Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Mattie on the Homefront is a podcast about a father and a son discovering their family. After finding wartime letters from my great-grandmother to my grandfather, I get to read them aloud to my dad, bringing together four generations of our family, week-by-week, in an almost daily look at life in the Twin Cities during WWII.
Dad. Hello, Hansel. Did Mattie ever take you out to a restaurant for a special occasion? Special occasions? No.
Hans Buetow:Just like a regular Tuesday, she'd take you out? Come on, Steve. We're going to the restaurant.
Steve Buetow:No. No. No. It would be on driving places. Oh, yeah.
Steve Buetow:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the Sportsman's Cafe in Moorer, Minnesota where the blueberry pie was the best buy in the world. Yeah.
Steve Buetow:We traveled a lot meeting friends and relatives of Mattie. And I think Matt
Hans Buetow:But you never went around in town? No. Okay. No. What did she order when she would go out?
Hans Buetow:You know? You are paying a lot of attention. Teenage boys. No. No.
Steve Buetow:I was looking at what I was yeah.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. This makes sense.
Steve Buetow:This makes sense. 10 year old boy. This makes sense.
Hans Buetow:I know. Yeah. Well, hello. Hello. Hello, and welcome to Mattie On The Homefront.
Hans Buetow:I'm Hans Buto. I'm Steve Buto. This is where we read the letters that Mattie, the eponymous Mattie, wrote to my father, Ken, her son, during World War two from 1942 all the way through 1945. And we go one by one to see what her life was like.
Steve Buetow:Yes. It's not really about Ken's life. He was in Prince Rupert, Canada, So we do not get stories of Ken's war time adventures, but we do have a lot of information about Mattie and what Mattie wants to tell Ken.
Hans Buetow:Today, it is Saturday, 11/28/1942. It's one page. Mattie's in a bit of a bad mood.
Steve Buetow:Oh. Gotta be
Hans Buetow:honest, she doesn't say so, but family's hard. Right? Holidays are hard. So November 28 is the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving weekend.
Hans Buetow:Thanksgiving weekend. We just had Thanksgiving. No. It's in the middle of Thanksgiving. Yeah.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. So just two days ago was Thanksgiving. So we're gonna talk today because of Thanksgiving a lot about food, but maybe not in the way you're expecting to talk about food when we talk about Thanksgiving. The family, though, is a bit scattered for this first Thanksgiving without the boys. The boys being Mattie's stepson, Bud
Steve Buetow:Yes.
Hans Buetow:Who is in the marines out in, we think, LA.
Steve Buetow:Right. He's still in The US. Yep. And he's the same age as Ken.
Hans Buetow:Who is her younger son, who is your dad Yep. And who's up in Prince Rupert up in Canada. There is one other son, an older son, Wes. Yep. And Wes and Flo are around.
Hans Buetow:They're in the twin cities. So that's the family that Mattie has to celebrate Thanksgiving with Okay. Is Wes and Flo. Is four
Steve Buetow:or five years older than Ken.
Hans Buetow:Yes. That's right. Four years yeah.
Steve Buetow:And it's he'd be in his mid to late twenties.
Hans Buetow:Yep. So this 1942, this is the first wartime Thanksgiving. War was declared after Thanksgiving, 12/07/1941. Yep. So you can imagine the patriotism that is abundant in this time.
Steve Buetow:That's true, and it's an American holiday.
Hans Buetow:Holy moly. And they are pulling out the stops for this one. Can I can I read you a bit of a long poem? Poem. Which this is what every everybody's just turning up the volume right now.
Hans Buetow:Oh, a long nineteen forties poem. Yes. Please. Okay. Well, the first line of it, is brace up, gents.
Hans Buetow:Brace up. So that's when I say to you, brace up. We're about to do this whole thing. This is from the New Yorker magazine published the day that this is written, Saturday, November 28. It was written on the twenty first, the week before.
Steve Buetow:And who wrote the poem?
Hans Buetow:Christopher LaFarge. Not a name I know. Nope. But this is a poem I love. Get ready for ham, you guys, in more ways than one.
Hans Buetow:Brace up, gents. Brace up. Even in these days of hell and disorder, take your minds off trials and tires and troubles. Come, come, tuck in your American napkins no matter where you are, the stars near your chins and the stripes over your bellies, and think what your country originated and grew and set richly before you. Make thanksgiving freely as your mouths water.
Hans Buetow:Let us consider first in the aura of a cocktail, the fruits of the season, The icy watermelon of midsummer. The wild grape preserve in the blue frosted concord of autumn. The scuppernogs hot in the sun. The fresh cut niagras. Cranberry sauce and buffalo berry jelly.
