Ed's Day Wednesday
Dear FOLKS,
Each Wednesday I continue to share family information that was provided by my late cousin Edwin J. Ostrom. We now focus on stories and anecdotes regarding Ed's maternal grandparents, Reinert Immanuel Emerson and his wife Dora Elisa Nilson. We have learned of the records found for Reinert that I wrote as a report. You can see this report by clicking here. Then last week I shared the memories of their oldest daughter, Ruby. You can see her story by clicking here.
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| IMAGE: Newlyweds Geneva Emerson and Martin Meyers (ca. 1924). Photograph from the family collection of Edwin J. Ostrom. |
This week I will begin the stories that Reinert and Dora Emerson's third child has left for us to enjoy. She was Geneva Pernella Emerson (1903-2009), who lived to be 105 years old. The set of stories and anecdotes we have from Geneva were created in 2000 and revised in 2007. Geneva shares her memories about each member of the Emerson household, herself included. It a longer post than I like to publish, but seemed wrong to break up the family unit into multiple installments.
Dad
– Pa and Papa.
Dad was rather quiet around the house. But when neighbors came in,
there was politics. He was always predicting a revolution. When I was quite
small, we had a team of oxen and one was named ‘Jim Hill.’ Seems there was an
industrialist or railroad magnate by that name. A big tycoon. Any man smoking a
cigar was ‘a big biz’ for Big Business or a ‘big Bug.
He allowed us much freedom. Seldom did he punish or scold us. He was lavish
with praise for our work. He would tell Mom, in my presence, how well I had
done at some job and the result was that I would strive more diligently to do
better.
Dad liked to see us have fun and told us about the sled on the end of a
stationary pole in the ice with which they had so much fun as boys. So we put
one in on the ‘Kettle,’ our special slough in our special north pasture, and
the young people for miles around would come there to skate and play. Dad so
often said that young people didn’t know how to have fun anymore. He would say,
“Now when I was a boy----.” Once, when he had to go to Canada, he brought back
with him a small .22 caliber rifle and gave it to me. It was my most cherished
possession for many years.
I asked him one day if I could drive the Overland to the house. His
reply was “Well, do you know how?” That was Dad for you and that was permission
enough for me. I had never driven a car and I took off with that Overland like
a jet propelled missal and missed the corner of the garage by a hair.
Mother - Ma and Mamma.
How Mama kept her sweet disposition, patience, good humor and courage
in that small, crowded house so full of wild Indians is hard to understand. We
were always hungry. It was always, “Mama, where are my overshoes, I’ve lost one
of my mittens, I can’t find my stockings,” and so on all day. She raised
chickens in the spring, gardened all summer, sewed all winter and disciplined
and guided her children daily.
She was always working so one day when she offered to race a few of us
children to the slough behind the barn I felt very superior and was entirely
contemptuous of her capacity to run. I thought she was an old woman (anyone
over twenty-one was ancient). So when she passed us up like a fleeing deer I
just stopped dead in my tracks with my mouth hanging open in surprised shock.
As a result she soared in my estimation. She was not just a slaving Mother
anymore. She was a human being. She could run!
One day she called us ‘fordervale onge’ (and you should hear that
ejaculated by a Norwegian) I became all perturbed because I thought she was
being profane. Now doesn’t that word ‘fordervale’ sound like profanity to you?
#1 Ruby - Shortie or Stubby.
Ruby was a voluptuous girl and was so popular with the males. The
bachelors and young men all were drawn to her irresistibly. Guess she had that
elusive something called ‘It’ or ‘Umph’ or whatever. She insisted on my going with
her on so many of her dates. I enjoyed going until I became suspicious that I
was being considered a ‘Tag Along.’ I balked and Ruby resorted to coaxing and
cajoling until I usually gave in grudgingly.
She was an ambitious girl, I mean that she was a hard worker like the
Nelson side of the family. Mom had a helper there. How anyone could have the
push to clean that crowded upstairs, putting doilies on our box dressing table
and keeping the rugs dusted and the floor swept, I cannot yet understand. But she
would make that crowded space look lovely and how I admired both her and the
upstairs when she had it all fixed up. Then she would order all the children to
stay away from there so it would stay nice. Mom didn’t know whether she
preferred her severeness with the children in order to keep the house in order
or my content with a disordered house and resultant congeniality with the
children in their need for room to play.
We, Ruby and I, shared the work in the house. We shared washing and
scrubbing the kitchen floor. She took the hard side and I the easy one. We
always mixed play with it all. Once we were washing each other's face with
floor rags before we had finished that job.
