Marion Nichols: “We always got a bag of candy at Christmas”

By LeAnn R. Ralph

COLFAX —  Marion Nichols says what she remembers most about Christmas when she was a youngster was Christmas programs at school — and milking cows. 

Marion, who grew up in the Town of Wheaton, came from a very large extended family and had 43 first cousins.

She has lived in the same house in Colfax on Cedar Street since 1956.

As a little girl, Marion attended school at the Sunny Valley School on state Highway 29, about three-quarters of a mile from where she lived.

The school is now located in Irvine Park in Chippewa Falls.

“I think there were about 75 students (in the country school). We had the boys side and the girls side closets. When it came time for the Christmas program, it was an hour long,” Marion recalled.

The Christmas programs at Sunny Valley School tended to be rather elaborate.

“We were changing clothes out there and then coming in and out, in and out, for that hour-long program,” she said, adding, “and we always got a bag of candy. There was an apple, too. And peanuts.”

Marion was born April 8, 1933, in Waukesha County to Fred and Dorothy Ganong at Dorothy’s parents’ home. 

“These were the Depression years, so they were renting a farm in the area,” Marion said. 

Three years before that, Fred and his brother went from northwest Eau Claire County to Waukesha to look for work. Fred was hired on a farm at a neighbor of Dorothy’s folks, and Dorothy was working as a hired girl at the same farm, just up the road from her parents. 

“That’s how they met and married in Merton, Wisconsin,” Marion said.

Wheaton

When Marion was nine months old, Fred and Dorothy moved to a farm northwest of Eau Claire and ran a dairy farm with Fred’s brothers. After renting different farms, Marion’s parents bought a farm on Highway 29 in the Town of Wheaton in Chippewa County. 

Marion’s dad was originally from the Town of Wheaton.

At that time, Marion’s grandparents still lived in Merton in Waukesha County.

“My mother was the only one of ten children who moved away, so we got to see Grandma and Grandpa maybe once or twice a year … At Christmas, we didn’t get to Grandma and Grandpa’s. Maybe once we got down there. Usually Christmas was at home,” she said.

Out of necessity and the need to help family members, Christmases were low-key.

“My dad’s oldest sister had no husband. Her husband committed suicide when the youngest of the four kids was six months old. He was losing his eyesight, and he couldn’t handle that. Dad and his brothers were always helping her,” Marion said.

“A mother’s pension didn’t give you much. They would help her. Dad would give her cheese and butter and milk. Her youngest boy, he just died last year in Chippewa, we were always pretty close, he’d come and stay six weeks at a time with us. ‘If it hadn’t been for your folks, we would have starved to death.’ He said that over and over. But you know, we didn’t know anything different. That’s just the way it was,” she said.

Milking cows

“We rarely went to church on Christmas. The church service was Christmas morning. We had cows to milk. If we could get all of the chores done, then we could go to church Christmas morning,” Marion recalled. 

“Christmas was usually with Aunt Hazel’s youngest boy, Wes. We went to their family and his married sisters sometimes. Our house was only four rooms, so it wasn’t very big,” she said.

“We didn’t make a big deal out of Christmas. If the chores were done and the weather cooperated, we could go to church at 11 o’clock. I don’t think our church even had Christmas Eve services. It was only just Christmas morning,” Marion said.

“When it was time for high school, I could have gone to three different schools: Chippewa, Elk Mound or Colfax. For Colfax and Elk Mound, I would have had to walk a quarter of a mile to the bus. Chippewa stopped right there. And Chippewa offered more, so I went there,” she said.

When Marion attended Sunny Valley, her mother was a member of the Parent Teacher Association at the school. 

“When school closed for the year, we had a big picnic. The mothers squeezed lemons and made a milk can of lemonade for the big picnic,” Marion recalled.

One can only begin to imagine how many lemons had to be squeezed by hand to make an entire milk can full of lemonade.

Rotation

When Duane and Marion’s children, Doug and Shelley were little, “we always rotated with Duane’s sister Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. One year, we’d have it Christmas Eve, and then the next year, we’d have it Christmas Day,” Marion said.

