Childhood Recorded Memories~Ross W. Colberg

My Dad left us three amazing stories from when he was a child.  I love these...they seem to come out of a very, very long time ago.  So long ago in fact, it is hard for me to fathom life at that time for someone that I actually knew as well as I knew my Dad.

Baby Food or Aunt Agnes' Answer to Gerber's

"Aunt Agnes, my Dad's sister, was a very resourceful person and I have vivid recollections of her feeding her babies.  This was the time before canned baby food so she improvised.  When her children graduated from milk to solid food she would take small bites of food, generally meat, potatoes and bread, put them in her mouth, chew well, roll into a little ball in the palm of her hand and pop it into her baby's mouth.  It seemed to work well because the little ones would anticipate it like a baby bird and would relish each morsel.  It didn't seem to harm them any as she had at least six and they were all very healthy.

My mother's reaction to this was one of disbelief and she abhorred the idea.  She preferred a knife and fork to get the food fine enough.  I am kind of glad Mom took this position!"

Chewing Tobacco or How To Get Sick In A Hurry

"I recall one incident that I shall never forget!  It was my first and last experience with chewing tobacco.  My Dad was going to take two loads of wheat to the grain elevator in Ventura, North Dakota.  I was about six or seven years old and my job was to drive a team and wagon load of wheat.  It wasn't a hard job and kind of fun.  I followed my Dad and his load.  The horses were gentle and followed his lead with no trouble.  The so-called roads were dual ruts worn by other wagons before us. 

We left early in the A.M and arrived and had unloaded our wheat by about lunch time.  There were no restaurants in the little town and the local butcher capitalized on that by provided local farmers with a place to get a snack.  

Liverwurst..possibly the wurst all right.

He had liverwurst and other sausages along with bread, crackers and cheese.  The real treat was Nehi Pop.  My Dad had malt liquor (this was before the day of 3.2 beer and sometimes I suspect home brew was also available to him.)

After our feast we were about to head for home and my Dad took out his plug of tobacco and whacked off a chunk with his pocket knife.  I must have looked rather wistful because he looked down at me and said, 'You think that looks pretty good, huh?'  My reply was affirmative so he gave me a piece about the size of a dime with the admonition, 'Don't tell Mama!' I really felt like a man as I climbed up on the spring seat of the wagon and headed for home chewing my chow.

Now wagons in those days didn't have rubber tires, but ran on steel rims.  So in spite of the spring seat it was a very rough ride in the empty wagon.  Dizziness reared its ugly head and I soon had to wrap the reins around the seat and let the horses follow the team ahead and lie down in the wagon bed. The ride got rougher and rougher and I got sicker and sicker.  I finally lost my good lunch and Nehi Pop.

I recovered before we got home but evidently my color wasn't too good because my mother questioned both of us about my condition.  I was ashamed to tell her I couldn't chew tobacco like my Dad and he was afraid to tell her what he did!  My Dad's reaction was of concern and some amusement.  He said, 'That can be lesson to you, son, not to chew tobacco.'  And you know I learned that lesson well.  I haven't had a chew since!"

My First Job Or The Saga of Ballinger's Bull

The first recollection I have of working for pay was when I was about eight years old.  I was living with my parents on my grandparent's farm in Mc Intosh County, North Dakota.  My cousin, Virgil, also lived in the area about four miles from us.  He was eighteen and made a deal with Mr. Ballinger to drive his old bull to market at the nearest rail head at Lehr.  The price to be paid for the ride was $1.00.  Virgil asked me if I would like to drive the animal with him and he would split the fee with me.  We started early on horseback one morning to drive that dumb bull 16 miles across open country.  (It was more like 26 miles 'as the bull runs!') 

It was in the fall of the year so crops had been harvested and there were few fences so the old boy had plenty of room to run.  It was a hard day's ride to the rail head and back but as I look back on it it was exhilarating fun in the outdoors and quite an accomplishment for a couple of kids.  I think some of the neighbors were laying bets we'd never get the bull to market.

We did it though and then sat back and awaited our pay of $.50 a piece.  For me it never came to pass and to this day I don't know if Mr. Ballinger got he bull to market for free or if Virgil reaped the full benefit.   I guess the moral of the story is you can drive a bull to market but you may not get your just reward!" 

Here they are, Daddy...1925! 
Virgil is in the clear!

Ross W. Colberg Journal Entry #1

This week I wrote about my Dad in celebration of what would have been his 95th birthday.   I included an edited version of the introduction to the book I wrote about him just months subsequent to his death.  Today I want to continue that entry with a short introduction to his planned writings of his life history and a trilogy of short stories he included before his untimely death.  The way that all happened is a reminder that it is never too early to get started on preserving our memories.  We never know when our time on earth will end.