One winter evening after supper the rest of the family would retire to
the front room while Ruby and I remained in the kitchen to wash the dishes. We
would take a chair and reach into the forbidden recesses on the top cupboard
and get two loaves of sugar. Then we’d take a glass of water each and sit
dunking them and sucking out the water until the sugar crumbled. The loaf sugar
in those days could take it and would last an appreciable time. We were never
discovered at this ritual.
Ruby always got homesick when she was away from home and she felt that
I wasn’t quite decent when I didn’t suffer the same malady. She loved beautiful
high-heeled shoes. She bought them when I was certain she couldn’t afford them
and I felt she was being very extravagant. Extravagance was as wicked as
laziness.
Ruby and I slept together and in the winter time she read ‘Dime Novels’
by the light of a kerosene lamp. Considered very trashy in those days and more
or less forbidden by parents, I tried reading them too but was too much of a
sleepy head.
We learned to play rummy with playing cards from a neighbor boy and
were playing rummy upstairs one afternoon, very secret, very quietly, when Mama
descended upon us and our wickedness and in righteous wrath destroyed the deck
of cards. Playing cards were forbidden; works of the devil, tools for gambling
they were. We had to be satisfied with cards such as; Flinch, Pit, Touring etc.
We knew then that our strategy of being quiet was our error and that if we had
been noisy like we were when sucking our sugar lumps Mama wouldn’t have been
suspicious.
#2 James.
James was my most intimate pal as a child. We exchanged many a
confidence. I was always a Tomboy and preferred working in the fields and the
barns to any work indoors and since Ruby was such an efficient and capable
helper in the house I was often released for working with the men. James and I
used to race each other shocking grain, running between the rows and once when
a storm was brewing how we rushed to get the bundles up before the rain
started.
Then there are the two Earned spankings he got from Dad. One summer for
some special misbehavior (specific character forgotten) Dad spanked him. A rare
occurrence in our family and although I had hoped so that he would be punished
I felt so badly at its fruition that I was out sympathizing with him, patting
him on the shoulder and saying, ‘Poor James.’ Another time we were playing some
card game on the kitchen table in the winter time. James was supposed to fill the
coal pails in the coal shanty when he decided to show his contempt for orders
by pulling tablecloth, cards and dishes on the floor. For that he had another
spanking. We have always maintained that James got his spanking just when he
needed them thus establishing Dad as a shrewd Disciplinarian. Relative to this
event is the fact that there were no broken dishes. Unbreakable dishes had
become indispensable to the growing firm of our family long before.
When James fainted three days in succession in physiology class-- even
I was suspicious that he was employing artifice and must have a secret dark
blue hate for that subject. Time proved however, that they were only
coincidental physiological phenomena and not psychological strategy.
#3 Geneva - Fattie.
Papa called me Fattie, Faita, Fluurie. Shortened to Fattie when I was
older. I thought my middle name ‘Pernella’ was a cow’s name because we had a
cow named “Manilla.’ Washing dishes, peeling potatoes and tending babies were
endless jobs. I loved to read and discovered I could do many jobs and read
simultaneously. I’d run the washing machine without rest because I could
transfer the book to the hand I wasn’t using on the job. Herding, which was
hated by most of the children, gave me a grand opportunity with ‘Little Women.’
Going to town was a thrilling adventure (I was always lost in even our
one-horse towns) and I was always poignantly aware of being a hayseed, as
farmers were called in those days.
#4 Lola.
Lola was an orphan. I was always coupled with either Ruby or James.
William and Ole were always together. So she was a lone wolf. I remember most
vividly her beautiful white teeth and lovely nose.
Then she saved me from having a broken leg. One year working in haying
I was running the Bull rake driving Molly and Dean. I was swinging my right leg
when I hit a bump with the one wheel under the seat and it began to pivot
catching my foot in the spokes. The horses wouldn’t stop so the wheel kept
turning and when I yelled ‘My leg!!’ Lola ran and jerked my foot out. ‘My
heroine.’ I couldn’t understand why the horses didn’t stop. Dad explained to me
that Molly and Dean wouldn’t stop as long as one pulled on the lines. With them
you had to slacken the lines when you hollered ‘Whoa.’ Now, isn’t that silly,
why couldn’t they be like the rest of the horses?
#5 William - Later in life, Bill.
William always walked so straight and was neat. He was the only one, I
think, with an uncontrollable temper in our family. If a cow hit his face while
switching for flies while he was milking he would pick up his milk stool and
hit her with it. We thought that was terribly cruel. But we would tease him
also to see his temper flare. I remember teasing him once until he made a dash
for me and got his thumb or finger in my mouth and tore the skin loose from the
roof of my mouth. I neither complained or protested as I felt I deserved the
attack.
