Slovene Runs Deep In Mary Staut

Article from Agri-View Newspaper, dated December 7, 1985

Transcribed by Shari Volovsek Hahn.

Mary Staut

Willard, Clark Co., WI—

Unincorporated Willard. Just a fly speck on the map in western Clark County. Nothing earth-shaking ever happens in Willard. Dogs bark, kids play, on Sunday people worship in the church. It’s the people in those pews, though, that set this sleepy farming community apart.

They look like the people in nearby Greenwood or Christie. Yet they’re apart. It’s their Slovenian blood, some purer than others’. For the fourth-generation children, it mingles with that of Wisconsin’s other nationalities. Though diluted, the Slovenian pulse remains strong.

Willard was, before the 1960s, the largest Slovenian farming community in the nation, with 200 families whose roots ran deep, back to that northernmost province in Yugoslavia. Though the younger ones left to seek their fortunes, many stayed on the land. Many traditions have stayed with them.

Mary Staut is Slovenian. Her husband, Janvid, a retired farmer and tool and die maker, still speaks with the accent of his boyhood in the mountainous old country. Mary’s mother, 92-year-old Anna Volovsek, lives with them. Anna, the last of the original Willard pioneers, sits at a card table in Mary’s living room, her head bent over books and magazines written in her mother tongue.

It’s potica (pronounced poe-tee-sa) making day at Mary’s. Baking the Christmas bread with its walnut and raisin filling is almost instinctive with Slovenians. Mary makes hers early and sends it UPS to her daughter in Colorado. In her mind, her sons are well cared for. Both married Slovenia-born girls, who, no doubt, lovingly make potica for their husbands.

"We kids used to sit under the table when mother made it and wait for the raisins to fall on the floor," says Mary, 1 of 11 children who slept with her sisters and brothers, dormitory style, in 1 of 2 log cabins on her parents’ homestead. "We used to wake up and hurry to run down to the barn, because it was a lot warmer," she explains briskly. "My father said a barn will build a house, but a house won’t build a barn. And the cows were in the new barn for Thanksgiving of the first winter."

Mary’s parents migrated to Willard, like most of the originals. They saw an ad in the Slovenian newspaper that there were farms for sale. Willard was someplace they could go and thrive in their traditions. Nine-year-old Mary went with them to the farm they bought in 1928, only to lose during the Depression. But, undaunted, they rented farms later.

Their children and grandchildren write about them in "Spominska Zgodovina" (meaning historical memories), a 220-page book with over 00 photographs salvaged from shoeboxes and yellowed, tattered albums from throughout the community. The inscriptions reads: "This Willard history is written in honor of our pioneering parents who tackled the forests and sod to make beautiful farms. With hard work, good upbringing of children, interest in social activities, they left a proudly developed area."

After the lumber company moved out, says Mary, "They paid down on property with their last pennies, so they couldn’t return. They rolled up their sleeves and brushed a little bit." Mostly iron and coal miners, they left the bowels of the earth to till its outer layer.

Mary is perhaps one of the most enthusiastic Slovenians, more excited perhaps than her mother about the past. Mary is a dyed-in-the-wool Slovenska Druzba member. That’s simply Slovenian for Slovenian Club, which has 200 members scattered throughout the nation, but whose heart remains pumping in Willard. The club, which celebrated its 10^th anniversary recently, meets four times a year. Members schedule their vacations so they can return to the gatherings, almost like homing pigeons. A pet project of the club is to renovate the old land office in Willard as an historical museum. This is no flyl-by-night group. They bring in musical groups straight from Yugoslavia.

"Music is one of the strongholds that keeps us all together," says Mary, with enthusiasm boosted by three trips to visit shirttail relatives in northern Yugoslavia, on the Austrian border. "I’ve always been interested (in Slovenian fold customs), but now that I’ve seen the country…the beauty of the country is indescribable, the mountains and valleys," she gushes. "The hospitality and friendliness of the people is not something you can find everywhere." Pulling out shoe box after shoe box of postcards, Mary points out that she corresponds at Christmas with at least a dozen cousins over there.

Mary, who’s up on the Slovenian national flower (which is, by the way, is the carnation), who taught "fourth-generation girls" to sing four Slovenian songs for the club’s anniversary doings, and who hollers at her husband in Slovene when she’s mad, is perhaps more Slovenian than the ones living in Slovenia. She admits she was somewhat disappointed in the natives’ dismemberment from their folk customs. Instead, she says dejectedly, they choose to be "modern".

Mary was the oldest girl in her large family. Because her father sometimes had trouble with his English, he’d dictate letters to her, which she’d translate in to the family’s new language. Funny, how things work out. Her early learned ability to translate from Slovene to English led to her marriage.

