Growing up Wisconsin with Nadine Block

 

Remembering Rosie: Memories of a Wisconsin Farm Girl
Nadine R Block
Biography, Memoir

 
March, 2021, Page Publishing, Inc., 220 pp
print, $17.95
 
Buy on Amazon, Barnes and Noble

About the Book

Most of the time, our dairy farm was an idyllic place to grow up. Everything revolved around school, church, and community. Yet, my four siblings and I yearned to leave the farm that had been in our family for four generations. We hoped to escape the long tedious hours of dangerous work, the short, cruel lives of farm animals, and the limited educational opportunities in our one-room school with 40-50 children in eight grades and poorly trained teachers. Family farms in Wisconsin have almost disappeared and have been replaced by factory farms. I look back with nostalgia to a place I could not wait to leave.

 
My Review
Block’s charming and authentic memoir of growing up on a farm in rural Wisconsin is quickly becoming part of a lost era. Few family farms can exist; even fewer multi-generational farms still sustain a family or are expected to maintain future generations of those who want to make a living as farmers.
 
The author has done her research of her German immigrant family, coming to Wisconsin in the 1880s, a little later than early settlers who arrived between 1830 and 1850 and became part of the USA in 1848. They settled in Taylor County, northern Wisconsin, where they carved out a home from forty-acres of rock-filled cut-over, tree stumps left by get-rich lumber barons. Often poignant and told with just enough detail to create vivid images, Block also uses family photos to enhance the script. Reading the book is like sitting down with a friend and paging through the family scrapbook. She shares the story of what it’s like to lose her favorite farm animal, the first time their home was “electrified” when she was four, and memories of her grandparents and their often gruesome morality tales which frightened her.
 
One of my favorite parts was when Block enticed her mother to share some family history. “When she was in her eighties, I elicited Mom’s childhood memories by giving her a Brandy Old Fashioned. Once the lubricating spirits loosened her tongue, I captured a family secret on my tape recorder. I learned that my quiet, shy, and reclusive Grandma Barbara who seldom
spoke English was a bootlegger.”
 
Life was what it was—sufficient as in making one’s own soap and laundry detergent—and communal in 4H, neighborhood games, movie nights, and church. Block’s parents were progressives, and fought with the powerful farmer’s lobby to protect Wisconsin dairy products. Portraits of siblings and family members’ struggles with marriage, divorce, social issues, and isolation make the book particularly poignant. “My two older siblings and I, who are closest in age,” Block writes, “lived in a different world than the last two, Lynda and Lin. The oldest children grew up in the fifties, which were comfortable, hopeful, and secure. We were the tail end of the Silent Generation.” The family farm was sold in 1978 and none of the siblings remained in Wisconsin. Nevertheless, they have fond memories of the place that taught them time management, hard work, the value of money, and about death.
 
Block’s story is told in a folksy way, fairly linear with healthy critical look-backs, interpretations, and occasional outside resources to remember the cost of items or general history. Remembering Rosie is a wonderful, intimate look at the changing landscape of rural family life and highly recommended for families, especially as an encouragement to capture your own family memories—the positive and not-so-happy—before they’re lost forever.
 
A Brief Interview with the Author
 
What I love about my book:

I love my book because it provided a wonderful bonding project for my family, Over five years, my four aging siblings and I, scattered all over the country, met occasionally and emailed often about our memories of growing up on our Wisconsin dairy farm in the l950s. While we sometimes disagreed on descriptions of specific events in our childhood, we did it with humor. We laughed often and sometimes cried.

 

I still shed tears over Rosie, my favorite cow who was sent to slaughter when I was ten years old, a victim of dairy farm economics. Her milk production fell with age making her unprofitable to keep. But it was more than Rosie's death that made me sad, it was the short and brutal lives of farm animals, something I could see all around me.

 
A sad scene:

Dad told me Rosie was going to be picked up that day. I shuddered. He meant she was going to the glue factory or a slaughterhouse where she would be butchered for hamburger or pet food. The glue factory was a place where animal hooves were made into glue. I did not want to know where Rosie was going. I was ten years old, and Rosie was my favorite cow. I balefully watched as Dad prodded her onto the ramp of the truck and as the driver, standing in the truck, pulled her up the ramp with a rope around her neck. She looked anxious and fearful. Her head jerked up and down as she struggled against the rope. Her tongue was hanging out, and saliva dripped from her mouth. She looked at me and mooed mournfully as she stumbled up the incline. She was begging not to be sent to her death. Desperately, I looked away. I could not save her. The driver slammed the truck’s back door, and Rosie disappeared. I watched him drive down our driveway and broke into tears. I ran into the house, crawled under my bed, and sobbed.

 
Most of my book is light with entertaining descriptions of everyday lives of children on a mid-twentieth Wisconsin dairy farm.
 
What I hope readers will tell others:
I hope readers say that they were touched by the childhood farm life memories in my book and that they share similar memories about growing up on a farm, visiting a farm, or that they just enjoyed Remembering Rosie as a mood boosting, hopeful and relaxing read during a challenging time.
 
What am I reading now?
I belong to two book clubs. In the non-fiction book club, we are reading 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari. In my fiction book club, we are reading Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford.
 
What’s next for me?
When I retired, I planned to make the rest of my life about writing and art. In writing, I plan to start a blog, NOT IN THE SLOW LANE, about aging with fun, joy, and productivity. In art, I am studying portraiture and taking Zoom classes from the New York Academy of Art.
 
 
About the Author

NADINE BLOCK has worked as a teacher, school psychologist and consultant to education and mental health organizations. She founded a non-profit organization, the Center for Effective Discipline, in l987 and served as its executive director until she retired in 2010. The organization was taken on at that time by the National Child Protection Training Center at Winona State University.

 

The Center for Effective Discipline was dedicated to ending corporal punishment of children through education and legal reform. Nadine developed policies and fought for legislation banning corporal punishment of children in schools at state and national levels.

 

In her retirement, she has continued to support ending corporal punishment of children though writing and personal contacts. She has since published books, This Hurts Me More Than It Hurts You: In Words and Pictures Children Share How Spanking Hurts and What to Do Instead (2011) and Breaking the Paddle: Ending School Corporal Punishment (2013). Remembering Rosie, a memoir of growing up on a Wisconsin dairy farm, is a current writing project. Nadine also began studying painting in her retirement and has exhibited her acrylic and oil paintings in Central Ohio. Visit www.nadineblock.com.