as told to Lorraine Kreucher by Rica Wiess

When we were children we didn't have a lot of toys, except for what our daddy made for us, but we didn't need them. We had a little black dog named "Prince." This was our Mother's dog. oh! she was crazy about him. The little boys, Eddie, John, George and Frank played with him, mostly. And, Oh, would they have fun. They watched their Daddy butcher a pig in the Spring of the year, back in the old shed behind the house and then after that, the boys would pretend they were butchering the dog. First, they would catch him and string him up by the hind legs between two chairs. And that little dog would squeal just like he was a pig because he knew what they were playing. Then they would stick him and bleed him, and he would squeal some more and then just hang there like he was dead. After that the boys would take him down and pretend to dunk him in boiling water up and down, just like they saw their dad do, till they figured they had all the hair off. Then they would cut him up into pieces. And that little dog just laid there and never moved - just as if he really was dead, until the "butchering" was all over. ohh my!! that was fun! But they never hurt him. OHh noo! My Mother wouldn't let that happen. She knew they were just playing and wouldn't let anyone hurt him because "Prince" was her dog. The little boys played this game everyday.

Footnote Joe, Otto, and John all did butchering professionally at on time. George always liked it and was called on around the community to assist at butchering s.

I had a little dog when I was a kid. I don't remember what kind it was, just a little dog. One day Uncle John Kreucher(Dad's brother) was there, and he wanted to buy my dog. Well, it wasn't just my dog, but I called it my dog. Anyway, he offered me a quarter if he could have my dog, and ohh, my, that quarter looked good to me. A quarter was big money for a kid in those days. So I sold him my dog for the quarter. when he went to go home and take the dog, I didn't want to give the dog up. I carried on and carried on, but he took the dog and started down the street. I was so mad I threw the quarter after him. We had a sidewalk made of boards with cracks between the boards, and the quarter rolled into a crack, and I never got it back. I don't remember if Uncle John felt sorry and left the dog behind, or if it ran away from him and came back home, but I got my little dog back. Uncle John had a farm and sometimes we kids went out there. Frank and I liked to sit on the fence and watch the cows eat, and then make a noise to scare them just to see them run. Uncle John had a son named Matt, he is the only cousin I really remember.

{Editor Note Matt Kreucher died in 1967 in Clinton Ia)

During the winter of 1895 when I was 6 yrs old, my little brother Phillip was born. Mother was never well after that, and seldom got up, but when she did she would sit in a chair by the kitchen stove. It was a big kitchen and the stove set far enough away from the wall so that we kids sometimes played behind it. On March 14, 1896 mother was quite sick, but she was sitting in her chair. I came around the corner of the stove and she winked at me. A short time later Dad Carried her into the bedroom and then the priest came. Dad and the priest were in the bedroom for a long time, at least it seemed like a long time to us kids because we had to be real quiet. Finally the Priest came out and left. I don't remember seeing Dad come out of the room. Two days later, on March 16, my seventh birthday, mother was buried. We all went to the funeral, and to the cemetery. I remember where where they put her. It was in a corner of the cemetery, there were lilac bushes all around and high weeds along the edge. The lilac bushes were still there when my brother Ed was buried next to Mother some years later. Otto was away and didn't get home in time for the funeral. He came a day or so later, and then we all had to get dressed up and we went down town and had our picture taken together. I was so mad that day. There wasn't a clean shirt for me to wear, so I had to wear one of the girls blouses. Ohhh how I hated the ruffles on the collar of that blouse When we got home the first thing I did was rip that blouse off and I threw it as far as I could see. A few days later we were all packed and Otto took John and Mary and Frank,  Ida and me up to Dubuque to the Orphan home. Aunt Mary Kreucher, Uncle John's wife took baby Phillip, but he died the next summer. Dad wrote to us in the Orphan home, and he was coming to see us in the spring of 1901 when Mary was to make her first Communion, but he died in the fall of 1900, in Laurel, Miss where he had been working since mother died.

