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Ralph Heiden - Who built the house at 8861 Dixon Road which became the
family homestead?
 Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Grandpa Heiden (August) was a mason and he built on the
dining room and kitchen after Pa bought it. Before moving there,
they lived down on South Custer Road at the Abby Place and the
Albright place.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Abby’s was right on the corner where Dixon Road and South
Custer come together.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel -
Edna and
Carl and
Leo went to school down there at the King
School. They rented those houses before moving to Dixon Road.
Ralph Heiden - Did Lee and Lu live where Jesse Barnes lived?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - No I don’t think so. Carl lived there. I don’t think Mary
Lou lived there.
Ralph Heiden - What about the doctor? Did he make rounds and stop by the
farm periodically?
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I remember Dr. Kelly. You had to call him to come out. He
didn’t come to our house very often.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Pa would get those kidney stones. He would just lay over the
couch in such misery. The doctor would come and give him a shot. He
would just be sick the next day and lay around. |
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Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Where were you born, Mary Lou?
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - On Dixon Road at the Wakefield place.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Where Betty and Rachel lived?
I’ve also got the cedar chest that Ma’s mother brought over from
Germany. Ma used it as a hope chest.
 Helma (Heiden) Nickel - No, there was an old house down by the ditch that crosses
the road east of Ma and Pa’s farm.
Edna and Henry (left) lived there when
they were first married.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Heinie Heiden lived there for a while too. And, the Weaver
kids, Arthur and Gilbert.
Mary Lou - That house burned down. There is a new house there on the
north side of the road now.
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Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - When we lived with
Grandma and Grandpa, I can remember
having to come down to the living room whenever there was a thunder
storm.
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Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - He was always afraid that he wouldn’t be able to get us down
from upstairs if the house was ever hit by lightning. So, in the
middle of the night, if a storm came up, we had to get dressed and
come down and sit together in the living room until the storm was
over.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - We had to get dressed since we were not allowed to come
downstairs in our night clothes. That’s the way us kids were raised.
When Marie got married and the first storm came along, she woke
Brick up in the middle of the night and said, “Get your pants on and
get downstairs.” He came into the living room and asked, “What’s wrong? Where are we
going?” Marie said, “Don’t be smart! We’re not going anyplace. It’s
storming.” Brick said, “Oh, for crying out loud.” and went back to bed.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - It seems like we used to have more serious storms back then
too.
 Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Remember the balls of lightning that would come right
through the telephone lines and into the house?
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - It did that once when we lived at Suchik’s. The lightning
came right through the phone and blew it clear across the kitchen.
It was a wonder that one of the girls wasn’t talking on the phone at
the time.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Edna used to be very concerned about electrical storms. I
used to stay up there with them sometimes.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - That was probably because they didn’t have any electric
lights. They just had a kerosene lamp hanging from the ceiling.
 Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - When Henry (Rambow)
(right) would blow that lamp out, it went pitch black in
the house. You could hear the sheep “baa” out in the barnyard in the
night. I used to lay there in the back bedroom saying to myself, “I
hope it gets to be morning soon!” That was really scary.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - How about the time while
Helen, Wilma, Marie and Helma were
all still at home. Helma and Marie went out on dates one night.
Helma and Wilma were supposed to sleep together and Helen, Marie and
I shared a bed. I always had to sleep in the middle. We were scaredy cats so we talked Wilma into sleeping with us. When
the others came home, Marie climbed in too so we ended up with four
of us packed like sardines in one bed and Helma by herself in the
other. |
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Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Norma Miller remembered that Grandma Rambow was a crabby
old lady.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - She was very strict evidently. We used to get instruction
before we went there that we were to sit quietly and not ask for
anything.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I remember going to Aunt
Minnie Rambow’s and she would be
sitting there reading the Bible. You didn’t dare say a word until
she was done with her scripture.
(Note: Uncle Will and Aunt Minne Rambow were Mary (Rambow) Heiden’s brother
and sister. They lived together through their adult lives at the
family farm on South Custer Rd.)
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - One time Lou and I were wall papering at their house.
Uncle Will Rambow came out of the kitchen and stood in the doorway
because he had dinner ready. Lou said to me, “We might as well go home now because he won’t let
her eat until we leave.”
So, although we had only one strip of paper to hang to finish the
room, we left for the day and came back the next day so they could
eat their dinner. Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - That was the quietest house I was ever in, I remember.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I used to have to stay there all summer. That was torture.
That’s why I am such a quiet person. (Laughter)
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Tick Tok, Tick Tok, that old clock they had was so loud
in the quiet of the room.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - At ten minutes to nine every night, Uncle Will would get the
Bible and hand it to Aunt Minnie. She would then read to him in
German until 9 o’clock. And I’d set there real still, never saying a
word. When she was done, he would take the Bible and put it back on the
shelf. Without saying a word, he would go upstairs to bed. There
wasn’t any talking going on at all in the house.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - There wasn’t anything for them to do. They didn’t have a
radio or anything. After Grandma Rambow died, Herb and I used to go
down there to visit. Uncle Willie just loved to play cards. We would
have a real good time. Edna and Henry used to go there and have a
good time too. The two of them were so used to just sitting
there in the quiet by themselves
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - After Aunt Minnie died, Uncle Will finally got a
television.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - He had a dog that he used to fry two eggs for each day.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I would think that the Rambows and the Heidens came over
from Germany about the same time. They had some of the same type of
furniture. Remember that settee that you had, Helma? Grandpa and
Grandma Rambow had a similar piece of furniture in their house.
Maybe the two families knew each other before they came over from
Germany.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Well the Milhans all went to
Bridge School way back then
too.
(Note: Mary (Rambow) Heiden’s mother was a Milhan.)
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Were the Rambows on the ship list that you got, Ralph?
Ralph Heiden - No but I don’t have the complete list. I only have a copy of
the first page with the details about the ship and then the page
that lists August
Heiden and his family. They were passengers number
304 through 308 so there were probably 400 or more people on the
boat. I will check it out. (Note: Turns out the Rambows came one
year later in 1874.)
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 Ralph Heiden - That is the only five generation picture taken with Grandpa
Heiden.
Helen (Henning) Heiden - Who is that then?
Ralph Heiden - There’s
Edna, Walter, Lauren, Grandpa and Lauren’s first
son, Sean. Walter made me this nice print since he still had the
negative.
Marie (Heiden) Tommelein -
Denny
got us an old newspaper for 1945, the year we were
married. It was fun to look through but sometimes you’d look at a
price and say, “God, it couldn’t have been that cheap back then!”
 I remember the first year after we were married, bread was still
rationed after the war. We had a neighbor who used to go and stand
in line to get a loaf of bread. She would take her 16 year old
daughter along with our ration stamp and get us a loaf too. I was at
home with the baby and couldn’t go.
You had to wait in line at the Kroger store to get a loaf of bread.
Helen (Henning) Heiden - We only had one car in those days too so you couldn’t just
go when you wanted to either.
Marie (Heiden) Tommelein - No. You were lucky if you had one car!
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Listed
below are excerpts from transcriptions of audio tapes of
two meetings with different combinations of the people
shown here. They occurred on May 28 and September 25,
1995. For the entire script,
