My friend Leona taught me how to make tacos when I was in my early twenties. She was the grandmother of one of my college friends, and I stayed with her for two weeks when I first moved to Los Angeles. Leona was fifty years older than me, but we developed a deep friendship.
Leona lived on Verde Street, on a hill in East Los Angeles in a house built by hand by her late husband. All the houses on the street looked homemade, each one like a small collection of shoe boxes glued together on tiny lots overlooking the San Bernadino freeway.
When Leona made tacos, she browned ground beef in one pan. She didn’t add any spices, not even salt and pepper. In another pan, she fried tortillas in vegetable oil until they were golden on each side, then flipped one half over the other to make a half-moon. With a spatula, she tossed the slightly crispy tortillas on a plate, using paper towels between each one to soak up the oil. She put grated cheddar cheese and a jar of mild salsa on the tiny chrome and Formica kitchen table.
When everything was ready, we sat down and combined the simple ingredients to make our own tacos while we looked out the window. From our eagle’s perch, we could watch the freeway as automobiles, trucks, and police cars lit up the night like Christmas. We also talked about the people in our lives, her children, her grandchildren, my friends, and each other. This is when I learned that the best lives are simple ones, no drama, no difficult entanglements, easy to manage. Those were the first tacos I had ever eaten, and I loved them.
While raising my two kids, I made tacos all the time. My dad was an avid fisherman, yet he didn’t like to eat fish; therefore, he brought freezer chests full of frozen fish to my house for us to eat. From his bounty, I made fish tacos—long before they became popular in restaurants. I invented sturgeon tacos with lettuce, sour cream, cilantro, and salsa. I created salmon tacos with fresh guacamole, basil leaves, shredded lettuce, and salsa. When we ran out of grandpa’s fish, I made tacos with shrimp, ground turkey, left-over steak, and pork chops. My kids loved them and, at the end of every taco meal, the serving plates were empty. In between bites, my kids told me about what had happened at school that day, what their friends were doing, and how they had to write papers for English and history class. As their mother, I learned to listen to them carefully before jumping in with advice and was thrilled they were confiding in me.
Now my kids are grown, and they have to feed themselves. My son is a taco specialist. For two years, he lived off of rice and bean tacos with shredded carrots, lettuce and salsa. It was his way of eating healthy and saving money at the same time.
The other day, I stopped at a farmer’s market on my way home from Sacramento. I bought red onions, peaches, cilantro and peach salsa. At home, I had some leftover roasted leg of lamb and spinach tortillas, and had decided I was going to make tacos for dinner.
Like Leona taught me, I fried the tortillas on each side until they were golden and then flipped one half over the other to make a half-moon. I transferred each one to a plate with paper towels to soak up the oil, even though I was using olive oil instead of vegetable oil.
I chopped up some red onion, cilantro and peaches, then sliced the lamb in finger-sized pieces and warmed it up in the same skillet that I had used for the tortillas. When everything was ready, I assembled the tacos: roast lamb, chopped red onion, chopped peaches, cilantro leaves, and peach salsa. I arranged two tacos on each of two dinner plates and called my husband to supper. Before we started eating, we expressed our gratitude for each other and the life we had built together. From listening to my husband’s prayer, I have learned that he is most grateful for having me in his life.
Leona and I were friends until she died at the age of ninety-five. We drove together from Los Angeles to Sacramento to visit our respective families. We stopped to taste olives and almonds. We visited missions. We ate lunch at Bob’s Big Boy and Denny’s. She made quilts while watching movies, and I made needlepoint pillows.
Leona taught me that life was a journey, and that every stop along the way was just one sojourn in a series of manageable experiences. Simply, Leona was a precious friend. I still love her, and am most grateful that she taught me how to make tacos. From that first day when she made them for me until today when I make them for my husband, I’ve learned that the relationships in my life are my most important possessions.
My first recollection of flowers was when I was ten and my family lived in the countryside in England. Across the road from our house was a forest which, that spring, was carpeted in bluebells.
I took my family’s scrub bucket into those woods, squatted down in the middle of the bluebells, and picked them. Milky juice squirted out of their stalks and trailed down my arms, making me sticky from hand to shoulder. When the bucket was full, I took it back home into the kitchen, knelt down to find my mother’s vases, and cut the bluebells’ stems to fit into them. Soon all the vases were full, but I found some quart Mason jars and filled them, too. Then, I put a vase of flowers on every bookcase and dresser in the house. My mother smiled when she saw them.
I love flowers. Flowers in my garden. Flowers in vases. The floral department in the grocery store. Flower fabrics and clothes. Flower pillows and bedspreads. Flower photographs and paintings. I just can’t get enough of them. Let me describe how my fascination with flowers has made my world beautiful.
Flowers Connect Me to My Mother
My mother loved flowers, too. Her name was Rose Marie and her favorite flower was a rose. When she lived in an assistant living facility near the end of her life, I brought her a bouquet of roses every time I visited. After my visit was over and I went back home, she would call me to tell me how the flowers were doing, when she had watered them, and where she had placed them in her studio.
But my mother had demonstrated her love for flowers all through my childhood. While we lived in England, she planted tulip and daffodil bulbs in front of our living room window. In spring, those bulbs bloomed like happy children and made our simple home bright and cheery.
When we moved back to California, my parents planted flowers all over their property. They took out the front yard grass and planted daffodils under the trees. Some of the trees were orange trees, and the combination of the yellow daffodils and the oranges was striking.
Easter lilies were planted in the back yard so that they would bloom for the Easter season, which was important to my family. Azaleas were planted in the shade, and my parents planted camelia bushes all along the patio railing. They bloomed all winter like red, pink, and white Christmas ornaments hanging amongst the glossy leaves. My mother would often comment on the camelias during our phone calls. Their buds were out. They were just about to bloom. They were in full bloom. One bush was white and the next was red. The humming birds liked them. We could have a whole conversation about her flowers.
A Flower Library
I’m an avid reader and have a library in my house. In my library, are books that I used during my teaching career such as the plays of William Shakespeare, The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, poems by Robert Frost, and the novels of more contemporary authors such as Toni Morrison and Tara Westover. But I’m retired now, and I’m starting a new collection of books based on the theme of flowers.
I was inspired to start a library about flowers when I read an article about Martha Stewart’s flower library. In the magazine, I found a picture of her bright book room with books stacked on mismatched tables around the perimeter and in the middle of the room. Every wall was filled with windows above the tables, making the room fabulous for reading. The books themselves were beautiful covered with photographs of roses, azaleas, and bouquets of every kind.
