Whitefish – The First Decade

Hard Times:

“The woodbox that was never full for long and the hard work splitting wood and carrying it in. That water pail that was always empty when one needed a drink and the water that had to be pumped by hand and carried from the well or creek. The water that had to be heated on the stove to do the washing, using a washboard and rubbing the clothes by hand. Also wringing the clothes by hand, making our own soap from tallow and waste grease. The floors to be scrubbed on hands and knees with a scrub brush and lye, the endless ironing with sad irons located on the cook stove, butter to be churned, Bread made, and the endless baking. The baths to be taken Saturday evening in the wash tub by the kitchen stove.”
 

“The cows, pigs, and chickens to be taken care of by the women while their husbands were off at the lumber camps, perhaps gone all week. The deep snow to be waded through in winter and the ice to be chopped so that the stock could get a drink…”
 

“The men getting up before dawn to curry and brush and feed their horses and get them harnessed so they could be at camp before daylight. Some men in those days took better care of their horses than they did of their wives, horses were real valuable in those days.”
 

“The clearing of land which all had to be done by hand and team…(The men) staying away from home and family maybe weeks at a time, sleeping in bunkhouses on bunks built against the wall with only boards with a straw tick, using sometimes the same blanket that was used during the day to cover their horses when they came in sweaty from a haul to the camp landing.”
 

“The flies and yellow jackets in the cook house with a yellow jacket or fly in the pie for extra good flavor.”
 

“The lumberjacks who spent their last nickel for a bottle, never remembering to buy themselves a warm pair of socks or mittens…”

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"The times when the camps closed down and there was little to eat except maybe fat pork, beans, deer meat…”

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“There was little to make life easy for a woman. To set up housekeeping in those days she had only a one-room cabin, cook stove, a home-made table and a couple of benches which served for chairs, a washboard and tub, a few dishes and a kettle or pail to cook coffee in, a bunk built in the corner, no mattress, a feather bed if one was lucky, otherwise a straw tick filled with straw, home-made comforters, sheets made out of flour sacks, curtains at the windows made out of flour sacks, or calico, a broom made out of fine willow branches.”

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“In winter, water froze setting a few feet away from the stove, and many mornings there would be a covering of snow near the door, which blew in during a blizzard. A hole under the cabin served as a cellar where the vegetables were kept or anything one didn’t want frozen reached by a trap door in the middle of the floor, a lantern and lamp…if one ran out of kerosene, one used a candle or went to bed when it got dark or just had the light from the fireplace, if one was lucky enough to have one.”

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“The men and women worked long hours and the work was hard, but even at that they were happy and raised their children There were no delinquent children in those days. Papa and mama believed in using the strap or willow switch when needed, and children knew they were loved even though paddled now and then. Everyone took their children with them when they went places in those days.”

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“Later men and women working in the fields together gathering the harvest…the threshing machine and threshing crew to thresh the grain in the fall…the high straw stacks and the big dinners mama and the neighbor ladies cooked for the men, getting up before daylight so the men could start threshing by daylight.”