March 27th…“WHAT TYPES OF WORDS DID YOUR PARENTS USE TO TRY TO CALM YOUR YOUNG FEARS?”
Tiny Elliott was TERRIFIED of both thunder AND lightning!!
Within the thunder’s cacophony of violent volume would appear fierce flashes of lightning in excruciating brilliance, forcing these little eyes of mine to snap closed in absolute fear!!!!
Only the Lord, Himself, knew why the farmlands of Minnesota seemed to be a magnet for powerful weather of all sorts; summer time, especially!! When dark cloud rumblings started in the distance, my little heart began to go pitter patter for anticipating what would soon be upon us and right over our heads. Sure enough, what started as a distant rumble eventually reached its crescendo with explosions right over our farm home that rivaled any artillery of any army on the face of the earth.
Scared little Elliott is top and center in this photo in his early days of being scared of wild weather.
With the wisdom of their many years on earth, my dear parents tried to communicate, to this terrified little toddler, in terms that might help a tiny boy’s finite mind comprehend the happenings just outside our farm home’s walls.
Bowling and thunder. Similar? Well, kind of, so thought Elliott’s little mind.
By this time of my young life, I had experienced some fun times at our local bowling alley and remembered the loud sound of a STRIKE against the bowling pins. As a result, I could almost understand when Mom or Dad would try to calm me by saying, “Don’t worry, Elliott, that sound you hear is just God and His angels bowling in Heaven and God just got a STRIKE!!!”.
Little Elliott could understand the FLASH from a camera like this.
To help quell my fears of the lightning, during these fear episodes, our parents brought up the family times of when numerous aunts or uncles would bring out their old flash cameras that used these giant bulbs that lit up the room when that shutter button was pressed in order to take a photograph. As the ebony night around us was charged to daylight in a split second of lightning, Mom or Dad would say, “Relax, Elliott, that’s justGod taking a photograph outside with His GIANT flash camera!!!”. To this day, I’m grateful for the gentle ways that were employed by our parents to quiet the fears of this Norwegian Farmer’s Son.
March 26th...”DO YOU HAVE ANY OTHER GOOD STORIES ABOUT BEING INJURED?”
Where there’s an accident, there’s Elliott 😉
I envision this big magnet located by inside my whatzelnipper and alongside my glamwackeedoodler. This magnet pulls accidents to me like hees to boney…….errr, umm, I mean bees to honey 😉 I’m an Olympic accident on the hoof. To describe this cacophony of yowsers in my life, I wrote a silly poem called, “Pobody’s Nerfect” (get it? Nobody’s Perfect?…hehehehe )
POEM – “Pobody’s Nerfect” by N. Elliott Noorlun
Pobody’s nerfect, Especially me,
I’ve been this way, Since I’d say three.
It’s a minor miracle, That I’m still here,
Considering the courses, I did steer.
There were many times, Back on the farm,
My given name, Should have been “HARM”.
You’d be amazed, At the stunts I’d pull,
Like my blood poisoned feet, Or shooting the bull.
Elliott’s BB in a certain spot, made this bull get really HOT!!
Bull weren’t too happy with what I did,
Cause I was a mean widdo kid,
I had BB rifle, Aimed just right,
In the place that made him, Wanna fight!
If it weren’t for the solid, Fence back home,
I wouldn’t be here, a’writin’ this poem.
Elliott should have taken a few seconds longer to think on that riding lawnmower.
Then there’s the lawnmower, With which I played tag,
March 25th…“DID YOU EVER SUFFER AN INJURY SEVERE ENOUGH THAT IT REQUIRED STITCHES?”
AUTHOR’S NOTE:Just as a single gem stone has many facets, so also can one incident in life have other perspectives to share about. So is the case in this little story poem. True, other entries in this gentle saga dealt with losing a finger in the riding lawnmower……this little facet focuses on the part of needing stitches.
