family history – Tessa M. Perko's Blog

What Writing Letters Taught Me

My mother hated writing letters, but she had three sisters who loved to communicate with her via writing. Mom was. however, an excellent problem-solver; using her exceptional negotiation skills, she convinced me to write letters to her sisters on her behalf.

For someone who didn’t like to write, she was a pretty good writing coach. From her coaching, I developed a passion for writing. This is what she taught me.

Brainstorming is Useful

When Mom asked me to write a letter, I first said, “I don’t know what to write.” Mom asked me to make a list of things I could write about, and she gave me some ideas: the weather, the garden, church, school. After a while, I started coming up with some of my own ideas in addition to these. My list included making cookies, going to the snow, and having my friends over to spend the night.

I still make lists before I write. Sometimes, I get ideas for a blog, like this one, while I’m sleeping. I get out of bed, go to the other room where I keep an arm chair and a pad of paper, and write down the ideas before I forget them.

If I get a dose of writer’s block, I jot down impressions that I want to include in a blog or chapter. I list as much information as I can and then leave it alone for a day or two. The notes help me get into the mood to write, and soon my writing juices are flowing.

How to Warm Up

“I don’t know how to start the letter,” was another refrain I often used. Mom said to start with “How are you? I am fine,” and then move onto another topic.

Asking about someone’s health seemed to be such a gracious opening, and it made me feel like a polite niece. Believe it or not, this introduction helped me warm up for the next subject.

How do I warm up for writing today? I have several methods that I’ve created to get me into the mood.

The first one is to take a walk in my garden where I have dozens of rose bushes that I’ve planted. Sometimes, I prune, other times I fertilize, but I always at least enjoy how beautiful they are. In my garden, I express my creativity, and enjoying it stimulates my creativity for writing.

Another thing I do to warm up is to read one of the affirmations that I’ve posted on my bulletin board to the right of my desk. Currently, I have three affirmations typed on 8 ½ by 11-inch paper to inspire me.

The first one says, “I lead with grace and ease.” When I read this, I see my writing as a way to lead the world to a better place. Thinking about being a leader dispels fear and encourages me to stand tall and feel calm.

The second one says, “I possess perfect self-expression.” I developed this affirmation when I started writing my first novel three years ago. I didn’t want writer’s block to inhibit my progress, so I thought of how I wanted to feel when I sat down to write.

The third affirmation on my bulletin board is, “The Midas Touch.” A few months ago, I was discussing my writing with a friend, and she said, “You possess The Midas Touch.” What she meant was that I was a brilliant and prolific writer. This gave my confidence such a boost that I decided to make it another affirmation for daily motivation.

Sentence Clarity

The letters I wrote on behalf of my mother taught me how to write clear sentences. As any serious writer knows, practice is the key to improvement. My mother had faith in my ability, so I was writing letters to her sisters at least once a month, and I started when I was six years old. Due to my mother’s coaching, my writing career and my writing practice started early in life. I’m sure, by now, I’ve written at least as much as The Beatles sang during their band years.

Paragraphing

Even though mother didn’t like to write or read, she was organized; therefore, she coached me to start a new paragraph every time I started to write about a new topic.

For example, I started each letter with “How are you. I am fine.” If the next topic was the weather, I’d start a new paragraph, which often turned into an interesting slice of my life. Here’s an example:

Today, the weather was sunny. We played outside all afternoon, and the bees were buzzing around the plums that had dropped to the ground. Since I was barefoot, I stepped on three bees and got stung three times. Luckily, Mom took out the stingers and I was fine.

Revising is Okay

If I made mistakes on my letters, my mother coached me to cross them out and to write the corrections after them. If I made too many mistakes, she convinced me to reprint the whole letter.

Maybe I was going to be a writer anyway, but knowing that I could make mistakes and fix them took off the pressure of being perfect the first time. For me, this was an important process to learn since, deep down, I hate making mistakes.

I also learned about revising from the letters I received from my Aunt Mary Ann. Today, Aunt Mary Ann is over 90 years old and still writes letters. If she makes a mistake, she crosses it out and rewrites what she meant to say. She demonstrates the perfect example of the writing process.

The Courage to Write

The other day, I told my five-year-old granddaughter that she could be a writer. Using one of her books, I showed her where her name would appear on the title page. She smiled at that, but then said, “I can’t write a story.”

For many people, writing is a daunting task. I know this since I taught writing at the college level for fifteen years.

Fortunately for me, I had a mother who didn’t take “no” for an answer. She had confidence that I could write.

Even now, when writer’s block stops my creative flow, I write letters: to Aunt Maryann, Aunt Dorothy, my friend in New Mexico, my sister-in-law in Florida.

Where did I get the courage to write? From a non-writer who believed in me.

