Coming of Age
Edna Fern’s Jobs as a Mother’s Helper
La Fleche, Saskatchewan, circa 1930s, drawing by Rollie Bourassa.
Besides helping to care for her younger brothers and sister, Edna Fern had been caring for the Anderson family’s younger children in exchange for piano lessons. When she was 14, Leonard and Aquina took her along with them to La Fleche to look after their little children while they took care of business and shopped. This was a highlight of her youth: “Riding in the Anderson’s motorcar the thirty-six miles north and back was an experience in itself; no one in the Haverfield family had a motorcar yet, and I hadn’t even seen a town since Percy had moved us from Williston, North Dakota, eight years earlier. I was impressed with the wooden sidewalks and other signs of modernity and affluence that merchants had displayed in their store windows. I wished I had the money to buy bits of the colorful velvet ribbon I saw in one window—Mother would have loved having that ribbon to trim a dress for two-year-old Lela Merne.
“That same year I had a chance to help a lady on her farm near La Fleche, and I liked the idea since it would give me a chance to earn a little spending money. Even though I had to miss some school, Mother gave me permission. But the job didn’t last long. I had been at the farm only two weeks when my hands were so raw from washing dishes that I had to quit and go home. I don’t know if the water from that farm well was extra ‘hard’ (alkaline) or the trouble was psychological, but I was mighty glad to get home where we had fresh spring water and I could be with my own family.”
“That same year I had a chance to help a lady on her farm near La Fleche, and I liked the idea since it would give me a chance to earn a little spending money. Even though I had to miss some school, Mother gave me permission. But the job didn’t last long. I had been at the farm only two weeks when my hands were so raw from washing dishes that I had to quit and go home. I don’t know if the water from that farm well was extra ‘hard’ (alkaline) or the trouble was psychological, but I was mighty glad to get home where we had fresh spring water and I could be with my own family.”
Times with Friends
Expectations of children in the early 20th century were much different than those of children in Canada and the United States today. They learned early to get along with what they had, to be happy socializing with friends and spending much of their time outdoors surrounded by the beauty of their natural environment. They didn’t expect others to entertain them—they knew how to play, to horse around.
These country children weren’t fearful to explore their world without having parents looking over their shoulders all the time, but they knew that their parents would be there when they needed them. Edna Fern wrote, “One evening after the Wood Mountain Rodeo, Mother fell ill, but she knew that Ruth and I wanted to stay for the dance so she patiently waited in the wagon until it was over after the midnight lunch.”
Ernest Anderson’s younger brother, Boyd, remembered being at the Wood Mountain Rodeo and hanging out with his older brother Cliff and his friend Bob Haverfield. Boyd said that one of the cowboys invited Cliff and Bob to leave the rodeo grounds to go back to his place for lunch and that Boyd felt abandoned being left behind. But before they left, Bob gave Boyd a quarter to buy his own lunch—a hot dog and a bottle of pop—and that cheered him up!
These country children weren’t fearful to explore their world without having parents looking over their shoulders all the time, but they knew that their parents would be there when they needed them. Edna Fern wrote, “One evening after the Wood Mountain Rodeo, Mother fell ill, but she knew that Ruth and I wanted to stay for the dance so she patiently waited in the wagon until it was over after the midnight lunch.”
Ernest Anderson’s younger brother, Boyd, remembered being at the Wood Mountain Rodeo and hanging out with his older brother Cliff and his friend Bob Haverfield. Boyd said that one of the cowboys invited Cliff and Bob to leave the rodeo grounds to go back to his place for lunch and that Boyd felt abandoned being left behind. But before they left, Bob gave Boyd a quarter to buy his own lunch—a hot dog and a bottle of pop—and that cheered him up!
Wood Mountain Rodeo Grounds, photo by Gary Ball. Today, Wood Mountain boasts the longest-continuously-running rodeo in Canada.
Corrals at the Andersons’ cow camp on Rock Creek near the Montana border, circa 1930.
When they were in their mid-teens, Ruth, Edna, Lyman, and Bob would get together with friends and go riding in the hills. Lyman recalled one time when a group of them rode south to the Anderson’s branding camp in the badlands, near what is now the eastern block of Grasslands National Park:
“There was Bob and I and our girlfriends, Ivy McEwan and Myrtle Bartholomew, as well as Ernest and Edna and a couple of other school friends—sisters Norma and Adeline Fagan and Ivy’s sister Hazel. We spent a few days together there camping out and having fun. In the evening most of us chatted and sang around the campfire inside the corral but Ernest and Edna Fern went up on the top of Sinking Hill to be alone.
“In the mornings, Ernest would light the wood cookstove in the bunkhouse and one morning he made us pancakes stirred up with muddy water. Even Rogers Golden Syrup couldn’t cover up the horrible taste and most of us chose to be hungry until lunchtime! It was all taken in stride—we were all very, very close in spirit so that even muddy-water pancakes were worth a laugh.”
They were a hearty lot of friends. The campout resulted in only one injury: Norma Fagan came back with a cut toe. Lela remembers her mother having Norma soak her foot in Epsom salts and then bandaging it up. Pluma seemed to know what to do about any kind of physical ailment.
