November 1, 1948 Memories...

This blogpost is the transcription of some email messages shared between James and Edna Groves' 5 children in November 2021.  It started with Linda sharing some entries from the diary of her mother, Edna, which had been written as James and Edna and their 4 children moved from Viroqua, WI to Fountain City, WI in November 1948.  These memories are shared in the hopes that future generations will find some information about earlier generations, who they were, how they lived and what their lives were like.

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Linda Groves Worden begins the email she sent to her four siblings and their families. 

Nov. 1, 2021

I want to remind us about the day our parents moved themselves and four of us from the farm in Viroqua which was owned by Minnie B. Cox Groves to the farm Dad and Mom bought and that we remember the most about near Fountain City.

While I was visiting the Berndts in La Crosse in June, we got out some boxes the Berndts are storing that have items which belonged to Dad and Mom.  We went through things and disposed of items in a few different ways.  As I prepared to leave, I asked Marge if it would be OK if I took Mom's diary that covers the years 1946-1950.  I had never read any of Mom's diaries and wanted to read about 2 major things - the 1948 move to Fountain City and the Jan. 1949 car accident when I had 6 baby teeth knocked out.

Today I am going to share about 2 weeks of entries made from Oct. 26, 1948 - Nov. 7, 1948 + a few extras...

Oct. 26 Tues 1948  A memorable day! Nellie &  I dressed 12 chickens. Put 10 in deep freeze.  Paul & James picked up corn.  All men & Uncle Harvey came & we settled with Gram.  She owed us $832.38.

Oct. 27 Wed 1948 Went to town in a.m. & tended to business matters.  James went to Foun. City. Took inlaid linoleum up.  Hazel Morrison had a party for Gram.

Oct 28 Thurs 1948  Scott, Thelma, Henry (or Harvey) & Iiva McClung & I went to Foun. City & laid inlaid linoleum.  Scott had been very ill yesterday with v.b. nose bleed.  Got home about 9.  James took a truck load up.

Oct 29 Fri 1948  I got our clothes in order to go to Halloween party & farewell for us at the School house.  Nellie helped pack.  Party collection $18.69.  ($18.69 in 1948 is worth $212.73 today.)

Oct 30 Sat 1948  Helen & kids came down & Gen, Norma & John also.  All packed Gram's things & James took them out to Gen's.  Rainy dreary day !

Oct. 31 Sun 1948 Had to work all day in order to get ready to move.  Washed clothes & did quite a bit of packing.  Fuel pump went bad on Pick-up.  Had to get a new one & put on.

Nov 1 Mon. 1948 Got up at 4:10 a.m.  Got all our things packed & were ready to leave about 11:30.  Jas & I had dinner at Tryggestad's.  Zube's took children to F.C.

Nov 2 Tues 1948  Tried to straighten up the kitchen a bit.  Gas man came & installed the stove in afternoon.  I took Jimmy to meet his new teacher.

Nov 3 Wed 1948  I was exhausted!  Felt terribly dizzy & weary so slept 2 hrs. when kiddies did.  James went to Viroqua & divided the cattle.  Olaf Walby & Uncle Harvey helped.

Nov. 4 Thurs 1948  Semi brought 27 head of cattle.  Had fuel pump trouble. Bad rainy day.  Half died on the way.  Others were down & almost died but revived when they got air. Jas. brought a load of hogs.

Nov 5 Fri. 1948  Bad, rainy day.  James had to leave the Ford truck in Winona last night so I took, him down today to get it.  Put linoleum on table top & ledge in pantry. 

Nov. 6 Sat. 1948  James went to Viroqua after case tractor, fuel barrel. & other items.  Had hard time getting home by dark.  I washed clothes, watered cattle & fed hogs.

Nov. 7 Sun. 1948  James put the cows out on the meadow.  We had chicken, potatoes, gravy, noodles, cold slaw, celery, baking powder biscuits & apple pie for dinner.  Wrote letters in afternoon.

Nov. 8 Mon 1948  Did some baking in a.m.  Also got some mail ready to send.  Rode to F.C. with Al S. in the afternoon & got some groceries.

From Lee:  Are you exhausted yet?  I will skip a few days and add a couple more of those first days in F.C.

