Jon Meerdink

On December 26, 2019, I interviewed Grandma and Grandpa for about two hours. We sat and talked about their life and they answered as many questions as I could think of, although I’ve thought of quite a few more since then. You can listen to the interview via the player above, download the audio file to keep, and read through the whole interview below. — Jon

Jon: So I guess I wanted to start at the very beginning. What is the earliest thing that you remember?

Grandpa: The earliest thing that I remember is I was four years old. My mom had made me a new snowsuit out of my dad’s overcoat and it was so stiff I could hardly walk in it. I was outside in the snow and a cousin of mine, an older cousin, set me on top of a bird bath at a house a couple of houses down from us. And I had to use the bathroom and I couldn’t get off of the birdbath, so I used the bathroom anyhow. And I remember that vividly.

I also remember being in a pen where my parents had raised some geese. I was in the pen and I was chasing the geese around and all of a sudden a gander turned around and started chasing me and got ahold of me on the back of my neck and there was some screaming going on and I had to get rescued from it, from the goose attack. That’s about the earliest things I remember.

Jon: So you were born in…

Grandpa: 1935

Jon: So that would have been ‘39?

Grandpa: Yeah.

Jon: Okay. Grandma, when were you born?

Grandma: 1934. I’m older than this guy. Let’s see. First I remember…well, I was born in Waterford. Of course, I don’t remember that. We moved to Port Washington when I was pretty little. And that I don’t remember much of at all, except what I was told about and that was a little girl across the road that I played with. But then we moved to what is now Sauk Trail Road, and I remember more of that, of the old house where my dad had a mink ranch. 

I pretty much was outside with him. I didn’t hang around the house much. I was an outside person. So I helped in the mink ranch and I had a pet cat and a pet chicken and played on the front porch a lot with my sister. Played dolls and we’d drape a blanket across or something and make a house, you know. My brother…we did a lot of, well, we played basketball, baseball, played baseball out in back of the mink ranch [with] some of the neighbor kids. I did a lot of pitching to my brother, who stood in front of the barn. And I helped my dad in the mink ranch quite a bit, grinding mink food and that kind of thing. So when he’d butcher horses, that was when I was a little smaller, then I’d stand around the corner in the house so I couldn’t see what was going on, and then after the horse was down, then I was okay.

Jon: Butchering horses, was that for mink food?

Grandma: Yeah. And we had a whole bunch of chickens. One time we had a chicken thief.

Jon: A person?

Grandma: Yeah.

Jon: Not like a fox in the hen house?

Grandma: No, a person. Those are some of the things I remember.

Jon: What do you remember about your parents? What were their names? 

Grandma: What I remember about them in particular? Anything in particular?

Jon: Yeah.

Grandma: My dad was a hard, hard worker.

Jon: What was his name? I don’t remember that name.

Grandma: Jerry. Jerry Mulder. My mother’s name was Amelia but she was known as “Mil,” really.

Let’s see once. Yeah. My dad took care of the mink ranch pretty much by himself other than us kids. So I remember feeding them, the mink, and watering them and all that kind of stuff. When we’d go to Port Washington for a load of fish,

Grandpa: For mink food

Grandma: For mink food, yeah. So when we went to Port, we’d always want to go along because we could have a free smoked fish, a chubb, a smoked fish. That was a big treat. Yeah. And we didn’t have a fridge when I was little. We had a big freezer in our barn and we had an outhouse, of course. That was not so much fun.

Jon: How old were you when you had indoor plumbing for the first time?

Grandma: I guess when we built…oh, I don’t know…when we built the house, I guess?

Grandpa: When you were a freshman.

Jon: So, not until high school? That would have been mid-50s? Early 50s?

Grandma: Yeah, 49-50. Yeah. And my freshman year there was dramatic because I was sick. We were living in a garage and my best friend and I had an accident on Sauk Trail where she had lost her leg and stuff. That was pretty traumatic.

Jon: Driving?

Grandma: Riding bikes.

Grandpa: Got hit by a car.

Jon: Both of you?

Grandma: I was behind, so I didn’t get hit, or we didn’t get hit. But the ones in front of us, my friend and her friend, got hit. So that was a rough year, but yeah.

Grandpa: Your friend was also your next-door neighbor.

Grandma: Yes, and still is a good friend.

Jon: Where were your parents from? Were they from Port Washington or near there?

Grandma: No. My dad grew up in Sheboygan Falls, really, yeah. And my mom was born right in the area there where we lived, in the Town of Wilson. So, yeah. And my grandparents came from Holland. 

Jon: So you were only a second-generation immigrant?

Grandma: Yep.

Jon: What about you, Grandpa? What do you remember about your parents?

Grandpa: My dad’s name was Harry, and he grew up on a farm four or five miles northwest of Cedar Grove. And my mother, whose name was Gladys Meylink, she grew up about two miles west of Cedar Grove. My dad’s [dad], my grandpa, was a good farmer. He had 120 acres, but he almost lost the farm in the Depression and had to really scrimp and save to keep ownership of it. But my grandpa was a fussy guy as a farmer. He wanted to do things very right, and even for his family — they always ate the best food. He wanted to butcher a hog for himself, he fed it different than other hogs. Got it to how he liked. They ate the best of food.

My mother grew up, her dad was dead by the time she was a freshman in high school, so she had to stay home and help work on the farm, and they were not doing farming very well. They ate the poor stuff. They kept broken eggs for themselves or if a cow got down on ice or something like that, they would eat what they couldn’t sell and that. So it was quite a change for her when my parents got married. My dad always said buy the best and get the best food you can eat and use it all and don’t waste any and you’ll be all right. And he passed that on to mom and I, that idea, too. We’ve never been disappointed in that theory, either.

I had a good life growing up. Always had jobs. I started bean picking when I was eight years old. I went to the bean field for Krier Canning Company, and I could go when I was that young because my sisters, who are older than I was — 13 and 14 they were. My parents said “Don’t worry about it, they’ll take care of you. They’ll watch out for you. But we don’t expect you to fool around.” They expected me to pick 60 pounds a day at a penny and a half a pound, that was 90 cents. That wouldn’t have been acceptable a few years later, but it was for an eight-year-old boy. I didn’t always want to go, but I always had a lot of fun there, too. It was a good part of my life.

Jon: Was that your first job?

Grandpa: It really was my first job. That fall, I started trapping also.

Jon: When you were eight?

Grandpa: When I was eight years old. I had six traps. I only caught one muskrat the whole year. But that was the start of the trapping experience that lasted me all the way through high school and became a good thing for me. It became profitable. 

In 1951, the first year I had a driver’s license, I had 75 traps out. I made over $600 in 10 days from November 1st to November 10th of wet sets, which was more than my dad earned in a whole month working for the highway department, so that was a great year. Prices were good and I caught a lot of muskrats and mink and raccoons. But I was busy every night skinning, skinning, skinning until midnight, maybe, sometimes. But that was the most profitable year I ever had trapping. [Note: According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, $600 in 1951 has the same buying power as nearly $7,000 today.]

