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The Victoria GAZETTE |
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December 2011 |
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"The church gave out Christmas packages with candy, fruit, and peanuts. The pastor was Reverend Splies. He had two kids at the Victoria Public School with us and we had carols and singing there." According to church records, Reverend Splies was at Lake Auburn from 1940 to 1951. The family walked to church? "We had a car but most of the time we walked -- it wasn't so far -- and somebody would give us a ride home," said Harvey. "We had a Christmas tree at home. I suppose Notermann's sold trees. We had bubble lights on the tree, two sets of eight each. The candle on each of them was about a quarter inch in diameter, and at the base of each candle was a ball that the candle came up from. There must have been something in the ball that would heat up and light the candles. We had tinsel, too." Did they have Christmas stockings? "I can't remember having stockings up," he said, "but Mom would wrap things up for us, always clothes. Dad would give us each two bucks -- maybe five bucks -- to purchase something for the others." Was there special food at Christmas time? "Well, turkeys weren't too plentiful then," said Harvey. "We'd have goose or duck that we'd buy from somebody. Mom made a lot of bread from scratch. It was delicious. And we'd have potatoes and gravy. We always had potatoes because Dad had rented a garden plot in back of the old bank. I think the tavern owned that piece of dirt." How had Kelly Drew learned blacksmithing? "He was self-taught," said Harvey. "He worked for Jim Powers in Monticello and that's how he learned. When the shop in Victoria came for rent, Dad went out on his own. All the equipment was there. We rented the building from Bill Braunworth. The shop was located on the east end of the Braunworth Implement Store, and it faced east. It faced the DX Station. Braunworth's store faced south." Harvey said that Bill Braunworth's wife was a friend of their mother and often made ice cream for the kids. What exactly did a blacksmith do in the 1930's? "He sharpened plow shears for farmers and he put shoes on horses," said Harvey. "Dad was a ferrier. He made the shoes out of iron. And he fixed farm machinery. Dad had the first welding machine in the area." Blacksmithing wasn't Kelly Drew's only labor. "He also worked the night shift at the Victoria Creamery during World War II," said Harvey. "They dried skim milk up on the second floor of the Creamery. Dad worked into the night as long as there was milk to dry. Then he recruited us kids to wash up the machines that dried the milk. He invented a powder shaker so he could pack more dried milk in a container. I think he patented a barrel shaker when we lived in Augusta." Harvey said he was about 11 years old when the family moved out of the Old Dance Hall. Another son James had been born in 1939 and baby sister Shirley was born in 1941. The brothers couldn't explain exactly how Shirley came to be born in a nursing home in Excelsior rather than a hospital, but there was a doctor in Excelsior. In any case, the Old Dance Hall was bursting at the beams. In confirming 1943 as the year the family moved out of the Old Dance Hall, Harvey said, "I never spent a lot of summers at home. I worked for Clarence Schwalbe from 1943 and graduated 8th grade in 1945. I've got pictures of Shirley sitting next to the big cottonwood trees that stood in back of the Dance Hall." To where did the Drew family move? The family moved to a home located just west of the 'Y' intersection at Highway 7 and County Road 13, better known today as Rolling Acres Road. Robert, the third brother, recalled that after blacksmithing in Victoria, their dad worked for a time at a blacksmith shop in Chanhassen, on the Main Street of Chanhassen, not far from the bars and the church. Finally, the family moved to Augusta in 1945, which is where they lived for a very long time! What happened to brother James? Oldest brother Don told the story. "He drowned when he was 16, in Millers Lake. He was swimming. It happened when we lived in Augusta. Dad and Ma and I were fishing on Plocher's Lake. You people call it Wasserman's now. We used to go fishing prett'ner every night. I can remember the light cane fishing poles that we got for ten cents at Wellens Hardware store in Victoria. We caught mostly sunfish, some bass. But I never got so cold in my life as when we fished on Lake Victoria. It's funny I got any feet left. We used to rent a boat there in the summer." Today that lake in downtown Victoria is better known as Stieger Lake. Miller's Lake is located south of Augusta Road. "Jim's drowning drastically affected our mother," said Don. "She crawled into herself. She was a mess. Finally my dad said she had to go out and get herself a job. She got a job at Gedney's in Chaska. She loved working there. Ma died in 1977 from cancer. Dad died in 1982, a stroke."
Click here to continue A Room at the Inn.
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