January 17th…“TELL A FOND MEMORY OF YOUR MATERNAL GRANDMOTHER”.

The imprint of one life upon another; what a magnificent marvel it is!!  My darling maternal grandmother, Amanda Margaret Rogness Sletten (1894 – 1967), had a lovingly positive impact on my life without a doubt.  The etymology of Grandmother’s first name (Amanda) comes from the Latin language and means “worthy of love”.  Margaret, Grandma Sletten’s middle name, garners its meaning from the Greek language and means, “pearl”.  How appropriate that this endearing matriarch of our family was ‘a pearl, worthy of love’.

It was just a matter of time before this lovely Norwegian girl met up with a Norwegian boy named Clarence Sletten.   During their wedding vows on Christmas Eve of 1917, I’m sure our demure grandmother’s beauty was a sight for all to behold.  From Clarence and Amanda’s marital union came our beloved mother (in 1919) and down the road of life came two brothers (Robert and Delmaine).  In 1929, the family enjoyed the arrival of a little sister (Beverly) for the joy of four children in all.

Although diminutive in stature and imbued with with a quiet nature, this dear godly woman of our family legacy barely reached five feet in height.  Amazingly though, Grandma Amanda was a giant in spirit among us and carried within her a heart bigger than all outdoors!  Ever thoughtful and tender towards all, she was a happy ‘hugaholic’ that could never get enough of her loving ‘fix’ in squeezing the little cherubs of grandchildren that would come to their cottage for visits.

Over her years here on earth, not only did I have my own fond memories of this dear godly woman, but I also heard of how delighted she was to enjoy any opportunity to gather with her much-loved sisters and brothers for fellowship times at the occasion of birthdays or just for fun times, as well.

As a young boy, I remember trotting up to the front door of their tiny home in Albert Lea, Minnesota.  While standing at their screen door, I could catch the aroma on the air of her Norwegian delicacy called, Lefse.   This potato based treat was rolled very thin and then grilled on a flat griddle till it resembled a ‘tortilla’, of sorts, with its speckled brown grill marks.  The most common way for us to enjoy this delectable dessert was to butter it with rich, creamery butter, then sprinkle it with a thick coating of sugar, roll it up and EAT!

Grandma Amanda worked wonders with another cookie-type delight called, “Kringla” (also spelled Kringle……the word actually means, “circle or a ring”).   We’d usually flip this yummy upside down and butter it, then it was a matter of taste buds to either use jam or jelly or other ideas to top off the tasty treat that was fun to eat.

Many occasions brought our clan together under the summer shade trees of their home and, as a little guy, I enjoyed gravitating to the lap of my loving Grandma Amanda.  After the meal, one time, I noticed that Grandma had some flesh hanging from the underside of the bicep of her arm.  I asked her, “Grandma! What’s that?”  “Oh THIS?”, she said, and with a giggle began to flap her upper arm from side to side to make her ‘flab’ to start swinging this way and that.  Little me was bustin’ out laughin’ from the sight of it all!    Pretty soon, my mother and her sister couldn’t resist and joined in the fun with their mother.  The sight of three ladies and their upper arm fat swinging underneath looked like upside down “Jello” gone WILD!!  Whooodawgies, there was flesh a flyin’ and giggles a poppin’ in the air there on Abbott Street in quaint old Albert Lea, Minnesota.  I guess you could’ve called our ladies the ‘Fine Feminine Fat Flopper Family!!’

What a cherished Grandmother memory for this Norwegian Farmer’s Son.

January 16th…“SHARE A FUNNY MEMORY OF YOUR MATERNAL GRANDFATHER”.

As I remember him, our maternal grandfather, Clarence Sletten, was a tall, quiet man.  His silver coiffure was that classic hairstyle of the early 1900’s which equated to combing the hair straight back over the top of his head.  These are my initial perceptions of the grandfather that I saw more often in childhood than I saw my paternal grandfather.    I suppose we visited my maternal grandparents more often due to the old adage that goes like this: “A son is a son, till he takes a wife, but a daughter is a daughter for the rest of your life”.   Our sweet mother, Clarice, naturally enjoyed being near her mother for visiting and helping her parents in their senior years.  Therefore, when our trustworthy 1956 Chevy was loaded with our family, Daddy would spin the steering wheel to the left out of our driveway and head towards Albert Lea, Minnesota more often than turning right out of the driveway and towards our paternal grandparents who lived in Lake Mills, Iowa.

