Uncle Janes & Uncle Norman

Uncle Janes & Uncle Norman

My Dad's sister, Aunt Lois was married in August 1951 to a farmer from the Ripon area. Every summer after that, they invited me to their home for a week or two. Having grown up in an urban environment, these visits were a much-anticipated treat for me.

I often rode along with Grandma and Grandpa Rogge when they went for daylong visits there, but a week's stay was an adventure. At that time, four adults lived on the Morgan farm. Aunt Lois and her husband, Maurice Morgan, were the principals. We shortened Maurice to "Maury." Maury's Mother was an Oleson girl and that farm was the original home of the Oleson family. There were two Oleson family remnants still living there. They were the two bachelor brothers: Uncle Janes and Uncle Norman.

The Oleson clan, a hearty lot, was 100 percent Danish. Uncle Janes Oleson was seventy-five when I began my summer visits and he lived to be ninety-five. We got along well and this man fascinated me. He was of medium height, very slender, and balding with a fringe of stringy white hair. He was fair of face with chiseled features. His blue eyes twinkled and although he seldom laughed, he had an agreeable disposition.

His day-in, day-out costume consisted of well-used heavy work boots, a long-sleeved white shirt that had too big a collar, and over that, loose-fitting bib overalls. In the summer, he wore a wide brimmed straw hat when outside. In cold weather, he often slipped heavy rubber boots over his regular footwear and wore a denim work jacket. His cold weather headgear was a fur-lined cap with visor and ear-flaps that were always in the down position. He never snapped the chinstrap in place; it dangled limply on one side.

Uncle Janes was rarely still for long unless the Hoard's Farm Journal came in the mail. Then, he sat at the kitchen table with a magnifying glass to read up on the newest farming strategies and techniques. Although he lacked formal education, he was a fellow of considerable intellect and had a keen interest in many things; primarily strawberry plants.

Janes' gardening activities kept him occupied for much of the time. He maintained a sizable plot near the apple orchard to the west of the house. There, he expended considerable effort hybridizing and evaluating various strains of strawberry plants. He staked each experiment with the parent names and meticulously recorded each berry marriage with a stubby pencil in his tiny spiral notepad, both of which were stored carefully in the chest pocket of his bibs. The rest of us formed his test kitchen and we evaluated the results of his efforts for size, sweetness, and seeds. It was a wonderful job and we were very willing to be helpful.

He also experimented with grafting scions onto other plants. I loved to watch him work with the process involved. He selected and cut twigs from a donor plant or tree that looked healthy. Then he carefully trimmed the raw end at an angle. A host plant was selected to receive the piece and a spot for the graft was chosen with care. He cut a "T" slit in the bark of the host plant and gently peeled it back with the tip of his knife. Then, he deftly slipped the raw end of the scion into the slit in such a way that the plant layers lined up. Once in place, he secured the arrangement with binder twine to hold it in place. He recorded the activity in his notebook and let the host plant adopt the new branch. We checked on these locations periodically to see if a scar was enclosing the joint. I never knew what his purpose was but he undoubtedly had one.

His spinster sister, May, was dead by the time I came to visit them. She had lived there her whole life and her passion was peonies. She and the Sisson family from Rosendale formed the backbone of the Ripon area brain trust for peony information. Long rows of peony plants left over from her tenure edged the strawberry beds and Uncle Janes lovingly tended them, too. To this day, peonies from the Oleson garden still decorate many neighbors' yards.

In the years before tractors, Janes farmed their 80 acres with horses. When the Fordson tractor replaced his horses, they were retired and lived out their lives in the east wing of the barn. By 1952, only Josie and another horse remained. Josie was enormous! Broad of body and heavily muscled, she was a powerful animal and Janes' favorite. She was the smartest of the four, and in earlier years, he had taught her tricks. I visited Josie daily and tried to bring her an apple treat, which she relished. That she was gentle was good, because she would have squashed me like a bug, had she pinned me against the stall. Her feet were as large as dinner plates and I was careful not to stand where she could step on me.

