Latah County Oral History Collection

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: And my brother. I hope maybe you work fast enough that we can all agree that bad roads and everything are going off road and that's part, you know, very often we never, never know. I know I never went to Boston with any of my kids either. You had all your kids around you? yes. Then a woman would come there and say that it was nice to be able to go, to stay in bed for nine days.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: yeah. That's what we did. No, it was just the midwife. And I believe again, you know, no mother never had a doctors, but then they used to always go to that. We went with her while she was having to be run away from the house. Well let's see. You were one of the older kids that now is all oldest.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: So. And I, we're in Spokane. And then when they were married, time off and had a baby. Not every time, a few times. And I had to come home and I said, No, I'm not.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: That's all I did. you helped at the birth for your. No, no, no. You just did. The house ran up, and I had to carry them baby, mama and baby across the street. And that was. I was too young for that, too. I was too young to go and take the babies when they got out there, I had to do the work.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Now, the girls never have the money, I think. yeah? Yeah. These.

Unknown Speaker: I don't know, maybe or something.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: And that's why I didn't care to have any kids when I got married. Because I. You get the kids. boy. You had midwives, too?

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Yeah, they thought they were. They were already. Would they just help and just kind of be around or did they. Yeah, I didn't have. No, not really. I didn't need any. I was able to save the world. I mean, I was just a little older than I. It's okay for somebody to sleep for many hours and then horrible.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Many hours. It was terrible. They were getting ready for something. Third. They didn't have anything to give you then. Well, the first time I was mad. The first time. yeah. I thought it was terrible. Never again said you don't like. I thought it was terrible, but he just laughed at me. yeah. Do you miss American.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Value for that?

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: And you knew you were. You were awake the whole time. They didn't put you out, No. My mother, she never had any. I wonder. She loved to travel. The U.S. more than here. No one out there on the farm. Whereas we had all the water by the barrel with the horse and. And the bobsled barrel and bobsled and all the water from down below the spring.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: There. Why is cause everybody quit doing the same thing that goes on around there. yeah, but life goes down there. They heat in the water right there. The great wash right down there on the border. They just hang around the bushes all around there. And they tried more time in the summertime, but there wasn't the resistance, frankly, it was a spring up there.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: So, so often that spring, they're still there, that late spring. And then we get spring. We'll have you off clothes in the winter. Or did you? yes. We have to wash clothes in the house. We didn't have to wash them by hand. I don't see how they ever got to clean lot of dirty clothes, you know, Live on the farm.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Yeah. All the underwear, long underwear, big particles. And very often, like I see the big kind of goes like on the floor. And then they boil them in a bear in the boiler. Well, it was the first and they boil them too, you know, and then businessmen hang them on the line, you know. Well, how often did you wash?

