Reflections Upon a Blessed and Exciting Life – No.12: Early Childhood: Poverty and Politics

I grew up poor. I was born in 1927. The market crash was in 1929. National unemployment rate rose above 25%. Income from farm products plunged. Dad’s salary was about $50 a month. Often the congregation was unable to pay even that. At one point the congregation owed him (I think) $300. They had a special fundraising effort, raised $150, gave that to him and called it even.

We never went hungry. We raised lots and Mom canned tons of vegetables. When all else failed we had boiled potatoes covered with beet juice. I loved it. I can still smell and taste the homemade bread. We raised and ate our chickens and pigs. The heifers were sold and we bought the beef. Even after our family grew to 7 members Mom would send me to buy $1.00 worth of round steak and it would feed the whole family. When we “butchered hogs” the meat was cut off the bones and made into sausage. But the bones were kept. (Some of them canned.) When things got tough Mother cooked these bones, we applied mustard and ground off the remaining bits of meat.

I had my first ever food in a restaurant when I was 14, a hamburger.

For me the Great Depression is associated with the anti-poverty efforts of President Franklin D Roosevelt. We listened on the radio to his fireside chats and made fun of his references to his dog, Fala. In those days we were all Democrats. (I don’t think I ever met a self-proclaimed Republican before I went to college!)

Two of the New Deal programs, which provided some government sponsored employment, were the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Worker Progress Administration (WPA). As one part of its assignment WPA built better “out-houses” and one was built for us. Of course, we had no indoor toilet facilities and that outhouse was a welcome luxury. (And yes, it was always supplied with a Sears Roebuck Catalog. Real toilet paper was only for “the rich people”.)

Even though we benefitted from the WPA it was ridiculed and looked down upon by the adults whom I heard speaking about it. Those WPA workers were considered poor citizens for “relying on government handouts”. The belief was that if you were in trouble you just got by, trusted your family and if you got hungry then subsisted on “jelly bread.” I do not believe that a single member of Zion Lutheran Congregation ever “stooped so low as to go on public welfare” and take one of those government jobs!

In the midst of it all, we kids always took along our Sunday church offering, a nickel every Sunday! In reflection, I feel sadness at how hard my parents struggled to meet our needs; yet I am also grateful. Those years taught me “to be content with what I had”, to always try to find some kind of a job, and to be a very conservative spender. It also taught me to have a very deep appreciation for those rare and special days at our church picnic. I was given a nickel and for that got a big double scoop of ice cream!

Reflections Upon a Blessed and Exciting Life – No.11: Early Experience With Death

Death and dying were certainly not far removed or never spoken about in my early life. After all, my home (a congregation –owned “teacherage”) abutted the church cemetery, a couple of hundred steps from our front yard. From very early in my life I watched the volunteer grave diggers; I went with Dad who tolled the funeral bells; I watched the earth being dropped upon the in-grave coffins as the pastor “intoned” dust to dust, ashes to ashes.”

The death of animals in front of my eyes was a regular event. Mother killed fryers for dinner; hogs were slaughtered for ham and sausages. Our heifers were always sent away for butchering. I was still in elementary school when I assisted my cousin Ben Jacob in his weekly ritual of butchering cattle. Fresh beef was always available in their Andice General Merchandise Store.

Two animal deaths did disturb me. I was so sad when my father needed to shoot to death my beloved pet dog, Rover. Rover had been bitten by a poisonous snake. The bite around Rover’s mouth became terribly infected. Rover could not eat. Seeing a vet was never considered. The bite looked fatal and besides we had no money for vet costs. So Dad shot, killed and buried Rover, the closest pet I ever owned.

The second instance was a pet lamb whose name I cannot remember. We played with it from its infancy. Then came time for it to be butchered, but I could not get myself to eat the meat.

The third recollection relates to a near-death (but no death) experience. Some of my relatives were visiting and showing off their newly acquired 22 long-range rifle. They spotted a near-by bird and gave me instructions on how to aim, fire and kill that beautiful meadowlark, head held high and singing. I missed and I was glad! In that moment I resolved to never again fire a gun at a bird and I have kept that promise.

I am amazed that I claim to have a memory of when I was only 3 ½ years old, but I think it is a real memory. My cousin Milton Kurio who lived only a mile away died at the age of only 10 months. My memory is of overwhelming sadness seeing that miniature coffin being lowered into the ground.

The other strong memory is when I was 5 years old and being told of the untimely death of my cousin Ben Siek who was also 5 years of age. Uncle Ben (young Ben’s father) and Aunt Elizabeth had just had electricity installed in their Austin home. They joyfully replaced the old icebox with a new electric refrigerator. The icebox was awaiting pick-up for disposal. Cousins Helen and Ben were curious. They climbed into the old icebox, Helen in the ice storage side and Ben in the food storage side. We never learned how both doors became slammed shut. By the time frantic Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Ben found their trapped children both were unconscious. Helen survived, apparently because some life-saving oxygen worked its way up the ice drainage pipe but Bennie was beyond recovery. I had played with Bennie just days before his tragic death. Sadly 15 months later Uncle Ben died and I remember the faith, courage and strength with which Aunt Elizabeth and Cousin Helen carried on after those shattering experiences.

