Grandma Cree and her Bread

Memories of Cree Probst as told by Glen W. Probst:

Cree Probst and her fresh homemade bread, circa 1964. 

Mom would have been 69 years old. These pictures were taken by Perry Lee, brother of Pres. Harold B. Lee.

He wanted to do an article for the Church News.

Arrangements were made for him to contact Mom and Dad through Madelyn and Marilyn who were working in the Church Offices at the time.

I think she made about five loaves of bread in each batch. She made them at least weekly and maybe twice a week when more of us children were at home. I remember her baking bread in the old coal burning kitchen stove back in the 1940s. We used to lean on it and eventually the round bar across the front became bowed inward from our weight over the years.

She probably gave a loaf away from time to time, but I think we consumed it too fast. She would have never sold such an item, and I don't think she ever entered it in the fair. She may have displayed it at Swiss Days back in the late forties. The first Swiss Day celebration was held in 1947.

Occasionally I got in trouble for eating the bread. I always cut the four sides (crusts) off and sometimes the tops, and Mom got after me for that. I really don't think she minded, but had to make a fuss about it just the same. Often I would sneak a loaf of bread, take it upstairs, and enjoy nibbling at it over the next several days. I remember on one occasion taking a one-quart jar of Mom's home bottled peaches, some bread, and walking up through the field to a secluded, sunny, and nice grassy spot on the bank of the Big Ditch, sitting down, and enjoying some wonderful homemade food! I was always a hungry teenager in those days. 

We always kept a bottle of cold water in the fridge to drink from. We all drank from it by pouring a cup of water from it. However, eventually I just began drinking straight from the bottle, and everyone else avoided it from then on. When my college friend and roommate, Theo Williams, would go to Midway and stay the weekends with us, he also would drink from the "community jug."