Elmer Strand, Norwegian-American Bachelor, Continued

As a child, I was delighted by the distraction of new adults entering into my sheltered world.  They came through the front door, often smiling, and left behind new sights, sounds, and stories.  Blood relatives or relatives by marriage, and even my mother's friends from "back home" in Minnesota would sometimes land in our living room for a few hours.  They always left our house fully-fueled.  My Mom's ingrained habits would not have permitted her to allow a guest to leave without being offered the usual round of coffee, sandwiches, cookies, and fruit, or whatever we had on hand.  As a quiet and cautious youngster, I did not ask many questions, but I had a great curiosity about family connections and how my parents came to know these visitors.

I clearly recall Elmer Strand as a lanky and laid-back older gentleman.  Our visit with him during the summer of 1965 included the experiencing a new location outside the comfortable and familiar surroundings at home.  The summer before I entered middle school, Mom asked Dad to drive the four of us (Dad, Mom, my 6 year-old sister Becky, and me) to Sonoma County to visit Elmer.  We had just moved from our house in Richmond, California (San Francisco East Bay), to nearby El Cerrito.  After all the work involved in moving and setting up a new household, Mom was looking for a little rest and recreation.  Back then, driving to Sonoma County from the San Francisco Bay Area was the equivalent of a pleasant day trip into the country.  Sonoma County, part of the beautiful Redwood Coast area in California, is also wine country, and has long, meandering two-lane highways that climb, dip, and roll gently past vineyards and farms, toward the rugged Northern California ocean beaches I knew and loved as a youngster.

Elmer Strand with his family, to that point (left to right):  Thomas (father), Theodore, Elmer, Arthur, and Regina (mother), ca. 1895, Chippewa County, Minnesota.


When I asked my mother who Elmer Strand was, she said that he was a longtime friend of my grandfather's.  Elmer, who was the eldest of his siblings, had never been married, and my maternal grandfather, Ernest Johnson, had been a widower for many years.  The two men were close in age to one another.   Elmer Strand was born on March 4, 1890 in Sparta Township, Chippewa County, Minnesota, and Grandpa (Ernest) was born on January 23, 1889 in nearby Granite Falls Township.  Elmer eventually moved to California from Minnesota as an adult, as did Ernest. When Ernest Johnson retired in the early 1960s from the Ford Motor Plant in Milpitas, California, he sold his house in Campbell and took an extended vacation on the southern Oregon coast. Elmer Strand went along.  The two men lived in Ernest’s trailer for a few months and did a lot of fishing.  It must have been old Norwegian bachelor heaven!

It was not until many years later, after I began genealogy pursuits in earnest, that I found out Elmer Strand was actually a cousin to Grandpa.  Elmer Strand's parents were Thomas Einersen Strand and Berthe Regine "Regina" Winje.  Regina (see post entitled Duty, Fate, and Beauty), was a younger half-sister to Grandpa's father, Ole M. Johnson.  Elmer was the oldest of a large family of siblings.  His brothers included:  Arthur (1892-1967); Theodore (1894-1973), Lambert (1897-1969), and Thomas Raymond (1899-1981).  A sixth boy, name unknown, did not survive birth.  After giving birth to Thomas Raymond in 1899, Regina died unexpectedly, leaving a widowed husband with five young sons.  When Thomas E. Strand married Beate Matilda "Tilda" Nelson in 1902, Elmer was further blessed with eight half-siblings:  Alvin (1902-1989), Isella (1904-1908), Noel (1906-1959), Gerda "Sylvia" (1908-1994), Stella (1910-1910), Olaf (1910-1982), Maude (1912-1968), and Margaret (1915-2003).  One of his half sisters died as an infant, and the other lived only to about four years of age.  Elmer headed a list of Thomas E. Strand's offspring that numbered three girls and eight boys that survived to adulthood.  Perhaps this large number had something to do with Elmer eventually striking out on his own and never marrying and raising his own family.



Elmer Strand as a young man, ca. 1918.  Detroit Lakes, Minnesota.

Elmer was confirmed at Saron Lutheran Church in Chippewa County, Minnesota on October 15, 1905.  His WWI and WWII draft registration cards indicate that he had black hair and light blue eyes--a striking combination.  Judging by the photo to the left (cropped from a family portrait), he was an attractive young man.  He was 5 ft. 8 ins. tall, and at age fifty-two, he weighed in at a lanky 120 pounds.  His main work was as a farm or ranch hand, and it appears he traveled around for various jobs.  In 1910, at the age of twenty, he was still helping out at his father's farm in Sparta, Chippewa County.  After leaving home, he boarded on Foster Ave. in Baltimore, Maryland, and by 1920 was working as a reamer at the shipyards.  In 1930, he was renting a place on his brother Theodore's property in Stony Run, Yellow Medicine County, Minnesota.  He applied for a Social Security card in the state of Illinois before 1951, and may have even worked in Canada.

Elmer Strand (center) with Ernest Johnson, and my mother, Doris Johnson.  Photograph was taken ca. 1948 in the front yard of the flourplex where Ernest's sister, Mabel Johnson, and his daughter, Doris, lived in Richmond, California.


