Interviewee: Mildred Hardy
Interviewer: Mark Durtschi
 
Mark Durtschi: This is Mark Durtschi; it is the 6^thof July 1996. I am presently sitting in the home of Lyman and Mildred Hardy. Today we are going to be talking with Mildred Hardy. She has been looking forward to this for a couple of weeks and has got several things that she wants to talk about. Mildred grew up in Raymond and married, of course, a local boy. Maybe that is a good place to start 

Mildred Hardy: Before I got married I had been in Stirling quite a bit for a good part of three years, working. I wasn’t here all that time but I was with my sister who was married. She was the principal of the school and was also a candidate in the Social Credit Party. He did a lot of campaigning and she would substitute for him while I took care of her kids while she was teaching school so I had been in Stirling a while before I had got married. When I came here we first lived in a apartment in my husbands fathers house, we lived in the upstairs for about two years. Then we bought a little house, it had four rooms, two upstairs and tow downstairs in that little back entrance. It was a house that had adobe lining in the walls which did not make a warm house. In that house we had a kitchen stove and a heater in the bedroom in which both burned coal. Sometimes we would have to keep the fire going all night in the winter time to keep the water from freezing in the water bucket. We didn’t have water piped in, we had to haul water, and we didn’t have a cistern after we moved into the little house. We had to melt snow and melt ice. We lived in that house for a few years and then moved it back in the lot and we had decided before that we had built a new house in that same spot where the old one had been. We drew up the plans, made our own blueprints and did our own building. When we poured the cement for the basement we couldn’t just order a truck to come down from Lethbridge with the cement. We had to have it all mixed my hand in a wheel barrow and dumped into the forms to make the basement walls, quite different from the way that they do it now.

Mark Durtschi: So that is this house here, you mixed the whole foundation in a wheel barrow.

Mildred Hardy: We did have a cement mixer but we hauled it in.  

Mark Durtschi: From the cement mixer to the wheel barrow. Then we built the shell of the upstairs and moved into the basement and lived in the basement for maybe a couple of years until we got the upstairs more finished, by that time we had the water pressure we had a pump and a cistern. We had water pressure and we had a bathroom and a few luxuries that were not too common in the town. Did you get a bathroom before the city water came in?

Mildred Hardy: Yes we did, we had a septic tank in the field our own pressure system.

Mark Durtschi: Where did you get your water then, was it out of your cistern?

Mildred Hardy: Yes, we had to use cistern water for everything that water in the cistern came in the ditch and we put some kind of chlorine in it to make it so that it was safe to drink. Then we gradually made improvements to the house and added the garage and eventually changed the siding that we had shingle siding at first and then we changed to vinyl siding so that we didn’t have to paint anymore. Finally changed all of the windows in the house and had window wraps put on and strapping on the basement so we could improve it through the years.

Mark Durtschi: Let me take you back to your little apartment that you lived in, in the Hardy home. Could you tell me a little about what it was like to live out there?

Mildred Hardy: It was very comfortable, it had a few advantages I could use the washer downstairs, my mother in law’s washer and wash my clothes. We had to carry water upstairs for our own use up there but we had a kitchen and a pantry and bedroom and then a big open place at the top of the stairs that served as a living room area. It has been changed now, different people have owned the place, it has been improved and it is an really nice apartment there with everything that you would want. Upstairs has a living sense where we live now.

Mark Durtschi: You didn’t have a bathroom in the house then?

Mildred Hardy: No

Mark Durtschi: So you had an outhouse outside.

Mildred Hardy: We did

Mark Durtschi: You say that you had a stove upstairs? 

Mildred Hardy: We had a stove

Mark Durtschi: How did you get your water up and down?

Mildred Hardy: You had to carry it up and then carry it down.

Mark Durtschi: Where would you throw it, just out on the grass?

Mildred Hardy: I don’t remember throwing it anywhere. We must have just thrown it on the ground. I think that is where the wash water went too.

Mark Durtschi: Could you explain to me the way that you canned your vegetables and your fruits?

Mildred Hardy: We always had coal burning stove, we never had wood. We had a boiler, a was boiler and it would hold fifteen quart bottles. We had wooden flats in it like that. That is how we canned our fruit, tomatoes, beans, corn, peas, even meat. We didn’t have pressure cookers so we just had to cook them for a long time. We didn’t have much of any spoilage we just did it that way. Eventually it changed to a pressure cooker. As we got other faculties like a deep freeze we canned less and less.

