Remembrances of Christmas Past Arlene Scheidecker: “One year I got a baby buggy for my dolls.”

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By LeAnn R. Ralph

COLFAX  — Arlene Scheidecker grew up in Colfax and graduated from Colfax High School.

She and her husband, Rollie, lived in South St. Paul for a number of years, then in a house in rural Colfax, and finally they settled in Elk Mound when they were both working in Eau Claire. Arlene worked at Luther Hospital, and Rollie worked at the Armour and Company meat packing plant. He also worked at Armour in South St. Paul.

All together, Rollie worked for Armour for more than 30 years. The Scheideckers had three daughters. Rollie passed away in September of 2018.

“Until I was eight years old, I lived [in the building] that is now the Laundromat. My dad had a meat market downstairs,” Arlene recalled.

The Laundromat is located on East River Street next to the Colfax Animal Hospital. The stone building was originally Card’s Meat Market and was built in 1912.

“One year I got a baby buggy for my dolls. There was an open [floor plan] and you could go from bedroom to bedroom. I walked past that doll buggy three, four, five times. It was right there in front of me, but it didn’t dawn on me that it was my Christmas present,” Arlene said.

“It was an actual baby buggy but it was for all of my dolls. I used to push my cats around in it, too. I had one I would dress up in doll clothes and put her in there and she would just ride around. I had another cat, too, but you didn’t dare put clothes on her,” she said.

The cat Arlene used to dress up was a bobtail. The American Bobtail cat is considered to be a rare breed of domestic cat.

When Arlene was eight years old, her folks bought a house a block behind the Methodist Church in Colfax.

“I lived there until graduation when I went to the Cities,” Arlene said.

“I do not remember ever cutting a Christmas tree. We bought one in town. Back then, you did everything in town,” she said.

Sleuth

When she was growing up, Arlene was something of an expert when it came to her Christmas presents.

“As I got older, I was always good at finding my presents and unwrapping them, then wrapping them and putting them back,” she said.

“When things are good, if I don’t remember anything bad, then everything was good. So everything must have been good about Christmas,” Arlene noted.

“My dad came from Norway when he was in his early teens. When I was eight years old, we went to Virginia where I met a couple of his brothers. I was the only grandchild until I was eight. Then my brother, Larry, was born, and then Teri Beth Christianson, who was murdered, was born several years after us. I had an aunt and an uncle who married late and never had any kids,” Arlene said.

Arlene’s younger cousin, Teri Beth, was the daughter of Louis and Lorraine Christianson. She was a Naval Hospital Corpsman and was found dead from gunshot wounds at the age of 20 in August of 1975 at the Portsmouth Naval Medical Center in Virginia where she was a medical technician student.

Teri Beth was a 1973 graduate of Colfax High School.

Fur coat

Arlene remembers getting a fur coat for Christmas when she was a little girl.

“One year, I was probably five or six, my aunt bought me a fur coat, fur hat and fur muff. I remember that. There were no other kids,” she said.

In fact, Arlene still has a photograph of the fur coat, fur hat and the fur muff that she supplied to the Colfax Messenger to use with this story.

“When (my brother) Larry was born, I could hardly wait for him to come home. I had some patent leather shoes I was going to put on him. His feet were already so big, I never did get those shoes on him.  Oh, the dumb things you remember,” Arlene said.

“And I remember all of the Christmas programs at church and all of the work that went into them. It didn’t seem like work at the time,” she said.

Arlene is a member of Colfax Lutheran Church.

“I was baptized there, confirmed there, married there. And if everything goes all right, I’ll be buried from there — if the church is still here,” she said.

Pigs tails

Rollie worked for Amour Meat Packing for decades, but even before that, meat processing was a significant part of Arlene’s life.

“My dad and my grandpa built what was the original Fennie meat plant,” Arlene said.

“My uncle Louie and Uncle Arly worked there, and for Christmas, I would get a cow tail or a pig tail or something like that — just so I didn’t get a big head thinking I would get too much stuff for Christmas,” she said.

“Christmas Eve we would go to my grandma’s for lutefisk and lefse and meatballs and all the Norwegian things,” Arlene recalled.

Both of Arlene’s grandmothers lived on Main Street in Colfax. They went to one grandmother’s house on Christmas Eve and went to the other grandmother’s house on Christmas Day.

“Uncle Louie Christianson and Uncle Arly, Gilma and my mother were (the children) in the family,” Arlene noted. 

“My aunt worked at the Colony [Northern Wisconsin Colony and Training School] in Chippewa for 30 or 40 years. She would come home on the train. Then we’d have Christmas on Christmas Eve,” she said.

Lefse

Arlene’s mother was a good cook and a good baker and made lots of lefse.

“I think I’ve made four batches of lefse this year myself,” Arlene said, noting that she makes between 25 and 30 lefse in a batch.

