Arthur & Viola
(recollections by Arthur Tschetter, son of Jacob)
One incident happened in our last year at Blaine School when I was in the 8th grade. It must have been in February or March of 1929. My sister Viola and four passengers were driving the 7 1/2 miles to and from school on this certain day. Most of the road to school was a county road where cars and wagons had caused two wheel tracks to be formed. All the single horse pulling buggy had to do was stay in the path between the two wheel tracks, which the horse learned to do without any guidance. We went to school that morning without any trouble. The last mile before the school was a graded dirt road. It was very muddy and rough caused by other vehicles using the road. This was because there was a lot of snow on the ground that was melting. I decided to detour through a pasture rather than follow the road. We came to a creek where the melting snow was starting to collect, but it was only 20 feet across and only one or two feet deep. So I let the horse pull us across without any problem. We took the detour through the pasture on the way home after school, but this time because of the melting snow during the day, the little creek had become a big lake about 50 yards wide. There was no way to go around it because of fences, and I didn't want to backtrack another mile to take the dirt road, so I decided to ford the lake with the horse pulling the buggy with the six kids inside. We only went a few yards, and the water was so deep that the horse was swimming, pulling the floating buggy behind him with the six screaming kids inside. Soon the water was inside the buggy, but by standing on the seats, we only got our feet wet. Thank goodness there wasn't any current. The buggy stayed upright and the faithful old horse kept swimming and pulling us along until the horse could finally touch bottom and pull us out on the other side.
Homesteaders in Minnesota
Bottom: Doris, ?, Violet, Toby
(Art never lived in Minnesota with family)
Directly above Toby: Viola
Directly above Viola: Jacob
Far, upper right: Katie
(Back, 2nd from left, dark complected: Cousin Goozsen (sp?)