An Informal Interview of Alden Nolette

Interviewer: His oldest son David

Time: Taped in 1975

Place: At Alden Nolette’s home in Cohasset

Subject: Alden Nolette was born at home, in Cohasset, November 30, 1912. He was a life long resident of Itasca County. His father, Napoleon, was a French Canadian immigrant who settled in Itasca County around 1904. Alden’s mother, Ida Anderson, was a daughter of Norwegian immigrants who settled in Norman County, Minnesota in the 1860's. Later, the family moved to Itasca County in 1903. Alden’s parents married in 1908. Alden was the second child and oldest son. Except for a couple of years of living in Grand Rapids, he lived his entire life in Cohasset.

He left school to work full time in the woods before he finished the tenth grade. He always worked full time after that, until he suffered a stroke in 1973. In the thirties he worked in a CCC camp and then later worked on building Highway 2. He worked 37 years for the now defunct Itasca creamery in Grand Rapids

He married Jennie Reed of Deer River in January of 1941. For a while they rented a house in Cohasset for six dollars a month. They bought their own house in Cohasset in 1944. They had four sons, David, Douglas, Ronald and Dennis. He was always proud of his family and also of Cohasset and told many stories of Cohasset that aren’t included in the interview.

As Alden entered his twenties, he began to grow deaf. Eventually he could only hear with a very strong hearing aid. He had good health most of his life and made it a point never to miss work. After a stroke in 1973 he often suffered from asthma. In April of 1984 he left Cohasset for the hospital. He died there two weeks later on April 29, 1984. He is buried in Wildwood Cemetery in Cohasset not too far from his parents.

Interview notes: At the time of the interview, my father and I were talking about his early days, so I decided to tape the conversation. Other family members were also in the room. Although their conversation is occasionally understandable, I have ignored it in transcribing this interview. In identifying the speakers I called myself David and for the sake of clarity I called my father Alden. 

Comments in brackets are descriptions of the interview and not part of the interview itself.

David Nolette, July 5, 1996

[An important note. It is not clear in the interview but he lived in two different locations in Cohasset, first on the western side of town and later on the eastern side of town. Sometimes the questions may seem repetitive but because of his hearing problems I was not always sure if he had heard the questions. What follows is the unedited interview.]

David: Now what were you talking about pigs?

Alden: Oh, I remember one year it was so big, that it wouldn’t fit in a great big barrel, so we had to lay it on a little table. Table, you know about six feet wide and about ten feet long, and then pour hot water on it so we could use it nice and straight instead of dipping it in the water. You could never dip it in there, it was too big around.

David: How did you kill it?

Alden: First we shot it and then we had to stick it.

David: Who did that?

Alden: My Dad.

David: What did you use to shoot it with, a .22 or something?

Alden: A .22, knocked it down, he jumped in there, took a knife and stuck it in the heart.

David: Did you start bleeding it then?

Alden: Then he’d bleed and then we’d . . .

David: He’d bleed it first.

Alden: Yeah, uh-huh. Then we caught the blood. Save the blood. We made dumplings, blood dumplings out of it.

David: What’s that?

Alden: Oh, you mix it with dough and stuff like that.

David: Just like bread.

Alden: Just like dumplings.

David: Just like regular dumplings except you made it with blood.

Alden: Yeah, uh-huh.

David: You used almost everything, huh?

Alden: Yes, we made head cheese.

David: Yeah, you remember how to make that?

Alden: My Mother made that.

David: You don’t remember how to make it though?

Alden: I don’t know how to make it.

David: What else did you do with it?

Alden: Well, it was in the summertime so we had to . . . salt it down.

David: What?

Alden: [He laughs] We had to salt it down.

David: You had to salt it down.

Alden: The whole thing, salt it down. Then we had salt pork for months and months. I ate so much salt pork it started coming out of my eyes. [he laughs]

David: What did you do with the eyes? Did I ask you this?

