Dorothy Trumpold: Transcript

Amana rug weaver and cook
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I’m Dorothy Trumpold, and I live in East Amana. I was born there, lived there all my life. I went to school there. I had one teacher for all my eight grades. My brother-in -law was, started his teaching there in East Amana. Before, my teacher was always his father, for all the years. And during the summer months I didn’t go to school. I had to learn to cook. The law was, you had to be fourteen when you quit school. One of the girls in the kitchen where I was supposed to work—she was going to get married, and she was going to move to Amana. So, they needed somebody to take, another girl to take her place: me.

There was always three girls in each of the kitchens. One week you had to cook ,and the other week you had to do the dishwashing and vegetable washing and all kinds of other. And then the third week you were in the dining room.

East Amana is a small town; it’s just a little square. When I was there, there were four kitchens. And each kitchen had about forty people there they had to cook for. And anyhow, after that, there came the great change in 1932, in the spring. I remember yet, when all the things that, the dishes and the pots and pans and everything was sold that were used in the kitchens, you know. And people could buy some of that, because, from then on, everybody had to cook in their own home.

Before the change, yeah, a lot of families or single persons lived in the house together, because they didn’t have no kitchens. They went, the older people went to the kitchens to eat their meals. My family—my mom and dad, and my sister and I—we lived in the upstairs of an apartment. They had three or four rooms. And my grandfather had a room or two downstairs. And an old uncle lived there yet, and he had two rooms. And I think, it was a big house. And I think an aunt lived there too, my old great-aunt. And like, the mother, if she had little children, they went with their basket with their little bowls there to get the food from the kitchens and take it home to their children.

And for breakfast, most of the people ate at home. They, usually, we had, we had two big pans of fried potatoes every morning except Sunday mornings. Sunday mornings there was coffeecake and bread and butter and jam for breakfast. In the evenings, mostly just, like the men came to eat, you know. But then there was, there was, in each kitchen, there was a big, a big garden in there close to the kitchen someplace where that ,the ladies that did the work in the gardens, they came to eat. Besides they came for lunch, but at night they usually would come too, because they didn’t, they didn’t have no smaller children at home anymore that they had to take food for them.

In the baskets--they’d come with a basket. And they had their little dishes so they’d know what they would be getting. Usually, it was potatoes, and a salad, and some meat, and bread and butter, and anything else, a coffee or a tea. At night there was always tea. And at noon and in the mornings there was coffee. And well, I did that for five years. I think I said it already.

You know, before the change, a lot of the young people were, they had friends, you know, more or less maybe from the outside, and they kind of wanted that kind of life too. So, a lot of the younger boys left the Amanas. And my husband, the one I was going to marry, was one of them.