The Man Called Swede

LIVING AND LEARNING ON MILACA FARM

Chapter 1

Dad was a widower with six children, and mother was a widow with two. Because she was 20 years younger than him, she was also the age of one of her new stepchildren.

The new marriage, which included the eight children, eventually became sixteen - ­six of his, two of hers, and eight theirs.

I was the first child of their marriage born September 15, 1908.

The doctor had set a day and time when he would come to help with the delivery. When he had not come at the given time Dad got nervous and hitched the horse to the buggy to look for him.

He found the doctor at a neighbor’s house about a mile from town where the doctor had stopped to deliver another baby. I understand Dad was quite put out over the delay. However, things worked out all right. After the neighbor delivered a girl, he rushed on to our house. Therefore, I had a neighbor girl friend my same age.

Growing up in this family in a six-bedroom, 120-acre dairy farm near the small town of Milaca in central Minnesota, provided a setting of constant stimulation.

We children shared the work inside and out. We went to a one-room school taught by one teacher for all eight grades, with attendance depending on the seasons of work on the farm.

We learned to do what we were told in all weather, from the heat and humidity of July to the below zero temperatures and drifting snows of winter.

There was much work to be done on the farm and Dad was a tough taskmaster. Work always came first. At age seven I began hand-milking two cows during the mornings and evenings.

Getting to school was a one-mile walk for the Hokanson clan. In winter with snow closing the roads, we walked through farmer’s fields where the snow had not drifted as high.

From grade one until I left school, the learning stimulation that came from listening to the upper grade classes kept me on the edge of my seat. I wanted to learn it all, now.

The one-room school with it’s eight grades met the community educational needs. One of our neighbor’s had 14 children, and with our 16, those who were of school age kept the place busy, along with the many other neighbor kids. None of the farm children in our area ever went to high school. Our family never talked about that.

This rather limited setting for learning met our needs in the early 1900’s in spite of the understanding among the farmers that when there was farm work to be done, the work came first. In any case the farm work interfered little until I was nine or ten years old. From then on more days in April and May and in September and October were focused on work, not school.

At age fourteen, about mid-April and prior to completing the seventh grade, I left school never to return. Learning to learn at school and learning to work on the farm was the best kind of learning I could get.

The farm work ranged from the early simple tasks of milking and feeding the cows, and feeding the hogs and chickens to field work during the harvest season. Later, came more dangerous or complicated jobs, including harnessing horses, hooking them up to farm equipment such as cultivators and then putting in a full day in the field. One of the great advantages of horsepower for me was that the horses had to rest at noon, thus, I too rested. Later, came experiences that built the mechanical base for careers that followed.

By age 12 I was doing a man’s work so Dad saw to it that my special mechanical abilities be used to his advantage. I learned to repair equipment that broke while I was using it, and by age 13 I would take on any mechanical problem on the farm.

Dad also taught me how to use dynamite safely. There were still large rocks and a few large boulders in our fields from the glaciers that overran the region in the Ice Age. These had to be removed. Each spring when the soil thawed more rocks and boulders would rise to the surface.

During the spring plowing, rocks were uncovered when it was struck by the plow, so I had to be prepared in advance for these rocks. A shovel was attached to the plow for this task. I took a sack containing sticks of dynamite with me, and dynamite caps, which I carried in my shirt pocket. I also had fuses and a bag of water to create the mudpack so I could cover the dynamite at the most vulnerable spot when I set the charge. When all was ready I measured the fuse for a three-minute run, enough time to walk away and be with the horses when the explosion occurred.

Later, I would return with a stoneboat, a large panel made out of oak, to haul the pieces of rock to a large pile. The broken rocks from this pile were sometimes sold to folks who would use them on special building projects.

As with most farms in the late 1900’s and 1920’s the machinery was primitive. We did have the tools to repair any machinery we owned, including our 1916 Dodge automobile. Farmers and their boys did not run to town and order replacement parts when equipment failed. They used their ingenuity and tried to fix it themselves. I recall seeing a broken or worn part and thinking, “I’m sure I can fix that