February 6th…“WHO WAS THE MOST FAMOUS PERSON YOU EVER MET, AS A CHILD?”

In my rural lifestyle, surrounded by the bliss of 120 acres of rich, ebony farmland, the most famous person I ever met was my beloved mother, Clarice!

Each day, rather than giving me her autograph (like famous folk do), she’d give us God’s love via her constant care, cooking delicious meals, working beyond sun up to sun down on that farm,  giving us loving chastisement and, above all, seeing that we received a spiritual education from her and our local church.

Like an Academy Award winner, Mom was the famous person who taught us fairness, compassion, love for family, etc..  And, when it came to boredom, Mom came to our rescue in teaching us patience and skills by combining our favorite coloring book pages and sewing.  We’d put a sheet of carbon paper between our choice of coloring book page and some cloth.  Then we had to trace the picture with a soft lead pencil while the carbon ink transferred the image onto the cloth below.  Then, Mom would show us how to use different colored thread to ‘color in’ our picture in little itty bitty stitches along the lines we had traced.

Our famous mom was the one who took us on adventures in the evenings by opening books and reading to us before bedtime and then would help us say our prayers.

Usually, our evening prayer went something like this:  “Now I lay me, Down to sleep, I pray the Lord, My soul to keep, If I should die, Before I wake, I pray the Lord, My soul to take.  Amen”

The dear soul who introduces you to God………now THAT’S a famous person for this Norwegian Farmer’s Son.

February 5th…“AS A CHILD, WHAT WERE YOU DOING THE FIRST TIME YOU SMASHED A FINGER?”

POEM – “Flattened Feeenger” by N. Elliott Noorlun

Dis iddo bitty boy, Wus in him’s daddy’s shop,

Him picketed up BIG hammer, To give dat nail a POP!

Wit teeny weeny muskels, Dem hands too long did leenger,

Cause down camed hebby hammer, Upon him’s flattened feenger!!!

YEEEOWSA!  Dat schmartts!!

February 4th…“DO YOU HAVE ANY KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR FAMILY HERITAGE AND HOW YOUR FAMILY GOT ITS NAME?”

As a tiny boy, I’d listened with eager ears, on many an evening, as the fragrant smoke from the paternal pipes of my father, Russell, and grandfather, Edwin Noorlun, would curl upwards into the kitchen air as my father would enjoy the fellowship of his father.  As a little tike, I really enjoyed getting cozy near my parents, grandparents and their elder generation of friends as they would reminisce about our Norwegian cultural heritage and the lineage of family fathers that migrated to America from the north lands of Norway.  Stories unfolded that in the mother country of Norway, our descendants were actually called by the last name of Bredeson.

If I heard correctly, from an old gentleman who came from Norway, in the old country when you were born, you were given the customary first name.  Then, your middle name came from your father’s family name with ‘son’ added to it.  Your last name was either geographically related or identified with the family you lived with, at the time.  If you moved, then your last name changed;  reflecting your new location and/or the new family you were then associated with.  I picked up this knowledge of our Norwegian heritage from a dear old Norwegian gentleman who emigrated from Norway when he was a mere 16 years of age (which just happened to be MY age at the time of this sharing).  So, to continue, this man’s first name was Trigve.  His father’s first name was Tolak.  To honor his father’s lineage, Trigve’s middle name was Tolakson (or, you could say, the son of Tolak).   Before emigrating to America, Trigve lived with a family by the last name of Lening.   He chose to adopt that family’s name as his permanent last name when he started a new life on the shores of our United States of America.  My sister found out, when trying to trace family history, that it was not easy to find the roots of our family much past the 1890’s or so, since the Norwegian family surnames in the old country changed so much with each move to a new family or locality.

I guess, if we used the old Norwegian role model for naming someone, then I’d be known as Elliott (first name) Russellson (basically, the son of Russell) Kaneohe (because that’s where I live (as of 2025) here in Hawaii.

