1920's-1930's
🙋♀️ Foreword 👋
Two of my maternal aunts, Lucile and Mildred, wrote a book of their memories of when they grew up on a farm in Michigan in the early 1900's. Their book is titled, "Before I Say Goodbye..."
Lucile's daughter Julie created a digital version on her computer with assistance from Julie's husband Jan in digitizing photos. The book was written in 2002, with revisions in 2003 and 2012. My mother Leona, who was older than either of them, is frequently featured.
2007: Lucile (age 82), my mother Leona (age 89) and Mildred (age 87)
Until they passed (my mother Leona, age 94 in 2012; Mildred, age 94 in 2013; and Lucile, age 97 in 2023), they were the last remaining relatives of their generation on either side of my family. Now the members of my generation are the oldest surviving ones on this planet (or any other).
🙋♀️ Prologue 👋
I recently reread most of my aunts' memoirs titled “Before I Say Goodbye …” I have had the electronic version for many years, but as usual, I procrastinated reading the entire book – and I still haven’t finished it all in detail!
I am including pertinent episodes from their book in this missive containing stories about my mother Leona (Mother) and other incidents that occurred during her time. Mother was a year older than Mildred and seven years older than Lucile.
Since their mother Emma worked in town (Traverse City, Michigan) as a nurse during much of their younger years on the farm, Mother was the surrogate mother to her five younger siblings during this crucial period in their lives – a great background for later raising her own 11 children!
Traverse City is in the upper part of Lower Michigan at the base of the East and West arms of Grand Traverse Bay, a 32-mile-long bay of Lake Michigan
There were seven Schwind children in all and Mother was #2. For a quick reference, here are the dates of birth and death and ages at death of the seven Schwind children and their parents, in ascending order of their birth dates, with their parents listed first. (Their spouses names are shown in parentheses.)
Note that Lucile, Mildred and my mother Leona were the only ones who lived into their 90's.
August 13, 2009: Lucile (age 84), my mother Leona (age 91) and Mildred (age 89)
The photo below shows the whole Schwind family in 1946 when the children are all adults. John and Ferdinand (Ferd) have recently returned from fighting in the U. S. military during World War II.
1946: The William & Emma Schwind Family
Standing: Edith (age 19), John (age 23), Isabel (age 31), Ferdinand (Ferd) (age 25) and Lucile (age 21)
Seated: My grandfather William (age 61), Mildred (age 27), my mother Leona (age 28) and my grandmother Emma (age 54)
I am only 16 years younger than my Aunt Lucile, and the farm that I was raised on is just 3 ½ miles from their farm. So things hadn't changed much by the time I was growing up, and I can personally relate to most the stories that Lucile and Mildred told.
Locations of the Farms and Schools Where I Grew Up Near Traverse City, Michigan
1 – The Kroupa farm, where I was raised, 4 miles west of Traverse City
2 – Lautner School, which my father Frank, myself and my siblings attended
3 – The Schwind farm, where my mother Leona and her siblings, including Lucile & Mildred, were raised (3 ½ miles west of the Kroupa farm)
4 – Neuman School, which my mother and her siblings attended
5 – Solon School, where my mother taught for 5 years before I was born
I remember an outhouse attached to our house, using horses to pull wagons before we had a tractor, etc., etc. But my stories will come in a later missive after you read these of my maternal aunts.
Summer of 1942: Myself (Barbara), age 1, outside our farm house with the outhouse attached by the rear entrance on the right
There are very few family photographs from the 1920's and '30's when most of the stories in my aunts' book occur, nor from the 1940's and '50's when I was growing up. Occasionally, I include photos from my own family albums to help illustrate what it was like being raised on a farm in that era.
At times, I have taken artistic license in rearranging the order of my aunts' stories or in making minor grammatical, emphatic or phrasing changes to fit my writing style. When I insert my personal comments, they are in italicized green.
Note: The Mom and Dad referred to are my maternal grandparents Emma and William (Will), the parents of Lucile, Mildred and my mother Leona.
Following are episodes taken from my aunts' memoir, "Before I Say Goodbye...."
🙋♀️ Introduction 👋
Lucile and Mildred begin their book with these words:
We dedicate this book to our children, and to our wonderful ancestors who blazed a wondrous trail full of incredible hardships, homesickness, poverty, hard work and, most of all, courage!
We think that not only will it amaze you, but you will appreciate the courageous, sturdy “stock” we come from.
Their book starts with family genealogies dating from the early 1800's, and continues on to the 1920's and 30's when my aunts' own memories are added. Their personal recollections are what I am including in this missive, since they relate so directly to my own upbringing in a large family on a nearby farm just a few years later.
