Interviewee: Rose Adamson
Interviewer: Mark Durtschi
 
Mark Durtschi: This is Mark Durtschi it is the 21^st of June 1996 I am in the home of Glenn and Rose Adamson. Today we are Interviewing Rose Adamson on some of the different things that she has seen while she has lived here in Stirling. Rose Adamson incidentally is my mother in law. So I will be calling her mom just so you can understand what is going on. Mom is there any chance that you could start out by telling me a little bit about your childhood and we will kind of go from there.

Rose Adamson: Well I can remember that we lived out on the farm where I was born. I was always out playing with my dog and running up and down the coulee banks even trying to catch fish in the pools with my hands.

Mark Durtschi: You could see them?

Rose Adamson: Yes, they were just small pools of water.

Mark Durtschi: You were an only child for many years. What are some of the things that you did since you didn’t have anyone to play with out there?

Rose Adamson: Well it was always my dog and me playing around. My mother says that she knew wherever I was when she heard the dog bark. So she didn’t worry too much about things. There was once when the dog was barking quite excitedly, my mother came out from the house and followed the sound of the dog barking and found me sitting in the pig trough. My dad had ninety nine pigs and they were all around me sitting in their trough. The dog was in there with me barking to keep them away from me. That is where my mother found me that time.

Mark Durtschi: Do you have any idea how old you were then?

Rose Adamson:I  can’t say I do but I was old enough to be able to climb fences.

Mark Durtschi: You were just a little child right?

Rose Adamson: Yes, I was going to say maybe five years old.

Mark Durtschi: Did that frighten you mom at all?

Rose Adamson: Well I kind of think that she was a little bit anxious about so many pigs there.

Mark Durtschi: How come?

Rose Adamson: Well when I was in the trough maybe they figured that I was in there as something extra to eat.

Mark Durtschi: Do you remember anything else that you and your dog used to do?

Rose Adamson: We were always climbing around the coulee banks and in the water.

Mark Durtschi: Talking about the coulee banks dad has shown me a big dinosaur bone out there; could you talk a little bit about the dinosaur skeletons out on your farm?

Rose Adamson: Well there was that one that my dad and Glenn pulled up out of the coulees so that it wouldn’t be hidden when the water was quite high. There was another bone in a big rock that was just across the fence on Charlie Perrett’s land. That had a big bone in it and I looked at it and thought that it must have been and elephant tusk. But that Rock is still down under water. It never got out of there. Along in the rock along the floor part of the coulees there was a lot of shale and there was a lot of these sea shells I would call them. I could see them in the rocks.

Mark Durtschi: Did your dad ever do anything with those bones?

Rose Adamson: Well he kept them; even Glenn has a lot of them now.

Glenn Adamson: There were a couple of them in the Cardston display for a while.

Rose Adamson: Yes, my dad took the bones up to Cardston where he had a museum and they were on display for quite some time up in Cardston.

Mark Durtschi: How old were you when you started School?

Rose Adamson: Seven

Mark Durtschi: You were seven years old

Rose Adamson: Yes

Mark Durtschi: And being out on the farm, it was kind of hard to get into school, how did you get in?

Rose Adamson: Well when I was young like that, Dad always took me in. I guess it was his truck. As I got a little bit older he fixed up a cart that I could drive the horse on the cart. There was this certain time that I didn’t think I had all of my homework done, I wasn’t watching where the horse was and I was looking at all my books at once and the cart stopped. The wheel of the cart was locked into the telephone pole. There I was stopped. The horse went in between the telephone pole and the fence. So I learned my lesson there. I think that I said something to dad when he come and get me; I can’t remember exactly how I worded it. So he got me untangled out of the telephone pole.

Mark Durtschi: Did you get to school the same way in the winter time?

Rose Adamson: My dad always took us into school in the winter time when it was cold. If it wasn’t by truck he fixed up a sleigh with a cover over the top where you could see out of the front so you could see the horses that were pulling it. He always warmed up some rock in the oven of the stove overnight and then in the morning he would put the rocks in a hay sack and put them in the middle of the sleigh. We had straw all around to sit on. We had a place to put our feet to keep out feet warm. When we would gather up all the kids down the road we would bring them in as well. My cousins Alfred and Mary Romeril, the Boyson kids and the Perrett kids, I guess that that was about all that we would be able to fit in there. That was winter time, but when I got old enough to ride a horse that is the way I went to school from then on. We had a school barn down here down the road, a little bit east from where the school house used to be.

Glenn Adamson: North side of Fourth Avenue now.

Rose Adamson: North side of Fourth Avenue is that right you say.

Mark Durtschi: Well how many kids brought their horses to school in those days?

Rose Adamson: Maybe there were four of five horses in the school barn.

Mark Durtschi: Let’s talk a little bit more about that school barn. So kids when they came to school there was a barn for them to put their horses in.

Rose Adamson: Yes and I always brought a little sack of oats, I guess that I must have held it because u rode bareback most of the time.

Glenn Adamson: It was warmer.

Rose Adamson:Yes Warmer is right. It was cold in the winter time and then riding bear back it bade it so that when I was riding on the back of the horse my legs kept warmer. I don’t remember when I gave her the oats could have been maybe at noon.

Glenn Adamson: About three miles each way.

Rose Adamson: About three and a half miles each way. Three and a half into school and then Three and a half back to the farm.

Mark Durtschi: Lets talk a little bit about your house out there, how did you heat it?

Rose Adamson: Well the kitchen was heated just by the cook stove, coal, and then we had a heater in the front room.

Mark Durtschi: Was it also a coal heater?

Rose Adamson: Yes it would have been.

Mark Durtschi: How good of a job did that do in heating the house?

Rose Adamson: Well it mostly just heated one room each. The heater in the front room and the kitchen stove in the Kitchen. Then upstairs where my bedroom was, in the winter time that was cold. I would wake up in the morning around where the bedding was up on my face it was all froze around my face because of my breath getting the bedding cold.

Mark Durtschi: What would you do when you got up in the morning? I guess that you would run downstairs quick.

