The manger that holds the sweet head of the little Lord Jesus each year at the historic St. Victoria Catholic Church was built by Ray Schmieg in the prime of his life as a Victoria carpenter, back in 1953.
The stars in the heavens
looked down where He lay,
The little Lord Jesus
asleep on the hay.
"I know it was 1953 because that's when Father Bernardine came here," stated the man well acquainted with the priests and dates and ways of his church.   "Father Bernardine asked me to build that manger.  You wanna know how much it cost?  It cost me 75 cents for the paint to paint it."
Ray smiles at the remembrance of it.  Being frugal was a virtue in the old days, both at church just up the hill, and at home just down the hill, with probably less than a whole block between them the way the crow flies.  Providing for thirteen children required prudence in all ways and all places.
The cattle are lowing;
the poor baby wakes,
But little Lord Jesus,
no crying He makes.
"I carried wood for the manger home from the willow marsh," continued Ray.  "I cut birch trees.  That marsh is in a hole in the back end of Deer Run now."
Frannie remembers well that cold winter day.  "I remember when he went out to cut the wood because he had to walk through the cold.  It was so cold, and I was worried about him because he was gone a long time and he had to carry it all home."  She shivered at the thought of it.
"It was a long ways back in there," explained Ray about the long time in getting back to the house.
I love you, Lord Jesus,
look down from the sky
And stay by my cradle
till morning is nigh.
Ray knew about that stand of birch trees because it was located on the farm where he grew up, down by Church Lake Boulevard, also known as County Road #43.  "It didn't have a name then," he said.  "It was just a gravel road that went between our house and our barn.  When we were filling silo, we'd lose some corncobs on that road, and our chickens would find it and stop to eat it and people would come up fast over the hill and run over them.  Then we'd have two to three chickens to eat at one time.  Ma would clean 'em up right away and we'd have 'em for dinner."
Not much ado was made about road kill when it landed on the table instead of the ditch in those days of the 1930's and '40's.  And since Ray is the oldest of seven brothers and sisters -- only half the size of his own brood, but still rather significant -- there weren't leftovers after the chicken dinner.

Ray and Frannie married in 1948 and soon had mouths to feed of their own.  For many of the years between their firstborn and their thirteenth child, there was a standing order at Mackenthun's Butcher Shop, which was located on the Main Street of St. Bonifacius at that time.
"They kept a slip up on their wall at the shop with our list on it, and when I called they put our order together," said Ray.  "We'd call 'em up and say we wanted meat.  We did that every month."
He remembers the order, exactly:  50 pounds of hamburger, 48 pork steaks, 5 beef roasts, 15 pounds of breakfast sausage, 6 rings of bologna and 2 rolls of summer sausage.  "It lasted one month," said Ray.  "That's three meals a day."  He said these meat orders were placed in the time period of the 1960's.
"It was three meals a day all year 'round," explained Frannie, "because the kids used to walk home from school for lunch."
"Our table was 3 feet by 6 feet for the 15 of us, with Steve at the bread board," said Ray, "and today our table is 4 feet by 6 feet with only the two of us!"
"We went through 148 half-gallons of milk a month," he added.  "Our milkman said he was going to have that ticket framed."
"Our milkman was Willie Heger," said Frannie, who was always home when the milk was delivered ... and served ... and poured ... and drank.  "We had Willie Heger as our milkman for 53 years, and now his grandson Mike Heger is our milkman.  They're out of the Oak Grove Dairy at Chaska."
"We also bought five chickens every month," continued the chief cook and bottle washer about their monthly menu.  "We could buy old laying hens for a dollar apiece.  I made homemade soup.  It was delicious."
For the first ten years of married life, the family lived in, what is today, the Jendro house, where Frannie prepared her meals on a cook stove and in an oven that was also heated with wood.  But there was no running water.  "We had a rainwater cistern that we had to fill once a month," said Ray.  "We ordered a thousand gallons from Watertown and they brought it in by truck."
For the next few years, the family lived in a basement house that Ray built on the first lot in Victoria Circle, until there was enough capital to build the floor above them.  Running water and a propane gas stove and oven came with the new kitchen plans.
To this day, one of Frannie's favorite kitchen signs reads:  "Good bread, good meat, good gosh, let's eat!"

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