The following pages are a transcription of taped conversations between Glen Gauer, Sr. and his sister Eleanor along with her daughter and son-in-law Lois and Duane Lunemann, at Glen's home in Willmar on October 15, 1996. The letter preceeding each segment of conversation represents the person speaking: G - Glen E - Eleanor L - Lois D = Duane Some of these stories did not get into the history that we have now. They present a broader picture of part of the history of the Gauer family and therefore add a little more understanding to part of its background.
E
Have you got any stories you can tell about the old barn and the garage from home?
G
Yah, I got a story I can tell you about that garage. You know before we moved over to that farm there on highway 7 where we lived for a long time in 1912 you know, they built the house. My dad had a house built. And there was two carpenters from Willmar here, their name was Ingland, they lived down east in town here, and they were stone masons, so my dad and brothers, they hauled stone from the fields you know, that we hit with a plow we'd dig'em up and in the winter we'd take what they call a flat pad (?) stone boat, they called. roll 'em on there and then haul 'em home and they had piles of them around, and then when they dug the basement these stone masons, they squared 'em up. They chiseled some way with a hole in 'em and then split 'em and some of 'em were just about as straight as a wall, you know, and they built the basement with that - way down in the ground clear up to above the ground and then they built the house on that. And uh, we thought that was something real wonderful that they could split them stones you know so good. Course they split just one side of it so it was straight and then the other side would be probably round and everything, but they stacked them up one on the other.
And that basement you know, stayed so cold in the summer that we..we, uh, raised a lot of potatoes and we put a whole bunch of .. .wagonloads of 'em down there. And they kept til spring of course, but then it started to get warm then they all sprouted you know, like potatoes do...then one day..uh, we couldn't get rid of'em, they weren't worth anything, nobody'd buy 'em, 'cause I guess most of the farmers around there raised potatoes and they, my dad took a whole wagon box full to Bird Island, and wanted to sell 'em; and they wouldn't hardly make any offer so he brought 'em all back home and fed 'em to the pigs. Pigs you know eat most anything.
D
You stored them in sacks in the basement?
G
No...they were all in a bin you know We divided the basement We halfed it off with a partition, but the partition wasn't up more than about 4 or 5 feet, but then the potatoes were packed up against the stone wall on one side and then, the whole bin was full. We raised them on...we had 80 acres that my dad bought first when he came to Minnesota from Iowa and, he bought this 80 acres and I don't remember if he built that house that was on there or not, but there was a two story house there but it only had, if I remember, it only had one room downstairs and one room upstairs but it was quite large, and that stood there for many years. -- But when we moved on the new place on Hwy 7 we abandoned that place and moved the house over to where we lived on 7 and used it for our granary to put-grain in. And Clarence, my older brother, he raised pigeons up in the attic part of it. But anyway, about the potatoes, the barnyard, where the barn was and that, it was all torn down and we used it partly to build the barn where, we lived on 7. And then they plowed up that yard, and that sod must have been just right for potatoes because they growed like wild. You'd go a little ways in a row and you'd get a great big pail full or a sack full even, ..2 bushel sack full. And we dug'em all and took'em home and tried to get rid of'em but nobody would buy'em.
D
Was that.the 80 eighty acres you were referring to and then you moved from there.
G
Yah, but we still farmed that 80 A and that was about a mile from our home on 7...half a mile east and; about a half a mile south.
D
So he bought another parcel of farmland then "
G
He bought 120 then. Then with the two it made 200 Acres. So that worked pretty good, but then we had to drive over and plow that over there which was a mile from home and that made it, kinda.. .sometimes we'd stay over there at Noon and have lunch and stay all day. Course, everything was done with Horses in them days, you know.
D
What did he plant on the 120 then?
G
A lot of that was pasture and sloughs... and then later on they ditched it and drained some of the sloughs...so we used it mostly a pasture for the cattle and even the horses
D
How many cattle did you have?
G
Well, it's hard to remember exactly, but if I remember right it was around 20, 25 maybe.
D
Some milking cows?
