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"Pupils just starting school in the primary room are: Katherine Naze, Eugene Cofell, Helen Hanson, Grace Trowbridge, Donald Askerman and Lowell Colby." (SCR., Vol. 26, No.5, Thursday Sept. 19, 1929.)
"At the last meeting of the board, E. W. Hunt was appointed to drive the school bus on Route No.1. Children will be taken from the following homes: F. Cofell, E. W. Hunt, V. Vanderberg, Harry Trowbridge, Paul Seiler and Joe Naze." (SCR., Vol. 26, No.7, Thurs. October 3, 1929.)
Early in December while playing on the school slide during afternoon recess--Eugene climbed to the top amidst a group of children and either fell or was pushed from the top platform. The slide at that point was eighteen feet high. He was badly injured with a fractured skull.
Some time previous to the fall, Uncle Oliver had brought us some toys and odds and ends they were discarding. Among these was a leather aviator's helmet with padding inside. It was a real helmet and one made for a child. It was probably a toy replica of the one worn by Charles A. Lindberg on his flight across the Atlantic. Eugene was wearing this helmet and it was attributed to saving his life. He did have a six inch fracture crack on one side of his skull and a very bad concussion. He was carried from the play ground and laid on a table in our room. I was in the fourth grade. I was playing on another part of the playground. Someone, probably a teacher, came out to the play ground and brought me in and wanted me to talk to Eugene. They thought a familiar voice might cause him to respond. I talked to him but there was no response and I remember saying that he was unconscious.
The teachers hovered about and someone called Doctor Lange who came to school and examined Eugene. Fortunately we had a telephone and someone called our parents. Dad came in and looked at Gene and talked to him but no answer. Ivar Ytreeide who had an enclosed car was called and with Dad took Gene to the Trinity Hospital in Jamestown. He was placed under the care of Dr. Gerrish who was at the hospital when Gene as admitted. Eugene was unconscious for about 36 hours and during that time our parents were in the depths of worry. The schools of that period were not equipped to handle severe emergencies. The schools and not many families carried any kind of liability insurance or medical insurance. It was long after the accident that the hospital or Dr. Gerrish were paid for their servIces.
"Trinity Hospital Notes."
"Little Gene Coffell of Montpelier, is receiving treatment for injuries received when he fell from a slide in the school yard the first of the week." (SCR., Vol. 26, No. 16, Thursday, December 5, 1929.)
Eugene was in the hospital for a period of two weeks. He made friends with the nurses and others at the hospital. I have a distinct impression that he became a favored patient as far as those who cared for him were concerned. He also made good recovery from his injury. It did interfere with his educational career. It added another blow to family's slender resources.
It was not easy for mother or father to go to Jamestown to visit their injured son. Our model T was not all that reliable and easy to start especially in winter. The neighbors were very good and if they were going to Jamestown and had room they would offer our parents a ride. I remember taking whatever savings I had and buying a toy airplane to take to Eugene. It was a replica of the Spirit of St. Louis so popular among children at that time. Lindberg was a national hero and so was his airplane and both were leading us into the era of aviation. Many young people were building Spirit of St. Louis airplane models. One of Gene's brothers or sister gave him a set of bears, a mother and three cubs.
Eugene came home and received a royal family welcome but did not start back to school until well after Christmas vacation. A little later in 1930 he was back in the hospital with pneumonia.
In beginning the 1930's, after mother's illness and Gene's accident in 1929, we were by no means free of considerable distress in the family. In January of 1930 both Eugene and myself were in the hospital. "William and Eugene Cofell are ill in Trinity Hospital at Jamestown. It is undecided as yet just what the trouble is but the younger, Eugene, was in the hospital recently because of his fall from the slide at school here." (SCR, Vol. 26, No. 25, Thursday Feb. 6,1930.)