Rose Adamson: Just as soon as I got out of that bed I just head right straight down to the kitchen where it was warm. There was another thing, I had a pet cat and that cat was a real nice cat I thought. He always wanted to go to bed with me. He would crawl in under the bedding and go right down to where my feet were. I had a perpetual foot warmer there. If he needed to get up and go outside at night I would just reach up to the window and raise the window up and there he would go. Maybe fifteen minutes he was back scratching at the window scratching to come in again. If he brought snow on him I always had to rub his feet off on the rug before I would let him crawl back into bed again.

Mark Durtschi: I have not heard that story before. You mentioned that because your bedroom was so cold that sometimes it was used for other things, specifically when Hogenson’s baby died. Can you retell that story?

Rose Adamson: I just don’t remember the date now when they had their second baby boy and he was sick and he died. This was Bill and Louie Hogensons baby. The brought it up before it was buried brought it up to my mom and dads place and put it in the north bedroom where there wasn’t any heat in there. They had to leave it there for a day or two, I don’t remember now, they had to dress it. This particular night was a Saturday night and I didn’t know that Bill and Louie were coming up, they oldest boy, Marvin, was with them. When Bill jumped out of the buggy to open the gate to come in the yard, I don’t know why but Marvin started crying. I heard that baby cry and I just petrified hearing a baby cry I knew that the dead baby was in the other room. I just stood there and couldn’t even move until bill had driven the buggy around to the south side of the house and tied the horse up. They got out of the buggy and then they came to the door and rang the door bell. That was what released me from my being so petrified. I just stood so still for so long that my mom wondered what I was doing. She came to the bottom of the stairs and called to me. Well as I had told you hearing them coming up and hearing the baby crying just scared me to death.

Mark Durtschi: You thought that it was the dead baby.

Rose Adamson: Ya, I guess I naturally thought of that baby being there knowing that it was dead and hearing it crying, but it didn’t.

Mark Durtschi: In the summer time when school was out, what are some of the things that you did to keep yourself occupied?

Rose Adamson: Well I just loved riding my horse. So one time, my cousin Alfred and I each had our horse and we rode up to the ridge which was maybe about twelve miles south of here. We rode up onto the ridge and there and we didn’t know that there were bear patches of ground where there was nothing growing on it. We just happened to ride across a bear patch of ground and all of the sudden our horses were just down in mud and just jumping and running around. I was hanging on to the poor horse and finally she got out of the bog hole. I looked at her and she was just covered with blue mud from the middle of her waist all the way down in just awful mud. We learned from that not to ride on anything that doesn’t have any grass growing on it. That really got us scared and we turned around and went home and I had to rinse the poor old horse off. So about maybe a week or so later my cousin Millie Romeril was over from Raymond visiting with me. Helen and Margaret Brandley, Margaret became Heber Parrett’s wife later and Alfred rode up with us too and we all rode up to the ridge. We told them not to ride on any patches of dirt that don’t have grass growing on it; we went on further on to the top of the ridge. We got thirsty and felt like we needed a drink of water, we could look down the ravine down there and we could see that there was a little bit of water running. We left Alfred holding the horses up at the top and we went down. I guess Margaret didn’t come down with us right then. We told her after that it was good water to drink. So we called to her to come down and let Alfred hold the horses, so she started coming down the hill, it was quite a steep hill and she started running. She come to about a six foot drop off at the bottom of that drop off there was that dry mud with no grass on it. She fell about six feet down onto that mud, which was dry then, it was that blue mud and she just got covered with mud. To this day I know that it was Millie my cousin that had the power from out heavenly father to walk out on that mud and pull Margaret out of there, she never broke through. That was a miracle that Margaret got out of there. We had to take her down to where the water was. Our coats were tied up on the horses because we had to take all of her clothes off of her. Was he all over and she were just plastered and we had to wrap her up in these coats, we had to wash her clothes. Hang them out on bushes around to dry. We were there for quite a long time before her clothes got dry. It almost kind of knocked her out. Because she a bit good, when we did start for home. There was a time or so where she had to get up off of the horse and lie down on the ground. We were gone for so long that our folks were beginning to wonder because it was getting dark. About maybe nine o’clock at night. That was our episode that time; I never want to see bog mud ever again, because that was really a scary time that we had then.

Mark Durtschi: I don’t remember a cistern being out at your house, what did you do for water?

Rose Adamson: Dad dug a well and we had a well that was over where the house was, to the back.

Mark Durtschi: What kind of water did it have?

Rose Adamson: It was good water, most people didn’t like the taste of it they said that it was soda water or something. We got so used to it that we just enjoyed it. When we would go to Lethbridge and come home we would so thirsty we just couldn’t wait until dad pulled a bucket of fresh cold water up out of the well.

Mark Durtschi: So this well was incorporated into your home.

Rose Adamson: Yes, it was right inside the house

Mark Durtschi: Was the pump directly in the well or did you have it hooked up to the kitchen?

Rose Adamson: No, it was just above the well

Mark Durtschi: So whenever you needed water you went to the well.

Glenn Adamson: The pump was over it and it had a rope over it with a pulley up to the ceiling and down into the well and you could pull the bucket of water up.

Mark Durtschi: Could you guts tell me a little about the night that you took baths when you were a kid?

Rose Adamson: Well when we had to have a bath it was usually just our Saturday night bath. We had to heat water on the kitchen stove and we had to use the old wash tub. Put it on the floor and then if we wanted privacy we had to drape something around on the chairs around to make it more private. Then the water that was heated on the stove was put in the tub. That is the way that I grew up having a bath was a Saturdays night bath. During the week you would have a sponge bath

Mark Durtschi: Can you tell me a little about the outhouse that you had out there. What it was like as a kid using the outhouse?

Rose Adamson: Those days, well we just naturally took it for granted that that is where you had to go out in the outhouse. It was an awful cold place in the winter time to have to go out there. We didn’t have toilet paper in those days we used the old catalogue that was when paper was out there. It is sure different from what we have now days. Even the little catalogue that we have out here now, I sure wouldn’t want to go back to those days, to have to run out there now.

Mark Durtschi: Did you have a chamber pod.

Rose Adamson: Yes, I don’t remember having one particularly out there for ourselves out at the farm but when we came and moved into town here and we didn’t have any bathroom, just the toilet in the outhouse. If you needed to get up and go to the toilet at night. There was quite a few times that I would have to get up and go outside, that would wake me up so I could hardly go back to sleep again. I ended up getting a chamber pale that worked a lot better for night.