G
Oh yah, we always had'em.. .milking cows, from 9 or 10, maybe 12 milking cows. We'd milk 'em by hand you know; then we had a separator where we could separate the cream from the milk, and we sold cream to the creamery in Thorp and he made butter. And then people bought that, of course, but we churned our own; it was a barrel churn, hold about 20 gallons, maybe not that much. It had a frame that it stood in and a crank, and you turned that and the cream would splash in there and that's what made the butter you know. The skim milk we fed back to the calves. Wesley Emerson was a neighbor on the farm, he'd come over whenever we were separating the milk and he'd put his mouth down by the spout where the milk came out and drink that. Warm milk, you know. Oh...we thought that was terrible.
L
Well, then, you used cream on a lot of things. Did you use whole milk?
G
Oh ya, we used cream in the coffee and we used cream on the cereal...
E
...on the bread. Come home from school, and mother baking bread..that nice fresh bread, and go in the pantry...and the cream, you could just take it with a spoon and dish it up, spread that all over the bread, and sugar.
G
Ho, it was good! Yah, I tell you we used lot of cream then...
E
Well, Dad, with tomatoes, you remember, didn't he put cream, sugar...
G
Cream and sugar on tomatoes. Yah, lot of things like that.
L
Did you ever drink whole milk?
G
Well you know we didn't have refrigerators or ice them days there. So the only thing we could cool the milk was to hang it down in the well, and it'd get fairly cool but wouldn't get real cold, and then we'd drink that.
E
I never drank milk
D
Milking by hand gives you muscles right in here, doesn't it?
G
Yuh. My brother Leo always made fun of me because I milked with wet hands. You know, some people use wet and some dry. He didn't wet his hands, but I always squirted a little milk on my hands, I don't know why, but I got a habit of that and I couldn't get away from it. But he always made fun 'cause he said that made the cows tits sore. But I don't think it did. One time Clarence and Leo were milking and I was, and I was just a kid of course but them days we sat on a...it was just kinda like a 4 by 4 and then they put a board on top and that's what we sat on the and had the pail between our legs and then we pumped away. Just a one-legged stool. Afterwards my Dad made 3 and 4 legged ones. One he made, I remember, where we sat on was higher and then it was lower where we sat the pail on. But that didn't work so good, but it worked, of course. But anyway, I was milking one evening, you didn't have electric lights you know, you had a lantern with a globe on it and a frame around it, and you hung that in the barn and that was all the light we had.
G
But anyway, this cow they set me to milk, had been out in the slough and She had sore tits, and when I started to milk her, after I got a little in the pail, she raised her leg up and got her foot in the pail and sent it across the barn. After that they called me cow's foot for many years.
L
Just in the family?
G
Well, some of the neighbor boys knew it and they called me that. That took away a lot of my self esteem for one thing. It hurt me, you know. But I didn't think too much of it then, but that's the way it went. Especially Leo - he always picked on me. He was two years older than I but he was bigger than I and he was better with horses and I wasn't much good with horses. He loved horses, he knew how to handle 'em and I didn't. I never learned. I think that's why I went into carpenter work. (Laughter) Anyways that's what happened.
D
That was a good choice, wasn't it?
G
Yah, in a way.
D
Because there weren't too many horses 30 years later.
G
No, I'll say not. Changed in a hurry - just about the time I left the farm, that's when the tractors started to come in.
L
You left before you got married?
G
No, I got married and then...I come into Willmar before I got married, and bought part of this house. It sat a little bit further west here a few feet. And then I got married and then we loaded up...they had a shower on Esther and we loaded up my two-wheel trailer that I made for Leo, and he said I could have it so we loaded that up with all the belongings we had... no furniture or anything and came here to Willmar and moved into that little three room house. This is part of it, then the bedroom is part of it, and the kitchen.
L
So you were into carpentry before you left the farm then?
G
Yah, I stayed with Leo and Ellen when they first got married and then I went into carpenter work. We built barns down by Cosmos, all around there. You see a round roof, a lot of Gothic type roofs, you know. And I liked that. It was hard work and it was a lot of climbing but I just loved to climb and it didn't bother me any.