I have often mused on the perchance that ancient Norwegians, having been introduced to Christianity, MAY have gotten their practice of this naming ritual from the Bible.  There are some common parallels to ……Jesus (His given first name), Christ (honoring his Father), and of Nazareth (the hometown where Jesus grew up).

From what I gleaned, in those story times with Dad and Grandpa Edwin, was that when the Bredeson family came to America, the male family leader (or patriarch), at the time, decided to signify to other Norwegians, in this place called America, where our family hailed from in the ‘mother country’; therefore, our family name NOORLUN was born from two words….NORTH and LAND…transliterated to Noorlun.

Be this accurate, or not, it is what is remembered as being shared with this Norwegian Farmer’s Son.  Yah shure yew betcha!! 😉

February 3rd…“SHARE A MEMORY ABOUT A WEATHER-RELATED SCHOOL CANCELLATION”.

The year 1964 saw the completion of my first decade of life on Planet Earth.  Wow, a whole TEN YEARS old already!  With that milestone tucked neatly under my belt, I perused the daily calendar as it continued to pass from that of a classic winter’s scene to the mild, marvelous month of March that had again descended upon the plains of southern Minnesota and my hometown village of Kiester.  Spring seemed to have regained sway over the ravages of winter’s iron grip.  Now, as each day got a bit warmer, we found ourselves playing outdoors with only T-shirts instead of multiple layers of long-johns and insulated clothing that were a necessity during the previous season.  One could now catch the fragrance in the air of delicious green grass as our lawn was being mowed and our rich farm soils drying in the welcoming rays of sweet sunshine.

One of my buddies, in those days, was John Steven.  It was soon to be his birthday and John had invited me to his farm home located a few miles east of our sweet hometown.  Excitement swelled within me, for it was not JUST a birthday party, but was to be an ‘over-nighter’, too, with his very kind family.   “OH BOY!  What fun! This will be a kick!” , I thought to myself.

The school bell set us free from education’s grasp as John and I ran to catch his bus for the ‘over-nighter’ birthday party at his farm.  Upon arrival at the end of his long driveway, we jumped down from the last bus step as we boogied down the graveled lane towards their farmyard.   The two of us burst into his quaint two story farmhouse and raced upstairs to get my gear settled into his bedroom where we were gonna bunk together for the night.  To pass the time till supper, John’s older brother, Wayne, invited us outside to enjoy the springtime evening and shoot some basketball against the hoop that was attached to the side of their barn or granary.  Of course, there were no basketball court markings, so to speak, we just bounced the old basketball the best we could on the dirt and scrub grass that grew there in their farmyard.  I remember looking around their farm while smelling the delicious aroma of this new warm season that was emerging around us and musing,   “Ahhhhh, spring is finally here and it’s GREAT!”  Little did I know, at that moment, what was in store for myself and the dear Steven family that were my hosts that evening.

The spring evening faded into night and we eventually came inside for the family’s supper, John’s birthday celebration and then some television watching alongside this gentle clan of farmers.  After offering my thanks for the meal and a good night to his folks, we boys clamored up the squeaky stairs to our ‘eagle’s nest’ of a bedroom and jabbered our little 4th Grade heads off as we prepared to sleep double in John’s bed.

Some hours after drifting off to sleep, John jostled me awake.  We both realized there was now a significant frigidity in the air and the newly acquired goose pimples all over our bodies proved that something very strange was occurring.  Our eyes opened wide in amazement as we became cognizant of the sounds of blasting blizzard winds that were scouring John’s bedroom window with its snowy ice crystals.  SNOW???  AT THE END OF MARCH???

