Adeline was born in 1915 on the family farm in rural Ambrose, just northwest of the city. Her family lived across the road from the Ragnvald "Roy" Ness farm. Her parents were Oluf "Olaf" and Annie Ness. They came to Ambrose in 1912. Olaf and Roy were brothers. She and Dolores “Toots” Lewis are cousins. Olaf was born in Norway. He was a carpenter and helped build the Ambrose Hospital in 1927. Annie came from Montevideo, MN. Unfortunately 1915 was also a sad year, as Adeline’s sister Belle died of rheumatic fever. Adeline’s other brothers and sisters were Evelyn, Al, Gladys and Orville. Jim Christianson was born in Twin Butte Township on a farm. He attended Twin Butte school. He came to Ambrose on farm business and with the rest of the “boys” for Saturday night fun. That’s how he and Adeline met. Jim and Adeline had three children. Donna currently lives in North Carolina. Champ lives in Williston. Diane lives in Crosby.
Adeline worked in the brick hospital one summer when it was the Good Samaritan home. She also worked in the G. P. Restvedt Meats and Groceries store, starting the summer of 1933, when she graduated from high school. She married Jim in 1936. She continued to work at Restvedt’s until the birth of her first child, Donna, in 1937. Jim worked for Olaf Henning in Olaf’s dray business. From 1941 to 1945 the family lived in Vancouver, WA where Jim worked in a defense plant. Subsequently they returned to Ambrose where Jim purchased the Olaf Henning dray business. He stood on top of the city’s flowing well pump house and pumped water by hand. He hauled the water in metal pails in a wooden horse-drawn wagon and sold it for 5 cents a pail. My but there was a fuss when he finally had to raise the price to ten cents a pail! Jim also hauled coal and delivered freight and mail from the daily train. In spring he hauled away ashes from house stoves and furnaces and plowed gardens for folks. He was also an Ambrose police officer for ten years.
When the daily steam train arrived everyone in town went to the post office to await the mail. While they waited for the mail to be delivered, sorted and placed in the boxes everyone visited. If the train was late everyone headed for the depot to wait for it. The kids would put their ears on the track as they had heard you could hear the train coming. They never could hear that train, but everyone pretended they did. Jim loved his horses and could train them to do anything. The horses on the dray team were named Beauty and Belle. When Jim delivered water he would click together two water pails to tell the horses where to go next. One click meant move to the next house and two clicks meant stop. One December in the airplane era when oil exploration was happening in the area a seismograph company flew in a Santa Claus. Jim picked Santa up in a sleigh, took him to town, and drove him down Main Street. Another time a huge storm left a lot of snow on the ground May 1, which was May Basket Day. Jim hitched the horses to his sleigh and drove the local kids around town to deliver their May baskets. He bought their son Champ a pony named Smoky when Champ was six years old. That pony could do anything Champ wanted. They had Smoky until he died at age 28.
The Sons of Norway Hall was the social hub of Ambrose. The Hall sat on Main Street across from the gas station (which still stands) and a little north of the current Community Hall. The Harry Schultz Pool Hall was next to the Hall, to the south. The Electric Theater also occupied that building and the Hall had a balcony. Many parties and dances occurred in the Hall. All the kids went to the dances too and learned to dance there. Folks brought along sack lunches. They learned the polka, circle two-step, waltz, and Schottische (which Toots Lewis described as a 1-2-3-hop-twirl dance that was a lot of fun). Adeline remembers the wonderful carnivals in the street in Ambrose. She also remembers the Chautauqua performances in the Sons of Norway Hall. (Click here for an explanation of Chautauqua.) They had live talent, like minstrels in blackface. It was like a traveling Broadway show. The kids could buy candy with nice prizes. This wasn’t something you could buy just any day, so the kids saved up for this candy. Another memory is a talent show one year in the Masonic Temple, which still stands today. Some of the talent in that show included Helen Ness, Bernice Hanson, and Adeline as the Andrew Sisters. They mimed to the music. A duo featured Martin Siverson on violin and Ann Fleck on piano. Dorothy Torgeson dressed in Western style and sang. There were also child talent acts. Lots of picnics happened at Woodlawn on the Souris River (known as the Mouse River in the U.S.) in Estevan. The location at the south edge of Estevan is a park and golf course today. All the school picnics were there. Adeline had worked in Omer Stenson’s meat locker plant. In 1950 the Christianson family moved to the coast as Jim had a job there. When they returned to Ambrose Adeline took over operation of the Ambrose Locker Plant. Two weeks later on July 28, 1959 it burned down along with both grocery stores. The town character was John Bidmead, known as “old King”. He just showed up in Ambrose one day. He came from England and was rumored to be the black sheep of a wealthy family but no one knew much about him. For a while he lived in Cowley’s Hotel, located where the current Ambrose Saloon sits. The hotel gave him food. Later he lived above the old fire hall in rather poor living conditions. A bachelor, he was very intelligent and helped the kids with difficult homework, like algebra problems. The kids were scared of him yet admired him at the same time. He tended the gas lamps in town, chopped ice off the old flowing well, and took care of the fire hall. After many years he had to move to the Good Sam home in Ambrose. He died there but no one seems to remember where he was buried.
After sixteen years in the dray business Jim wanted a change. In 1961 the family moved to Crosby. Jim became the custodian at the high school and also worked at Farmers Union. Adeline worked 28 ½ years at Ekness market doing every job there was. She now resides in Crosby Homes and Jim is a resident at the Good Samaritan Center. She has many fond memories of Ambrose and still remembers every house in town in the early days and the names of the families who lived in each one!
Family history taken from a personal
interview
Excerpted from the online article
by:
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