Introduction.  In August 2007, I interviewed my mother, Dotty Ofstedahl Laird, in Pleasanton, California.  I was able to do a taped oral family history interview with her that day, sitting around her kitchen table.  The conversation was originally recorded on a handheld tape cassette recorder.  I later took the tape to an audio store, and had it transferred to a digital format.  The audio recording registers at a little over ninety minutes in length – and was divided into two parts.  I am sorry that it has taken over twelve years to transcribe this, but being locked up during the coronavirus pandemic gave me the time to finally get around to it.

Dotty was the middle child of three children of my grandparents – Carl Arnfred Ofstedahl and Josephine Phoebe Nash.  She was born August 5, 1924 in Platte, South Dakota.  Her father was from Grafton, North Dakota, and after his World War I service, went to work for a lumber company, maybe in Winnipeg, Canada and was transferred South to the Thompson Lumber Yard in Platte, South Dakota where he met my Grandmother.  Her mother Josephine’s grandfather, father, and uncles had homesteaded in Carroll Township, Charles Mix County in the “Dakota Boom” during the early 1880’s.  Josephine was born in Wheeler, South Dakota in 1898, and grew up in Charles Mix County, attending the local boarding school, Ward Academy.  Carl and Jo were married in Lake Andes in 1922, and Lois, the first child, was born the next year.  Dotty was born in 1924 and the third and last child, Norval, was born in 1925.

The Ofstedahls lived in Platte until Dotty was twelve and then they moved to Geddes – both in Charles Mix County.  Dotty graduated from high school in 1942, and came to California and joined her sister Lois in Glendale.  She worked there for a couple of years, and then returned to South Dakota to attend the University of South Dakota.  There she met Ralph Laird after he had returned from service in Europe during World War II.  They married in 1946, she left school to support him, and after his graduation in 1949, they came to Northern California – where he got his first teaching job in 1950.  They had three children, and lived in Vallejo, LaVerne, and Pleasanton.  Ralph passed away in 2000.  At the time of the interview in 2007, only Dotty was left among the immediate family members of Carl and Josephine.  At the time of this transcription, Dotty is 95 and is still living in Pleasanton.

Her life began in the “Roaring 20’s” before radio, went through the Great Depression and Dust Bowl.  She was in sunny, pre-smog Southern California, lived through World War II, and had just had her second child when the family got its first television.  She was a “stay-at-home” Mom and then a “re-entry woman” going back to college in her 40’s.  She taught school for fifteen years before retiring.  She’s been using email the last few years.  In her over nine decades, she’s seen plenty, and much change.  This interview focuses on her life in South Dakota, and her family, and extended family there.

I have done my best to be true to the actual words of the interview.  There are times I added a word that was inferred, and many times dropped a “like”, “well” or a false start.  There were a few places where a phrase couldn’t quite be made out.  With those minor edits, this is a fairly complete transcript.  This taping was the third in an informal series of three – Lois in 1999, Lois and Dotty’s cousin Bernice in July 2007, and Dotty in August, 2007.  Dotty’s is twice as long as the others.  But each has an amazing amount of information about their family and lives – and taken together provides a lot of color about the family in the Dakotas. 

As I listen to them all, I regret not asking more about some subjects.  I didn’t ask Lois about her own family, and life in Glendale.  I could have asked more about her own parents.  At the end of the interview with Mom – the longest of the three – I suggest that we can still cover things in a future interview.  I wish that I had.  But the three of them together present an amazing amount of information about a generation and a time that has almost completely passed.

-       John Laird, Santa Cruz, CA – JohnLaird9@aol.com  – Transcribed May, 2020

The transcript of the interview/audio 90 minutes, 33 seconds/24 pages of transcript:

Start of Track One (46 minutes, 18 seconds)

Dot: Is it on?

John: It’s on, we’re all set.  I was going to ask you, start with the basics, what’s your name?

Dot: Dorothy Jean Laird.

John: You were born?

Dot: August 5, 1924.

John: You weren’t born a Laird.

Dot: Ofstedahl was my maiden name, Norwegian.

John: Where were you born?

Dot: Platte, South Dakota.

John: And where specifically were you born, where did your mother deliver you?

Dot: All three of us were born in a home, we didn’t have a hospital, didn’t go to a hospital at that time, probably had a doctor come to us.  We took a picture of the house when we went back to visit.

John: Was it in Platte?

Dot: It was in Platte.

John: Were you, Norval, and Lois all born in the same house?

Dot: Yes, all three of us.

John: Do you recall what street it was on?

Dot: No, we didn’t think in streets in Platte.

John: It was wherever you were living in 1923, 1924 . . .

Dot: 1925 . . . Yes.

John: What’s your earliest memory?

Dot: I think I was about four years old.  I remember my father worked at an elevator, a grain elevator.  And I was with him, and we were walking home, and he was thinking so hard he was walking fast.  He had long legs, took big steps, and I would toddle along behind him.  And that’s one of my first memories.  Also . . .

John:  Just trying to keep up with him as he walked home?

Dot: Trying to keep up.  And I kept saying, I’m four years old, I’m four years old . . .  Then I do remember my mother went to work, she was always trying to make things better for the family, and so she went to work in a hat shop, she made hats, and owned this hat shop in one part of a beauty parlor.  We had a hired girl, that stayed with us while she was working.  I remember one day she came home for lunch, it must have been my nap time, because I was cross and I didn’t want her to leave.  She went walking back to work, and when the hired girl wasn’t looking I got out and was following her.  Went for a couple of blocks before they finally caught me.  Then I must have been about four years old. 

John: Do you recall what the hired girl’s name was?

Dot: No, I don’t.

John: Is that the way it worked, your mother worked in the hat shop and somebody stayed and watched the three of you?

Dot: Yes.

John: What places did you live in in Platte?  Did you just live in one house that you can remember?

Dot: No, that house wasn’t the house I was born in.  We moved into this house, and then we went into a house that was called the Hartzer (?) house, a big stucco place, that’s when Lois started school.  And we didn’t have a kindergarten, so Norval and I were home.  I do remember  my mother was ironing and listening to the radio when Charles Lindbergh flew to Paris.  I remember that distinctly, so I must have been five years old about that time.

John: When you were done in the stucco house, is that when you left Platte?

Dot: No, we moved into a little house right next to Grandma and Grandpa Nash.  We lived there until I was eleven years old and then we moved to Geddes.  When we were in that house, the little house, I had started school.  My grandfather Nash was a carpenter, and he had built their house on the corner, the big house.  So he built my sister and I a doll house, pitched roof, windows in it, a door in it – it must have been about six by eight feet.  I think it was at that time that Grandma Nash made the two doll quilts for my sister and I.

John: The one that you . . .

Dot: I just gave to Kari and Lisa.

John: And the one that we took pictures of at the reunion?

Dot: Yes.

John: Was that one quilt you gave to them or was that two?

Dot: I gave her two big quilts and then the doll quilt.  Grandma Nash had made those quilts probably 1930 – 20’s or 30’s.

John: The doll quilt was designed for the doll house.

Dot: Yes.

John: That whole time you were in Platte, what was your father doing for a living?

Dot: He worked for the grain elevator, he was the manager.  We used to go down and play, but it was very dangerous to get near the grain because the it went down a shoot, so we didn’t do that.  I remember that time in Platte, before we moved to Geddes, was the big grasshopper plague, and we had grasshoppers all over, that were eating the crops, we had dust storms.  My father was selling this big black, gooey stuff that would kill the grasshoppers, he was selling it to the farmers.  I do remember that.

John: At the time, it was out of the grain elevator that he was selling this stuff?

Dot: Yes.

John: Since you mentioned it, the dust storms.  If you moved when you were eleven, you moved in 1935 to Geddes, or roughly thereabouts, so the dust storms happened while you were in Platte?

Dot: Yes.

John: Because of the drought and the depression, that things happened?

Dot: The dryness, then the big winds had came (sic).  I remember my mother particularly wetting a sheet and hanging it over the window on the side where the dust storm was coming from.  And within an hour, the outline was dirt.  So she was trying to keep it out of the house.

John: And what was it like, could you see big dust clouds coming, or did it just blow through?  What was your experience when that happened?

Dot: It just seemed constant.  You didn’t see it coming, it was just all over.  It was just like one big rain storm, only it was dust.

John: You went to school, you started school in Platte?

Dot: I started school and went through the fourth grade.  And then when I was going into the fifth grade, my Dad got a job, was hired to be a manager of a Thompson Lumber Yard in Geddes. And so we moved. . .

John: I’ll get to Geddes in a bit, so you didn’t have kindergarten so you had first, second, third and fourth grade in Platte? 

Dot: Right.

John: Was there was one school, elementary school?

Dot: Yes. Elementary and high school together.  It was one big brick building.  We were on the lower floor and the high school was on the upper floor.

John: What do you remember about attending school when you first went to school?  Did you have a different teacher every year?

Dot: Yes, we did.   I particularly remember my fourth grade teacher.  She was very, very good, very quiet, and passive.  Mrs. Just, J-U-S-T, I really liked her, I don’t remember too much about the other teachers. [NOTE: After my Mom passed away in late 2023, I went through many of her papers and photos. I found the clipping posted below from 1955 about Mrs. Just. It is probably from the Platte Enterprise, but just the date is noted, not the newspaper. It shows how much she remembered her. In the recollections of the Nashes homesteading in Carroll Township in Charles Mix County, written by Josephine Ofstedahl’s cousin Charles Nash, Chris Larson is listed as a resident of Carroll Township. Chris Larson is listed as the father of Helen Just.]

