MEMORIES OF A GERMAN GIRL IN AMERICA
By
Mary Noelle Kleinschmit
Our Father, (Papa), Frank Noelle
Our father was born on May, 3, 1864 in a small town in Westfalen, Germany,
called Callenhardt. He was the oldest child of Henry and Franziska Bracht Noelle He had
two brothers, Henry and Joseph. Their mother died when Joseph was a baby. Later their
father married Elizabeth Walters. They had six children including a set of twins. The
three boys from the first marriage and the youngest boy of the second wife emmigrated to
America as young men. They did not come at the same time. We think Frank was the first
one to come in 1890 when he was 25. With him were Frank Thielmann, Anton Prinz,,
and a cousin, Albert Bracht, all from the town of Callenhardt.. We do not know why they
came to northeast Nebraska, but they all came to West Point. Two of them settled there
but our father came to Wayne County and bought land there. Frank Thielmann settled in
Wayne and opened a blacksmith shop, which he had until he was too old to work
anymore. The land father bought was northwest of Wayne.
The biggest reason so many of the young men in Germany came to America at
that time was to escape military service. Besides this there wasn’t much chance for a
better life there and there were glowing accounts of the great opportunities waiting for
them in America. Our forefathers were farmers and that involved very hard work. Our
father told us that when he was a boy he had to work so hard in the field that he had a sun
stroke, and it left him with a weak left hand. I never knew him to do strenuous work. We
had a hired man to do the fieldwork and we children had to help with the chores and
milking. In later years, we were told by his best friend, that he had a defective heart
valve. He did the best he could and was well liked and highly respected by all those who
knew him.
He loved to tell stories about his life in Germany and when he first came to the
USA. How we wish we would have written some of these things down. We don’t have
any records of where he went to find a farm he wanted to buy. He stayed at West Point
with his friends for a while but must have traveled around the country to look for a farm,
because he had written his name on the inside of a small barn located west of Hartington.
There was a small building northwest of Wayne that we had to go past when going to and
coming from Wayne. He would often point it out to us children and tell us that’s where
he spent his first night while walking from Wayne to the farm.
He bought 160 acres of land in Wayne county located 15 miles northwest of
Wayne. The deed was dated Jan. 3, 1901. The owners were John and Julia Bressler who
had homesteaded it. The price was $3200 for 160 acres. It had a house and barn and a
well when he bought it. His brother Henry Noelle and his cousin Albert Bracht also had a
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mortgage on the land but he bought their shares as soon as he could and was sole owner
of a debt free farm in 1911.
Between 1890 and 1911 he made several trips back to Germany to visit his father
and step-mother. It was his father’s wish that Karl, the youngest of the family, should
also come to America to live. So in 1906, when Father had gone to Germany for a visit,
he brought Karl along to America. The story we were later told by Uncle Karl was that
since he was almost of military age he was not allowed to leave Germany. When the
passport agent asked Karl his age, he was refused permission to go to America, so they
both turned back. Father told Karl that the next time they went through the line, he should
let Father do all the talking. So several days later they tried again and when Karl was
asked his age, Father hit him on the head to remind him to keep still, and they were given
permission to come to America. Karl later told us that he felt that tap on his head for a
while. In later years, Karl told how very seasick he got coming over, so our Father told
him to put a newspaper real tight over his stomach and that helped a lot. Sounds
unbelievable, but he should know.
Another story we were told was about our Uncle Joe. He also wanted to come to
America but didn’t have the money, so he joined a circus that was scheduled to perform
in Chicago. When it got, there he ran away and eventually ended up with our Dad and
Uncle Henry in Nebraska. This goes to show how dissatisfied the young folks were in
Germany, and how they thought America would be the land of opportunity, the land of
milk and honey. In Germany the Noelle family were farmers, so when our Dad, Uncle
Henry, and Uncle Joe came here they also farmed but Karl had learned the carpenter
trade and did that for several years. He built the barn on Dad’s farm. In later years he had
a variety store in Wisner.
From the stories of his early days in America that we kids remember, the people
in Father’s neighborhood worked very hard and they were good friends. One family that
was especially good friends was the Matt Mohr family. They even came to visit us in
Germany when the war was over. When we came to America and found out that we
couldn’t move on our farm yet, they let us live in the house on their land from August to
the following March when we moved to the Henry Harmeier place near Carroll.
Father often talked about all the rattlesnakes there were, and how they would kill
them with a pitchfork and hang them on the corncrib until morning to be sure they were
dead. He planted an orchard on his farm before he returned to Germany. There were
apples of many kinds, cherries, pears and plums. As kids, he taught us the names of the
different fruit trees. We supplied the neighborhood with apples and that sure helped
everyone during the drought-depression years. He never took any money even though
many would like to have paid for them. Most of all it helped us during the depression. At
least we had fruit to eat. He made gallons of apple cider too, and anyone who came to
visit was treated to some. We kids drank our share, too.
His religion was very important to our Father. The church nearest to his farm at
that time was 13 miles away in Wayne, so he and several other early settlers went
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together and got permission to build a small church at Carroll, 7 miles away. A priest
from Wayne came to say Mass when possible. We belonged to that parish during our
growing-up years, but the priest from Wayne couldn’t speak German so we often went to
Randolph to church because that priest could speak German. And Mom felt more at home
there and also she could go to confession there. When our Dad died Mom got permission
to have the funeral and burial there instead of Wayne.
In 1911 our father had his farm all paid for so decided to go back to Germany to
get married. Clem Harmeier was living with him all those years so it was decided that he
would stay on the farm until Father came back, with the understanding that when he came
back with his wife, Clem would have to find a place of his own. Of course, things didn’t
go at all like he thought they would and he didn’t get back until 1923. Clem and his wife,
Mary, lived on the place until they were evicted by the U.S. government which had taken
over the custody of the land because America was at war with Germany (World War I).
Dad was an American citizen, but it still took 2 years after we came here, before we
could finally move back onto his farm because the government had leased it to another
farmer for 5 years.
Besides that, he had to give up his USA citizenship and apply to become a citizen
of Germany to get a marriage license. This changing citizenship took until 1920 to
become valid. According to the law in effect at that time, children were citizens of the
country of which their father was a citizen when they were born. Hence, we were all
natural-born citizens of the United States because we were born before 1920. But when I
applied for a passport to visit Germany, it took a year to get it because I didn’t have
written papers to verify this. I have them now!
Although I don’t remember him to ever be well and strong like other men his age
due to a heat stroke he had as a young man, his sudden death of a heart attack in January,
1930, was a shock to everyone. Although he died too soon to see us all grown up, he did
realize his dream of raising his family in America.
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Our Mother, Theresia Tillmann Noelle
Our Mother’s name was Maria Franziska Theresia Tillmann but she went by
Theresia. Her parents were Bernard Tillmann and Theresa Gockler. She was born on
Nov. 3, 1884 in Bockum, Kreis Meschede, Westfalen, Germany. Her parents died of
typhoid fever within two weeks of each other during a typhoid epidemic. They had two
daughters, Theresia, 5, and Maria, 3 years old. The two girls were raised by two different
families. Mother was raised (not adopted) by cousins, Joseph and Kasperina (Kessler)
Tillmann in Wenneman, a town near Bockum where Mother’s parents lived. They had
children her age so she fit right in. Maria was adopted by a family named “Doering” in a
nearby town of Freinohl. They were an older couple who had no children, so she was
raised as an only child. Although both girls were dearly loved by their new families, I
think Mother missed having her sister with her while they were growing up. I’ve been
told that they occasionally visited each other but I’m sure they would rather have been
together. I was never told why they weren’t adopted by the same family.
By the time she was 16, she had to make her own living. She used to tell us about
the ladies she worked for. They were very particular about how the housework was done,
how the tablecloths were ironed, and how the meals were served. One lady she worked
for was some relative of our father who was in America at the time. One of Mother’s jobs
was to write letters for the lady to our father. So they met through letters. Probably these
letters became part of their courtship. Eventually they decided to get married so in 1911
he rented out his farm to a good friend and set sail for Germany. It was his intention to
marry and, with his bride, to come right back to his farm in America. She owned a house
and 10 acres of land and that was our home. She had inherited it from her parents. She
couldn’t come to America until she sold all her property there, according to the German
law. To complicate matters even more, the war clouds were looming in Germany, that
ended up to be World War I. So the short of the matter was that they could not get
passport papers while the war was on, consequently, most of their family was born in
Germany. Since our Dad was an American citizen, he didn’t have to go off to fight but he
had to help out some families whose men had gone to war. I don’t remember that part, it
was told to me by my older sisters. I don’t remember that my Dad was ever anywhere but
at our place.
Mother was a beautiful lady, as you can see from the picture. She was a lady in
every sense of the word. I hardly know how to describe her to you. She was very kind
hearted. She was too kind hearted to get after us to do our work, just quietly did it herself.
It would have been better for us if she had been stricter. Looking back now I can see that
she really had a hard life, but we never heard her complain. She cried a lot and when we
asked her what was wrong, she would say, “You wouldn’t understand”. Until we came to
America, she seemed to always be happy. She had lots of friends, a nice house,
everything seemed good, but when we got here, nothing was like there. We had
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electricity there—none here. There we had, what we were told when we visited Germany
several years ago, one of the best homes in the village. Here we had a small poorly built
house and summers were very hot and dry, winters were bitter cold,--all the opposite of
over there.. It was hard for her to make friends here, there was always the language
barrier and she was not an outgoing person. If she had been, things might have been
easier for her.
She must have missed her friends in Germany terribly, especially after our Father
died. When I was in Germany they told me that she wrote to them that she would give
anything just to visit with them even for one hour.
Most of all she missed going to church. She was deeply religious. In Germany we
never missed Mass on Sunday and vespers on Sunday afternoons. Here we were lucky to
get to church on Sunday in the summer but hardly ever in the winter, not even on
Christmas and Easter. There, a big celebration was held for First Communicants. When
Frances and I made our First Communion, she couldn’t even be there and we didn’t get
home. We were staying in Randolph at the Sisters’ boarding school and the roads were
muddy. I don’t remember how our Dad got there because I don’t know that we had a car
then yet, but Mamma couldn’t be there or celebrate in any way. That was a big
disappointment that she often talked about.
When our Dad died, only six and a half years after we came here, she leaned on
our oldest sister, Theresia, a lot. Our Dad had done all the buying and all the business.
Gradually she got better with doing the business and learning the language. She could
read and understand even the hardest words, kept up with politics and other news, but
didn’t like to speak for fear she wouldn’t say it right. Neighbors and people she had to do
business with were very good to her and helped in any way that they could.
I think the time when we were teenagers was the hardest for her. She couldn’t
understand how every one went to dances on Christmas, Easter, etc.. Hardly any of our
friends were Catholic because we lived in a Protestant community. But she was really
happy to see us happily married and settled down, all with Catholic husbands. When the
grandchildren came along, she really enjoyed having them around. She was a ‘family’
person.
Several years before she died, she had a kidney removed because it was
tubercular. From then on, she gradually went ‘down-hill’. Her mind was real good all the
while though, and she still always enjoyed reading and family visits. She died peacefully
in her sleep at the age of eighty.
___
Here are three letters that our mother wrote to her daughter Theresia, who was
now a nun, Sr. Mary Leonarda. I have translated them. I am putting them in the book so
you can get the feeling of how deeply religious she was, and also how she missed her
friends in Germany. You can get the feeling of how dear to her were her family, more so
since she was an orphan and seldom got to see her only sister.
I’m sure that many of our pioneers that came to this country must have gone
through the same thing!!!
I am including a copy of one of the letters so you can see what German script
looked like. It has changed and is like ours now.
__________-________
Letter Number One
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Laurel , Ne. Dec. 12, 1949
Dear Sister Mary Leonarda,
We soon will be at the end of the old year and once more days go into eternity and
we will have a new year. But before that we will have the beautiful feast of Christmas,
and with that I wish you a Joyous Christmas feast and a Blessed New Year. Hopefully
you can celebrate these beautiful days in good health. We here are all well, and we think
that Mary’s and Elsie’s families will come. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could come and
spend the day with your Mother a little while.
It is now nearly 20 years since Papa left this world, and us. Often I cannot believe
that it is so long, With God’s help we got through those years. Christmas 1929 I
remember like it was yesterday. It was so nice and warm and everyone was so happy
because all the children still believed in the Christchild as we did in Germany. Now they
are all grown up and the feast day is not as nice any more. So we give presents. Thank
your dear children for all the letters, and wish Sr. Anna Marie also a joyous Christmas
and a Blessed New Year and to you my heartfelt greeting from
Your Mamma
-------------------------Letter Number Two
Laurel, 30/10 1957
Dear Sister,
Heartfelt greetings sends to you your Mamma. Thank you heartily for the two
Catholic Digests that we received this morning, I have read the article from the life of
Martin (L). It is very interesting how our dear God the young man to a good Catholic
family was given.
It is almost 4 months since we were last together. Those two weeks will stay long
in my memory.
When I am often alone my mind is often in memory with you by the Sisters, every
day in my mind when we were together, the days are for me unforgettable. Now, dear
Sister, how goes it with you health wise? We are also better. The strength will come
back, then God willing we will be again strong so that a person can work again.
Frances and I have not gone to church so far, we are afraid we are too weak. Last
Saturday we dug our carrots, got one and one-half bushels. Potatoes were not so good.
The corn is better than we first thought.
Dear Sister, last week we subscribed again for your magazine. Now dear Sister,
we are better again. Please excuse my writing and heartfelt greetings from us all.
Your Mamma
Letter Number Three
Laurel, Ne. Mar. 27, 1957
Dear Sister Mary Leonarda,
The heartfelt Greetings and a Joyous Easterfest sends to you your Mamma.
How goes it with you? Are you all better since the flu? It seems like the flu is
everywhere. So many can’t talk when they have it and can’t get over it. I think that the
nice warm weather which we have now will help. Over winter it is hard to get out. Easter
is early this year and winter over. Christmas was so nice and warm. I think so often when
you and Elsie in 1923 made your First Holy Communion. Easter was early that year,
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March 27 and we had it on Whit Sunday morning when you both in your white dresses to
Wennemen to church walked. Do you remember it? Do you also remember Tillmann’s
Aunt Sister ( Odelwas Lisbeth) also died, the day after was buried? That was a sad day
for Odolfes and Tillmanns. The Tillmann’s Aunt also wrote that Gertrude Kepler Schmitt
is again married. She married Josef Riekert. They live by Woses. Her father is a tailor, I
think the sister was as old as you. Do you remember them? They wrote to us for many
years. I have the letter from Tillmanns and pictures that they at Sisters took. They have
again said how nice it would be if we could see each other again. We speak so often
when we could again see each other what a joy it would be. You can write them a letter
what you all have seen and what you do. It would be so interesting. Maria has also said
that she cannot visit you. How is Sister Cornelia and her eyes?
Now dear child must I send you greetings from all from Mamma. Also
greetings to Sister Anna Marie and Sister Mary Clarita.
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Our Family
Our family consisted of eight children, namely: Theresia—1912, Elsie—1913,
Frances—1914, Mary—1916, Hildegard—1917, Henry—1919, Frank—1923, and
Dorothy –1927. My story includes all the family but Hildegard so I will write a little
about her. She was born, what we were told, a “blue” baby. Exactly what was wrong with
her, I don’t know but she lived only a day or so. Being only a year or so old at the time, I
don’t remember her but Theresia and Elsie do. If doctors had known then what they know
now, she could probably have been saved. Many times I have wondered what she would
have been like. For sure she is an angel in heaven.
I have tried to include all the rest of the family in my memoirs.
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The Growing-up Years
We children always had to call our father ’Papa,” so that is how I will refer to him
in the rest of my story.
The next part of my story starts when we arrived in Wayne. We took the train
from Ellis Island to Chicago, then had an hour or so lay over, then went on another train
to Wayne. I don’t remember any of this because it was night. We got to Wayne around
noon. Mr. Thielman was there to meet us. Seems like yesterday!! He had come directly
from his blacksmith shop and was so black and dirty, we kids thought he was a Negro.
How happy he and Papa were to see each other again. We all walked to the Thielman
house, about six blocks. Dinner was waiting for us. I don’t remember where they put our
family of seven, but we stayed there two weeks. After that we moved to a house across
the street from the blacksmith shop, and we spent many hours watching Mr.Thielman
work and watching the sparks fly like the poem, The Village Blacksmith.”
We lived in this house until the end of August—time to go to a school. Another
thing I recall from that summer was a park near by where we could swing and go on
slides. There was a German-speaking family near by with children our age. They always
took us along. Slides were new to us. Elsie went down one and held on to the sides all the
way down instead of letting herself go. She got blisters in both hands. That scared me so I
never tried it.
The news that we had arrived in Wayne was in the Wayne Herald that week so
Papa’s old friends and other German-speaking people came to Thielman’s to visit and
meet the family. Our brother, Frank, was born two weeks after we got here. It was a new
experience for our mother to deliver her baby in a hospital with a ‘man’ doctor in
attendance. She was used to being at her home with only a midwife present, so was
embarrassed to have this ‘man’ doctor there. A friend of Papa’s, Mrs.Carl Nuss who
spoke German, offered to go along with her and interpret for her. From then on, Mrs.
Nuss and Mom were the best of friends. We often took her along to visit there while we
went shopping in Wayne.
We were at Thielmans for the Fourth of July. They celebrated with lots of
fireworks, all new to us. Theresia and Elsie weren’t afraid to light them. Frances and I got
to hold the sparklers. What fun!!! Mr.Thielman had come from Germany with Papa in
1890 so they were like family. There were two adult girls and one adult boy at home yet
with their father. Their mother had died many years ago. All were very good to us and it
helped us so much to make the transition from German to American ways, language, etc.
Needless to say, the Thielman family was very, very dear to us all through the years.
It was a real disappointment to Papa that we couldn’t move to our farm, but we
had to go somewhere until such time that we could move there. Again, a good friend of
Papa’s from his early years there offered that we could live in an empty house that they
had. Mr. and Mrs. Matt Mohr had built a house across the road from their home place and
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had planned to move there as soon as it was finished but Mr. Mohr died unexpectedly the
week before we came to Wayne. The first Sunday we were here Papa asked to be taken to
visit them only to be told when he got there that Mr. Mohr was buried the day before. It
was a shock to Papa. They were such good friends that the Mohrs had even come to
Germany to visit us. Mrs. Mohr didn’t want to live in the new house alone so we lived
there from August to the following March. It was a mile or so from our own farm so we
went to that school now and later when we finally moved to our own farm It was called
Flag School. Mohrs had children in school that were our age so we walked to and from
school together. They taught us how to speak English during our walks. There were also
older Mohr girls who were out of school. One of my fond memories of them was how
they took us along sleigh riding that winter. There was a steep hill just north, a road, and
we had heaven riding along with them as fast as could be. They would sing Jingle Bells,
so it was the first English song we learned. In Germany we had no hills and didn’t know
what sleigh riding was. The Mohrs were our good friends for many years.
We spent our first Christmas in America at the Mohr farm. On Christmas day or
the Sunday after, on an afternoon, the Thielmans drove in. What a surprise! Their car was
loaded with gifts for us. We were told in later years that Papa had given them some
money to buy gifts for us instead of him doing it. But they were supposed to bring them
before Christmas so the “Christchild” could bring them. Papa was really put out with
them for not bringing the things sooner. I don’t remember what I got, I only remember
their car loaded with toys.
One other event that stands out in my memory was the time that Papa and I
walked to church in Carroll. We hadn’t been to Mass for a long time and somehow Papa
had found out that the priest would say Mass there that Sunday. He took me along and we
walked 4 miles to the Matt Finn place and from there we rode with them in their car.
Coming home was the same way.
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Living at the Carroll farm
In March of 1924, we moved again. Papa had to earn a living some way so he
rented a farm north of Carroll. All I remember of the move to that farm was that some
men came with horses and wagons and loaded all our possessions in the wagons. These
wagons had seats across the front for people to ride. I got to ride with Papa, but that’s all
I remember of the trip. The farm was owned by Henry Harmeier. Their home was a short
distance from us and they could also talk German, so we spent many pleasant Sundays
together. Their children were about our age and so we again had playmates.
