continued from last page>> children had orchards for several years. Besides vinegar, the large orchard supplied each struggling family with apples for winter storage. Oftentimes on those Sundays Grandfather and his sons played Seven-Up and pitch and drank beer and it always ended up in harangues. Grandmother would take a broom and drive them out of the house. They scooted for they knew she was not partial to either end of the broom."
Frederick also always had a barrel of corned beef and a barrel of salt pork which he shared with his progeny. He salted the fattest of the pork and dried his share of a beef, usually killed by his son, Fred, Jr. Beef was too valuable for many to be killed.
The children all worked like serfs, girls as well as boys; indeed, as in Europe at that time and in many countries there still, girls worked in the fields like men; from before dawn with the milking of the cows until long after dark, the milking again, caring of the poultry, feeding of the huge family and assisting in the general care of the younger children. Women never sat at table with the men if there were company for the meal; they waited upon the menfolk and then ate with the children. As the years rolled on, the number became too great for even that arrangement so the men ate first with the older boys, then the women with the older girls and finally the little children last. (In later years little children came to be fed by plates of food sneaked by their mothers while the meal was still being prepared.)
Butchering time was a special occasion and several families would gather to help as with a housewarming or a quilting bee. Blood from the sticking of the hogs was collected, mixed by hands and bloody forearms with caraway seeds and other spices then, as it was congealing, it was spooned into the small lye-cent salt bags and quickly sewed shut and dropped into a wash boiler of boiling water and cooked until the contents had coagulated solidly; then it was cooled and stored for sandwich neat called Blutworst.
Frederick and Katharine were staunch Roman Catholics living 15 miles from the nearest church with nearly impassable roads, they never got to church. Fred would go on foot and then by train to Canton or Bushnell twice each year and carry back a jug of Holy water which they used in their daily devotions. The daughter, Christina, was buried alongside the first cabin with a small white marble headstone because they would not bury in any but a Catholic cemetery. this plot was fenced from cattle and deer. (Because the church supported the monarchy in Germany, as the years passed, Frederick tended to lean more and more to the Protestants in the community. A lavado containing Holy water hung just inside their bedroom door and they dipped their fingers and crossed themselves before removing their rosaries from the crucifix on the dresser to offer thanks or when they asked God for guidance in periods of distress. They ran their beads always when worried. "I've seen Grandmother many times when in stress and worry over sickness in the family, over a threatened tornado, or animal sickness, go to the ,bedroom, put her fingers in the Holy water, cross herself, then go to the dresser and take her rosary from the crucifix and run her beads."
They did eat their staple food -- pork-- on fridays. They worked hard and had to have their meat.
Katharine and Frederick both loved music. He had a pitch pipe and taught the children to sing on key. Later he purchased the first foot - pumped organ in those parts. The elder children were married by this time so only the younger children benefited. Kate was taught to play simple hymns and foIk songs, including German songs, then the rest were arrayed around the organ on Sundays and taught to sing four-part harmony: George, tenor and lead singer; Kate, soprano and accompanist; Bertha, alto; and Anthony, bass. They were in demand on programs in their litterary society, held in the Buckeye Church, county fairs, homecomings and other community events. Anthony became proficient on the mouth harp and many times he would play while the others, along with their dates and with neighboring young people, danced on the bridge over Put Creek on the way home from meetings of the Literary Society. Their social life centered in Buckeye, although they had a deep fraternal bond with the Wiley (Blyton) Community. George was a natural-born fiddler and, of course, was much in demand at dances. His two sons, Royal and Delbert, inherited this talent.
"Grandfather was all torso. Very short legs, long arms, and very short fingers on large hands. His grandson, Fred Orwig, most represented him. Even in facial features. Jack Ford told me how he and others would argue politics with Grandfather just to see him straddle a log with his bandy legs not reaching the ground and argue and argue. Grandfather was definitely Lord of his Manor. Women, like children, were to be seen but never heard."
Frederick remained a baker at heart. He would straddle a kitchen chair, his arms folded along its back, and direct every operation in the kitchen. In time this became such an irritant that, by careful strategy, baking was done while he made his ever increasing pilgrimages to Smithfield where he would argue politics with his friends. There were five saloons in Smithfield, a village of about 500 people then, and they were truly man's domain.
On Christmas morning Frederick himself always baked little kuchen boys and girls for his 54 grandchildren. These were decorated with raisin down their fronts much in the fashion of gingerbread boys and girls of today. These, with oranges --the only occasion most of his grandchildren ever saw an orange -- were always in the stocking at each place at breakfast Christmas morning and not to be touched until chores were done.
In his later years Frederick would catch the old T. P. & W. train and ride to Peoria, transfer to a streetcar and cross the river to his old haunt of Pekin where he spent the day visiting with his early-day cronies. He usually brought back a gallon jug of liquor for his and Katharine's hot toddies. Made of liquor, water, sugar and spices, hot toddies were the home remedy for threatened colds, an accepted custom among the early settlers.
Katharine longed for a little beauty in her home and would bring in house plants in winter, but Frederick always grumbled about it. She especially valued the geranium which she had grown years before from a slip which she had taken from beds around Lincoln's Tomb in Springfield. She subscribed to the Home Comfort Magazine, published each month by Gannet in Augusta, Maine, and which sold for 25 cents per year. It was the only magazine she ever saw, and she devoured its every article and item. From its pages she learned how to make sash curtains from 100 lb. sugar sacks for her kitchen windows, hemstitching them around 3 sides. She installed them when Frederick was gone on one of his pilgrimages. When he returned he tore them down and would have nothing so frivolous in his domicile and the kitchen came under that category until the day of his death.
