April 29th……..“WHEN WAS THE FIRST TIME, GRANDPA, THAT YOU ATE OLEO MARGARINE INSTEAD OF TASTY SWEET CREAM BUTTER”?

There was a culinary, dairy-induced allurement as my eager teeth sank their shanks into Mom’s superb homemade bread. It was still hot from the oven, with real sweet cream butter ooozing over my bite mark and onto the plate. Ohhh…..the aroma, the delicious delectable delight….. it was utter childhood ambrosia!!!

Having been raised on true-to-goodness, bona fide creamery butter, I could never imagine Mom cooking, or our family eating, any food without golden, genuine butter. Our Kiester Co-op Creamery Association displayed a ‘no brag, just fact’ promotion on every butter carton that left their plant in town…….”A TREAT TO EAT” and that was gospel, for sure!!! 😉

From every society, down to every individual, we all have parameters by which we measure wealth. One man’s trash, may be another man’s treasure, and so forth. Tender to the monetary rigors of our family’s financial restrictions, I felt we were just as rich as anyone else in town. Why is that, you ask? It’s because our beloved parents inculcated us with the same basic tenets that they were raised on, which was our Christian faith and foundations based on the New Testament book of 1st Thessalonians Chapter 5 and Verse 18: “In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God”. In this specific life scenario, speaking about butter, I was so thankful for the talented men who faithfully provided fine dairy products for our community via our Creamery located along the south boundaries of Kiester.

What I didn’t know at the time was, our dear farm’s landlords were about to throw a bit of a curveball into my golden bubble world of butter.

In the spring of 1946, Morton and Tina Holstad had retired to Kiester town after an agreement with our parents to begin renting their farm which was three miles northwest of our village on what is today called 560th Avenue. The Holstad’s gentle ways quickly enamored them to us and vice versa. The amicable ways and respect of our two families eventually led our parents to sign papers to begin purchasing the farm versus renting.

For most family farms of that era, farm life consisted of a one man/one wife daily operation and a vacation from said farm was a near unheard of experience. Yet, our dear Morton and Tina had invited us to visit them at their vacation cabin along the shores of Woman Lake near Hackensack, Minnesota. It was to be a day or two of fishing, boating and good old times of visiting and fellowship.

Somehow, in their creative ways, Dad and Mom were able to secure some dear neighbors to ‘pinch-hit’ for us in doing chores and milking of cows while Dad pointed our family car northward to our waiting, pleasant adventures.

Being relegated to ‘back seat bouncers’, in those young years, sister, Candi, and myself passed the hours reading, playing with some toys and napping. Upon waking from one of those naps, the scenery had morphed from green, rolling farmlands to forests infused with white birch trees that resembled tens of thousands of white soldiers saluting us as we eventually banked into the driveway of “Woman Lake Lodge”.

The lake was immense, covering over 5,500 acres, and held a coveted bevy of fish ranging from Walleye to Northern Pike. What we noticed most was the zillions of mosquitoes that hung in black clouds when winds died down. Minnesota may be known for having 10,000 lakes, but they need to also warn you about the 10 trillion mosquitoes that are part of that deal 😉

The curve ball I had mentioned earlier came into play when we sat down for our first meal with the Holstads. Tina put something on the supper table that evening that looked somewhat like butter, but I sensed a deviancy from what I had been used to at our farm. Never wanting to offend, I politely asked what this butter was called. Tina responded, “Ohhh, that’s not butter, it’s Oleo Margarine”. With the first bite of my bread, I about gagged on the dead flavor of this butter substitute, yet, I was always taught to finish what was on my plate and gave her thanks for our meal with them. Later in life, I heard this saying that goes………“Margarine is only one molecule short of being plastic, and, it shares 27 ingredients that go into paint”!!!! Not even flies would land on that stuff and they were usually hovering over almost any food that would be left out, ya? That was quite an experience.