“I kept asking my mother for her lefse recipe, but she didn’t have one. You know how back in the day, they didn’t use recipes. Melva Ellingson had her recipe in one of our church cookbooks, so that’s the one I used,” she said.

“I said to Mother one time, the next time you make it, figure out how big a cup you use. It got down to a third of a cup of dough rolled out to the size of a dinner plate. So that’s what I follow,” Arlene explained.

“When my mother baked, everything was the same size. I still can’t make completely round lefse. It all tastes the same though,” she said.

Arlene says she recalls the lefse that Colfax resident Margaret Christianson would make.

“I can’t make them as big and as round as she did,” Arlene said.

If anyone had the opportunity to watch Margaret Christianson make lefse, it was both an awe-inspiring and a somehow slightly terrifying experience. It seemed like Margaret would make three or four passes with the lefse rolling pin, and then there would be this huge round lefse that she quickly wrapped up on the lefse turning stick and transferred to the baking griddle. 

“My kids tried making lefse but concluded it was too hard,” Arlene said. 

“My middle daughter went down to Texas to visit my older daughter. So I made a bunch of lefse before they left for Thanksgiving. I gave her lefse to take to Texas,” she said.

“My favorite way to eat lefse is with soft boiled eggs, mash them up and then roll up the lefse. I like to spread it with cranberries and put chicken on it, too,” Arlene said. 

“There’s no end to what you can put on lefse,” she said.

“I love lutefisk, too. It’s something you have to be brought up on,” Arlene said.

Lutefisk translates from Norwegian into English as “lye fish” and is dried fish cured in lye. It is usually served with melted butter. 

South St. Paul

Arlene has good memories of Christmas in South St. Paul.

“When we lived in South St. Paul, the neighbor and Rollie had a business together for yard maintenance,” she said.

“(The neighbor) played Santa Claus for a lot of friends. I would make supper, and then they would come over and eat, and then they’d go home and be Santa. And after they opened their gifts, then they would have an open house all night long. We’d go over there then until whenever,” she said.

“Before that, when the kids were younger, we’d come home every Christmas. My folks had Christmas Eve, and Rollie’s folks had Christmas Day. Santa Claus would bring gifts here. So we hauled everything here, and then hauled everything back for a few years. Then we decided that we’ll have Santa come when we’re gone. We’d come home Christmas night, and of course the kids were all worked up about their presents, and they didn’t want to go to bed,” Arlene said.

“That’s when I ended up making Christmas supper for the neighbors. It was just easier for me,” she said.

“Christmas for me is when I have my family together. It doesn’t have to be Christmas Day or Christmas Eve. It’s when I’ve got everybody together. I don’t care if I have Christmas at Christmas,” Arlene said.

Often there is bad weather right around Christmas, either extremely cold or snowy or both.

“You fix food for 25 people, but then nobody shows up. I would rather they stay home when the weather is bad. You worry until they all get there. And then you worry until they all get home. So we usually have it in July and get together and play games,” Arlene said.

“When we lived in Elk Mound, they would come with campers and tents. Then I didn’t have to worry about somebody on the road if we were going to have a storm. We haven’t exchanged gifts for years because the kids get so much stuff for Christmas, they don’t even know where it is coming from,” she said.

Christmas baking

Arlene still loves to bake at Christmas time.

“I usually make anywhere between 15 and 20 kinds of Christmas cookies and then give them away. I love to bake, but when 

you’re alone, you don’t do that as much,” she said.

“I used to work for Rod Larson [Security Agency], and when I got the urge to bake, I just had to bake. I’d give some to him, and then I’d take a bunch over to H&H Plumbing. They’ll eat anything. A bunch of guys that nobody cooks or bakes. They enjoyed that also,” Arlene said.

“I always taste what I make to make sure it’s edible, but after one or two cookies, I don’t want anymore. I was hungry for it just for that day,” she said.

Christmas shopping (or not)

As far as gifts for her own children, Arlene says she does not remember much at all.

“I hate to shop. When they were in junior high, I would give them the credit card, tell them they had X number of dollars to get what they want, bring it home and put it under the tree. Then I’d pick up some smaller items that I would wrap for them,” she said.

“I don’t even like to get groceries. I don’t know how people can spend all day walking around, just looking. To me, that’s not fun. I want to go and get what I have to and then go home,” Arlene said with a laugh.

“One year when we lived in Elk Mound [Arlene’s children] were bound and determined I was going shopping on Black Friday with them,” she said.

“People were so rude! They would just grab stuff out of people’s hands. They didn’t do that to me because I wasn’t shopping. I was just trying to stay out of the way. But my thought was ‘who raised you?!?’” Arlene recalled. 

Perhaps it is no wonder Arlene is pleased that her family no longer exchanges gifts for Christmas …