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: I think they don't want we didn't wash them on days like we do now. We went dirty I guess, and take a big tub and then take a bath in the tub upstairs. And then we put the tub upstairs. And then it was dark water up there in the bucket. And so you did take it up the stairs.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: That's gross. You didn't think that somebody would like to do an audit? So, what, you like took a bath once a week? Yeah, I got one once a week. We had a night. Just a nice game to stay up, not to watch, mention any time any more. Think about it every day. It wasn't that particular. Then we couldn't do it.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Yeah, I couldn't. We had a house on our houses. We had to go out to the outside hotels in the winter, in the summer, and in the dark over here. yeah. We'd be like with us months ago. I come. We're supposed to leave the country. We had to. I remember. I used to be afraid of the train, you know, Come to town.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: well, how old were you when you first came down? I don't know. I can't remember that. But you remember this house and you remember. yeah, I remember the big house. And you take yourself down here. They used to maybe fall on average people down here, and. And you take it home to mine? No, but to separate since then.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Okay. We used to ride the lumber wagons and the lumber wagon with within the use sleds in the wintertime. Did you come to town very often? No, we did sometime real. We rented Erie sometimes in that market. There's a part. We closed it up and out of girls up there and always go to get cocoa real hard that we could go on top of the crest.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: We could run all around the country right on top of you in that cold. And it's the coal, you know, that was hard. Yeah, an awful deep snow. And I wish it could get hard to get to it. Just jump through. And they don't like that much snow therapy. They don't get snow like that around here anymore. No, never was a bad since.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: We've seen a lot of Hollywood movies, kids like the Coast very long, long ways. Sounds like you had a real active youth. You did. We didn't get run around. We didn't get to go anyplace much, you know, because we lived country. When I went there, we walked and we went to go to dance. We got older. We had to we went to play the dances.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: we did. You said you went to the country school up there. Yeah, Used to meetings up there and. And parties and Christmas food programs and. yeah, well, us for the whole community or just for the school, for the whole community. I mean, just for that community, you know. Yeah. Yeah. But everybody that lived around, whether they have kids or no ways that programs up there could be Christmas trees, people wouldn't come.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: There was just that school. And now this is the Dry Creek school or they didn't call it the dry creek. Then they call it backwards to Bear Creek. There could we always call it backward? Is this anywhere near where the Olson's lived? On Dry Creek? Yeah. We didn't live far from there, but there many also there had also seen all of our carloads.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: we didn't look the part because there's a big family there, you know? Yeah, I remember. I used to go there. I was moving long table. Loved it to draw on a table home. Are you in pretty good family? Do we have a big, long homemade table then those around there? Well, you know, and they put pancakes in in the morning.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: not a poor transport. We always eat pork that we call the bacon report makes our reports, you know, calculation. I'm like, this sounds, it takes it all different and caucuses it so it isn't better than takes the same cream never well tasted better. Yeah nothing at all. Sailors there and they never had any. I don't see how they kept everything that never had.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: No, no. Well, what did you make on your bread? Bacon grease. sometimes we take the grease from the bacon and picture green and eat it with pancakes. we like that. The sugar and they sergeant molasses in my folks. But, Sergeant, some of them, we didn't like it pretty good. you're not sure, We didn't like Sergeant difference.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: You know, we don't eat that and we never eat that.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: These kids have been wounded all cooking. You mother, do it all. Or did you have to help? I guess that now, did you? Your dad? My mother, she never needed stockings and mittens and all kinds of things for us, right? Homemade made stockings, you know. Well, we've tested them. These homemade medicines and stockings. And then I had leggings through outside and, you know, on the side as well.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: But nothing went forward. A lot of work done and stockings and leggings outside because we had to open it because it would keep you warm and was good for you. I don't know. We never got underdressed. We had long ways to walk to, but we had neighbors that combined. Well, did you speak Swedish or Norwegian at home or did we have to learn English when we start school?

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Because we didn't know anything else but we. We like that. We start school. We have learned English. I went to a Swedish school, one of these when they had big parties at the school that everybody spoke English then or did this because we when you spoke. So yeah, I think it was Swedish where it is. yeah.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Without speaking we didn't know it. Between the movies, kids then in my voice that only didn't talk to me like that. Then they started talking to me, trying to get real like my mother was too. And she never talked to me. Very sort of can't remember any now with her mother before. Wow. Who was the last when you got older?

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: She never talks. We just. We talk English and the brother lived and my brother lives with her. You know, the always something funny. whatever you're comfortable with. I imagine your mother sewed all the dresses for all the kids. By hand. I got the same picture in the bed, in the velvet there, in the bedroom. She sold all our clothes.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: She sold for other people. And as always, you can make all kinds of quilt and you crochet, but you keep them everything. Well, none of us get this for takes a great deal of patients do would have many children she didn't know she didn't have to learn it either. So either. no, she didn't want to, she's too much nurses to learn it.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: She just hadn't done it was out. So we never get to learn. So we left her because she didn't want to bother learn can take her own, make breast, made her own batteries and everything. She didn't buy better dresses, had to go to town to get all kinds of material we could.