Jon: What happened to that money?

Grandpa: I had to save it. I turned my money over to my parents and they would ration it out to me as they thought I needed money. It was always my money, they didn’t keep it for themselves, but they made sure I didn’t spend it frivolously. 

Grandma: I guess my first job was bean picking, too, other than helping at home.

Grandpa: You were a little older when you started.

Grandma: Yeah, and we rode to the bean field in an open truck, sitting on our pail, and, let’s see once, that was exciting. 

Jon: Who would you go with?

Grandma: Just neighborhood kids, well, and kids from Oostburg.

Grandpa: Krier Preserving Company. It was a big canning company in Belgium.

Grandpa: When I was 12, I had my own field. I had pickers, and kids picking for me as well as myself picking. At night, we’d have to haul. My dad had a trailer behind the car, and we’d have to haul all the beans down to the plant down in Belgium, and they’d grade them and pay us accordingly for that. But that was a good year for me, too. 12 years old was my first business venture.

Jon: So who did you hire? Was it kids you knew?

Grandpa: Kids from town here. We’d have half a dozen kids who’d come and pick beans, and at that time you didn’t wreck the bushes, but you had a second or a third picking, and so it lasted for well over a month. But, yeah, that was my first independent business venture. That turned out to be profitable.

Jon: When did you start school? How old were you?

Grandpa: Six years old. First grade. There was no kindergarten at that time, so you started school at six. I started at Cedar Grove School, which had a pretty modern school. It had a four-room school plus a gymnasium. So there were first and second grade together, third and fourth, and so on. So you were in the same room for two years. But I started with 26 or 27 kids in my class, and Grandma had a much smaller —

Grandma: One-room school with movable partitions.

Grandpa: Two in your class.

Grandma: Well, when I graduated from eighth grade, yeah. There were two of us.

Jon: Wow.

Grandma: Yeah. We had a nice playground. Merry go-round. Teeter totters. That kind of stuff which you don’t have around anymore. But I played baseball with the boys quite a bit because there weren’t a whole lot of girls to play with. And then when I got a little older, talking about work, then I worked at Theune’s, with the tomato canning. We’d pick tomatoes, and first, we’d have to take off all the big caterpillars early in the season. And then we packed tomatoes too, later on, to be sent out. So that was probably the second job that I had.

Jon: So you would have been in school during World War II. How did that affect school? Did you guys know what was going on?

Grandpa: I knew what was going on because two of my uncles were in the military and were both involved in World War II in the European theater. One of them got wounded twice and sent back to England to recover and then sent back to the European/German/Nazi fighting again, and he was involved in the Battle of the Bulge, too, and this was my Uncle Marvin, one of my favorite uncles, so we knew when he was fighting and that. We prayed a lot for him and we’d look at the news and it was a pretty traumatic time to be growing up and seeing people that you know come back in a casket and know they got killed in the war. And some of them didn’t come back. They’d get buried somewhere in Europe or in the Japanese theater.

Grandma: I remember the blackouts.

Grandpa: Yeah, we’d have blackouts because we practiced air raids around here, too. My dad was an air raid warden. He’d have to walk around town to see any windows with lights in or anything, they had to be shut off, which thankfully never did matter. We never did have the war over here. Also during that time there was a great military emphasis of supporting the military, so meat was rationed, sugar was rationed and chocolate and anything like that, we had rationing books that we had to take if we wanted to buy anything. Gas was rationed. But it was a quiet time to grow up here because you didn’t do much moving about. You couldn’t travel or anything. It was a total involvement in the war effort. 

Jon: What was it like for you, Grandma?

Grandma: I didn’t have uncles that I knew of or anything that were in the service, so it probably didn’t impress me as much. But you knew it was going on. Listened to the radio a lot.

Grandpa: And the newspapers were full of it also. Made the most news. And then another thing that I remember was first when the United States entered the war, the war wasn’t going well. There were a lot of reversals and not-good reports. And America was a little late in getting ready for a full-fledged war, so until we had supplies and troops and that strategically placed, the war was not going that good, and then it started to go better and the news reports were more encouraging.

Jon: How did you play sports growing up?

Grandma: Well, I was not fortunate enough to play much sports, really. They didn’t, when I was in high school, of course, it was football and basketball, but I never got a chance to play sports.

Grandpa: Girls’ sports were not in high school at all at that time.

Grandma: I was born too soon.

Jon: Did that bother you?

Grandma: Pardon?

Jon: Did that bother you?

Grandma: Yeah! I would have…I envied the girls that were able to play sports later on. But…yeah, that’s the way it was.

Jon: And you wanted to be a PE teacher, didn’t you?

Grandma: At one time, yeah. But that didn’t work out either, so. Supposedly I had a heart murmur and they wouldn’t sign for me to play. That was before you went to doctors for another opinion, so.

Jon: Who would have been the doctor? Did the doctor come to you then?

Grandma: The doctor visited when you were sick. They would come to the home, yeah. But as we got older, that wasn’t the case.

Jon: What did you do for fun in high school?

Grandma: I was in some plays. Dramatic club was good. What else did I do for fun?

Jon: Do you remember any of the plays you were in?

Grandma: Yeah, Cheaper by the Dozen. I don’t know, a couple of different ones. Yeah, that was pretty much the extra stuff.

Grandpa: And you went to sporting events. Basketball, football games.

Grandma: yeah, in our one-room gym, standing behind one row of chairs, standing through the whole game. And I did my share of hollering, I know that.

Grandpa: She cheered against me.

Jon: Yeah, because you would have gone to rival high schools, Cedar Grove and Oostburg.

Grandma: Oh yes, big rivalry. Those naughty boys from Cedar Grove.

Jon: Did you know of each other in high school?

Grandma: I just knew by a group of boys, I think.

Grandpa: I noticed her.

Grandma: Oh, you didn’t.

Grandpa: Yeah, I did! I knew who you were, and I thought good things of you then already too.

Grandma: Then we went to Green Lake, that was another story.

Grandpa: Bible camp.

Grandma: Yeah, all the Reformed churches in Sheboygan County. And they were…we had a lot of kids. And we had one special night coming up, what did they call it?

Grandpa: Consecration night.

Grandma: Right. And I had a dress along for that.

Grandpa: A dress-up time toward the end of the week.

Grandma: And I stayed with some other girls in a cottage, and we were upstairs and it had a…you could open the doors and the windows. Well, these were doors kind of looking over the roof, I think.

Grandpa: And over the lake.

Grandma: Yeah. And anyway, I had my dress hanging there, and one night somebody threw in a dead, what was it?

Grandpa: It was a gopher.

Grandma: And it went on my dress that I had to wear to the candlelight service! To the special service.

Jon: Oh no!

Grandma: And it turned out it was those naughty boys from Cedar Grove.

Grandpa: And I was the thrower. We killed a gopher and we threw it into the window. And actually, it was after hours. We were all supposed to be in our cottages.

Grandma: That could be, I don’t remember. It was night.

