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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. Hansel. Did Mattie speak with an accent? No. No.
Hans Buetow:Like, not like a German accent or anything like that.
Steve Buetow:She didn't she would have been a Minnesota accent. She probably went to grade school in German.
Hans Buetow:Her mom was a German? Yes. Kinkorth.
Steve Buetow:Implied one time that his grandma never learned to speak English. And I'm not sure which grandma, and I'm not sure exactly what that meant.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. Okay. Okay. So a good old Minnesotan accent.
Steve Buetow:Yeah. Yeah.
Hans Buetow:Hello? Hello. And welcome to Mattie On The Homefront. I am Hans Buto. I'm Steve Buto.
Hans Buetow:We say our last names differently even though we are related to each other. Dad, you are my dad.
Steve Buetow:Yes. Indeed.
Hans Buetow:And Mattie is my great grandmother.
Steve Buetow:Which makes her my grandma.
Hans Buetow:And, her son, Ken, is your dad, my grandfather. Figure that one out. This is a podcast where we are going through, one by one, the letters that she wrote, the eponymous Mattie, to Ken in World War two from 1942 through 1945.
Steve Buetow:And we're still in 1942. We are in 1942.
Hans Buetow:Specifically, today, 11/23/1942. It's a Monday today.
Steve Buetow:That must be the week of Thanksgiving.
Hans Buetow:What a great segue. It is almost Thanksgiving. So this is the Monday of Thanksgiving week. So Thanksgiving's in three days. It's on the twenty sixth.
Hans Buetow:Yep. She's kinda missing Ken. She's missing Bud, who is her stepson, who is Matt, is the other figure in the household. Her husband, his son, Bud, missing those boys. Yes.
Hans Buetow:Three days ago, in our last letter, Mattie hosted nine ladies for a luncheon and Yes. That's right. Served a whole bunch of food to them.
Steve Buetow:Yeah. Circle for the ladies' day.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. Absolutely. This is around the time also that there's a whole bunch of rationing starting. This So is gonna be the first Thanksgiving under rationing.
Steve Buetow:Yes. We've been talking about rationing for a long time, but it's just beginning to be instituted.
Hans Buetow:It's there's been some things have been rationed, rubber, vulcanization. Some things have been rationed, but, like, late November, right around this moment is when much more rationing is gonna start happening both with food and with gasoline. Uncle Berndt is still dead also.
Steve Buetow:Uncle Berndt?
Hans Buetow:Yes. Uncle Berndt is is dead. Sorry. FYI.
Steve Buetow:And it's also dark out most of the time. There are no leaves.
Hans Buetow:Absolutely. Yeah. By late November, I they've talked about snow a lot. I would not she's not talking about there being snow on the ground. I would not be surprised if there were snow on the ground.
Steve Buetow:That's what late November it's usually dark and and gloomy.
Hans Buetow:So we're gonna start as
Steve Buetow:we always do. I'm handing Steve Yep. From 1691 Blair in Saint Paul, Minnesota with two United States postage stamps upside down.
Hans Buetow:Oh, no. I'm glad it still got to him.
Steve Buetow:Right? And and she's married to a professional. So
Hans Buetow:That's true. Matt worked for the post office.
Steve Buetow:Yes. Yes. Yeah. So upside down was it was serious. There's a big air mail sticker at the bottom, which is licked and stuck on, and then private Ken Buto.
Steve Buetow:MP company, Seattle, Washington.
Hans Buetow:MP company. So it actually says MP company now. Yes. Like, the
Steve Buetow:February.
Hans Buetow:02/30 Yeah.
Steve Buetow:Okay. Company. APO.
Hans Buetow:This is yeah. Is because for a while, he was in the DEML, which is the detached enlisted men's list. Okay. And so now he's been moved officially over as an MP. So he's an MP up in Canada on the coast Monday evening of November 23.