Left: Mildred (age 12) and my mother Leona (age 13) in their Communion attire in 1931
Right: Lucile (age 6) from a class photo at her one-room country school in 1931
🙋♀️ Episode 1 – Born on the Farm 👋
We were a large family of seven children, and we were all born on the farm.
One time, our Grandpa Joseph Schwind, came into the house shouting, “The Prussians are coming! The Prussians are coming!” He was laughing as he spoke. It seems their neighbor, Ed Carpenter, had started his gasoline engine and it was backfiring and missing something fierce, and sounded just like artillery fire as it came across the crisp frozen fields.
Our mother, Emma, spoke up and said, “Yes, the Prussians are coming all right. You’d better call the doctor!” Our sister Leona was born that day April 1, 1918, a few minutes before midnight. Our mother would not have an April Fool’s baby, so she had the doctor put down a few minutes after midnight on April 2nd, 1918.
1921: My grandparents William (Dad) & Emma Schwind (Mom) with their daughters Isabel, Mildred (on Emma’s lap) & my mother Leona. Lucile will be born 4 years later.
Lucile was the only one born in the “parlor” on the farm. Mom and Dad’s bedroom was on the south side of the house and it was terribly hot then, so they moved Mom’s bed to the parlor, as there was a door to the north that could be opened to let in some air.
Mom said that Lucile was born during a terrible thunder and lightning storm, with torrential rain. It was the last rain they got that summer. The crops were very poor and the potatoes practically cooked in the ground.
Don’t know much about the rest of the kids, but they always teased Mildred that the gypsies or ragpickers brought her.
🙋♀️ Episode 2 – Hard Times on the Farm 👋
As we remember it, life was extremely hard on the farm – hard work, hard times, and no money. But the bad times were tempered with the good times, and made life bearable. We had neighborhood parties, potlucks, card parties, square dances, sleigh rides, box socials, etc.
🙋♀️ Episode 3 – Picking Potatoes 👋
In October every year, we usually had a week off from school to help harvest the potato crop, our staple food. We remember Mom and Dad digging by hand, two rows at a time, and us kids picking them up.
Dad wanted us to sort the little ones from the big ones, to be put in separate crates. We know now that we must have driven them “crazy” as we kept asking “Is this a big one or a little one?” But they were patient with us.
1920's: Picking potatoes on the Kroupa farm (my farm). Our barn and silo are in the rear left. My father Frank Herbert is standing on the wagon loaded with potatoes. His father Frank Leopold is holding a crate of potatoes by the wagon. His sisters Dorothy, Helen and Clara are to the right.
In October, it usually got very cold and rainy – in fact, we picked up potatoes in the snow. Our mittens were wet, sandy, cold and freezing, so Mom would say we could take turns running to the house for ten minutes to get warm, and then come back to take turns with the other kids.
Dad and Mom told us they would give us two cents for every bushel we picked up – we didn’t expect it. We can remember Adolph Lautner's kids bragging to us in school that THEIR dad was going to pay them five cents a bushel – but “we have to wait ‘til our pa dies to get it."
🙋♀️ Episode 4 – Working Mom 👋
As children, we didn’t know that we were “hard up,” as all our friends were in the same boat. All we knew was that we had plenty to eat, clothes to wear, school to go to, and kids to play with – and Dad was always there for us as Mom worked as a nurse at the State Hospital, or “Asylum,” as they called it.
1912: Graduation photo of Emma Thum (Mom) second from the right, rear) and her nursing class
Sometime around when Lucile was in the second or third grade, Mom quit working out. It was so wonderful to come home from school, and find her there. Previously, Dad had to do all the farming by himself, with horses – no tractor – carrying Edith in his arms while working the fields.
🙋♀️ Episode 5 – Baking Bread 👋
Dad could make better bread than Mom, perhaps as he had stronger muscles to knead it. When Mom was working, he’d have to bake 6 to 8 loaves of bread every couple of days, as there were seven kids to feed and make school lunches for.
They made their own yeast (for the bread) and kept it going for years, like sourdough. We remember Mom boiling potatoes and mashing them in the same water and adding flour to start her yeast. Don’t know what else she did with it but it worked very well. Later on, they were able to buy yeast “cakes” which were more convenient and didn’t need refrigeration.
My mother Leona would would bake eight loaves of bread every other morning - they were the first thing she started when she got up at 5 a.m.. In spite of how good they were, we always had a craving for 'store-bought' bread.
~1955: Photo of Leona from a newspaper article titled, "Our Noted Cooks and Their Favorite Recipes."
Before the thermometer was invented, we would stick our bare arm in the oven and counted. If an arm had to be pulled out before the count of eight, the oven was hot enough to bake bread! We did this many times on the farm for all our baking of cakes, pies, etc.