Grandpa: We got out, some of us boys. She got blood on her dress that night from a dead gopher that we killed, and it came to light a number of years later. I had not known what we hit or any of the difficulties.

Grandma: But they were going after the Oostburg girls is what they were doing.

Grandpa: Causing trouble.

Jon: How did you end up meeting, then?

Grandpa: We didn’t meet then. We didn’t meet until 1954. The fall of ‘54. We both had a year of college, and she didn’t go back to Pella, to Central College in Pella, Iowa for a second year. And I got drafted into the Army after one year of going to UW-Sheboygan. And I worked during the summer until my induction day, which was the third of December in 1954. So I was working around building silos and stuff for Cedar Grove Block & Construction. And after work, we’d stop down by Lloyd’s Drive-in, which is now Mary’s Restaurant here, and have a cup of coffee and just be down there with a bunch of guys, and she was a waitress there. So we talked across the counter is the way we met, and after a couple months of talking, on the third of November, 1954, we were talking in the afternoon and I said “Did you ever go roller skating?” And she said yes, so I said “How about we go roller skating tonight?” and she said yes. 

Grandma: And I didn’t really like roller skating, but I went anyway.

Grandpa: And she had a boyfriend at the time, too —

Grandma: I did!

Grandpa: — that she was writing to in the service in Hawaii. So we had a good night that night. It was a pleasant night. And we saw each other every day for a month before I got inducted, and by that time she had a new boyfriend. 

Jon: Grandma, what do you remember about meeting Grandpa?

Grandma: I just knew that they came in with a bunch of guys and had coffee and were chatting back and forth. I wasn’t thinking of dating, I guess, because I was busy with someone else. But he won out.

Grandpa: Yeah, I did, didn’t I?

Grandma: One night we went for a ride and I had to say one way or another, you know?

Grandpa: And now I don’t know if it was the way, or the other.

Grandma: Oh dear.

Jon: What were dates like? 

Grandpa: A movie or sit down and talk about politics and—

Grandma: Yeah right, no. We did drive down to the lake, I guess, but we didn’t stay there long.

Grandpa: We’d discuss the moon, things like that. It was a good matchup. And she took me to the induction center at Fort Ellis in Sheboygan on the morning that I had to leave for basic training, and she came and got me from Fort Leonardwood, Missouri when I was done with my first eight weeks.

Jon: You went down to Missouri? Did you drive yourself?

Grandma: Yeah.

Grandpa: Well, no, that was with—

Grandma: Oh yeah, that was with Phyllis and John.

Grandpa: My sister and her husband. 

Grandma: Yeah, you’re right.

Grandpa: By that time we had a very good, solid relationship and a couple of months later we were engaged.

Grandma: But before you went in the service, we went to the Silver Diner in Milwaukee.

Grandpa: Oh yeah, the day before…I was inducted on a Monday morning, so Sunday afternoon we took a long ride around the Kettle Moraine State Park and we ended up in the north side of Milwaukee. There was a good eating place there called the Port Silver Diner. A regular old diner, like a couple of railcars hooked together.

Grandma: Shiny.

Grandpa: We had a great steak supper. The first time she had eaten a filet mignon.

Grandma: Pretty good!

Grandpa: Yes, it was pretty good. And everything was pretty good.

Jon: How much did a steak dinner run you?

Grandpa: At that time probably four dollars or something. Maybe even less, I don’t know.

Grandma: In fact, it was right across the road from what’s Kopps now.

Grandpa: Right, right on the north side there. And the rest of the story, the Paul Harvey part of it is, we got engaged on Memorial Day of 1955, and we got married one year later on Memorial Day weekend of 1956. And I still had time in the Army, like ‘till December, and we were going to move her down to Skokie, Illinois, and we found out that the rent on an apartment was more than the pay that a corporal pay in the Army could get in a whole month, so we had to avoid that plan, and I just came home on the weekends. 

Grandma: Then I was working at Kohler Company doing a man’s job there.

Jon: What was the job you had there?

Grandma: I was a machinist, yeah.

Grandpa: Cut keyways in crankshafts and milling machines.

Grandma: Cutting a crankshaft with really black oil and oh my goodness

Jon: You’d have been 21?

Grandma: Yeah.

Grandpa: She worked there until I got out of the service.

Jon: What was the work environment being a woman in the 50s in a machine shop?

Grandma: It wasn’t a job for a woman, really, what I did. It was —

Grandpa: A little heavy

Grandma: Yes, it was a little heavy. Those were big crankshafts.

Grandpa: But there were a lot of women working at Kohler at that time.

Grandma: [unintelligible] inspection or something like that. I don’t know how I ended up with something like that, but that was what was available, I guess.

Grandpa: The whole work environment you’re speaking about, in World War II the whole work environment changed because women went to work because men were in service. There weren’t young men available to come and fill the positions because they got drafted in the war effort, so women filled a lot of these positions. So I think actually that was the start of women in manufacturing, to a bigger degree of that, because of the lack of young men.

Grandma: Yeah, because it wasn’t much later than that and the building I was in was no longer even — there were no women there any longer.

Jon: So when did you get involved with the construction business?

Grandpa: Well, I got out of service on December 4 of ‘56, and I had already applied for a job at Boland’s Manufacturing in Port Washington because I decided I wasn’t going back to college. So I got out of service, and I worked there for about five months and then I decided I did not want to work in a production assembly line job my whole life, so I went back to construction work with what was Cedar Grove Block & Construction in the spring of ‘57. And in December of ‘58, I bought into the company.

Grandma: Before that we lived in Oostburg when you were working at Boland’s and then we moved to Cedar Grove.

Grandpa: Yeah, our apartment was not ready for us when I got out of the Army, so we lived in the house of a lady who went south for the winter in Oostburg’s house. But then together we bought into the company. We raised, we took our money, and also a bank wouldn’t give me any money to buy into it, so my dad gave us money, didn’t give us money, he loaned us money at the interest rate at what he could get paid in the bank and bought into that with Earl Meinen and Warren Heinen. Warren in the carpentry end of it and Earl and I in the masonry and concrete end of the company. And we sold the company — all my life I was what you might call my own boss, and yet all the people you work for doing jobs are really your boss. But it worked out well.

We were profitable and then came 1980 with what they call the Carter Depression. Jimmy Carter was president from ‘76 until ‘80, and things went downhill in the whole economy of the whole United States, and in 1980 it was a real task to find work. We had about 10 or 11 guys working, and I was really the expediter and quoter and I was secretary and treasurer, but that meant that I did all of the pricing of the jobs and that. And I was looking for jobs for people to keep them. I didn’t want to lay off our guys because we had good guys working for us, and I thought “This is not going to last for long.” But interest rates were 18-20%, so who could afford to do anything residential? Hardly no one. 

And fortunately, and unfortunately for Pinehurst Farms, [it] burned down. A big farm operation. And two days later, a guy called and said “When do we start rebuilding?” President Reagan had been elected president. The economy was turning around, and by the time we finished that job we were out of the depression and things were going well again. I worried that I might have to say “We’re going to lose the whole thing” in early 1980, but God was with us and we had work and we prospered. 

