We drove to McLeod to eat at the Silver Prairie Saloon. They had baby-back ribs for a special and I chose a larger portion than I needed. I talked Mary into getting into a saddle-stool and snapped a picture. When we left Fargo to do down to McLeod, she stated, "You're not getting me into one of those saddles." Here's the result.
I hardly ever share a post someone else has put on Facebook, but I couldn't help it with this picture. I've seen pictures where the old steam engines had the power to power huge plows. It looks as if it could pull this many grain wagons, too.
In the March 29, 1923 issue of The Sheldon Progress a front page article reported that the “Public School Building and All Contents Totally Destroyed When Blaze Started at Six P.M. Friday.”
The explosion of an alcohol lamp in a fumigator placed in the domestic science room started a blaze at six o’clock last Friday evening that totally destroyed the Sheldon Public School building together with all its contents, entailing a loss of over $50,000.
The school building was being fumigated over the weekend holiday. C. H. Bickford, the janitor, was on the second floor lighting the last of the fumigators, when there was a sudden and terrific explosion in the basement.
Fighting his way through the fumes and dense smoke, he reached the domestic room in the basement to find it enveloped in flames and the fire shooting from the door into the furnace room. He rushed to the first floor and turned in a fire alarm by ringing the school bell, and then tried again to enter the basement thru the outside celler way on the southside of the building. Breaking open this door, he was met by a cloud of dense smoke, but managed to stay in the furnace room to unwind a short piece of hose and direct a stream of water on the fire for a few seconds when he was driven out by clouds of dense smoke that surged out of the passageway.
The wooden partitions in the basement caught fire almost immediately and the flames were sucked up thru the ventilating system firing the building from bottom to top. The fire broke thru the first floor within a few minutes after the explosion.
The firemen soon had a line of hose laid and when they attempted to connect with the hydrant near the Louis Howell corner found this to be frozen, and they had to run a line over three blocks from the butchershop corner. When they got a stream of water this entire basement was in a blaze and their best efforts were futile to check it….
The building was a nine-room structure entirely of brick. The main part of the building was erected more than twenty years ago and an addition built on twelve years ago….
There was no loss of school time…The school building will be rebuilt during the coming summer. The board have been in session almost continuously since the fire, meeting with architects … Estimates so far call for an expenditure for another building in excess of $40,000…The insurance money will not replace the building and before anything definite can be done, a special election must be held to vote bonds….
I thought of the lines in a song: Those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end.
This morning when I opened FaceBook several pictures showed up as a memory from five years ago. Several Sheldon schoolmates gathered in McLeod that day for eats, drinks, and visiting. Sadly, I look at these pictures and realize three of them are no longer with us. I wish more pictures would have been available, but, unfortunately, only these five were revealed.
The library at Alexandria, Egypt burned in 48 BC. Caesar’s army set Egyptian ships afire which spread into the city and destroyed the large collection of knowledge stored there, as many as 40,000 scrolls. Legend has it that all the accumulated knowledge of the world went up in flames, but that is probably not true since other libraries did exist. Nevertheless, much was lost, maybe some that hadn’t been collected in other places.
When a person dies, it is as if a large library has burned to the ground. They always take knowledge of their personal lives with them that no one else can recall or knows about. Many people leave little record of their existence, often times only a stone in the cemetery that marks their grave. Pictures are forgotten, many times not identified, so that future generations don’t know who they are.
Preserving family history holds a respected place in our household, and my wife works diligently to see that it is done. A trip to the NDSU archives library was recently required in her search for a couple of community history books where she could pursue some connection to a relative. It yielded a good harvest of material from Ransom County’s neighboring county on the east side, Richland County, where some of my early settler relatives lived.
In a compiled Richland County history book the township of Barrie was featured with informative history. My great-great-grandfather Rev. Ole K. Vangsness is buried in the West Prairie Church cemetery located on the north side of Highway 46 at the junction of Highway 18. In that book a bit of information about him was revealed: In 1876, “Ole K. Vangsness settled on a claim on the edge of the hills. He was a Lutheran minister, an honest God-fearing man and during those early years preached many a sermon, traveling often on foot, and seemed tireless in his efforts for the pioneers. He made caskets for the dead, then conducted services. He was also the first assessor in Barrie Township.”
