Peter Reinart

REINART, HOFFERT

Posted By: Richard Gehling (email)
Date: 2/18/2007 at 14:54:45

Source: Memories of Genevieve Reinart, 1980

My father Peter Reinart was born on a farm near Roselle, Iowa, on 12 April 1878. He was the sixth son of Mathias and Susanna Reinart. As a toddler he once sat on Buffalo Bill's lap. At the age of eight he traveled alone on a train to the nearby town of Carroll to have his tonsils out. He nearly bled to death on the trip home.

When in his mid-twenties, Peter went to Nebraska to help with the oats harvest. While there he met and fell in love with my mother, Mary Hoffert, the daughter of Anton and Augusta Hoffert. He and my mother were married the following January in Axtell, Nebraska.

The newlyweds farmed near Funk, Nebraska, for eight memorable years. There was no means of irrigation, and the prairie fires and duststorms were severe. My mother combated the dust by hanging wet bed sheets over the windows. Once a tornado struck the farm and took all the buildings except the house, which was pushed two inches off its foundation.

My dad and my Uncle John Schneider used to hunt turkeys on the Nebraska prairies. They also shot jack rabbits and made them into a sort of hamburger - one/half rabbit, one/half pork.

In 1915 my parents moved back to Iowa and to a succession of farms near the towns of Carroll and Halbur.

On one of these farms they used to have a new hog house that was never used for anything except a whiskey still. Dad used to have a room in the house where he kept the whiskey hid from the revenue men. It could only be entered from out-side the house, and you couldn't tell from the inside that it was there.

We were at a neighbor's one night and the revenue men came and asked where Peter Reinart lived. The neighbor told them that the Reinarts lived ten miles from there, so we drove across the field to get home and destroy the still before the revenue men got there. Dad had been cooking whiskey for Jim Balukup, but after this incident he got out of the whiskey business. The whiskey was known as "Templeton Rye," and was in great demand for miles around.

In 1927 my Dad gave up farming and moved the family to a house in Halbur, Iowa. There he drove a gravel truck for awhile, worked as the school and church janitor for seven years, then as a carpenter until he retired. He had a lot of accidents while living in Halbur - he fell from the roof of a barn, breaking his shoulder, ribs, collarbone and arm; he cut his thumb with a power saw; he was in a car accident.

The house he bought in Halbur had two enclosed porches and one upstairs porch. A cave for storing fruits and vegetables was built into a cement wall. From this cave a small tunnel (to be used in the aftermath of tornadoes) led to an above-ground cob house. In the corner of the cob house was a two-hole privy. The property also had a barn that sheltered two milk cows, two brooder horses, and some chickens. Also on the property was a smoke house for hams and dried beef. Here, high on a hill above Halbur, my mother and dad spent the remainder of their lives.

Both are remembered as gentle and loving people, who never quarreled. The only disagreement I ever remember took place after a visit by the parish priest. Dad was in the process of emptying the chamber pot when the priest arrived. Instead of hurrying to empty the pot down the outside privy, dad stopped to engage the priest in a long coversation - the chamber pot still in his hand. Mom got so embarrassed she could not help but remonstrate once the priest had finally left.

After their retirement, my mom and dad spent their time working in a large garden, canning fruits and vegetables, and passing out the surplus to family and friends.

My dad also loved to play horseshoes. On warm Sunday afternoons the neighbors would come over, and the men would spend their time in the yard pitching horseshoes.

My mother died of breast cancer on 17 August 1956. My dad survived her by seven years, passing away on 21 June 1963. Both are buried in St. Augustine's Cemetery at Halbur, Iowa.