Grandpa: And we sold the business in 1995, so we were 36 years in business and it was good for us. By that time we had built some apartments and things to take up a little slack time and we had 16 rental apartments that we owned when we sold the business. And I was 59 years old and maybe a little early to retire, which I did not retire, either, because Willman Industries was one of our best customers, and they took me on and I had a commercial driver’s license. 

I did a lot of running around for them at my own convenience most of the time. They’d say if I was busy with something else then I didn’t have to do it, but I always tried to accommodate them if they had needs. And it became almost a full-time job. By the time I was 70 years old, I was working every day, sometimes up to 12 hours delivering for them and it was getting too much. We said “Let’s break this off,” and we did. The only time I did something else for them was if their regular driver had a problem that I had to go and pick up. He got sick along the way sometimes with some disease that he had and that, and I’d have to go and finish the route and bring his truck back. But it was an enjoyable thing to do because I really had no responsibility like I did when I was running the construction company, finding jobs that paid, and all that, so. 

But one thing I would say, the whole thing that buying into the business that made it possible was that my dad trusted us enough to give us money to get started with it. And he had grown up in the depression when a lot of things failed, so he was conscious of that. But he must have had confidence in me and gave us money to get involved in that, or loaned us money.

Grandma: Although he did ask you “Are you sure of this?”

Grandpa: Yeah, he did ask me. He said, “Are you sure this can work?” And I was all enthused about doing it and that, and I thought “How could it miss?” But after I was in it a while, I realized there were a lot of things that had to go right.

Jon: What made you sure it could work?

Grandpa: Youthful enthusiasm.

Grandma: Yeah, and three kids and a wife.

Grandpa: Yeah. Your grandma is as much responsible for the success as I am because she kept the home front organized and going and was a good, good manager of the home and that was really the most important thing.

Grandma: We had moved several times.

Grandpa: We had built a new house for ourselves in 1965, six years later. I would say the business was going pretty good because we had paid it off by 1970. But she did not throw money away, either. She was very conservative.

Jon: So Lynn is the oldest. When was she born?

Grandma: 1957.

Grandpa: October 3rd. And Jill was born in ‘59

Grandma: ‘59. February.

Grandpa: ‘59, February 18th. And your dad, Jan, was born in ‘62, February 1st. So by the time we were 27 years old, we had three kids, a business, and that’s what we had in ‘62.

Grandma: Well, and we rented a couple of houses, the upstairs here in town in Cedar Grove.

Grandpa: Rented an apartment for $30 a month.

Grandma: And the washing machine was way in the basement. We were about three flights of steps up. Yeah, lots of up and down over the years. But yeah, then we moved south of town and had a nice place there for the kids growing up. We had quite a big yard. We had oodles of rabbits.

Grandpa: Rabbits, we raised some rabbits.

Grandma: And our dog ran off with a beagle. Our rat terrier ran off with a beagle and we had some pups.

Grandpa: Some beagle terrier pups.

Jon: I bet that was a high-energy combination.

Grandpa: I would say it was. And we kept one that was the dopest of the litter. He was a very, very floppy and that —

Grandma: Sporty.

Grandpa: And he turned out to be a very good dog.

Grandma: And what was after that? We moved close to Carolyn. We lived by Warren and Carolyn in the basement for a while while they built our house.

Grandpa: Actually what happened is the guy who owned the house sold the house, so we had to get out and we were forced to build the new one. And we lived by Carolyn and Warren for a couple of months while we were building a new house. My sister Carolyn. A lot of things went right for us about that time, too. We prospered and

Grandma: And we lived in town and we lived out of town

Grandpa: We lived in our new house from ‘65 to ‘73, then we bought the farm west of town and remodeled the old house that was on it. A good house, but then a 90-year-old lady had been living in it before, so nothing happened for about 30 years at the place, so we had to bring it all up to date.

Grandma: Which was actually a relative on my side of the family. Well, a relative.

Grandpa: Yeah, it was your dad’s aunt who had been living there.

Grandma: And they had built the house, right?

Grandpa: Pardon?

Grandma: What year was that house built?

Grandpa: The house was built in 1913

Grandma: my great—

Grandpa: By your great aunt and her husband. Albert Droppers.

Grandma: There we had a dumb waiter.

Grandpa: Actually, that house was a good house built in the time it was built. It was still a good house when we bought it, but it had the features of 1913. Have you heard of a dumb waiter? You put your milk and butter and things in and drop it down into the basement over the cistern, which was the coolest part of the house, a cistern that collected the roof water that they used for laundry water and that. The well water went for the potable water, that came from the well. But laundry water and that came from a cistern, from the roof water, which we knocked out of the house. We took the cistern out, too.

Grandma: Put a shower and stuff in there. Yup.

Grandpa: But it was a good place

Grandma: And then we had a good dog

Grandpa: we had a good dog there too, yeah

Jon: Was that Snooks?

Grandpa: That was Snooks, yeah.

Grandma: And we had quite a few cats.

Grandpa: Dogs and cats, yeah. It was a great place for our kids to grow up. They could walk to town. It was only half a mile, it was, to town. And the town is out there now, just about.

Grandma: Jan could go out in back and trap and hunt. And we had a couple of special cats: Tiger and Carrots. Orange cats. Once in a while, they got to sleep in bed.

Grandpa: Or on the bed.

Grandma: On the bed. Yeah, but not very often. That was pretty unusual. But one night, I know, Snooks had my place in bed, too. So I said “A dog or me?” I won out.

Grandpa: It was not a contest.

Grandma: Oh, I know.

Jon: What do you remember about following sports growing up? Were you sports fans?

Grandma: Yeah, we were.

Grandpa: Very much so. In my high school years and even in that first year of college, the passion was basketball. It somewhat shaped my life in a lot of ways, too. Decision-making in basketball, of all sports, it can be going one way, it can turn to go the other way instantly with an intercepted pass or something. You have to make a lot of quick decisions. A pass that’s a half a second late is a no-good pass, so you have to be decisive in that. I credit my decision-making, a lot of times, on being exposed to that and having to make right decisions if you’re going to be a winner. And I had a great coach who was a father figure, actually, to me, in high school. My dad had suffered a nervous, depression time for a little while, so it was a hard time for me as a teenager. And the coach actually filled in some blanks for me there. That was good. And my dad did recover from that. He was a great dad. He was a great, great dad to me. And like I said before, his contribution to our being in business for a lifetime was financing our first efforts, which we paid him back with interest of maybe what he could get in the bank, maybe two or three percent at the time. So we had some cheap money, too.

Grandma: But sports, if you backtrack, I mean it used to be that, like, Oostburg had a village team. The teams in the area would all have, the towns I should say, all had teams. Baseball teams. And that was a big thing at night. My folks had a popcorn machine, so we’d go to the village park and sell popcorn at the games. But those were pretty well-attended and there was quite a bit of competition between the areas. Cedar Grove, Oostburg, Hingham.