Hans Buetow:And she starts as she always starts. My darling Ken, just as I was leaving the house Friday morning to go to Red Cross, I received your letter of November 13, and I read it on the streetcar. Excellent. This is not a thing that we have anymore. Streetcars.
Hans Buetow:It's true. It was still in operation when I was tiny. Did you take it? Oh, yes. I rode on the streetcar.
Hans Buetow:Yes. He says as though, it's just the that's cool.
Steve Buetow:Yeah. It's wonderful. So the streetcar would did not come over to the curb to pick you up.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. You'd have to walk to it.
Steve Buetow:You'd have to go it to the middle of the street. So it would stop. It had these wires overhead that would spark. Oh, spark. Yeah.
Steve Buetow:As it would roll there was a little roller that conducted the electricity down to the car, a wooden boxy thing. But the streetcars did a lot to just do city planning. Yeah. Because there were streetcar corners. There were little grocery store, hardware store corners where the streetcars would intersect Yeah.
Steve Buetow:That would serve the surrounding community. There's there's a lot less of that, but the remnants are all there. You can see it in Saint Paul and especially in Minneapolis.
Hans Buetow:Which is I think where she's going. This is the one thing I do know about the streetcars is that they, during this time in World War two, especially because we have rubber rationing, we have vulcanizing rationing, we have gas rationing. They're not selling new cars. Everybody's in this save everything military spirit is that the ridership went through the roof in the twin cities for streetcars.
Steve Buetow:The streetcar system worked really well. The University Avenue University Avenue. Every seven minutes, there would be a streetcar.
Hans Buetow:She just walks right down to university. It's a few blocks away. Yeah. Six six blocks. Six blocks away.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. So I like to think of her getting the letter on her way out and just sitting on the streetcar rattle rattle rattle client client client. Yeah. She went out there and she met Georgine because she says, I met Georgine, and she too read it. Wow.
Hans Buetow:We were blessed with three letters last week, which was certainly wonderful. Keep up the good work. Mattie says, dad saw missus Miniver and wanted me to see it. He saw it at Cedar Rapids, but I've heard several ladies say it was sad, so I have not yet seen it. The trouble with me is I live in a picture, and it affects me so.
Steve Buetow:Lives she's she's the star of her own movie. Yeah.
Hans Buetow:She you know, I hadn't taken it that way. Missus Miniver is an interesting one for her to say that about. So Missus Miniver, 1942, obviously, because it's 1942. It just came out. Was Greer Garson and Walter Pigeon
Steve Buetow:Yes.
Hans Buetow:Were the actors. Actors. This is directed by William Wyler. So it's it's top notch talent. Top notch talent.
Hans Buetow:You may know William Wyler's other work from things like Ben Hur, best years of our lives. Yes. Roman Holiday, the little foxes. He has I think, still holds the record for the most nominations for an Academy Award by a director,
Steve Buetow:which is won on this one. He did.
Hans Buetow:He did. He won three Academy Awards. One of them was for missus Miniver, this movie that Mattie's refusing to watch. Didn't she say she was reluctant to watch? Reluctant.
Hans Buetow:That is true. She's a I have not yet seen it.
Steve Buetow:Yes. And it takes preparation to take something that that, especially with the sun away at war, could be a great trial to see.
Narrator:The big event the whole country is talking about, missus Miniver, a timely drama tuned to the terrific tempo of the world of today. Missus Miniver, the story of a valiant woman whose love devotion shield her family from the cruelest onslaught of devastation ever visited upon mankind.
Hans Buetow:So the movie is about a housewife on the British homefront during World War two.
Steve Buetow:Right. Near the coast.
Hans Buetow:Near the coast in England. Yes. Based on that description alone, I can completely understand why she would not be eager to go watch it. That Yes. And it's and it's a drama.
Hans Buetow:It's a bit of a tragedy.
Steve Buetow:With Ritz, it is definitely a tragedy, and she and missus Miniver has a son in the army.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. So with the air force. And and so striking very close to home. Yes. Like, I can completely see her just not I know this feeling of not being like, the feels it's it's a busman's holiday.