Now that I’m retired, I have more time for gardening, and, this summer, I’m in the middle of re-designing my front and back yards. To do this right, I bought a book about hydrangeas so I can do what I need to do so they grow healthy and vibrant. I also bought a book about 300 varieties of tea roses since I’m going to plant six new rose bushes along my new western fence. Oh yes, I also bought a book about French flower arrangements that I have displayed in my French décor living room.
Flowers, Flowers, Everywhere in the House
As soon as people step into my home, they learn how obsessed I am with flowers. In the living room, I am using three artificial flower arrangements to create a beautiful ambiance. Currently, I also have a vase filled with over a dozen red, yellow, and white roses from my own rose bushes in the back yard. I have bouquets of artificial flowers in each of the three bedrooms, flower urns in the library, and a real Christmas cactus in the family room. My bedroom walls all have pictures of flowers in them. The guest room, which also has a French theme, has a photograph of a flower vendor shop in Paris.
Flowers, Not Chocolate
Here’s a secret. I can be bribed, not with chocolates, but with flowers. When anyone gives me flowers, my heart melts like a warm candle. My husband gives me roses and sometimes other types of flowers on Christmas, my birthday, and Valentine’s Day. I love each and every bouquet as if it is the only bouquet I’ve ever received.
My daughter gives me flowers often because she loves flowers too. Her favorite flower is the Gerber Daisy. When I want to get her some blooms, I look first for those.
The most beautiful flowers I have ever received, however, were pink roses from my son. The pink was so delicate and the roses were incredible as buds and astonishing when they were fully bloomed. I took photo after photo of them, and, now, I have two photographs of these roses upstairs. My heart skips a beat whenever I see them.
I’m inspired by beauty and that’s why I love flowers. This afternoon, I plan to read more about how to perfect hydrangeas and how to promote more blooms on all my blossoming plants. You can find me sitting in my garden amongst my flowers. Where else?
Back in my grandmother’s day, women didn’t get much notoriety, so I decided to write a blog about my Grandma Lillian. She’s not famous, but she deserves some long-overdue attention.
Grandma Lillian was born in Winona, Minnesota on November 9, 1903. Both of her parents’ families were originally from Trhove Swiny, South Bohemia, which is now part of the Czech Republic. This town dates back to the 1200s as part of an ancient trade route. In the 1400s, King Vladislaus II, who was then King of Bohemia, authorized the town to build a market. The town’s name comes from the Czech word trh which means market. The two most popular sites in Trhove Swiny are The Most Holy Trinity Church, which replaced a Catholic pilgrimage chapel, and an iron mill called Buškův hamr.
My Grandma Lillian, however, never visited the Czech Republic. In fact, she never traveled outside the United States except for Canada. She was a short woman, less than five feet tall, and a little plump. When she first married my grandfather Leon Jr., she lived in his father’s house on an 800-acre piece of property that is now a Minnesota State Park. Later, she and her husband bought their own house in Goodview, a town next to Winona. The house was painted white and sat on a flat parcel of land covered in shamrock green grass with a large vegetable garden in the back. Her brother Leo lived next door.
Grandma Lillian’s House in 2022
Grandma Lillian had five children, including my father who was the oldest. Then came David, Mary, Gerald, and Daniel. My father moved to California with the United States Air Force which stationed him at Mather Air Force Base. Once my parents came to California, they settled down to stay.
Grandma Lillian took the train to California several times to help my parents when my mother was in the hospital having another child. During these times, I learned about who she was as a person. I watched her embroider cotton tea towels, one for every day of the week. For each day, she embroidered a kitten performing a different kitchen task with one exception. For example, on Thursday’s towel, the kitten was carrying a tea kettle to the stove. On Sunday, the kitten was not doing kitchen work since she was going to church. She taught me how to embroider, but I was too impatient to make the stitches neat.
Even though Grandma Lillian didn’t ever travel to Bohemia, she used many recipes that came from the old country. She was famous for her Refrigerator Pickles. To make these, she combined seven cups of sliced cucumbers and one sliced yellow onion with a tablespoon of salt. She let the salt leach some of the water out of the cucumbers for about an hour. For the dressing, she combined one cup of vinegar, two cups of sugar, and one teaspoon of celery seed. She poured this over the cucumbers and stored the dish in the refrigerator to use as needed. By the time her recipe reached my family, we were eating the pickles as a side salad, all in one day.
My favorite memory about Grandma Lillian was how she made sugar cookies. Maybe we didn’t have cookie cutters. Maybe we didn’t have the shapes of cookie cutters that Grandma wanted. I don’t recall, but I do remember how Grandma folded a piece of newspaper in half and used scissors to cut out a heart about the size of her hand. Then she placed the heart shape over the rolled-out cookie dough and cut the dough with a sharp knife to make heart-shaped cookies. She placed the hearts on a cookie sheet and decorated them with colorful sprinkles. When we ate them warm out of the oven, they were buttery sweet.
Grandma loved to garden both vegetables and flowers. Many days, she spent hours out in her garden weeding, pruning, harvesting and enjoying the ambiance. My father inherited her green thumb since he also cultivated a big garden every year to feed his family.
Grandma Lillian was in her garden when she died on July 16, 1991. The weather was over 100 degrees, and my cousin Karen found her late in the day. Now, she is buried next to her husband Leon and her youngest son Daniel in a country cemetery. She didn’t become a movie star, a Congress woman, a Supreme Court judge, or even a newscaster on television. Yet, she lives on in the lives of her thirty-one grandchildren and more than forty great-grandchildren. That’s an accomplishment of which I am proud.
For years, the Macular Degeneration in her eyes had slowly darkened her vision. The blindness had started in the middle of her eyes and took over more and more of her sight as it covered her vision like a dark blanket. At the lunch table, her friend Ruth read the menu to her.
Last year, her doctor had diagnosed her with Alzheimer’s. She had called each of her ten children with the news. They didn’t know how to react, and she didn’t either. She didn’t think her memory was bad. She still knew her children’s and friends’ names and the address where she had lived for sixty years.
Her apartment was on the second floor overlooking the front garden of the assisted-living facility. When she had moved in, she could see the roses blooming and the branches of the sycamore trees swaying in the breeze. Now, she knew the roses and trees were outside the window, but she had to turn her head to see them from the perimeter of her eyes. Sometimes, she didn’t bother. She just let the circle of light enter her mind without trying to focus on any details.
