Agnes M. Sampson Tschirgi

June 22, 1997. An interview with my Mother Agnes Hanson, on the Hovey Sampson Tschirgi genealogy.
My father was full blooded Frenchman, when he and my mother were married he spoke very broken English. When he got excited or frightened, he went right back to the French language.
I was born in International Falls, Minnesota, November 23, 1919, I weighed 3 1/2 pounds, so you can see I was a very small baby. When I was born, my sister Alice and my brother Virg were already born, Alice was 7 and Virg was 5. They had whooping cough and chicken pox, and it was no time at all until I had whooping cough and chicken pox too. My dad worked in a paper mill in International Falls and he had hired a lady to come in and stay with mom and the other two kids during the day while he worked. This old lady was Irish, and she said, 'Why it's a sin and shame to bring such thing in to the world, why a rabbit would make 3 of the likes." [This was said in an Irish brogue] Scared my mother so bad, she told dad he had better get rid of her before she did something to me. So dad told her, he didn't need her any more and he gave me my baths. Dad would take a dishtowel or a diaper or something, and put around his legs when he gave me my bath, because back in those days when you changed your baby, or bathed them, you did it on your lap. One day, when he was giving me my bath, the grocery boy came with our delivery, back then they delivered your groceries to you. He asked dad if he could stay and watch me have my bath. I guess he had never seen such a tiny baby.
When I was less than 3 weeks old, my folks moved from International Falls to Park Rapids, Minnesota. It was a long move. My mother took us kids and went by train to her mother's place. I think Dad loaded stuff on a sled; I don't really remember. After we got to Granma's, I had a real bad coughing spell. Dad was going to give me some cough medicine, but instead of cough medicine he gave me something called camphorated oil; that is like the stuff that is in Vick's. It just about strangled me. He was so scared, my granma grabbed me up, and stuck her finger in a pitcher of cream and swabbed out my mouth. The next thing my granma knew, he was saying "If this baby dies I'm gonna open that heater door and I'm gonna stick my head in there and I'm gonna burn it off right to my shoulders, #^$%&#blank."
I don't have any real memories of anything more until I was about 5. We went by horse and buggy, because the roads were bad and cars weren't all that popular. Dad was a horseman anyway, and we had, I think, a mule and buggy. My mom had loaned some fruit jars to a friend. It was summer time and Mom wanted to do some canning. My sister Alice was about 12 and my cousin Hazel was between 16 and 18, and my sister Marj was about 2 years old. We were going to take this buggy and the mule and go get the jars. Hazel was a city girl, but she wanted to drive just like kids today, they want to drive. I don't know how far it was, but quite a ways. We came to a grove of trees and we decided we had to get out and go potty, so we got out and went into the trees. When we came back, Hazel got in and Alice got in with Marj. I was to short to step on the little step that buggies had back in those days, so I stepped on the wheel. I guess the mule thought we were ready to go and took off. My leg slipped through the spokes and it broke my leg above the knee, in the knee and just below the knee. My mother had very small hands and she could reach all of the breaks between her thumb and little finger. My cousin Hazel grabbed hold of the wheel and held it tight, she peeled the skin off her hands, till Alice got hold to the reins and stopped the mule. I don't remember who got me out. The mail carrier came along, he was a good friend of my Mom and Dads, his name was Leon Sarten. I think Mom had gone to school with him. I don't know if he got me out or if the girls did. He had a little Ford that had a box on the back, it made it like a pickup, he put me in there. I remember saying, "But I want my sister." He let Alice go with me and he took us back to my granma's. My granma had worked with doctors, and had been trained to do a number of different things. She was called a trained nurse, not a registered nurse, but a trained nurse. She had mother get in the front of this car and she packed pillows around mothers lap, then they sat me on her lap, and took me to the doctors. I can remember very vividly going across the railroad tracks into Park Rapids, and how much that hurt. They set my leg in a cast from hip to heel. In those days they did not know they could x ray through a cast, so when they figured it was healed they took the cast off and found all the bones had slipped, they were over-lapping each other. They put me to sleep and rebroke my leg in all three places. That time, when they set it, they bent my knee and bound it up to my chest. Can you imagine taking care of a kid like that? My mother was very small too. The Doctor told my mother that I would cry for 3 days and 3 nights, until the circulation rerouted. It was terrible, terrible bad. My leg healed nicely, so the Doctor must have known what he was doing, of course, now they would do it differently. Since my sister Marj was 2 years old, Mom still had her buggy, it was a big wicker buggy, I was