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The Victoria GAZETTE |
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Florian Continued |
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June 2010 |
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So what did Florian do after he stopped farming with his parents and brothers? “I started working for Cargill in 1946, in maintenance and lawn care and all the outdoor stuff, down by Minnetonka. It’s a big outfit. Still there. All the brass is out there. It was about 240 acres. They bought a tractor and a plow and a disc here in Victoria from Braunworth’s, and I plowed their land all black for a couple of years and then we planted pine trees, hundreds of pine trees. Terrible hard work. Now those trees are 40 feet high.” “I worked there 33 and a half years,” said Forian. “Retired in 1979. They didn’t think I was going to last that long. Much of them big wheels are gone now.” Florian mentioned that prior to Cargill, he worked a couple campaigns at the sugar beet factory in Chaska for 34 cents an hour. “Can you believe it?” he asked. “Thirty-four cents an hour!” Also prior to his work at Cargill, maybe when in his mid 20’s, Florian was a gravedigger five years for the St. Victoria Catholic Church. “I done a lot of grave digging for the church,” he said. “My Uncle Ed had it and when he died I took it over. I dug the graves by hand. Took me a day. I got $8 for it. Now they get $300. I dug probably thirty to forty graves in that time, Yes, six feet deep. In the winter it took me a couple days to pick and chop through the frost. There were no vaults then either, just a wooden box.” In the meantime, his parents were still farming the land where the Victoria Fire Station is located today. “Then my dad died in 1966, on November 24th, Thanksgiving Day,” said the son. “He had cancer and six months to suffer. My brother Art bought the farm after my dad died, and Ma bought the house where Pete and Diane Meuwissen live today.” It’s located on Petunia Street, the same street as Florian’s apartment. “My mother died in 1982,” he said. “She was never sick. She fell over in the bathtub, ten days short of her 90th birthday. She died on June 9th. The 19th was her birthday.” *** From his apartment windows, Florian has better than a bird’s eye view of the ballpark and people who pass by. “It’s better than television,” he said. “Not much on television today but I do like those old black and white movies and also the ball games. The Twins finally beat those darn Yankees yesterday.” “I used to cut grass for Jerry and his mother and here at the apartment,” said Florian. “I quit a couple years ago. I used to go fishing quite a bit with Jerry to Brown’s Lake in Eden Valley.” Jerry Diethelm is Florian’s cousin who lives less than a block away. Some of Florian’s other first cousins in Victoria include Bob Diethelm, Mary Farrell, and Joyce Heiland. Their fathers were brothers, sons of Carl Diethelm who was a son of Alois Diethelm who was born in 1787 in Galgenen, Switzerland. That’d be Florian’s great great grandpa. “I was just at Susie’s house for sunfish and she sent the leftovers home with me,” said the lucky fellow. “I’m going to have them at noon today.” Susie, wife of Tony Schrempp, is a niece of Florian’s, also his Godchild, the daughter of Florian’s brother Art. “Three of my brothers are gone,” said Florian. “Richard died in 1986. Harold died in 1987. Art died in 1996. Only Charles is left and me. Charles lives in Chaska. I go down every Tuesday and we play cribbage. That’s a tricky game. Sometimes he wins. If you don’t play right, you don’t win.” There’s a thick family tree book next to the easy chair in Florian’s living room. The pages that include Florian and his closest family ties are loose from being fingered so often by this clear-eyed gentleman whose vision is long and wide, and whose sense of humor belies a keen insight into human nature, not to mention the human condition itself. Thank you, Flori, for your stories and memories. Very enjoyable. |
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Meet the Victoria Baseball Team of 1944. The above photo appeared in a Sunday edition of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The team is a member of the Crow River Valley League. Front (l-r): Charles Diethelm, Florian Diethelm, Marvin Timmers, Leo Schneider, Joe Diethelm. Back: Loren Hartman, Jerome Aretz, Tom Schneider, Joe Gregory, Anthony Aretz, and Alfred Notermann. |