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 12, 2025
I’ll continue reading today from the Memories of Willie McFarlane from Badger, who wrote his
story in 2000. I was able to find a copy at the Roseau County Museum. In today’s segment, he’s
still working at the seed house in Badger.
It was that fall, 1951, when I drove a ’41 International truck … an old green one .. an old KB-5,
down to Mankato with a load of seed on it. Louise went with me, of course. Every time I went out
of town I took her with me because it was good for her and it was good to have company along. I
even hauled a load of screenings and bags to Minneapolis on that same truck. It was shortly
after that we got the newer truck. This was all happening at the Badger Seed House.
And of course we went camping every summer with the kids. We wore out the three best tents
that Sears Roebuck had … we couldn’t afford to go any other way. But the kids loved it, you
know .. in the state parks. Swimming and eating was the two most important things. I got to be a
pretty good cook because if you eat in the park and spill something you never had to clean it up.
I figured it out that Minnesota had 42 or 44 state parks and we had camped in 26 of them.
But by this time, things were going pretty good at the seed house. I was working all summer
fixing machinery and I guess I was as good as anybody and cheaper than most at fixing them. I
remember one time when old John was going home for dinner I told him to bring me back some
grease rags. I thought sure as heck he’d have some, you know. Everything we had at our house
was rags but we were still wearing them. So sure as heck, here he comes at about 1:30 with an
old shirt … I shook it out and looked at it … and then looked at the one I had on … it wasn’t hard
to decide which one was going to be used as the grease rag. I put his on and mine was torn into
4 little pieces and I had 4 grease rags. I think I ended up with 2 or 3 of his old shirts that way.
They seemed to fit pretty good because he was a big guy, maybe a hair bigger than I was … but
size didn’t matter when you got something for nothing.
As time went on we got more animals on the farm … more things to do … the seed house kept
getting busier and bigger … but we stuck with it.
I remember when Rocky came along. He was born in 1950 on the 25 th of May. I suppose he got
to be about 2 years old when Martin Bialke would come down the road with the old grader. It was
an old W-30 tractor with a blade on it … that was his grader in them days. And he always had
gum. So the kids they’ d run out when the grader went by … you know how nice and smooth the
road gets … he’d throw out 2 sticks of gum for the kids. Boy, they’d come tearing back to the
house …. they thought Martin Bialke was Santa Claus.
Then of course they had to see how much trouble they could get into. One day they got into a
five pound can of grease that I had for the tractor. They had a real good time for awhile. Louise
didn’t know if the kids were white or black but she finally got them hosed off. We didn’t have no
running water so she took them out by the pump in the summertime, pumped a bucket of water
… dump it on them … wipe some more … and finally she got down to where she could tell they
were ours. I’m sure there were times when she wished they weren’t.
In 1952, on November 1, that’s when Bimbo was born. We ended up calling him Wally … but he
came along the same year as the song about Bimbo so that stuck like glue. And when he was
about 2 years old he was a real talker and he still is.
But those were tough days in the seed house and on the farm. It was cold with those old wood
stoves. I remember going out in the country and hauling seed into town. We had to haul it out to
the road with horses and then load it on the truck … go back and get some more … and do this
for 2 or 3 hours and then you crawled in a nice warm truck … or it was fairly warm … you’d get
awful darn sleepy. We worked every Saturday so then every Sunday we’d be over helping John
Penas do something. John and Annie were like Grandpa and Grandma to the kids. Then
especially when they got a little bigger they’d help John do things around the farm. The kids liked
it and John appreciated it. So it went pretty good.
Old John’s brother Cecil … he never got married … but for exercise, it was dark in the wintertime
… he’d walk up to the seed house and get warmed up by the old pot bellied coal stove. Then
when he went home he’d walk down towards the depot and walk the railroad track till he crossed
the creek. Then he’d get off the track and walk up towards his mother’s place ‘cuz he lived with
his mother. So here comes Cecil one evening … I don’t know if he’d been sucking on the sauce
or what … he gets done at the seed house and heads down to the track and gets in about the
middle of the bridge going across the creek and here the damn train blew the whistle. Well, the
train could have been a quarter of a mile away because at night that light is awful bright. Cecil
got all shook up and jumped over the side of the bridge. He landed on some rocks down there
and broke his ankle. Well, he still had about 2 blocks to get home so he starts crawling dragging
his one foot. I suppose there was about a foot of snow.
He got about halfway home and my God, here four dogs came after him. So he was hollering
and trying to throw snowballs at the dogs and when things quietened down he crawled a little
further and finally he made it home.
I’ll continue reading Mr. McFarlane’s memoirs 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.