THOMAS DIETRICH GEORGE ADAM BODE TAPE RECORDING 1987 THIS BODE GROUP IS DISCUSSING A NUMBER OF FAMILY SUBJECTS. ONCE IN A WHILE THEY TOUCH ON SOME BODE FAMILY HISTORY. THEIR SUBJECTS AND OPINIONS ARE VERY INTERESTING. IN THE BEGINNING TOM AND MIRIAM HOLD CENTER STAGE. THEN ANNA LOUISE BODE GRIFFITHS ARRIVES AND JOINS INTO THE CONVERSATION. AL:----------- ANNA LOUISE BODE GRIFFITHS JOHN;-------JOHN GRIFFITHS (HUSBAND OT ANNA LOUISE) DANA:------- DANA BODE HARRIET:---HARRIET BODE (WIFE OF DANA) MARG:-------MARGARET BODE (WIFE OF TOM BODE) MIM:--------- MIRIAM BODE (SISTER TO DANA) TOM:---------TOM BODE (BROTHER TO ANNA LOUISE) ANNA LOUISE, DANA, MIRIAM, AND TOM WERE ALL COUSINS TO EACH OTHER. I HAVE CHOSEN A FEW OF THE STORIES THAT WERE TRANSCRIBED THAT DAY IN 1987. THE FIRST SUBJECT IS ABOUT A GERMAN GOVERNMENT CERTIFICATE THAT DIETRICH ADAM BODE RECEIVED WHICH APPROVED OR ENABLED HIM TO IMMIGRATE TO AMERICA. MIM: Did you ever get that translated. TOM: Well, this is Jim Bradley. I’m named after his mother. His mother says, Give it to Jim and he can take it when he goes to Germany. MIM: He could take it over, sure. Tom: He’ll get it translated. So he took it and in one of these fields they went to this church ‘cause that’s what you have to do go to the courthouse or the church and a, he took ‘em on a tour into this big Catholic Church, a whole group of kids. Well, then they come out, he took ‘em on a tour of the whole thing. It’s one of these, you know, midevil churches and when they come out, there’s the priest waiting for them all outside. MIM: No kidding. TOM: And he give them fifty Dutch Marks. “Buy the kids some ice cream.” MIM: Oh for crying out loud. TOM: That's a switch, you know. MIM: Boy, usually the hand’s out like that, you know. TOM: So anyway, Jim had it translated. MIM: Umhuh. MARG: Can you see any---- TOM: Somebody translated it. The only thing they couldn’t translate was the official that made it out. They couldn’t translate his signature with all those fancy curly-cues. You know his name could have Syvester or Samson or anything like that. MIM: Umhuh, I’ll be darned. TOM: Did you get a copy of it? DANa: I don’t think so. MIM: I don’t think so. TOM: We didn’t know whether it was my father’s parole papers or his prison release or what. you know. MIM: what did it turn out ot be? Tom: It was he had made application to come to America’ MIM: Umuh. TOM: This was in 1886 or somethin’ like that and they says this is in effect that he’s granted, he was born and so and so, son of so an so. MIM:Umhuh. TOM: And he was a journeyman mason guy, a bricklayer, a brick mason and this was his release from the guild and if he didn’t leave Germany when he was supposed to, you know when he made application to, this would be his last chance he would have or something. MIM To get out? Tom: To that effect to get out of Germany ‘cause all of their trades were leavin’ Germany. MIM: Yeah. TOM: You know coming to the land where the gold you just shoveled up a couple shovelsful every time you turned. MIM: Sure. TOM: And he came over in 1887. DAN: OK MIM: Were they all? Go ahead. HERE THE CONVERSATION VEERS OFF AND NOW THEY BEGIN A DISCUSSION ABOUT CHRISTAN GEORGE BODE DAN: It wouldn’t have been his stepmother because she hadn’t died then. She didn’t die until 1891. TOM: Who? DAN: His mother.. TOM: Christ’s mother. DANA: Yeah. TOM: Oh, see. I don’t know. Somebody said that his stepfather was giving him hell. MIM: Umhuh TOM: mistreating him. MIM: Yeah TOM: And they MIM: ---got him over. Did a, TOM: It was a scandal. A NEW SUBJECT BEGINS MIM: Yeah. Did these men all serve in the Kaiser’s army? TOM: My father didn’t. (DIETRICH BODE) I don’t think so. MIM: Well, see, our grandfather did before he came (JOHANN GEORGE ADAM BODE--GEORGE BODE). That we know. TOM: Maybe that was a part of that, too. MIM: Was to get out of there. TOM: He didn’t say anything about that. MIM: Yeah. BACK ON THE SUBJECT OF DIETRICH BODE PETITION TO IMMIGRATE TO THE US TOM Well, anyways, it was just like in fact if he didn’t take a chance while he had it, that would