By LELA TORGESEN WADE
Decades before automatic transmissions were even imagined, one of my stouthearted Norwegian great-aunts declared her independence. She learned how to drive her husband’s car … up to a point.
That pesky business of pressing the clutch with her left foot while shifting gears with her right hand and steering with her left hand never quite synchronized for her.
Undeterred by that minor technicality, she simply leaned on the horn through all crossroads and traffic signals at top speed … and never had an accident. Watching The Keystone Kops on television brought to life for me Daddy’s story of his aunt.
In the community where I grew up, many men worked at sawmills. The machinery was dangerous. One man whose children I knew from school had lost an arm. His adjustment to that disability amazed me. He somehow managed to change gears and steer his straight-shift pickup truck simultaneously, one-handed. He even made it look easy.
My sons fondly remember a particular autumn day when they were in their early teens and my father in his late 60s. Papa enlisted them for an all-day felling of trees. These boys had always spent most of their time outdoors – walking, climbing trees, doing farm chores – and were in great shape. But they swear their tongues were hanging out by noon, when their grandfather finally took a break.
They sat on logs eating the lunch he’d brought for them and drinking water. His one sandwich consisted of “a hunk of stinky cheese between two slices of bread without any mayonnaise.” The boys swear Papa ran circles around them all day, never seeming to tire.
They love to brag, “He chose the biggest, oldest oak trees – hard as a rock – and cut them down with a power saw. Then we helped him split those into firewood, loaded it onto the trailer behind the tractor, rode to the barn, unloaded and stacked it.” As I recall, my boys slept a good 10 hours afterward.
My mother was just shy of 70 when she decided the outside of her house needed a new coat of paint. She hired a neighbor who earned his living as a painter and carpenter. He did about half the job in two or three days, then went on a bender over the weekend. As of Tuesday morning he still hadn’t shown back up. Can you guess who completed the job? Mama, of course, with the help of a tall ladder.
In the county next to ours lived a middle-aged couple who were friends of my family. They were “salt of the earth” – ready to help a neighbor at the drop of a hat. One cold winter day our dog died. My husband had just begun his night shift at work, and it was about an hour before dark.
At that time our sons weren’t big enough to help, so I had to dig a grave. I reiterate… it was cold. The red clay at the edge of our woods was hard frozen. I managed to dig the hole about two feet deep and three feet wide before I gave out.
Then I contacted that neighbor on citizens band radio. He said, “Be glad to, but you gotta come git me ’cause my truck’s broke down.” He wouldn’t allow me to pay him. I later heard him bragging to mutual friends, “She ain’t no bigger than a minute, but she had that grave half dug ’fore she asked fer help.”
We all knew that same man imbibed a little moonshine now and then. There was an incident wherein his wife believed he’d been flirting with another woman. He denied it. They got into a big argument, which ended when she crowned him with her iron skillet. He recovered after a day or two and never gave her another reason to be jealous.