John: When you went to school, you always had Lois in the grade in front of you and Norval in the grade behind you?

Dot: Yes.

John: What was that like?

Dot: It wasn’t good being a middle child at times.  They were both so bright, so you were expected to be bright, too.

John: And so it was just hard.

Dot: Yes. It was hard.

John: In Platte, you had a lot of relatives that lived around, right?

Dot: Yes.

John: Who were some of them?

Dot: One of Mom’s cousins, Guy Nash, was our closest.  It was like they were our family, like they were brother and sister. 

John: Did they live by you?

Dot: About four blocks away.  But we spent a lot of time with them.  In the summer time, we’d go out to Lake Platte, and have a picnic with them.  He had an old, I think it was an old Pontiac, it had a rumble seat. It’s a trunk that the lid comes down and makes seating area, and the kids always sat back in the rumble seat going to the lake.  We spent a lot of time with them.  My mother and Guy were very close.

John: And Guy was married to who?

Dot: Claire, Claire Nash, and their children were Shirley and Keith.

John: And she was Claire Harding, right?

Dot: Yes, Claire Harding.

John: So they were among the closest to you when you grew up. 

Dot: They were.

John: But there were other ones around, I know that Charles Nash, who was a cousin of your mother’s, was around.  Do you remember him from when you were younger?

Dot: Yes, a very stately man.  He was an intellectual, he read all the time.  A very, very nice man.

John: Had he married Ella by the time you were growing up?

Dot: He had married Ella and they had children too, I can’t remember the names. . . you know . .

John: It was Dorothy . . .

Dot: Dorothy, and Alan, and Robert.

John: That’s right. Good work, Mom.  Was he a teacher, what did he do for a living?

Dot: They both were teachers.  At the time I remember him, he was also a farmer.  Most people were farmers.

John: He also planted, and we saw it when we were in Platte, didn’t try an orchard once?

Dot: Yes he did, he did.  But the farm that I really remember, to go back to, is Grandpa Nash’s farm, out in Carroll Township. And at that time, they were still there when I was very very young and then he built the house in Platte and moved in.  But I remember going to that farm.  He was growing peanuts, and I had no idea that peanuts grew underground, like a potato.  So I always remember that. And the house was just an elegant old house, had a big stained glass window up on top.  Later on when they moved to town, they rented the farm.  Eventually that house was torn down. 

John: Which is a tragedy.

Dot: Yes, but my mother rescued the stained glass.

John: And you still have it.

Dot: Jim has it.  Jim still has the stained glass from that old house, the homestead.

John: So you remember that homestead?

Dot: I do.

John: Were any other people living out in Carroll Township, did you ever know Fred Christensen or Lynn Christensen when they lived there?

Dot: No, I knew them after they had moved to California, to Long Beach.  I didn’t know them when they were in Carroll Township.

John: And was your grandmother’s cousin, Ora, did she live in Platte when you lived there?

Dot: No, she lived in Oacoma, up near Chamberlain, because that’s where her mother Mary lived.  And Mary was my grandfather James Nash’s sister.  Ora lived up there.  She was close to my mother, she worked in Sacramento as a Secretary.  Pierre, not Sacramento. [Below are photos of Mary “Mate” Nash at left - this is of her taken in Illinois, possibly before they came to South Dakota; and at right below is a photo of a younger Ora Elfes. I recall meeting her when I was a child.]

John: The capitol.

Dot: The capitol.

John: Do you remember her mother Mary? Mate?

Dot: No, maybe I saw her once or twice, I just don’t remember her.

John: What about your grandmother’s brothers.  You remember Ted, right?

Dot: Oh yes, Ted.

John: What about him?

Dot: Ted was very artistic and moved to Idaho.  He would make chess sets.  He was very creative and artistic.

John: He was also a printer, right?

Dot: Yes, he liked being alone, he didn’t like living near a big city.  But during the war he felt an obligation to help, so he moved to Venice, California and worked in an industry that was helping the war.

John: And then when it was done he moved back to Idaho? 

Dot: And when it was done he went back to Idaho.

John: And he was married, right?

Dot: To Ann.

John: And you remember your Aunt Ann?

Dot: And I remember Aunt Ann.

John: Anything about her?

Dot: Played the piano.  Lois kept in touch with her and when Aunt Ann moved to Arizona after Uncle Ted died, Lois would write to her.  I don’t know if she ever saw her or not.  They corresponded back and forth. 

John: And Ted and Ann had one child?

Dot: One son, Eddie, and he became a fireman in Los Angeles.  And before his wife died, they moved to Salem, Oregon.  They had one daughter.  And we’ve just lost track of him completely, we’ve tried to get an address to find out where Ed was and we never have been able to contact him.

John: So he might still be alive.  And the name of the daughter was?

Dot: Nancy Ann.

John: She went to Stanford.

Dot: Uh hm.  [Ida Kate Nash with Nancy Ann Nash, below, undated.]

John: There were also two other brothers and one was . . .

Dot: Uncle Ben.

John: Uncle Ben.  Did you know him when you were younger?

Dot: Oh, yes, I knew him.

John: When did you see him or how did you know him?

Dot: They would come to Platte to visit Grandma and Grandpa and we would see them then.  And Ben did some work travelling, I don’t know if he was a salesman or what he was, but he used to drop in and visit my mother when he was alone, he was on one of his work trips.  Their kids were Eloise, Miriam was the oldest, Eloise and Jamie.  Eloise came and spent the summer with us for several years.  So we were very close to her.

John: What do you remember about Eloise?

Dot: Oh, very very attractive young girl, had a lot of freckles.  Giggly.  Very very cute.  She, Lois and I were very close.  She was a year, a little older than Lois, I think. [A photo of Eloise is posted below.]

John: Do you remember Miriam?

Dot: I remember Miriam but she was older.  And her personality – she was always very stand-offish, and grumpy.  After meeting Jamie about two years ago, Jamie even admitted that she wasn’t very nice.  So we didn’t really have anything to do with Miriam.  Jamie was younger, and he told me when I saw him that he was always afraid of Grandpa Nash, because Grandpa Nash had a strong personality and powerful person.

John: One of Eloise’s kids gave me a book that Mrs. Ben Nash had written, Mabel, and that she mentioned that when they were going on their honeymoon, they got piled into the car with Grandpa Nash and the rest of the family, during their honeymoon, that was part of their honeymoon, driving away with them.

Dot: How awful.

John: Exactly.  What else do you remember about Ben?

Dot: Very nice man, he was very nice, he was close to my mother.  I think he worked for the County for a while too.  I’m not sure exactly what he did.

John: He got elected to something.

Dot: Yes,  I think he did.  I have no memory of that.  That didn’t mean anything to me as a kid.  But they lived in Lake Andes for a while because of that.  Then they were in Watertown, and Aberdeen.  When they lived in Watertown, Lois and I went up, we were taken up to Watertown.  We spent two weeks with them.  After living in Platte and Geddes, with no dime store, no place to shop, we were just enthralled with the stores in Watertown.  In fact, Eloise was so bored with us going through the stores, she didn’t want to do that.  And we did.  The other thing I remember about being in Watertown, is there must have been a fire one night, because there was a siren that scared me to death.  We didn’t have those things in Platte and Geddes. 

John: You didn’t have sirens of any kind?

Dot: The noon siren was all.

John: Just to let people it was noon?

Dot: Uh huh.

John: At that time they didn’t have sirens for tornadoes.

Dot: No, they didn’t

John: What about, there’s one uncle that we haven’t . . . Harley, what about Uncle Harley?

Dot: Harley.  Harley was also very creative.  I remember him when he lived in Platte.  He had a short wave radio, and was always using it.  The Platte water tower, which is up on high stilts, with a tank up on top, needed painting.  So he was hired to paint the water tower.  I do remember that.  But he couldn’t get a job.  So he finally moved to Sioux Falls where he found work.

John: Just because it was during the Depression?

Dot: Yes.  He left Aunt Belle with Russy, Jeannie, and Bill, three little kids.  And when he was in Sioux Falls he met another woman, and so divorced Aunt Belle, and married the other woman, so Aunt Belle raised the three children alone.  And I still am in contact with Jeannie, when I go back for reunions, I call her and try to see her.

John: What did Aunt Belle do when that happened?

Dot: When you lived in a small town like Geddes and Platte, the children from the country would have to come in to go to school.  They would stay from Monday morning to Friday night.  And so there was a dormitory-like home.  Aunt Belle was the cook and ran it, and that meant that the children could live there and she could live there, and she was also paid.  So that’s what she did to earn a living.

John: Interesting way to make it through that.  And there was one son that died before you were born . . .

Dot: George.

John: Do you remember anybody ever talking about him?