Unknown Speaker: I'd better.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Women don't do that. No, no, that's a lost art in order to develop clothes on the end. Yeah, I did that. The name I was born, March goes by hand. I didn't know. I watched it close by. And you wore them diapers and all the clothes. It was good for your arms. Yeah. So you were, as they say.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: And you had to stay in bed for nine days and you got away with it in them. Did not believe you. Why? Why nine days. they would be appropriate to be careful bathing. Did your mother? No, I don't think she did. She had to get up to milking cows before she was hardly. But as Paul, you never know what the cows were.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: They didn't like them for a long time. You got to get rich. Years developing, 94 years old apparently didn't hurt much. They don't lay in bed 50 or 60 days now. They have to get up. Really, they get a breather. Second day, I guess. Don't hurt me. Well, if you enjoyed the vacation, When you had to stay in bed and people in and.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: No. Yeah, it was nice to have somebody really cooking and do all the work, you know, even that you get. Now, neighbors just do this for me. Very nice to have anybody. you hired somebody. Okay, here we. We have to pay for them then, cause some days, you know, some women didn't charge for that. I think my folks are paid on before doing anything.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: You got it for nothing. There is a nice company during the pioneer times. They just kind of helped each other. Yeah, that's what they did. We had to run in the night to go get somebody to come remember me? For what? What would the the midwife do? Just let's take the big cuts, cut the cord and I just wondered, you know, if they had any set things that they figured they had to do or something.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: I don't know. I told like you always see on television that they go boil the water. yeah, I remember that. They always have the parents in water now. and I don't know what they did and all that bloody rags and everything. All well that's what all the water was for I suppose. Right. They had to have something planned.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Guess. Yeah. Nowadays doctors don't like that If you don't go to the hospital and they don't do that nowadays. We there are a lot of women that died in childbirth. I don't know if anybody up there did, but I lived good and it's good. They were just lucky they didn't have any trouble. No mother almost died. One for I remember she said she'd come to come through again.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: So she knew that when you're dead, that you just take care of you. My fair lady. yes. My mother, she used. She died in the bedroom now was there and I had very little then I always kind of scared of. And we sat there after afterwards. And then if you died, you know, they. You slept on the front porch all the time.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: So dirt, we sat on the front porch there and the coffin there was in there in the fall. It wasn't, it wasn't anything. When we hopped with we just left them in the in the coffin, right on the front porch. I remember these two right now. And then to the company of Well, well, how long did he stay on the front porch?

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: And I don't know. How many days were days, No, many days. Couldn't keep a very long. I don't feel comfortable. He just had a few in the front room, remember? We're close friends. One mother didn't take him to the things that no one took him out of. The very family and friends that were there to take off.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: And then this led with it was winter, the vitamin and this medicine back of his leg in all about the cemetery dug the graves and the neighbors, all of them the graves and they didn't have any special people coming through the graves like to do now with And then in the summer, they took the way to put the coffin in there.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: They all did. Their families did everybody bring flowers and things like we do now, or members got any flowers. And the women, they come in to help clean that clean the carpet that that personnel have, You know, they come there. Ma'am, I didn't have to do that. Some ladies coming done that. Clean them up. You know the best.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Just neighbors. Or if they were something that neighbors did for each other. Yeah. So I never heard that before and never asked either. So part of that there was an undertaker party down here though. I, I guess I went down there. I didn't have a big funeral some days you said it was to be different than they are and that they do nowadays.

Unknown Speaker: Everything is everything.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: you. I'm thinking about the, the parties that you had at the schoolhouse and. yes, as part of their dance and the old houses up there. We aren't old houses. No parties that were all made for. No, no kidding. What kind of music would you have? violin and guitar. Might have read is a play in music.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: It's called Youth Community. And it's just an old house music. So if there was, what kind of dances would you have? Did they. Were they called anything special from three steps and the square dances or square dances to square that one? One lady told me about one called school. Have you ever heard of that? What is that? Gustav School.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: She couldn't remember how to do it, but she remembered it was a school and one of those. What were some of the square dances that you did? Then? You could have any special name, different names for that? Yeah. I never cared enough to imagine my husband been be. He was real smooth on the swing. It like, that was the Irish in the mainland.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: So smooth. Yes, yes it well I met him down there on Main Street for the first time. I remember that went with him ever since. yeah. Right down the street. Did he have a little trouble fitting in with the Scandinavian community here? no, he didn't have trouble. If I should go with somebody else next noiselessly. he came from the coast.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: He was born in Nebraska. I think they traveled around a little more than people being critters beavers. But up there on the wall. Yeah, they got people in there. Yeah, maybe it's up to you. So you better not think maybe you can get it up the way. you know, you want. I was nine years old. I got married.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: I was 28, going on 29 from here.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: That's my mother said, not there. You see my mother sitting up there? Yeah. My mother there, my youngest boy there. My youngest boy, the baby baby of the family there. How old? And so you were very you know, she said to me, I was young. I would be 29 August. I got married in March 28.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Then 20 plus 29. I wasn't found out too much time to get married. I was going to say, it's a lot of hard work. That's okay. And just like a married. You know, I got married. What did you do? Your password? I didn't do that. But just out with the contract. I never had an isolated, you know, overnight.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Please. What was that about? The average age for girls to get married or was that kind of considered late. that was late seventies or was it. Yeah. They didn't get marriages. And then they said you can. I did, didn't they. Got married later. Nowadays you get married off in their. Was your mother young. My husband my sisters are much older than I was when they got married, but I was actually trying to get married.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Take on any of that Is private married. Was this like during the Roaring Twenties or something? That's when I was in Spokane when you were here. hey, this is your brothers and sisters. They still live right here. okay. I don't think. Well, you know, I'd. I'd ask one on the hill. This was her that there's a crucifix effect.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: You know, that's a crazy picture. Your. That's an enough for that picture. Well, here's an old kid. This is mournful. I'll be darned. That's me. When I was a young girl, I don't know how old I was. Seven, seven or eight or nine. So we never marked down anything on the picture. Somebody. I don't know how old I was.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: And you had one brother and two sisters then, Yeah, my mother had me. Just me and the three boys have to wait. This is a half here. okay. I wonder because I thought she had said I had to do a half sisters and one half brother. So that was 13 in the family. Mother took my mother took care of them.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Their stepchildren, too. She hid for a while till they got big enough. So. Yeah. I don't know how long she took care of them because when they were old enough, they went out to work and get out of work. We had to get out and work. And there, you know, all my sisters had to get out of work.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Went to Spokane. That's pretty big city, too. Yeah, we had to go there and work. We all of us went again. Or there wasn't enough places around for it to work. I used to work in Moscow, Genesee and Troy, and it was good. And I like Spokane, but more boys. Yeah. And the boys up there, I think.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Yeah. I like Spokane. This little town in the dances and all that stuff. It was great in Spokane and afraid it and it was fun. Nowadays. Yeah, that's freedom. You know, Thought about being free and different nowadays. You don't need to be in the cities now. Yeah, now I feel things right. You know, just. It's a very, very difficult place.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: And in those days, was it safe? And Troy? they used to. I guess there was one man against right here in Troy. Yeah, here it is. Telling you know, there was so much going on there. you mean Marshall Hays? Yeah, that's one. yeah, that's what I heard. Did you ever get the medium quote unquote?

