Burr Oak general store

When I was about twelve my father's mother left the hospital kitchen and moved back to Burr Oak, having purchased one of the two general stores there. It came with a bit of property which was mostly grass with a stream running through it and rose bushes and other flowers along the north and west sides of the yard. There was also a little bridge over the stream. Somewhere I have a photo of Sandy trotting across this bridge. The west side had taller trees and the lawn was always shady with the store building on the east and the trees on the west. Midday we could play on the grass on the north side of the store. On the east side of the store was the highway and the main entrance by way of an open porch complete with benches for idlers in good weather. On the south side of the store was a gravel back road leading out to farms and the outside stairs up to the apartment over the store. The apartment had normal eight- or ten-foot ceilings, but the store's ceiling was two stories high, at least sixteen feet, maybe twenty. There was a sliding ladder on wheels that ran along the north wall where the hardware was. They kept the bins of nuts and nails and washers and stuff like that up high on that wall. It was my job to inventory those things every year between Christmas and New Year's Day, along with my family counting everything in the store. About two-thirds of the way to the back of the store there was a wood stove with chairs around it where some of the men would hang out and gossip in the winter when there was little to do on their farms. I remember the fuss when Gramma got in some little shopping carts that people could use instead of the baskets. She was hoping it would help people buy more stuff--and it did--once they got used to the idea. Every afternoon when we were there Gramma would ask us what we wanted for supper and we would just go get whatever it was right from the store and take it upstairs to cook. In 1971 when my parents moved to Lake Havasu City, AZ, Gramma sold the store and went with them.

Aunt Carol

I mentioned my Aunt Carol in my last post and so I decided that this is a good time to tell you what I remember of her. She was my father's only sibling. She was born two years, one month and one day after he was (March 3, 1929). I don't know a lot about her, except that she was not very domestic and was more adventurous than most girls. For one thing, when she was old enough to drive, she could not afford to buy a car, so she got a motorcycle. It was just barely acceptable at that time for a girl to ride behind a man on a motorcycle. It was not acceptable for a girl to purchase and drive her own motorcycle. But that is what she did. She also worked her way through college and medical school. She qualified as a doctor--not a nurse, but a doctor--when I was about four years old. That was the early fifties and there were not many women doctors back then. Unfortunately, it was about then that she married Uncle Bill Battersby who was the son of maybe the richest people in Rochester, MN at the time and so she never did actually set up in the practice of medicine. I was in the Battersbys' home a couple of times that summer and it made a big impression on me. The estate--and I do mean estate--was located at the top of a cliff above the river that ran through the town. (It seems like every town had a river running through it.) There were wonderful views of the valley below. The house was huge with the double staircase curving up from the foyer like you see in the movies. A pair of fawn Great Danes patrolled the grounds outside the mansion and a pair of red Smooth Miniature Dachshunds had the run of the inside of the house. There was parking near the house, but the garages were beyond the tennis courts back near the stables and kennels. There were all kinds of bird dogs in the kennels and horses used for hunting as well as pleasure mounts in the stables. Soon after Aunt Carol married Uncle Bill, they became Jehovah's Witnesses and they worked full time for that organization and donated all they had to it when Bill inherited his parents' estate. They never had any children, but I think that was by choice since children would have interfered with their travel and missionary work. Poor Gramma! Her only son became a Mormon and her only daughter became a Jehovah's Witness so she did not dare to go to church anywhere! I was often told that I was very like my Aunt Carol and even talked like her and used the same gestures. I could not have learned those things from her because I saw very little of her while I was growing up. She was always very nice to us, but of course Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe in recognizing birthdays or celebrating Christmas or anything like that. And they were very busy with their missionary work and traveling all over the world for that. She was devoted to her mother and phoned and wrote to her often and sent her random gifts. That was how we got our news of her, usually. I wish I had made more of an effort to get to know Aunt Carol, even if it had to be through the mail. Uncle Bill was nice, too, but seemed an awful Caspar Milquetoast for someone like my Aunt Carol. Still, he had the handicap of being born with a silver spoon in his mouth. It's bound to slow a man down!

