Oral History Program Paul Gerhardt Rosenau Hazel Pearl Wise Rosenau Interviewed by Diana Deatherage 28 July 1983 30 July 1983 13 August 1983 15 August 1983 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Paul Gerhardt Rosenau Hazel Pearl Wise Rosenau Interviewed by Diana Deatherage 28 July 1983 30 July 1983 13 August 1983 15 August 1983 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Rosenau, Paul Gerhardt, Rosenau, Hazel Pearl Wise, an oral history by Diana Deatherage, 28 July 1983, 30 July 1983, 13 August 1983, 15 August 1983, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following are oral history interview with Paul and Hazel Rosenau. The interviews were conducted on July 28, July 30, August 13, and August 15, 1983 by Diana Deatherage, in the home of the interviewees. Mr. and Mrs. Rosenau discuss their lives separately and together throughout the years 1906 to 1927, and the historical and personal events that occurred within that time period. DD: This is Diana Deatherage. I am in Munster, Indiana at the home of my grandparents. I'll be interviewing my grandmother, Hazel Rosenau. It is June, no, July 28, Thursday, about quarter to six. We're going out to eat in a little bit. I guess just to start off… we've talked so many times, you've told me so many things in the past that I don't remember, so I wanted to go back and get it all on tape. Why don't we just start with (I'm always curious) what is the first memory you can remember when you were little? I was thinking about mine recently. What can you remember? HR: Living on the farm. DD: Where was your farm at? HR: Chesterton, Indiana. With my grandparents. Having a pair of red shoes and that was a big deal. Yeah, I got a new pair of red shoes. DD: How old were you? HR: Oh, I was only two years old, about two, because my mother died when I was two and Grandmother took us to raise. Then, I always remember the barnyard at the farm, with the chickens, haystack. We used to play in the haystack a lot. DD: Were you afraid of the animals at all? 1 HR: No, no. Well, they weren't up there much in the barnyard. They were out in the pasture. They used to cone up to the barn. Course the cows did at milking time. We used to run back in the woods, (there) was a woods right next to the farm, my grandma’s farm and we used to play back there. I always remember about the owl, cause, you know, when you're little and you hear an owl hootin'. Hootin’, yeah, I guess they say hootin'. Then us running back and one day, I always remember, my two brothers were ahead of me. Course, I was little, I was only two, I'm in back. We were barefoot and my brothers turned, all of a sudden to look see if I made it. They says, "We run over a snake!" DD: Did you know? HR: No, I didn't know. Then I had a swing out in the orchard, what they had, orchard, you know with all the fruit. We had one of these rope swings. I used to spend a lot of time out there. DD: Was it just a long rope…? HR: Yeah, rope with a board, you know, one of these kind, old-style ones, out there in the orchard it was always, under the apple tree. I used to love to go out there when I was little. And I had another thing I remember, I had a doll house. It had the prettiest furniture in it. It was all covered with material and it had perfume. It had a sweet smell to it, you know, like perfume would be. Outside of that the only toy I guess I had was a doll, that I can remember. What they called a tin-head doll, cause they were tin heads. DD: Really? HR: Yeah, and they had cloth bodies which was usually home-made, that your grandma or whoever made it. I suppose Grandma did. And they sewed the tin heads. And you know 2 they didn't have, veil they might of had, china doll heads. But I didn’t have one, it was a tin head. Called her Tin head! DD: That was her name? HR: That was her name, Tin Head! And then, I always remember on that farm too, that my uncle, which was my father's brother, lived, well, he was home yet. He used to take me on his bicycle, on the handlebars, take me down the road, as fast as he could pedal and back and that was great, you know! When I was small, like that. DD: Did you have a bicycle? HR: No, you didn't have things like that in... DD: But he was older... HR: He was older and you know, older people had bicycles once in a while. He had a bicycle. And we used to go, when I was on the farm, Saturday nights we went to square dances. Grandpa and Grandma... DD: Now this was getting older now? HR: You was gettin' older, well, a little bit, yeah as you go along. It doesn’t just right as I was two. Up until about, I think it was close to before I went to school, before we moved from that farm. Grandpa and Grandma used to go to the square dances and if it was just down at the neighbors, they used to pull me in a little red wagon. Course I'd be asleep coming home, and they could pull me home in the little red wagon. Otherwise, we went horse and buggy. DD: Oh, really? 3 HR: Oh, yeah! Then we traveled all the time horse and buggy. DD: Did they have two horses, or one horse? HR: They had the work horses and then they had the horses, a couple horses that you took to the buggy, when you went to town, or you went visiting, which you didn't do that much, only with their neighbors. DD: Was it a big buggy? HR: Ah, no, it was one of these, with the top on it, just a one-seater, where about three people sat across. But later on we did have one that was called like a, guess they called it…. forget what they called them that had fringe all the way around the top. Was a twoseater. DD: Some were called phaetons. . . HR: I don't know what they were called. DD: I don't know either. I would have loved to have done that! HR: And then in the winter going, Grandpa would hitch up a team onto a sleigh and we'd go sleigh-riding. You know, not sleighing, but sleigh-riding in the thing. It was real cold and we had blankets all around us. Lots of times Grandma would warm a brick or a couple of bricks and we put them at our feet to keep our feet warm. DD: And that was how you kept warm? HR: And then later on we moved to another farm, but we weren't there very long, and after that we moved into town. That's when I went to school, when I started school. DD: Tell me what were your grandparents’ names? I don't know if I know them. 4 HR: Grandma was, her whole name? Clarabelle Conklin was her maiden name, Conklin. Course, my grandpa's name was Daniel Webster Wise. DD: Your mother was their daughter? HR: No, my dad was their son, Wise, the Wise's. DD: Did your dad go to live with you there? HR: My mother had passed away and then he was here in, up in Hammond and worked. Or in Gary, or in different places that he worked. Then he married again. But he didn't marry again till I was about eleven or so. Then he married again. DD: Tell me about your mother? Do you remember anything? HR: I can't remember anything, see I was two years old. Except one time that we were scared. We were at this home living. She was there and my two brothers. My dad wasn't there. They had a barn with horses in it outside. It was just getting dark and my mother was frightened because we heard and saw somebody out to the barns and my dad wasn't home. I remember then that she locked the door and told us to get back. Well, it scared us and that's why I remember it. Later on my father came home. But outside that, I don't remember anything about my mother. DD: Did you ever find out if there was anybody there? HR: Yeah, there was… no I never found out (who), I guess I asked later on, there was nothing that they told us. DD: How did your mom die? How old was she? 5 HR: My mother was… let's see, about twenty-seven I think. She was real young. She died from childbirth. There was just the three of us, three years apart, each one of us. DD: Your brothers and you... Now Milt was the next oldest, or was he the oldest? HR: No, my brother, Dan was the oldest. Milton was the next. Then we went into a… Grandma went into... well in between that I had lived with my, oh no, my first stepmother he married younger than that because, oh yeah, I made a mistake there. He married her and we went to their place up here in Hammond. DD: That was before you were eleven then? HR: Yes, this was when I was about five and a half, between that and six. I had to go to first grade when I was with my first step-mother. That was up in Hammond, Indiana. I can remember going to first grade, walking. My brother was there. She wasn't very good to us. She was kind of mean to us. The neighbors complained. Finally, they wrote a letter to my grandma, and they told my father. DD: He didn't know? HR: He didn't know, but he found out through the neighbors. He came back one time, she thought he went to work, and he slipped back into the house. DD: To see what was going on? HR: Yeah. She'd take the food off of the table, cookies or anything like that. Made him very, very mad and I can remember they had a- I can remember that, too, being frightened, that they had an argument- fight, about that and he was going to leave her. But then he didn't. DD: He didn't leave her. 6 HR: After the neighbors wrote to my grandma, she came up one time. Then she took us all back with her and we lived with Grandma again. DD: Well how long did you live with her? HR: Oh might have been a year or something like that, because they put me back in first grade when I went in Chesterton back, to school. DD: I think you've talked about that before. Didn't she make you do a lot of work? HR: I used to have to comb her hair. She had long hair. Have to stand there for hours combing her hair. She liked to have her hair combed. DD: Hours, really? HR: My arms would ache. Things like that. She was really, you know... wouldn't let us go out and play. There was a lot of things she wouldn't do. DD: Whatever happened to that marriage? HR: She was sickly, course we didn't realize it at that time, but she was sickly and later on she had died. DD: You went back and lived with Grandma first... HR: Yeah, and then a few years she had died. DD: And then did you go back and live with your dad? HR: No, not till he had married the second time. DD: So you grew up with your grandmother then. 7 HR: Yes, well all my schooling was through my grandmother. I only had seventh grade education, cause that's as far as I got. DD: Was that a one room kind of schoolhouse? HR: No, no not in those days. It wasn't one roam. Each room had a grade. DD: Did you have a big school? Chesterton's a pretty small town isn't it? HR: Yeah, but it had a pretty good size school at that time. A room for each grade and two floors. Then they had one huge room that was a high school. Everybody was in there for four years of high school, until later years, they built a new high school. But I wasn't there then. DD: You decided not to go to high school or they didn't have it then? HR: No, I had to go out and work. I worked even when I went to school. When I was younger I had to work for my aunt, do housework. Then she married a man that had a restaurant. I used to have to go over there when I was a little older, around thirteen, fourteen. I worked in the restaurant. DD: You had to work all the time... HR: Dishes, yeah, oh yeah I didn't have much like children do now. I'm not going to tell you about this... but, you had to wait on tables; you had to do dishes. DD: There wasn't a lot of playing time then. HR: Oh no! No, no, no, no, no. Even when I wasn't working in the restaurant earlier, before that, my aunt lived down the street and I'd have to go over there. She had children, 8 young, couple babies and I'd have to go there help her with the work. Housework. And come right home after school! DD: That was expected of you, that you did that? HR: Well, they told you, you had to do it. In those days, what did you do? You were young. DD: Was that pretty much the way it was with everybody around? HR: No, no... I could see my friends had freedom. DD: You just had a kind of strict family? HR: Yeah, yeah, oh yeah. They thought work was it. DD: Where do you suppose they got... HR: Well, they always had to work hard for their living and were brought up working hard. So they thought that was the way that you had to do. They felt they needed the help. They were raising us and they felt that we had to do work to help them. DD: Your brothers worked then, too? HR: Yes they had to. My oldest brother he wasn't there with my grandma and grandpa all those years. He was with my dad when he got older. He lived with my dad up here. But my younger brother was with my grandpa and grandma until he was about, I think he was about fifteen and he ran away. DD: Milt ran away? HR: Uh huh, cause they treated him pretty mean. He went and a farmer took him. He worked for this farmer and was real happy. He was real nice to him, this farmer. DD: How did you find out? Did you know... for a long time? 9 HR: He came, no didn't know for a long time. He came and told us then later, maybe a year or two. DD: So for a year you didn’t even know where he was? HR: Uh-uh, no. DD: How old were you then? HR: He must have been about fourteen and I was about twelve or eleven. When he ran away, this farmer was real good to him, so he stayed with him, worked for him. He was real good to him. DD: To not even know where your brother was for a year, though. HR: Didn't know where my other brother was, didn't see him very often. My dad would come out. I can remember he came out to see us at Christmastime, but very seldom in between. DD: Can you remember what you thought about your dad? HR: No, I can't remember what I really ... I used to want to see him. I know that. When I was older and he married my second step-mother I resented it very much because I had two dresses, all the time, to go to school in. One was in the wash and the other one you wore to school for a week and you keep it clean. The other was in the wash and it got washed and then you put that on. The step-mother would come out, I think before they was married, and she would have these new high-topped shoes, which they wore in those days, button high-topped shoes. And she would brag that my dad had bought her those nice high-topped shoes! And what he had paid for them. Me, as a child… DD: What did he pay for them, do you know? 10 HR: Well, I don't know, about fifteen dollars or twenty dollars, well in those days, that was fancy shoes. They were high, and buttoned, leather. That's what I imagined they were. DD: You imagined... HR: Well that or maybe I was told. I don't know really. DD: How much did a dress cost? HR: I don't know because... I really don't know. My clothes were always dresses that Grandma would get the material and make. DD: I can see why you would feel some resentment. HR: Yeah. One Christmas he did take me shopping and he bought me a real large sweater, warm sweater. I can remember that. DD: So he had some money even though. . . HR: Oh he made good money. No, he didn't buy us kids anything. DD: Did he give your grandmother money? HR: Well, that we never knew. We never knew whether he gave grandma a little money for taking care of us or not, but we never got any money. You never got any spending money. If you went to Sunday School you got a couple of pennies to put in the collection, but outside that, you didn't get any money when I was a child at all. Grandma would every once in a while, we'd go to a movie up there on a Saturday night. We'd go to a movie and then have an ice cream cone afterwards. That was a big treat! DD: Do you remember how much the movies were in those days or who you saw? HR: Like only a few cents, that was all they were then. 11 DD: Do you remember who you would see? HR: You know I often think of that and can't remember who it was. Was supposed to be some good-looking fellow. I really wondered what those were. . . Sometimes they were continued on the same thing. DD: Did they have sound or were they with captions that you had to read? HR: They were with captions that you had to read. DD: You don't remember the ladies that were in them? HR: No, no, I was too young. I can't remember this fellow but I can remember that he was so good looking with a captain's hat on. You know how you do when you're kids and you see somebody like that. We went to the show once in a while. That was our big treat, go to a show. DD: Sounds like it was, well, we've talked before and you've said it was hard. That you didn't have a lot of happy memories. HR: No, not at all. Cause you couldn't go to the neighbors and play, or anything like that. DD: Did you enjoy school, playing at school? HR: Well, I enjoyed, yes, being with the rest cause that was the only time. I had a couple of good friends that walked with me home from school. I every once in a while had to stop, and Grandma always bout a lot of, I can’t remember why, but she bought a lot of these crackers. Saltines like, but they came by the pound. You bought them by the pound and I’d have a big bag. She’d have me go and spend fifty cents and that bought a big bag of these crackers. I would carry them home with my girlfriend and we’d be eating crackers. 