Interview with Grandpa Tim

When I went on the trip to see my grandpa Tim Wesselowski I recorded some interviews with him. This is the transcript of the first interview.

Grandpa: well that Couch Cemetery is our family cemetery.

Me: yuup that’s it

Grandpa: There’s more people-  more relatives- I’ve got more relatives buried up there than probably anybody else in that cemetery.

Me: yup

Grandpa: and I recognize a lot of the names that aren’t, you know, ours. Claude Slate. Called Claude Slate he used to come down and go fishing with grandma and he’d go fishing with the boys up in the pond.

(post talk note: the names he mentions are related through marriage or otherwise, contrary to what grandpa thought)

//silence as grandpa Tim clicks through the findagrave site. He reaches Etta Byers’s page.

Me: What do you remember about Etta?

Him: Oh a lot!

Me: Oh Okay

Him: She was, well actually she died in the nursing home in Beloit.

//short pause

Him: I know that uh, I hated going to visit her there.

Me: Aw

//I laugh a little- it wasn’t what I was expecting him to say

Him: Well I mean you know I

Me (interrupting because I feel bad for laughing haha): Yeah I know it’s not fun to visit nursing homes.

Him: Yeah.

//short silence as he looks at findagrave some more

Him: but the funny thing is, you take a baby into the nursing home and all the women just go crazy.

Me (Laughing): Oh yeah?

Him (Laughing): They get so excited because the baby-

Me: Yeah because they are so used to old people

Him: yeah

//brief pause

Him: You know Walter (Byers) died about 10 years before Etta did. They say the old home- Walt (his brother) told me the old home- the farm- he says is gone. The house is gone now- it just kind of collapsed in on itself.

Me: oh it did?

Him: yeah

Me : how often did you used to see them

Him: oh I remember we used to go up there for Sunday dinner about every Sunday. Grandma was a good cook, boy. We’d have fried chicken and roast beef and oh you name it it was a spread. There was a big old long table that my moth- Walt’s got it now- my mom had it for years and I don’t know how many damn seats were in that thing but that thing would stretch out so it went in from one end of the dining room to the other. And they used to have big family dinners up there and, god, them old folks knew how to cook.

Me: We found the recipe for her bread

Him: Oh really? Yeah I saw that yeah.

Me: we’ll have to make that sometime.

Him: Yup

Me: mom liked her red velvet cake

Him: yup yup. Lets see uh.. search that Wesselowski one again.

Time passes of general conversation and searches.

Him: Adolph Eugene Wesselowski I went to his funeral.

Me: oh you did?

Him: Walt and I did but we couldn’t go up to cemetery because it was in a military cemetery. He was actually over in Germany, not during the war or anything. He was also a mason. A mason funeral is amazing. I mean all of a sudden out of the side door of a- and the casket was up almost on the stage in the front- and it was open. They had this door to the side open up, and heres all these masons come out and lay a rose on the casket. But he was really big on that mason stuff.

Later on talking about his grandpa Julius Wesselowski (they never met but he heard stories):

Him: He played the violin, and he had the first car in Jewell County.

Me: oh really? Wow that’s pretty cool.

Him: Yeah and he and another guy- he raced a horse and buggy from (?) to Randall 8 miles away. But they had a race between the horse and buggy and his car down to Randall and I think the horse and buggy won, I don’t know.

//laughing

Me: well the roads were probably not built for cars.

Him: Well yeah and Randall is just uh, and of course I’ve got my aunt Irene, who is my moms sister, she lived in Randall. And actually I went to a family reunion and see her first husband died. We called him N. M. Elniff. He died in about 1950, somewhere in there. I remember the funeral. He was my favorite damned uncle, I mean he would let me do anything. I remember he had a 49 ford with an automated transmission and he took me out to the cowpatch and let me drive it around.

//laughing

Me: Nice, how old were you?

Him: Oh I was 10 maybe

Me: 10!?

Him: I loved him he was a great guy.

Him: So, you know, I got cousins that are named Elniff.

Me: yup