Latah County Oral History Collection

Sam Schrager: This conversation with Ruth Olson and Margaret Olson took place at their home in Derry on June 16th, 1976. The interviewer was Sam Schrager. Yes. I would like to invite a.

Ruth Olson: Moment of pop of support to have a job here with you as the brakeman on the train. And just before I left for school, I broke his arm so he couldn't do that. And I that I can see the work in the works, cutting up on that, of course. And we were in there. But it was because of Uncle Will's a thinking wire.

Sam Schrager: How was that? Well, already here.

Ruth Olson: When they were here, they were established there. I mean, they were he had a store there in Kalmar and he and I was wonderful country, of course, new mothers. But they all do a lot of country for us. And they would. And mom was, my mother's mother and father would come through. They didn't come out of the in a little.

Ruth Olson: Well, when did Uncle Charlie come? I don't know. That moment. I can't really say.

Sam Schrager: Were you were you born by that time?

Ruth Olson: Yes, I. I was just a baby. I was born in 1960.

Sam Schrager: And what about you?

Ruth Olson: I was born Homestead.

Ruth Olson: They were living out there. And then a little later in the year, they were ordered up during that 1910 fire. So they moved off the homestead. And in return, they treated the dump them and moved in here In February of the next year.

Sam Schrager: There were a lot of people who had homesteads right at that time in that country, weren't there? Well, I.

Ruth Olson: Think that was a lot, but mostly it was this very land running, this land that they could get, and that's why I brought them. You. When you think of the early people, most of them homestead the land on this isthmus, folks, I imagine they get the burnt limbs down there on Mary Creek. And my sisters. Well, the improvements, folks, the homestead is that virgin part of it.

Ruth Olson: And they all moved.

Margaret Olson: And the Normans homestead, the.

Sam Schrager: I was thinking that that around the people that were homesteading around that area, around Elmer, that was kind of almost right about the edge of where you could farm, wasn't it? Because the idea that I might I mean, it was almost it was pretty much timber that I mean, it's still largely temporary like right where you're.

Ruth Olson: Well and right. I mean, when they came, of course, a lot of it was just timber that they cleared. I don't know. They're still planning on some of this. Well these homesteads.

Margaret Olson: Around here or timber.

Ruth Olson: The right around there, you know.

Sam Schrager: The lot were a lot of those sold to, to to Potlatch.

Ruth Olson: I think for when I think about it from where you, you had that old county that you know which was all I remember well that atlas that that at home that you know it shows now I know we had some friends over from Potlatch and her sisters are scattered out, but they were up here and they were trying to ask us if we could, if we had any idea where their father's homestead was.

Ruth Olson: And we said, well, we didn't know. And so we went out there with a bird. And he told us that it was not by the old city dump. So we'd forgotten about there be another dump farther to the south and west a little bit. This was a yeah, that way when it's with the dump now and we forgot about that and so we told them I was by the dump there.

Ruth Olson: And then later someone said, don't remember that one. And we did recall after the progress report, one did recall the regular dump in a previous place. And when you think of some of them of course, or moved away then or something about Peterson's house over there is a person that you ought to talk to. You know, Mike Hooper down here doesn't talk like his sister does he?

Ruth Olson: Is he lives in the north. Cabins from across the bay where those three little ones in a row. But you recall she had a wonderful mind and she recalls she lives in Spokane. Her name is Margaret Hoover. MARGARET Well, no, I they had at one time a store and they were the post office together down there at Albert Cross.

Ruth Olson: NORBERT they owned that. And then they moved their store from there over to where the is it belong.

Sam Schrager: On your folks at that time?

Ruth Olson: Well, I don't think they had an easy time of it, but I don't they didn't complain. Really. I don't know. I think they enjoyed they.

Margaret Olson: Took it just like people in those days. I don't know what hard times are so.

Ruth Olson: Well, I mean, of course, not having they have didn't have any modern conveniences really like that. They carried the water, grew spring and things like that. But that was expected. They all.

Margaret Olson: Lived. So if they had a horse, they had a horse transportation. If they didn't, they walked. Ruben tells about his dad going to law school and carrying a flower on his back.

Ruth Olson: Well, you know, and my mom told about how she went out to begin with and picked up every roosting for firewood. They were used to not having anything back there in Minnesota that way because they just don't have the for. And she said she thought that was such a terrible waste out here last year. She said, Mrs. Grannis, was she mentioned her.

Ruth Olson: You know, she did that, too.

Margaret Olson: Well, they'd come from Minnesota, where they'd homesteaded back there and their family. So, I mean, it was just another generation doing the same thing.

Sam Schrager: Do you think that that your folks had money to live on or or when they came out here that they had saved? Or do you think it was just real subsistence?

Ruth Olson: Well, my mom and I had some you know, I don't know, just say how much, but I would say I've always felt that while we we didn't have a great deal, we certainly were very independent and happy. And I think we had a very happy childhood, you know, and it's certainly didn't bother me.

Sam Schrager: Well, tell me a little bit of what being a kid was like, what childhood childhood was like.

Ruth Olson: Well, of course, we there was a large family. There were six of us girls and kids nowadays make your own fun in the night, in the evenings and the a whole bunch of us get together and play games and things like that. And we all had our chores or certain things we had to do and we had to do them.

Ruth Olson: And to me, advantages, responsibility. And I see so many children now having any responsibilities, whatever. They don't learn due to going out and doing what they're supposed to do. And then my grandfather lived with us and he jumped the woodshop and it was our job to carry the wood. So we have to carry the water, things like that.

Ruth Olson: But I never thought that I was really in every one of you. So I should know how many times we get together as a group and we go from one house to the other and help each other do the local hours and do so. We get out and play our game.

Margaret Olson: And we could be together doing it.

Ruth Olson: Right. We just it was just a matter of that things had to be done. And I know even when lots of times when we were moment moments to, you know, and you know, we had our responsibilities to the table was cleared up and things like that before we went back to school. And no, because the mom had other things that had to be done.

Ruth Olson: She had a lot to do therapy. Do you think that those things of.

Sam Schrager: You knew what you had to do rather than being told by parents.

Ruth Olson: You know, these things had to be done every day or when the time came, we knew that if we didn't get in, a group of why we would have to later in was we might as well. They were done.

Sam Schrager: Did you wind up helping your father very much in the outside work at all?

Margaret Olson: He wasn't home to do it. I mean, he worked out in the woods.

Ruth Olson: And he was in the office that.

Margaret Olson: We have. We do have a thousand moms and help with that kind of stuff.

Ruth Olson: That's all we had because we and a little garden, we help with that.

Sam Schrager: So mostly he was working out in the in the woods after dinner.

Ruth Olson: Yes, he was there to begin with. He trained they created the homestead restoring and restore for a while. And he was in really for a while. But then we went to work in the in the camps and was working with camp camps in Central. I remember headquarters. So that I mean, it was kind of an important for the camps, their sakes.

Ruth Olson: And then he went to Mobil and he was an officer of Mobil. And then when he came back, it was during the Depression and he worked as a foreman and associated positions and then shortly after that, he was postmaster.

Margaret Olson: There. But then you worked down Bear Creek in the logging.

Ruth Olson: Well, for her, yeah. Had the timber. Yeah, it was in the timber, but he worked on it.

Sam Schrager: But.

Ruth Olson: He scaled.

