My Life in the Little Brown House, part 27: Mel Rosene, Nellie Scott

The other incident which involved Mel and his wife while they were in the house across the street occurred when some large cottonwood trees were being felled along the west side of their home. There were two or three of these large cottonwoods, and as cottonwoods are when fully grown they were rather tall trees, with a large crown of correspondingly large branches. Whoever was cutting down the trees had completed the task except for the last tree by the middle to late afternoon. I’m not sure at this time whether it was in the spring (as in March) or in the fall (as say late in October) but the day had become increasingly cloudy and windy as it progressed and so as the tree felling proceeded, climatic conditions were steadily deteriorating. The fellers had attached ropes to direct the line of fall but with the wind the way it was they were rather ineffective and the tree finally came crashing down somewhat prematurely. Fortunately it did not fall against any structure but the situation was rather frightening for awhile. I recall looking out the south windows of the little brown house either in the parlor or the dining room and watching as the workers struggled with the tree in the rising wind. After Mel’s moved out of that house it was refurbished and used as a combination residents and funeral home. The business competed not too successfully with the well-established mortician business of Lennarson and Johnson who captured most of the local business.

Beyond the vacant lot to the south of us was the home of Nellie Scott, a stooped little lady of indeterminate age. A spinster, she had no visible means of support and to my recollection had never been employed. Perhaps she lived on funds from some inheritance. I don’t think she was elderly enough to have developed osteoporosis, but she had the rounded back and stooped stance characteristic of the condition. At the rear of the property was a building that could be partly used as a garage (though wasn’t as Nellie had no car) and was partly used by Nellie for her flock of chickens. These roamed outside in a large enclosed yard along the west side of her property, Nellie was a friendly person and both Clarice and I spent time in her kitchen and parlor/dining room visiting and talking with her. This contact began at an early age for Clarice and me and was the reason why we never developed a real facility in the use of Swedish for talking. Clarice I think was able to understand Swedish some, but I never really developed any understanding except for a few commonplace phrases or expressions. Neither of us could speak it. Nellie was not of the Swedish community so spoke only English and Clarice and I soon adopted it and our Swedish fell into disuse. I think that my parents spoke Swedish in their early married life so had it not been for Nellie I’m sure Clarice and I would have acquired a working facility in it. I know this happened with one of my contemporaries, Arthur Holmer.

Nellie maintained a more haphazard style of housekeeping that did my mother — her little kitchen table always had salt and pepper shakers on it, condiment containers and other material. My mother always cleaned off the table completely after a meal. One of the attractions that Nellie provided was contained in a women’s magazine she subscribed to called I believe the Delineator, whatever that signifies. Each issue would have a page of paper doll cutouts, which she would let us have (after she had read the reverse of course). I recall that the reverse was a complete page of text — no advertiser would buy the space there.


























Cover of Delineator magazine, October 1930

Nellie had various relatives that imposed on her. During the depths of the Depression, either a brother or nephew with wife and son Jackie lived with her for some time. Later Curtis and Lowell Smith lived with her — Curtis was a little older than I, Lowell younger; how they were related to Nellie I don’t know. Nellie later either had to sell her home or lost it via the mortgage foreclosure route. She spent her last days in a substandard and rather decrepit structure in the far west end of the town. One day, after people noticed there was no sign of her, she was found to have expired in bed. This all happened after I had left the community so I only learned of it third hand or even more indirectly. The news caused sort of a pang of sorrow in me, for a friendly person who had fallen on hard times and whom I had not thought of in years.

I have a couple of memories related to Nellie’s house and lot. Her lot had several larger trees on it, compared to the trees growing up around the little brown house. These produced a correspondingly larger amount of leaves which of course fell in the fall. I remember assisting Nellie in a superficial way by raking these into piles, which were then burned. No EPA or local burning criteria in those days to hinder such a practice. Whether it is because of this early and pleasurable experience with the smell of burning leaves or not I am not sure, but the distinctive odor still rouses a sense of pleasant reaction and nostalgia in me. I also recall playing at one end of her front porch — there was a low spot in the ground which afforded access to the open area beneath the porch and I recall using this to get under the porch. Inside the house I remember using the stereopticon viewer she had and the various pictures to look at, and wondering how the perception of depth was achieved. Although I’m sure Clarice was along most of the time when I was at Nellie’s I don’t really remember her presence, in my memory of Nellie and her house.




















Stereopticon viewer

My Life in the Little Brown House, part 26: Mel Rosene and Transients

Although I am nominally writing about the little brown house I have included to this point some areas around the house that were closely involved in the activities of my early years there. At this point I shall also include some additional material about several residences close bu that were similarly involved in the early family activities for me.

