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Then he named Stella's only son after one of his brothers (Loyal). Loyal was seventeen when he drowned in the Mississippi River. Stella and Emile were living on a boat at that time. A man by the name of White had hired them to stay on his boat and take care of it. He paid them $25.00 a month. He could have done lots better than that at home, but he could never say no to anyone. Stella had gone in to N. 0. that afternoon and that night Loyal told his daddy he and another boy were going across the river on the other side where Loyal's Uncle Dudly was on another boat, so they went and it was dark when they came back and they had to go over on barges so when they came back they had put another barge in which had no piece turned up on the front end and Loyal walked right off from it into the river. He was a good swimmer but he had no chance and the current took him right under the barge and they had men searching for him for ever so long, but one day after he had been there sixty three days, he came up, but he was so badly disfigured that no one only his uncle could identify him and only by a terrible scar on his arm where he was burned with boiling hot grease when he was just sitting alone. His neck and arm was burned so badly until he still carried the scars to his death bed. He was a fine boy, never gave his mother or his daddy a minutes trouble. As I said in the first part of my letter that sister Olla had four children, two boys Rasmus (oldest), Thomas and Edith and Annie. Annie was three when her mother died and Edith five. When the high water would come up down below the house Rasmus and I would take those babies down where the water was waist deep and put them in a big zinc tub and let them float around in that tub and moccasins (snakes) everywhere, we'd scare them away and go right on wading and playing in the water. We could have had all kinds of diseases but I know now that the Lord took care of us, because he knew we, I say me, because I was fifteen years old and Rasmus was much younger. The Lord says He takes care of fools.
My old home sat up on a hill, a big two story building from floor to ceiling twelve feet. We had to go down a hill below the house about four or five hundred yards, I guess, to get our water in a spring flowing right out of the bank and in the summertime the water was like ice water, but in the winter it was warm. My father bought the place, eighty acres and the house and several barns and stables for ($500.00) for five hundred dollars. All the fields with rail fences. I don't suppose the younger generation has ever
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