March 30, 2013 - More of David Daugherty's Family Story

I'm thoroughly enjoying this family story that Uncle David Daugherty wrote and that cousin Gwyn sent me.  The date of the writing is unknown.  David is gone now, so these words are even more precious.  He was the youngest sibling of my mother and the son of Fred I. Daugherty and Irene Carrington Daugherty.  This is "part three".  The time period is the early 1940's. The bold italics are my additions.

"Sometime during this era, we as a family picked potatoes several miles from home.  I don't remember too much about it except that we stayed in a quanset hut with several other families and picked potatoes during the day.  I was friendly with the guy who drove the truck to pick up the potatoes.  I don't know how long we were there, probably a week.  My mother and I also visited my sister Helen in Minneapolis.  They (Helen and Dale) were going to school and Judy was quite young (I was 8 when she was born.)  Anyway we rode the streetcars and the escalaters and it was my first experience in the big city.

School was always an unpleasant experience.  Bonilla school was small, averaging 5 or 6 kids per grade.  Grades 1,2, and 3 were together and 4,5, and 6 were together.  7 and 8 were together and then highschool.  I moved to Colorado after the start of 1st grade.  There were 6 kids in my class, 5 boys and 1 girl.  I was the smartest boy but sort of tied with the only girl, Eleanor French.  We were all good friends when together by twos, but as a group, somebody would end up fighting, just like boys.  My better friends were Lowell Funk who lived in town and Darrel Shamp who lived near town, but they had 1 cow for milk.  Both their fathers worked on the railroad.  We always had hot lunch at school.  We got all our shots and physical exams there too.  I'm not sure of the accuracy of David moving to Colorado at such a young age.  I remember he and his parents in Bonilla, SD when he was older than that.  I need to check on the years that they were in Colorado.  He may have meant 11th grade. 

Church was a big part of our life.  In Bonilla, the Presbyterian church had Sunday school at 9:30 and church at 11.  I am sure I have absorbed many values from our time there.  There were many church suppers where the whole community would gather for pot luck dinner and a few activities.  Our churches these days cannot seem to bring back the community that we had then.  Everone is too busy doing their own thing.  The congregation is so large that each time we go to an activity, there seems to be a whole new set of people.

The South Dakota country roads had ditches which became our wading hole in the spring and summer.  We also had a pond near the barn.  We would catch frogs.  My Aunt Bertha (Parmely) gave me a ewe that I called "Tootsie".  This ewe had lambs each year and I would get the money for the lambs and Tootsie's wool (about $8 for the wool) which would be my spending money for the year.

David Russel Daugherty

 

 Dad would always buy us a candy bar (a nickel) and a bottle of pop (nickel) when we went into town.  Going into town was always a great time.  Our closest town was Bonilla (4 or 5 miles).  We would go in for incidentals.  The women would gather at Winegar's Cafe (cafe, grocery store, beer joint, ice cream, etc.).  The men would gather at the service station and sit around a stove, chew tobacco and talk.  The kids would listen at one place or another or go out and play street games.  Ocassionally there would be Saturday night dances in the community hall.  We would make our spending money by getting up early the next day, collect beer and pop bottles and collect the deposit from Winegars Cafe.  There was also another grocery store in tow
n...Peterson's.  The owner also made the school lunches.  We had a blacksmith, Jimmy Winnegar's father.  The blacksmith was always a fascinating place with a large coal hearth and all the welding equipment.  He did everything from shoeing horses to fixing farm implements.  We would always need our scythes sharpened from the binder and mowers."