MUNSON:

We've been married sixty-one years now.

DALLETT:

That's a wonderful introduction here to interview number [DP-16]. This is going to be interview number [DP-16] with Mr. Arthur Munson. Starting off, his wife is playing for us on the piano here in the background and we're at their home in Beaver, Washington on a very sunny Tuesday morning. Very unusual, fortunate weather. And we're about to begin this interview, as I said number [DP-16], at 11 in the morning. Okay, we're all on record.

MUNSON:

Betty, is it straightened up now? Did you move it at all?

DALLETT:

Mr. Munson is videotaping this. So, let's start back at the beginning of your story and could you tell me where and when you were born.

MUNSON:

Well, I was born in Bjornskinn, Norway, July 21, 1907. And I was baptized in a church in Borkenes one year later, 1908. And my mother, my father had come to America in 1907, the year I was born. And I think he came with one of his half brothers to, clear over to Seattle. Now, he came through Ellis Island, as most all immigrants did in those days, and he worked at the Clopeck Fish Company for to years and two months, ten hours a day and two dollars a day. That was his salary. And it took him over two years to save enough money to send for my mother. And, uh, he did, and in 1909 in September, 1909 in September, I think my mother's uncle took her in a buggy from Bjornskinn to Harstad. It's a distance of fifteen miles. All her luggage was on the carriage and four of her children, and I was the baby. And, uh, she got on the steamer in Harstad, she went down the coast of Norway to Glasgow, Scotland and she took the steamer, the name was Ticken [sic, Tietgen], T-I-C-K-E-N [sic, Tietgen]. And, uh, she came into Ellis Island in September that year, but it was real rough going across. She said it took two weeks to come across the Atlantic. And I only regret that I wasn't, I was too young to remember that trip. But as Mother told us, we were all seasick. And, uh, when came into Ellis Island we had tags and went through these cages. And my sister had, I think, what they call whopping [sic] cough, and they were not going to let my mother take us children through to Seattle through America. In fact, they were talking about sending her back. And they, and a Canadian farmer befriended her. He says, "I can take Mrs. Munson up to Montreal and she can get on the train there and go across Canada." And that's what she did. And she arrived in Vancouver, and my father was waiting at the immigration station in Seattle. And they got a hold of him and told him it's your wife that's come from Norway. And, uh, he, I'm not sure, but I think Ellen would know, my sister would know, uh, whether my father came up and got her or they sent her down on the boat. That I don't know. And, uh, but my first remembrance is the, we lived at John Street. And in those days Seattle, well, we lived on, well, we went to John Street and I can remember, my first remembrance was my brother Magnus and I, I think he was picking on me. And we got into a little fight like kid brothers do, and my mother said, "If you kids don't stop that, that policeman over there is going to put you in jail." Well, we went down in the basement, we hid for a half a day. And to this day I'm kind of scared of policemen. And then we moved to another house. I can remember that house, it wasn't too far away from the one at John Street. And in those days they had hot water tanks with pipes and stuff in them, and the pipes went into the stove and would heat your water. And the tank blew up. And then, in that house they had a big potlatch that I remember all these boats on the water. Then we moved to another place close to Denny's School in Seattle. Now, Denny's School was on top of Denny Hill that is no longer there now because they washed the whole hill down into Puget Sound so it would be level there. And when brother Carl started Denny's School, it would be, of course, in 1909, and he couldn't speak English. And the kids, but he was a good student. He was smart. And the kids used to make fun of him. But when he found out what the word "stupid" was, they didn't call him stupid anymore. And I remember that, my first remembrance is my Uncle Tobias, that I have pictures of, was in Seattle. He also came to America from Borkenes, and he's my mother brother. And he had a big, wide mustache you could, and he was rocking me on his knee, and I was playing with a cat one day and I tied a string around the cat's neck and the cat hung itself. And I felt terrible. But then I can't remember when we moved to Port Townsend. But I started school in Port Townsend in 1913. And my first grade teacher's name was Miss Avery, my second grade teacher was Miss Calhoun, my third grade teacher's name was Miss Cotton. And I was giving a political speech in Port Townsend in 1962, the year I ran for the legislature, and I mentioned that Port Townsend was the happiest days, where I spent the happiest days of my boyhood. And I mentioned these teachers. And when I got to the fourth grade teacher I said, you know, I couldn't remember my fourth grade teacher's name, but it ended in E-R-Y. So when I got through speaking this lovely lady comes and says, "Arthur, could it have been Miss Lafferty?" I said, "That's it." And she gave me a big hug and a kiss and Miss Lafferty, I later on, and she says, "Arthur." Now Miss Avery I was afraid of, because she gave me a spanking one time with a foot ruler that was about a half an inch thick on both sides of my hands for something I didn't do. And I wouldn't cry because I didn't do it. And so she says, and later on, and when I was speaking at this, in 1962 at that banquet, why, Miss Lafferty said, "Arthur, you might not agree too much with Miss Avery because she's a democrat." And she served on the city council of Port Townsend for seven different terms. So every, but she taught, I think this class was the first class she taught in Port Townsend, and none of those teachers ever got married. And when I was ringing doorbells in Port Townsend in '62 to run for the legislature, I ran into a man by the name of Cotton. And he was a civil engineer and a good one. Because he practically laid out Port Townsend. And I asked about Miss Cotton. He said, "Arthur," he said, "She was my sister." So he said, "Here's the key to my house. If you want to take a snooze while you're ringing doorbells, go ahead and take a snooze." And, uh, that was sort of the history of Port Townsend. But it was where my youth, I spent my youth, a lot of it, I remembered. We were not, we were kind of poor, our family was. My father was a very honest man. I remember I was giving a political speech one time in Port Townsend, uh, in Port Angeles, before I introduced Governor Evans, and I said the most honest person I every met in my life was my father. And I, and then my mother. And in Port Townsend my mother, we were baptized Lutherans. And she was going to church and she belonged to the church society there. And every Christmas when they had a Christmas party for the kids, us kids were standing there with big long black ties clear down (he gestures). I was six years old. And we rocked back and forth when we sang. And Ed Simms, who later on became a state senator, a legislator, owned practically the only car in Port Townsend. And one day when us kids were playing on Washington Street he stopped and picked us up and took us downtown and bought us all big milkshakes. And, of course, he immediately became our hero. But my father was foreman of the Little Cannery. And when I looked up my father's history in Norway, every place my father worked he was always the foreman. And now, in Norway, Nancy, you only got a seventh grade education. It was equal to our eighth grade education here. And he said only the wealthy kids could go farther in Norway. But he had the guts to get out of Satrevik [PH]. When I went to visit Satrevik [PH] in 1952, I went to see my brother, my cousin Munrod, who was Uncle Hanse's son, and Munrod met me in Oslo. We got on a train and we travelled to Bergen. And I told him, "Munrod, I would like to visit the place where my father was born, in Satrevik [PH]." "Well," he said, "the steamer goes every Friday up the coast of Norway." So he told me how to get there. I got on that steamer on a Friday evening and it went up the coast of Norway to a place called Floe, F-L-O-E. And then it took off into a fjord. Maybe two or three hours. And I got off at a place called Dagnapolen [PH], and I knew I had to walk up the street for a mile to get on a fish boat to go across that fjord. Now I could speak Norwegian, and understand it quite well. And so I got on the ship, this boat, and went across, it was a fish boat. And I waited for that bus for practically two hours. And when that bus driver came I told him I want to go to a place called Kopernes [PH]. And so it took the bus about three hours. And that bus, and I remember, drove on top of mountains, only a single road. And there was, you look on one side of the mountain, and I said, "What will happen if a bus comes up?" He said, "I'll just back into the siding." I no sooner said it, up comes a bus. And backed up, and I was looking this way, and I was looking that way and when we got to Kopernes [PH] I knew what my Uncle Hanse looked like. So he was talking to somebody else trying to convince him that they were me. So I walked up to him and I greeted him in Norwegian. Oh, he said (Norwegian). That means, "he looks like his father." And he had a little cab there that wasn't over eight foot long at the most. And we put the suitcase on top, but he brought a relative of ours, his name was Peterson. He could speak English quite well. So he would interpret, when I couldn't make my uncle understand my broken Norwegian. And we drove into Satrevik [PH] and that little town of Satrevik [PH] looks the same today as it did two hundred years ago. And the same people are living there. They're dying there. And in that Satrevik [PH], it's hard for me to describe the picturesque part of that Satrevik [PH], because it was right next to, (break in tape). So when we came into Satrevik [PH], a beautiful fjord, a beautiful, the only thing, exactly, there were, the farms in Norway average from two to four acres in size. And they start from the fjella. Now the fjella is a mountain, and pretty soon there's soil, from the foot of the mountain, right clear to the fjord. Very good soil. And, so the farms are two to four acres in size, and Uncle Hanse had a four acre farm, and a nice little barn. And he, my father was born in Satrevik [PH]. Now, I saw the house he was born in, and my Uncle Tobias, uh, Severit, my father's brother lived in a place called Hockalest [PH], maybe down two miles farther down the fjord. And I got onto a bicycle and I met my Uncle Severit. And, uh, he could speak English. He had been to America. They were both good carpenter. Now, my Uncle Hanse, he built the church in Oram [PH], they called it, and he built the altar, the whole thing. Beautiful work. And my Uncle Hanse never got out of Satrevik [PH]. He died when he was ninety years of age. When I was there he was seventy-five. And, uh, we were standing on top of a little hill behind his home. The Germans had taken Norway in World War Two, and they had the, uh, barbed wire fences all over the places. And across the fjord, my grandfather on my father's side was born in a place called Sande, S-A-N-D-E. So I wanted to go over there and visit their grave, but I couldn't get a boat to take me over there. But the thing of, I remember, of Satrevik [PH], my sister Ellen was born in the same house my father was born in Satrevik [PH]. And he showed me a piece of steel about six inches long and about six inches thick. There was a German ship in the harbor and the British blew it up. And one of, the piece of steel went through this window into his basement. And so when I was talking to him about that war, he said, I said to Uncle Severit, I said, "What did you use for coffee?" He said, "Boiled rags." They didn't have anything to drink. And, uh, but in their Norway they sloughed the hay. That's cutting it with a scythe. They hang it on a fence to dry and when they, my uncle had built a big wheelbarrow, the wheel was about two and a half feet in diameter with a hole where something went through it, a wood axle, and he made a hay rack on there. Maybe the hay rack was about eight foot wide. And when he took, would take the hay down from the fence he put it on his little wheelbarrow, wheel it up behind the barn and dump it in the hay mound. Now, he kept, he had four cows, and those cows were stalled in the barn for all winter long. Six months of the year. And he had four little sheep. And along that fjord were possibly ten or fifteen of these little farms. Everybody knew each other. The church was their main thing there. And they had a little store where people could come to buy some groceries once in a while. Now, in those days, the teachers came to a town like Satrevik [PH], they stayed with somebody and taught the children. I know one time when I went to visit Norway I was on the steamer going up the fjord. And I was wearing an Ike button, because I was Ike's campaign manager in 1952 for Clallam County. And I had this button, and that was a pretty popular button because everybody liked Ike in Norway. And when we came to this fjord, little dock there, all the kids come running down to meet their teacher. And he stayed there. And I'll tell you something, they learned the three R's quite well in those days. People respected, children respected their teachers, I respected my teachers. And today I don't thin the kids respect anybody. So that was my first trip to Norway, and I have been back there four different times. And the second time I went back I took my sister with me. Ellen had never flown in an airplane. And Ellen was kind of the mother of us kids. If we got in a mess with her she always knew about it. (he laughs) And getting back, we left Port Townsend...

