Today’s guest blog comes from Jim.
As a seed saver I am dedicated to collecting, maintaining, and passing on seeds of vegetables and other plants that are rare and in danger of being lost. In the past, many families knew how to save and pass on seeds that they valued from one generation to another. This tradition is dying out. The Seed Savers Exchange (www.seedsaversexchange.org ) and other groups are making an effort to get the public more involved in seed saving. Saving the stories that are connected to seeds is considered by many seed savers to be as important as the seeds themselves.
I asked my Uncle Jake if he had any seeds that came from my Grandfather. He did have a jar of very old seed for a flat Dutch green bean that my Grandparents would slice up and make into a homemade product similar to sauerkraut. Unfortunately this seed was too old and wouldn’t germinate. Then I learned that my Uncle was willing to share some seed he had saved for many years. I am now growing and saving seed from a tomato and a bean that my Uncle got from his German neighbor. The tomato has fairly large, sweet, pink colored fruit that resembles some other tomatoes that originated in Germany. I call this tomato, Jake’s, in honor of my Uncle.
The bean is a very large white dry bean, which I call Large Navy. I like the bean because it came from my Uncle and because I haven’t seen another exactly like it. My cousin told me that this bean was used in cooking by my Uncle’s parents and I am looking forward using it myself. I gave my Uncle a copy of the Seed Saver’s Yearbook where my listing of the seeds I got from him is published. My cousin told me that his father would probably frame the Yearbook pages with those listings and hang them on the wall.
My Aunt Ida preserved a rose that came from my Grandmother. This is a large, very hardy, old fashion, pink rose. My Aunt told me that my Grandmother said the rose is an Austrian perfume rose. My Aunt also said that you couldn’t necessarily believe everything that my Grandmother had to say! I very much appreciate my Aunt’s sense of humor and somewhat sarcastic stories. She doesn’t hold back from speaking her mind and will say some things that might be a little offensive to some people and which I find to be very entertaining. She has some other stories I treasure about my Grandmother which are very funny and not entirely respectful.
Do you know any “heirloom” stories about your ancestors?
Trail Baboon 
thanks, Jim – it’s good to know folks are preserving that genetic stock from seeds going back so many years.
as for stories – one i remember: my fun Grandma was home alone on the family farm with my Dad’s little sister. Grandma saw the Fuller Brush Man coming down the driveway – drat! (Grandma probably said scheiss) he was told last time to stay away (pushy salesman, i guess). Grandma grabbed Aunt Ruth and Grandpa’s shot-gun and climbed the stairs to the second floor. she went to the front window and saw the FBM sitting in his car – just sitting there, the creep! (although Grandma would have said a German word meaning creep) Grandma opened the window and shot the top off a spruce tree growing next to the FBM’s car. he drove away, never to return.
i have no idea if this is true, but knowing my Grandma i bet it is.
thanks again, Jim iCG – a gracious good morning to You All.
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You should see the movie “Second-Hand Lions”
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so Clyde, what IS German for creep? I feel I need to know.
barb, your inclusion of scheiss reminds me of a tale that belongs to yesterday’s blog. One of my friends when teaching at Luther was a woman from Germany who was there for the year, and lived in the “German” house, where students lived and spoke German. She invited me to dinner one night and I was gamely using my rusty Deutsch.
We somehow got talking about the pope’s bullet-proof popemobile and I was trying to say something about the fact that someone had indeed once shot (schiessen) the pope-something went sadly awry with my verb conjugation and I actually had very correctly, if mistakenly, conjugated scheissen.
I thought my friend would never stop laughing. She did use it as a teachable moment for the students, that it is sometimes ok, if not entirely correct, to just speak and not analyze everything you say as if it were classwork.
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Great movie
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LOVE Second Hand Lions! One of our favorites.
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Nice piece, Jim.
My father’s family emigrated to northern Wisconsin from Scotland in the early part of the 20th and we had a huge family reunion when I was a kid, so I have a couple of fun stories.
