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.