Of course, in the years since these early encounters with death I have been at the bedside of many deaths, have presided over burials ranging from Forest Lawn in Glendale, California to hillsides in Hong Kong to burial at sea in the Pacific. My childhood images of heaven and the after-life have changed in many ways. I continue to marvel at the mysteries of eternal life and I am confident in my trust in a benevolent God and confident that peace is what yet awaits us all.

Reflections Upon a Blessed and Exciting Life – No.10: Elementary School Days: Helping Grandpa

In my elementary school age it was always a very special treat to go visit Grandma and Grandpa Kieschnick. They lived in a farm outside Lincoln, Texas, about 60 miles from my home. The trip to and from was itself an adventure. We loaded our 1929 Model A Ford with kids and excitement. The roads, of course, were unpaved and the 60-mile trip took in excess of 2 hours, especially since it was not at all unusual to have to stop and fix a flat.

Once at Grandma’s place we were sent to the garden to hoe weeds, prop up plants and often harvest some vegetables and/or fruit. If I (or my sister Leona and I) stayed over for a week or more our jobs got more interesting. I remember picking beans, then placing them on a tarp to get good and dry. After a few days we beat the beans to separate the kernels from their pods. After another day or so of dry heat we would find a windy spot. Then we threw the beans into the air and let the wind separate the kernels from the chaff. The chaff was fed to the animals; the kernels we consumed.

A special treat while at Grandpa’s was to make hay. The hay was in a field some distance from the farmhouse. That was good because we got there by riding on the back of my Dad’s faithful horse Dan. I remember my job when the dried hay was made into bales. I sat on one side of the baling machine and reinserted baling wire so it could go from one side of the bale to the other.

We had an hour off for lunch to eat and rest. One time I think my sister and I sat on some kind of a tick nest. That evening our bodies were covered with blisters and we both believed that some of those ticks had embedded themselves permanently into our flesh. We struggled to extract them from our own and our sib’s body.

At the end of the day there was a special treat. Grandpa would say in German, “Melvin, go take the horses down to the tank to water them.” This meant unhitching them from their wagons and then leading them to a tank (pond) where they drank the water. I loved being in charge of those horses, then unbridling them, feeding them and getting them into their own stalls for the night.

A job that I did poorly and hated was “cutting maize”. Milo maize grew to be several feet tall and the stalks held heads containing seeds. The job was to use a knife, cut off the head put it into a bag and then load it onto a wagon. That was tough work. Worse yet was that something about that milo maize created a terrible itch over my whole body – and of course the rule was “bathe only once a week, on Saturday.” One of God’s great gifts to kids like me was the invention of the combine, which eliminated the job of “cutting maize”

Many years later when as a school principal I was confronted with an upset parent or an angry teacher I always comforted myself by saying, “This surely beats cutting maize!”

Reflections Upon a Blessed and Exciting Life – No.9: Primary School Years: Chores and Work

During my primary school years I almost never had to do any school homework. Since I attended a 2-room school there was always time during school hours to complete our assignments. (We did that while the “other grades” were “up front” for their specific subjects.) The only homework I recall was my mother listening to me recite my “Religion Recitation”, memorized Bible verses, Catechism lessons and hymns.

Household chores were shared (after all eventually there were 9 of us kids.) I often helped “do the dishes” and got an earful from one or more of my sisters when I tried to be excused from this as I suggested this was “girls’ work”.

We lived in the church’s teacherage, which was located on several acres of the congregation-owned land. So there was room for our home, barn, stables, hen house, large pasture, small field for crops, a large garden and a big cemetery. Our lawn was immense and the grass was always mowed by me using a hand-driven mower.

The cattle, chickens and pigs needed twice daily feeding. We shucked corn and shelled it for the chickens with the hand-driven corn sheller. We sometimes had fun shucking corn, seeing who could shuck 100 ears the fastest. Or we would get a thrill out of shucking an extra amount of corn and hiding it. Then when we were told to “go shuck corn” we gleefully exposed our already completed work.

From very early on I milked the cows. The cow was let into the stall and her calf was allowed to come suckle. Then we roped off the calf, sat down next to the cow and milked her. The milk was immediately taken to our home and run through our hand-cranked separator that separated the cream, which was then made into butter. I always liked to drink my milk when it was still warm, having just come from the cow’s udder. When the calves reached a weight of a couple hundred pounds or so they were sold to the local butcher.

We slaughtered our hogs ourselves on cold days with the assistance of neighbors. I recall how they were killed (usually be slitting their throats). They were bled. Then dropped in hot water so that the hairy skin cold be scraped off. We had wonderful fresh pork and also preserved smoked sausages and hams (and occasionally also the stomach). One of my jobs was to keep the bark of logs smoking in the smoke house where the pork was cured.

