A Great Man

I can see a summer evening — 1928 — with dusk wrapping its arms around “The Old Castle.” Dad named our home in memory of his boyhood days at Friesenborg Castle in Denmark. Our open front porch held a half dozen neighborhood rag-a-muffins where Dad held forth as the Hans Christian Andersen of South Minneapolis.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Omar Norheim gave notice. (His nickname was “Kisser.”) He thought he had donned a bulletproof ghost vest for what was to come.

“I’m like you,” Red Marcy laughed nervously, “there are no ghosts, but I’d sure run like heck if I ever ran into one.”

Everyone laughed, releasing repressed fear, each trapped in a graveyard of his own making.

Dad made his way through this obstacle course of comments with a mischievous smile playing on his face. No sir, these ghost story Scrooges couldn’t detour him. He ran his hand distractedly through his graying hair. All eyes riveted on him in expectancy.

“I can still see the house in Lading.” Oh! Oh! Here we go again. You could have heard a pin drop. “Lading is a village in the tiny land of Denmark — far across the sea.”

All of us stood in our minds in front of this house in the small town of Lading. Roguishly he transported us to this far away fairyland. Fear numbed each one. Hands gripped tight. We knew something bad was about to happen.

“I know why she haunted this house there in Lading,” he announced with certainty. This laureate conductor of the macabre had a phantom gargoyle peeking around the corner of the house. “A wo-wo-woman ghost!” stuttered Peg Nielsen who always walked with a limp. “I n-n-never heard of a wo-wo-woman ghost.”

“Oh sure,” stated Dad emphatically. His stentorian voice carried as much authority as that of big Pastor Bartsch. “She was looking for the grave of her baby.”

“Looking for the grave of her baby?” echoed a barrage of voices. A female spectress walked among us to lay her hand on a small shoulder.

“Why wasn’t he buried in a cemetery?” queried Red Marcy. And Harry Nielsen blurted out with amusing innocence, “I’ve got a porch.”

“I don’t know why he had been buried under the porch there in Lading.” Dad threw his own apprehensive look about the porch. All eyes followed his.

“Nobody’s buried under our porch,” Lloyd said flatly with questionable assurance.

“That’s hard to tell,” opined Dad suspiciously. He gave them a moment of silence to listen to their hearts. He snapped off the silence like the breaking of a twig. “Have you ever seen a troll?”

“Wait! Wait! Wait!” all hollered. A cacophony of protest met his change of subject. “What about the lady ghost and her baby?” “Oh. Oh. Oh,” the beguiling storyteller chuckled, “the people who lived in that house began to dig under the porch.”

“Was she — the lady ghost — was she watching?” asked Dave Pace with studied interest. Dave knew dusky gremlins and goblins were prowling beyond the porch rail. He also knew the ghost police didn’t patrol this street tonight.

“No, she wasn’t watching,” filled in the storyteller, “they were digging in the daytime. You can see ghosts only at night.”

“I’m glad they didn’t ask me to dig,” one laughed excitedly.

“Me too,” chorused another.

“Finally they found the bones of the baby,” announced a relieved yarn spinner.

“Wow! a little skeleton!” exclaimed Dave. “The people of Lading had a funeral,” Dad uttered like a newspaper reporter, “and the little baby boy was given proper Christian burial in the churchyard cemetery.” This gave the story credibility.

“Did the lady ghost come around anymore?” Elmer wanted to know.

“No, no,” answered this guide to the gruesome, “all along she wanted this baby buried with her.”

“Boy!” quipped a relieved Omar, who didn’t believe in ghosts in the first place, “I’ll bet they were sure glad to get rid of her.”

A face peering through the spindles ventured in a quavering voice, “I’ve never seen a troll.” He was baiting Dad.

“They lived in the forest. Nobody has ever seen ‘em in town. Anyway they lived in the forest of Friesenborg castle. I played there when I was a boy like you. This is in the tiny country of Denmark.”

One would swear he knew the trolls on a first name basis, but he never stated outright that he saw one. Often he left us suspended as he ignited our imaginations. He tip-toed through our childlike openness. He talked about Hulgar the Dane who would someday save Denmark when there were not enough men left to stand around a barrel. On his magic carpet he took us to castles and dungeons. He helped us to hear the chains dragged back and forth in the attic.

