1 10 1 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/46614/archive/files/6e6a31529021699bd93f31245c68fbb6.mp3?Expires=1773878400&Signature=v1QN3v3a6UuwEYyow8Jr7ZFmwcLNvlsfpdpofoHW07Gc1CRKYM31MOfJuH7EbNUVjq9Lp3DLoJJDf1eOhRClPDH3ga6IO5GyZXeYjFxupSaRjyW-1kspYBemXo0c1seNQWkGuluAtUWzyWdzCuP3hRptKQox-CoxtERsxmmSgnU7bEPFmOF5Ee4qikDMlC%7EMLuNzggw7CMavFJQLcbcl0HqBoVVbVkpuoUWFVX4hirGNNegpEl%7EKtc6ethUlST2GSZXkeRgJ5WWCMeOyhBk8jEfpkHJoWfEk9zdbV5IAEbTIwzdGUNzn5w1%7EM4SMSMvkrcDjzmhioF3HJRuw4ugBqA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM cf0f7d65753e5862f824ba2d06f4ab94 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Eunice Rice audio https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/46614/archive/files/6d38d8728e4d289c28ebcc3e6d0246e5.pdf?Expires=1773878400&Signature=ApO97Zvr%7EmiLuDQb3HvhirMl4kHZhg5KJAZOiSR-ud642-p6SXNl6F2ggWUNFwUOTOrZAbXqd1lkqUQla4iZHc4GqbO6KwxlXqFYBxv7XO6iZrp3rHZhlUzkVYP2cfPeuv4cTBuraBZnOLDjQrRiB6Gp7C8Ejsq9i9ZCQOMBBJfmdXMZhfVQFWvKSkZS03XD2tb44b5JT4bMQtQzwJqz-q4Ox8%7E72N2PycZUU6-I04B-gjv%7EYkihPftgXJLZS94VWGd5stgBBlZ668-nE0ieT9gQWbXCaZjvAufoWD6Ekn3WARckzHNbktgiZFSdTQuJpI3-PEU3GDVbldrv21cBVA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM b798093a462d7fae6800a0d51c13d407 PDF Text Text Interviewer is Kim Morey and Interviewee is Eunice Rice. Other voices are unidentified. KIM MOREY: We are now recording, and today is February 20, 2015. Today we're listening to Eunice Rice. Eunice, if you could, start by telling us your early memories. EUNICE: Well, I guess I could go back to when my little brother was born, and it was up to me to take care of his older brother, and I put him in a converted buggy and wrapped him up real good and took him out in the yard and went back and forth and back and forth. Finally he said to me, "Grandma, I've had enough of this." So we stopped right there. : Could you tell me where you were born? EUNICE: I was born in a little town near Sioux Falls by the name of Alcester. : What brought you to Rapid City? EUNICE: My husband. : You looked cold. Tell them some of the stories. I remember you telling how to heat the house. It was quite a problem. EUNICE: Oh, yes. We had to go out in the yard and pick up corn cobs. The corn was gone because the animals had eaten it. They were slimy and dirty, but we still had to pick them up and put them in the cook stove to kind of warm them up a little bit, so they would be suitable for heating our food. : You had a horse? EUNICE: Oh, yes, I had a horse, and her name was Nelly. Nelly was the most amazing horse. She was gentle and kind and loving, and she didn't need much guidance. She knew where I wanted her to go, and there you went. : Did you ride her back and forth to school, to town? EUNICE: Oh, yes. I lived two miles from school and, until I graduated from eighth grade, I practically lived in that building. We had no barn for the horse, and I rode the horse. II guess that's all I can say about it. : Where did you go to school for your primary grades? EUNICE: In a little town called Colton. It was 25 miles from Sioux Falls. I remember those days very clearly, but it's hard for me to remember them and talk to you about them. �How about sledding? Sliding off the barn, you told us? EUNICE: Oh, yeah. We had a great big snowbank in back of the garage...the barn. It was taller than the barn. We kids would get on our sleds and climb up to the highest peak, get on it and slide down, and eventually we'd hit a creek. We'd go for about mile and a half on that creek, and then we'd get back up and go again. So that's what we did. : Could you tell me about what year that was? EUNICE: I must have been under ten. : You were born in 1913 so under ten would be about 1920, somewhere in there? EUNICE: I imagine. : How old are you now? EUNICE: I'm as old as my big toe. See, that's the kind of question I can never ask. : Now we had another one that you liked to tell. How are you feeling? EUNICE: Oh, with my fingers. : You got up to your grade school. How about high school? Where did you go to high school? EUNICE: At Colton. I worked for my board and room in a boardinghouse all of those four years, and it was my job to pick up the grocery list and take it down to the grocery store. They would fill it for me, and then I'd take it home. When I was down there, I got friendly with some of the help. I eventually married the man. : Now who was that? He was working in the grocery store in Colton? I didn't know that. EUNICE: Oh, yes. : Now how did you get out to the Black Hills? Tell us about that. EUNICE: Well, my husband decided that he would take a trip out to the Black Hills, because he heard it was such an opportunity for a young man. He came out to Colton, and that's where I spent most of my young life on a farm about 2 1/2 miles out of town. I had a horse that I rode back and forth. : When you first came to Custer, that's where your future husband went from Colton? �EUNICE: Yeah, he went to Custer before we were married, and then after he was there for about a year, we were married. : Tell about Tenderfoot Hill. EUNICE: It isn't as