If we ran out of bread, the older girls made saleratus (baking soda) biscuits. If we ran out of butter, they would put “meat lard” and salt on them. “Meat lard” is the browned juices and bits of meat left in the pan after frying pork. Congealed with a bit of the grease and sprinkled with salt, it is very tasty. In fact, it is the base of wonderful pork gravy.
🙋♀️ Episode 6 – Churning Butter 👋
Mom churned all our butter from our own cream, adding her own special design with the butter ladle, on top of the large pat of butter.
The churn we had was hand-made by Dad, and he was very proud of it as it was put together entirely without nails. It stood about three-feet high and had a hand-carved lid with a hole in the middle for the handle, which was made into a cross at the bottom, to be pumped up and down. It was larger at the bottom so it wouldn’t tip over, and there were three iron staves around it to hold it in place. It was really a work of art.
There is also an art to making good butter, washing all of the buttermilk out of it and salting it just so, and Mom’s butter was so good she had many customers to buy it, to make some extra money. Later on, we only had enough cream for butter for ourselves.
I (Barbara) had to churn butter when I was growing up, trading off with my siblings on a churn similar to this one (although ours may have been ceramic by then). It seemed to take us hours pumping up and down on the handle, but it was probably only an hour or less.
Our mother Leona would skim the cream off the top of milk stored in the refrigerator, until she had enough for us to churn. After the churning, she would scoop the chunks of butter out of the churn and the remainder was buttermilk for drinking. Buttermilk was a favorite of our father, but I never cared much for it's tangy flavor.
🙋♀️ Episode 7 – Making Cottage Cheese 👋
Mom used to make all of our cottage cheese, and it was wonderful. She would let the milk clabber,* gather it all in a big double cheesecloth, tie it together and hang it over the clothesline to dry in the sun so all the whey could drip out of it.
* Clabber is a type of soured milk. It is produced by allowing unpasteurized milk to turn sour (ferment) at a specific humidity and temperature. Over time, the milk thickens or curdles into a yogurt-like consistency with a strong, sour flavor.
When this was ready, she carefully rolled it into a dish, seasoned it with salt, pepper, and onions – and garnished it with finely chopped “schnittlock” (chives), which we grew, and she would send us kids out to snip some for her. It was better than anything you can buy today, perhaps as it had no preservatives.
Sometimes, instead of the onions, etc., she would add sugar, cinnamon, and eggs, and make the best cheese kuchen (coffeecake) in the world.
🙋♀️ Episode 8 – Raising Pigs 👋
Dad also raised pigs, sometimes to sell, but mostly for our own use. Incidentally, there is nothing cuter and sweeter than a new little white pig, with their pink skin showing through the sparse white hair and tiny curl of a tail, and tiny snout.
Mom always felt sorry for the “runt” of the litter, and so it would survive, and she hand fed it. She would sit down and bottle, feed it and later, put corn in her apron and call for the piggy to come. No matter where it was, it would come squealing and high-tailing it to her lap to eat. Of course, when it was big enough, she abandoned that practice, but those pigs usually remembered her and would come running when they saw her.
We remember Dad telling us that he kept a large boar. He was cleaning out the stall with a 5-tine fork and was adding fresh straw when, without warning, that boar attacked him. All he could do was brace that broad-tined fork down low in front of him, and the boar just kept on coming until the tines went in clear up to the hilt under the pig’s jaw. That finally stopped it long enough for Dad to climb out of there. After that, Dad got rid of it and never kept one again – worrying that us kids might get hurt.
While we’re on the subject of pigs, we can remember that three or four farmers would get together and “fix” (geld) our pigs, sterilizing them with turpentine. Doesn’t that make you cringe! They would help each other out with their pigs. Dad never allowed us girls around at that time, and we used to wonder why the pigs were squealing so hard.
1969: Pigs on my brother Gary's farm (the farm I grew up on)
I (Barbara) raised my own pig once in the early 1950's. I even bathed her and showed her at the County Fair, where she took first prize. We butchered and ate her after that.
🙋♀️ Episode 9 – Slaughtering 👋
Toward winter, Dad did all his own slaughtering of the animals – bleeding them, butchering them and hanging them up to cure. After the animal was butchered, we always had fresh liver and onions for supper – a real treat after eating chicken all summer.
Dad never used the kidneys, and he would save the brains for Elsie Kirsch (his niece). When she heard he was butchering, she always phoned him to ask if she could have them, as she liked them scrambled with eggs. As we used to say “punkin pie for mine.”
We did save the heart, tail (schwantz), tongue and ears. They were all cleaned, boiled and pickled. We enjoyed them all.
Mom and Dad smoked our own bacon and hams, and made “blut” (blood) sausage, liver sausage, head cheese and pickled meats. We remember Mom cleaning the head, scraping it, boiling it and cutting all the meat off to make head cheese.
