Someone Else’s Treasure–The Autograph Book of Miss Helen Sundquist–Part 1

Helen

When sitting in the twilight
Reflecting on the past
Remember you have one kind friend
Whose love will always last.

--Your Friend,
Madalia Johnson
Bishop Hill
Jan. 1st, 1885

The best wishes of your friend, Ida M. Johnson.  Bishop Hill.  Jan. 1st, 1885
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Earnest Van Osdel
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Friend Helen – Honor thy father and mother. Your Friend, Charlie S. Perry. March 2, ‘85 Toulon, Ills.
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Helen [no excuse for me] Compliments of Adelle Trickle. Feb. 12, ‘88. Toulon, Ill.
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Mrs. Herbert Smith.  Larimore, N. D.
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Compliments of Theresa Volgamont.  Toulon.  School days 1888, March 5.

Dear Helen
When years and months have glided by
And on this page you cast your eye
Remember ‘twas a friend sincere
That left this kind remembrance here.
With best wishes for your future cheer!

Your Friend,
Mary Christy
2-25-1886

Dear Helen,
When far away and friends are few, think of me and I will you.
Yours Truly,
Lizzie Gemmell
Feb. 11, 1886

Dear Helen
Some boys are pleased with your Brilliant eyes
But ‘tis your worth and polished mind I prize.
Eva Edwards
Toulon, Ill.
Feb. 11, 1886

Dear Helen

In twining your wreath of friendship, please twist in a bud for me.
Best Wishes of Jennie Ryder
Toulon, Illinois
January 7th, 1885

May your life be as pure as these pages as unshadowed as these lines are.
The best wishes of Bessie W. Marsh
Toulon, Ill.
Jan. 7th, 1885

Dear Helen

Be true to your friends and you will never be friendless.
Katie Anderson
La Fayette, Ills.
Oct. 15, 1885

Dear Helen

So short our existence a glimpse at the most
Is all we can have of the few we hold dear
And oft ever joy is unheeded and lost
For the want of some fond heart to echo it near
Ah well may we hope when this life is oer
To meet in a world of more permanent bliss
For a smile or a grasp of a hand hastening on
Is all we can have of each other in this.

Maggie Brady
Toulon, Feb. 12, ‘89

Friend Helen

Look how we can sad or merrily
Interpretation will misquote your looks.
Harry Whittaker
Sunday School days of 1889

Friend Helen, Remember me.  Chas. Bacmeister, Toulon, Ill.
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Eddie Henderson, Toulon, Ill.  Feb 10th 1886
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Remember your school-mate.  Alice Berfield, Toulon, Stark Co, Ill.
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Compliments of Flora Gelvin.  Mar. 6/’88.  Stringtown, Ill.
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Lines to Helen.  Florence McClenahan
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May your life be full of sunshine.  Yours Very Truly, Mardell Lyon
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Helen, Ever your Friend, Minnie Trickle.  Feb. 12, ‘89
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Compliments of Your Friend and Schoolmate, Esta Cole.  Toulon, Ill.

Friend Helen

Among the many who claim a kind remembrance
I too would add my name.
Your Friend
Flora Smith
Toulon, Ill.  Stark Co.
Feb. 14th, 1887

Helen

Tis sweet to court but O, how bitter to court a boy and then not get him.
Your Friend
Ada Walker
Toulon, Ill.
1885

Dear Helen

Remember me and my best wishes,
When your at home washing dishes.
Your Friend,
Effie Holmes
Toulon, Ill.
Jan. 31, 1890

Helen

Remember me when far far off
Where wood chucks lie with whooping cough.
Frank S. Price
Toulon, Ills.
Feb. 17, 1885

Helen

Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.
Jimmy A.Nowlan
Toulon, Ill.
Feb. 17, 1885

Armour Packing Company

The old Armour packing plant had been situated on the top of the hill - or maybe the enormous building just seemed to be on a hill - just outside of town for as long as I could remember.  It was always somewhat of a mystery with the fence around it and seemingly limited access.  Once, as a young child, my dad took some visiting relatives on a tour through the plant, and we got to get a sneak peek inside of that huge, stinky, and slightly scary old building.  All I really remember was hearing my dad's description of how they would "stick" (electrocute) the hogs to send them to the fate for which they were born - our Easter ham, or breakfast bacon.  I was totally creeped out.

My family's association with Armour & Company began in the early 1950s, when my widowed grandfather left the farm to work at the plant - it put food on the table for his tribe of kids, but to economize, he lived in a box car near the plant during the week.  He eventually remarried and gave up the farm, but Armours was a part of his life for many more years, until his retirement.  Several of his sons took jobs at the plant as well.  

