<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They are\nabsolutely huge and black, immense pieces of life, blowing snot. I\u2019m supposed\nto feed them apples. I can hardly move. They\u2019re harnessed, but not to anything.\nI\u2019m sure I\u2019ll get my hand ripped off. I\u2019m probably six. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
My\nfather and his uncle Adolph are laughing, remembering how it is to be scared by\nthe sheer size of something living. King and Duke, the two horses, stand there\nwaiting, once in a while stamping or whooshing air out their huge glistening\nnostrils. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I offer\nan apple to King, the horse on the left. He snuffles it off. I still have a\nhand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I lay\nthe second apple, small and yellow with reddish streaks, on the flat of my\nother hand and move toward Duke, who leans his huge head over and picks it off.\nHis lips are slimy, his tongue rough. My dad has this proud look. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Uncle\nAdolph lifts the reins, motioning to my father. Dad gets this grin, takes the\nreins in both hands and clucks at King and Duke who walk past me toward the\nbarn. I follow them in and watch Uncle Adolph and my father unharness these\nmonsters who obey commands of people so much smaller than they. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Uncle\nAdolph wore bib overalls to work, which was out his back door, farming on\nDonges Bay Road in Mequon, Wisconsin. The land he farmed was down the road from\nthe homestead my father\u2019s great-grandfather Gottfried settled into, sometime after\nhe arrived from Germany in 1839 at the age of 17. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gottfried\u2019s\nson Herman bought a farm and ran it with his wife Margaretha until he died of\ndiphtheria in 1894 in his thirty-fourth year, leaving Margaretha with two sons,\nseven and three, and Rosa, who had just had her first birthday. Two other boys\nhad already died of diphtheria at ages five and two. A seven-year-old boy, the\neldest, Hugo, got diphtheria too, but survived with a weakened heart. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not sure\nhow Margaretha managed. Her son Hugo went to work in Milwaukee as a fourteen-year-old,\nclerking in the office of an uncle\u2019s coal business, which he bought after his\nmarriage. Her younger son Walter probably helped on the farm. Maybe Margaretha\nran the farm or maybe she rented it out; at least she continued to own it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\nleft Rosa, a year old when Herman died at 34. Rosa finished public school in\n1907. Her Wisconsin Common School Diploma, complete with a silver ribbon\nbeneath the State Seal, lists the subjects she completed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She was\nfourteen. It was May, in the middle of the month, in time for spring planting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a\npretty long list: Reading, Spelling,\nOrthoepy, English Grammar, Arithmetic, Geography, Writing, United States History,\nthe Constitutions of the United States and Wisconsin, Physiology and Hygiene. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Orthoepy??<\/em> I looked it up just now.\nIt means the correct pronunciation of words. In this case, English ones.\nProbably useful, German being the first language for many in Mequon at the\ntime. Must have worked. I don\u2019t remember her having a German accent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She\nmarried Adolph Milbrath, making him my dad\u2019s uncle. Eventually they took over\nMargaretha\u2019s farm and she lived with them. My father spent his summers on Uncle\nAdolph\u2019s farm from when he was five years old until he went to high school. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Rosa was\na large woman, laughing every time I met her, and kind. We knew her as Aunt\nRosie. We usually saw Adolph and Rosie at family gatherings in Milwaukee since\nthat\u2019s where my family lived. But once in a while we would take a Sunday drive\nout to the country to visit them. That\u2019s where I met King and Duke. It mixes in\nmy memory with the smell of Uncle Adolph\u2019s cigars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A 1930\u2019s\ntraveling photographer recorded him in a color photo, standing behind King and\nDuke who are harnessed for work. He seems serious, dressed in a denim jacket\nand pants over a light blue shirt buttoned up to the throat, with a felt hat.\nThe limestone gravel driveway is white and dusty and the grass is dark green\nand he\u2019s not wearing gloves, so maybe it\u2019s summer after the dandelions are\ndone. Probably his best work clothes, chosen for the picture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nhorses look huge, even though it\u2019s just a photo with the inevitable foreground\neffect. And there\u2019s Uncle Adolph, this elf of a guy between them in the\nbackground, reins leading from their jaws through their shoulder collars back\nto his hands, loosely clasped, waist-high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n King.\nDuke. English names, not the German ones I might have expected them to go by. Orthoepy <\/em>spin, I suppose. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Power\nand family, that\u2019s what they are. Not about to take the hand off a petrified\nkid feeding them yellow summer apples streaked with red on a sunny afternoon in\nmid-September. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" They are absolutely huge and black, immense pieces of life, blowing snot. I\u2019m supposed to feed them apples. I can hardly move. They\u2019re harnessed, but not to anything. I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll get my hand ripped off. I\u2019m probably six. My father and his uncle Adolph are laughing, remembering how it is to be scared by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-essays"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pahwNU-aS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=674"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":686,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions\/686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamesbrueggemann.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}