Reminiscences of Anna Maria (Junkermeier) Melcher

Anna Maria (Junkermeier) Melcher, daughter of Friedrich Christian and Emma Christine Elizabeth (Lacour) Junkermeier, was born October 11, 1913. She married March 6, 1935 at Laurel, Iowa, Raymond George Melcher, born March 26, 1907 at Charles City, Iowa, son of Charles Oscar and Amelia Kathryn Melcher.


These are her reminiscences, as written in 1980:


“   When Dad bought the home farm in Floyd County, Iowa, he built a two-room building with a ladder to the attic over the living room-kitchen. Similar to some houses in Germany, the other part housed his horses until a barn was built. Later, the surrey was stored in that part. Dad told us of fruit trees at their Junkermeier home, number 58 in Stemmen, Germany.
  For many years we had the wooden oak box which our father brought on the ship from Germany (18” X 24” X 18”). It was nailed with square nails.
  Our Floyd County community was mostly of German descent. After World War I, our German Methodist church could no longer have services in German, but had to preach and teach in English. We spoke German to Dad until 1926. He could read and talk English. Rosa remembers a German-printed paper which came to our house, but it was discontinued after World War I. Dad and Mother talked low German when they didn’t want us to understand. Uncle Bill visited our home a number of times, and he and Dad spoke in low German. One time Uncle Bill came at garden time, and he hoed and weeded the garden.
  The flu following World War I brought neighbors to our house with soup and a bran-filled bag which was heated in the oven and used like a hot-water bottle. Brother Fred was home ill with pneumonia.
  Dad built a new six-room house on his farm before he married. It had a built-in cupboard in the pantry, and a built-out picture window in the living room with a shelf for flower pots. It was fun to sit on that shelf or use it for papers and books. There was wall-to-wall carpeting in the down-stairs bedroom, tacked down with carpet tacks; a hutch in the kitchen for dishes, with two drawers and two doors below. There was a drop-hinged door to the basement. We ate with knives and forks with wooden handles, also heavy white stoneware plates and bowls.
  After our mother died, when I was four years old, relatives and neighbors wanted to take us girls into their home. I remember the day that they came and asked Dad for us, but he would not consent to it. We were glad that we girls could grow up together. After Nettie married, she and Ed often had us at their home for meals or overnight, especially during high school for Marie and me. Rosa and Fred’s home also was my second home until I married their neighbor’s son. I remember on Sunday after Mother died, we all got in the surrey and Dad took us to visit our grandparents Lacour in Charles City, Iowa. They had a horse barn and Grandpa unhitched our horses, put them in the barn and fed them during our visit. They hung Mother’s picture above their bed for the rest of their life. After August had a car to drive, he and we girls visited our grandparents Lacour, and August played the harmonica for Grandpa.
  Another buggy trip was in 1923 to visit Dad’s first grandchild —Nettie’s first child, Mildred.
  Because I wanted to attend high school, I helped our neighbor, Mrs. Draeger, with housework during the summer of 1927. Another summer, I helped Mrs. K. Laun, and during another summer I helped Mrs. Swartzrock two days a week. The summer that Rosa worked for Mrs. Lewis, an Osage farm lady, where there were hired men to feed, milking machine utensils to wash each day, and strawberries to pick, I stayed home to bake bread, and washed clothes with a wooden, hand-turning machine with a hand-turning wringer. Rosa began working on Monday morning, leaving her bread recipe for me. The bread was tolerable, except for one time when I left out the yeast. Mrs. Draeger told me how to can tomatoes in two-quart jars in the oven.
  I remember Dad taking us to church when Rosa was confirmed. The horse pulling the buggy became frightened when a car passed us slowly on the dirt road and we went into the shallow ditch. The driver of the car stopped to quiet the horse.
  Once Dad took me to the dentist, a seven-mile ride in a topless cutter-like buggy having sled runners instead of wheels. The lap robe gave us protection from the cold wind. Dad bought me my first tooth brush. Then I could show off at home and participate in a “Colgate toothpaste for cleaner teeth” at our rural school. Then there was a buggy trip to William Ploegers, Dad’s cousin near Floyd. Aunt Louisa asked Rosa to play “Oh how I love Jesus”. Another cousin, Mrs. Sophia Hirschmiller of Floyd, also was visited.
  Rosa could hitch up a horse to a buggy, so we three girls would go visit Nettie, who lived five miles from us.
