Wisconsin My Home

Golden Wedding

GOLDEN WEDDING ffN THE SUMMER of 1935, when the children came home, they lLbegan to talk about our golden wedding. It was right in the middle of the depression and drought, and we wondered if any such kind of celebration would be successful, since all our relatives and old friends lived fifty miles away, and our children were scattered all over. But they would not listen to anything but that we must rejoice on that wonderful day. Unbeknownst to us, all that winter they kept writing to each other and planning the program, gifts, invitations, and everything to make the day a success. Our fiftieth anniversary was on May 26, 1936, but that was on a Tuesday. We felt that because lots of our relatives were farmers, Sunday would be a better day, so we planned it for the twentyfourth . The members of the Winchester Lutheran church wanted us to have it there, because John had done so much work on the church when it was built, and we had given one of the big windows . But the children preferred to have it at our old home. We had such a lovely front lawn at the farm. John had made a big round cement table, a cement bird bath, and cement barbecue pit years before, and we had seats out there and a little log cabin where the children loved to play house. On summer days we used to go there to roast corn and weiners, and it was a nice picnic spot, under all those big oak trees. All that spring John and I worked very hard grooming the place for the big day. The house had a cleaning such as it had not had since we first moved there. It had been newly decorated a year or so before, but I made new curtains for the dining room and kitchen. A kind Scotch neighbor, Will McCunn, helped to clean out the first floor of the root-house, which was now emptied of all machinery, because we had sold off everything. We thought that if it rained on that day we could trim it with green boughs, and the men and children could stay in there part of the time, since we expected two hundred people. Our children began to arrive from all over the country during that week, from Alabama, New Jersey, Florida, and all over Wisconsin , bringing the little grandchildren that we loved. I can tell you that the old farmhouse was full of happy laughter again, and looked as if it would burst at the joints. John and I had laid in all 21 5 sorts of supplies, and I had been baking for days before they came. Stella came home a week early and helped me. The children had brought many provisions in their cars, and mysterious packages. There was whispering in corners everywhere we looked. Erna had furnished my wedding dress. She had asked me to send her an old dress that fitted me, and I did. This she took to a dressmaker in Birmingham, Alabama, with some beautiful delft blue rayon cloth which had white leaves and flowers in it. The buttons were small crystal balls and the collar and fichu were of white georgette and lace. The woman who made it was Mrs. Henry Bragg, grandmother of the famous football star, Harry Gilmer, who was just a young boy at the time. BETWEEN TEN and eleven o'clock of the great day, we began to see a stream of cars coming around the bend in the road at the bottom of the hill in the distance. John had appointed Will McCunn to be traffic manager, and he took his post seriously. He was all dressed up in his best clothes, and I can still see his long arms waving the cars into orderly rows by the barn and back yard. If ever a day had been picked out, if all the sweet breezes and blue skies and warm sunbeams had been saved for fifty years, the day of our golden wedding could not have been finer. The grass was like a thick green carpet under our feet, the trees full of new leaves, the red, yellow, and pink tulips, purple lilacs, and white spirea were blooming. All the birds had come back north and were singing and skimming around in the air above our heads. We always had so many...