No, that's good.
You're good right there.
I'm starting to intrude on the
journey. Yes, here I am.
Hold on, I'm going to cover this
orange light. What?
Thank you.
I have to cover the fire light so it
doesn't affect the white balance.
Will you flip it to the other side?
As I go over backwards.
That's right, you know what I'm saying.
Beautiful.
All right, and then, can you hold it
up a little higher?
Our camera's speed, mark it.
Hold your focus.
We're rolling?
Alright, Jerry, we're rolling.
Alright, 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 about that.
What's the excitement in the air?
What are you guys doing? What's your
mom doing?
The 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 the few
celebrations that we really
celebrated.
Thanksgiving and Christmas were
the important ones.
And once the Sears Roebuck
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, and 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.
That 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 that we could really only
buy two for our
three kids.
Or were some of the presents you
remember distinctly getting as a
gift?
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 the train up,
and it's got about four little metal
cars, and they go round
and around 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 was 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
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, um...
Can you pause for a second?
I'm actually going to cut.
I'm going to add a little more.
All right. The cameras are speeding.
Mark it.
Okay, hold the clock.
All right, we're rolling again.
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 little 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 could
sing, that we could 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 she, let
me pick out, she said, I'm talking
about first grade now, she said
Jerry, here's what you're going
to do.
What am I gonna do?
You're going to memorize this little
piece. I go, what?
I went home to my mother and
I said, the teacher, Miss
Pioski, she wants
me to memorize this thing and
talk to the people, to
say it to the the people.
I'm not going to do that.
That's not what I do.
I'm scared of people.
I don't want to talk to people.
You're gonna talk to People.
So here I am at
the Christmas program.
And it's filled with people,
oh my gosh, way in
the back, way in the front,
everywhere there are people.
And I'm sitting in the fron row and
I'm sitting 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 Ms. Pioski 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 the stage
and he says in a very
clear voice, we'd
like to welcome you to our annual
Christmas program.
Thank you for coming.
And I sat down.
That was the long spiel,
we Germans call the little speech.
And everybody clapped in.
Oh my gosh.
I'm about...
Three and a half feet tall,
a little bitty 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 most 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's the match box.
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 said, 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.
Ha ha ha.
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 the few of 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
Miss Piosky to
help me see that I could talk
to a group.
And I've been talking to groups ever
since.
I've given thousands of speeches to
people, all because of
Ms. Piaski saying, you can
do it, Jerry, look at the stovepipe.
I've been looking at the stovpipe
for 65 years,
people.
So this is a very special, special
teacher.
Tell me a little bit, just a little
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 is kind of fun.
Evelyn Kolko was one
of the neighbor girls and 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, Cheerio!
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, rum-dum, ding-de-ding-ding,
brum-dumb, dinga-dinga-dink, and I
burst into the door and ran
up to the teacher and I gave her
a big kiss and she turned...
And everybody clapped,
and it was one of the highlights of
the evening at the schoolhouse
of which I don't remember the name.
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,
you 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 tree.
And then there were fake icicles.
We hung those on the trees.
If we would drop one of mother's
big bulbs, I mean, that's
something you wouldn't dare even
think of doing.
But the big bulbs
and the icicles, I remember
most as decorations
on the street.
Oh, there was some kind of
a do-de-do 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 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 it.
The Sears catalog of presents found
its way under a tree during
the weeks up to Christmas.
In fact, that was a really fun time
because when the folks weren't
looking, we'd See this?
That's you.
Shake this package to see what was
in it. And my mother there would
say, I think that's the package that
you're looking for.
It was, I could hear it, it was a
rattling sound.
We had more fun trying to figure
out what was within these package.
Package is when the parents weren't
looking.
And we had several weeks to do that.
What were they wrapped in?
Somehow, wrapping, Christmas
wrapping paper was available
on the cheap, because
my mother had gotten Christmas
wrapping papers to wrap these
things, and she did.
Another interesting thing,
this relates
to Ruth's family.
