During most of my childhood (pre-school days), drawing was almost a daily habit of mine. My parents encouraged me, and kept a steady supply of manila paper and pencils in the house; but drawing on both sides was the rule. I distinguished myself, in the family at least, as the artist, the boy who drew. I believed I was entertaining my younger brother Dean, who was barely old enough to sit up, with the serial adventures of "Jack Shoot," my own invented comic strip character. I was such a devotee of the funny pages that I remember asking our paperboy, who was, to me, the embodiment of these printed wonders, if he actually knew the man who drew 'Hairbreadth Harry' and of course, he assured this five year old that he saw him every day!

My first art “instruction” was in the first or second grade. There, I learned to despise the use of watercolors simply because of the primitive materials and formulaic method that was required. A blunt camelhair brush, cakes of primary colors in a mixing pan, and dull manila paper, plus a mechanical formula, created confusion, not a painting. This would be my first taste of “negative education," where the teaching method discourages further interest. As children, we are all victims of our parents' and teachers' biases and prejudices. This is how we learn to make our choices; this is good and that is bad! A child is lucky not to be influenced by ignorance.

In 1926 the St. Paul School of Art started a Saturday morning class for children of grade school age. One of the instructors was Richard McKenney, an art teacher at Humboldt High School and a friend of my father. He was also my teacher in high school, and a great influence on my choices of art schools.

I was in my teens during the Great Depression and the years of FDR's New Deal. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) made art classes available to all. So with my friend and fellow artist Almon Olsen I enrolled in a weekly WPA life drawing class; one of the evening classes available in the castle called the Federal Building downtown by Rice Park. I can't honestly say I was taught anything, the teachers were unemployed artists, not necessarily teachers. But I learned what a nude looked like in variety; these were not experienced models, just men and women who were unemployed and needed the money.

My juvenile presence there was the subject of a heated debate one evening. The school manager's office was next to the classroom so the argument was too plainly heard. An older woman was in there objecting to my being exposed to the sight of a naked woman, "at his age"! The manager, a rough type of character, told her, "That kid has more business to be in there than any of the rest of the *******!! There were a lot of adult voyeurs who really weren't interested in drawing.

Dear Dede,

I believe my history might be lacking a chronology. My memory of these dates is approximate:

Poplar, Montana - 1919 - 1921

2926 West River Road, Minneapolis - 1922. My grandparents' home.

??? Hague Avenue, St. Paul 1923.

3xx Brimhall Avenue, St. Paul 1923 - 1924 .

At age 5, I started kindergarten at Randolph Heights grade school and then we moved to

367 South Snelling, St. Paul 1924 - 1926. Our new address was only a block away, but I now attended Mattocks, a new school.

400 Macalester Street, St. Paul 1926 - 1946. This was my home address until after army service.

I was 7 years old when we moved to our Macalester house, one block from Mattocks, my school until 7th grade when I attended University Junior High School for three years. For senior high school I chose Humboldt, where my dad was teaching. I graduated in 1937.

I worked for my Uncle Sal in commercial photography for one year after high school. Then I was off to Brooklyn and Pratt Institute, 1938 - 1941; WWII service, July 18, 1941 to January 3, 1946.

My earliest honest memory is of waking up in a sunny room, the eastern sun porch of my grandparents' house whose address was 2926 West River Road, Minneapolis. I was not yet three years old and this is where, surrounded by family, parents, brother, grandparents, uncles, and a changing cast of visiting relatives, I formed my first impressions of this planet and its rules. The Ellertsons, my mother's parents, were an abiding presence all during our growing years.

Every day was a discovery then, something new and exciting: Grandma's electric car, the Victrola, the canary, the butter and egg man with his leather apron, the iceman and the milkman. Even coal delivery held a sense of wonder for a three year old boy. I was enchanted by the comics page in the newspaper of course, and when my uncle Sal drew those characters for me, I knew that drawing was what I loved and must do. Paul and I played constantly with our coaster wagon. I remember my very practical grandfather promising me fifty cents if I would learn to push with my other foot. The reason; only my left shoe was wearing out. I never mastered the switch, so I didn't earn the bounty!

