Dr Rosemary Lucas - Thanksgiving in 1930’s Palos Township, IL

00:02 My name is Sarah Lucas, and I am interviewing Dr. Rosemary Lucas. Today is July 3, 2023. We are in La Grange Hospital, and Dr. Rosemary Lucas is my husband's aunt, and I'm recording this interview in. I think it's Western springs. Right. Illinois.

00:26 La Grange

00:27 In La Grange I stand corrected. Okay. So, Rosemary, you are reminiscing and thinking about Thanksgiving in the 1930s. So paint a picture for me. What does that look like?

00:43 Yes, it's a Lucas family tradition, and it's through the 1930s. Now, from background, you need to know. My grandfather, Peter Lucas, was a farmer, and he was a very large landowner. He owned much land out there. Also. He had 11 children, my father being one of them. Dad. There were seven girls and four boys. Ed was the fourth in the family, and the first boy. He was the oldest boy. Now, because farming was their way of life. Yeah, it was their way of earning their lives. And so all 11 of them were involved in the family farm. And as they grew older and married, each was given. When they married, each was given a piece of land. Oh, really? And that way, that kept them going on the farm. Now, interestingly enough, this is just a side story. The boys got more than the girls. The girls all got 10 acres. The boys got 30. And again, it was a way of keeping the farm together because the boys all worked there. And when the girls married, they usually married somebody who was certainly happy to move in on a business, you know. So anyway. But during the 1930s, it was a tradition, and amongst the farmers, it was Thanksgiving Day was truly a holiday. And by that, they did only the essential farm for chores.

02:33 Okay.

02:33 Nothing else. In the Lucas family, the tradition was that they would all gather at the big family farmhouse. Now, this could conceivably be 60 people.

02:47 Wow.

02:47 Because with all of the siblings and the children, you know, and now, the thing is, the. And the feast consisted of certainly turkey, goose, duck, chicken, you name it. And then. And most of the meat was prepared at the big farmhouse. Some of it was at the homes in the area and brought to the table, but the women in the family brought the vegetables and so forth and so on. And so on Thanksgiving Day, the food would start flowing in. Grandma had some kind of a big cookstove, and she had the turkeys and the other fowl in there cooking. And the different women would come with the vegetables, you know, every kind of vegetable under the sun. But the piece de resistance was the ones who came with the desserts. And, of course, that would be every kind of pie imaginable, plus some cake for those who had to have cake. What a picture. When we would get there, if you can believe this, when the meal was prepared and it was usually served around noon. So this was a big deal. And it was. And remember we were going up to the big farmhouse, right? So the table was set in the kitchen and the men ate in the kitchen. Now that wasn't sound like too great a thing except that the kitchen was somebody else's five or six kitchens long. It was huge. And so they would all be gathered around. There could maybe 30 or 40, I don't know how many. And the children ate in the dining room and we were allowed to eat away from our parents and you know, and we've had the greatest time. But all of this happened at noon. And it was interesting to watch the. Before the dinner it was interesting to watch the different sweet things coming in from the women who made, you know, for the suite, the dessert table we called it in those days. But that was the big deal. And then we would. The house had a big wraparound porch and so, I don't know, the men would gather to play cards in the afternoon. The women probably cleaned up, did all that, but the kids played out on the porch. It was a closed in porch wrap around. So we had the best time out there with all of our cousins. There was an old player piano out there on the porch, so somebody would play that and we would put on productions and so forth.

05:32 Sounds amazing.

05:34 And anyway, now that was only. That was only noontime. About 4 or 5 o'clock we had to start with supper and there were some. That's when some of the special treats came out at suppertime. Although usually sometimes by suppertime some of the families had to leave to go with another part of their own family, you know, anyway. But I would say that it was not uncommon to have maybe 75 to 100 people at this feast. But as I say, but it was truly a holiday. The men would. And they were thankful. The idea was they were thankful for having had a good year, good year.

06:16 Of crops in a very immediate sense. They were thankful for that. Good.

06:20 About 4:00 or so. Some of them would have to leave the card table or whatever to run to take care of the dairy cattle and that sort of thing. But for the most part it was truly a holiday.

06:33 Rosemary, I've got a couple questions for you if you don't mind really quickly. Who did you look forward to seeing on Thanksgiving?

06:41 Some of my cousins that I didn't see Very often. I had a couple of girl cousins and I like them. And I didn't normally get together to play, you know.

06:51 Sure.

06:52 But we lived by Elsa park, you know. But the interesting thing is I say it was a holiday and it was not uncommon for there to be a wedding on Thanksgiving Day.

07:06 Oh my goodness.

07:07 In fact, I can remember going when one of my uncles was married, it was on Thanksgiving Day. And the reason for my own parents were married on what was Thanksgiving Day. And the reason of course, being that the man who was getting married could take the day off or they would have the wedding service up at our little Farris church and then come back to the farm for the party.

07:36 Wow.

07:37 You know, that was part of it.

07:38 But this is a very vivid and beautiful place.

07:42 It went on through the, all through the 30s and by the time the early 40s rolled around, it was starting to wane a little bit because of course, the children were growing up and all that sort of thing. And then I believe that the last time we really had it was in 1941 because my father, being a key member of the family, passed away in 1942 and they never had one again after that. So that's the Thanksgiving. That's a Thanksgiving in my memory. That's an incredible image. And it was a, it was an event. It was a big event. Oh, I'll tell you, we kids got away with more stuff that day.

08:31 Like what?

08:32 You know what?

08:33 Do tell.

08:33 Oh, we'd be playing, we'd be playing games and hiding behind the couch and all that sort of stuff. It's an interesting house because the kitchen, the kitchen seated, I don't know how many, but the dining room was quite lovely. That seated probably. Well, 15 people, I don't know.

