Edith Erickson

Edith Erickson

CENTER FOR ORAL AND PUBLIC HISTORY

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, FULLERTON

NARRATOR: EDITH ERICKSON

INTERVIEWER: Jennifer Keil

DATE: March 27, 2013

LOCATION: Laguna Beach, California

PROJECT: Hitler’s Europe to the Golden State

JK: This is Jennifer Keil.  I’m conducting an interview with Edith Erickson in Laguna Beach, California. It’s March 27th, 2013 at 10:15am. This is California State University, Fullerton oral history project entitled, “From Hitler’s Europe to the Golden State.” My first question is when and where were you born?

EE: I was born on June 27th, 1934 in Berlin, Germany. 

JK: Can you share with me what your upbringing was like?

 

EE: The first four years of my life I was in Berlin. Then because of the Nazi pressure, my father who worked for the International Industrial Bank, which was primarily Jewish, took the family to the mountains in the middle of Germany in the Thuringia Bald and I grew up in a small town called Schmalkalden.

JK: Do you recall what year that was when you moved?

EE: That was probably 1938 or ‘39.

JK: What were some of your favorite hobbies as a child?

EE: I think I was a tomboy. I was always running wild and climbing trees. We didn’t really have hobbies. As a small child I had to help pick needles and things for food. I feed the rabbits, [since] we (family) kept rabbits for food. We worked in the garden.

JK: Where did you attend school?

EE: I attended school, first primary school and elementary school in Schmalkalden. Then we have a rather tough examination from fourth grade where if we don’t make (pass) it from fifth grade [you don’t get] to go into high school. I was just in high school when the whole area became first American and then Russian when the whole school system changed.

JK: What was it like with the Russians taking over the educational system? How did you adjust to that?

EE: The Russians decreed that there shouldn’t be any high school, but we kept on doing what we were doing. I had started English and then Latin. We got Russian on top of it. Every day we had an hour of Russian and another hour usually of political re-orientation, which was geared toward Communism. Otherwise it was basically the same. The educational system was actually very good.

JK: Were most students resilient to that or did they adapt to it?

EE: I think they just adapted. There were not that many kids going to high school anyway.

JK: Can you recall some of your role models you had growing up?

EE: Probably my mother. She was a very sweet person, very hard working, very kind. She grew vegetables in the garden and made the most of what little we had to eat.

JK: Would you share with me more about both of your parents?

EE: My father was a banker and at the same time an ichthyologist. Ichthyologist means he was into tropical fish. I was told by some experts that he has more fish named after him than anybody alive. He was always breeding fish and examining fish. We had the whole place full of tropical fish. My mother was just a housewife but very bright. During the war, my father was sent to the front because he would not join the Nazi party and he was a younger man. My mother and I would listen, we were not allowed to do that [since] she could have been jailed, to the BBC to find out which cities were going to be attacked so we would be prepared. Although we lived in a very small town.

JK: What was your parent’s educational background?

EE: My mother just had primary school and then had an apprenticeship with a small department store. The owner sort of adopted her, so she learned how to buy, sell, be a buyer for the place, and she had to learn how to cook. They were very good cooks. She was there for something like twelve years at least until she got married. My father was orphaned at the age of twenty-one with nine younger brothers and sisters that he had to take care of. He had to leave the priest seminar, he wanted to be a Protestant priest, and then studied to be a lawyer in night school for seven plus years. He and my mother were officially engaged, which is different in Germany than here, for seven years until they could get married. Then he got the job in Berlin.

JK: How do that work, the engagement? What’s the difference from an American model?

EE: In Germany you get a kind of wedding ring, without the diamond just a plain ring, on your left hand when you get officially engaged. It’s a big celebration. When you are getting married then you size the ring because often your right hand is bigger than the left had with the fingers. Then the priest or the minister puts it on your other hand. So if somebody’s pregnant in Germany (laughter) we often look and see if the ring is on the left hand or if it’s on the right hand. So is she married or not married? So you can always tell.

