Well I got home that day, it was some time before my feet and hand was right again. The skin pealed off them but I had not to give up. No there was lots to do, I had not enough fire wood to last the winter. I had lots of fence stakes and logs I had go the winter before for to build a log house with. My fence stake was squandered about, some in one place, some in another now under 12 inches of snow. Well I had to rest a day or two when it started snowing again then blowing till it gave me no chance to go and get fire wood so I had to burn fence stakes and the logs I had got to build my house with.
I had to dig in three feet of snow for every stick. I had to keep warm digging and sawing up the wood while my wife burnt it. I had burnt my last bit of wood by the first of March 1907. You say winter would be over then. No sir, not by any means. We had five good weeks of very cold weather after that. I had no sleighs so I had to borrow them from a neighbor so that I could go to the river bank for some. I had two miles to go to get the sleighs, two miles go get a little wood and then take the sleighs back as he wanted them to go to town the next morning.
About the 26th of March there as a great wind storm. It blew two telephone poles down about 3/4 of a mile from my place. The poles had rotted at the bottom and broke off. I was now out of wood again. I went for the telegraph poles, I dragged them one by one on my shoulder. It was cold that day but next day, Oh say was it cold? Cold is a very poor name for it, if I had not taken them poles we should all have been frozen to death in the house.
After this snow began to go the men came to repair the telephone line, they found the poles gone, they came to me made a big nose about it. They would have seven miles to go for more and there would be Prince Albert for me. I did not care Prince Albert jail or not, they saved my family from freezing. What would you have done under such circumstances? I think any man would have done the same but I heard nothing more about it
That winter I shall never forget if I lived to doomsday.
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