When Ruth's families, when they
opened a present of any
kind, any package of any kind,
she ironed the paper
so they could use it another time.
But that's, that's another
story.
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
Oh, when did we open presents?
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
so cold some mornings walking
to the country school,
and those woolen mitten 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?
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 she what?
Where would she buy the oysters
from? Would they just be at the...
Well, the mercantile store
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
if 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
preparation to Christmas Eve did
the store have oysters to
purchase.
And do you still do
oysters 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
stew on Christmas Eve.
Were you surprised when you the
first time or that you 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 in
the two families.
I don't know that for sure.
Just because we're on food, you said
that you guys didn't have a
lot, you had a present, 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 like best are
what called, I think, pinwheel
cookies with dates.
I really like 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 stuff.
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, you 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 straits, another
neighbor would help them because,
well, that was what
a part of our community
was about.
And the words I use 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 so
much to some of these families.
How long did the 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 breaks?
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 started, yeah, it was 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 the 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-ups.
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, you were
talking that at some point you
guys got an ice shanty, where was,
tell about the ice shandy and 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 on
this lake where we were, I think
I said to my dad How come we
don't have a shanty, for heaven's
sakes? We're sitting by a fire.
I said, I don't know.
I don't think we can afford one.
But then he said, you know,
I've an idea.
When we raised potatoes
by the
20, 30 acres,
we hauled them to town.
In January,
with a sleigh, and on the
sleigh was a sleig
coupe.
And what's a sleigh coop?
A sleigh coop 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 town.
Now,
we 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 a
little, it kept the stove.
And it was the most wonderful little
place.
There were about four of us and
it it 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 shantyt 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, because I think
it just caught us hilarious
about, because you had this high
shanty for a long time.
Tell me how it
shrunk by a couple inches one year.
Did I think, did 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 shanti is
sinking into the soft
ice.
And I 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 there and
saw the bottom off.
Oh, wouldn't that be illegal?
Yeah, but we're not gonna tell
anybody.
So we saw the button off and pulled
it off the lake and I never knew
what happened to the bottom.
What else besides ice fishing did
you do for during break or
during uh did you do any ice skating
or do any snowball fights or?
Well,
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,
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.
I've forgotten what year it was,
but it must have been when we were.
When my brothers and I were maybe
close to our teens,
Pa said, you guys, you
haven't been ice skating, have you?
Well, I've been ice-skating, I mean,
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, 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,
pulled 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, When
you hear the ice...
Lake was there, no melded,
we're gonna skate out there.
My dad comes along, I wonder what
the heck is 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 my gosh, this old guy,
he can skate?
He could skate forward, he could
skate backward, he could state
sideways, and he didn't say
anything. Just smile, clear smile,
run around, around, and around.
So there was our model.
Like anybody who skated as well as
Paul, well, nobody could.
That was the answer.
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, telling him, I can skate,
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 who
would get together in
these various shacks and
sit there and lie to—I'm sorry,
tell stories to each other
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.
Y'all need some water.
Are we going okay?
Yeah, it's going great.
What are you thinking, Susie?
Oh my gosh.
OK.
Keen, you didn't talk about the
keen, did you?
No, if we come back to skin...
Yes! Oh my gosh, you gotta guess!
What are you going to guess?
Get your water out of the way.
You got it.
You gotta ask me about skiing, you
know, put the water back.
I was going to say somebody just put
it here.
Thank you. Is it OK with water?
Oh, yeah, that's clear.
OK, thank you. Are we still recording?
Still recording? OK, why don't you
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 stays, but we did.
And then we graduated
up to
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 it.
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.
Shoom, straight away down the Hill
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 skis.
And my dad had been in Hotz's
Hardware in Wildrose.
Mr. Hots said to my dad, you're
looking for a skis, aren't you?
My dad said, well, yes, I am.
Gerald always wanted a pair of
skis.
And Mr. Hotts said, 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 skis,
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
come 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?
That was not a function, it was 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
its. 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
foxtail.