L
Who did this barn building with you
G
Well, I worked for a contractor. His name was Adolph Holmgren. He was a brother to Amy's first husband, that died so soon. Then I started with Ellen's brother, Henry Olson who lived around Cosmos then and was farming. He was repairing a house and needed help and wanted me to help him. I didn't know beans about carpentry work, hardly, but I went with him and he thought I was pretty good so I stayed with him until he didn't have any more work for me. But then this Holmgren needed help to build these barns so I went with him.
E
When you went to Dakota then...that was when you were younger?
G
I just went out and stayed with Elizabeth and Roy over winter. I worked for Roy fixing cars. I left the water in one of his Fords, it froze and cracked the block. (Laugh) A bunch of us young folks went out to a farm and had a little party and he said I could drive his car...it was an old Model T Ford with a top on and no side curtains, I don't think; and didn't have any antifreeze so you just had to put water in the motor and then drive, and when you got where you were going to go you had to drain the motor cause it was cold. Some reason or another we had trouble, it froze up on the way out there...had about 5 miles to go. I was driving and the guys that were with me they went out in the slough and broke the ice and got some extra water and put it in because it started to steam. Well, it was probably busted already then, I don't know.
G
What happened was, we got back home all right to Elizabeth and Roy's...it was a little town, you know, they called it Meadow...! stayed with Elizabeth and Roy all that winter and helped him. When I got home with that car, anyhow, I never thought about draining it, I don't know why it was late at night you know and I thought it would be all right until morning; it sat outside in front of the garage if I could have got the car in it probably wouldn't have froze and busted, but I left out, anyhow the doors were locked. And the next day Roy come in and told me that the block had busted. I felt terrible.
L
What things do you remember about the family and the house, about your parents?
G
I don't remember too much about them except that of course I know we were threshing grain when my dad died. I suppose I was about 18 then. I got married when I was 25. I know that after my mother got paralyzed that you (referring to Eleanor) did all the housework and washing and baking meals and everything, and you was just a kid.
E
Yah, I was just a kid. Mother was paralyzed when I was 9 years old. She died when I was 12.
G
Then you weren't like a 20-year-old.
E
Mother always used to make bread 14 loaves at a time, but Clarence used to come and help me knead it, if he was there, because I could hardly knead that.
G
Yah, Clarence and I, we always got along good together. But, Leo and I, we really didn't fight but he was always mean to me. I knew I couldn't do anything about it, because he was bigger than I.
L
Do you remember a piano in your house, or a violin, or a...?
G
Dad, he had an accordion and he could saw away on that and after awhile Clarence got a violin and he started to fiddle on that. Then he started to make one, and he made a violin one time.
E
Was it a mandolin with buttons you pushed and had strings?
G
Clarence bought that. What do you call...autoharp.
E
I used to chord on the piano and someone chorded on that and then different ones played violins and we had regular music things going.
G
Yah, really made music. Clarence was good at that. He always tried to learn to play the clarinet and, what was it, the saxophone one time too.
E
Of course, Dad loved music.
G
Yah. When the people would come over he'd always try to get some music entertainment.
D
Did he play the accordion?
G
Yah. He was no professional, he really didn't play by note. He played some tunes like "Pretty Redwing" and all them old fashioned tunes. Just by ear, you know.
D
And Clarence made a violin?
G
He did. I remember that. And it worked! The only thing he couldn't make was the bow part. I don't remember if he made one of them or not.
L
And what was his life's work...what was his career?
G
Clarence? He went to school to be a minister. He worked down in Minneapolis, what he did there I don't really know, but he was going to school. He worked his way through. He was ordained and got to be a preacher, but then he got so hard of hearing that he had to quit that and then he went into construction work, when he got to Great Falls, Montana. Then he hired a bunch and they built buildings and he was the foreman of course.
L
When you made things like the trailer for Leo, for instance, where did you get the wood.
G
Most of the time Leo bought it. You could go to the lumber yard and get some of that rough sawn stuff real cheap. I used a piece of the axle from a Model T Ford.
L
Did you have many trees on your property... on the farm?
G
Well, there was what they called a grove built around the buildings, mostly on two sides like the west and north. Keep that northwest wind away, you know.
E
There were some fruit trees, too, on the north side there plums and...