by Rica Kreucher Weiss

OHhh we had good times at Christmas time when I was a little girl. Oh Christmas eve we set the table with our soup plates, and put our pennies and our name in our soup plate. Then we put a cup and saucer and a plate of cake in the middle of the table and then we went to bed. In the morning our pennies would be gone, and the cake would be gone too, and our plates would be filled with candy, fruit and nuts. We never saw the tree or anything of until Christmas morning and then there it was in the parlor all lit up with candles. we didn't have any of those lights like they have now. OHhh but then we would have a good time around the tree with our toys and singing. Where did we get the pennies? Well my Daddy made us a big wooden bank with a partition for each of us. Our neighbor got a daily paper and every day one of us kids went and got the paper for him and took it to his house. then he gave us a penny, and we put it in the bank. At the end of the week the neighbor would give us all the papers and we took them home to Daddy. He rolled them all in a bundle and put them in a room upstairs, and in the winter when there was no work, he sat behind the kitchen stove and read all those papers. One year when I just started school I was to be an angel in the Christmas program and I was supposed to sit on top of a ladder.. anyway up high. My Mother made me a white dress just for that . But the night of the program I got scared up so high and started to cry so the Nun took me down and set me under the Christmas tree, and gave me a sucker. Joe told me I was still the prettiest little angel.

One year I wanted a red dress for Christmas but my mother said I couldn't have one. The lady who sewed clothes for people in our neighborhood sometimes used me for a model to fit dresses she made for other little girls . My mother made all of our clothes. Well this lady had me fit this red dress she was making and I made all the buttonholes on that dress by hand. There were 24 buttonholes. Then on Christmas Day OHHhh what a surprise !!! I got that dress for Christmas. My brother Joe went and got that red material and then paid that lady to make that dress for me. And all the time I helped make it I never suspected it was for me at all. Yes, I was my brother Joe's pet !!!!

by George Kreucher

After mother died, some of my brothers and sisters and I were put in St. Mary's Orphanage at Dubuque, Iowa. Brother Otto took us up and checked us in. Father Werner was the Priest in charge of the home, and Mother Coletta was the Mother Superior of the Sisters who ran the home. They were Franciscan Sisters. The home was a big old place with barns and fields, and orchards and gardens. There were about 150 kids of all ages there when I was there. I was 8 years old when I came to the Orphan Home. Sister took all the new orphans downtown to a store where we got a set of clothes free. We all walked in a line past all the counters, the boys in the mens dept, and the girls in the ladies dept. As we walked by a counter the clerk would throw an article of clothes on the pile we carried in our arms. We were outfitted from the skin out, but they didn't pay much attention to size. The clerk would look at the kid, figure he was about this size and toss a shirt or underwear or whatever on the pile. Some of those clerks had damn poor eyes. Anyway, afterwards we kids sorta traded if things didn't fit, but us younger ones didn't care that much. Then we all went to a big shoe store and got a new pair of shoes. At least they fitted them on us first, but those were heavy shoes - they never wore out. These two big stores did this once each year for all the kids. We were all marched downtown, everybody got a new set of clothes free, and a new pair of shoes. The shoe store usually gave us each a bag of candy too. It was their contribution to the Orphanage. Included in our wardrobe was a hat or cap whichever was closest at the clerk's hand when we went by. Sometimes they fit, sometimes they didn't. One year I got a really good leather cap with fur lined ear flaps. I really took care of that cap. In the spring the sisters took all the caps and mittens and put them away to be used the next year if needed. I kept my cap. I hid it under my mattress. I guess I had that cap about 3 years. Our mattresses were a sack of bed ticking stuffed with corn husks. Every fall after corn picking time one day would be spent by everyone taking his mattress outside, emptying out the old husks, and filling the tick with clean new husks. The older kids had to do the little kids mattresses. Each older kid had a younger child he was responsible for. When I got older I had the cutest little boy. I think he was Italian, because he had the blackest curley hair you ever wanted to see. Every morning I'd help him dress, and wash up and make his bed, and then I'd comb his hair. I always mad a big curl on the top of his head and he did look cute. His hair just curled around my finger so nice. The sister who was in charge of the kitchen and cooking was a great big husky Nun with a gruff voice. We were all scared to death of her tho I don't think she would have hurt a fly. The nun that did all the sewing for the home was a tiny little thing. She taught the older girls to sew. Her sewing room was right off a big long porch. How we tortured that poor nun. In the summertime on a rainy day especially we just loved to get on that porch and run back and forth and holler. She'd come out and chase us away and as soon as she went back in we'd start all over again. Every night we said the rosary. In the winter we said it around the table right after supper, but in the summer we said it out on the porch. One summer night some of the bigger boys were having a little fun during the rosary. After it was over they were punished. My brother John was accused of being in the gang, but he denied it. Then the sisters accused him of not being on the porch at all during the rosary, but he was there, I know that. He was kind of in the shadows at one end, but he had to be punished. They made the boys lay over a bench so they could whip them. John wouldn't lay over the bench. So the nuns tried to pull him over it and they couldn't do it. That really made them mad; so they went to get the big Cook Sister. She couldn't pull John over the bench either. They finally gave up. John left soon after that. They told us he was placed in a home, but I always thought that for sure he had run away. He was put in a home in DeWitt, Ia., but he didn't stay there long - he ran away from there and went back to Clinton to Otto. I guess that sounds like the Nuns were mean to us. Well --- sometimes they did get a little out of line, but they worked hard, and they tried to raise us right, and we weren't any of us any angels either. They tried to train us for the day we left the orphan home to go to another home, or to make it on our own. As we got older we all had a certain amount of work we had to do besides going to school. They had a shoe repair shop at the home, that an old man worked in. He wasn't too bright, and thats how he lived, working for the Nuns, and then he had a room to sleep in, but he could really fix shoes. I worked in there with him for a while putting new soles on shoes and patching others. We never wore shoes in the summer time, but when we did, we were hard on them. Yes, thats where I learned how to fix shoes, and it saved us a pile of money with you kids shoes later on. I guess we learned more in the Orphan Home than we ever realized. Everything we learned came in handy later on. when I was 13 the Nuns sent me up to Illgs to live. I got a new suit for that made by that poor little Nun we teased so bad. I wasn't sorry to leave tho......