Now, of course, I can’t blame what happened next on the Oleo, but that night, Dad and I shared the same bed while we were at the cabin. In my dream world, I must’ve been intently fustigating someone, because, upon waking the following morning, Dad said, “You sure were angry at someone in your dreams last night”!!! “I was?” I questioned? “Yup, being up against the wall, like you were, you kept slugging the wall with your fist and with each punch, you intensely said, “S**T, S**T, S**T!! “!!!! Sure enough, I checked the wall and there were the knuckle dents from this Norwegian Farmer’s Son!!! 🙂

April 28th………“GRANDPA, DID YOU AND YOUR FAMILY EVER RETURN TO MINNESOTA TO VISIT LOVED ONES AND SEE YOUR OLD FARM NEAR KIESTER”?

“Russ, did you get all those blueberries on ice and packed into the Dodge? We need to stop along the way to deliver them to Miles City, Montana”. Mom was excited about helping her brother, Bob Sletten, with delivering some blueberries for him while on our way home to Minnesota for vacation in 1968. Dad’s reply was just as upbeat as we prepared to travel ‘back home’ to see our family and friends there. “Yup, sure did! Good thing that new Coronet of ours has a strong 318 under the hood, cause we’re packed for fun on the run”!!!

The culmination of this past year for our family had been one exciting adventure after another. First, it was the major, life-changing move of selling our farm near Kiester, Minnesota and then loading what we could into two cars and a pickup truck for the 1,720 mile sojourn out to Battle Ground, Washington.

From the time of their respective births in 1918 and 1919, Russ and Clarice had both grown up on their family farms………Mom in Iowa and Dad in northern Minnesota. And, since their marriage, in 1941, our parents had chosen, as a team, to continue the agrarian occupation of their parents into farming. As they followed in the footsteps of their heritage before them, they knew full well the multi-faceted cost of farming would be to live frugally and be ‘on the clock’ twenty four hours every day, seven days a week and 365 days a year.

From the sale of our farm, in July of 1967, to our embarking on this family vacation in the Summer of 1968, Dad & Mom had been greatly rewarded for all those years of sacrifice and super long work hours by the selling of our family farm. In a sense, using an old farming verbiage, they were now ‘living high on the hog’!!! We had a new home paid for in cash. Two cars and a truck, paid for in cash, too. And after all that, they were still able to put some dollars into a savings account. And for Dad, well, he was kinda in a type of ‘heaven’ in that he now only had to work five days a week, had his health insurance fully paid and had earned this paid vacation to now enjoy, as well!!!

I, for one, saw our family as a modern day version of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804 – 1806). We had explored new territory on the way out west and this year, we’d be exploring more on the way back to Minnesota on vacation. Two of the places we Noorluns stopped to enjoy along the way were Hat Rock State Park, in Oregon, and Pompey’s Pillar, in Montana. Both of those sites are recorded in the Journals of Lewis & Clark.

As bona fide members of “The Greatest Generation”, our parents were even frugal in how we fed ourselves as we journeyed eastward towards home and family. We enjoyed many a picnic at roadside parks or even just pulling over off a highway and ‘chowing down’. Dad, ever the farmer thinker, would take a can of corned beef hash (for instance) and strip off the paper labeling. He’d then wire the can of hash to the manifold of our car engine and then drive for a half hour, or so, till we saw a picnic spot. At our picnic destination, he’d put on his super thick work gloves to remove the HOT can of food to go along with Mom’s other picnic goodies for a tasty meal for all.

It would have taken 26 hours of round the clock driving to have made that kind of trip ‘straight through’. So, we relished the fun of staying at least a couple nights in motels, usually “The Best Western Motels”, which were pretty common in most bigger cities along the way back home.

After hundreds and hundreds of miles of sage brush and flat land, we eventually began to encounter the gently rolling hills and rich earth of our sweet Minnesota once again. It was this former farmer boy’s joy to once again see the rippling corduroy-type rows of soybeans and corn as they whipped by our car windows while we ever faithfully got closer to our beloved hometown of Kiester and family and friends.