I had given Dad a journal for Christmas a couple of years before he died.  I asked him the following Christmas to share what he had written.  He sheepishly told me he hadn't done it yet.  So I asked him to please start and to give it to me for my birthday in July.  He agreed.  Over the next couple of months he made a few entries.  With no warning he started having cardiac issues in May and was gone by May 21, 1979.  My dad was youthful and active and physically appeared to be the perfect picture of health.  We just never know. Not exactly the birthday present I was hoping for that is for sure.

For months after his death Mom and I scoured the house because she knew he had been working on it.  Now their home was very orderly and so there just were no piles of stuff to look through, and not many out of the way places it might be hiding.  We were just baffled by what had happened to it.  One day while putting something away in their coat closet I was impressed to reach up on to a shelf that was completely empty above the coats.  My fingers grazed the top of something that looked like this.

If you know what this is you are dating yourself!

Some ancient computer printing paper was lying completely flat and not visible from my perspective.  On that paper I found the four entries my dad had made.  I guess he had planned to copy it into his journal once he was satisfied with his draft.  This treasure is something I cherish.  Ironically his life was cut short and he was just beginning but, it was precisely the time period that his sister, Grace, could not have supplied for us, she being five years younger than he was.  With her writings and my mom's we were pretty much able to reconstruct his early life for the book.  I do not view this as a coincidence but as a miracle.  He brought us to the time period when his father died, which is exactly where she picked it up.  They were eleven and six respectively at that time.

Wild Prairie Rose~North Dakota State Flower

 Here is what he wrote for us:

" I was born in Ashley, North Dakota on August 8, 1917.  I do not have full recollection of the day but was told I was born at Grandma Godfrey's house.  Grandma and Aunt Theresa were in attendance at the delivery as they both claimed to have given me my first spanking!  I don't know if any doctor was in attendance but doubt it, because it was such a small town and I don't think there was a doctor in the community at that time.  (Later old Doc Campbell arrived and met all our needs.)  So, a new baby boy arrived and now-what to name him?  My Dad evidently wanted to name me Jack, but my mother objected because Grandpa Colberg--A Swede with a heavy accent and trouble with his J's, would have called me "Yak!"  So somehow they came up with Ross Willard!  I have no idea where they got these names but they have served me well as a means of identity and after all, that is the purpose of a name. (Ed. Note:  My grandmother once told me she selected the name Ross because it was a character name she liked in one of her favorite books.  I am not sure about the Willard.)

I remember all of my grandparents except Grandpa Godfrey. He was bed-ridden with a stroke when I was born and died about two years later.  He and his parents came from Michigan in the late 1800's to settle in Hoskins Lake which was about three miles west of Ashley.  They came in covered wagons and suffered many hardships such as Indian and prairie fires scares.  More and more settlers came to the area and they evidently decided to move to town to the present site of Ashley.  Grampa Godfrey operated a livery stable and also was Deputy Sheriff up until the time he became ill.  I remember Grandma Godfrey as always bustling about the kitchen.  Most of her ten children were away from home by the time I arrived, so I suppose she was even busier in the early days!  She had three boys, James, Glen, and Martin Jr., and seven girls, Elsie, Minnie, Nellie, Alice (my mother), Eleanor, Theresa and Hallie who died in infancy. Grandma was a Christian and quite active in the Methodist church and the ladies' society called the Thimblebees.  

Many years later, she remarried, Grandpa Moore, who was also quite religious and my first recollection of table prayers was at their house.  He was a carpenter by trade, but pretty much retired by the time I knew him.  He always had a big garden so I learned how to hoe weeds when I went for a visit!  Grandpa Moore died and Grandma lived for a while with my Aunt Elsie in Linton, North Dakota and later at St. Vincent's Home in Bismarck.  She died there and must have been nearly ninety. 

I don't remember much about the Colberg side of my family.   I do know that my Grandpa John and Grandma Josephine came to America from Stockholm, Sweden.  I think their oldest son, Frank was born there but, the rest of their children were born in this country.  They had two girls, Agnes and Delia, and five boys, Frank, Fred, Philip (my father), George and Victor.  I have faint recollections that Grandpa Colberg worked in logging and the sawmills in Sweden.  He was not a tall man but had big arms and great shoulders which might bear out the fact that he did heavy work in his early life.  He became a farmer after homesteading in the Dakota Territory, and they lived in a sod shanty.

It must have looked something like this.

