Isn’t it a good thing ….
Isn’t it a good thing we don’t know what our destiny in life is? Who would have known when I was a kid and walking over a mile through the woods on an old abandoned road to grade school that some day I’d be writing a column in a newspaper? Well, here I am doing something that started back in 1967 and is still going.
Following grade school I rode what we called the “Pipe Lake” bus some 12 miles to high school in Turtle Lake. I recall the first two years I had to pay $3 a month to ride the bus. Hot lunch was $1.60 a month. My mom gave me $5 and I got to spend the rest.
Like I said last week, when I was in high school, boys either stayed home and helped on the farm, or went to the Twin Cities and got a job. I think we only had one boy that went on to college and became a lawyer. So I ended up in St. Paul and rode the street car all the way to South St. Paul, where I went to work at Swift & Company. Thanks to a big labor strike in the spring, I ended up making $1.07 an hour. When I told my mom, she said, “There isn’t anyone worth that kind of money.”
For some reason when fall came the shipment of cattle slowed down and my nice job packing baby food cans in boxes changed to a night cleanup job. That prompted me to go over to Bayport, Minn. and take a job at the Anderson Window Company. That would have been my dream job as an uncle and my brother Carl worked there. They were known for paying nice annual bonuses. I even got to meet Fred Anderson, one of the founders of the company who made a habit of always greeting new employees. Back in those years not many builders worked in the winter and the supply of windows filled the warehouses, which resulted in a layoff.
I’d just bought a 1934 Chevrolet for $150 and needed gas money, so I took a job at the Turtle Lake Times newspaper. Wages in Turtle Lake took a drop from the big city, way down to 50 cents an hour. I kind of made up some of the difference by staying at home and living off Mom and Dad. Oh, yes — and brother Harold who didn’t like the idea of me drinking milk and eating butter which he was providing on the dining room table.
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Then the Korean War broke out and Uncle Sam called to say he needed me. Lucky for me, he didn’t send me to Korea, but off in the opposite direction to Goose Bay, Labrador, Canada. There I and the 652nd Heavy Truck Company expanded the airport so they could handle the big bombers being used in the Cold War.
My friend Otto Becker was drafted just a week before me. His two-year duty saw him busy on Grand Turk Island in the Atlantic Ocean, building an air base down there. After our two-year hitch, I went back to my newspaper job and the owner figured out how to use the GI Bill to give me a 20-cent raise. Meanwhile, Otto went to college and became an ag teacher. Later he would join with his father and brother enlarging their farming operation. I think they were one of the first to use a milking parlor as the herd expanded.
I must say my newspaper boss was kind enough to steer me to writing a civil service exam and I was one of the top three. That resulted in a position at the Turtle Lake post office.
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I might still be there yet, but as it turned out, I got picked to work on a special project. Seems the Lutheran churches in that part of state were looking at why we — the counties of Barron, Polk, Washburn and Burnett — were in a depressed condition.
So the American Lutheran Church (ALC), the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod decided to appoint a committee of three pastors and three laymen to look into this. We went to Madison to the Agriculture Extension Department, and arranged for motivational speakers to give a series of meetings and speakers talking to the group of about a hundred each night.
Once it was done, I became concerned with what I would do with all this material. You couldn’t condense it into a five-minute report. I ended up doing a nine-part report called “A Time for Learning” that was printed in the Turtle Lake Times newspaper, and that triggered what is now called “Over the Back Fence” in 1967. Since the workshop was meant to promote economic development, I decided there needed to be a bigger push on our number-one industry in the area, farming and the whole agriculture industry.
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One of the reasons given for our poor economic condition was the area had been cut over by lumbermen and farming conditions were not satisfactory. I can understand, as my grandfather homesteaded a quarter section of land. I think he took it because it reminded him of Sweden, from where he came in 1884. Back in those days it might have been fine, but my dad was only able to make 38 acres farmable. A homestead with 160 acres was called “free land.” Grandpa only paid a $14 filing fee.
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We made good use of the hills and small lake that made up most of the farm for sliding. My brother Carl even got the idea that if the stock tank ran over, the water would freeze and make the hill even better for sliding. Another idea of his was to build a sled on a pair of skis. Then he used a wide board crossways in hopes it would fly like an airplane. It wasn’t all a waste of time, as Dad rebuilt it into a handy sled which got used to bring the milk cans up to the house where they were kept until the milk hauler came.
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All that time to look up all this old stuff I have written wasn’t a waste of time. In August of 1967 I found the first “Over The Back Fence” logo with Florence’s initials carefully hidden in it as you see it today.
