Growing up then and now

[Editor’s note: Autumn helped out with stories and other small chores for part of the last school year. It was a busy spring and early summer, and this story did not get published before Jerry Ollendieck passed. The Times opted to wait a while before printing in out of respect for his family’s feelings.

Autumn compared her life in 2019 to Jerry’s teen and younger years.]

CRESCO - Jerry Ollendieck lived with three siblings. He had a brother and two sisters. Even though life was tough sometimes, his parents always managed to get food on the table for him and his siblings to eat.

Jerry milked cows  by hand for his family when he was 13 until he was 15 and in his junior year. Then his father upped their game by buying a milking machine, which also allowed them to have more cows. They could then milk 40 cows.

They did most of the chores around 4:00 at night. In addition to milking, Jerry also fed the hogs and cleaned the chicken and hog pens. Because of Jerry’s chores at the farm, he could not go out for sports. 

Dinner would be at 6:30 or 7:00. For dinner, they would always have meat, which they butchered themselves. They had cows, chickens and hogs on their farm alongside some crops.

Along with always having meat, they also had potatoes and some sort of vegetable. His mother always had to have a dessert after dinner.

Jerry’s favorite dessert was like many other people’s favorite — it was homemade strawberry ice cream. It took two hours to make.  

 

 

 

At 4:30 in the morning, he was back at the chores again.

The family lived two miles out of town and school. So in the winter time, his parents would always give him and his siblings a ride to school and back home.                        

Everything Jerry owned, he or his family worked very hard to purchase. Every dime they earned was a treasured item to them. They sold most everything they had at the farm, like eggs, crops and butter. Every single egg had to be washed by hand, then they were carefully placed in a carton until it was full.

They took the eggs and sold them for money for the groceries that week. Each dozen was worth at least 10 cents.

They also sold their hogs,  cream and butter. They churned their own butter. They also made a lot of whipped cream.

Sometimes, if their parents had leftover money after purchasing groceries for the week, they handed it off to him and his siblings. 

In Jerry’s freshman year in high school, his dad gave him $5.00. “I carried that five-dollar bill around for about three months,” Jerry said.

The family fixed everything they could that was broken, even welded, and they made their own clothing. They even got new shoes twice a year. 

Holidays were plain but cherished by Jerry’s family.

Christmas and Thanksgiving is when they all got together and enjoyed each other’s company. On Christmas, they had a beautiful ham dinner with family members, while on Thanksgiving they had turkey and caught up with each other.

They didn’t have a bathtub. They just had a big tub that was filled up with water. The youngest was always the first to take a bath. Then it moved up the line until everyone got one. 

They didn’t even have electricity until 1945. Before that, everything was battery operated.

Nor did they even have a bathroom until Jerry was in high school. In sixth or seventh grade, they got waterlines.

In 1948, they lost their barn to a fire, and many people came to help with the repairs including Perce Thomson (the banker). 

In 1950, when Jerry was 11, his father purchased a B John Deere Tractor. Jerry was the one to drive it home. 

When they first got their TV around 1954, it was black and white. There were only three channels on it. Before that, they just listened to the radio. 

Life Now With Autumn Nolan

Life now is not as exciting as Jerry’s was. Some things even become a lot easier. Sometimes . . . way too easy. 

The thought of no Snapchat, Internet or even not having their smartphone on them, would horrify most people my age. Some of them can’t even be separated from it for over five seconds. 

Well, I am the oddball out, not that I mind. I do not have a phone, and that is okay because I don’t really need it much. The only thing I would use it for was to talk to friends who live out of town. 

Like, Jerry, my favorite dessert is ICE CREAM. I love it. Some days I just can’t get enough. I will eat it in the winter, the fall, the spring and summer — I don’t care as long as I have ice cream. My favorite ice cream is . . . well every kind but coffee.                  

Whoever dreamed of having coffee in ice cream must have been exhausted and wanted ice cream and coffee. Then BOOM we have coffee ice cream. ICK. 

Like Jerry, I also have three siblings. I have two brothers and one sister. I am the second oldest child and oldest daughter. My older brother moved out a long time ago. 

My little sister is amazing, and sometimes we fight as all sisters do. She is more sporty than I am. She was in basketball and track but she is also in choir. Like most sisters, even when we fight each other, we are always defending the other. My sister does it a lot for me, which is cool I guess but as her older sister (by a year) I wish I could do a little more for her. 

Oh . . . and my little brother. He is awesome. We just connect on so many levels. He is kind and smart and just so loving like you wouldn’t even believe it. 

We used to spend hours upon hours with each other when I was younger and he was a baby and toddler, but now I am a teenager, and my new best friend has become my bed. 

My parents are awesome. Jerry’s parents and mine have one thing in common — they love their children and helped them make the most of what they had. 

Although, unlike Jerry, who had his whole day planned out from the moment he woke up to the moment he fell asleep, I do not. 

