“Mrs. Schmieden– wife of officer in W.W. I with 1 son. Husband died & [she] married a Nazi General of WW2.

“While her son was in hospital from being wounded, he was given orders to go fight Russians.

“She found that her husband had given these orders, so she left him as she was fed up with Nazis anyway.

“The Gen had been jealous of this son. He was later tried in the War Crimes Court but was exonerated.

“Her father had been a Banker & they were well to do before the War. She had English Governess etc, & never had to work etc.” 

—from Grandma Sommers’ travel notes

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

—Psalm 90:10 (King James Version)

In America today, many of us will exceed threescore and ten, or even fourscore years, in good health and strength. But we know that before long, the words of the Psalmist will be fulfilled, and we too shall fly away.

Like many other septuagenarians, I am trying to reduce, not enlarge, my collection of mementoes. Some of them, however, I just can’t part with. 

In my basement there is a box labeled with my name: It holds photos, notes, artifacts, even scraps of paper linked to people or events that linger large in my memory. I have a similar box for my parents; and one each for my uncles Stanley and Franklin, both of whom died in World War II. And there is a shoebox labeled “Old Folks,” compassing traces of earlier generations. 

In the “Old Folks” box I found two spiral-bound, stenographer-style notebooks, plus a thin bundle of 4” x 7” looseleaf pages. What I did not find, yet, was time enough to go through them page by page, for they certainly are worth that kind of scrutiny. Taken together, these little books contain my Grandma Sommers’ notes from two remarkable journeys she and Grandpa took. One was a driving trip from Illinois to California and back. They left October 7, 1949, and returned May 29, 1950, after a jaunt of nearly eight months! The other journey was their only visit to Europe—from November 8, 1954 to January 28, 1955—eleven weeks and four days.

Today, few of us make such extended journeys. Perhaps our attention spans are shorter. But also, we lead busy lives. It’s hard to get away for more than a week or a month at a time. And travel is, relatively, less expensive now. What we don’t see this time, we can catch next time. Both of the trips recorded in Grandma’s journals were once-in-a-lifetime excursions for my grandparents. They were determined to make the most of them.

Grandma was a straightforward person. In conversation, you could be forgiven for thinking her a “ho-hum” person. But these notes show she was an astute observer, keen to see and hear everything, and keen to record the details. Unlike us, she had no frivolous and ephemeral way to do this. There was no Twitter, no Facebook, no Instagram. All she could do was write notes in longhand in paper books. What worked for Julius Caesar, Marco Polo, and Meriwether Lewis, also worked for Millie Marie Gunsten Sommers.

Many of her notes were mundane. For example, from the California trip log: “Leave San Bruno – 9:30 am – 42187 [;] 6.6 gal. gas – 1.51 Castro Valley – 42213 [;] 1 qt oil – .41 . . .”

Other entries are more intriguing, like the one quoted above from the looseleaf addendum to the Europe trip book. It apparently records the results of a conversation she had with a real German woman, Frau Schmieden. Grandma’s summation of their talk contains the seeds of a big novel, maybe even a major motion picture. 

Grandma’s Eurpean trip notes also tell of visiting Heidelberg, where they saw in Heidelberg Castle the famous Great Heidelberg Tun, the world’s largest wine barrel. “Built in 1196,” she notes. “Holds 50,000 gal. Stairs leading to top.” Imagine my surprise to learn that this German cultural icon, which I myself visited and photographed in 2015, had been on my grandparents’ itinerary sixty years earlier.

Grandma’s notebooks hold the promise of further tantalizing facts and memories. My ancestral duty to look into such things and, if possible, keep some of them alive in our communal recollection, is one of the joys of being in the “reducing” phase of life.

I’ll try to keep you posted.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Author

Author of Price of Passage—A Tale of Immigration and Liberation.

Price of Passage

Norwegian Farmers and Fugitive Slaves in Pre-Civil War Illinois

(History is not what you thought!)