Mark Durtschi: Is there anything else in particular that you would like to tell me about your childhood.

Rose Adamson: Well that made me thing of another time, we were living out at the farm. Not to long after we were married. My dad had a buck sheep and there were some little lams and we had garden pots across the house from the fence out. This old buck sheep was getting after these old lambs and he was just trying to kill them I guess you could say. So I went out there and grabbed the little lamb away from him and then he started after me. I don’t remember that I had a stick or anything but I had to keep dodging him because he was coming right after me. I guess that it was such a noise and a fuss that Reinard Brandley was working his land across the road from our house and he had trouble with his machinery and he came over in dads work shop fixing it he heard the fuss there so he came out and came on the run and he got the buck sheep away from me so that I could get through the fence and get out of there. I never had any more luck with that buck sheep. 

Mark Durtschi: Your father was quite an interesting character; could you introduce him to us?

Rose Adamson: Well when he was young he went to school

Mark Durtschi: Charles Zenus Romeril isn’t it?

Rose Adamson: Yes, my dad, he lived down in Utah, he was born in Salt Lake City
 
Tape 1 Side 2 
 
Rose Adamson: Well he had to teach his younger brothers and sisters at home, they didn’t have school where they lived, in northern Utah. Then they moved up to here in Sothern Alberta. I guess that it was North West Territories at that time because it wasn’t Alberta when they got here. It was on the 20^th of May that they arrived here, 1899, it was fifteen days after the first ones who came here, Theodore Brandley and his men and there were some mothers that came. Then he worked on the Canal using a team and a scraper, making a canal down in the southern part of Stirling, spring coulee was it. Anyway from then on he got into herding sheep, he herded sheep for several years for Harkers. Well when he was out herding sheep he got acquainted with two men that came in from Utah, they were renegades I guess, they skipped over the border to be away from the police in the states. I guess that they had done things down there that they figured they had to get away from Their names were Sid Swayze and Nee Foldn, they were big men. Dad had a ride on the horse sitting on the horse behind Sid Swayze one time and he says that when he got off there just wasn’t much horse left for him to sit on with Sid on the horse. I think that he was about 275 lb. or more Nee Foldn was about 250 lb. So they were big men, they were pretty tall. Well after he got through herding sheep he had his call so he went on a Mission to England and his headquarters was in Manchester, I just don’t remember much for sure. What strikes me right now is that Preston is an area where people were off against the Mormons. This one time in particular dad thought that he would have some safety if he saw policemen around. But this one particular time as he was going to knock on the door of a house the lady was upstairs looking out the window and the policeman across the street yelled across and said pour a bucket of water on him. So dad decided that he didn’t have any safety with the policemen. In this area the people were so bitter toward the Mormons and now days, Preston Tinkley spent his mission over there in the same area in Preston and it was far different, when he was over there. With my dad it was so bad for him over there doing any missionary work, now they are going to build a temple right there.

Mark Durtschi: Your dad was really quite a genius in his own way. Could you tell me a little bit about his astronomy and the radio that he built?

Rose Adamson: Well he always made a study of going and getting books from the library in Lethbridge and reading them he would come home with books about Einstein, James Deens, and another writer was Edington. I remember those three that he would read their writings. I don’t know enough about those men or writings to be able to explain anything but my dad was really smart about these, he learned all about the ways of the rotations of the heavens and the stars. He learned on his own about the changing of the seasons because of the earth rotating around the sun. There was a time or two when he was asked to give a lesson on astronomy in Sunday school, I am not sure now but he had to teach it in a class one time. He made the earth a round ball and then he made the sun a round ball and he had it placed in such a way that he was able to explain the changing of the seasons with them rotating around the sun. There was something else that you mentioned.

Mark Durtschi: He made one of the very first radios that were ever used in Stirling.

Rose Adamson: Yes he did, that was really something, and it wasn’t a fancy looking radio because it was just, it had three real stats that you had to turn. There were coils at the back, and they were all put together in such a way, you had to have earphones on to hear. In order to get a station you had to reach one of the dials. He was able to get KOA Denver, CFCN in Calgary, and I think another one that he got was KGO San Francisco. So after he had done that his brother George Romeril wanted him to help him build a radio for them, so he was busy building another radio that he had done in a more fancy looking way then but it was still made with coils that he had to wind up. I don’t know where he learned, but he learned how to do it anyway and so many different ones had come out and they just had to have them headphones on to hear. That would have been in about 1922 or 1923 I believe, when he made them.

Mark Durtschi: Can you tell me a little bit about your mother?

Rose Adamson: Her name was Rose Anna Connie, She was born in Belfast Ireland and from there she went over to Scotland and was working in a laundry in Attenborough. Her sister, Margaret, had gotten married and had moved out to Montréal. When her first baby was born my mother decided that she had better come out and take care of her sister and family. So she left Attenborough and came to Liverpool England for her where her aunt Martha Nelson was and she stayed there for two weeks with them. While she was there she met the missionaries. She wasn’t a member of the church at that time one of the missionaries that she met was Elder Charles Zenus Romeril she looked at his picture on the Bargen I think it was and said that is the man that I am going to marry. I don’t know if she was for sure or not but. He came around there and, I think that she was only around there for about two weeks and she got to know him then. Then she came on out to Montreal in Canada.

Mark Durtschi: Your mother had Sugar Diabetes didn’t she?

Rose Adamson: Oh yes, but she didn’t have that until she was about forty nine years old.

Mark Durtschi: What kinds of treatments did they have for her?

Rose Adamson: Well for a while she lived on Butter Milk. To kind of control the sugar levels, she eventually had to take insulin. That was in a needle, every morning. Dad had to give her the needle. I think that when her arms go so leathery he had to put it in her thigh.

Mark Durtschi: Changing the subject just a little bit. What was the day to day routine in your mom’s kitchen when you were a kid?

Rose Adamson: Well she did lots of cooking.

Mark Durtschi: What kind of things did you eat?

Rose Adamson: Well we always had potatoes, we had a garden. We had Carrots and I can remember that she made lots of rice pudding because dad loves rice pudding, baked rice pudding. She always made home made bread.

Mark Durtschi: Did she make her own yeast or did she buy it?