Mark Durtschi: Back in you bottling day, before you even got the pressure canner. How many bottles would you put up in a year? 

Mildred Hardy: Some years I would put up a hundred quarts of tomatoes. I don’t remember how much corn but we put up a lot of corn and a lot of beans. Probably seventy quart sting beans. Quite a bit of corn, maybe not quite as much beans but we canned a lot of food.

Mark Durtschi: So that kept you busy.

Mildred Hardy: Yes, I used up a great number of flower bags making bread too. Sometimes I would make six loaves of bread three times a week. That was after we had a bigger family. We did a lot.

Mark Durtschi: Going back to those flower sacks, that sounds interesting. That came in a claw of sacks didn’t it?

Mildred Hardy: Yes

Mark Durtschi: What would you do with all of those extra sacks that were just laying around the house.

Mildred Hardy: After we made quilts lots of people used them in the depression years to make pillow cases to make sheets they would piece them together to make bed sheets, dish towels. People used them to make slips and underclothing for the children even. They used the flower sacks for a lot of things

Mark Durtschi: How big were these sacks, were they hundred pound sacks?

Mildred Hardy: They would be about a yard square, maybe a little less than a yard, big enough to make a pillow case out of one sack.

Mark Durtschi: Could you tell me again about making quilts out of flower sacks?

Mildred Hardy: We did that, particularly at the relief society, I don’t think I ever did that for my own use because we could buy broad cloth for twelve and fifteen cents a yard. I didn’t make to many quilts in those days because I started out with a fair supply. For the relief society we would get the sacks and the women would wash them and bleach them, they all had printing on them. They would bleach them and then they would die them and I can remember dyeing them in my washing machine after they were sewn together, we could die them before too. We would take them up to the church and put them on frames and quilt them. We had mostly after I was married the bats were made up commercially. Maybe one bat or two bats would do for a quilt. Not to long before that people made the bats with wool carters and made small bats and had to fit them together all over the quilt.

Mark Durtschi: So they would take some wool from the sheep, shear it and then they would card it.

Mildred Hardy: Wash it and get it clean as possible and then card it.

Mark Durtschi: What were the cards like?

Mildred Hardy: They were rectangular wooden things with the handle on and a whole bunch of little teeth on one side.

Mark Durtschi: About a foot wide. Okay, how would you operate those two pedals?

Mildred Hardy: Just leave the wool on one, they both had teeth on them and take the other one and keep kind of combing through it until you had it all spread out.

Mark Durtschi: What was the goal of carding, you got the sheer wool and it’s all ready? I guess it has been washed already. It is kind of matted I guess.

Mildred Hardy: It fluffed it out into a fluffy piece of wool instead of being in a kind of solid mat.

Mark Durtschi: I guess probably spinning wheels. Did anybody here in town have spinning wheels? 

Mildred Hardy: Some people had them but I don’t remember anybody using a spinning wheel.

Mark Durtschi: You mentioned the relief society just briefly about making quilts and things. You were in the relief society for a very long time. Could you tell me a little about the relief society?

Mildred Hardy: I started going to it as soon as I was married. We used to read the relief society magazine when it would come and read it from cover to cover, even when I was growing up. It was a favourite magazine of mine. So I kept going to the relief society and we had the relief society during the week in the afternoon. Later on quite a few of the women in the ward were working, we had a night relief society as well as the day time relief society, that was still during the week that changed in that we have relief society on Sunday.

Mark Durtschi: How did relief society itself change when it moved from the middle of the day and all of the women came in the middle of the day and I know that you used to have a lot more work projects? How did it change from those times to when you started holding it on Sunday?

Mildred Hardy: Well we still have some work projects but we can’t do them on Sunday but I don’t think that we have as much as we did. If the relief society involved welfare canning now days they just ask people to go to the cannery and help at the cannery in Lethbridge. That is what it amounts to.

Mark Durtschi: How did it work then?

Mildred Hardy: Earlier, well we had to prepare the vegetables but I think that the priest had pretty well taken it to the cannery. I don’t think that the women, well they did go to the cannery some but I don’t remember being responsible for getting the project to Raymond, just getting it prepared here. We would have quite a few women come in and I know one thing when we were carry vegetables through we were doing it pretty well all day long. How we got them to Raymond I don’t know because, we couldn’t have done that, they had to be prepared the day before.

