Progress: [Plows, Telephones, Cars and Radios...]Thunder Creek district kept advancing with the times. Mr. Harry Taylor tells how in 1903 he broke 50 acres of land with three horses on a walking plow. Others tell of using the sulky plow which was still only a one furrow plow drawn by three horses but made so the farmer could ride. What a wonderful thing it must have been when Mr. Jim Brawn bought a 10 furrow plow&endash; a breaking plow pulled with a 20-40 Hart Parr engine. This took one man on the plow and one on the engine. The engine travelled about 2 and a half miles an hour. It could not have been very satisfactory as it was not used long. Next came the two furrow gang plow requiring five horses to pull it. About the early thirties the tractors took over the field work. Oxen are rarely mentioned in connection with taking part in the settling of the district. The only oxen I ever saw was a team the Old Man Simpson was driving around about 1915-1916. When Robert Young took up his homestead he had bought a yoke of oxen, a wagon, a plow with him. Upon arriving from Deloraine, Manitoba, he found he had no clevis for his plow. There was no such thing as wire so he walked 50 miles back to Deloraine for a clevis. He spent the first summer in the shelter of his wagon box turned upside down. In 1909, the telephone was put in the district. At the time this was a wonderful invention so they thought. The first meeting held to organise the telephone system was held at John Southcombs. It was an afternoon meeting but lasted so long Mrs. Southcomb got supper for everyone there including Dad. The meeting went on into the evening so she got midnight lunch. Still it went on and on and finished late enough in the morning that everyone had breakfast before staring home. It was registered as the Audrey Telephone Circuit #41. Everyone in the district were subscribers. The list shows the names:
The first settlers were glad of their team and wagon as their mode of travelling. By early nineteen hundreds the good old horse or team and buggy was used. Bob Dancey was the first man in the district to have a car. It was a model T Ford in year 1914. Sometime before 1918, Mr. English had a car. One of first persons to have a car on our side of the district was Harry Taylor. They always had to go by our place on their way to and from Carnduff. On this particular day we knew he had gone to Carnduff to get a new car. Of course this was a big event. We all watched to see the car coming home. Just west of our place he had a corner to turn, which he missed and the car went into the buffalo wallows. Dad took the team and pulled the car out, thus giving us kids a good chance to view - this wonder - this car. In 1925, Dad bought a new model T. Ford. In those days one did not need a driver's license. You only needed to be 16 years old. No one carried birth certificates or identification card so plenty of big boys at 14 were driving cars. It was in 1931 that anyone not owning a car had to get an operator's license costing fifty cents. The car owner got his or her license free. In 1906, the car owner paid a registration fee of $10.00 to $15.00 depending on the wheel base of the car until around 1942 when it increased to $15.00 - $20.00. About 1923, the first radios came into the district. Harry Taylor's and Jim Brawn's each got an Atwater-Kyent radio. It was a big box type thing about 12" x 36". It had three dials on the front, each one having to be tuned in separately. They were powered by two dry batteries which would likely last a winter, a small C battery and a six volt wet battery that had to be charged at least every two weeks. Besides the box was a large horn which had to be contended with. Each radio had to have an antenna. This was usually a wire about 100 feet long stretching from the peak of the house to some high building or near by tree or out building. Taylor's being our closest neighbor we often were invited there on Saturday night's to hear the barn dance from WIS Chicago. This was four hours of old time music. On these night's at Taylor's everyone sat quietly while Mr. Taylor adjusted the dials. After a bit we would hear some faint music. Then Mr. Taylor would wonder if he could get it better and start adjusting dials again. There would be nothing but static for twenty minutes to a half hour. Then we would hear a bit of music. This went on all evening but we thought it was really something just to hear a bit of music from far away Chicago. In a few years every home had a radio. They were much smaller and better. Law required that you had a license to run a radio. The license cost $2.00 like most laws this one was easily broken. In the hard years when money was scarce we had no license. It was a standing rule at home that if a law officer drove into the yard someone was to unhook the battery off the radio and get it out of sight. With no battery the radio was not working. We were never checked and no doubt lots of other folks in the district ran a