We entered twilight swashbuckling and daring, but when darkness descended there was no pretense to naked bravery. How welcome the volunteer chaperone.

“Anybody goin’ my way?” sounded one in veiled friendliness.

“If I walk you home, who’s gonna walk me home?” countered a nervous voice.

Our neighborhood had become a graveyard policed by a woman ghost. She took no hostages. For sure I’m gonna pull the covers over my head tonight.

I want to jump ahead now to 1970. I sat with my two brothers and two sisters in the family room of the funeral home. Dad had just died.

Pastor Johnson asked us, “How would you characterize the life of your father?” He searched for words that would make Dad live again. In forty-eight hours he would publicly eulogize this ninety-year old man. What would he say? He looked to us.

Lloyd spoke up first. “I suppose you’re looking for something that would help you picture this man, something that would help you see him as we see him.”

Pastor Johnson nodded. Each one of us faced the question — How would you characterize your dad? — with hallowed feelings. Words seemed such feeble tools in a room pervaded with that Lenten atmosphere. Our minds traveled back in time.

I thought to myself. His death constitutes more than an end to an era. His departure closes down a micro-civilization. Not even a vapor. It’s gone. Disappeared. I find it sobering.

When I peek into the sanctuary of a departed loved one’s life — motion pictures — sacred pictures — dance across the slate of my memory. Imagine this: I am a trustee of his legacy.

Elmer broke the hushed reverence. “I think of all he saw across the years from eighteen-eighty-one to nineteen-seventy.”

Each one saw Dad’s life — glinting — from another facet of the diamond in this moment of solemn reflection.

“He loved America.” Evelyn jogged us back to the moment. That started a torrent of comments.

“Dad was never a complicated man,” appraised Betty.

“That’s for sure,” agreed Lloyd, “he never lost his childlikeness.”

“Everybody liked Dad,” I interjected.

“I think the reason for that, Norman,” Elmer rejoined with feeling, “was because he never talked about other people.”

“Do you remember,” chimed in Betty, “that he never allowed gossip around the dinner table?”

Pastor Johnson leaned forward as he began to see the colors for the portraiture of this man. He said to himself, “I wish I had known this man more intimately.”

“He whistled a lot” recalled another. “Don’t you remember him whistling in the bakeshop?”

“Oh yeah,” reminisced Evelyn, “he loved all kinds of music.”

“Talking about music,” said Elmer with a broad smile, “what about that song 'The Bells of Hell Go Ting a Ling a Ling’? That was a World War I song.”

“And what surprises me is that he knew all the words.” recollected Betty. “And what about ‘How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?’”

“Oh, that was by Patti Page. He loved Patti Page.”

Lloyd mentioned how hard Dad had worked in his life.

“You can say that again,” responded Elmer, “He was a roll-up-your-sleeves kind of a guy.”

My thoughts kaleidoscoped and tumbled through the years of my father’s life. I projected myself into a veritable hymn of fatherhood. Memories unleashed lyrics that are ineradicable.

“As I listen,” reflected the minister in a moment of quiet, “your father impresses me a great man.”

“He sure was,” exclaimed Elmer and Lloyd in unison. All of us felt a kinship with the insight of the pastor.

For each one the minister had sounded the right note. No one could have strummed a finer phrase. I can still hear the first words of his eulogy to a packed chapel: “We have come together today to say farewell to a great man.”

I mulled the sentence over in my mind ... We have come together today to say farewell to a great man. A great man. A great man. What made him great? I’ve spent some time thinking about that since that morning in the funeral home. How do you measure a man’s life? I can’t use the measuring stick of money … or success … or power … or status. None of these help me ascertain the dimensions of his life.

If you had the privilege of meeting him you would have noticed his voice first. Rich and baritone with a beguiling Danish accent. At five foot nine he stood erect with a strong build. His posture was that of a military man.

“Stand as straight as a candle, Stron,” was his admonish to me. A wisp of a smile played across his face as if he was up to some mischief.

Pronouncements came with such finality such apocalyptic certainty — a voice from the clouds.

“Stron, yop this is the Yellowstone Trail.”

I stood open-mouthed at the small concrete bridge between Lake Calhoun and Cedar Lake. A small sign identified the rail line — Yellowstone Trail. Oh yes, as an eight-year-old boy I thought it was God Himself speaking. Nothing could be added to this proclamation. How could I know it was nothing more than the name of a rail line?