Hans Buetow:I'm not doing that. I mean, it's more serious than that. Yes. This was an interesting movie in the way that it was put together because it's based on a book from 1940.
Steve Buetow:'39. Yes.
Hans Buetow:From '39.
Steve Buetow:Okay. Which is where things that happened in the movie had not happened in 1939.
Hans Buetow:Wow. That's interesting.
Steve Buetow:Yeah. A key part of the movie is the rescue of the soldiers on the coast Dunkirk. In at Dunkirk. Exactly. We're the flotilla of
Hans Buetow:Fisher folk.
Steve Buetow:Little boats. Well, Walter Pigeon took a little cabin cruiser Yep. Out with all the rest of everybody else, and so that was in the movie.
Hans Buetow:Yeah.
Steve Buetow:But that happened in 1940.
Hans Buetow:So they did start writing the movie in 1940. And Right. There was a really interesting example that I was reading about of how the movie kept changing as they were writing it and then subsequently filming it. Because you could imagine when they started in 1940 and there's the big noninterventionist sentiment in The United States saying, we're not getting involved. We're not getting involved.
Hans Buetow:This is Europe's problem. You're gonna have a very specific tone that the movie is gonna be written in and have this attitude about. Right?
Steve Buetow:But it's an American movie.
Hans Buetow:It's an American movie about to be very British. Yeah. But it's But it's not British. It's not. It's very American.
Steve Buetow:It was very popular in Britain.
Hans Buetow:And it reflects the American spirit. And so the example that they gave was there's a scene where Luftwaffe pilot crash lands and then appears in her garden.
Steve Buetow:Her yes. And they already have this argument in the kitchen.
Hans Buetow:And they have this argument in the kitchen.
Pilot:We will come. We will bomb your cities like Barcelona, Barshaw, Narvik,
Pilot:Rotterdam. Rotterdam we destroy in two hours.
Mrs. Miniver:And thousands killed. Innocent. Not innocent.
Pilot:They were against us. Women and children.
Hans Buetow:The example that I was reading about of how much it evolved as public sentiment was evolving as they were writing it was, that encounter got more confrontational with every rewrite. Ah, interesting. To the point where when they actually filmed it, it was just post Pearl Harbor. Oh. And so they were in the war, and it it escalated, and she slapped him.
Pilot:30,000 in two hours, and we will do the same thing here. Which
Hans Buetow:was not the original intent at all, but they were reflecting this growing anger and the fact that we were now at war.
Steve Buetow:Thus, Mattie I mean, she has not seen a string of World War two movies. This is the first World War two movie. Interesting way to look at it. There are a lot of propaganda movies. Yeah.
Steve Buetow:But it's early on that a well talked about, very highly regarded movie Yeah. Is dealt with World War two.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. I love this line. The trouble with me is I live in a picture, and it affects me so.
Steve Buetow:It is wonderful.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. I don't take I don't take that as the way you originally took it, which is like, oh, I'm the center of my own movie. And yeah. No.
Steve Buetow:No. I agree.
Hans Buetow:It's much more like, I I don't need to watch that I live it Yeah. Sort of sort of thing.
Steve Buetow:Yeah. There's there's a lot of drama in my life is her feeling. Yes.
Narrator:You will not soon forget the gallantry of this family of brave and decent people whose courage is the flaming spirit of a family of brave and decent nations.
Hans Buetow:Well, in happier notes, Mattie continues in the next paragraph. Saturday, Florence Glyndmeyer called me as she had done three or four times, and I felt I just couldn't disappoint her again. So I invited her and Alice to have lunch with me, and they were tickled, which tickled. Just come on. You gotta bring bring it back.
Hans Buetow:Bring it back, tickled. You would think I prepared a banquet for them. You should have seen Alice eat. She cleaned up her plate entirely, and she did have a goodly helping. Once again, we're hearing Mattie talk about someone's weight.
