Grandpa comes into my life

The latter years of Sigurd Grytnes
26 February 1868 - 13 October 1961

by Daniel Borgström
danielfortyone(at)gmail.com



Grandma died when I was 3 1/2 years old; but I never really knew her because she lived so far away, way back in Minnesota. After she was gone, then Grandpa sold their home and went to live with his children and their families. There were several he would stay with, including my parents from time to time. And so I lost a grandmother, but gained a grandfather.

I was just a very little boy then, when he first begin coming. We would go down to the railroad depot to meet him. I still remember that huge train chugging in and slowing to a stop. It was fascinating, but also somewhat frightening, that big train. The engine would let off steam with a loud hissing sound, Grandpa would descend from one of the coaches, and then he'd be here to stay with us for a couple of months.

It was really neat having Grandpa with us. And, being the only child, and living on an isolated farm out in the sticks, I was lonely and enjoyed the extra attention. However, Grandpa had other things to do and he didn't always have time for me. I had to work hard to get his attention.

One day he was out in the yard, raking up leaves. And, being the violent little monster I was at that time, I picked up a rotten apple from under one of the apple trees, and threw it at him. I scored a direct hit, right in the head.

Grandpa didn't chase me; in fact, he did nothing. He just sat down in a chair to take a rest. He had done nothing and obviously he intended to do nothing. And so I just went back to playing in the yard. Then, for some unexplained reason, he grabbed hold of me, turned me over his knee, and gave me a spanking.

My parents ran a chicken farm. We had 10 acres, there was plenty of space, and mother had her gardens where she raised vegetables and flowers. She also had a cow. There was a hay field, a pasture, and the woods.

So there was haying to do. It was later that we started having our hay bailed. Back then there were still a number of old timers around who used horse-drawn hay mowers, and we used to have them cut our hay. I remember Grandpa making hay stacks. And when I got older I also learned to use a pitch fork and do my part.

Having been a farmer, swinging the scythe and making water-tight hay stacks was something Grandpa had done all his life. But he never milked cows. Neither did my father. Nor was I expected to either, although it was the normal thing for most of the other farm kids around there.

I never thought much about it. That's just the way it was at home. It was only recently that I found out why, when I read Amerika-Breve by Ole Rølvaag. In it the author tells of his amazement and disgust after coming to America and finding that he would have to help milk the cows. Back in Norway that was women's work, something that men just didn't do.

Grandpa had come from Norway; that had been years before when he was a young man. He'd been in Washington when it became a state, back in 1889. He was young then, in his early twenties. It was hard to imagine Grandpa having ever been young. By the time I knew him, he was in his 70's.

He'd spent his life here in America, a couple years in Washington, but most of it farming in Minnesota and thereabouts. He spoke English well, and of course he read books and newspapers in English. But he still preferred the Decorah Posten, the Norwegian language newspaper which he'd been reading all his life.

The Decorah Posten came once a week, and when it came he would sit there for the next day or two wearing his glasses and holding his magnifying glass, totally absorbed in his newspaper.

One day while he was reading, Mother left me in his care while she went out to work in the garden. But when she came back she found that I had taken out a whole loaf of bread and covered every slice with jam.

"Pa, why did you let him do that?" my mother demanded to know. He looked up from his Decorah Posten and asked, "What? ... What did he do?"

That's the way he'd always been, Mother says, "He'd pick up some book or newspaper, and you wouldn't hear from him again till he'd finished it."

He also read to me. We had some Uncle Wiggly stories, and he'd read them to me. There was a part in one of the stories that I asked him to read to me over and over. Actually, it was a picture of some hills in the story which had caught my fancy, and I'd say, "Read me that one." He'd read it to me, and then I'd ask him to read it to me again. He'd say, "I just did." But I'd ask him to read it once more.

But he never read me Per & Ola, the comic strip in the Decorah Posten. Mother had to do that. It featured a family of goofy Norwegians who lived out on the prairie in the Dakotas. "They're so silly," Mother objected. But I enjoyed Per & Ola even if they were silly. I still have fond memories of them.

Once Per and Ola bought an airplane and installed a steam engine in it. Per, who'd come up with the idea, explained the logic of this to Ola: they could save money since firewood was cheaper than aviation gasoline. Ola responded admiringly, "Per, you have a head like a brick."

