After a while we really got big. Each family got a little Ford truck—a one-ton truck. Then we put a box on the back that each one built. This is how we came to church then. We sat on the gas tank in front and the family was in back in the box. That’s the way we started to go to church with our vehicles. We didn’t have to drive with horses anymore. Boy, that was something great when we could leave the horse go in the pasture, jump in the truck, and go to church. After we had those trucks for a couple of years, we bought cars. Hey! You should have seen the cars come to church. That was something different, driving with cars right up to the church. We didn’t need our horses, although in winter time, when there was lots of snow, we had to all come with sleds. Each one had to drive his horses and sled to church then. But if the road was passable, we went with the cars.
Our first car was a Model T Ford ($350) from George Westland. It was a used car, and since we had no roads we followed wagon trails. Sometimes the ruts were so deep we had to straddle them. In the first six to eight years, farming was done by horses, and then the Ford tractors and trucks came out, which made farming more efficient and faster. Our first tractor was a Fordson that we got in about 1920 or ’21. We were the first ones to have a Model T Ford car in the community, and were often called on by Mrs. Baker, the pioneer nurse, to be the ambulance. Many, many times have I driven to get Mrs. Baker for sick people or when there was a youngster arriving. I never counted the trips I made, but I made many, many trips. Like the J. P. Thiessens—I drove every one of them that arrived there, and Pete Pankratz, just not the two oldest ones. They were born in Minnesota. The rest were all born here in Montana. He would call me up and say, “Get your car ready.” “OK,” I’d say. “I’m ready,” and then when the call came, I’d jump into my clothes and trousers and I’d start the car and off I went, rain or shine, storm or no storm. We had to go. Many, many others I helped drive to the hospital in Glasgow.
I’ll never forget Roland Toews. One time he was so very sick and the snow was so deep. They asked if I would come with the Nash car and they would help me through the snow so they could take that boy to Glasgow to the hospital. We loaded him on boards, then on a mattress and some blankets. We had to stretch him out. He couldn’t bend himself, and he had to sleep on that bed. That’s how we took him to Glasgow. Well, there was a coulee with snow four or five feet deep. I didn’t want to shovel all that snow; that was quite a distance across the coulee. Must have been fifty feet or more of a drift. So I thought, “I’ll take one chance. This time I’ll take a chance and see once what will happen.” So I backed up about an eighth of a mile and took second gear and drove 60 miles per hour in second and jumped over that snow bank. We didn’t have to shovel. That was something I would never do again, because what would have happened if I had dived into the snow bank and got stuck. We’d have to shovel car and everything out. But we got over it.
Another time Abe Unger was very, very sick. They called me about two in the morning. They said come quick and take him to the doctor. So I went down there and we loaded him up and started out for Glasgow at night, three in the morning. It was very dark and he was very sick. About between Frazer and Nashua, he started to throw up. Mrs. Unger sat in the back and she thought he was going to die. Well, I didn’t want to stop on the road and have him die there, so I started going faster. I had the car up to 90 miles an hour. Boy, I thought, just so the Lord will help me hold the steering wheel. I wanted to get him to the doctor before he would pass away. And, lo and behold, right about a mile or two from Nashua there was a curve in the road, and when I came around the curve with such speed, a bunch of horses were on the road. What now? In the wink of an eye, I jumped the ditch. I didn’t want to tear into all those horses. I got free on the other side. There was no fence—that was a blessing. Then I came back and drove through the ditch again and back on the road. Off we went again. But that scared us about to death. If I had gone straight, I would have plowed through all those horses, but nothing happened. Just a little shaken up and that was all. We got Mr. Unger to the hospital, and the doctor came right away.
In 1919 I got very sick and had my appendix removed. Once Kathrina got very, very sick, so she was taken to Glasgow to the hospital. She had to have surgery on her gall bladder. After a week of much pain and suffering, she got better. We thanked the Lord for healing her.The homesteader’s life had many troubles and was not always easy. I rolled over with a tractor twice, and Elvin rolled a complete backward somersault with a tractor. On another incident, I was loading a large, flat rock on my wagon when my horses spooked and took off running. I was thrown in front of the wagon, but escaped without injury. I called this a miracle of God. My horses ran seven miles before I recovered them.