Subject: Excerpt that includes a letter from Grandpa George Helle to the Walton Boys
MEMORIES BY ETHEL HELLE WALTON
CHAPTER 18
POP
My father was one of a large family of 13 children. His parents were from Germany. Grandma use to tell us stories, though many of the words she would use we couldn't understand. She told us she helped a family care for their children to pay for her passage to this country. Her father was a cabinet maker in Germany, who made coffins. She would deliver the small ones for children carrying these on the top of her head. Grandmother always walked with very straight shoulders. She died when I was 12 or 13, so I did not get to know her well. I never knew my Grandfather. He died before I was born. His family was able to afford to pay for his passage. The Helle family had a brewery in Germany for five hundred years. About fifty years ago it closed. When his father's estate was settled, they sent him several thousand dollars, a lot of money then.
He worked as a cook during the Civil War and finally settled on a farm in Fulton County. I was always told the reason he got the job with the Army was because he knew how to make vinegar. He cooked for the Army in Louisville, Ky.
After settling in Fulton County, he also ran sawmills, which is where Dad got his start. When the head sawyer did not show up for work, Dad took over, although he was just a boy. Grandfather Helle never allowed the children to speak English at home. He was a very strict disciplinarian. This must be why our dad was such a gentle man. He really enjoyed all of us, was so proud of his big family. I can not remember any of us ever being punished by him. I remember Grandmother staying with us; the German women of her day idolized their men. Grandma had only two sons left of her four sons. My dad was very special to her. When she stayed with us, we would thread a package of needles for her every morning before going to school. No one could keep up with the mending in our family. She could sew although her eyes were not good enough to thread the needles. Dad always got her a new package of needles when she came to visit us.
They often talked the German language. After her death he forgot it. He never taught it to any of us. He was very sensitive about being German and the Germans starting World War I, and World War II. Dad's first and last occupation was sawmills. He was such a capable lumber man, he could walk through a woods and estimate the number of board feet in it. He could add long numbers in his head quickly without pencil and paper. Don of course, knew nothing of the timber business when e joined my Dad and Delbert. Dad had a simplified method of figuring up a pile of lumber. He taught this to Don the very first thing.
We had a visitor once who showed Don a long complicated method of figuring lumber. Don was polite to him, but as soon as the man left, don threw his figures and papers in the waste can. It takes an experienced sawyer to tell how to get the most and best lumber from a log. There is now way of telling this until you have the log on the carrier and start cutting the first slab off. This slab is the first piece cut off of a log and contains the bark and enough wood to hold the bark together. Today a machine is used to cut these slabs into small chips. Many uses have been found for these ships since my dad's day. He filed the teeth on his circular saw blade twice every day, sometimes oftener if the saw hit a nail, stone or some hard object. Saw filing takes an expert to do a good job. Today they have separate teeth to put in, but they still require sharpening. Often these large blades would lose their tension. Then Dad would take the blade off, lay it on a flat surface and hammer it with a special hammer until he had the tension back. It took years of experience to accomplish this job well. Delbert was the only one of the boys who learned to do this.
At the turn of the century, Illinois had a @2.00 poll tax assessed on a township basis. Pop lived with his folks, but through the week, worked at his sawmill which was located in an adjacent township, where he stayed in a cabin through the week. One day he found two dogs killing sheep near the mill. This could not be tollerated and the dogs had to be killed. Pop killed the dogs. The owners became violent and charged him with not paying his poll tax in the township where the sawmill was located and he stayed through the week. Pop had paid the tax where he lived with his folks.
The local county court ruled against him. A lawyer friend of his and his family asked him to appeal it to the supreme court. Back in those days, the filing fee was $85.00, and Pop paid this, while the lawyer donated his time and appealed in the Illinois supreme Court. The verdict was reversed. The local county court was reprimanded for showing prejudicial error in judgement, stating that a man's actions in paying poll tax in one township was sufficient evidence as to what he considered his home. As long as the Illinois poll tax law was on the docket, the George Helle case was the law.
One form of entertainment when Dad was a young man was debates. It is said he never lost a debate, and one senator said to him, after losing a debate, "What do you do for a living?" Dad told him he ran a sawmill. The senator then said, "My god, man, quit it and go to school." Pop always told us kids, "Once you lose your temper, you lose your argument." Dad was a great believer in self-education, only having four years of school for himself. His older sisters taught him English in secret. They were not allowed to use it at home.
Pop always had to have his Chicago Tribune which he would read and drop on the floor. Mom scolded him for being messy until one day, in their early days of marriage, Pop was working away from home doing threshing and became very ill. Mom went to care for him and in his delirious fever he was saying "Ida, I'll pick the papers up", over and over. After that she never scolded him for throwing the paper down. He always read his papers with a baby on his lap.
Though Pop discussed politics with the politicians by the hour, he, himself, was no politician. He was too frank, and would often make people angry because of this. My father said the farm is the only place to raise a family, and today looking back, I agree with him, as we all turned out well. During the winters he ran the sawmills, and in the summers the threshing machines and clover hurlers. Actually, he was a machine man, as are most of my brothers. He was skilled in the operation of sawmills and threshing machines, which were powered by steam engines. These engines used coal or wood for fuel and grease on all gear parts. They were very, very dirty. My brothers grew up working on them, starting very early. There were no child labor laws, of course. Laws would not have stopped them anyway, as they just enjoyed working with machinery.
Dad never had cared to work the horses and usually hired a man to do that until the boys ere old enough.. Most of my brothers were just like their father. Just a s Lloyd milked the cow at four, he passed the job down to Royle, and Royle to Joe, and right down the line. Dad quit framing during the depression which followed World War I. Pop played the violin and was a great old time fiddler. He often entered into contests and usually won. It was not unusual to find him sitting in the kitchen in the dark, late at night, just fiddling away for his own enjoyment. Mom played the piano and most of the kids played musical instruments. Family entertainment was music, with those who didn't play enjoying those who did, and all having a good time.
Pop taught us with stories, usually about the Mason kids. He had a Mason story for teaching for every situation we faced. His method of teaching was very effective. I am putting in on of the stories Pop wrote in a letter to my sons in 1936. After studying this letter, I owe my younger brothers an apology. I always blamed them for teaching Ray to greet everyone by threatening to throw them in the river. I should have known this, as he always had one of us doing things like that.
Dad had several older sisters. They all loved him and pampered him. Mom with so many babies did not have this time. After I was married he still loved to have me come home and do things for him. One thing he did when the babies came along, was help get breakfast. He could cook oatmeal or mix up pancake batter as good as anyone. We were never allowed to waste food. We knew the value of it. Dad was a machine man, not a mechanic like his sons. He no doubt would have been, had he grown up on Model T. fords as they did. Few of the men of his age were good with cars. They judged the speed by the sound of the motor. When the faster cars came along, they would do like Dad, drive at 60 miles an hour, thinking they were going 40. Pop had an accident when Gail was a boy. Gail's jaws were broken. After that he left the driving mostly for the boys to do.
The last years he became quite a gardener He surely did enjoy the grandchildren. I have always regretted he died so young. He would have so enjoyed the accomplishments that many of the family have made. His letter to my boys shows how much he was interested in all of you.