small and she could put both of us in there that way, we could go outside and different places. This all happened in the early part of July, and I got out of the cast just before my birthday. Right after this happened, Dad took his team and went to the Dakotas to work in the harvest. The day he came home was my birthday, November 23rd, so you see that was a long drawn out affair. When they let my leg down it hurt something terrible, and my leg looked awful from the hip to the toes. It just hung like a fish's belly, I cried because it looked so awful. I got out of the cast and started walking with crutches. When Virg saw Dad come into the yard, he grabbed my crutches and threw them behind the couch, he wanted my to walk, but I couldn't and I cried. The Doctor had my Mom put me on the library table and massage my leg with warm olive oil every night for 30 minutes. Mom, Dad and Alice took turns doing that, and they were very faithful about doing it. Now you can't tell the difference between my legs, a lot of people that had breaks, not even as bad as mine had problems. I did come out of it nicely. Another thing the Doctor said was that I was to have really good shoes, and they had to be half soled, why I have no idea. They had the half sole put on immediately. [Half soled shoes are missing the heel and both shoes had to be done this way.] As soon as the sole started wearing though a little bit, they had to put on another half sole and the second time they started to wear I had to have a new pair of shoes. Back then there were little oxfords that were made of elk hide, they were very soft and that is the kind I was to wear. They did that for me faithfully. I should have started school that September. We lived in the country and I couldn't walk. When I did start to walk my leg would bend backward at the knee if I stepped in a hole or something. Then someone would have to help me stand up. I don't remember if there was any pain, I just remember falling. All these years I have gotten along really well. I have had a lot of pain in my knees, and that may be why. A lot of times a break in the knee never heals right, but, my lands, if you stop to think that way back in 1924, that Doctor did a really good job with what he had to work with.
The first Christmas after my leg was broken, we lived on one side of town, and Dad had a friend that lived about a mile on the other side, his name was Lyman Crooks, I called him the Big Boy. He came and put me on his shoulders (I suppose my mother dressed me really warm, because it would have been really cold) and he took me to see Santa Clause. My granma from Canada sent us a package and some how or other, she forgot me. Lyman was there and he grabbed a gift, maybe something he had bought for me, and he stuck it under his coat and said he bet my package was out in the mailbox. He brought in the package and it was a little black doll, just a real small little doll. I always thought it was from my granma, until I was pretty well grown and someone told me. But it was really from Lyman. He taught me a song about an old man, he combed his hair with a wagon wheel, and something about a frying pan, just a fun little old time song. I remember him teaching me that.
Once in a while Dad would try to teach us something in French, but we just couldn't say anything that sounded right. We could say oui oui and souples, but as far as anything that made sense, we couldn't do that. He used to sign a song that was, Irela Irela Crispoto. I have no idea what it meant. It probably isn't pronounced so that any French person could tell what it is. Anyway we though he was saying Irela Irela piss pot too. Marj and I were singing that and our Mother was horrified.
My mother, Alice, Virg and I, and some of my mother's younger sisters and her brothers all had the same first grade teacher. By the time I had her she was getting pretty old and she was cross. I remember her punching my arm to show me which was the right and which was the left.
When my mother and Dad were first married, they went from Park Rapids up to Canada, thats where my granma Sampson lived. They lived across the river from International Falls in Fort Frances. I don't know when she moved there. They were Catholic, and were pretty strict about going to church on Sunday morning. When the priest was up doing his thing, all the people would be saying "Pray for us. pray for us." They were French, but were trying to say it in English, and my mother thought they were saying piecrust, piecrust. She ask a friend "Why are those people saying piecrust, piecrust. Her friend said that isn't what they were saying, they're saying, "Pray for us, pray for us." That's just kind of a fun thing I remember.
About 1929, I was about 10 years old, we moved near Hibbing where my granma Hovey was staying with my Aunt Ida. Granma Hovey was already sick when we got there. She had what they called dropsy in those days. (Heart failier? Ginger) The body fluids just build up and the legs got enormous. I think that people pretty much drown from the fluids. There were no drugs in those days like there are now, so there was nothing you could do for it. She was sick for 3 or 4 months. We went up there in the early spring. I don't know if that is where we intended to stop, but that's where we did stop, and we lived there for 3 or 4 years.