12 {Grandpa says here you could buy them by the barrel.} HR: Yeah, they did sell them by the barrel. Eating crackers all the way home. DD: I really like crackers, I wonder if I inherited that? Isn't that funny what you remember? The crazy little things. Do you suppose it's almost time for us to get going? Okay. {July 30, 1983: The following interview continues with Hazel Pearl Wise Rosenau.} DD: Today is Saturday, July 30, and this is Diana interviewing Hazel Roseau, again. Now what about the threshers? HR: Well, when I was talking about the farm and I was remembering things, I should have said about, I remembered about when the threshers always come to put the grain up. These machines would have to come, they go to thresh the stuff. I forget what they're called. They'd go from farm to farm. Set up a date and then they'd be at that farm. And then Grandma'd have to, and some of the neighbors’d help her, and they have a great big... you see there was a summerhouse on this farm that you'd, there was a large house, and the summerhouse was all windows all around and they cooked in there. And they ate in there in the summer cause it kept the other house wasn't hot. Cause you didn't have air conditioning. When the threshers came, the men around thats the farmers come and help and then they would have to fill these great big washtubs, what they did washings in in those days you know, and the men would wash up when they came in at noon, and then they'd go and eat. Have all kinds of cakes and pies. DD: Did all the ladies from all around come? 13 HR: Well, some would come each time and help a little. DD: So this was a really big day? HR: Yea, always remembered that. DD: Did you to help do alert to get ready? HR: No, I never had to cause I was small. That I can remember anyway. On the farm I was pretty small. DD: And this was wheat that they were growing? HR: I guess it's wheat that you have to thresh. I suppose it's wheat. They all helped, you know, all the farmers. And another time, whenever the grain was ready, then they'd go to another farm. Course then Grandpa'd go there and help. So many that was close by. I don't know how many it took, each one, but the neighborhood, for miles around they'd help. I don't know if I told you that Grandpa always called it when I was talking ah cut "he square dances, Grandpa always called the square dances. I didn't tell you that? And that my uncle played the violin, the fiddle. DD: Now, tell me again, your grandparents were... Wise. HR: Wise. W.I.S.E. DD: And then your uncle was your... HR: Grandma's son, my father's brother. DD: Okay, alright. And he still lived at home. HR: Yea. DD: And what was his name? 14 HR: Everett Wise. DD: How many other brothers and sisters did your dad have? HR: Uh, four, besides him. And one sister. DD: What was her name? HR: Pearl. And there was four brothers, let's see, no there's only three brothers besides him. And Pearl was his sister. That was five children that my grandparents had. With four boys and the girl. DD: So there's Clarence, Everett, Lloyd, your dad's name— Milton... Your dad's name was Milton? Oh yea, okay, and then Pearl. So there were five that were your dad's brothers and sisters. Now what about on your mom's side? We started to talk about that, that's the McPhersons? HR: McPhersons. DD: And they had a farm, too? HR: They lived on a farm. DD: Did you see them very often? HR: No, no I didn't, cause we didn't travel that far. DD: Where were they? HR: They were in East Gary. Well it was called Christmas, Christen, at that time. DD: Now how far was that? From Chesterton, cause we've driven by both areas right? Thirty miles? 15 HR: You could have gone by horse and buggy but it'd taken you... I suppose I don't know if you could it in an hour with a horse and buggy or not. DD: Cause it's interesting when you say it was too far to go and now you look at today, how we drive by both places... HR: Well, one thing, my Grandma Wise didn't like my Grandma McPherson, see. I learned that later. DD: Why was that? HR: I don't know. I learned it when I was older. She didn't care for her. I don't know why it was. I never was with my Grandma McPherson, but my brothers were, on the fan later on. They were out there with my Grandma McPherson, because... I know why, I guess the reason my Grandma Wise didn't like my Grandma McPherson was because when my mother died, she wanted to take my two brothers but she didn't want to take me. She didn't want the girl, but she wanted my two brothers cause they could grow up and work on the farm. But she didn't want me. Grandma didn't like that. She wanted to split us up when we were real small. But she took us for a couple of years and course later on, then my brother, the oldest brother, went with my dad… But then two of us stayed with Grandma most the time. And I think that's why she had that resentment. DD: So what do you remember about the McPherson's side of the family? Who were your mom's brothers and sisters? Did you know any of them? HR: Oh yea, uh huh! Had an Aunt Pearl, Aunt Eveline, Uncle Johnny, and that's all I can remember. DD: And then your mom's name was what? 16 HR: Elizabeth. Mary Elizabeth. So they had four children that I can remember. DD: And your Grandmother and Grandfather McPherson' is names were what? Do you know what their names were? HR: No. Didn't get that acquainted with them. And I never was told much about them when I was small. DD: Well, it's all starting to, I'm getting pictures of both sides of the family and how they were all laid cut. It's always been so confusing. HR: See, I have one cousin left, that's, you didn't meet Rhoda, did you? DD: Yea. HR: Well, that's my one cousin of my mother's sister. DD: Evangeline? That was her daughter? O.K., I see. HR: Well I have other cousin's in Michigan City, and their families but I don't, never kept up with them and don't know where they're at or anything like that. DD: What was one of the most interesting things that you heard out of all those older relatives? Was there any one of then that did anything interesting or something that kind of stood out in your mind when you were young, that kind of impressed you? HR: You mean with me, to do with me? DD: Either way, anything like that. HR: I don't know what would be too interesting… {Tape side A ends. Continue Tape side B.} 17 HR: Then there was another his name—both were Robert, and he used to walk as far as his house then I had to go further and he never walked me clear home. DD: Those were your first boy friends? HR: Well, they were just friends not really boyfriends. DD: Well do you remember your first boyfriend or what did you call them then? A beau? HR: Do you mean that I went out with? DD: Yeah, or that you liked— I mean we were just talking about how it starts so much younger with kids these days. How old were you when you had your first crush on. HR: Gee, who did I have a crush on? I have to stop and think. Of course, you liked people and I mean you see somebody and you like them or you would go around how neat they were. Of course, they didn't use the word neat then, but I can't remember anybody. Who did I first go out with, gee whiz, don't even remember who the first guy was. Well, it was when I came up here to Hammond the first time I didn't go out with anybody until I had come up to live with my second stepmother for a while that was about when I was fifteen years old and I still had to go to school until you were sixteen and I had to go to school here in Hammond for a year. Oh, that was my second stepmother and then you would meet boys and you would stand and talk to them and you could do that more than you could nowadays, you could go for a walk. DD: Oh, yeah? HR: Yeah, and that. DD: Do you think it’s easier to get together in those days? 18 HR: Oh, yeah and then we were in East Chicago at my stepmothers aunt’s. I used to be with her and then I lived with her a long time because she had a daughter my age and my stepmother— we didn't get along too well either. But my second stepmother-then I went over and lived with this aunt and her daughter and that’s where we met all the younger boys and went to dances and we didn't single anybody out. It was a group of boys and a group of us girls and we would meet on the corners and stand nights and talk and laugh and fool around because there wasn't much to do but you always met or something somewhere and just stand around with the boys. DD: Something like cruising now? HR: Yeah, because you didn't have anything to travel in, in those days. But then we all went to these dances once a week that they had at the end of the week, I guess it was Friday or Saturday, we 11 we would all go the and all dance with one another and my girlfriend and I, they used to fill your book up for dances so they would get a dance in. Our book vas always filled up. We used to have so much fun just going and dancing. DD: I have seen pictures of you when you were young— you were pretty. HR: And then my girlfriend, at night you would walk down to the ice cream parlor and get a soda and you might meet somebody of the crowd. DD: You had a lot of boyfriends? HR: Yeah, I did. DD: What did you look like, did you have long hair? What kind of clothes did you wear? 19 HR: I just can't remember— just when I met Grandpa, your Grandpa? What did I look like, well, I don't know— for a while I had long hair and used to twist it up at one time with four little buns across here. Two here and two here and put them up. DD: Your hair was brown or dark? HR: Ah, it was a pretty shade of reddish brown not red. What was it called? I can't remember what color they called it. Yeah, it was a lot of high lights of red - sparkly red because my mother had red hair, and light red she had and then we had our hair cut later on and we worked in the factory, after we got past sixteen. We were sixteen, my girlfriend and I, her aunt was keeping us, we got a job at the factory, Cudahy Factory where they made these cans of… DD: I've heard of that— HR: Cans of like Babo is but it was called, isn't that funny I can't remember. DD: Was it called cleanser? HR: Yeah, cans of cleanser, and I ran the machine that put the bottles on the machine and we worked there for a long time. We would bring our paychecks home. We made about, I guess, fifteen or eighteen dollars a week and that was for girls-all they got paid at that time. We brought it home and gave it to the aunt and then she bought our clothes and our food with that and spending money. DD: She gave you spending money? HR: Oh yeah, out of that we probably got more back, she was very good to us. Gave us a lot of things— she was a fortune teller. DD: Oh, really? 20 HR: She was what you call medium and she used to hold these séances in a room and go in there with people and she made her money, her living, because her husband wasn't living, she made her living-a pretty good living-and people would come and wanted her to tell them things, read to them of their life and they would pay her. I don't know how often she would have those people come and she would talk to spirits. DD: What did you think of that? HR: I didn't really believe in it. I went in one night and set there and it was supposed to be my mother that came and talked. DD: Oh, really? HR: But she just said a few words, I can't remember now what it was but I couldn't tell if it was her voice you know or anything but supposedly she couldn't get through tot good. DD: Do you remember what she said? HR: No, I don't remember what she said, isn't that funny, but I didn't believe in it too much. It’s kind of an interesting life, in a way. DD: Yeah, you were jumping around a lot. HR: Yeah; well I had to, I was on my own living there and had to be working when I was younger in the restaurant for my aunt doing all that hard work. DD: Did you ever feel like you were really alone and didn't have anybody to take care of you? HR: Yeah, because my Dad never checked on me you know or anything. DD: Did you stay in touch with your grandparents then? 21 HR: Yeah, I would go home to my grandparents whenever I'd get a chance. I had a fellow I went steady with him, had an engagement ring from him, and we would go to grandma's and stay over the weekend. My brother would go, too, sometimes, because he was up here at that time arid Rhoda— he was going with Rhoda, my cousin, and we four would go and we would stay there or we would stay at the restaurant where my aunt was for a day or so because we would come back. Otherwise, I didn't get to travel only once in a great while. My Dad would go and say do you want to go along-that was very seldom. DD: What happened to the guy you were engaged to? HR: This one, he went to California and he wanted me to come then and marry him but I was leery. I liked him real well and I always remember… but I was at that young, and to go to California and a long, long way— he was there with his sister and I never did it— always kind of wanted to, but to make that trip by myself; he would send me the money and he bought me a cedar chest after we were engaged. DD: Oh, really. HR: He bought me lots of things. I can remember my first birthday going with him, he came with a great big bouquet of peonies and then they had a party for me. I was only sixteen years old when I was going with him» already. DD: How long did you go out with him before you got engaged? HR: I really don't know, I met him when I was-thats right-must of been my seventeenth birthday because we were working and that’s where I met him at the Cudahy Plant where we worked in Hammond. How long did I go with him? I don't know, not too terribly long maybe six months or so. 22 DD: Now, I have another question, because I want to go back-you said you had to go to school until you were sixteen but that you only went through seventh grade. HR: Well, I went through seventh grade in Chesterton then I came up here and lived with ay stepmother and I had to go to school in Hammond for another year. DD: So that was the high school you went to? HR: Oh no, that was only the eighth grade, but I didn't graduate when I was sixteen then I quit. DD: Oh, to go to work? HR: Yes, to go to work. DD: Okay. HR: Yeah, because I wasn't getting along with my stepmother. DD: When did you go live with your Dad and stepmother— when you came to Hammond? Was Hammond a big city then? HR: I don't know, let's see, I must have lived with them a year or so must have been about fourteen or fifteen. DD: That was just like, when you lived with your Dad and your other stepmother, it wasn't a very good experience... HR: No, but she wasn't as mean. I was a little older but she wasn't as mean. One weekend the girl came over and she was to spend the day together, must of been Sunday and the next day on Monday, we were sleeping on this day bed and my stepmother didn't get me up in time to go to school so I didn't go to school that day— well the girl was 23 there too, so my Dad said, “Well, why didn't you go to school?” and I said cause she didn't wake us up and that made her so mad that she took and tore my blouse off and so then the girl goes home and tells her mother, so the aunt comes and said you live with us for a while so I did. Then I went over and lived with them. DD: What did they say, what did your Dad and stepmother say? HR: He didn't say nothing. He let me go. That's what I said-my Dad wasn't too much taking care of us. DD: Did you fight a lot — you know teenagers — how you can have those. You know when you were a teenager living with her did you fight with him and your stepmother. HR: No, we didn't fight. I was more the quiet type, but I told my Dad she didn't get us up and was late and didn't go to school and there was probably other little things that come along. DD: Now we are almost up to when you met Grandpa, what other things did we skip over. HR: Oh, I met other people and other guys between that and when I met Grandpa, I was— I got a job at this gift shop on Calumet Avenue and then I was staying with some people here in Hammond, and I got this job at this gift shop and there is where I was working at the gift shop and he was the truck driver and that^ where I met Grandpa. DD: Do you remember the first time you met him? HR: Yeah, he was just in the shop and he would come in. He would always come in at noon lunch hours and I would be there and the woman that owned the place lived upstairs and he would come in and sit and talk with me because I would be in the shop. DD: Did you think he liked you? 24 HR: Well, I kind of thought he did, yeah, and then he started coming, meeting me, he would have the truck early and pick me up because I had quite a way to walk and take me to work and he managed to have the truck when I was ready to go home and he would meet me out somewhere and take me home and that's how we started and finally we dated then and he had his Dad's car and we would go out. DD: He drove the truck for the store you worked for? HR: Yeah, a little truck. He would deliver fixtures and stuff like that and run errands because he was just the truck driver. Then, after we met and went together quite a while and then we got married and he was just getting in his apprenticeship, started his apprenticeship to be ar. electrician when we got married. He was making eighteen a week and I was making eighteen. DD: You probably were in the middle income bracket then in those days, probably." HR: Yeah, I guess that was a good salary for then but rent was high. Paid forty five dollars a month for furnished room we had when we started out. DD: I want to go back a minute before we go further— what did you do on your first date when you actually went out. HR: Just took a ride— just took a ride out in the country and back. DD: What was this town like then— Hammond— it was Hammond you were living in. HR: Yes, this was never built up. DD: Munster was all country and farm? HR: Yes, all country and farm. 25 DD: What was Hammond like then? HR: Well it was a busy little town, just a little town. DD: About how many people? HR: Gee, I don't know. DD: But there were still horse and buggy then or cars then? HR: No, there were no more horse and buggies when I came up to Hammond to live with Dad, be had just bought a car— there were a lot of cars. I mean, people were buying a lot of cars then but the streets weren't full like now. They had gas street lights— that sort of thing. DD: Can't remember guess maybe they were? Did you notice? HR: Things were changing, though they weren't bad. Back to that though— when my Grandma went by horse and buggy and all-but they did have a team or two around town, I remember. Oh, back in those days a beer truck or two that they hauled with. Kegs of beer. One of my Uncle's did that later on and he drove the beer truck and a team of horses. DD: Oh, yeah? HR: A team of horses that looked something like those big horses that the brewery— what is those...? DD: Budweiser. 