I'm not sure how long we actually lived there before we settled in Saint Paul, because our visits were so frequent. The West River Road house seemed to have room for any and all of their visiting relatives. My grandfather was the head of the Russell Grader Mfg. Co. during the peak years of road construction in this country. His position was certainly a boon to members of his family, as was his affluence. My grandmother was the sweetheart though, so loving and generous. As children, we went on trips with them. Grandad always drove a big car. In later years, one of us drove for him. That was several years, and moves, for them from the West River Road house!

More From the South Pacific

Dear Dede,

Searching through old files and photos I came upon letters I wrote to my folks from the South Pacific in 1945. I scanned this one for possible blogging because it brings to mind the day to day irritants, miseries, and rewards of Air Force life in the tropics. It's these little things you don't remember, but that's what colored your daily existence 90% of the time. Any dramatic happenings you weren't allowed to write about anyway. Your letters were all censored. I thought reading these would give people a closer idea of what it was like.

My father felt that Paul and I should have a firsthand knowledge of the rural, animal oriented life of physical work that he had known. Our summer vacations, instead of wasting away in the hot city, could be spent learning to be useful on a farm. So it was, beginning in my pre-teen years, that I went to our Ramstad cousins' farm near Ada, Minnesota, at least for part of the summer. These were years when their large farm, though tractor powered, still used several teams of large horses and raised shorthorn cattle and pigs and poultry. All of which was of great interest to a city boy. The Wild Rice River with its wooded banks, ran through their pasture. There were swimming holes and fishing was possible with grasshoppers for bait.

Paul and I alternated, one at a time, in our summer's farm visits. Starting in 1931, our bachelor uncles, Matt and Leo, decided to pair together and farm Leo's homestead in the north woods. My father liked this and that summer, Paul was the pioneer in the woods, and I went to the big farm at Ada. The next year I was in the woods, and Paul went to Ada.

It was no picnic in the woods; I was the designated "chief cook and bottle washer." I made pancakes and thick bacon slices every morning then started the rice pudding in a double boiler to cook slowly until noon. We had plenty of buttermilk, sour cream, eggs, and dried beef and dried venison. I learned to kill, clean, and cook a chicken once a week. With the garden produce, the diet was very complete, for a sustenance farm. Everything, with the exception of the dried rice, flour and condiments, was home grown. They had a few cows, a bull, pigs, chickens, turkeys, a flock of sheep (sometimes goats), and three horses (two geldings and a mare). I was still too young to work in the fields, but I had chores, besides the cooking.

My second year in the woods Uncle Matt bought me a 22 caliber rifle, to keep me occupied. So I became the nemesis of all small animals considered pests, woodchucks especially. Gun discipline was something expected where guns were a part of living, just as you had rules in swinging an axe. Stupid accidents were something you couldn't afford. There was no telephone and the closest real town was 15 miles away. The nearest neighbors were almost a mile away. My two uncles were quite critical of a city boy's perceived ignorance, including my having never been taught Norwegian. So I learned what I must, including how to say " I can't understand" in Norwegian!

Dear Dede,

My interest in the gopher and The Gophers began as an eight year old. This was when I learned that a bounty of two cents was being offered by many Minnesota counties for the tail of a striped gopher. And the U of M football team entered a decade with powerhouse teams that gave them a national reputation, with genuine heroes, like Bronko Nagurski, who became legends of the game. And homegrown too; these were Minnesota men playing old fashioned single wing football. With their size and strength they dominated. There were a couple of imports, from North Dakota and Wisconsin, as I remember. It's little wonder that Gopher football was the only game in town. There was no major league team of any kind. So the only sport that I was interested in was football. Gopher bounty hunting was another story that was never successful for me!

The U of M did not choose the lowly gopher as its mascot. That decision dated to quite a few years ago. It seems that there was some discussion in the middle of the 19th century, before Minnesota became a state, about whether to call Minnesota "The Gopher State" or "The Beaver State." Opponents of "The Gopher State" called the striped gopher an insignificant animal with a destructive nature. The striped gopher was too useless and undignified to represent the future great state of Minnesota. Opponents of "The Beaver State" argued that the beaver, while numerous in streams, was not abundant enough to represent the whole of Minnesota. A political cartoon, widely circulated throughout the territory, gave wider exposure to the gopher and "The Beaver State" faded into history.

