Alma, in her own words: Stories handed down by my grandmother, Alma Rafert Welp

 I didn't mean to wait so long to write again, and actually I'm leaving the writing for this entry to my grandmother.  The following narrative was woven together from various stories she told me, allowed to record, or that she wrote down for others to read.  Every time I read it, I can hear her telling me the stories.  She passed away just a couple months shy of her 96th birthday and her mind was always sharp.  One of the last times I visited her she told me that I was the only one who knew the people she talked about anymore.  Of course most of them I only knew through her words....

"I was born on East Merrill Street in the same house where my father was born. My parents, Edward Rafert and Elizabeth Otto, met at a yearly picnic given by the Lutheran Orphan’s Home on East Washington Street in Indianapolis.  They married in 1894 and for less than a year they lived on Spann Street.  Then my grandmother Rafert became seriously ill with liver cancer.  Pop and Mom moved to the Rafert homestead on Merrill Street to care for Grandma. The home had been Pop’s birthplace and here he lived almost his entire life.  Here his brothers and sisters were born and grew up and here also his children were born and grew up.

We lived close to Eli Lilly Company, and many people walked past our house to work.  It was always a fun time watching them.  There was a large brewery in our neighborhood and their wagons were drawn by the most beautiful horses.  I’ll never forget them.  The horse drawn fire engines were a wonderful sight to see, how those horses could run!  Evenings were quiet.  We could use Alabama and Merrill streets as there wasn’t any traffic at night, no cars.  Our long back yard had one side where grass never had a chance to grow.  It was the neighborhood baseball field and it was really used.

Pop loved his family devotedly, and was proud of his six children.  My father was of a quiet nature, he always seemed content.  He liked people, but did not enjoy visiting people.  He was a foreman at Diamond Chain Works on the second floor and was highly respected by his workers.  I remember when he came home from work; Carl and I could go as far as the second alley, but not to Delaware Street.  We’d meet Dad and take turns carrying his leather dinner bucket.  After supper while Mom did dishes, my Dad would often take me along while he got a beer at the saloon.  Some of the other kids came too.  He would have a glass of beer and talk to his chums and we’d be back by the time Mom had the dishes done.  He never stayed long.  I also remember Dad standing in the

front yard at the gatepost watching us play at night.  We neighborhood kids would play at the corner under the streetlight..  At night I’d sit on the side of Dad’s arm chair while he read the newspaper.  While sitting there I’d wind my hair ribbon around the arm of the chair, pin it with a pin and the next morning it would be smooth again.

            Dad liked to go fishing and there were times when he would rent a horse drawn surrey to take the family for an outing into the woods.  When the twins were born upstairs, Dad took Carl and me to see them.  He was so proud and happy.  When we came to the stairs he said I could slide down and he held Carl and slid him down.  We were never allowed to do that.

            I can also remember some serious scoldings we received, but always with an explanation.  You had to look Pop into the eye when he was scolding you.  Pop gave me a stern lesson on telling lies after I had climbed out on the roof of our porch from upstairs on a rainy day to get our rubber ball out of the gutter.  Walt made me go and get it as he held my legs.  Our neighbor, Mrs. Redding, saw me and came over and told Mom.  We were always corrected or spanked by Mom, but this time she told Pop.  He was so kind.  He got on his knee and made me look him straight in the eye.  Then he said “You better tell the truth”.  I did but I never told him that Walt made me do it.  He then impressed on me how I could have fallen.  All my life if I wanted to lie, I could see my Dad’s eyes looking straight into mine.

            Pop died when I was seven years old.  At age 39 he had an attack of the grippe or flu, as we would call it now.  He returned to work too soon and contracted pneumonia.  A week later, January 15^th 1908, he died, despite efforts of a doctor and a private nurse who were called in.  I well remember our goodbye to our Dad the night before his death.  He was well aware of his condition and wanted to see and speak to all of the children.  The twins were not quite two years old.  I remember distinctly the funeral service and Miss Weiss singing “Harre, meine Seele” (Wait my Soul and Tarry).