Hans Buetow:Oh. Yes. This is something that she did to Flo to her son, Wes's wife Yeah. Commenting extensively about her weight. Yep.
Hans Buetow:Do you think that Mattie was somebody who monitored that, was aware of that? Do you where do you think that comes from with her?
Steve Buetow:I do not know. I don't really know at all what her father was like, And her mother, I don't think was was large. Yeah. It's one of those prejudices she lived with.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. She does reveal, though, the next thing. The secret of the luncheon was, it was all leftovers from my circle on Wednesday. I had made so much chili and baked so many rolls and also had cranberry salad left as well as dessert. So it was certainly no effort on my part, but, of course, they didn't know that.
Steve Buetow:Cranberries and chili?
Hans Buetow:And they appreciated it very much. Well, I don't think you put the cranberries in the chili. The cranberry salad. Cranberry cranberry salad. Cranberries and
Steve Buetow:Jell O? Well, we have her box of recipes.
Hans Buetow:We're gonna make it. Cranberry salad. We're gonna look this up. Oh, I didn't realize we did. Okay.
Steve Buetow:Okay. It might not go back that far. Most of the recipes are from the sixties.
Hans Buetow:But maybe
Steve Buetow:she Fifties.
Hans Buetow:Maybe she maintained. It's so good. Yes. She made she brought it forward. So she says that they appreciated it very much.
Hans Buetow:And then she says, to her credit, I was really happy that I asked them.
Steve Buetow:Excellent.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. Alice has joined reverend Grant's church, and you really wouldn't know the girl. She's an entirely different individual. She has an entirely different outlook on life and now feels she has something to live for. She wanted a strict religion, nothing wishy washy, she said, and she's getting a much fuller life out of it.
Hans Buetow:I am very happy.
Steve Buetow:Wow. Yeah. But it seems very germane to sit. This discipline and fortitude that it takes to get through your spiritual life, everyday life. Sure.
Steve Buetow:And and that is a blessing to be able
Hans Buetow:to apply all of that. Yeah. The structures, the struggle are are are all appreciated. Yes. Yeah.
Hans Buetow:Mattie says that Alice told her that they have remodeled their home and have rented the upstairs, so they have a very comfortable income. Get $40 for it.
Steve Buetow:Excellent.
Hans Buetow:Now here's where it gets real interesting. Oh. Mattie says, now I know what your huts are like. Mhmm. Okay.
Hans Buetow:Carr Cullens, where Florence works, had the contract for them, and she told me just how large they are and what they are built of and that they were flown there at the small sum of $1,700 apiece. So you live in an expensive house even if you do call it a hut. Wow. Let's start at Cullen.
Steve Buetow:Car Cullen is a millwork interior and exterior millwork company from Minneapolis across the river, and it was started in the eighteen sixties. The first industry in Minneapolis that relied upon the falls Was
Hans Buetow:mills.
Steve Buetow:Was wood. Yeah. The pine forests. Yeah. So the wood came down the river, the power of the river falling at the falls.
Hans Buetow:That's Saint Anthony Falls, which was at that point the second largest waterfall in the nation.
Steve Buetow:Yes. And they would saw boards, and so there were a lot of pine boards. Yeah. And so millwork companies began to thrive. Yeah.
Steve Buetow:And they were still operating in the forties.
Hans Buetow:Eighty years later. Yeah. They had they had branched into selling complete sets of plans for houses, which is not uncommon at all. Complete okay. Wait.
Hans Buetow:Complete sets of plans for houses. So you'd it it's like a prefab house, but just the plans for it?
Steve Buetow:Just the plans.
Hans Buetow:Okay. So you would buy the blueprints
Steve Buetow:for it. The blueprints.
Hans Buetow:Architecturally designed. Yeah. Yes. Yes. And then you'd hand it to a contractor, and that contractor would then make it.