Grandma Colberg spent her time in the kitchen also, and wore starched, blue, gingham dresses and always had a shawl or cap on her head.  She smoked a corncob pipe with cheap tobacco called corncake--she was kind of a crusty old gal who always spoke her mind and would switch to Swedish when she couldn't talk fast enough in English.  (Or when she didn't want me to understand!)  I couldn't understand Swedish, but my Dad could and my mother had learned to understand and speak a little.  Grampa died when I was about six and Grandma when I was eleven, just ten days after my Dad.  

Great Great Grandma Colberg~Sheesh!

Can't you just picture this image Dad leaves 
for us of this "Crusty Old Gal?

My mother, Alice Godfrey was born in Ashley in 1896.  She went through high school there and I think she attended Ellendale Normal School for a short time or at least long enough to be able to teach in a one room rural schoolhouse.  She and Aunt Elsie were both school teachers before they married.  

My Dad, Philip Albert Colberg, was born in Montrose, near Sioux Falls, South Dakota in 1886.  I know of two jobs he had in his early years.  He worked for a time in a creamery and to his dying day he would not eat butter.  I guess it was because of the sanitation or lack thereof that he noted while working in the creamery.  He wouldn't even allow my mother to cook with it.  When she wanted to tease him she would set the butter near his plate at the table.  He would  give it a shove with some force and then put jelly in his bread.  He also spent time working on the railroad.  Later he became a farmer which was very hard work and not always rewarding.  Being a farmer did have one good point though--it kept him out of World War I."

Thus ended the journal entry that Dad began in the spring of 1979 and was never able to finish.  It was just a beginning but I will always love him for the valiant effort he made to do it just because he knew how important it was to me.  In the front of the journal we eventually found he wrote the following...

"This journal is a gift to my dear daughter, Bonnie, and is dedicated to her to share with her children and grandchildren.  I also include my good sons, Steve and Gary, so that they may know a little more about their Dad's early life on the prairies of North Dakota.  As I start to write I have no idea what will come out but, I will do the best I can to try and be as accurate as my memory allows.

With love to all of you, Dad" 

Wow, this has been a real experience for me today sitting here retyping all of this.  It is amazing how deeply the joy and grief can be buried when your father died 34 years ago.   That stiff upper lip I have been displaying for 33 of those years is disappearing over this past year.  My tear ducts leak frequently and it feels good.  Family history has helped me get real with myself and my deep down feelings and has been very therapeutic for me.  More than anything it has helped me know what really are the most important things I have left to do during my life.  It is all about people, relationships and love.  Not just family but cherished friends too. What a blessing to know where I am going to focus my energies and efforts.  I love it when the Lord takes your hand and leads you in the way you should go.  I could never deny that that is exactly what is happening to me on a daily basis.  My heart is filled with thanksgiving and love today.

♥ Bonnie

Happy Birthday, Daddy (Ross W. Colberg 1917-1979)

My Dad would be 95 years old were he alive today.  Sadly he died when he was 61 years old.  So very young, way too young with the potential of many years still left unlived.   He was taken from this life due to an embolism in his lung after his second heart attack.

My Dad died when I was 30, I really miss him. It is hard to imagine that I have spent more than half my life with him gone. It's funny though that when someone impacts you like a parent does...they are never far away.

My Dad grew up in North Dakota and he was a great guy. His Father passed away before my Dad became a teenager and that placed some huge hardships upon my Grandmother to raise her two children. Consequently, my Dad spent a lot of time away from his Mom and sister while growing up. Another family, the Vanorneys (God bless them), took him in so that he could continue his schooling while my Grandmother sold all the farm equipment and moved from Ashley to Bismarck to go to school. She eventually became a court reporter and then was able to survive. My Dad had a college degree which was rare in those days, from the University of North Dakota in accounting.

He worked endless hours to make it happen with no financial support from his Mom, as she was barely making it herself. He was very athletic and handsome and would get the most gorgeous golden tans in the summers. He was super smart and had a great sense of humor. Here is a photo of Dad at 19. Isn't he a cutie? Had he been LDS he would have been ready to go on a mission about this time.

My Dad was a gentle and quiet man. He didn't talk your ear off, but when he spoke he had something important to say and people listened. He got a position with the Firestone Tire Company in Minnesota after he graduated from college. My Mom had just moved there from South Dakota to go to beauty school and that is how they happened to meet in 1939 or 40. I think they were the cutest couple. Here they are on one of their dates before they got married.

The Original Rossie and Jo-Jo Bean
I just love the clothes and shoes from this era, do you?

Dad served for nearly six years in the Army during WWII. After the War he accepted a position in California with Standard Oil and one month after he started working there I was born. I was thinking about how our decisions truly do affect the generations to come. Had they not moved to California just weeks before I was born, I would not have married Jim, joined the church, had the kids and grandkids we do, etc. etc. It is amazing how important each big decision really is. Everything would have been different in Minnesota.  We don't realize how every decision we make affects our posterity and our history. 

