Tag Archives: old times

02.17.26
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Loyalty

Those Germans. They always know what they’re talking about, even if nobody else does. 

Those Germans. Carl Burckardt, Die jungen Deutschen. Public Domain. 

From the language that brought you Weltschmerz, Weltanschauung, Gemütlichkeit, and Fahrvergnügen, comes our old friend, Schadenfreude—taking pleasure at the misfortunes of others.

Volksvagen’s “Fahrvergnügen” ad. Fair use.

Right now, however, I’m focused on loyalty, and I’d like to commission the German language, if possible, to give us a word meaning nostalgia for the old loyalties of yore, now lost in our benighted era. 

In May 2024 Your New Favorite Writer posted a piece, “A Time Travelogue,” and a man wrote this week to thank me for it. 

The original post was a visit to the now-distant past, to the time when I was a boy in Streator, Illinois. I happened to mention “the Onized Club”; my correspondent happened to be Googling last week for “Onized.” That was, as investigators say on TV, the nexus. 

Onized jacket. Fair use.

The Onized Club was a company-sponsored club for the thousands who worked for Owens-Illinois Glass Company and their families. Owens was far the largest employer in Streator. The word “onized” was a transform of the words “Owens-Illinois” and “organized.” By going to work for Owens you became onized. People were proud of this club, which gave them various benefits—especially, wearing spiffy “Onized” fan gear around town. 

It was a company town. During the years when glass jars and bottles were being displaced for many uses by cheaper plastic or coated-paper containers, every quart of milk sold in Streator carried the legend: “See What You Buy—Buy in Glass!” Those who were onized naturally wanted to keep their high-paying jobs. They were grateful to the company. They were glad to be in the club.

The man who wrote me had been commissioned to do a project of some kind for the Streator Onized Credit Union. Puzzled by the term “onized,” he Googled it to find out what it meant and, voilà! found my blog post, which enlightened him on the origin of the term.

BUT HERE’S THE TWIST: As he continued reading, he “became nostalgic for a time I never knew when the richest among us funded the public good. A time when companies cared about their employees enough to spin up a credit union to make sure they had access to banking. A time when employees had an actual reason to be loyal because the respect went both ways. . . . [Y]our article reminded me of what life could be like and for a moment, I was there – imagining I was Onized and cheering for my team.” 

Aw, gosh—now I’m all choked up.

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But wait a minute, Dear Reader. Hold your horses. 

My new friend seems nostalgic for a time he never knew, “when employees had an actual reason to be loyal because the respect went both ways.” Hence the need for a new German word. Perhaps Loyalitätsnostalgie—nostalgia for (an era of) loyalty.

The thing is: I have lived in both eras, and I’m not sure they’re all that different.

Don’t get me wrong. I venerate the ’50s and ’60s as a wonderful time—a golden era, with all sorts of good things that have been abandoned in our heedless rush for modernity. (Or, these days, postmodernity.)

But that’s partly because memory dwells on the good stuff. At least, my memory does.

A Vietnam War-era P-38 can opener, with a U.S. penny shown for size comparison. One remains useful; the other, not so much. Photo by Jrash. Public Domain.

We all look back to the early years of our lives as the standard against which we measure all things. That’s why old duffers who have not touched an M-16 rifle or used a P-38 can opener in sixty years wear baseball caps with patches representing their old units and blubber unashamed tears when they meet fellow vets. It’s not because the service was so wonderful—it often wasn’t—but it was the capstone or climax to the early years of a person’s life, the passageway to adulthood. Often enough, as adults, we look backward to the more exciting and heady days of youth.

So what about it, Gentle Reader? Has the two-way tug of loyalty between employer and employee gone the way of the Great Auk? Does it live only in the past?

I don’t think so. To begin with, it’s not clear that all rich people, or all large corporations (the two categories are not identical) were stalwart stewards of the public good in old times. Second, for every splashy billionaire we see in today’s media behaving like an ass, there is a quieter billionaire out in the hinterlands working patiently for a better world. We have a good example right here in Wisconsin: Judith Faulkner, creator and sole owner of Epic Systems, Inc.—who, besides having invented a very beneficial medical software, is methodically working to give away 99 percent of her net worth to worthy causes during her lifetime. There must be many other examples.

I know there are a lot of lesser companies in small towns across the nation, delivering great goods and services with workforces who are proud of what they are doing and of the company in whose employ they do it. 

Loyalty will always be with us. It’s the glue that holds our society together. It works so well because it is a two-way street. Smart bosses go to extraordinary lengths to get and keep good employees, and those employees work not only for their bosses but for their communities. 

