Further Memories of Budsin

I have read over the anniversary booklets from the 125^th anniversary of the Budsin and Newton churches. Undoubtedly you have copies of them, which contain many items of interest that were way before my father's ministry there. My sister Clara, her husband Harvey, and my sister Gert attended that anniversary celebration.

We talked about names of members during my father's ministry. Besides Teske, Floeter, Wechwerth, Muehrer, Kettler, and others we may have talked about, I also remember Petrich, Pohl, Ristau, Schwanke, Tagatz, Hallman – and Clara mentioned seeing Erna Gilgann at the anniversary. That name sounds familiar to me also.

My father was installed on October 25, 1925. I don't remember too much about it. However, a few sidelights come to mind. We woke up that morning to see the ground covered with snow. I always loved the first snow of the season, and this was so early and unexpected. The other incident I remember is that a family from Germany had recently moved to the area. After the service a lady excitedly asked my mother, "Are you the new people from Germany?" When my mother said, "No, we're the new pastor's family," she was really embarrassed. (This conversation was in German). I think our family was invited to Muehrer's (Eileen's parents) that evening. There were almost no girls in the Budsin church, and now suddenly four were added to the small number.

What do I remember about conditions there in 1925? I mentioned the sandy roads and ruts, which zigzagged a lot. My father said he would fix that. He would accelerate the car and by going fast he would make the ruts straight. He soon found out that he was wrong, so he drove in the ruts for three years. The road coming from the north ended at the church at that time. To go south you had to make the jog past the parsonage. I guess the roads to Wautoma, and also to Neshkoro, weren't too bad. The road toward Westfield, and Newton, and the one going south had the ruts as I remember.

Of course, the house had no electricity, no furnace, and no plumbing. We were used to all of this, except for the last two or three years we had electricity in Forestville. Now we were back to kerosene lamps. I trust my mother had saved all of our lamps. Our new bathroom had no plumbing, but some way water was pumped to a tank in the attic to provide running water. How this worked I don't know. I don't remember there being any faucets in either the kitchen or the bathroom. I do remember that there was a chemical toilet.

Telephones were on party lines. When anyone received a call, most people on the same line picked up their receiver to listen in. Two weeks after we moved to Budsin my parents' first grandchild was born. My brother-in-law called from Wyoming to tell us the good news. I can remember my father saying, "Will you people please hang up so I can hear." The message finally came through, and my parents were very happy to be grandparents, and the rest of us were happy aunts and uncles.

People who spoke German spoke mainly low-German. I remember Sadie Pohl asking us girls whether we spoke German. When we said "Yes" she said, "I mean the real German," meaning low-German. One of the little farm boys told my father some funny things in low-German when he made a call there. We laughed a lot about that. We spoke German in our home, but when as teen-agers or earlier we began to speak English a lot, my father would often say, "Kinder, sprecht Deutsch:" translated, "Children, speak German."

The farmhouse our family lived in during the remodeling of the parsonage in 1926 was on the right side of the road as you drove south. We saw no signs of it last October. My sister wrote in '84 that there was a "No Trespassing" sign on the gate. The house could also be reached by a road that came from the west. I can remember spending the greater part of a day picking blueberries somewhere in the area while we lived there. We had no blueberries in the Forestville area, so this was a new experience also. I only remember that my body ached so badly for several days after that I could hardly walk.

The lake where all of the cottages are east of Budsin was just a farm lake at that time. It was the Wagner farm, if I remember correctly. I'm quite sure they belonged to the church. We drove by there only once since the cottages are there. I don't know when this lake was converted to a resort area.

We had a cow and chickens. These were no novelty, since in Forestville we had lots of chickens and two cows. There we had milk customers and we children had to deliver milk mornings and evenings. I think milk was 7 cents a quart at that time. I don't remember the Budsin chicken coop, but Clara has a picture of it.

