Rose was born on a farm in the early 30s. I met her one day and was amazed at her story.
Rose Polasek, A Wilson County Woman’s Story
I visited with Rose in her back yard that day. We had the most wonderful time as she told me her story.
Rose loved her daddy. Leo Zahn’s life was filled with sickness, pain and disappointments. But his life was also filled with joy because of his children and his beloved wife Stella. I am sure he was especially grateful to have the love of his wife and children, who tried their best to take care of him through years of a major illness.
Leo Zahn, even as a young child, had some serious illnesses. He had typhoid fever and a burst appendix before he married Stella Mazac. They got married in 1925 in Wilson County. They immediately started to farming. They had six daughters and one son. Rose smiles and says, “But I was my daddy’s pet!”
Rose said, “I was born at home in Wilson County when they were living near Sokol Hall. We moved around a lot, all over Wilson County. Daddy planted cotton and corn. I went to school in Rideout and Picosa, and Three Oaks, and Dewees and then to Sacred Heart. We walked to all the schools we went to. Sometimes we would walk through pastures and fields to go to school. My parents moved around and never owned their own farm. We had it hard, but we didn’t know it was hard. We always had food on the table. We worked hard as kids, working in the fields. I remember when we lived on the Wiseman place. We would have a long way to walk out into the field. Once I got bit by a poisonous spider. They poured a bunch of coal oil on it and took me to the doctor. We kept going to school and working in the fields.”
Leo began to have problems with weakness and walking when he was in his 30’s. Rose remembered her mother going with him in the wagon to Falls City to the doctor who diagnosed his illness as “low blood pressure”. But he continued to get worse. He was on crutches and still trying to farm. They had mules to farm with. He could still plow and plant walking behind the mules on the crutches. Rose and her sisters did the harvesting. Her brother was too young at the time. Finally, he got too weak to walk at all even with the crutches. It was much later when they finally knew the nature of the illness.
When Rose was in the 7th grade her father moved them out south of Floresville. My mother wanted us to go to Sacred Heart School to learn catechism and confession. So these ladies would come pick us up down by the highway to take us to school. But half the time they didn’t pick us up so we would have to walk all the way into town to school. It was a long way! Finally, we got so tired of walking and our mama needed us at home, so we quit school. By then my daddy was in a wheel chair. We told the nuns we had to go work in the fields.”
“Finally, my mother couldn’t take care of my daddy any longer. By then they knew what was wrong. He had multiple sclerosis. He had to go to the State Hospital. We used to go see him all the time. My sister and I would go see him on the bus. We finally moved my mother into Floresville and she became a practical nurse at the old hospital. She worked really hard for many years at the hospital as a practical nurse.”
Rose went back to her youth, “When I got older, my sisters and I worked in café’s in Floresville for years. I worked at Hengst Café and my sister worked at the White House Café, when Fritz Teltschick had it. The Hengst Café was right between the White House Café and I think there was a furniture store there. There was a pool hall down there too. The Bauman’s had a Café across the street and Mr. Hengst was a son-in-law to Mr. Bauman. Then there was the big Ellenhausen’s & Teltschicks Dry Goods Store. The C & C Dime Store was in there too. Then there was a drug store there and then the bank was on the corner.”
“But, first, I started out working in town for the Cridels”, she said, “They lived down toward near the Floresville Cemetery. There was a big two-story house there and they had a big dairy. They had two children. I did housework there and then I went to Skarke’s to live when I was working at Hengst Café. Mrs. Skarke had a big two-story house on C St. west of where the bank was. My sister and I were renting there from her, with room and board. They tore that building down later, and built the post office there. Before that, the post office was by the Elite Café. So, I worked at Hengst Café. Then I went to work at the Elite Café as a waitress, which was also the bus station. It was when the Poppel’s owned it, before Hilda Dunn bought it”.