Though the description of the reverend is limited, it is more than I knew. Other people and incidents in Barrie Township caught my eye. For instance, the treasurer of the school kept his records on the back of a granary door. When the minutes were called for, the meeting had to adjourn long enough for him to get the door so he could read the report.
There was a government bridge across the river near the site of the present one on Highway 18. It was guarded by a man who sold liquor, something which the citizens of the community thought was immoral. The history says the bridge was burned which leaves one with the questions, why did it burn, and who burned it? We don’t know, but people had to ford across the river for some time before another bridge was constructed.
One man volunteered to take a teacher to Walcott so that she could board the train. They were caught and stranded in the open in a fast moving blizzard. He made the lady help him cut and stack snowblocks as a shelter for them and the horses. As the story went, “Again and again she begged to lie down and rest, but he told her she would be whipped if she did.” As cruel as it sounded, his insistence to keep her moving and working saved her life in the frigid weather.
In 1883 as the Sheyenne River flooded, a lady in her house kept hearing cries for help. She ran to the river and found a man hanging onto a branch over the water. In order to help, she had to pull an empty wagon to the river’s edge and push it into the water to where he could safely jump. Another incident told how three Indians were struck and killed by lightning. Their companions believed the Great Spirit was angry and had punished them with a bolt from the blue. They quickly buried their dead and fled.
Little snippets of history are fun and interesting to read, but for someone trying to fill in holes of unknown history they help form a more complete picture. Because someone thought to include these old stories, we know just a bit more about my great-great-grandpa. Putting this in perspective for my grandchildren, he was their four-greats grandpa. Now try to imagine his forebears that many generations previous to his life. They have disappeared into the dark past.
“Evening Land,” a first-rate Swedish book of poetry contains a refrain that causes me to travel to other times in my memory with these lines, “With old eyes I look back. All is so long ago.” He talks about his life being spent far away, “In another world or as if in another world.” His imagination had taken him elsewhere in his earlier life, but now “all is soon over.”
I have a large collection of images that I've boxed and stored on an upper shelf in my memory. Every once in awhile I bring them down to look at again. Some are small and light, others weigh heavy. They have accumulated over the years. I'm lucky because the box is large and continues to fill. Let me reach in and grab hold of a few.
I'm standing in a hayfield reaching under a windrow to hook my finger in the handle of a crock jug. Hot and thirsty, I hoist the jug high in the crook of my arm and drink long, cool swallows from it.
I'm a small boy and my grandpa has taken me fishing at Lake Teawaukon. He baits my hook and throws in the line telling me, "Don't take your eyes off that bobber!" I obey, for several long hours. Small perch pull it under making it bob and bob. He takes me home at twilight just as a full moon rises. I look at it and see that float bobbing, bobbing, bobbing in the moon, in my supper plate, in my dreams.
Goose bumps chill me when I lie in bed with a raging winter storm howling in the eaves. I'd wonder why, it seems, a woman screams inside a blizzard wind.
I'm in the barnyard. A bull eyes me from the pasture. His hooves kick up a dust cloud filled with a hate for the man-child he spots. He charges. My fingers dig and claw into the wall of the barn, and I gain the rooftop just as he arrives.
We’re in the hayfield again. I always want to be where the men work. I'm given the job of cleaning spilled hay from underneath the stationary stacker. As it raises to dump its load atop the growing stack, the wooden main beam breaks and hundreds of pounds crash to the ground just as I've stepped away.
Spring arrives and I shed the long underwear and the heavy boots to finally glory in the light feeling. And in the spring wind I watch clothes on the line sail with the wind.
Saturday night as we drive along the gravel road to Enderlin where by the Center Farm we must stop for a long train pulled hard by a steam engine blowing smoke up the grade out of town. Given a boost in the rear by another steam engine, the chuffing sounds and clouds of coal smoke roll from them.
A long burlap bag hangs from a tall temporary scaffold ready for someone to throw in a twine-tied fleece and crawl in to pack it down as bundles of wool accumulate. The wool glistens rich with lanolin that soaks the pant legs and softens the leather of my shoes.
What are my earliest memories from so long ago. There was a rooster that kept attacking me. With a long stick and one swing I removed that threat forevermore. Finding eggs to gather and bring to my mother ended poorly when one carried in my pocket broke. Leaving the farmyard and wandering down the gravel road, I entered a slough with tall reeds where luckily my dog accompanied me and his wagging tail flagged down an uncle driving by.
