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