June 6th……..“THIS TIME, MY CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN, GRANDPA’S GOT A RIDDLE FOR YOU. WE HAD A ‘BANK’ ON OUR FARM, BUT IT DIDN’T HAVE GREEN DOLLAR BILLS OR EVEN COINS IN IT. WHAT WAS IT”?
Our corn was young and so was I as my bouncing boney boy butt did a jig upon the axletree of Dad’s little Farmall “B” tractor.
With his cornfields in their infancy, our farmer father had the wisdom that ‘too much of a good thing, isn’t good’ when it came to the type of tractor that he decided to use for cultivating the ubiquitous bane of weeds that grew between the corn rows. Later in the growing season, when the corn was much taller, Dad would likely use his larger Farmall “H” or “Super M”, but the “B” was today’s better choice of power. Snatching a handful of Mom’s scrumptious cookies, fresh out of her oven, Dad gave Mom a wink and a smile as the two of us farmer fellows headed out to the cornfield aboard our smallest tractor, the “B”.
With every passing year of growing up there on our farm, I saw it as a graduating honor each time Dad included me in one of his farming operations. It was like he would silently say to me, “Elliott, you’re growing up to the point that I can share thisagricultural experience with you now”!!! I was elated!!
Considering that 50 or 100 years prior to our dad and son day together, farmers had to hoe the weeds from their corn by hand. Eventually, in the late 1880’s, someone invented a horse-drawn, riding cultivator that could clean two rows of crop at at time. As to that day for us, in the early 1960’s, I found our cultivator on the “B” to be fascinating since it not only cleaned the weeds from between the corn rows, but also had shovel/shoes that came behind and re-dug the soil where the tractor tires had gone.
From my perfect perch on the iron ‘seat’ of the axletree, I enjoyed watching Dad as he mechanically lowered the plow-shoes of the cultivator into that fecund, ebony soil that enriched our farmer lives. With a little pull to the throttle, for speed, our Norwegian farmer daddy let out the clutch and we productively moved forward down our first of many swaths that dug up weeds and aerated the soil near these corn ‘children’ below us. A happy prairie wind skipped across the young corn plants that made their young, green arms ‘wave’ at us in their rows, just like a classroom of children would wave at their teacher as she’d walk by their rows of desks.
That was one perfect Minnesota day to be alive and thrive on this acreage that we called home! I had so much fun just watching and learning as Dad handled that tractor and its mounted cultivator like it was an extension of is own arms and legs. As we’d reach the end of a row, our handsome patriarch would quickly yank the digging shovels out of the ground and use the right or left brake of the tractor to make that little rig ‘spin on a dime’ just in time to drop the cultivator back into the soil for the next ‘cleaning’ swath. On the return swath, I remember looking in prideful amazement at how gorgeous our field appeared with weeds all gone between those finished rows and the soil basking in all its black, fertile glory.
While learning and loving our father/son time together, I noticed that there was some acreage alongside of us that was not planted in a crop that year. Inquisitive as I was, I leaned into Dad’s ear (so’s he could hear me above the tractor’s engine noise) and asked him, “Hey Dad, why don’t you plantcrops in that field, like you did here”?? Dad responded with the answer, “Because, Son, that’s called SOIL BANK”!!! Hmmmm???, the only ‘bank’ I knew of was The First National Bank in our hometown of Kiester. As we brought the “B” back to the farm yard for our noon dinner time (as Midwesterners call it), Dad was able to talk more freely without competition from the tractor’s engine. “You see, Son, The United States Department Of Agriculture knows that we American farmers are some of the world’s best producers of food, etc.. Sometimes, we even produce a bit too much product to the point of what’s called a surplus on the market. So, ‘Uncle Sam’ (our government) decided to pay farmer’s something called a “rental payment” for a certain percentage of acres to allow some of our land to take a rest for a year or two. They call this program “Soil Bank” because it reduces some of that excess product, still brings in some money for farmers and their families AND allows the soil to rest for a while to kind of regenerate rather than being worked every single year”. My, my, my …….little did this farmer boy know that we had a BANK right there on the property of this Norwegian Farmer’s Son!!! 😉
June 4th……..”HOW DID YOUR PARENTS CORRECT YOU AND YOUR SIBLINGS ON YOUR FARM THERE IN SOUTH CENTRAL MINNESOTA”??
Mom’s perfectly pulchritudinous peanut butter cookies pleasantly pervaded the premises of our humble farm home that day. And, like any ravenous young farmer boy, my nostrils locked on to the ‘beam’ from the steam that was still emanating from those savory homemade cookies as our sweet mother pulled them fresh from our combination wood-burning and gas driven oven. Ohhhh the ambrosia of those delectable, delicious delights that sat there in their splendor with Mom’s classic meat tenderizer mallet pattern that she pressed into each cookie.
