Grandma Hettie Beck

by Gayle Fischer

Rene' Marie Fischer and Great Grandma Beck

I have many fond memories of Grandma Beck but the one thing I will always remember is the first time she held my daughter, Rene’. She said that this baby was very special because Rene’ put her over 100 grandchildren (counting grandchildren and great grandchildren). Rene’ was her 101st grandchild. I cannot even imagine having 100 grandchildren, much less, remembering each one. Rene’ was almost six years old when Grandma passed away. She told me that she remembers Grandma Beck always wearing a dress with a floral pattern and black shoes. She also remembers that Grandma’s hands were busy all the time.

Although Grandma was a quiet woman, her strong work ethic spoke volumes through her actions. I never knew anyone who could out-work Grandma Beck. When I spent time with her, she was working in the garden, doing laundry, canning, baking, churning, quilting and chasing chicken snakes down the road and she must have been in her eighties by then. On Thanksgiving, the family would get together to celebrate Grandma’s birthday. Grandma Beck was always the last to sit down and eat. She was waiting on everyone else to make sure they all had what they needed before she would take a plate for herself. Not only was she strong physically, but she had a strong faith also. With all she lived through, death of her husband, children and grandchildren, wars and hard times, Grandma Beck stood strong in the belief that God would provide for her and keep her going. I remember what a great respect she had for people of the religious profession, too. She was always helping with laundry and cooking for the priests of Sacred Heart Church. I think her inner strength is one of the reasons she lived to be almost 94 years old.

Many times, we would go to Grandma’s and she would have homemade noodles drying on the kitchen table. At Christmas time, she made shortbread cookies and hung them on her tree. I loved when she would bake because we got to lick the bowl. A couple of times, I helped her can pickles, make ketchup and churn butter. Before she got a separator, Grandma would use a spoon to skim the cream off the top of the milk. It seems there was always bread dough, covered with a towel, setting on the floor by the stove waiting to be made into homemade bread. I know it is a lot of hard work living on a farm, but the time I spent there was fun and different from anything else I did.

I think of Grandma Beck as the original recycler. She had a clothesline in her pantry and she would wash wax paper, aluminum foil, plastic bags, etc. and hang them on this line to dry so that she could use them again. Grandma told me once that when her sheets became worn around the edges, she made them into tablecloths. When the tablecloths showed wear, she made them into pillowcases. The pillowcases were made into dishtowels or table napkins and those were made into washcloths eventually. Grandma Beck would not waste anything whether it was manmade or God given.

Two stories I recall Grandma Beck telling me left me wondering and I did not know whether to believe them but at any rate, they are good anecdotes. One had to do with Aunt Josie’s red hair. Grandma said she gave each of her children copies of the checks that Grandpa Beck used to pay the doctor when each was born. There was no check for Aunt Josie (Josephine Frerich) though. Grandma Beck said that they paid the doctor in sweet potatoes and that is why Aunt Josie was the only child with red hair. The other story was about the wringer washer. I was down on the farm helping her and we were doing the wash. I would pull the clothes out of the bluing solution and hand them to Grandma to run through the wringer. I wanted to put the clothes in the wringer and that is when Grandma told me that it was very dangerous. She said, if you get your hand caught in the wringer, it would not stop but pull you in. She told the story of a man who got his hand caught in the wringer and it crushed his arm all the way up to his elbow before the machine could be stopped. Now, I don’t know if this story was true or not, but it served its purpose which was to make me scared of the wringer so that I would not mess with it.

Another time, I was stayed with Grandma after she had been in the hospital. She wore her hair in a bun and no one had taken it down and combed her hair the whole time she was in the hospital. It was a tangled mess. My aunts and I tried to comb through it, but were not having much luck. Grandma told me to go out to the rain barrel and get some of the rainwater she had saved and put that on her hair. I remember it made her hair so soft and it made it a lot easier to comb out the tangles.

I always thought of Grandma Beck as a kind, sweet woman but my sister tells a story of Grandma wringing a chicken’s neck and plucking it right in front of her. Anyway, I didn’t care much for chickens so I would not have been upset seeing Grandma do that. There was a time when my sweet thoughts of Grandma wavered though. She had locked her small female dog in the woodshed for a few days. I would hear the dog making awful sounds and crying to get out. I went to Grandma Beck and pleaded with her to set the dog free. She said she could not because the dog was in heat. I asked Grandma what that meant and she told me to ask my parents.

Until you saw a chicken snake in the henhouse, it was always fun to go out and collect eggs for Grandma. I’ll bet every one of us collected the marble eggs and/or door knobs that Grandma had planted in the nests to entice the chickens into laying. We would take them inside and, every time, Grandma would have to take them back out to the henhouse. Some of the eggs were brown, others were white and it was just like hunting Easter eggs without the bunny. Grandma Beck used to say something in German all the time and this was one of those occasions when she said, “Mine Himmel, noch einmal.”

Speaking of eggs, I have to tell the chicken snake story because it is a favorite Grandma Beck story of mine. When I would go stay with her, my mother would always tell me that I was there to help Grandma and take care of her. Even though Grandma took better care of me than I did of her, I took my responsibility seriously. Grandma would never wake me in the morning. She would let me sleep as late as I wanted while she got up and started work without me. I did not like that, because I was supposed to be helping her. One morning, I awoke and could not find Grandma Beck anywhere. She was not in the kitchen, not in the garden and not in the henhouse. I started to worry because I could not imagine what my mother was going to say when she found out that I had “lost” Grandma Beck! I was supposed to be taking care of her and I could not even find her! Even though Grandma had indoor plumbing by then, I decided to check the outhouse She was not there, but on my way back to the house, I saw her walking up the road. She was carrying something. As she got closer, I saw it was a stick with a large snake hanging on the end of it. I probably should have taken the stick, but chicken snakes are really ugly and I do not like snakes. I asked Grandma where she had been and she told me that she went to the henhouse and saw this chicken snake. She said she had to chase it all the way down the road before she could kill it. I asked her why she had to chase the snake if it had gone down the road and away from her chickens. Grandma said that if she did not kill it, it would come back and get her chickens and/or eggs. I just could not believe my 80-year old grandmother was chasing a snake through the woods to protect some eggs. Now I understand that the same patience and perseverance that Grandma used to track down and kill the snake are just some of the qualities about her that made her a strong woman and one that I admired. I know that these qualities were passed on, as I see them everyday in my Mother, my sisters and Grandma Beck’s 101st grandchild.