I doubt the work at the plant was easy.  As a matter of fact, I'm sure it was not.  I remember many times hearing the sounds of my mother cooking breakfast at 4 a.m., and hearing my dad wolf it down before heading out the door to work.  I recall his sore muscles, and his tales of working in the freezer, and other temporary assignments he'd get that he didn't particularly care for.  But it was a job, and a darned good one.

The packing plant seemed to be the one bastion of security in the town - the financial benefits it brought to the community ($8 million in the 1970s*) supported numerous other businesses, and could be counted on to pay many a mortgage, not to mention provide some luxuries to the families who depended on it.  Rumors of closings came and went, but the plant persevered.

Eventually, though, the inevitable happened.  The plant was sold to Swift Independent Packing Company in the 1980s, and then to Dakota Pork, and then - the doors closed.  The building was torn down, and an era ended.  Time marches on.  But the sight of that huge building at the top of the hill remains in my memory.

***********

* According to the book "Huron Revisited."

I Lied to Read True Story Magazine

"What are you doing in there?" Grandma hollered through the locked bathroom door.  "Nothing," I answered.  "Are you 'having trouble?' " Grandma asked.  "No!" I was quick to respond.  If Grandma even suspected you were 'having trouble' in the bathroom, there would be a spoonful of Green Drops waiting for you upon your exit, and that stuff was a punishment worse than any kind of bathroom trouble.

"I'm almost finished," I yelled back to her, as I turned a small piece of the corner of the page to mark my place, and stuffed the magazine quickly back in the linen closet.   A needless flush later, and trying to look as nonchalant as possible, I exited the bathroom and hoped Grandma wasn't standing there with a spoon and that bottle of nasty green liquid.

I was reading her True Stories.  She knew I was reading her True Stories.  I knew *she* knew I was reading her True Stories.   Such forbidden tales as "A Case of Cradle Robbing" or "My Runaway Wife" or "I Am the Other Woman" were about as close to excitement as it got in my small town life.  And to a young girl on the cusp of being a teenager, this glimpse into mysterious and exciting adult lives was too much to resist.

Grandma and I apparently were not alone in our enjoyment of this magazine and the exotic lifestyles and stories it featured.  According to Wikipedia, True Story came into existence in 1919, and in the next few years circulation soared, and the magazine lasted 92 years before the publisher finally pulled the plug.

One afternoon, to my dismay, the magazines were no longer in the linen closet in the bathroom.  I did a thorough search (more than once), but Grandma apparently found a better place to store them, at least temporarily.   Being unable to find their new hiding place was driving me crazy.  They did at some point make their way back into the bathroom closet, and my extended bathroom breaks resumed.  Did Grandma know I was reading her True Stories again?  Of course.  Couldn't hide anything from that woman.  But she never did move them again.

Lies Grandma Told

I was recently looking at some photos of my brother, sister and I as kids, with Grandma Lill's cockatiel, Charlie, sitting on our shoulders.  All of us had our heads cranked straight ahead, but were looking at him out of the corners of our eyes.  I realized that all of our pictures with Charlie were like that - because Grandma always told us if we looked right at him from close range, he'd peck our eyes out.  I don't know if that's true, or if she thought it was true, or if she didn't want to take a chance on it being true, but I'm still scared to look a bird in the eye at close range 40+ years later.

Are you happy, Grandma??

I started thinking about some of the things she told us as kids - "If you swear, rocks and dirt will come out of your mouth, but if you talk nicely, flowers and sweet things will come out of your mouth instead."  I wondered briefly what rocks and dirt would taste like, but then decided that a flower in my mouth probably would not taste much better, so I went into the bathroom, locked the door, and crawled up to the mirror above the sink, and very cautiously said the first bad word I could come up with.  Shortly thereafter, I started to wonder if Grandma was full of... well... baloney.

Being a woman small in stature, and having charge of the three of us all day while my mother worked and Grandpa was out at the farm, she needed an Equalizer - and I think she found one in her little white lies.  For a long time after the "Rocks and Dirt" story, we talked nicely.  When I discovered that her attic was filled with wonderful old things to play with (without permission) she told me the floor was bad in spots, and if I stepped in just the wrong spot, I'd fall in between the walls and even Grandpa would not be able to get me out.   I never went up in the attic again without her.

She told me about her classmate at school, who squeezed a pimple on Friday and was dead of blood poisoning by Monday.

She told me the man across the street was a policeman, and if I left the yard without permission, he'd see it, and he *could* arrest me if he had a mind to.  Not saying he would, but you never know.  He doesn't like it when kids leave the yard without permission.

But she was right regarding a lot of things in life, and despite the occasional bamboozling, she taught me a lot. "Don't always trust whoever you're doing business with, they may not have your best interest at heart."  "Never quit your job until you have another one lined up."
When someone is talking trash about you, "consider the source."
Don't brag up your boyfriend to your girlfriends.
And, "If you have leftovers, you know everyone at your table got enough to eat," followed quickly by "Grind up your leftovers and put them in the meatloaf."