There were so many precious farmer friends that we just had to stop by for a hearty handshake of fellowship once again. Each stop at each farm brought out the memories that had welded our families together over the years. Like, Chet and Violet Ozmun, for instance. Chet had been so fast to respond to our mother’s call when Dad was badly injured in a farming accident. Chet had also offered me employment, as a youth, in picking rocks out of his fields. Mrs. Violet Ozmun had also been so very kind to me in being one of those dear souls who bought some boxes of Christmas cards from me one summer. Then there was Charlie and Mabel Heitzeg, Louie Heitzeg, Harry Bauman and the list of visiting just went on and on.

There, in the northern distance, as we rolled out of the Ozmun’s driveway, was our beloved former farm place. Except for corn now planted in what used to be the cow yard, our sweet home looked about the same as when we had left it a year earlier. We had heard that our old family home was now rented out, so we dare not pull into the driveway as we had done countless thousands of times from 1946 till 1967. Mom’s Kodak Instamatic slide-film camera was always at the ready, so she took a photo of our beloved farm to help keep it fresh in our memories. Our family’s new Dodge slowly rolled past the south driveway and then, like a slow dream, past the north driveway as our hearts were a mixture of longing to ‘be home again’ and thankfulness for the uncountable happy memories that had transpired on that farm over our family’s life there.

Our sweet mother, Clarice, felt like a queen when our beloved farmer neighbor lady, Genevieve Mutschler, honored Mom with a luncheon at her handsome farm home just north of our old domicile. The sweetest of memories accompanied the sweetest of desserts as our mother fellowshipped with Janet (Ozmun) Twedt, Barbara (Gries) Heitzeg and Violet (Thompson) Ozmun who joined with the hostess, Genevieve (Heitzeg) Mutschler, as these special souls reminisced with Mom about all the happy days gone by with our respective families.

Of course, our happy travels could not be complete with out taking our mother to her childhood church just west of Emmons, Minnesota. Lime Creek Lutheran Church had been built in 1874 and Clarice, along with her family, attended there throughout her childhood and young adult years. This occasion, though, was to be bittersweet in that here, on this crystal clear Minnesota day, our stop was for Mom to visit and mourn over her beloved mother’s grave. Her mother, Amanda Rogness Sletten, was dying of breast cancer when we had moved to Washington State a year earlier. Clarice and her beloved mother were very close and it tore at our mom’s heart to leave her matriarch in her last days. Grandmother Sletten left this world just weeks after our arrival in the Pacific Northwest. This somber time of remembrance was a hard part of our vacation, but, as Christians, we were buoyed by the Scripture in II Corinthians 5:8 that says, “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord”. We look forward to that grand reunion someday. ><>

In those two or three weeks, we did our best to hug, talk, fellowship and laugh with all the family and friends that we possible could. It was a time for our hard working parents to bask in the joys of how God had touched them with so many fine Kiester neighbors who continued to remember them and show them love. This was truly some golden moments to enjoy during the vacation of our family and this Norwegian Farmer’s Son.!!!

April 27th………“AS FAR AS SPORTS GO, GRANDPA, WERE YOU EVER ON THE WRESTLING TEAM AT KIESTER, MINNESOTA JR./SR. HIGH SCHOOL”?

POEM – “Do The Mighty MatMen Mangle” by N. Elliott Noorlun

Back in the year 1962,

When great young men, Wore the “White & Blue”,

An intense new sport, Came for them to do,

I’ll call it ‘The MatMen Mangle’! 😉

Subterranean space, Where guys each day,

Would make their way, To class FFA,

Is the place we wrestlers, Held sweat and sway,

As we danced ‘The Matmen Mangle’!

Under caring eyes, Of Koenck and Parker,

We grapplers were inspired, To be their sparker,

And with each victory, We’d become the barker,

Carrying out ‘The MatMen Mangle’!