Sam Schrager: Well talking about the work that the kids were supposed to do. Did this leave you very much free time?

Ruth Olson: yeah. We had plenty of free time. We planned every evening if we wanted to. We were out. The whole community would get together, the kids and we'd play games together. And she from high school, just games like that, that we didn't have a lot of sleeping.

Margaret Olson: We didn't have play things and we didn't have money to buy things, and we just had fun.

Sam Schrager: What kind of spread age would there be among the kids that would get together and play? Was it a wide age group?

Ruth Olson: Yeah. yeah. From the.

Sam Schrager: School.

Ruth Olson: First grade.

Margaret Olson: On through sometimes even high school kids players.

Ruth Olson: I remember it was it was that when we were playing when she run that I you know glories when they came here I had met Dora here, She got down there some way and I was the first time I'd seen her, she was in high school and she was playing with the little kids.

Sam Schrager: I play Run sheep, right?

Margaret Olson: It's a hard.

Sam Schrager: Game. Is that when.

Ruth Olson: You have two teams and everybody stays at the home base, the other goes out and they have a leader that takes them out and hides them and gives him certain signals and they're supposed to maybe they yell red and that means you're supposed to go to a certain place and the others. In the meantime, we're trying to find where they're getting them and they have their signals to tell to sneak from one place to another, try to get in.

Sam Schrager: Trying to get to her home base. Yeah.

Ruth Olson: I know where they you.

Margaret Olson: Yeah, those things were really lost. I think kids now if they do some of those.

Ruth Olson: Things it's a can of course that was learned to really enjoy it.

Sam Schrager: Yeah. What about. I heard that there were a lot of party games that were played in schools too. You dealt with that through around here. not during school, but. But for what you have got. Yeah. There's.

Ruth Olson: There's good parties in here and have lots of fun of those too. That's where every basketball game we usually entertained the visiting team and had a party for them afterwards. And I remember one time a sledding party where we got sleds and after the basketball game we had a party and where we all took one course. But we always entertained the visiting team after basketball.

Margaret Olson: Of course, at that time they used to stay overnight a lot of times and they'd stay in the homes. The players would stay in the homes of the the local players or people. Whoever had room.

Sam Schrager: Was kind of nice because I heard I've heard a lot about the rivalry between the towns when they played basketball. You know, I was really quite, you know, I don't know if that was.

Margaret Olson: Well in the game it was. But that well, they didn't have.

Ruth Olson: Too many around at that time. We made good friends and some people we kept track of for years that we would stay in their homes. You know, when we went to Potlatch and Elk River Park here in Fernwood.

Margaret Olson: My daughter met a girl up near a burger from Elk Grove. And the other day and she said.

Ruth Olson: Well mentioned, you.

Margaret Olson: Know, you probably knew my mother and she was well, I didn't know her, but I knew her older sisters. They used to play basketball. And I and I knew then then and the.

Sam Schrager: Was a what what was the set up on basketball. There were how would how big were the teams.

Ruth Olson: And well, we had a girls team the same as the boys. And we made lots of times the very same groups of the boys. We'd go the Elk River and is the overnight and play. And usually just one time we didn't have a practice thing like they do now, but we would go and meet most of the kids that the boys had.

Ruth Olson: One time the coach's wife decided that we couldn't. Maybe the train would make connections a ballgame. They started out with them. We had to take us to Boulder. We got up as far as a flight place and the team gave out and we had walked from flags to Boulder to catch the train. We made it even though we had to walk through it and got on the train up there to go on the Elk River to play basketball with.

Sam Schrager: Would you remember the the game this being? Did you do a lot of practice? Was there a lot of skill involved? It was a mostly fun.

Ruth Olson: Well, we practiced quite a bit, but not like they do today. We have the old what they call the old Legion Hall, and it was just a cracker box there. There wasn't a room alongside people. If people still along the side, they were really on the court and there was just a little stage where they could see it.

Ruth Olson: But that's our practice. Then after they built the high school, then we had to go from the Legion Hall up to the high school, a shower. Sometimes by the time we got up there we were perspiring and our hair would be frozen stiff. By the time we got to the high school shower. But we enjoyed it and the, you know, we were not the worst for.

Ruth Olson: No, we were. We had like.

Sam Schrager: There was one time for the whole high school.

Ruth Olson: Yes, one time for the whole high school. Those were the boys and girls and boys didn't have a second straight. Well, I have to go there and take care of this. So yeah, I think that.

Sam Schrager: When you first moved into dairy, what was the school situation that time of? They didn't have the high school?

Ruth Olson: No, just elementary school. When the folks first moved here. Of course, none of our family was yet in school when they first moved here. And then, of course, they built the building up that was up there close to where we live now. And my grandfather and uncle helped build it and my uncle was injured. He fell on it and they said that his death was a direct result.

Sam Schrager: Of Lord.

Ruth Olson: But that was building the second story building they had. It tells about the folks about halfway when they decided to put a side story on and so on.

Sam Schrager: Do you know how he fell?

Ruth Olson: What? No. He was working on up on top somewhere. You know.

Sam Schrager: What? What did you think of dearie, when you first moved?

Ruth Olson: Well, I just. Yeah, I was just six months old. And they hear you're just. Yeah, I was six months old, and they moved here, so I couldn't think about her.

Sam Schrager: Do you remember Harsh?

Ruth Olson: yeah.

Sam Schrager: Well.

Ruth Olson: He was. I think it was a real, I think a real good fellow to deal with. Now, I know when we got ready to go to school, the folks would go away to college. The folks couldn't afford to send. They didn't have the money and talk about it all the time. And he's like, I've never turned you down yet, have I?

Ruth Olson: So we got money, then we borrowed to go to school and paid it back. When we got out and started working.

Sam Schrager: I guess he had money. He had a more mixed reputation and I think bankers, a lot of bankers will tend to have that kind of reputation because those who were who they supported will think a lot more highly of him than they did.

Ruth Olson: Well, I think that may be true, too. And sometimes the people who maybe don't think so much of some of those people are the ones I don't know, but maybe some of them that got money and didn't want to pay it back or maybe trying to get out of I don't know. Yeah, there may be a reason for it.

Sam Schrager: But would you say that that that Mr. Harsh was really working for the good of the community?

Ruth Olson: I think so, yes. Yeah, I think definitely, yeah. As far as I remember, we had quite a few years back after we were out teaching quite a while.

Sam Schrager: Do you know what happened to the, to the bank and why and why failed eventually.

Ruth Olson: Once it was that the time was never to fail, you know, when the it was all over the country and, and that was probably we didn't get enough of it. Just like I said, maybe there's some of those that too many of them didn't have. They didn't know enough to come out of it.

Sam Schrager: I want to ask you about your wells in the Wells and the Wells family. Did did you remember them very well?

Ruth Olson: Well, it is this thing. Yeah.

Sam Schrager: But. But I don't think you.

Ruth Olson: know, Yes, I remember them and they were well liked and everyone, you know, they all respected them, so they were just included. You didn't think you were coming in at all and I did. We didn't have much contact with them, you know, except for the kids in school. Now, Louis Stern and Billy or in school or the school, when I was in there.

