Grandma Boll

My Grandma (Betty Jane Boll) was born on August 13, 1930 in Waupaca, Wisconsin.  I don't yet have pictures of her of a child - hopefully I will get some soon to share and I can update this post.  This is her as a teenager.

Grandma was the daughter of Onie (what a name!) and Wanda Prindle.  I only have a few pictures of Great-Grandpa & Great-Grandma Prindle.  At some point in their lives they divorced, and the feelings between them were so bitter, that my mom referred to this picture as the closest she ever saw them to one another.


(Pictured above, left to right: Great-Grandpa Prindle, my Aunt Sally, my mom Sam, Aunt Barb, Aunt Diane, and Great-Grandma Prindle).

Great-Grandpa Prindle (February 16, 1903-January 10, 1998, he lived to be 94 years old!) worked as a farmhand.  As time passed, he worked on tractors, then as a self-employed carpenter, and at one point he raised chinchillas.  Great-Grandpa Prindle was remembered for his special gift in carpentry, and was said to be able to build or fix almost anything.  He lived on his own until he was 93 years old.  Great-Grandma Prindle was a housewife when she was younger, then worked during the war (World War I) in a tomato canning factory in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

(Grandpa Boll, during this interview, decided to take that time to tell me this fantastic story about what the ladies there would do in that factory when they got bored - he said they wound chuck tomatoes at one another across the factory floor. Grandma corrected him quickly, however...and Grandpa said that he was just trying to make it more interesting. I was pretty disappointed that the story wasn't true.)

Great-Grandma Prindle later worked in a number of other places, including a grocery store when Grandma Boll was a teenager, then at the Roosevelt Hotel in Cedar Rapids as a waitress, and Woolworth.

I only got to meet my Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma Prindle once. We had gone to Iowa for a family reunion, and took the time to visit them at each of their homes.

Pictured right: me, Great-Grandpa Prindle, my sister Casey, and my mom, Sam.

One of the only things about my Grandpa Prindle's house (and sadly, him) was his peacock feathers, as seen in the lower left of this picture.  And no, I don't know what it is that my sister is holding.

Pictured left: Casey, Great-Grandma Prindle, me.  (Casey hated having her picture taken.  I have spared us the picture with her sticking out her tongue.  haha!)

My mom always mentioned when we grew up that Great-Grandma Prindle had the softest skin of anyone she ever knew.

The Prindles had 5 children in all - Darline (Dolly), Shirley (Sue), Grandma Boll (Betty), Roy, and Carol.

 As a child, the sisters all had a tree house in the backyard, right above the chicken coop.  They spent a lot of time in the tree house - they loved it up there!  One time, when their mom was working, they went in the house and made homemade potato chips (something they were forbidden to do!).  They took them up to the tree house and ate them all so they wouldn't leave any evidence and get in trouble.  They got very sick from those potato chips, but kept the secret, telling their mom that, "It must've been something we ate!"

The girls would also steal eggs from the chicken coop and use them to make mud pies that would, understandably, get very fragrant.

Growing up, Grandma babysat a lot for her family, but also hired out to other families.  Grandma went to Cedar Rapids on the bus for a couple of summers and joined her mom with a job in a bakery.  During those summers, Grandma provided the primary care for her younger siblings, Roy and Carol - she would drop them off at the daycare on the way to work and then pick them up afterward.  The four of them stayed in a room where Grandma had the task of keeping the little ones quiet because they weren't supposed to have children in the room.  They also weren't supposed to eat in the room, but they had made a makeshift kitchen in their one closet, and would sit on the floor in the evenings and make sandwiches, etc. because they had no money to eat out.  These summers were a temporary separation for the Prindles, but were a necessary source of income for the family's survival.

Grandma Boll attended Lamont High School from kindergarten to 11th and 3/4 grade, when Grandpa interrupted by marrying her.  Stay tuned for more on that story, which promises absolutely to be very entertaining...

[I apologize for not being able to include more pictures of Grandma Boll in her younger years in this post.  I don't have many of her, but these are isolated to those after her marriage.  As soon as I can get my hands on the pictures that do exist, I will scan them and add them.]