Introduction.  In November 1999, Lois (Ofstedahl) Grupp came to Thanksgiving at my Mom’s home in Pleasanton, California.  I was able to do a taped oral family history interview with her that day, sitting around my Mom’s kitchen table.  The conversation was originally recorded on a handheld tape cassette recorder.  I later took the tape to an audio store, and had it transferred to a digital format.  The audio recording registers at a little over thirty-nine minutes in length – and was divided into two digital sections.  I am sorry that it has taken over twenty years to transcribe this, but being locked up during the coronavirus pandemic has given me the time to finally get around to it.

Lois was the oldest of three children of my grandparents – Carl Arnfred Ofstedahl and Josephine Phoebe Nash.  She was born May 23, 1923 in Platte, South Dakota.  Her father was from Grafton, North Dakota, and after his World War I service, went to work for a lumber company, maybe in Winnipeg, Canada.  And he moved South to work at the Thompson Lumber Yard in Platte, South Dakota – as described by Lois on the tape – met my Grandmother.  Her grandfather, father, and uncles had homesteaded in Carroll Township, Charles Mix County in the “Dakota Boom” during the 1880’s, Josephine was born in Wheeler, South Dakota in 1898, and grew up in Charles Mix County, attending the local “normal school”, Ward Academy.  Carl and Jo were married in Lake Andes in 1922, and Lois, the first child, was born the next year.

Lois came to California following her graduation from high school in 1941 – landing in Glendale, where her grandmother Ofstedahl and various aunts and uncles lived, including Borghild “Peg” Landes, her father’s sister.  Lois married Leo Grupp there, they had five children, and Lois lived in Glendale and La Cresenta.  She moved to Atascadero, California sometime after Leo’s death in 1982, where she lived until her death in May 2005.

At the time of the interview in 1999, it was a time of transition for this generation of the family.  Norval Ofstedahl, the brother of Lois and Dotty, died within days of this interview.  His widow Carlene passed away the following spring, and Dotty’s husband Ralph Laird died the following fall.  After Lois’ death in 2005 – the only family member remaining from Carl and Josephine’s immediate family was Dotty, age ninety-five at the time of this transcription in 2020.

I have done my best to be true to the actual words of the interview.  There are times I added a word that was inferred, or dropped a “like”, “well” or a false start.  With those very minor edits, this is a fairly complete transcript.  A couple of times I couldn’t make out a brief phrase – and I added a few notes to explain the actual facts about what we might have talked about.  If you were listening to the actual recording you can hear the conversation of others in the background, as it was Thanksgiving.  My mother sat in for the interview, and originally had said I needed to ask Lois things – because my Mom didn’t remember as much as Lois.  But as you will see, she remembered a few things after all.  In a 2007 interview, I taped a separate conversation with my Mom, which has been transcribed as well.  I did a 2007 interview with Lois and Dotty’s cousin, Bernice Ofstedahl Connolly – and I have transcribed that interview.  Both are also posted on this website.

As I listen to them all, I regret not asking more about some subjects.  I didn’t ask Lois about her own family, and life in Glendale.  I could have asked more about her own parents.  At the end of the interview with Mom – the longest of the three – I suggest that we can still cover things in a future interview.  I wish that I had.  But the three of them together present an amazing amount of information about a generation and a time that has almost completely passed.

 -       John Laird, Santa Cruz, CA – JohnLaird9@aol.com  – Transcribed April, 2020

The transcript of the interview/audio 39 minutes, 27 seconds/eleven pages of transcript:

Start of Track One (31 minutes, 59 seconds)

Lois: . . . . a kindergartner . . .

John: You’re no kindergartner, we’ve got kindergartners in the family.  (Laughter) You know the story about how your Mom met your Dad, right?

Lois: Yes, and I learned it from Grandma Nash. (Doorbell rings and interview temporarily stops). Oh boy!

John: Here they are. We’ll pick that up later. 

John: (tape is started after the break) . . . chatter . . . . When we were so rudely interrupted by holiday cheer . . .

Lois: Very well.

John: . . . I was asking you to tell the story about how your father met your mother.

Lois: Grandma Nash told me the story.  My Dad was in the army and when he came back from the Army, he went to Winnipeg, where he had worked before the war for Thompson Lumber Yard.  They sent him to Platte, South Dakota.

John: From Winnipeg?

