another brother and sister were born. All are gone now except my youngest sister, Vera Gezel, and myself. I want you to know that I do have something in common with Loretta Lynn. No, I can't sing, but I was a Coal Miner's daughter for three years, when my dad worked in the mines at Enterprise, Iowa, east of Ankeny. In fact my earliest memory was that of my dad coming home from the mine with that stinking Carbide lamp on his hat and his lunch pail with always a cup cake left in it as a treat for me. When I was three, Dad bought a milk truck and had a route where he picked up milk in 10 gallon cans. Hard Work! He was also a big farmer so we always had hired hands.

I started school at five years of age, but the county nurse found that I had no sight in my left eye, so they kept me out of school that year. It didn't bother me much, I guess, because I made it up and took 4th and 5th grade in one year — not because I was smart, I was just lucky. There were only three in my class; one moved away, and one got put back, and I guess the teacher didn't want a class of only one! I got along fine in school. I was only in trouble once. Those were the days of the Indian Chief tablets. Then they finally started putting pretty movie stars' pictures on the front of them, and Mom got me one. I was so proud of it. I was sitting at my desk looking at it, and the boy behind me reached over my shoulder and put a big mark right through her face! The teacher didn't see him do it, but she saw me turn around and hit him in the face with it, and she slapped my hands with a ruler!! I remember one day I forgot my lunch pail, and the teacher let an 8th grader drive me home to get it. From then on he was my hero.

We walked to school, probably a mile or two, and never missed because of snow days, as I remember. We lived about four miles from Ankeny and four miles from Polk City. I can remember the family going to Polk City lots of nights to get an ice cream cone, but I can only remember being in Ankeny once before I started high school there. Dad was in Des Moines every day with his milk truck, so we shopped in Des Moines.

I had to go to the doctor just once. That was to Ankeny, and while there we went to a restaurant for lunch! That was during the Depression, and I can't remember that I ever really suffered any, as we always had what we had to have: plenty to eat, a big house, lots of friends, and loads of relatives, because by that time the four oldest ones were married and starting their families. I did my share of baby sitting, sometimes for three or four kids, and their mom would bring me a pretty ten cent glass dish from the dime store for my hope chest.

I started high school in Ankeny at the age of 13 — a shy little farm girl. The first day, I met three girls, and we became friends, the four of us together for all four years. I'm the only one left. I guess about that time dad realized that my brother and I needed some spending money, so for an allowance he gave us our own milk cow's milk, and our own can, number 10. Carl and I milked 13 cows night and morning, but we got a pay check and could we ever stretch it! One thing I remember is that if I wanted anything special, I'd ask Mom, and she'd never deny me, but she would say, "We'll see if we can meet our obligations." I'd always's get it. My baccalaureate dress cost $1.00, and my, it was pretty! I never used the word "obligation" to my kids.

When I was 16, my brother had a good looking hired hand from Missouri, and I was smitten. I guess he liked me, too, because we'd be together when we could, which was not that often, because he didn't have a car. But one Sunday we went to a church picnic with my brother and his family. Tom looked so sharp with his white suit and navy shirt. The picnic was in a park in Des Moines, and it was Mulberry time (need I say more?)

I should have found out right then what a temper he had, but the fall after I graduated at age 17, we got married. By that time he had a job in Wisconsin. We were married the day before Thanksgiving, went to Missouri to see his folks and came back to Wisconsin that weekend. On December first, he lost his job. It was still during the Depression. No jobs. I did day work and learned by doing. Everybody was so nice. Lots of times I was not paid with money but with groceries or a nice roast or something we were always glad to get.

During the next couple of years, we never stayed in one place for long, and finally ended up back in Missouri. In early September of 1939, my first son was born. The cost of delivery and $15. Tom had a job but hadn't been paid yet. When he got paid we went to the doctor's house after work to pay him, and he was already in bed. The doctor's housekeeper said, "Just take it in to his bedroom and put it on his night stand." Can you imagine doing that now?

We had our first real apartment after John was born. We had family around, and I remember his mother brought me a dozen eggs one day and said, "If I can't get more than a nickel a dozen, I'll give them away." The rent in our first place was $12 a month, but then we found one for $8.00, which was still hard to pay for. Jobs were still hard to get, but his brother-in-law had a service station with a wrecker, and he got to help go out pulling semi-trucks out of ditches. I remember once a family gave him a case of marshmallows instead of money. By that time there was sugar rationing, and we used marshmallows for sugar any way we could. ,

Things were slim picking for a few more years until 1942, when Tom and I and John went to Kansas to live with Tom's sister and husband so the boys could work in the rock quarries. We had nothing, but we enjoyed it immensely. We were young, and it was a completely different experience. Everybody should get to go jack rabbit hunting on a Kansas prairie in a roadster with the men sitting on the front fenders.

