With James E. Kerns, interviewer

24 April 1984

James:  Tell us about this experience in Slack.  You went to school over the hill?

Kate:  We had to walk sometimes, and sometimes we rode.  As Peggy says, we rode and tied.  When we had to ride and tie, two of us would ride say two-and-a-half miles, and then we'd tie the horse up on top of the hill, and then the others would come along, and two would go ahead and walk, and those that were coming along would get on the horse and ride the rest of the way.

James:  You only had one horse and had to trade off?

Kate:  Um-hum.

James:  Who was the teacher you had at Slack?

Kate:  I can't remember her name.  The only thing I can remember about her is that she had wax in her ears, and she never cleaned her ears!  I didn't like her.  I don't know her name, and it's terrible that all you remember about your teacher is something like that.

Peggy:  Can you remember all the teachers there at the ranch?  That was before Tom and I went to school, and you had school at the ranch.

Kate:  We only had one teacher

INTERVIEW OF KATE HARKEN AND TOM KERNS

4 July 1988

The occasion is the gathering of the family following the death of Margaret Olive Kerns, (Aunt Peggy), yesterday, on the 3rd of July 1988.  People in attendance are Tom Kerns (her twin), Katherine Harken (her sister) and her husband Rudy, Lorna (Kate's daughter) and Harold Kortum, and Tom Kerns' children and grandchildren and their spouses.

Kate:  Dad always asked everybody to sit down and eat with us whenever they would come in.  We often had grubline riders, and this Indian came in, Arm Around His Neck, and Dad said, "Sit down, sit down and eat.  We’re just having some beans and ham."  So he said, "Fine, me sit down."  So Dad dished him up some beans, and he ate the beans with relish, but there was a ham bone in there, and Dad just put the ham bone over on his plate and said, "Here, you can have the ham bone with the meat on it."  "Fine, fine."  So he ate the meat all off the ham bone, and then he licked it off and put it back in the bean pot.  That was too much for us.  We couldn't stand that.  We always stayed away from the table that time, too.

James:  Did you know about the twins before they were born?

Kate:  Oh, yes, oh, yes, we knew about them.  Mother was very large.  She would be with twins, you know…I could tell a little more about the Indians coming in.  I could tell you some of their names:  Mare Walks Pretty, Pretty On Top, Mary One Goose, Arm Around His Neck, Old Redneck, and another one or two.  They'd come in there and walk around one at a time and go around and look at the babies, and grunt and carry on, and they left little gifts there on the bed.  Each one would lay a gift down for the babies, and they were lovely things, all hand-stitched and embroidered with beads.  It was very elaborate.  For years they kept those little beaded moccasins that were given by the Indians, tied with a knot and hung up by the fireplace.  What happened to them?  I'd like to know.  They were adorable—little tiny moccasins, and they were beaded perfectly.

Mac:  Was there a special feeling that the Indians had for Grandfather and Grandmother?

Kate:  Oh, yes, they loved them very much.  And they were always welcome.  Did Peggy tell you about the name they had for Dad? They called him Kudtha (Coo' tah) because he laughed at them.  He thought they were funny, and he laughed at all their jokes, and he'd throw his head back and guffaw and laugh so happily and joyfully that they called him Kudtha, and that was his name.

James:  What about the naming of the twins?  You have some more input on that.

Kate:  We had to each write their names on a piece of paper and put it in a hat, Dad told us, and then they'd draw the names out.  Well, I always loved the name "Belle," I thought that was a very beautiful name, so I thought "Belly" would be pretty.  I thought if it was a girl, call her Belly, and call the little boy Billy after our Uncle Bill—Billy and Belly.  Those were the names I had picked.  That's all I know.  I don't remember the other part.  I was interested in what Josephine had said about…was it, Flossie?  When she and I played in the bushes she was  "Fortina" or "Forina" or some fancy name, and I was always "Belle."  We rode stick horses.  But that's not about the twins.

James:  How did the twins get named?

