Rule Family blog (The first)

Hello to all our Rule Family members and Gregory Family members.  I am Barbara, my husband is Max.  Max's father was Elvis Eric Gregory.  Max's mother was Itha Lee Rule Gregory.  On this blog, I'll post Rule Family history and Gregory Family history.  Hope you enjoy it.  If you have Rule Family history or Gregory Family history, please share it.  We'd love to expand our knowledge of these good family lines.

Here is an article written by a cousin of the son of Ed Rule. Ed Rule is Worcester Rule's younger brother.  It includes a few words about Grandpa Rule (James Thomas Rule) Worcester Rule's father in Moosejaw Canada. James Thomas Rule was living with Ed Rule.

Here is the relationship:  Max's Mother - Itha Lee Rule - Itha's Father - Worcester Rule  - Worcester's Father - James Thomas Rule.  The article is about life in the late 1920's in Moose Jaw Saskatchewan Canada and includes a bit about Grandpa Rule.  Hope you enjoy this article.

I remember……….. by Rosy Agnew Stewart

            I remember the first radio in the whole community.  We went to Taylors to hear it.  It had a set of headphones, only one could listen at a time.  It squeaked and squalled, but you could make out voices and music.  The song I heard part of was: “Does the Spearmint lose its flavor on the bed post overnight.”  It was so funny because we really did save our chewing gum as long as we possibly could and chew it the next day.  This was in the late 1920’s.

            We always wanted Mom to go to town with Dad because she brought us Post Toasties which we ate like candy.  A box was gone in one evening.  We didn’t put sugar or milk on them. 

            We were always busy.  We three kids (George, Bud and I) dug a cave in a bank about ¼ mile east of our place.  My folks told us not to dig it too big or it would cave in.  We made it big enough for us and 4 Rule kids and 3 or 4 Harolds.  It was fun to go in there on a cold night when we were playing outside.  Like sliding down the hills on scoop shovels.  The best place was over in Harold’s pasture west of their house.  We rode a horse and pulled a sled after we got one.

            We each milked 5 or 6 cows every night and morning.  If I had a brother lined up across the barn where I could squirt milk on him, I couldn’t resist even though I knew I would get it back.  Many times I went to school with milk in my hair and washed it before school.  They had running water there.  It was a lot handier than doing it at home.

            Our bus driver was “Little” Guy Shriver and one morning, we hadn’t gone far, when I look at my feet.  There was cow barn sticking out all over.  I told the driver to stop and let me out.  He asked what was wrong and I said “Look at my shoes.”  He just turned the bus around and said, change them, and waited.

            In 1923, I went to Lone Star School, southeast of Hoyts.  It was one room and all 8 grades.  Mabel Cambridge was our teacher.  She was fresh out of high school and took a test to become a teacher.  The families that attended were the Ed Rules, Cambridges, Hoyts, Harolds, and Agnews.  The teacher built the fire before we arrived at school and did all the janitor work.  We had programs, box or pie supper where the ladies took a decorated box.  They were auctioned off to the highest bidder.  A girl would let her favorite boy know which was her box and when he bid, everyone would run upon it.  They had to pay as high as $5, sometimes – most went for 50 cents, some less.  You ate with the one who got your box.

            When I was growing up, we did not have radio or TV or telephones.  We had Grandpa Rule (not my Grandpa, but my cousins), but we called him that too.  When anyone came to visit they slept in my bed and I slept on the floor.  One night, I had gone somewhere and came home in the night.  I got ready for bed in the dark and when I started to turn down the covers, I put my hand right in a whiskery face.  Grandpa Rule had come to visit.  I slept on the floor after I got over the fright.

            Grandpa Rule told us gruesome stories about Indians.  He had lied about his age and came west with a wagon train when he was 12 years old.

            We also had Walter Coates.  He told about being in WWI and touring the old country on foot.  We all loved his stories.

            We heated the house with the coal range and I liked to sit on the oven door and would stay there as long as I could because when I got up, I was cold and had to wait my turn for the oven door again.  I would heap corn cobs in the stove so it would get real hot and my brothers would have to move in a hurry.