DALLETT:

Take me back a little bit. Tell me a bit about what you can remember your mother and your father telling you about, uh, that decision that he made to come here in 1909. Were you born then?

MUNSON:

No, I was on the way. And Mother, it was Pa's idea. Now Father was, he got out of Norway. Mother's brothers got out of Norway too, but they went back to Norway and they died there.

DALLETT:

You were born in 1907. So in 19...

MUNSON:

I told you I was born in 1907, but Father came in 1907 to America. And he came through Ellis Island just like we did. I mentioned that before. But...

DALLETT:

Did he tell you about coming through Ellis Island?

MUNSON:

You know, this is one thing that I really regret. As I got older I got kind of nutty about genealogy too and I asked my father, "How did you get out of Satrevik [PH]?" He said, "I walked out." And he went up to northern Norway and he met my mother up there. Now, my mother, there was my mother and two brothers, Tobias and Uncle Ulaf. And Tobias became a farmer, (Mrs. Munson speaks off-mike) oh, to make money. Uh, Munrod I was telling you about, my cousin, he came to New York, and he worked for five, six or seven years there and he made enough money to buy himself a big apartment house in Bergen, and that's how he made his living in Bergen. And they all, panga. Money is panga in Norway. And they all came to make money. But for some reason or other, the other two uncles went back to Norway. You know, (Norwegian). I love Norway, too. And sometimes I feel like going back to Norway. But America has been good to me, and I love this country, but Norway, there's something about (Norwegian). Mama, Mother used to say (he sings in Norwegian). And it goes on, I've got it, I play it on the saxophone. And, uh, but mainly it was money. Mother, I, Mother hated to leave Norway. And the sad thing about it, my father did go back to visit Norway and Mother always talked about going back to Visgummler [PH] and when never got there. Boy, if she had waited till I'd got a little older, Mother would have got back to Norway. And, uh, but the main object was, my father stayed. But my father was hired by the Japanese government in 1930 to put up (?) salmon. My dad was a fish expert. He made people millionaires, and they made it off of his fish buying expertise. And I remember asking him a question. I said, Pa, my dad could make pickled herring. You never tasted stuff like that. And one day (?) I said, "Pa, why didn't you make this stuff?" He said, "Art, I don't have the education to run a business." And he said, "I'm sorry, I just don't have that kind of an education." If he could sell that stuff he'd have been a millionaire, you know. People do that. And so, but Pa made somebody a millionaire. He worked for Einer Buyer. And I remember I was, I went to California. When I was seventeen years old my father got me a job at the California Fish Company. Now we're getting back to Pa. And he took Einer Buyer with him. And when I was going to high school, also in Seattle, he said, "Arthur, you want to take a day off. There's a herring boat coming in from Alaska and I want to see if the herring is fit to buy." That was a ship full of herring, about a hundred, three hundred pound tiers. This was about this high. And so I, they rolled the barrels off the ship and he opened them up and, I rolled the barrels, and he opened them up. and he stuck a finger in that stuff, in the herring, he looked at them, and he said, "No, we won't buy these. They're not salted right." Well, Einer Buyer didn't buy them. And then when he, he was a foreman of the United Fish and Pack Company scow. That was a corporate scow in Neah Bay. And they put up mild cured salmon. Now, these mild cured salmon were put in a barrel that weighed eleven hundred pounds of salt, brine and everything. They would cut the head off the salmon, take the backbone out, and they'd lay the sides down there in a certain way, and salt it in a certain way, and every week our tender from Neah Bay would go into Seattle with about thirty of those tierses. And then in the fall of the year, my father would supervise repacking that salmon. There was one or two stinkers and all kinds of grades, I did no work. And Germany would only buy salmon that had my dad's name on that barrel. That's how good he was. And when he retired and quit working at sixty-five, when World War Two come along, he got a job for the Todd Shipyards. In three weeks he was a foreman of two hundred fifty men down there. Because they had to do things right. And everybody trusted my father. He told me one day, "Art, if I ever catch you telling me a lie you won't be able to sit down for a week." So none of the Munsons tell any lies. That's how we were raised. And in my political life, if I would have told things as they really were, I would do it, and that doesn't get you elected. If you go for the things that you think, people think are popular, and I think they're no good for the pocketbooks, I could be one of five hundred people who vote no, and ninety percent of the time I was right. That's why they call me Mr. Republican, one of the reasons they do. So but, you asked a question about, but my uncles went back. My father never did, and he died here in October 18, 1952. My mother passed away, she was seventy-three, March 21, 1950. And Arthur Junior was killed in Germany May 1, 1952, all in that one year. And, uh, you never get over those things. Artie was, our son, Arthur Junior. He wasn't like me at all. He was just like his beautiful mother. And he was real good in math in school, like Betty. She can do geometry, straight A's in all the time, and algebra. And I remember one day when Artie, in World War Two when Truman was president, after World War Two everybody that graduated from high school, the boys, were taken and put in the army. But if they were, if they would say where they wanted to go, if they would join, they could go where they wanted to go. So Artie, there's a picture of his troops that went to Germany. He put in for Germany and he, he joined the army in 1949 and went to Fort Ord. Artie only weighted one hundred forty-five pounds when he left for Fort Ord, and when he got back in May he weighed one seventy-five. And when Eisenhower went back over to, now he told me when he was working on his car one day. He said, "Daddy, I'm just going to be a private. I don't want to boss anybody." And so when he went to Germany I would write him letters and I had said Artie, what would you get as a sergeant, etc. He wrote back and he said, "Daddy, money isn't everything." "But," he said, "if it will make you feel better," he said, "I can be a sergeant any time I want to." So in '52, when he was killed in a vehicular accident there on military police duty, he wasn't driving the thing at all, I asked, I was guest of his Lieutenant Willard for one week in Heidelberg, Germany or in, uh, in (?), Germany. And he said, he called Artie Addie. He said Artie turned down two officer schools, because he didn't want to boss anybody. And uh, when he was killed they brought his remains back here. (he pauses) Well, that's how it went. And now Gregory was good in school, too. Gregory, he'd boss anybody any time. (he laughs) But not Artie. So Linda, our youngest, beautiful youngest daughter, now, we have a daughter Mona. Mona is fifty-six years old now. And, uh, Linda was our baby, and she graduated from Western Washington University in 1971. So, uh, but if you have any more questions to ask me about Norway.