Originally just to the south of the little brown house was a vacant lot that in the summer grew up to bluegrass unattended. As long as it remained a vacant lot there was a path across it from the rear of the little brown house diagonally to the street which we all used when walking in the direction of town, school or Grandmother’s (or to Grandfather Strand’s for that matter). It was along this path that some of my mother’s jewelry was found after Vincent, at an early age, got into her dresser drawer where she kept these items and took them to play with.

It remained a vacant lot for quite some time but eventually Mel Rosene and his wife purchased it and built a house and garage on the property. Mel didn’t have a car so he didn’t need a garage for that purpose but I guess he needed a place to keep his gardening tools etc. Mel and his wife were childless and this unacquainted with the propensities of children, so my mother was a little concerned about possible friction between the Rosenes and us as children. Nothing developed along this line however, Mel (Melvin to be correct) made a show of earning a living by selling insurance, but I suspect that he had inherited some funds from his parents and was living partly off of that. I can see him still, a fairly tall man, quite erect, but with a substantial girth at his midsection, walking toward town with a little leather satchel-like contained, perhaps containing his insurance papers. It was rather an odd-shaped carrier — sort of like it was sized to contain legal-size envelopes and other papers folded to that dimension. It looked to be leather, dark reddish brown in color; probably not plastic — those were the days before plastics (except for Bakelite) were in much use, even existence of thought of them.

Before Mel and his wife built the house on the lot next to the little brown house, they resided in an old house across the street in a 45-degree direction toward the northwest corner of the park; indeed that house faced the park across the street from it. I have two vivid recollections from the time Mel and his wife lived in that house. While Mel lived there he kept several goats for the milk they produced and these goats were housed in a little barn at the rear of the property. The picture in my mind of large, portly Mel milking the goats has always fascinated me. Early one morning the barn caught on fire and was consumed as I recall. I don’t know if the cause of the blaze was ever determined but it could have been transients trespassing and using the barn for a night’s lodging. Gowrie had a floating population of hoboes or tramps that would ride the trained into the town and, presumably, stay for awhile before drifting on.

Some several blocks to the east of the little brown house the M & St. L tracks ran through the town (just north of the town they circled to the west and passed north of Lindquist’s pasture as I’ve written earlier) and adjacent to the tracks just north of Armour’s egg and chicken facility there was a hobo camp. I have the vague recollection of viewing the place, perhaps in the company of Harris Magnusson, and noting the evidence of habitation. There were no occupants there at the time. The tramps would make the rounds of local residences cadging free meals and perhaps offering to do some menial work in exchange. I’m sure that from time to time they solicited at both the little brown house and at my grandmother’s, with some success. I don’t think they were ever given any work to do — probably the feeling was that the sooner they left, the better, though there was regard for their hunger and homelessness. Or I suppose not homelessness, since the hobo jungle was in a way their residence.

I would suspect that this transient population no longer exists in Gowrie. Certainly the greatly reduced rail traffic through the town makes it much less accessible to tramps. I have the feeling that there was more tolerance then to such vagrants than there would be now. In addition to the hoboes there would appear traveling bands of gypsies who would spend varying lengths of time camped at the north end of the city park. Whether they received permission to do so I’ve no idea. As children, we were warned to steer clear of them — there were these rumors that children had disappeared, presumably being kidnapped into their society and culture.

My Life in the Little Brown House, part 25: Vacant Lots

To the west of the little brown house were some vacant lots that generally grew to tall grass during the summer months. Eventually whoever owned them didn’t keep the taxes paid and my father (I think after the move back to the little brown house from the farm) bought the lots adjoining the pasture and house lot on the west on tax sale. Indeed he bought the lots extending further south to the street that ran east and west along the north side of the city park. One reason he had for this purchase was to control the quack grass that infested the lots and which kept invading the west side of his property (actually it may still have been in my mother’s name only — a change made in the depths of the Depression as a precautionary move).

These lots tended to be wet and soggy — generally they were at a somewhat lower elevation that even the lot on which the little brown house stood, which had some problems in that respect. During wet rainy periods there was always the problem in the little brown house of water backing up from the basement drain and my parents had a little plug that would be place on the entrance to the drain to keep this from occurring. The lots to the west of the house were drained by some tile, but the inlet may have been plugged, or the tile may have become imperative for any one of a number of reasons. On one occasion (so I am told) after my parents moved back to Gowrie, my uncle Carl took it upon himself to look into the situation and was poking around out in the lots trying to locate where the tile was (I guess by prodding a stick down through the wet, easily penetrated earth). My father, always in sort of an uneasy truce with my uncle (particularly after the time on the farm when he worked for my uncle until he was employed by the county treasurer’s office) was incensed at this intervention, beneficial as it might have been, and there was an altercation of sorts, with my uncle retreating form the scene.