Visiting Gramma Reed

I was always glad to take the northernmost route, the one to Rochester and my father's mother's apartment. It was very small and narrow, like a single-wide house trailer. The front door opened into the living room which might have been eight by ten feet. Then there was a galley kitchen opposite the bathroom. Two people could just barely pass in the hallway that led to her bedroom. It seemed odd to me that there was a door to the outside in the bedroom. I suppose it was for fire safety. She must have had a sofa sleeper in the living room for my parents and Missy (Merry) slept either with them or in the bathtub. (She had a problem with bedwetting until she was six or so.) It was all padded with quilts, etc. and looked cozy. Sue and I slept in Gramma's bed with her.

To help us fall asleep, she would tell us stories about our father when he was a boy. That was how I learned about Growler, the smartest dog ever. He played hide and seek, even waiting until they called out, "Ready!" Then he would go find them. He was a small black shaggy dog, but big enough to be useful on the farm. I don't remember any other stories, but I know there were lots of them. Maybe that was where I heard about how my father was so ill as a boy. He had scarlet fever when he was seven or eight and it took months for him to get well. Gramma taught him to crochet, knit and make rag rugs to keep him occupied while he recuperated. One spring day when the weather was finally warm enough, she put him out on the front lawn near the gravel road that ran between Burr Oak and Decorah so he could get some sun and watch whatever traffic there might be. Well, a circus had gotten off the train a little ways north of Burr Oak and was walking into Decorah a few miles away. When the ringmaster who was leading the parade saw little Glen in the chair with the blanket over his lap, he stopped everyone and had those acts that could perform in the road put on a little show just for him! So he got to see the liberty horses and the trick dogs and the clowns and the acrobats and even the elephants. He saw the lions and tigers in their cages on wheels pulled by brave horses. It was quite the memorable day!

There was not a lot for us girls to do at Gramma Reed's place, but there was a little neighborhood store just across the alley that ran along the south side of the building. Stores like that have mostly been replaced by 7-11s and Mavericks. They were about that size, but were not standardized. Each was unique, according to the ideas of the people, usually a married couple, who owned and ran them. This one had mostly food items (Twinkies were my favorite.), but also carried school and office supplies and gifts. Among the gifts were china figurines, including horses. One day when my father's sister, Carol, was also visiting I was given some spending money. I took it straight to the store to choose a new horse. Well, they did not have any horses I liked that day, so I bought a donkey. It was really cute, dark brown with a mane and tail tassel made of some black feathery stuff. When I got back to the apartment, Aunt Carol asked me what I was going to name it. I replied, "Well, I don't have any named Carol yet." Somehow my parents did not think it was a good idea to name my new donkey after my aunt! So I called it Kerry, deciding it must be an Irish donkey.

The apartment building was on a busy street, just a gas station away from an even busier one, so we were not allowed to go any further than the store or the gas station. But Gramma kept books and games for us, so we did not get too bored. We never stayed longer than a day or so and I really enjoyed listening to the grownups talk. They would often forget that I was quietly listening in the corner and I would hear very interesting stuff!

One year when I was very little Easter fell on my birthday and Gramma made a lamb cake to celebrate both. She must have had a mold and it looked just like a lamb lying down in a bed of Easter grass with shredded coconut all over it to look like wool. I did not want them to cut into it, but of course they did. It did taste good, but it was a shame to spoil the lamb.

Three Possible Routes

Once across the Mississippi River and in the state of Minnesota, there were three possible routes we could take, depending on where we were headed. We could go northwest to Rochester where my father’s mother lived until she retired and moved back to Burr Oak, IA where my father had grown up. My father’s sister Carol also lived in Rochester, up high on the bluff above the town on an estate owned by her husband’s family. We could go “due west” to Lanesboro where Aunt Norma and Uncle Ray lived. Her mother, my father’s father’s mother, lived across the street in a sort of nursing home until I was around twelve. Or we could go southwest to Albert Lea where the farm was where my mother’s parents lived. Her brothers also lived in or near Albert Lea.

