Fifth Generation

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In December 2008, Marita sent her annual Christmas letter to the Root family. The edition contained the following information:

"On a bitter cold Christmas morning in 1918, I arrived on this planet by way of the Glendive, Montana high school, because the hospital was full of flu patients. I weighed a mere five pounds and didn't have a spear of hear on my heard until I was three. However, I was a lively little waif and walked younger than most children do....

I don't remember this, but they tell me that one day I decided to crawl under the corral fence and visit the long-horned cattle there. They weren't used to being chased by anyone who wasn't on horseback, much less a skinny, bald-headed toddler. Mama rescued me and I lived to tell you about it.

Then, when I was two, came the flood. I'll only tell you snatches of what I remember. My crib was beside the window and I remember seeing the water rising up on the pane outside. I remember sitting on the window sill with Mama and Wesley to keep out of the water when the house tipped up and the furniture all slid down to the low side. I remember being carried by Papa across the plank he put from the window to the bank of the stream when the house lodged for a time before swirling on down to its destruction. I remember screaming when he left me there all by myself and went back to get Mama and Wesley.... Uncle Rob and Aunt Edith had five children of their own, but they took us in until we could go back to Wisconsin, where most of Papa's family were....

Uncle Arthur helped Papa find a farm to rent. It had nice square white house and a big red barn. We lived there for four happy years. During that time, Norman, Lois and Harold were born, I learned to sew with needle and thread, Aunt Ruth taught me to read, President Harding died from blood poisoning caused by a blister on his foot (Why do I remember that?) and they built a new cement highway past our house."

When I was five, I went to school. Mama went with me the first day the mile and a half down the new cement highway. After that, I went by myself. I accepted a ride from any motorist who offered one. A kind truck drive often stopped and helped me up into the seat beside him, and sometimes I got a ride with the patrolman on his road grader.

My teacher was Miss Day and I dearly loved her. I was the only one of the five first graders who could read, which was a problem for Miss Day. She asked Mama if she could put me into second grade. I've always been grateful that Mama said 'No,' but first grade was borning!

When I was in the second grade, we moved to Coles Valley. That was different. My growing up years were surrounded by boys. I had three brothers and there were five Christiano boys next door. My class at school consisted of three boys and me....

When we were old enough to work, life got more serious. The boys helped with the milking and I gathered eggs and pulled weeds in the garden. In the summer, at 4:00 every afternoon, Wesley, Norman and I, along with Buster, our collie dog, went to get the cows. We opened the gate and let them across the road into the pasture where they went to the barn to be milked. I helped take care of Harold, greased the pans when Mama made bread, wiped the dishes, and peeled potatoes. When I was eleven, Ruth Anne was born and my responsibilities increased.

Then came the most miserable four years of my life. I went to high school. Since there were no school buses, I stayed in town with Miss Chadsey. I did my own cooking with provisions Mama sent from home. Aunt Cora kept me from starving by inviting me to her house about once a week for a meal. I refused to babysit to earn money, but I raked leaves, washed cars, scrubbed floors and made posters for the corner bakery. I was on the high honor roll and the low social strata. But, gradually, I made friends and life got better."

In December 2003, Marita's annual Christmas letter contained more of her childhood memories, such as:

"Our First Automobile. Until I was about ten years old, our only means of transportation, besides the farm wagon, was an old surrey pulled by two slow, patient work horses. But one day our father, who was definitely not mechanically inclined, came home to announce that he had bought a second-hand Nash touring car. I don't remember how much he paid for it, but it seems to me that it was a little more than a hundred dollars. The dealer delivered it to our farm and he (dad) and our mother set about to learn to drive it.