My great-grandmother, Myrtle, was the youngest of six. She was red-headed and “feisty” according to all accounts. Once when she and her older sisters were shelling peas for a meal, the older sisters had to scold her a couple of times for eating the shelled peas out of the bowl. At one point the older sisters had to leave the room for a bit and when they came back they asked Myrtle is she had eaten anymore of the peas. When she said “no” they burst out laughing. In her haste to chow down while alone, Myrtle had spilled some of the peas and they had gotten caught in the lace around the neck of her dress, like a necklace! This story was clearly a family favorite – I heard it more than once.
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caught myrtle taking a pea huh?
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Ha ha ha!!!
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i do have some family peonies that go back about 100 years. they came off the leech lake lake place my grandmother built. she inherited it from her dad who was the native american in my family tree. intersting guy who grew up on the reservation in aitken his dad was a fur trader who wanted the mom to move off the reservation. when she wouldnt he started a family in town with another woman but arranged to have his son on the rez moved to minneapolis for schooling and a degree at the universit of minnesota, he was a football star on the u of m football team, went on to coach named jim thorp (his indian name was not a good thing to have in 1920) and then went on to become the county attourney in the leech lake area trying to keep the native americans form getting into more trouble than neccessary. my dads irish family letters photographs and stories are great too
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Cool story, tim! So you are part Indian . . . I’m guessing Ojibway.
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Yep Chippewa is what I was told growing up but I believe Ojibwa is correct
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great story, tim.
Now you’ve got me wondering about the lineage of my peonies and rhubarb(the old green kind, not the fancy schmancy strawberry type), both of which came from the same farm as the barn I wrote about. Wonder where my grandparents got them from-no way to find out now….
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tim, do I have this right? The peonies are from your grandmother’s father who was Jim Thorp. Is that the same Jim Thorp that won gold medals in the Olympics?
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Ed Rogers has his bust in front of the court house in walker for his years of public work up ther was my great grandfather, he went to u of m was a big dog, captain of the football team went on to coach where he met this Indian athlete may have been at the carlaile Indian school with pop Warner where he met Jim thorp who at that time had a long unpronounceable Indian name. My great-grandfather gave him the name Jim thorp after a friend in south Dakota and helped him to become the athlete we know now
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tim . . . what I have been told is that neither Ojibway nor Chippewa is as correct as Anishanabe. I’ve noticed that Native Americans are not consistent in these matters. I used to struggle with the “Dakota” and “Lakota” business, but often my Indian friends called themselves “Sioux.”
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Steve – I just finished my first Tony Hillerman novel and I agree that within the NA community, they are not always consistent. Granted, Tony Hillerman is not a Native American, but he was honored during his lifetime by the community for his accurate protrayal of their traditions and ways of life. The Navajo characters in his books (& movies) use “Navajo”, “Indian” and also “Dine” interchangeably.
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The Ojibwa and anishanabe are the two groups that hung in this geography. One was the hunter one was the farmer. I believe mine was the hunter the anashanabe
I had better get it straight before the possibility of passing it on is gone. My kids don’t know and they should. I will report back after talking to my mom.
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Not an ancestor story, but a thanks, Jim, for reminding me about the pink Irish rose given to me by a friend. It tends to wander, and only blooms once a season (but prolifically). It does have a wonderful scent, while it lasts. Her story is that years ago, it was brought here by another friend’s Irish grandmother.
Very romantic story. true? does it matter? Regardless, I am really looking forward to smelling those roses.
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Thanks, Jim, always good to think about our ancestors. I have an Aspidistra (though not the largest in the world as Gracie Fields sings about) that is said to be from my great-grandmother’s plant. I have rhubarb and daylilies that my grandfather grew.
My mother shared her hostas with me, they continue to survive in the jungle I call my “garden”.
And I have my own to pass on…two very large jade plants I bought as babies in 1968…plus a couple Asparagus Ferns a friend gave me in 1967.
Then there is the furniture from family…including my father’s leather chair and my mother’s bamboo sofa & chairs from the time they were married…I feel like I finally have my parents together again.
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The Seed Saver’s exchange has a yearbook for flowers and herbs where members list and exchange flowers and herbs which is separate from the yearbook for vegetables and fruit. It’s good to hear about the flowers and ornamental plants that Babooners have which are family heirlooms.