Kate:  Our father did most of the naming of the babies in the Kerns family, and they each had at least one name that was chosen from the Bible.  The first baby was John Wesley Kerns.  The second one was Martha Josephine Kerns.  The third one was Mary Katherine Kerns (I think it was Katherine Mary, but either way).  The fourth one did not get a Biblical name.  He got a family name, and that was Albert Cooley Kerns.  The fifth one was James Fredrick Kerns, and he didn't like his name, and he changed it to Jack.  And he'd fight anybody that called him any other thing.  That's how he became Jack Kerns.  The next one was Margaret Olive Kerns and Thomas Lorance Kerns, so that's the record.

Kate:  I love to tell about the Indians.  They used to camp down on Gay Creek, and they'd go berry picking.  Dad would always give them something to eat.  And he would give them maybe a lump-jaw cow that he couldn't sell on the market, and they were always glad to get it, and they would butcher it right there.  We kids were kind of a gruesome bunch, and we'd stand and watch 'em.  They'd butcher that beef, and they'd cut it all up and build a big bonfire and then took the intestines and wind it around sticks and hold it over the fire, and cook 'em.  And they ate the intestines.  That was a very great (treat).  What do they call it?…chitlins, I think.  And they also saved the liver for special occasions because that was supposed to be a great delicacy.  They took the liver and they'd cut it all up into little pieces, and then they'd gather around the teepee after dark, and sit in there in a circle and they'd pass that liver around, and each one would take a little piece of it and they'd eat that, and that was supposed to make 'em st-r-ong.

James:  Was it cooked?

Kate:  No!  Raw!  It had to be raw.  Well, our brother John thought that would be kind of fun to do that.  He thought he wanted to join the tribe and become an Indian, I guess, because he got right in the circle, and he sat there and when they passed it around, he took a piece, and he ate it, but he didn't care for it, for some reason.  That was something I remember.  I can't remember what happened after that except that they went on back to the reservation with their beef and their berries.

Kate:  …You did not take the 8th grade at all.  Lawrence Davis was in the 8th grade and you and Peggy were in the 7th grade, and you would all listen to him reciting, because there were only just about 6 kids in the whole school.  When the county sent out their examinations for the 8th grade he took the examinations, and I said, "Why don't you two try it?"  And so we had you take the examinations, and durned if you didn't pass better than he did!  So you never even took the eighth grade.  You skipped it, and went into high school the next year.

Tom:  I didn't know that.

Tim:  Sure spoils what we were told.  We understand that he never made it through the eighth grade.  And now we know why!

Kate:  I think in little country schools you listen to the other classmates recite, and you get the benefit of all the classes.

James:  So you were teaching the twins in the 7th grade.

Kate:  Yes.  And they skipped the 8th grade.

James:  Well, what about this business of them spending the night there—spending a week there—when it was cold in the winter?

Kate:  Well, I don't remember that too well, but I do remember making hot chocolate and things on this big, old pot-bellied stove with the flat top.  We did make soup, and we made hot chocolate on that.  We may have stayed a night or two, but I can't remember that part.

James:  How long did you teach school?

Kate:  Twenty-two years, but I only taught one year there—at home.

Ellen:  Tell us about teaching the Indians.

Kate:  The Indians?  Oh, but that doesn't have anything to do about Tom and Peggy, though.  Do you want me to tell it?  I can tell you about the Indians on the reservation.  They were going to a school up by the Tschirki Ranch, which was a very large ranch.  They owned about half the reservation.  I taught there.  I had the primary grades.  There were about 6 or 7 Indians.  They would come when they felt like it.  But I had one little boy.  He belonged to a famous family, the Yellowtail family.  He just came to school every day, but he didn't say a word.  He just sat there, sat there.  And I thought, my goodness, how am I going to teach this child.  His father would come with him and squat down on the floor by him, and sit there and fold his legs, and sit there and listen to the children recite, but I couldn't get this little boy (to say a thing).  I can't remember what his first name was, but his last name was Yellowtail.  And he would not talk.  And finally, all at once one day when we were having class, he decided that it was his turn to read, and he could read perfectly.  I was amazed.  He'd been listening to the kids, and he'd been learning all the time.  And his father quit coming to school then.  His father thought he had to come to school and sit there.  You knew the Yellowtail family, didn't you, Tom?