Dot: No.  Other than my mother mentioned a couple of times,  he was seventeen I think, he was in Ward Academy School.  The only thing that they would ever say about it is that he died of brain fever. Well, heaven knows, that means they couldn’t diagnose what it was.  In today’s sophisticated technology, they would have found out what it was.  Very bright, very bright, is what my mother told me. [Below is a letter from George to his parents in January, 1907, six months before he died. It was from Academy, probably indicating he was studying at Ward Academy at the time.]

John: It sounds like they were very creative in that family.

Dot: My Mother painted, my grandmother painted.

John: I didn’t know your mother painted.

Dot: I have a painting of hers.

John: What kinds of things did she paint?

Dot: Still life.  She did ceramic painting.  The plate in there, she painted, that I have, she did.  I have two paintings in my bedroom that Grandma Nash painted.

John: I have pictures of those.  Let’s talk about your mother a little bit.  You mentioned that she worked, what memories do you have of your mother when you were growing up?

Dot: She always liked to work, that just pleased her.  She felt like she was helping the family.  Her personality, was she wanted to be out with people.  And in Platte, she ran the hat shop.  And then she worked in a grocery store before we moved to Geddes.  And I can remember on Saturday night they were open until ten o’clock at night or eleven o’clock.  All the farmers would come in and buy their groceries and set it aside in a box.  And then the clerks like my mother would wait for them to come and pick it up to go home.  So I can remember her working on a Saturday night.  And then when we moved to Geddes, she also did that, she managed her little grocery store.

John: In Geddes?

Dot: In Geddes.

John: So while your father was working for the lumber yard, she was managing the grocery store.

Dot: She was managing the grocery store.  By that time we were able to take care of ourselves. 

John: What was it like during the Depression for you?  Sounds like your family worked all the way through, so they did OK.

Dot: They worked all the way through, but we didn’t have a car until I was probably thirteen years old.  One time we went on a vacation to Sioux Falls.  We didn’t vacation, we never went out of town, I never went any place.  But one time my Dad and Mom borrowed Grandpa Nash’s Model T Ford, and we drove to Sioux Falls and stayed in little cabins along the stream. 

John: And it was right by the falls, right?

Dot: Yes and so that’s the only vacation I remember.

John: And I was going to ask when you got the first car, so you weren’t thirteen, how did the family manage before having a car?

Dot: Well we always walked, we lived closed to town, you could just carry your groceries home, if you had to go to the doctor he was in town, you walked every place.

John: And every service was near enough . . .

Dot: It was just a small town.

John: And when you were thirteen and you got the first car, what kind of car did you get?

Dot: It was a Model A Ford, it’s the one I learned to drive on.  My sister took me outside of town.  In the farm country you have sections, a mile this way, a mile this way, it’s makes a square.  Lois took me out, and I drove around that square.  But I had to shift all the time, it wasn’t automatic.  So that’s how I learned to drive.  I must have been about fourteen, fifteen.  We didn’t have drivers licenses at all. 

John: You didn’t need a driver’s license?

Dot: No, I didn’t have one until I came to California.

John: About your Mom, do you remember things that she taught you or things she would talk to you about when you were a kid?

Dot: I guess.  She taught me a lot about cooking.  I loved to cook.  I’d come home from school after school and she’d be working and I’d start baking. 

John: What kinds of things did you bake?

Dot: Cookies, cakes, something sweet.

John: No (unclear)

Dot: She taught me to sew.  She made all of our clothes at that time.  It was a rarity for us to get a “boughten” outfit.  And I didn’t get any sweaters unless they were hand-knitted.  And I guess when I finally became eighteen or nineteen I would go out and buy sweaters. 

John: And be surprised . . .

Dot: Yes, so she made all of our clothes and in the winter time it got very cold, so she made us snow suits, with the pants leggings and everything.  Besides working, she was doing this all the time.

John: So she was just busy, either working or . . .

Dot: A very busy lady.

John: Your father, who I know you loved, and was a special guy.  What do you remember about your Dad when you were a kid?

Dot: He was always very quiet, a quiet man.  And he grew up with his speaking Norwegian in the home.  So I do remember he taught us some Norwegian phrases.  He taught us “Silent Night” in Norwegian.  He was just very quiet, very smart man.  I do remember that when he worked at the lumber yard, the carpenters would come in and say to him, now Carl, I need to build a chicken shed, it’s got to be twelve feet by ten feet.  How much lumber do I need?  And my father would sit down with a paper and pencil and about ten, fifteen minutes, he’d say you need this this and this.  So he could always figure that out.  So he had a reputation among them of being very good. 

John: And do you recall, and I want to get back to your Dad later, but do you recall his mother at all?

Dot: Yes, we went to North Dakota after we got our car.  And she was living with Uncle Elmer at that time.

John: In Grafton?

Dot: In Grafton. So went up to visit.  It was an apartment.  We stayed, I think, two nights.  So I do remember her from that visit.  I think that’s the only time I saw her.

John:  Really, you only met her. . . that’s the only time in your life?

Dot: Yes, because I didn’t see her after she moved to California.  But I do remember one incident that embarrassed me completely.  My mother  was telling her what a good cook I was.  She says, Dotty can really make omelets.  And so they asked me that morning to make an omelet, and I was so embarrassed.  I don’t want to cook for all these people. (Laughter)

John: I guess that Norwegian was spoken in grandpa’s home when he was a kid. 

Dot: Yes.

John: So she must have spoken Norwegian.

Dot: Yes, but she spoke English to us. 

John: And did fine, do you recall if she had an accent?

Dot: I don’t remember that, John.  I don’t remember.  She was just a quiet lady.  Very nice.  Very happy to have her son come home.

John: And how about your uncles and aunt.  What do you remember about Elmer?

Dot: Elmer would come to visit us after you were born.  That’s my memory of him.  Not when we lived in Dakota, but when we came to California and he used to come and visit.  I do remember Elmer, once, wanted to visit this lady in the TB sanitarium in Santa Rosa, who had come from Grafton, so he went to visit her, and it was Jerry Waldie’s wife. 

John: Yes.

Dot: And then also, my cousin Betty.  See Dad’s sister Borghild, we called her Aunt Peg, had two children, Betty and . . .

John: Dick.

Dot: Dick.  And Betty had gotten married and she and her husband were in San Francisco at the airport, and getting ready to board their plane.  So Ralph and I drove Elmer in and we had lunch together with Betty and her husband.  And so Elmer was very pleased to see them.  He stayed with us when we lived in Vallejo and he thought my boys were so polite because when they got up in the morning they would always walk up to him and say good morning.  Remember that?

John: No I don’t remember that.

Dot: I do remember Elmer.

John: Do you remember Gerhart or “Gee”?

Dot: Yes.  And I had only met him maybe twice, and when my father died, he came to the funeral.  So I had a good visit with him then.  But Aunt Peg, Dad’s sister, I knew the best because I stayed with them for two months. [NOTE: Gee had died about nine years before Carl’s funeral, so it was probably Ledwin she remembers being at the funeral.  She mentions Ledwin at the funeral a little later in the conversation.]

John: And that’s when you first moved to California?

Dot: Yes, I stayed with them before I moved in the YWCA.

John: So when you graduated from high school, you came to California?

Dot: Yes.

John: And the first two months you stayed with them.  What was that like, where did they live?

Dot: They lived in a very nice house in Glendale, up in the hills.  I got a job in Los Angeles.  So I would get up in the morning and go to work.  I’d ride the bus and the red car, that’s when LA had the red car.  They should have kept them.  

John: That’s right.

Dot: And so l was with them for two months and then when I turned eighteen I moved into the YWCA.  You had to be eighteen to live at the Y. [The photo below was Dot at the Glendale YMCA in this period.]

John: So you needed a place to stay until you were eighteen?

Dot: Yes. And Betty my cousin was in high school, but that was summer time so she was home and so Aunt Peg kept me for that period.

John: Was it nice living with them?  Was it relaxed?

Dot: That’s hard for me to remember, I was gone most of the time.

John: Because you were working. . .

Dot: Yes.

John: What kind of job did you have?

Dot: I got a job at a blueprint shop as a receptionist.  And then they taught me to use the veratyper, which is a form of a printer.  So I worked there until  . . . oh I think, a matter of a couple of months.  And then I got a job back in Glendale with an optometrist  as a receptionist.  I could walk to that I didn’t have to take a bus, it was down on Grand Avenue. [Mom identified the photo below of her and and a co-worker at Dr. Stedman’s in Glendale.]

John: That’s where Bob of Bob’s Big Boy was one of the . . .

Dot: . . . customers.  So I did that for two years, I was in LA for two years and I then went back to college at the University of South Dakota.

John: One of the reasons you came out was not just that your Aunt was there, but Lois had already . . .

Dot: My sister was there too. And she was going to Glendale JC, she was a music major, played the piano beautifully. 

John: And going back to South Dakota for a second, you mentioned that your Mother had gone to Ward Academy.  What do you remember about, it had already closed by the time you were a kid.

Dot: Yes. But Rev. Camfield, it was a congregational school, Rev. Camfield was the headmaster, as you might call him.  And it was a boarding school and my mother lived on a farm, so she had to go and stay there all year.  If she were to come home, they’d have to go get her in the buggy and wagon.  So she didn’t come home very often.  I remember growing up, that there would be reunions, and she would go back out to visit all of her friends.

John: Had they torn down a lot of Ward Academy by the you were a kid or were some of the buildings still standing?

