They Called Him Slim

My father was a handsome man.

He immigrated from The Netherlands in 1918 when he was 7 years old. His family worked a dairy farm in Holland but they didn't own their own land, and that became their American dream - buy land, buy cows and build their own farm. My grandfather was never a healthy man and Dad was expected to help build the new life here so he had to quilt school at 12 and do a man's job. He always regretted not finishing his education. He particularly liked biology and wanted to become a mortician. In that job, he could learn about the human body and perform a service. But he wouldn't have to graduate from a college or university. He could become an apprentice to get the training he needed. That, he thought, might be achievable. Going to a college or university was something my father couldn't imagine for himself since he had so little formal education, and money for schooling was nonexistent.

He never was able to go back to school or get any other kind of formal training, and he remained a dairyman most of his life.

As he got older and developed a belly, he told me that folks used to call him Slim. As a young man, he worked hard and couldn't keep any weight on. He had a picture of himself when he was about 13 that showed him with skinny legs and arms. Throwing bales of hay into the troughs for cows, hauling cans of milk to the processor, shoveling out the manure from the cow pastures was all tough work for a boy and his body became thin and wiry.

In my dad's mid-teens, his father developed tuberculosis and was never again able to do the work of a farmer. Dad's younger brother was allowed to stay in school and that meant most of the farm chores fell to my father. But his mother was a hard-working, determined woman. When the family first arrived in the U.S., they bought a few acres of land with only an out-building for pigs. My grandmother cleaned out that building, the family patched the holes in the walls and around the windows, and they lived in it while they saved money for more land and more cows. After my grandfather became ill, with help from his mother and advice from his father, my dad made the dairy work.

Eventually my grandfather died and his mother remarried. The couple moved to a new house and my father took over the farm. He married my mother and moved her from Minnesota to the dairy farm in California.

I look at his pictures now and appreciate what a good looking man he was. I also remember some of the stories my grandmother told me about their life during the first few years after their immigration. That early pig building? It was in Minnesota. I can hardly imagine the cold in the winter, and I wonder how they survived.

But their frugality brought them to a larger farm in California with a house that had indoor plumbing. That was a treat, my dad said.