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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.
Alright. Through the door. Yeah. That's a tiny door. Alright.
Hans Buetow:Shut it. And here we go. Into the shop. Into the shop. Thanks, dad.
Steve Buetow:Oh, you're welcome. See you there? I'm not far into this.
Hans Buetow:Okay. So if you feel ready
Steve Buetow:Yeah. So I suppose not everybody you've heard most of my stories and jokes, but not everybody has.
Hans Buetow:Oh, boy.
Steve Buetow:Look at you. You can
Hans Buetow:you can go hog wild. Yeah.
Hans Buetow:Oh, boy. Fresh
Hans Buetow:audience.
Hans Buetow:Perfect. Yeah. Perfect. So get really close. Alright.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. Teacher. Okay. Feel them ready? Yes.
Steve Buetow:Here we go.
Hans Buetow:And here we are. There we go. In the shop, real microphones are on, and we're set up. And I am ready to say, hello, family.
Steve Buetow:Hello, family.
Hans Buetow:Hello, family, and welcome to Mattie On The Homefront. I am Hans, Hans Buto, and my relationship to Mattie is that she is my great grandmother.
Steve Buetow:She is my grandmother, which makes me Hans' dad.
Hans Buetow:Which, Steve Buto, my father. Okay. So, dad, we're here in your shop, in your wonderful but very eclectic shop where I think you can make just about anything.
Steve Buetow:Eclectic is a word for sloppy? It's
Hans Buetow:interesting in a Midwestern kinda way. Wow.
Steve Buetow:We could go on forever on
Hans Buetow:this. Okay.
Steve Buetow:Eclectic shop. Yes.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. You're eclectic. Wonderful. Wonderful shop. And I have put down in front of you, some letters.
Hans Buetow:These are letters that I found in my house, when I took over from your parents. I should say, when I say letters, I mean literal letters that you get in the mail. Correspondence. Correspondence. So I moved in to your parents' house when your mom moved out to a home, And in the basement of that house, that we now live in, I found a box.
Hans Buetow:And in that box were three years worth of letters that your dad saved from his mom, letters from his mom, during his time serving in World War two. And I thought that was so cool, and so I started to go through the letters. And in reading these letters, I found that the experience of going through them was really exciting and something I wanted to share with you.
Steve Buetow:Okay.
Hans Buetow:And with our family, who I hope is listening. Hello, family. This is for you. This is for all of us to get to know this woman, Mattie, who wrote these letters, who died in July 1974, so before I was born. I never knew her, except to get to know her a little bit through these letters.
Hans Buetow:And these letters, I think, are a window into the life and the personality of our paternal matriarch, a big figure in the family.
Steve Buetow:Mhmm.
Hans Buetow:So have you read these letters?
Steve Buetow:No. I I'm very curious. Yeah. I have not. In fact, I was a little surprised that you found them.
Steve Buetow:And I guess it I credit dad, Ken, with having saved them because everything that Mattie had sort of disappeared in her, I guess, dotage after her husband died. There there there was very little left of memories, pictures, anything connected with her. So I was a little surprised to hear that you've you've found these. Yeah. I know a little bit about Ken's military service, and I probably even know less about what Mattie was doing at the time.
Steve Buetow:She had remarried and she was living in Saint Paul, but I don't know. She always seemed very close to Ken, and I'm curious about how their relationship is revealed Yeah. Through the letters, what her priorities are, and, well, we will not know how Ken responded except
Hans Buetow:through because we don't have those.
Steve Buetow:Through Mattie's responses to whatever he may be saying.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. It really ends up being a bit of a diary of the twin cities during World War two. The years are 1942 to 1945 that these letters go, and you really do get a sense of the day to day of what it was like living in the twin cities at that time, at least through Mattie's perspective.
Steve Buetow:It does sound very interesting because she lives in Saint Paul. She was she was living in the house I grew up in. That's right. And so a lot of not only the places, but the neighborhoods, the streets, are familiar, but eighty years ago, they were a lot different.
