Brev 2

Leila and Elva each wrote a letter concerning their childhood.

 

Leila's letter:

Nora and her piano playing were a wonderful addition to the lives of the whole

family. I remember when I was quit little, sitting on my mother's lap during a Douglas Fairbanks/Mary Pickford silent movie showing at the town hall at Glenfield, with Nora playing the piano the whole time off to the side.

Arnold and Hank were very good athletes. Almost every small town had a baseball team in those days. Arnold became the first baseman and Hank was a wonderful catcher on the Glenfield team. Mother , Elva, and I spent many summer days watching the Glenfield games and practices and also drove to neighboring towns when Glenfield played there.

The farm work was larglely done by Josephine. The two boys helped between school sessions, and a man named Paul Herman Peterson from Minnesota, who spent one or two years as "hired man " also helped on the farm. Josie milked several cows every morning and night and vowed no child of hers was ever going to milk cows. She would "separate" the milk in the house. The cream was later churned into butter, and possibly once a week there would be a trip to Glenfield or neighboring Sutton, with horses and a buggy. She would sell the butter, a five gallon can of cream, and a few dozen eggs from the farm. This money would pay for all the groceries bought.

 

John's wife Josephine b.1879 at time of marriage 1901.

 

Elva's letter:

I would like to add a beautiful story about my father, John Hendrickson, as told to me by my older sister, Nora, whom I was visiting in Mesa, Arizona, a few years ago.

When their big house burned down, the Hendrickson family, with the four oldest children, moved to a small house closer to Glenfield. When Nora was a little girl, she would stand in front of the kitchen windows and pretend that the window sills were keyboards, moving her fingers as if playing a piano. Her father, watching her, must have gotten an idea. One day he hitched the horses to a wagon and drove off. The family was not sure where he went. It was late the next day when he returned, backed the wagon up to the porch, and unloaded a piano he had located in Cooperstown about 25 miles away. Little Nora enjoyed playing a real piano, so we had lots of music in our house from then on.

Josephine a lot later.