Third Grade

Third grade was just across the hall from second grade and the teacher was Miss Geddes. I have the vague feeling that later on she married someone locally.

I specifically recall only one incident from being in third grade. One time we has a drawing (art) assignment and it consisted in part at least of snowflakes falling from a dark blue sky. The sky was the blue of the blue composition paper that had been furnished us for the exercise and we were making the snowflakes with a white crayon or a piece of chalk. Most members of the class, including myself, proceeded to do this with quick, vigorous stabbing of the crayon on the paper but two members of the class (the Stillman twins) proceeded to draw in a more deliberate fashion. Miss Geddes noticed this and brought the difference to the attention of the class, comparing rather negatively our approach to that of the Stillman twins. I felt vaguely chagrined. Whether pictorially our efforts were not as good as those of the Stillman twins I don’t know at this point – certainly out approach was less a considered one.

In the art classes which I have had in retirement, there has always been an emphasis on spontaneity as being a highly important, if not a dominant factor in producing a superior artistic statement. I haven’t always “bought” this concept, concluding that consciously or unconsciously there are mental decisions that control what is being produced.

The conclusion has probably been influenced by the attitude engendered in my training as an engineering where there us a premium placed on the deliberate approach. So I am not sure if art instructed would agree with Miss Geddes’ opinion although I would tend to agree with her.

I recall playing with the Stillman twins a couple of times — they resided about a block west of my grandmother’s house. The family left Gowrie sometime when I was still in the elementary grades; one of the twins died in WWII and the other has also died I think.

In the third grade my seat was on the right side of the room, facing the teacher and very close to the back of the room. I might mention at this point that the first three grades had recess all at the same time (recess lasted fifteen minutes and was at bout the middle of the morning and afternoon parts of the school day). I think we were also expected after recess to line up in a queue fir a drink of water at the water fountains (which were in the hall) before going back into the classroom. I think we were also expected to make a stop at the rest room in conjunction with recess.

Recess for grades 4 through 6 was at a later time. When the weather was nice recess was always out of doors. The playground was to the south of the building and had swings, a merry-go-round and perhaps a slide.

Originally the swings had two steel rods for the two attachments of the swing to the bar above, but these had a tendency to be bent (from children “pumping” up so high that some sort of torque was placed on the rods near their point of attachment to the overhead bar). The replacements were linked attachments, the links being 6 to 8 inches long. The swings were not of a type really suitable for young children.

Second Grade and the “Corn” Show

Each classroom through junior high, had a cloakroom or closet along the side or the back of the room. These had sliding doors I seem to recall. Probably the cloakroom had little use on early fall or late spring days, but in winter it was filled with overshoes, coats, caps, etc. Children living within the town walked to the school; bus service was provided only for rural children. And generally children in town went home for lunch.

The school day ran from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. with an hour off for lunch. Getting home for lunch and back to school by 1 p.n. was easy for us as we were only a couple of blocks from the school For my relative Harold Renquist who lived at the far east end of Gowrie it was a different matter but he always (I was given to understand) went home for lunch. Harold was enough older than I that I never remembered him in a school setting.

My friend Howard Nelson also resided on the east edge of Gowrie, but somehow or other he and his two cousins Beth and Faith Blomgren (who lived near him) were permitted to ride on the school bus. Perhaps they were just outside the city limits. In the first grade the cloakroom was along the north side of the room, in the second grade on the south side.

One of my recollections of the second grade was of the only time I recall of being kept after school for disciplinary reasons. It happened in connection with the annual “corn” show which was held in various rooms in the basement of the school building. While the show was in progress the rooms it occupied were off limits to the pupils during school hours — they had a guided tour of the exhibits, etc., and perhaps they could freely attend after school was out (I don’t remember specifically as to this).

One of the boys in my class, Dale Hauser, inveigled me into going to one of the exhibit areas during a noon hour; we were observed and Mrs. Woods kept the two of us after school and reprimanded us. It was a pretty mild reprimand, in retrospect, but I was quite frightened at the time. The exhibit that had lured me to disregard the attendance ban was a rather elaborate mechanical construction from an Erector set.

As I mentioned the “corn” show was an annual event. It included both agricultural displays and home-making projects. The agricultural exhibits included displays of ears of corn which farmers had submitted in the competition for the best corn. There were also chickens in coops and, I believe specimens of hay, oats, etc.

Who judged the agricultural exhibits I don’t know, perhaps the ag teacher in the high school did, or it might have been the county agent. Maybe the exhibits were judged as a class project by the ag class of the high school.

One year my mother entered a coat that she had made for me, in which she had used a discarded one from one of my aunts as raw material. She won a prize for her project and I seem to recall in one of the picture albums that I have there is a photo of me wearing that coat.

In addition to the sewing projects there were I think displays of canned goods, perhaps baked items also. The corn show was sort of an anachronism of times past and it didn’t survive after the first few years I was in school. In a way it was sort of a fair on a very local basis, less extensive than the county fair or of course the state fair.



Schematic of first floor of Gowrie school (not to scale)

School Desks

Second grade for me was taught by Mrs. Esther (?) Woods, who as I have mentioned was the only female married teacher I had all through the years at the Gowrie school. As for the first grade I have some recollection of where I sat in the classroom. In first grade it was, at least part of the time on the very left side of the room (as the teacher faced it) and two or three seats from the front.

In second grade Mrs. Wood had her desk on the north side of the room but the rows of desks ran past her rather than toward her — the pupils faced east. I was in the second row away from her desk, about midway in the row.

The desks were movable, each desk being a unit in itself. I think the desktop could be adjusted as to slant, but of this I am not sure, and it could only be adjusted slightly if it were possible. The desk could only be entered from the left side and underneath the seat was a little drawer, which could be pulled out form the right side, where books etc. could be stored. Perhaps there was also space under the desktop. This kind of movable desk was used all through the sixth grade.

The desktops bore the marks of earlier students — scratches, initials carved into it, etc. The janitor probably did some maintenance on the tops, such as varnishing, during the summer months. On the desktop there was space for an inkwell, but it was never used, either in the elementary or junior high grades. I think the classroom would be provided only with the number of desks required by the number of students, the excess supply was probably stored somewhere in the school building.

Academic Performance

Recently in looking through some relics from my past, I ran into my report cards, which are complete for the first 12 years of my schooling. I noted that my record was no better than average in many respects, though I seem to have done well in spelling and arithmetic. Generally the poorest record was in the first grade and there was a gradual improvement through junior high and the first year of high school.


First grade report card

At that point I seem to have entered a new phase in which I usually had “A” grades. This continued through junior college but when I went to the university there was a dip in my performance during my first year there. But of my last three terms at Iowa (my senior year and the following summer to complete the requirements for graduation) I had all “A’s” for two of them and the third was marred only by a “B” in organic chemistry.

All my life seems to have been rather a similar pattern — of meeting a new situation of phase in my life and performing only moderately well at first with a gradual improvement to a good, but not exceptional level thereafter.

I should mention I think that during my first seven grades in Gowrie the superintendent was one P. A. Leistra, who was a stickler for academic performance and achievement. So the standard by which the students were measured were more exacting than in the small neighboring communities. Indeed I think this may have been one of the reasons why in the end public sentiment sort of turned against him and resulted in the end of his tenure in Gowrie. Certain people in the community became dissatisfied with the emphasis on academic achievement and he finally got tired I think of keeping up the battle.

He was a life-long bachelor. When he left Gowrie I think he had some position in either state education or in some private institution related to education.


Death notice for P. A. Leistra, Sioux City County, October 8, 1953

The reading instruction in Miss Rice’s class was divided as to learning ability and performance and though my performance left something to be desired I think I was in the group of better students. The two groups were labeled bluebirds and redbirds — at this time I’m not sure which was which.

I’m not sure whether if I encountered Miss Rice now (as she was then) that I would recognize her. Physically she resembled my aunt Ruth a little, moderately tall and willowy; and I think she wore her hair in a similar style.

First Grade

As I’ve mentioned earlier I have very few recollections before I was six years old. That was when school started for me and perhaps it was this break in the established pattern of my life that caused me to have more recollections about my life.

My first grade teacher was Hazel Rice and she, like the rest of the female teachers in the Gowrie school (with one exception) was single. Probably a spinster as she stayed on for a long time in her position. I think the reason why the female teachers were not married was that it was subtly frowned on in the community for families to have two incomes — teaching posts were to be reserved for persons whose sole source of livelihood was the teaching job. The one exception was Mrs. Wood, the second grade teacher, but in her case her husband had some sort of disability so couldn’t work or was kept from continuous employment.