Grandpa: Waldo, Gibbsville, Cascade, Millersville.

Grandma: That was a lot of entertainment, then.

Grandpa: Fast pitch softball, it was.

Jon: You would have been a little bit younger than I am when Vince Lombardi came to Green Bay. Do you remember that?

Grandpa: I do! Lisle Blackbourn was the coach before and he was a loser. Lombardi came and the whole scheme turned around and became a success story. And the Packers were really about to fold around 1958-59-60, and that’s when they sold a bunch of Packers’ stock and got some money together again to get the team on an upward swing and Vince Lombardi came and the passion of the audience of the sports fan turned. You could get Packers tickets any time up until then. In fact, after Mom and I were married, we’d go to Milwaukee County Stadium to see a Packers game. We had no tickets. We’d walk in and buy a ticket at the ticket window and go to the seat. And after it started to get successful again, then all the tickets were bought up, and I guess from that time you’d have to get on the waiting list to get a ticket, which I guess is pretty long.

Jon: So you went to County Stadium?

Grandpa: County Stadium, went to Green Bay sometimes. Never when it was the old City Stadium. I know where it was and what it looked like, but never until they built the new stadium. But today’s stadium is a far cry from what the original Lambeau Field was. But we’d go on complimentary tickets from the vendors from the construction company. We’d get great seats, 20 rows up on the 50-yard line. It was a great ticket to go to Green Bay.

Jon: Were you conscious of it growing up? Pro football was not what it is today.

Grandpa: I knew what it was and I played neighborhood football. I had a couple footballs myself. One Sid Luckman and one Johnny Lujack football. I think probably the Bears were as much a favorite as the Packers growing up. But it was different listening on the radio as it was watching on the TV screen, too. That whole thing came a long, long ways as did the game change and the money involved in it. All of the original Packers around ‘60 had summer jobs, you know, to make it go. Yeah, I remember a few of the old names that were there at the beginning like Tony Canadeo, and the Hornungs and Taylors and Bart Starr came along.

Grandma: Bart Starr was a favorite for a long time.

Grandpa: For a long time because he was a hero of the Lombardi years. But it was a great diversion to go see a game or something, too, at that time.

Jon: What was baseball like? Were you baseball fans?

Grandpa: Yeah. Actually, when I was growing up, we’d go to Chicago on the train a couple of times a year. The terminal was right near Wrigley Field, so we could walk a couple of blocks over from the Chicago Northwestern Depot in Chicago and go to a Cubs game. And there too we could buy tickets to get in and even get close up. One year I remember we had a ticket right on the first base side. Phil Cavaretta was a first baseman for the Cubs, which was a…we liked him a lot. We were sitting right there. But you could go for…it was not expensive. I don’t remember what it was, but I’m sure for $10 you could go to the game. Get the railroad ticket and back at night on the 9:00 train and go to the Cubs game and eat a yard of hot dogs and have a couple of lemonades and stuff. So it wasn’t real expensive to do, but it was quite an adventure, which I wouldn’t let any kid go like that today when they’re 12 years old. Get down there, it wasn’t dangerous at that time.

Grandma: Grandpa got to go a lot. I really didn’t venture out that much because we were country people. He was city.

Jon: Big city of Cedar Grove. How many people were in Cedar Grove when you were growing up?

Grandpa: The first thing I remember on the population sign on the edge of town was 709. It probably was close to that until…we were maybe 1,000 people when I got out of high school. I remember it being 709 population.

Jon: Grandma, what were you going to say? You said you didn’t get to venture out that much.

Grandma: No, my dad couldn’t get away very much because he was—

Grandpa: He was working two jobs.

Grandma: —the only one. Working two jobs, yeah. And my mother didn’t drive, and she was pretty much home. Well, I guess she did go out and work. She did some sewing. She was a great seamstress. She did do some factory work for a while in Belgium.

Grandpa: Shoe factory.

Grandma: Shoe factory, yeah. But I don’t even know how she got there because she didn’t drive herself.

Grandpa: At that time she was starting to drive.

Grandma: Maybe that is about the time that she started, yeah. But he got around much more than I did as far as out and about.

Jon: Did you listen to things on the radio?

Grandma: Yes. Oh yes. Get home from school and listen to the radio.

Jon: What did you listen to?

Grandma: Oh, I don’t know at all anymore. What did we…?

Grandpa: I know what I listened to, but I don’t know what you listened to.

Grandma: I listened to a lot of the same stuff.

Grandpa: Afternoon was Tom Mix

Grandma: Tom Mix, that’s just what I was going to say. And, yeah.

Grandpa: The Lone Ranger. Captain Midnight. All suspense, hero things. Superman was on for 15 minutes at about 4:00 in the afternoon.

Grandma: Listened to the news.

Grandpa: There’s a smile over there (meaning Liz, just out of the room)

Jon: There is a famous Superman storyline: Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan. Do you remember that?

Grandpa: I don’t

Grandma: I don’t either

Grandpa: Every afternoon, Superman made a dramatic rescue. Up, up, and away. Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to climb tall buildings in a single stride.

Grandma: And the news, Gabriel Heatter

Grandpa: And war news. Every night at 8 o’clock at night we’d crowd around the Philco radio, and for 15 minutes we got the war news. What was happening. Some of it was real, some of it was propaganda, too. But he would, Gabriel Heater, he was a commentator after it was time on, he would always tell what news was going to come because his first word was “Ahhhh, there’s bad news tonight,” or “Ahhh, there’s good news tonight.” And then we’d hear what was going on and we thought we were getting an accurate report, and maybe we were and maybe we turned out, after the war.

Jon: Did you wonder at the time if it was accurate?

Grandpa: No, then you just think “This is the way it is.” So, propaganda happens on all sides and even today, there’s a lot of agenda in all the news, you’d say.

Grandma: When did you have your first TV? I think ours was 1950. A little Zenith.

Grandpa: We got one just before I got out of high school, so it would have been ‘53 or something like that.

Grandma: So we had one before you. We had one when we built the stone house on Sauk Trail that was a Zenith upright with a screen about, what? 

Grandpa: 12, 15, 17 inch. 21-inch got to be a real big one. That was nice to have a real big screen, 21 inch.

Jon: Do you remember what you watched?

Grandma: I can’t say that I do, really. Well, the news, of course, because I can remember my Grandma Mulder, a little tiny lady, sitting there and arguing with the TV. That I can remember.

Jon: How old would she have been?

Grandma: Would she have been then?

Grandpa: Close to 90 years old.

Grandma: Yeah, I would say. She would get disgusted.

Grandpa: Liked to talk back.

Grandma: Yeah, liked to talk back to the TV.

Grandpa: But we’d have special shows that we watched. We watched the Ed Sullivan Show, which was a variety show. We watched the Texaco Star Theater, which had, somewhat the same as the Ed Sullivan Show, was a variety show. And there would be some of comic soap operas like…

Grandma: I guess that was before the Red Skelton show. 