Once when I was home from high school he destroyed my box of face
powder so that I couldn’t continue my wicked sin of using make-up. A girl using
lipstick was a ‘Hussey’ and very shameless. He was very righteously indignant
about that box of face powder.
# 6 Ole.
Ole was careless and slouchy and very good natured. Carried himself
loosely. His shirts were always escaping his trousers and his clothes were
always torn. The visor of his cap was always bent out of shape.
The Boys #5 & #6.
William and Ole are remembered mostly together and not as individuals
and were called ‘The Boys.’ They walked to and from the barn so often with
their arms around each other. People often mistook them for twins. James and I
witnessed a fight between them once. Exciting and forbidden. We were expected
to stop fights but the temptation to watch was too overpoweringly fascinating.
Ole started it and hit William first. After that he walked up to William and
took the hit every time, finally being knocked down and bleeding.
I believe William felt worse about Ole being the loser than Ole did.
Less than half an hour later they were walking along with their arms around
each other.
When haying the boys would talk politics and the conversation for
preaching was punctuated with ‘That Big Biz’ and ‘Those Big Bugs.’
#7 Alice.
Seems that I remember Alice most vividly as a member of the children’s
band. Pots and Pans. Marching in a straight line barefooted. Certain of her
dresses and her hair. Then of course, there was the highlighted event of her
requiring the services of a frightening and mysteriously dangerous doctor to
sew up her cut lip. She was quite a baby when she fell downstairs, cut quite a
long gash thru her cheek and the side of her mouth. How important she became.
Occurred in the evening and the doctor couldn’t be gotten until the next day
and then he had to be gone after with horses 14 miles distant. She got thru the
night OK but the next morning while eating she slid the spoon right into the
cut and had us all staring at her, some horrible qualms.
But the doctor being an unknown factor in our life filled us with
trepidation. We felt that his arrival boded ill and all the while he was in the
house, Ruby, Lola and I spent our time up on the top of the haystack by the
barn praying for Alice to live thru the ordeal. When we finally entered the
house so apprehensively, to find her happy, bandaged and smiling, how we
showered her with affection. We had to let her see her bandaged cheek in the
mirror at which discovery she promptly tore it off and we were scolded for not
being more sensible.
#8 Ray.
Ray had such a charming way of excusing his misdemeanors that he was
always escaping punishment.
He came in one day to ask Dad’s permission to build a contraption for
his little wagon to facilitate the hauling of manure. Must have been an off-day
for Dad as he stopped Ray with a flat “No” before he could begin his request.
Ray kept shifting from one foot to the other and tried a few approaches before
the quick “No” sent him out defeated. I thought Ray’s idea was so clever and
felt Dad was being so unreasonable not to give him a hearing.
#9 Estella - Tootsey.
Toots, like Alice, is a member of the band. Remember a dress and
bare-feet and her ‘dutch’ bob. Also that she went thru a stage when she became
so extremely animated when we had company. Neighbor children coming to play
were company in those days. She would chatter and giggle and put on an act
until they left. We scolded her at first and then left her alone and the phase
was soon over. But of outstanding import is the name ‘Tootsey’ She was named
Estella. We, and I think the "we" is probably Ruby and I, decided to call her
Tootsey. The name was to be our magic formula for keeping her the last baby to
come to our house. When over two years passed and she was still the baby we
were assured that Tootsey was potent magic indeed.
When Toots was the baby, Mom made a trip to Minnesota to visit family, taking
her along. When they returned home they had a ride with a neighbor and came
walking from the highway. We saw them and made a quick exodus from the house
and ran to meet them.
We all had to take turns carrying Toots part of the way and she kept
pointing to things and saying “See.” It was her first word and we thought she
was so grand and lovely and we loved her so. We always loved the babies.
#10 Oliver.
How I adored Oliver. He was different from the other boys. So beautiful
and darling. One day he was playing in the coal pail getting himself all dirty
and I spoke to him harshly, saying “Oliver, you naughty boy.” Harsh words to
the youngsters were so unusual. I thought he would cry. When, instead, he
looked at me with his beautiful eyes and said, “I’m ain’t a boy Neva, I’m a
goil,” I thought nothing more charming had occurred in this world.
#11 Ivene.
Seems I was away at school at her event. I came home when Ivene was
sitting in the high chair and Mother said, “Geneva, don’t you think she is
pretty?” I replied, “No, she looks like the Johnson kids.” I was surprised we
had a baby in our house that wasn’t pretty.
