A little to your left,
a little more to your right.
Okay, and flip it.
Yeah, wait up.
And do a somersault.
Beautiful.
Thank you.
Our camera's speed, mark it.
Hold for focus.
Over focus...
Okay, and whenever you're ready.
We're rolling? We're rollin'.
All right, Jerry, we're rollins'.
All right so let's just jump right
in. Why don't you just tell me about
the holiday growing up on
the farm, Christmas is
coming, tell me that.
What's the excitement in the air?
What are you guys doing? What's your
mom doing?
Christmas on the farm, when I was
a kid, was one
of those things that we
looked forward to all year long
because that was one of the few
celebrations that we really
celebrated.
Thanksgiving and Christmas were
the important ones.
And once the Sears robot
catalog arrived in
our mailbox, we
knew that Christmas was
on its way.
And I have two brothers, Donald
and Daryl, twin brothers.
And when the catalog arrived,
we would fight over who could
have it first.
And whoever would win that had
a chance to page through it
and see this wondrous
collection of toys
that you might get
for Christmas, which we
never got for Christmas.
There was also in
that catalog all
kinds of gifts.
That we could possibly
receive and so what was
the pattern at our house?
My mother had decided we were poor
as poor could be this is the middle
of the depression in the
1930s and she
would say to us you can select
one toy and
one piece of clothing
and That's it.
And so can you imagine these
three kids?
All sitting around the wood
stove in the dining room, because
we had no central heating of
any kind, all sitting round
the dining-room table after
we had come home from the country
school.
Paging through the catalog,
we finally decided that
we could work together rather
than fight over it.
So I, being the older one,
I would turn the page.
Anything on this page?
No.
Another page. Anything on on this
one? Nope.
How about this?
Well, maybe, and that's
how we went through the Sears
Roadbook catalog.
It was something to see.
I'm sure my dad was off to
the side smiling because
he underlined
the fact that we didn't have enough
money to buy very many presents
and then we could really only
buy two for our
three kids.
Or were some of the presents you
remember distinctly getting as a
kid?
My first present that I
remember so well,
and I still have it somewhere, I
don't know where it is, is a
wind up train.
You wind a train up and
it's got about four little metal
cars and they go round
and round and around the Christmas
tree. That's the idea.
I had two of them.
The second present must have come
the second year and that was a
farm set up and there There's a
barn and a house and the
animals are all there.
And the pig house was there, and
I played farm.
Why in the world was I
playing farm when I was living farm?
But I thought it was fun to
play farm as well, and so
I got that little set of
farm toys.
Those farm toys and the
train, I don't have
them. I wish I had the farm toys.
I don't have those, but I still have
that little train that you can wind
up, And it had a little bell on it,
ding, ding ding, and it'd
go in a circle.
Wonderful little presents and
wonderful memories.
When you're mom, yeah,
I'm actually gonna cut.
I'm gonna add cameras are speeding
market.
Okay, hold for focus.
All right, we're rolling again.
All right.
All right, Jerry, let's go ahead and
let's talk about the Christmas
program at the school.
Just tell me, again, what it was,
the importance.
Why don't you just tell me about the
Christmas program.
The next thing to remind us
of Christmas, after
the arrival of
the Sears Kettle, was the
fact that when we
got back to school after
Christmas break, we knew
something was different.
What was that?
Well, the teacher had a
whole pile of blue books
on her desk
and she was picking out
something.
What was she picking out?
She was picking out little things
that we could say, that we can
sing, that we do.
As part of a Christmas program.
I wanted no part of the Christmas
program! I was scared to death
of talking to people.
When people would visit us at home,
I'd run out in the woods and hide,
and now here I've got to perform
on a stage in front of
people. And the teacher, she didn't
even tell me what, let
me pick out, she said, I'm talking
about first grade, she said, Jerry,
here's what you're going to do.
What am I going to?
You're going I'm going to memorize
this little piece, I don't know
what!
I went home to my mother and
I said, the teacher, Ms.
Piasky, she wants me to
memorize this thing and talk
to the people, to say it
to the the people.
I'm not gonna do that.
That's not what I do.
I'm scared of people.
I don't wanna talk to people.
You're gonna talk to to people,
so here I am at
the Christmas program.
And it's filled with people,
oh my God, way in
the back, way in front, everywhere
there are people.
And I'm sitting in the front row,
and I'm standing there, almost
shaking like this, because I
am the first person on the program.
And what am I supposed to do?
What am I suppose to say?
And I have it very well memorized.
And Miss Piazki had said to me,
I know you're a bit afraid of
doing this, Jerry, but here's
something that you can do.
To get past your fear.