Mark Durtschi: Were they put into cans or were they put into bottles?

Mildred Hardy: They were put into cans.

Mark Durtschi: Any ideas about how many cans you would do when the relief society was going?

Mildred Hardy: No, I have no idea, it seems like we did a lot when we were preparing. I couldn’t translate it into cans.

Mark Durtschi: Getting back to home, I understand that the Hardy’s made a lot of cheese over the years. Could you give a quick sketch of how you did this?

Mildred Hardy: Yes, I learned to make cheese while I was still living upstairs in the apartment and my mother in law would be making cheese downstairs and I would often go down and help stir the product while it was being made. We made that in a big boiler type container to and after you put the rennin in it sat and you would take a big long knife and cut it into squares, both directions across and then we had to stir it for quite a long time until the crick formed. It was quite a tiring job for one person to keep stirring that all of the time. After we moved up into our own p[lace we had quite a bit of cows and we made cheese. We made quite a few pounds of cheese, we put them in cheese cloth.

Mark Durtschi: So help me out with the stages. First of all you got the milk to the right temperature then you put the rennin in after it set you cut it both ways with the knife and stir it. They would drape it in cheese cloth.

Mildred Hardy: Oh, well we had to drain it. We also had to put coloring in it to make it yellow.

Mark Durtschi: Was the next step then the cheese press?

Mildred Hardy: Once it was all drained then we would put it in the press and it sort of tightened and bound gradually as it was pressing.

Mark Durtschi: How long would it be in the cheese press? How often would you give the screw a little turn to get it a little tighter?

Mildred Hardy: Most of a day it would be pressing.

Mark Durtschi: You would only press it for one day. So it wouldn’t be in there for a week. How often would you tighten the screw down a little tighter?

Mildred Hardy: Until there was no more coming up.

Mark Durtschi: Every half an hour or hour when you went by it you would give it another turn.

Mildred Hardy: It was a crank.

Mark Durtschi: Okay, so it would stay in there about a day and then after you pushed it out of the press, what was the next step?

Mildred Hardy: We put plaques around on the cheese cloth. That helped seal it up so that it kept it from molding. So after the cheese was out of the press and waxed we just stored it in a cool, dry place and let it age. Sometimes it got older than others, other times we were in a hurry to start eating it and we liked mild cheese so sometimes we ate it fairly soon.

Mark Durtschi: Okay

Mildred Hardy: It was good cheese.

Mark Durtschi: When you were first married, you mentioned to me that you had to carry your water. Could you give me a little history about the water use in your home from the beginning until now?

Mildred Hardy: Well when we were in the apartment we were able to use water from the cistern that was there for the building and then when we moved to our own little house we didn’t have our own cistern so we put water in barrels and let it settle. Ditch water, you would use that for washing in the winter time. Quite often we would melt snow and ice as well. There was no water in the ditch so we had to.

Mark Durtschi: Would you just set the wash tub on the stove, is that how you did it.

Mildred Hardy: Just melt it, so we were quite frugal with our water use for a while. Then we didn’t think to long until we were able to build a cistern. I remember selling victory bombs during the early part of the war and made enough money to pay for the material for the cistern. We built the cistern with mixing up cement with the cement mixer and mixing the sand and the gravel. We had quite a big mixer and a pressure pump and a tank in the basement that we were able to get water pressure in the house. Then when we built out new house after we moved the little house back in the yard we built new houses and we were able to have a bathroom with a sceptic tank out on the south slope south of the house. 

Mark Durtschi: How long did you use that system with the pressure pump and the cistern until you got the town water?

Mildred Hardy: I can’t remember when that town water came in.

Mark Durtschi: It was in the sixties that the town water came in.

Mildred Hardy: We must have used it from then on then. We must have used it almost twenty years because we had the pressure system and the sceptic tank when reed was little. He was born in 1941 so we must have used that system for about twenty years.

Mark Durtschi: The way that you have heated your house has changed quite a bit over the years. Could you tell me how it was when you first came to Stirling?

