For my 76th birthday this past December 7, 2020, my son James gave me the gift of STORYWORTH. This is encouragement for me to write stories about my life each week. Each Monday for the next year, I will receive a prompt for a story. I can chose to respond to the prompt I have received or change the prompt to something of my own choosing. At the end of the year, my stories will be put into a book I have written 3 stories so far. Each of these stories share things that I remember happening earlier in my life. Today I will post one of those stories on this blog. This story references one of my earlier Storyworth stories but also stands alone in answer to the title of that story.
What memories do you have of your life on the Viroqua, WI farm?
I was born on December 7, 1944 at the La Crosse, WI Gundersen-Lutheran Hospital at 5:30 AM. I weighed 10# 3.5oz and was 23” long. My Grandmother, Amanda Sophia Isaacs Groves, wrote in her diary on that date which was a Thursday, “Rec’d a telegram from Jas (James) & Edna saying they had a 10# & 3 1/2 oz baby girl Linda Louise born at the Lutheran Hospital.” My Grandparents lived in Chicago, IL at that time so weren't able to visit me in the hospital.
A nurse told my mother that I was the longest girl baby to have been born at that hospital up until that time. My birth had come three weeks after my mother’s due date. She told me that her Dr. took vacation time over the Thanksgiving holiday so he didn’t want my birth to interrupt that and I waited for his return apparently.
La Crosse was about 35 miles from La Crosse. There was a hospital in Viroqua which was much closer to our farm and my brother had been born there nearly three years before my birth. But when my mother was about three months pregnant with me, she began to have some complications. She saw a Dr. in Viroqua and he told her that her pregnancy wouldn’t last so she should “go home and call me when it js over”. That was news my parents weren’t willing to believe so they decided to get another opinion from a La Crosse Dr. That Dr. admitted my mother to the hospital for a week of rest and care which was what I needed in order to survive and thrive in utero. Therefore, my birth took place in La Crosse where Mom’s Dr. worked. This was added cost and stress for my parents because it was during WWII when gas and tires were rationed so multiple trips to the Dr. were not possible. Close to the time of my birth, my Dad took my mother to his Aunt Helen Hart’s home which was in La Crosse. Aunt Helen was able to get my mother to the hospital more quickly when I was on the way than would have been possible from Viroqua. So that’s why I was born in La Crosse and not Viroqua.
The La Crosse Gundersen-Lutheran Hospital had other significance for my mother. Her mother, Tessie Oliver Matson, had a thyroid operation in that hospital in January 1925 when my mother was five and a half years old. Her mother was 39 years old at that time and was the mother of seven children from ages 8 months to 12 years old. Very sadly, there was a complication for Tessie and she died in that La Crosse hospital a few days after what had seemed to be a successful surgery. Another significance of that hospital for my mother was that she would move into a Nurse’s Residence Home which was attached to that hospital for her Junior and Senior years of high school. That home was where out of town nurse’s aides would live while they were employed at the hospital. She walked 22 blocks from that residence to the La Crosse Central High School and returned after school to work as a nurse’s aide at the hospital evenings and weekends. This building still stands and is now used to house equipment that the hospital uses in his normal daily operations. You can still read the words NURSES HOME over the front doors
My parents took me home from the hospital to the Viroqua farm where we lived until I was nearly four years old. From there we took my first long trip to a farm 75 miles away. My parents and my older brother lived in the Little House which was across the road from the Big House on the Viroqua farm. This photo shows my Dad holding me with my mother and brother. Everyone is dressed up so maybe this was taken on Easter Sunday after my December birth.
Perhaps it seems that a person doesn’t have many memories between birth and age four but as I thought about myself in those years, I realized that I do have some significant memories and I’ll share those in this story.
This Viroqua farm was owned by my Great Grandmother Minnie Cox Groves. This photo on the left shows four generations of the Groves family. The woman is my Great-Grandmother Minnie Cox. The photo also includes my father, James with the dark hair, his father, William and my brother, Jimmy as a baby. Her husband had died in 1937 but she continued to live in the farm home. Her oldest son, William F. Groves and his wife, Amanda Isaacs Groves and their four children were also farming in the Viroqua area. My father, James Burton Groves, was child number two in that family.
He had been born in Montana where his parents had met, got married in Billings and lived on a Montana homestead for five years near Ryegate. Following those years, the family moved to Viroqua to raise their family. The photo on the right is my Grandmother, Amanda Isaacs Groves and my Dad, James as a baby in Montana.
