Aunt Ruth

I believe that my aunt Ruth is next in line. Again I know little of her early life in the Peterson household, my recollections are all of her as an adult.



Ruth, about age 10, circa 1905

She was always a rather thin figure and I would say that her facial features tended to be on the “sharp” side. She contracted some sort of weird disease or condition characterized by an aversion to many foods (she tolerated bananas as I recall). In her illness her abdomen became distended as if there were some growth inside her. She went to a doctor in Fort Dodge by the name of Shafer and his diagnosis was that she had a tropical sprue whatever that is. [Actually, it may have been celiac sprue. —LS] Personally I think she had some sort of internal cancer.

I was often delegated by my uncle Carl to take his old Essex and take for to Fort Dodge for an appointment with her doctor there. She died sometime during my second year in Iowa City, and at my mother’s urging I made the trip back to Gowrie for the funeral. I doubt that I would have gone of my own volition.

I remember two things from the funeral. Like in the case of uncle George the casket stood for a time in the parlor of my grandmother’s house. The undertaker had curled her hair in a way quite different from the way she usually wore it. I recall my aunt Laurine commenting that the undertaker had done a poor job. My aunt Ruth (like my grandmother, aunt Esther, my mother and my aunt Lillian) wore her hair long and tied into sort of a “bun” at the nape of the neck on the back of the head.

During most of her adult years she was the organist at the Lutheran church in Gowrie. I believe she at one time was the organist at some church up in Minnesota until the position in Gowrie opened up. For most of her career at Gowrie she was paid the munificent sum of $30 a month (totally inadequate in my estimate in relation to the time and effort she put in doing her work). But she lived rent-free in my grandmother’s house where she did some of the housework. She did little cooking thought she would on occasion make a butterscotch-like cake.

She gave piano lessons, but I don’t know how extensively beyond Clarice, Vivian, me and some of the children of the preacher at the time. I well remember sitting at the piano in the little brown house doing scales, arpeggios in the various keys alongside her. And doing a few tunes like “The Happy Farmer” by Robert Schumann. In between the lessons we would practice maybe half an hour each day. I don’t think Vincent or my younger brothers ever took any lessons. For Clarice and me the lessons stopped when we moved to the Peterson farm but Vivian kept on, I guess until aunt Ruth died. By that time Vivian was in college in Dubuque pursuing her musical studies there.



Carl’s younger sister, Vivian, and Ruth, circa 1922 or 1923

Although I never did much with the lessons that my aunt Ruth gave me she did instill in me a liking for piano music. And I have come to like organ music very much. When the new church was built in Gowrie in the early 1930s a new organ was purchased and installed. The individual who supervised the installation gave a concert in which he played Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in (?) minor and it had remained to this day as one of my favorite Bach compositions.

I can’t say that being musically inclined is part of my makeup. My three brothers have all developed a facility for vocal music. Vivian was of course a music major in college and I believe Marold was in his undergraduate years. When I was in high school the music program was all vocal music, late on instrumental music was introduced and I think Vincent and Marold at least played some instrument in the band. I participated in the American Junior drum and bugle corps, playing a snare drum so to that extent I was exposed to instrumental music. For a short while as a freshman in high school I tried out for the glee club but soon lost interest.

In rereading what I have typed I note that I did not write about my second recollection of my aunt Ruth’s funeral. It was the sigh of my uncle Carl after the trip to the cemetery and the visiting at my grandmother’s house, sitting morosely in his chair on the front porch. As he had done after the funeral of my uncle George.

As with my aunt Esther, I consider the life of my aunt Ruth a kind of tragedy. While they led useful lives to a degree neither of them ever developed the talents they had. Sexually barren and dominated by a rather extreme form of Lutheran fundamentalism is what I think of their lives.

Elvira

It was at about the middle of the Peterson children that my grandmother had Elvira(?) who died at about the age of one. Vivian told me that grandmother had told her that Elvira was the prettiest of all her babies.

Serenus Peterson

I guess uncle Serenus is next in line of the Peterson children. In my opinion he was the least capable, the least intelligent and the least physically attractive of all the children. Even uncle George had a certain class to himself, uncle Serenus had none. I believe that his birth was the most difficult of those that my grandmother had. As I wrote about my grandfather he tried to get the doctor in Callender to come but he wouldn’t and the experience turned off my grandfather from doctors thereafter, not that he had much use for them even before.


Serenus, Edith, and Eugene

Doubtless his early years were the usual ones in the Peterson household. He probably finished the eight grades in country school but unlike his siblings (most of them at least) did not continue at Gustavus. Amongst the letters my uncle Carl received while at business school in Des Moines there is one or two from Serenus, then quite young.