Rose Adamson: She had yeast cakes that she bought but we did at times save some of the batter, save a hunk of it and then we would take it and throw it in the flower bin which was in the well. And covered it up with flower and just left in there until the next time that we needed to make flower. Mom always saved her potato water. We put the balled dough which was hard, it had flower all around it and up that in the potato water and made it stand, and I guess that it would take a day for it. It took a good day for it to get soaked up good. And then work it into a paste.

Mark Durtschi: How big was this lump of dough that she saved?

Rose Adamson: About like that

Mark Durtschi: To me that looks like you’re describing a ball about four inches in diameter, enough to make half a loaf of bread. 

Rose Adamson: Yes

Mark Durtschi: She would put that in the flower bin and it would just kind of sit there and dry.

Rose Adamson: The flower would stick all around it.

Mark Durtschi: So it would stay in there a good three or four days.

Rose Adamson: Until we were needing to make more bread. I guess that we would have to take it out a day before, so that we could get it all soft and add the potato water to it

Mark Durtschi: You would just mix that in with her next batch of bread. So that is how she saved her batter instead of in a crock pot like a lot of people did.

Rose Adamson: But you would have to let it stand for a day before you could make your bread. To have it so that it was getting to be, it would take some thinking ahead of time. To have it work.

Mark Durtschi: What did you use for refrigeration out there?

Rose Adamson: Well, the north room, where the well was, it was quite a cool room. Dad had made what I called the flower bin because he had a big bin with a whole bunch of flower in. he had another section for the oatmeal. There was another section, I can’t remember what we put in that, but then above that she had made a shelf and had a door made with screen on it. It would open up and mom would put her milk in milk pans and then put the pans inside that and then close the door down. It stayed cold that way. You had to lease it for the cream to rise, sometimes if you didn’t need the milk for anything in particular and you would have more cream rising on it, but we would drink the milk and save the cream. Then we had an old bathroom stern that you would have to move the cream up and down with the stern and make the butter. That is what they had done for butter.

Mark Durtschi: How did you get your soap?

Rose Adamson: Soap, well I know that mom and dad did, I can’t remember where they got the grease from but I remember that they used to make soap for us to wash clothes with. Dad made kind of a box. Quite a long box, maybe four feet long. And then when she fixed the grease and the lye. I guess that was all we used to make the soap wasn’t it.

Mark Durtschi: Water

Rose Adamson: Ya, then when it was stirred up the way that it was for consistency, they would pour it into this long box that didn’t have any lid to it of course, it just had sides but they would leave that in there until it would get set. Then they would cut it into bars to use for washing. Mom had a thing that was maybe eight inches across and same high, and she would put a couple of bars of soap in that the day before she was going to wash clothes and she would put hot water in it to start melting. When it comes time she wanted to was, it was liquid so she would just pour the liquids in, we used the wash tub, for washing clothes for a long time.

Glenn Adamson: Used your wash board

Rose Adamson: Ya

Mark Durtschi: Did your mom boil clothes?

Rose Adamson: Ya, we had a wash boiler and we would put lye in the water, put it on the stove. I don’t remember whether it was boiling or not but we put our, especially our white things and put them in there and let it soak for ten or fifteen minutes or a half hour. I am forgetting. Then you would take them out of there with a stick because you didn’t want to get your hands in this hot water. Then you would put them in another big pan of some sort and ring them our and rinse them real good.

Mark Durtschi: That made the shirts real white though.

Rose Adamson: Oh yes it helped to take all of the stains out, it even helped to take the dirt out.

Mark Durtschi: One thing that you did a lot as a kid was get ice out of the cooler right there beside the house and stores it somehow, could you tell me about that?

Rose Adamson: Well we didn’t get it out of the cooler, it was down in the meadow where quite a lot of water would collect and then it would freeze during the winter time. The blocks of ice, I helped dad with them because they were big heavy blocks of ice. Roll them up and pull them on I guess it was a wagon. We had ice tongs. Anyway the blocks would be about two foot.

Glenn Adamson: Maybe not quite two feet, I think they were a little smaller.

Rose Adamson: Well I know that they were about that deep sometimes the ice

Mark Durtschi: You’re looking about two feet deep you say.

Rose Adamson: Ya, there were these tongs to hook on to them. Then when dad added on a ling you might say to his work shop, to the north of it, he fixed up an ice house. He put, it wasn’t straw then, it was wood shavings, sawdust in and all the way around. Then he fitted the blocks of ice in. he did put straw on the top to keep the cold in and the heat out. We had bought an eight quart ice cream freezer and those ice cream freezers were manually turned with a handle. Dad loved ice cream, but he didn’t like it to reach of cream. I can remember him telling mom to make that ice cream so that I can eat a hat full when I come in, when it was so hot working out on the farm. She would make it like cooking custard on the stove and then it was mostly in vanilla flavouring most of the time but there were times when we would add strawberries to it. Then another time we got crushed pineapples in the ice cream and I like that. So dad would come in when it was hot and say I don’t want anything for dinner, just ice cream. She would put like a soup dish on the table and he would eat that for his dinner. When we made the ice cream we had to break the ice up in very small pieces and make it mushy like. We would put it in the very bottom of the ice cream freezer then we would put some salt and sprinkle it around on the ice and put more ice in. Sprinkle more sale on, the ice was brought right up and went right over the canister. And so you would let it sit for just a little while just to make sure that it wasn’t sticking to the side to bad. When it was starting to stick more you had to stir more. The more that it stuck the harder it got to turn. So we had to keep doing that until you couldn’t turn it anymore. It was really good ice cream.

Mark Durtschi: Well that was an eight quart freezer; I don’t suppose that you ate all eight quarts at once.

Rose Adamson: No you had to keep ice in there.

Mark Durtschi: This was the summer time, how did you keep it cool so that it wouldn’t melt.

Rose Adamson: The salt kept the ice from melting

Mark Durtschi: So you just left that ice and salt in where the canister was in.

Rose Adamson: Yes, ill tell ya, it might be a surprise just how fast that ice cream was eaten.
 
Tape 2 Side 1
 
Mark Durtschi: This is Mark Durtschi and we are in the home of Glenn and Rose Adamson, it is the 25^th of June 1996. This is tape two and we are going to more or less just continue on with where we finished the last tape. You know that as a child you helped out quite a bit, you helped with the thrashing of the wheat you helped out with your dad a lot since he became injured and from the stories that you have been telling me you were more or less his right hand man for several years there. Could you tell me a little bit about how your dad got hurt in the first place? 

