The Swedish Cowboy

The Swedish Cowboy

 

 

One day while sitting in a restaurant in a small farming community, I noticed a kind looking gentleman around 80 years old, sitting at a big round table and passing on some words of wisdom to his fellow farmers.

 

As I listened to some of the stories this gentle man was telling, I decided to ask him if he would mind giving me a private audience, so I could write down some of his stories and pass them along to others. This is the story of that mild mannered gentleman named Cliff W. Olson.

 

"Grandad Olson, lived and died in Sweden. I don't know what his first name was, but he was a stonecutter. He built the stone house my dad was born in, and it is still standing. There are people still living in it over a hundred years later. Grandpa was a wealthy man until his wife died. Then he got to running with the wrong crowd and went broke.

"My dad, Olof Olson, was born in Sweden around 1872 or 1873. He didn't know exactly when he was born, because his mother died when he was really young. After Grandad Olson lost the family money, the kids had to go to work to help support the family. Olof never went to school, except through the second grade,'cause, by God, he had to help make a living for the family.

 

"He hauled potatoes with a team of oxen to the distillery for his uncle. The distillery in Sweden was like the co-op here. You and I and four other fellows owned the distillery. Well, this month is your turn to use it, next month is his turn, etc. You would take your potatoes in there and make alcohol out of them. Well, they could make the trip to the distillery in one day with the team of oxen.

 

"Dad said, 'Boy, them little old things would trod just all day long. For dinner, you'd stop and lay a piece of linen cloth on the ground and cut up a loaf of bread and that's what the oxen got to eat.'

 

"In Sweden they bake bread twice a year. They didn't bake every day. It was just like a hogkilling in this country where half a dozen fellers get together. Well, the women in Sweden got together and had a big rock oven and they baked the bread in that. When they got all the bread baked they wrapped it in linen cloth which they made themselves out of flax.

 

That stuff would keep for six months. After they got done with the oven, they would store the bread in the oven because it was waterproof and moistureproof. It got hard, now. Boy, don't think it didn't get hard.

 

"Dad continued, 'After you got done giving the oxen a rest period, then you'd go on up to the distillery and stay all night. You'd go back the next day after another load of potatoes. Going back you could make it without having to stop, but with the load you'd have to stop and rest the oxen.'

 

"He said, 'It was quite an experience, but them little old oxen, would just trod all day long, with an empty wagon.

 

Taxes in Sweden were 72% of the wages.

 

"The state took 72% of the wages, then when you got old the government took care of you completely including your medical expenses, your lodging, everything.

 

"Dad said, 'That was the downfall of Sweden. Nobody had to save because everything was taken care of. That caused more alcoholics and more trouble because people didn't have no responsibility.'

 

"The money situation got so bad with my grandad, well, the fact is, the law was even after Grandad, because he was in debt so bad.

 

"In 1888 or 1889, when he was 16 years old, my dad decided to come to America from Stockholm, Sweden by himself. Boy now, that took guts. Think of a 16 year-old boy corning across the ocean to America alone and he couldn't speak the language or anything. He came to New York, got on a train and spent three days riding down the East Coast, back up, back and forth until he finally arrived in Dwight, Kansas.

 

"'Dad's uncle lived in Dwight and had paid Dad's passage to America, so Dad worked as a farm hand for his uncle for $12 a month to pay it back. Dad came over here and worked for his uncle, Charlie Olson, for about two years and saved enough money to send after his brother. Then his brother came over and they put together enough money to send after their sister. They also had a retarded brother and they sent after him and got him over here. Before they saved up enough money to get their dad over here, he passed away. So Grandpa is buried in Sweden.

 

"When Dad's first brother came over, Dad went to New York to meet him. He got a hotel room and had a suitcase with enough food in it to last the two of them long enough to get back to Dwight, Kansas. Dad went to the ship to meet his brother and forgot what hotel he was staying in. So the two of them didn't have no food for three days until they got back to Dwight, Kansas. He told me, 'By God, we just drank water. That's an experience, when you can't speak the language and you had no food.'

 

'Politics wasn't dirty in those days and when Dad turned 21, his uncle took him into town to register to vote. If you registered as a Democrat, it cost you 50 cents in Kansas. If you registered as a Republican, it was free. With dad working for only $12 a month, you know how he registered. Fifty cents was as big as a ferris wheel in those days. Dad raised six boys. Because of that 50 cents that it cost you if you registered as a Democrat, he raised us all Republican. The oldest boy drowned before he was 21. Of the other five boys, they are all still Republicans. But we never did know how my mother, who lived 'til she was 89 years old, voted. You know women's suffrage came in around 1820. 'That's my privilege and it's none of your business,' she would say.

