Probably very few people are left alive who actually knew Alice (Gilchrist) and Charles Reagan/Regan. One of them (perhaps the only one) is their granddaughter Helen, the oldest child of their youngest son, John Vincent Reagan/Regan (the spelling of the last name was changed from Reagan to Regan in the earliest years of the 20th century, possibly when they moved to Fort Dodge in 1900 or 1901).

Following is a grabbag of memories of Grandma and Grandpa Regan and their house, told to me (Barbara) in bits and pieces over many years and written down as soon as possible after hearing each item. There are a few actual "quotes" I was able to catch (which are within quotation marks), but a lot was just written down in shorthand or in whatever words I could quickly write down before I forgot.

Note: I never otherwise refer to my mother as "Helen," but do here only to make it easier for others to realize who I'm writing about. - Barbara

Another Note: This page has been read (many times), edited, and approved by Helen.

Helen was born in Fort Dodge, and not only did her family live near Grandma and Grandpa, so that she visited them often (probably just about every day, she says - they lived just a block or so away), but she stayed for a semester at Grandma and Grandpa's house when she was in high school after the rest of the family had moved out to the farm in Farnhamville, so she could finish the school year at Sacred Heart Catholic school, and most of her memories of Grandma and Grandpa and their house come from those months. That was in 1932, when Helen was 14 years old - She thinks she was probably in the eighth or ninth grade.

GRANDMA AND GRANDPA'S HOUSE IN FORT DODGE

In the Regan house, at 701 So. 17th Street (a corner house - They had lived previously just around the corner in a smaller house on 7th Avenue South), there was the main floor, the attic, and a basement (which may have been called a "cellar"). The house was deeper on the lot than it was wide. It was about 30 feet across from side to side.

There was a big porch that went across the front of the house, either from side to side or almost that wide (Helen does not remember there being a swing on it); it wasn't screened. There was a small porch in back, behind the kitchen; it was screened in, at least during the summer.

The driveway opened onto the street around the corner, on 7th Avenue (this being possible because their house was on a corner lot), and went behind the house and porch. The garage was probably approximately behind Grandma's bedroom. You can probably imagine this better while looking at the diagram Helen made from memory of the layout of the house...though it is from her memory of a place she last saw approximately seventy-five years ago. But she did know that house well.

The coal truck delivered coal via a chute at the back of the house and it went down into the coal bin in the basement.

There were two bedrooms, the kitchen, a living room, a dining room (open to the living room), a bathroom and a den on the first floor. The large attic was used as a bedroom, and sometimes part of the basement was, too.

WHERE THEY SLEPT

Uncle Allen and Uncle Roy (except for very, very brief marriages -- 1913 Allen, 1917 Roy -- they were bachelors all their lives) lived with Grandma and Grandpa in Fort Dodge for some time - or at least they were there during the time that Helen remembers being there (specifically focusing on the first half of what must have been 1932). At that time Uncle Roy slept in the attic and Uncle Allen slept in a bedroom across the hall from Grandma's bedroom.

Helen thinks that Allen must have slept in the attic, too, at times, but while she was staying with Grandma and Grandpa, Allen was sleeping in the bedroom (she remembers that he was sick for a while and she wonders if he slept in there then because he was sick, or if he was there because he was working days at that time).

When Grandpa worked nights, he slept in the attic, too (the attic was very large) and Grandma slept in the bedroom on the main floor, next to the bathroom (which was at the end of the hall), by herself. When Helen visited them, she slept with Grandma.

All the beds in the house were double size, as far as Helen remembers. She thinks that maybe they didn't have twin beds back then.

THE BASEMENT

"I remember the coal bin in the cellar (basement), and sometimes putting a little coal in the furnace, or maybe I just watched them do it. When the furnace door was open, it sure felt hot in front of it."

There was a cistern in the basement, too. The cistern caught rain water that fell on the roof. "That rain water in the big cistern, they had it somehow piped so there was one of those regular old-fashioned hand pumps in the cellar, [which pumped water] from rain water in the cistern. When it would rain you could go down and listen to it come into the cistern." This soft rain water was used mostly for washing clothes.

By the way, in the diagram Helen drew, the cistern may not be the right size. She can't remember how big it was for sure, but it wasn't small. It may even have gone clear across the room.

"You only let the water into the cistern when you wanted it to go in there. First you had to let it rain long enough to clean off the roof, and then open the deal and let the water run into it. The cistern was a part of the cellar. There was an open window [in the cistern], no glass, so you could see the water. If there had been a lot of rain and water was close to the window, they shut it off from coming in. They entered by this window to clean the cistern when needed (or remove cats.) "One of the cats got in there once." (At least one of the cats, whose names were Hoover and Smith, caught fish sometimes, but not in the cistern -- They fished them out of the goldfish ponds across the street in front of the hospital.)

