A Trip With My Mother • Chapter 16

Chapter 16 • A Trip With My Mother

Years ago my mother and I were on a trip from northern Minnesota to Minot, North Dakota, to visit my sister. I was a young woman in my 20's and this was to be my first trip on a bus. Traveling by bus was a fairly new way of transportation; it was a new and exciting adventure for me. When we reached Fargo, North Dakota, we had to change buses, as there were too many people for one small bus, so two buses had to be sent out. We went on to Grand Forks and picked up more people. Soon the sun set over the Prairie and it grew dark. The bus traveled on through the lonely darkness. All the passengers sat quietly dozing in their seats as we sped through the night.
All of a sudden we were startled wide awake as we heard a loud boom and jolt. The bus began to lurch drunkenly along the road. The driver expertly guided the bus to a stop, and we all piled out as we were sure we had a flat tire. It was much worse than that. The rear wheel had come off and rolled away.
Here we were, with a three-wheeled bus miles out on the prairie. There was not very much moonlight, but everybody took off to search the wheat fields to find the lost wheel. We searched for more than an hour before we found it a long way out in the field. It was rolled back to the bus and was being put on, when it was discovered there were no lugs or nuts to hold it on with, they had completely sheared off . In the meantime, the other bus came back to look for us, as they realized we were very late at our next stop. A drive of fifteen mites to Devils Lake had to be made to replace the missing lugs and nuts. We sat in the lopsided bus and waited for about an hour. They came back and put the wheel on and we were on our way again.

When we reached Devils Lake, it was nearly four o'clock in the morning. All the passengers got off and went to take advantage of the rest stop and have hot coffee. I had more important things to attend to. I picked up the lug crank and checked all the lugs on the wheel to make sure they were on good this time, good and tight. A very surprised bus driver came out and walked up on me as I was busily working away. He asked me what I thought I was doing. I told him I wanted to be sure we would lose no more wheels before we got to Minot. I had found several nuts that were loose and needed tightening. He burst out laughing and said, "Good! Now we can go to Minot".

Victor Olaf Erickson, 1918. Served in World War 1. Father of Lorraine and Annabelle Erickson

When I was growing up, my dad was very strict with me. He never let me go out, only when there was a whole gang of us. I never had a boyfriend till I was over sixteen. I met him at a school Halloween program at our school, which was the only entertainment in our neighborhood. We had large crowds of people at these programs.
He had just got home from World War I and France. He asked me to dance and we had a lot of fun that night. When it was time to go home, he asked to walk me home, which was one mile, and I agreed. He had a nephew about twelve or thirteen years old that walked halfway with us to his home, we were going to cut across to my home, so we were going through a gate and the kid was coming too, and Victor told him to go "hem or leg sig", which means go home and go to bed in Swedish, and he did. We got home and he said good night, and asked me if he could come and see me again. I agreed, so we played cards and checkers all that winter.

When spring came, he went to work for a big farmer. Then be bought a car, a little Saxon. All summer we went to barn dances every weekend, to town afterwards and had lunch and ice cream, which I sure enjoyed.

I worked in town all winter and in the spring I married him. My sister came home for the wedding. When we came from Detroit in Dad's Model T, the mud was hub deep. We just barely made it through down by Campbell Lake, they called it Sharp Curve. We stayed home that summer, Victor worked out and l picked cucumbers for Dad, he had half an acre. I was getting things to start housekeeping and sewing for myself. We were getting ready to move into a vacant house a mile from home. All the neighbors had a cash shower for us when we moved into this house. I don't remember how much, but we were to get all those little things one needs. But I gave Victor half of it, as l always heard when you married, it was a fifty-fifty deal, so I gave him his half.

We had gone with Dad and Frank to Otter Tail River in the Model-T car to fish in the spring. We took food along and camped out all night. There was a dam there, so somebody dropped a plank into the dam to hold the water back and all the water ran away and the fish laid all over on the sand, flopping their tails. We picked up all we wanted and soon the water came over the dam again. Then Frank had put a large northern pike in a newspaper and rolled it in mud, and put in into the campfire with potatoes. In an hour or so we had baked fish and potatoes, coffee, and toast over the fire for breakfast. Did it ever taste good at five in the morning! We never slept a wink that night; then we left for home about twenty miles away.
The same spring we were married, Victor, Frank, and others went to fish in Olund Creek, between Round Lake and Buffalo Lake in a meadow. About eight pm a group of cars pulled into the yard and before we knew what was going on, cowbells rang, and dish pans and everything imaginable, a charivari party came to the creek.
They wanted Victor, but he was not there, so they took me to find him. We did, and then all hell broke loose down by the creek! This went on for an hour or more; then it was decided to have a party in a vacant house on the old Rinehart farm. I guess they scared all the fish away that night.