DALLETT:

We're going to come back in a little bit. Let's just, I think we're going to pause here and turn the tape over. That's the end of side one of interview number [DP-16] with Arthur Munson. END OF SIDE ONE, TAPE ONE BEGINNING OF SIDE TWO, TAPE ONE

MUNSON:

(he sings in Norwegian) No, I can't read that other part. If they'd have wrote it in Norwegian I could have read it.

MRS. MUNSON:

Oh, I wrote it, dear.

MUNSON:

Oh, you wrote it, honeybunch.

MRS. MUNSON:

Norwegian wouldn't have meant a thing to me. (break in tape)

MUNSON:

...so many times, and she really missed Norway. (voices garbled) I don't think, really, I don't think my mother wanted to leave Norway. She always wanted to go back. And, uh, I think my mother gave her life to her children, her boys. None of the girls were good enough for her boys. (Mrs. Munson plays the piano in the background) (he laughs) My father used to love Betty. Oh, he said, (Norwegian), she's smart. Now, if, Betty, if we had the book, with the Norwegian words in it, I could sing it.

MRS. MUNSON:

I'd love to have the book, but I have not been able to get the book.

MUNSON:

Yeah.

DALLETT:

Remember it?

MUNSON:

You know, I never, no, I can't, I would, if I had the words I could sing it, but I can't. (he sings in Norwegian) See, I got to have the, you know, I could sing the song, because I know the tune. Because I can smell out Norwegian words. Now, you want to remember, Nancy, I never went to school in Norway. The only Norwegian I learned was hearing my mother and father speak it. And when I went back to visit Norway I was in, I as in the, my cousin, my mother's first cousin Clara met us in Norway when we came to Marstad. Oh, everybody in Norway was there to meet us the first time I brought the family along. And so I, I got into a car with, I'll always call her Aunt Clara, husband, Saerre Rugeldal. And he owned a big store there in Borkenes [PH] and I was riding with him and he started to rattle off in Norwegian really fast. (Norwegian) (he laughs) So they had to be careful what they said because I could understand it, see? But he got hung, he loved Betty. She was an American. And so when we went on a tour in this, he had a big station wagon, Betty, Clara and I sat in the back and Betty and Saerre in the front. And he explained everything in Norwegian. And Clara said, (Norwegian). That means Betty didn't understand anything. But he was just a, and he took her up and showed her how to cut fish up and all. He had a ball. (he laughs)

DALLETT:

Did you go back to, uh, this house where you were born?

MUNSON:

I went back into that house where I was born. I've got pictures of sitting in that house where I was born in my photo albums.

DALLETT:

Can you describe the house?

MUNSON:

Describe the house? The house was about twenty foot long, let me see, one, two, three, four, five, and about twelve foot wide. Eight? It wasn't over sixty feet high from the ground to the peak of the house, to the gable. Now, this gable with that light in there, the windows in there, had a floor there. And my mother used to go up the ladder with us kids and we slept there. She stayed with her mother and father the two years two months my father was gone away in Norway. And this was the place where my cousin were, they picked her up and left that little, Stueia, it's called. S-T-U-E-I-A, it's called. Stueia. And, uh, Clara, when I went back to Norway the first time my Aunt Clara, my mother's Clara, her, my father's, my mother's father and Aunt Clara's mother were brother and sister, so Mother and, Clara and I were first cousins, and I was the second cousin. And, now, this was the mountainside up here, Nancy. And, of course, these, uh, power poles were put in a lot later. Now, that house was one hundred sixty years old when I visited it. The walls were eighteen inches thick, and there was a little kitchen, little stove over in at one side here, there was a bed over here, and they ate in the middle of the place. And my mother had a ladder to go up there down here. And this is where, we played around here.

DALLETT:

And what grew on the roof here?

MUNSON:

Grass. My dad said they used to mow the grass on the roof and it didn't leak. So that, I'm very proud of that house, and almost like Abraham Lincoln's log cabin. He didn't have anything on that house. And the house now is no longer there. But I took our daughters to where I was born, and they had taken the house down. And Betty, you saw the house, didn't you?

DALLETT:

Was there an outhouse somewhere? Not in the photograph here.

MUNSON:

The what?

DALLETT:

Was there an outhouse?

MRS. MUNSON:

Didn't show in the picture, did it?

