Reminisce with Ann…

—Ann Kaiser, Editor

For over 38 years, Editor Ann Kaiser has opened each issue of Country Woman with a friendly note to readers. Here's one from the days when our magazine was called Farm Wife News. It's taken from the February 1977 issue.

From Our Kitchen to Your Kitchen
The past 6 months it seems like I’ve been seeing more of rural America than of my office here at Farm Wife News. Between working a day with a farm wife each month and speaking to rural groups at their various meetings and banquets, I’ve really been seeing America and its farm folks.

During most of the trips for speaking engagements, when an overnight stay is required, I stay in a farm home (by invitation) rather than a motel. I recently stayed with Joyce and Marshall Litchfield in their home near Macomb, IL, after speaking to the McDonough County Farm Bureau Women, of which Joyce is an officer. 

The Litchfields’ lovely home was “picked up for company” when I arrived.  Joyce later confided that the “middle son” of her three sons had been picking up his things earlier and grumbling, “Who is this Ann Kaiser, anyway, that we have to make this place so neat—some kind of queen?”

We chuckled over that, and although I didn’t let him know she’d told me, I did my best to convince him that I am just another “regular person” who usually likes that “lived-in look” just as much as he does.

Joyce drove me to the small Macomb airport the next morning to catch my flight back. It was a small plane, seating only 8 or 10 people. (You know it’s a small plane when the pilot handles the luggage himself!)

I climbed in to find I was the last passenger among a flight full of businessmen. The pilot saw me and said, “Good morning! The only seat we have left is the co-pilot’s, so if you would like to come up here and assist me…the pay isn’t too good, but the view is terrific.”

Wow!  What a treat it was for me to sit right up there and see everything going on. The pilot explained all those dials and some of the radio signals. As we talked, he asked what I had been doing in Macomb. I told him about the meeting the night before and said I was on the staff of Farm Wife News, “a magazine for rural women.”

“Oh, sure!” he said. “We get Farm Wife News!”  Well, I was floored—what a small world. A pilot who reads Farm Wife News! Turned out he and his two brothers, who are also pilots, own and operate a farm together, and their wives read FWN!  Things like that really keep the traveling interesting.

* * *
Here’s another experience I’d like to share with you…recently, I was setting up my slide projector in preparation for my talk to the Jackson Co. Homemakers in Black River Falls, WI. It was early and only a few women were trickling in.

One woman watched me a second, then said hello. I introduced myself, and she asked what I write for the magazine. Before I could answer, she said, “You know, I really get a kick out of that girl who goes around and works on farms. Do you know her?”

“Here she is!” I said. Surprised, she stammered a little and said, “Guess I just didn’t recognize you without your jeans.”

* * *
All this travel takes a lot of packing and unpacking, but it sure couldn’t be to meet with nicer people. Our staff members fit in as many speaking engagements as we can without jeopardizing our press deadlines and our families’ ability to recognize us. So maybe we’ll be seeing you at one of these rural meetings soon.

And, if we do have to turn down an invitation to be at your group meeting, it isn’t that we don’t want to come—it’s just that there are still only 24 hours in a day…