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Helen's Valentine |
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| The understanding was that when we got married,
his father would set him up on a farm of his own. So I quit college, went to
business school and got a job in the office of a defense plant so that I
could save money. Finally, after going together for almost four years, we set
a wedding date. His father had purchased a 560 acre farm on which we were to
live. One night, two weeks before the wedding, Johnny came to my house to tell me that he was leaving home and that I needed to decide if I wanted to call off the wedding or take my chances on an uncertain future with him. His father had decided that there wasn't enough money to set us up on a farm, that Johnny should work at home without a salary, and that I should get my job back to support us. I had quit my job in order to become a farm wife. There was never a doubt in my mind that I would not pursue any kind of future without him. I had saved $200 to buy furniture and he had $40. We didn't have a car and we didn't have jobs but I never doubted that my future with him would be secure. This was 1944, he had a farm deferment and got a job on a large dairy farm with a house for us to live in and $100 a month salary. So the wedding went off as planned at 8:30 p.m. on a Saturday night in September. It was a beautiful sunny, crisp fall day. We were married in a small church surrounded by relatives, friends and neighbors. Because it was wartime, gas was rationed. My Dad saved up his gas coupons so we could take his car on a honeymoon trip to northern Wisconsin. We came back to my parent's home where we were given the requisite charivari. I don't know if that is, or was, the custom in this area, but where I grew up, every newlywed couple was given a charivari. Townspeople would get together noise-making equipment, creep up at night and loudly "serenade" them. Fortunately, someone always told the couple when it was going to be so they could be prepared. They were expected to provide refreshment for everyone, usually ice cream and soft drinks. |
And then we took up married life on the farm.
Because it was a dairy farm with a milk route in a neighboring city, Johnny
had to be in the barn at 4:30 every morning to milk. I knew absolutely
nothing about farm life, and almost nothing about the life of a housewife. We
had a furnace and a wood and coal cook stove. I was supposed to keep a fire
going in at least one of them but I was not notably successful. I was also
supposed to cook meals, but I had my misfortunes in this area, too. This
wonderful man I married never complained. He would patiently get the fires
going again; he would cheerfully eat whatever I put on the table,
unidentifiable though it might have been. Probably what kept him going was
the fact that every Sunday we would go to my folks for a good dinner, and my
mother would write out for me what to cook the coming week. She didn't have a
cookbook, so it didn't occur to me to get one, either. Her measurements were
not what you would call exact ... like a medium sized lump of butter. There were many, many times when my husband's patience was needed. We had the use of a car that my brother had bought before he went overseas. About the only good thing you could say about that car was that it had good tires. In wartime, that was a great plus. But the only way to turn the lights on was to open the hood and insert a fuse. If you pulled up on the steering wheel at all, as I tended to do when I put on the brakes, it came off in my hands. And as far as the brakes went, you had better start stopping well before you actually intended to come to a halt. Lots of cars wouldn't start in the cold Wisconsin winters, including this one. In order to get it started, Johnny would hitch one of the big farm work horses to the car. My job was to lead the horse (and car) down the road while he tried to coax the car into independent motion. Leading that big horse which was breathing menacingly (I thought) down my neck, caused me to keep edging away from him, eventually landing the whole procession in the ditch. There were so many times when Johnny could have yelled at me, but he never did. go to page 3 |
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