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 Ralph Heiden - Grandpa
(William C.) Heiden bought this farm in 1909 or there about.
There are stories about great grandpa
(August) Heiden doing the masonry work
on the house. Do you know anything about that?[Note:
Wm Carl Heiden bought the farm on April 1, 1909 which was his 35th
birthday.]
William Frank Heiden - I heard them talking about walking over here from South
Custer when Pa was about 13 or 14 to help his dad do the brick work.
[Note: August Heiden was a
brick mason by trade.]
Ralph Heiden - Then that would have been about 1890. So that was when
someone else owned it?
(Note:
Which would have been while the Meyers
still owned the property.)
William Frank Heiden - Yes, I think it was the Langs or someone else who owned
the farm at that time.
Ralph Heiden - The 1873 county plat book I think lists the owner of this
farm as a man named Meyers.
William Frank Heiden - They called him “Milky Meyers.” I always heard Pa talking
about him.
Ralph Heiden - The plat map also showed a piece of landlocked property
located on the back of this property. There wasn’t any access from
Ida-Maybee Road, Dixon, Mulheisen or South Custer.
William Frank Heiden - That would be on the back end of Suhciks farm. It was the
Stokes that had an old house back in there on a hill. Could be some
relation to Bill Stokes, Aunt Emma’s’s relations.
Ralph Heiden - There also used to be a house on the north side of the road
just east of here. I know Mary Lou was born there and Carl and Anita
lived there for a while too.
William Frank Heiden - Carl lived next door here where Jessie Barnes lived.
Verdell was born there.
Edna and Henry lived in the other place for a while and
Bill and
Alice (Brossia) Heiden lived there too. Bill worked the farm. That was when
old Jesse Wakefield owned it.
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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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Ralph Heiden - What kind of farm did Grandma and Grandpa have while you
were growing up?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - We raised pigs to butcher.
 Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Ma raised geese. She made us all a feather bed from the
down.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I got flogged by a goose once. Believe me, they could hurt
you!
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Aunts and Uncles would get together pull out the down and
put them in bags and dry them for mattresses. Feather beds.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Remember how we used to be afraid to get the eggs out from
under the old setting hens? They’d pick you on the hands if you
reached in for the eggs.
Pat (Bicking) Klass - We would throw corncobs at them to get them off the nest. Aunt Helen would say, “What’s the matter with you?” and reach in and pull
them out with her hand.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - We would take a stick and hold their head down and then
reach in to take the eggs from the nest.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - They were old setting hens and they did not want to get off
the nest. There were always a few that just wouldn’t get off the
nest for you.
Pat (Bicking) Klass - We would beg Helen to let us help get the eggs. Then the next
day, she would wonder what all those corncobs were doing in the
nests.
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - You always had a nasty rooster out there too that would come
after you. You’d be scared stiff.
I remember Ma would kill the chickens. She hold them down and take
the ax and cut off the heads and then dunk them in hot water. Then
she’d pick the feathers off them and we’d have to pull out those
darn pinfeathers. She’d cut them all up and soak them in some sort of saltwater over
night. The next morning, boy, that would make the best chicken! They
don’t taste like that now.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - My dad used to cut the heads off like that on Saturday.
Then he’d let them run around and us kids would laugh. Then he’d dip
them in hot water and come in and dump them on the table. That was
the end of his part. It was Mother’s job from then on.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - When we first got married, Bill noticed that William and
Helen always had chickens in the freezer. He said, “Why don’t we put
some chickens in our freezer too?”
I said, “Oh, I don’t know about that.”
William asked Bill, “You want some chickens? Come on out next week.
I’ve got some and you can have them.”
So we went out there. William started to cut off the heads and stuck
them into a sleeve thing that held them while they bled out. And the
chickens were bleeding and squirming around.
Before long, William turned around and said, “Where’s Bill?”
Bill had disappeared around the corner of the shed. We went around
to find him and he said, “My God, I’ll never eat another chicken in
my life!”
He never talked about putting chickens in the freezer after that.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - That’s the city kid in him.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - That smell when you put them in the hot water was enough
to put anyone off chicken.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Talking about chickens. They have those Amish chickens every
once in a while at the store and they taste like real chickens like
we used to have on the farm.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - I bet they’re corn fed. And they let them run in the
field too.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - I haven’t been able to find them since. They don’t have any
chemicals and stuff fed to them.
Pat (Bicking) Klass - It’s amazing we eat anything anymore.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Ma would take the chickens in the house and light a rolled
up newspaper and singe off the remaining feathers.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - We had guinea hens too.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - They were like watchdogs. They would start to “holler” and
make loud noises that would chase animals away.
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - The best time was when Pa would kill a pig. We would have
fresh liver that night. Boy that was fresh and delicious! They would
slice it real thin and they would make that dark, black gravy. Wilma
never liked it but I loved that dark gravy!
I tried buying liver at Baisley’s and I brought it home but it was
nothing like what we used to have when we lived on the farm.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I would just hate it when I knew they were going to butcher
because I would come home and they would have liver for supper.
That is the only time I can remember that Ma bent her rules.
Normally, we were expected to eat whatever was put on the table.
But, I hated liver so much and almost got sick so finally she said,
“Oh, all right, I’ll fry you an egg and don’t act so foolish.”
