Written in 1983
Both my grandparents as I remember them were rather short and round. My grandmother (born Trientje J. Ausema (also spelled Oudsema) in Uithuisen in 1851) spoke only Dutch, so we couldn't really communicate with each other, since I knew only a few scattered words. My grandfather (Lammert Herlein born in 1852) learned how to speak English, since he worked away from home and it was necessary for him. It must have been a rather sad life to have so many babies die but I suppose people rather got resigned to it in those days. I remember them as a rather saintly pair.
When we went to visit them things were very quiet except for the ticking of a clock and the cooing of a pigeon in a cage hanging in the kitchen. Before we ate we had a long, long prayer in Dutch, none of which I could understand. In the backyard was a grape arbor under which was a pair of swings in which we could sit and rock back and forth in nice weather. Aunt Minnie's house was right next door, so they sort of shared the swing. When my grandparents became older they gave their house to the Holland Home in exchange for their care until they died. Grandpa died in 1935 of pneumonia. Grandma lived on for another year and was found in her bed one morning-she had died in her sleep in the night. I think she really gave up living when he died.
My mother's parents also spoke Dutch at home. Grandpa Bush learning English because of working with others outside the home. I can't remember much about Grandma Bush except that she was sick for a long time before she died and my mother walked over there to take care of her every day. As I remember, I was quite often the baby-sitter for Ruthie, Gertrude and cousin Jeannette when she was there, and I wasn't very old since I think I was 7 when she died. I have just 2 memories of Grandma Bush. She was sick in bed both times. Once I was with Henrietta, who went over there to do the housework, and she scolded me for not dusting the table legs (I still think of that when - infrequently, I dust our table) - and the other time she had me get a box of chocolates out of her dresser drawer so we could have one. Both times confused me because she spoke in Dutch, which of course I couldn't understand. I sometimes think now that it was a shame we couldn't communicate better.
Grandpa Bush - I get the impression was kind of a rip-snorter in his early days and still was of uncertain temper later when I remember him. Our grandmother was his second wife. He loved to fish - went out to Lake Michigan just about everyday in his later years, and went to California and married for a third time when he was in his late 80's or early 90's. He came back to Michigan one time with his new wife because she wanted to meet his children. My mother and her new step-mother liked each other at once - never saw each other again but corresponded with each other after that.
Now for memories of my parents. They never had much money, and I suppose with 8 children, life was a constant struggle for the necessities. But there was love enough to go around, always lots of books and music and religious training and what I think of as the better things of life. We never went hungry and we always had clothes to wear: hand-me-downs they might be.
Our house was never too full with all of us - there was always room for one more. When Uncle John Bush's wife, Aunt Annie, died in the flu epidemic of 1918, cousins Harry and Jeannette came to live with us for a while. Harry was a little older than me, Jeannette a little younger, and I was only 4 or 5 at the time. When Uncle John married again and his wife turned out to be less than desirable, baby Raymond stayed with us for a while. When Aunt Mabel, Uncle John's 3rd wife, had relatives moving from California and little 4 year old Forrest (I think) was very sick with some quite serious disease (he had frequent conculsions) he stayed with us to be nursed until they were settled in their new home. When a friend called and said that her neighbor was sick and her small baby was being neglected, little Stanley (again, I think) came to live with us for a while. My mother burned his filthy clothes, dressed him in fresh ones supplied by Carrie, Lammert's wife and brought him to the doctor for a once over, healed his boils and diaper rash and finally reluctantly gave him back to his recovered mother (soon to return to his former unkempt state).
My mother also was very active in the Ladies Aid of the East Lawn Church. She wove many rugs, and I remember many quilting bees at our house when they made quilts to be given to those who needed them - and there were many people like that in our neighborhood during the depression days.
My father was a less social person. He loved music all his life. I remember him endlessly practicing Bach on the piano and whenever I hear Mendelson's Spinning song I am immediately transported back to those early childhood years. When he was in his 80's he copied music a good share of his time and sent copies out to all his children. Even in his 90's the library at Fairfield, IL sent away for books about music and composers for him to read, after he had read what they had to offer.
All of us picked away at music more or less while we were home, except Ruthie, as I remember, and she was the one who scraped up money out of her meager wages to pay for music lessons for Edith. Lammert was a natural - he had very few regular lessons except for during the Depression days when they were being offered by the WPA (Works Progress Administration) but he started very early (at age 15, I think) playing in church, and played in church for the rest of his life, until the last few months before he died.
As for me, I was a puny little kid. I remember I had typhoid fever when I was about 7 (How do I remember? Because the doctor came to see me just after I had all my paper dolls arranged all over my bed, and she, Dr. Lucy Eanies, gathered them all up in any which way so she could "turn the kivers back" and look me over). Then I think for the next 2 or 3 years I had something which left me in bed for 3 months at a time. I remember drinking endless bottles of cod-live -oil and spending the spring months in bed in the back yard.