Lois: Yeah.  And when he was in Platte, the young women in town [had a dance?  There is a blip of talking missing in the tape, but I recall that that was part of the story] for the returning soldiers, of which my father was one.  And they all had poppies and they went around and pinned the poppies on the soldiers, and my mother pinned my Dad and started the romance. (Laughter)

John: And you heard this from your grandmother? 

Lois: Yes, Grandma Nash.

John: So she was the one who was keeper of the story.

Lois: Yes she was. And then when my father would date my mother, he would go to Grandma Nash’s house and have to play checkers with Grandpa before he could go on his date.

John: Is that when you had the test?.

Lois: That was it.

John: To make sure he was safe enough to out?  Did he have to let Grandpa Nash win at checkers?

Lois: I am sure he did.  Then the cutest story is when he roomed down on the other side of town and he took a bath, and had a date with my mother.  But he laid down on the bed and fell asleep and that was the end of the date.  It caused quite an uproar in the whole family.  Where was my father?  They finally chased him down and he was asleep in bed.

John: Just laid down for a moment before the date.

Lois: Yeah.

John: I can imagine knowing how forgiving your mother was, that she didn’t forget that quickly. 

Lois: No, not at all.

John: So you mentioned he was in Winnipeg?

Lois: Winnipeg was very close to Grafton, not very far from Grafton.

John: So he worked originally for a lumber yard somewhere near Grafton?

Lois: I think in Winnipeg.

John: In Winnipeg.  And then they sent him down.  And there was a story once I heard that he played baseball in Winnipeg?  Do you know anything about that?

Lois: No, I don’t know anything about that.  But it’s very likely.  Because he did play in Platte, but then everybody played in Platte, South Dakota.  Now I have a picture, and when I find it I’ll send it to you.  It’s my Dad sitting on a pile of lumber in Platte, South Dakota.  At work.  Then he went to work for the elevator.  What did they call that?

Dot: Farmers Elevator.

Lois: Farmers Cooperative Elevator.

John:  And that was in Platte?

Lois: Yes.

John: What did he do for them?

Lois: Well he managed it.  Farmers came in with their grain.  And he graded it.  He had one of the first and only radios in town because he got the market from Minneapolis.

John: Did he have to keep the radio at work?

Lois: Yes, but on certain occasions he’d bring it home and we’d use it and then he’d take it back.

Dot: I can remember being in the elevator and talking to Dad, and he would be visiting us, the market would come on, and everything was quiet while he wrote down the latest grain prices.

John: Was this already during the Depression?

Lois: Yes. Also they have a warehouse.  In the winter they got apples from Washington.  And in the summer they had things like sheep dip.  A barrel of sheep dip.  Dotty knows this story.  My brother fell in.

John: To a barrel of sheep dip?

Lois: Yes, and he was yellow.  They got him out and had to clean his nose out, and clean his face, but he was still yellow from . . . .

John: What is sheep dip?

Lois: Creosol?

A definition of “sheep dip” from the internet: Definition of sheep-dip

1 : a liquid preparation of toxic chemicals into which sheep are plunged especially to destroy parasitic arthropods (such as lice, mites, keds, ticks)

John: And he fell in accidentally? 

Lois, uh hum, that or else . . .

John: Did he get the dickens from his mother?

Lois: No. 

John: She actually didn’t?

Lois: She didn’t . . . We weren’t sure if he was pushed.  And the kid that pushed him, his Dad was second in command at the elevator.  Dotty knows him, Melvin Iverson, his son Mervin who was a pill. 

John: Another thing I was going to ask you about is what you remember, if anything, about your grandparents or any of their siblings.  There was one time when you were at your grandmother’s apartment in Grafton, right?  Did you go up there?

Lois: Yes when I came to California in 1941.

John: Oh, and she was living out here?

Lois: Yes, she was living with Borghild and her husband.  But before that she owned a house down on Sonora Avenue.   If you ever come down to visit me, I’ll show you her little house.  It was there six months ago.  She and Ledwin, Ledwin married very late in life, and he lived with Grandma.  And when she could no longer manage by herself, she went to live with Borghild. 

John: And Sonora Avenue, what city was that in?

Lois: Glendale. 

John: So it was in Glendale, so she lived on Sonora Avenue in Glendale.

Lois: Yes.

John: She lived on in Grafton for a number of years after her husband died, right? 

Lois: Yes.

John: Did ever you go see her in Grafton when you were a kid?