What in the world could that be,
I wondered.
And she said, here's what you do.
You look out in that
schoolhouse and you look
way in the back and you see
a device
on the
chimney, on the stovepipe.
And when you are, when we
ask you to stand up to speak,
You look at that
wood
at that stovepipe and everybody
thinks that you're looking right at
them and you're not.
You don't see anybody.
You see a stovepipe.
And so Jerry stand up on the stage.
Jerry's now on the stage and
he says in a very clear voice,
uh, we'd like to welcome you to
our annual Christmas program.
Uh, thank you for coming.
And I sat down.
That was the long spiel we
Germans call a little speech.
And everybody clapped
in, oh my gosh, I'm about
three and a half feet tall,
I'm a little bit of a gut.
So that was the start of
the Christmas program.
And as the years went on,
each of us had a role
in the Christmas Program.
They became more complicated
as the year went
on.
And we had some really
interesting things happen along
the way, in addition.
To the program itself.
And there adults like to
bring presents.
They like to add a little humor to
what was going on.
And for one year,
the present that
the farmers were sharing with each
other, now don't fall off your
chairs when I say this, but it was
a pig's tail.
When you butchered your pig, you
chopped off the tail and saved it
for the Christmas program.
And then when the adults all got
together and they sat around the
wood stove, and it was time to
open the presents, they ripped open
the present, and each one
got a pig tail,
which was the stupidest thing in the
world.
And then another year,
almost as bad, when the adult
opened their presents,
and they each, not each,
several of them, got little boxes,
but match boxes.
And they could hear a little
skittering sound in the matchbox.
She used to matchbox, must be a
present in there of some kind.
Open the match box,
and a sparrow flew out.
Woosh! Sparrow roll, hit the guy in
the nose, flew around the
school room, and people would go,
whoa, this is the best present ever.
Sparow went round and round.
Somebody open the door.
Open the door, sparrow outside,
end of that story.
The Christmas program was
just a wonderful time.
For other kids as
well as their parents.
And it's one of the celebrations
that was looked to every year
by the parents, by
the kids, by the
relatives, because it
was one of the
few social events for
many of the parents.
And it was one of a few social
events that was put on and
sponsored by the country school.
It was a wonderful thing to
remember.
It provided wonderful
opportunities to the kids
to learn how to
say their piece.
I have been forever thankful.
I'm choking up for
Ms. Piasky to
help me see that I could talk
to a group.
And I've been talking to groups ever
since.
I've given thousands speeches.
The people, all because
of Ms.
Piaski saying, you can do it,
Jerry, look at the stovepipe.
I've been looking at this stovepipe
for 65 years,
people.
Sounds like this very special,
special teacher.
Tell me a little bit, just some more
about that.
How did you guys decorate for the
Christmas program?
And talk about Santa coming to visit
at the end.
Now, we decorated for the Christmas
program, again, shortly after
Thanksgiving, and we would
put snowflakes in all the
schoolhouse windows.
That was the decoration.
We also had a Christmas tree in
the corner, which we would
decorate.
So, actually, the school house
was better decorated than
our own house.
They were far ahead of us.
All of that in preparation for
Christmas.
Santa Claus was someone
that was selected.
Quietly from the adults,
parents, and
some others. I got to tell you a
little story about this.
This got fun.
Evelyn Kolko was one
of the neighbor girls in her,
she attended the country school,
graduated from the country's school,
and was now a school teacher
herself in
Springwater Township.
And I was in college.
And Evelyn said to me, Jerry,
could you be our Santa
Claus this year?
I said, yeah, of course
I could be your Santa Claus.
So I all dressed up in the
old Santa Claus, nobody there knew
who the heck this was.
And the deal was,
when it was time for Santa Claus you
ran around the schoolhouse three
times.
And it was shaking bells, so
vroom-dum-ding-a-ding, ding, vroom,
dum, ding-a, ding. And I burst
into the door and ran up to
the teacher. And I gave her a big
kiss. And she turned bright
red, and everybody clapped.
And it was one of the highlights of
the evening at the school
house, of which I don't remember the
name.
Oh, so you're saying
that the school house was usually
better decorated than your house.
How did your parents or your mom
decorate your house for the house?
We had very, I would say we had
limited, very limited decoration
because we had a
need to understand what was
like during the Depression,
when I say this, and I'm talking
about 1930s.
We, almost everybody
else in our community had next to
nothing.
And so you decorated,
we decorated a Christmas tree,
which was one that we
grew ourselves.
And beyond the Christmas tree,
my mother made some special cookies.
And that was about it.
We were very
minimalist in terms of Christmas
decorations.
What decorations would be put on
the tree?