The town was so small it had one grocery store with the post office inside. Groceries were delivered to the store one day a week, and if you weren't there that day, they would be out of a lot we thought we really needed. In those days we all learned quick-like that we could do without it.

We went back to Missouri that fall, and a war job opened up in Kansas City. We had to go to Jefferson City, the capital, to get my husband's birth certificate. While there, we saw our friends' car. They had moved there a year before, but we had lost track of them. Imagine finding the one couple we knew in a town of that size! It's a small world after all.

Tom got the job at the glider factory in Kansas City and went from nothing to $90 a week. About then our second son, Ed, was born, and for a while we were doing great...until my husband found a girl friend. I didn't like the idea; it was practically unheard of, but that marriage ended in a divorce. It cost $35 for the lawyer.

I came back to Iowa with the two boys and started a new life. For a couple of years I got piece work wherever I could take the boys with me. I took in washings, etc. and made it fine with the help of relatives and friends. I was back in a big old farm house in the country. Nobody knows how lonesome and scared I was to be living there with no phone and no car. While living there, I had taken the job of Secretary to the school board at $20 for the year. I bought a dictionary and a ball point pen and gave $12.50 for it. They had just become popular and didn't everybody have to have one! We lived in the big house until we had to give it up for the landlord's daughter and her hubby who was just coming back from the war.

Soon I married again. Of course we heard it was probably a marriage of convenience, but it lasted 25 years. Everybody should be so lucky. It isn't everybody, that the second time around can find the love of a good man who will take a package deal with two little boys. Walt had lost his wife. He had two daughters, but they did not live with us. However, I always claimed them as my step-daughters. I just recently lost the oldest one. She was always a big sister to our children, especially to the boys while they were in service. She lived in California and their home was home away from home as the boys spent a lot of time in California and were always welcome. She will be sadly missed. We moved in April, and that is the earliest spring I can remember. A new place, new flowers, another new adventure, and here comes Larry on May 11, my number three son. What a joy! We lived there for seven years and had two more boys, Mark and Randy.

Then we got a chance to buy 10 acres. The house, what there was of it, was nice. ..hard wood floors, etc. It was built in 1926, but the owners ran out of money. The inside had never been papered or painted. The yard was grown up in silver maple sprouts. The house hadn't been lived in for two years. We didn't care. We had 10 acres for the boys. We had a big garden, some cows, some pigs, and lots and lots of baby chickens. We would get 300 in the spring, dress them out in the summer, and get 300 more in August, fill our 23 foot freezer and sell the rest, dressed!

The older boys were old enough to work and seemed to get jobs where they had to wear white shirts. This was before wash and wear. Those days there were always jobs the boys could get on farms like walking beans and putting up hay. Walt had a good job. He worked at Ford Implement in Des Moines for 17 years and retired from there.

Here came my first girl. She is my only girl, but I did get three step-daughters. Her feet didn't touch the ground until she was 16 months old...the five boys carried her everywhere. She also never wore slacks until she was older. Nothing but frilly little dresses. Four years later Rusty, my youngest, was born at the same time my oldest was a senior in high school, so we had little ones for 18 years. Rusty died on his 41st birthday.

The boys were all good workers and also good cooks. It seems they all took a turn at learning and all did a fine job of it. One even had his own restaurant for awhile. Ed learned to iron and told me he was sure glad he had learned because he made his spending money in the Navy, ironing his buddies' shirts for 25¢ each. We had very few broken bones for a family as large as ours. Randy was always a climber. He fell out of a tree that was about six feet high, and broke his arm when he was three. We took him to a German doctor and he said, "It hurts, no?" Randy said, "It hurts, yes!"

We had four boys in the service...two in the Navy and one Marine. Rusty, the youngest, was in the Army. He was born four years after the only girl, Jean. I didn't work a lot except at home until Rusty was in school, but then I had several jobs away from home.

My husband was killed in a car accident, and after that I had to earn my keep, especially after Social Security ran out when the children grew up. One year our town was celebrating 150 years, and everybody had to have sun bonnets to match their dresses. I made them by the dozens. I also made dresses for my girls and their friends that could be worn inside out, so one dress made two outfits. I stitched two pieces of material with different patterns together and trimmed them with rick rack. People would bring the material they wanted and leave me the scraps so I started making quilts. It got into my blood, I guess, because I'm still doing it. My favorite story of the "Depression" is that thread cost five cents, and I had to wait until payday to buy it.

There was a big gap between 1969 and 1975, when I was by myself. There was a period when I just felt blah! I was afraid I was falling into depression. Then along came Vaden Buster, a widower and a neighbor. I tell people I chased him until he caught me, and when we were married, I gained a new mother-in-law and three more step-children. They had all gone to school with my kids, and they just fit right in. That made twelve.

