Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Clara Lathrop

Clara Lathrop

I think that in 1949 or 1950 divorce was a shame placed upon all concerned.  My father pretty much disappeared from my life, having moved out of state, and Lill and Lee seemed to take over a large part of raising me.  My additional good fortune was that I had truncated, but fairly regular, contact with my other Grandma, Clara.  She was also a teacher and Grandma Lill and Grandma Clara, or "Grams", as everyone on my father's side called her, remained close friends.

This was somewhat amazing, in retrospect, considering that it was 1950.  In those days Catholics and Lutherans were not overly fond of one another like they are today, sharing mass and so forth.  Grandma Lill attended the Congregational church and I am certain that she faced a certain degree of criticism when her daughter turned Catholic to marry.  That, and the divorce after only a couple of years, would have driven a wedge between a lot of people.

But Clara and Lill were not ordinary people.  Grandma Lill could give you a good tongue-lashing or cut a willow switch to give you a spanking, but she saw the bigger picture.  Both, although they owned very little, were generous even to complete strangers, and they were equally generous with their good will.  I think that it had a lot to do with sharing the burden of living through the Great Depression and of raising children in difficult times. 

Clara gave me a nice little scrapbook later in her life.  I am sure that she made a similar one for every grandchild.  It details the family ancestors on her and Gramps' side and it is, as probably all of them were, personalized to the recipient.

The very first page has glued to it a folded page which reads:

                                                         WITH
                     VERY                         BEST                     WISHES
                                                            TO
                                  JOHN           LEE                     LATHROP
                                                          FROM
                                     THE          LATHROP             FAMILY

The inside contained a little poem:

     Dear Grandson John,
          It is not so much, who we are,
          As it is, what we are,
          But sometimes we wish to know,
          And why we are just so.

          Now Julius Lothrope had red hair,
          Freckles and curly,
          He passed these on to Frank,
          One of seven sons, quite early

          Then Frank passed the traits along
          To Dudly his eldest, who slipped
          Because his eldest was a girl.

          So to bridge the generation gap
          And add to the confusion
          You are the eldest of the youngest
          Will you be the conclusion?

          So, you see why you have red curly hair and freckles.  The grand sense of humor must, just must come from your mother's side of the house.  I hope your mother does her family tree for you.  What an interesting book this could become.  Lovingly,  your Gram.

So Peter Willger and his wife Barbara Adams came to America from Essen, Germany in 1855.  John A. Willger was their son, and he and his wife Anna (Rinehart) Willger were Grandma Clara's parents.  Clara was the youngest of their ten children.  Anna Rinehart was the daughter of Ferdinand Rinehart and Hannah (Wasmund) Rinehart, who had migrated from Iowa to Nebraska in 1860.

Grams and Gramps lived in a farmhouse out on a county road parallel to Highway 16 west of Sparta.  I can remember going out there several times as a child and Grandma Clara was always accepting and loving. 

Grandma and Grandpa Lathrop had a long chicken coop sort of out building and I would explore in and around it.  They also had a large tree in the front yard which might have been an apple, because I seem to remember eating fruit from it. 

Grandma Clara had a smooth, firm voice and she always finished her sentences in a descending tone, as though she was accepting what she was saying.  It was very relaxing and nonthreatening to have a conversation with her, even as a little child.  Maybe it was the teacher in her.

Because I was merely a toddler, and because I lived under the care of my maternal grandparents, I simply didn't have the day to day contact with Grams and Gramps.  It wasn't as though they lived just down the street within range of my tricycle.  It is my loss that I don't have a rich treasure-trove of intimate memories like my cousins on the Lathrop side do.

Events were soon to take me farther from both her sphere and that of Grandma Lill and Grandpa Lee, but I am grateful that both of my ancestral families never degraded into animosity for one another.  I have never felt estranged from my cousins on my dad's side of the family and I think that this is a great tribute to both Grandma Clara and Grandma Lill. 

 Since the primary motivation of my writing these little blurbs is to provide my grandkids with an idea of what it was like to be a child in the old days, I would welcome comments from any of her other grandchildren or great grandchildren in the section below this post to help memorialize her wonderfulness, and I will have a few more to share a bit later on.

Sunday, November 17, 2019

Leland Fay Hanson

Leland Fay Hanson

Grandpa Lee was born in or near Westby, along with a brother and three sisters.  The farm was located near a little town called Bloomingdale.  He worked on the farm and, until fairly recently, if you visited the old place, his initials were painted on the corner of the old barn.  There has been some renovation and the last time I visited, they were gone. 

