School picture

The original picture is torn through Lyle's face, but he looks like a cutie. He would have been six, and Vivian about seven.

Joe's Christmas cards

Here's one of Uncle Joe's Christmas cards. Apparently he sent such nice ones all the time. The writing on the back reads "Memorial in Sheldon City Park. The World War I list has Sylvester Michael Mulhern's name. He died in France of pneumonia."

Money poor

From Grandpa's tapes:

James says he doesn’t think he could sleep nights if he was so poor now as he and Cecelia were for years. He was completely happy but tells how he scraped up $80 and bought her an engagement ring with that. He didn’t have another penny, but by the time they got married he had rounded up $88 and that was enough for a ten day honeymoon. They stayed in the best hotels, ate well, went to the Minnesota fair, and did whatever they wanted. Money went far but when they got home they did not have a dollar in the house and there were hardly any groceries in James’ bachelor house. They rounded up some wedding money to buy staples. Then for the first couple of years they sold Ann Chase some chickens every Saturday for $1.50 and they bought their week’s groceries with that. Of course, they had their own meat, eggs and milk.

James says the world has changed and some of it has rubbed off on him. We have to have so many things and when he looks back on how many things they did without as children and when they were first married, and for several years after, it would bother him today. It did not at the time.

To explain just how money poor he was he told about the spring after Pat was born. Matt and Vete were helping James put up hay. He was using their hay loader which had a rope running between the bars to bring the hay up so it would not fall off. It broke and since he was using their outfit he had to replace the rope. It was going to cost
55c. He went up to the house and told Cecelia that they had to buy the rope and he did not want to tell them he did not have 55c in the bank, a purse or anywhere. Cecelia remember that Fr. McCormick had put 50c in a piggy bank for Pat and someone else had put in a dime. They broke open the bank, got the 60c and went to town and bought 55c worth of rope.

A snowstorm in 1888

Another story written by Uncle Joe in 1972 for the Sheldon Centennial:

Laura, Winnie, Eugene, James, Tressie and Molly Mulhern attended Grant Township School #1, one fourth of a mile north of the home place. It was a beautiful, sunny, warm winter day on January 12, 1888. There was a couple of feet of light fluffy snow on the ground. As they came home from school, they ran and jumped in the snow and it flew out from them like duck feathers. While Michael Mulhern carried hay in to a hay shed for the cattle, James and Eugene tried to drive the cattle into the shed for the night, but the cattle had their heads and tails up in the air and kept running by the door. Then all at once they headed for the door, pushing and bellowing to get in. The wind came rearing in from the Northwest and all of the light snow flew up in the air, making visibility zero. Mr. Mulhern thought they better spend the night in the hay shed rather than try to make it to the house, but with the strong northwest wind came a severe drop in temperature, so sleeping in the shed would be too cold. Mr. Mulhern put his one arm around the waist of James and the other around Eugene. They got down on their hands and knees and headed in the direction of the house. All went well until they got out into where the hay shed wasn’t breaking the wind. The wind was blowing the snow between their legs into their faces so they had to fight the snow away to breathe and see. There were no fence rows, no cornstalk fields, no large set of farm buildings, no large grove to slow down the wind or snow in those days. They had to stand up and fear struck them that they’d get lost out in the snowstorm. They opened their eyes and looked toward the house. They could see a light in the north window of the house. So they headed for the light and made it safely into the house. Mrs. Mulhern figured the way the wind was blowing, it must be terrible outside. She had heard somewhere if you place a lamp next to the window, it will penetrate out into a storm a lot better. So they left the light in the window all night in case someone was wandering in the snowstorm near the house. A few days later, they learned a neighbor, Calvin Hurd, didn’t make it home from school in Sheldon that evening. He perished in the storm a couple miles southeast of their home.

Pat ran over a pig and almost ran away with Susan

One time Mom and Dad were gone and Pat was babysitting. They had to do the chores, and one was to take the little tractor out and feed the pigs. Pat was 12 or 13 or so. When he was out in the field, he accidentally backed over a pig and killed it. He came back to the house, and we were standing by the big garage door talking about how he was going to be in BIG trouble. So he decided he would run away. He started out wanting Margy to go with him, and she was NOT going, so he tried to convince one of the rest of us to go. No one would go with him, and the way Susan could was if he carried her. He ran all the way to the railroad bridge, which was in the center of the section. By the time Mom and Dad got home, he was back home. And he never got in trouble, because it was his own 4-H pig he had killed.