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 trapline.
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 trap line.
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
when it's 10 below zero
in the morning.
The sounds of the
ski itself are scrunch,
scrunch 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'll hear a chickadee.
What is this poor little
chickadeee doing?
Chickadee, chickadees, chickadee.
And these sounds I have
never forgotten because
I move along the snow.
Scrunch, scrunch,
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
holiday?
Like, like the smells of
like certain like cookies or
whatever, or pies, or whatever.
Are you asking the sounds of
Christmas?
What smells do you associate
with Christmas like you remember
growing up of smells of your mom
cooking or
Well, I told you about my skis and
that particular smell,
but the smells of Christmas,
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 have read one thing in
this book, just with
your mom baking and cooking.
I have this thing, and I don't quite
remember, but you can just tell me
the story. Tell me about how things
changed after,
did you read the light bulb?
Yeah.
Three, five.
Yeah, we're going to pause for a
second so I hear it.
We just have to replay.
I'm gonna cut.
Yep, great.
All right, both cameras rolling,
mark it.
And hold the focus.
Okay, we're set.
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 was
a wonderful baker.
And World War Two required
everyone to ration
the amount of sugar they
could purchase.
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 sorghum 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 pound.
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.
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 present in a
sack.
And that was the two times
he saw Santa.
And it wasn't long before we knew
that Santa was kind of a fakey
guy, not real.
Ha ha ha ha.
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.
And people,
Sanis, real Sanis.
Whiskers don't slip for heaven's
sakes.
Ah, yes.
So I'll go back to food briefly
and then we're going to 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, any relatives help?
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 native.
He lived off of nothing.
They were so goddamn poors.
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 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?
You know, I don't think we went
on Christmas Day.
We would go on
Christmas Eve.
We were not good churchgoers
to, I would be very,
I would telling a
lie if I said we were.
But Christmas Eve, we would
generally go, and I
can't remember that we, 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 not have our church.
Yet in wild rose,
meaning we did not yet have
a German Lutheran Church.
The Lutherans were all divided up.
There were Norwegian Lutherans,
Swedish Lutherans and German
Lutherans.
And it was something you just not,
you 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 church more
often because her pastor
was now there, speaking one
of the sermons in Charmin.
And my dad thought, I'm not going to
listen to this Charmin Christ
trying to speak English when he
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
25.
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
could afford it as it just,
and it's kind of embarrassing when
people can't afford something, They
don't want to let you know that.
But I my folks never
said I can't buy that for it,
but they meant that So
that's that's a little bit of the
of the difference of why they're
they're probably more far
more German songs
and other things that were
brought here and were practiced
but Not not
yet
Were you able to,
as you two
celebrated Christmas for you and
Ruth, 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 am 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 that would have been fun,
as I think about it now, to do that.
But I don't recall that we did.
Why do you think it, okay this
is just a generic one, 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 we 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 to see
my great-grandsons,
my gosh.
And it's just wonderful to
see how 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 Aps family and
I'm so proud of that.
It makes me feel so good.
That's beautiful.
That's just a wonderful cherry does
anyone else have anything we feel
like we should cover otherwise I
think that's a great place to stop
Yeah That's 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 pretty
emotional.
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 my both my
parents are gone now, and so that's
even more special for me.
I'm gonna get around my sister sure
mine
No, it's it
I can't say enough about the
importance of family, as you can
tell.
Yes, it is, and it's going to be
great because I'm going to love to
get you and Susie tomorrow just
talking about that.
You're just going to make everybody
cry. I know, it's gonna be great.
Oh, I know.
I'm sorry when he did that, I mean
it got me.
And I'm like, oh, that's going be so
good at the show.
It's going make everybody crying.
Alright, we're going to start, yeah,
dismantling so we don't
trip over anything.
Can we do, can you
slate me for a room tone?
Oh, room tone.
Oh, OK, we have to do it.
Have a good day.
Okay, go for it.
Okay, great.
Perfect.