We knew Coach cared, As leader of men,

And we gladly did, His bidding when,

He’d bark out orders, To us young guys then,

As we wrestled ‘The MatMen Mangle’.

So, down in the place, Where the Boy Scouts met,

We’d slither n slide, On the mats with our sweat,

As we built our muscles, And team spirit, you bet!!

Proud “Bulldogs” of ‘The MatMen Mangle’!!

As us wrestlers now, Look back at each angle,

That our young bodies weaved, And had to disentangle,

We’re lucky our young bones, Didn’t break and go to dangle,

As we “Bulldogs” muscled around with The MatMen Mangle’!!! 😉

April 26th…….“TELL US, GRANDPA, DID YOU ENJOY PLAYING DURING RECESS AT KIESTER PUBLIC SCHOOL? DID YOU EVER GET HURT OR CUT DURING YOUR RECESS TIMES”?

“I GOT IT!! I GOT IT”!!!, or so I thought, as my Kickball outfield team members backed off for me to make the catch and put out the kicker who was just launching himself from Homeplate towards First Base.

Except for the winter months, when heavy snow made this sport unplayable (or at least unenjoyable), Kickball was easily the most dominant choice for us Grade School boys at Kiester Public School. We were avid (almost rabid) devotees that relished the joys of this game at almost every recess. We little, pre-hormonal, boys would be ‘chompin’ at the bit’ and all fidgeting in line in high anticipation of our teacher saying, “You’re now excused to recess”!!! Down that second floor stairwell we guys would fly, missing most of the steps, as we burst out those west-facing doors and out on the playground to choose up teams as fast as we could.

Recess was the ‘holy grail’ of our kinetic kid kingdom in those memory lane days. Our school was blessed with a far-reaching, expansive paved play area that surrounded the large, red Future Farmers Of America educational workshop and classrooms building. The long, silver-roofed edifice had a small, adjoining room that jutted out to the west of the main structure.

Home Plate, for our legendary Kick Ball games was always located at the south end of the playground and we’d kick that tortured red rubber ball (or a soccer ball) towards the north ‘outfield’, then, the kicker would run the bases, just like the game of baseball.

Up to kick, that day, were some of our muscle guys like Doug Trytten, or Steve Rebelein or one of the Pederson boys. Being that the majority of us school boys were farm kids, we often wore the ankle-high leather work boots from our respective farms. Those leather boots made the kicking of that ball a sheer pleasure in those exciting, fun-filled times. One of those aforementioned ‘heavy hitters’ was up to the plate on that occasion when our pitcher person carefully rolled the ball in the kicker’s direction. A “Tahwanga-POW”!!!! resonated from the connection of rubber and boot leather as that kickball acted like a rocket leaving Cape Canaveral!!! “I GOT IT!!, I GOT IT”!!!! came my youthful, bellowing voice in the outfield as I felt I could be below that ball as it began its descent back to earth.

My flyball catch satisfaction was stolen from me when that rubber ball landed on top of the Future Farmers of America class building and rolled on down and onto the small classroom roof that jutted out from the west side of that building. Well, being the young monkey that I was, I wasn’t about to wait around forever for ‘Pud’ Bufkin (our custodian) to bring out a ladder to climb up and retrieve that ball. Heck, half of our playtime would be consumed in waiting for that to happen. {{{ IDEA }}}!!! I know, I’ll just shinny up the rain gutter at the corner of that structure and I’ll get that ball down all by myself. Faster than a midget’s burp, I was up on top of that roof, grabbed the rubber ball and flung it back to the pitcher for the game to continue.

Having monkey-shined my way UP to the roof, it was time to make a monkey-wiggle DOWN from the roof, ya? What I didn’t plan on was gravity speeding up that process to the bloody chagrin of my poor left hand. ‘Haste makes waste’, ya know, and that day I ‘wasted’ a bunch of blood as the palm heel/base of my left hand got caught on some razor-sharp metal bracketing that held the gutter up tight against the wall of the FFA’s abode. It all happened in the blink of an eye, so when I landed on the ground, I inspected my profusely bleeding hand and found that the knife-like bracket had sliced way up into the actual palm of my hand, thus allowing me to peel back my palm’s flesh in a major slab of bloody mess. Such was one of those memorable playground adventures for this Norwegian Farmer’s Son!!!!

