Nonagenarian reflects on life in the olden days
Rita (Weighner) Clayton, 96, a former Prairie du Chien resident, was recently interviewed by her great-great-nephew Adam Novey about the olden days.
Rita’s husband, DuWain Clayton died 25 years ago, just before Thanksgiving. At 96 years old, she still keeps this photograph of them fastened to the cover of a notebook in which she records her memories.
Prairie du Chien native, Rita (Weighner) Clayton, 96, recently participated in an hour-long videotaped interview produced by her great-great-nephew, Adam Novey, of Wyocena (Wis.).
Rita, who currently resides at Leisure Terrace in Overland Park, Kan., was born in 1920 to Melvin and Elda (Zabel) Weighner in their two-room living quarters in the back of a barn in Frenchtown. She resided in Prairie du Chien until she and her husband, DuWain, moved to Beloit and then to the Kansas City area after World War II.
Rita spoke of the days when her father farmed and worked as a mechanic at Ray Weighner’s car dealership, while her mother stayed at home and was an excellent seamstress and cook. The kids’ chores included carrying in wood, carrying out ashes from the cook stove, pumping water, and fluffing grandpa’s feather bed which they did not always do to his satisfaction.
Although she grew up during the Great Depression, Rita expressed that they were relatively unaffected by circumstances. Her dad would hunt and fish, and they would always get meat and vegetables from Grandma and Grandpa Zabel’s farm. Often, they would come home from a visit with a couple of live chickens in a sack, and when they got home they would wring their necks and butcher them.
For fun, a large group of neighbor kids would spend hours roller skating on the sidewalks, playing jacks, and playing baseball in Lechnirs’ field across the railroad tracks. In the winter, they would ice skate on the Mississippi River—the only time Rita and her siblings were allowed to go near the river alone due to her mother’s fear they would fall in and drown.
Grandpa Charlie Weighner built houses and was an excellent carpenter, crafting furniture in his large workshop.
Rita has fond memories of time spent at Grandma and Grandpa John and Lillie (Wachter) Zabel’s farm. She also revealed a little-known fact that her grandpa ran a still. You’d have to go through the pig pen and out to the apple orchard to get there, and Grandpa Zabel used to give Rita and her sister Alene the apricots from out of the brew. The big jugs of moonshine would be sold to a man who then distributed them in Iowa.
Some in the family were avid horsemen. Rita describes how family, friends, and neighbors used to gather in the winter to watch the younger men break horses when the snow was deep. In the meantime, coffee and cake would be waiting in the house to warm up the spectators. Sometimes the horses were also raced at the fairgrounds, although Rita, herself, never attended a race.
John and Nancy (Nellis) Wachter were Rita’s great-grandparents who migrated to Prairie du Chien from Salisbury Center, New York, in 1869. All she had ever heard about the Nellis/Klock family line was that she had relatives “out east” and that she was the spitting image of the Nellis family with her small stature and distinguishing facial features. Novey had previously done some research on this family line and discovered that they settled in the Mohawk Valley of New York well before the Revolutionary War. The family was fiercely split between Loyalists and Patriots, fighting in bloody battles such as the Battle of Oriskany. In July 2014, Novey’s family visited several family sites near Albany, including Fort Klock, the Nellis Tavern, the Old Palatine Church, and the Hans Jurg Nellis homestead, all still standing since colonial times.
Thinking of Veterans Day, Rita recalled the military service of some of the men in the family. Her husband, DuWain, was drafted into the Army in World War II. Rita had written in an earlier memoir, “The war ended about halfway through his tour of duty, but he was then sent to Germany to serve in the Army of Occupation. It was hard being alone [with two small children, Gary and Sharon]. I took a job at the local Kroger store as a checker to supplement my income. Sugar, coffee, and shoes for the kids were rationed…DuWain’s folks were living in Beloit too at that time. His mother took a job at a defense plant working on a machine because there was a shortage of men to work in the plants.” While overseas, DuWain was able to visit and photograph the grave of another relative, Albert Novey, who served in the war and lost his life in the Battle of the Bulge. Rita’s son, Gary, also served in Vietnam, but she says he has never wanted to talk about his experiences over there.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of DuWain’s death just days before Thanksgiving. A photograph of the couple is lovingly fastened to the cover of a notebook in which Rita has begun recording her memories. After DuWain’s death, Rita almost moved back to her beloved Prairie du Chien, where her husband is buried.
Even at almost 96 years of age, Rita remains spunky and quick-witted, and although she sometimes needs to pause for a moment to search for a name, her mind remains sharp. She is now wheelchair-bound (and wishing she could, instead, be out riding horses!), but she can still see relatively well without her glasses, and she is thankful that she still has all of her own teeth. She also continues to enjoy crocheting as a pastime.
Rita’s advice for this generation? Parents need to go back to investing themselves in raising their children.
