“When Hubert and I were young we would go out to help our Dad hay. My dad would lift us up on the hay by our suspenders with his pitchfork. We thought that was great fun.
“Since Hubert and I were close in age we were good friends. In the spring and summer months we enjoyed shooting marbles. I was a pretty good player and I won all of Alex Allenbach’s marbles. His mother came to our house and demanded I return what I’d won from Allen.
“In the winter Hubert and I enjoyed skiing on the hills above town. Our skis were homemade in school woodshop. The tips of the skis were steamed in boiling water in a wash boiler to curve up the front ends. Then they were weighted down until they dried. We wore our regular boots and we walked up the hills, but we probably had more fun than the kids who ski today.
“In the winter Hubert and I trapped muskrats and took the tails into Sam Lewis’s general store. We bought all our clothes at that store. We wore knee pants and long sox when we were young and we were so proud when our folks bought us our first long pants. My dad liked to dicker Sam Lewis down on the price of our clothes.”
-John Joseph Straubhaar
Excerpt from Straubhaar Family History, July 1990
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