The first winter we were there we went to a place called Bear River, and Dad worked in the woods. By the way, he didn't get paid, the man went broke. He did have a company store, so we got groceries. Lyman Crooks and Dad went somewhere to try to find work, they were quite prone to that. Mom went to Aunt Ida's which was 10 to 12 miles from us. She went to help with her mother. The four of us kids stayed home, this tar paper shack, that the workers lived in. We were getting pretty low on groceries and Dad had a deer rifle. All that was left in the camp after the guy went broke was the cook shack and an old cook that stayed there and us kids. We were across the road from him. Virg, he was about 14 or 15 years old, decided that he was going to get us a deer. The old cook heard one shot, and he knew what Virg was up to. But he didn't do anything, he was a good man. There were two tar paper shacks the Crooks had lived in one and ours. We had used theirs for a storeroom, or maybe even slept there, I don't remember. Virg and Alice put quilts over the windows, so no one could see in. Virg cut out a hole in the floor under an old trunk, and dug a hole in there, I think they worked all night. We had a wooden keg and he filled it with water and put salt in it. Then he took an egg and put it in the water. If you could float an egg in the brine, then you knew it was salty enough to cure meat. So he cut up the venison and put it in the brine. Then they put the trunk back over the hole, so if anyone came looking they wouldn't see the hole. We now had meat to eat.
The old cook built a trap so Marj and I could catch chipmunks. After we caught them they bit us really bad, so much for chipmunk pets.
The loggers were Finlanders, and they ate little tiny pickled fish, they were like smelt. They didn't clean them. The old cook gave some to Marj and I, and we ate them. We told Momma how good they were, and she like to have a worm because we ate those things. She was just horrified at the thought of us eating those awful things. But he showed us how to put the body in our mouth, clamp down with our teeth and put on the head and the meat stayed in out mouth and the backbone came out with the head. The other bones were soft from the pickling.
Dad was having a real hard time finding work and feeding us. We had a little house that was right across from Aunt Ida's. The first summer we were there, when the blueberries were on, Dad thought we could make some money picking berries. They used to have buyers that came right to the camps. This was up near the Canadian line. We no more got set up when there was a big forest fire. Virg and Dad got to work on the fire. They left Mom, Marj and I, and why Momma wanted to keep picking I don't know. Most everyone else left, they didn't want to be hanging around the fire. One day, we went out and we followed some people, Mom thought they might know where the berries were really good. After we got there, these people picked what they wanted and left. It was late, and I couldn't get Momma to leave. The berries were good and she was bound to stay on and pick. I told Marj, "I didn't even know if I could find our way back, I'd never been there before." Momma couldn't find her way across the yard, so finally Marj told Mom we had to go and she decided we better go. We walked down the railroad tracks for a long, long way, and finally I knew where to turn off. I didn't know if we had passed it or where we were, I was just a little kid (about 9 or 10 years old) When we crossed the tracks and started across where the trees were and back to camp, I told Momma "We're in trouble now, Dad's been looking for us." She said "Well, how do you know." I said "Look at all his tracks." It was Dad and he was madder than hops, to think that she would take us kids that far and it was almost dark.
Another time when the guys were out fighting fire, we looked down the road and we saw a bear, we didn't have anything but a tent. Mother built up a roaring big fire, but the bear didn't come our way. It sure did scare us.
When the fire was out, it seemed like forever, but probably wasn't that long, we went back to Hibbing. We met my mother's brother Tom; he was a shoemaker at that time. Our grandma had died and it was a sad time. My mother was just sure something was wrong, she was so upset, and had wanted to go home. It was rough at the camp. We didn't have anything.
After we left there we went back to Hibbing, and we lived in apartments that didn't amount to much. I don't really know if we had money for rent. I think when the rent came due we had to move. I don't really know, but it was really roughs times. Hibbing was a mining town, and Dad wasn't in to that. Dad and Virg went to the Dakotas that fall for the grain harvest and earned some money. They had an old car, it was a real rough show. When they got back, they were dirty and Mom told Virg he had to have a bath, so he peeled off his cloths. Mom told me to pick up his pants and throw them in the stove. Guess what, there was $5 in the pocket. Virg didn't like me anyway, so I really got chewed out. It wasn't my fault, I just did what Mom told me to do. She didn't want me to put my hand in the pocket, and it was in the watch pocket. Then $5 was probably a months wages for a kid that age.