In the fall he went to North Dakota in threshing time, I was home with the folks. When he came home from there, we rented a vacant farm and moved in. There was an old wood range, table and chairs in the house. My dad gave us a bed and antique dresser and we got an airtight heater for the one room, but all we had was green wood. In the night we shut the door between the kitchen and living room where we slept. The coffeepot and teakettle froze sold on the range.

Then our first baby was born. He was a cute little fellow and very smart.
In the winter Victor cut wood for the people. Jobs were very hard to find, so we bought a team of horses and two cows, and I churned butter and made it into one-pound prints, and took it to the store to trade for coffee, sugar and other staples.
One day he asked me if he could buy an accordion. If he had one, he could play for dances and house parties, and pick up some extra money. He sent to Sears and Roebuck for a twelve bass accordion, and it went over big, so he got the first one paid for. Then we wanted a 48 bass one, so he sent to Sears again and got the big one. Then he sold tickets on the little one and raffled it off. He took that money and put it on the new one. He had his nephew get a set of drums, and then they really went into business. It seemed as if every time there was no grocery money, he would get a couple of dances to play for, which was five dollars a night. So this accordion paid for itself many times over.
In the fall again he took his accordion and went to North Dakota for the harvest, and l milked the cows, raised a garden, chickens, canned till he came home, which sometimes was six weeks, as it would rain so much there, and they would have to wait for dry weather. What he made on the harvest was used to pay on the bank notes.
On March 17 1923, my little son Wallace died from spinal meningitis. He was 18 months old. I was horrified to lose my baby.

Then an Oct. 19 1923, Annabelle was born.

In the fall of 1928 Victor drove this 1918 Model T Ford home from North Dakota. he paid $25.00 for it

Then the twins on July 14 1925 were born, one weighed 1¼, and the other one 1¾. One lived eleven days and the other lived eleven months. I was frantic to lose both of them. My mother baptized them at birth, as they never expected them to live at all. They were one week from bing seven-month babies. She named them Wallace and William. On May 22 1928, Elsie Lorraine was born. She was a tiny baby with long black hair and could have passed as a little Indian.

My dad helped us to buy twenty-four acres across the road from their home, so we were building whenever we had a few dollars to buy material with, but Victor did not live to finish his home. He died on Jan. 7 1931, of a ruptured appendix, so I was alone with two little girls, two and seven years old. All I could do was stay there and take care of my cows and chickens. Everybody was so good to me; they got wood up and hauled feed in for me. I got Victor's government bonus after he died, so I paid for my home and bought a 1928 Model-A, which I still have and it runs good in 1972.

When Annabelle was a baby, we lived in our house and it was not finished. One day my mother gave her a pair of dark home-knitted booties to keep her busy little feet warm. When I first put them on, she stuck her feet up in the air and looked at her feet and started to cry. The more she kicked the louder she cried, till she got used to them.
When I was a widow, Harry Johnson came by to see how I was doing with my chores and farming, and then we started to go together. I had my Model-A like new, so he drove it for me. We went to dances all that summer. He had a Model-T truck he used for trucking for himself and others.

Annabelle and Elsie feeding the chickens. The granary in the background served as cook house in the summer of 1925 when we were building our new house

In June 1932, we were married in St. Paul. There was a ministers' convention on and all the ministers were out of town. Henry and Nora Lober stood up for us. Henry finally found a minister at home, so we went to his house. He and his wife were there, so he married us, but he had too much wind and was pretty tipsy while he was marrying us, but he or she made out the marriage certificate.
We were married and went back to Henry's house, then to Detroit Lakes, where Harry helped make a very comfortable home for my two little girls and myself. He bought a Model-B truck to use for all his trucking. He built a new barn, raised more cattle, bought all their feed and filled the barn with hay, built a well house, put water in the barn, built a new granary and filled it with corn and oats to feed his Herefords and milk cows. We worked hard to haul all that feed in before winter came.

