The Gypsies

The other day I was looking over some family records, and I came across something my mother said years ago, in an interview with her cousin Gene, who was collecting the Erickson family history.  Mom said this about her childhood in the 1930s:

“Gypsies would come through the area every summer in their horse-drawn wagons during the Barbers Corner years.  They would steal the clothes off the clothesline, and steal chickens, turkeys, eggs, vegetables, bicycles, and everything else they could.  Everything had to be hidden or watched when the gypsies were passing through.  Sometimes they would come to the door and ask for food.” 

The whole topic of the Gypsies has always intrigued me, ever since I saw the wagons of the “Travellers” when I was in England and Ireland.  Could there really have been Gypsies in rural areas of America like Barbers Corner, Illinois in the 1930s?

So I did a little digging…  and it turns out there were. 

The website LivingHistoryFarm.org says that the Gypsies, more commonly known today as the “Roma,” came to the U.S. from Russia and the Balkan countries in the late 1800s.  Although their origins were in northwestern India, they were nicknamed “Gypsies” because it was mistakenly believed that they were Egyptians due to their dark skin, hair, and eyes.  They were persecuted almost everywhere they went; Hitler hated them like he hated the Jews, and he killed between half a million and a million of them.

The Gypsies were always a roving people (their name, Roma, means “wanderer”) and that held true in the United States during the Great Depression.  In those days they often traveled in caravans of covered wagons pulled by horses.  Elroy Hoffman remembers them from his Nebraska childhood.  “They’d park somewhere to feed the horses, eat there along the road…  They’d come up to our place to get food.”  Another Nebraskan, Mildred Opitz, remembers being afraid of them—they dressed differently than the locals, spoke a different language, and looked different.  She said the men were often horse traders, and the women made jewelry and baskets to sell or told fortunes.  She said they traveled in clans and had brightly painted wooden wagons.

The website DailyNewsOnline.com had a post on April 14, 2013, recalling the days of the Gypsies in western New York State during the Depression.  The article says that bands of Gypsies traveled in covered wagons and camped on the outskirts of town each spring from the early 1900s into the 1950s and beyond.  (In later years they favored Cadillacs over wagons!)  The women would work as healers or fortune tellers.  The police would warn local residents to stay away from them, and at times, if the Gypsies fleeced too many locals out of their money, they would either be arrested or told to leave the area.

And are there still ethnic Gypsies (Roma) in America today?  The Website EveryCulture.com says that there are probably as few as 100,000 or as many as a million, from several different ethnic subgroups.  They came to the United states from Russia or Eastern Europe (the Rom); Great Britain (the Romnichals); Sloviakia (the Baschalde); and Hungary (the Romungre); and another half dozen places in Europe.   The article says, “It is uncertain how many Gypsies are in the United States because many Gypsies’ entry was undocumented, and others were recorded by their country of origin and not as Gypsies.”  Also, “Many Roma themselves do not admit to their true ethic origins for economic and social reasons.”

Today many of them still travel, but others are settled in northern urban areas like Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, and Dallas, mostly in trailer parks.  Some more conservative groups have settled in rural Texas and Arkansas.  They still have a powerful group identity and don’t often socialize or intermarry with outsiders.  They have their own language, cuisine, clothing, marriage customs, music, and traditions about health, religion, and family dynamics.  Today they are often used car dealers and repairmen or sell watches and jewelry—along with the traditional trade of fortune-telling, which is alive and well.

  

Image:  Andrew Rowland via 123rf.com

A Very Special Wedding

Not all family history is ancient history.  Once in a while an event takes place that makes me think, “This story should be told.  This story should be written down and remembered.”  One such story in our family is that of Frank and Nancy’s wedding.

Shortly after my mid-life wedding in 2007, my sister met a man named Frank.  Both had been previously married (and had their hearts broken).  It was true love, and they got engaged in 2008. 

Nancy had been living in California for decades by then and had deep roots there, as did Frank.  But as they planned their wedding, she was continually saddened by the thought that our bedridden mother would not be able to attend. 

Mom lived in Illinois, as I do.  She had missed my wedding the previous year, being too frail to attend (as well as being legally blind and nearly deaf).  When I got married in 2007, I went over to her house in my wedding dress, along with Nancy in her maid-of-honor dress.  “Mom, I’m getting married today!” I told her.  Her face lit up with a smile as she touched the fabric of my dress.  I wasn’t sure if she would remember that day, but I wanted to give her what I could.