She had gone down to the dining room for breakfast. Ruth didn’t have to read the breakfast menu to her since the server knew that she ate the same thing every morning: a piece of bacon, toast with jam, and a full glass of milk. Sometimes, her daughter Margaret brought her some homemade jam that she stored in the refrigerator in her studio apartment. Strawberry-rhubarb was her favorite. She would carry the small jar of jam down to the dining room and ask the server to spread it on her toast.
She found her way around her studio by reaching out to touch the furniture as she walked to the bathroom, the bed, or her recliner. To get down to the dining room, she found the knob on her front door, twisted the door open, scooted her body around it, closed it behind her, took the apartment key that she hung on a lanyard around her neck, and locked the door by finding the keyhole with her left fingers.
Once she got outside of her studio into the second-floor hallway, she reached out to touch the armchairs, side tables, lamps that led her to the elevator. Since her studio was at the end of the hallway and the farthest from the elevator, she passed many other apartments along the way. She could discern from her perimeter vision that some had wreaths on the doors. She knew when she was passing Nellie’s door since she could hear her chihuahua barking.
Lately, she’d noticed that she had trouble talking to her friends at the dining room table. She knew what she wanted to say, but it seemed hard to get the actual words out. The same thing happened to her when she phoned her children. In fact, it was exhausting to talk for any amount of time.
“Wait a minute,” she would say as she struggled to express herself. They waited so patiently, much more patient than she had been as their mother. Then, slowly and deliberately, she would answer their question with a complete sentence.
Since she had moved into the assisted-living facility, two of her long-time friends had died. Jim had severe back pain for a week before her passed away. She and her husband had known him and his wife for sixty years. They attended the same church. Their kids went to the same schools.
Patty passed away in her sleep one night. When her daughter came to clean out her studio, Rose Marie asked if she could have Patty’s tiny cabinet desk. The handyman had moved it into her apartment, and she kept her calendar and pens in it now. When she opened it, the wood felt warm, like Patty’s arms.
Rose Marie had always told her children that death was part of life. This time, however, the death that was coming was her own. Throughout the day, more and more of her life was transitioning to a new place with which she was unfamiliar. She couldn’t play Solitaire anymore at her desk because she couldn’t see, so she sat in her recliner and let the window’s light stimulate her thinking.
She was afraid. What would happen to her children when she died? Would they still be a family? Who would her sons talk to when they had problems to discuss? Who would need her when they got a divorce or lost a baby?
When she had first moved into the facility, her friend Morgan had picked her up every Sunday and drove her to Mass. She didn’t come anymore since Rose Marie no longer felt safe enough to walk around a place where she hadn’t memorized the placement of the furniture. Now on Sundays, she went down to the chapel when the priest came to bring Communion for the Catholics.
“I don’t know how to die,” she said one day. She could see him put his hands in his lap before he answered her. “I’m fully aware that I will die soon, but what should I be doing right now, before it happens.”
Father Moyer took a deep breath through his nose, and let the air out like a sigh before responding. “Well,” he said. “You don’t need to worry about dying. Just spend your days loving your family and friends. That’s all that matters.”
“So simple,” she said. She heard Father take another calm breath. When he exhaled, she was reminded of the ocean. She thought his answer would have involved praying, repenting, forgiving, or philosophical discussions. “I’m afraid of what will happen to my children when I’m gone. I’m the matriarch of the family. I keep them together. Shouldn’t I talk to them about these things?”
“No. They won’t remember anything like that, but they’ll remember how you love them.” He breathed in and out like the ocean again. It sounded so beautiful and relaxing to her.
Later, when Rose Marie went back to her apartment, she sat down in her recliner and picked up her cell phone. She pushed “1” which would dial her oldest daughter’s phone number automatically.
They only talked for two minutes. It was so hard to get out the words she wished to say. At the end of the phone call, Rose Marie said, “I love you.”
“I love you, too, Mom,” Celia said. “So much.” Rose Marie hung up.
Then she pushed “2” so she could talk to her second child. Then “3,” then “4,” then “5.” Her fifth child Ron didn’t answer. She’d have to call him later. By the time she had talked to the rest of her children, she could tell that the sun was setting between the branches of the sycamore trees outside her window. Soon, she’d have to walk down for dinner. She dialed “5” again, and Ronald picked up.
“I just wanted to say I love you,” she told him. She took a long slow breath and exhaled. The ocean flowed through her lungs.
Every kid in my family loved pancakes. Most of the time, we drenched our “cakes” in squares of butter and maple syrup.
My mother stood at the stove making the pancakes while us kids sat around the table eating them, so they were hot from the griddle. The butter was cold, but it melted into a golden pudding on top. My mother warmed the syrup bottle in a pan of water, and then she poured the syrup into a child-sized pitcher for the table. It smelled like an autumn hot toddy and dripped down the sides of the stacked pancakes like teeny waterfalls.
One morning, after the rest of our siblings had left the table, my brother Don and I were still cutting into helpings of pancakes with all their sticky toppings. As I chewed on my sweet breakfast, I said, “I bet I can eat more pancakes than you can.” I was five with a confident attitude, and my brother was four with a hollow stomach.
“No, you can’t. I’ll beat you,” Don said with a full mouth.
“Mom, Don and I are havin’ a pancake-eating-contest. Will you make us some more?”
My mother looked into the mixing bowl and found out that she still had batter left, so she agreed. “I’ll make dollar-sized ones for you.”
First of all, I have to tell you that my mother made pancakes using Betty Crocker’s Bisquick. Her pancakes were bready and fluffy with a flavor that you just can’t replicate without the secret Bisquick recipe.
She had taught us what dollar-sized pancakes were. Her regular pancakes were about 6 inches in diameter, and Don and I had already had about four of them that morning. Dollar-size pancakes, on the other hand, were about only 3 inches. They apparently were about the size of a silver dollar, but I’ve never seen a 3-inch silver dollar.
We started counting from 1. My mother gave us each a small stack of three dollar-sized pancakes. I melted the butter and swirled the syrup on top, then cut the cakes down the middle and scarfed them down. Don ate his too.
The next helping came. More butter and syrup. More chowing down. Don had a smile on his face like the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. He was feeling assured of his success, so I stuck out my tongue at him. Mom couldn’t see me because she was up the three stairs and behind the kitchen wall.
The next helpings came. Don rubbed his stomach and groaned. I didn’t dare complain that I was full. Winning was important.
The next helping came. By this time we both had eaten 12 little pancakes, not to mention the 6-inch ones we had eaten before we started recounting. Syrup was dripping out of the sides of our mouths, and the butter plate was empty.
