Family history
When I was in seventh grade, I interviewed my paternal grandfather about growing up during the Depression (he was born in 1915). He told me about how he wore the same button-down shirt and corduroy pants every day for two years. And that he worked as a paper boy — delivering the same newspaper that I now work for, he recently reminded me — when he was in college.
(As an aside, I’ve always thought our Kansas history courses sorely lacked the common-folk experience that I find in Grandpa’s anecdotes.)
My grandparents all spoke German at home when they were kids. I don’t think they spoke it much around my dad and his brother and sister — although that may be because Grandpa spoke low German and Grandma spoke high German, so they didn’t agree on the right way to say things.
Grandpa turned 92 this spring. There are many stories that he can’t remember anymore. And at Christmastime when we sing carols, because he can’t hear so well, sometimes he gets lost on the words and starts singing the German version of the lyrics because that’s how they sang it when he was young. But sometimes he tells great little stories — and when he does, a hear a German accent that I don’t hear other times.
My dad emailed me this today:
Katie,
I was visiting with my Dad today. I thought I would tell you his stories ( to help me not forget). I was asking him about his grandfather — the one that immigrated here from Ukraine. Dad pronounced it Ukaraine.
Dad’s grandpa got off the train in Peabody, and wagons took people to the Moundridge area were he had enough cash to buy a square mile of land. He had his wife and two girls. Three more girls and five boys were eventually born here. At some point he moved to Butler county and farmed for a while, and then later moved to the Aulne area (in Marion County). He was a skilled orchard man, good with grafting of trees, and usually had the best orchards in the area.
Dad was telling me that there was a saying about his grandpa, which he told me in German and translated as “He gave him one like Lohrenz gave the tom cat.” Evidently some tom cat was coming around the area and causing problems. He caught the cat by the hind legs and swung him around his head and over the house. The cat landed about a block away and took off like a bolt. Someone in the next town, ~20 mile away, reported that the cat was still running scared there.
I called Dad later to ask a little more about this story. Dad remarked that a story that cast his grandpa — or any Lohrenz, really — as a badass tough guy doesn’t really ring true. It seems, down through the generations, all us Lohrenzes think of ourselves as thoroughly harmless but outsiders find us distinctly more intimidating.