MUNSON:

No. Oh, there's an outhouse in the back, I think. So, they all had outhouses in those days. And when I went back to visit Norway the first time clara, I, I flew from Trognam [PH] to Bodo. Bodo is where my mother and father were married in 1900. And, uh, then I took a three motor German Fockker plane, and it flew me up to, um, I can't think of the name of that place, but it landed on a fjord. And there was about a thirty foot speedboat going alongside that plane. I said to the pilot, "What's up." He said, "If we flop, that thing will pick all the passengers up." Of course, it didn't. Then I took a little two motor single engine plane in Alesund and flew up to northern Norway and we landed in the fjord in Harstad. Now, that was my first trip to Norway. And the little boat came out, and he got me. And all my relatives were on the dock to meet me. And I remember Uncle Ulaf, he was about six feet tall. He weighed about a hundred and seventy. He was supposed to have been the strongest man in that part of Norway. And he had red hair, and he could speak English. And he took me to his home in Harstad. That's where he lived. He was a molla. That is a painter. But he also painted beautiful pictures. And he could take, I went to visit a house he was painting inside it in Bjorskinn and it was alongside the fjord this house was. And he had about a, uh, a can full of about eighteen brushes, and he painted the grain of the door in the doors. He'd paint you an oak door, a mahogany door, a maple door, anything you wanted. And he said to me, "Arthur," he says, "do they do that kind of painting in America?" I said, "No, they don't. They buy the door with that stuff in it." And so he did that kind of work. Then in Norway, in Harstad, they had a church that was one thousand one hundred years old. And the most famous sculptor of that day in Europe did all the, uh, painting in the gable of that church. Beautiful. I, you know, you see these babies, and the things they paint, they don't paint like that here. And, but they had to have somebody do the goldwork and that painting, and my uncle did it. So he was a real talent. And I remember when I was there it seemed he said, "Arthur, do you think I should come back to America?" "No," I said, "Uncle, stay right here because you're better off here than going off." But they didn't, they wouldn't compete with the things he did. But he had the yen to go back. And I think, really, he was sorry he didn't go back. Now, my father was the one that toughed it out and stayed here, and made something of his life. My father did quite well in his lifetime.

DALLETT:

Did he talk about that period when he really toughed it out in the beginning? Did he tell you about that period when you were a young boy?

MUNSON:

Oh, Pa said, Pa used to say, he said, I worked in that Clopeck Fish Company. I worked in an ice house for six hours a day. It was thirty-two below zero. And he said, I had a half an hour to eat lunch in ten hours at two dollars a day, and he saved money to send for my mother. And I think Sigvild, his half brother, half cousin, I'm not sure, came with him. And, uh, I remember my father bought an Oberlin car and Sigvild bought a Star car. They don't make those kinds of cars anymore. And Sigvild was killed in Seattle. He ran between two trains and he got stuck in the trains, and it cut him in half. And that was the end of Sigvild. He's buried someplace in Seattle, I don't know where.

DALLETT:

Did your father tell you why he came to Seattle? Was he joining anyone?

MUNSON:

No, he didn't. This is one of the things that I regret. It seemed like everybody asked Mother all the questions. My father wasn't much of a person to volunteer information. But my father, huh?

MRS. MUNSON:

He had an acquaintance or a relative there in Seattle.

MUNSON:

But my father was very accurate. Anything...

MRS. MUNSON:

They'd come to Seattle because of the fishing?

MUNSON:

Probably because of the fishing, yeah. My father did work on a fish boat, come to think about it,a halibut boat. He didn't like that. And, uh...

DALLETT:

Was this in Norway, or...

MUNSON:

No, here. He worked on the fish, on the halibut boat here. And I think he went to Alaska. Now, Ellen might tell you some of these things. And, uh, but I don't want to get your stories, get your stories mixed up. And so, but the minute he got money, he sent for my mother. And, uh...

DALLETT:

Did she tell you about what that was like to leave?

MUNSON:

Oh, she said, yes. She'd, Ma hated to leave.

DALLETT:

She had to leave her mother.

MUNSON:

She had to leave here mother, she had to leave (Norwegian). Mother loved Norway. And she came to this country, couldn't speak a word of English, brought all us kids along with her.

DALLETT:

How many children and what ages.

MUNSON:

Four. Carl must have been nine years of age. Ellen was seven, I think. Mag was born 1906, so he'd be six years old. And I was a baby. I was born in 1907, and I started school in 1913. So that was roughly the ages of the kids that she brought over.

MRS. MUNSON:

But she talked about when she got here in the United States, couldn't speak any English, and how she went shopping and to go to the store she'd watch for her landmark so she could get back. And when she'd come into the store, whatever she'd want, she would put her finger on what she wanted. And everything, she had to buy dishes, she had to buy groceries and things. She just pointed to them.

MUNSON:

Did Ma tell you that?

MRS. MUNSON:

Yes.

MUNSON:

Oh, she never told me that. So that's good, that's yeah. And Carl, Carl was a, us kids were good athletes. Especially Carl was a good athlete. And Carl, when he went to school in Port Townsend, 1913, he was thirteen years old. He got straight 100 in arithmetic, and that's when they graded 75, 80, 85 and 90. And, but he learned. And, you know, it's funny, you learn the English pretty fast when you were kids. Boy, I often thought, when I, I've been to about twenty different countries in Europe. When I went to Germany, and all those words are about a half a mile long. But if you know where to break them, and some of the words in German are something like Norwegian. And, uh, so I though to myself my gosh, what would I do if I went to Germany and couldn't speak a word of German. So I never called anybody anymore a dumb Swede, you know. We're all dumb when we go back there to another country.

DALLETT:

Did your mother tell you about that period in the beginning when she came here and she didn't speak the language?

MUNSON:

Well, what they had, did, they associated with Norwegians. And some of the Norwegians could speak, and then someone would tell her what that word meant. And finally my father learned to write quite well, and my mother learned to write quite well too, but not as good as my father. And, uh, Ma said, you know, I was never very good in arithmetic in school Pa was good, pretty good in arithmetic in school, Mother wasn't. But, uh, Mother could crochet, she could make things without even a blueprint.

MRS. MUNSON:

That was because she couldn't read the instructions.

MUNSON:

Yeah. And besides, Mother was crazy about flowers. She won more first prizes in that Coliseum down there in flower arrangements, I think, than anybody in the history of Seattle.

MRS. MUNSON:

That was later.

MUNSON:

She had, yeah, later. She had shelves with blue ribbons in them. And Mother wherever she went, she'd say, "Oh, can I have a slip?" And Pa says, you know, we're going to have to plant the slip, I'm going to have to plant the slip. So Mother, she loved flowers. Mother would have been a good farmer. Now, in Norway, uh, Nancy, Uncle Tobias, when I went to se him, had a little four acre farm on (?), on that fjord. He'd go fishing. Most of the men went fishing in the summertime, and the wives milked the cows. And when I went to see them we were milking cows at that time. Now, bear in mind, I was bookkeeper when I come to this country. I didn't know anything about cows or horses or anything. I didn't like to work in an office. I could remember numbers by the hundreds easy, but I could not remember names. I could remember names pretty good when I was a kid, but not, because I can remember, I can hear a song a couple times, and I can sing the song. And, but they, Norwegians are great to associate, like in Ballard in Seattle. That is a community of Norwegians. And they tell the problems, and they tell what you should do, what you shouldn't do. And after a while you finally learn to speak. I think mother and Dad did quite well. Mother learned how to drive a car in Seattle, and my father did the same. He always seemed to have an automobile. And, uh, but people were after my father because they could trust him. They made money off of his expertise. And, uh, it's too bad that he didn't get the education that he would have needed, you know, top rated business. But Mother...

DALLETT:

Did she tell you, a bit, I know you said you regretted you didn't know what happened to your father when he came through Ellis Island, but did your mother tell you about what happened, in your experience, at Ellis Island?

MUNSON:

Pa came through Ellis Island, no, Pa came through Ellis Island, he came straight across the United States, but Mother had to go through Canada, because Ellen had that cough. And lots of times they've sent these people back, and Mother didn't want to go back after being here. And Mother could, oh, she could make Norwegian dishes. Mother was a good cook. And she also...

DALLETT:

What did she make?