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Thanks, Jim.
Since we are half moved, I have a very clear inventory in my head of any physical heirlooms, which amount to one old lamp from my wife’s grandmother. I passed on some of my father’s tools to a nephew, only child in the next generation with any interest.
Heirloom stories from my side are about how abused my father was by his stepfather and how mean my mother’s older brother was to her. Dull stuff. Dull family. My wife has many tales of her Russian relatives emigration to Nordeast Minneapolis and her Swedish/Norwegians grandmother, with whom my wife grew up. She went sweetly senile in her early fifties (widowed with four small children at age 26) and things she said (always called me Claude). What she is famous for, the counter to Jim’s wonderful mission, was taking all of her wonderful recipes to her grave. She ran a very successful bootleg bakery in the depression, her cakes and pies were in high demand in some rich homes. For 30 years she steadfastly refused to write them down or tell them to anyone. On her death bed one of her last comments was something like, “See, I am taking the recipes with me and no one ever got them.”
OT, re the Big Move: we are both exhausted. Today the pros move our furniture. Then for three days we are babysitting and I am doing my daughter’s church services. That leaves us four days to clean out our den in the warren and be clear of Efrafa. By the way, the other rabbits here are close to demanding we tell them why we are leaving, but Sandy and I will take that to the grave. Our last revenge.
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Good story. That attitude about recipes is fascinating (and increasingly odd or dated).
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Tell them once you discovered what the neighbors are doing you hd to leave and let them figure out who and what bit could be
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nice list of saved items, CiM – helped me remember that i have a fern peony, roots handed down from maternal Grandma to my Mom and from my Mom to everyone in town. mine is languishing in a weedy front garden here. each spring i vow to move it to a more suitable and prominent place… the story is that these plants were given as prizes by the grain elevators in S. MN – don’t know if that’s true.
i better get outside or i’ll have some angry goats!
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Heirloom plants tend to be very tough. I have some rain lily bulbs from my Aunt that I failed to plant for two years and they grew when I finally did get them planted. Barb, I’ll bet the fern peony is hanging in there in that weedy spot and will keep going there until you find time to move it.
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thanks, Jim – this is the year. what’s the best time to uproot the poor thing and take it to its new home? fall?
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From what I have read, it seems that peonies are best moved in late August or September. I tried moving some last year and will not know if that worked until I see how they do this year. It might take them a year or two to start blooming again.
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this fern peony is an ethereal – it yellows and the ferny leaves disappear by July, usually. i have to remember to mark the spot so i can find it in late summer.
thanks
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Another Myrtle story….
When my father was a boy, my great grandmother lived in Spooner, Wisconsin – a little brick house that is still there. He spent summers up north, sometimes in Barnes Township at the family homestead, sometimes with Myrtle in her little house. Myrtle had a weekly poker game with some of her cronies from town and one late summer day, she let my dad sit in. He was 16 at the time and had been working up in Barnes that summer and had a pocketful of cash. Myrtle and her cronies wipes him out. Every penny. My dad used to say that this was a strong lesson that kept him from every gambling again. I mentioned this to my grandmother (Myrtle’s daughter) and said I Myrtle had been a wise woman to give my dad such a good lesson. My grandmother said mater-of-factly “No, she wasn’t wise, she just liked to win at all costs!” I still laugh thinking about it.
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As you know, Jim, you are doing holy work. You are not only revering the past but preserving precious living parts of it for future generations.
About a decade ago I was overwhelmed by strange and contradictory stories about my family’s history. I spent six years chasing down old stories, assembling them in coherent form and eventually writing a book to make sense of them.
A few stories didn’t make that book. This is one.
My mother’s father was a classic grandfather, gentle and comically old fashioned. If you know the word means, he was avuncular. Grampa Cox was just stunned by modern times, and his word for expressing his confusion about jet planes, short skirts, women lawyers or electronic miracles was “Garsh!” Grampa Cox would shake his white head in amazement at modern times. Men were flying to the moon? “Garsh!” Those crazy hippies in San Francisco? “Garsh!”
