Two busy days in mid-March, 1938

 

Tuesday, March 15 – Went to school. Hebls and us were the only ones there. Got A in Spelling. Had lessons good. Played basketball. Bad day. Pack [probably Pack Williams -- His birth name was Paschal, married to Mae or May, and he farmed in the area] went with Dad to mission. Art stayed here. Played six handed. Art, Joe and I against Dorothy, Mother and Grandma Schnare. They won 2 and we won 1. Spot and Dannie slept with me. Situation in Europe tense. England + Germany!

On that day, Adolf Hitler stood at the Heldenplatz in Vienna and delivered a speech officially declaring the Anschluss - the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany. This marked a critical flashpoint in European history, effectively erasing Austria's sovereignty and absorbing it as a province of the Third Reich.

I am not certain how dad would get such timely information other than through the radio. But the farm had not yet been hooked to electricity. Some farms had battery-operated "farm radios." Specially designed to bypass the lack of a power grid, these radios relied on heavy, direct-current (DC) batteries or home-rigged generators to power their vacuum tubes.

Electrical power would arrive in the fall of that year. 

I have not yet determined who Art and Joe were, but would guess that one or both of them were in the Williams family. But what struck me was the final notation about what would eventually become WWII. It didn't earn much detail from the boy and was placed last in the diary, perhaps because he learned of the tensions just before going to bed. I had the sense that dad tried to end his day with his daily summaries.

Now, with full knowledge of the carnage and disruption of the war that was on the horizon, it's a good reminder that children can't possibly comprehend earth-shaking events... but they can certainly take notice of what the adults are discussing.

Wednesday, March 16 – At the top of that page is a special inscription that "today is Gus’s birthday." Augustus A. Schnare was born on March 16, 1863 and had died in 1936, age 73. 

Augustus, or Gus, as everyone called him, never married and is described in various official documents as a bachelor farmer. Dad had only been seven when Gus died, but Gus clearly had a major influence on the boy. Dad himself summed it up as "they were close" and he spent a lot of time with his uncle. Family members and neighbors took to calling young John "Gus," and the nickname stuck for his entire life.

Augustus was born in Iowa to German immigrant parents, Wilhelm Schnare and Lena (Sabina) Schnare, who settled in the region during the mid-19th century wave of German immigration to the Midwest. The arrived in Iowa in 1854, just six years after Iowa became the 29th state. Iowa City was the original state capitol, giving way to Des Moines in 1857. 

He grew up in a large household alongside five siblings:

• Henry William Schnare (1860–1927)
• William Fredrick Schnare (1865–1928), who later served as a local steward for the Johnson County Poor Farm, which we will get into in the future.
• Louise Schnare Davis (1869–1904)
• Wilhelmina "Minnie" Schnare Hastings (1873–1904)

A few years before his death in 1998, dad typed up some thoughts on how he would like his own death and funeral to go, "just in case," as he wrote. 

To tie the two days together, dad remembered that when his Uncle Gus died, neighbors came to the house and stayed up all night with the body, telling stories. Pack Williams was specifically mentioned as being part of that wake. Dad hoped something similar might happen after his own passing. He also urged everyone to not "spare the horses."

An all-night vigil was out of the question when dad passed, but a good-sized crowd did gather 50 years after the death of  his beloved Uncle Gus at the Donohue-Lensing Funeral Home to share stories and laughs the night before the funeral.