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Herman Christel bought a new shirt for the occasion of our first photo session in 1986. The creases from the packaging were still vaguely visible. He posed in front of the house where he was born and still lived, standing in the knee-deep grasses. He wouldn’t let us in. Neighbors told us that years ago the Christel farmstead was perfect. It had been built by Herman’s grandfather in 1880. The well had been discovered with a divining rod. There were dairy cattle, chickens and horses. His mother kept it neat and clean. It was all flowers and pristine white paint. The place began its gradual decline when she died in 1946. After his dad died in 1965, Herman farmed alone until he sold his last bull in 1985. We’d drive by and notice another window pane had fallen or that the sheds and barns were straining increasingly against gravity and Wisconsin’s weather extremes. Eventually, Herman was living in one room of the house. He had a wood stove, radio, and a single electric light for reading the newspaper. The currant bushes, Victorian detail, and old pick up truck remained inert outside.
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He visited Chicago in 1935. He was in high school and spent a week or two there visiting their former “hired girl.” He went to a movie at the corner of Belmont and Cicero. When the trip was over, he was glad to get home. He hasn’t traveled since. During the 1930s, he and his friends would go to the movies, especially those based on books. After high school he worked in the seminary book publishing department in St. Nazianz printing greeting cards and calendars. In 1941, he was asked to be head of the department. He thought about for awhile then decided to stay on the farm with his dad. The World War II draft board summoned him to Milwaukee for a medical examination on February 23, 1945 and he was deferred. Being the only son of a farmer, it was his patriotic duty to stay on the farm and produce food. “To get into the real army where you get hurt, that’s tough.” he said. All of his classmates were drafted though and he especially missed his closest friend, Ray, who was in the air force. They wrote each other letters while he was away. It was February 17, 1994 when the floor gave way. His feet were trapped below. The fire in the wood stove had gone out. He laid helpless. “Maybe I didn’t feel so hot, I don’t know how to explain it. Maybe you just don’t care or something,” he said. A neighbor discovered him and drove him to the hospital where he was treated for frostbite. This included the amputation of his legs at the knee followed by months of therapy. “What can you do when they saw off your feet? You have to go through the real routines. Who wants to sit around all his life?” he asks rhetorically. He was fitted with prosthetic legs, rehabbed, and taught to drive again. The nurses called him Speedy. He moved into subsidized senior housing where he had, for the first time in his life, indoor plumbing and a TV. Now he schedules his daily activities around his favorite shows--Oprah and Mr. Rogers. He can’t afford a telephone. His farmstead was seized to pay the medical bills and legal fees--but he resists signing it over to the county making him ineligible for Social Security. In the afternoon, when the weather’s nice, he drives there in his $200 Chevrolet to feed the raccoons and skunks his leftovers, pick up sticks and contemplate his move back. |
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