My mother used often to go alone through a ravine at night to see the Ramsey's. She carried a lantern but was never molested or afraid although it was often very dark. Their storeroom, in those days everyone had one, was stocked in the fall with everything for the winter. My father would buy a side of beef and then cut it up according to the directions his wife would read from a diagram in a cook book. This was frozen and placed in an outside storeroom.
One Sunday my father announced from the pulpit that if anyone was in need they always stood ready to help. That night everything was taken from the storehouse. It was thought the act was done by someone who respected my father's wishes as expressed in his sermon.
Their first Christmas here, the doorbell rang. When it was answered, no one was there, but a great bag containing supplies of all kinds hung from the latch. A large pincushion outlined in black was among the things. It was years before the donor was known.
Once some eastern people came to see us and we took them for a long drive. The bridges were not built, so we had to cross the Mississippi on a ferry. We went first to Fort Snelling which seemed to be abandoned. In one of the rooms we found some peculiar high caps which had belonged to the soldiers. My father took one and amused the children much when he went under Minnehaha Falls by leaving his own hat and wearing that funny cap.
Mr. L. L. Lapham.
When we were coming to Houston County, if we couldn't get game we breakfasted on codfish. I think it was the biggest slab of codfish I ever saw when we started. It made us thirsty. The fish called for water and many's the time mother and I knelt down and drank from stagnant pools that would furnish fever germs enough to kill a whole city nowadays, but I suppose we had so much fresh air that the germs couldn't thrive in our systems.
Speaking of codfish, reminds me that one day we met a man and his family making their way to the river. I halted him and asked him what he was going back for. You see we met few "turnouts" on the road for all were going the same way.
"Well," said he, "I'm homesick—homesick as a dog and I'm going back east if I live to get there." "Why what's the matter with the west?" I asked. "Oh nothing, only it's too blamed fur from God's country and I got to hankering fer codfish—and I'm agoin' where it is. Go lang!" and he moved on. I guess he was homesick. He looked, and he talked it and the whole outfit said it plain enough. You can't argue with homesickness—never.
Arnold Stone and his good wife lived up there on the hill. One day in the early 60's an Indian appeared in Mrs. Stone's kitchen and asked for something to eat. They were just sitting down to dinner and he was invited to join the family. The butter was passed to him, and he said, "Me no butter knife." "I told Arnold," said Mrs. Stone, "that when it gets so the Injuns ask for butter knives it's high time we had one."