Agnes Benaszski

Oral History Project

AGNES BENASZSKI

Agnes Benaszski was born in 1928 and was around a year old when the market crashed. She grew up on a farm in Ringle Wisconsin during the Depression.

My name is Agnes Benaszski from Ringle, Wisconsin. I was a baby when the depression started. I was born in Chicago in ’28, and ’29 was the stock market crash. I don’t really remember much except for what my mother told us through the years.

My parents bought a farm at very high prices, and they bought cows for $300.00. The next year, when the stock market crashed, they couldn’t get $30.00 for them. They almost went bankrupt. My grandpa helped save the farm, but they worked very hard to pay the debts all their lives. What I remember was as soon as I was old enough, I had to milk cows by hand. In the summer we had to go to pastures with our farm dog and bring the cows home every day. In winter the cows were in the barn. Then we had to help with all the crops. The girls were the oldest and my brothers were the youngest. I remember planting potatoes with a hand planter. I don’t know if you have ever seen them. It’s a potato planter you pushed in the ground and put in one potato at a time. Then you had to push the ground to cover the potato, and we planted a lot of potatoes. We were in school during potato harvesting, and my dad needed us kids to help pick. He went to the school board and got a vacation; it was called a potato vacation. We didn’t know the difference between vacations then; we had never heard of them. We had to pick potatoes for two weeks. We filled our basement to the top because they sold potatoes plus milking cows. Then I also had to help plant corn by hand with the same kind of planter. You had the seed in it, and you’d push it in the ground. It was up to your waist, and you’d push it in the ground. Then you’d cover the seed up with your foot. Oh we had so many different things to do plus our gardens. I helped my mother with our gardens. We also had field corn, and we had to cut that by hand. We’d take a knife with a long handle on it. You’d cut one corn stock at a time, and make big piles on the ground. Then we’d haul it to the barn where we had a silo to make silage. We also had to go help our grandparents pick potatoes and pick beans. We helped cut and can. I cut with a hand knife all day with me uncles. We had to find time to do this. My mother made pillows and feather ticks from ducks’ feathers.

We had horses when I was young, and we girls had to always help my dad in the field. After he cut the hay, and it dried, his horses pulled a side rake or a hay rake to make rows of hay. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen an old-fashioned hay loader. One of us girls had to drive horses on a load while we were going down the row. To keep the horses nice and straight, we would hold onto the reigns. Then one of us would help my dad as the hay was coming off the hay loader. He would push a bunch of hay. My other sister and I took turns driving horses and helping him. If we didn’t pile that hay right, he would scold us because it would slide off the wagon. When we got the wagon full, we went to the barn. We had a hill that went up to our barn. My dad would have to back this load of hay up the hill into the barn, which was tricky. After he got it in the barn, he would unhook the horses from the wagon and hook a rope to the evener. There were two ropes; one rope would pull up. My dad had a big fork he would shove into the load of hay, and we’d drive the horses, which would pull that one rope and pull the hay up to our hayloft. Then the other rope would trip it and unload it. That’s how we unloaded the hay. Then one of us girls had to go up in the hayloft. That’s the job I hated the worst. It was hot, dusty, and stuffy up there, and if I didn’t move fast enough, my dad almost dropped a load on my head. We took turns doing that. Usually there was a first and second crop of hay.

After we had the hay made, we planted oats. We still had the horses, as there were no tractors yet. My dad had a binder. It would cut the oats, make it into bundles, tie it, and would discard it on the field. Then we kids had to take about four or five bundles and set them up so they wouldn’t tip over. We leaned them on each other, and we called those shocks. If it was going to rain before the threshing machine came to get the oats off the straw, we had to haul all of this stuff to the barn. I remember one year, we had to haul them in and we girls were up in the haymow. We had so much hay that year that I could touch the edge of the roof of our big barn, but dad was slugging up those bundles, and we had to catch them and pile them. When we were done unloading the load, it was straight down. It was really high, and we had a big ladder to come down. I was afraid. My dad said, “Slide down. I’ll catch you.” I said, “Okay.” But when he caught me, my one leg went down and hit the rack. I had to have stitches, and I fainted so they didn’t know what happened. They had to carry me in the house. We enjoyed threshing because the wives had to make big meals. It was like a big picnic. You had to feed all the farmers that were helping you.

One year, my dad didn’t have quite enough oats, so he told this one farmer that he really didn’t need that much help. Us kids were standing behind the farmer’s car and were watching the threshing machine being pushed up the hill with a really noisy tractor. This was a big thrill for us. My younger sister and I were being pushed on each other, and when the farmer backed up his car to go home, he ran over my sister. We didn’t hear the car start. Then the farmer got so excited, he went ahead, and he backed over her twice; we thought she was dead, but she lived. The doctor said her bones were like rubber because she was only five or six years old. I’ll always remember that.