Rose Adamson: It was during the winter when the cold winter north winds came in and the cows started drifting away from the wind and going south. He had a dog but the dog was not worth anything because it wouldn’t help him, he had to do all of the chasing of the cows to drive them back to the farm yard. He got them back and from then on his heart just went down until he had to go to the doctor and the doctor told him that if you don’t quit your work you are soon going to be less than six feet of ground. He says that you’re going to have to get a good hired man to take over all of the hard work and let you have the rest. So after that I told dad if you could come out and just sit in the truck and just tell me what you want done that I would go out and do it. He says well we could give it a try and see. So it meant that I had to put the gas in the tractor which was heavy buckets that I had to lift and pour them into the tank on the tractor and also keep water in the radiator of the tractor as well and oil. The tractor didn’t have a starter on it so I had to use the crank. I had to figure out a way that I could turn that crank around so that if it back fired that it wouldn’t break my arm. My dad told me what I had to do. So from then on I worked the tractor and the machinery I had to pull was disks and one ways and rod weeders. I had to put the grain in the drills and drill land in the spring. So that was my way of helping my dad for two years. The first fall he got to feeling good enough that he was able to sit on the tractor and just steer it for combining. I had to do all of the trucking of the grain. I had to shovel the grain into the granary, believe me, I developed some muscle. That was my helping of my dad for, well more than two years because I helped him running the horses as well. I didn’t get to help my mom very much when I was doing that.

Mark Durtschi: Let’s go back to the time when your father had his own thrashing machine. Could you tell me a little bit about the operation there about the way that your mom fixed dinner and the things that you did to help out on a thrashing crew?

Rose Adamson: Well she always had the meals prepared, after doing the meals at night she would reset the table ready for breakfast in the morning and she would cook for I think it was bout ten twelve men I guess that it would have been for breakfast, dinner, and supper. She cooked good meals too.

Mark Durtschi: So your thrashing crew ate at the house then?

Rose Adamson: Yes, when dad was doing our land and farming

Mark Durtschi: Did the thrashing crew stay out at the farm out at the night?

Rose Adamson: No they went home to town because they lived in Stirling here. There was Linden and Harold Nelson, Ralph Erickson, anyway they most all were Stirling men that would help dad out on his threshing machine.

Mark Durtschi: What are some of the things that you did during the thrashing season?

Rose Adamson: Well I went out and helped my dad by driving he bundle rack and team when the men that were out in the filed got threw with filling the hay rack. I would drive the team back in to where the thrashing machine was and then dad would go out and throw the bundles in the thrashing machine. So when he got that threw I would drive the bundle rack back out to the field where the men were filling that rack up again. There was my cousin Fredrick Romeril and I was doing the two teams and his back rack was being filled out in the field when dad was emptying the bundles into the machine there. That was about all that I did was drive, in and out.

Mark Durtschi: Let me take you back the first tape about the radio that your dad built. As he had one of the very first radios in town, it was no doubt that such a machine would pull signals out from thin air from thousands of miles away. What do you remember about that?

Rose Adamson: Well that was really unbelievable that you could hear people talk and music being played from as far away as KOA Denver and close in Calgary, CFCN. Another station was KGO San Francisco. We had people come from town to listen just to prove it to themselves that they could listen to these stations that were being brought in on this home made radio. Then my dad started making another radio with his brother, my uncle George because he wanted a radio for himself to enjoy.

Mark Durtschi: Could you tell me a little bit about the early dances in Stirling?

Rose Adamson: The old dances back when I was about fourteen when I was able to go to the dance it was held in the church dance. It was a dance hall and church was held in it and I guess that there were other things that were held in it. It was the only public LDS building at the time.

Mark Durtschi: What kind of music did you have?

Rose Adamson: We had music from orchestras coming in, as you call them bands now. We had a kind of local band that played in Stirling, Henry Perrett, his first wife Vida played the piano and Henry played the trumpet and the violin and Delfred Oler played the saxophone and they played real good music. When Henry’s first wife died the got Vida his wife’s sister and Gladys to play, she was pretty good at playing too. That was the only band that we had from here in Stirling. But they did once and a while bring in a band from Lethbridge, we called them orchestras back in those days, now they just call them bands.

Mark Durtschi: What kind of music did they play?

Rose Adamson: It was all modern music it was, modern dance music, back in the 1930s.

Mark Durtschi: I have often heard a story that you tell about coming to the dances when it was the winter time and it was frozen and what you had to do to keep you pick up running. Can you tell us?

Rose Adamson: Well in order to be able to be able to get into the dance I had to be able to drive dad’s old truck. I would drive it in and if it was cold weather I would have to bring the watering can in and drain the water out of the truck because it didn’t have antifreeze in those days. I would drain the water out of the truck and into the can. Then take the watering can into the dance hall up on the stage there was a big potbellied stove that had a flat top on it and I would stand that can up on top of the stove while the dance was on. Then when the dance was over I would have to take that water which was quite hot by then out and first turn the tap off so the water wouldn’t run on out onto the ground then poor the water into the radiator of the truck Then the truck started up good because it had the hot water in it. Lots of times there was snow drifts to have to drive threw. I had quite a time at times to have to do that. Glenn came to my rescue once when I was stuck out on the hill out south of town here; we called it the Pearson hill at that time. I just couldn’t get through until Glenn walked out from his dads house out there and helped me get through the snow drifts and then I knew that there were more snow drifts to get through out at the Perrett farm So this time Glenn came on out and helped me get through those drifts out there. This was the first time that Glenn cam all the way out to the farm rather than have to walk all the way back to Stirling. He stayed out at the farm and cam home the next day. I must say that that was probably the beginning of our friendship.

Mark Durtschi: Getting back to the dances, how many people attended those dances on average?

Rose Adamson: I would say that the majority of the town and there was lots of times that they had to bring their children with them because they couldn’t leave them at home.

Mark Durtschi: When you say the majority of the town you mean that it was not just a youth dance.

Rose Adamson: The parents came, the young ones came and the kids came.

Mark Durtschi: Older people were there also, in their fifties and sixties. This was a community dance for everyone. What was the dress like? How did people dress for the dances back then?

