Lenore Shirley Abbey

The entire Oran Ralph Abbey family, taken just before Oran died in 1943. Back row, left to right: Lois, Alan, Oran, Alice, June; Middle row, left to right: Lenore, Donna, Gale and Marilyn; Front row, left to right: Colleen, Jim. Photo courtesy of Kay Koslan.

Dad was supposed to be Valedictorian but decided that Amelia Pulver in his class needed it. I think Amelia was a sister to my Dad's best friend that he wrote about in his history - Bud Pulver. His class was pretty small. He was always feeling sorry for people and tried to help them. Perhaps, he thought going to war was more important, I really don't know. I should have asked him.

Kay Koslan comments: At one time Harry Donald "Don" Wetzel taught in a one-room schoolhouse south of Beulah, between 1946-1947. They must have been playing around in the picture because the children are all smiling. Photo courtesy of Kay Koslan.

Sons-in-law: Loren Lang, Alice (Herman) Abbey, Arvid Gustafson, Don Wetzel, at Alice's house, Beulah, Mercer Co., ND, 1959. Photo courtesy of Kay Koslan.

Cousins: Back Row: Cindy Gustafson, Barry Wetzel, Vanessa Dolce, Kay Wetzel, Douglas Lang. Front Row: Kim Wetzel, Mike Dolce, Dean Lang, David Lang, Gary Dolce, Diane Lang, Jan Gustafson. Photo taken Alice's house, Beulah, Mercer Co., ND, 1959. Photo courtesy of Kay Koslan.

Thinking back one night, I remembered how industrious they were. They lived in a small town. Though Dad had one of the better paying jobs in town, we still did not have a lot of money. But probably because my Mom grew up for years on a farm (they didn't move into town until after 1943, possibly 1947) and Dad's father was a coal miner so Dad did all kinds of things - he fished, hunted, trapped minks, foxes, and raccoons, worked in the Forest Service in Idaho. My Mom came up with the idea of a garden when they moved to the house we grew up in. Dad soon took over and we had an 1/2 acre or more of corn, watermelon, cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, muskmelon, asparagus, peas, cauliflower, green peppers and whatever he was testing out. We all had to help hoe. One summer, my brothers had the idea of throwing ripe tomatoes at the neighbors brick wall. That didn't go over well. I guess they had to clean it off. Mom would can as much as she could, including buying peaches and pears for canning. Then add chokecherry and buffalo berry jam, cucumber and crabapple pickles.

Then Dad added honey to the garden because of what he read about the "marvels of honey" and pollinating his vegetables. Thankfully, it didn't last long because those little bees stung real well and I'd run up to the house and away from the bees, just having got a bee sting. Dad turned the honey bees into his next hobby, aside from his fruit trees in the front yard. We all helped with the honey.  My brothers at the "Honey House" and where they extracted the honey, my mom and I washing jars in scalding soap and water and labeling jars for the Spring Creek Apiary honey. People would come to our house to buy the honey and the farmers loved the hives on their land. Dad only put hives on sweet clover land as he considered the best honey, according to his monthly bee books. Dad still recounts today his 53 barrels of honey (52 gallons) 600 lb/barrel at his peak season. He sold all his bee equipment to a place in South Dakota and the "Honey House" finally after Mom passed away, much to our sadness. But this summer I was lucky enough to find some sweet clover honey near Mt. Rushmore, SD and it tastes just as good.  

Dad used his fishing skills so we had the best Northern Pike and Walleye. He shot deer, mostly for making deer sausage, as none of us liked just as deer meat. One year, we all got leather coats and gloves from the deer my brothers and Dad had caught. Dad always took the local priests with him, when we were older. They loved the sport of it.  When Dad was still fur trapping, he used the money usually for Christmas presents. One year we had the biggest Christmas ever - we each got bicycles. That was Barry, Kim and myself. Wouldn't you know it - in the Spring someone saw the shiny new bicycles sitting in our yard and stole them.   

