This week’s farm couple has two reasons to celebrate.
The milestone 90th birthday of wonderful neighbor Anne Eckert and also the donation of a nearly century-old elementary school classroom desk are both reasons to smile.
First, the story of a sturdy student desk that has withstood the test of time.
Reader Shonda Talerico Dudlicek of Hoffman Estates, Illinois, read in one of my previous columns about a pair of school desks I’d purchased years ago at a town auction when my elementary school closed.
Shonda wrote me with her family’s similar story and asked if my desks, often used for displays and functions, could use the “company” of another desk with the same school roots.
“Phil – When my Grandpa’s grade school was torn down in North Judson, Indiana back in the 1970s, he rescued two desks and gave them to me and my sister. When we were kids, the desks were in our basement in Frankfort and garage in our first house in New Lenox. We made art projects and played school on them. My dad had an HVAC business and he’d give me old notebooks and ledgers and I created class lists and grades for non-existent pupils and assignments. I could spend hours creating names from the TV Guide and would grade worksheets that I re-copied from my own schoolwork. As we outgrew the desks, my mom gave them back to her father. He stored them up in his attic. When my own daughter Mia was a baby and Grandpa sold his house, my husband Jim and I rented a van and took back the little desk. Mia used this desk in our den when she was little but, tall girl that she is, she outgrew it much too soon. For years this desk sat in our shed and garage and during the pandemic I brought it inside. I was not sure where to put it and the desk ended up in our dining room. I looked into how much it would cost to refurbish or fix up, with all its gouges and scribbles, and decided it was priceless just as it is. I contacted the Starke County Historical Society a year or so ago to see if the group wanted the desk to display. I sent photos and an explanation of its link to North Judson. I’ve reached out a few times but never heard anything. I didn’t want to give it to a crafter or a scrapper. I wanted this little desk to go to someone or somewhere that it would be appreciated for what it was — a school desk dating back nearly 100 years.”
“Thank you Phil Potempa, a fellow journalist whom I’ve never met but we’ve both worked for the same publication, same editors, and with a lot of our old newspaper colleagues. He grew up in San Pierre, which is the town next to North Judson where he then graduated from high school. In fact, my grandparents’ house was on the corner of San Pierre Road and the main road into North Judson, across from an old Wilson cattle-holding site and the sand hills that my sister Jes and I used to run up and down and chase the tiny lizards we didn’t have around our own childhood home landscape. Thank you Phil for your work with schools and historical groups in Northwest Indiana. I was thrilled you agreed to take my little desk to display at annual school banquets. And thank you for the photos of other desks displayed. Mine would definitely be one of the oldest! I still get back that way to visit at the family cemetery in Grovertown where Grandpa Roy Boots was born and buried with Grandma Goldie. My Grandma died when I was 18, but Grandpa lived until 2007 when I was 37.”
Thank you Shonda for sharing your family school desk with so many future generations to come, including the guests of our annual spring banquet for alumni of the now long-gone San Pierre and North Judson original elementary school structure.
One of the guests at each year’s dinner is Anne Eckert, whose family farm neighbored our own home just a stone’s throw down San Pierre Road. Anne, who served as the longtime treasurer for the San Pierre Alumni Association and helped host the annual dinner, is now a retired teacher who lives in Indianapolis to be closer to her three daughters now that her beloved husband Ken passed more than a decade ago.
Anne celebrated her 90th birthday on Sept. 23 with family, friends and a delicious menu of her favorites. All four of my published cookbooks are filled with recipes from both Anne and her late husband Ken, who was also a schoolteacher.
Fall is the perfect time to share her delicious recipe for baked Polish sausage and sauerkraut, just in time to add to menu planning for Oktoberfest celebrations. Anne notes that this recipe originally came from her Aunt Mary Paulsen.
“We served this sausage and kraut recipe at daughter Anita’s wedding,” Anne said.
“I have the recipe portions to serve it for a large guest gathering. Later, I learned to cut it down and I’ve served it many times at our family gatherings and holidays.”
Columnist Philip Potempa has published three cookbooks and is the director of marketing at Theatre at the Center. He can be reached at pmpotempa@comhs.org or mail your questions: From the Farm, PO Box 68, San Pierre, Ind. 46374.
Anne Eckert’s Favorite Baked Polish Sausage and Sauerkraut
Serves 8
2 pounds fresh Polish sausage
1 quart sauerkraut
1 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 onion, ground or finely chopped
1/2 potato, ground or grated
Pinch of caraway seed
Directions:
1. Simmer sausage in just enough water to cover the meat for 30 minutes. Remove from water and cut into pieces, reserving the boiling water for later use.
2. Place the cut sausage in a 350-degree oven to brown for about 30-40 minutes.
3. While meat is browning, drain the brine/juice off the kraut and discard. Put kraut in the sausage water. Add brown sugar, onions, potatoes and caraway seed.
4. Cook kraut on top of stove for 30 minutes. Remove from heat and mix with sausage to serve.