Rose Adamson: Well for the special dances like Christmas season the girls would have long skirts, down to their ankles, fancy dresses to wear. But other than that, just the weekly dances, I can’t remember if we had it every week. But just our good clothes that we would wear to church.

Mark Durtschi: It was the same with the men then?

Rose Adamson: Yes, just their suits. There were lots of times that these baby chairs would be laid around on the walls of the dance hall. The babies would be lying there asleep. People may think that to be funny now but that was just common. They couldn’t leave their babies home. Everybody went to the dance.

Mark Durtschi: How often were the dances held?

Rose Adamson: We had dances quite often, almost every Friday night. Two or three times a month I guess.

Mark Durtschi: And how long would the dances last?

Rose Adamson: I think that it was mostly about nine to twelve.

Mark Durtschi: They started that late

Rose Adamson: Yes

Mark Durtschi: In the winter time it didn’t start earlier

Rose Adamson: Well people started arriving by maybe eight o’clock.

Mark Durtschi: Didn’t really get swinging until nine?

Rose Adamson: Yes

Mark Durtschi: It usually let out at about twelve o’clock at night.

Rose Adamson: Mostly twelve

Mark Durtschi: If it was a stake dance it went until maybe one o’clock. Well the parents brought their babies, did they maybe bring their smaller children.

Rose Adamson: I guess they must have done because smaller children couldn’t have been left home alone. The families all came out for the entertainment of the dance.

Mark Durtschi: Mom, you were unable to have children because of a couple of pregnancies that went bad. Can you talk a little about the adoptions that you made?

Rose Adamson: Well because my problems that I had, making it so that I was unable to have any family we decided to have a baby. So with Glenn’s cousin who was working up in Edmonton We got in touch with him and he made it possible to make arrangements to adopt a baby. It was rather difficult when we got there; we had five babies to choose from. I know that there were three girls. The first baby that she showed us was about six months old and for some reason I had an awful funny feeling within myself about that baby. I just couldn’t take to her. I felt bad about feeling that way, so then Mr. Hill took us to the Beulah home where girls went who were expecting babies and were unmarried. They brought another two little girls out and showed us that home. I held one and Glenn held the other. They were both cute babies, I felt that it was a little difficult to decide because they were both cute babies and I didn’t have any bad feelings with them like I did with the first one. But we decided that we would prefer to adopt. The baby that we later named Brenda; she became a beautiful looking baby girl, so cute when she got older too. She has grown up to be a lovely woman with a family.

Mark Durtschi: Was there any other peculiarities about Carol’s adoption.

Rose Adamson: No we didn’t have any choice in that we got a phone call from Calgary telling us that they had a baby there for us to go and get. We had our truck, was it the radiator was off the truck and you were fixing the truck. When I got the phone call I told Glenn that we have got to get to Calgary in the morning. I thin that it was ten o’clock that we had to be there. So he fixed that truck up in a hurry to get it ready to go. So we left and when we arrived at the office in Calgary. Brenda was so cute the way that she was coming around and she was a little cut up and we had to hang on to here because she was almost stealing the show right there in the office. But they told us that they had another little baby girl there because I had told them previously that I didn’t want my little girl to grow up without a sister because I had grown up along and never had a sister and it was a kind of lonesome thing to be without a sister. So then we were told to go to a certain address I think that it was two o’clock and that they would be there and they would have the baby dressed and ready for us to take. Not knowing that we had any other babies to choose from I felt a little bit anxious. When they brought the baby around into the front room I turned around and looked and held her and she was just a beautiful baby. She really was a good looking little baby and then we had to make a bed for her between Glenn and I on the seat. When we got to around Nanton we had to stop and get some formula warmed up to feed the baby. I think that we were able to continue on home then without making anymore stops for feeding.

Mark Durtschi: Do you remember what some of the rules and regulations were for adopting babies back then? What are some of the things that you had to do?

Rose Adamson: Well the man that came down to interview us, after we had got Brenda he looked at out house and he said No, I don’t think that you have got space here because we didn’t have a bedroom for the babies. I told him; well my husband is closing the front porch in and was going to make the soft end of the front room the bed part for a crib and a bed. Brenda needed a bed and the baby a crib. So that was what I had to explain to him and he thought that maybe it would work out alright. So that was how come because I didn’t want a little girl to grow up like I had done, along, and not have a sister.

Mark Durtschi: One last question about adoption and that is for both of those adoptions that you made; how land did you have to wait from the time that you applied to the time that you got the babies?

Rose Adamson: I think it was bout three months. Just about three months.

Mark Durtschi: Three months in each case.

Rose Adamson: Bill, Glenn’s cousin told us that his boss Mr. Hill had told him if he could place any babies that he would prefer for them to be placed into LDS homes because of the training and the upbringing that they would receive. Mr. Hill wasn’t a member of the church but he knew that there was less troubles in the LDS homes with placing their babies.

Mark Durtschi: Could you tell me a little bit about your church jobs that you had while you have lived here in Stirling?

Rose Adamson: Well I have lived here all my life in Stirling and I have been kept busy and I started teaching in primary when I was sixteen maybe and it was shortly after I started teaching in primary that they started asking me to teach in Sunday school. So I was doing that for years and years and years. I can’t remember how many years. I also learned to sing in the choir when I was about sixteen. I taught different classes in primary and different classes in Sunday school. I was also called to be a stake primary school teacher when my cousin Louie Hogenson was the stake president. I was the teacher of the blazer class in the stake primary. I made a trip or two to Salt Lake to receive instructions on general primary teachers. A few years ago Glenn and I received a letter from a former Stirling boy who is in Calgary. He has held all kinds of positions in the Church up there.

Mark Durtschi: Who is this?

Rose Adamson: Chestly Pearson, he is an undertaker up there and he wrote the letter when Glenn’s brother and he proceeded to tell me about his he appreciated me as his primary teacher.
 
Tape 2 Side 2
 
Rose Adamson: He said that he told his Children that he would have teachers in Primary and Sunday school as good as he went to school in Stirling He said that he greatly appreciated all of the teachings that I had taught him. I felt like that was really a complement, to see a letter like that. It may have been three letters that we received from him and in his comments he has always mentioned about how he appreciated my being his Sunday and Primary School teacher.

