Grappa Eddie's Furnace : aka The Octopus

With the winter season, I've been thinking about the huge old furnace Grappa Eddie Smitmajer had in his basement.  When I was a kid this furnace seemed GI-NORMOUS.  And all those ducts coming out the top made me think it was a metal octopus.  You never knew when one of those metal arms might reach down and grab a kid when she wasn't looking.  

This furnace was huge and inefficient.  Still, Grappa managed to get the temperature in the house up to 80 or 90 degrees on a regular basis in winter.   He liked it toasty and warm!

Here he is at the kitchen table.   His birthday would have been Feb 2. 

Linden Blossoms

The Linden Trees are in bloom! I caught a very pleasant whiff of that unmistakable perfume this evening, and I knew it was time again -- All I had to do was look up at the trees nearby.


Linden Blossoms


Linden Tree Leaves, also known as Basswood (so you might recognize it when it's not in bloom).



Grappa Eddie Smithmajer

Great Gramma Smitmajer (Eddie's mother)

My Grandfather (Eddie Smitmajer for those long lost cousins in The Czech Republic) said his mother loved Linden Blossom Tea. When she found a Linden tree in bloom, he would help her pick the blossoms in July, which would then be dried in a warm oven for this mild tea all year round. When he realized we had a Linden tree behind our barn, I went out with him to fill a brown paper shopping bag with the sweet blossoms. I don't know how much tea he actually drank, but it was a nice memory. For years after that, I had a huge jar of those dried blossoms.


Tonight I made a fresh tea from these little beauties. My husband says that his Grandfather in France also had great reverence for Lindens. His family had a summer place in the country, complete with an orchard, Linden trees and bees. CL would go there to get "hunny and money" at Mailly. Another reason I married this wonderful man!


Image from here.
Linden flowers make the BEST honey. If you know a beekeeper with Linden trees nearby, they will keep the Linden honey "under the table." You have to ask for it. It's in short supply and they typically don't leave it out for general sale. Linden flower honey is always a special treat.

Remembering Grappa Eddie

Grappa Eddie died on Thursday, August 20, 2009. He spent his last week in Hospice with the family gathered around. We were looking at pictures and laughing and remembering his adventurous life--or at least the stories he told about it. I hope to post more of hist stories here in the near future ...

I will remember many afternoons spent sitting around the kitchen table listing to his stories. He had a million of them!

I will remember plum dumplings every fall. This is a traditional Bohemian feast. Gramma Pickles actually made them, but Grappa always won the contest for who could eat the most.

I will remember Grappa taking my brother and me fishing with looonnnggg cane poles at Rabes Lake probably before I was even in school. Fishing was important to him.

Grappa drove a yellow school bus for many years. After long days at school, I can remember speeding down 5th Ave. Road at 80 miles an hour. For years, I actually thought there was a separate speed limit for school buses!

I will remember bailing hay on the hottest days of summer, on ridiculously steep hills. My brother and I were still pretty small then. We could pile the bales 2 or 3 high, but Grappa would have to stop and re-stack the bales to get more on the wagons.

After I learned to quilt, I decided that I would make a quilt for Grappa Eddie. When I shared my intentions, everyone in my family said "Why do you want to make a quilt for Grappa? He's not going to be around much longer." This was in 2004. My mom took care of the quilting and the binding. When we gave it to him, we made sure he understood that this quilt was to be used, and not put away and "saved" to keep it nice.

I found some orange blossom fabric and fell in love with the colors and the textures. It reminded me of Grappa. He had a talent for picking the best boxes of Indian River grapefruit and oranges from the travelling truck drivers who sold them on the road in northern Wisconsin. Grappa knew how to pick the fruit at the peak of ripeness, sweet, and fresh, and juicy. He knew what he was doing!

The pattern is called Northwind, however, I softened it to "Orange Blossom Breeze" because Grappa didn't tolerate the cold as he did in his younger days. This quilt was my way of keeping him warm with memories of his cross-country drives down south and the sweet, fresh fruit of Florida--where everyone has a fruit tree in their yard!

After Grappa moved into the nursing home 2 years ago, Gramma returned the quilt to me. They decided the detergents in the nursing home would be too harsh on the quilt. She gave it back to me--it still smelled like their house. Now I get to keep the quilt and remember Grappa Eddie.

John Dillinger : Robin Hood or Terrorist?

Last summer, Johnny Depp, Michael Mann, and crew were in my little town of Oshkosh, WI, to film parts of the newly released Public Enemies movie. Now that it's been released, I'm remembering how my Grappa Eddie used to speak of John Dillinger as a great hero.

I never quite understood why Grappa would think of a bank robber and murderer as a hero. To my mind the guy was a brutal terrorist, a criminal--pure and simple. He wasn't classified as a "public enemy" for delivering flowers.

So I asked a couple of friends (who happen to be history professors * at the local University) if they could explain this phenomenon to me ... At present, my Grappa is 98 years old. He lived through the Great Depression. He probably kept his money in his mattress (with a .45 in his night stand). (It's a miracle none of us grandchildren were not hurt at his house while we were growing up!) Banks were failing all over the country during The Great Depression. He saw Dillinger as a modern-day Robin Hood. The guy stole from the rich (banks). But did he ever give it to the poor? Maybe he left a fat tip at a restraunt ... you (not me) just wished you were the one to wait on his table.

The other thing that really stood out for Grappa was Dillinger's connection to The North Woods of Wisconsin, where Grappa Eddie grew up. Grappa was a full-blooded Bohemian (that's a nationality, not a life-style). So for Dillinger to show up at The Little Bohemia Lodge was a big deal--validation for a Bohemian otherwise lost in America. Grappa took tremendous pride in that Bohemians could show Dillinger proper hospitality. (I'll vouch for the bakery!)

I don't remember Grappa speaking so fondly of the other gangsters of the time, but he could have ... Didn't Capone have soup kitchens for Chicago's down-and-out? That certainly helped get the public on his side. At least it made it easier to turn the other cheek when it came to his crime and murder record.

Grappa now lives in a nursing home. His memory moves in and out. Sometimes he recognizes my mom and Aunt Cindy, some days he doesn't. Last I heard, he was sleeping all day and staying up all night to regale the nurses with stories of making moonshine in Garski Flowage with his buddies. He was back in the days of Prohibition, when the only way to get alcohol-for-drinking was to make it yourself with a distillery, or still (remember that contraption Hawkeye and BJ had in the old M*A*S*H episodes?). I think he used to use potatoes most often ... Anyway, he was telling the nurses he had to finish this batch because he'd get beaten if his Dad found out about it. Nevermind the G-Men. He's getting younger as he gets older ...

* Thanks to Dr. Kuhl and her husband Jeff Pickron for explaining this Dillinger hero worship phenomenon in the light Robin Hood. They have the much wider perspective of all historic time!