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Washington Women’s Heritage Project records, 1900-2000 
University of Washington Libraries Special Collections 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn 
December 11, 1980 
Cassette 1, Side 2 
 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  00:01 
Jeanne Biehn, interviewed by Susan Ehlers for Washington Women's Heritage Project, 
December 12-- excuse me, December 11, 1980. Tape one, side two. " 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  00:15 
Okay, that was your aunt, would have been--  
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  00:19 
Yeah. My mother's older sister. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  00:22 
--went into the convent mainly for security rather than any religious feeling. 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  00:28 
Because education there, again, was not one of their longsuits, and she just was really not skilled 
in any particular job or opportunity. When my mo-- 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  00:42 
Did she feel that there was more of an educational opportunity in the convent? 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  00:45 
Mm-hmm. Though she-- and to the best of my knowledge, she never pursued it. She chose more 
to doing Belgian laces and all the things that Belgium is known for. I have some Belgian laces 
that -- I'll be happy to show you -- that she did do while in the convent. It's exquisite work. But 
no, she chose-- I think by the time-- let's see. Mother was-- I think she was older than mother 
probably by three or four years, so that by the time the decision came, she felt she probably was 
beyond the stage of being educated, and she was very, very good with her hands.  
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  01:32 
So do you know approximately what year both sides of the family-- one side or the other of the 
family came to this--? 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  01:39 
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Mother was 14-15, in that age group, when she came to this country. And so my aunt probably 
then was three or four years older, and then at that time, went into the convent. And I remember 
Mother telling me that my aunt would probably never have gone on to school, but would rather 
work with their hands. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  02:04 
Anyhow, back to the question about you don't know of any particular reason, like a war or 
bankruptcy or anything why the families [crosstalk]? 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  02:13 
No. Well, the war, actually, the First World War, as my mother told us about it in the stories she 
had to tell, left a very bitter taste in in the Belgian people's mouth. And not-- and as I recall, 
when the Germans went through Belgium, they were reasonable in their demands, and were not 
brutal or anything like that. But when they retreated, it was a whole different story.  
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  02:38 
When the Allies were pushing them back?  
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  02:45 
Yes, when the Allies came in and pushed them back, then they just devastated anything in their 
wake, and to the point-- I think that might have been an influencing factor on my grandparents, 
because mother remembers going back to the house and there was nothing left inside. I mean, it 
was just demolished. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  03:14 
So they were refugees for a while, [?they'd?] gone to [?then get out of the way?]? 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  03:19 
I-- well, yes, they had to go. And where they stayed was just wherever they could stay. And that, 
at the time-- that was-- that-- it was at that time that my grandmother was caught smuggling food 
for her family. She had an interesting dress that had all pockets in the hem, and it was the same 
time that my un-- well, they actually came and took my grandmother and my uncle at the same 
time. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  03:59 
They were both in the prison camp for about six months? 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  04:00 
No, my grandmother was released after about a month, three weeks to a month, because she said 
it was just imperative that she get home, and she couldn't speak anything but Belgian, and so 
they couldn't get anything out of her. And they didn't understand Belgian, she didn't understand 
German, and for three weeks to a month, there was a total impasse. Rather than fool with her, 
they let her go.  
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  04:19 
Okay. I was wondering if she was-- wound up being let go because the war ended, or [inaudible].  
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Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  04:26 
No, I think it was just a lack of communication. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  04:38 
Let's see. Back to Minnesota. On your schooling, this Normal Catholic Grade School, was it run 
by nuns?  
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  04:51 
Oh, yes. Order of Saint Joseph. The beads, the white, the whole shot.  
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  04:57 
You had church every day?  
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  05:01 
Oh, you bet. Confessional once a week. The whole bit. And it was a one-room schoolhouse, it 
housed all eight grades. Two grades to every room. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  05:12 
Do you know how-- approximately how many kids were all together in the...?  
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  05:17 
Oh, I would say there probably were about 20 in first grade, 20 in second. Forty children to a 
room. And one nun handled both classes. While she worked with one, the other was-- like, when 
she worked with the first grade, the second grade studied, and so on. And it was interesting 
because I can re-- oh, I can remember that schoolhouse like it was yesterday. It had a huge, thick 
door. The door must have been a foot. It was just huge. And this cute little old janitor used to 
hold the door open when we went in. And first and second grade were on the left hand side, and 
third and fourth were on the right hand side. There were just two rooms and then a very small, 
narrow library. And then you really had reached it when you got to fifth and sixth because you 
went upstairs, and then seventh and eighth was really... That was the epitome, because that was 
the far right hand room in this brick, red brick schoolhouse.  