26 HR: Yes, Budweiser. They looked a lot like them and when we was up here when I first came up with my Dad we would walk down to the park a ways on Sundays and there was a ball game you would see and things like that that you did. DD: Did you notice the difference between when the way that you traveled was like horse and buggy and then— I mean in your life time you have gone from horse and buggy… HR: Streetcars and train. DD: Was that in between and then cars after that? HR: There was cars around my grandparents but they never owned a car. DD: But was it a gradual change or did you find yourself saying-boy is everything getting so modem and things are changing. HR: No, it was gradual you saw,—motorcycle was the first thing I ever rode in. DD: Oh, really? HR: One of my uncles, and he came when I was at my grandma's and he came with a side car, you know, and I got in and he took me down for a mile or more and that was fast for me and it was in a motorcycle and it sounded like a telephone pole (they were in already) and they zipped - zipped - zipped. I had my eyes shut because that was something. I had never rode in anything like that before DD: Did you anymore after that? HR: Huh? DD: Did you ride in it again after that? HR: Oh, yeah. I think he came and gave me a ride. 27 DD: You were really daring then to do that! HR: He just took me for a ride you know. My uncles were always pretty good to me. The one uncle that stayed with my grandma lived in town. Then, this uncle, he used to take me to the show when grandma didn't take me to the show. When I came back that was a big treat. Grandma made me a little hat. You aren’t taping this? Made me a little hat that was a little turban and I would say what should I wear to go to the show in and he would say that little oh, I'm not going to say the word. DD: What did he call it? You gotta tell me. You can. Wait till I turn it off and then you can tell me. HR: I always remember those things that he would say. DD: What was it called? HR: It was a little turban but what he called it was a slang name. DD: What did he call it? HR: It’s a swear name. DD: Oh. HR: But a cute little hat. DD: And I can't say it either. People are going to be dying of suspense to know what it was. He shouldn't have said that though. HR: No, he shouldn't have. DD: Oh, let’s see where are we at here, that’s funny, did you ride horses at all? 28 HR: Oh, yes a couple of time when we lived with my grandma. We went out in the country. One of my aunts sisters was about my age and went out and spent a day or two once in a while— and they had brothers, and we rode the horses out there for up a little ways. That was the only time. DD: Did you ride bare back? HR: Yeah. DD: Did you like it? HR: Yeah, I liked to ride horses, a little bit scared at first though. They were gentle horses. DD: What was the most daring thing you ever did in your life as a young girl? HR: Gosh. DD: Maybe it wasn't before you were married or if it was after— whenever. HR: I don't think there was anything that I ever did. DD: Or something that you were kind of proud of that you did or were scared to do. HR: Never did much of anything. The only thing that I was scared to do was ride the Ferris wheel when we were back living in East Chicago with my aunts and went to the circus fairs that came around and a girl friend of mine she was crazy about them. I can't stand heights anyway and then up at the top and she would swing it. Oh boy, she couldn't get me back up there so I was always scared of heights. DD: This is an amusement park you went to? HR: Well no, see the circus and carnivals - it was carnivals traveled from little towns or cities and then up in East Chicago where we lived and they would come every year or every 29 so often - every summer they would come and stay for a week or so and we would go to the fair - circus — carnivals is what they call them and ride the rides, merry- go-round, whips and all them but you never could get me again on the Ferris wheel cause I thought boy, that was way up there! DD: Think of anything else? I have a question - what was the first thing you did to earn money and how much was it? Your first job, and you had a lot of then, actually you started young. HR: Yeah, bet I wasn't paid. DD: Oh. HR: When I was with my aunt she would, yes, she did, she gave me a little bit that was in the restaurant when I was real young. She gave me a few dollars. Can't remember the amount. Of course, I had my food and room and board. DD: How old were you then? HR: Only— let’s see thirteen or fourteen. Well, I went to school and I had to work afterwards. DD: You went to school and then you went to work at the restaurant afterwards and that was the first time you ever got paid for? HR: Yeah, a little bit of money and then I worked for my aunt. That’s about the first time I was ever paid though and then when I came up here and got the job in the Cudahy Factory that’s the only time really made any money. DD: I have another question. Since you were moving around a lot—do you remember having a best girlfriend then? 30 HR: Yeah, in Chesterton I had one girl friend that palled around with for quite a while. DD: Do you remember her name? HR: Oh, Irene was her name. DD: Do you remember her last name? HR: Churchill. I think her name was. Well when we were in school I had girlfriends too. I always remember then— especially— one her father was a fisherman out in Lake Michigan. She had a sister too, and used to stop at her house going to school and they would come in - they lived in the summer at the lake. Then they would drive in the horse and buggy to come to school and stay the week. The mother, with the two girls. Then this fellow used to come in a motorcycle with a side car and fish with a box - fresh box and they would go around the streets and sell fresh fish and I guess he shipped fresh fish, too. I think they did because his father was a fisherman and I was asked to come out to the lake in the summer time and be with them but my grandma would never let me go. Never got to do anything like that. DD: This is a different friend than Irene. HR: Yes, this is a different friend - the one I had when I was in school. Irene was the friend when I was working in the restaurant. Because in between I went and worked for my aunt in the restaurant. DD: After you graduated from seventh grade. HR: After I had gone with this fellow and he had gone to California I went back and worked for my aunt in the restaurant. DD: Oh, I see and she was your friend when you went back there? 31 HR: Yeah, Irene was. DD: Now I have a lot of questions. Did you have any other serious boyfriends besides the one you were engaged to before grandpa. HR: Yeah, there was after the fellow went to California. When I was living in East Chicago met a fellow I went with, we went together for quite a while. He gave me a ring but I gave it back to him because I wasn't that serious about him. Then others I dated or went dancing with in between and we used to go roller skating. I had more freedom when I was with my aunt- or I called her aunt. DD: She was your stepmother’s aunt. HR: Had more freedom then. Had a job and could go out evening and was older. Had more time could go and do things like I said, we went to the dances and roller skating and met on the corners and just talked. Oh, when I was in the restaurant I met fellows who went to the show with. There was one, he was the jewelers son, went to the show once in a while but nothing serious. DD: Okay, I have another question. I want to know what you remember in terms of things that were going on in history— just the major things that you would remember as being tied on in your life— like what president, wars were happening when you were young and how do you remember them affecting you? {July 30, 1983: The following interview continues with Paul Gerhardt Rosenau.} 32 DD: This is Diana Deatherage and I am interviewing my grandpa, Paul Gerhardt Rosenau. We are sitting at the kitchen table. What is the first thing you can remember—your earliest memory? PR: My dad building on the front porch onto the house. DD: Do you know how old you were? PR: Four—somewhere in there. He was a carpenter by trade, and there was some fella helping him. At home the folks had a garden and, of course, we had chickens. Mother used to have a hen and Banty set there with eggs to get the little ones. A couple of years we had geese there. We got some eggs from some of them and the hen had to hatch the geese. DD: Where did you live? PR: There in Hammond on Summer Street. DD: Was it a farm, or did everybody have chickens? PR: It was in town. Everybody had chickens in those days. When you grew up, you used to let the chickens run out in the yard and then you had to stand at the front there so they wouldn't go out in the street— chase them back toward the back of the yard. DD: You had to stand in the front of the yard all the time and keep them back there? PR: Yeah, I'd be playing there back and forth and they'd go out in the street. DD: My chickens do that too. PR: I can remember a sister of mine. The folks always raised Plymouth Rocks and they were rather large chickens and the rooster was a mean son-of-a-gun. He had big spurs 33 and one day one of my sisters was out there in the yard and he attacked her. The spurs got her in the face and the leg. Dad came home and he was so mad about the rooster that he came out and chopped the head off right away. DD: What did you do with him? PR: Ate him! Folks used to raise the chickens for the eggs and then during the winter months, why, every weekend you'd have a Sunday dinner with chicken and that. DD: What else do you remember—early memories, before school even? PR: I know I had to sit every day at a blackboard we had before I ever started school and write all my ABC's and everything. You had to be able to print them all the way. I used to write my numbers from one to a thousand. DD: Before you started first grade even? PR: Yeah. DD: Who made you do that? Who taught you? PR: Mother. DD: She sat down with you and did lessons? PR: Yeah. We used to have the black board that stood up and it used to have a little roller in the top for your alphabet and then your numbers and your multiplication tables. DD: Like a scroll that showed them? PR: Yeah. I remember doing my multiplication tables from one to ten before I ever started school. In those days everybody did it, I guess. DD: You just memorized it. 34 PR: Yeah. DD: You must have been studying every day even when you were little. PR: Yeah. Every day you'd have to study. DD: Did your mom do that with all your brothers and sisters? PR: Yeah. DD: What was your mom's name? PR: Emma Bensel. DD: And what was your dad's name? PR: Arnold. I can remember us growing up. I had an uncle that was caretaker at a cemetery that was on the outskirts of town at that time—he lived in the cemetery. My dad was a carpenter by trade and he worked at five and a half days a week. My uncle would get a funeral for Sunday right away and he always needed help digging a grave because he did it all by hand. He would call the people across the street from us and they would relay a message to my dad. Then a lot of times on Saturday afternoon he'd go out and help my uncle. The kid brother and I would go along and sometimes he'd have even two of them to dig. Back in those days they buried people on Sundays; now around here it's not allowed. But then brother and I would go along and we'd stay overnight there at my uncle's. That night there was four cousins there and we'd play hide and go seek in the cemetery around the tombstones. I always remember that. DD: Was it spooky when you were little? PR: No, I didn't think a thing of it. 35 DD: Good hiding places. PR: Good hiding places because there were a lot of big tombstones and there were even a couple of these mausoleums where you went down the stairs, you know. I always remember that. DD: Do you know about where your parents came from? PR: My mother was born in Wisconsin. DD: Do you know where in Wisconsin? PR: It was along the Mississippi River there. I think it was around Winona—somewhere near there. And then later they lived at Fountain City. I can remember my mother saying about back in those days the Indians used to be plentiful through Wisconsin and if they had a bad summer and they weren't able to pick berries and one thing and another and it got to be a bad winter, they would come with snowshoes and everything and they be walking fifty or maybe a hundred miles into these little towns. They would beg for food and if you gave them a twenty-five pound bag of flour or something and whatever you had, then the next spring they would, if the berries were plentiful, pick these berries and haul them on their backs all the way back to these towns and they'd give the people this and a little bit of everything they could get. DD: They weren't warring then? PR: No. They were friendly people. I always remember Mother talking about that. That was when her folks lived close to Fountain City, Wisconsin. Then my dad, he came from Germany and when his folks came over here back in 1870 or somewhere in there, there was a war going on between Germany and some other country. Well, they were always 36 warring—Germany and all those countries in there. They left, but my dad couldn't come with his folks because he was about 15 or 16 years of age—close to military age. At 18 years of age you took there all into the service. My dad’s brother who was a few years older than my dad, he was in the service. So my dad, he had to stay with some friends of theirs. That war ended with whatever country that was, so my uncle was released from the Army and then my dad was allowed to come over too. But, he was over there several years before he could come over, here and join his folks here. DD: How many brothers and sisters came over with his parents? PR: He had a younger brother and a younger sister that came. DD: Did he have older brothers and sisters too? PR: Just the one older brother that stayed over there. DD: So there were four children in your dad's family? PR: Yeah. Two of them came and two had to stay there. My dad, as I say, was close to the age that they drafted into the Army. DD: Did they ever say why they came over here? PR: Well, religious persecution they could see in the offing there with the different wars and everything. DD: That was before World War I? PR: Oh yes, this was back in the 1870's. They were Lutherans. DD: And they were being persecuted by whom? 37 PR: Well, not really by another religious group, but they probably saw the handwriting on the wall that Communism was beginning to show up— radicals in different countries, which would lead to Communism and so forth. DD: That was the impression that you got from what they would say about why they came over? PR: And, of course, Dad and his brother, they came over by boat in those days. It was a long trip across the Atlantic Ocean. DD: Did they tell you about that? PR: No. I don't know how long it took them or anything. DD: When they came over, how did they wind up here in Indiana? Or did your dad's folks come here too? PR: Well, my grandfather, he