be his last chance. MIM: Yeah, umhuh. TOM: We finally got it translated. MIM: Umhuh. TOM: And then everything on it and Jim Bradley didn’t give you the American transcript. It was typewritten in German and in English and in the transcript that he had written, He says a, the only thing they were sorry the only thing that they couldn’t translate was the guys’ signature. MIM: Umhuh. TOM: I have it someplace. I give it to Tim, the original, and boy, he’s got it framed. MIM: Does he really? I”ll be doggoned. TOM: And then there were some sheets of music. MIM: When you find it, would you make us a copy of it, or make a copy? TOM: Oh yeah. MIM: I’m just doing this kind of stuff. He’s doing the real thing. TOM: Oh. If I find it, I’d send you a copy of it. I’ve got it copied of it someplace. In fact I found it not too long ago. I put it in my drawer’s, one of my drawer’s someplace. I’m a pack rat. I got stuff you you wouldn’t believe. NATURALIZATION, WHEN?? MIM: When were these people naturalized, do you know? TOM: Gee I do not know. MIM: Did you ever hear anybody say anything about when they became citizens? That’s something we’ve been wondering about. TOM: Like I say, But you know, when we were kids, you always saw somebody walking up the street somewhere. MIM: Umhuh. TOM: With a straw suitcase. You knew it was a “green one” (a new immigrant.) They were coming over in droves. MIM: Umhuh. TOM: That would be after World War I. MIM: Umhuh. TOM: And a, like in the early 20’s when there was such a reception, er recession er-- Er depression MIM: Umhuh TOM: In Germany, you know my mother used to send money over. MIM: Did she? TOM: I can remember when I was a little kid. MIM: Umhuh. TOM: And they never got it. MIM: Umhuh. TOM: Soon as the postal clerks or whoever was in the post, in the post office saw that letter with American postage on it, they steamed them open and stole the money. MIM: I’ll be darned. Huh. TOM: You know at that time in the ‘20’s, early ‘20’s, in Germany they’d let the people off like at noon. MIM: Umhuh. TOM: Pay ‘em their days wages, their half day’s wages, they’d pay ‘em cause between then and quitting time , it could be the way inflation was, it could be worth a half of what it was then. MIM: Umhu. TOM: I guess you could take a , had to take a wheelbarrow full, a load of money down to buy a share or somethin, you know. MIM: Umhuh. TOM: You the deutsch marks. DANA: I’d heard that if you wanted a kite for your little boy, I was cheaper to take the paper money and paste it together and make a kitr than it was to buy one. DID OUR PARENTS EVER GO BACK TO GERMANY? MIM: No kidding. I’ll be darned. Did any of our people ever go back to Germany once they were here? Your mother or father didn’t? TOM: No. MIM: your grandparents didn’t. TOM: No, no. MIM: once they were here and they crossed the ocean, that was it. They stayed put. TOM: That was it. They stayed. MIM” Yeah. HERRLICS--FRIENDS OF DIETRICH & FREDERICKA TOM: See these friends of ours, the Herrlichs MIM: Umhuh. TOM: her name was Marie, Margie, Mary, MIM: umhuh. TOM: Herrlich and her husband Joe was a carpenter and my father was a bricklayer. MIM: UMHUH. TOM: And they were bosom friends. MIM: hum. TOM: They were ir German Catholics and we were Protestants but every Saturday night we were out at their house. MIM: Umhuh. TOM: And they had three, three boys and a girl. MIM: Umhuh. TOM: But their mother Margie, that was my mother’s best friend. They called he Schwartz Margie, Black Margie. She was real dark complexioned and they called her Schwartz Maria. Well her sister-in-law that married her brother, they called her Dich Margie. See she was so fat and she was jolly. I can remember Oscar had to come in. You know our living room with the parlor or whatever it was, a room the kids never went in, we had that sliding doors. You know that was always closed all the time. I can remember my father being laid out there, you know and a , under the floor of that, there was, they’d get to dancing. We had an Edison Victrola and there was---. We had all them dances, The----the