The way to Rochester looked much like the rolling farm country of Wisconsin, with the addition of vegetable crops to the corn, other grains, alfalfa and dairy cows. We knew we were getting close to Rochester when we passed the water towers that were painted to look like tomatoes and ears of corn. These were for Green Giant factories where they canned various vegetables grown in the area. Different ones were packed at different times of the year. Sometimes we drove by when they were canning peas. Peas were “picked” commercially by pulling up the stems and all and then the peas were separated out at the factory. The stems, leaves and pods would be piled up two or three stories high outside the factory and stank to high heaven! I think they were collected and used to make fertilizer or something, but in the meantime, even driving past with the windows closed was an ordeal. It took several minutes to pass all the buildings with the piles outside and it was not possible to hold one’s breath the whole time. But we tried. Rochester itself had about the same population as Appleton, but it had a lot more tall buildings which we could see for many miles before we actually arrived. They were all hospitals. The downtown was full of hospitals, and the Mayo Clinic, which were the major industry of the town. The Mayo doctors would diagnose patients’ ailments and then the hospitals in town would try to cure them. My grandmother worked in the kitchen of the Worrell Methodist Hospital for many years. She was in charge of the kitchen before she retired. (3/18/09 I just discovered that if you Google Rochester, MN you can find photos of the corn water tower and of Lanesboro.)

The road to Lanesboro was the most winding for the longest distance of any road I have ever been on. It seemed like it was going one direction and then it would sort of shake itself and go the other way! The west side of the Mississippi Valley was filled with steep hills with little valleys between cut through by streams. Lanesboro was located on the Root River which was small and very twisting. We girls would try to count how many times the highway crossed over the river, but the number was so high that we always lost count. Lanesboro was a charming little village with a downtown about two blocks long. Uncle Ray’s dental office was located over a store across the street from the lawyer’s office which was located over another store. Their names and professions were painted on the windows in black with gold highlights. They were both the only one of their professions in the town. There were only two churches, the Methodist where Aunt Norma played the organ and the Lutheran one. (3/18/09 The downtown looks just the same in the Google photos as it did then.)

The highway to Albert Lea ran through more excellent farmland. We arrived at the town from the northeast, drove right on through the downtown, and out again on the highway heading south. Then we turned off onto a gravel road with a few curves and corners and when we saw the little one-room schoolhouse, we turned east onto the driveway right beside it.

Across Wisconsin by Car

You may be wondering why there are so many French names in Wisconsin. While the western parts of the United States were explored mainly by Spanish conquistadores or Spanish priests, the eastern parts and the Midwest were explored by the French. Wisconsin was the domain of “Marquette et Joliet” which are names that were repeated over and over in my grade school years. One of them was a trapper and the other was a priest, but I am no longer certain which was which. For the most part, the early names were either Indian (spelled in French phonetics) or French in origin. Later on, when the region was becoming properly settled, names were English.

The first little town we came to after turning west at Oshkosh and going through Lake Butte Des Morts was Omro. After a while there was Redgranite. Then came Wautoma, which we never called by its proper name. We called it “Blue Stools Town” because of the little café where we often stopped for a piece of pie (and a potty break). Most cafes and diners of the time were decorated in black and white with red trim. So the benches in the booths, the chairs at the tables and the stools at the lunch counters were upholstered in either black or red vinyl. But this little diner was different. I do not remember its real name—something like Dan’s Diner or Flo’s Café, probably—because we just called it Blue Stools because its vinyl was sky blue. We never knew why that was so, but we girls found it enchanting. Our parents always preferred to sit in a booth, but we girls always wanted to sit up at the counter on the tall stools. We usually won. (There were three of us and only two parents.) Thus fortified with pie and milk, we proceeded through Coloma, Necedah, and Wyeville.

Wyeville was the smallest place of the whole journey. There was literally nothing there but a train depot in the middle of a large clearing in the forest. (The middle of the state was pretty much all forest, with the farms on the east and west sides of the state.) I have anxious memories of that train depot. One summer day when I was about ten, Sue maybe eight and Merry only four, we girls were put on a train to go to Minnesota by ourselves. We had to change trains at Wyeville. There was about a half hour between trains and I was extremely stressed out trying to keep my sisters close by and safe until we got on the next train. There was no one around but us. We did all survive, though I was very glad to hand over responsibility to adults when we arrived in Albert Lea!

When driving, we next came to Tomah and then Camp McCoy. Camp McCoy—now Fort McCoy—was something like Camp Williams, only much larger. (It is larger still today.) It was in the middle of the forest part with this one highway running through the middle of it. Every so often there were gravel crossroads and sometimes you could see barracks or other buildings a little way up the road, always to the north, but mostly it was just trees with fences and signs against trespassing, etc. It was boring and sort of scary, if you know what I mean. Once in a while we would happen upon a CONVOY. This would make my father extremely frustrated. You have to understand how my father drove. It was as though he were in a race. He would speed up and up until there was something in front of him that he could not pass and he would have to slow down. After a while it would be clear to pass and away we would go full tilt again! Well, convoys were required to maintain a very slow speed, for no reason we could see, and they were so long and the vehicles so close together that it was impossible to pass. So my poor father would have to drive SLOWLY for miles and miles until the convoy got to the crossroad where they left the highway. He did not usually keep his temper. We would then drive very fast indeed!