It had a self-starter, which they were never able to persuade to start anything, so dad had to resort to a wrist-wrenching crank to get it going. On the steering wheel were two mysterious levers. One controlled the gas and the other the spark. There was also a gas pedal on the floor. To start the reluctant old vehicle you set the gas lever and the spark at what you assumed was the right angle and hoped for the best. Mom was pretty good at manipulating the levers, so, unless the weather was too cold, several might turns of the crank by dad usually produced a deafening roar from the powerful Nash motor. If mom readjusted the levers right, the motor kept running. If not, dad grudgingly had to crank it again.

On very cold days, they sometimes had to hitch the horses to the front bumper and pull the old Nash down the road as fast as they could be persuaded to go. Sometimes that would succeed in producing a cough out of the motor and the crank could then be relied on to do the rest. If not, they stayed at home.

There were no glass windows in our first car. There were, however, black canvas side curtains with little isinglass windows. When winter came, these side curtains were snapped into place to protect us from the wind. Some of the curtains promptly came unsnapped as we traveled and flapped in fierce diabolical glee while we shivered under our lap robe in the back seat.

About the time I started high school, dad bought a newer Nash with glass windows, one that didn't need to be cranked to start. What a luxury!"

"What Was School Like? We walked there, you know that. Our farm was the farthest from school, so other children joined us as we passed their farms. At half past eight the teacher rang the big school bell. That was to warn us to get moving or we would be late. School started at nine.

Before school started, the 'water committee,' elected on Friday afternoon in a very solemn and strictly-according-to-'Roberts Rules of Order' meeting, had to take the water pail to the pump and fill our water cooler. After school, the 'eraser committee' took the chalky erasers outside and clapped them together to get the dust out of them. The 'toilet committee,' a boy and a girl, took the broom to their respective toilets and swept out whatever leaves, dry grass and little stones had collected on the floors.

First and second grades were separate for most of their classes, but third and fourth, fifth and sixth, and seventh and eighth had the same lessons and recited together. When it was time for their classes, they left their seats and sat in a row at the front of the classroom. We did a lot of memorizing...multiplication tables, poems, the names of the states and their capitals, the names of the presidents, etc.

One class we all had together, except the first grade, was penmanship. We stayed in our seats and did 'ovals' and 'push and pull' exercises on lined paper. Then we learned how to write using the 'Palmer Method.' Penmanship was more important then that it is now with typewriters and computers to do our writing for us.

We didn't have much music. If the teacher could play the piano, we sang with that. Otherwise, it was a phonograph we followed. Probably we sounded pretty bad."

"Our Clothes. You might be surprised to know that eighty years ago, when I was very young, I wore high-buttoned shoes. To button them you needed a button hook. In winter we all wore long-legged underwear. To put on your long stockings, you wrapped your underwear tightly around your legs and pulled your long stockings over them. It took a great deal of skill to do this successfully. The underwear had trapdoors in the back to allow bathroom visits.

Of course, there really was no bathroom. We had an outdoor privy, complete with Sears and Roebuck catalog. When it got too cold to go outside, we stayed in the house and used a white enameled bucket that had a lid.

As soon as school was out in the spring, we took off our shoes and stockings and we didn't put them on again until school started in the fall. We didn't go to church because it was to far to travel with the horses. Hay stubble, Canadian thistles, nettles and hot pavement were painful to walk on and we avoided them at all costs. In the fall when we first put our shoes back on, we suffered a great deal because our feet had spread out during the summer and they pinched. On rainy days, when the roads were muddy, we were allowed to go barefoot even to school.

Everyone bought flour in hundred-pound bags. They were printed with pretty flower patterns along with some advertising. The advertising washed out, but the flower pattern didn't. Most of the girls in school had dresses made from flour sacks, as we did. Instead of neat little ready-made panties like little girls wear today, our mothers made us 'bloomers.' They were of ample size and had elastic in the tops and legs. Usually they were made from the same material as our dresses, so it didn't matter very much if they showed a little."

