What I Remember About X-mas at Grandpa & Grandma’s
Every year on X-mas Day all their children & grandchildren went there for dinner. All the women brought food & helped Grandma fix dinner. The grownups ate in the dining room & all the kids ate in the kitchen at a long table. We sat on benches brought in from the back porch. They always had a big X-mas tree in the living room. After dinner all the grandchildren stood in a row in front of the X-mas tree and each one recited their X-mas speech they had in church on X-mas Eve. Then Grandpa gave each one a nickel. Grandma gave everybody a small gift. I think one year it was a toothbrush.
Childhood was fine & after our parents died it was still fine. We were always loved by our Great Aunt & Grandpa. We were also given a lot of attention by loving aunts, uncles & cousins. Let me explain how Aunt Anna Rebber entered the picture.
When my mother was three years old, living in Holland, Indiana, her mother passed away. Her mother was Aunt Anna’s sister & Grandpa Schmeltekop’s wife. Since Aunt Anna was single (I was told she was jilted & decided never to marry) she was on hand to raise my mother.
When my mother was grown, Aunt Anna went to Cincinnati, Ohio and became the kitchen manager in the home of a very rich family by the name of Dolle. Mr. Dolle was a tailor. She had a good comfortable life, spending summers at a home in Michigan & winters in Cincinnati. Occasionally she would visit in Mt. Olive. She always brought gifts.
When my mother passed away suddenly as a result of double pneumonia, Aunt Anna was called. I don’t know what her intentions were but she arrived with her trunks & she stayed. It was probably meant to be a visit but when my Dad passed away the following year, following peptic ulcer surgery, she stayed.
“We were so lucky to have her. She was mother & father to the three of us.”
Grandpa Schmeltekop worked on farms & at Buske Trucking & he came home many weekends to be with us. He probably spent all he earned on us & Aunt Anna’s savings helped too. Our Dad had an insurance policy which paid $50 each month.
He married again after his first wife died. This wife was the mother of Aunt Ada & Aunt Elsie. Aunt Ada came to Mt. Olive to teach in the Lutheran School. Eventually our mother, Grandpa & Aunt Ada’s mother came too from Holland, Indiana.
Aunt Ada met & married Uncle Cobus Orange & our mother met & married our dad, Fred Stamer. The year I was born, Grandpa’s second wife died following surgery. So Grandpa stayed in Mt. Olive.
That’s how Aunt Anna became our mother and she was a very good mother. She was a very good cook. She canned, washed, ironed, cleaned & worked in the garden. We all tried to help her whenever we could but she was so efficient she would have everything done when we got home from school.
We often spent a few days at Aunt Annie Prange’s or Aunt Lydia’s during the summer so we could be with our cousins. She always made sure that we went to Sunday School & church. Once in a while we were allowed to go to Sunday School & skip church but not very often.
After graduation from High School I worked for a lady who was confined to bed. Then I worked for a High School teacher for a short time. After that I worked at a dentist’s office for a short time. Then I got a job at the Mt. Olive Bank & I worked there for 4½ years until I quit to get married.
Harold went to a trade school in St. Louis. Then he worked at several stores in Mt. Olive until he enlisted in the army. Lucile went to Granite City for nurses training after High School graduation.
I lived at home with Aunt Anna & on weekends Grandpa was usually there. In 1942 Grandpa had a stroke & passed away and then in 1944 Aunt Anna had a heart attack & passed away.
But we all had a normal happy childhood while we were growing up!
I was born on Aug. 26, 1920 in Mt. Olive, IL. I was born at home at 4:30 in the afternoon. At that time babies were born at home and not in the hospital. They told me my Mom was canning chili sauce the day I was born. We lived one block south of Mt. Olive City Park. My Grandpa & Grandma Schmeltekop lived just west of the park. My Grandma Schmeltekop died when I was six weeks old. She was buried in Holland, Indiana. That’s when I had my first train ride.
I was about two or three years old when my Mom & Dad moved to our house on Fourth South Street. I was two years old when my brother was born and four years old when my sister was born. I remember my first day of school. My Dad took me and when he left I went to the window and watched him leave and cried. We went to school at the Lutheran School for the first seven years and then to the Public School for Eighth Grade.
We had to walk about nine blocks every morning and again after school. But in the eighth grade we only had one half block to walk. We lived three houses from the school. Then when we went to High School we had about nine blocks to walk. There were no buses or cars to take us. We walked in all kinds of weather. We had a car and my uncle tried to teach me how to drive but I just wasn’t interested. Soon after that we had a garage fire and the car burned up. The fire was started by neighbor boys who were lighting firecrackers behind our garage. So I didn’t learn how to drive until I got married.
My Dad worked at Mine #13. The mine whistle would blow in the afternoon, so the miners would know whether to go to work the next day. 3 blasts meant they would work & 2 blasts meant no work.