Under the stairs in the basement, uncles Roy and Allen kept their fish bait in a bucket, or at least they did this once. It looked and smelled very bad. It had chicken feathers and blood (probably from chickens) in it, and Helen doesn't know what else. Helen thinks the bait must have been for catching catfish. "Someone had given them the 'recipe' for that bait!"

There were several areas in the basement that had different purposes -- some for more than one purpose. For instance there was a food storage area (where home-canned food was stored...Grandma did the canning).

Presto pressure canner - 1920 version

1920s mason jars for canning

Grandpa shaved in the basement. Helen often watched him shave because it was fascinating. He had "the shakes" (once he had Helen thread a needle for him to sew on a button because he couldn't do it), and his hand shook while holding the razor until the blade reached the skin on his face, and then the blade came down the face quickly and smoothly. Then his hand would shake again.

An antique straight razor

"But I don't remember Grandpa much ... My main memories are of Grandma. I think Grandpa spent a lot of time down in the cellar. Working nights, Grandpa would have slept during part of the day and of course I was in school during the week. They had these big workbenches. I went down there and cracked walnuts, black walnuts. They had a setup for cracking walnuts."

The cellar was very roomy and it wasn't a dark place. There were windows along both long sides of it.

THE STAIRS

"There were stairs going up to the attic and down to the cellar. They were located between the walls of the kitchen and Grandma's bedroom. Those to the cellar were off to the side of the small hall area between the back porch and the kitchen. A door in the bedroom/bathroom hallway led to the attic stairs." Sometimes Helen would go upstairs and make the beds for her uncles and Grandpa.

THE KITCHEN

The kitchen was at the back of the house as was Grandma's bedroom. The narrow driveway beside the house let people enter the house at the kitchen door (there was a small porch out there "...and even an icebox -- The iceman could fill it with ice without having to come into the house"). There was a booth in the kitchen, like they have in restaurants, where they ate breakfast and lunch.

Grandma used to make breakfast for Uncle Allen and Uncle Roy when they lived there. "She would cook a whole bunch of eggs and bacon and put them on a platter and put them on the table for them. When they were finished, she put the rest in the upper cupboard. Grandpa may have either been at work or asleep in the attic after working a night shift." There were no microwaves back then -- Grandpa ate his breakfast cold. Allen may have been working at a laundry at that time (20s, early 30s), but Roy was working at the railroad, as was Grandpa. Grandpa worked in the roundhouse.

THE LIVING ROOM

The living room and the den were at the front of the house. Directly across the street was St. Joseph's Mercy Hospital (a Catholic hospital). "Right beside the hospital they had the place where the nuns lived. They were nurses and they ran the hospital. Their house was closer to Grandma's house than the hospital itself, as that set back a ways from the street, with lawns and two big fish ponds in front - one on either side of the walkway."

The dining room was open to the living room.

There was a piano in the living room. "You pumped foot pedals at the floor and we played some old fashioned player piano rolls." There was also a fireplace.

THE DINING ROOM

There were short bookcases with glass doors between the dining room and the living room. They held Uncle Allen's Zane Gray books, and he let Helen read them whenever she wanted.

Grandma kept her sewing machine in the dining room, in front of three windows. You had to pump the pedal beneath the sewing machine with your feet to make the sewing machine go. "She was trying to teach me to sew using [tiny] complicated paper patterns (for doll clothes!), but one time when I was guiding the material my finger got too close and the needle went through my finger, alongside of the nail. I still have the mark it left on my finger."

Grandma liked to have Helen brush her hair while she sat in a rocking chair in a corner of the living room, near one of the bookcases and the fireplace. On the diagram it shows where the chair was situated. Grandma had her eyes closed while her hair was being brushed, and she was so relaxed she about went to sleep.

"A big radio sat at an angle in the corner near the sewing machine. There was a sideboard against one wall, and a real nice, large, dining room table and chairs were about in the middle of the room and I remember one time when I had been at the swimming pool at Oleson Park, when I came home I put my wet swim suit over the back of one of the chairs. There were only two times I know of when Grandma was really mad at me and this was one of them. I must have damaged the finish of the chair (it may have been shellac) and it's a wonder I didn't get 'shellacked,' but I outran her going around and around the table!

"The other time Grandma started getting mad at me I was in the kitchen with my cousin Alice (one of Uncle Frank's daughters, just about my age and in the same grade at Sacred Heart school) and we were eating cookies. I was just biting into one when she [Grandma] came through the door and got a side view - and thought it was a cigarette in my mouth! I don't recall what she yelled at me - or what she said afterwards, but the cookies we were eating were some she always made -- big sugar cookies, rolled and cut out with a big cookie cutter. Why on earth she thought I was smoking, I still can't understand."