One event I remember so well happened there one Sunday afternoon. While the
grown-ups were visiting, we children were running and playing and all at once their dog
bit me on my leg. It bled and of course I cried. Our parents decided that they better put
some peroxide on it so I wouldn’t get infection Mr Harmeier promised me it wouldn’t
hurt, but of course it did!! Then he laughed because he had tricked me, but I didn’t like
him much after that because. he should have explained that it would hurt but that it
needed to be done. He told me a LIE.
For the time that we lived on that farm, we attended a nearby country school,
District 70. By that time we could speak English quite well and Theresia and Elsie were
promoted from the 3rd grade at the beginning of the year to the seventh grade. School was
so much easier here and when they graduated from the eighth grade they had the highest
grades in the county. Frances and I had been set back to the first grade, but we made 3
grades in that first year. In September of 1925, when the new school year began, Frances
and I were sent to the Catholic school in Randolph. We were old enough to make our
First Holy Communion and that was a Catholic school staffed by Sisters. The school
building consisted of three stories and a basement. The basement had a kitchen, a dining
room for boarders, another for the Sisters, a furnace room, and a chapel. The first floor
had the grade school classrooms, the second was the high school and a study room for the
Sisters. The top floor was three dormitories, for the Sisters, the girl boarders, and the boy
boarders. There were 15 or 20 pupils that lived too far from school to walk every day so
they stayed at the Sisters during the week but went home on weekends. Frances and I
were not so fortunate. We seldom got home more than once in the month. Then on
Monday morning, Papa would take us to Carroll with horses and a wagon because we
didn’t have a car. We would board the train and ride to Randolph. We would get to
Randolph at about noon and, since the depot was down town, we had a long walk to the
school, carrying our heavy suitcases.
Our first night at the boarding school was unforgettable for me. There we had to
do everything by the clock. At eight o’clock we all had to go upstairs to bed. The
dormitory looked so big with all the beds neatly in a row, probably 10 or 12, all with
white bedspreads all alike---except ours. Our mother had sent a red featherbed and big
square feather pillows that we had brought along from Germany. This didn’t match the
rest at all, so the Sisters sent a letter home with us to bring a quilt and a white bed spread.
Poor Mom---she didn’t even know what a quilt was, but Papa saw to it that we got the
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necessary bedding. And that wasn’t the end of our problems. After we were all in bed and
lights were turned out and the Sister that was in charge of the boarders had left, our bed
went down to the floor with a big bang!! The Sister came storming upstairs to see what
was going on. The Sisters’ study room was right below the dormitory so it probably
sounded real loud. She saw that our bed hadn’t been set together right and it came apart
when we got in it, so it was set it together right and we went to sleep in it with no other
trouble.
We adjusted to our new life in a short time. Our mother had our hair cut before
school started that year. When it was still long we had to kneel on front of her every
morning so she could brush and comb it and braid it into two long braids. With it short,
we could brush and comb it ourselves. The barber had given each of us the long hair he
had cut off. Frances kept hers for many years and finally had it made into a hair piece for
her doll.
As I can remember it, the year at the Randolph school was quite enjoyable. The
3rd and 4th grades were in the same room. The children were kind and friendly to us even
though we were different. We had one dark dress to wear and coverall aprons like we did
in Germany. Nobody else in the room wore aprons. Since we didn’t get home every
week, I’m sure we got really dirty! Several weekends the Sisters washed our clothes. The
poor Sisters! I think we were a nuisance, especially since we were there many weekends so one of the Sisters had to always be with us but I think we behaved well and we
got good grades and since a number of other pupils were there during the week, we didn’t
get as home sick as we might have. .
We made our first confession and our First Communion on the weekend after
Easter. The Sister that was our teacher, Sr. Justinian, had instructed us well so we
understood what it all meant. Our first confession was on the Saturday afternoon at the
church in Randolph. Fr. Lordeman was the priest. We were all very nervous and excited.
I remember that when I was finished with confession and back outside, I felt like I was
“walking on air”. In that parish the children made their First Communion when they were
in the 4th grade and wore ordinary Sunday clothes. In church they knelt with their parents
instead of all in a body. Then, when they were older, they made their Solemn
Communion and wore white dresses and veils and it was much more ceremonious.
The next day was rainy and the roads were muddy so Papa was the only one of
our family in church that Sunday so he knelt between us at Mass. We had stayed at the
Sisters that weekend and had gotten ourselves dressed for church alone. Our dresses
were new and alike. Frances’ dress was orange and mine was brown and both had white
embroidery on the front. We were very happy with them. Best of all, we each had a First
Communion set consisting of a pearl rosary, a scapular, and a prayer book, all in a pretty
box. The prayer books had white hard covers made of celluloid, which looks like plastic.
Mine had a picture of the Blessed Virgin on it and Frances’ had the Sacred Heart. It was
the only prayer book we had for several years so it had hard use. I still have mine.
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Right after Mass we went back to the school house and Papa went home because
the roads were muddy and it was still raining. The Sisters made us a nice dinner and
afterwards we went to a school room to spend the afternoon. At some time we started to
play tag, running around the benches. I fell and hit my head against the corner of a desk
.and the bump swelled real fast. One of the Sisters brought a cold knife and laid it on the
bump. The cold was supposed to make the swelling go down. It quieted us down for a
while anyway.
The next morning when our classmates came back to school they all had stories
about their celebrations---how many people came to their house and how many gifts and
money they had received. I don’t know that Frances and I were envious or anything
because we knew we had no relatives nearby and we didn’t expect anything, but the day
was real hard on Mamma because, in Germany, the girls wore white dresses and veils and
a big celebration was held in honor of the occasion. Here she didn’t even get to be at the
Mass. She often talked about it and how disappointed she was.
Some time while we were living at Carroll, Papa bought our car—a Model T
Ford. It was “air-conditioned” because the top was made of heavy canvas held by a frame
of iron rods. The sides were open but during the winter there were “curtains” of the same
canvas like the top that were buttoned into place. The curtains had little windows made of
isinglass. In summer it was nice riding in the car but in winter it was cold. We always
covered ourselves with quilts of some kind. You have seen pictures of Model T’s, I’m
sure. THE GOOD OLD DAYS. But better than horses and buggies.
I don’t know why it was that Papa usually wanted me along to help him. Maybe it
was because I was stronger than Frances. The weekend that stays in my mind was when
we were still living at Carroll and he decided to spray the orchard at our own farm.
It was a cold day in late spring. He loaded the spray barrel into the back of the buggy one
Saturday morning and said I should come along with him. The buggy had curtains like
our Model T to make it a little warmer. When we got to our farm he put the barrel on the
ground, put in some kind of pump, and filled it with water and some Paris Green that was
supposed to keep the fruit from getting wormy. My job was to hold the pump. In the
process, the solution ran up my arms to the elbow. By the time we were done and on our
way back home, I was really cold and my hands and arms hurt from the spray and I cried.
I knew that Papa was proud of how I helped and my reward was a sack of chocolate
drops----all for me. I don’t think he realized that the spray would hurt me or he would
have figured out some other way to do it. The spray and cold didn’t make me sick or
anything, but it was something to remember.
Another incident happened that year that is worth mentioning. We didn’t have
water in the house, so to do the wash the water had to be carried from the well to the
house. A wash boiler was put on the stove to heat the water. This water was “hard” which
meant that it used much soap to wash the clothes clean. Lye was added to the hot water to
“soften” it. When you added the lye to the hot water, a layer of scum formed on top and
Mom would skim it off and then add the soap. Since this was all new to Mom she didn’t
realize how poisonous lye was. The only place she had to store her lye and soap and other
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things was an open cupboard that Papa had made. She had made a curtain in front of it to
make it look nicer. Frank was a baby at that time, probably about two, and when Mom
was busy at other things he got into that can of lye and tried to eat it. Of course when the
lye touched his mouth it hurt and he started to cry. Papa and Mamma immediately took
him to Carroll to Dr.Texley who did what he could for Frank but he had a very sore
mouth for a very, very long time and he cried and cried. I remember that we had to pull
him around on the place in the little coaster wagon for hours at a time so he wouldn’t cry
so much. The doctor said to be thankful that Frank hadn’t swallowed any lye or he
wouldn’t have lived.
Every summer our cousins, the Brachts at West Point, would come on a Sunday to
visit and we would go there once, too. There wasn’t room for the whole family in our
Model T so we had to take turns to go there. This year at Carroll was Theresia’s and my
turn to stay home and watch the place. We raised a flock of geese and we also had hogs
in the hog yard. We were supposed to keep the geese out of the hog yard but somehow
one did get in. We heard it squawk and ran to rescue it but were too late. The hogs had
already bit it so bad that it died. We felt so bad that we hadn’t watched better. I don’t
remember getting scolded when the folks came home, but the geese were Theresia’s pets
and it made us very sad.
Our second Christmas in America was spent here at the Carroll place, too. I don’t
remember what I got but Theresia and Frances each got a porcelain doll with moving
eyes and long real hair. Theresia was really proud of hers and we went to Harmeiers so
she could show it to Mrs. Jenny Harmeier. All Jenny said was “A big girl like you plays
with dolls?” Mom said Theresia just laid her doll down and never played with it again.
Was Mom ever disgusted with Jenny! Theresia let me hold the doll, make dresses for it,
and I even made a wooden wardrobe that doubled for a bed. Every year I hoped I would
get a doll of my own for Christmas but I never did. But I was given her doll after Sister
died and it is displayed in my living room. In the museum in Hartington there is a 1924
Sears catalog that has those dolls in it. In those days catalogs were used much more than
now I think. It was more convenient for our parents, I’m sure.
Papa ordered a sewing machine from the Sears catalog. It was a Minnesota A
model. It was necessary for Mamma to learn to sew because it was much cheaper to make
clothes than to buy ready made ones. A good neighbor, Mrs. Paulson, showed Mamma
how to use the machine but she picked out such a complicated pattern that I think it
discouraged Mamma right away. They made dresses alike for all four of us girls. The
dresses were red gingham with three ruffles on the skirt. The ruffles were made with a
ruffler attachment. That alone was hard. I remember that Mrs. Paulson and Mamma got
all four dresses done and they looked real nice but Mamma never cared to sew with the
machine. Theresia learned to sew by watching them and soon did most of the sewing. In
later years Theresia showed Frances and me how to sew. Mamma could do real neat
hand sewing, could knit, crochet, embroider, and darn. Her patching would have taken
top prize at any fair. She knitted our mittens, caps, shawls and socks. It was running the
sewing machine that she had a hard time with. You had to pedal it, too. An electric one
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would have been much easier. I think she wished for her seamstress from Germany many
a time.
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Our Own Home----Our Farm
In December of 1925, the Maxons who had rented our farm from the government
found another place to rent. They could have stayed until March 1st, the usual moving
day, but they moved in December so that we could finally come to our farm. Frances and
I were at Randolph at school on the actual moving day. We had gone to school on
Monday morning from our home in Carroll and on Friday night when they came and got
us, we went to our own farm. Everyone was so happy to finally be on our own place.
So we celebrated our third Christmas in America at our own farm. That year I got
the nicest present ever. It was a set of tin squares with which I could build houses,
skyscrapers, and other buildings. The squares were double so they would fit inside each
other at the edges. They had doors and windows, but if the edges were bent they wouldn’t
fit in their allotted slots. What fun I had with it. I couldn’t take it along when we went
back to school in Randolph in January so I gave orders to Frank and Henry not to play
with it but they did anyway and the edges were bent when I got home again and it wasn’t
so much fun anymore.
Frank and Henry got a little steam engine that really worked. It was like the real
steam engines that the farmers used to run their threshing machines. You filled a little
container with denatured alcohol and lit the wick on it. The flame wold heat the water in
the tank to steam which would make the engine move and the whistle blow. That was the
best toy ever and they had it for years. Those Christmases were so nice and peaceful.
I don’t remember ever getting to Mass on Christmas until we had a better car and
the roads were better. We believed in the Christ Child bringing the gifts and not Santa
Claus. We would have a small Christmas tree that we set on the dining room table. We
set our plates on the table around the tree and put our names on the plates. That way we
knew which toys were ours. We had real candles on the tree that clipped onto the
branches. When we lit the candles we all had to watch so no flame would get on the
branches. We would all stand around the tree and sing German Christmas songs. As years
went by, times changed and old customs were forgotten.
Elsie told us this story in later years. The big packing boxes that we brought from
Germany with our belongings were stored in the wash house. One year she went in there
and looked in those boxes and found some toys—a doll buggy for one. She played with it
whenever she could go without being found out. On Christmas morning there the buggy
was by her place. In later years she said she thought the Christ Child hid the toys at each
home because it would be much simpler to bring them, and the Christ Child could do
anything. Weren’t we naïve? In those years children believed longer in the Christ Child
or Santa.. They weren’t exposed to the adult world so soon, at least not our family.
It may have been one of our first Christmases on our farm. Frances, Henry, and I
wanted to sleep in the dining room in the sofa bed. We wanted to see if Santa or the
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Christ Child came. By then we had heard so much about Santa that we weren’t sure about
anything. After much begging, Papa and Mama finally gave in. But our plans didn’t work
, we promptly went to sleep and when we woke up, here were our toys and candy. Years
later Theresia said they worked so fast and so quietly for fear we would wake up. Do you
suppose our guardian angels put us in that short, deep deep sleep? Ah!! Memories!!
Now that we are finally living on the farm that Papa bought in the 1890s, I’ll try
to describe to you the way it was when we were growing up there.
The first picture is the earliest picture of the place that we have, the second is how
it looked 30 or so years later. In the foreground of the earlier picture it shows Clem
Harmeier with the team of horses and Papa standing to the side. The Harmeier family
seemed like family to us all through the years and their name comes up from to time in
my story. Under what circumstances they met is unknown. My, how I wish we could still
ask them questions. There were three Harmeier brothers, Clem on the picture, Henry
who owned the farm we lived on for a while near Carroll, and John who lived with us as
a hired man at the time Papa died and who later rented the land until Henry and Frank
were old enough to farm. Clem and Papa were like brothers.
In the first picture is the original house consisting of one room downstairs and two
upstairs. Clem stayed on the farm while Papa went to Germany in 1911. Clem was
married by then. He built the addition to the front of the house. It served as a kitchen. The
spring that we moved there, Papa had the addition on the back of the house built. It was
large and was used as a bedroom. It had two double beds in it plus a small heating stove
to warm the room in the winter. Papa, Mamma, Theresia, and later baby Dorothy slept
there. It had a large closet, the only one in the house, so we all had our clothes in it.
The barn on the first picture is still on the place. Soon after we moved there, they
built a large and a small hen house, also a garage and a brooder house. The wooden
windmill tower was replaced with a steel one.
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The trees were small yet on the first picture but did they ever grow! Most of them
were cottonwoods. As you can see, they were more than twice as high as the house.
There were so many kinds of birds living in the grove. We kids enjoyed identifying them.
When the wind blew hard, the trees were so “noisy”. Cottonwood leaves are brittle and
make a sound of their own, but when it was one day after another of strong winds the
sound could be real nerve wracking.
It was not unusual for lightning to strike in the trees. If a bad storm was predicted,
we would go into the cave just in case the wind would blow a tree on the house. This was
after Papa died. Mamma was so afraid of storms. This made us children afraid too.
Actually, there was once that a huge tree branch did fall through the roof of the
downstairs bedroom. The grove had many nice things about it. It was a good windbreak
in the winter. It made a cool shady place for us kids to play in summer. Since we were
home most of the time, that’s where we went when we were done with our work. There
was a good swing there, too. Our place was about a quarter mile from the road, kind of in
the middle of the farm. We had nice neighbors but their children were all boys younger
than Frances or I so we really didn’t have anybody to chum with. Our friends, the
Harmeiers, came to visit once a year or so, so most of the time we entertained ourselves
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For income, we raised chickens as did most farmers. In March Papa bought 500
baby chicks from a hatchery in Wisner. We used the building that was supposed to be a
wash house for a brooder house. Papa and Theresia took care of the chicks until they
were big enough to be put in the big hen house. Then it was us kids’ job to feed them. In
the evening we had to bring pails full of oats and bran to the house. The oats was soaked
over night and in the morning water was heated and poured over the bran. We school age
kids had to carry the feed to the hen house and put it into long troughs. We also had to fill
the waterers before we went to school. We had to walk a mile to school so that meant
that we had to get up early to get all done. During vacation it wasn’t such a rush.
I should describe the brooder stove too because they are no longer used. The stove
was made of iron and burned the same kind of coal as the base burner in the dining
room. It was about 18 inches square and a yard tall, It had a tin canopy over it that kept
the heat by the chicks It was about four feet across and reached to within about eight
inches from the floor. . They learned very soon where it was warm. The feeders were not
under the canopy. So the chicks ate their fill and ran back to the heat. It was a pretty sight
to go in there at night when the chicks were all nestled in a ring under the canopy.
When the first bunch of chicks was big enough to be moved to the hen house,
Papa went to Wisner again and got another 500 chicks When the roosters were big
enough to eat, a produce man from town came and bought the roosters, called broilers.
We ate a lot of them too, but this was before electricity and freezers so we killed only as
many as we could eat at one time. In all we usually had 500 laying hens so we got a lot of
eggs that we packed in crates that held 30 dozen each. Papa took them to town to be sold.
It was our main income for many years, especially during the dry years when there was
no income from the crops.
Our Saturday work included cleaning the hen houses. Frances, Henry and I did it
the first years we lived on our farm. It wasn’t such a bad job. The floor was cement and
the roosts came apart so we could easily shovel the droppings to the door and onto the
manure spreader The hired man took it to the field and spread it for fertilizer. When we
had the floors all shoveled clean and swept, we put the roosts back. During this while we
had chased the hens into an attached holding pen called a scratch pen. It had lots of straw
for the hens to scratch in and they just loved it. They weren’t allowed to run loose on the
place most of the time because then they would lay their eggs all over where we couldn’t
find them.
There were two other jobs with the hens. Once a month or so we sprayed the
walls and floor with some dip that would kill the lice. Hens didn’t lay as many eggs if
they had lice on them. Also, one summer we were plagued with bed bugs in the big hen
house. They were about the size of a small tick and were in the cracks in the nests. Papa
and us kids would carry the nests outside. They were long boards nailed together with
partitions for the nests. Mamma would heat water to boiling and Papa would pour it into
the cracks where the bugs were. Dip didn’t seem to kill them but this did. After we were
done with the hen house cleaning, we had to put on all clean clothes before we came in so
we sure didn’t bring some of the bugs into the house and we never did have them in the
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house but many people did. Once I was invited to stay overnight with a girl friend. They
had a big fancy house and I never would have thought they would have bed bugs but in a
day or two after I was home, I could tell I was full of bites. When DDT became available,
I think the bed bugs met their match. I don’t know how many years there were bed bugs
in the hen house at home because I went on to high school and wasn’t home much.
We never minded the hen house cleaning job and made a kind of game of it. But
one Saturday I got myself into trouble. There was a program on the radio that I wanted to
hear. I figured that if Frances and Henry together would clean the big hen house and I
cleaned the little one by myself, we would be done sooner because we wouldn’t fool
around so much. It so happened that Papa came in to where I was working and he gave
me the worst scolding ever. To this day I haven’t forgotten that because I still don’t know
what I did wrong. Frances and Henry had agreed to my plan and I wasn’t trying to get out
of work. In fact I did more work than they did.
Our other source of income was from milking. We had 10 or 15 cows to milk. The
milking was done twice a day. When we were at home, we school kids had to help. The
cows were put into a barn and into stanchions so they couldn’t run away. They were
pretty tame though and each had a name. When we were done milking, the milk was
brought to the house and run through a separator to get the cream out. The skim milk was
carried to the hog yard where the hogs drank it out of long troughs. They sure liked it.