JK: Wow, it’s a different tradition. What were your siblings like?

EE: I only had one sister and her name is Ruth. She is nine years younger. I only got her because I begged my parents to get me a little brother. Of course it didn’t turn out that way. My father had a very hard time naming her Ruth because it was a biblical name and considered to be Jewish and he was not supposed to give her that name. He was very angry and just pushed it (name) through. She was called Ruth.

JK: What other childhood memories do you have of Germany?

EE: It was a very happy childhood except for the bombing by Americans. I didn’t know that we had a one man submarine factory on the ground that was manned by prisoners of war, but the British knew. Our little town was bombed several times. The worst experience was, now I’m getting really teary, my girlfriend was sitting next to me. She and I were in school and going home for lunch and a bombardment happened. Of course we never thought anything would bomb us. All they found of her was a braid and some blood. With some of the bombing, we children had to help clear the rubble. Some of the rubble was burning because the American threw in incendiary bombs. The people were still screaming underneath. So we had a bucket brigade and we kids, especially the ones that didn’t burn, had to take the rubble away and look for things or people. I remember once my right hand when into a whole bunch of blood and flesh and stuff like that and I couldn’t even touch a sandwich after that. That was a really horrible experience. Once I got almost killed. It was a beautiful medieval town. Of course the bombing happened in town and I was standing by an old doorway just being told where to go. Somebody tried to clear enormous cobblestones that had flown up on the roof and threw them down and almost hit me. For some reason I just stepped aside. Right next to me this enormous thing came right down. So it was stuff like that I remember and no food. Just terribly hungry all the time.

JK: Do you recall Kristallnacht in 1938?

EE: No, I was too young for that. I recall when the war started. I was sitting in our kitchen, which was a very large kitchen. My mother insisted that I had to drink the warm milk and I was sort of kneeling at the table. I said, “I’m not drinking this. I can’t drink this. It’s yucky; it has the skin on top.” She said, “You’re going to sit here and drink this milk. You can’t get up.” She had the radio on and got suddenly very upset and said, “The war has started. The war has started.” I always connect drinking milk with the war. So that’s what happened.

[00:10:13]

JK: How did you feel about Germany during your childhood and also now reflecting upon it in the present?

EE: I guess I was a little bit conflicted. I knew my parents were anti-Nazi, but I couldn’t let that be known. At an early age, I think I was nine, they got me into the Hitler Youth partly because I was declared pure Aryan. We were called at an early age to become future leaders. I was very proud of that. My mother was upset and I didn’t quite understand. Here I felt this was a great honor and why didn’t she participate? What we really did was sports. I was always very good at swimming, and running, and diving. In the winter [we] helped older people carry coal for heating purposes from the basement, or do some shopping, or helped out. I thought it was really a great program. I liked it.

JK: Was your sister a part of that as well?

EE: No, she was too little.

JK: What other World War II memories do you have?

EE: Mostly being hungry which got worst after the Americans and the Russians came. Just on the other hand, being able to run wild. We had mountains and forests. My friends and I would run all over and collect berries and mushrooms. It was just a very free, nice lifestyle. I was happy.

JK: Do you recall the differences from living in Berlin and into the mountain range?

EE: I have strange memories of living in Berlin. My father not only collected fish but he collected other animals that were then sent to the zoo. They had been shipped over on big ocean liners. He had a friend that was a captain and he would bring these creatures. Then we had them in our apartment. I remember playing with a little crocodile, turtles, and I remember that quite well. Of course we didn’t have that in the German mountains. I remember being a child in a place in Berlin where people who were into fish and into animals like that had enormous areas with ponds. I was ten there. My mother would sit there on the bench with me and my father would putter around with other people, with fish, and propagating fish. I have a vague memory of that. The playground in Berlin, there was a huge sandbox outside our apartment building. I remember that. But basically I remember my childhood in the German mountains.

JK: What would a typical day look like for you there?