With a herd of fifteen Holstein cows, down in our barn, I knew I had a never-ending supply of ice-cold milk waiting for me in the refrigerator to make a heavenly match of ‘white gold’ to wash down the stack of warm cookies I was about to consume in voracious abandon while I went into our cozy Living Room to watch cartoons.
It was the summer of 1963, and like many a little 9 year old boy on a Saturday morning, I grabbed a handful of Mom’s scrumptious peanut butter cookies and a tall glass of that cold, marvelous milk and settled myself down into Dad’s overstuffed easy chair in preparation to enjoy one of my cartoon heroes, “The Mighty Mouse Show”. Trotting across the linoleum floor of our little Living Room, I gave the ON/OFF knob a twist on our old black n white television set and heard the internal crackling of life as the picture tube came alive and began to glow with one of my favorite cartoons of those days.
Our big sister, Rosemary, in 1963, had just finished her Junior Year of High School, there in our hometown of Kiester, Minnesota and, like many a young adult through countless generations, was beginning to ‘push the envelope’ of challenging our parent’s God-given authority to “train us up in the way we should go” (Proverbs 22:6).
Pretty soon, above the antics of my cartoons on the TV, I began to hear a clashing of wills out in our Kitchen between Rosie and our mother, Clarice. Voice volumes, intensities and challenges to Mom’s authority, as ‘Queen Of The House’, reached a crescendo that our mother could no longer abide. Mom grabbed a nearby yardstick and was about to ‘correct’ our big sister in a distinct fashion. Rosie, realizing she had ‘met her match’, took off on a run for escape from that wooden version of discipline. At that precise moment in time, I had just walked over to the TV to change a channel when, spinning around, I saw big sister burst from the kitchen saying, “Don’t you dare spank me with that………..”!!! when KER-SWACK!!!! Mom swatted her teenage daughter with that yardstick that was so on target that it literally snapped in half on big sister’s ‘posterior motives’ as she squealed and ran upstairs to re-think what she had done to raise Mom’s ire!!! 😉 Myself? I laughed heartily!!! 😉
On the other side of that corrective ‘coin’, discipline had taught me a lesson a couple years earlier. I had been a Proverbs 22:15 kid cause I was being downright ‘foolish’ one day in our Kitchen. Having watched and absorbed so many family situation comedy shows on television, in those formative years of my life, it seemed that the children on some of those programs ‘got away with murder’ by just having an anger tantrum and storming off to their bedrooms to pout until mommy and daddy gave in to their whims and wishes. Well, little doofus Elliott figured, if those kids can get away with an anger tantrum, so can I!!!
Mom was over by the sink washing dishes, that afternoon, and Dad was sitting in his spot at the Kitchen table have his afternoon ‘lunch’ (as we Midwesterners called it) of coffee and cookies or a sandwich before going out to milk our cows. I opened the refrigerator door and was scrounging for something to eat when Mom said, “Now Elliott, close that refrigerator door and wait till supper or you’ll spoil your appetite”!! Well, with my vacuum cleaner type of tummy yearnings, that’s the last thing I wanted to hear! “Ahaaa”!! I thought to selfish self, “I’ll just throw a tantrum like that TV kid did on the show lastnight”!! So, I hauled off and slammed that refrigerator door so hard, you could hear food containers rattling against each other inside. In a micro-second, Dad launched from his chair by the table and had one muscular hand on the back of my neck with his other powerful hand picking me up off the floor by my gluteus maximus (butt) cheeks!!!!
I am now, literally FLYING aboard ‘angry daddy airlines’ as Dad flies me to the corner downstairs bedroom and throws me over his knee. That massive, iron Norwegian hand of his began to make my backsides wiggle like a bowl full of jello with every intense indicator that what I had just pulled back in the Kitchen was NOT acceptable behavior for his son!!! And, ohhhhhhh did he EVER get his point across to my ‘base’ understandings ‘down there’!!! Heheheh 😉
As I was getting that intense correction to my attitude and behavior, I was saying to myself, “Heyyyy, that sure didn’t turn out like it did on TV last night”!!!??