Also perhaps the reason why the female elementary teachers were unmarried was that they were newly graduated from college and the school district could hire them for less salary. They would teach for a few years, then get married or drift off to more profitable positions. It was certainly true that there was considerable turnover in some of the elementary teaching positions.

During more if not all my elementary grades, textbooks were not provided by the school — they were purchased by the parents for their children. Bowman’s drug store oddly enough was the local source of these textbooks in my earlier school years until the school took the function over, say around the time I was in junior high. Even then the books were not free, though they may have been partly subsidized by the school district. Later on, when I was in high school, I think the district provided the textbooks but my memory is not clear on this.

At any rate, my first grade class had our readers, purchased for us by our parents. There was however a set of primers belonging to the school which Miss Rice used on occasion and I remember how delighted I was at this new book to use. Probably it was that the first primer suffered from too much exposure. The school set of primers were kept in a cupboard on the north side of the room. The doors to the cupboard were glass paneled so these attractive reading books were always there as a distraction.

Another distraction in the schoolroom was a small-scale model of a medieval castle, complete with a moat and a little drawbridge which sat on a table at the rear of the room. Who made it or why it was sitting at the rear of the first-grade classroom I have no idea. Certainly it was an attraction for little hands and we were instructed not to touch it, though what harm that would have done I don’t know.

Erector Sets and Electric Trains

While I was a young boy I was attracted to such toys as Erector sets and electric trains. I was given an Erector set, perhaps as a Christmas present, but it was one of the smaller or intermediate sets. The larger set which I craved came with a small electric motor for activating the steam shovel or other item that had been made from the parts of the set. This desire on my part was never fulfilled.

I recall that one of the boys of my age had such a set and on one occasion I saw what he had made with it and was enthralled. Although I envied him his Erector set I surely didn’t envy him his later boyhood experience. His father was a rural mail carrier, a good stable job back at the time, and had in addition the income from some farm property — probably an inheritance. The father started to speculate on the Fort Dodge Board of Trade, lost the farm and the family home, and committed suicide.

My friend, his mother and sister had to move in with his mother’s parents as a place to live. His grandfather was Jonas Lindquist who had operated a clothing store in Gowrie for a long time — at the time of Clare’s father’s suicide he may have retired from the business.

I sort of lost touch with Clare in later years — he was retained a grade at school so he was no longer in my class and after our move to the farm I had limited contact with the boys I had played with in Gowrie.

Clare died quite some time ago. He died at a relatively early age. I think his sister still lives in the Twin Cities — she was Vivian’s grade and I think Vivian always liked and admired her.

As to electric trains my interest was aroused by the set Lennarson and Johnson (one of the two hardware stores in Gowrie in my youth) always set up in their window at Christmas. It appeared year after year, perhaps it was not for sale or was too expensive for the Gowrie clientele. It was a Lionel train, green as I recall.

During this time I had a subscription to American Boy magazine, and in this magazine there would be advertisements for both the Lionel and American Flyer electric trains. These usually offered a free booklet describing the various train sets and other items they had for sale and I sent for the booklets and dreamed of the trains shown. There was one train set for $13 and I calculated that if I were to save my weekly allowance for a full year I would have enough saved to purchase it — of course this never materialized.



I guess if I had saved the little booklets they might now be worth as much as some of the trains described in them. I seem to recall having read about these being real collector’s items.

Chores and Allowances (and other memories)

As children we had certain prescribed tasks that we were expected to do in order to receive our weekly allowance. Mine was to sweep the kitchen and the sunroom every day in the morning. My recollection of this task was that there was not much dust accumulated but there was always a lot of paper debris etc. I think Clarice and Vivian had either the dishes to wash and wipe, or perhaps the beds to make. I don’t recall that Vincent was as yet assigned any chores. Perhaps he was still too young.

My allowance was 25 cents per week and I suppose Clarice’s was also. Vivian’s was I think a little less. The use of the allowance was not however at our discretion, 5 cents of mine being designated for the weekly contribution in my Sunday school class.

I don’t really recall what I used my allowance for — perhaps some went for popcorn at the summer band concerts in the park. Periodically our family would make a shopping trip to Fort Dodge, all of us more or less tightly packed in the Essex (I don’t recall the old Chevrolet in this regard).

On one such occasion I recall throwing caution to the winds and buying two little toy cars — cast iron red-colored with stamped metal wheels. One was a coupe, the other a truck. Each cost 25 cents — no sales tax in those days. I bought these toys at one of the dime stores, Kresge’s or Woolworth’s.

I also remember candy purchases, particularly the gelatin candy in the shape of orange slices — sugar-coated on the outside and with orange flavoring. There were also such goodies as either an ice cream sandwich at one of the dime stores, or perhaps a stop at the start of the homeward journey for an ice cream cone for everyone. The stop was made at some store on the outskirts of Fort Dodge along the Callender road back to Gowrie.

After the cones were consumer we children were naturally thirsty but no stop was made (or practical) to slake our thirst and we had to wait until we were home for a drink of water. The Callender road passed along the west edge of Gowrie, and en route passed through the little towns of Callender and Moorland.

The other route to Fort Dodge lay east of town and the north-south portion of the trip was along highway 169. Originally this route near Fort Dodge ran along the Des Moines river and was characterized by several (to us) spectacular hills. It was along this “river road” that Vivian and Gene had their little blue house before moving to Urbandale near Des Moines.

The road also had the attraction for us of an overhead tramway on which little cars ran along the wires of the tramway carrying loads of gypsum ore from where it was mined t o the processing facility. The tramway passed right over the road at one point. Sometimes they were not operating which was a disappointment to us. Some time in the 1930s the highway was routed to the west of Fort Dodge along a more level route and the river road became just a local access road.

I should say that there was a third route which my father used in commuting from the farm to the courthouse in Fort Dodge. This route ran north about a mile east from the farm, past the Bohemian hall and the county “poor farm” and joined up with highway 169 near Fort Dodge.

Vivian and Gene’s house was close enough to the river so that it had some danger of being flooded in the springtime. The river road was between it and the river and there was a fairly respectable rise between the normal level of the river and the house — I suppose vertically it might have been as much as 20 or 30 feet. Despite this the house had been flooded before they bought it and was also after they sold it and moved to Des Moines.

Gene was an individual who delighted in projects and one of the things he did while they lived in the little blue house was to put a basement under it. I happened to be back in Iowa on vacation while this project was underway and helped out one day when the concrete floor of the basement was being poured. I suppose at that point the house had already been raised and the basement walls erected. As I recall my part in the proceedings was wheel-barrowing the mixed concrete from the mixer into the basement. Gene I think was running the mixer and he had hired someone to actually finish off the floor properly.

Early Memories

I’ve written some about my life in the little brown house during my childhood there. I believe I’ve mentioned that my recollections up to the age of six are very limited. One that I believe I haven’t mentioned was once when I was supposed to be napping in a crib but wasn’t and my mother came in and instructed me firmly to lie down and go to sleep. The crib was in the northwest corner of the bedroom that my parents slept in, right next to the door to the stairway leading to what was then the attic. I could only have been a couple of years old.

Before the attic was finished off into the two bedrooms I don’t know where the four older of us children slept. I have a vague feeling of having slept in the second downstairs bedroom of the little brown house (in the northwest corner of the house). But I have no idea where the girls slept.

After the upstairs was finished off this room was turned into sort of a play room. The piano was moved into it from the parlor and it is here I recall having my aunt Ruth giving me piano lessons. Scales, arpeggios plus short little compositions like Robert Schumann’s “The Happy Farmer” which was one I liked and so remember.

California Residences

I stepped out of 931 Seaview for the last time the morning of our wedding day. Actually I still had some last-minute things to do there so I did not attend a church service that morning. We had already moved our belongings into 411 Bonnie Drive and we spent our wedding night there.



931 Seaview Drive, El Cerrito, CA

After I had to move out of the Quadrangle because of WWII, I roomed in a house on Iowa Avenue in Iowa City, several blocks due east of the old capitol. Did I spend the night after my graduation ceremony there? I must have since I did not ride back to Gowrie that evening with my parents and Vincent. I can’t remember walking out of the house for the last time.

In San Pedro I roomed in about four private residences as I recall most notably and for the longest time in the home of Hugo and Palma Johnson. They lived in one of the home that Hugo had built in his career as a carpenter and contractor. Another very well-built house. It was while I was living there that Vincent was visiting me at the time the atom bombs were dropped on Japan. He was stationed at the time out near Malibu as I recall.

Hugo had been one of those quick-active people but had developed Parkinson’s disease and was even more restricted in what he could do than my father when he had the disease. It was a sad situation. I suspect that it was because of their reduced finances that they took me in as a roomer.

In San Pedro I also lived briefly in an apartment and I also spent some time at the YMCA over in Long Beach. I cannot recall when I stepped out of all these places for the last time.