Inevitably, the time came when my grandfather began having accidents with his two-toned Oldmosbile 88 (with white sidewalls and cats whiskers). He hit some garbage cans one day. Then he drove clear through the end of the garage. My grandmother began pressuring her husband to give up the car keys, but my grandfather–then in his late 70s–fought and fought. He would not give up the keys. Then his doctor intervened. Grampa Cox finally handed my grandmother the keys to the Olds.
That’s the story I got as a young man. A bit later I was told the other part.
The real reason my grandfather fought so hard to keep his keys was that he was running a sort of circuit of mistresses, lonely women who lived not in town but mostly on isolated farms close by. The green and cream Oldsmobile was my grandfather’s one way of getting around to servicing all of those mistresses. When he gave up the keys he gave up a sex wilder than that of most San Francisco hippies.
To which I can only say, “Garsh!”
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Guess we had to give “avuncular” a new definition based on your grandfather! Nice story, Steve.
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His mind was fading but his body was on autopilot. Great story
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We recently discovered that there exists in my husband’s family heirloom stories that no one has ever talked about, and how we are to find out what happened, I don’t know. For Christmas and his birthday, my husband asked to have some genetic testing done to clear up some missing information about his mother’s family origins. What we have discovered is quite startling. I am simplifying all of this so any geneticists out there, forgive me. The methodology used in the testing satisfied us as legitimate, by the way. His mother’s family, we knew, was part Scots. That was confirmed. What we surprised to find is that his mother’s family is Turkish/Greek/Anatolian. His father’s family immigrated from southern Germany, but now we have discovered that they are genetically most similar to slavs in Belorussia, and a Roma community in Slovakia! Well, now the olive skin and dark, curly hair are better explained, but where are the stories that should accompany this information?
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Maybe now that you are armed w/ the science, you’ll be able to pry some stories out of the family. If not, you’ll just have to make up your own. You might want to check in with Anna – she’s good at that!
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My aunt and I have made up a few stories about my great aunt…especially after we found a treasure trove of Great Aunt’s photos in my grandmother’s apartment. Great Aunt is in several photos with dashing (sometimes younger) men – she never married, and none of these men are familiar to us. This, by the way, was the same aunt who, it was rumored was asked to leave her first job at a girl’s finishing school (or was not asked to return for the next academic session) because of an affair with the headmaster. Many eyebrows were raised when we found the photos from a Chicago trip that included one of my grandfather’s favorite pictures of his sister (alone, in a fabulous hat, head thrown back, grinning widely) – and we found that the same boat trip on Lake Michigan included a younger, dashing, gentleman…tons of fun making up the back story for those photos. 🙂
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There are so many surprises to be found in a family tree. Remember when Madeline Albright (who was already the Secretary of State) discovered she was Jewish?
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I thanks the Seed Savers all over for their work, whenever I eat one of those heirloom tomatoes. Thanks for your work, and for inviting our stories today, Jim.
My dad’s mom, Helga Kvalem, came over from Norway at age 12 to live with heraunt Henrietta. After living as a maid in New York City for a time, Henrietta had married her much older employer, Civil War veteran Jonas Duea, and they came west to the Norwegian colony of Roland, IA. Helga grew up, was able to return to Norway and see her family at age 18 or so, and had the choice to stay there or return to Iowa. But she had met my Grandpa Art Britson by then, and returned to marry and raise 5 kids, of which my dad was 4th, William Joel Britson. By the time he was in high school, “Grandma” Duea was very old and infirm, and his family was invited to come and live with her so they could care for her. He remembers her as feisty, funny, resourceful – Dad remembered her as able to make do with anything. It was that house that became my grandma’s house, of which I know every nook and cranny.
I wish I knew some stories about Jonas Duea – there is a Duea reunion scheduled there this summer; maybe I should go…
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I enjoyed visiting my Grandparents’ homes. One of my Grandmothers had a flower garden with paths in it that was a lot of fun to explore.
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Yes, remembering the grounds around the house is fun, too. There was an old abandoned chicken coop, a corn crib (they were on the edge of town). And someone had horses over the back fence, the next lot over.