EE: After I went to school, I had to go to school every morning, we lived on a mountain. Up to the mountain, there were steps. So I had to go down all the steps. Unto the side of the steps, there were chestnut trees, lots of them. I would go under the chestnut trees. At the bottom of the stairs was a lake. I had to walk around the lake and go to school. I’d be in school until one o’clock or so. We didn’t have school in the afternoon. Then I’d return home and eat lunch. I’d do my homework or run around, or pick food for the rabbits or us. I read a lot. Actually, that was one of my hobbies. I read a tremendous amount and I would also go to the neighbors and asked for books to read because we had run out of books. There wasn’t really a school library. They’d say, “Are you sure you’ve read this book?” and I would return and say, “Yeah!” They would question me very often and wouldn’t believe at this early age that I would read so much. 

JK: Do you have a favorite author that you recall?

EE: Later on, but not at that time. It was Karl May. He wrote about Indians in America and Old Shatterhand. I was totally in love with that. As a very small child I read the stories about Rubitsall. Rubitsall was a sort of mythological figure in the German mountains. He could do magic and he would help orphans and they would people. So I liked those fairy tales. I like fairy tales.

JK: Did those stories resonate with that particular creature during the war with having a mythical creature aiding you? Was that some kind of hope?

EE: No (laughter), this mythical creature just helped kids in many ways. He would take lost children who were lost the forest home.

JK: What was the women’s role in the war?

EE: The women were housewives and then they had to work in factories, most of them. My mother didn’t have to do that because my sister was born and so she had a small child at home. It was nutritionally good because we got a little bit of milk, which sometimes my mother would share with me. Otherwise we wouldn’t even have the milk which was often watered down. It looked more blue than white.

JK: I was reading how Germany created the Mother Service Department in 1934 and how they established German Mothering schools. They would actually train women how to care for their children. I was wondering if your family ever encountered one of these schools?

EE: No, but I think my mother had taken courses in child caring. She was very good with arts and crafts and knitting and crocheting. My best girlfriend father was a big Nazi. They had one child after another. She got the Mutterkreuz, the cross for mothers. I’m sure she was trained. Then of course after the war, that whole family fell apart.

JK: With your mom being a skilled homemaker, did she teach a lot of those skill sets?

EE: Some of them, but we had a school. Maybe it was part of the elementary school where young girls, age thirteen and fourteen, were then sent into households where the woman knew how to cook and how to be a good housekeeper. They had to learn housekeeping there. We always had somebody who learned to cook in our household and take care of a house. Sometimes they even helped out with me but I didn’t like that. We had one that was called Fayhe from Felicitas and she was a Nazi. We had to be very careful with what we were saying. She was raised by her grandmother who was a super Nazi and so there was always tension when she was around.

JK: Did she promote ideals?

EE: Oh totally.

JK: What was her (Fayhe) rhetoric like?

EE: She said how wonderful the Nazi party was and we were going to win the war. My parents had both been abroad to America and spoke English, we were not for this war. In fact my parents felt that we couldn’t win it. 

JK: Was there an ideal Nazi women that she would support with the roles of the mother?

EE: No was too young. But the ideal Nazi women would be a mother with lots of children for Hitler and for the Third Reich.

JK: Can you recall Gertrud Scholtz-Klink and the Frauenwerk?

EE: No.

JK: Did you assist your mom, you were saying with home management by taking care of the rabbits, but were there other assigned roles that you had?

EE: No, I just helped with chores, planting and digging up potatoes, picking fruit. We had a second garden which helped us survive. No, basically I had a lot of homework. We kids worked pretty hard with school.

JK: Do you recall your mom preparing meals with ration cards or supplements? 

EE: Oh yes. 

JK: What was that like?

EE: Well we never had enough with the rations. Since we were living up on a hill, it was hard to know sometimes when meat would be delivered for example. So I would be sent down to stand in these long lines to get a little piece of meat for the rations or get some milk. I remember a couple of times I just about fainted. I was just vomiting yellow gaul because I hadn’t eaten. I would get terrible headaches. We always had to work stretching these rations. It was never enough.