Green Woods, you know. They were all German waltzes and they’d get in there and get to dancin’. Well the whole house’d be goin’. Well that Dich Margie must have weighed three hundred pounds. MIM: Oh my gosh. TOM: Oscar had to come in and make a big “T” brace and put it under MIM: no kidding. Under the floor. TOM: But. oh, they had a jolly time. We were little kids then. They had a jolly old time. MIM: I’ll be doggoned. Were you allowed in there then? TOM: No, we could listen though. MIM: But you couldn’t watch? TOM: No. MIM: I’ll be darned. TOM: No, I was. But the Herrlichs were like a big clearing house. Everybody from this certain area in Germany that came over came to the Herlichs. And Mrs. Herrlich found them jobs up on the north hill ‘cause these people up on the north hill, these millionaires the Tods, Hendersons, the Armes, the Wicks and all them, they liked these German girls. MIM: ‘Cause they could work. Tom: They worked their *** off. MIM: Sure. TOM: For nothing’. MIM: Yeah. TOM: You know they were slaves. MIM: Sure. TOM: And they were honest. You know you couldn’t get a, you couldn’t just hire anybody, you know, and she got jobs for everybody. She was noted for that. They always came to Mrs. Herlich. MIM: My gosh. TOM: This Jim Bradley’s mother-in -law generally goes on these German trips. She pays her own way. DANA: Yeah. TOM NOW RELATES A STORY OF THE FAMILY (JIM BRADLEY) THAT HELPED TOMMY TRANSLATE HIS FATHER’S RELEASE FROM GERMANY. THEY COMPARE THE CLEANLINESS OF EUROPEAN CITIES WITH AMERICAN. TOM: And she was telling me one day. She says, “Go into any city, she says, you don’t see a piece of a gum wrapper, a cigarette but, you don’t seen anything on the street. DANA: They a, oh all, when I was in New York in the subway, all the graffiti and all. There isn’t a train-- TOM: What in the hell are they doin’?--- DANA: They say in Moscow they have an art gallery down in the subway with priceless paintings hanging on the wall. TOM: Boy wouldn’t that last in New York. Wll down in the mill they have a ---and all you can see wherever the blacks ate would be pork chop bones, fish skeletons, like a cartoon. You see fish heads ---You know throw it down, bread crusts and everything. DANA: Just like football, baseball and basketball now these pro teams where they give those guys so much money---The first time they get caught with drugs, finish, no more, and they never play again, but they cry. ‘Oh, but you’re depriving me of my rights. This is a fine opportunity. I’ve to have the opportunity, you know. One time, that's it. You’re done the first time. TOM: They interviewed this one on TV and he had to take remedial reading after he got out of College. He got kicked out of the prps for somethin’, football and he couldn't get a job and he was suin’ the college because he couldn’t read. Now how in the hell di d he graduate from college? DANA: Yea, that says a lot for the college. TOM: In the first place, how do they ever get out of high school to get, take their college entrance exams when they can’t read or write. I had one little-----He says, “Yeah, you talk now Bode, you talk now, “he says” I can’t read or write, he says “I couldn’t go to school”--- My mother (Toms mother, Fredericka) had to scrub floors. And there she was. She went Cleanin’ offices. I went through school. She put three kids through school. My father died and was sick before he died. That’s why she was a widow since 1918. We all went through high school. Geck was the only one that didn’t go through high school. He quit but we went through high school and we went down to the mill. You know day after like the first of month. IN THE ABOVE CONVERSATION, TOM WAS COMPARING HIS YOUTH WITH A BLACK MAN’S YOUNGER YEARS. TOM WAS SAYING IF ALL WORK HARD ENOUGH, ONE CAN DO ANYTHING. HE FELT THE BLACK MAN WAS A COPE OUT BECAUSE HE DIDN’T HELP HIMSELF MORE. ANNA LOUISE & JOHN GRIFFITHS ARRIVE AND JOIN THE CONVERSATION AL: Hi everybody. TOM: Why hello. AL: We just came from the doctors office. My heart was--- TOM: That’s good. You just came an hour late. We had