Please share your stories with Jim or me. I will post any stories I get and forward them to Jim.
I’m looking forward to attending the 2026 All School Reunion. I hope to see many of you there!
Those 70ish girls…Sharing MHS stories
Author: Mary Francis McNinch
Those 70ish girls…Little Murdo Girl’s Doohicky Dilemma
I had to start wearing nylons. It seems that when you get to the 8th grade, you’re supposed to wear them when you dress up. We went to Winner for a music contest, and that’s when some of the girls decided it was time to start wearing “hose.” I had to play a saxophone solo, and those darn nylons ruined it.
There are boys who read this. Oh well, I don’t care. They should know what we go through.
You have to wear a garter belt to hold your nylons on your leg. It is a very weird contraption. The top of the belt goes around your waist. There are four straps hanging from the belt. On the end of the straps you have doohickys. (There are four of them.) You put the top of the nylon under the bottom part of the doohicky. It has a button-like thing on it. I think they are called garters. The top garter goes on the top and buttons to the bottom garter. That’s what keeps your nylon up. The whole thing is called a garter belt. The nylons come separately.
Right in the middle of my solo, the doohicky on the back of one leg came loose, and the nylon slipped right off, which caused the front to sag. I finally got an opportunity to glance down when the piano player who was accompanying me, had a little part that I didn’t play my saxophone to. I could see the nylon was a wrinkled mess just like Grandma’s hose (nylons) always are because they don’t make them small enough for her. Grandma wears a girdle to keep her nylons up, but it doesn’t work. Besides, you still have to deal with the doohickys attached to the girdle. (Some older ladies just roll them down over a rubber band. I wonder if that works better.) Well, at least the front doohicky on my garters never came all the way off, which was a blessing. I feared that all the doohickys would come off and I’d be standing there with my hose around my ankles.Anyway, for the very first time in my life, I didn’t get a Superior on my solo, because I was too distracted to remember all of it. I can’t even tell people about it, because it’s going to sound like an elaborate excuse, and they’ll think the real reason is that I didn’t practice my solo enough times to memorize it better.
It just wasn’t a good experience all around. Mom threw a hissy fit because I forgot to mention I volunteered her to take me and some other kids to the contest. I told her the day before. She said I hadn’t even told her I was playing a solo, although I’m pretty sure I did. She asked me when I practiced because she very seldom heard me.She didn’t even care about my doohicky dilema.
Those 70ish girls…Girlfriends by Valerie Halla
As we get older, friends seem like family and we lose some dear ones along the way, letting us know we might go next. But when it comes to the holidays we can be childlike . (You can probably remember a special gift or two you got as a kid) My friends don’t have a lot of money so some of the gifts this year were a bit strange. Six of us met for our annual gift exchange. But we took the gifts home without opening them, because we had all had lunch together and time was limited. We also got carried away with the holiday gift giving. It took me two trips to carry it all to the car. I’m not even sure what some items are for but it was still fun to unwrap and pull out colorful tissue from gift bags revealing these things:
-A plugin snowflake shaped room deodorizer pine or peppermint scented (some assembly required.)
-Friends spoon with cute poem engraved (not for use with food or beverages.)
-Bar of goat milk soap.
-Dog gift catalog with stickers.
-Fifteen individually wrapped pretzels from Pennsylvania which are crunchy and delicious.
– A 2 foot long hand-sewn hanging kitchen piece made of fabric, shaped like a house with a floppy mini-wreath sewn on the door of the house. It has a big pocket on the lower half and two loops on the top suitable for hanging up…somewhere.
-A stick with a cute little gnome at the end.
-Gift cards.
As I opened each gift and card, I kept wondering where I would put these things. The giftcards were the best because then I could go buy what I want, especially the giftcards to a coffee shop. And of course there were also the pieces of jewelry given. You can always put those in your jewelry box, never to remember who gave them to you, or when to wear them. I don’t even want to bring up necklaces getting all tangled up.
My Dad used to say, “It’s the thought that counts.” That kept going through my mind as I looked over the collection of presents. I’m just lucky to have such generous, kind people in my life. It doesn’t matter what they gave me. Their friendship is what counts. They’re probably in turn looking over the gifts I gave them: a mug, kitchen dish towels purchased at a church gift bazaar, candy, and mini scented candles. They’re thinking the same thing I am. What will I do with all these? Do I really need any of this? What were they thinking giving these to me?
It doesn’t matter what you give to others at this time of year because just the giving part is what counts. The friendship is there. There’s love inside each gift. The friends give you meaning at this time of year.
Happy holidays!
Those 70ish girls…MG’s Christmas letter
I vowed to write a first at last. I’d never done this in the past.
I thought there would be nothing to it. It seemed like anyone could do it.
I brought my family all together, so we could write a Christmas letter.
I read those I’d received from others. Written with love by grandmas or mothers.
I said,
“These can be a great example, but our own exciting times are ample.”