Rose talks about Joe, “I was working at the Elite Café when Joe came back from the war and we started going together. I knew him out in the country a long time before that. But then he went off to the war and he went all through France and Germany and Czechoslovakia during World War II. He was in what the called the Normandy Invasion in France. Many times I have watched pictures and movies of that invasion and I would always look at the faces of those boys, looking for Joe’s face. I used to thank God that he was one of those who came home.
After the war was over they wanted him to stay in Czechoslovakia and be a spy, since he could speak Czech, and he wouldn’t do it. All he could think about was coming home. He said he was so glad to get home to a good bed. When he was over there he said all they had was one woolen blanket in a foxhole and that was his bed. He had to wrap that blanket around his feet and head to get warm. He remembers always being so cold. For years after we married he would have nightmares about those bad times, and woke up screaming, ‘They’re after me. They’re after me!’ They didn’t give them any help when they came home back then”.
We had moved into Rose’s kitchen and sat at the kitchen table, and I watched Rose, as I drank my glass of iced tea. I asked her, “What kind of things did you do when you were dating?
She said, “Well, we went to the Arcadia a couple times. But most of the times we went to dances like at Sokol, or Three Oaks, or Herman Sons Hall in Poth. Once we went to Playland Park in San Antonio. That was one of the best times. Then we would go down to the River Bridge to the park there, and the G. I. School would have picnics down there for them. After going together for nine months we got married. We got married in the Catholic Church here in Floresville. Father Zarb married us. We never went on a honeymoon. We left the church and he went straight to the peanut field. We went to live with my in-laws”.
Rose laughed, “The only advice my mother gave me when I was going to get married was, “Just try to get along with your mother-in-law’. I tried to do that. You know we done what ever they wanted to do when we lived with them. Like when we would eat supper, we always had to wait till the men came home, because they were farming. We couldn’t eat until they came home, no matter how late it was.”
Rose laughs about her first Thanksgiving after she and Joe Polasek got married, “Joe went across the road where my uncle was raising turkeys and he shot a big old gobbler. It was so big! We brought it home and cleaned it, and then we couldn’t put it in the oven, because it was too big! I think I had a little coal oil stove. I don’t remember what we did with that turkey.”
The newlyweds moved out from his folks after several months, and started farming on their own near Sokol Hall - on the Johnson Place. From there they went to the Hartman’s place and Joe was farming for his brother-in-law. Later they farmed out in Canada Verde.
Rose talks about her father, “A few years later after the girls were born, I went and got my daddy from the State Hospital where he was with Multiple Sclerosis, and took him out to our farm to care for him. I thought I could take care of him, but it was very hard, and finally my husband took him back to my mother’s house to live. About that time, my daddy came into a little inheritance and he bought my mother her first washing machine and refrigerator. My mother was working hard at the hospital at nights and living in a little house back of where Hoelcher’s store is. Then finally Daddy had to go back to the Hospital, where he passed away at the age of 55”.
“I never had to work in the fields after I got married”, Rose said, “One time I went into Teltschicks and Bessie Ullman was there, and she said, ‘I guess you got to go home and do all the feeding now and all that other work! But I didn’t say nothing. My husband did all that. I did have a garden and worked in that, but not in the fields, and I made my own homemade soap, and used to do all the canning and the work in the home. And I took care of the kids. But after I got married, I don’t think I had it as hard as other women did who worked in the fields and did hard work around the farm.
Rose and Joe eventually had 11 children: Patricia Ann and Judy Rose, then came nine sons, Michael, Milton, Merlin, Milroy, Melvin, Mark, Morris, Malcom, and Matthew. She laughed, “When we had the first boy, my husband said, ‘we are going to stay with the M’s.’ I thought we were going to run out of M’s!”
Later on, Rose and Joe worked a farm east of Floresville, raising turkeys. It was hard and they couldn’t make much money. The kids were still coming along. Finally they moved into town and Joe found work where he could. He worked at Roegelin’s Meat Packing Plant in San Antonio for a time. Then he worked as a carpenter, and even tried farming again. After Rose’s last child had started to school, she went to work cleaning houses in Floresville to make ends meet.