So that was another neat thing about having Grandpa around. I got to read Per & Ola. When he left, Decorah Posten stopped coming, and there was no Per & Ola. Not till Grandpa came again.

One thing that always intrigued me about Grandpa was the large clock he brought with, one they would nowadays call a grandfather clock. It was about a foot and a half high, and as I grew older and began school and learned to tell time, I attempted to try out my skills on it. But instead of numbers, there were some strange markings on the face which I didn't know how to read. Mother told me these were "roman numerals". Each night before going to bed he'd take out a special key and wind it. That ritual also intrigued me.

Both he and my father were history buffs. Sometimes in the evenings he and my father, who was Swedish, would talk about the history of Scandinavia. And as I got older I begin to listen to bits and pieces of their discussions.

My grandfather was, as I have said, Norwegian, and it had been only in 1905 that Norway had finally achieved its long-sought-for independence from the Swedish Crown. Grandpa would have been about 37 that year, and so for the first half of his life that struggle had been going on. He didn't appreciate the benefits of Swedish rule, nor did he particularly like Swedes in general.

My father, on the other hand, always thought Swedish rule had been just great for Norway. He thought that Norwegians were backwards, stubborn people who didn't know what was good for them. Looking back on it, I can see that my father's attitude was a good example of what had been wrong with Swedish rule.

So there was that one sore spot they generally avoided; otherwise they got on well. My father thought highly of my grandfather, and respected his knowledge of history. "He knows his history better than anyone else I have talked with," my father used to say.

But the unfortunate topic still came up from time to time, but my grandfather was a consummate diplomat, and defused the tension by saying, "Most of the wars between Sweden and Norway were caused by the Danes." I imagine that if a Dane had been present, then the blame would have gone to the English, or perhaps to the Germans.

More often they talked about other things, like the Black Death, which wrought havoc and panic in Scandinavia in the 1400's. They remembered it almost as if it were a personal experience they'd lived through, recalling vividly how whole countrysides had been left deserted, how you might walk into a village and everyone would be gone. I was later surprised to learn that these events had happened hundreds of years ago.

The Black Death had obviously traumatized the old-world Europeans. But it was non-controversial. It was a shared experience, killing Swedes and Norwegians alike. They could recall the event with shock, horror, dismay and sorrow--but without anger.

But it wasn't just history that they talked about. Grandpa was well versed in Norwegian literature. They spent hours discussing Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnstierne Bjørnson, and other authors of that world. But I was not old enough to know who Ibsen and Bjørnson were. It was their stories of the Black Death which made the greatest impression on me.

Grandpa had always spent a lot of his time reading. Mother recalls that back in her childhood home, when somebody in the family brought home a book and he got his hands on it, "We didn't get it back till he was done with it." She also recalls that whenever anybody would say a book was no good, he would always say, "Have you read it? You don't know if a book is good or not till you've read it."

Reading was his interest, but he was an active person who always needed something physical to do for several hours a day. He would never have been content just to sit around reading books all day long. We had a wood burning stove and when he came we would always have a load of wood for him to chop up and stack in the woodshed. "It was the only way we could keep him around," my mother says, and that was true.

He did other things too. I remember once watching him build a pig pen. And he dismantled all the old tumble-down sheds and structures left over from the previous owners of the farm. But whether reading or working, I can never remember him just sitting there with nothing to do. When he didn't have anything to do, he'd find something.

One day he tore open the skin of his hand on a nail that was in an old fence he was taking apart. But he went right on working till my father happened to come by and found him, still chopping and sawing, and blood all over the place. "What happened to your hand?" my father asked him.

"It's just a scratch," said Grandpa.

But my father insisted on taking him to the doctor, and it turned out that this "scratch" required 10 stitches.

That's part of being an old-world Norwegian. When you need ten stitches you call it "just a scratch," and go on with what you're doing.

When the woodshed was full, and if it wasn't haying time, then he'd sit around for a few days reading whatever he could find, until he got restless, and then he'd go back to Minnesota, or in later years to Idaho.