Hans Buetow:What are you looking forward to in reading through these letters?
Steve Buetow:I used to spend a lot of time with Mattie in the fifties, and so I knew her quite well as a grandma. She's gram. I was she wanted me to she wanted me to call her gram. I always called her grandma Mikkelsen. I had three three grandmas.
Steve Buetow:She was just grandma Mick. And I'm curious to know what her life outside of being a grandma was like. There was a broad spectrum of people that she would just have me along with. We would ride in the back I would ride in the back of the Nash in the nineteen fifties, and we would visit friends and relatives. I think almost all of them were Matties.
Steve Buetow:She she grew up as a Zabel in in Saint Paul in around the turn of the twentieth century. And I'm just curious to know what a little bit more of what she was like.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. I mean, that's a lot of what I'm interested in too is is in the few that I've read through, you get a sense of her. You get a sense of kinda who she is. She's writing about just everyday stuff. Like, it's really about the quotidian, and the dramas that she has in her life are very are the dramas that we all have in our lives.
Hans Buetow:And it's kind of wonderful to have her spell them out letter after letter, and there's some that are ongoing. We'll start with the drama of the watch, which be the watch. We'll go over the first the first few letters.
Steve Buetow:That's when watches
Hans Buetow:went
Steve Buetow:tick tick
Hans Buetow:tick tick tick tick tick. Well, this one doesn't, and that's a problem.
Steve Buetow:Okay. What
Hans Buetow:do you know about the state of the world, 09/01/1942? It was a Tuesday, just for context.
Steve Buetow:Oh, Tuesday. Yeah. Of course.
Hans Buetow:Of course. Oh, that changes everything. Yes.
Steve Buetow:1942 was the worst year of the war from an American standpoint. There was not much hope. There was not much, mobilization. There had been almost no response to either the German or the Japanese advances. And I'm guessing that the Homefront, as it was called, would be puzzled and dismayed and just beginning to sacrifice.
Steve Buetow:But we had it was the war was not even a year old.
Hans Buetow:It's Right. Because we got in in December, so it's Right. You know, really the war's ten months old at
Steve Buetow:this point. Right. And and so they're still mobilizing people. They're still there's all sorts of things that need to happen.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. So overall, on September 1, Tuesday, 09/01/1942. Battle of Stalingrad is happening on the Eastern front. Yeah. So the Germans are pushing into the southern suburbs of Stalingrad.
Steve Buetow:Which is just a horrible, horrible thing.
Hans Buetow:Awful thing. Horrible. In the Pacific, Guadalcanal was happening.
Newsreel:Oh. Guadalcanal Airport, the tiny patch of land for which Japan has sacrificed a fleet of warships and thousands of fighting men still bristles with United States bombers. For the forces that control Guadalcanal, command the approaches to Australia. Pull mastery of the skies over the vitally important Solomon Islands.
Steve Buetow:Basically, our army and the and the islands in the Pacific were being lost.
Hans Buetow:On the Homefront, the Manhattan Project had begun in June. But nobody knew that. Nobody knew that. Nobody knew that. But it had it was going and had been going for a few months by September 1.
Hans Buetow:When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, our West Coast became a potential combat zone. Living in that zone were more than 100,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, two thirds of them American citizens, one third aliens. We knew that some among them were potentially dangerous. But no one knew what would happen among this concentrated population if Japanese forces should try to invade our shores.
Hans Buetow:On that exact day of September 1, a US federal judge upheld the detention order for Japanese Americans in internment camps.
Steve Buetow:Oh, I didn't realize it was that early. I thought it was later in the war.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. Okay. Behind them, they left shops and homes they had occupied for many years.
Hans Buetow:And on a very local level, on 09/01/1942, a middle aged woman was standing on a lakeshore fishing. Can you, dad, can you open the first letter for me and read just the first line? How does it open? So tell me yeah. Yeah.
