My Life in the Little Brown House, part 29: Moving to the Farm

I have some poignant memories of the last year or so that we lived in the little brown house before the move to the farm. During the depths of the Depression I recall how my father had his pay at the bank reduced stepwise until finally he was terminated. After one of these pay reductions I recall him coming home and for consolation going out in the yard for some gardening activity. I dimly remember him going off, early in the morning during the winter, for some sort of WPA or PWA work program. I also recall as the plans to move out to the Peterson farm developed. The move depended on renting out the house and when this was achieved (the renter was the Percy Millard family — he was the agriculture and farm shop teacher at the high school) the move was made.

Uncle Carl assisted in the move, and I think at least Will Lines supplied some of the horses used. The two wagons I specifically recall being used were the hay rack and one of the “lumber” wagons. The latter had been outfitted with some springs between the rolling stock part of the wagon and the box part; this was done so that my mother’s piano would have an easier ride out to the farmhouse. Ordinarily in a “lumber” wagon, which was really a grain-hauling wagon as to any use I ever observed for it, had no cushion between the ironclad wheels as they rolled over the sometimes bumpy roads and the wagon box. Getting the piano out of the house presented a little problem, as the turn through the front hallway out onto the porch was too cramped. Eventually it was moved out through the large window onto the porch and thence on its way. In retrospect, recalling how the movers on our move both to Houston and then to Ashland charged extra for the piano (and in both cases no lifting was actually required, just getting it on a low set of rollers and then trundling it along) I can see the physical effort in all of the lifting needed to move the piano from its place in the parlor of the little brown house to its comparable location on the farm. I don’t recall assisting in the moving process, either any packing, loading furniture or anything else.

Although the move was made at a time of economic extremity and uncertainty for the family, I had a sense of excitement at the move to a new, unexplored and interesting locale. I wonder though with what trepidation my parents viewed their new circumstance.

After the move to the farm, I guess I didn’t set foot in the little brown house for fifteen years or so. It was only after my parents moved back to Gowrie sometime after the war, but before 1950, that I was in it again while vacationing with my parents. The house had probably suffered somewhat from lack of maintenance over the years and I suspect that my parents had some renovation — painting etc.— done. I don’t know how long my father continued working as bookkeeper at the Johnson Lumber Co. after the move back to town (he had stopped working at the county treasurer’s office in Fort Dodge sometime in the late ’30s or early ’40s and started fulltime at the lumber company). Between the time he quit work and when his developing Parkinson’s disease incapacitated him, he spent his time gardening and cultivating.

My mother had never had a refrigerator and I believe this was an acquisition she made when they moved back to the little brown house. The house had had natural gas service for years, and I think during the years it was extended to the kitchen range and furnace (although of this I’m not sure), also the hot water supply. I recall definitely that there was a water-softening unit in the basement, which meant I suppose that the cistern, with its runoff rainwater, was no longer used. Of these periodic visits to the little brown house I don’t have many specific recollections. I do recall the time I was there during Vincent and Jean’s wedding. Vincent was working for John Deere at the time and arrived back in Gowrie not long before the day we was to be wed — I was up in the “boys” bedroom and I saw him drive up in the Studebaker he had at the time. After my dad died (I came along to the funeral; Jean and the girls stayed in California) I stayed on for a week as company for my mother during those first days of the change in her lifestyle.

It may have been at this time that I was rummaging around in the old hayloft in the barn (then in use only as a storage place as my parents did not have a cow after the return to town) and I ran across the toolbox that I had made in farm shop during high school freshman days. In it were a few tattered remains of the play farm machinery that I had made on the early days on the farm.




I boxed the toolbox up with these fragments and railroad expressed them back to California. Since then I’ve used the toolbox for storing an assortment of smaller nails, screws, etc. And of course we visited the house as a couple or family the first time being in May of 1954 before Muriel was born when I was on the way to Holland for several months.