Lois: Did not see her there, but went to Grafton and Borghild visited some of the people that she knew as a child that were still alive.  One of the interesting things about Grafton, Borghild showed me linoleum that was on the floor that had been there when she was a child.

John: At the same house?

Lois: The only house they lived in.

John: Yes, because they bought that house after Rev. Ofstedahl died, or it was given to them.

Lois: I didn’t know that.

John:  So you went with Borghild to Grafton?  Where were you living at the time?

Lois: In Platte, I came to live with them in Glendale.  On the trip out, we went to Grafton and then across Montana and down that way to California.

John: So that was 1941 or 1942?

Lois: Yes, 1941.  I was married in 1942 and Paul was born in 1943.

John: But by then your grandmother was already out in California?

Lois: Yes.

John: You knew your grandmother very, very well, Grandma Nash. 

Lois: Yes.

John: Do you remember things about her from when you were a kid?

Lois: Oh, she raised the three of us.

John: Really?

Lois: Yes, she really took care of us.

John: How was that?

Lois: Well, Mom worked, for one thing.  Did you know she had an embroidery shop, a hat shop?

John: And where did she have those shops?

Lois: Platte.

John: Oh, she had those shops in Platte.  Do you think it’s possible that she ever advertised in an old newspaper so we could find an advertisement for her?

Lois: That, I don’t know.

John: Mom says yes, maybe next year if we go we will look and see.  Where were those shops, downtown in Platte?

Lois: Downtown.  (Dot talks in background, something about the beauty parlor).  I know where they are but it’s all so changed.  Kuypers grocery story was on the corner.  And then Gray, Ally Gray, not Ally, Ally was the daughter.  They had like a dime store.  Next to that was Mom’s hat shop. 

John: Did she do OK with her hat business?

Lois: Evidently she did.  But why she quit, I don’t know.  Unless it’s because she got pregnant with Norval.  Which is possible.

John: Was the embroidery shop the same thing or was that a separate business?

Lois: It was the same.  Later it became a beauty parlor with that Cool lady?  Do you remember the Cool lady, Dot?

Dot: Yes.

Lois: She owned the beauty parlor.  That was after Mom.

Dot: Elizabeth Cool.

John: What do you remember of your uncles and aunts?  You mentioned Borghild, and you came to California to actually live with her? 

Lois: Yes I did, and went to Glendale College.

John: And she was already married at that time?

Lois: Oh, yes, she had two children, Betty and Dick.  Betty has passed away with brain cancer.  And Dick, I don’t know why he died.  I am still in contact with my cousins, Bernice Ofstedahl Connolly, and Doris, Doris was an Ofstedahl.

John: Did you ever know any of the uncles on the Ofstedahl side?  You mentioned Ledwin, did you know Ledwin at all?

Lois: Yes. He was called Red, he had Red hair.

John: What did he do for a living, do you recall?

Lois: He was a contractor of some sort, I can’t elaborate on that.  The thing about Ledwin, is that he didn’t marry until quite late.   Louvena, I don’t know if they ever married.  Oh yes, I think they married, for a long time they didn’t.  They had a neighbor who had two children.  This neighbor left the children with Ledwin, Leddie.  And she, the neighbor moved and took the girl with her, and left the boy.  Ledwin adopted the boy.

Voice (Dot?): That’s Gary. . . .

John: I have been in touch with him.  His son lives here in Pleasanton.  Mom talked to him on the telephone.   

Lois: I remember his son when he worked in Glendale with a man that I taught swimming to.  He told me at the time, he said, he was very wealthy, he was doing well in real estate.  But he said, if he doesn’t get his head on, and keep himself above water, he was spending money faster that he was making it.  The next thing I knew he was gone.

John: Do you remember anything about Ledwin other than that?  Any stories?  Spending any time with him at any time?  Or did you just see him?

Lois: He was in touch with Borghild.  I was kind of on the back scene.  So I didn’t really have much contact.

John: How about your uncle, Gerhart or “Gee”? Did you ever meet him?

Lois: Yes, I knew Gee.  Gee was an alcoholic, you know how he died?

John: I didn’t know that.

Lois: . . . Gerhard lived at Fallbrook, he was on his way home, and he went off the road and lay in a ravine.  By the time they found him the next day, he was dead. 

John: Was that in the 50’s or 60’s?  Actually, I remember him coming to Vallejo, so that was probably in the 60’s sometime. 

