Stepputtis
My dad ran a lumberyard and hardware store in town. And the company he worked for owned a farm I don’t remember which direction. The man, Emil, and his wife, Sofia lived in the house. She was an invalid - she was on the couch in the dining room the whole time. We used to go out there, and he really liked my brother and I. He was from Germany. I remember he had a little accordion he gave us, and our mother made us give it back to him.
He had several older kids. Mother got acquainted with the youngest daughter, Elza, who was 18. Mother was only 26 when this happened, and I was eight-years old. Max was seven. I think our car was a ’32 Chevy. Elza, the youngest gal, had just gotten out of high school. She had just gotten married to a boy named Elmo. They were using her dad’s car, and he wanted it back. They wanted to come to town for a basketball game that night. So mother said, “Just take the car home, and I will come and get you.”
That’s why we were there. In these old farmhouses you just went in the back door all the time. We went into the dining room. One of Emil’s sons and the son's wife were there, too. Elza and her new husband had gone in the bedroom to pack a few things. And the father, his last name was Stepputtis. Anyway, the father came out and told Mother, “Take the children and get out.” She didn’t know what to think, she looked at the daughter-in-law, everybody just kind of wondered what was going on. The next thing we know, we heard shots. Mom grabbed Max and I and ran out the back door. I remember running out the back door. I jumped off the back porch, there was no railing. It seemed like I was floating. Mother had to start the car and turn it around because it was not headed toward the road. Then Stepputtis came out with the gun and his son fell right in front of our car. Mom drove around him. I don’t know if he was shot then, but Stepputtis was shooting at him when we left. The son had drawn his legs up towards his chest.
What happened was, when we left the house, the daughter-in-law was in there. But I saw her crouching down behind a cowshed and that’s the last thing I saw when we left. I guess the father went back in the house and shot himself. But we were already gone.
At home the newspaper people were swarming around, and we had a gal who was a friend of Mother’s and she was there. Dad said don’t let any of the reporters in, and he set off to the Sheriff’s. It was really cold that February, so they let one reporter in. That’s where the news came from. Mom’s picture was in the paper. They took snapshots of Max and I. It was quite a write up and a dig deal.
You know what – that night, Max and I didn’t realize, I don’t think, what was going on. We just thought there’s a bunch of people out there. I did not think about that for years and years and years. And I never talked about it. Until one day at work at Tony’s sometime in the 70s this all came back to me. And I went in the nurse’s office and talked about it.
I’ll tell you what, this is just something that everybody decided later. He didn’t want to be left alone with an invalid wife to take care of. His daughter that got married was the baby of the family and was going to move away, so he wouldn’t have any help. He killed both Elza and Elmo, but he didn’t shoot his wife. Everyone said he just blew up. But while Emil was in the hospital - he didn’t die for two days - he said he was glad he did it, and he would’ve like to have gotten them all.
I remember going to the funeral, but I don’t remember where it was. I don’t know. I don’t know. It would be interesting to go to that cemetery to see if there were headstones at the family plot. Could still be people with that name in the vicinity.