OTTO OLDS
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In his memoirs related to early Connell history, Otto Olds wrote that he arrived as a young boy with his family from Nebraska on December 23, 1900, when Connell consisted of a depot and a section house, plus one store whose stock of goods was so meager it could have been hauled away with a two-horse team, he said. “It was a beautiful day, the bunchgrass was green from a recent rain, and the temperature was only 65 degrees,” he stated, which was such a contrast to the wintry weather they had experienced during their three-day and two-night train ride from Nebraska.
“I can’t remember for sure, but it probably seemed like the Garden of Eden, but we found out different in the next few years, and Dad would have given anything at times to be back on a Nebraska farm paying rent with two-fifths of the crop, but we didn’t have the money to return. With the $1,400 that Dad brought west with him, Dad paid the filing on a 160-acre homestead, and purchased 320 adjoining acres. He also had to buy a 250-gallon capacity wooden hauling tank to haul water with his four-mule team, Olds said. Oh, yes, we paid only $2 an acre for the 320 acres we bought,” he added.
Olds’ dad plowed 15 acres with a walking plow, or “foot-burner,” as they were called then, after he had first erected a small house and a barn, built with 1”X12” timbers standing on end. A harvest job the first summer at Lind paid $3.50 per day to his father for himself and four mules, enabling him to buy winter groceries.
Olds mentions other families who came to the Connell area, and one of the problems faced by all of them was the lack of water and wood, there being almost no trees. Olds says he can’t remember having a Thanksgiving Day that year, and that he had his doubts about Santa Claus finding them in Washington again. He said they were feeling pretty low, but soon after dark they heard a loud knock at the back door. “Aunt Mary took the only lamp we had and went into the kitchen, followed by us kids, and behold, there was Santa Claus and the most beautiful Christmas tree I ever saw!” Olds wrote. “It was made out of sagebrush limbs nailed to a 2X4, trimmed with colored paper chains, popcorn and six candles.
“The presents consisted of homemade shirts for the boys; a dress for my sister Laura, and a small toy apiece for the smaller children… We were so excited we never realized Mamma had disappeared and came in as Santa Claus,” Olds concluded.
Another fascinating and moving story remembered by Olds about those early days concerned a Northern Pacific work train parked on a siding near Connell, which was then not much more then a whistle stop. Olds said that the work train had about 150 Italian laboring men who lived on it while they did track construction work in the vicinity. He said the story took place on a beautiful Easter morning in 1902, and that it happened to him and another small boy. They were out exploring the countryside that beautiful morning,… when suddenly one of them stopped, with a startled expression saying, “I think I hear music.”
They ran to the nearest hill, Olds said, “like the shepherds of old… and indeed they there was singing and music. The Italian laborers, hundreds of them, thousands of miles from home and families, were commemorating the resurrection of our Lord. Dressed in Old Country Easter finery of many colored costumes, and with at least twelve accordions to furnish music, the men sang, danced and performed a religious ceremony for at least two hours,” Olds wrote.
“Can you imagine a 10-year-old boy getting a plow for his birthday? I did,” Olds recalls. “Dad had been doing the plowing with a ‘footburner,’ or walking plow. One day he saw a ‘sulky,’ the first riding plow made, in the hardware store, so he bought it for $17.50… In 1908 we acquired a two-bottom gang plow. One could plow five or six acres a day, and it was pulled by six horses or mules… What a change in the past 60 years! Now we use 65-horse-power Cats, and if we don’t plow 100 acres a day we are unhappy, “ Olds concluded.