The cream was put into five- gallon cans and taken to town and sold.
This separator was in a corner of our kitchen, bolted tight to the floor. The milk
was poured into a tank at the top and it ran through a part that had 15 or so discs in it, and
two other parts with spouts, one for cream and one for milk to come out of. It was
powered by a crank that we kids usually had to turn. When we had it going fast enough,
we opened the spout on the tank and the milk would run through. It was quite a job to
turn it fast enough so we changed off turning. If we went too slow, the cream didn’t come
out so it had to be done right. Once a day the separator had to be taken apart and washed.
Today this is so much different. Dairies have hundreds of cows and everything is on such
a large scale. Many kids don’t even know that the milk in the stores comes from cows.
After we had electricity, this chore was much easier.
Before the days of DDT for fly spray, flies were a big problem, too. We had
what was called fly ribbon. It was a long narrow paper that was sticky on both sides. It
was enclosed in a small cardboard tube. The paper was pulled out of its container and
was tacked to the ceiling with an attached ribbon and if the fly would light on it, it stayed.
These fly ribbons helped but were unsightly. There was another fly killer called Daisy fly
killer. It was a tin box about 4+6 inches and about !/2 inch deep. The top was really pretty
with green leaves and white daisies painted on it The container contained some kind of
poison The centers of the daisies were yellow felt. We would pour a certain amount of
water in it and the flies would drink from these centers and soon lay there dead. I thought
they were so neat, but they didn’t last long and were rather expensive so we used more
fly ribbons.
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We, like most other farmers in the days before electricity, had a cave. It was
“nature’s refrigerator”. Ours was real nice but not as deep as many others. It was all
bricked out and kept potatoes, apples, canned goods, etc. nice and cold. Since the trees
shaded it in the afternoon, it stayed quite cool. There were shelves on both sides for the
canning jars and a pen in the back for the potatoes. Apples were put on top of the
potatoes. Supposedly, the apples would keep the potatoes from sprouting. Papa had an
apple press down there too, where he made the apple cider. Most important of all it was
used for a safety shelter in a windstorm.
Sometimes in the summers, I was told to go to the cave to get something. There
was a swarm of honey bees on the north side under the eaves of our house. Going into the
cave involved opening the big door, going in the cave, and closing the door before
running back in the house. Many times I got stung before I could get back to the house.
The rest of the family didn’t seem to have that problem. Theresia could take her time and
go slow and never get stung and she kept telling me that if I wouldn’t run they wouldn’t
get after me but that didn’t help. They simply didn’t like me. I shed many a tear because
of the darn bees, but I could never talk somebody else into taking my place. In later years,
a bee keeper would come and get the honey out of the eaves.
I should write a little about our country school, Flag school. In those years there
was a grade school every two miles so it included the pupils from four sections of land.
The number of pupils varied and included children in grades 1 to 8. Many children went
only until they graduated from the 8th grade and if they wanted to go to high school they
had to go to the town school. Every school had a name like Flag, Tip Top, Sunny Side,
etc. A county superintendent was head of them all. All the eighth graders had to go to one
of the town schools to take the final exams. That was only fair because then they had no
way of cheating. Eighth grade graduation exercises were held at the county seat with 8th
graders from the whole county there. A typical school day started at nine o’clock, with a
fifteen-minute recess at ten thirty, an hour off at noon, another recess at two thirty, and
dismissal at four. Classes lasted ten or fifteen minutes and many times two classes were
combined to make better use of the time. I think pupils got more individual attention than
they do now and they probably learned the basics better but they had to learn only the
basics compared to what children have to learn now in the modern times.
We always looked forward to recesses and noon hours. We played games suitable
for the little kids as well as the older ones, such as hide and seek, and keep-away. In the
winter at Flag school, we went sleigh riding when there was enough snow. There was a
hill east of the school that was steep enough to make sledding great fun. In the fall when
we were in the seventh grade, Frances had major surgery. She had two large tumors
removed from her abdomen and was weak for a long time. When she was able to go to
school again she was not allowed to go outside and play. That winter she couldn’t go
sleigh riding with us, so instead the teacher showed her how to crochet. I had the choice
of learning that or going sledding but I chose sledding. Dumb me! For the rest of her life
Frances made many, many nice things including three bedspreads. In later years I learned
how to crochet also, but her work was so much nicer than mine.
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The picture of the school house where I first taught is typical of most country
schools The other picture was taken when Frances and I were in the 6th grade. Back row,
left to right: Frances, Myself, Tillie and Willie Mohr. Front row: brother Henry, Ivan
Smith, two Brugeman boys, Warden Lyons, and Henry Arp.
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The highlight of the school year was the Christmas program. The teachers and
pupils worked hard to get ready for this event. All the people in the district were invited
to it and it closed with a gift exchange. Some years Santa himself came. One year could
have been really bad for us. The dining room at home was heated by a stove called a base
burner. It burned “hard” coal which was slow burning and kept the room fairly warm day
and night. The upper part of the stove had doors on three sides with little windows that
had isinglass in so you could see the glowing coals It lit up the room with a warm glow,
very nice. But when the isinglass got old it sometimes got little holes and cracks in it
allowing the carbon dioxide to escape into the room. The night before the program
Frances Henry and I had slept in the dining room in a sofa bed as we often did on cold
nights. The next morning when our parents tried to wake us they realized that we were
unconscious and carried us outside in the fresh air and we quickly recovered. I don’t
remember any of this except that when I woke up I was outside in my night clothes.
Needless to say, the base burner fire was put out, the isinglass was all replaced that day
and the room was aired out. We were all very, very grateful that our parents had found us
when they did. We all got to school and the program went on just fine. Our guardian
angels were on the job!! Again!!
The first summers that we lived on our own farm, Frances, Henry and I had to
herd cows. In those years, roads had dirt centers to drive on instead of gravel. On both
sides there was lots of grass. We had permission from the neighbors to graze our cows on
their side of the road as well as ours. Our milk cows were kept in a small pasture during
the night. After milking in the morning, they were kept in the yard until noon so they
would be hungry when we took them to graze. Our job was to keep them from going on
other people’s places and on the roads where they did not belong. It was a lazy, fun kind
of work. When the cows were hungry they walked very slowly and ate the grass. When
they were full, they would run all over and then we herded them home and into the
pasture.
One time Henry and I herded alone. The cows went east and when we got to the
first farm we stood in their driveway to keep the cows out. The lady of the house saw us
and came out and invited us into the house to see their new baby. She coaxed and coaxed
and so I finally went into the house leaving Henry to watch the cows. All at once he came
running to the house, that the cows were at the corn pile. With the farmer’s help, we got
the cows off of their place and got them home. We were afraid to tell Papa what had
happened but he found out anyway because, in a few days, the cows passed shell corn in
their manure. When Papa saw that, he cornered us so we told him what happened. Papa
went to the neighbor’s and offered to pay for the corn but they wouldn’t take any pay.
She told Papa it was her fault because she coaxed me. We saw later that there were two
ways to get on the place. Henry had watched the first one but the cows had found the
second one. I knew it was my fault. I knew I shouldn’t have left Henry alone with the
cows. We were in the ‘dog house’ for a while at home and after that we never left the
cows unattended again.
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Harvesting Days
One of the big jobs every summer was harvesting grain, mainly oats. First the
grain had to be cut. They used a binder that cut the grain and tied it into bundles. Horses
pulled the binder but later tractors were used. Then the bundles were gathered into shocks
that looked like Indian teepees. The older children had to help. It was important to make
the shocks tight so that the wind wouldn’t blow them over and the rain wouldn’t soak
them. Each farmer cut and shocked his own grain, but the neighbors helped each other
with threshing the grain. One man in the neighborhood had a threshing machine and went
from place to place. The pictures here show Cletus (standing) and Gerald bringing lunch
to the workers. You can see what a binder looked like, also the backs of the horses if you
look close. The other picture shows the steam engine and the men threshing. After
tractors were made, steam engines were no longer used.
Some of the men of the threshing crew hauled the bundles to the threshing
machine and pitched them into the machine. Other men hauled the grain to the farm. It
had to be unloaded into the granary by hand with shovels. No elevators! It was hard
work. One year they told Henry and me to go into the granary and shovel the grain from
by the door to the back. We thought we were really, but maybe they gave us a job to keep
us out of their way.
The women had busy days too when it was their turn to cook for the crew. In most
places, dinner and lunch were served. Ladies that didn’t have older daughters to help
them often hired a girl to help. The dinners that were served were really feasts
compared to what was the usual home fare. The crew usually numbered 12 or 15 men so
that took a lot of food, and of course each lady wanted to serve a better meal than the rest.
One year while Papa was still living and they would thresh at our house, Mamma decided
to serve chicken. Our broilers were not fully grown yet but were big enough to eat so we
all got up earlier than usual. Papa , Frances, and I cleaned 22 broilers early that morning
and they were all eaten that day. Without a refrigerator, none of the work could be done
the day before. I think the men enjoyed the special food that they got at each place and
the pleasure of working and eating together. Now the grain is combined and much labor
is saved, but also much of the ‘togetherness’ among the neighbors no longer exists.
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Corn picking was also done by hand. That was the hardest job of all. The men
would each have a team of horses and wagon, but the older girls usually went two to a
wagon. This picture shows Theresa and Lavina, Cletus’ sisters, with the load they had
picked by noon. The horses were trained to go a slow speed and to listen to the picker’s
commands. Besides bad weather, a big problem was blood poisoning. There were always
sand burs to contend with and the stickers from them would often turn into blood poison,
preventing picking until they were all healed up which often delayed the picking until
into the winter...When the tractor-drawn mechanical pickers came on the market, they
were very welcome. I never had to help with picking because I was in school during
those months.
The men were so proud of how much corn they could pick, each trying to outdo
the rest. Contests were held in each county and the winners went on to compete in the
state contest. So they often combined play with work.
I have mentioned before that Papa wasn’t well. One time he was in a hospital in
Omaha for three weeks. While there he had his tonsils removed and after that he had a
hard time with eating, he sometimes he choked on his food. The one scary time when he
was coughing so hard Mamma told me to run to the windmill and get him some water. I
was eating a piece of raisin pie. I was so scared, I ran with the pie in one hand and a cup
in the other but then I thew away what was left of the pie so I could run faster and got
Papa the water. Afterwards I wished that I had laid my pie on my plate but it was gone.
There was an Indian lady that traveled all over the country with a horse and
buggy. She had all kinds of herbs and tea. She would look at a person and tell them what
herbs they needed. Papa used her homemade tonics for several years and they seemed to
help him a lot. She was interesting to listen to One time she had us four girls stand so she
could look at us. She said I was in perfect health, Theresia was almost as good, but
Frances and Elsie needed a number of herbal tonics. I don’t remember whether they took
them or not.
Money was scarce at our house as with all people then. I don’t remember ever
having any money, didn’t know the prices of anything. I needed a pair of shoes so Papa
sent me to town with a neighbor to buy some. I wasn’t told how much they would cost or
anything. Mr. Harper, the owner of the store, waited on me. He showed me some shoes
that cost about three dollars. They didn’t feel good so he had me try on some that cost
seven dollars, which was a lot of money in those days. They felt so good on my feet that I
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decided to take them. Mr. Harper wanted me to wear my old shoes and take these home
to show them to Papa but I wanted to wear them. Was Papa mad when he saw how much
they cost and that I had worn them so they couldn’t be returned, but I didn’t know what I
should do. He said I’d wear them until there was nothing left of them. That same summer
I had made a scrapbook of wild flowers for a contest in the Nebraska Farmer magazine.
Papa took a lot of interest in what I was making. When the notice was in the paper to
send fifty cents with our scrapbook to be eligible, I was afraid to ask him for the money
because of the scolding I got about the shoes. After the contest was over, he asked me if I
had sent mine in, I said ‘no’. That didn’t please him either. Besides that, I dried the
flowers in the pages of their big atlas. The moisture from the flowers ruined the atlas
pages and I heard about that from Mamma for years afterwards. I would never have used
the atlas if I would have known that would happen. Seems like I could never do the right
thing when I was growing up, but at least it wasn’t intentional.
One of the last years I was in grade school, our teacher told us about an offer from
Earl May Seed company. If we sold a certain amount of their seed, we could earn a
premium. So with Mamma’s permission, I went around the neighborhood and sold seed.
My first premium was a camera, the first one in our family. We had lots of fun with it.
The next time I sold enough seed to get a set of dishes for twelve settings. They had
airplanes on them commemorating Lindberg’s flying across the Atlantic. We used these
dishes for many years and I still have most of them.
In 1926 or 1927 Papa traded in our old Model T Ford for a Model A. We were so
happy about the new car. It had a hard body—no canvas—and there were big windows
that rolled down. It was air tight but I don’t remember if it had a heater. It was so much
nicer than the old one and we had it for many, many years.
It was in 1926 or so that Papa bought a Maytag clothes washer. It was delivered
on a Saturday because all of kids were at home. What excitement! I don’t remember at all
how Mamma washed before. Since no rural areas had electricity, she probably used a
washboard. Some people had wooden washing machines where the dasher that stirred the
clothes to get them clean was turned by pushing a side lever and the wringer rollers were
turned by a hand crank. I don’t remember that we had one like that. Mamma did the
washing when I was in school so I didn’t help, but I often helped carry water from the
windmill to do the washing. We first had the Maytag on the south porch that was open to
the weather but had a roof to protect it from the rain. The whole machine was made of
metal. It was powered by a gas engine that was located under the washtub. You had to
measure a certain amount of oil and add it to a certain amount of gas and pour it into the
fuel tank. When you stepped hard enough on a side lever, the engine would start-hopefully!!!! Our clothes were washed in record time compared to the old way. It was
such a labor saver- if you could get it started, but if you didn’t mix the exact amounts of
gas and oil it just wouldn’t start. Theresia seemed to have the magic touch but after she
had left home, the rest of us often had to work a long time to start it.
The exhaust from the motor was diverted outside by a long flexible metal coil.
When the weather got cold, the washer was put into the kitchen and the exhaust coil was
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laid to the outdoors so we wouldn’t have the fumes in the house. We had this washer for
many, many years. In ‘’36 or ’37 when the REA brought electricity to rural areas, the gas
engine was replaced with an electric motor. That made everything so much easier. In
those years we never would have thought that we would have automatic washers and
dryers. No more hanging clothes out doors in the winter time to freeze dry, or to hang all
over the house on lines to dry.
Ironing was a chore, too. It was done with irons heated on the kitchen stove,
Usually they were in sets of three so that when one iron got too cold it could be put back
on the stove and the next one was hot. Ironing was nice in the winter because there was
fire in the stove anyway, but in the summer it made the kitchen so hot. Then. too, clothes
were made of material that had to be dampened several hours before ironing or you
would never get the wrinkles out. As for me, I am so thankful for modern day clothes that
are so easy to keep nice.
In May of 1927 Theresia and Elsie graduated from grade school. They had the
highest grades in Wayne County. It was quite an honor considering that they came from a
foreign country and had to learn a different language. In the fall, Elsie went on to high
school in Randolph to earn a teacher’s certificate. Theresia stayed at home to help until
she was old enough to go to the convent. She wanted to go at this time but our parents
said that she should wait until she was older and more sure of her vocation.
As I mentioned earlier in the story, we didn’t get to church on Sunday very often
but we didn’t neglect praying at home. We always prayed in German. Breakfast prayers
were short—the daily offering. Dinner was a long prayer before and the Angelus
afterwards. At supper we said our night prayer and every evening we said the Rosary
together. On the Sundays that we couldn’t get to church, we each had to take our prayer
books and go somewhere by ourselves and pray the Mass prayers before we could go and
play. I still pray my morning and night prayers in German. It seems that what you learn
as a child stays with you. Mamma had a great devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and passed
it on to her family. Every May we made a May altar with a statue of the Blessed Mother.
We hunted for wild flowers, mostly wild roses for the altar. Then every night we knelt in
front of this altar and Mamma prayed German prayers just for May. When our children
were small, we also made a May altar but didn’t say the German prayers…
We belonged to the Wayne-Carroll parish and Fr. Kearns was the pastor. Since
there was no Catholic school in the parish, we had a two-week catechism school every
summer. Two Sisters from Omaha taught it and it closed with the younger children
making their First Holy Communion. In 1927, Frances and I attended it and made our
Solemn Communion. If I remember right, we were confirmed the same day, as were all
the parishioners that hadn’t been confirmed. The bishop had not been there for a number
of years so it was a big group. Theresia was with it. Elsie had been confirmed at
Randolph since she was at school there. The catechism school was held every year so the
children were well instructed in their religion.
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For those two weeks of school, we stayed at Thielman’s, the blacksmith’s family.
Elsie Thielman worked at the variety store there and brought home to us some little 3 or
4- inch porcelain dolls and bits of ribbon and small beads and showed us how to sew the
little dolls some dresses. That was such fun and helped pass our evenings and kept us
from being homesick. .
In November 1927, our little sister, Dorothy, was born. None of us younger
children knew Mamma was going to have a baby. In those years such things weren’t
discussed when the kids were around so the news was a big surprise. We were told that
Mamma was going to stay with a friend in Randolph who was a nurse. Theresia was
taking care of things at home. It was Saturday and Frances, Elsie and I were all in the
kitchen cutting up pumpkin for pie when Theresia broke the news to us. Were we
surprised!! We were told that we could pick out a name for the baby. After much
discussion we decided on Dorothy Ann. Our second choice was Patricia She was
everybody’s pet and brightened up our lives. Papa would rock her and sing German songs
and we would sing along. Such good memories.
So for us life went on as usual. Chores in the morning and night, school, etc.,
occupied us. Elsie was going to high school at Randolph. I think that when we got older,
we wished more and more that we could sometimes be with other young folks. Frances
and I often talked about our classmates of the year we went to Randolph to make our
First Communion. Now when we would go to Randolph to church, we felt like we
belonged there, but then we had to go back to our farm and be by ourselves again. In
1929, Papa seriously thought of selling our farm and buying one near Randolph. I
remember the land agent coming more times to talk to Papa, but in the end he decided to
stay on our farm. I guess the memories of how he bought the farm and worked to pay for
it made it too hard to move away. If we would have moved to Randolph, I think we
would have all been happier.
Papa’s brothers, Karl and Henry were very dear to us because they were our
REAL relatives----, more than just friends. Uncle Henry lived in South Dakota and came
to see us several times a year. When he shipped cattle to Sioux City to sell he went along
to see them be sold. It was custom at that time for owners of livestock to ship the animals
by train and watch them be sold. I think it was kind of a mini -vacation for the farmers.
On his way home Uncle Henry always came to see us and stay for a day or two and we
enjoyed hie visits.. He was such fun. He showed us how to play sheephead. He always
had a treat for each of us kids. One year each of us girls got a pretty handkerchief with a
nursery rhyme on it. We carried them around until Mamma had to wash them – and all of
the printing came out. Uncle Karl had a variety store in Wisner. We stopped there every
time we went to West Point and also when we got our baby chicks... He always had a box
of caramel candy for us. He didn’t have a refrigerator to keep his candy cold so in hot
weather it would melt together enough so he couldn’t sell it. We sure enjoyed this treat.
Of course the Brachts were very dear to us too, and we called Mr Bracht Uncle Albert,
but he was Papa’s cousin and not really our uncle.. But Uncle Henry and Uncle Karl were
our REAL uncles so we felt that we had relatives like other kids did. Papa’s brother, Joe,
also lived in South Dakota but never came to see us.
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One day in December of 1929, Papa came home from Carroll with a radio for us.
It was 2nd hand but to us it was perfect. The radio was run by batteries. The main one was
like our car battery and could be recharged. There were also two other kinds of batteries
called dry batteries. The radio seemed to bring the world to us. There were news and
weather programs but mostly music. Our favorites were cowboy singers and we learned
many of their songs. One of our most listened to stations was WNAX in Yankton.