Ruth Olson: Of course, you they went with them that before. I don't remember. Or would even get there from his class. I don't remember. I remember going up there, went to, I don't know, meeting camp, our grove or something of them up there, their home, things like that. Up to Mary and Billy. I remember one time and the school one was one and we just thought Billy was wonderful and packing around on his back all the time and one day he'd been packing around and, and Billy came up to me and he says, he says, they say I'm a nigger and I'm not in my head.

Ruth Olson: But he he just felt that he was just accepted that way, you know? And he was they weren't feeling any department.

Sam Schrager: Well, I don't know to me that they're one of the most interesting families that I've heard about. And and know there's so much race prejudice. I mean, it's so much part of American history that that that to see how there are and there also are not very many Negro pioneers in the West. So there's not too many out here.

Sam Schrager: So to see how they how they were accepted is really is really and what they were like is people are real important. Well.

Ruth Olson: You think that they were brought out here by their white masters, you know, that they got enough of them to bring them out and set them up out here, too. You know, that they were pretty rough, but don't you have that or others that you've talked to about. Well, isn't that the general feeling? Yeah, right.

Sam Schrager: That's very, very well accepted.

Ruth Olson: And very well thought out by all the people.

Sam Schrager: And it doesn't stop there from being some some racial jokes that.

Ruth Olson: Well that's true, you know, or any part, no matter what nationality or what country your ancestors are from, why they jokes about them right then like I say to me is just like that. They have the Negroes. I think it's just the ones that are trying to stir up the trouble. But, you know, like Little Langston was like your little story that you aren't supposed to read to kids in school.

Ruth Olson: And they like that because racial stereotypes. Yeah. But now they have look at Haiti. That's a story of a little girl and it is. That is a wonderful story. And to me it's the same in the Whites. That was little Boy, there wasn't anything wrong when they were in like that. But still, why shouldn't children hear that story?

Sam Schrager: I think maybe that story had connotations from the South.

Ruth Olson: Well, probably.

Sam Schrager: That ah, when people some people think of it that way and not as a story, but. But I see what you're saying. Yes. What was one? Do you remember Mary being like the person she was.

Ruth Olson: Well, to me she was very, very hard working and she used to run the of war. He is going do things for that kind of thing for folks, housework, washing and ironing. And to me, she so she was always very kind. She was a person that I think everybody like really fellow Joe. Joe. Well Roy Roy.

Sam Schrager: Was Chuck and Roy were the brothers. Yeah.

Ruth Olson: And then.

Sam Schrager: Joe was the.

Ruth Olson: Father and the father years and they were all together. You know, they live. They're so great. They go home or they just never do this. That time, it's been one of the biggest houses in the country there on the Hill.

Sam Schrager: Do you have you heard about the starting of the school that why they called it that? Well, school.

Ruth Olson: Historically, I imagine so. You know, up there I close to the Wells place. Yes. It was on their land, I imagine because of Mary. I lived in the school house after it was and weren't there. They built the new school or the old schoolhouse.

Sam Schrager: I hear a lot about about Joe and the boys drinking. And I sometimes wonder if it's exaggerated or we really or it's hard drinking. This is some people I know.

Ruth Olson: Every month and I can't remember, can't go round and round, you know, round them enough that we would really know they were the boys were up there on the farm most of the time. I guess. And that I wouldn't know.

Sam Schrager: Do you think the local people ever would defend them against, you know, prejudice from the outside, You know, people elsewhere who don't know them and thing?

Ruth Olson: I think the old timers, the ones that were around here at that time especially, would I don't know about the present day people, but I think the ones that were here at that time were have don't you know, seem to me like they would, because they certainly were well, far.

Sam Schrager: Very, very down the line here.

Ruth Olson: No.

Sam Schrager: No.

Ruth Olson: She went to Poland and she I think so I think she went over there, started working at the college or something. I wouldn't say that as a fact, but I believe that's where she was. Some people weren't really certainly know the rising thing or.

Sam Schrager: Or what is there was a relationship there with the store and helping out who ran that there were were there a black person in the store there? Helen.

Ruth Olson: Mildred. Mildred, who was Chuck's wife, wasn't that in not Yes, No. And Chuck Prominent. How did Dan Ross get? Well, Dan was married to Mildred or was.

Sam Schrager: There was after she was who? Dan Ross. Was he a local?

Ruth Olson: He was raised up by him.

Sam Schrager: Or which me.

Ruth Olson: Quote. Families are also sort of like their own home.

Sam Schrager: Were were wishy washy. They're a Hellman for a long time and very long and she and and Chuck split up.

Ruth Olson: Quite a while, you know, until her death I guess she was there and that was Oklahoma years ago. And every time.

Sam Schrager: I was she was local. Right? She was from somewhere.

Ruth Olson: Yeah. So sometimes they off I don't know where.

Sam Schrager: I imagine there must have raised some eyebrows. It could even today, you know.

Ruth Olson: Well, I guess that's to be in with maybe in some cases it is. But I think they would just accept it and.

Sam Schrager: It's funny because I had heard about there being a Negro woman at death's door, and I did. I never thought to ask anyone who.

Ruth Olson: Because most time they were up there. That was after we were away teaching or at school or something. We went around here to my hearing of years.

Sam Schrager: Do you remember the fire very, very well that morning in 1923? I think that was the year that was what was the most serious of the.

Ruth Olson: Yeah. Yes, we were in.

Sam Schrager: You do.

Ruth Olson: I remember we woke up in the middle of the night for some plains and and about that time with the fire was the hardware store and then of course they carried ammunition and stuff there and things started popping. And the first thing I thought of one, a very good friend of mine was staying down there with her uncle there.

Ruth Olson: And I was really concerned if she was out my ride and there wasn't much and it just burned down. And I remember standing in the window at home and watching it there were, you know.

Sam Schrager: And then there just wasn't much water.

Ruth Olson: Well, there was they didn't have a system in that warm water system. They used to have a town well down back of the city hall now. And many people carry water from down there.

Sam Schrager: I was reading it, were looking through some of the very old dairy papers.

Ruth Olson: Over just now in.

Sam Schrager: The university library and microfilm. They happened. And in 1908, the editor, Peter Peterson.

Ruth Olson: Jane Peters.

Sam Schrager: Was was calling for, you know, getting a water system because of the fire danger in the town. 1908 He's talking about it right that way back then.

Ruth Olson: His son lives in Spokane. I guess what I'm saying was no one was smart enough not to be. I worked for him when I was in high school, Saturdays and after school I sat on all the typed by hand and distributed it all by hand and by the local paper. They had a that's for you, Mr. or Frank Davis and the like.

Ruth Olson: And they managed to find right things. Rain Man was turned off at 10:00 at night, from night after clock.

Sam Schrager: Were you paid for doing that? That worked for the newspaper.

Ruth Olson: $0.25 an hour. And then I worked all day Saturday, 8 hours per dollar. But even I worked after school. I got $0.25.

Sam Schrager: Now, do you actually set the tape yourself? Yourself, without paying for a going concern? Did he have other work?

Ruth Olson: Besides, he didn't have other work, but he lived on a shoestring, I think. I don't think he made enough to really make budgets. And my father marches along. Yes, that's right. People were more satisfied with then.

Sam Schrager: Well, I just you know, I've I've heard and read elsewhere how how the early day newspapers in a small town really were just a kind of marginal affair. I mean.