Alden: The eyes, threw them away.

David: You cut them out. Who did the butchering?

Alden: My Dad.

David: He did it all?

Alden: Yep.

David: You watch him? He cut the eyes out?

Alden: Yes.

David: Is that the first thing they did?

Alden: I don’t know. Don’t remember now but he took the eyes out.

David: Then he took the head off and boiled it up? Then what they do? Grind it up first?

Alden: Grind it up or something. Took the brains out. Anyway you have to hang it and cut it.

David: Did you guys eat the stomach too?

Alden: No. We kept the . . . liver. Fried liver.

David: You didn’t eat stomachs though?

Alden: Haa! No!

David: What about the feet?

Alden: Naw, we couldn’t use that because you got to make pickled pig feet.

David: You didn’t use that?

Alden: No. We used that, not down to the feet, but we used that for, you know . . . I don’t know. You boil that. Make soup out of that. Hocks, part of the leg. But you should have seen that pig. It was the biggest pig you ever seen. I never seen anything so big.

David: It was a sow or a boar or what?

Alden: It was a sow.

David: An old one.

Alden: Yeah. It was a couple of years old. [pause] Yeah, we had one, one time, that had about ten little ones.

David: What did you butcher it in the summertime for?

Alden: Well, it was getting so old. You know, getting so fat and . . . too hot weather so we had to kill him.

David: Usually butchered in the fall didn’t you?

Alden: Yeah, in the cold weather, and then you hang them up and freeze them, that way.

David: Yeah.

Alden: But we sure had a lot of pork.

David: Did you have a lot of pigs?

Alden: Well, we always had two every year, two and three.

David: You ate pork a lot then?

Alden: All the time.

David: Did you run out before the next year came along?

Alden: Oh, sometimes.

David: Is that what you ate most of the time for meat?

Alden: Pork mostly.

David: Did you have chickens?

Alden: Huh?

David: You didn’t have chickens?

Alden: Yeah, we had some chickens too.

David: You had chickens.

Alden: Yeah, we had chicken and a few times we had a calf but not too much.

David: You didn’t eat beef much?

Alden: Well we ate beef but not too much.

David: That’s mostly the meat you ate though, the pork and the chicken.

Alden: Pork was the biggest meat.

David: Did you drink milk? Did you buy milk or what?

Alden: Well we had to buy milk until we got a cow.

[Interruption as Granddaughter goes to bed.]

Alden: Well, I suppose you want to hear something else. [pause] You know, when I was a kid. [some inaudible remarks]

David: You want to talk about wood? Talk about wood.

Alden: You know we lived right beside Bass Brook and every year we use to go down there in the summertime and the spring. We started in the spring and we picked little popple bolts in the water. It was, oh, laying on the bottom. We used peck poles to pick ‘em up. Bring ‘em to the shore. We always made a raft so we could pick a few up, put on top of the raft and go to shore and unload and go back and pick up some more. There use to be a sawmill right behind there for years and years. And . . . so we got enough wood in the summertime to last all winter. We use to saw wood all summer. If we didn’t saw wood my Dad would say “Time to saw wood,” so we had to saw wood.

David: That was all down wood, wasn’t it?

Alden: That was in the water.

David: That was all you used. Where did it come from?

Alden: There was a mill back there.

David: They didn’t pick it up or what?

Alden: No, they closed and so a lot of times when logs stay in the water a long time they sink to the bottom. So we use to go over there and pick them up and they were only four feet long.

David: [After a long pause] Did you do this every year?

Alden: Every year.

David: You always got your wood that way?

Alden: That’s right.

David: It’s funny the mill didn’t pick up their wood sooner.

Alden: They closed up because they closed the saw mill down, so we lived right there.

David: They wouldn’t close the sawmill down every year?

Alden: Well we picked every year and the sawmill was closed for a long time.

David: I see. It was open for a while and then it would shut down again.