In Elmer Strand’s later years, he was employed as a ranch hand in Sonoma County and was still quite lively at the time my family visited him in 1965. Elmer lived simply, in a trailer on the ranch owner’s property. At the time of his death on October 29, 1985, he was a resident at the London House Convalescent Hospital in Sonoma. Though raised a Lutheran, Elmer became a member of the Swedenborgian Church in San Francisco.  It is thought that the ranch owners converted Elmer to their church since he had the opportunity to ride along to services with them each Sunday.   After Elmer's death, his ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean just beyond the Golden Gate Bridge in a communal, clergy-led ceremony aboard The Neptune Society’s yacht, the Naiad.

Related posts on Nordic Blue:

Elmer Strand, Norwegian-American Bachelor
Duty, Fate, and Beauty


Ancestry.com sources:

--Border Crossing:  From U.S. to Canada, 1908-1935.
--California, Death Index, 1940-1997.
--Social Security Death Index.
--U.S., Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Records, 1875-1940.
--U.S. Federal Censuses for 1910, 1920, and 1930.
--U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918.
--U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942.

As I Remember Them

I just finished reading The Distancers:  An American Memoir, by Lee Sandlin, which is an extremely well written account of the history behind his great grandparents' old house in southern Illinois.  The author gradually unfolds the personalities and lives of the elder relatives who lived there, many of whom were a regular part of Sandlin's life as a youngster.  What struck me most was the realistic portrayal of the attitude children often have toward their elders:  not questioning, but simply accepting who their family members are at face value, with all their faults and idiosyncrasies, while any strengths or aptitudes are usually taken for granted.  Questioning, reasoning and approaching an understanding of our elders' choices and actions usually comes later in life, and it often happens too late for us to be able ask the relatives themselves about their experiences or intentions.  And, that is what family history is all about:  piecing together the purpose and meaning of our ancestors' lives in order to better understand them and ourselves.

I was never fortunate enough to experience living with my great aunts and uncles (or grandparents, for that matter), for extended periods of time.  But, I always looked forward to Dad's two week vacation in August when the old Ford Ranch Wagon was packed up with suitcases and a twin mattress in the back for my sister and myself to sleep on.  Almost yearly we traveled from the Bay Area to Salem, Oregon, where we stayed at Aunt Phyllis's house and made the endless round of visits to my grandfather and his many brothers and sisters, as well as a few cousins.

Everywhere we went, modest dining room tables groaned with coffee and milk, sandwiches or pastries, wonderfully diverse jello or pasta salads, and best of all--homemade doughnuts.  As a child, I too was content to observe and wonder, never asking questions of my elders.  If I had, I might have been ignored, or at best, received a thinned-out version of the truth for an answer, or worse--been teased for asking in the first place.  We children knew our place!  So now that these elders are gone, I am left to piece together their lives out of a desire to know how they coped with everyday problems, and where they reaped their rewards.  I also want to know simply because I care.

The following photograph of my grandfather (front and center) and six out of his nine siblings was taken in in 1967, following the funeral of their sister, Thea (Johnson) Humberstad.  Thea was the first of the ten siblings to pass on.   They are all departed now, the last being Oral Johnson in 1996.

(Left to right), Front row:  Cora (Johnson) Moen, Ernest Johnson (my maternal grandfather), and Mabel Johnson.  Back row:  Carl Johnson, Frank Johnson (the youngest of the siblings), Oral Johnson, and Ruben Johnson.  Missing from the photo are Bennett Johnson (the eldest) and Odin Johnson, both from Minnesota, and of course, Thea (Johnson) Humberstad, who was buried that day.  The photographer was one of their neices, either Doris Johnson Wheeler or Phyllis Johnson Rice.  Although the photograph is dated with the printing date of May 1967 on the border, it was taken shortly after Thea Humberstad's death in February of that year.

As Sandlin stated in his memoir:  "all stories of the past are sad."  This photo is sad, too, not just because of the event that created it (a funeral), but because of the shared anguish among close family members after the loss of a loved one, and having to come face-to-face with the harsh reality of their own mortality in the process.  The shell-shocked look on many of the faces--my grandfather's especially--continues to haunt me.  Still, I cherish the photo because it represents my grandfather with most of his brothers and sisters together in one place, with everyone appearing exactly as I remember them during the mid-1960s.

The photograph was shot with a Kodak Instamatic camera, which was all the rage in the mid-1960s.  The subjects posed inside my great aunt Mabel Johnson's living room, on Ellis Ave. NE in Salem.  I cannot fail to recognize the vintage dark red upholstered chair that Mabel always kept by the front door, and I owned it for a time after her death in 1983.  Grandpa must have been given the only seat for the portrait because he was the eldest sibling present.  Most of the family lived in Salem, Oregon or the surrounding area, but three of the brothers, Bennett, Odin, and Oral, lived in Minnesota.  Only Oral Johnson was able to make the trip to the west coast for the funeral.  Thea, the departed, lived in West Salem with her husband Carl Humberstad in a tiny and immaculate white clapboard house with baby pink trim.

The people in the photograph were a big part of the backbone of extended family that I knew and loved as a youngster.  I miss them all, and if I could have one more chance to see them, there would be a thousand questions for each and every one.  All stories of the past may be sad in some way, mostly because they are from a time that is irretrievably lost to us, but that does not mean they should be ignored or avoided.  The reason why some of us spend so much time researching family history is to rediscover the experiences of those who paved life's road ahead of us, winding through all of its mysterious peaks and valleys.  Though their time has passed, there is joy and honor to be celebrated from their journeys.