An item the follow week reads: "The Children of Floyd Cofell who have been in the hospital recently are much improved. William the elder had an operation on his ear about two weeks ago and is slowly recovering." (SCR, Vol. 26, No. 26, Feb. 13, 1930.) I can remember that the water in the hospital tasted odd. We were not used to chlorinated water. Dad brought water to the hospital in a thermos jug and that was better. The other thing I remember was that they had to change my pillow case frequently because of the discharge that flowed from my ear. I do not know what the nature of the infection was except that I was very sick and there was a good deal of worry about whether I would have to have a mastoid operation.
Eugene's illness was pneumonia, which may have had some connection with the injury he had sustained as a result of the fall from the slide. It may have been the inactivity while he was hospitalized. He recovered but was pretty much kept out of school the remainder of the term.
As a result of these illnesses both Eugene and I missed a lot of school and the critical question became should we be retained in grade or passed on to the next. I recall that Mother and Dad went to school and discussed this matter with the teachers. I have no idea what was said or how the decisions were made. I was passed on to the fifth grade "on condition." It meant that if I could do fifth grade work, I would stay in the fifth grade, if-not it would mean a return to the fourth grade. Eugene told me in a telephone conversation on February 3, 1996 that he had remained in the first grade for two years. He also said that he had graduated from high school in 1942. These two statements make the time factor correct. Eugene had missed a great deal more school than I had during that year. Eugene still remembered the name of the nurse in the hospital who spent so much time with him. He also mentioned that about this time Aunt Edith wanted to take one of mother's children and Gene was the one she wanted. This became somewhat of a problem after Eugene's injury. Mother was not about to let anyone, elder sister or not, take one of her children. After the second hospitalization Eugene spent some time with Grandpa and Grandma at Edgeley. This may have been the response to Aunt Edith.
On October 29, 1929 the stock market crashed we children didn't have very clear images of what happened and what we did have were quite erroneous. We knew people jumped out of windows. It was hard to imagine what a Wall Street was and why those people jumped. We did understand that something very serious had occurred but it was something far away and we would not have understood very well how it was affecting us. We understood that our parents were concerned.
We learned more as times became worse. We were not so deeply concerned even when we received written accounts of what was supposedly happening elsewhere. There were no television cameras nor helicopters to put us right at the center of events. We usually got our news from Grit and the Chicago Herald and Examiner which Dad brought from town on the weekly Saturday shopping trip. The news was somewhat older and had time to ripen before we read it. Dad would bring home whatever local news was of any importance. Our teachers also kept us alert by insistence on a thing called "Current Events". We were all encouraged to bring items to school and we would discuss them the first period in the morning.
We almost always had something to contribute from "Grit." We occasionally had an item from the weekly papers, "The Montpelier Magnet" and sometimes the "Stutsman County Record" which was published in Jamestown. We did not often take a daily paper. We did take quite a few magazines, the result of trading chickens for subscriptions. Those that I remember are: "Country Gentleman," "Saturday Evening Post," "Colliers," "Woman's Home Companion," "Ladies Home Journal," "Pathfinder," "The Progressive," "America Magazine," "The Farme,r" "The Dakota Farmer," and "Successful Farmer." We had a wealth of reading material in our home and I thank my parents for having kept us well supplied and also acknowledge a debt of gratitude to the chickens. The magazines were our contact with the outside world.
We did not have a radio until about 1930. We got our first radio, it was second hand, after the first half of the Soldiers Bonus was paid out. There was a notice in the Stutsman County Record that the national bonus must be applied for before January 2, 1930. (Stutsman County Record, November 7, 1929.) The payment was the first half of the bonus to veterans. The Bonus Act was vetoed by President Coolidge in 1924 and Congress passed the bill over his veto. I am not clear as to the payment made in 1930. My memory is about concern expressed as to whether any bonus would be paid. Each of the bonus payments Dad received was about five hundred dollars.
The radio was not the first purchase with the Soldier Bonus money. First, there were some new clothes for mother and us children. I remember Dad was proud of the Hart, Schaffner and Marx suit he bought for himself. Dad did not buy another suit for himself until after World War II.
