Chapter 2: Coming of age
Raising cane, etc.
The folks decided to raise sugar cane a few years. That was one of the summer jobs, keeping the field clean. When it was ready to be harvested, we helped. The tops had to be cut off and the leaves stripped and the canes cut and bundled and brought to Peterson where someone was set up to make sugar and sorghum syrup. At the time he was kept quite busy. now you don’t go to all that trouble raising it. You buy it ready made in jars at the store.
One year we raised a half acre of navy beans. In the fall after harvesting we would bring in a milk pail of beans from the granary bin and pour it on the kitchen table and Mother and us kids would all sit around the table and pick them over. Empty the good ones in a grain sack and bring them to the elevator in town to sell.
Everything is so different now. There isn’t enough work for the young people to do. Too easy to get into mischief. Everybody has TV and there are too many crime stories on. And with too much freedom the kids sit and watch TV too much. And don’t get enough exercise.
The last of school
Every winter the young folks in the district put on a play and basket social. I remember once I was a princess by the name of Zuleika. I had to be dressed like a princess. The teacher decided cheese cloth would do for a dress. We bought some yards of cheese cloth and dyed it pink. If Mother hadn’t been such a good manager and dressmaker, it wouldn’t have turned out so good, but we thought it looked quite glamorous. Mother’s health wasn’t so good but she had a lot of determination and will power and kept us all busy.
The school house burned down when I was thirteen years old. The chimney had been repaired in the summer and it was said it was a poor job done. So the log house on the forty acres my parents had bought next to our farm was made to do. The seats from the old school house had been rescued. And the teachers desk and most of the books. So we went to school there a couple years until a new schoolhouse was built where the old one had stood.
I liked to read anything I came across. Dad had a shelf filled with books that he had when he went to school in Norway, and others, when I had free time. I many times ended up reading those. I couldn’t have gone to school in town even if there had been money for it, by that time.
Getting to town
We went along to town in the lumber wagon when we needed shores or dress goods or whatever, or going to the dentist, and this was the chance when Dad took corn or barley or oats to town to grind into feed. We also raised wheat and brought sacks to the mill in Rushford to be ground into white and whole wheat flour.
It took all of three hours by lumber wagon to get to town. It happened only two or three times a year for the women. Mother’s sister, Ina Helleland, lived in Rushford. She and mother would talk to each other on the phone and when she heard we were going to town she’d ask us for dinner, sometimes.
Behind the steering wheel
Dad bought a Chevrolet when I was fourteen or fifteen years old. This was wonderful except Ole was going to high school in Rushford at the time so in the fall there was no one but me to take over the driving. I wasn’t mechanically minded. Had never run anything but the sewing machine and separator. And I remember I was scared. Dad gave up trying, he was used to rowing a boat in Norway and the turning was opposite, so I had to learn. Margit was working for a neighbor at the time and she was less anxious to learn than I.
Ole rode a bike back and forth on Monday and Friday when the weather allowed. So the day came when Dad decided we could make an errand to town out of it and pick up Ole at the same time. So Dad, Mother, Halvor and I started out. As we were going up the short steep hill by Bunker Hill, I didn’t feed enough gas and was too excited to think to change gears. Oh, I tried to put the brakes on but didn’t manage. the motor died and we started rolling backwards and tipped on the side at the bottom of the hill. The windshield broke and a fender was bent. I took a long time to get over that one.
I was never at ease driving. It was said afterwards that I hadn’t had enough instruction. But, I was the driver when Ole was away at high school, then later when he was at Luther College, until I was married. The roads then weren’t like now. The country roads were narrow. You couldn’t always pass a car. Someone had to back up. And no paved highways. I sometimes think when I ride with someone now how much more fun it must be to drive.
Sibling rivalry
I have thought many times and mentioned it to Mother. Some people are strong willed and really don’t see themselves as that, just feel they have rights and not willing to give in. Others are not and will give in when asked to do so, to keep peace. I remember so many times when growing up Marg and I had different ideas and Mother would say to me, “You’ll have to be good then, Gunhild. She’ll get it back.” Well, this sort of thing isn’t good, and I remember running upstairs to cry more than once. Life just wasn’t fair and eventually you get the feeling it’s no use.
I remember Dad saying once, I was home for a couple weeks (when we lived in La Crosse), “I can’t understand it, Gunhild used to be so lively, the happiest one of our children. And now…” Mother sort of shushed him, with “there’s nothing wrong.” Those weren’t her exact words, but she didn’t think it should be mentioned. I don’t think she realized it, really for me, to give in seemed to be the only thing to do. And as a result I wasn’t ever as good a helpmate to Nils as I could have been, if I had more confidence in myself.
Still, we had good parents who brought us up to be honest and hard working and to believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior. How many times I have been blessed by going to God in prayer for help when things got hectic and felt I had answers to my prayers.
Margit Mindrum 