"Whiskerinos" and the Golden Jubilee of Richmond, California



Ernest Johnson, age 58, dressed for the Golden
Jubilee in Richmond, California, August 1947.

I was quite surprised when I first saw this photograph of my maternal grandfather, Ernest Johnson, with a beard and moustache adorning his face. To my knowledge, he had never worn any facial hair, aside from an occasional unshaven stubble that he liked to rub against his grandchildrens' faces for their squeamish reactions.  My mother told me that when they both lived in Richmond, California, the city held a Golden Jubilee from August 22-24, 1947, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the city's founding. Among the planned activities was a "Whiskerino" contest, for which "Richmond's male populace [had] been grooming their whiskers for weeks."  Grampa always seemed to be a team player, having been raised with nine siblings, so I'm sure he thoroughly enjoyed the anticipation of the events, and perhaps talked over plans time and time again in the break room with his fellow custodians at the Ford Plant.

In 1945, my grandfather moved to the west coast from Leonard, Minnesota, when he could no longer make an adequate living as a farmer.  By 1947, he had been a widower for over 25 years.  Richmond, California was a boom town during World War II, mostly because of the local shipyards and the tank production going on at the Ford Motor Company plant.  Housing shortages continued right after the war, so Grampa lived for a time in a boarding house and then rented a room above a water tower.  He was a modest man with simple needs, and he knew how to get those basic needs met by taking steaks or salmon from the Richmond Pier to his sister's nearby apartment on Sundays, in exchange for a good home-cooked meal.

Richmond's Golden Jubilee celebration was meant to serve as a reminder of the "good old days" in the history of the west. It seems that not just my grandfather, but many other Richmond residents had a lot of fun getting into the spirit. Here is a link to a privately owned collection of photographs taken during the Golden Jubilee parade in downtown Richmond, in August 1947.



The huge parade was not the only special event planned for the 3-day celebration.  Opening the festival was a mock raid on a downtown pharmacy by "Joaquin Marietta," an early California badman, along with his henchmen.  "Guns from both sides will blaze, but, as in olden times, the bandits will lose and will be carted off the 'jail' and kangaroo court," a local newspaper reported on the day before the commencement of the Jubilee.  Following an exciting start, there were plenty of activities to follow, including a hillbilly music contest, a Mexican festival, and a Saturday night costume ball at nearby Alvarado Park, for which all attendees were expected to wear pioneer dress.  I would like to have been a fly on the wall to see Grampa thoroughly enjoying himself, wearing his crinkly smile, and his sporty new whiskers, of course!

Sources:
"Raid to Open Richmond Fete."  The Oakland Tribune, August 21, 1947. p. 16, col. 1.

In Search of Great Grandma's Girlhood, Part II

For months I've been meaning to get back to scanning a box of loose photographs given to me by a cousin who lives in New York, who had previously borrowed them from relatives in Minnesota and Idaho.  These photographs--already quite well-traveled--were part of an extensive collection that once belonged to my great grandparents, Ole Martin and Malla (Larson) Johnson, of Leonard, Minnesota.  Due to a severe Pacific Northwest snow storm, I had a few precious days off work.  I decided to roll up my sleeves and warm up the scanner (hopefully, my husband is not now feeling as neglected as the scanner was until this past week). 

Recently, in one of the old Johnson cabinet card albums, I discovered a previously undetected tin type photograph of Malla (Larson), looking several years younger than she was at the time of her wedding in 1886 (see my previous blog post:  "In Search of Great Grandma's Girlhood.")  I was overjoyed to find this photo, because it is now the youngest image the family has of Malla.  I say that it was "previously undetected," because my ancestors, like yours, did not often take the time to write down the identities of people in their photographs.  Everyone knew who they were at the time, so what was the urgency?

Perhaps unmarked ancestral photographs were left untouched in order to present a challenge for relations to come... for people like me, who take pride in being the family historian, and who also possess capable facial recognition skills along with a love of the chase.  And, a chase it is!  Many of you know that familiar adrenalin surge when recognizing someone in a newly acquired vintage photograph, or feeling the slow spread of certainty after an initial reaction of "I know this person!"  You have just "bagged" another ancestor and not returned home from the hunt empty-handed.



Anne Marie ("Mary") Sloan (right), 1884/85

 

Though I was not actively looking for it, I acquired a piece of another great grandma's girlhood among the tin type photographs I scanned yesterday.  In this especially lovely pose from the mid-1880s, I knew I had seen the girl standing on the right before, though the hat made it more difficult to see all of her features. The girl sitting next to her was unfamiliar--a cousin, or friend, perhaps?  Suddenly, it hit me that the girl on the right looked like my mother's maternal grandmother, Anne Marie ("Mary") Slaaen (or Sloan--the Americanized version of the family name).  Her face in the photo above has a bit more "baby fat" than what I remembered in her wedding photograph, so I zoomed in on the two in order to compare.  One in the same!



Mary (Sloan) Berge, Feb. 1886

In 1886, at the time of her wedding to Ole Benhart Berge in Leenthrop Township, Chippewa County, Minnesota, Mary Sloan was 17 years old.  In the earlier photograph, she appears to be 15 or 16.  Now, Mary was not related to either Ole or Malla (Larson) Johnson, the original owners of the photographs.  What then, was my other maternal great grandmother doing in Ole and Malla Johnson's photo collection?