Dot: I don’t remember that.

John: And that’s how Academy got its name.

Dot: Yes. That’s how the little town got its name and the school.  And she roomed with Kate Nachtigal.

John: Which was a friendship that lasted her whole life.

Dot: Yes. But her whole family went there.  And that’s where she first met Uncle Ben’s wife Mabel, because Mabel was in school too at that time.

John: Even in Mabel’s biography said she had roomed with a sister of Ben and since there’s only one, that was probably the one.

Dot: Yes, Mom.

John: It’s kind of unusual to have such a prairie academy.

Dot: It is.  I think it is.

John: And your Mom never went to college, right?

Dot: No. When she graduated from Ward Academy, she started teaching at a country school and she taught I think for two years until she met my father.

John: Oh, so she taught between?

Dot: She taught after she got out of Ward Academy.

John: Just as an aside, she also taught in California, but was one of the last teachers not to have a college degree, right?

Dot: Yes, she could teach as long as she was going, continuing her education.  She would take summer classes and night classes.  But then after she taught for a couple of years, then she married my father. And after we were a little bit older, she started to work again, like in the hat shop.

John: But she didn’t teach again until she they came to California, right, or did she teach back in South Dakota?

Dot: I think she taught a year or two when we were in Geddes.  I wish I could ask Lois about that.

John: What about them deciding to move to California, what do you think went into that decision?

Dot: Part of it was, Lois was in Glendale, and I had moved out there, and Norval graduated from high school and went into the Navy, so we were all gone.  And Uncle Gee had been after my Dad for years, to think about coming out, because they moved out during the Depression, I think, they came.  So he’d been writing to Dad and saying come, so I think that was a part of the whole thing.

John: And one of your uncles I didn’t mention, Uncle Ledwin, had he already been out in California as well?

Dot: Yes.  I don’t remember when he, Ledwin came out.

John: What do you remember about him in general?

Dot: He came to my father’s memorial, but other than that. . . They called him “Red”, he had red hair.

John: And his nickname was Leddie in the family.

Dot: Yes. So I remember very little about him.  The family was so spread out and you didn’t travel easily at that time.

John: But there was a time that only Elmer remained in the Midwest?

Dot: Yes.

John: . . . and the rest were in California.

Dot: Uh hm.

John: On your Mom’s side, Ben was the only one that really remained in . . .

Dot: . . . in South Dakota. Harley eventually moved to Washington state, I think, was working up there.  And Ted moved on to Idaho.  And my mother and father came out here, so yes.

John: Really on both sides, Elmer and Ben were the only ones . . .

Dot: . . . that stayed in the Dakotas.

John: I didn’t ask you much about your grandmother.  What about her?

Dot: What a delight that woman was.  It was so special to know her.  She was very easy going.  I do remember when they lived in the big house, and she’d be churning butter you know . . . with an old-fashioned churn, the big wooden thing with the churn going down.  And she’d reach in and poke her finger in it to see if it was done, and then she’d poke her finger in it and give us some.     So I do remember her, she read a lot sitting by the light every evening, reading, reading, reading . . .

John: Books, or newspapers, or what do you remember?

Dot: Well, I don’t remember newspapers.  Books, and magazines, but she was always reading.  She was very active . . . my grandfather was a very strong personality, and I have a feeling he really bossed her around, but she sort of was her own person.  They had a beautiful old house with great big mahogany furniture.  And a nice kitchen.  But when she moved in the little house and after Grandpa died, she was very independent.  She did her own painting.  I remember one time she was seventy-five years old and she was out painting the barn.  It was a shed, you know, but it was quite high, she was up on a ladder. She would walk to town, get her groceries.  She walked all over.  We all loved her dearly.  Used to go up in the summer time, you could ride the bus to Platte.  We’d stay with her for a couple of days.  In fact, when we lived in Geddes, we were able to go any place in the summer time.  All day long, we’d be with friends.  And if we didn’t come home til five o’clock, my mother never worried about us.  One day my sister, Lois, didn’t come home.  It was even six o’clock and six-thirty.  So my mother really began to get worried.  And we looked all over for her.  Finally she called up.  My grandmother didn’t have a telephone, but she called a neighbor and said, “Is Lois there?”  The neighbor went over and said, yes she’s here.  She got mad at my mother and rode the bus up.  All on her own.  But we used to go stay with grandma.  She was very special.

John: She was four when her family came over from Denmark, do you have any recollections of her talking about Denmark or the family?

Dot: No, I don’t, no, she never talked about it.

John: I know once you told me, I thought it was you, maybe it was Lois, that it was a very long trip or something like that . . .
Dot: That was Lois.  I didn’t remember that.

John: You’ve also told me stories about how your grandfather would just tell her what time it was to go to bed and she’d have to go to bed.  What was that?

Dot: He was just a strong personality, like my cousin Jamie said, he always scared me.

John: And so what did he do?

Dot: He would just say, Ida, come to bed, it’s time.  She’d just be sitting there reading, and want to read, she’d have to obey him, that was the tradition at that time.  So she sort of enjoyed being alone, I think, after that.  She told me she got to sit up as long as she wanted at night and play cards. [Below is a photo of Jim Nash, taken in his Mason hat at a studio in Yankton, South Dakota.]

John: And do you recall when your grandfather died?

Dot: Oh yes, I definitely remember that. We had moved to Geddes.  And we got the phone call that grandpa had died.  There was a huge snow storm and my Mother couldn’t get there.  We couldn’t get there by car.  And so she finally rode a train up to Platte.  And then the funeral was postponed a little bit.  We finally got there.  I remember Grandma Nash at the funeral.  I was thinking she’s so stoic.  And when they buried him in the Carroll Township Cemetery, the snow was so packed they couldn’t find the right place to put him, so we was buried in the road, the roadway, so later they went out and moved it to . . .  (end of section one) 46 minutes, eighteen seconds.  The next section picks up on the same subject.  I think it was when one tape ran out, and a new cassette had to be put in.

Start of Track Two (44 minutes, 15 seconds):

John: You were just saying that when your grandfather was buried, they buried him in the road, and they had to move him. . .

Dot: They couldn’t see where the plot was, we had a Nash section, and they were trying to put him there, but there was too much snow. [Below is Jim Nash’s tombstone and a view of Rock Hill Cemetery in Carroll Township from our 2000 visit there. There is an additional photo from that trip below with the memories from that trip.]

John: And where was the funeral?

Dot: It was at the mortuary in Platte.

John: You just remember going, you were twelve, I think, when it happened.

Dot: The whole town turned out, the Nash family was very well known.

John: So it was a huge crowd. 

Dot: Yes.

John: And did your mother live in that house most of the rest of her life, the house they had been living in at the time that he died?

Dot: No, she eventually moved in the little house that we had left, my grandmother you mean?

John: Yes.

Dot: I think they rented that house, and finally eventually sold it.  But I think it was a rental at first.  The house was too big.  There was a little controversy about that because my mother eventually sold the house, and gave Grandma the little house but she kept all the money and didn’t share it with the brothers.

John: Why was that?

Dot: Well, because she was taking care of Grandma and she had set her up in this house, which may have been expensive or something.  But looking back on it, she should have shared it with everybody and then they all together should have done that.  There were a little hard feelings about that for a while, about the way it was handled. My mother was a very determined lady, though.

John: That’s an understatement, as was your grandfather a very . . .  

Dot: Yes.

John: How did your grandfather pass away?

Dot: It was a heart attack.  He had been shoveling snow the day before.  He died that night.  She didn’t have a telephone, so she had to walk to the neighbor’s and call the doctor.  And the doctor came out.

John: Do you recall anything about any of her family members you met, only after you came to California, right, there was no member of her family you knew back in South Dakota?

Dot:  The only one who came back to visit us was Lynn Christensen.  Was that my mother’s cousin?  I think it was my mother’s cousin.

John: Yes, it was your mother’s double cousin . . .

Dot: Double cousin.

John: . . .  because your mother’s father – his sister married your mother’s mother’s brother.  And he came back and visited?

Dot: He came back with his wife and visited us, they stayed overnight with us.  By that time in Geddes we were in the big yellow house up on the hill.  We had room enough for guests.   I do remember when they were visiting, I can’t remember her first name [Jewell].  But we had a lightning storm and she was petrified, because she lived in California, and doesn’t experience electrical storms.  We were all little in awe of her fright.

John: Just talking briefly about Geddes. . .  So when you moved there, your father was working in the lumber yard, your mother in a small store, but by then you were eleven, twelve, and thirteen as kids, so that was where you all went to high school, right?

Dot: Yes, we all graduated from Geddes High.

John: And how many people were in your class?

Dot: Twenty-seven.

John: Wow, that’s actually not bad for a town that was three hundred, but actually it was all the people from farms around.

Dot: The country, surrounding area. [Below is Carl, Jo, Norval, Lois, and Dotty in this period. They moved to Geddes when Dotty was twelve, so it looks like this could be just about that time. This image came from Norv’s daughter Lise.]

John: That was very similar with Lois and Norv, and their classes?

Dot: Yes.

John: And what was it like in high school?