One friend’s son has lots of knowledge. He’s only ten and goes to college.
I asked.
“Who has something that compares?” All I saw were empty stares.
My son read,
“This mom said she lost a ton. Now she out-runs everyone.”
A daughter said,
“Mom don’t be sad. look at all the fun you had, eating donuts, pies, and cake.
Who needs to run for heaven’s sake?”
Ignoring her I forged ahead. “Let’s write about our trips instead.”
“Do I have a volunteer to highlight our time-off last year?”
“You said we’d soon be on vacation, and then you changed it to staycation.
Instead of seeing Disneyland and building castles in the sand…
We stayed right here in our own house and drew pictures of Mickey Mouse.”
Had I been overconfident? There must be one accomplishment.
“Did anyone get to school on time, clean their room or solve a crime?”
(They were reading others news and it was giving them the blues.)
I said,
“Let’s not continue this. We’ll send pretty cards this Christmas.”
“We should not antagonize all those with less exciting lives.”
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!
Those 70ish girls…Saving Time
They say tomorrow never comes. It really does, you know
Yesterday was just today a few short hours ago.
Time goes by so quickly…You’ve heard that to no end.
Time can be your enemy… or your new best friend.
The best times can be over in the blinking of an eye.
A day can last forever, yet the years seem to fly by.
If something bad is happening, they say this too shall pass.
If the best is yet to come, then…to come… goes way too fast.
So what does one do…while time keeps marching on?
March along right with it, from dawn until new dawn.
As our lives continue and what is… becomes… what was,
It doesn’t seem quite fair that we’re unable to hit pause.
We can save a time and store it, and spend that time again.
And sometimes here and there, we can remember where and when.
Murdo Girl… We celebrate a good man on a very important birthday
Those 70ish girls…The stock I came from
By Valerie Halla
Aunt Helen:
When I was a little girl, we visited Aunt Helen and Uncle Bob and their four kids in Michigan just once. We only saw them once in a while because we lived in Pennsylvania pretty far from their house, and had only been to Murdo, South Dakota for a few SANDERSON family reunions together during the summer. But after seeing Aunt Helen a few times and noticing how pretty she was, I decided to name my new dark haired doll Helen in her honor. To me that was the perfect name.
Me with my Mom and the doll I named after my beautiful Aunt Helen
Aunt Helen was the fourth child born to Grandma and Grandpa SANDERSON and the last to be born before the family moved to a little log cabin on Horse Creek about 7 miles outside of Murdo. Her brother Jeff’s birth had been difficult so her dad, my Grandpa, drove his wife a very long distance in a wagon/carriage to Mitchell Hospital when the time came. Helen was named Mary Helen but was called Helen so as not to be confused having her mother’s first name.
Helen was the baby of the family when this picture was taken with brothers Wayne and Jeff, and sister, Ella.
It was a tough life on the farm there. Even though the family had a Model A, Grandpa later bought a Model T which made the two miles on dirt roads then the 5 miles on gravel roads easier. Aunt Helen later wrote that she was always happy growing up even in tough times. She dressed the farm kittens like her babies and loved playing house, even though she had chores and worked hard as did the entire family. The kids road a horse three miles to school and did not like leaving their horse all day in the barn at school with no food. There were 12 students in the country school in eight grades.
The Osborn family also attended school with the SANDERSONS and only had bread with cocoa junk on their bread sandwiches. That was a mixture of sugar, cocoa and whole milk which would soak into the homemade bread. The Osborn family was poor. They had 13 children. Helen felt lucky to have sardine sandwiches at school for lunch. A tin of sardines cost 4 cents and she recalled that some were canned in mustard or tomato sauce and were tasty.
The Sanderson sisters…from left, Helen, Elna, Ella, and Loretta
Helen recalls that her Dad, M.E. SANDERSON was strict. If their Mom, Mary, couldn’t handle the kids, she would say in a low voice, “I will have to tell your Dad.” One time M.E. put her on top of a tall cupboard to discipline Helen. Or to show the other kids who was boss.
Helen was a dark haired, slim girl in high school. Later she went to business school out in Rapid City after my Mom, Ella, gave her the money to attend. She eventually met her future husband Bob who graduated from School of Mines and he got a job in Michigan with the auto manufacturer, Chevrolet. They left the day after getting married and drove with another couple all the way to Michigan from South Dakota. They raised their four children there in Michigan. One summer my parents bought a car from Bob and Helen. The two families met in Murdo so my parents could drive it home later. They were so proud to have gotten a relatively new car from Bob and Helen.
Later in life, when Bob had passed away, Helen went to live near a daughter in South Dakota once again. She regularly wrote beautiful letters to her brothers and sisters with a neat flowing cursive handwriting. I remember my mother read those letters over and over and kept many of them. Aunt Helen was always happy as long as the sun shone. And she was always beautiful inside and out.
From Left: The ever stylish sisters, Helen, Ella, and Loretta
Those 70ish Girls 