08:53 Are you able to lay out for me what, like if I walked, if I walked up to the house. Talk to me about the outside and let's walk inside together. What does it look like outside?

09:06 Well, it's a very large house, of course.

09:08 Okay.

09:09 And it's a farmhouse and it had a glassed in porch that wrapped around three sides of it.

09:16 What is the color of the house?

09:19 I think it was white. That doesn't stand out in my mind right now.

09:23 Okay.

09:23 But to get in, to get to the house, you parked in the yard and you would walk down a sidewalk and there was a hedge, a beautiful hedge, probably, I don't know how high on one side of the well, I think on both sides, one whole side and only part of the other side because you also walked past the well what they call the well house. It was a house where the. When they did the milking, the cans, there was a tub in there filled with cold water, and that's where the tub. The milk was cooled while they were waiting for it to go off to the dairy or something. Yeah, they called it the well house. You know, there was running water there.

10:08 I love this. I love this.

10:09 It was not. The place was. Did have all. It did have all the amenities like running water, electricity and stuff. But the.

10:19 So we walk in. We walk in. The porch wraps around.

10:22 Yeah, you walk into the porch.

10:24 Okay.

10:24 And like, if you went in the evening to visit, Grandma would be sitting in the porch. Although most of the time, if it was nice weather, she'd be outside on a bench waiting for people to drive by to visit. Really. But there was a large yard, very lovely yard. And the place was at the top of a hill. So you look down over the countryside.

10:48 Oh, wow.

10:49 Grandpa liked to look over his property. And so it was there. But the song.

10:55 So what happens when you go inside the front door?

10:58 Well, you go in the porch, and the next thing you know, you go into the kitchen. Okay, there is a front door, but I don't really think I know where it was. We went into the kitchen, and the kitchen was humongous. Well, sure. It feeds into that many people. Absolutely. And then off of the kitchen, there.

11:20 Was a. I want to know what's in the kitchen, because that kitchen had a lot of activity.

11:24 Well, interestingly enough, I remember way back in the 30s, the cook stove, as they called it, was off to one side, but then off of the kitchen, there was a huge pantry, and there was sink and all that was there. And so a lot of the food preparation took place in that pantry. I could never figure this out. And poor Grandma had to walk all the way across the big kitchen to get to the stove to cook with. And that was when we weren't there for a feast. There was a huge dining room table pushed up against the wall. And when you go up during the week, if you stopped in to visit, your grandma would usually be there at the table kneading the bread, because she baked all her own bread and coffee cake and things like that. You know, you knew just what time to go if you wanted fresh coffee cake.

12:24 Where were the windows? Where were the windows in the kitchen?

12:27 Well, the kitchen was still. The porch. You went through the porch and the porch was glassed in. Yeah. And the kitchen windows would be. They looked out onto the porch.

12:41 Okay. It sounds like an incredible kitchen. And your grandmother had different. I think you told me. I'm just going to refresh what you told me before, that she had different aprons for different days of the week.

12:53 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. She was. My other grandmother was more fussy about what color they were. This one wore a big apron, and she was satisfied.

13:04 Cute.

13:05 Cute.

13:06 All right. So then there's a parlor. Where's the parlor in relation to the parlor?

13:10 When you. It's in the kitchen. Off to the left was the parlor.

13:14 Okay.

13:14 Which wasn't very big. It was big enough for a few people, but not big enough for the family. And off to the right was the dining room. And again and again it was, you know. And then off of the dining room, there were two bedrooms and the bathroom was there. But then you went upstairs, and that's where they had a lot more bedrooms.

13:38 Question for you. What's in the parlor? What colors are the walls?

13:42 I don't remember. Everything was drab. Okay. It was overstuffed furniture. You know, dark. Yeah.

13:48 Okay. Okay.

13:49 If we went up there for some occasion, another tradition that we throw in here is.

13:56 Yeah, please.

13:57 Grandma's birthday was February 2nd, and so every year on February 2nd, people would come after supper and have a little party for her. And the women from the family would bake cakes, and we'd go up there and we'd have cake and coffee. And every year we'd go up after supper, do that. Grandma would be sitting there. Oh, my, my, my. I thought you would. Nobody would come. She knew darn well everybody would come. And we didn't stay very long.

14:30 Yeah.

14:31 But we stayed long enough that we. She had the coffee path going and everything, but she didn't know anybody was coming. Oh, that's. So anyway. But the Thanksgiving, as I say, was really.

14:44 Well, you painted an incredible picture of this scene.

14:48 Yeah. But it was fine. And as I say, what was your favorite dish like?

14:56 What did you love eating at Thanksgiving?

14:58 Something you really loved. I didn't love or anything in particular. I liked the turkey, of course, but I don't remember anything particular.

15:06 No.

15:06 Other than that. No.

15:08 Just the volume of people there.

15:10 Oh, good grape. I never saw so many potatoes in my life. You know, it was a big task to put that together.

15:19 So when do you think about this now? What do you think about the ThanksGivings in the 30s? What do you think about it?

15:26 Well, of course, they're changed now.

15:29 Yeah.

15:30 But I'm sure families still do something, right. You never would have thought of going out to a restaurant?

15:36 No.

15:36 Well, you didn't go out to a restaurant in 1930. Anyway, you know, it was too much. But you felt kind of sorry when you went back to school and some kids would talk about Thanksgiving and, you know, it was no big deal, but this was a big thing to farm farmers. Not to just this family, but all farmers. It was Thanksgiving for a good crop that year.

16:01 Yeah.

16:02 You know.

16:03 Well, thank you for telling me this story. Thank you so much.