Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - I remember Helma and Herb’s shivery. That was impressive to me.

Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - They went to Indiana to get married but when they came home, a bunch of relatives and neighbors said, “We’re coming tonight so have some beer ready.”

Helma (Heiden) Nickel - I still have the receipt from Jim Malone’s in Ida where Herb went and got the beer. It was a dollar something a case. He got beer and candy and pop for the kids.

Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Remember they had the old metal wash tubs that they were banging on to make noise?

Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - You always had to be careful because they would threatened to take the bride “for a ride” in the truck.

Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Did they take you for a ride?

Helma (Heiden) Nickel - No they didn’t!

Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - You should have heard the noise. John Eipperle put something on his exhaust pipe that made the pipes “whistle” real loud. I remember everyone in the house just holding their ears. They made so much noise!

Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - What year did you get married, Helma?

Helma (Heiden) Nickel - 1938

Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - So, I would have been 9 years old but I can remember it very well.

Pat (Bicking) Klass - The only place I ever saw a shivery was on The Waltons on T.V.

Helma (Heiden) Nickel - They had one for Mildred and John Eipperle too. That was ten years before Herb and I got married though.

Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - They had those big tubs of beer and everybody came and drank. They just had to have a party.

Word must have passed around the neighborhood and they just showed up at a certain time. You had to have some food and drink ready.

Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Did you know they were coming?

Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Yes. It was on the very first night back from being married. We got back from Hilda’s on Sunday and the shivery was on Monday night. All the relatives from Toledo were invited too. The house was full. The yard was full.

Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - People would make all kinds of noise banging on pots and tubs.

Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Yes, and then the newlyweds would have to show themselves on the porch.

Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Guess you’d say we were kind of a party family.

Pat (Bicking) Klass - At the reunions, I remember having those big horse troughs and everyone would be in there fishing around for beer and pop in the icy water.

Helma (Heiden) Nickel - At Lester and Lila’s shivery, I remember them passing out drinks and fresh fried cakes.

Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Did Lee and Lou have one?

Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - I don’t remember, I wasn’t born yet! 

Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Carl, Leo and Lester were working at other farms much of the time while I was growing up. Hilda (Fuller) and Mildred (Eipperle) worked in Monroe and stayed at Uncle Fred Rambow’s during the week. They would come home on weekends. We all had our chores around home. I don’t ever remember Ma washing the dishes. We all did our share of ironing too.

Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I had to fill the woodbox with firewood for the stove in the kitchen.

Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - The boys would do the farm work. The girls never did too much in the fields. We would help out once in a while.

Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Ma was always there though. She did the baking.
 
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Art worked over to Knapp’s farms.

Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Carl worked down to Rath’s. Wherever the boy’s worked, they stayed for room and board too.

Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - One thing that I hated was when Pa would let the cows out to graze along the ditches near the road. I was supposed to watch them and I was scared to death that they would get hit by a car on the road.

Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - We had to pick raspberries, peas and strawberries from the garden.

Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - We used to hoe weeds out of the corn rows for 5 cents a row. When I would accidentally slice off a stalk of corn, I would prop it up in place praying that Grandpa wouldn’t see it.

Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - We thought 5 cents a row was going to be a lot but the rows ran all the way back to the woods. You got to the end and you would say to yourself, “Ugh, there’s another 5 cents.” You would make about 15 or 20 cents a day at that rate!

Helma (Heiden) Nickel - We used to pick raspberries down to Brossia’s for 3 cents a quart.

Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - At Spewak’s we would pick beans and at Polley’s we would pick strawberries. I don’t remember how we got to those places but we did.

Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I can remember picking 80 some quarts once and I only made two dollars and forty cents. You guys would pick over 100 quarts and get over $3.00. Our hands would be all dirty and stained and then at noon, you had to eat your sandwich from a bag. It was all day long in the hot sun. Finally, Ma said, “You don’t have to do that anymore if you don’t want to.”  

Ralph Heiden - Did Sally Eipperle live at Grandpa’s house for a while? I guess I never knew that.

Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Yes, she lived there about 7 years. John and her moved in after her mother, Mildred’s, death. He used to listen to the radio show, The Inner Sanctum, on Sunday nights and I would be so scared.

Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Everybody liked John.

Helma (Heiden) Nickel - John and Jeanie tte were always good to the folks too. They would take them places in John’s car.

Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Ma and Pa never got to go anywhere so John took them up north one time. He took them up to Cedarville. There was Uncle Fred, Aunt Emmie, Ma and Pa and Sally and me.
We had three flat tires on the way. We stayed in a tourist home just over the straits. I don’t think there were any motels then. I slept on the floor.

Aunt Emmie brought a big can of Crisco oil to fry the fish in. They all went fishing and we all ate our fill of fish that night.

On the way up, we stopped in Cheboygan and we had dinner in a restaurant. I don’t remember Ma and Pa eating out very much around home. Ma order ham and she was shocked at the size of the portion they served her.

This would have been about 1940 or so. With all the people in the car, no wonder we had so many flat tires.

Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Remember how fast John used to drive? I can remember John and Mildred, and my Mother and Dad and I went down to Elkhart, Indiana. Mother kept telling him to slow down!

Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - The more she would holler, the faster he would go, too!

Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - He took us up north one time and, by gosh, nobody was going to get ahead of him! Jeanie tte was sitting in the back telling him to slow down. I think I had the floor board nearly pushed through trying to hold on.

Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Remember, Jeanie, when John took us down onto the river ice pulling us on a sled behind his car?

Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - The river had to be frozen at least a foot thick before Pa would let us skate on it. One Sunday while Ma and Pa were at Grandma Rambow’s, John let us hook the sled behind his car. He would head down the river and then he would slam on the breaks and yell, “Hang on back there!”

The snow was flying in our faces and we were just airborne. We could have been killed but it was a lot of fun!

Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - He was something else!

Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - We used to stay over to John and Mildred’s when they lived on Dunbar Road and she would help us make popcorn and Kool Aid or lemonade to sell out by the road.

Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - That was always a highlight when they would come over to play cards. I would be sitting there and Mildred would tell me to ask if I could go over to their place for a few days. They took me to Woodland Beach which was a big deal in those days. They had a week’s vacation and they used to stay down there at some relative’s cottage.

There was this girl about my age there and she said, “Let’s take a walk around the lake.” I looked at the lake and thought I couldn’t walk that far. So about half way around, I started back and I got lost and I was praying and everything because I didn’t know where I was.

Finally, I got back and Mildred said, “Where have you been?”

I just said, “Oh, out walking.” I was so darned scared but I didn’t dare let on.

We went out on a raft in the lake and John asked if I could swim. I said, “No.” So, he threw me in the water. He pulled me out quickly but I don’t like the water ever since. 

Ralph Heiden - What did Mildred (Heiden) Eipperle die from?

Helma (Heiden) Nickel - It was complications from pregnancy. She was only a couple of months along and she got kidney poisoning.

Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - If they would have had the antibiotics they had now, she would probably not have died.

Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - I still remember her funeral. They had her for visitations right in their house and I can still picture in my mind, every chair in that room even though it happened in 1939.

Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Me too. They wanted me to go in there and touch her. I remember Sally walking in and looking for her mother but she couldn’t grasp what was going on. She was only two years old at the time.

John came right home from the burial service and went into his room and didn’t come out for a long time.

Helma (Heiden) Nickel -   We drove him home from the hospital after she had died.

Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - That was before sulfa drugs and penicillin. They told her to drink lots of water to try to clear up her kidney problem. That was about all they could do then.