Mildred Hardy: When we were in the apartment the heat came from the room downstairs, they had a furnace down there but we had a cook stove upstairs to do our cooking and we had to carry the coal upstairs and the ashes down. When we moved into the little house we had a heater in the bedroom and a kitchen stove, there were only four rooms. Two upstairs and two down in the little house and we had to keep these fires going to keep the place warm. It wasn’t an insulated house. It was very cold in the winter time. Sometimes we would keep the fires going, the fire in the bedroom at least in the little heater. Web often kept that burning all night. We would have to watch it, sometimes we would get pretty hot and we would have to be careful. We burnt coal in both of those and then when we moved into the basement of our new house we had a furnace and it burned slack. Later we changed to a different furnace that burned just regular coal. We would just haul coal and just fill the bin through coal shoots. Like little round window in the wall of the coal room to shovel the coal in.

Mark Durtschi: When the gas came to town did you switch to gas?

Mildred Hardy: Yes we switched to gas right away. That meant a different kind of a furnace. It took a little getting used to it seemed like the heat from the coal furnace kept us warmer than the gas furnace did but it was just a matter of adjusting to the change. I would like to go back to coal now.

Mark Durtschi: Let’s talk a little bit about the depression, when you got married in 1937 the depression was three fourths over of course there were still three or four hard years to go. Could you tell me a little about your recollection of the depression and what times were like back then?

Mildred Hardy: Well things were a lot different than they are now. You could sell a whole cow for ten dollars, eggs were ten cents a dozen and you could buy a notebook for five cents. Fabric were anywhere from fifteen to thirty cents a yard. Things were really cheap but nobody had any money anyway so people did have a lot of goods. After we were married we had cows and we sold cream we would ship it to Lethbridge, that helped a bit to buy things.

Mark Durtschi: Was that about your only source of cash income there?

Mildred Hardy: Well there was always, Lyman was farming and we did have some farming income. Sometimes the farm income wasn’t very great but it was always enough that we managed to live, nobody went hungry, a lot of our clothes were made over.

Mark Durtschi: What do you mean by that?

Mildred Hardy: Well I can remember for one instance making a man two pants suit and making a skirt a jacket for myself. My sister did the same thing; many people did things like that. We would take a old pair of slacks and a pair of dress slacks and cut them down and make a coat for my little boy and I made everybody pretty well did their own sewing and made clothes for their girls and their boys and for themselves. They utilized things like flower sacks to make pillow cases and sheets. Everybody did a lot of canning, people had gardens. They preserved a lot of food.

Mark Durtschi: Aside from canning you mentioned earlier that you used to dry a lot of corn.

Mildred Hardy: We did that, we often put cream with it and I can remember putting it in clothes and hanging up up on the clothes line to dry.

Mark Durtschi: So you would cut the corn off of the cob to preserve it?

Mildred Hardy: Right

Mark Durtschi: Did you soak it in cream?
 
Tape 2 Side 2
 
Mark Durtschi: You were saying that it kept indefinitely. 

Mildred Hardy: It was good, we soaked it, when we wanted to use it we would take a bit out and soak it then cook it for a while and just eat it.

Mark Durtschi: You say that you soaked it for a while, was this for two or three hours?

Mildred Hardy: Probably, maybe even overnight.

Mark Durtschi: Then you cooked it for a while, what did this corn taste like when you got it done?

Mildred Hardy: It didn’t taste like fresh corn but it had a good flavor.

Mark Durtschi: Alright, let’s move on just a little bit more. The next age in the history of Stirling after the depression years were the war years. Can you fill me in on how you remember the war here in Stirling?

Mildred Hardy: Well because Lyman stayed home and worked on the farm, going to war didn’t affect us that much personally. Yet a lot of our family went, I had brother who joined and he had a brother who joined. I had a brother in law who went overseas and lost a leg over there. I can remember when I was in the hospital with one of my children several of the nurses must have been married to men who were overseas; they would be always quite concerned about the news. I remember once making a comment about well it is just the news. They kind of pounced on me for that because they figured that I should be really concerned about the news. It did concern me but as personally as it did them. We did have rationing, they rationed gas and sugar. I don’t know what else but I can remember shortening must have been at a premium for some reason.

Mark Durtschi: How did that rationing affect your family life?

Mildred Hardy: It really didn’t bother us, we didn’t have any problem with the rationing, we were short, we really didn’t suffer at all.

Mark Durtschi: So you had plenty of gas to go to about anywhere that you would normally go.

Mildred Hardy: I don’t think that we even had a car. So that didn’t bother us. His dad had a car but we didn’t.

Mark Durtschi: Did the ration affect the farmers at lall or do they have everything that they needed.

Lyman Hardy: They had everything, they had purple gas for farmers, people couldn’t use purple gas in their cars.