Love ya lots, Grandma, and miss you every day.

The Original Party Animals

The year was 1963, New Year's Eve.   Over the decades, I've brought in many new years, some of them tremendously fun, some of them awfully dull, some of them not feeling so well, and I've slept through a few of them, but none of them were healthier or happier than this one.

To be honest, I don't remember a lot of the details of our party.  We likely watched Guy Lombardo on TV, and ate yummy munchies that Grandma Lill had prepared .  Lill, who was behind the old brownie camera that took this picture, had a stash of little tiny hats with elastic bands to hold them on, and a box of various noisemakers - some you twirl, some you blow in, others you just shake.  It was a fascinating collection, which we only saw once a year, and then, briefly.    We donned our garb, and for about a minute - no more - we were allowed to make as much noise as we could with our noisemakers, and then they were collected, put back in the box, and hidden in places unknown until the next New Year's celebration.

I was nearly four years old in this picture, my brother just days away from turning two.  We had an inter-generational party, with our grandparents and great-grandparents, and "warm fuzzies" like we'd never have again.  We had one more year with both sets of grandparents, before my great grandfather, Will Knutz, developed stomach cancer.  But on this particular year, we gathered, we loved, we celebrated, and we made memories.

The Short Life of the Unpopular Bonnie Posy

The year was 1965.  Yes, that’s me, with my new Christmas present, Bonnie Posy.  Despite the obviously pleased look on my little face,  I have no recollection of ever owning that doll.  Don’t remember playing with it.  Don’t remember picking it up off the floor.  Don’t remember what ever happened to it.

I’ve had a lot of luck learning about old toys through Google and eBay, most impressively through the Ugly Baby posts.  I never thought I’d know so much about that doll.  But for some reason, Bonnie Posy is proving to be a more difficult subject.

The only information I was able to find on this doll was through a couple of newspaper ads, circa 1964-65, one of which appears below:

The above advertisement was from the Milwaukee Journal, December 4, 1964, courtesy of Google News.  While it vaguely resembles my doll, it’s obviously not the same; but the doll in the ad is the 1964 version, and mine made her appearance the following year – perhaps a newer model.  At any rate, with Cootie games (remember those?) selling for ~$1.50, the $4.99 price tag on this doll would suggest that it was a much-coveted item on the wish list of little girls of that era.

So why don’t I remember this doll?  The only other ad I found was for these dolls on “clearance” in 1967, so perhaps Bonnie Posy was a “flash in the pan.”  Apparently mine was!

Dippity-DON'T!

Ninety percent of the time I spent at my Grandma Lill's house was fantastic - helping her bake, learning to sew, and when I was old enough, she let me watch her "stories" (soap operas) with her.  But that other ten percent of the time, well...

I was a little kid with goofy hair.  It was fine, but thick, and Grandma hated looking at it.  To call it "unruly" would be an understatement.  Most of the time, she let it slide, but one day, she decided to show me how nice it could look with a "little" work.

So she stuck my head in the sink, towel-dried my hair, and gathered up her "makeover kit" - a comb, a container of rollers, and, of course, her jar of that miraculous green goop, Dippity-do.  That stuff still scares me to this day.  After she got my hair combed out (anyone who had long, thick hair as a child knows the pain that combing entails) she would part off a section, slather it with a generous dip of Dippity-do, roll it up, and proceed to the next piece of hair.

To stop my incessant complaining ("that stuff stinks," "I want to go watch TV," "Stop it, Grandma!" and, of course, "OW!!") she let me play with a few of her rollers - we called them Spaceship Rollers, but the real name for them is Spoolies, probably for more obvious reasons.  These were soft, pliable, rubbery curlers.  A section of hair would be rolled in the middle, and then each end would flip back toward the middle, creating a spaceship sort of shape, and securing the hair.

It seemed to take forever for her to finish rolling my hair - actually, it probably did take forever.  We used every one of her Spoolies in all that thick hair, and she had a lot of them.   Between all those curlers and Dippity-do, the sheer weight of my head hurt my neck to the point of having to lay down, but resting my head on anything hurt worse.  One valuable lesson I learned that day (besides RUN when Grandma gets the curlers out) was to not stress her out while she was rolling my hair, or the curlers would be tight - really tight!

Hours later, she finally took all those miserable little spaceships out of my hair.  I was left with a head FULL of curls so tight and crispy that neither brush nor comb would get through them, and hair bigger than any 1970s rock star ever had!  Grandma looked a little shocked - I started to bawl - and when my mother came to pick me up, I hid on the floor of the back seat all the way home, and immediately stuck my head back in the sink to rectify this terrible situation.

On a positive note, Grandma Lill never tried to fix my hair again.  Instead, she turned her attention to my little sister, who was not nearly as fast as I was after that.