Lois: I think so. [NOTE: Gerhard died in September 1958]

John: How about your uncle Elmer?  Do you remember him?

Lois: Oh yes, there was a lot of kindness.  He had a problem with his amputation.  I am sure you knew that.  They amputated, and then gangrene would set in again.  They would amputate more.  So he was under a lot of pain.  He had a drinking problem too.  There were times when my parents in Platte and Geddes would drive up to Grafton.  He would be in the hospital.  And then he would recover and they’d come back home.  They went several times.

John: Because of his leg?

Lois: Yes.

John: And that was when you were a kid?

Lois: Yes.  We saw Elmer often.  Not often, I mean every couple of years or so.  And when he came to visit me in Glendale, David was about five, six.  And he took a look at Elmer without the leg, and ran outside and climbed a tree.  Elmer went after him.  And by the time Elmer got done talking to him, David came down out of the tree.  The absence of the leg threw David completely.  Elmer had a gentle kind way.

John: For your information, I got his file from the Canadian Army, so I have his war file.

Lois: Oh my gosh.  I understand he lay on the field for quite a time before they found him.

John: I didn’t know that.

Lois: And that that was one of the reasons it became infected.  Now with penicillin it wouldn’t have happened.

John: Then there’s probably nobody else, those were the . . .

Lois: Everett.  Did you know Everett Ofstedahl?

John: Now Everett was Gee’s son, right?

Lois: Oldest son.  He worked for Hormel.  He came to Geddes.  He brought Blanche, his mother, and his wife Leona.  And Mom, at that time, put on the white linen table cloth and had everything beautiful for them.  And before Everett died, Bernice told me this, he had Alzheimer’s . . .

John: Bernice was his sister, right?

Lois:  Yes, she’s still alive.

John: Yes, I am in touch with her.

Lois: Or you are.  Bernice and I went to Ledwin’s funeral together.  I have been in contact with her.  I babysat her oldest daughter when I came to Glendale, Patty.  About two weeks ago, I had a long talk with Doris, John Ofstedahl’s wife.

John: And John was Everett and Bernice’s brother?

Lois: Yes.

John: He has Parkinson’s, right?

Lois: He died.  I don’t know when.  Dotty, when did . . . ?

Dotty: Just this year.  In April.

Lois: I know Bernice wrote to me that it was very hard for her to accept the fact and . . . 

John: Because now both her brothers are gone.  And Bernice’s husband died a year ago or so as well.

Lois: Now there’s another boy, Jim.  I meant to talk to Bernice and find out where Jim is.  We used to have Ofstedahl picnics over in Verdugo Park. [NOTE: This interview was in 1999, Jim died in 1989.]

John: Who would come?

Lois: John and his two daughters. And Everett.  And Bernice.  They were all there.  It would be a picnic.

John: All the Ofstedahls that were in southern California?

Lois: I think Bernice started it.  In fact I need to talk to Bernice again anyway.

John: She’s online so Mom and I can send her emails.

Dot: There’s a letter upstairs, I’ll go get it.

Lois: Every Christmas we exchange cards, Christmas cards.

John: How about the brothers of your grandmother, your Grandmother Nash who was a Christensen.  You actually met her brothers at some point, right?

Lois: I met Fred Christensen.  And there was another Christensen, I can’t remember.  One of them had been married twice, you know about that.

John: Yes, both of them had been married twice, I think, but Chris was married twice because his first wife died in Kansas.  He remarried, and his wife was named Mollie, they moved to Long Beach and she helped raise his two sons from his first wife.  And Fred – this is where a brother and sister married a brother and sister. 

Lois: That’s right.

John: Because your grandfather Jim Nash, his sister married Fred Christensen.  And then Ida Kate, Fred’s sister, was your grandmother.  Is Fred the one you referring to, married twice?

Lois: Yes.

John: But it sounds like he was divorced from the second one.

Lois: I don’t know about that.  I do know why Grandma came to South Dakota, though.

John: Why was that?

Lois: She came to help Fred.  She was sixteen years old when she came.  She said she slept on sacks of grain, in what they call, anteroom, was added on, like a store room.  That was her bed.

John: In Fred’s house?

Lois: Yes.  There she met my grandfather, James Nash.

John: So when she was sixteen, she came to South Dakota.  But you don’t know where she came from, do you?

Lois: Kansas.

John: Oh she did, she was in Kansas before she came?

