Life in Stirling Through the Years

 

William Hogenson

Born April 30th, 1907

© 1999, A. Mark Durtschi.

 

Bill was born in 1907 in Stirling almost 8 years after the first settlers lowered their belongings off the side of the railroad cars. Bill's father, Neils, was born in Europe, had joined the Mormon church there, and as new converts did in those days, got the 'spirit of gathering.' Later in Utah, Neils brought his family to Stirling in 1902, bringing his widowed father with them.

 

Bill was born in the village in a little three room house. Bill was happy in this little house. It had a bedroom, a living room and a kitchen. The boys sometimes slept up in the attic. They gained access to it by an outside ladder. For the times this was a rather large house for Stirling. Many families were living in little homes that had only one or two rooms. When Bill was three years old his mother died. His father soon re-married, and his new mother was very good to him.

 

In the days of Bill's youth Stirling looked almost like the countryside. It consisted of huge 2 1/2 acre lots with little houses in the front and a barn in the back with plenty of wide open space between buildings. Off to the side sat a outhouse. Even though the roads of this little town were straight, forming square blocks, one could hardly call them streets, for they were either mud or dust. Often when they were mud the ruts got so deep that a wagon sank right up to it's hubs. During the spring thaws and freezes, the frost buckled the mud upward creating crevices large enough to accidentally step into. One lady lost her new shoe in one of these things and never found it again.

 

In 1917, Neils ordered a big house out of the Eaton's Catalog. It came on the train in pieces that needed to be assembled. When this house was complete, it was a three level structure with four, square, outside walls. It was one of the largest homes in Stirling at the time. Bill lived in this house until 1927 when he went on his mission for the LDS Church.

 

As a boy, Bill's dad took the family to Waterton National Park for a week in the summer. They traveled in a wagon pulled by horses. In those early days there were few roads in Southern Alberta and the wagon headed west across the prairie 60 miles to the mountains. Many is the story of people losing their way trying to get home over the open prairies.

 

During those early days much of the commerce that went on within the little town consisted of barter, including tithing. There was a whole building set aside for tithing where the people brought in their tenth. Much of these goods went back out to the poor people of the community.

 

Bill remembers a house fire or two as a boy. The village had a horse pulled fire engine, but it was rarely, if ever used. By the time the alarm sounded, the horses were caught, harnessed and hooked up to the fire engine, and pulled to the house fire, all that was left was a heap of ashes. House fires were true community events. Those who weren't already on the scene were notified by the ringing of the school bell. People would run out of their homes and scan the horizon. Then with a bucket in hand, they'd hightail it towards the smoke. The first priority was pulling all the belongings out of the house before it burned, which was almost taken for granted that it would do. With the belongings out, a chain of men, women and children passed buckets from the ditch in an effort to put out the fire. But this was usually an exercise in futility.

 

Bill had to work hard as a kid. Aside from working on the farm which was about a mile outside of town, he had cows to milk and a garden to work in. Another chore Bill had was taking the family's cows out to the Stirling pasture where there was plenty of grass to eat and a lake to drink from. The village's cattle were taken out in the morning and brought back in the evening. The cattle were brought home in one big herd. But as the cattle walked down the street, they were urged away from the main herd by the boys and headed towards their individual barns behind almost every little house in the village. Often there were other out buildings also for chickens, pigs, sheep and goats.

 

During the winter, the cattle were kept at home and fed hay that had been harvested during the summer. A coulee or small stream meandered through the town that had been dammed up in places. Twice a day every family drove their livestock to the coulee, and chopped holes in the ice for the cows, horses and other livestock to drink out of.

 

Getting a year supply of ice was one of the busy times during the winter, usually taking two or three days. They did this when the bitter cold Canadian winter had frozen the water up to 16 inches thick behind several small dams in the coulee. They chopped a hole in the ice then cut it up into foot square chunks with an ice saw that had huge one inch teeth. Then they hauled them out of the water using ice tongs and stacked them on a sleigh. After it was loaded, it was taken to the family ice house for storage. The ice house usually had walls insulated with saw dust. They covered the blocks of ice with straw or saw dust for extra insulation. This ice usually lasted until somewhere between the middle or the end of August. They used the ice to keep their ice box cold in the house, to make ice cream and to cool anything that was to be served cold.

 

During those bitter cold winters when the temperature would regularly drop down to minus 40F, their homes were also cold as few homes had insulation in the walls. In the mornings ice was in the water pail in the kitchen. Bill woke up many a morning with frost on top of his covers. But he slept warm under a pile of blankets. The heat for the house came from the coal burning kitchen stove. During the winters they got their drinking water either from their well or by melting snow. There were no bathrooms in those days and baths were taken in the kitchen next to the stove in a metal tub. When everyone had finished their bath the dirty water was taken outside and thrown on the ground or snow.