My mother got some very special
bulbs. I don't know where she got
them, great big ones.
We had no electricity.
So these great big bulbs hung on
the trees.
And then there were fake icicles
on those on the street.
If we would drop one of Mother's
big bulbs, I mean, that's
something you wouldn't dare even
think I'm doing.
But the big bulbs and
the icicles, I remember most
as decorations on the
tree. Oh, there was some kind of
a do-dee-doo on the top.
I don't know what it was
made of, but on
the very top of the tree, there was
maybe a, I don't know, something
that's called attention to
itself.
And I know you didn't
get many presents or whatever.
When would the presents, did they
go under the tree?
Would it be like Christmas morning?
When would those happen?
The presents found
their way under the tree as
they were purchased, as
best I could understand.
And the Montgomery Award
had cataloged, the Sears cataloged
presents found their
way onto the tree during
the weeks up to Christmas.
And in fact, that was a really fun
time because when the folks
weren't looking, we'd see this.
You shake
this package to see what was in it.
And my brother, Darrell, would say,
I think that's the package that
you're looking for.
It was, I could hear it rattling
something.
We had more fun trying to figure
out what was it in these packages
when the parents weren't looking.
And we had several weeks to do that.
How, what were they wrapped in?
Somehow wrapping, Christmas wrapping
paper was available on
the Jeep.
Because my mother had gotten
Christmas wrapping paper to wrap
these things, and she did.
Another interesting thing,
this relates
to Ruth's family.
When Ruth's Family, when they opened
a present of any kind, any package
of any kinds, she ironed
the paper so they could use
it another time.
That's another story.
Did your, did you
get your parents anything or did
they get gifts for each other?
Did your mom and dad get gifts from
each other.
They may have, but not that
I knew of.
I doubt it.
It was really a tough time.
When did you open presents?
Did you guys open presents.
Oh, this, when did we open?
The presents stayed under the
tree until
Christmas morning.
Lots of people opened presents on
Christmas Eve. We did not.
My dad said, the cows
always come first.
And in fact, on Christmas morning,
we milked the cows before
we opened the presents.
And people would say, what?
How did you manage that?
Well, you managed it
because it was the rule.
And no presents were opened
until the cows were milked.
And then we sat around the
tree, opening
these presents and wondering,
did I get the present I
wanted as a toy?
Did I get another pair of socks
for a present?
Did I get a pretty sweater of
some kind?
And then I forgot to mention that
I would get presents from my
grandma Witt,
who was a knitter.
And she would knit me
and my brothers
a pair of woolen
mittens.
And I've never forgotten that
because a woolen, it was
all darn cold some mornings walking
to the country school
and those woolen Mittens were
just wonderful.
Except when they got wet.
Oh, yes.
Did your mom for Christmas
morning, did she make any type of
special breakfast or meal for
you on Christmas morning?
Not really.
On Christmas Eve, this sounds like
no connection, on Christmas
Eve we had oyster stew.
That was a very special dish.
My grandparents had it.
It passes through the family
for generations back to Germany
and Ruth's family the
same way. It's strange.
But oyster stew on Christmas
eve and I
don't remember anything special
other than our maybe
flapjacks extra and some
scrambled eggs or something for
breakfast. I don't remember things
special.
We were not hungry.
We were wanting to open presents
Christmas morning.
Where would your mom get the oysters
at?
What did you-
Where would she buy the oysters
from? Would they just be at the
mercantile?
Well, the mercantile store,
I knew that there was a
goodly number of
Germans and Norwegians living
in the community, most
of whom ate oysters, too.
It was a tradition that was passed
on, as I mentioned, from generation
to generation.
And so the mercatile store had
a supply of fresh
oysters. Why in the world
would they have it?
They didn't at any other time.
I mean, who would eat an oyster?
Not in a stove, for heaven's
sakes.
So, only on
preparations at Christmas Eve did
the store have oysters to
purchase.
And do you still?
To Oyster Stew to this day?
We do.
We're passing it on from generation
to generation.
My attorney grandson
has learned how to do it.
And I'm so proud of
Josh that he is cranking
up the Oyster Stoo on Christmas
Eve.
Were you surprised when you the
first time or when you and
Ruth celebrated
Christmas together that oyster
stew was a tradition in both your
families?
I was. I was surprised.
I don't know why.
I still don't why.
The Norwegians and the Germans both
have the same tradition.
I didn't know the Norwegian
tradition. I don't know where that
started.
It was a surprise to me that
that happened.
I think we probably handled it,
worked with it differently than
the two families.
I don't know that for sure.