Like a mini-hotrod, my little boy engine was always purring and ready to zoom from point A to point B.  I remember running everywhere, even if it was just across the room to change the channel on our old “Zenith” black and white television.  Unlike my high energy, Grandpa Sletten, on the other hand, only walked.  And even when he did walk, it was at a slow, aged gait.  Being the inquisitive, tiny jabber-box that I was in those little boy days, I would often ask my parents, “Why don’t Grandma and Grandpa run????”  My parents would look down at me and giggle at my innocent ignorance of the seasons of life and try to inform me of what happens to the body of a person who gets old, but I was still in a fog.  “What’s OLD??”, I would question in return, to which they’d just smile and shake their head.

The scene fast forwards to the late 1960’s and Grandfather Sletten traveled out to to visit us in Washington State.  It was time for our Norwegian progenitor to visit many of his progeny that now lived in the Vancouver, Washington area.  Clarence was easily in his mid 70’s now and his gait was even slower than it was in my little scalawag days back in Minnesota.

Independence Day had arrived and our family clan were gathered for some private fireworks and holiday picnics in someone’s backyard.  July 4th had ebbed into night and we were now going to have our own personal fireworks show to celebrate our nation’s freedoms.

One of the sparkling, whooshing fireworks that evening was a ‘ground spinner’ that SHOULD have spun in place in a circle as it lifted vertically off the ground.  But did it go straight up?  NOOOOOOO!!!!

That contraption seemed possessed by the mean little ‘fireworks fairy’ and, as it spun, it navigated in a bee line right for where Grandpa Clarence was standing!!  In the blink of an eye, our 75 year old elder showed everyone that night that a Grandpa CAN run!!!  And he DID!!!  That lanky old Norwegian body took off like a shot out of a hot cannon.  We all laughed till we busted a gut to the point of being breathless.  And, come to think of it, Grandpa Clarence was pretty breathless, too!!  So was one of the fun times of this Norwegian Farmer’s Son.

January 15th…“WHAT IMPRESSED YOU ABOUT YOUR FATHER’S ABILITY TO INVENT SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS ON THE FARM?”

Like a recalcitrant child unwilling to share a toy, so also was ‘Old Man Winter’ in 1965 in southern Minnesota.  Instead of acquiescing to the release of his power over us, ‘Old Man Winter’ had a trick up his sleeve.

The marvelous month of March had moved into our lives and hopes of spring were just around the corner.  There were even signs of brown dirt beginning to peek out from beneath melting piles of snow that had been around since the fall of 1964.  One night though, what began as a simple rain storm, was quickly overtaken by a fast moving cold front that dropped temperatures well below freezing in a blink of time and, in the transition of going from rain to ice, the moisture-laden electrical power poles and lines were now heavily coated with thick, frozen crustaceans.  All it took was one more blast of those powerful winds and the massive power poles snapped like matchsticks for miles.  We, and everyone around us, went from modern life to pioneer existence literally overnight.

Before the blizzard knocked out our electricity source, it was routine for our father to use electric motors that provided vacuum for him to run two ‘belly milkers’ to milk our cows twice a day.  Our dairy herd consisted of 15 Holstein cows that are world famous for their impressive quantity of fine milk that they produce.  Our dear dad, in this frozen predicament of being without electrical power, could no longer use his two vacuum-powered milking machines.  Now, in order to get that job done, twice a day, he had to resort to the old fashioned way of milking our herd………..BY HAND SQUEEZING THE MILK OUT OF EACH COW’S UDDER (MILK) BAG.

Keep in mind now, that every cow has four teats on her udder (milk bag) that had to be squeezed multiple times to extract up to four gallons of milk per cow.  And, the cows had to be milked morning AND evening.  Four teats times fifteen cows equals 60 teats squeezed till she was ‘dry’ and then multiply that by two (morning and evening).  Incredibly, that comes out to 120 teats a day that had to be squeezed and pulled till no more milk would come out into the bucket.  Poor father, there he was squatting on his milk stool in that barn, in the severe cold of a late winter blizzard.  Well, after two or three days of that ‘torture’, his hands were beginning to cramp severely and I’m sure, even with sitting on a milking stool, that his back was killing him in pain from bending over that milk bucket 15 times……..twice a day.