Alden: No. They would open. They worked on the sawmill and when they closed down every year we would pick up the wood. They never opened up.

David: That was a pretty good way of getting wood.

Alden: They had tons and tons.

David: That’s better then going out in the woods and getting it.

Alden: Yeah, and then it was . . . and then it was easy if used a peck pole and jab ‘em down on the bottom and pull ‘em up.

David: Used a what?

Alden: A peck pole.

David: What’s that?

Alden: That’s a pole with a sharp thing on the end. Kind of a screw on the end. Stab it down and pull it up, stick right in the log. Then if you miss and start pulling backwards or something like that. Well, you just miss and fall over backwards in the water. We always had a pair of pants on.

David: Did you stand on shore and do that?

Alden: No, we rode a little raft.

David: You made a raft first. You and who?

Alden: My brother

David: You and Ervin?

Alden: Yeah, and then we . . . lots of times we went out all alone. Foolin’ around. Go for a swim for a while. Pick up a few logs. But I cut ‘em up.

David: Well, did you plant anything?

Alden: Oh, we had a big garden.

David: Well, wait a minute. That was the only thing you used for wood?

Alden: That’s if we didn’t haul from the country, home or something.

David: You used the wood all summer and winter to burn with?

Alden: Yeah.

David: That was the only heat year around.

Alden: That’s right.

David: How many stoves did you have in the house?

Alden: Cookstove and a heating stove.

David: One heating stove?

Alden: Uh-huh

David: What kind of a stove was that?

Alden: Oh, it was a box stove . . . [coughs] or an airtight.

David: Where were you living then?

Alden: Right beside Bass Brook.

David: Oh, you living there. Where was that?

Alden: That’s you know . . . Oh.

David: You had a house over there.

Alden: Yeah. Right beside the creek anyway. Down that same street where Andersons lived. You know towards little dam, down that way. We use to take an old boat and put a light in front and go up and down the crick and spear suckers. You could have a light at night, you know, and you could see a fish swimming around all over.

David: Was that legal?

Alden: It wasn’t legal. [He laughs. David laughs]

David: You did that a lot?

Alden: We did that all the time, every spring.

David: Then you eat fish for a long time?

Alden: Nah. We didn’t eat much fish.

David: You didn’t smoke the suckers then?

Alden: No, we just got enough for a meal and that was enough.

David: What did you do with the rest of the fish?

Alden: We never got that much, one or two and then we’d quit.

David: Oh, I see. What did you use for a light?

Alden: Oh, a torch or a lantern.

David: What do you mean, a torch?

Alden: A piece of . . . it could be soaking in something, kerosene and burns away.

David: Soak what? Rag?

Alden: Yeah. Or mostly put a lantern out there.

David: A kerosene lantern.

Alden: Yeah, or you could take a flashlight, a big flashlight. Shine it in the water.

David: They used flashlights then, too.

Alden: Yeah.

David: I didn’t know that.

Alden: Yeah.

David: Big batteries in them or what?

Alden: We had, I had a five-cell flashlight.

David: When you were a kid?

Alden: Yeah. That would go a thousand feet.

David: Yeah. That’s a pretty big flashlight.

Alden: It was about two feet long.

David: Did you have electricity in the house then?

Alden: At that time, no.

David: You didn’t.

Alden: We had lamps

David: I suppose everyone went to bed pretty early.

Alden: No, we stayed up. Everybody read around a lamp.

David: Go to bed . . . Didn’t you get up kind of early though? Why, what time did you get up?

Alden: Why . . . when I was about ten years old . . . I got a light job. Turn the lights off and on in Cohasset. And . . . you would have to get up at daybreak in the morning, every day of the year . . . and then you would have turn them back on at night. We got five dollars a month for it. We bought all our own clothes. Shoes and everything.

David: Five dollars a month.

Alden: We spent one nickel a month for an ice cream bar.

David: That must have been about 1922 then?