came— must have known somebody around— North Hammond where they came to. DD: So they came right here? PR: Yeah. They came right here. I don't know how they got here— must have been by train, evidently. DD: What year would that have been when they came over? PR: Probably about 1870-75 I imagine—somewheres in there. Maybe even the late 60's, I forget now. They settled on the north side of Hammond. My dad, of course, he was learning to be a cabinet maker, because over there they start you at about 14 years of age. You have to start learning a trade of some kind. Even at 14 years of age he went to 38 one town and worked for 6 months in a cabinet shop. Then he would have to pack up and go to another town to another place and work. They never left him very long and that way he got experience with different people. My dad's older brother, he had learned to be a machinist. When he landed here, he had a job with the American Steel Foundries right away in North Hammond. He was a machinist. When my dad came here, he somehow got away from the cabinet trade and got in with the carpenters somewhere and learned the carpenter trade. Back in those days, he had to belong to a union then. They were pretty strong men already back in the 1900’s. DD: I don't know much about the unions. PR: He built the house that he lived in. DD: The house that your grandparents lived in or that he lived in? PR: No, that he lived in. DD: So how old was he when he came over here then? Seventeen? PR: Sixteen, seventeen, in there somewheres. DD: So he wound up over here, and had a trade. Was he living with his folks then? PR: Yeah, he was living with his folks. Then he built the house there in North Hammond. DD: He got married first, before he built the house? PR: Yeah. DD: Did you ever hear how he met your mother? PR: He met her through an aunt of mine in Chicago, but I never knew how he met her— never did know. 39 DD: Do you remember other stories that they told you when you were growing up—other interesting stories that you remembered? PR: Well, I can remember icy dad saying, I guess it was back in Germany, because on Sunday morning they would walk out of town and up the mountainside. Strolling around there, they could hear the church bells and one thing and another in different valleys and how nice it sounded. DD: Where did they live in Germany? PR: It would be close to the Polish border, but now it has been taken over by Poland. Another war occurred later on and Poland and Germany were at war and at that time they didn't really dissect it. Germany got partitioned off and really in the Second World War a good corner of Germany was given over to Poland. I believe it was on the Vistula River, somewheres in there, they lived close by that. DD: Do you know if there are still relatives over there? PR: No, I wouldn't know. DD: Uncle Ron told me yesterday that the name was changed when they came over here, is that true? PR: No. Where did he ever get that? DD: I don't know. He said it was Rosenthal, or something. PR: No. DD: So it's still spelled the same and everything. PR: Yeah. 40 DD: Any other stories you remember your mom or your dad telling you about when they were little? PR: No. I never did ask them too much, or I don't remember them telling any other stories. DD: I remember Dad telling me some bedtime stories and that. Do you remember any stories they would tell you they'd make up, or anything like that? PR: No. I really don't remember that. I know our bedroom was awful cold, because it just had a coal stove in the kitchen and you'd have the hard coal stove in the dining room. It was a very large dining room, I don't think you ever saw it. DD: No. We should go over and see it. It's still there isn't it? PR: No. It's been moved away, they built a school there. DD: They moved it, but it's still somewhere? PR: Yeah, it's somewhere over in the other end of Hammond. I don't even know just where— along State Street somewhere. DD: We should go try and find it when I come back. PR: I remember sleeping under a feather tick that was probably about that thick. And in the morning when you'd get up you'd get your clothes and run behind the hard coal stove and get dressed—the only warm place. DD: Tell me about your brothers and sisters then. You weren't the oldest, were you? PR: I was the oldest, yeah. I had two brothers and five sisters. DD: OK. Go down the line and tell me them in order, because I always get them mixed up too. 41 PR: My brother Ernie was next to me, and then my sister Elsie, then Erma, Emma, Olga, and then Arnold was born, then Erma was the youngest one. DD: Pretty crowded place, huh? PR: Well, no. The home originally has three bedrooms on the first floor and then as the family grew up my dad raised the roof on the entire house and he had four bedrooms up there and a bath. Later one of the bedrooms was eliminated because he made a big stairway in the front. As you come in the front door, you would have a little hallway and a stairway going to the second floor. It had French doors that opened into the living room. So, they eliminated one bedroom by building this stairway through there and everything. It had a stairway in the tack upstairs and the kids used to run down one stair through the house and up the other and around. They had a large living room and dining room and a very large kitchen. You could open up a very large table and you could seat a heck of a lot of people there. Then he built a sun parlor on later on. DD: You said it was a big oak table. PR: Yeah, and it had very heavy chairs. DD: What happened to that house and everything? PR: Well, when my dad passed away, my mother moved away because the city was buying up all the property to put the school on about where they were living. I remember their dining room outfit, the table and about six chairs. Those chairs were massive things. Then there was the buffet—I don't think two people could even lift that thing; it was that heavy and large. It had carved legs on it. When she got ready to move into an apartment with Erma, she put an ad in the paper and some woman from Way came 42 over. She weighed about 300 pounds and when she saw that set, she said I don't care about the price of it, that's what she needed to sit down in. It was that well built a set. DD: So she bought it and took it away. PR: Yeah, and of course, the family sort of scattered out. Brother Ernie after he retired, he moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas. Brother Arnold he moved to Atlanta, Georgia. Then Elma after her husband passed away, she moved to Phoenix, Arizona—she's really in Mesa just outside of Phoenix. But the others live around here. Elsie passed away about a year and a half ago. Ernie passed away. DD: Let's go back to before you started school and some of the things you did-r-maybe starting school and some of the things you did around that time. Do you remember things with your brothers and sisters too? What kind of games did you play? What kind of toys did you have? PR: Oh, you didn't have too much of toys back in those days, because you couldn't afford it. At Christmas time you'd get things to wear, stockings or a pair of shoes or a jacket or something on that order. The only toys I got was from an aunt and uncle of mine from Chicago. They were well to do. They would always come out at Christmas morning. They would take the streetcar from Chicago into Hammond and transfer and come up to State and Calumet and we always knew about what time the streetcar vas coming there and we'd go up and meet them. They would bring a lot of goodies along. They'd have a toy for each of us. DD: What kind of toys did they give you? PR: Well, we night have got a ball clove and a ball, or a wine up train. 43 DD: Each one of you got one--those were very nice presents. PR: Yeah, they were very nice. Or you might have got a fire wagon that was made of iron drawn by two horses. There might be ladders on it, or something like that—you don't see them anymore. The girls, they probably got a doll. Maybe they'd bring candy out and cookies. DD: Do you remember any of the games that you played? PR: We didn't have much of games. Well, Parchesi was one of the games we played. As kids we grew up and the folks liked to play cards and all the kids learned to play cards. DD: No wonder you're so good—that's why! PR: And I can remember as we were growing up, why, the minister from the church he would stop by at least once a week and play cards with the folks one evening for an hour and a half or two hours--not very late. Course, my dad always made a lot of wine. And the preacher he liked a little glass of wine now and then. DD: What card games did they play? PR: They played Pedro a lot, and I don't remember a thing about that game anymore. They played Pinochle later on and we used to play with them. My dad he belonged to a singing club there in Hammond. They would meet once a week for practice. DD: He was a good singer? PR: Yeah. DD: What singing club was it, like a barber shop or something? 44 PR: No. It would be a larger group. Not part of the church—he didn't sing in the church. Mixed choir, men and women in it. I couldn’t sing worth a darn. When I was going to school, one other kid and I, we was always excused in the singing class because we grumbled. So for that hour we could do anything we wanted to. DD: What did you do? PR: We used to go cut off the door and sit at the top of the fire escape—we weren't allowed to go down and play during that hour. We would maybe read a book or something there. DD: You weren't that bad, were you, really? They let you out of singing class? PR: Well, you disrupted the rest of the class. DD: You were that bad, huh? PR: One other kid and I. DD: What did your dad think of that, since he was such a good singer? PR: There just wasn't anything he could do about it. DD: You said you played hide and go seek in the cemetery. I wonder if you remembered any more games. Since kids didn't have a lot of toys, you must have had your own repertoire of games. PR: Well, we used to play red light. You called numbers and somebody at the starting point would holler one and then I guess (after you'd run a little bit) if you didn't stop in a line, then you'd have to come way back and start over. Then you'd run clear around the block and you'd hear the kids a block away hollering one, or two, or three or four. By that time you couldn’t see them and they could do anything, you know. The idea was to 45 let somebody go past the line so they'd get back to the starting point so that way you'd be way ahead and come around. Then you'd be the winner, see. Then it would be up to you, you'd holler one, etc. Then we used to play hockey with a tin can. Go find a stick there with a knot on the end, so you could use it for a hockey stick. You get on the street somewheres, and back in those days you had a small milk can, and you'd crush that and you'd bat that around (Pet Milk can). You'd have sides that played it. DD: Now, were there cars mostly—you said there were streets? Were there paved streets? PR: There were a lot of the streets that weren't. There were the old sand streets. When I was a real little kid, it was mostly horse and buggy and wagon. DD: Did your family have horse and buggy? PR: No. They didn't. If we went anywheres, my dad would go out to my uncle's at the cemetery and get the horse and buggy. Like if we was going to the Fourth of July picnic about three or four miles away from where we lived, then he would go to my uncle's and get the horse and buggy and load up the family. We would go to the picnic all day and then at night he'd have to take it back and we used to go back with him. DD: You mostly borrowed one then, because you mostly walked to everywhere you went? PR: Yeah, you'd walk everywheres you wanted to go. And there later on a few cars began to appear in the streets. Even the beer truck got mechanized. At first the beer truck would come around to the saloons with the barrels hanging there underneath and it was all horse drawn. The fire trucks were all horse drawn when I was young. Later on they mechanized them and did away with the horses. The peddlers would come around in the summer time with a horse and wagon with a top on it. For quite a few summers I 46 was on the peddler's wagon. I'd go down to his house at 7:30 A.M. and maybe get through at 5:00 or 6:00P.M. He'd go down the alleys hollering for vegetables. When it got towards evening, he'd go over to East Hammond to a Polish settlement. There he'd go down the alleys hollering "Orangi, Peachachi"— oranges, peaches. DD: Oh, I didn't know you could speak— what is that German or Polish? PR: Polish. DD: Can you speak Polish? PR: No. Just a few words. DD: What did you do to help him? PR: Sometimes I'd go and knock at doors; some places you'd knock at the back doors. Some of the women would come out to the wagon and you'd have -to take in the vegetables they had bought—if they had bought a half a bushel of potatoes or a peck. Back in those days they bought in the ten pounders—either a peck, or a half bushel, or a bushel. DD: So this was a big wagon. PR: Fairly good sized, because he would have bananas and everything— cantaloupes in the summer, watermelon. DD: How old were you when you worked with him? PR: Gee, I don't know—about 9, 10, 11 or so, maybe 12. DD: What's the first job you remember getting paid to do? PR: Well, I had a paper route when I was 14, 15 & 16. 47 DD: You got paid when you were 9 and 10 to work, so was that your first paid job? PR: You got paid a quarter a day. And, like I say, you'd go down to his house at say 7:00 in the morning and maybe we'd work until 5 or 6:00 at night. Once in a while if he had bananas which wouldn't keep anyway, cause he'd have to go to a certain place and pick up fruit every day--he might give you three or four or a half a dozen bananas, or half a dozen mush melons left over, five or six quarts of strawberries which was getting kinda soggy anyway by that time. Other times he didn't have anything left. Potatoes or cabbage would keep--that was another Polish word, "Pushta". DD: So that was the first job you got paid to do. PR: That was the first job, and then I had a paper route later on in Hammond, not far from where we lived. Used to go into down town Hammond to pick up our papers. DD: How far was that from where you lived? PR: A mile. DD: Did you have a bike, or did you walk? PR: No. We walked. And then we walked the paper route. DD: How many people did you have? PR: A hundred. DD: How long did it take you? PR: Gee, I don't remember. Probably an hour or an hour and a half. The papers were heavy, might take you two hours. DD: Was it every day? 48 PR: Every day. DD: It was a pretty big city. Do you know how big it was at that time? PR: No. I doubt that it was more than 15-20,000 at the most. Could be, cause you had street cars back in those days. {August 13, 1983: The following interview continues with Paul Gerhardt Rosenau.