Sapiens...recommended reading

    Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari, 2015 HarperCollins 416pp.

   There's nothing like assuming a bold task and writing a one volume of humankind certainly qualifies as bold.  The book is surprisingly readable and full of new insights for me.  While, I didn't find much with which to argue, a genuine academic critique of many of his assertions is beyond my ability.
    The book jacket says "One hundred thousand years ago. at least six human species inhabited the earth.  Today there is just one.  Us. Homo sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance?...
    "In Sapiens, Professor Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical--and somewhat devastating--breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural, and Scientific Revolutions.  Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, paleontology, and economics...he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us and even our personalities."
   

from Story Worth 11/24/17

Memories of My Father

Perhaps it would be well to begin with some biographical information to set the stage.  My paternal grandparents, Lars and Sigrid (Graven) Negstad, knew each other in Norway but married at Lac Qui Parle Lutheran Church near Dawson, MN.  Sigrid had several siblings.  When she was a young girl she went to live with her childless aunt and uncle on a farm near the Negstad farm on the island of Averoy, Norway.  Her parents, the Halvor Gravens emigrated to America, settling in Lac Qui Parle County, before Sigrid did. She did see her parents from the time she went to live with her aunt until she was reunited with them as a young woman in America.   Grandpa worked as a logger and on railroad building in America  until he had enough money to purchase the rights to complete a homestead in Brookings County, S.D.   In 1885 Lars took his family by wagon to the land he purchased.

My Father, Albert Negstad, was born Dec. 22, 1883, Lac Qui Parle County, MN., and died March 2, 1969, Brookings, SD.   Dad used the initials A. L., as in A. L. Negstad, but neither he nor his brothers had a middle name.  Whence the L?  I never knew for sure but thought it may have been taken from his father’s name, Lars.  By the time he was a young man the family was quite affluent.   That changed with the financial crash, the depression and the drought of the 1930s.    Albert married Edith Bergh at her parents home in St. Paul, on November 28, 1929.  Even with children born in 1932, 1934, 1936 and 1938, Dad was able to support the family without losing the farm.

It was a big farm kitchen with many doors;  seven to be exact, they opened to outside, a store room, the north stairs (the house had separate areas upstairs, the north with a guest bedroom and the bathroom, the south with three bedrooms where out family slept) pantry and basement stairs, the south stairs, a smaller pantry and dining room.   In the center of the kitchen was a large table around which the six of us, seven when grandmother lived with us, ate.  Perhaps my earliest memory of Dad was sitting in his lap after supper (evening meal on the farm) and playing with his pocket watch.  He always wore bib overalls and in his chest pocket was his watch on a leather cord. 

The kitchen had double windows to the east looking out toward the east and over the yard toward the barn and granary.   In front of the window was a low sofa, perhaps a fainting couch.  Sometimes Dad would take a brief nap on it when work was not pressing.   In 1948 the cook stove in the kitchen was replaced by a combination stove.  One side was electric with an oven and four burners for use during warm weather.  The other half of the stove was heated with corn cobs, wood or coal or some combination of these.

Dad was strict and tolerated no nonsense.   One of my older female cousins who would help Mother said that if I got fussy at the table Dad would silently pick up my high chair and carry it to the other room then retrieve it silently as soon as I quieted down. Mother and Dad never disagreed in front of their children. Dad often would reflexively say “no” to requests.   Often he would come to me later with his position reversed.  I suspect Mother talked to him privately and persuaded him to change his answer.

It was not Dad’s style to ever enter into our children’s games.  He had a lively life of the mind and under other circumstances probably would not have been a farmer.  Other than seed time and harvest he was a man of regular routine.  He’d rise by 6:00 a.m. to milk the cows, breakfast next, a morning of farm work, dinner (noon meal on the farm) at 12:00, an afternoon of farm work, supper, the largest meal, at 6:00, and then milking again.  By about 8:00 he’d been in his rocking chair in the dinning room reading the paper, farm magazines and books until bedtime about 10:30.   He had very little schooling, as the oldest son he was needed on the farm…perhaps six grades…but his love of reading and learning made him self educated.

