Joined:
May 2002
Posts: 3005
Location: Las Cruces, NM | Cliff
Great story and deep condolences, many Russian and Ukranian refugees settled in eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania where I grew up. My aunt married a german, Harry Casbohn, who had a big farm in western Pennsylvania where I spent many months dairy farming in the german way with my cousins. My uncle was very strict, and had no tolerance for laziness, they were very successful and produced a lot of milk, and pork (butchered every year), and grain, and corn, and pickles (there was a pickle plant in Springboro that we delivered cucumbers to in season), and maple syrup each spring. I had to go live with them when my mother was in the hospital for almost a year with TB, and it was something of an adventure as my cousins were in their late teens "batching" on various farms in the area where they would live on the farms in a bachelor cottage and milk cows and farm the lease. It was where I learned to smoke, dip snuff (mostly Copenhagen wintergreen), but not to cuss as they were somewhat religious.
They were entrenched country music fans and had some old guitars laying around that I learned a few chords on. The best thing my aunt had was a wind up Victrola on the porch with stacks of Gene Autry, and other 30's and 40's cowboy singers, that I listened to for hours, cranking and listening, changing steel needles and sharpening the worn needles.
Oh, and last but not least, at every holiday they hosted family get togethers that were, no matter the times good or bad, the epitome of the cliche of presenting a table as a "Groaning Board". In the depths of WWII rationing, we feasted as they had maple sugar (sugar was rationed), plenty of home grown meat (meat was rationed), pies (home grown fruit), scrapple, head cheese, even squirral and quail and venison(I never quite adapted to game). But very little store bought victuals like ice cream, we made ice cream with a freezer.
Good people those Pennsylvania Dutch, and many, many refugees from the Ukraine and Russia lived in that area and prospered in the same traditions.
Bailey |
Tung My Wood