Soon after that we would pass Roche a Cri State Park. (Roche a Cri is French for Crying Rock.) One summer we camped there with some friends of my parents. My family arrived first and drove around looking for a good spot to pitch our tents. There was a lovely place with a big tree or two and ferns and things all around. We did not understand why no one else had taken this choice spot, but figured it was our good luck. A couple days later, when our friends came, we found out why. Some of the brush around the campsite was poison ivy! No one in our family had any problem with it, but our friends insisted that we move to another campsite. Apparently, it is an allergy and my family did not have it.

Another landmark in this area was Ship Rock. This was a huge rock left standing after the glaciers scoured off most of it in the area. It was about the size of the RCA Building, but all jagged and ragged, of course. Someone must have thought it looked like a ship, though I could never see it. But it was great fun to climb and clamber all over it and it was a wonderful break from riding in the car all day long. There is a part of southwestern Wisconsin that is sort of like Monument Valley, with huge rock outcroppings that the glaciers missed, but you can’t see them as well as in Monument Valley because of all the trees.

The next town was one of the biggest of the journey. Sparta must have been a county seat, I think, because that is where the orphanage was, right along the highway. (Or maybe it was even the state orphanage. I don’t know.) The orphanage looked sort of like my hundred-year-old elementary school multiplied several times over. Inside a very tall chain-link fence there were six or eight buildings around a gravel square with playground equipment in the center. There were other big buildings back behind the square, too. There were “houses” that looked like ordinary homes except that they were way too big. There would have been plenty of room for thirty children in each house. Sometimes there were children playing on the swings and slides and sometimes the place looked deserted. Either way, it looked sad.

After that we came to LaCrosse (French for The Crossing) where we crossed the Mississippi River. LaCrosse was the biggest city of our trip and had many interesting features. There was a small factory where they made giant fiberglass figures for advertising purposes. In the grassy back lot, which the highway bordered, they kept the mistakes and broken items. There were life-sized horses and cows, and way more than life-sized lumberjacks, jumping trout, chickens, etc. Many of these figures were twelve to twenty feet tall. LaCrosse also had a large cemetery. You might wonder why that was of interest to a little girl. Well, for reasons which escape me now, Sue and I had to hold our breath whenever we passed a cemetery. This was no problem with most of the ones we passed because they were only as big as a house lot or maybe a city block. But the one in LaCrosse was huge! It stretched for several city blocks. Usually, we could manage to hold our breath for that long, unless the traffic light right in the middle was red. Sue never could last when we had to wait at the light. Often I could, but not always. She generally accused me of cheating when I could hold my breath longer than she could, but I didn’t, really! She just hated me to best her in anything, but I was older and sometimes could do stuff she couldn’t. Another place of interest in LaCrosse was the Big Boy Restaurant where we usually ate lunch. Sometimes we ate after crossing the river at an A & W Root Beer stand where they kept the thick glass mugs in the freezer and the root beer stayed so cold! If the weather was hot, we went there. The Mississippi River itself was one of the most impressive landmarks of the trip. Already that far north the river was huge. It was over a mile across, but it wasn’t just water. There were lots of “needle-shaped” islands in the channels. We would go across a bridge to one and cross it in a few seconds and get on another bridge to reach the next island. There was a wide part on the west side without islands where the bridge was maybe a quarter mile long. Then we would be across into Minnesota. More on that next time!

Our Route to the Relatives

It has been a long time since I posted to this blog. Life got complicated for a while, but things are calmer now.