We don’t even have dinner at the same time every night, but we always get fed; not the same thing every night like at Jerry’s house but spiced up each time. There is never an item on our plates that will not be eaten.

My chores are a lot simpler than Jerry’s, yet you can still find me complaining under my breath of how ridiculous it is that I am sweeping and mopping the floor, and it is just going to get mucked back up by us in a few days. 

I have basic chores I guess you could say. I do the dishes, which includes cleaning the counters, table, stove and floors. 

I also clean the kids’ bathroom, which is a bathroom that only they and Dad use. Mom just won’t because she believes it’s a little gross . . . mostly the sink because of the toothpaste and gunk.

I am supposed to clean it every other Saturday, switching off with my sister. Then there are also the towels. I wash the towels that us kids use to take showers with or the dish rags and towels and take out the basic and dreaded trash. They randomly call upon me or my sister  to take it if it is full. I do not know if you can count letting our dogs outside a chore, but I also do that.

[Editor’s note: This was written when Autumn was still attending school.]

My younger siblings wake up at 6:30 in the morning, but I set my alarm to 4:40 so I can be awake before anyone else and get dressed and maybe watch some TV. By the time it is 6:20, I am fully dressed and awake and waiting for 10 more minutes to go upstairs and greet my parents good morning, and if I am lucky and have enough patience, I can catch my younger sister before she goes to the restroom and say something annoying, like, “It’s a beautiful day, and the sun’s out, and I am dressed you are not”  or “Hey, sleepy head. Smile. It is morning.” I just live for those little annoying moments. 

We all walk to school in the mornings. We live at least eight or nine blocks away from it. Sometimes we all walk together, and sometimes we do not walk together at all. 

We also walk home but mostly not together, at least not me, anyway. I have work Monday and Tuesday, and Wednesday through Friday I am at the Times Plain Dealer. 

Unlike Jerry’s farm life of great homemade goods, we mostly purchase everything. I have a job as well, so sometimes I can get whatever I wish. I also try to fix things at home. Although I never try to fix things that I know may end up being a disaster if I were to make one wrong move.

My freshman year wasn’t as exciting as Jerry had made his sound. Mine was kind of dull, and I knew it. I got my first real job in the summer, which I had been very proud of. I worked at the local Super 8 in town. I loved working there. I also loved how I got to work and get paid for it. The other girls who worked, and still do,  lived off every dime they made. But for me, my money was just something in my pocket that I could spend wherever and whenever I wanted. My check came at least every two weeks.  

So like most of the girls who worked with me, I prayed that my envelope that had been placed in the room I cleaned would have a tip in it. I didn’t care how much it was. Just the thought of having a tip from someone made me know that my work and cleaning that I had done for them were appreciated and noticed. Unfortunately, most people leave nothing at all. 

Sometimes they just used the envelopes for something else or they just throw them away. I remember the day I got a two-dollar bill as a tip. I was so excited because now I had yet another rare bill to add to my collection of rare coins and bills. I didn’t even think twice about asking my mom to hold onto it for me. 

Jerry’s holidays were nice and calm. Mine can be calm at first, then us kids go nuts with holiday dreams. When it is Thanksgiving, we have a family dinner that Grandma and others help make; then the adults eat in the dining room while the kids eat in the kitchen. 

Thanksgiving is kinda dull, while Christmas is the nail-biting and daydreaming favorite. It’s not just about daydreaming about presents. For me, it is daydreaming about people’s reaction to the presents I have given them or about my grandma’s baked goods. My grandma’s chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies are to die for. She also makes Jell-o candy or Jell-o bars. She makes red and green ones. Then there’s the fudge, which we haven’t had for a while, but man . . . that is to die for.

Every year on Christmas Day, we wait for everyone to wake up and get there to open our presents. This year I  complained and said everyone everywhere else in the world wakes up, runs to the tree and rips open their presents.  

One Christmas I remember it like it was a long time ago. My sister and I got a big box wrapped with our names on it. It was heavy. My hopes were of finally getting a computer. My sister and I looked at each other and bit our lips, then ripped that thing open like there was no tomorrow. What we got was okay but, not what I had expected or remembered even asking for. We got our first TV. It had its own DVD slot so we could watch movies. The first movie we had watched was something girly. I remember that much but after a while it was dull, and I was the only one who watched it.

Jerry only had a radio. But when I moved here, I now had a radio and a TV. My sister got a radio. I normally can’t fall asleep without any music on.

Unlike Jerry, I had a bathtub and bathroom. I always had one. 

I was not around in 1948, but I do have a farm. It’s not mine, per se, but my dad’s family owns it. I have never visited it before, but I would love to someday.

When I was 11, we moved to Wyoming and then started off my personal mission I guess you could say of being a pain in the butt towards my parents. I wasn’t a pain in the butt all the time, but most of the time I was getting myself into trouble by doing things they told me not to do. 

Although our lives may be seem very different, they are also pretty similar.