San Antonio's cultural experience museum..
|
||||
|
| ||||
Stella Teltschik Taylor "In Those Days, It Was Just Different" We are talking with Stella Teltschik Taylor in Weimar County. Stella? Well, I was adopted into the Teltschik family when I was a year and a half old. I came all the way down from New York City on a train. What year was that? It must have been about 1906. The family already had eight grown children. They adopted two more-a three-year-old boy and me. We had a wonderful home. I was Papa's darling, and Mama took the little boy under her wing. In those days when we went somewhere, we walked or we went in the buggy. Did you ever drive the horses? I drove the horses. We lived two and a half miles from school. When it was really muddy, I rode a horse. Because the buggy couldn't get through. What were the roads like? Oh, muddy, and deep-black ruts! We had a pretty nice school at that time in Oakland, Texas. And then in the summer we helped in the field. We picked cotton and chopped corn. I wasn't very good at it. I wouldn't have been either. Raymond, the little boy that was adopted, was a good, sweet little boy. He had a better disposition than I did. And he always liked to work. He liked to do everything. You see, when their youngest child was about 16 years old, they adopted the two children. The older ones were gone from home, and I only remember them from when they would come home to visit. And, let's see, we always had a big garden. We canned peaches and green beans and beets and made sauerkraut. In the winter we killed several hogs and we had home-cured ham and home-cured backbone and bacon. We made sausage. We milked cows. I could milk. You home-cured it. Was this because you had no refrigeration? Right. We home-cured it. It was salted down, and sometimes they made a brine by boiling the water and then putting enough salt into that to float an egg. How about that! That's how they knew they had enough salt in it. And sometimes they used a little bit of saltpeter because that helps keep your meat pretty and red. Was the egg opened? No. The whole egg. When you put it in there, if it floated to the top, it had enough salt in it. We stored the meat in the smokehouse in crocks. Put it in that brine, and then you put it in that crock. And then they took it out, wiped it off good, and they hung it up and smoked it. It was most delicious. I bet it was. Probably better than what we get now. And the hams were really big, and it was good ham-good bacon. Sometimes, you know, there was so much fresh meat, you couldn't use it all. So the backbone and the loin and stuff like that was also put in brine, cured, and smoked. Then after the sausage had been smoked so long, well, it was just like the dry sausage you buy at Christmastime. But it was better, because it was all pork. What was your home like? We lived in a big house over on the farm until I was about 8 years old. Then we sold the farm?seems like [around] that time their last [biological] child married and moved away. So they sold the farm, except they kept about 15 or 20 acres?I don't remember how much?and built another house. Since we didn't have a lot of land left, we just planted a big garden and corn. And that's how I grew up. When I was 19 years old, I married. How did you heat the house? With a wood stove-a good old cast-iron heater in the kitchen. In the summertime it was pretty hot in that kitchen with that wood stove, so they bought a kerosene cookstove to keep the kitchen cooler, but what really happened was we wound up using both of them. (laughter) You cooked a lot then. We cooked a lot. And we had lots of soup. Mama could make good soup, and we'd have a different soup every day. We always had a little bowl of soup with our meals. I know what you mean. That sounds good. You went to school, then, in Oakland. How long did you go to school there, and what was the school like? We had a good school. I went through the 9th grade. How was it heated? Was it a one-room school? I think it was heated with wood. It was a consolidated school with four rooms. It wasn't a little country school. Do you know where Oakland is? No. It's about eight miles through the country this way. And that is where they are going to have a school homecoming in June. It was a big thing last year, [and] it will be again this year. Did you go last year? I didn't go last year. "Gee," I said, "we might as well start walking from Weimar because there's not going to be any parking." (laughter) How were the grades divided, if you had four rooms? Do you remember? What grades would be in each room? Well, I think the Ist and the 2nd grade was in one room. Well... That's kind of hard to remember. About how many children were going there? Oh, a bunch. And we all walked. You were lucky then, to have a horse and buggy to ride. Um-m-m. We were lucky. We were lucky kids. Some of them weren't so lucky, but I was. You don't know