Dad kept every job in a little date book from the feed mill, one per year, in pencil: the date,
the place, who hired us, what they paid, and usually a line about how it went. Mom found
forty-three of them in a coffee can in the milk house after he died. Not one year missing.
I can't type them all up. That's something like two thousand jobs. So here's a sampling, a
few from each era, copied the way he wrote them, with my notes in brackets where you'd need
them. The money is what the whole band got for the night, split even, with Dad taking an extra
share for the gas and the phone calls. Mom says to tell you it was never as much as it sounds.
[Where it says "B.S.W." that's the "Blue Skirt Waltz,"
which he closed with every night of his life. "Y" means he yodeled.]
| 1952 (23 jobs) |
Sat. May 17
$40 |
Folmar–Baer wedding. Pleasant Grove town hall. "First job! Bride's dad paid in fives. Played B.S.W. three times, they kept asking." |
Sept.
$50 |
Cheese Days, Monroe, Sunday stage on the square. "Hot. Burton split a reed in the 2nd set. Y twice. Big crowd." |
Wed. Dec. 31
$60 |
New Year's Eve, Legion hall, Monroe. "Played till 1:30. Home at 3. Milked at 5." |
| 1955 (44 jobs) |
Labor Day wknd.
$75 |
Dance after the Wilhelm Tell play, New Glarus. "Whole town out. Y on the Emmental tune and the old ladies cried." [The Tell play goes on every Labor Day weekend in New Glarus, outdoors, in German and English.] |
Sat. Oct. 15
$55 |
Sartin wedding, Alpenrose Ballroom, Hickory Ridge. "Groom's uncle wanted Ländlers all night. Got them." |
| 1957–1958 |
Sat. Mar. 9, 1957
$65 |
Firemen's dance, Twin Grove. "Gloria born Thurs. Played anyway. G. says fine, go." [Mom says she said no such thing.] |
Sat. Apr. 12, 1958
$60 |
Foran wedding, Sängerbund Hall, Monroe. "Left at 11. Burton led last set." [I was born at three in the morning. He made it. Barely.] |
Sun. June 22, 1958
$45 + dinner |
Zion church picnic, Bern Corners. On a hay wagon. "Horses spooked at the Clarinet Polka. Jim held on to the bass horn. Good brats." |
| 1961 (52 jobs) |
Sat. Feb. 11
$90 |
Firemen's dance, Twin Grove. "20 below. Bass horn valves froze in the car. Played the 1st set with Jerome humming the bass part." |
| 1964 (61 jobs, the most ever) |
Sept.
$150, two days |
Cheese Days, Monroe. "Sat. night street dance and Sun. after the parade. Ate my weight in Limburger. G. made me sleep on the porch." |
Sat. Nov. 28
$110 |
Golden anniversary party, Fairview town hall. "Couple married 1914. Danced every waltz, both 74. Wouldn't take the last B.S.W. sitting down." |
| 1967 (55 jobs) |
Sat. Aug. 12
$125 |
Shields wedding, Sängerbund Hall, Monroe. "Beer ran out at 11:30. Nobody left. Played till 1." |
| 1972 (49 jobs) |
Sat. June 10
$225 |
Wedding, Fairview town hall. "Leon's 1st job on drums. Did fine. Dropped a stick in the Clarinet Polka and kept going. Pay him $20." [Everybody else got about $40. I was fourteen and I thought $20 was a fortune.] |
| 1976 (51 jobs) |
Sun. July 4
$300 |
Bicentennial picnic, Monroe. "Played Yankee Doodle as a polka. They made us do it again. Red vests matched the bunting." |
| 1979 (46 jobs) |
Sat. Jan. 13
$0 |
Wedding, Alpenrose Ballroom. "SNOWED OUT. Roads shut. 1st one in 27 years. Moved to Feb." [The big blizzard that weekend. The bride's mother called Dad six times.] |
| May |
"Sold the herd." [That's all he wrote. Two pages of jobs before it and two pages after.] |
| 1981 (48 jobs) |
Sat. Oct. 24
$425 |
Firemen's dance, Twin Grove. "Joy's 1st job. She can sing. Finally somebody in this band can sing." |
| 1984 (44 jobs) |
Sat. May 26
$475 |
Wedding, Legion hall, Monroe. "Bride is the daughter of the Folmar–Baer wedding, our 1st job in '52! Played B.S.W. three times for old times." |
| 1988 (41 jobs) |
Sept.
$550 |
Cheese Days, Monroe. "Glenn's 1st Cheese Days. Electric bass. Old Swiss men gave him dirty looks. By Sunday they bought him a beer." |
| 1991 (38 jobs) |
Tue. Dec. 31
$650 |
New Year's Eve, Alpenrose Ballroom. "Biggest New Year's crowd since the 60s. Lots of young people. Y at midnight." |
| 1994 (35 jobs) |
Sept.
$650 |
Cheese Days, Monroe. "Cheese Days no. 22 for me. Same corner of the square as '52. Some of the same people dancing." |
| 1995 (31 jobs) |
Sat. Oct. 14
$650 |
Wedding, Pleasant Grove town hall. "Good crowd. Y twice. B.S.W. to close." [Same hall as his first job in 1952. That's the last entry. He had three more jobs written in for November and December, and he crossed them all out himself, neatly, with a ruler.] |
The money, if you're wondering. In 1952 five of us split $40, eight dollars a man, which
Dad said was good money when a man on the farm made maybe five dollars a day. By the nineties a
good wedding paid $600 or $650, about a hundred apiece for six of us. Halls never paid as well
as weddings, church picnics paid in brats, and New Year's Eve always paid best. Nobody ever got
rich, but Dad said he never once went to a job he didn't want to play.
Add it up: forty-three years, a little over two thousand jobs by my count, and from the
mileage he wrote in the backs of the books, something like a hundred and eighty thousand miles,
all of it inside about three counties. Four station wagons, one panel truck, and a bass horn
strapped to the roof more times than I'd like to admit.
If your wedding is in here, or your parents' or your grandparents', write me and I'll look it up.
I've got all forty-three books on the kitchen table and my wife would like the table back.
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