Dad was born in 1869. He was raised on the Tolstedt farm at Laurel, Iowa. After Grandmother died they quit farming and went to Nebraska. This was around 1893. The three boys (Edward, Lewis, Joseph) went over to northeast Nebraska, not very far from Missouri River (they actually settled in Buffalo County quite a distance from the Missouri River). The reason Dad told me about this was that he swam across the Missouri River when the river was high. He thought that was an accomplishment.

Evidently they did not stay in the farming business very long. It was probably a pretty tough life. During the period when he was in Nebraska Dad got a lung infection just like his mother had gotten. The boys got alcohol and spread it over his body, covered him with a blanket and revived him. In 1892 they probably did not know what strep throat was.

Sometime in there Uncle Lew abandoned the farm in Nebraska and learned how to run a railroad station. It was Lew who taught my dad, Joe, how to run a station as well as to do telegraphy. After Joe learned all that stuff, he got a job at the Chicago Great Western Railroad in about 1908. This job was in a little town called Acme, Minnesota, which does not even exist on the map anymore. It was a small, poor-paying station, costing more than they were making on it; so they moved my dad to Welch, Minnesota in 1912. During this time both Lew and Dad were at th railroad stations. Lew was at Stanton, Minnesota and Dad was at Welch, Minnesota. Dad taught me a lot about railroad stations. (I learned telegraph.) Then I went to school instead.

Joe was generally a healthy man, over six feet, rather handsome. He had one peculiar trait. When I was in early high school he went down to visit his sister Bertha in Oklahoma. While there he started talking with Bertha’s husband who was a Christian Scientist. Dad became a Christian Scientist. My mother did not share Joe’s interest in Christian Science. My mother was Catholic, Bohemian, but we lived in a Swedish community. All the Swedish were Lutheran. There was no Catholic church. We were isolated. When we went to church we had a missionary. He came every Sunday, meeting in the schoolhouse. The church was the American Sunday School Union. It’s home was in St. Paul, Minnesota. They came to our town for a meeting.

Joe’s main hobby was the Christian Science religion. He had plenty of time to study religion because the railroad was declining. Their work had been taken over by trucks. Dad did not have much work. He had a garden and a good job. He still got paid.

Another hobby Dad had was reading books by Abraham Lincoln and telling stories that Abraham Lincoln told. He read them over and over again and got to be an expert on stories about Abe. He also read “Science of Life.. Scriptures”, a paper monthly, produced by Christian Science Establishment.

Another feature of Joe was he was color-blind. He was employed at a small railroad station and was never able to occupy a position using red and green signals. I, too, have the same trouble with green and red (as does the senior author). That seemed to be a hereditary trait of Tolstedts.

During his last years he lived on a farm in Newberg. He spent those years monkeying around on the farm. By that time the boys, Glen and Howard, had started a mink business. My two brothers, Howard and Glen, had to quit that business because of the war.

Dad was a Democrat with radical ideas about how government should be. He was in tune with the general population but Uncle Lew was not. Uncle Lew stayed a good Republican until he died. I think I might say in my own opinion Dad was a very fine man. He taught me to read. When Grandfather Ulrich died, he left about $5,000 to each of the children. What was Dad going to do with all that money? It was a lot of money then. (I could buy an ice cream cone for a nickel.) He went to northern Minnesota and bought 160 acres in the Red River Valley. It cost $125 every year to help pay for a drainage ditch. After the 1929 crash he gave up ownership to that 160 acres. He let it go. He left it to the state rather than pay taxes. After paying for the drainage ditch he didn’t make a dime. Had he invested his money he would have been a rich man for the rest of his life, but he was too much of a farmer to invest in steel or other industry. Dad made $1500 a year. He would save $1000 and put it in the bank. He went around to the bank and said he did not want 4%. He wanted 5%. They said, of course. Then the bank closed. He probably got $100 out of a thousand. The old man, Joe, took care of a garden and mother helped, but he was the main gardener.

On Sunday, Dad was always on religion. Dad professed to be a Methodist until he went to visit Aunt Bertha, where he came into contact with Christian Science. Mother always threatened to hit him over the head with a broom. He died reading Mary Baker Eddy. To complicate religion, Mother was Catholic and we lived in a town that was inhabited by Lutheran Swedes.