The times were really rough, that was just the beginning of the Depression. The City of Hibbing had a type of welfare, and they gave commodities. They also had a program where the men worked a week a month or something like that. They did all the parks and the sweeping of the streets, and hauled the garbage, that kind of thing. It was really hard to get on that. Our school had its own nurse, doctor and dentist, and they had a swimming pool, we were the richest school district in the state, thats because of the mine. The nurse that was at our school took a liking to me. I might have had a sore throat and when she looked at it, she saw how bad my teeth were. She set me up with an appointment to get all of my teeth fixed. That was the first time I had been to the dentist. I didn't even have a toothbrush. I was 13 by now. Momma found out that this nurse liked me so well, so when ever it was time for Dad to get on the Village Work Program she would send me to the nurse's office and I would tell the nurse "My Daddy needs a slip to go to work." And she would get it for us. I just can't imagine my Mother doing that. I would never have made my kid do that. I would have done it myself. When it was time for commodities or a lot of stuff like that, she would send me. Alice was working for $1.50 a week, so she couldn't go.
When Jim was 1 we had a lot of commodities and that is when we decided to go to Idaho. I was about 15. Uncle Arlow had been in Idaho for several years, and Uncle Willis had come out the year before. These were Momma's brothers.
Aunt Ida always thought they were so much better off that we were. Well they were, because Uncle Harry had a good job with the railroad. My Dad worked at this and that and we were always broke. We had this nice little car that Lyman Crooks didn't think would get us across the state, so he talked Dad into trading the car and trailer for a truck. My Mother was horrified to think that we had to ride in that crummy looking thing. Lord, it was just about more than she could take. We never even went to say good by to Aunt Ida. It was a flat bed truck, we loaded all our stuff on there and they put a seat out of something, some old car or something I suppose, and part of us rode in the back and part in front. It was covered with the tent. I suppose when we got to where we were spending the night, Dad had to set up the tent. I don't really remember.
Arlow and Myrtle had a one room shack with a screened porch on it, and a path (that went to the outhouse). Everybody stayed there. Dad set up our tent, oh my, what a hard time. Between Arlow and Willis they had two trucks, and it was grain harvest and Dad and Virg went right to work in the grain. We also picked prunes. My mother felt so bad, Myrtle just had an old broken down cook stove and had to use coal. My Mother used it to bake bread, and she wasn't a very good bread baker; she didn't like it, so she wasn't very good. Anyway, the bread wasn't worth a hoot and there was nothing to put on it, just bread. We went to work way out in the country, we took the old truck, Dad, Alice, Marj and I and Mom stayed home to take care of Jim. Virg worked with the truck someplace. The man where we went had bees, and Dad talked him into letting us have a comb of honey. So then we had that to put on the bread. Our Mother just felt so bad to send us such crummy looking lunches. We ate lots of prunes, and kids can handle things pretty good. I don't know if WPA was on then, I think we had to exist buy ourselves for a while. A lot of people were on welfare, really they were. We weren't to proud to get commodities and stuff if we could. Aunt Myrtle and Aunt Clara would go, and guess who went with them to get ours, me. I would have thought Momma would have let me stay home and take care of Jim and she would have gone. But no siree, Momma always sent me, and I don't know why. Maybe because I was so scared that they took pity on me. I never had any trouble with grocery buying later after Dick & I were married. Marj and I did it all, Momma didn't at all. When we first came to New Plymouth, we would ask for a peck of potatoes and they thought we were from a foreign country; what is a peck? So we showed them a sack, but they sold them by the pound. We could buy a soup bone, and there was quite a bit of meat on it for 10 cents, and Mother would make us meals that way. It was a hard life, but I think I learned a lot. Alice was working for someone for about $1.50 a week.
We lived out at Hamilton's Corner and there was a store out there called Falks. Right there at the corner there used to be some cabins, and Uncle Willis and Aunt Clara and our family each had one of those cabins. (These cabin are still there, they are not livable. 2010 GS) When school started thats where Marj and I had to go. They made another blunder in my schooling. We were out there 6 weeks or so and then back into town. I really wasn't ready for the 8th grade because there was such a change in the schools. I was ready for 7A; in Minnesota, they divided the grades so if you failed half you didn't fail the whole year. So I was ready for the second half of the 7th grade. They didn't have that in Idaho and I thought "I'm not going back to the 7th grade, I'll go to the 8th grade." I was lost, it was strange and I didn't have any friends, it was horrible. In the early spring I got the measles. I got both kinds, regular and the three-day. I missed about a month of school right at a crucial time. I wasn't getting good grades anyway, and I probably wouldn't have passed if I had gone back. So Mommy let me stay home and that was the end of my schooling, until I was 60 and I went back and got my GED. I guess I just stayed home until Dick and I were married. I did pick some prunes and things like that. I also did a little short housekeeping job. You know how your hindsight is always better than your foresight, if I had known then what I know now, there was a retire teacher that probably could have tutored me and I could have done her house work, because she hired someone to do it. But I was to smart, I didn't think I needed it.