Mom used a spatula to set three more pancakes down on each of our plates. I scraped the butter plate for any leftover bits, and poured the syrup in between my pancakes so they were nice and moist all the way through. Easier to digest that way. Don was stooped over the table like an old man, looking down at his plate. I kept my back tall, and my Buddha belly rounded out in front of me like a balloon. We kept eating.
Both of us ate through the next helping slowly. The syrup failed to make the pancakes irresistible. I felt like throwing up.
Soon, another little stack of three was on my plate. Don poured the syrup, and cut into his stack like a drunken sailor. When he got half-way through, he pushed his plate away from him, put his head down on the table, and let out a deep moan. “Mom, I can’t do it,” he said.
There wasn’t enough syrup for me to pour it in between each pancake, so my stack of pancakes was a little dry. I used both my knife and fork to cut the stack, chewed the dry pancakes into a pulp, and swallowed the damp pulp of dough down my throat. Don was finished. All I had to do was get through this whole stack and I would be the winner.
I chewed and swallowed without tasting. The stack got smaller and smaller with each bite. I belched. I swallowed some more. Finally, I jabbed the last piece of pancake onto my fork, stuffed it into my mouth, chewed, swallowed, and put my fork back down.
I sat up straight, acting as if my stomach didn’t ache like an overblown balloon and raised my arms up into the air, my fists together like a champion. A full and painful stomach would pass. The feeling of retching would too. Winning was everything.
My relationship with food started with a tummy ache.
When I was born, my parents soon learned I was allergic to cow’s milk. My mother had grown up on a farm in Wisconsin where her father milked his cows to provide milk on the table. My father loved cow’s milk so much that he scooped the cream off the top of pasteurized milk with a spoon and put it in his mouth, right over the bottle. So my allergy to milk was unusual for them. To solve the problem, they bought a goat, milked it, and put the goat’s milk into my bottle.
Our family was large—two parents and ten children to feed. This meant that the preparation of food required a major effort, not just by my mother but the whole family. Since my father grew up on a farm, our first home was a rented farmhouse on top of a barn on a two-acre property in Fair Oaks, California. My dad’s day job was in the military, but before he went to work and after he got home, he milked the goat and cow, fed the chickens and ducks, collected their eggs, gave lettuce to the rabbits, sheered the sheep, picked fruit from the fruit trees, and planted, weeded, and harvested the vegetable garden.
When I was three, my parents bought a house right down the street on a half-acre lot, and it was the most prolific half-acre I’ve ever known. We didn’t keep a cow there, but we still had sheep, ducks, chickens, fruit trees, and a year-round vegetable garden. Radishes, carrots, lettuce, and green onions in the spring. Zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers in the summer. Pumpkins and acorn squash in autumn, and potatoes in the winter. I remember running bare-foot under the plum trees over fallen, ripe plums that were magnets for the honey bees. Before I went to Kindergarten, I had been stung dozens and dozens of times each summer.
We weren’t legally allowed to work when we were kids, except as harvesters in my father’s garden. Under the blazing summer sun, I stooped between the rows of tomato plants and picked tomatoes until my arms itched with rashes. When I complained, I was switched over to the rows of green beans where the purple dragon flies terrified me as they flitted among the bean plants’ twirling tendrils. I hated the hot sun, the rashes, the dragon flies, and the repetition of picking.
One day at the dinner table, I came up with the incredible idea that I didn’t like green beans, and, if I didn’t like them, I wouldn’t have to pick them anymore. With this inventive scheme in mind, I looked down at the green beans on my plate and said out loud, “I don’t like green beans.” As fast as lightening, my brother stuck his fork in my green beans and lifted them over to his plate. All I had left were fish sticks and mashed potatoes, and the serving dishes on the table were all empty. Nevertheless, I spent my whole childhood hating green beans. It wasn’t until I was around thirty that I tried them again and discovered they were delicious.
Cow’s milk and green beans weren’t the only foods that traumatized me. My mother was a decent cook, but she often lost track of the vegetables cooking on the stove. By the time she remembered to turn off the zucchini, it had turned into a gelatinous mass of green sludge, and she made us eat it anyway.
My mother employed her daughters as helpers in the kitchen as soon as we could reach over the counter. When we had French fries for dinner, I had to peel ten pounds of russet potatoes and slice them into French fry fingers. Then, Mom deep-fried them in oil and we cooled them on racks placed over cookie sheets.
I never complained about not liking French fries. I loved them as much as everyone did. In fact, if I didn’t protect the fries on my plate, one of my siblings would snitch them when I wasn’t looking. The best course of action was to eat the French fries on your plate first, get another helping, then eat the rest of your food. To this day, I don’t dip my French fries in catsup while I’m eating them. When I was a kid, I didn’t have time.
Some of my food trauma also stems from the creative ways that my father punished us when he caught us committing food crimes. I think my dad could have earned a PhD in psychology if he had the notion to get more than a two-year college degree. He was thoughtful, and, because his sentences were so inventive, they were effective. One time after dinner, he caught me popping a large marshmallow into my mouth. “You still hungry?” he asked. “Next time you eat when you’re at the dinner table.” He made me sit at the table and finish eating the leftover pork and beans. That was a “tooty” experience that I never forgot. Today I don’t even like marshmallows.
My father was born in Winona County, Minnesota, an area dominated by Winona—a tranquil, medium-sized city on the west banks of the Mississippi River.
What I love about Winona is its history. Before white settlers came to the area, Dakota Sioux natives called it Keoxa. They lived in the area for centuries and stayed for years, even after the the United States government purchased the land from them in the Traverse des Sioux and Mendota treaties in 1851.
The first known white man to see Winona was Lieutenant Zebulon Pike in 1805, who traveled from Fort Bellefontaine in Missouri to find the source of the Mississippi River. In his journal, he writes about the Dakota legend of Winona, a daughter of Chief Wabasha III who throws herself from Maiden Rock, a precipice on the Wisconsin side of Lake Pepin—a wide expanse of the Mississippi River just north of present-day Winona.
On October 15, 1851, Captain Orrin Smith, Mr. Erwin Johnson, and two other men—knowledgeable of the Traverse des Sioux and Mnedota treaties—claimed title to the riverfront and surrounding prairie land. When the town site was surveyed and plotted in 1852, Smith and Johnson named it “Montezuma.”
Why this Aztec name was chosen for the town is a mystery. Montezuma means “angry like a lord.” Perhaps the swift current of the Mississippi River was the motivation for this label, but, nevertheless, the name didn’t last long.