Um just because we're on food you
said that you're you know you guys
didn't have a lot you had presents
and your mom's
decorating was minimal but she did
maybe make some special cookies
or what kind of holiday
treats or cookies do you remember
your mom making
Well, the ones that I liked best are
what called, I think, pinwheel
cookies, was dates.
I really liked those, still do.
And then she made several kinds
of other cookies that were
from her German tradition.
I don't remember exactly what
they were, but she
did make cookies for
Christmas.
And we ate them on Christmas
Eve.
And then the days following
in our school lunch, we
had Christmas leftover
cookies.
So then that was the end of cookies
and we're back to our
regular story.
Was there any exchange of
presents or gifts amongst neighbors?
Not that I recall,
that could have happened,
other than the big
tail at the schoolhouse.
These were neighbors, and the
sparrow, not caught,
but allowed to fly away at
the schooIhouse.
Those are the two presents that I
remember the
people in the community
sharing with each other.
That's silly.
I can't remember any
present shared beyond that.
Now, need to understand.
Wherever a neighbor
needed some help,
another neighbor was ready to help
them.
And if they needed,
let's say they were
without clothing of any kind,
and I have a story in one of
my books about that,
my mother would give them something
to wear.
I mean, people were in
dire straits, and those who
were the most dire strait,
another neighbor would help them
because, well,
that was what a
part of our community was
about.
And the words I used are,
we were sharing and
caring.
Those are two important phrases
that country people lived by,
sharing and carrying.
And I still use those today.
That's so poignant.
I just love when you're talking
about that and just how
just those little things meant much
so much to some of these families.
How long of a school, I mean,
just like, you know, kids today,
they get a break around Christmas
from school.
Did you and how long were those like
your Christmas break?
Now, the Christmas break was
a fun time for all of us.
It was, let's see, it would be from
Christmas day,
it would start on
Christmas day and last
probably for two weeks.
Yes, two weeks, and
during those two weeks we did all
kinds of things.
One of the things we did, of course,
we had wood stoves and
we cut wood.
Take the ax and the cross cut saw
out
and they fought a little wood
pile, but not wood pile.
Woods we had next to the house and
bring in wood that we could
saw up and put in the stoves.
That was an important part of what
we did.
We also went ice fishing.
Almost all, we couldn't go every day
because we were hauling wood
half the time.
But ice fishing was just the most
important part of what were
doing.
And we ice fished.
Just because, not just because it
was fun, but it provided us
with another source of food.
We caught, I'm bragging now folks,
a lot of fish.
Northern pike was
the premier fish that we caught
on tip hooks.
And those that we didn't eat
immediately, we
freeze them to eat later.
Those that we did not freeze
to eat later,
my dad pickled them.
So we had Northern Pike
for a very long time to
eat.
And thus, that period of
time when Christmas
was let out and Christmas
began again, provided
us a chance to not
only have fun, but
also to get the wood pile
reinforced, which in most instances
needed doing.
Um, just because we were talking
about ice fishing anyway, tell me
about, I know you were,
uh, I read in your book and you were
talking that at some point
you guys got an ice shanty, where
was, tell about the ice shandy of
what your dad made it from.
Prior to our having
an ice shanty,
which was what most
ice fishermen wanted,
we sat on shore by
a campfire and warmed
ourselves and
warmed our sandwiches and
all the rest of it.
But then we one day
said, as we looked out at the
shanties in the...
On this lake where we were.
I think I said to my dad, how
come we don't have a shanty for
heaven's sake? We're sitting by a
fire.
My dad said, I don't know.
I don t think we can afford one.
But then he said, you know,
I have an idea.
When we raised potatoes
by the
20, 30 acres,
we hauled them to town.
In January,
when the sleigh and on
the sleigh was a sleigh
coop.
And what's a sleig coop?
A sleig coupe is
a place where you, well,
for potatoes, you
sat in there with a stove
and the lines for the horses
went out the window and
you were nice and cozy warm while
you were hauling potatoes to Tom.
Cut the bottom off that thing, put a
new bottom on it with runners,
pulled it out on the lake,
had a hole in it if you wanted to
fish for bluegills, and it
was started a fire, had those,
it kept the stove.
And it was the most wonderful little
place.
It was, there were about four of us,
and it's was like shoulder to
shoulder. And if you looked out the
window and you
could see a flag go up on a tip-up,
there was a crush to go through the
little door of
the shanty.
To attend to the fish that
surely must be on that guy's
hook. So it was a
wonderful thing, this little shanty.
And we even had music.
I don't know where I got it, but I
got a Victrola record
player, the kind that you put a
33 and a third record on,
you crank up the bugger, and it'll
play for 15, well, 10
minutes at least.