Dot: We had one big what we called study hall, with a little library up in front.  I remember of taking Home EC, I enjoyed that very much, I took short hand.  I was in the band, I played the drums (unclear).  I was in the chorus.  I was in a trio, a sextet, and then the chorus.  When we were in high school, our best friends were the children of our Methodist minister.  I sang in the church choir too.  And so on Sunday night, Rev. Chafee would preach at our church on Sunday morning. Sunday night, he’d go out into the country to a small church and he would preach.  So his daughter Fid, and Lois and I, would go out and we’d be the music.  We were a trio and we would sing for them during . . .

John: Hymns?

Dot: Anything, hymns usually.

John: Did you get paid for that?

Dot: Oh no. No.

John: You just went and did it?

Dot: We just went and did it.

John: You told me a story once about the community church in Geddes, that it was one church and you’d take different ministers for different times.

Dot: Yes, there was a Catholic church and a community church, and they would have different pastors.  But most of the time we would have Methodist ministers.

John: And the real issue was is that it varied between ministers of different denominations.

Dot: Yes, now it’s strictly Methodist, it’s the United Methodist Church.  Because when I went back for the reunion I went back.

John: But at the time it was a community church?

Dot: Yes.

John: Did everybody that wasn’t Catholic in the community go to that church?

Dot: Yes.

John: Did people come in from the farms to church?

Dot: Yes, they still do, they still do.  They had a very good youth group.  Every Sunday night we would meet.

John: What were the winters like?

Dot: They were very cold, very cold.  I remember one winter we had a lot of snow, so we would listen on the radio to the Sioux Falls station.  And they would list the schools that were closed because of weather, and we would listen for Geddes all the time.  And if it was closed, then we had the day at home.  What we did a lot of times was . . . the Chafees had a boy, Bill, and Vincy, two boys, so my brother would go down and be with the Chafees all day, with the boys – and then Fid would come up and be with Lois and I.  We would play monopoly and . . .

John: Just do what it took to pass the day.

Dot: Yes.

John: In terms of winters, what was it like in heating the house and or keeping warm?

Dot: We heated with coal.  We had a basement.  And whenever coal was delivered, they had a chute they would just dump the coal down and it would go into a bin.  Every morning my father would go down and start the fire and stoke it.  So we didn’t have a fan to circulate the heat.  And so that was our heating.  We were always comfortable.

John: And at night it wouldn’t really run, or would it run at night?

Dot: As long as he stoked it for the night, it would run most of the night. . .  it would burn most of the night.  There was no fan.  So it wasn’t blowing out anything, it wasn’t central air. 

John: But he’d have to go stoke it first thing in the morning.

Dot: Yes, get it going in the morning.

John: I remember you telling me once, maybe this was when you were living in Platte, that you would have root cellars, or you would have a place that you’d . . .

Dot: Oh, we didn’t have a cellar in the little house, but Grandma and Grandpa Nash had a big root cellar in the big house.  And they would put away vegetables that would last most of the winter.  Mostly cabbage and potatoes and things like that.  They also had an ice house down there because we didn’t have any refrigerators.  So they would go in the winter time down to the Missouri River, we lived very close to the Missouri River, and the men would cut chunks of ice, and they would put burlap around it and haul it in a truck, and shove it through a window down into their ice cubicle in the basement.  And they’d cover it with sawdust.  And it would last through most of the summer.

John: Really.

Dot: Yes. They’d preserve it.

John: How did that work?

Dot: Well, it’s just like the one at the cabin.  The Tarones didn’t have a refrigerator for a long time and they had a shed outside.  They’d open up the doors, and it would fill with snow and then they would close the doors in the spring and that snow would last a long time.  

John: Just self-preserve (Unclear) . . .

Dot: Well, it was cold.

John: And how did that work physically?  Was it dug below their house?  Was it dug in their yard? Where did they have . . .

Dot: The basement was dug below the house.

John: I know the basement was, but the root cellar, is that where it was?

Dot: Oh, the root cellar was in the basement.  Some places I can remember would have a root cellar outside.  You’d see this little mound with a trap door, laying partially at an angle.  And open it up and that would be their root cellar.  But Grandma Nash had hers in the basement.

John: When you were dealing with having to stoke coal, and . . . really you were at the mercy of the elements in a lot of ways.

Dot: Yes. Always, and especially when you were washing clothes.  I remember my mother used to heat the water in a great big wash tub.  She’d have a little gas stove out in our wash house, out sort of a room attached on to the house.  She would heat the water and they’d pour it into the washing machine, it would churn, and then you had a hand ringer.  And then if it were winter time she would have racks in this little laundry room, and that’s where you would dry the clothes.  If it wasn’t snowing you could hang them outside.  But you had to be very careful when you took them off, because if it were frozen it would crack the fibers and tear the clothes.  So you had to let it thaw out before you took them off the line.

John: Wow.

Dot: It wasn’t easy.

John: No.  What about electricity.  Platte and Geddes had full electricity when you were a kid.

Dot: Yes, we always had electricity.  No lanterns.

John: That’s good.  You mentioned the Missouri, the dam had happened before you were born, right? Or did that happen later. . .

Dot: Oh no, that happened long afterwards.

John: So do you remember Wheeler? [NOTE: Her mother Josephine was born in Wheeler.]

Dot: I remember going there once.  But I really don’t remember the town.

John: Was Wheeler the County seat until the dam flooded it?

Dot: No, I think they had moved it to Lake Andes before the dam flooded it.  But my mother went and got this clock from the courthouse.  She probably bought it, I would imagine.

John: I hope so.

Dot: Before it was flooded.

John: Do you remember the construction of the court house in Lake Andes?

Dot: Yes, Ora had worked there for a time.  So I remember of Mom going to visit.  I think it’s the same one that’s there today.

John: Yes, it is.  It’s sort of a Works Progress Administration, WPA . . .

Dot: It’s brick, big court house.

John: It’s the one thing you can see from the road approaching in one direction. 

Dot: Yes.

John: Who were some of your friends when you were in Geddes?

Dot: Oh, my best friend was Ruby Flory.  We were very close.  I met her the summer we moved to Geddes, because we moved early in the summer.  So she took charge of me.  She said, Now, she says, when you go into the fifth grade, she says, you come to my house, and I’ll take you over there and I’ll get you a seat.  She just took charge, and so she was always my best friend.  And then in high school, the country kids came.  Sometimes they went to a country school, and then during the freshman year of high school they would come into Geddes.  So that’s when I met Faith Bowen Berry (sp?).  She’s now my best friend from South Dakota, she lives in Rapid City.

John: But first, did she live out in the country somewhere?

Dot: They were farmers. Uh hm.

John: It was the Berry family?

Dot: No, the Bowen family. 

John: Bowen family.

Dot: She married Charles Berry.

John: Was it her sister that lived in Geddes when we visited at the reunion? Did she have a sister there?

Dot: Sister-in-law, that’s her brother’s wife.

John: And so you didn’t meet Faith until you were going into high school?

Dot: A freshman. [Below is a photo of “Harlan” and Faith and Dotty before a Geddes High School field trip.]

John: Did Ruby leave Geddes at one point?

Dot: She left Geddes, her sophomore year, I can’t remember it was her freshman year or sophomore?  One or the other.  Her father wasn’t able to make the payments on the house.  He had an automotive shop, and he was so proud that he would not live in Geddes without being in this house, which was a very nice place.  So they moved to Oregon, McMinnville, Oregon.  So she left.  And I didn’t contact her until after I was married, and Ralph and I were in Crockett.  And then they moved to the Bay Area and she left a message and we finally made contact.  And then when we lived in Vallejo, we moved to Vallejo, her mother came out and visited.  So I got to see her too.  But Ruby was my best friend and then I knew Faith in high school.

John: Was this house in Geddes, you referred to one that was up on the hill, but it’s the one I think we drove by when we were there. 

Dot: Yes.

John: It’s on the hill if you look from outside of town toward Geddes, right? 

Dot: Right, correct. 

John: Now was that the one where Norval had the bedroom where he had to go through your parents’ bedroom?

Dot: Yes.

John: What was that like?

Dot: Well, it was a sun porch, a very nice big sun porch and that was his bedroom.  But the only way to get there was to go through my parents’ bedroom.  I remember the story one night when he was in high school he had stayed out with his friends doing something and so he came home, and was creeping through their room, and they were laying there, they had trouble keeping from giggling.  (Laughter) Finally, after he got all the way through, my father said “Hi, Norsk”.  They called him Norski.

John: That was his nickname that your parents gave him?

Dot: Yes.

John: How did you get your own nickname? Dotty? How did you get that nickname?

Dot: My Father always called me Dots, he put an “s” on it.  And I guess my mother started by calling me Dotty.

John: Even when you were born, didn’t he say something after you were born about, there’s my Dotty.  I thought I heard that story.

Dot: That could be.  I don’t remember of hearing that.  Lois probably told you that.

John: Did Lois ever have a nickname?

Dot: No. 

John: It was Lois.

Dot: Lois Elna. 

John: Do you know why she had that middle name?

Dot: I think it must have been after somebody in Dad’s family.  They may have lived in Minneapolis.  I would like to ask Marian Matson about that if she comes back to the reunion.

John: If there’s somebody that she knew.  How about Dorothy, did they ever tell you why you got Dorothy?

Dot: There’s a relative, an Ofstedahl, Dorthea Ofstedahl, in Minneapolis, and I think I was named after her.