  Rosa and Carl sent for seeds to Henry Fields at Shenandoah. We always had some garden produce. Dad always planted a large patch of potatoes. Dad raised six colts for farm work. At the time he owned a white stallion. Dad planted a grove for a windbreak around the farmstead, and an apple orchard with plum trees, and a few beehives for honey.
  I remember mattress-filling time with freshly threshed straw; geese which would peck at me as we walked home from school but furnished feathers for pillows; sheep-shearing time and wool carding for filling in quilts; soap-making in a large iron vat outdoors over a fire; Nettie canning apples, tomatoes and green beans in two-quart jars; wax candles lit on the church Christmas tree; and bricks (heated in the oven) to warm the feet as neighbors rode in a sled to church; hand-turning corn shellers for seed corn (the ears of corn chosen from the previous year’s crop); the round stationary saw operated by a belt with tractor power, to saw tree logs in lengths suitable for burning in the kitchen stove or in our room-heating stove; a pail for drinking water, and a reservoir attached to the kitchen stove for heating water; the tile ditches being dug with a spade and arm power; oats bundles put into shocks by hand, and the oats threshed out later by machine.
  About 1922, Dad bought a used Singer sewing machine (pedal-type) at a sale, and it was a good learning experience for us. We had sad irons heated on the stove for ironing (before electricity), which meant firing the stove on warm or cold days. We did not have a telephone.
  Our only store doll was one of cousin Sorothy’s. Rosa stuffed a sock for another doll. In the summertime we three played house under the trees, using round tile for corner posts and boards laid across for walls. Mud pies and dolls kept us occupied. In the winter, Rosa helped me sew for the doll. Rosa cleaned house on Fridays for one pastor’s wife, so Marie and Rosa could take a few piano lessons from her.
  There was butter to make when cream was available. We used a tall milk can, stretched a clean sugar or flour sack (they came in 100 pound bags) across a can, cut a hole in the center of the cloth for a round wooden stick with paddles (flat boards) nailed to the bottom end, and with the can filled 1/3 or 1/2 full with cream, someone would churn the cream by raising and lowering the stick and paddles continuously, until the cream was whipped and the butter separated.
  In warm weather separated milk would sour quickly and clabber (thicken). It was a treat with a bit of sugar. What good soda pancakes it made!
  I remember eating only a little of fried meat slices or patties stored in stone crocks covered with lard. This kept in a cool place in cold weather. We stored a goose’s wing-tip in the lower compartment of the stove, to dust with. Smaller feathers were used to oil and clean the sewing machine gears.
  I remember the yeast foam cakes, five in a package, which had to be dissolved for bread baking, only one was used for six to eight loaves, so a sponge dough was necessary to begin the batch of bread. People bought white soda crackers in large boxes for their large families. We did not mind the crumbs of homemade bread nor the kettle of cooked potatoes right in the center of the table. I believe that the children do not mind inconveniences as much as older people think.
  Sisters are good to go along after dark to the outhouse, or to sit in apple trees and munch apples, like Whitney apples, overripe and mushy, or to go upstairs to bed after dark. I like sisters, and cousins, and family.
  We would watch field corn until it was in the milk stage and cook it on the cob. One year Carl and we girls went into the field before the corn was in its milk stage and ate it. No doubt we were hungry and ate too much, and it came back up. We had food problems because of the war. Oatmeal, rice and potatoes were on our table, sometimes oatmeal for three meals a day. We waited anxiously for fresh garden produce. One day Nettie and Ed stopped by and Nettie grated some potatoes with a special plate disc on the food chopper, and made potato pancakes for our supper.
  Not all kids attended high school then. Those who did had to room in town on school days. Farm boys did not attend rural schools if they were needed at home to help with field work, so my brothers did not get eight years of schooling. Gallon-sized syrup pails served as lunch boxes for some children. I was jealous of their special food and took an apple, in apple season, to eat a recess time. We could go home at noon for dinner, which was best, because we often had no butter for sandwiches, and sometimes no bread.