So we had music.
I mean, we had the most up-to-date
deal you could imagine.
Listening to music while we were
waiting for a fish to bite.
Sorry, I didn't know about that.
Tell me this story, cause I think it
just thought it was hilarious
about, cause you had this ice shanty
for a long time.
Tell me how it
shrunk by a couple inches one year.
Did I think, didn't it melt and get
stuck and then you had to saw it off
or?
Well, one of the rules that
the DNR had for all
of us with shanties is
that they had to be off the lakes,
let's say by March
1st.
And for some
reason, we did not get our shanty
off the lake by March first.
And things melted.
And now our shandy is
sinking into the soft
ice. And my auntie
said, Pa, what are we gonna do?
We're losing our shanty.
It's sinking into the lake and I'm
not going out there to do anything.
Go out there.
Go out here and saw the bottom off.
Wouldn't that be illegal?
Yeah, but we're never gonna tell
anybody.
So we saw the bottle off and pulled
it off the lake and I never knew
what happened to the bottle.
What else besides ice fishing did
you do for during break or
during um did you do any ice skating
or do any snowball fights or
anything like that?
We did,
it depended on the weather of
course, but
ice skating was something that we
would often do and
that depended whether or not the,
especially if the lake, like Chana
Lake, which is nearest to our
house, oh, it's frozen over,
we could go there, shovel off some
of the snow and
ice skate.
And when, I've forgotten what year
it was, but it must've been when we
were.
When my brothers and I were maybe
close to our teens,
Paul said, you guys, you
haven't been ice skating, have you?
Well, I haven't ice skated in any of
these skates.
So we went to Hotch's
Hardware and
bought four
sets of skates, can you believe
it?
Four sets of skate.
No, three sets.
Yeah, no, it was four, there were
four of us.
And 50 cents a pair.
You clamped them on your shoes.
And if you didn't do it right, it
pulled your heel off for sure.
Pulls the sole off also.
The buggers were not good for
that kind of skating.
But we skated.
And we didn't know how to skate.
I mean, we'd never been on skates.
We'd slide on the ice and fall on
our two-toed, get up again and fall
again and run.
Well,
in front of our house,
one year the ice.
Lake was there, snowmelted,
we're gonna skate out there.
My dad comes along, I wonder what
the heck's he coming along for.
He comes along.
We put on our skates,
fall down, get up, go around.
My dad said, let me try this.
He clamps on one pair of these
skates. He's going forward
around the lake.
He's go backward around the Lake.
Oh
Oh my gosh, this old guy,
he can skate.
He can skate forward, he could skate
backward, he can state sideways,
and he didn't say anything.
Just smiled, just smiled, went
around, around, and around.
So there was our model.
Okay, anybody skate as well as Paul?
Well, nobody could.
That was Steve.
Was he just naturally talented
or had he skated before
as a kid or is he just talented
for skating?
He, I think he had skated
a lot when he was a kid,
and he never told anybody that he
had.
And now he was being smart and
skating with his nose up in the air,
and you guys can't.
Did your dad enjoy the
winter activities? I know when he
wasn't working or whatever, but did
he enjoy skating and ice
fishing?
My dad, you can't imagine
how much he enjoyed ice fishing.
Even when we weren't in school,
he would go ice fishing
with other neighbors all
through the winter, he did.
Ice fishing was one of the special
things that a farmer could
do because you could do the chores
in the morning and
then you could go fishing in the
afternoon.
Chores took place the
rest of the year. You were doing
work. You were.
Handling grain and silage
and all that kind of stuff.
But in the wintertime, you could
be off in the afternoon and
you could go ice fishing.
And there were a whole bunch of
these old farmers
would get together in
these various shacks and
sit there and lie to each other,
tell stories to each of
them all of the
afternoon.
And that went on
all winter long.
It was wonderful as I looked
in on it.
Do you need a break at all?
I want some water.
Yeah, I'll need some water
Yeah, it's going great.
What are you thinking Susie?
Oh my God.
Yeah, okay.
Keen, you didn't talk about Keen.
No.
Yeah, what can we come back to?
Game yes
oh my gosh you gotta guess
I'm gonna show you, put each wire
out of the way.
You gotta ask me about skiing.
You'll put the water back.
How's this if I just put it here?
Is it okay with water? Oh, yeah,
that's clear.
Are we still recording?
Okay, why don't you, why didn't you
tell me about, tell me,
about skiing?
One of the things,
one of the memories that I
have most is
skiing, because
my dad could not
afford to buy me skis.
He couldn't afford to by any of
us skis, so what
he did, and it's
fascinating what he did as I think
back on it.