When Vaden and I married, we both left our homes in Polk County and moved south to Lucas County. We knew only one couple and the minister there, but it seemed like home from the very first day. We brought Vaden's mother and her belongings with us. It is a good thing we had bought a big 10-room house because we had three households of furniture. She was a good seamstress. She never dropped a thread on the floor. The first Easter, 35 people spent the Saturday night before Easter with us. What an Easter egg hunt we had!

When I married Vaden, all my depression symptoms left. I believe it was love that healed me. Vaden showed love in every way. I never went to the doctor's once after that except for a routine visit.

We were married just four years and twelve days when Vaden passed away with a heart attack — far too young. He was 64, but we had crammed a lot of living in those years. The kids never knew where we were going to be. From coast to coast and then some. Most of the time we had his mother with us. She was a good little traveler. She was frail and a sweetheart. After Vaden was gone, she continued to live with me until she died at 92. I've had three mothers-in-law, and every one was precious.

In my marriages there were no disagreements. I said I was a lover, not a fighter. I won't say that it's been easy, but I've been able to handle it. We've had our share of sadness with deaths, divorces, and so on, but it's to be expected in a family this size.

My family now is into the 5th generation. To start with, my parents were full blooded Swedes. The only ones left of that generation are my sister and me. Then there are my children, their children, their grandchildren, then their great grandchildren who are my great-great-grand­children. Talk about a melting pot! With the first and second marriages of some of them, bringing their little ones along from their spouses, and their first marriages, we now have quite a collection. We have about every nationality you could think of and they are loved and respected as one big family. We have our own, some adopted ones, plus the steps-. You name it, but they all call me Grandma Hazel and I love it. At the most recent count, the number is 144.

We've had our share of sadness with sickness, deaths, and divorces which is expected in family of this size. I've lost two sons, a step-daughter, a grandson and two baby granddaughters. I even had a bout with cancer when I was 81; but I'm a survivor. Our four boys in the service —two in the Navy, one Marine and one Army — all returned home safely. As of now I have been a widow for 30 years but looking back, I cannot think of a thing I would change.

I've learned a lot over all these years. Nancy calls the collection:

Hazel's Words of Wisdom

1. If you make your bed you've got to lie in it.
2. Not to wait on people to do things for me. I usually end up doing them myself.
3. I always respected my parents. I never got in trouble with my Dad or Mom.
4. The most important thing: "Thy will be done." That carried me through the death of two sons. When I had colon cancer, I never shed a tear. That was God's way; it will be that way. All my adult life I went by that. Two doctors told me that the way I went through cancer was because I had such a good attitude. I never cried; never felt bad. I just did what the doctors told me to do and came through with flying colors. That was eight years ago when I was eighty one.
5. I never liked to argue. If there was a disagreement, I walked out around our 10 acres and by the time I came back, I was over it.
6. Never go to bed angry. One of us would give in.
7. My third husband, Vaden, and I were married four years and 12 days. We never had a cross word between us.
8. Ninety percent of arguments are about money. The love of money is the root of all evil when it comes to a family. Young people want everything their mother and grandmother have.
   
9. Advice to young couples starting out: Put the money you receive from your wedding into a vacuum and washing machine so you start out without bills.

This year, to celebrate my 89th birthday, my family came from all corners of the United States. Now I've been a widow for the last 30 years. I moved to Osceola, Iowa in 1994. I am in a very convenient apartment, keeping busy with sewing and with family and friends who live close. Looking back over my life, I cannot think of a thing I would change. This poem seems to say it all:

My Cup Has Overflowed
Author Unknown

I've never made a fortune, and it's probably too late now.
But I don't worry about that much, I'm happy anyhow.
And as I go along life's way, I'm reaping better than I sowed.
I'm drinking from my saucer, 'cause my cup has overflowed.

Haven't got a lot of riches, and sometimes the going's tough-
But I've got loving ones all around me, and that makes me rich enough.
I thank God for his blessings, and the mercies He's bestowed.
I'm drinking from my saucer, 'cause my cup has overflowed.

I remember times when things went wrong. My faith wore somewhat thin.
But all at once the dark clouds broke, and the sun peeped through again.
So Lord help me not gripe about the tough rows I've hoed.
I'm drinking from my saucer, 'cause my cup has overflowed.

If God gives me the strength and courage when the way grows steep and rough,
I'll not ask for other blessings; I'm already blessed enough.
And may I never be too busy to help others bear their loads.
Then I'll keep drinking from my saucer, 'cause my cup has overflowed.

Return to main page for Recipes for Living 2009 by Fern Underwood

Last Revised November 19, 2014