A Eulogy for my Sister Carol

Photo by Cristina Anne Costello on Unsplash

Good morning. My name is Tess, the third child in a family of ten children and Carol’s older sister. Carol was the sixth child in our family, born on October 20, 1960 at Mather Air Force Base hospital in Sacramento.

As a baby, Carol was a pretty little blonde girl with fine hair and features that mirrored her mother’s: a long forehead, an awfully straight nose, and a smile that created dimples in her cheeks.

Carol loved, loved, loved music.

She enjoyed old-fashioned country music by the likes of Hank Williams who wrote “Hey Good Lookin,” which she heard when Mom and Dad played the radio.

When Carol still lived with us, Beverly, Carol’s oldest siter and another musician in the family, sang songs to her, such as “Do, Re, Mi” from the musical Mary Poppins and “My Favorite Things” and “Edelweiss” from The Sound of Music. Carol smiled, laughed enthusiastically, and sometimes rocked to the beat.

Just before Carol died, Ron and I visited her in the hospital. She was anxious, and the only noises in the room were the beeping of the medical monitors. We turned on some music by the Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. Immediately, Carol turned her head toward the music speaker and calmed down. Her eyes gleamed with joy.

We believe Carol would have been a great musician if she hadn’t suffered from Cerebral Palsy.

Carol possessed determination.

Even though she didn’t speak, Carol had ways of letting people know what she didn’t like. Whenever someone tried to brush her teeth or feed her sour fruit, she clenched her mouth closed to prevent anyone from getting anything past her teeth.

While she was in the hospital, Carol demonstrated determination as well. She didn’t like having oxygen tubes in her nose, so she moved her head from side to side until they fell out. One time, after I had inserted the tubes back in, Carol used her left hand to accurately bump the tubes out of her nose and above her head. A look of satisfaction spread across her face as she became free of them. I laughed out loud realizing that her spirit was still strong and impressive.

Carol was sometimes mischievous and annoyed.

One time when Margaret visited Carol while she was living in transitional housing, she found a caretaker feeding her.

Margaret knew that Carol had been attending school to learn how to eat on her own, so Margaret said to Carol, “Carol, you know how to feed yourself.”

Carol swallowed, looked up at Margaret, and laughed heartily.

Apparently, she was hungry, and, if she had to feed herself, it would take much longer. She knew what she was doing.

When Carol was annoyed, she set her mouth in a tight straight line to let us know. Her expression was so like the countenance of Mom’s face when she was irritated that we recognized it easily.

Carol enjoyed the support of a loving family throughout her life.

Our parents’ greatest gift was a strong family bond, and Carol was an integral part of our family unit.

Carol lived with our family for nine years. When she was a little girl, I lifted her onto the swing and pushed her. She raised her face to the sky to feel the breeze. I also took her by the hand and walked her around the back yard so she could see the animals. Her eyes followed the ducks and chickens as they strutted around for food.

When we flew to England to live for almost four years, I sat next to Carol on the plane. I thought I was luckier than my two older sisters because they had to take care of more siblings than me. As long as I took good care of Carol, Mom was happy. I danced stuffed animals in front of her, fed her the airplane food, of which she didn’t complain, and sang her to sleep.

After we returned from England, my parents decided to arrange for Carol to live in an assisted living home. One of her homes was in Santa Clara. At the time, I worked in Santa Clara, so, once a week, I visited Carol and fed her dinner. Sometimes, I was able to take her outside to enjoy the warm sun and soft breezes by the Bay. We sat on the expansive lawn under the shade of an oak tree, and I told her stories about the people in our family while her hazel eyes stared at my face.

Margaret and Liz also visited Carol in Santa Clara. First, they went to Great America for a day of fun, then called Carol’s facility to see if they could visit. Since they were arriving after visiting hours, they knocked on the back door. Once admitted, they sat next to Carol in the sitting room and told her about their day at the amusement park. Since Margaret and Liz love roller-coaster rides, they described the thrill of bouncing up and down and all around, and Carol stared at them, probably day-dreaming about a calmer choice such as “It’s a Small World.”

Finally, my parents arranged for Carol to move to Sacramento so she could live closer to them.

Once, while visiting, Margaret took Carol to Starbucks and ordered her a Strawberry Créme Frappuccino. She wheeled Carol outside since it was summer and she wanted Carol to enjoy the good weather. Margaret held the Frappuccino up to Carol’s mouth and told her not to drink it too fast or she would get a brain freeze. Carol eagerly sucked quickly through the straw for a few seconds, then let the straw go, wrinkled up her nose, and squeezed her eyes shut. Oops, she got a brain freeze.