Lois: Yes. She told about the mud sod house that they lived in.

John: In Kansas?

Lois: Uh hum.

John: Oh she did move with the family to Kansas. 

Lois: Yes, she did.

John: But Fred was in South Dakota so she came to . . . Because it says a younger sister in the obituary of Chris moved with them to Kansas, so now it’s clear that that was your grandma. And so she was living with her brother on the bags of grain in the ante room, and that’s how she met her husband.

Lois: Uh hum. And she married him and they lived with the seniors in a little house, the original homestead house, and she told me this, that when she lived there, she had – I don’t know whether it was Ben or George that was the oldest . .  .

John: George was the oldest.

Lois: OK. When she had the baby, the old wives tale was that you did not drink after birth, you did not drink any water, and she said she couldn’t stand it.  So she’d get up in the middle of the night and go out and take the dipper, and gulp water in the kitchen.  And she says, One night when she was going out to get a drink of water, she heard her mother-in-law yell, “Ida, Ida is that you?”  They called her Ida, you know.

John: And so, when you say they were living with the seniors, they were living probably with George and Phoebe Nash, who were Jim Nash’s parents.

Lois: Yup, you got it.

John:  At the time that would have happened would have been the 1890 census and it’s the one census that was destroyed, it was lost in a 1921 fire in Washington DC., the entire 1890 census is lost.  So you have to find people in 1880 and then they next show up in 1900, and you might not know what happened in the twenty years in between.  She probably was  with them in the 1890 census, because she would have been married in 1888 or 1889.   We’ll find out when we go back, we’ll find her marriage record.  Did she tell you any other stories from that period, like when she first got married, that you can recall?

Lois:  I can’t, no.  I just know then they had the new house.  And you know about that.   Did you know they had a peace pipe?  I’m sure you knew that. 

John: Somebody mentioned that.

Lois: We as children used to play with it, if we were careful like Grandma said. That peace pipe,  I believe when Grandpa died . . . went to Edward Nash, Ted Nash’s son.  He got the peace pipe.

John: And it was originally from . . .

Lois: Grandma said when the war ended, the Indians came and parked their tent, wigwam, on their front yard.  And Grandpa would go out in the evening and talk to the Indian.

John: So that was your grandfather?

Lois: Yes.

John: Do you ever recall your Grandmother having an accent?

Lois: Grandma Nash?

John: Yes, because Danish was probably her first language.

Lois: No, not that I noticed.  She had words that probably would have fit. . .  She had a famous expression with us children.  She was very disciplined with us.  She would say, “hear now”!  Do you remember that?  Dotty?

Dotty: Yes, hear now.

John: And that meant pay attention or else.

Lois: She gave us her bag of clothespins to play with.  And we’d take some clothespins and leave them out, “hear now”.  The other thing I remember is that she gave us haircuts.  Not only did she give us haircuts but if I had a stomach ache . . .I had all her home remedies tried on me.  If you had a stomach ache, you got hot water, a little bit of horse liniment, and some cream, and you stirred it all up and you drank it.  If it didn’t burn a hole in your stomach, it cured you.

John: So after a while that pain was so much you forgot the original stomach ache.

Lois: And I can remember even when I was older, I had styes, terrible styes.  I went up to her house and she’d take a bread and milk potus (??).  She’d heat the milk and put bread in it.  And then wrap it in a dish towel and you tie it around your head, if it didn’t burn your eye out of your socket.  But we loved her.  She took care of us.

John: And I heard she baked a lot of cookies.

Lois: Never was ever without gingerbread cookies and sugar cookies.  Now that cookie cutter was well known.  And the person who got the cookie cutter was Ed Nash, Edward Nash.  He lived in Reno with Ann and Ted.  He came probably once a year, but he wanted that cookie cutter.  He loved Grandma’s cookies.  See this was Grandpa.  He had to have those cookies every day.  Now the other thing when Mom worked, we lived in the little house next to Grandma’s.  Grandma fed us whatever we wanted to eat, mostly bread and jam – which was fine with us.  But when they had dinner, we’d be hanging around with our tongues hanging out, please.  She says I can’t give you any fried potatoes, because your mother said they’re not good for you, they’re too rich.  My mother signed up for home extension course from Brookings College and she had a whole new concept of eating.  We didn’t go along with it at all.  In fact, she had lima bean soup one night and I remember she and I got into quite a confrontation because I wouldn’t eat it.  I wanted to go back to Grandma’s and have fried potatoes.

