Mrs J. C. Bitterman 722 Seneca Place, Madison, Wis. Jan 20, 1935 Dear Circle: Cal and I have just come home from Henry's where we spent the afternoon. He seemed some what stronger, at least his voice was more as it used to be today. Just as we were leaving, Fred Sears arrived. He had ridden down to Madison with friends from Neillsville and they must have had some ride if the roads are as icy as our streets & walks are here in they city. They have been really dangerous for a week or so and tonight when we left Henry's there was a sleet storm on and it froze on the windshield so soon that Cal had to drive with his head out the side window, and he had to crank our Chev. for the first time since we bought. Ella says that their great-grand child is the SWEETEST baby ever. We wish Rufus & Myrta would send around a picture of little Pat. [Patricia Ann Pickford, dau. of Gerald, b. Sept. 10, 1934.] This little Beth Anne Thompson is some little whiz, we think. Grace has been in the hospital for two weeks following some repair work she had to have done, but is at home again now but has to keep rather quiet for a while yet, so I have had charge of the household for the past few weeks. She had a woman come in to do all the heavy work four days a week, and I've really enjoyed taking care of the children. They've all been well, fortunately. I had a letter from Dellie Murray (Blanks) last week. You will remember her perhaps as a girl who used to visit Mr & Mrs. Haynes forty years or more ago, and was a friend of mine. Trullie & I called to see her last winter when in Los Angeles where she lives. She & her husband lived in Alaska & while there, far from a Dr., she accidently burned her hands so terribly with hot fat that she lost several fingers & the rest are just crumpled up, & twelve years ago while down in Kentucky doing work among the mountain folks, she was thrown from a horse & has been confined to a wheel chair ever since, her lower limbs completely paralized. But she has typed books & pamphlets of her experiences in these different places with her one poor crooked finger and is as witty & clever as ever; an object lesson in indomitable will power. Her husband died several years ago & she has one son & his wife & their two boys who are very kind to her. She has to have a nurse all the time, and is 70 years old. A number of people from here are driving down to Florida for a few weeks now. A lady at Henry's this PM said they were going down very soon to near Jacksonville. They have been around the world twice & all over this country, but still have their home in Madison. This is Mrs. Deimer, Amelia. We don't know yet if we will get away or not. Bed time now. Love to you all. Annie E. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 201 S. Mills St. Madison, Wis. March 11, 1935 Dear Circle: We have had eight changes in our address in the past 1 1/2 years. I think the Madison Post Master will hope we settle some where soon. We have been at Ella's since Feb. 18, and are very comfortable here. It seems strange without Henry here and we miss him every day and can scarcely realize we shall see him no more in this life. [Henry Wood Pickford d. Feb. 6, 1935.] Roswell & family came Sat. PM and left again Sun. PM and Ella went home with them for a visit. They drove in their car and found the roads bad most of the way, they said. The R.R. connections are very poor to Cedar Rapids from Madison. Ella and I have had a session with the prevailing "flu" cold but both of us are better now. A monument dealer just came to the door to see Ella and when I told him they had a monument already but the date of death, he departed at once, and I realized how much trouble their fore thought had saved her at this time. March 9th was the birthday of Eliz. Anne Thompson, 2 years old, so we went over to help her celebrate it. And soon Cal and I will pass our 45th anniversary. I have done very little since we have been at Ella's. Her maid is very active and keeps busy so there is not much for us to do. Cal looks after out door work & the car & any repair work needed. We may go out to the farm in April until July 1st when our house will be vacated. There is always work to be done out there and so far nothing has turned up (Micawber-like) here. We went to see "David Copperfield" last week and liked it very much. There is quite a scare about smallpox here now. Twenty two cases at present and the health officer urges every one to be vaccinated. Cal was vaccinated last yr. but its years & years since I've been & so I may have it done. Ella went down to Monroe recently and she says Lettie is looking very poorly but won't have a Dr. Jennie Bitterman Chapman whote us how much she enjoyed Arthur's Florida letters. Suppertime now so I must close. Best wishes to you all & love from Annie E. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 201 S. Mills St. Madison, Wis. Fri. April 5, 1935 Dear Circle: We have just breezed in, in 6 1/2 hrs, from the west and found the Robin here so will ans. it now as we will be busy collecting what we want to take out to Nora S. with us & packing away what we have here. We drove out to the farm on Wed. stayed there Thurs. looking after some business matters and also inspecting Jennie Chapman's house (which has not been used for two or three years) which she says we may occupy from now till July 1st. She left her furniture in it when they were compelled to go up to Osakis, Minn. to take charge of Al's farm so it will not be necessary for us to take any of ours. It will need mostly to be swept & dusted, & the storm windows taken off & the others washed. So we may leave for Iowa again about Tues. next week. We saw several farmers in their fields as we came home today, tho' Dale has not begun to sow anything