steep as it was then, but it was very steep and if you got up on a sleigh and the ground was packed with snow or ice, you could slide down that hill, and eventually you'd hit a creek and you could go for about a ________ on that creek. The worst thing was that you had to walk all the way back. : Didn't the car break down or something when you were coming up Tenderfoot Hill there by Custer? EUNICE: Oh, yes. The clutch went out, and so my husband took it upon himself to back up all the way to the top of the hill, because he couldn't drive forward. : So he drove backward? EUNICE: All the way up that hill. You would be amazed to know that there were lots and lots of people that never made it up that hill, Tenderfoot Hill. : What kind of car did you have at that time? EUNICE: A Model T. : Tenderfoot Hill is about a mile from Crazy Horse? EUNICE: I don't think it's that far. : And then when you were first married, what did you do for work? EUNICE: Well, I babysat a lot, and Les just got work wherever he could get it. Then a fellow kind of befriended him, took him under his wing and showed him what he knew about the lumber business. Les decided he'd be a lumberman, but after he was in there for a while, he didn't like it, so he quit. He got this job in a grocery store. Mostly what he did was candle eggs. He got so sick of candling eggs that he could have thrown them a mile away. : Didn't you and he buy that grocery store in the '30s? EUNICE: No, we bought it __________________. I think it was maybe in the 1900's. : And what was it called back then? EUNICE: Jack and Jill. �: Now it was SaveRite Grocery, wasn't it, first? It was a little hole in the wall, and you and dad expanded that grocery how many times? EUNICE: It was at least ten. : It was a bunch. It was right at the foot of the hill as you come down Custer? EUNICE: That building is still there, and Les' dad built it. He was a carpenter and a good one. : Do you have some memories of the Dust Bowl and Depression era out here? EUNICE: Oh, boy, do I ever. I lived on a farm and, during the height of that Depression, we had a blizzard. The wind came, and made mounds of dirt. When they'd come to a fence, they'd just walk over it. I didn't drive around it. : How about the sheets on the windows? EUNICE: Well, during the Depression when this blizzard came, my mother took sheets and wet them and hung them on the windows. The dust would blow into the sheets, and it made us very comfortable, but without them, our lungs would have been no good. : What kind of animals did you have on the farm? EUNICE: Horses and cows, mostly. My mother would order 100 chickens every spring and she'd get the tiny day old chickens and raise them. As they grew up, she would butcher them and sell them to people in town. They appreciated a chicken now and then, you know. She would dress the chickens and get them all ready to fry. : Did you help with that? EUNICE: Oh, yes. : What was your part? EUNICE: Well, I guess I just had to carry the feed to the animals and look after my horse. : What did your dad raise? EUNICE: Cattle and horses. During the Depression, my mother said, "I think we should get some sheep." They don't require much food, and they can subsist on very little. My dad said, "I'm not having any of them on my place.” and he didn't, either. : Did you grow crops? EUNICE: Oh, yes. We had oats, corn, wheat, and barley. My mother raised a beautiful garden. It was maybe, I think, maybe about an acre and a half. She and I planted that and �weeded it and raised it. When we got the crop done, we canned it, because, in those days, there was no freezing. Everything had to be done by hand. Hard work. Oh, I have to tell you about the sleigh. My older brother had saved his money until he had enough to buy a sled. He bought a sled, and we'd go up the hills and then slide down. One particular day, my mother called us to supper, and my sister and I started in for supper. My brother didn't. He said he just had to go one more time. When he got to his favorite place, he had to duck his head this particular time. When he got to the fence, he thought he'd gone under it, but instead it was right in front of him. It took him right here. : Right between his nose and his mouth. EUNICE: There was no way of going to the doctor or having the doctor come out there, because they couldn't do it on account of the weather. My mother took a towel and tied it around my brother's chin with a big knot on the top of his head. When he went to eat, he had an awful time because he wouldn't take the towel away. It was really funny. I look back on those days. Then there was another interesting thing that happened with that sleigh. My brother made a couple of sleds out of old lumber that was laying around. One was for me, and one was for my sister. He had the boughten one that led the parade. We had old Nelly, and Nelly knew just what to do. We didn't need to coax her or slap her or anything. She would know just where to go. She'd climb those hills, and we'd all get on our sleighs and down we'd go. When we got maybe a quarter