Ruth Olson: His hands on paper, I was trying to find a couple of high school annuals to show you one of those in here to show you the number of businesses in period of time was really surprising. They Had a shoemaker and they had a piano bar, a music house or a store. And really surprising the number of businesses going in.

Ruth Olson: Have you ever seen one of those annuals?

Sam Schrager: No.

Ruth Olson: I saw one of them there. That is the Court He got some legal notices. I remember that. That was one thing we had to be very careful about with the legal notices. And they were said in some little tiny fine type that took forever to get anything done, but they were seven different type.

Sam Schrager: I thought that was really important to to those legal notices were a kind of steady income, right?

Ruth Olson: Well, that that's right. They were they were all sure of that. And we did have some of those. But when I was playing basketball and I go down for school in the morning so I could practice basketball at five, get up and down here an hour or so before school. The telephone company that was owned by Bill Smith, that time I went garage Guy, he printed those down there.

Ruth Olson: Give me.

Sam Schrager: Yes, quite a few.

Ruth Olson: Surprising, you know. And then.

Sam Schrager: Quite a few.

Ruth Olson: Went to this one. Yes. That was Larry's first basketball team. And I took it down to Russell Foster and he really well, and some of the kids came in while I had a thing around. They thought that was something that I that's all they had on the team with my players and.

Sam Schrager: While there were more girls.

Ruth Olson: Yes, I know boys.

Sam Schrager: Well, I'd like to to you know, know some of what? Of what it was like, what kind of activities there were in India when you were just, you know, teenagers growing up. What there was to do, the small town in those days.

Ruth Olson: There weren't many things. Like we said, we made our own entertainment. We went out, we played games, we had costume parties, we had home parties, you know, where they they'd or maybe a school party at the schoolhouse during school term. But they didn't have to have somebody entertaining all the time.

Sam Schrager: There wasn't much organized.

Ruth Olson: No problem other than, you know, like she said in the schools, they had parties and in the homes. So many of the parents I know, they'd say, well, they'd rather have a party in the home and know where their kids were than to have them out someplace and not know where they were. For maybe one week they'd have a party at one person's home and maybe the next week somebody else it.

Sam Schrager: It be dancing.

Ruth Olson: Or games, more games. I think dancing was a party game.

Sam Schrager: What kind of party games are you.

Ruth Olson: All skipped Malone? Well, it's practically the same as square dance. Yes. And at that time they called it I know the first time I am. My folks don't approve of dancing. And I went out to Texas for the country school. And I'm very good friends. And I used to spend the weekend with her. And we went down to the schoolhouse and all that that kept coming on.

Ruth Olson: I can't remember all of them, but they were practically the same as the square dancers like in there. And I told mom, What if they played those things up there? And and of course, that was just about wrong, I guess. I don't know, because it was so much like dancing. But, you know, in a way I can't remember when come on like that.

Ruth Olson: I mean, that was one where you stand, you sit in a chair, in chairs in a circle, and the girls, the chairs and the boys stand back for them. And if there was only one more in the chairs. No. Yeah, well, one lesson. One lesson. The chairs and the ones standing up and the one that didn't have a partner, someone in their chair, They'd look at one of the others, and then they were supposed to try to get away and get over that chair.

Ruth Olson: But if they, their partner put their hands on their shoulder but they had to stay there, that's one thing. But some of the others I can't remember.

Sam Schrager: But why? Why we folks opposed to dancing?

Ruth Olson: Well, I don't know. A lot of them, I think, were in the early days.

Sam Schrager: You know, I've heard it. I know I've heard it before. And, you know, I wonder why. You know, I figure that they must've thought it wasn't you know, it wasn't moral for some reason. Or was.

Ruth Olson: It? I Don't know. A lot of them were. And later the folks, weren't they? We went to the school dances and and we went to Grange all the time and they went and and they danced at Grange after Grange meetings and things like that. But that one time they were.

Sam Schrager: Your parents themselves, too, You.

Ruth Olson: Know, they never dance. I don't I think I don't remember his brothers. They used to dance and then to I don't think the Lutheran church, I mean, when they were in the East, they belonged to the Lutheran church. I don't believe that they believed too much of that know.

Sam Schrager: I think perhaps.

Ruth Olson: No, I think that moment, of course, was one of their.

Sam Schrager: Where how did it happen that you both decided that you weren't to teach boys?

Ruth Olson: Well, you know, at that time there weren't many openings for our Mormon girls, you know, to get out. My older sister was a nurse invited last Thursday or last Saturday. They had their class reunions from when she graduated from the V.A. hospital, 50 years ago. And we had to stop there. And St Mary's on our way back. And she had two of her classmates there spending the night, well, spend several days with her.

Ruth Olson: And she'd been up Spokane. There were several in her class. And the doctors to the inner programs of the night before. And she's a great time about nursing and teaching. Some did office work, but I always to me, I always saw I, I want to teach. I like children and I wish that I'd like you. I would recommend.

Sam Schrager: You to get married or when you were going to school And then did you here for a long time in elementary school?

Ruth Olson: Well, I think the teachers play a lot. They are not much more. I had some teachers I thought an awful lot of and I really admired them. And I think that's one thing. And of course, my grandfather's the teacher. My mother was a teacher that taught, like I said, for some of the teachers that I had and I certainly admired.

Ruth Olson: And I thought a lot of and I think that's partly why I went that way.

Sam Schrager: Yeah. How about you?

Ruth Olson: Well, it's probably the same thing. And I was interested in modern and home economics, but I, I went up and started working with that and, and at the time couldn't go on to finish. We had to finish two years and go out worked. So I went to school and by the time I got to where I was, I ought to be able to go on and finish up.

Ruth Olson: I decided that I didn't want to work with the older ones. After seeing and working with younger ones and some of the problems coming from the older ones, I decided I'd rather stay with a lower level. Father's Day stayed elementary.

Sam Schrager: Well, I have to ask you what some of what you saw as the problems.

Ruth Olson: Well, those days, the older kids, some of these discipline problems and things that they were encountering in some of the some of the older ones, well, then they were so much minor and minor that. Yes. And they were they were minor. Like I said, some of the kids that I had been in school now or at a school when I was teaching and I thought they were kind of problems to a certain extent in troublemakers.

Ruth Olson: There wouldn't be anything compared to the things that I saw in the last few years that I taught.

Sam Schrager: Well, then give me an idea of what discipline problems would have been in those days. What you you know, what you saw as problems. So I get an idea, the difference between, well.

Ruth Olson: They wouldn't be considered problems at all. Now, just some of them may be rebelling a little bit about some of the things that maybe you asked them to do, just objecting and these kinds of things where they didn't want to get work to work and do what you're asking them to do and it wouldn't be anything today when you see some of the things now and every time that you try to do there for the last few years, you try to get some of them to do something and but you make me do this or you do that like my folks are going to sue you and this kind of thing.

Ruth Olson: Is this the thing that is coming up now? All the time we thought too much the last few years we were getting.

Sam Schrager: Where do you think you got the interest in home economics from?

Ruth Olson: Probably from my mother. She helped us a lot. She helped us with cooking, she helped us with sewing and this kind of thing. And that's the kind of thing I like to do and do with her. Now, some of the the family weren't as much interested in that kind of thing. They'd like to go outside and work in the yard and do things like that more.

Sam Schrager: Did you go to to Moscow? No, This.