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: boy, that's a pretty close your mother made all over. yeah. She made all the girls talk to me in a lot of quilts and you know how to make everything grow. All the quilts used to make. you. How about your father's clothes? Did she make those, too? no, she didn't make sure. It's. I don't think she made dresses.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: I don't think she made 34 suits. Lot of women makes the shirts for the men.

Unknown Speaker: Do you make a.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Lot of women? Likes to make their own shirts for the men or my sister for her husband. Not me. My mother used to make sure that goes for my boys when they were little.

Unknown Speaker: Well, you know.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: The button paper there. you're doing fine. You're doing great. I was wondering, your mom ever tell you any fairy tales or. No, she didn't want to. Any old company kind of thing. My mother was. She loved. I didn't do much of anything. They you know, she didn't have. No. I remember when I was in the government monthlies, I was scared to death.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: yeah. she didn't want to tell us. We never asked Mother much about anything. I know she loved with these kids. Nothing. I don't know. We really don't know much, but it's quite well. Well, I can remember. She told us very much. We didn't ask her either.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: How about your dad? Did you get to talk to him a lot? I used to be lively, man. He used to play violin and my father, he was more like me. My mother's mother. She was kind of quiet. Father used to be lively.

Unknown Speaker: So to hear.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: What he didn't tell us very much. We played my brother down there. If you could talk to him, he'd tell you. Okay? Yeah. He was telling us about a a man that lived out on the ridge named Big Andersen. yeah. You live down the creek by about that place from a big man, from walking out with the big long stick and the longest.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Exactly. His legs was about what was the big long stickman bar plays every time he went to church. we used to stop in the place. He did a great dance working for me. Kind of wanted to do a thing. you get a chance, pretty young man. You have to work. We have to get out to get to do some work.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Your husband now, is this to keep the family going? Is your family going for everybody up there? Did the same thing. Now when you went fishing and in the fishing, you were real young then or. yes, with kids were young. Did you have any back to school? Yeah. Yeah. Soon as we all have to run around, you know, to do other things besides fishing.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: I'm kind of surprised here that girls went fishing, you know? yes. We on vacation. We go and take huckleberries up in the lakes. And I it not a go for me right around that I had there. We had a wild look over some days. You know, I grew up in the woods. So I went to.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: you used to go take out of the country. Small business owner. The wild strawberries. And we are not we don't know. It played in the woods and little houses up in the woods with them that they used to go in on. The place where you come in from. Far from the trees. Well, I went down to the pine cones and made houses on the ground.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: we call the bait houses. You never leave the house like that with pineapples. I remember we did that. We walked all around the country up there not to go someplace that wasn't big. Andersen came to visit. You said that he had such a long reach to go across the table. I think what kind of what kind of stood up and reached across the water table and he wanted something.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: The table wasn't so wide open. They were alone in there. Did he tell you any good stories, understanding, spoken, been able to tell that? I don't know. I don't. I couldn't tell anything about that. Were you afraid of him like you were the Nobody was freedom. No freedom. Know, when I went to school, I used to be a man with a bunch of dogs.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: You know, We call them Wild Dave. wild. Even he lived far off in the country, heart country. He'd come every once in awhile. And by then we disposed of him. When you are here real long here, no visitors. And you come with an in long string of dogs every once in a while. I don't know. How do you think we were kind of afraid of him?

