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Biography by Kenneth KRAUSE —
The fourth son of Ferdinand and Justine (Bierwag) KRAUSE was Ferdinand KRAUSE, born September 29, 1891. He, along with his brothers and sisters were born in Tarutino, Akkerman, Bessarabia, South Russia, at various times under Russian or Romanian rule. Two brothers, Emil (1909) and Ferdinand in 1911, at the age of 19, left Tarutino to avoid conscription into the Russian military. Ferdinand immigrated to Canada, to the district of Irvine, Alberta, where the Wilkie's lived, friends of the Krause family in Bessarabia. While living with them, Ferdinand worked in Medicine Hat as a bricklayer's helper.
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Biography by Kenneth KRAUSE —
The fourth son of Ferdinand and Justine (Bierwag) KRAUSE was Ferdinand KRAUSE, born September 29, 1891. He, along with his brothers and sisters were born in Tarutino, Akkerman, Bessarabia, South Russia, at various times under Russian or Romanian rule. Two brothers, Emil (1909) and Ferdinand in 1911, at the age of 19, left Tarutino to avoid conscription into the Russian military. Ferdinand immigrated to Canada, to the district of Irvine, Alberta, where the Wilkie's lived, friends of the Krause family in Bessarabia. While living with them, Ferdinand worked in Medicine Hat as a bricklayer's helper.
When his brother Emil took a homestead in Hilda, Ferdinand took a homestead very near to his brother - the land had to be improved within a certain period of time. Friends helped out with food - large quantities of cooked beans and sauerkraut. Ferdinand built a little sod shack and lived there in the summer. In these years the winters were extremely cold so he worked and stayed with the Carl & Kathrina Otto family on the farm near Irvine, Alberta in the winter.
The Neumann's, Fred and Justina (Hammel) and their family had come to Canada in 1905 from South Dakota, USA. They lived on a farm near Irvine, in the Elk Water district. It was here that Ferdinand met Dora Neumann. She was born March 4, 1895 in Villecreek, South Dakota. Dora and Ferdinand were married January 26, 1914. We believe they could have lived in the 2-room mud hut for a short period of time while they built a small house on the farm. (The majority of the Neumann family moved back to the USA to California sometime during the years of crop failures - in 1922.)
Ferdinand and Dora's first daughter, Alma, was born November 27, 1914; Ida was born October 10, 1916; their third child, a son, Albert, was born January of 1918. Sadly, he died of pneumonia at 5 months. The third daughter, Elsie, was born February 29, 1920. As they had no son, they decided to adopt a boy. Kenneth Ferdinand Krause was fortunate to be adopted into this loving home.
It's very difficult to write a story when you weren't there. It is unfortunate that Elsie did not write this story, as she lived it, and knew it so much better than I did! (Ken Krause)
Dad took up a homestead in 1911 or 1912. I remember him talking about living on a side hill; it wasn't far from where the main farm was set up. I went to this hill and could see where he had dug in - there was just a hole in the side of it. I assume he moved farther north from this hill when he had a well drilled, it was about 80 ft. deep and had good water. About 100 yards south of this well he built a log barn; it had room for about 8 horses, with a corral to the east of the door.
For a home, he built a mud house - the walls were mud and rock 18 inches in width. This house was about 10 or 12 feet wide and about 24 feet long with a wall in the middle. The house was set on a north/south setting, the south end looked like it had been lived in; the walls had been painted in light blue (probably with calcimine). There was a door and a window set in 2" x 12" frames; the other room was used for a cow or two. When I came on the scene, this building was used to store coal and wood on the south end and ducks and geese were housed in the north end. To make the mud for this building Dad got a couple of wagon loads of clay, spread it on the ground about a foot deep and 20 feet round. Then he spread 6 inches of straw on top, barrels of water were hauled and poured on top of the straw. To mix this together Dad got his saddle horse and rode round and round, poured more water on till it had a workable consistency.
I rode a saddle horse one year to mix mud for an over-lay on the roof of this house. The walls were about 18" wide and 6 feet high. The roof was made of poles with one running the length at the peak of this building - the center was about 9 or 10 feet off the ground, then shorter poles (rafters) were laid from the walls to the center. On these poles Dad nailed boards, over these he put about 8 - 10 inches of mud. This made for a warm building, but every year or two he'd have to add more mud to replace what had washed off during rainstorms. I presume he lived in this until he could afford to buy lumber to build a house.