Tom:  Well, sure.

Kate:  Very famous.  They were very good friends of our dad.  One of them even became a senator…

Mac:  When was this, Kate?

Kate:  When I taught in high school?  Oh, that was in the early 40's, I think, because Lorna and Margi, when they lived out on the ranch, didn't have any schooling, either, just like the Kerns kids.  So I had to teach them myself.  The county superintendent paid me a little bit to teach my own children at home.  They went to Colstrip the next year.

Kate:  I enjoyed Tom and Peggy as students.  Peggy was an excellent student in everything but math.  And I don't think she was so good in math, but Tom was so good in math that he always helped.  And I think you helped your teachers with math, too, didn't you?  You had to help them.  If we got stuck on a problem, you'd tell us how to work it.  You were the best.

James:  What kind of a student was he in the other subjects?

Kate:  Well, he was fair.  He was good.  He was pretty good.  He was above average.

James:  Did they ever give you trouble because you were their sister as well as their teacher?

Kate:  No, they never did.  I know that we'd have trouble sometimes going to school, because they had to ride double.  One would have to sit behind the saddle and hang on.  We were sometimes short of horses, and one would sit in the saddle, and the other would sit behind and hang on.  One time we came down the pine hill and there was a rattlesnake coiled up right in the middle of the trail.  And boy, oh boy, we sure made circles around that thing.  We went 'way down that steep hill, and came up again.  It was a very steep ride, but we weren't going to have anything to do with that rattler.  We left him.  We didn't bother him.  We just turned things over to him.  Another time I remember they rode under a bush crossing a creek and the brush brushed the one sitting behind into the creek.

Mac:  How did they decide who was going to ride in front?

Tom:  The oldest one generally rode in front.

Kate:  I can tell you a story about Uncle Bert.  We always fixed our lunches before we went to school and wrapped them in paper.  He wouldn't fix his lunch, so I fixed lunch and put it in a bucket, and he wouldn't carry the lunch pail.  He was supposed to take his turn carrying it up the pine hill.  That was a long, old walk, and a steep one.  So I thought, well, I'll get even with you, and I took his lunch out which was two nice drumsticks and sandwiches, and I put them on a rock ledge, and we went on to school that day.  Well, I felt sorry for him at noon 'cause he didn't have any lunch, so I gave him part of my sandwich.  But when we came back, he had to divide.  I told him where I'd hid his lunch, and we stopped and had another lunch.  We had lunch on the way home, too.  It probably had a few ants in with it.

Mac:  Were you both students then, or were you teaching?

Kate:  We were kids then, going to school.  Kids were sure ornery in those days, weren't they?  They used to aggravate the teacher.  The teacher was going to whip one of them, I believe it was John, because he'd done something that she didn't like.  She went out to get a stick out of the quaking aspen tree.  She couldn't get it down.  It was kind of a frail little tree.  So they said they'd help her.  They pulled it down for her, and then ran off and left her.  She was left hanging on the end of it, and it pulled her up off the ground.  It pulled her up in the air.  They did things like that.  They played hooky.  They built themselves a little log cabin right out in the yard, and they'd go out there and play at recess in this log cabin.  It was fun.  But you had to crawl in it.  You couldn't stand up in it.  They went out in the bushes and cut quaking aspens and made logs of them, and built themselves a cabin.  We had one teacher that had us act out Hiawatha, and so we went out in the woods and we built an Indian camp.  I was old Nophomus.  You know the story.  She's the old mother squaw, you know.  Probably one of the Holly girls was Minihaha.  Wasn't that Hiawatha's sweetheart?  One of the boys in the school was Hiawatha.  We each had a part.  It was a real nice camp down in the trees, and there was a little brook that went right through it.  Tom, you know that schoolhouse.  You know that stream?  Gay Creek.  Gay Creek started there.

