Back at the Kirk house, I said, “Latin really makes you think!”
Dorothy said, “When I was in Wisconsin, Uncle Wesson said something to me about thinking. I wrote it down in my diary.”
“What?” I asked. “Can I read it?”
“I remember it,” Dorothy said. “We were talking about my future and where I wanted to go to college, and what I thought about life, things like that. And he asked me if I knew what an educated man was. I said ‘No, I don’t.’ He said, “An educated man is one who has taught his mind to think. And his hand to act. And his heart to feel.'”
I, too, thought that was worth writing down. It’s a description of Grampa himself.
Freak snowstorms and weather reports
Here’s another research story, which keeps writing fun. My brother, a doctor in Oregon, treated an elderly woman, Elsie, in the ER, and as she left, he said, “I love your Swiss accent–just like my Auntie Irmy.” The woman stopped, they talked with excitement–Auntie Irmy was Elsie’s sister and they had both worked on the Dougan farm! We kids called her sister “Auntie.” Irma’s first son was named after my uncle Trever, and her second, after my grandfather: “And Irma had to go to the hospital on a bobsled, it was a freak April snowstorm, and on Trever’s birthday!” Elsie said.
I had enough to write up a story about the bobsled trip, and I was currently studying my grandfather’s letters of 1921, which mentioned the baby’s birth, and also a freak snowstorm–but the dates didn’t match. It seemed an odd bit that Elsie would have remembered, if it hadn’t happened — so I looked up the weather following the baby’s birth. I found the freak snowstorm — really freak, it blocked all the roads — for the day that the baby came HOME to the farm from the hospital. So Elsie Did remember!
I called up that baby, now 80 years old, and he said he’d never heard about a bobsled, coming or going, when he was born. But my research proved Elsie’s story and her memory (almost) true. What a research pleasure!
govt follies poem #77
Green Goddess
Six-Day Cow
1952 news item just found:
“Dairy Workers to 5-Day
Week.” —ten years before
this clipping I heard my
grandfather say “We can’t
go to a six-day week until
we breed a six-day cow.”
Speaking of labor issues, I’ve also found items dating from the 1920s that document Grampa’s struggles with how to give each of his hired men a day off. He also wanted each man to to have a half day on Sunday for relaxation and devotion. He solved the problem by working himself one day each week in place of the man released, and juggling Sunday in various ways. He included himself in having a full day off every week. He’d get up and put on his good clothes, then read, write, and spend time with his family.