Ruth Olson: Was my first. The college of the 18. I don't I didn't Vermont, but all of us, my college was outside, so I went to Lewiston one summer. Otherwise it's all on the boat.

Sam Schrager: But it was for financial reasons that made you decide to start teaching.

Ruth Olson: Yes, I had. I finished two years and then went out to teach to begin with.

Sam Schrager: Where did you go to school?

Ruth Olson: I did mathematics and I work at Cheyney too.

Sam Schrager: How did you happen to go to Cheyney?

Ruth Olson: Well, I know I had my aunt there. I had a couple of cousins there and things like that to make sure I had a finding that was part of what influenced us or in a way to I kind of this older sister was in Spokane at the time training, and I thought, Well, I guess I'll be close to an friend.

Ruth Olson: And I used to spend a lot of weekends in Spokane with her at the hospital, and Cheyney was considered a very good school at that time. I think it was rated higher than most of the. Of course, Cheyney and Louis were the two or three teachers was training colleges. They got them at that time and I, I think Cheyney had better it was right higher than the U.S. I am several quarters of course the summer school there and I went we went to Mount Carmel, went to Bellingham and.

Sam Schrager: Again, tell me a little about what college life was, was was like then I've heard I've read about the twenties is there as being the flapper age that people were were it was more collegiate maybe than it had been before. Maybe it wasn't that way. Achieving that. Just curious about the.

Ruth Olson: What would you say? Well, I want to collaborate on your own three camps. Is there much difference when that was any other age? Using those things? there were no cars on campus. You know, if anybody had a car, they were just left at home. Well, I know that when we were up there one time when we were there, we a bunch of us decided we wanted to come from a lonely island and we decided we wanted to come home.

Ruth Olson: And a friend of mine from Dallas and they borrowed a car. This was out of the car and there were only six or six of us not in that old touring car came over the weekend, and that way it was very seldom that anyone had a car at that time, you know, around the campus at all. I don't know.

Ruth Olson: We were at Boston and that's quite a ways you can discover how we were here. And if we want to go downtown, You know, when it first walked in, we walked down the back of the school into the dorm. And, you know, even those schools that there wasn't too much social activity. There was absolutely no another thing. There was absolutely no smoking allowed in the dorms at all.

Ruth Olson: I remember we went into a friend's room one evening and she was all panicky. We'd had a house meeting and the housemother announced there was no smoking and she did smoke, but she had quite a few cigarets there. She was getting them wrapped up in a hurry. So she could send them home the next day to get them out of her room because she was afraid to be kicked out of school if they were found there.

Ruth Olson: Sure. Hustling around those things. Here was a she was Montana kids day, very tumultuous day the first year I was there. I don't I don't think you know her.

Sam Schrager: Were there were there any any man at the school going to school for teacher training, too?

Ruth Olson: yes. They had one dorm. All men in the dorm.

Sam Schrager: But still, it seemed to me like a great majority of the teachers were.

Ruth Olson: that's true. Yeah. Most of them represented women there. And I remember when I lived in Lewiston, we had Spalding and Norris home. I know.

Sam Schrager: But I want to ask you that this did you feel at all at the time that there was the concern about a lack of opportunity for women?

Ruth Olson: I you know, I've always, of course, that they didn't talk about racial or racial prejudice. They're not in the realm of discrimination. But I can't it's true that man, of course, a little later when they had so much activity in athletics, the men would get their salary from teaching and they also got a salary for coaching and that and then they got salaries and women.

Ruth Olson: And in book there was books there. And it shows there isn't too much discrimination, is there? No. In the salary gives the salary of the men and women in the school and I can't see where the women were discriminated against too much.

Sam Schrager: I think that what strikes me is that is the the fact that most that almost all women had to go if they wanted a career into either teaching or.

Ruth Olson: Nursing, it was limited at that time. That's definitely true. Now, I if I had lived around many years later, I certainly would have gone into forestry or something like that at that time. That would be unthinkable. I had to work for the Forest Service and all that kind of stuff, and I really enjoy that kind of stuff. But I at that time I wasn't doing my work.

Ruth Olson: I think a woman was crazy for driving. Going to that fair.

Sam Schrager: I think that's what I mean, that looking back at it, that seems like a narrow view of what women could do.

Ruth Olson: Well, of course, a lot of them didn't expect to go. A lot of them expected to marry and go in and they didn't expect to go out and work after they were married. They expect to stay home and take care of their home and their family. And there were so many going out looking for jobs.

Sam Schrager: Well, that's another thing. It strikes me that, you know, it seems like most women who were who were married, who say they taught for a few years, they got married then they always seemed to start teaching. Now, was that were they do you know whether that was what they were, what they had to do or whether it wasn't just wanted to to start.

Ruth Olson: Schools wouldn't hire a married teacher? Very well. They were married and then their job was over.

Sam Schrager: But what's the what would the reason for that being that there would be that they would I mean, there's no I just can't right now.

Ruth Olson: I don't really know. Well, I think that maybe it was because there were too many openings. They felt that this other woman had a man to take care of. But the likelihood and what necessary job. Now, I know a lot of like some friends, you know, they they were married, but they kept it a secret for just who was out because they wanted an education.

Ruth Olson: And it happened quite often. They knew that if the school knew that there were very well, then, you know, I guess a contract doesn't I don't know, maybe the contract stated that it may environmental.

Sam Schrager: Of course, that might or might not be true of that. I would think that I mean, I imagine in some cases a family would be struggling could be very much struggling with just one member of the family working. I mean the reason that one of the main reasons why both my spouses were both in work these days is because it takes too long.

Sam Schrager: You know.

Ruth Olson: They didn't the man I mean, they didn't expect I didn't have to have everything. I don't want to here. When I was there, I went to Colfax to teach. Our principal was really put out. He says these some of these younger folks coming in wanting jobs. And then he says they'd call him as a principal and ask him if he could find them an apartment or to help him find an apartment.

Ruth Olson: And he says they won't have anything but the bare pieces. Thelma and I well, the he still they were still using a wood stove. He says we're satisfied with that. But he says he's no one's coming out, won't have anything but electric range and everything. The best of everything.

Sam Schrager: With this been in the in the fifties maybe here.

Ruth Olson: Yeah 5840.

Sam Schrager: Yeah. So then then you're saying expectations really changed that.

Ruth Olson: That's right. Yeah.

Sam Schrager: When I think about it then it seems like it seems like a person would be forced to make a choice if he were woman teaching between their, you know, family career to some extent. If you wanted to teach.

Ruth Olson: That's right. They would.

Sam Schrager: Which is a choice that men certainly didn't have to make at all. When you first taught where where where were you teaching?

Ruth Olson: My first year was in a rural school out here. So still this building still standing on your subsidiary.

Sam Schrager: What was it the.

Ruth Olson: Applicant.

Sam Schrager: Was offered?

Ruth Olson: You know where Alvin Nelson is?

Sam Schrager: No, I don't think.

Ruth Olson: Just across from the house that he's living in. I bet that this whole farmhouse that he's living in now and talking, that was my first school.

Sam Schrager: Was a way to teach. Well, start with.

Ruth Olson: Very little to do with practically nothing. And supply carried your work, carried water, not fire or swept the floors as part of your work along with teaching you or janitor. Do you know lights? And sometimes I think they were a lot better than they are. They the sanitation, you know. And there would be some stuff like that in here.