"What Did We Eat? There were no McDonald's or Burger King's when I was growing up and I never had a hamburger that I can remember. Our meat came from the animals grandpa butchered. We had pork more than any other meat--chicken only when we had company or for special occasions. We seldom had beef. The cows were too valuable to butcher. They gave milk that brought in the monthly milk check, about the only cash we had.

The only way to keep things cold was to put them on the floor in the 'cellar.' Meat wouldn't keep that way, so beef was canned and pork was put into a salt brine in a huge crock on the back porch. It had to be boiled in fresh water for a long time to get the salt out of it before it could be fried. We seldom cooked it any other way.

During the Depression, wool didn't bring enough money to make keeping sheep worthwhile, so we ate mutton. I hated mutton! Many city children had no meat at all during the Depression, and I should have been grateful for mutton.

Grandpa was an accomplished gardener and in the fall he harvested and put in the cellar huge piles of potatoes, rutabagas, pumpkins, squash, beets, carrots, and onions. He didn't like most vegetables, so he seldom ate any himself. He ate bread (lots of bread), potatoes and gravy, meat and dessert. He was six feet tall and weighed about 160 pounds. Obesity was a word we didn't know and a condition we seldom saw in those days.

We had a big apple orchard with kinds of apples you youngsters never heard of. We had applesauce, apple pie, apple pickles, apple butter, dried apples and apples in our lunch pails.

In the winter we sometimes made ice cream. Why not in the summer? Because we needed snow to freeze it. (There was no iceman in the country.) It was hard to crank the freezer and took a long time. Sometimes we wondered if it was worth it.

Living on a farm had its advantages and disadvantages during the Depression, but food was an advantage."

"What Did We Do For Fun? Can you imagine--no TV, no radio, no computer, no toys with batteries, no Barbie dolls, no bicycles, no ice skates or roller skates, not even little cars. But we had books. Our one-room school had about 75 books in the little bookcase we called our 'library.' And Aunt Ruth kept us supplied with reading material. She even read to us when she came in the summers to stay. I still remember Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit from the 'Uncle Remus' book she read.

What did we have to play with? We had a beautiful gold and white collie dog named 'Buster' who went everywhere we did. We had kittens, an orphan deer who came down form the woods with the cows and a pet lamb that we had to feed from a bottle.

We had dominoes, checkers, marbles, a little red wagon, snow sleds, and a bat and ball. We knew lots of games to play and we didn't lack for imagination. We made up stories and told them to each other when we went to bed. In the woods we built a 'wigwam' out of gunny sacks and played Indian. The boys had jackknives and Wesley whittled out all sorts of things, among them whistles and little tractors made from grandma's empty spools with rubber bands to make them travel.

We went fishing in the creek with willow poles the boys cut with their jack-knives. We tied strings on them with hooks on the end baited with angle worms. Sometimes we caught a rainbow trout seven inches long, big enough to keep. Grandma would fry it for our supper and we would scrupulously divide it so each of us would get exactly the same amount. Nothing every tasted to good, nothing! I still order rainbow trout when they have it on the menu.

I had a rag doll named 'Betsy' with an embroidered face and cotton stuffing. I think Aunt Ruth made her.

We had just as much fun as children do now and I don't remember ever complaining that we didn't have anything to do. The 'way it was' wasn't a bad way at all."

She appeared in the census in 1920 in Dawson County, MT.³²⁸ (Her name was spelled "Marietta.") She appeared in the census in 1930 in Adrian Township, Monroe County, WI.³⁰⁶ Marita graduated in 1937 in Tomah, Tomah Township, Monroe County, WI.^{334,385,386,387} from Teachers Training.

"When I graduated (from Sparta High School in 1936), they told me my grades were good and I should go to college. When I told Aunt Cora I wanted to study art, she looked sternly over her glasses and said, 'And how do you expect to make a living painting pictures, young lady?' Mama wasn't much more encouraging when I told her I wanted to go to Madison and live with Aunt Edith (she had told me I could), and go to the University of Wisconsin. 'Who will pay your tuition and buy your books?' she wanted to know. Tuition? What was tuition? And didn't the college furnish the books? The high school did.