On this farm he built a barn for cows - it was about 20 ft. wide and 30 ft. long with a 10 ft. sliding door facing east, on the west side there were two window openings through which he could feed the animals. On the west side he built a wall 8 ft. away from the barn with ends in it - sort of a storage bin, this was filled with straw to feed the cows; there was a similar bin on the side of the log barn. On the end of the cow barn he built a 10 ft. by 20 ft. lean-to with a wooden floor, this was used to store grain. On the other end he built another lean-to with a concrete floor, this was used for pigs, calves, and other livestock over the years.
There was a chicken house built on the east side of the mud house, it was about 10 ft. wide and 30 ft. long with a sloping roof. This barn had three rooms - right next to the mud house was a 10 x 10 ft. room, this is where Mom kept her clucks to hatch eggs. There were turkeys, ducks and chickens; the geese had their own hatching nests in the goose mud house. The chicken barn was divided lengthwise; behind this wall there was a room about 6 ft. wide - this is where the chickens went to roost at night. The roosts were made of inch round poles 6 ft. long nailed on 2 x 4's - there were about 4 rows of poles. There were three sets of these that leaned against the back wall - oh, how I remember those roosts; it was my job to clean up under them! There was a door at the end where I could get them outside, I'd lay them down, scrape the muck off them and brush them with used oil. Then clean the chicken muck off the dirt floor, pretty smelly stuff, the worst time was in summer, there were a lot of chicken mites (the oil didn't kill them all) - I'd get them in my hair, I still feel itchy as I'm writing this!
At the front of the wall Dad built laying nests, there were two tiers made of 1 x 12" boards with a divider every 12 - 14 inches. In front there was a rail where they'd fly up to, then step into the nests and lay their eggs. On the dirt floor there was a trough for ground up grain; and one for water. Wheat was scattered on the floor and the chickens would scratch around to find the wheat seeds. They were also fed ground oyster shells, as well as all the eggshells we had on hand.
Another building on the farm was called the summer kitchen; it was about 12' wide and 30' in length; under this building there was a root cellar. The kitchen part, 12 x 12 feet had two windows, one facing south and the other facing west, the entrance door was on the northeast corner. In this kitchen we had a wood and coal/cow chip cook stove, it had a water reservoir on the side and a warming closet on top. There was a cupboard on the east wall and a worktable on the south side below the window. It also had the cream separator on the east wall. The other end was used as a dining room; it had a long table with benches, that's where the threshing crew ate. Mom did all the cooking and baking in this building. To get to the root cellar there was a 3 x 3 foot trap door in the floor; it was on hinges so you just swung it open and went down the ladder.
Dad owned 1120 acres of land, I believe he homesteaded 640 acres; the remainder was bought on tax sales or from homesteaders who gave up during the dry spells. Dad had a philosophy about finances, before you buy, make sure you have the cash in hand to pay for it; he lived by that all his life and it stood him in good stead. Mom and Dad helped a lot of people who were down on their luck. I remember him telling me about the 1920s, he sold a milk cow to a fellow so he could have milk for his young family. A year or so before Dad died there was a knock on the door of his Chilliwack home, there was the man he had sold the cow to some 40+ years before. He thanked Dad for waiting so long and paid for the cow - gave him the same amount of money he bought the cow for.
Dad had a lot of farm implements; these were parked in a row along the farm fence line. There were two two-bottom gang plows, each pulled by four horses, a one-bottom sulky pulled by two horses, a 8 foot disc, several sets of harrows - when laid out they were 12 to 16 feet wide, with a cart to ride on, pulled by six horses. He also had a 12 foot header with binder attachment that needed six horses, a header box wagon, two grain wagons - one had a capacity of 150 bushels, the other one held 100 bushels of grain. There was another steel-wheeled wagon used for general farm work such as picking stones off fields, hauling manure from the stables, etc.
In later years he built a barge which was used with the header at harvest time - this was about 8 feet wide and 10 feet long and 7 feet high, mounted on two wide wheels, the floor was made to tilt - as it tilted a full width door would swing up at the back and the grain stack would slide out - when the stack was out, the door would swing down, pull the back of the floor up and be ready for the next stack. To move these stacks from the field to the threshing machine he and his threshing partner built a bullrake - it was a sweep that was pushed by four horses, it could pick up the barge stack and move it to the threshing machine.