Hans Buetow:Right. Probably using their wooden millwork.
Steve Buetow:Exactly. So it was more of an effort to be able to market to help market. They would have specific millwork for the inside and the outside of the house that could be applied and specified very quickly, easily.
Hans Buetow:That's actually so smart because all you have to do is produce a drawing, and then somebody else does the actual construct. You don't you don't take on the cost of any of the parts, any of the labor, any of the anything, and you convince them to use your stuff in it. That's really smart. So this is the friend Florence who works there. So the line, now I know what your huts are like, and then talking about how they get the huts out to the army was Carr Cullen making buildings for the army.
Hans Buetow:Prefabricating. So they're wow. I mean, this is
Steve Buetow:not unusual. In the twenties, you could go to Sears and order a house. Yeah. And it would arrive on maybe one or two boxcars, and you would have everything. All the nails you needed, all the millwork, all the studs, the structure, the plans.
Steve Buetow:Yeah. But it wasn't unusual that houses could be packaged in their basic form and sent out. And they had a need for it. A tremendous need.
Hans Buetow:Yes. Tremendous need. So it because the army has to get set up. Right? So we know that Ken's little unit has just kind of emerged out and, I think, like, tripled the size of the town, didn't you say?
Steve Buetow:Yes. Triple the size of Prince Rupert.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. Yes. And, like, that needs to happen almost immediately that you need places for all these people to go. And he's an MP, so assuming that they're making some sort of jail facilities, some sort of holding facilities. All the different support structures
Steve Buetow:Yeah. Need to be there.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. And it's not just the army and everything too. I was reading a little bit about how much they had to build, especially in the coasts, for the amount of people who moved for manufacturing. So close to one quarter of the population of The United States, more than 30,000,000 Americans moved during the war. Wow.
Hans Buetow:The government alone helped produce about 2,000,000 dwelling units for people to stay in. Yeah. During the war to house people who were coming to factories, who were coming to military bases, defense plants, all of that sort of stuff. So they had to do that sort of stuff quickly too. So there was a civilian need just as much as there was a military need even though those two things are pretty linked.
Steve Buetow:Interesting. Because there was a huge housing crisis once the war
Hans Buetow:was over. Once the war was over. Absolutely. Yep. So Carr Cullen, do you have any sense of where Carr Cullen is?
Steve Buetow:I'm guessing Northeast Minneapolis.
Hans Buetow:I'm guessing Northeast Minneapolis.
Steve Buetow:Long wrong railroad tracks.
Hans Buetow:Did find a 1963 photo
Steve Buetow:Okay.
Hans Buetow:That the historical society Minnesota Historical Society has that lists it at 1000 Marshall Avenue Northeast.
Steve Buetow:Exactly.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. Which is right up there in Northeast.
Steve Buetow:In fact, there were that's a number of lumber yards along the river there.
Hans Buetow:Oh, because that's Marshall's right along the river and right next to the brewery.
Steve Buetow:Yep. Yeah. It's just south of the brewery. Just south
Hans Buetow:of the brewery. There were a number of lumber yards. And someone else on Facebook, I do not know this person at all, had posted a photo of the campus for Car Cullen Company, and you can see in this, it's pretty sprawling. There are a lot of big warehouse buildings, and there's the river. You can see the river just a little bit of ways over the hill there, which would have been where they were getting the power for the mill at least in the eighteen eighties.
Steve Buetow:Yes. They wouldn't have been doing that in the forties. But yes. Sure.
Hans Buetow:But they That's why it's located near the river.
Steve Buetow:Yes. They're upstream from the falls Yeah. A mile or two.
Hans Buetow:Yep. It's all fascinating. So I don't have a good transition because Mattie doesn't have a good transition here either. We didn't even switch paragraphs.
Steve Buetow:It goes in the family.
Hans Buetow:We go from even if you do call it a hut, the next sentence is uncle John has a geographic magazine we wanna get ahold of that tells all about your camp, and we wanna read up on it.
