Wagner Tales Winter 2015

GLENVIEW, ILLINOIS 1

Wagner TalesLife and Work on a 1920s Dairy Farm | Winter 2015

HISTORIC WAGNER FARM2

IRONS THROUGH THE AGES

ALL ABOUT ROASTING CHESTNUTS

In this issue

NEWS FROM THE CLASSROOM

UPCOMING EVENTS AT THE FARM

7

TELLING HISTORY

4

8

10

14


From the Director’s DeskChuck Balling Chuck’s vision and unwavering support has helped the Farm reach new heights. I remember when Chuck dropped by to visit our brand new Bonfire event in 2007. An hour into the event, we had already passed our 500 estimated guests. Without missing a beat he jumped right in, running out to buy Hershey’s bars. By the time the evening was over, more than 1,300 people had been through the gates and there wasn’t a chocolate bar left in town. Chuck’s actions said a lot about his character and dedication. Bob Quill Bob was the second person I met when I came to Glenview, as he was the one who hired me as the director for the brand new Historic Wagner Farm. I don’t think he anticipated some of the interesting times we would share. As my superintendent and supporter, Bob has done exactly what you would ask a great boss to do. Sometimes he stood behind me, sometimes he stood beside me and sometimes he took the position in front of me. While our journey building this museum wasn’t an easy one, I have enjoyed taking it with him.Jeff WienskiJeff was our Farm Manager from the first day the Farm opened. But it’s more than a job that will mark his time here. He was the link between the Wagners and all of the rest of us. Few people knew that Jeff ’s work at the Farm began decades before the referendum that brought the farm into the GPD. As a little kid he would ride his bike down from his house in the Acres and help Pete do chores and other odd jobs. Together, Pete and Jeff taught neighborhood kids all kinds of jobs on the farm. I have had the honor to witness Jeff doing the same thing with so many young visitors and 4-H kids. Without even knowing he was doing it, he touched the lives of so many.

It comes in threes. This winter our community got news of three retirements that will make a big impact on not only the Glenview Park District, but also Historic Wagner Farm. These three individuals have made a profound impact on our organization. If you get the chance and see one of these three I hope you can thank them for making our community a better place.

Thank you Chuck, Bob and Jeff.

Written by Todd Price Director

[email protected]


It’s a beautiful spring day on the farm in 1970. My grandpa lumbers into the old farmhouse

and plops down on a rickety wooden chair that can barely hold his burley 6’2” frame. The windows are open and a warm breeze drifts lightly though the house. The chair creaks slightly as he leans it back against the wall. He is smiling. There are several adults in the room chatting, including my parents, my Uncle Herman and my Aunt Louise. My grandpa easily joins the conversation. They’re talking about which relatives have died recently, who got married, and other boring family news. Until he came in, I had been passing the time playing games with my fingers on the steep wooden staircase. Now I tiptoe along the wall, past the bookcase, over to his chair. I reach up and wordlessly tug on his sleeve. He stays in the conversation and doesn’t look my way but his giant hands scoop me up by the armpits and set me in his lap.

Telling HistoryOral history can help us build living links to the past and preserve our stories for future generations.

Writen by Christine Shiel Volunteer Coordinator

[email protected]

I lean against his overalls and breathe deeply. He smells like the barn and that’s my favorite place. His knees start to bounce. I start to giggle. The next thing I know, he’s launched me off his lap to the floor. Shrieking I come back to his side and tug on his sleeve. “Again, Grandpa!” His hands are huge. Really huge and powerful. They’re rough and calloused from a lifetime of working the farm.

In his youth, in the early 1920’s, before he got married and started a farm, my grandpa made a living as a bareknuckle boxer. Four years after that warm spring day, I find myself sitting on a cold metal chair in the corner of his hospital room, staring at those same hands. The nurse is trying to get him to squeeze a dark blue rubber ball. His hand weakly takes the ball from hers and holds it. She praises him, smooths his blanket and leaves the room.


There is a deeper, more authentic way in which we could know the Wagner Family and their stories.

As soon as she’s gone though, the ball falls to the floor, rolls a few inches and then stops. I don’t know if I should pick it up and try to put it back in his slack hand so I leave it. I sit quietly, watch him sleep, and play games with my fingers. I am seven years old and in a few weeks he will have passed away, and I will grow up with just a few precious memories of him.Who was my grandpa? His name was Reuben Hall, and if you were to research him you would find a birth record, a marriage certificate, a couple news clippings and a death certificate.