Nov 12 Fri 1948  Have 30 acres plowed.  Took in rest of clothes (that had been washed the previous day and hung on clothesline outdoors) & hung on the rack.  Pressed some of our good clothes in afternoon.  In evening we went to Winona shopping.  Got drapery for front room - 79 length panels $1.77 a piece.

Nov 14 Sun 1948 Bathed all the youngsters in a.m.  & we all went to the Nazarene Church in Winona. V.G.  In afternoon we visited Semlings.

Nov 15 Mon 1948 James & Alton went to Viroqua after a load of machinery & the trailer.  Ran out of gas twice & had a flat on trailer.  Had chicken, gravy, cranberries salad & banana cream pie for supper.

Nov 16 Tue 1948  I rendered 6 gallon of lard & canned 12 qts of cherries.  James & Alton plowed.

I have learned much from these entries.  I have gained new appreciation for what Dad and Mom experienced as they moved a farm a distance of 75 miles at a time when conditions were difficult on many levels.  I appreciate them more as I read these entries that don't include complaint, blame or hopelessness.  I still have many questions but now have more facts than I had previously.  I wonder how many "half of the cattle" is that died being transported to the farm.  And what was done with those carcasses.  How many were left to provide the income needed for our family?  There are some names I don't recognize etc.

I am grateful that Dad and Mom moved to the farm in Fountain City,  They certainly were hard workers to do all that they did.

Love to all,  Lee

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Responses from Jimmy:

Linda, and all,

1.  Boy, there is a lot in this!  I just wish I had more time to comment on much of it.  I will do some.  Thanks for digging this out and typing it up!

2.  Nellie Zillig and husband had a farm right across the road from "the bowl" on Grandma's farm.  Paul is Paul Zube who lived on the next farm past Zillig's and uncle Harvey Cox was Great Grandma's brother who lived in Viroqua just a block or two from the entrance of the cemetery.  I find it interesting that mom doesn't say anything about dad's birthday on the entry for Oct 26.  No doubt with all they had going on and with the stress involved, birthdays were small potatoes.  

3.  Bill and Hazel Morrison lived on the farm just up the hill on Hwy 82 and on the other side of the road from our farm.  They had a really cute granddaughter(Judy), my age, who I had a big crush on.  We knew them fairly well and one time I was at their house for breakfast or lunch.  When the food was on the table, everybody just dove in and started loading their plates and eating.  I famously blurted out, "Hey, doesn't anybody pray around here?"  They got the biggest kick out of that and couldn't wait to tell mom and dad about it.  

4.  One of the things that comes up in these entries is dad taking loads of machinery, etc. up to the Fountain City farm.  As he finished with various pieces of equipment over the summer and fall, he would take a load up to the new farm.  His truck was a 1 1/2 ton 1936 red Ford dual wheels vehicle that did not have operative headlights!!  Therefore, dad had to be very careful with his itinerary timing because he had to make the trip up and back while it was still light out.  With no daylight saving time, it got dark quite early in the fall.  

5.  The Friday, Oct 29 entry about the Halloween party at the Bishop Branch School is interesting.  I remember it well.  I was a first grader and had been in school for about two months.  The students had to memorize some pieces for the program that we had prior to the party.  I remember I held a pumpkin standing up in front of the room and said my memorized piece for my part in the program.

6.  I had forgotten that Great Grandma Minnie Groves must have moved out of her part of the big house at the same time and went to live with her daughter, Genevieve(Gen) on their farm west of Viroqua.  Gen's husband's name was Art Christofferson and they had two kids, Norma and John.  Helen is Helen Hart (Gen's sister) who lived with her husband, Clifford, and two kids, Bill and Sharon, in La Crosse at 316 Copeland Avenue, very near the Milwaukee Road Railroad station where Cliff worked.  

7.  WOW, this all brings back such ancient memories!!  I must sign off for now.  I am rejoicing that we can still share these memories together and that mom, who must have been absolutely stretched to the max, still carved out time to keep her diary up to date, and we can enjoy them now.  I do know that she got weeks behind in it at times, but eventually took the time to catch up which itself must have been an onerous task!  Thank you Mom!!!

Many blessings to you all,

Mom and Dad's Jimmy   

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From Linda,

Jimmy, I am so thankful for all that you have added to the words of Mom's diary entries.  You have filled in much that I couldn't recall such as connections with named people.  I had never heard that you were in attendance at that Halloween party.  There was a phone conversation with Sharon Aspenson that I had this past summer and she mentioned that her Grandmother Minnie lived with Helen and Gen for 6 months at a time.  I had thought she lived only with Helen.  Sharon has lots of memories and says she loved to visit her Grandmother and be around our family. 