Dad’s age was never a topic of conversation.  Mother’s age was no secret and was easy to track because she was born January 7, 1900.  It was an accident that I learned Dad’s age when I was eight.  I was with my parents in some government office in Brookings on some official business and dad was asked his age….“Sixty three” he said.  That startled me and even at eight I could do the math and figure out there was sixteen years difference between my parents and that he was fifty-five when I was born.  He didn’t show his age but I’m sure that it was factor in his understanding of a father’s responsibility.

Apparently Dad was quite athletic and a risk taker as a young man.  There is a picture of him standing on the very top of the windmill above any handhold.   My classmate, Lloyd Hope was staying overnight with me  when we were boys, and, after milking we were trying to stand on our heads in the grass.  Dad, walking by with a pail of milk saw what we were doing .  He set the pail down, put hands to the ground and quickly stood on his head.   He was at least in his mid-sixties at the time.

He was not verbally affirming; it was the Nordic “everything’s alright and if it’s not I’ll tell you”.  I never heard “I love you” but always knew that he did so the lack of the words has never troubled me.   In retrospect some greater affirmation could have been helpful but it just was not who he was.

Dad was very interested in politics and he was a Lincoln Republican, fiscally and militarily conservative, but progressive in his understanding of human rights and racial equity.  He supported Taft over Eisenhower for the Republican nomination for president because Eisenhower favored universal military training.  His sense of equality had one blind spot…he was prejudiced against Irish.  Reading Ole Rolvaag’s books about the tension between the pioneering neighboring Irish and Norwegian communities helped me understand where that prejudice may have originated.

Quality was important to him and he would pay for it.  When I was in early elementary school I needed a winter cap.  My mother told him to buy me one when I accompanied him to Brookings.  In Montgomery Wards store we found one.  It was helmet style with a leather exterior and sheepskin inside and a leather strap that buckled on the chin.  When mother learned that he had paid $4.50  for it she was shocked by the extravagance.  But, my head was never cold even though there was short tear in the top because I didn’t duck quite low enough going under a barbwire fence on my sled.  I wore it for many years and eventually Mother conceded its value.

A gift, for which I never thanked my parents, was providing orthodontic care for me.  I had a very significant overbite.  Our local dentist told my parent about Dr. Marens, the first orthodontist in South Dakota whose practice was in Sioux Falls.  So, I got braces when I was in seventh grade.  Every three weeks for two years it meant a seventy mile drive to the orthodontist.   Fortunately commuting duties could be shared with neighbor, Donald Evenson’s parents because he, too, had braces.  This was a huge sacrifice for my parents, for which they never made me feel guilty, but, I’m sorry I never thanked them.

Community leadership came naturally to him.  The community recognized him for his wisdom and impeccable integrity.  Yes, he was good man, a good father, and a loyal and loving husband. 

11/18/17 My First Big Trip

St. Paul, Minnesota, Summer 1948

            Almost certainly it was Aunt Agnes Hammer’s idea that my brother, David, age 12, and I, age 10, should accompany the Hammers to their home in St. Paul.   Life on a South Dakota Farm in 1948 was a far cry from life today.  Leaving the farm to go anywhere was a big deal.  Both of my parents spoke Norwegian fluently yet they seldom spoke it to each other.  Dad’s west coast dialect was so different than mother’s from Oslo they would some times struggle to understand each other.  My mother said when Dad and his mother were in conversation she could barely make out what was being said. Consequently, Mom and Dad used Norwegian as a code to keep secrets from the children.  When they would begin speaking Norwegian my siblings and I would say “Can we go along?  assuming a trip to town was being planned.

            Once a week someone would go to Sinai, the little village we considered our hometown.  Many of our neighbors would go on Saturday night but that was a bit worldly for Mom and Dad.  Saturday night was for baths and getting ready for going to church on Sunday.   The trip to Sinai was for groceries and other necessities.   It meant a seven mile automobile ride and the delights of the city…population 150 (?).  We attended a country church so Sunday’s didn’t even get us to town.