Instead, Papa found a place in Tomah where I could work for my room and board and he enrolled me in a post-graduate Teacher Training course taught in the attic of the high school. When I graduated a year later, there were twenty two of us and only twenty schools that needed teachers. I was one of the two who didn't get hired." Between 1937 and 1940 she was a school teacher in Janesville, Rock County, WI.^216,385 "That's how I ended up in Rock County in southern Wisconsin, where they were short of teachers.... I paid a dollar a day for room and board out of the $75 a month that the school paid me and I had quite a lot of spending money left over. I got acquainted with the fourteen children in my little one-room school and things were going well.

Then I went home for Thanksgiving. It was a tragic week. When it was over, Papa had died, we had his funeral, Wesley and Norman had dropped out of school to help Mama run the farm and I had to go back to my little school.

My new friends were very kind and sympathetic and I picked up where I left off. In another month, I had my 19th birthday. At the end of the school year, the school board hired me back and raised by salary to $90 a month. I sent a little money home when I thought Mama needed it, and lent Lois money to go to Teacher's College.

After three years, I had saved $400--enough, I thought, to take me to art school. So I gave up my little school and went home. Mama met me in tears. She didn't have any money to pay the taxes and I stopped at the (Monroe) County Superintendent's office to see if I could find a school to teach. 'You are in luck!' the County Superintendent said. 'A school board member just left my office, who were still looking for a teacher.' So I went to teach in the Randall School near Tomah." She appeared in the census in April 1940 in Turtle Township, Rock County, WI. She was a "Lodger" in the household of Warren and Hazel Howard on Route 1 and her occupation was "Teacher, Public School." Her total wages in 1939 were $765. Between 1940 and 1947 Marita was a school teacher at the Randall School and several other schools in Tomah Township, Monroe County, WI.³⁸⁵ "I taught in several schools for seven more years, when the war was over and they would let us quit teaching.

I had again saved money to go to school (this time it was $1,000), but I didn't know where to go. Just when I needed him, I met a kind old artist from Chicago who offered to investigate the art schools in Chicago and recommend one. He did that and also found a place where I could live. As soon as school was out, I got on the train and took off for the Windy City and the Chicago Academy of Art." Between 1947 and 1948 she was an art student at the Chicago Academy in Chicago, Cook County, IL.³⁸⁵ "There I joined a couple dozen veterans on the GI Bill along with a half a dozen girls. When the summer was over, I hadn't signed up soon enough for the fall term and it was full. So I went back to Coles Valley and taught home school for a year. then I returned to Chicago and never came back to Coles Valley again, except to visit. I was 28 years old.

After about two years at the Chicago Academy, my money was getting low and I took an evening job with a small paperback book publisher. Then I decided I wasn't learning much any more, so I quit school and went to work for Scripture Press, first in advertising and then in their new art department." Between 1948 and 1951 she was a clierical worker in advertising and the art department for Scripture Press in Chicago, Cook County, IL.³⁸⁵ "...June had come from Minneapolis and taken a job with Scripture Press. We got her a place in the Girl's Club where Ruth Anne and I lived and when apartments became available, Eleanor Krupsky, June, Ruth Anne and I rented a furnished one on the North Shore....

After six happy years in our apartment, Scripture Press told us they were moving with Christian Life in Wheaton. So I bought 814 Pick Street and we moved there, too. Christian Life decided to stay in Chicago, so Eleanor, Jane and Joan took the train back to Chicago to work. They helped me furnish my little house and it immediately became a haven for young singles who had to move to Wheaton and rent rooms because there were no apartments...."

After three years in Wheaton, I left Scripture Press and worked out of my home. My friends were sure I would starve, but, although I sometimes struggled, I survived and most of the time it went well. I bought and paid for a new car during that time and never missed a mortgage payment.