From the Bloomingdale cemetery on the hill above, you can see parts of the farm fields and this cemetery is where many of the people I will try and remember things about lie in repose.  It is a beautiful place and must have been a magical little bubble in which to be a child, grow up, and fall in love.

The things I have been told about Grandpa Lee include doing a lot of farm chores, playing baseball, fishing, and sleighing and ice skating in the winter.  When he was older he got a job with the Pet Milk Company which had a plant in Sparta, many of the buildings of which are still there but used different ways.  He apparently had a knack for doing the chemical tests on the milk in various stages of the condensing process.  The road down from Cashton Ridge to Sparta was, in those days, convoluted and steep, winding around from one hill to the next.  Grandpa Lee used to follow the snowplow in the winter, lest he not be able to make the climb or descent.




This is a on old picture of Grandpa Lee and Grandma Lill with my mother.

He also worked many years as a "jobber" for the company, which simply meant that he traveled routes through various towns in Wisconsin, visited the outlets (mostly grocery stores), took orders later to be delivered, and set up displays.  By the time I was born, all of the above was ancient history to Lill and Lee.  When their kids were in high school, Lill would sometimes trust my mother to be in charge and she would join Lee on a run for a few days.  They might get in a couple days of fishing and card playing at Eagle's Nest flowage between Tomah and Necedah.

According to my uncle, this was leaving the foxes in charge of the hen house.  In the younger years, the three girls apparently would lock my uncle in the closet so they could party. When he was older, the four youths took turns having beer parties in the house; then cleaned it up before their parents' return. 

Lee and a friend had developed an ice cream stabilizer which they marketed for some time either through the Pet Milk Company or through connections they had made.  They named it "HiBub" and my baby picture was on the label.  "Bub" was his nickname for me.  My mother received a couple of hundred dollars in royalties for the use of my picture, which she kept in a bank account.  I don't think the product lasted in popularity all that long.

Grandpa Lee always had a deal going on, usually with cars.  He had an Edsel at one time and I can remember the push-button shifting.  He would have a Mercury from time to time, always fairly big sedans because, after all, he had four kids.  You could put four people in the back and three in the front, easily, with these oldsters because they had not yet invented bucket seats. 

Lill and Lee would occasionally make a drive, either up the Cashton Ridge or up the Norwalk Ridge to visit either their parents in Westby or Lill's uncle and aunt in La Farge, alongside the Kickapoo River.  An easier trip was to La Crosse to visit siblings there, but no trip was quickly made like it is today.  As I mentioned the drive up the ridges took forever, unlike today after the roads have been widened and straightened.

I can remember being about three years old and in the back seat with Lill in the front and Lee driving.  I'm not sure who was in back with me but I do not believe it was my mother.  We were driving south from Sparta on Highway 27 to go up Norwalk Ridge and on through Ontario and ultimately to La Farge. 

I was in a bad mood and I can very clearly remember throwing a tantrum for the first five or so miles.  We were almost as far as Farmer's Valley, which is now called Janus Avenue.  At about the point where the Farmer's Valley Cemetery is located, Grandpa Lee pulled over and they put me out on the shoulder of the road, which, in those days was just grass, and drove away.

I stood there, watching the car get smaller, and burbling the equivalent of expletives for a three or four year old.  The car stopped, then backed up.  I was told I had to behave if I wanted to get back in.

I got back in and pouted for a while, but the tantrum was over.  Grandma Lill would try and keep me engaged, as she later did with the other cousins, by looking for white horses in the fields along the way.  I was to get a quarter for each white horse.  I would find several but I really do not remember getting any quarters.

In that day, Highway 27 had to go through a little tunnel under the railroad track that eventually became the Sparta-Elroy bike trail.  Grandpa Lee would always toot the horn when we went through the tunnel.  If he forgot, I reminded him.

On the way home from any of these drives, Lill and Lee would always stop at the A & W Root Beer Stand on the corner of Water Street and Wisconsin Street.  It is still there, although it is now Rudy's Root Beer Stand.  I would get what they called a "baby beer", which was a small mug of root beer which amounted to about a cupful.  It was a great idea and I loved it and clamored for it.  I'm sure many of the cousins yet to be born at that time can remember getting a "baby beer".

Lee always had a big idea fermenting.  At one point, while my mother was still in high school, he moved the family to Madison.  They had a small cottage style house down by First Street where Johnson Street cuts through to get over to East Washington.  I am typing these words not more than two miles from that house.

