95 Years Ago today

 

front:  Bob, Jean, Jane, Dona  back: Lois Ann and Bill

     My Grandma, Lois Ann (Gustin) Alber was born on September 24th, 1917.  So, 95 years ago today a midwife and doctor were at Lois Ann’s mother’s bedside bringing a crying, wriggling baby girl into the home of Ethyl and John.  Lois Ann was their first of six children.  Ethyl had been a teacher for eleven years before marrying John who was a farmer and cowboy.  Together, they raised their children in the town of Grand Island, Nebraska.  Some of Lois Ann’s childhood was spent in town and some out in the country on a farm.  The farm was bought using the savings from Ethyl’s years as a teacher.
    Lois Ann remembers her home in town as being rather large.  It had electricity and a coal-burning stove.  There was a pot bellied heating stove to warm the living room and dining room.  But, Lois Ann slept in an unheated bedroom with her siblings.  John worked at a wholesale house for $100 a month.  He roasted coffee and peanuts.  He even ordered his own green coffee from South America and created his own blend called, “Blue Ribbon.” 
    In 1928, when Lois Ann was ten, her family moved out to the farm that was 4 ½ miles from town.  There was no electricity, so among other things, the family could not use the vacuum cleaner they had enjoyed in town.  It was Lois Ann’s job to sweep the floor with a broom.  In an interview done in 1999, she explained to me, “In the winter the living room was cold because we had no heat in there except for Sundays.  I would go out and pick up snow and bring it in.  I would sprinkle the snow around on the rug and that would collect the dirt and then we’d sweep the dirt up into the dustpan.”  In the summer they would take the rug outdoors, hang it up, and beat the dust out of it with a rug beater.  The vacuum cleaner lay under the bed, unused.  Lois Ann said, “I can remember lying down on the floor and praying to God that we could get electricity, which never happened.”
    It was also Lois Ann’s job to do the ironing.  While Lois Ann worked, she sometimes sang duets with her mother (who was usually cooking or baking for their family of eight).  Lois Ann sang melody while her mother sang harmony.      
    In addition to no electricity, the house on the farm also had no bathtub.  So, the Gustin children took baths on Saturday night in a round washtub.  It was Lois Ann’s job to help wash her twin sisters, Jean and Jane, who were four years old when they first moved out to the farm.
    Lois Ann’s brothers (Bill and Bob) had to help out on the farm by shoveling grain, and shocking wheat and oats.  Sometimes during harvest, the whole family would help with the shocking, help put hay in the haystack, and help guide the work horses as they went around and around.  During dry years, when there was not enough hay to feed the cows, the children herded the cows along the road so they could eat the grass out of the ditches.  When it was time for threshing, the Gustins would have about a dozen men come to work and it was up to Lois Ann and her mother to prepare the big noon meal.  The made beef roast, potatoes, beans, corn, tomatoes, and apple or cherry pie.  The only time they put ice in their icebox was when the threshers came.
    Lois Ann’s childhood wasn’t all work and no play.  She and her family would have checkers or dominoes tournaments in the winter.  In the summer, the kids would play with the dog and cats or their pet pony.  They made up games, climbed trees, played Hide and Seek or ball games, picked mulberries, pulled weeds and played in the creek.  They had very few dolls or toys and didn’t have any playmates outside the family.  When extended family came, they would have homemade ice cream and sit at their sixteen-foot long lumber picnic table John had made.
    John moved the family to the farm in 1928 because he was hoping he could support them better on a farm than doing his peanuts and coffee roasting in town.  Little did he know that the stock market would crash just one year later (1929).  The crash didn’t affect the Gustins much at first because they were growing so much of their own food.  They had no money in the bank and were living from one crop to the next.  The girls (Lois Ann, Dona, Jean, and Jane) got to make three new cotton dresses every fall.  They would wear one for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and they would wear another one Thursday and Friday.  They washed the dresses on Saturday and started out on Monday with the third dress.  Special Sunday clothes were worn to church.
    The family regularly attended Sunday morning AND Sunday evening church services.  They sat in the back row.  John and Ethyl sang in the church choir and Lois Ann was often a soloist for church.  Her first solo was bright and early on an Easter Sunday before she was ten years old.  She and Dona had matching white dresses that year.  When Gustins arrived home after church on Sunday morning, they would sit and read.  They often had a Sunday afternoon picnic of hot dogs, beans, and coffee by the creek.  Faith was always important to Grandma.  She wanted to either be a missionary (like her pen-pal missionary friend in the Philippine Islands) or a teacher.
    Lois Ann and her siblings got one pair of new Sunday shoes every year, and wore the old ones for everyday.  The soles would wear out, and they had to put cardboard in their shoes.  They had dresses made of flour sacks.  John would buy a large amount of flour at one time so the girls could sew one dress using all the sacks at once.  The funny designs were used to sew their underwear.
    By 1933 (four years into the depression), John sold two loads of calves and got what he had paid for one cow in 1928.  He had to sell the cows in order to buy shoes for the kids.  The family couldn’t afford to butcher their own meat, so Bill and Bob shot pheasants, rabbits, squirrels, possum, and ducks.  The family also ate potatoes, milk, and eggs.  They canned corn, beans, and tomatoes and ate pies of mulberries with rhubarb.  Ethyl could make a one-egg cake using just one cup of sugar and flour.  The cake was big enough for everyone in the family to have a piece.  There was no electric mixer so Bill would beat the cake because he was the strongest.   
    Looking back on her years of living during the depression, Lois Ann said, “I hated being poor.  I hated peanut butter sandwiches.  I hated pancakes.  They were a cheap food for breakfast.  I felt people were always looking at me because I didn’t have nice clothes.  A lot of people were poor, but I still felt people were looking at me.”
    Lois Ann was in fifth grade when they moved out to the farm in 1928.  School was three miles away, so John would drive his kids in their Model T Ford.  Lois Ann described the car as a gas-guzzler!  The one-room schoolhouse was taught by one male teacher, who taught first through eighth grade.  The students marched in and out of the classroom to a tune played on the piano.  Students had to put on boots and coats just to go to the outhouse in the winter. 
    Lois Ann attended 9th – 12th grade in town (Grand Island) from 1931 to 1935.  She lived with her aunt and uncle during the week.  Her dad brought her home for the weekends.  Lois Ann walked to her aunt’s house for a hot lunch each day, stayed to do the dishes, and then walked back to school for the afternoon. 
    Music was a huge part of Lois Ann’s high school life.  She sang in a girls’ glee club and a mixed chorus.  She was in a triple quartet that sang semi-classical music.  In tenth grade she was in the chorus for the musical “HMS Pinafore” and then in eleventh grade she had the alto lead in “Rosamunde.”  That same year, she won top rating in the high school competition for vocal low solo.  Lois Ann also sang a vocal solo for her high school graduation in 1935. 
    Looking back on her childhood Lois Ann said, “One of the things that my dad tried to teach me was to be yourself!  That was way back before psychologists started telling people that.  To find yourself, who you are and then be that person…don’t try to be somebody else.”   

Lois Ann's graduation picture in 1935