Grandpa: Yeah, he was a comedian on there.

Grandma: There was the Three Stooges.

Grandpa: Well, they didn’t have a show, but they were a part of a lot of other shows. And then there was the quiz shows like Groucho Marx and the 64 Dollar Question. Imagine people crowding around and cheering for someone to win $64. Man, the $64 Question.

Grandma: Was it $64? I was thinking it was more than that.

Grandpa: It was the $64 question. They had to build up to that by answering. You get a wrong one and you were chopped off. Bankrupt. Out of here. And there were shows like Father Knows Best and Green Acres, which was a comedy, family show.

Grandma: Yeah, there were some good family shows.

Grandpa: They had a buffoon and a mother who was stable and the father was always getting caught in a trap of some kind. There were…we had a choice of two stations. That was about it. Channel 6 and Channel 4. A lot of adjustments on the TV. Always have it set just right and then it would go all snowy, you gotta go on and get it adjusted again.

Grandma: We didn’t have a remote, that’s for sure.

Grandpa: But those were good times. We had a lot of neighborhood games and that growing up. Kids would come out at night after supper. We’d meet at Duenk’s corner and play Kick the Can and Captain, May I? and some of those games. 

Grandma: That we had, too, out in the country. Neighborhood kids would get together and, yeah.

Grandpa: Another thing: you were satisfied with less because it seemed like everybody had less. I never went to the circus, but I did go to the circus to watch them unload when the circus train came into Sheboygan, we were there about 3:30 in the morning to watch them unload and set up the big top and all of that stuff and watch the elephants pull the carts around and pull the ropes of the tent so the tent could come up. But I guess we couldn’t afford to go to the circus itself, but we could stand and watch them in the railyard, unloading the cars and circus wagons and stuff. But it was satisfactory living. We were, we had loving parents who we said “They’ll take care of us, I guess.” If we didn’t say it out loud it was our feeling, that. And they did love us and do good for us and bring us up. It was, I would say for myself, I had a good life. I should have nothing to complain about.

Grandma: Yeah, so did I.

Grandpa: It was pleasant, even in retrospect, when sometimes I thought it wasn’t pleasant when you couldn’t do something you wanted to do. But it was good for character-building. It was the same then as it’s been in every generation. We would tell our parents we wanted to do something. “Everybody’s doing it!” And then if they didn’t call up everybody and find out that everybody wasn’t doing it, maybe we got to go.

Grandma: Of course when we called up, years ago, it was on a party line.

Jon: Yeah! When did you get a phone?

Grandma: Well I guess in the new house, too, which was in the 1950s.

Grandpa: We had a phone as long as I can remember. It was a cabinet on the wall with a hand ringer and you had to ring to central and she would plug in the connections at the central telephone.

Grandma: 7 3 F 1 3. One long one and three short ones. That was our number at home. And then, you wanted to use the phone, you’d pick up the receiver and, oh, somebody’s talking. And then some of the older ladies would stay on that phone forever and you wanted to use it, so then you’d hang it up kind of loudly, wait a little while, pick it up again, oh they’re still talking.

Grandpa: In the country, they’d have as many as 10 or 11 people on one line. In town, we only had four people on one line.

Grandma: Sometimes, it was pretty hard to get a hold of the phone.

Jon: So you got indoor plumbing and a phone and a TV almost all at the same time.

Grandma: All at the same time!

Grandpa: And a brand new car they got. The mink ranch was good that year!

Jon: That’s what I was going to ask about. What kind of car do you remember driving?

Grandma: Well, I drove…that one was a Chevy, that brown one was what I learned on. Well, I might have learned on the Dodge, I don’t know. But I was driving tractors before that. We had an Allis-Chalmers, and I drove that quite a bit. So I was used to…

Grandpa: She was used to the clutch.

Grandma: …and the shifting, except for when I had to take my driver’s test. We went to Sheboygan, and on Indiana Avenue where that hill is? That I was really nervous about, because I had to stop at the top and then start again without going backwards down the hill. That I remember real well. It didn’t cost us anything. I don’t think we had to pay.

Grandpa: For our license?

Grandma: Not the driving for it. Not the training, or whatever you want to call it. We didn’t have to pay for that.

Grandpa: No, your parents took you around and said “Can you do it?” And you’d say “Yeah, I can do it.” And then you went to get your license. As I remember it was $2 to get your driver’s license. And I still got my first one.

Jon: Really?

Grandpa: Yeah.

Jon: That would have been 1951?

Grandpa: 1951.

Jon: You go right away when you turned 16?

Grandma: Oh, couldn’t wait.

Grandpa: Oh, even before. I got temporaries before. You had to have a temporary license for, you had to hold that for a month or something before you could take for your permanent license. 

Grandma: Read the book.

Grandpa: And when my license, my dad had just got a brand new ‘50 Pontiac. And he didn’t want me to wreck with, which I probably would have. He said, “You have to buy your own car.” And I had enough money to buy a car, but I didn’t have enough money to buy the real car I wanted. And cars were expensive in 1950 because you gotta remember there were five years when no cars were built because of the war. So my first car was a ‘41 Chevy Superdeluxe with an under-seat heater and a push-button radio and a motor that was shot, actually. It was not good at all. But we bought it, I bought it, and it wasn’t too long afterwards, a guy rolled over a ‘57 Chevy out on 141 and my dad knew about it. The car was totaled, so we went to the junkyard and bought the motor for 25 bucks out of that car and took it to a garage on Sauk Trail, which is no longer there, and the guys took the motor and put it in the old car that I had for $35, just for putting it in. So I had a pretty good car for a while, but I took care of that after a while, too, it wasn’t good anymore. 

Grandma: And I guess my first car was a 1939 Ford?

Grandpa: Yeah, you had a ‘39 Ford two-door. 

Grandma: Shift on the floor.

Grandpa: With a little V8 in it.

Grandma: Went back and forth to the restaurant for work with that. Yeah.

Grandpa: And when I was buying a car, another thing from my dad, I wanted to buy a better car than I had money for, and he said “If you can’t pay for it, that’s not the car you want. You don’t want to borrow money to buy a car.” So we never did in our whole life. 

Jon: What was the car you wanted to buy?

Grandpa: Well, it was a ‘41 Ford that the Hoekstra brothers in Sheboygan had, and that one has a V8 in it, that was a more spunky car than that Chevy. And later I did buy one of those after a couple of years I bought a ‘41 Ford. Another mistake, because the engine was going bad, too, and, yeah

Grandma: I can remember in one of those cars, we went for a ride and you put the gas pedal way down and we went

Grandpa: oh, I was showing off for you, yeah.

Grandma: We went pretty fast, I know that!

Grandpa: The next one I bought was a ‘48 Chevy while I was in high school yet. And then when we were dating but we weren’t married yet, and I was in Skokie I wanted a better car, I moved up to a ‘53 Chevy, that blue one we had after we were married, even. So, yeah. 

Grandma: Lots of water over the dam.

Jon: What do you remember about having kids?