April 25th…….“WAS THERE EVER A TRIUMPH, IN YOUR MINNESOTA FARM BOY DAYS, THAT EVENTUALLY LED TO A PERSONAL TRAGEDY”?

What better way to start the last day of Sixth Grade, at Kiester Public School, than with my best buddy in the whole world…..Davey Mutschler!!! We were just a couple months apart in age, there in 1954, when we were born. The two of us farm boys were interwoven, even at birth. Davey’s beloved grandparents, Walter and Genevieve Mutschler (along with their entire clan) were loved by our family as if we were blood-related. In 1946, when our family moved onto the Morten and Tina Holstad farm, just a half mile south of Mutschler’s farm, it was Wally and Genevieve who borrowed us a number of pregnant sows who then, by their birthed brood of piglets, gave us a start of our own sounder of hogs. Coupled to this farmer’s gift of love came many other gifts of heart from Davey’s sweet grandparents over the many years that we enjoyed them to the fullest. With such abundant love, it was only natural that our two farm families gathered often for fellowship from simple cookies and coffee times, to us two boys celebrating each others birthdays in fun-loving style!

Like any little boy, with only pennies in my pockets, I dreamed of having cool toys to play with. Alas, those boy toys cost MONEY, which I had very little of. Until the day came when I was wrapped up in a Richie Rich comic book and saw an advertisement from a company called, “The Junior Sales Club Of America”. My eager eyes hungrily poured over that advertisement that showed a veritable plethora of toys and treasures that could be earned by just selling their greeting cards to family and friends. Each grand toy had a different quota of boxes of cards that had to be sold to earn that specific prize. My eyes were set on one of the most expensive prizes………..a handsome Schwinn 26″ three-speed bicycle. Retail value of that bike, in the mid 1960’s, was around $80.00. That same $80.00 in 2024 (when this story is written) would equal $800.00. In order to ‘win’ my bike prize, I would have to sell at least 60 boxes of Christmas cards. During that scorching summer heat of 1965, I saddled up “Little Lady” (our Shetland pony) and rode for miles in every direction of our farm. At each farm (or house inside the Kiester City Limits), I’d have to answer the same question that ladies would ask at each home where I’d knock on their door…….“It’s 90 degrees outside, why are you selling Christmas cards in this heat of summertime”??? I should’ve carried a tape recorder to play back to them all those ladies that I needed to sell my quota before the season of fall so I could send in the orders and get the cards back in time for Christmas mailing.

Low and behold, I was finally successful and triumphed in achieving my prize for selling all those Christmas cards. Of course, I should’ve given my mother a dozen roses, too, for all the kind-hearted bookkeeping she did to make sure my orders were correct and writing one check to the card company.

I’ve heard that in the United States Army, there’s a saying that goes, “Hurry up and WAIT”!!!! That edict was employed in my case, because even though I had achieved the sales quota back in early fall of 1965, I had to wait until late February or early March of 1966 for my handsome new bike to arrive at our farm!! I was beyond elated to have this two-wheeled ‘Cadillac’ beneath me and wanted to show off my ‘hotrod’ something fierce.

As the last day of the 1966 school year came closer and closer, Davey and myself would make plans to ride our bikes to school that day to show off my new bike and have some guy time fun. I seem to recall that Davey’s dad gave him, and his bike, a ride down to our farm for our pedal into town. You see, Davey’s farm was about 2 miles north of our place and even as a youngster, that would’ve been a mighty long ride for my buddy. Extra bright and early that day, the two of us bikers made the three mile journey into Kiester and made it in record time to enjoy all the festivities of that final day of class.