Mark Durtschi: Unless they got caught. So you would say that the war years were probably better than the depression years because things were starting to look up economically all over.

Mildred Hardy: It eventually got better, gradually got better.

Mark Durtschi: Could you tell me a little about when you got your first telephone.

Mildred Hardy: Actually I don’t remember when we got our first phone, if we were still down in the basement when we got the phone or when we were here I don’t remember.

Mark Durtschi: How did it change your life then when you got that phone? What were some of the workings of how it worked, I know that you were on a party line?

Mildred Hardy: It was on a party line and we had several people on one line. We would ring whatever number we wanted but it made a difference to me because I was able to phone my folks in Raymond, they had a phone then to by that time, I was able to call my parents and call them. Before we got the phone if I wanted to call them I would have to go to somebody’s place that had a phone. It was a convenience but sometimes the party line was a little bit interesting because you would to make a phone call and you would be impatient to get to the phone and people would talk on and on and on. If anybody on the line was using the phone you couldn’t use it because you would get brave and then they would let you have the phone for a few moments.

Mark Durtschi: What kind of privacy was on the phone when everybody was on party line?

Mildred Hardy: There wasn’t too much privacy, people quite often listened in. You could tell when people were listening in. You just had to be careful what you said.

Mark Durtschi: Were people often telling other people to get off the phone.

Mildred Hardy: Once and a while they would yes.

Mark Durtschi: Is this after the days that there were the operators in Stirling?

Mildred Hardy: There were no operators here in Stirling at that time, not after we got married. That time that it was operated in Stirling was way back earlier.

Mark Durtschi: Probably just before the depression then.

Mildred Hardy: They had an operator in Raymond. That is probably where we made our connection.

Mark Durtschi: Do you remember how many people were on your party line?

Mildred Hardy: I think that there were six or seven on the line. It was nice to get our own private line.

Mark Durtschi: Let’s talk about the church a little bit. Maybe a good place to start is when your husband was a councillor in the bishop ranks and later when he was a bishop. How did that affect you and the kids?

Mildred Hardy: Well he was a councillor when we had one child. Throughout our married life I spent a lot of my time sitting down in the audience with my kids and he was up on the stand. Once and a while I would let one of the kids go up there and sit with him. Mostly they sat down with me, he would have meetings, we didn’t live very far from the church so even though we didn’t have a car for a lot of the years it was no big deal getting your kids to and from church because we could walk. In the wintertime we often took them on the toboggan or on the sleigh in the wintertime. Just kind of got used to having him being involved, besides being on the stands on Sundays the bishop had a quartet that three members of the bishop rank and the ward clerk sang in a quartet so they had a lot of quartet practices. They were singing in different programs so that there is another way that they were taken away from home. They had a lot of practices for those quartets.

Mark Durtschi: This is something I never ask a bishops wife so I will get brave now. What was your status in the ward as being the wife of the bishop? Do you think that it was enhanced at all or were you just another sister?

Mildred Hardy: Well I think that it was enhanced a certain amount but when you are in position like that besides maybe the enhanced you are in a position where you might get a little more credit.

Mark Durtschi: Did that happen to you and Lyman sometimes?

Mildred Hardy: Not to me but I can remember once or twice people making a comment about the bishop and my first impulse was the punch them in the jaw. So he had to have the deaf ear and if he had to do interviews, when he was the bishop, not a councillor. So the rest of us would stay out in the other part of the house and this had to be private.

Mark Durtschi: Was this going on all the time, I presume that it was?

Mildred Hardy: Well he was bishop, off and on.

Mark Durtschi: Did the kids ever resent that?

Mildred Hardy: I don’t remember them resenting it.

Mark Durtschi: It was just kind of the way that it was.

Mildred Hardy: They were used to the idea.

Mark Durtschi: So they built the bishops office fairly early when you were the bishop. While you lived here in Stirling could you tell me a little about different churches and the different meeting places and how that has evolved over the years?

Mildred Hardy: Well at first they were having church and MIA and stuff like that in the brick building when it was done in 1930 I guess. But the activities were done in the cultural hall, the little old while building. At the time that we were married they were working on the cultural hall, I remember that was another activity that took him away from home quite a bit because he was up helping build that building. But it was really nice to have the cultural hall. Later when they joined the two buildings together we had a relief society room and a bishop’s office. When they got water and sewer we would have the restrooms in the building then.