Grandma: Well, yeah. That was a lot of work.

Grandpa: It was good. It was very good.

Grandma: That was, well actually, at first they were born in Cedar Grove. All of them.

Jon: The doctor came to you again?

Grandpa: You went to doctor visits. The doctor’s office. Without an appointment you’d go there and sit there until…if there were 10 people in the office at night, doctor’s usually had night appointments or visits. But in the daytime they were making housecalls and stuff, so you would sit there until it was your turn to go see the doctor. 

Grandma: Doctor Jensen.

Grandpa: Doctor Jensen.

Grandma: First, Doctor Voskuil, but that was years before that.

Grandpa: Doctor Voskuil was very old, and Doctor Jensen came to town out of medical school in 1947. But you want to know, if a girl birthed a girl, the doctor’s charge for your pre-inspections and all that, $50 for a girl. $75 for a boy because circumcision was involved. So your dad was the last one in ‘62 for us. We had all of our kids when I was 27 years old. And when we were 45, we were empty nesters already. Imagine that.

Grandma: The first big investment we had was when you bought the backhoe, right? That was before Lynn.

Grandpa: Oh yeah. The first year I was out of the service, building silos in the summer, I was working for the company then. And we got by a guy, there was a nice, brand new, International 300 with a Davis backhoe on it, the guy that dug the hole. And I was looking at it and talking to the farmer, and I said “How come he leaves it here?” And he said “That’s my son-in-law’s and he wanted to buy it. He wanted to have a second job.” He worked at a factory in West Bend during the daytime and he was going to do digging at night for people for cemeteries. But he said, “It doesn’t work out very good because he’s too lazy.” And he said, “You want to buy it?” So I said, “How much is it?” He said, “Take up the payments he owes on it from the International Harvester dealer and it’s yours.” I asked him what it was and it was like $2700 or something like that that he owed on it. 

Grandma: I had saved money, probably more than you did, from being in the Army. I had saved from working at Kohler. So that was a big purchase.

Grandpa: That was a business venture. Owned that for a couple of years and did some digging at night for foundations and stuff with that. But then that I had to sell, too, when we bought into the business to get some money.

Grandma: Plus, that was about the time you broke your collarbone. You were sitting on there with your one arm.

Grandpa: I was digging with one arm on the controls on there because I had broke my collarbone playing softball at night. That was right away when we bought it. I brought it home from there with a broken collarbone. I drove it all the way home, bumpity bump all the way from West Bend, and my collarbone was killing me.

Jon: That’s a haul from West Bend!

Grandpa: Yeah, that was 25 miles with a tractor with a backhoe on it. And it was one of the bigger ones of the hydraulic backhoes in that day. But I dug a bunch of stuff, put water lines in for farmers and that. But I always had to do it at night because I was working in the daytime. But the day that I said we’d buy it, that night I broke my collarbone. 

Jon: Playing softball?

Grandpa: Playing softball.

Jon: How’d that happen?

Grandpa: I ran into another guy. I was a third baseman and they were knocking up flies to the outfield and I went back, I was going to catch one that was short in warming up. I was running backwards to catch it and a guy from the outfield, bang, we hit. Broken collarbone.

Grandma: That was when we were living in town here back by the railroad tracks. Three stories up. We had to haul up all of our fuel for the stoves and he had one arm.

Jon: What’d you think of that?

Grandma: Not too much!

Grandpa: We needed money and I couldn’t work on construction for six weeks, so I got a job at the canning factory. It was corn season. I was a timekeeper in the cook room. So that’s what I did for a little bit of money. It wasn’t paying what I was earning otherwise, but we had to have something. 

Grandma: Of course, we didn’t have to spend much on diapers. They were all cloth.

Grandpa: Yeah, all cloth diapers.

Grandma: Two girls in diapers at the same time.

Grandpa: Lynn was already born at that time.

Grandma: All three of them were born upstairs.

Grandpa: Kind of going back and forth in the timeline here.

Grandma: Yeah, it’s kind of mixed up, but you can’t think of it all.

Grandpa: That was another good customer of ours, the Calumet Dutch Canning Company because they’d give us a lot of work. Built two new canning factories for them. One in Waldo, one here. We built a stew packing place in Waldo, and then we built a big warehouse in here and all the time little jobs for them, too. And Willman Industries was our best, consistent customer, right up to the end of our time and then I did stuff for them after that, too. And we also did a lot of work for like Schneider Cheese Company. We built their whole plant. Gibbsville Cheese, we did some work for that. 

Commercial work was always better than residential for profitable and you didn’t go late at night like for building a house for them. We spent a lot of time on the estimate, and then they’d say “This house is more than we can afford” and we’d have to remodel it or chop it off. They always would say, we’d say “You gotta get the price down, you gotta chop some things out.” They never wanted to chop things out, then you’re trying to get the price down, you maybe end up not getting the job at all, or sometimes they could rationalize themselves and say “Yeah, I know I can’t have the big three seasons room on the back” or something. I didn’t like residential work near as much as commercial work besides having to go at night and visit with them. Commercial you go and they are ready, “We’re going to do something, and it’s going to happen.” The only thing is if there’s a couple of bidders in there and you don’t get the low bid, but that, you can’t do all the work in the world anyhow. 

Jon: Grandma, did you stay at home with the kids until they were grown?

Grandma: Yeah, and then once they were out of school, maybe, before that I worked in the canning factory a little bit. And then after they were out, yeah, then I took care of the place for quite a while and then I went to Thomas INdustries yet for 10 years. That was in ‘88 to ‘98.

Grandpa: You worked in the canning factory after the kids were out of school.

Grandma: One year. One full year.

Grandpa: But you didn’t work while the kids were in school.

Grandma: Yeah, not while the kids were in school and stuff. It started out you worked just part-time, then one year full time, then that’s when a friend of mine and I said “oh, we didn’t get any benefits. We may as well go somewhere you get some benefits.” so that’s how I got to Thomas.

Jon: I remember visiting you there.

Grandma: That was a little bit of a challenge. Piecework, which i wasn’t used to.

Jon: What were you making there?

Grandma: A lot of medical stuff. Compressors.

Grandpa: Nebulizers and aspirators.

Grandma: Yeah, stuff like that. Worked on a line with about five other people, and the men were easier to work with than the women.

Jon: Why’s that?

Grandma: Why’s that? Well, they weren’t so afraid of helping you out if you got behind or something. With women, you just go so far and then oh, well, too bad. 

Grandpa: And they were more catty. She would come home and say that a lot of times. It’s easier to work on the line with men than with women.

Grandma: And then later on I was by myself, I did some bagging and stuff like that. Parts, I took care of bagged parts and stuff.

Grandpa: It was good for her to get into that, see what the world is like after staying at home for so long because she would complain and then pretty sure she would understand that these women were going through some difficult times. She learned to give them a little room in their life. They had a whole different lifestyle than ours.

Grandma: Most of them worked from one check to the next.

Grandpa: and they had my kids and his kids and our kids, I kicked my old man out of the house and all that kind of stuff. They were a little rougher.