There might be some school records somewhere but probably not since whatever one-room schoolhouse he might have attended is long gone. If you wanted to know who he was, that’s pretty much all the history you could compile of his life. Historical facts don’t help you know the man, though. Not really. They don’t tell you what his childhood was like, how he felt about farming or whether or not he was even a good farmer. Historical facts don’t tell of his love for my grandma, or lack thereof. What was he passionate

about? What did he chat about at the dinner table? Was he good at woodworking? Was he honest? The way to really know the man would be to talk to the people who knew him. His daughter would tell you of a stoic, hard-working but uncommunicative father who killed her pet dog with a hammer because it wasn’t a good work dog on the farm. His brother would tell you of a time when their sister Olga threw her husband out of the house and took a young farmhand into her bed (Rueben kicked the door in, beat the young man and ordered


Olga to take her husband back into the house). His granddaughter would tell you of his big hands and his overalls that smelled like the barn. This is oral history, and it tells so much more about the man than the facts.Who were the Wagners? Certainly we have a lot of facts about their lives. We know when Thomas Wagner’s parents came from Germany. We know who he married and what year he bought the farm. We know about the five children Thomas raised. We even know that his youngest, Martin, was disowned by the family for marrying outside the Catholic faith. We know that after Thomas died, his son Pete Wagner farmed his father’s land for many years. We know Pete’s sister Rose was the last of the children to pass away, still living on that same family farm.

In preserving your stories, we will bring the Wagner history

to life, with all its vividness and authenticity.

These and other facts that we know, give us a framework on the Wagner’s story. However, there is a deeper, more authentic way in which we could know the Wagner family. In the coming months, you will be hearing more about oral history and how it can help us build living links to the past and to preserve the farm’s history for future generations. You, or someone you know, probably has a story about a member of the Wagner Family, or about the farm itself. We’d like to hear from you. We will be recording and preserving stories for researchers, students, and the community in which we live.

IF YOU HAVE A STORY TO TELL OR WANT TO HELP WITH THE WAGNER HISTORY PROJECT,

EMAIL CHRISTINE SHIEL.


ANNUAL DAIRY BREAKFAST

NORTHSHORE BACONFEST

SPECIAL PROGRAMS

This June, enjoy a delicious farm style breakfast that

includes a variety of dairy items. Live music, dairy demonstrations, wagon

rides, and hands-on activities throughout the morning. Check the Glenview Park District website for more information this spring.

Spend a “sizzling” evening on the farm this May as chefs

from many of the North Shore’s best restaurants serve

up tastings of imaginative bacon creations! This

delicious evening (limited to adults 18 and older) will also include “a side” of live music, and a cash bar. Buy tickest at: glenviewparks.org/baconfest

Join us this spring for both youth and adult

programming! Learn about horses, cows, how chores were done, get tips and tricks for your vegetable garden from experts and

more. See the Glenview Park District spring brochure for a

full list of programs.

UPCOMING EVENTS AT THE FARM


News from the classroom

Written by Sarah HagyeProgram Manager

[email protected]

Happy New Year from Historic Wagner Farm! I’m sure this newsletter

finds you huddled with a cup of warm tea or coffee, covered by cozy blankets, sitting in front of a warm fire... well, at least that’s the picturesque version of what we dream of during these cold winter months. For most of us, we layer up and brave the harsh elements. Unfortunately, along with this brave mindset comes cold air and frigid temperatures, which often leads to a cold or some kind of winter ailment. This was not uncommon during the early 20th century, and people

had many home remedies on hand, just waiting for the next bug to come inside the home. In this issue of Wagner Tales, I’m sharing a couple of time honored ideas to help you get through the cold and flu season.Many of us have our own home remedies passed down through the generations, but it never hurts to have a few more stored away. Perhaps the most well-known and widely practiced home remedy is chicken noodle soup, but we can help add to this with our winter Savory Soups from Scratch cooking class. Chef Jill Houk will teach us all about making

stocks and stews from scratch on February 3. Make sure to join in on this informative and delicious evening. And if visions of spring are what get you through these cold winter months, then keep an eye out for the Community Garden program and the many garden class offers. Information will be in this spring Glenview Park District brochure, mailed out in early February. In closing, I hope you have a warm and cozy winter season, and we look forward to seeing you for our many exciting offerings over the next few months.


Recipes to Get Well ByEGG GRUELBeat the yolk of an egg with one tablespoon of sugar; pour one cupful of boiling water on it, add the white of an egg beaten to a froth, with any seasoning or spice desired. Serve warm.

