These stories can also be heard on Sunday mornings around 10 am on WILD 102’s “Look Back in Time” program. Each week’s radio story will be posted here on our website.
Weekly radio stories are researched, compiled, and read by Sheila Winstead, RCHS Board Member.
December 24, 2023
Clarice Lancaster in Roseau was kind enough to share her memories with me and my sister Tallie during a visit a couple of years ago. Her parents were Clara Dahl and Ralph Medicraft. Ralph was our mother’s first cousin. Clarice was born at her Grandma Dahl’s house in Falun. By the time she was 5, her family had moved to a house of their own in Palmville Township, south of Wannaska and about a mile west of the old schoolhouse on the south side of the road. The house was very small by today’s standards, just 16 x 20, with no electricity or running water inside, and had only one bed for her parents to sleep in. Her older brother slept on the floor and the next three kids slept on a couch that pulled out into a bed at night. I asked where the baby brother slept, and she said he slept between the parents when he came along. Clarice was 9 when he was born.
She grew up during the Depression so there wasn’t a lot of money for anything extra. The house was lit with kerosene lamps and later Aladdin lamps. They had long chimneys, which eventually had to be washed when they got coated with soot from the burning wick.
They raised a garden for fresh eating and canning. Canned produce was stored below the house in a cellar accessed through a hole in the floor. They raised farm animals which gave them eggs and meat. Her mother would trade eggs and butchered chickens to the Knute Lee store in Wannaska for other groceries like flour. They milked cows mornings and evenings, and after setting aside enough whole milk for the family to drink at mealtime, the rest had to be run through a separator to take off the cream. The skim milk was fed to the pigs and the cream was stored in a pail, hung by a rope in the well where it would stay cold until it could be sold to the Wannaska Creamery. One of Clarice’s jobs was to take apart the separator after each use and wash the many parts inside, which was one of her least favorite jobs. The pigs were raised to be eaten eventually. Her dad didn’t like to be the one to butcher them after raising them, so he had a neighbor come over to do it. Clarice remembers that her mother made head cheese and pickled pig’s feet. Every part that could be used was used in those days.
Meals were simple and basic. Breakfast was often bread broken into a cup with sugar and cream on it. She called that “sul”. Her mom also made “grout”, which was cooked milk thickened with flour, served warm with butter, sugar, and cream on top. For lunch Clarice had a lunch pail and often she would have a sandwich made from a piece of bread with the surface dabbed onto cream, then sprinkled with sugar, and covered with another piece of plain bread. There was no waxed paper or wrap for the sandwich. It was simply put into the lunch pail as it was. Sometimes the schoolteacher would have a big can of beans to heat on the wood stove in the classroom. That would be a nice treat for the kids at lunch time.
We asked Clarice what she remembered about Christmases celebrated by her family. She said her dad would go find a tree in the woods to bring home just before Christmas and set it up in the house. Then they would make paper ornaments in the shape of bells or stars. Sometimes they’d color them. They’d also cut pictures of interesting things from the Sears and Montgomery Wards catalogues, poke a little hole in the pictures, and hang them on the tree with a string. They had clip-on candleholders with small candles carefully watched when they were lit.
Their Christmas meal was usually a chicken. I asked if her mom was a good cook. Clarice said, “Oh,yes!” and mentioned that she was known for making delicious white buns, which she often brought to church events. They were baked in a wood stove. She also made cinnamon rolls and lefse. I asked Clarice if she helped with baking and cooking, being the only girl in the family. She said she mostly washed dishes and swept the floor for her mother until she was in her teens. She helped with the milking when her dad was in the field. Otherwise her mom and dad did the milking. She remembers having barn cats and squirting milk into their mouths while they were milking the cows.
On Christmas, after eating, they’d gather around the tree. There wasn’t much emphasis put on gifts, but they would always get something from Santa Claus. Clarice remembered getting stockings one year, usually something they could use. They were expected to unwrap their gifts carefully so the wrapping paper could be saved for the next year. The kids made small gifts in school for their parents.
There would be songs to learn and “pieces” for the kids to memorize for a school program which the parents could attend in the schoolroom. Their neighbors, Melvin and Julia Carlson, would also pick up the kids and bring them to the Palmville Church southwest of Wannaska to practice for a Christmas program there. After the program there would be apples and candy handed down each row for the people in attendance. Relatives Edith and Oscar Roseen lived just a little south of the church and their girls, Helen and Lorraine, were about Clarice’s age, so they had fun together.
Thanks to Clarice for sharing her Christmas memories. I hope you’re asking your parents and other family members what they remember about their celebrations. It’s interesting to compare these sweet stories from the past to the ways we celebrate today!
Thank you to 
(www.roseauonline.com) for letting us share our county’s history with your listeners by donating air time, studio time, and production staff every week.