 

"My mother, Mary Fostrum, was born in 1878. She came to this country from Stockholm, Sweden with her folks in about 1886, when she was eight years old. They moved to Dwight, Kansas. Dwight is a Swedish and Norwegian settlement. They had one of the biggest Swedish Lutheran churches in the country. We were visiting some friends one time and my grandad Fostrum (he was a stonecutter, too) had whittled out a rock at the spring where you could go fill your bucket with water. It was saucer shaped on one end and had a trough on the other. You could dip your bucket in to that rock and fill it with water. I'd give anything for that rock today.

 

"My dad worked in the stone quarry there in Dwight and his uncle from Foreacre, in Osage, Okahoma, came to him one day and said, 'Olof; I'd like to borrow enough money to buy 100 head of steers.'

 

"My dad said, 'Well, wait 'til dinner time 'til I go to my room.' Dad loaned him $900 to buy 100 head of steers.

"My uncle said, 'I'll give you a note.'

 

"Dad said, 'No, If your word isn't any good, your note isn't either.'

 

"So, he just loaned him $900 cash and that fall when his uncle Austin sold his steers, the first place he went was to pay Dad off.

 

"'By God,' my dad always said, 'Make your word good, if it takes the skin off your nose.' And that's the way they lived. A hand shake and your word was good enough for anything they done. In them days if you went bankrupt, you was ruined for life.

 

"My parents met at Dwight and got married in 1901. Mom and Dad had lived in Kansas for two years when they had the big flood in 1903, on the Kaw River in Kansas. It worried Dad to death because he had a brother that almost drowned in it. They were building a rock bridge and he lost his footing and fell into the river when it was flooding. That just scared Dad to death. Mom's folks were living in Minnesota then, so they talked my dad into moving to Minnesota in 1903.

 

"Dad bought a farm in Minnesota and built his own home. The house that Dad built was made from wood and stone. They sawed trees off his place and would he borrowed lumber off of a neighbor that already had some cured. Everybody trusted everybody in them days. He borrowed lumber off his neighbor, but Dad replaced it the next year, cause his was dry then. The stone was round granite rocks that was formed when the glacier came through. Boy, they'd lay them stones up in mortar and they'd last forever.

 

"It was pretty much timber country when he bought the land. Dad would rub out five to seven acres every year. He would pull the trees out with an old stump puller and plant potatoes in that new ground. That's the way he cleared the place.

 

"Dad would dig a freightcar load of potatoes, and ship the carload in 100 pound sacks to Minneapolis. Then he would take the team and wagon and go down there and peddle them. People used to buy their potatoes a year's supply at a time. In them days, they could keep them year to year. You would have to carry them down into the cellar, put them in their potato bin, which was always dark, where the potatoes couldn't get sunlight on them.

"Dad would sell his carload and wagonload of potatoes, then he would go back home. One of us boys would always be digging potatoes while he was gone. He would take two or three carloads a year to Minneapolis. He had regular customers. People knew his potatoes was good.

 

"When he first started, he would give women two or three potatoes and tell them to cook them and see how they liked them. That sold his potatoes for him. One of them would tell her neighbor, and that one would tell her neighbor and so on and he said, 'You'd just sell a whole wagonload without having to move even. The women would come to you.'

 

"One time he was going home about two in the morning. He had money in all of his pockets. He sat down on the floor of the wagon, put a burlap sack between his legs and emptied out all of his pockets. And, by God, an old boy stepped up on the sideboards of the wagon. You know, them wagons had steps on the side of them.

Anyway, this boy pulled a gun on him and said, 'Give me your money.'

 

"Dad said, 'when he jumped up there, I covered up my money with a sack and said, "What's going on over there by the rairoad?" and that old boy turned around to look and I hit that team just as hard as I could with that whip and the old boy fell off and put two bullets in the tail end of the wagon.'

 

"Dad said, 'By God, I was laying flat and the team was moving on. The old boy never did get me. All he did was put two holes in the back of my wagon.'

 

"I was born in Anoka, Minnesota, February 6, 1916, and didn't have a name until 1994. I was registered in the courthouse as "Olson male #5". I pulled a hitch in the army and carried the mail for 28 years and my name never was registered at the courthouse where I was born. But I have always been Cliff Woodrow Wilson. My brother was head custodian in the court house there in Anoka county and, by God, his name was Stanley Leroy Olson. When we went to check my name, he found out he was listed as Stanley Roy Olson instead of Leroy. He done his hitch in the army and worked in the courthouse for years and they didn't have the right name listed for him the whole time.