As Nancy sadly planned her motherless wedding, it was Frank who came up with the idea.  He said to his beloved that if her mother couldn’t come to the wedding—they would move the wedding to her mother.  Mom lived in a large, bright room with our sister-in-law Susie by this time.  When presented with the idea of hosting the wedding, Susie said that she would be delighted.

 And so it was…  On December 26, 2008, we all gathered in Mom’s large room at Susie’s house.  The room had been festooned with lots of white netting, white lights, and white candles.  There were about 20 chairs set up at one end of the room.  At the other end, next to the fireplace, there was a ivy-covered arch.  And just a few steps away was my mother, tucked in under an afghan in her special chair, which was turned towards the arch for the ceremony.  She was wearing a wrist corsage of red roses that matched her daughter’s wedding bouquet.

Five of Frank and Nancy’s six children were able to attend.  Rather than a best man and maid of honor, the five children stood on each side of the couple as they were wed.  My friend Karen, an ordained minister, officiated the ceremony, and our niece Sarah and her husband Russ read the scripture.  It was beautiful and magical and just perfect.

This may not be an old story, but it’s a story that should be remembered and passed down in the family... my family.  Well done, Frank and Nancy—and happy sixth anniversary!

  

One Girl’s Childhood During the Great Depression

Memories of life on an Illinois farm, as dictated by my mother, Adra Erickson Wallin (1922-2010)...

“I was born at home (all four of us were), at the farm at Barbers Corner on August 18, 1922, at six in the morning.  A nurse and a doctor came—Dr. Ludwig—but I was born before he got there!  My mother got a “hired girl” to help her take care of us for a few weeks.

We lived on three farms when I was growing up.  My father grew corn, soybeans, oats, wheat, alfalfa, and hay for the animals.  We had six horses, two cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and sheep...  The Depression was hard on our family.  When I was twelve, in 1934, we lost our farm and had to move.  Everybody was poor then.  We had a phone when I was little, but not later—no electricity, no running water—and we were seven miles from town.  We had lamps and we would carry them to our rooms to study by.

In the summer, we would have droughts—we’d get small crops those years.  We’d also get chinch bugs and grasshoppers on the corn (our biggest crop).  We’d sit in front of the fan to stay cool, or go down to the river, which was cold.

We had an outhouse at every home I lived in.  We called it “the privy.”  They were terrible—just a board across with two holes.  There was also a board with a smaller hole for kids!  It was hot and had bees in the summer.  They were far from the house, too, because of the smell.  We used a Sears Catalog for toilet paper, because we liked the thin sheets.

Chores I had as a child included bringing in the “split wood” for the kitchen stove.  Geraldine brought in the “chunks” for the big stove in the dining room (our only heat), and little sister Audrey brought in the cobs (to start the fires).  Also, I’d gather eggs every day after school. 

I remember my first day of school—I walked downhill, across a creek, and uphill, half a mile...  There were a lot of kids—first through eighth grades all in one room.  There were smaller seats for the younger kids.  I would help my sister Audrey—we sat in a double seat.  We didn’t have all the subjects every day—not with eight grades.  At recess we played baseball, tag, hide and seek, hopscotch, and swinging—we had a rope swing in a tree.   

I walked to Barbers Corner school, but at Higgins four of us rode in a pony cart.  Bob would drive the cart, put it in a shed, hook it back up at night, and drive us 1½ miles…  When I was in high school, my brother drove us in the car.  He needed to get home to help on the farm, so he couldn’t do sports.

My favorite times with my mother were sitting on the front porch at night on the swing.  Her best advice to me: Don’t get married too young!  My favorite times with my father were going for buggy rides with our horse, Bess.  In the winter he would take us in the bobsled—a big wooden box on runners.  I remember sometimes being worried about being an orphan and being sent to an orphanage. 

My mother was scared to death of thunderstorms, so I was, too!  She’d get us out of bed and get us dressed and take us down to the basement.  When my mother was younger and teaching school, there was a storm and lightning struck the barn and set it on fire.  She and the family she was boarding with had to go out in their nightgowns and save the animals, and she never forgot that—that’s why she got us up and dressed whenever there was a storm.

When I was nine I went to the 1931 World’s Fair in Chicago, and when I was ten I went again.  I was visiting a friend of the family.  He would turn all five of us kids loose for the whole day there—and I was the oldest one!” 

Thanks for the stories, Mom.  My, how times have changed!