Hans Buetow:Beech plum jam and huckleberry pie and blueberry sat upon, and half a grapefruit please. And for the fruits of the sea too, Thanksgiving, whether from net hook flies sen or trap, For codfish balls on Sunday morning and for pompano, white fish, and stone crab. For blue fish and the little skip jacks, for shad and its roe, for brook trout and cutthroats, red snapper, and for, oh, baby mackerel. For flounder, fillet hid, not called soul, for scup and skeetig and taughog and quahog, if you can pronounce them, and for steaming clams and for clam chowder minus tomatoes, and for the Atlantic and the Olympia oysters for terrapin and green turtle and for soft shell crabs. Let us give thanks as we take in our belts slightly for the fruits of our own earth, for baked beans and for black bean soup with a slice of lemon, for hominy grits to you all, and for buckwheat cakes, for yellow cornbread and for Indian pudding with honey, for johnny cakes, properly spelled, and for sweet corn on the cob, for lima beans and the wild rice, for maple sugar unrationed, and for pinion nuts.
Hans Buetow:For donuts and for pecans and for chili peppers. For squash pie and for pumpkin pie. And never, never forgetting for sweet potatoes and plain potatoes, mashed fried, boiled, jacketed, baked, Delmonico creamed, caked rice, or cold in the icebox, which is itself frozen. Let us make Thanksgiving too for the hot dog and lollipops, for the ice cream ice cream sodas, for the cheeses, leader crayons in Vermont sage, and dear old American rat. Let us give a bow from the slim waistline we shall all of us reacquire to the flesh of America, to the canvas mac buck and the black mallard, the green winged teal and the green head, the wigeon and the ruddy duck, the pintail and the butterball, the Canada goose, and the brant to rail birds and to mountain quail and a nice fat mountain sheep if your wind's good in the High Rockies.
Hans Buetow:To prairie chickens and bobwhites and rough grouse, to the memory of creakers and yellow legs, of black breasted and of golden clover, to woodcock and the jacksnipe roasted in fat bacon, to the hump of the buffalo in the well hung elk, the mule deer, the Virginia deer, and antelope, to moose liver and to caribou steak and to the sizzling t bone of the Intermountain States, and oh, yes, to the Virginia Razorback, hot or cold, sliced or minced with currant sauce or cut when you're hungry. And now, gents, lift up symbolical glasses and give toast to America in bourbon whiskey or in a long mint julep, in rye or in rum or even in sarsaparilla. And finally, light up gents and make thanksgiving in a richness of good tobacco smoke gently rising. And whether this be all but memory or a promise or whether you have had your fill or merely long for it it's all there waiting your own. It always will be there.
Hans Buetow:Your board again will heave an American groan in the days of peace. And so call to the kitchen in a loud voice and cheerful saying, thanksgiving, Thanksgiving. Let there be victory and turkey hash for tomorrow.
Steve Buetow:Wow. I'm glad to hear that the irony of the New Yorker did not go away.
Hans Buetow:We inherited something. Wow. So that's thanksgiving nineteen forty two by Christopher LaFarge. If you're still here,
Steve Buetow:thank you. Right. Or wake up.
Hans Buetow:Or wake but whoo. How evocative. How big. How, like Yeah. We're at war.
Hans Buetow:One of the other big moments do you know what Franksgiving is?
Steve Buetow:Franksgiving. No. Friendsgiving.
Hans Buetow:Friendsgiving. This is yep. Yep. Yep. That is accurate.
Hans Buetow:This is not that. This Franksgiving is what this time period is called. This is the end of Franksgiving, which is a portmanteau, a combination of Franklin, as in Delano Roosevelt, and Thanksgiving. Franksgiving.
Steve Buetow:Okay.
Hans Buetow:In 1939, there was gonna be five Thursdays.
Steve Buetow:Yes. Is it the fourth Thursday or the last Thursday?
Hans Buetow:Last Thursday. And so they said, oh, no. And so Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, we're gonna do it the next to last Thursday, one week earlier than what is traditionally done. You know who's in favor of this? Macy's.
Hans Buetow:Very in favor. They're not called Macy's yet. They're the Federated department stores, but Fred Lazarus Junior, who's the head of it, is stoked about this move because it offers a whole extra day because when you have it that, like, on the November 30, a whole extra week when you have Thanksgiving on thirtieth of of November. And it back then, it was a no you did not do Christmas before Thanksgiving.
Steve Buetow:Okay.
Hans Buetow:Christmas creep, was just starting back then, and it was unpopular. This change was deeply unpopular. It was really hard. Like, people had scheduled college bowl games and football games to, like, end their season on Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving, and then it moved. They're like, do we play?
Hans Buetow:Does we not have people there? It was split a lot, by party. So the Democrats favored it 52 to 48%, while Republicans opposed it 79 to 21. The Republicans were very mad about this. And so in 1940, 32 states observed it on the twenty first, and 16 states had Republican Thanksgiving on the twenty eighth.
Steve Buetow:So if you had relatives in Wisconsin, you could have it twice. Oh.
Hans Buetow:What a good point. Yeah. So it did not last. So in late nineteen forty one, this is when Roosevelt says, you know what? We're we're in the war now.
Hans Buetow:We need to have some clarity. And so they declared the Thanksgiving Day holiday is the fourth Thursday, not the last, not the second to last. It's the fourth Thursday in November. Okay. And so this puts an end to Frank's giving, the turkey getting up and walking along.