 

In the spring of the year, water was turned into the ditches and this was how Bill's family watered their garden and lawn. They also filled their cistern through a gravel filter then put chlorine in it to kill any bacteria. There was a ditch running down nearly every block with water that originated in the mountains 80 miles away. This was a great place for kids to play.

 

Bill made a trip to his grandfather's farm a time or two. On a couple of the hills the horses couldn't make it all the way up without resting. They dragged a large pole behind the rear wheels. As the horses stopped, the wagon rolled back on the pole and this stopped it from rolling backward. This way, as they rested, the horses didn't have to hold the weight of the wagon.

 

Bill went to school when he was six years old in a two story brick building that had been built by the villagers before he was born. The brick for the school had been formed and fired by the inhabitants to the south of the village. Bill missed a lot of school because his father and grandfather needed his help on their farms. It wasn't long before he would rather be on the farm than at school, probably because he was so far behind. This went on until he was about to complete grade 7, being 15 years old, the age at which one could quit school. He and one of his friends, Heber Perrett, got upset with their teacher. They picked up their books and left school, never to return. Surprisingly, this was about the age that most boys quit school unless they were planning on becoming school teachers. Bill, his parents, or his friends saw little need for an education beyond this point. The girls, on the other hand, often completed the 12th grade. It was mostly girls in those older grades. As Bill matured, he recognized the importance of an education and became a self educated man.

 

The town made their own entertainment and during Bills growing years there were dances and house parties nearly every week. Bill was so bashful that he missed out on most of these events.

 

In 1927 Bill gave up 26 months of his time, serving a mission for the LDS Church in the Central States Mission of the United States. When Bill came home from his mission he worked with his father on the farm. He also got a welcome home party. Bill ask Louise Perrett onto the floor which turned into a budding romance that blossomed until they were married on April the 9th, 1930.

 

After Bill and Louise were first married, they lived in a small house on his father's farm. A little over a year later they moved onto 20 acres of farm land that Bill owned. Louise's brother let them have a small coal house. They traded this for a granary from a neighbor and pulled it to their little farm by putting two poles under it and dragging it with horses. This same friend helped them put a new roof on it. Then he let them have the coal shed anyway. This granary, 12 feet by 14 feet, with a room they added years later, was to be their home for the next several years.

 

Bill and Louise fixed up this old granary by putting up thick wall paper on the walls and ceiling. There was no money to buy things, and they furnished it as time and money made it possible. They cooked on a coal burning kitchen stove which also supplied the heat during the winter. They didn't have any tables, cupboards or chairs, and as time went on Bill made them. They first started out using boxes for chairs. Things gradually came along until this little granary started looking like a home.

 

During these years out on the farm, major improvements were coming to Stirling. First, the telephone made it's appearance. There were 8 to 12 families on the same line and people often listened in. Perhaps one of the more interesting stories still being told was when one of the village boys was proposing marriage to an out of town girl. Yes, there were eavesdroppers. Electricity came next with that single light bulb dangling into the center of the room making a huge difference in the lives of those who got it. And then came the radio. The Hogensons gathered around it, like we do the television now, and listened to The Happy Gang, Who's That Knocking At My Door, both Canadian shows, and Saturday night hockey.

 

That first year on his farm Bill only had one horse and no machinery to farm his 20 acres. He had a good milk cow, and an extra cow he traded for a disk and a drill to plant his crops. The same neighbor who gave him the granary, and another neighbor each lent him a team of horses. These four horses were what he needed to pull his equipment. During those first years on the farm, he got a lot of help from others around the community, and especially his extended family. Years later he would repay this kindness by helping other young people make a new start.

 

In the first part of 1933 while it was still winter, Bill and Louie's 2nd son, 5 month old Ruland died. This was a terrible blow to them. During these times the villagers took care of all the funeral arrangements. In those days when a person died, the body was usually kept in a closed off room in a house until the funeral. The same neighbor who gave him the granary, built a casket, prepared the body, and kept it in an upstairs bedroom of his house awaiting the funeral. Other villagers helped with the funeral and the burial. This family had a teen-age daughter who had an adjacent bedroom upstairs. While she was in her room, she heard a baby cry. This shook her so badly she was frozen with fear, not knowing it was Bill and Louise's older son Marvin she heard crying as they were coming for a visit.