And then there are the two houses I lived in, in Berkeley and Oakland after the move from the Los Angeles before rooming at 411 Bonnie Drive in the first of my two residences there. The first was on Shattuck Avenue right next to a little park (Love Oak? Codornices?). The second was on Grove Street (later Martin Luther King) another well-built house that was torn down when Children’s Hospital of the East Bay expanded.

Then there was the house on Seaview that I owned while still a bachelor. That house was greatly expanded and modified by the people that I sold it to. And the house in Houston which looked the same the couple of times we drove past it later on, in 1977 and 1980.

I forget the name of the people in the Shattuck Avenue house but they were quite elderly then in the late 1940s so they are long since deceased. So are the Reymanns on Grove Street and the Wilsons at 411 Bonnie Drive. They were also well into their 60s when I knew them so they have been dead for years. I never kept in touch with the Reymanns but we did keep up with the Wilsons for awhile — actually visited them once or twice near Felton where they moved to after we bought 411 Bonnie Drive from them.



411 Bonnie Drive, El Cerrito, CA

Homes Past

I reflect sometimes on the houses that I have lived in and wonder what goes on in them now, how the occupants use and consider their abodes, what changes have been made.

The little brown house was not as well constructed as my grandmother’s house but when I last saw it (during the year of the Strand reunion and my high school class fiftieth reunion [1988]) it looked very neat and well cared for. Several years ago when we visited the Midwest, Vincent had arranged for us to see the inside of the little brown house (which was now white). We saw the downstairs rooms and I was struck at how small they seemed. We did not see the basement or the upstairs.

Grandmother’s house was better built and could stand another hundred years with proper maintenance. But it was not been kindly treated since sold and it has been reported to me that it stands neglected and perhaps empty. I have no specific remembrance of the last time I left each house for good perhaps for the last time.

I sort of recall leaving 411 Bonnie Drive; the movers had finished packing and we walked out to start the drive to Houston. On our trips to the Bay Area since then we have occasionally driven by the look at it. For a long time it appeared that only nominal attention had been given to the exterior and the bushes and shrubs. But lately it has been spruced up a bit.

I still feel that it was a mistake to move to Houston, although Jean and the two older girls do not regret the experience. I’m not sure how Laurel feels about it. We had lived in the house for 19 y had had an interview with Bechtel but I had not heard from them. Actually the interview was after I had told Shell that I was going to Houston. Maybe they checked with Shell who told them I was going to Houston.

The way I look at it now I could have got a job as a chemist doing routine work that would have met our living expenses. Perhaps at one of the refineries in the north Bay Area. Or if not Bechtel with my background in design of distillation equipment I could have got work at Chevron or Union Oil. Or I could have taken some courses that would have qualified me as a bookkeeper — I had had in high school a class in bookkeeping and I liked it.

Financially also it might well have been advantageous to stay in El Cerrito. I would have received $1000 a year for ten years as severance pay. The increase in value of the property would have been more than the increase on 1070 Terra by far. We could have moved eventually to Auburn, a town that I much liked (even more than Ashland). Our life could certainly been different.

Lost Letters

One time when I was up in the attic, this must have been after I had left the Midwest for California — indeed after my mother had moved to the house — and I can’t picture why I was up there, I saw boxes of old letters that family members, principally my grandmother had saved over the years. These had been kept in the envelopes they came in and as I was interested in the stamps I asked my mother if I could detach the stamps. She assented.

Now that I have disposed of all my stamp collection (as of March 2005) they are now all gone. I regret now that I did not save the letters, as I recall I left them in a disorderly pile in the attic. The letters would be of much more interest to me at this stage of my life. But now they are all gone (though I still have those from a collection that uncle Carl left behind when he moved to Madrid which I still have to peruse in detail). When will I ever get around to that project?

Christmas

Back to the dining room at my grandmother’s. It would also be the site of the evening meal on Christmas eve. This would feature such traditional dishes as lutefisk, a rice dish with a geometric sprinkling of cinnamon and sugar on its surface, and sylta (sort of a jellied meat dish that I didn’t particularly like). Sometimes the latter would be made in a pie dish, with slices of hard-boiled egg placed in the dish when it was served, and of course balaksar at the end of the meal.



Sylta

After supper was over the table had to be cleared, and all the dishes washed and put away before it was time for the eagerly anticipated distribution of Christmas gifts. This took place in the parlor with everyone present arranged in chairs around the periphery of the room. The process was a very deliberate one, with each unwrapping of a present watched by everyone.

Following the opening of the gifts and a period of picking up the wrapping paper for use next Christmas, there would be a reading of the Christmas story (always the version in Luke), a prayer and then the singing of some of the traditional Christmas songs in the music room. Aunt Ruth would of course play the piano — I guess I was off in California by the time she was no longer on the scene to fulfill this function. The singing would include one of two of the Swedish carols such as “Glad a Yul aften” (sp?). The melody of the latter still has a festive and Christmasy air to me.

Three Swedish Dishes

I don’t think I have mentioned elsewhere two Swedish dishes that were a regular item on the menu not only at my grandmother’s house and at our house, but also elsewhere in the Swedish community. They were greda-kaka and ost-kaka [see here and here for two different ost-kaka recipes], literally translated they were cream pudding and cheese pudding. Vincent’s Jean has made greda-kaka I know. Greda-kaka is made largely from whole milk, eggs and sugar; rennet is use in the making to curdle the milk. When properly made it is a sweet firm custardly-like pudding, but firmer in consistency than the typical custard. Often time it would be served with thickened grape juice poured over it with a further topping of whipped cream. I always liked greda-kaka particularly in the latter form. Jean has attempted it as I recall but without much success.

Ost-kaka I didn’t like. Its texture is more granular and it doesn’t have the smooth creaminess of greda-kaka. Often the pudding is given a further treatment in which pieces of the original pudding are put in a pan, along with milk and some additional spices sprinkled on top, and the mixture reheated. An additional reason I did not like ost-kaka was that the spice cardamom was used in making it and this is a spice, fairly often used in Swedish cooking that I have never liked.

Another Swedish dish that I really like very much is gryn — literally barley. The ingredients are pearl barley and ground-up pork liver and pork steak. It jells after the initial cooking and then it is sliced and fried. Jean had made it quite successfully using various livers such as lamb or beef liver, but the real flavor comes when pork liver is used. The older of the Strand children liked gryn, I don’t think Verner or Marold did. Jean used the recipe she got from aunt Dagmar when she made it. As I recall she served it to the Rev. Flowers on one occasion and he at least tolerated it. Most people turn up their noses at the smell and taste of it.

Sunday Dinner at Grandmother's House

Grandmother’s house evokes many memories. Int he kitchen where my grandmother even in her most advanced years was the dominating figure, I can still see her washing the dishes while others took over the dish-wiping function. She almost always would have on hand a supply of her chocolate cookies, with the chocolate icing on top, and would often parcel them out to us children when we happened to be in the kitchen at other than mealtimes.

Aside from these chocolate cookies and the Christmas bakalsar (sp?) I recall only one other kind of cookie she ever made. These were a cookie that was baked over a curved surface (such as a rolling pin) and thus were not flat. I preferred the chocolate cookies. She may have made the garden-variety sugar cookie but I’m uncertain as to that. She made pies, notably apple pie and her pie-crust–making ability was unsurpassed — her crusts were always light and flaky. Cake making was more in my aunt Ruth’s realm and her specialty was sort of a brown sugar of caramel cake with like frosting.

The kitchen was the source of the Sunday dinners which we often had at my grandmother’s house. Typically they would feature some sort of pot roast and invariable mashed potatoes and gravy. On rare occasions the mashed potatoes and gravy would be supplanted with fresh boiled potatoes with fresh peas all in a cream sauce. This would occur when the first small potatoes were available from the early planted potatoes from the garden, if at the same time the first peas were ready for picking.

Sunday dinners were always later than the usual noonday time as a good part of the cooking was done after my grandmother returned from attendance at the morning church service. The service would be at 11:00 o’clock so it would be at least 12:30 before she had returned, changed her clothes and began in the kitchen. Actually I suppose the pot roast had been simmering all during the church service.

The Sunday dinners were always served in the dining room. I only remember eating at the kitchen table a few times and that was not at a Sunday dinner. At quite of few of these Sunday dinners in addition to our family and those in my grandmother’s menage, there would be “uncle” Albert and “aunt” Marie also. “Aunt Marie” was actually a cousin of my grandmother’s and “uncle Albert” was her husband. When there were vacation visitors such as uncle Lawrence and aunt Dagmar or uncle Milton’s family were in town they too would be at the Sunday dinner table.