G
Oh yah. Dad got hold of some...we had some apple trees and we had some cherry trees that they planted.
L
So were those fruits canned then?
G
Yah, they canned 'em. Then we had 'em for sauce in the winter. Every year Dad would buy a barrel of apples when he'd go to town, which was 14, 15 miles away. With horses that took all day long. He'd come home late at night and the horses'd be all frosted, wet. He was afraid the barrel of apples would freeze so we had to get them in the house right away. So then we had apples for while. Mother would make apple pies and I think Eleanor did, too.
D
How many horses did you have on the farm?
G
As well as I can remember we had about 7 or 8 horses. But then we had 3 or 4 mules. Most of the time when I was a kid anyhow. They are easier keepers for one thing, they're cleaner and they seemed to eat less than a horse. Another thing a horse will drink water when he is overheated, where a mule won't touch water when he's hot. Put him in front of a water tank and he wouldn't touch it until he got cooled off. I don't know if they're smart or dumb or what. We were about the only ones that had mules around us. My Dad had a pair of mares that were big. So he got the idea that if he had them bred with a jackass he'd get some big mules which he did. And sure enough, we got two mules one was a jack and one was a jinny. They got to be about two years old and we started to break 'em so they could get used to the harness so we could hitch 'em up with a horse and then we could use 'em. That's about the time my Dad died. When we had the sale on the farm, someone up by Pennock bought 'em. And I never heard what become of 'em if he kept 'em or what. I remember that one once, she was about a year-and-a-half old she'd jump over a fence just like a dear. They were big and they were agile. The other mules we had were smaller but they could keep up with a horse pulling or anything.
E
Do you remember when Dad and Mom and Otto and I were going to Grams and went across the bridge, the team got scared and ran away? The snow was so deep and we had to walk the rest of the way to their place, and they had a hard time getting the team afterwards. They had run off by themselves. They found them by the fence at Grams place. Otto and I were sitting it was a buggy type thing, they were sitting in the seat ahead of us and we were sitting with our backs toward that seat...
G
Oh? And those horses run away?
E
Yah...it was those ponies, I think. I think they dumped us off on the bridge...if they had gone off the bridge we'd have gone down in the river and been hurt or killed, but we weren't.
G
One time Mom and Dad were coming from Grains in deep snow, they had two horses many the same ponies they were a little smaller than our big horse, we'd use them on a light sled or a buggy. They were coming home and it was so dark you couldn't really see where to go, across the fields, and one runner hit a high bank of snow and tipped them out and the horses came home with the sleigh and my folks came walking afterwards. My brother Leo and I saw the horses, of course we took care of them and were going back to see where our folks were and we then saw them come walking not very far away. It wasn't over quarter of a mile from home where it happened.
D
Was that the same sleigh Eleanor was referring to?
G
They were riding in the same sleigh that she was talking about. They were a narrow gauge. They weren't as wide as a regular wagon. If one runner got high it didn't take much to tip it.
D
Did you use those ponies for work horses?
G
We did. Not very much though just for real light work. We only had one pair of them ponies we used them on buggies and light sleighs. One time Leo and Ellen and I were going to go to church (before they were married) there wasn't any snow on the road so we had to go out in the fields. It gets awful dark in the country at night when it is cloudy, he wanted me to drive. Of course, he was holding Ellen on his lap and they were laughing and talking, and we went pretty fast. There was a big stone in the field and I didn't see it. The horses straddled it and when the cutter hit it, it stopped and broke the single tree or if something on the harness broke, but anyway, they got scared and ran. I didn't hang on to the lines for some reason or another it went so quick you know the lines slipped out of my hands and away they went. They ran all the way to the church which wasn't more than a quarter of a mile; because they were used to going there they knew just where to go; so the guys that were there my wife's brother (this is before I was married) saw them coming and he thought something was wrong so he went out and got a hold of them so they didn't run away again or something. Leo got so mad at me he was gonna half kill me. He said, "Why didn't you hang on to the lines?" He wanted me to hold them, you know. Well I probably could have if I'd had them wrapped around my hands, but you don't ordinarily have to do that when you're driving a team.
L
They would have taken you with them anyway wouldn't they?
