January 1st, 2021 by Gary Osberg
I celebrated my tenth birthday on a ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean. My mother and her four children were returning from a stint as a US Army Dependent Family stationed in Vienna, Austria. Dad was in the Fifth Army. He and the family dog, Mickey, got to fly home later.
When he arrived in Upsala a few weeks later, Ma and baby brother Brian were in New Ulm visiting her cousin Helen. Dad borrowed a brand new 54 Chevy from Uncle Duke who owned Hagstrom Chevrolet in Upsala. My brother Bill and I rode along with Dad to New Ulm.
I was napping in the back seat and I woke up when our car was broadsided by a dump truck. I had a broken leg. I can still remember the pain when they lifted me on to the X-Ray table at the hospital in Cokato. The cast that they put my leg on went from my toes to my crotch. I was in the hospital for a few weeks and when it came time to transport me back to Upsala, Dad took me to Uncle Elmer’s house which was the Dokken Funeral Home in Cokato.
I had to spend a night on a cot on the main floor in the living room next to the viewing room. The next day they took me to Upsala in a black Studebaker hearse. That explains a lot, huh!
I spent the next two months sleeping on a cot in Grandma Laura’s dining room behind Ramlo Grocery. I think that I gained 30 pounds. When I went back to Upsala school, I remember falling down a flight of stairs the first day. No one had taught me how to use crutches to go down stairs. I quickly learned how not to do it.
“Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out” Chekhov
December 24th, 2020 by Gary Osberg
Children love Christmas, as well they should. As with most families, some years, Christmas gifts were easy to come by and some years the budget would not allow for much. The Christmas of 1956 was a memorable one for me. My mother had to move from our home in St. Louis Park due to Dad’s inability to handle alcohol. Her mother, Grandma Laura Ramlo, drove her 1952 Chevy from Upsala to St. Louis Park, put Dad in the back seat and drove him to the VA Hospital in south Minneapolis. She told them, “He is a veteran, he is a drunk and now he is your problem, not mine”. She took us all back to Upsala to live above Ramlo Grocery in Upsala.
I am not sure what the reason was for our ending up living in an apartment in Little Falls in December. It had something to do with getting financial aid. That Christmas, Santa brought us six big Tonka Toy 18 wheel trucks. There was a cattle truck, an oil tanker, a freight truck and three more. This was a perfect gift for a family with five boys. I was 13 years old and brother Bill was 10. We played with them non-stop.
I am not sure what my sister Kathie got that year. For many years I had the impression that they were from some sort of social agency that served the poor. It turned out that “Santa” was Dewey Johnson, a classmate of my mother’s from Upsala High School class of ’37. Dewey’s cousin was one of the founders of Tonka Toys. Dewey had already passed on before I learned the “rest of the story”, so I never did have a chance to thank him.
Perhaps you know of a family that has come upon hard times and they could use a “Secret Santa”.
“Peace on Earth, good will to men.” Angel
December 18th, 2020 by Gary Osberg
In December of 1984 I was employed at Dayton’s Commercial Interiors in downtown Minneapolis. My family was still living in the home that we had built on Cedar Lake west of Upsala. My daughter Kerry was 16 years old and her art teacher in Upsala was pushing her to produce a lot of work. For Christmas that year Kerry presented me with a pencil drawing of a Golden Retriever with a pheasant in its mouth. She had an uncanny ability to make the eyes so very lifelike. She had reworked one of the eyes to the point that there was almost no paper left.
I took it to Vern Carver Frame Shop near our office in LaSalle Court across from the Dayton’s department store. One of my co-workers begged me to have Kerry draw another one so that he could present it to a client as a gift. Kerry tried but finally we had my friend Dave Oswald print 130 copies and we sold them as limited edition prints for $25 or $95 framed matted and glazed. I simply carried the original in my trunk and if someone was interested, I would go back out and bring it in to show them. We sold most of them. I have the original hanging in my office in Wimmer Hall at Collegeville.
In 2002, Kerry’s first born, Kaylin Marie, created a picture of an angel blowing a horn. Kaylin was 7 years old at the time. I marvel how she was able to capture the puffed up cheek on the angel. It was a gift for Kerry’s mother Marcia. I borrowed it from Marcia and that year I sent out the very first “Angel Christmas Card”. ( pdf attached)
In 2008, Kaylin’s younger sister Christen created her first “Angel card”. She was 5 years old. I have attached a jpg of this year’s angel card drawn by Christen age 17. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and yours.