Wide awake now, we amazed little boys were shivering with chattering teeth as we tippy-toed across the icy feel of the linoleum floor and tried to peer out into the black of the night via John’s frosted bedroom window.  Our intentions were to get a glance of what in the world had happened to the spring we enjoyed just hours ago!  Unable to discern anything that was in the darkness beyond the glass, we quickly scrounged up a number of heavy quilts for John’s bed and then vamoosed our little goose-pimpled butts back into the bed to stay warm with each other’s body heat and the blessings of those heavy quilts that now guarded us against the frozen wildness of the night outside.

When our eyes popped open the next morning, we could see our breath vapors in the air of John’s bedroom.  Even with morning daylight, nothing could be seen outside of his bedroom windows, though, cause they had been completely frosted over from the blizzard still in full blow outside.  Having only taken ‘spring-type’ clothes along for what was to have been only an overnight stay, John then began sharing his collection of winter clothes with me.  For his age, John was much taller than I was, so everything I wore was kinda floppin’ and moppin’ up the floor as I moved about, but hey, I was WARM and that’s what counted.  As our energetic young bodies bounded down the stairs, we came into and were immediately enveloped by the cozy warmth of the Steven’s kitchen.  With a smile on her lips, John’s mother gave us the joyous news that was music to our juvenile ears……she said, “SCHOOL IS CLOSED DUE TO BLIZZARD CONDITIONS!”   The news had been broadcast over one of the local radio stations.  Within a blink, our eyes lit up as we looked at each other, then we burst forth with exclamations of “WAHOOOO!!!”  Since the phone lines of our county were still intact, Mrs. Stevens had given my mother a call to let her know that all was well and that I’d be a Steven’s kid for awhile and well looked after.

John’s mother was an excellent cook!  For breakfast, on that first blizzard morning, she made us the BIGGEST pancakes I had ever seen in my 10 year old life.  A single pancake completely covered my large plate.  That doughy delight must have been ten inches across, at least!  We slathered those monster cakes with real sweet cream butter made at our local creamery in town.  Then came the ‘gallons’ of rich maple syrup that had just the right viscosity to make a slow motion ooozing over the pancake pile and slowly dribble to the plate below.  An utter delight to the taste buds they were!  To top off this early morning food celebration came a breakfast dessert of strawberries sliced into rich cream.  Scrumptious, for sure!

Our little boy engines began to purr for adventure, now that our ‘gas tanks’ were fueled with that marvelous breakfast.  With both of us wrapped and bundled to the hilt, we ventured forth into the howling white world of snow that had superseded the warmth of spring that existed just the day before.  Stepping out their front door, wind gusts shrieked past us at such a high velocity, that they literally sucked the air from our lungs, causing us to gasp quickly to return oxygen to our bodies.  Even now, in daylight, with the blizzard’s roar around us, it was difficult to see neighboring farms, due to the visibility being cut down by the snow storm rolling through the area.  Accumulations made snow drifts much taller than our 10 year old bodies, and those massive snow drifts now inhabited what, the day before, had been green grass and pasturing cows.  Yet, even in the fierceness of this scene, the beauty of God showed His creativity within His storm by sculpting snow drifts of all shapes and sizes.  Trudging our snow-laden legs through this mass of screaming white, we came upon artistic dimensions in the snowdrifts that fueled our imaginations.   Thanks to the force of the winds, some of those drifts now had overhanging ‘cliffs’ of snow that allowed us to hunker down underneath them to get away from the stinging winds and more calmly witness this white spectacle from the protection of our temporary ‘white cave’ while the white wonderment swirled around us in wild abandon.

Looking like two human snowballs, John and I came waddling back into his home to thaw our frozen frames.  Peeling off our multiple layers of clothing, we then settled down in front of their Living Room furnace and began to watch his family’s black & white screened television set.

John’s dear mother made us a giant bowl of steaming hot popcorn to enjoy as we whiled away the hours watching old adventure serials from the 1930’s and 1940’s.  Shows like “Flash Gordon”, “The Adventures Of Crash Corrigan” and others that kept us spellbound and ‘left in the lurch’ at the end of each chapter where the hero was about to be killed.  But, as we continued watching the next chapter of the serial, the hero would somehow wiggle out of his dilemma to gain victory over the bad guys.

