The Palimpsest

Swaim, Ginalie

Listening to  the Voices
IN FASHIONING THIS ISSUE, I worked 
with three contributors who had been drawn 
to make personal connections with the past. 
Lauren Pille Robinson wanted to know about 
Riverside, a small town in Washington County, 
in the 1920s. ‘ Those of us who were born after 
1930 can experience the 1920s in only two 
ways: by reading the writing of historians, or 
by reviewing contemporary accounts of the 
times, Robinson explains. “I found another 
way — by talking to the people who were 
there.” What she learned through oral history 
interviews was that Memorial Day was a day of 
commemorating soldiers and veterans. The 
memories of three Riverside citizens are com­
plemented by photographs of girls in white 
dresses carrying bouquets up a dusty road to 
the cemetery. At the end of the essay, Robin-✓  j  *
son voices her own thoughts about oral history 
projects.
Donald E. Fish tells us about his work as a 
county agricultural agent during the Great De­
pression. Much has been written about the 
New Deal on a federal level, much less on a 
local level. Fish knew the experiences from 
those days were significant, in his own life as 
well as in the nation s. He writes, “My life has 
seemed as if it has flowed bv in fits and starts. 
There were times that moved so fast that I was 
breathless trying to keep up with the events of 
the day, and again there were times that 
seemed to drag, and nothing really happened.” 
For him, the New Deal years were one of the 
fast-moving times. “It s a shame that the peo­
ple who worked with me on the Corn-Hog Pro­
gram couldn’t have seen this story in print. 
They were a great bunch.”
Edward Yollertsen spent years researching 
his great-great-grandfather, Civil War lieuten­
ant Philip Hayes Goode, and transcribing his 
Civil War diary and letters. Last year, on the 
128th anniversary of the Rattle of Shiloh, Vol- 
lertsen visited the site. On the eve of April 6, 
he wrote his own thoughts about the past: “I 
can see the faces of these men and bovs lit onlv/ J
by candlelight or kerosene lamps as they might
be writing letters home or in their diaries and
not knowing what lies ahead for Sunday, April
6, 1862. At 8:20 pm the rain begins and again I
think of those lonely men preparing for battle
and not realizing that many of them would not
live to write home again. Their final night on
earth. The next dav Yollertsen wrote from the
*
battlefield, “1 am standing in the rain knowing 
this is where my great-great-grandfather and 
many brave men from both North and South 
were wounded or died. What am I feeling? I'm 
not quite sure, but I’ve never felt like this 
before.”
Finally, we listen to a blend of voices in 
Clothe Yourself in Fine Apparel: Mesquakie 
Costume in Word, Image, and Artifact. In the 
Summer 1991 Annals of Iowa, art historian 
Ruth B. Phillips writes extensively on the 
meaning of Mesquakie costume. This compan­
ion piece in the Palimpsest, inspired by her 
work, adds a visual dimension to Phillips’s re­
search and features voices of Native Americans 
and those European-Americans who had early 
encounters with them.
Each of these articles, then, presents a pri­
mary source, a first-hand account of Iowa his­
tory. One value of primary sources is that they 
offer texture to a historical event. They breathe 
life into it. They people it with individuals who 
disclose dreams and fears. Artifacts and pho­
tographs and artwork help us envision the 
environment in which these individuals lived.
1 he words, especially when they are those of 
the participants or observers of the actual 
event, provide the voices, the dialogue.
I offer here my continual thanks to all 
Palimpsest contributors who are curious about 
the past, who research and record that past, 
and who then share their findings on these 
pages, helping others connect with that past. 
In this issue in particular, I invite you to listen 
to the voices of an earlier Iowa.
— The Editor
50 THE PALIMPSEST


English

Listening to the Voices

Fish, Donald E

The Emergency Years: Remembrances of a County Agricultural Agent in the Great Depression

The Palimpsest, vol.72 no.1, Spring 1991

Index for 1991

Johnson, William M

The Swellest Car Built': A 1903 Cadillac

Cumberland, William

Watershed Years: John Fisher at Buena Vista College

Brose, David A

Ethnographic Crossroads: Iowa as a Cultural Conduit

Vollertsen, Edward W

A Pretty Hard Business': The Civil War Diary of Philip Goode

Acton, Richard

The Story of Ann Raley: Mother of the Coppoc Boys

“ I WISH YOU A HAPPY NEW YEAR
Historical Haves and Have Nots
In a sense, this Palimpsest considers Iowa his­
tory in terms of the haves and have nots. 
Starting on page 192, historian Loren Horton 
looks at holiday celebrations during the Vic­
torian era. For many Americans, an ethic of 
conspicuous consumption fueled an extrava­
gance of holiday decorating among the upper 
class and those aspiring to it. Local Iowa news­
papers listed extensive menus of holiday meals 
posted by the prominent; abundance and 
excess seemed to be the guiding principle. Our 
popular conception of Christmas today is often 
pased on the richness and color of the Victorian 
holidays as documented in historical materials.
Yet, as Horton points out, not everyone in 
the Victorian era had cause to celebrate. 
"Poorer people would have had a hard time 
keeping warm and fed,” he writes, "without 
extra money to spend on luxuries such as holi­
day decorations and special food and drink.
In nineteenth-century American magazines, 
the voice of the "have nots" is occasionally 
heard amidst the more frequent reports of ele­
gant Victorian social events. The above illustra­
tion, for instance, accompanies a nine-stanza 
poem on the front page of the January 1, 1859, 
Harper s Weekly. One stanza reads:
“. . . It is gay and glorious wine you drink,
I can see it sparkle from here,
As 1 stand on the pavement, cold and wet,
And wish you a Happy New Year. . . . "
«
As students of the past, do we base our view
of the nineteenth century on the Victorians
0
who celebrated the holidays with wine and fine✓
food, or on the Victorians who stood hungry in 
the snow? Smithsonian curator Spencer R 
Crew reminds us on the next page that all parts 
of the American experience are essential—not 
just those of the rich and politically powerful. 
According to Crew, certain cultural and com­
munity groups have felt left out of American 
history because their past has been overlooked 
by history. As keepers of the past, historical 
societies must be sure to collect and interpret 
the common, everyday objects, used by the 
"unsung heroes of American history, the con­
struction workers, sailors, servants, miners, 
and farmworkers.
Yet, we can only exhibit and publish what we
collect, and we can onlv collect what is avail-¥
able to us. Consider this: is your own history 
available to historical organizations? Try 
Crew s exercise of imagining a museum exhibit 
on your family’s history. What artifacts and 
documents are needed to tell your story? Will 
those objects be passed on to historical organi­
zations, so they can be shared with the public? 
We wish that this Palimpsest could have 
included accounts of multicultural winter cele­
brations of the past, but such accounts are rare. 
If your holidays include the African-American 
celebration of Kwanzaa, or the Jewish celebra­
tion of Hanukkah, for instance, how can you 
help assure that future generations will know 
about these social customs in Iowa of the 
1990s? Will historical institutions possess the 
artifacts and documents to depict the range ol 
American holidays of the twentieth centurv? A 
lot depends on the Americans who currently 
own those materials.
To celebrate the diversity of ethnic customs 
still in place in Iowa, w'e offer folklorist David 
Brose’s colorful photo essay on ethnic tradi­
tions. For your own celebrating we’ve included 
three Victorian holiday recipes on page 204. 
And as we approach 1992, the Palimpsest 
wishes our readers an abundant and peaceful 
new year. As a final note, w'e direct you to an 
important question boxed on the inside back 
cover. —The Editor
162 THE PALIMPSEST


Historical Haves and Have Nots

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