In Minnesota he had other children, and he also stayed with them and their families. My mother was one of 10 brothers and sisters, and some of them would also visit us from time to time. There was Aunt Freda who would spend a week or two with us almost every year, and Aunt Wilma and her family whom I got to know later when they moved to Idaho. But most important in those early years was Uncle Ralph, my mother's younger brother. He used to visit us even before Grandpa came into my life.

Uncle Ralph was a sailor in the merchant marine. And he used to come and visit us as far back as I can remember. That was during the war years.

My parents had bought our farm the year we came back from Alaska in 1941. That's also the year I was born, as well as the year that America finally entered the war. Mother tells me they had gone out to look at the farm, and that's where they were when the radio announced that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.

Later, my folks learned that Uncle Ralph had been on a ship which sailed out of Pearl Harbor just a few hours before the attack. Throughout the war he remained in the Merchant Marine, which must have been fairly dangerous duty because cargo ships were targets for submarines.

When his ship docked in Seattle or Tacoma, he came up to Ferndale to visit us. He usually stayed for a week or two. He helped with the farm work, which there was always plenty of. One summer he helped build the hay barn. I remember riding on a horse drawn hay wagon with him.

Ralph was a fun guy to have for an uncle. But he was also something of a tease, and one day I got mad at him and told him to leave, "You've been here long enough!" I said.

I only vaguely remember telling him that, but was often told the story by my parents. And then the next day he did leave, much to my regret. Apparently his leave was up and he would have gone anyway. After he was gone I missed him. I still miss him today.

Even in his absence, there were mementos of his visits that continued to make an impression on me.

From distant ports like Shanghai, Hong Kong and Osaka, he brought back various exotic art objects. He gave to his mother and each of his sisters a beautiful Chinese teakwood chest. These mementos of the Orient were also part of my childhood home, as were the visits of the sailor who brought them. I remember one of those pictures on our wall that intrigued me. "It's Japanese," Mother told me, and I asked, "Is that what Japan is like?"

I admired those pictures and wondered about the strange, distant, exotic worlds they came from. Those pictures were my first impression of Japan--a place I was eventually to spend several years.

Today, Japanese art is very popular in this country, and can be seen everywhere. But back in those days it was found only in the collections of eccentric world travelers, or people with an exclusive Asian connection. You didn't expect to find it on the walls of a farmhouse.

Uncle Ralph wasn't the only family member in the war. On a dresser were the photos of my cousins, Douglas and Russell. One was a soldier and the other a sailor, I could never remember which was which. Despite my knowing so little about them, I'll always remember their photos as part of my childhood home. They were Aunt Freda's sons, other grandchildren of Grandpa. There were also two other cousins, Aunt Dagny's sons, Merle and Dewey . These represented our family's participation in the war. So Grandpa had one son and four grandchildren in the services during WW II. And, as I was to learn later, he also had a son who sat out the war in jail for refusing to serve because of his religious beliefs. That was Uncle Ingvald, whom I met later.

I remember those photos so well, along with Uncle Ralph's visits. But I remember nothing about the war. I was only 4 when it ended. And it was even a year or two after that that Grandpa came into my life.

Mother had taken me with her on a trip to Minnesota when Grandma was dying, when I was about 3 1/2. I remember that trip well, and there I met many of my cousins, including Ramon and Beulah and their mother Aunt Wilma. But I didn't see them again until around 1951 when they moved to Idaho.

Most of Grandpa's children lived in Minnesota. Several of these still lived at Lengby, where his home had been for several decades. He had also been treasurer of the school board there in Lengby for so many years.

But in the 1950s many of the Lengby people, both family and neighbors, migrated to Post Falls, Idaho. First one or two families came to the new area, and then one by one, the others followed.

Grandpa's daughter Wilma and her husband Simmie DeMarre moved to Post Falls Idaho in 1951, and his sons Ingvald and Bill came about the same time. Another son, Olaf moved to Lewiston Idaho. Other Lengby people also came to Post Falls. And so Grandpa spent most of his latter years in Post Falls with Aunt Wilma and her family.