One time my Mother wanted to go someplace and it was to far to walk, so she told me to take her in the truck. I had never driven before and told her I didn't know how to drive. That was ok, she wanted to go and she knew I could take her. Well, I didn't know how to shift, I couldn't find reverse, so I drove it forward. I parked where I could just drive forward. Boy was I scared. It didn't matter what Mom wanted she just knew I could do it.
In 1935, late in the year, Virg went to work for the Tschirgi's because grandad Tschirgi had had a heart attack. Dick was milking a bunch of cows by hand and feeding a lot of pigs. Alice and Virg had met Dick at the Apple Dryer Plant the year before. I'm not sure just how Virg came to get this job, but he did. So, he brought Dick home and the three of us went to a show and from then on Dick and I dated until October 7, 1936 when we got married. I was 16, and the next month I was 17, and Dick was 20, he turned 21 in January. We stayed with Mom and Dad a little while and then he started feeding cattle for Clifford Barker; he got $33 a month and breakfast. Then in 1937, Dick farmed 40 acres about a mile and a half from where Clayton was farming just Northeast (I think) out of New Plymouth a couple of miles. He used some of Clayton's equipment. I think we rented that one year. Ginger was born in December while we still lived there.
When Ginger was real little, we lived at Barkers and the house caught fire. Your basket was out in the kitchen, water started coming down through the ceiling. Dick and Clifford Barker were just coming to the house for breakfast after getting the teams ready, and they saw the fire. Dick had built a fire before he left, he used some chips and they went right though and landed on the roof, and burned a hole in it. It made a wet nasty mess, but didn't burn any of out stuff. When Ginger was about 6 months or maybe a little less, we move back to New Plymouth and Dick worked in the hay for different ones. About that time Granma Tschirgi got some money from her people. They bought a farm up on the Oregon Heights, 80 acres that was just sagebrush; it was new ground. The ground was so loose, it was just like trying to run water though dust. We stayed there for quite some time, and things were really rough and we decided that we would have to leave. Dick worked at Hermiston for a while on the defense project. Then we went to Arizona for a while and then we came back and that is when Grandad Tschirgi died. Dick ran the place and worked for wages besides. While we were there Peggy was born (1942). About 1943, Granma sold the place and we moved into Fruitland. Then we bought a place in Council, Idaho. Dick had worked during the winter and had money to buy stock with. Right after Clifford was born (1944) we moved up there. We just stayed one season. The crops were short because there was no irrigation. Then we moved back to Fruitland again; we move more times that anybody I ever knew. He went to work for Milan Davis.
This was during the war (WWII), and since he had been farming or worked for farmers, he had a draft deferment. So when we decided we were going to get out of farming and go to logging or work in a mill or something, he had to go to the draft board and get cleared from Col. Patch. He told him "You go and within a month you'll be in the Army." Dick told them that was all right with him, he was going any way. So we went, and we never heard from the draft board. It kind of nagged at me; I kept thinking "What is going to happen?" Well, many years later, after Dick died in 1978, in the old building where the draft board had been, there was a big tall file cabinet, and I think Col. Patch had put Dick's papers on that file cabinet and some how they got knocked down behind it. They were moving things out of that building and there were some papers behind the cabinet, and guess what, they were Dick's draft papers. Col. Patch knew Clayton (Dick's older brother) and called him and told him. "You know why Dick never got drafted?" And of course Clayton didn't know, so he told him the story. So that kept us out of that trouble.