 

"When I was l5 years old, I picked 8,400 pounds of potatoes in one day. I worked for a neighbor and I got three cents a sack. A hundred pound sacks too, I mean, and I was a little kid! But I could work. My fingers was fast. And I made too much money for a dang kid. The old boys working up at the shed sorting potatoes was getting two dollars a day and I made over two dollars and fifty cents a day. There was this 80-rod row of potatoes. That's about a quarter of a mile. They would give this kid about a hundred feet, and that kid about a hundred feet, and the next one, the whole way down the row.

 

"Here this team with four horses would come by digging the potatoes. The things they used too dig potatoes out of the ground look about like those peanut diggers they got out here. They were about 30 inches wide with a runner that raised the potatoes up and onto this chain. The chain was about a foot wide and it had oblong rollers. The rollers shook the potatoes and the dirt, and that shakes the dirt out of the potatoes and the potatoes went up and out the back end of the machine. You had the vines and the potatoes left. The dirt's already shook out. The machine had little old teeth that pulled the vines over to the side, so you just got potatoes in a row.

 

"As soon as the team went by, I would start picking them. Well, the team would go to the end of the row and while they was turning around and coming back, well, you was supposed to have your station picked up by the time they got back. Where here they had more potatoes for you to pick up, you just stepped over and went to picking in the next row. And when they turned and came back, you ended up having two l00-foot stations, the one he had just dug and the one he was just starting. Well, I would talk to the kids that was a bit lazy and tell them to give me a part of their station. The one on one side of me and the one on the other side of me. Heck, I was picking up two stations by myself. So they cut my station down the next day, because I was making too dang much money for a kid. So I only picked 7,300 pounds the next day. But that was big money, two dollars a day for a dang kid.

 

Dad bought a new 1925 Ford touring car for $500. "Before that he had an old touring car that didn't even have a top on it. Mom sat on top of the gas tank in the old car. The old gas pumps were hand pumps. Mom had to get out and they would take up the cushion and there was the gas tank. We'd pump the gas in it, put the cap back on, put Mom's seat back and she'd get back in the car.

 

“The next new car I remember him buying was a Model H around 1927 and it had the gas tank right up against the windshield. It was right in the middle of the windshield, in the front. And the radiator cap was the same size. Well, the gas cap had a vent hole in it and the radiator cap didn't, because it was under pressure. Well, if the caps got switched, you'd get about five miles down the road and the car would quit because you'd get a vacuum in the gas tank. In those days cars didn't have fuel pumps. They used gravity flow. With the caps switched, after the vacuum built up in there, you didn't get any gas because the vacuum was like a seal holding the gas in the tank. That car even had balloon tires on it. I bet they was three-and-a-half inch tires. The car came out with 30 x 2 1/2 tires, but Dad got the balloon tires on his.

 

"My parents left Minnesota in 1928, right after World War I. They moved to Kansas to be next to Dad's sister and he farmed on the Kaw River, 16 miles east of Manhattan, until 1948.

 

"I came to Oklahoma in 1932 when I was 16. My aunt died and I came down to the funeral with my cousin. My Uncle offered me a job at $20 a month plus room and board. And I slept in a granary without heat, water or light for the first year. And we worked 16 to 18 hours a day, those days.

 

"Dad's brother was a stonemason. One time I helped him cut out a fireplace in Osage County on a hillside. It was in the wintertime and the place had a roof over it so the snow and the rain wouldn't get in and he could still work. He used an old wooden ruler that folded up to measure it. "When we got ready to lay it up, he said, 'Cliff, now you start carrying this rock to me the way I've got them laid out.' And we laid up that whole fireplace and we never had to cut a rock. He kept track of how many inches he needed, using a variable of four-inch to eight-inch rock, in the back of his head, and, by God, the whole thing fit all the way from the floor to the ceiling. But he was a master. He wanted to teach me to be a stonecutter, but I was 18 and thought I already knew everything.

 

"He used a two-to two-and-a-half-inch chisel, which was straight on one side and slanted on the other. That's what they did the pretty stonework with. They used a barrel full of sand to lay their rock on when they cut it. They knew how to lay it on there so that it would jar the stone and cut just right. To split a rock, they used a chisel that had teeth that were about a quarter of an inch wide on it To split the rocks, they would start on one side of a row and come across it and just tap each rock. Then they would go back to the beginning of the row and come back and tap each one again. They might have to make three, four, or five passes, but they would just hit it with the same pressure every time and finally here it would just pop open.