Pat also always carried Susan down with him whenever he had to go to the fruit room in the basement.

The 1924 Chrysler

Sometimes it pays to be a packrat. I haven't found a good use for my first grade workbooks yet but I did find some stories I wrote in high school. I wrote this one when I was a junior (got an 'A' though probably not up to today's standards.

The 1924 Chrysler

Last night, I sat down with paper and pen to find out the story of my Dad's first car. Of course, Dad didn't have much to offer. But luckily, my great-uncle was visiting for the evening at our house. Pretty soon, I picked up a lot of odd bits ad Dad and Uncle Matt reminisced.

Dad got his first car about 1934 or 1935 when he was about twenty years old. At this time, his parents and family were still living on the farm on which we live. Dad spent his time working in Starrett's in town for ten dollars a week. But in order to buy his first car he had to "float a loan" from the bank. This wonder was a 1924 Chrysler and cost all of the amazing sum of thirty-five dollars.

As Dad described the car, the light lit up in his eyes. It was a big black square box on wheels. The spare time hung on the back of the car. Only the back wheels had brakes, leaving the front ones with none. The car had two cylinders, whatever and wherever they are. Dad explained that the car wouldn't start most of the time and he had to crank it. Then he jumped in before the car took off.

Now, this is all Dad really told me until he started talking to Uncle Matt. And half talking to me and half to my uncle, I learned the rest.

One summer, Dad, some of his brothers and some of his cousins, went to the Black Hills in Dad's Chrysler. As they rolled along, Dad's cousin, Bob O'Kane, wound the car up to forty-five miles per hour, and then a bull jumped into the path of the car! They couldn't stop, so they rode right up on the bull. Everyone piled out and helped the bull from under the car and then watched the poor creature run off.

But this was only one episode in the Chrysler's life. On the same trip, as they were coming down a steep and winding hill road, my Uncle John got the car in high and couldn't get it into low. Pretty soon the car was speeding down the hill at forty-five mile per hour. On each curve, everyone leaned in toward the hill because all there was on the other side was a thousand foot drop-off. John applied the brakes but that did no good. Finally, after two miles of dangerous riding, the car stopped at the bottom of the hill, but the brakes were on fire. John pulled the car into a gas station and asked if he could have some water to put the fire out. But the attendant said that water was expensive in those parts and he would have to sell them pop. So they put out the fire with eight bottles of pop at ten cents apiece.

The trip turned out fine, but at times it seemed impossible. They went 120 miles on the spare time with the red inner-tube showing. But it never blew out.

The Chrysler survived the trip and never wore out until my Dad's future bride (my mother) borrowed it for a day. The rod burnt out and started to pound. Mom didn't know what was wrong, so when people asked her, she said, "Wait, I'll start the car and you can see." Well, finally, the rod drove right out the side of the engine. Dad lost his car, but gained himself a wife. But I think Dad will remember the Chrysler forever.

Grandma's Craft Club?

This is really a partial answer to Deirdre's questions about Grandma, but I couldn't resist posting this picture. Dad HATES this Christmas decoration that Grandma made. This year when he was trying to give it away yet again, he mentioned that she made it in "her craft club". I don't know if that was the CC Club, but here's what Dad could remember:

It was her and four other older women: Dorothy Farnsworth, Mrs. Wilkins, and two Dad couldn't remember. They used to get together once a week.

Dorothy Farnsworth (a neighbor, who lived on some of the land Dad farms now) told this story: They were all heavy-set women, and drove over to Rock Valley one day to exercise. As they all got out of Grandpa's Buick, the men came out of the elevator to watch them all get out of one car. While they were exercising, a woman came over to Dorothy and told her she shouldn't be doing that exercise. Dorothy said, I need all the exercise I can get, but the woman told her that was to increase your bust, and Dorothy dropped the weights immediately.

According to Dad, Grandpa used to say it was just an excuse to get together once a week, and have coffee and pie.