Hans Buetow:They can open from the top. Tell me what you're tell me what you're pulling out here.
Steve Buetow:I'm pulling out a letter, handwritten letter from Big Sandy. It's it's in pencil. It's
Hans Buetow:in Big Sandy is not a person.
Steve Buetow:Big Sandy is not a person. From Mattie. Big Sandy is a lake. I'm well acquainted with the lake. It's still there.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. Why don't you go ahead and start at the top? So we're as we said before, we're at September first 1942, And, Mattie was born on the 09/17/1894. So she was 48 years old, only two weeks away from becoming 49 years old.
Steve Buetow:Okay. Starts my darling, which is interesting. I I'm sure my mother called me a darling, but not when I was in my twenties. I was happy to get your letter. I was out on the point fishing when Roddie came with your letter.
Steve Buetow:I came directly in. That's really interesting.
Hans Buetow:Okay. Tell me why.
Steve Buetow:Well, she was interrupted by a letter. Yeah. Most of us are not. She stopped what she was doing Yeah. So she could come and read the letter.
Steve Buetow:Okay.
Hans Buetow:I have questions about this. So I was out on the point fishing. Does that mean anything to you?
Steve Buetow:Oh, yes. Mattie and her husband, Matt Mattie, of said in their mailbox, Matt and Mattie. I don't know when, but it was probably in the late thirties that they purchased a cabin, and it was a cabin. It was not heated. It was it did not have plumbing.
Steve Buetow:It had an outhouse outback. It had a very small lot, a little cabin on each side of it, a very sandy beach looking out at a copper colored lake. It's like a lot of lakes or rivers in Northern Minnesota, which have that tea color to them. So if you were to if you stand in the water, your feet kinda turn like you're you're standing in tea. Wow.
Steve Buetow:It's nice, cool, and very clear lake. But I don't know north and south, but you you would stand looking out at the lake off to the left. There was there was a cabin. But if we'd walk down the beach, that cabin, there was the point.
Hans Buetow:Oh.
Steve Buetow:And so they were in a bay. I could see across the bay. It was it wasn't terribly large. But if we'd go to the point and around the point, Big Sandy opened up. It was a very large lake.
Steve Buetow:There had been there were islands in the middle of Big Sandy that had been the battlefield sites between the Anishinaabe and the and the Dakota Yeah. As as the Anishinaabe were forced further and further south. So there were places where they're airheads. It is part it's a very strong part of the Mississippi Watershed. So there was a dam that we'd go visit.
Steve Buetow:Yeah. That would but they would spend the summers there. Yeah. Matt and Mattie.
Hans Buetow:I mean, I can just imagine her on this Tuesday, early September day, you know, just past labor labor day, right, up north
Steve Buetow:Yep.
Hans Buetow:Standing out there fishing. And Roddy, whoever do you know a Roddy? Do know
Steve Buetow:I do not know Roddy.
Hans Buetow:So Roddy is our first character who's coming in. Besides Mattie, we do not know who Roddy is.
Steve Buetow:So if anybody knows Roddy, let us know.
Hans Buetow:That's right. That's right. If you go, oh, I know Roddy. So keep going with it. I'm interested in where this goes.
Steve Buetow:Just so they won't keep you on KP duty, KP is kitchen patrol. It was something that whereas a kid grew up pretending to be in the army, KP was punishment. Punishment.
Hans Buetow:I mean, that's classically. Right? That's what Yeah. In mash and all the Yes. You know, all the things.
Steve Buetow:KP duty every few days, it won't be so bad. But I suppose you are all anxious to get going somewhere else.
Hans Buetow:Somewhere else. I think this is a good moment to talk about where he is.
Steve Buetow:Do you know where he is? So take a look at the envelope. Oh, excellent. Okay. Oh, he's in Fort Snelling.
Hans Buetow:Exactly right. So he's at Fort Snelling, which is a major induction center for the entire region. Over the course of the war, more than 300,000 people went through Fort Snelling. It was not a place that people stayed. They would get their medical examinations.