about the orphan train, do you? No. What was that? Is that the way you were adopted? Well, see, I was placed in the New York Foundling Hospital when I was four days old. Do you know how? Yes. I had some literature that said the doctor brought me over to that hospital and asked the hospital to take care of this little girl because the mother was unable to care for it. I stayed there until I was a year and a half old. They had so many kids. They were in the streets, and they were everywhere-so many orphan children. The New York Foundling Hospital was taking as many as they could, and I understand that after a while they organized these trains and shipped them all over the country. But they said that in some of those places, the bigger ones were lined up-especially the little boys-and people went around and felt to see how strong they were, and if they weren't strong enough, they didn't take them. Should have had abortions, rather than that. Then, if nobody took them, they got back on the train, and they went somewhere else. Well, I'll be darned. I've never heard of that. Well, you were put on the train and brought down here then? I was put on the train in New York and brought down here. In Weimar I don't think there was anybody lined up because Father Shemonski, his cook, and my mama and papa and one of the boys was with them. They just put one off. My parents said, "We get another one-we get two." And somebody said that they put the little boy off, [and] my Mother said, "Oh, I get a little girl," so they pushed me off. Can you remember anything, riding down on the train? No, no, no. Why, I wouldn't think so. I never heard of that orphan train. How about the family that adopted you, what were their names and where did they come from, do you know? Mama's name was Anna Hickle, before she married. And, of course, Papa's name was David Teltschik. They lived in Fulnick, and they lost two children when they were small. Where is Fulnick located? That's in West Germany. Do you remember when they came over here? No, Papa came over first, and he stayed here a year. He was really lucky. He got a real job with the railroad, building bridges and the road. And then Mama came over a year later. They came over separately, then? And Mama lost a little boy on the way over here. He was buried at sea. It was so hard for her, when she got here, to tell him [David, her husband] she had lost one. They were married in Germany? They were married in Germany. Oh, when Papa came, two of the oldest boys came with him. Ernest and Rudolph. I hope I got the names right. And Papa worked on the bridge gang, so two farmers-I don't know who they were?took one little boy [each]. At the end of the year, one boy got so many acres of corn for helping, and the other one got a couple of hogs. So when Mama came, they had cornmeal and meat. And I'm sure they planted and did everything else to raise stuff. You had to, with that many children. I'm sure they did. Did you have to grind your own corn when you were small, or did they have some type of grinder by that time? I think they took it to the mill. But we had to shell it on a corn sheller. You got to turn that handle all the time, then? (laughter) Oh, yeah. I had to shell corn. I hated that corn so. Then Papa said he would shell my corn. I tell you, they were two such beautiful people. Here they are [photo]. Want to see it? Here is Schneider. Papa was a tailor. In Germany? Uh-huh. And he could still show me how to make a buttonhole. I never did make it [as] good [as] he could. (laughter) Well, he changed jobs, then, when he came over here? I don't know. It tells you somewhere in here where he was born. I could look it up while you talk about the other things. Did he make any of your clothes while you were growing up, or did your mother do that? Oh, yeah. Mama had to sew and make shirts and make underwear. They spread the cloth out on the table, up on the table like that. My father would stand up like this. He got that chalk, and he marked it off. Mama cut it by the marking and sewed it up. And it fit perfectly, I bet. Yeah. And shirts and everything. He marked it off with crayon. And, at first, when they came over here, Mama made the shirts by hand. They didn't have a sewing machine. But later on they had a sewing machine. Don't you know it took a long time? HP: It says here he came to Texas in 1883. That's a long time ago. That was the same year that he moved from one house in Germany to another house, and in the same year he left Germany and went to Texas. It says there were five children eventually. They went to Oakland from Galveston-came from Galveston, you know, through Galveston to Schulenburg and then later settled down in Oakland. And [it] says he was one of the oldest settlers in Oakland. [He] was a very helpful, friendly, and peaceful person, very much loved by people there. And both husband and wife, David and Anna Teltschik, were