Alden: Something like that.

David: How long did you do it?

Alden: Oh maybe about . . . 1922? . . . let’s see . . .

David: A couple of years?

Alden: I think, about seven, eight years.

David: That long.

Alden: Uh-huh

David: Quite awhile.

Alden: Oh we had it a long time. Might have been longer then that too.

David: Why don’t you tell us about what you planted and the food you ate and stuff?

Alden: Well, a few years we planted a garden. We use to have a garden every year. Big garden . . . so my mother use to can everything. We never had to buy any vegetables. And we had our own pork. And we so the only thing we had to get was flour and stuff like that and sugar. You know, those were the days it wasn’t to easy getting. And . . . Oh . . . We had a garden, I remember once, when I was a kid that we planted . . . right around in March. And it was a nice spring, oh boy, so we planted it in March and in April everything was up. We had potatoes way up, beans. Well, we had potatoes, eating them before anybody hardly had the garden in. And everything was just perfect that year. Next year we did the same thing. Everything came up. Boy, it was just beautiful out in the garden. Frost came. Killed everything. So we had to start all over again. It was late that year. So that’s the way it went. After that we didn’t plant that early anymore.

David: Well did you have enough food at the end of the year to last the whole year?

Alden: Oh, always enough vegetables.

David. After you can ‘em they would last until next year?

Alden: Yeah. We’d have beans, beets, carrots, potatoes, onions. Everything.

David: Lots of potatoes?

Alden: Quite a bit.

David: They wouldn’t last until next year?

Alden: Most of the time it would.

David: They would?

Alden: Yeah.

David: What did you store the potatoes in?

Alden: Well, we ate all the potatoes, little ones--big ones.

David: Well, how did you store them?

Alden: How . . . did we keep them?

David: How did you store them, right.

Alden: Oh, put ‘em in the basement.

David: They stayed pretty good.

Alden: Yeah [pause] And huh . . . we had pretty good luck for that, the garden stuff. We had . . . Oh . . . we always had to keep the garden going. Hoeing in the garden. And after we got a little bit older, my Dad worked out in the woods so we had to help him out in the woods cutting logs.

David: What did you use for seeds? You buy seeds?

Alden: We bought all the seeds.

David: So you didn’t spend a lot of money though?

Alden: No

David: You ate almost everything yourself.

Alden: Yeah.

David: You bought the pigs from farmers or what?

Alden: We bought the pigs when they were little. I think we paid five or ten dollars a piece for them . . . And we bought them from farmers. [small pause] That’s what we had every year.

David: Pretty much the same . . . What did you do for entertainment?

Alden: Looked at each other [he laughs, David laughs]. Yeah. Every night we were home early. Always before dark. We always went to bed pretty early too because we had to get up early in the morning to do something.

David: Did you read at night or anything?

Alden: Oh, I didn’t do much reading, cause . . . I don’t know . . . I wasn’t in much habit of reading.

David: Played cards ever?

Alden: We use to play cards all the time.

David: Played cards all the time?

Alden: Played, Oh, what was it now . . . I don’t know. Some kids and neighbors use to come over and play some games. Yeah, that was about the only thing we ever did. Play run, the good sheep run, [and] hide and seek.

David: When did you start working out in the woods though?

Alden: Well, when I got around twelve years old.

David: Started working out in the woods?

Alden: Started working out in the woods in the summertime.

David: What did you do?

Alden: Oh, my Dad would cut the trees down and I’d trim ‘em and then he’d cut ‘em in lengths. When my brother got old enough, my Dad would cut ‘em down, I’d trim and then he’d cut ‘em up in lengths and my brother would peel ‘em. [small pause] So mosquitoes were real bad.

David: This was pulpwood? Oh, the mosquitoes were real bad?

Alden: In the summertime they were just thick.

David: Yeah, I suppose.