[0:20:53]

JK: What eventually brought you to California?

EE: That’s a long story. First, our area became American and that was pretty nice. We watched the American soldiers and sometimes they’d give us candy or chocolate. We didn’t even know what chocolate was. I had heard of it and that it was brown, but I had never tasted any. One day they disappeared and there were sheets hung from the smallest streets from side to the other with weird writing on it. That meant that the Russians were coming. They came on their horses, Punyan (pony?) little horses. They were screaming, yelling, and shooting into buildings. They went into people’s houses, shooting into the mirror and bookcases which often had glass, and raping women. I watched some of this although it was pretty awful. That’s what happened. The school became Russian. After about two and half or three years, my father found out that his bank was going to be examined. It’s a long story. He handed back all the stuff in the safe to the people who had their stuff in safes. He and one of the tellers had keys, but when the Russians came in they demanded all the keys of all the banks and to take all the stuff out. It was all empty. They couldn’t prove anything. My father had a friend, a local butcher, who had been in the death camp of Remagen where all the German soldiers were rounded up. They survived and so he told my father they’re watching you. They’re trying to find out what happened with the keys and why all the safes were empty. So my father said, ‘We need to get out.’ To make a long story short, my mother, my sister and I left the Russian part. We had drivers, took some of our furniture, and bribed the Russians in the middle of winter with felt boots. They were non-regulation and they could wear that and [bribed them] with vodka, huge amounts of vodka. My father couldn’t leave. Much later he joined us. It was very difficult. That’s how we left the Russian part. In the meantime I was sent back and forth, I was very scrawny looking, to find an uncle in Mannheim in the western part. He lived in the right wing of the Mannheim castle, which was totally bombed. I found him and he said, ‘there’s a horse stable here and I can try to steal some tiles and put a roof on it. You could live there, there was no toilet. That’s what we did finally.

JK: So you moved westward into Germany and from there you found a connection to America pretty early or was it until later?

EE: From Mannheim, then I finished my high school in Karlsruhe, from there I went to the French part of Switzerland to learn more French. From there I got a working scholarship to Cambridge England to Newnham College. From there I went back to Germany and studied some more to be an interpreter and language correspondence. Then I got a job at Canadian Mission, which is part of the Canadian Embassy. That’s when I met my American husband who was a student and also with the military over there. Then I worked for the Canadian Embassy, another branch in Cologne. Then we got married and we came. My husband had been kicked out of Harvard for alcohol poisoning. We went to Cambridge, Massachusetts and he finished his B.A. there. We had our first daughter in Germany.

JK: What year did you move to become part of the Canadian Embassy? What era was this you started your college?

EE: 1957. I finished my studies. I had finished them early because I went into first grade when I was five, so I was always sort of ahead which was always nice.

JK: What year was it that you met your husband?

EE: I met him in ’56 I think. We were both twenty when we met.

JK: You established your home in Germany first?

EE: Yes, I had my daughter there.

JK: What was it like rearing a family in that era?

EE: I didn’t really rear my daughter there. She was born six weeks before we had to leave the United States. After we got married, we had promised not to have children but of course it didn’t quite work that way, I got violently sick. I was in and out of the hospital with high grade toxemia. Then my parents took me back in, so luckily the child was born very healthy. Then we came to the United States. My mother often took care of me. Both my husband and I often ate with my parents because I couldn’t even cook. I couldn’t hold anything down.

JK: What were your perceptions of California before you came and after you arrived?

EE: It was just a name basically. I never had given it much thought. Never even thought I’d end up here.

JK: When did you actually move? You said you originated in Massachusetts. For how many years were you there and when did the transition take place?

