On Sunday the plan was to go to Lisbon and do some birthday celebrating. The boys and all were able to come then, too. Then came a blizzard and we all stayed home. Weather conditions were pretty good here so we decided to go to a movie that we'd been wanting to see since it came out: Les Miserables. How long since we had attended a musical, neither of us could remember - maybe never as a married couple. In this movie not a single spoken word was uttered; they were, in its entirety, sung. The movie was well worth the price of admission; we both liked it. The book on which the story was based was written by Victor Hugo sometime in the 19th century. France experienced a good bit of political and social turmoil during this period and the movie did a good job portraying it.
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Interesting items can always be found in the Heritage Center. I returned again to the Baguhn papers. He wrote some good stuff and here is one that I thought approached the Ole and Lena type, although it might be true. An old timer in early settler days was a Norwegian named Henry Larson. It was at Herman Schultz's place that he learned German thinking it was American. Next he went to Dan Cornwall's, and there he tried to get Dan to understand when he spoke German. It didn't work. Then he tried Norwegian. He couldn't understand that either. Then he said to Nicolai Arntson, working for Cornwall, also. "What kind of an American is he? He can't even speak English."
Another example of failure to communicate is this one. He wrote, "Some are living today (he meant the 1950's) who could neither read nor write in their youth. Their state of being was much the same as the Indian, spoken of by Mrs. Cavalier in the long ago 1850's, who shook his head and was saddened to think that he could not talk with the paper as the white man could."
Wives must have been cheap to obtain. Baguhn told a brief story of a trade made by a half-breed Indian named Joe Marlow who gave up a pony, a stack of hay and a winter's supply of flour for a fourteen year old girl.
For some years now I have been interested in the early freighters or bullwhackers who criss-crossed the countryside and learned a word that I will file away for future use - booja (bouillion) was cooked in their camps. They knew the trails, were hardened to the long wearing and tiring walking beside their oxen. The monotony of the trail was made less so by hunting for game to provide meat for the booja. Around their campfire they could pass the liquor jug, smoke their pipes, and eat of the prepared booja.
He called the contents of the brown jug the conquering hero of those lonely, long, and dusty trails. Its firewater subdued the Indian as nothing could. In one case Indian used it against Indian. Joe Marlow camped with some fellow half-breeds who were driving a herd of ponies taken from the Sioux. He plied them with liquor until they passed out, and then drove some of the horses off for his own profit.