 

It was about this time that the depression really hit Southern Alberta. The people of Stirling didn't have much money before, and now they didn't have any. Several families didn't have the money to pay their electric bills and the power was shut off to their homes. The same thing happened to most of the phones. As the radios used battery power, even the time these were on was rationed and the family only listened to the best shows. But this didn't have any effect on Bill and Louise as they never had any electricity or phone in the first place out on their farm! Those who had crops or beef to sell couldn't hardly make a thing on them. Through a lot of back breaking effort Bill harvested 100 bushel of wheat on his 20 acre farm. That fall, wheat sold for 29 cents a bushel. A gallon of gasoline cost 25 cents. Needless to say, he didn't buy any gas, and the $29.00 he had to show for his summer's work didn't go very far. During these years the Hogensons and all the inhabitants of Stirling were forced to be as self reliant as the days when in 1899 tents rather than houses dotted the Stirling landscape. The lessons of the depression were so powerfully taught that the last remaining citizens from Bill's generation still (1999) practice frugality to the extreme. Large gardens were the norm in Stirling before the depression, but now because of the depression they got even bigger. During those years if you didn't grow it, or make it, you went without it. Nothing was thrown away and a new use was found for everything. Bartering became prevalent again with eggs, milk, cream, and butter regularly traded at the two stores in town for groceries. One family charged their winter's groceries and paid the bill in the spring. It came to $15.00. They only got the things they couldn't produce for themselves, such as salt, baking powder, soda, sugar, and maybe some flour.

 

During these years Bill was in desperate need of a little money to buy the few things he couldn't make for himself. He tried to find a job to augment his farm income but there weren't any to be found. One day he was reading in the Free Press newspaper and came across an add for selling suits. He got a Model A Ford for $50 and started selling suits and neck ties. It was a pretty good business for him and was an economic salvation for his growing family.

 

Bill also started raising sugar beets during the depression. The sugar beet company planted the sugar beets for them with a four row planter. Then it was his job to raise them. A cultivator stirred up the dirt and killed the weeds. It was pulled by two horses and cultivated four rows at a time. The beets had to be thinned, irrigated again, then finally harvested. This was back breaking work. But it was a good cash crop for farmers.

 

During the depression years, Bill's farm grew to 100 acres then he rented and later bought another 80 acres. By putting most of the money he earned back into the farm, Bill purchased his first tractor, an iron wheeled John Deere for $400 in 1935. This was his prime power for a number of years, then he bought another John Deere, Model D tractor with rubber tires for $1,200. His farming acreage increased until he farmed about 1,200 acres. Some of this land was rented.

 

During the late 30's, Bill also purchased some cattle and started a feedlot. As the years went by he got up to 500 cattle. In 1951 it all came crashing down over an outbreak of Hoof-in-Mouth disease. Bill's cattle never got it, but the parts of Canada that did have it knocked the price down all over the country. Controlling the spread of the disease, cattle couldn't be shipped to market. The next spring he sold the cattle that had been fattened up for less than what he had paid for them the previous fall. Even though the disease never made it to Southern Alberta, the depressed prices wiped the cattle business out for a time throughout the area.

 

In 1942, Bill and Louise had earned enough money to move out of their granary house and move into the village. Almost as soon as he moved into town he was voted into the city council where he served for 12 years. During 8 of those years he was the mayor. Graveling those dusty, muddy streets was an ongoing project Bill inherited as the mayor. Those who had no money for the village taxes took their gravel carrying wagons to a gravel pit north of Stirling and got a load of gravel. Then they pulled their wagons back to Stirling. When they got their load to the spot they wanted to unload, they pulled the planks out of the bottom of the trailer and the gravel fell through to the street below. A scraper smoothed the gravel out. Horses were used to do all this work. Putting in sidewalks was another ongoing project.

 

The arrival of natural gas in the village was the next big improvement Bill saw as mayor. Having gas in their homes was a nice convenience. There was no going outside for coal and no ashes to carry out. And better yet, there were no more trips to the river bottom 20 miles away to break the local coal up with crowbars and sledge hammers before bringing it home in a horse drawn wagon. It was the start of a new life. Most people converted their coal burning stoves to gas as they couldn't afford to buy new gas ranges.

 

It wasn't until 1966 that Stirling got it's water and sewer system. Before this time, everyone had cisterns and filled them from the irrigation ditches lining the streets.

 

In the mid 60's, Bill, as a member of the school board, remembers vividly an important meeting to keep the high school open. There was still no water in town and Stirling was losing more and more residents. People were moving out of town, and there were fewer students. One person suggested that the community face it: People were moving out of town. Only two families at that time were even having more children. And there weren't any new homes being built. The people of the community wanted to keep the school open, but they didn't see any other way but to close the school because of the declining student population. They could send the high school students to Raymond, a town only 6 miles away. Bill felt they were being hasty in this and told the group that he had a strong feeling things were going to change, and that they should leave the school open. This suggestion was finally accepted by the school board. Soon after this, more families started moving in. Bill believes the town would have 'been sunk' if the school had been shut down.

