61 Treffer anzeigen

Sketch of a band playing music, likely at a wedding.

Sketch of a family and their housebarn in Chortitz, Manitoba circa 1930

Text describing the continuation of children spending a Sunday afternoon.
"is as homely as her sister Mary pretty, and those angular features that look so good on Jacob don't on her. Distinctive she is, but it would take a Leonardo to notice it, and we don't know that yet. "Children, come for coffee," Margaret Kauenhofen calls, hurrying us to finish. The three Penners live next door, Annie, Helen and Tina, and go home. Susie Thiessen goes home, next door but one, and takes Nettie and Mary Froese, the Thiessens cousins along. Margaret and Agnes, mine and Betty's freidns respectively, stay. That makes us nine at table. During the week we've moved cooking and eating utensils into the summer kitchen where it's cool. Mary's made a cake and Margaret her usual large white buns. We spread butter and tangy cranberry jam , drink our coffee half milk. The smells are good, on Saturday we've cleaned the coffee kettle, Sunday we start fresh, each day we add some grounds through the week, simmered over breakfast and in between... taken to the fields in a narrow neck crock, picnics at work. The kitchen's fairly fly-free. On Saturdays and whenever delicious borscht and frying ham smell attract them, we chase out flies. Margaret is good at it, taking a dirty towel, shooing high and low like a whirling dervish to the open screen door and beyond, out, out, out!"

Sketch of children playing near and swimming in a creek near their homes, continuing to spend their Sunday afternoon,
"At our place and at Thiessens we talk at table. Penners don't. They are a large family, I think twelve. Maybe that's why they don't often eat elsewhere. They are a "brought together" family. Mr. Penner has lost one, no, two wives, they died, no other separations or divorce exist, and had children by each, Mrs. Penner had a family too and now they have Annie and Helen together. A boy baby in their old age dies soon after birth.
After Faspa it's time to get the milk cows home. We and Thiessens share a fence just outside Chortitz. It's always fun to do this. Sometimes Abram Thiessen and Jake Froese come too. Otherwise we seldom play outside, boys and girls, except in school hours. The boys may decide to strip and plunge into the creek, one hand between their legs, one over mouth and nose. We scream with excitement along with the boys 'tho at a respectable distance and guess who remembers the cows? On Sunday other village children come and it's great fun. They take a running leap to make the muddy water splash, no matter cows do their thing in it too."

Sketch of Marta and her sister playing dress-up in the pantry of their home
"All Beginnings
Mary beckons me to the pantry, "Close your eyes: Suprise!" She has basted together a "brassiere" for me, of flour sacking, and dyed it pink with beets; I look so funny with it on, we "sneeze" out into laughter."

Sketches of Marta's family going out to their wheat fields in a wagon and stopping for lunch
"Our wheat is ripe! The weather fine, the water in the barrel begins plish-plashing here in the back of the feedwagon. Lisa and Abe would rather come to the fields...
"Well, shall we break early for lunch?" in the fields everything tastes better! Cold potatoes, meat, bread with pickled cucumbers..."

Sketches of a family collecting straw and using it to stuff mattresses to sleep on circa 1930
"Stuffing our straw beds circa 1930.
Here in the strawloft it is scary; it is only of wide-spaced branches laid. One must step straddle-legged not to slide through!
How sweet the sleep then on such a high fresh-smelling flax strawbed..."

Sketch of Marta's father and a government worker hauling ice in the winter
"This winter we have a government worker, Jacob, eldest son of the widow, Mrs. Fred Thiessen, from the village end. The government pays Jakob a few dollars a month, and something to father for providing the work and for his food. He eats with gusto (doesn't fuss), is always friendly, and helps willingly enough. We like this arrangement! Here he helps father haul ice from the (woods)creek..."

Sketches of a family cutting chop and discovering mice in a stack of oatsheaf
"Towards spring once, when cutting chop, we found one oatsheaf stack (was) riddled with mice. What a squeaking, squirming and scampering - ranging from naked new-borns to stunned old ones! At first our barnyard cats leaped, startled, about among them. But soon, not knowing which ones to follow, bewildered quite, they turned tail and fled...
When the cats fled from the mice!!"

Sketches of a family around the dinner table and in the cow barn at night
"After supper
Before bedtime"

Sketches of children going to the bathroom in the cow barn before going to bed
""Now quick: go and pee and then to bed!" says Greet
In Winter we go behind the cows - big eyed and slow - because of the scary shadows...
At night alone on the pot"

Sketches of the burial and funeral of Marta's mother.
"At the cemetery we wing, pray, and the minster "thanks off". Then he scatters the first handful of earth on the coffin... Village women brought butter and milk together yesterday to make the rolldough. This they carried to other women and took some themselves for baking. While we are at the cemetery, they set the coffee table: rolls, coffee and sugar cubes. The men eat first, then the women and the children."

Sketches of Marta and her siblings dealing with fleas in their bedclothes.
""Look how the beasts hide themselves in the seams! There - you must be quicker than they - get 'em between your thumbnails and squish them before they hop away!" says Greet. No one seems to know where these fleas come from that spread through the village now and then. Some say from the hay, some say from Mexico. We chuckle at those who still wear old-fashioned clothes. We call their high collars flea collars because they hide the telltale red dot flea bites!"

Sketches of a cow breaking into the family's garden, and the family chasing it out again
"Greet calls: "Children, come fend off! Yellow (one)'s in the garden! That old beast! That sneak-thief! She needs a ladder hung on her again!" We drive her out gently so she won't panic and trample yet more underfoot. Such a ladder is used only on young stock, and that only rarely..."

Sketch of a house on fire, and the community rallying to put it out with buckets of water
"The dogs are suddenly barking like crazy, horses neigh, cows bellow, and there's a banging at the window. "At old Frank Groening's is fire and pass on the word!" Father jumps out of bed, runs across the yard to Penners... and so the news goes through the village. People run, call to each other, some with lanterns, buckets.. there's pouring water, carrying out what can be saved, thanking God no one is hurt. Next morning so much is brought together, Greet says, "Groenings are better off after the fire than before!""