It Was Good While It Lasted

From my youngest adult years, I remember my grandmother encouraging me to take the Civil Service exam and get a “good government job” with benefits, a decent salary, and job security.  It might have been an opening at the post office, or a courthouse secretarial job – just get a “good government job.” Perhaps she was remembering her own experience in early adulthood and a very good time in her life when she was truly independent and had money.

Lillian Christensen (left) and Pauline Cooper

Beadle County Courthouse, Huron, SD

The year was 1933.  Everything was looking up for Lillian Christensen.  Though the Great Depression was in full swing – low crop prices, economic crash, and extreme drought, Lillian’s future was looking bright.  She began working at the new U. S. Crop Allotment office in the Beadle County courthouse in Huron, South Dakota. The purpose of the new office was to administer the national, voluntary program by which farmers would be paid to only plant certain crops on a certain number of acres.  This program was under the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and part of the New Deal.  Mr. Irven Eitreim took charge of the office staffed by Pauline Cooper, a stenographer; Lillian, who was a clerk, and another young woman named Adaline.  It was the duty of the county office to collect and process all the data associated with the program and write up contracts with the farmers. 

Lillian on her apartment roof

For Lillian, it was a great opportunity, getting a “good government job” in place of the live-in nanny job she had for a number of years.  She and Pauline, who had become close friends, also became roommates in a nice modern apartment in downtown Huron, thanks to their good salaries and steady jobs.

Lillian’s beau, Bill Knutz, was a farmhand who did not make a great deal of money so Lillian’s job was a blessing.  As long as Lillian was single, that is.  Most employers preferred to save the jobs for single women who had no choice but to support themselves.  Romantic sparks were also flying between Pauline and their boss, Irv Eitreim.

It was December of 1935, and big changes were in store.  Pauline was on an extended vacation in California and Adaline didn’t seem to be employed there anymore, leaving Lillian with the office responsibilities. It was then that everything changed.

In Pauline’s absence, on December 28, 1935, Lillian and Bill decided to elope to be secretly and quietly married.  It was so quiet, in fact, that afterward Bill parked his car a couple of blocks down the street and walked to the apartment to spend time with his wife, in order to “save their good names.”

But on a bigger scale, the U. S. Supreme Court was taking a closer look at the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and specifically the Crop Allotment program.  The court ruled it unconstitutional to tax the food processors and reallocate that money to farmers, so on January 6, 1936 it all came to an end and offices were to be closed.

In a letter postmarked Jan. 15, 1936 from Los Angeles, Pauline wrote to Lillian:

“Lillian Dear:

I haven’t written you before because I was just so upset and worried that I didn’t know what to write and thought that just keeping still was better than letting you know how I really feel.  However I had a letter from Irv. this P. M. that made me feel better.  I’m so glad he is going to get something else even though you and I are really in a spot.  It certainly has taken the pep out of me but in a way I’m sort of glad that I was out here when it happened.  It sort of is a dirty trick though to leave you with all the dirty working of finishing it all up without any pay.  Anyway I’m certainly not regretting my trip out here.  I haven’t looked for work and don’t think I will until I hear further from Irv.  I really and truly want to come to Huron and don’t want to stay here very badly even if I could find something to do.  Maybe if I could have you and Irv out here I would feel different about it all.  It makes me sick to think about losing the apartment---all I can say is hang on to it as long as you can.  Maybe something else will turn up.  If I don’t get back before the end of the month I’ll write my folks to get my things.  I’m sure you know how everything is divided and I’ll also split on the bills.”