March 24th…“HOW DID YOU EARN YOUR OWN SPENDING MONEY ON THE FARM IN MINNESOTA DAYS?”
Elliott could spend HOURS wishing and dreaming of toys he wanted from a catalog like this.
A tincture of happy green envy must’ve literally glowed from my little boy face as I’d gaze over each page and dream about all the toys I wanted to have out of that well-worn catalog. My three favorite adults each year were Mr. Sears, Mr. Montgomery Ward and Mr. Spiegel…..for each of those gentlemen sent their catalogs to our farm home FOR FREE!!! 😉
When Elliott was little, even THESE 1961 prices seemed steep and hard to reach for his empty pockets.
With money being scarce on our farm, our hardworking parents gifted us kids a mere $.25 cents per week to use for spending money when we’d all go to our hometown of Kiester on Saturday evenings for the “Lucky Bucks” drawing. For me, though, when there were Tonka trucks and other toy goals in my “I just gotta have it” little mind, wellll, that twenty five cents a week just wasn’t gonna make those dreams come true fast enough. I just HAD to find a way to earn more money.
The Plains Pocket Gopher was to be Elliott’s way of earning his OWN larger amounts of spending money.
One day, our dear father, Russell, said, “Son, if you wanna earn your own money, I’drecommend trapping gophers for the bounty money from their front claws!!” Minnesota (and other Midwest States, I’m sure) were the home of the Plains Pocket Gopher. This rodent received its name from the fur lined pockets that resided on each cheek. This subterranean sleuth would fill those pockets with soil as he’d tunnel beneath the earth. When he’d come “topside”, those massive front claws of his would then evict that soil from those cheek pockets and he’d return to the dark underworld for his continued excavating adventures (as well as eating tasty roots). This underground rascal was considered a pest and dangerous for a couple of reasons: 1. Crops were hindered or destroyed as he’d forage on their roots from under the ground. 2. The very act of his tunneling also proved hazardous due to his surface holes that he created every so many feet across a field. Livestock that would be grazing in his area were more focused on the next munch of grass than where they should put their next 1,500 pound footstep. Unknowingly, some cows would step into the gopher’s hole either injuring or breaking a leg. This type of incident incurred high veterinarian bills for either treatment to the leg or having the animal “put out of its misery” with euthanasia (killing the animal by injection or gunshot). This was a loss of hundreds of dollars to farmers plus the sadness of losing one of our animal “friends”.
The Plains Pocket Gopher’s “front door” and also the danger point for heavy cows to step into to injure or break a leg.
As a result of this underground tyrant’s mischief, Faribault County created a bounty price for eliminating as many of these rodents from our area as possible. In this case, a “bounty” was a gift reward from the local county government if someone would trap and kill these lil troublemaker, animal ‘criminals’. Our Faribault County Agent (Charlie Heitzeg) would pay anyone $.10 cents for each front claw of a Plains Pocket Gopher or $.02 cents for the tail of a Striped Gopher. “Hot DOG!”, I thought…….”The more gopher claws, the more MONEY!!”
Elliott’s wise farmer father taught him how to find, set trap and kill those gophers for their claws.
Any time spent with our dad, of course, was priceless for me! This day was to be one of those golden moments as he taught me how to locate the “front door” of a gopher mound and then how to remove the loose soil down to the “Y” in the burrow below ground.
This steel trap is in the “snapped” or closed position.
Once Dad and I located the intersection of “Mr. Pocket’s” underground highway, then was the time I’d excavate about a 2″ depression into the “floor” so that my expanded and “set to kill” steel trap could lay below the “runway” level of the tunnel. In order to hide the scent of the steel trap and my human hands, Dad taught me how to gently sift some soft soil over the top of the trap that made it smell like the rest of “Mr. Pocket’s” underground thoroughfare. Hopefully, now, the gopher would think all was well in his world as he’d come scurrying along later. A chain (with a ring on the end) was attached to the trap. That chain was brought up above ground level and a stake was driven through the ring and tightly into the soil where we stood. This way, when the trap snapped, ol’ “Pockets” couldn’t drag my trap with him into the depths of the earth. In order to make the rodent think all was well, Dad showed me how to take small boards, grass or other material to re-cover the hole and then pile soil on top of that to once again replicate the black darkness down below that was normal for the gophers natural world beneath mine.
