Charlie's Life Story Part One. More Fun to Come

Nick gave me this book for Christmas 2021. After 2 years of COVID 19 pandemic, it seemed I was ready to reflect on my life. At 81 for the first time i felt i was losing my freedom. Wear masks, don't hug, stay six feet apart, don't gather in big groups, cancel parties. All of those things I loved became taboo. Most I did anyway, somehow most of my life I followed what my gut told me. So instead of answering the questions laid out for me in this book, I am just going to write how I remember life.

I was born Charlene Ann Krause on January 28, 1940. My father's name was Roy Krause. My mother, Evelyn, had been married to him for about eight years. They had my brother for years prior to me. His name was Roy Jr. My mother's maiden name was Evelyn Vandora Mott. She was born on 3/11/1912 in Red Granite, Wi. Although Mom's last name was Mott, she genetically had no Mott blood. The Motts were people who adopted my grandfather, who was born into a family named Miller. He lost his mother when he was very young. My grandmother's parents were from Sweden, and their name was Haselquist. Whenever any of my family survives an adverse event, we say it's the Mott in us. Technically, it was actually the Haselquist in us. My grandmother was the most influential person in my life, and I credit her with my life's philosophy, my strength, and my positive attitude.

I knew very little of my father, other than he was born in northern, western Wisconsin near the Mississippi River and his grandparents came from Germany. My mother was divorced from him when I was two, and I never saw him.

When I was born, my mother owned her own beauty salon. She worked many hours after her divorce. When she had free time, she loved to dance and party. She met and married a man and was divorced again within a few years. When I was about five, she married my step Dad, Jerry Kluever. He traveled for work a lot. When he was home, they argued a lot. Sometimes I was afraid and would just hide. I recall having nosebleeds often. I would lay in the tub with my nose bleeding and afraid because it would not stop. I was alone with sitters or with relatives a lot when I was not at my grandparent's farm. I spent most of my time before I was five with my grandma and "PA" (grandpa) on their farm in Neillsville, Wisconsin. After I turned five, I moved to the city with my mom and Jerry to go to school. They were not very affectionate to me. As a matter of fact, I don't believe my mom ever told me she loved me and never hugged me until she was older and I was grown.

After I started school, I spent all my summers and vacations with my grandpa and PA. My aunt Alice was in college and returned home often. My grandma pretty much raised me. She is the one that taught me right from wrong and the importance of being kind and thoughtful. Farmers seem to inherit know-how to watch out for each other. Helping harvest each other's crops, bringing over meals when someone is sick. They have common bonds, which are very strong. Their vulnerability to forces that they could not control, such as flooding, droughts, storms, and sickness, brought them together as a team. It seems today, at least in my world, everyone is so into themselves that we have lost those virtues of which our relatives lived and what Gramma and PA taught me, including good work ethics.

Even as a little tot, I loved fishing and making dishes from clay that I found in the little creek. I played house in the corn crib and put on stage shows with my corn cob microphone. My very favorite thing to do was to go fishing. We had a very small creek which ran through the cow pasture south of the house. There was a section in the creek that pulled and little fish schooled there. My first fishing experience was there with a bent dress pin, tied to a string attached to a long stick. No bait needed because the tiny fish would bite on the shiny pin. I would be so proud to bring home four or five little shiners about 4 inches long. Grandma made me clean the little guys and she would dust them with flour and fry them crispy for me to eat. As I got older, I would take a bag lunch and spend hours fishing from a bridge that was over a little larger creek. When my brother Roy would fish with me I was allowed to go to the black river. I'm not sure why my grandparents allowed me to fish there. It was very dangerous, a big rock set over very deep pools of water, and in the other places, the water ran very swift. One slip into the river would have been my demise. I suppose they were so busy. They really didn't know the river. When I wasn't fishing at the little creek, I loved to sit under a big tree that sits over and eddie and listen to the sound of water rippling over the creek's bed of stones. I would marvel at the sounds of the leaves flapping in the breeze, the sound of a black birds, wings in flight, and the rustle of the squirrels scrambling up the tree. Before I was able to do any of the things I loved, my grandparents always had chores for me. Sometimes it was feeding the animals or gathering eggs. In the summer there were always garden chores. Hoeing the garden of weeds, picking tomatoes, beans, and berries, all of which grandma canned for use in the winter. Every week we would bake bread, cakes, pies, and cinnamon rolls. All of this in a wood burning stove. After the cows were milked in the evening, PA would bring in wood of what he had harvested and built a fire in the potbelly stove, which was in the living room. The stove was our main source of heat. Grandma would put metal irons on the kitchen stove to heat and place them in the beds to heat them for the night. We would go to bed at 8 o'clock every night but prior my grandma would listen to Paul Harvey on the radio. We all had to be quiet so if we didn't listen to the radio, we would read a story.

My grandmother had been a teacher in South Dakota before we moved to Wisconsin so she liked us to learn from what we read. THIS PULL QUOTE FOR SURE: My grandmother told her girls that they should all learn a trade so they would never have to depend on anyone for survival.