The GGma Chronicles, Part 15: Staying on the Farm and The Grippe of 1917
"Keeping Them Down (or Up) on the Farm" and "The Grippe was not a Travel bag"
This was written by my maternal grandmother, Alice Green-Kollenborn (1911-2005). It is part of a longer document she wrote, but as much of it has appeared in former parts of the GGma Chronicles, I am selectively abridging it to present the new information only. What we now call “The Spanish Flu” she called “The Grippe of 1917”
MAMA
IV: Mama Becomes a Farmer
Grandpa trying to help Mama only made her life more difficult. I wanted her to leave our farm and move to town near him and Grandma.
She, being determined and strong-willed as he, refused to take us to town.
She share-cropped part of her place out, saving enough land to raise a truck patch, large garden, and pasture for our two cows and one horse. Had lots of orchards of pears, peaches, apples, plums, and wild black-, dew-, and huckleberries.
With Beck as her beast of burden—riding, delivery, and workhorse—she managed along with the older children (oldest being girl of 14) to plant, tend, and harvest truck patch and garden. Hay and grain came from her share of the rented hay fields and corn fields.
Neighbors helped all they could, sharing their sorghum cane crop, wood, cut and split for the fireplace in winter, and stove wood for the cook stove. They came in to do the fall butchering for her. When the wood ran out Mama and brother sawed and split more.
V: The Grippe of 1917
The year of the 1st World War and outbreak of the “Grippe.”
Mama tried to care for my oldest sister, married and living nearby, and attend to us children, who went from the Grippe to whooping cough. Why none of us died, I’ll never know. We made it through the winter, alive but well spent. Coughs hung on all summer.
Next week: Mama Read the Bible Nightly, Saving Shep, To Oklahoma and Back, and Mama’s Death