GROWING UP DANISH

WALKING HOME

Time:  winter of 1931 and 1932.  It was in the depths of the Great Depression.  The business of farming had failed for my dad.  My folks sold almost everything they had and had moved to a house in town.  There was very little food to eat and coal with which to heat the home, and nothing else.

When I was a senior in high school, and by some arrangement unknown to me, I was sent, bag and baggage, to the Andrew Jacobson farm a mile west of the college campus at Cedar Falls.  The Andersons were strangers to me.  Mother, Dad and brother Hilmar had moved from the house in Cedar Falls to the Walter’s farm adjacent to Grandfather Petersen’s farm, about six miles west of town.

As a hired girl for the Jacobsen’s, I was expected to help with meals, wash the dishes, and do some of the cleaning.  I did all of this before and after school hours for fifty cents a week plus room and board.

I walked the mile or so back and forth to the school in Cedar Falls on frozen ground in the winter and deep mud in the spring thaw.  Imagine what my shoes and boots were like by the time I got to school.

One winter Sunday afternoon after the work was done I was lonely and wanted to go home.  It would mean a walk of between four and five miles.  So I put on the warmest clothes I had and began walking the four plus miles towards home by heading west on 27^th Street.  It was a cloudy cold wintry day but I was determined to go home just for a few hours.

After walking a little over three miles, I got to the corner north of Grandfather Petersen’s farm and started the mile long trek south.  The air was very cold and the snow was crunchy as I walked along.

By the time I passed Grandfather Petersen’s lane, about three quarters of a mile, and started up the hill towards where my parents were living, I began to feel drowsy.  I wanted to lie down on the road and take a nap.  But some instinct told me that if I lay down I wouldn’t wake up.  I would freeze to death there on the road.  So I trudged on for that last quarter mile or so, just putting one foot in front of the other, and finally got to mother and dad’s house.  Oh, my, it felt so good to be home!

I stayed the afternoon, and prepared to return that evening.  Dad had an old Dodge coupe and somehow he had enough gas to take me back to the Jacobsen’s house that evening.  It is strange what can be done if desperate enough.  It was an experience I would probably never do again, but somehow I can’t forget that day.

I stayed and worked at the Jacobsen’s until I graduated from high school.  Then I got a job working in Cedar Falls for a Dr. Hearst.  From there on I kept working wherever people needed me.