Czech Village & New Bohemia: History in the Heartland (Brief History) by Rasdal Dave

Author:Rasdal, Dave [Rasdal, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2016-04-13T04:00:00+00:00

CZECH GEESE

Hermina’s mother raised a dozen geese each year—a sign of a solid Czech family—for geese had more uses than providing feathers for warmth and meat for holiday feasts.

“They were as good as watchdogs as they honked loudly whenever someone other than one of our family came into the yard,” she said. “Mother used their grease for cooking, and as a chest rub when we had a bad cold…We didn’t like to have the grease put on our neck and chests but it did help us feel better. We also made pastry brushes out of their wing feathers.”

Hermina attended Rose Dale Country School, where her last teacher was Grant Wood, the would-be famous artist, who had recently graduated from high school. Hermina herself would go to Washington High School in Cedar Rapids at age thirteen, graduate and become a teacher, too, at a couple one-room rural schools near her home.

“After World War I, the years in the twenties were good years,” Hermina said. “People had work and money. Voting rights for women came about 1920. The first presidential election that I voted in was 1924. Calvin Coolidge was president. Many played the stock market. We never did.”

In 1920, Hermina fell in love with Joe Trejtnar, who had emigrated from Bohemia in 1909 at the age of eighteen. Trained as a cabinetmaker, he worked for Hunting and Williams on the west side of the Cedar River, losing three fingers in the process. But he learned English, performed gymnastics with the Sokols and joined the navy during World War I to repaired wood-frame airplanes. At war’s end, he put his skills to work at Klepach Construction and later, on his own, built about fifty houses in Cedar Rapids.

That fall of 1920, Hermina’s mother took her to the Sokol bazaar in Little Bohemia, where they ran into Joe, the foreman of the crew building their house. After coffee, Joe and Hermina became friends. That Christmas he brought gifts to the family, including an engraved gold wristwatch for her. They married nine months later on September 3, 1921, in a simple ceremony at her parents’ house.

Hermina and Joe lived with her parents while he built their house on evenings and weekends along the Lincoln Highway at Thirty-sixth Street Southeast. For entertainment they listened to the radio or attended movies.

“In 1929 the stock market collapsed and until almost 1940 a great depression followed. This meant hard times for people as jobs were lost and no work could be found in the cities. Everywhere there were long lines of people waiting in the soup lines for something to eat. The farmers experienced the worst of the depression. Corn was so cheap they couldn’t even sell it, so it was used as fuel for heating. Pork sold for 5 cents a pound. Many farmers lost their farms.”

Work in the city had been good to Joe, though, and in 1930 he decided they would visit his parents in Czechoslovakia. They left their daughters with his sister, Emma, boarded

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.