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
Tags
Who is online
600 visitors
She looks like a really nice lady! Is that your grandmother?
No, not my grandmother, though she does indeed look like a nice lady.
Nice slice of life from a bygone era.
Some people are in awe of people and places and some people take things in stride.
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.
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.
I wonder if she spoke Minnesotan to the New Yorkers....Yabetcha.