By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Shopping circa 1886, Rwandan genocide and the Depression were disparate topics brought together by items shared at the Cass County Historical Society's annual show-and-tell meeting Tuesday night at Cass District Library.
Doug Fry, recovered from being stung 63 times by a swarm of bees last November while hanging storm windows at the Newton House, recalled an African client he sponsored into the insurance industry.
Fry well remembers gentle Jerome, fluent in four languages and the son of a school principal and a Seventh-day Adventist minister.
The Tutsi was called home to Africa during the 1994 Hutu ethnic cleansing when 48 family members were slaughtered in one weekend with axes, machetes and pitchforks.
A nephew left for dead was the village's only survivor.
"He had to go back on a couple of occasions because the government – or lack of it – was stealing his land, killing his cattle and the caretaker was murdered. While he was there securing his property, he purchased and presented to me" two wooden carvings – a male figure and a pair of giraffes – Fry "treasures. I feel honored for him to think enough of me to give me such a wonderful gift."
When Fry retired in 2002 the LaGrange Township man and Jerome shared a farewell because his friend returned to Rwanda from Benton Harbor.
"We shed a few tears because I hated to see him go and he hated to go," Fry said, "but he was that kind of individual who would not shirk his responsibilities, even though they were killing everybody and dying of AIDS over there. He felt obligation to his church."
Fry's wife, Marilyn, Historical Society president, added, "He married a Rwandan girl and they had two babies. We miss him. That little nephew who survived was about 10. Jerome brought him over, got him into school and I tutored him Sunday afternoons. We went through one book after another."
Marilyn shared her "kick" of studying the Great Depression. "I was born, but too little to pay any attention," she said. "It fascinated me how people got through. Sunday dinners, my mom said everybody in church divided up into cliques. We took turns going to each other's houses and bringing something. She said it was easier that way. If you had one potato and five people in your family, you cut it up and put it in the stew pot. Nobody felt hungry, poor or neglected. If you lived in the country, you had a better chance of surviving because you had fresh vegetables, chickens and eggs and fresh milk. Nobody in the country felt neglected."
Fry recalled writing to a nostalgia magazine soliciting memories and recipes, from which she reaped a box of 150 letters, including one woman who wrote 12 pages on both sides of notebook paper in pencil.
She asked Fry to return it so she could hand it down to her granddaughter.
"It's the only copy I have and I don't have the strength to do it again," the woman wrote.
Another person sent her a copy of a book, "A Nickel's Worth of Skim Milk," one "boy's view" of the Depression.
County Commissioner John Cureton, then a father of two children, remembered during the Depression "when all we had in the house to eat was some rice. Fortunately for us, we lived next door to my folks. My step-father had a good job, so we weren't in any danger of starving, but things were rough for a lot of people."
He exhibited a Tweety Bird cream pitcher he believes to be from the 1920s or '30s. He obtained it last fall in northwestern Wisconsin.
Iola Holtz brought a Civil War powder cow horn ("I used to have the gun that went with it") that belonged to her husband's neighbor and Edwin White's ledger from the Williamsville store, 1886-1907, in northwestern Porter Township.
"You put the powder in the gun, which had a little flint. It made the powder explode, then the bullet would go," she explained.
According to the store's 1886 price list, a plow cost $4.95; a shotgun, $4; fence roll, $14; cider barrels, $1.50; sock yarn, 50 cents; velveteen, 94 cents for a yard and a half; shoes, $2.50; blankets, two for $4.50; two spools of thread, 10 cents; corset, 25 cents; oil cloth for tables, 39 cents; bluing for laundry, five cents; lamp chimneys, 25 cents; maple sugar, 13 cents per pound; moccasins, 15 cents; neckties, 25 cents; two pairs of overalls, 82 cents; and felt-lined shoes, $1.25; straw hats and suspenders, 18 cents; eggs, 21 cents a dozen; butter, 18 cents a pound; potatoes, 30 cents a bushel; and lard, 9 1/2 cents a pound.
"He paid taxes in 1893 of $20," Holtz related. "He sold a pump for $20. Fence posts – I don't know whether they were iron or wooden, but they were $4. He sold floor oil cloth," which Donna Rodwick explained was made with layers and layers of varnish, like a linoleum rug."
Holtz said White spent $13.61 in 1909 for threshing, paying $1 each to seven men who helped. "My dad didn't have to pay men because they would go to each other's houses and return the favor. Once we had a steam engine threshing machine in the '30s. It was a noisy, smelly thing. Eggs were 21 cents a dozen in 1886, but two years later they were 14 cents. One man cut wood for nine days and got $2.07. He sold a 90-pound beef for $4.50. He got a shave and haircut for 25 cents and he sold some whiskey for 64 cents."
Historians also reviewed Niles store owner H.P. Fletcher's ledger for June 1846 to October 1847. His son married Eva Huff, granddaughter of a Revolutionary War soldier buried in Shurte Cemetery. They owned 160 acres in Wayne Township in 1881.
Rodwick, who enlivened the 2006 show and tell session with a road log unearthed in Porter by sewer construction, shared a 1942 stand-up poster promoting "how to serve better meals and help Uncle Sam – eat more fruits; use more vegetables; and use more milk. All foods, including meat, bread and cereals, are necessary for a balanced diet."
She said the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. distributed the poster on behalf of the national nutrition program of the Office of Defense, Health and Welfare Services, Federal Security Administration.