Duane always wanted the Christmas gifts to be a surprise for the children, she said, noting that Duane’s nieces and nephews would pick out what they wanted from a catalog, and that was what they would get for Christmas — so it was never a surprise for them.

Of course, Shelley and Doug took matters into their own hands one year.

“I ordered ice skates out of a catalog for Shelly and Doug for Christmas. They came in the mail, and I hid them behind the couch,” Marion said.

The skates remained hidden for only a short while.

“They came home from school, found them and opened them up, and they had such a time getting them wrapped up again so I wouldn’t know they’d found them. But I knew it. That was one of the worst things they ever did as far as cheating on Christmas. They knew they were getting skates,” Marion said.

“I don’t think Doug skated very much, but Shelley did a lot. She liked it,” she said. 

“When I was a kid, I didn’t have any skates. But I had a neighbor who did have skates. So we’d go and each take one skate. And we’d go skating with one skate. That’s if there was enough rain in the fall, so the lower part of the field had an ice pond. Some kids brought skates to school so they could skate at school. I never had any skates of my own, though,” Marion said. 

“I did do a lot of roller skating when I was growing up. We’d go to the big roller rink in Elk Mound. We had some friends who were older who could drive. The roller rink was that building in Elk Mound that’s all apartments now. That’s where the roller rink was … it was barely big enough to get going when you went around. It was pretty small. Later on, a whole carload of us would go to Wissota to skate. That was a big roller rink over there. That was fun,” she said.

“My folks never said I couldn’t go. They must have thought I was with the right crowd. Dad always had strict instructions. ‘Behave yourself like you do at home, and you’ll be okay.’ That was his advice.” Marion said.

St. Paul

After Marion graduated from high school, she and a friend went to St. Paul to look for work.

They both found jobs at Waldorf Paper and worked on shifts around the clock.

They came back to Wisconsin weekends and rode back and forth with a man who came home on weekends to stay with his mother.

“We would get on the street car and go down to St. Paul to go to work at Waldorf. We didn’t think anything about somebody hitting us over the head or anything. Of course it was a good thing my mother didn’t know that,” Marion said.

“I had been dating Duane Nichols starting in the fall of my senior year of High school. Two weeks before I graduated from high school, he was drafted into the army and left for basic training in North Carolina for six weeks. When he came home that fall, we became engaged,” she said.

“My dad told me, if your engagement will last, if your relationship with him lasts when he is gone to Korea for a year, it will always last. And he was right,” Marion said.

Duane was shipped to Korea for a year of service. 

“I got laid off from Waldorf Paper that December. The last part of January, my grandmother in Merton had a stroke, and being I was laid off, Grandpa Meissner asked if I would come and help them. It was an enjoyable time there as I had 43 first cousins who I got to know better and did things with them sometimes,” she said.

When Marion came back to this area in March, she looked for work and was hired at Johnson Printing Eau Claire. 

“Duane came home from Korea, and we got married that summer on July 18 at my church in Eau Claire. He was back to work at Uniroyal when he got home from the service in February. We had an apartment. Duane said it was 742 steps from the apartment to his time clock,” Marion recalled.

“Our daughter, Shelley, was born the next August of 1954. The next January, we moved to a little house on his parents’ farm near Tainter Lake. His father was dealing with cancer, so we tried to help out. Then in October of 1956, our son, Doug, was born. We then bought our house in Colfax, and I am still in the same house,” she said.

After Marion and Duane moved to Colfax, Marion was an active member of Norton Lutheran Church.

Marion has served for many years as the president of the Ladies Aid at Norton. For a number of years, she also served as Sunday School superintendent at Norton and was responsible for putting the Sunday School Christmas programs together. 

Tornado

Marion, Duane, Shelley and Doug were living in the house on Cedar Street when the Colfax tornado  struck on June 4, 1958.