In 1963, Elliott and “Little Lady” would ride the trap lines morning and evening in hopes of success in catching more gophers. Family friend and former landlord of our farm, Morton Holstad, holds the Shetland pony in tight rein.
With extra traps hooked over the saddle horn and a burlap bag of gear, I would climb on-board my faithful Shetland friend, “Little Lady” and away we’d ride, mornings and evenings, to check the trap line for any gopher catches that day. When we’d approach a trap site, I’d dismount from the saddle to either tie off my pony to a fence, or just let her graze next to me as I’d pull away the cover and look inside the gopher hole. On most occasions, if a kill had occurred “down under”, I’d pull the dead gopher from the hole and release it from the trap.
A salt-filled Mason jar was the collection container for Elliott’s gopher claws.
After cutting off the front two claws, I’d drop them into a salt-filled, glass Mason jar to put on hold till a later date of cashing them in at Charlie Heitzeg’s farm. The reason for the salt was this…..our wise daddy spoke from his own boyhood days experience, so he strongly suggested that I pack those dead gopher claws into the jar with salt around them. Salt is a natural preservative to help keep down the stench from the natural rotting process that would occur over time. Now, to do the right thing, it was time to slide the body of “Mr. Pockets” back down into his hole for a proper burial and I’d cover the hole with dirt.
Some of Elliott’s gophers were still alive and very angry when he pulled them from their underground home.
On occasion, things got a bit exciting on the trap line when I’d pull a LIVE gopher from his hole as he’d hiss and snap at me with all his little might. A quick KABONG to his head with a club put him out of his misery and I’d then “harvest” his claws for my collection. The strangest times, on the trap line, were when I’d uncover a gopher hole to find only ONE claw in the trap. The gopher, out of desperation, had chewed off his own foot to try to survive. Likely he bled to death in his underground domain, and I only received $.10 cents from that experience.
Charlie Heitzeg, far left, paid Elliott for his trapping efforts.
Once that big, glass Mason jar was packed full of claws and/or Striped Gopher tails, it was time to ride “Little Lady” up the gravel road to Charlie Heitzeg’s farm. As you recall, Charlie was the County Agent in our area that had the power to pay out for the bounty on these trapping treasures I’d bring. There we were, under the giant shade tree by his house. Charlie would unleash the cap of that VERY smelly Mason jar and pour all those rotting claws and tails onto the ground. To distance himself from the putrid nature of those items, Charlie found a very long stick as he’d count out those former body parts of them ‘criminal’ gophers. As my little boy eyes anticipated my “millions”, our dear neighbor, in the spangled shade of that tree, then brought out his checkbook to write me a check for as much as $5.00 or even $7.00 dollars. YEEEHAWWW, thought I…….I’m rich!!! So thought this Norwegian Farmer’s Son.
The distinct cheek pockets of a “Plains Pocket Gopher”.
March 23rd…“DID YOU EVER BREAK A BONE, OR BONES. TELL US HOW.”
1974. Elliott broke two bones in his left hand between the knuckles and the wrist.
POEM – “Pain Is A Messy Teacher” by N. Elliott Noorlun
Two YOWSA instances, Come to mind,
When life to me, T’weren’t very kind.
In Nineteen Hundred and Seventy Four,
This 20 year buck, Just out the door,
Tried to stop, A trampoline,
That came my way, And started to lean,
Upon my hand, And broke two bones,
I hollered LOUD, And made some moans.
