Joy Neal Kidney's Blog, page 48

Food Shortages During World War I

Donald, Clabe holding Doris, and Delbert Wilson on the back porch of the house “down on Beaver,” belonging to Leora’s brothers who were serving with the 88th Division in France. The contraption to the right is Leora’s hand-cranked washing machine.

Leora seemed to always have a batch of bread “set” on the evening before her babies were born, to bake the next morning. Her mother was there for the birth and to help out for a few days. When Doris was born, in August of 1918, Grandmother Laura Goff made rolls out of some of the dough and baked them and loaves of bread the next morning. When little Delbert and Donald, ages 3 and 2 came in from playing, they could smell the aroma of baking bread. Of course, they each wanted a roll. Then another one. Grandmother said, “Oh, you’ll eat up all and your Daddy won’t have any.”

Donald  said, “He can eat con-bread,” meaning cornbread. Food was rationed during the war, and flour was stretched by adding other grains. Bread made from it didn’t keep long–it soured quickly and was sticky. 

The government encouraged replacing wheat bread with cornbread.

In fact, “An Appeal to the People” by Herbert Hoover, United States Food Administration, was published in local papers throughout the nation in June, encouraging reduction in consumption of food. “But the situation with regard to wheat is the most serious in the food supply of the Allied world. . consumption . . .  must be reduced to approximately one-third of normal.” 

He stressed that “it is imperative that all those whose circumstances permit shall abstain from wheat and wheat products in any form until the next harvest.”

The newspaper included a list of substitutes for one cup of wheat flour:

barley 1 ¾ cup
buckwheat ⅞ cup
corn flour 1 scant cup
corn meal, coarse ⅞ cup
corn meal,  fine one scant cup
corn starch ¾ cup
rice flour ⅞ cup
rolled oats 1 ½ cup
rolled oats ground in meat chopper 1 ½ cup
soybean flour ⅞ cup
sweet potato flour 1 ½ cup

“This table will help you to make good griddle cakes, muffins, cakes, cookies, drop biscuit, and nut or raisin bread without using any wheat flour.”

The newspaper also included a muffin recipe:

Rice and Barley Muffins

1 egg
1 cup of milk
1 tablespoon fat
2 tablespoons syrup
4 teaspoons baking powder level
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup rice flour
1 ½ cup barley flour

Beat egg, add milk, fat and syrup, combine with sifted dry ingredients, bake 20 to 30 minutes in hot oven. These are very delicious, the recipe added.

Delbert and Donald asked their grandmother if they could take the new baby for a ride in their wagon. “Let’s ask your mamma.” They tiptoed into the bedroom, where the boys bumped up against the bed to ask their question. Leora answered that baby Doris needed to get bigger first, so they skipped back outside to play.

From Leora’s Early Years: Guthrie County Roots

Dad’s 1939 Chevy (AKA C-39)

Dad flew up (to Dexter, Iowa) from Texas where he was training advanced cadets. He was in time for my birth in June 1944 (two days before D-Day). He bought the Chevy from the town banker and left it for his dad to make sure it could make the trip to Texas, which is when the photo was taken.Dad was stopped in one town and warned that a tire had a dangerous bulge. They couldn’t buy new tires in those days so they had it patched it.The gas gauge didn’t work and they ran out of gas 10 miles from Marfa, Texas. It was dark. Mom and I stayed in the car while he hitched a ride into town for gas!This is the first car I remember. When Dad bought the 1952 Chevy, the old one became his workhorse, carrying tools and farmer things. It had a knob on the dash to switch for the loud country horn and quieter city horn. The seats were a plush fabric and I can still smell the mustiness.(They dubbed it the C-39 because all the Army planes were designated with a letter and number. Dad’s brother flew 13 missions over the “Hump” in a real C-47.)—–Leora’s Letters: The Story of Love and Loss for an Iowa Family During World War II

Our One Vacation, the Black Hills, 1958

When I was a girl on an Iowa farm in the 1950s, we read items in The Dexter Sentinel that so-and-so had been to the Black Hills or to Estes Park. We knew people who actually took vacations during the summer.