Steve Buetow:Interesting. National Geographic did something on the coast of Canada.
Hans Buetow:They did it actually all about Alaska. It's September 1942, and I got a copy of it. Oh. So it's a whole bunch of stuff that you would expect from National Geographic.
Steve Buetow:A lot of black and white pictures.
Hans Buetow:A lot of black and white pictures of the First Nation people up there Okay. Of all types. A lot of those sorts of, like, here's whalebone things, and here's them going out on the hunt and stuff like that. But there is a double spread here about the bizarre battleground of the lonely Aleutians. Oh.
Hans Buetow:Because this is the thousand mile stretch of islands that pokes out into the Pacific that has been invaded by the Japanese. And occupied. And occupied by the Japanese. And I just wanna read you the first paragraph of this because it's the writing style of the nineteen forties just it does something it makes my soul very happy. So this is by Lonnel Davison.
Hans Buetow:Behind a tantalizing intermittent curtain of fog lies one of the strangest of the bizarre battlegrounds of the war, the Aleutian Islands. Darkly upthrust from the gray blue waters of the North Pacific, this giant's causeway of half drowned volcanic peaks extends for more than a thousand miles in a bewildering panorama of ice and fire, of dead and smoking volcanoes, of boiling springs and chilly streams, of disappearing islands, nameless waterfalls, green valleys, and stretches of barren desolation where grows not even a bush. Oh, yes.
Steve Buetow:Yes.
Hans Buetow:Wow. You can just imagine the crackle of the newsreel. Yep. There's a fighting man out there.
Steve Buetow:Yes. And that was one of the problems with the Aleutian Islands was warfare was often inhibited by weather. Yes. Fog, mist, impenetrable conditions.
Hans Buetow:Speaking of more non sequiturs, we got another one. I had a long visit with Gin this morning. Okay. The next thing that Mattie has to say. So Gin is Virginia
Steve Buetow:Who we think is Ken's fiance. She is a there is a woman named Virginia that was engaged to Ken for a while. We're assuming this is who it is.
Hans Buetow:We're assuming this is who it is. So long visit with Jen this morning. Mattie says she certainly has a wonderful position. I was going to say job, but it definitely isn't a job when she can talk forty five minutes to me over the telephone during working hours.
Steve Buetow:And this is not on the cell phone. Just no. This is
Hans Buetow:While you're
Steve Buetow:work yeah.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. Company phone. The company phone. Absolutely. Mattie says that Jen told me how tickled Susan was with her Santa that you drew her as well as her letter.
Hans Buetow:That was nice of you. It takes so little to make a child happy.
Steve Buetow:Ken was very good at little sketches that could be quite amusing. He would sit down with a sketch pad, and we would say, draw a horse. Yeah. And he'd draw a horse. Draw an ambulance.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. Delightful. Delight you know what else is delightful? Taking a quick break. Alright.
Hans Buetow:So let's just let's make our little child, inner child happy and take a quick break.
Steve Buetow:Do you lie awake thinking of Segways?
Hans Buetow:It's all I think about. Do you lie? Just fussing and fretting. Oh.
Steve Buetow:What am I gonna get from
Hans Buetow:this corporate transition?
Steve Buetow:I'm not a professional. I don't know.
Hans Buetow:All professionals do. Yeah. Well, Mattie continues, which is how we're gonna continue, with Saturday evening. So that was Friday. All that stuff happened.
Hans Buetow:Saturday evening, the Genriches came over. The Genriches are the friends from Minneapolis.
Steve Buetow:Oh, that's right.
Hans Buetow:Live over on Chicago Avenue. Yep. Friends of theirs. So Saturday evening, the Genriches came over, and we had our usual Saturday night's fun.
Steve Buetow:Excellent. We should probably involve cards.
Hans Buetow:Cards, penny gambling the last time.
Steve Buetow:That's right.