Lorna:  Tell about how they made over the twins and how they made over Aunt Peggy.

Kate:  Everybody that would come to the house when the twins were small would all fuss over Peggy.  "What a darling little girl, with her lovely blue eyes and pretty hair."  Tom would just stand back and look at them with his thumb in his mouth, and look sad.  One time when they were making a big fuss over Peggy saying how cute she was, what a darling little girl, and what a good little girl, and what a pretty little girl and everything, and Tom went and hid behind the house.  Mother saw him back there, after they'd gone, and he was still standing back there looking sad, and she said, "What's the matter, Tom?"  And he says, "Well, I's dot pretty brown eyes, anyway."

Ellen:  Do you remember them getting stung by bees?

Kate:  Yes.  Well they were always going out and having adventures.  They decided they wanted some honey.  They had seen somebody—probably Uncle Bill, because he was the bee man—he'd put on the bee veil and go out and get honey out of the hives.  They decided one time when they were out in the yard by themselves—the beehives were back there along the fence—that they'd go out and get some honey.  So they went out and they took the lid off, and boy, oh, boy, you can imagine what turned loose.  They got stung all over.  They were just a mass of stings.  And they were stinging and crying.  Mother went out there, and there were her twins by the beehive.  They were screaming and crying.  She took them in the house and laid them across her knees, and took the bee stingers out.  She took a hundred, at least, out of each one of them.  They had so many stingers in them that they didn't even swell up.  The bee poison counteracted.  I never heard of such a thing, but those children did not swell up.  Maybe Mother put soda on them or something, but they didn't have any bad effects from those stings.

Ellen:  How old were they?

Kate:  Oh, about four or five—preschoolers.

Tom:  I can remember beating on the hive.  It had kind of a tin top.  It made a nice noise.

Kate:  You'd probably seen somebody doing that, because that was common.  It makes them swarm.—But Tom, do you remember about the sheep we had?  They were all pet sheep that we'd raised as bum lambs.  They grew up to be big sheep.  Some of them were rams, and they got real mean.  You boys would tease them, and trained them to be ornery.  You'd take the lid off a boiler.  You were a knight—a grand knight.  You'd take a stick in one hand, and that boiler lid in the other, and you'd march up to those rams, and they'd come up and bang it.  You thought that was a lot of fun.  But one day you went out there and you didn't have your boiler lid, and they knocked you down.  You'd get up and they'd knock you down again.  Mother came out and had to help you.  She had to save you from the ram.  I think we had to get rid of that ram, because every time he'd see you comin' he'd run clear across the field to butt you.

James:  Are you sure it wasn't the older brothers that teased the ram, and he was just a little guy and became a victim?

Kate:  Well, you could be right.  I can't remember which brothers it was, but I think they were all mixed up in it.

Lorna:  Wasn't Jack the ornery brother?

Kate:  He was the feisty one.  He used to get into fights.  If anyone called him anything but Jacky, he was ready to fight.  He admired a cowboy from Texas by the name of Jack Dallhart.  He was a very famous cowboy, so he changed his name to Jack.  Jack's real name was James Fredrick.  The reason he didn't like his name was because during World War I people called him "Fritzie."  He didn't like that.  It was a war with Germany, and he didn't want to be "Fritz."

Mac:  How old was he when he changed his name?

Kate:  About 10.  Boy was he feisty.  He'd go to take his girl to the dances, and she was awfully cute.  If any other fellow came over to ask her to dance, and he didn't like the looks of him, he'd take him out and beat up on him.

Ellen:  Dad, what about trying to rope the bear?