Relationships of mutual loyalty not only abound in the business world, they also make schools, churches, libraries, hospitals, and all kinds of nonprofits work. 

Those who do not live within a web of loyal relationships would be well advised to keep seeking. Such relationships are out there for the having. When you find an employer, a partner, or an institution worth giving your loyalty to, make sure you respond in kind.

Then you’ll truly know the joys of Beziehungsglück (relationship happiness).

Worth thinking about until next time.

Blessings, 

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

12.23.25
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The Gathering

Visit of the Wise Men, from an 1894 Sunday School lesson, by lithographers Harris, Jones & Co. of Providence. Public Domain.

Tomorrow will be Christmas Eve. On Thursday morning, as Santa’s sleighbells jingle away to the North, the Big Day itself will arrive. 

This will be my eightieth Christmas on Earth. 

The first few of those eighty are lost in the mists of time, permanently and perpetually outside my experience. But I recall clearly the next several after that. I remember times of gathering and feasts of togetherness. 

After the workday—most folks used to put in a whole day on December 24—Mom and Dad piled us into the car and we drove in darkness over the hundred miles from the city of Streator to the little town of Knoxville on the Illinois prairie, to gather with family.

1936 Plymouth, from an old postcard. Fair use.

The car was a 1936 Plymouth or a 1939 Chevrolet—both of them relics from an old-time gangster movie—or, later, our first modern car, a 1954 Plymouth. I sat in the back seat with my sister Cynda. We all four sang Christmas carols all the way down the road. Over the river—both Illinois and Spoon—and near some woods but mostly through plateaus of snow-dusted corn stubble, to Grandmother’s house we went.

It was all about gathering. Being together. 

The “-gether” part of “together” is really the same word as “gather.” From Old English gaderian, meaning to unite or join.  

We gathered together with Grandma and Grandpa, with Uncle Dick and Aunt Jane and Cousin Rick, with Uncle Garrett and Aunt Edith and Cousins Steve and Betsy, with Aunt Jo and Uncle Earl, with Aunt Jean and her boyfriend Richard Henderson, with Aunt Sue and Aunt Linda; with Grandma’s sister Aunt Bertha and her husband Uncle Harry Young; with Dad’s parents, my Grandma and Grandpa Sommers, who had no other children left in the Midwest and so joined the LaFollette mélange; and sometimes we would even see Grandma LaFollette’s brother Uncle Roy Dredge and his wife, Aunt Eva.

Eighteen of us including the unpictured photographer, who is probably Aunt Bertha, plus General George C. Marshall on the cover of Life to prove it’s Christmas 1950. Your New Favorite Writer is the boy at lower left, chin on hands.

That made twenty to twenty-five of us all celebrating Christmas in Grandma’s house. Gathered. Together. And the best part was: we all knew each other. We knew one another very well. We were kin. There’s hardly a better way of understanding love than gathering at Christmas.

“Fear not,” says the prophet Isaiah, “for I am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west; I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth; even every one that is called by my name: for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him.” 

It’s a grand vision of gathering together, members of one tribe, one kindred. 

That’s what we did on those long-ago Christmases. Our tribe came together, at least those of us who could. We came from east and west and north and south and called one another by name. 

I did not know this fact at the time, but I know it now: It was not the toys that mattered most, nor the turkey and dressing and pie and cake. It was the coming together of the people. The spindly tree, illuminated by strings of gaudy colored lights over which Uncle Dick and Uncle Garrett and Uncle Earl had slaved for hours on the living room floor getting all the bulbs to light up at once, was the totem pole, the magnet that gathered the kin. 

Rice pudding with lingonberries. Fair use.

In my wife’s family it was much the same, only with a Swedish accent, because her mother’s folk were all Swedes, first- and second-generation Swedish Americans. So they had warm glögg with almonds and raisins in the bottoms of the cups; rice pudding with lingonberries; meatballs and gravy; limpa rye bread and dopp-i-gryta, the dipping of bread in fatty broth. But mostly with them, it was the people coming together, even if they were all Swedes except my wife’s father, who was Norsk.

The decades bring forth change. Families are smaller now. Folks tend to be more spread out, east and west, north and south. In our house this Christmas we will have Jo and me, my sister Cynda and her husband Steve, our daughter Katie and her children Elsie and Tristan (teenagers!). Plus Katie’s friend Valerie. Eight, all told. Still, it’s a coming together, a gathering. 