My mother had to go from teeny tiny Sparta High School to East High in Madison, which looks like something between a castle and a fortress, even today.  She went in one door, freaked out, and went back out another door and home, so the story goes.

I don't think that move lasted more than a year before everyone agreed to go back to Sparta.  Lee tended to move the family a lot and I know of five or six houses or apartments in Sparta where they lived.  In fact the Cottage Street house might have been purchased upon returning from Madison.

I lived like a little child-emperor with all these loving people to adore me and take care of my every whim.  Sparta was not a big town yet and I could roam freely in the park, stick my head into the cannon, ride my tricycle around the block and up to the cemetery and do mischief with all the flowers and pots beside the graves, and play in the back yard.

I remember playing with a boy who lived about a half block away and who was a little bit older than me.  He had gotten the old newspapers and carefully rolled up sand from the backyard into them to make a stack of  "grenades" which he hoarded in their garage.  The atomic bomb had been used to end the Pacific War and he called these little packages "A-bombs". 

He hurled one against the inside wall of his garage and yelled "A-Bomb!" as the newspaper broke and sand went all over the place.  We took a few outside and were throwing them.  I was yelling "B-Bomb!" and "D-Bomb!" and "Z-Bomb!" when one hit me directly in the face, filling my eyes, nose, and mouth with sand.  I ran home crying and told Grandma Lill.

There must have been a boy delivering the newspaper, and I must have seen someone paying him, because I got the idea in my head that I could take the old newspapers from the stack in the kitchen and peddle them throughout the neighborhood.  I would take a couple and go down the street ringing doorbells.

I can remember only one success.  There is a beautiful old house on the corner of Montgomery Street across from the park.  I can remember the man inviting me inside to meet his wife.  They were a little older and probably grandparents missing their grandchildren.  Here was this curly haired little street urchin on the porch selling newspapers.   I thought it was a bridge too far to have to go inside and pitch my newspaper, but I did always get a dime.






Thursday, November 7, 2019

Arlene Lillian Hanson

Arlene Lillian Hanson

Owing to the divorce of my mother and father, and the fact that my mother was probably twenty-three years old, we fell into the safety net of living with my maternal grandparents, known to everyone as Lill and Lee. 

Grandma Lill became as much a mother to me as her daughter was.  We lived in the house on Cottage Street in Sparta as if nothing had happened.  I was simply added to the four children they already were raising.  My mother had studied to become a typist and secretary and likely had sporadic employment and I would not be surprised if much of it was at Camp McCoy, the nearby army base.

We are in the year 1949 now and I am two years old plus.  I have considerably more memories but they are still fragmented.  The cottage street house was on a corner, across from a park that consumed an entire block.  The park was largely green lawn space, but in one quadrant was a small cannon, placed there as a memorial.  The street was unpaved then but there were some sidewalks, and I can clearly remember riding a little tricycle up and down the sidewalk.  I played and rode the trike barefooted because I can remember looking down at my feet on the pedals and seeing that my big toe was bleeding.  I had stubbed it on the concrete while pedaling.  I went crying into the house to show Grandma Lill.



Grandpa Lee, my mother, and her sisters smoked cigarettes at times and I had seen them use book matches.  I can remember finding a partially used book of matches in the dirt street while playing.  I removed a match and rubbed it on the scratcher, holding it tight to get a good enough grip on it to move it.  It flared alight and burned my finger.  I went crying into the house to show Grandma Lill.

Arlene Lillian Hanson was born in Westby, Wisconsin, about twenty five miles south of Sparta and up on the ridge.  She had three sisters and a brother.  Her family lived in a valley north of Westby, down in a valley through which a creek ran.  I have been to the location many times, but there is no  house or farm building left from her time there.  In fact, the family fled the house in a flood and ran up the hillside.  I do not know if it was destroyed and relocated or if they just mitigated the damage and kept on living at the original site.

In recent years the site has become developed as a religious retreat and church camp called "Living Waters."

She attended school through the eighth grade, after which, she went to La Crosse and attended "normal school" which prepared her to become a teacher.  I believe she and grandpa Lee were already sweethearts by then.  She returned and taught school in Bloomingdale, hiking or using a horse drawn sleigh to go "cross country" to the little one-room school across the fields and light the fire so that the little building was warmed before the children arrived.  She and grandpa Lee courted and I believe that the rules for teachers meant that she had to be single and not dating, so the teaching probably ended when she and Lee got serious.

