SPEAKING OF MY FATHER, it's probably time to look at his side of the family.  We've taken our time getting here because, to be honest, on the whole I find the Schroeders less interesting to think about.  For one thing, there are no real genealogical mysteries.  I haven't looked very hard, but it seems pretty cut-and-dried:  my great-great grandparents came from Germany to St. Paul, Minnesota in the 1850s and 1860s, married, had kids, and a generation later us kids were born.  The end.

            It's also true that we never had much to do with my dad's side of the family, except for R.G. (who we'll get to in a minute).  My father's family was never really much a part of our family life.  That might seem sad, and in a way I suppose it is, but in the end it was probably not such a bad thing.

 

♣

 

            Harold Frederick Schroeder, Jr. was born in Minneapolis on April 19, 1926, elder brother to Betty Schroeder, born two years later as I recall.  Their mother's name was Hazel something.  Overby?  Overton?  I have to ask Sue.  Grandma Hazel we called her, though it never really felt like she was my grandmother.  I saw her maybe half a dozen times, when my mom took us visiting.  I remember she had a very strange voice, deeper than a man's and very gravelly, I think because they operated on her throat. 

I don't know much about Hazel or her family.  My father had little to do with them.  If he was close to anyone it was his father, Harold Sr., whom Hazel had divorced years before, though I don't really know.  I know he didn't stay in touch with his mother.  He never talked about her, or his father or sister or family, and I never asked.  When she died he didn't go to her funeral.  Nor did she go to her daughter Betty's funeral (Betty died of breast cancer in the early 1980s).  Said she didn't have anything to wear, or so the story goes.  I vaguely remember being told that at one point Hazel gave Harold and Betty away to one of her sisters, or her aunt, then took them back again, though I'm not sure.  Sue probably knows.

What I do know, which I learned as an adult, is that my father had a pretty loveless childhood.  As a child he received very little love or affection, from his mother or anyone else.  So he grew up not really knowing how to love.  He was never taught, and later, as an adult, he never much taught himself.  Maybe he learned part way, I don't know.  I do know that feeling genuine love for other people was a very difficult thing for my father to do, and that he never got very good at it.

 

♣

 

I don't remember my grandfather Harold Frederick Schroeder, Sr. much either.  We visited his house at 1515 Highland Parkway in St. Paul a few times, but I was very small and he never made much of an impression.  I remember summer days climbing the crabapple trees in the side yard, and rolling down the big grassy reservoir with my siblings, and snowy days sledding down gigantic and hugely fun Highland Hill on the golf course, right across the street.  (How could I know that a few years later we'd all move in, rip out those beautiful old crabapple trees, build a humungous addition on the side lot, and live there for the rest of our family life?)  I remember the house, and I remember our visits, but I don't really remember Harold Sr.

 

Harold Frederick Schroeder Sr. with Sue, Paul, and Michael (holding doll), circa 1962

 

My grandfather died of cancer in 1964 at age 70.  Liver cancer I think.  I was six years old.  He was the first dead person I ever saw.  I remember looking down at him in the coffin, his face all gray and ashen, and I kept waiting for him to open his eyes and surprise me.

            Harold Sr. lived for many years with his brother, Raymond George, nicknamed R.G., in the aforementioned house at 1515 Highland Parkway.  My brothers and sister and I have more R.G. stories than you can shake a stick at.  That's because after June 15, 1968 our whole family basically took over that house, which we shared with him for the next dozen and more years (my father and R.G. struck a deal that we'd buy half the house, move in, and see to his needs till he died, after which the house would be ours). 

 

1515 Highland Parkway, circa 1925 (one of the first houses on the block, in what used to be an apple orchard)

 

1515 Highland Parkway (looking south across Highland Parkway to Highland Park Golf Course), circa 1925

 

♣

 

R.G. was a lifelong bachelor and former clerk for the Northern Pacific Railroad, a job he held more than 40 years before retiring in 1954.  He was 79 in 1968 when we moved in.  He lived for another 20 years.  Didn't quite make 100, though he came within a breath or two. 