John:  That’s pretty good.  And then she lived for a long time, almost twenty years, after your grandfather died. [Jim Nash died in February 1936 and Ida Nash died in November 1951]

Lois: Yes, he died very young.  And it was in the middle of the winter.  (Unclear phrase) They had to try to find a path for us to come to the funeral, for Mom to come.  What he had done, he went out and shoveled snow, and then he had the heart attack.

John: He had a heart attack from shoveling snow.

Lois: You know, he had the heart attack, but he had been eating wrong.  Salt pork.  When he got off the farm he didn’t you know . . .

John: Eat very healthy.  What do you remember about him.  He died when you were a little girl, right?.

Lois: Yes, he was a very austere person.  If we were going downtown, and he was coming home – he had cronies downtown that he played checkers with and talked with all the time – when we passed him, he said, “Hello Sir”. 

John: So he was called sir?

Lois: Yeah. He was really something else.  Very proper.  He sang.  He read.  He took the National Geographic and read all the time.  I wanted to tell one more thing about Grandma.  I just loved that lady.  They had a cat named Elaine.  And Grandpa adored that cat.  But as cats do, they have kittens.  They wouldn’t take care of it before the cat has kittens.  So every time the cat had kittens, Grandma would go downtown to Mr. Slate, who had the pharmacy, and buy 25 cents worth of chloroform.  And she’d go home and she had a (Carol??) syrup pail, she’d put a nice little soft pad in it, and put the kittens in it, all but one, the cat had to have one.  She put the lid on the cover and they went to sleep beautifully.

John: What do you remember about the farm?

Lois:  Very little, the only time I was there was when the Hoppes rented it.  When they  moved to town.  You knew when the bank closed, that just sunk Grandpa’s ship.

John: Did he have some investment in the bank?

Lois: He did, he had money put away.

John: When you say when it closed, it was the Depression.

Lois: Yes.

John: So he just lost the money that he had in the bank.

Lois: Yes.

John: So at that point they weren’t very financially well off.

Lois: Not at all.  My folks helped them all the time.  I can remember that.  It was sad.

John: So the Depression really had an effect.  But they owned their house, right?

Lois: I think eventually they sold it.  But before they sold it, they rented it to Hoppes.  When we were in South Dakota we met one of the Hoppes.  They would come in on Saturday, the Hoppes.  Grandpa made beer all the time.  They would have beer and play cards and have a high old time.  Us kids always hung around.  And I can remember Grandma saying to us, don’t you tell your Mom, don’t you tell your mother, that we’re drinking beer. 

John: Did your grandma ever tell you anything about her Danish heritage, or Denmark, or her family at all?

Lois: The only thing she told us was coming across the ocean.  It took three months.

John: Did she remember it?

Lois: Yes, she remembered some of it.

John: Because she couldn’t have been but four years old.

Lois: I know, she remembered some of it, but I don’t think she remembered a lot.  But she also, didn’t talk much about it.

John: She just remembered it being a very very long trip.

Lois: Yes, it seems that’s all she mused.  Being on the ship in the ocean.

John: The youngest brother, who was four years younger than her, was Henry.

Lois:  He was born on the ship, wasn’t he?

John: That’s the story.  (End of track one – 31.58)

Start of Track Two (7 minutes, 28 seconds) – it appears there was a little conversation off tape between the two tracks.

John: You were saying something about how she used to always churn her own butter, your grandmother.

Lois: Hoppes brought the cream in from the farm, and they used to bring vegetables, and she made her own butter.

John: And she had a churn?

Lois: Oh, a beautiful churn.  It had a wooden top that fit in it, and a hole in the center of that where the stick was and she turned it that way.

John: How would she know when it was done?

Lois: Oh, she’d take it out and test it.  The milk that was left from the butter you know was buttermilk.

John: I remember some story, maybe Mom said, about taking ice from the river and keeping it in the basement.

Lois: Oh, they did. 

John: How did they do it?

Lois: They cut it.  They had blocks of (they would saw?? – unclear)

John: They would go with the saw and cut blocks of ice in the Missouri River and then bring it into the basement?

Lois: Yes, like they had, what do you call it, croft (?), they would take it and slide it down in.   And they covered it with sawdust.

John: How long would it last?

Lois: We had it in the summer, all summer.

John: So it would last all summer.  So would you keep vegetables with it?