Before they had casings (or couldn’t afford them), the sausage was put in large cake pans and baked. (Lucile used to like the “blut” sausage until she found out that “blut” was blood! That’s the last time she could eat any blood sausage.)
Later, they got a sausage stuffer and made a lot of sausage, stuffing them, tying them, and cooking them in hot water. We’re not real sure how they kept them, but Mildred thinks we had an icebox then, as Dad used to cut ice on Long Lake.
Before we had a way to keep meats, we remember Dad slicing huge sides of meat (pork) and Mom salting, peppering, and frying all the meat, putting it in layers and covering it all with boiling lard in 30-gallon crocks. They also had many other smaller crocks to fill.
The meat in the crocks would congeal in the cold basement and kept very well. In the winter, it was a difficult job to go down to the basement and hack out enough meat from the frozen lard to melt down for supper. Think of the cholesterol! But it sure tasted good, and didn’t seem to harm us any.
🙋♀️ Episode 10 – Making Sauerkraut 👋
The folks made their own sauerkraut with our own kraut cutter. It was better tasting that anything you can buy today. They made at least a couple of 30-gallon crocks (depending on how much cabbage they had). It was just layers of finely sliced cabbage and salt, with a large dish wrapped in a heavy cloth on top, weighted down with a large, clean heavy stone.
We can remember going down to the basement to get the sauerkraut, lifting the heavy stone, taking the slimy dish off the top, pushing aside the top slimy kraut, and digging down to get the good kraut, and then covering it. Yuk!
They also stored their potatoes, carrots, onions, beets and apples in the basement in the winter.
🙋♀️ Episode 11 – Popcorn & Navy Beans 👋
Dad grew our own popcorn. It was hard to shell the popcorn, as their kernels were so sharp.
We also grew our own Navy beans. Many a time we helped pull up the beans and stack them around a base with a pole in the middle, about 5 feet high, with all the roots facing in, then left to dry. When dried enough, Dad would load the whole bean rack on the wagon and pull them up to the house with the horses.
He would then put a heavy canvas down on the ground, get the “flail” (a two-pieced heavy club with one piece longer than the other, bound together with a piece of leather) and knock all the beans out of the shells. It took some expertise to do this, as you could easily hit yourself in the head. Then he would winnow them (toss them in the wind) to get most of the chaff out. These were then put in bushel baskets, and placed in the basement.
Many an evening, he’d gather us all around the huge pull-out dining room table (it had about 6 leaves), and tell us kids to do down and get a plate of fresh raw sauerkraut, and bring up a bowl of apples. He would then pour a huge mound of beans in the middle of table, and we’d all sit around and sort the beans, while enjoying the apples and sauerkraut, and listen to the radio – no TV then. This was one way to keep us kids out of trouble and think of the healthy way to eat in the winter– don’t think potato chips were invented yet!.
🙋♀️ Episode 12 – Mulligan Stew 👋
Besides bread, Dad made the best “Mulligan Stew” in the world. Even now, I can’t make anything as tasty.
He would start with a piece of salt pork or whatever piece of meat he had on hand, add a variety of vegetables from the garden – potatoes, carrots, onions, peas, cabbage, corn, rutabagas, tomatoes, and his own Navy beans – and let it simmer on the back of the wood-burning cookstove in our huge aluminum kettle with the round handle. He would stoke the fire when he came in from the fields for lunch.
When we got home from school, we’d get a serving dish of his stew and hunks of homemade bread and butter. Plus all the fruit we wanted. It was heavenly and healthy!
🙋♀️ Episode 13 – Pigeons 👋
John used to climb up into the cupola of the barn and catch pigeons. Then he would kill, cook and eat them, as Mom refused to do that because they were so beautiful.
🙋♀️ Episode 14 – Canning 👋
Later on, when canning began to be the way to preserve food, Mom canned everything that grew in pint, quart and two-quart cans. We always had 1,000 to 1,500 quarts of food canned in the cellar – meat, tomatoes, green beans, carrots, applesauce, peaches, pears, plums, corn, peas, etc. As soon as a few cans were emptied, Mom would find something to fill them with again.
We also had canned pork, which was so good when we came home from Sunday Mass, and it made a great meal with mashed potatoes and gravy. We also canned chicken, pork and beans, our own catsup, pickles of every sort, and citron.
Citron looked like a small watermelon and was absolutely tasteless. Mom would make it palatable by cooking it with sugar, cinnamon and plump raisins. We would usually wait until the rest of the fruit was gone before we opened a can of citron, which by then, tasted pretty good.
🙋♀️ Episode 15 – Baking & Cooking 👋
Besides her bread, cheese kuchen, streusel kuchen and cinnamon rolls, Mom made pies – especially lemon meringue (her favorite), chocolate, apple, rhubarb and blackberry. She also made molasses cookies, as well as white, sugar cookies that were cut out with a scalloped cutter and she would put a raisin in the center. They were absolutely the best!