radio a lot of years without a license. Most people had a home made wind charger to keep the battery charge up for the radio. Electricity was put in the district in 1938. This was a great boost to the community. In early days homes were lighted with coal oil lamps. A coal oil lantern was used at the barn to do morning and evening chores. Later on an Aladdin lamp was used. It was an improvement on the old coal oil lamps but was not too satisfactory. If the air in a room got too stuffy it would flare up and the mantle got black. Next came a two mantle gas light another great improvement but nothing like the electric lights we know today. I think one of the biggest changes over the years is the harvesting of grain. In 1903 Mr. Harry Taylor told of threshing with a steam portable machine. It was the Taylor-Simpson-Farr threshing outfit. It had no blower and straw was hauled away with two horses on a bucking pole. There was no feeder so two men stood on the machine and cut the bands. If you did not run the grain spout into a bin it was run into bags in a wagon. One man held the bags and another man tied them. When you took bags of grain to the elevator the elevator man stood with one foot on the hopper and one on your wagon and helped lift the sacks and empty them into the hopper. The first threshing outfit I remember Dad having was Jim Brawn's. It was a big 30-40 Hart-Parr engine and a 40 inch Case separator. I don't know what outfit was threshing at our place when I was born, but Mother tells me how I was born in the other room at noon while the men were eating dinner at the kitchen table. Aunt Viola (Mrs. Geo. Moore) was working for Mother at the time. Anyone who has ever cooked for a threshing crew knows it was no easy job. For days and days before preparations were made for threshers. Tables were laid with the best of food, breakfast at 5 A.M., which meant getting up at 4 a.m. Supper at dark which was often 9 or 10 p.m. with all the dishes to do after that. One fall, Brawn's were threshing at our place. Oliver Russell and myself had big plans of spending some time at the outfit on our way home from school. Our plans were squashed when Dad met us and told us to go right straight home as Van Oene's little boy had fallen into a tub of boiling water and Mother was called there. I with the boy's help had to get supper. All went well till I drained the potatoes. The lid slipped and half the potatoes went into the slop pail. When Dad came in I told him what had happened. He just told our boys and our 2 hired men to go easy on the potatoes at supper. All the time I was getting supper my biggest worry was having to wash all those dishes. My worry was short lived. Dad told the men if any of them would stay and help me with dishes he would tend their horses for the night. Needless to say I had lots of help. Dishes were finished in no time. The little boy died that night. Quite often when they would be threshing at home there would be two wagons loaded with grain ready for us kids to take to Nottingham after school. There was no quota system then. On these trips we had a nickel to buy five all day suckers. They were large enough - about 3" across and lasted us most of the way home. It would take about two hours to go to Nottingham with the load and over the hour to come home. One year Dad had a bumper crop and nearly every day all winter hauled a load of grain to Carnduff a distance of eleven miles. This was by team and sleigh as trucks were unheard of at that time. Every night when we kids got home from school we hooked up the team and took the sleigh to the grain bin in the field and filled the box with wheat ready for town in the morning. This meant shovelling between 97 - 100 bushels of grain as loaders were unheard of. As soon as the boys got old enough to run the outfit Dad bought his own machine. Some falls in the Thirties when there was not much crop we did our own threshing. Russell, Joe Moore and myself drove stook teams. Oliver ran the machine and also threw off my load when I came to the machine. Uncle Alfred Moore and Eddy's had steam engines to run their separators and their whistles could be heard all over the district. When each had finished their fall run and pulled home they would tie the whistle open and it would blow steady till the steam went down. It always seemed like good natured rivalry between them to see who would finish first and get the whistle blowing. Most anyone who has ever helped in harvest field at threshing time or experienced the hustle and bustle of the busy days in the house seem to have it impressed on their minds as a wonderful experience they would never have wanted to miss. The march of time goes on - from horses to tractors - from buggies to cars - to combines today that we see in the fields - cutting and threshing the bountiful yields. No more social threshing in the old fashioned ways. Just history and memories of those long gone days. |
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