it. Everybody worked towards that end. It was very difficult to get the okay on it because it had provincially funding but we did get it and it was our estimate that within five to seven years that the cost savings in pumping costs along would pay the venture and that is what happened.

Jon Duncan: So it really did work out for the village.

Mike Clawson: I would say that was the one thing that we did that was a plus because even to this day and forever we will be selling water to the water users outside of the village, one of the few revenue generating projects that we will ever have.

Jon Duncan: This is that water reservoir just outside of Stirling? 

Mike Clawson: Yes, it comes from cross coulee and it is gravity fed, we have two quarter horse motors that open and close valves, that is the only power cost that it is to us.

Jon Duncan: Alright, now how many times have you run for council?

Mike Clawson: Six times.

Jon Duncan: Have you won that many times?

Mike Clawson: Yes

Jon Duncan: When did you become the mayor?

Mike Clawson: On third term

Jon Duncan: What was it like to be the mayor of Stirling?

Mike Clawson: It was time consuming but it really was quite good. A lot of the big problems we had behind us. Once your finances are reasonable and we felt that we had a reasonably good administrator and the town Forman had been here quite a while, things were working fairly well. That was the time when the question of the library came up. Donna was the chairman of the library board at that time and as her husband as mayor I had to support it. That is another nice addition to the village was the addition of the library as part of the village office.

Jon Duncan: What was your major challenge as mayor?

Mike Clawson: The upgrade of the sewer.

Jon Duncan: Why did that come about?

Mike Clawson: Well because the department of environment came up to us and said that we were illegal, which our present lagoon system was no longer adequate, that the rules had changed and we were no longer complying with the law. But the problem is that because of the type of soil that we have in this area we were very limited on where we could have a lagoon. Any place close to where we had it was unacceptable and we had done all kids of surveys and testing. We found that the lake property was the only feasible place and there were a number of people from outside the village that were against it. It took us eight years to get it in place, which is a long time. However both the water system and the lagoon system should be good until our population gets to be fifteen hundred to one thousand people.

Jon Duncan: Alright, that is another thing that I want to talk to you about, you are on town council now, what do you see for Stirling in the future?

Mike Clawson: Most of us on council would like to see is slow but steady growth here in the village. We have an awful lot of land that is the distance between houses is still great that a lot of empty land in between. We would be filling in the streets with houses and see that development. As you know each new house means more taxes and provides about the same amount of service that we have now. We would like to have it remain a family community.

Jon Duncan: Alright, why don’t we turn to provincial politics then, now what party did your dad support?

Mike Clawson: Social Credit

Jon Duncan: What about yourself?

Mike Clawson: Yes I was supporting that party, however in federal politics I had always been disappointed to what I considered the level of quality of politicians that the conservatives had. When Mr. Pierre Trudeau came in I thought that he would do good things for the country. I voted liberal then and he became disillusioned with the direction that they went. The just continued that we were outside the mainstream and we were continuing to contribute to Ontario and Quebec. We would continue to get less than we gave.

Jon Duncan: So feeling this way, have you changed your federal affiliations?

Mike Clawson: I thought that the reformed party’s concepts were closer in line with my thinking that any other.

Jon Duncan: Going back to provincial politics. Do you remember when the Tories came into power?

Mike Clawson: I think it was in 1974 that they came into power. That is when I was in Claresholm and we were invited to the sports-plex to some big deal and it was to meet primer Lawheed and his group.

Jon Duncan: Did you support this new party.

Mike Clawson: Yes

Jon Duncan: So you no longer supported the social credit. How did you feel about primer Lawheed

Mike Clawson: I thought he was a fantastic Politian, I thought that he had a lot of good ideas but in retrospect he was a good Politian because he had lots of money at his disposal.

Jon Duncan: Now do you still support the Tories today?

Mike Clawson: Yes

Jon Duncan: So Ralph Cline is the person that you want as primer?

Mike Clawson: Yes

Jon Duncan: Alright, what do you think of the major challenges in Alberta at this time?

Mike Clawson: Well I thin first of all that we are headed in a lot of the right directions. We may have been sold a bill of goods but I know that we could not have afforded the level of government that we had. I feel that way federally also. Then it has affected me personally. There have been sacrifices that I have had to make because of my job. For instance three years ago my take home was three hundred dollars less than what it was ten years earlier.

Jon Duncan: So you have seen wage roll change.

Mike Clawson: I fell that I have a stake in the chain and I feel that there is validity in the fact that the only way that we can really compete is to lower taxes. If I was living in the states I would be paying a third less taxes.

Jon Duncan: Do you support the council of Universal Health Care?

Mike Clawson: Ya I think so, without its abuses.

Jon Duncan: Another issue that has been prevalent lately is National Immunity. How do you feel towards Quebec?

Mike Clawson: I would like them to stay in Canada, I am prepared to continue to subsidise them for that. I don’t think that it would be the end of Canada to have them leave. I feel that for the most part they have been laid to and by their separatist leaders to think that they would be able to maintain independence.

Jon Duncan: Do you think that Quebec is a distinct society?

Mike Clawson: No

Jon Duncan: Alright, now a few years back there was a separation movement in the western Canada Concept party. Were you a member of that?

Mike Clawson: No

Jon Duncan: How did you feel towards that?

Mike Clawson: I was against it, although notwithstanding I have often thought that we could probably do better by being a part of the United States.

Jon Duncan: Alright, that leads into my next question. You have ties to the Untied States with your family, with school, you also have Canada. Where are your loyalties?

Mike Clawson: First to Canada, Secondly to the U.S.

Jon Duncan: Do you feel yourself more Canadian or Albertan?

Mike Clawson: I am probably number one Albertan.

Jon Duncan: Albertais your home, Okay. One more question that I want to ask you, what was it like when they changed the Canadian Flag?

Mike Clawson: I felt that we spent a fortune in getting to the point. I thought it could have been orchestrated far less expensive. In my youth it was basically two terms. That was the number one thing on the agenda. Billions of dollars that flag cost us.

Jon Duncan: So it was an issue that went on too long?

Mike Clawson: Yes

Jon Duncan: Did you support the new flag?

Mike Clawson: At first I didn’t, but it grew on me.

Jon Duncan: Alright, well Mike I want to thank you, we have defiantly had a good visit, we have said a lot of things. I think it is time to shut this tape off and let you get on with your day.

Mike Clawson: Okay thank you
 
Transcribed by Clinton Dovell