The claim shanty where I was born was built like most of
them at that time, 83 years ago. They first
dug in a side hill and put boards over the dugout for protections while
building the house. It was usually
attached to the dugout which was later used as a root cellar. Snakes often crawled in here and hung down
from the ceiling (this was terrible!)
The first few summers of my life were spent running around
in the tall grass and beautiful flowers.
My mother Anna Oehlke Fraedrich told me she would look for a white head
bobbing up and down in the tall grass and then she would know where I was.
The grass was very bountiful where we lived and my father,
William Fraedrich, would care for neighbor’s cattle in summer. This also meant a little extra money. There were no fences and often at night the
cattle would start moving against the wind when the mosquitoes were bad. Some cattle had bells and they should be
easier to locate at night, but it wasn’t easy to get up and find them and get
them back home. My father finally built
a fence of willow branches to keep the cattle in. this worked fine until the following spring
when the fence took roots and began to grow.
Then the cattle ate the fence.
We lived five miles east of Enderlin and two and a half
miles north of Sheldon. The farm now
belongs to my nephew, Leon Heuer. Relatives
and friends always stopped on their way to Sheldon and when they came
back. My father had four brothers and
two sisters living along the Maple north of us.
It seems like we always had company.
My father did threshing for many farmers. This meant that we needed to prepare for 25
to 30 men for meals and a place to sleep.
It was an exciting time for me for it meant a trip to town for
groceries. A pig or beef was butchered,
lard rendered. Dishes and kettles were
marked. Usually a notch was put in with
an iron file. Neighbors borrowed these
from one another during the time they fed the men. Even then you didn’t always get your own
dishes back. I remember one lady who had
only one large cooking pan. She used to
cook coffee in it and then clean it and use if for frying or cooking the rest of
the meal. When my father saw this, he offered
to cook for the men while he was there to do the threshing, for he wanted them
to have good meals.
Breakfast consisted of fried potatoes, boiled eggs,
bacon, cooked cereal, cookies or coffee cake, with lots of coffee. Pies were either custard, currant, or a dried
fruit grape, but which looked like a huge raisin. Then there were the dried fruits like apples
and prunes. The farmers had chickens,
eggs, milk, cream, butter and cottage cheese.
Wheat could be taken to a mill and ground for flour, at first at Lisbon and
later at Enderlin. We never canned any
vegetables. Root vegetables kept well
until spring in the root cellar. Sauer
Kraut, dill pickles were put up in large crocks or barrels. For meat, we had only to go to the smoke
house, where hams, bacon, sausage and smoked fish kept very well. We sometimes roasted barley to mix with the
coffee beans. Coffee was 12 pounds for
$1.00. It was called Arbuckle Brand and
had a picture of an angel floating on the paper bag it came in, which I often
wondered about.
To seat the men in threshing time we brought in saw
horses and long planks for table and chairs.
Boxes outside held pails of water and soap for the men. We always locked the door until everything
was ready and the food was on the table.
The men stormed in like a mob.
Many of these men came back to work each year. One of them who returned for many years was
Black George Walker. He used all his
money for liquor and would come back in the spring looking ragged and
thin. My father did not pay him one year
until he was ready to leave. He took him
to Sheldon and bought a suit, shoes and other clothes and gave him the money
left over. He was grateful that anyone
should care to do this for him. He told
my father that he was well educated in law, but started to drink and could not
keep his position. He wrote to his
brother and told him he had an accident and could not work. Since this was not true he could not return
to his home.
My mother made the lye we used to make soap. Foe this we filled three large salt barrels with
wood ashes. The tilted barrels were set
on a container. The ashes were kept
moist. It took a couple of months. Lard and cracklings were mixed with the lye
solution and cooked in huge kettles. It
made a soft, sudsy soap that cleaned almost anything.
In the winter and again in the spring, the men in the neighborhood
would go to the Sheyenne to fish. One time
they got a wagon box full of fish. They would
sooner go fishing than to a party. They did
not enjoy so much the trips to the Sheyenne to cut the supply of wood for the
year, for it was cold hard work and often they did not get home until long
after dark.
One stormy night we were sitting around the stove,
enjoying the warmth and comfort of a good fire.
Father said that the wood was very good that year. Someone looked up and discovered smoke around
the stovepipe. We discovered that the
roof was on fire. There was a storm
outside and we could not locate a shovel or other implement. My father crawled on the roof and tore the burning
shingles from the roof with his bare hands.
Mother tried to help, but the wind blew her off the roof. He got the fire out before it did too much
damage.
I attended school in Highland Township when I could, but
my mother was often ill and then it was up to me to do the housework. My sisters, Ida (Mrs. Kaatz) and Pauline
(Mrs. Heuer) and I always walked to school.
It was two and a half miles. During
the cold weather the school was closed. There
were always 20 or 30 pupils.
What a joyous time was Christmas – visiting and having
company, candy, cookies and apples – just about everything we could wish
for. There was always the tree. Father got a large branch from a boxelder and
they would wind green fringed paper around the branches. Sometimes we found a little of this paper and
that meant Santa was working and we had better not disturb him. The tree was decorated with apples, candy and
cookies. What a wonderful time it
was! One year I got two presents – a pair
of overshoes and a religious booklet.
I was confirmed by Pastor Dieter when I was 13. The first church I remember going to was at
Sheldon. It was while singing in the
choir that I met my husband, Robert. I remember
the ones who sang in the choir. They
were Pauline Kunst (Mrs. Aug. Geske), Carolyn Kunst (Mrs. Spitzer), Augusta
Kunst (Mrs. Fraase), Ameliea Fraedrich (Mrs. Petrich), Minnie Kaatz, Tillie
Finger (Kaatz), William Finger, Gust Hohnse, Albert Fraedrich, Carl Schroeder,
R.T. Petrich, Emma Kaatz (Finger) and Robert Lindemann, and it was directed by
Mrs. Dieter. The first choir, however
was directed by Henry Fraase. He had two
mules which were always decorated with red tassels on the bridles. He used to start early in the evening to
gather his choir.
Robert and I were married in 1901. Like all weddings, there were many guests for
diner and lunch in the evening. The Enderlin
Coronet band played in the afternoon. Robert
and I lived with his parents on the farm now owned by our son, Karl Lindemann. Robert’s mother and father were very good to
me. She loved the outdoors and was
always planting flowers and trees. Whenever
she saw someone driving down the road, a half mile away, she would put on the coffee
pot and have everything ready when they came.
Each afternoon when possible there was milk with coffee and sugar in it and
bread and butter for the children when they came from school.
For Grandma Lindemann, Saturday evenings was a time to
prepare for the church services on Sunday.
She put on a clean apron, put a shawl around her shoulders and sat by
the west window where the rays of the setting sun made it easier to read her Bible.
Robert’s most loved pastime, next to amusing his
children, was hunting. One afternoon, I
cleaned 30 ducks. I don’t think anyone
had more patience with his children than my husband. He had some of the children with him always,
whether going to town on business, to the river to fish or hunt, or to inspect
the fields. One year there wasn’t much snow, he hauled water on a hill to make
an ice slide for them and their homemade sleds.
I can’t call any of this time difficult or a
hardship. Some evenings we were very
tired, but many evenings Robert would play the violin and we would sing and
really enjoy ourselves. All but one of
our children live in North Dakota. They are
Verner, Karl, Reuben, Maynard, Doris (Utke), Agnes (Geske), Esther (Brun), all
of Enderlin, Willis in Florida, Kenneth in West Fargo and Alice (Peterson) at
Arthur.
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