Early Years

 

It was 1919 and the Great War, the one to end all wars was finally over.  The world was awash in relief and joy.  I was born just before Christmas on December 22^nd at the small six and a half acre farm north of Alton, IL that had been handed down from my paternal great grandfather Charles Hesselbach.  He had bought the farm from the Meyers in 1857 after emigrating from Germany to Madison County, IL via New Orleans and the Mississippi River.  My proud parents were Robert Groshans and Charlotte Heafner who married eighteen months earlier on Apr 18, 1917.

The two-story house where I was born was big and sturdily built having originally been a grain mill.  Downstairs was the kitchen, the living room, and a small bedroom where my grandmother, Anna Hesselbach Groshans slept.  The rest of us lived in the two rooms upstairs.  I was the oldest.  I was soon joined by my sister Dorothy (1921) and my brother Robert (1923).  By the time Leon joined us in 1928, the upstairs room we shared was getting crowded.  When grandma died in 1933, my folks moved their bedroom downstairs giving us kids some extra space.  Unfortunately the second upstairs room was unfinished and I remember snow coming through the weatherboarding onto the floor in the wintertime.

Our farm was just north of Alton in a little valley along a dirt path known then as Coal Branch Road.  It was named after the little stream that ran past the farm and alluded to all the coal mines that dotted the area.  Our little “metro” area was even once named Coal Branch.  Eventually Alton expanded gobbling up many of the little villages in the region.  When they annexed the Alton Brick Company land south of us, our road was paved and became known as the Alby Street Extension.

Despite being close to Alton, our house was country living at its best.  No electricity or running water.  Heat came from burning coal and firewood.  Lighting from kerosene lamps.  Water came from a well in the yard that we carried in to fill the sink and washbasins.  In the summer we would fill an outdoor bathtub.  Our only extravagance was an outhouse with two seats!  Being close to Alton we soon got a wall-mounted telephone.  No push-buttons, no rotary dial, not even a dial tone.  A hand crank alerted the operator, who would make the connection for us.  Of course, it was a party line, with each household given a unique ring.  But anybody could listen in and we all did.  “Piking” as it was called, was one of our few entertainments.  It reduced our privacy but on the positive side we all knew what was happening with the neighbors.

When I reached my teens, our family got a nice tabletop Majestic radio so we could listen to Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats and episodes of Amos & Andy.  Unfortunately the big radio quickly drained the rechargeable batteries so we didn’t use it very often.

On Sundays our family would pile into our pride and joy 1913 Model T Ford and drive out what today is Route 3, north of Piasa Creek, close to Beltrees to visit my grandmother, Caroline Steiner Heafner.  Once in a while Mother and I would visit her during the week. Since Mother didn’t drive we took the horse and buggy.  As you can imagine this trip would take all day.

At one time or another our family grew just about everything on our farm.  We were pretty self-sufficient.  Mostly we raised chickens and hogs and grew vegetables.  We also had several milk cows and a few horses. For spending money my parents would deliver milk to Alton households with the horse and buggy. That business soon dried up when the government passed laws requiring milk to be pasteurized before being sold.  Still, for years afterward, a few people came out to the house to buy our fresh milk. 

Of course early on, it was my job to milk the cows.  I did it every morning and every evening seven days a week.  A milk farm knows no weekends or holidays.  My usual day started at four thirty.  There was a lot more to do than just milking the cows.  I also had to hand crank the separator to skim off the cream, wash the quart glass bottles, churn the butter, and make cottage cheese and buttermilk.  After it was all done I would take the “worthless” skim milk and feed it to the hogs. 

In the bottomland next to the pasture, we had a large asparagus patch.  At that time Godfrey was the asparagus capital of the nation.  It was shipped to Chicago via refrigerated train cars.    Since “ice block” refrigeration was unreliable, it was not unusual for the asparagus to spoil before arriving in Chicago. 

Like my great grandfather who bought the farm, I liked to garden.  My Dad would use the horses to plow and harrow most of our land to make it suitable for grazing our livestock.   I took what was left to use as a garden.  My mother insisted on the normal vegetables, which we always had plenty.  I also grew California Wonder peppers, Marglobe tomatoes and sweet potatoes.  But I liked to experiment and grow some uncommon ones too.  I tried growing eggplant, peanuts, cauliflower, and even tobacco.  I would send to the Department of Agriculture for free bulletins telling you how to grow them.  During the Depression you could get seed free from the Township Supervisor’s office.  I put in my own hot beds for growing the seedlings.

After putting in a full day on the farm it was time to walk to school.  Louis Veltjes, an older neighbor kid, showed me the way to McKinley School on my first day of Grade School.  That was where I went for the next six years.  Once out of elementary school, it was on to Roosevelt Junior High School on Langdon Street and then Alton High on College Ave.  Mostly I had to walk to school and it was three miles one way to High School.  If I timed it right I could hitch a ride part way with our neighbor, Herb Farrell, who would deliver fresh milk each morning to the Strickland Dairy at Thirteenth and Langdon.

Despite the walk, I always enjoyed school, especially the math classes. I was never really good at English.  One of my teachers insisted that I join National Honor Society.  I guess it was his way of trying to let me know that I had potential.  I was always curious about everything; and I loved to read, although books were scarce around our house. On rare occasions a neighbor, Joe Boucher, would bring me a book to read.  My favorites were the Tom Swift detective stories. The rest of the time I would read the old school books packed away in my grandmother’s trunk.  They had belonged to her brother, Ed Hesselbach. He had been studying to be an architect at the St. Louis Manual Training School (started by Washington U.) until his untimely death at the age of eighteen.  I learned a lot from reading his books.  Before long I was calculating cube roots manually.  Not even my teachers could do that.  I was limited though.  Half his books were in German (sometimes German script).  Still I tried translating them.  Hopelessly, as I was never fluent in German.  Those books were my pride and joy and I have kept them ever since.
 

Even with my diligence toward my studies, there were few jobs for me after high school graduation in 1938.  Despite FDR’s alphabet soup of government programs, the Depression was still dragging on.  I, along with 123 other eager jobseekers answered a newspaper ad for a clerk at Louis Horn’s Grocery at 7^th and Henry St. in downtown Alton.  Being a farm boy, Mr. Horn figured I knew how to work and dress chickens so I got the job.  For $12.00 a week.  I was rich!  Since a workweek was usually over 60 hours I was earning every penny.  It was only Mr. Horn and his wife Alvena in the store, so we did everything.  I started out delivering groceries and anything else that needed doing.  Eventually he taught me to cut meat.  I figured I was going to work there forever.