Author Archives: Rebecca Southern

The Story of the World’s Smallest Church

Nationality: Bohemian, 1/4 German
Age: 74
Occupation: Accountant
Residence: Benson, MN
Performance Date: March 19, 2013
Primary Language: English

The “Smallest Church in the World,” St. Anthony of Padua Chapel is in Winneshiek County, Iowa. It is a Catholic church and seats eight people. My informant, who is my Grandfather, told me the story of how the world’s smallest church came to be, which we had a family reunion at a couple years ago. The setting of the interview is my informant’s living room in a small town of Benson, MN. The “third party” was my Grandmother interjecting into the conversation.  My informant is very interested in family history, so he visits people in various towns and looks up archives to collect the family stories. He has been accumulating more stories and more details of the stories since my mother was a young girl. The conversation is as follows:

Me: Wait, do you know the story of the smallest church?

Third person: We’ve been there.

Informant: I don’t know if Rebecca has been there has she?

Me: Yes I have for the family Reunion. Anyways, what was the story of St. Anthony?

Informant: The story of Saint Anthony was uh, there was this guy, whos mothers said, uh what was his name…Gaertner. Johann Gaertner. He was drafted into the army with Napoleon, he was only 16 years old. But he was a rather big guy, 6 foot tall. So they made him a military police to take care of Napoleon when he was out and about. Anyways, his mother said that if he came back safely, she would build a chapel in honor of our lady. Well, he did come home from the war safely, she never built the chapel, he immigrated to the united states and his daughter said when he was 90 years old that, “you better get that chapel built before you die” and so that’s how we got the chapel built. He donated the first money and the stone, and… And uh they got the chapel built in fulfillment of his mother’s promise. And then they named it, they asked what should we name it? And some priest said, “well, name if after your alleged relative St. Anthony. Your [Rebecca’s] ancestor. So that’s what they did. And every year on the feast day of June 16th or whatever day St. Anthony is they have an annual meeting. So if you want to go down next year, I might be going! That was the story! Yep. They were supposed to build a chapel in honor of our lady and so the daughter is the one that got it done, not the mother.

Me: The daughter of the guy?

Informant: Yes the daughter of the guy. And 5 years ago, some relatives from Minneapolis came down with a gun… that this guy used in the Napoleonic War. So that was kind of interesting. It wasn’t a hand gun, it was a long riffle kind of a thing.

My informant tells this story because he is interested in history, but most importantly because it tells of our family history. He is the one person in the family that knows everything about our family history. He researches our ancestries and makes family trees as well as visit historical sites in various cities to find documents and records or certain events. This is difficult to do because our family is from a small town in Iowa, and we are not in any way famous so the stories are not well documented. My informant heard this story from his mother. My informant also modifies the stories as he learns more information. This is an example of family lore; my family even had a family reunion at the site of the church. My informant tells these stories to his children, in laws, nieces, and nephews when they visit Iowa and we all share the stories with each other. Most of my family knows this story, or at least that we are connected to the church, but my informant is definitely the active bearer; he is the one that we verify the facts with in any family story.

Potstickers myth

Nationality: Irish, German, Czech American
Age: 15
Occupation: High School Student
Residence: Deephaven, MN
Performance Date: March 19th, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, French

My informant is a high school student who has been taking Chinese in school since kindergarten (age 5), to make a total of 10 years of study. She traveled to Taiwan last summer doing a homestay. She was born in Wisconsin, but raised in a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is very knowledgeable of Asian culture; she has had a passion for learning languages and learning about different cultures since a young age. She also studies Japanese Language and culture. My informant heard this legend explaining how potstickers were invented from her Chinese instructor, who is from China. She told me this story because of her interest in Chinese culture.

Informant: This emperor from China asked his chef to make him some food. So the chef decided to make dumplings. Then, he forgot about them in the pot…When he came back to the kitchen, they were stuck to the pot. He was going to make more food because he messed up, but the emperor really wanted to eat. Because he did not have time, the chef brought the overcooked dumplings to the emperor and told him that he was trying something new called “potstickers” because they stuck to the pot. The emperor thought they were tasty and voila, potstickers!

Me: Where did you learn this from?

Informant: From 8th grade Chinese class

Me: From who?

Informant: Tan Lao Shi (Informant’s Chinese instructor)

Me: Where is she from and who did she hear it from?

Informant: Mainland China and her parents told her the story.

Me:Why did your teacher tell you this story?

Informant: Because we were doing a project Chinese folklore. We had to find a story and then make a presentation about the story. She told us this story as an example of a story we could do for our presentation.

I thought it was interesting that my informant had to do a folklore assignment for her Chinese language class. Her Chinese teacher gave this story as an example of a common piece of folklore that is passed down in China. It was interesting that my informant heard this from her Chinese teacher who is actually form China, because it seems like a story that Americans could have developed to explain how this food came to be. It reminds me of the story about how pretzels were invented which was My informant told me that she tells this story when at Asian restaurants to her friends, because it is like a “fun fact.” She is interested in any Chinese stories and says that she gets them from her high school in structors how are from mainland China.