Dad had his religious bug and he was sitting there in the railroad station, never able to overcome wanting to be a preacher. He got stuck on the railroad. I remember once someone said that Christian Science was neither science nor religion. I never discussed religion with my father. I did not want to quarrel with him. Joe was always praying. Mother would get mad at him for carrying on like that.

Dad became a Christian Scientist when he went down to visit Aunt Bertha in Oklahoma. Bertha’s husband worked for an electric Company. He was a Christian Scientist. Dad stayed with that all his life. Christian Science had a special appeal for the American middle class, not the rich ones or poor ones, but in between. What did my mother think about that? She was Catholic. I need not say anything else. She stayed Catholic all her life. The Swedes stuck with theirs and the Catholics stuck with theirs. I am a hybrid, a cross culture. Dad’s head was long and narrow. The Bohemians have a round head. I talked with the preacher at the Presbyterian Church. He said you could always tell a Bohemian. Their eyes are shaped like an almond. After looking at pictures I realized that was true. I would not call my mother intellectual. Anything intellectual came from my old man. My dad retired at age 65 and settled in Newberg, Oregon, a beautiful spot with a nice climate. Once in a while it gets cool, but not much. That was before World War II. After a couple years Dad died, in 1937. He was still a young man by modern standards. For many years he had complained about gallstones. After he had been in Newberg a couple of years he died. I went out to the funeral on the Burlington Railroad. I wondered what was the cause of his death. Something was wrong in his stomach area. The doctor was not able to make a diagnosis. After about a week the boys, Glen and Howard, said they would get another doctor. He diagnosed it as gallstones, but it was too late. His intestines had become infected and he died. They did an autopsy and found a gallstone had obstructed his intestine. He died from that infection and obstruction. At the hospital in Portland, the doctors wanted to preserve the gall bladder and stone after autopsy and have it on their exhibit for the education for future doctors. Gallstone shaped like a fifty-cent piece was unusual. My mother refused. (Author’s note: Joe likely died of gallstone ileus. This is a condition in which a large gallstone migrates into the intestine and causes an obstruction.)

Dad was buried in a cemetery in Newberg, Oregon. In 1952, after Mother died, she was buried in the same place. My Dad (Joe) was born in 1869. Dad had insurance on his death. At the time of Dad’s funeral an insurance agent asked Lew when Dad was born. Dad was born in 1869, but Lew told the insurance agent he was born in 1870. That cut my mother out of a little money that she was to receive after Dad’s death.

My two brothers, Glen and Howard both died about fifteen years ago. (Note: Glen died in 1976 and Howard died in 1989.) They are buried in the same cemetery in Newberg, Oregon.

I spent most of my time in younger years swimming in summer in the Canyon River running through the town of Welch. A vacation was not in style very much in those days. Dad would go away for a few days when he could get someone to take his place for about a week. I was interested in flowers, collecting all the flowers I could find, drying them, etc. I was a real fuzzy wuzzy. I spent most of my time in the winter by the fat bellied stove. I didn’t depart from it very far until it warmed up in the spring and I could go out. When spring came I was out watching the flowers. Crocus would come out in early spring. Mother had a chicken house. We always had food, chicken on Sunday and all the vegetables we needed.

In Welch, Minnesota in the early 1900’s there was a poor education system. It was a rural schoolhouse. Most of the kids I went to school with were Swedish and spoke Swedish. I walked from Welch to home at the depot, where we lived, about three miles. There were no buses those days. I really was not in school enough. It was too cold, -10ºF weeks in a row. I only went to school in fall and spring. In the meantime Dad taught me to read. We got the daily newspaper, the Minneapolis Tribune or Democratic paper and I would read. If I could not read a word, I would ask Dad. I learned phonetics those days. Dad was a good teacher. My brothers, Glen and Howard, never cared about education. They cared about chasing mink, skunks, skiing and having a good time.