yet. Three weeks ago today, Flora Wood & Lettie Churchill came to Madison for Lettie to have treatment at the hospital here near Ella's. She is very seriously ill and so far there has not been any improvement in her condition. Flora stays here at Ella's to be near her. She has the special nurse that Henry had. Noel James celebrated his birthday on the 3rd, 10 years old and as big as most boys two or three years older. Ella has engaged a lady from Janesville (a relative of Ray Owens) to live with her when we leave for Iowa, and Cal & Ella will drive down to Janesville tomorrow to get her. She seems to be a very pleasant person and will be able to drive her car for her. No more measles have developed in Grace's family so far, and she has no idea where she contracted them. None of our [smallpox] vaccinations worked, so I suppose we are immune. Something over 80 cases in the city now. Arthur, I can say the next verse of that poem. "There has not been a sound today, To break the calm of nature, Nor motion, I might almost say, Of life or living creature." I can't recall any more of it. I hope you all keep well. Love to you all, from Annie. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [Nora Springs,] May 6, 1935 Dear Circle: I hope by July 1st we shall be using the above address [1717 Chadbourne] again. But we are very comfortable here at Jennie's house. To be sure, we could make use of a bathroom & laundry & refrigerator, but we were brought up without any of them, so we will survive for a couple of months without them. Rufus & Myrta were down to dinner yesterday. Had expected to have Arthur also, but he was at Cedar Rapids. We had a telephone put in just when we came and, of course, use it to telephone the farm, BUT when I proposed to call up some of the friends over in town (we are in the SUBURBS) I found only Abe Spotts had a telephone. They'd all had them taken out when the depression came! So that was that! and it is a jaunt of 1 1/2 MILES to walk over to Main St. and back, so I don't do that. Therefore, I decided to get some fishing tackle and fish and meditate when my household duties were not pressing, but lo! when I had invested the sum of 14 cents in a hook & 30 ft of line (the pole was found in the garage here) I was informed that the Iowa Game Commission had ruled that ALL PERSONS over 16 must have a license to fish and out-of-state licenses were $15.00! So we are still opening a can of salmon from Seattle when we are hungry for fish, and we living one block from the mill dam! Such is life in a small town! However, we have rhubarb (& green onions which we can't use) and will have asparagus later (they say) and have planted radishes, lettuce, & early peas, which have not yet appeared after being in for two weeks. I have been presented with a boquet of pussy willows, tulips and a foliage plant, so we are blooming somewhat, indoors. But really, the place is in good shape to say it has been untenanted for two or three years. The weather has been so cold that we have had a furnace fire every day since we came, but expect to have more normal weather for May soon. Cal is as much a farmer as ever; just as keen to be up and at it as 30 years ago. But I am not his equal & like to rest a lot. Hoping this finds you all in good health. I am, with love, Annie E. Alice Holden has gone home but we have not heard how she is since. Celia is to be married to a farmer when her school is out, we hear. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Nora Springs, Ia. June 14, 1935 Dear Circle: We were away from home when Rufus & Myrta left the letter on Sunday but we were glad to know they were safely home from a nice trip, and I think I'll just beat Uncle Sam out of the 6 cts postage by leaving this letter at Wendell's on Sunday or Sat. if we should go to Mason C. that day. Only two more weeks before we hie ourselves back to 1717. and a big job of rejuvenation in our own house. I've just finished reading "Wanderers Circle" by Cornelia Stratton Parker and have enjoyed it. After living all over the world, she & her children bought a farm in the Berkshire hills of New England in 1933, and she describes how they settled there (toward the end of this book) in her own witty way & how completely happy she was to BE SETTLED in a home of her own, and I begin to know how she felt! They were near Bennington & she tells of going to a Bach Concert there with her son Jim. "It is pleasant to be able to mix manure and music, cultivation & culture" We are so far in the suburbs here I haven't been able to mix with anything but the Calendar Circle so far. Eliza Senior asked me to be her guest at that this week. Of course, there IS a carnival in town (yesterday and today) but the husband is too busy for us to attend, but I could see the airplane zooming almost overhead even out as far as our house & it was MOST EXCITING!! O, well! something between Ella's program and mine would be about what I'd like. Our sweet corn seems to have grown two inches over night. We will have to present our small garden to some needy family, I think, tho' our own family will be as needy as any for garden truck when we get to Madison, as our own garden is completely filled with named varieties of gladioli by our tenant, who says we may have as many of them as we can use for boquets. Yesterday we shed our winter underwear. Our custom is "to stick to our flannels till they stick to us" and that occurrred yesterday. I have no exact record but I think the date is the LATEST we've ever had. I notice Noel James' name in the group of boys boing to summer camp across Lake Mendota in the State Journal this week. I wish he could work off his spare energy on the farm with his Grandfather. Nothing like a farm for exercise. Dale has hired a man with an invalid wife & three children (who was on relief in Mason) for $1.00 a day who was GLAD to work, but he gets no more relief now he has a job. Ella, I have finished one braided rug, but Heaven forbid that I ever start another! Love to you all. Annie E. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Nora Springs, Ia. July 14, 1935 Dear Circle: Here we are again in "Hardscrabble". Got here yesterday at 4:45 PM after spending ten days in Madison and working 12 hrs a day washing walls & painting them. The family who have been living in our house the past two years wrote us the latter part of June that they wanted to stay another year & we decided to let them, but the house needed refinishing, so we washed and painted the walls & ceilings in the living room, dining room, front hall, stairway & two rooms upstairs and front & back porch floors. Then we had the living room & dining room floors sanded, stained & waxed, and when it was all done, I wanted to use it myself, it looked so well. But Cal is such an honest-to-goodness farmer this year, we must hurry back to help cut the 80 acres of oats and make the second crop of alfalfa, etc. etc. He decided to bring his old Chev. back with us to use, so after a two year rest, he got it out & pumped up the tires, got a 2nd hand battery & an Iowa license & we started out. I was to drive the new Chev. & he the old one, regardless of the fact I'd never driven over 80 miles in a stretch before. Well, we'd just passed Arena, Wis. when the old ark developed heart trouble so seriously that Cal got out his tow rope & we changed places. He driving the new Chev. & I trying to keep that bucking broncho from running him down. And I was more tired from that back car driving than from all the wall washing & painting. However, we got here in good season, though I did wrap the tow rope around the axles six times & we broke three tow ropes, but its here now to stay and he has fixed its "insides" so it will go out to the farm & back & I can have the new one to use. Found the Madison relatives well, & Ella left for a two weeks visit at Merle's on the 11th. Noel James was away at a boys camp around Mendota Lake. We hoped to bring Noel J. home with us but he was having trouble with two boils after he got home from camp so he will come out later, we hope. Flora Wood, Betty Smith & Ella were at Grace's for supper when we got there the evening of the 4th. Dale & Rena did some painting & papering in the farm house while we were away, also. Sorry to miss Arthur's birthday party, but we are happy to see him so peppy, both mentally & physically, at 80. Rufus looks like Henry in the Pickford group. Glad to see all the babies pictures also. Much love from Annie. [It seems that Arthur was busy writing his "Westward to Iowa" about these years.] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Nora Springs, Ia. August 20, 1935 Dear Circle: I'm a week late by the date on my last letter but there has been so much on hand since it came, I lost out. I notice Rufus has had a relapse and uses only one half sheet with wide spacing! Well, we got the alfalfa made & the 80 acres of oats cut & then Cal began rejuvenating the old separator preparatory to threshing and when he said the word "Go" it was "business as usual" from morning till night. Dale had a bumper crop of oats, 5370 bushels by measure but it over runs in weight, enough to make 6,000 bu. Cal is not one of the threshing crew except as his brother Clint cannot be there to run the separator but he is secretly happy when he is called on to officiate. When he is not with that crew, he is busy repairing the No. 4 school house in time for the opening of school Sept. 2nd (he told me he was only going to work when he felt like it, when we came, this summer.) Today we have attended the 8th grade Cerro Gordo Co, rural graduation exercises in East Park, and the day was windy & chilly, and the spearkers could not be heard very well. Some 142 were graduated, I understood, and Jean among them & one of the prettiest. Her average was 92.1% on her diploma. We hope she can go on thro' high school in Mason City. After the exercises at the Park, we went over to the Fair. We had a fine rain last night, so no threshing today and the attendance at the Fair was good, but it seemed to me it was largely a Midway, and what curious specimens some of those barkers are! I enjoy watching the crowd as much as looking at the exhibits. Cal has just succeeded in selling Jennie's Ford car for $30.00. It had stood unused in the garage here for several years since she married Mr. Chapman & moved to Minn. The young man gave it a coat of paint & it looked very well again, for it had been used very little. I was Eliza's guest at the Calendar Circle again last week. She seems jolly & friendly, and helps in the church work all she can. Noel James came out Sun. morn. on the train to stay two weeks with us, and is having a big time. He & Jean & Janet went swimming in the river here yesterday PM & did they have fun! I haven't been able to fish for a month. Can't find any bait when it's so dry. Love to you all. Annie. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Nora Springs, Ia. Sept 23, 1935 Dear Circle: While my snowy locks are drying after a shampoo, I will add my sheet to the "Robin". If I write only until they are dry, it won't be a long letter for the locks are getting few. I think Charles should find when our "Robin" started somewhere between the covers of his diary, for he was the one who started it. I'm sure I never wrote before we were married in 1890. I have kept only the letters I've written since we moved to Madison in 1915, Amelia. It makes sort of a monthly diary for the last 20 years. Those two old boys in Charles' clipping surely are spry. I've been astonished at the way Cal has worked this summer, day after day, never resting a minute after finishing his dinner and doing every thing the men 20 to 40 years younger were doing, and he has felt better than he did last summer at Chicago when he was not doing any hard muscular work and was indoors all summer. Today, he is helping Dale select seed corn in the field which is not an easy job either. Last week he drove a tractor all week cutting corn for silo fillers, often without a man on the corn binder he was pulling behind him. Speaking of Ella's party where bridge was NOT played, reminds me of a splendid article in the Aug. Ladies Home Journal entitled "Too Much Bridge" by Mrs Ely Culbertson (herself a bridge expert) in which she says, "No woman should be so interested in bridge that it interferes with her duties to her children, her husband, her home or her social or cultural activities." Ella, I never kept any postage stamps or any letters, & I do think Lucile's a VERY nice looking girl, but I didn't keep her picture. I went to a social meeting of the Senior Bible class of the M. E. Church one day last week, as Mrs. Day Reeds guest, & had a very nice time. Many of our old friends are gone & of course, strangers have moved in so there are many we don't know. Eliza Senior told me she had given up teaching the primary class this year after 16 YEARS WITHOUT MISSING A SUNDAY!! She must be almost 80, but looks much as always. Mrs. Bishop goes to the M. E. Church each Sunday also. She lives just across the street. Well, my hair is dry, so I will proceed to arrange my coiffure as best I can. Love to you all. Annie E. Am enclosing the latest snap shots of Ruth's family. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Nora Springs, Ia. Oct. 27, 1935 Dear Circle: Oct. 27 and the corn husking is done! Cal and Dale finished yesterday. Cal had told me they had husked ten loads a day sometimes when every thing worked well. So I went out one PM to watch the modern method of "shucking" corn. To begin with, I found it rather difficult to get into the three-box-high wagon to ride out to the field. I stayed in the wagon while the husker filled it, marvelling at the speed & thoroughness of the machine & at the skill Dale had in managing the tractor, the husker & the team at one time. (I recalled that it was just 44 years since (in that same field) Dale was trailed behind the wagon in his baby carriage when I went out to help Cal husk one PM. We had tied our one cow to the other side of the wagon to have her eat her fill so our speed was considerably less that his last week.) Then Cal took the load to the crib where an elevator whisked it inside in short order. I think a husker is a worth while machine. I've made apple butter from some of the Patton's greening apples (that are not keeping very well) but not in the wash boiler as in years gone by. I make two qts. at a time in my small oven & it only needs stirring occasionally & it tastes as of old. Merle Hamel is a real modern mother. Who would have thought a few years ago Ella would have three grand children who were Drs. as I suppose Roswell Jr. will be also some day. They must inherit it from her who liked to nurse. Nellie Armstrong's letter interested me, for we spent some time in Balboa Park in 1934. Janet came down to spend an afternoon with me recently & she wanted to fish, so we dug some worms & went down to the river, but never a fish did we see! I wonder where they go when it is fall. We came back from Madison via La Crosse and those wooded hills were like paintings in their lovely autumn colorings. We are all well here and hope this finds all the circle well. Love to you all from Annie. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Nora Springs, Ia. Nov. 25, 1935 Dear Circle: I was hoping the Robin would come before we left for the south, for there is always quite a long time when we have no mail, & have no address. We will stay now until next Mon., we think, for this weekend is holdiay time and vacation for many and we think the traffic may be greater than next week. Cal and Dale have been busy every day since they finished husking, plowing, making fence, and other jobs and Sat. Dale bought a truck (as his old one was used up) and now they are hard at the job of making a box for it. In doors Rena & I are making old things look like new, if possible, lengthening & remodelling dresses for the girls, repeating my program of twenty-five years ago. Yesterday we were all at Jennie's for dinner, a pheasant dinner, as her husband is a hunter and the open season for pheasants is on. Dale & Cal have had no urge to go out, so we are content to eat chicken. Cal said he saw five jack rabbits on the lower farm one day last week. We don't even know if they are good to eat. Ruth writes that Dick is planning on going to the Science meetings in St. Louis after Christmas and will stop in Madison for a short time. Noel thinks of going, also, if he can drive down. Grace writes that there are many cases of scarlet fever in Madison & the schools were closed for a time, but now are open again with restrictions on children going to meetings or riding on street cars, etc. They were all well when she wrote. When we see some people who are eighty years old & the shape they are in, we marvel at Arthur speaking "on the public stage", writing for the papers & driving over these busy highways, just like young folks, and we are glad it is so. We have had a letter from our friends the Pipers, who are now in St. Petersburg and they like it very much there. We will look them up when we get there. We hope to avoid the storms they have down there and get back safely in the spring. Hoping you all keep well this winter. I must close, with love to you all. Annie E.