Steve Buetow:And so '42 is when this It was just
Hans Buetow:the first one. It's the first one, and everybody's on the same page. Everybody's doing it. So it was it was just two days ago on the November 26, which brings us to Mattie and Mattie's letter. So I'm gonna hand you the the envelope for today.
Steve Buetow:M Mickelson. There are all the people that live there are M Mickelson. That's true.
Hans Buetow:That's true.
Steve Buetow:That's true. And the the postmark is right side up this time. The stamps are right side up as well. Kenneth Buto, airmail, Seattle, Washington for his MP company, the February.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. So he's in the MPs. This is a small one, but there's a lot packed into this list. So this is Saturday evening. It's postmarked at 08:30.
Hans Buetow:This is Saturday evening, November twenty eighth nineteen forty two, and it starts, my darling Ken. My my, it is a long time since I've written to you. I am ashamed not since last Monday. More than a week. Five No.
Hans Buetow:Five days. Last letter was five five days ago. But that okay. So this gives you this is your first inkling of what a week Mattie has had. Okay.
Hans Buetow:I think this is an exhausted woman. You tell me what you think in a little bit here. So she continues. I have been so extremely busy since that time. One can't seem to be able to keep up with the times.
Hans Buetow:Last Tuesday, I had a roundtable meeting with the Federated Women's Clubs. Sounds ritzy, doesn't it? So this is her volunteer group.
Steve Buetow:Oh, that's right.
Hans Buetow:The Federated Women's Club was a national organization, and she was on it. And there's all sorts of all sorts of committees involved, and this is apparently the roundtable meeting about which she says, which I consider strictly a waste of good time. But missus Sheeman of the Railway Mail Auxiliary seems to have taken a fancy to me and has been after me for such a long time and so many times to be on our committees that I just didn't have the nerve to turn her down again. Oh. But these women who just love to sit and talk what must be done and are still unable to do anything sort of give me a pain.
Steve Buetow:She gets to rant. We've heard
Hans Buetow:this complaint from her before. Yes. That's true. We've seen her involved in a lot of different volunteering things. Yes.
Hans Buetow:Yes. And, you know, she's elected president at one and was like, I don't wanna deal with all stress.
Steve Buetow:She the the pastor stayed there till two in the morning trying to convince her to take on more responsibility Yeah. With women's groups.
Hans Buetow:It's such an interesting dynamic with her of being so involved in everything in the community and having so many friends and so many things and yet kinda not having time for these meetings. Yeah. But there's a there's a proper noun in here that I'm wondering if, we can unpack just a little bit because she goes over it really quickly with the railway mail auxiliary. It's actually the women's auxiliary to the railway mail association.
Steve Buetow:Okay. Matt was Her husband. Her husband was sorted mail on the train.
Training Video:This is one job where a man can't be late in reporting to work. This office moves. People's mail, going someplace, coming from someplace. People's possessions, things they are buying, selling, or giving away on the move.
Steve Buetow:The most skilled people were on the train. Oh, that's cool. They were tested, and they were tested regularly about how well they sorted mail, and they had to be 97% correct.
Hans Buetow:What was it about correctness? Was it about speed? Both?
Steve Buetow:Both. Both.
Hans Buetow:And then there were the train is going. The train is going 70 miles an hour. Have limited amount
Steve Buetow:of time get you to get get you to you to get you you
Hans Buetow:to begin to
Steve Buetow:sort get get it while it was still traveling toward the train's destination. And then the the mail that was sorted and to go to that town would get chucked out.
Hans Buetow:Out the window.
Training Video:Now watch how they catch mail on the fly. With one hand, he tossed the pouch out and down. With the other hand, he brought down the catcher handle, and the catch was made. A neat two handed operation.
Steve Buetow:Oh, man. But it's these confined, windowless cars on the passenger trains because the passenger trains went faster and were more regular. Okay. Just a group of them standing, you know, jostling jostling around and Yeah. Opening the mailbags, which were dragged aboard, and then sorting them.
Steve Buetow:There's just rows of pigeonholes into which I do not understand how they sorted them, but they did. They had to read them accurately, and they were tested on it.
Training Video:To save the public precious hours and days in delivery, railway mail clerks sort and exchange great quantities of letters and printed matter. Yes, men and mail in transit speed the mail on speeding trains, affecting dramatic exchanges almost every minute of the day.
Hans Buetow:That's fascinating. So the women's auxiliary to the railway mail association was organized in 1900 by wives of postal clerks from Saint Paul and Minneapolis. So it's combined. It's a twin city operation. National.
Hans Buetow:Oh, dear. Federated. It became national in 1911, but was started and centered here in the twin cities.
Steve Buetow:So Actually, that was when Saint Paul was the busiest railway station in the country. This makes sense.
Hans Buetow:You see those maps of Saint Paul, and it's just rail lines going out. So Minneapolis had the mills in the fall. Yes. And, but you couldn't, for a long time, get boats up to the falls. So the boats would come as far as Saint Paul, and you'd bring the things for the the wood and the flour from Minneapolis down to the the lowlands that were downtown Saint Paul as far up as the boats could get, load them up and send them, and then that turned into trains.