In 1853, Henry D. Huff bought an interest in the town site, and he was successful in changing the town’s name to Winona. Huff was in town to make money by building railroads. He also wanted to develop Winona into a classic city. When he changed the city’s name, he also created streets and street names: Huff Street after himself, Harriet Street after his wife, and Wilson Street after his son. The town was still a muddy expanse, but Huff built a family a mansion to signal to future residents that Winona was to be a town of sophisticated architecture and graceful culture.
What better way to achieve this than to name the city Winona, which means first-born daughter in Dakota. Her story is tragic but inspiring. She threw herself to her death so that she wouldn’t have to marry a man she did not love. She settled for nothing but the best, and that’s what Huff wanted for himself and his new home.
References:
History of Winona, Olmsted, and Dodge Counties Together with Biographical Matter Statistics, Etc. H.H. Hill. 1884. pp. 352.
Even the sweetest human being contains a little bit of wickedness, and the most awful person possesses at least a little goodness. This is because each person is made from a complex collection of DNA that has been blended over and over again, generation after countless generation; furthermore, these durable genes have survived a variety of political systems, religions, geographic locations, war, peace, cruelty, and kindness—all of the experiences of their ancestors.
One day, when I visited the Polish Museum in Winona, Minnesota, I saw a photograph of one of my ancestors, Lawrence Bronk. I thought I was looking at a photograph of my father—a man of fine build, blonde hair, and handsome face; however, Lawrence was the brother of my Great-great-grandfather Ignatius, and he immigrated to Winona, not from Poland, but from Kashubia, a place that bordered the Baltic Sea. This man inspired me to find out just who these Kashubians were and what made them Kashubian instead of Polish.
Not only did I research the immigration of the Kashubians to North America, but I also investigated how the Kashubians settled in Kashubia. What I found out was that I was related to people who had lived complex lives of peace, aggression, oppression, and chaos throughout the centuries. This is their story.
After the Roman Empire dissolved in the 6th Century, Slavic tribes from the East, mainly from the Ukraine area, migrated north into Russia, west into what is now known as Germany and Poland and the Czech Republic, and south into the Adriatic Region. These were distinct from the Germanic tribes that had migrated from Scandinavia into the Roman Empire starting in the 4th Century.
The Kashubians were a Slavic tribe that settled in Eastern Europe on the coast of the Baltic Sea at that time. Specifically, they claimed a region of land that was south of Sweden, north of Poland, east of the German homeland, and west of Lithuania. Their ancient territory stretches from the Kashubian capital city of Gdansk to as far as the German Capital of Berlin. It lies between the Odra River to the west and the Vistula River to the east. The whole north side borders the Baltic Sea.
During the migration, the Slavs became a nuisance to the Byzantine Empire, which was really the eastern part of the Roman Empire that lasted for a thousand years after the fall of the western Roman Empire. Since Slavs were an adaptable species, they learned how to use the weapons of those they conquered and attacked cities instead of trade routes.
These pillaging Slavs believed in nature, and they had adopted a mythology consisting of a pantheon of gods. Their shamans were known for telling great tales about their gods, and the Slavs traditions and way of life were developed from these tales.
The Byzantine rulers wished to calm these robust terrorists, so they ordered two scholars and brothers, Cyril and Methodius, to educate the Slavs in the Glagolitic alphabet, which was closely connected to the teachings of Christianity. This is how Kashubians and other Slavs became Roman Catholics.
When the Byzantine Empire ended, the Slavs created Slavic kingdoms across Eastern Europe, effectively squelching the influence of the Mongol tribes who wished to spread their Muslim religion.
The Kashubs were also called Pomeranians, which translates to “the people by the sea”. When they settled by the Baltic Sea, they spent many years isolated from other Slavs and peoples. This allowed them to develop their unique Kashubian dialect and create their own traditions, folklore, music, dance and cuisine. Their access to land induced them to become an agricultural people, farmers who worked the land to provide for their families. They organized their smallest community structure into Catholic parishes, and their lives centered around their religion.
Eventually, the German Empire encroached upon the independence of the Kashubian people, and Kashubia became part of Prussia. Their German rulers forced priests to say Mass in German instead of the native Kashubian language, and the Kashubians strongly resented this. Farmers had large families so that children could help work the land, but when these broods of children grew into adulthood, there wasn’t enough farmland for them to farm; therefore, the German government offered Kashubians free or cheap travel to North America where homesteads and land were abundant.
On May 14, 1859, three sailing ships left Hamburg, Germany for Quebec, Canada, carrying a host of Kashubian families. The names of the ships were the Laura, Donau, and Elbe. The river that connects Hamburg to the Baltic Sea is the Elbe, so the ship named Elba was likely named after this river, a common German practice for naming ships.
On board the Elbe were families with the surnames of von Bronk, Galewski, Kistowski, Konkel, Libera, Piekarski, Platowna, Rzenszewicz (Runsavage), Walinski, who knew each other in their homeland. The records of the ship were posted in German using Prussia as the land of origin; however, Kashubians never did consider themselves German.
My ancestors on the Elbe consisted of the Joseph and Francisca von Bronk family, including their five sons—Johann, Ignatz, Vincent, Lorenz, and Jacob. Von is a German preposition meaning “from,” so this label indicates they came from a place called “Bronk.” In the Kashubian region, there is a forest known as “Bronki” so they may have originated from that specific place. All of the passengers listed on this ship were classified as “Landsmann,” indicating that they were farmers.
Joseph von Bronk is my Great-great-great grandfather. His son Ignatz, who changed the spelling of his name to Ignatius, is my Great-great grandfather mentioned above. The family left Quebec and traveled south, eventually arriving in the Winona area before the end of 1859. Many of the families who traveled across the Atlantic with them also settled in the Winona area. Others stayed in Canada and founded another Kashubian town known as Wilno.
The Winona area was a lot like their home in Kashubia where there were plentiful forests, abundant water and fishing, and land for farming. At first, the Kashubians settled on the east side of what is now known as Winona where they established a Kashubian village. In 1886 after his second wife died, Ignatius bought land in Pine Creek, Wisconsin. This property is owned by my Uncle David and Aunt Linda today.
Artifacts in the Polish Museum in Winona revealed that the Kashubians were a literary and creative people. Many of their descendants have continued the strong story-telling and writing traditions of the culture, including me, for instance. Their colorful embroidery and distinctive pottery are world-renowned, and their flag and national symbols are celebrated today, not only in Kashubia, but now in the Kashubian communities all over North America.