In the 1920s Dad and his partner Chris Krause (3rd cousins, unknown to them) owned a threshing outfit - it had a straw burning steam tractor to run the threshing machine. Dad said it was his job to keep feeding straw and water into the steamer, and Chris looked after the threshing machine. Besides the threshing outfit, they had two 150 bushel grain wagons and a grain elevator to put the grain into the granaries, saved a lot of shovelling.
On the farm there were two bob sleighs, one with a grain box on it and one with a straw rack to haul straw to feed the livestock in the barns. To go to town he had a 4-wheel buggy - in summer-time it was pulled by two horses; in the winter there was a cutter (sleigh) closed in on the sides, but open at the top. Many a time I got stuck in the bottom of the sleigh with horse blankets to cover me up and keep me warm.
In threshing time they'd start at Chris Krause's farm, then move to Uncle Alfred's, from there to the Bauer's - 2 farms, father and son, and when they were finished there, they moved to our place and finished up for the season. The threshing machine was parked at our place, the next year they started at our place and worked their way back to Chris's place. While threshing on 5 farms, they had enough hands to make up a threshing crew. Some years, however, they needed to hire additional help.
Sometime in the 1920s the straw-burning steamer was replaced by the Oil Pull Rumley, a fairly big unit that used gas and cost a little more at threshing time. In 1930 Dad and Chris bought two new Case Model L tractors. These tractors were more versatile and could be used for field work.
When Dad bought his Case tractor he also bought a 4-bottom John Deere plow. A few years later he got an 8' one-way disc plow with a seeder box on it. He didn't use the tractor too much for plowing and seeding, always used horses, they didn't need gas, just a lot of straw and grain. For seeding he had 2 seed drills - a 10 ft. and a 14 ft, pulled by six horses and eight horses respectively. My sisters spent many days sitting on a gang plow or standing on the back of a seed drill helping Dad in the fields.
Dad owned 1120 acres of land, but he also had 640 acres of lease land used for grazing cattle. He usually had 40 to 50 head - some 20 calves were branded (bull calves were castrated). Every ranch had their own brand; Dad's brand was FK with a bar across the top. Of these, 900 acres were under cultivation; half was put into summer fallow, so there was a lot of plowing to cover 450 acres. Seeding started about the middle of April, when seeding was done, summer fallow plowing started. First part of July the summer fallow had to be worked as Russian thistles and tumble weeds took over - these thistles would grow to a ball one to two feet in diameter from a single seed. When ripe the stem would break close to the ground and the wind would blow them - rolling across the fields scattering thousands of seeds as they rolled. Tumble weeds did the same thing - these weeds usually did their seeding in the fall, then were plowed under in the spring, but started growing all over again. To work the weeds out, Dad used a rod weeder - it had a 1" rod about 12' long that was pulled just under the surface of the ground crossways, it would root out the weeds.
One year Dad used his tractor to pull this implement, sometimes weeds would get hung up on the rod so they had to be pulled out by hand - instead of getting off the tractor and walking back to do this, he had Elsie ride on the back of the rod weeder, he'd stop and Elsie would pull them out. Being very dry and dusty Elsie would get the worst of it, when I met them at the end of the job; she was so dirty she didn't look like a human being!
We also had a grass mower and a hay rake - we had some low places in the fields that couldn't be seeded due to water that collected with the winter run off, when the water went down the grass would grow. This grass was cut and dried, then brought home and stacked for winter feed. During the 1930s things were pretty tough for a lot of people - a lot of men looking for work. The government had a plan for any farmer who'd take in a man for the winter, house and feed him and they would pay the farmer $5.00 a month. The government paid the worker another $5.00 per month, Dad always gave this to the hired hand and he helped take care of the horses, cows, clean barns, etc. In the spring most of the hired men left for greener pastures.
Farming in those days was a real chore - take plowing for instance: Dad needed 12 horses for two plows, up at daybreak, bring in the horses, put them in the barn, feed and harness them. When that was done, it was in for breakfast, then back out to bring the horses out of the barn, put bridles on them, team them up and drive or ride them out to the field. Hook them onto the plow, get on the plow (steel seat) - then giddy-up, yeh-hah and away you went. If you were lucky you didn't hit a stone in the ground, if you did, you ended up behind the horses or on the ground - they didn't have seat belts on those plows!
