Farm Girl (15 page)

THE WALSTADS

In 1872, my grandfather Hans Walstad came from Norway to Iowa to Nebraska to become one of the first settlers in Webster County. The Norwegians would come out to Decorah, Iowa, a Norwegian town, and from there travel to various places to settle. My mother always said that her dad, Hans Walstad, was here before George Cather, but they called it Catherton Township just the same.

Jakob and Karen Walstad lived on the Franklin County side and Hans on the Webster County side. The oldest daughter and her husband stayed in Norway, buying the parent’s farm for $1000. This is the money that Jakob and Karen brought to America

One large family built a two-story frame house connected to their sod house. This is the only family I knew of who kept the original sod house, as most were glad to get rid of it and build a frame house.

Sofie Walstad lived with us from 1924-26. Mother and Aunt Thilde would each take her for three months at a time. Thilde married Charlie Banks, a Swede, and they lived in the Scandinavian community four miles west of us. Their children were Clarence, Hazel and Stella. When the children got old enough for high school, the parents bought a farm near Inavale. Thilde had a Norwegian accent but not Mother. Mother wanted to be Americanized, and didn’t even cook Norwegian.

“Lieten yenta” is Norwegian for “little girl.”

THE MARKERS

John Marker, my dad’s father, was married to Annie Elizabeth Wilson in Virginia, and they came out to Nebraska with her brothers Clarence, John, Arthur and Albert. The parents and two other married daughters didn’t come.

Clarence had two sons and a daughter. His son Ray was superintendent of the church for years and kept it going. John Wilson probably did the best. He gave land for the school house and the New Virginia church.

Aunt Elizabeth, a school teacher, became superintendent of schools in Red Cloud. When she married Will May, they moved to Lincoln and that’s where I stayed when I went to high school. Aunt Dora married John Lutz and they lived near Campbell. We always got together with their family at Christmas. After Dora, there was Carrie who married Ed Johnson. They had Cecil, Clayton and Gladys who had Downs Syndrome. Aunt Bernice taught school in Lincoln and never married. After Ford died, Bernice tried to live in their house alone, but ended up in a nursing home in Red Cloud as she had Alzheimers.

THE NEW FARM

My parents had lived on another place with old farm buildings and a little three-room house, but now that they were expecting a child my dad sold cattle and built a nice house. He wasn’t a carpenter, he had someone else do the work. My dad kept the old farm and the hired hand lived there and worked the land. Uncle Ford’s farm joined ours, so he and my dad often worked together to help each other.

I remember two of the mail carriers, Claude Conley and later Gerald Leonard. Our box was there along with the ones for the Henry Williams and Jay Lovejoy families.

Our fence was woven into long rectangles about an inch and a half wide and six inches long, and curved at the top into scallops. The wire used in this fence was very strong, maybe1/8" thick.

MOTHER AND ME

During the early years of the Depression, Mother subscribed to the “Comfort” magazine, published in New England. The back half of this magazine contained articles and letters written by subscribers telling about their hobbies. They would tell what they made that they would like to trade for something others had made. Mother would write to women in different states offering to trade an oil painting or a small pastel painting. I remember her receiving salmon from Washington, strawberries from Oregon, embroidered dishtowels and pillowcases, crocheted doilies, etc. One woman in Iowa pieced a quilt for a large oil painting, then Mother sent the quilt top to a woman in South Dakota who quilted it by hand for another oil painting. In fact, my hope chest consisted of dish towels, pillow cases, doilies, that quilt, all things that Mother had received in exchange for paintings.

I didn’t care to do embroidery, crochet and so called fancy work. I preferred to read or play outdoors. Mother could do all that but she preferred creating other types of things, like beaded baskets and necklaces, painted winter bouquets from weeds and branches she gathered, plaster of Paris figurines and pictures she would mold, dry and paint. She would have loved ceramics, but back then in the 1920’s and 30’s she hadn’t heard of that.

Mrs. Ellen Lambrecht also usually boarded the schoolteacher. One year when LaVerne Lambrecht was small, he got very sick with pneumonia, and his mother was busy caring for him so the teacher, Gertrude Wiggins, stayed several weeks at our place. We had a hired man, my cousin Milton Lutz, so lots of evenings, my Dad and I and Milton and Miss Wiggins played cards.

MY PRETTY COUSIN CATHERINE

There was some kind of fight later at the stadium, and after that the University of Nebraska never played Notre Dame.

I think one of the reasons I whined and tried to get out of work around the house was because I really didn’t feel well much of the time. I had so many allergies and it seemed my nose was always stopped up. I didn’t eat right since I was such a picky eater, and was anemic, too. Mother took me to every doctor around, but they all had a different answer as to what my problem was and did nothing to help it.

THE BEST DAD IN NEBRASKA

The lady my mother worked for in Omaha gave my mother a porcelain doll that was slightly broken. The feet were broken off, so Mother made a base for it out of plaster of Paris and kept it for years. This old lady lived in downtown Omaha. Everyone was trying to buy this woman’s house and she refused to sell. She had lived there for fifty years, since the Indians were around, and she told my mother about them coming to her door. Back then, this lady said, they didn’t dare have a light at night for fear the Indians would see it and come right into the house.