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Art used to talk about catching the blood from the pigs as
they butchered them. They would make blood cheese and sausage.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - That was something I could never eat. I don’t remember them
making it very much.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - We were talking the other day about “souse” (spelling?) and
head cheese and those things.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - They also made that apple stuff with the cracklings and
things when they butchered.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - That was from frying out the lard. They mixed that with
apples.
 Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Pa always made the mettwurst out in the smokehouse.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Boy, that is one thing that you cannot buy. Not that tastes
like that did. Carl was the last one who could make it taste like
that.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Remember all the wine and cider barrels in the basement?
They’d tell us to go down and siphon off some of the wine with a
hose once in a while.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - I can still smell that wine down there. Remember when we
got drunk that time?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - We siphoned off too much. They were playing cards and they
told us to go down and get a pitcher of wine. We would just empty
off all the glasses before refilling them. Pretty soon we were.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Remember how mad they got?
Ralph Heiden - Was everything you used at home mostly homemade?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Everything. I don’t ever remember buying any canned goods
back then.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - We used to have a grocery wagon come by every Monday. A guy
named Jake Myers traveled around from his store in Strasburg (Michigan).
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - He had a big truck that he would drive around the
countryside selling his goods.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Ma would go out to the road when he would come by with a
basket of eggs and trade them for groceries.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I remember peaking over the edge of the truck and looking at
the box of candies. I don’t know what you would get for a basket of
eggs. Maybe some somersausage.
Ma and Pa would go to town, to Monroe, once in a while and come home
with link balognas in buns with mustard on them.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - That would be our Saturday night supper.
Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Art used to say, “Give me a tase of one of them der buns.”
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Pa went to the mill with the wheat to get flour.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - He would trade bags of wheat for bags of flour.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Then he went to Heck’s Market right across the street.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - I think it’s Schroeder’s now.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Pa would also buy peanuts. Peanuts in the shell which he
just loved.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - That must be where my Dad (Leo Heiden) got his love for peanuts in the
shell too.
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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.”
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Ralph Heiden - Was
the house nice and warm in the winters?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Ho, ho, ho! Upstairs where
we slept, if you left a glass of water out overnight, it would
be frozen in the morning!
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - That’s why we often
slept three to a bed.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Those ceilings would slope
down near the bed. You could reach up some nights and scratch
the frost off the inside surface.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - We had a big furnace in the
basement that burned coal.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Then there was one little
register or actually just a hole in the floor where the heat was
supposed to come up through from below.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - You didn’t fool around
getting dressed in the morning. Sometimes we would run
downstairs by the radiator and get dressed there.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - I remember sitting on
that old pot and it would be ice cold.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - You didn’t know if you could
go or not!
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Those were the good old days.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - But we didn’t know any
different. Everybody we knew lived the same way so it was all
right.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I went to the dentist one
time recently and I asked him what kind of toothpaste he would
recommend? He asked, “What did you use when you were young?” I
said we used backing soda or salt. I told him we lived on a farm
and that’s what we had.
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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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 Ralph Heiden -
There is an old story about the Heiden farmstead being located
on an “Indian burial ground.”
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Back where the old hickory
tree was near the lane was supposed to be an Indian burial
ground according to Pa. It was before you got to the ditch. They
used to find a lot of arrowheads and things there all the time.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I wonder why nobody ever
keeps that stuff.
Ralph Heiden - Carol said she used to have a bunch of
arrowheads and things but she has lost track of where they are
now. |
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 Ralph Heiden - There are trees planted in even spacing
along the river bank, didn’t Grandpa plant those?
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Pa planted those but I don’t
know when.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - You say they bought the
house in 1909? I thought Great Grandpa built the house.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Pa bought the place from
Meyers.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Stella Graf’s grandma and
grandma built that house.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - I forget what Pa said they
had to pay for the farm. I think it was about $75 per acre or
something. It was 140 acres.
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - It is 141 acres. They always
had to go down to Stella’s folks, the Langs, to pay the mortgage
payments.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - They must have bought it on
land contract then or they wouldn’t have had to pay the Langs.
Afterwards, they got a loan from Monroe County Bank. I was still
in high school when they finally paid it off. That would have
been in the early 1940's, maybe 1941 or so.
Sometimes they would have to
borrow money to pay the taxes. Fortunately, Gilbert Oyer at the
bank knew all those farmers and he knew they were good for it.
He’d loan them the money for the taxes but then they would not
be getting any of the principal down on the loan that year.
Ralph Heiden - I have some
old property tax receipts that my great grandfather,
August Heiden, paid from the late 1800's to about 1911.
Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Where did they live
then?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Over on South Custer where
Uncle John and Aunt
Agnes
(Brockman) Heiden
lived.
Ralph Heiden - The property tax form says that
August Heiden's
property on South Custer Road was bordered on the north by Jacob
Mathis, on the east by George Rath and William D. Miller, and on
the west by Ernst "Ernest" Heiden. In some of the older
receipts, it says they were bordered on the north by W. Stock,
on east by C. Rath and on the west by K. Opfermann.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - K. Opfermann?
Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Killian Opfermann would be
Frank’s dad.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Did William F. and Helen
ever have a survey done on the home farm?
Ralph Heiden - Yes, they wrote in their letter that
they have a copy of the title search.
Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - That’s what I do for a
living. I’ve been doing it since April 3, 1946 and worked until
April 30, 1989. Now I work part-time at it.
Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - We’ll have to have a big
party next year to celebrate Jeanie working 50 years.
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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,
