A Story from Great Grandpa Nels

We spent Labor Day at the farm my Dad, and my Grandpa before him, grew up on.  The picture above is in the house where my grandparents raised their six children.  It is in this dining room and living room that we spent every Christmas Eve and many Sunday dinners.  It seems so small now.

Across the driveway is the house where my Grandpa grew up and where my Great Grandparents lived during my Dad's childhood.  I remember sleeping in an upstairs bedroom and hearing the horrible screeching moan during the night that the windmill makes - spooky.  My grandpa used to climb to the top, routinely, to oil it but that hasn't happened in many, many, many years.

During our Labor Day picnic, stories were shared and there was one I'd never heard before.  My Dad retold a story his Grandpa Nels told him about a man back in Denmark who used to walk home, every night, in the dark.  The path he walked wound through a cemetery and every night he'd get to a spot and he'd fall down.  He would pick himself up only to fall down again.  Every night he fell four times but that fourth time, when he picked himself up again, he was able to stay upright and continue home.  So, one day he decided to walk the path during daylight hours and find out why he kept falling down four times every night.  So he came to the spot where he always fell and there was a goat tied to a tree, munching away on the plentiful cemetery grass.  The goat got excited and knocked the man down, ran around the tree and, just as the man got back on his feet, came from behind and knocked him down again.  After the fourth time, however, the rope, now wrapped around the tree, had grown too short and the goat just ran past the man.

Now, I'm sure there was originally more to the story.  Why was he walking home after dark?  Was there another reason he was falling down?  Had he never walked through the cemetery during the day before?  Is there a moral to the story?  I don't know but what a fun, weird, little story!

This is the car I drove in High School, a 1966 Corvair, sitting not so prettily in the old chicken house now.  Like the Volkswagon Beetle, the engine is in the back and the trunk is in the front.  The trunk had a key of it's own which, for some reason, I kept on a separate ring than the ignition key.  One summer, some friends and I spent the weekend at my parents cabin where there was no garbage service.  So, at the end of the weekend, we packed the big bag of garbage in the trunk.  At some point, I lost the separate trunk key and the garbage started to STINK!  And, as I drove around, the stink wafted back.  Ewww.  I don't remember what happened in the end; whether I found the key or we had one made but I remember the stink!

Another story about Great Grandpa Nels is that he had a real hard time transitioning from driving horses to driving a car.  In the stable/garage, he lined the back wall with old tires and when he returned from a trip to town, he would drivel into the building and continue to drive until he hit the tires.  My Aunt says the car would hit the tire wall, shimmy a bit and boing off it.

And "my" willow tree.  This is the most singular image that comes to mind when I think of the farm.  Well, that's not true since, as I wrote it, 3,4,5 more images came immediately to mind.  But this tree is first.  It wasn't nearly this big, of course.  It is what you see when you look from the window over the kitchen sink.  So, I guess this was my Grandma's kitchen tree.