Hans Buetow:They watched some football. So, you know, that sort of thing, very possibly.
Steve Buetow:They couldn't have watched football.
Hans Buetow:Listen to some football. Look. It's true. It's absolutely true. They could not have watched it.
Hans Buetow:You're right. But that's all she says about Saturday. Sunday morning, she says, we went over to auntie Hansen's to celebrate her 80 birthday.
Steve Buetow:Auntie Hansen. Okay. I don't know.
Hans Buetow:After the party was over, we stopped in at Hansen's and, of course, had to have some more coffee. This is the fourth
Steve Buetow:social event this week now.
Hans Buetow:Yes. Yes. Plus talking on the phone
Steve Buetow:Yes.
Hans Buetow:Plus receiving it and writing letters. Yep. This is the fourth one. It sounds like she just went to two and had coffee at both of them because the next line that she says is, we believe in getting our fill before the rationing starts. Of course.
Hans Buetow:In fact, it has started because it is frozen now, and we won't be able to buy any until next Sunday. One pound per person every five weeks. That, she says, amounts to one cup per day. This is coffee. Coffee.
Hans Buetow:Oh. Yeah. Yeah. That's a
Steve Buetow:real trial. A lot of sleepy people.
Hans Buetow:She says, of course, I won't deny that we won't all feel better if we don't get so much, but it is so much fun to sit over a cup of coffee with a congenial friend. That's great. That sounds like Mattie. Right? Like Yeah.
Hans Buetow:I can do without.
Steve Buetow:That's true.
Hans Buetow:But, honestly, I wanna hang with my buds. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dad, this is not you.
Hans Buetow:Dad is Matt.
Steve Buetow:Yes. Mattie, in talking to Ken, would refer to her husband as dad. Dad. Dad went up on the bluff
Hans Buetow:to aunt Martha's. Aunt Martha is uncle Berndt's widow. Uncle Berndt died a few weeks ago.
Steve Buetow:Yes.
Hans Buetow:He was Matt's uncle. Right. And Martha is his aunt by marriage who is now alone.
Steve Buetow:Okay.
Hans Buetow:Mattie says, we're having a birthday party on her tomorrow. We're taking our supper, the relations all, and we'll have supper with her. She's very much alone now. She's contemplating a Lingblomston home for the aged, a Scandinavian home, which I think is a very good idea. Then we won't have any responsibility, and we'll be able to come and go at will.
Steve Buetow:And they're still around. Ling Lingblomston. Lingblomston.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. You know, her husband just died. Yeah.
Steve Buetow:Yeah. Makes sense.
Hans Buetow:A lot of sense. She's in her eighties. Yep. Yeah. Bud's back in the picture now in the next paragraph.
Steve Buetow:We hadn't heard from Bud.
Hans Buetow:We hadn't heard from Bud, but now we have, and we get a quote. So the report from Bud is from Mattie saying, well, we had quite a day today. Got a letter from Bud, one from Chuck and one from cousin Ella. Chuck is Chuck Gertzon, who is Ken's best friend, and cousin Ella is cousin Ella. Bud, says Mattie, Bud is still enjoying swimming and sunbaths.
Hans Buetow:Last Sunday, they drove up on Mount Wilson 5,000 feet and drove through the clouds of rain into the sunshine above. And he said it was quite a sight to look down on the sea of beautiful clouds. It is a thrill, I know.
Steve Buetow:So where is he? Where's Mount Wilson?
Hans Buetow:So Mount Wilson is the peak of the Saint Gabriel Mountains in the Angeles National Forest in Los Angeles County, California.
Steve Buetow:So he's in LA?
Hans Buetow:He's in Southern California right now.
Steve Buetow:With the marines.
Hans Buetow:With the marines. Yeah. Yeah. But Mattie says he has his name in for a furlough again. So he's looking to come home.