PLAIN MILK TOASTCut a thin slice from a loaf of stale bread, toast it very quickly, sprinkle a little salt over it, and pour upon it three tablespoonfuls of boiling milk or cream. Crackers split and toasted in this manner are often very grateful to an invalid.

In passing from warm, crowded rooms to the cold air, the mouth should be kept closed and all the breathing done through the nostrils only, that the cold air might be warmed before it reaches the lungs, or else the sudden change will drive the blood surface of the internal organs, often producing congestions.

Many colds are contracted from the feet being damp or wet. To keep these extremities warm and dry is a great preventative against the endless list of disorders which come from a “slight cold.”

Health Suggestions from The White House Cookbook

A drink of hot, strong lemonade before going to bed will often break up a cold and cure a sore throat.



Written by Jack HorbalVolunteer



Irons from Jack’s and Herman’s collections are currently on display at Historic Wagner Farm’s Heritage

Center. The exhibit spans from about 1850 to 1950.


Flat or Sad IronsEarly irons were heated on a stove. They were called “flat” or “sad” irons depending on the thickness of the body. “Sad” is an Old English term meaning solid, dense or heavy. Sad irons were thicker and heavier than the flat irons, weighing in at 5-9 pounds. The heft would help the iron to hold its heat better, as well as pressing the cloth. Actually it is the heat that’s more important than the weight. Look at the modern electric iron, it does the job well while being quite light, easing the burden on the hand.

The “Potts” IronIn 1871 Mrs. Potts (Mary Florence Potts of Ottumwa, Iowa) received a patent for a detachable handle for pressing irons. This was a huge improvement. It allowed one or two iron bases to be heated on the stove while one was in use. When that one cooled down it was swapped out for a fresh hot one using the detachable handle. The sets were usually sold with three bases and one handle.This increased efficiency and, very importantly, kept the handle much cooler as the handle never sat on the stove. Earlier, Mrs. Potts also received another patent for a double-pointed iron, so it didn’t matter how you grabbed the base with the handle, you were always ready to go. The point on an iron, by the way, allowed ironing in small corners…..and around buttons. This design changed the sad iron world forever and became

Once man progressed out of furs and skins into woven fabrics for clothing, and

the immediate needs of survival gave way to community living and social hierarchy, a new need arose: neatness. Washing fabrics in water tends to make them wrinkle in the same way as hair curls when wet. The need for pressing arose.It is not known when exactly people started to press clothes smooth to remove wrinkles. The Chinese were using hot metal for ironing long before anyone else, using open pans filled with coals as early as the first century B.C. Northern Europe was using unheated stones, glass and wood for smoothing until trade with China in the 12th century introduced the idea of using heat to iron clothes. European blacksmiths started forging simple irons (flat irons) in the Middle Ages.Ironing is the use of a heated tool (an iron) to remove wrinkles from fabric. The heating is commonly done to a temperature of 355-428 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on the fabric. Ironing works by loosening the bonds between the long-chain polymer molecules in the fibers of the material. While the molecules are hot, the fibers are straightened by the weight of the iron, and they hold their new shape as they cool. Some fabrics, such as cotton, require the addition of water to loosen the intermolecular bonds. Many modern fabrics (developed in or after the mid-twentieth century) are advertised as needing

little or no ironing. Permanent press clothing was developed to reduce the ironing necessary by combining wrinkle-resistant polyester with cotton. In America it became traditional that Monday was washing day and Tuesday was ironing day. Woven throughout the entire history of irons are two important issues, mainly how to heat the iron and at the same time how to keep the handle cool to the hand. The variety of solutions and designs is one aspect of irons that I find most interesting.

The “Potts” Iron

Flat or Sad Irons


Electric Irons

Box and Fuel Irons

Toy Iron

extremely popular. At the height of sad iron production, just one manufacturer, Dover, was machining 4,000 iron bases per day!

Box and Fuel IronsBox irons were hollow, hence the name, and a source of heat was placed into them. There were charcoal irons which were heated

by placing still burning coals or charcoal into the iron itself. Charcoal irons produced a lot of smoke, so some actually had little chimneys to carry the smoke away. Other box irons were heated by placing a heated metal slug into the iron thus eliminating the smoke. Fuel irons were heated by gasoline, kerosene, alcohol, whale oil, and natural gas or carbide-acetylene gas, with the burner actually inside the iron, and in the case of the liquid fuel irons, a fuel tank in the front or back of the iron. They were around in the early 1900s. The most commonly seen

of those was the blue enamel Coleman (think camping stoves and lanterns) gasoline iron.