To the rescue came Dad’s inventive genius in the form of a tractor.  “A tractor to milk cows?”, you say?  Here’s what he did.  Now I know nothing about engines and mechanics, but our Norwegian farmer father did.  Our trustworthy Farmall H tractor was backed up to the barn door to be in place for this special assignment.  After some mechanical thinking, Dad was able to connect vacuum hoses from the milking system in the barn and somehow plug them into the running engine of the tractor.   Now he could make use of the vacuum that was generated by the tractor’s engine.  Climbing aboard the “H”, Dad fired up the engine and yanked the throttle up to high speed so that a higher degree of vacuum would be produced to at least be able to run one of his ‘belly milkers’.

So while ‘Old Man Winter’ clawed at us in his last gasp of frozen expression outside our barn walls, I stood in awe at an amazing feat of problem solving by my farmer father that made me really proud to be known as his Norwegian Farmer’s Son.

January 14th…“DID YOU EVER RECEIVE A BIRTHDAY PRESENT THAT REALLY MADE YOU LAUGH OUT LOUD?”

ON THIS CALENDAR DAY,

OF WHICH I WAS BORN,

A PLAN OF MANY GOOD DEEDS,

A GIFT TO YOU ALL,

E’EN THOUGH THEY BE SMALL,

A PACK OF NORWEGIAN DONUT SEEDS!!!

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Where to grow?………Any sunny location, preferably next to a coffee shop.

When to plant?……Any time of the year is good, but iced donuts grow best when planted in Winter.

Planting instructions and care?……..Plant in several rows that are five feet apart and ten feet deep.

For best results, use two Norwegians……one to do the actual digging and the other to clean the dirt from his teeth.  Should you prefer glazed donuts, sprinkle each donut blossom with one teaspoon of sugar.  Many Norwegians use manure on their donuts, however a touch of whipping cream creates a better flavor.

SPECIAL NOTICE OF WARNING!!!……It is feared that individuals associated with the International Donut Institute Of Tasmania Society (IDIOTS) may have mixed common breakfast cereal into our seed stock.  For your own protection, please compare your donut seeds with the illustration.  O = Donut Seed and O = Breakfast Cereal.

Guarantee………If for any reason, you are not 100% satisfied, dig up the donut seeds and return this package UNOPENED to the American Donut Seed Society for refund.  This guarantee is VOID after purchase……heheheh 🙂

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My very best friend and the kindest soul this side of Heaven, Mr. Jim Morris, gave me these Norwegian Donut Seeds (package of Cheerios with these cute instructions) on my birthday one Sunday at Battle Ground Baptist Church in Battle Ground, Washington.   I was reading the ‘instructions’ and, at the same time, driving home after morning worship that day, and I tell ya, I laughed so hard I nearly went off the road with the family.  Thanks to dear hearts like his, it can be a lot of fun being a Norwegian Farmer’s Son!!! :o)

January 13th…”DID YOUR MOTHER WORK OUTSIDE THE HOME?”

Why, yes indeed she did!!!  Not only did she work ‘outside the home’, she worked ALL OVER THAT FARM!!  😉

Our mother was an amazing career woman!  In her daily enterprises, you could see her excel as a “Pork Promoting Processor”    (she fed the piggies in our hog house).

Following that achievement, she would head over to the other side of the farmyard and engage in being a “Professional Poultry Practitioner” (she picked eggs and fed the hens in our chicken house).

And if that wasn’t enough excitement in her life, she moved up the corporate ladder of success and achieved the status of being a “Cumulative Calf Caresser” (she’d take a small bucket that had a big rubber nipple attached and feed milk to all our baby calves in the barn).

Now, I know this has you bowled over already with drooling envy to be just like her, but get this…….she really wowed the whole kitchen culture with her amazing career as a “Pucker Power Pickle Producer”!! (she made the BEST Dill Pickles)

Yep, ladies and gentlemen, right there in her own localized factory (her farm kitchen).  Matter of fact, her success in the canning industry got to be known far and wide, so she branched out into “Pretty Peach Preserves Production”, “Passionate Pear Poppin’ “ (into jars, that is) and, get this…..she even took on “Wild Watermelon Rind Wrangling” (she made us her super delicious pickles out of watermelon rind).