This 1981 photo has always been a bit spooky to Elliott. Prophetic, in a way. Like this farewell cake shows, he was using a riding lawnmower when injuries occurred to his left hand.
Then came 1981,
While riding a mower, This son of a gun,
Decided to try, And stop the blade,
So mincemeat of, My hand it made!
Finger tip gone, Another one broke,
Life changed quick, In one fell stroke,
Pain is one heckuva messy teacher,
Especially when dealing, With a Norski creature. 😉
Epilogue: Whether it was a proclivity to procrastinate, a childhood paradigm shift of learning, or just a plain lazy little stinker……..this poem of silliness found its genesis in that fact that our dear farmer father had wisely told me about the need to properly bed down our calf pens with new, clean bales of straw. “Be sure to take the two strands oftwine with you OUT OF THE PEN”, he’d say to me. “Awww, heck, whadda dads know anyway!”…I thought to myself. So, I’d just cut open the bales, kick the straw around the pen and leave the twines. Later, when the straw was “soiled” and time for removal, those twines came back to haunt both me AND my dad as we struggled for each forkful of manure that snagged on twines that THIS bad boy had left behind. A life lesson learned the hard way for this Norwegian Farmer’s Son.
March 21st…“DESCRIBE A FARM CHORE YOU HAD AS A CHILD.”
This very tall, cement-block “tube” you see is called a silo. Our family stored chopped up green corn, called silage, in there to feed our animals over the long Winter. Look close and you can see the little doors that Elliott climbed through to begin tossing down silage each morning and evening.
Proverbs Chapter 1, Verse 8 “Listen, my son, to your father’s instructions……..” and that’s just what we Noorlun children did. Welll, when it came to this ornery third born….most of the time 😉 But overall, my big brother and two sisters knew that it was just a normal part of family responsibility to “listen to our father’s instructions” and help work on our farm. The root meaning of the word, chore, comes from the Old English word, char, which boils down to “odd job”. When it came to seeing our animals fed twice a day, seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year…….now there was nothing ODD about that……THAT was important.
When the corn was still young and green, our father hired someone to go through our fields to chop the corn into what’s called silage.
Our wise father decided that some of his corn fields were to remain intact until the stalks and ears dried to a golden yellow in the fall harvest of field corn. The remaining fields of corn were taken and ground up fine, while still young and green, for what’s called silage to feed our animals over the long winter still to come.
A giant fan blower would literally shoot the silage up that long tube and into the silo until it was full to the top with winter food for our animals.
Tractors and their wagons full of silage made many, many trips to our silo and unloaded their green cargo into a giant blower fan that shot the loose silage up, up, up a long tube and fell down into our silo. When the silo was full, we were now ready to let ‘Old Man Winter’ bring on his winds, cause our dear animals now had lots of food as they cozied up in our barn which lay in the shadow of that silo.
This is a ten tine silage fork.
Here’s where my chore for the family came into play. Daily, it was my job (or whoever Dad assigned) to climb the very tall, silo chute ladder to the top of the silo and then crawl through the doorway into the silo, itself. My job? Take the silage fork and toss down enough silage to feed the cows for that morning or evening’s feeding.
Elliott became dizzy from the optical illusion of the clouds racing across the aperture of the silo walls above him.
Staring up in amazement into a cylindrical slice of blue sky from inside our silo, I could see fluffy white clouds skidding quickly across the aperture of my farm-boy domain. The prairie winds blew those white vapor-puffs past the cement orifice so fast, that the optical illusion of the silo ‘falling over’ would make me dizzy and I’d lose my balance temporarily. I felt the need to steady myself on the handle of the silage fork in my hand that was stuck firmly into the silage. Seven days a week, it was my task (or Dad, or big brother) to forge my way through our handsome old barn and enter a small room that linked the barn to our very tall, cement-block silo.
Up, up, up the silo chute ladder Elliott would climb each day to toss down the green silage for the livestock to eat. Our chute ladder had a roof, though, not open to the sky like this one.
