REMEMBRANCES OF CHRISTMASES PAST: The Hellmanns have many fond memories of their Christmases together
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JOE & BARB HELLMANN
By Renee Bettendorf
BOYCEVILLE – This holiday season, Barb and Joe Hellmann plan on celebrating Christmas with their five children, 10 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren and their families.
“There’s just about 40 of us, it’s a ball to watch the grandkids,” said Barb of her family’s Christmas celebrations.
Barb and Joe got married in 1965 and have many fond memories of their Christmases spent together and when they were kids.
They both grew up on dairy farms. Joe’s family farm was located in Arland Township in Barron County. He was born on the farm and is one of six kids. His parents had a Holstein herd of 24. Besides milking cows, Joe and his siblings would spend their Christmas vacations in the woods cutting firewood for the family’s wood furnace.
His dad would also cut a Christmas tree for the school that Joe and his siblings attended. After the school Christmas program, Joe’s family would take the tree to their house and have it for their Christmas tree.
One year when he was about seven, he went with his brothers and sister and dad to pick out a Christmas tree. They took a horse drawn sleigh and when they got to the woods, he and his sister, who was about ten at the time, went one way and some of his brothers went the other way.
It was late in the afternoon and as they looked for a good tree to cut, Joe and his sister realized they had gotten separated from the rest of their family and were walking around in circles. It started getting dark. Eventually they came across sleigh tracks in the snow and were able to follow those out of the woods.
“I knew the woods a little bit better than my sister,” said Joe of getting lost in the woods.
Barb was born in Prairie Farm and grew up on her family’s farm in Sheridan Township. Her parents raised Guernseys and Barb and her sister helped out a lot in the barn.
“We went out to the barn just like the boys,” Barb said. “I liked working in the barn with the animals”.
Her family has Norwegian roots and served lutefisk, meatballs and lefse for Christmas.
“That house stunk,” said Joe of the special aromas that come with preparing lutefisk.
Barb said her family purchased fish from a fish truck that came through the area periodically. Her grandma, who lived on the farm with them, would then soak the fish in lye and cook it for Christmas.
“Dad didn’t like lutefisk, but mom did,” said Barb.
Joe said his family ate a lot of venison when he was growing up. Even though there were not many deer in the area at that time, Joe’s dad would manage to bag an animal now and then.
Barb’s family exchanged gifts on Christmas Eve at the farm. They had to wait for an aunt and uncle to get back from church, then they had to eat and then clean up.
“It seemed to take forever before we could open presents,” she said.
The presents she got from family members were mostly useful things, like mittens or a hat or a scarf or maybe a sled. If you got a toy, it came from Santa and one year she got a doll and her brother got an electric train.
Joe also remembers one of his brothers getting an electric train for Christmas one year. He said that brother passed away at the age of 86 and still had the train.
Barb and Joe both remember getting a paper sack with an apple, an orange, peanuts and candy at their school Christmas programs. Generally at the programs they sang songs and recited poems.
Attending church was also a shared childhood memory for them. Barb’s family went to church on Christmas Day. While Joe’s parents went to midnight mass on Christmas Eve.
“We wouldn’t miss that,” he said of midnight mass.
He said his parents had a 1935 Chevy car that they would drive to their church which was located about ten miles from their farm. The car did not have a heater, so they wrapped up in blankets and used heated bricks to stay warm. On the way back they would watch out the windows for Santa.
“I never seen him,” said Joe.
He said they kept that car for a long time since you couldn’t buy a car during World War Two. Other things were hard to come by at that time as well. Like sugar, which was especially a problem for Joe’s family because they kept honeybees. During the winter they put the bees in their basement and fed them sugar water.
“We used up a lot of ration stamps for sugar for the bees,” he said.
Joe and Barb met at the Barron County Fair in Rice Lake in the summer of 1964. After getting married about a year later, they lived in Almena for a short while before buying Barb’s parents’ farm and cows.
Joe and Barb lived, farmed and raised their five sons on that farm until the mid 1990s. During that time, Barb and Joe and their kids would spend Christmas Eve at Barb’s parents’ house in Ridgeland.
Every year, right before they were going to leave to go to her parents’ house for Christmas Eve, Barb would pretend to forget something. Her family would then sit in the car and wait for her and she would take that opportunity to put gifts from Santa under their Christmas tree.
On Christmas Day Barb’s parents would come to the farm to visit and see what their grandkids got from Santa. Joe’s family celebrated Christmas together in January since most of them no longer lived in the area.
In 1996, Barb and Joe retired from farming.
“Milk prices were terrible,” said Barb.
A few years before they left the farming profession, Barb took a job cooking for the school district so they could have affordable health insurance. They bought a house in Boyceville near the football field and lived there for 26 years. During that time, Joe worked for Downing Tractor Parts and as a courier for a local bank.
They currently reside in Boyceville and most of their sons and their families live nearby. Their kids take turns hosting holidays throughout the year and they look forward to attending them.
