The Life of The Mother of My Mother

She was a tough but sweet woman.

Elma was born in a hotel room, in the still frontier of west-central Minnesota, just thirty years after the civil war was over, to immigrants from Norway. The hotel was owned by her parents; they had established it on a rail line, between Wadena and Fergus Falls.

"Make up all the rooms on the top floor," their mother would tell her brother Oscar, "And you can do the same with those on the first floor," to the Elma, my grandmother.

My great-grandparents had come from Norway, by steam ship, but had sent their furniture and most of their other belongings over by sail ship. The steam ship got here all right; but the sail ship sank in a North Atlantic storm.

"And make sure all the rooms have water!" said their mother, "And wood for the heater stoves."

They had brought over just enough money to build a hotel in this Norwegian settlement, living well enough while the tracks were still used. When Oscar was old enough to go off on his own, he set up a hotel in western North Dakota, on the rail line, in the early 1900's; my grandmother came out to help him for a while. He married a girl from Anoka, Minnesota. I'm not sure if he just met her traveling; her family had moved there; or he had met her on a trip to the twin cities. Grandmother Alma met my grandfather Henry there, though. He wanted to homestead some land out there.

Henry had come from a farm in Granite Falls, Minnesota. His father had been married to a woman who bore him six children, dying having the sixth one. She had been sick during much of her pregnancy, having a hired girl of about twenty, helping her around the house. When his wife died, he married the hired girl, not having much time to go courting, nor even watching kids since he was busy farming all day. They had fifteen children, my grandfather being one of them.

Henry and Alma got married; moved to Canada; homesteading land there; but then moving back to Eastern Montana, to a farm near Plentywood. My mother's younger sister Florence was born there; my mother Hazel had been somehow born in North Dakota, her older brother Lyle having been born in Canada.

When mom was about three, the family went to a fair. They had to park quite away from the midway, so they had a long walk to get there. Mom decided she was not going to walk that far, so she sat down. Grandma and Grandpa were not going to pick her up, she had to walk. But, little Hazel was not going to. They walked up to the carnival lot, looking back, now and then, she sitting there looking at them. They got to a tent, walked to the front of it so to obscure the view. After a few seconds, they look back around the tent: the three year old was still sitting out there. They always wondered where I got my orneriness from. Grandpa just gave up, and went back to pick her up.

Going to school, the kids had to ride horses, it being too far to walk. The school was a one-room shack at first, but later they built a much bigger brick building. One day Hazel was riding to school along with boy, who had been born in Germany, and did not know English well. Then the horse saw a snake. The horse bucked once, knocking the oats off. The horse bucked again, knocking my mother off. The horse bucked again, running off for home.

When the German boy got to school, the teacher asked him, "Lyle said you were with Hazel, where is she?"

"Oh!" said the boy, "The horse, a snake, she saw! The horse, the oats off, she bucked! The horse, Hazel off, she bucked! The horse, back home, she ran!"

About an half hour later, my mother finally got to school.

These were in the drought years. The fields did not produce much grain; certainly not enough to support the family; so grandpa Henry went to work on the railroad. When he was in the mountains, something serious happened to him. They put him in a hospital, saying he had an embolism. He lost strength rapidly, but managed to write to his wife what had happened to him, and that he might not be coming back home. He advised her to marry his brother Oscar.

Elma married Oscar quite soon after Henry died, since it was hard for Alma to run the farm, watching three children one under five. There sure wasn't any money for hired help. Yes, now we have two Oscars in the story. But I won't mention my great-uncle again until just near the end, and I will call him great-uncle Oscar, and my step grandfather, I will just call Oscar. He was grandpa to me; only when I got a little older did I hear about my grandfather Henry.

The drought was even worse now. They planted wheat two years in a row, not getting back as much grain as they had put in for seed. They moved back to Minnesota. Oscar worked out as a hired man for about a year. My mother completed High School in Granite Falls, but when Oscar got a job with the phone company in Grove City, they moved to Litchfield. Mom, still single, moved with them. She met my father, who was living in Litchfield too.

Oscar and Elma moved back to Granite Falls to farm with another of Oscar's brothers running their father's farm. My parents worked on a pipeline going to Chicago, moving to Cleveland, Ohio after that for a few years. My folks moved back to Minneapolis in 1944. I was four when my sister was born in 1945. I stayed with Oscar and Alma, because my mother was having a hard pregnancy.

I always called Oscar grandpa; not even knowing he wasn't my 'real' grandfather, until I got older. One day when I was there, I was crying for some reason, I sure don't remember why, but grandma could not get me to shush up. She picked me up, standing my a window, she pointed to the barnyard. She said, "Look! there is a bull over there and if he hears you, he will come and get you!" Even though I don't remember why I was crying, I do remember her telling me that. It did not make me quit crying though. Grandma just sat me down on the floor and said "Ok, just keep crying then, I don't care." Sure enough, soon I got tired of crying, something else taking my attention.