Several years after Papa died and Theresia had become more used to driving, she took us
to Yankton to the radio station. We watched them broadcast and saw Jimmy and Eddie
Dean, The Rosebud Kids, George German and Lawrence Welk. Was that ever a treat!
That radio gave us many, many hours of enjoyment. We didn’t know it at the time, but it
was his last Christmas present to the family.
According to the letter that Mamma wrote to Sister, that is elsewhere in this book,
December of 1929 was warm and nice. Then in January the snow and bitter cold came. It
was on January 19th that Papa died in the night. He had gotten up to put wood in the little
stove in the downstairs bedroom where he and Mamma and Theresia and baby Dorothy
slept. Theresia said later that his last words were a prayer, and he fell on the bed—dead.
From then on, life for all of us life was drastically changed.
The snow was so deep that the neighbors helped the snowplow open the roads so
the Priest and the undertaker from Laurel could come to our place. They couldn’t take
Papa’s body to the mortuary because of the storm and roads so the undertaker brought out
the coffin and got Papa ready for burial at home. What a hard time for us, but especially
for Mamma. The neighbors came and helped with the chores.. On the day of the funeral it
was twelve below zero and the wind was blowing. To get to Randolph to church a snow
plow went ahead of the hearse and cars and another one followed to be sure they got
there. Mamma had gone to see Fr. Lordeman and gotten permission to have the Mass and
burial there instead of in Wayne. Since the weather was so beastly cold and they weren’t
sure how things would go, it was decided that one of us would stay at home with little 2year old Dorothy. Besides she was afraid of anybody but our own family, so I stayed
home. She always liked best to have me take care of her. She was even afraid of the
neighbor ladies that came to cook dinner for the family and friends after the funeral.
During the days before the funeral, Papa’s coffin was in the bedroom. Not many
of his friends could come because of the roads but they came to the church. Later
Mamma talked about how disappointed those friends were because they wanted to see
Papa one more time, but the undertaker wouldn’t open the coffin because he said that the
holy water they had sprinkled on Papa before they left home had frozen and didn’t look
nice. She often mentioned that. Such hard things she had to go through, but Theresia was
her big helper and John Harmeier who lived with us did more than his share, too.
After Papa died, our life went on somehow. Mary Bracht stayed with us for two
weeks to help Mamma over the worst time. Neighbors were also very good to us. What I
remember of that time was that nothing changed much for us kids. Chores had to be
done, school was as usual. I am sure it was doubly hard for Mamma since she still didn’t
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speak much English and had never done any business, not even buying groceries.
Theresia took over the business and the driving and John Harmeier was a big help.
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Elsie was in the eleventh grade in Randolph. Frances and I graduated from the
eighth grade in May. Theresia had made each of us a new dress for graduation. We felt
real dressed up when we wore them. The graduation exercises were held at the Waynse
county courthouse. The graduates were the eighth graders from the entire county, so there
were around two hundred. After the ceremony, we all sat on the courthouse steps to have
our pictures taken. Here is a picture of Frances and me.
Then we were all at home for the summer, Theresia taking the lead and the
rest doing what we were told. That fall when it was time for school to start again,
Theresia and Mamma talked more and more about me going to high school.
School had always been easy for me but hard for Frances. I never once thought of
going on to high school and always argued against it. Finally Theresia promised
me a fountain pen if I would go so I said I would. Elsie and I would be boarding
at the Sisters together that one year since she was a Senior and would graduate in
the spring.
I’ll have to tell you why I wanted that fountain pen. The pen replaced the messy
ink bottle and pen. It was a new invention. It looked like a big ballpoint for size and
shape. Inside the main part was a rubber ‘sac’ that held the ink. It had a little lever in the
side that if you pulled it down tit would squeeze the “sac’ together so that when you let
go, the ink was sucked up into the pen. Then you put the cap on the pen when not in use.
You didn’t have to refill it very often. One drawback was that the sac got old and dry and
would leak on your papers or your pocket or where ever you carried it. My pen lasted all
through my high school years. I wasn’t sorry when the ball point pens came out, though.
So September came and we went to Randolph to St. Frances High. The first week
I hated everything about it. I missed the farm and home. Algebra was one of my subjects
and I couldn’t understand how A plus B equals C. We were told to imagine that A was
cows and B was horses and we should figure out what C meant? I asked Elsie to help me
but the Sister that supervised us scolded me and said I should do my lessons alone. That
didn’t help me feel any better either. When we got home the first weekend I told Mamma
I was NOT going back, but of course I went back and enjoyed all four years of school,
although I didn’t enjoy boarding at the Sisters. The first year Elsie was there with me, as
well as other nice students but the second and third years I was there all alone.
That was lonesome. There was always a Sister there to supervise and I had to go to bed at
eight o’clock . I could lay in bed and listen to the choir practice in the assembly room in
the story below once or twice a week.. I asked Sister if I could join them but she said no,
because I didn’t belong to the parish although I was there half of the weekends for sure.
Those first weekends that Elsie and I came home from Randolph, we went all
over the house and place, I guess to see if everything was like when we left. One
weekend when we were upstairs, we found a phonograph hidden in Frances’ room.
Frances was disappointed that we found it because she wanted to surprise us. Then she
told us that Clem Harmeier had brought it during the week. It looked just like the RCA
logo, but without the dog. It was a rather small box and a big ‘horn’ where the music
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came out. The records were cylinders about 6 inches long and 3 inches across and had a
black coating with grooves that the needle went on. Did we ever enjoy that!! We learned
every song and tune. There were at least 50 records. Sometimes it needed a new needle or
minor repair and Theresia would take it to Laurel to the druggist who fixed it. Finally the
day came when he said it was beyond repair. Clem gave us a number of other things
when they got newer ones. He probably did it for Papa’s sake, he knew we were sad and
lonesome for Papa. He also gave me a violin that his daughter didn’t like. I enjoyed it and
learned to play it some. I played in the orchestra the first year of college, not that I was so
good at it, but it was a free credit. Phys Ed was the alternative but that cost money that I
didn’t have After college I didn’t play it much, which I have regretted, but there were
other things more important or more fun.
At the farm the days passed without any major crisis, health wise, The weather
was dry year after year so no crop—no income. Have you heard of the dust bowl days?
They were awful. I don’t know exactly what year it was, but the wind blew the dirt so
much, it was worse than a blizzard. At least snow is clean. The lamps had to be lit in the
daytime to see and everything in the house had a layer of dirt on it. We put damp cloths
on the window sills to help keep the dirt out but it didn’t seem to help at all. One time
Mamma sent Henry and me to the neighbor who lived at the end of our lane. We were out
of kerosene for our lamps and borrowed some from them. We had to carry a kerosene
lantern so we could see our way at noon.
Times were so hard that the Red Cross provided flour and other foods for the
asking and most people took it because it was all the food there was. The usual farm
produce wasn’t there nor money to buy it. Many people thought it was the end of the
world. Even the priest that taught us religion said we would never see the year 1940. I
was staying at the Sisters during that time so didn’t go without plenty of food, but they
did at home.
As if dust storms weren’t enough, we also had an epidemic of crows. If I
remember right, they came in the fall of the year when the little corn we had was ripe.
The birds were all over the area by the hundreds. During the day they ate what was left in
the fields and at night they roosted in the tree tops of farm places. What dirty birds they
were!!! Their loud cawing was almost unbearable. Some farmers shot at them but they
would fly a little ways and come right back. Some farmers hired airplanes to fly over the
trees to scare them enough so they would leave the country, but nothing helped I don’t
remember how long they stayed, probably until there was nothing left for them to eat.
They were there only the one fall but they robbed the farmers of the little bit there was to
feed the livestock.
My board and room cost ten dollars a month but some months we didn’t have the
ten dollars, and when I would go back to school without the money they scolded me,
which didn’t help. But by the time I graduated they were paid in full. The hours of classes
were really enjoyable and I made some lifetime friends. After the algebra episode, I was
at the head of my class all four years because I had nothing to do after school but study. If
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I could have gone home and helped with chores like the rest of my classmates did, that
might not have been the case.
The year I was in the tenth grade, Elsie was going to Wayne college to get a
teaching certificate. The following year she taught in a country school about two miles
from home so she could walk home every night, almost all of her salary went to pay bills
at home, including my board at Randolph. I was the only boarder for the next two years. I
seldom got home, especially during winter. Sometimes I would take the train to Carroll
or Laurel. There were two depots in Randolph, one to each town. I had to carry my
suitcase a mile or so to go to either depot on Friday afternoon. When I got to Carroll or
Laurel, I still had to find a way to go the rest of the way which was 7 or 8 miles. From
Laurel I seldom could find a way. I think the priest in Randolph felt sorry for me because
he asked the Laurel priest who came on some Fridays to hear the nuns’ confession, to
take me back with him to Laurel. Several times he took me all the way home. When I
took the train to Carroll, I would call the folks when I got there because we were on the
Carroll line. Then I stayed with friends until Theresia came. Theresia always took me
back on Sunday afternoons. With no laundry facilities at school, I really needed to get
home to get my clothes washed.
I got home often when the weather and roads were good. Theresia was usually
waiting for me when school was out . Sometimes she even let me drive home. Another
reason I didn’t get home so often was because times were so hard that the folks didn’t use
any more gas than was necessary and Randolph was sixteen miles away. Mamma told me
more times that she knew I was on a '‘good'’ place on those weekends. Little did she
know how I hated it there!
My senior year was much better. Frances Tomek from Pierce, Ne., came to board
at the Sisters, too. She was a freshman. and so much fun. Our two families became fast
friends. They could talk German which made our Mom very happy. Many weekends they
took me home with them or Frances would stay at my house. Mrs. Tomek even sewed
several dresses for me. Frances played the piano and took lessons at school.
One weekend when I was at her house we spent the evening playing songs. She
would play the piano and I would play the harmonica. The harmonica they gave me
toplay was so big and fancy, much nicer than the little ones we had at home. It had
belonged to Mr. Tomek’s brother who had it in the army overseas. He died there and it
was sent back to the family with his other possessions. It wasn’t many days after that
weekend that I got very sick. I was too sick to remember anything of that time. The
doctor came out more times and even told Mamma that I might not live. He said I had
trench mouth, the kind that killed so many soldiers oversees. He couldn’t imagine where I
would have gotten in contact with that germ. Needless to say, Mr. Tomek burned the
harmonica.
When I was a senior, the Education Department of the state sponsored a contest,
sort of an ACT test. The Sisters sent four Seniors, including me, to Hartington for the
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test. I was one of the four top winners in the county. The others were from other schools
in the county. As a reward, our priest gave us half of the day off. Were the other
schoolmates glad. They went to a football game at the public school. I called home and
told them to get me at noon. I waited and waited and Theresia finally came at about fourthirty. So I didn’t get anything out of the half day of no school I was so disappointed
that I have never forgotten it. All Theresia said was that she had other things to do first.
It was May, 1934, and graduation was near. Theresia took me to Wayne to buy a
dress for the event. Everyone was getting formal dresses. She picked out a nice dress for
me but I wanted so much to have her get me a good bra too. I didn’t have any but was too
shy or afraid to ask her, so did without. She really liked the dress and wore it to have her
picture taken before she left for the convent. In later years we made a flower girl dress
out of it for Elaine to wear for Dorothy and Mike’s wedding. So we got a lot of use out of
it.
On graduation weekend I stayed in Randolph with a classmate and went to the
graduation exercises with them. Mamma asked me over and over if I wouldn’t come
home. I didn’t tell her why I didn’t, for which I was always sorry, but I was afraid that
something would happen that I wouldn’t get there. Besides, there would be seven in the
car without me and my dress was sure to get soiled or wrinkled. Besides that, it seemed
like on those special times when we sure had to be someplace special that the cows got
out or we had a flat tire or something and I didn’t want to take that chance.
The scholarships were awarded that night. The Sisters didn’t ask us what we
would prefer, it was all a secret. I was dearly wishing for a scholarship to Briar Cliff
College in Sioux City. Our class had visited them one day and I thought it was such a
nice place. The scholarship paid for tuition and books and the Sisters at the college said
they would try to get us a job to pay for room and board. But the Sisters in Randolph
awarded it to someone that had no intention to go there. I was awarded the scholarship to
Wayne State ..It really didn’t help me at all because, at that time, if you lived in Wayne
County, books and tuition were all free. It did not include board and room and some class
fees. So I went to Wayne to college. It was close to home and didn’t cost much.
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Young Adult Years
So now that I am out of high school and eighteen years old, I am legally an adult
so I start a new chapter in this book, ‘The Young Adult Years.’
That summer Theresia announced that now she was definitely going to the
convent. Henry was old enough to drive and help Mamma with the business things. Elsie
and I had our plans made to go on to college and teach, so she finally got her wish. I think
it was harder for Mamma to see her leave than it was when Papa died. That summer
Theresia had to go to Omaha to the convent one day to be interviewed and get permission
to join the Sisters. So one day Theresia and I drove to West Point to the Brachts. Why I
went along, I don’t know. Theresia probably thought that I would eventually go to the
convent too. Uncle Albert had cattle on the market that day so we saw the stock yards.
We also toured the Swift Packing House. At the end of the tour, they promised us each a
ham. That turned out to be a little ham about an inch long and half an inch wide. I still
have mine. We ate dinner at the Union Pacific depot and watched the trains come and
leave. It was quite a day.
When Theresia left home it was just before school started so I got all her clothes
to wear for college. That really helped the budget. I worked for my room and board at
Frank Thielmans, the family where we lived the first few weeks when we came to
America. Helen had had surgery so needed help with the heavy work. I did the washing
in the evening after school and hung the clothes out early in the morning before I went to
school. Helen had dinner ready when I got home at noon and I had to do the dishes. It
was quite a walk to and from school but enjoyable. On weekends I did the cleaning, etc.
The Thielman family consisted of only Helen and her brother, Frank, who was a
contractor. They were good to me but Frank kept calling me “hayseed” which I didn’t
care for. Almost every Sunday that I didn’t go home, he took Helen and me to Sioux City
to the Orpheum to a show and we had lunch at some café before we went home. What a
treat! The Thielmans belonged to a bridge club and they tried to teach me to play bridge
too, but I could never get the hang of it and when Frank told me I played like a fish, I
quit. I had other things to do, like lessons.
Theresia took her first vows in September. All the rest of the family was there but
me. I didn’t want to skip class so early in the year, but Frank and Helen later took me to
Omaha on a Sunday afternoon to visit Theresia.
College was altogether different than high school, but interesting. One of my
classes was how to teach health and hygiene. The teacher was also the football coach and
most of the class were football players. Some even slept through class and got away with
it. I had not missed a single class all year so I decided that I would skip this once. Instead
of doing the laundry in the evening and hanging it out in the morning, I did it all in the
morning and didn’t go to class. The next morning the coach announced that we would
have our final test that day. When he handed out the test papers, there wasn’t a single
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question that pertained to the subject. I got 75% for a grade and went to him about it. He
said I should have been in class the day before because he had gone over all the questions
AND ANSWERS that day. Was I mad! No fair! When Elsie had him for a teacher, he
treated that class the same way, but as coach, football was all important. Years later we
heard that he dropped dead on a golf course. Elsie and I weren’t a bit sorry.
The orchestra class in which I played violin was quite an experience. It meant a
lot of night practice and I had to walk back to college after supper when they were
practicing to `put on an operetta “The Bartered Bride”. Another one of the evening
attractions was a magic show. The magician performed all the usual feats like the rabbits
out of a hat and cutting the lady in half. Because I was in the orchestra, I sat next to the
stage and could see real well, but I still couldn’t see how it was done.
At home things seemed to go on as usual. I didn’t get home very often.
Henry was now Mamma’s helper, but he was never the helper that Theresia was. When
school was out and I had my teaching certificate, Elsie and I went to the country schools
that were changing teachers. Each school had a 3-man board that did the hiring. Often the
teacher they hired was related to a board member or they were good friends of the family,
so we didn’t have a chance. Besides that we were always the ‘German’ family nobody
knew. Several men told us that they didn’t hire Catholics so we didn’t get a school that
year. So we were all at home all the school year. I did a lot of the chores and Elsie helped
with the house work. Then one day a neighbor came and said that his brother needed a
hired girl, that his sister-in-law was crippled and couldn’t do all the work. With three
grown girls in the house, he thought one of us could come. Mamma said “no” we
couldn’t go, but I said that either Elsie or I could just as well go. It was one less mouth to
feed and a little income. Elsie didn’t want to go so, much against Mamma wishes (as
usual) I went. They paid two dollars a week, the usual wages. I had been doing much of
the hog chores at home before I left and sows were having pigs. It so happened that a day
or so after I left a sow had 7 pigs and laid on them all. That was quite a loss and I got
blamed for that for a long time afterward, but it could have happened if I had been home.
Why Henry wasn’t to blame, I never understood. .
I worked for this family for two years and it was enjoyable. I made many
good friends that I met there. After two years of trying, I finally got a school to teach. It
was six miles west of Carroll or about twelve miles from home. So now I was finally a
REAL teacher and so happy about it. I stopped working as hired girl so I could learn to
play the piano and Elsie took my job. The time was September, 1937. I was teaching for
45 dollars a month. My board and room cost 12 dollars and 50 cents a month, which
meant from Monday night to Friday morning. I was expected to bring my lunch from
home on Monday, too. If I came on Sunday night on account of the weather or roads, that
was extra. I didn’t help her with dishes or anything. They were very good about taking
me to school if it was very cold. It was a mile and a half walk to school, so I appreciated
that. She was a former teacher They must not have gotten along very well, at least when I
was not around, because in March of that year they had sale and got a divorce. They had
a darling little girl, about a year and a half old. So then I had to find a different place to
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stay and the couple that I stayed with the rest of the time lived only half a mile from
school, which was much nicer.
When I had applied for the school, the school board said that since they
had just bought a piano for school, I had to promise to learn to play it if I wanted the job.
A good friend of Elsie’s, also a teacher, spent her summers giving music lessons to
children during vacation. She went to each pupil’s place. We didn’t have a piano at home
but there was one at our school. I got permission to use it to practice so I walked to
school every day. Then I found out that a family that lived near there had a piano that
they wanted to sell. Their children were grown and gone from home. They wanted fifty
dollars for it and said I could pay for it a little at a time as I got the money. It was a red
letter day for me when we got it home. I learned to play it and Dorothy also took lessons.
After we were married and had our big house built, the folks brought the piano to our
house. No one was using it and they didn’t have room for it. It is still in the same house.
In the school that first year I had 16 pupils and all 8 grades. All the pupils
were well-behaved and a joy to teach. One girl was a challenge. She was tall for her age
and was being raised by an uncle and aunt who were an old-fashioned German couple--extremely nice people. This girl must have been neglected by former teachers or too shy
to learn because she was in the fourth grade and could hardly read. I worked a little extra
with her and she learned fast. Her family was really pleased and so was her teacher. It
was so rewarding to see her make such progress.
We had very little money at that time, like every one else, so I had made
myself four dresses for school, so I had two one week and two the next. I also wore
cotton stockings that were practical for playing outside with the kids. The lady I stayed
with thought that was awful, that when she started teaching, she had 23 dresses and
always wore rayon stockings (no nylons yet). I didn’t care. I did get a “store bought”
dress for the Christmas program. The school year went well and I was offered a contract
for the next year. My salary went up to fifty- five dollars but my board was raised to
fifteen dollars. So I was only a little better than the year before.
When I got my first paycheck, we spent that evening making out an order
to a mail order house. Those were hard times even for businesses so the bigger mail order
companies like Sears and Wards offered credit to their customers that was unbelievable.
The customer filled out a form promising to pay a certain amount determined by the
customer. There was no limit on how much you could order and no interest. They trusted
everybody, it seems. I decided to pay eight dollars a month. Our first order was huge !!
Henry had outgrown his suit so that was first on the list. We also ordered sheets, towels,
blankets, and many other items. Elsie didn’t have a school that year so there was very
little income so this was a Godsend. We ordered from this company for a number of
years and I didn't make the final payment until I was engaged to be married. By then,
times were better so we could buy locally. Before school started that fall I went to a
dentist at Randolph. It was the first time I had ever been to a dentist and I knew I needed
a lot of work done so I asked if he would fix my teeth and let me pay for it by
installments and he agreed. He filled seven teeth and pulled two, so that was quite a bill.