Lois: She had a separate cellar for vegetables.  She had a big cellar in that house.  Grandpa even had a woodworking machine, I don’t know if it was a lathe, or what.  Woodworking one, whatever.  The vegetables.  They had a lot of cabbage. And they buried it. 

John: When you say buried it, what did you mean?

Lois: They would build a big pit and put a brace over it and they put the cabbage in there and kept it all . . . .  Do you remember that, Dot?  Jocelyn’s had the pit and they put that in.

John:  Do you remember anything about your grandmother?  Did she go to church?

Lois: Grandma didn’t go to church. 

John: She didn’t.

Lois: No, she played bridge and she had her bridge group.  And she quilted.  I saw the quilting.  She had the brace brackets, you know, where you roll it up.  And when it was her turn to have the bridge group or the quilting, she had a special desert, and they had coffee and tea . . .

John: And just chat.

Lois: Yeah.  Now grandma, as I said, was really close to us kids.  We lived across town.  And I took Dotty and Norval, in my little red wagon, and I took them to Grandma’s house whenever I felt like it.  (unclear)  my mother always agreed.  Well this one particular day we went along, and there was this chicken yard and Norval plastered himself on the fence, and watched the chickens and wouldn’t move.  I couldn’t get him to go.  So I went up to the door.  And I knocked on the door and said to the lady, I said, would you mind keeping my brother until we come back?  He won’t go with us.  And this lady told Grandma about it later and they all thought it was great.

John:  She just took care of Norv until you got back.  Did you know any of your grandfather’s brothers, Orson or Orley or . . .  

Lois: Yes, I did.  We knew Orley, Uncle Orley.

John: What was he like?

Lois: Very mellow.  Both Grandpa and Orley and the Nashes were very intelligent people.  They read a lot, they kept up on world affairs.  And Aunt Amy was a class in herself.  She and Grandma were good friends but Amy always did funny things.  She was Charles’ mother, remember?  And  I can remember, you don’t know Eloise, Eloise was Ben’s daughter.   She came to visit in the summer.  And Grandma always made us go over and visit Dorothy.  Dorothy’s still alive.  She’s Charles’ daughter I guess you know.  We had to go visit, for Grandma’s sake.  Aunt Amy was kind of weird, kind of strange, she would frighten Eloise and Eloise didn’t want to go, but grandma insisted that we go and pay our respects. 

John: And how was Amy weird?

Lois: Just one thing.  She invited us for dinner.  The family.  We’d all go to dinner and after we finished eating she had half the food still left on the kitchen stove.

John: I have her journal, from her just keeping farm prices, and who visited from 1906 or sometime, I have a copy of it because her grandson, her great-grandson transcribed it.

Lois: They were very bright people.

John: That’s Orley, do you remember Orson?

Lois: No, I don’t.  I knew Ora, did you know Ora.

John: I met Ora.  Ora Elfes.

Lois: She gave Dotty and I the nicest little mirror with a box.  What did we have in that, powder? We were very young.  She gave us good Christmas gifts, didn’t she? (Dotty says something in background). My Dad was the most patient loving man you could ever know.  Anybody could get anything out of him.  And my Mother was the firm one.  They used to go around about that.  And we had a car, 36 Ford, was that was it was, Dotty?  I think so.  And Dad would lend it to people in town.  And we kids would go tell Mom, we saw so and so driving our car.  My Dad would get into so much hot water.

John:  When he got home, that would be it.  Did your Dad ever talk to you about him being in World War I?

Lois: Yeah, a few things, but he didn’t talk much about it.  One thing I do remember, he was in France, and he said one night it was awfully cold and they were walking, and two girls came around the corner and they spoke English.  And he said it was so nice to hear two girls speaking English.  And then he was in the Battle of Aragon [Argonne], where the supplies came . . . did I tell you this? John: No.

Lois: . . . where the supplies came like one bulk thing at a time.  And nothing was coordinated.  At one time they got nothing but sugar and they had nothing but sugar.

John: I did hear the story that one time they . . .

Lois: He met Gee . .

John: They had to salute, and they were all saluting, and it turned out it was his brother.  It’s a good old family story.  Thank you, Lois, these are great stories (the tape ends)

I thought I’d close with a photo that I have - where I am not sure what the source was. It was identified as - Leo on a Tractor With Lois Hanging On - in a Corn Field - probably at Geddes at Ford Raymond's.