Family Stories
In the summer of 1988, Sarah Helen Bohnert, our paternal grandmother, got sick and entered into a nursing home. I drove home from Wisconsin, worried that she wouldn't be with us for much longer. While I was there, I used an old cassette tape recorder and asked her to tell me some of the stories of her life that she had often told me before. One of my favorites was the day she fed the convicts that arrived at her door.
The following is a transcript of Grandma's story. You can hear it in her own words by going to the "Photographs and Memories" page of this website and clicking on this link.
Grandma was tired and ill during this conversation, so her words were slurred and muffled and, as always, her thick German accent made it a challenge to decipher her words.
Thankfully, Grandma surprised us all, recovered completely from her illness, and lived another 9 years. She died on December 19, 1997.
Sarah H. Bohnert
Grandma and the Convicts
(Transcribed)
Grandma:
In a two room house…two room house.
Me:
In Longtown?
Grandma:
No, in Uniontown. In a little old scabby little town. But I was so dumb I thought you had to feed ‘em all…if anyone was…feed you…hungry you had to feed them. And my little ones were little and Pop went already to work…it was already getting a little bit daylight and I was there by myself…and then I went and fed ‘em…and…
Me:
They came knocking at your door?
Grandma:
They knocked at the door and asked if they could get somethin’ to eat…and they were dressed…
Me:
In convict clothes.
Grandma:
In convict…and I told ‘em to come on in. And so I went into the bedroom and the long black kitchen and the little ones was there an…was in bed. And I waited on ‘em till they was finished and they left. See, they was no newspapers, no television, no radio. We didn’t know nothin’ of the outside world. It was a dead world.
Me:
I wonder what ever happened to them.
Grandma:
Oh, they probably *******
Me:
I wonder if they ever got caught?
Grandma:
No, probably hid out again, begged for somethin’ to eat…two great big guys…they coulda killed me.
Me:
They could have, Grandma, you were lucky you fed them.
Grandma:
I guess…
Me:
Who knows what they would have done.
Grandma:
Yeah, that’s what your mom said, your mom told me, she said, “You know, Grandma,” she said, “Our Lord had your…his hands over your head.” See, I thought he was…they was…that wasn’t all, they was old tramps come back in there. We lived off of the street…’bout a half a mile, and they wanted somethin’ to eat and I’d go down in the basement and bring ‘em up some canned stuff and give it to ‘em to eat.