Those of you familiar with barrels,
wooden barrels, There are
staves, they're called, on wooden
barrels.
And they have a little bend to them.
And my first skis
were a pair of
wooden barrels.
My dad nailed a leather over
the middle and those were
my skis. They didn't slide,
but you could kind of walk on
them.
And I can't imagine
anybody having skis made out
of barrel staves, but we did.
And then we graduated
up to.
Well.
To homemade skis
that my grandpa Witt
made by
cutting out
birch bores that are about
this long, about this
wide, and holding them over
steam, a fire with
creating wood steam.
And that way he could bend up the
ends of the, I have
one of those skis left in my
shed at the farm.
It was wonderful, I just thought,
my gosh, my grandpa couldn't have
done anything better.
Because of course they didn't have
any slots in the bottom so
you'd go sideways down
the hill, forward on the hill shone
straight away down the hills and
run over somebody.
But then it wasn't,
I don't know what year it was,
but that year I
always asked for a pair of
skis.
And my dad had been in Hotch's
Hardware in Wildrose.
And Mr. Hotts said to my dad,
you're looking for a skis, aren't
you? My dad said, well, yes, I am.
Gerald has always wanted a pair of
skis.
And Mr Hotts says, I'll tell you
what I'll do for you.
I've got a pair skis out in the
back and they
are not,
each one lost its pair.
And so if you will
buy them,
I will give you a half price because
you're only getting half of it.
Half a pair anyway,
and those will be your skis.
My dad brought those skis home
and the memory I
have, one was brown and one was
black, and
they were both way
long, five, six feet long,
and my dad painted the brown one
black.
So my memory of Christmas is
this wonderful pair of
But why did they smell like
that?
Where would you go ski?
Was it cross country downhill or
where would you go?
Oh we had hills all over the place.
We could cross country on our farm.
There were enough hills on our farm
you could go downhill pretty
well.
And there's a nice hill right back
of the schoolhouse that you could go
down. Now, we had plenty of
amateur hills, so to speak.
Did you do skiing just
for fun, or was there a
function to it that it was great to
have skis?
There was a function of just for fun
in our community anyway,
and we would ski to the
neighbors. In fact, I would
ski at school when
the snow was really deep.
It was my way of
transportation and this I
will share and some people will be
put off by it, but I
had a trapline when I was a kid.
Trapline is something where you
hope to catch a
wild animal and then sell
it. Sell it for
a little bit of money.
And I had a trapline for
fox.
And every morning at
sunlight in the winter,
I would put on my grandpa's
skis and ski my traplines
one after, I never, don't
tell anybody, I never caught
one fox, people.
But that was my goal, because
I think we'd get 25 cents for a
fox tail.
And I never even saw a fox,
but can
you imagine how stupid I was?
I don't know how stupid is the right
word. Every morning at daybreak,
it might have been 10 below zero.
I'm strapped on my skis and do my
step, my, my
tripling. And that's clearly
cross-country skiing of the first
order.
Just let's keep on going with that.
So you're out there, you're skiing,
you're checking your trapline.
Just can you give me a sense of what
sounds are you hearing?
What are you smelling?
You know, just- It's interesting.
To be out with
a pair of skis at
10 below zero in
the morning.
The sounds of the
ski itself was scrunch.
Sound and then
sound of silence when
you stop and
you don't hear anything and
then you hear a crow way off
in the distance.
And then you wonder what's that poor
crow is thinking when his tin blows
through.
And then, you hear,
you here a chickadee.
What is this poor little
chickadees doing?
Chickadee, chickade,
chickatee.
And these sounds I
have never forgotten
because I move along the
snow scrunch.
I hear this stuff in the background
and I anticipate, will I
see a fox this time?
I never did.
But I skied, I don't know
how many winters with my
grandfather's skis,
checking to see if
I had trapped a fox on
my trap line.
It was a good outing.
I was wide awake when I came home,
ready for breakfast, I tell you,
after doing that.
But my father taught me
to do that. Why?
I don't know,
but he did.
And I thank him for it.
It was an interesting experience.
Just along those lines, this is one
of my first ones and I should have
done this earlier, but so
when you when we talk about
Christmas or circling back to that
and sound or smells,
what kind of sounds or smells do you
associate with Christmas or the
holidays?
Like, like the smells of
like certain like cookies or
whatever or pines or whatever.
What are you asking, the sounds of
Christmas?
Let's start with the smells.
What smells do you associate with
Christmas? Like, you remember
growing up with smells of your mom
cooking or...
Well, I told you about my skis and
that particular smell,
but the smells of the
Christmas tree itself
provided a litany
of sounds.