EE: I don’t remember. Well in Massachusetts we were probably there for a couple of years. Then my husband got a job with a publishing company in New York so we moved to New York and he went to Columbia University to get an M.A. He would change fields all the time. Once he’d gotten a degree, he’d change fields. He was the eternal student. He had studied Greek and Latin before that, then he studied Engineering, then he studied German and I helped him with German. Then he decided he would go to Princeton University and study classics. Then moved to Princeton and he was teaching at Douglas which is the female part of Rutgers University. He drank a huge amount and I was not familiar with drinking. My family didn’t drink. Then one day I asked him to read a book called the Autobiography of Yogi. I thought if he’d started to meditate a little maybe he wouldn’t drink so much, which is what happened. Then he decided that we had to move to California because of the monastery and the hub for the self-realization fellowship, which goes along with this Autobiography of Yogi was in California. We came for a visit, he liked it, and applied for a job. When he finally finished his Ph.D., he got a job out here at Scripps College in Claremont. That’s how we got here. I sure didn’t want to come.

JK: What year was that or the era?

EE: I don’t remember. It was in the 60s.

JK: What were your perceptions of the United States before you even moved out here and also when you arrived what were your new perceptions then?

EE: Before I arrived, I thought probably that it was a country of opportunities. My parents had been here for vacation. I had a great aunt living here. I heard via her about America, but I never intended to come here. I liked Europe. I probably thought it was a fun country. My parents never wanted me to move away and have children in another country. I had the grandchildren and a husband in another country. When I came here, it was an interesting experience. We lived in Massachusetts. My husband had a favorite aunt on the north shore of Boston and we spent a lot of time with her. She engaged a nanny for the child. Then we had children, we had the second one. My in-laws, my father-in law was a famous political commentator on television, Quincy Howe with the news. He was also an historian. We spent time with them. There were always political debates and religious debates. It was always very interesting. I learned a lot about America and that aspect of America.

[0:30:54]

JK: Did you assimilate to those ideologies?

EE: Yes, I think I did.

JK: Do you maintain German traditions with things such as meals and holidays?

EE: I kept the German traditions up to a certain extent. I remember my mother-in-law was very haughty. She was a Bostonian Baughman and was very tall always wearing hats that she would never take off. She came one Christmas and the children were small. We were in our apartment in New York when she started screaming. I didn’t know what was the matter. In Germany we have real candles on our Christmas tree and they were burning. She was screaming, ‘You’re burning the house done! You’re burning the house!’ She was totally out of her mind. That was her tradition versus mine tradition. I also remember the first birthday I spent in Massachusetts. We had just arrived. My mother-in-law asked me, ‘Dearie, what do you want for your birthday?’ and I said, ‘a huge pot.’ She said, ‘what are you going to do with a huge pot?’ and I said, ‘I need an enormous pot.’ She didn’t understand. I explained [it] was for the diapers. We rinsed diapers in Germany and we boil them. That’s how they get clean and then we rinse them. It’s our big pride to be the first ones in the neighborhood to have the diapers out on the line having the wind go through them. She thought I was out of my mind. I got a huge enamel pot that was used for canning, she found one. I boiled the diapers.

JK: Did you rear your children in other German traditions?

EE: I spoke German to them, especially the eldest one. My ex-husband, Quincy, who spoke German fluently because he had a German nanny growing up, didn’t want to speak German anymore after we came to the United States. I remember one day he took my eldest daughter Janet in the stroller. She looked up and there was a butterfly and she said, “Schmetterling!” He just about killed over that our kid could speak German. It hadn’t really registered.

JK: You shared with me that you taught Comparative Literature at a college. When and where did you do that?

EE: I studied Comparative Literature at UC Riverside. I got by B.A. and M.A. there. I started teaching part-time at Citrus College. I hadn’t even finished my M.A. Then I got a full-time job. I taught languages and literature. I’ve done that all together for twenty- six years not counting part-time. First I started part-time.

JK: What was that like in that era?