Preceding and following the dinner there would be visiting in the parlor, with uncle Carl ensconced typically in “his” chair in the northwest corner of the room. It was here he would relate his little story of “pinch me” and “tickle me” while holding one of us on his lap so he could appropriately pinch to tickle us at the conclusion of the story.

One of uncle Albert’s oft-repeated comments would be about uncle Carl’s hands as being “real working hands.” Uncle Carl’s hands, like my mother’s were sturdy, short-fingered and admirably suited to toil. Uncle Carl’s hands were calloused and hard — he never used gloves when he was working. I always used cotton gloves when I was using a pitchfork for example as during threshing.

During the summer months such visiting would likely be on the screened front porch, particularly after the noontime meal. Late in the afternoon there would be almost inevitably an early supper — bread, cheese, perhaps some rice dish, jello, with cooked fruit for dessert. Following the supper there would be the ubiquitous devotions, perhaps a Bible or devotional reading with a prayer being read followed by the Lord’s prayer.

Uncle Carl and His Cars

Uncle Carl had a series of blue Essex sedans during the time we were on the farm. I think he acquired them second-hand in Fort Dodge and why he favored them I have no idea. I have a vague recollection that when I was quite young he had an open (canvas top) Dodge touring car and I seem to recall getting out of it alongside the east door at my grandmother’s after having arrived from somewhere. It was after dark.

During the time we were on the farm he also bought a second-hand Chevrolet sedan as a second car — again why I don’t know. He and I and Vincent drove to Ames one of the times we attended the agronomy day there, using this car. I drove. On the way back to the farm I was driving along at a moderate speed and a car passed me traveling at a much faster speed. The driver had to cut in maybe because of oncoming traffic and as he did so he clipped the bumper of the Chevrolet. I could hear the click but that was all.

I have sometimes wondered why he took Vincent and me along on these trips to Ames. Was he envisioning a future for the two of us as farmers, possible taking over someday the operation of the Peterson acres? He never said. Vincent of course deserted John Deere for being a farmer, but I guess it was despite uncle Carl than because of him. I recall that when he was discharged from the army he worked for our uncle for awhile but he could not stand the way he farmed and went back to school at ISU and got his degree in agricultural engineering.

After I had left the farm for California, my uncle purchased a small truck to transport grain to market in Gowrie. After all, the horses were all dead by then. It was on one of the trips with the truck hauling shell corn to the elevator in Gowrie that the corncrib burned down. I guess he was informed at the elevator and he drove back at a furious speed. Not that there was anything he could do about it.

He himself was really responsible for the fire. He had been shelling corn and had elected to dispose of some corn husks from the shelling by burning them up. He didn’t adequately ensure that the embers were all out and they were apparently too near the crib. They flared up and the crib caught fire. My mother and the persons in the house (Vivian was on the scene) were unaware that the crib was on fire until the neighbor to the east noticed the blaze and called them. I believe the corn had all been shelled but the two bins upstairs contained oats I believe. I believe he sold them for hog feed.

Early in WWII he bought a new Pontiac (a two-door I think) and it was the only new car he ever bought in my recollection. As a farmer he must have been allotted the purchase of one of the few remaining new autos still remaining at the time. To my knowledge it was the last car he ever owned.

Typically my uncle’s cars were stained and characterized by grease, dirt and debris. On the rare occasions when he wanted to transport some family member (such as my grandmother) somewhere he would clean out the car more or less and cover the seat where the riders would sit with a clean tarpaulin or some such piece of fabric. I can still see my grandmother on such an occasion seated placidly in the front seat of the car alongside him. I think that on at least one occasion I was detailed to clean out the car for such an excursion.

I don’t know how he treated the Pontiac but his Essexes always got secondary treatment to his tractors. For example when he changed the oil in his Farmall he would use it in his Essex.

The large Hart-Parrs which he used for threshing were originally equipped with a magneto to generate the spark for the combustion in the cylinders. When we were on the farm this form of ignition had ceased to be used and instead he used a storage battery and an old Ford coil for the purpose. At the end of each threshing day he would disconnect the battery from the tractor and install it in the circuit of the Essex to have it recharged on his trip back and to his overnight sleep at my grandmother’s.

Uncle Carl was a master at adapting to meet his mechanical problems with such materials as he had at hand. He was great at using wire for making makeshift and often permanent repairs. The wire he used for these purposes was old check wire from early corn-planting methods. I find in a way that I have adopted this technique for fixing things and the use of wire is one of the first solutions I turn to. For example, I like to mow the grass in the lawns as high as I can so I set the mower at the extreme adjustment possible with my current mower (Sears’ lowest-priced hand-pushed model). The design of the mower is somewhat deficient in that the force transmitted along the handle to move the mower will sometimes cause the mower wheels to lift off the ground and the mower will slide or roll on the back of the mower where the roller is. This can be rectified by wiring the handle to the roller attachment, which I have done.

This is not the way that Jean’s machinist father would have attacked the problem.

In a way I think I resemble my uncle Carl in that the means are never overemphasized in pursuit of an end — except perhaps in the case with Uncle Carl and his famous potato planter. I think I may have written about the project elsewhere.

Grandmother's House, Part 3

Diagram of lot, drawn from memory

I’ve written a little about the yard around my grandmother’s house. The lot was quite deep and about 100 feet wide. There was perhaps one-third to half an acre. Behind the house to the west was the vegetable garden. I can recall driving the spring wagon into town from the farm behind Barney and Birdie bringing the walking plow in. Uncle Carl came in and plowed up the garden area where the vegetables were grown. Because of the size of the garden I’m sure that a substantial part was in potatoes and sweet corn.
My grandmother liked spinach so I’m sure there was that grown.

Along the east side of the lot was a gravel driveway leading to the southeast corner of the lot where there was a small barn. On the east side of the barn at the front was where my uncle garaged his car. Beside the garage on the west was an indeterminate area — perhaps it housed horses or a carriage at some time. To the rear of the barn was the chicken house and yard. I vaguely remember loading up the accumulated manure for transport for the farm. Why it wasn’t just put on the garden I’ve no idea. Perhaps one reason for remembering this was that while I was engaged in my task the preacher’s wife came looking for one or more of her small children. I hadn’t seen them.

Along the east side of the lot, beginning at about the back edge of the garden were various fruit trees. And along the west side of the house were the Concord grape vines. Among them were pie cherry trees — that was the only kind of cherry I knew as a child.

My grandmother liked flowers and there was a bed of tulips at the east end of the large front porch. She also had flowers (potted) in the bay window of the dining room. There was a large tree, species unknown to me in the northwest corner of the lot, and a birch tree along the walk leading from the street to the front porch. The latter expired for some reason in the late ’30s or early ’40s and was never replaced at least to my recollection.

On the back porch of my grandmother’s house was a pump and well. I’d guess that when the house was new that this was the source of water for cooking and drinking in the house. When I first became aware of it it was no longer operable. I remember trying to pump some water and was unsuccessful.

Grandmother's House, Part 2

Diagram of second floor, drawn from memory

As long as my grandmother lived and thereafter as uncle Carl and aunt Esther continued to occupy the house, the old-fashioned range was the cooking facility. It was stoked largely with corncobs (I suppose with coal or other combustibles at times) and it served not only for cooking but as a source of warmth in the kitchen during the winter months. The pails containing the cobs, etc. sat alongside the stove to the east. I can still see my grandmother taking off one of the round iron plates from the top of the range and putting in some more cobs. In the winter months I wonder if the kitchen wasn’t the place where most members of the family spent a good deal of the daytime. Probably being cooped up so close for such a long period contributed to the “winter-sickness” that the household seemed to encounter at that time of the year. The stove also served as the heat source for the hot water tank connected to it.

I believe that when my mother moved into the house after uncle Carl and aunt Esther went to Madrid, that she replaced the old range with a modern gas stove. That would seem the logical thing to do as I do know that gas service was introduced to the house (to supply the new gas furnace that replaced the old one).

Grandmother’s house was extremely well constructed, though probably lacking in the insulation in present-day houses. I don’t remember the layout of the basement — I was never in it to any significant extent. I’ve shown what I remember of the ground and upstairs floor plans in the accompanying sketches. The attic was one large undivided room. The water head tank (it had the appearance of a typical rectangular stock tank) was located close to the stairs leading to the attic. The attic was lighted by windows at the north and south ends, at the gable ends of the house.

The woodwork in the downstairs floor was all oak, stained dark. The upstairs was pine or fit, including I think the floors. There were a considerable number of built-in cupboards in the kitchen and the dining room. When the house was first built these had solid oak doors (not paneled) and apparently they warped or the component boards separated. Anyway they were subsequently replaced by paneled doors. I recall uncle Carl commenting many years later unfavorably on what he regarded as unsatisfactory workmanship. And I recall seeing the doors that had been replaced lying up in the attic. What happened to them eventually I don’t know but I’m sure they would have been good material for woodworking at school.