G
I probably would have hit that stone! (Laughter)
D
So this was a cutter you were in?
G
Yah. It was like a little buggy with runners on. Not a bobsled.
E
We used to go to church in a bobsled. When Leo took me to Atwater to get the train when I was going to business college, He walked beside the sled most of the time. It was so cold, the train was frozen up and it was so cold on the train going to St Cloud.
Glen's story of the Luce Line construction
Sometimes a freight car or two behind the passenger car. They never hauled too many passengers. It would go back and forth once or twice a week, or three times.
I rode a wagon that was like a dump truck. It had hopper bottom that you opened up and the dirt would fall right out. They called it an elevator grader. It had a disc that plowed up the stuff and then it would go up the elevator so it would go into my wagon. I had a team of horses that Dad had bought that were green they didn't know how to follow the right speed. The grader horses had a steady speed, mine would slow down too much and I couldn't get them to go the right speed, then the elevator grader would throw that dirt right on the back of my neck and the elevator guys would laugh. I was just a kid. The elevator guy that was driving those horses it was pulled by 16 horses so they could plow and dig out the dirt. The elevator would stop long enough for the next driver to get in front of the it, and that's the way it kept on. My horses would go too slow or too fast. When they went too fast then the elevator guy would get mad at me because then the dirt would fall back on the ground again. They took the dirt out of the hills and put it in the low spots. Along our farm they had to take it sometimes in the ditches to raise it up. Then when I got to where they were dumping it, there was a guy there to tell you where to dump it and then you turned around and went back and got another load. That's the way you kept on all day. That was hard work for a kid. I guess my Dad thought I was pretty mature and knew what to do.
After that when they started to lay the rails, then he had me haul ties. They'd come as far as the track came and they'd unload them on the ground. I"d put 'em on a flat bed like a hayrack load up a rack full of ties and drive 'em ahead to throw off one by one where they were going to lay them. Some of 'em were heavy about 8 feet long. Boy, I was tired at night then, I"ll tell you. But I didn't get any dirt in my neck anyhow. (Laugh) Soon as the ties were laid they would come put the rails on 'em, spiked 'em down, and another crew came and leveled them off so the train could come with another load. As soon as they got by our farm then they laid me off. The further west they went somebody else would drive farmers living along that stretch of track. (A question regarding leveling) After they got the grade, they dumped gravel on top of the dirt, then put the ties in that gravel and then laid the rails on and then leveled it off. In other words, if there was a low spot they'd jack it up and put more dirt on.
They kept their horses in a great big tent fed them in there and kept "em in overnight, unharnessed. The horses were so used to it they knew just what to do. They had men to curry them and whatever. The 16 horse team were harnessed four abreast. The driver just had to mention a word and they would do just exactly what he wanted them to. The plow/elevator was a large machine, and when they got into hard dirt, it took that many to do it. Sometimes they had to go deep. When they went through the farm before us it was quite a high area so they took a lot of dirt out of that and we had to move it ahead over to where our farm was to make the grade higher.
Eleanor told her recollections of her dad's death, in the family history book..This is Glen's story.
I was pitching bundles into the machine we were threshing flax and a neighbor boy came up to me and said come and look at your dad, he's making funny faces and acting funny. I thought dad was just joking with him because he did that a lot with kids you know, played with them and never thought anything of it. The boy must have really known something because he went up to the tractor hooked to the machine and went to Jess Summerlet to tell him he should come and look at my dad because he laid in the bottom of the wagon box. So Jess went, and soon as he looked at him he knew he was dead, so he came over to me and said, I guess we'll have to quit threshing, your dad is dead. I just about fainted and didn't know what to do, but Summerlet said I should drive home and leave the wagon and everything, just take the horses home and take care of them. They put horses on the box my dad was driving and hauled him home about a quarter of a mile and carried him in the house. They kept him right in the house and embalmed him right there. He never left the house before the funeral. I don't see how my mother could of stood it.
Note: Matthias Gauer had the Gauer stomach he belched a lot and had stomach pains or gas pains, I suppose it was then. It kind of runs in the family. Dad suffered alot. Sometimes he even had to go to bed and lay awhile to get over it.