Hans Buetow:Chuck, she says. Chuck Gertrzyn, best friend. Chuck says, according to Mattie, he is glad you like the army and that you are supposedly doing something along, quote, our line, parenthesis. My work is along a line, but not the line I had picked out. However, it is fun.
Hans Buetow:I haven't had a word from him since leaving The States, so I was glad to find out where he had been sent. We certainly travel in opposite directions when we leave. I wonder how he likes the cold weather in Canada. I think I rather prefer the warmth here to the cold of Canada. So this is Mattie getting a letter from Chuck.
Steve Buetow:Reciting it to Ken.
Hans Buetow:Putting it word for word into Ken's letter of what his best friend said.
Steve Buetow:Which is also snubbing his nose to his friend saying, I'm in the warm climate. You're up near Alaska.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. That's true. Her next line is he gets very good food. So there's definitely there's a competition hav happening here. Yeah.
Hans Buetow:We're getting to the end of the letter with a report on Matt. Mattie says that dad will certainly have a tough schedule for Christmas.
Steve Buetow:Oh, of course.
Hans Buetow:He will spend every Sunday at Cedar Rapids during the month of December with the exception of the first one and another one in January. He will work straight through from the twelfth until Christmas with one day in between trips. He's afraid he'll be fit for a box when he gets through. You know they get no extra help this Christmas at all. Oh, that's true.
Hans Buetow:They're short staffed. So this is him on the train.
Steve Buetow:Sorting mail for the post office. Yeah. Which also means Mattie will be alone. Which means Mattie will be
Hans Buetow:alone for a lot of the dark December.
Steve Buetow:Yes. She will.
Hans Buetow:She won't have Matt around. This is one of the things that we've known about her now is how much she still surrounds herself with people.
Steve Buetow:Even when Matt is not around.
Hans Buetow:She's deeply sociable. Yep. I'm very curious how the holidays are going to amp up for her. Thanksgiving's only three days away, and then, of course, it's the run till Christmas. Yep.
Hans Buetow:I have a feeling she's gonna be quite convivial with a lot of people.
Steve Buetow:But people probably will not travel a long ways. And just as a side note, in exactly six years Yeah. From when Matt goes, I will be born.
Hans Buetow:Wow. I mean, letters don't go that far, so we won't actually get to meet you, but it's nice to know you're on the way. It makes me happy. Well, that's the end of the letter because she says, well, honey, guess I had better ring off as it is nearing 05:00. And I wanna get this letter off before six, and dad will want to add a line.
Hans Buetow:God bless you, honey, and keep you safe from all harm and give you good health always. Love, mom. And then as advertised, down below is the handwritten PS from Matt Mickelson.
Steve Buetow:Right. Not much room left for me to write and not much left to be said. So we'll just say we are getting along pretty well here. And if you young fellows can keep it that way, I know everything will be swell. Do a good job of whatever you do, and we'll be seeing you soon, dad.
Steve Buetow:And it just conveniently it fills the space. Exactly.
Hans Buetow:That's what he had to say. Right.
Steve Buetow:It could have been about four sentences shorter and still give it the same message.
Hans Buetow:But, again, I just I I will always say about these, it's the participation that matters. Yes. Just Bud asking about him Yep. In his letter and Chuck saying stuff to him in his letter. It's we're reading these.
Hans Buetow:They're, you know, a week apart from each other, so it's about the same cadence that they're reading them.
Steve Buetow:It's an hour or two of connection to home a week. Yeah.
Hans Buetow:That is Mattie's World for 11/23/1942. Thank you so much for joining us. You can keep the party going. You can keep the cranberry salad And the chili. And the chili going
Steve Buetow:Yep.
Hans Buetow:By heading over to moth.family. We are putting into the show notes a list of the characters and what their relationship to Mattie is. So if you get confused, go there and look. Our theme music is by Matt Buto, and our logo and art is by Amy Kirkpatrick. I am Hans Buto.
Hans Buetow:I'm Steve Buto. Thanks for being here. Bye bye.