} DD: This is Saturday, August 13th, 1983 and I'm going to be interviewing my grandfather, Paul Rosenau but Grandpa's' outside watering the lawn. He won't stop to come in so I can interview him, so I'm going to take the tape recorder and go outside and we're going to see how this works. We might have a little bit of traffic noise going by, or maybe the sprinklers. Every ten minutes he's going to have to go and move his sprinkler, because he's going to have to water his lawn. But he won't be done until this afternoon, so I have to go out there now and interview him. We'll see how this works. It's just before noon. How old were you when we were talking before about the newspaper? PR: Fourteen. DD: That's where we left off. You were born in 1920, no, 1908? PR: 1907—I'm 76 years. DD: What year was it that you had your paper route then? PR: It started when I was fourteen, so it was 1921. DD: So we're into the roaring 20's then. What do you remember about them? 49 PR: The roaring 20's actually didn't come until later on, because in 1921 it was right after the World War. The War was 1917-1919. The roaring 20's didn't come until the mid-20’s. DD: Why did they call it the roaring 20’s? PR: I don't know, but I suppose it's because that's when it started—like the different things in the 30's and 50's and so forth. DD: I just wondered why you thought they called it the roaring 20’s. PR: Well, back in those days, the college kids they used to go to college and there was a point where people were making a lot of money. Their kids could afford a few cars — the very rich people, and they always had them big long fur coats, the fellas did, you know, that dragged on the ground. And that's when it started with the crazy hats. DD: You didn't have those? PR: I didn't, no. It was only the college kids. No. In high school, you didn't have anything like that yet. In fact, the first year when I went to Hammond High, they didn't even have a band or an orchestra. A girl was going around, I suppose a senior or somebody, from one classroom to another and taking the names and the instruments you could play. This one fella got up and said, "I can play a Victrola!" It was in our Physics class and boy everybody roared and hollered and hooped it up. So after this gal left the teacher said to this fella "You sure embarrassed me. What was the idea of saying you could play a Victrola?" The kid stood up and said, "How many in this room can play a Victrola?" There was only about two kids in a class of about 30-35. It was a novelty at that time and people didn't have money for that. I know it was quite a few years later 50 before my folks had a Victrola. We used to go listen to the neighbors' all the time. You'd crank the thing on the side, you know. One record at a time—one song. DD: Do you remember some of the old musicians that you listened to? PR: No, I don't. DD: That kind of relates to a question I was going to ask you about in the 20's when all the electricity came in they brought a lot of appliances in. Do you remember when electricity first came and how that might have changed your life? PR: No. We had gas lights and I remember going down with my dad one time and talking to an electrical contractor. The following week some fella come along and did the wiring on the house. But when we had gas lights, you would have to use a big long stick with a wax thing on the end. Like in the bathroom at night, you'd extinguish that light at night after everybody went to bed. Then you'd have to turn on the valve and you'd light the big long stick and then light the fixture, you see. The kitchen fixture was that way, but the ones in some of the other rooms they had like a little pilot light going there. That was kind of expensive, so they used to extinguish that. That way, when you went into different rooms, you'd take the stick and light up your fixture whenever you turned it on. Of course, people were very savings in those days anyway. If you had a light on in the kitchen, that was probably the only thing during the supper hour—nothing else was burning. That would be turned on until the dishes got cleaned and then you'd all go in the one room. My folks used to have a hard coal heater in the dining room—that and the kitchen stove which was a coal stove. Later on my dad dug out the basement. I can remember helping him dig it out and laid the bricks around and then we put in the furnace, a hot water furnace. He did all the work himself on that. A few years later he 51 built the second floor on the house. Of course, by that time I was about sixteen years old and I was working already. I used to work from 6:00 P.M. to 6:00 A.M. and then I'd come home and do some of the shingles for a couple of hours before I'd go to sleep. DD: You were sixteen. Where were you working then? PR: General American Car Company in Chicago. DD: What were you doing there? PR: A mud hop. DD: A mud hop? What's a mud hop? PR: It's what they used to call the yard clerks. When the train came in with all the cars in this plant, they had a scale there and you had to weigh the cars. You had a big scale where they'd pick one car at a time and put it on there and weigh it. You had a card that you'd stick into this scale and it would punch it and you'd have to write down what the number was and the letters and everything. If possible, you'd see what was in it, whether it was steel wheels or anything like that. DD: They were making the cars at this place? PR: Yeah, railroad cars. DD: Oh, railroad cars. And you weighed them when they were full? PR: Full or empty. If they were leaving the plant. You had about four switch engines there, see, in this place. DD: How long did you work in the railroad yard? PR: Oh, I was in there just in the summer time. 52 DD: Why would they call it a mud hop? PR: I don't know; that's just what they used to call it. DD: They have funny terms on the railroad for everything, don't they? PR: Yeah. Another thing I used to have to the railroad yard that was alongside this plant, and like at 4:30 or 5:00 A.M. you'd go into the railroad yards and check ahead of time and see these cars that was lined up for your plant coming in--maybe 20, 30, 50 cars coming in. So when you were weighing them in you'd have the names of these cars already. Then all you'd have to do is put this weight down and it went fast. This engine would come in with this load and he'd have to disconnect and have only the one car there. He'd pull ahead away from the freight part and then the engine would have to be disconnected so you didn't weigh him in with it. Then you'd back up and get into the long string of cars and pick up one more and bring it out that way. It was a long process. DD: You said you don't remember too much about when electricity came in to your house, but it wound up changing your life. I mean, that's what you worked at. But, you don't recall any thoughts—you never knew you would be an electrician, did you? PR: No. It was kind of an odd thing, but when I went to a technical high school and I took up every shop except electric. I had plumbing, sheet metal work, auto repair, machine shop, carpenter—never had electric work. My kid brother, he went there and took electric for four years and he winds up at the General American Office. He worked in there all his life. I got my first job with the contractor that wired my folks house that time. DD: So that was when you started. Did you apprentice then? 53 PR: No. I was just a clerk in the electric shop filling the orders and different things for the electricians. They had a truck driver to deliver the material to a job. I had that for three or four months and the truck driver got fired, so I got to be a truck driver. In a few months’ time, the contractor took me down to the union hall one night, so I made my application for apprenticeship. I had to wait about six months, though, and I finally got in. Back in those days, you had to go to school five years—two nights a week and Saturday morning on your own time. DD: That was probably a pretty good field to get into, since electrical work was so new. It's kind of like computers now. PR: Yeah. Of course, I didn't really realize it was coming in that fast, you know. I just happened to be at the place there and got the job. DD: You didn't see it as a good job for the future to have at the time. PR: I didn't really think of it. All those things were changing. Your horse and wagon had disappeared off the street. It was all cars and everything. All the gas was disappearing out of all the homes. Telephones were starting to come in then. It used to be when I was a little kid there, there were only about two people in the whole block that had a telephone. One was across the street from us. They were good friends of my folks. If you needed the doctor or something, you went to their house and called. In fact in those days, the doctor came to the house. You had no emergency at a hospital or anything. DD: I've got a question just to kind of backtrack a little bit. These are sort of historical questions. They won't go exactly in order here. In the early 1900’s America was seen as the place to make your fortune, especially with emigrant families. A lot of emigrants 54 coming in thought it was the richest nation in the world. Did you ever hear anything to that effect when you were growing up? I mean, your family did come from Germany, but you said it wasn't for that particular reason. PR: No, they could see the handwriting on the wall of the way the countries were getting ready to go to war. And how, back in those days, there was an arms buildup too already. Not like we have today, but there was a lot of minor fighting because the countries were so close there. It's not like here, where the only countries we've got are Canada and Mexico alongside of us. But over there you've got three or four different countries around your country. My folks said the reason their parents came over was that they could see a religious conflict coming in. This was back in the 1800's yet. People in those days could probably look ahead a little bit, just like you looking ahead for nuclear war and things nowadays. You have religious fighting in ail these countries now. Look at these Moslems and Arabs and over in Ireland you've got the Protestants and the Catholics fighting. DD: What religions—would it have just been like Christianity versus what, Communism? PR: No, it wasn't Communism then. I don't know really. Of course, a lot of the fighting then between those countries was trying to grab up more land, I think too. DD: They said it would be religious conflict, but they didn't say what religions. PR: No. You never talked about anybody else's religion. I went to a Lutheran school for eight years and the first thing on Monday mornings, you were always taught to respect, especially with us, the Catholic religion. Because catty-corner across the street from us was a Catholic school. And where we lived was right at the edge of downtown 55 Hammond, and the priest and the nuns, sisters as you called them back in those days, would go shopping. They had to pass this corner where this Lutheran school was. We were always taught to respect their religion, because that's how they were brought up and that was the first thing on Monday morning after you had your prayer session would remind you of. The priest would generally stop and talk to the kids and you would address him as Father, that was his title. If the nun came along, her title was Sister, back in those days. So, we were taught to respect someone else's religion. They were brought up and we were brought up through our families that way. Coming back to the people trying to leave, whether it was too much of religion that was creeping into some of these battles back in those different countries or not. They never said. DD: When you were a little boy, did you ever hear anything about all these people coming into the country? PR: No. Because the biggest majority of people did come from different countries, so they wouldn't be criticizing anybody else trying to get in the country. DD: Do you remember any of the Presidents when you were a little boy—McKinley, or Teddy Roosevelt before you were born, or Taft or Woodrow Wilson? PR: No. I can remember my folks talking about Teddy Roosevelt. They thought he was a very good President. DD: Do you remember anything that they said he did? PR: No, because that was before my time. DD: That was 1901-1909, or something like that. 56 PR: The only Presidents that I remember was when Woodrow Wilson was running for President, he was the one on the Democratic Ticket. He was running against a fella by the name of Hughes. Us kids, we used to go take pieces of chalk and write on the sidewalk, "Vote for Hughes, he's the man, because Wilson was born in the garbage can". Of course, Wilson, being a Democrat he advocated not taking us to war with Germany or anybody else. But the minute he got in, man, war right now! So he was another one of those political liars. Perhaps circumstances may have come about that he may have had to do that, I don't know. I don't remember now. I remember President Coolidge coming into Hammond there, they dedicated that Wicker Park down there, which is on Ridge Road. You pass that. He dedicated that. All the people were downtown on the various streets and watching him come in the parade. The first President I voted for Hoover back in 1928. I was just at the voting age at that time. A lot of people don't remember that—I don't know why, I just did. He was the one that was the engineer that built the Hoover Dam; it's still called that. The plaque down there is still dedicated as the Hoover Dam, which he was the engineer of— by Lake Mead there. The Democrats had another name for it, because they didn't want to associate it with the name of Hoover. DD: I didn't know that. What did they call it? PR: I don't ever, remember—what the heck was it? DD: They had another name, though. What do you remember about the sinking of the Lusitania—that was a pretty controversial incident? Do you remember anything about that being in the news? 57 PR: I remember hearing about it, because, back in those days, we didn't ever have radio yet. The only news you got was out of a small newspaper printed in town. But there used to be a few fellas around town, causers I guess you would call them, because if there was any little incident that would happen, they would come around like in the middle of the morning-- even at four o'clock in the morning--hollering, "Extra papers" Everybody would be rushing out to buy one to see what the extra was all about. If a President died or something like that. You had no radio, so I don't remember too much about it. I remember hearing about it; it was just one of those things, I guess. DD: Do you remember when you heard about World War I, about what you thought? PR: No, I don't really remember now what I had thought about it. DD: You were pretty young; you were only nine or ten then. PR: Yeah, nine or ten. They had a lot of rallies and parades. I can remember in Hammond, my dad being the carpenter, the carpenters had pledged to build what they called a Liberty Hall—a place where they could go and have a rally. Somebody had donated a big lot downtown Hammond there and these carpenters built this thing all in one day. There was so darned many carpenters working there and electricians and different crafts, that they were just crawling all over each other. They had donated their time. The lumber companies donated lumber free to build this thing. DD: Kind of like an old barn raising, or something? PR: Well, it had four sides to it and it was a real large building—posts were there to brace the roof. It would probably hold a few thousand people. I don't know if they ever got 58 enough chairs to fill this thing—so people just stood. You'd have political rallies, or war rallies all the time there. DD: What were they for? PR: To get the people in the spirit of Okaying the war, and for the young people to get in and sign up instead of being drafted to go volunteer for services. Back in those days when you had the war going they used to have different drives for things like aluminum. They wanted all the women to bring their aluminum pans and throw them in a big pile. They would take them into the factories and melt them down and use it. Pep rallies is what they were really used for. DD: Whose idea do you think this was? Who thought they needed this pepping up to get ready for war? PR: I don't know. There's always somebody who always thinks of these things and they begin talking about it to a few others. A little agitation, just like nowadays—look at these protesters you have. There is probably only one or two that starts it and a few others follow in, whether it's good" or bad. DD: Do you think that's sort of how it was back then? PR: I think it was the same way. DD: It's funny how the patterns just keep going. PR: It gets a little bit bigger though, because there's media now and things like that. That's about all I really remember. Back in those days during the war, if the people had a son of theirs in the service, you had a small flag there, probably about 6X8 that you'd hang in the window. I don't know who donated them—it was silk with a nice fringe on it and in 59 the middle you'd have a star. If you had two sons in the service, you’d have two stars. If one of them was killed, you'd get a gold star to put in. You'd go down the street and see all these different homes, and you had to put the flag in the window. DD: I have a picture of that in that history book I have inside. I'll have to show you. I think that's the same thing—only I thought it was a circle. Maybe different places had different types. So we're up into the 20's then after the war. You were about 14. PR: Talking about when I was 14 and had the paper route, I have a letter that the circulation manager wrote at that time. It's a full page all written in long hand as a Christmas greeting to me. I'll have to show that to you. How many places would think of anything like that now? Of course, you didn’t have the amount of carriers, like you do now. I've always wanted to take it back to the Hammond Times, there. DD: You should; they'd probably want to publish it or something. You went to a Lutheran grade school, but then when you went to high school, was it Lutheran? PR: No. I went to a public high school. DD: Did you get good grades? Do you remember? I mean you're pretty smart. PR: Yeah, I got good grades. I never had any trouble in school. DD: Did you study a foreign language? PR: No. DD: Did your family speak German? Did you ever study or want to learn German? PR: I learned some German in the Lutheran school there, but then when the war broke out, I was in the 7th grade and they had to quit teaching it. 60 DD: Was it primarily German children at the Lutheran school you went to? Were there a lot of German families? PR: Some and few others. They didn't really have to belong to the church or anything. There was probably a fee of some kind to go there. A lot of people thought that the parochial schools were more strict with kids and that's the reason they would send them there. A dentist that I used to go to after I was married, he sent his kids there because the public school, he said, was too lax and they had too many kids to take care of. He sent his kids to the Lutheran school, but of course they got out at the end of the eight grade—so that was that, see. They still stayed whatever religion they had. DD: Tell me about some of the crazy things you remember doing in high school. You know how high school kids have all that energy. Can you remember stunts you used to do with your friends? PR: I didn't have too much time, because after school I would have to walk to downtown Hammond and get my papers for the paper route. So that kept me busy every evening. DD: What about girls? PR: No. You didn't fool around much back in those days, there. DD: You didn't have girlfriends or dances when you were in high school? PR: No. You didn't have any dances. DD: You didn't have any fun then? PR: No. DD: It sounds pretty serious! Like you worked a lot and didn't have a lot of time for fun. 61 PR: No. You didn't that's right. DD: Was work maybe fun? PR: I don't know. I suppose it was alright. It gave you money to spend. DD: Well, you've got such a great sense of humor, I just can't imagine you not joking around and not playing tricks on people and telling some of your whopper stories. PR: Oh, that all came later on. DD: Oh it did? You didn't do that when you were young, you had to learn it, huh? Through your years of wisdom. PR: Yeah. DD: Okay, I have one more question to ask you before this runs out. Grandma told me about how she met you and I want to hear about the first time when you saw Grandma. PR: Well, that was at the electric shop where I worked there. She was working there. There was a gift shop in connection with the electric shop and the man's wife put in about half of the store (we had lighting fixtures and things like that in it). Back in those days, the only place you could buy an electrical fixture was in an electrical shop—you couldn't go to Sears or a lumber company and buy any electrical supplies or fixtures. This woman put in a gift shop and then she kept expanding because she had a very good trade. We have a few of the pieces in our basement there from back then. She had a lot of stuff imported from France, and we've got a couple of vases from there. DD: So do you remember the first day you ever saw Grandma? 