            Arlington was seven miles the other direction from Sinai, and, with 1000 people, it seemed very cosmopolitan.  It had farm implement dealers so we’d go there for spare parts and repairs.  Our doctor and dentist were also there and it had three car dealers.  Sporadically we’d go the twenty five miles to Brookings, the county seat and a metropolis of 5000.   Shopping, legal business and Christmas shopping would be the focus of those trips.   If we were lucky there would be an annual trip to either Watertown or Sioux Falls.  We often attended the State Fair in Huron but never left the fairgrounds to explore the city.

            Aunt Agnes, my mother’s sister next in age to Mom,  along with her husband Herald, daughter, Louise, four years older than I, and daughter Priscilla,  seven years younger than I, would spend two weeks with us every summer.  Herald worked at a St. Paul, post office and received two weeks vacation each year.  In 1948 (July?) David and I rode back with them to St. Paul and spent two weeks there.   They drove either a 1936 or 1938, brown, four door,Chevrolet, but they didn’t drive it very fast…it was an eight hour trip…now I regularly drive it in four hours.  It was must have been very crowded with six of us plus luggage.  I do remember stopping for a picnic lunch…I’m guessing in New Ulm.

            While we were with them they made certain to show us the sights of the Twin Cities.  Their house was at 2334 Carter Ave., in the St. Anthony Park neighbor hood, near the Minneapolis City Limits.  Agnes’ father, and my grandfather, bought the house when he retired from ministry in South Dakota and in 1939 Hammers bought it from Agnes’ mother, Minnie Bergh.  It was a two story house but not large.   There was master bedroom on the first floor and the girl’s bedrooms were on second.  David and I slept on 2^nd floor  summer porch at the back of the house.  We were fascinated by the train sounds from a train yard a few blocks away.   

            We saw downtown Minneapolis from the tallest building, the Foshay Tower…which we can now see from our condo window.  They took us to Como Park and the flower conservatory in St. Paul.  The huge onyx statue of The Father Of Waters in the Ramsey County Courthouse was impressive as was the State Capital Building.  Agnes put us on the Como-Lake Harriet Street Car and we rode it to the end of the line and back.  We saw our first television in a store window, perhaps an eight inch screen, showing snowy pictures.  I bought my first ball point pen…which soon leaked badly.  Hammer’s took us to a beach on the Wisconsin side of the St. Croix River.  Herald dug in the sand and came up with a 50 cent coin which impressed me and I didn’t discover until much later he’d planted it there.  It was fun hiking the trails along the Mississippi River and we gaped at Minnehaha Falls.

            For farm boys playing in the evenings with a large group of children in Commonwealth Park north of Como Ave. was a delight.  Our playmates at home were our siblings unless it was a rare time when a neighbor boy slept over our on Sunay when the cousins came.  The games are lost to me but I still can visualize the beautiful trees in the park.  When we weren’t busy with other activities we’d play on the front porch of the house where grandpa had once visited with his brother via ear trumpets.

            When our two weeks were over we boarded a Greyhound Bus, which took us back to Arlington and our parents met us.  I think I wrote home during the trip but there were no phone calls.  No doubt mother wrote to us. The phone, a crank box on the wall, was only for emergencies and very important business.   Thinking about my first big trip, I’m again filled with gratitude to the Hammers who extended themselves for two country nephews/cousins.

From 11/10/17 "Story Worth"

How did I get my first job?

       Doesn't that seem like the easiest question in the world?   But, it has me stumped.  How did I get it?  But, more basically what was it?   Growing up on a South Dakota farm in the '40's and '50's was very different than much of anything today.   Farm children were working, at least on our farm and the others that I knew, from a very early age.  How old were we when we were first sent to bring the cows up from the pasture for milking?  How old were we when we collected eggs?  When did we start watering the calves in the barn or start milking cows?  