a chicken for---- ? AL: No , it’s a song book to somethin’. I think. I can’t make it out. ? AL: My mother was Lutheran. TOM: what? AL: And you can have all-- TOM: Was our mother Lutheran? AL: yeah. TOM: Well, you know, I used to drive to work and of course I’D pick up the Lutheran Hour. AL: Oh, I like that. TOM: You know and you know that credo everything was the same, the same, just the same day. too every Sunday they had a different --- AL: Well, you know, they went to ---and they went there---- In fact they were married in that---but it was beautiful. TOM:------- ? AL: And he ---------high, you know. TOM: We used to take out an hour to, Christ was crucified and a ----almost every Friday. AL: Yah----- ? AL: My grandfather---- TOM: he was there when they had those dances there----at one o’clock in the morning. ? ANNA LOUISE TELLS THE STORY ABOUT THE FATE OF HER FATHER JOHANN THOMAS HAUCK, BORN ON 12/25/1839 & DIED ON 9/16/1893. AL: He was picking cherries and he fell from a cherry tree and I imagine he broke his neck or skull or something. MIM: who was that, Anna Louise? AL: It was my grandfather on my mother’s side (Johann Thomas Hauck). TOM: Makin’ cherry juice now, huh. AL: And he went and he died, you know, right then. Marg: I never heard that--- MIM: You know we have been in there jibber jabbing in’. AL: so when he died, my grandmother (Katherina Elisabetha Schmitt Hauck) went to the priest and said, you know, he was always loyal to his church that she felt he should be given a Catholic burial. MIM: umhuh. AL: Well the priest said, “No He couldn’t do that.” Marg: Harriet, want some? Throw the doll off the chair. AL: So she said. ‘My pastor will.” So I guess she went to the Lutheran Minister and he said, “Yes, he’d bury him. So then, Marg: Put her in the corner. Sit her in the potty chair. You’d like the Amish. AL: The priest said to my grandmother, he said, MIM: Yeah, yeah. AL: He was buried a Lutheran. MIM: This is your ? AL: My mother’s father. MIM: Father, Your grandfather. What was his name? AL; John Thomas Hauck. MIM: And that’s where the Hauck comes in your linage? AL: Umhuh. MIM: Where was she? In this country? AL: and her name was Schmidt. (The family Bible name is spelled Schmitt) Oh, I sent CARE packages. MIM: In Germany? AL: Schmidt. I think her name was or Schultz. I forgotten now.It’s in there and they were married I forgot what the date even was. I think it was Schmidt. MIM: my gosh, what do you have, a Bible? DANA: 1867. AL: yeah, 1967 ( She meant to say 1867). MIM: Oh, my gosh. Anna Louise, couldn't you just tell story after story would you? AL: well most of ‘em I got from, you know Marg: Yeah AL: People that knew my mother and you knew us. MIM: yeah. AL: That’s how I got the stories. MIM: Yeah AL: I was big enough for most of the things, you know, when they talked, you know, with their coffee klatsches I was always there, too, and I heard this things. MIM: Yeah. AL:And you know that is where I go a lot of them, too. MIM: Umhuh. I’m fascinated. TOM: Hazel, Hazel was the one that had a lot of them, too. AL: Helen too. MIM: Well Hazel died. AL: Yes. MIRIAM TELLS A STORY ON HAZEL BODE MIM: She’s the one , you know I told you Dad pulled somebody’s wig. AL: I don’t think it was her ‘cause she didn’t wear a wig. The only one who MIM: No, no, it wasn’t the corpse. It was somebody in the funeral home. AL: Yeah, oh. MIM: And you didn’t hear him tell that story the other day. When, I think I was in my teens, mother had a call that, I’m sure it was a cousin, so it had to have been Hazel that died and I remember the names Hazel and Helen. AL: She died in 1960. MIM: Well, then I would have been beyond my teens. AL: Yeah, she died in 1960. MIM: Yeah. It may have been somebody before that. But I rode up AL: well it could have been. MIM: With them to the funeral home and all I remember is there was a big parking lot and I didn’t go in. I Didn’t know anybody and I wouldn’t have any parts of this.Maybe it was somebody before this. that time. AL: Yeah. MIM: But Dad was like Uncle Dick, very jovial in talking with