Janes was, by nature, a tinker and an inventor. For example, every farm operation needed rope. Rope had a way of getting lost in the farm clutter, and its absence frustrated Janes. Replacement was expensive and required a trip into town. That wasted time. So, in the basement of the house, he devised a machine that he used to fashion twine into rope. When he needed some, he made his own.

Janes operated on the theory, "Waste not, want not" and he saved all things big and small. Rusting hulks of derelict machinery and other cast off items awaiting new purpose littered the barn and the farmyard. It didn't matter in what stage of malfunction an item might be; any given part or piece could be of use to effect a repair on some future disruption. He was often in his workshop in the barn occupied by some project or mend. It was a cluttered space, long and narrow with a workbench along the exterior wall. He was patient with my many questions and seemed to enjoy my company.

Uncle Janes had some eccentric eating habits. He clearly was not of the school that the food on one's plate should be sequestered in like categories. He constructed his meals in a generous-sized cereal bowl. For example, it would be common for him to place a large piece of frosted chocolate cake in the bowl as a base. Next, he might liberally spoon hot stewed tomatoes over the cake. Then, he would add warm milk to the mix and enjoy the meal with a slice of bread. Janes never drank coffee or tea, but did enjoy a cup of milk laced with hot water.

The old farmhouse had a second floor. Uncle Janes' bedroom was in the open space at the top of the stairs. When I was visiting, I had to walk through it to get to the room to which I was assigned for sleep. He did have a functioning double bed and if he wasn't in it, I could see precisely where he slept. There was a well-defined impression of him in the mattress. It represented decades of sleep in exactly the same position, in exactly the same spot. To keep life simple, he eschewed the use of bed linens and slept in his clothing. Piles and piles of farm magazines filled the rest of the room; so many that only a narrow corridor remained between the top of the stairs and the side of Janes' bed.

The other Oleson uncle was Uncle Norman. Everyone called him Normie. Uncle Normie was not the congenial fellow that Janes was. He was something of a curmudgeon. Normie lived, by his own choice, adjacent to the homestead in an overgrown, two-acre wood. There the thicket completely obscured his abode, an unimproved dugout lean-to that he called home. A stranger would never guess that the site was inhabited.

Uncle Normie walked past the farmhouse toward town nearly every day. It was a three-mile hike one-way and I had no idea what kind of business he had in there. He was a big man, taller than Janes and of stockier build. At no time did he look in my direction. I didn't approach him because his appearance intimidated me.

It never varied: long, bushy white beard, wide-brimmed hat pulled down over long white hair, non-descript denims and a rifle slung over one shoulder. That rifle commanded my attention. I was afraid that if I called to him, Normie might take the gun off of his shoulder and use it. . .on me! Later, when he returned from his sojourn, he often had a rabbit, a pheasant, or a fox dangling from the rifle barrel. As he walked, the limp form swayed gently where it hung across his back.

Uncle Normie had no vehicle, no animals, and no visitors. He walked everywhere and led the simplest of lives until his death at the age of seventy-nine.

Normie was not on good terms with Maurice. When he married my Aunt, Maury built an addition onto the old Oleson homestead that included a new kitchen and an indoor bathroom. Normie thought it sacrilegious that Maury had "put a shit-house in his mother's kitchen," and made no effort to conceal his disapproval. This small transgression was enough to fuel life-long hard feelings.

Ironically, his incredible wealth was disclosed when Normie died. Many years earlier, he had purchased land in the Dakotas from a banker in Ripon. He had paid very little for it and had never visited the property. At some point, oil was discovered in that part of the territory and Uncle Normie's patch sat right on top of it! For years, unbeknownst to anyone, he had been quietly collecting the royalties from a number of producing oil wells.

When he died, he left his Dakota land, the oil wells, and his surprising fortune not to Maury, but to his only other Nephew, Glen Goodrich. Glen continued to receive checks for the oil production for some time until the wells played out. Uncle Norman's life gives credence to the adage, "don't judge a book by its cover."