My great-grandfather John Sebastian Sehnert was an odd man. From his earliest childhood, people shook their heads and said he was bound to come to no good. He was an idler, a woolgatherer, indifferent to authority, dreamily impervious to punishment, unintimidated by anybody else’s opinions. At school, he insisted on re-Germanizing his name, pronouncing it in the heaviest Teutonic accent he could muster: yo-hann say-BOSH-tyan. When the other kids made fun of him he just laughed and repeated their jokes himself. That was how his friends and even his family came to call him Bosh.
It was his father who put an end to this career. J.L. understood laziness all too well, but he wasn’t going to watch any son of his make a fool of himself. So he took Bosh into the family business and gave him the one job everybody thought he could handle: deliveryman.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Twice a week Bosh loaded up a big beer wagon and drove its horses between Edwardsville and Pierron and Highland. To be fair, it wasn’t as easy as it sounds. The roads hadn’t changed much since the days of the first settlers. They were fine in the summer, baked solid by the sun and softened by dust; they were passable in winter, after the ruts had been filled in with ice and hard-packed snow. But the thaws of spring and the long rains of fall made them a soupy misery: a journey of a few hours could turn into a day and night of torture as the wagon lurched from one bottomless mud hole to the next. Bosh took pride in his skill at maneuvering through these obstacles, but what he liked most was the solitude–usually he rode alone, with a shotgun in case of hijackers, and he had nothing to do except watch the familiar hills and forests drift past.
Her name was Agnes Gross. She had just turned 21; she was broad and big-boned, with a flat nose, a wide, plain face, and masses of dull brown hair. She had a spectacular temper. No one was better at conveying furious resentment at Franciska’s demands; and her look of sullen hatred whenever J.L. contrived to be alone with her was enough to get even an elephant like him to shy off. But she had one other quality that trumped any of her defects in the Sehnerts’ eyes: she had a limitless capacity for hard work.
Bosh and Agnes were married in March 1902. The custom of a church wedding with the bride in white wasn’t common then among German Catholics; the service was at the priest’s house and Agnes proudly wore a new blue dress. The wedding day was brilliant–cloudless, windy, and warm, the first thaw of spring. The streets of Edwardsville became rivers of mud and Bosh’s skill as a driver failed him–a few blocks from home the bridal carriage got stuck up to its axles. His efforts to free it grew so ornately frantic that the whole wedding party was caught up in a wave of giddy hilarity, and everyone arrived at the priest’s house disheveled, mud-spattered, and teary-eyed with laughter.
The house was on Brown Street, a quiet residential street on the southeast side of town. It was a squat, solid brownstone–a solemnly respectable place where the blinds had been kept drawn and the afternoon stillness was deepened by the tock of the grandfather clock. But J.L. liked things lively. He filled the house with family and friends: three generations of Sehnerts and a floating population of visitors, houseguests, and out-of-town cousins. It was a rare meal when 15 or 20 people didn’t sit down together at the dining room table.