The doors were probably the product of John Hoff who worked at the lumberyard where my father was the part-time bookkeeper. My impression was that he always worked in the shop at the lumberyard rather than as a carpenter out building barns, houses, etc. Perhaps he was a cut above the other carpenters in ability. I think he was an immigrant from Sweden, perhaps his wife was also. Their oldest child Mary Jane, a plump happy sort of individual, was in my class all through grade and high school.

Grandmother's House, Part 1

Diagram of first floor, drawn from memory

I’ve written some before about how my grandmother’s house was designed by my uncle Carl. And how it was built on some lots that my grandfather had bought. The lots had some corn storage facilities on them. The corn could be hauled in from the farm at a convenient time (as in the winter when the ground was frozen so that the ungraveled roads were passable). The corn would thus be available for sale when the price was right. The fact that these lots were available and had been used for corn storage is I think [representative] of the business acumen of my grandfather. An acumen that was largely lacking in all of his sons. My uncle Carl was an entrepreneur of a sort with his threshing and corn shelling operations but I suspect that the investment would have been better made in Iowa farmland.

I shall now turn to a discussion of my grandmother’s house. The house was basically a rectangle in floor plan, indeed almost a square. There was a full basement, first and second stories and a full attic. The latter had restricted headroom at the eaves. In front of the house was the front porch, extending the full width of the house and perhaps 8 to 10 feet deep.

In the summertime screens were put up to keep the flies out. During the summer there were always two rockers or chairs out on the porch, painted sort of a light aqua-green color. One of these, to the left of the front door (which was in the center of the porch, looking directly at the house from the front), was typically the chair used by my uncle Carl whenever he was on the porch. It was here I can recall seeing him reading the newspaper or the Wallace’s Farmer, his lips silently forming each word, not a single one being missed. I also remember him sitting in his chair morosely viewing the assembled people who had gathered at the house for refreshments and visiting after the funerals of uncle George and aunt Ruth.

Beneath the acerbic and non-social exterior of my uncle Carl there was a sentimental nature that was affected by evidences of the transitory nature of life. Typically after a funeral there would be a later afternoon period of active visiting as relatives would be seeing each other for the first time after a considerable period had elapsed (say since the last funeral in the family). Uncle Carl would not participate in this visiting, nursing instead his private sense of grief and loss.

The house at the time it was constructed was up-to-date as to the household conveniences available at the time, but few if any changes were made over the years to update it, until my mother took over the house when uncle Carl and aunt Esther moved to Madrid. About the only change that I can recall was the addition of a refrigerator perhaps in the 1940s sometime. The refrigerator was acquired through some sort of arrangement by relatives of uncle Verner, perhaps a special purchase price etc. I recall there was some difficulty with the initial operation of the unit and uncle Carl, acerbic as always was disposed to making an issue of the difficulty. Aunt Laurine who was on the scene tried to soft-pedal any evidence of dissension, doubtless for keeping family feelings amiable. I don’t know how the situation was finally resolved.

The heating system in the house was hot-water (natural convection) with radiators in most rooms except the kitchen and the upstairs sleeping porch. As I recall the upstairs hall was also unheated and was characteristically cool in the wintertime (the doors to the bedrooms being carefully closed as a rule). I suppose the furnace was stoked with coal in part, but when uncle Carl was feeding it (at least in later years) he used corncobs as the sole source of fuel. This involved fairly frequent trips to the furnace as corncobs, though they burn quite hot, are consumed rather rapidly. For overnight periods he developed a stoking technique that involved banking a large pile of cobs at one side of the firebox, through which the fire burned more slowly. After my mother moved into the house, the furnace was replaced with gas heat, doubtless on some sort of automatic control. I think she also replaced the old kitchen range with a gas stove but of that I am not certain.

Though the house was connected to the municipal water system at least in later years, it may not have been when first constructed. The house had a cistern for collecting rainwater and this was used for such purposed as laundry and baths. There was a well on the back porch and this supplied I suppose water for cooking and drinking. Unlike the little brown house which has a pressure tank for providing the flow of soft rainwater, grandmother’s house had gravity flow, the head being provided by a holding tank up in the attic. How this was charged from the cistern I don’t know.

In later years the little brown house had used city water for all purposes with a water softener to make the water suitable for laundry, etc. My mother, on the move back to town from the farm, acquired a Maytag washing machine to take the place of the old wooden-tub washer of pre-farm days and the Hart-Parr machine out on the farm. I suspect that my grandmother and aunt Esther continued to use their outdated wood tub washer until aunt Esther stopped doing laundry altogether.

Hot water in pre-farm days at the little brown house, on the farm and at my grandmother’s was provided by a unit in the kitchen range. I suppose in later years it was provided by a gas-heated hot water heater, at least after the folks moved back to the little brown house and after my mother occupied by grandmother’s house.

Aunt Laurine

I come now to the youngest of my grandmother’s children, aunt Laurine. She was born in 1904 and her early life was doubtless not marked by the hardships and rigors that her oldest siblings experienced. I suppose she attended country school, but she was still in elementary school when the family moved into Gowrie about 1915 when my grandfather died. So I suppose some of her grade school years may have been in the Gowrie school as well possibly her high school years. Her college years may have been spent at Gustavus or at Iowa State Teacher’s College.

She was either a teacher in the primary grades, at various places in Iowa with the last and longest period in the Dubuque schools, or as an instructor in the field of education, first at Luther College in Nebraska and later on at Gustavus in St. Peter, Minnesota. I think Luther College was the same school where Verner had one or two years at the start of his college training. I believe it was a two-year school.

Like her siblings, Laurine was quite an intelligent person and my understanding was that she was an excellent teacher. Like her siblings however her personal development was hampered by her unusual piety and her unswerving commitment to her religious beliefs that colored her adaptation to society in general. She was a life-long spinster. I doubt that there was ever a man in her life that was attracted to her. I think she would have liked to have been married and perhaps she would have been a less self-centered person which I think she was. And at times a bit of a hypochondriac.

I suppose I shouldn’t judge her that way. She certainly contributed to the educational opportunity of both Clarice and Vivian by providing them with board and room while they attended the University of Dubuque. I well recall the trips taking Clarice and Vivian to and from the school there. Dubuque was a very old town, hilly and picturesque on the banks of the Mississippi river and my memories of it are quite positive.

Personally, one thing I recall of her generosity — she gave me a nice Sheaffer pen and pencil set when I graduated from high school. The pencil still works though I never use it. The pen is broken though I still have the pieces. It ceased to function at one point and in attempting to take it apart to determine and rectify the trouble I broke it.

I have mentioned in passing the few times when our paths crossed over the years since I finished at Iowa and left home for good. In later years in connection with her work at Gustavus she needed to be able to drive and she did so — I think the only one of my grandmother’s daughters that did. I’m not sure if I ever rode with her but I gather she wasn’t as careful a drive as she might have been. During her years at G.A. she bought her own home there which I think was a source of enjoyment to her. When she could no longer maintain herself independently she moved to Friendship Haven where she lived out her days. I recall Vincent saying that her funds ran out just at the time she died.

While there she did something for me for which I am most grateful — namely the translation into English the Swedish letters which came to my attention after the visit of Verner and Marlys to Sweden. These letters had been sent to me by a cousin of my mother’s after I wrote to him about them. Aunt Dagmar who was also living at Friendship Haven at the time assisted in some places where the translation was difficult. A few of the letters were translated by Ruth Strand, the wife of one of my father’s cousins, Olger Strand.

Aunt Lillian

Aunt Lillian was the second youngest of the children in my grandmother’s family and when I was first aware of her she was in China acting as a teacher for the children of the missionaries second by the church. I’m not sure how long she was there, whether it was longer than a single tour of duty.

On her return from China she taught in the school at Dayton (about 8 miles south and east of Gowrie) and while she was there she would often return to Gowrie on weekends. Often my father would drive to Dayton late on Friday afternoons and bring her to Gowrie — I can remember riding along for the drive and I can still sort of picture vaguely the house she roomed in in Dayton.

The last year she spent teaching was in Gowrie. She had the sixth grade the year I was in fifth grade. The following summer she was married to uncle Verner. I recall the wedding — at least the dinner that followed in the evening after the ceremony. The children were relegated to eating on the front porch — the adults occupied the dining room table, perhaps extended to handle the number of people present, by some makeshift extension into the parlor.