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So, by the time I paid my board and room, the mail order company, the piano and the
dentist I had very little left. To celebrate my first paycheck I decided to buy myself a
bottle of pink nail polish for 25 cents. The clerk knew our family and didn’t think I
should spend money for such a luxury but I did anyway.
The school year went fast and vacation time was here. My certificate had
expired and had to be renewed so I went to summer school in Wayne for six weeks This
time I lived in an apartment near the school. There were six other girls in that building
too, all teachers, so it was a fun time. That was the year that the movie ”Snow White and
the Seven Dwarfs” came out. We went to see it together so called ourselves the seven
dwarfs. That fall I taught the same school and boarded with the same family. The year
went fast and it was time to think about the next school term. They offered me a contract
but with no raise. Wages were going up all over the county so I said “No”. By now I was
experienced and had good recommendations so I could ask for more money.
The third school year I taught a school near Wakefield. My salary was $65
and I paid $15 dollars board so I was ahead a little. At that school I had the nicest pupils I
could ever ask for. There were six eighth graders, two seventh graders, and the rest in the
other grades, 16 in all, and all eight grades. The school house was modern, even a
basement where the kids could roller skate during noon when it was too cold to go
outside. For me it meant no more cobs and wood and water to carry. There was even a
library room. It was so much nicer than my first school and a joy to teach.
At the start of the year we made a float for the fair and got second prize
for the county. We were told that we would have gotten first but the crepe paper
streamers stretched out of shape on the way from the school to the fair grounds. Then, at
Christmas, we put on a really nice program for the patrons of the district. One of the
eighth grade girls played the piano so I could concentrate on the program. One of the
songs was called ‘Mamma Dolls’ It involved my first and second grade girls that were
dressed like dolls, acting and singing the song. When the school year was over and it was
time for eighth grade graduation, the superintendent asked to have the girls do the song as
part of the program. Quite an honor. All of the eighth graders were on the honor list for
the county—another honor for the school. To this day, these pupils are still very good
friends of mine, although, sad to say, many of them are already gone to their reward.
I can’t leave out an incident that happened one of the first weekends of
school. We were expected to put out the flag every morning and get it in at night.
I was told that the flag was new and not to leave it out at night, especially not on
weekends. It so happened that I did forget to take it down on a Friday night and didn’t
think of it until I was home and in bed. With the price of gas and all, I just could not go
that far for a flag. When I got back to school on Monday, the flag was gone!! At recess a
neighbor brought it to school. It so happened that he was the man who had lived with us a
short time as a hired man when we first moved to our farm. He had seen that I had
forgotten the flag so came and took it down and home with him. He introduced himself
and I recognized the name but not the man. It was so many years ago. He knew who I
was when he heard the name of the new teacher. He was married and lived near the
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school and I enjoyed many visits with them, talking old times. It was almost unbelievable
that we would meet again after so many years and under such circumstances.
Two of my eighth grade boys were brothers. They had two pet goats that
they had trained to pull a little cart. They came to school with it several times. Such fun!
Years later, when the school was fifty years old, the people in the district
decided to celebrate by having a reunion of all former teachers and pupils. By then the
building was no longer used for teaching but was bought by a couple who remodeled it
and lived there.
It was such a treat to see my former pupils and hear about what
they did after their school days were over. Every person had to get up and tell something
they remembered about their school days. One of my former eighth grade boys thanked
me for having a school harmonica band . He said that was one of his best memories of his
school days. I didn’t realize it was such fun for them. Teaching music was one of the
requirements, so at every school that I taught we had a band, mostly with harmonicas.
Most of the youngsters in those years had a harmonica at home so it wasn’t an extra
expense. It was so rewarding to hear how they enjoyed it.
One sad event of the reunion was that one of the eighth grade boys had
died and was buried the previous week but I hadn’t known about or I would have been
there. He had suffered with heart problems for several years before he died.
Cletus, my husband, had come with me to Wakefield and was getting very
tired so we went home after lunch instead of visiting the rest of the afternoon. He was
recovering from a heart attack so wasn’t a bit strong.. I’ll never forget that wonderful day
and treasure the pictures that were taken.
After I had taught there for one year, events happened that changed our
lives. I could have had my school back the next year but had not signed a contract. Elsie
still didn’t have a school and had not taught for several years. In the meantime, a clerk in
the grocery store in Laurel told Elsie that she should go north of Hartington to apply for
a school because that was a German Catholic community and she might have a chance
there. So we went to that part of the county on a Saturday morning and, sure enough,
Elsie got hired at a school not far from where I live now. We were happy to go home with
that news. Then Mamma told me that because of the driving that it would involve,I
would have to give up my school near Wakefield and try to get a school near the one that
Elsie was to teach. So we went school hunting again. I was fortunate to get hired by a
school board a few miles away from her school. Mamma was real happy about it all, but I
was really sorry that I had to give up my nice school near Wakefield. Dorothy was going
to be in the eighth grade and had never gone to a Catholic school so it was arranged that
she would attend Holy Trinity school in Hartington and board with the Sisters. So on
Sunday night or Monday morning we would head north, leave Dorothy off in Hartington,
leave Elsie off at her school and go to mine. Friday nights we went back the same way.
Elsie never cared to drive so it was up to me to do it. I had the car during the week.
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The school building was not nearly as modern as my former one, but it
was well kept up. I stayed with a young couple, Emil Loeckers, They were so good to
me. She was also a former teacher. This was the first boarding place during my teaching
years that the couple showed that they were happy with each other. At the other places
where I had stayed they were on the verge of divorce or constantly bickering and
fighting/ They treated me well but it did not make for a pleasant home. Loeckers took
me along to visit relations and friends and I soon felt like I belonged in the community.
They were all Catholics and of German ancestry like myself. At that time many wedding
dances were held at a hall at Fordyce. I had never been at a wedding dance so it was new
to me. At one of these dances I was told that almost all the people at the dance were
Catholic! I couldn’t believe it. So different than at home.
I had 16 pupils that year, all grades. School got off to a good start and I
really enjoyed it. After a few mistakes on my part, because I didn’t understand how
things were done, I got along super and was made to feel accepted. Several families still
spoke German in the house and one little first grader would come into the schoolhouse at
noon all excited and tell me things in German but he soon changed to all English but my
German came in handy. One subject I had not expected to teach was Catechism. The
classes were held before school, and not on school time. Besides that the children also
went to catechism instruction on Saturday in their respective parishes.
At that time war clouds were looming, causing much worry to parents and
families. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president. In Germany, Hitler had been seizing
small nations in Europe , one after the other. We were told that we would not get into
war, but on December 8th , 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, our major air force
base in the Hawiian Islands, which was a territory of the United States. The emperor of
Japan had met with our president shortly before that and had promised that Japan wanted
to stay friends with us, so the attack was a complete surprise.
It didn’t take long for FDR, our president, to declare war against Japan
and our country prepared for war with all our resources. Factories converted to making
war goods instead of domestic things. Factories made guns and ammunition, car factories
made tanks and Jeeps, clothing factories made military uniforms, etc. A draft law was
passed. Many of our young men and women volunteered for the armed forces in defense
of our country. In time all young men had to join a branch of the military if they passed
the physical exams. At first married men were not drafted, nor men with a family, but as
the war continued, all healthy men had to report for duty.
Although the actual fighting was not on United States soil, we were all
affected in one way or another. The store shelves were almost empty of supplies. Gas, oil,
and tires were rationed. Car tires were made from old tires that the people had turned in
and they were called retreads. Sometimes they lasted but often they didn’t. As for food,
butter and sugar were also rationed. Doctors, mail carriers, teachers, and farmers were
allowed to buy more than the rest but they had to have a permit.
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What was much harder on the people than rationing was having to see so
many young men and women and especially young fathers leave home knowing that
they might not come back. Many young women also got involved in the war effort by
working in factories that made war supplies. Wages there were good but the work was
hard and the women were usually far from home and among strangers and homesick..
The war was called World War II .The history books cover the war events so I will not
write any more about that.
Entertainment During the Hard Times
Even though there was very little money that could be spared for entertainment, in
our neighborhood a group of neighbors started to have barn dances. They were something
that made the depression a little less grim. The dances were held during the summers.
Everyone took their turn at having them. There was no hay or straw to put in the hay
mows so that is where the dances were held.. Some didn’t have barns that were suitable
so they cleared several rooms in their houses to dance in. If they didn’t have room in
their houses to dance, people came anyway and played cards. Music for the dances
consisted of an accordion, a fiddle, and a banjo or guitar, all local talent. Lunch was
simple—sandwiches and cake brought by those that came to the dance. Those that didn’t
care to dance stayed in the house and visited and watched the smaller children. Barn
dances were held in many rural areas across the country and are still a popular past time
in many places.
Another inexpensive but good way to pass the time was jigsaw puzzles. It was
something the family could do together. Puzzles with 500 to 1000 pieces were the most
challenging and it took days or weeks to finish them. They were usually put on a card
table or dining room table that wasn’t used much. Often the children got more pieces
together than their parents did. These puzzles are still used to pass the time for many
people but at that time it was a nationwide fad and a great way to spend an afternoon or
evening with friends and family.
But life goes on and so did school. The year went fast and things went
well. I was offered a contract for the coming year for sixty five dollars so I stayed there.
My teaching certificate had expired after my first year there so Elsie and I went to Wayne
to summer school for six weeks. We stayed at home and drove to Wayne in school days.
Elsie and Arnold were married in June of 1941 so for the second year of
teaching at Fordyce I drove alone because Dorothy had graduated from the eight grade in
May and did not want to go on the high school. That summer of 1942 Elsie was going to
have a baby so she asked me to come and stay with them to sew some clothes for herself
and the new baby. I wanted to stay at home but finally got talked into going. She was
living in Sioux City. I stayed there for a number of weeks and finally told her that I had to
try to get a school for the coming year. At Fordyce they didn’t care to give me a raise and
wages were going up every where else. So I went to the county superintendent to see
which schools had to hire a teacher yet. He sent me to a school near Coleridge. There I
got 85dollars and had only six pupils. That fall Dorothy had decided to go on to high
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school so she enrolled at Trinity High at Hartington.and boarded at the convent as before.
So every Monday I took her to her school then drove back to Coleridge to mine . On
Friday I got her before going home. With only six pupils, we couldn’t do as
much with band or programs but the year was enjoyable and I met so many nice people.
I walked only half a mile to school and the people where I boarded, Frederick and
Mildred Hanson, were so good to me.
The first year I lived at Fordyce I met my future husband, Cletus at a
dance. We planned to get married after school was out. So on the last day of school the
patrons of the school surprised me with a bridal shower. They had dressed my little first
graders as bride and groom and had decorated a coaster wagon loaded with gifts. Cletus
knew about the shower but it was such a surprise for me, the perfect ending to my
teaching days.
And so I come to the end of another chapter of my life and will go on to tell about
my married life.
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Married Life
June, 1943, saw the end of my “ Young Adult” chapter and the beginning of 50
plus years of married life.
I will start this story by telling about the country, the war, etc., because it affected
everyone. This information is in all the history books now so I will be brief. I’ll have
more in the story. In Europe Hitler was taking one little country after another. Italy was
his alley. We did not become involved until later. In 1939, Great Brittain and France
declared war on Germany. Before long all of Europe was a big battlefield. On December
7th, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor our naval base in Hawii. President Roosevelt then
declared war on Japan. Our country geared up for an all out war and it lasted until
September 2, 1945, VJ day when the atom bomb was dropped on Japan. Germany and
Italy declared war on the United States on December 11, On May 8, 1945 Germany and
Italy surrendered to the Allies. Although the fighting did not take place on our own land,
it affected everyone. Shortages of food and goods was hard but much worse was giving
up so many of our young men and women, many of whom never came back. With the
end of the war, the country gradually returned to normal living, factories reverted to what
they were before the war and so goods became plentiful and what was called ‘good
times’ took over the country.
Now back my story. I should start by writing about Cletus’ family. My family is
in previous chapters. His mother, Gertrude Witte Kleinschmit, was 65 years old when we
got married. His father had died accidentally at age 52 so she was a widow for many
years. Cletus was 3 when he lost his father. Alphons was 22 so he took over the lead in
many ways. Grandma Kleinschmit lived on the ‘home’ place with the family. I will call it
‘over home’ in the story. My home near Laurel we called ‘down home’.
There were 11 children in the family. The first two, Elenor and Herman died in
infancy at about 6 weeks of age. The rest, by age were:
Alphons ( Monica Wubben)
Lavina (August) Lange
Theresa( Edward) Lange
Andrew ( Agatha Wiebelhaus)
Louis (Dorothea Pick)
Bernard (Pauline Arens)
Alma (Emery Fischer)
Gerald ( Irene Pinkelman )
Cletus (Mary Noelle)
To write this chapter I won’t go into boring day to day events that were no
different from any other family. I will write about events that come to mind that could be
interesting to you. I want to give you an idea of what life was like years ago.
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Going back a few years in time, like any young adult person, I dated some really
nice boys but was not that interested in getting married. I had my teaching certificate and
wanted to teach to earn some money. While teaching near Carroll I met a really great
young man whom I dated for several years. When the subject of marriage came up, so did
the subject of religion. I would not give up my Catholic faith, no matter what. He felt the
same way about his church so we talked it over and decided it was best that we each go
our own way. I never saw him again until two years ago. My sister, Elsie was in a
nursing home in Norfolk. When I saw his name on the chart of patients there I went in to
visit him a little while. He died a week or so later, so I was truly thankful to have seen
him one last time.
When we came to Fordyce to teach, I was sad and lonesome for him. Getting
acquainted with other young folks my age and going to dances soon helped me get over
the blues. I met so many nice people that became my good friends. One night at a dance
in Fordyce, I was on the dance floor and I saw Cletus standing in the sidelines watching
the dancers. For some reason he drew my attention and I hoped he would ask for a dance
so I could get to know him. Sure enough he did. That was the beginning of over 50 years
of happiness for us.
We picked June 7th for our wedding day because it was Cletus’ mother’s birthday.
We thought she would like that but it didn’t work out so well. Not one of us thought to
wish her a '‘Happy Birthday” or to give her a gift that day. Everyone had the wedding on
their mind. Besides that, in later years, she had to share her birthday celebration with our
wedding anniversary so the family always had a big picnic at her place in her honor, so
that made her happy.
Two weeks before the wedding, his family had a surprise shower for us. Cletus
knew about it but I didn’t. I was told that we were going to a show and Emery and Alma
were going with us. I didn’t think it was necessary to wear my best dress and good shoes
just to go to a show. I had on my school oxfords. Cletus had me take them off so he could
polish them. Imagine that! It still didn’t dawn on me that something else was in the plans
but when we got near the schoolhouse and I saw all the cars there I knew what was
ahead. The guests were only family and close neighbors. The school was small so they
didn’t invite as many guests as they would have liked.
I stayed at Cletus’ home the two weeks before the wedding to help . The dinner
and reception would be there so there was lots of extra work. This was the first wedding I
was ever involved in so I let them make the plans for it. Cletus’ mom and I went to
Yankton one afternoon to pick out a wedding dress. She wanted to buy it...Nowadays
girls get their wedding dresses long before the day, but with teaching and all I hadn’t
done it. I had planned to go to Norfolk with my mom and Dorothy but that didn’t work
out either.
Traditionally, the wedding takes place in the bride’s church which for me was in
Wayne, but Cletus’ mother was not well and didn’t know if she could stand to drive to
Wayne, then come back to Bow Valley in the evening for the dance, so they asked if we
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could be married in Bow Valley instead. Our priest in Wayne, Fr. Kearns, said it would
be OK and he would say the Mass and marry us. So he came the evening before and was
there all the next day. He seemed to enjoy himself all day. In a way it was better this way.
Our house at Laurel was very small and we would have had the dinner and reception at a
restaurant in Wayne. Over home the house was big and could accommodate many
people. But in Wayne there would not have been so much work for the cooks. Besides
that , Cletus’ mother really did not want Cletus to get married at all. He was her baby and
her wish was for the two to live together and she would keep house for him. But with her
health, this would never have been possible, so we tried hard to do what she wished to
make it easier for her. Cletus’ brother, Gerald, and my sister, Dorothy, were our
witnesses.
The wedding day was cool. It had rained the night before but the day was fine.
My folks were late for the Mass because they had to go over muddy roads. The Mass was
so nice. I hadn’t been told that it was up to me to talk to the choir and the organist to be
there but they were there and made the Mass so much nicer. At that time the school was
staffed by nuns who also took care of the choir. I would have liked it better if someone
would have told me that I should have asked the choir to sing, but they didn’t realize
how different this was from weddings at Wayne.
After Mass the dinner and reception were all over home like I wrote before. The
dinner was good. All I remember of the menu was saurkraut, which I didn’t like and
oyster corn , which was my favorite. Cletus’ mom had baked the wedding cake, an angel
food, and a birthday cake for herself. In the afternoon the guests visited while the
wedding party and Cletus’ mom went to Yankton to have our pictures taken. She wished
to have a picture of herself on her 65th birthday and it turned out very nice. When we got
home we opened our gifts and then ate supper. The dance followed at the Bow Valley
Ballroom with the Leise orchestra furnishing the music. By dance time it had started to
rain and it was really pouring by the end of the dance. I didn’t know until weeks later that
my folks had stayed overnight at Louis and Dorothea’s place and had gone home the next
morning. They still had to be pulled out of the mud several times before they finally .got
home. So now we are on the thresh old of our life together.
At the time we were married, the rest of the Kleinschmit family were all married
and living on their own farms. Gerald lived on the same section as Alphons. Cletus had
bought 40 acres that had a set of buildings on it. Because of the war shortage of farm
machinery, Alphons, Gerald, and Cletus formed a partnership having one set of
machinery and one bank account. Gerald’s farm was not completely paid for and our 40
acres was an added debt, so all the money they earned over and above expenses was used
to pay for that land. All three worked and saved together for this goal and eventually the
land was paid for, more machinery was bought and they ended the partnership. It was not
fair to us wives. The men ate dinner where ever they happened to be working so Monica
had to cook dinner more often than Irene or I did. Most of the land was there and also the
shop where they spent much time repairing the machinery. It was the best way to do so
we all worked together to make the best of it.
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We had planned to move on our own place that Cletus had bought in March but
those plans also were changed. The people that had bought the place originally had built
a cow barn, hog barn, corn crib, and a car shed. By the time they wanted to build the
house they were so deep in debt that they lost the farm to a loan company, so the car shed
was made into a two room house. The outside measurements were 16 by 26, the kitchen
being the largest room. In the meantime Cletus’ family was trying to buy a farm near by
that had a better house on it but there were none for sale. Then they looked for a house
that they could move on the place but that was unsuccessful, too. It was important that we
live nearby with the one set of machinery, so they decided that we should live in the little
house until they could build a new one. All this took time so we didn’t move to our own
place until about September. In the meantime I helped Monica with the house work. I
was also chauffeur for Grandma, Monica, and Irene since they couldn’t drive. I was sent
to town for machinery parts at times, too. I often took Graandma to visit relatives so I got
acquainted with more of the extended family.
So now we were in our own home. What a treat it was to be in our very own
house. Having to live in a house with 5 adults and 3 little kids was not the way we had
planned to start our married but it was the best plan then and we didn’t mind. They were
good to us while we lived there and they did their best to make me feel part of the family.
Another reason we had to stay there at first was that there was only one car for both
families until Alphons could buy himself one.
In our kitchen we had a new stove and second hand cupboard, a table and 4
chairs, a cot that could be made into a double bed, and a cream separator. Cletus made a
shelf for the wash basin and the water pail. There was also a small cupboard that had
been built right under the chimney support. We also had a sewing machine and big box
for cobs and wood. So you can see how crowded we were. Our bedroom set was new. I
had bought it while I was still teaching and it is still my favorite furniture in the house.