Hans Buetow:So Minneapolis was the mill city, and Saint Paul was the transport city
Steve Buetow:Yes.
Hans Buetow:Exactly. For all of the things in that got
Steve Buetow:The trains.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. That got made.
Steve Buetow:It was the it was the way west. It was the way east.
Hans Buetow:That's right. Right. It's really the intersection back between both. So it one of the busiest. Interesting.
Steve Buetow:Yeah. In fact, nowadays, it's Chicago. It was Chicago for a long time, but about 1910, Saint Paul was was the busiest.
Hans Buetow:So 1941, this organization in the Twin Cities had a 181 members.
Steve Buetow:So what do you have to do you have to be married to a postal clerk?
Hans Buetow:Any member of the immediate family Okay. Of a railway postal clerk or ex railway postal clerk is eligible. Okay. Yeah. And the purpose was, quote, promotion of social enjoyment and the mutual advancement of the families of railway postal clerks.
Steve Buetow:There we go.
Hans Buetow:I mean, that's an honorable thing. Right?
Steve Buetow:Right. And I'm guessing they all suffer from traveling spouses who are on the train, gone for a couple of days at a time.
Hans Buetow:Days at a time. Absolutely. I mean, we know Mattie is has stretches where Matt's just gone. Yep. They had a monthly luncheon meeting from September through May.
Hans Buetow:So they it's interesting that they're having one now in November, but they were also very active. They would do all sorts of volunteering. They volunteered at the Red Cross, the City Milk Fund, all sorts of social welfare, community work from these women organized together. So it's no wonder that Mattie is doing work with them, as one of the people organizing.
Training Video:The most exciting thing about handling mail, when you stop to think of it, is that each letter contains a person's thoughts, his hopes, business, love, and promises, neatly folded in a tiny package. The important thing is that these men help make sure each item arrives at its destination on time.
Hans Buetow:We go on. And so we go on. So she's now, these women who are still unable to do anything sort of giving her a pain. She continues, well, that lasted until I don't know when. Anyway, I left at 3PM to meet Graham, who's her mother, as we are going to the hospital to see missus Willey, who has fallen down the steps at Lee's broiler and almost completely tore off her ear.
Hans Buetow:Woah. What a scene that describes.
Steve Buetow:Yes. How do you do that?
Hans Buetow:Your brow is dick if if you open up the dictionary to furrowed, you'd see you'd see fields, and you'd see my father's face right now. Yeah. How do you fall down the steps at at Lee's?
Steve Buetow:And lose your ear. And lose your
Hans Buetow:lose your ear.
Steve Buetow:Lee's was on the 1st Floor.
Hans Buetow:Lee's was on the 1st Floor. So we know about Lee's. Tell us a little bit about Lee's.
Steve Buetow:Lee's was started out in the country. They opened a branch in in Minneapolis, and it was so successful. They decided to start within Saint Paul. It was downtown Saint Paul. Saint Peter And 6th.
Hans Buetow:Frank Lee was the one who owned it. He started it as Lee's Log Lodge.
Steve Buetow:There we go.
Hans Buetow:1925 in Saint Cloud. There we yes. Do you know what their motto was?
Steve Buetow:No. I do not.
Hans Buetow:Specializing in, quote, food that is different. Really?
Steve Buetow:Yeah. Because I have a recipe that was posted about their roles, which aren't that different.
Hans Buetow:They don't seem that different.
Steve Buetow:No.
Hans Buetow:I found a menu Oh, good. From Lee's from the late forties. So I'm gonna hand this to you.
Steve Buetow:It does look like a supper club sort
Hans Buetow:of It looks it's a sort of thing. Sort of thing. So tell us what they used to serve over at Leeds.
Steve Buetow:Broiled filet mignon, which Mhmm. Mhmm. The prices are astounding. Yeah. A dollar 35.
Steve Buetow:Nailed it. With french fried potatoes, french fried onions, individual salad with Lee's french dressing, sherbet served with dinner. Sherbet. Not after dinner. Rolls and butter and a beverage.
Steve Buetow:You could also have the chopped beefsteak or the French fried shrimp platter parenthetically followed with this is delicious.
Hans Buetow:In case they would probably like to reassure people the shrimp is delicious in the Midwest. That's true.
Steve Buetow:That's true. How long has it been? Uh-huh. How long has it been traveling? And then pecan pie and other homemade pies, ice cream, sherbet, chocolate sundaes.
Steve Buetow:Incredible. The kids meal doesn't sound all that unusual.
Hans Buetow:It sounds like a supper club. It sounds like what I would expect the nineteen forties to taste like. The the kids meal cost 50¢. And I wanna I wanna read you a it's not a review. It's a recommendation from this incredible book that I found.
Hans Buetow:This is, again, from the later in the nineteen forties. This is a man named Roland Hill who was born and raised in Dawson, Minnesota
Steve Buetow:Okay.
Hans Buetow:Which is where your sister lives.
Steve Buetow:Still. Still.