She was not a good cake baker, and she would be the first to admit it, but her other baking made up for it.
Mom also made the best pickled meat in the world; rice pudding rich with cinnamon and raisins; baked beans with pork (without all the brown sugar and molasses) that we all enjoyed with applesauce; fried potatoes with lots of onions; and her cucumber salad and wilted lettuce.
I’ve mentioned Mom’s cheese kuchen. She also made a good streusel kuchen, bread, pickled meat, baked beans, cookies and pies. Other things we enjoyed were her pork schnitzel, chicken with gravy and homemade dumplings, rice pudding (rich with cinnamon and huge raisins), her homemade noodles and potato dumplings (with a touch of powdered sugar and nutmeg).
She made wonderful buttermilk pancakes on a huge, round griddle that would make at least ten at a time, and the boys would see who could eat the most pancakes in the morning.
We had syrup that came in one-quart and one-gallon round tin cans, with removable handles and a pry-off lid on top. These were perfect to use for lunch pails. We didn’t waste a thing in those days. Sometimes we made our own syrup by boiling sugar, water and butter, and flavoring it with maple flavoring. You ain’t lived ‘til you’ve had warm “something-from-the-oven” saleratus biscuits with butter and syrup on top!
🙋♀️ Episode 16 – Going Barefoot 👋
From the first warm day of Spring until the snow fell, all of us kids went barefoot. Mildred remembers the boys daring us to run barefoot to the barn and back in the snow. We darned near froze.
It was a common thing to step on a nail and have the puncture doused with turpentine. Never heard of tetanus shots then.
🙋♀️ Episode 17 – Turpentine 👋
Apparently, they used turpentine a lot in the “olden days.” We can remember a spot in our backyard, south of the woodshed, where we threw a lot of our vegetable and fruit peels (now they’d call it a “compost pile”). It was a great place to dig up angle worms for Dad when he went fishing (usually on a rainy day when he couldn’t get out into the fields).
We always left a 5-tined fork upright in the ground (warned a hundred times about leaving it upright). Lucile went out one day to dig some worms for Dad (fish was another supplement to our diet when Dad was lucky, or if the fish peddler came around with herring lying in crushed ice in his truck).
Anyway, Lucile had dug up enough worms and put them in a can of dirt for him, raised up the fork to plunge it into the ground upright, and one tine went completely through her foot. It didn’t hurt until she tried to pull it out. She had to put one foot on top of the other one to hold so she could pull it out. She limped into the house, managed to tell Mom what happened, and fell into a faint onto the couch.
Mom cleaned it the best she could, poured turpentine through it, and put a poultice of bread and milk on it (sometimes they used a soap and sugar poultice). There Lucile laid for the next few days. She was really sick and could not eat. (Now if you know Lou, when she can’t eat, she’s next to death.)
Mom finally told her that she had to eat or they would take her to the hospital where they would force a tube down her throat to feed her. That scared the heck out of her and so she said she’d try. Mom made her some hot milk toast (a slice of toasted bread with butter and hot milk poured over it). She hated milk, but forced herself to eat it, and it actually tasted pretty good.
🙋♀️ Episode 18 – Epsom Salts 👋
Another favorite medicine was Epsom salts as a physic. Lucile remembers when Leona made a new recipe called mashed-potato fudge. She always used Edith and Lucile to try out her recipes, because we’d eat everything, especially fudge.
It was awful, and we spit it out and said, “What’s in that fudge?” Leona said, “Oh! My gosh, I put scouring powder in it by mistake! You’ll have to take a dose of Epsom salts, or you’ll die!”
We didn’t know that she was fooling us, and she convinced Edith to take a dose of salts. Lucile said, “No, I won’t. I’d rather die than take Epsom salts.”
🙋♀️ Episode 19 – Homemade Toys 👋
Life on the farm was pretty grim, but we had really fun times too. Dad was a good woodworker, and made all our kiddie cars, skis, and a great toboggan that held more people than the “boughten” ones.
🙋♀️ Episode 20 – Fun in the Snow 👋
We can remember on beautiful starlit nights (almost as light as day), all the neighborhood kids got together and we’d go skiing, tobogganing, and sleighing right across from our place on our neighbor’s slopes (they had the best). When everyone was tired, they would come over to our house for hot chocolate and Mom’s cookies.
1930: The Kroupa farm in the winter taken from the road in front of the farm (located 3 ½ miles from the Schwind farm – there are no photos of the Schwind farm in the winter.
Even our country schoolteacher would join us on the toboggan sometimes (the older boys loved that). At times we ended up in a ravine and we’d all spill out and laugh like crazy!