Then Mom had a stroke. She needed to come and live with me, so the two women who were with me left and she moved in." Between 1951 and 1980 Marita was an in the Art Department at David C. Cook Publishing Company in Elgin, Kane County, IL.³⁸⁵ "Soon after she (Marita's mother) came, the art director of David C. Cook Publishing Company in Elgin asked me to come and work there. I was dubious about leaving Mom alone, but I finally agreed to try it. She was lonesome at first, but she took in sewing and the small-fry in the neighborhood discovered her and loved to visit her, be read to, and eat the gum drops she kept in a jar on the kitchen table.... After she had been with me for eight years, Mom needed care and Lois found a place for her in the Morrow Home in Sparta. She left and for the first time in my life, I was alone!....

I decided to retire at age 62 when my job at D. C. Cook became increasingly computerized." She lived at 814 Pick Street in Wheaton, DuPage County, IL between 1959 and 1994.³⁸⁵ "During the time (that she lived on Pick Street) twenty-three people shared my little brick two-bedroom-with-crawlspace house near the railroad track. Not all at once, of course....." She lived Fairview Village in Downer's Grove, Dupage County, IL after 1994.³⁸⁵ "Since I have been here, I have helped organize the art studio, the Penpersons writing group, the Charioteer wheelchair pushers, and several bible studies. I seem always to be organizing something. I wish I could organize my dresser drawers!

God didn't give me a husband, but He took care of me Himself. He did such a good job that I have never been in the hospital except overnight when they took my tonsils out, and that doesn't count. I look forward to the time when I will go to be with Him in heaven. I hope all of you who read this have put your trust in Jesus and will join me there someday!" Marita died on 28 May 2018 at the age of 99 in Downer's Grove, Dupage County, IL.³⁸⁸ Obituary Notes: "Marita M. Root, 99, of Oswego died Monday May 28, 2018, at the Symphony at the Tillers Nursing Home.

She was born Dec. 25, 1918, to Irvin and Minnie (Jones) Root in Glendive, Mont. Their family moved to Sparta and then later to Cole’s Valley, having purchased the family farm, which stayed in the family until 1977.

She was a member of the Sparta High School Graduating Class of 1936. She attended Rural Teacher’s Training School in Tomah, and taught in the Janesville area and at the Randall Country School near Tomah until 1947. She furthered her education by attending the American Academy of Art in Chicago.

She worked for 11 years in the art department at Scripture Press, where she eventually was put in charge. She then went to work for the David C. Cook Publishing Co, until 1980. After retirement she served for one year as a missionary teacher in Nairobi, Kenya. Marita taught Bible study to people of all ages. She taught Sunday School for over 25 years, and did miscellaneous work with VBS, mission’s secretary, and different church committees.

Her passion was her art and she spent countless hours painting, writing poems, and writing family histories. In Marita’s own words “God didn’t give me a husband, but took care of me Himself. He did such a good job that I have never been in the hospital except overnight, when they took my tonsils out, and that doesn’t count. I look forward to the time when I will go to be with Him in Heaven. I hope all of you who read this have put your trust in Jesus and will join me there someday!”

She is survived by a brother, Harold; a sister-in-law, June Root; 23 nieces and nephews, many great-nieces and great-nephews, many other relatives and friends.

She was preceded in death by her siblings and their spouses, Wesley, Norman and Ruth, Lois and Gordon Ness, Ruth Anne and Ivan Wilson; sister-in-law, Ruth Root; and a nephew, Bruce Wilson.

A funeral service will be held Monday, June 4, at 11 a.m. at the Tomah Baptist Church. Pastor Donald Root will officiate. Burial will be in the Woodlawn Cemetery, Sparta. Relatives and friends are invited to call Monday from 10 a.m. until the time of the service.

Memorials can be made in Marita’s name to the Oak Trace Benevolence Fund, Oak Trace 200 Village Dr., Downers Grove, Ill. 60516."

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