After my grandfather died and the family moved into Gowrie, he stayed on the farm and perhaps in conjunction with my uncle Carl farmed the Peterson acres. By then he had married Edith Anderson, who was about his age and grew up on a farm about a mile east of the Peterson farm. I recall my mother telling of riding home from Gowrie after a Luther League meeting with him and Edith, she being left off at the farm and Serenus continuing on with Edith as a part of his courtship.

As a farmer he had dreams of becoming a breeder of purebred hogs. In line with this he had the hoghouse constructed and also a sort of sales pavilion next to it. The whole operation was underfunded and amateurish and my impression is that it soon collapsed. He then got the idea that he was destined for the Lutheran ministry like his brothers. He had no high school or college education so was unqualified on that basis but I surmise that this was overlooked by the synod by the intercession of uncle Laurence and uncle Milton.

After leaving the farm he went to Texas for a couple of years. What he did there is rather unclear. Did he work on the farmland that my uncle Carl had in Texas? Did he attend SMU in order to make up for his lack of education? At any rate he appeared to soon thereafter begin his seminary training in Rock Island. Our family visited them during this period. We drove in the Essex from Gowrie and I suppose spent several days with them. I have two recollections of the visit. I slept with my cousin Eugene and I remember lying in bed before I went to sleep listening to the unfamiliar noises of the city. The other recollection was our being taken to some sort of exhibit funded by a Palmer chiropractic firm, the details of which are now very vague to me.

After my uncle’s ordination and because it was during the Depression he had some difficulty receiving a “call” to serve a congregation. He finally received a call under somewhat peculiar circumstances in Fargo, North Dakota. The previous pastor thought that the call was not legitimate and declined to leave the post. Very messy and I think typical of my uncle Serenus. Maybe when the congregation saw what they were getting they wanted to back out. I don’t know how the imbroglio was resolved. Later on he was minister at congregations in Fresno, California; Denver, Colorado; and Mason City, Iowa (his last congregation). I would say that he functioned in a manner consistent with Lutheran practices, but that he was an uninspiring leader.

When uncle Serenus’ family visited Gowrie (rather rarely) they would not stay at my grandmother’s house but rather in the pink brick Stenholm house where one of Edith’s sisters lived. The sister was married to Pete Stenholm, the International Harvester farm implement dealer, until he was drowned in an accident at an Anderson family) Edith was an Anderson before her marriage to uncle Serenus) picnic in Dolliver park. The accident took the lives of three members of the Anderson family. One of those drowned was Constant Anderson who was at the time farming the home farm a mile east of the Peterson farm. He was and up and coming farmer and had built a new barn and corn crib, the next building project being the replacement of the substandard house. After his death the farming operation was taken over by his brother Ernest who had none of the capability of his brother Constant. During my experience in the annual threshing crew I observed the lackluster character of his farming. Ernest too died a tragic death in an encounter with a bull he had.

After the last time he visited Gowrie I saw my uncle only three times. Once was the time our family visited him in Rock Island, the next time was when my sister Vivian and my aunt Laurine came to California shortly after the end of WWII. I accompanied them on the train back to the Midwest and we stopped in Denver to see uncle Serenus and aunt Edith. The last time was when Jean and I took Laurel to Ames to go to school. All I can remember of that visit was how loud my aunt and uncle spoke, I guess they were both getting quite deaf.

There was only one child in my uncle Serenus’ family, namely my cousin Eugene. As a child I envied him, he was an extrovert with a volatile personality. He went to Fresno State College, probably when my uncle was pastor at Fresno. I think his college was subsidized by my uncle Carl, either directly or by a loan. I always had the feeling that my uncle Carl favored my cousin Eugene over me even though I was his namesake.

After childhood I saw Eugene just twice. He was in the advertising business and he visited the Bay Area in regard to a campaign for one of the large beer companies. He came to our house in El Cerrito, maybe we had a meal with him, I do not recollect.

The second time was when our family was in Chicago on a sightseeing trip. We called him up and he invited out family to dinner. He was married by then and living in a high-rise apartment in downtown Chicago. We met his wife, a very short and hunched figure (quite a bit older than Eugene) who I think he met on one of his travels to various parts of the world. After she died he moved to Windsor, Ontario (actually it was earlier after he retired from the advertising business) where his wife had roots. I wrote to him once after his wife died with a question on his past but the letter came back with a note on it that he had died.

When Vincent organized a get-together of the Peterson cousins in this mid-’90s he was able to track down information on Eugene’s death. He had been a heavy smoker and I guess suffered from emphysema and heart trouble and apparently in his last days his affairs were managed by a lawyer acquaintance. At one time he entertained the idea of retiring to North Carolina somewhere but his physical debility caused him to cancel those plans. He continued to support his aging mother till she died and on her and his death bequeathed his estate to the facility that had taken care of her. I think he retained at least the outward appearance of his Lutheran faith to his death, what he actually believed I hesitate to say.