In 1928 Dad built a new hip-roofed horse barn at a cost of $2,000.00. It had room for 15 horses, two to a stall. It had wood floors in it plus a big hay mow on top. This barn was about 40 ft. long and 30 ft. wide. On each side he built a lean-to - these were about 16 ft. wide and 40 ft. long. The one on the north side had a wooden floor; the northwest end was divided off - about 10 feet of this was used to store barley or oat chop to feed the horses, the rest was used for grain storage. On the south side Dad built another lean-to about 16 x 40 ft. - this was used to house cattle and horses in winter, there was a manger that ran the length of the barn for feeding, this had a dirt floor.
In the main barn there was a manger in every stall, to get straw into the manger there was a hole about 2' x 3' cut in the mow floor to push feed through. For the lean-to there were holes cut in the wall to push feed out, this straw was run through a hammer mill that broke it down to 1" pieces and blew it up into the mow. The hammer mill was also used to make chop; they just changed the sieve from 1" to 1/16 inch.
The main barn had a 10 ft. sliding door on each end, so to clean the manure out, Dad just drove through with a wagon, or bob sleigh in winter, pitched the manure in, and drove out to the field. The lean-to on the south side had doors on the end so he could drive through there as well; he spread a lot of straw, so the animals stayed fairly clean.
A couple of months before Elsie died she was telling me how Dad put her on a wagon with a team of horses and sent her to town (10 miles one way), to get a load of lumber - she was only 8 years old, when she got there the man at the lumber yard loaded it for her and she took it back home!
In 1929 Dad and Mom built a new house on the farm at a cost of $3,000.00. It had a full basement with an 8 x 8 ft. cistern in one corner. They used this to catch rain water for storage and when it didn't rain enough Dad rented a water wagon in Hilda and hand pumped water out of our dam after spring run off, and poured it into the cistern. To get water out of it, we had a small hand pump mounted on the cupboard - we used this water in the stove reservoir; this was soft water, our well water was very hard. The spout of the tea kettle would get blocked by alkali deposits. This house had a coal furnace in the basement with hot air and cold air registers, also had a coal storage room that would hold about 8 ton of coal.
In the mid 1930s it was very dry with very little water in the South Saskatchewan River - this exposed a lot of coal seams on the river bottom so Dad and the Uncles would go down and break coal off the river bed. They only did this for a year or two; the coal was not very good, left a lot of slag after burning.
In the summer time Dad and my sisters would go out on the ranch and pick up dried cow chips, which were burned in summer time for cooking in the summer kitchen. Where we lived it was bald prairie - no trees except on farmyards, if they had water for them, so wood and coal had to be bought, with poor crops and money tight, you made do with what you could find!
In the fall after freeze-up it was time to replenish the meat larder. Dad would get together with one of the Uncles and butcher a yearling steer - this was divided among the two families. There were some steaks, roasts, and lots of ground beef. Much of the meat was canned; out there on the prairies there were no freezers, except for the cold in wintertime. The hamburger was made into sausage, then smoked and canned - one year we had a lot of geese, they butchered 10 or 12, saved the feathers for pillows or bed quilts; then skinned the birds. The skins were cut into cubes, boiled to render all the fat, this left skin rinds - these were salted and eaten with breakfast (real tasty). The fat was used for frying and baking, rubbed on frost bitten cheeks, etc. The rest of the birds were de-boned, ground up and mixed with beef hamburger and made into sausage, then smoked (delicious)! To make all this they had a hand cranked food chopper and sausage stuffer. For casings Dad took the small intestines from the steer, turned them inside out, cleaned them and washed them real good and used them for the sausages.
About 1938 Dad and his partner Chris Krause bought a new Case threshing machine, I think it was July. I awoke one morning hearing this truck roaring, coming up a big hill on the road allowance where nobody ever drove because it was too steep, but this fellow made it up. On the edge of the pasture Dad had dug out a lot of clay - this left a sloping hole 4 feet deep, the fellow backed his truck into it - that left the deck of the truck level with the ground. Dad drove his tractor over and pulled the threshing machine off the truck. Chris and Dad worked as a partnership until about fall of 1943, approximately 20 years, then they split up - Chris got the threshing machine, Dad got the bullrake and the grain loader.
Then Dad teamed up with Uncle Emil - they bought a McCormick Deering threshing machine and did some threshing. George brought his big combine over and they combined a lot of the wheat fields. This combine was fairly large - it had a 16 ft. cut and a 70 bushel grain tank, fully loaded it held 4200 lbs. of grain. Some of our fields had long grades and George's D John Deere spun out trying to pull it up, so George got his brother over with his 102 rubber tire Massey-Harris tractor and tied on to the front of the John Deere - on the hills he throttled up and pulled them over.