Even as a child, I knew without a doubt that our parents didn’t hate us. As a matter of fact, they spent their entire lives doing their best to show us God’s love and care for us. It’s just that they, with their Christian convictions of living life according to God’s Word, they knew that we, at times, needed to be corrected so that we would learn to travel in life’s best pathways that would come back to bless us later in life. So, for those loving parents, I will always be one very grateful Norwegian Farmer’s Son!!! 😉 ><>
June 3rd……..POEM – “Upon An Electric Fence” written by N. Elliott Noorlun in 2013. Before you enjoy this poem, realize that our farmer daddy deeply loved all of his children, including me. And, with his decades of farming experience, he fully knew that the jolt I’d receive from touching our cow-lane’s electric fence that day would last about a second or two, at the most!! And, as he defended himself to our mother later that day, he said, “Awww, I was just trying to teach him something about farming life”!!! Well, he DID!! Sixty plus years later, I can still feel that SHOCK as if it were yesterday and it DID teach me, VERY well, to have a high respect for electricity!!! 😉
This tiny lad, Walked with his dad, In days back on our farm.
I had a peace, On life’s new lease, That I would see no harm.
Except the time, Dad did the ‘crime’, Of teaching me, Post hence,
To lay that blade, Of wet grass laid, Upon our electric fence!!
My eyes did ‘LIGHT’, And I filled with fright, As farmer tot of 3 or 4,
That this lesson hard, In our cow-yard, I’d ne’er repeat NO MORE!!
June 2nd………“AS A LITTLE BOY ON YOUR FARM, DID OUR GREAT GRANDPA RUSSELL EVER LET YOU BE IN HIS WORKSHOP AND PLAY/WORK WITH HIS TOOLS”?
The workshop of Elliott’s father, Russell, sits next to their two row corn picker. Circa 1959.
A little boy’s jewels are his daddy’s tools!! 😉 So it was, at least, for this little farmer boy clad in my cherished bib overalls that were just like those my hero wore. That hero, of course, was my handsome farmer father, Russell Conrad Noorlun. If ever there was a testosterone-tested territory for a boy, it was our dad’s workshop there on our farm just three miles northwest of Kiester, Minnesota.
In the twilight of many an evening, I could see an amber glow emanating from the little windows on the north and south sides of Dad’s modest-sized, white wooden shop building. When our father’s repair projects were too large, on those evenings when God’s spotlight of sun had gone down, Dad relied on the tungsten lamp, within a white porcelain shroud that hung over the shop’s entry door.
I suppose, that if I had been raised by a fisherman, I’d be in love with fishhooks, tackleboxes and outboard motorboats. But, for this little boy of the fecund farmlands of southern Minnesota, I was raised on all things from fragrant black soils to fragrant lilacs and even fragrant cow-pies that had to be cleaned out of the barn and hauled out to the fields in our manure spreader towed by a Farmall. 😉 Therefore, it was other fragrances that easily caught my nostrils as I’d step inside Daddy’s ‘man-cave’. The aromas of wood shavings, used motor oil, grease for Zerk-fittings by the five gallon buckets full, arc welding equipment and so much more caught me up in their aura and transported me into the realm of Dad’s world as he’d ‘doctor’ our broken machinery.
Elliott’s talented dad sits on one of his creations. Sister, Candice, and niece, Debbie, enjoy his finished “flat rack”, too! 😉
What intrigued me by far, though, were the myriad of tools that Dad possessed and guarded dearly within the male-motivated kingdom of his workshop. Claw hammers, sledge hammers, cold chisels and wood chisels, etc. hung in profuse abundance from either his wall pegboards or tucked into heavy-duty bench drawers. I was always in awe of the seemingly limitless array of wrenches, and sockets and ratcheting jimmeebeewhobbers that my farmer daddy used with the deftness of a surgeon in a hospital to make any machine with an ‘oweee’ feel better and perform again like new.
Tiny tool terror, Elliott, at the time of ripping apart that small engine. Circa 1960.
Dad put his tools and talents to use on a regular basis in the barter & trade agrarian rural culture we lived in. Out of respect and caring for each other, every farmer was brother to another farmer and ‘If youscratch my back, I’ll be sure to scratch yours!’ was the unspoken motto of fellow farmers all around us!!! Our father often did welding repairs for our neighboring farmer, Charlie Heitzeg and his son, Louie. They, in turn, used the massive scoop bucket on their John Deere tractor and made sure to keep our yard clear of snow after we were hit with heavy blizzards in the winter months. I was always impressed with the win/win solutions and good-hearted way the entire community got along to each other’s benefits.