Ruth Olson: They have no water bucket on back in the school. And sometimes I had a different name there, but sometimes we had they had their tin cups, you know, but drank out of the same door and they sent it to.

Sam Schrager: Did you feel it that you could where did you where were you?

Ruth Olson: Mine was out here too. I thought it sounded like. to storage at the old school is still standing. And it was a very well, I was it was a two room school and I had a first four grades. And Mr. Barrett, his son, lives in Moscow now. But, Mr. Barrett, we talk for your grades.

Sam Schrager: It sounds a little luxurious to have two rooms there for the school and two teachers.

Ruth Olson: Well, that.

Sam Schrager: Was it, because there were a lot of kids.

Ruth Olson: And there was a lot. Yes. For that. Well, a farm for so much more. And they are now up there on the ridge and you know the houses. Well, we'll say, well, we drive along there with some of these friends. Well, this was where all the horses in this were terrible place used to be. Those were in various houses.

Ruth Olson: And you can place after place, the house is gone. And at that time, of course, families living there with three or four or five children in the family. So there was quite a few, just a lot of people at the time.

Sam Schrager: Did you feel that that you could that you could take care of all of the needs for the kids and the way of learning at that time or was with having to teach so many grades? Was it was it really difficult?

Ruth Olson: It was difficult. But children learn. I mean, they learn from each other a lot. Yes, they did. For younger children. Listen to the older ones and our school, they was longer. It is today. And then we never let out before 4:00 at night. And some of those kids, you know, from those rural schools that come in the high school and do fine, you know, do as well and work better than some of those living in town.

Ruth Olson: Of course, now I'm a little person just to have the range of or the fields that they can go into. But those in those rural schools, they they came in and I think they were just ready for their high school and their colleges a lot of years you look back at some of them, they all that have gone on and and well, there's one little boy that I remember that school that plans your classroom, you know, down between your trouble and he was very bright, a bright child.

Ruth Olson: And I think I had three years in that school and he went on to high school. And of course, when he got in high school, you just can't get the ability to do that. He went on to college and the doctor now look at that year that that report was in the paper from Moscow. They had the averages from the school throughout the state.

Ruth Olson: Elk River would have top average of high school students at the University of Idaho. And Gary had the third ranking out of at least four high schools and those kids were mostly kids that had come in from rural schools and got by.

Sam Schrager: Or is thinking that that it was better, actually.

Ruth Olson: Well, I don't say it was better, but I think at that time, I think you were doing just as good a job for the children in the rural schools as as they were in the in town. They just had the fundamentals that I mean, that the well, like you might say, the reading, writing, arithmetic, this like that. Of course, we went into social studies like that.

Ruth Olson: They didn't expect all this extra stuff that they expect nowadays. And I don't think some of us.

Sam Schrager: Necessary extra stuff. Like what? Like band and that sort of thing.

Ruth Olson: Well, that's all right for kids after they get out the way. But I think sometimes they start that take their kids in the car up to a meeting place like my wife and kids hike up there. And that's cool. You know, when you think of that, there's those kids in the country that work for the school. It wasn't good.

Ruth Olson: I mean, it was hard, I'm sure. But they they certainly and it just seemed to hurt them. Any one thing that I know, we kind of when we were over there, mostly they got at one time, they got the idea that whenever we took the children out for recess, they should be have a supervised game, that they should be playing all at the same thing.

Ruth Olson: And we said no. We thought that they needed to get out there and have some freedom of their own where they decided what they were going to. We'd be there to supervise so they didn't get hurt or get into trouble in this kind of thing. But we didn't think it should be supervised play. And I think they need more of this for their on their own to do the kind of activities they want to do.

Sam Schrager: Do you think that kind of means that there's too much organization that goes on now or two to too much expecting every all the kids to do the same thing or Yeah.

Ruth Olson: I think they're all very different than in they're not supposed to be their free time, especially I think I think they should they need and like I say, we objected to that and until finally we weren't required to do it anymore because we tried, we finally, I think, made them see that we built it and they didn't need that.

Ruth Olson: So we are that is that organized planning. We needed to be there. Supervisory. Okay. This is it is now this is three, four, four or five. Yes, it's a seventh grade.

Sam Schrager: But did you do most of your teaching around here?

Ruth Olson: Yeah, no, I taught in rural schools here for several years now. I was at Colfax for 11 years and it what was it like for 16 years and.

Sam Schrager: What did you teach?

Ruth Olson: Mostly for intermediate grade or anything? I was looking around and.

Sam Schrager: Then I taught at park.

Ruth Olson: Yes.

Sam Schrager: What was that like? Did you find Park?

Ruth Olson: I enjoyed it out there. I really did. It was parks, this little community of own. And they they made their own entertainment. We didn't have a car, so we'd get in and out whenever we wanted to go through an interstate. If we went out lots of time in the wintertime, we went out with the sledding team and, you know, you would understand a child.

Ruth Olson: You would understand when you lived in a community like that. You can understand children a lot more, a lot better. You. Well, I know I had my little girl. She just used my words all the time, constantly. And when I got to know our parents, I knew why because that was part of our conversation and why. I mean, it wasn't a child's problem.

Ruth Olson: That's all she heard at home. So she had to separate that except as a way to talk. And I. I don't want to much that you have to be careful. And I tried to talk to her and tell her I asked that we don't talk like that and she will. Why don't you? And you really got to understand the child.

Ruth Olson: And you could see that a lot of their problems are caused by and I enjoyed it.

Sam Schrager: Did you feel there was much chance to help children with their problems?

Ruth Olson: Well, or some you could some there wasn't too much that was just their way of life.

Sam Schrager: I just was thinking more what he what teachers in those days would feel they they were responsible to do if they could. If you could make a neat division between studies and and personal things or or if they had to deal with both.

Ruth Olson: Well, you have to deal with what you had to deal with both trying to get them to see their responsibilities in their study and then in their behavior and all that. It was it all worked together. Just like I think that the teacher, you had your guidance people in your schools and everything like that. But I think a teacher has more effect or can work better in guiding a child.

Ruth Olson: And then these people come in and and try to there are psychologists and all that. You have more influence on me or with them every day.

Sam Schrager: Did you feel that you got to know the kids really well? yeah, you can.

Ruth Olson: You know, that was clearly especially those are all you really I think your invite, you were invited into their homes, you were in their homes and you saw how they lived and you knew the children so much better than nowadays.

Sam Schrager: Do you think that the kids and those in those communities, were they I know this a hard thing to know, but were they individuals? You know, they do they stand out as individuals or were they? I often get the feeling that kids today are tend to to to be more of a well, I don't know. I don't have a very long time span to look at it all, you know, 25 years.

Sam Schrager: And so it seems like there there's a lot of similarities. Kids, you know, one kid to another.

Ruth Olson: This is a real I don't know. I think that kids to a certain extent were individuals. But then, too, when you think about these little communities, they all were together so much all the time that they just but they seem to get along most of the time. They say they seem to not have any difficulties. When I when I returned, it was like they gave this book and they had written to this was just showing what impressed a child in those days, this one that wrote this letter.

Ruth Olson: She is a teacher's book. And and I had her in a rural schools up by Crystal River and it says thank you for spending some of your teaching time at Megan school and I Idaho. I was so glad I was privileged to have you as my fifth grade teacher. As I look back on that year, I find I have many memories and they're happy ones.