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  06:29 
What was with the door so thick? [Inaudible] [laughs]. 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  06:31 
I have no idea whether it was-- I-- today, that door would be worth a small fortune. It had to be a 
foot thick, because none of us could keep it open. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  06:42 
Was there a regular public grade school?  
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  06:45 
No. The public grade school that-- this was interesting, because my mother, being a devout 
Catholic, was also on the school board of the public school, and it was a one-room school. And I 
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would-- I don't think they had more than six or seven students for the entire eight grades, and it 
was just a pot-bellied one-room school. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  07:12 
Okay, so there were more kids in the parochial school than in the [inaudible]? 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  07:16 
Well, Belgium is predominantly Catholic. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  07:18 
Yeah, I see. 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  07:18 
Yeah, so that... I don't think there were five or six -- at the most -- public school students. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  07:25 
I see. Did you mix very much with the [inaudible]? 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  07:31 
We had to. There weren't-- we were it. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  07:34 
But I mean, with the few that weren't [inaudible]? 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  07:37 
Oh yeah, oh yeah. Though we were told, "Through sheer luck, they'd get to heaven too," because 
they weren't Catholic [laughs]. But, oh, yes. I mean, in this small town, we had no television. 
We-- our summers were spent riding horseback, playing kick the can, and lots and lots of the 
farmers came to town on their horses, and so across the one street that ran through town, across 
the street from... The stores and everything were on one side-- on this side of the street, and the 
road, and then across the railroad tracks, or between the stores, the road, and the railroad tracks, 
were these big rods that horses-- or poles, horizontal poles that the farmers would tie their horses 
up. And we used to do our gymnastics, so to speak, on these things. And then, of course, the 
railroad tracks and the granaries that the farmers brought grain in to. So we were on-- and in the 
winter, we walked to school. The nuns who ran it lived right there in the convent, so that school 
was never shut down for snow, because we didn't have any other transportation other than 
walking to school, and the nuns just skipped over the snow bank, and so school carried on. And 
in the winter, my father was not only the butcher, he also slaughtered cows for the farming-- 
farmers around there. It was a very, very rich farming community. Rich, I say, in soil and what 
they produced. And my dad went out and slaughtered their cows for $3. And then would-- 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  09:10 
He went out to the person's farm? 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  09:11 
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He went out to the farm. I used to go with him. And it just used to break my heart see these 
beautiful animals just conked on the head and then bled and/or shot and then bled. And, yeah, for 
$3 he went and did this, hauled it back to the store, and aged it for about two and a half weeks. 
Today, when someone says they age meat, they think it's a really sensational thing to do. Well, 
my father wouldn't cut it without aging it. I think if you go back to all of these things, French 
cooking, Belgian cooking, anything, they knew how to cook. And in the wintertime, back to the 
[?original for hobbies?], my father was the fire chief. And ironically, they would take half of a 
city block and put two-by-fours up and flood it, and we had an ice skating rink, instant ice 
skating rink. We built-- 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  10:20 
Well [?would?] the fire department did that?  
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  10:22 
Sure. Well, it helped to know the fire chief, and that was my father, and it was a local fire 
department, and it was all volunteer. We didn't have fires, because the houses didn't have 
fireplaces. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  10:37 
Oh, what did they use for heating? 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  10:39 
Just a big coal furnace. I mean, the-- though, I think the pri-- the local priest had a fireplace. But, 
and they own-- and they all had these, you know, the potbelly stove, again, somewhere in their 
kitchen, or... The fireplaces were a real luxury, because these people really came to this country 
with clothes they had on their back. Coming from Belgium, they had used everything they could 
for the transportation over here. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  11:12 
Remember the kind of house that you lived in, what it was like? 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  11:16 
Very, very simple wood structure, absolutely no frills. There again, I think-- 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  11:26 
Two-story, or...? 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  11:28 
Yes, oh yes, and did not heat the upstairs. Ever colder than a billy goat up there. And Mother, in 
addition to being cold, believed in fresh air. Oh, it was so cold up there like this. And then we 
would race downstairs, because I can remember, we had a big stove in the kitchen that she put 
wood into to cook on, and that was always toasty warm by the time we got down [?in the 
morning?]. Yeah, it was a very, very simple structure.  
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  12:01 
Did you share a room with--?  
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Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  12:03 
With my sister.  
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  12:03 
Sister, and your brother had his own room? 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  12:06 
And my brother had his own room. And then Mother and Daddy had the bedroom downstairs. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  12:16 
Would you say the place was very artfully decorated— 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  12:18 
No. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  12:18 
--with a lot of lace, or frills, or anything like that?  