She ends with “I guess there is nothing we can do but hold our chins up and take it…”

It all had a happy ending though – Irv found a job at the South Dakota State University Extension Department in nearby Brookings, South Dakota.  Pauline also found work in Brookings “just typing” as they did when they first started typing wheat contracts with the Crop Allotment office.  Pauline and Irv were eventually married.  However, in a letter Irv wrote to Lillian a few weeks after the office closure he said he was “floored” when Pauline told him about Lillian and Bill’s marriage, and that he shouldn’t have been so surprised that Lillian was not too concerned about losing her job.  He went on to say that he will never forget the years they worked together and will never know a more pleasant, congenial and efficient person than Lillian.  “Tell Bill I think he is a ‘lucky cuss’” Irv said.   

It’s hard to say how long Bill and Lillian could have kept their marriage quiet if the Supreme Court had ruled differently, or what their long-term plans had been.

Lillian and Pauline continued their friendship for many more years even though their lives took completely opposite turns.  Irv’s career with the United States Foreign Service took them all over the world, while Bill and Lillian settled down on a farm just outside of Huron.  But both of them had their “happily ever after” and Lillian had her “good government job.”

What I Really Threw Away Today

 Well, I had to throw away my measuring cups today.   

Besides being measuring cups I actually liked, these were the first ones I owned when I initially set up housekeeping at the age of 18.  It's quite amazing that they lasted this long - they were still structurally fine but the silver stuff on the inside was getting flaky and corroded.  But these cups were more than just measuring cups.

They are following other vintage kitchen gadgets into the landfill.  The old double boiler, and the electric frying pan with the leg that kept breaking off...  That frying pan... the leg would break off and Grandpa would glue it, and it would break off again, over and over, until Grandpa put a couple of screws in it.  I remember him saying that last fix would outlast the frying pan, and he was right about that.  All of these items, and more, were from my first little house.  Bit by bit, my grandparents helped me get that little place furnished and functional.  They went through their house and gave me furniture they weren't using, went to estate sales where they got me a bed, a vintage stove and a washing machine, and drove to endless rummage sales where kitchen gadgets like the double boiler and the measuring cups (along with things I could not identify) came from.  As I was moving in to that little house I'd walk in the door and find something that hadn't been there the last time.  I would have been up the proverbial creek without them and using these little kitchen items over the last half century always made me feel just a little bit closer to them.  

I think I'm down to one special kitchen item left, and that is her biscuit cutter which I treasure because that was actually hers and used for years and years.  Silly, yes.  But every time I used one of these old items I was reminded that I was deeply loved by those two incredible people, and so much that they did all that for me at their own expense (on a fixed income).  So they were more than measuring cups to me.  But time marches on. 

The House in Princeville

What follows is another sketch from my great-grandmother's (Elvirta Graves Knutz) book of sketches.  She sketched many of the homes she had lived in over the years - from her first home (below) to the last farm they lived on.  

This home, built by her father Tom Graves, was located a short distance northwest of Princeville, Illinois (see map) on Section 3 of Princeville township, the south half of the southeast quarter.  The land was given to Tom by his father, William Graves, who left an 80-acre farm to each of his children, most of these farms in the same township.  His three daughters married and stayed in the area; his son Simon sold his farm and moved to Nebraska, son Austin sold and moved to Minnesota, son Tom sold and went over the county line to Stark county before moving his family to South Dakota.  The one remaining son, Oscar, purchased some of his siblings' farms and eventually his father's, and remained in Princeville township.

The sketch below was her home from birth until age 11 when the family moved to Stark County.  Below that, a photo of the house with the family in front of it.

The Tom and Nettie (Lair) Graves family, from left: Lulu, Maude, Delbert, Elvirta, Nettie and Tom.

The location of the home, northwest of Princeville, Illinois, is outlined in red.  This map is from 1896 - William Graves owned the land to the north, E. O. Graves (Tom's brother Oscar) owned the land to the north of that; east of that M. M. Cox (Tom's sister Madeline) owned that land and to the north of that A. E. Graves (Tom's brother Austin) had his farm.  Sarah Cox's land (another sister) was located in Section 4, and sister Cynthia Evans' land was in Section 9.  Brother Simon had sold his land and relocated by 1885.