Grandpa (L.J.) Koftan's youngest brother was Joseph Albert (b. 12 February 1903-d. 3 July 1967), who apparently stayed with them at the Old Brick House and was good friends with Dad (Jack Luckert), three years younger, when Dad worked as Grampa's hired hand. All [Great] Aunt Babe mentioned was that Joe left Missouri, went to Colorado, came back broke, and went to Nebraska. These photos are from that time. [Great] Uncle Joe looked like Grampa but was taller and thinner and was good-humored, easy-going, as I remember him.
This is another with Mom (Velma) in the middle. They must be going to a dance. Like the classy caps and Mom's cloche.
Times were so bad--I assume this is in the late 1920s-early 1930s--that Dad and Joe went up to North Dakota to work with the wheat harvesting crews. My brother-in-law, Jim Rohrer, said that a group of them went from Nebraska and they also harvested flax. (I'd never seen flax fields until I taught in North Dakota, striking in their dark maroon-burgundy color.) He also mentioned, as I then remembered, that the crew sometimes slept in rail cars. I've found these studded belts and pants in the photo below intriguingly like cowboy chaps. I'd guess they were for dress-up rather than work. I wish I could remember more of what Dad told me, none of it very happy memories, though the trip out to Yellowstone with Joe was better. I've always had a hard time imagining that, jumping in a Model T and taking off when roads were scarce, service stations rare (they had to take most of their repairs with them, like tires, tubes, oil, gas cans, gaskets). And I would think the Twenties roads were equivalent to the old Alcan up to Alaska, rough and hazardous, all the way to Yellowstone and inside the park too. The Old Brick House is prominently in the background.
The upshot was that, as I've told before, Jack (Dad) married Mom (Velma) and Joe married Ella Larson (b. 1 July 1910-d. 3 January 1982) on that day too windy to pick corn, driving over to Yankton 21 October 1933 to the courthouse now gone. Apparently, judging from the set of photos following, Walter Wenke married Mildred Larson, Ella's sister, around the same time.
This would be their formal 1933 wedding portrait, followed by a 1965 Christmas card photo. I have several more recent pictures of them and their three children, Phyllis, Delores, and Merlyn (Bud), but those are for later years.
Leave a comment