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: No more. We had to go through the woods to school all the time. You know, We never saw anything of an animal that was all tired or nothing. If we didn't think. And sometimes the treated the blue part of the tree blew around across the road. I had to go with the side action. Take the freeway from the road.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Yeah, from there. All that happened a lot of time that would be on your own homestead that you kept the roads cleared. What went through your route other than through other people? Faster to get the schoolhouse? we had to walk quite a ways. Three blocks over the river over the road. Sometimes people can go through from this order not to wait because we never got hit for them.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Increased risk for you to go through the woods lower like everything. The trees fell down sometimes across the road. You know, nothing ever happened to any of us. And it was in the valley. Never happened to nothing then or, you know, I was your lucky. Never was ignoring that sickness for me to think, Well, did you have any kind of special medicine for you If you had cold or stuff like that, we threw you.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: They were homemade medicine. Okay. What kind of medicine was that? Well, they used turpentine in Lord and speed. All were just. Yeah, that's. How did it. Yeah, you did. That's my kids do. I remember my from my husband. It scared me. So because I learned low lying. Sometimes you mix it up with cold. I know, I know, I know.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: We had them. They made cough medicine themselves, made their own cough medicine, or they make it out of, I don't know what they used. Water and sugar and some kind of stuff. They bought you the story. You know that everybody gives them to me their own cough medicine. They didn't go to town by whipping them. They and they bought groceries.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: So the last a long time when you go there and when they when you lived up there, we didn't go to town. But you big sacks of flour, £100 extra flour and that with that didn't last long. Well then in the early year we had to buy a sack every, every week and they really seemed like it. Yeah.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: They got a president for ten children. Yeah. Yeah. And then all of a sudden another big red. Before we went to school in the morning, we had to take some more bread with us. This group that they sent the Red Knight, you know, and that's what needed up in the morning. And then before we went to school, just like that would women had to be put.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: No wonder your mother was the quiet man if she was this yesterday. No, I was thinking to have many kids. He had too much to do to worry about talking, or she had to see that up late at night. And it. He wasn't such a smart woman. She never made it. She had a lot of little clever shortcuts and stuff.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: She did that everything to. He can make everything, you know, She couldn't buy all the girls. You know, that's important for them to buy them and make it or make the girls up. Like everything, you know. Yeah, about everything for my kids, too. I don't know. So I used to get mad at him. You don't? We never learn.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: So did she. So by hand, You know, he had a machine. She had. yeah. All those cradles it all by hand. she always had friends of different temptations and stuff. We didn't have many in so many kinds of food. They didn't have no, we didn't know of any that we didn't know everything like they have nowadays.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: But we had good food. Yeah. We always helping and that's what counts. You, you lucky then ten of us was always helping. They were six like married. And I. I don't know everything. I lived through all of them. I never was sick. Technology, you know. I've got to be sick. That's moral. And was.

Unknown Speaker: Never a sick.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: When. When people did get sick or home, did did people stay away from them or did they go help them or how did it work? yeah, they give way to help each other. That's what they did for like with the measles or something. They end up bouncing around when they know that was 19 years of measles. I remember when I was in my office, ordered a number.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: There was a lady some days with me more serious than was then, No. You're sending them to somebody else to dirty stock, as they say it was. And everybody had big families, you know, 11, 12 kids. Were the young girls anxious to get married and have their own families? I don't know. Most them. No, no. You said you had too much fun.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: You you wait on through and find out. Activity has made the most of your girlfriends in your age were they get married real early. They're now they got married earlier than I did for her, but not like 16, 17. So how do you think they were that you were? My sister was pretty young when they had to go to work, right?