Today, in Winona and in the surrounding farms, the Kashubian descendants live in harmony with Polish, German, and Swedish peoples. They work in each other’s businesses, attend each other’s weddings and baptisms, and share the same merry-go-rounds.
This is the Kashubian story. Now this is my advice. If you have a Kashubian neighbor, laugh at their jokes, never insult them, keep the peace. A Kashubian is a warrior. Behind that friendly gleam in his eye, behind her engaging smile is a constitution of ferocity. Those DNA have migrated over mountains, through valleys, into war, across water, and have survived.
I’m from a town—a suburbia in the San Francisco Bay Area–a place that is less densely populated than a city and bigger than a village. My town has clean streets lined with sycamore and crepe myrtle trees, houses with front and back yards, barbecues, swimming pools, cabanas, patio sets, and walking mail carriers. People walk their poodles and Labrador retrievers on neighborhood hiking paths and buy popsicles from the singing ice cream truck that meanders the streets on summer days.
I own a tidy little home in my town. Yards with manicured hedges, carefully pruned flower beds, edged lawns. Clean and tidy. I sweep under my garbage cans each week when I take them out for collection. My children are grown and have homes of their own, so my house is immaculate too. I spray my shower down after each use. I wipe the stove after each meal, and I own five vacuum cleaners, one for each type of vacuuming task. You get the picture. I’m a clean freak.
I decided to visit my relatives in the country this last month. They live on farms all around the city of Winona, Minnesota, in both Minnesota and Wisconsin. I also am lactose intolerant, and, when I was born, my parents bought a goat to feed me. My mother grew up in Wisconsin, a state popular for milk and cheese. Her whole life, she drank three tall glasses of cow’s milk a day, one at every meal.
I wasn’t one of those town kids that thought milk originated in the refrigerator case at the grocery store. My mother told me where it came from. After all, she grew up on a farm. I’m smart enough to know that most milk at the grocery store comes from cows, not goats, almonds, coconut, or oats. Sorry vegans.
When I visited my relatives in Minnesota and Wisconsin this month, my cousin Scott–a handsome man with a ready smile, who owns a 600-cow dairy farm near Altura, Minnesota, invited a bunch of us to visit his farm. I didn’t mention to him that I was lactose intolerant since I didn’t want to feel ostracized. I was confident, however, that his cows would like me just fine. Really appreciate me, in fact.
We got to the farm before Scott did, and his workers told us to wait outside. As we walked through a barn full of teenage cows—some with the cutest faces, we found some pitchforks and posed for a picture like Grant Wood’s 1930 American Gothic painting, except both my husband Bob and I held a pitchfork since we believe in equality. In Grant’s painting, the farmer’s daughter didn’t have a pitchfork in her hand. I hate to think what Scott’s pitchforks were actually used for and what debris was on the handles that I touched, but I wasn’t going to pass up a great opportunity for a memorable photograph.
I was wearing a clean T-shirt and skort and a pair of running shoes, knowing that we’d be traipsing around in cow emissions of all kinds. When Scott arrived, I gave him a cousin hug. He recoiled away from me, and when I let go, I noticed that his Tshirt was full of dirt stains. He didn’t want to get me all dirty, apparently. He had already been at work on the farm the whole morning, and had had meetings with lots of females (cows) who never put on a suit or blouse. That was a town-girl blunder. I surreptitiously looked down at my T-shirt and skort to see if I was still presentable.
I’m not at all a dumb person, but, living in a town, I spend more time thinking about the best hiking trails and restaurants than I do about the biology of animals. This visit brought my knowledge of cows out of the back room of my brain into my frontal cortex. I appreciated, too, that Scott was as informative as an agricultural professor at the University of California, Davis where they offer classes in dairy farming.
The first thing people must understand about milking cows is that a cow has to have a baby before it produces milk; therefore, the process of milking cows takes patience and great skill. Because the cows have to be impregnated, go through about a 280-day pregnancy, give birth, and then produce milk, a dairy farm is comprised of a fertilization lab, pregnancy dorm, maternity ward, nursery, elementary school, high school, milking station, and milk refrigeration tank.
There’s a lot to learn about a cow’s life. About half of the calves that are born are female and the rest are male. I know this seems obvious, but Scott doesn’t need all those males so this statistic is unfortunate; he keeps a few males for breeding but sells off the rest to beef processing facilities. What happens there is for another blog post, likely not written by me.
At the back of his property, Scott raises his calves in individual pens, each one living in a domed shelter with food and water. When the calves get bigger, they live in a barn—organized like a college dormitory—which has an insulated roof and fans that blow constant breezes through the building to keep the cows cool. The cows are encouraged to spend as much time in the field as they want. I was intrigued that they actually had a choice in this matter; Scott talked about them like they were his valued students. Their rooms were also much cleaner than most college dorm rooms I’ve visited.
Pregnant cows also live in a barn dormitory. A long building that holds several dozens of cows, organized into three rows that run the length of the barn, each row is divided into individual pens filled with a soft bed of sand. The two outside rows are where the cows stay when they’re inside. They can either stand up or lay down in the soft sand. They face out, having access to fresh water and hay. Their backsides face into the center row through which a stream of water flows, sweeping up the cow manure and any sand that is soiled and discarded by the cow’s movement.
The dirty water, filled with excrement and sand is processed through a filtering system near some manure holding reservoirs. The clean water gets recycled back into the barn stream, and the excrements are deposited into the holding reservoir where it is treated and used for fertilizer to grow alfalfa or corn. A well-thought-out system that truly impressed this town-girl.
So many problems can occur with milking cows. They can get sick, dehydrated, infected, or overheated—all of these situations affecting their ability to produce high-quality milk. We saw calves that had spikes put through their noses to prevent them from milking on other cows. We learned that new babies were removed from their mothers so they wouldn’t milk, and they were given milk that was tested to ensure good health. We witnessed testing tools, pages of testing data and production statistics.
In the milking shed, the cows are milked twice a day. They are led into the stalls and encouraged to turn around so that the workers have access to their relevant body parts–teats. Some milking sheds, Scott informed us, have turnstiles that turn the cows into the right position. Scott doesn’t have those. His milk hands push the cows into the correct position, clean each cow’s teats and attach the milking tubes which automatically milk the cows for an average of 20 minutes. When the milk hand punches the cow’s serial number into the machine on her stall, the machine measures her milk output and adds it to the farm’s data system. See why math classes are so important. Everyone uses math.