That evening, “we took Duane’s mother and were invited to my mom’s on Highway 29 for supper. The Colfax tornado happened while we were there. We did not know of the tornado until we came home to Colfax. Eight big trees were down in our yard, and there were many windows broken, but the house was still standing,” she said.

“We learned soon that our very good friend and his son were killed in the storm. His wife and three other children were in Luther Hospital. It was a very busy summer doing repairs and yard work as well as trying to help friends and neighbors,” Marion said.

“We noticed something was wrong when we got to Fennies (on state Highway 40 near county Highway B) because we could see that the Emmerton farm straight ahead was gone. That’s when we first knew anything. We left the kids in the car on 40 because you couldn’t get into town because of the trees down and the wires, and Duane and I walked over here,” she said.

During the aftermath of the tornado, “Grandma Nichols sorted clothes at the high school for distribution,” she said.

“My father-in-law died in February 4,1958. My dad died February 22 that year, and then the June 4 tornado. It was a very bad year,” Marion said. 

Last one 

When Shelley and Doug were teenagers, they ended up with a little brother.

“In July of 1970, our son, Steven, was born. As he grew up we were involved with his school activities,” Marion said.

“Duane retired from Uniroyal after working there for 35 years. He retired in December, and then he didn’t feel well and went to the doctor in Eau Claire in January, and the doctor helped us go to the University of Minnesota Hospital in St. Paul for a second opinion and found heart problems. They kept him there at the hospital right that day. He ended up with four bypass heart surgery. It was lots of time in and out of the hospital for a few years,” she said.

“On June 14, 1992, Duane passed away while we were visiting friends near Durand. Many relatives and friends were very supportive of us then and now as well,” Marion said.

“My son, Steve, has never married and lives with me. He does many things for me that I can no longer do, like shovel the sidewalk, so I’ve been very thankful for those things,” she said.

Shelley Nichols Rassbach died February 8, 2009. She was diagnosed with brain cancer just before Christmas and died only two months later.

“Losing Duane to heart problems and Shelley to brain tumors was hard, but family, friends and Norton Church friends sure were helpful,” Marion said.

“Another thing about Shelley. She and Mona Thorson were always friends. Mona was two or three years older, but they were always friends from day one. Mona’s grandmother lived with them, and my kids always thought it was just the best thing if they could go visit Grandma Larson,” she said.

“Mona is still my daughter. She comes on my birthday and Mother’s Day, and she brings me a flower. After Shelley died, she came and asked, ‘Can I be your daughter now?’ And I said, ‘you sure can. Any day of the week.’ So she’s pretty special,” Marion said.

People who have been around Colfax for a while know that Mona Thorson is active in many activities, including the Red Cedar Sounds Sweet Adelines Chorus, the Colfax Woman’s Club, the Colfax Municipal Building Restoration Group and at Colfax Lutheran Church.

Family reunion

While many families hold family reunions, there is one special family reunion Marion will never forget.

“When I was about five years old, my mother’s father, Will Meissner, started a family reunion on his farm on the Rock River northwest of Milwaukee about 25 miles. That was the first of 50 reunions at the farm,” she said.

“Mom was one of ten children, and when Grandma and Grandpa retired and moved to the small village of Merton nearby, Mom’s youngest brother took over the farm. When he retired, his youngest son (he had four children, two boys and two girls) took over the farm, so even today, it is still in the family,” Marion said.

When it was time for the 50th family reunion, eight first cousins got together to make plans.

“It was a three-day day event that started Friday evening with an ice cream social. Saturday there was lots of activity. Relatives came from all over the United States. The group hired a firm to roast three pigs and another provided German potato salad,” she said.

“We could also purchase a half gallon of potato salad to take home. We had wagon rides to the back of the farm, by the river, where the first reunion was held. Sunday morning under a big tent and bales to sit on, we had our worship service. There were seven ministers in the family, and they conducted the worship service. All in all, it was a most enjoyable weekend. I’m very thankful my mom and all my family could attend,” Marion said.

“I heard that there were 500 people at that 50th family reunion,” she noted. 

Marion Nichols has five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

“They are my gifts,” she said.