The photo below was taken in 1931 of the school teacher and the students attending the one-room Neuman Country Elementary School (grades kindergarten - 7th grade) located a mile west of the Schwind family farm on Highway 72 west of Traverse City.
1931: School Teacher and Students Beside the Neuman Country Elementary School
Mildred (age 12), Lucile (age 7), Ferdinand (Ferd) (age 10) and John (age 8) are shown in the photo with their Teacher. Their youngest sister Edith (age 4) wasn’t old enough to attend school yet.
Isabel (age 16) and my mother Leona (age 13) were attending school in town after graduating from Neuman School.
My father and most of his 11 children, including myself, attended a one-room country school house three miles to the east of the Neuman School.
🙋♀️ Episode 21 – Player Piano 👋
Another thing we all looked forward to was when all the families in the neighborhood would get together at each other’s houses and have parties. When Mom worked, we were able to buy a player piano. All the music was tiny cutouts on paper rolls, and you put them in the piano and pumped it with your feet to play the music.
🙋♀️ Episode 22 – Square Dances 👋
When we got a player piano, all the neighbors had to have one, so we also had square dances. Adolph Lautner would usually be the “caller.” Since Lucile was one of the older girls, some of those old (to her) farmers would ask her to square dance. Of course, she loved it and do-si-doed with most of them.
🙋♀️ Episode 23 – Playing Cards 👋
We also had wonderful Euchre parties with the neighbors taking turns hosting them. These were also potlucks. What wonderful times we had and all the different foods!
One night Lucile was asked to play cards as Rudy Neumann needed a partner. Well, she was so proud and full of self-importance! When it was her turn to give, she for some unfathomable reason said “PISS” instead of “PASS.” She thought Rudy was going to have apoplexy, as he was trying so hard not to laugh. His face was all red and the wart on his face kept going up and down. She was mortified!
🙋♀️ Episode 24 – Spring 👋
All of the seasons of the year were great. We looked forward to spring and early summer, as that’s when we went mushrooming, and with the first fresh peas creamed with the new little potatoes, cucumbers with onions, fresh asparagus, and early wild strawberries. It was a glorious time!
Sometimes in the spring of the year, the cows would get into the woods and they loved the fresh green sprigs of wild leeks, but the results of this were awful. The milk and all of the butter would taste of leeks and we hated it. Now it would be considered gourmet (garlic butter).
🙋♀️ Episode 25 – Watching Cows 👋
Summers were boringly long, as Edith and Lucile had to watch the cows every day to keep them from getting in the corn and other crops, as the fences were so poor, or there were no fences at all. Mildred also remembers having to watch cows all day.
We would take jars of cold water out with us and put them in the shade of a fence post (rotating them as the shade moved) to keep them cool. Sometimes we’d take a sandwich with us, but the absolute best was when we would go over to Mrs. Tilton’s house and ask if we could have some cold water. She always said, “of course you may” and then would slice some of her fresh baked bread, right out of the oven (if we timed it right!) and spread it with butter and applesauce. It was scrumptious!
Mrs. Tilton had three sons and one of them was “deaf and dumb,” as they used to say. Once in awhile, she would send him over to us with fresh bread and butter. We were terrified of him, but he’d just give us the bread and be on his way. What a kind woman she was.
On my farm, we also had dairy cattle, in addition to our cherry crop for income, as well as the use of their products (milk, cream, butter, cottage cheese, meat, cherries, prize money, etc.). However, we did have good fences, and didn’t have to spend our days watching the cattle. Below in 1955, my sisters Mary and Elaine and I (Barbara)are shown with our cows at the county fair.
🙋♀️ Episode 26 – Lightning & Thunderstorms 👋
Sometimes we had terrible lightning and thunderstorms. We had lots of lightning rods on top of the house, but we have seen balls of lightning explode right outside our front porch.
Dad always got out of bed, got dressed, lit the lamps, and stayed up until the storm was over. He did it in case lightning struck and he’d have to get us kids out. That was always so comforting to us.
🙋♀️ Episode 27 – Heating the House 👋
We heated our large house with a wood-burning stove in the dining room. Sometimes the fire got so hot that it turned parts of the stove fire-red.
There were seven doors off the dining room -–pantry, kitchen, stairway, west bedroom, parlor, outside, and south bedroom (Mom and Dad’s). During the winter, the parlor and stairway doors were kept closed to keep the heat in.
The upstairs was unheated and unlit as we had no electricity then, but we had many of Mom’s colorful “crazy quilts” as we called them, that Mom had sewn from all different scraps of material to keep us warm. Besides, we usually slept two to a bed, and our body heat soon had us warm and snug.