well regarded in the community. Well, that's just what Stella was telling us. There you can read it in black and white, see. He was my prince in shining armor, I tell you that, and she had a beautiful soul that reached to the high heaven. Then, as you were growing up, what did you do for entertainment? Did you have dances? Oh, sure. When I was about this big, it seems like there was always a picnic. And there was a dance at the picnic. When I was very little, my daddy used to dance with me. I'll bet the other boys did, too. That I don't remember any more. See, they were gone from home. Willie is really the only one that I remember. He was the youngest of that brood. That's the only one I remember, [from] when he married. Well, then, you said as you grew older you married and graduated from school. Then what did you do? Before I got married, we didn't do anything in the summer. There was nothing to do. I think I read every book in that Oakland library. They had a library there? Oh, sure-a good library. And I had the upstairs all to myself. You know, out in the country there's a lot of chores to do. You have to feed chickens, wash dishes, mop, dust-oooh, you'd better dust, Lord, how many times a week! About every day when you were out in the country? So that kept you pretty busy. Yeah, that keeps you pretty busy. We did a lot of things, especially in the spring?we canned so much stuff, and we'd dig potatoes. How did you store potatoes? Under the house. It was cool there. And how did you meet your husband? At a dance somewhere, I don't remember exactly where. Tell us about your courtship. Well, [there] wasn't much to do in those days. He was a peace officer, so a lot of the time he worked nights. He'd come out, but he had to go back to work at night, and when we married he still worked nights. When did you get married? In 1924. What kind of wedding did you have? We didn't have any wedding because my father had already had a stroke. He was in a wheelchair and in bad shape. My husband had some relatives living in the Osage community, and there was always a minister in his family, so we were married by the minister out there at his people's house. Now, which family was that, your husband's family? Yeah. What was his name? Taylor. And the preacher's name was Campbell. Johnnie Campbell. Tell us about the early days of your marriage. Where did you live? We lived in Weimar until 1940. Then he went to work for the Texas Liquor Control Board, and we lived in Galveston for five years. From the Liquor Board, he went to Monsanto in Texas City as a guard at the plant there. They opened this plant in Sheridan, Texas, so we came back here, and he went to work as a guard at Sheridan, but see, he was a wounded veteran. Which war was that? World War I. World War I? In France, I don't know if it happened on the St. Lo front or the Argonne Forest. It happened over there. Then they laid out in the rain and they were sprayed with mustard gas. And he had a lot of problems. Was this before or after your marriage? Before. Can you tell us any interesting things about his life and how it affected you when he was a policeman here? Did he have a jail? What kind of car did he drive? We had a Ford. And, oh, I don't remember. Then I went to work at a department store, and, when World War II broke out, we were living in Galveston. Then in 1945 his health got so bad he couldn't breathe down there. [The elevation] was too low, so we came on back [to Weimar]. And there was such a shortage of help, and they needed a clerk at the railroad company-the Southern Pacific in Weimar-so I went to work for them, and I worked for them fifteen years. So, there wasn't much time. Did you learn to drive the car? After driving the horse and buggy, you know? Oh, sure. What was your first car? You said it was a Ford. What year was it, do you remember? In '24, I'm sure. '24? Sure. When I came to town, Carl used to come to see me. Sometimes he would ride with other peace officers and leave the car at home. And I looked at the car one day, and I said: "I'm going to drive you." [laughter] I'll bet it had an automatic shift, too, didn't it? [laughter] I went out and got in it, and I don't remember where I drove it, but I drove it. I drove it back in the yard, and I parked it, and, when he came home, I said, "I drove the car." What did he say? Nothing. It was okay. You know, I guess he knew I was going to learn sometime anyhow. You might as well learn then. Didn't take very long. What was your husband' s first name? Leslie. Leslie Taylor? Leslie G. and the G stood for Gregg, but you'd better never mention it. He didn't like that Gregg. So we said G. Did you ever know why he didn't like it? Uh-uh. He never did tell you? He never liked it. He didn't like that Gregg. Must have had a bad memory somewhere. Can you tell us about your home life? Did you speak German at home? Oh, yeah. They always spoke German. They did not