I then remembered the situation as my mother had previously described to me.  In early Chippewa County, as in any sparsely populated pioneer community, it is true that everybody knew everybody.  When friends gave likenesses to friends, it was a kind gesture that was usually reciprocated.  But, Mary Sloan had an even more important reason to give her photograph to young Ole Johnson, because the two of them courted for awhile.  Mary Sloan, at about age 16, dated Ole Martin Johnson, a local homesteader and landowner, who was eight years her senior.  At the same time, Malla Larson, also age 16, dated Ole Benhart Berge, who was four years her senior.  Somewhere along the line, Ole Johnson must have decided that Malla Larson would make a better partner for his chosen way of life, whereas Mary Sloan fell in love with Ole Benhart Berge, a future mail carrier and railroad worker.  Both couples, linked to better suit their mutual strengths, were married in February 1886:  the Berges on February 6, and the Johnsons on the 28th.  So, Ole Johnson got his helpmate in lovely Malla, and Ole Berge got his sweet Mary; the stars were aligned correctly, at last, and the Johnson/Larson and Berge/Sloan legacies were begun.



Ole and Malla Johnson, Feb. 1886

  
 Ole and Malla Johnson facts:

--Ole Martin Johnson, August 6, 1860-April 20, 1948; born at Lassemoen farm, near Grong, Nord-Trondelag, Norway; immigrated with parents and sister in 1866; died from heart disease.
--Malla (Vigesaa) Larson, April 20, 1868-April 19, 1948; born near LaCrosse, Wisconsin, USA; died one day short of her 80th birthday from pneumonia and stroke.
--Ten children, all of whom lived to old age.
--Lived in Granite Falls Township, Chippewa County, Minnesota; Fosston, Polk County, Minnesota; Leonard, Clearwater County, Minnesota.
--Married 62 years.
--Died within hours of each other; both buried under a double headstone at East Zion Cemetery near Leonard, Minnesota, across the road from their last residence.
 

Ole and Mary Berge, Feb. 1886

   
Ole and Mary Berge facts:

--Ole Benhart Berge, October 30, 1864-January 24, 1949; born at Storberget farm near Lillehammer, Gudbrandsdalen, Norway; immigrated with mother and sister in 1869 (father immigrated the year before); died  from stroke.
--Anne Marie (Mary) Sloan/Slaaen, June 20, 1868-June 7, 1947; born in a covered wagon near Swan Lake, Nicollett County, Minnesota; died from leukemia.
--Twelve children; two died in infancy.
--Lived near Leonard, Clearwater County, Minnesota; Maynard, Chippewa County, Minnesota.
--Married 61 years.
--Both buried at Maynard Lutheran Cemetery, Maynard, Chippewa County, Minnesota.

Special note:  Ernest Johnson, son of Ole and Malla Johnson, married Esther Berge, daughter of Ole and Mary Berge, on March 22, 1917 in Chippewa County, Minnesota.  Ernest and Esther Johnson were my maternal grandparents.

The Dirty Thirties: No Easy Street, Part III

A Hand Up, Not a Hand-Out

Ernest Johnson, my grandfather, was unable to eek out a living in the 1930s solely by raising crops on his small farm in rural Leonard, Minnesota. One of many places he out-sourced his physical labor was at the Hoover Dam construction site on the Arizona/Nevada border, about 35 miles southeast of Las Vegas. My mother does not remember exactly how long her father was away from home while working at the site, but it seemed a long time to a girl in her early teens. In any case, the employment probably extended for a period of six months up to a year, somewhere between 1931-1935.

Grampa was not a large man, perhaps standing about 5'5" or so, but like others of his generation and before, he could work extremely hard. I still have one of the shirts that he was fond of wearing: a sturdy button-down wool flannel in a red and gray plaid. When he outgrew it by a few spare pounds in his elder years, he gave it to my mother. She wore it outside while gardening for quite awhile after that and then passed it down to me. I am only 5'1" but I have never really been able to wear that shirt, in a man's small size. It rests, lovingly folded, among other treasured items in my cedar chest.

I remember sitting on Grampa's lap as a child, but being very young, I had no sense of how he compared to others back then. He was just "Grampa"--my only grandfather--with an interesting accent and a crinkly smile. He sometimes smelled of pipe tobacco or bacon, and I never knew him to go anywhere without a hat or cap. I always understood that underneath that shy smile and spare, straight talk there was an unshakeable fortitude... a fierceness even, that I'll liken to a pioneer spirit. I felt safe whenever he was near. Grampa loved a good laugh, but he had no tolerance for utter foolishness. I was more than okay with that since since I was a rather subdued child to begin with, but I really only wanted to please him, or any of my elders, for that matter.

I wish I knew something specific about the work my grandfather did on Hoover Dam, which was renamed Boulder Dam in May 1933. The family just always knew that Grampa spent a fair amount of time working on "that dam with the two names." To be certain, it was some variety of sweaty, back-breaking labor under the heat of the desert sun: there was no escaping it in one of the hottest and dryest regions of the United States.



A vintage postcard.