Uncle Verner was also an ordained pastor in the Lutheran church and he served first in Florida and later in Isanti, Minnesota. While they were in Florida they would make the trip back to Gowrie every other year. As I have written earlier I visited them in Isanti sometime in my youth — I can’t pinpoint the date. I think it was at Isanti that aunt Lillian died from Hodgkin’s disease or it may have been later when they were at a pastorate in Michigan (Iron Mountain?).

We children liked uncle Verner — he was an easy-going extrovert and surely had a way with children. I remember once when he took us on a walk, beginning at the little brown house, north to the M and St. L tracks, then west to the road bordering Gowrie on the west and thence back to the little brown house. This may have been even before his marriage to aunt Lillian.

On one of his periodic trips back to the Midwest from Florida, uncle Verner was giving a number of presentations, probably with respect to the home mission he was involved with in Florida. I think the congregation he served in Florida was supported by home missions. He needed someone to handle the slide projector he was using in one of his talks and he asked me to assist him. The talk was at one of the towns neighboring Gowrie, Boxholm, and we got back to Gowrie at the (to me) unearthly hour of 11 p.m.

Aunt Lillian was an individual of a rather slight, willowy build and of a pleasant demeanor and an easy way with people. Like her sisters (except for aunt Laurine) she wore her hair with a little bun at the back of her head. Like her sisters her blond hair had grayed early and was almost white at the time of her decease (late 40s or early 50s).

One facial expression characteristic of aunt Lillian sticks in my mind. Whenever there were the usual devotional reading and prayers after a meal or when the conversation turned to matters religious, there came on her face this look of solemn, almost implacable piety, with a slight pursing of the lips, a kind of intent expression, even almost manic, to the eyes and brows. It was an expression exhibited to a degree by all her siblings under such circumstances. It was as if they were worshiping not so much the content of the reading, but the actual form of it. Utmost respect was accorded every outward manifestation of various religious rites. The attitude would also be accompanied by a lowering of the eyelids with the gaze directed downward toward the hands, folded discreetly in the lap.

I wonder sometimes if I have a fixation, of disapproval, with the religiosity of my grandmother’s household and to a lesser degree of my parents’ home. Perhaps I am as unnatural and as biased as they were. Maybe it is primarily that I cannot tolerate being so closed up in mind that I cannot tolerate change or the evidence of the world as it can be seen. I trust that that is the case and I am not inhibited by a vagrancy of character that keeps me going where reading, observation and experience lead.

Over the years we have had some contact with aunt Lillian’s children. On some of our trips to the Midwest we have visited with Phoebe (the eldest) and her minister husband Arne and with Ted and Barbara. We last say the youngest, Luther, at the time of my mother’s funeral — that was also when I last saw uncle Verner.

Uncle Verner remarried after aunt Lillian’s death and lived out his retirement years in southern Minnesota. He is now deceased.

Uncle Milton

Next on the list of my grandmother’s offspring is uncle Milton. When I became aware of uncle Milton as a person in my mother’s background was when he was teaching at the Augustana Seminary in Rock Island. This was I think the second step in his career, the first (directly after ordination) having been a pastorate at Anoka, Minnesota.



Milton as a young man

Unlike his two brothers in he ministry he was very capable intellectually and his discourses tended to command attention, though perhaps not agreement. While he was at Augustana Seminary I sense that there had developed some sort of dissension between my uncle and the prevailing powers and/or thinking at the seminary and he moved onto a large city church in St. Paul, Minnesota. The dissension may have had to do with uncle Milton’s somewhat liberal ideas about the character of some part of the Old Testament, which were at odds with the more fundamentalistic attitude of older members of the faculty. This difference in outlook surfaced again subsequently in his last career position which was as a teacher in a seminary of the Norwegian Lutheran church, also in St. Paul.

The evidence I have of this is a copy of a discussion he gave which presented some mildly liberal interpretations of some Old Testament occurrences. As earlier this brought him into some conflict with the old-guard conservative elements of the church. I became aware of this discussion through Howard Nelson who received it from our mutual cousin John Milton. It surfaced apparently during a reunion of the Milton children.

The impression I have of uncle Milton is that his thinking was the first step in the thinking about Judaism and Christianity which if carried to its logical and inevitable end would be a complete demolishing of the traditional tenets of the two religions. In his case the process had hardly more than just begun, impeded doubtless by the still potent influence of the religious outlook of the Peterson household. Initially uncle Milton had selected law as a potential career and had actually spent a year at Yale. But in the end he succumbed to the home influences and ended up in the ministry (in my opinion to his and society’s loss).

As far as actual personal contact I had very little with uncle Milton. As a rule the Milton family would come to Gowrie sometime each summer as a part of their vacation. They would actually stay with aunt Faye’s parents, but there would be some meals and visits to my grandmother’s to which we were also guests. Thus I had contact with my cousins but never developed any real rapport with them. Mostly they seemed to live and play in a world apart from us socially and economically.



Uncle Milton and Aunt Faye, in an undated photo

I recall one brief conversation that I had with uncle Milton on the occasion of one of his periodic visits to Gowrie. We were standing on the front lawn of the farm, beneath the six pine trees that stood in front of the house (I think these pines were planted by my grandfather — in a very early picture of the farmstead in which perhaps three or so of the oldest children appeared along with their parents, the trees can be seen in the foreground, protected by some crude enclosures probably against farm animals).



Peterson farmhouse, circa 1883. From left to right: Carl, Jonas, George, Emma, Esther. Note the five small pine trees in enclosures.

To the south was the pleasant vista either of the alfalfa field, or perhaps flax. Either field in bloom is a particularly attractive farm scene. Uncle Milton mentioned that during the summers when he came back from his schooling he would participate in the farm work such as plowing — which at the time would probably be with horses.

I suppose the last contact I personally had with uncle Milton was the time we came to Gowrie via Minneapolis because of a United Airlines strike. They (he and Aunt Faye) unexpectedly showed up at the airport on our arrival and we stayed overnight with them on the way back to California.

Farming — What MIght Have Been

I have indicated that Iowa farmland, particularly in the general area of Webster county, has about as productive a potential as any land elsewhere in the state, the country or the world. I don’t know whether it is because of the association with land and the growing of things (whether crops, garden produce, flowers, trees or what have you) that has been integral with my past, but I have an attachment for land and growing things that is almost transcendent in nature. This has manifested itself in various ways.

Early in my career at Shell (say in the middle 1940s) I considered, superficially at least, the possibility of moving back to Iowa, purchasing 40 acres (which I had sufficient savings at the time for doing) and living sort of a Thoreau-like existence. I didn’t of course do it, perhaps it would not have worked out at all. Certainly I would have been at odds with the religious climate of my family.

At the end of the war, I did put in for a transfer within Shell to the Wood River refinery but it never came through — perhaps my potential was evaluated by my superiors and it was decided that I had more value to Shell in research and design than in a manufacturing engineering position. One reason behind my request was of course that I would have been closer to agriculture and land with which I was familiar and could have pursued this bent as an auxiliary activity.

This affinity of mine for the possession of land has been satisfied for the most part by the events that have transpired since — first the purchase of the old Joe Johnson farm and later on acquiring half of my father’s farm. Although I decided against purchasing Vincent’s half of the Strand farm when he sold out, I still have a vestigial regret that we did not go ahead and acquire it also.

If we had been younger in years I suspect that we would have. As I’ve said in the past, and perhaps I’ve set this down in what I have written in this project, I would have been equally happy in work as a farmer or as an accountant as I was as an engineer — at least that is my opinion at this point. Farming had I drifted into it would have been a very satisfying way to spend my working years.

Cousin Eugene

I might as well include a few comments about my cousin Eugene at this point. As a child he was a loquacious, interesting individual and I certainly enjoyed his company; I suppose I was a bit envious of him. On their visits to Gowrie (I suppose during the time uncle Serenus was attending the seminary) they typically would stay at the home of Ellen Stenholm (aunt Edith’s sister who was the widow of Pete Stenholm who had been the International Harvester farm implement dealer in Gowrie). Her home was about a block from the little brown house, rather an imposing structure made of sort of pink-colored stone of cement blocks.

I think Eugene went to college at Fresno State and I believe he was assisted in his expenses by my uncle Carl. Following WWII, in which I believe he was in the service, he entered the field of advertising. On one occasion he was involved with the account of some beer company and was in San Francisco in connection with it; he looked us up while we were living in El Cerrito. This must have been not long after Jean and I were married and before Eugene and “Dode” were married.

The last time I saw Eugene was in Chicago when Jean and I and our three daughters came through Chicago on a drive in a rented car from Kansas City to Des Moines. On that trip we did such things as visit the Field Museum and we also had dinner one evening with Eugene and Dode. They lived in a high-rise apartment building in the downtown section of Chicago. It was a rather imposing, sophisticated place of residence. “Dode” (a nickname for Dorothy I think) was a very short lady quite a bit older than my cousin. Where or how they got together I have no inkling. They seemed quite compatible but I always thought it a rather odd marriage. Coming from uncle Serenus’ family I suppose I should not have been surprised.

