My wife and I had 3 small children, and I went back
at Christmastime in 1931 to bring the family back.
We arrived here on New Year’s Eve, 1932. The
government had shipped my furnishings and everything
we had down, and it was deposited in a brick house
on Denver Street that had just been finished. Now,
the plaster was wet, and everything was soaking, and,
of course, they put the bedding on the floor in the
living room and all the rest of the furniture on top
of the bedding.
I had been living in the camp on the site of what
is now Lakeview. And after the family came down, some
of the boys from the camp said, “Well, we’ll
help you get going.” There was no heat in the
house; we couldn’t use electricity for heat,
but there was an electric range that had just been
installed. So the first thing, we loaded the fireplace
full of wood, touched it off . . . and, my friends,
there wasn’t one bit of the smoke went out of
that house except out in the rooms! [laughter] Well,
we pulled the wood out of the fireplace and got rid
of that.
The next thing was to make ourselves beds. So what
we did was we lighted the range and used the oven
in the range, went out and found a bunch of big rocks,
put them in the range and warmed them. And we wrapped
them up in papers and put them in the beds at night.
And that was my hardship in coming here. But I was
lucky to have a job, and my work went on from there.
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