people and so on and evidently, he and mother came out and they didn’t know whether to laugh or what to do and they were just about splittin’ themselves and I think Mom was embarrassed to tears and Dad didn’t know what to do. He said to the lady, “How are you?” and he pats her hair, it moves. The wig fell. It didn’t come off but it moved and I couldn’t understand. What did he do? Push it back or drop it or whatever but I can’t remember what he did. AL: He was just one of the family, I guess, because everybody had their troubles. MIM: Yeah. ANNA LOUISE TELLS ANOTHER STORY Al: All I know is one. They said the kids, the twins, were comin’ down Myrtle Avenue MIM: Yeah. AL: And there was this house that had this stoop almost on the sidewalk and he’s sitting there like an old man. MIM: Dad, Our dad. AL: Yeah, and he scares the pants off of them and they run and got my father. Here it was your father. For a while our families didn’t talk. MIM: No kidding. Because of that?\ AL: Well all of these little things they used to pull, you know. MIM: Oh, my gosh, well they must have been AL: They were buggers. MIM: How did their mother survive? I can0t imagine that Uncle Dick, er Uncle George, Geck wasn’t angelic either. TOM: Actually their mother wasn’t much older than they were, our mother. She raised AL: of our kids. MIM: yeah. you know that kind of thing. AL: I heard Dietrich tell a lot. MIM: We heard a a lot of those but the one that Dad used to tell was when Mother would be trying to get us to do something and if he didn’t quite agree with it or somethin’, he wouldn’t come right out and say no but he’d say, “When I was a kid,” and the only story he ever told was he had to take piano lessons and the lady came to the house. She came once and the second time, pop was waiting for her. As she, talk about you goin’ out the window and shinnin’ down the tree, that's exactly what he did. He went up on the second floor, went out a window somewhere and down the tree and was gone. And there was another one then, probably was Geck. I can’t believe Uncle Dick would have pulled something like that, but one of the other boys and he every time this lady started coming near the house, boy, they were gone. And how they pulled that one and get a way with it, I mean they stopped because there was not going to be to any money lost that way, you know. But that’s the only story we ever heard of that nature where he, unless you heard some, Dana, Did you? Where he intigated. AL: they were always doin’ something more or less. They were, you know, There was---- MIM: Was there really? AL: All of the kids had gotten into it. TOM: Her brother Geck, every time somebody’d come in the house, he’d go up the back stairway, upstairs. MIM: And out? TOM: Well, he would stay up there. MIM: He’d stay up there, huh. I”ll be darned. TOM:---- AL: You know, we never called our grandmother an aunt. We always called her Tanta Anna. (AL is talking about Miriam and Dana’s grandmother, Anna Feihler Bode, wife of George Bode.) TOM: ----rundown the hallway and out the ---screen and down the street and gone. MIM: Yeah. Sure AL: That’s the way we were taught and that’s what we called her. MIM: Sure, that’s the what you knew. AL: And Uncle George. WE never called her Aunt Anna. MIM: Umhuh. AL: But a, when Edna and Fred lived in the apartment on Alice Street TOM: Unless Fred lived there. Fred lived there. AL: Well, this time it was Edna and George and I think Dorothy was a baby. MIM: Umhuh. EASTER EGG MAKING AL: And I don’t know if they had George or not but a, my mother, They’d go over there and my Mother’d stay and help them. So grandma, Tanta Anna would bring us back and there was a little store on Market Street where she always stopped and she’d buy us, well they were like marshmallow kind of heard you know, little figures MIM: Umhuh. Umhuh AL: And then we’d come home and she made us Easter eggs. MIM: Umhuh. AL: Put them in the coffee pot, you know. MIM: Umhuh TOM: The grounds made them brown. MIM: Umhuh. AL: That was the hard boiled eggs. MIM Oh my gosh. AL:Always made us Easter