Grandpa Lee had taken work in Sparta, some fifteen or twenty miles away and they bought the house on Cottage Street to raise their family in.  I have surprisingly many memories of that house.  I remember the kitchen, which had a door to the back yard and I remember toddling in and asking her for a cookie or a drink of water.  There was a little tree in the back yard which grew hundreds of little miniature apples about the size of a marble.  They were bitter and inedible but I would not be surprised to learn that she made jelly or sauce out of them nonetheless.

They must have been having trouble toilet-training me, because I can remember my mother, having talked to the doctor, placing a piece of tag board on the inside of the cupboard door in that kitchen.  When I would have a good day, I would get a little colored star to stick on the tag board.  I can remember being enthusiastic about the stars.  They were in a little box, like a match box, up on a shelf inside the cupboard.  I can't remember actually equating the stars with any behavior on my part, but I do remember climbing up on the counter top, opening the cupboard door, and getting into the little box.  I licked and stuck all the stars on the tag board.

Lill and Lee had a thin metal kettle which was filled almost to the brim with used sundry items, like nuts, bolts, nails, pieces of wire, thumb tacks, upholstery tacks, and the like which just couldn't be thrown away because, of course, they would be needed at some time.  I know this is true, because I have always had a similar stash of items just like them that I simply could not throw away.

I have a clear memory of sitting at the little kitchen table watching my uncle paw through the little kettle looking for a nut or a bolt that he needed.  He would pile little items that were in the way of his search on the table.  One item was an electrical plug, the kind that could replace a broken one on the end of a lamp cord.  It had no wire, just the prongs, and I picked it up and promptly plugged it into the electrical outlet above the table.

Sparks and blue flames started flying out of it, startling my uncle who was a high school kid at the time.  The little connections within must have been just close enough for the current to arc between them but not so close as to allow an absolute short, which would just have blown the fuse.  I remember him gingerly grasping the plug and pulling it out of the wall before admonishing me not to do anything like that again.

I didn't pay any attention to his advice, of course, and continued fooling around with outlets from time to time until I pressed my sweaty thumb up against one and got a paralyzing jolt which not only hurt but frightened the daylights out of me.  I gave them a wide berth after that.  Life lesson learned.

I remember fondly the occasional evening event of that magical treat, popcorn.  My uncle seemed to be the best at making it.  He used a lot of butter.  Everyone would be listening to the radio and out would come this big yellow bowl, the biggest one grandma Lill had, full of popcorn.  Everyone raced to get the top part  because it had the most butter.  I can remember sitting on the bowl once it was half empty, opening and closing my legs to allow people to grab handfuls of the popcorn.  They were howling with laughter but my uncle thought it not so funny. 

I can remember him lifting me off the bowl, shaking his head, and saying, "not a good idea."

The little cannon in the park was a fascination because, if I got someone to lift me up I could stick my face right into the bore and feel its coolness and see its darkness.  The cannon is still there and, on a bike ride this past summer, I realized that a commemorative marker had been placed next to it with some explanatory information.

The cannon was captured at the battle of Vicksburg, Mississippi during the Civil War and brought back by one of the Wisconsin Divisions.  My great, great grandfather Peter Hanson was in that battle and would have been in the outfit that captured it and brought it back.  I don't think that anyone in my family knew this!  How ironic that this soldier's great-great-grandson would be sticking his head into that cannon!

The real attraction, however, for an obsessive-compulsive toddler, was in the basement of the house.  Once down the wooden stairs, I navigated my way through the dark, spider-infested shelves holding Grandma Lill's canned vegetables and fruits to the front corner where, beneath a dirty, miniature window was the greatest mystery in the world.  It was a metal case with a thick glass front and inside were all these little clock-faces with tiny little hands.  One of the hands was nearly always moving and rarely stopped near the little numbers.  Another of the little hands was clearly moving, but at a much slower pace.  Two or three more didn't appear to be moving at all, but if I stayed there watching long enough, they were! 

I don't recall ever wondering how Grandpa Lee's car worked, or the refrigerator, or the radio, but this little device, hidden away where my aunts and uncle didn't even know it existed, was truly baffling, and I could sit there on a couple of peach crates and watch it for tens of minutes, wondering what the heck it was.  It was, of course, just the water meter, but it kindled a curiosity in me and probably had a lot to do with making me the kind of kook that I am, always charting things and analyzing things.