Even though it was crowded, we loved every bit of it .
There were three other things on the place that I really liked. There was a cistern
for rain water which made washing so much nicer and took less soap than hard water .
At home we had a barrel by the house that caught rain from part of the roof but during
the dry years it was seldom full. Here the cistern was not close to the house because it
caught water from the corn crib. That meant that I had to carry the water up hill to the
house. I was so thankful that I had rain water that I didn’t mind at all..
The windmill was near the house. It supplied drinking water for us and for our
horses and cows. A long pipe took water from the pump to the tank. Cletus fixed a barrel
so that the water ran into it and then into the tank so it was colder than tank water. I put
milk and cream into tight containers and then into the barrel so we had a home made
refrigerator. Some people had a dumb waiter built into the house. It was a box about 30
inches square and 30 inches high. It had a strong rope attached to a pulley. The box had
shelves in it and was water tight. This dumbwaiter was lowered into a hole deep in the
ground and kept food quite cold. Still others had dug a round hole quite deep. They had a
pail that just fit into the hole. It also had a rope to pull the pail up. So people improvised
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even though there was no electricity. When we needed ice for special occasions we went
to town and got a big chunk of it. This was often used to make homemade ice cream and
was that ever good. Every family had an ice cream freezer that we turned by hand Some
freezers were the gallon size, others bigger.
Our cave was not close to the house either but it was nice and cold. The bad part
was that there were snakes in it—bull snakes. Cletus said they were harmless and not to
pay any attention to them. There were quite a few mice too and I hated them worse than
the snakes. We had some nice tame cats in the barn so I decided to use one of them to get
the mice. I put the tamest one in the cave and shut the door. What a mistake!!! The next
time I went into the cave that day the cat came racing out when I opened the door. So I
went down and what a mess there was!! Quite a few of my jars of canned food laid on the
floor---broken. I still don’t know if the cat knocked them down while chasing mice or if it
was afraid and was trying to find a way out. Anyway I had a mess to clean up because of
my ‘bright’ idea. Several years later when they started to dig the foundation for our new
house they uncovered a den of snakes and got rid of them. After that I never saw another
snake there again.
My Sewing Machine
Now I want to tell you about my ‘beloved’ sewing machine. I had gotten it at an
auction for two dollars. I had to pedal it to sew, like all sewing at that time. I was used to
that because ours at home that I learned on was like that. It did a good job of sewing.
Cletus put drawers on it from a discarded cabinet so I had a place for my sewing supplies.
Some years later, when we got electricity, Cletus put an electric motor on it so I didn’t
have to pedal it any more. The first thing I made for our kitchen when we first moved
into our little house was new curtains. They were made with top curtains and lower sash
curtains. .Alma had given me some material she had and I had a yard of it too, just
enough for the two windows. There were no curtain rods to be had so I made my own. I
cut up a clothes hanger, straightened it, and used that. The curtains made our kitchen very
homey looking and they lasted for quite a few years.
I even made a good impression on my mother-in-law when she saw how I could
sew because she was a good seamstress, too. I wasn’t alone in sewing like that. It was
almost a necessity for all homemakers during the years of shortages when the stores were
almost empty. At that time chicken feed, flour and sugar came in cloth sacks. Some were
white and some had designs printed on them. You have probably heard how the women
tried to get several sacks of the same kind. We made dish towels from the flower sacks
and quilt blocks from the small sugar sacks. The printed ones were used for dresses,
aprons, and many other things. It was extra work for the feed store man but sure saved us
a lot of money. Seed corn came in heavy sacks almost like denim. They were white with
blue lettering on them I soaked the empty sacks in lye water to get the print out, then
dyed them a bright blue and made overalls out of them for my little two and three year
old boys. I made shirts for them from men’s shirts from the second hand store. The boys
looked very nice in them. The first time Alphons saw the boys dressed in these clothes he
told Cletus that I didn’t have to dress the boys so nice for every day. When Cletus told
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him how I had made them he didn’t say another word but it sure made my day when
Cletus told me about it. Sewing had always been my favorite thing to do. I also felt that I
was saving a lot of money by sewing, altering and patching. I’ve often wished that I had
kept track or how many quilts, raggedy dolls, Cabbage Patch dolls, and Care Bears I have
made. Not to mention dresses, shirts and other things I made over the years.
So life went on. Our first three babies were born in our little house. Our house got
still more crowded but we didn’t care. Their coming made our life complete.
In those years it was common in our part of the country to have the babies born at
home if there was a midwife in attendance. Grandma Kleinschmit was a midwife and
helped bring many a baby into the world. A country doctor from Crofton usually worked
together with her so he was my doctor too. I had never been around a baby’s birth so
didn’t know what to expect. .In those days such things were not discussed except in
private. But everything went well and we were very happy with our first born. I hadn't
expected it yet so didn't have any baby clothes made but my sister , Elsie, had sent me a
box of baby clothes that her children had outgrown so they came in handy. We couldn’t
buy Pampers then. We made diapers out of flannel, about 30 inches square. It made a lot
of washing but that’s the way it was. When we took the baby out, we put a pants of thin
rubber over the diaper to keep the baby’s other clothes dry, but they made the baby sore if
the wet diaper was left on so most of the time I didn’t use them. Instead I had a thick pad
to lay the baby on.
There is another item of interest to tell you about. I wrote earlier that Grandma’s
first two babies died a few weeks after birth. Then the doctor told her to rub whiskey on
the baby after its bath, that it would make it strong. So she did that and no more of her
babies died. After that, we all had to rub the babies good with whiskey after the bath.
Whether it helped or not, we will never know, but it didn’t hurt them and it made
Grandma happy. We got the whiskey from a farmer who made it in his still. Of course
that was illegal but we couldn’t buy any in the stores so we went to him for it.
We named our first born William but called him Billy which was later changed to
Bill. He was such a good baby that we didn’t mind our more crowded house Alphons
made us a playpen when Billy was learning to stand. It was about 30 inches square and
high enough for the baby to look over standing up. Here is a picture of Billy in the pen in
front of our little house. Being closed all around, it kept the baby off of the cold floor
and drafts. We used it for all our little ones and they loved it.
Before we got electricity, Cletus got a windcharger that mounted on the roof. You
can see it on the picture. It made enough electricity to light our two light bulbs—when
the wind blew. Otherwise we used kerosene lamps.
As I wrote before, machinery could not be bought without a government permit.
The young men were in the service and there was no help with getting the corn picked.
Cletus and Alphons and Gerald applied for a permit to buy a bigger tractor and a corn
picker. They got the permit on condition that they help other farmers pick theirs too. So
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they picked corn all day and all night until they were all done. They changed off with the
picking so they could each get some sleep and rest. The farmers whose corn they picked
had to see to it that the corn got hauled home. Corn picking always meant long days of
work because it might snow and then the work was so much harder. They picked corn
this way for several years until more pickers could be bought and more farmers could do
their own. Also by that time some of the young men were back from the service. So the
time went on, farming for Cletus and gardening and caring for the family for me filled
our days.
A year or so later, the second son was born. He was born on Lincoln’s birthday
and Grandma thought we should name him Abraham, but we called him Edwin. A week
or more before he was born, a sad thing happened. We had butchered and I was canning
meat on the stove. Grandma came over to help me and somehow she tripped and fell and
hurt her back. I couldn’t get her up alone so I called over home. The men came to help.
They called the doctor and when he examined her he said she had hurt her back and it
would be best not to move her. So they got the hospital bed from over home and set it up
in the kitchen. She had to lay there until she could walk again, about a month if I
remember right. Some of the family came every day to help and Lavina stayed at night
for a while. When I went into labor, since Grandma couldn’t help with the birth as at
other times, I had to call somebody else. It was Monday morning and wash day. I called
Dorothea and she stopped her washing and came. We had party line telephones at that
time so the neighbors knew what was going on. One of our nearest neighbors called and
offered to come, but by that time Dorothea was already on her way. Irene took Billy for
the day but Dorothea took him to their place until I could take care of him again. He
loved to stay there and knew them real well. When Cletus brought him home again, I
showed him the baby. He took one look and ran to the door and pounded on it , crying
Wwooei, Dorty. He wanted to go back but it didn’t take him long to accept his little
brother and he ‘helped’ to care of him. The day Ed was born , Grandma wanted at least to
give the baby its first bath so Dorothea brought him to her in her bed and she had her
wish.
We had another big worry on our minds at that time. The war was still going on
and the men who were married and even those with small children were being called too
if they passed their physical. Cletus had been called for a physical a number of times in
the past but was always classed 4F meaning that he was not able to serve in the army. He
had a bad knee because of a tractor accident as a boy. The knee would come out of joint
when he walked. He learned to put it right again so he could get along with the farm
work. The day after Ed was born Cletus had to go to Ft . Leavenworth in Kansas. The
army took them there by train. If they passed their physical, they were inducted into the
army that day and couldn’t come back home first. When Cletus didn’t come home that
night, we were afraid that he also was in the army, but he came home the next day. They
had kept him over a day to take more x-rays. Then he was told to go home and farm. The
country needed the farmers too to raise food for the army. If he had had more than 8th
grade of schooling, he would have had to stay and do office work. So we were a family
again and helped the country by raising food.
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With only the cook stove for heat, it was impossible to heat the bedroom warm
enough for a baby so Cletus had put a temporary chimney on the roof over the bedroom.
We got a small stove from my folks. It was about 3 feet high, 2 feet wide and 1 foot deep,
so it could be carried by one man. It had a door in the front so we could burn a good sized
piece of wood. This arrangement worked really well except when the wind went to the
southeast. Then the down draft pushed the smoke into the room. Then the fire had to be
put out and the stove carried outside. That was always a worry but God was taking care
of us as usual because this happened only once and Cletus was there to take care of it
right away. We used this stove in our big house too until we got a furnace.
Clothes Care
In those days it was a real job to keep the clothes clean. I’ll write about what we
had to do so you will appreciate what we have today. Everyday clothes were usually
cotton, table cloths were linen, and winter clothes were often wool. Washing was usually
done on Monday. We heated the wash water in big boilers on the cook stove. Some
houses had a separate addition or a small building near by that had a range in it. It was
called the summer kitchen. It was also used for butchering, canning meat, fruit and
garden things. Then the whole house wouldn’t get hot like when you had to do it in the
kitchen and it was much easier to keep the living quarters cool and clean .but most people
had to do this work in the only kitchen they had.
We used the homemade soap we had made after we were all done with the
butchering. Soap was made by rendering (melting) the tallow or lard and straining it. We
each had our own favorite recipe. We mixed the tallow, lye, borax and whatever the
recipe called for in a big crock jar and stirred and stirred and stirred until the mixture got
like heavy cream. It had to cool down to get to that stage because the lye made it really
hot. This work was usually done out doors and the colder the day the faster it cooled. The
mixture was then poured into pans lined with heavy material to make it easier to get the
finished soap out. Before it was really solid it was put on a flat surface and cut into bars.
It took several weeks to cure and the lye to evaporate. The finished product was judged
by how white it was and how many suds it made. Hand soap was made the same way but
other ingredients were added. Look through some old cook books and you are apt to find
some recipes for soap
All the clothes were washed in the same water, whites first, then the colored,
ending with dark everyday things. After the clothes were washed and rinsed, they were
rinsed again in water to which bluing had been added. That gave the white clothes an
added whiteness. Then they were hung outside to dry. In summer it didn’t take long to
dry but in cold weather it was a different story. Many times they were almost frozen
before you could fasten them on the line with clothes pins. They were left on the line
until they eventually froze dry. Then they were brought in and hung on lines in the house
to finish drying. The long underwear was gotten in stiff as a board. And it took several
days for them to dry.
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Dresses, good shirts, aprons and other things had to be starched. This laundry
starch was made by boiling water and gloss starch until it was clear. When it was cool,
the clothes that were rinsed were dipped in it and then hung out. In later years there was
instant starch that didn’t have to be boiled Starched clothes had to be completely dry,
then redampened before ironing. Do you wonder why we all wore coverall aprons? We
wore our dresses at least a week before washing. We tried to hang colored clothes in the
shady part of the clothes line to keep them from fading.
The good clothes were made of rayon, silk or wool, or even velvet. They could
not be washed in water. If you could afford it you sent it to the cleaners. Many women
washed these fabrics in gas. This was white gas and not as dangerous as regular gas. But
one of my good friends lost her life that way. She had hung a fur coat on the line outside
and proceeded to use the gas to clean it. It must have made a spark because it caught fire.
Her clothes caught fire too and she didn’t survive.
While in high school I got a white knitted blouse for Christmas one year. We didn’t know
if we could wash it so Theresia cleaned it with corn meal, having read that in a paper.
She rubbed it and rubbed it in the dry corn meal and it did clean it some, but not really.
Wool blankets were a chore too and mostly got washed only before storing for the
summer. Thank goodness for polyester clothes, wrinkle free clothes and automatic
washers and dryers.
The first while after we were in our own house, I took my washing over home.
Irene also did her washing there because it was the only washing machine in the family.
Gerald and Alphons had electricity . We didn’t because we weren’t sure if we would live
here. I got really dissatisfied with this arrangement. I had to go there early when Cletus
went and stay all day until he came home for the night. I had very little washing
compared to Irene’s and Monica’s. Often Monica hadn’t had time to put the water on the
stove to heat. With their three children and Irene’s one there were lots of diapers in the
wash. I was elected to hang out all the clothes (no dryers yet) and get them in later. Then
there was dinner to get for 6 adults and 4 little ones. Finally, after several months of this,
I told Cletus to get me a wash board that would be less work and less time as at Alphons’.
That winter we bought a washing machine like we had at home with the motor that used
gas and oil. We had to leave it on a platform outside because of the exhaust. I didn’t
mind this as much as being over home all day. After we got electricity , Cletus put an
electric motor on it and we could have it in the kitchen.
After the second baby was born, Cletus and Alphons decided that we would stay
on the farm and that they would build us a house. They called the REA to install
electricity. That made a world of difference for me and made my work a lot easier. Since
Alphons was a part time carpenter, having built a number of barns and other building for
other people but never a house, they decided to build it themselves. It took several years
to build because they farmed too.
A year after Ed was born, our third boy, Martin, was born. He also was healthy
and easy to care for. We needed another baby bed but didn’t have the room for it so we
used a ‘trundle bed. Clem Harmeier had given it to my folks. It was about 5 feet long and
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4 feet wide and had sides all around that .were about ten inches high. The legs folded
under like a card table and it could be rolled under a big bed. Two children could sleep in
it very comfortably and it was easy for the kids to get in and out of it and still they didn’t
fall out of it while asleep. We used it until our upstairs was done and we could get regular
beds. They loved it.
The construction of the house was slow. To get the lumber and other supplies they
went to lumber yards all over to get what they could. It seemed to me that they were in no
hurry to get it done, but with farming to do too there were many weeks that they didn’t
work on the house at all. They started building when Ed was born in 1945. They first dug
a foundation. Instead of using cement blocks, they decided to make it of cement that they
could pour themselves. When they were about half done we got a cold spell and they
couldn’t pour the rest until later. When they finally got at it again, the cement didn’t bond
with the first batch and it was a problem ever since with crumbling and leaking. They
didn’t dig out the entire basement at that time. Several years later, when they did to put in
a furnace, it was twice as much work for them because they had to dig out the rest of the
basement by hand.
Finally the house was almost done. The rooms were plastered and the rough floor
was laid. They had poured a cement floor in the kitchen. By now, Martin was almost a
year old. I was pregnant again and was tired of waiting to be able to get moved to the new
house. Caring for three little ones in one room was not easy. So at Thanksgiving I insisted
on moving into our big house. The upstairs wasn’t done except for room partitions. There
was no furnace so we heated the three rooms with our little stove and the kitchen range
.We didn’t use the living room at that time. We covered the rough floors with linoleum.
We didn’t have a bathroom either. I had to wait for that for another five years. We all
slept in the one bedroom. Then I had more problems than I ever expected. When we
started heating the rooms we found out that the plaster was still so wet that the water ran
down the walls. It was winter so it didn’t show this until we heated it. It looked dry. So
the house was very damp and cold. Sometimes I was wishing to be back in the little
house but then I knew that we would have had to wait until the next summer to move in.
There was no door from the kitchen to the basement steps. Martin hadn’t started
to walk yet but he could get around real fast with his walker. Not knowing any better, he
went through the cellar opening , walker and all. He didn’t get hurt, thank God, but he
wouldn’t come back into the kitchen again for a long time. The house had been built next
to the cave and there were four or five steps and a landing to get to it. This landing kept
Martin from going all the way down to the basement.
A few months after we were in our big house, I had a miscarriage. Some months
later I was pregnant again and started to have problems so Cletus and I decided to change
to another doctor. This one didn’t deliver babies at home so Grandma didn’t care much
about that. This doctor , Dr. Kovar, did the best he could for me but I lost that baby too. I
had to stay in bed for quite some time that summer so my folks took the three boys home
with them so I could get better. They were there quite a few weeks but seemed to be
satisfied there.
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Then, after several years, I was pregnant again. I went to Dr. Kovar and with his
help and lots of prayers, we became parents of a little girl, Lois Marie. That was the
winter we will not forget, 1949. There was an excessive amount of snow. We lived on a
main road so the county snow plows tried to keep it open but at times this was not
possible so Dr. Kovar sent his mothers-to-be to the hospital before their time so they
would have help even though he might not be there. Some had to wait several weeks
before they had their babies. I was lucky and had the baby the first night I was there. She
was born on March 11, 1949. When Cletus took me to Yankton the snow drifts were
piled so high that you couldn’t see the telephone posts. A snow blower was used if the
plows couldn’t get through. Then, while I was in the hospital, the weather warmed up, the
snow started to melt, and the roads became impassable because of the deep mud. Luckily
it froze every night so people could get to town early in the day. For this reason the
hospital let me go home early although I should have stayed a few days more. Cletus
came early in the morning with the jeep so we got home all right. Lois’ brothers were so
happy to have a little sister so I had all kinds of help with her. The warm spell kept on
and the roads were still impassible. So, instead of being baptized on the second or third
day like was the custom, we had to wait 3 or 4 weeks. Louis and Dorothea came to
church early on a weekday while it was still frozen and she was baptized. Dorothea was
substitute for my sister, Dorothy , who couldn’t get there. We had her baptism dinner
later when the roads were dry again. Lois was a healthy happy , active little girl, busy
every minute.
Again the years went by with no big event to write about. Our house was being
worked on whenever they had time . The upstairs got finished, the oak floor laid in the
whole house and we finally could move our beds upstairs. We had been using the living
room as a bedroom for the kids. What a difference that made for us. But we still did not
have a bathroom. We were using that room for a closet. After Roger was born, they
finally made time to put one in. When the house was being built, the bathroom somehow
turned out to be smaller than we had planned. But now it couldn’t be changed. We
couldn’t buy a bathtub that was small enough for the space we had. We thought the kids
were too small for just a shower so Cletus made a small bath tub out of cement. The sides
weren’t very high so it could be used as a shower, too. By the time he had everything
done we had a nice little bathroom and it served us for many years. Cletus was so gifted
in making things and could almost always make what he wanted so we had much more
than we would have had if we would have had to buy it or hire some one to do the work.
He passed his ‘fixing' knowledge on to his children and they are all very talented '‘fixers'’
In November of 1950 Roger, our last child, was born. The weather was warm and
dry and they still had corn in the field. At about 7 o’clock I knew that it was time for me
to go to the hospital so I got word to him in the field. He came right home and took me to
Yankton. Our baby was born soon after we got there and everything was fine so he
hurried home to pick corn again until midnight. In those years we did not work on
Sundays like they do now but times were different then too.
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By now the partnership had saved enough money to pay off Gerald’s farm and
there was enough machinery for him too, so he asked to go on his own. Cletus and
Alphons still worked together as a partnership. Cletus always considered Alphons as a
Dad so he stayed with him until Alphons’ son was big enough to help with the farming.