Unfortunately some memories become stone and I must return them to the box. Maybe they will be dug from the box again in the future, but they are personal history that I can’t give away. and don’t want anyone else to experience either.
The singer songwriter John Prine recently succumbed to Covid, but left us with one song called “I Remember Everything.” He writes “I remember every tree, Every single blade of grass Holds a special place for me.” Although we can’t take the words literally, they do hold meaning. With a little effort, we can remember much.
People in general have quite a capacity for gullibility. When history from the 19th century is read, many cases of people being conned come to light.
Prompted by my recent purchase of the Eureka community book I went to the internet to look up a bit more about the city and area. This newspaper advertisement in the early 1900s attracted my attention, “10,000 Live Gophers Wanted.” A local livery man received a letter from someone in Chicago that named him to act as representative for the AUSTRALIAN RABBIT EXTERMINATION COMPANY. The pretense being the company in Chicago planned to inject the gophers with a disease fatal to rabbits and ship them to Australia where they were being overrun with bunnies.
Female gophers would bring 25 cents and males .15. Locals proceeded to capture them by the hundreds and brought them to the stable for future payment. Some farmers were said to be neglecting their duties for this sure thing. The stable became full of boxes full of gophers with no room left for the horses and the overflow became stacked around town. The advertised day of payment arrived and the promised money transfer from Chicago never arrived.
The smell of defecating gophers, dying gophers, and overcrowded gophers proved to be too much. An embarrassed livery man became very angry when he realized he’d been duped and began destroying the crates thereby releasing hordes of the critters to run in the streets of the town. People had to be careful not to step on one, plus hungry gophers began finding their way into gardens. Needless to say, the liveryman was not popular.
Years later the truth came out. It was a practical joke pulled on the liveryman by a local man said to have a great sense of humor. The ‘joke’ had spread throughout a hopeful community, all wanting a little extra cash. This story illustrates two points: immigrants were short of money, and they were just another gullible group in a long list that extends to the present day.
“Do unto the other feller the way he'd like to do unto you, an' do it fust.” This line from the 1890s novel “David Harum” became associated with the art of horse trading, a profession with many stories about someone getting hornswoggled, someone getting the better of another through cheating or deception. One old horse trader by the name of Ben K. Green has even written books on the subject. Let’s illustrate with a few examples he tells about.
While Ben admitted there were many honest and reputable horse dealers, it was the wandering gypsies and their deals that he learned to avoid. This independent young man of sixteen owned a paint horse with many bad habits that he couldn’t correct, so he took him to a horse market. There, a man approached him with an offer to trade. The stranger had a nice little mare which he jumped on bareback and rode around the arena. Good enough for Ben, they traded with Ben giving him an extra $20 to boot. He threw his saddle on the horse and pulled the cinch tight, whereupon the horse reared, fell over, and refused to get up. He went to kick her in the belly, but the stranger stopped him, fed a sugar cube to the horse, loosened the cinch, and the horse stood right up.
Disgusted, Ben led his new horse away and soon learned what had just happened. A bystander told him, “That there is a gypsy horse. It’s been trained to lie down for a sugar reward and do just what she did. When you complain and want your old horse back, they’ll agree but will keep the $20.”
The horse called Sleeping Beauty by those in the know had bought groceries for those gypsies for several years. With this quick education, Ben set out to get the better of the deal. He tied the legs of the horse, threw her down, and waited. Soon the gypsy came back offering the predicted return trade, but Ben said it was his horse and he intended to properly train her. So much did the the gypsy want the horse back he finally offered to return the $20 if he’d give her back. Nothing doing.
Soon an old woman arrived on the scene, begging and pleading for the return of the horse. Nope. To make it short, the gypsies ended up giving him a good horse that they had cheated out of someone else which he later resold for a nice profit. He’d made his first successful deal.
Another story concerned his purchase of a beautiful matched pair of dapple-gray mules said to be eight years old. He offered the winning bid and drove them home where they worked beautifully. But then they got caught in the rain. Soon the dapple-grays turned pure white, and when he looked in their mouths he saw they were more like fourteen years old. The fact he’d been fooled bothered him; he wanted to even the score. He found an old-timer who could fake dappling with Easter egg dye after he learned the seller’s son-in-law was acting as his agent and buying horses for him. Ben found the unwitting son-in-law at the market and sold the freshly dappled mules back to him for a profit. There’s a moral here: beware of horse trades.