Alden: No water to drink, run out of water. You’d be so thirsty you’d find a hole in the ground someplace, a rut where a horse stepped. You’d drink that water out that horses hole in the ground.

David: How often did you get sick from that?

Alden: Never got sick, we use to take the water out of the swamp and drink it. It was all little red bugs in it. Never got sick.

David: If the bugs can live in it, I suppose you could live on it.

Alden: I suppose . . . I don’t know. I wouldn’t do it now.

David: So what did you do out in the woods. Use that for pulpwood.

Alden: Pulp wood. [pause] Yeah, that was no money in that though. We just made a living.

David: Well then, you had to buy all your own furniture. How did you get the furniture? Buy all that?

Alden: Yeah. We didn’t have . . . Oh, we had beds, tables and stuff like that but it wasn’t nothing fancy.

David: Did you use horses?

Alden: Yeah, we had a team of horses. When I was about . . . I was in the third grade, we moved out in the country. We had a team of horses and we had a couple of cows. We stayed out there for a couple of years. My Dad tried to farm and it seemed like nothing went right. Couldn’t make no money in farming so he went back to town and he worked out in town and mother and kids stayed out there in the country? And there nothing out there, just a bunch of . . . what do you call those . . . squirrels would be eating up all the grain. Big snakes. Lots of rabbits . . . eat up everything.

David: What kind of snakes?

Alden: You know, green, garden snakes.

David: What about the snake you chopped up and came back together?

Alden: Well, you want me to tell you the time [David laughs] I cut a snake in two, when I was a little kid, and the head part of it crawled away and a couple of hours later it came back and hooked onto it’s tail and the way it went.

David: What kind of a snake was that?

Alden: I don’t know what it was.

David: Did it look like a garter snake?

Alden: I don’t know what it was. There was so many snakes around the house. We had a bunch of pine stumps. You could walk out in the grass and you could feel snakes hit your shoes . . . bing, bing, bing, all the time.

David: You never liked snakes then.

Alden: Oh, afraid of snakes.

David: [pause] You going to give up?

Alden: That’s enough. That’s the whole thing, I think.

David: That’s not it. [I think the recorder was turned off and on]

Alden: When I was small they used to have a lot of logs on the river and [not understandable] use to ride those logs. I could watch him from where we lived. And then they had a pail factory about a half a block from our place. And they had to use logs down there. And there was a lot of logs on the river. Those were the old days. A long time ago. I’m not too old but old enough to remember that much. [Daddy laughs] I lived in Cohasset almost all my life except about three years. We lived in Grand Rapids when I was two years for six months. We lived in Wellis Spur for, oh, that was in the country, for six months but otherwise right in Cohasset. That was . . . They had a lot of buildings in those days, lot people around but things change for a little town.

David: [pause] So what have you figured out? [apparently had left the room and came back]

Alden: I told them about the logs.

David: Logs on the river?

Alden: Yes.

David: Well did you ever go to church when you were a kid?

Alden: Oh, we had to go to church every Sunday and we went to catechism every day.

David: Every day?

Alden: Every day when they had catechism. That was so many weeks in the summer you had to go every day.

David: Not in the winter?

Alden: You had that on the weekend.

David: How long did you do that?

Alden: Oh, I went every day until I started working out?

David: Quite a few years then.

Alden: It was about . . . I quit . . . let’s see. I went to church every Sunday until I was about sixteen years old.

David: What did you do at catechism?

Alden: Well it was just like . . . read the catechism . . . who made you and this and that.

David: Every day, huh?

Alden: Every day.

David: How long did it last?

Alden: It was a few . . . maybe two or three weeks in the summertime.

David: But I mean, half and hour a day?

Alden: Maybe half an hour to an hour. Then we had different priests come over. Had mission talks and stuff like that.

David: Did you have Sunday school too?

Alden: It was catechism and then we had church.

David: You didn’t have Sunday school?

Alden: Confirmation class.

David: On Sunday?