MUNSON:

Oh, rudaka. She'd make blukaka. You know what blukaka is? They take and they boil the blood and they make pancakes out of what they get out of it. And rudaka is a, uh, it's a dough kind of a thing. And then they make fatimine, and that looks like a doughnut almost, and it's curled up like that. And then Mother made head cheese. They'd take and make, boy, it was god. So they never wasted a thing in Norway. Oh, I would not eat that blukaka. Not me, blukaka. (he laughs)

MRS. MUNSON:

You wouldn't eat some of the cheese that she showed me how to make, too.

DALLETT:

So she continued to make all that here.

MUNSON:

Oh, yes.

DALLETT:

Not just in Norway.

MUNSON:

Oh, and, what did we have for, (voices off mike). Oh, she wanted that new mild because there's lot of blood in it. What did we make for Christmas? Fish. Lutfisk, lutfisk we'd call it. And when you see how they prepare lutfisk you would never eat it, but after you prepare it, we'd go to a lutfisk dinner that the Sons of Norway put every year. And, uh, every Christmas we'd have lutfisk. And when we had Christmas, when we were a family at home, we had a big Christmas tree with candles on it, and we had to learn lines, we had put on a play for Mother and Dad. And they'd sit there and the kids would perform. And, uh, we eat...

DALLETT:

What was the play?

MUNSON:

Oh, anything Ellen and Carl would figure out they would make us do. And Mag and I, we were the little, they made us do things. And, of course, William was the baby, and nobody would bother little Cork, or little William. They, Ma called me Cork all the time. And I think if Mother...

DALLETT:

William was the son that was born here?

MUNSON:

Yeah. And everybody loved, brother Bill turned out to be a very successful businessman, an awful nice person. And we still love each other. And nobody can say anything about a Munson to us, nobody. And I, when I'd take my motor home, I got a beautiful motor home sitting in the barn, I'd take, my brothers and sister, we'd take a trip over to Colfax, and we'd chew over old times, you know. And William married a Mormon, and she is very religious. William, after fifty years, she turned him into a Mormon. (he laughs) And, so, he uh, he's some kind of a bigwig in the Mormon church now. I don't know what he is but, of course, I don't believe in Mormonism. So, they, even gave us a great big Bible and it's still sitting there. I haven't read a line in it. (he laughs) But, Betty, give me our little Bible, will you, my little Bible that I got? And when we lived in Seattle when I was a kid, I was going to tell you, when we left Port Townsend, (?) my story, we left Port Townsend in 1918, and I remember my mother was crying. And we took the Sue to Seattle. And we moved in...

DALLETT:

I'm sorry, when you say the Sue...

MUNSON:

The Sue. S-U-E is the mane of the ship, the steamer we sailed.

MRS. MUNSON:

It was S-U-E?

MUNSON:

S-U-E, the Sioux.

MRS. MUNSON:

Not, S-I-O-U-X?

MUNSON:

No, no. S-U-E. Sue. And we moved to 17 Roy Street. Now, that is right a the foot of Queen Anne Hill. You don't know Seattle, but, uh, I was in the fourth grade then, and because we started, I started at Warren school. And Ellen was in the eighth grade at that time, and she graduated from eighth grade at Warren school, and I was put back a half of, I didn't put back, they made me stay another year because, Arthur, you're work that you're doing is six months behind ours., so we'll have to leave you. So I lost a half a grade there. My mother was a over. Every time we got in a place she got, I went through eight different schools before I got out of the eight grade. So, uh, but anyhow...

DALLETT:

Why was that? Why was she moving?

MUNSON:

Ask Ellen. See, because Ma was the one that had ants in her pants moving. And Pa was kind of wanted to be stuck someplace. In 1918 Mother and Dad separated, and that's something we couldn't understand because we never heard them argue. And I remember at Christmastime in 1918 brother Mag acted as Santa Claus, and he wore my father's boots, which were red, and a Santa Clause suit, and we had kidded William about Santa Clause and when Mag came in to play Santa Clause, William said, "Oh, that's Pa's boots." So there was no more Santa Claus, and Mag was Santa Claus. And then they separated. And I remember they moved to 711, about four houses down from Roy Street. Now, in those days, from Roy Street clear to Fourth Avenue in Seattle, were fields of grass. John Street was way behind when we came to Seattle. It was grass fields there. And when Bill hart came to the, he was the movie cowboy star of those days. And you'll always remember Bill Hart. And my mother would give each of us a nickel apiece, and we walked down to the Liberty Theatre a couple of miles to go to that show. And so, then we moved, they found out I was in their own school district, so they moved us over to Mercer school which was a couple of, about four of five blocks away. And there I was in the fifth and the sixth grade. And when I was in the sixth grade, Mother moved, Mother and Dad separated and got a divorce. And they moved to Retsil, Washington, across the bay from Bremton. There I was in the seventh grade. And my father came out to see us. My father was real good. He always come and he'd give us things once in a while when he could, but when we were living at 711, that next Christmas we moved from 718 down to 711, he come with a bag of presents for us kids and mother wouldn't let him in the house. And we all cried, you know, we couldn't understand it, and later on I said something to my mother about that, because I didn't think it was very nice. But mother, when she made up her mind, oh she made up her mind.

DALLETT:

How did she support the family then?

MUNSON:

My dad give her, I think she was getting thirty dollars a month. At that time it was a lot of money. And my father had to find work. Because the reason he left Port Townsend, Port Townsend had the customs house, so it was quite a thriving little town. And when they lost the custom house to Seattle, the only thing that kept that town alive was those canneries. And that's when my father started going to Neah Bay in the summertime. And later on I talked to my mother. I said, Ma, what? And so, to get ahead of my, not to get ahead of my story, but finally in 1930 Mother and Dad married again and lived happily ever after for twenty-five, see. So I said to Mother one day, I said, "Ma, why did you leave Pa?" She said, "He was gone every summer ever since I came to Seattle," you know. And, I don't know, I'm not a, wait a minute, I don't understand women anyhow after all these years. So anyhow, but...

DALLETT:

Wait, her response was that he was gone in the summer?

MUNSON:

He was gone, gone in the summertime.

DALLETT:

But that was true in Norway too, isn't that right?

MUNSON:

Yes, but he wasn't, see he was married in 1900, and Pa, now, Pa had various jobs in Norway. He was always a foreman. In this coal mine, he was working in the copper mine there and he got something wrong with his lungs, and he said mines wasn't for him. And he was a foreman at the mine. And I remember years later on when they came out to visit us in Beaver, we went up to Sappho because they were taking an x-ray of our lungs for nothing, everybody in the community, and I got a card saying that I had this spot on my lungs. Well, they made a mistake. They sent me my father's card, and he had that spot, that he explained to them what that spot was, it was from that mine. So he didn't have tuberculosis. And so, uh...

DALLETT:

What kind of mine was it that he worked at?

MUNSON:

Copper mine. Yeah. And he didn't tell me about all the jobs that, when he came to northern Norway is where he met my mother. And then they married and this picture we have here, that was her wedding picture. And they were, they were married...

DALLETT:

Which one is your father?