Tom:  Well, that was an awfully dumb trick; but I was coming down off the mountain, and I saw this bear turning over rocks and licking the ants off it.  He couldn't see me, so I thought I'd just rope that bear.  I had the rope tied to the saddle horn.  I swung the rope, and it fell right over the back hips of that bear, and if I'd have caught that bear, he'd have crawled right up that rope, and that horse would have bucked me off.  I'd have been in a terrible fix.  If that wasn't the dumbest thing!  I realized it right after I threw that rope.  I don't know why I tied it to the saddle horn.  I used to ride along and rope sage brush and pull it up, and I'd have to dally it around the saddle horn.  That's the reason I always had it tied to the saddle horn with a couple of half-hitches.

James:  Was it a full-grown bear?

Tom:  No, it wasn't a full-grown bear.  It was about a yearling.  It stood up about four feet high, but he was a very active bear, though.  He'd have come right up that rope and got me.

Mac:  How old were you?

Tom:  I suppose 13 or 14.

Kate:  What were you doing?  Taking salt to the cattle up in the mountains?

Tom:  Yes, we used to have to take salt up there.  Remember there was something we used to call the hogsback?

Kate:  Just above the bench where Uncle Bill had his cabin?

Tom:  Uh-huh.

Kate:  He homesteaded the bench.  We loved to go up there.  We'd always eat milk soup.  Do you know what milk soup is?  It was a Cooley special.  Grandma Cooley was 'specially great on making milk soup.  I think she raised her family on milk soup.  She'd take a couple of cups of flour, put some salt in it, drop two or three eggs in it, and stir it up and make lumps.  Then she'd heat some milk, and drop the lumps in the hot milk.  When the noodles had cooked, it was milk soup, and that was what they lived on, practically.  That's all Uncle Bill knew how to cook.  So whenever we went to visit him, we always had milk soup, and I liked it.  John didn't like it.  He always to put sugar in his.

Did you ever have it, Tom?

Tom:  Oh, I remember it.  I never was too fond of it.

Kate:  Dad wouldn't eat it, so Mother had to make potato soup for him.

Tom:  Maybe that's why I never really cared for it.

Kate:  Bert liked it.  Bert liked everything.

Kate:  I wonder if Tom remembers when he was small; you, and Jack and Peggy played together quite a bit.  And you had a horse named Brownie that you could hitch up to your little wagon.  You fixed yourself a camping outfit.  You always took potatoes, and probably some eggs, and a frying pan, and you hitched this horse up to this little, old  wagon.  You'd go out into the woods.  Mother wouldn't know where you were.  None of us would know where you were, but you'd go off and camp out along Gay Creek, up toward the old Dinwiddy Place.  Somebody said, "Don't you ever worry about your children—where they are?"  And she said, "No, they'll come home when they get tired."  And they'd stay out there all night.  They'd build a fire, and fry potatoes, and cook eggs.  They were just kids.  Don't you remember that?

Tom:  No..o..o.

Kate:  It was you and Jack and Peggy.  I don't know if Peggy went with you very often, but I think she went once in a while.

Tom:  It was probably Jack and I.

Kate:  I thought that was pretty good.  She never worried about her kids, but she seemed to know where they were.

James:  What story did your mother tell?

Kate:  About the haunted attic.  In the old house.  She could hear this strange noise in the attic.  She thought it was haunted.  She was there alone.  But she said, "Well now, I'm not going to be afraid."  She finally decided she'd go climb up the ladder.  You had to climb a ladder to get to that old attic.  She went up there, and didn't see anything.  She came back down, and sat down.  She had the lamp lighted down low.  She was trying to read, and she heard it again.  So she went back up in the attic.  She said, "I'm going to find out what that is.  I'm not going to be scared any more."  So she said, "I'm going to sit here and find out what that is."  So she sat there, and sat there."  It was before they had flashlights, but she had a little lantern, and she sat there with her lantern, and thought, if there's anything here, I'll see it.  She didn't see anything.  She sat there, and sat there, and got tired of sitting there.  She kind of dozed off.  Pretty soon she woke up.  She heard this, "Wheeeee…"  This squeaky noise.  She looked up in a little cart hanging from a nail on the ceiling.  On one of its four little wheels was a little mouse climbing the little spokes of the wheels.  Every time it would climb, the wheel would go "Wheeeee…"  It was having the best time chasing around.  I don't know what you'd call it—not a ferris wheel, but it had its own carnival.  She said, "Well, I'm not scared anymore," and she went downstairs.

