Summer of 1999
In 1999, while visiting my great-grandmother, Clara Schlotman, I gave her a tape recorder and tapes and asked if she would record some stories for me. I transcribed the tape, and this is the result.
Well, here I am again. I’m going to try to tell you something that I don’t know too much about. On the farm we had a building called the crib, which stored the corn on either side of the building and in the center, you could drive a wagon or use it for a storage space or whatever. Well, when the proper time came (now I can’t remember what time of the year it would be–it was nice weather, I know) the geese that we raised on the farm (we had ducks and geese and chickens) would be driven into the center of this building and closed up. My mother always took a chair, she put on a big apron, and she would pick up one of these geese, one at a time, lay it on its back across her lap, and pluck feathers from its breast. Now, she didn’t bare that breast, she just, I don’t know how she knew, but anyway, the breast was left covered. And she’d save those feathers and put them in a bag. That was down. That’s what you made your down pillows from. And she’d take each one and as she finished with one, it was put outside and each one was plucked until they were all done. But I don’t know how long it took to have enough down for a pillow, I have no idea, but that’s the way that they were plucked. Then…I don’t know where to go from here. I guess we’ll stop right here for a little bit.
Well, here I go again. I was going to tell about when you live on the farm. There’s always so much work to be done. The men have a lot of work. They work from early morning until late at night and after the chores were done at night, the cows were milked (and I guess that they might have milked them at night too, I don’t remember) and supper over, the family all gathered in the living room and talked and laughed and told stories and played games. You never once thought of saying “I’m going to town” or “I’ll be back, so and so.” Everybody was home and went to bed and had a good night’s rest, because tomorrow brings another day. They had to work hard, as well as the women because they had all those beds to make and change and they had to cook and fix a good meal. Breakfast consisted of meat, potatoes and gravy and whatever. Of course, I was never up early. But when I got up, there was a place for me waiting. I loved to take a slice of bread and pull it into little parts, and just and stack it on my plate way up high, and then put gravy on top of that. Oh, that was so good! But that’s been a long time ago. Now, as I was telling you, we were on the farm. I had a big yard to play in, but I didn’t go out of the yard unless somebody was with me, because there was always animals — cows and pigs and horses and whatever we had was around. And then there would be, some distance from the house, a plot of ground where we’d have watermelons out there. We had plenty of watermelons and musk melons. And then we had the garden which had plenty of potatoes that we would dig. Aunt Nona was the one that was always around to dig potatoes and gather things from the garden. So, if we wanted watermelon, sometimes we’d just walk out into the patch and we’d thump the watermelons to see how they sounded. If they sounded like they were good and ripe, we’d just pick it up and drop it and it would break into several pieces. And we’d stand right there and eat that watermelon. Oh my, we’d spit out all those seeds, oh! *chuckle*, it was great. Oh! So, that’s it for now.
Here I am again with another tale. When I was just quite small, everybody told me that Santa Claus lived in Iceland. So, one day I thought, “well I’ll just talk to him myself and find out.” So, I remember there was a telephone hanging on the wall, a big, old-fashioned thing and you had to ring to get central and get through. So, I rang the ringer (on the side was a thing to ring it) and central said, (oh I don’t remember I suppose she said) “Central.” And I said, “Well, give me Santa Claus at Iceland.” I don’t know where my mother was, but about that time she got me down off that chair and I never did get to talk to Santa. That’s it! *chuckle*
Well, hello. Here we go again. I was going to tell you about…besides farming, my father owned and operated a threshing machine. Now, that consisted of a steam engine, water tank, (the whatever it was, where they put the oats in, and it took the hulls and everything off of the oats and the corn…that was called) the sheller. He did his own business at home and then he would go out into the neighborhood and help the neighbors with all of this. Of course, I’m assuming that they paid him for this. I don’t (of course I wasn’t big enough to) know. But anyway, he was a busy man. And he was a gentle, soft-spoken man, and had a beard, and he was a great guy. That’s all for right now.
Good morning! Today is my father’s birthday, so I thought I’d talk a little bit about him. His health began to fail and he couldn’t any longer farm. But he thought that he’d be able to do something. So he bought a restaurant in Sheldon and he had a sale and sold his farm equipment and we moved to Sheldon. It was a nice, big restaurant and there was a living space up above. I was seven years old and I started to school in Sheldon, the first grade at age seven. Anyway, my mother did the cooking and my father was downstairs, of course. Then, there were a couple of the boys that helped occasionally. But oh, I was so proud of that. The windows were deep seated and we had little white curtains to the back of them and the display in the windows was big jars of candy. I don’t remember what else but I do remember the candy in lovely big, big jars. There was a little girl that lived in the apartment not too far down the street from where we were. So, I walked to school with her. I learned the city by walking to school with her. She was real nice. Her name was Mirla Dibble. She wasn’t well. She was a very frail little girl and she didn’t live maybe ten years later. We weren’t in the restaurant to long until my father saw that he wasn’t going to be able to do that. So, we found a home in Sheldon and he closed the restaurant. We lived not to far from town and everything was working out well as far as I was concerned. (I fell down the basement once. We had a trap door in the kitchen, and I went rushing through, and the door was open, and down I went. Maybe that’s what hurt my head today *chuckle*! Well, I just thought I’d tell you about that.) Then we moved a couple of more times until we found the right home for us. My father wasn’t able to do anything. He had such headaches. And the doctor had told him to soak his feet in real hot water and that would take the blood from the brain and would relieve him. Anyway, this went on for some time. And so finally, he passed away and then we were left without him. That’s all now.
Good morning. This is June the second, 1999. It is now about 10:00 in the morning, temperature around sixty-eight degrees. The Sky is partly cloudy. And it’s to be about 70 degrees today, a little cooler than what we’ve been having. I had my air conditioner put in yesterday. It was pretty warm on Saturday, but now that I have it in, it’s cool. Well, I think that I haven’t been too busy, but that’s all right. We went Memorial Day to Marcia’s in the evening. Day before, we had gone to the cemetery to do some decorating and that’s been about it. You know this may just be my last recording. I can’t think of anything, really. I had a very simple life, I had fun. But I can’t remember everything, and it wouldn’t be fun to you if it repeated, so this is the way it goes. I went to school every day and I came home and worked–maybe did ironing or something necessary, studied, maybe go to the library in the evening. But on the whole, everything was very simple. Since I can’t think of anything more at this moment, I’ll wish you all adieu and maybe I’ll see you all again.