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When Mrs. Eisele Took Manhattan: Big City Failed To Awe Minnesota Journalist

  

Category:  Scattershooting,Ramblings & Life

Via:  community  •  8 years ago  •  7 comments

When Mrs. Eisele Took Manhattan: Big City Failed To Awe Minnesota Journalist

In the summer of 1936, a plain and sturdy farm woman from southern Minnesota traveled to New York to meet the mayor, stay at the Waldorf, dine at the Stork Club and make headlines in every major newspaper.

That woman was Susan Eisele, my grandmother, who Country Home magazine selected — out of 4,000 entrants — as its "Rural Correspondent of the Year."

The award came with a $200 prize and a two-week trip to New York and Washington.

To understand what a big deal it was to go from Blue Earth, Minn. — more than a hundred miles south of Minneapolis — to Manhattan in 1936, consider this: My grandparents' farm didn't even have electricity yet. Susan wrote her newspaper columns by kerosene lamp.

She had started writing in high school, and her small news stories about rural topics had been published in regional papers since the 1920s.

At the time of the award, she had a column about life on her family's small farm. Her editor entered her in the contest without her knowledge, and she found out she won on the day she gave birth to her sixth child — my father.

So picture this sturdy farmwoman, just shy of 40, in her one good suit — black with white buttons — stepping into her suite at New York's famed Waldorf Astoria hotel, a 6-week-old infant in tow.

I suspect it was a publicity stunt for a slow August news month — "Country Mouse Visits Big City Newsroom!" — but it worked. The big city newspapers roared.



Rural Journalist Not Awed By City. A Bit Stunned by Its Size, but She Finds Country and Urban Reporters Alike. / Here as a Prize-winner / Correspondent of Blue Earth, Minn., Has Recipe, Untried, for Stuffed Peacock. — The New York Times

Mrs. Eisele of Minnesota Expects Slight Thrill from Skyscrapers — The New York World-Telegram

All Right for a Visit, Etc., Says Rural Authoress Here / Prize Winner Says She Wouldn't Give a Straw for Our Wild Oats — New York Post

 

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Larry Hampton
Professor Participates
link   seeder  Larry Hampton    8 years ago

 
 
 
Dowser
Sophomore Quiet
link   Dowser    8 years ago

She looks like a really nice lady!  Is that your grandmother?

 
 
 
Larry Hampton
Professor Participates
link   seeder  Larry Hampton  replied to  Dowser   8 years ago

No, not my grandmother, though she does indeed look like a nice lady.

 
 
 
JohnRussell
Professor Principal
link   JohnRussell    8 years ago

Nice slice of life from a bygone era. 

 

Some people are in awe of people and places and some people take things in stride. 

 
 
 
Larry Hampton
Professor Participates
link   seeder  Larry Hampton  replied to  JohnRussell   8 years ago

I really enjoyed the slice of earlier Americana too,,,hard to believe we are talking about not even a hundred years ago, but boy have things ever changed.

 
 
 
Dowser
Sophomore Quiet
link   Dowser  replied to  Larry Hampton   8 years ago

Yes!  The 1930s saw a huge increase in electricity in homes and indoor plumbing.  I think that was one of FDR's deals.  Rural electric companies and indoor plumbing.  I'm thinking of the TVA, for one.

 
 
 
Kavika
Professor Principal
link   Kavika     8 years ago

I wonder if she spoke Minnesotan to the New Yorkers....Yabetcha.

 
 

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