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Barbara,
I have a lot of information about Jonas as I am one of the decedents. Jonas had a son named Oscar who had a son named Arthur who had a son named Robert, that is my dad.
I have also been in contact with the people that organized the reunion this past July in Iowa as well.
Please contact me at joeduea at hotmail dot com. You will have to type my email address in, I do this because I don’t want to get a ton of spam emails. I look forward to hearing from you.
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OT-Neal Hagberg is doing a Lenten series at church based on his serious songs. He introduced himself last night by singing “Old Love.” After an amazing discussion time I asked why he hadn’t sung “Old Glove’? He launched into the the version about Kirby Puckett. When I said I was thinking of TLGMS version he offered to sing it next week. And said, “Aren’t we all Morning Show fans…Ahhh Dale!”
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I thought that Lenten series with Neil would be fascinating. Beth-Ann…
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My mother’s parents farmed, but they were pretty dirt-poor and sold off the farm by the time I was a teenager. My mother moved to the city as a young woman and never ever had a garden or even grew so much as a single tomato plant. I think she figured she had husked enough corn and shelled enough peas for a lifetime and didn’t want any part of growing things, not when you could just pick them out of the freezer case at the grocery store.
There is one odd thing that I’ve kept that I got from my mother, and I’m guessing she got it from hers – it’s a way of cracking an egg. I don’t know if anyone else does this, but my mother always cracked an egg on the edge of the counter with two strikes – the first just a light tap, then the second with enough force to crack the shell. So the sound of cupcakes or cookies on the way was always that same tap-crack. I never asked for an explanation of this, but I suppose the first tap was to get a good sense of where the counter was, because you don’t want to misjudge and hit it so hard the egg smashes and runs through your fingers, so you test first – tap – and then you have the necessary force calculated – crack.
When I took home ec in junior high we were taught to crack an egg on the side of the mixing bowl. It never caught on with me, though – as soon as I was out of the classroom I went back to using the the edge of the counter, tap-crack.
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I remember being taught to crack the egg on the side of the bowl as well, but I also never do this. If the shell is thin or you aren’t paying attention and hit the egg too hard, then you end up w/ shell in the bowl. I always break the egg into a separate cup or container, to make sure everything is OK before I dump it into my mix – of course, this means one more dirty dish to wash up. Rats!
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I’m kind of a recipe outlaw – if it says to cream the butter and sugar, and then add the eggs, I ignore it and put the eggs in first so I can check for shell. Then on to the butter and sugar.
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I like that “recipe outlaw”… makes me think of you in the kitchen in your cowboy boots and a black mask!
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Did you ever wonder what constitutes a recipe outlaw in the sense of stealing a recipe? I published a book of recipes once, and it became important to know what would be a violation of copyright. The answer seems to be: four ingredients. If your recipe differs from another in terms of including or excluding a total of four ingredients, it is considered yours; and if you significantly alter the amounts of four ingredients, I think you can still claim it as your recipe.
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“This recipe ain’t big enough for the two of us…”
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Too funny!
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….unless we add some black cardamom and sea salt, then maybe it is.
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but how do you separate an egg?
it a point of pride in my childhood, when I could finally crack that egg and tip the yolk back and forth between the 2 halves of shell, letting the white run into the bowl it was going to be whipped in.
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Since I started cooking and baking on my own I’ve defaulted to the “use your hand” method, letting the white slip out between my fingers. My mother wasn’t much of a cook/baker, but she did the half shell method, which I’m not good at.
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I do the tap-crack thing too (but on the side of the bowl). I’ve never seen anyone else do it, till now.
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Interesting… I crack them on the bowl too… sometimes I’ll crack them into a separate dish first but usually right into whatever I’m making. I guess it’s two hits; never thought about that before…
I can do the one handed crack. Sometimes.
And sometimes making eggs in the morning I get egg under the frying pan…which really annoys my wife……….
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Be careful what you save or the corporate seed men in black will be at your door and bury you alive in legal bills.
I have the Lily of the Valley that use to line the back of my grandmother’s house that she got from her mother’s house. I like having the connection to my great grandmother especially since I never got to know her. I’m not sure if the flowers still exist at my great grandmother’s house but I like to imagine them as a sort of trail we leave behind.