know English. They could speak German and Bohemian. When they didn't want us to know something, they'd talk Bohemian. So, you were raised speaking German? Yes. When did you learn English? When they adopted us, we didn't know anything but English. We had to learn German, and then when we went to school, we had to learn English again, so we were kind of mixed up. Did you find it hard to learn English again after you spoke in German? I don't think I ever forgot all of the English. You see, when people came to the house, Willie would talk to them in English, so we didn't lose it altogether. You didn't lose it altogether? Was Willie the one Teltschik boy that was left at home when you went there? Yes. But I think when I was very small, two of them were still at home. One was blind, Henry. When he was a little boy, he had trouble with his eyes, and so Father took him on the train to San Antonio. They did something about it, but then after he got older and was away from home, this thing came back. I think he was nearly a hundred when he died. It says here that Henry was born on December 21, 1892. And he passed away on May 22, 1983-[91 years old.] He lived in a rest home, up in Marshall, Texas. He was blind for many years, but ,you know, they must have taken good care of him [for him] to have lived that long. And one time, when we had the Teltschik reunion at the Vina, he came back here. In '74. He hadn't been back here for so many years due to his blindness, but he wanted to come, so Oscar Teltschik from up at O'Donnell brought him. They came through Houston, and, when they were coming this direction and he was between Eagle Lake and East Bernard, he said, "You know, we ought to be about at Eagle Lake now." Something felt right, or smelled right, or something, you know. That stays in your mind somewhere. And we could put his food on his plate and just say, "This is your meat; this is your potatoes," and he'd sit there and eat it. But he didn't have that bad trouble where he couldn't see at all until he had moved away from the house, away from the family. Yeah. But he had trouble with his eyes while he was still with the family. Actually, you went through nine grades of school, didn't you? Uh-huh. And then you went to another school, or was that the end of it? That was the end of it. Everybody went for nine grades? Oh, no. Just those that stayed here? No, some of those children [only] went to about the fifth or sixth, because in many families they were needed so badly at home. In those days you couldn't come to town; you had to raise what you ate. You had to help till and work the land and everything. Uh-huh. Did you ever go to the movies, or anything like that? Did you have a movie theater when you were young? Yeah. I went to the movies when I was young sometimes, when we came to town. Which town was that? Weimar. Oakland didn't have a movie [theater]. It was too small. And, you know, in those days it was just different. The neighbors would visit. We would walk to the neighbors' house, and maybe one Sunday they would come to our house. We'd have cake and lemonade, and a whole bunch would get together. But people don't do that anymore. No, people won't spend more time with each other instead of watching TV. Well, that's all you had. And we'd come to church. What was the church like? How far did you have to go? To Weimar. You came to Weimar? Weimar church. St. Michael's? Yes. Then, did you have a big dinner on Sunday after you got home from church? Always chicken-noodle soup on Sunday. Oh! Homemade, of course. Homemade noodles and chicken out of the yard. Did you ever have to pluck the chicken, or did somebody else do that? I can pluck that chicken. I could cut it up; I could do anything to that chicken! How old were you then, when you learned to do that? Very little. One time Mama and Papa and Raymond had the flu. They were all in bed, and I was little. I knew I had to cook something. So I went out and chopped the old hen's head off, brought it in the house, poured the hot water over it, plucked it, and washed it. I put it in a dishpan and took it to the bed to where Mama was, so we could get that chicken cut up. How old do you think you were then? I couldn't have been over 12; I was small. Well, you knew what to do, because you'd watched your mother. You obviously learned something. You were the only girl at home for a long time, I would think, because, according to this family tree here, the other two girls were quite a bit older than you were. They must have been gone by the time you got there. Oh, the first one, I don't remember her. The other one was at home?she married late in life. I don't know if I was going to school when she married. Agnes married a fellow by the name of Burns. I was small. Since you spoke of them being sick, what was the medical treatment at that time? Did you have a family doctor? There was a family doctor at Oakland. Did he come