Grandma: A little rough around the edges, yeah.

Grandpa: A lot of times after a while, you said especially, you said “Wendy is really a good person, she just had a tough life growing up” and that. And she wasn’t grown up yet then, even.

Grandma: I still keep in touch with a couple of them. You see them in the Sheboygan area when you’re shopping and stuff like that. Yeah.

Jon: When did you get involved with Faith Reformed?

Grandpa: Actually, what happened was we were First Reformed Church, and the church was overfull, which is a big church. That’s a big auditorium. And then we were…every Sunday they were setting extra chairs down the aisles to accommodate the congregation. And the fire department said “This is not good. You have to do something.” The church said, “Well, let’s have an 8 o’clock service in the morning and that will go from 8 until 9:30. Then we’ll have Sunday School, then we’ll have the 11 o’clock service.” So, two services. Early and late. And people can decide which one they want to come to.” 

And at that time, everybody wanted to come to the 8 o’clock service in the morning. So we didn’t really gain anything. Only a few people came to the second service. So the question was put to the congregation: do you want to build on here, which would be a hard church to build onto with how it’s constructed there, or do you want to have a second Reformed church in Cedar Grove? So we voted for the second Reformed church. 

But then you had who was going to be committed to go to the new church. That was in 1963. And my whole family, my parents, both of my sisters and their families and us were part of the group that went to Faith Church. And in 1964, we built the new church. Up until then, we met in the gymnasium of the elementary school. But then the new church was established and the old church, First Reformed, helped in financing the new building. And so it was like a mother/daughter church. A situation that worked out well. And then we grew to be the church that we are now, and we’ve had a couple building programs, expansions on it.

Grandma: And there’s still back and forth with First Church.

Grandpa: We do some things together. Our youth programs are tied together, which works out well. Yeah, there’s a common church picnic in the summer time and Bible school was first in Faith Reformed Church and now First Presbyterian Church joined in the Bible school in an effort to have one Bible school. So we’ve got fifty years of that in already, from ‘64 until a couple of years ago. It would have been 2014. We celebrated our 50th anniversary with a nice celebration. We’re on our eighth pastor now from the start. It worked out well.

Grandma: Everybody gets along good. I mean, the church is, you know, no problems.

Grandpa: Well, there is a problem in the denomination right now. There’s a problem with people who are, with the whole gay program, it’s a problem but we don’t have to go into that. There’s some reason to have a disconnect with the denomination of churches that are that liberal. But other than that, we’ve got the basic reformed church standard of unity is the Belgic Confession, the Canons of the Synod of Dort, and the Heidelberg Catechism which are as good a statement of faith as you’re going to get. And if you don’t want to abide by that, I don’t know. It’s mostly eastern churches and New Jersey, New York area. 

Grandma: Which are more liberal.

Jon: What do you remember about cultural changes? Kind of a big question, but you know, you lived through the 60s and 70s and 80s.

Grandpa: Well, a lot of the changes that were dramatic wore themselves out. The hippie generation of the 60s grew up and the famous saying, which you know, too, and I’m pretty sure you know, “If you’re not a liberal when you’re 20, you have no compassion, and if you’re not a conservative when you’re 40, you’ve got no brains.” That’s not exactly right, is it?

Jon: Yeah, I think it’s “if you’re not a liberal when you’re young, you have no heart. If you’re not conservative when you’re old, you have no brain.”

Grandpa: Yeah, that’s it. I’ve seen that play out in my life through a couple of generations. We’ve seen a couple of generations come through the teen years and the 20s years, and then now, the ones that are 40 and 60 are different than they were when they were young, too, so. That’s not all bad, because their imagination that they had of how things should be when they are young, they’ve learned it first hand, so some of them are ultra-conservative now, almost to a fault. But, I guess, it’s stages that you have to go through. 

But the culture in its entirety is a pleasure-driven one today. I didn’t know that when I was young. Just what conservatism and liberalism meant. Because I thought we were one mix, but turns out, America has got to be crazy. Sports crazy and recreation crazy. When, if you look back further, a couple generations to the immigration of Europeans to here, they were looking for religious freedom a lot. They were looking for a place where they could prosper and take care of a family. A good job where they could make some money for and some freedom was important. Now it’s “hand it to me, give it to me, I have my rights.” You know? It’s gone dramatically the other way.

Grandma: The pendulum has swung.

Jon: What did you think when your kids were going through it? Because I can remember pictures of my dad when he had pretty long hair. What did you think of that?

Grandpa: I wanted a haircut.

Jon: But you let him have it!

Grandma: You looked past it, I guess.

Grandpa: Disgusted a little bit, but you said “Why?” They said, “Well, my friends are having the same kind of haircuts.” “Why do you need a new pair of jeans with holes in the knees?” It’s that kind of thing. It makes no sense. I wouldn’t want it for myself for convenience. It’s easy shampoo. I can’t figure it out. But still, there are some today doing the same thing.

Grandma: I guess if they behaved, that was the most important thing. If their hair was a little long, then, well

Grandpa: And they didn’t always behave. My saying is, you warn your kids about the dangers of what they’re exposed to, and you don’t want to tell them how come you’re so smart of what happens when you embrace those kinds of things. And you thank God for your own survival at that time, too. You realize the risks that were…

Grandma: Like we told them, if you go there, you’re a part of it.

Grandpa: Your Aunt Jill came home from Northwestern College one Christmas break. And we said “Where are you going?” and she said “I’m going to the Windjammer at Sheboygan,” which was a bowling alley, bar, kids hangout. Trouble. I said, “Don’t go there, there’s trouble there.” And she said, “But all my friends are there, we’re all going to meet there, and if there’s any trouble, I’ll get out of trouble there.” I said, “You know, your getting out is going to be too late at that point.” I can’t tell you this day if it did happen or not, I don’t know.

Grandma: I don’t know either.

Grandpa: But anyhow, I can understand her thinking, because that was my thinking, too. But there’s an age when you want to do some things that are on the edge, and you kind of know you shouldn’t do it, but you want to do it. Which is endemic of sinful mankind. 

Jon: So what was on the edge when you were in high school?

Grandma: I don’t think I lived on the edge very much.

Grandpa: There were teen bars and stuff like that that you go to.

Grandma: I had an unusual class, too.

Jon: It didn’t sound like there were too many of you.

Grandma: We had like 48, or something like that.

Grandpa: A lot of rough stuff. Racing and stuff like that.

Grandma: I had a pretty calm group of kids in my class. The boys were more studious, a little different than, I don’t think, well I don’t know what those boys did when they weren’t in school, but they were more studious. They weren’t sportsmen for one thing. Sports boys.

Grandpa: I was studious to a point. I got good grades, but I could have gotten a lot better grades if I had really been interested in it. Like I said yesterday, I like history a lot better now than when I had to study it. Yeah, living on the edge…in that year of college, I played on the basketball team. We were traveling all over the state to different…Wausau to Marinette to Racine to a whole lot of places.