Sometimes a story jumps out at you

ROYAL CITY — I stopped by Judy’s wine tasting and produce last week to see how Larry and Norm Myrick were doing in their hunt for someone to revive the cafe, and I happened to make the acquaintance of sisters Joanne and Claudia (maiden name) Krom.

On their way to their childhood home near Dusty, they started to tell me about their trip and childhood. I stopped them before they could get too far and went to the car for my notebook. Then I sat down for an unexpected interview.

The daughters of John and Elizabeth Krom had five siblings. Margaret, the oldest, died last year at the age of 93. Alma, the second, had several health issues and died in 2004.

Ruby, 92, lives in Arizona, Virginia, 89, resides in Colfax, and John Jr., the lone boy, has a home in Pullman and is 80.

“We’re the only ones who can travel anymore,” said Joanne, 83 of Ashland, Oregon.

“We visited Ruby in May,” said Claudia, 78, of Renton.

It’s natural for the younger sisters to make this trip. They grew up in a happy family that still hasn’t had a quarrel. There was a piano, and all seven kids learned to play.

You could catch the children singing about as often as not. They produced their own entertainment. Margaret usually played the piano when they gathered around to sing.

As they grew, the Kroms spread out across the country, pursuing separate lives. But the closeness they had as children endured.

“We stay in touch with each other on a daily basis,” Joanne said.

As I conversed with the ladies, I sensed this story was going to get better, and it did. John and Elizabeth were Germans from Russia. Their parents had farmed wheat along the Volga River in the 1800s.

Their ancestors had gone to Russia starting in the late 1700s at the invitation of Czarina Catherine the Great, who was a German princess before marrying an heir to the Russian throne. She became Czarina when her husband, then the Czar, was killed by Russians who trusted she would be a better Czarina than he was a Czar.

Russia was suffering a famine because of crop failures. In an effort to save the Russians from hunger, the Czarina invited German families, whom she knew to be good farmers, to settle in Russia.

Things went well until the late 1880s, when Russians started to resent the fact the Germans, and not the Russians, were the prosperous ones. The Germans became persecuted, and they knew it was time to leave.

But many of them did not go home to Germany. They didn’t stop traveling until they reached new homes in America.

John and Elizabeth arrived in the United States with their families in 1900 and 1911 respectively. Like many German families from Russia, they settled in the Palouse and starting raising wheat just as they had in Russia.

“A lot of the towns around here had Germans from Russia,” Joanne said.

“Odessa was settled by Germans from Odessa, Russia,” Claudia said.

John and Elizabeth met in the Russian Town part of Colfax, where their families lived. Some places, like Toppenish, had German Towns.

“They all spoke very fluent German, but they never spoke it around us. They wanted us to learn English and become Americans,” Claudia said. “Our name was really Kromm. Grandpa dropped off the second M when they got to America.”

Like most immigrant families in farm country then, and now, all of the members pitched in. John Jr. helped his father on John’s 1,000-acre wheat farm, later John Jr.’s, which was located outside of Dusty on the Snake River in Whitman County. The girls helped their mother with household chores, which were not exactly the household chores of today.

“We canned 900 pounds of peaches one year,” Joanne said.

The girls helped their dad pick those peaches in an orchard on the river to save money. They helped pick and can, or otherwise process, many of the other foods they and their harvest hands ate.

“We helped mom as soon as we could walk,” Claudia said.

The girls who were still home in any given year worked together, but Claudia never worked with Margaret and Alma. They were leaving the roost about the time Claudia appeared.

Though they were a lot of help, the girls weren’t little angels. After they tired of pitting cherries one time, they started hiding unpitted cherries under the pitted ones.

“Boy, did we get it when Dad found out,” Joanne said.

The busiest time of the year for the girls was wheat harvest. They had to help Mom feed about 15 men in addition to John and John Jr. and themselves. Those hungry men lived on the farm for about six weeks, sleeping in a bunk house.

The girls woke at 4:00 every morning to start the day. First they prepared for breakfast. It consisted of fried spuds, thick sliced bacon, biscuits, fruit, eggs from the henhouse and milk they had just taken from the cows in the barn.

It was the girls’ job to have the tables ready by 5:00-5:30. The men headed to the fields between 5:30 and 6:00, and mom and girls started working on dinner. That meant bringing vegetables from the pantry and fruit to make the pies the men favored for dessert. And it often meant a trip to the barn for more fresh milk.

“Mom did most of the cooking,” Claudia said. “We did all of the dish washing (from the breakfast and meal preparation for lunch). When we were doing dishes, we sang all the time.”

When the men finished a dinner of meat and mashed potatoes, vegetables and dessert, they went off to a little rest and then to the fields. Mom and the girls went back to work, repeating the tasks of the morning hours to prepare a supper equal to dinner.

“We milked before every meal,” Claudia said.

After supper, the girls cleaned the dining hall and kitchen and then sat down to slice bacon until they had enough for morning. They set the breakfast tables with the plates upside down, finishing between 10:00 and 10:30 and got to bed at about 11:00.

After telling their story, Claudia and Joanne bought some produce from Larry and Norm, got back into their car to finish the trip to visit their sister and brother and the house in which they grew up.

“The people who own it now are really gracious about letting us see it again,” Claudia said.

“I can’t wait,” Joanne added.

I don’t think I’d be able to wait either.