One time our daughter Palma was in Chicago and she called my cousin but it was late in the evening and she was not invited up to their apartment for a visit.

Naomi

I believe that my mother was the next in line of the eleven births in the Peterson family. Of her early years I know nothing. Doubtless she was the usual child in the Peterson household, required to perform certain duties at quite an early age. I’m quite sure she went through the eight grades of the country school. I believe I have related on incident in her schooling when my uncle Carl was her teacher. She certainly did not go directly from country school to her schooling (equivalent to present day high school) at the academy at Gustavus Adolphus. Her academy days were I think spread over several years with interruptions of a year or two to help with household duties. She had some college schooling but not enough to earn a degree.

Her years at Gustavus Adolphus were I think an eye-opened to her that there was a different life than existed in the work-emphasized regime in the Peterson household. Because it was work-dominated with the need to care for the expanding household with each new birth — eleven by the time my mother was in her mid-teens. And there was always the need to pay off the additional land purchase that my grandfather was making. I can recall my grandmother being happy when the last of the indebtedness was retired. I wasn’t on the scene of course, but I heard of her relief from family members. There was a social life at Gustavus that never existed in the Peterson household. That it meant a lot to her is evidence by the album she kept of those days with mementoes of picnics, banquets and other social affairs. I have this album but of course I do not recognize many of the persons in it.


Naomi Peterson (center front) and classmates, Gustavus Adolphus, class of 1916

My mother taught in the country school and at the outbreak of WWI she was actually teaching at the high school level somewhere up in the state of Minnesota. I recall her describing hor she had to study every night the next day’s assignment in order to keep up with the class. That was I think just before her marriage.

My impression of my mother’s married life was one of diligent toil interspersed with a few interludes of true enjoyment such as the picnics the family would have in Dolliver Park. Cooking, washing, ironing, cleaning, tending her growing brood of children, occasionally doing some gardening work (an activity she really enjoyed). The occasional family picture (with the camera my farther bought as a gift for her) seemed to show to me at least a mother weighed down with the cares of her family.

And of course there was the religion of the Lutheran church that governed her outlook on most aspects of her life. To the end of her days she persevered in the beliefs that she had learned in childhood and she worried when her offspring strayed too far from it. For example, she was unhappy when I married a Christian Scientist, although she came to accept Jean for what she was. But I think being married caused her to adjust her beliefs somewhat from the rigid orthodoxy of the unmarried members of the Peterson clan. It also helped I think that she was one of the more intelligent children of my grandparents.

She was a devoted and loving wife to my father all his days. During the difficult days of the Depressions, during the years she cared for him after he developed Parkinson’s disease. He was often the dreamer, she was the more pragmatic one. When my father bought an endowment life insurance policy from Fred Magnusson (the father of my boyhood pal Harris) she disagreed with the purchase saying that she was not interested in the policy, she was interested in him. So there were mild disagreements in the years they spent together. But generally they were of one mind at all times.

I shall related one incident involving my mother during our days on the farm. One day she broke her glasses and it seemed to her that that was the last straw. Money was tight. Where would the funds come from to get a new pair? She cried. It must have been during my sophomore year in high school. That year I had submitted an essay put on the Des Moines Register newspaper and I placed third in the competition. I was awarded $5 which I had not spent. I went to her and offered my $5 to her to defray the cost of a new pair of glasses. She said no but she did I think stop crying.

After my father died she continued living in the little brown house, providing help as needed to my uncle Carl and aunt Esther who were still in my grandmother’s house which they had taken as their share when my grandfather Peterson’s estate was finally divided in 1960. When they left to live out their days at the home in Madrid, they deeded to my mother the house and she moved there. It was there she had a heart attack and I can remember her saying that she sat in a chair in the parlor worrying at her fate in the fearsome judgment of the God of the Lutheran faith.

Later on I thought of her remark at the time of her funeral. The six children were in the funeral home for a testimonial session and each of my siblings talked briefly of my mother’s Christian faith. I couldn’t, I kept silent. I had in my mind the picture of my mother in her moment of travail with her heart attach and I thought of how her faith had failed her at the very time she needed it most. A pox on all the preachers who had engendered in this good woman the fear of eternal damnation. It was another event that served to destroy any shred of belief I had in the Christian faith. What my siblings thought when I didn’t participate I don’t know. The session eventually ended and no one said anything.

She moved to Friendship Haven, where aunt Laurine and aunt Dagmar were living but she was there only a few weeks when she was hospitalized with her heart condition. One day she had been given a bath in her room and the nurse or attendant left. When they came back she had expired. So ended her days.