The radio was purchased at the Chenery Hardware store in Jamestown. It was a rather big box affair about three feet long maybe 18 inches high and 15 inches deep with a lot of glass tubes inside and perhaps a dozen dials on the front. The speaker was built into the box. The radio required a 6 volt wet cell battery and a 45 volt dry cell battery. I know about the wet cell battery because one day I put a piece of the paper on which battery acid had leaked in my mouth. It had a decided sour taste and I immediately spit it out and washed my mouth with water---just about exactly as I should have done --except not taste it in the first place.
We children had heard our first radio at a neighbors about two years before this time. One evening Mother and Dad loaded us all into the wagon, it must have been late winter or early spring, and in the dark we journeyed to the Joe Brehm home about three miles away. We went over to hear the words and songs that came through the air. Their radio was also a large box affair but with the horn or speaker on top as I recall. On that particular evening the broadcasts were not coming in so well. All the owners of the set "could bring in" was a lot of noisy crackling called "static" and an occasional snatch of song or speech. At least we heard a few words and songs that came over the air and were convinced it could be done. After all this effort the adults decided to play cards and we children got involved in some play activity.
We know it was toward spring because Mrs. Brehm had another machine we encountered for the first time. It was an incubator that hatched chicken eggs and it was in operation. Mrs. Brehm raised a lot of chickens. We knew about hens setting on eggs for about 25 days we were fascinated by a, machine with a lamp in it that did the same thing in large quantities.
It was in November of 1928 that two teachers at School Number Two purchased a radio and had their names mentioned in the Stutsman County Record of November 29, 1928. For a while anyone purchasing a radio 'had their names printed in the paper. The two teachers were Blanche Cumber and Audrey Mortenson. Audrey later transferred to the town school and was my teacher in grades four and five.
Hardly any of the programs received on that first radio are now remembered. I do remember a few things. One weekend my parents allowed me to stay up later than usual and listen to the radio. On that evening I kept a log of all the stations that the radio would bring in. I remember stations in Chicago, Boston, New York, Pittsburgh, Denver, St. Louis, Seattle and how many more? I noted down the city, call letters and position on the dials and had quite a long list when the evening was over. It was a very good lesson in geography. Another time, probably the spring we got the radio, I was able to follow the reports of rescue operations made necessary by a flood along the Mississippi river. One other program that I remember listening to was the Grand Ole Opry or a program similar to it from Nashville, Tennessee. During this period of our first radio we listened to four stations mostly, KFYR, Bismarck, ND.; WDA Y, Fargo, ND.; WNAX, Yankton, SD.; and WCCO, Minneapolis, MN.
The radio expanded the radius of knowledge and activity of that period. The soldier bonus payment eased some other things at that time. Our parents bought a Horton Washing Machine powered by a Briggs and Stratton engine. The purchase was made from the Roscoe Hardware in Montpelier. It was a most welcome addition for mother and for us children. The previous washer was a wooden tub affair that required hand power to operate the rotating agitator and a cranker to operate the wringer. It was a job that none of us children appreciated and when we weren't present it must have been a terrible chore for mother. I believe that Horton washer continued in operation through World War II. After they had installed Rural Electric Power about 1948, I used some funds to purchase an electric motor to replace the Briggs and Stratton that was becoming somewhat unreliable at that point. The machine did its duty for about fifteen years. These purchases in the early 1930's improved our daily life.
It was during these years that another change was taking place in our rural society. The advent of trucking of livestock and other farm products began. There was a distinct mechanical and technological change in progress. Previous to late 1920's farmers in our area had cattle drives sometime during the year. Farmers would drive the cattle to the stockyards in Montpelier when they had enough for a car load. Hogs were usually taken to town in a triple box wagon. One of the fall drives was memorable when our neighbors made up a shipment of cattle to be marketed. The first group of cattle must have started from Konoskes or DeLairs. Other farmers with cattle to market joined the drive as it moved along. The Serbas, Ratts and Davis may have joined the drive. Dad had several head of cattle that joined the herd when it went past our place. There were perhaps forty or fifty animals in all when it went past our place. I rode with my father on his horse as we drove that herd to Montpelier. After the cattle had been driven into the pens my father put me down outside the stockyard and I was told to stay in place. I watched through the planks as they moved the animals from the pen into the stock car that stood at the chute on the other side of the pens.