Ruth Olson: Indeed The Christmas programs we had in La Grange Hall, the delicious soup and spaghetti you fixed on the wood stove for our hot lunch, the walks we took looking for wildflowers, the baseball. I was hit square in the eye with a fast one of the library furniture. Furniture we made from orange crates and apple boxes. They were beautiful, painted orange and blue.

Ruth Olson: The walks to school with the hearse, the Herald and the hearse children. And that kind of shoes showed me that. But they had such a terrible side. And but anything like that that I like that you knew the child and you thought of them and tried to work with them and do for them and I know we used to write the afternoon.

Ruth Olson: I can remember down it pleasant. How about. that's good on anybody between here and try That was after recess on Friday. We had a while kind of a crafts time and we had cooking start and things like that and then cut out all magazine racks and we painted with crayons and things like that and sent to the county fair.

Ruth Olson: And that was a big time for them. It took so little at that time, just like this, to make an impression on. We have so much in our lives today and kids have so many things to play with that these little things I make furniture out of a crate to them. To Nana, that meant a lot. And today they have too much.

Ruth Olson: But still a lot of children love to to learn and work with their hands. I've never they don't do it too much anymore. I think.

Sam Schrager: It was a really simple thing that she's.

Ruth Olson: Talking about. That's right. And I have raised her so much and.

Sam Schrager: You think that teacher had a special role in the community and the community's life?

Ruth Olson: Definitely. A teacher was one of the most respected people in the. And don't you think so? I think so thank you for so many things. You know, just as normal man. He was 87 years old and they had that. They used to have parties at the school. A lot of a child had a birthday. They'd bring a cake, little music come up there.

Ruth Olson: And this day Mr. Chamberland came up to me and he says, Say Ruth. He says, And how many petticoats do women wear nowadays? And I said, Well, I usually wear just one. And he says, That's what I told Lenny, that she was bound of the long three to the you that you were asked the question you knew it would be.

Sam Schrager: You were asked you asked about the way things should be done.

Ruth Olson: Yeah.

Sam Schrager: And it was the etiquette.

Ruth Olson: Okay. They thought they considered that teacher quite literally the another thing that always was a plain that this one mother told me, she says so and John Rowan from Voyager one day and and she said she was in the living room and there was a door was open to hear them talking and they were talking about people and and so you said, well, mother is smart.

Ruth Olson: And John says, yes, but she hasn't the smartest results and is also not almost much as God. And but that was their idea. You can answer their simple questions, and that's the way they don't have to answer their questions. And there's question. Q They were simple ones, and you had an answer for my Someday, Yes, I'm even now.

Ruth Olson: And I taught first grade for many years, even in the first grade by then, you know, a lot of times they felt the teacher I was very much you can't palm room off my friend and Jonathan.

Sam Schrager: Would you be asked for a by I want one teacher told me that that that she would send actually sent for information on things that that local people wanted to know about things and she couldn't answer. Did you ever have that kind of experience of, you know, being asked for technical advice? You know, this was, I think, digging.

Sam Schrager: Well, digging.

Ruth Olson: wow. I don't know we've ever done that. I remember ever doing that. But yes, lots of times we refer them to places where they could send for information, where they come in and want information on something. And they you couldn't and maybe you'd refer them to some I. Don't remember ever having sat for it but well, now, like here over there at Moses Lake, I know one time one of the mothers came through and I had well, Margaret started getting the range for her room at school.

Ruth Olson: It's surprising how much money you spend in your school room for the kids. You know, you're your salary and Margaret ordered range of and her kids had enjoyed it very early folks and so I had copies of Major Ruth in school. I subscribe for it and a mother came to school and. She said her son had been telling things that we've been talking about, you know, nature.

Ruth Olson: And and I showed her the strange fruit. I said, if you want to get something for him. And the boy was a very bright boy, and he was definitely interested in that kind of stuff. I, I think one of the nicest things you getting for Christmas be a subscription of orange or white red. And so she did. And one of the first things that they saw when they got to the magazine was something about submarines and they were over the ice up north, you know, and it happened to be that one of the fellows in the submarine was telling the story was Dick and a known him was in work with him and all that

Ruth Olson: much. The boy in the school said that man, that story was a friend of his dad's, but that they they do books and things like that. They often ask for information what to get for a child or whatever, because they're they're interested in a book that would fit the need. I had, you know, Bobby Nelson in my room, his brother was in, and I he took a day off from school to go over me.

Ruth Olson: And he came in over Sam.

Sam Schrager: Was there any special kind of any special books that that you found were really especially nice for to read to the kids and your teaching things. And you thought were really, you know, spoke to them well.

Ruth Olson: So I think it varied according to your your class and your movie interests. I think one one group the read one thing one another. But there were books that, I can't recall what ones are now particular. But one year I read that maybe two or three years later I thought, well, that would fit this class and use the same book.

Ruth Olson: But this is one thing I think that definitely they need is some book that you're reading. Two of them, because it carries along and keeps and keeps them going along for the year and it's something that they enjoy.

Sam Schrager: And which keeps them going along the way.

Ruth Olson: They wait for the next chapter.

Sam Schrager: I remember feeling that way when I was in school.

Ruth Olson: Sometimes they did. You have to stop right there and you stop right there on purpose. Yes.

Sam Schrager: Did you teach did you do much for teaching here? And you did you talk around?

Ruth Olson: We talk in in some we talk. Let's see. I was in Idaho, 18 years, in Washington, 25, I guess so. So we were I was in Washington.

Sam Schrager: Was there a particular reason why you you both did better teaching over there than here?

Ruth Olson: Well, I went there about the time of the war. I was in on the salaries, you know, And so that was it. I was retired and everything. I was in Plummer and just across the line they called me and asked me if I'd be interested in coming to Fairfield. And the salary was so much better. And that's part of what you teach, you know?

Sam Schrager: Yeah, yeah.

Ruth Olson: Down to the if I back to Plummer, they want me to take over as the principal. I knew there were some problems coming up that I didn't want to do that.

Sam Schrager: But did you see much consolidation going on when you were teaching?

Ruth Olson: Well, most of the schools we went in through were pretty well consolidated already. That was the ones that weren't consolidated with course to begin with. Here we were in rural schools and they later came in here, but we were away from here at the time before. These are the range that's talked about. so Nature magazine and I've always been kind of a viewing for nature.

Ruth Olson: I like that. And Steel and Caney and Rimrock and Fern Hill and Applecross and Elwood Buckhorn Libertine all out south of town here. Well, I'm between here and Troy. There was Brannon and then, you know, Spring Valley, just right along our. Well, there's Bear Creek. Over Creek. Yes. And right between here and try and quite close to the highway to.

Sam Schrager: These ones that you listed are all on on Texas Ridge because there are was there do you think there was a wide variation on these little schools in terms of the size of the of the attendance number of kids that were going into teaching?

Ruth Olson: I think there was I think some of them were always quite a bit smaller than others. But no, liberty was always a one room school with Buckhorn and Elwood, two or two room school and the old steel school is what is now the dining room. Don Granger Well, the Buckhorn School is the house up here that are our top cardholders that was brought in and they made into our house.

Sam Schrager: We'll ask you about the depression and and what effect that had around on people out here yourselves.