You mention surprise that Mom didn't mention Dad's birthday on the 26th.  I had had the same thought but when I was transcribing her entry for that day I realized that she started with the statement, "A memorable day!"  Of course that could have referred to the dressing of 12 chickens but I think it is a reference to Dad's birthday.  I am surprised that there is so little mention of us kids.  No mention of how you are getting to school or how that is going.  Or anything about the 3 girls under the age of 3.  My theory is that a diary is different from a journal.  A diary records what did happen but not much about the impact on life of those happenings.  I remember Dad would consult Mom about the date of taking hogs to market and what they "brought" and when they started spring field work etc.  Those were the most important details for their lives at the time. 

I have been wondering if Mom relied exclusively on a wood burning stove but since gas was hooked up, she had gas for the burners and oven.  That kitchen stove was also wood burning but perhaps that was mostly for heat in the winter.  I know we lived almost exclusively in the kitchen during the winter.  Mom would have used that wood burning part of the stove for rendering lard I think.  And also, if there is lard to render, there has been the slaughter of a hog. 

I remembered that the old truck did not have working headlights but I didn't remember your other details about that truck.  I'm not sure what area was known as "the meadow"?  Was that the area -a field- alongside the lane that had cattle paths going out to pasture? 

Thanks for all the memories.

Lee

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 From Barbara Groves Drew

Thanks Lee and Jim for explaining so much that would be lost on me otherwise. Why did “Gram” owe Mom & Dad over $800? That would be a fortune in today’s money.

 Barb

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From Linda,

Barb,

I have the same question myself about owing money to GG.  Maybe there were improvements that Dad had made to the farm which GG "hired" Dad to do.  And maybe he was the hired hand who did the work of the farm.

$832.38 in 1948 is worth $9,474.28 today.

Thanks for responding,

Lee

 

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From Jim,

 

Family,

1.  Lee, I think you are exactly right about a diary versus a journal.  Mom just recorded the significant facts, not much about her feelings, etc.  Putting in stuff about day-to-day activities of the kids would have taken pages and would have been pretty much the same day after day.

2.  Regarding rendering lard.  I distinctly remember dad and Chester Veraguth butchering a hog in the barn haymow where they suspended it upside down in the center of the barn using the ropes and pulleys of the hay carrier system.

3.  The meadow: I am pretty sure this refers to simply letting the cattle go out on the fields and eat hay that grew up after the third crop was cut, also whole corn cobs and stocks left over and whatever else they could find as they had a free range over the entire farm. 

4.  I also have a clear memory of riding down to Winona to meet the semi-truck that was coming from Viroqua with the cattle. The truck had come up highway 61 on the Minnesota side of the Mississippi River and we met the driver on Sarnia Street on the east side of Winona near to where the hospital is today.  I think the reason for meeting the truck there was to lead the driver from that point up to the farm.  I definitely remember that one or two cows got suffocated on the trip but I had never heard that up to half the load was lost.  If that's true, it would have been absolutely devastating.

5.  My first couple of years at the Cross Ridge School, Delbert Heuer simply used their personal Ford family sedan as the school bus.  As more kids came along he got the Packard limousine which was really plush.  Then, he finally transitioned to a series of ever larger traditional yellow school buses.  In 12 years, I never had a different bus driver.  I remember how he would open the glove box of the bus and pull out a beautiful red apple and eat it in front of me with my tongue hanging out. As I look back as an adult, I marvel with something mom and dad sometimes commented on.  That is that Debbie Heuer had a remarkable record of punctuality year after year.  When you think about all the things he had to do on the farm with chores and field work, it is truly a credit to him to have been so reliable!