Barn Lithograph RLR 1947

Dear Dede,

My uncle Olaf and my father were the ones in their family who were in the horse business. Most everyone, in the early days of the 20th century, was horse savvy. Horses were still the common source of local transportation and farm power. The wild horses of the great plains were free to be captured and moved to a ready market, like the small farmers of northern Minnesota.

My dad never called himself a horse wrangler, but he, with others, would drive a herd of these mustangs, which he had shipped from Montana, from town to town in Minnesota until they were all sold. Summers of this work paid for his University year. He often joked that he was probably responsible for more cheap horseflesh in northern Minnesota than anyone else! Indian horses, or broncos as they were commonly called, were often bred to Percheron or Belgian stallions to create a serviceable draft horse.

The story of Dan is that he was born at a time when it was necessary to rescue him from the herd, so my father gave the colt to his eight year old nephew Sylfest in Ada. Dan, even in his old age - he lived to 24 yrs - was spoiled. He had been worked very little at farm work in his lifetime. He was not used to motor vehicles so he would spook at a car. And he'd been taught a lot of bad habits - like galloping into the barn! I can't say I rode him that much, he could be a problem. My experience with horses was really with the draft horses, the working teams on the Ada farm and Leo's place in the woods. This was as a teen, when I was big enough to throw a harness on a horse properly.

There was a horse consciousness then, before automobiles took over the country, a knowledge of breed and quality that was far more common than it is today. My father, because of his early occupation with horses, would often compare people to an equine type. "A spavined old mare," or an "unbroken scrub," would be metaphors for people. Ruth and I both lived, as children, in cities where horse drawn wagons like the iceman's and the milkman's were common. Horse manure was a part of everyday life; that's why street sweepers were so important. Horse apples was the common term and when you rode a bike, you rode around these piles! By the middle 1930s custom and laws had motorized most services; and the horse in the city disappeared.

Dear Dede,

I wouldn't like to compare my impressions of the 1920s with those of historians. All I know is that my parents kept their sons fairly ignorant of whatever worries or troubles they might have had. The only time they spoke Norwegian was in heated arguments or discussing things that"didn't concern us"! So when the depression hit (I was in the 5th grade) my father explained to me that "things wouldn't be as good as they had been." I guess I wasn't too depressed because as a 10 year old, I didn't think things were all that great anyway! We suffered no unemployment during these years, but a teacher's salary was minimal then; so my mother's meal budget was always tight. Home Economics really meant something then; and my mother was an expert!

My earliest radio memory was in the West River Road house. The whole family gathered around a tiny crystal set that one of my mother's brothers had, to hear the St.Olaf College choir! Their cousin was in that choir and they all agreed, that through the headphones, they could hear her voice in that tiny, quavering sound. I also remember, at a slightly later date, and on a tube radio, the Jack Dempsey- Luis Firpo heavyweight broadcast, which Paul and I enacted while it was in progress. I forget which one of us was the unlucky Firpo!

By the time I was seven or eight, and we lived in the Macalester St. house, radio seemed a regular part of our family life. Though few households depended on broadcast news; newscasts were seldom over 15 minutes long, music and comedy were the main attractions. I can't remember the family sitting around the radio, staring at the little light, for anything but certain serious speeches and programs like Amos and Andy. We had both the morning and evening newspapers; these were the real news sources then. There were afternoon programs like Renfrew of the Mounted and Little Orphan Annie which were really kid programs.But I really liked only the comedians and Gopher football broadcasts. In our teen years, Paul and I shared a radio in our 'homework room.' Lights Out, a mystery program, was popular with both of us!

My brother Paul and I were so close in age (and size) you would think we'd be as close as twins in interests and activities. But we couldn't be. We could compete on certain levels, but each would excel with his own abilities. But our talents were so different that we avoided any appearance of interest or competition in the other guy's activity. My excuse for not being a scientist or an academic whiz! We fought regularly, it became more serious as we grew,until I had finally outgrown him and violence became a stupid way to settle differences, (because now I prevailed).

You asked me if I ever ran away from home? Yes, as a six year old whose angry mother stood in the doorway with a hairbrush in her hand, expecting me to come in and willingly sacrifice my backside! I believed I had reached the age of reason so my choice was not to enter such a hostile environment. So I walked and walked in the summer darkness, as far as the Ford plant, where fate would have me meet a 19 year old neighbor, a favorite of mine, who was just coming off his shift at the plant. He talked me into accompanying him and of course he was walking home. My father had notified the police and before I reached home I was 'discovered' and threatened with "a trip to the station." Which horrified me; I told the policeman that "I have to go to school tomorrow." I think my mother and I both learned something that night.