After three or four days of fun and no school, the wild winter weather finally abated  and our Faribault County snowplows were once again opening the roads for school buses to travel.  Alas, the adventure had to come to an end and life returned to normal as we boarded the bus from John’s farm back to school and the rigors of reading , writing and arithmetic for this Norwegian Farmer’s Son.

February 2nd…“DO YOU HAVE ANY FUN MEMORIES OF PLAYING OR SLEDDING ON ICE?”

Mr. Moon smiled down so brightly on our winter farmlands that night that you could have sworn it was noontime by the way its ethereal glow reflected off the pureness of the snow.  The night air was pristine in its frigid beauty and not a breath of wind stirred for miles.

Always in the mood for fun, our eldest brother, Lowell, had an idea to have a nighttime outing in the snow.  Little sister, Candi, and I gladly accepted the chance to spend time with our hero brother and one of his good buddies, Jimmie Kephart, who lived on the farm next to us.

Brother Lowell had a 1957 Ford Fairlane that was a real dream machine (as far as I was concerned) so the four of us ‘sled sleuths’ piled into that blue powerhouse with great anticipation, for on this brilliant night excursion, it was to be our chariot to enjoy slippin’, slidin’ and sleddin’!!  Lowell turned over the ignition key on that Ford and brought that purring engine to life.  Next thing you know, those chained up snow tires crunched a happy sound into the frozen drifts of our yard as we spun out of the south driveway on our way to pick up Jimmie, over the gravel road, and up to Chet Ozmun’s farm and tall hill.

The Ozmun’s farm house porch light popped on as Chet Ozmun responded to Lowell’s knock on their door.  After customary greetings and chatting, we received Chet’s blessings to be on their property and climbed to the top of their hill for sledding under the moon’s happy light.  Our anticipation was a bit stunted, though, because the snow up on the hill that night was just not compacted enough to allow for any decent speeds of sled fun.  There was too much mangled grass beneath the snow and it kept bogging down our efforts for playtime.  Even though the sledding wasn’t too good, we DID revel in the majestic blue hue of the farmlands below us.  What an amazing vista of glittering fields sleeping in their winter’s rest of that snow-blanketed night.   Someone blurted out an idea, “Heyyyyy, let’s drive down to the bridge over Brush Creek and go sledding on the ice!!!”  In a blink, we all ran back to the Ford and in just a few minutes we were at the frozen creek that ran east to west at the southern border of our farm property.  The change of frozen scenery was grand fun as we began slipping our way down the snow-encrusted creek banks to our new venue of nighttime adventures.  Sure enough, the ice-covered creek by the light of a winter’s full moon was a childhood ecstasy to enjoy!

First, we shared the sled for single person runs on that glazed ribbon of frozen water.  Then, the muscles of our elder brother and his buddy provided little sister and I sled rides where they’d even play ‘crack the whip’ with us hanging on for life as their centrifugal motions almost made us airborne.  Our laughter in that violet-hued night was captured in the frigid air around us in frozen ‘puffs’ from our mouths as we huffed and wheezed our way throughout that joyous ebony evening.

My joy was temporarily interrupted by a moment of potential icy terror for me.  You see, our brother’s buddy, Jimmie, was a husky teenager and he decided that he was going to take the sled and do a run ending in a ‘belly flop’ on top of that wooden and steel contraption.   Bone chilling and deadly was the water beneath the ice that night and Jimmie was not a ‘Slim Jim’.  With sled in hand, he trotted a short distance on the ice and then launched his body into the air and came down on top of the sled with a mighty KAWHUMP!!!  My eyes were as big as dinner plates as I heard the concussion of his fall and saw the ice crack in all directions!!  You could see the fissures sparking out from his contact point and all I could think of, in my panicked little boy mind, was that we were all going to collapse into the deadly ice water below and freeze to death!!  Thankfully, my fears were unsubstantiated and with a sigh of relief, nothing happened.  Just for safety, though, I kept my distance from that cracked area of ice for the rest of that wonderful night of icy fun memories for this Norwegian Farmer’s Son.

