by Twila Carlson Enget, as told to Chester E. Nelson (A Kandiyohi Quilt)
When I think about the Kandiyohi community over most of the last century, I think it peaked out in many ways about the time I was finishing high school in the early 1940’s. There were a number of families in the area, the community was coming out of the depression, we enjoyed our friends and ourselves and were excited about the future. Most of what we were so proud of as a community as almost totally disappeared. The following are some of my memories as a young person growing up in the community and also as a school teacher in Kandiyohi School No. 1. I taught there from the fall of 1943 through the spring of 1946.
My parents, Otto and Mabel Hjort Carlson, lived on the farm just east of the school. Dad and his sister, Emma Nelson, came to this country from Sweden with their parents, Nels Carlson and Bentha Mortenson. After attending three or four years of school in Minnesota, he went back to Sweden with his parents. A few years later he came back to this country with his friend “Old” or “Big” Ernest. My dad lived with and worked for Pete and Emma Nelson until buying his own farm. My parents purchased their farm from Nels Hjort, my mother’s father.
Mom’s mother died when she was very young. Mom went to the Leslie School as a child, and remembered walking with Dewey Hjort to the school for a Christmas Program one stormy winter night. After the program they got lost while walking home. Eventually they stumbled into a piece of farm equipment. Dewey recognized it as equipment he had parked the fall before. Remembering the direction he had placed the tongue of the equipment and its relationship to home, he quickly realized where they were and how to get home.
I started school when I was five. My teachers were Linnea Christenson, 1927-29, grades 1 and 2; Lawrence Nielsen, 1929-32, grades 3 and 4; Erma Richards, 1932-35, grades 4, 5, and 6; and Ella Ness, 1935-1937, grades 7 and 8. My first grade classmates were Margaret Mickelsen and Lola Christensen, Jens Christensen’s daughter. After Jens died, when Lola was in third or fourth grade, she went with her mother back to Denmark. Once when back visiting in North Dakota, Lola confided in me that she was so upset about going to Denmark that she considered jumping overboard while on the Atlantic traveling to Denmark.
When the weather was nice, my brothers, Raymond, Russell, and J.L. “Bud”, and I would run home from school for the noon meal. Erma Richards was a special teacher. She could play the piano and gave me piano lessons after school for ten cents a lesson.
Adolf Holt lived to the immediate north of the farm. He lived alone in a shack. He visited our farm often and loved to talk and tell stories. He did not seem despondent about his lonely bachelor lifestyle. At holiday time Mom would have a treat of rice and dark cookies delivered to him. Once when he came to our house for coffee shortly after Christmas, I showed him my Christmas presents – a comb and brush. To my horror he calmly took the comb and combed his hair then took the brush and brushed his hair. Obviously I had not intended my proud showing of such a nice Christmas gift leading to that.
When I think about it we really were poor, but we didn’t look at it that way then. We never knew we were “hard up”. I have a letter Mom wrote Russell and me while we were staying with our Aunt and Uncle “Swede” Otto and Ruthie Carlson in Kenmare. Mom not only kept us informed on what was happening on the farm, she also enclosed 25 cents for each of us as a weekly allowance.
The War was probably the most traumatic time for us as a family. Russell, my second-oldest brother, was draft age. The folks agreed with his thinking that it was almost certain he would be drafted and that by enlisting he might get an assignment more to his liking and maybe by going in early he could get out earlier. He joined the Navy Medical Corps as a medic in 1942. I was really worried and actually didn’t fully understand the meaning of war. We knew it was a very serious time for our family and had a number of good-bye functions for him including everyone having their pictures taken with him. The Kenmare and Niobe Baptist Young Peoples group met for a farewell party for him at our farm. As part of the program Mom read the 91st Psalm which includes the following: “Because he loves Me I will protect him; He will call upon me and I will answer him.; I will deliver him and honor him with a long life and I will satisfy him and show him salvation.” She continued with verses: “A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand; but it will not come near you” . . . . . “For he will give his angels charge of you to guard you in all your ways.”
On New Years Eve that first year Russell was gone, I remember our whole family on our knees by our chairs with him in our prayers. Russell saw and was involved in close to the worst of it in the Pacific Theater, but he survived and came home to work at JC Penny’s in Kenmare and made a successful career with Penny’s as did I.
When I was old enough to help with the threshing, I not only helped my mom cook, but also helped some with the neighbors. I liked the excitement of threshing time. It was hard work for all of us, not just the 20-25 members of the Pete Nelson threshing crew. At our farm some of the crew stayed in our haymow, but most of the crew would return to their own homes and at the end of the day along with their teams and wagons if they lived close enough. Pete Nelson owned the threshing machine that our threshing crews used.
I helped Emma Nelson when Pete’s crew was threshing. Their farm was a half-mile to the south of our farm. Emma normally would have my cousin, Florence, or Eleanor Carlson working for her all summer and then I would join them during threshing time. The day started at 5 a.m. since we served breakfast for all of the crew at about 7 a.m. We delivered midmorning and mid-afternoon lunches, but the other meals were served in the house. Emma cooked the meat – probably a roast. One of my jobs was baking the pies. I recall baking both lemon and apple pies. Cooking, baking the other items and making coffee I believe were jobs divided between the other hired help and me. It was hard work, but it was actually fun. For the noon meal we didn’t begin serving until everyone was in the house ready to eat. For the evening meal, which was probably at 7 p.m., we began to serve as the bundle teams came in since the men were in a hurry to go to their own homes.
We liked to entertain and had picnics with relatives in our trees and also did some entertaining in the wintertime. The wintertime entertaining could bring real disappointment; however, since the weather on the flats might be different than in the hills. What would look like a nice day at home which encouraged us to get ready for company might be a stormy day with a lot of wind on the flats, discouraging our intended guests from driving out to the farm. I remember once we had set tables for a number of relatives, and not one was able to come. What a disappointment.
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