Recipes for Living Imogerne Florence Virden Slezak

I may be the only one telling a life story in transit. We are on our way to Des Moines for a doctor's appointment. My health has not been good. They have been unable to identify the cause, which may be, in part, associated with Frank's death. Even though he suffered with emphysema for a long time, and on some level I was aware that I would lose him, his death has been very difficult to bear. The first lines of the poem in his funeral folder says a lot: "If I had only known I'd never hear your voice again, I'd memorize everything you ever said." He had a wonderful spirit, always had an answer and could always make me laugh.

Whenever I took him for a ride, Frank whistled as we went along-no tune, just whistling. Near the end of his life as we were riding, I mentioned that he was not whistling. He said, "Somebody turned the page and I don't see the music." Maybe it was partly because we didn't have children that we grew closer all the 53 years of our married life. We did, however, unofficially adopt our niece Sandy Campbell, for whom I am so grateful, particularly now.

Frank's family came from Czechoslovakia. He loved the joke about the man who died and went to heaven. The gate keeper told him was easy to get in - all he had to do was spell "love". The man quickly spelled it and was given entry. Awhile later he was asked to take his turn keeping the gate and who should appear but his wife. She asked how to get in, and he told her she just had to spell one word-"Czechoslovakia."

His family came over on a boat from that country, and his uncle was born during the crossing. He loved to tell me that he was better than me because he was pure, while I am a mixture of everything. I told him that they took the best part of all nationalities to make me. When the family came to this country, they insisted that everyone learn to speak English. Frank could speak some in his native tongue and was so delighted when, in the last months of his life, the young girl from Hospice could speak Czechoslovakian (Bohemian) with him. He was a very private person in a group, but one-on-one he “could talk your arm off.”

Frank did all that he could to make life easier for me after he was gone. We bought a new car; and when he conceded that he couldn’t take care of our home and large lawn at 730 South Jackson Street in Osceola, he moved us into an apartment in Indianola. Perhaps, if we had lived there longer, I’d have felt more at home there; but the time was too short for me to become acquainted with the area and the people. My nature is to be involved, always going and doing, and I didn’t follow that pattern because of limited time combined with Frank’s condition. I have now moved back to Osceola, to Casual Living Apartments.

Frank was born Frank Mike Slezak on December 9, 1909. Not Francis Michael Slezak-he said that it was Frank Mike because his mother knew he couldn't spell. His brother is Art Frank. He also had two sisters, Mary Margaret and Dorothy Margaret. They grew up on a farm near Cromwell, Iowa, which is north of Creston. Frank went to country schools through 8th grade and then helped on the farm in order that his younger sister could graduate from Creston. From there they moved to Kellerton. His mother died in 1936.

The farm to which they moved near Kellerton was right behind our house, so I knew Frank for a long time. I was born February 1, 1922. I have two brothers and one sister. As I grew up, my life was not unusual for a farm family in that time. We all were involved in the family livelihood, each having our own chores to do. I gathered eggs, picked up cobs, and carried wood for the cook stove and filled its reservoir, which was our source of hot water. We made our own fun with games of Blackman/Redman, Steal the Stick, or Ante-over; and in the winter we skated on the pond, did belly-whopping on a sled, and made snow-men and -angels. We wouldn’t have known the "I’m bored" complaint that seems to be that of young people today.

I went to Cornstalk College Country School. One of my teachers was my brother. After we moved to Kellerton in 1935, I attended Kellerton High School and, in 1939, graduated with a Normal Training degree. I was only 17 years-old, so I couldn't teach and worked in the telephone office until I was 18.

Frank took me to my first teaching job; and if he had suggested turning around to take me back home, I'd have gone. The school was as close as you could come to the Missouri line without being in that state. It was really in the boonies and people told me some fascinating stories about their area: It was dense and at one time Bonnie (Parker) and Clyde (Barrow) hid out there. They came into the town, Caledonia, for supplies from time to time. There had also been a man they referred to as "Nature Boy'' because, summer and winter, he wore only a loin cloth. He lived in an old shack and, when he came into civilization, he sometimes stayed with a family who took him in. As the story was told, during that brief time in winter, he became accustomed to the creature comfort of heat and nearly froze when he went back.

In that school I had 16 kids and every grade but one. I taught there four years, but everything I am telling is completely different than now. Teachers were also the custodians, being responsible for building a fire in the stove and seeing that water was brought from the well. I have tried to capture the difference in a poem which ended with these verses:

You might say that now we have it made
But it takes all our time with the help of an aide.
Some things are better and some are worse
We still teach kids the three R's, of course.

School, you know, is different today.
Hickory limbs have 11gone by the way.11
The Golden Rule is no longer used
Civil Rights is now-abused.

We're chauffeured in a car or ride a bus
Walking to school is not for us.
If the snow is too deep, we have no school'
Cause the roads are closed and the bus can't go through.

We have furnace heat run by natural gas -
Merely click the switch as we pass.
But the energy crisis keeps us cool
And we need a sweater as a general rule.

Lunch every noon is now quite hot.
For a small fee, we can eat a lot.
But we're in too big a hurry to eat much.
A half hour noon doesn't allow for such!

We go to the faucet to get a drink
But when the water pipe breaks, we go "off the brink."
There's no well to use, so we call a plumber.
If we're lucky, he'll come sometime before summer.

We have special classes for things like gym.
To be real good takes vigor and vim.
Special teachers are hired for Music and Art
No extra work required on our part.

We no longer go into that house out back,
Nor worry about cold coming through a crack
The paper we use we mustn't squeeze,
But it's mighty thin so be careful, please!