My young legs and arms worked in unison as I climbed higher and higher within an enclosed ladder/tunnel that led to the highest open door of this cement block repository of green delights that our cows enjoyed for their meals. Since our silo had no roof, the frigid temperatures of winter and its snows would oftentimes freeze the layers of silage down as much as two feet deep in permafrost as SOLID as a rock! In order to release the green gold of cow food beneath that frozen grip, I would take my pickaxe and slam the pointed end into that frozen maize to break it up enough to then take our large silage fork and scoop forkfuls of silage down the tunnel I had just come through to get way up here. On some winter’s evenings, with crystalline stars sparkling above the round silo opening, I’d take a rest from forking and just drink in the magic of the twilight as I’d glance down the ladder tunnel to see the golden glow of the barn lights below me. Heat, from the many bovine bodies down there would fly up the tunnel ladder and warm the numbness of my half-frozen cheeks while Bobby Vinton could be heard singing “Blue Velvet” over Dad’s barn radio.
For Elliott, getting silage blown in his face was a quick lesson learned.
Even with our barn doors closed against the blast of winter’s assailing winds, there ofttimes were whistling gusts of air that would filter through the barn and then fly up the narrow tube of the ladder tunnel and into the silo where I was working. There was a quick lesson for me, early on, as I made the mistake of standing right in front of the silo door as I tossed my forkful of silage into the the chute opening, only to have MOST of it blown right back into my face!!! I quickly learned to stand off to the side of that square portal and THEN toss that silage down the long tunnel to the bottom of the ladder.
This is almost exactly the same type of metal bushel basket that Elliott used to haul the silage to each cow.
When a sizeable pile of this ground up corn lay at the bottom of the silo’s tunnel, I would then climb down and begin filling our metal bushel basket with that green gold. Each bushel basket was then carried out of the silo room and placed on top of the manger railing to slide down the line for feeding each of our 15 head of Holstein milk cows (and other livestock, too). Within the confines of that long wooden manger, one could hear the lowing of the cows as they marvelously munched the maize brought to them by this Norwegian Farmer’s Son.
March 20th…“WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER AS YOUR FAVORITE TIME OF THE YEAR AND WHY?”
The brilliance of Fall was Elliott’s favorite time of the year, both on the farm and up to today.
The earth was yielding her fruited harvest to us and the trees became giant flowers in spectacular, breathtaking hues………yes, the season of fall captured my heart when it came to being a favorite time of the year to find pleasures for this farm boy. Of course, every season shares their magical wonders to us, but that one special point on the calendar of yearly life held many facets of the “jewel” it was for me to enjoy.
Harvest time, on our farm, took center stage each autumn. Of the many agricultural plantings that our parents gleaned from God’s dear soil, corn was the crop that held a major role in feeding our livestock of cows, hogs, horses, chickens, etc.. Dad had an old Farmall F-20 tractor that he kept dedicated to reside inside the enfoldment of a two row International Harvester corn picker. It was hard to say which was older, the corn picker, or that old Farmall F-20, yet they both rose to the challenge of harvest each year, so we were grateful.
When that red “beast” came to life, you could hear it for miles. 😉
There was little, if any, muffler to quiet the sound of that 1930’s generation of tractor, so everybody knew when it was time for the corn harvest to begin as Dad sparked that old “beast” to life. It was always easy to know which field Dad was in as he was picking corn; all you had to do was step outside the door of our farm home and hear the GROWL of the F-20 “beast” as it fueled the raw power to the corn picker. In the pristine clarity of that crisp, fall air, the unmistakable fragrance of the field corn permeated the entire farmyard and had a delicious distinction all its own……so pleasant, yet difficult to describe.
This wagon load of field corn was fun for Elliott and little sister, Candi, to play on, but almost became deadly for Elliott.