My dear mother, we called her Mom, was the sweetest, most understanding person one could find.  She was of a quiet, retiring nature.  Everyone loved her.  Mom had four sisters and four brothers.  There were many serious sicknesses in our family, but Mom nursed them all.  Her sisters teased her by saying “Liz won’t come to visit us, but just get sick and Liz will be there to help.”  I also remember Grandma Otto, she died when I was four.  I didn’t know any of my other grandparents.  Grandma Otto had had thirteen children and raised nine of them.  I still remember her house on Oriental Street.  How Mom raised six children after Pop’s death has always been a marvel to all of us.  I know she prayed a

lot.  How well I remember her scrubbing the kitchen floor on her knees; and many a time, I know, it wasn’t sweat dropping from her face.  She never admitted any tears to us children.  Each week my mother visited Pop’s grave, and that was a very long walk.  We went with her.  After Pop’s death we were poor, but contentment and love was in plenty at our house. 

            Our Aunt Em Rafert, Dad’s sister, always lived with us.  She never married and had the third room upstairs.  She worked in a laundry on a shirt collar ironer.  Every week we children each got a dime from her, which meant a lot as a ice cream was five cents then.  Walt said Mrs. Mirbach filled them with a spoon and if he’d talk to her she’d keep on filling it.  Every doll I ever had, she gave to me, as Mom had no money.  Em also gave me material for a Christmas dress, otherwise we wore other peoples dresses after Dad died.  She often took us for walks to Garfield Park and to some shows as the cinemas were just starting.  We had a long walk; no one had cars in those days.  She would also take us to Aunt Bena’s, another of Dad’s sisters, who lived near Garfield Park.  There we sometimes took a streetcar for five cents a person.  We usually walked but Em would be so tired from work.  She also took us to Riverside Park and Fairview Park which were far to the north side of Indianapolis.

            Two of Mom’s brothers came to live with us.  Their board money helped a lot to buy food, etc.  Al was a bricklayer and had little work in winter.  Sometimes he’d come home a bit tipsy, but was always in a wonderful humor.  He was good to us.  Art worked at a furniture store.  He was a very quiet fellow.  At age 19 he got pneumonia and died in our house.

Mom borrowed the coal money from Uncle Charlie Otto and paid him back in the summer time.  Walt and I walked at least four miles to get milk, buttermilk, and butter from a country lady who brought Uncle Charlie butter and milk.  It was good, but a hard way to carry milk and buttermilk.  I soon gave out, but Walt kept going.  Uncle Al Rafert also lived in Indianapolis; he worked in the carpet department in a big store.  He and Aunt Annie often came to our house.

            At times Uncle Billy Rafert came to visit a few days from San Diego.  He was so handsome, but he had an injury in his leg from the war and needed a cane.  He would take Edna and me to show downtown and treated us like queens.  Such a gentleman!  He always sent a check for $100 to Mom and she’d use it to pay Uncle Charlie Otto for the coal.   When he died he left some money to my Aunt Em and a bit to Mom.

            Aunt Bena was Dad’s sister and I often stayed with her in the summer.  She only had one girl, Clara who later lived in Fort Wayne, IN.  Aunt Bena gave me a lot of silverware and also Christ’s picture.  She was so very stout and she’d come from town by street car.  She loved the twins and wanted them to sit on her lap, but then she’d laugh because she couldn’t get them on her knees.

We all gave Mom our salary until we were 21 years old; I got to keep 50 cents a week from my pay.  My sister Edna began working in Uncle Doc’s grocery store on Saturdays when she was 12.  At age 14 she went to work for a milliner.  Edna did not go to High School, but later went and took a business course.  All the boys had paper routes; they took the papers on their bicycles.  Walt went to High School for two weeks but then had a nervous breakdown, we found out later it was St. Vitus Dance, and was sick for a year.  It was terrible, we couldn’t get the medicine down without shaking him and he would spit it out.  Finally in the spring he would lie in a hammock and I would read him the papers every day.  He especially wanted to hear about the sports items.  He finally recovered and got a job at Sentinel Printing Company.   Carl was always a steady and reliable boy, I don’t think he every caused any worry.  When he was 14 help was necessary for the production of war material so Carl went to work.  He later became a machinist.  Alfred was a very quiet gifted boy, always reading books or playing baseball.  He finished High School and worked for an insurance company, later becoming an accountant.  Wilfred was a friendly good natured boy, always active in sports and very social.  He finished High School and then attended Concordia College in River Forest, Illinois. 