MUNSON:

Right there. And that's Uncle Hanse, the one that we visited, this is my mother. And, Betty, I had taken Betty to Ollisen, that's where Mother and Father were married. Because the one in the picture said Bodo. And you notice they got all dress suits and they're all dressed up nice. They got this tie (?) like we're wearing now, right? And my mother, boy, my mother. My mother, should I say this? My mother was, what you call was "stacked." Forty inch bust, twenty-four around the waist and thirty-eight hips. And she had small wrists. And Mother was a beautiful woman. If she could have fixed up like fix up women today, they'd all have been oohing and aahing. But Mother, in that picture there, I can remember her getting us ready. I can remember Mother, gee, she was a beautiful mother. Getting us kids ready, tying our ties. "Now don't you run off the sidewalk because you'll get your shoes dirty." Shined our shoes. And this is me here, and little brother Bill sitting in the middle. I remember one time in Port Townsend she tied William to a tree because he was all running away, he was all trying to chase Mag and I, see? And I can still hear Bill hollering. He says I still remember the time you tied me up, Ma. So, uh, I would say, we were a close family. And when I was living at 711, Sunday I went Bible church on, uh, Saturday, Sunday, Sunday school and confirmation class. And then at two o'clock in the afternoon we had to listen to a Norwegian minister speaking Norwegian for another hour. And this little Bible I have here, when I was going to Sunday school in Port Townsend, you can read that, it says, "With best wishes to Arthur Monsen." It's spelled M-O-N-S-E-N. "From your Sunday school teacher, Karen Olson. Christmas 1917." And she asked me to read One Corinthians, 13th Chapter. And I saved that Bible.

DALLETT:

Was there a change in your name, or was your name Arthur Munson?

MUNSON:

Yes. The reason Pa, when he came to America, he thought Satrevik [PH] was too hard to pronounce. And I think Pa was almost a little bit ashamed of the name Satrevik [PH]. But his father's name, one of his names was Monsen. So he took...

DALLETT:

Now, Satrevik [PH] was the town where your father was from.

MUNSON:

That's right.

DALLETT:

Okay.

MUNSON:

Yeah. And then he...

DALLETT:

And your father's name was what, in that town?

MUNSON:

He came to America?

DALLETT:

When he was in Norway.

MUNSON:

Satrevik [PH]. Andreas. That's Satrevik [PH]. Andreas Herman Satrevik [PH] was my father's name.

MRS. MUNSON:

There were Satreviks [PH], people named Satrevik [PH] in Norway...

MUNSON:

And all the people that lived in Satrevik [PH] was named Satrevik [PH], and there's no relation to each other. Now, in Norway, it's easy to find your genealogy. I am in the book of Bjornskinn. Ellen is the book of Satrevik [PH]. Carl is the book of Sulitjelma. Mag is in the book of Mo-i-Rana. Yeah, Mo-i-Rana. That's where Mag was born. So Carl was born in Sulitjelma. So you go to those little cities there, and you get the book. I've got the book of Bjornskinn, and it's got my name in it. So, in Norway they're pretty careful about genealogy. I've got in my files here, the year 1400, they go clear back in my, and not so good in my mother, because they didn't keep the records. My father was pretty accurate at writing stuff down like...

MRS. MUNSON:

Women never had a name. They were just the daughter of so-and-so.

MUNSON:

Yeah. In Norway, Nancy, women, Mother told me a couple of times, they're just made to go to bed with in Norway. The men just run everything. You do it. And when I was in Norway, this is in '52, they had a couple of acres spud fields. The women were digging the potatoes. And they picked them up and put them in sacks, and a man would take a horse down with a sled and load the spuds on the sled and haul it in there.

DALLETT:

Okay, I think we're going to pause here. Uh, that's the end of side two of cassette number one of, uh, interview number [DP-16]] with Arthur Munson. END OF SIDE TWO, TAPE ONE BEGINNING OF SIDE ONE, TAPE TWO

DALLETT:

This is the beginning of cassette number two of interview number [DP-16] with Arthur Munson. This is side one of cassette two.

MUNSON:

He come back, when he came to America, he was sort of ashamed, I think, of the name Satrevik [PH].

DALLETT:

Why do you think he was ashamed of the name?

MUNSON:

I don't know. He thought it was hard to pronounce. And so he took, his father was named Monsen, M-O-N-S-E-N. And so he took the name Andreas Herman Monsen, M-O-N-S-E-N. And later on in life he changed it to Andrew Munson, M-U-N-S-O-N. So that's what everybody calls us now.

DALLETT:

And at what point did he change from Satrevik to Munson?

MUNSON:

In his early, early life in America he changed. I don't know exactly when he did, I don't think anybody did. Because I never...

DALLETT:

Is it possible that it happened at Ellis Island?

MUNSON:

No, no, no, we were here.

DALLETT:

He did that on his own.

MUNSON:

On his own. And he did all of that Munson on his own. Bingo, all of a sudden we didn't know what, how to write our names. So, uh, but he came into Ellis Island Satrevik [PH], Andreas Herman Satrevik [PH]. And, uh, Pa never did make it clear why he did. He only said that he though Satrevik [PH] was hard to say. Our daughter Linda said I wish my name was Satrevik [PH]. She likes it, and so do I. It's a different name.

DALLETT:

So you, as the next generation were proud of something that...

MUNSON:

Absolutely. I was proud of where I was born, I was proud to be a Norwegian, and I was proud of my folks. Lots of times I'd look back and I'd say gee, I sure had some beautiful parents. In fact, I think, uh, Nancy, if my wife, my mother had maybe a little favorite. It could have been me. You know why? When we were living at 717, Mother and Dad were still living together, and they slept upstairs, and I, when I'd get up in the morning I'd fry some eggs, make some toast, make some coffee and I'd take it up to bed in a tray to them. And then when, when we moved from Retsil, Washington back to Seattle, we moved down to a place called Harrison Street. And my sister got a job as a telephone operator. She was pretty good. And Mother, she got a job in a laundry. I don't know what she did. So I, when it rained, I used to run, go to the laundry with an umbrella so Mother wouldn't get wet. But I'd also wash the floors, clean the dishes, make the beds, and Mother come home she doesn't have to make the beds. And so, I think maybe Cork, uh, was something special in her life. But anyhow, I had a beautiful mother, and a father.

DALLETT:

You mentioned before that she always wanted to go back to Norway.

MUNSON:

Yes. Now, if she hadn't' been married to Dad, she would have gone back to Norway. I'll tell you what my father did. When he went, when he was hired by the Japanese government to put up mild-cured salmon in (?), that's in Japan or Russia or someplace there, when he got through that one year, now, he took my brothers Mag and Carl with him for two years. And then the government didn't want them any more. They just wanted him. And the last time he was there he got on a train in Siberia, went clear through Siberia and came to Satrevik [PH], Norway. He picked up his brother, uh, Severit, and took them up to Bjornskinn, and met all of Ma's, Mother's folks again. And in the meantime, when he was there, he noticed that there wasn't a tombstone on Mother's grave. And he gave him some money to put a tombstone on both his grandfather, her father and mother's grave. And, uh, I've got a beautiful picture of the (?) in Satrevik [PH]. I'll have to show it to you, because you'll have to see that picture too, what the country looks like there. And when I first pulled in to Satrevik [PH], or to Bjornskinn, where Mother was born, I had to pinch myself to believe I'd come to the place where I was born. And when I saw the house I was born, I just couldn't believe it. But Clara, her daughter, Dagmar, very intelligent lady, could speak real good English, and she'd follow me around like a little puppy dog. Because, you know, oh, somebody from America come. Now, I want to say one thing about Norway. Norwegian people love the American people. They love the America more that any country in Europe.

DALLETT:

Why do you think that is?

MUNSON:

Because so many of them got their first chance to make something of themselves by coming to America. And the type of government we had, people could elect their own officials, they could elect their own president, they weren't a dictatorship, and that's what they loved. And as I have gotten older, my father used to say once in a while, he'd be really upset about things. He'd say, what they need, he always swing his left hand, as a boss. And sometimes I believe now that he's right. I don't want to get into what's happening to our country because I could talk for three or four days. But I think we had the beautiful, most beautiful country in the world in America. Nancy, there is such a thing as having too much freedom. You cannot give people too much freedom because they abuse that word. Now, I don't want to get into what that would entail. I've done a lot of speaking in my lifetime. In fact, I was honored here two years ago. They couldn't figure of a better person to speak about the constitution was written, of the United States, was written in 1787. They took a picture there of me on the courthouse steps. And I spoke to most of the businessmen in Port Angeles. I was a history nut in school. I could just get straight A's in history. I could speak on dates, no problem, but names befuddle me. And I...