When Carol moved to a home in Penryn, she was extremely popular with her roommates. She had more visitors than anyone, and her roommates thought she was Miss Congeniality. When we visited her, not only did we talk to Carol, we spent time with her friends. The joy on all the faces was rewarding. We felt popular, too.

Mom and Dad supported Carol throughout their lives, making sure she was well-cared for wherever she lived. Often, they brought her home for holidays such as Christmas so everyone could see her. Carol even showed up at Mom and Dad’s 50^th wedding anniversary at St. Mel’s Church, accompanied by her caregiver.

Later, after Dad passed away, Mom visited Carol as often as she could even after she moved into an assisted living facility herself when she was 89. Whenever Carol saw Mom, she didn’t have eyes for anyone else. She gazed into her face with a tender look of love, often accompanied by a smile.

Mom was a dedicated mother; she called Carol’s home every Sunday afternoon to check up on her. Our parents also purchased a burial plot for Carol next to their own so she could rest beside them.

Closing

We will miss Carol. Like any sibling, she was our friend, our companion, our entertainment, and most of all our teacher. She inspired us to slow down our racing lives to enjoy basic joys and connection with her. She showed us the value of unconditional love and how to practice it. She taught us that family bonds go beyond childhood and are maintained by commitment.

Our lives were and still are enriched by hers, and we are grateful to God that she was our sister.

Leona’s Tacos

Photo by Jeswin Thomas on Unsplash

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.

The Sugar Cookie Grandma

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 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.

Cousin Love

No one ever talks about their cousins, except my family. I have 44 first cousins that live all over the United States and beyond. I have friended many of them on Facebook. Many receive Christmas cards from me, and I visited many in Wisconsin and Minnesota this last year. I feel as close to my cousins as I do my own siblings.

My parents assured us that we would enjoy being from a large family since we’d always have friends. They were right. Even though I don’t see my cousins on a daily basis, they bring me so much joy and satisfaction.

My cousin Tim lives in Montana. He recently retired as the Superintendent of a tiny school district. Since I was a college professor, our careers were focused on helping students and improving education. We also comforted each other when we went through our divorces by sitting in a car in San Diego in the middle of the night and sharing stories after his brother’s wedding.

My cousin Roslyn is a high-school history teacher in Michigan. We both believe that students are better off when they learn history from more than one perspective and understand the difference between equity and equality since we worked with those concepts in the classroom. Roslyn is my philosophical partner in our extended family.

Carolyn lives in Winona, Minnesota. She raised her son as a happy single parent and now has two grandchildren. Yesterday, she posted a picture of her front yard packed with snow where she had painted flowers on the three-foot snow walls beside the path to her front door. What a creative spirit!

Cousin Dan lives in Japan with his wife and two pretty daughters. He works for the United States Navy and leaves his family for months at a time while stationed on the U.S.S. Reagan. I love his mustache and fun-loving family, who spend their afternoons searching for pottery on the beaches and artistic manhole covers in the towns.

My cousin Arlie is a handsome devil who has worn his once-dark-but-now-gray curly hair both long and short over the years. Once he drove a truck full of Wisconsin cheese to my parent’s house in California. We ate cheddar for weeks. Now, Arlie rides horses with his wife and works at an auto store. Even though we have little in common, at every reunion, we share heart-felt cousin hugs.

Patty lives in Boston and is married to Steve, who completely adores her. They go to baseball games and concerts on date nights, and inspire the rest of us not to give up on love. Patty sure knows how to pick a good partner.

Diane lives with her husband Matt in Minnesota. Now this is a fun girl. If you want to kayak in the Winona Lake, she’ll do it. She knows all the best restaurants in town and will even accompany you to the local spice and Polish museums for an afternoon. If you’re up for it after dinner, she’ll go with you to a bar for a beer and sit outside with the mosquitoes. One year, I watched on Facebook as she and Matt took their motorcycle on a cross-country trip through Minnesota, South Dakota, and Montana. Wow, what a woman!

Scott, a happy tall guy with a strong build, owns a dairy farm in Minnesota where he produces thousands of gallons of milk per day for American milk-drinking consumers. If you ask, he’ll take you on a tour of the farm and you’ll see where the calves are raised, cows are milked by machine, statistics are collected for each animal, and cow manure is recycled. Even a town-girl like me learns something every time I visit his farm.

I could go on talking about Lisa in Florida, Marilyn in Ohio, Marjorie in Minnesota, Randy in Minnesota, Karen in Wisconsin, Dewey, Joanne, Debbie, Denise, Renee, Kathy, Scott, Jim, and more, more, more, but you get the idea. I have interesting cousins in my life, and I interact with them frequently enough to maintain vibrant relationships.

Thank you, Mom and Dad, for maintaining such close family ties over the years. My cousins are an essential part of my happiness. I love them.