There came a day when I was enjoying a hunt and peck in Dad’s shop and saw an old lawnmower engine that seemed to be abandoned. Running down to the barn, I found Dad and asked permission if I could have the engine and take it apart. Our patriarch’s answer was, “Sure, Elliott, have fun”!!! AND I DID!!! NOW I had a real project to use for all those grand tools of my dad’s collection!! Out came screwdrivers, hammers, open end/box end wrenches, pry bars, socket sets, you name it, I used it. Only problem was, when my mechanical ‘autopsy’ was completed, I had not the slightest idea how to put it all back together again!!! Ohhh wellll, but, it SURE was a LOT of fun for this Norwegian Farmer’s Son!!! 😉
June 1st………POEM – “Have A Grateful Memorial Day” by N. Elliott Noorlun written in 2013. Did you know that the word “holiday” is actually constructed of two words? “Holy” (to be separate) and “Day”. Even though May 31st was our official Memorial Day, I wanted to share this poem I created back in 2013 to at least suggest that a better greeting for this “Holy” “Day” would be better characterized by the words …….”Have a GRATEFUL Memorial Day”!!! ><>
I hesitate to say “HAPPY”, In describing Memorial Day,
“GRATEFUL” is a better choice, Of greeting that we should say.
For these dear souls, Faced pain of death, In freedom’s noble cause,
And coupled with, Their family’s pain, Gives sober thought and pause.
We, today, can sing within, A song of honored praise,
For giving of their last, Earthly will, In courage they did raise,
To sacrifice in blood, For friends and freedom’s call,
Against the foe, Did forward go, And thus in battle did fall.
As a nation, I pray, That we can say, We’ll return to this day’s true meaning,
It’s not about sales, Or picnic’s tales, But should take on a holy leaning.
May 31st……...”ON THIS MEMORIAL DAY, DID YOU KNOW OF SOMEONE, FROM YOUR HOMETOWN OF KIESTER, MINNESOTA THAT DIED WHILE FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM’S CAUSE”?
Daryl Garvick is second from far left in this happy, chaotic shot of us all getting the whistle to RASSLE!
‘Bulldogs’ exploded in every sweaty direction possible!!!
But before you say, “Who let the dogs out”? I’m talking about Kiester High School Wrestling Team ‘Bulldogs’, that is!!! 😉 All our coach had to do was put us with a fellow teammate on the mats below us, blow his whistle and the male mayhem erupted into a chaotic clenching of collegiate clobbering as we’d try to pin our buddy’s shoulders to the mat for points and the approval of our adult mentors.
The school year of 1966 – 1967 was chock-full of fun for all of us under the great coaching of Mr. Parker and Mr. Koenck. We were all young bucks and full of spunk for learning the skills of wrestling and burning off youthful energy at the same time.
Daryl’s Junior Class photo at Kiester High School.
There, in that subterranean wrestling chamber, I got to know a fine upper classman that you just couldn’t help but like. On February 22nd of 1949, a fellow, local Norwegian farm family saw the birth of a son, Daryl Ray Garvick enter their world. Full of the zest for life and all the joys within it, Daryl possessed a personality that I easily gravitated to. He, and his younger brother, Dale, rode our school bus each day and I can still see long-legged Daryl make a leap for the school bus steps and launch up inside that metal, ‘yellow banana’ looking for his buddies at the back of the bus. His searching eyes spied his pals in the back seats, but he always found time to greet this underclassman as he flew past my bus seat each day.
As that 1966-67 school year moved farther into fall, I made sure to sign up for being on our school’s wrestling team. Reflecting back on those days, I ponder now on who, what or why I was inspired to seek a place on the ‘Bulldog’ Matmen’s team. But, there I was, and glad to be a part of the testosterone-laced atmosphere as we all poured out sweat like a faucet while writhing in tense, tangled training on the spongy mats in what appeared to have been a former Boy Scout/Cub Scout meeting room there at Kiester High School.
A statue depicting soldiers during the Vietnam War in Southeast Asia.
We ate up the adventures of being a team and striving for the same goal of scoring the highest points and winning against any and all school rivals from our southcentral Minnesota area.
Snack Attack for Elliott and Daryl 😉
Daryl, being the gracious upper classman he was, would make the quick hike with me, up to Kiester Food Market on those out of town wrestling meets, so that I could stock up on a box of “Chicken In A Biscuit” crackers and a big bottle of Mountain Dew to wash those snacks down as we’d race back to the bus in time to enjoy traveling to a nearby farming community to gain another victory in wrestling by our ‘Bulldogs’!! 😉
Being that I was only 12 years old in 1966, I was still not quite with the times as far as closely following the media about the growing conflict in a part of the world known as Vietnam. Oh sure, our father, Russell, watched the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite nightly, but, for myself, what I knew of that escalating military engagement had not yet really gained a foothold on my young mind’s focus or understanding.