“You must not think that feeling is everything. Art is nothing without form.” Gustave Flaubert
December 11th, 2020 by Gary Osberg
Christmas is only two weeks from today. I think that I have it covered, but I still have a couple of gifts to buy. I used to wait until Christmas Eve, but I have improved in that regard. I trust that your plans are all coming together.
In 1958 I was the youngest member of the Black Knights Car Club in Upsala, Minnesota. One of the older members borrowed his dad’s 1950 Ford and we ended up in a drag race with another member. I was riding shotgun. The Ford slid off of the gravel road into the left side ditch and hit a bridge. I can still remember the horn blaring, the rear tires spinning and the sound of the windshield breaking. I had put my arm up to protect my face and the force of the impact broke my wrist. I was a sophomore at Upsala High and that fall I had to stand on the sidelines instead of playing football. The sling that held the cast for my broken wrist did provide a perfect place to hide the “tools” that I shoplifted later on.
The car club had plans to drop a V8 engine into a 1936 Chevy Coupe that the club had acquired from the leader of the gang, Duane, (AKA “Punk”). We needed tools. The old Chevy was stored in a garage that was behind the house that my mother rented on Borgstrom Street in Upsala. When the Morrison County Sheriff showed up at our front door with a search warrant, Ma fainted dead away. They were going to charge her with “fencing” since we had hidden some stolen goods in the barn next to the garage. The club house for the Black Knights Car Club was an old chicken coop next to the barn that we had cleaned out. The garage was still there in 2010, surrounded by trees growing out from the foundation. It has since been torn down.
The entire gang was brought to trial in the Morrison County court house and we each received a sentence of six months of probation. “Punk” was held in the county jail for almost two months without bail. Our school superintendent, Mr. Whoolery, was named as our probation officer. Two of the gang went to the boys reform school in Red Wing, but they both went on to lead very productive lives. One was a successful franchise salesman and the other became a lay minister in the Twin Cities metro area.
This Saturday you will have an opportunity to enjoy a very special Christmas Carol. The magical performance of Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol will be streamed at 3pm and 7pm. Simply go to www.csbsju.edu/wow to purchase your ticket. Your entire family can enjoy this show from your own living room. I already have my ticket.
“Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light get in.” Leonard Cohen
December 4th, 2020 by Gary Osberg
It looks like the ice on the pond is here to stay for a while. Do not go out there unless you are with a buddy and be sure to check the ice often. We used to drag race cars across Cedar Lake west of Upsala when we were teenagers. To my knowledge, no one ever went through the ice. We got away with a lot of stupid things as kids. One winter we made a game of standing on the hood of a DeSoto, using it as a giant snowboard as we were towed in the ditch behind a car. Dumb and dumber.
My sister and one of my classmates both ended up in casts after a toboggan run down a steep hill in the Burtrum Hills. After a heavy snow we would make a party by driving into the Burtrum Hills with our old cars and just try to get stuck. These were not SUVs, simply rear wheel drive Chevys with a bunch of boys and snow shovels.
Here is one way to enjoy the winter and the ice in a safe environment. https://youtu.be/iNuCXUkp2DE
“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.” Seneca
November 27th, 2020 by Gary Osberg
Yesterday was the most unusual Thanksgiving of my life. Our family decided to not gather, but rather we scheduled a Zoom meeting for 11am CST. There are six Osberg children, five boys and one girl. The girl came first, so she always had her own room. She is the sweetest of the bunch. Besides some spouses and two children, there were a couple of nieces who were on also. One with her dog and one with her fiancé. The wedding is probably going to be in 2022. Maybe the second Saturday in June. (inside joke). Three states, Minnesota, Arizona and Illinois were in the mix. We had a wonderful time with lots of laughter.
The only thing that could have made it better would have been if the loved ones that have passed on would have surprised us all with a check in. I actually pictured it in my mind. I am sure that others were thinking the same thing. One of my brothers mentioned that our sister reminded him of Ma. 2020 has been a very tough year for many. So much loss.
A big shout out to the genius that made this happen. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and whomever it was that came up with Zoom. The only reason that I am still sane is because I have loved ones that I can stay in constant touch with. Sharing pictures, sharing music, sharing videos. But the best is still going to the mailbox and getting a note that is signed “Love,”
“The world is very beautiful and very wonderful. Life can be very easy when love is your way of life.” Page 127 of The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz.
November 20th, 2020 by Gary Osberg
In 1998 Dad moved from his high rise apartment in downtown St. Paul to my house in Upsala. He had been a city fellow for most of his adult life, but he was raised in Upsala. I was working in Minneapolis as a sales manager with a Xerox agency and I was gone most of the week. It wasn’t much of an inconvenience to have him there. His passion was cooking, however I told him in no uncertain terms that I hated the smell of fried foods and I did not eat leftovers.
