The Minnesota Farm Woman

In 1919, the world was probably a little bit happier than it had been the year before. The war was over, the flu pandemic was ending, and my grandfather was in love. Grandpa lived in Forbes, Minnesota, and my grandmother lived on a farm a few miles down the road, somewhere between Cherry and Iron. My cousin Deb and I, both writers and the family genealogists, travelled back and forth along the road, visiting cemeteries, telling family stories, and getting my uncle’s memories down on tape for future generations. Unfortunately, we can only guess about the budding romance between my grandparents back in those days, because they died long before we became interested in family history. We don’t even know how they met. It is kind of hard to imagine carrying on a kind of long-distance romance without our modern methods of both transportation and communication, but none of us would be here today if each generation hadn’t figured it out in one way or another. Grandpa had his own method of courtship. Every night, after work was done and his chores were completed, he stole the hand car from the railroad depot and pumped iron all the way to Iron. Certainly, if I said “borrowed” it would make Grandpa sound a little less delinquent, but family lore has it that he often didn’t return home until dawn. Perhaps being the son of a founding father, business owner, and justice of the peace had some perks, or perhaps he just never got caught. He and my grandmother got married that year and moved away from their small farming villages, as did so many other young people in those days. Bigger towns and cities were exciting places to live, and the world was changing. If they were alive today, I think they would be really surprised at just how much it did change. They enjoyed modern city life with electricity, indoor plumbing, and no cows to milk. They loved to go out dancing, and managed to do so quite often while raising five sons. They visited their respective family farms fairly often, but never moved back. These days, the bustling little main street of my grandfather’s youth is no longer there. The abandoned Forbes railroad depot, which was so longed for just a generation before, still stands, but it may or may or may not be the original building. Cousin Deb spent many hours sorting though and scanning old family photographs, many of which are unidentified. We peer at them closely, trying to find familiar faces. There, in the midst of faded photographs and someone else’s memories, is a picture of a railroad hand car, surrounded by young people. There couldn’t possibly be two of them in this rural farming area, so it has to be the same one. My grandmother is the second one on the right. Looking at the sheer size of the car and the width of the tracks makes me realize just how hard it must have been for my grandfather to pump it by himself, night after night. Of course, looking at her beautiful young face, it maybe wasn’t so hard after all. I’m very glad he thought she was worth the trip.