February 1st…“BEING FULL-BLOODED NORWEGIAN, WHAT KIND OF HERITAGE RELATED THINGS CAUGHT YOUR ATTENTION AS YOU WERE GROWING UP?”

The tire treads of our family car thrummed against the gravel road as they sang a lullaby to this tiny boy while I drifted off to sleep upon my mother’s soft chest.  Little toddler that I was, I had expended every ounce of my young ‘Norwegian battery’ from playing with cousins during our fun visit to their home.  Now Dad was pointing our car homewards bound and back to our farm there in southern Minnesota.  As I groggily slid from sleep to consciousness and back to sleep again, I was comforted by Mom’s voice, droning from the cavity of her bosom, as she conversed with our father while driving along.   It was a most pleasant way to be introduced to Norwegian-sounding words and their use in my infantile time of early life.

But, later in life, when it came to adults talking amongst themselves, something unique to my Norwegian heritage began to evolve.  As I grew, I began to discern something distinct in my grandparent’s generation; the sound of a Scandinavian accent, a flavoring, if you will, to their speech.

My father, in his young generation, told me of growing up in a Norwegian household.  He shared, “I grew up bilingual, that is speaking two languages.  I could be speaking Norwegian to my mother, then spin around in the room and speak English to my father.

Later in life, I found a photo of our Dad standing for a very solemn photo with some of his brothers.  I’d ask why the scowling faces?  The answer was that they, in those days, had to sit through TWO worship times in church each week.  The one church time was in English and the same sermon was then repeated all over again…..only this time in Norwegian.  No wonder he and his energetic brothers were sour-looking and frowning.

From the time my mother (Clarice) was little, the same held true for her side of the Norwegian culture that followed our ancestors from the shores of Norway.  What really caught my attention the most, though, was when my parents and the elders of the family would ‘shift gears’ while visiting among themselves.  English was being spoken at first, but all of a sudden the adults would begin conversing in Norwegian and leave us kids in a cloud of confusion as to what was being conveyed between their adult ears.  At first, it was hard for my little boy mind to wrap around the event unfolding before me.  Adult lips were moving, but I couldn’t understand a thing they were saying!!  Over time, though, I discerned that if the grownups talked Norwegian in serious or dark, hushed tones, they were likely talking about a confidential family matter.  If they spoke the Norwegian in happy tones, with inflections of voice and whimsical winks, eventually, they ended up laughing their heads off.  We kids then knew it was very likely a ‘colorful’ joke that our young ears either shouldn’t hear or wouldn’t have understood anyway.

In our early days, we Noorlun kiddos learned various Norwegian phrases as we listened to our parents and grandparents.  The phrase “UFF DA!!!(pronounced OOOFF DAH)” is a Norwegian term used to express shock or disbelief or even being upset about something.   Then there was the customary Norwegian way of saying “many thousand thanks for the food”, which was “Mange Tusen Takk For Maten”.

Some NON-Norwegian ears, one night, heard something and misinterpreted what he THOUGHT he heard and our whole family laughed a good one!!    You see, each evening, at bedtime, it was customary for Mom and Dad to give us children a Norwegian blessing of “sleep good”, in Norwegian, as we went upstairs for slumber.  The phrase “Sov Godt” was kinda transliterated to our family version of “Suva Gut”.  Well, anyway, Douglas Ehrich was over visiting our sister, Rosemary, one evening at bedtime and as we raced up the stairwell to bed, Mom and Dad hollered out the Norwegian blessing to us and we returned the blessing back down to them from upstairs.  Doug leaned over to sister Rosie, on the couch, and quietly asked, “Do your folks always cuss at the children that way??”  What a hoot!!!  First Rosie started laughing, then our folks and then all of us roared as we told Doug that they were just saying “good night” to us in Norwegian!!!