We didn’t. Oh, there was the one Sunday when our pastor was gone, Mom packed a breakfast picnic and we headed for Madison County’s Pammel Park. She cooked breakfast on an open fire, Dad read the Sunday paper and took a nap. Gloria, two years younger, and I went for a hike and came back with lots of snails we’d found on tree trunks. Some vacation, huh!

In 1958, Mom got Dad to say okay to traveling to the Black Hills. But I was 14 then and didn’t want to go. I was at “that age” and didn’t want to ride all that way in the back seat with a pesky little sister. That changed when Mom suggested inviting Grandma Leora along.

Having Grandma along certainly improved my outlook.

Joy, Grandma Leora, Gloria, at the Wyoming border. Aug. 20, 1958. Ladies always wore dresses in the 1950s.

Not only did Grandma ride in the middle of the back seat, she slept between Gloria and me at the motel.

 

Gloria on a Triceratops at Rapid City’s Dinosaur Park, Aug. 19, 1958

Highlights: Rapid City, SD, with its School of Mines Museum and Dinosaur Park, a “Passion Play” at Spearfish, and Mount Rushmore.

On the way back, we looked over the old Air Force Base at Alliance, Nebraska, where Uncle Bill Neal, Dad’s brother, had been stationed during WWII.

We actually stayed gone for a week, August 17-23, 1958. I was the official keeper of mileage (1759.7 miles), what towns we went through, what we spent ($37.67 for gas, about $68.11 for food, $73 for 6 motels, $30 for a tire), even kept a diary of what we saw every day.

I’d always thought of this trip from the POV of a bratty teenager. An assignment in a writer’s class was to reframe a story from the past. The Black Hills story turned into a delightful memory about how the upbeat personality of one person can permeate things. Dad was willing to stop at places he would ordinarily have frowned at, even Wall Drug and the Corn Palace.

Gardens in the Family

Both Grandma Leora Wilson and Grandma Ruby Neal enjoyed gardening.

Grandma Ruby’s was along the east side of house on the farm near Dexter. She grew both vegetables and flowers, saving certain seeds, swapping them with relatives and friends. Once she gave me seed pods for Love in a Mist. Another time she shared Money Plant seeds. Mine didn’t turn out as well as hers, but they were fun to experiment with.

Both grandmothers kept many houseplants in their basements during the winter, then carried them outside during nice weather. Here’s a story about Grandma Ruby’s barrel cactus.

Grandma Leora had big vegetable gardens at Dexter and at Minburn, with help from everyone in the family. When she was widowed and moved to Guthrie Center, she chose trees and shrubs for the new little house and started a bed of vegetables. She added flowers and joined the Guthrie Center Garden Club. Even though she died in 1987, people remark about her beautiful flowers to this day.

Grandma Leora’s front gardens in Guthrie Center, even vines in the window box. There was another larger garden in the back yard.

We always had a garden plot, just outside the kitchen window on the farm. After she was widowed, her garden began to include as many flowers as vegetables.

Still going through boxes of her papers, I found two notes from a neighbor who lives a couple of miles up the gravel road. “Thank you for all the beauty you share with us,” she wrote. The other, from 2003, “Thank you for making a garden of beauty for all to enjoy. I often tell people to drive by Doris Neal’s – view the flowers.”

How nice of Lila to take the time to write the notes, which have become part of my mother’s keepsakes, reminding me again of her yucca and day lilies and pink peonies.

Mom with blooming yucca and a few of her many day lilies, 1999Mom, Grandma Leora, and Aunt Darlene gathered their spring flowers every year to take to the cemeteries in Guthrie Center and Perry for Memorial Day.

 

Autumn Moon (poem)

AUTUMN MOON

Flooded with moonlight
and treefrogs
of late summer
dew-spangled webs
of orb weavers
first school days in the air
the grumble of golden buses
a throbbing cadence of
early marching band
autumn nudging
as daylight shrinks
its progress measured
by that moon

Disowning Fibromyalgia

I’d rather say yes than to turn down an invitation to talk about the “Leora stories.” The latest was for a group in the evening and an hour out of town. These days, I need to say no. 