Well we went to Troutlake, Washington, and I think Dick worked there a year and a half or so. We were like a band of Gypsies. That's why when I was by myself I'd call myself the Gadabout. Anyway he was tired of the mill and we thought we would move back to Payette County. His mother was there and so was his brother, and my folks were in New Plymouth, so back we went. Then he went to work driving truck for Bassford. We were living with Granma and Clayton, they had a good sized house. We bought a little house that was partly finished in New Plymouth and put it on my sister Marj and her husband Ralph's lot. Dad and I went to work on it, because Dick was only home Friday night before sundown and left again Saturday as soon as the sun went down, because Bassford was Seven-Day-Adventist and like to keet those trucks a rollin'. The trucks didn't have sleepers, so Dick was really tired when he got home. Dad and I got this house livable. Dick even drew a diagram so I could wire it. I'd never done that before, but I was perfectly capable of trying anything. The switch was right by the door to turn on one of the lights; it would turn the light on but when I turned it off, it only dimmed it. I don't know what I did, but when Dick got home he fixed it. When it came time to put the siding stuff up, it kind of looked like brick. A lot of houses used that stuff then. It was maybe 18 inches long and had sand on the outside and the inside had fibers that way back then we called Celatex. Dad showed me how those things fit together, they were kind of like tongue and groove. He went to church and I decided to work on the outside of the house, it was a nice Sunday morning. When he came home, he was horrified because I had cut that material though the sand instead of thought the fibers, and then breaking it. He said to me "My God, Mag, what are you doing with my saw?" and I said "Well Dad, what does it look like?" He said, "That's not the way you cut that stuff." Of course I didn't know, I had just about worn the teeth off his saw. I was real apologetic and told him that as soon as I was finished, I would take his saw and have it set and the teeth filed. So when I did that the saw filer was horrified too. He said "What have you been doing with this saw, cutting cement." It took me a while to live that down. Anyway, it made us a small comfortable house. We only lived there probably long enough to get the last nail pounded in. The kids and I hated having their Dad gone all the time, every time he left, we cried. He was gone a week at a time and we felt so isolated. We missed him so much. I think we went back out to Barkers. While we were there, we had a small one bedroom house, a big kitchen, dining room and living room all in one, and a path. We decided we would raise some fryers; we raised them on halves with Barkers. I don't remember if we let them out or if they got out. Ginger (she had just finished the 2nd grade) and I went out to the pasture to get them back in. There was a little hog house, just a little A-frame building, neither of us knew there were baby pigs in there. Ginger went in and the big old sow came in after her. I heard her scream, it just terrified me. I didn't know just what to do; I didn't know if the building had a floor in it, if I could turn it over. I probably could have, because I was so scared I would have been stronger than a horse. Clifford Barker had a dog, a border collie, and he used to come to our place, but I really wasn't all that crazy about having him hang around out doorstep. Anyway, I hollered for that dog and praise the Lord he was there. He got in the pasture, and some way he managed to get in the pig house he grabbed the pig by the nose and she came tearing out of there. I told Ginger if she could come out to do so. The pig had taken hold of her knee, but it didn't break the skin. I grabbed her up in my arms and Clifford's son, Darrell, who was in high school was there, I handed Ginger over the fence to him and ran to the gate and got out of there, so the dog could let go of the pig. I took Ginger to the house got her all washed up and calmed down and put her to bed. When I got her to bed I started crying. I just went to pieces. Dick was out irrigating. Clifford took the pig and maybe her babies to market the next day. We didn't have to worry about that any more. It was just a miracle we got out of that alive. When we left Barkers Dick must have gone to work for the sale yard in Ontario, Oregon.
We lived in the Bummer house for some time. That place had a big barn and a silo (the silo is the only thing left. 2010. GS) and a big old house, this was the third time Dick had lived there. While we lived there all three kids had their tonsils out. We raised a bunch of pigs with Ellis White. One day Clifford fell out of the hay loft and managed to land right in the middle of one of the pig's bellies, that gave him a soft landing. It sure scared Ginger, she was afraid he would land across the 2 x 4 on the feeder. One time we had a really bad wind storm and it blew down 5 trees.
Then we went back to New Plymouth and built another house. We put this little house, three rooms and a path on Marj and Ralph's new property, just north of where we were before. Most of the lumber for this house came out of the Emmett lumber mill scrap pile. We bought the windows and the door and the roofing etc. We both worked on it, all we had was a hammer and hand saw. After the house was finished as best we could, I kept fussing about the way it looked. Little scraps here and there, it looked horrible. I told Virg I wished there was something we could do about the way it looked. He said we should stucco it. I said I didn't know how. He told me how and said he knew I could do it. So we got two or three rolls of tar paper and chicken wire. I put up the tar paper and the wire and he told me to take my big dish pan and stir up a batch of mud; he told me how and I got to work. You had to use slake lime and sand; Virg was going to help me get the sand but got called on a job. Dad loaned me the trowels and things. After I got every thing ready, I assumed you started in the gable ends and worked you way down. I build a form to put planks across so I could get up there and reach it. When I was putting one of these cross piece up, I had one nail in it and had to reach down to get another nail and the darned thing came loose and hit me in the head. I saw stars but it made me so mad I just grabbed my hammer and went right back to work. After I got my first batch of mud stirred up and had it on the scaffold, my Dad came home and said "Mag, whatch doin' up there." I said "Well Dad what does it look like I'm doin'." He said "Well, I'll tell you that's not where you start, you start right here at the bottom." And I said "The bottom, why?" He said "Because if you start at the bottom it builds up and it doesn't fall off." and it sure was falling off, I'll say that. So anyway, I got started and I did the whole thing. I think the building was 24 feet square. My Dad knew a guy that lived in New Plymouth that knew how to mix up a paint of some kind, and it didn't cost hardly anything. You used slake lime, motor oil and I'm not sure what else. It made a white, white paint, and the longer it stayed on the whiter it got. It finished that stucco till it looked beautiful. That guy was sure pretty sharp. He said he would mix it for me and he didn't charge me anything, but wouldn't tell how he did it. That is a lost art now, I would love to know how that was done, it was sure good stuff. You put it on once and that was all you ever had to do. We build a swing for the kids on the north side of the house before I stuccoed it. We took a pole for the up-right and put it right to the pike. We put the crosspiece inside and tied it to a 2 x 4. It made a really nice swing. And so, gypsies that we were, we just lived there about three years. Dick worked at the sale yard in Ontario.