Carl’s toolbox, closed and open

My Life in the Little Brown House, part 28: Albert and Molly Rosene

Across the street to the south of Nellie’s house was the house where Albert and Molly Rosene lived, unmarried brother and sister. I surmise it was the house where their parents had lived their last years and expired; as the other Rosene children left, Albert and Molly stayed on and made it the place where they too spent their last years and finally expired (actually I’m not sure just what happened to them in their declining years as I was no longer in the community, but I can easily visualize this happening). Mel left of course and for awhile at least lived kitty corner across the intersection from Albert and Molly. One daughter married Carl Magnusson; they lived directly across the park from Albert and Molly to the east. Like Mel and his wife they were childless. Carl worked as a clerk in the local Lindquist clothing store. Another daughter married Frank Lindquist, the older son of Nils Lindquist, an early banker in Gowrie. Right now I can’t recall the names of these two daughters. Frank and his wife had one son, Maurice, a tall thin person at least in his younger days. Frank lived on the same street, and on the same side, as Carl Magnusson some four or five houses to the south. So all the Rosene children ended up residing on the periphery of the city park, or close to it. Five children and they all together produced one person, Maurice, in the next generation.

Albert and Molly’s house was an old one and did not have an indoor toilet. Their outhouse was often the target of Halloween activity and I dimly recall seeing it in its upturned, rather overturned, condition. Outhouses, by the nature of their function and need for occasional move to a new location, were not firmly affixed to the foundation. Also being a small structure they were quite within the scope of the effort of a couple of young hoodlums to overturn. Albert in earlier days had worked on a section crew (maintaining railroad track) for the railroad, but when I knew him he had retired from this activity. A good part of his time was used in maintaining the lot around their house, growing his considerable vegetable garden and I think tending to his chickens. There was a small barn at the rear of the property, probably suitable at one time for stabling a team of horses.

For a time he was the gardener for the city park, mowing the grass etc. This was not a small task during the spring, summer and fall months, as the park was a city block in size, and the time was before the advent of motorized mowers. Albert mowed the whole park with his hand-pushed reel-type mower, I suppose once a week. Prior to Albert’s time as gardener, the gardener had been one Griffee (daughter Doris was in my class, and was one of the two members surviving at the time who did not show up for the 50th class reunion in 1988). Griffee’s one big activity in the park was apparently to cut down trees, I suspect as a source of firewood for his family.

At any rate when Albert took over the park, it was dotted with stumps more or less over its entire extent. Albert, with his sense of orderliness and neatness, removed the stumps by grubbing them out with axe, shovel and considerable effort. I would sometimes watch him as he worked with his good-sized garden cart alongside the stump he was attacking and serving as the means of carting off the parts of the stump as he dismembered it. Typical of Albert’s standards, it was removed to below the surfaced, thus restoring the lawn to its original level. Albert didn’t want little boys playing around on his yard though. One time I remember some of us were playing cops and robbers with rubber guns and we wanted to use his barn as a place to hide. He took a dim view of this and while not exactly saying no, intimated that he was not going to let us.

In stature Albert resembled Mel, being rather tall and husky, and with considerable girth at his midsection. His almost invariable attire Sunday as well as weekdays was overalls with I suppose a blue chambray work shirt. I don’t think I ever say him in church though I believe he was at least nominally a member. Somehow I recall seeing him in a more “dressed-up” attire, with a very old-fashioned hat on his head — the kind of hat from the period before 1920, or even 1910, which appeared on my Uncle George’s head on the few times he too appeared in more formal dress.

Molly was a generally slighter of build and girth person than her two brothers and resembled her two sisters in this regard. She sang quite often at church functions in a duet with Anna Blomgren. Anna was the soprano, one of the better ones if not the best, in the congregation and Molly was the alto. I sort of remember two social occasions when I was in the home of Albert and Molly. One was when our family had been invited for a supper meal. The other was some sort of women’s church function, and I accompanied my mother. The meeting was held in Molly’s parlor and I was fascinated by the player piano, which Molly demonstrated in action. Molly was the person who decided when we could have their Sunday paper after they were through with it, with its attractive comic page section. Bringing Up Father (Maggie and Jiggs), the Katzenjammer Kids, Tillie the Toiler, Popeye the Sailor, Flash Gordon — all were absorbed by me with great interest. I’ve mentioned already how I think this exposure to drawing had in the end a considerable, though much delayed, [impact] on the hobby I’ve had in retirement of drawing and painting.