Why Queen Elizabeth II Matters to Me

In 1966 when I was nine, my family moved to England. My father was in the United States Air Force and he was stationed at Mildenhall Air Force Base in Suffolk County, about one hundred miles north of London. Queen Elizabeth II had already been queen of England for fourteen years.

My parents sent my siblings and me to an English Catholic school named St. Edmund’s in Bury St. Edmund’s. I started in Junior 2, and every day I had to dress in a blue uniform and tie a blue tie around the collar of my blouse.

By the time I entered Junior 3, I had developed some strong friendships with girls in my class. Elizabeth invited Ann and me to spend weekends at her historical English home in the countryside where we slept together in her late grandfather’s bed and heard the grandfather’s clock chime every fifteen minutes during the dark night.

Ann invited me to spend weekends at her house as well, where I learned the English custom of having tea each afternoon. We also walked for miles around the town of Bury St. Edmund’s exploring the 11^th century, ancient ruins of the St. Edmundsbury Cathedral and the dark nave of St. Mary’s Church. We visited Moyses Hall and found ancient instruments of torture that had been used by former leaders of East Anglia. In Bury, I learned that history was a long story about the human race and its complicated nature. I learned about selfishness, arrogance, faith, power, tactics, and greatness.

In class, beside studying math and English, we memorized famous English poems and old songs that had enriched the English culture for years. In fact, the first tune that I ever played on the recorder was “Greensleeves,” an old English ballad first recorded in 1580 by Richard Jones. This unforgettable tune was mentioned in Shakespeare’s play The Merry Wives of Winsor, and also serves as a favorite Christmas hymn in England “What Child is This?” that I sang in church. Thinking about how I was exposed to ancient English ballads and Shakespeare at such a young age, it’s no wonder that I later became a college English professor who specialized in the Early Modern Literature of writers such as Shakespeare.

Since I attended English school during my elementary school years, I never learned American history until I went to college. Instead, I developed a deep interest in English history, all the way from the Anglos and Saxons who brought rudimentary English to the island, to William the Conqueror who established French as the language of English politics, to Henry VIII with his six wives, to Elizabeth I with her fierce independence which I admired, to Elizabeth II who I saw on television night after night shaking hands, breaking bottles on the hulls of ships, and opening parliament, dressed in regalia. I grew to know even more about her than John F. Kennedy who had been assassinated when I was in first grade.

Perhaps I was so attracted to Elizabeth II because she reminded me of my own mother, who was also calm and dignified. They both wore a fluffy, curled hairstyle, red lipstick, and pastel clothing. My mother liked to wear rings and she loved flowers and hats. If Queen Elizabeth needed a double, you could adorn my mother in her royal robes and priceless jewelry and put a scepter in her hand and no one would know the difference.

But their real similarity was their endurance and generosity. I watched my mother give love to my father for over fifty years as a consistent and reliable spouse. I watched her endure the deaths of her friends and her sister with tenderness and strength. I admired the way she loved all of her ten children regardless of their talents, mistakes, and weaknesses. She lived until she was 92 years old, and the last year of her life, she called each of her children once a week and told them that she loved them. I couldn’t believe she could die.

I never believed Elizabeth would die either. I had felt her in my life like a steady light for so long. My parents loved her, and I loved her.

I don’t have any qualms about loving a monarch that represented a country once involved in colonialism. Elizabeth didn’t represent her country’s history. She represented its last 70 years, a time when Canada achieved full independence of Britain, a time when I grew up from an innocent, little girl to an independent woman who now possesses some of the characteristics of my mother. She ruled with grace at all times, during sadness, amidst anguish, and throughout the joyful times.

But most of all, Elizabeth represented a woman who accepted her role of service to her country. She served England with love and generosity; if everyone could lead with the commitment and humility that she demonstrated, our world would be a happier land.

Today, I’m English again, eagerly basking in her influence.

The Brother-Sister Dollar-Pancake Contest

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.

Winona: The Daughter Whose Choice Inspired a City’s History

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.

Withington, Ross. “Henry D. Huff.” Writing in Winona: A student and community writing project. https://medium.com/wicwinona/henry-d-huff-b7ffb6102672. July 3, 2022.

The Kashubian Warriors of Winona

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 6^th 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 4^th 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.

References:

Larry Reski. Poland to Pine Creek, Wisconsin. https://polandpinecreek.blogspot.com/2014/02/elbe-departing-from-hamburg-14-may-1859.html.
Haden Chakra. The Great Migration and Early Slavic History. https://about-history.com/the-great-migration-and-early-slavic-history/.
Welcome to Wilno. Wilno.com.

A Town Girl on a Dairy Farm

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.

Cousins in Every Direction

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.

A Story about Straw Pile Hill

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.