GRANDMA'S QUILTS

Ladies would come over to her house and they would work on a quilt together. They were probably all parishioners at Sacred Heart Church. There were no grandkids in the house when they quilted, so Helen doesn't know much about it. The quilting frame was put together from boards as needed. Some of Grandma's quilts were handed down in the family. We have one of them (see picture below). "Grandma eventually made beautiful quilts for each of her four sons -- Lone Star comes to mind as the pattern of at least one of these 4 quilts, possibly the same pattern for all?" But the one Helen ended up with several decades ago, isn't a lone star pattern (it definitely has stars, but not just one lone star). The quilt that Lorraine ended up with, and which her granddaughter now has, was probably Uncle Roy's. Helen is pretty sure that the one she has was given to her by her mother and it had been the one given to her father (John Vincent Regan, Charles and Alice's youngest son -- Helen is their oldest child).

MISCELLANEOUS MEMORIES OF GRANDMA

Helen remembers going shopping with Grandma. They went to what was probably a drugstore and had ice cream, and she remembers Grandma taking a pill, probably on account of the sugar. Grandma had diabetes (others in her family also had diabetes, and Allen and Roy had it, too, though obviously it kept none of them from eating sweets).

Grandma used to pack a lunch for Helen to take to school. She remembers the potato salad that Grandma Reagan put in her lunch sometimes. Grandma made it too mild, so Helen told her that her mother put onions in it. So the next time Grandma put great big chunks of onions on top of the potato salad she packed in Helen's lunch, rather than putting chopped onions in the salad itself.

Grandma always made sugar cookies, and she sent those in Helen's lunch, too. Helen loved Grandma's sugar cookies. One time when they were back in California Grandma sent a box and it had some of her sugar cookies in it. Helen didn't think they were as good as the cookies she'd had at Grandma's house, but now she realizes it was probaby because they were old by the time they got there, and they didn't have things to wrap them in back then like waxed paper or plastic wrap.

Sugar Cookies

CHRISTMAS

When the family got together at Grandma and Grandpa's house at Christmas (in the 1920s and early 30s), they went to church Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. On Christmas Eve they all (including Frank and Bess and their son Chuck and daughters Alice and Louise, who lived just blocks away -- Frank was one of Grandma and Grandpa's sons) were at Grandma's house. Frank's kids and Helen and her brother and sisters were Charles and Alice's only grandchildren, and they all lived nearby.

Helen thinks that only the adults went to midnight mass at Sacred Heart Church, and the kids probably went to mass on Christmas morning. The adults, having fasted before going to communion at midnight mass, were very hungry when they got home, and the kids were hungry, too. After mass the adults had oyster stew and the kids probably had something like tomato soup -- definitely not oyster stew.

Oyster Stew

Tomato Soup

One Christmas Eve Helen remembers that Uncle Allen dressed up as Santa and banged on the door and ho-ho-hoed. He came inside and asked if everyone had been good little girls and boys. Every kid received one present, or else there was something to share. The time Helen remembers, "we four kids received a Flexible Flyer sled."

On Christmas day, Grandma would cook a goose and render the fat, which was used for home remedies.

HOME REMEDIES

Grandma, or Helen's mother possibly, rubbed warmed goose grease on your neck and chest if you had a bad chest cold or tonsillitis, etc. that affected your throat and chest. Then they'd put flannel over your chest and a wool sock around your neck. Possibly turpentine was mixed with the goose grease. This was at bedtime.

Allen or Roy, or both of them (but she thinks it was probably Uncle Allen), would take care of a sore throat. They would put iodine on a feather and dab it on your tonsils. Helen remembers standing in the basement near the door to the part with workbenches, etc., and one of her uncles dabbed something on her tonsils with a feather. Another remedy was to give you a spoonful of sugar with some turpentine in it, to swallow!

THE DEN

Helen doesn't know if they called it a "den" or not, but that's how she thinks of it. It was at the front of the house, which faced St. Joseph's Mercy Hospital across the street. There were double-wide glass French doors that opened into the den from the living room.

"There were times when the nuns at the hospital across the street would ask Grandma to let family visitors of very ill patients stay overnight. These folks would have come from out of town and had no place to stay. There were no hotels or other accomodations near the hospital for visitors. I think they may have paid but I'm not sure about this. A person would have to go through the living and dining rooms to the hall that led to the only bathroom so probably a night or two would be the most anyone would be staying.

"I recall the dressing table in the den - one with little drawers on either side and mirrors - the larger one in the middle with side mirrors - I believe they were either at an angle or perhaps could be moved to an angle for better viewing of the sides? And the lovely matching set with hand mirror, comb and brushes with kind of pearlback handles, and a bowl-like container with a small hole in the center of the top that contained long strands of Grandma's hair. It seems there were several different pieces, including a manicure set - one was a nail buffer. This was perhaps five inches or so in length, padded and with a chamois-type covering. I remember using this on my nails at times. I would sit on the bench in front of the dressing table while buffing my nails.

