The Frost is on The Pumpkins or at Least on The Squash

"Wed, Sept 29, 1926: Everything froze Sunday morning. It was a very hard frost that made ice in the bottom of pails. It seemed too bad that the squash vines were frozen and all the squash were partly froze. All, but Dad, went to church in the morning. He wouldn’t shave! After church we went up to Aunt Lizzie Dittmar's in the afternoon. Len went to his folks. Tresidders came up this evening to visit with us.

On Monday, Len & Ruby went down to Len Atz’s near Elizabeth, Illinois and got a sheep buck. Meanwhile, Mother and I put up 8 qts of pickles. Tuesday we washed as we do almost every Tuesday.

Today is Ruby & Len's sixth wedding anniversary. Len & Ruby spent it digging potatoes this afternoon. Len had gone to town with feed to grind this forenoon. Aunt Till [Dittmar] came down today. She and I went up on the Weis' hill to look for hickory nuts but didn’t find many. Aunt Till is going to stay with us over night.>"

Living in Michigan, I can, for the first time, relate to the temperatures in Lillian's Diaries. This year has had very unusual weather. Today the temperature had a high of 51 degrees and tonight, we are cutting down from three to one window open in our bedroom. When I was transcribing Lillian's Diaries the weather was so different from what we experience today. Global warming????

Note the lack of fanfare over Len and Ruby's anniversary.....no cards, no gifts, no romantic candlelit dinner. Throughout her diaries you will find that Christmas and big anniversaries - 30-40-50th were the only times that the day was marked with cards and/or gifts. Occasionally, Lillian will write that she has received a birthday card from a cousin or aunt, but as she gets older they appear less and less.

Sat, Sept 25, 1926: Thursday was a cloudy, rainy day, a very bad day for the Elizabeth Fair. We intended to go if it had been nice weather. We washed in afternoon and made some yellow tomatoe preserve. There were storms and heavy rain that evening. On Friday, we were busy baking and etz, & etz. We made two kinds of jelly. I wondered if the Fair would be put off, as the weather was cold and wasn’t much better than Thursday.

Today is a very cold day but sunshiny. We wanted to go to town today, but Dad has about 3 weeks’ whiskers on and wouldn’t shave so we didn’t go. We spent about all afternoon and evening gathering in tomatoes, peppers, sting & lima beans, cucumbers and etz. Ruby & I went over to the garden at Weis’ place and picked lima beans at eleven tonight with lantern & flashlight - everything was all ready frozen."

Having been a social worker for years before retiring, family dynamics always fascinate me. Here we have Charles and Amelia Dittmar Trudgian[see today's photograph], Lillian's parents living in the house that Charles grew up in with their two adult daughters - Ora Ruby Trudgian Stauss and her husband, Leonard Stauss and of course Lillian. They are living on 88 acres of land - what remains of the original purchase made by Joseph and Mary Pellymounter Trudgian [Charles' parents]. The rest had been sold off in years past [The land the neighbors -Fiedlers - live on once belonged to Charles' parents and then my great-great grandparents - Thomas and Rachel Kloth Trudgian]. In the first volume of Lillian's Diaries: Whispers of Galena's Past there seems to be a division of labor, with everyone helping out when a particularly large task had to be done like husking corn in November.

Now it appears Ruby and Lillian are working, working, working and occasionally their mother helps out. In the meanwhile Charles is out gathering nuts and Leonard is out helping the neighbors and his parents but not at the Trudgian homestead.

In the 1913-1919 period of the first book we see what might be questionable behavior of Charles......everyone is busy working and he takes off and to chance a ride* to another town and stays overnight, sometimes without telling his family who he is staying with or how long he will be gone..... or being so sick that all the womenfolk are worried about him and he is again leaves to chance a ride in the cold and rain to go somewhere.

In today's entry he hasn't shaved for three weeks and is refusing to do so. It seems that the whole family will stay home because he won't shave. Was it necessary to shave before going out in public? Was he growing a beard? I am sure that period of time had many more guidelines as to what was proper to wear or do while out in the community than we experience today......do you agree?

* to chance a ride is to hitch hike

A Quiet Day at the Trudgian Home

“Thu, Sept 10, 1926: "Yesterday forenoon Len & Ruby went to town. Mother and I stayed home and washed the weekly laundry and hung it out to dry. No rain, so it was able to dry before late afternoon. We took it in and folded it. Today we ironed. Ruby helped and then we made catsup and put up 10 quarts.”

Here’s a question for those of you who read Lillian’s Diaries Vol. I - did you enjoy the recipes I included from the old handwritten and newspaper clippings cookbooks from Lillian’s kitchen? Or is that something that distracted from your reading the diaries?