Wannaskan Almanac for Thor’s Day, May 31, 2018 By WannaskaWriter

Violet Palm, Osnabruck, North Dakota, 1928

  Two weeks ago, on May 17th, I had an eventful day, as y’all know if you read this blog. Searchin’ on the web, I found a huge amount of stuff had happened on that date throughout history, but one thing I failed to mention then, I’ll mention now on May 31st, is that May 17th was my mom’s birthday. She would’ve been 109 years old.

Ma was forty-two when I was born, a fact that I’ve over-used in my on-going tenure as her fourth child, and her only son. I think she’d probably tell me not to dwell on that fact, as lots of women as old as that and older have birthed babies since time eternal, what’s the big deal? Knock it off. Let it go. Geesh, don’t you have other things to write about?

I guess I mention it out of routine, some list I check off as I begin my life story in conversation, should anyone get me started down that road, or gives me time as well as a few good writing pens and/or paper. But maybe I should start talking about Ma differently, what little of her I know because as I mentioned, she was so much older than me.

My mother, Violet Palm, was born in a early 20th century cedar log house, with dovetailed corners made by a high-craftsmen, namely her grandfather and father, on a real Minnesota frontier called Palmville Township, Roseau County, Minnesota, that was officially organized only four years before her birth. The township was named for her grandfather, Louis Palm, the first Euro-American homesteader there in 1895, fourteen years before she was born.

There was no running water in the loghouse, meaning no indoor toilet, no kitchen sink with water in the faucets. No pipes at all in the house except for the stovepipes of the kitchen woodstove and oven, and the wood-fired ‘furnace’ in the front room. There was no electricity. No lightbulbs in ceiling fixtures, no lamps except those burning kerosene whose light was just a little better than candles. No off/on switches by the doors. No TV. No radio. No screens in the windows--and this was in NW Minnesota where they invented and perfected mosquitoes for the consumption of humans and all other warm-blooded animals..

There was no telephone service until about 1911, I think, when her Grandpa Palm started the first telephone system in the township with six telephones, perhaps one resembling an early rural system like this as explained on this site: https://www.ntca.org/ruraliscool/history-rural-telecommunications. Further expansion on the subject I found on this site (with a beautifully detailed map) http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/the_vault/2015/03/16/LgTelephoneMap.jpg

But I digress.

Violet was the oldest of six kids. Her parents were scandanavian. Her father was of Swedish heritage, her mother of Norwegian heritage. They were both the first generation born in the United States, in their respective families. Likely they met in church or some community event.

Her dad was a good-looking, wild and wooly individual who enjoyed his drink. He was a jack-of-all-trades kind of guy, whether it was setting broken bones or digging graves or gunsmithing. He farmed and worked in the 'big woods' during the winter often staying 'in camp' there for weeks at a time.

Violet’s mother had to be a woman of some serious resolve, particularly when her father decided to brandish his revolver and shoot flies off the kitchen wall while she was cooking. (I saw the bullet holes near the ceiling myself.) Norwegian women were tough in those days. When Violet's dad was away at camp, or decided not to come home for some reason, her ma and the kids were left to do the chores around the farm. One time her ma put an ad in the paper looking for him because she hadn't seen nor heard from him in three weeks. She thought he was overdue ...

Did I mention there was no electricity? Water for livestock had to be pumped by hand, same for the house. No lights in the yard or in the barn. No flashlights either. Imagine kerosene lanterns swinging as someone outdoors carried them at night. Or imagine being the small child attempting to hand-milk a few semi-wild cows, with their necks pinned in stanchions, in the dim light of lanterns hanging from the low ceilings in the barn. 



Hey, these were cows with horns and that lived outdoors, day and night, that grazed on pastures in fields and woods, that defended their calves from wolves and bears--or were slaughtered in the process-- that were driven to madness and stampede by mosquitoes and hordes of flies before the days of any kind of insecticide. Horses were known to have suffocated by ingesting bugs. Check out: https://roseaucohistoricalsociety.org/ 

Wood had to be carried into the house by the armload to fill the woodbox near the stove, so they could cook or heat the kitchen. Snow had to be shoveled. Horses had to be harnessed and hitched to wagons for transportation. Often Mom used skis and snowshoes.

My mom, all five feet of her, could display a mighty temper. As I grew into my teen years, she was known to hiss, “My girls never talked to me that way!” being that she didn’t have much experience raising a teenage son. I believe what she said, sort of, because I know my middle sister was a rebel in her own right and her behavior didn’t always adhere with what Mom’s idea how her daughter should act--or say, back in the late 1940s. Still, she didn’t take any crap or back talk and even though she denied she ever talked to me that way, she did threaten to knock my teeth down my throat more than once.

No, I was lucky to have a mom like her. Could’ve been worse. She didn’t cuss, or smoke, or drink much, although she did enjoy a beer now and then with Dad. She liked to dance as she so loved music reminiscent of barn dance music, polkas and the like, but waltzes and two-steps too. She and Dad floated across the ballroom floor at the Moose Lodge a time or two when I was still a kid. Oh, she also kept a clean house, I might add, and ruled it.

She was my first counselor for things as I grew up, from first time sex notions, “I knew we’d have this talk someday...” to sharing morality issues with personal experiences. She told me one time, just as I entered the dating stage of my life that, “I liked my men, but I was never easy.” She’d always warn me, “Keep your hands to yourself,” and “No means no!” She was not ignorant. I could always go to her with questions about 'most anything.

She how enjoyed good humor and laughter. As a Palm descendant she was a fun-loving person by nature. She was rarely down or negative. She liked to whistle and I knew where she was in the house by listening for her tunes. Guess that’s where I get my penchant for a whistleable (made-up word) tune so rare in these days of rap. I recall old Tennessee Ernie Ford and Jimmy Dean ballads, Elvis Presley, and movie show tunes from some dark shadowy era of my childhood days that I likely heard on our kitchen radio as I got ready for school. “Sixteen Tons “, "Big John", and "Oklahoma," for instance.

Mom died in 1982 at the age of 73. She had an enlarged heart due to an earlier situation I don’t recall. She and my dad had been married 53 years. Dad died in 1992 at the age of 87. They were good people. I try and remember their birthdays. 
Oh, Dad's birthday was May 27.