The difference between the two men resembled the difference in psychological character between the Strands and the Petersons. The Strand side was less intense and demanding, the Peterson side with its ties to the Seashore character was in a way almost mentally unstable — certainly almost neurotic at times. Both sides shared a common ethnic heritage, for example as to religion, but the Seashore side exhibited a fanaticism in religion that I feel was lacking on the Strand side. I have always been grateful that my genes contained the Strand characteristics to counteract the heritage from my Seashore ancestors.

I recall playing as a child out in the vacant lots to the west of the house. As the ground was low and swampy there grew in some spots tall reed-like plants with a rather sturdy main stem. The remains of these plants when dead and dry served as a raw material for various “cop and robber” games and I remember indulging in these with some of the boys of my age who lived in the general neighborhood. In later years after the return from the farm, my parents no longer kept a cow (or I think chickens for that matter) and the pasture and vacant lots were plowed up and my father grew field corn on them. Vincent was farming by then and I suppose he provided the plowing, field preparation and planting but my father did the cultivation and the weeding. I wonder if he didn’t pick it by hand also. Somewhere in the collection of photographs I have is a picture of him standing at the edge of the cornfield, just north of the little brown house, with the corn towering over his rather stooped, thin figure. I don’t know how long he kept up this activity; at some time in the early to mid 1950s his Parkinson’s disease had progressed to the point where he could no longer do gardening work. From that time on he was more or less housebound.

























Clarence in front of cornfield north of the little brown house

My Life in the Little Brown House, part 24: Flower Garden and Lawn

My mother liked flowers and she had various flowerbeds both in the back yard and the front yard. There was a white trellis fence from the southwest corner of the house to the south property line and thence west to about when the vegetable garden began. Many of my mother’s flowers were along this fence, and I believe there was some sort of climbing rose on the trellis over the gate through the fence.

My father assisted in the cars of the yard but as to flower his attention (and liking) was directed to the canna plants and bulbs. The foliage was a darkish purple-brown and the plants grew sort of like short cornstalks, though with wider leaves. The flowers were brilliantly colored and were located like the tassel on a corn plant. The bulbs would not survive the cold Iowa winters outside so my father dug them up every fall and stored them over the winter in the basement.







































Canna lilies

Even then he liked trees and on the south side of the house were two or three trees of a species unusual to Gowrie — right now I can’t recall the name for them. They had as I remember quite large leaves. I think it was he who selected them. Another thing I remember about my father’s care of the yard was the lawnmower he had. Mechanically it was an excellent mower, but it was very hard to push. I think this may have been because the reel was geared to rotate at such a high speed, requiring considerable traction between the wheels and the ground. Perhaps to get this traction the mower was also heavier than other lawnmowers I’ve encountered over the years. It was also the only mower I’ve encountered that had a round handle — again of excellent construction but quite heavy. My father could push it handily enough but it was more than I could handle at that young age. Somewhere about the time of the move to the farm another lawnmower was acquired that was easier to push and this became the instrument of use in subsequent years.

Across the roadway to the eat, in the front of the little brown house were several vacant lots, with trees and buses in them that made them good play areas for us children. Along the roadway on the opposite side my father kept the native grasses mowed, I suppose for appearance sake. One summer during the Depression years a family camped under the trees in the vacant lot. We had, as children, some contact with them, but I suspect we were warned by my mother not to become too closely involved with them.

Further east beyond the vacant lot was the Anton Byers’ home. This was a rather large, well-constructed house that (I am told) was the house that Uncle Carl used sort of as a prototype for Grandmother’s house in town. The two houses are roughly similar in overall dimensions but the Byers house has a more pleasing external appearance. To my recollection I was never inside the house so I don’t know how the interior compares to Grandmother’s. If it is true that Uncle Carl was the person who “decided” what the house in town would be like, it must have meant that he had, implicitly, assumed the status of “head of household” even perhaps during the last years of my grandfather’s life.

My Life in the Little Brown House, part 23: Vegetable Garden

To the west of the playhouse and south of the barn was the vegetable garden, a rather large area. It was large enough in area to warrant it being plowed by Uncle Carl, using a team of horses and a walking plow. I suppose he would do the plowing on the same trip as when he plowed the garden Grandmother’s house sometime in the spring of the year. After we had moved to the farm I remember a trip into town to Grandmother’s, taking in the walking plow on the spring wagon behind Barney and Birdie. After I had arrived Uncle Carl drove in from his work on the farm to do the plowing. The walking plow, as its name implies, is a plow that is operated by the user walking behind it — he doesn’t ride as on a sulky plow. The plow has two long handles extending back from the plowshare that are grasped by the operator, both for directing the plow and to a lesser degree for keeping it in the ground. The latter is mostly generated by the characteristic of the shape of the plow slade and the moldboard. The reins from the horses loop back and around the user, who will release his grip on the handles to pull on the reins as needed to direct the horses. Plowing, either with the walking plow or with the tractor is something I never did; I believe Vincent did however on occasion. I always had the feeling that Uncle Carl somewhat doubted my capability for doing some work, such as plowing.