R.G. wasn't malicious or mean, on the whole, just breathtakingly self-centered.  I'm sure we took some getting used to, too.  Our moving in must've been hard on him – he'd never much lived with people before, except Harold.  And there's no doubt we weren't always the most impeccably behaved of children.

He had many routines, as we all do.  For one thing, he was like a caricature of a miser, like Scrooge, always fussing over his money and accounts.  In a way I thought it was funny, but it also made me feel bad for him.  Why do you care so much about your money, R.G.?  He did some kind things for people, like take our dog Matt for walks (quite a story in itself), give us $5 each for Christmas, stuff like that.  But basically he tried to get us to do stuff for him.  My grandma simply could not abide R.G., during the two years or so they lived under the same roof.  She actively disliked him in fact, and it was very unlike her to dislike anybody.

Part of the reason, on top of his selfishness, was that he could be very crude and lewd.  My grandma could tolerate the former well enough, but would not begin to contemplate the latter.  One time he "hit on" her (you know what that means), right after we moved in.  Such a meek and gentle woman, she came this close to flattening him.  She didn't watch all that wrestlin' on the picture box for nothing!  My goodness she was steamed – and she never got steamed! (well, hardly ever, except when "Mad Dog" Vischon would put an illegal headlock on Francis "Pretty Boy" O'Donnell and slam him onto the mat right before the commercial.  What a fuss and racket there'd be then!). 

It got so bad, whenever my brothers or I brought girls home we'd warn them to keep their distance from R.G., because he'd come up and shake their hands and shimmy up close and before you knew it he had his hands all over their sweaters.  It was terrible! 

One time, right after we first moved in, my mom saw R.G. leering at 14 year-old Sue in the kitchen.  My mom knew his type, knew his reputation, and wasn't about to put up with any monkey-business from Raymond George. 

So after all us kids had tumbled out of the kitchen, she gently took R.G. by the elbow and, standing very still, whispered calmly into his ear, that if she ever caught him touching Sue, or even so much as looking at her sideways ever again, she'd come after him with the butcher knife.  I'm not going to say what she told him she'd cut off with the butcher knife.  Then she put her face right into his, tilted her head a little to one side, and smiled, squeezing his elbow just a bit harder.  "Do you understand?" she asked softly, still smiling pleasantly, with a cold, murderous look in her eye, to which she received a terrified nod of the head.  My mom was hilarious, but she could be deadly serious too.

 

R.G., Sue, and Michael, circa 1962

 

I think R.G. and my grandfather Harold Sr. were a lot alike.  They were the youngest boys among seven siblings, and they lived together, as single men, for much of their adult lives.  There might be time for a couple more R.G. stories.  Later.  Now it's time to look at the family in which they were raised.

 

♣

 

Harold Frederick Schroeder Sr. was the youngest son of William Schroeder and Bertha Augusta Wilhelmina Kaddatz Schroeder.  William Schroeder, born Wilhelm Schroeder on April 2, 1832 in Arnswalde, Germany, also served in the Civil War.  I learned that during my 1990 trip to the National Archives when I looked up his papers along with Frank Lang's.  He, too, applied for and received a disability pension, and generated a fair amount of paperwork in the process. 

William and Bertha were married on September 6, 1868, in St. Paul, Minnesota.  We have this information even though 30 years later, in 1898, when the Bureau of Pensions asked William Schroeder about his marriage certificate, he replied:  "I had it but it got lost."

William and Bertha raised seven children in their home on North Linden Street in St. Paul, my grandfather the youngest:

 

THE FAMILY OF WILLIAM AND BERTHA SCHROEDER

Ø        Annie Schroeder, b. August 16, 1869

Ø        Tillie Schroeder, b. 1 June 1872

Ø        Louisa Schroeder, b. August 13, 1874

Ø        William J. Schroeder, b. April 23, 1877

Ø        Carl Schroeder, b. January 7, 1882

Ø        Raymond George Schroeder (R.G.), b. July 20, 1889, d. 1989

Ø        Harold Frederick Schroeder, b. April 28, 1894, d. 1964

 

          These kids were also part of the post-Civil War baby boom, just like Jennie and Nellie Lang, though stretched over a full quarter-century here, with long stretches between births.  By the time her eldest Annie neared 30, her youngest, my grandfather, was just out of diapers.  That, however, is not the main reason why I have not come to envy the lot of Bertha Augusta Wilhelmina Kaddatz Schroeder.