One of the tender times of our Norwegian heritage was when our elders and parents would recite the Norwegian Table Prayer.  You could almost see the olden days, in their eyes, as they gently spoke these words.  I would surmise that they were seeing their own elders from days gone by as they, too, recited these words of loving thanks to our Lord Jesus for giving them the provision of another daily meal.  These fond memories brighten the heart of this Norwegian Farmers’ Son as I bid you “Goodnight and sleep good” in Norwegian…….’Godnat og sov godt’.   😉

January 31st…“WHAT WAS A SPECIAL EVENT IN GRADE SCHOOL THAT YOU REMEMBER FONDLY?”

My life was ‘planted’ in an ocean, of sorts.  An ocean of the richest farmland this side of anywhere and it was located right smack dab in the center of our Continental United States in the mighty marvelous mowed meadows of Minnesota.  Being in that special location that I was, I had never been to or seen the REAL Pacific Ocean in my young life (that would come later when I reached 13 years old and we moved to the West Coast).   I could only read and hear about the majestic Pacific from books, movies, orrrrrr, enjoy an exciting event that came to our school one day.

Whenever I saw posters or heard of a Lyceum coming to our school, I was intrigued by our teacher mentioning its approaching date in class or seeing a poster advertising the topic that would be discussed and shared.  Schools in other parts of the nation would have students come together for what’s called “Assemblies”, but our school system used the ancient term in the form of the word……Lyceum.

The word originates from the Latin language and has the meaning of “a popular form of education, with discussions, concerts, displays, etc..”

One of the many Lyceums, over my Grade School years, captured me in awe because it colorfully taught us about life on and beneath the ocean.   Stories, slide shows and film told us of the ancient sailing ships that plied those trackless waters.  I vividly remember as our class filed into the gymnasium and, as we climbed into the tiered auditorium seating, I looked down below us and was enthralled by what awaited us!

Tables and tables of ocean-related ‘trinkets’ were for sale after the Lyceum for those interested in taking home a bit of the sea as a reminder of this day.  Also present were ocean-related paintings and nautical apparatus to teach us about life under the wide waters of the world.  Accompanied by impressive music and lighting effects, stories and information would be shared via slide shows, film and fluorescent colored chalk drawings that artists would create right before our very eyes.  As the ocean artists painted and educated us, gymnasium lighting dropped off one by one until the chalk painter and his masterpiece were illuminated by only a single small spot light as he taught.  He then began using a special colored chalk to create underwater scenes of magnificent colors on his canvas.  As he taught us of the unfathomable depths of the sea, more and more sea creatures appeared on his portrait of a world below the waves.  As a grand finale, the artist would then douse his spot light and turn on various “black lights” to make his final art piece ‘come alive’ with vibrant colors revealed by the magic of ‘black light’.  Little did I know that day, that visiting the powerful Pacific Ocean would become a reality in just a few years for this Norwegian Farmer’s Son.

January 30th…“ARE THERE QUESTIONS YOU WOULD’VE LIKED TO ASK YOUR FATHER ABOUT HIS LIFE, BUT DIDN’T?”

YES, indubitably so!!!  As of today, it’s been a full 45 years since our farmer father left this world for Heaven’s Shores after suffering from the ravages of pancreatic cancer.  Over those years, since he left for Glory-Land, I’ve had innumerable times when questions about Dad’s life would come to me, but he was no longer ‘across town’ to go ask him about ‘this or that’.  I’ve had so many musings about what his feelings would have been on issues of his life that would’ve, in turn, brought me more understanding about the foundations of where I came from and who I have become.  How wise it would have been to have employed more foresight than hindsight regarding Dad’s life.  It would have garnered a fuller story of the life of Russell Conrad Noorlun from birth to his last days.

