12/14/1925 Letter from Ted Surdez

                                                                                                          Skidmore, Mo.
                                                                                                             Dec. 14, '25
                                                                                                                 7am

Dear Doris -

Well it is snowing this morning and I am rather mad.  We were figuring on geting through tomorrow and going to S.F. Wensday.  But it is hard to tell when we will get through now.  I was sorry to hear that you got hurt and hope you are all right now.  My knee has been bothering me a lot lately but it feels pretty good this morning.  I gave it a hot bath last night.  Norman and Dewey went hunting yesterday but I stayed home

all day and sat by the fire.  Went to bed about 7:30 last night and got up at 5 this morning and now we can't work so I guess I will go back to bed.  I would rather start for Sioux Falls this morning than any thing I know of but these folks have been so good to us I think we had ought to stay and help them finish.  I wonder what is the matter with Les.  We have been looking for him every day and he hasn't showed up yet.  Is he still at Kennedy's or (-over-)

has he found some more corn to pick?  I have a chance to get my old job back if I want it, and I would take it if you were here but I would die if I had to stay here all winter with out seeing you.  But I realy don't know what I will do up there all winter.  I don't suppose one could buy a job now and it is a long time till spring, but I suppose I will get by some way.  Well I must close as news are scarse and it is almost mail time.

                                                                          xx     Yours only,
                                                                 xxxxxxxx           Ted

                                              xxxxxx
                                              xxxxxx

08/24/1925 Letter from Ted Surdez



Dear little Pal:

Just a few lines to let you know I got your letter and was glad to hear that you got there O.K.  I am sorry the way things turned out but I guess it cant be helped.  I haven't much time this morning.  Am writing this while waiting on breakfast and please excuse this paper as it is the best I could find.  I have been pretty good since you left went to dance at Renner last saturday night.  And it rained so we all came home about ten oclock.  I think I will go to Kennedys barn dance tomorrow night.  Well breakfast is ready so must close answer real soon as I think of you every minute.

                                                                As Ever Yours Only

                                                                          Ted

LIFE BEGINS by Doris Zilpha Sisson (September 1924)

As I stated before, I came to Kennedy's to board in the fall of '24.

George Sisson brought me out from town, and I left my suit cases, it being a Saturday, and then went back with him to spend the weekend with Grandma Flodin's. When we got to Kennedy's there were a couple young fellows there who had come in from Kansas.  They were Floyd and Lester Surdez.

I learned when I came back out Sunday night that they would help with stack thrashing, and then pick corn. Kennedy had a threshing machine and they worked for him.

That was really a difficult fall for me--away from home, a school teaching job that really worried me for fear I wouldn't do it well enough. But all the patrons were so nice to me, and cooperative that I needed not have been so worried. The county superintendent walked in on me one day when I was teaching the primary grades the poem, "September," and each day as they learned a verse, we tried to picture it in our minds; then each child drew and colored what he "saw." At teacher's institute a couple weeks later she told the group about it and made generous comment. I got over my fear of a "county superintendent", and she became a very helpful friend.

As before stated, I was engaged to Gerald Tyler at this time, and though I got letters from him regularly, I was lonesome, and homesick at first. Ted kept asking to take me home, so I let him, but we didn't really date. He still was seeing Miss Snyder, who had taught here the year before, and boarded with Kennedy's. She came down just a couple weeks after school started and so Molly Kennedy had a house party (we danced on the enclosed porch) so she could see her old friends and pupils and so I could meet the parents. Clyde Langloss called square dances and I got to dance most of the time. Johnit Erickson was there, just looking on. I thought he was sure a nice looking guy and gave him "the eye", thinking we might get acquainted. But he was too bashful. When lunch time came Snyder and Ted wondered whom they might get for my partner. Then she suggested Oscar Schjodt, so I ate with him. Snyder stayed overnight with me, and she told me about the people and students, and helped me out quite a bit. I liked her very much.

One weekend Ted went to Madison to visit Snyder and while sitting in a rocker visiting with her and her Mother he got a terrible pain in his leg. He had bumped his knee when picking corn and they thought at first that was it. He got so bad that they had him put in the hospital there. The doctors didn't know just what it was, and let his right leg draw-up til the heel touched the hip, and there it locked. Learned later it was polio, but it seemed to be the only case around at that time. One day the Doctors and nurses, after putting him to sleep, forced it out straight and put a cast on him from waist to toes. They had put it out of joint and didn't even know it. The suffering he went through was terrible--and away from folks or relatives, and no money to pay hospital bills. A friend, Royal Siegried, whom he had met down here, since he had worked in the neighborhood, lived up there; that is, his folks lived on a farm near Lake Madison. Royal asked his folks if he could bring Ted there, and they generously said "yes". She told me-later that she wondered if she would ever pull him through. He was out of his head most of the time, and everything she tried to feed him, he just shook his head and said "salty."  She was at her wits end, for she knew he MUST eat. One day she made him some Iemonade, thinking he should have some fluid, and he drank and drank. She said she nursed him back to normalcy on lemonade.  So he was up there all fall, into the winter, and Les didn't go back to Kansas. He stayed and worked for Kennedy.

Christmas time came and Gerald came home and wanted me to go back to Mankato with him and look at apartments, so I did. I stayed at friends of his, the Peppers, and of his brother and wife, Ray and Georgia, who had moved to Clinton, Iowa, that fall. I came back in time to go on down to Kennedy's on Saturday before school was to start again after Christmas vacation. And here was Ted. Les had asked if, instead of taking pay for his work, he could work for his and Ted's board. Ted was still in the cast but could get around with crutches. We all had fun that winter; they played "pitch" and taught me to play, and we played most every night. The neighbors, also, got together for cards, playing "500" which I learned, too. Once in a while someone would have a "house party."  This meant dancing to someone's fiddling. These parties were at Siemonsma's, their cousin's the VanDer Waude's, and a few other places. Josephine started to school that year, and Don was in the 7th grade.  Ted had a difficult time getting a job that spring, because there were some things he couldn't do. However, he painted Kennedy's barn and hauled manure for Oscar Schjodt. Then, that summer he hired out to Baynard Cornue for $3.00 a day for days he could work. He ended up working every day that summer.

In the spring we started dating, and I soon knew it was all off with Gerald, and wrote him so. Ted had a Buick roadster, and took me home week ends, and came after me on Sunday, but not for long for this was only an 8-month school.

I went to summer school at Madison again, Ella Anderson and Esther Lickness, being in with me in light housekeeping rooms. I had bought a Ford coupe through Uncle Ira, and drove it.