Family housing

In Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury writes of his penchant for making lists and how those lists helped him see patterns and served as “provocations” for writing.  A good list to hand can prevent blank paper paralysis when we sit down to write our family history.  So for today, let’s make a list of all the houses associated with your various family lines.  Residences, vacation houses, apartments, rentals, all living quarters that were significant to your family.  Write down addresses if you know them.  Today you need only make the list. In a later post we’ll talk about how to use it, but if an entry “provokes” you to write about one of your abodes, go for it!

My family lived in a lot of different places -- some of which I was told about, others I do remember quite clearly!

When I was born, my parents had recently moved back from the Cities where they had worked at a munitions plant during the war.  After they married, they lived in an upstairs apartment near the old Farmers Union Gas Station.  That's where they were living when I was a baby. 

Then they built a house on a farm about 2 miles out of Roseau.  It was a small, story and a half house, painted white on the outside but I don't have any recollection of the inside.  We lived there when my father had an appendicitis attack and was hospitalized for a month with peritonitis and nearly died.  I imagine they had no insurance and soon had to sell the house to pay expenses.  

So we moved to California.  We first lived in an apartment in Bell Gardens, a suburb of Los Angeles.  My recollection of that is that it was in a long row of apartments and we lived close to Julius and Mary Brunell (and their boys, Kermit and Donald).  I started first grade there.  Then we moved to a larger apartment in Lynnwood.  That was a series of 4-plexes and lived in a downstairs apartment next to a family who had a daughter named Katherine who was convalescing from polio.,

By the spring, however, we moved back to Roseau.  Then we lived in a small house on the river right by the dam, we lived in another house by the hospital, then a large house by the elevator, and finally we moved to the "Engebretson house" which was located where the license bureau is today.  That was such a nice house, I thought.  There were two bedrooms upstairs and a bathroom!!  My grandpa lived with us part of the time and he stayed in the other upstairs bedroom.  My brother John was born while we lived there. 

But then my dad bought a farm by Badger.  So they bought an old house and moved it onto a (very wet ) new basement in 1957 and added on a  living room, a bedroom, and a nice large bedroom upstairs.  There was no indoor bathroom at first but by spring, the small room downstairs was remodeled into a bathroom and so it was pretty comfortable.  I remember that the kitchen counters were a bit lower than what was standard; the original owners must have been short!  So we always remarked on that.  But I lived with my family in that house from 1957 until 1964 when I went away to college and lived in the dorm.

So I had never shared a room with anyone until moving into Pine Hall at BSU.  Poor Marion!  She had to live with this "not so fussy" housekeeper for a whole year!  But we had a lot of good times.  I liked living in the dorm so I signed up to be a Resident Assistant and I did that for the next two years -- had my own room again!!  But it was usually full of girls hanging out and visiting!  I did my student teaching in Thief River Falls, lived with my aunt Othelia, and had my own room again!

So then we got married in 1967.  Moved to Hawley and lived in a honeymoon cottage on the edge of town.  Furnished three bedroom house.  Very nice.  Moved to Roseau into a new mobile home in the East Side Trailer Court and we lived there for one year before we bought some land at Fox and moved the mobile home to the woods where Keith brushed out trees, made a lawn, built a garage, and I complained about the whole thing.  

In 1973, we sold our mobile home and purchased a manufactured (Dynamic) home.  It has served us well.  We put on an addition in 1995  which Keith built practically singlehandedly.  That has been a great thing; we have a new dining room and a bedroom downstairs.  Progress was good. 
 

Family food

For today’s five minute family history, write (or type) one “must have” traditional family dish.   If it came down within the family write what you know about its origins or who was most particular about it, or most famous for preparing it.

One of the family dishes that we loved to eat was "Potet Klub" or potato dumplings.   My father's family had them regularly and he always liked them -- even helped to make them.  My mother made them every once in a while and she maintained this wasn't something her family ate when she was young.   Bu tI bet they ate something similar.  Because, you see, that "delicacy" that we stand in line at the restaurants for today was really a type of peasant food - something that filled you up so you could go out and work in the woods or in the barn without having hunger pangs in an hour or two.

Potato dumplings are heavy, starchy, rather unattractive and delicious.  They are made by grinding or shredding raw potatoes and adding enough flour to the potatoes to make a semi-solid handfuls of dough.  A small piece of ham or (preferably) salt pork was set on the middle of the dough and then another scoop of dough was put on top.  The whole dumpling was shaped like a good sized potato and then dropped gently into salted water to cook for 20-30 minutes.
The dumplings would be scooped out, drained, and served in a big bowl.  They needed to be solid -- but not too solid!  They should stay together in a firm mass when they cooked.  When you placed one on your plate and cut it up, you would slather it with real butter and each bite would just slide down your throat.  Today, there are some folks who pour dark syrup on the dumplings and eat it that way.

The best way to eat them, however, is to slice up the cold dumplings the next day.  Then fry those pieces in butter, adding a little cream to make a gravy.  The crisp fried potatoes in the creamy gravy is very, very good.

My mother made delicious dumplings.  My aunts -- Alma, Gunda and Othelia -- made them as well and we were often invited to their homes when the dumplings were being cooked.  My mother would often grind the raw potatoes in a metal food grinder that she clamped to the counter, often placing a bowl on the floor because the potatoes had a lot of water in them which dripped down the metal parts of the grinder.  My aunt Othelia would shred the potatoes and she would use different cuts of pork inside. 

Today, we travel to different restaurants to try out the potato dumplings.  Nelson's Café in Roseau makes very good ones.  They always have a big crowd on dumpling days and often sell out so there are no fried ones the next day.  The gals at The Guest House make them as do the cooks at Café 89 in Wannaska, the Twins Café in Badger, the Twins Café in Greenbush. Even Fran's Café in Mesa, Arizona, serves potato dumplings once a week, during the winter months, at least!  Most of the restaurants do serve ham or bacon or sausage along with the dumplings.

 Fundraisers at various churches have potato dumplings on the menu and they are generally very successful.

I understand that some people make potato dumplings out of frozen hash brown potatoes (like the ladies at Badger Creek Church and whose dumplings are very tasty).  You can even buy packages of frozen dumplings in the freezer section of the supermarket and/or "potato dumpling mix" which comes in a brown paper sack. 

My grandparents would chuckle to think of their lowly "potet klub" being served commercially in so many places.  But  I bet they would gladly sit right up and enjoy a ;plate to "stick-to-your-ribs" dumplings!