South Dakota Mary

Hi! I'm Mary.

I'm Mary from South Dakota. I've lived in South Dakota almost all my life, almost 90 years. It's home for me.

My dad and mom came here from Holland, but my brothers and sisters and I were born here. I grew up here. I went to school here and taught school here.

I got married here, and raised eleven kids here. I'm a mother, a grandmother, and a great-grandmother.

Photo: Sandy Peters

Dad had to have his cup of coffee.

Today at lunch at the cafe, I suddenly said, “I haven’t had my cup of coffee today, Anne."  She’s so nice. She went and got the coffee and poured me a cup, so I got my cup of coffee after all.

I remember Dad always had to have his cup of coffee. He took a quart jar of coffee out to the field.  He drank cold coffee from the quart jar.  At home Mom always kept coffee on the back of the stove so he could have it whenever he wanted.

Mom and Dad's immigration stories

My dad, Emil Brakke, came over from Holland. He left behind his parents, two brothers, and a sister. He didn't come alone though. He came over with two friends.

He landed in Iowa first, and met and married Mom there. He was 25 at the time. I don't know how old she was, but I think she was two years older than he was.

She came from Holland, too, but she had come over with her folks when she was a child. She was like six years old when her mother died and some folks adapted her, or rather just took her into their home.

Photo from Mary's photo album
Mom and Dad's wedding

Dad's arrival from Holland

   

Dad grew up in Holland and came to the States as a young man. Here are two of my photos of Dad at that time.

In the first one, he's in Holland. He's the one on the right. The one on the left is his brother, Theo Brakke, who stayed in Holland.

The second photo shows Dad arriving in the States. He's on the left in this photo.

Photos from Mary's photo album

The old farm place

My Dad was a good farmer, and we had a good farm. The people who had the farm before us had a homestead. They planted all those trees. They even planted flowers.

You wouldn't know the place now. Nothing is the same. All the buildings have been torn down and the house burned down. Nowadays, even the old barns are going.

The top photo is of Ted, Evert, and Dad on the farm. I'm with Dad in the middle photo and in the close-up.

Photos from Mary's photo album

Dad was the one who took us places.

This was our first car. Ted is standing in front of it. This picture was taken on what was then Fred Lathrop's place.

Dad drove us to lots of places. Mom didn't drive a car. He saw that we got to do our shopping on Saturday and got us to church on Sunday morning.

He was always the one who took us to the Huron Fair or places like the Corn Palace.

Since he had lived in Iowa before coming to South Dakota, he also liked to visit his friends there. Some Sundays when he went there, we got to go with him.

Photo from Mary's photo album

The men played rollie bollie

I remember those trips to Iowa. The men there had a game they liked to play. It was a kind of outdoor bowling a little like horseshoes; my dad had played it in Holland.

I think it was called rollie bollie. There was a stake in the ground, and you rolled a wooden ball to get points. I never played it because only the men did. The women weren't in on it.

Dad often let me take the car.

I've got to give my Dad a lot of credit. When I went to high school, he let me take the car. I drove a mile and a half to pick up two neighborhood kids, and then we drove to school.

It was the family car, so my Dad was without a car during the time I had the car. I didn't think about it at the time...how generous he was to let me have it.

The day Dad stood on his head

Dad was easy-going. He liked to smoke a pipe—not cigarettes or cigars. A pipe was his thing. He also liked to play pool.

He liked to go to the Ward cafe. We lived across the street from it. He was always the one sitting there telling stories, making everyone else laugh. He had a brogue to his language his whole life, and I think it made him interesting to his friends who sat and talked to him.

One day my oldest son Chuck bet Hank, the owner of the cafe, a dime that my dad (his grandpa) could stand on his head. Hank was going to win, and Chuck was getting upset, so Dad came and stood on his head so Chuck wouldn't lose ten cents.

Dad also bought Chuck his first bicycle and taught him how to ride it.

Photos from Mary's photo album

Pancakes, ice cream, cakes, and dentists

 

For breakfast, we had pancakes. My dad always had cornflakes and pancakes. We never had eggs or bacon or anything like that...not like people usually eat for breakfast now.

We made ice cream; we didn't buy it. In an ice cream mixer, you mixed milk and sugar and what you needed to make it. Then you put ice all around it and turned it and turned it until you had ice cream.

Mom never made anything real sweet for us—not a lot of sugar ever; and when she baked a cake on Saturdays, the cake frosting was always thin, not thick.

Yet, us kids all had bad teeth. I used to hate those visits to the dentist. They would drill right down and raise you ten feet off the chair.

Photos from Mary's photo album