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: They did all right. You just get on the train and go out. We have to go and look at the train down here. People. They want a job set up before you left, Did you have a job waiting or. No, we went there. Didn't even have an office. When I comes back, end of day, job and employment office.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: And they sent you to that place? Took the best course. I always had nice places, even tried to it sometimes on that women I remember they tried in other places and I was so small. And they never made You worked very hard. small. They always let small to me. Smaller. Smaller. So I never had to work very hard.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: But I have those by hand that funny that people everywhere didn't even have washing machines. So when I was there, I had to work a lot by hand. You had double time started out? Yeah. And you and white boards and now what? Good. What kind of soap did you always do it with? Homemade soap. Sometime up at about five.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: My mother. But that's why I work in Spokane. Where you smart soap. I know. It just. I don't know what that is called different. They wouldn't use powder then based on the things you just had. Bars of soap in a bar. Soap? Big bars. Rub that bar on the side and it goes. And then I read that in order that your mother made her own soap,

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: You know, sometimes your. Your mother was quite a worker. She milk the cows and she is your was born every now and then. Go. And I didn't want to be on the cows either. you didn't. I'll take the little bit and I'd it or run. Well I didn't like milk cows, I didn't have to do that but.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: no, my mother had to do that. I don't know. We did it, but she got sick. I don't know who done it. Then know I never cared about anything else on the way to the. And did you have a lot of horses around the place? No, we never had many them for a mother, you know, both worked with horses and these other fields, you know, their work, work, work with the handsome and with the hair and everything.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: And so. Do you remember your school very much? yes. I remember school. We used to play in there. We had we played Europe. They had to keep, you know, a long to run around, you know, and play ball and softball, you know? yeah, play ball and just games, you know, We went to the creek and we did it barefooted sometimes.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: yeah. All our shoes and dogs went through the and we schoolhouses go through that.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: We had a lot of them make sure we walked barefoot. Obviously the dogs you know so they quick enough on and picked out and go huckleberries and I mean goose berries they had very good berries of brother we had dry land to go to that that bush I remember and recess wasn't very good. We had we had the we'd hurry to that person thinks in those days it was just to do you take it like you speak Swedish in school or.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: No you know we had culture, we had to learn English for her and then take on learning. That was like, I don't know how we ever learned. It didn't seem funny. It just kind of happened. Did you have the same teacher all time? I know we had different teachers. I remember I was offered with this valley school. I get surprises all the time.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: I never was. I can spell good yet I can spell better in my young sisters don't know where they can spell as good as I can remember a lot of words fellow members I here I forget in all kinds of words. Did they teach spelling differently than they do now? When I got up in the long roll, you know, in Israel, down here, when after and just keep spelling.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Yeah, well, I hated to draw a map on the board. I could already have like you call that blackboard, I just copied from them from the one that's next door to me. Because I didn't know how to draw copies of other different states, you know? by heart. I hated that. I just. I just do it.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: I mean, look that verse and do the best I could, you know? Yeah, right. Got my neighbor groceries and looking for him and all would use my eyes. And I went off and I got surprised. And she didn't. She got to be a schoolteacher to see just like that. Then I guess the price was good. You get so mad because I would.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: She didn't. is that in the spelling bee or. Yeah, I just thought you graduated. this really? I wish I had saved all the price I used to get to school. We've been friends. Look at that. Look, I remember What all I got dated. no. It's very rare that if you got lots of other friends, they'll never make you want to respond.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Spelling In the end of reading a spelling and writing this that I was didn't. I didn't care for the other. We learned we got along. That's all we needed for the right reason. Right? And to figure, you know, education, you had to get out to work, you know? Yeah. You couldn't live. We couldn't stay all week. We had to get out and work and then decide to school, like to do nothing to do it.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Well, how long did you go to school? I don't remember when and how long I was school in. In my residence when remembers all over A and how many years when the school was in. Right after you get to school, you had to go to work. The answer is we don't have to go to work. We had to get up with make our own, our own go and had to send home somebody to find out as we desired.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Once I got $6 a week. Well we charge we said we, I started talking to myself like a month close eve them that you know, everyone's okay. Yeah. That's your brother. no, that's right. I know your boyfriend. my brother lives down there meeting. Well, that's right. He should have been. He should be here today. Somebody with HIV.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Yes, Sam, I don't know what to tell. Sam's talked to him. Sam. Sam Schrager. He's my boss. he's talked to your brother? yeah, I listen to a little bit of your brother's tape where he was talking about Big Anderson. So it made me think of asking you if you remember him. Yeah, I remember him. He come by our place for Never Sunday when he went to church and he'd walk over, and then you come in the house because he thinks of it looks terrible, big man.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: He was awfully big. Long sticking to the stick was to help him walk. I'd have to think he hasn't got a disease in his legs. And of course, he lived there and we didn't die for many years. I think. I don't know how long he lived again. He was dug out. You look and tell you all kinds of things.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: He was saying something about a machine or an invention or something like that. Or maybe he'd done something. I had some kind of a machine. I don't know what he done. Every You remember him being real friendly or. yeah, I guess he was. But he didn't dare to eat the stuff that they brought him, though they said because if afraid they bring with him that if he gets sick from no he didn't like to be like that but he ain't, you know.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: yes he did. Arnold. It was very bizarre, I think. Ever heard that big diva brought him stuff he didn't dirtied. Maybe they were going to kill him. You know, he'd get sick from it. He was worried about that. Apparently. you remember the kind of spread your mother used to put out for Sunday dinner?

