Mary Zinsli
Mary Catherine Zinsli was born the second child of
Anton (Mike) and Catherine (Jerry/Giguiere) Zinsli in Aitkin, Minnesota in
May of 1925.
Before the age of two she was on her way across the plains of Minnesota and North Dakota.
Anton(Mike) and Catherine worked their way across ND with the railroad crew, while Kate was pregnant with her third child,
Josephine. Mike worked with the railroad crew and Catherine cooked for them to help earn her way while she cared for her two young children
Louis Francis (Louie) and Mary, (my mother) who was just a baby.
They eventually settled on a farm a few miles south of
Sentinel Butte, ND
on the west side of the butte by the same name.
By the time Mary was two, a younger sister,
Josephine, joined the family. On October 29, 1929, the stock market was probably as far from Catherine's mind as Sentinel Butte, ND is from New York City. For recently she had given birth to another child, This time, a boy, whom Mary's parents named
Richard Anton. Within a year or two, at the age of 5 or 6 Mary would be keeping house and taking care of her younger sisters and brothers and fixing dinner for the family, while Anton and Kate (Catherine) worked the farm.
As most children growing up in rural ND, Mary and her siblings walked to a one-room schoolhouse where they were taught to read and write among other subjects. Occasionally in the winter Anton would pick them up in the truck so the young Zinsli's wouldn't have to brave the cold weather and blowing snow. On one occasion in particular, Mary remembers that even though they were lucky to live somewhat close to school the trip home was quite long. Every mile or half mile, Anton would have to stop because either the windshield wipers weren't working or the truck didn't have any. Louie would get out, clean off the windshield and they would go as far as they could again, until it was time to stop.
Another time that Louie and Mary were walking home from school in the springtime a large ball of hibernating, entwined rattle snakes came rolling out of a crevasse and stopped on the road immediately in front of Louie and Mary. The two school children, most likely familiar with rattle snakes having lived in southwestern ND most their lives, simply walked around the ball of snakes and continued on their way home.
When it came time for the children to attend high school, the walk became longer. The high school was in town and several mile walk, when Anton could not take them. They would cut through a fenced in field when they could, to trim some distance off their hike. One spring Louie and Mary decided that it would be ok to cut through that field on the corner. They didn't see any animals in the field, namely the mean bull that was usually kept there. It wasn't until the two were half way across the field that they saw the bull. They took off running for the fence. Mary lost her shoe in the mud and had to stop to retrieve it. Louie crawled out under the fence and held it up for Mary, both getting very muddy in the process. After their harrowing escape, they returned home to change and received a ride to town in the truck.
Mary didn't have to walk back and forth to town for long. She became very ill and ended up in the hospital, but it wasn't the first time that this would happen. Mrs. Martin Mike and Kate were able to find a place for Mary to stay in town while attending high school. Mrs. Martin would allow Mary to board with her family in exchange for Mary keeping house and doing chores for the family. Mrs. Martin’s daughter, , and Mary (were friends) became close friends. To enable Mary to attend school, the Zinsli's were able to find a place for Mary to stay in town while she attended high school. In exchange, Mary would keep house and do chores for the family she was staying with. Continuously, Mary became ill at school, or fainted and was sent home (to Mrs. Martin’s—was Mr. Martin dead?). She was held back one year. By the time she was a junior in high school, she was only attending school half of the day, going home to her room to rest the second half. On the weekends Anton would come in and pick Mary up and take her out to the farm to spend with the family: Louie, Josephine, Richard, and the three younger children: Rose, Nick and Irene and her parents.
It was customary to have dances almost every weekend during the warm weather. Mary was also good friends with Kaye Wright who lived out north of town. The Zinslis and Wrights were family friends; each family knew the other’s family. Kaye and Mary went to a dance at the Westerheim school with Kaye’s brother and boyfriend. The Westerheim school was another one room school house on a main country road several miles north of Sentinel Butte. Mary was the defacto date of Ted Wright, Kaye’s brother.
Evelyn Cook
was the school teacher at Westerheim and had been since she finished school at Dickinson Teachers College in 1920(?). “Fiddlin’ Bill Johnson and his cousin and brother played at most of the dances at Westerheim. The band would set up in one corner and the desks and furniture would be cleared and put in a side porch or outside. Then people would dance around the room, usually in a circle to move around the potbelly stove in the middle of the room. The women (mothers) would make sandwiches and bring them to revelers in the middle of the night.
my mother's