Kate:  Did they ever tell you about the time the Indians came, and Mother went down in the cave?  She was working in the cellar—the old cave where we kept our potatoes and canned goods in the winter.  It was an outside cave, built with a dirt pile on the outside, and you had to walk down into a hole.  She was down there putting things on the shelves, and she looked up, and there were two Indians standing in the door.  Big, old Indian bucks.  They looked at her, and saw some jars of vinegar sitting up on the shelf, and they said, "Fots daught?  Me like-um minikaWEya."  (That's firewater).  "Me heap big Indian, wants minikaWEya."  "Oh," she says, "we don't have any minikaWEya."  She knew what it meant—it meant whiskey.  And he said, "Oh, yes, white woman have minikaWEya.  All white men have minikaWEya.  She said, "No, we don't."  And he said, "Yes, there some minikaWEya."  She said, "No, that isn't minikaWEya, that's vinegar."  "No, no, that minikaWEya."  "Well," she said, "help yourself."  He said, "Me want minikaWEya.  Me kill white woman if she not give minikaWEya."  She reached up and got the bottle and handed it down to him, and he took a great big swig of it.  And boy did he sputter, and  turn around, and slink out of there!  He got out of there in a hurry, and got on his horse and left—both of them.  That's mother's story….

James:  Josephine did what?

Kate:  Went to a Catholic convent in Alliance, Nebraska when she was in high school.  She went there several years, I believe, and took elocution.  She learned to give readings.  She came home and gave us these readings.  I was spellbound by them.  She was excellent.

Mac:  Was she studying to be a nun?

Tom:  We were afraid that she was going to become a nun.

Kate:  No, no, no.  When she got too interested in the religion in the Catholic Church, Dad didn't let her go back anymore.  That was it.  But it was a very good school, and she learned a lot.  She was very fold of the sisters.  One of the sisters was named Sister Sirella.  I even remember her name myself because my sister would come home and tell these stories, and I thought, "Oh, boy, would I like to go there."

Kate:  Dad taught us sometimes when we didn't have a teacher.  He was a very strict teacher.  He was especially strict with Bert.  Bert couldn't learn to spell.  He was trying to learn to spell "love."  He could not learn how to spell "love."  He tried and he tried.  But he never could spell very well.

James:  Did you ever get spanked?

Kate:  He never spanked us girls.  He may have spanked the boys, but we girls were never spanked.  I think he was kind of partial to Tom.  I always thought Tom was very special to my father.  We always thought that.

Tom:  Well, I can remember being spanked by Mother.  One time in Spokane.  I don't remember why.  I was just being an ornery kid, I guess.  She took me in the closet and spanked me.  I kind of laughed about it all.

Kate:  Tom, do you remember what street you lived on in Spokane?

Tom:  Indiana Avenue.

Kate:  Right!  And a street car went by there, didn't it?

Tom:  Yes.  That's another time I almost got killed.

Kate:  Where did you go to school?

Tom:  Garfield School.  But I was learning to ride a bicycle.  It got stuck in the trolley track.  I couldn't get it out of there.  I fell over, and the car went right by my head.

Kate:  Did you remember what Mother used to do?  She worked while she was there.

Tom:  You know, she was a gifted woman.  She could do anything.

Kate:  She did.  But, she sorted apples.

Tom:  Well, she sorted apples, but she also got a job in a store that sold dry goods.

Kate:  She did?  I didn't know that.

Tom:  She did real well.

Kate:  While you kids were there I was going to Cheney—a Normal School or college at Cheney, Washington which is about 20 miles south of Spokane.

James:  You say that was another time you almost got killed.  There was another time?

Tom:  Well, that dumb trick of trying to rope a bear!  I came within an ace of getting killed there.  It was kind of a wild, dumb horse I was riding.