Memories of Cars, Boys, the End of WWI

This is the first automobile Grandma remembered. It belonged to her step father's parents. Here she is inside the car. I am interested in the chains on the tires, which must have helped drive in the sand of southeastern Washington.

Here is my grandfather, Howard Tess, holding a puppy. He was ten years older than Grandma, a veteran of the first world war.

This is my grandmother before her marriage.

But I met my husband while we were in Troy. He even made meals with me. One time when he invited himself to supper all we had was boiled cabbage and potatoes, and I thought that nobody ever would sit down to a meal like that, and pretend they liked it, but he did. He sat down and said it was delicious, although I found out later that he didn’t like that. He didn’t like cabbage at all. He didn’t like chocolate cake either, and I made that for him for a long time.

Carol: He liked spice cake, I know.

Yes, he liked spice cake.

Well, all of a sudden out of the clear blue sky we got a letter saying Dr. Smith was coming home. And for many reasons that I haven’t mentioned here, I did not want to follow his plans for my life. He had plans that I would become his secretary, and he would be my teacher, he would tell me exactly what to do, and he would pick out who I should go with, and who I should marry. And I just couldn’t face the idea of that. So, everybody got together, Howard’s folks and my mother, and it was decided that we would get married. It was a very very hasty affair.

Carol: Where’d you go on your honeymoon?

We went to Chicago on our honeymoon. We were married in Milwaukee, by two ministers, because the one wasn’t, he wasn’t, what do you call it? Ordained. Yes, although he had been out in East Troy, and had been ministering at the church there. He was the one that gave us advice on the sense of matrimony. And he was very nice, and we liked him. So this older preacher was there when we went to be married, in his apartment in Milwaukee, and the older preacher pronounced us man and wife, so we’d be securely married. Which we were for forty-five years. And had two beautiful daughters.

Carol: You moved in, didn’t you, when you were first married, with your in-laws in the other side of the house?

Yes, we did. We lived in, well, it was the living room, two rooms, three rooms, a kitchen and a living room, and a bedroom. And -

Carol: An outhouse out back

Yes, oh yes, the outhouse was out in back. And actually, there was no bathroom, we had to use our in-laws’ bathroom, which was if we wanted to take a bath. Otherwise we went to the place outside. But if we took a bath we had to go next door, and use their bathtub, because we didn’t have such a thing. We had a coal stove for heat and we had a coal stove that we put in storage later and we lost because they sold it while it was in storage and we were young and green and didn’t know enough to make a fuss about it. So we lost that completely when we moved to Elkhorn. It was brand new and our prized possession.

They’re going got ask me some more questions.

Carol: Mother, you told me about how out at the ranch you got around. But I know that you and Grandma didn’t drive, so how did you get around while Grandpa was gone and you were alone?

Well there weren’t even any cars to drive back in those early days. The only car I ever saw was when my stepfather’s brother - I don’t know how he managed to get out there – he got out to the ranch in one of the first cars that was ever built. And it was a wonder on wheels to all of us. Nobody will believe this.

And the first time I rode in a car was in Grandpa Smith’s in Milwaukee, and he had a Pierce Arrow, and he took us for a ride. It was a great big mammoth thing. When you set in the back seat you felt as if you were in the living room. And it was carpeting had had seats that folded down from the front seat so four people could set and face each other and converse. And there was room to put a table in between, if you wanted to. You could even eat a lunch or play cards there. And when he came to us he would get out and light the lights by hand, And we’d chug along at fifteen likes an hour, and Grandma would say, “Oh, you’re going much too fast, much too fast. Slow down, slow down.” Of course there weren’t any cement roads then, It seemed we were going a lot faster, probably, than we were. But we never went very fast. And there weren’t very many cars on the road, because very few people had them at that time.

Carol: Yeah, but how did you and Grandma get around?

When we got out of Troy we didn’t have any transportation of any kind, and we would go with the neighbors who had horses and buggies. And finally somebody lent us a buggy and we found an old broken down horse. And the horse and the buggy were united and we tried to ride that to East Troy. But it was a sad and sorry state and the old mare did not have a good disposition. She was very balky. And she was apt to balk in the middle of the road and we couldn’t move her one way or the other. And she also nipped people.

