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Making Quilts

Feb. 1996

We are back to our house on Pleasant Street. As I said, we had a living room, 2 small bedrooms, and a kitchen. It was the year 1939, and we had just moved to Wausau from the country.

Being a large farm family, we had made many quilts for different members of the family. Today we were going to make another quilt for someone in the family. The quilting frames were set up in the living room, the only place where there was room enough for them. They filled three-fourths of the living room with all the other furniture pushed out of the way. Mother and some of my sisters were already busy at the quilt.

There was a knock on the front door. Since the quilting frame extended all the way to the front door, someone had to crawl under the quilt to get to the door to answer the knock.

At the door stood Rev. E. H. Bertermann, pastor of Trinity Church at that time. He was making a call to see where we would be going to church, since we were new in town. We had not met him before, but politely invited him in. However, the only way he could come in was to crawl under the quilt, -which he did.

After this very casual introduction, we did end up joining Trinity Church. His first impression of us must not have been too bad, since I ended up teaching there for 22 years. We often talked about the informal way we first met him, -practically under the quilt!