We had a '21 Model T Ford, given to my father by the congregation and some of the businessmen in Forestville. This was our first car, of course. Sometime before 1927 he turned it in for a sedan. The summer of '27 my parents and four of us kids went on a trip to Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri to visit relatives. We must have been really crowded in that little car. We left Margaret (Marge) at my aunt's in Minnesota where she spent her sophomore year. As a freshman she drove to Neshkoro with Bernard Weckworth. When my sisters and I reminisced about Budsin last October, Marge said she didn't think she and Bernard ever spoke a word to each other on all those drives back and forth. We really laughed about that. Otto "commuted" to Neshkoro for part of his sophomore year, 1925 – 1926. During the worst winter months he boarded in town.

In those years mission festivals were an annual event in Lutheran churches. They included morning and afternoon services, with guest preachers at both. Between the services there would be a potluck meal, or a picnic lunch. I remember the one in '26. It was held in a woods somewhere out toward Newton. One of the preachers was Rev. Hinnenthal, our friend and neighboring pastor from the Forestville area. He also spoke at my father's funeral. Our visiting family members who had come for our reunion were at the mission festival also. It could be my brother John preached one of the sermons.

I can't tell you much about the Budsin school. I know that Evelyn Tagatz was the teacher the last two years we lived there because she boarded at our house. She, Clara, and my mother remained good friends for many years. About Erna Gilgann Clara wrote in 1984 – "I think it was the last year in Budsin that she would come to school with the older ones. She sat right behind me with an older sister and used to poke me and say "Schee-re" (sounds like shay-ray), whenever she wanted to use my scissors." "Schere" is German for scissors.

Clara kept up her friendship with Selma Nuehrer until Selma's death. She is still friends with Laura Hallman, who lives in Shreveport, La. I can't think of their married names.

I spent only two Christmas Eves in Budsin. A favorite memory is driving to Newton one Christmas Eve and singing German Christmas carols on the way. I also remember elders sitting near the Christmas tree with pails of water, just in case the burning candles would start a fire.

In the Budsin anniversary booklet it says on page 5 that "salaries received by our pastors in the 1930's varied from $50 a year to $450 in later years." That has to be wrong. Even during those depression years you could not support a family on $50 a month, much less on $50 a year. I believe my father's salary was $100 a month while there. There are many errors also in my father's obituary as written in the booklet.

My father was 53 years old and my mother 52 when we moved to Budsin. As far as I know they were happy there. My mother had spent some of her growing up years in Richford, so "sand country" was familiar to her. Her father, Johann Oetjen, was pastor at Richford. Whether she ever got to Richford while living in Budsin, I don't know. Also, she had a cousin or cousins in Montello. The Portage cousins (Bergers) were fairly close by, and that was nice also.

The time there was short, and 1928 was filled with worries. That spring Clara (she was eleven at the time) was very ill with typhoid and pneumonia. She was sick for weeks, and not expected to recover, but God answered the many prayers said on her behalf. During the summer my father developed a bad infection in his leg and foot, and by the time of his death in September it had worsened a lot. This was a big worry also for all of us.

That year (1928) we single ones from Milwaukee spent the Labor Day weekend at Budsin. The following Sunday we were all shocked and saddened by my father's sudden death. Funeral services were held in Budsin on Thursday and another service and burial were at Ashippun the following day. My father grew up there and his parents and some of his sisters are buried at the same church cemetery.

Our family could have stayed in the parsonage until a new pastor arrived. This would have been almost impossible, so some of the older ones in the family stayed on and helped my mother break up the household. Many things had to be disposed of, so it was very traumatic. Also, the car and cow had to be sold. All this was done in a week's time.

Those of us who had returned to Milwaukee after the funeral found a lower flat that met our needs quite well. It was light and cheery, and the backyard adjoined Concordia College. "Professor's Row" was just around the corner, and some professors lived on our block also. Being surrounded by Lutherans helped my mother adjust to life in the big city. Professor's wives and pastor's widows welcomed her into their circles. We single ones in Milwaukee moved in with the family, and we made friends with Concordia students and professor's families as well.

I hope you will not be bored with the following details about our family. My father graduated from Springfield Seminary in 1895. His first church was in Riley, Michigan, and from 1903 to 1925 he was pastor in Forestville. The other pastors in the family were my mother's two brothers and two brothers-in-law, my brother John, my brother-in-law Ted Hinck, and also a cousin.