Mark Durtschi: In regressing as to when you had so much trouble with your pregnancy, you had a terrible haemorrhage and you were bleeding to death and I remember that if you had gotten to the hospital much later you wouldn’t have made it. Can you tell me a little about the transfusion that you got?

Glenn Adamson: Doctor told me that if it had been a half hour later it would have been too late

Rose Adamson: Ya, I was really sick and haemorrhaging and back in those days it was war time and we were rationed on gas and we couldn’t get enough gas on Sunday to be able to go to the doctor In Lethbridge. So when we went to the doctor in Raymond he checked me out and told me to go home and he would give my mother some instructions on what to do to help me feel more comfortable but by the time that Saturday had come I really got sick, lots worse. Glenn was working at the sugar Factory and he didn’t get home until about nine o’clock at night from work. So my dad went over to go and get the car from the doctor in Raymond but the doctor wasn’t home, he was at the hospital in Lethbridge. So dad said that he say on the door step of the doctors home and waited for him to come back. It was about midnight I guess when the doctor got back home so then the doctor came directly over to where we were living. And when he came in I told he don’t touch me. I was in pain so much that I couldn’t move. He says I won’t touch you. He got his needles and sterilized and he gave me a shot, I don’t know what it was that he gave me but it killed the pain. And then they just wrapped me up in blankets in bed and he took me right on to the hospital in Lethbridge. Glenn and my mom came along too. I think it was around maybe three o’clock when they had me all ready to decide if it was right for an operation. They operated on me and Glenn was told that if we had been twenty minutes or a half hour later it would have been too late. The next day, Sunday I think it was, I don’t remember of it but they said that they had him lie on one bed next to my bed because our blood matched. They just took the blood right straight from Glenn and put it into me because I had been haemorrhaging so badly.

Mark Durtschi: Well dad, to get a first person story on that, how do you remember that

Glenn Adamson: Well I got home and they said that they had taken Rose to Lethbridge and I was to get there as quick as I could.

Rose Adamson: You come in the car with us. Because it was about midnight before Doctor Dell got over to our farm house. Then you came right on up with us.

Mark Durtschi: Actually I just wanted to know about the transfusion, how did that go?

Glenn Adamson: Well all that I know about it is that they took the blood out of my arm, of course they cleaned it first and then they put it directly from me into her on the other bed. That is about all I can remember about it. Took it out of me and put it into her. I don’t know if she was actually conscious.

Rose Adamson: I must not have been, I don’t remember of it.

Mark Durtschi: So you don’t even know how much blood they took and they probably don’t either.

Glenn Adamson: No, I don’t know how much it was but shortly after that I was talking to the doctor and he told me that if they had been a half hour later it would have been to late.

Mark Durtschi: Could you give me a bit of a comparison about the way that life was before the comparison and how things changed during the depression.

Rose Adamson: Well the way we eat now days we have a lot of goodies that we didn’t have back in those days. I can remember them saying that if I wanted any jam on the bread I didn’t need to have butter on my bread because they had to ship the food out. I don’t remember having any oranges, hardly at all to eat.

Mark Durtschi: Was this also before the depression, before things got bad?

Rose Adamson: It could have been. The depression time was when the ducks used to fly when the wind blew but the crops didn’t grow good.

Mark Durtschi: It was too dry.

Rose Adamson: It was too dry and I think that my dad said that he only got nineteen bushels to the acre that time would that be bad, Glenn?

Glenn Adamson: Well that is not a big crop

Rose Adamson: I can’t quote it now but I know that he didn’t get very much for his crops.

Mark Durtschi: I am almost sensing from you that things weren’t that much different for you out at the farm after the depression, and before. You pretty well at about the same, you may not have had as much money.

Rose Adamson: Well we had our garden, but for to go and buy stuff from the store we didn’t do any of the buying of stuff like ice cream. We had to make out own ice cream if we wanted it. As for kinds of fresh fruits we didn’t have them back in those days.

Mark Durtschi: Can you tell me a little about some of the celebrations that happened in town during those days?

Glenn Adamson: You were in a horse race with your horse.

Rose Adamson: I had forgotten that, I used to ride my horse to school and back all of the time. There was one time when we had these celebrations in town; I don’t know which one it was, if it was the 1^st of July which we called Dominion Day, or on the 24^th of July, Pioneer Day. I rode my horse in one of the horse races. I didn’t come near winning but I felt like it was kind of fun to get in with all of that. The celebrations were special days that we looked forward to. For pioneer day, this was the 24th of July I always got to help work in the concession stand, hot dogs, hamburgers, watermelon, and all kinds of candies and stuff. I usually had to do some of the cooking of the meat, the hamburgers and hot dogs.

Mark Durtschi: What are some of the different activities that went on during those celebrations?

Rose Adamson: Well as I had mentioned once they had horse races, games, and foot races for different ages of children, they were sixteen anyway. I ran in the foot races a time or two. I won too. What else was it that we did? The whole town was occupied in doing something in these celebrations.

Mark Durtschi: Was there parades?

Rose Adamson: Oh yes, we had parades too, in the morning.

Mark Durtschi: Can you tell me a little something about the flavour of the parades?

Rose Adamson: This one particular parade we had all of the different things pertaining to the pioneers and to the church. I remember one flat rack had a mound of dirt and Lyman Hardy was standing on this mound of dirt and that was depicting Joseph Smith and the hill Camorra. My dad made up, it was painted like a house on the wagon. There was a porch to sit on and he pulled that with his truck. My cousin and Gordon and I sat on the porch.

Mark Durtschi: Which cousin was it?

Rose Adamson: Millie Romeril, from Raymond. I would almost have to look at the pictures in my album to remember all of the different floats. Back in those earlier days the town put up for entertainment they had a drama which was put on by Elodia Christenson being the director. She was really extra good at it. That time that was out entertainment for going to see our open dramatic shows. It helped in helping to pay for the ward. I have another thought now but I can’t remember. There was a dramatic show that was on, smiling through. Anyway Teddy Nelson, she was one of the actresses in it and another one was Alice Brandley. They had to cry in the show. They had done it so good that they got to crying and they couldn’t stop crying. They had us, even in the audience, couldn’t keep from crying too. I can remember when I was driving home I was thinking about that play. I couldn’t keep the tears from coming out. It was so real, they had done it so extra good so that was some of the special times that we had then and we don’t have then now. I think the younger ones are missing out.

