A Little Bit About Clarence Strand

My father must have lived in his parental home during his bachelor days. While he was engaged as a teacher he may have been at home only during the summers. Somewhere I have a picture of a man cultivating corn and I wonder if it might have been my father during one of the summer breaks from teaching.

After my grandparents retired from the farm I speculate that my father lived with his parents in the house they had in Gowrie. While he was attending Tobin College I believe that he roomed with a family somewhere on the north side of the Des Moines [River] as it flowed through Fort Dodge. I have a vague recollection of being by the place at one time, perhaps on one of the occasional family trips there. There was a time in the mid-’30s when he was working at the county treasurer’s office and the several blizzard what we experienced for a couple of years that he stated in Fort Dodge because he couldn’t get hone. For a short time he again roomed at the same house that he had roomed at during his Tobin College days.

My father was 35 years old at the time of his marriage. He would have liked to marry my mother sooner, but though he courted her she would not accept his suit. It was only after she had gone to school at Gustavus Adolphus academy and college that, on her return to Gowrie, his continued suit prevailed.



Program page from Gustavus Adolphus College graduation event, May 30, 1916


They set up housekeeping in a rented house located on the same street as my grandfather[s house but four or five houses to the west. Both my sister Clarice and I were born in that house. Somewhere there is a picture of several [children] sitting on the steps to the front porch of a house and I believe that my sister is one of them. However it was not long after that my parents purchased the little brown house. The previous owner was the Albert Blomgren who later resided to the north of my grandfather Strand and through whose lot we children would walk when we went from the little brown house to my grandfather’s.



Clarice (left) and friends on the front porch of Clarence and Naomi’s rental house, circa 1919

One of my father’s dreams was to be “his own boss.” This dream was never realized. I guess he chafed all the years he spent working for someone else. I think this could be interpreted as a desire to be back in the work relationship on the farm in his early years. He certainly exhibited over the years they lived in the little brown house (both before and after the time the family spent on the Peterson farmstead) a liking for gardening activities, In this he was perhaps responding to my mother’s interest in gardening. My father had a particular interest in trees. Along the south side of the little brown house he planted three basswood http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilia trees. At other places in the yard there were various fruit trees. In his later years he became interested in oak trees and on trips to Dolliver Park he would pick up acorns that he would take home and plant. I attribute my own liking for trees (both bonsai and in their natural state) to the example my father set.

How well he would have succeeded as a farmer I can only guess. He would certainly have worked diligently and pursued a more responsible and practical financial course that his brother Reuben. On the other hand he was quite inept mechanically and farming entails a certain exposure to various kinds of mechanical equipment. At the little brown house he did some carpentry jobs (for example he constructed a workshop table for himself in the barn). But the workmanship on it was rather crude and not nearly up to what my grandfather would have turned out. He was simply not very good with tools. He also was not very good with mechanical devices. This ineptitude was shown by his approach to driving a car. His concept of shifting gears was to move the gear shift lever in the general direction required in a forceful manner, ignoring the resultant clashing of the gears.