Yes, yes, I know……by this time you’re beside yourself with thrilling yearnings as to wanting to follow this grand woman in the lavish career of being famous like my mom, but WAIT!!!  Clarice Arlone Sletten Noorlun broke all records in the demanding business of being a “Lavish Laundry Liquefier” ( she did TONS of laundry to keep our family in clean clothing over the years).

All kidding aside, as you can see, this precious lady of our lives was, after all, a farmer’s wife.  Of her own volition and heart attitude, she chose to make a career of lovingly serving the needs of her husband and we four children there on our farm near the quaint village of Kiester, Minnesota.  Mom’s choice of career has deeply embedded her in all our hearts as our ‘Living Treasure’ for what would be the remainder of her 98 years and three months until her loving Lord called her Home to Glory on June 23rd, 2017.  Our mother will always make me proud to be a Norwegian Farmer’s Son.

January 12th…”WHAT DID YOUR FATHER DO FOR A LIVING?”

As his daddy before him, my father was a tiller of the soil and I gladly count him to be in excellent standing among other great All-American Farmers.

Under the loving tutelage of his much admired parent, Russell gleaned a working knowledge and great respect for the honored career of farming.  Yet, due to the hard times of growing up in The Great Depression of the 1930’s, our father, Russell, faced the fact that he would have to make his own way, financially, by the sweat of his brow and muscles.  You see, the handsome Edwin Noorlun family had been blessed with five sons and three daughters.  That’s a lot of mouths that had to be fed and bodies clothed in those very lean Depression years when every penny was hard to earn and even harder to keep in light of life’s expenses.  Russ faced the fact that he felt it better to strike out on his own in the world and lessen the financial load upon his parents.

Our Norwegian patriarch only finished his 8th Grade year of education in the public school system on or near the Chippewa Indian Reservation.  From there, he then left home to begin his new chapter of life as a hired farm hand working at various farms in his home area.  It must have been a real adventure for a 14 year old boy to be on his own, independent from family and working at various farms in and near Mahnomen, Minnesota.  Dad was grateful to get even the simple wages of a place to sleep and a meal for his tummy (with a few dollars in his pocket) in exchange for long days in the farmer’s fields.

Since Dad was now a 14 year old independent person, he went from farm employment to farm employment hearing an old-fashioned term used by the owners of each host home.  They’d tell Dad something like, “Well, Russell, we’ll give you $10.00 a month plus ‘room and board’.   The origin of this phrase, ‘room and board’, originally came from history’s Middle Ages.  As a laborer served his master/employer during the day, he was given an evening payment of a room and a bed to sleep in at night.  The ‘board’ part of this old phrase had to do with food.  In ancient times, only rich or royal society folk could afford true china plates, therefore, peasant commoners would take a wooden board, hollow out one side of that board and used it as a plate for the ‘payment’ of food for their hard-working laborers.  And there you have it…….’Room and Board’.  😉

When it came to hard work, our dear daddy spoke of harvesting potatoes from sunrise to sunset and getting only 50 cents for the entire day of grueling, bent over labor.  After his early teenage years of being a farm hand in the northern realms of Minnesota, our family patriarch decided to head for south central Minnesota and northern Iowa to seek new agricultural employment on the farms in those areas.

While there, in northern Iowa, Russell caught the eye of another Norwegian who was of the gentle, feminine persuasion……that of our dear mother, Clarice Arlone Sletten.    They were married in June of 1941 and the newlyweds went to work for a couple of growly, bachelor brother farmers near Mom’s tiny village of Scarville, Iowa.

Over time, Dad and Mom had their bellies full of the negative and irascible bachelor brothers who employed them, so, in the spring of 1942, our poppa was looking for new opportunities of agricultural employment in the Kiester, Minnesota area.  It was in that dear village that Father met a sweet man by the name of Walter (lovingly known as Wally) Mutschler.  Wally and his darling wife, Genevieve, not only hired Russell and Clarice to help them work their farm, but also became like an ‘extra set of parents’ for my folks and an ‘extra set of grandparents’ for us Noorlun kids.  We’ve been tied in love to the Mutschler family ever since!!