My Dad was a great father. Sometimes I wish he would have offered more direction, but his parenting style was more like ~ train up a child and then let them try their wings. He always trusted me and supported my decisions. My Dad was just such a kind person. People that worked for him would always tell me what a gentleman he was and that he was the best and kindest boss they had ever had. He was always so even-tempered and kind at home too. I think I can only remember him ever being really mad at me two times in my whole life and both times I deserved it! When he got annoyed about things he would grind the gear shift in the car and that was about it.

Dad's Retirement Picture

 I believe this is my Dad's College graduation picture.  He went to the University of North Dakota and received his degree in Accounting and Finance.  That was as much an accomplishment for his widowed mother as ti was for him.  Although he paid for every cent of his education his mother made many sacrifices for both her children after my grandfather, Philip Albert Colberg  died when their kids were young.  The resolution on this picture is terrible, but it does give it kind of an ethereal look which I do like.  He was so handsome and such a sweetheart.  The perfect gentleman in every way.

Some of my favorite times with my Dad where when I was a young adult and I worked in San Francisco at Standard Oil with him. We commuted together for a few years and that was a great one on one time for us. I was always very proud to be his daughter when I would meet his colleagues from work or anywhere for that matter. Dad worked endless hours in the Lutheran church, he was a great servant for the Lord. I really miss my Dad! I know that families are forever though and that helps!

The best part of our relationship was when he became a Grandpa and that is when I really saw him open up and adore our kids! He had a great smile and laugh and I can remember seeing more of both during those times. He was the first Grandfather in our town to work in a classroom as a volunteer when Jen was in kindergarten. He called Christopher his Little Buddy and spent lots of hours over here playing with the kids. Sadly he had only a few months with Laura before he was taken home.

The sentiment here is just perfect I think!

After my Dad died I wanted to write his life story.  I had tiny children and an old ratty typewriter but I plunked along on it and finally got it done.  It is not long and it is a compilation of writings from several of us close to him.  It was kind of a family/friends effort to deal with our grief at his sudden death.

Here is an edited version of the introduction to the book...

The History of Ross W. Colberg

Complied in December of 1979,

 just months after his death on May 21, 1979

It has occurred to me many times in recent months just how fleeting a man's life on this earth really is.  As we go about our daily activities, days turn into months and then years.  Time passes much too quickly, almost unnoticed sometimes.  Each of us becomes myopic, getting rather caught up in the immediate concerns of the day or the hour.  Rarely do we stop and ponder the more global and eternal aspects of our lives.  Each of us places the utmost importance upon who we are, what we will become, our life goals, our opinions, or values and beliefs, our family and friends, and whatever else gives meaning to our lives.

This is all well and good but where does it fit into the over all scheme of things?  When one thinks of all the people that have lived upon the earth, how significant really are the achievements, activities, loves, joys, trials and heartaches of any one individual?   Deep within my heart I believe that they are very important, not only to us but to our contemporaries and our posterity.  How deeply we value our own lives affects all that we do.  What we do affects those around us.  What we leave behind affects generations to come. 

My father's life on this earth is over but I cannot bear to let his memory and his legacy die with him.  Those things cannot just fade into nothingness with just the passing of a few years.  That would truly make his life's experiences and contributions to all of our lives seem insignificant, indeed!  I cannot let that happen, it would be such an ungrateful thing to do.

As I have begun to research our family history I think that it is very sad that we need only to go back one generation before little is known about our ancestors beyond their names and in some cases we don't even have that.  Isn't it ironic that those important lives, no less significant than our own, of people that literally sacrificed for us personally and contributed to who we are today, are now lost to us?  That is just wrong.  Thinking about the sacrifices we make for our own kids brings the reality of this to the forefront for me.  We need to remember and never forget them.

We all could have learned so much had family records and journals been kept.  That is why I gave Dad a journal two years ago for Christmas and asked him to fill it up with stories and the events of his life.  He was a little reluctant and felt no one would want to read it. He did write some very important things, (mostly because I begged...)and for this I will be eternally grateful.  They are recorded here. The rest of what you find here is a compilation of the things we each remember about him.  Herein you will find things you never knew about him as we all share our own personal memories with each other, our love for our father, husband, brother, uncle, grandfather and friend will grow.  I hope these things will bring comfort, peace and strength to us all.  I hope we will all resolve to leave our legacy for those left behind.  What better inheritance could there be?.........

To be continued if there is an interest.....B