"I met my husband when I was working in Milwaukee. He was rooming with friends of my family, who was a shoemaker. I had a pair that needed fixing, and I went over there and here he was, sitting on the porch, trying to make conversation with the shoemaker’s daughter," Mary explains. "He couldn’t talk much English and she didn’t know any Slovenian." Mary knew both, "And that’s the start of what he’d say was ‘trouble’." Mary confides that she always wanted to marry a man from the old country.

So Mary talks of the past as if it just happened yesterday, as she rolls out a massive lump of potica dough to the size of her dining room table. She smears on the walnut paste and briskly sprinkles on raisins. She takes two corners of the sheet on which the precious potica rests and nudges it forward, slowly rolling the dough into a long log. It’ll be cut to fit into bread loaf pans.

She gingerly snips her potica and gently places the dough in the pans. Baked and wrapped, a loaf of potica will be sent across the U.S. to another Slovenian family, far from Willard. That family will remember, as the Christmas bread of their ancestors is enjoyed, the people whose Slovenian heritage they share.

Potica Abounds During Holidays In Slavic Area

By Jane Fyksen, Associate Editor, Agri-View newspaper, dated 12/7/1985

It wouldn’t be Christmas at Willard—a Clark County farming community with a heavy Slovenian population—without warm loaves of potica passed among friends and accompanied by hot, spiced wine.

Mary Staut, a member of the Willard Slovenian club and daughter of the last living local pioneer, is a potica maker from way back. She talks about Christmas customs in the northern province of Yugoslavia and shares her sacred formula for the delicious, walnut-filled bread.

The nativity scene is central to the Slovene celebrations. In the old country, candles were burned all night in front of the manger. On Christmas Eve, the Slovenians, who are usually Catholic, would incense every room of the house and barn. They prayed the rosary to insure a bountiful year.

It’s believed that on Christmas Eve, the animals can talk because the lowly beasts were present at the birth of the Christ child. However, only the pure of heart and soul can hear them conversing.

Along toward midnight, the people would carry flaming torches in their trudge through the snow to midnight mass. They’d have hot, spiced wine, which Mary calls "pink tea." She recalls that one Christmas the choir was served hot tea at the parsonage. "We sure sang our best at the last mass, by golly!" Mary recalls with a smile.

Now the official winter holiday is New Year’s Day in the communist bloc country. Mary doesn’t like to talk about the government of her sacred homeland. She says the people fear a Russian invasion. The people, around New Years’, put up a tree, called a jelka and the children receive gifts from Dede Mraz, who is granddaddy frost.

"We had no money, but I remember most, the house parties. People would come on horses and sleds," she says, of the merrymaking and potica eating during her girlhood. "They were hard times, but still happy times, because everybody was in the same boat."

"People would take the railroad handcar in the early days of Willard and get groceries, bringing back 50 pounds of flour and 100 pounds of sugar on their backs, following paths through the woods." Their back probably ached, but the pain was worth it to have the ingredients for future loaves of potica.

Here’s Mary’s recipe for potica:

Dough: Dissolve 2 ounces compressed yeast, or 3 packages dry yeast, in ¾ cup lukewarm water and ½ cup sugar. Scald 2 cups rich milk in which is dissolved ¼-pound butter. When cool, add 5 egg yolks and beat well. Add 2 tablespoons brandy (optional). Sift 6-8 cups four; add 1 tablespoon salt; add yeast mixture and gradually add milk mixture. Work dough well in large bowl, beating with wooden spoon until bubbly in texture and falls easily from spoon, about 15-20 minutes. Dough should be fairly soft, yet still enough to handle with hands. Place in greased bowl, cover with cloth and let rise in warm place until doubled—about two hours. In the meantime, prepare filling.

The walnut grind is made the following way: Grind—1 ½ pounds walnuts, ¼-pound graham crackers, 1 cup dates and 1 cup raisins. Scald—2 cups milk (dissolve ½ cup honey in milk) and while hot, pour over ground ingredients; add—1/2 cup white sugar, ½ cup brown sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, ¼ teaspoon salt, grated rind of 1 lemon (do not omit), 2 egg yolks, 2 tablespoons brandy or rum extract (optional).

Filling: Stiffly beat 7 egg whites (5 left from making the dough). Fold egg whites into walnut mixture and spread on thinly rolled or stretched yeast dough. Sprinkle generously with raisins (white or dark). Roll tightly as for jelly roll, starting on widest side. Cut to fit into greased pans. Cover with cloth and let rise ½ hour. Bake in moderate oven at 350 degrees for one hour. Brush tops with melted butter before and after baking. Invert on cooling racks to cool. Makes four pans. Freezes well.