Ivene also had a dutch bob, straight blond hair and was a lovely girl
when past the baby stage. Mom made a red coat for her to play in. Later she had
a square-necked dress buttoned down the side in the back in which she was
adorable.
Oliver and Ivene.
They go together as William and Ole did. They played together
constantly and Ivene ordered Oliver around. She would have him get her shoes
saying she couldn’t find them and when she was so slow getting dressed to go
outdoors, she would want him to wait for her while he stood restlessly by the
door. Unless she said, “Oh Oliver, you can go,” he waited.
#12 & 13 Verola and Vivian -- Twins.
We were tired of babies. The twins were born during my vacation and at
night. Dad, Ruby and I sat in the kitchen. Mrs. Peterson (midwife) walked in
and handed Ruby a baby girl, went back to Mom and after a while came and gave
me another girl. What a thrilling, exciting, wonderful event. Seems we were
just tired of one baby at a time. Ruby and I took care of them and bathed them
their first bath that night. They were so strong and lovely. Believe me, Ruby
took care of hers and I of mine, being careful to always get our own special
one. Verola was Ruby’s and Vivian was mine. They were known for the longest
time as Ruby’s baby and Geneva’s baby. My baby had a little distinguishing mark
by one ear and that is the way we told them apart for a long time. How wounded
we were when we met James at a dance when the twins were about a week old and
so gaily said to him, “Bet you can’t guess what we have at our house?” when he
so disgustingly answered “Twins.!” We felt he should think it was as wonderful
as we did.
When they were quite small they strummed the guitar and sang. We
finally depended on them to amuse all and sundry who came to our house. When
they tired at entertaining they would both crawl on Mom’s lap and into her arms
and we learned to expect no more from them after that. How my heart burst with
pride and love for those twins.
Twins were Mom’s magic formula for putting an end to the babies coming
to our house. Now you have to admit that was a grand finale.
Generalizations Remembered….
Washing clothes in the winter time. Bringing all the paraphernalia into
our small kitchen the night before. Family eating in relays because of
minimized table space. Ruby and I taking turns hanging the clothes out to
freeze hard as boards on the line and running in constantly to keep our fingers
from doing the same.
Even more disturbing were the times Mamma painted the floor when we had
only one room. The inconvenience and extra work of eating, sleeping, and living
through that operation was stupendous. I was very unhappy then and out of
patience with my Mother for feeling that the job was necessary.
Seems that all the family, excepting Papa, like to sing. We sang a lot
and favored morbid songs such as: ‘The Dying Cowboy,’ ‘The Letter Edged in
Black,’ ‘Tell Mother I’ll Be There,’ ‘In a Lonely Graveyard,’ and an
interminable song about a young man’s murder of his sweetheart.
Telling ‘Ghost Stories’ was a past-time on many winter evenings. ‘The
headless man knocking at the church door,’ ‘The ghost lady entering a room
filled with people and telling them to search for her baby’s body in a certain
well.’ The supply and variety of the Ghost Stories was never exhausted.
I think the ‘Mad Dog’ stories frightened me more. I became so
frightened listening to the recounting of the actual case of the mad dog
running the streets in Minot biting people that I pulled my feet up under me in
the chair so that my legs wouldn’t get nipped during the telling. It took
courage to leave my chair afterward.
Stories about Catholicism were passed down the generations with the
ghost experiences. Catholicism was filled with monstrous evils. The priests
taking advantage of superstitions and ignorance and bleeding poor widows of
their last pennies to buy their husbands out of purgatory.
Mother sent for International Sunday School Books for the different age
groups and we were disciplined to study our lessons before the end of Saturday
and a Sunday School Class was conducted around the kitchen table on Sunday. It
was not easy for Mom but I only remember James becoming openly rebellious and
refusing to take part.
Taking over our new barn for our play, using the lightning cords for
the purpose of getting to the top of the barn and then walking the gable for
the entertainment of those below. Using the sling ropes and rods for climbing
and swinging. We finally had perfected a number of performances and called the
result ‘The Emerson Circus.’ During the first World War we entertained the Red
Cross meeting with the ‘Emerson Circus,’ seating the audience in the horse
barn. William and Tootsey were the stars, being capable of the most difficult
and dangerous feats.
Playing tag, grabbing the sling ropes from the top of the horse barn
and sliding on them to the ground. The rope burned our hands but facilitated a
speedy escape from the pursuer. Finally all this mass attack on the barn proved
too drastic for its bracing and its appearance became disreputable.