Alden: On Sunday and Saturday. Ah, communion, first communion class, well, you take so long and then you get your first communion. After you get your first communion you take confirmation and then you take that so long and then you can get confirmation then.

David: Go to Confession?

Alden: Went to Confession? Yes

David: Ever think of anything bad to say?

Alden: Anything bad?

David: Yeah.

Alden: Oh, I was a real bad boy. I use to do the worst things. [joking voice]

David: Is that what you told them?

Alden: No. [laughs]

David: What did you tell them?

Alden: I didn’t tell them much because I didn’t do much. [David laughs]

David: What did you say? I was pretty good this week?

Alden: I said, I was just real perfect this week. [Daddy laughs] Now that’s enough of that baloney.

David: That’s right. Didn’t you ever have anything bad that you wanted to tell him?

Alden: No, if I did I’d sure tell him.

David: You probably kept it to yourself.

Alden: No, I wasn’t scared of anything I did.

David: You told him your bad things. What if you did something bad. What would you about it?

Alden: I suppose I’d tell him.

David: Then what would he do?

Alden: Well, maybe he’d tell me to say more prayers. That’s all.

David: That’s what he’d do. Tell you to pray more. How often did they have confession?

Alden: Well you could go to confession . . . you could go to communion every Sunday if you wanted to.

David: Confession at the same time you mean?

Alden: We always said that the night before.

David: Saturday night?

Alden: Yeah or you could do that Sunday morning.

David: That kept him pretty busy?

Alden: Yeah, It was . . . it kept him pretty busy that way.

David: Did he try to keep you in line?

Alden: Yeah, but I still . . . [coughs] . . . be a bad boy, that’s all. I was just a bad boy. [Daddy and David laugh for a while] Now I hope you don’t believe all this.

David: This has to be all true now.

Alden: Oh, that is true.

David: This better be true.

Alden: It’s true. I put my hand on the bible and say it’s true.

David: OK. What else did you do?

Alden: Well I . . . did a lot of things when I was small. We played around the neighbors. Went swimming all the time.

David: What?

Alden: Went swimming every day. And we picked logs. Went swimming every day that way. Then in the wintertime we use to . . . I and another guy use to go to little dam, down there. And the hill was awfully steep and we use to go down there on skis and . . . go down a steep hill. And the water was open. The creek was partly open in some places, about eight feet, use to go right over the ice, right over the opening on skis. Never went in. Then we use to skate a lot. And ahh . . . remember once it was a little black spot at night and I was wondering what it was. Whole bunch of people skating around and I was wondering what that black spot was so I touched my toe in it so I went clear up to my . . . my leg . . . in the water was an air hole. So I stood beside the fire until my pants dried before I went home. [he laughs]

David: [pause] Did you worry about being poor?

Alden: Poor?

David: Yeah, did you worry about that?

Alden: No, it seemed like . . . it wasn’t too bad. We always had stuff to eat but I suppose it wasn’t like nowadays. But we didn’t have any money to spend. And every fourth of July we’d always get five gallons of ice cream. We’d eat ice cream all day.

David: That was the only time you had ice cream?

Alden: No but that was the biggest.

David: You chase a lot of women when you were a kid. [Joking]

Alden: When I was a kid?

David: Yeah.

Alden: Oh, that was the biggest trouble. [They both laugh] I never thought about that when I was . . .

David: [pause] Did you ever make wine at home and beer.

Alden: Oh, my Dad use to make some beer once . . . quite a few times.

David: Never made wine?

Alden: I don’t know. I think he tried to make dandelion once.

David: How’d he make the beer?

Alden: Oh, I don’t know. He set it.

David: What he’d use.

Alden: Water, malt, yeast . . . but I don’t know. That was no good.

David: What he’d use for bottles?

Alden: He had big bottles. Then they had a capper.

David: A capper

Alden: Yeah, he’d cap the bottles with . . . [the end of the tape]