  Some years the teacher supervised competitive games at recess time. Some years softball was the main activity at recess and before the school day started, because of the number of boys. My last teacher rode a horse to school, about 1 1/2 miles, and sent it back home again. Her husband came for her after school. She was a super kind of teacher, but her husband sold liquor of some sort and with parties at their home, this during prohibition days (1927). My sixth-grade teacher was a man who was very capable, but he liked jazz music and played the organ (two-pedal), and at one program, he and his sister sang “Yes sir, that’s my baby”. He kept time with his whole body. At noon, during cold weather, he warmed up food in small glass jars which the pupils brought for noon lunch, in a kettle of warm water on a kerosene stove. This was the way school lunches had their start. He even made a kettle of chowder at recess time for noon lunch, the pupils bringing the ingredients. He had a one-seated car and could drive to and from Rudd, except during stormy weather when he stayed at a home. My first teachers stayed at a home in the township, some only hired for three months. It was fun, the day school-kids would clean the yard, pick up, and rake the grass which had been mowed in preparation for school. We played “Anti-I-over” over the coal shed.
  How did we live with so few baths – baths in a washtub before an open oven door. many families had only one change of clothes between washdays. Washday and drying were major projects.
  The West St. Charles Church Sunday School picnic on the 4th of July was held in a nearby woods. The program before dinner called for seats – planks of wood borrowed from the lumber yard. The minister spoke and patriotic songs were sung. I remember Ernie Ziebell playing his accordion one time for a special number (he died at 21 of sleeping sickness). People sat on the ground in groups around a tablecloth for food and dishes. I remember this for only one summer. We may not have attended every picnic. Carl and we three girls came in our pickup and ate a sack lunch that day. In following years, the dinner was potluck and served on planks nailed to posts for a serving table; also a stand for selling ice cream, candy, pop, lemonade made with real lemons, but later, only pop, firecrackers, sparklers and gum. A swing and contests, and ball games were planned. how fortunate that we had little to spend or we may have ended by being sick at the stand. Some years there were sixty children.
  Our rural school, with 30 to 35 pupils, could have good programs. Box socials, auctioned off after a program or play, were for raising money, the buyer eating with the owner of the lunch box. How pretty they were, decorated with crepe paper (at Valentine’s Day). (Boy friends were given hints, so they would buy “her” box, and eat the lunch with her that she had brought.) Lamps (kerosene) on the wall brackets with reflectors gave light for night programs; sometimes, gas lamps hung from the ceiling in the center of the room.
  Besides Ernie, the church buried the 11-year-old brother of Raymond, who fell off a horse, a young (21 years) school teacher who died after a short illness, plus our funerals – these during the 1920s.
  These were years of change – change from Bible sermons to talks about living, as young preachers came from seminaries, change in Sunday School lessons about the way to heaven. They taught “right and wrong” as “the way”. Education was becoming more important. Revivals were not acceptable, as new young preachers came. The change in behavior and attitudes were noticeable. Cars made parents unnecessary for getting to youth meetings and socials. Parents were not needed for weddings, either. Many couples went to parsonages. School teachers even kept their marriage a secret until the year was over, or be fired. The depression was only an excuse. I had never been to a church wedding, so was satisfied with going to the parsonage.
  After Mother died, the minister came to visit one evening by horse and buggy. He read out of the Bible and knelt by his chair to pray. People in church knelt by the church pew and before preachers came from seminaries, the church men would lead in prayer for the church services. Prayer was not left for the minister alone. Prayers were not read by preacher or by prayer meeting members in my young days. Women could also pray at missionary meetings and prayer meetings. Mother was interested in missionary work and prayer meetings. The doctor confided to Mother’s friend that Mother prayed for us before she died.
  Country churches built long sheds, open on one side, divided into stalls for two horses and buggy or surrey (two-seated). They threw robes over horses during church time and Sunday School. For communion, there was a common cup and cloth napkin to wipe the cup after each serving.
  Dad sat by the window and read news and farm papers. War years brought news to discuss. The letters from Germany discontinued about 1917, when Dad’s mother died. The younger ones in the family in Germany did not know Dad; he was the oldest of nine children.
  Nettie did much for us after her marriage, sewing plaid dresses for Christmas in time for the church program, my dress for confirmation, canning and baking bread for us. Nettie and Ed shared their home – we could never repay Nettie for all she did for us girls. We even met our future husbands because of Nettie and Ed. They helped Marie attend high school. They took me to the 4th of July picnic at the West St. Charles Sunday School, where Ray asked me for a date. Rosa could meet Fred at their church or vice versa. Their Bible reading and prayer time each morning spoke to me more than many other words. 		”

Junkermeier Lineage