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Nice!
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You are right about those cororate seed men in black, Laura Jean. I save seed mostly because I enjoy doing it, but I do know a little about those men in black.
One of the worst efforts of the men in black was introducing seed with a terminator gene that would cause seeds saved from their seed to fail mto produce a crop. Thus, you couldn’t produce any seeds for your own use from the seeds you bought from them. I think some farmers got some of this seed with terminator genes and didn’t they couldn’t save seeds from it and had crop failures when they tried using their saved seed that came from the seed with terminator genes.
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My dad’s mom was a great flower gardener, and I had some of her seeds from some double pink poppies. I waited too long to plant them, though and they didn’t germinate. By the way, when you plant or transplant peonies, don’t plant them too deep.
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thanks, Renee – i think that’s what’s wrong with my little fern peony – that and the lack of sun…. oh, and lack of soil fertility…. yes, and weeds.
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I have found peonies to be forgiving of mostly everything except depth.
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In recent years I’ve tried to show respect for tradition in a tiny way: by honoring domestic architecture style.
There are things about my home I really would like to change, but my new attitude is that the house has rights with more legitimacy than my preferences. For example, I dislike the most prominent feature of my living room, the fireplace, but I know that the fellow who designed that thing was exceptionally proud of it. I respect that. My garage is built with the same marbled stucco and faux-Tudor styling as my home. I badly wanted to replace it with a modern garage big enough to hold a car and fishing boat, but I decided I don’t have the right to destroy a garage that truly belongs to the home. It would be stylistically offensive to stick a 1980s outdoor deck on the back of my 1920s bungalow.
I came to this understanding late. I made big mistakes when remodeling the kitchen and bathroom in the 1970s, and now I’m not rich enough to undo the damage. But at some level, old things (including old buildings) have integrity that should be preserved, if just to keep variety in our lives today.
I now know what a bungalow is–what it means and looks like–and I will try to preserve the spirit of Arts and Crafts in my home where possible.
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I know what you mean, Steve. We’ve considered adding on a “family room” to this place, but it would wreck the entire feel of it. Someone did add on a double garage, but ‘way before our time, and didn’t interfere with anything else…
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Oh, to have a house with character! We live in a small, 1978 oil boom “ranch” that has no distinctive style except dull. Someday it will have new windows and siding, but there really isn’t much else we can do to liven it up except focus on the garden and flowers. I find that quite satisfying.
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Steve, in an earlier comment you said that you wrote a book that contained stories about your family history. What is the name of that book, when was it published, and where? I would be interested in taking a look at it. I like reading books of that kind. The books with stories about people by Studs Terkel are favorites of mine.
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How kind of you to ask, Jim. The truth is that I have not found a publisher for this book. It is available for free to baboons, though. If you have an interest, write to me at mnstorytelr (at) comcast.net and I will send files to you electronically. That’s the best I can do now.
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OK, now I should represent my mom’s side… Her mother came over from Sweden when she was about 15, an orphan, Ruth Thyra Augusta Bloom. She stayed with a sister until she was of age, met my grandpa while ice skating in or near Sioux City Iowa. He was Robert Chase Sterling (of Welsh descent), youngest of a family of architects and carpenters. The Sterling name resides on a window of the Congregational Church there, as his father Fred been one of the founders; Fred also built a large mansion that was later transformed into Smith Elementary School. Grandpa build the little 2-bedroom bungalow where they raised my mom, Hope, and 6 other kids. (Shudder.)
My grandma was quite a character. She had innate musical talent, and I remember her playing a lot of songs on her old upright piano, though she’d never had a lesson in her life. Loved to hear her talk with her Swedish accent. My grandpa died in 1962; she remarried a few years later at age 72 and outlived #2 also. In the last little house she lived in, her daughter once found a stash of empty beer cans behind the refrigerator. Grandma would be watching TV on the couch, finish one and just toss it behind the fridge.
She loved to flower garden, and if I’d known anything then, I’d have asked for some of her seeds.
Thanks, Jim, for the opportunity to write some of these things down!