In answer to some of these other questions; I would say that we brothers were closer, in terms of association, to my maternal grandparents than any of their other grandchildren. My mother was their only daughter and the caretaker in their last years. I was 60 years younger than my grandfather, exactly the same as Jamie is to me, but there is nothing else similar in the relationship.The generations were too far removed in those days. I owe him much though, it was his generous contribution that allowed me to start Pratt Institute and eased many things for our family.

And as for your comment about lutefisk? I can't remember it ever being prepared by anyone in my family. That was served once a year at church (Lutheran) suppers, where people proved their Norwegian heritage by their apparent enjoyment of this delight. My father, because he was born in Norway was expected to be especially delighted.

This photograph was, I'm sure, taken when we were first back in Minneapolis. My father had a 1922 Model T Ford and my Grandfather Ellertson had this Buick! My grandmother drove an electric car which was an adventure because she would often have to be 'rescued' when the battery gave out; stranding her downtown or some other far place! But driving any car was an adventurous undertaking . Automobile tires were quite unreliable as were country roads; the spare tire was not enough to rely on in those days. A tire patching kit was a necessity, along with a jack and a tire pump! I remember Sunday picnics when only one car problem was considered a good day.

And yet because road building and the growing evolution of the family car was creating a tremendous sense of progress and prosperity in this country, people endured all kinds of what we would consider intolerable hardships with the new conveniences. So much faster and easier than before. I think it was this early 20th century mantra that created an easy acceptance of any new idea or fashion as progress. Each year we couldn't wait to see what wonders the Detroit big three had for us in style and improvements in the latest model. This was their marketing strategy; each year, your present car would become more obsolete.

In response to your question about which poem I enjoyed the most in Silver Pennies? It was certainly

The Plaint of the Camel

CANARY BIRDS feed on sugar and seed,

Parrots have crackers to crunch;

And as for the poodles, they tell me the noodles

Have chickens and cream for their lunch.

But there's never a question

About my digestion —

Anything does for me!

My mother and father started married life in 1916 in Poplar, Montana. My father was in the banking business with his brother Olaf. This was all part of the boom created by the railroads' Western expansion. They were creating towns and land holdings to populate the great prairie by incentives, some real, some not. The harsh facts hit these new landowners when they found there was a limit to the bonanza of the prairie. Droughts and killing winters could occur; 1919 was a very bad year. With foreclosures and nonpayments the banks suffered as well. Lots of money was lost!

My mother was sick that terrible first winter of my life and unable to nurse me. Goat's milk saved me according to the story first told to me by my father. Now my mother, with her college education, was insulted that my uncle Olaf should be the one to recognize the signs of rickets in her infant. He was just a horse trader! But nutritional starvation was all too common in those days before vitamins became a watchword.The effect rickets had on me was a lopsided shape to my skull as seen in my early photos. You know the lowered left ear story etc. I'm sure. But I'm convinced that the early malnutrition created an appetite that none of my brothers had.

This whole scene was a painful memory in our family. My father fortunately, was well qualified to teach. So we landed back in Minneapolis in my grandparents' West River Road house, a block north of the Lake St. Bridge. This, I always say, is where my earliest memory begins. When my father got his job with Humboldt High School we moved across the bridge to St.Paul; a house on Hague Ave. From here, Dean made his appearance in 1923. Paul and I were both born in Minneapolis though we were originally Montanans! Only Phil can say he was born in St. Paul.  

I don't think Peter Pan was my first movie. It came out in 1924 so I was four, almost five, when these drawings were done (although I'd been in love with drawing since I was three). I have vague memories of going downtown Minneapolis with my mother and grandmother when I was three or four and being in one of the movie "palaces"! Remember, there were no 'talkies' until 1926, so dialogue had to be read to a child. Thus, there were few movies in those days that I imagine were attractive to a preschooler, or his parents. Here I am, back to closed captioning again at this stage of my life! Did I believe in the magic of Peter Pan? Of course I did! I doubt if Paul did. He could explain why it was impossible for people to fly!