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 10, 2025
Last week I started reading from Wilbert McFarlane’s memoirs, which he wrote in 2000. I found
his story in the Family Files in the Roseau County Museum’s research area. I’ll continue reading
his story today. He told about his family moving from Manitoba in 1923 to various farms around
Badger and Greenbush before moving into a log house on the south end of the town of Badger
when he was a little kid. Here’s more of his story:
Entertainment was pretty scarce so we would cut out things from the Sears catalog. Elsie would
cut dolls and I would cut horses. One night we were cutting and having only one scissor became
a problem. Elsie was cutting a doll and I wanted to cut my horse so as I grabbed for the scissor
she accidentally poked it into a vein on my hand. The blood poured all over the catalog. We
didn’t have to color the pictures. My dad took a handful of flour and slapped it onto my hand and
wrapped it up tight and took me uptown to Florence Turner who was a nurse. She patched it up
and I survived … again.
When we lived down there was when I started first grade. And to get into that schoolhouse in
Badger, My God, you really thought you were going someplace.
Then sometimes in the evening we’d sell milk different places and I remember walking with Ruby
over to Happy Johson’s with milk and he lived way up behind the lumber yard. We had to walk
through the woods and across the field to get there … all to take two quarts of milk. But anytime
we sold anything, regardless of whether it was for folding money or small change, you were
pretty happy about it.
And then there was the time when Ruby, Elsie and Edna were all home and they used to make
their own wave set because they all had lots of hair. Edna was a little short, but Ruby, My God,
you could use her for a mop anytime. So they got ahold of some flax seed and boiled it and then
strained it through a dirty sock (which was easy to find with that many kids in a little house). But it
was the slimiest stuff you ever saw. And I remember getting swatted in the hind end because I
was upstairs where they had this two gallon crock with this slimy stuff in there and I was there
playing in it with both hands and having a heck of a good time. I don’t remember which one of
them got ahold of me, but I was a couple of inches taller for a few days.
But then, after that, we didn’t live there all that long. My dad traded a Holstein cow to Ed Beyrice
for the old house and two lots in town. We couldn’t get into that house right away so we moved
into a shack behind the beer parlor for 2 or 3 weeks. And boy, that was a shack! You tried to
open a window to get some fresh air … well, you didn’t have to open a window cuz I’m sure there
was one broke out and all you could smell was beer. That beer smells different when someone
has enjoyed it and strained it through their kidneys. And the farmers would tie their horses up
back there. They’d either haul wood to town or cordwood to the school or creamery. They had to
have a few beers before they went home and what was left behind was the road apples from the
horses. It was good for your sinus. But we were lucky and didn’t spend very much time there. We
got into the Hilton which was to be my folks’ home for the rest of their days. And that was the
home I lived in until close to the time I got married.
When we moved in there, then we had lots of kids to play with. Mary Reese lived just across the
street. Across the highway were the Hoosier kids and the Johnson kids. I remember those kids
quite well …. We played a lot of games and stuff … walk on barrels and roll them down the hill.
Howard Hoosier ended up being a good buddy of mine.
Betty Johnson had a way of always being almost late for school, so at five to nine you’d see her
streak out of the house passing rabbits on the way to school with her coat standing out straight
behind her. That’s when I decided not to go out for track. Betty’s dad, Anton, was a great
accordian player and he worked on road construction with my brother Buster and they became
good friends.
Mary Reese washed clothes in the backyard. She was at our place having coffee so all of us kids
were at her house playing with the washing machine. Somehow I got my arm in the wringer and
no one knew how to stop it. Someone ran to get Mary and she jumped up and ran home to push
the release button. Mary could run like a jackrabbit. You’d see her and one of the kids going
down the road…Mary in the behind … and when she caught up to the kid he got a good kick in
the back end.
Jeanette Carlson got a new bike and Elsie wanted one so bad. She went up to the hardware
store and asked I. B. Setran if she could trade her little brother Willy for a bike. I. B. said he
wouldn’t take anything that eats.
Billy Johnson still reminds me of the time when we had a cow on about a 40 foot rope that we
kept staking out when the grass was green (that was our lawn mower). I remember I had it
staked out across the highway by Johnsons tied to a tree, when Billy appeared with a big fat
peanut butter sandwich. We couldn’t afford peanut butter and my mouth was watering … so I
traded Billy 2 or 3 squirts from the cow for half his sandwich. Well, that was like ice cream to me
because we ate potato soup in the winter and rhubarb in the summer.
I’ll continue reading from Wilbert McFarlane’s remembrances next week.
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.