mile, we'd hit a creek. My brother, of course, had the leading sleigh, and he guided us, and we slid down about a mile and a half on our sleds. Old Nelly was right there with us. : When you went to high school, was the boardinghouse that you were at a part of the school? EUNICE: No, it was privately owned. : I talked to some other people that actually had a dormitory at the high school, but this was a private house and you lived there and then went to school. EUNICE: I had board and room. : Were you able to take Nelly there with you, or did she stay on the farm? EUNICE: She stayed on the farm and died on the farm. When she died, it was a nasty, cold wintry day. My brother said it we cut her legs off, we can bend them back, and we won't have to dig this big place for her. And my brother said, "Oh, no. Nelly came in this world to serve us and now it's our turn to serve her." So they dug a hole that was deep enough and wide enough to put Nelly down. She was sure a wonderful horse. I look back on those days and I think about the courage that horse had. She knew when we got to the top of the hill, and she'd step aside and let us all get on that sled. Down the slope we'd go, hit a creek, and go for about a mile and a half. �: When you were on the farm in the summertime, what did you do for fun? Did you swim in the creek, or...? EUNICE: Well, we played baseball. I know I played first base a lot of the time, because they didn't have any boys as good as I was. : Was that in Colton? EUNICE: That was out on the farm. : Was there one particular winter that you remember that was really cold or really nice? EUNICE: I think the sheets that my mother had on the windows to collect the dust from going in the house was one of the most amazing things. She'd take them down and wipe them and hang them back up again. : Didn't she help all the neighbors? EUNICE: Oh, yes. Whenever anybody would get sick or hurt, it was call Mrs. Emery. My mother would go _____ a sickbed. My mother had kidney stones, and they put her in bed many times, but when a neighbor got sick, even if she was sick in bed, she got up and went to that neighbor's. She would stay there and help him until he got well. : How many brothers and sisters did you have? EUNICE: I had three brothers, but the two younger ones died when they were quite young. Maybe twenty or twenty-five. My older brother lived to be ninety-something. He was the one who led the parade. : And you had one sister? EUNICE: I had one sister that died when she was just a tiny child. I had another sister that was 2 1/2 years older than I. The two boys that were born were younger than I, and my job was to take care of those boys. That's what I did. I had them outside if I could, played games with them and learned how to play baseball. : Your sister, Vi. She was different than you on chores, wasn't she? EUNICE: She was a socialite. She wouldn't have anything to do with _________.She'd clean the house, and sometimes, but very rarely, she would help mother cook. It was upon me to do most of it. I got so I could bake bread, pies, and doughnuts. : Why don't you tell us how you got that recipe for those darn old cookies that I still have to bake...frosted cream cookies? �EUNICE: Well, mother had a neighbor who lived five miles from us, just door to door. There were no roads. I went down there, and she had some of those cookies. They were called frosted creams, and they were a molasses cookie with a seven minute frosting on them to make them white. To this day, that's my favorite cookie. Anyway, I used to go down to her house and learn how to do various things, like, for instance, baking bread. I learned a lot from her. She was a wonderful neighbor. : And she taught you how to make those cookies? EUNICE: She taught my mother, and mother taught me. : And your great-grandchildren...it's their favorite cookie, too. EUNICE: They're my favorite. Matter of fact, the other day, my daughter said to me, "Would you like a cookie, mother? I have some that I made." She opened up a box, and she'd baked some of those cookies. I gobbled down a lot of them. They were sure good. To this day, that's my favorite cookie. : And they're not easy to make. EUNICE: Well, the frosting was hard. : Yes, the frosting is tricky. EUNICE: It isn't for me, but I guess other people cook that topping too much, and it gets sugary, or else they don't cook it enough, and it runs all over. : When did you have your main meal when you were growing up on the farm? Was your main meal of the day at noon? EUNICE: Yes. : Could you tell me if you have a memory of what that meal was, usually? EUNICE: Well, we had our own beef, and it generally consisted of beef cooked some way. There were a lot of different ways to cook it, and then we had corn that my dad had _____. We had an abundance of corn during that season. : Did you have potatoes often? EUNICE: Oh, yes. We raised all of our own food...potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers. You name it, and we raised it. �: Did you ever have any game animals like venison or deer or pheasant? EUNICE: Oh, yes, we had a lot of pheasant, and we had a deer around which we shouldn't have had. : Was that like a pet deer, or was it just... EUNICE: Oh, the pheasants we had year round. : You had the pheasants year round or was it deer? Or both? EUNICE: Oh, we had pheasants year round. I think we would have starved to death if we wouldn't have been able to _____. Dad would set out traps and trap the pheasants. Then he'd dress them out and take them in the house, and mother would cut them up and fry them or bake them in the oven. She was a very gifted individual as far as feeding us was concerned. We always had plenty to eat, even in those terrible, terrible dust storm days. Mother saw to it that we had plenty to eat. : How did you get water for your garden? EUNICE: We had to pack it from the well which was well over a quarter mile. We took a pan in each hand full of water and take it to the garden to save it. : Do you remember anything from when you were little, mother, or high school or any of those days you can tell me about? EUNICE: Well, we had a rival school by the name of Parker, and one of the girls, one of the Parker girls, became very close to me. We had lots of fun together when we were growing up, and she'd us on the sleigh quite frequently. I remember one time mother went to town to grocery shop, and this little girl came over to our house and enticed my brothers to go pick radishes out of the garden. When mother got home, she decided I don't like what you did _____, she said. I had those all planned for a special day for the Ladies' Aid. The Ladies' Aid food went down by ______. We ate it all. : Did you have dogs, or pets? EUNICE: We always had dogs. : Can you tell me about any of the dogs, mom? EUNICE: Well, I don't know which story to tell. �: They weren't your special pets, were they? EUNICE: Oh, no. They were special dogs. : What did they do? EUNICE: Well, in the summertime, we'd hitch them up to a makeshift wagon or sleigh and march us around the neighborhood. Another thing they did that you might be interested in is that they did what they call ____________. Have you ever heard of that? : No, I haven't. EUNICE: Well, what they did was that they matched up, and then they'd get in the sleigh and go to _____ house and then another until they went to the whole neighborhood and, at each house, they had a treat waiting for them. By the time we got to the final place to eat, we were so full that we couldn't eat it. : And what did they call that? EUNICE: ____________. I used to write a lot of poetry when I was a kid, and I wish now that I'd saved it. I don't have a bit of it. : Nothing? How old were you when you moved to Custer? EUNICE: I was six. : No, when you moved to Custer, not Colton. Custer. EUNICE: I moved to Colton before high school, because I worked for my board and room all through high school at a boardinghouse. This old lady was very good to me that ran this boardinghouse. It was my duty to help her make the beds, hang out the clothes, iron, anything like that. : Were there other high school girls who stayed at the boardinghouse? EUNICE: No. Teachers mostly. One of them was a druggist, and he fell in love with one of the teachers that boarded and roomed there. Eventually they were married. My sister and I decided that we'd pull a prank on them. When they came in the house, they had been outside quite a while, and they were cold. They weren't too cold to take us to task. We had hidden behind the piano. : And spied on them? EUNICE: I spied on them, but we giggled, I guess. �: Do you remember moving to Custer with dad? When you moved to Custer? There were other relatives there, too? Other relatives went to Custer, too? EUNICE: Oh, yes. On farms, mostly. : Well, what did you do while Les, your husband, joined the CCC? EUNICE: I mostly babysat. I think for five cents an hour. That wouldn't be much now, would it? : Not much. EUNICE: I can remember when I was going to go from the school to the house where I boarded, and I had an alley that I had to go through. It was a long ways to go around, because there were houses close together, and you just couldn't afford to buy a house in those days unless you were rich. I remember one time after high school play, we were practicing, and one of the boys who was a mischievous kid said, "Let's take her out and dump her," so they decided that's what they'd do. But they couldn't get me to go with them. I wouldn't go, and the next day I found out how they tried to entice me to go out and then dump me out in the country and let me walk back. That didn't work. : How many kids were in your classes in high school? EUNICE: Well, there were 67 that graduated, and I think that was the biggest class. That included so many of those farm children that would get to high school, and that's where they had their fun. I remember one time, we were pranksters. We took a wagon and, in those days, the schools all had what they called canopies, kind of a little bungalow area on the top of the school. We decided we would pull a prank, so we went down to the lumber company and got some