 

In 1965, Bill was made the bishop, or the ecclesiastical leader of the Mormon church congregation in Stirling. Bill was 58 years old at this time and wondered if he wasn't too old for the job. Yet he had a wonderful experience being the bishop. Bill was the bishop for 8 years. When he was released at the end of that time he was surprised to find his son was to be the new bishop. Shortly after this, Bill and Louise were the first missionary couple to serve from the Stirling congregation. They served for 18 months among the Indians in Montana and Wyoming. In 1977 Bill was ordained a Patriarch, a lifelong position in the Church.

 

Louise died of cancer in 1981. Bill sees much of his success in life as a result of the support she gave him. He remembers her as always being there. They were very much in love and worked together. She was a good mother and always supported Bill while he was the Bishop and on the town counsel.

 

Presently (1999) Bill lives a quiet yet active life and is still very much part of the community. Bill, at 92 years old has a great amount of energy for someone his age. He works out every day and continues to maintain a beautiful garden of vegetables. A few years after Louise died, Bill married a kind and loving woman from England. Their getting together is a romantic story in itself. She takes good care of Bill and he has been good for her as well. Bill believes Stirling is a good place to live where people still care about each other. He feels grateful he was blessed to live his life out here. Looking back on his days, he sees his family as the most important thing in his life. He and Louise were blessed with 5 wonderful children and he now has 23 grandchildren and 55 great-grandchildren. His one wish is that there "aren't any empty chairs" when the family reunites during the eternities. May this, the greatest desire of his heart be realized.

 

Postscript

 

It was a lot of fun interviewing Bishop Hogenson (as most of us call him) for this story back in 1997. He is one of those people who radiate love and make you feel better inside by just being around him. Even now at 92 years old, Bill loves to exercise. One day he said to me, "Taking care of yourself is primary in a person's life. We are all here for a purpose. And that is to prepare ourselves for entry into Heavenly Father's Kingdom. We should try to keep ourselves spiritually, physically, and mentally fit so that we can fit into the programs and things that we need to do."

 

Bill feels it is especially important for older people to keep fit. This includes good eating habits, and staying as mobile as possible. "Use it or lose it," he says. Bill exercises most of his muscle groups in the morning. "One must exercise until he knows he has done something," he says. He also exercises in the evening with 5 pound weights in several positions, standing and laying on his back. He used to go to a chiropractor but now that he has been exercising with weights he doesn't need one anymore. He works with weights 45 minutes every night and this helps him go to sleep. Exercise helps keep his limbs mobile so he can get around. He has been exercising with weights for 4 years. He started exercising 32 years ago and has continually been building up his program since then.

 

After one interview session, Bishop Hogenson took me into his basement where he exercises every morning. He wanted to show me his routine. On getting downstairs, he tossed a couple of those hand exercisers my way. (You know, those doodads that have two handles you squeeze together, connected by a spring.) Then he told me to follow him. Bishop Hogenson's 90 year old legs were bowed and didn't work very well any more. And as I looked down on his bent, five foot frame as we hurried along, with both of us working the hand exercisers like crazy, the whole thing struck me as quite comical. The rather tinny quacking sound the hand exercisers made somehow complimented our shuffle perfectly. Bishop Hogenson's route went back and fourth all around the room, circling furniture and lamp posts. On the second lap I started looking at his carpet more closely and noticed the trail he had beaten into the carpet from following the exact path over many years. There were two little furrows, one for each foot. As my eyes followed the movements of his feet on the carpet, each foot fell exactly within their furrow. (We calculated it out later. This part of his exercise covered 2/3 mile.) Throughout our jog, Bishop Hogenson told me how many steps it was around one lap, and how many laps he went, and how many steps it was all together. After this, he grabbed his stretching machine (the kind with two handles with several springs attached between them). His exerciser has five big springs on it. He gave it to me and I tried to extend it with my arms. To my embarrassment I couldn't stretch it very far. Then I learned why his arms were so big as he had no problem with it. He used this exerciser in several different exercises for both his legs and his arms. Towards the end of his routine he jumped down and knocked out 50 perfect pushups. Finally, he showed me how at the end of his workout he went over to the window for his deep breathing exercises. In the morning he exercises for an hour every day. A teenager would have a hard time keeping up with him.

 

Coming away after visiting Bishop Hogenson always leaves one smiling.

     

Some interesting links..

 

Stirling Historical Society

waltonfeed.durtschi.com/stirling/history/index.php