In light of what I’ve shared already, regarding unanswered questions, I wanted to be proactive in my generation and create a source of what life has been like for me, myself and I in this earthly journey I’ve enjoyed up to this point in time.

A ‘light bulb’ came on in my head after giving our mother a one year calendar some years ago.  That calendar contained 365 questions for her to share HER life with us, as a family.  After thoroughly enjoying her responses about her life, I took that format and revamped it to fit a more male genre of questions based upon life experiences of my own and began to write this series I call, ” Norwegian Farmer’s Son”.   Therefore, for those of you who have just ‘come on board’ with these writings, I preface this magnum opus with the full knowledge that I am NOT a professional writer.  You will see many of my misspelling errors, grammatical flaws, etc..   Yet, I embark upon this literary endeavor to share my heart and life, not only with my beloved five children, but also for my grandchildren and generations of family yet to be born who can someday pick up these pages and find out more of who their grandfather was.  I also count it pure joy when friends also ‘jump on the bus’ along with me and, as a result, many times share their stories of growing up, as well.

Picture these short stories and jottings as a poor man’s autobiography and his children are asking him over 600 questions to better know who their father and grandfather is.  In the course of almost two years, I will answer those questions one day at a time.  Some answers will be in short story form, others in poetry and some will be simple, straight forward answers.

I find a sense of peace that at the end of my life, when I, N. Elliott Noorlun, take my last breath on earth and traverse into eternity, my children and grandchildren will have over 600 ‘windows’ (via these stories) to look into the life of this simple farm boy who grew up under God’s grace, mercy and provision.  I am eternally grateful for my Lord’s love and mercy shown to this Norwegian Farmer’s Son.

January 29th…“HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ‘KNOCKED OUT COLD’ (i.e. UNCONSCIOUS)?”

In those dear days of the long ago, I excitedly looked forward to Saturday evenings in our village of Kiester like kids of today look forward to the latest video games.  But contrary to the youth of today, my buddies and I didn’t sit around like body lumps staring into tiny cellphone screens with just our thumbs moving for some form of exercise.

After arriving in town and climbing out of our parent’s car, I’d quickly locate my schoolmates.  Off we’d go on a run for adventure and exploring all around the village while parents did their shopping and visited with friends.  Many of our quaint store buildings had narrow gaps between them that were just skinny enough for us rambunctious boys to shimmy sideways along from the back of the store siding to the front and back onto Main Street.  As was true for most Midwest towns, there were ‘service alley lanes’ that followed along behind the stores and paralleled Main Street.  There, in that rear utilitarian domain, we kiddos could check out every nook and cranny behind the stores.  Imagination ruled supreme in our fun from playing ‘Kick The Can’ to how far one could fling a rock down that long back alley.

With the summer’s sun sliding gracefully into the farmland horizon, our youthful energies often escalated to playing ‘Hide N Seek’ in the shadows of the village buildings or challenging one another to see how fast we could run to out-do a pal who was chasing and trying to catch you.

Those ‘Catch Me If You Can’ races took my feet flying in front of one of our grocery stores that evening.  Whizzing along, like a Minnesota wind gust, I was racing my little legs down the sidewalk in front of “Field’s Supermarket”.  That same store, in earlier years, was owned and operated by the Hoel family.  I looked over my shoulder to see if my pal was catching up to me and when I did, my toe caught in a raised bit of sidewalk.  In a millisecond, my eyes were wide open in shock as my face ‘planted’ right into that sidewalk and ‘knocked me out colder than a cucumber’.

As my eyelids began to open, I realized that I’m now horizontal and looking up at the ceiling of a grocery store while laying on top of the store’s check out counter where the cashier person stands.  A small crowd of townspeople were gathered around to observe when this little ‘racer’ would ‘come back to life’.   Being the fine community of caring folk that our town was known for, the store owner (Mr. LaVerle Field) had scooped up my limp little body from the sidewalk and carried me into the store to take care of me.  Other than a big lump on my forehead from ‘kissing the cement’, I seemed to be alive to thrive yet another day of childhood.  Good neighbors had found and summoned my parents from nearby and they, in turn, sincerely thanked Mr. Field for his kindness in coming to the rescue of a tiny, unconscious Norwegian Farmer’s Son.