Mark Durtschi: Let me ask you about the restrooms, did they use the outhouse until they built intersection?

Mildred Hardy: They did

Mark Durtschi: Then they didn’t put the actual bathrooms in the intersection until the town got the water in the sixties?

Mildred Hardy: That’s right

Mark Durtschi: So that is probably one of the few churches that had a outhouse in the 1960s.

Mildred Hardy: I guess, Raymond didn’t get theirs to much earlier, I don’t remember just when they got theirs but as long as I was going to church in Raymond before I was married they still had to go out back. 

Mark Durtschi: Can you tell me about some of the church jobs that you had?

Mildred Hardy: My first job probably was when I was in primary and then I was made a councillor in the relief society. I worked in their new study for quite a few years. After that I was in the primary presidency and I worked there for several years, I also taught primary for some of that time. Later on I began working in MIA then called it then, I started as a teacher in the beehive class and then I asked to be a councillor, then again as a teacher. I worked in MIA for nineteen years. Then we were asked to work at the temple, we started working there and we worked there for quite a few years. While we were still working at the temple they asked us to work in French Extraction and we worked in the extraction for twelve years. Then we went on a mission to Canada, Winnipeg. A little later we went on a mission to Jackson Mississippi. Then after we came back from there we went back into the extraction program and in to work at the temple, we didn’t go into the temple until after the renovations at the temple. We are still working there, but not in extraction.

Mark Durtschi: Could you mention a little bit about what it was like to travel in those early days? You went to the temple your whole life. Tell me about some of those early trips the temple and how its different then now?

Mildred Hardy: It was quite different, it took a lot longer to go through a session and get back. Sometimes we would go to the temple and we wouldn’t get out until way late at night. The roads were gravel and when it rained a lot they were really bad sometimes. I remember sliding around and wondering if we are going to make it home or not.

Mark Durtschi: It takes forty five minutes to drive to Cardston now. How long did it take then to get back and forth?

Mildred Hardy: It must have taken longer, I don’t know how much but quite a bit longer. We went to the temple and went to one session a ten o’clock session and were married right after the session. We weren’t married until after one o’clock in the afternoon. In those days we always had a meeting before the session, a meeting in the chapel and it just took a lot longer to do the same amount of work that you do now.

Mark Durtschi: Could you tell me a little about your wedding day?

Mildred Hardy: Well it was November 11^thin 1937 and we drove up to Cardston and were married. President Wood who was the president of the temple suggested that maybe we would like to stay for the afternoon session as well so we did that. After we were married we had lunch at the temple, people quite often took their own lunch, there was a room there that you could go to eat your lunch. They didn’t have a cafeteria. So we had lunch and then we went to the next session. When we came out it was dark. Coming home we had a storm, kind of freezing sleet, it froze on the windshield and Lyman had to put his head out the window  to see the road then clear the whished. It was really quite a nasty little storm. We didn’t have any trouble except that we had to drive slowly. We stopped at my folks place in Raymond but I don’t remember the road between Raymond and Lethbridge being like the storm it was between Cardston and Raymond.

Mark Durtschi: Was that a borrowed car?

Mildred Hardy: Yes it was, it was his cousins car. Didn’t have a heater, I don’t know why we couldn’t see out the windshield, it didn’t have any wipers. Anyway it was really just freezing.

Mark Durtschi: You mentioned on the forum that we filled out earlier that some of your hobbies like Ice skating and dancing. Could you tell me a little about those activities in your family?

Mildred Hardy: Well Lyman and I did go to dances quite a bit before we were married and then quite a bit after we were married, we have kind of gotten out of that habit. We also went ice skating before we were married. I did that as I was growing up, we had a pond at our place and that was just a regular winter pass time to go out on the farm and skate, we did that in Stirling. After we had children we often would take them skating. We would skate up and down the coulee just south of the house here. Then we would also take them sleigh riding and tobogganing. 

Mark Durtschi: Do you have any particular remembrances of the Stirling dances that were put on. Some people have told me that there was lo0ts of family dances.

Mildred Hardy: Yes there were, they used to have quite a few dances, I think it was probably a dance where I first met my husband in Stirling. On Christmas and New Years Eve they would have a children’s dance in the afternoon and then an adult dance in the evening. In the afternoon it seemed like so many of the parents would come with children to the children’s dance that you were able to visit with everybody on Christmas day. I don’t know how we managed to work it all in but they used to do that and they gradually got away from that. Every Christmas and every New Year they would have a Children’s Dance. They used to have quite a few adult dances but they don’t have much anymore. We always had a Gold and Green Ball.