Sometimes, in the lull of the busy harvest activities, a wagon load of field corn would sit idle on our farm yard. In these older days of harvesting corn, the ears of corn were plucked whole from the stalk of the corn plant (unlike the shelled corn of today). The mountain of maize piled high in that wagon looked like a fun playground for my little sister and I to climb to the top and explore. We were giddy with glee as we played among the thousands of ears of corn that awaited the conveyor that would auger them up and into the tall, metal mesh corncrib where the harvest would dwell over the winter months. Children are often innocently ignorant of life’s dangers and, on that day, this adventure was almost deadly for this farm boy. I recall crawling to the corner of the wagon and I began to excavate ears of corn out of the way so that I could snuggle deeper and deeper into what almost became my tomb. There I was, digging myself further into that wagon corner when suddenly……the corn load shifted and hundreds of pounds of ear corn slid up against me and trapped me tight. I was cemented (so to speak) by that corn and panic set in quickly. It was even becoming hard to breath as the corn pushed against my chest. Thank the Lord, my darling sister came to the rescue in speedily grabbing and throwing ears of corn away from my compressed body. I, too, was flipping ears of corn away from this predicament as fast as I could. The combined wild tossing of those ears of corn eventually allowed me just enough wiggle room to pull myself from what could have been a literally crushing situation.
One of two wire mesh corncribs the Noorlun’s had on their farm to store and dry corn. Building on the left was our hog house. You can see the old corn wagon in the distant hog yard.
Eventually, through the faithful work of Dad and his crew, our amber harvest of marvelous maize made its way into our wire corncribs. After a time of drying, a grinding company from Kiester would come out to the farm to grind these ears of corn to a finer meal that our animals could easily chew and enjoy.
As if spectators to us mortals and our harvesting, our age old windbreak of deciduous trees were ablaze in their gigantic mantle of fall color. Their “grand finale” of the season’s growth was taking place around us as each tree’s brilliant hues were set in glorious contrast against an azure-blue sky. God’s enormous bouquets of orange, red, bright yellow and mellow gold were on display for us humans to ponder upon as the magic passing of another season was before our very eyes. Like a curtain closing the act of a beautiful play, winter’s winds would soon strip the petals of these crisp “flowers” and usher in the next season of rest and cold for our rich Minnesota farmland. These are but a few of the reasons why autumn has been my favorite season as I relish each year of life God has given to this Norwegian Farmer’s Son.
Our beloved mother, Clarice, captured this image of Autumn color at our farm in 1965. We had just come home from morning worship at Grace Evangelical United Brethren Church in Kiester, Minnesota. Don’t let the date here fool you. In those days, a roll of film wasn’t sent into the lab for developing till each frame had a picture on it.
March 19th…“DID ANY OF YOUR BOYHOOD DREAMS GET DASHED ON THE ROCKS OF REALITY?”
Elliott’s hero, Roy Rogers, wore the coolest looking cowboy boots in the world!
Roy Rogers was elevated into the sky by the equine strength of his mighty Palomino, “Trigger”. When those powerful front hooves touched back down to earth, “Trigger” and Roy would streak across the screen of our black and white television in conquest of any injustices that came to challenge the law of right and good in the Old West.
Elliott drooled and dreamed over the Sears Catalog pages in hopes of someday owning a suit of cowboy clothes and boots just like Roy Rogers.
As a little boy, I admired everything there was about Roy Rogers (whose actual birth name was Leonard Slye). I loved the way he sang, I thrilled to his manly muscles as he’d be fighting the bad guys and I was especially intrigued by the fancy cowboy outfits and boots he’d wear. In my tiny world of idol worship, I decided that I wanted to look like my hero, so I’d start from the ground up with some of my very own cowboy boots.
To earn money to buy cowboy boots, Elliott trapped Pocket Gophers. He received ten cents for every front claw foot from Charlie Heitzeg, the local Faribault County Agent.