Dad entered this world in the deep of winter in Denmark. He was born two weeks after Christmas, January 6, 1881, the second son to Laurs, age 32, and Kirsten, age 25.

I can picture the day when Kirsten said, “Laurs, today he crawled for the first time.” Or, “Laurs, today he took his first step.”

Out of deference to his wife, Laurs named him Rasmus. Kirsten’s maiden name had been Rasmussen. Laurs also had a half-brother named Rasmus. I wonder if somebody kidded Dad about his name when he came to America?

“Hey, Rasmus, you better get moving.”

He dropped the name and went by the initials “RC” or the name “Chris” from his middle name, Christian.

“Do you know how the fox gets the porcupine to turn over?” he would ask us as he taught us about forest lore. “He would pee on him.” Then he would laugh in embarrassment. He spent his boyhood in the forests of Friesenborg Castle. Here with his four brothers and dog Thor he enjoyed an idyllic childhood. He watched his dad care for the horses and coach of the Count. After an eighth grade education he left this charming life to travel to the town of Hamel.

So at the age of fourteen, in the year of 1895, weighing only sixty-four pounds, he commenced his bakery apprenticeship. In 1899 at eighteen he achieved the coveted title of Master Baker.

“You boys,” Dad later admonished his sons, “have to have a trade. I’m not raising you to move pianos all your lives.”

At eighteen he began the life of an itinerant baker. He put on his seven league boots to see the world. When he landed in a new town he went to the office of the baker’s union.

“Here are my credentials. They show me to be a master baker.”

He always found work. Between 1899 and 1912 he traveled through Denmark, Germany, and Norway. He and a good friend became bicycle racers.

“I’ll never forget that day,” he would laugh, “this farmer kid leaned out from the inside rail to see us coming. Wham! We collided heads. I went sprawling on the track but I wasn’t hurt. I never did find out what happened to that big kid.”

Many times he stood on the winner’s platform to be decorated for his achievements on the track. A drawer of medals gave credence to this, but he talked little about those badge-filled years. I wish I had asked him more about his years as an adventurer.

America. America. At first, no more than a word. Then it moved to acquaintanceship. He perked up his ears when America was mentioned. A new life. New adventures. New opportunities. His dream passed from “I could never do that,” to “Why not!”

This Gulliver with a dream in his pocket landed in the Norwegian harbor city of Trondhjem in 1912. A dandy of thirty-one with a straw hat, cane in hand, a sharp dresser with a clipped mustache. A lovely brunette with olive skin caught his eye, and they talked America as they hiked the forested hills that smiled down on this fjord city.

They crystallized their dream with Dad sailing first for America in 1913. He landed with his hands full of ambition but little money in his pocket. In desperation he took a job in a tire factory in Racine, Wisconsin. He hated it. It was not the picture his mind had painted on those pine-covered hills overlooking Trondhjem. Mom came over a year later and they were married in south Minneapolis in the spring of 1915.

When Dad was fourteen years old he started to work for Mr. Christiansen. A dignified man, an important man, a man who always wore an expensive suit — he owned the town bakery. Mr. C. became his life-long role model. Even though Dad often worked harder than an underling the persona he had of himself was that he was Mr. C. If he looked at himself in the mirror he saw himself as a successful Mr. C. This perception became the core to everything he did. He owned more than twenty-five different bakeries in his lifetime.

Dad enjoyed telling the story of his appearance before the draft board in 1917.

“How tall are you?” barked the sergeant to Dad.

“Nine foot five!” blurted out Dad in his anxiety. He could laugh at himself. But he was thirty-six years old, had two children, so they excused him from service.

1918-1923. Dad co-owned a bakery in Osage, Iowa with a Mr. Engstrom.

“Never have a business with a partner,” was the only thing he had to say about those years.

In 1923 he bought The Old Castle and moved back to Minneapolis.

“I have moved thirteen times,” he reminded us, “and I’m not moving anymore.” And he didn’t. He lived there forty-seven years.

By 1925 five children were scurrying about The Old Castle. As each child grew, to around the age of two, Dad fed the child on his lap during the dinner hour.

He never learned how to drive a car. Of course, he never owned a car. He never took a vacation. He never ate in a restaurant. He never swore. He never talked politics, sex or religion. He never was a churchman, and he never read books.

