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.
August 17, 2025
Today I’ll continue reading the remembrances of Wilbert McFarlane of Badger, who wrote his
story in the year 2000, 13 years before he passed away. He told a lot of anecdotes about his
childhood, and that continues today.
A few years later Edna tried to convince me that I should eat the crust of my bread. We always
had homemade bread … the stove wasn’t too good so lots of times it got burnt and kind of hard.
Of course, then Elsie would come along with a big old knife and cut off the end because that’s all
she wanted to eat was crust. If she couldn’t get it off the end, she didn’t give a damn. She’d cut it
off the top, bottom or side, because she had to have crust. I suppose the reason I never ate the
crust was because I never got any. So, Edna comes along and says if I eat the crusts off all my
bread she’s going to buy me a little red wagon. So finally I got around Elsie somehow and I got a
piece of the end or the first two slices and I’d eat around the edges. Edna was out in Kennedy
working for Axel Running and they came up on a Sunday and here they had this red wagon. It
was no cheap one either .. it was good. So then I had a little bit of clout with the neighbor kids
because I had the wagon. Mrs. Johnson used to send Betty over once or twice a week to borrow
my wagon to go uptown to get groceries.
At that time we didn’t have any electric lights in our house or any running water. The neighbors,
they had lights, but Hoosiers didn’t have any electric lights or running water. Reeses and
Johnsons had electric lights, but we had a lot of other things to do. We could go down to the
creek and play with the sleds. The rich kids could slide down on their fancy toboggans after
Christmas day. Me and the Hoosier kids would go down there and find a piece of cardboard and
down we’d go. We thought we had the greatest thing since sliced bread.
We were down by the creek, and Howard Hoosier was always our leader, … whatever he done
we thought was great and sometimes we tried to do the same. Sometimes it worked and
sometimes it didn’t. Going down the hill on that cardboard got pretty tiresome and about every 4 th
time he went down he’d grab Goldie Moen and he’d go down on top of her. He was 2-3 years
older than the rest of us, so I thought that was kind of cute. After watching him several times, I
discovered Betty twenty feet away and I started grinning at Betty thinking that would be a hell of
a good idea. When I started walking over to her she just started shaking her head “No” and
handed me her cardboard. Well, that proved that that wasn’t going to work out so I went back to
the old time way of doing it. Slide down…walk up…slide down…walk up.
I remember when I got to be 15 years old. Like the kids nowdays, I had to have a driver’s license.
So I went tearing uptown to the drug store to Ronnie Ramberg. The first thing he asked me was
if I had 35 cents … that’s what it cost to get a license. He asked me some simple questions … if I
knew my right hand from my left. I went out of there about 10 minutes later and I had a driver’s
license.
The first car I got was a 1934 Chevie … an old brown four-door. I bought it from Dennis Urdahl’s
dad and I’ve had cars of some kind ever since.
But times were tough … we’re talking about back in the ‘30s. Winters were long and cold …
everybody was heating and cooking with wood. Then the ‘40s came along and some things got
better and some thing got worse. World War II started and I think the only thing that helped me
through school was the fact that while we didn’t have a radio, we scratched up enough money to
get the Grand Forks Herald. I still think to this day that I did more reading in the newspaper than
any kid in town because it was all about planes being shot down and ships being sunk. My
mother used to sit there by the old lamp and read stories to my dad about it.
And then, in the summer time, I was lucky enough to work for the Wilson boys, Howard and
John, in the hayfield. They had 3 teams of horses and I used to rake hay with one of them. I got
50 cents a day for raking hay, but boy did I get the good stuff to eat. They lived with their sister,
old Belle, and boy, that gal could cook!
And then, a little bit later, I suppose I was about 13 or 14, my dad used to go out to Donaldson
and haul bundles for 2 or 3 weeks and I remember going out there on that deal. I drove the team
of horses on the bundle wagon and then he got paid so much for what they call spike pitchers
out in the field … they’d go from wagon to wagon helping to load. We’d leave Badger with the
horses and wagon .. drive them to Karlstad, put them in the stockyard, crawl under the hayrack,
light the lantern and read a book. Of course, by that time, my dad had found a tavern so he was
happy. After awhile he’d come back and the next day we’d get up. We’d brought lots of stuff to
eat along and we’d take off for the Bakke brothers farm and haul bundles for several neighbors
around Bakke’s … Earl Nelson and a few others around there. Then we camped out in
Donaldson. That way I’d get a few bucks to buy something to wear to school or whatever.
I must have been about 13 when I rode my bicycle uptown to the old seedhouse. Every sack that
came in was given a lot number which was written on the side of the sack. Well, I was supposed
to go down the basement and find that pile that said how many sacks had that number on it and
dump it in a hole and they’d elevate it upstairs. And I would do that from 4 o’clock until 6. Old
Pete Sjoberg would come along and hand me a quarter. My God, I couldn’t understand why
Badger didn’t have a bank. Money was coming in pretty good!
Next Sunday, I’ll read more of Wilbert McFarlane’s reminiscences.
Thank you to 
for letting us share our county’s history with your listeners by donating air time, studio time, and production staff every week.