Author: Guy

Fencing the Prairie
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Fencing the Prairie

Successful Farming

Successful Farming

This is the story that triggered the Grandpa Guy’s Stories blog. Everyone in the family knows this story as it was one of Grandma Fanny’s favorites. Grandma told this story every time we visited, and we visited her often.

At the risk of repeating myself; my brother Linn, our cousin Ted and I were riding in the car to Ted’s house one afternoon. We started reminiscing about Grandma’s stories. One of us recounted the Chandler Story. Another pointed out the errors in that version, and the third one of us laughed at the incongruities of both versions, telling what was certainly the true version of the story.

Esther clearly recognizes that many versions of the story exist, and I could point out a couple of discrepancies in this version, and perhaps add more details. Grace had her own short version of the story which she recounted in one of her letters to me in 1994. Grandma Fanny’s version of the story took about twenty minutes to tell, and may have had more detail than any one of us remember. Continue reading →

Stranger in a Strange Land
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Stranger in a Strange Land

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Stranger in a Strange Land

As a boy, I spent untold hours at the library looking for books. My mother let me go to the library alone as early as age ten. Within a couple of years I’d bring home three or four books at a time, read them in the evening, and head back the next day to get a couple more. Over a summer I could read stacks of them. In between books, I’d have a dozen or so magazines at home to read, too. The magazines included everything from MAD to Science News, a weekly digest of the latest in science. I started reading that one in Junior High. The reading habit I picked up as a child has served me well ever since.

Through high school, I read mostly science fiction. Early on, the Danny Dunn series was my favorite, but there were several others. The books kept me busy for months, but there was a minor problem with the limited scope of my interests and the brisk pace of my reading. I ran out of books to read! I’d finished all the Danny Dunn and science fiction books in the children’s section. There were no other books for me to read. I had no idea what to do. Finally, I recognized that I had a problem and should go talk to the librarian. She probably knew me quite well because I was there almost every day and the room wasn’t that big. The librarian had a wonderful, simple suggestion for me, one that changed my life. Continue reading →

Papa
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Papa

Tom Sawyer Abroad and other stories

Tom Sawyer Abroad and other stories

I never knew my maternal grandfather Ted. He died long before I was born. There’s only one material connection between him and me; a copy of Tom Sawyer stories by Mark Twain. The book was a Christmas gift from his sister Frieda in about 1901. That single connection lends credence to Esther’s comment that he liked to read.

How much time did Ted have to read when they lived on the farm in Kidder County? There would have been plenty to do without taking the time out to read stories by Mark Twain. Tom Sawyer’s experiences would have resonated better with Grandpa Ted than they do with me, and my grandson would have little idea what Mark Twain was talking about in some of those stories. Even reading changed dramatically in the last 100 years since Ted received this book for Christmas. Continue reading →

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How did this happen?

We see them everywhere downtown. This is Rochester, home of the world-famous Mayo Clinic. It’s common for us to see a person in a wheel chair, often sporting a tied scarf to keep a head warm. The hair was probably lost due to a difficult treatment for some medical condition. I always feel bad when I see a wheel chair pushed by a parent. The parent of a child. A young child, often not even double-digit years old. A child facing life and death. Far too soon. That kind of thing isn’t supposed to happen, but in Rochester it’s not that uncommon.

It never occurred to me that another situation would hit me even harder than a sick child in a wheel chair.

It wasn’t that many years ago that we buried my Dad and Judy’s mother. They were old. Eighties. Life had been good to them, but it was over. We hated to see them go, but that’s the way of life.

I didn’t see the next one coming.

Those of you who know me know that I spend an inordinate amount of my life wandering the halls at the Mayo Clinic, too. I’ve been lucky that my challenges responded to proper treatment. My life is good. I do what I want, when I want, and the bumps from minor medical mishaps enhance, not detract from, my life.

Until that day I was in for a routine blood test. Continue reading →

The Doctor Book
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The Doctor Book

I grew up in my Grandmother Fanny’s house, getting most of my medical care from the same woman who treated Esther in this story. Esther describes the all too common wound of a foot punctured by a random nail.

Henry on crutches – after a 1936 snowstorm.

Henry on crutches – after a 1936 snowstorm.

As a wide-ranging eight year old child, bare foot most of the summer, I stepped on plenty of nails and sticks, pulling them out of my foot before heading home for Grandma’s treatment according to the “Doctor Book” that Esther describes. The standard treatment for foot wounds was to wrap the wound in bacon and wait. It may have worked, as the salt from the bacon could reduce infection.

The other treatment that is much more memorable was for sunburn. In the summer, neighborhood kids went without shoes or shirts. On the exceptionally sunny summer afternoons we’d come home beet red with sunburn. I hated the treatment described in the book. Vinegar. Continue reading →

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That sounds like fun

That sounds like fun. Let’s do it!

A couple of years ago a friend of ours found herself in a tough place. As she tried to put her life back together we talked about what she was doing to ease the transition. People tried to get her involved in activities, partly to get her mind off the difficulties, and partly because she was fun to be around. In a change from the past, she now responded “That sounds like fun! Yes, let’s do it.”

We loved her new way of doing things, partly because it meant we got to do more fun things with our friend. I’ve since realized that the change she made taught me an important life lesson. Unconsciously I’ve been following a similar strategy for years. Recently saying “Yes!” to new opportunities has become more intentional and frequent.

Three episodes come to the front of the line as I think about saying “Yes!” In college, one of my buddies in the next room in Sevrinson Hall asked me if I’d like to take his cousin to the prom, because she needed a date. It would have been easy to say no. What kind of loser decides she needs a date to prom, a week before the big event? There were plenty of parties with my other college buddies that could fill up the weekend. I should have studied for finals. But what the hell? I took the bait, and ended up marrying Judy the next year.

Fifteen years later my friend Jim called and offered to sell his 1953 Cadillac to us. The car was 35 years old, almost as old as us. We didn’t think we needed yet another hobby, as we were fully involved in projects, working, two young kids, and an old house to keep up. We sat on the porch swing and talked about what to do. The whole conversation was something like this: Continue reading →

Mama
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Mama

A hundred years ago a mile was a lot longer than it is today. In this story Esther relates that they didn’t get to visit her grandparents very often, and then just for funerals. The five hundred miles from North Dakota to the old home in Nebraska was just too much.

Grandpa Ted and Fanny in 1939

Grandpa Ted and Fanny in 1939

That distance barrier still existed in the fifties when I was a child. Esther and her husband lived in Montana at the time, and I lived with my mother and her mother (Grandma Luehr) in Jamestown, ND. Once we took the train to Libby to visit them. Once. I don’t remember much about the trip, but I do remember being on the train for a very long time. Maybe it was lack of resources, but we very rarely visited family other than the few who lived within fifty miles of home.

Esther starts this story talking about her mother’s name. I never used the word Fanny to address my grandmother. She was Grandma Luehr. There was no question about that. Continue reading →