Walking plow














Walking plow in use

The two main food items grown in the garden from the standpoint of the area occupied were potatoes and sweet corn. Potatoes were usually planted early, and the “new” succulent potatoes would be available by, say, the end of June. Often they would coincide with the ripening peas, and one of the seasonal delights was creamed new potatoes and peas. The potatoes would be relatively small so they would not be halved, but whole little ellipsoids. Sweet corn was planted later but would also come mid-summer and would last for some time; typically there would be several plantings to stretch out the time of availability. Other vegetables which were grown were radishes, lettuce, carrots, peas, string beans, acorn squash, pumpkins. Perhaps cabbage but I’m not sure. My grandmother included spinach in her garden — it was one of her favorites — but I can’t recall my mother ever growing it. After the sweet corn ears had been harvested my father would cut down the stalks, which were still green and juicy at that stage and feed them to the cow, who ate them with gusto.

The one perennial in the garden was rhubarb which, at least for me, was a favorite fruit (or vegetable, depending on the definition). For awhile my parents had a few gooseberry bushes but I guess they weren’t too productive, or too troublesome to prepare so they disappeared after while. There may also have been strawberries but I’m not at all sure about them.

There were several cherry trees, at various places in the yard west of the house and some apple trees along the north side of the driveway. The cherries were supplemented by those from Grandmother’s garden which seemed to be more productive. I really don’t remember how well the apple trees produced. I remember on at least one occasion the family making a visit to an orchard near Fort Dodge having U-pick apples. Both cherries and apples (at either our home, Grandmother’s, or for that matter, on the Peterson farm after the move there) were never pruned; I think with some attention along that line they might have been more productive. Along the east fence of the pasture there was a volunteer mulberry tree and the berries were picked sometimes; mulberries were never one of my favorites as there is no way of conveniently detaching the stems from them — you either ate them, stems and all, or not at all. There may have been a few blackberry bushes somewhere but they were a minor addition to the fruits at most.



















Mulberries

My Life in the Little Brown House, part 22: Playhouse

The last structure associated with the little brown house was the playhouse, and this was the last addition to the buildings on the lot. It was a square structure, with latticework sides from about three feet up to the roofline. The roof sloped down from a central high point to the eaves all around the building. There were two entrances — a large central one on the east side and a smaller, narrower one on the northwest corner on the north side. Clarice and Vivian occupied the south half of the playhouse as their play area — I was in the northwest corner. I don’t recall Vincent and the younger brothers playing in it. On the south side ivy had been planted which grew up into the latticework and shaded the interior. The ivy may have been on the west side also.

One of my recollections of the playhouse is painting the latticework on the north side. I was doing it on a sunny day and for some reason decided to get my arms suntanned in the process. I ended up with rather painful sunburn on one of my upper arms — it was enough to develop in me a reluctance from then on to get a suntan. What develops as a natural result from working and being in the sun is fine, but a suntan in and for itself is another thing. The playhouse ended up rather ignominiously as a chicken house out on the farm, to where it was moved not long after we moved out there. The sides were boarded up as I recall and probably some sort of closures were put on the two openings. What happened to it eventually I don’t know.

My parents provided additional outside play equipment for us. There was a small swing near the southeast corner of the barn — it may have had as one of its supports the post at one end of a clothesline. Of more interest to me was the sand pile of or sandbox which was located just outside the fence in front of the chicken house (after it had been erected in the pasture). The sand may have been enclosed by a low enclosure of boards but of this I’m not certain. What I do remember was playing in the sand pile and liking it when the sand was wet so it could be formed into shapes for various purposes. The sand would gradually be dispensed in a number of ways — for example I think Clarice and Vivian would use it in their play cooking — requiring periodic replacement. The latter would doubtless come from the Johnson lumberyard and I remember my delight at the big heap of new, damp sand.
























Carl at a local playground, Ashland, Oregon, July 1990. Still playing in the sand.

There was also a coaster wagon, and I believe a scooter, provided by my parents and I have already mentioned the bicycle I had. When I was younger I believe I had a tricycle — somewhere there is a snapshot of my cousin Eugene and me on our respective tricycles. This must have been when I and he were quite young and Uncle Serenus and family were residing on the Peterson homestead. Just when he left it to start his seminary training I’m not sure but I suppose it was in the mid 1920s.




















Cousins Eugene and Carl on their tricycles