lumber products, an old _____ and a ______. I can't remember all the stuff. But, anyway, we got them in that building, got open the cupola. They had to stay there all that night, and the next morning, oh man, was that ______ever mad at us. I can still see the dust flying. : What kind of punishment did you get for that? EUNICE: None. I guess mother got a big laugh out of it. It didn't cost her anything. : Do you have any stories about when Uncle Arlen was small? EUNICE: I told you about him getting _____. : That was Wayne. How about Uncle Arlen? EUNICE: Uncle Arlen was a fisherman. He loved to go fishing. We had two creeks that ran into little ponds. One of them was about a mile and a half from our house, and the other one was �three miles. My older brother pleaded with mother to let me take old Nelly and drive ___________. We didn't catch any fish there. We'd take old Nelly and go to the next place. We had quite a time. : So that's when you started fishing? EUNICE: That's when I started. : You've fished for most of your life. EUNICE: Yes. I still love to fish. One time we went up to a lake, oh, maybe less than ten miles from our place. It was just really a big pond, but, anyway, it was stocked with fish. A surprising thing was how they fished ____________. They had a basket that bananas were brought in. : A huge, huge basket that bananas were brought in? Do you remember when they'd bring those big boxes of bananas in the grocery store, and what would crawl out? EUNICE: Those deadly tortilla bugs? They weren't a bug; they were an insect. : Big spider? EUNICE: Oh, yes. They were deadly. But, you know, I can look back on those days, and they were the happiest days of my life. At that time, I didn't think so. : Well, you worked hard. It was hard work at that grocery store. EUNICE: Oh, boy, was it ever. I used to run the tills, and I would get up there and, if there was a customer, I'd wait on them. When they left, I'd run to the back room and do some work back there that needed to be done. If I heard the doorbell ring, a customer came in and I'd have to go out and add up the bill and get the cash or else charge it. In those days, when they'd come in, you had to write everything down in longhand and the price and then you had to add it up. : It took time. EUNICE: Yes, it did. : Remember how you got the cans down from the top shelves? How'd you do that? EUNICE: We had one of those devices that, I don't know what they called them, but they had a ________ at the end of it. It was a pole oh maybe from here to the end of a table, and we'd grab that whatever it was and bring it down. We had coffee stacked to the ceiling, and whenever anybody came in and ordered coffee, we had to climb one way or another and get to the top to get the coffee. �: Was the coffee in cans or was it in sacks? : EUNICE: Both. It finally got so that cans ruled the roost. But, you know, you go into a grocery store and the scent of the coffee. They'd grind it there, and, boy, did it ever have an odor. : Do you have anything else to tell, mother? You're getting kind of tired. EUNICE: No, I can't think of anything. I guess I've talked enough. _____: Well, I'm sure there's a lot more to say, but I don't want to wear you out all at once, either. _____: I'm sure there is a lot more to say. : I really appreciate you sharing your stories and memories, and so will many other people I know. _____: That horse was obviously pretty special to you. You must have really loved Nelly. EUNICE: I really did, and now I think old Nelly loved me. _____: I'm sure she did. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Eunice Rice transcript Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rapid City Public Library Description An account of the resource Oral Histories recorded for the Rapid City Oral History Project by Rapid City Public Library Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Eunice Rice Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Kim Morey Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 48:04 Location The location of the interview Rapid City Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview: Eunice Rice Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-02-26 Subject The topic of the resource Black Hills, Custer, Great Depression, Grocery Store, Rapid City, Sledding, South Dakota Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource waiver on file Description An account of the resource Eunice was born in Colton, but moved to Custer, SD to be with the love of her life. She grew-up with a memorable horse, sledding, and corn cob stoves. Eunice and her husband ran a grocery store in Custer and much more! Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context https://catalog.rapidcitylibrary.org/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=290147 Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Rapid City Public Library Language A language of the resource en Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Custer, (S.D.) Black Hills Custer Great Depression Grocery Store Rapid City Sledding South Dakota