Several years ago I wrote a letter to my cousin, I don’t recollect now what I wrote about. I sent the letter to the last address I had for him, in Canada. When he retired from the advertising business he and Dode moved to Canada where she was from originally. She died and my cousin stayed in Canada. The letter came back with the notation on the outside either that he was no longer at the address or that he had died. Subsequently in connection with a family reunion that he was setting up, my brother tracked him down and found out that he had indeed died and a lawyer friend wound up his affairs.

To the end of her life he had maintained his mother in some institution in the Twin Cities and he had I think willed his estate to that institution in gratitude. According to the lawyer he had developed a drinking problem (perhaps because of Dode’s death) and had given the lawyer control of his funds. He had always been a rather heavy smoker and I surmise that he had health problems with that habit also. At one time he had considered retiring to some location in the Carolinas and I have the impression that such a move was abandoned because of his health.

For many years while he was still working he used his vacations for trips around the world. Perhaps he met his wife on one of these trips. His Christmas cards would reflect these excursions. At one time our daughter Palma was in Chicago for some reason and, remembering that our family had once visited him and Dode in a downtown apartment tried to contact them but they had retired for the night.

Although I had my uncle Carl as a namesake, I always had the feeling that he had a closer relationship with Eugene than he had with me. Perhaps it was due to the years when he and Serenus were on the Peterson farm together. My last comment about my cousin Eugene, and it is a feeling that developed and strengthened with the passage of time was that, like his father he was sort of an odd person.

A Bit More about Uncle Serenus

Two more points about uncle Serenus. His birth was apparently a difficult one for my grandmother, and it was the only one of her children for whom I heard such a comment. I think it was my mother who wrote that my grandfather went driving off to Callender to try to get a doctor to come, but I don’t know if he was successful or not. The second point was that aunt Edith grew up on a farm about a mile east of the Peterson farm. My mother wrote, or told the story, of riding along to Gowrie for some such meeting as Luther League with uncle Serenus and aunt Edith. Any courting would have had to wait for the stretch of road between the two farms after they had left my mother off at the Peterson farm.

Two Visits with Uncle Serenus

Following the completion of his training and his ordination uncle Serenus had difficulty in getting a “call” to a congregation. In the Augustana at the time, the individual congregations were the sole arbiters of whom they would want as a pastor and apparently no congregation was interested in him. I believe he ended up in Fargo, North Dakota, but it seems there was some irregularity in how the “call” was rendered. Some other individual seemed to have the feeling that he, not uncle Serenus, was supposed to be the minister for the congregation.

In retrospect, this imbroglio seems to represent the temp and character of uncle Serenus’ life and vocation — haphazard, ill-considered, indecisive, and with a touch of unreality and farce to it. Later the family was in Fresno, California, then in Denver, Colorado, and his final pastorate was I believe in Mason City, Iowa. Shortly after the conclusion of WWII, aunt Laurine and Vivian made a trip to California to visit some friends that they had known in Dubuque and who had moved from there to Pasadena. I guess they spent most of their visit in Pasadena but Vivian came down to San Pedro for an overnight stay with me. So the visit must have been in 1946 as later that year I was transferred to the Bay Area.

Two more points about uncle Serenus. His birth was apparently a difficult one for my grandmother, and it was the only one of her children for whom I heard such a comment. I think it was my mother who wrote that my grandfather went driving off to Callender to try to get a doctor to come, but I don’t know if he was successful or not. The second point was that aunt Edith grew up on a farm about a mile east of the Peterson farm. My mother wrote, or told the story, of riding along to Gowrie for some such meeting as Luther League with uncle Serenus and aunt Edith. Any courting would have had to wait for the stretch of road between the two farms after they had left my mother off at the Peterson farm.

I was living at the last place I resided as during the time I was in southern California. My most vivid recollection of that visit was the evening I spent with aunt Laurine, Vivian, and their friends — we went to a fireworks display at the Rose Bowl and the event lasted until quite late. I still had the long journey back to San Pedro which involved a change on the Pacific Electric System in the downtown LA station and then, probably a walk from the San Pedro station to where I was living, a distance of a couple of miles. I was well after midnight when I was at last abed, tired and somewhat disgusted at the whole evening. I hadn’t liked fireworks all that much either and I think it colored my regard for fireworks ever since.

At any rate, aunt Laurine, Vivian and I arranged to make the trip back to the Midwest together, by way of Denver for a visit with uncle Serenus and aunt Edith. The first leg of the journey from L.A. to Denver was by Pullman [a sleeping car], but the overnight leg from Denver to Boone, or wherever we got off the train, was by coach. It was an uncomfortable experience and I didn’t sleep well and I’ve never tried an overnight trip again.

Uncle Serenus and aunt Edith were very hospitable and I suppose they showed us around Denver a little but I have no recollection specifically of the visit. The last time I saw either of them was when Jean and I took a driving trip around the periphery of the country (in 1977 after taking Laurel to school at Ames). After leaving Laurel at ISU we drove north to the Twin Cities and looked up uncle Serenus where they were living in an apartment in Hopkins. We had a short visit, perhaps “afternoon coffee” before we headed on the see aunt Faye.

From this visit I have one main recollection. Both uncle Serenus and aunt Edith were quite deaf and neither had a hearing aid, so their conversation was at a rather high decibel level. I guess out talking to them was necessarily at the same level. As when I visited them in Denver they were hospitable and welcoming though they still came through as quite odd people.

Uncle Serenus' Ministerial Career

At the time uncle Serenus decided to become a minister, both uncles Lawrence and Milton were in the profession and perhaps it was their example that led him in that direction. However his sense of mission also entered, this being a sort of natural outgrowth of the religious environment of the Peterson household. As I mentioned he was rather old to be entering the field and in addition he didn’t have the educational background that was normally required. In fact I don’t know for sure if he had any college training at all or even high school for that matter.

Apparently the church organization (the Augustana Synod at the time) waived these requirements, perhaps because of the presence of uncles Lawrence and Milton in the ministry and any influence they may have had. There may have been influence also from other quarters who knew of the character of the Peterson clan. At any rate he was accepted for the training in the Augustana Seminary in Rock Island and was at school there in the early 1930s.

It was while he was living there that our family made one of its few or its only vacation trip. It must have been shortly after the Essex was acquired in 1929 and we all rode down to Rock Island (8 people, including wiggly young children) cooped up for 200-plus miles in the not-too-roomy car. Where all the baggage was carried is still not clear to me. I remember on the trip down that my mother kept urging my father to maintain the speed. The Essex really did not operate well over 40 miles per hour, so even at top speed the trip would have lasted well over 5 hours. But eventually we got there.

I can remember only a couple of things from the trip. I slept with my cousin Eugene (I believe that he was between Clarice and me in age) and I recall the strange sensation of the lights outside the house and the city noises as of the traffic in the street outside as we were going to sleep. I also remember the excursion we made to a sort of man-made grotto garden that was the work of one Dr. Palmer who was I seem to recall a chiropractor. It was filled with exotic relics of his travels to foreign countries. Of the return trip to Gowrie I have no recollection.

Uncle Serenus' Farming Career

His entry into the ministerial field was a late one. He must have been at least 35 years of age when he was taking seminary training. Before that he had been engaged in agriculture or related activities. It was he who tried raising purebred swine, using the Peterson farm as a base for this activity. Doubtless the hog house on the farm was a byproduct of this project. Also the building that uncle Carl used as a tool shed was originally a small sales pavilion — it was located in such a position that the swine could be easily brought from the hog house into it for the sales process.

I don’t know who successful this project was, at least it had been long abandoned when I first became aware of uncle Serenus. Perhaps during this period he also farmed, or helped in farming the Peterson or acres. It is certain the occupied the house on the farm in the early 1920s. I’ve seen pictures of my cousin Eugene and his dog playing in or near the house yard.

During the 1920s he also spent some time in Texas, possibly farming the land that uncle Carl had down there. Uncle Carl had purchased this land following the advice of some Lutheran minister who had previously bought farmland in the same general area. As it developed the minister really “made out” on his venture — oil was discovered on his property and he became wealthy. Uncle Carl’s land was leased for the oil rights, perhaps off and on, but no drilling was done, nor was oil found nearby, so he did not have the same good fortune as the minister.

