Ernest Albert Fichtner (Part 2)
The Grandfather I Grew Up With
After Alfield died, Ernie was a widower with two little girls who was trying to keep everything afloat. His life had shattered around him in the course of just 5 years leaving him bereft and possibly without direction. Luckily, his sisters and mother stepped up to help with his young daughters and he kept his farm and family afloat.
Around 1935, Ernie gave up his farm and began work for Standard Oil, becoming the bulk service agent in Hardin County by 1940. It was a hard, demanding job and he needed care for his two girls. As many widowers did, he hired a housekeeper, offering room and board in exchange for housekeeping and daycare.
Elizabeth Warner, or Liz as she was known by family, was a local girl who had also married in 1928 and had a daughter in 1929. She and her husband Howard lived on his parents’ farm where he worked as a hand.
Howard was a heavy drinker later in life, a habit that likely started around the time they were married or possibly earlier. Prohibition didn’t prohibit him. Instead, he and his 2 brothers turned it into opportunity when they became bootleggers. Family stories suggest that Howard even kept his still in the house under the living room floor.
In the early 1930s Liz’s teetotaler in-laws discovered their sons’ side business and kicked everyone, including my grandmother and mother, off the farm. Instead of finding a new home with him, Liz moved in with her oldest sister and divorced.
Writing about my grandparents almost a century later, I can’t help but see the romance of two young adults, both on their own with children, both with deep losses in their lives tied to alcohol and thinking that it was fated. Certainly, all of that is true and those losses made both of them incredibly resilient and practical people.
I never saw my grandmother drink. In later years, at family gatherings my grandfather drank beer. But of course so did all my uncles and even some aunts, so it would have been difficult for my grandmother to object. Growing up, I heard stories of Grandpa having a fondness for warm beer, because he couldn’t keep it in the fridge and hid it in the barn when they lived on the farm.
Whether they met the first time through a business agreement or socially, Ernie’s offer was perfect for Liz and her small daughter, Patsy. Born in 1929, she fit exactly between his daughters, Audrey and Elaine. It didn’t take long for things to develop naturally.
Ernie’s sense of duty and his desire to take care of his family were reassuring to Liz, and she shared his sense of humor. Both of them were competitive athletes in school and continued to shared an avid love of sports, particularly baseball and football all of their lives. On June 12, 1936 Ernie and Liz were married at The Little Brown Church in Nashua, Iowa and officially became a family.
Once back from their honeymoon, Liz and Ernie settled down to small town life in Hubbard. Ernie continued in his job, and they added two sons of their own. Rodney was born in 1940 and Royce followed in 1945.
As their family grew, Ernie tired of working for someone else and returned to farming not long after Royce was born. This time he rented a farm south of Hubbard. The family kept horses, pigs and chickens, and farmed corn and beans. Grandpa taught both sons to hunt and fish and they grew up helping on the farm. Rodney joined the military, and Royce, the baby of the family, went to ISU for an engineering degree after graduating high school.
And since Substack has decided that my post is too long for email, this will be in 3 parts. Look for the next and final part of the story in a week or so. Thank you for reading.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this story about my grandfather. I certainly enjoyed writing it, and while doing so realized that I have written quite a bit about my grandparents. If you enjoyed this and want to read more please read the posts above or these:
Part One of this story:
Here is a short piece about the farm itself:
And a couple of others:
And of course his link on WikiTree:
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