DALLETT:

You're very patriotic. I wonder if when you first went to Norway did have any mixed feelings about wanting to stay there?

MUNSON:

I'm glad you asked the question, Nancy. When I went to Norway, you know what I noticed when I came back from Norway? People there don't, uh, strike. They don't have these big marches. They don't say anything bad about their leaders. They like their government. And when I come back from Norway the first time, and I was in New York and I saw these people picketing, the rioting they were doing, and what they're doing today scares the very dickens out of me. And I don't think there's anybody in America today that's got any brains at all that aren't concerned about what's happening to our country. I am so, a woman cannot walk down the streets of this country. They're afraid of getting raped. Children are being raped. And when I went back to the Soviet Union, I was one of twenty-one farmers picked in the State of Washington to go on this tour of seven different foreign countries, of which the Soviet Union was one of them, Russia, Moscow. And I don't know why I was picked, but I was picked. And we were interviewed by the State Department. And when we went back to Russia, example, the Russian people appeared to me to be real happy. I didn't believe in their kind of government, because they only had one candidate running and you vote for that candidate and ninety-five percent of the people vote. Now they're changing a little bit. I think one big mistake they're beginning to make now is allowing these rock stars to come to the Soviet Union and make the kids crazy, too. And, Nancy, no one can convince me that is not what's happening in this country today.

DALLETT:

You were going to talk about how you felt when you first were in Norway, about...

MUNSON:

So when I came back, I thought, gee, Norway isn't bad at all. They don't have these kind of riots and stuff in Norway. They do have a, not a dictatorship, they have a king that they all love in Norway. He doesn't have too much power. I got to go into something like that. They have a legislature that, there are the liberals and conservatives like we have here, and the king can't veto anything. But the people, it's a type of Socialism, they told me back there, Nancy, that sixty percent of what they made they kept, and the forty percent they didn't, the government took. And they said we (Norwegian). You know that means? We have it good. There you pay nothing for a hospital. You pay nothing for a doctor. And I'm not so sure we've got to start educating ourselves a little bit that way, because you can't no longer afford to go to a hospital in this country anymore. They're sticking us one way or the other. And I think it's terrible, just terrible. In my farm life, I have done most of the things around. I've done a lot of veterinary work in my life. Because all I would see a vet do something once and I could do it myself. I'd do it for nothing. I didn't charge them anything. So everybody loved me down here, because I practice what I preach. I've served on the Equalization Board now for seventeen years, and that's the board that, when you're unhappy with your assessments on your property, you come to us. So these are, go ahead, stop it if you want. (break in tape)

DALLETT:

I was interested in the feelings that you had when you went back, what it meant to be a Norwegian, an American, or how you considered yourself.

MUNSON:

Well, once you're a Norwegian, we are so dedicated to our country and we love our country so much, it's really hard, you never forget Norway. You can, you can, however, I like the government we had in America. The littlest person could become the President of the United States. That's something that can't happen in Norway, in these other foreign countries. You can do more things in America that you cannot do in any other country in the world. That's why I think it's the greatest country in the world. That would be the difference. But you're always love (Norwegian). I wouldn't go back there live, never. I love our country here too much. I've been here all my life. I can see the good things about their government, the bad things about their government, and the same about ours. But this is a country if you want to, stretch out. If you want to make something of yourself, you can do it. You can go to school. You don't have to be rich to go to school, Some people have a lot of trouble going, all right. Not because the fees are so high, but everybody can get an education in America if they want to try for one.

DALLETT:

People who listen to this tape won't be able to see what I'm seeing as I visit you here. Can you describe where we are, the property that we're on.

MUNSON:

We are on a piece of property that was first farmed in 1895 and I think (?) were the first, Joseph Hamilton. There were four, this used to be five or six little farms. And the way it got to be a two hundred acre farm, and farmer would buy it, he would buy a piece of ground that had, like over there's the Porter place. R.H. Kidd bought the Porter place. So that became a part of the Kidd place. And finally, from some small farms, it was made a larger farm. And I have, now, Kidd farmed this place from 1907 to 1937, and he...

DALLETT:

What has been grown here over the years?

MUNSON:

You grow, well, he milked cows. Most of the cows, they milked cows here. And Kidd used to mild twenty-five and thirty cows here. And he had Holstein cows, but he also had a family of six kids. And Kidd, at one time had his own butcher shop. He sold meat to shops in Port Angeles, as I did too when I started to farm. And, uh, he had some, the kids went to school there, graduated from high school here, and finally he lost the farm because I understand Kidd did a lot of gambling in his younger days. And, uh, his wife stayed here with the children, they run the farm, and he was out playing around. And finally he, he borrowed money from the Federal Land Bank to pay some of his debts that he owed on the farm and other places, I suppose. And, uh, he lost the farm. We purchased the farm from the Federal Land Bank in Spokane in 1937. We were farming, (?), and my farm life started here when I met Betty and married her. In 1927 I came to the country the first time as a bookkeeper. And I'd met her, and in six months we were engaged, and I went back to Seattle again, and I worked for Sears Roebuck. I was a valued employee of Sears Roebuck's. And, uh, when they started a store in Los Angeles, they offered me a real good job down there, I turned it down, and I came back to work for her dad in 1928. And, uh, I worked for her father for just about five years, we bought a little farm on the dickie, I cleared twelve acres of woods out of there with a brush and an axe and pulled the stumps with horses. And then we leased her uncle's farm, who was one of the outstanding pioneers of the West End, the Wesley Smith Farm, of two hundred nine and three quarters. And he was milking thirty cows down there. We took our little seven cows from the dickie, ran them down there, and we leased it for five years from Uncle Wesley. And I had a chance to buy that farm. And, uh, it was on the river bottom, beautiful piece of ground, but every once in a while you'd have a flood there, and that meant the whole farm. So we decided to buy this place in 1937. And in 1940 when our lease ran out down there we took cattle, horses on the highway, and drove all the cattle up here, and started farming at Beaver Prairie Farms. And we've been there, I retired at seventy years of age. I thought I'd done, I've got up 4:30 in the morning for fifty years, Saturdays, Sundays and all. If a dance band had played, come back and sometimes we'd chase the cows in and then go to sleep after we'd got them milked. And that was our life. But I had some beautiful children, a beautiful wife, that without her I'd never have made it, and that's been my life. And I really had never, ever done anything that was really important. She doesn't know it. I discuss it with her, and depending on a lot what she said, I would do it. Because she's always had big loads of common sense. It is rare in lots of people today. To me, I never went to the university. I have debated professors. I had no trouble with them. You know why? All they knew was what they learned in that book. There was a lot of things that happen in life that's not in a book. And so I was really, and her father was another person, you could write a book on him. And, uh, so I came down here, my mother thought I was kind of crazy for leaving all the city lights in Seattle. And we had kerosene lamps in the barn. I bought a light plant up here and finally we developed, I leased five hundred acres from the national park, farmed for twenty years. I had one time five farms that we were operating, the family was operating. We'd get on the kids, we'd go riding into the bush, and the wife raised Arabian horses. And there is no one that I know of that can handle horses better than she. She doesn't think of mentioning handling Arabs at all. And her father, all he did was break horses. And her father could break any horse that was ever alive. And he had a ball doing it. So those are the kind of people I was around. I was around the people who made our country great, and that was people like the Smiths, who came over in this country, her father, grandfather, came over and cooked for the Indians. He was a preacher, a very intelligent man. And I was around those kind of people that set me off, and I was living in an entire different world than I could remember in the city. So it was the kind of people I was around. Her father, I think, probably shaped my life. Boy, he was a tough fellow to work for. And that's his picture right up there. And her mother taught school for thirty-five years. Come out here and, for a teacher to come out here, she was nailed right away, because they were looking for people to marry in those days. And they were married happily all their life.

