After we moved to town we still walked to school, but this time it was only about four blocks. It was a big, three-story brick schoolhouse. Everyday after school we would walk down to Hank's Market or to Cullen's Store for a bottle of Pepsi into which we would dump a bag of Planters peanuts. Our mother left in 1950 and things changed drastically for us. At one point Frances and I went to Moab, Utah to be with our mother. Frances returned to RHS and I stayed in Moab until after Mom and Fuzz moved to Farmington, N.M. then to New Castle, Wyo. I was lonesome for Reliance so I went home. Life wasn't real good so 
by the time I had finished my freshman year I had had enough and moved on to Chamberlain where I got a job at the Silver Leaf Cafe. It was while I was working there that I met the 6 '6" man I was to marry. (When I was 10, my father and I were building granaries west of Kennebec and had gone into town for our lunch of Old Home Breakfast Rolls and bologna ... a slice on each side of a roll ... and Nesbitts orange pop. There was a carnival along Main Street and my dad gave me 10 cents to have my fortune told. This gypsy woman told me I would marry an big tall man and we would have four children ... two sons and two daughters. So from that day on, I was looking for that tall man.

Mar. 3, 1958 I married Emil Edwin Speck at the Calvary Baptist Church in Pierre, Hughes County, SD with Grandma and Bill Morgan at our sides.  We returned to Chamberlain and in December we moved to Farmington, New Mexico to be (once again) near my mother.

Emil Edwin GOEHRING was born Aug. 6, 1937 in a car en route to the Faulkton hospital in Faulk County, SD to Emil and Josephine KUPER Goehring. His parents divorced. His mother next married William Edward Speck at Interior, Jackson County, SD. Ed worked for farmers in the area until going to work for Gustafson Const. on a road job as a truck driver at age 13. He had assumed the surname Speck. His family moved to Chamberlain in 1952 and Ed went to work for Louie Truman on a farm near Fort Thompson and later for Wristen & Emme on the Chamberlain armory and the United Church of Christ at Chamberlain.

He had his name officially changed to Speck in 1977 in Duchesne, Duchesne County, Utah.   He sports an oblong birthmark on his right leg as did his Grandfather Kuper before him and the birthmark has passed down to our daughter Sindi, grandson Jason. Another  medical misfortune to befall our family is called Dupuytren's Contracture, thanks to Ed's mother's Norwegian genes. This is a disease that attacks the muscles in palms of hands and balls of feet; forming hard lumps on the muscles and drawing the fingers into the palm. Surgery can fix it somewhat, but it is not necessarily a cure.

As the family grew, they followed Ed though the oil fields of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nebraska and Wyoming. They spent two years in Nevada with the atomic energy commission drilling test holes 96 inches in diameter and 5,000 feet deep in which to test the atomic bombs and two years at Ely, Nevada drilling oil wells. From there it was Kimball, Neb. then Gillette, Wyo. where Ed worked on the construction of the Weltner Museum and I worked at Pioneer Manor Nursing Home. The next stop was Duchesne, Utah where we both worked for six years with Trans Western Tankers (oilfield water transport) and TWT Drilling. Over the years, I worked as a waitress, cook, clerk/receptionist (with dispatching on the side,) personnel, insurance, accounts receivable for TWT; as a nurses aide, as a cashier at a Safeway grocery store and last but not least, as a waitress at the San Juan Country Club in Farmington, NM. It was while we lived in Utah I learned about genealogy and bought a book to get started. I worked on it for a couple of days and stuck it in a drawer. Period.

Ed took a position with Brinkerhoff Drilling and would be working in North Dakota and Montana, so I came home to Lyman County and purchased a couple of homes; one to remodel for us and one for rental purposes. Six years and many thousands of dollars later our trashy run-down old six room house was a "new"13 room home, all done by Ed. He worked a five days on/five days off schedule. He often said he could have had it done in four years, but spent two years hunting down his tools because every time he laid some tool down, Barbara picked it up and put it "in its place!" Or rolled up the electrical cords so
no one would stumble over them. I worked as a clerk in the post office in Oacoma and prepared meals at the senior citizen's center in Chamberlain before I took employment with the local newspaper, Chamberlain-Oacoma Register. I worked there until ill health forced me to retire in 1999.