out to the house? He came out to the house, but I was never sick. Did he come out when your parents had the flu, then? Yeah, he came out. How did he get there? With a horse and buggy. Then, when Mama was sick one time, they said she had an enlarged heart, but how did they know? They didn't have an X-ray. Anyway, that year I stayed home from school for about six weeks, and, when Mama got well, she said, "We're going to town today." I went to town, and she brought me a taffeta dress, shoes with two buckles on them, and she brought me a pretty hat. I never will forget that. I was dressed up! How old were you then, do you remember? No. I was less than 14, I know. How come she bought you all those pretty things? Because I was taking care of her. That's nice. Wasn't that nice? I told you they were just precious people. What happened when the doctor came? Sometimes the doctor would stay for lunch. And especially when Papa was sick and Mama knew he was going to be there, she fixed a big pot of chicken-noodle soup because he really liked chicken-noodle soup. How did he carry his medicines and all? He came by buggy, right? Uh-huh. He had a kind of a briefcase that he kept the medicine in. It wasn't a lot of medicine in those days. I guess maybe it was quinine and that kind of stuff. I don't know of any other kind of medicine we ever had. You didn't have all the little bottles of pills like we do now? No. I don't even remember any liquid medicine. All I remember is, when Mama went to live with one of the boys, the doctor came, and that was the first time I saw him leave a bottle of liquid medicine. Did he make it right there or mix it up? That I don't know. But I remember Willie going in there one day to give her the medicine. And the medicine was gone. I don't remember if she said she took it or poured it out. It wasn't helping. (laughter) Didn't taste good! Got rid of it. (laughter) I remember later, it seems to me the doctors were coming in a T-Model automobile-Ford T-Model, I believe. That's as much as I know about how doctors came. He'd come as far as our house, spend the night, eat breakfast, and the next day he'd go on to Hallettsville. Did he stop there on his way back? That I don't remember. You started to tell us about this family that lived close by you that lost their mother. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they did. Every Sunday morning Mama would bake kolaches for all of them. Now we call them hefekuchen . One of the kids was so little he couldn't walk all the way, so they had to carry him. He was a little bitty fellow. That was way before my time. They would come up then and have Sunday, sort of Sunday brunch, would they, with your family? Yeah, just sit around and eat. But that was before they got me. That was before my time. They were all a lot older than I was, and I believe they're all dead now. I don't believe there's any more living. Let's see what else we'd do. They would milk and then let the milk clabber and skim off the cream. We had a big churn we'd use to make butter, and in cooking we used a lot of fresh butter instead of shortening. And that's the reason now some of that stuff tastes so different when I try to fix it. Because you don't have the fresh butter? Yes. It makes all the difference in the world; [it's] much better than the butter you buy now. You take that butter, and you keep working it after you get it out of the churn, and you work all the milk out, and it's good solid fresh butter. It was good. But now this butter, I don't know. Most of it's frozen. Machines don't make it as good. No, machines don't make it as good. Have we talked about curing meat? No, I don't think you did. We'd butcher a hog. And, you know, out in the country, it was just different. If a man was going to butcher a hog, others would go help. The weather had to be cold, though. Then they'd make the sausage. We fixed ham and bacon and put it in the salted brine. People sometimes ask me what we did for entertainment way back [then], out in the country nights with no television. Well, we stripped feathers. I think it was in the fall of the year, they would pull out the feathers from the geese, and then at night we would strip the feathers. Then pillows and beds were made of down. One thing about the stripping was so comical-the feathers were so light and fluffy after their quill was stripped out that you couldn't breathe much. You had to be careful how you breathed because the feathers would fly. (laughter) And coughing was out. You had to wait until you got out of the room before you could cough. Yeah. And during the school days, we had to study, study. When I was in the seventh grade, I had eight subjects, and we had to do our homework before we got to school in the morning, so that took up a lot of time. Did you have homework every day? Yes. And back then, everybody sewed every night. [We also] embroidered and crocheted, and some