We had to work very hard. We had some land that didn’t have stones, but my dad would plow land across the creek. Every year when he plowed there was a layer of rocks underneath; we had to go pick rocks every spring because there were so many rocks that he couldn’t put the planter in. That was another job we did. But as I look back, we never had vacations. We never heard of the word vacation. That was just to go visit your grandparents or relatives or neighbors. We never heard the word bored because when we got done with a day’s work of picking potatoes or doing things, we were glad to go to bed. Sometimes we first milked late at night by the time we got off the fields. Plus when the potatoes were growing, there were so many potato bugs. People that had gardens would pick them off and just throw them in a can. We must have had about twelve acres at least of potatoes; really long rows. We had to get up early in the morning and shake a little powder on each bush to kill the bugs. I was surprised we never got sick on that.

I was going to tell you in spring from the potatoes we stored all winter, we had to find seed in there; the little potatoes and then the bigger ones would get sprouts by spring. The big ones we cut in half; they had to have a sprout on each end, or they wouldn’t grow. That was part of our job too before we planted them. That was among the jobs we did.

In winter the cows had to be fed because there was snow. We had a big silo; in fact my dad had two of them filled with corn we had cut, and that was called silage. In winter we had to go way up in the silo once a day and throw down the silage to feed the cows. Then we had to go up in the hayloft and throw hay down for the cows in the lower lever. We would go up where the hay was, throw it down this hole, and feed the cows. Plus everyday my dad would back the horses in the barn, and we had to help him clean the gutter and smell that old manure every day. We shoveled the manure in a manure spreader, and sometimes if there wasn’t too much snow, he would spread it on the fields in the winter. Otherwise we made a big manure pile out in the barnyard. That was our fertilizer. Now they have these big pits that the big farmers have for their manure, which is a very good fertilizer; it makes things grow. Another thing we had to do was go up in the barn and throw down the straw to bed the cows, so they didn’t have to lie down on the cement. We just constantly had something to do. We were never bored, but things were just so hard. When my mother went shopping with the milk check, all she could buy us was a bar of soap and a sack of flour because there was no money left after they paid their mortgage and everything. So it was rough; we had to work hard, but all our neighbors did too. We didn’t think we had it bad. My mother had a big garden. One year she had many watermelons and pumpkins, and we sat on the wagon coming home, and we thought that was all fun after we picked them all day. It’s different now. My grandson asked me how it was back then. I said, really, I think you have it worse mentally, but we had it worse physically probably and mentally, but I don’t know. We weren’t in such a hurry all the time except when it rained. Then my dad said, “Hurry up the rain’s coming.” We had to get the hay in.

Almost all children were born at home. My sisters, brothers, and I were born at home.

What were you doing when President Roosevelt died and what was your reaction to it?
I’m not even sure, but I know the whole country was really upset because he was a good president. I’m not really sure what I was doing at the time, but everybody sure liked him because he brought a lot of good programs in the depression. I think farmers had food because we raised our food, so we didn’t realize how bad some people were. They didn’t have jobs, but then they had victory gardens and stuff. All I remember is a good many programs that he had. In fact in the town of Ringle there’s a clubhouse that’s called the WWER Club House. That was built by the WPA, one of his programs. It was the Works Program Administration. The WPA allowed people to work for $1.00 a day.

Did you have any free time during the day?
Not really. I loved reading, but I had no time to read. In fact, if you sat down reading too long, you were considered lazy. We didn’t have books to read, till we went to school. Sunday was the day off for farmers, except cows had to be milked two times a day. We had some time to play when field- work was done.

What do you think is the greatest invention of your lifetime?
Before my dad got Delco lights, we had a kerosene lamp. For late and a lantern to go in the barn. Now that I’m getting older, I didn’t even want a microwave, but I think it’s a great thing. It sure warms my food fast when I’ve got fellows coming in to eat. I don’t know. There’s a lot of things because we didn’t even have a refrigerator when I was a kid. It was an icebox. No electricity. I don’t know how old I was before we got electricity. My dad got Delco Motors; it’s like a generator. He had to charge a motor everyday, so we’d get lights, but he got that before the electricity, so I would say electricity actually. So many things come from electricity. I would say that’s the best.

Do you think life is easier and more fun now?
I think it’s easier and more fun. I enjoy my family, and I have a lot of hobbies that I like to do. Actually I think I enjoyed my whole life.