Dad was always learning new things. Mom would get tired of the magazines laying around. Field and Stream, Bee books, National Geographic. Some things were different. He decided to take Algebra (which he didn't have in High School) and really enjoyed it. He was always a Math whiz and he would spout it before us. Thus, at least three of took careers, requiring Math skills. When Mom became sick with cancer, Dad took a computer class at the High School. He really learned a lot. He kept active with email jokes, Word and Excel, while Mom was sick. Because Dad was a story-teller, we got him to record the stories. He did this while Mom was sick to pass the time.

Mom was as hard a worker as Dad. She took on mowing the yard the way she thought it should be done. She was a crocheter, knitter, seamstress, quilter. She sewed many of our clothes when we were little. She was very detail-oriented. If it was not perfect, she'd rip out stitches. In later years she did counted cross-stitch and ceramics. Her counted cross-stitch was perfect and far more detail that I wanted to do at 18 stitches per inch. She cross-stitched the "Lord's Supper" in perfect detail. She loved painting the ceramics and had an eye for it.

Sometimes, she had other ideas. Like one time, Mom wanted one hallway wall taken out. Dad came home to find Mom had taken out the wall with a sledge hammer. Dad had no choice but to build her a bookcase on the other side of the hall. Now Mom had more space. Then she tackled a new couch and chair she wanted. She and Dad made the framework and springs. Mom upholstered both. That couch and chair, built back in 1967, still exists and in perfect condition because of the materials they used. In fact, the renter in Dad's house asked if she could buy the "retro couch" because she loved it.

She also decided what the new house would look like. She took out some freezer wrapper paper and then drew it out. Though the outside was a rectangle, she did some layouts different than most. Actually, it worked out good, for my 2 sisters who ended up in the basement bedrooms, for any laundry room noise, pantry and for Dad coming in from the garden. The house was very well built with 2x6 walls. Dad did the insulating, plumbing and electrical. Mom did all the taping and paint walls. She stained and finished all the doors and trim.  It still looks good today. She was really proud of that house. Because they were so industrious, they paid cash for the house, which was good at that time, some 42 years ago.  

Mom was quite a joker, just like her mother. What else do large families do but pull pranks on each other? My two year old little sister hit her one time. So Mom pretended like she was crying and got some ketchup on her leg and showed it to my little sister. I don't think it had any impact on my sister though. She and her friends would dress up for Halloween but that was part of their bowling team. She was very athletic - she bowled and she golfed. She was both a very good golfer and a bowler. Those were part of her outlets from taking care of us kids. She was an excellent cook. We never starved. Actually we had to have eaten better than most. We had a quarter beef every year, though I complained, why did we have to have steak. All the other kids got hamburgers. I am not sure where we got the chickens, but Dad chopped the heads off and Mom defeathered them, then singed the rest of it off.

There were always cookies in the freezer for us and for company. We all had a sweet tooth, probably because of Mom. She baked fruit pies (juneberry being a favorite) and Kuchen. And we all loved her Fleischkeukle, which was a lot of work, made from dough shaped into half-crescents - filled with onion, hamburger, egg and then fried. Served simply with ketchup and a side of her home made coleslaw. (My Uncle Jim came one time and she fooled him real good. His Fleischkeukle contained shredded newspaper. We all got a good laugh out of it, including Uncle Jim. She knew there would be pay back, but not sure when or where.)

Mom was much quieter than Dad, except for laughing at us kids. She did talk but not half as much as Dad did. She loved having children and was so proud of us all. It was very important to her that we all went to college, probably because she didn't go. Mom was also very religious. I guess she got it from my Grandma Alice Herman Abbey and her grandmother Frances Tavis Herman. We all went to the Catholic church, for sure. It was a nice thing that developed when we kids were all adults out of the house and Mom and Dad would invite the local priest and another couple for a dinner and to play cards on a cold winter North Dakota night.  