January 28th…“WHAT DID YOU AND YOUR SIBLINGS FIGHT ABOUT THE MOST?”

That’s an interesting question to muse upon as my Norwegian ‘time machine’ takes me back to childhood days.  As I peruse that past, I would say that the reasons we had for our sibling fights tended to parallel the time frame of life that each of us were living in at any given moment.

She’s the sweetest soul to walk the face of the Earth, nowadays, but in our younger years, there on our farm northwest of Kiester, Minnesota, I would’ve said that the ‘burr under my saddle’ was my little sister, Candice.

She was a year and 10 months younger than myself.  In my little boy thinking at the time, little sister, Candi, was guilty of ‘bothering’ the layout of my toy farmyard that I created in the cool, powder-soft soil that was under our giant shade trees where the tire swing hung.  I had painstakingly manufactured my own home-made fence line, consisting of tiny branch twigs, to corral in my imaginary herd of Holstein cows.  Little Sister would either want to ‘help’ me play farmer or argue that she wanted to enjoy a time on our big airplane tire swing and now it was ME who was ‘in the way’……..NOT!

Long, long before there were televisions in every room and now a cell phone ‘TV’ in every hand, we had ONE “Zenith” black and white screened television located in the corner of our cozy living room on our farm.  Being the normal kids that we were, here was another venue for a squabble as to which channel each of us wanted to watch.   Out in the kitchen, Mom and Dad would listen to the whining only so long and then they’d make a ‘command decision’ for us, OR, they would stride into the living room, grab the on/off knob on the set and ‘flick it off’.   That would get BOTH of our attentions……negatively, of course.  Candi and I would then be ejected to our own bedrooms or told to “Get outside and find something to do!!!”.

An epic sibling battle ensued once between myself and big sister, Rosie (8 years my senior).  I was 10 years old in 1964 and I had heard of this new rock-n-roll band from England called “The Beatles”.  They were scheduled to appear on the very popular variety program called, “The Ed Sullivan Show”….THAT VERY NIGHT!

Our folks, not being connoisseurs of this new modern sound, had decided to watch a different type of program to their liking on our one and only television set.  SUCH a dilemma I faced!!!  I really just HAD to see “The Beatles” perform that night!  I thought to my sinister little self, “Ahaaaaa!!, I’ll just sneak into Rosie’s room and watch “The Fab Four” on the little television that her fiancé recently gave her!!”  I slinked and slunked upstairs and right into her room and dared to touch her ‘sacred’ television set.  Ever so gently, I turned the knob on the plastic cabinet to hear the set click “on”.  Now I could hear the tubes inside the TV hum with current and the little screen ‘crackled’ to life.  THERE THEY WERE!!!, THE BEATLES!!!  They were in the middle of the song, “She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah”.   I had the sound turned down somewhat, but I hadn’t counted on one thing.  You see, old farm houses, in those days, had at least one square hole in the second story floor covered with an open metal grating.   We could actually look down through the grating and see our folks downstairs.   The concept of the opening was for allowing heat to rise from downstairs to the upstairs so it wouldn’t be so cold in our bedrooms at night, during the cold winter.  In my musical case, though, it was a dead giveaway, cause big sister Rosie could hear HER television being used WITHOUT her permission.  Like a German Gestapo Storm Trooper, she ripped the stairway door open and charged up the stairs, bellowing all the way for me to get away from HER television set!!!  Whoooeeee, did I EVER get a ‘tongue lashing’ from her!!!   There was ‘trouble in River City’ THAT night for this Norwegian Farmer’s Son.