"My oldest brother still has my dad's wooden mallet. The face of the mallet is about six inches in diameter and the handle is about four or five inches long, just long enough for a good grip.

 

"Dad was a pretty good corn farmer too. In 1933, Dad sold his corn for 13 cents a bushel. An old colored guy hauled it about 16 miles away for three cents a bushel. He had a little old Ford truck. Well, I guess you'd call it a ton and a half nowadays. And it had racks way above the cab on it. I remember one day, he had such a load on it that when he tried to turn out onto the road, one front wheel didn't touch the ground. But, he hauled it down there to Alma, Oklahoma and scooped it off for three cents a bushel. But, by God, a dollar looked like a Ferris wheel in them days.

 

"I ranched in '32. We pastured a couple thousand head of cattle for the big ranchers, Chapman and Barnard - Old Ben Johnson, a world champion calfroper, was their foreman. Well, his son wasn't 21 years old when we pastured cattle, 'cause I remember old Ben caught young Ben smoking a cigarette with us down there at the bunkhouse and he just slapped the "H" out of him.

 

"Now, the son was Ben Johnson, the movie star, who died in '96. I worked cattle with the world champion calf- roper, Ben, Senior, and the world champion steer roper, his son. All of the ranchers worked together. You'd have 30 or 40 cowboys working together out there. The first roundup I ever went to, a steer broke out and went south, and the younger Ben, "Son", and Kid Smith took off and went after it. One of their buddies, Dudley, said, 'Son broke his back.' What he meant was that young Ben hit the steer in the back with the rope. He had missed him. Then come another yell, 'Kid broke his back, too'. The Kid and Ben, Jr. rode a little bit more, then Son finally snared him. They caught him and put two ropes on him and brought him back to the herd. The old boy who had popped off about them missing the steer, rode out there and heeled the steer, (put him down on the ground) and stretched him out.

 

"That was the first time I ever worked cattle in my life. They told me, 'You hold him down while we take the ropes off of him.' Heck, I know that steer still has my fingerprints in his horns. Dudley stepped back and I pulled the steer's head back to keep him from getting up while they took the ropes off. When they said to turn him loose, all three of those cowboys had their horses right there between me and the steer so that he couldn't hurt me. The old steer got up and ran to the herd. Now they were dang sure cowboys. They really knew how to cowboy.

 

"About three years later, Son and Kid went out to California. They were stable boys for some big movie actor out there and, by God, there was supposed to be a faked runaway team of horses in a movie; but it wasn't no fake, it became an actual runaway. Ben Johnson, Jr. caught the team and saved the life of an actress in the process. He started right then in the movie business and he done real well for himself. But he was an actual real cowboy.

 

"The old man I worked for had 27,000 acres of deeded land and he said it was just a fence corner to some of them ranchers. Some had hundreds of thousands of acres, yet they was out there cutting cattle just like you or I would. One time, I and the boss's boy, Bill, had just bought two new saddle slickers, the big ones that cover your horse and saddle. It started raining and the boss rode over to Bill and me and asked us to give him our slickers so he could give them to Mr. Chapman and Mr. Barnard. So we had to peel off our slickers and give them to the old man. He rode over to them and they said that if the other hands working had to set out in the rain, they would too, and they wouldn't put them on. They told him to take our slickers back to us.

 

"Old man Chapman rode, Old Midnight, the best cutting horse in the world. And he rode him 'til he was 23 years old. They would haul him to roundup, unload him, cut cattle with him, and when we were finished, they'd load him back up in the truck and haul him to the next roundup. Boy, that old horse was a cutting horse. When you said, pick that steer, he brought him out. He was just the world's best cutting horse at that time.

"When I worked on the ranch, I counted more cattle that any other cowboy in the whole outfit, besides old Ben Johnson, who counted steers seven at a time. Each finger stood for seven head of cattle. Now, I counted by twos. Whenever we counted out a carload of steers (there were 28 big steers to a car), I'd hold my hands up if I wasn't sure of my count and we'd recount them. You know, after about half a dozen times like that, it was cut and dried, old Cliff should do the counting. I'd admit when I was wrong or wasn't sure, by God, and I built a good reputation.