Wilma and Simmie had about 40 acres at the edge of town near the Spokane River. Uncle Ingvald brought his trailer and parked it near the house; and he would sometimes work with Simmie in his sawmill. This sawmill was also on their farm; it was a small two- or three-man operation. As a by-product, it produced scraps which Grandpa sawed and split into firewood. So, wherever he was, there was always something for him to do.

I spent a year there with Uncle Simmie and Aunt Wilma in 1958 and 1959. That was after my father died and Mother sold the farm at Ferndale. I was a teen-ager then; the year after that I went in the USMC.

Behind their house was a large rock, about 100 feet high; and on it the town water tank was built. When it was finished, a local paper wrote a story about that water tank; and to illustrate it, printed a photo with the rock in the background, and Grandpa in the foreground, chopping wood. My aunt and uncle went to the newspaper and received a print of that photo which they proudly displayed.

My cousin Beulah remembers that at around noon Grandpa would always take a break and walk down town to a tavern and have a beer or two. That was how he broke up his day. The dogs would always follow him on his walk down town, a mile or so, and then sit outside the tavern and wait there for him. He didn't want the dogs following him, so before leaving he would lock them in the house. But somehow they would get out and when he came out of the tavern the dogs would be outside, waiting for him.

Beulah told me that story years later. It really surprised me. I never knew that Grandpa went to taverns or even drank beer. My mother was very anti-tavern, anti-alcohol, and so I just assumed that her father was too. Beulah says he would drink one beer, sometimes two. That was his limit. "It was something he did to break up his day," she said.

Now when I think about it, I do remember Grandpa going downtown around noon, the dogs following him. I didn't know where he went. I was a teen-ager then, living pretty much in a world of my own.

If Grandpa had an addiction, it wasn't alcohol, it was reading books and newspapers.

That was when the uranium boom of the 1950s was going on. A number of prospectors had discovered deposits of the ore and struck it rich; and so it became the national fad to buy a Geiger counter and go prospecting for uranium. Even Simmie and Wilma had their mine. It was about a hundred miles to the north, up in the Coleville Mountains. The way that came about was that a neighbor had discovered an ore deposit and needed help to develop it. So four families got together and located their claims, did the required assay work to keep it legally in their names, and built a cabin on the property. I was there at that time and went with, and helped build the cabin. It was a beautiful place, high up in the mountains overlooking the Columbia River.

A mining company offered them $75,000 for the property. Back in 1959, a dollar was worth much more than it is now, so it seems to have been a fairly good offer. But the partners thought otherwise, and, as Aunt Wilma said, "If it's worth that much to the mining company, it's worth that much to us."

They planned to mine it themselves. However, as more and more deposits were discovered in various parts of the world, this small deposit soon paled to insignificance. And they never got any financial return. But they did wind up with a nice summer cabin, and they enjoyed that.

Uncle Simmie later used to say, "That's where two fools met. The one who offered me $75,000, and I who refused it."

Grandpa never came with to visit the mine; He was about 90 by then, and mining had apparently never interested him to begin with. While the rest of us made trips to do assay work at the mine, he stayed back in Post Falls; sawing away at his wood pile, and taking his noon day walk to the tavern, with dogs in tow.

In the summer of 1959 I joined the USMC. By then I had just turned 18. About a year and a half later, I received a letter telling me that he had died. He had lived to the age of 93. He had brought to my life an atmosphere of history and tradition, a bit of Old Norway. By his presence in my childhood home, he enriched my life in many ways.


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Not even Grandpa could ignore the loneliness of old age. His wife had been gone for over a decade; he'd outlived his friends and contemporaries. Even many of his children were gone. And during the last 2 or 3 years of his life he was able to work less and less in the wood pile, and he would often walk around in the house and sometimes push the curtain aside to look out the window as if to see if a visitor might be coming; perhaps one of his old friends from out of the past, and he'd say, "I feel so lonely."

Sigurd Grytnes, born 26 February 1868 in Norway, died at Post Falls, Idaho on 13 October 1961, at the age of 93.

Recently I looked to see if Decorah Posten and Skandinaven are still publishing. No, they are not. Skandinaven ended in 1941, its subscription lists were taken over by the Decorah Posten, which survived till 1972. Their readers, the Norwegian immigrants of my grandfather's generation, have passed from this earth. And their newspapers followed them.



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3/9/09