I remember the Lusitania’s sinking in May 1915.   I read the newspaper to Mom after school as she peeled the potatoes for supper.  It was a terrible tragedy, some 1600 persons killed.  Then we knew the war was coming.  Later Walt and a friend joined the Marines and spent many months in North Carolina for training.  He was aboard ship to go across when the war ended; of course we were glad he did not go across.  The first time it was announced that the war was over was in the middle of the night.  The whistles began blowing and Mom came upstairs to our beds and said “The war must be over”.  Then it was announced the next day that it wasn’t so, the War hadn’t ended.  But a week later the war really did end, I was working at Indiana Dry Goods at the time.  We all left our desks and ran into the streets, no street cars could move because of the crowd.  Such cheering!  It was quite a few months before Walt came home.  Then he was discharged with a heart problem.  He returned to his job at Sentinel Printing Company, but died in 1927, he was 26 and his daughter Jean was just 3 months old.  I’ll never forget my Mother, how she cried in the cemetery at his burial.  Later Louis Schmidt married Walt’s widow Edna and he was a good father to Walt’s two children.

I worked at Indiana Dry Goods for $4.00 a week when I was 16.  I worked from 8am until 6pm and also on Saturdays.  At first I worked in a dark basement marking prices on socks and underwear.  We all sat with our feet off of the floor for fear of rats.  Soon I was promoted upstairs in the office making sales balance with the receipts of the day.  If we were 2cents over or short I had to stay and balance it.  I worked a while and the head lady in the office told us girls, ten of us, that maybe we should look for jobs as the company was going broke.  Then I took a course to learn the Comptometer.  Two weeks before I finished the head lady asked if I’d go to demonstrate the machine the agent was selling to Eli Lilly.  He made the sale and I was asked to stay to help, but I wanted to finish my course first.  Then I began working at Kingans meat packers.  I worked in the statistical department and I liked the work.  It was a long walk to work which was near White River.  My boss was Danish and a fine man.  I worked on the second floor and my account was with their foreign trade which sold immense pounds of meat to nearly every country.  Many nights I worked overtime, but my boss always made a boy who cleaned the office stay with me and to see me home.  Kingans was not in a good neighborhood at all.

It was while I was working at Kingans that I met Harry, it was the summer of 1919.  He was in Seminary in St. Louis, but during the summers he worked in Indianapolis at the Stutz Motor Company.  We didn’t meet until two weeks before he had to go back to St. Louis so we had a date each night.  He practically proposed then already, but students were not allowed to be engaged while at the Seminary.  Letters came often and I now appreciate them so much more since I know how he dreads to write letters.  Harry came back the following summer of 1920 and worked at the Pres-O-Lite Company

.  The following year I attended his Baccalaureate Service held in St. Louis at Holy Cross Lutheran Church.  I went along with Harry to Frohna, Missouri to meet his parents.  On June 26^th 1921 Harry was ordained at Campbell Hill, Illinois, but I couldn’t take off work nor did I have the money to get to the ordination.  I had planned to work a year longer, but after Harry got to Campbell Hill he wanted me to come sooner.  So in October we had a very simple wedding.

The day after our wedding we left by train from Indianapolis to St. Louis and from there by train to Wittenberg, Missouri.  We arrived there at 11pm and Harry had to wake up a driver to take us by horse and buggy from Wittenberg to Frohna; a distance of about seven miles.  Not wishing to wake Harry’s parents when we reached Frohna we climbed into the house through a window, no one heard us.  Harry opened a folding bed which luckily had covers on it.  The next morning his father opened the door, but quickly closed it.  They knew we were coming, but not just when.  After a day or two we traveled by train again to St. Louis and transferred to a train called the “Accommodation” to Campbell Hill.  This train ran from Murphysboro to St. Louis in the morning and back to Murphysboro in the evening.