John: Your Dad had an aunt by that name.

Dot: Yes, I think that’s where I got it . .

John: Although I think she died relatively young, he might have just known her. I don’t know.

Dot: That could be.  That’s the only thing that I can figure out, that I was named after a relative.

John: And Norval was a family name too, your father had a brother.

Dot: My father had a brother Norval, and he had died of TB, so I am sure that he was named after him.  And Elmer, Norval Elmer, after Grandpa Nash.

John: Oh, after that Elmer, not the Elmer that was the brother.

Dot: No. No.

John:  Interesting, because a lot of times they repeated [names].  Your mother’s middle name Phoebe was her grandmother’s name.

Dot: Yes.  I think that was tradition at that time.

John: Did you just live in that one house in Geddes, or other houses?

Dot: Oh no, my mother was always moving.

John: Why?

Dot: She was trying to find a better house.  We first lived in one house, a two story house, then we moved to a little one story house in Geddes, and lived there was for a while and then we moved again to another nice house, and then my parents bought the house that I call “up on the hill”, it was yellow at that time.  So there were four houses that we lived in in Geddes.  And I think they sold that big house for four thousand dollars when they left Geddes and moved to California.

John:  So they owned every house, they were just selling . . .

Dot: No, we rented some.  We rented the first one, and we owned the second one, and then we rented the third one, it was always a little bit bigger, that’s what my mother .  .

John: And you never could be very far away from anything in Geddes, you were always close, right?

Dot: Always walking distance.

John: There’s a picture I have that you gave me to scan, that’s Norval and Lois standing outside of a house, and I believe it’s in Geddes, and I believe it’s the one that’s on the hill, and you can  just see around the corner the water tank in the background.  [That photo is posted below, colorized.]

Dot: That was probably it.

John: And there was always a water tank in each town, you mentioned Harley painting the one in Platte.

Dot: Oh yes.  That’s the way we got our water.

John: You didn’t have sewers?

Dot: Yes, we had sewers.

John: You had sewers, so it went into the sewers rather than outhouses or anything.

Dot: We had an outhouse one time in Platte in one of the houses that we rented.  And that was awful.  But I was very young and hardly remember that.

John: I remember you mentioned one story once when you were a kid about driving along and your father picked up an Indian.  What was that story?

Dot: Well we went to the County Fair in Lake Andes, and we were driving our old car back to Geddes, driving along, we were very close to the Rosebud Indian Reservation, and this Indian man was standing there and wanted a ride, and so my father stopped.  And he got in, but there wasn’t much room in the back seat so he sat on Norval’s lap.  Oh my mother was mad, “Why did you stop and pick him up?”, but my Dad was always such a kind man.

John: Do you remember much about Indians from that period?

Dot: Very little. Very little.

John: There wasn’t much interaction?

Dot: No.  Later on when I went to college in Vermilion, there were a lot of Indians in college.  We had one special, special artist and his paintings are just wonderful, Oscar Howe.  But I don’t remember as a child growing up we would see them around, but I don’t remember interacting with them at all.

John: And you mentioned once, I have a vague recollection when I was a kid, that there were still buffalo wallows around?

Dot: Yes.  Yes.

John: And what was that?  What was a buffalo wallow?

Dot: Well you had a section of land and it was fenced.  Lots of times there would be a corner fence.  It’d be open at one part, or the buffalo wouldn’t get in it.  But there weren’t buffalo there at that time but it was just like a big pile of dirt that they would kick up and make borders on, and that’s probably where they laid down.  They were called buffalo wallows.

John: Did they hollow something out when they laid down?

Dot: No, no, it’s like you made a little bed.

John: Just to ask, do you ever remember a tornado when you were a kid? Did they ever come near?

Dot: I don’t remember any.

John: Were there any storms that were particularly . . . like those storm cells?

Dot:  We always had big storms.

John: What were they like?

Dot: But I just remember the dust storm more than anything.  Big heavy rain storms at different times and lightning and thunder.  But I don’t really remember being frightened by them.  So I don’t know if they were big, like you’re getting through the Midwest now.

John: You mentioned that you didn’t take many trips, but what just around Charles Mix County?  Now you lived in Geddes, and you lived in Platte, you mentioned being in Wheeler once, and Lake Andes.  What do you remember about some of the places around?  Was Bijou Hills really a place?

Dot: Well, it was in my mother’s time.  It was a place, there were hills there.  And I think there was a group of farmers out there together.  I don’t remember much about Bijou Hills.  But I do remember Bonesteel.  I don’t remember actually going to Gregory or those other places very much.

John: Gregory was in a whole other county.

Dot: Yes it was.  I do remember going to the river.

John: What would you do at the river?

Dot: Oh, the kids would just walk along the side of the river, wade, and get in the water.

John: Did you go on your own?

Dot: Well, when Lois learned to drive, Dad let her take the car, the old Ford, once.  And she put the key in her pocket.  Her blouse pocket.  And as she was playing along, she bent over and lost the key.  So there we were stuck out there.  And so I can’t remember how we got somebody to town.  Somebody came and got us.  And I think Dad had another key, I’m not sure how they got the car back in.  But that was a dramatic event for us.  We had to be careful of rattle snakes when we were out there, because it was rattle snake country. 

John: This is before the dam?

Dot: Yes.

John: And when it was before the dam, was it a free flowing river?

Dot: Yes.  I do remember in the summer time going out at night, like ten o’clock or so.  I don’t know why we were out that late, and stealing water melons.  And we would take the water melon and there was an old abandoned school house and we would put it in there and then we would go out and have a water melon feed the next day.

John: How funny.

Dot: Not Very.

John:  Amazing to people.  I am trying to think of other places that you might have been.  You were very close to another county though, weren’t you close to Douglas County or some other county?

Dot: Yes, but Lake Andes was the only other place I really remember of going to.

John: And that’s because that’s where your Uncle Ben was.

Dot: Yes, and that was the County seat, there was a bus that went from Yankton to Platte.

John: What about the train?  The train ended in Platte, right?

Dot: Yes, it did.  It’s now no longer there and they pulled up the tracks. [Below is a photo from our 2000 visit to Platte of the former railroad alignment in Platte. Elsewhere in her remembrances, she remembers her Uncle Harley painting the water tower - which is also in this photo.]

John: It was known as the end of the line, right? 

Dot: Yes.

John: Where did the train go from Platte to?

Dot: Yankton, down the river, maybe to Vermilion, I don’t remember but I know it went to Yankton.

John: Did it stop in Geddes?

Dot: Oh yes, it stopped at every little town along the way.

John: So the train went through Lake Andes, Geddes, and other places.

Dot: Wagner. 

John: And that was just the way people would really move between them, the train?

Dot: Yes.

John: Was there a station in downtown Platte.

Dot: Yes.

John: A little station in Geddes as well?

Dot: A very small station in Geddes, but the Platte one was very nice.  I do remember that one. Of course it’s gone now.

John: Did your family ever go somewhere from there?

Dot: We never really took the train, other than that time my mother had to get to Grandpa’s funeral, after he passed away.  It was mostly to haul. . .

John: Equipment or farm stuff?

Dot: Farm things and the grain, the grain, the elevator, it would pull right up by the elevator.

John: And the elevator could just load . . .

Dot: load the train cars.

John: And when your father left the elevator and went to the lumber yard in Geddes he managed to make it through the worst part of the Depression working at the grain elevator.  Was it tough?  Was there not a lot of grain in that period?  Do you remember anything about that?

Dot: I don’t remember much.  It seemed like there was a lot to me.  He would listen to the market every day about eleven o’clock, and he was writing down the prices of things, so he would know how much to pay, if the grain was brought in. 

John: And as a result, he must have known every farmer around?  Right?

Dot: Oh yes, he knew everybody.

John: He was probably one of the few people, except maybe [at] the bank or the post office, that interacted with everybody, right?

Dot: I would imagine, yes, other than the grocery store.

John: Do you recall, there were other cousins around of your mother’s, one was the Sheriff for a while.

Dot: Guy Nash, no Frank Nash.

John: Do you remember him?

Dot: He lived in another town, I think he lived in Gregory.  And so he wasn’t around too much.  But I do remember of seeing him.  And then when he was Sheriff he was in Lake Andes.  My Mother was never close to him.

John: I thought I did it some other time, but let me ask you, how did you meet Dad?

Dot: We met at college.  I went to school after I lived in Glendale for two years at the YWCA.  Faith was there with me, Faith told me one day, she said, I’m going back to Vermilion to go to school, why don’t you go with me.  I looked at her and I says, oh OK, let’s do that.  Then I told my parents I was going and they were going to have to pay for it.

John: And did they?

Dot: Yes.  And I had saved some money when I was working.  But they paid for it.  And I got in-state tuition because I had graduated from Geddes High School even though I had lived out of the state for two years.  I think it was the second year that I was there.  I lived in the dorms the first year, Faith and I roomed . . . 

John: What year did you start, 1944?

Dot: 1944.

John: So you started while the war was still going on?

Dot: Yes. I can remember when Roosevelt died, I think it was April 12.

John: Exactly.