She was such a card player, probably because it was one of the things she and her siblings could do together. The Abbey siblings would stay up and play until 2 in the morning. This was when one or more of the Abbey sisters or brothers (who no longer lived in Beulah) would come home for the summer. Oh, and they had time to catch up with their sister or brother into those wee hours. One morning I saw my Mom and Aunt June coming up from our big garden. It was morning. They had been up all night and were now admiring the garden. All of the Abbey first cousins (children of the Abbey children) loved to come home to join the camaraderie, whether it be a picnic, watching the grown-ups play card, sleep-overs at a cousin's house or just plain goofing off. A few years ago, we had an Abbey reunion with all of the adult Abbey children and cousin's that could make it. They loved it, only to say when are we going to have the next one? Unfortunately, I was the planner and I have just not taken it on yet. I think it would be much more difficult as several of the Abbey children have passed away or have dementia. But there is not doubt the Abbey cousins want to keep the memories of the fun time in days bygone.

Kay Koslan comments: My dad started with a small bee screened box in our garden to pollinate his large 1/2 acre garden, probably as an experiment. It was around 1960. I decided to check them out one day. They started buzzing around my head and I left running. I once took them to school for show and tell. The bee bit this boy I liked. I was embarrassed but I found the bee sack, so he didn't feel the sting. Over the years it grew to hives on farmer's lands. They loved it and he would bring them honey every year. Dad used it to make extra money but also loved the outdoors. A couple of years it was my job to wash all the honey jars in hot soapy water and add his label, "Spring Creek Apiary" to the jars. They'd sell it at the local grocery store. My brothers, Barry and Kim, had to help with the honey extraction. It was quite a setup. His hot knife to slice off the top layer of bees wax and then an expensive honey extractor to centrifugally remove the honey. It was always in the hot part of the summer. Then my dad and brothers would move the honey into honey barrels for packaging. Dad readied all his bee frames each year and the flat wax with octagonal shapes begun to give the bees a place to start that was added to the frames. He subscribed to Bee Journal magazines to learn more. Once the word spread and it sold in places in South Dakota, where they also had crops of sweet clover. The honey was the best, according to Dad, because it was sweet clover honey and never mixed with other types of pollen. Only bees that propagated sweet clover. And then Dad collected the extra bee pollen that he placed in the freezer. He said it was good for arthritis. He'd take a spoonful every day. Sometimes people would bring their jars to dad at our house and they'd pay just for the honey. There were other years, someone would call and ask to get rid of the bees. So he'd pull out his honey bee hive smoker and go over to the location. This was the same way the hives were emptied of the bees so the honey boxes could be brought in to harvest the honey. He'd smoke the bees and they'd fill up on honey and move away. They did not sting then. Dad quit selling locally eventually and sold his honey to the large apiaries in South Dakota in barrels. The amount varied by year because of the bees, but the largest crop of honey he got was 63 barrels, each at 600 lb. Thus 37,800 lb (18.9 tons). He kept up the bees until after my mother died. He sold all of his equipment and barrels to an apiarist in 2004. It was sad to see it go but by that time, Dad was 76. The final day in 2004, my brother and Dad loaded up the boxes ready for the new owner.

Dad and my brothers and spent late summer every year until 2004 with honey bees - more than 40 years. I forget how many hives we had, but we had a lot. They were on ten different locations; one was on my Grandma Alice Abbey's land, which the Abbey children and family still own today.

Photos courtesy of Kay Koslan.

Harry Donald "Don" Wetzel died December 10, 2021, at Missouri Slope nursing home, Bismarck, Burleigh Co., ND, at age 94. Buried in Saint Joseph Catholic Cemetery, Beulah, Mercer Co., ND.

Gwendolyn Alice Wetzel was born 05 Feb 1895 and died 05 Aug 1923 in Minneapolis. She went to Jamestown College in Jamestown, ND.