Marion's Prairie Prayers

My first post of 2011 is only tangentially related to Foxcroft but it is related. I've actually referred to Marion before, specifically here:

Heirloom peas



Aunt Marion was my father's aunt. She was my grandmother's closest sister, three years her junior. We always saw Marion and her husband, Bill when visiting at grandma's in the summer. They would come and play 6 handed pinochle with my grandparents and parents. Marion's home in Marcus, Iowa had a very large garden. Aunt Marion had a loom in her basement and wove rag rugs. After Bill died Marion always came to Thanksgiving at our house with Grandma and Grandpa. Marion was a favorite of mine.

Apparently Marion was a lot like both Bess and Helen, in even more ways than I have already related. (gardening, handwork). Marion and Helen were contemporaries, Helen was born in 1911, Marion in 1912. Both married later in life and apparently both were dedicated diarists. I had no idea Marion kept a journal. The article listed below is written by one of my dad's first cousins, whom I've never met.

Marion's Prairie Prayers

Considerably less educated than Helen, Marion, like my grandmother, was sent to live as a "cook girl" with a farm family at age 14 after the completion of 8th grade. Marion's journal seems to be far more insightful than anything I've read in either Helen's or Bess' journals. Of course I need to remember that I still have over 1,000 letters yet to read as well as what is at the UI main library from Bess and Helen.

As my brother commented to me "Wow...so interesting to get a glimpse of the backstory I'd always wondered about..."

I'd love to get a transcript of Marion's writings and line them up with Bess and Helen's.

Helen's Diary: Oct. 7, 1933

Sat.

Worked 8-12 reading scores. M + I to Iowa (38) Bradley (0) game. Got much colder during the day. M canned 35 qts of wild grape juice from Grace Strubley.

Giants won World Series 4 games to 1 over Senators. Score 4-3 in 11 innings

Comments:

• Helen had a work study job and UI in foreign language department.
• Tickets to the Iowa-Bradley football game would have cost $1.00 each according to some quick research showing that UI cut prices in 1933 from $1.50 to $1.00 due to the depression. For the Florida International game this season I bought tickets at face value of $50.00 each.
• I can't imagine how many grapes it would take to squeeze 35 quarts of juice
• The New York Giants beat the Washington Senators at Griffith Stadium in Washington D.C. to clinch the series. According to Wikipedia:
  Washington, D.C. has not hosted another World Series since 1933. Game 5 was the final Series game played in the nation's capital as of 2008. This Washington Senators franchise became the Minnesota Twins during the 1960-1961 off season, and would not reach the World Series again until 1965. The second Senators team became the Texas Rangers. The transfer of the Montreal Expos to become the Washington Nationals opens the door to D.C. again potentially.

Iowa football player and Big Ten 1933 MVP Joe Laws. This photo was taken after the mayor of Iowa City offered Laws any honorary position in the city after winning the MVP award. He chose to be the fire chief (photo from Des Moines Register)

Washington Senator's Player/Manager Joe Cronin (photo from Wikipedia)

May 15-16, 1933

From Helen's Diary:

May 15
Monday
Gardened most of day. Fed Buster every hour or so. Put in seeds + transplanted artichokes + tomatoes. France and England worried over Hitler's aim of arming Germany. Sunny till evening then rain. Made rhubarb fluff + ham souffle.

May 16
Tuesday
Gardened in morning and dug worms. Saw "Farewell to Arms" Helen Hayes and Gary Cooper. Very good. Went to Mortar Board picnic in park. Took Mrs. Wilson. Bed + read.
Roosevelt sends message to 54 nations warning against aggression. Fair- rainstorm in evening

My Comments:
Helen would have been 22 years old and would have lived at Foxcroft for 4 years with her mother when she wrote this. The spring term at the University of Iowa was already over, the previous week she wrote about working on a correspondence course. I believe she would have graduated the year before, but worked on grad level classes. "Buster" was a baby robin that had been pushed out of it's nest by his mother. She was digging worms for him.

Helen probably made rhubarb fluff from their rhubarb patch in the yard now owned by our neighbors behind us. The neighbor's lawn service just mowed all the rhubarb down last night while cutting the grass.

"Farewell to Arms" probably made a major impression on Helen. Her father had volunteered for World War I at age 40, and since he was a physician, was commissioned as a captain and sent to field hospital in France. He was sent to Serbia to help fight a typhoid outbreak after the armistice, but before his enlistment expired. It was there that he contracted pneumonia and died. Helen was seven when he passed away, Bess was a widow at 36. She never remarried.

"Mortar Board" was an honor society that Helen belonged to. "Mrs. Wilson" was their neighbor two houses down. Mr. Wilson, was Eric Wilson a former University of Iowa track star, who ran in the 1924 Olympics. The Wilson's were neighbors for 40 years.

On May 10, 1933 German students burned 20,00 "Jewish books" in front of the University of Berlin. By 1933 Helen had already been to France twice, something that certainly set her apart from young Iowa girls of the 1930's. We found her ticket stubs and a 78 rpm recording of Josephine Baker from Helen's 1931 tour. As a French major she was keenly interested in European events. I find her comments to be ominous foreshadowing considering that 10 years later she would leave her high school teaching job in Milwaukee and volunteer for the American Red Cross. Due to her fluency French she was posted to England prior to the Normandy invastion and went to France right behind the allied troops.

"Tired As Hell" Helen's Diary Again

April 21, 1934
Sat.

Cleaned aquarium. Worked on pool. Sprayed trees, washed hair, made 4 doz. cakes and decorated them.
Tired as hell.

Here is a photo of cleaning the pool:

The caption says "Spring '34" so it may have been this day. Bess and Helen finished the pool in 1933. Here it is in progress:






Some day we will dig it back out.

HELEN's Diary!

I've posted from Bess' diary before, but haven't ever posted from her daughter, Helen's. Here is a post from 1933 when Helen would have been a senior at the University of Iowa:

APRIL 17, 1993 Monday

Up at 9. In town, shopped. Made divinity. Made over sleeves of green dress. Had Progressive party 8- 1:30. Williams, Olsens, Williams & here. Marg, Izzy, Hilly, Ilse, Self, Bob Mudge, Tom Miller, Ippen, Carl Drumm. Bob Mudge kissed me in the kitchen on a bet.

Wow, I'll need to go read more of her stuff more often!