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.