Saturdays and stories

Every so often we revisit Walter Schutz’s book, It Was Fun Being Young, with remembrances of his boyhood in Milwaukee in the early 1900’s. We recently came across a letter written to Walter in 1990 from a Sievers student and mom of three “modern” kids about their experience going back in time through the stories he told in the book. Excerpts from both are presented in this post.

Walter wrote, “Looking back, it seems that life was more organized and ran on a very tight, narrow schedule. Certain operations were performed on certain days, such as washing on Monday, ironing on Tuesday. Saturdays were no exception. Certain duties had to be done on that day only and were carried out in rigid routine. Saturday was cleaning day. My first chore was to gather up all of the carpets. I would string a double clothesline, put a rug over the line and then beat it from both front and back to knock all the dust out of it. Streets and sidewalks were not too clean and the carpets had loads and loads of dust in them.

My next duty, weather permitting, was to wash windows on the outside. In summer, I usually cut and trimmed the grass. In fall, it was my duty to rake the leaves.

In winter, I would haul ashes to the ashbox and sift them to retain partially burnt coal chunks used for banking the fire at night, thus saving fuel and money. I’d also clean and arrange the woodworking shop. Father contended a rusty nail held more securely than a new one, so all the old rusty nails would be straightened by hand and used again. I must have given thousands of nails a rejuvenation.

The shop had a small cast-iron wood-burning stove. Another duty I had was to collect all the burnable rubbish and burn it in this stove. I turned this work into play. By setting the drafts in a certain way, I could get the stove to burn in puffs, so…I was the engineer on a steam locomotive and I rode dozens of miles with a long string of boxcars behind me, or a passenger train headed for some far-off place. I even went so far as to tie a blue bandana around my neck!

The last thing my mother did each Saturday was to scrub the kitchen floor. It was maple wood, unfinished. She would get down on her hands and knees and scrub and scrub until every speck of soil was removed. None of us dared walk on it. To protect it, she covered it with newspapers until it was dry, and it always dried to a dazzling white. What a sight to behold.

Of course, the last real chore was to sit down and have a treat of whatever Mother had a notion to bake that Saturday. What a grand, sharing, wholesome time we had!”

In response to purchasing It Was Fun Being Young, one “modern” mother of three very “modern” children living a very “modern” life wrote a letter to Walter saying, “My three children are part of a generation of kids who expect to be continuously entertained. Things like rocket ships and moon walks are “old hat” to them and heaven forbid I should mention the word imagination to them – what an ancient concept, never to be taken seriously. To Washington Island we came, alone on an island, no Nintendo, movie theater and only a 13″ TV broadcasting two channels when it’s a good day. I could always go back to reading them stories, but what could possibly hold the attention of both an 11 year old and 5 year old? Surprisingly, it was your book, and I was not prepared for the enthusiasm they displayed when I read your book to them for the first time. Soon they were fighting over what part should be read next. And so it went for at least an hour. They were full of questions about the 89-year old man who wrote it. ‘Do you know him Mom?’ ‘Can I meet him?’ When they did meet you, my heart cried out in triumph. What a connection made between the generations! Your book has become a family treasure, igniting a flame of reminiscence and conversation which travel back and forth across time and generations, helping us experience a rootedness and feeling of connectedness we all so need to feel. Last night, my son said, ‘I want to see Walter again.’ My daughter said, ‘Walter who?’ He replied, ‘You know, the 90-year old dude.’ In the end, what strikes me most is the innocence reflected in your stories. Thank you for sharing with me and my family the spirit of your innocence.”  E. W.

Although a blog post like this is a very modern way to experience connectedness, the stories told within are never outmoded.