Some of the animals sold off of farms went directly to the local butcher. There was also a livestock buyer in Montpelier who bought from the. farmers and shipped livestock to Fargo and St. Paul. He later traveled a wider area and gathered young hogs that were shipped to serum producing plant near Ames, Iowa.
The only other cattle drives that I know about that went through the pens in Montpelier were those from the herd of Black Angus that came from the big pasture on the Chicago Ranch. During the yearly shipment (maybe more than one) Mr. Cone would warn people in the village to keep their dogs inside and tied up. And people themselves would be much safer if they also stayed inside until the cattle were safely in the pens. These were semi-wild cattle because they foraged pretty much for themselves in the big pasture. Mr. Cone carefully attempted to prevent any conditions that might lead to the cattle stampeding. In which case someone might be hurt, property damaged and a problem of rounding up near wild cattle.
The local cattle drives pretty well ended about 1928 or 1929. The motor truck became the better way of transporting livestock to market. There is a memory of the event and it was recorded as well: "Robert Getty took a truck load of stock to Fargo for Floyd Cofell on Tuesday." (SCR, Vol 20, No. 47, Thursday July 11, 1929.) The truck arrived very early in the morning. The livestock to be shipped had been penned, watered and fed the evening before. We were up early to receive the truck and watch the loading of the frightened animals. It was not an easy matter to prod the animals up the loading chute.
I suspect there may have been another load about two weeks later when Dad and William Boelter visited the State Fair in Fargo. (SCR, Vol. 25, No. 48, July 18, 1929.) This trip may have been a load of hogs or sheep that might have been transported in Frank Stott's Model T. truck. This vehicle was, as I recall, usually driven by William Boelter. In our area this was the beginning of a new industry. Until then farmers could not ship their livestock when the market was best or when they had stock finished and ready to ship. When animals were shipped by rail there was the need to fill cars and most farmers in our area did not have a hundred head to ship at one time. I think from about 1930 that almost all livestock shipped from small farms went to market on trucks. I believe this was an important technological change of that period.
There was another change to be recorded that occurred during the late 1920's. The settlement and use of land was a gradual affair in many communities. At the time we first moved to Section 8 in Montpelier Township the south one half of section 7 was virgin prairie. The first years we were on the farm on section 8, Dad cut and stacked prairie hay on that land. It was a very interesting place. There was a large slough in about the middle. One of our neighbor's sons managed to sink a Rumley Tractor on the shore of that slough. It stood there for some time before they could move it. There were nests of bumble bees. I investigated some bumble bees that had their nest in a hole in the ground and was stung as a result. These bees were large bodied creatures perhaps an inch long. It was an instant of learning through feeling. During the spring and summer there was an abundance of all kinds of wild flowers. There were a great many meadow larks that nested in the grass and would alight on fence posts and sing their hearts out in the spring. We especially waited for the songs of meadowlarks in the spring. There were also quite a few prairie chickens that nested in that prairie. It was always a soothing experience to hear those wild creatures. We herded our cattle on that piece of land. I do not know who it belonged to at that time and I presume my father must have made arrangements with someone to cut the hay.
Not all virgin land in our area was first broken with oxen, horses or steam tractors. In the spring of 1928 or 1929, brothers, Dave and Joe Naze, bought new Case tractors. In early spring they pulled onto the south one half of section seven with their plow outfits and broke the land and planted flax. The following year wheat was planted on that land. The same fall they purchased a gleaners combine to harvest the crop they had planted in the spring.