Mark Durtschi:  Were those plays also very well attended by the people of the town?

Rose Adamson: I would say they were.

Mark Durtschi: Another question that I have, I suppose that there were some non-members of the church living here in town when you were younger.

Rose Adamson: Well I just don’t remember any problems with non-members.

Mark Durtschi: You got along okay with every one?

Rose Adamson: I think so

Mark Durtschi: What about other ethnic groups that were living in town? Was every one accepted quite well in town?

Glenn Adamson: What groups?

Mike Durtschi: Other ethnic groups like the Indian people.

Rose Adamson: I think that they were accepted by LDS.

Glenn Adamson: The Japanese were in; some of the Japanese kind of immigrated during the war.

Rose Adamson: They were sent from the Vancouver area over here.

Glenn Adamson: During the war they sent a lot of the Japanese that were along the coast inland. They worked in beets and had done a lot of different things.

Rose Adamson: I think that with Eldon, he had some working with him and they became pretty good friends.

Mark Durtschi: Changing the subject again, could you tell me a little bit more about you and your mom when you were a child, to preserve food up for the winter.

Rose Adamson:Well to preserve food I can remember we bottled our vegetables and we also dried corn. We dried corn with putting it in a big flat pan in the oven and it seems like one time we soaked the corn first in some cream and sugar I believe and then let it soak and then we put it in the oven to dry and it made some tasty corn. In fact we have got some right now hanging on the old room in the kitchen there.

Mark Durtschi: The corn that you dried when you were with your mother?

Rose Adamson: Yes

Mark Durtschi: So you grew quite a bit of corn out on your farm then?

Rose Adamson: Oh yes, we had a big garden; we had sand cherry bushes growing. Saskatoon’s growing so that way we had some kind of fruit that we made into jam and what not. We bottled our meat, we butchered animals, and in emergency sake sometimes we had to cook a lot of the meat up fast because it was warm weather and that way we had to fry it. Anyway we had chops and then we had to put it in hot fat at the bottom of a three or five gallon crock, I think that it was a five gallon crock. We kept cooking the meat and then we would put it down in some of this hot grease and put some more grease on top to make sure that it was covered. We kept doing that until the crock was full, we had to seal it over with the hot fat. When we wanted any meat out of it we had to take the meat out and pour some of the hot fat over to seal up where we had taken the meat out.

Mark Durtschi: Where did you keep that crock after you had finished with it?

Rose Adamson: We kept it down in our basement, cellars we called them then. Dad had built what we called a dumb waiter that we could pull it up by a rope; it was lowered down into a cellar with all of the food in it and the screen door on it. Then we would pull it up to get the food out for our meals. Then when we had leftovers, milk too, we put it back down into the cellar.

Mark Durtschi: So if I understand this right, you more or less for those times had a movable refrigerator and you put the food in it and put it way down into the ground where it would stay cool.

Rose Adamson: Yes

Mark Durtschi: Two feet high by about five feet wide right.

Rose Adamson: At least

Glenn Adamson: Maybe a little more than that, about five feet and you would let it go right down into the basement and then the top of it would sit right on the floor.

Mark Durtschi: Well mom, about the meat that you had in the crock pot, how long would it stay good like that.

Rose Adamson: I don’t remember it ever spoiling. I think that the meat would have lasted probably six months and we would have it heated up by that time.

Mark Durtschi: Could you tell me some of the different things that you grew in your garden; you have mentioned corn and I know that you have had potatoes out there.

Rose Adamson: Oh ya, we always had lots of potatoes, carrots beats and peas but I don’t remember doing a lot of bottling peas because peas was rather difficult to make them stay good without fermenting or spoiling in some way. What other vegetables were there. We may have had pumpkins or squash down there too.

Mark Durtschi: Could you tell me a little about what it was like when you first got married.

Glenn Adamson: We lived on the farm for a little while; I was still working at the sugar factory and helping to farm too.

Rose Adamson: Ya, well when we first got married Glenn was still working at the sugar factory. That was in the fall, he had to make arrangements for me to come out after we were married to be with him out on the road at Barnwell, Cranford, and Taber. It was quite something or I would have to stay at home with mom and dad and it wouldn’t have been like we were married then. So Allan Oler came and picked me up one day when he was still in town and I had to gather up all of the preparations of food and bedding and everything that I could think of us needing out there. Glenn had fixed up the scale house out where he was working for us to live in. Now a scale house is not a very big place. We didn’t have a flat table and the stove that we had was a two burner little heater, I had to cook our meals on that heater because I didn’t have an oven, so we always had plenty of chicken to eat that I cooked up. I made the chicken by frying it first and then pouring water on it and then putting vegetables on it and thickening it like gravy. That was out one pot dinner. If I made any desert it was boiled rice pudding and that is about the main thing that I can think of. But to top up the bed was another thing because it was about the size of a single bed. It wasn’t like I wanted a bed to sleep on and when one wanted to turn over the other had to turn over because we had to sleep spoon fashion because the bed was narrow for two people. Another thing at Cranford, Glenn loves dogs and out there they had a Saint Burnerd dog.

Glenn Adamson: It was at a store and gas station.  

Rose Adamson: Right near us, that dog was always following him back and forth when he was walking. One time he brought that dog into this steel house which was our own, and that dog was big enough to be a cow I felt. The slobber was hanging out a foot from his mouth down. I told Glenn to get that animal out of here before he gets slobber all over everything. I just couldn’t take to it at all. The other men were afraid of the dog; they always hid behind Glenn when they would be walking up to the store.

Glenn Adamson: It was a trailer that they lived in and it was parked right next to the scale house that we were in. They wanted nothing to do with that dog. The other two operators lived in the trailer and we were walking up to this store where the gas place was. 

Rose Adamson: At Crawford

Glenn Adamson: It was less then half a block away I guess, about half a block. My big dog saw us coming, he was up at the store and he came bounding toward us. Both of those guys ran around behind me when he comes. As he got up to me he would hit me with both front feet on my chest, nearly blow me over. Them other guys, they were getting out of the way, they wanted nothing to do with him.

Rose Adamson: Now you mentioned about a desert that I had made, this was in the trailer house that the men were living in, we got to live in it when it was moved back to the
 
Transcribed By Clinton Dovell