Summer Fun

by George Kreucher

In the Orphanage when the boys got to be about 10 years old they were taught how to serve mass, and we all took our turns. We often had visiting priests, and they always have the servers a little money. The sisters always wanted us to give the money {nickels & dimes} and they saved it for us, and when we left the orphanage, they gave us all the money that was ours. But .. we wanted to spend what we got, so sometimes we would hide it and say the priest didn't give us any. Sometimes we even swallowed it so Sister wouldn't find it after we went to sleep. There was a store down the road from the Orphanage about a half mile away. There was a beebee gun in the store, and we boys wanted it, so we saved our hidden money until we had enough, and then we sent the neighbor boy to the store to buy it for us. So if Sister asked us how we got the gun we would say it belonged to this kid. His father had a farm near the Orphanage and he often played with us boys at the Orphanage. The Orphanage had a farm, and the big boys worked it with the help of some men. Near the barn was a well with a hand pump to furnish water for the horses.

There were always bees around the pumps looking for water. The kids at the Orphanage came to the pump to get a drink when they were playing outside in the summer. We boys would lay up in the hay loft of the barn and shoot the kids (especially the girls with be-bes and they would scream and jump and they always thought they were being stung by the bees.

We had a lot of fun that summer, until sister got wise to all the so called bee stings. When she finally figured it out she demanded the gun, but we told her it was the neighbor kids gun and she said, we had to give it back to him. We kept the gun, but we hid it and then we sort of forgot it since we couldn't use it and the next summer we came across it again but it was all rusty.

by George Kreucher

The orphan home I was in had a big farm and garden and orchard. Every fall the kids, especially the boys, had to help pick the apples and carry them to the basement where the older girls helped the nuns can applesauce and store the winter fresh supply. The same for the garden stuff. We used to sneak into the garden and pull the new carrots to eat--- never washed them, and when the tomatoes were ripening we did the same. That wasn't easy and we usually did our snitching when we had to pull weeds. But in the fall we had to pick the tomatoes and carry them to the celler. Every time we took a basketful to the celler we snuck a few into our pockets. There was a big old tree in the yard that had a big hollow spot on one side. We hid our tomatoes (or apples) in that old hollow tree on our way back to the orchard. The Sisters always kept a big barrell of salt in the cellar so when our last trip at the end of the day we all managed to walk past the barrell of salt and grab a handful. Then we'd all go to the old tree and what a feast we would have. We never got sick. One time as I was coming out of the cellar with a handful of salt, one of the sisters caught me. Right away I stuck my hands in my pockets. She wanted to know what I had in my hands. I said "Nothing." but she made me take my hands out and show them to her, and try as I might, I couldn't rub all the salt off. She took a look at my salty hands and finally said "okay". Then she went on into the cellar. She knew what we were up to all right, but she never said anything. After that the salt barrell was moved. Heck, the apples and tomatoes tasted just as good without the salt. There was one kind of apple in the orchard that the sisters kept especially for their own use. They kept extra good through the winter, and were really good eating. those were the ones we especially liked to swipe. We never got caught or it would have been too bad for us. Or, maybe they knew it all the time. I don't know, but we got by.