       Child labor on the farm could be divided into two categories.  In the first category would be daily chores.  This would include milking cows twice a day.  Feeding and watering the calves housed in the barn was an afternoon job.  The chickens had to be fed daily and the eggs were also collected daily.   One of the duties I found hard was to go to the barn after dinner ( we called it supper) to milk when it was sub-zero cold.  Included in this category could be other duties like yard word, mowing, shoveling snow, cutting firewood, carrying cobs and coal to the house and much more.

        The other category could be called field work and that was sporadic.  Manually this work was very arduous at times such as haying and harvest.  Perhaps my least favorite duty ever was, when on cold spring days, with the wind blowing (the wind always blew), picking up rocks that the frost had lifted from the ground over winter.  It seemed that we spent much time with either a pitchfork or a shovel in our hand. Tractor work I didn't mind so much: plowing, discing, cultivating, harrowing and much more.

         But. this doesn't answer how I got my fist job.  Wayne Henricksen was a local farmer for whom I worked off and on for some years and this was probably my first real job away from our farm.  It entailed the usual farm work.  He also did custom corn shelling.  In those days corn was harvested 'on the ear' and stored in cribs.  Before it could be sold the kernels had to be shelled from the cobs and that's where a custom corn sheller would be employed.  There were two or three shellers in the community who would be contracted by the farmers to do their shelling.   We would pull the Minneapolis Moline corn sheller to a farms cribs and we'd also provide a truck for hauling the corn to the local grain elevator.  Corn shelling was back breaking work.

        Wayne also bailed flax straw for sale.  Flax straw is used to make fine paper and linen. There was a good market for it. Flax was a crop that farmers added to the small grains and corn.  Flax straw is very tough and farmers were glad to get rid of it.  Wayne,working with is brother-in-law, Gene Olsen and a friend, Charles Larson, running two balers and two trucks,would bale hundreds or acres and thousands of bales.  I spent many hours baling. loading, trucking and unloading.

        Yet...I don't remember how I actually started working for Wayne.  I think it was probably in my last year of high school. I do remember how I got my job for the summer of '57, after my first year of college.  Earl Sorensen lived a mile and a half east of our farm.  He connected me with his brother, Herald,  who lived twenty miles west of us and had a big farm.  So, I signed on as his hired man for the summer. If I remember correctly, I was paid $145. a week.  I lived with his family; he had a wife and 2 year old daughter.  We had breakfast at 5:30 a.m., dinner at noon and supper at 9:00 p.m, six days a week. I had Sunday off.  One of the perks of working for Herald was driving his new John Deere Model 70 diesel. 

        I can remember no off the farm jobs before my enlistment in the USMC began in 1959/

From 11/3/17 "Story Worth"

My Favorite Toys As A Child

   We (my three siblings and I) had toys.  Growing up on a farm in South Dakota in the 1940's, having toys was not a given.  I remember visiting neighboring children who had no toys.  There was no assumption that parents owed it to their children to provide them with toys.  In fact, much of our play as children on the farm did not involve toys.  There were trees to climb, a barn with a hay mow full of hay in which to play, places to walk and swim, bottles to collect along the roads which brought 2 cents when redeemed at the store, snow for forts and snowmen, games of tag and hide and seek, etc.  With brothers two and four years older than I, and a sister six years older, there were often others with whom to play and that influenced the choice of toys.  We were fortunate enough to have a variety of toys and others with whom to play.

    We had toys, quite a few actually.  Some belonged to us all and others to one child specifically.  Among my favorites was an old, i.e., older than I, cast iron, rubber tired tractor.  It was red but not a specific replica of any brand.  Yes, my fascination with tractors began early.  My brother, David, had an Erector Set.  It was full of perforated steel strips, corners, angles, wheels and axles accompanied by screws, washers and nuts to build structures and machines to match one's imagination.  Hours and hours were spent with it.  It was preceded by Tinker Toys, small wooden dowels of various lengths accompanied by round wooden pieces drilled with holes into which the dowels would fit.  We built with it to our hearts content.   We also had a Carom Board,  about three feet square with targets guarded by wooden pegs at which we shot round, wooden, missiles; launching them with a snap of the fingers.  ( A bit like a miniature pool table.)