Dealing daily with fibromyalgia is something I don’t like talking about, but last spring, I was invited to interview on PJNET. For new guests, the host does a trial run to make sure of computer connections and to get acquainted. When we went on the air, I expected to talk about Leora’s Letters, but the first thing he brought up was the fibromyalgia.

He said it’s part of my story. That I’m writing in spite of daily challenges.

I needed to think that through. It’s been part of my life for more than two decades. I know that God is with me in this. Mostly house bound because of daily symptoms, I guess I’ve tried to disown the suffering. When pain and exhaustion set in about every 3-4 hours, 25-minute nap usually calms them down. Yes, that’s three naps a day. Even in between, I don’t feel well enough to write, but sometimes, an hour or two a day, I’m lucid enough to tackle it.

The Onset

Before the onset of symptoms two decades ago, I wrote regularly and began getting paid for essays and articles. My goal was to eventually share the Wilson family World War II story, but I needed to learn to write, so I attended the summer writing festival at the University of Iowa several summers. 

I regularly journaled first thing in the morning, including prayers. Some of those prayers during the 1990s included the Wilson family stories. One was that someday people might want to see where the stories took place. I remember thinking that was an audacious prayer. Who did I think I was, Laura Ingalls Wilder? (That’s what we fans have done, visit the places she lived.) 

In 2001, I went downhill physically. Exhaustion. Pain–joints, bones, muscles. A painful bout of shingles. As the horrors of 9/11 were played out on TV, I watched with a heating pad against my afflicted ribs. That fall I gave my last program for a group of women.

The Miserable Middle Years

There’s no test for fibromyalgia, but that’s what the doctor listed. About all she could prescribe was something to mask the pain. I’d read that sufferers are usually women and that the condition lasted an average of seven years. 

Brain fog set in as well. On my worst days, I couldn’t read or write. Sometimes the goal for the day was to take a shower. I begged God to heal me, reminding him that I’d certainly be more useful if he would.

I was sensitive to loud sounds, lights, music, and watching TV became impossible. The basement steps were a challenge, and getting into the bathtub was scary. Getting dressed to go anywhere was an ordeal, with extra discomfort for the next couple of days. So I mostly stayed home. Walking very far was hard. So was standing to do work in the kitchen.

As my husband (Guy) and I settled into how much I could tolerate, we realized that long trips were a thing of the past. 

Sleep apena is also part of my story, as are several unrelated surgeries. I was still in the hospital after the worst one, for diverticulitis perforations, when God reminded me of his presence. Even during those darkest hours of misery, he was alongside. 

These Days

About four years ago, the brain fog began to lift. My heart and head returned to the WWII story. Robin Grunder eventually helped shepherd it to publication. Right before it came out, all five Wilson brothers were remembered on the Dallas County Freedom Rock. They asked if I’d speak at the dedication. I gave two talks that month (October 2019) for the first time in 18 years.

But still, the more times I need to get into and out of a car for errands, the longer recovery time I need. I’m so thankful that my husband Guy does floors, chauffeurs, does the grocery shopping (all of it since my shoulder replacement in 2020), and everything else. 

With lots of prayer and help, I’ve managed to self-publish two “Leora books,” and the third is due out next month. I am so amazed and humbled at this. One program or book club a month is about all I can handle, since it means “saving up energy” ahead of time, then a few days to recover afterwards. 

Is there purpose in all this pain? Have I been trying to deny something precious? What if fibromyalgia is God’s way of getting me to stay home and write the stories no one else can? Grandma Leora’s stories? I’m grateful and humbled. 

What if I’m to share about suffering, about living (and even thriving) in spite of pain?

I certainly have discovered blessings while feeling crummy. And because of fibro, I have a circle of encouraging internet friends I’ve never met. What a blessing! 

. . . We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. – Romans 5:4-5  

I’m in the endurance stage, and I’ve got hope. Whether I’ve developed character through this is up to God, as is whether I’m able to write. Or anything else. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

 

Jim Boll, the Man Who Rescues Windmills

I asked who the man was in a photo taken at the dedication of the Dallas County Freedom Rock. He wore a knitted cap and was one of the first people to come up afterwards to talk to me. I’d been asked to talk about the Wilson brothers, who are remembered on one side of the memorial.