Hans Buetow:Yes. He loves it out there. He's born and raised there. He says, didn't go anywhere for twenty eight years, and then I traveled everywhere. And he wrote this book called I recommend parentheses good places to go, eat, play, and shop.
Hans Buetow:Uh-huh. By Roland l Hill. It's an incredible book. It is by continent. So first, it starts with Africa, Algeria, and it just goes through of, like, where you should go in each of these places.
Hans Buetow:Wow. He is Minnesotan. And so you get to The US, and it's good. And then you get to Minnesota, and it's Mora, New Ulm, Cloquet, you know, Cocato, like, all of these different places all all over. But he has an entry for Lee's at 6th 0, he does.
Hans Buetow:And Saint Peter. Okay. About Lee's, Roland Hill, in his I recommend book says, quote, famous for chicken in the basket, charcoal broiled steaks, and southern pecan pie. Oh. I especially like their cupcakes with the best chocolate sauce, parentheses, why can't more places in the country have a decent chocolate flavoring and ice cream?
Hans Buetow:Open weekdays from 10:30AM to 8PM. They serve an average of 1,800 people daily. Wow. That's shocking. And this is their new location that that doesn't exist in 1942.
Hans Buetow:Yes. But woah. My friend Marvin Hartwig rarely eats elsewhere as he claims this is the best place in the country. Also have lunched here with that fine friend of years and years, Gilbert Flynn, one of the young execs of the Northern Pacific Railroad. At noon, he and his friends go here because there is a section reserved for men, And so the service is better and no standing in line to get in.
Hans Buetow:Oh, okay. That's the review of Lee's.
Steve Buetow:It sounds like he was on the payroll.
Hans Buetow:He's got he's gushing about a lot of stuff in this book, but it's an incredible document of, like, all these places to go. He, like, recommends chiropractors and print presses and Oh, wow. The the Saint Paul Winter Carnival, all sorts of stuff. It's a treasure trove. We'll put a link to it in the show notes because it's worth looking up your town and seeing if he's got an entry for you of what used to exist in the mid forties that was worth going to.
Hans Buetow:For Mattie's part, she did not go to Lee's broiler. She merely went to see missus Willie who nearly lost her
Steve Buetow:ear. Right.
Hans Buetow:Falling down the stairs on Wednesday, underlined, all day in a goodly part of the evening, we spent stuffing the goose and baking pies, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Steve Buetow:Stuffing the goose.
Hans Buetow:Oh. Why tell me about this reaction.
Steve Buetow:I never had the only person in our family who ever made goose was me. Well And I didn't do
Hans Buetow:that Well
Steve Buetow:until I was well into my twenties. And I was just curious. What does
Hans Buetow:goose taste like? But, Mattie, cooking a goose sounds wonderful. Cooking a goose for Thanksgiving? Yeah. Yes.
Hans Buetow:Right? The traditional Christmas bird. That's a very good point. Here's a question. What was the deal with bird rationing at this time?
Hans Buetow:Because rationing is a is a big thing.
Steve Buetow:Oh, of course, it is. It has just begun.
Hans Buetow:It has just begun. I have news for you, though.
Steve Buetow:Okay. Bees are not rationed. Either geese or turkeys.
Hans Buetow:So she's just choosing goose. Okay. There is, however, something that is important to Thanksgiving that is rationed, sugar. Oh,
Steve Buetow:of course, it
Hans Buetow:is. So Yep. The pies.
Steve Buetow:Yeah. And with the goose, you get the goose fat. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. So it's that's a butter replacement if if butter is rationed.
Steve Buetow:Oh, yeah. So that would be
Hans Buetow:because it's a very fatty bird.
Steve Buetow:Right? Very fatty bird. Yes. And the goose fat is delicious, like duck fat. Yeah.
Steve Buetow:But her German tradition would would allow her to, have goose fat.
Hans Buetow:Well, the New York Times suggests that if it's difficult to get enough supply of sugar for cranberry sauce or jelly or if transportation bottlenecks keep cranberries out of reach, orange or apple preserves may provide an acceptable substitute.
Steve Buetow:And take less sugar.
Hans Buetow:Yes. Less sugar. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
Hans Buetow:Because cranberries is astonishing amount
Steve Buetow:of sugar. Yeah. Yeah. You can make apple preserves with just apples.
Hans Buetow:So this is the choice that she's making for her Thanksgiving. Underline, all day and a goodly part of the evening. It's interesting. She didn't do it on Thanksgiving Day.
Steve Buetow:Right? I can't imagine her re heating the goose the next day.
Hans Buetow:What a good point. What an what a weird that's true. It's unclear who's there. Yeah. Doesn't mention everyone who might be there.
Hans Buetow:She only mentions a few people and the reason maybe that she did this because she continues saying, my how we missed you boys. It just wasn't the same. You boys always got so much out of Thanksgiving dinner. I hope you had a nice day, however, and I wonder if you thought of home. Thursday morning, of course, we went to church.
Hans Buetow:And after Yep. Until about 09:30 that night, it was one nightmare. I'm telling you, this woman's she's in a mood. So the kids there's no explanation who these kids are. The kids, she says, pretty nearly drive you nuts.