They enjoyed being together, too , and both enjoyed doing carpenter work and fixing
machinery. When we finally ended the partnership, it was a nice feeling to be alone, but
they still helped each other when they were needed.
I don’t want to give the impression that we were an all work and no play family.
Far from it. It was custom to spend Sundays visiting relatives and friends. We often
visited our mothers and helped them as much as we could. Grandma Kleinschmit died in
1963 and Grandma Noelle the following year. When the children were little, we went to
Crofton many a Sunday afternoon to the theater to see the show. Many families were
there with their children too. The children sat down in front, watched the cartoons, ate
popcorn or candy, and enjoyed themselves and the grownups could enjoy the show. One
Sunday this backfired for us. About ten days after we had been there, all the children
came down with the measles at the same time. We made beds for them all in the dining
room so it would be easier to care for them. They all recovered nicely. We felt lucky that
they were all sick at the same time instead one by one. More children that had been at the
show that Sunday came down with the measles at that time. Oh, well.
As the children grew older, we played the usual board games with them, also
cards including sheephead and pinochle. I think that their favorite was chess, and were
they ever happy when they could beat their Dad. Cletus liked to go fishing and all the
kids did, too. They spent many a Sunday afternoon at the river and brought home many a
meal of fish. The boys still enjoy fishing. I couldn’t go with them but hobbies filled my
time. We didn’t have TV until about 1960. At first the children’s programs were really
good for them. There were Captain Kangeroo and Mr. Rogers. Both were relaxing and
taught them many good things. So different than now with the violent cartoons, etc. The
saying that ‘Families that pray together and play stay together’ held true with our
family. We prayed together, played together, and stayed together all through the years..
I don’t want to leave out an important member of our family when our kids were
growing up ---our dog, Blackie. We got her as a pup from Wendel and Millie Marx. Did
you ever see a dog that could smile? Our Blackie did. She was very good around cattle
and hogs. It seemed like she could talk to them. Cletus would tell her what to do , like get
a certain head of cattle home and she would do it. She was a very good watch dog and
when people came on the place they stayed in the car until we would come and tell her it
was OK to let them come in.
Cletus was her favorite family member. She loved to lay in the shop when
he was welding but the bright light hurt her eyes and she eventually went almost blind.
She had only two litters of pups. She let Cletus pick up her pups but everyone else had to
stay away. Kenny Sudbeck often came to spend the day with our boys. Blackie didn’t
seem to like Kenny and she nipped him on the heel just once every time he came. After
that she left him alone.
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She liked to sleep in our back entry but we never knew how she could go in and
out the door because it had a good latch. Then one night I was staying with Grandma
overnight and at about 3:;30 in the morning I came home to get something. She was
outside and seemed happy to see me. Then she ran to the back door, jumped up against
the house , stood on her hind legs and opened the door with her mouth. So that mystery
was solved. She recognized our car that the kids used to go to school. Before we could
even see it a mile away, she would sit by the house yard gate and wag her tail and smile
and wait.
She met her end one night when she went to the end of the lane and a car hit her
and killed her. She was a good family member and we really missed her.
School Days
The time went so fast and before we knew it Bill was in school. He was 5 and if
we had it to do over again, we would have waited another year. The school was a
country school about two miles from home. Gerald’ and Alphons’ kids also went there so
they could walk to school together when they didn’t get a ride. He went there one year
and then went to Bow Valley for his First Communion. All our children went to Bow
Valley from then on through the eighth grade.
Since they were in a Sister school, all the boys learned to serve Mass. In those
years the Mass prayers were in Latin so my four years of high school Latin came in
handy to help them learn their prayers. The first few years Alphons would take the
children to Bow Valley to school in the morning and we would get them home in the
afternoon. It was my job to do it when there was field work to be done and it sometimes
presented a problem for me. Martin, Lois and Roger were still at home and there wasn’t
room for them in the car when all the school kids were there so I had to leave Martin as
baby sitter for that while. Martin was very dependable. At least once a week I baked
bread. Then I had to time it so that it would be ready to go in the oven when I had to
leave. So I put it in the oven, hurried to Bow Valley, and got home about the time it was
done---except when somebody had to stay after school. But we managed it and when Bill
was in high school he could take them to and from school.
As time went by, our farm place began to look a lot different. The cow barn was
taken down and replaced with a bigger one that included pipeline milking and a milk
room for a bulk milk tank. We were now selling milk in bulk and the truck picked it up
every other day or so. The corn crib and small hog barn were taken down and a bigger
hog barn was put up. A bigger silo was put up and an automatic cattle feeding system was
put in. Cletus did all this planning and our boys did a lot of the work or it would not have
been possible. They spent their vacations doing this. They also had to do the milking
morning and night. After we moved into the big house,our little house had been used as a
car shed. It was moved up west on the hill and a big shop-car shed replaced it. Alphons
and his boys also helped with the work.
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In 1956 or so we had bought the farm that joined our land on the north. We had
enough money saved for the down payment and got a loan for the rest. Machinery was
bigger and better, our boys were getting big enough to help with the farming so we
added that land to ours and had a nice medium sized farm. Some places on this farm
there were ome good sized rocks so it had been used as a pasture but Cletus wanted to
farm it so he decided to get rid of the rocks. They used a tractor and chain for some but
some were too big. They decided to blast them apart with dynamite. That turned out bad.
A chip of stone flew into one of Cletus’ eyes, so we made a hurry- up trip to Crofton and
the doctor examined and bandaged it. This happened the day before Lois was to make her
First Holy Communion, so the next morning I had to go alone with the kids. The state
was working on making the road past us into an oiled highway. They worked a half mile
stretch at a time so people could get out in one direction. We could go west but not east.
They did so much grading that we had to go through fields and ditches to get to Bow
Valley. That night it rained and rained. I had to take the jeep through a field to the next
mile then through ditches and muddy roads but we made it to church on time. I had not
dressed Lois in her white dress and veil in case we had to walk some of the way so we
went to the school to get ready. But, again, we got through it OK. Cletus’ eye healed
nicely but I never forgot that morning.
We were increasing our livestock because we could take care of more. In
1956 or 57 they moved a chicken house from the farm we had bought and put it on our
place. They took down the windmill because the pump was now run by electricity. All
this was a learning experience for our boys and they used that knowledge ever since.
In our house we made many improvements, too. We put a larger addition to the
kitchen, enlarged the basement and made steps from the basement to the outside, put in
an oil-burning furnace and made everything more efficient and modern. In 1961 Cletus
had bought a quonset building at a farm sale. He got it cheap because it had to be moved
out of there and many at the sale didn’t think it could be done without taking it all apart.
Again Cletus proved how well he could plan. They had a farm truck so Cletus braced the
inside of the building and lifted it and drove the truck with the building inside the truck it
home. They had made a foundation for it some weeks before.. Patrolmen stopped traffic
until they were home because it was highway. He said it was really something to drive
the truck when he had to look down to see where he was going. His brothers helped with
this because our boys were in school at that time. This was the talk of the neighborhood
for a while. The quonset is still very much in use. Times and life sure changed and it is
not much different than now.
So I will go back to my story and write about my family. The events will not be in
chronological order so bear with me. The years seemed to fly by . After 8th grade
graduation, they all attended Holy Trinity, now Cedar Catholic. At first they rode with
Alphons’ kids but when Bill was old enough to get a drivers license, he drove to school.
He graduated in 1961 and went to Universal Trade school in Omaha for one year to study
auto mechanics. He got a job in a garage in Hartington but the fumes of car exhaust that
is always in such places made him so sick that he gave that up and came home to help
farm. He also joined the National Guards.
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Edwin graduated in 1963. He went to the seminary at Elkhorn for a year , but that
was not for him so he came home too. At first he joined the guards too but Bill and Ed
decided that one of them could go into the army for the required years so Ed went. He
went to Viet Nam after basic training and spent a year there. After he came back and
when he had put in his time in the army, he was dismissed and came home.
Martin graduated in 1964 and with his scholarships and a part time job in Lincoln
he graduated from UNL. When a junior there he went into the army on the ROTC plan
and graduated as a second lieutenant. During his army stint he spent two years in
Germany where we still had troops. When his time was up he also came home to farm.
Lois graduated in 1967 and worked in Yankton until her marriage.
Roger graduated in 1968. He enlisted in the army. He stayed in the states and after
he came home he went to college in Sioux City to Western Iowa Tech to learn air
conditioning. After he graduated he got a job in Sioux Falls
So life went on. Cletus and I were involved in outside activities too. Cletus had
always been concerned that farmers were not getting a fair price for their products. Their
grain and meat was sold to big companies that worked together to buy what they needed
as cheap as they could. There was an organization called National Farmers Organization,
NFO. They tried to organize farmers to sell as a group so they could demand their price.
Cletus firmly believed that this should work and spent many hours and traveled many
mils to many meetings to help this cause. He was president of NFO for Cedar county for
several years. I was busy with whatever mothers do when raising a family on the farm. I
had a big garden and did a lot of canning and freezing what I raised. I also worked with
our church, was secretary for our parish and also for the deanery.
God was good to us. We had no major accidents or illnesses up to now with two
exceptions. When Lois was about three, she fell out of the car when we were coming
home from Laurel. She was badly bruised and skinned up, but no serious injury like
broken bones. Edwin had bad luck too. He was about ten and the boys were playing
cowboys and Indians with toy guns. Somehow he hit a tooth and knocked it loose. We
took him to the dentist but there was nothing the dentist could do. Ed eventually lost the
tooth and has a partial plate as a result of it..
Weddings of the Family
Our children spent their fun time like teenagers did in those years. Each had
their own car and their own friends with which to spend their time. Before we knew it,
they planned to get married, not all at the same time, of course. Martin was the first one.
He had met his life’s companion at college. She was a student, too, Linda Moosman,
from Valentine. They got married in 1968. He graduated as a First Liutenant and was sent
to Fort Sill in Oklahoma. Fort Benning was next, and then to Germany for the rest of his
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service. Their first child, Julia, was born at Fort Benning, and the second, Mark, was born
in Germany.
The following year Lois married Irvin Schock who grew up near Constance. He
was working in a packing house in Dakota City so that is where they made their home.
In 1970 Bill and Liz Pinkelman were married at St. James. We had known Liz’
family for years. They moved into an apartment in Hartington but Bill farmed with us.
After we helped him buy a neighbor’s farm, they moved there and made that their
permanent home.
Edwin also got married in 1970, a month after Bill and Liz. When he came home
from the service he helped us at home and then got a job as hired man for Emery Heine, a
neighboring farmer. There he met Carolynn, his future wife. They were married in St.
Helena. They moved to a farm near Crofton that we had bought the year before and
made that their permanent home.
Roger was married in 1974 to Debra Dykstra from Parker, South Dakota. They
had met when he was working in Sioux Falls.
They make their home in nearby Canton.
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In October of 1970, the bottom fell out of our world. Cletus
suffered a heart attack while doing chores. I was not at home until later in the
evening. We were living alone by then. But Bill came when I called and we did
what we could to help him. We suspected heart attack but we weren’t sure. Early
the next morning I took him to Vermillion to the doctor that he had been going to
for arthritis. He was put in the hospital there and had a second attack in the night.
With a good doctor and help from God he survived that, too. In about three weeks
he was able to come home but his heart was badly damaged. The doctor told him
that he would never run again, dance again, or ride a tractor. He tried them all
and that’s the way it was.
We were living alone at the time Martin was still in Germany and Roger
was in Texas in the service. We got Roger out of the service so he could do chores
and help me. That fall and winter we had two homes, the hospital and home
because he spent so much time in the hospital. Cletus gradually got stronger and
could enjoy life again even though he could not work. His biggest
accomplishment was to help his boys to make decisions about farming and
business related to it. Up to now they had done what they were told to do but now
they had to take over, each on their own farm. In later years they often said the
example and advice he gave them was invaluable. They spent many nice hours
together, both as father and son and as friends.
In the spring of 1971 Martin’s tour of duty ended and he made plans to
come back home to farm. Linda and the two children, Julia and Mark, came
several weeks ahead and lived with us. We planned to live somewhere close by so
they could live alone, but our life was still too uncertain to make hasty decisions.
The doctor advised us to stay in the country instead of moving to town because
the strain of changing to town living would be hard for him to handle. We
couldn’t get a place that was suitable so we decided to build a small house
adjacent to the home place. Our boys took down the house on the farm that we
had bought several years before. A lot of that lumber was used for our new house
and they did a lot of the building with Cletus supervising. We could not find a
contractor that was not busy for the summer. It took much longer to build than
they had planned because the farm work had to be done too.
In August Martin and Linda had their third baby, Jim. So we had a busy
active household .Our two families living together was not the way we had
planned it. We remembered how it was to live with Alphons’ family when we
were first married, but we had no choice and we enjoyed it, especially the little
ones. Then late that fall Cletus had another set back. The doctor said that he
needed a quiet house so the boys hastily finished the basement of the new house,
paneling the walls and putting carpet and tile on the cement floors. When he came
home that time it was to our new basement home.
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Baby Jim cried a lot and didn’t grow like normal so they took him to a
doctor who found out that he had cancer. He had surgery and gradually got well
and has been a healthy person ever since. This was a worrisome time for us all but
especially for Linda and Martin. With time things got back to normal. We lived in
the basement for one and a half years while the rest of the house was being
finished.
During this time my work was changed, too. I had a garden and did the
housework as usual but much of my time was spent on the road to the hospital and
sitting by his bed to keep him company. Lois had showed us how to play two
handed pinochle so we spent many hours that way. We were both card players
and it helped Cletus to relax, so it was good medicine. Gradually Cletus got well
enough to drive short distances and could lead a more normal life. He liked to
fish and enjoyed taking the grandkids to farm ponds that had been stocked with
fish. As the years went by he could go to the dam at Yankton, too. Another way
he passed his time was to go to Fordyce to play with other retired men. Best of all
he enjoyed the grandchildren especially when they stayed here while their parents
went some place. One time when Tom and Eric and Susan were here was an
example. Tom had never been close to Grandpa, he didn’t like to be teased so
stayed his distance. When Susan and Eric went close to their Grandpa, Tom ran
over to them and pushed them away with “That’s my Grandpa.” It was a never to
be forgotten memory.
One summer when Ed’s Paul was a year or so old, he was sickly and in
need of special care. Carol had Dean and twins, Amy and Ann to care for and
also baby twins, Susan and Eric . The doctor told them it would be best to put
Paul in the hospital for a while so he would get the care that he needed. Because
Carol couldn’t give him the time and care he needed, Cletus and I decided that we
would take him home to see if we could help him. Was that ever a good decision!!
He was such a good baby and brought us so much pleasure. He was with us all
summer and got well again. We hated to give him back to his parents. It was like
having our own baby again. I think he did us more good than any thing else would
have. He is still pretty special.
Another pleasant memory for me is when I taught the granddaughters to
the basics of sewing. When they were old enough, they came for several days at a
time and they sewed all kinds of things. The first thing was pot holders. Then they
made things of their own choosing. If they didn’t care to do more, that was OK.
At least they learned the basics. Several of the girls said that helped them so much
when they took sewing in high school. Nancy even made her prom dress. It was
beautiful and made us so proud.
Many a Sunday in summers the kids came to our house and played ball.
We had a nice big lawn to play on. They even put up a volley ball net. Cletus
would sit by the window and watch them. At times they came in and visited
before going home. It brightened many a Sunday for us.
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After we were done with the house and were no longer living in
the basement, we had a family get together to celebrate our 37th wedding
anniversary and to have Fr. Parr bless our house. All our family was there, also
the witnesses at our wedding. It was a nice day and we enjoyed it so much. In
1983 our children had an open house for our 40th anniversary. By then our family
included grandchildren who were old enough to help make the day so memorable.
We started with Mass, followed by the open house. So many friends and relatives
came to help us celebrate and we took many pictures to remember the wonderful
day.
Besides his heart condition, Cletus had problems with allergies
especially pollen and certain smells. He said he had had these allergies ever since
he could remember, but nothing was done about it. He would get severe
headaches, especially at harvest time. When his health got so poor, we had to do
something to help him because his lungs would fill up with fluid. When we built
the house we had installed nylon carpet with a pad. We had also paneled some of
the walls. He got sicker so we were told to find out what it was. The first thing to
go was the paneling. That helped for a while but there was still something that
made him sick. So we took out the carpet and replaced it with rubber backed
carpet. We finally ended up with linoleum. Then he got better. By then his
emphesema had gotten real bad and he was on oxygen day and night. On top of
all that he had to have colostomy surgery. I learned a lot about taking care of sick
people. Our boys did most of the work of making the changes in the house.
By this time we had been married for fifty years. The family
wanted to commemorate the day with a celebration. It had to be very low key
because of Cletus’ health. So we had a family dinner at Martin’s house and all the
family was there. In the afternoon Father Parr said Mass there. Father Knippen
was also there. I often think of that day now. They had done all they could to
make us enjoy the day. Except for the fact that I knew he wouldn’t be with us
much longer, it was perfect. They even made a book for us in which all our family
including the grandchildren wrote a page. I look at this book often when I get
lonesome.
Still he got weaker and on March 9th of 1994, he passed on to his
reward. All our family and the priest were with us to the end. It was so hard to
loose him but he had suffered so much that he just couldn’t go on any more..
Our family took over the funeral arrangements. I could never have
done it alone. Julia wrote the eulogy and led the people in singing his favorite
song, “It Is No Secret,” at the end of Mass. The only one of our grandchildren
who couldn’t be at the funeral was Jim. He was in Europe. Some time before that
he had brought us a statue of Jesus from Lithunaia. We called it the toothpick
Jesus because the crown of thorns was made from toothpick like pieces. Father
Mike used it with his sermon, so in a way, Jim was with us too.
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Life as a Widow
So now I am alone. The funeral is over and I have to do the best I can alone. I
don’t know how I would have gotten through those first weeks without my family’s help
and support. I knew it would be hard but not like this. Even after twelve years of being
alone, I’m still not used to it. When I hear some news I think, ”I’ll have to tell Cletus
about it when I get home.” Then I remember that he is gone. Other widowed friends tell
me they do the same thing. So the weeks, then months, then years go by. With time the
pain eased somewhat and I got involved with other things to occupy my mind and time.
…….In 1995 my family gave me a set of luggage for Christmas to use for a trip to
Germany. I tried to get a passport but that wasn’t easy. I had always been told that , even
though we had been born in Germany, we were natural born citizens of the United States
but we had no papers to prove it. After almost a year of paper work, letters etc., I was told
that I was indeed a citizen of the United States and now I have the papers to prove it. Our
U.S. Senator Exon finally got through the red tape and helped me.
Lois went with me to Germany. She had gotten nine days off from the bank where
she worked. We left for Germany on August 6, 1996. Dan took us to Omaha and we flew
from there to Chicago. There we boarded a Lufthansa plane and flew non stop to
Frankfurt, Germany. Most of the trip was at night and most of the passengers slept, but I
was so tense and excited that I couldn’t relax. When we got to Frankfurt, Meinholf
Tillmann met us and took us to Eppelheim where he lived. His mother was in the
hospital as the result of a car accident so we couldn’t go right to Wennemen as planned.
We stayed in Eppelheim for a few days We toured Heidelburg castle and other
interesting places. The first morning Meinolf took us on a boat fide on a river near
Heidelburg. It was a leisurely , interesting trip. It took several hours and when we reached
the end of the tour, H einz, who lived with Meinolf, was waiting for us. They treated us to
a delicious dinner after which Heinz took us back to Eppelheim. The next evening we
went to see a play “ The Student Prince”. It was great! They even had live horses on the
stage. The singing and acting were superb. I’ll never forget it.
On Saturday morning we finally went to Wennemen. On our way there we drove
through Bockum where I was born. What a thrill it was to see my home but it was
drastically changed from what I remembered. Our house used to be sided with gray slate
siding. Now it was all black, even the roof. The nice white picket fence and the flowers
that we used to have were also gone. Instead there was a busy oiled highway past there..