   Face cards, like those used for poker, were considered evil but we had Rook and other card games.  My parents would sometimes gather with neighbors to play a card game called Somerset, a bidding and trick taking game.  I've not seen a set of these cards for 70(?) years.

   At some point we got a 'family bicycle'.  It was a 'boys' bike but sister Lucille also rode it.  It was blue and white, single speed, as were all the bikes in the neighborhood. Every year our father would take our picture on our birthday and the bike appears on some of those pictures.  Before I finished elementary school, I'd guess about 6th grade, I bought my own bike.  It had belonged to Curtis Holm, six years older than me, who lived across the road.  Curtis had graduated to his own car so I purchased his bike for $10.00.  A bit fancier than most it was maroon,and, of course, fat tired.

   While we shared a bike my brothers and I each had our own snow sleds. There was hill in the pasture just north of the barn down which we could slide.  But, most of their use was at school which had a steep little hill for sliding,   Mine was the famous 'Flexible Flyer' model and could be steered by pulling on the front bar.  Once, while walking the mile to school on a snowy day, pulling our sleds, a neighbor, Frank Teller, stopped his '50s something Buick Roadmaster.  He told us to hook the ropes of our sleds to his back bumper and we got an exciting ride to school with snow and gravel flying in our faces.

   Two toy wagons were used for both play and work.  The green one was so old that it had lost its hard rubber tires before I could remember. Eventually it was supplemented with a new red Radio Flyer.  We'd use it for many things including coasting down hills.  

   Perhaps to our most unusual plaything was an old buggy.  The seats were gone and the front pole used to hitch to a pony was off.  In place of the pole a rope was tied to the front axle, one side of the rope on the left and the other on the right.   By pulling on the rope the rider could steer the buggy.  With it's large wheels it moved easily and provided many thrilling rides down the pasture hill.  Of course there were no brakes and we'd have to pull it up hill again but it was very light and that was easy.

   Ah, yes, of course there was also plenty of work to do so we were seldom bored.

This Just In "Chaing Rai"

   The second year that I taught school in Thailand I roomed with another American, Nick, in a small house in family compound in Ayutthaya. A daughter of the host family, Pear, was then in junior high and she was very interested in learning English so she and I talked often.
  In the years since I've stayed in touch with Pear via Facebook.  I've also visited with her in person and gone to dinner with her and her family.  Pear attended a university in Chaing Rai, Thailand's northernmost city, where instruction is in English.   When I saw Pear earlier this year she told me that her graduation would be in February and invited me to attend, though the dates had not been set yet. (Quite a contrast to American universities where the academic calendar is set years in advance.)
  Today's Facebook message from Pear informed me that her graduation ceremonies will be Feb. 12-16, 2018, which is while I will be in Thailand.  I plan to attend.  It's been 12? years since I was in Chaing Rai and I've never attended a university event in Thailand.  Will the ceremonies be in English?  If so, many families will not be able to understand, but,if it is in Thai I'll be out.  No matter. I'll be able to enjoy the festivities either way.  Needless to say I'm excited.

At dinner with Pear's family...Pear between her parents.

With Pear.

"Boys in the Boat" Recommended Reading

   The subtitle of Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Daniel James Brown, 2013,  is instructive.  The boys are rowers in an 'eight oar boat' so there are eight plus the coxswain. The climax is their performance at the Olympics, but, the book is much more than that.  It's primary focus is one of the boys, Joe Rantz, and it gives his biography from birth to death.
   This is a very rich book putting the rowing events, and the lives of the participants, in historical context.  It relates the events that were happening in America as background to the lives of the rowers, e'g., the Great Depression.  As the books moves toward the 1936 Olympics it places those games in the historical context of Nazi Germany, Hitler's rise to power, and the propaganda power of the Olympics for Hitler's Germany.
   Inspiration drips from the book which details the sacrifices and struggles the boys endure for a perfect row.  It is a moving testimony to the beauty and power of the human spirit.  A friend said it was the best book he ever read.  I would not put it in that category but I do think it is a very good book and I'm glad I read it.