eggs. MIM: Remember the old pantry in the old house? AL: You, You don’t remember. You were about three or four but you don’t remember that. TOM: I don’t remember but you remember the old pantry in the old house on Myrtle Avenue, the big house. AL: Yeah. TOM: Where Uncle George lived. You went into the pantry on the side. That was always dark and gloomy there. MIM: Umhuh. TOM: She always had big AL: Well, there was a big bedroom off of that. TOM: She had, oh, I didn’t know that. She had a big crock with apple butter in, remember ? GOOSE LIVER AND VICKS FOR WHATEVER AILS YOU MIM: Where did she keep her goose grease? We used to hear that one all of the time. AL: Oh, my mother , I didn’t , we always had goose liver in the ----- MIM: You always has it smeared on you? AL: Well I don’t know what they did with it. I just know they made you eat it for a cold. MIM: Oh, for colds, yeah. When we’d get colds as kids or something. AL: Oh, no, I remember------ MIM: Do you remember hearing that story about goose grease? TOM: We never had any. I can remember as a kid begged mamom to buy a turkey and you know MIM: Yeah. TOM: The turkeys would be hangin’ in the butcher shop. They were expensive. They were awful expensive. Marg: They---then> AL: Goose for one of the holidays. TOM: We always had goose. We had a goose. AL: We always had a goose and the goose grease but I remember MIM: You had it spread on you too, huh? AL: Oscar especially. He’d get croop real bad, terrible. Now none of us kids ever got anything like that, er a lot of kids didn’t either but Betty (Oscars daughter, Betty Jane Bode)had croop real bad. TOM: I can’t remember. AL: So my mother went down and got the goose grease out and that cleared it up. MIM: What did she do, just smear it on? AL: I don’t know like you would. MARG: I often wondered what they did. MIM: Just on the outside. Well, there was a time, you had to do it more than I ever did, swallow Vicks coated in sugar. Marg: Oh, I’ve done that. AL: I remember that. MIM: Yeah, there was a period of that. AL: You know who did that and he used to, they used to get him to show. Jackie Wilson. Grace’d say, “Show them how you can eat Vicks.” DANA: Umhuh. AL: He swallow it off the spoon. MIM: Oh. Marg: He thought that was a pretty good cookie. AL: He thought that was something--- MIM: Claim to fame, huh. AL: But she always made us Easter eggs then. You know we had MIM: Umhuh. AL: An old enamel coffee pot MIM: Sure. AL: That you put the grounds in and she put the eggs in and she’d boil the coffee. We had brown Easter ega. MIM: I’ll be darned. MARG: People still do that with onion skins and coffee. MIM: Do they? TOM: ---We do it with onion skins too. MARG: Yeah. I hear them on party lines talkin’ about it. AL: For a month we saved onion skins . Remember where we saved them, Tommy? Remember the little corner sink? TOM: Yeah. AL: Mom had a bag there and that’s where we put the onion skins. MARG: People still do that. DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT OUR GRANPARENTS NATURALIZATION? MIM: My gosh. That’s one I never knew. Anna Louise, do you know anything about when anybody was naturalized as a citizen? Dana was asking me. AL: Oh, yeah. My father was. MIM: Do you know when or where or anything? They all had to have been somewhere. AL: Youngstown, I think. Oh, I know Uncle George went there. MIM: They would all have to have been.. AL: yeah:, You know my mother married him. She was naturalized , you know. MIM: Umhuh. AL: she was a citizen----Oh, I know they were, Yeah. MIM: Umhuh. You don’t know where or when or anything like that then. AL: No, a, MIM: Dana went to the courthouse TOM: He came straight to Youngstown. The older brother--- MIM: Your dad? TOM: Yeah, I think he came straight to Youngstown. MIM: Where did he land, do you know? AL: I think in New York. MIM: New York. I think most of them came in through, AL: I think that was the main port. MIM: New York was the main one. AL: Yeah. MIM: Yeah. CHATTER ABOUT ANNA EVA ELISABETH BODE, SISTER OF GEORGE & DIETRICH BODE AL: They had a sister, too. TOM: Whose sister was that? MIM: All right. there you go. AL: Brazil. MIM: Brazil? That would be your father’s sister and your grandfather’s sister. TOM: What was her name? AL: Don’t ask me but I remember Hazel and Helen talkin’ her, askin’ them about it and they said, “Yes, one time she sent them dolls.” MIM: umhuh. AL: I don’t know from Germany or where she sent them dolls. MIM: Umhuh. Huh, Oh my gosh. Umhuh. DANA: She went to South America? AL: Yes. DANA; Well, that family only had one girl. AL: Well, then that MIM: That would be the one. AL: I can’t remember her name now. I don’t know if I ever heard it. DANA: Eliza. AL: Eliza. Oh, was that? Oh. DANA: That’s what I have. MIM: I’ll be darned. A FAMILY SECRET AND SCANDAL AL: Well, I know there was a girl. There was Simon. TOM: Simon called Peter. AL: Simon was supposed to be Christ’s father (Christrian George Bode) TOM: Oops. AL: He was a *******. MIM: Oh. AL: And they brought Christian George and my father, (Dietrich) and Uncle George brought them over here. (Anna Louise is saying that Christian George Bode was the ******* son of Simon Wilhelm Bode. Johann Heinrich and Barbara Eva Bode, The parents of George, Dietrich, and Simon must have convinced George Adam Bode to sponsor passage for Christian to immigrate to America rather than allow him to remain living in Bad Hersfeld.) MIM: Yeah. That’s what Tommy was saying. TOM: That was a scandal. AL: that was a MIM: Was it muted at the time or did people? TOM: A *******. MIM: Yeah. Who called him that? Just you kids or Al: No. MIM: People in the family called him a *******? AL: No, behind everybody's back. MIM: yeah. umhuh. That's what I wondered. Harriet: Who? MIM: Christ. Harriet: Oh. MIM: Grandpa’s brother. (Miriam still looks upon Christian or Christ a a brother to her grandfather, George Bode. If Christ is a *******, then he really is a nephew to George and Dietrich Bode. The father to Christ was Simon Wilhelm Bode and he was a brother to George and Dietrich Bode.) AL: All I remember was the time because of being Christ. Bode--- MIM: Yeah. It would have been his stepmother who mistreated him then? AL: Huh. MIM: It would have been his stepmother who mistreated him then? DANA: What do you mean. MIM: Yeah. DANA: ---was the father of this fellow? MIM: Do you mean we only have one like that? We’re lucky. AL: ----- MIM: You start rattlin’ those bony cages you know you have all kinds of things fall out. TOM: Nobody ever knew about him. Hazel told us. AL: We knew how old he was (Christian was born in December 1878 and arrived into the US in 1893. He was about fifteen years old when he arrived in Youngstown.) DANA: Well, lets see. He was the one that married----- TOM: -------how long they stay in Germany. MIM: I don’t have any idea. I wish I, I keep sayin’ I wish I knew more German and I don’t take the time to work at it. TOM: Two years ago over at Kent State they offered a beginners----other courses in German. MIM: Did you take them. TOM: And I was goin’ to and I never got to it. MIM: I did it once but see I don’t have any German background, you do. TOM: Na. MIM: I can rattle French all right but I don’t have any German background. DANA Yeah, and you don’t know TOM: Well, see I can listen and pick it up MIM: Pick it up. TOM: A smattering of it, but I can’t talk it ‘cause I don’t have the right tenses or anything. MIRIAM TELLS THE STORY ABOUT HER GERMAN TRIP MIM: I, a It’ll be five years ago this fall I went to Germany and got Berlitz tapes that summer and I worked like crazy on those things and learned enough that I could get by with things I needed to do. In fact I went to see Josie, the one who would be a sister-in-law to Edith in Florida. DANA: They were second cousins. MIM: And she’s almost blind. I mean totally blind. She can’t write. This was five years ago and she couldn’t take a step out of her apartment and you went in to she had everything exactly positioned. She’d get this close to see you. So anyhow I, goten morgen and this kind of thing I could get out. Well, Pauline wrote her a letter and said I was gonna come and