My father and his three siblings had become a quartet of musicians and singers. Each played a different instrument and sang in four part harmony. They often sang at church and other gatherings in the community where entertainment was used. The photo on the left shows this quartet with their instruments. Hubert with a tuba, Vernon with a trumpet, Mildred with a clarinet and my Dad with an accordion.
My father and each of his siblings had graduated from High School and had gone on for further education. My father attended a Normal School which was a one or two year school which trained teachers. My father graduated from that school but did not seek a teaching job. His career choice was farming. He and his younger brother, Hubert, were farming their grandmother’s farm together following their Grandfather’s death in 1937. They and their parents were living in the house with Minnie Groves. The photo on the left shows the Little House. The photo on the right shows the Viroqua farm as it looks quite recently.
My parents met in 1939 and married in 1941. There was a “little house” across the road from the farm which was where my parents lived when they got married.
That house soon became too small for my parent’s growing family. As that was happening there were other changes coming about for my Dad’s family. His parents decided to move to Chicago, IL to seek employment as there were jobs opening due to many men joining the military during WWII. This was good timing because my parents needed more space and they moved into the farm home with my Great-Grandmother Minnie Groves. My Dad’s brother, Hubert, felt the call to pastoral ministry and decided to move to Chicago to pursue schooling for that.
So when I was brought home from the hospital, my parents may have already moved into the big farm house across the road from the little house or would move there before my next sister, Kathleen, was born eighteen months later.
Of course I don’t remember that but now I want to list the things I do remember about that “big” house and farm and my life there.
I do not really know the order of these happenings but I have memories of the following things.
The main floor of the Big house had a kitchen with a pantry, a dining room and probably a bathroom since I don’t remember having to go outside to an outhouse as we would do after we moved to our second farm. In the dining room, there was a sliding door that opened into a two room apartment where my Great-Grandmother lived. She quite often invited my brother and me to come into her apartment and there she told us stories of her years on a Homestead in NE and probably many other things as well. I sat on a metal flour can on a wide window sill. My brother sat on a chair beside our Great-Grandmother. I don’t remember the content of the stories but I remember loving to hear them as they were exciting and spell-binding. I loved the times we got to be with our Great-Grandmother. Sometimes my Great Grandmother would let me brush her hair. She had a long braid wound into a bun on the back of her head. She would take out the hairpins, let her hair down and allowed me to brush her hair as long as I kept the brush on the outside of her hair and didn’t go up underneath and get the brush tangled in her thick hair. I can imagine there was a reason she had made that rule!
That farm house had an upstairs where the bedrooms were. I have a memory of sitting on those stairs next to my brother and being very upset with him about something. I have no idea what he had said or done that made me so angry but I recall saying emphatically to him, ” When I get to be a boy, I’m going to…” I don’t know how I finished that sentence but since he was older than I was, I assumed children were born as girls and then became a boy at some time in the future. I don’t know how long it took for me to realize I was never going to become a boy so I better protect myself as a girl but I’m quite sure I got it figured out in time to defend my turf.
Another memory happened after I had two younger sisters that joined our family. The three of us girls were playing in the dining room and my little sisters got into a squabble about something. Mom was in the kitchen where she could hear but not see us and decided we all needed some discipline so gave each of us a swat. I did not feel as though that was fair because “I had not been involved” but my pleas were ignored.
My Dad probably often did the grocery shopping. When he brought the sacks of groceries into the house, he set the sacks on the counter in the pantry. I remember knowing that Dad often bought a Hershey chocolate candy bar which would be at the bottom of a sack so I decided one day to push a stool up to the counter and sneak a peak to hopefully find the Hershey bar before it was shared with the family. I’m pretty sure I got caught before I accomplished my endeavor. Not sure if I got anything other than a scolding and a warning to resist that temptation in the future.
I do know that sometimes my Dad checked on cattle that were in a pasture a few miles away from the farm buildings. I remember riding along with him and being able to climb around inside an abandoned house on that property. I think that property was owned by a family named Zuby.
My brother started first grade before we moved from that farm. There must have been an Easter party at the one-room country school which was a mile or two down the hill from our farm in the spring before he started school. For some reason I got to attend that school party also even though I was too young for school myself. What I remember of that experience was that there was an Easter egg hunt outdoors on the playground for all the students which I also got to participate in. Somehow I was very excited about that and knew that the eggs would be hidden in places difficult to find so I was ready to scour the property and find eggs just like the big kids. But for some reason, an egg had been placed on a ledge of a basement window which was at ground level and easily seen. Someone who was organizing the egg hunt must have assumed that I was too little to find an egg that was really well hidden so that person took me by the hand and walked me over to the window sill where the obvious egg was and told me that was for me. I was so disappointed and angry because I felt as though I was being treated as a baby not as a big girl that could hunt successfully on my own!