What had begun as a ‘Last Day Of School Celebration’, evolved into a painful and humbling moment on our trip back to my farm that day. For those not familiar with a Minnesota winter and subsequent spring thawing; gravel roads were sometimes pushed up and down, in places, by strong, heaving called ‘frost boils’ (for lack of a better name of it). Those heaving frost boils often manifested themselves in a ‘washboard’ or wavy effect from one side of a gravel roadway to the other. When cars or tractors rolled over those areas, it would make the car jump and shudder from hitting all those rises in the roadway.

In celebratory moods, Davey and I had just turned off of the main, paved highway (now known as 35th Street) and were going to race our bikes down what was then known as the stretch of Ozmun’s Hill (now 560th Avenue).

My new bike and I had just flown past the farm driveway of Chet and Violet Ozmun when my brand new ‘Cadillac’ bicycle and I hit a series of those frost boils on the gravel road beneath us. After some violent bouncing, the handlebars and front wheel ‘jack-knifed’ (went perpendicular to travel path) on me and I was thrown forward into the air. I can still see that ugly gravel roadway coming up towards me as I literally face-planted and slid for some several feet on my face.

Davey brought his bike safely to a stop and then ran over to help me get up off of the roadway. I was nothing but blood from my hairline to my chin and had received some serious ‘gravel burns’ to my hands and lower arms, as well.

My new bike was now a twisted mess of metal and I was sort of in shock as we both walked the rest of the way up the gravel road, pushing our bikes to my farm place. Mom saw us coming and came out our back porch door asking if I had had a nosebleed? I facetiously replied, “Yeahhhh, at 60 miles per hour)!!! 😉 It turns out, not only was I a bloody mess, but I had also incurred a diagonal break off of three quarters of one of my front teeth.

To literally, and figuratively, ‘save face’, our sweet mother gave our local, and well-loved, dentist Dr. Pirsig a phone call. He recommended and installed a silver cap to go over and cover my slanted, broken tooth. Bless his memory!! Now I could be like “The Lone Ranger” and call out “HI HO SILVER” for this shiny Norwegian Farmer’s Son!!! 😉

April 24th……..“DID YOUR MINNESOTA HIGH SCHOOL HAVE AN ANNUAL YEARBOOK”? “WHAT WAS IT CALLED”?

POEM – “Rambling Through The Rambler” by N. Elliott Noorlun

In the velveted vernal veil of time,

Month of May to be precise,

There came to this world, Upon a pink cloud,

The essence of cuteness and nice.

As years went along, Enjoying life’s song,

Our big sister was up for the joy!

She and her brother, Shared many a laugh,

Even though he was just a mere ‘boy’! 😉

Rosie made a new friend, Around every bend,

As her fun Grade School years flew on by.

But when High School began, She was really a fan,

With her buddies, She really could fly.

To capture each year, Came a book full of cheer,

Stocked with photos to capture each treasure.

Times at games, Or in class, For each lad and lass,

Golden moments beyond any measure.

Rambling through the “Rambler”, Was so full of fun,

For all “Bulldogs”, No matter the gender.

Golden memories made, Throughout every school grade,

Brought out pens to record every lender,

Pens and pencils were shared, By each classmate who cared,

To write down moments that touched their own heart.

And as years flew on by, Each “Bulldog” gal n guy,

Mused on memories where good times did start.

So as we all ponder, Upon times back in yonder,

Old days that seemed a moment ago.

We’ll read all those writings, And the photos of sightings,

When fun youth-filled memories’d flow!!! 😉

April 23rd……..“AS A LITTLE BOY, WHAT WAS A SILLY WAY YOU TRIED TO IMPRESS SOMEONE”?

POEM – “Brother’s New Toy” by N. Elliott Noorlun

Home from the Air Force, And ‘feeling his oats’,

Big brother came carrying, Some green money notes,

To bring home a dream, The kind that you drive,

With the wind in your hair, Makes you thrive and alive!!!