we would stopped to see her. And a, I called her on the phone and I had worked out in my mind how to say who I was and yeah, she knew who Pauline and Der Herman. She knew the Herman right away. So she gave me directions how to get there. I was strugglin’ like crazy trying to follow what she was saying. Well, we got there alright and went in and I had taken pictures Pauline gave me and I looked around her living room. She had pictures of the Vugrincic kids and Kathy and Joanne and enough people I knew I was in the right place. But anyhow she finally said to me , she couldn’t say a word in English except things like hello and stuff like that you know, but she finally got it out and what she was sayin’ to me was, why can’t I speak German like your Uncle Dieter? When he was over there, (Dieter is Dietrich Adam Bode, son of George Bode. He was a preacher.) TOM: He was, he was MIM: He was good. TOM: He gave MIM: He used to preach in German. TOM: two sermons a day, in German or in MIM: In English. TOM: An early service MIM: sure. TOM: And the next service would be in German, strictly German. Well, Rev. Mayer could do that too. MIM: Did he? TOM: He had German and English, yeah. MIM: Well, she was not happy that I was not talented like this other guy and I though whoa, hold back, you know, but that was a tough thing to walk away and leave her. She evidently doesn’t have a lot to go on. She told me her husband George was in the basement and had a coronary and there was a mix up with the two sons and and they just started to reconcile whatever this was.I couldn’t get what she was saying enough to put it together but he made us tea, er made us coffee. So, we had taken things over. I talked with Edith beforehand and said “what can we take.” So she suggested rice and tea and band aids and those were the three things we were to take.So we took pretty goo quantities and a , anyway she had a little package cake that they had bought in a store. Finally we got around to saying , “how do you shop?----But she went out and she, you know how they have these coffee makers on the wall built in with a tube, a view tube looks like what you used to check anti freeze in a radiator. All right. It looks like that but right against the wall and there’s a direct line from the water tank to that and you open that tap and fill three cups or what ever she wants and shut it off. She couldn’t see that but this was a hydrometer. She’d have a flashlight and she was up like this looking at it. I watched her. She didn’t know I was in the room looking at her to see what she was doing. I was scared to death she’d burn herself----She’s a prisoner in that apartment and I wanted to ask her, but I didn’t want to upset her for asking anything I shouldn’t ask. I didn’t care what church or wher eit was. One women, a neighbor in the apartment,---to do her shopping and she never got out of there. I had asked her and in a way I was hoping to ask her and I backed awayfrom it whether we could rent a car if she’d like to go for a ride and we’d go out and try to find some of these places---No way she could step her foot out. When we went to leave and when we got there , she had her door part way openso she couldn’t go anywhere but the walk area. It, it was tough. She still, a, when Edith broke her hip, maybe you heard the story, she called Pauline and Herman right at the time they were going to church. He’s out in the car beeping the horn for her to get her bones out there and she’s bein’ slow when the phone rings. Josie’s callin’ from Germany, Frankfort-am-Main, and he, she’s saying, “Josie, Josie.” mShe was thinking josie died and this was somebody calling---She goes out and here they’re on long didtance across the ocean all this time, she goin’ out screamin,’ “Herman get off that horn and get in here and answer the phone. They lost all kind of time on that call from what they were saying but what she was calling was to tell them the one in Florida had brtoken her hip. She wanted someody to know it and that was I think------ TOM: Is she still living? MIM: Near as I know.