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.
October 5, 2025
In August, I read several episodes from the Memories of Willie McFarlane. At the end of the last
story, he was living on a farm south of Badger, working full time at the Badger seedhouse, and
raising 3 sons, Nathan, Rocky, and Wally (or Bimbo), with his wife Louise Stein.
I’ll continue his story today.
There were 2 or 3 years when the seed house didn’t run all winter and they’d just lock it up until
the first of March when they would start cleaning some seed for farmers. In the meantime, when I
wasn’t working, me and John Penas were hauling wood … so I got a pile of wood and John got
wood.
But after that first 2 or 3 years the seed house was running pretty much steady … but we put in
long days. Sometimes when we got behind in the winter we would run two 12 hour shifts … 6
days a week … we never got Saturday off.
Sometime around 1954 I was hauling flax seed south of Thief River Falls to 4 or 5 little towns
down there .. to Fertile, Twin Valley, Bagley, Fosston … to all those elevators. I had cut my hand,
inside by the thumb, a week or so before that. We were treating flax with an old treater that
wasn’t ventilated with a powder called Seracin .. a mercury compound .. a poison. So when I
broke a pop bottle trying to open it up I just wrapped a rag around my hand and thought nothing
of it. But I noticed for the last 5 days when I was hauling the seed down south, I’d get awful sharp
pains in my left arm .. clean down to my fingers. And I’d just close my fist and squeeze it and
pretty soon it would go away. But I didn’t want to take any time off work to go to the doctor
because I was soon gonna be done .. we got a month off in the summer, too. We had been over
to Louise’s folks .. there were enough kids around and we were playing ball out in the yard. It
was still about every hour I’d get those pains down my left arm.
We went home and did our own chores and were in by about ten o’clock when all of a sudden
something hit me right in the middle of my chest real hard and I couldn’t move … couldn’t holler
… couldn’t do nothing. But I could still think (contrary to popular belief) but I just kept thinking
“I’ve got to get out of here.. there’s something wrong”. I don’t know how it happened, but I flipped
over and I hit the floor and that must have jarred something loose because I could sit up .. but
oh, my God, I was hurting and I was sweating. Louise got scared as hell .. the kids were
sleeping. So we made it outside and got in the car and made it over to Edgar Castle’s. They were
still up .. Edgar’s son-in-law was there from International Falls. He’d just gotten a new car and in
just a little bit we were on the road to Roseau. It was a big car, I think it was a Hudson or some
damn thing. It didn’t take long to get there and old Dr. Jack seemed to guess right away what
was wrong. He said, “Did you eat some fish?” I said, “NO”. I went down to the old Budd hospital
.. I still didn’t know what was wrong. It was hurting so bad I couldn’t lay down in bed .. so I sat up
leaning against the wall that first night. I had this oxygen thing on me that looked like a pair of
glasses and this cut my nose so I was kind of a bloody mess. Dr. Jack was in and out of there
checking things out. I was in there about 3 weeks that summer. After about 5 or 6 days I started
to feel a little better and I asked for something to read so one of the nurses brought me a local
paper and I started going through it .. reading all the news and crap. Here it was in the news that
Willie McFarlane had a severe heart attack. It was caused from that poison that got into my blood
stream from the cut. I got home and it took a long time but it gradually got worked out of my
system somehow.
I couldn’t do anything .. could barely walk out to the barn and back. One of Louise’s brothers was
staying with us and he was helping out with the chores and stuff. While I was in the hospital
Louise’s dad died and I didn’t even get to the funeral. So all of these things building up was kind
of hard on her, too.
In the summer of 1955 I went to a seed school in Ames, Iowa. Ames was, at that time, rated as
one of the best ag schools in the country. It was a toss up between Ames and Purdue, Indiana. I
went to Ames to learn how to analyze seed. It was a real good school, a good short course.
When I got home I started spending a lot more time in the office at the seed house. I did a lot
less out in the mill, but every time there was a breakdown they hollered for Willie. I still drove
trucks quite a bit. They said they were going to give me an easier job after that heart attack. It got
to be less physical but being under the right hand of Old John wasn’t that easy either. But we
survived it.
I think it was in 1958 I went to another school in Madison, Wisconsin for 3 weeks in the summer.
It was an advanced course on analyzing seed put on by the federal government. Rocky and
Nathan stayed at John Penas’ when we were gone. Louise and Bimbo went with me and they
stayed in Menominee with my sister, Edna, while I went to school. Weekends I’d come back to
Menominee.
It just went to prove that you didn’t have to finish high school to go to a college course in the
summertime. I felt I was pretty lucky to get in on that deal.
It was after that I went and got my GED … both me and Louise did and we got signed diplomas
out of Badger High School.
There’s much more to read from Willie McFarlane’s autobiography, which I’ll continue 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.