Dot: And I had gone back to my dorm in between classes, I turned the radio on and I sat down  just stunned, thinking about it.  But the second year that I was in college I pledged a sorority so I moved into the Pi Phi house.  And by that time Dad came back from the war, and he was a Delta Tau Delta fraternity.  And we had a couple of house boys, we would have a sit down dinner at night, we had a cook and she would cook our dinner.  And then the house boys would have the job of coming during the dinner hour and setting out the plates and everything .  Two of the house boys were from the Delt house, and so Dad said to one of them, I’d like to meet that little Ofstedahl girl.  And the guy said, well I could introduce you, but why don’t you go introduce yourself.  It’s a small school, so that’s how we met.

John: So that’s literally how you met, he saw you and he wanted to be introduced to meet you.

Dot: Yes.  So we started to date and after that we just never dated anybody else.

John: And you worked for Mr. Cadwell at some point?

Dot: Mr. Cadwell.  He was a housing director.  After we were married, Dad had three years of college left. So I got a job as a secretary at the housing director.

John: When did you stop going to college?

Dot: I just went two years, the year we were married, I stopped.  And I worked.  I think I was earning ninety dollars a month.

John: Which you probably thought was a lot of money.

Dot: Yes. And we lived in student housing.  We lived in little trailers.  I think it was eight feet by twenty-eight feet, something like that.  But all the other GI’s were there too.  In the summer time we used to pull our tables out in the yard. [The holiday card photo below was in Dot and Ralph’s photos, and must be of this very trailer camp.]

John: Did Al Neuharth live in a trailer?

Dot: No, he didn’t, but Dad knew him.  It was a small school, everybody knew each other. [NOTE: Al Neuharth was later the founder of USA Today.]

John: And didn’t your grandmother come and visit you once while you were there?

Dot: Yes, she came for Thanksgiving.  We had a bed in the front that we could make up and then we had our bedroom in the back.  She stayed over a couple of nights.  She rode the bus down.

John: And did you major in anything when you went those first two years?

Dot: No, I was just taking general education.  I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I just took everything I needed to.  English, I took speech.  Second year I took biology and zoology.  I really liked zoology, that was fascinating.  What else did I take?  Spanish. I was in the chorus. [I do not know where it came from, but below is Dot in Spanish class at the university - she mentions taking Spanish above.]

John: Did Faith stay the whole four years?

Dot. No she only stayed two years too.

John: Then what did she do?

Dot: She went back to Michigan and worked for a while in a summer resort.  Benton Harbor, I think it was.   By that time, I had moved to California.  Then I think a year or two later she married Chuck Berry (sp?).  He was from Geddes, he was the doctors’ son.  He was teaching in Rapid City by that time I think.  So she only went two years too.

John: That’s where you made a lot of other friends, although didn’t Dad do basic training there?

Dot: He did ASTP program . . .

John: What’s that?

Dot: Specialized service engineering program.  And he went for nine months in the army at the University of South Dakota.  So even though he was from Illinois, he said, gee I’ve got a years’ credit there, so when we got out of the Army he came back. [Ralph’s engineering specialized training certificate - which Tom Laird has - is shown below.]

John: And were there other people that had gone through the program that came back as well?

Dot: Yes.

John: And some of them were his friends, right?

Dot: Bruce Kundert from Pittsburg, California.  And there were several others that came back, and I don’t particularly remember their names.

John: And so that was his real impetus for coming back.

Dot: Yes, even though he was from Illinois.

John: Because he had a year’s credit there.

Dot: He always wanted to go to the University of Illinois, and never did.  But he went to the University of California.

John: He came back and he didn’t have to do as much time because . . .

Dot: He had a year, so he did three years and graduated and that’s when we decided. . . we were trying to decide do we go to Illinois or do we go to California.  By that time my folks had moved to Sonoma.  Finally, after visiting California in the wintertime Ralph decided, I need to go out there, so we moved to California.

John: That was always a hard thing with his family, right?

Dot: Yes. She, his mother, always said, well the time that Dotty took Ralph to California.  But it was Ralph’s decision.

John: Probably the best thing for . . .

Dot: Best move we made.

John: And Dad and Ardie Kenny you actually knew from . . .

Dot: Vermilion.

John: And were you all students at the same time?

Dot: Yes we were.  See she lived in the dorm with me and she had known Ralph when he was there in ASTP.  So there was a double connection there.

John: And then did she meet Dan there?

Dot: No, she graduated, she went back to New York and worked for Metropolitan Life Insurance.  She was a math major.  Phi Beta Kappa math major.  And she went to work for this insurance company and Dan’s sister worked with her, and she met Dan through her.

John: So she actually had a New York connection, that’s how she met him.

Dot: But she was from Sioux City, Iowa.

John: And had Dad dated somebody else first?

Dot: Yes, he did.  When he was in the army, in the ASTP program, he dated Mr. Cadwell’s daughter.  But he came back and realized that wasn’t what he wanted.

John: Were they actually engaged?

Dot: I think they were engaged.  Because she went to Danville and to visit Grandma and Grandpa Laird.

John: But she married a son of one of your professors.

Dot: Yes. Jones.  One of Ralph’s professors.

John: And you guys never actually had Doc Farber as a professor? [well-known University of South Dakota Political Science professor]

Dot: No, we didn’t have him but . . .

John: You gave him a ride . . .

Dot: He was from Illinois, so one Christmas when we finally got our little ’46 Ford, we were driving back to spend Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa Laird and so we took him home and his mother invited us in to have fruitcake and tea.  I always remember that. He just died.  I just got the bulletin where he just died.  Outstanding man.

John: What else from that period in either South Dakota or the University have I not asked you about?

Dot: I made a lot of friends there.  That’s when we met Jan and Claire Harding. Claire Harding graduated from law school, his father was a bank manager in Richmond, California.  So Claire came out to work out here.  He and Jannie were engaged.  We brought her out one Christmas as we drove out to visit.  They were married a year after we were.  We were close friends all our lives.  We did a lot of travelling with them.  She taught me a lot about travelling.

John: You mentioned never taking any trips, so you had never been to Pierre until we were back there in 2000.

Dot: Correct, that was a wonderful trip we took up there. [Mom is shown below in front of the South Dakota State Capitol in Pierre in 2000.]

John: We passed through South Dakota in 1959 when we were traveling east and we stopped and visited Eloise.

Dot: That’s when Uncle Ben had had the stroke.  We also met one of Eloise’s sons, Joe.  When he came here to visit me I told him I had met him once before, he was seventeen years old.  We stopped to see Uncle Ben.

John: What was Eloise’s story then?  She married  . . .

Dot: She married Joe Langenfeld . . .

John: And had a lot of kids. [The Langenfeld Holiday Card below shows fourteen children, so it must have been from about 1961.]

Dot: Yes. She had fourteen and she died having her fifteenth.

John: Did the fifteenth make it?

Dot: No.

John: And then Joe ended up moving to California with the kids.  It turned out they lived in San Jose for a while.

Dot: Yes, they did. And then they went back to South Dakota.  Joe remarried.  Liz told me Aunt Mabel really helped during that period.  She said she was really like our mother.

John: Anything else that we didn’t talk about?

Dot: I can’t think of anything.  Boy, you’ve covered it all.

John: I just wanted to cover South Dakota.  I’m sure there some things I’ll think about .  . .

Dot: We can do another one.

John: We’ll do some others, we have a lot of things to talk about.  That’s great. Thank you, Mom.  (tape ends at 44:15)

Notes Written Down From Mom’s Stories Told During our August 2000 Trip to South Dakota

Mom's Stories About South Dakota. NOTE: These stories were from our 2000 trip, which was a few years before I sat down with Mom to do the interview above. There might be some duplication, but I notice that many of these stories are not directly referenced in the interview above. I just wrote them down each night as she told them to me, and I emailed her when we got back, but don’t show that she made any corrections. Here are those stories as written down at the time:

Mom worked in a restaurant in Geddes while she was going to school.  Max Raymond cooked, and Mom waitressed.  She just wanted to make some money.

One time Lois was mad at the family, and left the house and took the bus to Platte (from Geddes) where she visited Grandma Nash.  It was never a concern where kids were in Geddes.  They were always around.  But when dinner rolled around, and Lois wasn't to be seen -- Jo called her Mom in Platte (by way of the neighbors who lived two doors down and had a phone) and found that Lois was there.  Grandma Nash said that she was sure that it was known that Lois had come there, and sounded surprised.

Grandma Nash came to visit Mom and Dad while they were living in the trailer in Vermillion.  There was a room in front with a fold out couch, and she stayed there.  The bathroom was down the street.  The trailer only had a sink that would drain water.  Mom baked a pumpkin pie and baked the crust and then realized she should have baked it with the filling in it.  Grandma Nash laughed and laughed at that.  When she arrived, Dad met her at the bus depot and she had a big suitcase.  He offered to call a cab and she would not go for it, so they walked through the snow to the trailer.

Guy Nash scoped out where to go to leave South Dakota, near the end of World War II.  He decided the two more desirable places were King City and Santa Rosa, California -- and the family, including Claire, Shirley and Keith all moved to Santa Rosa.  This was the reason that Carl and Jo ended up there.  Mom once took a trip home from college, and when her Mom and Dad met her at the bus station -- Keith was there jumping up and down welcoming her.  Shirley and Claire didn't much like California, so after two years -- they moved back to South Dakota.  Later when we visited with Shirley, she said her father had a company called "Nash Electric". [I have an advertisement for Nash Electric below, I do not recall the source.]