EE: I like it a lot. What I especially liked was that the student I got were first generation students. They really wanted to learn something, most of them. I started out with six semesters of German, four to six semester of French, and I also taught English as a Second Language (ESL) for the foreign students. I liked the mixture of students. I just loved being there. I didn’t like the administration too much. We had a President who didn’t even study foreign languages. Once we had a meeting with him and he said, “Well let’s face it, foreign languages are only for recreational purposes. I pride myself for never having had to take a foreign language.” We had people like that in the administration. Didn’t get much support there.

JK: I was also wondering what your responsibilities were as a wife and mother? When you moved to America was there a change with responsibilities?

EE: I didn’t really have many responsibilities when I was married in Germany. After a year of marriage we came over here. I was so sick during that time. I had to learn how to cook the American way. I got the Fannie Farmer Cookbook and had to figure out ounces, cups, pints. We have the metric system in Europe. Life was just different. We never had cocktail time in Germany, it didn’t exist. It was a more opulent lifestyle here. My husband’s family had money and they had houses. I was immersed in that kind of lifestyle too.

JK: Did you have aid doing household management?

EE: No, only after the second child was born in New York my mother-in-law’s maid would come a few times to help me with the housework, otherwise I never had any. We ourselves, my husband who was always studying, we had very little money. We were really poor. Later on I worked for a publishing company for small animal books to do translations from English into German. They were sold at pet stores.

JK: Do you still have those?

EE: No (laughter). [There were about] how to take care of your dog, cat, or parakeet. I did other translations too here and there. I worked on a German grammar book.

JK: I was wondering if you had labor saving devices in Europe with refrigerator, washers and dryers, stoves.

EE: No. We had refrigerators, of course, but my parents never had a washing machine or dryer. [It was a] very small refrigerator. In the beginning when I grew up we didn’t have a refrigerator. We did our laundry in a huge kettle. We’d boil the laundry, rinse it all, and then hang it up on the line.

JK: Which labor saving devices did you utilize once in America?

EE: I first started with the washing machine when the second child came, still boiling the diapers. That’s about all we had.

JK: Did you home have anything else pre-installed with dishwashers and ovens?”) “We had an oven, obviously, and a stove top combination. When we finally moved to Princeton, we had then the third child, we had in the basement a washing machine and dryer. We had a dishwasher in a very small kitchen.

JK: Did it increase your productivity with these devices?

EE: Yes, I had more time for the children. I also worked again at the same time. It gave me more time.

JK: Did you feel as if it was easing the burden of housework or was there a sense that the workload was increasing with technology?

EE: No I think I felt it was helping and that I had more time for the garden and the children. I also worked part-time.

[0:40:00]

JK: I’ve been looking at marketing materials for the era advertising some of the machinery and I was wondering if as a homemaker if you encountered them in newspapers, magazines, or commercials? This is from ’49, the Hoover vacuum machines, the GE 40s electric range. 

EE: I remember the washing machine and dryer were from Frigidaire, which I thought was funny because I always thought a Frigidaire had to be a Frigidaire. We usually had used appliances, we didn’t have money for new ones. It helped tremendously, especially the washing machine and dryer.

JK: How did you acquire the skills to operate this machinery? Was it based on use or was there someone who instructed you?

EE: My husband knew.

JK: Did he grow up with that material around him?

EE: He mostly grew up in boarding schools, but he mechanically more inclined than I was. He knew these things.

JK: Do you recall purchasing your first television?

EE: Yeah. I watched television for the first time basically in Beverly Farms on the north shore of Boston with my husband’s aunt Mattie. Our favorite show was Julia Child. I was just riveted with the television for all these cooking shows.

JK: What were your thoughts about these shows?

EE: I loved them.

JK: Did her methods suit you? Were they easy to adapt to?

EE: Yes. Especially since I had a bit of a background in cooking from [living in] the French part of Switzerland and France. I also stayed a while in France. I was always interested in cooking.

JK: In France, was there an actual course you took?

EE: It was the same family I lived with in Geneva and they had a house in the small place called Moussan which is about sixteen kilometers north from Cannes. We spent vacations there.