One day, Oscar and Elma had to go somewhere; but they could not take me. They were trying to think where they could put me. I remember one of grandpa's brothers being there, and he said "Leave him with the Central in Clarkfield, she will know how to take care of the likes of him." Those were the days when the phones hung on the wall; to call somewhere one had to turn the crank on the side of it. The phone wire ran from your place to a number of other places; so there were several phones on the same line. A party line they called it. Each of those phones had a certain ring. One person would have 'two short' meaning there were two short rings for that phone. Another might have 'a long, a short, and two longs' meaning their ring tone would be a long ring, a short ring and then two more long rings. Everyone on that party line could listen in on any of the others on that line. If you wanted to talk to your nearby neighbor, you would just ring his ring, and they would pick up. Often, though, other people would rubber neck, or pick up when they knew someone else was on the phone. If you rang just once, you would get the central operator, or just central. Central could hook you up to any of the other party lines connected to her switchboard; or she could connect you though to the trunk line to other cities. The operator, or central, would ring or would have another operator ring the called phone. They left me with one of grandpa's sisters, however.

Grandfather was county commissioner and grandmother was a LPN at a hospital in Clarkfield. The farming years were good, and they did quite well.

Later my mother, having a lot of problems with her fourth child, stayed with them, her three children farmed out to various relatives.

After a few years, they sold the rights to the farm to his brother, moving into Granite Falls. After living in Granite Falls for about a year, they bought a farm by Clarissa, Minnesota.

My brother, Gerry Al, helped them to get started, he was in the fifth grade. His name was Gerry Alfred, pronouncing the Gerry as Gary. My dad had filled out the birth forms, and thought that was the way it was spelled. One of Gerry Al's chores was to herd the sheep out of the corn field that had been harvested for silage, before dark. Oscar came in from milking, asking Alma if Gerry Al were in the house. "No," said Alma, "I thought he was out with you."

"No, I sent him out to bring the sheep in, and I see they are in the yard, but no Gerry Al."

Alma said "Is the buck with them, you know how ornery that buck is, you'd better check."

Oscar saw the buck wasn't there; he went to check out into the field. There was Gerry Al sitting on the bucks back, the buck just standing there, not knowing what to do. Gary Al said, "The buck started ramming at me; so I just got on its back, and then didn't dare get off."

After school was out Gary Al came home, and I went to help that summer, my cousin Rene was there too. One of our daily chores was to pick strawberries. Afterward grandma would always make strawberries and cream for us, using real cream from their farm. She took the strawberries into town every day, except Sunday, to sell to the produce buyer and to get a few groceries. One day, when I was trying to start their motorized reel lawn mower, I kept winding up the rope on the starting pulley, pulling on it, doing this over and over. I took the spark plug out and saw that it was flooded. When I was putting the spark plug back in, Rene asked, "Can I help?"

What I did next, I really shouldn't have done. I told Rene, "Here hold on to the top of the spark plug, while I pull the rope. I didn't think she really would; I mean, everybody knows how an engine works, don't they? She said, "You mean here?" Saying it oh so innocently. I just could not resist. I pulled the rope hard; she fell on the ground hard. She would not talk to me for the rest of the week, even when we went out to pick strawberries. I felt bad; but still, she did learn something after all; and life's lessons are not always easy. (I still have a mixture of guilt, and laughter over that.)

We moved up there the next year. I had moved home for two weeks, but then stayed with my grandparents again, starting high school in Clarissa. The rest of the family moved up there in November, after all the harvesting was done on the old farm in Cosmos. The idea was that I would not be pulled out of high school just after I started just to be put into another new one. From first though eighth grade, I had gone to a one-room country school.

After I had graduated for high school, my grandparents sold the farm, moving into Clarissa. When I was going to college, Alma's brother Oscar came to stay with them for a while, he had been staying in a retirement home, but he said he could not stand all the old geezers that lived there. Great-uncle Oscar lived with them for a couple years. I visited them on leave for the Navy. I ate supper with them one evening, my great-uncle mumbling things just about the audible level. Often he talked about riding horses, or hunting, but sometimes the mumbling took a sexual turn. Grandma, speaking rather loudly, would get his attention, bringing him back to the real world. A few days later, I had to start getting ready to go back to Long Beach, to a new ship, bound for Vietnam. I was driving my 1958 Chevy. My folks were there, as well as my youngest sister, and some of the neighbors. When I left, grandpa asked, "Do you think that car will make it all the way out to the coast?" I assured him the car would make it just fine.

After I was out of the Navy, I lived in Memphis for a while, then moved back to Minneapolis. When my son was born, Grandpa Oscar was one of the sponsors for baptism. We had been living in Minneapolis for about four years when I got a call from grandma Alma. Grandpa was starting to die; maybe I should come up there; and "Tell your brothers and sisters too."

It took three hours to drive from Minneapolis; he had died before I had gotten there.

Grandma soon distributed all of her stuff at that time. I got some pottery and a few other things, including the picture shown here. She moved to Granite Falls, moving into a living assistance home. My cousin Rene came in from California to see Grandma. She had me drive her out there from Minneapolis.

Rene did not like the way Grandma looked. She said, "She is not going to live much longer. I sure wish I could be here to see her more often."

She died in that home in Granite Falls a few weeks later, her son Lyle nearby, as well as many of her nieces and nephews, with others on their way.

Alma was buried in the Bergen Lutheran Church out in the country, not too far from their old farm, and next to her Oscar. I had gone to Sunday school there when I stayed with them when my sister was born.

She was a tough but sweet woman.