SPRING VALLEY — Betty Larson and Sylva Anderson went from neighbors growing up to next-door best friends at the Spring Valley Health and Rehabilitation Center, celebrating their 101st birthdays which were both in February.

Larson and Anderson grew up on neighboring farms and became good friends at the age of 13 when they attended Confirmation lessons together and later attended Spring Valley High School.

“We were always farmers,” Larson said. “That’s hard work, but it never seemed to hurt me. I was quite healthy.”

Things have changed a lot in a century, but the biggest without a doubt in Larson’s sharp mind is electricity.

“It goes back, I suppose, to the electricity,” Larson said. “I think that has made life a lot easier for a lot of people. There have been so many changes.”

Larson said tractors have eased the challenges facing farmers and medicine has progressed to allow people to live longer. The days of one-room schoolhouses are now gone, but Larson and Anderson experienced them while they were still around. Larson went to Brookside School, where there were normally 10-12 people from a wide span of ages there to learn.

“If it had 15 [people] they had a big crowd,” Larson said. “I’ve always thought these teachers that were one-room teachers, they had to be extraordinary people.”

Larson said she and a friend were the lone two in their class through grade school, and they came away with their fair share of stories. She said they got the idea to tap dance on the stage for the school program.

“The night of the program, we thought the roof was going to fall in when we started,” Larson said with a laugh. “I think they pulled the curtain on us.”

Another time, Larson and two friends got ukuleles for Christmas. The three went to strum the ukuleles for the program, but they were all tuned differently. When they went to strum, it was clear as day they were all out of whack.

Lastly, Larson remembered a play where they were operating on someone who was acting sick and they were doing so on a knee-hole desk. Someone sat under the desk to blow up a ball to make the sick person look bloated.

“As the thing progressed and the surgery was going on, the one underneath was supposed to let the air out of the balloon,” Larson said.

Then, the air was not released correctly, so the balloon emptied in cartoonish fashion, making loud noises and nearly knocking the patient off the desk.

“His family was sitting over there, they were supposed to be crying,” Larson said. “But they just hooted. Well, that was a disaster. I think they pulled the curtain on that one too.”

The country schools eventually closed and Betty went on to Spring Valley High School.

“I don’t know if that was a good move or not,” Larson said. “As far as education was concerned it was a good move… The country kids didn’t ever really get to know the town kids. It was always a difference there.”

There have been a ton of changes Larson noticed over the years. She said it used to be hard to find deer outside, now they are hard to miss when you go for a drive. On the flip side, she remembered circuses being a major attraction decades ago, and now they are sparsely found.

She remembered professional wrestlers coming to Spring Valley to put on a show.

“Minnesota had a governor that was a wrestler,” Larson said. “They all came in the same car, but oh my God how awful they were to each other. But they sure got the crowds.”

She had two pieces of advice to give to young people who are unsure about the future.

“The school years are your best years. You better learn to work and learn what you can,” Larson said. “Hard work never hurt anybody… It teaches you something.”