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.