With the wrestling season now past, Daryl went his way in our school days at Kiester, and I went mine. Oh sure, we’d still jostle each other and joke in the hallways when we’d meet. Our quick antics made me to feel that I was still a viable part of his more grown up world of what would be the Class of 1968. Little did I know, at the time, that he would not live to see graduation with his fellow ‘Bulldogs’.
Daryl’s classmates honored him in the 1968 yearbook for Kiester High School called, “The Rambler”.
That summer of 1967, my family was busy in getting our farm ready for sale, which happened in late July of that year. Turns out Daryl was busy too, that summer, but for my tall, strapping wrestling teammate, he was making himself ready to serve our nation in the United States Army as an infantryman in the country of Vietnam. So, as our family bade goodbye to Minnesota and traveled to the far west, Daryl bade goodbye to his family and Kiester and traveled to the far east.
Elliott’s scrapbook article is yellowed after 50 plus years, but Daryl is always remembered.
There’s an old saying that goes…..”You can take the boy outta the farm, but you can’t take the farm outta the boy”!!! That served my family well, in that we missed our family and friends, back home in Minnesota, and wanted to stay in touch by having our hometown “Kiester Courier” newspaper delivered to us at our new home in Battle Ground, Washington.
One day, as I was reading news from ‘back home’, my eyes locked onto an article with a photo of Daryl Garvick that left me absolutely dumbfounded!!! My mouth dropped open in disbelief!! Could it possibly be? My upperclassman wrestling pal was GONE!!!??? Tears welled up within my now 14 year old eyes as the Vietnam War had suddenly come painfully home and personal as I learned that Daryl had died from wounds sustained in combat in the Phong Dien Province.
Although never officially declared a “war” by our government, that whole war now had a different aura and solemnness to it in that a fine young friend of mine had paid the ultimate price in hopes of gaining freedom for the South Vietnamese people and their forces that he fought alongside in that war.
Very carefully, I took my scissors and cut out the article about Daryl. As was customary, in the days before technology gave us its digital wizardry’s of saving information, I taped the sobering and sad article about my friend into my scrapbook. Over the decades since Daryl’s death, I have thought of my ‘Bulldog’ buddy countless times; either in passing past this old article or seeing a documentary about that harrowing time in our nation’s history. Needless to say, on every Memorial Day since that time, I have given a prayer of thanks and honor for the memory of Daryl Ray Garvick who was so kind to this farmer boy and served our nation so valiantly in behalf of this Norwegian Farmer’s Son.
May 30th……….”TELL US, GRANDPA, ABOUT A PIECE OF FURNITURE IN YOUR FARM HOME THAT WAS VERY SPECIAL TO OUR GRANDMA CLARICE”.
POEM – “For His Best, In Her Hope Chest” by N. Elliott Noorlun
Even Shirley Temple, In the long, long ago,
Encouraged other maidens, In love’s way they should go,
In preparing for their journey, Young love’s most happy quest,
Meant they should place life items, In a cedar-lined Hope Chest.
Clarice Sletten and Russell Noorlun in their courting days of the late 1930’s.
Clarice and Russ had met upon, Proverbial blind date,
Yet as time played on, Their love was drawn, To deep love, Each other’s mate.
The lovely cedar Hope Chest of Elliott’s mother, Clarice, is now lovingly cared for by his sister, Candice.
So a Hope Chest was given to store inside, The gifts that would make their home,
For this cedar-lined chest, Would preserve their treasures, No matter where they might roam.
With love in full bloom, Mom’s Norwegian groom, ‘Popped the question’ she yearned to hear,
That she’d be his own, Throughout life’s journey, And forever she’d be his dear!!!
The gift of a quilt, made by Elliott’s mother before her death in 2017, is still held in loving care within this fragrant, cedar-lined Hope Chest of hers now in the tender care of his sister Candice’s home.
Soon blankets and sheets, Pillow cases and more,
Were protected by cedar, Where our mother would store,
Anything and everything, That a home would hold dear,
At the open of lid, They were there fresh and near.
Russell and Clarice’s Silver (25th) Wedding Anniversary celebrated in their farm home northwest of Kiester, MInnesota. Clarice’s cedar Hope Chest was still holding her treasures a quarter of a century later since June of 1941.
As their years flew by, In love’s marriage strong,
We children were born, As part of love’s song,
And we all reflected, God had given His best,
In provisions even beyond, Mom’s Cedar Hope Chest!!! ><>
Norwegian Farmer's Son 