Like many farm families, money was for essentials of life, NOT cowboy boots. I’d have to EARN that kind of money on my own. So, out came the steel traps as I’d saddle up my Shetland Pony, “Little Lady”. My Shetland pony and I began our own trap line (as it’s called) for a mile or two in each direction from our farm; anywhere we saw a gopher mound, we’d set a trap. When successful, I’d catch and kill a Pocket Gopher. After killing the creature, I’d cut off their two front claw feet. After trapping and killing quite a few gophers, I’d then receive a bounty of ten cents for each front claw that I presented to our local County Agent (Charlie Heitzeg). I’d keep the claws in a glass jar of salt, so I could save up a bunch to cash in at one time. It took A LOT of gopher claws to add up to enough money to purchase and ship those boots to our farm there outside of Kiester, Minnesota. As dollar bills began to accumulate in my shoe box, I had the thrill of perusing our mail order catalogs till I found the PERFECT pair of handsome cowboy boots. The rest of my western outfit would come later, but I HAD to have those boots……BIG TIME!
A perfect lookalike of the boots that Elliott ordered from the Sears Catalog.
With each catalog page of boots, I began imagining “Little Lady” and I on our own grand adventures around the farm with my magnificent cowboy boots hooked into her saddle stirrups. When the shoebox was “full” of cash, the day finally arrived as our beloved mother, Clarice, did the catalog paperwork on my behalf and we took the envelope, with my dream money inside, out to the mailbox. My goodness how the days seemed to creep slowly by as I waited for the magic parcel to arrive from Sears!!! Being the impatient youngster I was (and still am), I must have driven Mom close to the brink of violence as I’d harass her almost daily with, “When will theyarrive? Do you think my boots will come today? Why is it taking so long?” Sainted woman that she was, I was thankful she didn’t take my head off like a praying mantis. She’d just answer my anxious questions in a reserved manner. Blessed we were to have her patient heart among us!!
Elliott’s boot dream was crushed.
The magic day FINALLY arrived and I could feel the electricity in the air as I grabbed that shipping box out of Mom’s offering arms and raced upstairs to become, in a sense, Roy Rogers (farmer boy style)! Tape and wrapping paper flew as my nervously anticipating fingers wielded a blur of activity while I dug for my precious new foot wear. These were to be my very first EVER pair of cowboy boots. The boot box lid came off and……THERE THEY WERE!!!! In all their tanned glory they filled my nostrils with their heady fragrance of leather cowhide. I could have fainted right into cowboy heaven at that moment. Scooting over, I sat on the edge of my swaybacked bed and began to tug on the first boot. OHHH NOOOO!!! No matter how hard I pulled, the boots were TOO SMALL!! Somehow our family’s concept of boot size was different than that of the Sears Catalog folks. I was totally CRUSHED in my spirit! With tears streaming down my cheeks, I took the too small boots downstairs to Mom with the deepest sad face a brokenhearted little boy could emit!! It had taken SO VERY LONG for them to come, and it would be SO VERY LONG, in a little boy’s mind, to send them back and get the next size up. But, you know, as hard as it was, I just had to endure that wait. It was a true test of patience for a very discouraged Norwegian Farmer’s Son.
March 18th…“WAS FARM WORK DANGEROUS? SHARE THE REASONS WHY.”
Farming was a dangerous way of life, at times. It was an unspoken Christian code of honor, among tillers of the soil, to come together to help another farmer in need due to injury or sickness. Here, Elliott’s father, Russell C. Noorlun, is fulfilling that code of ethics with fellow farmers of our area in southern Minnesota. Russell is circled in “blue ink”.
Our hard working farmer father was like a soldier facing the dangers of the unknown as he’d enter the world of agriculture every morning. Only the good Lord would know what kind of predicament or battle Dad would have to face with either recalcitrant animals, or in this case, a piece of farm equipment and a tool.