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I, unfortunately, do not have any cuttings or seeds from the various flowers and plants my grandfather grew. We were all a little sad when he and my grandmother moved from their big house by Powderhorn Park to an apartment and left his rose bushes behind – but they were varieties that likely would not have moved well at the time.
One story, though, that I do treasure is the story of my grandparent’s wedding. My grandmother was apparently dithering as to whether or not she should get married, and more importantly, if she should marry right now. She had a professor from college who was wise and trusted (and knew my grandparents were a good match, I’m sure) who told her, “Elsie, if you don’t get married now, you won’t ever get married.” Her concern was that by getting married, she was losing potential income as a teacher as most districts at the time wouldn’t hire married women to teach. But she knew my grandpa was the man for her…they decided on a Sunday, I believe it was, that they should go ahead and do this thing. My grandfather was teaching in her home town at the time, so he walked down main street and invited people to the wedding that Thursday (with a luncheon to follow on a friend’s farm). Grandma and a friend drove into Mankato (the “big town” close by) and bought dresses of the rack. Bonus tidbit to this story: my grandfather had been carrying the marriage license for a year in his wallet, waiting for the day my grandmother would say, “okay, now,” so that they would have it, ready to be signed without further delay. For a guy who could otherwise seem kind of gruff or stoic, my grandpa did have a romantic streak.
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What a lovely story!
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My paternal grandmother’s name was also Elsie. Was that a common name back then?
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I think so – Daughter’s middle name is Elsa in her honor. 🙂
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My grandparents were both originally from Waseca County. When they were newlyweds, they honeymooned near Nisswa. They always loved that area and finally retired on the east side of Gull Lake (in the Cinosam neighborhood, if you’re familiar with it). My Grandma Helen was a lot like Sherrilee’s great-grandmother, Myrtle. She always tried to be the picture of a lady but her eyes gave her away. She was up to something – always. She was also an avid pheasant hunter and was good with a .410 shotgun.
My Grandpa, John, somehow arranged for a car to take them up there. The roads between Brainerd and Nisswa were not paved in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Stores and service stations were few and far between. They were running low on fuel before they reached the little resort, darkness was falling, and they decided to make a stop before it got too late.
They got the car filled up and Grandpa went in with the attendant to pay and to pick up some milk. He pulled out his wallet and some men who were in the station saw the $20 bill he used to pay for the gas and milk and the change he received. He returned to the car and to Grandma and asked her to please sit in the back and to keep her head down. He pulled quickly out into the dark muddy road and took off. Grandma immediately realized what was going on. They were being followed. (“Keep my head down… shivelgrits.”) She pulled her .410 out and loaded it. The headlights behind them got closer. The driver of the car behind them was trying to run them off the road! Grandpa hollered, “Hang on, Helen!” and made a sharp left turn onto a tiny road. Grandma started shooting out the back window. The car behind them missed the turn and went off the road. Grandpa kept going.
They told the story only once to me. They were reluctant to give any more details about it. I think what troubled them the most was the part about the milk. The station actually sold beer. They really didn’t want to admit that.
They never had very much. They lived simply and didn’t ever seem to want any more than what they had. There wasn’t much as far as heirlooms. I have Grandma’s uke and my brother has her .410. I think I have a wee bit of my Grandma’s character. I wish I had known enough in the 1960s to have asked my Grandpa to save some seed from his huge garden.
My Grandma, Mom and I all tap, CRACK on the edge of the bowl and use the back and forth technique to separate the egg.
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Great story Krista! Love the visual of your grandma shooting out of the back window.
(I’m a tap CRACK on the bowl edge, too, for the record.)
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Public health advice now frowns on the back and forth method of separating because it is more likely to get salmonella from contaminated shells into the egg. I was so good at the back and forth that I regretted giving it up but now enjoy the separate thru your fingers trick.
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I am the sheepish owner of three egg separators – one plastic, one aluminum, one pottery.
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So what do sheep make with egg separators? Maybe those fancy lamb cakes with coconut that you see around Easter?
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Or baba ganoush?
