Childhood Days with Grandma and Grandpa Horst
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Reuben and Frances Horst
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My maternal grandparents, Reuben and Frances Horst, lived on a small farm in a little village known as Farmersville, located in West Earl Twp, Lancaster County, PA. (Those who follow bicycle racing might remember it as the home of Floyd Landis who won the Tour-de-France two years ago only to have his title stripped because of accusations of doping.) Grandpa and Grandma did not have much land, but they did have a big garden, an old frame house, and a small barn. Grandpa had an old car. I think it was an Essex. I remember that it had solid wheels rather than spokes like most cars.
The time was that of the Great Depression. Many during that time were poor, but they must have been very poor. Grandma gave birth to fourteen children Thirteen of them grew to be adults. I suppose they all helped to support their parents. I remember occasions when we visited them and Daddy would slip them some money. I seem to recall that it was about five or ten dollars.
Grandpa raised vegetables in the garden. He may have also sold some produce to earn some cash. I do recall him cultivating the garden by pushing what was called a wheel-hoe. It had two handles with a big steel wheel in front. Behind the wheel, some cultivator blades worked the soil. Even though he lived on this little farm, he did not own a horse. I would suppose that he got some neighbor to come in and plow the garden in the spring.
They also raised chickens and ducks on the farm. I remember him mixing fermented corn meal in water for the little ducklings to eat. He called it mash. It smelled so good that I was always kind of jealous of those little ducks. They seemed to enjoy it so much. There also was a pan of water that they loved to swim in.
Aunt Anna was a single lady who lived there with her parents. She worked at Moyer's Knitting Mill in Ephrata. I suppose the arrangement helped all concerned survive the hard times. Aunt Anna drove a 1936 Plymouth coupe. She sometimes took Arvilla and me hope to Farmersville for a few days. We loved going there. I remember one time, however, when I began getting homesick in the car on the way over to Grandpa Horst's house. We lived only about fifteen minutes away, but it seemed like a long trip. I just remember that I had this terrible pain in the pit of my stomach, but I didn't want to cry. On that occasion we stayed there overnight, and I developed ingrown eyelashes. Aunt Anna pulled them out, one at a time, with a tweezers. It was quite a relief to get rid of those scratchy eyelashes. Maybe that's why I didn't feel good and got so homesick.
There was an Old Order Mennonite family lived next door. I think their name was Stauffer. They had a lot of children and we loved to play with them. They had the usual Mennonite buggy and we liked to play in it and pretend we were riding in it. They also made homemade root beer. It was ice-cold and I thought it was the most wonderful thing I had ever drank.
Grandma had real bad arthritis. She called it Rheumatism. She always smelled of liniment. As a matter of fact, her whole house reeked of it. To this day, the smell of liniment takes me back to Grandma Horst's house. There was always candy at her house. Our favorite was what they called clear toy. It was made of sugar and molded into animals, houses, etc. You could suck on one of those all day. She also always had a dish of non-parells. They were wafers of dark chocolate with big round sugar crystals on the top. Then there were the white and pink lozenges. After I had children of my own, they would refer to them as Pepto-Bismol candy.
The adults always drank coffee Grandma's house. Since the children couldn't drink coffee, she would make Postum for us. We would pretend we were drinking coffee like the adults. I think Postum was made of cereal.
Grandpa Horst liked to chew tobacco. I remember an occasion when there were several of us cousins sitting on the edge of the porch with Grandpa. He took out his pouch and took a chew. We children gave him a hard time about the tobacco chewing. I seem to think he eventually quit. I don't know if we had anything to do with that or not. When I turned nineteen, I took up smoking cigarettes. I often thought about that episode with Grandpa Horst and I knew that I shouldn't be using tobacco. I did eventually quit smoking when I was fifty-three years old.
There was an old outhouse behind the kitchen. The only toilet paper was a Sears Roebuck catalog. It wasn't too bad until the index pages were all gone. Then there were none left but hard, glossy pages. I hated that place. It always stank. In the summer there were wasps in there, and in the winter you froze your butt off.
Behind that outhouse was a persimmon tree. I learned early on not to eat persimmons until they were fully ripe. They are an astringent that draws your mouth together like alum. However, when they are fully ripe and drop off the tree into the snow, they are delicious and very sweet.
On June 22, 1941 Grandpa Horst died at the age of 72. He died of a severe heart attack. The funeral was held at the Ephrata Mennonite Church where they were members. It was a very sad occasion. They had an open casket in the front of the church. Before they closed it for the last time, all his children gathered around. I remember a lot of crying. I particularly remember uncle Noah sobbing out loud and bending over the casket. Grandpa Horst was the first of my grandparents to die and it was the first time in my life that I experienced real grief.
Later that summer, they had a public sale at the farm. Everything was sold except what Anna and Grandma took to their new house in Akron. My dad had built them a new house next door to my Uncle Amos Horst. The day of the public sale was quite an occasion for Arvilla and me and our many cousins. We played all day on the farm. My parents had given us a little money. We bought lots of soft drinks. I bought Royal Crown Cola because it came in the biggest bottle. We also bought candy bars and I remember going home with a wooden box that had a bunch of old locks in it. There were no keys. I don't think I would have bid on them. Perhaps it was stuff that was left over that even the penny man didn't want. I treasured that stuff for years. I have no idea what ever happened to it.
- The Old Professor
Copyright © Jay D Weaver - January 23, 2009
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