Alma married Edward Walker in October of 1938. They rented a farm next to Uncle Alfred's. Their son, Morley, was born in 1940. It was a very sad time when Alma got a chill and became very ill, ending in pneumonia and taking her life on April 15, 1941. She was only 26 years old! Ed, unable to care for a very young child, just months old, gave him over to his grandparents, they adopted him as their own in June 1941.
Ida completed her education in Hilda, took her teacher's training and taught at various schools during the years 1936-1943 as a teacher or substitute teacher. Ida accepted the Lord as her Saviour and wanted to become a missionary. To that end she attended Prairie Bible Institute in Three Hills, Alberta in 1943-45.
Elsie and George were married March 16, 1941. George took over his parent's farm, and they moved into town. Bruce was born in 1942. George was conscripted into the army in the fall of 1942; he was stationed at the army base at Calgary and at Prince George, B.C. Elsie moved back home and helped her father harvest the crops. The family worked on papers to get George out of the army because he was needed on the farm. He arrived back home from the army in April of 1943. Elsie had to repay all the monies she had received.
One Tuesday in June 1943 before school I went to Mom's room, she was sitting on the edge of the bed holding her side and rocking back and forth. When I got home that afternoon, Uncle Emil had taken her to the Hat hospital. Unfortunately, Mom had appendicitis, she lingered for less than a week, but her appendix had ruptured and the poisons in her body killed her. She passed away on June 19, 1943. She was only 48 years old. When Morley's dad came to ask to have him back, Dad would not allow it because he had promised his wife he would raise Morley as his own. Sometimes one wonders how much grief one family can bear. But we know God is with us in every situation and understands our pain.
After the death of Mom Dora in June of 1943, there were 3 children to look after - Ken 11½; Morley 2½; and Bruce, 1 year old, as well as the cooking, washing and cleaning. Elsie and George moved in with us and kept the family together. Dennis was born in 1944.
In 1944 Dad & Uncle Emil took a trip to Chilliwack, British Columbia. Emil bought the property on Yale Road East, and Dad bought a 35 acre farm on Gill Road in the Rosedale area (Uncle John had bought a farm about 1/4 of a mile down the road from Dad's farm). October 24, 1944 Ferdinand married Ida Frey in Medicine Hat; she had one daughter, Frieda, aged 15. They left for B.C. the next day. I stayed home on the farm with Elsie and George.
This was not an easy trip - they were travelling with a fully loaded one ton truck. The first day they had 3 flat tires; they made it to Calgary and stayed in a motel with 2 single beds. They had to go over the Big Bend Highway, at that time the Trans-Canada in B.C. (Rogers Pass was not built till 1962). It was 100+ miles north from Golden, then south to Revelstoke. The second day of travel went quite smoothly, they stopped for supper at Golden. Seeing it was still light, Dad suggested they carry on, but they hadn't gone too many miles before they ran into heavy fog. They found a safe place to park, and spent the night in the truck. The third night was spent either in Revelstoke or Salmon Arm. The fourth evening they arrived in Lytton, populated only by Indians. They stayed in a motel and Frieda remembers there were many apples. The fifth day, Sunday October 29, 1944 about noon, they finally made it to Rosedale; Dad remembered how to get to Uncle John's. They were not at home; they had gone to the church service. A neighbour saw them walking about and took them to their place for a bite to eat, and they waited there until Uncle John came home to help them unload.
The house on Dad's farm was not in very good repair, so the family went to Chilliwack to buy some paint and wallpaper, as well as needed supplies and groceries. Mom and Frieda went to work to fix it up; as well as looking after Morley. Dad only stayed at the farm about 3 days; then he took the train back to Hilda to get a box car to haul the remainder of their goods and animals. Dad was away for about 3 weeks.
Dad came back by train in November to take me and the other implements and stock to Rosedale. Dad went to the station in Hilda - he wanted to rent a double door boxcar C.P.R. The station master said he couldn't get a double door car. Not to be outdone, Dad came home, went out to the chicken barn and caught two big birds, butchered them and went back to town and gave these to the station master. Dad says, "Do you think you can get me a double door car?" A week later he had the car of his choice! You see, we needed a big boxcar, we had a sulky plow, hand plow, disc, mower, wagon, 2 horses, 4 cows, 3 geese, and then there was a water barrel, a few sacks of chop, straw, some hay, a chesterfield and some other furniture.