🙋♀️ Episode 28 – Sleeping With the 'Old Lady' 👋
In later years, Uncle John McGill (Dad’s brother-in-law) would bring his horses over and work the 40 acres he had acquired from Dad as part of Aunt Rose’s (Dad’s sister’s) inheritance.
He used to eat with us and sleep upstairs in the dark (which he knew like the back of his hand). My brothers would sabotage his bed by putting an adult dress form (the Old Lady) in his bed.
Many a morning he would wake up and John and Ferd would tease him at breakfast, “Did you sleep with the Old Lady last night?” Of course, Uncle John was a good sport and always laughed right along with them. Sometimes, he’d even ask them before he went to bed, “Am I going to sleep with the Old Lady tonight?”
🙋♀️ Episode 29 – Elderblossom Wine 👋
Uncle John was a tall, thin, freckled Irishman who liked his drink. He usually bent the truth a little bit (the Irish blarney), but he was a really likable guy.
Dad always had wine around, which he made himself, and it was good. He’d usually make grape wine from our own grapes, and Mom would make her elderblossom wine.*
* Elderblossoms (or elderflowers) are the white blossoms from the elderberry tree. Elderblossom wine is made from elderblossoms, raisins, lemon juice and zest, sugar, black tea, wine yeast and a campden tablet.**
** Campden tablets are a sulphur-based product that is used primarily to sterilize while making wine, cider and beer to kill bacteria and to inhibit the growth of most wild yeast.
One time, Dad had made a batch of wine and it didn’t “work.” He didn’t want to waste all that good juice and expensive sugar, and he couldn’t bring himself to throw it out.
Mom told him that she had read that if you put fresh pea shucks in it, it would make it work. Dad said, “I’ll try anything,” so we had a mess of fresh peas that night and Dad threw the pea shucks in it. BOY, did it ever work! Dad was so pleased – until he tasted it! It was absolutely vulgar, but he said that he still wasn’t going to throw it out and would drink it one way or the other.
Well, Uncle John came over, and before leaving to go home for the weekend, Dad said, “John, before you leave, do you want some of my pea wine?” Well, no Irishman worth his salt would turn down an invitation like that, and said “Sure Will.” So Dad gave him a tumblerful and waited for his reaction.
Uncle John smacked his lips and said “That’s pretty good stuff, Will. Ya got anymore?” Dad grinned and gave him another tumblerful. Uncle John downed it, thanked him, and said he figured he’d be on his way. He lived on Herkner Road and had quite a piece to go to get home.
A few hours later, Aunt Rose called Dad and said, “Will, what in the world did you give John to drink?” Dad said, “Just some of my pea wine.” Aunt Rose said “Pea wine? I’ll say it was “pee” wine! He peed his pants, he peed his boots, and he peed the bed!”
By this time, Dad is laughing so hard he can hardly stand up. Uncle John laughed about that himself, and said he never knew how the horses found the way home.
August 1964 around the dining table at my farm: My grandfather Will Schwind (Dad) his brother-in-law, John McGill (Uncle John), and Lucile’s husband Joe Lickteig
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1946: The wedding of Lucile Schwind and Joe Lickteig. Lucile’s parents (my grandparents) Will (Dad) & Emma (Mom) Schwind are on the left.
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🙋♀️ Episode 30 – The Carbuncle 👋
In school, all the kids (kindergarten through 7th grades) played games outside together. We can remember playing Kick the Stick, Dare Base, Prisoner’s Goal, Run Sheep Run, and Baseball.
One day, Frederick Green, a boy from Coldwater,* came to school. Frederick had a huge carbuncle** on the side of his neck.
* Coldwater was a place they kept homeless or “incorrigible” boys and placed them in various homes to work for their room and board. Frederick lived with the William Lautner family as they only had two girls, Wilma and Vivian, and no sons.
** A carbuncle is a severe abscess or multiple boil in the skin, typically infected with staphylococcus bacteria. Boils happen when infection around the hair follicles spreads deeper. They are usually located in the waist area, groin, buttocks, and under the arm.
The carbuncle was ready to burst, and was so sore and swollen that Frederick could hardly turn his head. He decided he wanted to play baseball anyway, so he went out into the right field.
There was a line drive right off the bat and Frederick missed it, but it hit him right on that carbuncle. Needless to say, it cured the carbuncle in a shower of pus. How that must’ve hurt, the poor guy!
🙋♀️ Episode 31 – Isabel 👋
We don’t have many recollections of Isabel at home. Perhaps as she was the oldest and ten years older than Lucile, so she was gone before we were old enough to remember.
However, we do remember Stanley Bristol (before they were married) coming up from Robert Lautner’s to see her when he worked as a hired man there. When Stanley got his first car, he gave Lucile his bicycle. She was so happy to have it even if it was a “boy’s” bike.