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  12:21 
Oh, yes. Oh, you couldn't put a dime down anywhere. Mother had d-- Mother did excellent, 
beautiful, beautiful, cutwork. And she would have runners on all the chiffoniers and the dressers, 
and you didn't put-- well, number one, a coffee table that didn't have 84 doilies. Number one, you 
were going to ruin the top of the table because the elements would get to it, and beside, these 
were really works of art. And... 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  12:45 
Cutwork is the cloth is cut out, and then...?  
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  12:54 
No, the cloth is embroidered with silk thread and then cut out.  
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  12:59 
Oh, [inaudible]. 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  13:01 
Yeah. And then my grandmother was always whipping up these little, oh doilies and pot holders, 
and they crocheted and knitted. And it was just... They would be talking as I'm talking to you and 
be doing something. There was never a-- mother didn't waste breath, even. I mean, they were just 
very, very frugal people. Having been through a war and then using all of their savings to come 
to this country and then literally starting over, had to be a, really, a task. I don't think today any 
one of us realizes the magnitude of it. And I can remember just vaguely the Depression of the '28 
,'29, '30 era, because I can remember my parents bought the bank building after the banks 
crashed, and I can remember with my wagon moving cans of groceries to the new store. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  14:12 
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So they turned the bank building into a store?  
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  14:17 
My father bought the big brick building that was once the bank, and we were just thought we'd 
had it made. We bought the bank building. Never did find a dime in there. So that really was a 
depression. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  14:25 
This was, you mean, your little red wagon, or whatever, that you helped with the moving? 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  14:33 
I can remember that like it was yesterday.  
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  14:35 
You don't have any idea how old you were?  
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  14:37 
Well, the cra-- I was born in '28, and I think it really hit like '30, '31. So I can-- I must have been 
four or five, but I can remember. It was downhill. And my dad said, "Will you just take this 
down to your mother?" And he would put, I don't know, maybe, 10 cans of tomatoes in my red 
wagon and I just thought this was keen, and I went down and gave them to my mom. Yeah. That 
was-- and then from there, he remodeled it and put in-- this is, of course, again, it's before the 
days of home freezers. And...  
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  15:02 
But he did have some sort of cooler or freezer for the beef? 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  15:12 
Oh, he hung it in a room that aged it, and then had a walk in cooler. Yes, they went. Oh, I shall 
never forget this, because that was one of... My mother did not believe in banks. She really, truly 
did not, so she always had a coffee tin in her kitchen that she had cash in. Maybe it was to pay 
bills. I don't know. I also remember this can that mother had in the kitchen, because I'm sure it 
also had to do with income tax and and the whole bit. But that can of cold cash got them through 
the Depression. And I can remember a conversation that my father had when he came back with 
my-- to tell my mother he had bought this building and it was going to need some remodeling to 
make the vault into a cold storage locker. And he had paid $4,000 for this building and mother 
cried and said, "We will never, ever pay it off."  
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  16:30 
Well, did they ever get [inaudible]? [Laughs.] 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  16:33 
Oh, of course. Mother had her coffee can going, you know, because she believed that that was 
the way to do it. So that's how you saved money. You did not put money in a bank.  
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  16:42 
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And she didn't believe in taking on mortgages or anything like that, too?  
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  16:46 
Oh, my god, you did not buy anything you couldn't lay out cash for. And that-- I remember that 
so vividly because it was the first time I'd really seen my mother cry, and she said, "Oh, John, 
what have you done? We will never pay this off." It was just like a big noose. [Coughs] Excuse 
me. In those days, $4,000 was a lot of money. It still is. Doesn't mean as much, but it still is a lot 
of money. And they did pay it off. And I haven't-- I must ask mother someday, eventually, what 
they did sell that building for. And it's still there today.  
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  17:30 
Who did the bookkeeping? [Crosstalk.]  
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  17:32 
My father, in and out. That's all it was. What he took in today and what he paid out. There was 
no complicated bookkeeping system.  
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  17:49 
I see. Do you know if he had any particular disputes or whatever with his customers because they 
couldn't pay on account of the Depression? 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  17:57 
Oh, no, no, no, no. They, in this town, it was, I guess, a kind of an Indian barter thing. No one 
went hungry. As I think of it now in-- even just in this interview, it was kind of like the Mormon 
church. Farmers came in and needed things that they didn't have, that they couldn't [inaudible]. 
Every farmer had a tremendous garden, and the farm women, in addition to feeding chickens and 
plucking eggs and selling them to the grocery store, as my father bought these things, he would 
then, in turn, give them, like, crackers, and... They didn't buy cookies and they didn't buy cakes. 
They made all this. And so that-- I-- this one man who had a ton of kids used to say... Just had-- 
and we had a shelf box thing with little slots. And everybody had-- there was very little cash 
exchange, as I recall. Everybody had a charge account. It was kind of like a charge account today 
with no [inaudible]. And they'd come in and buy. They made their own butter, they made their 
own bread, they had their meat, they canned all their vegetables. It was like crackers or fruit, lots 
of this sort of thing. So this is-- the store necessarily did not need to be big, and it wasn't large, 
because they didn't need that much. Paper things, you know, toilet tissue, paper towels. They 
didn't use paper towels. Who [inaudible] paper towels? Everybody had tea towels, as they were 
[?called?]. But it was sort of a barter exchange. If Daddy needed meat for the store to sell the 
town people who didn't grow all these things, so they grew-- but just the carpenters and the man 
in the garage, and it was a small, small town. I never saw a great deal of money passing. Daddy 
also, in addition to having the butcher shop and slaughtering all these cows, had his own 
smokehouse. He cured their hams. He cured their bacon. They wasted nothing. My dad sold the 
hides from the skin, the skin from the cattle, to a Jewish man in Marshall, Werner. Ben-- good 
old Ben Werner.  
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  20:30 
There was one Jewish family?  
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Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  20:33 
Yes, and nobody-- none of the Catholic girls were allowed to go out with a Werner boy. Wiener, 
Werner, I forget. Wiener, I think. I don't know. Then... so there was really not a lot of cash 
passed back and forth. It was sort of a "I'll give you a pig and we'll wipe the slate clean," "All 
right, John, fine." And it was all-- after my father died, for example, and as the years progressed 
and he got very successful -- and with a frugal, frugal wife as my mother was -- my dad was 
becoming more and more successful. He was loaning money to people who were having trouble 
[inaudible]. Like, I can remember tornadoes going through Minnesota, cyclones, and just wiping 
farmers out. And in order to rebuild, everybody gave the guy some money. And so when my 
father died, Mother said-- I said, "Does he have a will?" Well, "No, we just never got around to 
this," or thing. But they gave me this box that was sort of like an apple crate, and in here were all 
these papers and notes, and it was my task to go through this with a fellow I'd gone through high 
school with who was then the local town attorney. And I said to mother, "Well, here's a note 
from so and so about $2,000 or $3,000 worth." "Oh," she said, "he paid that off long." They 
never bothered. None of this was recorded. It was a "man of your word" type thing. Was an 
interesting background. I didn't think so at the time. Now I do. I think-- I find it fascinating.  
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  22:19 
Okay, one-- on your house, did it have electricity and indoor plumbing?  
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  22:24 
Oh, yeah, we weren't that far out of it. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  22:27 
[Crosstalk.]  
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  22:27 
But downstairs was not a rec room. That's where we-- that's where-- ladies would bring Mother 
canned goods. I mean, Mother obviously didn't have time to can -- or preserve, I guess, is what 
they call it -- this sort of thing, because she was busy with Daddy in the store. And so they would 
bring her these things and she would scratch it off the books. There were really two bookkeepers. 
Daddy would write it down, Mother would scratch it off, for one reason or another. The one-- 
another lady who -- and being devout Catholics, all had large families -- who needed food for her 
children -- and he was sort of a jack of all trades -- was the town seamstress. She made all our 
clothes, my sisters' and mine. Mostly, well, until I got to the point where I didn't appreciate them 
and thought they were really kind of [?yorky?], that I had to have these things that this lady made 
and everybody else was going to JCPenney and buying beautiful clothes. And she-- this woman 
was absolutely incredible, because she never used a pattern. She just looked at you and just 
whacked out a piece and sewed it and it fit. And it was-- and as I recall, and I remember this very 
clearly, when I was in college, I could send her a picture and my measurements and she would 
send me back the formal and it was absolutely incredible. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  24:01 
When did you start working in your father's store? 
 
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Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  24:04 
From the time I could see over the counter. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  24:06 
Seven, eight years old, [?do you think?]? 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  24:10 
We had chores and jobs to do, like polish apples. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  24:19 
Besides that, did you help around the house [crosstalk]? 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  24:22 
No, my sister was supposed to do that, but she was really not too talented in that direction, either. 