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: just plain food. Just plain food that I guess they used to say. Potato salad that you had always had potatoes. And that was the meat. He was going to make cakes and you can make pies with the many things that we didn't eat that we don't know. Yeah, we did. We bought my baby sacks about Mary Ann on big bags, you know, with pretty big bags made of, you know, wheat.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: That's mostly heavy. What will that be like for yourself? Supper free breakfast for breakfast. You were talking about big stack pancakes and that my mother always picked up more than she did for a cup of tea. About two. And great to go from place to place. You don't have bills? Yeah, we just made it out many, many times over here.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: And then around the country, you don't do that nowadays to have those things always going to have good dinners. We went out to clear the mosque because of that. We as kids, you know, and then on the way home with my family and my folks. And I remember that too. That was the only surviving I remember way, you know, there was at least nine my house up there and then for me to draw in.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Yeah. yeah. A lot of friends with us. They stayed all night sometimes. Well, they played all night at the back of the way they did that. We don't get to them when we go in the morning. Yeah. Do you have other people come visit. You do. yes, we. we had some big families comparatively that was not away from them.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: But they do, you know, affection for people. Yeah. You know, you kids had a we, we didn't have enough chairs from night and we had to wait till they were three in its way some days. yeah. The kids didn't go first like that in hell and not they didn't do that. Me, we always had special when we had company.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: You train higher ups, we were big that they and they were great that we could together neat that's funny one of the chief people come and visit a navy you know with a ladder and they had moved along with them. They said, Me And so they did the landing in the hand and the Commonwealth. That was their entertainment visit to come and visit me or not.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: That was great for somebody come. And even if they were lonesome, to sit up there and go, this would be morning, they were probably okay. Did you dad have to work real hard? yes. You you are pretty hard. You, you had to work hard then. They. Yeah. Was he just a farmer or did you start a farmer?

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: He made it all right then. Yeah. Married three times. you kids. I guess that's why I got stepbrothers and separate stepsisters and have them trained in a lot of the people.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: You looking out of there, destroying them? Maybe one or two or like sisters living in one in Massachusetts. my goodness. She got far away and two sisters in Brooklyn and one in Massachusetts wound up in Wenatchee. I love too far. Yeah. My sister began to this on Monday following the judge's order. And more and more know, you come up here, you.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Know, pictures on the Internet you like.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: And you had a lot of relations in Spokane. Musician, nephew in Congress and still alive when people come visiting or they just just sit around and talk and how they sit around don't play cards or games or have lunch an afternoon after the dinner, they get lunch. We went all over the place. The main thing, the main thing was eating when I was drinking, which we didn't have any music at home.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: But you said her uncle did play outside. We used to go fishing in the summer when he was in Florida. Run down the creek, still looking for me ever since. Do you have any other kind of special games that you play? You know, I didn't think of anything going, people.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: We didn't have a game or music in the house or anything. You come on Tuesday. No, money was a game. Some people did. I mean, no one was extremely cool. But they didn't. They had a lot of work to do to engage a lot longer than a really long days and days, I think. Or, you know, I think in some places on the song you did, your mom did canning and things like that.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: yes, we know the way. Got a lot of friends. They covered for the police and Santa Cruz who was somebody had an orchard really compared. Well, we didn't have orchard at home very much. You know, 1800 people were killed. We went to the farmers and got and we didn't have payment. Try to keep them losing more than you are.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: yes, you can. But you didn't get much vegetables. We had other with vegetables the in the first minute so it was on a lot of fruit. We didn't have both. Any of that was also maybe too many kinds of fruit and apples and fruit there or and paid or taking a pick. So, Mary, thank you very much.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Thank you. The whole family would go and pick the fruit or did the farmer have it picked for you? no. We went to pick their own here. Yeah. We thought got was fun. When you go to work you can pick from the Well. Tell me some more about when you hike into town to Troy here for the dances.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: I was. That was. I thought it was neat. Evangeline stopped on the road, made some lunch and took the boy. That's a long distance, nine miles to walk the husband. I liked to do that. You were there a lot of kids that did this? I don't know what you say. It's just along the women. It was safe for two girls to just go like that.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: yes, we know. We're afraid of hurting anybody. Well, there was something happened the other day. You're on there. No danger of animals or anything. You in they car. You was a hollering. Hollering at night. There. We didn't see that. Sometimes we see them on the beach or something and we never saw them also run across the field sometimes.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Yeah. They never known to hurt anybody, though. Hurt with it? No, we never ever taken their place on it. And there's there was all they around there. You what about Troy when you got into Troy, what was it like. Well, I was maybe only 70 because I heard some things, you know, like. Like there was a saloon, every other door and things like that, or is that right?

