Reiss Dairy: Famous for milk bottles with poems - Tapa blanda

Reiss Dairy is the third book in this series. It is a history of the Reiss Dairy in Sikeston, Missouri which was founded in 1935 by third generation John Reiss and his son-in-law, Lonnie Standley. The dairy is famous for milk bottles featuring poems created by Sikeston citizens to promote Reiss Dairy products. The best of these bottles now sell on eBay for over $200. It Takes A Matriarch was the second of four books about the extended Reiss and Basler families who settled on a small farm in St. Clair County, Illinois in 1834 and 1839, respectively. It includes 780 letters saved by first generation Margaret Basler Reiss Ebert from 1852 to 1888. Some letters were phonetic English but most had to be translated from "old" German. Authors were Margaret's siblings, their spouses, her children, their spouses, her grandchildren, and two friends. They mention serving in the Civil War, personal challenges, life in St. Louis and Sacramento and Davenport, and the lost family fortune. One author was friends with John Wilkes Booth who shot President Lincoln. Quilter, Granger, Grandma, Matriarch was the first of these four books. It is the daily diary of third generation Katie Reiss covering 1949 through 1953. It was published first to give the reader a feel for life on the Reiss Family Farm in the German heritage of southern Illinois. Katie and husband George Reiss doubled the original Reiss/Basler farm to its current 360 acres. Relatives gather for a reunion in June 2009 to celebrate 175 years of the ongoing existence of the Reiss Family Farm. Family, Farming, and Freedom will be the fourth book. It is 55 years of professional and personal writings by fourth generation Irv Reiss from 1949 to 2004. His favorite subjects were family fun and travel, restoring strip mined coal lands to productive farming, and promoting individual freedoms and responsibilities. He was my dad.

Stephen W. Reiss was born in California in 1944 while his dad Irwin was serving with the US Army in World War II in Burma (Myanmar). His family moved to Sullivan, Indiana in 1948 and visited the Reiss Family Farm near Belleville, Illinois dozens of times over the next 50 years. Steve joined Caterpillar Inc. in Peoria, Illinois in 1966 and recently retired after 40 years. He married his wife Diane in 1971 and they have two sons - Adam and his wife Heather in Springfield, Illinois and Grant and his fiancé Hany in Chicago.