Jim Boll, I was told. Not only is he a Vietnam veteran, he’s known as the man who rescues windmills. The old Aermotors and other classic windmills we rural Iowans grew up with. They are dying out since electricity now pumps water on farms.

Jim started out with the one he played on as a kid. It later needed fixing, so he did it himself. Someone came by, saying he had one that needed repaired. That’s how it started, but he’s saved and mended well over 100 of them, some dating back to 1892.

Boll has survived the Vietnam war and cancer. It’s a good thing he has no fear of heights, although he does use a safety harness for the taller windmills.

Once in a while he sells an old windmill. The Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines bought one. He repaired one on the Iowa State Fairgrounds.

“My” windmill, where Dad rented a farm from Donald and Lucille Shaw. The address was Redfield, Iowa, but the you can see if from Dexfield Hill next to old Dexfield Park. The house is on the left, with the barn across the road.

I’m drawn to the silhouette of old windmills across a prairie, announcing a farm there or at one time an old homestead among the corn, elderberries, oats, sumac, and wheat fields. That old windmill drew water at one time for the life of a family and their livestock.

An old windmill was my first chore, at least that I can remember from age 4 or 5, that of trudging down a gravel road to wire the handle of the contraption to let the blades above catch the wind to pump our water up the hill to a holding tank.

You can see Jim Boll’s forest of windmills along Highway 44 in Dallas County, Iowa, between Grimes and Dallas Center. It’s a treat to get to see so many all at once.

Here’s a story about him from KCCI TV.

 

Purple Heart Day

Purple Heart Day is observed every year on August 7, since the medal was created on that day in 1782.

Originally called the Badge of Military Merit, consisting of a cloth purple heart worn over the left breast, it was awarded the first time by General George Washington. It was mostly forgotten until World War I, when a plan for valor and merit medals took shape. 

Then in 1932, US Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur reintroduced the old Badge of Military Merit, renaming it the Purple Heart.

The Purple Heart is awarded for combat action only and is awarded to any person wounded in action while serving with the armed forces of the United States, even posthumously.

Designed by Elizabeth Will, the heart-shaped medal, including a profile of Washington, is one of the best known and most beautiful of all US decorations.

Both Dale R. Wilson and Daniel S. Wilson were killed in action during World War II. Both were awarded a Purple Heart. Daniel’s, with his name engraved on the back, was sent to his grieving parents. Dale’s death wasn’t officially declared until January of 1946. I asked for the family to receive his Purple Heart. It is not engraved.

It’s puzzling that the Purple Heart is awarded even for superficial wounds for veterans who survive, but there is no separate medal commemorating those who actually lose their lives.

American Medals and Decorations by Evans Kerrigan

Omar Shearer, the First of Our Own Boys to Give His Life, July 30, 1918

German submarines sank three American merchant ship in March, 1917. The US declared war on Germany in April. A month later, the Selective Service Act passed. Men ages 21-30 had to register for the draft. Among the Guthrie County enlistments listed in the May 14 Guthrie Times was a young man named Omar Shearer, age 16.

In 1918, he became the first Guthrie County soldier to lose his life. Word didn’t make it to Guthrie Center until a few weeks later:

The Guthrie Times, September 12, 1918:

“Omar Shearer–Who, according to a letter received from one of his comrades by his mother, Anna Shearer, gave his life on the battlefields of France to save the world for God and mankind. His mother has had no official announcement from the government yet, and there is a hope that there may be some possible mistake. A letter was received here from Omar of date July 24, and the letter containing the announcement of his death was of date of August 4. What might have happened in the interim can only be guessed at. It is truly hoped that later news may bring word that it is a mistake.”