A sparkling new Chevy, For year ’62,

Impala by name, And oh what a view!

Black paint on the outside, Ruby red seats inside,

Power plant under hood, That invited a ride.

“Hop in, El, I’ll take you”, “Flying down gravel road”,

“We’ll jump over rises”, “As I give my engine a goad”,

“This 327”, “Turbo Fire V8”,

“Is some manly-type power”, “That makes me feel GREEAT”!!!

Just 8 years, I was, With a mind full afire,

As Lowell drove us over, To dear family named Meyer.

In their driveway we rolled, Impala sleek and slim,

To show off new car, To Lowell’s best buddy Jim!

As I sat in the Chev, With Lowell up by the house,

My little boy brain, Buzzed like sneaky lil mouse.

“If I crank the window slowly”, “Both up and then down”,

“They’ll think ELECTRIC WINDOWS”!, “On the only car in town”!

You’ll think me so silly, But it’s happy I felt,

For my handsome big brother, With his ‘black beauty’ svelte.

I was just so thrilled, For brother’s motorized machine,

Back in farm boy days, When I was skinny and lean 😉

April 22nd……….“TELL US ABOUT A SPECIAL EVENT ON YOUR FARM IN SOUTH CENTRAL MINNESOTA THAT REALLY STOOD OUT TO YOU AS A LITTLE BOY”.

With a mind-numbing, Norwegian nescience, my little farmer boy eyes were frozen in a stare at the behemoth land-leviathan that had just crossed the Brush Creek Bridge and was lumbering north in the direction of our farm. Lazy clouds of gravel dust billowed and curled behind it as it traveled along, much like the dragons of yore in their smoking ways.

Sure enough, that snorting diesel engine of the immense truck-tractor down-shifted and the smoke stacks belched out the back pressure of the engine as the combination tractor and low-boy trailer made the banking turn into our farm’s south graveled driveway and pulled that gigantic monster up the knoll and into our farmyard.

Our handsome daddy, Russell, had an equally handsome cousin by the name of Wilford Ulve (Mr. Ulve’s family name, in Norwegian, to my limited knowledge, means “the wolf”). After the last choking chug, chug of the truck’s engine came to quietness, down from that tall vehicle’s cab climbed Wilford with all the bravado of a highly virile Norwegian man. Wilford’s garrulous personality effused happily from that mile wide grin that he gladly brandished in all of his daily affairs. Stepping out from the corner of our barn’s ‘Dutch’ (split top/bottom) doors came our farmer patriarch and, as their eyes met, these two familial brothers, in their classic bib overalls, lit up with smiles and hearty handshakes with slaps on the back and laughter.

With only three years separating these handsome cousins (Wilford in 1915 and Russ in 1918), they had enjoyed many a manly adventure in their younger days. Such as the time, in the late 1930’s, when they both attended a local dance down in Iowa. A common prank by mischievous young men, in those days, was to hang around cars in the darkness of the evenings, and urinate on some poor guy’s tires………just like a dog would do. Well, Wilford and Dad were NOT about to let those hoodlums get away with that nasty habit. They had contrived and created a wire from the rear tire’s metal rim to the battery with a flip switch along the wire’s route. When, out of the corner of his eye in the side mirror, Russ saw a prankster starting to ‘whizz’ on his tire rim, Dad would flip the switch and send a powerful electrical charge to the metal tire rim which, in turn, shocked the perpetrator so intensely that it literally knocked him off of his feet. So while the bad guy rolled on the ground in agony for having his privates roasted, Dad and Wilford would howl in well-deserved laughter!!! 😉

On this agricultural occasion, Wilford was going to use his prowess in big machines to help our father with a normal problem that plagued many a farmer in the spring thaws after all the winter snow had melted. Portions of our farm land would get excessively wet from ground water that just couldn’t drain off and dry fast enough to allow our dad to get his plow (and other equipment) into the ground to prepare soils for later planting. Wilford’s massive machine, with shovels that mounted around a giant circular frame, would dig a long trench from the wet areas of our land towards Brush Creek to the southern border of our property. Hard-fired, clay/terracotta cylindrical tiles would then be laid in that trench to allow excess waters to drain away from the acres involved so that the soils would dry faster and crops could be planted sooner.

