When the depression hit about 1929 the winter was bad and the hens couldn’t lay many egg. Christmas gifts were only given to the younger members of the family. Theresa asked what I really wanted. One thing I said was a ring with a red set. I got that and a light blue opal necklace also, I felt I was certainly blessed! Opal my birth stone! Adolph saw I could make Christmas wreaths out of cedar branches and add red crepe paper bows, he asked me to make more and he took them to market on Saturdays to sell to customers for 25 cents each to buy Christmas gifts for the little ones under 6 years at home.
depression
Uncle Herbert
In reading the Aunt and Uncle’s stories, a number of them mentioned Uncle Herbert and the fact that he was gone for a number of years. My Dad told me this story one night when we were both up with Brittney when she was little.
Uncle Herbert was Grandpa Adolph’s younger brother. When Uncle Herbert was a boy a barn door fell on him and injured his back, so he was somewhat stooped over (of course he was an old man when my Dad knew him, so this could have been part of the stoop.) Grandpa Adolph, being the oldest boy would inherit the farm from his father, so because Uncle Herbert was injured he was sent to school to become a banker. The family could afford to send him to school. They were rather well off. Grandpa Adolph was the first person in Cole County to own a tractor and they owned all of their own farm equipment. They were even able to afford farm hands.
A few years before the Great Depression hit, Great Grandpa Sommerer decided that Uncle Herbert should have a farm of his own. They mortgaged the homestead farm that would belong to Adolph to purchase Uncle Herbert’s farm. Life went on as it typically does on a farm until the depression came to the area. Uncle Herbert’s crops didn’t bring in enough money to pay the mortgage payment and he decided he had had enough of farming and took off. That left the mortage payment to be made and the homestead farm connected to it. Grandma and Grandpa didn’t have the cash to make the payment either and were forced to sell off their farm equipment to try to raise the money. They were not able to save the homestead, but moved to Uncle Herbert’s farm to try to make a go of it. This was how Grandma and Grandpa lost the old homestead.
This would have been in the 1920’s. Uncle Herbert was not heard from again until after my dad was born in 1943. When he was finally able to speak again after his stroke, they found his family and his brother and sisters went to St. Louis and brought him home. I don’t think he originally lived with Grandma and Grandpa, but that is where he spent his final years. Most of us remember the rope swing on the tree in front of Grandma’s house, well I guess Uncle Herbert liked to sit on the swing in the shade in the afternoons. My dad and Aunt Naomi would
Gas Rationing… by Uncle Mahlon
Then somewhere along this period (second World War) Dad and I was over south of the house, across the creek, up on that ridge. The first ridge. We was building a turkey house. We had turkeys and he wanted to keep them away from the chickens so they wouldn’t get infected. You couldn’t raise chickens and turkeys together. While we were there and a phone call came in and Mom hollered at us to come over real quick that Uncle Herbert was found. He was in a hospital in St. Louis with a stroke. So I remember we came back and Dad and Aunt Dora and a bunch of them got together and they decided that they had to go down. So each one of them had to put in to get enough gas rationing stamps to drive to St. Louis to see their brother that they hadn’t seen for upteen years. he had disappeared from home. So they had quite a deal to get enough gas to get there.
Uncle Vernon’s Story (part 2)
At our sale, Pearl Ehrhardt collected bottle caps from where they were selling soda pop and removed the inside cork and attached them to her skirt completely around it and when she would twirl around, the skirt would flair out. It’s interesting the events of youth that stick in your mind.
The auctioneer at the sale was named Dawson. I didn’t remember much about the sale, but in 1944 or 1945 we took some cows up to Norfleet’s barn and had a sale. When Dawson started the sale, he said that it was the second sale that he had for Mr. Sommerer.
Nearly everything we had was sold at the sale, so we didn’t have much to move to the 2nd Ivan place. The Ivan place was large. It had two houses on it. The one we moved into is the one Bud purchased in 1949. Ehrhardt’s owned both farms. They lived in the house (brick) on the lower farm.
Grandpa Sommerer helped Uncle Herbert Sommerer purchase the Ivan farm. When the depression hit, he was about to lose it, so Aunt Dora and Uncle Theodore moved from their Honey Creek farm down to the Ivan place to try to help Uncle Herbert Sommerer save the farm. In the process, they lost both Ivan places and the Honey Creek farm also. Aunt Tillie and Uncle Hans Eckert purchased the Honey Creek farm and later sold it back to them when they could afford to buy it back.