We still wash the board and clean the sink.
Still very few teachers ever wear mink.
We make our reports, fill out the forms,
Put in over-time hours, and weather the storm.

Though you've all heard of the "good old days"
We're always looking for better ways.
Everyone knows just how it ought to be
But on what is best, we don't all agree.

It became necessary for me to go back to college to renew my certificate. I went to Simpson and it took 13 years for me to graduate because I taught during the winter and went to summer school until I got my B.S. degree. I kept going to Drake off and on until I had 30 hours more credits, but I only took courses that would help with my teaching and wasn't concerned about applying them toward a Master's degree.

Frank and I were married on March 28, 1944, while he was in the service. We continued for 11 years to live on a farm east of Grand River, on the river bottom. Time after time we were flooded. One year Frank planted the crops four times and didn't harvest enough to pay for the seed. We gave up and moved to Carlisle, and Frank commuted to Des Moines to work for
Diamond Chemical Company.

When I retired, in 1984, an article about me appeared in a section of the Des Moines Register. It summarized my years in the school near Caledonia, two miles north of Kellerton, in Ellston, Beaconsfield and Tingley, the later four becoming consolidated into the Mt. Ayr school system. I taught a couple of years in Creston and finally in Carlisle, where I taught 1st grade for 26 years.

The one who saw the article and gave it to me was Phyllis Wilson. I was her first teacher; and she became the daughter-in-law of George Pennington, who was pastor in Osceola from 1960 to 1964. Following is the article, written by Ginger Kuhl, as it appeared in May, 1984:

" 'You're either too strict or else too lax. You're one of the best or one of the 'quacks'.' Imogene Slezak has heard all the theories about teaching, watched the methods change and seen about 400 children through their crucial first grade in her 20 years in the Carlisle Elementary School.

"Her total teaching experience is closer to 41 years and began when, at 18, she taught kindergarten through grade 12 in a little one-room school in Hatfield, Missouri.

" 'That was quite a place,' said Slezak. “I had one student that was taller than I was. I lived a mile and a half from school and the road was mud in the spring. It was the Shady Grove School, but sometimes they called it Rattlesnake Bend because there were a lot of rattlesnakes. The spring I quit, the creek rose and there was water up to the door of the school,' she said.

''Before starting at Carlisle in 1966, Slezak taught in the Mount Ayr School District. She taught 33 children then and classes since then have averaged about 20.

"'I taught them to read in three primers before they got through their first year of school,' she said of an early class.

"Since that time, a lot of fads have come and gone in teaching and things have changed a lot-not all for the better-in her experienced opinion.

"'The biggest change is the behavior of the children', she said. 'It's gotten worse. As a student, you never talked back to your teacher. You did what she said. Children now seem to need more love, more talking with,' she said. Slezak and Frank have no children of their own but have had nieces (and nephews) around them all their married life.

"Regarding the discipline problems which Slezak found more severe this year, she thinks the reason may have been evident on a recent trip to Europe. 'There, kids take education seriously,' she said. 'It's a privilege, not an obligation.'

“‘In first grade children learn how to get along with each other, develop respect for themselves and others and learn about caring for their environment and their own cleanliness and safety.You work on helping them learn some give and take. You work on it day after day because you want them to be good citizens.'

"She said she regards first grade as both the hardest to teach and the most rewarding. 'They come in here knowing so little and come out pretty independent,' Slezak said.

"Reading is her favorite subject to teach followed by math, but she has a reputation in Carlisle for creative, imaginative teaching.

''By second grade the children have to be able to work by themselves and use their own creativity. Teaching those skills requires some order in the classroom because children this age (six to seven) rely on a schedule and feel better in some routine, she said.

“You can’t have bedlam in the classroom and teach. You have to have a direction and a sense of order,' she said.

"Slezak taught one subject that children now in high school have told her they remember. That was a Circus, an annual event held (until three years ago) in the gym. It began with a ring in a classroom and the children pretending to be animals or other characters in a circus, and gradually became a three-ring performance in the school gym.

“I hope that if I have never taught a child anything else, I have taught fairness and that it's all right to make mistakes,' she said. ‘If you have to correct a child constantly, it's rough on the child.'

"Retirement, Slezak style, may include running for the school board except for the fact that her husband Frank said he would start going to the tavern if she did.

"A good cook book probably will be written and she will paint. Her involvement with children continues this summer as a story hour volunteer at the Carlisle Library.

"But when it came to all those years teaching school, her preference was the first grade. 'I love it,' she said."

Imogene has the only picture in existence of the Shady Grove schoolhouse, where she first taught. It had an interesting demise. There came a time when teachers chose to work in defense plants, which was more lucrative than teaching. The situation created a need met by some long-since-retired teachers, who were not really adaptable to new schoolroom requirements. One of those teachers taught in the Shady Grove schoolhouse, and one night a mysterious fire burned it down. It was never replaced. Imogene's sketch follows.

A section of the first edition of Recipes for Living was devoted to Imogene’s poetry. A sample follows:

REMEMBER ME

When I am gone and laid to rest,
Just remember "I did my best."
Forgive the things I did that were bad,
'Cause these will only make us sad.

No use in both of us remembering these,
So, I’ll do it for both, if you please.
My only wish as I passed each day
Is that I’ve been of help in some small way.

Think of me now and then, if you will.
My place on earth will be easy to fill,
But I’d like to think as I passed through
The love from my mends grew and grew.

So, when you look back, think of all the fun.
I’ve enjoyed life and now this part's done.
I hope the relationship I’ve had with your lives
Was inspirational and this part survives.

Now, take one last look, then turn away.
No need for sorrow 'cause we've had many a happy day.
Look for tomorrow and all you can do,
To take over my task, which is now up to you!