Three miles from home was Rice Lake. Lakes were rare and trees grew by
this lake. Trees were also a rarity. Our home at the time stood stark naked on
a little hill. So did our neighbor’s houses. Rice Lake was a strong attraction
for us all and we went there often on Sundays. To our folks, as to us, it was a
lovely place for diversion. But to some of our neighbors it was a place of
iniquity and sin and they wouldn’t allow their children to go there. Seems that
anything that smacked of beauty or pleasure was a sin to some people.
There were no restrictions on us riding horseback except that we couldn’t
use the working horses on their work days as it was too hard on them. How we
all loved horseback riding: one of the things we missed most when we left
home.
When one of us would become a patient as the result of some injury and
Mother would put us in the rocking chair and wrap a quilt around us, what a
place of honor that was. The well ones standing around so jealously regarding
the one so pampered.
I’m sure that a psychoanalyst could not place the blame for any of our
idiosyncrasies on childhood repressions. The following are some of my memories:
1) Filling coal pails in the coal shed.
2) Emptying the slop jar.
3) Cleaning out the back house
4) Going to the warm horse or cow barn in the winter time rather than
sit in the icy back house.
5) The hateful job of washing the lamp chimneys with their soot.
6) Forever carrying water.
7) The snow coming under the kitchen door and under the upstairs
window.
8) Rubbing the younger ones legs when they had leg aches.
9) The courage it took to get out of a warm bed upstairs in the winter
time and the speed we used grabbing our clothes and getting downstairs by the heater to dress.
10) What a magnet that heating stove in the front room was all winter
long.
11) Christmas Fooling. [very similar to Halloween; while in costume knocking on neighbor's door for candy treats, but occurring between Christmas and New Year's. Usually children of Scandinavian descent.]
12) The Halloween James got cut so badly in Nelson’s barbed-wire fence.
13) The horses ‘Homer & Charlie,’ ‘Nellie’ and the mule ‘Scotty.’
14) The cows ‘Cuba, Rosie and Daisy,’ and the old horse barn.
15) Filling the barrels with slough water and pulling them to the house
on the stone boat.
16) Mother breaking the water from the well with lye for washing.
17) The flies-the trillions of flies and the smudges to milk by.
18) The flying ants (and our name for them.)
19) Schocking barley and getting the beards in our clothes.
20) How many tines got broken on the bull rake.
21) Helping Dad hold the sickle when he sharpened it on the grind
stone.
22) Trying to make a bull's eye shooting streams of milk toward each
other's mouth while milking and the resulting milk baths.
23) Our economy with cream and eggs because they were cash products.
24) Putting eggs down in water glass.
25) Bread baking and all the bread we consumed when we came home from
school.
26) Potato cakes with syrup and fried pork.
27) Hateful job of churning and working the butter.
28) The old schoolhouse and the new one in our north pasture.
29) Killing the snakes around the Kettle.
30) Making sails of our coats and having the wind propel us on ice
skates.
31) The hammock made of barrel staves in our grove (Two rows of
cottonwood trees) The black worms on the willows and those large many-legged
tomato worms.
32) Picking mustard out of the grain fields.
33) Minnie Sword riding side-saddle over the hills.
34) The games we played, the singing ones and the ones with tricks.
35) Threshing time.
36) Washing diapers.
37) Eating carrots out of the garden.
38) The wind always blowing and the blizzards.
39) Visiting Olsons’ at Berthold and Aunt Ida’s cooking. [Note.
Aunt Ida is Reinert’s sister, Ida Malene Emerson. She married Paul Olson in
1896. Berthold, ND is in Ward County, northwest area.]
40) Pete Lundberg and his dog ‘Sport.’
41) Altman and the frosted cookies.
42) Reading the funny papers on the walls and ceilings of Pete
Lundberg’s shack.
43) Papering our kitchen with newspapers.
44) Uncle Josh’s records on the phonograph.
45) Our ‘city-girl’ teacher from St. Paul who was afraid of Coyotes.
46) The skunk in the cellar and the ensuing excitement and smell.
47) Banking the house with manure in the fall and putting on the storm
windows.
48) Butchering and its mess.
49) Trapping and skinning muskrats and stretching the hides.
50) Mrs. Pete Jacobsen playing the organ and singing, ‘Darling Nellie
Gray.’
51) Our herding horse ‘Prince.’
52) Our post offices---Pitts, Grelland, and Drady.
53) State examination for eighth-grade graduation.
54) Mrs. Albert Peterson mid-wifing at our house.
Geneva's story ends....
I want to thank those who worked to bring us Geneva's story. It is appreciated that her memoirs have been made available for those of us to learn what life on the plains of North Dakota was like for those that were there to live it.
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