No. 79

Chas. in 1886 Blizzard

Stewart King c/o

John C. Davant, Attorney

501 Cleveland St.

Clearwater Florida

January 8, 1938

Dear Stewart,

Your mother and I got along better as I took more initiative with the household. Charles was right that I would learn how to keep the mansion in tip-top shape, and this was in a large part to the writings of Maria Parloa. But in winter storms, we allowed ourselves to take a break and enjoy long days of reading and baking.

On one of these snowy days, as I was cleaning up a flour mess from your mother's wonderful baking, I piled the dough remnants up like snowbanks. Taking the pile to the sink, I looked out the window at the mounds of snow and thought about Charles. In his last letter to your mother, found in the batch written to her a decade before, he was sending up a flare to her. And here I was, with the start of 1896, so warm and cozy in the mansion. Then, rinsing the flour balls down the sink, I recalled the January blizzard of 1886. Weeks after Charles was writing to your mother for help, he (and most of Iowa) endured the greatest loss of hope or life for those unprepared. Not only was I imagining what he was going through, but I was remembering my own unpreparedness. That same January I was a new hire for the saloon.

It was shortly after my eighteenth birthday. My father placed me there to pay off a debt. Our saloon took in those stranded people for several days and nights. I saw my boss have a heart; it was the same charm he showed my father. At first, as with everything for a poor girl, I fell in love with the change of scenery, thinking it was a permanent grace, a step up, all because of an uptick in my own income. But the innkeeper didn't care too much for me to be so attentive and attractive to the transients. When things warmed up inside of me, my boss could but stand it for so long. The time of my uptick was short.

The only thing that worked for me was to focus on the beads of my rosary. When I could not focus, I remembered St. Joseph: focus on the wood. Imagine the smell of rosewood in the hands of St. Joseph!

Over time, my boss increased provisions for me. Some days he would just have to treat me this way, I grew to understand, and on other days, he just had to move me that way. And when he turned me over, I rotated a bead and knew St. Joseph was with me, rotating the wood and smoothing it out, aggravating the grain.

Would St. Joseph be the one to train Jesus on the best way to carry the wood? For perseverance and with love for one's back and happiness for the shaping it does one to be used for another one's break in the day.

Those railway postal clerks would have lost their jobs if found out they caught me and pulled me out of the saloon for good. I owe it to them to testify. I owe it to them to not be useless.

Only you know this, Stewart, and Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. I prayed on it, the wood. I said, “Lord, do you now want me to feel pulled in today instead of pushed away? If it be your will that the bark break from a tree today for a plank tomorrow, save it for a moment, please, as I would like to use it to climb into your arms."

—Miss Minnie

2025 Copyright Christine Friesel