“I had cancer 30 years ago”, said Rose, “I passed out one day and told Dr. Coats I was coming in for a checkup the next week. (Rose had no money or insurance) He said, “Oh no you’re not. You be here tomorrow!” He did a D&C and sent it off and then he told me it was cancer. He told me I had to have a hysterectomy but I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have any money or insurance. He said I had to have the surgery and wanted me to over to the hospital right then. He said, ‘If they give you any static over at there you let me know!’ My littlest one was 6 years old. I was 46 years old. I was living on E. Street then. Dr. Chenault did the operation. I never had any other treatment! I think it was a miracle. That was 30 years ago.”
She said, “My dream always was to own my own house. We never did. One day my son said, “Mama, Mr. Flieller wants to sell this house on Trail Street. And I just couldn’t believe it, that I was going to have my own place. It took us 10 years to pay it off. My husband had a serious of strokes and finally could not work, and lived for 10 more years. But I worked and it was OK. We paid it off. It is perfect for me. It is walking distance to everything!”
Another lifelong dream of Rose Polasek’s, was to go to the Czech Republic in Europe. Her ancestors came from Czechoslovakia and Germany. When her grandparents got married, he spoke only German and she spoke only Czech and they spoke no English. They had 11 children also. Several years ago Rose’s dream came true . Some of her children took her to Europe to visit the countries she always wanted to see: Austria, Germany, and the Czech Republic. She brought out her pictures to show me. In the pictures Rose face is glowing with joy that her dream had come true .
Rose: “You know, I look back and think sometimes, I wish I would have done things differently. But it’s past and can’t be changed. Now I just stay busy. So many people say, ‘I’m lonesome. I’m lonesome’ and I say, ‘ I don’t have time to be lonesome’. You have to keep in touch with people and with your family. As long as I am living, I am going to keep my children together. They always come home at Easter to this little house and we are all in the back yard. We rent a hall for Christmas and for our reunions. I guess I may have spoiled my kids, all 11 of them, but now they spoil me. Now it’s their turn. Even the ones who live far away, they call me all the time to check on me or just to talk. And one of my other sons always starts to cry when he starts to hang up the phone, he is so homesick.”
“I always tell my kids I am not 100% perfect or right”, Rose said, “But if I am wrong, you can tell me I am wrong. Because my mother and daddy, they were like two saints. You never spoke back, you never a word to them. You never could tell them they were wrong. I told my kids that they could tell me when I was wrong. My mother did not like anyone to tell her she was wrong. She had a hard life compared to us. I always say, ‘Thank God I am alive and everything turned out all right. I have a roof over my head. I do the best I can.”
Before I leave, she shows me where she sits by the window and does her embroidery and then shows me the piles of embroidered things she makes for her granddaughters and friends. She tells me to pick out a pair of her embroidered pillowcases. I am honored and blessed. She spends time visiting friends in the nursing homes and having her great grandchildren come over for a few hours and talking to her sisters to see how they are doing and going to have lunch with them. She is right! She is doing the best she can to keep her family together. And they are still a close family. She stays busy and doesn’t have time to be lonely. I think she is doing a good job!
Quite a story. Thanks for bringing it to us. She sure has a memory for details. When people think about the good old days they don't think about how hard the work was and how devastating illness or sickness would be without insurance.
So many from immigrant families and lives like that. Hard lives with lots of kids and schooling cut off by having to work. Reminded me of my grandparents. My paternal grandfather worked as a farm hand and factory worker for many years before he was able to buy his first hardscrabble farm. My maternal grandfather was lucky to inherit his father's farm that was homesteaded.
As I continue to read all of your stories, and this one is no exception--most people don't know what hard work is. You and all the folks you write about certainly do, and they don't feel deprived or put upon. Unfortunately, pursuing higher education is one of the major sacrifices, although your subjects have plenty of wisdom and common sense which comes from working the land and not from turning the pages of books.
Rosetta was born in 1909 as the youngest of ten children. The family had more laughter than money and neighbors would knock on their door to ask, "Can we come in and laugh, too?"