We ate lots of eggs and chickens. My mouth still waters as I recall my mom catching a young rooster, chopping its head off, getting the feathers off and then frying that wonderful chicken in home-made lard. The price I paid for getting those always fresh and tasty meals was two-fold. 1) Feed those chickens plenty of corn and 2) Keep scraping the chicken “droppings” to keep the hen houses clean.

Summertime meant it was time for us to earn some cash for the family. (We kids never kept a penny of those earnings for ourselves and we never had an “allowance”. Those meager resources all went into the family coffers. While others “chopped cotton” I never had that chore. It entailed hoeing very close to the young cotton plant, removing weeds and surrounding the cotton plant with fresh soil. I think the fear was that if I were given this task I would too often chop out the whole plant. But I could ”pick cotton”. An 8 to 10 foot long bag was strung over our shoulders and dragged behind. We “crawled” between 2 rows of cotton plants and extracted the soft cotton bolls. The load was weighed, placed in a wagon and when some 1300 pounds had accumulated was taken to the gin. There the lint was separated from the cotton seed and debris, then packaged into 500-pound bales and sold. On a really good sun-up to sundown day of picking I might make between 50-75 cents. But I was such an inept cotton picker  (my sister out-picked me every time) that rumor has it that the verdict was, “Melvin will never make it on the farm. He’d better go to work for the church as a teacher!

And that is what I did.”

Reflections Upon a Blessed and Exciting Life – No.8: Primary School: Physical Health

My memory is that I was a healthy strong boy. Of course, I together with my siblings and friends had all the usual childhood illnesses, none of which was considered dangerous. We had the mumps, measles, chickenpox, red eye and scarletina. I don’t think any of these were serious enough to have to go see our family physician, Dr. Wedemeyer. But Mr. McGuiness, the druggist in the 55 residents-town of Walburg, regularly filled our prescriptions.

There were, however, 3 specific health issues that stick with me to this day.

The first is a tooth filling. My cousins who drank “Walburg water” never had decayed teeth. There was something in that water that discolored their enamel but preserved their teeth. I was not so fortunate. I had to have a tooth filled (probably hastened by the reality that as a child I never brushed my teeth).

My memory is that in the mid-1930’s the dentist used no anesthesia and the drilling was painful. But that’s not what was the most painful. What hurt most was that the after-school dentist appointment came on the exact date that Zion school played softball against another school – a rare event. I simply could not believe that my parents thought it more important for me to go to the dentist than it was to play this softball game. I knew my team would miss me. I knew my substitute at the shortstop position, Wimpy K, could not play up to my standard.

So it was with mixed feelings that I learned the results of the team having to play without me. We won and all the students said that Wimpy was a great shortstop, made 2 great plays and hit a double. (As stated above, this was nearly 70 years ago and I remember it still. (And Wimpy grew up to be called ”W.A.”, was a successful banker and married my cousin Genelle.)

Second health memory. We went barefoot all the time, except that we needed to wear shoes when we went to church on Sunday. There are consequences of always going barefoot. The soles of the feet become hard as leather, but not hard enough to avoid being pierced. We stepped on glass which lacerated our feet. We stepped on nails protruding from boards and they pierced our soles. We would come home from the cotton fields with thistles embedded in our feet. We dug them out with needles or tweezers. Mercurochrome treated the wounds and if there was a slight infection we had a famous “black salve” that cured everything.

But some 15 years later a surprise reminder of those barefoot adventures suddenly was revealed. I played college football and broke my ankle. The doctor who examined the x-rays noted the break but had a more interesting question. “When did you step on that needle now firmly embedded in your heel?”

The last time I had to have that ankle x-rayed was when I was in my 60’s. The needle continues to rest comfortably.

My mother always worried that the needle would move, get to my heart and kill me. I ignored it. In 1958 I played basketball in Hong Kong, had an x-ray and heard the doctor asked in Cantonese, “Where did that needle in your heel come from?”

My third health episode was the most serious. I think I was in the second grade. When I complained about a “stomach ache” my parents assumed I was getting the measles (as 3 of my siblings already had them). But the pain got worse and my skin didn’t get red.

Finally Mom stayed behind with the measled kids and Dad and Uncle Reinhold took me to King’s Daughter’s Hospital in Temple, Texas. There I had a moment of extreme embarrassment. When asked to provide urine sample I simply could not urinate lying down. So they had me stand. Then I couldn’t stop. How ashamed I felt.

But the diagnosis was serious: appendicitis. And when I was under ether and opened up the severity of the situation raised a serious alarm. The appendix had ruptured. Peritonitis was all over. There were no anti-biotics yet discovered. My condition was declared “extremely dangerous”. Three tubes, each a foot long were inserted to drain the puss. I survived. Survival brought with it 2 wonderful extra benefits: a relative brought me a beautiful 10-inch play sailboat. And I had a nurse named Ms. French. She told me I was handsome, so handsome, she said, that she would wait for me to turn 18 and then she would marry me. I believed her and then doubted, but I did not share my doubts with her. I recovered but my mother said that I never ran as fast after that surgery as I had earlier.