This was in that same family history book and I thought it was worth sharing. It was written by Genevieve Marie Jensen, daughter of Ivar and Lena Jensen. Ivar was a son of Lars and Ane Jensen that I wrote about yesterday. Genevieve was born in 1909 and was Lars and Ane's granddaughter.
She wrote quite a piece, but I will share just a bit.
"I believe another time later, about the time Phillip was a baby, Dad and Mom bought a second-hand Brush car that looked like a single red buggy without shafts, had a dash board only you steered it with a bar 7. The motor was under the thing and Daddy had driven it by the front gate the night before. Next morning, he was going to show Mom and me how it ran, as he had it on trial. He got it started by turning up the step and cranking it. It popped and cracked and smoked. Then he hooked it in gear. Mom and I were standing on the porach, out of the way. He pulled the bar the wrong way, pushed the gas lever to go ahead, backed into the gate post, and knocked down about six foot of woven wire, besides knocking over the post. As I remember, that was the end of that. He fixed the fence, got it started, and drove it back as far as it would go, until it ran out of gas. I know we went to town with the horse and buggy later that week and it was setting beside the road.
About this time, Mother was having a time with Phillip. Her milk wouldn't satisfy him. She used "Horlicks", a malted milk sort of power in milk to feed Phillip. Nothing seemed to agree with him and he threw it up. Finally, he was skin and bones, back to birth weight or below and he was four or five months old. Folks thought they were going to lose him and Mom had his picture taken in the christening dress.
About this time, Mom was making chocolate pies. One morning with we children watching her in the kitchen, she had Phillip in the high chair on a pillow, with one to his back and him tied in to it, with a diaper. All of a sudden, Phillip held out his little hands and cried toward the pie filling as she was cooling and pouring it into the pie shells. She said, "You poor little thing, I"ll give you some. You may die but at least you will die with a full stomach." She took a teaspoon and put some into his mouth. How he sucked on the spoon. She must have given him about two tablespoons of it -- all the while big tears were streaming down her cheeks and she was saying, "You poor hungry baby. I've probably killed you, but you will die happy." She sat down and rocked him to sleep. Then she went to the big old telephone hanging on the wall and rang up Central, all the time crying and got Dr. Morris in Wisner. Anyway, Kathleen and me were crying because Mom was crying. Between sobs, she told the doctor what she had done. He told her if Phillip didn't throw it up, to dilute the pudding with boiled milk and put it in a bottle and feed it to him. He was raised on chocolate pudding into a lovely son. (Today, he is allergic to chocolate pudding, he tells me)."
She had other stories to tell and they were quite interesting. I looked up Phillip in the book and at the time the book was written in 1987, he was still living so I don't know how long his life was or if maybe he is still alive. He married a woman named Lake Erie Blanchard and had three children.
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