Victoria MN Newspaper

That Melby farm included the house where my Grandma Opdahl sat on a pile of corncobs to stay off the wet floor on my mother’s wedding day.

Said Mom, “My dad also bought a sheep and cattle ranch and then a sheep farm at Section 15. We herded sheep and cattle back and forth between the farms, through the ditch, in the spring and fall, to take advantage of the grasses. I sure do remember that. That’s when FDR was president.” FDR served from 1933 to 1945.

Mom said that Bertha Verschelde was their hired girl to help out at home when she was little. “Bertha helped wash clothes and did the dishes when Mama had a baby,” she said. “Mama had to stay in bed for nine days. On the seventh day, you could sit up. On the eighth day, you could dangle your feet. That’s how it used to be, for me too.”

Mom said that her Grandma Helene Jennen, who was "a Stassen girl," died in 1930 of pneumonia, and when the Jennen estate was settled, each of the 12 kids of Mike and Helene Jennen got $10,000.

Mom's mother, my Grandma Opdahl, was one of those 12 kids. That's when Grandpa Opdahl bought the Becker farm where my parents live to this day. Grandpa paid $20,000 for 231 acres. By then it was 1948, just in time for the newlyweds, Joe and Betty Claeys.

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Most all of their lives, my mom and dad either lived next to each other, separated by a corn field, or together. They became better acquainted when Dad picked up Mom for school in the morning.

Mom explained how it worked: “Ruthie Johnson was the first one in the car in the morning so she sat next to Joe. But after school I was the first one in the car and I sat next to him. There were no school buses in those days. My dad picked up Joe’s brother Jim and took him to grade school in Ghent. Joe picked up me and Ruthie Johnson and took us to high school in Minneota.”

For the first time, the stories began to repeat themselves. I believe the story about Mom and Dad driving to school together appeared in “A Love Story” in 1987.

Stories are the way we stay connected with each other, down through the generations. They tell us who we are and where we come from. This one began by looking at Mom’s hands, hands that served her family all her life, like Dad's. The work of our hands comes back to us.