Alice and George, (Essex, my sister and her husband) were at Troutlake, Washington, and we went up there to visit them. We liked it and decided we'd like to live up there. We didn't have any deed or anything on the house so we just left it and moved to Washington. When they sold it we got very little out of it. Hardly enough to pay for the nails. But it was good experience. We moved to the Peterson place in Troutlake, and Dick went to work at Hollenbeck's mill. Then, we moved to Hallenbeck place and lived there a couple of years. When we lived there, Dick worked Swing shift and I was nervous, I tried not to let the kids know, but I was. Alice and George were going to Portland, and they had gotten a dog from the dog pound up there and Alice said she would get me a dog and I wouldn't have to be scared. She found a German shepherd, it was a female, Dick had alway said we couldn't have a female dog. Alice said if Dick wouldn't let me have her she would take her. I took her in my bedroom, because I didn't want her to run away. When Dick came home, I hollered and told him not to open the door, but he didn't pay any attention. She had on a collar and I grabbed it and that dog pulled me across the bedroom and the kitchen floor like I was a kid. She would have eaten him alive if I'd have just said "sic him." Her name was Lady and we loved her like you can't believe. Dick never said I couldn't have her. This house was built on a slope, with the grain field to the west below and also that is where the road was. There was row of lilac bushes at the bottom of the slope and the kids used to like to throw the ball over the roof, and the ball would get lost in the bushes, and they couldn't find it. So I said "Let's see if Lady can find it." I said "Find the ball Lady, find the ball." She went right down there and got it. So we thought that was just happenstance so I took her around the house so she couldn't see what they did, they threw the ball in there and I brought her back around and told her to find the ball; she could do it every time. When I would go out about the place I would put my hand down to my side with the palm facing to the back and Lady would walk with her nose right in my hand. She kept nudging me all the time, and I put my hand down to touch her or push her away or something, and she put her nose in the palm of my hand and was perfectly contented, so somebody had trained her to walk that way. When my brother, Jim was about 15 or 16, he came to visit us and we weren't home. We had a barn like building with a loft in it with just a ladder going up to the loft, she put him up in that loft and he had to stay there until we got home. She would not let him down. Once she had met someone and knew that it was ok for them to be there, she never bothered them. She had never met Jim and didn't know who he was, and figured he had no right to be there. When he saw us drive in, he stuck his head out the window and hollered for us to do something with the dog so he could get down out of there. While we were there, Dot and Lloyd came to see us and then, when we lived in BZ Corners they came again and we weren't home when they got there. As we were pulling up, we could see a man laying on the ground with Lady standing over him, it just scared us to death. Well, she remembered them and didn't do anything but greet them like old friends. They didn't even know that she might not have let them out of the car. She and Lloyd were playing and having a good time.
We still had her when we bought the place in BZ Corners. She had a regular path around the whole five acres from making her rounds. When we first bought the place, it had a great big raspberry patch. We thought we could make some money on the raspberries, but we didn't. We had a sign up, and maybe one over at the Corners, and some people came to buy berries. We were in the berry patch, and had a sign right on the gate, "Beware of the Dog" but this guy was so smart he wouldn't pay any attention, and she did nip him. The wife said, "Don't you worry about it, it was his fault. He saw that sign, and he was so smart he was going to go anyway." I don't think it broke the skin or anything like that, but she did nip him. She could have torn him limb from limb. She also never liked Mrs. Coal. If we weren't home Lady wouldn't let her in the yard.
While we still lived in Troutlake she had puppies. So after we moved to BZ Corner, we didn't want any more pups, that's for sure. I kept her tied up and in the shed the first heat. When she got thought with that, I took her to a Vet in Hood River and had her spay and it killed her. We where all heartbroken about that. She was our favorite dog, next to Tuffy.