Most of us will attend our church’s Christmas Eve service. It’s a Congregational church, meaning the local congregation governs itself autonomously. Such a church is said to be a gathered church, that is, one formed by a process of kindred souls simply gathering together. And indeed it’s more like a family than like a formal institution. We’ll read the Scriptures and sing the carols and burn up a few candles in the process. But the main thing is, we’ll gather together.

We have within us the seeds of hate and the seeds of love. When we gather together around the Christmas tree or the communion table, we nurture the seeds of love and starve the other ones. 

Two greatly different realities are available to us in this world. I prefer the gathered one.

May you gather this season with whomever you have to gather with. And treasure the time, the place, and the gathering. It’s the best Christmas gift.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

11.26.19
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Memoirs of Millie Marie Gunsten Sommers, Part III

This is a guest post by Millie Sommers (1889-1971), my grandmother. In 1969, at my request, she wrote a memoir of her life, mostly telling about her early days, around 1900. She wrote 13 pages, in clear, crisp longhand. I have broken it into three parts for easy reading. It is verbatim, straight from her pen, except for a few additions of my own, in [square brackets]. 

Grandma’s Narrative:

I mentioned transportation, but didn’t say what kind. It was horse drawn of course, and usually was a “spring wagon,” which was a light wagon with two spring seats with leather cushioned seat & back.

Spring wagon. Public Domain.

My grandparents never did have anything with a top. They had umbrellas for sun or rain in Summer, and when it was snowing or raining in the winter, I think we mostly stayed at home. We did go quite often in sleigh or bobsled when there was snow on the ground. We always had sleighbells on.

The sleigh was not one of those fancy looking ones with large round runners. But I rather think it may have been home made. Anyway it was made of wood, painted red, and had two seats. Then there was straw in the bottom and hot bricks to keep warm.

Millie Marie Gunsten, age 18.

We never tho’t of anything better. There were top [?] buggies and “surries with the fringe on top,” but very few around then. 

Later came the Klondikes or enclosed buggies, but we never had any of those.

When our family was small, we usually went to Greenview for Xmas, but later spent it at home. There were now several families of relatives living there, and they would take turns having family dinners—one at Xmas, one at New Years, another at Thanksgiving etc.

Age of the Telegraph

When we moved to Middletown there were still no telephones. When Election time came, the returns would come in by telegraph at the R.R. station.

Everyone would go to the hall or Opera House and there would be some kind of entertainment.

Every so often a Messenger would come from the station with a Bulletin, which would be read.

How to Keep Food Fresh

Most every one had a small vegetable garden and fruit trees. But we didn’t know how to can vegetables then, except tomatoes. We canned fruit, but not a lot, as we did after I was married.

Vegetables, such as beans etc., were dried, and we also dried some fruit.

Most everyone had cellars or caves which would keep apples, Potatoes, cabbage etc. 

Girls were pressed into service as “icemen” during World War I. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. Public Domain.

Most people baked their own bread, but when there was a bakery near by, the bread would be shipped in, in large baskets, unwrapped. The loaves were baked in large pans & were stuck together. They were put in wall cases with sliding doors, and when you wanted to buy some, they would tear off as many loaves as you wanted, and wrap it.

Of course there were no Electric refrigerators or freezers. The fresh meat was sold in Butcher shops, who had large coolers, cooled with ice. They did their own butchering, as did all private families who had butchering to do. and also smoked their own hams, bacon, etc. The sausage & some other meat was fried, and put in stone jars, and covered with Grease so it would keep.

It all tasted much better than the meat we get today, or so I tho’t.

Dairy Products

Our milkman had a horse-drawn covered wagon & the milk was in a large Milk Can. We would take a pitcher or something out & he would dip out as much milk as we wanted. That was in larger towns. In smaller towns most people had their own cow & some sold milk, but you would usually have to go after it.

Milk wagon. Public Domain.

My own folks never had a cow, that I remember, but we bought milk & butter from a farmer who lived on the edge of town.

My grandparents were Norgeian [sic], and they always had 2 kinds of cheese on the table for Breakfast. One was made from what we call cottage cheese. It was wrapped in cloth after being drained & salted, and laid away until it became real strong. I didn’t like that quite as well as what was made from the whey. It was boiled down to about ¼ of what it was, and then a little sweetening and thickening added. There were small grains of the cheese as it had not been strained. I tho’t this was super & could eat it at every meal

Well this is all I have written at the present time. I may think of more later.

June. 5 – 1969.  .

And that’s all she wrote.

Next Week: Something Completely Different!