Electric IronsIn 1882 Henry W. Seely of New York City patented the electric iron; it was called the electric flat iron. Early electric irons used an electric arc to produce heat. This was not very safe and in 1892 irons using electrical resistance were introduced and these are essentially the type that we still use today. During the early 1950s, electric steam irons were introduced. As mentioned previously, certain fabrics such as cotton require water in addition to heat for efficient pressing.When electric irons were first introduced in the late 1800s most regions of the United States did not have electricity, and those that did had it on only at night for lighting. Earl Richardson in Ontario, Canada, was the first

to convince the local electric company to run electricity during the day on Tuesdays, ironing days. Most of rural America was not electrified until the 1930’s , so sad irons were still well in use into the 1950’s. Wagner Farm most likely had sad irons in use in the 1920s.

Specialty IronsIn earlier times, ironing was such an important skill for a woman to have, that little girls were given miniature sad irons as gifts. They would use them to iron small items or doll clothes right alongside Mom on Tuesdays. These toy irons were typically under four inches long.Tailor irons, meant to be used commercially by a tailor and not the housewife were much heavier, weighing up to 20-22 pounds. The added heft helped to contain the heat longer.Other specialty irons of all kinds were used for making ruffles (fluters), ironing sleeves, hats and more.


Photo by thefloridianinspector.com

ROASTING CHESTNUTS

ALL ABOUT

“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...”

You’ve all heard the song, especially recently since the holiday season just ended,

but have you ever actually eaten or prepared chestnuts? Many people nowadays have not.

I was in my twenties before I roasted and tasted a chestnut for the first time. You might be interested to learn, however, that they were once a staple of the American diet.

Written by Patrick FoxVolunteer


Chestnuts are native to many places throughout the Northern Hemisphere including Asia, Europe, and North America. They were an important food source in southern Europe throughout ancient and medieval times, and to this day they are present in regional dishes in countries such as Italy, Spain, and France. Chestnuts are often ground into flour to make bread in some European nations. Native Americans relied on chestnuts as well. The first Europeans to arrive in North America used the straight-grained wood from the trees for construction and fuel and the

tannins from the chestnuts themselves for making leather; of course, they also ate the chestnuts.The forests of the eastern half of the United States were once covered with chestnut trees, which are believed to have made up a quarter of all the trees in those woods. Unfortunately, a disease known as chestnut blight was unintentionally brought to this country via Asian chestnut trees in the late nineteenth century. The epidemic ravaged the American chestnut population to the point where there weren’t many trees left, and people could no longer rely on them as a staple. American diets adjusted to be less inclusive of chestnuts during the 20th century, but today they are making a comeback.Interestingly, chestnuts are not actually nuts. They have a much higher water content (about 50%) and are high

Below photo by icinganddicing.comRight photo by msucares.com


Photo by gourmet.com

in carbohydrates (especially starch), whereas nuts generally are dry and high in fats. Chestnuts have a much shorter shelf-life (about a week, two at most) than nuts because of their moisture but aren’t a threat to those with tree-nut allergies. On top of that, chestnuts are a good source of vitamin C, potassium, and protein. They have no cholesterol, no oil, and best of all, they’re gluten-free!To prepare roasted chestnuts on your own, find the flat side of the shell, and use a boning knife to cut a cross in it. This is so the nut won’t explode, because between the edible nut and the shell there’s a layer of air which will expand when heated; that’s why chestnuts “pop” when roasted if you don’t cut them open first. Put the chestnuts cross-side up on a cookie sheet and bake them in the oven at about 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 to 30 minutes.

When they’re done, the section with the cross will be peeled back. While the chestnuts are still hot, tear off the shell and the skin that covers the edible part; the warmer they are, the easier it will be to remove the brown skin from the golden heart. If they’re becoming hard to peel, put them back in the oven to reheat them. Don’t handle the chestnuts if they’re too hot, but don’t let them cool too much or you won’t be able to open them. Also, don’t use gloves or anything like that, because you will need your fingers to pry pieces of the skin out of wrinkles in the nut.Chestnuts have a chewy texture and nutty flavor, in my opinion. They taste like a baked potato but slightly sweeter. Now go buy some chestnuts and discover why they are praised in so many Christmas carols!


JOIN US FOR NORTHSHORE

BACONFESTTickets go on sale March 16


Documents

Wagner Tales Winter 2015