He possessed a robust common sense, a shoe-leather philosophy all his own. A number of phrases served as mileposts in his journey. One was “Stay away.” If he saw a hopeless situation that would spell nothing but trouble he simply stayed away. His counsel contained two words: “Stay away.” I’ve used those two words like a pair of shoes through the years.

“Aw ta dickens.” Another verbal tool from his vocabulary tool box. Who cares? Or, it’s only a bunch of humbug. As far as he was concerned the difficulty didn’t amount to a hill of beans. No wonder he never lost a minute of sleep worrying about a problem.

“Pyot.” A Danish word pronounced pee-yot. “That’s a lot of pyot.” Pyot would mean gibberish or nonsense. So when Dad said, “That’s a lot of pyot.” he was saying that talk doesn’t mean a thing.

How can one forget “Skock” Johnson. Skock meant chess in Danish. Chess Johnson. He and Dad loved to play chess. Several times a year they would sit in the little telephone room and play till 2 a. m.

“How can you get up at five a.m. to run a bakery when you don’t get to bed till two o’clock?” Mom would quietly ask.

“Skock” Johnson looked like an old prospector. Mom was always leery of old man Johnson. He had clued her in one night that he had no use for Christianity.

“You shouldn’t have anything to do with that man. Don’t you know that man’s an atheist? He has no use for God. You shouldn’t have anything to do with a man like that.”

Dad taught everyone in his family how to play the game of chess. After World War II young men —Pierre Virite, Howard Revac and Bob Comer — joined Dad and the family for an evening of chess. To this day they speak fondly of their memory of “Chris.”

“I don’t like to talk about dying.” Dad’s whimsical smile vanished from his face. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to buy a cemetery plot.”

His fear of death shadowed him most of his adult life. He spoke about it frequently.

His large open Bible lay on the chest of drawers in his bedroom. In the last decades of his life he closed his day with the reading of a Psalm. I can feel the heat from that 60 watt light bulb. I can see him standing ramrod straight in his pajamas. And I can hear his voice, still strong, reading aloud in reverence and meditatively.

Some trust in chariots.
Some trust in horses.
But as for me, I will trust in the Lord.
Psalm 20:7

His formal education took him through the eighth grade. He never walked the hallways of a high school. He knew nothing of Shakespeare or the so-called “greats” of the literary world. Now he stood in the company of words that were seeds. Seeds because they possessed life. He exchanged his fear for a new found confidence.

One thing have I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after,
that I may dwell in His presence
all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord
and to enquire in His temple.
Psalm 27:4

Alone he came to the discovery that these tiny words — these seeds — possessed the awesome power to change him. He saw himself in a mirror. As he gazed he was lifted out of the fear of death that had haunted him all his life. After that he never again talked about the fear of dying. He drew a line in the sand. Quietly he purchased six gravesites at Lakewood Cemetery. Now he joined the thin ranks of spiritual nobility who know that

 ... the one who dwells in the secret place
of the most high,
abides under the shadow of the Almighty.
Psalm 91:1

I can hear him mutter “ ... the secret place.” He taught us how to live, and he showed us how to die.

I think back to that morning in the funeral chapel. We brought his life into focus so we could see it better. Again and again the phrase echoes and reechoes through the halls of my memory. Your father was a great man. Your father was a great man. Isn’t there music or an angelic choir for such an hour as this?

I shiver when I think on that winter day so long ago when Kirsten gave birth to a baby boy. He runs with his brothers in the forest of Friesenborg Castle. I groan with pain when I see him crashing into the farm kid while leading the bicycle pack.

He strolls the foothills above Trondhjem and enthralls Mom with his dream. That’s him at the ship rail with a faraway look in his eye as he sails for the land of his dreams.

Oh so clear, him holding me on his lap and feeding me at the dinner table. Only yesterday we stood under that small railroad bridge and he declared, “Yop, Stron, this is the Yellowstone Trail.” Now the porch of The Old Castle has fallen silent.

Memories are more precious than rubies. They light the darkness of where I came from, and they help me to see who I am. Gee! I wish I had learned more about him when he was here to tell me. And I wish he knew how much I thought he was a great man.

God’s gentleness has made me great.
Psalm 18:35