Work on Boulder City began in December 1930. The original plan called for completion of the town before work on the dam began, but the construction schedule for the dam was accelerated, and the town was not ready when the first dam workers arrived at the site in early 1931. During the first summer of construction, workers were housed in temporary camps while work on the town progressed... [1]

It is likely that Ernest Johnson arrived in Boulder City by train and lived in a company dormitory. Reporting to work each day, he had to stop at security check point and present an employee card. All those entering the work site were expected to obey the posted regulations, which included not bringing "intoxicating liquors, narcotics, explosives, or firearms..." onto the site. Many employees rode in large groups on the large motor lorry ("Big Bertha"). [2]

The road from Boulder City to the canyon rim, about seven miles, was constructed for the Government by the General Construction Company. Designed to transport men and equipment to and from the dam site, these roads later formed a link in the main highway between Las Vegas and Kingman, Arizona. [3]

The U. S. Bureau of Reclamation posted signs along the trecherous canyon rim:

Men Are Working--

Please Refrain From Rolling or Throwing Rocks [4]

To accommodate the workers and their families at Boulder City, Six Companies constructed housing for both single and married employees, a fully stocked department store, a post-office, laundry, recreation hall, school, and hospital. Single employees at Boulder City were housed in eight 171-man dormitories, and one 53-man dormitory. The bunkhouses contained water coolers, toilets, and one shower for every 13 men. For $1.60 per day, workers received a private room with a bed, mattress, pillow, bedding, a chair, meals, and transportation to and from the construction site. In addition to the dormitories at Boulder City, Six Companies constructed six dormitories and a 400 man mess hall at Cape Horn, a bend in the river downstream from the dam site. [5]

The concrete arch-gravity Hoover/Boulder Dam was the world's largest electric-power generating station and largest concrete structure when it was completed in 1935. For images of the construction, visit the Bureau of Reclamation Hoover Dam website.

When Ernest Johnson ended his stretch of employment at the site, he remembered his daughters before heading back home to Minnesota with his earnings. At a local store, perhaps in Las Vegas, he purchased a purse and a pearl necklace for each of them. These were very special presents for the girls, particularly during the Depression era, although they never received their necklaces. Someone stole the pearls from among Ernest's belongings before he left the dormitory. Strangely enough, the purses were left behind--unlawful greed mixed with a twinge of guilt on the part of the thief? Or, perhaps the purses were simply not as portable as the jewelry. Grampa, being a practical man, had allowed a certain amount of money for presents, and when the necklaces were gone... well, they were gone. The thief was lucky to have gotten away undetected, because Grampa could be hot-tempered if the need arose, and he was not afraid to defend himself. Although my mother and aunt were disappointed over the loss of the necklaces, they did appreciate their father's thoughtfulness, and they treasured their purses all the more. My mother still has hers to this day: a hand-carved leather shoulder bag with a metal clasp.

While back on his farm in Leonard, Minnesota, Ernest Johnson used some of his WPA wages to buy new seed, after which he spent a few years successfully raising alfalfa, flax and clover to sell for feed. He found it increasingly difficult to farm due to a physical incapacity, however. Years before, a horse had stepped on his ankle, and arthritis had slowly set in.




Ernest Johnson with his dog, Pee Wee, near Leonard, Minnesota in 1941.  The photo was taken
 a few years before he sold his farm and moved to Richmond, California.



 

In preparation for his retirement years, Ernest Johnson sold his farm at age 56 and moved to Richmond, California along the Pacific coast. He went to work as a custodian for the Ford Motor Company in 1945, first living in a boarding house due to a housing shortage, and then renting a room atop a water tower. Other family members, his two daughters included, had already made the move out west from Minnesota, since California was the land of new opportunity to midwesterners after the heavy industrialization experienced during World War II.

As with many others during the Depression era, the WPA wages from the Hoover/Boulder Dam reconstruction project and others gave my grandfather the means to support himself until he was ready to make the transition from farming to a different way of life. It was not a hand-out, but a "hand up." Thus, those who were willing to work hard and carefully use whatever wages could be earned, were able to turn the "Dirty Thirties" to their advantage, in spite of difficult times, as did my grandfather.



[1, 3, 5] The Boulder Canyon Project: Hoover Dam, by Wm. Joe Simonds
[2, 4] The Boulder Canyon Project, AKA Hoover Dam

The Dirty Thirties: No Easy Street, Part II

How You Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm?

My grandfather's family was, almost unamiously, stubborn and proud: not so proud that they would not help one another, but proud enough that they would never have accepted outright charity. When Franklin Roosevelt's legislation resulted in the Social Security Administration and unemployment insurance began in 1935, it would have been a "foreign" idea to my Norwegian-American relations. I'm sure they eventually got used to the idea, but if there was a way to survive, unemployed, and not burden anyone but close family, they would have certainly have preferred that to being "on the dole."[1]

President Franklin Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration (renamed the Work Projects Administration in 1939) officially began with the passage of the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935. It served as a continuation of relief programs similar to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) started in 1932 by Herbert Hoover and the U.S. Congress. Both programs were meant to provide the means for many out-of-work individuals to bring home a wage and put food on the table, though the WPA--part of FDR's New Deal--would be much more succesful.

Even before the RFC or WPA, a large scale project came into being in the midwest that provided over 20,000 with temporary work at the beginning of the Depression era. My grandfather, Ernest Johnson, was one of the lucky hopefuls who were not turned away for the building of the Bagnell Dam in central Missouri. The trip out from Minnesota was neither too far nor too ardous when the promise of months of wages were at stake during the 1930s.