Blessings, 

Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Author 

11.12.19
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Memoirs of Millie Marie Gunsten Sommers, Part I

This is a guest post by Millie Sommers (1889-1971), my grandmother. In 1969, at my request, she wrote a memoir of her life, mostly telling about her early days, around 1900. She wrote 13 pages, in clear, crisp longhand. I have broken it into three parts for easy reading. It is verbatim, straight from her pen, except for a few additions of my own, in [square brackets].

Grandma’s Narrative:

I was born Aug. 8 – 1889, at Greenview, Menard Co. Illinois. I was the oldest of 10 children. My father & mother were running a resturant [sic] in Greenview. But when I was about a month old, we moved to a small farm, about 10 or 12 miles from there.

Millie, age 5, and her sister Mabel, 3.

My father’s name was John Oliver Gunsten, and his folks were Norwegian, altho he was born in this country. My mother’s name was Sarah Elizabeth Foster. My father did not farm, but was a carpenter as were quite a few cousins of two other Gunsten families who lived near by.

They all worked together, with my father as Boss Contractor. He never had but little education, but was an excellent carpenter, and drew all his plans and then had them blueprinted. He also made a lot of our furniture, such as dressers, desks etc.

Several years later we moved to Lincoln, Logan Co. Illinois. There was a Feeble-minded Institution there, and they always kept several carpenters for repair jobs & other work that needed to be done. So my father was Boss Carpenter there.

School Days

I also had my first two years of school in Lincoln. Then we moved to Middletown, also in Logan Co, and about 25 miles from Springfield.

Later quite a few of my fathers relatives moved there, as did a few other Norwegian families.

My mother’s folks still lived in Greenview, about 10 miles away, but quite a trip in horse & buggy.

I finished my schooling in Middletown, which had 8 grades, and 2 yrs. High School, as most small towns had.

This was all one 2-room building – one downstairs and one upstairs, with two teachers.

I even taught several times in the lower room, when the teacher was sick or had to be away.

I was large for age and also rather quick to learn, so I suppose that was the reason I was chosen.

In those days only the “well-to-do” tho’t of going away to High School or College.

Small Town Life

After finishing school, we moved to Lowpoint, Ill. a very small town in Woodford Co. But it was a very important town, and was practically owned by three brothers. They had a large general store, lumber yard, elevator, coal, etc.

Millie, age 18.

They always kept a Carpenter for their house building etc. thru out the country, so that was my Dad. The telephone exchange was in the middle of the General store, and there were wires extending from there to different parts of the store for the cash boxes. So I was the telephone and cashier there.

There was a blacksmith, but he was independent, and let everybody know it.

Several years later we moved to Springfield. My mother’s sister lived there, and later most of the rest of her family moved there. 

The older ones lived there until their deaths. I still have one sister living there. My mother’s father lived to rather a good age, and her mother [Martha Elizabeth Smith Foster] lived to be 100. She was in good health always and able to get around rather well altho her hearing was not too good. She was knitting a suit for one of her grown up grand-daughters, and finished it soon after.

But she seemed to give up at 100 years, and 6 mos. later she died.

Marriage and Family

William P. Sommers, around age 30.

I worked as telephone operator in Springfield for awhile, then later did office work, until I was married on May 29, 1912 to Wm P. Sommers of Metamora, Illinos. He and his father [Peter Anton Sommers] owned and operated the Telephone Exchange in Metamora, as in those days most of Telephone Exchanges were privately owned.

My husband was a Telegraph Operator, and railroaded since quite young (14 yrs.) Those days they worked as apprentices ˆ(and general roustabout) in a station until they learned Telegraphy and then they were on their own.

One of Grandpa’s telegraph keys, an unusual Foote, Pierson & Co. “Twentieth Century” key from the early 1900s, popularly known as a “Pump Handle Key.” Larry F. Sommers photo.

We lived in Metamora 23 yrs. Our 5 children (4 boys & 1 girl) were born there. My husband was station agent there for awhile, then he went to work for Sinclair [Oil Corporation]. At that time they dispatched their oil [on their oil pipeline] by telegraph, and had pumping stations every 40 miles (I believe). He had to work as relief Opr. at different places at vacation time until a permanent place was open. Finally we moved to Dahinda, Knox Co., Ills. We lived there 8 yrs. but as the children had to drive 10 miles to High School, we moved into Knoxville where we still live (or at least I do.) My husband died Jan. 1957. He had retired from Sinclair after 16 yrs. The children all live away now.

Our children all graduated from Knoxville High School. The oldest Edward went to University of Washington 2 yrs. Then enlisted in the Naval Cadet Program, which was being pushed at that time on account of W.W. 2 looming up. After 4 yrs in Navy, he went with Pan American Airway where has been [sic] ever since. 