"Actually, the only time I was aware this room was occupied was when my cousin Louise's body was kept in there from when the funeral home brought her until the funeral was held in the church a couple of days later. I understand the same was done when Grandma Regan passed away. Only the adults in our families were attending for Grandma's funeral - We kids stayed home on the farm and knew little of what was going on that time." [Grandma died in February, 1934].

A SIDE NOTE ABOUT FRANK AND BESS AND THEIR DAUGHTERS LOUISE AND ALICE

As mentioned above, Frank (Charles Francis Reagan/Regan) was one of Grandma and Grandpa's sons; in fact, he was their second oldest child (Roy was the oldest, Allen came along after Frank, and John Vincent was next; a daughter was their last child - There is more on all of these people in other parts of this section of "Our Iowa Family").

Frank and Bess were married in 1909. Louise was their oldest child. We can't find her birthdate right now, if we even have it, but Alice was born about the time Helen was, and so Louise was probably born sometime between 1909 and 1917, probably at least a few years before the latter date.

Neither do we have the date when Louise died, but Helen and her family were still there at that time, and it was before Grandma Reagan died (which was February 14, 1934). Helen and her family were still in Iowa.

Louise's husband, whose last name was Busby, was in the Marines. She had just had a baby ("Billy") in the hospital across the street from Grandma and Grandpa's house and that was where she died, when her son was possibly six weeks old. Uncle Frank "was devastated. Hit terribly hard." They kept Louise's casket in the den. "The undertaker hadn't made her hair look natural. He [Frank] rearranged her hair, as it didn't look right to him. They made the kids be real quiet around the house, not turn on the radio, etc. Her little girl Betty wasn't more than two years old, and Billy was the baby. And then Billy drowned during an invasion of an island that belonged to Japan (possibly Iwo Jima) when he was in the service, just eighteen or around there." Frank and Bess raised Louise's kids.

Frank and Bess' other daughter, Alice, was almost the same age as Helen, but Helen liked Louise more than Alice. Their son Charles (named after Grandpa Regan) was about two or three years younger than Alice.

When Helen and Alice were both going to school at Sacred Heart there must have been some kind of Christmas or other holiday show the class put on, and the two of them, who were the smallest in the room, were featured as "The Gold Dust Twins." Helen doesn't remember what they did as the Gold Dust Twins. This was maybe in about the third grade. Helen and her family had been out to California, to San Diego, and had gone back to Iowa.

MEMORIES OF UNCLE ROY AND UNCLE ALLEN

Uncle Roy worked for the M. & St. L. (Mineapolis & St. Louis) railroad (Grandpa worked for the Illinois Central Railroad). Helen doesn't know which railroad Allen worked at.

Both uncles liked to go fishing, possibly in Minnesota (which is not that far away, and there was family up there).

One time uncles Allen and Roy took Helen to an A&W root beer place in Fort Dodge for root beer floats. The weather was hot. They left Grandpa at the roundhouse and picked up Allen where he was working at the railroad (later Allen briefly worked at a laundry - Mom learned from Allen how they folded the shirts after they were ironed in the laundry). Helen thought the root beer floats were great. She had never had one before.

Root Beer Float

"Another thing I was thinking of [says Helen] ... When Allen and Roy conned us, me especially since I was around more, when we were kids there ...... They convinced us to pick dandelions out of the lawn. To make it more intriguing and more fun they said they were going to make dandelion wine -- Probably just getting us to get rid of the dandelions. I think we were also paid a little, probably just pennies [a couple of cents would buy a candy bar back then]."

There really is such a thing as Dandelion Wine!

"I remember getting night crawlers for bait. Whenever it would rain, the night crawlers would be coming out of the grass. I'd help get night crawlers for fishing. They [Uncle Roy and Uncle Allen] kept their bait under the basement stairs."

You don't want to see a picture of night crawlers. They are worms.

GRANDMA GOT READY FOR HER OWN FUNERAL

Grandma died in her mid-sixties, in early 1934. We don't know what she died of, but she did have diabetes. For years before she died, she had the clothes she wanted to buried in laid out in a dresser drawer in her bedroom, and she had a list of the pallbearers she wanted at her funeral. There is more about her death and funeral on other pages.

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A lot of the family lived near Charles and Alice Regan, including their son Frank and his wife and kids who just lived one or two blocks away, and also Helen's family lived about a block away, and Alice Regan's brother Bert Gilchrist and his wife Daisy were just a few blocks away.

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This page was last worked on on July 9, 2009.

...OUR IOWA FAMILY
...Preface
...Introduction
...Table of Contents
...Links to All Maps
...Questions & Answers