The spring of 1946 brought a wonderful opportunity for Dad and Mom to have a farm of their very own.  Just to the south of the Mutschler farm (where they were hired hands), was a lovely 120 acres owned by Morten and Tina Holstad.  Tina’s parents (or grandparents) were early farm folk who worked that land back in the late 1800’s.  I seem to recall a family by the name of Thompson were the original homesteaders that lived and worked that soil even farther back in the middle 1800’s.  When our folks moved onto the ‘Holstad place’, they first rented from Morten and Tina, but eventually, they signed papers to begin the process of purchasing this special farm to have and call their very own.

Life on a farm is both heavenly and hard at the same time.  To smell the delicious black earth turned over by the plow in the spring is a delight to the senses.  Then, at the end of the harvest season, to catch the heady fragrance of harvested field corn stored in the corncrib……well, it makes one glad just to be alive.

Thanks to our father and mother’s choice of livelihood, I was able to see the glory of the farming culture on a daily basis.  That scenario ran the full gamut of life’s spectrum from seeing farm animals being born to the necessary ending of some of their lives by butchering in order to provide meat to the freezer for our family meals.  I loved it all and was touched profoundly for my entire life by each farm experience.  Thanks, Dad, up there in Heaven!!!!   I’m so glad I grew up as a Norwegian Farmer’s Son!!! 🙂

January 11th...“WERE YOU EVER FEATURED ON A LOCAL EVENING NEWS TELEVISION BROADCAST?”

During the happy tenure of my 31 years with the Battle Ground School District, I became known as “The Singing Custodian”.

It was in early February of 1980, that I received a phone call at our school office one day.  The person on the other end of this conversation was one of the Producers from the CBS Television affiliate station in Portland, Oregon known as KOIN-TV.  He wanted permission from our Principal and myself to come to our school to film me singing to our students for broadcast on their evening news that day.

It is interesting what brought about that phone call from the TV station.  There had been a couple of newspaper articles that were written about my ‘singing and cleaning curriculum’.  I enjoyed rewarding the students with a song, story, fun toy sharing or other enjoyable activity with the little ones to ‘pay’ them for helping me keep our school clean.

Here’s how my ‘cleaning curriculum’ worked.  Each day after school, I would inspect the classrooms as I cleaned.  If the students achieved my three core cleaning goals, I’d draw a smiley face on their chalkboard which equaled a reward of three minutes of happy time with this old custodian.  Five smiley faces for the entire week would garner them a full 15 minutes of song, play or story time as my way of saying THANK YOU for making my cleaning life easier.  I would then pay a visit to participating classrooms on my one hour, personal lunch break once a week to ‘pay’ what I owed to my little pals.  😉

A Video Cameraman who worked for KOIN-TV had taken one of my newspaper articles into the Portland, Oregon television station with him to show his superior.  As I spoke with the videographer after the filming, he told me that he had approached his co-worker this way, “Hey Boss, instead of covering all the sad news in our area; you know…killings, robberies, etc………., let’s go out to Glenwood Heights Elementary School in the Battle Ground School District and do a happy story about this guy who is a singing custodian!”  Well, the supervisor agreed, and after getting permission from our school office, they arrived to set up cameras and do an interview along with capturing me ‘on stage’ with some singing and guitar time in a classroom.

One of our 4th Grade teachers (Mr. Steve Rees) was so kind to allow us to do the filming segment in his classroom.  Those great students and myself sure had a blast of a good time as I went through my ‘show’ for this special audience of Glenwood “Cubbies”(the school mascot of a lion cub).

My heart has always had an affection for the beautiful time of life for children between Kindergarten and 4th Grade.  Their life experiences are still brand new to them and they are thrilled to enjoy every minute of every day!!  I was ‘tickled pink’ to be a musically fun part of their daily lives in a more personal way, rather than just be an ‘invisible person’ that only comes in after school to clean.  I hope some of these dear little souls have positive reflections of their custodian from those days in the long ago who is also known as the Norwegian Farmer’s Son.

January 10th…TELL OF NICKNAMES YOU’VE HAD OVER THE YEARS FROM FAMILY OR FRIENDS.