THE NEW VIRGINIA COMMUNITY

I went back in 1981 for the 100
^th
reunion of the New Virginia Church, and that was fun seeing people. I saw Irving Brooks, who was in my class in high school, and he couldn’t figure out who I was. They had a program and a dinner, an all day affair, with a church service in the morning, picnic in the afternoon and another church service in the evening. The New Virginia Church was open until just a few years ago in the 1990’s, and they stopped services then because there’s hardly anyone living out there anymore. The ones who were coming had gotten old or moved away, so it wasn’t worth it to pay to keep it open, so they closed it. There’s a foundation that wants to keep it in good condition for funerals and weddings, and any community events could be held there. The church is on the Willa Cather tour.

OUR CATHER CONNECTIONS

Albert had come out in 1871 or ‘72, then his brothers came out around 1876 or ‘77. There were some Wilson sisters back in Virginia who were married who didn’t come to Nebraska, but all the Wilson brothers came. My dad’s father, John Marker, had married Lizzie Wilson in Virginia, and my dad was about three when his parents came West.

Jessie Auld and my cousin Stella Fregulia, Mathilde’s daughter, were in the same PEO out in Palo Alto, California. Don’t ask me what PEO means, only the members know; but it is a service organization for women.

THE BIG CITY

While I was staying at Aunt Elizabeth’s, Catherine received a watch from her mother as a birthday present. Oh, I wanted a watch so badly. That was one of the popular fashions of the time, for young people to wear a wristwatch, and I didn’t have one. Later, Aunt Bernice gave me one for Christmas, I think it was a Timex, with a leather band. The most popular and nicest watches back then were Elgin. The Elgin watch for girls had a pretty metal wristband. Many students received a good watch as a high school graduation presents, and I got a nice Elgin when I graduated from high school.

An Austin, joked about by the vaudeville team, was a very small car.

DUST BOWL DAYS

I had graduated from high school on January 26, 1934. Back then the city schools had A and B classes. Students could start to school in January as well as September. The B class finished in January. I wasn’t in the B class until I was a Senior and had finished all my required subjects and earned extra credits with top grades, so had enough credits to graduate in January. I stayed home with my parents during February and then started in March to Kearney State Teacher’s College, which was on the quarter system. I began the third quarter there.

APPENDIX B:
Writings of Julia Walstad Marker
(1948-1958)

Julia Marker

Oil painting by Julia Marker

INTERVIEW WITH THE WORLD HERALD
OMAHA NEWSPAPER

Mrs. Julia Marker, whose four hundred acre farm in the middle of Nebraska hasn’t produced a spear of grass since 1932, painted her way out of the Depression.

Today Mrs. Marker is proud to announce that her crop of pictures exceeds one thousand, that they have gone to every state in the union and her household budget is balanced.

“We have not had a blade of green grass here for five years,” Mrs. Marker said, “so I had to do something. I borrowed a painting and copied it. Since then I have made as many as three oil paintings a day. I send hundreds to stores in Minnesota. I also exchange paintings for embroidery work, quilt tops, oranges from Florida, salmon from Washington, dates from California, and also turkeys from the state of Iowa.”

Mrs. Marker said she gets up early in the morning to paint and is often still working at midnight. She never tires, she says, because she loves to paint. She never had any formal art education.

“Only when the dust blows too hard, I have to stop,” she explained. “I tried to paint in a dust storm but had to give it up, although I was indoors.”

“Sometimes I copy snapshots of animals,” Mrs. Marker said. “Sometimes I just copy a picture out of the paper.”

“My favorite picture is ‘Dog and Lamb,’which I painted in 1934. I also like the one I made of two cranes standing in a stream of water with water lilies in front. I think a picture is more complete with a deer, a dog, bird, or some animal in it.”

Mrs. Marker’s ambition is to paint a large church mural. “The next time I get an order for a church painting,” she said, “I am going to paint a picture of Bethlehem. I want to do a large canvas with lots of color and life. I know I can.”

The middle-aged woman who took up painting in lieu of potato planting, makes all her own frames. She augments her income of oil paintings with what she earns from plaster plaques and painting of velvet.

A GIRLS PATH STREWN WITH SNAKES INSTEAD OF ROSES

I have heard of a person’s path being strewn with roses, but I never heard of a person’s path being strewn with snakes. That happened in my own life so I know it is true. I guess I inherited those snakes from my grandfather and my father. They did their best to rid the country where they lived of snakes, mostly rattlesnakes, by breaking up the sod where the rattlesnakes thrived. But this country has many different kinds of snakes that are not considered poisonous.

I remember seeing rattlesnakes curled up in a coil alongside the road as we walked barefoot to school. I have had blue racers chase me. They are long and slender, a dark blue with head raised a foot above the ground while they wind their way about.