Much of what had been our land had been used for the new road so all the houses were
really close to the road. The next morning the people who were now living in ‘our’ house
invited us to see the inside of the house. Some of it had been remodeled but some of it
was as I had remembered it. After all, it was 73 years ago that we had left it and I
shouldn’t have expected it to stay the same. We also visited the neighbors who lived
across the road that now owned our house .Sunday afternoon and Monday were spent
visiting other relatives, especially one of my cousins who was my classmate the two
years that I went to school there. On Tuesday we went back to Frankfurt where we met
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Sr. Celine, Lois’ sister-in-law. She stayed with us at Eppelheim until we had to leave for
home on Thursday. Our flight home was uneventful and I was glad to get back home. It
was an experience that I will never forget and it did me a world of good.
So, as usual, life went on. I filled my days with family events such as baptisms,
weddings, graduations etc. I can’t go into detail because it would fill a book, as they say.
I still did a lot of sewing, mostly for the family. I bought myself a sewing machine that
also embroidered. That is still a big part of my enjoyment.
In 2003, our parish in Bow Valley was celebrating its 125 years as a parish. As
part of the celebration, the parish wanted a history book made about the 125 years. I
offered to start on it and asked 5 other parishioners to be on the history committee with
me. That was when I first got a computer, thanks to my kids. I gradually learned to use it
and, while I’m no expert at it, I’m glad I have it. It took us two years or so to make the
book and I enjoyed every minute of it. I learned so much from the other committee
members. Thanks to my co-workers and many, many other people, the finished book was
well received and is a good account of the 125 years of our parish’s existence..
I should write a little about my medical problems these last years. In 2001, I had
an accident that was totally my fault. We had had freezing rain in the night and the lane
was a sheet of ice. I thought I could walk on it to get the mail. When I was almost back to
the house, I fell and broke my leg at the hip joint. Somehow I drug myself into the house
and to the telephone and called 911. Liz and Clay were told about my accident so they
came to help. Then the ambulance came and took me to Yankton to the hospital. I had
surgery the next day. I had to wait until the next day because six other people had fallen
too. The surgery went well. The following year I had back surgery and had four vertebrae
fused. That was the end of many years of backache. In 2004 in June, I had a total knee
replacement. The doctor told me that it was either that or the wheel chair. That surgery
was harder to get over partly because I had to have heart surgery in November. I was at
the wellness center in Yankton for therapy for my knee when I had a heart attack. I didn’t
know it at the time but when I couldn’t run the treadmill the nurses at the center sent me
to my medical doctor and after a few tests he sent me to the heart hospital in Sioux Falls.
I had a three-way bypass and thanks to the good doctors and nurses I recovered in record
time. I was 88 years old and was told that they very seldom do heart surgery on
somebody that age. Now I feel so much better so I’m glad I had it. God is still taking care
of me as usual. So much for my medical problems.
I should write about other events in my life. For my 85th birthday’ my family had
an open house for me. It was well attended and I enjoyed every minute of it. The
months and years seemed to fly by. The family grew as is normal. At the time I am
writing this, I have 23 grandchildren and 24 great grandchildren, all healthy and very,
very special. One little grandson died at about four months of age with what was called
‘crib death’ so he is in heaven with his great grandpa.
So now I will close this chapter of my life, ninety years of lots of happiness ,some
work, some sadness, and lots of fun time.. I have been blessed with the best husband and
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the best family anybody can have and am eternally grateful for them. My children will
add their memories of home in the final chapter, “Looking Back”
Looking Back
So now I am in the final part of my story. I decided that it is only fitting to have
our children write something of what they remember of their “ growing up” years. Their
memories show what our family life was like then better than I ever could. So , then,
here are their stories.
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Earliest Memories------by Roger
My earliest memories start before I was able to go to school. Since Alphons and
Dad farmed together, I got to see my cousins, John and Melvin, on a regular basis. As
very young children I can remember interpreting for John. We were probably 3 or 4 at the
time. John had a stutter problem and it seemed that adults couldn’t understand him very
well so they would ask me what he said. I was about six months older than John , but at
that age, six months is quite an advantage.
The games we played in the old corn crib on Alphons’ place were a lot of fun
since Westerns were the thing in those days. The corn crib made a perfect saloon for our
Western make believe town.
First Driving Experience
In 1955 or ’56 Dad bought the adjoining farm. I think it was the Edgar Fischer
place but I may have the first name wrong. I remember being at the farm sale and playing
with kids my age, I think they had a kid that I played with quite often. The farm had
many large rocks on it and was hard to farm so Dad decided to move the rocks so he
could farm more of the land. If the rocks were too large to move with the tractor, he
would use dynamite to make them a little more willing to move. The job was time
consuming and took several days, I think maybe weeks. One evening Dad was working
late and needed the tractor and the Jeep both home that night, (it was very late) and he
took me along to the field so I could bring the Jeep home and he would bring the tractor
home. It was getting dark and I had to have the headlights on to see. Dad put the Jeep in
super low (pretty slow) and pulled the throttle out a little so it would run on fast idle,
since I couldn’t reach the pedals and see out the windshield at the same time, and I was
on my way. Dad went to do a little more work before he came home. As I made my way
home,(the whole trip was less than a quarter mile), I remembered that I was to just turn
the key off when I got to the end of the cow lane and walk the rest of they way. It was
getting pretty dark and I was a little scared to walk past the trees at night, so I tried to
maneuver the Jeep around the corner and into the yard. I was very proud of myself for
succeeding in this task..
School Days
I was not the best student in any of my classes (mostly from lack of effort on my
part) but it was really nice, now that I look back on it, to have a mother who was a
teacher. We had to do our own homework all the time. And we had to get the right
answer, Mom always made us do it over and over until she knew we understood it. In
today’s world, I often see parents who can’t do the homework for their 5th grade children,
much less help them with it. Spelling and correct punctuation were always needed on our
homework, even though it was not graded. Today, many of the children we see in our
schools cannot do either, nor is there anyone there to help them develop these skills. I
believe because of Mom'’ insistence that we get our own answers it also taught us to
solve our own problems in life without depending on others to do the work for us.
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My favorite years of school were in Bow Valley. We would bring our lunch to
school every day and bring a nickel along for milk, sometimes chocolate. The lunchbox
would come open at first recess and sometimes it was emptied then too. We always hed a
good lunch and without the benefit of a microwave oven or a refrigerator to store our
lunch in. One of my favorites was something I must have requested, I can remember
having a fried egg sandwich with jelly and cheese on it. During the first recess, at about
9:oo a.m, it would still be warm in the waxed paper. The egg white had soaked up all the
color from the jelly and it probably looked awful, but it tasted very good. Many a time
we would have a piece of hand pie wrapped in aluminum foil for desert. We always got
the best trades for our lunches if we wanted to trade, because our sandwiches were made
with homemade bread and our snacks were also homemade. Many of our class mates
would have sandwiches made with store bought bread, Twinkies, Snowballs or other
store bought snacks. We were very lucky. We also got compliments on how nice our
shirts were. Most of our shirts were made by Mom and they always fit just right or they
would be altered until they did
We don’t realize how the little things that our parents do affect how we look at
life. I think of the orchard that Dad had to put on his land as a prerequisite for his loan.
There must have been great difficulty getting it all started, but growing up we almost
always had fruits and sauces to eat and take in our lunches. We had cherries, pears,
plums, apples, and sometimes apricots. Mom would tell how many quarts or pints of each
she got canned each day. All the peeling, cutting and cooking that went into it. Our cave
(fruit cellar) was never without some type of sauce.
Yes, we ate well while growing up, fresh eggs, milk, and home raised beef and
pork. This gave us a head start on eating right, (we actually ate a good supply of fruits
and vegetables like the food pyramid suggests even before it existed). I do not remember
another family that had as good or as large an orchard as we had. In the spring when the
trees were blooming, it was a sight to behold. We may not have appreciated at the time,
but looking back on it, I believe that the little things that went on in the background of
our lives like the examples and hard work of our parents made the difference in the set of
values that we received versus the values that others in the community may have
received, even though we were all raised in the same community, educated in the same
schools by the same nuns.
Allergic Reaction
When I was in the 6th grade, (I think,) I slipped on the gravel at home and cut my
lip on a rusty barrel top. Mom had to take me to Crofton to Dr. McNamara. I believe it
wasn't bad enough to need stitches, but they were concerned about lockjaw. The doctor
gave me a shot of tetanus. I think it was an older version made from horse serum base.
Anyway I had an allergic reaction to it and passed out right there in his office. He
immediately gave me an antidote to it but it took all afternoon before I could go home.
For the next two weeks I had several more smaller reactions, dizzy spells etc. and Mom
would have to get me from school and take me to Crofton for another shot. I remember
the nuns thought I was faking it to get out of tests and homework because I would be fine
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one minute and be pale and dizzy the next. I think Mom had to get me from school at
least twice more during the next week before I was normal.
Fishing
Many times in the summer months we would pack up the car after chores were
done and head to Gavin’s Point dam to night fish. Usually Dad and the kids would go
and we sometimes would fish until eleven or twelve at night. It was really nice sitting on
the south shore with the cool summer breeze and the moon to light the way. We usually
brought home some fish also. We ate a lot of fish growing up and usually had some to
bring to Alphons’ family also. Sometimes Uncle Louie would come along. When he did ,
we would fish the Jim river, and even though he baited my hook and cast my line out, I
always got to reel in the fish and somehow I always caught more fish than he did.
Shooting accident
One night when I was about 14 or 15, I came in the house from doing a little
hunting after chores. ( We could hunt pheasants the year around and the hours for hunting
½ hour after sunset.) This particular night must have been after duck season was over
because the shotgun did not have the required plug in it that would limit the number of
shells in the chamber. I remember that Uncle Emery’s family was visiting and they were
waiting for me to wash up so we could eat supper. I was on the back porch and I quickly
ejected three shells from the shotgun and pointed the barrel down and pulled the trigger
like I had done before so many times. This time the 12 ga.. still had a shell in the
chamber. It discharged and blew an entire tile from the floor of the porch, pellets were
ricocheting everywhere. I think I even got a couple of scratches from them. It was loud
and I think this was the first time I really trembled from fear as to what could have
happened. Everyone came out to see if I was all right and I was embarrassed, especially
since we had company.
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Boyhood Memories and more --- by Martin
The Rooster
One of my earliest memories is the rooster. We would tease him by throwing lumps and
tin cans at him, he would charge us. We screamed and ran, but mom came to save us by
chasing him off with a broom. We really thought she was brave. We kept teasing the
rooster though.
The Sewing Machine
I remember finding an old sewing machine in the loft of the hog barn. I don’t remember
ever seeing it before and we began destroying it with a hammer. I don’t know why we
thought it had no more value that our pleasure, but we did.
Painting the barn.
I remember painting the old barn. Roger was just a baby and just walking. He came out
to see what we were doing. While walking through the cow year, he saw a fresh green
cow pie and must have considered it a seat, chair or something. Anyway, he cautiously
centered his butt over the pie and sat directly in it. This was one time there was more
material on his diaper than in it. I was glad I didn’t have to clean him up.
Dad’s home-made drill press
It was in the winter. I was in the house and it was dark outside. Dad had been working
in the shop, something he often did. He came in so proud. He showed us the drill press
he made. I remember him looking at some in the catalog, but I guess they were to
expensive and didn’t fit his Sears drill. Anyway he came to show us what he made and
how it worked.
That drill press was used for about 24 years until about 1975 when I replaced it with a
store-bought one from S&S in Hartington. I remembered why dad made his and I felt
guilty spending so much money for one that I talked the guy into removing the ½ horse
motor, and I bought it for $50 less. I put an old 3-speed salvaged motor I bought on a
farm sale for $5.
Feeding slop to the sows
We were pretty small then. The sows were chest high on me. They did seem to depend
on me but didn’t respect my space or wishes. Since dad was often working over home till
late, one of our jobs was to feed the sows. We would carry oats from the bin and put it in
a barrel (about 8 inches from the top), then add just enough water to see the surface oats
standing in water. By the next day the barrel was full with soaked oats. We would often
try to sneak down there and scoop some out with a pail and get it over the gate and into
the hog trough before many sows got there. If you were not fast enough, or quiet enough.
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All the sows would meet you at the gate and you couldn’t get to the trough with your pail
full.
Fixing the Blue Plymouth
Coming home from school and noticed when I left Ione off that the car was smoking
more than usual. I mentioned it to dad and he/we immediately went out to the shop to
check the car. There was antifreeze in the oil. We said the head gasket was blown and
he began taking the engine apart. Dad worked on the top and I crawled under and began
loosing the oil pan.
Within a short time we were popping pistons out the top and cleaning them up. The next
day I got to take the ’60 Ford to school and stopped off at NAPA to pick up gaskets,
bearings, and rings. That night we worked late again to put it back together. The next
day I drove it back to school. That night he re-torqued the head and the car went on form
many more years.
Taking the picker off
In all the fun we had growing up, we did a lot of things and were lucky at a lot of things.
My most recent incident was when Ed and I were heading to the hill to take the old corn
picker of the tractor. Since it was the last we planned to use it, we took it off on the hill,
lifting it with the loader tractor. I was behind him with the bale fork, getting ready to
hook one side of the picker when I started to slide forward, toward the tractor. I couldn’t
stop so yelled at him.. He was sitting on the seat but turned just in time to see what was
happening and get out of the way. The tooth from the fork passed through the seat back
rest and stopped just before hitting the tractor. I was relieved a felt really lucky.
Digging Potatoes
I think this may be a bit how Ed felt the time we were heading up to the old Fischer place
with the 40 and the stock shredder. Our mission was to shred the weeds off the potato
patch so we could dig potatoes. It was a cool fall day and I was standing behind the
driver with my feet in the 3-point chains, straddling the PTO shaft. While we were
moving, Ed must have decided to scare me so he switched the PTO in gear. It did startle
me a bit but scared me when the turning shaft caught my pants leg and stripped it off at
the crotch. It pulled me down but I was able to grab the seat and hang on. My leg was a
bit bruised up and really got cold later as we did continue to shred and dig the potatoes.
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Memories------by Edwin
My first memory is playing in the dirt with a little dog. I’m not sure if that was
when we were living in the little house or not. The next earliest memory is sleeping in a
little bed beside Mom and Dad’s bed in the downstairs bedroom. I remember doing this
more than once. I think this was when we first moved into the new house. I also
remember when Dad was making the kitchen cabinets in an upstairs bedroom. My
brothers and I would crawl inside while Dad was working.
The old wood and cob cook stove stands out in my memory, too. In the morning
Mom would be making breakfast and we would spit on the hot stove and our spit would
dance and sizzle. When Mom and Dad decided to get a new electric stove Mom wanted a
stove with electric burners and oven on one side and wood burning on the other half.
In the fall the corn was shelled to empty the cribs and we boys would put the cobs
in the basement. We used the cobs to light the wood in the furnace. If the draft was not
set right, the furnace would “puff” and the basement would fill with smoke. Dad put a
wet hanky over his face to go down and get things burning right and clean the air out of
the basement.
We milked cows by hand and separated the milk to sell the cream. We also had
chickens and sold the eggs. Dad moved the chicken coop from the Fischer farm to our
place. We then could have more chickens. Dad put stations in the old chicken coop and
got electric milking machines. We could milk more cows this way.
The windmill pumped water into a wooden tank and the cows and hogs got water
from this tank. There were no water lines or other waterers on the place. This was the
only source of water for all the livestock. There was a tank heater to keep the water open
in the winter. We filled the heater with cobs and wood to heat the water. I remember Bill
telling me to put my tongue on the water pipe from the windmill to the tank. It was in the
winter and there was frost on the pipe and my tongue froze to the pipe. He said, “don’t
pull back, just wait and it will come loose,” and it did. Dad dug the water line by hand
when I was in grade school. He worked very hard. We helped some, but Dad did by far
the most of the work.
In my early years in high school, we took down the old cow barn and built a new
one. During that summer, Dad moved the milker and milking stalls outside. That summer
we milked the cows outside,”rain or shine”. One night there was a real severe storm.
While we were milking, we could see the clouds swirling round and round and they got
sucked up into a hole in the sky. We said it was like a tornado without a spout.
Dad loved to fish. One or all of us boys would go with him. When we were very
young, Dad went to stock dams. Then we moved up to the Jim river. Those were the best
fishing trips. Uncle Louie and or Lois Pick went along a lot. Mom canned a lot of the fish
we caught. When the new silo was being built, the erection crew ate dinner with. Once
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they were there on a Friday so Mom went out and asked if they wanted fish for dinner
since we couldn’t eat meat. Then I would make some steak for them. They all said,”no
fish for us!”. So Mom made fish patties for us and steak for them. She took canned carp
added eggs, crackers and made it into patties and fried them. The men all loved it and
couldn’t believe it was fish. They didn’t eat one bite of their steak.
When I was in the fifth grade, us boys were playing with the hammer mill in the
old corn crib alley. It had a travelling table and we took turns riding on it. It was my turn
to turn the belt pulley while some one else took the ride. My little finger got caught in the
V-belt pulley and it got cut open. Mom took me to get it sewed up. Bill and martin found
a piece of my finger still in the pulley and they laid it on the house yard fence post. When
I got home from the doctor, they were going to show it to me, but it was gone. A cat had
probably eaten it.
All through my school years, Saturday was my favorite day of the week. It was
not because we didn’t have school, but because that’s when Mom baked bread. She made
thirteen loaves a week while we were in grade school and fifteen loaves when we were in
high school. There is nothing better than the smell of fresh baked bread. We ate at least
one loaf while it was still hot with butter and honey. M-m Good.
Before I was in school, Bill and I were playing by the cow yard. The cows were
milking Shorthorns with calved and they were not friendly. Bill was showing how brave
he was , so he would run in the yard and back out befoere the cow could get him. One
time, the cow got him down and he was between her horns. The cow pushed him along
the ground till the fence, where he got away from her and under the fence he went. He
never did that again. He made me promise not to tell Mom.
The garden and orchard were both very important for our food source. Mom got
up in the morning early to work in the garden before the heat of the day came. We ate
very little food from a tin can. Our food was fresh from the garden or frozen from the
orchard and garden; strawberries, spinach, peas, carrots, cabbage, asparagus, apples,
pears, cherries, all the jams and jellies, potatoes, peanuts, rhubarb, raspberries,
mulberries, plums, plums, pickles, squash, watermelon, pumpkins, beans, lettuce; it was
GREAT!! Thanks Mom!!
Butchering also stands out in my memory: beef, pork and chicken. We helped but
Mom and Dad did the work. Dad cut the right muscle from the hind quarter of the beef
and put it in a brine for a week, then hung it up in the basement to dry. Mom sliced the
dried beef and we ate it on our school lunch sandwiches. Dad cured his own ham and
bacon, too. Mom butchered the chickens mostly by herself. Sometimes we helped. Most
of the time us boys chopped the head off of about six or seven chickens and Mom
cleaned them and put them away. The next this was done all over again until the roosters
were all cleaned.
We walked the cornfields to chop cockleburs and sunflowers from before we went
to school. Once when I was maybe 142 or 13, Bill, Martin, andI were chopping on
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Fischers. I held the big cocklebur down with my left foot while chopping the plant with
my corn knife. I chopped through my shoe and split my big toe nail. Bill and Martin took
me home on the John Deere 40 tractor. I was sitting on the rear axle with my feet on the
tool box. I was doing my best not to pass out. I felt faint but held on the best I could.
When we got home, I took my shoe off. The sock was all bloody. The toe was split as I
feared. We taped it up and it is very normal now.
The hay was bailed in small square bales. It was a lot of work to load the hay
racks with bales and bring them home. The hay was stored on top of the barn in the hay
mow. In the heat of the summer it was very hot in the Mow under the tin roof, so we
would wait until late in the day or the next morning to put the last loads up. Once it
started to rain during the night; Dad got us up and we worked real fast and hard to get the
loads up into the hay mow before it got too wet.
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