Kristine’s mother used to tan hides. She’d tan maybe one or two hides. We’d go down there and then she’d want me to either scrape the hair off or stretch it or soften it or something like that. I would do that for her. That is where I picked it up.

Once that hair starts to fall off and it’s in the water long enough you can take your hand and take that hair off. It’ll come right off real good. I usually try to wait until the hair will come off like that before you monkey with it because you can take the hair off of a hide in about 15-20 minutes, if you go like a bat out of hell. If you just take your time about it maybe it would take you a half an hour or so to take the hair off. Then get a couple of you to stretch it out and nail it down to dry.

This one is a spider, a spider design on it. And this design on this side over here I think is part of the swallow, part of the swallow design.

This is my knife case. We carried knives during World War II.

A little bag I don’t know what I made it for. This was made for 33 (rifle).

(Kristine speaking) He tanned hides and everything. I can’t believe he tanned hides, right from the beginning he made all those.