62 PR: It was a while that she was working in there and we got to talking and one thing led to another. Once in a while when it got to be bad weather and I was the truck driver, I used to drive her on home with the truck before I put it in the garage. About a block away in a public garage, I'd put the truck in and then in the morning on the way to work I would pick it up. Course, when I first started working there, she was working there already. We just talked and one thing led to another. DD: Do you remember your first date? Did you have an official first date? PR: No. I don't remember too much about it. I remember that it was back during prohibition days, and I used to pal around with a fella. He had a new car and we used to go to Cal City. That's where all the speak easies were. Lot of times we'd be going over, and we'd see Grandma with her boyfriend and they'd be coming back already from some place or other over there. DD: So she had another boyfriend, but you maybe wanted to get to know her. PR: Oh yeah. She had another boyfriend for quite a long time. DD: So you knew her for a while, but you couldn't go out with her, because she had another boyfriend. PR: Yeah, she had a boyfriend and she went out with him all of the time. Back in those days, your speak easies were in Indiana. You didn't have anything like that in Illinois, but you had the Capone gang, I suppose, and different outfits from Chicago and they were coming to Calumet City over here where all the speak easies were. People had this stuff they would be selling out of their basements. Or there used to be saloons and they reopened them, but the front door was closed, and you had to go to a back door or a 63 side door. When you rapped the door, if they knew you, you could get in. If they didn't, they'd close the door and lock it again. You had to be known to get in anyplace. {August 15, 1983: The following interview continues with Hazel Rosenau and Paul Rosenau.} DD: This is Diana Deatherage interviewing my grandparents Paul and Hazel Rosenau on Monday, August 15, 1983, and we are sitting at their kitchen table in Munster, Indiana, and it’s about 9:30 in the evening. HR: We had to walk so far to school. Miles and miles in those days and the nearest school was a Catholic School so we had to go to a Catholic School but they still had to walk miles and miles to get to a school. DD: But you weren't a Catholic? HR: No, but you learned the catechism. DD: What was their religion? HR: Grandma's? I don't know if they really went to church. The only church that I remember was we went, my aunt and I, as a child and I used to go to Sunday School and I went to the Methodist Church. That was the only thing that I knew of a church and I don't think my Dad went to a church. DD: What church were you raised with then? HR: Methodist. When I went to school I went on my own. Went to Sunday School and Church on my own. My aunt had joined. One of my aunts had joined - my Dads sister 64 joined because I remember she had her baby baptized there I remember that much. But about Grandma going to church I don't remember her going to church. But on my own I used to go to church. I would walk from the farm in for Sunday School. DD: About how far? HR: About two miles. That was about all the religion I ever had was from that Of course, that was all I had until I married Grandpa. Then I joined the Lutheran Church, after we were married, after Lucille was born and had her baptized there. See, Grandpa was raised with the religion all the time DD: As opposed to what you were. HR: Yeah. DD: Where are you going, grandpa? PR: Going to turn off the lights. DD: Now I talked to you both separately and got up to the point of 1927 when you two had just met. HR: We married in 1927, we met before that. DD: So we were right up to when you two both had met so I want you to tell me about your courtship period. PR: Well there isn't any. DD: You just plain married her right off? HR: He used to get his Dad's car and we would go for a ride, go to the show or we would go out - we didn't have restaurants or go out and eat in those days either. 65 DD: Not like you do now. HR: No. And once in a while we would go out and have a sandwich. We would see one another every day at work. DD: Well what do you remember about it? PR: Too far back. DD: Did you take her flowers? And candy and presents. HR: No we both didn't— he wasn't making that much money to be doing all that. Were you? PR: No. DD: And you were still living at home then? HR: Yes and he was just working as a truck driver. DD: And you were living with... HR: Some people on the North Side. DD: Is that when you were living with the aunt? HR: No this is another party, that I, when I was working that I lived with. PR: Driving a truck I don't think I made more than fifteen collars a week. HR: No, when we married you were making eighteen and I made eighteen. We had thirty six dollars a week. DD: Did you go to the movies at all? HR: Afterwards. Well, did we go to the movies when we were going together? Not too much. PR: No. 66 HR: No, because we didn't spend the money for that we would go for rides. Oh, we would go for walks in the summer time and he wouldn't go home till— always laughed about it when the milkman was coming around, you know, they delivered Is wagons. PR: Four in the morning. HR: Four in the morning. The milkman would be delivering. DD: And you would be walking. HR: Yeah, we would walk and talk. DD: You would go for walks until four in the morning? HR: He would go home at that time and we used to kid about him going home when the milkman came around. Sit on the porch and talk. DD: You sat and talked all night long? HR: Yeah. DD: Wow! HR: We used to laugh about that. DD: I guess. What else? That’s pretty interesting. PR: I remember when we got married that day a lot of snow on the ground and very cold. DD: Tell me about your wedding then. Your wedding day. PR: Wasn't much of a wedding. HR: We just had a— went to the pastors— PR: Residence. 67 HR: Yeah and got married and my girlfriend stood up and my father and my stepmother and your brother Ernie. DD: Your family didn't go? HR: No we just went. My Dad, we were just going to go the four of us, we were going to just go and be married with my girlfriend and his brother. But my father and my stepmother— she had to be nosey— she had to be in there so she came. But his folks didn't. But then they had a little house gathering that night—the people I stayed with had that— and gave a party for us. A house party and asked a lot of electricians and friends, just a small party and Paul bought me a great big bouquet of flowers. I had a white dress with lace on it. We got married and then Paul had rented furnished rooms. DD: For you to move into right away? HR: Yes, you did that in those days a lot— furnished rooms and then after we were married in between that and our reception we went and got a load of groceries. Took then up to our rooms. DD: Were you excited? HR: Oh yeah, and then we had that big party that night and there was snow, when we went and icy. DD: What day was it? HR: November 19th. PR: Saturday. HR: Saturday, November 19th. 68 PR: About 10 inches of snow on the ground. HR: Of course, his mother and father, sisters and brothers were at the reception and my brother, father and stepmother. DD: How long did you date before you got married? HR: Not too many months— not quite a year was it. DD: Do you remember when you asked her to marry you? HR: Just out riding one day. And then that night was a funny night because they had— Oh, my girlfriend was along and her two children and her husband was out of town and the children got sleepy and Paul went in and helped put them to sleep for her. PR: Rocked the two of them to sleep. HR: And we played games there and they had food. And they had a lot of wine and his dad came up to me, he didn't know me that well and came up and said something like don't drink too much wine and I don't drink—I wasn't one to drink then. He brought all the wine— his father— he made the wine. But then these electricians they got pretty well… PR: Pretty well lit up. HR: One went to go home and he fell off of a snow bank. Another one left his wife there and went home. PR: Yeah, went looking for the guy in the bedroom, his hat was there, his coat, his overcoat and went out to see his car was gone. But his wife was still there. DD: He forgot his wife? 69 PR: About an hour later— they called his house where he lived on the south end of Hammond. No answer, so somebody else took this guy’s wife home and he was home and in bed. So drunk he didn't know how he got home. It was ten above. Your brother got pretty well lit up to. He was trying to get my sisters. Irma. HR: Not Irma, the other ones. PR: He tried to get Elsie, Alma and Emma. HR: And they were used to— PR: They were used to drinking wine because we had it with our meals at home. Instead of him getting the girls drunk they got him drunk. They were still sober. DD: Well, then why did his father tell you not to drink too much? HR: I don't know he just said something coming up to me. Not in a mad way though. DD: Maybe because of your honeymoon or something? HR: I hadn't been, I don't know why he said that. DD: So you didn't go anywhere on a honeymoon or anything like that. PR: Couldn't. DD: Had to go to work on Monday morning. HR: But then another funny thing at the party was they wanted to play a trick on Paul. So they sent a cop to come— see those days they did things like that— they sent a cop to knock at the door. You tell the rest of the story. You hooked the door… PR: The cop came there and he said I understand you have some booze in the house and a rough party going on here. So I was talking through the— 70 HR: Screen door. PR: Screen door or storm door, whatever it was, and he was going to grab it and he did grab it, thats right— he was going to come in and get me so I went out on the porch and shoved him over the railing in the snow, and I quick come in and closed the door. HR: And he was a friend of the guy that gave the reception, you see, the guy where I was staying wanted to play a little joke and the guy take him and lock him up for the night. DD: Oh, yeah? PR: They did a lot of that then in those days. DD: Oh, because this was prohibition and you knew that? PR: Yes, I knew the cop because he had been a couple of grades ahead of me in school. Yeah, he jerked the door open as I had ahold of it— so I just went out and gave him a good hard shove. See back in those days the porches all had railings on them so they were about this high… DD: About three feet. PR: Went out and shoved him in a big snow bank. HR: We played a lot of games and it didn't end till way late. Then we took my girlfriend home and children and then we went home. DD: What was it like being married then? I imagine pretty funny. PR: I had to do all the work. DD: You did? HR: Oh. Well later. 71 PR: Right after we got married. HR: He said he had to do the work. Well I worked Saturdays. So he had to clean house and do the shopping cm Saturdays. And he did. Because we would buy groceries at night going home and fix our meals. DD: Did you mind? PR: No. HR: He didn't seem to mind. He even in the evenings got home before I did and a lot of times he would start the supper have the potatoes peeled and things like that. DD: How come you were such a nice guy? Did your Mom raise you to be such a nice guy? HR: They were used to doing all that. PR: We had to do all that— do housework at home. DD: Yeah but you had all those sisters. PR: They were all younger. I was the oldest one. HR: They all had to do their share of work, you know. DD: Was that a pretty good, I don't know if affluent would be the right word but here you both had your separate incomes but when you put your incomes together you were probably making - HR: Thirty six dollars a week. DD: Was that pretty good for then? 72 HR: Well we got by. But we had to pay for our three rooms forty five dollars a month and that ate up quite a bit - well we didn't go hungry. PR: But you didn't go anyplace either. HR: Only got to go to a show once in a great while and you went over every Sunday mostly was to the folks and had dinner and you went to church because his folks were only about three blocks away. DD: Was that nice for you then, grandma having the security? HR: Yes, it was very nice. Having somebody that cared for you and you were together. DD: And take care of you? PR: Of course, she had to work six days a week to make eighteen dollars and I had to work five days and made eighteen. See I made forty five cents an hour. HR: The people we worked for was so nice. They would give us things. PR: They would have parties and always ask us. HR: And sometimes we would even stay overnight. PR: Well especially if he had a good size party some of these people that lived in Chicago didn't have a car and they used to cone out on the street car and then I would have to take them home, maybe one, two, three o'clock and then— HR: Then I would go to bed at her house and grandpa would come back and sleep in one of the other twin beds. She used to buy me these beautiful nightgowns and things like that and she took me to Chicago when they bought these things for the gift shop, when all the buyers cone in up at Chicago at the hotels -Stevens Hotel at that time. All the 73 buyers would come in and bring their stuff and then she would go up and pick out what she wanted. PR: She would go up about two or three times a year. She worked a big business there with that gift shop. HR: And then the depression came and she lost it all. PR: Because they gambled in the stock market. DD: Now tell me about, prohibition was already going on then, when you were married. Tell me about those times. I mean it wasn't fun— it was supposed to be illegal— but it sounded like it ended or being fun. PR: Well, after a few years after we were married… HR: We made our— he made his own beer. PR: Then we used to go— I was making more money by that time, of course, at forty five cents an hour I had to work for a whole year for that and then I got a raise to fifty five cents an hour for another year. HR: First he was an electrician’s helper what did they call them? PR: An apprentice. Five years we had to serve. Then after we were married a couple or three years we palled with another couple and they had a car so we would go over to Calumet City. HR: We went out more when we went with this other couple. PR: Yeah, we were making a little more money then. DD: Who was that? 74 HR: Schreibers. Eva & George, and they had a daughter about Lucille's age and we would go out and have drinks or