JK: What was your favorite dish to make?

EE: I don’t know. I like curried shrimp. A German dish called rouladen which is a rolled, very thin meat with a little bit of bacon and pickles in it and onions. Then my husband became a strict vegetarian so I couldn’t cook any of my favorite meals anymore. Then I mixed rice, beans, and lots of veggies. It was very boring.

JK: Did you enjoy the gadgets and measurement tools that are utilized in cooking?

EE: Yes I love the handheld mixers and later on I liked the microwave oven. I was one of the first ones to get a microwave oven. I liked all of those things. Measuring, I don’t know. I had to go to the ounces and pints. I preferred the German system of liters.

JK: Did you have measuring utensils for both?

EE: For both.

JK: Was there ever a time that you felt gadgets would reduce productivity where it took longer to clean them than to actually use them?

EE: No. I would work out.

JK: Do you think there’s any sense of being American and purchasing American products in showing your sense of assimilation into that culture?

EE: I liked to purchase American products although when it comes to cars I have preferred Japanese cars because the American cars weren’t well made. Otherwise I try to stick to American products especially after I saw a film, Death by China. I’m trying to never buy anything that was made in China and of course if you go to a Wal-Mart, ninety plus percent of everything they sell is made in China. I’m trying to be very careful with that.

JK: Is that a more of a recent awareness?

EE: Yes. It’s been in awareness but it really chartered.

JK: Do you think early in the 50s and 60s as you were adapting to the culture, were you aware of purchasing Wonder bread or Coke to show your sense of patriotism?

EE: Yes. I don’t like Wonder bread. I don’t like Coke. The first time I drank Coke was in Germany as a teenager. A girlfriend and I had saved money to buy a bottle of Coke. We thought it would be wonderful. It was so disgusting. It was so artificial. We were used to fruit drinks with real fruit. It was awful. I still don’t like it.

JK: Were there any products that you really enjoyed using?

EE: I enjoyed more gourmet stuff like lobster and shrimp on the north shore of Boston. I liked American food. I wasn’t familiar with American hamburgers because we put stuff similar to a meat loaf to a hamburger. That’s different. I liked American drinks sometimes. I’d have mixed drink, which I never had before. That’s interesting.

JK: In Disneyland in 1957, they made a place called the Monsanto House of the Future and the Carousel of Progress in Tomorrowland. I was wondering if you had the chance to visit that in its early stages or later?

EE: I probably did, but I don’t remember.

JK: Monsanto House of the Future was seen as a hopeful sign of technological progress and the removal of drudgery of housework. Did you encounter something that encouraged you that it would become better?

EE: I don’t really mind housework since I grew up with that. It’s relaxing. I can follow my own thoughts so I don’t think of housework as drudgery. Of course now, I have all the machines I need so it’s not a big deal.

JK: Do you have particular thoughts of the technology entering the home? Any other reactions to it?

EE: No if there should be anything else that should help me, I’ll get it. Also it’s fun to try out something new.

JK: Do you find American consumerism different than European?

EE: Totally. It is a country of waste. It is so wasteful Americans don’t even realize how they waste. Let me give you one example. When I arrived in the Boston area, I stayed with his aunt for a while. I had met a German girlfriend; we’re still friends to this day. She lives is Munich. She and I taught. She was here to learn more English. We said, “Can you believe it?” She lived with George Bondese, which was a famous person in the UN. They had steak in the evening and you know what they did with the bones? They threw them in the trash. I said, “What with the bones in the trash? It’s unheard of.” You would never do that in Europe. You would make a soup. You don’t waste anything. To them, they probably didn’t even think about it twice.

JK: Do you think that was due to the shortage of rations in the European experience during war? Did that carry on into conserving? I heard that the American ration experience wasn’t as radical.

EE: Maybe it influenced things a little bit, but basically I think in Europe you always used what you had. You use the bone to make a broth or a stock. You don’t waste stuff like that.