Hans Buetow:So that's probably Virginia's children and Joe's children. So the okay. The grandchildren. So this is a sense of who
Steve Buetow:might be grandchildren.
Hans Buetow:Matt Virginia's Matt's son
Steve Buetow:Well, there's daughter. On The Mattie on The Homefront, there is that wonderful Thanksgiving picture.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. Right on the Meet The Family page if you go there.
Steve Buetow:Meet the family, and it is from Thanksgiving three years hence. 1945. Yes. And you can see a number of children, five, six.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. That's true. And so all of them would have been around. Yep. Yep.
Hans Buetow:So it's some sense, and the kids will nearly drive you nuts, apparently. She says, unfortunately, I had to have them all day. But I wanted Wesley and Florence also. And since Wes has to go back to work in the afternoon, I had to have dinner at noon.
Steve Buetow:Thanksgiving dinner at noon. At least
Hans Buetow:it was light out. At least it was light out, but this is some explanation as to why she had to make everything the day before. Oh. You couldn't you couldn't start that, especially with going to church in the morning.
Steve Buetow:Oh, that's right.
Hans Buetow:There's she couldn't have done it.
Steve Buetow:Right. That's a good point. So the pies had to be made, and the goose probably as well.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. So everything's made the day before. So they're accommodating Wes and Florence. Mattie says, well, Wes and Florence left about 02:30 as Florence had no way of getting back, and driving here was simply terrible as we had a bad snowstorm about three inches on Wednesday, and it blew all night. Oh.
Hans Buetow:The temperature dropped to about six above Thursday morning. It has stayed around that temperature ever since. Yeah.
Steve Buetow:That's cold for Thanksgiving.
Hans Buetow:It's cold for Thanksgiving.
Steve Buetow:Yeah. I remember every once in a while, we could skate on Thanksgiving, but but that'd be maybe once in a decade.
Hans Buetow:She says that Friday morning, bright and early, I had to go to Red Cross, and I never got home until almost supper time. This morning was the usual cleaning. In fact, I haven't yet finished, but dad just went over to Monkeys to get some paraffin covered cloth to put over the screen on the back porch to see if we can keep out some of the cold. Go what's going to Monkeys?
Steve Buetow:Going to monkeys is Montgomery Wards.
Hans Buetow:That's amazing. My
Steve Buetow:it was Monkey Wards. Monkey Wards. And everybody called it Monkey Wards.
Hans Buetow:What? Everybody called it Monkey warts?
Steve Buetow:I think so. Oh. Everyone I was related to did, and I think that I think it was it was pretty general. It was a huge regional facility on University Avenue.
Hans Buetow:South Side Of University Avenue over by Lexington.
Steve Buetow:So you could go in there and open a catalog. They would have catalogs, big, fat, 500 page catalogs, and you would write down your numbers, take it up to a place where the pneumatic messaging would send it go and would send it upstairs where people on roller skates would be No. Gets better. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Steve Buetow:It was huge. Huge. It was the largest enclosed area. Oh, I I it was even bigger than the Sears over in Minneapolis. Even bigger than
Hans Buetow:the Sears. That's a nineteen forties thing. Just like, my it's even bigger than the Sears.
Steve Buetow:Well, Sears had a bigger facility in Chicago, but Montgomery Ward had it it was huge.
Hans Buetow:That's delightful.
Steve Buetow:The building would stretch all the way, and it was about five stories tall and a and a block wide, and it stretched all the way from the facade on University Avenue to what is now 94.
Hans Buetow:That's nuts. It was huge. Four blocks.
Steve Buetow:Yeah. Yeah. Three or four. It was huge. That's enormous.
Steve Buetow:Just huge.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. Wow. And so this would have been over in that area a mile away from the house, little bit over a mile, mile on a change with going south a
Steve Buetow:little bit? It's very close to a mile. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Steve Buetow:Very close to a
Hans Buetow:mile. And so Matt running down there for, what do you say, paraffin covered cloth.
Steve Buetow:Yeah. This is a perfect place to go. Department store, they got everything. Parking's easy. You can get in and out quickly.
Steve Buetow:They've got what you need.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. Well, he's going because they wanna keep out some of the cold because Mattie says, we are gonna have a simply delicious time trying to keep warm with a little fuel oil we will get. Oh. Can we just, like, pause for a moment for delicious time? And what does that mean?
Hans Buetow:Well, she says, we go around here with sweaters most of the time.
Steve Buetow:The thermostat is set at 65.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. It's cold in that house. Yeah. Tonight, she says, Saturday, tonight, we go to dinner at the West Twins with Bob and Glad.
Steve Buetow:Bob and Glad are the friends from Minneapolis?
Hans Buetow:Friends from Minneapolis live over in Chicago, the Gentsrichs. We are celebrating Bob's birthday, and dad's too, I suppose, is now gas rationing going into effect the December 1. It'll be almost out of the question to go any place you can't get to by streetcar as that will be our conveyance from now on.
Steve Buetow:Oh, okay.
Hans Buetow:Want to save the little we get. This is gas, she means. We do wanna save the little we get to get dad when he comes in from work the next month.