There's nothing for me that smells
better than a
freshly cut pine tree.
And to smell the ashes and
to smell that tree when you're
setting it up, that's so
special. I haven't
ever found anyone.
Able to create
artificially a smell
that's like that.
It's so special.
Other smells of Christmas would
be.
Oyster stew,
bubbling on the stove.
And that's kind of an
interesting smell.
The cookies that my mother had
prepared were always a
special smell.
And well, what else?
Winter itself had its own
smells and you
can associate those with
Christmas because they're the
background for Christmas.
I think I had read one thing in this
book, let me see if I can find it
out, just with your mom baking and
cooking.
I had this thing and I don't quite
remember, you can just tell me the
story. Tell me about how things
changed after,
did you read the light book?
Yeah, can we pause for a second?
Yep, we're going to pause for a
second so we can hear it.
You just have to replace.
I'm going to cut.
Yep.
All right. All right, both cameras
rolling. Mark it.
And hope for focus.
Okay, we're rolling whenever you're
ready.
So going back and I think it was
probably this book that I read and
this is a note I made so you can
tell me more about it.
Talk about how things changed after
World War II when your cousins came
home safely and when your
mom could finally buy sugar again.
An interesting thing happened after
World War II.
Several interesting things, as a
matter of fact.
My mother had,
was a wonderful baker.
And World War Two required
everyone to ration
the amount of sugar.
And my mother was so put off by that
because she wanted to do all this
baking and no sugar.
We used sorghum.
We grew an acre
of sorgum to use it
because it was a sweetener.
And that's another story.
But as World
War II ended, the
first thing my mother said to my
dad, you go downtown, Herman,
and I want you to purchase a hundred
pounds of sugar.
A hundred pounds?
A hundred pounds.
And so my dad, who never
said no to my mother,
went to town and purchased
a hundred pounds of
sugar and stored
it in our attic,
which was there when we sold
the place.
But she was really upset.
The other thing of course that I
should mention because it made such
a difference for Christmas
was electricity.
In 1947,
we got electricity and
that meant Christmas lights,
all kinds of things changed,
different presents.
It was a very interesting
time.
World War II ended.
Tell me about any experiences you
had or seen Santa
Claus. I mean...
Well,
one of the interesting things that
happened, we'd see Santa
Claus twice, usually.
Once at the country school when
he ran around twice, jingling
the bells, that's
one time.
And the second time,
the Wild Rose Merchants
would organize a
time when they would give
presents to kids,
and Santa was there to do that.
And the present was usually
a cookie and maybe
an apple.
That was the little president of
SAC.
And that was the two times
he saw Santa.
And it wasn't long before we knew
that Santa was kind of a faking
guy.
Not for real.
My brothers and I were
great detectives.
We were always looking behind the
scenes to see what really was going
on. This didn't really
seem real.
This guy's whiskers were slipping.
Real Santa's whiskars don't
slip, for heaven's sakes.
Ah, yes.
So I'll go back to food briefly,
and then we're gonna start wrapping
it up with just some generic.
So I know you did oyster stew on
Christmas Eve. Did you do anything
special for Christmas dinner, or
did you go anywhere when you went
for Christmas to any relative's
house?
And on Christmas Day,
sometimes we would go to
visit, I remember clearly
my uncle Ed at
his place on East of
Wildrose for Christmas dinner.
My mother just didn't like
to do that because Uncle
Ed was so goddamn poor.
You came in the kitchen
door and there was a dead raccoon
laying out on the side,
and my mother would take one look at
that and say, good golly, we're
gonna have a raccoon for dinner,
and she didn't liked Uncle
Ed's stuff.
Uncle Ed, was a true,
was true native.
He lived off on nothing.
They were so goddamn, poor.
But my dad said, we will go
there and eat with them because he's
my brother.
The other time on Christmas
day was when my
mother would invite her family
to eat with us.
And that was quite a different
experience.
There were no dead raccoons laying
inside the door.
No dead anything.
It was just a very nice meal
prepared for our
aunts and the kids.
And it was a good time.
Did you guys go to church on
Christmas?
You know, I don't think we went
on Christmas Day.
We would go on
Christmas Eve.
We were not good churchgoers,
so I would be very, I
wouldn't be telling a
lie if I said we were.
But Christmas Eve, we would
generally go.
And I can't remember that sometimes
on Christmas Day as we got older,
but one of the problems was that
we did not have, this is my
mother talking now, we did
have our church yet
in Wild Rose, meaning
we did yet have a
German Luther Church.
The Luthans were all divided up,
there were Norwegian Luthians,
Swedish Luthens, German Luthins,
and it was something, you're just
not- We wouldn't go
to it. Why would you go to a
Norwegian church?