JK: Did you use those ideas in your home?

EE: Yes, always. I still do.

JK: Do you find that you mimic some of the ways your mother managed her home?

EE: Yes, absolutely. So if I have bones, they all go in the freezer and then I make stock. Then I freeze that in ice cube tray. This is modern technology. Every gravy I make, they all get a cube of the concentrated stock.

JK: With your home, did your spouse ever assist you with the housework?

EE: Very little, he was always studying. He would mow the lawn.

[00:50:07]

JK: Did he adopt more of the gender roles of certain workloads as being more masculine?

EE: don’t think so. He wasn’t raised with doing any work around the house. He came from a well to do family and went to boarding school so we were never raised with that.

JK: Would you ever identify yourself as a homemaker?

EE: By the] amount other things, yes.

JK: How would you define it?

EE: I like to cook, I like to entertain. Even now friends call up and say, “What’s for dinner? Or can I come for half a glass of wine?” I like having a nice home. I like having flowers inside and out. I like cooking good meals and my freezer is always well stocked. It’s probably coming from the war when we had nothing to eat. I’m sure that’s part of my system here.

JK: When you moved to California, were there any clubs, cultural groups, or political organizations that you became involved with?

EE: The one thing we were involved with since my husband had joined Self Realization Fellowship was the Fullerton Yoga Temple. I was one of the first ones to teach the Hatha yoga class and then Sunday school which contained a combination of the Christian Bible and the Bhagavad Gita.

JK: Were you involved with anything like this in Europe?

EE: No, not at all.

JK: In what ways have your experiences in Europe shaped your life here in California?

EE: Love of nature. Not liking government per se very much. It’s always suspect. Food in Europe versus food in the United States. Food in making the most of what we have was always part of my system here.

JK: If you settled in another part of the United States, how would your experiences been different?

EE: I don’t think it would have been that different. I absolutely loved living on the east coast. I didn’t want to come here at all. At the first time I drove up all the way to Mount Baldy and saw there wasn’t a tree in sight. I started crying. I was used to the mountains and the forests. I thought this was a joke. Then I learned to like the desert but was not part of my past experience. I first didn’t like it at all here.

JK: Did you take trips back to Germany? Was it frequently?

EE: Yes. Every few years, we didn’t have much money.

JK: Did you parents spend their lifetime in Germany?

EE: Yes, but they both came for visits. My father only came once to lecture on fish and stayed with me for a while. My mother would come to be a part of the family with grandchildren.

JK: How would you define yourself?

EE: I have no idea. I’m a retired college professor who loves people and flowers and dogs. All the people with dogs come up and visit. A spiritual person, but I don’t go to church. That’s about it. Honest, decent, read a lot.

JK: What about your national background? Do you find yourself being one culture more than another?

EE: No, I think I’m a hodgepodge. I’m sort of citizen of the world. I used to have a second place in Mexico until not too long ago, so I’ve spent a lot of time in Mexico. I like the Mexican culture.

JK How would you like World War II to be remembered?

EE: As a large mistake. I’m sort of getting funny again (choked up with emotion). So many people got killed. So much misery. So many families fell apart and it shapes you. If you go through a war it shapes you. Americans haven’t really experienced the war much. They had a little bit of rationing and maybe they had some Victory gardens.

[Track 2]

[0:00:00]

JK: Would you have any additional thoughts with World War II and how you would like it to be remembered?

EE: No, I wish wars could be eliminated. All this hate mongering and all the destruction doesn’t lead to anything good.

JK: Would you have any additional comments you would like to make about any of your experiences or lifetime? Any closing thoughts?

EE: No I think every lifetime is a journey and you learn a lot. You go from one experience to the next to the next. Hopefully at the end of your life you’re a little bit wiser and a little bit more forgiving. That’s about it.

JK: Well it’s been a pleasure just meeting you and having been a part of this. I want to thank you and this concludes our interview

EE: Ok, thanks.

END OF INTERVIEW