| Marissa, a southern Illinois town about thirty-five miles south east of St. Louis, Missouri, was the place of my birth, November 5, 1888 and also was my home for the first twelve years of my live. I was the youngest of eight children-four boys; Fred, John, Will, and Ben; and four girls Lydia, Margaret, Mary, and Anna. When I was two, my dear mother died. At that time the older children who were used to helping, took over the work. A year later mother's sister Margaret, a widow, came over from Germany with her fourteen year old son, Fred Ress. She married my father in St. Louis when he had gone to meet her. The first member of my childhood is a clear cut picture of my new mother and her son stepping into the front door of our home. No doubt my brothers and sisters had filled my mind too, with their intense excitement in anticipating the return of our father bringing with him the woman who was to take such an important place in our lives. It was quite an adventure for her too, to come to a foreign countr at the age of forty-six, to be a mother to family of eight children, especially since for several years she had had only one child, an older son having preceded her to America, several years before. In this new home, even the language was different for her. My brothers and sisters knew some German but now they had to speak it every day. At three years old, I easily learned a second language. Our stepmother absolutely refused to learn English, so we had to speak her language. She was a very strong willed woman and things had to go her way. She took over the cooking but my older sisters continued to look after other household activities. We lived in a two-story, eight-roomed brick house which also had the bake shop and store build in one part, separate, but under the same roof. We were a very busy family for my father not only had a bakery, a dairy but also a farm just outside the town corporation line. Each member of the family had his own special job to do, so the three projects worked out quite well. Everything had to be done according to schedule. My father had charge of the baker at a certain hour in the evening he set sponge. The next morning, early, at a certain hour, he made up the dough. As business increased and the children grew old enough, he had Mary and John help him make up loaves besides several large pans of buns; and all these had to be made up by hand. There was no machinery in the bake shop in those days of long ago. The large oven was built back into the wall at shoulder height, and consisting of two parallel layers of stone with about three feet between the top and the bottom. It was heated by a narrow grated area at the side extending a short distance into the oven baking area. For a considerable time a hot wood fire was built here until the whold oven was heated. Then the fire was banked with coal to hold the heat. It took much know-how to put the twelve large pound-and-a-half loaves, in their big square pans, into the oven at just the right time and space, for well baked bread. The pans were pushed to the farther end of the oven on a flat square of wood, nailed to a long handle of twelve or more feet. A quick backward jet set the pan on the oven floor and the spatula-like tool was withdrawn. The bread was sold for five cents per loaf or six loaves for a quarter. The baking was timed so as to be ready for the noon meal. What a busy time with customers coming for that hot loaf of mid-day meal. Many people also came from towns and farms near by to buy a week's supply of bread, rolls, and cookies. At harvest time large purchases were especially numerous as the threshing crews moved from one farm to another and the women who had to cook large quantities of food, were glad to be spared the hot job of baking bread and cookies. |
| Memories By Anna Kess Weedman, 1970 |
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