Since my mother’s reminiscences opened the subject, I intend to continue with my memories of the farm and her parents, starting with our route across Wisconsin and parts of Minnesota. To me as a small child, US Highway 41 started in Green Bay to the north (In actuality, it ran clear up to the northern edge of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on the south shore of Lake Superior.) and continued south to Florida. I do not remember how I learned that it went that far south, but it seemed almost magical to me that you could just stay on that road and eventually reach the point the farthest south and east in the whole country! (Perhaps I-15 seems similarly magical to those who grew up here, leading straight to Disneyland.) It was a freeway, but not part of the Federal Interstate Freeway System. 41 came down southwest from Green Bay and curved due west at the northeast corner of Appleton. When it reached the northwest corner of town it turned south and continued down the west side of Lake Winnebago through Oshkosh half-way down and Fond du Lac (French for bottom of the lake) at the bottom of the lake. Then 41 curved back toward the southeast and went to Milwaukee, about a hundred miles south of Appleton, and then straight south to Chicago. I never took it further south than the 200 miles to Chicago, but I fantasized about going all the way to Florida. Green Bay, Appleton, Oshkosh and Fond du Lac are all about thirty miles apart, following the Fox River and Lake Winnebago. Appleton had three connections to the highway: one at the northeast corner, one due west on College Avenue, the main street, and one at the southwest corner. Usually, Dad took the southwest ramp after cutting across town, since we lived in the northeast part of Appleton.

When we got to Oshkosh, we exited to the west and went through Lake Butte Des Morts (French for hill of the dead). Now you would probably not recognize this as a lake. It was more like a large area of swamp, cattails and reeds interspersed with areas of open water. There must have been a lot of wildlife in there, but the only thing I remember seeing was flocks of red-winged blackbirds. They were the first birds I was aware of with the males looking very different from the females. The males are shiny black with “epaulets” of scarlet edged in yellow. The females, on the other hand, were drab--speckled brown and tan. Sometimes there would be hundreds in the flocks and they would make a racket with their songs and calls. (Of course we usually had the windows open, unless it was cold outside.) Most of the way across Wisconsin was through flat farmland with fields of corn, wheat, oats, barley, soybeans or alfalfa and pastures full of dairy cows, mostly black and white Holsteins, with about ten per cent tan and white Guernseys or pure tan Jerseys. Barns were big and either red or white, with silos and outbuildings around them. My parents said you could tell who wore the pants in the farmer’s family by whether the house or the barn was better maintained. When the barn was in need of paint, watch out for the farmwife!

Next time I will tell about the little towns we drove through. I have researched some of them on the internet and there are even photos of some of them. They look just the same today as they did forty or fifty years ago!

It was kind of a shock to go to the file of my mother's "Random Recollections" last week and realize that they were all used. I had thought that there was at least one more. That is why I did not post anything; I had nothing composed in my head ready. So, I guess it is time to tell about my grandfather and his animals.

Most people know the "tune" to "Here, kitty-kitty-kitty-kitty!" It is a sustained "here" on a relatively high pitch, followed by, usually, four quick "kitty-kitty-kitty-kitty" on a lower pitch. The similar whistle for a dog of four quick lower-pitch tones followed by a two-pitch rising longer tone is known the world over. (I even heard it on a TV program about the dogs of the primitive New Guinea bush people. One of the aboriginal men used it to call his dog.) Those are the only animal calls most people know nowadays. But my grandfather knew others and, I suspect, most other farmers of his day did, also.

Whenever most people appeared in the fields and pastures, any livestock there would run away from them. But my Grampa Thompson could just stand at the gate to the pasture and call, "Shee-eep! Shee-eep! Shee-eep!" on a rising inflection and his sheep would come running to him as fast as they could. (That could be scary to a small child standing next to him.) The hogs would come to "Soo-ey! Pig-pig-pig-pig!" The "soo" syllable was on a middle pitch with the "-ey" much higher and the "pig-pig-pig-pig" the lowest. And the cattle came to "Hey, boss! Hey, boss! Hey, boss!" with the "hey" very high and the "boss" much lower pitched. I suspect that he also had a call for his horses, but they were gone before I could learn it. Perhaps he just called them by their names, but there might have been a traditional horse call, too.

The hog and cow calls are related to their Latin names (suis and bos) and I believe they have been in use at least since Roman times. It is amazing to think of the generations of shepherds and cowherds using the same "tunes" to communicate with their flocks and herds for thousands of years. Probably there were animal calls even before there was Roman language, too.

By the way, my grandfather's sheep were often pastured right next to the fence dividing his farm from the Peterson farm to the south. When the Peterson sheep were near that fence, they did not try to come to my grandfather's call; they knew their own shepherd's voice. He might use the same "tune" but it was not the right voice, so they stayed where they were.