On Fridays the train came to town, so Friday morning November 9, we left home driving with the wagon pulled by the team of horses, cows tied on the back and headed for town. We got everything loaded and were ready for the 4 p.m. departure.
The afternoon we left Hilda it was about 35º below, but we were dressed for it. We had to milk the cows by lantern light. We first headed east, stopped in Swift Current, that's where a lot of people shipped their cream, then on to Calgary. There the cows were put in quarantine for 7 days.
When our week was up and the cows passed their tests, we were off. We left Calgary sometime during the night; we were dropped off at Hope by the C.P.R. Now we had to wait for the C.N.R. to pick us up, this was a Sunday morning, we waited all day and Dad kept bugging them! Sunday, November 19, 1944, in the evening we were on our way, and got into the Rosedale station after dark. Dad had phoned Uncle John and Emil and Eric came to the station on their bikes. The cows and horses were taken out of the boxcar and herded down McGrath Road to Camp River Road, and then down Gill Road to their new home. The next day the remaining items in the boxcar were unloaded and taken to their home.
The house on the Gill Road farm was old, heated by a McClary wood stove in the kitchen, with a warming closet, and a reservoir to heat a bit of water. There was no running water in the house, and of course, an outhouse. The living room had a wood/coal heater. There was another building very close by, part woodshed and part sleeping quarters with a stove in it where I (Ken) slept.
A year or two after they moved into their Rosedale home, Dad installed a tap in the kitchen with cold running water. In 1949 Dad bought 35 more acres of adjoining land. They ran a dairy farm, grew corn, made hay, and had a large garden with the most delicious tomatoes and peppers. They had some nut trees and fruit trees on the property by the house. Dad always worked very hard!
The operation of the Krause family farm in Hilda continued to be run by George and Elsie (Krause) Bender after Dad moved to B.C. in 1944. Several years later the property was purchased by them. (Two daughters were added to their family - Marian in January 1949 and Pamela born in June of 1956.)
Our family attended the Evangelical Church regularly - about a 10 mile drive into Chilliwack. Dad was very good about visiting friends who had lost their wives and were now alone. I thought he did this because he remembered how it had been for him when his daughter and his wife died, only 2 years apart, both at such an early age.
On August 20, 1952 Frieda Frey married Leo Bodener and that same year on October 3, 1952, I married Dorleen Bodener (Leo's sister). After Glen was born in 1953 Grandpa and Grandma often stopped in on their way to church to see him.
Dad operated the farm until November 1954; then moved into Chilliwack. (Dorleen & I and Glen moved to the farm, Sharon was born there in October 1955.) Dad wasn't much for retirement, he had a couple of acres of land on which he planted raspberries; also had a cow, a little cow barn, and a chicken house. In spring he would buy about 50 chicks, keep them in the basement until they were old enough to be put out into the chicken barn.
In the spring Dad and Uncle Emil would go to work in the Hop fields, hoeing and training the hops to go up the strings that were hung from overhead wires. A year or two he also worked for Fraser Vale pitching peas into the pea thresher machine, I believe they worked 10 hour days. He was in his late 60's pushing 70.
In March of 1957 at the age of 16 Morley left home and settled in Regina, Saskatchewan. He had always had serious asthmatic attacks in B.C. and had greatly improved with the move. June 18, 1960 he married Bertha Beutler.
The last visit Elsie & George and their family - Bruce, Dennis, Marian and Pam made to Chilliwack before Dad passed away was in July of 1960. The photo is in front of the Albert Krause home on Prest Road. (Aunt Annie made the most delicious kuchen!) Dorleen and I did not return to Chilliwack until December, 1961, so we missed this visit.
Dad had an operation in January 1969, after he recuperated from that, he and Uncle Emil were planning to go back to work in the hop fields. March 18 Dad went out to the river bar and got some sand to repair some stucco on his house. He finished that, had his supper, and enjoyed a cup of tea before going to bed. March 19th at 5:00 a.m. he was snoring pretty loudly. My stepmom poked him and he stopped breathing. We got the call - Dad had a stroke and had gone on to his heavenly home! His funeral was held on March 24, 1969, he was 77 years of age. We have many fond memories of Dad!
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