 

♣

 

William Frederick Schroeder was small of stature, 5' 2" tall, with blue eyes, light-colored hair, and a light complexion.  His signature was scratchy and uneven, revealing a man not accustomed to putting pen to paper.  A tailor by trade, he immigrated from Germany before the Civil War.  He enrolled in the Union Army on March 5, 1862 as a private in Company D of the 5th Regiment of the Minnesota Infantry Volunteers, and was honorably discharged in Indianapolis, Indiana on March 14, 1865.

In the war there occurred three separate incidents which William Schroeder later claimed had rendered him "totally disabled."  The first occurred on at Fort Abercrombie, Minnesota, on September 3, 1862, six months after enlisting.  By his own account, dictated to a scribe 28 years after the fact,

 He was injured in the head by a rafter, which supported the roof of the porch of the barracks, falling upon his head which knocked him senseless and he has suffered from dizziness in the head and deafness produced by the same ever since.

 The second incident occurred five months later, in February 1863 in Germantown, Tennessee.  Again, by his own account,

 He contracted chronic diarrhea by which he was more or less continuously disabled.  He had been out on picket and was thoroughly wet and being exposed to cold and wet afterward brought on an attack of rheumatism and inflammation of the lungs which soon became chronic.  He did but little duty after the first attack of diarrhea.

 The third incident occurred one month later, in March 1863, near Vicksburg, Mississippi:

While camped on the banks of the Mississippi River in the state of Mississippi in March 1863, he was taken sick with rheumatism caused by the camp being overflowed with water, and he has suffered with rheumatism ever since that date to the present time, and he is now suffering from dizziness in the head, deafness, and rheumatism. 

I have not received the medical attention of a physician from the fact or for the reason that the doctors told me they could do me no good.  Though I treated myself with medicines purchased at the drug store and having my neighbors rub me.  I can only do a quarter day's work – in other words, before I went into the army I could do four times as much work as now.  I am laid up so bad with rheumatism that I cannot do anything at all.

In the same year of 1889, his neighbors Frances M. Gembe and Leopold Hauser vouched for the terribly bad state he was in:

They are neighbors of the above named William Schroeder and have known him for at least 25 years, and at the time of his muster out of service in 1865, he was suffering from rheumatism, deafness, and dizziness in the head and he still continues to suffer from the same complaints at the present time, which has continued and existed from the date of his muster out, and that their knowledge of the above facts are gained from almost daily personal observation and association with the aforesaid Schroeder and from hearing his complaints.

Two years later, in 1891, his co-workers John Sandell and Olaf Seaquist also swore to the awful state of William Schroeder's health:

That they have known and been acquainted with the above-named claimant William Schroeder for eight years – that he was a fellow workman in the same shop with them – that he suffered greatly from rheumatism, deafness, and dizziness in the head, and he still continues to suffer from the same complaints, so much so and to such an extent that he is unable to work at his trade, which is tailor, for weeks at a time, and that he is unable to support himself and is dependent on his daughters' labor for support.

These facts we know from personal knowledge and almost daily observation and association.  And affiants further state that on account of his infirmities he would not be retained as a workman by his employer because of the imperfect manner of his work and it taking so long to complete his work, but he is retained from consideration of having been in employ at his present place for eight years and his employer does not like to discharge him on that account.

William Schroeder lived to a ripe old age, I'm not exactly sure how long.  It was probably until around 1915, when another set of papers, these from his widow Bertha, began cropping up in the file.  It seems the Pension Bureau smelled something fishy about their marriage, thinking maybe the deceased had been married before, and stopped making payments.  After a flurry of letters and depositions and so on, Bertha cleared things up and the payments resumed.