"Grandmother made what all her grandchildren called "stink cheese." She mixed cottage cheese with garlic, caraway seeds, salt and perhaps pepper. Then she formed small cakes of it and placed them in a one gallon stone jar and covered them with cream. She covered the jar top with a cloth made from a five pound salt sack and set the jar on a shelf in the pantry. She stirred it every day and added cream until it became a yellowish stinking mess about the consistency of thick gravy. This was then eaten on the large three-inch "store" crackers. Limburger was as a rose and Roquefort as a geranium compared with this fermented mess!
"When Uncle Hi Walters was courting Aunt Carrie, at one of the regular family Sunday gatherings, her sisters and Uncle George persuaded him to eat some of the "stink cheese." He ) did and later had to shave off his thick black mustache because he could not get rid of the smell! Uncle George told everyone about it and Uncle Hiram was ridiculed for years.
"In late fall, this mixture was allowed to harden by placing it in a cheesecloth-lined tin pan. Then it was sliced off and eaten as we slice off brick cheese today. This was stored in the attic as an exterminator, I am sure, for no mouse or cockroach ever approached it. Raid must have been developed from Grandma's "stink cheese." Not one of my aunts or uncles would eat it. I think all other German families made it too. It was one item of food that one never need examine to see if it really contained mouse droppings -- all knew it was only caraway seeds. I never touch a salad today if it contains a blue cheese dressing, for I am immediately reminded of Grandma's "stink cheese" and I do not want to sit near anyone who has been eating Roquefort or limburger cheese!"
"One night in 1906 lightning struck Grandfather's horse barn setting it on fire. He called us and my dad hurried over there. We all got up and watched from our house. The barn was falling in by the time Dad arrived and he could not get Kit, Grandfather's driving horse, out so it burned up too. Grandfather never had another horse and buggy."
Frederick had quit farming before Anthony moved nearby (1904) and farmed both farms, but he ate just as of yore, chucks of boiled hog fat with carrots and parsnips. So he suffered much from rheumatic fever attacks and grippe. When he could no longer enjoy making his pilgrimages to Bushnell, Canton, Peoria and Pekin, he just "laid back his shovel and his hoe." He announced he would be gone by five o'clock and even though the clock in his view was turned back, yet he died just before five A.M. A bed had been placed in the living room for this last illness.
"Now Grandmother and Uncle Willie lived alone on the farm. In 1908 she hired Perry Ham to replace all the board walks with concrete, a much needed improvement. On summer evenings the neighbors could hear her singing the old German songs as she pumped cool fresh water into the milk trough. it was lonely for her and, after my father, Anthony, was killed in 1909, she would ask me or my brothers or sisters to spend the night with her, usually me. I listened to her recollections of the Old Country and all her trials in the new country.
"On May 29, 1911, Uncle Will died during an epileptic seizure. Grandmother had always prayed he would go first and now he had."
After Willie's death, daughter Mary and family moved in with Katharine. It was that summer that she decided the time was come for the disinterment of Christina's body so her grandson, Charlie Helle and a neighbor, Will Joachim, dug into the now very shallow grave and they recovered the few bones and bits of rusted metal and the little white tombstone. Katharine kept them lovingly in her bedroom until they could be buried beside Frederick and Willie. The small skull looked like a coconut shell with the brightest of yellow hair. Katharine said that the hair looked just like that when it had been buried 40 years before. Now she felt her labors were truly ended and she resigned herself to the wait.
After Mary and family moved out in 1913, granddaughter Dena (Orwig) Cadwallader and husband moved in with her. This time she reserved the front bedroom and lived in just the one room, using the parlor door just next to her room. After a year of this arrangement, she took her three-quarter bed and went to live among her children, renting the farm to another daughter, Caroline Walters, and husband. Katharine had always said that wherever she died that was the family which could have the bed.
She died in 1921 at the home of her eldest son, Fred, Jr., and family. This time Frederick's rosary was entwined in her hands. Her own rosary had been given to Catholic nephews in Macomb and at their death it came back into the Helle family when Phillip Krauser brought it to Dena (Helle Kuehn) in Smithfield. She in turn gave it to her nephew, Anthony Helle. The Memorial cards made up for Frederick carried the cross at the top because Katharine had to send one to his sister's family in Germany and she did not want the relatives over there to know that he had died unchurched. Her own Memorial cards did not carry this cross since all her children were now of the Protestant persuasion.
After Katharine's death her grandson, Charlie Helle, bought the farm and the Helle homestead was back to its original tract after the last purchase made by Frederick and Katharine in 1883.
"I Remember" by Frederick Grey (1905-), son of Joseph and Mary (Helle) Grayl
"Some of the memories of my Smithfield days;"
Some of them are fond memories and some not so. Some funny and some not so funny. But they all go toward living. For awhile I still wish I could live them all over. How wonderful it would be if we could all have the second chance to live our lives over.
"I can remember going out to Grandpa and Grandma Helle's when I was a small tyke and sitting on Grandpa's knee and talking to him. After he passed away someone had to go stay with Grandma so Mom and Dad were the ones chosen.
Grandma had a lot of guinea hens along with the chickens. Back of the barn was a deep gully so I used to chase these guineas and make them fly over this gully to the other side which they could do easily. I thought the chickens should be able to do the same, so I would take a buggy whip and try to make them fly with the guineas but they couldn't make it. One time I wrapped the buggy whip around the neck of one of the chickens. I received a severe whipping and we had stewed chicken for supper!
"The house sat back from the road quite a distance with a lane leading to it from the road. Across the road to the east another lane went back past the orchard to a hill which went down to a pasture where we kept the cows. Each morning we would have to take them back to the pasture and go get them