Steve Buetow:Of course, you gotta go pick him up at the depot.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. So they're talking about very little gas. They're, like, celebrating birthdays early to combine Yes. Going places. They're talking about, like, can we go pick him up at the depot in downtown, which is three, four miles away?
Steve Buetow:Yeah. And the cars are probably well, the cars aren't big or fast.
Hans Buetow:No. And they can only go 35. There's a national speed limit at
Steve Buetow:35. You can't go bit more than 35 between 1691 Blair and and and Don Taunt. No. No. Uh-uh.
Hans Buetow:So there's another thing in the middle of all that that I just wanna I just wanna come back to. Okay. Where they're going with Bob and Glad. So do you know the West twins? Did you ever see the West twins?
Steve Buetow:Do not remember the West Twins. I don't think so.
Hans Buetow:Okay. So Minneapolis? It's not. It's over in West Saint Paul. Oh.
Hans Buetow:For the nonlocals, when I say West Saint Paul, what I mean is the South Side of the city. I know it's just the way things are here.
Steve Buetow:It was in the Louisiana Purchase. It is on the West Side
Hans Buetow:Of The Mississippi. I understand that.
Steve Buetow:And the Mississippi in Saint Paul goes east to
Hans Buetow:west. I know this. Okay. I understand that that's how it bifurcates the city, and so half of Saint Paul at that point is across the south across the river on the West side of the bank, and so it's called West Saint Paul. But it is in fact south of the rest of the city.
Hans Buetow:Right.
Steve Buetow:And just South of West Saint Paul is the town of West Saint Paul.
Hans Buetow:See, they had a choice. They made that choice, and they didn't need to. Technically, West Saint Paul is Minneapolis. Okay. Right?
Hans Buetow:There is no West Saint Paul. The it's everything West Of Saint Paul is Minneapolis. So true. There you go. But the West Twins is an incredible building on Robert Street.
Steve Buetow:Okay.
Hans Buetow:So it's up Robert Street at 932 South Robert. It is no longer there. It's just empty fields right now.
Steve Buetow:Oh, okay.
Hans Buetow:It was a single screen movie theater and restaurant. Oh. So it was built 1939, so it's new. New. Yeah.
Hans Buetow:Super exciting. I couldn't tell what movies were playing, but we talked about missus Miniver last time.
Steve Buetow:Right. And by this time, I think Casablanca has been showing for just three or four days.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. Something like that. Something like that. Absolutely. But they're not going for that.
Hans Buetow:The although, remarkably, for this, they did try to ban smoking in this theater in the nineteen forties and failed Oh. Just miserably.
Steve Buetow:Oh, smoking in the theater. Yeah.
Hans Buetow:Oh, right? Yeah.
Steve Buetow:Yeah. I remember that sort of thing. You do. Oh, yeah. Hockey games.
Steve Buetow:Oh. If you had the cheap seats, you were up so so all the smoke would rise to the rafters, and you could just barely see across the rink to the people on the other side.
Hans Buetow:Oh, with that tiny little puck, you just like, I think I see. I think I see. So it's this iconic building, right, with which had a revolving tower on the marquee. Oh. And I wanna show you show you just this photo that I found of it.
Hans Buetow:Oh. And it dominated the skyline over there in West Saint Paul. Will you you you're an architect, so describe a little bit of what you're seeing here.
Steve Buetow:It looks like classic Liebenberg and Kaplan.
Hans Buetow:Oh, I I was just just about to say that.
Steve Buetow:And it they were famous for their art deco theaters. The one down in Highlanders, they're scattered all over Minnesota. They just did a marvelous job with the entryways, the marquees, and then the towers. And they were all lit up, the neon.
Hans Buetow:Oh, the neon. All these lights, and it's Yep. It's all like hexagons and squares and this beautiful marquee, you know, marbled walls right on the very base there, and then these, like, oblong doors that are just great glass block windows that are very vertical and very tall all the way
Steve Buetow:up. Right. The tower going many stories up.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. It's just absolutely, absolutely gorgeous. And so they're but they're not going to the theater because it was the twins was both the theater and the restaurant.
Steve Buetow:So they're actually going entertainment.
Hans Buetow:Complete entertainment. Yes. They did everything. Oh, so the West Twins Inn, this is the inn that we're talking about here. There's a matchbook from that time, which, says proudly special attention given to weddings and breakfasts, bridge luncheons, private dinner parties, visit the gay nineties room, visit the Camellia Room.
Hans Buetow:Wow. I mean, it sounds awesome. It does. Shall we check out what our good friend Roland l Hill wrote in, I recommend good places to go eat, play, and shop. The West Twins Inn at 09:30.
Steve Buetow:We don't have a choice.
Hans Buetow:You are along for the ride today, my friend.
Steve Buetow:But I'm the dad.
Hans Buetow:So he says, mister Roland L. Hill says of the West Twins Inn, this theater restaurant and cocktail lounge is very new and very swank. The owner, I understand, is a movie producer and runs the movie house next door as well as many other movies. He made the Dillinger picture and is currently bringing out the story of Dan Patch on the screen. Woah.