I do not know exactly how long Grampa worked at the site, or even what type of work he did, but the construction of Bagnell Dam was begun during the later half of 1929 and completed in 1931. The following images are from 1931 postcards that my grandfather brought home to Leonard, Minnesota to give to my mother and aunt as keepsakes.

Bagnell Dam, Missouri, in 1931 (Postcard #1)

Bagnell Dam, Missouri, 1931 (Postcard #2)

Records show more than 20,000 people worked on the project at one time or another. Although there were some steam shovels and other powered equipment, most labor was done by hand. Pay rates for construction workers were as low as 35 cents an hour. But during the Depression era, when a person could be hired for farm work for 50 cents a day, workers were glad to make the wage.
The project was truly massive. Nearly 60,000 acres of land had to be acquired, and about 30,000 acres cleared of trees and brush. One million cubic yards of earth and rock had to be moved. Enough concrete was poured to build an 18-foot-wide highway from St. Louis to Topeka, Kansas. Enough carloads of material were used in the dam to fill a freight train stretching from St. Louis to Tulsa, Oklahoma. [2]

For more information and photographs, see also the interactive online book, The History of Bagnell Dam, at the Lake of the Ozarks website.

I wish I had specific stories about the time my grandfather spent at the Bagnell Dam, but these personal memories and observations are lost to history. I am sure he told a few tales to his brothers and nephews, but they did not filter down to my mother and aunt--his own daughters. Perhaps if they had been sons instead, Ernest would have shared a few yarns with them, if only to see their eyes open wide in fear or amazement. But, since the Johnson girls did not live in the same house as their father, and they were not of the same gender, my mother and aunt missed out on a lot of the tales of male bravado. Girls were apparently meant to be protected and be useful in earning their keep. Although Ernest Johnson brought his daughters chocolate, treats, small gifts, and even pets upon occasion, he apparently did not spend a lot of time talking to them about his past. What a pity!
If my grandfather were alive today, I would not let him get away from the table without telling me a story or two. When I knew him, I was too young to be assertive (he died when I was 16), and I did not even know what to ask at the time. You know how they say that youth is wasted on the young? I'm afraid so, especially when it comes to genealogy.
In the late 1930s, Ernest Johnson again left his farm in rural Clearwater County, Minnesota, to work on the construction of the Hoover (Boulder) Dam near Las Vegas, Nevada--a bona fide WPA project.

To be continued in Part III


[1] "On the dole": a giving of food, money, or clothing to the needy; a grant of government funds to the unemployed.
[2] History of Bagnell Dam

The Dirty Thirties: No Easy Street

Ernest Johnson Begins Farming

During the Depression era, independent farmers like my maternal grandfather, Ernest Johnson, found it increasingly difficult to earn a living from planting and harvesting, and frequently supplemented their income through other work. The following story tells how he coped and managed to keep his small farm through difficult economic times in the 1920s and 1930s.

Ernest and Esther Johnson in March 1917.
Fosston, Polk County, Minnesota.

My Grampa Johnson was a farmer in rural Minnesota from 1914-1945. Like his nine brothers and sisters, Ernest Johnson had a Norwegian accent all of his life, even though he and his siblings were all born in America. English was something primarily used at school and social functions, while Norwegian was spoken at home. Upon leaving his parents' farm in 1914, Ernest purchased a plot of land about three miles outside of Leonard, Minnesota in Clearwater County, where Mississippi headwaters trickle from Lake Itasca, mirroring lush pines and running crisp and clear on the long journey to the Delta in the Gulf of Mexico. When Ernest married Esther Agnes Berge on March 22, 1917, he brought his shy, deferential, and bespectacled bride to live on that small farm. In a little clapboard farmhouse with one room up and one room down, my aunt and mother were born, in 1918 and 1920, respectively.




The farmhouse where my mother was born near Leonard, Minnesota, ca. 1920.



Ernest Johnson lived down the road from his parents and some of his siblings. For many years, the creed among farmers, including his grandparents as Norwegian-American homesteaders, was that neighbor helped neighbor, and especially, family helped family. Family is the main reason Ernest's parents left behind a picturesque and productive farm in the green and forest-rimmed fields outside Fosston in Polk County, so that they could follow him and his older brother, Bennett, to Leonard, over twenty miles away. Keeping the family together was not only ideal, but prudent, especially when there was hard labor to be done on a regular basis.

Though the newlyweds were off to a good start, Ernest and Esther's marriage was tragically short. Before their younger daughter celebrated her second birthday, Esther fell mortally ill with tuberculosis and died in January 1922. As per their mother's deathbed request, the young girls were sent to live with their paternal grandparents down the road, Ole M. and Malla Johnson, in order to be close to their father as they grew. It was painfully obvious that Ernest would not have the time nor resources to care for his two young daughters as long as perpetual and solitary work awaited him in the fields. And, what of the autumn and winters, when he must travel here and there to bring in some kind of income? No, it was far better that the little tow-headed girls, Phyllis and Doris, be watched over by their grandparents and a maiden aunt, Mabel, who could help supervise them and make their clothing.

Phyllis and Doris Johnson, Sept. 1921.