🙋♀️ Episode 32 – Leona 👋
We remember Leona always staying in the house doing the cooking and cleaning. She never worked in the fields, as she was sickly. Mom thought she might get TB. The folks insisted that she take cod liver oil, and it had such a ghastly taste, it almost made her sick to take it.
Mom was still working out at the time, so Leona took over the job of bathing us kids. We’d heat all the water on the kitchen range and fill the big aluminum washtub in the middle of the kitchen floor, and she would scrub our “stovepipes” (necks) and wash our hair.
One time, a neighbor kid, Sylvester Lautner, was visiting us and playing with us kids. As we formed a line to have our heads washed, Leona grabbed Sylvester by the “klapottle” and scrubbed his head too. We should have warned him when she cleaned, you’d better not get too close to her, as everything got scrubbed.
🙋♀️ Episode 33 – Mildred and the Car Wreck 👋
Mildred was the beauty of the family. She always used to look like she just “stepped out of a band box” (as we used to say).
1931: Mildred (age 11) and Leona (age 13) in their communion outfits
Sometimes she would bring a girlfriend home on the weekends, and Lucile can remember them trying on makeup and curling their hair by putting the curling iron in the top of the kerosene lamp globe. Sometimes they’d curl Lucile’s hair too. Mildred can remember how she also curled Mom’s hair.
Mildred was working at the time and Lucile didn’t see very much of her, mostly on weekends. Then the folks or the boys would drive her back to Traverse City.
One time in the winter, we had a terrible blizzard – a virtual whiteout. The boys were going to take Mildred back and Lucile begged to go along and they let her. Ferd was driving and we had a head-on collision with another car. Thank goodness both drivers were both crawling along and not much damage was done, but we had to wait for the State Police and they took us home in their warm police car.
🙋♀️ Episode 34 – The Collie 👋
We used to have a beautiful white collie with just one brown-orange spot on her side. We called her Trouble, as Dad said that it was a lot of trouble to keep a dog. We loved that dog, and grew up with her.
One day, Dad said that she had to be put down as she was almost blind and could hardly walk anymore. She was very old and suffering. Dad couldn’t stand to see any animal suffer.
John said, “Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll do it.” Dad asked him, “John, are you sure that you can do it?” John vehemently declared he could, so Dad got the shotgun, loaded it, and John took Trouble up by the grapes.
He told her to “stay” and backed away from her. Trouble whined a little and came up and put her nose on the gun, as if to push it away. John told her once more to “stay” and she came forward again and piteously whined and again put her nose to the gun. The third time John told her to “stay,” she did, and he only had to fire one shot.
In the meantime, Edith and Lucile knew what was going to happen, and hid in the barn and peeked out to watch. They couldn’t see anything, but when they heard the shot ring out, they screamed and cried for all their might.
That shot almost did John in, but he knew that he had to keep his word. Certainly, John was really hurting and crying on the inside, as he vowed he would never do that again.
1949 on the Kroupa farm (my farm) with a dog: On the swings in the front yard, sister Elaine on the left, cousin Vivian on the swing, brother Gary and myself (Barbara) on the ladder above sister Mary
🙋♀️ Episode 35 – Horses 👋
The first time Lucile ever saw Dad cry was when we lost our little horse, Queenie. We were told that we used to have nice matched teams of horses, but somehow or other, as a horse died, Dad had to buy whatever he could find and afford.
Dad bought a large-rawboned Western Bronc, with a brand on her side, and we called her Belle. She was a good, strong horse, but whenever she wanted to stop for any reason, she stopped, and no amount of coaxing would make her go until she was ready.
Our neighbor, Bob Stricker, said, “By golly, I’d make that horse go. I’d hit her on the back until she moved.” Dad said, “No, no – I could never hurt my animals!” So Dad just patiently waited until she was ready and off she’d go, lickety-split.
When Belle's mate died, Dad found a smaller horse, a gentle little thing. But she had as much grit as Belle and so they made a good pair, even though not in stature. We called her Queenie.
One morning, Lucile was sent out to get the horses from the field on the back forty. They had been out overnight as was frequently done, as there were a few trees that they could take cover under. Apparently, there had been a lightning and thunderstorm during the night.
When Lucile found the horses, Queenie was lying over the barbed wire fence, dead. She had been electrocuted while leaning over the fence to get some grass.
Lucile ran home as fast as her legs would carry her and told Dad. Somehow he got Queenie on a skid, and Belle pulled her home and Dad buried her there. Dad always said that it takes a good horse to be able to pull the weight of their mate.
1910: Cows and horses in front of the Kroupa barn (my farm). My grandfather Frank Leopold Kroupa is holding a horse, second from the right. My father’s brothers Walter, Albert and Amos are also in the photo.
👵🙋♀️ Continued in Before I Say Goodbye... (2 of 2) 👋
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