Schritter, Pauline
B 26 Sep 1919
D 24 Jul 1992
Married: George W. Wall
Buried: Salem Lutheran Church, St. Francis, KS

   

FS: In September of that year, I believe it was August or September, my husband's dad's brother died in St. Francis, Kansas. And his dad wanted to go to the funeral. Like I say, his dad couldn't ever drive a car. But he had a car, and we didn't have a car. So he wanted Matt to drive my mother-in-law, his wife, and Matt and I to the funeral in St. Francis. Matt was a little bit leery of the brakes on the car. He said, "The brakes are not holding very good. You better have them fixed before we go." "Oh, no, they're alright. They work around here and they'll be alright." So we left for St. Francis one afternoon, and we drove all afternoon and all night, and we got to Goodland in the morning at about 4:00. I was watching the map and the roads, and tried to keep things going. We weren't speeding or anything, just driving normal, and we came to a corner...a sharp corner. It was kind of offset, a funny corner, and Matt put the brakes on and the brakes didn't hold. And we went through the barbed wire and wrecked the car in some people's backyard. They had changed the roads, but it wasn't on the map. There was a new road. Had we been on the new road, it wouldn't have happened to us. But this was the old highway, and we didn't know it. So anyway, there we sat. The people came running out; of course, we weren't badly hurt. We had some bumps and some scratches and some bruises. So these people took us in and made us feel comfortable and gave us coffee and whatever.

But here we were still, I think 50 miles, whatever Goodland is from St. Francis, from the funeral. And the funeral was that afternoon. So in order to get to the funeral we called Matt's cousin, Rudolph, who was farming in St. Francis. He lived in St. Francis. We asked him if he would come and pick us up. We told him we had a wreck and we had no car to get the rest of the way. So he came and picked us up. We left the car there and then that afternoon they had the funeral and stuff. On Monday they went and took the car to the garage to have it fixed. So, after they got the car fixed, it cost $125 or $150, and none of us had that much money. His dad had some money with him, so he paid some of it, but we went into debt for $100. Rudolph said, "I'll pay it if you and Jake (that was Matt's brother next to him) will come up here and shuck my corn for me." After his dad died, he had his dad's place and his own; he was a grown man, you know. So we said sure.