...After Bill and Louise were first married, they lived in a small house on his father's farm. A little over a year later they moved onto 20 acres of farm land that Bill owned. Louise's brother let them have a small coal house. They traded this for a granary from a neighbor and pulled it to their little farm by putting two poles under it and dragging it with horses. This same friend helped them put a new roof on it. Then he let them have the coal shed anyway. This granary, 12 feet by 14 feet, with a room they added years later, was to be their home for the next several years. Bill and Louise fixed up this old granary by putting up thick wall paper on the walls and ceiling. There was no money to buy things, and they furnished it as time and money made it possible. They cooked on a coal burning kitchen stove which also supplied the heat during the winter. They didn't have any tables, cupboards or chairs, and as time went on Bill made them. They first started out using boxes for chairs. Things gradually came along until this little granary started looking like a home. During these years out on the farm, major improvements were coming to Stirling, the nearest town. First, the telephone made it's appearance. There were 8 to 12 families on the same line and people often listened in. Perhaps one of the more interesting stories still being told was when one of the village boys was proposing marriage to an out of town girl. Yes, there were eavesdroppers. Electricity came next with that single light bulb dangling into the center of the room making a huge difference in the lives of those who got it. And then came the radio. The Hogensons gathered around it, like we do the television now, and listened to The Happy Gang, Who's That Knocking At My Door, both Canadian shows, and Saturday night hockey. That first year on his farm Bill only had one horse and no machinery to farm his 20 acres. He had a good milk cow, and an extra cow he traded for a disk and a drill to plant his crops. The same neighbor who gave him the granary, and another neighbor each lent him a team of horses. These four horses were what he needed to pull his equipment. During those first years on the farm, he got a lot of help from others around the community, and especially his extended family. Years later he would repay this kindness by helping other young people make a new start. In the first part of 1933 while it was still winter, Bill and Louie's 2nd son, 5 month old Ruland died. This was a terrible blow to them. During these times the villagers took care of all the funeral arrangements. In those days when a person died, the body was usually kept in a closed off room in a house until the funeral. The same neighbor who gave him the granary, built a casket, prepared the body, and kept it in an upstairs bedroom of his house awaiting the funeral. Other villagers helped with the funeral and the burial. The family keeping the baby in their upstairs bedroom had a teen-age daughter who had an adjacent bedroom upstairs. While she was in her room, she heard a baby cry. This shook her so badly she was frozen with fear, not knowing it was Bill and Louise's older son Marvin she heard crying as they were coming for a visit. It was about this time that the depression really hit Southern Alberta. The people of Stirling didn't have much money before, and now they didn't have any. Most families didn't have the money to pay their electric bills and the power was shut off to their homes. The same thing happened to most of the phones. As the radios used battery power, even the time these were on was rationed and the family only listened to the best shows. But this didn't have any effect on Bill and Louise as they never had any electricity or phone in the first place out on their farm! Those who had crops or beef to sell couldn't hardly make a thing on them. Through a lot of back breaking effort Bill harvested 100 bushel of wheat on his 20 acre farm. That fall, wheat sold for 29 cents a bushel. A gallon of gasoline cost 25 cents. Needless to say, he didn't buy any gas, and the $29.00 he had to show for his summer's work didn't go very far. During these years the Hogensons and all the inhabitants of Stirling were forced to be as self reliant as the days when in 1899 tents rather than houses dotted the Stirling landscape. The lessons of the depression were so powerfully taught that the last remaining citizens from Bill's generation still (1999) practice frugality to the extreme. Large gardens were the norm in Stirling before the depression, but now because of the depression they got even bigger. During those years if you didn't grow it, or make it, you went without it. Nothing was thrown away and a new use was found for everything. Bartering became prevalent again with eggs, milk, cream, and butter regularly traded at the two stores in town for groceries. One family charged their winter's groceries and paid the bill in the spring. It came to $15.00. They only got the things they couldn't produce for themselves, such as salt, baking powder, soda, sugar, and maybe some flour. During these years Bill was in desperate need of a little money to buy the few things he couldn't make for himself. He tried to find a job to augment his farm income but there weren't any to be found. One day he was reading in the Free Press newspaper and came across an add for selling suits. He got a Model A Ford for $50 and started selling suits and neck ties. It was a pretty good business for him and was an economic salvation for his growing family...