But no, I worked in the store because I enjoyed the people and they enjoyed me, and I enjoyed 
being with my father, and he was at the store all the time, where my mother was there when 
needed. But I loved it. I really, truly did, and I worked there... it was just-- it was an unwritten 
law. I came home from school and went to work in the store. They had the cookies. Cookies 
didn't come packaged. You bought a box of cookies. And they had a little glass doors on these 
little bins and those glass doors-- the store was immaculate, because like the Flemish and the 
Dutch and the Belgian always were very, very clean. Everything was just slick. Those windows 
had to be washed, I swore, every day, but it wasn't that often, I'm sure. And it was polishing the 
apples and whatever needed help. And then, as I grew up, I wrapped for my father.  
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  25:36 
What, wrapped meat, is it?  
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  25:38 
Yeah, for the lockers, because it was a quick freeze where he would go out for-- all right, for the 
record, he would go out and slaughter the cow, bring it back, age it for two weeks, maybe a little 
more, depending upon the size, then he would have to cut it and put it in the [?sharp?] freeze, and 
from the [?sharp?] freeze, it would have to be put in each man's individual locker. And so it used 
to be a great game to throw the meat to Daddy from the [?sharp?] freeze. And we would stand-- 
[laughs] pitch these things back and forth at one another and just had a wonderful time doing 
this. And then, in the meantime, he was curing the hide and curing-- if it was a pig, he was 
getting the hams and the bacon into brine and then into the smokehouse. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  26:29 
[Inaudible] the Jewish man to whom he sold the hide, so, was the man a cobbler, or would he just 
sold hide-- sold the hides to somebody else or a tanner? 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  26:41 
I think he sold them to a tanner. He was kind of a local junk man. You know, you didn't-- 
nothing with thrown away and you just took it to Wiener/Werner. I can't-- I think it was Wiener. 
And he bought anything. And the hides, I can remember putting rock salt on these hides and 
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thinking, "What an awful smell." And they were kept in sort of a shed for maybe whenever 
Daddy would go to the store or to them to Marshall, from Ghent to Marshall to take [inaudible]. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  27:15 
You mentioned JCPenney. Was that store in Marshall? Or was it--? 
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  27:20 
Mm-hmm, it was in Marshall. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  27:22 
It was big enough to have at least one.  
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  27:24 
Mm-hmm, JCPenney, mm-hmm.  
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  27:30 
You mentioned a lot of the games you played as the kid. It was pretty much, you might say, all-
American type thing? There wasn't anything [crosstalk]?  
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  27:40 
Oh, the big attraction during the summer was they-- the local Chamber of Commerce -- again, 
my father was one of the staunch members of the local Chamber -- from the movie theater in 
Marshall, they would bring an evening thing and show it up on the lumber yard wall for all the 
kids. And you took your blanket and popcorn and apples and you went and watched the movie 
on the wall of the lumber yard. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  28:10 
They took the projector and [crosstalk]?  
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  28:11 
Oh yeah, the whole shot, brought it right out once a week. And it was a big night. Everybody 
came in to see the movie. It was pretty much a Western, but, you know, for those people who 
didn't get to Marshall that often, it was really a treat. 
 
Susan Lynn Ehlers  28:29 
Could you kind of describe what might have been a usual day for you when you were, oh, 
somewhere between the first and eighth grade?  
 
Jeanne Ellen Vercoutere Biehn  28:38 
Okay, let's hit around five or six. Usually, they pretty much started off early in the morning, and 
always the hot cereal, had to start something warm-- in the morning off with something hot. And 
my parents were early risers, and then I, normal routine, and went to school, came home for 
lunch, back to school, and then back to the store. Oh, and I also delivered for my father on my 
bicycle. I had a bicycle with a basket. It was pretty much-- every day was pretty much the same 
while I was in school and working in the store. And my father played poker every Tuesday and 
Friday night. Mother did needlework at night, and we listened to the radio. That was a big thing. 
Page 12 of 12 
 
I had lots of homework. Pretty much from, I would say, from Monday through Friday, it was 
pretty much a routine day, going to school, working, and cleaning up with the dishes and so 
forth. And the store was open till 7:00 every night. Then weekends, Saturday afternoon, when 
things were slow, my father was a great sport, and I listened to baseball, football, whatever 
happened to be on, because we didn't have television. And then Sunday was a day of visiting. 
Everybody got up and went to church, and Daddy kept the store home until noon. Not so much -- 
and against the preaching of the Catholic Church, you did nothing on Sunday [laughs] -- not so 
much as to sell things, but more of a convenience to all the farmers who came in to go to church 
to get meat for the following week out of their lockers. 
 