 

♣

 

What insights do these documents provide on my great-grandfather William Frederick Schroeder?  We see here a frail man of ill-health who suffered a variety of ailments, all chronic.  These afflictions stemmed from his military service, he claimed.  The dizziness probably did.  Getting conked on the head by a falling 4x4 rafter can be kill a person, or disable them in all kinds of ways.

His other ailment, his rheumatism, seems another matter.  I don't doubt he suffered it.  Arthritis, bursitis, stiffness of the joints and muscles, these are terrible things.  My grandma had a bad case of arthritis, especially in her hands.  It caused her much discomfort and pain.  She would talk about it, of course, and would sometimes complain, but mainly she'd open and close her fingers a thousand times and more to loosen them up.  While you weren't looking.  Then she'd set herself to mending.

What is dubious about William Schroeder's claim is his allegation that his stiffness and soreness were caused by a bad drenching he received while on picket duty three decades before.  Rheumatoid arthritis, as "rheumatism" has come to be known, is still not well understood.  Its causes are complex, an intricate mix of environmental factors and genetic predisposition.  Its effects can be worsened by behaviors and circumstances, especially working conditions, and its severity depends greatly on one's overall state of health and well-being. 

One thing is known:  getting drenched in a rainstorm does not cause rheumatoid arthritis.  Not even if it's a really bad rainstorm.  Not even if it's a whole bunch of really bad, really cold, really miserable rainstorms, one after the next.  Hunching over all day at a workbench for years on end, on the other hand, and not getting much exercise, can make it worse.  The point I'm driving at is this:  William Schroeder's rheumatism probably had nothing to do with what happened along the banks of the Mississippi River in the spring of 1863.  It's external, environmental causes were most likely totally unrelated to his war service, and had more to do with his work as a tailor, and the fact that he didn't get enough exercise.

He blamed his army service, in other words, for a chronic affliction whose environmental causes were made worse by his own daily routines.  Why?  So he could get his disability pension, of course.  But there is more to it than that.  The papers in his pension file suggest not only chronic ill-health, but chronic bewailing and bemoaning of his ill-health.  The depositions from neighbors and co-workers hint strongly that, regardless of the true state of his health, William Schroeder complained a lot.

There's a certain type of person who gets pleasure from constantly complaining, from filling the air with moans and laments.  The papers in my great-grandfather William Schroeder's pension file gives the impression that he might well have been just such a person.  To put it plainly, to me he sounds a lot like R.G.  He sounds, frankly, like a hypochondriac, endlessly decrying his many terrible afflictions – to the walls, to the floors, to the heavens, to whomever was unlucky enough to cross his miserable path.  It's significant that his ailments were unverifiable and untreatable by doctors:  "the doctors told me they could do me no good."  Deafness.  Dizziness in the head.  Rheumatism.  Who can say?  His neighbors certainly got an earful.  His co-workers too.

The portrait that emerges from his papers is of a weak, frail, self-absorbed man, unhappy at work, unhappy in life, ever complaining, a man not disinclined to live off the labors of others – especially his wife and his daughters, but not excluding his neighbors for the occasional rub-down.  In my less charitable moments I imagine him shuffling around the house day and night wailing and muttering to all within earshot about the plague of his afflictions, about that terrible crash of the rafter that knocked him senseless and gave him dizziness in the head ever since, about that terrible night along the Mississippi River back in '63 when he got drenched to the bone, that terrible, terrible drenching that sent him straight to the hospital and made every day of his life pure misery ever since.

This may be unfair.  But that's the sensibility that fairly drips from his paperwork.  It comes out in the oddest places, like his explanation of what happened to his marriage license:  "I had it but it got lost."  It got lost ?  Well I'm sorry, but papers do not lose themselves.  Why not simply "I lost it"?  What is so hard about that?  This is what my mom used to call avoiding responsibility.  Perhaps I am wrong, and if I am I apologize.  But I knew his son R.G. very well, and as I said, he sounds a lot like R.G. to me.

