Odessa and Winter Fun

(A close up of a historic sign in the shape of a small school. The sign has snow on the top. It says Odessa School Location. The film’s title appears: Winter Fun, Odessa School).

(Leah Uffelman shares memories from her home over zoom)

Leah Uffelman: Odessa was another interesting name and that was because most of the people around the area came from Odessa to the Dakotas and then to Beiseker, from Russia. The name of the town in Russia was Odessa. So that is how they arrived at that name.

(Matt Schmaltz shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Matt Schmaltz: They came from Odessa, Russia to start with and then in 1891, they came into Hague, ND and from Hague, they had poor land down there, it was not the best land and Canada was starting to open up.

(Monty Metzger shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Monty Metzger: In the winter time, if it was real cold, Dad took me to the school with the tractor and there was no cab on it either, so we got to school all the time.

(Vera Schmaltz shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Vera Schmaltz: In the winter when it was quite cold, they had quite a large rock and my mom would put it in the oven for the night before we went to bed, and then in the morning, Dad would put it out in the buggy.

(Matt Schmaltz shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Matt Schmaltz: The winter, yes we had a skating rink outdoors, and help flood that rink to put some ice in to play some hockey. I can remember helping make ice, we would flood all night with a little old garden hose, just running around.

(John Richter shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

John Richter: So we played on an outdoor rink where the current arena is now located. It was a bit of a challenge because we had to scrape the snow off the ice before and we had a little pot-bellied stove in the dressing room.

(Matt Schmaltz shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Matt Schmaltz: They were homemade scrapers, out of wood and a kind of a metal bar across the bottom and shovelled. If it snowed, you had to shovel it off. Yes it was different, but we enjoyed it.

(Frank Schwengler shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Frank Schwengler: We cut telephone poles and we’d cut slabs off and made them into curling rocks. We’d drive a spike in and then bend it over and then there was little ponds and spots that had maybe frozen over ponds in the schoolyard and we’d curl.

(Fred Lyczewski shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Fred Lyczewski: We used to take the bicycles and ride around the yard where it was hard packed and play and be riding, it would be cold out, but we made our own fun basically.

(Leonard Hagel shares memories from his home over zoom)

Leonard Hagel: We used to go sleigh riding in the wintertime. Of course, we all got wet and we’d hang our wet clothing on the furnace jacket.

(Leah Uffelman shares memories from her home over zoom)

Leah Uffelman: There certainly wasn’t a variety of clothes like we see today, and the materials also were so different. Especially in the winter when you had to walk, you had a suit that you had to wear, a snowsuit. They were made of such miserable material and you had to have many layers and they didn’t fit properly around the ankles and your wrists, the snow often blew up and you had to walk over snow drifts and things like that, so it was miserable.

Jean: In the wintertime, I had to wear long brown stockings and felt shoes. Oh, I hated them things. But they kept my feet warm, they were comfortable, it’s just that they were ugly.

(Monty Metzger shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Monty Metzger: The teacher lived right next door by the G.G. Berreth place, so in the wintertime, he would go home for dinner and when he would come back, sometimes we would make a snowball and make it real slush- full of water and we would set it on top of the door, so when they came in the door it would fall down on the person underneath and things like that. We had lots of fun.

(Leah Uffelman shares memories from her home over zoom)

Leah Uffelman: In all the schools, Christmas was the most exciting time, the Christmas concerts and getting practicing for that, the music and everything was great. It gave a lot of children the opportunity to be involved in music.

(Frank Schwengler shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Frank Schwengler: We always had Christmas concerts, and everybody took part. The little guys would do something smaller and the bigger kids would do a little better.

(Leonard Hagel shares memories from his home over zoom)

Leonard Hagel: The event when it happened was some really big occasion, because it was so different 80 years ago about the power and the lighting.

(Fred Lyczewski shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Fred Lyczewski: In those days, we had no electricity at the school, one of the neighbours brought his tractor up and fathers got together and wired things up and made a stage.

(Frank and Jean Schwengler shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Jean Schwengler: I remember the concerts specifically because we got out of school, but it was hard.

Frank Schwengler: It was a good chance for the parents to visit too.

(Vera Schmaltz shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Vera Schmaltz: We would do one or two plays, and there would be dancing and poems recited, and Christmas carols were always sung. It always ended with a nativity pageant.

(Frank and Jean Schwengler shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Jean Schwengler: It was a full house, and of course, Santa Claus would come, and every kid got a bag full of candy and a Christmas orange.

(Fred Lyczewski shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Fred Lyczewski: What I always liked about it, we all took part. When you get to the bigger schools, you can’t always do all that.

(Frank and Jean Schwengler shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Frank Schwengler : We really looked forward to that, because we used to practice for quite a while for it- we thought we were pretty hot.

(John Richter shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

John Richter: I remember Valentine’s Day, we all had to get our school teacher, we got Valentines for the other students in our class, in the middle grades.

(Fred Lyczewski shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Fred Lyczewski: It was pretty hard for us to go away, because we had the roads snowed in, we didn’t have the equipment that we’ve got today, but humans are determined people, if it doesn’t work this way, well we’ll find a way and usually we do, and that still holds true today.

(the Beiseker Station Museum logo appears).