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 19, 2025
I’m picking up Willie McFarlane’s story where we left off last week, sometime in the 1950s when
their family was living on a farm near Badger.
It was the last year we lived on the farm when Nathan started school in Badger. Shortly after that
was when we moved into town. We bought a little house on Tamarack Street. When we were
kids we used to call it the back alley, but it was actually Tamarack Street. We went in there every
evening. We had someone staying on the farm to help with chores and stay with Louise and the
kids. I used to go in there every evening and paint. I got everything painted and fixed up pretty
good and finally we moved in. It was kind of a relief, for me especially, because I walked to work
then. I wouldn’t start my car all week in the wintertime. It was 600 steps from my door to the seed
house door … if I wasn’t bucking a strong north wind.
Then Louise got involved in some things in the town and in the church. Then later on when more
kids were in school, there were more things involved. But we lived in that house until Nathan was
a sophomore and Rocky was a freshman and Bimbo was down in about 4 th grade.
Then in 1962, Sandy was born on October 9. So we still had one at home and three in school.
And in the summertime, every evening, we’d have to run out to the farm and see if we could get
something done. Sundays we’d go out there and pick rocks or do something. There certainly was
no free time around. We were still working 6 days a week at the seed house. A lot of people
worked 6 day a week jobs. So this went on until about 1965 when there were some big problems
at the seed house.
John Sjoberg’s health wasn’t good .. and he, without thinking, sold control of it to his brother,
Pete, in Roseau. And that wasn’t working out. They wouldn’t talk to each other and one of them
would come and tell Willie something and he was supposed to tell the other one. Well it didn’t
take me long to decide that life was too short for that, so in 1965 I took a job with Northrup King
out of Minneapolis and was given a territory of eight counties … Des Moines, Iowa south to the
Missouri border. This was in July or August, just before school started. So we moved to Iowa,
rented a house in a neighborhood with lots of kids. Louise had coffee parties during the day, back
and forth with neighbors. I was on the road every day. But that was a 5 days a week job … and
what a relief! I had all day Saturday … all day Sunday … but I did have a lot of book work to do,
because if I remember right in that eight counties I had just about 40 town dealers and just about
the same number of farmer dealers out in the country. And you had to make out daily reports. But
I soon wised up on that. I had a wooden thing built that would sit on the seat beside me and
inside of it I had all the reports and papers and so I’d pull out what I needed and make my daily
reports as I was traveling. So by the time I got home at night I just had to put it in an envelope
and that was it and the orders I had taken from people during the day went into the envelope with
my daily reports. It took awhile to get used to it. The biggest problem that I had was wearing that
damn necktie everyday. They did expect you to be quite presentable. So here comes this
tanglefoot from Badger going into some of those big dealers in Iowa with a white shirt, necktie,
My God. But I was so thankful when they had those clip on neckties. As soon as I got out I threw
the brief case on the seat, and got in the station wagon and the first thing off would come the
necktie and put it on the dash.
Before I went to Iowa, old John Sjoberg didn’t want me to go of course but there was really
nothing much that anyone could do about it. He asked me if I would come back if he bought out
his brother and sold me part of it. Well, I didn’t think it would ever happen. So I says, “You make
a deal and get him the hell out of here and sell me part of it and I’ll come back.”
But not thinking anything would happen, I went to Iowa. It was going pretty good down there .. I
was getting pretty good marks from the company and the district office in Waterloo. I’m sure I
knew more about cleaning seed and good seed from bad seed than anybody there. I don’t want
to sound like I’m bragging, but finally they took us over to a field day at Washington, Iowa at a big
corn plant where they cleaned and bagged and got the seed corn ready for sale in the spring.
They had just opened this plant and they had some bugs in there. So we were there all one day
and got home late that night and about 4 days later I get a call from Minneapolis. And a guy in
the buying and selling department had just found out that I was working for the same company
he was and I was down there in Iowa. Well, to make a long story short … this traveled around the
big office in Minneapolis … of course there was a lot of people working there and I knew quite a
few of them. Then they wanted to know if I’d go back to Washington, Iowa for two days to just
take a look at how their machinery was set up. This made me feel awful good to have something
like that coming out of Northrup King. Then being he was the boss, I couldn’t tell him “no’. So I
went over there and spent two days there … surprised a few pretty sharp people who just didn’t
know much about machinery. Some of the machines weren’t set at the right angle … one end
was supposed to be a little bit higher … they had them sitting flat so the seed wouldn’t move. You
had to put ground wires on some of the machines because of static electricity … the seed
wouldn’t leave the drums while it was turning and would just follow it around. So they got a few
things straightened around. Finally I told them they’d just have to play with it … we’d got the
worst of it done. I took off and went home again.
I’ll read more of Mr. McFarlane’s story 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.