Remembering Rosie: Memories of a Wisconsin Farm Girl
Nadine R Block
Biography, Memoir
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 Family farms in Wisconsin have almost disappeared and have been
replaced by factory farms.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.
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.
spoke English was a bootlegger.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