Well, Dick fell timber and did all kinds of stuff up there and then we decided we wanted to farm again. So we sold that place and moved back to Fruitland, Idaho
　
　
Obituary
Agnes M.Tschirgi Hanson Nov. 26, 1919 - Feb. 2, 2010
Agnes M. Tschirgi Hanson, 90, Ontario, died Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2010, from age-related issues after a recent fall. Memorial services will be at 10 a.m. Saturday at Shaffer-Jensen Memory Chapel, Fruitland, with her oldest grandson, Darrell Strawn, officiating. Interment will be at Park View Cemetery, New Plymouth. Services and arrangements are under the direction of Shaffer-Jensen Memory Chapel, Fruitland. Condolences may be made to the family at shaffer-jensenchapel.com.
Agnes was born Nov. 23, 1919, in International Falls, Minn., to Charles and Sabra (Hovey) Sampson, weighing in at a hefty three and a half pounds at birth. She used to tell of being kept in a shoebox behind the wood cook stove and her father holding her in his hand when she was a newborn with her head at the tip of his fingers and her feet at his wrist. The family moved to Hamilton Corners out of New Plymouth in 1933. She married Richard "Dick" Tschirgi on Oct. 7, 1936, in New Plymouth, and they had three children together. Richard died July 27, 1978, in Madras, Ore. She married Roy Hanson on Aug. 2, 1980, in Colville, Wash. Roy died May 12, 2001, in Baker City, Ore.
Due to an injury she received as a child, she dropped out of school in the eighth grade. She often thought that because she hadn't completed school she wasn't very smart. At the age of 60, she obtained her GED and framed the certificate, and it hung proudly on the wall of her home. She was a homemaker and more all her married life. She worked briefly for CCC in Ontario as a nurse's aid and cook in the late 1950s. She and her husband Dick owned and operated a motel for several years in the Hermiston area. She worked with Dick on the farms that they owned, milking the cows and goats, taking care of her chickens, helping with the haying and irrigation. In her younger years, she made most of her family's clothing and raised a big garden from which she canned produce. She enjoyed camping, hunting, sewing and knitting, was an avid reader, and she was a really great cook. She was a member of the Agape Center Church in Baker City. She lived in many parts of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington throughout her life and moved back to Ontario in September 2008.
She is survived by daughters, Ginger (Roger) Strawn, of Fruitland, and Peggy (Jim) Galyen, of Baker City, Ore.; son, Clifford (Judy) Tschirgi, of Elgin, Ore.; brother, Jim Sampson, of Carson, Wash.; 11 grandchildren; 23 great-grandchildren; 21 great-great-grandchildren; and numerous nieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by her parents; sisters, Alice Essex and Marjene Smith; brother, Virgil Sampson; one granddaughter, one great-grandson; and one great-great-granddaughter. The family wishes to thank the wonderful staff of Wellsprings Assisted Living, and Heart N Home Hospice, for their care of our mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests memorial contributions be made to the Fruitland Community Library, c/o Shaffer-Jensen Memory Chapel, P.O. Box 730, Payette, ID 83661.
　
From her funeral 02-13-2010
Let us pray:
Heavenly Father, we thank You for this day and all the days You have given us and we thank You for this opportunity to gather as a family once again, now to celebrate the life of Your child, Agnes. We do not come here in grief and sorrow, but truly in gladness to thank You for her long life, well lived and lived in worship of Your son, Jesus Christ.
We thank You for the many memories we have of her, of hard times and times of bounty, of times of sorrow and times of abounding joy, of music, good food, quiet nights, the many places she lived, the love she had for her family and for living to see her family grow into a fifth generation; for all these things we are most grateful. Help us Lord to remember her well, to cherish our memories of her life with us and to pass on to our children's children the stories of her incredible life.
Lord, You taught us that by whatever measure we forgive others for wrongs done to us, we ourselves are forgiven by You for our trespasses against You. If she had ever committed an offence against any of us, Lord we ask You to help us forgive her, even now after she has gone. And if any of us have committed an offence against her Lord, we now humbly seek Your forgiveness, and hers as well.
We ask You now Lord to receive her as a believer in Jesus Christ into Your heavenly Kingdom, to the mansion You have prepared for her, to dance with joy with her loved ones who have preceded her there, to remove her sorrow, pain and infirmities, and to add her voice to the heavenly chorus gathered in worship forever at Your throne.
For all these things, we thank You and praise You in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen