All this while my mother, a country girl from Cincinnati, was getting more and more homesick for hills. Peoria is rather flat, rising from the Illinois River slightly to what they call the bluffs. (The river views from these bluffs are magnificent and worth a trip to Peoria.) Anyhow, Mom wanted to go back home to Cincinnati. My father, being a true Trefzger, must have said "Yes, dear," and we moved to the Queen City. I was about 5 1/2 years of age. Plans had been made to move into a new two-apartment building at 1966 Queen City Avenue, two doors west of the neighborhood saloon, across the street from Stang's Bakery, and a block or so west from Richter's Grocery and a hair factory. A short distance away lived another Fred W. Trefzger, a chicken huckster, unrelated to us as far as we knew. Behind the two-apartment building at 1966 Queen City was an alley on which was located a sign painting shed under the name of Dan Dukes Signs. The Stangs were new arrivals from a Germany, and excellent bakers. Mrs. Stang and her daughters worked in the bakery, at the counter. After the customer gave his order and she filled it, Mrs. Stang would say "Wot yet?" The Richters were relations by marriage. The hair factory stunk from the hides they scraped.
Well, getting settled at 1966 Queen City Avenue was not so easy for the Trefzgers from Peoria. First of all the bills of lading for all our furniture were sent to Fred W. Trefzger, the above mentioned chicken man, and secondly, the building was not ready for occupancy. We went to grandmother Berger's place on the Hill (2567 Queen City Avenue) and stayed there for a while. When dad couldn't locate the furniture and household effects he finally got together with the other Fred W. who admitted having received the bills of lading, but said, I did not know what they were all about so I threw them out." Much furniture and money was lost because the Rail Road did not wish to accept the Trefzgers story. The two Fred W.'s however, did not want any more mix-ups so they decided that the man up the street would be Fred Trefzger and pop would be Fred W. Trefzger. Big deal! Just after the turn of the century there were three families of Trefzgers in Cincinnati, who were not actually related but all of whom came from the same town in Germany, Wehr in Baden. The third group settled in Madisonville. But through the years confusion of names has continued, with more Freds, Jerrys, Patricias and Maries, weddings and funerals, and articles in the newspapers, in all three families. This would be more understandable if our name had been Smith or Jones.
Of course living on the Hill then, as throughout the years was a great delight to me. As a small boy those 27 acres seemed to be the great outdoors, and the big old house with its deep cellars and many rooms was a palace. What a place to play hide'n seek, and "haunted house." During that period old Henry was my grandmother's hired man. At first he lived up in the third floor or attic, and clumped up end down the back stairs morning and night. In going up and down the stairs he had to pass through the back bedroom in which we slept at the time. He ate with the family, but down at the end of the long table. I could not understand why, with all the excellent food served in the Berger house he was always eating clabber with jelly in it. Homemade cookies were always available on the big dining room table, as well as fruit and nuts in season. It is strange how smells and tastes cause one to reminisce. Even now when I think of the back of the kitchen on the Hill I can smell Cook cheese, which is homemade from clabber left to dry and then cooked with caraway seeds. The unpleasant odor lingered. In those days I could not bring myself to eat either cook cheese or cottage cheese. But they were the days of hot cereal - oatmeal and cream of wheat, and pancakes, eggs, bacon and fried potatoes for breakfast. Not too long thereafter I ate my first corn flakes with thick cream and sugar. Really good! Cornflakes in the beginning were large, thick and hard; they had to be soaked in cream.
Before too long, old Henry moved down to the big stable apartment. After Henry's death his work was done by Rob Bauer, one of my mother's cousins. Aunt Teresa Sheblessy in her Remembering gives much of the atmosphere of the Hill. I would like to relate one or two stories that Aunt Teresa knew but chose not to include in her Remembering. My father as I have already mentioned, was a man of about 5 feet 5 inches who weighed at least 200 pounds. He was a beer drinker and liked to play pinochle. His brothers-in-law were whiskey drinkers who liked to play poker. He was the butt of many of their jokes. It is said that when he took out his nightgown on his wedding night they had cut out the whole front of it. To relate another story, while dad was sleeping upstairs in the old house, before the time of indoor plumbing, he heard very clearly the call of nature. He took off, down the back stairs, through the summer kitchen, and was running across the yard toward the outside john (about 75 feet away) when in the dark of night his nose hit a taught clothesline and threw him to the ground. According to some members of the family he is supposed to have said, "Oh well, I wouldn't have made it anyway."
In my early days the Chic Sale was still in the yard on the Hill (as the above story relates). It was next to a carriage house barn on the circle. Nonnie's one-room house was on the Price Hill side. The Eckerle's lived on the Westwood side of the property in a fancy house on a three-acre tract. The same narrow driveway serviced both homes.
A creek (Lick Run) ran along Queen City Avenue and into this main creek ran our small one which came down the valley. These creeks necessitated a rather large wooden bridge because both of them became tempests during storms or heavy rains. This was the horse-and-buggy day. Eckerles' barn was on Queen City near LaFeuille Avenue. The Bergers' main barn was just at the turn above the bridge (now known as 2567 Queen City.) Both families had hired help, horses, cows and, of course, chickens. The Berger barn was quite an architectural gem almost a tri-level masterpiece. On the lower level perpendicular to Queen City Ave., built into the hillside were the cow and horse stalls, at least five or six, with a door at each end for open passage from the driveway to the pasture. Built partly over this structure on the 2nd level was am apartment to house a stable man and a carriage house, complete with a narrow, gravel circuitous driveway around the complete tri-level structure and back to the main driveway. A path led from the circular driveway to the front porch of the house at the top of the hill. And interestingly enough a portion of the driveway fronting the house was covered for protection against the weather. However, the distance to and from the house made this protection somewhat inadequate. The third level was the hayloft with built-in ladder and hay slide. What a place for kids to romp and play! Do you suppose playing in all that hay could have made me the hay-fever victim I am today? Attached to the main barn on the Price Hill side was the chicken coop and hen house.
Before leaving this kiddies' paradise I would like to recall a very frightening experience which I had in the cow barn. It was my pleasure to hang around there, particularly when the hired man was milking a cow. To keep me from getting too close he would squeeze a teat and squirt the hot milk in my eye, and I did not like milk at the time. So, I usually watched from a distance. While in the cow barn one day a sudden violent storm came up and a bolt of lightning, probably attracted by the metal milk pail, came in one door, struck the pail, upset it, knocked the man and the cow down, and went out the other door. Fortunately no one was injured. It was my first experience with lightning. Later, a bolt split a large and beautiful cedar tree near the old house - this within 2O feet of the room in which I was sleeping. Again, when my family lived at 2929 Lischer Avenue, the darn stuff hit our rear chimney immediately above our bedroom (Herb's and mine). We were still rather young, and after the crash we found ourselves on the floor in the corner - no longer in bed. Neither one of us knew how we got where we were.
Aunt Teresa tells about the quince orchard which was near the old barn at the bottom of the hill
(I wonder if any of the young people today know what quinces taste like?)
Following the creek, from the old barn, past Nonnie's house then across the creek, ran a limestone country road. This private road went through the valley then up the hill, going south, and arrived at an old grain barn in the center of the eleven acres our folks farmed on the Price Hill side. Generally these acres were in corn which was used to feed the stock. It was flat terrain and adjacent to the Branch Hospital, which at that time was a county hospital for contagious diseases. We called it the "Pest House" and stayed away for fear of dying. This old farm road was never in very good shape. To traverse the road old Henry would hitch up the workhorse to a sled (heavy wood work sled with metal runners). No one thought that a wheeled vehicle could stay on the road. So imagine our surprise when we were awakened very early one morning by the clanging of a bell on a horse-drawn city vehicle rushing up our road to the barn on the other hill. Later we were told that an itinerant worker had hanged himself in the barn. Thereafter we associated ghosts and spooks with that spot, and avoided it. And before too long, my grandmother had the barn torn down.
How long we lived on the Hill during this period I cannot say. While there I did start to St. Bonaventure School in the valley on Queen City Avenue, near St. Francis Hospital. As my folks had no carriage it was often necessary to walk to school - and I judge that the distance was close to two miles. Sometimes I got a ride with the Eckerles who had a carriage and who attended the same school. Or Uncle Joe would take me along in his racing rig, a two-seater. I remember that for a while we ate our lunch at Aunt Richter's whose grocery was close to our school. On the way to school we passed through an Italian settlement known as Little Italy, which housed many Italian immigrants who had come to this country as road builders. They built their own stone houses along Queen City Avenue - even a pleasant little church. There was trouble one day in the settlement neighborhood. I am not sure how it started. Some say I beat up a little Italian kid who ran home to tell his mother. (Fortunately there were a few older boys who usually accompanied me on the way to school.) But trouble there was, because shortly thereafter - a day or so - as we passed the Italian boy's house his mother came tearing out with a large butcher knife, yelling and screaming at me. If someone had clocked me that day I would have set an all-time Olympic record. From that day my friends and I were no longer safe walk along Queen City Avenue - so we followed the old Cincinnati-Westwood R.R. tracks (Called Gambles' R. R.) on the crest of the hillside, parallel to Queen City Avenue - and passed behind St. Bonaventure school. On these tracks we were safe from our enemies and could amuse ourselves on the trestles, and around the lime-kiln operated by Martin Stritzinger. My only recollection of St. Bonaventure School when I began there is that there were two school buildings, one on either side of the church. (They were torn down later and the one on the Cincinnati side was replaced by a small monastery home for the Franciscan Fathers.) The first grade was in the front room of the building on the Westwood side. There was something different about St. Bonaventura School from the beginning. We were instructed in German in the morning, and English in the afternoon, which did not seem to bother the kids because most of them came from German families. I was bilingual from the time I learned to speak in Peoria. Mom and Dad were bilingual, and they felt that learning two languages was important.