He married Mary Nelson of Knoxville, and have three children and 3 grandchildren.

Next oldest is Mabel, who married Robert Hiler of Knoxville, who is mechanic for United Airlines in California. They have one son.

The third was Stanley, who went to Knox College 2 yrs. & then enlisted as Aviation Cadet. He became a Pilot and 2ndLt. He married Mary Parkins of Galesburg just before going overseas.  

He was killed in So Pacific. Dec-1st 1942.

The youngest Franklin was also a pilot and 2nd Lt. He was killed in France at age 20 years. Sept 2 – 1943.

The next to youngest was Lloyd went into the Army, just after High School.

He spent 3½ yrs. in So Pacific and came home in fairly good shape. He then went to Knox College for 4 yrs, and taught H. School for 3 yrs. [Mistaken: Actually 2 years.]

He is now Chemist for Johns-Manville in Waukegan, Ills. He married Barbara La Follette of Knoxville, and they have two children. Cynda, the youngest is in first yr. college.

Larry who is overseas with Army Air Corp [actually, U.S. Air Force], works as interpeter [sic] of Communist broadcasts, for one thing.

Millie Sommers, 1950s

He went to a Chinese language school & studied the Chinese language. Since being in Okinawa part of the time, he has studied Japanese language. He is the one who gave me the idea of writing these memoirs. He wanted me to write of some of the things we did differently in the days when I was young, and what we did for fun. So I will try and think of some things that might be interesting.

Next Week: Fin-de-Siècle Pastimes

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Author

05.07.19
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Stop the presses! Mystery Object Revealed!!

Last week, I asked you to guess the identity of the object below:

Foote, Pierson & Co. “Twentieth Century” telegraph key, popularly known as a “Pump Handle Key,” Serial Number 197. ©Larry F. Sommers, 2012.

That’s right, it’s a telegraph key. 

“Why doesn’t it look like a telegraph key?” you ask. Maybe you think a telegraph key should look like this:

Telegraph key. Lou Sander, Public Domain.

Yes, indeed it should—and that’s the problem. 

Samuel F. B. Morse invented electric telegraphy in 1844. In the ensuing years, telegraph keys—those little gadgets telegraphers used to send messages in Morse code over wires before the telephone, teletype, and Internet were invented—were mostly of the type shown in Lou Sander’s image above. The devices required a repetitive up-and-down motion of the hand to send the dots and dashes that composed the message.

As this new technology spread rapidly around the globe, men and women were soon spending whole careers “pounding brass” eight hours a day, five or six days a week—employed by railroads, military organizations, and other operations that needed to transmit information quickly over long distances. By around 1900, manufacturers started producing telegraph keys with horizontal or lateral actions to combat “telegrapher’s paralysis,” a repetitive motion injury that today we call “carpal tunnel syndrome.” 

One answer to this challenge was J.H. Bunnell & Company’s Double Speed Key, introduced in 1904. This key, known as “the Sideswiper” for its horizontal action, looked very similar to a standard telegraph key, but the lever was mounted for sideways operation. It became a very popular item in Bunnell’s inventory.

Priority, however, goes to Foote, Pierson & Company with their “Twentieth Century Key,” also known as the “Pump Handle Key,” introduced at the very turn of the century, in 1900. The motion of this device was rotational: The operator swung the handle up and to the left to make contact. Professor Tom Perera of Montclair State University tells us this key was “Popular with Railroad operators.”

That’s probably the reason I happen to own the Twentieth Century Key shown in my teaser photo at the top of this post. It came down from my grandfather, William P. Sommers, who was a young railroad telegrapher and station agent in the early years of the twentieth century. The “pump handle” of this device today is quite stiff, but I suppose that’s a matter of congealed lubricants. Even assuming fresh lubricants and a smoothly operating handle, it’s hard to imagine Grandpa sending with any speed while using such a cumbersome wrist-twisting motion to send the signals. 

But the very nature of that wrist motion presumably spared the operator’s carpal tunnels and made the key “popular with railroad operators.”  Even so, I suppose by the time Grandpa left the employ of the railroad, his “Twentieth Century Key” was an obsolete relic, superseded by the sleek Bunnell “Sideswipers.” That is what allows me to think the railroad would have let him take the outmoded key with him as a souvenir of his railroad days. 

Grandpa was a fierce, truculent, and eccentric man. He was also a stickler for propriety. He would never have simply stolen railroad property.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Author