Carol: Well you didn’t have much luck, You weren’t any child when you learned how to drive a car.

Oh my no.

Carol: How old were you?

Oh my heavens!

Carol: I guess maybe you weren’t that old.. You must have been sixty.

Well I didn’t drive, you know, I never drove. Howard didn’t want me to drive.

Carol: Oh I remember when we were little you trying to learn to drive.

I tried to one time, but he was glad that I didn’t learn because he really didn’t want me to learn how to drive. He liked to be king of the road. Well, I scared myself to death. I pretty near had an accident a couple of times. Howard always kidded me about trying to run the sheriff down in the middle of Elkhorn because he pushed on my radiator and tried to push me back in the intersection.

Carol: I remember another story that was interesting was after the first world war, I guess you were uptown Milwaukee and it was being celebrated.

Oh yes, that was in grade school. Yeah –

Carol: You were probably in high school.

No, I don’t think I was even in high school yet. They threw the talcum power –

Carol: Yeah, tell ‘em about that story..

Well we let out from school when the wonderful news came that the first world war had ended, so of course everyone was on Grand Avenue down Milwaukee , which is now Wisconsin Avenue, but at that time it was Grand Avenue. And the stores were all closed because people were going crazy. They’d go in and loot them and help themselves to anything they wanted. And the clerks couldn’t stop them. The police didn’t stop them. So finally they locked all the doors, nobody could get – so they just wandered up and down the middle of the street, and screamed and yelled and threw things at each other. We got a whole handful of talcum thrown at us, and most of landed in my eyes. I couldn’t see anything, and my eyes were smarting and burning and I had to go home finally. Which was probably a good thing because it went on and on ‘til nearly all night long. It was a tremendous celebration, but there was a lot of damage done. Lot of people hurt.

Figure Drawing

When I graduated from Elkhorn high school (EHS class of 1969) and headed off to the state university twenty mile from the farm where I was raised, I had two ideas in mind. I would either major in English and teach high school students how to love literature and write decent research papers, or I would major in art and teach high school students how to - what? Love art as I did.

I ended up with the English option by default. My freshman intro to art class was held in the basement of a science building on campus, a cement bunker where I was urged to draw with a black marker and not lift it from the page. We also were required to carve blocks of wood into interesting shapes with a set of Exacto blades. After I accidentally drove the blade into the middle joint of my left pointer finger and fainted dead away onto the cement floor, followed by several stitches in said finger, I decided that writing term papers about Shakespearean heroines was easier and safer. I became an English major.

So - I never got to take a figure drawing class. I like drawing people, but my "models" are usually sleeping people at airports or the library, or the beach. I have drawn the back of many heads. I try to draw people quickly in theaters, coffee shops, whatever I can. But once spotted, people either become nervous or self-conscious and it's over.

I thought I had the answer this summer when I read about a summer figure drawing class in Madison. I had looked at these classes before, but the driving and the timing concerned me. I live 40 miles from the UW Madison campus, and most classes ran until 10:00 PM, which meant I would get home really late (for me). I hate to admit it, but my eyes aren't as good as they once were, especially at night. This class runs until 9:14 p.m., which means that if the weather is good, and road construction isn't too awful, I get home by 10:30 p.m. I keep the cell phone charged,
Anyway, I have enjoyed the evenings once a week devoted just to drawing. On my own at home I tend to work a lot from photos, and this class forces me to use my eyes, to work from a live model.

Ah, a live model. Herein lies the rub. Of the five classes I have attended, only three have had models. Twice no model showed up at all, so we were reduced to drawing each other. I was disappointed. I ran this little pep talk in my head:

You paid your fees. You want to learn to draw from life. You want to learn new techniques. Quit your bellyaching and draw!

Yes, but there is the two hours of driving, the rushing around, the parking fees...

Sherry, quit your bellyaching and draw!

More of Grandma Tess's Tape

Grandma as a young woman

Grandma's friend Agnes, in a stylish bathing suit, about 1915

At this point in the tape Grandma talks about her family coming to Milwaukee while her stepfather is doing medical training in Boston. My mother, Carol, asks a few questions about cooking and the Depression.