Hans Buetow:They would get any vaccinations they needed. They'd get assigned to a unit and then issued basic equipment, but most of the training would they would get transferred to other military establishments for whatever training they needed to do. They processed at the height, they were processing 800 recruits per day.
Steve Buetow:So Ken had no idea, and Mattie had no idea where he was headed?
Hans Buetow:Sort of and sort of not. Okay. So he would have been unique in that he may have actually been there for a little while because one of the few units that were trained actually trained at Fort Snelling were Norwegian speaking soldiers who were trained on skis and fighting with skis.
Steve Buetow:That was not Ken.
Hans Buetow:And there was also they had a huge language and code breaking training facility. They trained people for the military railway service, and then they also trained military police.
Steve Buetow:And I laugh because the least likely person that I can think of to become a military policeman was my father, and that was And yet what he did.
Hans Buetow:And yet he's a private. So it's private private Kenneth Buso. Yep. Yeah. At Fort Snelling.
Hans Buetow:There was a swimming pool. There was a golf course. There was a movie theater, and a library that was all run by the Red Cross on the post, and it had a streetcar that ran between the upper and lower posts, was called the Fort Snelling dummy.
Steve Buetow:Oh, the Fort Snelling? Interesting. Yeah. And I'm guessing you could get the car back home to sixteen ninety one Blair. So this is what was
Hans Buetow:happening is that he was able to go home,
Steve Buetow:which a lot of soldiers wouldn't be able to do that.
Hans Buetow:Exactly right. Yeah.
Steve Buetow:Right. So apropos the date, which is September 1, the next question is, how is your hay fever? My father and I, I think I have it worse than hay. My son has it. Hay fever seems to be something that runs in the family, and so sneezing and so on.
Steve Buetow:And this will come later in in the story as that's why I was farmed out to Mattie quite often. The ragweed is still going good and probably will be if these nightly rains continue. We have had rain every night so far. The days are beautiful, though. I hope you're getting a little more rest now.
Steve Buetow:I felt so sorry for you coming home every night and up at five in the morning didn't give you the rest that you require. No doubt, Virginia is back by now.
Hans Buetow:We have our next character.
Steve Buetow:Virginia. Virginia. Virginia to me is very mysterious. My father was engaged to someone named Virginia. Oh, there's two Virginias.
Steve Buetow:Virginia is his stepsister.
Hans Buetow:Virginia's his stepsister. So this Virginia, you think no doubt Virginia is back by now means that
Steve Buetow:That Bud's older sister was back from somewhere she lived in on the would have been living in Saint Paul and may have gone away for a vacation. We can only speculate.
Hans Buetow:I'm curious if this which one this is.
Steve Buetow:I do know that Mattie met the fiancee, Virginia, because there are a number of photographs she would come over for Thanksgiving dinners or whatever. I don't know when she and Ken became an item.
Hans Buetow:Okay. Let's go back to the letter.
Steve Buetow:I am having a wonderful rest. I felt having someone with me means additional work as there are meals to think of. This way, if I don't feel like cooking, I don't, and can also go into echelons and eat if I wish. Right now, I have so much food, though. I had better eat some of it.
Steve Buetow:I slept well too. I am guessing that September 1, the food is a product of Matt's garden. Matt had an immense wonderful garden.
Hans Buetow:Oh.
Steve Buetow:And I don't quite know how it worked. But he would start husband this garden and then go up to Big Sandy for long periods
Hans Buetow:of garden was down in the cities?
Steve Buetow:The garden was down in the cities.
Hans Buetow:Oh, not up at Big Sandy. Okay.
Steve Buetow:No. There there was all pine trees. There was nothing cultivated Yeah. At Big Sandy. There was no lawn.
Steve Buetow:Yeah. It was just in amongst the trees and the red squirrels. So eggplants, rows and rows of raspberries, some of the most delicious corn ever, beans, things I just didn't know what to do with. Yeah. Matt was probably working at the time, so he may have had to stay in the Twin Cities.
