Franklin County, Nebraska

For Another Day

This past spring Tammy (Fritson) Fahrenbruch wrote me a letter asking that I write something about her parents, Johnny and Donnie Fritson living at Macon, for their 40th wedding anniversary.

There are many memories that, put on paper, go into a special book that Tammy prepared for that anniversary celebration day. I write here about our friendship experienced in the 1970’s.

In about the year 1971, our friendship with Johnny and Donnie Fritson began. I had met them once before we moved to Bloomington, but I remember that day of our first real meeting. They came to visit our other dear friends at Macon and we sat in Abe and Donna Rae Greening’s kitchen and visited the afternoon away. I knew immediately that I liked this family that lived just a half mile east down the road from Greenings. As they left that day Johnny and Donnie invited us to their home and it wasn’t long until we went.

I remember thinking these people are so giving. Their warm kitchen soon became one of my favorite places to be and I felt perfectly comfortable to load up my boys on a summer eve and go straight up the back road to their home. Donnie is such a good cook and made the best homemade bread. More often than not our supper was as simple as homemade bread and gravy with lots of condiments from their lovely garden on the east side of their two-story house.

After a few visits of getting to know each other we met Johnny’s parents, J. B. and Emma Fritson. Their home was just a short jaunt down the road to the east and south at the first corner.

Butchering day at J. B.’s was so fun; I can sometimes still smell the fragrances of the day. The gas-cooking stove in the washhouse warmed our bodies, as well as cooked the meat of the day. No one could leave until we sampled the product. Emma, on the annual day, usually someday in November, was busy running in and out as she was cooking our lunch; as well as the afternoon snack.

Duane always said when we went to the Fritsons for any reason we had to eat at least five times before the day was over.

Sometimes on butchering day Emma’s brother, John and his wife, Anna Reil, helped with the sawing or cutting of the meat; they lived southwest of Hildreth. It was Donnie and I who wrapped the meat. I had a feeling of security as I headed home that day, for we had lots of good meat to serve our growing family.

Many times, at the beginning of our friendship I would ask Donnie “How do you make that bread?” Our whole family loved her bread; she would say just so much flour and a scoop of lard, etc. I really wanted to know how she made those six loaves of bread with each loaf divided into two pieces.

Come one summer, when I knew she was going to make bread I went to her house with my 25 pounds of flour and yeast. As Donnie made the bread I held the measuring cup under her hands and measured everything she put into the bread. To this day, I still make that bread just like that day of my first trying in early 1974. That bread recipe has gone from coast to coast, for everyone that enters my home loves this homemade bread and also the dried Rusk or Toybac that Donnie taught me to make out of the bread. There is not a person that comes through the door that won’t eat the Rusk, from a small child to my father, who I caught out in my back room eating some that I cooked far too brown. We all love it and it would be awful if I didn’t make it at every holiday. My coffee women enjoy it dipped in coffee. I make big bags of it and send to my dad at Christmas.

I have learned a lot of recipes for good home cooking from these friendly people-fried parsnips, salmon patties, breaded tomatoes, mulberry and rhubarb jelly (this was my son Steve’s favorite jelly).

I fear now that Emma is deceased that no one knows how to make this famous jelly. She somehow mixed the two foods and boiled until it was just right on the stove, never using Sure Jel. Every year on my birthday in May I wanted to go to Emma’s and spend my day with her. She would ask me what I wanted to eat. I replied, “breaded tomatoes.” I learned to make breaded tomatoes; a person has to have home canned tomatoes and home made bread-Emma’s tasted just like my grandmothers.

As we ate the lunchtime meal we sat in her kitchen at the table by the west window. Out side robins hopped in her backyard looking for food. Emma was a peaceful person that had worked hard all her life. She was always feeding someone or preparing to feed someone. She loved people at her table. Her words to us were ‘you must eat it all.’ Emma and I watched soaps on her TV on top of the refrigerator that day in May. If I missed them I would call her and she almost always knew what was going on. This lady mowed her lawn by hand until she was 83 years old, and still gave the fences a fresh coat of white paint when needed. I always told her, I wanted to be just like her, but I lacked a bit of get up and go. Emma Fritson was a grand lady.

Donnie’s parents lived by Blue Hill and came down sometimes while we were at the Fritsons. They were very nice people too. Her father was a stately gentleman with gray hair and a gray moustache. Her mother was a small, thin woman with a very quiet voice. She was an agreeable woman and I enjoyed being in her presence. Donnie’s mother still lives today at a very elderly age. I also enjoyed knowing Donnie’s sister, who lived in Hastings. We had visited her at her home a few times.

Another favorite food that Donnie would make if we just popped in was fried, canned beef with gravy and bread on the side. I sure loved her home canned tomato juice with a cold beer in the summertime. I also enjoyed her red cucumber pickles. I have tried to make them but they never turn out as good as hers. Sometimes, yet today I come home with a jar of them in my hand. One thing I always said about going to their home, I never leave empty handed, be it a jar of pickles, a flower from Johnny’s garden or a jar of home canned apricots. Although Johnny and Donnie work jobs now at the Bethpage Mission at Axtell, they seem to still have time to do the homey things that really count.

Every time I go to their house in the summer, we take a walk to the garden; we always have and I hope, always will-it’s my favorite part of ending a visit with them. Johnny’s garden is clean of weeds and everything is in a neat row. He is one of the first to have peas and new potatoes. I look forward to this parting walk to the garden, even if the bugs are biting, it’s OK-it’s tradition.

For the next two weeks I will share with you more of these wonderful memories that race through my mind of those days when our hearts were young and so were our bodies.

Our days on the earth are as a shadow…the Bible

Rena Donovan, For Another Day.

Return to For Another Day main page

Return to Franklin County NEGenWeb Main Page