Once again a bachelor, Ernest applied himself to whatever would bring in enough money to pay the bills and buy seed. He helped on his parents' and brothers' farms, grew what small crops he could, and took pleasure in training and caring for his horses. Ernest's young nephews and their friends delighted in visiting someone who was "batching it." They could also ride horses away from the critical eyes of their mothers, and Ernest helped their fun along with some of his tricks. His horses were trained to stop dead in their tracks when he snapped his fingers, which sometimes left young riders clinging frantically to whatever they could, like real bronco busters. Ernest Johnson's farm was also a place where boys might find some privacy to steal a taste of their first cigar, or make successful raids on the cooky jar without the usual repercusions at home. Ernest may have been a longtime widower, but he knew how to fend for himself in the kitchen. He made his own doughnuts and canned apples, peaches, and other fruit... and he always kept the cooky jar full, too.

Ernest Johnson shows off his prized team of horses, Tony and Birdie.
My grandfather was very fond of this photograph, taken on his farm
near Leonard, Minnesota, May 2, 1943.

Whenever he could, Ernest Johnson raised sheep and planted seed crops such as flax, clover, and alfalfa, using only horses and a plow. He hunted game and fished to supplement both his larder and his income. He often traveled away from Leonard to help with late summer harvests in the fields of South Dakota and also drove drays for logging companies in the forests of northern Minnesota--hiring himself out however he could. He was often away from home for months at a time, leaving family and neighbors to tend to his livestock, and he returned such favors for them. Truth be told, he even attempted a little bootlegging on the side, but it was thankfully a short-lived venture that ended when others blew up the still during his absence.

With the onset of the 20th Century and increased industry, family-run farms began to struggle. Ernest's father, Ole M. Johnson, had made a success out of his own farm without once using a tractor, but he'd had decades of early midwestern development to build upon his success and reputation. For Ernest's generation, when so many small farms reached for a foothold in existing markets, independence by farming was harder to achieve, especially when the stock market crash of 1929 darkened the forseeable future. When the money was gone and seasonal jobs were harder to find, Ernest Johnson, bachelor farmer, began to look long and hard at new federal programs created by President Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, and the promise of jobs with the Work Projects Administration (WPA). Unemployment insurance would not become available until after 1935, but even then, many farmers who were independently employed were not eligible for the "Dole," as it was often called.


To be continued in Part II...

Hell, No, I Won't Go!

When Ancestry.com first made World War I draft registration cards available, I immediately began to search for evidence about relatives. Only one in my grandfather's family (total of ten siblings) actually served during the war. Most of his brothers were too young to be required to register... but, what of the eldest brother, and especially of my grandfather--the second eldest?

On May 18, 1917, the Selective Service Act authorized the President to temporarily increase the U.S. military. Under the office of the Provost Marshal General, the Selective Service System was established to draft men into military service. Local boards were created for each county or similar state subdivision, and for each 30,000 people in cities and counties with a population greater than 30,000. [1]


During World War I there were three draft registrations:

June 5, 1917 - all men between the ages of 21 and 31 residing in the U.S. - whether native born, naturalized, or alien

June 5, 1918 - men who reached age 21 after June 5, 1917. (A supplemental registration, included in the second registration, was held on August 24, 1918, for men who turned 21 years old after June 5, 1918.)

September 12, 1918 - all men between age 18 and 45.


Not surprisingly, I found Grampa's card; he registered promptly during the first go-around, on June 5th:

Name: Ernest JohnsonCity: Not Stated
County: Clearwater
State: Minnesota
Birthplace: Minnesota;United States of America
Birth Date: 23 Jan 1889
Race: Caucasian (White)
Roll: 1675389





His occupation is listed as "farmer."

In response to the question: "Have you a father, mother, wife, child under 12, or a sister or brother under 12 solely dependent upon you for support," he answered "wife."

I was unprepared, however, for his response to the question: "Do you claim exemption from draft (specify reason)." His answer was: "Yes, don't want to go to Europe," and below it, he signed his name.

I had to laugh at the blatant honesty of that answer, and I'm sure Grampa did not mean it quite the way it sounds, but...

Don't want to go to Europe?!

I can't imagine how many other young blokes would have liked that phrase to stick on their behalf.

Grampa turned out to be one of the lucky ones, but the government's decision to not draft him was based on several things: 1) his dependent wife, 2) the fact that he farmed alone, and 3) the need to keep enough farmers producing food on the home turf for U.S. citizens and troops abroad, and, 4) not just because he felt a responsibility to his wife and farm. As a newlywed, married just months before draft registration, he obviously felt a great deal of pressure to make his farm into a successful venture that could support a family. If Grampa had been drafted, the farm would probably have been sold and my grandmother would have returned to live with her parents. Happily, that did not have to happen.



(Love you, Grampa--always will; I miss your crinkly smile.)



Ernest Johnson, Salem, Oregon, about 1965.






[1] Kimberly Powell at About.com: genealogy

Elmer Strand, Norwegian-American Bachelor

Summer brings to mind the town's old Norwegian bachelor farmers, stolidly harvesting wheat with their antiquated, clattering six-foot combines. The Norwegian bachelors were not impressed by modern 20-footers. Sure, you got done faster, but that just meant waiting longer till it was time to go to bed...