Milwaukee was another disappointment to me. We couldn’t find a place to stay, and we went to a cheap hotel and lived there for a little while, and read want ads. Finally decided that I would have to go and board and room to start high school. I went into high school at twelve years old. In order to do this I had to work for my board and room., and be away from my father and mother, and the baby, which was the big hurt. But we got together occasionally.

But life as a student, trying to go to school and still work, do the work at home, and being as lonely as I was and having only two dresses to my name. Nobody wore slacks in those days. That was entirely out of the question. You wore skirts and a blouse or a dress. And Mother gave me one of her old dark blue dresses, and I cut it off at the waist and made a skirt for myself, and wore it out to the prom with a pink blouse. It was very very sad. When I got to the prom I found out I was the only one that couldn’t have an evening dress on. I didn’t know they wore evening dresses to proms. I didn’t even know what proms were. Twelve years old and from the Hicksville, I think they thought I was. But my date was wonderful, and didn’t – never reproached me or anything. In fact he took me over and introduced me to his folks. He was a complete gentleman. So, that was my first humiliating experience at school. But I was to have a lot of them. Except of course when I was (unintelligible), when it was one big humiliation. Life was rough. And it was rough for many long years after that, but I won’t go into all those details.

We’ll let the girls ask me some questions now, about the Depression, probably, and my marriage.

Carol: Well, Mother, ah, I don’t remember Grandma Smith as being that great of a cook, but you were always a very good cook. So, how young did you start your cooking?

I was eleven when I started cooking on the ranch. Um, I helped, oh earlier than that I started helping and learning. And I liked it, so I sort of took over, making the cakes and pastries and things while we were still on the farm. And I baked cakes then. We had thrashers - great crews of men, they came to thrash the wheat, sometimes as many as twenty men, and that was a lot of cooking. So I had plenty of experience. But I always liked to cook and I liked to experiment and do things . When I worked for my board and room I did a lot of cooking. And I always liked to try new recipes, and I did them.

Carol: What about during the Depression?

During the Depression it was very hard to cook because we didn’t have any money, and the foods that were had to be had, even though they were cheap, they were expensive to us.

But we skipped a lot of time here. I had to get married in the meantime. We got married during the Depression,. while we were still out on DeWitt’s cherry ranch Mother and I and DuRell, waiting for my stepfather to graduate. And he was going to school back East then at Boston. And he went to Brigham Young and he went to Massachusetts General, and all the big hospitals back there where he interned. And he had started out in Marquette in Milwaukee. So, while all this was going on we were hanging on, trying to get by ‘til he got though. In the meantime I had grown up. I was eighteen, and then I was into my twenties. By this time we were out at Troy, and Mother was still doing her practical nursing, and there were babies born here and there. I was taking care of DuRell, and doing babysitting for the neighbors.

Carol: Was that the first paying job you had? Baby sitting?

Yes, it was, if you don’t count working for my board and room, which was much harder than baby sitting. The first I got money for was babysitting, and I got only about fifty cents a night. That was top wages then. And the night meant sometimes you had to stay all night. If they didn’t have transportation home or whoever you were staying for didn’t want you to leave. So, you never knew of you were going to stay all night or not, when you left, which wasn’t very happy for Mother. We didn’t have a phone at first at the farm, but after the boys started calling, the neighbors got really tired of having me go back and forth to answer the phone, so eventually, even though we didn’t have very much money, we did put a phone in.

But we were expected to live on a very very small amount of money. And we had to stretch it. I remember one time I put my family on a very strict diet, because I was supposed to mange the finances, so I could buy a new bathing suit, and the bathing suit was five dollars. So for a week we lived on cabbages and boiled potatoes, and we used to go out and pick dandelions and wild asparagus, and all that stuff.

Carol: Is this when you were in Troy?

Yes, when we were in Troy. We boiled it up. But it tasted pretty good. We were always hungry then, and everything we had, whether it was expensive or not, tasted good. And I finally got my bathing suit, but they wouldn’t let me get any more clothes that way. They said I was taking it out on them, and it wasn’t fair.