With all the confidence of a knight in shining armor, Wilford climbed aboard that yellow ‘dragon’ of his and, with a push, pull and yank of levers, brought the beast to life. As if angered by its master, the trenching machine spewed to the skies a frothing black cloud from its muffler as that engine revved up in readiness for slicing a path into our soils. Those caterpillar tracks began to slowly bring the trencher off of the lowboy trailer and it laboriously clamored out to the west of our orchard and to its targeted area of work.

Our father and Wilford collaborated as to the best route for the tiling to travel and thus was the plan laid into action. The beast-sized trencher started its monster wheel of attached scoop buckets going round and round while Wilford hydraulically pushed the bucket wheel down deeper into the soil. While the trencher brought up soil from the deepening trench, that soil was thrown to the side of the trench by conveyor belts.

To fine-tune the cleanliness of the trenching, Dad employed a treasured tool that had belonged to his father called a Tiling Spade. The narrow and deep blade of this implement worked perfectly down in the narrow slit to true up the surfaces for the clay tile tubes to lay end to end correctly.

In conjunction with the machine digging our trench, a team effort was employed to spread out a supply of the clay drain tubes along the way. The overall operation was fascinating to observe as man and machine worked like the tick-tock of a clock in creating the trench, laying in the tiles and covering the trench at the finish.

For a little farmer boy, like I was, this was very impressive to see our father, along with his grand cousin, accomplish a task that would make our land even better for growing crops to make our farm successful for this Norwegian Farmer’s Son. 😉

April 21st……...”GRANDPA, DID YOUR FAMILY ALWAYS HAVE RUNNING WATER ON YOUR FARM NEAR KIESTER, MINNESOTA”?

POEM – “The Zing With A Sting” by N. Elliott Noorlun……..From 1946 (when our parents moved onto our farm) till the late 1950’s (when plumbing actually was installed in our farm house), our mother or brother or father had to carry buckets of water from the well “Pump House” up to our home to use for cooking, baths, etc.. When we became ‘modern’ in the late 50’s with indoor plumbing, there was a shower down in our basement that had so much pressure it could ‘peel paint off the barn’…….or, in my case, my skin!!! 😉

In the early days, The answer was no,

As far as no pipes for water to flow.

From ’46, Till late 50’s or so,

That modern convenience, Was just a ‘no-go’.

For back in those days, Filled with rural romance,

If you wanted water, For life to enhance,

You’d need two buckets, Like our farmer’s spouse,

And get that water, From local Pump House.

But then came the day, When we yelled HOORAY!!

Farm home had running water, And the shower had a spray!!

But showers with Dad, Were not my thing,

Water pressure too high, And like needles it’d sting.

Cause Dad was tall, And I was small,

When he’d pull me in close, T’weren’t fair at all.

Water ‘bullets’ hit his chest, No problem for him,

But little tender me, Had to learn to swim!!!! 😉

April 20th……….“WHEN YOU WERE A TINY FARM BOY, DID YOU LIKE TO RUN AROUND YOUR FARM”?

POEM – “Energy’s Joy” by N. Elliott Noorlun ……..So often, as adults, we forget the pure and simple pleasures of childhood such as running as fast as the wind with unending energy and joy. I have tried to share some of those happy day feelings here.

There were the days, When I would run,

From morning’s rise, To setting sun.

And wave as I passed, While having fun,

Enjoying life’s energy!!!

And in those days, Before a remote,

No plastic little box, For us to tote,

Across the room, We’d RUN to note,

New TV station that we would see!!

Today, there’s still, That little boy,

Who relishes every, Childhood joy,

Except now I’m too tired, To employ,

The antique frame that is me!!!