Harry and Elsie at potato picking time

When we had been married nine years, a baby girl was born to us, called Ethelmae, on Jan. 30 1941, at the farmhouse. Esther, Frank's wife, and my mother were there with the doctor. Harry had worked so hard to keep the road open all through January. The roads were full of snow, so they had to drive through the fields, or any place they could get through. He shoveled every day, so Esther ran across the field to a neighbor in deep snow to call the doctor, he came out with his big car and Harry went to meet him. He was sure the doctor could not get through where the Model-A could go, but the doctor said he could go where anybody else could go so he came in but got stuck so bad he had to leave his car and get into the Model-T to finish the trip to the house. Harry had to go and baby-sit with Allen, Esther's baby, while she was at our house. He thought we had all died; it took so long (it was not a picnic). When the doctor was through, Esther made coffee for the doctor, which took time. When the doctor left, Harry had to help him out of the snow before he got back to the house to see his new baby girl. We were happy it was all over. Harry said it was the longest afternoon he had ever spent.

Ethelmae Johnson, bridesmaid for Lorraine's wedding June 21 1952

In the summer of 1943 we built a kitchen on our house to give us more room. In August I went to Rochester to the Mayo Clinic and had an operation for cancer. I came home in one month. Today, twenty-nine years later, I never felt better in my life, only now I am getting older but still am in good health.

Harry would go out and buy a load of block wood, haul it to Fargo, sell it, come home and buy another load of wood for the next trip. Then we would buy a sack of flour or a sack of chicken feed and gas. This went on for several years. The wood market was not so good, you had to wait too long for buyers. But times got better, we had more stock, so we just stayed home and trucked around here and sold ice in the winter.

Old Rover the dog would sit outside and wait till he could hear the truck coming down the road three miles away. He would start to yap the welcome bark on a cold clear night. In a little while Harry would drive in, but sometimes it was snowy and stormy, so I was glad when he came home.

In the summer of 1941 Annabelle joined the WACS and she was in the service two years. When the war was over, she came home and married Joseph Carlson. They had the church wedding on June 2 1946. Then the children came: Deanna, Alice, Joseph, Daniel, William, Denice, and Elise. She left her husband on account of family problems, so she later married Obert Rue. He took over seven children, although he had never been married before. In a year they had a baby girl, Laurie. They are very happy.
Deanna married Donald Omvig and they have three children; Cory, Stacey and Darcey. Alice married Jurgen Byers of Athens, Ohio. They have two children, Carrie and Yvonnie. Joseph is in the Navy and he married a girl in Hawaii, Marilyn on Sept. 2 1972; Daniel is working and William, Denise, Elise and Laurie are still in school.

In June 1952, Lorraine got married to Robert Nelson. They had a church wedding at Richwood Church. They have three children, Shane, Chan and Julie, all in school.
August 1962, Ethelmae and Richard Dieke were married. They have one child, Tamarah Lee. Richard works for the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge, and Ethelmae manages the R&S fabric store in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota.

Now that all the children are grown up and on their own, we were busy with all the farm work. I have a big garden and chickens, vegetables, and raspberries, and I am busy taking care of all my customers. In 1967, we had a sale and sold off all the work, only for the garden. I still have a large raspberry patch and garden.
Now that we are retired, we take trips to California to visit with my bother Frank and family, and other sisters and brothers on both sides of our families, We made a complete circle in the western U.S. every year for six years. In June 1972, I made a trip to Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Germany to see if I have some ancestors left over there. This trip from Fargo to Oslo, Norway, takes eight hours by jet. Ever since I was a child I have wanted to go to Norway, and had thought of it many times in the later years, never thinking it would happen to me, but Myrtle, my sister, and I will be going in June if the good Lord will take care of us until then, and on our trip.

Now Harry, I think we will go back home. This has been a long story. We have had many years of happiness and not too much sorrow in these long years. God bless all of us.

Back: Daniel Carlson, Annabelle Erickson Carlson, Ethelmae, Deanna Carlson Omvig, Larraine Erickson Nelson, Denise Carlson, William Carlson, Obert Rue, Richard Deike, and Robert Nelson.
Front: Elsie with great grandchild Darcy Omvig, Cory Omvig, Tammy Deike, Julie Nelson, Chan Nelson, Lori Rue, Shane Nelson, Elise Carlson, Harry Johnson holding Stacy Omvig.
Taken in 1971

‹ -pages of photos not included- ›

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