During the summer of 1907 we were still (or again) living on the Hill. Herbert and I were sleeping in the back room on the Creek side of the house. The front room on the same side was called the swan room because of a design in the furniture. I the middle of the night we were awakened by a peculiar noise - a baby crying. Sure enough, in the swan room a baby had been born to Aunt Teresa, a baby named John Berger Sheblessy. During this period there was another memorable incident in my young life. One day after school Uncle Joe in his racing rig saw me walking home. He stopped, said, "hop in," and off we went. When we reached Richters' Grocery he told me to wait in the rig while he picked up some groceries. While I sat there something frightened the very nervous racing horse and it took off at high speed for the Hill. Fortunately for little Francis a young neighbor, Harry Stephens (later the village dentist) dashed into the street, grabbed the animal's bridle, and was able within about 50 feet to bring the rig to a stop. Uncle Joe and Harry thought the incident was great fun - I had other ideas!
At this time in my life the regular occupants of the Hill house were my grandmother, my Aunt Anna (unmarried), and my Uncle Joe (also unmarried). The latter was rarely home - he was a ladies' man, a traveling salesman, a three-cushion billiard champion, and in general, a man about town? He was my idol - he seemed to always have time for me. He rode me in his buggy, behind his fast racehorse. He tossed ball, hard ball, with me. He pitched and I caught. He was 6 ft. 3 in. tall - and the balls he pitched were fast, they really did sting my hands. One day I was up in a cherry tree on a high limb when he passed under. I asked him to swing me, which he did - right out of the tree because I did not have a good hold. I fell over 7 feet to the ground and broke my arm in two places. Uncle Joe hitched up his rig and went for Dr. Wendlen. I can still feel the pain I experienced on this occasion, but old Doc did a good job. However, my left arm has ever since been a little shorter than the right. My uncles carryings-on did not always please the ladies in the family, but he had a way with them and gifts of candy would at least temporarily make them forget his peccadillos. One of the big sports events of the time was the Johnson-Willard prizefight. What excitement - black vs white. All of us young ones had to wait until Uncle Joe got home for the results - there was no telephone, radio or TV. To tell the truth, today I can not even remember who won, or exactly what year it was.
It was about then that Uncle Joe sold his horse and buggy, and purchased a Stutz Bearcat. This beautiful auto was parked in Eckerles' drive one day when somehow the brakes loosened and down the hillside it went, to Queen city Avenue. The car must have been a tough one, for Uncle Joe went down to get it, and drove it back up the hill.
The occupants of the Eckerle home at this time were Uncle John, Aunt Amanda, Viola, John Jr., Gene, and Adolph. As I have mentioned, Uncle John was a rich man, a very successful tobacco merchant and salesman. He was personable, and liked children. Aunt Amanda was sweet - we all loved her. There was a tremendous contrast between the two houses on the Hill - the old homestead - a typical farmhouse type - and the new Eckerle turn-of-the-century modern American home. Structural changes took place in both houses through the years, of course. From the beginning the Eckerles had a foreign couple as help. They lived down below in the garage apartment. My fondest memory of these foreign women was in the cooking. One, in particular, a Hungarian, could produce the best smelling cakes which she called "strudel." She was especially fond of Eugene, and would say to him, "Willst poi habe, Lucie?" (Want some pie, Eugene?) Naturally he did, as we all did. About this time the Eckerles were changing from horse drawn, vehicles to autos. My recollection is that the first one was a Packard, then other Packards, and finally, Pierce-Arrows. Last evening I was watching on TV a film called World War II -the episode had to do with the North Africa campaign. One of the biggest problems of the British soldiers was houseflies. They caught them in screened boxes, killed them, then stacked them into tubs or vats. They had to quit this practice because of the terrible heat and because the flies had been on dead bodies, carrion, and were more poisonous dead than alive. The story reminded me of Uncle John Eckerle who hated flies. (There were no screens in those days, and very little refrigeration.) So, Uncle John paid us kids to kill flies. He furnished the swatters. We killed the flies and counted them. It was great hunting. As a matter of fact, just about that time there was a fly-killing campaign throughout the entire city of Cincinnati. The result of this endeavor is evident in the city today. Compared with other cities Cincinnati has very few flies.
Because the Eckerles were wealthy, and Uncle John had many business friends from out of town, they put on big parties, with an abundance of food and drink. At one of these parties my cousin Adolph and I stole a bottle of champagne, went into a cupboard and drank it. For the first and last time in my life I was almost unconsciously drunk! The episode was one of embarrassment for my poor mother because of the family connection. Adolph was what the German aunties called a "nix-nux", a mischievous kid. He was always in trouble. During this same period he and Herb built a fire too close to the carriage on the Hill and much of the barn was burned away. There was something glamorous about the Eckerles - their home, their cars, their clothes, their meals (served in courses) and their wealth, but my heart was always in the old house on the Hill.
I loved my grandmother, Aunt Anna and Uncle Joe. The deep basements intrigued me, - as did the wine cellar, the attic, the gloomy steep back enclosed staircase, the summer-house with climbing roses, and the summer kitchen. In the summer kitchen the ladies and the help would make butter and cheese; they would prepare the vegetables for canning and pickling; make sauerkraut; and turn the grapes into wine. I enjoyed picking ripe produce in the vegetable garden. Have you ever tried eating carrots, radishes, even cabbage, right out of the garden? A job to my liking was turning the handle on the butter or ice cream churner. I liked licking the container and rollers after cake baking and ice cream making.
A cousin of my grand-mother's, a deaf mute, lived In a small one-room house on the Price Hill side of the Hill. Her name was Nonnie, at least that is what we called her. We couldn't understand her inability to hear and speak. In her little house she was surrounded by chickens and cats. She was quite stooped, and after she died we knew why. She had a sack of metal coins hanging around her neck from the time of her arrival from Germany. You might call her a miser, but if you read what Aunt Teresa had to say about her in Remembering, you will understand Nonnie better. After her death my grandmother gave me
about half of the coins, which I still have. They are from many countries and some are very old. Some have holes bored through them which could indicate that at one time she had them strung around her neck. She had been through famine in her youth and undoubtedly the poor soul was everlastingly gratefu1 to my grandmother for giving her a home.
Many other persons from Europe found at least a temporary home on the Hill. Several were teachers - academic and music. These men exchanged language and music lessons for their board. One of them was a splendid singing teacher. I heard the results of his instruction in the lovely voices of my grandmother and her sister, my Aunt Bauer. The way they sang Schubert and Schuman Lieder was unforgettable.
During the summer of 1910 my grandmother, Aunt Anna, and the Eckerles decided to take a trip to Europe, especially Germany. Grandma asked mother and dad to bring our family up to the Hill to live during their absence. It was so pleasant there. Mother cooked for all of us, including Uncle Joe, a bachelor, who she thought needed a decent meal now and then. Something else was at that time going on the Hill at the time which, if I had been a little more sophisticated, I would have noticed. My mother was urging Herb and me to pray for a little sister, and she seemed to be getting fatter. Well, at the end of the summer, on November 7th another baby was born in the Swan Room, my little sister Elsa (now, Elsa Trefzger Meyer Gervers). Although the shock of hearing a new-born baby crying in the middle of the night was not as great as it had been with John B. Sheblessy, there is really something eerie about hearing and seeing a new human being.
Incidentally, one day while we were living on the Hill that summer we had a terrible electric storm early in the morning, perhaps about 5:30 a.m. Lightning, struck a tree in front of the house and in some manner followed the electric wire into the house and started a fire in the wine cellar. Aunt Teresa who was at that time still young and active rushed downstairs followed very closely by me. As sac opened the cellar door the flames gushed out. She closed it promptly and we went out to the yard, attached the garden hose, and put out the fire which, fortunately was just a paper fire.
During the summer before Elsa's birth we kids on the Hill used to go up the street to what was called Kenning's pond to swim. The pond was a natural one but quite stagnant, full of cow manure, old broken trees, and mud. There was really no danger of our drowning because Herb and I had learned to swim when I was seven, and he, five and a half, in Peoria. Our uncle, Charles Trefzger, the baker, had paid for our lessons. In Peoria we went to a very fancy sulphur-water pool near Glen Oak Park. The natural springs were there. The water which flowed continuously was ice cold. Sulphur water is easy to stay up in but it smells had, like rotten eggs. My swimming teacher was a kindly German whom we called Old Man Becker. Then I went up to him at the pool side and said, "I am Francis Trefzger; I have come for my lesson," he said, "All right, Francis, let's fasten this broad belt around your waist." The canvas belt was fastened to a rope which was in turn fastened to a lone, strong wooden pole. The pole was at least ten feet long but he handled it as if it were a tooth pick. After I was securely fastened in, he said, "Are you ready?" before I could answer he had kicked me into the deep water and allowed me to sink to the bottom. No use trying- to explain how scared I was: But Mr. Becker succeeded in teaching me the breast stroke, and I have never been afraid of the water since.
We all liked to swim. We decided to dam up our creek. We chose a spot where the water was fairly deep, perhaps three feet, and where the surrounding walls were of solid limestone rock. Because it was a natural spot it was not too difficult to dam up the creek and build ourselves a swimming hole. We dived off a fallen tree close by. Of course we had to put up with crawdads and a few garter snakes, but they did not spoil our fun. During this same period we developed a bad habit (which I think all country kids have for awhile) of stealing birds' eggs from their nests. If someone were to ask me now why I did it, I would have to say that the colors of the eggs fascinated me. Also, at the time, I was a born collector. Old Nonnie was dead, so we used her old house as a kind of clubhouse. In one part I had several old shelves on which I displayed my beautiful birds' eggs, many colors and sizes. Now it happened that both of the above pastimes - swimming in the creek and stealing birds' eggs - made Uncle John Eckerle very angry. He put a stop to both. As to the latter, be simply said, "If you boys don't quit that I will whip you good!" We stopped. As for the former, he had a great idea - to put in a concrete pool on the side of the hill not too far from the lot line. It was built in 1911, I think. The pool of solid heavy poured concrete was 40 ft. long and l6 ft. wide. At its deepest point it was about 4 1/2 ft. Uncle John reasoned that if the water was not too deep no one would drown in the pool. It is now the year 1974 and the pool is still used, and no one has drowned in it. There were iron rails around it on all four sides except at the steps where one entered. It had overflow drains as well, which were later removed so that the water would be deeper. Evidently Uncle John did not know about young peoples' love for diving because he furnished no diving board, nor deep area for that sport. As soon as the pool was finished all the Hill people and their friends participated. The older folks put on their swimming togs in the house, but the kids, in the beginning, slipped into an old ‘john’ or ‘Chic Sales’ with seat removed. About twenty feet from the stairs into the pool was a very small "cabana" with space for only one person to dress or undress at a time. Up from the pool and between the pool amd the lot line in those days the Bergers had a chicken-run with coops and an incubator, up near the cherry tree at the high point. The smell of the chickens and the need for outside dressing rooms lead to the conversion of the coop and incubator into a dressing room, on the left for the women, and on the right, for the men. (The old ‘john’ was burned down.) These new dressing rooms were built about 1913, 1 think. I do remember that the women's dressing room soon had many peep-holes in it. Many young fellows, including the writer (to his everlasting shame), learned much about the female anatomy in this thoroughly despicable, sneaky manner.
Enough of this confession of my early morel turpitude, and back to the cool water of the pool. Unfortunately the sun over heated the water in our more-or-less shallow pool. Going into it even at night was not invigorating. So Uncle John to the rescue! He got in touch with his friend Scherz and had him put up an awning which covered the entire pool. This appealed to the older ladies because in those days it was not the style to get sunburned and have ugly freckles stylish women had to have mi1k-white skin. In fact, my Aunt Anna Trefzger who was an excellent swimmer - she swam every summer day wherever she was, in Peoria, Cincinnati, or elsewhere - wore a complete swimming outfit including hat, stockings, shoes, and gloves. The surprise was that her paraphernalia did not sink her. As you may have guessed, the awning kept the water too cold. We had to roll it back so the pool was only half covered. The boys used the high metal pipes of the awning frame as diving towers, and more than one guy was taken down to St. Francis Hospital to get his head sewn up after hitting the bottom in that shallow pool. Others went to the same hospital because they insisted upon diving between end balancing upon the pipes, or bars as we called them. Time has witnessed much building and many changes around that pool, including several filtering systems. In the beginning we cleaned it every week by hand, like a bathtub. The pool area of the Hill is now called the Lodge -but that's another story.
