Arno's Memoir
My wife Kristi's father, Arno Seifert, died last month at age 95. An Appleton, WI, banker by trade, he was a farmer at heart and retired early to continue farming as a hobby on an 80 acre farm near Weyauwega, WI. He and I had become quite close over the years and Kristi and I were thrilled to receive a tape recording made a few years ago by Arno's brother John of Arno reminiscing about his life. Though this isn't directly folk-song related, it is certainly in the oral tradition. Here are some excerpts:
Our father's parents, Carl and Pauline Seifert, came over from Europe... In the 1800s... They had to stop for a time in New York City because dad's mother was pregnant... After he was born... they went on to Wisconsin...
Anyway, they got there, and... settled in a place near Sheboygan and after some time there they were able to acquire a small farm. They had named dad Carl after his father. But to keep things straight around the house they used his second name which was Julius. The name stuck... In fact I don't think even his close friends and neighbors knew that his first name was Carl. Dad's parents had two other children: Reinholdt and a daughter, Tina... The farm they were on was small, and didn't require the work of three men the entire year. So both dad and Reinholdt worked for others a good part of the time.
Dad worked quite often at a local cheese factory and he liked the cheese making business so when a course in cheesemaking was offered at Madison, he took the course. When he and mother were married or soon thereafter they moved to Appleton. After some time at Appleton working at various jobs he was able to by a cheese factory... in the town of Greenville. He drove to Appleton with a team of horses and a wagon to sell the cheese and butter he produced... At that time it was difficult to make a good living in a cheese factory and as his family got larger he needed more income... So he bought a small farm at the very west end of Spencer Road in the town of Greenvillle...
In a kidding way I like to say that the only thing that the place is famous for is the fact that I was born there on September 16, 1912, in a little white house which is still there. When I was about 4 years of age, our family sold the little farm [and] ... moved to a larger... 120 acre farm...
Now we're getting up to a point where my memory of life on the farm starts to kick in...The buildings included a... two story frame house with a full basement. The first floor was divided into a kitchen, dining room and pantry, and a living room, and... another fairly large room that our parents used as a bedroom. The second floor was divided into bedrooms... The basement contained a cistern to store rain water for washing clothes and other things, and rooms to store fruits and vegetables, canned foods and other preserved food... There was no indoor plumbing in the houses at that time. There was an outhouse built not too far from the house, and ours wasn't too close either. It was anything but convenient, especially in the winter time, and the only equipment in the outhouse was a Sears Roebuck catalog.
The kitchen had a cookstove with a baking oven and a warming oven and a reservoir for hot water for dishes and stuff like that. The kitchen was the warmest area in the house... and that's where the kids got their Saturday night baths, in a big tub set before the kitchen stove with the oven door wide open. The rest of the downstairs area was heated by a potbellied stove placed in the living room... The bedrooms on the second floor were not heated... Each farm was equipped with a drilled well and water for the house for cooking and drinking was taken into the house in a pail and placed in the kitchen. Water for the animals on the farm was piped to a tank in one of the other buildings... We had a windmill and that was fine when there was a fairly good breeze but on a quiet day we had to pump the water by hand to fill that tank...
All the farms in the Greenville area were dairy farms. One advantage of a dairy farm was that it was very self sufficient... All the products of the farm were food products. I never heard of anyone starving at a dairy farm no matter how bad the winter might be... If a farmer in the area of Greenville stocked up on a few food items such as sugar, flour, spices and things like that, that he didn't produce himself... If he stocked up in the late fall, he had no absolute need to be able to drive to the city during the entire winter. However I never heard of a farmer who didn't drive to the city at least once a month during the winter months. I might mention here we had a neighbor who drove to the city quite often and he had a habit of stopping at a saloon on the way. There were times when he stopped at the saloon too long and when he came out of there he didn't know his way home, but his horses did. And if he was able to untie the horses and get into the wagon or sleigh before they took off, he could sleep all the way home and they'd just take him home, and this happened a few times....
Most farmers had good secondary incomes. For instance: eggs, which they sold to the city grocers... When I mention eggs it reminds me of the very unusual situation that exists... Today you can buy a dozen eggs at approximately the same price they were... back in the early [1900s]. Now there are reasons for that; you might explain it this way; in these early years, they had a breed of chickens that didn't lay eggs very well...
Now I'll get on the subject of farm chores... On the farm each of the kids had certain chores to do each day. For the girls, the chores were mostly confined to the house and garden, unless there were no boys in the family. It so happened in our family that mother's first six kids were girls, so at one point some of the girls had to help somewhat in the barn. With a larger farm and a large family there was a seemingly endless list of chores to be done. For the boys the chores were mostly outside and in the barn. I don't know what age the chores thing started, but with me it seems like it began as soon as I was able to walk. But anyway. When I was a little older, my chores included filling the wood box in the kitchen, and that was a big woodbox; feeding the chickens; and gathering the eggs; carrying fresh water to the house, and helping in the barn with feeding of the animals, cleaning their stalls, and bringing in fresh straw bedding for them. And of course milking; that was the big chore. At that point we had no electric service. We used both kerosene and gasoline lamps in the house, and kerosene lanterns outside and in the barn. The kerosene lamps didn't give too much light but they were adequate, and they were a lot safer in the barn area than gasoline lanterns. I will say this about the gasoline lanterns in the house: a double-mantle gasoline lamp gives light equal to a forty or sixty watt electric bulb...
Back in those days radios were available, early radios, and when I was about 8 years old we bought a three dial Atwater Kent radio... Most of the time we were only able to pick up two stations and we didn't pick 'em up too well but at times they were okay: Sears in Chicago and a station in Jacksonville Florida...
Music note: Arno went on to play the National Steel Guitar on an Appleton radio station for a time; Kristi and I still have his guitar...