Arriving at the Campbell Hill Station quite a few curious people had gathered.  No street lights!  The trainman dumped my trunk off in front of us, and I envisioned my cut glass vase in fragments.  But it was ok.  Mom had wrapped it in a blanket.  Mr. Bentfeld was there to meet us on foot with a lantern and flashlight.  We were to spend the days with the Bentfelds until our furniture would arrive.  Mrs. Bentfeld was one of the truest and finest persons that I ever met.  How I admired her straight-forwardness and quiet advice.  For supper that evening we had homemade bread, cheese, peaches, and coffeecake.  Later that evening Louis Bentfeld and Martha went with us to see the parsonage.  With the flashlight and much giggling we went.  No street lights and no sidewalk part of the way.

The coal burning stoves and I didn’t get along well.  At home my brothers took care of the stoves and of carrying in coal buckets.  Edna and I had had other chores.  Often when Harry came from school the fire in the stoves was out or going too hard.  All water had to be carried in from outside and the dirty water taken outside.  Harry made the fire in the school building each morning.  Once a week he had to clean the soot from the long stove pipe that reached across the school room.  So he’d get on the ladder and I tried to keep part of the pipe from falling with a broom which I held against the pipe.  What a mess!

My first Christmas Eve at Campbell Hill was a lonely one.  We went to the program at the church and we had a tree at home.  Coming home from church, Harry immediately had to study his sermon for the next morning.  I sat in the rocker, no gifts; our package from home had not yet arrived.  My gift for Harry was in the package and he had been too busy to get me one.  So I rocked and tried not to think of home and the Rafert family all gathered around the Christmas tree.  Two days later the package came and Harry found time to go get me a box of candy.  The next year we had Phyllis and it was better.

Phyllis was born on October 15^th, 1922 while her Dad was preaching in church.  Her sister Marian followed on August 16^th, 1924.  Marian had beautiful brown eyes like her father and was a happy child with a quiet humor.  Paul was born on March 7^th, 1926; he was such a contented baby and quite active.  Before he was nine months old he was pulling himself up to chairs and standing on his shaky legs.  He became ill suddenly with Secondary Meningitis, a high fever set in and he was soon in a coma.  He lay that way three days when the Lord called him to himself on Dec 18^th, 1926.  The Christmas tree was already in church at his funeral.  Wrapped gifts from Indianapolis had already arrived.  Doris was born in 1927, when small she was satisfied to play alone.  The neighbors remarked how little attention she asked for.  In the late summer of 1929 both Marian and Doris got whooping cough, and it was terrible.  Marian would run to the porch and hang on tight to the post and oh how she coughed!  She was so weak after each attack.  After that she never had the same pep, she was so tired.  On February 1^st, 1930 she contracted bronchial pneumonia; she weakened and died on February 10^th.  Vera was born a few months later; she was so tiny as a child.  She walked at nine months, walking right under the dining room table.  When Vera was two she became desperately sick with Summer Complaint, a dreaded thing at that time.  The doctor came to see her every day.  The fear of losing her so soon after Paul and Marian was almost overwhelming, but God heard our prayers.  Vera had to learn to walk all over again, but after that she was fine.  Ruth was born in 1932, she was a very pretty baby and her sisters loved her so.  She evidently was nervous as she cried so much, in church she just sobbed while the organ was playing.  But I never had to leave church because of her.  When she was three years old the mumps were around and she became desperately sick with a high fever.  The doctor thought mumps just came out on one side and went inside the left ear.  We were afraid of losing her, but on the 10^th day her ear opened with a terrible discharge and then she was fine.  Mom Rafert had made her a bright red spring coat and we all were delighted when we got to take her out, she needed the color.  Tom was born in 1937, all of us were so proud to have a boy.  He was so thin and the girls thought themselves so tall and said Tom would grow up to be a shrimp, but he grew to become a big man.  He caused little trouble when small and played with two imaginary friends Bobey and Docker.  He tinkered around a lot with wheels and wagons and made his own contraptions, they always worked.

My mom died of a heart ailment in 1945.  At one of Mom’s last attacks, the attacks seemed to come the last four Novembers, I told her, “Mom, we need you yet”, she said; “Oh no, you all have your families now and good partners.  Pop and Walt and many others are waiting for me in heaven, and I want to go.”  Pastor Zorn made many house calls.  He prayed with her and read many comforting Bible readings with her.  He said “She (Mom) was one of the most wonderful persons he ever knew.”