Did you have a lot of fun back then living on the farm? Oh yes we did. The fun that we had, was when we visited, you got to know all of your neighbors’ children and all of your relatives’ kids. We kids would play tag outside and hide and seek. We didn’t have toys; there were no computers or things like you have now, but we enjoyed ourselves. It was ok for me. We also went swimming in a river near us.

Do you recall any ways the depression affected education?
My younger sister was the first one in our family to attend high school for a couple of years. Wausau high school was built so somebody would pick her up and take her to school. Everest High School was not built until my youngest brother attended high school. I think education has come along as the years went by.

Who were your sports heroes, what do you remember about them, and did you ever see them play?
No we didn’t have TV, and in fact when we went to school the kids played baseball or tag or something. There was a merry-go-round. There were no sports. There probably was baseball, but we didn’t listen to that. There was no time for it. We were busy working all day. People listened to baseball games on the radio. Joe Lewis was a great player.

What do you remember the most about the depression? I don’t remember that much because I was born in 1928, and the stock market crash came in ’29, so see I would have been a young child until I was old enough to work in the fields. The thing I remember the most is the very hard time my mother had. Before electricity, she washed clothes by hand. They didn’t have a well right away. My mother had to work very hard because my dad would work part time and try to make extra money. She washed clothes by hand, and there was a hand wringer. Then when the washing machines came, there was a wringer that you would have to put clothes through, and a lot of women got their hands through it too if they weren’t watching. That’s how eventually everything got more modern.

How early did you have to get up in the morning?
The milkman came by 8 o’clock, so we had to have the cows milked. I suppose we must have been up at six. Then my mother made us a big meal because we did so much work that we were very hungry. It was like having a big dinner. She had meat and potatoes, and she had to bake all of her bread and deserts. There were no supermarkets. For our fruit, we would pick berries or plant a few in our garden. Then most farmers had one or two apple trees or a plum tree. That was our fruit; you never went to the store to get fruit. Most people had rhubarb plants.

Did your parents consider the depression was worse than now or was it better?
They had to work hard when they were kids. My dad was born in Poland, and my mother would tell how they would cut hay by hand, not even with horses then. They had wet land there; you’d have to scoop the hay out of the swamp with pitchforks. They milked cows by hand, and they raised their own meat like we did. They had to go to church and school with horses and a sleigh. A lot of kids my age had to walk. There was a law that if you lived two and a half miles or more from school, somebody could be hired to haul you to school. My dad took the job for a while, but then a lot of kids that were younger got picked up and taken to school too. Some had to walk through the snow and everything. There were no buses. They never complained because everybody around you did the same thing. You didn’t realize you had it better or worse, but things got better for my parents and everyone after the depression.

Was school fun for you or did the depression affect it?
I enjoyed it. I liked school. I just went to the eighth grade, but I enjoyed it. It was fun I thought. We had a picnic in summer after school was out. All the mothers would bring something to eat. We also had a big Christmas program, which was fun. We’d put on a big play and practice singing songs, but that was like the two events of the school year. We had to have wood furnaces at school because it was cold. Then in Ringle, I went there for four grades to one room and one teacher. Ringle had two rooms. A lot of schools then had only one room. The teacher had eight grades to handle. My husband tells me I had it modern because he had all those eight grades in his school in one room.

I can’t think of a reason that the depression affected the school. All the children were poor. Rich and poor people suffered the same.

What were your favorite movies during the depression? There used to be a hall in Ringle, and a guy would come and show movies there for a quarter. I can remember going probably only three or four times to that. I never went to a movie when I was growing up, except a few times at the Ringle hall.

Did you ever get any presents?
Not really. At Christmas, if we got anything, it was a coloring book, a box of colors, and a pencil maybe, but there was no such thing as money. My parents were very poor. They had a lot of debts trying to save our land. The prices were low, and they didn’t make that much money, so kids didn’t get very many things. My parents got food stamps.

Did you have a lot of different animals on the farm?
Oh yes. When we milked cows we always had cats on the farm. Then we’d have fun squirting milk while we milked; we aimed pretty good, and the cat would stand up and lick it while we were squirting milk at it. Then our horse had a little pony, and it was such a nice pet. We had fun with it because it walked down the aisle while we milked, and my dad would bring sugar. Then it would lick the sugar out of his hand, and we rubbed its neck, and we played with it. That was our pet and a dog.

Did you ever ride the horses?
No, our horses were workhorses. We had to drive them; you had to learn how to drive them.

Did you have fun driving them?
You would be scared. We lived close to a railroad track, and sometimes if we trained a new horse and they were scared, they would almost run away. They would get scared of big sudden noises. Then when we drove the horses making hay, we had to make sure we were driving them and keeping them straight with the middle of the row. But no I never remember riding a horse.