Hans Buetow:Right. Was he up there with her?
Steve Buetow:Right. Did you find bedding for your bed, or do you sleep in hours? Although, by now, I presume you are a champion bed maker, which is part of being in the army.
Hans Buetow:So what I find about this is that did you find bedding for your bed, or did
Steve Buetow:you sleep in ours? He's at home. He's at 1691. Yeah. Okay.
Steve Buetow:So he's at the house I
Hans Buetow:grew up in. Up at five in the morning and heading down commuting down to Fort Snelling.
Steve Buetow:That's really interesting. Yeah? That Ken could commute to the army. Yeah. I that's just that's not the way it is in the movies.
Hans Buetow:And but, like, how how much was he doing that? How much was he in the barracks? Because I think subsequent ones are in like, have a barracks named.
Steve Buetow:Oh, okay. Yeah. Like, Barracks
Hans Buetow:3.
Steve Buetow:Barracks 301.
Hans Buetow:Yeah.
Steve Buetow:You surely had to get up early to get to the fort by 6AM.
Hans Buetow:There you go.
Steve Buetow:Yeah. Wow. From all the description, the man you have been riding with, Rex, is a neighbor of Peter's. He's married to a Bletchinger girl. Bletchinger girl next door.
Steve Buetow:So there are only three left in your roster. Write me again, honey, when you can. I am so anxious to hear. God bless you, darling, and I pray for you every day. Dad went home Sunday and will be home all day Thursday.
Steve Buetow:Lovingly, mom, PS, hope you get this.
Hans Buetow:That's my favorite PS. I hope you get this.
Steve Buetow:So she's he said a little, no. I didn't get it.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. Yeah. So it's a it's a beautiful introduction to her little world, and, you know, they're working in so much shorthand of who they know and everything. But I feel like I get this real picture of her up at the cabin, him, staying at the house and then commuting with someone named Rex, who's involved with a Blutchinger girl, to Fort Snelling for training. Let's head into the second letter of this week, that she gets off to him.
Hans Buetow:And this one is the last of the two handwritten letters, and it's addressed to
Steve Buetow:It's addressed to Kenneth h Buto, US Army Company three Fort Snelling. It's interesting if he was living at home.
Hans Buetow:Why address?
Steve Buetow:She addressed it to the Fort Snelling. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Friday, September 4, three days later, Big Sandy.
Steve Buetow:Hello, darling. Yes. You are right. I stayed and have enjoyed it too, which means that she remained at the cabin while while Matt went home. Okay.
Steve Buetow:Although she was a strong independent woman, I can't imagine her driving up there herself. But the two probably went up there, and then Matt would commute back home. Walt, Viv, and the boys came yesterday. Walt is her little brother.
Hans Buetow:Okay. Mattie's little brother, Walt. Uncle Walter. And and then Viv. Viv is Viv would be Genevieve.
Steve Buetow:Walt was married to Genevieve. They did not have boys. So I wonder what They had no children. That's really interesting, but it could be but mom always called aunt Genevieve, Walter's wife, Jean. But it's entirely possible that she was called Viv as well.
Steve Buetow:I that we're guessing here.
Hans Buetow:Yeah.
Steve Buetow:So now we're busy. I was so happy to hear you spent your leave with Wes and Flo, or I would have felt terribly guilty not having been there. And I know they were happy to have you. I am sure Viv. Viv is glad to have a chance to be with you, and it is nice she has been able to get you.
Steve Buetow:The weather's been beautiful. No rain, except night twice. Dad says all the times not to be there to take him to work. Secretly, I'm a little glad I missed. That's the Adam in me.
Steve Buetow:He says, he put on your raincoat, but his feet were soaked and his head shrunk about three sizes. Yes, I suppose you will see the fair. You always do enjoy it. So that'd be the state fair, which would been going on at the time. Do you manage to keep warm at night?