go out and eat once in a while. Not all the time. PR: During prohibition days you could go over to Calumet City which is Ill., and go to these individual homes they would generally have a basement fixed up a little bit not like we do now here, they would have chairs and they could serve you some drinks. DD: Instead of bars you went to homes? PR: Yeah, you could go either way and like with us we would go to an individual home. DD: You knew a whole lot of different places. HR: You learned about them and you could go to them. DD: How would they know you? PR: Well, pass word or something. Like if we were talking with somebody else well you would say this house here and give them the address. You would have to have some certain name or something like that to say. You would go rap. DD: And then the bars you would go to sometimes? PR: Yes sometimes you would go to the bars. Women over there at those bars were allowed to stand too, like the men. They always had some, that was where you went into the bars more to get instead of a drink of whiskey, get beer or something. It was all spiked beer anyway. DD: What's spiked beer? PR: They shoot it with alcohol and it would be a near beer and they shoot it with alcohol to give it an effect like your beer you would have nowadays. And it would have no 75 alcoholic contents to begin with see. And then in these darn saloons that you would go to speakeasies they would always have some hot peppers or something on the bar. Didn't cost you nothing. Then you would have to drink that much more beer to cool things down a little bit. HR: Used to get some good ham sandwiches to. PR: Yes, you would get some good sandwiches. DD: And was this the places that had slot machines too. PR: Well, not right away they didn't. Years later they got slot machines. DD: You said some of the places in Calumet City that you went that the gangsters used to come sometimes. How did you know if they were going to be in town that night you wouldn't want to— PR: They never would come around at night. DD: They went in the daytime? PR: Well if they were doing any dickering they did it in the daytime with the fellow that was running the place. After each individual home had to pay into somebody, see, because you never saw any of them or know anything about it. DD: Oh I see. PR: Just once in a while- like Frank Pelk goes over there found him dead at the front door, Monday morning at six o'clock. There was two factions like out of Chicago— the Capone gang and another outfit. Ah, Moran, and each one was trying to push beer on to these guys that had saloons or taverns and then like this one fellow there, he had been 76 taking beer off of one or the other had been taking for years and then the other ones were moving in too and they thought they were stronger, they pushed their barrels of beer to the guys front door. Now you either take them or use them or something would happen. He didn't take them. And then they found him dead that morning. HR: There was a lot of that in those days. DD: Really? PR: It never affected any customers. DD: Okay, because I know you said the used to come down there so their control extended down to there and they would have to pay. Was that for their protection? PR: Yes. DD: Okay, that’s what I wanted to know about that. PR: Oh, one little incident that I always remember, shortly after we had been married, we had been fooling around, chasing each other back and forth. I went out, we lived on the second floor, that time had a great big porch out there with a swing and that's where you kept your ice box out there on the porch so I go out there and she quickly locks the door. HR: No, I put the chair underneath. Just for fun you know… PR: Oh yeah, she put the chair underneath to lock it and I give it one good shove. This was in a furnished apartment and I give it one good shove and— HR: He broke the chair! PR: I broke it in a hundred pieces! 77 HR: We didn't care it wasn't our chair. PR: So we went down the next night to a used furniture store and tried to buy one that resembled the one we had broken. DD: Did you find one? PR: Yeah, pretty close to the one. DD: Was it expensive? HR: No, not really but it wasn't— it was for us at that time a little bit. Not real expensive. DD: How much was it? HR: I don't know. Because all our furniture was— we would add to it. We bought two reed rockers, and put in with the furniture. DD: What’s a reed rocker? HR: Didn't you ever know what a reed rocker is? DD: No. HR: Did you ever know what a reed buggy was? Baby buggy. DD: No. HR: Made of these little— DD: Like wicker? PR: Be made out of something as big around as this. HR: But strong. Reed rockers they were— PR: They were comfortable. 78 HR: Yes, and they were quite something in those days. DD: Okay, I think I can picture it. HR: We bought a couple of reed rockers and I had a cedar chest and we would buy little things to fix up the place because everything was furnished. We had a radio. PR: A great big high boy radio with a cabinet. HR: Oh no, the first one we had was a little speaker on it. Remember this shape speaker. PR: No, I don't remember that. DD: That was your entertainment then too? PR: Yes, your radio was really your entertainment. Oh and this was a battery operated set. HR: Yes, a great big battery like you have in a car. PR: Had a little charger you would charge it up. DD: What would be your routine—would you put it on as soon as you got home from work? PR: No, not exactly. HR: We got our meal and washed the dishes. PR: We probably would sit out on the back porch. HR: Yes, we had a swing on the back porch, one of these double swings. DD: Porch swings. HR: Sit out there and had an ice box, you didn't have a refrigerator. The iceman came and put the ice in the top of it. DD: Oh yeah. 79 PR: They case around every day. HR: You bought your ice for a quarter, twenty five or fifty pounds. We would go out and sit in the swing. PR: My folks only lived a block away. HR: And then he used to go with a girlfriend, she lived right down, she could see us sitting in the swing and seemed like she was always out there watching us. Seemed like she was always out in the yard, we got a kick out of that. DD: How did the iceman get ice on your porch if you were on the second floor? Was there a stair on the outside? PR: Yes. HR: Then they had these tongs and they carried them on their shoulder. PR: You would put your card in the window. HR: You would say how many pounds you want. PR: Our living room window was facing the west and he would come down the street cause the house next door their back was built by the alley so he could look up and see if you wanted fifty, or seventy five. Set the card that way. DD: Oh, I see. PR: Oh and that little ice box that was up there too. There was another little incident that happened. We had been making home brew and we had had four or five couples from the shop we were working at, invited electricians and friends, wives and we had bought some limburger cheese and I had the home brew that I made, loaf of bread and 80 probably a Spanish onion to slice. Back in these days’ people ate a lot more limburger cheese and things. We bought two rounds of it. Everybody left and we were cleaning up and we had one small cake of the limburger cheese left so I took and put in into a dish and this is on a Saturday night we had the party, and I took and put it on top of the ice box on the porch after everybody had gone. HR: We didn't want the house smelling. PR: The next morning we get up and somebody stole our limburger cheese. Never did find it. Maybe it walked away I don't know! DD: It was that strong. HR: We used to have lots of laughs about stuff. DD: Thought this guy wasn't any fun cause he was always working and he didn't get to be fun until later on he was telling me that. HR: Did he tell you that? DD: He didn't pull pranks and that? HR: No, he was always, if the women were washing dishes or things like that, sneaking up behind them, they wore these aprons and he would untie their aprons. DD: Sounded like you were matching him though. You locked him out. PR: When we lived at this second floor, too, one day I was down making home brew and the fellow that owned the place was downstairs and he was off that day from work. He came down the basement and said “Let’s go get some crabs and bring them back and fix them up.” Something new to me so he said “Put on an old pair of pants,” we would 81 wade in water about knee deep to hip deep. So put on an old pair of shoes and old pair of pants. Drives out Calumet Avenue down here to 45th where we make the turn to head for Arlene’s and we go down to where that ditch is and that’s where he parked. It was an old dirt road back in those days. So he had a seine along, two buckets. DD: Seine? PR: Net. It’s a seine because it’s a net about that wide. You had one pole at each end. One guy on each side we would go along this place you would seine. The thing was probably about this high. Go along that way and these crabs were along there. And they were real big ones. Crayfish, as some people would call them. But some of these were as big as, some of the tails were as big as your lobster tail that you get. We were probably only gone about an hour at the most. We had two buckets full. Bring them home. We ate them. DD: How were they? PR: Good. DD: Did you know how to cook them? HR: No, the neighbors that he went with fixed them. PR: The landlord and his wife fixed them. They got a big kettle of boiling water going and dropped these in with a lot of salt. DD: My goodness! HR: And another time he brought a turtle home when he was somewhere with his truck. PR: Twenty five miles south of here at Cedar Lake. 82 HR: He said every time he would go a little ways and he didn't have a way of tying the turtle down, so he would come up and then he would have to stop and put the turtle back further in the truck. DD: Was it a snapping turtle? PR: I don't know what kind you called it. It was a big one. DD: About two feet. Two feet around. PR: Well I would say he was that long, that oval shape. DD: That was a big turtle. HR: He knew that the neighbors fixed turtles. PR: Gave it to him. HR: He took and killed it. Dressed it up or whatever they do and she made turtle soup and she had turtle meat and had us over. DD: How was it? HR: It was something different. I didn't care for the soup. But the meat you thought sometimes you were eating chicken. PR: One part does just taste like chicken. It’s light in color. {Side A of tape ends. Interview continued on Side B.} DD: This is the interview with my grandparents continued from the other side. And I want to know about your side of the family you had some illustrious members over there. PR: I had a cousin that was a member of the Capone Gang. 83 DD: He was a member of the gang? PR: Yes. There was a shooting occurred on Valentine’s Day in Chicago and he must have been one of them in it. It wasn't too long, a day or so after it happened, why there was police in our folks neighborhood they would just sit there parked in the car watching our house. My aunt was supposed to come out and my uncle from Chicago that Sunday and she called. I happened to answer the phone, she said something happened and we won't be out, so she couldn't say what it was. We really didn't find out only just by guessing at putting pieces together here and there. DD: It was the big Valentine's Day Massacre. What happened? What did you hear about that? PR: Well, a bunch of gangsters came and they were dressed as police. Pulled up in a police car at one speakeasy joint and they got in somehow or other and they killed I think it was seven people, shot them and all the bartenders. HR: Didn't they take them somewhere to shoot them? PR: No. Right there. DD: They were the members of the other gang. PR: Yes, they were members of another gang. HR: What was the noise of the truck? PR: Well, what they had done, the gang that had done the shooting had rented a garage next door to this speakeasy and they supposedly repairing trucks, but all they were doing was raving the motors up and making loud noises back firing and everything and when this shooting would take place, it was all timed, the mechanic started the trucks 84 up, the back firing and all these things, at the time the shooting was going on, people heard the noise and thought it was trucks back firing and didn't know any different. DD: So nobody went… PR: Nobody went and investigated right away. DD: So you think this cousin of yours was involved in it. PR: Yes, he was involved. DD: What was his name? PR: Well I'm not going to give his name right now. HR: He was from a well-to-do family. PR: He went to Illinois University. Folks lived in Chicago. Owned a lot of property up there. He had his own airplane when he went to Illinois University and he had his own car down there and of course I guess after he started working, got out of college, wasn't enough money coming in so he got hooked up with the gang somehow or other. DD: This was your dad’s brother? PR: No, my mother’s sister’s boy. DD: Okay. Well did you ever hear anything else about him being in a gang before that? PR: No. DD: But you knew he was. PR: Only after this happened. DD: You didn't know before that? 85 PR: No. DD: Then he got killed later didn't he? PR: Yes about five or six years later. DD: With the gang? PR: He was dumped west of Chicago. Gangland style. HR: He was married and had a couple o: children. PR: He didn't have any children. HR: He didn't have any children? PR: No. DD: Anything else you remember about him? PR: No. DD: How about some others? What about any other family members? Cousins, aunts or uncles or long past? Anything you heard about any other family members that was interesting? PR: Probably one thing that might be interesting. I had an uncle that lived in a city in Wisconsin, had four boys and two girls and my Uncle was a captain on the Riverboat on the Mississippi River and the four boys all went to college and they all came out and were captains on the Riverboats. DD: Would that be in the steam days, then? When they had steam boats back then? 86 PR: Well you didn't have to be exactly on that, but you could be working on a government boat that took care of repairing pilings or cleaning the channel of debris of some kind or other. DD: How were the boats— how were the boats powered? PR: Powered? They were all gasoline driven. One cousin was stationed here at Joliet not too far from here, we used to visit quite often with them. I was on his boat a couple of times, had a real nice layout. He had charge of a government boat on the Illinois River down on this end here. Another cousin had after his Dad had retired up in the Mississippi, way up north at Waynotte, Minnesota he got up in there. Another one used to run a boat, cargo boats from? I forgot how far north, but he used to go down to Mexico and he was captain on one of those boats. DD: What was your uncle’s name? PR: Rudy Karnath. DD: And his sons were — PR: George, Bill, Rudy and Walter. Four boys. The two girls he put them through college. Don't know what title the one was but she lectures in different colleges all over the country. DD: Does she do that now? PR: Well, in fact when she was here, two years ago, when they were visiting up here in Michigan she called one evening and said she was going to stop by on a Saturday and she was then on her way to go to California. She had entered the University of California for another degree of some kind. 87 DD: What’s her name? PR: I would have to look in the book. I can't remember right now. DD: What does she lecture about? PR: Well let’s see, she had been a registered nurse at one time and I believe she was lecturing on nursing and one thing and another. In fact she even went to college over somewhere in France for about a year. She gets a degree here and then she lectures for a while. She gets an urge to go back to school and she's my age. Yes, about two years ago she was going to University of California. DD: Well, who else in your family did you think had a pretty interesting life? Did something kind of different-like? PR: Well I don't know of anybody else that way. DD: What about when the stock market crashed you had only been married a couple of years? PR: Yes, in 1929. DD: Had a new baby? PR: Oh, yeah. Your mother was a baby then. DD: She would have been a year old. Tell me about your memories then that day that you heard that that happened. HR: Well, that was that, we had a little money in the bank. PR: Yes, we had saved up a little money. Well, and of course, the stock market crashed and the banks were closed the next day already. Well, no they really didn't close the next 88 day but within a day or two everybody was at the banks for blocks away trying to get their money out. Of course, when they closed the doors it wasn't insured like it is now and you just lost your money. DD: So you lost your money? PR: Yes, what little we had in the bank. DD: Do you remember how much you had saved? PR: No, don't remember how much it was. DD: Were you pretty upset about that? HR: Well, yes, because it meant that much to us, as much as somebody that lost quite a bit. DD: But it was all you had? PR: Yes, it was all we had. DD: Just as much effect on you as somebody that lost a lot. PR: Yes, you probably only got to save maybe a dollar a week, maybe two dollars a week, fifty cents. It all depended. DD: Did you know what that meant when it happened? What effect it would have on the country? PR: No, didn't really know until a few days later. The party that we were working for, he had gambled so much he had everything tied up in the stocks because whatever way he bought it, he didn't have the cash but he had owned property all over and they would turn in your title and whatever, I suppose, and deeds to the property to the broker that you were buying stocks through and when that occurred he didn't have the cash to put 89 down so they would take this piece of property and this one and he owned a lot of property around. He was a fellow that was very, very good and when your mother was born the next day there was a reed baby buggy. DD: He got it for you? HR: Yes. DD: Wow. HR: And he gave us stuff in between. It affected him so much that he committed suicide. He was one that would help other people, families, he was even raising a family that lost her husband and she had several boys and he was furnishing them with clothes. PR: Seven kids in the family. HR: Clothes and food— that type of a person, then when he lost all his money it got to him that he couldn't do anything for anybody. PR: At Christmas time this one family lived across the alley from where this fellows shop was in Hammond and him and his wife would go down to Mina’s Department Store and outfit them kids from head to toe, everything they needed all them seven kids, all the winter clothes, new shoes, overcoats and everything, buy summer shoes for them enough to last awhile and they would do that every Christmas. I remember another old couple three or four blocks away from there, I was always delivering food stuff to them and at Christmas we used to take bushel baskets of food to them, made ur those baskets, well, and Thanksgiving, also. Have enough in that bushel basket - potatoes and you would have a turkey, celery to stuff it with bread and all the cranberries, bag of nuts. 90 DD: Wow a really nice guy. PR: Yeah, he really was. HR: And she was too. PR: Yes she was very good. DD: What did she do later on? HR: She carried on, first she got some little chickens and raised them and all kinds of things. We kept in touch every once in a while with her. What was it she was doing at the last before she retired, I forgot what it was but she got back on her feet quite a bit, working, she was a hard worker. PR: Good business woman, she kept the books and everything, she did the spending of the money and things. DD: They made an interesting couple. PR: Yeah, they were. DD: Well what effect did that have on you effects went on for a long time. How did it affect you? PR: Well, we just didn't have any work, didn't have any money. DD: No work, you lost both jobs? PR: Well, she had had to quit when your mother was born. HR: Yeah, I wasn't working then. DD: So then that probably was harder living on half as much. 91 HR: Well, Paul, after we didn't have work he did all kinds of, he always kept a little job, he worked in a fruit market quite a while and he worked in a grocery store. PR: Fruit market just worked a few hours. HR: In the grocery store for this fellow was very nice to us. PR: Fruit market I would go to work about five o'clock stay until eleven or twelve at night, till it closed up. DD: How many nights did you do that? PR: Every night. Saturday you would go to work at seven in the morning until one o'clock Sunday morning. DD: Boy you weren't working all day then still were you? PR: No, this is during the depression and I wasn't doing any electrical work. DD: Oh, okay, I see. Thought you were doing this afterwards. PR: Of course, that was only during the summer months because when the fruit was through coming from Michigan why, then there was not work in there either. DD: How could you work that long? PR: Well I was young then, could stand that. DD: Did you plan those jobs, did they help you get any extra food, I mean did you plan to work with the foods. HR: No, just took it because he got it. Oh and he knew the people, like the grocery guy. PR: In the fruit market was making fifteen cents an hour. 92 DD: Wow, all the prices of all the jobs went way down then. PR: Yes. DD: From fifty five cents to fifteen. PR: And after I got through in the fruit market for a year or so worked part time in the grocery store. I would work Tuesday mornings and I think it was I would work Thursday mornings. DD: Wow. That sure turned your life around didn't it? PR: Then later on I was working Tuesday morning, Thursday morning, all I would be doing was delivering, in fact, back in those days all the people would call on the phone and you would deliver their groceries, you had the metal basket and put everything in and write it on the slip, call in an order and then you would have to collect for it a lot of them were charging for it. All you would do was rap at the back door, go in the house and dump it off. HR: Then when he worked at the grocery store any fruits that would start to spoil he would get to bring it home and I could salvage a lot out of it, or do things like that instead of leaving all the fruit go to waste like the stores do. DD: I'll bet that helped. HR: Oh yeah, sure it did we needed every bit of it. DD: So here you were going along you had a job, you had money in the bank, you thought you were doing really good and then, boom. HR: That was everybody that wasn't just us. 93 DD: No more electrical career. PR: No, not for several years. DD: Nobody did any of that at all? HR: He worked at a poor farm— was that during the depression. PR: No that was right after. That was about 1934. It was after that. HR: Yeah, but work was scarce then. PR: Oh yeah, it was still pretty scarce. HR: Well it didn't pick up that good. PR: That’s right, it took quite a few years. DD: What about when FDR came into office, right about that time? PR: In 32 when he came in. DD: Was in the depression, he was going to bring everyone out of the depression with his New Deal. Do you remember what you thought about that, did you have faith in that? PR: Well, we thought he did a very good thing because he called a bank moratorium. DD: What was that? PR: The banks were still going under and everything all over, and he closed them up for one day or whatever it was, and had some kind of reorganization through national effort and they opened the banks and the government had put some money into all these banks because most of them people are coming here and they had run out of money to pay the people so they had to close the doors then. 94 DD: So he closed the banks. PR: FDR called a bank holiday. Well it all helped and we thought he was very good, in fact, my first time I ever voted it was for Hoover, of course, I wasn't for FDR then. I voted for him the second time in '36 but then the third time he was running I said, boy, that guy wants to be a dictator because no president had ever tried to go more than two terms but four years each but he was going for a third so I crossed that guy off my list right now. He got in, of course. DD: Guess not too many people felt the way you did, huh? PR: Probably not. DD: Those were the days of the democrats back then. PR: Yeah, that’s when they got a good start. DD: And all the social welfare policies started back then a lot of them. But it helped? PR: Yes, it did help but then some of it went to extreme like all of them are. DD: Got to ease out of that, out of the depression then gradually. PR: In 1934 we bought our first car. DD: By then you had how many kids? PR: Couldn't have been more than two. Arlene was born in '32. Just the two of them. Your mother and Arlene. HR: Shirley was born in '35 and Paul in '36 and I made a lot of their clothes and his mother sewed and gave us a lot. She was a good seamstress. She even made coats from older coats for the kids. Winter coats and they helped us out a lot, as much as they could. 95 PR: Yeah, mother made a lot of clothes for the kids. DD: But by '34 you could afford a car. How could you afford a car right away all of a sudden? PR: I was in '32, let’s see was it '32? DD: You went from fifty five cents to fifteen cents an hour and then you could buy a car? PR: I didn't have any money to put down on the car but I had gotten a job as an electrician through a county commissioner in the county end of it when they went democratic and he told me to go down to Crown Point which is about twenty five miles from here and do electrical work on the county buildings. Well, I said I had no car to go down and do any electrical work. Well, he said I'll make a few telephone calls and I had to go to Crown Point, he even had somebody take me and got a car without putting anything down on it. DD: Wow! PR: So I got the job and went down and did the work. Of course, I went and checked with the Union because I belonged to the electrical union and they gave me the okay to go ahead and do work down there so I was working as county electrician thats how we got started on the car. DD: So then you had to start paying on the car. PR: Oh yeah, had to pay every month, payments were very high. DD: How much did your car cost? PR: Six hundred twenty-five dollars. HR: That was a lot! 96 DD: What kind was it? PR: It was a Plymouth and not quite a year old, because brand new cars back in those days right then sold for only eight hundred fifty-six dollars, for a four door sedan with a radio and white wall tires. HR: That’s what we paid for our new car when we got it eight hundred dollars. The gray "Betsie" we called it all the time. DD: That was a pretty nice turn from— PR: Yes. HR: Yes, we got help that way and we even needed some furniture and we got it that way. PR: The county commissioner had a furniture store in Gary. HR: We got a dining room set and a rug. DD: Well how did you get to be such good friends with the county commissioner? PR: Well, I worked with the Democratic Party for a while and got in. DD: When did you do that? PR: Started in 1932. DD: What did you do? PR: Oh, I was even a campaign manager for the fellow running for county commissioner. DD: I never knew this that you had an active political career. HR: Yes; and this was the people I was living with when I married Paul and he run for county commissioner and Paul was his manager and helped him get in. 97 DD: So this was the same guy. HR: No, he helped get him in, talked to this other guy. PR: Well the way it was this county commissioner from Gary had some other way, finagled and set up another part of the county here to have another commissioner elected instead of only two there was going to be three and he got somewhere the ruled changed. Well, then I was working for this fellow here and I was his campaign manager and collected a lot of money, lot of political meetings and made a few little speeches here and there. DD: Any of your tall tales. PR: No, no. It was on the up and up. Back in those days every political meeting served a lot of free beer so you always had a lot of people. So if he got elected, which he did, I was to have the choice of the best job that he had to offer which was several hundred jobs. He got elected and I didn't get a thing out of it. But I found out later what he had done, all the people he had appointed had paid him quite a few hundred dollars for different jobs so thats how they all got work and I didn't and then I happened to be talking to this other county commissioner that had set up this area in here and got this fellow elected, actually. DD: The one that she used to live with. PR: The one that we bought the furniture from through his store in Gary, so he asked me what kind of a job did John give you and I said nothing. So he got on the phone and he raised hell with him. So he was the one that said okay John didn't take care of you so I will. Tomorrow morning you¥« on the payroll in the county - so only a couple of days 98 down on the job and he was coming down to this place where I was working so he said how about being the county electrician. Well, I would have to get an okay from the union. Well, he said, see what you have to do. So I went and talked to them and that's how I got the job down there and he made arrangements to get me a car. DD: I never knew any of that. HR: And afterwards some furniture because we had moved into a little large house. 99 COMMENTARY Hazel Rosenau: My grandmother was very helpful, pleased and cooperative throughout the interview process. She often suggested that we “do a tape”. She was in quite a bit of pain from arthritis through all of the types, but never complained. She would get stiff after sitting for a half an hour and then it would hurt her to move. She had a very unhappy childhood for the most part with very little security and sense of belonging. She is, I feel, angry and sad about her early treatment by her dad, stepmothers, and remaining family (except her brothers), but she would not say anything very strong about her feelings on this. She would just speak lightly of it and never admit outright that her life was a real hardship. She simply would not say anything bad about anyone concerned. She felt helpless in the situation, and this came through in the interview. I also felt a great sense of loss on her part from not having a mother. I feel she may have often thought about how her life would have been different if her mother hadn’t died. Because her mother died when she was so young, she has very few memories of her. What she thinks of her mother is an idealized image. I also feel that she tried throughout her life to be the mother to her children that she never had. This is translated into an extremely helping woman, who puts her children’s needs before her own. 100 Grandma had not thought about a lot of the things I asked her about for a long time. Some of her answers may have not been complete because she often could not recall feelings. The second half of Side A was continued onto Side B and there is a gap in the questioning here. I had asked her about any relatives doing something extraordinary or interesting. She could not think of anything after giving it further thought. Grandma was also a little nervous about answering the questions. She was afraid I’d ask her something she didn’t know. Since it was all about her anyway I just reassured her by saying that if she didn’t know an answer, probably no one would. This helped. I was very surprised when Grandma told me she had been engaged before. Actually, she had been engaged twice, but the second one didn’t sound like it was too solid. Grandma thought it was a little ticklish talking about it, I could tell. Since Grandpa wasn’t around, she told me, though. Then, what was even more surprising was, when talking to Grandpa, he mentioned it very matter-of-factly. Grandma was the surprised one when I told her he mentioned it. The name her uncle called her little hat was “that little damn hat” and she would not say “damn” on the tape recorder. Grandma didn’t seem to have taken much notice of historical events in her life. She couldn’t remember anything about world or national events I asked her about. This may be due to the fact that she doesn’t consider herself too educated. 101 Paul Rosenau: Grandpa was very willing to "be interviewed. It was a little hard getting him started, but once he got started he was full of stories. He's a very matter of fact storyteller, has an alert memory, and a sharp sense of humor. Paul and Hazel Rosenau: As the tape begins Grandma, Grandpa, and I are finishing a conversation we were in as I started the tape. Wed then get into talking about the early years of their relationship together. A reference is made to going out to eat, now. One of their favorite activities is dressing up and going out to eat at nice restaurants, which they do regularly, about once a week. When Grandma told about Grandpa not going home till four in the morning, we laughed and laughed. I tried to picture them young and in love and talking all night long. This year will be their fifty-sixth together and I consider then a very close, compatible couple who love and enjoy each other very much. They tell their stories very well together. Both adding to each other’s memories, reminding each other of this or that. I felt that together they recalled more than each would have separately. Grandpa wouldn’t tell the name of his cousin who was a member of the Capone gang. After the tape was off I asked him why. He seemed to feel that it wasn’t safe to discuss it, that there would be some danger in revealing the name and wouldn’t tell me. 102 I really didn’t understand why or what harm there could be now. This seems to be the way he had viewed it all his life and I don’t think he wants to change it now. 103