These previous memories are of minor significance compared to the last memory I have to share.
Apparently my brother and I were playing outdoors and decided to go into a shed which was where our Dad stored and used his tools. I think we were just curious children so entered the shed to explore quite innocently. We were walking or running around the bench on which our Dad’s anvil was sitting. I was following my brother. I’m quite sure that neither of us knew that the anvil was not fastened to the bench. So as my brother passed the anvil, he must have bumped it and it toppled over just as I passed it. It landed on my left foot, crushing my 4th toe. I do not remember much after that moment. I don’t know if my parents took me to a Dr. or bandaged it themselves. I do remember having to crawl instead of walk but I don’t know how long that lasted. I remember crawling down the porch steps and heading toward the barn on my hands and knees. I think I remember a splint on my foot to keep the toe straight but I must have been too active to tolerate that during the healing process.
My toe healed in time but grew crooked and that made it difficult for shoes to be found that fit without rubbing and hurting my toe almost all the time. When I was thirteen, my parents took me to a Dr. to see if there was anything that could be done to relieve the pain I had almost all the time. That Dr. said, “I’m sorry. Nothing can be done about this so you’ll just have to live with this the rest of your life.”
That is what I did do until I was 52 years old. One morning as I was dressing and putting my foot into my shoe which of course caused pain, I cried out to John, my husband and said, “I cannot believe I have to live with this pain for the rest of my life!” He replied, “Well, why don’t you see a podiatrist?” I told him I had seen a podiatrist when I was 13 years old and was told I had to live with it because nothing could be done. But John countered that with, “Well, maybe that’s not still true.” So I made an appointment with a podiatrist. Dr. Moblad looked at my foot and said, “Well, I can’t make it pretty but I can make it better.” So a surgical procedure was scheduled and my toe had a significant and very successful makeover which is amazingly beautiful in my estimation. I have no pain in that left foot toe and can comfortably wear any shoe that fits me. I am very grateful for my husband's advice, Dr. Moblad's procedure and especially God who guided all parts that brought about release from pain I had experienced for years.
These are memories of my years until November 1, 1948 when I was one month short of being four years old and our family moved to another farm that was 75 miles from my first home. I will conclude this post with a few more photos that have something to do with the Viroqua, WI Groves farm.
L to R: hay loader getting loose hay from windrows of alfalfa into the hay wagon where James Groves was forking the hay into a full load; tractor being driven by Edna Groves; Viroqua, WI farm buildings in the distance; Team of horses pulling hay rake being driven by William Groves.
This must be an early version of a thrashing machine. James and Hubert Groves are standing beside their Farmall tractor which is in front of the Viroqua farm home. 1930's or 40s
James Groves on the left; Hubert on the Tractor seat in front of Viroqua farm home - 1930's. or early 40's
James Groves at driver's door; Edna on the passenger side.
James Groves
James Groves and Mildred Groves or Grandma Amanda
Groves Quartet: Hubert, Vernon, Mildred and James
Front Yard of Viroqua farm home where James and Edna got married. Road to Little House is off to the far right in this photo.
Wedding of James and Edna Matson Groves with Rev. Ferguson, Vernon, Mildred and Hubert. June 7, 1941 in front yard of Viroqua farm home.
Jim Groves and Linda Groves Worden
Jim Groves, Linda Groves Worden, Margelyn Groves Berndt with street sign for road that goes along the former Viroqua Groves farm.
Linda Groves Worden With Viroqua farm behind her. This was her home until Nov. 1, 1948
I hope to get some added information from my brother or others if they are able to identify more things in the photos and stories shared in this blogpost.
My parents took me home from the hospital to the Viroqua farm where we lived until I was nearly four years old. From there we took my first long trip to a farm 75 miles away. My parents and my older brother lived in the Little House which was across the road from the Big House on the Viroqua farm. This photo shows my Dad holding me with my mother and brother. Everyone is dressed up so maybe this was taken on Easter Sunday after my December birth.
My parents met in 1939 and married in 1941. There was a “little house” across the road from the farm which was where my parents lived when they got married. 
No comments:
Post a Comment