people would knit. That was done after the chores were done, so the night [evening] didn't last very long before it was time to go to bed. And I think people probably went to bed earlier than we go to bed nowadays, don't you think? Remember what time you used to go to bed? About 8 o'clock. That's when the whole family went to bed? No, my mother always went to bed before my father and I did. And that's how I got the music clock. Did you see the music clock? HP: I don't believe so. It was advertised in a German paper he was reading to me. I liked that clock so much. Mama didn't know we ordered that clock that night, but she liked the clock after we got it because it's a music clock. It's pretty. Do you remember what tune it plays? Yes. Let me show you something about that clock...look how it opens. It's got a little door... And it has a key and keyholder and everything in there for it. About how old were you when you ordered that, do you remember? I wasn't that old, maybe 10 or 12. Look at all the mechanisms it's got in there. It's really something, and you can see part of it through the glass side and watch it play. I think it's beautiful. What kind of Christmas decorations did you have? Oh, yeah, I knew I was going to tell you that. Santy Claus would always come, but he would always be on the outside looking in the window before he got in the house. What was he supposed to be looking for? If we were good or bad. After he looked in the window and scared the heck out of us, then he'd come in. Did you make the ornaments for the tree every year, or did you carry them over from year to year? Well, in those days, I don't remember what ornaments we had on the Christmas tree. But I remember we had apples, peppermint candy, and oranges; I don't know what they did to them to make them stay up there. I know the Christmas tree was always in the parlor. And we did not go in the parlor. When did you put the tree up? Or when did it get put up? Well, we didn't know... Oh, it just appeared on Christmas Eve. It just appeared. Did it have candles on it? It had candles on it. Real candles? Uh-huh. When they would light the candles, Papa would sing "Oh Tannenbaum." Oh, he had a good voice. Did you string the popcorn? I don't think we strung popcorn, because I don't remember popcorn. That wouldn't be a German tradition. We made cookies with icing and sprinkled colored candy on them and hung them on the tree. How long did you keep the tree up? I think we kept it about a week. Well, you know, in those days we had St. Nicholas, too. Did you have St. Nicholas? HP: We still have St. Nicholas at my house. Tell us about St. Nicholas. St. Nicholas used to put up a stocking. When would you put the stocking up? Oh, it was before Christmas, but I don't know how long. HP: In Germany it's usually done on the night of the 5th or 6th of December. That's probably what we did, too. We'd hang up the stocking, and then I don't remember if we could go and look in that stocking that night or if we had to wait until next morning. That I don't remember. What would be in the stocking? Oh, some peppermint candy. And I used to like dates, so the Easter Rabbit and Santa Claus would bring dates. One Easter, the weather was so bad. It was raining and raining and raining. And I thought, Oh Lord, the Easter Rabbit can't come, and there's not going to be any dates. And I waited until it was pretty late in the morning, and I don't remember whether Mama or Papa or somebody said, "Well, I tell you, go in the barn and look in the wagon." And there were the dates and the Easter eggs. The rabbit laid it in the barn, on the wagon. At Easter, did they hide eggs in different places and have you go looking for them? No, not different places-we had just one nest. But you had to go and find it. Yes, and most of the time it would be in different places. Did you color the eggs? I don't know. Well, in those days they didn't let you see. I guess they colored the eggs, but we didn't see them when they colored them, because the Easter Rabbit laid them. How were we going to color those eggs? That's right. I believe it was at Easter time that we always ate good. Always set a good table. When we were going to have company, usually-did I tell about that big ham, that fresh ham? No. Papa would buy that piece of fresh pork and then put it in Mama's big roasting pan-season it and score the skin. And then she'd bake it until that skin was good and brown. It was good, too. Another thing we had was sauerbraten . Now, did you have special meals for Christmas and Easter, and what were they? On Christmas Eve we always had pickled herring. Papa would buy them in a salt brine, in little wooden kegs. And Mama would take off the heads and wash them. Then we'd soak them. I think she soaked them overnight. The next day she took them out, and she had a little crock. She put a layer of herring and a layer of bay leaves, onions, and allspice, then