Nomenclatorial superlatives, alias nicknames, have followed me throughout my life.  Within my immediate family, the three syllables of “ELL-I-OTT” were often chopped down to a single burst of “Heyyy ELL”.  It was short, I know, but then again so was I……short, that is!  Now the word, “nick”, means a small cut or indentation and, I guess you could say that any of us who are tagged with a nickname are receiving a small kind of ‘dent’ when that substitutionary name is used in place of our given birth name.  It all depends whether that silly salutation is directed in an affectionate or derisive way.  On a rather intriguing aside, the British usage of the verbiage “nick” is employed to describe a prison or a person being arrested.

Like most nicknames, some of mine over the years were a bit derisive and intended to embarrass me, but I came to the point of grinning and bearing the tease and taking them in stride.  I learned to keep smiling and hope for a better outcome on the other side of the ribbing that I endured for the moment.  For instance, one of my Grade School buddies used to mimic the old “Nestle’s Quik” television commercial from the early 1960’s.  He’d sing the tune of the commercial ‘jingle’ and insert my name into certain spots…..”N-E-S-T-L-E-S, Elliott is the very best…..CHOCOLATE”.

A favorite cops n robbers television show for many of us kids in the early 1960’s was, “Eliot Ness and The Untouchables” (by the way, the real Mr. Ness was a Norwegian, like me….yah shure yew betcha).  It was a thrilling TV show about FBI crime fighters and their exploits in the America of the 1920’s.  The handsome actor, Robert Stack, played the part of Ness.  In this case, there was yet another Grade School classmate who enjoyed tagging me with the nickname ……“Hey there, Eliot Ness!!” (yes, Mr. Ness used only one L and one T in his first name.

Throughout my 31 years as a custodian for the Battle Ground School District, many sweet little kiddos at the Grade School where I worked would tag me with the latest cartoon or movie idol that had the name of ‘Elliott’ somewhere in its story line.  Walt Disney’s “Pete’s Dragon” was one venue of yet another nickname for me.  I can’t even begin to count the number of students at Glenwood Heights Elementary who would holler down the school halls with, “Heyyy There Pete’s Dragon!!”  or, “There goes Elliott the invisible dragon!!”.

Director Steven Spielberg’s “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” film brought me yet another nickname while custodian at my beloved Elementary School called Glenwood Heights.  The little boy in the movie was known as “Elliott”.  Many a student, in those days, would approach me in the halls with the classic ‘bent finger’ of the space creature and tell me in a strange voice from outer space, “E. T. phone home!”

Overall, this subject of nicknames has been fun over the years.  I tease folks by saying, “You can call me anything you want……..just don’t call me ‘late for dinner’ “  :o)  These have been just a few of the ‘handles’ that describe this Norwegian Farmer’s Son.

January 9th…“WHAT WAS A HOBBY OF YOUR FATHER’S THAT YOU ADMIRED?”

My father’s propensity of reading books was likely fueled by tales he’d heard as a child of the romanticism of The Old West.  That, and seeing the lifestyle of Cowboys and Indians lived out right before his eyes on a daily basis.  For you see, Dad learned many ‘ways of The West’ by growing up under the auspices of his own Norwegian farmer father who carried out his entire tenure of farming days in northern Minnesota with handsome teams of horses.  Grandfather Edwin Noorlun, I’m told, never drove a tractor.  Seems that would’ve made him a kind of a farmer cowboy, in a way.

Plus, another factor of influence was that my father’s family lived either on or near the Chippewa Indian Reservation near the northern Minnesota town called, Mahnomen.

Many Chippewa Indian children attended our father’s country school.  His daily play times with these friends could only help to grow his appreciation for the Indian culture that surrounded him, and with that, kindled a flame of love for all that composed the American story of The Wild West.

It wouldn’t surprise me a bit that, as a boy, this dear patriarch of our family, who only completed the 8th Grade in the public school system, would have loved to own a complete set of Zane Grey Western novels……..that is, if he could’ve afforded them in those youthful days.  Mr. Zane Grey was world famous for being an illustrious writer of Western Adventure stories.

