Sometimes I get lonely, and I know why. I forget that I am never alone. I miss my Grandpa. He was a very spiffy man. I remember his white derby hat, his tan pants and his striped tan suit coat. When he preached he always wore a black robe with a white ruffled thing around his neck. I guess he got that when he was ordained at the high church in Norway. He came to the United States after his ordination. He loved to sing and he would sing the hymns with a Norwegian brogue.

He decided one day to baptize my oldest daughter in our church which definitely was not Norwegian! His baptism was long and in Norwegian! Our Godparents were not, which made it hard to know when to answer his questions. Not only that but he turned toward the organist and said “I will now sing a song, will you play it for me?” After they got together on which song he would sing, it went okay. but The Godparents and my baby girl were still standing up on the podium. My baby girl behaved the entire time! The problem came because the church had bought one hour on the radio and the service was much longer than that but the radio people kept the radio going. I guess they also were intrigued with my Grandfather. When he died he was buried in a beautiful cemetery. My little boy ,only four years old, said during the solemn part of the service, “Is this place heaven, Mama! He married my Grandmother but I never met her, Mom told me she visited once in our little parsonage, but it must have been when I was very small. I do remember Dad taking the train to Philadelphia to visit her on her death bed.

The other lady I really miss is my grandmother on my mother’s side. We visited her, her two daughters and her son. None of them were ever married. I miss them too but today I am thinking about my grandfather and my grandmother,

Grandma was a wonderful lady. I am often told she went blind the day I learned to walk though I’m sure that was said to tease me. But she was totally blind. I used to wipe dishes for her and I’ve never seen any one wash them cleaner or brighter than she. She would go round and round on each dish and if she found a little bump on the dish she fixed it. She knew what time to put the potatoes on the stove, ready for my aunts to come home and she sure knew what time to put the radio on for Ma Perkins or when the Grand Forks Chiefs were going to play! She was knitting every time we came in. In fact, she knit a muffler for every man who went into the army during World War II. She was always smiling and happy. She prayed for “the boys who went to fight for me”. I feel a loss when I knew she was praying for me, Maybe she still is from her new home in heaven. Grandma married twice. Her first husband froze to death during a blizzard. Her second husband died in a sanitarium. I never met either of them.

There, you have met my grandparents. I’ll tell you about another person I miss next week. But I do know someone who never leaves me but always comforts me. He is Jesus. Do you know him?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I see the men and women with their signs on street corners begging for money. I hear they have an organization and meet once in awhile to tell of their success. I imagine they are bums of today. I could be wrong but our city has many places where they could get food and shelter.Why don’t they go there? I support one of these and don’t give to those who have the signs.

It’s not at all like the old time buns. They worked hard for whatever they got. My Dad or Mom would meet one of them at the door. He would say something like: “Do you have any work you need done?” One day Mom was trying to hang curtains and was having trouble being two persons at one time, so she invited him in to help her. All he wanted was some carrots and onions from our garden for the stew he was making. Sometimes Dad put a guy to work sawing logs for our stoves. The men of our church brought long logs in the fall as their giving to the Lord. It was during the great depression and there was very little cash around.

Farmers brought us milk, cream, butter and chickens as their tithe. Not only did we have enough but we fed a lot of bums for work. When the farmers butchered they left some for the pastor. Our front porch was our freezer so we had meat all winter in that area of Northern Minnesota. I sure didn’t feel like we were in a depression!we gave much of our food to those who had none.

The kids in our neighborhood often went down to their camp which was under the bridge and near the railroad tracks. They had it nice and cozy and a stew was often boiling using stuff they had earned from people’s gardens. Often they gave us some of their stew which was not allowed, as far as our folks were concerned.

I guess there is a rotten apple in every bunch, at least that is true in my Dad’s place. It was during one summer, when we were taking our vacation. When we came home and Dad was getting ready for his first church service, he went to the closet for his “sermon suit” and found it was gone. In it’s place was an old suit wrinkled and torn. Some bum had taken his suit and left his old one hanging just as Dad’s was! That was one time when Dad was real mad at bums. But for the most part, I liked them. It’s just another thing that has changed in our good old America!