This continues a series adapted from the book, “A Port Oneida Collection,” Volume 1 of the twopart set, “Oral History, Photographs, and Maps from the Sleeping Bear Region,” produced by Tom Van Zoeren in partnership with Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear. Here we conclude a look at the Anderson brothers and their farm east of Lake Narada.
As described in the previous installment, bachelor brothers Henry & Ernie Anderson were extremely frugal, and hardly seemed to eat properly. One time Ernie was just “standing like a post” with his hands behind his back while the thrasher ran at a thrashing bee. Neighbor Charlie Miller, who was notorious for pranks, put an oil can on the fender of the tractor until it got just to body temperature. He then filled Ernie’s hand full of oil without Ernie noticing. “He’s the only man in the world that can sleep standin’ up,” Charlie observed. Ernie finally noticed the oil — but he never did figure out where it came from.
Dechow Family member Jill Baxter recalled that “The Ernie & The Henry (as they were known) ate with their knives . . . I remember them eating, ’cause my grandma used to have them for dinner. They’d help my grandpa sometime in the yard. And they ate with their knives . . . I think big jackknives. Sometimes they’d eat with just table knives if they didn’t have them—But they were really good with a knife. I mean, they could line peas up on that thing like nobody’s business. It was really something. I mean, I was amazed as a kid. I watched them, you know. Oh, they were good.”
Henry & Ernie were always suspected of having a lot more money than they let on to. Neighbor Lorraine Mason claimed that “They kept their money hid under the toilet seat in the old toilet. They didn’t trust the banks.” Leonard Kropp told how, when he went to collect $50 they owed him, “they went from one room to another, coming back, and every time they came back they talked, and walked into another room. And the first thing, they had fifty dollars and they gave it to me. I don’t know where it came from, but it came from there.”
Their friend Walter Houdek told that they got into trouble with the IRS because they never filed their taxes, and that Henry eventually “went berserk from the hounding by the IRS.” He eventually was committed to the state hospital. One time when Walter was home on leave from the Air Force, he stopped to visit Ernie. At one point Ernie went into another room, and returned with a two-quart jar of gold coins. He asked Walter to take it to Henry, figuring that he would need it for expenses. This was during the Depression, when President Roosevelt had called in all gold coins; so Walter advised Ernie to put the coins away to avoid getting in trouble.
After both of the brothers died, their neighbor and old friend George Shalda assumed the task of clearing out their home. Don Dechow told, “But what George found was that Ernie and Henry had never thrown away anything in their lives. So every newspaper that came into that house was saved. Every magazine that came into that house was saved. Every piece of mail that came into that house was saved. And they put it on the stairway, they put it in—You couldn’t hardly get through the house because of that there! They just didn’t want to throw anything away.
“Now I was told this by George Shalda, and I trust George Shalda. I think he was fair. Ernie and Henry never spent any money, but they made money galore. They made it from their blacksmith shop . . . So George Shalda went down to the barn, and he went through the house, and every place he could, he found a little rolled-up wad of money . . . I’m sure that he was honest. He’s an honest man . . . I hope he found it all, but maybe he didn’t . . . I don’t know what he did with that, because there were no relatives. But nevertheless, George Shalda found that money and he took care of it in a legal way.
“. . . The Andersons passed on, and they were buried (next to) their folks (in the Cleveland Township Cemetery).”