Jim Nash raised different crops on the farm.  One crop he raised was peanuts.  Mom remembers them.

Harley Nash was strapped for money during the depression, and painted the water tower in Platte.  He got that job.

Harley also was a lifeguard at Lake Platte.  One time he saved Lois.

Once Norval fell out of a tree at their house in Geddes, and Mrs. Scott next door was looking over and ran out to see if he was OK.  Norval got up and walked away.

Grandma Ofstedahl worked at the grocery store in downtown Platte when the family lived just a couple of blocks away.  The kids would walk over to see her.  She had someone who would take care of the kids, and she would come home for lunch.  Once, when mom was about three, she ran out with only a shirt on and ran down the street after her Mom because she was leaving them and going back to work.   The owners of the grocery store were Pete and Mary Kuipers, who were brother and sister and who never married.  When Anna Kuipers came to the library to help us with the Platte Heritage Society obituaries, she indicated that she was their niece.  On the main street there is a brick building, where bricks have been placed on the side where there used to be a door and some windows.  The door was the one Grandma used when she worked there.

The kids walked all over, even walking out to Lake Platte to have fun.

The Lyric Theater is now a museum on Main St. in Platte.  Mom remembers going and sitting up around watching her parents dance there at a big community dance.

Grandpa ran the lumberyard is Geddes.  Men would sit around and talk, and women wouldn't feel comfortable about coming in.

Grandma Nash once was staying with her grandson Eddie and his wife Berniece in LA.  Something wasn't going right, so she telegraphed that she was coming to visit -- while Mom and Dad lived in Crockett.  She sent a telegram that arrived on a Sunday, while the folks were out doing something.  When they came home, this telegram was taped to the door -- and they found out that someone at the telegraph office had said, it says she arrives today -- take this out there now.  So Ralph drove to Oakland to meet her.  She was standing in the train depot with her suitcase.  She was hard of hearing, and she was saying above the hissing of the train, "Is this Oakland?" when Dad walked up and she looked very relieved.  She then stayed with them in Crockett.

Mom's friend Faith was in high school with her in Geddes.  She went out to California and they were in Glendale together.  Faith said she was going back to school at the University of South Dakota, and why didn't Dot come along.  She did, and that's how she made the decision to go back to school.

Grandpa ran the grain elevator in Platte.  When I suggested that this was probably an important position, she said probably, but he didn't make much money during the Depression.  He got $105 per month by moving to the lumberyard at Geddes, and that was an increase.  He came to Platte because a lumberyard in Park River, North Dakota -- right by Grafton -- had another lumberyard in Platte.  He came to Platte to work at this lumberyard, and after some period, moved to managing the grain elevator.  When he moved to Geddes, ca 1935, it was to take over the lumberyard in Geddes.  He did this until they left for California ca 1945.  Faith Bowen's father took over Carl's job after he left.  A few years ago, Joyce, Faith's older sister, was reading through some history books on World War I.  She noticed that in the front page they were for Lois, Dorothy, And Norval.  She didn't know how the books got to her father, but speculated they were left at the lumberyard.  They were given to my Mom by the Bowens.

We stopped at Ward Academy to look.  By my estimate, it was about fifteen miles from the farm.  Grandma didn't come home much while she was boarding as a student there.  She could only be fetched by buggy, and a thirty-mile round trip was a substantial one -- particularly given the weather.  It would also mean that there would have to be time taken off from the farm to pick her up -- which is why it didn't happen very often. [Below is the monument at the location of Ward Academy placed in memory of the Camfields, who started and operated Ward Academy. This photo was taken in 2000 during our visit.]

I asked if on the farm, the family (her mother's) was self-sufficient food-wise.  She said yes, except for flour, sugar, and salt.

One summer, Lois, Dotty, and Norval were hired to watch cows at a ranch north of town (on the Brakken farm?).  Out in the fields while they were watching the cows one day, a new calf was born.  They realized that the calf could not survive the evening walk of the cows back to where they were boarded by the farmhouse, because the hoofs are so tender among the newborn.  The farmer came out and drove the calf back.

Shirley Dimick, whose mother was a Harding, went with us to the Rock Hill Cemetery in Carroll Township.  Among the graves there are the early settlers of Carroll Township -- the Nashes, Adkins, Hardings, Boohers, and others.  There are five young Harding graves there, all the siblings of her mother, that perished from diphtheria within a few days in 1891.  There is also a teacher buried there who arrived at the house while the illness was going on.  The mother tried to send her away, but she pushed her way in.  She died and is buried nearby.  One farmer nearby could see across to the cemetery from his farmhouse, and is said to have seen John Harding (the father) walk by with a shovel, and said "another child must have died".  Shirley reported that two of the children lived through the illness, and that someone reached into the throat and pulled the "phlegm" out that was closing their throat.  The mother always fretted that if she had known this she could have save some or all of these five children.  It was a frontier tragedy.

While we were there, a warm wind was blowing at the cemetery -- which overlooked a small farm valley.  Shirley said, "a prairie cemetery, and we're prairie people". [Mom and Shirley are shown in the cemetery below with a photo from the August 2000 visit.]

Mom mentioned that her grandfather had shoveled snow, wasn't feeling well, had a heart attack, and her mother went two doors down to the people who had a phone to ask them to call for help.  When she returned to the house, he was gone.  He was buried in the middle of winter -- and when the snow melted, they realized he had been buried in a pathway in the cemetery, and he was moved.  She also remembers that someone took care of them while the funeral went out to the cemetery, and gave her milk and melba toast -- something she always remembered.  Because the Ofstedahls had just moved to Geddes, they had a hard time getting back to Platte in the middle of winter after Jim Nash died.

Charles Nash had an orchard on the southwest side of town, not far from the main intersection.  It's now where there's a church and the municipal swimming pool.  A Ford dealership is nearby.  He grew apples and other crops.  Shirley said it was always a struggle because of the spraying that had to be done.  A woman who has built a house back in the area where the orchard was says there are still a few apple trees there from the "Nash Orchard". [Below is a reference from September 16, 2010 Platte Enterprise that refers to a 1960 item about the “Nash Orchard” winning prizes.]

We visited the museum for the Ward Academy in Academy.  It's in the church that was part of the Academy.  The last class appears to have graduated ca 1930.  According to information there, the building of the academy (a big almost four story building) was built in 1911 and razed in 1961.  The bricks were taken to the local Mennonite settlement.  The church is still in use at a congregational church.

There was a piano in the Jim Nash house.  It appears that Grandma Nash played the piano.  Kate Sabin Nachtigal's mother taught many of the women in the community to play bridge, and Jo, Kate, and Grandma Nash were among the regular players.

Dirty 30's was the phrase used by Shirley, and again by Faith, to describe the 1930' in South Dakota.  Mom mentioned that during the dust storms, her mother would wet a sheet and put it around the window to keep dust from coming in.  Within an hour, the sheet would have a dust outline of where the window was. 

There was a time when the Berry family, Chuck married Faith, went away and the mother told the kids that no one was to come into the house while they were gone.  The kids all came into the basement and played cards, and were slapping the cards and having a great time -- when the parents came home.  They were able to quietly sneak out the back door without being detected while the family walked around upstairs.

We visited Rock Hill Cemetery in Carroll Township, where many of the early pioneers are buried – including Mom’s grandparents.  Shirley, Mom’s cousin, pointed out the hill next to the cemetery, which had rocks on it and said that a plow had never been through it.  She said that it was thought that there are Indian artifacts there.  She also said that her parents – Guy and Claire Harding Nash, chose to be buried in Platte, because they thought that Rock Hill would not be maintained.  It has been maintained, and Shirley offered that if they had understood this, they probably would have chosen to be buried there.

We drove past a park on a stream south of Geddes on the highway, and Mom said that as kids they walked to this park all the time.  She asked that I check the odometer to figure out how many miles from Geddes it is.  It was about four miles.

Ruby Flory, one of Mom’s best friends in Geddes, left during the depression.  Her father owned the garage downtown, and when it became clear he’d probably lose the garage or house because of poor business, they chose to leave instead.

There was a dormitory in Geddes where farm kids going to school would stay during the week.  One of Mom’s classmates indicated that they would leave for the farm on Fridays after school, and generally come back Sundays late to be ready for school on Monday.  Belle Nash, Mom’s Uncle Harley’s first wife, was the cook and dorm mother for the dormitory in Platte.  It worked out well for her, as the kids could stay there with her and she had a place and job in that difficult time.

As I was checking out of the motel in Platte, I got into a conversation with the owner, and mentioned that Grandma had been born in Wheeler.  He indicated that divers had been down in the lake behind the Fort Randall Dam – which flooded out Wheeler – and that the buildings are still down there somewhat intact. [The picture of that court house - from the 1907 Charles Mix County history - is posted just below.]

Norval’s bedroom in the family house in south Geddes was upstairs in front of the house, and he had to go through his parent’s room to get there.  He wasn’t ever happy about this.  They had a big vegetable garden to the right of this house when they lived there. [Below is Dot in front of one of their Geddes’ houses during out 2000 visit - not sure if it is the house described above.]