Whole Egg Country

So I was cleaning out some old files on my lappy... we had a big project in High School to research our family trees and learn about our heritages... this was part of my project. Frederika was my great-great-grandma, and Kari was my great-grandma who raised 14 children and lived on a dairy farm in Lester, Iowa.

Frederika Knoblock woke up to the smell of eggs frying that morning. For a moment she couldn’t remember where she was. Then it all began to come back: the months of planning and packing, and the tearful good-byes when the day finally came to board the ship for America. She had been reluctant to leave Germany, even though her husband Wilhelm could hardly keep enough food on the table. She had been an expert at making food stretch as far as possible to keep her seven children fed. They even had to share their breakfast eggs because farming had gotten so bad.

Wilhelm jumped at the chance when her brother, who was already in the United States, offered to sponsor them so they could start over in America. Her brother bought 80 acres and it was waiting for them in Iowa. They had left early in 1889 to start their new life. The thirteen days on the boat had been crowded and cramped and there weren’t enough beds for their entire family. Her darling two-year old Karoline had slept in the top of a trunk on the way over. She looked over to the bed on the floor where little Kari was still sleeping peacefully. She hoped that she would have a better life here.

All too soon it was time to get up for breakfast. She woke her children and they all went down to the table. She couldn’t believe all the fresh food. She began to help her sister-in-law dish out the food. Out of habit she cut several eggs in half for her children. Her brother couldn’t believe what she was doing. He told her to give every one of her children a whole egg, even little Kari, because “America is a whole egg country!” Frederika could hardly believe it. A whole egg for everyone in the family! There would be no need for her food stretching skills here. What a story she would tell to the people back home and to her grandchildren and maybe their grandchildren would hear it too.