You can’t chase the cattle unless you eat more pancakes than me

Nationality: Caucasian, German-American
Age: 52
Occupation: Orthopedic surgeon
Residence: New Orleans, LA
Performance Date: 3/25/13
Primary Language: English
Language: German, Spanish

My informant is an orthopedic surgeon, who was born in Hawaii, lived in Texas, Long Beach California, and Virginia Beach. He is also in the Army Reserves. My informant now works in New Orleans, Louisiana. This is the same informant as the orthopedic surgeon and snipe hunt entries. My informant heard this story from his grandfather was from Germany.

Informant: My grandfather said there was a rule that I couldn’t chase the cattle on horseback unless I ate as many pancakes as he did. I was like 7 or something like that. I remember I had rain boots that were too big for me.

Rebecca: So what happened then?

I: He was going to go out and chase the cattle. I couldn’t go out with him. It was 4:30 or 5:30 in the morning, whenever farmers got up. He was saying that if I wanted to go with him I had to eat everything that he ate. And of course I did, not getting the hint, I ate as many pancakes as he did.

Rebecca: How many pancakes did you eat?

I: I ate around ten, I felt like I was going to throw up

Rebecca: did you get to go wit him them?

I: Yes I did, and so I got to chase the cattle with him.

Rebecca: Why do you tell this story?

I: I realized my grandfather didn’t want me to go with him and was trying to get rid of me. I think my grandfather really didn’t want to go horseback riding with him. But I was so stubborn that I ate as much as he did. That was the last time I ever got to ride horseback with my grandfather. They stopped using horses to bring cattle around. They started using machines, pick up trucks and things like that.

Rebecca: why didn’t he like you?

I: Because he was a grumpy old German farmer.

My informant’s grandfather told him this story when he was younger, but did not know that this was not an actual rule until he was much older, reflecting on the story. My informant tells this story because it reminds him of his childhood and his time spent with his grandfather before he died. I like this story because it shows how ideas or stories have the potential to turn into folklore if they are believed and passed down. This story was passed down between my informant and his siblings when they would visit their grandfather, so it was something that stayed within the family. However, my informant did say that he uses this excuse or similar requirements with his own children if he wants or doesn’t want them to do something. Being stubborn runs in the family, so if his child is challenged, they will most likely try to follow through. This story shows how this idea has been translated down generations from my informant’s German grandfather to now my informant’s own children.

If you play with rice your mother will die young

Nationality: Korean
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 5/1/13
Primary Language: English

This is the same informant as in the restless leg syndrome entry. My informant was told this superstition by her parents, who are from Korea. My informant’s parents always stopped her from playing with rice as a child. She does not remember when she was first told this, because it is something that she has always kept with her. However, it made her not play with rice because her mother is the one that told her this, and taunted her with the fact that “she would die if she played with rice.” My analysis is that this, along with the shaking leg superstition, are all preventative measures and ways of stopping people from bad habits. By telling someone at a young age that something bad will happen if they do a certain thing, it prevents these bad habits from forming.

Si Tayeb Biaz

Nationality: Moroccan
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/28/13
Primary Language: English
Language: French, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish

My informant was born in Fez, Morocco, then moved to the United States, and then moved back to Morocco but to the mountains when he was five years old. He attended high school in Auburn, Alabama. My informant told me stories about the origin of his last name, how is family got to Morocco, folklore stories about his family, and a family superstition. All three stories that I collected were passed down from father to son to father to son, my informant being the son. My informant’s father, who is one of twelve children in his family, became the active bearer of this family lore. My informant is the only son in his family, so he commented that he will be the active bearer after his father passes. My informant speaks French at home, and these stories were translated from French to English. The setting is an apartment bedroom in Los Angeles.

Informant: And so a couple hundred years ago there was this guy name Si Tayeb Biaz. Si is like Mr. and Tayeb and T-A-Y-E-B. And so the family became a little political. And this guy became the minister of foreign affairs for Morocco. And he was very close to the king. And he became an extremely powerful man and there was a giant fountain built in his honor in the middle of Fez and it said [pause] “drink, be merry, and remember the Biaz, the face of heaven” in Arabic. It was an inscription on the fountain, that’s still there to this day. But, but, Si Tayeb was becoming really influential so Fez was the capital of Morocco at the time. So he became really influential and really powerful. Enough that the king began to feel threatened and he thought that Si Tayeb was planning an overthrow the king.

Me: but was he?

Informant: We don’t know. We don’t know if he was. It could have been grounded in some truth. And so he had him executed. But because he liked him so much, he let his family live and keep the estate and so we were still around. But he had them executed, he had him beheaded and then he had the inscription changed on the fountain.

 

My informant first heard this story from an uncle, to explain why his family does not like politics. I liked this story because the elements of uncertainty as to whether or not Si Tayeb was actually planning to overthrow the king, give the story a legendary quality. There is additional mystery in the story, because there is no proof of the inscription on the statue, because it was removed after the execution. It is also interesting to note that my informant first heard the story in French, but told me the story in English. The story also probably started out in Arabic and then was told in French. As more generations of my informant’s family stay in the United States, I wonder if the “active bearer’s” version of the story will remain in French or begin to be passed down in English.