Cows are insanely fruitful. One cow produces about 60 pounds of milk a day—that’s 90 glasses a day for people like my mother. The milk travels through pipes into a stainless-steel cooling tank that looks a lot like the stainless-steel wine tanks in Napa, California that hold sauvignon blanc or chardonnay. These dairy tanks are expensive—one can cost from $100,000-$140,000. What struck me was that the purpose of the tank was not just to store the milk, but to also cool it. The milk is warm when it comes out of the cow. Again, I might have figured this out on my own, but, secretly, I was surprised to hear about it.
I asked Scott whether his farm was considered a small, medium, or large dairy. “It depends on who you ask,” he replied. “I’m only one of three dairy farms left in the immediate area. Smaller farms are disappearing due to the rising costs of operation.”
Scott now has a female manager at his dairy. I can’t remember her name, but let’s call her Laci. “Laci likes to be in charge,” said Scott. “She also fell in love with my one-in-a-million cow hand, married him and now has a child.” Scott’s calls this cow hand one-in-a-million because of his excellent work ethic. Apparently, One-in-a-million is also supremely savvy; he married his boss.
By the time we had toured the whole process, my T-shirt and skort reeked of cow sweat, dust, and hay and the treads on my running shoes were caked with a smelly, nefarious, brown sludge. I found myself holding my arms away from my body in a desperate attempt to feel cleaner.
Scott invited us into his office where his hound was waiting. When we sat down, the dog plunked his muddy paws onto my lap and slobbered my skort with drool. First, I looked down in horror, but, then, I quickly composed myself and left the drool alone, trying very hard to adapt my cleanliness obsession into an acceptance of the natural dairy farm environment.
Scott opened his little refrigerator and offered us frozen chocolate treats and push-up ice cream popsicles. They were certainly welcome after a hot tour of his cow quarters. I hadn’t had a push-up popsicle for ages, and I tried hard not to drive the whole piece of ice cream out of the tube and onto the floor as I struggled with it.
Turns out, Scott gave the last part of his popsicle to the hound who licked it up joyfully on the floor. This helped me relax a little, and when I had just a little of my popsicle left, I shared the rest with Scott’s hound too. This was a remarkable development, you see, because a town-girl would have never put her popsicle down on the floor for a dog to roll around and lick up.
That day, on Scott’s dairy farm, I proved that even town-girls can leave the town behind and have a little fun in the country.
Way back in the 1860’s, my great-great-grandfather Ignatius immigrated to Wisconsin with his four brothers. They all had families. My great-grandfather Leon had seven siblings. Most of them had families. My grandfather Leon had six siblings; all of them, except for his brother Phillip who became a priest, had families. His brother Ed had fourteen children. His brother George had nine offspring. Many farmers had large families so they could use their children to provide free labor on the family farm.
My father had four siblings, and they had children. My father had ten children. His brother David had ten children. And between his siblings Gerald, Mary and Daniel, there were eleven more descendants. Now those descendants have children and so do their offspring.
Then, there is the maternal side of my family. Two families dominate this line of my heritage: the Konkels and the Jereczeks, families who immigrated to the Pine Creek area of Wisconsin in the 1800’s as well. I’m still working out the threads of my great-great-grandparents, but I’m clear about the progeny of my Great-grandpa John Jereczek and his wife Pelagia Konkel. They had eight farm laborers—excuse me, eight children. One of them was my grandfather August. He married Florence Gibbons, a woman from a large Irish family that immigrated to the area during the Irish Potato Famine. Everyone in every generation had large families.
Truly a cousin conundrum. I have first cousins, second cousins, thirds, fourths, cousins-removed in a lot of different ways, over-the-hill-cousins, and near-and-far cousins. Between the farming community of Altura, Minnesota—throughout Winona—and into the farming communities of Dodge and Pine Creek, Wisconsin, I am in danger of running into one of my cousins at any time in any place—as the owner of a dairy farm, at church, in a restaurant, at a grocery store, or on a hike in the state park which used to belong to my great-grand-father Leon. If you count the relatives who live outside of this area—in Minneapolis, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Colorado, Montana, Idaho, and California, my cousin count is exponential.
What really is a cousin? I did a little research and found a definition. The website Who Are You Made Of? defines a cousin as “anyone who shares a common ancestor with you and is not a direct descendant of you or your siblings, a direct ancestor, or a sibling of a direct ancestor.” This definition certainly proves that I have hundreds of cousins, most of whom I probably will never know since I can’t even keep the names of my great aunts and uncles straight.
I recently visited the Wisconsin/Minnesota area where my ancestors first landed in America, and I had such a fabulous time with my relatives—mostly cousins—that I became inspired to better understand this voluminous family of mine. I do understand who my first cousins are. They are the children of my aunts and uncles. I have 44 first cousins—the children of my father’s and mother’s siblings. When I visited a few days ago, I was able to see about 25 of them. What a fun group they are—laughing, joking, telling stories, recalling memories, and thinking of the next fun social opportunity.
My children’s names are Alex and Rachael. Since I have nine brothers and sisters who have produced a total of eighteen children amongst them, my children have eighteen first cousins just from my side of the family, two from their dad’s side.
The thing is, my first cousins now have children, like I do. With a little more research, I found out that my cousins’ children are my first cousins-once removed. They are also the second cousins of my children. This means that all of the children of my 44 first cousins—I can’t even begin to tabulate this number—are Alex and Rachael’s second cousins.
One day on my visit, I went to the Bronk Nursery which is owned by the son of my Great-uncle Ed—one of Ed’s fourteen children–Donald. Later that night, Donald had a beer with me and some of my first cousins at Wellington’s Pub and Grill in Winona. We sat outside while the sun set, and when the darkness descended, the mosquitoes started to feed on us with a relentless enthusiasm. Since Donald is my father’s first cousin, I believe he is my first-cousin-once-removed.
My brother Ron and sister Margaret were on this visit with me. On Sunday, they went to church in Lewiston, Minnesota to meet Greg, the son of our Great-uncle George. Since Greg is my father’s first cousin, Greg is also our first-cousin-once-removed. Oh boy.
Another time when I visited Winona, I went to a restaurant with some of my first cousins, and the waitress turned out to be the daughter of my Great-aunt Agnes, who preferred to be called Florence. The waitress’s name was Paula Doerr. She was also my father’s first cousin, which also made her my first-cousin-once-removed.
This visit, I was looking for a restaurant for another dinner and I found a bar owned by the Gibbons family. This name shows up in my mother’s heritage line. I don’t know whether these bar owners are first-cousins-once-removed or even worse. After visiting several cemeteries where I was related to an incredible number of inhabitants, I was becoming overwhelmed by all the relationship possibilities.
