``My name is Ray Oliver, well my proper name is Raymond Oliver. I`ve lived here in Belle Fourche since 1916, I am now 87. I think Belle has changed much for the better. I`ve probably been here the longest, compared to other folks. I was born in 1902, I came from Southern Colorado. Belle Fourche was a nice town, wouldn`t want to live in another. It`s not like any other places, one where every man is for himself, this here`s a friendly community.``
``No, I never did own any ranches. All I owned was mules and horses, Colorado mainly had mules. I did have some places rented here that I farmed. One of the places was up at Redwater and one was over by the Diversion Dam . . . well it wasn`t a farm, it was a pasture. ``
``I had a blacksmith shop. It was an old frame building. Then in 1944, I built this one and tore the other one down. I mostly shod horses and repaired wagons, I would fix the wheels or tongue. When the tires on the wagon would get loose, I would cut a chunk off of the steel tire, shrink it , get it hot and throw it back on again. We had to cool it off with water. We had to forge weld then. We would get an iron real hot and fluent , glowing, then we would hammer it together. I learned Blacksmithing from my step-father. He was a blacksmith but he didn`t do it all the time. My real dad farmed in Colorada (sic) and he worked on the side. Of course it was all farmin` but he`d help his neighbors or whatever.``
``I enjoyed repairin` things and I enjoyed, horseshoein`, and I enjoyed working with oxen, and like I said repairin` wagons. Homestake [a gold mining company] used to bring the oxen down from the mountains to get them shoed. There weren`t many oxen here in South Dakota. I don`t recall anybody using an ox back then, except for Homestake. I was the only one around to shoe em`. I`ll tell ya one story if ya don`t mind.``
``One time there was a big blue ox that Homestake used to bring down here, and he was wilder than all get out. I had to hog tie him, then shoe him. The next time when I went towards him with the rope, he laid down and stuck his feet out. I guess he didn`t want to be hog tied again.``
`` I did lots of riding but not rodeoin`. I was in the parades though, it was mainly the Fourth of July parade. I don`t know if all of our parades were called the same . . . I suppose they were. There is a lot more people that came to our parades then, than there is now. In them days it was a gathering on the street. I was on the police force, I was usually street patrol. During the celebration I was the sheriff, I didn`t like it because you`d meet so damn many people that you `d beat, and they would go across to the other side of the street and shun ya. I didn`t like that.``
``They had a traveling whore house. It used to float up and down the [Belle Fourche] river here. It was just on this side of where the community hall is now. Where Harold`s Club sets was a whore house then. They used to gather down there at that place and ride the ferry up and down the river. That was what you called a floating whore house. There wasn`t people there all the time. Every week they always. . .especially on Saturdays, cowboys and sheep herders went there, it`s what you called a #*!-ing town! You used to see lots of whore houses here. Then in 1919 they tried to spoil all a man`s fun. They voted out prostitution and voted in prohibition. Hy Hantz was the law then, and he was trying to put a stop to it. There used to be a livery stable right up on the corner across from Hoseths now, and next door to that was a whore house. Hantz was trying to get the goods on `em. ``Close `em up,`` that was what his orders were. There was this one woman running one, and he hadn`t been able to catch her at anything. He had a ladder right there close to the livery stable and he climbed up there to her window and tried to catch her that way. Well she had saw him and grabbed the piss pot and dumped it all over his head, piss and all! `` (Ray laughed merrily.) ``You know how big them pots were! They were yeah big`` (held hands to indicate approximately 14 inches), ``probably about two feet long and you can imagine there was a lot of piss in that! As far as I know he never tried it again.``
``It wasn`t the only business in town though. There was a livery stable and there were other little stores. There was a lot of traveling saloons.``
``Bootlegging? I had a big crock pot. Hell yeah, I made gallons and gallons and gallons of beer. It was made of malt, and I sold a lot of it. Mostly I made it in the attic of the house. It was always warm up there you see. Then to bottle it why, you would get the stuff flowing through the hose . . . you could bottle it on the ground floor once you get it started.``
``There used to be a cowboy that lived next door to me. He would come over. We always had an outlet for all the beer we could make. We never raised hell or anything like that . . . well it`s different terrain along the Belle Fourche River now than it used to be. The river had heavy growth and the bootleggers would come to town and they would hide their whiskey down along the river grass. One of us, or maybe more, would hide down there and watch where they would hide it. Then, of course, we would move it to a different spot.`` (He chuckled)
``The police was Hy Hantz. . . Henry Hantz` son just over here,`` (points to the Tri-State Cafe) it`s his grandfather. Whenever trouble would come to town, you know like a Revenue Officer, he would send someone to notify me. He`d say to me, ``there`s an officer in town and you`d better lay low tonight.`` I don`t know when bootleggin` died out. It did, I guess when they started bringing in that hard liquor they have today.``