DALLETT:

Was there a Norwegian community in Beaver?

MUNSON:

No. (he laughs) Betty's mother was Irish, MacElwan. And Betty's half Irish and Scotch. Her dad had a little German in him, too. But he, I got my political philosophy, in fact I debated Henry Jackson. I, well, I don't want to go into politics, but I learned a lot. I was, I watched things done. That's why, on a farm, if you're going to be a successful farmer, Nancy, you've got to be able to do your own thing. I can repair my tractors, everything. You learn because there nobody else to do it for you. So that's, (break in tape) They milk cows. This was a place where...

MRS. MUNSON:

Describe the place.

MUNSON:

The place...

MRS. MUNSON:

It's a piece of land on the slope of the hills.

MUNSON:

It's at the foot of a...

DALLETT:

Would you like to describe the place to us?

MUNSON:

It's a farm at the foot of a mountain. I call it Beaver, it should be, I call it Beaver Prairie Farm. Now, this was some of the natural prairie. And, uh...

MRS. MUNSON:

...one side by the river, and on the other side by the mountain...

MUNSON:

And the Salt Lake River goes through the middle of it.

MRS. MUNSON:

Not through the middle of the place. It was in the middle of the valley. But it was on the edge of the place.

MUNSON:

Yeah. And we raised hay. I sold a lot of hay, and we fed a lot of cattle. And this farm, the last ten years of my life we went into the beef business and just ran beef on the place. In fact, we raised all the produce on the place, the hay and the, I used to, oats, I used to thrash oats. I had my own thrash machine. And we run all the cattle at La Push.

MRS. MUNSON:

...out and brought them back.

MUNSON:

Yeah. And we, we'd haul them back in the trucks. I sold cattle to the Marysville Stockyards. My beef I would sell, every year.

MRS. MUNSON:

The house was built in 1918.

MUNSON:

This house built 1920.

MRS. MUNSON:

After the World War, and there was a camp down here. He got a lot of the materials from there, all the lumber. Ad, uh, lots of (?).

MUNSON:

Well, Mr. Kidd's daughter...

DALLETT:

Can you tell us about your horses?

MUNSON:

Oh, sure, yeah.

DALLETT:

I'm not sure if we can pick you up on the...

MUNSON:

Come over here a little closer, Betty.

MRS. MUNSON:

I'm glad you wanted to know about the horses. It has nothing to do with him. He doesn't like horses.

MUNSON:

Oh, now, here, put this on your (referring to his microphone) put this on this thing so you...

MRS. MUNSON:

Let's see.

DALLETT:

Tell us a little more about the property here.

MRS. MUNSON:

Oh, about the property here? I thought that, you know, because the horses, my father always raised horses, so we lived around horses. We would walk a mile to ride a horse just a short distance. We just lived, I spent our life on horses. And when we came up here to live, why he didn't know that much about horses. We did manage to get some, but I told him I would not chase cattle on foot. So he had to supply me with horses. I could have a horse. First thing he knew I had fifteen horses. Nearly scared him half to death. (she laughs) But it got too hard to sell them. You don't know if you can't control their life. So I just had to quit. It was a lot of fun raising them and training them, and I had more fun having them.

DALLETT:

Who would buy the horses?

MRS. MUNSON:

Well, I sold five horses one trip into Seattle. And the, uh, people in Seattle buy out here, and the people here go into Seattle to buy theirs. I didn't like selling them here, because I could see what happened to them. But I did sell them locally.

DALLETT:

How do you mean you could see what would happen to them?

MRS. MUNSON:

Well, they kind of get spoiled and hurt and whatnot and they weren't, I had a horse that one of the children, it was a very nice little gentle horse. Some other people took it over and, uh, those kids were teasing it, they don't know it, and the child got hurt and they blamed the horse. The horse was not that kind of a horse. They could only take so much foolishness and they become foolish. So I didn't like it, so I quit. But I have, all I want, and when he would complain about it I says, would you rather have me go bowling? That would cost you more money. My horses paid for themselves. I was able to buy my own trailer and run around with them, but I was going to have something to draw the trailer that I could live in so that I could go out. I could go to the beach, and I could put the horse in the trailer and I could be in my rig. But, uh, that didn't quite work out, but it's all right. Like I'd took them to the show in Angeles. I rented a stable for the horse and I slept in the horse trailer. Because you can't just park your horse like a car and go off to a motel somewhere. You have to stay and take care. I did very little showing because it didn't work out with the other practices here, and I really didn't have any place to keep my horses here. They had whatever was left over. They went up on the hill because it wasn't suitable for cattle. And then I didn't have them foundering like they do now when they had the whole place. That's enough about horses.

DALLETT:

And just how many are here now?

MRS. MUNSON:

I have two now. One of them I had raised, and then I had a little bad luck with the horse, uh, our grandson Morris at last kept them for the kids. Of course, I liked one horse, and two horses, that I could ride with them. And this boy liked this old horse so well that he wouldn't take over the young horse, so I sold the young horse. Then I had to go and buy back a horse for him. That's why I have a boughten horse now. Otherwise they would have been just horses I had raised. I raised them because then I know what's wrong with them. Because whatever it is, I did it. You buy a horse and you don't know what kind of troubles you're getting. This horse I bough turned out to be a Ridgeling. The people the sold it to me didn't even know what a Ridgeling was. And I'm stuck with the problems of a Ridgeling. I had to keep him separate from the other horse because he's abusive, I can't trust him with little children, and...

DALLETT:

What type is the other horse?

MRS. MUNSON:

The horse I raised is a very nice, gentle horse that the kids can ride and enjoy. They can crawl under him, over him, and all around him and I know that they're all right. The boughten horse, I can't do that. I even laid them down on the ground and sit on them.

DALLETT:

So is that a different practice than your father had?

MRS. MUNSON:

Uh, my father, my trained them on, to work, of course, a driving. And of course you're not going to buck them out. Then you hitch a new horse up the a horse that's already trained, and this horse that's already trained holds the other one down until they get the go in them. Yes, I took a pair of green horses out. We had to go and get some wood when my father wasn't home and, uh, I never thought, but you learned by doing. We had a sled and the horses went trot trotting, that's fine. But we went off of the field onto a gravel road. When that sled hit that gravel and it went, whoop. We were gone. We had a race. Down the highway we went. (she laughs) I stuck with them, and the whole sled was doing this way, and then it was going this way, and there was a bridge. Well, when we came to the bridge, why, it just kind of went like this and went through. By that time I had them stopped. But I unloaded and went home. But the boy that was on behind me to do the loading, his hair was standing on edge. And minute we stopped, he was off that sled, but he wasn't a driver. He wasn't a horseman. I did the driving. I drove them home with our load, no problem. Just part of a game. The fun of doing it. They were always trying to spring something on you. More fun that you can believe. You didn't get that.

DALLETT:

I did. (break in tape) (piano and saxophone music) We're going to end this interview with a bit a music by Mr. and Mrs. Munson. Mrs. Munson on the piano, and Mr. Munson on the saxophone. (music continues to play) That concludes our interview number [DP-16] with Mr. and Mrs. Munson. We'll go out with whatever you choose.