Harvey and I had the job of chopping chunks off the main body of sugar in the sack. We used hammers, ice picks, screw drivers, and any other small, sharp objects we could find. Dad made framed, strongly-stretched screen on which we could rub the chunks to roughly sift the sugar. The first-sifted sugar was collected in a large bowl. From the bowl we poured it into a fine-screen flour sifter. After the second sifting most of the lumps and hard pieces were gone, and it was good for our mother’s use in baking and canning. The few small, hard pieces left after the second-sifting each time were saved in a tightly-sealed jar. We had cold cereal most mornings, and a couple of those small hard pieces of sugar were dissolved in milk to sweeten it (no pre-sugared cereals at that time). When we ran out of hard pieces, we ate cereal without sugar.
VE Day, May 8, 1945 marked the end of the war in Europe. VJ Day, August 14, 1945 marked the end of the war with Japan. On VJ Day our mother, Harvey, and I were in Kewaunee, Wisconsin, on the western shore of Lake Michigan. Kewaunee was a small village of mostly first-generation Americans of Czech/Bohemian and Polish descent, and their immigrant parents and grandparents. We were visiting our mother’s parents, aunts and uncles, and cousins.
My grandparents were second and third generation American-born, but spoke very little English. Mother and her older sister had learned to speak, read, and write English in school. Grandma had learned limited speaking and reading English from my mother. She spoke with a strong accent, and wrote phonetically. Learning to read Grandma’s letters gave me a “leg up” when it came to working in genealogy. Since Grandma and the aunts and uncles weren’t comfortable speaking a lot of English, while we were in Kewaunee Mom spoke Bohemian with all of them. Harvey and I were not allowed to learn Bohemian, because Mom said we were born in America, we would speak American.
All day long on VJ Day there were rumors on the radio that the war was ending, and finally in the afternoon the big announcement came. There was a Congregational Church with a bell tower at one end of the block where Grandma and Grandpa lived. At the announcement that Japan had finally surrendered, the minister of the church began to ring the bell. I ran to the church, I guess to watch the bell being rung. The minister saw me standing, watching, and told me to come by him.
As the bell was being rung, the rope would alternately go way up, and come back down to drag on the ground. The minister told me that the next time the rope came down I should grab hold just below his hands. Even as I’m writing this, I’m smiling. What a ride that rope took me on! I think I went up and down about 10 times each before I had to let go of the rope. For some strange reason Mom wasn’t nearly as excited as I had been when I told her about my ride.
Being a village of mostly Czech/Bohemian and Polish residents, Kewaunee had at least one saloon on each side of the street in every block of the downtown area. The evening of VJ Day, it seemed that everyone living in the village and all the close by farms gathered downtown. Many of the older people still played accordions, tubas and other band instruments and had their instruments with them. After the beer had flowed for some time, the musicians drifted out of the saloons, sat down on curbs, and played the songs of their youth with hearts of joy. People were laughing and crying at the same time.
Mom walked Grandma and Grandpa home early, but she let Harvey and me stay until midnight. Mom had taught Harvey and me each how to dance the polka just about as soon as could we could walk. That night we danced until we couldn’t dance any longer.
Kim Feldman is the widow of a Korean and Viet Nam veteran, and wife of a WWII veteran. One morning a week she volunteers to read to two second grade classes and one third grade class. She volunteers one day a week to work in the Archives of W. H . Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M and one morning in the gift shop of the local hospital. A talented story teller, Feldman is currently one of the leading ladies of a production of The Telling Project, Telling: Aggieland.