Mark Durtschi: Was that here in Stirling?

Mildred Hardy: Yes, and we would have a floor show. We would have a queen and attendants and trumpeters and the whole thing. We made a bid deal out of the Gold and Green Ball.

Mark Durtschi: When was that held?

Mildred Hardy: It was in the spring.

Mark Durtschi: So it was quite a fair.

Mildred Hardy: Yes it was, when I was working in MIA that is one activity that we were involved in quite a bit, we would have dance director and they would teach the floor show to the kids. They would perform at the gold and green ball.

Mark Durtschi: What kinds of decorations were there?

Mildred Hardy: Sometimes they were quite elaborate; they would have paper streamers and maybe balloons. They would put different kinds of things on the lights to make it more exciting.

Mark Durtschi: Were there any other out of the usually dances? I understand that they had dances every week but any special occasion dances?

Mildred Hardy: The valentine dance was especially meant to interest, in those days we didn’t have a movie theatre or television. I guess people just need a little more activity but we had a lot more and they always had what they call an old folks party every year. They would honour the people over sixty I guess it was and have a big dinner and they would invite people who used to live in town back for the old folks party. They would have a big dinner and then a program then they would have a dance for the old folks. They would have an old time band. They had some really good parties.

Mark Durtschi: Going back to the early dances when they first came to the dances, what kinds of music did they have for those dances?

Mildred Hardy: They had music that I would say is a lot better than what they have now. It was music, the Raymond Canadians and they played a lot of waltz music. We even had Mark Kenny come and play here. He had different bands but they were good bands. People quite often went to Raymond to dance on the open air dance. That was a very popular place, they had a good orchestra. Often in the summer time people would go to Waterton too. Quite often Mark Kenny would be playing up there. People like to go and hear him play. They put on a lot of dances in the second ward building to raise money to build the building. They would charge everybody a dime to dance.

Mark Durtschi: I noticed that both you and Lyman were active in the Home and School Association. Could you tell me a little about what this association was?

Mildred Hardy: It was an organization that was supposed to build communication between parents and teachers. Just generally function to provide benefits for the school. The often were responsible for some part of the graduation, high school grad. We were active while we had children in School, not much after that. I belonged to the Daughters of Utah Pioneers and originally we joined a camp in Raymond and when there was enough interest we formed a camp here in Stirling. That wasn’t really for civic benefits so much, which was just for interest sake although they were responsible for putting up markers; there are three markers now I think in Alberta. The first is outside the United States. I also belong to a Monamic Club which wasn’t a civic organization either but we did the Red Cross canvas every year. At least we did that much for the community.

Mark Durtschi: Sister Hardy you and Lyman were some of the folks that helped get the senior citizens group organized. Could you tell me a little about that and what traditionally the senior citizens do, how often they meet?

Mildred Hardy: We originally started meeting every Saturday afternoon but the Saturday afternoons kind of teetered out. There were a few people who went down there quite often on a Saturday afternoon. Actually the room was available to anybody during the week if they wanted to go down and play pool and the women played different games and visited. They always ad a bit of a lunch, once an moth we would have a supper, we still do. We always got together and made quilts, sometimes we did custom quilting to make money for the center. We always made a quilt for the New Years baby. One thing that has been quite enjoyable although it enjoyed the Raymond group as well, they have bus tours every once and a while. Next week they are going to Calgary to the stampede. They charter a bus and Stirling hasn’t gone on their own very many times actually we did go on our own from Stirling with a bus from milk river. We went on a bus from West Edmonton Mall and stayed in Edmonton overnight and some of the other interesting things in Lethbridge. Mostly the Stirling Group has gone with the Raymond group in the big bus. They have gone a lot of different places. They go to Wilson’s camp once a year pretty well and quite often they have a trip to Kananskis. Sometimes to Spruce meadows, sometimes out into B.C, sometimes they have gone on temple trips. One year we went to Los Angeles and Oakland and different places along the way, Salt Lake, and Jordan River. There have been a lot of really nice trips. I have been on more than one temple trip with the bus.  

Mark Durtschi: This was part of the senior citizens group?

Mildred Hardy: This was part of the senior citizens group.
 
Transcribed by Clinton Dovell