The Guthrie Times, September 26, 1918:

Omar Shearer the First of Our Own Boys to Give His Life

He Laid It on the Altar of His Country

Freely and Voluntarily–in the Fiercest of the Battle

He Stood and Was a Victim to the

Cruel and Treacherous Hun Bullet

“. . . Never, in all the years have we more reluctantly, and with deeper sorrow told the story of death, than when we announce the death of Omar Shearer. But amidst our grief we can exclaim–‘What a glorious death to die!’ Only a few short months ago he was a lad in our public schools, free from care, and intent on getting an education, fitting himself for life’s duties and life’s work. But war came and the foundation, principles upon which rested the whole fabric of our great and noble government was threatened. President Wilson announced a state of war existed, and Congress declared war against Germany and a call went out for volunteers. Omar Shearer with others of our own boys was among the first to answer that call. He was large of age, and with the consent of his mother, was accepted and enlisted in the Machine Gun Company of the 168th Regiment. He went into training at the State Fair grounds at Des Moines and learned to be a soldier. . . . When the 168th went over Omar was with them. . . . Some months ago he was gassed and wounded, from which he recovered and was with his command again when the present drive began upon the part of the Allies, and was . . . in the thickest of the fray that, according to a letter from one of the comrades to his mother, he fell. Yes, he shed his blood and gave his life for the noble cause of humanity, for his country’s honor, for freedom, for home and native land. What more could he have done?

“Since the above was in type Omar’s mother received a message from Washington confirming his death, which was sad news indeed, and took away the hope that still lingered in the hearts of his loved ones.

“His death brings the war closer to us all, especially to the people of our little city, most of whom knew him personally, and who loved him for his manly ways and his buoyant disposition. We all hoped and prayed that he might be spared to come back to us and enjoy the fruits of victory won upon the battlefield, but it was not so ordered by Him do doeth all things well. No words of ours can assuage the grief and sorrow of the mother’s heart or console the grandparents and other to whom he was near and dear by the ties of consanguinity, but we can cherish his memory and recall his great sacrifice in our behalf and drop a silent tear with the loved ones. We can see to it too, that this fine young man, who gave his all to insure a world’s peace, shall not have died in vain. And while we all cannot cross the ocean and offer our lives, we can do our part at home. We can make personal sacrifices, give of our substance, and thus help those that are still fighting our battles by all the means of our power.

“The government has promised that the bodies of our hero dead, who died in the foreign fields, should be brought back to their own, their native land, and all that is mortal of Omar will come to us again, but his soul will go back to Him that gave it to live forever and forever. . . . ”

Omar Shearer is buried in the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France. There is a cenotaph in his remembrance in the Guthrie Center cemetery. The FindaGrave site gives the death date as July 30, 1918.

The American Legion post at Guthrie Center is named in Omar Shearer’s honor.

The 1936 Berlin Olympics

Some of my favorite stories have come from the 1936 Berlin Olympics, also dubbed the Nazi Olympics, held in August of 1936. Reich Führer Adolph Hitler saw the major international event as an opportunity to promote his government and ideals of racial supremacy and antisemitism. Jewish athletes were barred from taking part.

Jesse Owens

Although Germany won the most medals, overall, with the US coming in second. Jesse Owens of the US won four gold medals, becoming the most successful athlete of the event, effectively rejecting Hitler’s notion of racial supremacy.

The year before, Dexter band marched in the the 1935 Drake Relays parade in Des Moines. Doris Wilson, playing a borrowed trumpet, asked who was the man riding in the parade and waving to the crowd. It was Jesse Owens, famous as a runner even before the Olympics the next year.

—–

Two of my favorite books are about athletes who also competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Louis Zamperini

Runner Louis Zamperini came in 8th in his race, but Adolph Hitler insisted on meeting him. Zamperini, who been a troubled youth, found his purpose in running.

After WWII broke out, joined the Army Air Force. His B-17 went down in the Pacific, where he spent 47 days adrift, then 2 1/2 years in three Japanese POW camps.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand is an incredible true story!

The Boys in the Boat

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown is another favorite story from those historic days.

I especially enjoyed the backgrounds of the crew, many of whom were dirt poor because of the Great Depression. The book combines the craftsmanship of boat building, superb coaching, laws of physics, psychology, and the mystery of hope. Rewarding and refreshing.