From the eighth grade to coming of age at twenty-one, dad saw lots of work. Grandpa had acquired several farms by now and rented out some of them, sold some of them (but held the second mortgages) and the boys did all the work. I remember him telling me that grandpa spent more and more time in town hob-knobbing at the tavern but controlling what was done at the farm. Dad and his brothers were beginning to see that their dad wasn’t making the most of the crops they planted. He would often sell grain or hay to his Danish acquaintances rather than marketing for a better price. Dad tried to tell him that pop-corn for instance had a better market value than field corn. Grandpa wouldn’t listen and bought more field-corn to plant. In a rare display of non-compliance dad traded some of the field corn for pop-corn seed. On some of his inspections grandpa was puzzled as to why some of the corn in the back-field was smaller. He made several visits and never said anything. When the time came for harvest he personally had the pop-corn picked separately. As dad predicted the pop-corn brought twice as much as the field corn. He never gave dad the money even though he realized dad was right. It was a lesson to dad that “the old man” was in charge and it didn’t pay to cross him. Grandpa would live long enough to regret not listening to reason.

By the time dad was in his teens his older brothers had their own cars. They were in love with the automobile. It absorbed whatever time they had away from work. The stories they told of trying to race trains, horses and buggies, each other or any one on the road they met, were constant. Dad would tell of the first automobile he ever saw with such reverence it was almost a spiritual experience. The Andersen boys all had a car before anything else. Dad would go into a rendition of the different “makes” back then, which brother owned what, their escapades…….and his voice would trail off as he re-lived the scenes in his mind. Dad had a steady string of automobiles. He said anytime he lost a race with anyone he would determine to get a car like the one that beat him. He always wanted a faster one so he could “leave them all in the dust”. He mentioned cars I’d never heard of before….it seemed he could remember every car he ever owned. Of course with such punishment to their vehicles it was mandatory to be able to fix them. They would repair, fix it faster if they could and go try it out. Their interest was endless.

Finally, dad is a car-owner himself and that meant going into Blair to see what was going on. He loved movies and always saw a show when Saturday night came. He could remember every movie he ever saw and repeat the dialog right off the screen. Of course movies were different then……..there was an organ to play appropriate music for the flick and one had to read the conversations rather than hear them. None-the less they held dad and his friends captive once a week. After the movie he would always go down the street to the Racket Store to buy some candy to eat on the way home.

As he walked around the counter looking at the selection he became aware of a pretty little girl behind the counter. He couldn’t help noticing her big brown eyes, long auburn hair and tiny figure. She looked like a young doe that would run any minute if anyone were to pay too much attention to her. He was lacking in any confidence when it came to girls and could only ask for a nickels worth of chocolate covered peanuts. He gave her his money and walked away with his candy wishing he could think of some reason to stay. On his way back to the farm he munched on the candy and kept thinking about the girl behind the counter. He thought of himself as a “dumb Dane” that no girl would be interested in. That night a young woman with doe-like eyes went to sleep thinking about a shy handsome man who liked chocolate covered peanuts.

Tomorrow brings unexpected opportunities.
Until then,

Essentially Esther