All for this time,

Jimmy  

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From Kathleen Groves Gettrust

Really hard to imagine how Dad and Mom did the move with a 6, 4, 2 and 1 year old.
I was thinking about those cow carcasses and suppose Dad (and Mom) dragged them with a chain attached to a tractor out into the field. I remember various times seeing a calf carcass thrown onto the field decomposing where Dad would have been spreading manure.  The Sunday meal was sensational! No Sarah Lee or any other store purchased pie would have been purchased even if available.Lee, did it mention anything about your birthday in Dec. 1948? Sure hope they stopped everything and threw you a big party! Love to all, Kak

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From Margelyn Groves Berndt,

I’m in agreement with everyone’s comments….how did dad & mom manage everything they were dealing with?? I’m exhausted & emotional just reading what mom recorded. I’m grateful to know that they had a community of friends reaching out to them…providing helpful support in various ways. Whether it was relatives, Viroqua neighbors or new neighbors-people in Fountain City to welcome & assist them, they all provided support & encouragement. 

Thanks for sharing the family history everyone.

Love, Marge 

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From Linda,

I hadn't looked ahead in the diary to my birthday so I have done that now so I can answer Kak's question.  I am attaching a photo of her diary so you can read 5 years worth of my birthday celebrations etc..   And so you can see Dad's handwriting also as he sometimes wrote the detailed memories of the day.   I will transcribe here the day before and day of my 1948 birthday so I can respond with a few memories of those days.

Dec 6 Mon 1948  Linda has been washing & wiping dishes alone.  Bless her little heart!  She's so good & helpful.  I cleaned all downstairs & washed Barbara's bib.

 

Dec 7 Tues 1948  Linda's 4th birthday.  She & I put up pantry shade & curtain.  Painted "corner shelf."  Sutter's, Heisinger's & Rev. & Mrs. Alexander here in evening.

 

I do remember standing at the end of the kitchen table where Dad always sat and washing dishes in a big dish pan.  I have thought that I was doing that by age 4 and now I have proof of that but I was apparently doing it at age 3 also.  I believe there was no running water to the house at that time so water was carried from the pump above the windmill cistern or the pump close to the house which was rain water from the eave troughs and heated it in a tea kettle on the wood burning/gas kitchen stove..  I think a dish towel was laid beside the dish pan on which to drain the dishes before they were wiped.  Water was brought to the house in 1950 about the time Margelyn was born.  It was a gift from Grandpa and Grandma Groves (I believe) and installed by Shaffners.

I have memories of the Heisingers helping celebrate my 4th birthday but I had thought we had probably gone to their home instead of them coming to our home.  They gave me a plaque with a picture of an elephant on it.  I kept that on the wall and in my possession for many years.  I treasured it but can't remember what happened to it eventually.  I also remember that a man (maybe Merton Sutter or Rev. Alexander) reached into his pants pocket and took out some coins and gave them to me.  Was John Sutter still living in 1948?  If he was, he might have been the one at our house that evening.

Love, Lee

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From Jim,

1.  Thanks for more good input and memories, Lee!

2.  I am just amazed that dad and mom jumped into major hospitality, entertaining within a month of their arrival there!  And to bite off having multiple couples at a time in your home in the winter with no indoor bathroom or running water is a real act of courage and marvelous neighborliness for sure!  Just think, they had to have fed all the cattle and hogs,done the milking and put the milk in the milk house water tank, do all the cooking and get all the kids cleaned up and dressed nice before the guests arrived.  Do you think they had these three couples for supper or just for birthday dessert?  

3.  If they lost so many cattle in the truck during the move, I wonder how they had enough cattle in the barn to keep it warm enough to prevent the water pipes from freezing.  There was no other source of heat in the barn.  

4.  Yes, John Sutter was living then and he and his wife lived on the Sutter place which Merton later took over.  I don't think Merton was even married at that time.  I am almost positive I can remember the occasion when he got married.  John Sutter is the one from their farm who rushed back home from the Minnesota State Fair in August when he read in the morning newspaper in Minneapolis that an airplane had crashed on his farm near Fountain City killing everyone on board.  When he arrived back home he found cars everywhere with hundreds of people swarming over his property.  John Sutter's brother Fred lived on a farm in Eagle valley near the Litcher's.  When Merton got married, he took over the home place and his parents moved into that brick house that looked so much like ours, almost at the end of county road M near where it terminates into highway 95. 

Y'all have a great weekend!!

Jimmy      

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From Bryan Nelson Groves

Nice to be learning more about the family history and dynamics growing up, to see you all having so much fun as you stroll Memory Lane, & especially to see my Dad sign off “Jimmy.”  

Love,

Bryan 

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Thus ends a few days of email conversation for the Groves' siblings.