 

♣

 

A couple of stories about my grandfather Harold Sr. and his brother R.G. before we move on.  One of my favorites is about how Harold and R.G. used to put out peanuts to feed the squirrels.  They had a special way of doing it.  First they'd put the peanuts on the ground, making the squirrels very happy.  Then, after a while, they'd tie a long rope between the two crabapple trees in the back yard, and tie the peanuts to the rope.  The squirrels would make their way along the rope and get the peanuts.  Then, after a while, the two brothers would take down the rope and stretch a thin cotton string between the two crabapple trees.  Onto that string they'd tie smaller strings, onto which they'd dangle the peanuts. 

The squirrels would try crawling along the string but only make it part way across before they fell to the ground.  They'd jump and leap and spin and chatter and scold and run around in circles and go crazy trying to get those peanuts.

And Harold and R.G. would look out the back window together and laugh, laugh, laugh at those stupid squirrels.

 

♣

 

R.G., like his father, was also mostly deaf.  At least he was most of the time.  It's a curious thing.  His capacity to hear seemed to vary widely, depending mainly, it seems, on the topic.  When someone would look up the stairs toward his bedroom, for instance, and say in a regular voice, "R.G., you're pension check came in the mail today," he'd shuffle right down.  Or, when they'd say, "R.G., dinner's ready," he'd be parked at the table a minute later, fork in hand. 

On the other hand – and this is the curious thing – when you'd be standing right next to him in the kitchen and yell, "R.G., clean up that mess you left on the counter!" he'd just keep shuffling away, not hearing a word.  Or, when he'd turn the radio up so loud that that the golfers on the sixth tee way far away across Highland Parkway could hear Halsey Hall announcing it was the top of the ninth inning and Harmon Killebrew was up to bat, and you'd go up to his ear and yell at him, "R.G., turn the radio down!" it seemed as though he hadn't heard a word you'd said.

He must have gotten his deafness from his father William.  Nothing the doctors could do.  A hereditary condition, most likely.

 

♣

 

 [Note:  This book is published here pretty much as written in Dec 2005, despite Tom's later misgivings about some of its interpretations of William Schroeder.  For instance, Tom recalled being told that William enlisted in the Civil War mainly to collect the bounty of $300 or so for serving in another man's place.  He also observed that William was deeply committed to his family; that the family was probably poor; and that he might have suffered long-term clinical depression.  Tom also stressed something I breezily dismissed in a sentence:  the contexts of these texts production.   Clearly, William emphasized his ailments and complaints in order to get his disability pension check.  Of course all the depositions focus on William's complaints.  That's the only thing that would make the government pay up.  That was the whole point.  Seen in a different light, the documents speak to William's virtuous attributes, such as capacity to maintain deep and lasting friendships with neighbors and co-workers.  In short, the interpretation advanced here is entirely too narrow. 

So Tom was right:  this needs to be revised.  Such is the process of writing.  First drafts can always suffer revision.  This whole section was written in a few days, before plowing forward into Nellie's pre-Minnesota days and other such tales.  I nonetheless include these sections as written, in order to present the actual manuscript, and because I find these infelicities an instructive illustration of the unwarranted assumptions and biases that can creep into historical writing if one is not careful, as well as the errors bred by haste, and the certain narrowness of thinking that can be induced by excessive solitude.  Still, I also think there's something to the interpretation advanced here that is not entirely off.  I still suspect he was probably a chronic complainer.  But even if that were true, such behavior does not define him.  It needs to be balanced with all the other aspects of his life and personality.  Some effort in this direction has been launched in the william schroeder pension file. 

So good job Tom!  Thoughtful and helpful critiques!  Keep 'em coming! -  -  -  - And now, to return to the Saga: ]

 

♣

 

There's a million other R.G. stories I could tell, and that's not even counting the ones from Tom, but we'll stop there for now.  You've probably got the general idea regarding my father's side of the family. 

We'll have more to say on it later, maybe.  But for now let's get back to get back to the more meaningful part of the story.