I was very proud of being in 2-2 (they had the grades divided in two parts in those days) when we moved into the Moon School district. I was out of school most of the spring, so in the fall when I went back they put me in 2-2 again. The next day they sent me to another room 3-1, and the following day I was promoted again to 3-2 where I finished the term. I read so much of the time when I was home that I hadn't fallen behind, although I missed all the arithmetic drills and was rather shaky in that line.
I liked to read! At one time I decided to read all the books in the Hackley Public Library's children's department, starting from A and going through Z. That ambitious scheme was given up when I foundered somewhere along in the Alcott's. I also remember at one time getting a lot of ridicule from my elders because I had the book "The Magic Garden" home from the public library. Lo and behold, I came across the same book in the school library-my friend, my treasured story, and I took that book home, too. No one could see why I took another one home when I already had one at home. They didn't realize it wasn't just a book - it was a friend!
I guess I was a lot tougher than anyone thought because I'm still going strong - haven't had a cold in 5 years (knock on wood) not since I quit teaching and don't have all the little kids breathing in my face.
I graduated from high school in the midst of the Depression - no jobs to be had. I was fortunate to get a scholarship to go on to Junior College. I was given odd jobs around the school to earn money for books. The second year the scholarship was done, but I was given more odd jobs and worked in the chemistry lab for a semester and, believe it or not, taught chemistry to a class of nurses (I often wonder how those nurses did on the job). Then for the next 2 years I received a scholarship for tuition for Western at Kalamazoo. I worked for room and board, first for a young lawyer and his wife where my duties were mostly babysitting for their 2 year old daughter and baby son, and the last part of my stay there keeping house for Great Uncle Peter Zuidema, whom I had never met before going to Kalamazoo.
One of my regrets is that the rest of the family didn't have the chance to go to school. My first school after graduating was a two-room school near Muskegon. I was there for 2 years, teaching kindergarten through 4th grades for the munificent salary of $85 a month. Then I moved to a larger school - Hile - south of Muskegon where I had a 2nd or 3rd grade (one year both with a total of 51 kids with a raise to $100 a month. The last year I taught in Muskegon, I had 2nd grade - mornings only for the first half of the year. The building only had the first 3 grades - the older children were transported to schools in the Heights. However, a new school was being built and was ready for occupancy by the second half of the year. Unfortunately, the furnishings were held up some place in Chicago while a lot of government red tape was unraveled and I had the unique experience of teaching with no clock, no window shades (with the sun beating in) and seats for about half of the children. The rest of them sat on the floor. That was a hard year. Probably about half of the children came from normal homes. The rest came from the poorest of the poor - not in money only, but that too.
The next fall Alan was born and that ended my school teaching for a while - until we had moved to Fremont and the triplets were in the 2nd grade. Then I started substituting first, taught in 2 country schools for 8 years and then in Fremont for 12 years, the last 10 in 1st grade.
We married relatively late - 28 and 29 - got a family in a hurry - 6 kids in 5 years isn't wasting time. We spent a number of years with Alfred working nights and me days - meeting on weekends - and have retired for 5 years, which we both think is great.
Going back to our early days, I remember the things we used to do for fun, most of which cost little or nothing. We played with paper dolls for hours on end, spending lots of time drawing and coloring and cutting out clothes for them. The prize paper dolls came from the monthly pages in the Ladie's Home Journal, but catalogs provided all sorts of dolls - whole families of them. We used to play innumeral games of pollyanna. We also played jacks a lot. We used to jump rope - knew all the silly verses for that and of course we read a lot.
One point in my younger years was a sore spot with me. There was a range of 20 years between the oldest and the youngest in our family, and it stands to reason that you couldn't have all the little ones tagging around after the big ones, so we were naturally divided into "big kids" and the "little kids" For some reason I could never figure out why the dividing line came between Jo and me, so I as always one of the "little kids" and was always excluded from all the alluring and mysterious things the "big kids" were doing. I have no idea now what all those attractive things were that I missed out on, but it still rankles.
Of course we "little kids" did our thing, too. I remember we used to ramble around in the woods around Little Black Creek - with an occasional excursion to Big Black, had a club or something of that sort. One of my pleasant memories is going out to those same woods with my mother and her cousin, Jenny Spier, our next door neighbor, to pick wild blueberries. Jenny would bring along some tea and we would have sandwiches and have a picnic in some grassy spot. (Those creeks are highly polluted now, and the woods are pretty well destroyed).
Well, I could go on and on, but I think this is plenty for now.