More about Uncle Carl

Uncle Carl and namesake nephew, Carl Strand, circa 1921

My uncle Carl was a man of rather slight build and not very tall. I don’t think he ever weighed more than 150 lbs. He was however a prodigious worker but suffered from sensitivity to the summer heat — particularly after one time (before we were on the farm) when he became overheated while working.

He wore glasses for reading but never when working or driving. One time he was picked up for driving without his glasses (this was after I had left home to work for Shell) I suppose he had used them on the reading part of the driving test and the restriction was on his license. His license was temporarily suspended, and being the law-abiding individual he was — started used in old bicycle he had. Eventually he convinced the authorities that he could drive safely without his glasses.

In later years he was hard of hearing — perhaps because of the years of exposure to the loud exhaust of his tractors had injured the mechanism of his ears. He tried out various hearing aids but was never able to find one that satisfied him and I think he never used one despite his impairment. For all his willingness to try out new things (for example he was one of the first to use rubber tires on his Farmall or one of the first farmers to start to grow soybeans instead of oats) he was occasionally singularly unadaptable to accommodating himself to something that was to him less that totally satisfactory.

Though he worked hard from early spring to late fall, winter was a time of almost total inactivity for him. This period of inactivity brought on the indefinite malady of “winter sickness” which I think was largely just ennui. In fact this was a malady of the hole of my grandmother’s menage — the other members of the household had it as well. Being cooper up in the house with the same day-to-day contact with the same individuals with not enough to keep oneself occupied brought this psychological feeling on.

I guess I shouldn’t write that he was totally inactive during the winter. At some time he decided to heat the house with corncobs (no coal) and this required fairly frequent trips downstairs to the furnace for refueling. Corncobs give a hot fire but they burn up rather quickly. For overnight hours he developed a “banking” procedure which I visualized as having a large charge to one side of the firebox in the furnace, with the fire slowly burning its way through the charge of cobs. There were as a rule plenty of cobs from corn shelling to make this feasible. The practice of uncle Carl’s was typical of the man — the most complete utilization of the resources at his disposal. My picture of him on weekdays in the winter at home is his gray-sweatered presence in the rather dimly lit kitchen with his somewhat dour look and his non-talkative habit.

Generally, my uncle Carl enjoyed excellent health. The “winter” sickness which I have discussed was mostly psychological. He apparently had one disability which he never discussed — hemorrhoids. One day, completely out of the blue he took himself to the Lutheran hospital in Fort Dodge to have his condition surgically attended to. As with many other of my recollections I can’t place this as to a specific time, but I have a vague feeling it was before I finished at the university of Iowa and also that I was home at the time. Perhaps one reason I remember was that the discussion of what was happening touched on the fact that his stay at the hospital was free — at the time the hospital was constructed (probably in the early 1930s) he had made a contribution of sufficient size so that as a consequence he had free use of the hospital for the rest of his life.

He was still actively farming around 1950 at the age of seventy. Whether he was still farming all of the 200 acres of the Peterson farm I don’t know, but during the 1950s he gradually reduced his activities with neighboring farms renting part of the farm. The farm was finally sold and the estate settled about 1960 and he moved some of his equipment into town with the idea that he would rent some land and continue a small-scale farming operation (he was past 80 then). This never developed. After Jean and I bought the old Joe Johnson farm, probably in the first year we had it, he helped Vincent at corn picking time, making some of his “bailing-wire” repairs to the crib ion the place which was in rather poor shape. That would have been in the fall of 1961, when he was 82. I think this is correct — the information I have would have been secondhand either form Vincent or from my uncle himself.

After my grandmother died (early in 1954) uncle Carl and aunt Esther lived on in the house until such time as they could no longer care for themselves. For a time my mother aided them in their living, I don’t know for how long, but it was long enough that she was given the house by uncle Carl and aunt Esther (who had acquired it as part of their share of the Peterson estate) for her efforts. Finally though uncle Carl and aunt Esther moved to the home in Madrid for the rest of their lives.

There uncle Carl retained his usual prickly character to the disapproval of the staff. He would go for walks, apparently fairly extended, and the staff couldn’t keep track of him and where he was — I suppose they felt an obligation for the welfare and safety of the inmates. Also by that time he had developed a heart condition and periodically he would either neglect or refuse to take his medicine. Perhaps he was just wishing to die from a heart attack. After all, his father, my grandfather had refused any medical treatment in the last year of his life though I am told he suffered considerably from the cancer that eventually ended his life.

Another thorn in the side of the staff at the home was his using the room to work on clocks. Various individuals would bring him clocks for repair and fixing up and these would litter the table in his room to the discomfiture of whoever of the personnel who had the job of cleaning. I can recall seeing parts of clocks on the table in his room the couple of times I visited him in Madrid. I think I was along on these visits, perhaps I stopped by in Iowa while on a business trip. Uncle Carl and aunt Esther had adjoining rooms at the home and I guess my uncle aided aunt Esther who by that time was quite severely crippled by arthritis.

The last time I saw my uncle was on one of my visits to the home in Madrid. He was somewhat stooped and his walk was somewhat of a slow shuffle, like a very old person without much “spring” in their walk. It was a little difficult to carry on a conversation with him because of his deafness. When he couldn’t hear well enough to ascertain what was being said he did not really respond, such as asking me to repeat what I’d just said. Instead his face would assume sort of a passive, faraway look (actually even in his prime he would often get a similar, rather blank look, as if what was being said or discussed was something on which he had no opinion, or which he thought politely had no significance either to him or any thinking person). I suppose that I stayed perhaps a half hour or so on these visits.



The two Carls, at the home in Madrid, Iowa, probably mid to late 1960s

One thing I remember from these visits was the stale smell of the place, as of unwashed clothes, bodies, floors etc. I suppose that persons encountering this kind of institutional smell become accustomed and inured to it so it doesn’t bother them or they don’t notice it. It did bother me and I hope I am never in such a circumstance. The visits were depressing to me.

Sometime after my last visit he had his last illness, what it was I don’t really know. After a stay in the local hospital he died at about the age of 88. Somehow or other I heard that he had arranged [not?] for a simple casket, but a rather expensive and unusual copper vault for the protection of his mortal remains, pending the day of resurrection. I felt saddened as much as when I saw him on my last visit.



Uncle Carl's gravestone, Gowrie, Iowa