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I put my faith in the farmers who eat the same eggs I do and have yet to suffer from it. I cannot bear the idea of having it run through my fingers-ick. I know you will all bring flowers to my funeral and shake your heads knowingly-if only she had listened to wiser Baboons 🙂
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I’ve been busy and have only been able to skim through the stories… looking forward to going home now and catching up later.
Have a nice evening y’all…
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My Irish side was an interesting group in the opposite way from the native American relative. He was very aware that he was an Indian and needed to be upright and never be in a position where his race was called into question. H Irish were a hearty lot but the drinking and the laziness was true generalization about who they were. Some cunning like the one who bought a farm a mile out o town and rather than farming spent his first couple of years selling dirt and gravel buy the truckload and the last years selling dirt out of one end and filling the other end in as the town dump. Then there was the relative who would enjoy visiting so much with his friends that he put the first head lits on a tractor anyone ever heard of so he could do his work at night sleep during the day and visit af his sleep before he went to work in the fields at night, he would play his flute while driving his tractor like the guy in Peter mayors driving with your knees song. My geandfath form fargo was a bit of an eccentric who wore an open road Stetson and fresh white shirt and bow tie every day. This is not odd until you realize he was a brick layer. Building downtown Fargo one brick at a time, a very prices man who left zero room for error or variation. He built many seven to ten story skyscrapers in downtown Fargo, Renee knows em all downtown is about 6 block by six blocks and the 20’s and 30’s is when it went up. He w a baseball pitcher prior to that and would have gone pro but my grandma got him and traveling was no life for a family man. She actually had to give up a child rearing role she had taken on to get married and they had their 5 Irish twins 9 months and ten minutes apart. My dad was the baby and when his sister dies at Christmas time this year that was the end of the direct access to that time frame. My moms side is all straight and tall but in various stages of starting the slide. Two husbands dead, one fading fast and the other two bay sister aunts who were young teens when I was a kid now in their 70’s.
My dads dad was the son of an alcoholic who was in turn opposed and never let it touch his lips. His family had brothers who were the drunken Irish foreman and policeman and he wanted to stay far away from that. I got to go to the true Irish wakes where the dead got put in the ground and the fun began where old uncle kingfish would start telling stories and singing songs and getting tipsy until someone would take him bu the arm and lead him to a restful place for the rest of the evening. The grimes and the hines and the joneses were close and always at each oths wedding and funerals. That and summer vacations over at Detroit lakes were the tie that bind us to Fargo, if you are from Fargo there is nowhere eles to go but Detroit lakes for the summer. It was not a option it was a. Matter of which lake you were on. There were a bunch and each lake had 5 to 20 people on it that you knew. It was a big small town atmpsphere. Golfing bike riding, adventure and fiends were the deal at Fargo cousins, up at leach we were 4 miles down a woodsy driveway that was put in with my grandfathers road construction company assistance when I was a kid. H was flamboyant and had the new t bird every time they cane around . His place was beautiful but the rules were stern and the boat rides were short and it was always a long wait until something other than swimming was on the agenda. But we didn’t push ourselves on the place the way the other relatives did so we ended being odd man out in that clan and maybe that was by design. My dads family were happy Irish party folk with lots of hugs and couches to sleep on and my moms family was an uptight rule based group who were all very successful and all very boring and people you would love to get away from. I had one cousin who I would partake in a little weed with and we would laugh and howl at the little game we would always play that’s main focus was to pick the subject of a sentence and say If you can’t use it for that you can always use it for… And that would get us rolling in the aisles about all the odd things you could think of to use that thing for. He turned out to be a social misfit with a substance abuse issue. We gotmalong great. The other relatives on that side were what others would call nice people, model citizens…not my type of people at all. Nice enough but no imagine or intrigue. Dads family comes up I smile and remember
Moms. My shoulders tighten and I wait for the thought to pass. Ahhhh heirloom thoughts.
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Did he build Block 6-the old Delendrecies building? I love that building and how they have preserved it.
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Yep
When I as a kid we would drive down the streets of Fargo and I would ask did grandpa jb build that one and the the andswer was yep and atone and the answer was yep and how about that one. And my dad and uncles would say iunless it’s a new one jb built it. 1918 to 1950 he built it if was brick
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