I went to high school in Red Wing; I rode the train back and forth to Welch. Sometimes I stayed in a couple’s house in Red Wing. We lived there until I graduated from high school in about 1924. The first girl I got my eyes on was Mary Ann Carlson. She had to have her tonsils taken out, because in Minnesota the winters were so cold you ran the risk of freezing the back part of your mouth. Her tonsils were taken out in Red Wing, Minnesota. By accident they severed a nerve going from her brain to her lung. The lungs created so much mucus that she drowned in her own mucus and died. She was about twenty-two years old. That was my first admiration. (Author’s note: Death following tonsillectomy did happen. It is not the minor operation many thought it to be.)

We did have a car. Keeping a car running was a major occupation. We always went to town on Saturday night, to Red Wing, Minnesota. Mother would buy things at the grocery store and then come home. We also went to the movies on Saturday night. There were two movies in Red Wing. The shows would run two times a night and we would go see both of them. My mother was more provincial, a farm girl, from Bohemia, southwest of Germany. The Czech language is quite different from the German language. Czech is difficult. I never began to learn it. When we went to Grandmother Roman’s every summer, when I was a kid, I never understood a word they said. They spoke Bohemian. We stayed about two weeks.

When Grandfather Ulrich died, Dad and I went down to Aunt Mae’s in Des Moines to the funeral. My brother Glen and I stayed at Aunt Mae Rice’s house. My brother Glen ran across a porch Harry Rice had just painted and made tracks in the fresh paint. It made Uncle Harry pretty mad. Another thing I remember was a statue of an old Civil War general in Des Moines. I took a fancy to that. I was just a kid, about five years old. Twenty years later I saw the same statue on a visit to Des Moines.

While I was in high school dad taught me how to do telegraphy. Dad got the idea I could get a job like he did. Eventually I went down to the dispatcher, as Dad said I would be able to run a station. The dispatcher was in St. Paul. He said he would talk with me. I put on my nice blue suit. The dispatcher told me they did not have anything on the Great Western. He also told me the railroad was not making money like they used to and to look for another kind of work. It upset me rather drastically. I went home and told Dad about it. He asked me what I wanted do and I told him I wanted to go to college. The old man was kind of hesitant about that. My mother was definitely against it. She said it cost too much money. After graduating from high school I stayed home one year before I went to Luther College. Then in 1929 my Dad said I could go to Luther. Mother objected, but Dad said I was going to college, period. I was always thankful for that Dad made enough to send me to Luther. He gave me one third of his income to go to school and saved money to boot. It cost him $500 a year, four years cost was $2000. At that time he was making about $1500 a year. That was good wages then. That year I worked on the railroad section for thirty-five cents an hour. I paid for the first semester of my college from money I saved working at the railroad.

I don’t know what I would have done had I not gone to Luther. At that time it was men’s school only. I got a good liberal arts education, math, history, Greek, English, German, and Latin. I never got over using Latin.

I was lucky, after the depression starting in 1929 many people did not have jobs. I always had enough for room and board, and enough to come home at Christmas. I was lucky that I went to college.

I had quick consumption in World War II at Camp Barkley. I was in the hospital three weeks. The doctor came in at the end of the third week and said to the nurse “you had better give him some penicillin”. She gave me some of that and I was ready to leave in a couple days. That infection showed I had the same weakness as the rest of the family. They took me back to the Company and on the second night they put me on guard duty. Then I had a relapse and had to go back to the hospital for another week.

I have this “Puritanism” deeply enthroned in my being. Like my father, I save my money (I would not even put a quarter in the machines in the gambling joints at Reno even though my curiosity demanded that I see them). I do not like doctrine, but am highly theoretical in my outlook, dominated by modern science. At another time I might have been a religious keeper of the doctrine, however, Dad was a nut on Christian Science and made his prayers until his last breath, true unto death. You might say that these things are learned, but I don’t believe it. It comes with inheritance; like ignorance, or the tendency to be so, among others, and most others at that. Aunt Mae was this way, too, but I thought that Lew played it rather “cool”, though very attentive.

I can’t see. I have macular degeneration. I have suffered from this for fifty years. I am now ninety. Did I get that genetically? I think so, from my Mother who had it for sure. A picture of her and her family showed everyone wore glasses. My mother was near-sighted. I have been near sighted ever since I was born. I never could read the blackboard. I had a special seat up front to see the blackboard.