She had six children, the first five born at home, doubtless without the benefit of any anesthesia. Verner the fifth child was a difficult birth and Dr. Studebaker was called from Fort Dodge to assist. It was necessary to break one of the legs for the birth to occur. Although Verner seemed to be normal as to his leg thereafter, it must have been a weak spot in his anatomy. When he was old (after his retirement from the ministry) he fell on one occasion and broke the same leg that was injured at his birth. As I recall the leg had to be reset once and his convalescence was lengthy. Marold the youngest was born in Mercy hospital in Fort Dodge, perhaps because of the experience my mother had had with Verner. I recall waiting out in the car when various adults went into the hospital to see my mother.

I also recall Dr. Studebaker’s car parked in our driveway at the little brown house when Verner was born. It looked like a rather grand car to my young eyes. Dr. Studebaker was also the surgeon when I had my ruptured appendix, and for the operations my mother had for her goiter and for her gall bladder.

There were two doctors in Gowrie when I was young, neither of them very competent. Dr. Lundvick, who was I think the doctor in some of my mother’s pregnancies, was not very highly regarded by my mother. I believe he had a problem with alcohol. Dr. Erickson was older and had simply become incompetent with age. When my grandmother had her gall bladder condition the family called in Dr. Erickson. The family became concerned that he was misdiagnosing her condition and called in the doctor from nearby Paton. He immediately sent her to the hospital. Eventually Dr. Erickson sold his “practice” to Dr. Borgen, a young and competent doctor and he stayed in Gowrie the rest of my parents’ lifetime. He was also the doctor that came to the farm and sent me to the hospital with my ruptured appendix.

Uncle Laurence and Aunt Dagmar

Next to my uncle Lawrence. Of his early life I know actually little. I assume that he had the usual eight years in the country schoolhouse and the Swedish school in the summer time (which in addition to instruction in the language had considerable religious instruction). Then he must have had college and seminary years. I do know that it was through my mother that he met my aunt Dagmar. She spurned his at first but then had second thoughts in the matter. My aunt Dagmar was really a lovely person, very gracious and kindly. My mother knew her from her days at Gustavus. Aunt Dagmar was I think in the college whereas my mother was in the academy (like high school).


Dagmar

As a pastor my uncle Lawrence served congregations in Brainerd and Minneapolis in Minnesota and at the end of his ministry at Albert City, Iowa. I would class him as run-of-the-mill in his capability as a minister. He certainly served the elderly Swedish Americans well in the congregations he was called to, and I am sure he did not stray far from the orthodox Lutheran position but as to his intellectual ability he would have been better off as a simple farmer than a minister.

As a minister he would typically have the month of August as a vacation month and he and aunt Dagmar would spend two weeks with Dagmar’s parents in Little Falls, Minnesota, and two weeks in Gowrie visiting my grandmother. So I could observe him during a short period each year. The couple had no children so there were no cousins to play with. As children we would receive a small monetary gift at every birthday and at confirmation we would get $15. This was in lieu of a high school graduation gift – my uncle considered the confirmation rite of more significance than high school graduation. I can remember clearly him giving me the gift. I was coming from the barn where I had been attending to some of the evening chores and he met me at the lower gate to the house yard. He said a few words emphasizing the importance of confirmation. Even then the first doubts of the Lutheran faith had risen in my mind but of course I said nothing beyond taking him for the gift.

I visited them once in their home in Minneapolis, riding back with them on one of their vacation trips to Gowrie. The only thing I can recall of the trip was that my uncle one day asked me to hand water some of the lawn. I kept on watering until he came back to me and commented that I had watered enough as though I should have stopped sooner. On that trip he took me to visit my aunt Lillian and uncle Verner in Isanti, Minnesota. I spent a few days there (I will comment later on the visit when I write of aunt Lillian) and then returned to Gowrie on the M and St. L, which at that time was still providing passenger service. My uncle Carl had come up to see the family of my aunt Lillian and he rode back on the train with me.

I was in their Albert City home once. It was after my marriage and on one of our visits to the Midwest Jean and I borrowed Vincent’s Studebaker and with Muriel drove to Albert City.

I must confess that in his later years my uncle Lawrence struck me as sort of a comic figure physically. He had developed somewhat of a paunch and he wore his belt above the paunch. Usually men with that figure wear the belt below the paunch. I have always found wearing the belt above the paunch somewhat preposterous. He also had a very peculiar tic. He would sort of extend his head upward as if his collar was too tight and he wanted to ease his neck from its confines. He also had a quite disconcerting way of staring, impaling the person he was looking at with wide open eyes with his vivid blue eyes quite prominent. That and his unctuous manner as he read from the Bible at the conclusion of an afternoon meal at my grandmother’s. When one of the minister brothers was not present this duty fell to my uncle Carl who would read in his word by word style that he had learned in his early country school days.


Laurence and Dagmar