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Mettes Family Recollections1
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Chris.L-@jci.com
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Mar 27, 2001 16:00 PST
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Mettes Family Recollections
In an effort to keep some of the Mettes family history alive I wanted to
write down some of the recollections I have of the older generations
that I had contact with. First of all I should cover my lineage. John
(Johannas) Mettes was the original immigrant to the U.S. back in 1851.
One of his sons was John Simon Mettes, my great-grandfather. One of
John Simon's sons was James Haley Mettes, my grandfather. One of James
Haley's sons was Anthony Merle Mettes, my father.
My recollections go back to my grandparent's farm. James Haley Mettes
was a postman in the Macon, Atlanta, and Edina areas, as well as in
Kansas City. His wife was Mary Leona Delaney. The story goes that as a
young Irish lass, Grandma hit her croquette ball all the way across the
court and hit the ball of a young Dutch lad. Grandpa had no chance
after being smitten by this young lady. The marriage and eight children
were inevitable. James Haley Mettes was fortunate to have a civil
service job during the Depression. He was able to support his family
while others were having a tough time. Sometimes on his postal route he
would deliver sample boxes of cereal. He was known to stuff the
mailboxes of the needy families with as many samples as would fit in the
mailbox. His original routes were through the country where he would
ride a horse or use a buggy. As his children grew up he had an
opportunity to take a postal job in Kansas City. In this way his
children knew both rural and urban life. My grandparents lost one son
(Glennen Mettes) as a young boy and another (Joseph Denver Mettes) who
was an Army pilot shot down over New Guinea. Two other sons also served
during WWII. One was a Navy pilot (Anthony Merle Mettes) and another
(Bernard Adrian Mettes) was wounded during service in the Pacific.
Upon retirement in the early '50s, Haley and Leona purchased the farm
where my Grandmother had been born and raised. They had to modernize
the farmhouse with indoor plumbing and a single gas heating stove. The
80 acre farm west of Ten Mile (north of Macon) was more of a hobby than
a business. Grandpa farmed with two horses, Dick and Brownie (and later
Daisy), and the old horse drawn implements. It was in the late '50s
that I started visiting the farm during summer vacation and weekends.
What a paradise for a young boy and his cousins. At first, Grandpa
would put a bridle on the horses, lift us on their back, and we would
ride them bareback. As we got older, we learned to guide them close
enough to the wooden fence where we could climb the fence and jump on.
The horses had an uncanny knack for stepping a few feet away just when
you reached the top of the fence. With another year or two of growth we
were able to jump up, get our arm around the shoulder hump, and pull
ourselves up on top. That was a real sign of growing up when you could
get on the horse by yourself. We would ride as far as the Ten Mile
general store, buy a nickel bottle of pop and ride back home. Top speed
was a slow walk. Occasionally Grandpa would hook up a wagon or a buggy
and we would all go for a ride.
Harvest time was always fun. Grandpa put his corn in shocks to dry,
just like the old days. About November, Christopher Lee and the other
Amish neighbors would pull their gasoline power thrasher to the farm
with their horses. The horses were harnessed and the wagons were rigged
and we would pick up the corn shocks in the field and bring them to the
trashing machine. Cobs of corn would come out one end and the fodder
would come out the other end and be loaded into the loft of the barn.
Picking up the corn shocks was the most fun because they were infested
with mice. Every cat and dog in the area somehow knew when the shocks
were being picked up. They would gather around and catch the mice as
they scatter from the shocks. After an hour or so they tired of the
game or had eaten their fill and went and laid in the sun. At dinner
(lunch) a hearty meal was served in the warm house. The Amish did not
speak during their meals, but they could sure put away the meat and
potatoes. After dinner it was back to the field until supper (dinner)
time, wherein the process was repeated.
Grandma had about 200 chickens out in the henhouse. The money she made
on the eggs was for her expenses. It was my job to collect the eggs
once a day. As a young kid I used to wear gloves to collect the eggs
because some of the chickens would peck at your hands. Grandma was
brave. She would collect eggs bare handed. I got even with the
chickens that pecked me because we had chicken for supper almost every
night. It was my job to catch two chickens every day for Grandpa to
dispatch. I used different and inventive techniques to catch chickens.
Sometime I would corner them, sometimes I would catch them napping, and
sometimes I made a trap with a box, some string, a stick, and some corn
as bait. At first we stood back as Grandpa did his thing with the ax.
Chickens really do run around with their heads cut off, at least for
awhile. My introduction into adolescence was marked by the time I was
first given the honor of doing the deed. The first time Grandpa held
the chicken and I wielded the ax. That's how Grandpa got his nickname
of Lefty. (I exaggerate.) Eventually, I could hold the chicken and the
ax at the same time. It wasn't a real pretty sight the first couple of
times. After the chickens had stopped running around, Grandma would
come out and show us how to pluck the feathers off of the chickens. She
then singed the little feathers off over a fire in the barrel. After a
little more cleaning, she would fry them in an inch of lard. Yum, yum.
We always slept upstairs in the two story house. The only heat for the
three upstairs bedrooms was a single potbellied stove. The adults would
stoke the stove at night and we would all crawl under the multiple
blankets. If we were lucky, someone got up in the middle of the night
and added more wood. In the morning we ran downstairs and sat in front
of the gas heater to get warmed up. Somehow Grandma always had a good
supply of eggs for breakfast.
By mid summer the bullfrogs were big enough to eat. My cousins and I
developed many inventive ways to catch the frogs. Sticks, pitchforks,
rocks, and sometimes just your hands. Later on someone showed us how to
gig a frog with just a fishing hook and a piece of red cloth. It was
amazing. Frogs just went crazy trying to eat anything that was red. We
learned to clean the frogs ourselves and put the legs in salt water. If
you didn't soak them in salt water they would jump out of the pan when
you fried them. More yum, yum.
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