Think about all the tombstones connected to me. In the Sacred Heart Cemetery in Pine Creek, there are 27 Jereczeks and at least 7 Bronk headstones. There are dozens of Konkels, Gibbons and Broms, too, and they are all related to me. My Great-grandfather Leon and more Bronks and Broms are buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery which turned out to be only half a mile from my hotel. My Grandfather Leon and Grandmother Lillian are buried in Fremont Cemetery–a pastoral place in the country with their son Daniel who died when he was only 29. I even have a great-great-great grandmother who is buried under Mankato Avenue in Winona, Minnesota. When they laid out the streets for the City of Winona, they never moved her body. Her husband is likely buried nearby since we don’t know where he is.
I didn’t meet any of my second, third, or fourth cousins that I know of, but I know they’re walking around the Minnesota and Wisconsin dells somewhere. My research revealed that I share DNA with all of these cousins, and that anyone beyond a third cousin is considered a distant cousin.
I’m married, but if I was single, I could marry my third cousin. Queen Elizabeth II married Price Phillip who was her third cousin, both descendants of Queen Victoria.
It’s comforting to know that I come from such an ample family. I am close to many of my first cousins, and even if I don’t see them on a day-to-day basis, when we do see each other, we take up just where we left off the last time we spoke. We support each other through both happy and sad family occasions: weddings, births, graduations, and deaths. My life would feel so much lonelier without them. Luckily, cousin love doesn’t have any DNA restrictions.
Between Stockton Valley and the west side of the Mississippi near Winona, Minnesota is a ridge covered with white pine trees. Once upon a time, my great grandfather, Leon Ambrose Bronk Sr., bought land on this ridge to grow alfalfa and corn. Throughout the years, he bought more adjoining farms until his land holdings reached 761 acres.
On June 16, 2022, when I was visiting, two of my cousins arranged for a group of family members to ride up into the park in 4-wheel drive trucks so that my 92-year-old uncle could see the land where he spent the first 14 years of his childhood.
Great-grandfather Leon bought this property in the 1920’s and lived in a white wooden house at the bottom of the ridge where he planted a family garden and built a barn for cattle and horses. Twenty years ago, I remember walking through the ruins of that house. When he bought some farms at the top of the ridge, Leon Sr. let his oldest son Leon Jr. and his family live in one of the farm houses up there. Leon Jr.’s first son, Paul—my father, was born in 1929 and his second son, David, was born in 1931. David is the father of ten of my closest cousins. Twenty years ago, we found a rusted sled that Paul and David used to travel down the snowy slopes of the ridge when they were little.
In 1969 when he was 81-years-old, Leon Sr. sold the land to the State of Minnesota, and it became part of the Richard J. Dorer Memorial Hardwood State Forest. Since much of the property rises 500 feet above the surrounding valleys, it provides hikers and bikers tremendous scenic views of the land and water below. The State of Minnesota planted thousands of white pine trees in rows, a forest that now covers up any evidence of houses, gardens, and alfalfa fields.
On this day, cousins Diane and Bill drove the trucks into the park and up the ridge under the supervision of a park volunteer named Mark. Mark is an avid off-road bicyclist, and he started to maintain the 6.5 miles of hiking trails in this park by using his electric weed-whacker to cut the weeds. One day when he was working, he met a state park ranger, and he explained how he biked up the ridge with his whacking machine to keep the trails open. He also wished that the gate was open so he could use his four-wheeler jeep to bring his mower up; because the weeks grew so fast, the mower would do a better job in a shorter amount of time. The ranger gave Mark a key to the gate and unlimited access to the park.
When my cousin Diane wanted to arrange a family drive, she called Mark to get the State’s permission to drive trucks through the gate and up to the top of the ridge. He helped her out because he wanted to meet the oldest living Bronk relative, my Uncle David, who had actually once lived on the property.
Mark was excited to hear stories about the property’s history. The park is named the Bronk Unit Plowline Trail referring to the line where the Bronks stopped plowing their fields. Uncle David revealed that one ridge is known as Cherry Hill, probably due to the cherry trees growing there. Another ridge is known as Straw Pile Hill. That’s where, when he was a mere boy, David dumped the hay that he harvested from the fields, and Paul would pick it up and haul it off to be sold. David had to plow the fields and collect the hay with a horse-drawn contraption. Paul got to drive the tractor since he was older.
My dad used to say that “You can take a man away from the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the man.” All his life, my father was an excellent farmer. When I was born, my family rented a two-acre farm in Fair Oaks, California. I was allergic to cow’s milk, so my parents bought a goat and gave me its milk. We had chickens, bunnies, and geese. My mother made butter and ice cream by hand.
Later, when we moved to a smaller property, my dad raised sheep. One sheep was our favorite, and we named him Jerimiah. One day when we got home from school, we couldn’t find him. At dinner, we asked my parents where he was. “He’s on your plate!” said my dad with a grin.
David, too, farmed his whole life. He bought a farm that had been owned by my Great-Great Grandpa Ignatius Bronk, who immigrated to the area from Gostomie, Poland and bought this farm in 1886. When Ignatius died in 1896, his son Theodore took over the farm; Theodore was the older brother of my Great-Grandfather Leon Sr. Today, David lives on the farm with his wife Linda and a herd of cows that his son, Bill, manages for him. While I was visiting, about twenty-five of us cousins, first-cousins-once-removed, second cousins, and Uncle David and Aunt Linda had a picnic on a hot and humid 100-degree day. To stay cool, we sat under the spreading branches of a white oak tree and slapped the gnats that buzzed around our faces.
While we walked around the top of the ridge on Great-Grandpa’s property, we found wild carrots and asparagus—souvenirs from the gardens that once fed the Bronk families. Hanging high above a hiking trail, we found a scarecrow with a Jack-o-lantern head, plaid shirt, and farmer pants. Mark told us that a solar light made the head light up at night, creating an unexpected scary encounter. We watched big, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterflies settle on wild flowers and examined tiny pine cones that fell from the white pine trees. The floor of the forest was covered in a thick matting of dead pine needles, hiding the remnants of our relatives’ lives.
What occurred to me that day was that all of the farmers who worked on my great-grandfather’s land had been removed from it: my great-grandfather, my grandfather, my father, and my uncle. Yet, there was evidence all around the area and in places far away, like California, that these people and their descendants were still farming. David’s son Bill will one day take over David’s historic farm. My brother, Donald, can grow any vegetable or flower in his patch of garden in California. I have a green thumb when it comes to growing flowers. Apparently, you can’t take the farm out of a farming family.
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