Hans Buetow:Dan Patch, a horse? Horse. Very famous horse? Yes. I think everyone knew that.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. Mister Hill continues. He has brought the Hollywood touch with him to Saint Paul, and his spot here shows it plainly. The whirling hors d'oeuvres platter will amaze you here as will the meals that are so tempting and so excellently served. My favorite next sentence, music.
Hans Buetow:That's it. Music, period. The cocktail lounge is about the coziest I have found in my travels. Wow. Yeah.
Hans Buetow:Go to the West Twins Inn to celebrate birthdays.
Steve Buetow:Sounds wonderful.
Hans Buetow:Oh, yeah. So so cool. Next week continues, Mattie. Next week will be another nightmare as far as activities are concerned.
Steve Buetow:The holiday season has begun.
Hans Buetow:It's tough. Tuesday night, Wednesday night, and Thursday night. Dad will go to work Monday morning. So this is part of why December gets really hard is because Matt works the railroad during holiday season. Right.
Hans Buetow:She said I last letter a week before. Yeah. She's like, he's gone all of December. Yes. It's dark.
Hans Buetow:It's dark. It's cold. She does drive. She but she's not gonna be able to because there's gas.
Steve Buetow:There's no gas. She gotta take gotta get to
Hans Buetow:So it's a it's she can go places. It's just like it's just a pain in the butt to go places. You can walk all the way down to university, probably. So, you know, it's December. I could imagine that that that having her boys gone for Thanksgiving, knowing how much they loved it and having such fond memories of it Yep.
Hans Buetow:And it not at all being the same, being at war, being nervous for them, being scared for them, entering this season of, like, what we just outlined is is tough. There's a lot happening.
Steve Buetow:Yes. And not all of it with people she treasures. Yeah. Some of them seem like their obligations.
Hans Buetow:But that's what community is.
Steve Buetow:That's true.
Hans Buetow:You know? And this is a thing that I think that we lose a lot of sight of is, like, it's a pain in the neck. Some of these some of these jokers but you know what? They're our neighbors. You know what?
Hans Buetow:There are they go to the church. You know what? They're on the railway mail auxiliary service with me. Yes. And she does it.
Hans Buetow:Like, she doesn't not do it.
Steve Buetow:And the only place she can complain is to Matt
Hans Buetow:and And Ken, which is interesting to have that kind of relationship with your 21 year old son.
Steve Buetow:Yes. But I I suspect the two of them lived by themselves before she married Matt, and that they have a very, very close Bonded relationship. So she, I'm sure, relied on him a lot for emotional support.
Hans Buetow:He's not married. He hasn't left home. Yep. Which is another reason that, like, this 1942
Steve Buetow:He's 21. Yeah. But you're yeah.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. But he's still around. He's still in the house, and Bud's still in the house. Yep. You know, it's another it's quiet.
Hans Buetow:Like, she's not used to being there alone, and she's there alone in the cold and the dark. Yep. Yeah. Well, she concludes by saying, I'd hoped we would get a letter this morning, but Richie Shower said he hadn't gotten his bundle of mail when he came to the box this morning because they are starting an hour later now because they can't see the addresses at eight yet, which is really only seven by the sun. However, I'm hoping to get my lair Monday morning as usual.
Hans Buetow:She usually gets her letters from him on Monday and then writes them right back. Ah, yes. She concludes finally with, until then, darling, God bless you, and keep you safe from all harm. Hope you are well. We are all fine.
Hans Buetow:Love, mom. I like that she adds that we are all fine right at the end there. It's just like it's a, like, it's rough right now, and it's tough. But We're all fine. We're all fine.
Hans Buetow:Like, I think maybe she real maybe she, like, read through it or, like, realized Yep. Like, night she uses the word nightmare twice in this in this letter. Yeah. A lot of a lot of can't deal with these folks, can't deal with the situation in this. So it's probably her saying, oh, you know what?
Hans Buetow:Yeah.
Steve Buetow:But all that celebration and the people she loves most aren't
Hans Buetow:there. Absolutely. So I think in conclusion, the only thing really ultimately left to say is brace up, gents. Brace up.
Steve Buetow:We've done it once.
Hans Buetow:Dad, wait. Where are you going? Dad? Dad? Dad, we're not done.
Steve Buetow:Dad. Slam. Well,
Hans Buetow:that is Mattie's World for 11/28/1942. Thank you so much for joining us and sticking with us.
Steve Buetow:Yeah. It's been a tough one to stick Wow.
Hans Buetow:You're not wrong. If you wanna tell us that they should be shorter, you can head over to moth.family, our website, and get in touch with us. You can also see the photos, the photo that, dad, you mentioned of Thanksgiving dinner 1945.
Steve Buetow:A classic photo.
Hans Buetow:Classic. It's one of the best photos of our family. Moth.family. Our theme music is by Matt Buto, and our art and logo is by Amy Kirkpatrick. I'm Hans Buto.
Hans Buetow:I'm Steve Buto. And you are a trooper. Thank you for being here. We'll see you next time.