- Garrison Keillor, Radio Humorist
(Lake Wobbegon Days)

In 1965, during the laziest part of July in the San Francisco Bay Area, my mother suggested that Dad drive us all up to Sonoma County in the '57 Ford Ranch Wagon. She wanted to pay a Sunday visit to Elmer Strand, whom she had not seen in quite awhile. I had no idea who Elmer Strand was, but I was always up for a drive to someplace new.

Mom said that Elmer had been a pretty good friend of my grandfather's ever since their younger farming days in Minnesota, and he continued to stay in touch by sending Christmas cards. Grandpa (Ernest Johnson), a long time widower, and Elmer, a dedicated bachelor, even took a sabbatical together. A few years before, they had lived in a trailer on the Oregon coast and fished for a stretch one summer. It was Grandpa's treat to himself after retiring from the Ford Motor Company--a once-in-a-lifetime vacation tucked in between his move from Campbell, California to Salem, Oregon, where his eldest daughter and a few siblings lived.

Elmer Strand stayed in California and accepted a job as a caretaker on a Sonoma County ranch in the Valley of the Moon. The name of that valley, once the home of author Jack London, conjured up all kinds of romantic visions for a 12-year-old like myself. Unlike the lush, fantasy-inspired fern-filled forest that I envisioned, the valley turned out to be mostly rolling plains of dry, yellow grass, and was quite sparse of trees.  The land was spotted with vineyards instead of unicorns.  But, I'm sure that watching a full golden moon rise and set over that thirsty landscape, accompanied by a cricket symphony, would have been very nice indeed--especially for Jack London.

Elmer Strand, Doris Wheeler, and Becky Wheeler, along the main road to the ranch house, Sonoma County, California, July 1965.

Elmer Strand was aging but slim and spry, and as far as I could tell, he was a well-mannered gent who chose his words carefully. He wore a long-sleeved shirt and overalls and was in the habit of standing with a hand in his pocket, or resting it on an nearly non-existent hip. Elmer's trailer was spartan and devoid of many possessions or character, even when compared to my grandfather's bachelorized home, where documents of eventual interest to genealogists (like a confirmation certificate) shared a shelf in the garage alongside the motor oil.

Men like Elmer Strand and my grandfather spent decades without feminine input or interference: life was work and work was life, and an old Norwegian bachelor did not need "stuff" cluttering up his spare time. For recreation, there was always visiting, fishing, hunting, napping, or simply cooking up a big pan of bacon and eggs with hotcakes.

Our visit turned out to be on a very hot day, so Elmer offered Mom, my younger sister, and I some refreshments in his trailer.  Dad was off somewhere talking with the ranch owner.

"I don't have much around these days, but let me see," Elmer said. He had contracted Type II diabetes and was doing his best to eat properly. Though Elmer lived in the trailer, he took his meals up at the main ranch house and did not keep much in his cupboards. He turned to Mom: "I have this drink I mix up for myself sometimes. Would you like to try some of that?"

Mom was too polite to question what was being offered, so she agreed.

Elmer fixed up a big batch of the pale drink in his mixer, then poured it into a tall glass and handed it to Mom. My sister Becky was as hot and bothered as any fidgety six-year-old could be at this point, so she was offered the first drink of cooling liquid. She placed her small hands over Mom's as they steadied the glass together. As soon as my sister took an exploratory sip, her face quickly contorted into a grimace. "Ugh!" Mom offered Becky another chance at a sip, but my sister would have nothing to do with it.  Instead, she did a few little hops and began to whine.

Mom offered the glass to me instead. "She won't drink it, so you have this one. I'll get her something later."

The liquid inside the glass looked like a vanilla milkshake, and I could not imagine what Becky hadn't liked about that. Having patiently waited my turn, I eagerly took a drink.

The stuff almost didn't go down my throat.  It tasted and felt like liquid chalk!  I waited until Elmer was out of view and then timidly tried to give the glass back to Mom.  I whispered in her ear that I just could not drink it.  "Chery, we're not going to be impolite!" she scolded quietly and frowned, refusing to take back the glass.

Judging by the look on her face, I knew that I somehow had to finish the drink--no argument accepted. I steeled my resolve, held my breath, and gulped the whole thing down quickly, but not without feeling a little queasy afterwards. The worst part was that it did not even quench my thirst. The last thing I wanted to do was irritate my elders, but, this was above and beyond the call!

It was Mom's turn when Elmer handed her a glass of her own. She took a small taste and her eyes flew open wide. "Oh!" She set the glass down and reached for a handkerchief from her purse in order to wipe her mouth. She looked at me in sympathy and said, "Oh, Chery... I'm sorry." Then to Elmer: "I'm sorry, I can't drink this."

Elmer took the news very graciously and had halfway expected it, I'm sure.  "It's soy. That's pretty much all I have between meals these days," he said.  Soy?  Wasn't that some mysterious substance used by hippies? Whatever it was, it tasted like raw cement and went down about as well. I put it on my "don't try this at home" mental list.

I think I earned a little extra respect from my mother that day, and perhaps even surprised myself.

And, Elmer? Well, all that soy must have done him some good because he lived another twenty years, to the ripe old age of ninety-five. It was not until years after his death I discovered that Elmer was more than a family friend. His special connection to our family was not known, even by my mother.

In addition to being the only one to get that horrid drink down, I was also the one who rediscovered the family link between Grandpa and his "good friend," Elmer Strand.  Elmer was actually a half first cousin to my grandfather, and they shared the same grandmother, Thibertine Johnson Winje.