 

"I worked with Old Man Johnson 'til he died up at Sedan, Kansas. He had back problems. They had him working all over the United States in spite of his back. He got sick one morning while he was working cattle up by Sedan and they ran him into the hospital, a dang little old one-horse hospital up there. And the doctors found a cancer behind and inside of his spine. The men told the doctors, 'Don't spare the horse, save Ben,' but there was no saving old Ben. He died there in Sedan, Kansas at the hospital. So I worked with the best of them and I worked with the sorriest of them.

 

"I worked on the ranch 'til I went into the U.S. Army during World War II. I was 26 when I went into the army. I volunteered on a Monday and on the following Saturday, I was done with my basic training and working on airplanes. About four months later, I was a buck sergeant. When I got out of the army, I went back to the ranch where I had been working, and, heck, it had turned into a dude ranch. The hired men came to work in a company pickup at 8:00 A.M. and at 5:00 P.M. went to the house. When I had gone into the army, we had been working 16 and 18 hours a day.

 

"About a year after I got out of the army I got married. My wife and I moved up next to my folks at Manhattan, Kansas. We talked them into selling out and coming to live with us. They was way up in their 70's and 80's, so they sold out. My father had farmed 84 acres of deeded land and 20 acres of quick claim land which had been built up by soil deposits from the river. The farm had a big rock two-story sweet potato cellar, a rock chicken house, the main house and a big orchard beside the house. He sold it to a bunch of professors in Manhattan. Then there was a big flood, and when the flood was over, all that was left of the farm was the house and one acre of land. The river had Changed its course and cut the rest of the land off of the farm.

 

"I had saved some money while I was working on the ranch and while I was in the army, so I bought 160 acres for $5,000 and furniture, machinery and a harness for $100. That was in '45. I finally got electricity in about 1946. I tried to wire the old house myself, because I couldn't get an electrician. I soldered and taped every joint. We didn't have any connectors then, so I used black tape. A friend and I worked under the house all one morning, 'cause we was running the wires up into the house from underneath it, and after we ate dinner we came back out and laid down in the crawl hole on the south side of the house and there was two copperhead snakes there.

Turns out, we had been under that house all morning with those copperhead snakes. Now, you talk about two old boys that got spooky, by God, we was spooky from then on.

 

We got running water in the house about a year later.

 

"Dad died when he was 94. He farmed until he was 75. He had six boys, Arvid, Rollien (Ollie), Mayby, Stanley, me and Phillip, but my oldest brother, Arvid, drowned at a Sunday school picnic at a lake in Minnesota when he was 17, before my youngest brother, Phillip, was born. I was Mom's helper. Ollie and I were buddies 'til he died in 1993. Mayby died in 1989. Stanley still lives in Oklahoma and Phillip is in El Centro, California.

 

"My wife and I had 51 years together and the secret to staying together is "give and take". Now, you might disagree, but you don't have to fight. You can discuss anything and talk it out. I've always felt that way. You can settle any argument by sitting down and just talking. Nip problems in the bud. That's the best thing to do. Discuss them immediately. Don't wait until tomorrow or next year, by God. Discuss it right now. You clear it up and, by God, if you’re wrong, admit that you're wrong.

 

Author's note: I want to thank Cliff for sharing a part of his life and memories with us. As you read this story, I hope that you find it interesting and somewhat entertaining, but there is also something that we can learn from reading about past lifestyles.

 

The one part that I find interesting in Cliff's story is where his father worked for two years in order to save up enough money to bring his brother to this country. Then both of them then worked and saved their money to bring other family members over.

 

Was this done out of obligation, respect, duty or love? We hear so much about family values in today's society, I wonder how many people in this country would spend two years' salary to help a family member now? As I travel around this country meeting people, I see many people that have not talked with their own brothers, sisters, parents or some other family member for months or even years.

 

What kind of example are we setting for our children? As a parent and the teacher of our children, are we teaching them that money is more important then family or that family unity and closeness are too precious to be replaced and are much more important then money?

 

In this modern day of technology it only takes a few seconds to call someone on the telephone, so what excuse do we give to our children for not taking the time to talk or spend time with another family member?

 

The lesson we teach through our actions and by example, will be remembered long after our words are forgotten. Make the effort today, for you may not get the chance tomorrow. I would like to encourage every reader to share some time with a family member, and while you are talking with them, why not spend some time sharing stories about other family members and memories of childhood days. And remember to take along a tape recorder, so you can preserve those stories for future generations.

 

By Franklin T. Wike

 

Copyright 1997

Legacy Magazine

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