another layer of herring, and then, I think it was vinegar and water they poured over it. They are good. Then what did you eat with them? Potatoes? Home-made bread. What did you eat on Christmas Day? That I don't remember. But I remember those herrings; I especially like them. And we always belonged to a Beef Club. What was a Beef Club? Well, there were so many, and they would butcher a calf. One person would kill the calf, and then everybody would get so much meat. My papa was the butcher. And so you got a little piece of steak, some stew meat, some soup meat, some ribs-a little of everything. On Saturday we always had a big pot of stew of fresh meat because you couldn't slice it with the saw. So Mama would trim all the stuff, that kind of little ragged edges, and some of the bones, some of the ribs, she put that in pot, and we'd make stew out of that with a lot of potatoes. One thing we never did put in stew were tomatoes. Did you put carrots in? No. No carrots-just the potatoes. Just onions and potatoes. So did your parents speak German to each other? Yes. They couldn't speak anything else except German and Bohemian. But they spoke German to each other. How about to you kids? They spoke German to me. I couldn't understand them when I first went there, and then when I started to school I couldn't understand English. Did they ever learn English? I think they knew more than they let on. When we were talking, they knew what we were talking about-sometimes they didn't admit it. And when they didn't want us to know what they were talking about, they talked Bohemian. They got around us. And, let's see, what else. The washing was something. You had a big old iron kettle. First you rubbed the clothes on a rub board.rub board? HP: Washboard. You rinsed them, and you boiled them. Then you brought them back in and rubbed them again. You rinsed them first in clear water and then in water with some bluing in it. It took all day, but we were lucky we didn't have to draw the water. We had a windmill and cistern and water pipes running to different areas of the kitchen, out to the barn and all that. But some people had to draw the water from the well and carry it. Where did you have your wash kettle? In the barn or in the house? The wash kettle was out in the yard. With a fire under it? Yes. The washing machine was in the washhouse. We had a cistern that sat on top of the washhouse. The washhouse had a rock floor with the washing machine, the tubs, the washboards, and everything kept out there. Now when you say "washing machine," what are you talking about? Because you did most of the work by hand. Yes. But later on we got the washing machine. OK, but at first it was all by hand? All by hand. What kind of irons did you have? You'd heat them on the stove. Get the wood stove real hot and set them on there. Then you would take them and try and iron the clothes. If it was too hot, you'd scorch everything; if it wasn't hot enough, it didn't iron anything. Those old clothes, like old blue jeans, were hard to iron. Didn't you ever spit on the thing to see whether it would work? Yes, we did. Everybody wore white starched shirts. Imagine how you had to wipe that iron off over and over again so that you didn't soil the clothes. And those white shirts. [By the time ] you'd iron one side, the other side was already wrinkled again. Did you have the detachable handle type, or was it all just one piece in your iron? The detachable handle type. HP: That's better, because one could heat while the other was working over here. I know when I was going to Catholic school, I was always in trouble. Why were you always in trouble? Because where I went to school, boys and girls could play together and talk to one another, but, when I went down there, I wasn't supposed to talk to boys, and my little brother was over on the other side. I'd want to go over there and say something to him, and I would get in trouble. That was at St. Michael's? Yes. Where did you go to school first? In Oakland. You see, we were adopted and that man from [Houston] New York would come down once a year to see how we were getting along. And he said we had to go to communion. So we did. So I went to St. Michael's up here, and one day I was marching with somebody that I was mad at, and I said, "I won't march with her." I never will forget. Sister came over there and shook me and said, "She's just as good as you are." So then, when Papa came to town, she told him. So he bailed me out with some money. Oh, my. [laughter] So both you and the little boy that got adopted with you went to St. Michael's? Yes. It was catechism school. We just went six months so we could go to communion. That's what Father Shemonski said. You were just saying that the man from New York came down. How many years did he come down here? Until we were grown. Really? I don't know. If we didn't go to church often... but you know, seven miles is a long way to drive a buggy to church. What did he do? Check up on everything you did? He said to Papa he was going to have to send us back. And Papa said, "Oh, no." If you weren't treated right or weren't doing right? If we didn't do those things they told us we had to do. My papa said, "They aren't going nowhere." I remember I was scared of him. God, I was scared of that man. I don't blame you. He wanted you to go back. I think if the devil had walked in, I wouldn't have been more frightened. Ooh! But you continued going over there to St. Michael's to church? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Were your parents Catholic, too? I read in this chronicle that they were Evangelical, but the Catholic church moved into where they were living, and I think they were asked to go to that church. HP: Not having read it, I would imagine her parents over there and her relatives were probably Lutheran-what is now called Lutheran here and over there it's Evangelisch Lutherisch Kirche. That's the kind of church where we had the services last year when we were over there. HP: Was it Evangelisch Lutherisch Kirche ? Yes. HP: That's what I thought. So when the church took over, maybe they didn't convert, but maybe they were supposed to. Obviously, the people that you came from were Catholics and wanted you to be brought up in the Catholic faith. Did your family celebrate any German holidays? I know Pentecost was always a special day. On the Monday after Pentecost,there was always a picnic to go to somewhere. What were the picnics like? Oooh! There was beer drinking, I think, and dancing. I'm kind of getting them confused with those big country weddings we went to. Those country weddings were something else. Tell us about a country wedding. There was always so many people invited, and there was noodle soup at every country wedding. They had to have so much noodle soup that they made it in a wash pot. [laughter] I hope they cleaned the wash pot first.. And then what else did they do at a country wedding? Would it be an all-day affair? We always went in the afternoon. I don't know if they had it in the morning or not. I don't remember what we drank. I know I didn't have beer because I was too little. There was some dancing going on and people visiting, talking to one another. In those days every neighbor for miles around knew each other. And they would come. And if a neighbor was sick and needed buttermilk to drink, well, somebody took it over there. How late would you stay at this country wedding before you'd go back home again? I think we got back home by dark. We never did stay. I'll tell you what, it took a long time to get there. We stayed there for a while, and then we had to get back. And the next morning you had to start feeding chickens, milking cows, and feeding horses. You didn't have too much time to stay too long anywhere. Did they have big celebrations for baptisms or anything like that? If they did, I don't remember it. The little babies were only two or three days old when they baptized them. But you know, I never will forget one time the weather was real bad... I was maybe twelve or fifteen years old, and a wagon went by in the mud with a poor family I knew. They had a little baby, and it died, so they came to town in the wagon and laid that little baby in church. That was a sad situation. And I remember that man came to our house once around noontime, and someone said, "Fix him a plate; we'll take him a plate." My father said, "No. He's coming to the table; he's a human being, and he's going to eat at the table with us." I remember we had cucumber salad. The poor guy looked at that cucumber salad, and he got the bowl, and he just started pouring that bowl of cucumber in his plate. Papa told him, "You can't do that. If you haven't got anything in your stomach and you eat that cucumber, you're going to be sick." So that was all right. He didn't do it any more. Poor guy. HP: Going back, checking in this book, I would think they were Lutheran. Just like we speculated. There is a wedding license from the Lutheran parish. ... in Germany. You had your cow staked. You had to make sure the cow stayed on your property, because the people next door needed their grass as much as you needed yours. HP: The distances from place to place over there are so much smaller. And here, you've got all these distances, and you have all this land for yourself. You know I often wondered, as I was riding through the country, what would these people really do if they had the resources that we have? It would be quite different. HP: They can't imagine the distances, for instance. It's hard for them to think of that. Every little thing, every little place, there's something growing, and, if there wasn't something growing, you could see they had already worked the soil, getting it ready for something else. |
|
|||
 |
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