In the 1920's there quite a few parcels of land that had not been plowed. On section 18 just south of section 7 there was a quarter section that could not have been plowed until the 1940's during the second World War. This was the place the prairie chickens had their booming ground. It was also a place where we went as children to pick wild strawberries. It makes one wonder why we put so much effort in civilizing the earth by plowing under the original plants and destroying animal habitat and then in the 1930's we began to spend money taking that land out of production. We even attempted to encourage owners to restore it to some kind of original state. I do not know that the Naze brothers were in this category or not, but there were people who when talking about the drop in grain prices during the early 1930's would make the statement that they would have to rent another quarter of land if the price of wheat continued to drop. As a child I could not fathom the error in that line of thinking and didn't understand it very well when someone tried to explain it to me.
There was another event that is associated with the land on section 18. Sometime during 1924 or 1925 when we came out of the house after dinner, the wind was blowing pretty hard from the south there was the smell of smoke in the air. We became very much aware of a prairie fire on section 18. Among other things we had some stacks of hay on section 7 and there was a lot of grass that was still standing. Dad had been plowing during the morning, he had the horses harnessed and only needed to hitch them to the plow. He stood in the yard yelling as loudly as he could to attract the attention of neighbors. William Ford lived on the hill north of us and someone came out of their house and heard the yelling and saw the fire. Our father went out of the yard on a gang plow at a run and hurried about two hundred yards to that piece of land and began plowing a fire break. The neighbors went by on a plow and soon pulled in behind him. The fire had to pass through a ravine that was dry but that stopped the fire enough so it was somewhat diminished by the time it reached the firebreak. I remember best how loudly my father was yelling to arouse the neighbors.
It was a few years later that mother made an interesting discovery on our farmstead. It was during summer and it was raining which may have had something to do with the discovery. She had gone outside and on returning to the house had discovered a hole in the yard in front of the house. It was perhaps two feet across not so very large at that point. When she came in she asked our father what that hole was. He didn't know. He got into some rain clothes --- went out to check the hole and then went to the shed to get a shovel. I remember we watched from the window as he gingerly worked around the hole caving it even further until it was about four or five feet in diameter. He also discovered that it was about twelve or fifteen feet in depth. If mother had walked into that hole she might have had a dangerous fall. She also might not have been discovered for some time.
We thought it looked as if someone had tried to dig well but why should it cave in the way it did? Dad later made some inquiries and was informed that a previous family had tried to dig a well in that place in 1916. They had gotten down about 70 feet and had discovered no water and decided to quit digging at that point. At about the same time some of their horses had become sick from a disease called Glanders and had to be destroyed. They shot the animals and dropped them down the well shaft and covered them over. It took about fourteen years for all that to really settle. I am not certain of the number of animals dropped but it must have been ten or fifteen.
The day after mother's discovery dad hitched the horses to a scraper and filled in the hole. It settled once more after that but only by about three feet. According to our observation the shaft must have been yellow clay soil all the way down. If they had reached sand any ground water in the area would have been badly contaminated for some time by that burial. On the visit to that area in 1989 the spot and the soil disturbance was still noticeable after more than sixty years.
There was an abandoned well on that property and we children were often warned to stay away. It did hold an enticing curiosity for us but we did avoid the vicinity. However, one year one of our neighbor's horses was missing and was found dead, head down in that well. In those days of open grazing many farmers turned horses loose in the fall so they could forage for themselves in the stubble field, straw stacks and prairie grass.
I do not remember that well being filled. It must have been sometime after we left that farm. There were quite a few hand dug wells that never found water or very much water. Most were eventually replaced with drilled wells. We learned early that abandoned wells were dangerous. The well was part a farmstead, abandoned because the well was dry. I remember the house being moved away to another location. It was where the sheep shed on our farmstead was originally sited.
The property on which we lived was originally owned by a relative of the Ford family. They were early settlers in Montpelier township. Mrs. John Ford living to an advanced age died about 1929. Will Ford had already left the area at that time. He and his family moved to the State of Washington. Charley Ford later moved away after the death of his mother. They were our first and closest neighbors in Montpelier township.
There were a lot of things going on in 1930 despite the worsening conditions in the farm economy. There was hope in the land and there was hope that despite so many discouraging experiences that improvement was in sight. Perhaps the crops were better but prices were lower and seemed to be headed even lower.