Ruth Olson: Well, we just plain didn't have much. There were were times when you didn't have anything for money to buy anything. Well, we had I don't know, one day it was after the banks closed and we had our warrants. We got more children, school, they had neuroprotection, we had those. And then dairy bank had closed and we had, of course, someone in Missouri Bank got a great deal, but we had our warrants, we had a checking account, dairy and that no cash.

Ruth Olson: We couldn't get any. And my dad, we wanted to buy a tire. We I guess we had a flat tire on the way to Moscow or someplace. Anyway, we wanted to buy it on that at trial. When we came through here, we didn't have any cash or anything like that. Of course, I imagine if we'd gone to Oklahoma, Dinsmore had a service station.

Ruth Olson: We could have gotten into that. But we didn't want to. We wanted to pay for it. And perhaps as well, just too many reasons I in to see only Borman for equal and he went and told them that man is warrants. I guess we had to come on in and we had to cash in and we needed some money and all.

Ruth Olson: He says, well they said, I can't let them have all the cash, but said, just checking, come here, just let me write checks, you know, when they want to send money that way. So that's when we started making it, trying that now never just tied up every position and just we couldn't pay our board room. We were boarding and roaming out in the school.

Ruth Olson: We couldn't pay them. We didn't have anything to pay at work.

Sam Schrager: Because you weren't being paid for teaching.

Ruth Olson: Right? We were getting warrants, but they weren't taking them anyplace, you know, until we that were pretty darn good to get a cash. And many of the times our warrants were registered and either we had to get a bank that would take them and hold them, or we had to hold them until they were called because we weren't funds from the district funds to pay them.

Sam Schrager: Where were you teaching at that time?

Ruth Olson: I was out park at the time. I met the person who.

Sam Schrager: Spoke in the area. Did you see its effects on and the communities that you were that you were teaching did it and did it cause a much of a change?

Ruth Olson: I don't know. It was a great big change. I think they just made the best of it for our community. The school was the center of the community, you know, and everything that all their parties, their social life, they sort of revolved around them. Of course, they had their church meetings and their ladies. They had never of course, we were teaching and couldn't go to those and that, but they found their social life in the community.

Ruth Olson: They didn't have to go out for entertainment, anything like that, kind of some people wouldn't call it much entertainment. And even we've said so often the way things people go nowadays, and I remember that I had been down in Henry grade twice when I graduated from high school. We went down to Kennewick, wants to play basketball, and they took us down in the back of the truck and once we went to Lewiston, they have our graduation pictures taken and I don't think much more than that.

Sam Schrager: Moscow So the school, the school was generally really the social center of, of the small of the community.

Ruth Olson: Well, you know, you hear me say of you went into school they took the everything away from the community and didn't have any gathering place or anything other than the schools. But buildings weren't maintained or taken care of and eventually torn down, moved out.

Sam Schrager: I heard that said, even in big communities like Flyover, which last mile school that's just changed, do you think the schools was was it still highly important in in a town like Gary? I mean, did it still have the same important role or was it was it considerably less important because of the other things?

Ruth Olson: I think it was pretty important that maybe not quite as much, but I think the schools were the center. They everybody was interested in the schools and what was going on there and helping them.

Sam Schrager: I remember this day much longer. And I'm wondering I just want to ask you just a little bit more about during the time in the twenties and you know what the I mean, it seems so different to me. These small towns like Derian and Genesee is another good example. Elk River is another one. Of course they lost the mill.

Sam Schrager: But you seem to know to look at this kind of thing and see all the businesses and all that. It was that was going on. Was it pretty much self-sufficient, the town? I mean, in terms of what for your needs, the families shopping and all that kind.

Ruth Olson: Of thing, they had to be they didn't have any way to get out. Yes. But catalog.

Sam Schrager: You. They do they use their to wrap up much.

Ruth Olson: yeah. Yeah. That was there. of course very At one time they had a stores where they carried dry goods. A lot more of it had materials that are sewing in that and there Curtis had a real nice hardware store here and I think I guess there are changes in everything. Yeah he's a transportation It's so easy to get out and get things other places and like we say, just like having the phone mail there without a store and just have a little place.

Ruth Olson: Now, are they going to get the milk and a few things like that. It's just going to and it's going to Yeah. A hardship on some of those people because I don't think that having transportation now, are they going to get more of the staples and that I haven't been in that place out there but they say they carry just that just a few things articles.

Ruth Olson: Have you been in there?

Sam Schrager: Yeah I have been here a couple of years. Yeah.

Ruth Olson: Well, of course they just changed. They lost their store this spring.

Sam Schrager: then I don't know about that.

Ruth Olson: No, I see their. Their store is gone and in the back of a tavern, they had one room there.

Sam Schrager: I know that one.

Ruth Olson: They can get milk and bread things by now.

Sam Schrager: That's a shame.

Ruth Olson: It is. And all they have. And when you finally were over to it, they called on Margaret over to that. I don't know where that meeting was, what aging when they were talking about this, but they said they had the money in the district to buy a bus. And we went over. When we got there, we thought it was all from Moscow.

Ruth Olson: And we told them, we said, well, we thought Bovill and places like that before they needed to be considering a bus. They're the ones that needed more than these people so that they can get the entertainment. Those people need it because of necessity. At the meeting, so many of the Moscow people said, Well, this would be wonderful if they could buy so that they could attend these night entertainments, the university, things like that.

Ruth Olson: That's further interest was and well, one woman said that they had a bus that's how bus there she rode downtown every day. Well, I don't think that was really necessary. But to people like Wolfgang Mobil there and there, taxpayers in the county and supported, they are entitled to something, too. And even if they had a bus once or twice a week so they can get out because before long they aren't going to be able to get, know, perishable vegetables and things like that.

Ruth Olson: But yes. they could have both. And so on that entertainment, the phone's fine. But I think some of these necessities are that they're just those people up there are bad are struggling. Five we said we go we have our own transportation as far as we're concerned. If we want to get someplace bad enough, we go. But some of these people, they just can't drive.

Ruth Olson: They don't drive, they don't have transportation. And one time they brought them back on that bus from Moscow to Derry and I had gone down there to meet one of them that I knew was coming back to take something down for. And they several from Belleville came down. And the one who was supposed to come back to get them, they have to get their own transportation this far and back.

Ruth Olson: They weren't there. They were stranded. How were they going to get back to Baltimore? I said, Well, we take them up. So we took them up there and they're just in bad need for something.

Sam Schrager: And I think you no question about that. I've always I felt that way for a long time about need for transportation in the county. But Moscow has a population.

Ruth Olson: That's right.

Sam Schrager: And they seem to have the clout.

Ruth Olson: That's right.

Sam Schrager: Well, I'll get going once we get down towards 12.

Ruth Olson: Almost ten to.

Sam Schrager: One more. Think they used to have revivals around here and here. What do you remember?

Ruth Olson: Well, this was just funny. This it was in the times when times were harsh. So there's a couple of us. Well, a young man and his sister of with family and all got and it really got pretty hot and so and his first wife was later out of town for those person of the year and it was a dollar and that was a lot of money.

Ruth Olson: And, you know, and so he put that in and he was so mad. And she says, well, of course to them that having that dollar so they could go to a dance like more important than that, bring it into this situation. But the economy I mean, I always remember how disgusted Miller was at town for putting their collection plate.

Sam Schrager: I could.