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Mom went to Iowa with her two brothers, Jerry and LaVern, for the yearly Neitzell-Sundahl family reunion. I remember going to these as a child. There were so many people that we commandered the entire park, pretty much. They were always held in Bellmont, Iowa, because it was they half-way point between the Minnesota family and the Iowa family.
My grandfather, Jay, and his sister, Fern, had a sad childhood. Their father was nearly fifty when he married their teenaged mother, who was forced into the marriage by her sadistic mother-in-law. Carrie, my great-grandmother, had been orphaned at 1 month old and was raised by her maternal grandparents. Her mother had died, presumably of complications from child birth, a month after Carrie was born. Her grandparents were elderly and in poor health, so she had to find work. Of course the only thing she could do was housekeeping, so she got a job with Lavinia Calhoun, a mean-spirited woman who had forced her son to remain with her as a caretaker, keeping him a bachelor until he was nearly 50.
Lavinia insisted that it wouldn't be proper for Carrie to work in their house as a single woman with her son living there, so she strong-armed Carrie into marrying Phillip. The girl was desperate and saw no other possibilities open to her. (This was back in the early 1900s.) So she married my great-grandfather and kept house for him and his mother.
Well, the mother-in-law had an unheated, uninsulated lean-to on the side of her house. This is where the newlyweds were forced to live. I believe the name of the town was Cheritan, Iowa. Well, Iowa gets mighty cold in the winter.
Phillip was a horney old bastard and "wouldn't leave her alone," according to my grandmother. Well, we know what that means, don't we? She was constantly pregnant and had one miscarriage after another. I'm sure she had post-partum depression, which wasn't known in those days...Finally she gave birth to my great aunt Fern. Three years later, she had my grandfather. In between them, I don't know how many babies she lost. Lots of them, according to the oral family tradition. My mom and uncle once went to this town and found the cemetery where all these little babies were buried. They said there were so many little stones that it was completely horrendous.
Well, with her husband on her constantly fathering new babies to die, and her mother-in-law withholding everything from food, clothing, and heat from her and her children, and probably fearing that one of these days SHE was going to die in childbirth, just as her mother had before her, Carrie packed up and left. My great aunt Fern was 3 and my grandfather was 9 months old.
When my grandfather was 7 or 8 and Fern was 10 or 11, their father made arrangements for them to be placed in an orphanage. He was quite old then, and in poor health. When he abandoned them there, he left strict instructions that their mother was NOT ALLOWED to collect them or even to SEE them. (I suspect she had tried to get her kids once she had resettled herself and remarried to a huge Frenchman who treated her like a queen.)
Orphanages were cruel places in those days. Both of them were beaten and mistreated both at the orphanage and at the farms they were sent to work at. My mother remembers my grandfather talking about a time when Fern accidentally broke an egg while she was in the hen house and she sobbed, knowing she would be whipped. My grandfather, who was just a little boy, told them he had broken it, and the farm whipped him with a buggy whip. He was only 9 or 10 at that time.
Well, when people would come to the orphanage, they'd often take my grandfather on a trial basis, and my Aunt Fern would hide in the park across the street from the orphanage and cry because her brother had been taken away. My grandfather would run away from the families and come back to the orphanage to be with Fern.
Well, one day a nice couple from Iowa came to the orphanage and adopted Fern. They had a son, couldn't have more children, and wanted a daughter. The children were forbidden to tell their adoptive parents about their siblings, and they were so in fear of the orphanage people that they didn't tell. The people who adopted Fern were very kind and loving to her. After quite some time had passed, the father found Fern crying and wanted to know what was wrong. She broke down and told him about her brother.
He was upset and said that they would have taken him too, had they known they were siblings. He went back to the orphanage to adopt him, but he had already been adopted by some people named Neitzell. He stayed with them because he knew Fern was no longer at the orphanage and it was pointless to go back.
The kids were not allowed to know where each other was because they were afraid they would run away to get back with each other. Somehow the parents worked it out that the kids would write letters to each other, then mail them to the orphanage. Someone would read and censor the letters, then send them on to the other kid. Mom has copies of all the letters that Fern wrote to Jay. She doesn't have the ones he wrote back to her.
Anyhow, when they were adults they were able to hook back up with each other. By this time, my grandfather was living in Hollandale and Fern was living down in Iowa somewhere. They were both married and had children, so they began these yearly reunions. By the time I was around, there were kids and grandkids and even great grandkids, eventually. In this modern world, people do not continue to live within fifty miles of where they were born. The third generation scattered across the country and quit coming to the reunions.
Now there are only a handful who get together: my Mom, my uncle Jerry and his wife Lily (who didn't go this year because of the pain she is in with her frozen shoulders), my uncle LaVern, and two couples from the other side. I guess one of their sons was there this time. The youngest of them is in his 70s, and all the Iowa people are in poor health.
I expect there will not be many more of these reunions. And the story will probably die with me, since none of my nieces and nephews have any interest in family history. My mom has a lot of information and has written a lot down--but she sanitizes everything. There are a lot of interesting details that she would leave out because they may not be "nice." It is the parts that are not "nice" that are the most interesting!
Carrie lived a very long life. She had three children from her second husband--a son named Jesse, a daughter named Nellie, and a daughter who died in infancy. I met Jesse and Nellie before they died. Jesse was a really great guy (except he was a republican who adored Ronald Reagan and Oliver (gag) North). I didn't discuss politics with him. I wanted to continue to like him. LOL.
Anyhow--while my mom was at the family reunion, I baked sugar cookies, Lunchbox cookies, which are a kind of oatmeal cookies, and tried to recreate the salad I had at Old Country Buffet when I went with Jessica. It had pea pods, celery, chicken, penne, and a dill dressing. My renegade version wasn't bad, but it didn't taste the same as the one at OCB.
The oatmeal cookies were freaking awesome!
I gave a plate of each kind of cookie to Lily, Rhonda, and Rachelle who had stopped in on their way to Owatonna. I sent some salad home for them later, when Jerry dropped off my mom. Jack and Kari and the kids stopped in after Caleb's football game, and I gave them big plates of each kind of cookie. I made them stick around until the first to pans were baked. The lunchbox cookies are Jack's favorite kind.
Lily called me later to tell me that the lunchbox cookies were delicious. She wants the recipe. I will give it to her later. I may put it up here too as they are simply awesome.
When I got done baking and cooking, I washed the dishes, wiped down the counters, and swept the floor--I tried to make everything cleaner than it was when I started. I love to bake. I am not so fond of cleaning up afterwards. LOL.
But, I did it.