They would, oh.
Finally, in 1947,
41, we got a German
Lutheran church.
And then we went to church more
often.
Because our pastor was
now there speaking one
of the sermons in German.
And my dad thought, I'm not going
to listen to this German choir
trying to speak English
when I can't.
What were some of the other German
traditions that your parents brought
to Christmas?
Were there any certain ones?
Other traditions that the Germans
brought, I don't
think of any right off hand.
There probably are some.
Why don't you just talk about,
again, you mentioned it earlier,
the traditions that you had, that
you brought to your
marriage and that Ruth brought,
the difference between them.
Well, the differences were great
in that Ruth's
traditions were far more
religious-based than
were ours from our family.
And Ruth's Christmas, and
you'll find out about this
later, I'm sure, she was celebrated
on the second day, on
the 26th, and
that was foreign to us.
We celebrated on 25th.
On the 25th, as most
people did.
But she had the
Norwegian tradition for Christmas
as Ruth's
family celebrated it
was far, far
more elaborate than
ours.
And I think part of that was
the fact that we
co- afforded, it's
just- And it's kind of
embarrassing when people can't
afford something, they don't want to
let you know that.
But my folks never said,
I can't buy that for you, but
they meant that.
So that's a little bit of
the difference of why they're
probably far more
German songs and
other things that were brought
here and were practiced.
Not yet were
you were you able to as
you and and had as
you two celebrated christmas more
you and ruth were how were you
i'm sure you were able
to yes the answer is yes how were
you able or what traditions did you
guys use to combine like i'm going
to bring this my german part of this
but ruth brought this and you
made your own family tradition
you're unique
Well, we really
didn't do any of that.
As far as I'm concerned,
as I remember, not concerned,
I remember we kept,
Ruth's traditions were here, our
traditions, the few we had were
here. And I don't remember there was
anything, it would have been fun
as I think about it now to do
that, but I don't recall that we
did.
Um, why do you think it's, okay,
this is just a generic one, um,
why is celebrating the holidays
important as a family?
Why is that important?
As I recall,
the celebrations that we
had, Christmas and
Thanksgiving, were
so important to bring the
family together because
one of the things my father and
my mother and Ruth's
folks as well felt strongly
about was
family and family
traditions should continue.
And that goes back
to thinking about
rural communities and
the fact that rural America
was made up of families
who were sometimes struggling,
but mostly keeping together.
Family was foundational
for
the history of this
country.
And my judgment, no
question about it.
Families and we work
at it together some of us to
keep families together because
that's the foundation not
only for who we are but
who the community what the community
is.
Why don't you reflect just a little
bit as we're wrapping up today what
your general overwhelmed sense
of as a boy when Christmas
time came and how is
it still there today?
Say that again.
What feeling did you when you knew
Christmas was coming as a boy tell
me some of those feelings you had
about that and do you still have
those types of feelings today
when Christmas comes around?
Yes, do I have the same
feelings today toward
Christmas that I had when I was a
youngster?
And here I am now 91 years old
and I do have
exactly those same feelings.
Christmas is important to me.
It's a chance for me to see my
grandsons and their new wives.
It's the chance for my to see
great-grandsons.
My gosh!
And it's just wonderful to
see all the family.
Is now expanding and
yet they see the importance too
of coming together and
sharing and letting us know
that yes we are a part
of this APPS family and
I'm so proud of
that.
It makes me feel so good.
That's beautiful.
I think that's just a wonderful
cherry.
Does anyone else have anything we
feel like we should cover?
Otherwise, I think it's a great
place to stop.
Yeah?
That was awesome.
You did so great, Jerry.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I don't know.
You did great.
You did awesome.
It was wonderful.
I couldn't ask for more.
So some of this stuff gets me.
I know it does.
It gets us all emotional.
So that's the feeling a lot of
people do when you talk about
Christmas.
You get that warm feeling that makes
you, you know, I mean, both my
parents are gone now.
And so that's even more special for
me. I'm going to get around my
sisters. So am I.
Yeah.
I can't say enough about the
importance of family, as you can
tell.
Yes, it is and it's gonna be great
because I'm gonna love to get you
and Susie Tauron just talking about
that
You're just gonna make everybody
cry. I know, I'm just gonna cry.
I know, I know.
I'm sorry, when he did that it got
to me, but then I'm like, oh that's
going to be so good at the show!
Alright, we're going to start, yeah,
dismantling so we don't
trip over anything.
Wait, before we go, can we
do, can you slate me for
a room tone? Oh, a room tongue.
Okay, we have to do it.
What do we have do? We're happy.