Mailboxes along the roads and old barns set back in fields overgrown with weeds often served as landmarks in rural Montana.  These landmarks told us where we were and how far we had to go.

Sometimes they signaled “home”  and the end of the road.  At other times,  barely visible through swirling snow, they told us we had miles to go.

The things I share here each Sunday simply reference one of the mailboxes of my memory, one of the old barns along a distant road.  Today’s MBOB is a continuation of someone else’s Mailboxes and Old Barns–my parents.   Last month I shared Dad’s  January, 1926 courtship letters.   These are the February letters, written 87 years ago when he was 27 years old.  Their wedding was on April 10 so at the end of March one more round of letters, the last,  will be published.

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My grandfather immigrated from Frederikshavn, Denmark and arrived in New York Harbor on the Amerika on June 12, 1893–73 years to the day before the birth of our eldest son.  The ship records indicate that he was born “about 1867”  although family documents record his birth as December 15, 1869.

After the sailing ship deposited him and his wife in New York and they caught their breath, they got on a train and headed west to Nebraska where he worked as a farm hand for two years, putting cash together to be able to rent land.  Then they rented Nebraska farmland for ten years before heading north to Montana by train, my Dad and his brothers riding in the passenger car with Grandma while Grandpa rode in the immigrant car with the livestock and the farm machinery–now prepared to buy their own land. (more…)

Today’s MBOB is a monograph written by my late brother whose Naval career spanned from the Korean War into the 80s.

He relates memories of the water issues from dry prairie country which were triggered by a conversation he had with a fellow crew member from an aircraft squadron based in Jacksonville, FL in 1965.  As is usually the case when I’m preparing MBOBs, initials only are used to reference those he mentions by name.

On April 20, 1965, while at 30,000′ traveling at 450 kts (520 MPH or 8.5 miles a minute), I had just turned the cameras off as we finished the last flight line in mapping the flooding Red and Pembina Rivers in North Dakota for the U. S. Geodetic Survey.  As navigator, I gave the pilot the heading to take us to St. Paul International where we would spend the night. (more…)

I want our next POTUS, should we be so fortunate to ever have another one, to be someone who doesn’t look stupid riding a horse or shooting a gun (one of those that really goes BOOM.)

He should look good in man jeans.  He needs to understand why we still love Pete Rose.

He should be able to explain in Normal American why Karl Rove is a jerk, why old ladies love Ted Nugent and why we loved how much Ronnie loved Nancy even though she had an occasional seance.

We want to see the word cloud from an aggregate of his public speeches covering the five years just before he came to the attention of the general public–just to see what’s there. (more…)

Life back in the day was prioritized and practical.

It was prioritized in that important things were intentionally planned and taken care of.  It was practical in that everything, important or unimportant, was simply handled the best possible way every day, whether unexpected or planned.

In completing one of those personal heritage blank books that is titled along the lines of  Mom, Tell Me About Your Life Growing Up I came across a page that requested that I list home remedies or commonly accepted first aid and health-related truisms. The list:

• If you fall down, get up.
• If you get cut, get stitched if it’s gaping wide open about a half inch.
• If you are bleeding, stop it.
• If a tree falls on you, get x-ray’d.
• If a bee stings you, kill it.
• Don’t walk further than you can walk back.
• When climbing ladders, keep one foot on the ground.
• Don’t climb on the roof if you didn’t have lunch and breakfast.
• Drowning is very bad.  Don’t.
• Don’t play with matches.
• Sewing needles work for getting slivers out.
• The best treatment for a bad headache is ice. (more…)

The church was four miles from our farm and sat inside a chain link fence that surrounded about five acres of land that had been set aside in the early 1900s for the purpose.

About half of the acreage was occupied by the church building which was surrounded by a treeless and huge open yard on three sides.  The cemetery filled the other half, with the earliest dates of death around 1910, after the area was settled by immigrant Danes looking for some place to farm.  They had had to settle for eastern Montana, since most of North Dakota and Minnesota was already filled with Swedes, Norwegians and Germans who had arrived around the mid-19th century.

We would arrive at church about 15 minutes before the service was to begin and found ourselves in the same places Sunday after Sunday. The women would have taken their places with their children in the pews prior to the ringing of the bell while the men stood in a long line outside~~some just visiting quietly, some having a cigarette before going inside. (more…)

Today’s MBOB is a few word pictures taken from the records our father kept for January, 1941.  He kept this type of detailed record through every year he farmed.  I have the originals of these books beginning in 1923.  They are very precious to me, both for their historical value and the detailed portrayal of my Dad’s character, willingness to work and his habit of accountability. (more…)

Today’s MBOB is the transcription of the letters my Dad wrote to Mom during January of 1926, three months before their wedding.

These four were written in English, and there is a fifth  January letter, written in Danish,  which has not been translated.

He was already settled into farming on the old homestead one mile north of the eventual site of our family home, and she was working as a mother’s helper in a town about 45 miles away, quite a distance to drive in the 1924 Model T.

Neither of them attended school beyond the 8th grade one-room school houses that dotted the prairie.  Both of them spoke and wrote Danish and English.

Their wedding photo is included below.

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The fabric used for the 25 and 50 pound bags of flour during the ’30s and ’40s was tough and useful and pretty.

In the days before doubleknit or wash and wear, there was pleasure in variety and the flour sacks provided flowery variety.

Here’s a simple little poem about the wonders of those flour sacks. (more…)

Palle Lauring has a two-page discussion in A History of Denmark (David Hohnen, Host & Son, Copenhagen, 1960) in which he analyzes the historical reluctance of Danes to spend materiel, men or money in the interest of a constant state of military defense.

This missing piece in the essential business of self-preservation is  even more significant in the light of another observation he makes elsewhere in the book:

“Even though the central, basic land of Denmark has been obliged to cede various territories, the nation is nevertheless still there….Denmark has maintained her position throughout her 1,000-year old history.  Her inhabitants represent one of the few peoples in Europe that have never suffered from large-scale invasions or population transfers and so today can really claim for the most part to be the descendants of the ‘Danes’ of the Stone Age.”

He  describes this thrift mentality that resulted in their perpetual lack of military preparedness as a “weapons outlook” that concluded money thus spent was “spent unwisely.”

He says, “One sometimes has the feeling that the Danish outlook has never developed beyond the idea that, in time of war, you take your rusty battle-axe down from the wall–or go and try to find it in the woodshed where it has been serving a useful purpose–and sharpen it on a grind-stone…Preparedness has seldom been a strong point in Danish history.  The Danish people are too tied up with everyday life, are blessed with too great a sense of humour to be eternally en garde.  Their mentality dictates their fate.” (more…)