On many an evening, both in our farm days of Minnesota and after we moved to Washington State, one could walk by our parent’s bedroom and view this hardworking man supine in his bed with a reading lamp attached to the headboard and an open “Zane Grey” book resting upright on his chest.  In these cherished moments of relaxation, Dad devoured page after page of adventures with sagas of thundering herds of buffalo or the lonely call of a wolf in a quiet forest while a full moon emanated an eerie light from the star-lit skies above.

Father’s love for reading was contagious to me and I found, like he did in his younger years, that no matter how poor you were, one could board a magic carpet of imagination and riches by just opening the cover of a book and venturing into the worlds that awaited you there.  When our father’s voracious appetite for Zane Grey had been satisfied by consuming every volume that author had published, our daddy turned to another, even more prolific Western author and the novels of the notable, Louis L’Amour.

Russell Conrad Noorlun lived out an honorable farmer’s life and yet, in a sense, he knew every trail and every ornery hombre that had ever swung up onto a saddle to ride to adventure and conquest.  Just as easily as he unwrapped a Christmas present, our wonderful dad unwrapped countless adventures each evening with a good western novel in his hands.  And the fun thing is, he didn’t need a cell phone or some other high-tech digital device….his medium was the classic printed page and the joys of imagination that dwelt within them.  His hobby made me glad to be his Norwegian Farmer’s Son.

January 8th…”DURING THE FROZEN WINTERS, WHAT INDOOR FAMILY ACTIVITY WAS FUN TO ENJOY?”

Outside of our quaint farmhouse walls, ‘Jack Frost’ was having a good old time decorating our windows with icy swirls, but inside our warm and cozy home, we were doing some swirls of our own.

Each week, my family looked forward to watching “THE JOHN DEERE BANDWAGON” television show that flew out over the airwaves from KEYC Channel 12 broadcasting station in Mankato, Minnesota.  “THE JOHN DEERE BANDWAGON” was brought to life in 1960 and, in its early heyday, was sponsored by many of the John Deere tractor dealerships of southern Minnesota.

Many local and national polka bands would come to entertain not only for the television audience watching throughout our Minnesota/Iowa region, but also for the many farm families that would drive to the studio, there in Mankato, to enjoy dancing to live music while the television show was being filmed for broadcast.

I loved to watch local couples dancing on the TV screen to this happy Nordic music.  Many of these dear farmers were from various Scandinavian backgrounds such as Norwegian, Swedish, German and other northern ancestries.  A smile would creep across my face as it was easily seen that these dear, balding men with amply fluffy farm wives were ensconced in the lifestyle of agriculture.  The main reason for this recognition was that the men bore the mark of the what I called ‘the farmer’s tan’.  You see, in order to protect their skin from the harsh elements of summer’s weather, any wise farmer would wear either a baseball cap or a full brimmed hat.  Day in and day out, while tending their crops, those head coverings protected these agrarians from the brutal Midwest sun.  From the midpoint of the man’s forehead, down to his chin and neck, these hardworking men were burnt brown, yet upward from foreheads to their bald or receding hairlines, their scalp was white as snow.

The device used to bring us this weekly musical merriment, was our little black and white television set that was tucked into the corner of our linoleum-floored Living Room.  Within that glowing picture tube were the sources for our gateway to avenues of  entertainment, learning, and in this case, a rousing good time.  Chairs and other furniture were sometimes moved off to the edges of our small Living Room to allow us kids a chance to wiggle and giggle as we knew the bandwagon show was about to come on the air.

Our beloved sister, Rosemary, was the happy ignition switch that usually sparked a party attitude wherever she went.  When the television master of ceremonies turned over the microphone to “Harold Loeffelmacher and His Six Fat Dutchmen”, Rosie often would grab either myself or our little sister, Candi, and would spin us around the Living Room as the polka music would fill the house with danceable songs like, “You’re Too Old To Cut The Mustard Anymore”.

It may have been dark and dreadfully cold on the outside of our farm home, but inside we basked in the warmth of smiles and outright laughter as us little tikes sometimes stepped up on and rode upon the feet of big sister as she attempted to teach us to waltz, polka and even try the schottische dances.  Our loving parents couldn’t help but giggle right along with us kids as their progeny not only made memories there in front of them, but also, in a childishly quaint way, maintained the heritage of the Scandinavian ways from timeless eras gone by.  Those truly were warm memories inside our warm home for this Norwegian Farmer’s Son.