“There was Bob and I and our girlfriends, Ivy McEwan and Myrtle Bartholomew, as well as Ernest and Edna and a couple of other school friends—sisters Norma and Adeline Fagan and Ivy’s sister Hazel. We spent a few days together there camping out and having fun. In the evening most of us chatted and sang around the campfire inside the corral but Ernest and Edna Fern went up on the top of Sinking Hill to be alone.
“In the mornings, Ernest would light the wood cookstove in the bunkhouse and one morning he made us pancakes stirred up with muddy water. Even Rogers Golden Syrup couldn’t cover up the horrible taste and most of us chose to be hungry until lunchtime! It was all taken in stride—we were all very, very close in spirit so that even muddy-water pancakes were worth a laugh.”
They were a hearty lot of friends. The campout resulted in only one injury: Norma Fagan came back with a cut toe. Lela remembers her mother having Norma soak her foot in Epsom salts and then bandaging it up. Pluma seemed to know what to do about any kind of physical ailment.
The Sinking Hill and bunkhouse at the Andersons’ cow camp. These badlands are rife with dinosaur fossils.
Venturing Afield for Education
Edna, Ruth, and Lela with friends, circa 1930. L. to r.: Louise from Opheim, Edna Fern, Viola from Sister Butte, Ruth (background), Lela (foreground), unidentified.
L. to r.: Percy Haverfield, Bob Haverfield, Lyman Haverfield, and Nathan Goodrich, 1936.
Ruth had left home by the time Lela was a year old, so she missed out on Lela’s early years except for short visits now and again. Ruth and her good friend Hazel McEwen boarded in La Fleche for grades 9 and 10, but before completing high school Ruth went down to Glasgow, Montana, and talked her way into a nurse’s training program.
Ruth’s daughter Marcie chuckled when she told the story of how her self-assured mother had managed to convince the hospital administrators in Glasgow that she was 18, when she was actually a year younger, in order to qualify for the program. Edna said that Ruth was always very competent at everything she did and that she was tall for her age, so that it wouldn’t have been difficult for her to be convincing.
During her years in Glasgow, Ruth met her future husband, Nathan Goodrich, whose parents farmed nearby. Nathan was one of the thousands of workers who helped to build the Fort Peck dam.
While Ruth was training to be a nurse in Glasgow during the spring of 1929, Edna Fern and a neighbor boy, Kenneth Olson, took grade 9 at Woodville School with Miss Cook. There were no high schools closer than La Fleche or Opheim, Montana, but Woodville School offered grade-9 subjects. Edna Fern remembered, “I started out with eleven subjects but soon realized that I would never conquer French and Algebra, so I dropped them in order to have more time for the other nine required subjects. Both Kenneth and I managed to pass our exams, and congratulations were printed in the La Fleche newspaper.
“Mother was very excited when she read the good news, and it made me wonder if she still worried that I wasn’t up to the challenge of finishing high school. She herself had only been able to finish grade nine and didn’t really know what the high-school curriculum would ask of her children, but she wanted them all to have high-school diplomas.”
As the older children were all quickly arriving at high-school age, Pluma and Percy knew that there would be no choice but for them to leave home and board in a town with a high school, or for the whole family to move into either La Fleche or Opheim. Also, Lela would be starting grade one soon, and when she did the boys would no longer be riding horseback to Sister Butte School, and they couldn’t let her ride there alone. There were bobcats and coyotes that might threaten a small child, but quickly changing weather—hailstorms, dry lightning and thunderstorms, and late spring or early fall blizzards—was the greater threat. In 1932 Pluma and Percy made the decision to rent a house in Opheim, Montana, in order to meet their children’s educational needs.
Ruth’s daughter Marcie chuckled when she told the story of how her self-assured mother had managed to convince the hospital administrators in Glasgow that she was 18, when she was actually a year younger, in order to qualify for the program. Edna said that Ruth was always very competent at everything she did and that she was tall for her age, so that it wouldn’t have been difficult for her to be convincing.
During her years in Glasgow, Ruth met her future husband, Nathan Goodrich, whose parents farmed nearby. Nathan was one of the thousands of workers who helped to build the Fort Peck dam.
While Ruth was training to be a nurse in Glasgow during the spring of 1929, Edna Fern and a neighbor boy, Kenneth Olson, took grade 9 at Woodville School with Miss Cook. There were no high schools closer than La Fleche or Opheim, Montana, but Woodville School offered grade-9 subjects. Edna Fern remembered, “I started out with eleven subjects but soon realized that I would never conquer French and Algebra, so I dropped them in order to have more time for the other nine required subjects. Both Kenneth and I managed to pass our exams, and congratulations were printed in the La Fleche newspaper.
“Mother was very excited when she read the good news, and it made me wonder if she still worried that I wasn’t up to the challenge of finishing high school. She herself had only been able to finish grade nine and didn’t really know what the high-school curriculum would ask of her children, but she wanted them all to have high-school diplomas.”
As the older children were all quickly arriving at high-school age, Pluma and Percy knew that there would be no choice but for them to leave home and board in a town with a high school, or for the whole family to move into either La Fleche or Opheim. Also, Lela would be starting grade one soon, and when she did the boys would no longer be riding horseback to Sister Butte School, and they couldn’t let her ride there alone. There were bobcats and coyotes that might threaten a small child, but quickly changing weather—hailstorms, dry lightning and thunderstorms, and late spring or early fall blizzards—was the greater threat. In 1932 Pluma and Percy made the decision to rent a house in Opheim, Montana, in order to meet their children’s educational needs.