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: I guess it was. Or you'd buy some of whiskey, sometimes used information. So we let you use that when you had a cold? I probably used it for. Yeah. Did he let the kids have it vertical. No he didn't. Not least he didn't let you. My they were from that when they got older. I find out about that later, you know, in grade I would ride in all kinds of Edwardsville today.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Horses and the beaches, all non bad roads and no roads like they have nowadays. Who wanted to fix the road, get not what the farmers want to have and work. From the data protection perfection inherent to big machinery and nature and things like that you live for nowadays. How long it takes the road damage line? Are you in there?

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Nobody was in there? No. I think she left the papers and snuck out.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Well, I don't think she's at work. Like. Yeah, it's not that quiet, Well, maybe I better get going for today. Yeah. I don't think you find that very bad for me. It's a good time. You know, I've been here over an hour. We had an advance here, so they come here and he says, you goes, have no.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: I mean, you. You are the one that puts the news in the paper, Yeah.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Yeah, yeah. One time. And someone, I think maybe someone at home. Well, he left to you. Say, you know, Mort, everybody's life is interesting. Their life story, even yours, said that. So you think you've been mine? I. I bet you would be, too. Even as a young man, if you could just hit nut pie. But close enough. Not.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Not get to longest faces in between. I it'd be interesting to. It's funny. I think about that now and then, but I don't think I have my story down here. I think maybe would have lived a lot longer. I will. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah. But now it doesn't seem very interesting. Well, it, it, Some things are interesting when I think of some of the, some of the hardships I went through.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: I remember one time, one year, I remember one year I met with them fellows for a mine to write. I had more said I had a cousin that always, he didn't care how how hard the other half job was or working for him or wouldn't and just didn't care. You want to know if I'll do most of work?

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: That's it. And I went to work for him one time. Him and him and his brother in law. All they had in Lala land. And I went to show shocking rain for them. And you know, I man does good when it when he keeps up with one binder a shocking grain you don't know much about binders or good yet just seen pictures of that Well they dropped a bundle you have to pick them up and jump them.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: And that's a man's job When a man does that. He had done a hard day's work. You know what they had me do? Keep up with two binders. Yeah. And I just a but 18 or 19 years old and because they knew I'd do it, they had me do it. I tell you to do what you are do, but they just had me do it.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: Yeah. And things like that. Know when I think of it they're not very many. There's not very many people would have a boy doing that, but he would tell everybody all other way to everybody liked him. And I just. He just took advantage. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Boy, that sounds tough. Yeah. So, well, so many young fella, when they become 21 years old or older, were come on with go lower than you.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: So it was back in a long time. They liked it too. Of course it was more wild and wooly then too. But they liked it a lot better than they did back East. I don't know if it's a certain kind of people that like it out here, and there's others that don't. They don't want to change or what the reason is that some people come out and some people, Yeah, yeah.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: But I'll tell you, there's not very many people that were born back east and come out here and live here a while. They don't want to go back. And I think the percentage pretty small, but they're I never did see the time that I ever wanted to live. I've ever been in World War One and written what I've made back, which came back a year or two afterward.

Amanda Asplund Phelan or Karen Purtee: And I never I never really go back to my life. Go back. Did it. But you only live there. Well, no, I had no.