This is a disc. Front and rear ranks were usually set at 45 degree angles.
One of the many machinery implements Dad used on the farm was called a ‘disc’. This device could be used to help smooth a seed bed for planting in the spring, or help cut up the stalks of corn stubble in the fall. The sharp, circular steel wheel blades of this device, being pulled by the tractor, would cut and send the soil to one side and then slice that same soil back again to break it up thoroughly. It was during one of those corn stubble operations when Dad looked back, from the seat of his tractor, and saw that one of the disc blades had broken and needed to be replaced.
This is a Crescent Wrench similar to what Elliott’s dad was injured by.
After bringing the Farmall Super M to a stop, Dad shut off the engine and climbed down from the tractor to inspect the damage a rock had caused to the disc blade. With feelings of consternation for the interruption to his field work, our father pulled a Crescent Wrench (and other tools) from the toolbox attached to the tractor. By spinning the gear wheel on the Crescent Wrench, Dad was able to close down the metal jaws to just a slit opening and then slipped those jaws of the wrench over the disc blade. His intention was to use pressure exerted against the spring steel of the blade and then loosen it to come off the disc shaft and reattach another disc blade in its place. Instead, Dad’s sweaty hands, being now under full muscle power, slipped off the handle of that wrench that was now under recoil pressure of the tension disc blade. In a split second, that wrench (under pressure from the disc blade) catapulted into Dad’s face. The jaw of the wrench hooked into and ripped open our father’s nostril, tearing open that fleshy protuberance clear up and exposing Dad’s sinus cavity. Now in stunning pain, and with blood everywhere, our father miraculously made the trek from the field and back up to our farm house. Mother quickly called our neighboring farm and Mr. Chet Ozmun to please come to their aid and assist in administering some initial medical attention.
Dr. Hanson was the classic epitome of what an old fashioned country doctor was all about.
Mr. Ozmun quickly realized that our daddy’s injuries were far beyond his capability to help, so Chet then gave a fast phone call to Frost, Minnesota and the office of Dr. Lewis Hanson. This country doctor was, in my opinion, one of the last of his breed. He was a true country doctor in the fact that he deeply cared for the farmers and their families in our area. Unlike today’s modern medical specialists, Doc Hanson came TO you…and fast…..right to your farm. Even though it was about 20 miles from our farm to Dr. Hanson’s office, it seemed like Chet Ozmun had just placed the phone handset back on its cradle when Doc’s old Buick roared into our gravel driveway and slid to a halt in the yard just outside of our kitchen window.
Little sister, Candice, and Elliott around the time of Dad’s farming injury.
Daddy was painfully waiting at our kitchen table when Doc Hanson blew into the house with his black doctor’s bag in tow. Little sister, Candi, and I were in the kitchen that day and observing this tense and bloody moment. In our innocence, one of us mentioned that our father’s face resembled ‘cherry pie’……….with that remark, we were then ushered outside to play and not to bother the adults involved in the serious situation at hand.
This is the type of needle that was lost on the floor of our farm kitchen by Dr. Hanson.
Later, I was told that Doc Hanson had dropped (and lost) his half-moon suturing needle on the floor of our kitchen and it seemed to have disappeared. He had to settle for one of Mom’s straight quilting needles, instead, in order to sew up the gash to our father’s nose and sinus. I can only surmise the EXTRA pain that our father had to endure with this more intrusive form of repair to his already hurting face. I could bet that our daddy’s fingernail marks were still in that kitchen chair cushion for years to come because I don’t recall anything mentioned about the doctor using any type of anesthetic.
Our thanks to Doc Hanson, Mom and dear Chet Ozmun for coming to our father’s aid that day. Blessings to your memory, Dad, for your hard work and the dangers that you faced for this Norwegian Farmer’s Son.
We were blessed to have good neighbors, like Chet Ozmun was, that cared and looked after each other.
Norwegian Farmer's Son 