Agriculturally the land did not compare in productivity to the Iowa farmland. Perhaps if he did farm the land, as I suspect he may have, that was the reason uncle Serenus gave up farming and gravitated to the ministry. While we were living on the farm, uncle Carl made at least one trip down to Texas to review conditions on the farm with his rented. I don’t think he got much, if any, net income from the place. Eventually in his later years he sold it and I think donated the receipt from the sale to one of the church activities he supported.

I should acknowledge at this point that uncle Serenus’ leaving the Peterson farm as he did to enter the ministry played a significant part in the history of the Strand family. His leaving left the house vacant for us to move into during the Depression. So I suppose I should be thankful that he followed the checkered career he did.

“Space-Fillers”

Next to uncle Serenus, and if uncle Lawrence had some odd characteristics, uncle Serenus, in my opinion, was odd from beginning to end. Like uncle Lawrence, but even more so, he would have been well advised to have made farming his career rather than the ministry. I suppose he did some good and filled the needs for persons of like viewpoint to his, but overall his influence must have been a negative one. Sincere he was but sincerity alone is not enough for such a calling.

There is a place in society for what I call “space-fillers.” There are positions in society, organizations, and government which require that a person occupy the position which has been established by custom, design or constitution. Oftentimes the qualifications for filling these positions are beyond the qualifications of the persons attempting to fill them. These persons go through the motions of filling the position but their performance is hackneyed, unimaginative, pedestrian — any person regardless of qualifications could replace them. They occupy space and satisfy the requirement that the position be occupied but beyond this they do nothing.

In the field of government this is a very significant problem. I can think of very few persons in all of the governmental functions in the country (and this includes Congress, the executive branch and the courts, certainly including the Supreme Court) who function with real integrity, foresight, purpose. At most their actions are blind attempts to meet short-range problems and to provide superficial solutions. Uncle Serenus fulfilled the qualifications for being a space-filler in the field of the ministry.

Elvera

At about this place in the sequence of my grandmother’s children was Elvera (sp?). She died in infancy. According to my sister Vivian who was told this by my grandmother, Elvera was the prettiest of all her babies.

After the move to the farm, Vivian continued her piano lessons with my aunt Ruth. She would ride into town with uncle Carl when his work was ended for the day and have her lesson. On these trips Vivian would share my grandmother’s bed overnight, and Vivian was the recipient of various confidences from my grandmother. Amongst these was the secret about uncle George which she never disclosed.

Aunt Ruth

The next of my mother’s siblings would be either my aunt Ruth or my uncle Serenus, again I forget the exact order in age. I shall choose aunt Ruth to write about first.

Aunt Ruth when I first became aware of her as an individual was a member of my grandmother’s household, was the organist at the church and the person who came periodically to help my mother on washdays. This picture of her never really changed for me, except for the last item. This aspect of her gradually phased out and ceased entirely when we moved to the farm.

She was of reasonably height but always sort of a spare person similar in this respect to uncles Carl and George and aunts Esther and Lillian. She tended to be shy and retiring as far as any social contacts outside of family and church. I wonder if there was ever any attraction to a member of the opposite sex in all her life or if any male was ever attracted to her but was deterred by her family characteristic of unusual piety. I don’t recall whether she had any schooling at Gustavus. I do seem to remember that she had musical instruction, perhaps in both piano and organ in the Twin Cities area, but this was before my time.

She was quite a competent organist, and vocalists who used her as an accompanist regarded her highly in this respect. The congregation really paid her a pittance for her work, which was actually more extensive than merely filling the role of organist. I seem to recall the figure of $30 per month; of course at the time in the 1930s $30 was much more in what it could buy but even so the pay was too low. She did have her board and room at my grandmother’s house, I suspect she never paid anything there and perhaps she received distribution from the farm as my mother did but that was irregular in character.

I think she gave piano lessons over the years; I seem to recall specifically that she gave lessons to Brynolf Lundholm, one of the four sons of one of the pastors of the Gowrie congregation who was actually the pastor during my younger years) who later went on to a rather significant career in the musical world.

She gave lessons on the piano to Clarice, me and Vivian. I don’t think the three younger brothers were ever her pupils. I certainly recall her lessons with me, going through and practicing the various scales and arpeggios. And I remember such pieces I liked to play like “The Happy Farmer” by Robert Schumann. I never became very proficient with the instrument but I think this exposure to the piano was what led to my lifelong liking for the piano as a musical instrument.

During the time I lived in San Pedro I stated to take piano lessons but these were interrupted by my transfer to the Bay Area and I never resumed them. Though I did rent a piano for a time and played on my own for a while when while living in Berkeley.

The instruction by aunt Ruth ended for me when we moved to the farm, but Vivian kept on and this doubtless led to her later interest and activity in this field. Clarice I think sort of stopped lessons when I did.

Sometime in the mid-1930s after our move to the farm, my aunt Ruth developed some odd illness, which resulted in further emaciation from her already slight figure, but which at the same time results in a distention of her abdomen. Was it a kind of cancer that was never properly diagnosed? The term of diagnosis I recall was “tropical sprue” whatever that might signify. [Actually, it may have been celiac sprue. —LS] She had as her doctor either Dr. Waddell in the nearby town of Paton or a Dr. Shafer in Fort Dodge. I remember driving her to appointments with both of these doctors, driving uncle Carl’s old blue Essex for the trips.

Whatever treatment was administered was eventually ineffective and she died during the time I was away at school at Iowa City. I came home for the funeral at the urging of my mother — I remember as in the case of uncle George seeing her lying in the casket at my grandmother’s. Unlike in the case of uncle George however the mortician had prepared the dead body in a less than normal or attractive aspect. He had been told that her hair was wavy (which it was with a very slight waviness — she wore her hair with a bun in the back, as did also my aunt Esther, my mother and my aunt Lillian all their days). The mortician had interpreted this as rather fuzzy curls. I recall that aunt Laurine was rather incensed at what had been done.

So my aunt Ruth passed out of my life. She left me with an appreciation of music that I might not had had otherwise.

Naomi and Religion

I started writing about my mother in saying that I anticipated in a way that it would be difficult for me. And what I try to put in words at this point is the most difficult of all.

My estimation of my mother is somewhat ambiguous — on the one hand I have the highest regard and appreciation for her unquestioned devotion to providing for the well being of her family, both the children and as a partner in the marriage union with her husband. Her concern for her children was unqualified and she acted with integrity to her ideals in her treatment of and relationship with them throughout their lives.

On the other hand she was the product of the social milieu into which she was born and what to my thinking was the stultifying religious outlook of the Peterson household. I think this outlook transcended that of the Swedish community of which she was also a part. My observation of other members of the church — such as my uncle Reuben and his family — was that they had sort of a pro forma acceptance of the teachings of the church. It provided for them a viewpoint of the world around them and a framework in which they could live their lives in a fruitful and reasonably psychologically satisfying way. That is to say their rather unconsidered acceptance had utility for them — it wasn’t required that it was correct nor that they should strive for utmost consistency between what they thought and did and what the professed in words. They never really thought about their religious commitment, it was just something that had always been a part of their lives.

For my mother and her siblings the situation was quite different. Partly this was because their intellectual level was higher and this provided a basis for greater consistency between what they thought and did and the actual teachings of the Bible and Lutheran theology. But more important was the subtly repressive influence of my grandmother. She, too, was the product of her position in life which led to her conditioned retreat into Christian piety as a means of meeting the vicissitudes of her life. She influenced her children to an unthinking (from the standpoint of analysis of the world around them, both physical and social) viewpoint characterized by consistency to selected and limited religious dogma.

While this parochial outlook did provide a framework for handling the problems of human existence, it also restricted the opportunity or likelihood of a realistic assessment of nature in general. Maybe the latter is not a worthwhile or significant goal for some — it is for me. It is perhaps, in the last analysis, the only real and ultimate goal (if there is one at all) of human existence. The extreme commitment to Christian theology typical of my mother’s family resulted in some quite unhealthy viewpoints such as the attitude toward dying, because of the fear of judgment of God.

I recall hearing my mother speak of this personal fear when close to the end of her life she was contemplating what she considered what she thought was in store for her. I was saddened for her, and at the same time incensed at the hundreds of years of highly egotistic and intellectually sterile Christian theologians who because of their inadequacies in capability had foisted on humanity not the inspired revelations of a deity, but their own stunted views of the cosmos.

So I have a very mixed assessment of my mother — very appreciative and thankful for her aspects of love, care and concern for family, friends and humanity but saddened by the persons, clergy and institutions that restricted and stultified her thinking and the development of her personality. I am now in almost total disagreement with her on what was to her the most important segment of her philosophy of existence. I suppose I should have realistically the same assessment of my father, however I have the intuitive feelings that his commitment and attitude toward Christian theology didn’t have quite the depth or unhealthy involvement that was the case for my mother.