Steve Buetow:I've got pretty cold here Wednesday night. It got down to 47. Froze ice four miles from here. Wow. But that would have been up at Big Sandy.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. But 47 in September 4
Steve Buetow:That's a good point.
Hans Buetow:Is Yes. Remarkable.
Steve Buetow:Yeah. Yeah. But that just wait global warming. I'll get that. But last night was much better.
Steve Buetow:I was 50 in the cabin Thursday, and believe you me, the stove felt good. I went out fishing about 09:30, and it warmed up some. I caught one fish, enough for our dinner at least. I never saw her fish.
Hans Buetow:Interesting. Because this is the second in two letters that she's been fishing.
Steve Buetow:Yes. That's of course, it is.
Hans Buetow:Yeah.
Steve Buetow:Oh, that's great. And she fished by herself. Yeah. I mean, she went out of the boat all by herself. Yeah.
Steve Buetow:Yeah. I have invited Jean to come out, not knowing dad has asked Viv and Walt, so had to write Jean quick. So now we've
Hans Buetow:got a Jean and a Viv.
Steve Buetow:And I'm confused.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. Okay.
Steve Buetow:I get this off to the mailman. Don't know if you will get it tomorrow or not. God bless you, honey, and give my love to Jen. Give Graham a ring if you can. Please write me again.
Steve Buetow:We're planning on being here next week, god willing. Love, mom. So there's a few people here that are confusing. So give my love to Jin. That would be a Virginia.
Hans Buetow:Virginia.
Steve Buetow:And so this is beginning to indicate that
Hans Buetow:That Ken and Virginia are an item if not engaged.
Steve Buetow:Correct.
Hans Buetow:Yeah.
Steve Buetow:And that they would see each other and that Jin and Mattie have at least a casual relationship.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. So those are our first two letters, which is what we're gonna tackle for today. So I just wanna ask, how are you feeling after having read through these first two letters?
Steve Buetow:It's just interesting to imagine, Mattie. Yeah. I can see the cabin. I can smell the cabin. The cabin smells like look, I think of it as smelling like dust, but it smells like basswood.
Steve Buetow:Like oak smells different than cedar, smells different than than other kinds of wood. The cabin had a certain warm, friendly smell to me. Wonderful. And just imagining her being very busy up there. And she's quite a bit younger than when I knew her.
Steve Buetow:And, of course, very involved with lots of other people, which seems to fit very well with what I knew of her.
Hans Buetow:I love this as an introduction to Mattie, someone who died before I was born and I never got to meet as a way to see. And from this point out, we're gonna be reading typed letters. And it looks like next time, we are gonna be looking at a little bit of the watch saga and Ken's departure, which was very sudden. Interesting, which I'm sure happened to a lot of soldiers.
Steve Buetow:Yeah. Just gone. 1942.
Hans Buetow:Yeah. Just gone. So more on that next time. Thanks for doing this, dad.
Steve Buetow:Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you.
Hans Buetow:That is Mattie's World for 09/04/1942. Thank you so much for joining us on this inaugural episode. If you have a story, or corrections or context about anything that we talked about, we would love to hear what you have to say about any of this. Please let us know. You can head over to moth.family.
Hans Buetow:That's moth.family. Mattie On
Steve Buetow:The Homefront. Mattie On The Homefront.
Hans Buetow:Moth.family to get in touch with us. You can see photos there. We're gonna put up some letters. We're maybe put a tree of people we know. We don't know.
Hans Buetow:We're gonna we're gonna build it out as we go here with this. We're very excited to see where it goes. Our theme music is by Matt Buto, and our logo and art is by Amy Kirkpatrick. I am Hans Beuteau.
Steve Buetow:I am Steve Beuteau. And we really hope you
Hans Buetow:stick with us. We hope we hope to see you all the way to 1945.
Steve Buetow:To the end of the war. To the end
Hans Buetow:of the war. Thanks for being here. See you next time.