The oilfield, as we all knew it, ceased to exist and something like 500,000  of us were put out to pasture.  Ed moved home in March 1986 and owned and operated Speck Construction (until heat strokes one time too many) caused his retiring Dec. 31, 1999. Not being one to sit still or in the house, he continued doing smaller repair jobs for a few years until he just slowly phased them out.

I am the standard stocky (er ... fat) Stallman complete with the "Stallman blues," extended pinky and "bubble butt." I have the gravelly voice of Grandma BLACK. I don't drink, smoke, gamble or run around, but sadly, I do cuss like a sailor. I am, however, a Leo and we know what a wonderful sort of person us Leos are, so life is not all bad. I am also  the family genealogist (as was Aunt Victoria before me) and presently, the webmaster of seven  web sites: Lyman County, SD Genealogy (a world-wide GENWEB project), The Lyman-Brule Genealogical Society, this Stallman family site, paternal Schelle site, maternal
Black and Creasey sites, and Ed's maternal and paternal Hansen and Kuper sites. To free up some of my time I have turned over or eliminated three others.

I am one of  five  charter members of the Lyman-Brule Genealogical Society organized in 1986; published " Stallman Family History 1881 -1981";  project director of the three county (Lyman, Brule and Buffalo) history book "Of Rails and Trails," in 1989; chaired the Oacoma Centennial celebration in 1993 (a three-year effort) which included the "Oacoma History Book" and the "Oacoma Centennial Cookbook" and most recently, chaired the publication of the "Lyman-Brule Genealogical Society Cookbook" in 1999; wrote a column  (Here I go ... thinking again)   for the Chamberlain-Oacoma Register and plan on publishing my columns in book form whenever time allows. In my spare time I was a member of the Chamberlain development corp-oration, the Oacoma Planning and Zoning Board and the Lyman County Zoning Board.  In 2004, I started writing a year-long column for Central Dakota Times, published in Chamberlain, about Reliance who was planning its centennial celebration in 2005.  Researching old papers for the columns got me hooked and by centennial time (July 2005) I had the book,  "Reliance, South Dakota  1905-2005"  on the shelves and sales were good.  That should leave my mark for my descendents to find!

In my attic sits an antiqued pitcher and bowl set on which I have written, "I made this in 1985 for my great-granddaughter to find after I'm gone," or something like that. I'll be watching to see her find it!    

We lost our son Bill (35) in 1997 and all of us have found ourselves with horrible holes in our hearts. Donn and Casey live in Oacoma. Sindi has relocated to OKC, OK since her son Morgan graduated and has moved on to a new independence, living in Vermillion (2010). We are blessed with two grandsons, Jason, (recently mustered out after eight years with the US Navy), Morgan and one granddaughter (14, lives in Copperas Cove, TX (Ft Hood) with her mother and step-father and spends summers in SD with her dad). 

I retired  Sept. 28, 1999, from my position as the community editor/columnist of the Chamberlain-Oacoma Register due to medical problems brought on by the use of Phen-fen and the loss of Bill. Medication and oxygen keep me going and I hope I live long enough to cash my BIG (ya, right) check from the American Pharmaceutical Company for the damage to my lungs and heart. I'm not holding my breath ... I can't !  (2009 - good thing I didn't).

Feb., 2000, we took a trip south to Texas and around through Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. As soon as we go through Idaho, Washington and Oregon we will have all  of the western states covered. Ed did say something about Amish country in the fall.

In 2001, we took our fifth-wheel camper and wintered in the pines up above Etoile, Texas where my sister, Pegge Smith and her husband Marshall, lived. We can't wait to go again. (Pegge died suddenly from a massive heart attack Jan. 14, 2008. We made it to Texas before she passed, but never did make it back down for another winter with them in those East Texas pines. Marshall has since moved to an assisted living facility in Ft. Worth near his daughter Michele.)

We observed our 50th wedding anniversary quietly (except for the loud mouthed woman Sindi had to go ask to lower her voice!) over dinner with our children, Donn, Casey and Sindi and her son Morgan.

The way we were ...

Me, 1942		L-R: Katy, Grandma, Ann, Albert.  Kids: MaryAnn, Maxine, Frances, Barbara  ca 1942		Me, Pegge, Frances   ca 1945		Barbara, Pegge, Frances, Sandy (seated)
					Sandy, Pegge, Barbara, Frances. March 1962, Reliance

Proof positive I wasn't always HUGE!!

Marshall, Pegge, Ed, Barbara, Frances, Gerald   1963