In July of 1999 the Xerox agency and Xerox parted their ways and they no longer needed a sales manager. I spent the summer painting old buildings and garages in the Upsala area and started working for Minnesota Public Radio in October of that year. If I did not leave a post-it note on the counter in the morning that said “NO SUPPER”, there would be a home cooked meal on the table when I arrived home. The food was awesome. The baked potatoes were done in a special way. He boiled them 10 minutes first and then baked them for one hour at 400 degrees.
As Dad struggled with old age and cancer, sometimes the quality was not up to his usual standards. Also, many times the smell of burnt food or worse, burnt plastic, from the tea pot handle, would greet me as I came in the back door. He burned three tea pots, with plastic handles, in the last six months. It got so that the only time I did not leave out the post-it note, “NO SUPPER”, was on Fridays.
On November 18, 2004, I came home and he greeted me with “I have to go to the hospital, but you can eat first. Your supper is in the oven” I responded “No way, we will go now!” I put on the oven mitts and grabbed the baked potatoes and dish of meatballs from the oven and shoved them in the frig and we drove to the VA in Minneapolis.
That was Dad’s “Last supper”, he never did come home. That weekend I ate the leftover meatball supper. It was a very tasty meal.
“There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself.” Howard Thurman
November 13th, 2020 by Gary Osberg
Today is Friday the 13th. The Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, NC, reported that an estimated 17 to 21 million people in the United States are affected by a fear of this day. Some people are so paralyzed by fear that they avoid their normal routines in doing business on this day. “It’s been estimated that $800 to $900 million is lost in business on this day..” Source: John Roach.
According to Wikipedia, the actual origin of the superstition appears to be a tale in Norse mythology. Friday is named for Frigga, the free-spirited goddess of love and fertility. When Norse and Germanic tribes converted to Christianity, Frigga was banished in shame to a mountaintop and labeled a witch. It was believed that every Friday, the spiteful goddess convened a meeting with eleven other witches, plus the devil – a gathering of thirteen – and plotted ill turns of fate for the coming week.
For many centuries in Scandinavia, Friday was known as “Witches’ Sabbath.” source: Charles Panati, Panati’s Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things.
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” Frederick Douglass
November 6th, 2020 by Gary Osberg
One of the hardest things about this pandemic is that we can’t break bread together. Many families are going to be playing it safe and not gathering as usual.
Each family has the one or two meals that everyone looks forward to. In our family, it was “Ma’s roast beef”. She always put on a very special roast beef dinner. The meat was very tasty, the mashed potatoes were perfect and the gravy was “right on”. There was many a time that the four Osberg brothers who lived near Minneapolis would gather at Ma’s apartment for her roast beef dinner. After she passed on, there was much discussion at the dining table about what cut of meat one should ask the butcher for. Since Ma raised six kids as a single parent, we know that the meat had to be “affordable”. Brother Craig always claimed that it should be “the eye of the chuck”.
I went to Byerly’s and they said that normally they would cut steaks from the “chuck eye”, but they would be willing to simply provide the cut as a roast. The balance of the recipe, as I understand it, is to sear the meat in a roasting pan on all sides, slow roast in a covered roaster with water added and roast it for a long time. Adding onions, potatoes and carrots is an option. The finished product should be a roast beef that will flake at the touch of the fork and not break the “piggy bank”.
“Nothing says lovin’ like something from the oven!” Pillsbury Doughboy
October 30th, 2020 by Gary Osberg
Tomorrow night is Halloween, the night before All Hallows Day. According to Wikipedia, though the origin of the word Halloween is Christian, the holiday is commonly thought to have pagan roots.
Historian Nicholas Rogers, exploring the origins of Halloween, notes that while “some folklorists have detected its origins in the Roman feast of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, or in the festival of the dead called Parentalia, it is more typically linked to the Celtic festival of Samhain”, which comes from the Old Irish for “summers end”. Samhain was the first and most important of the four quarter days in the medieval Gaelic calendar.
Samhain was seen as a time when the ‘door’ to the “Otherworld” opened enough for the souls of the dead, and other beings such as fairies, to come into our world. “Guising” – children going from door to door for food or coins is a traditional Halloween custom and is recorded in Scotland at Halloween in 1895. The practice of “Guising” at Halloween in North America is first recorded in 1911, where a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario reported children “Guising” around the neighborhood. I am not sure that there are any outhouses left to tip in central Minnesota.
This year is going to be different. Stay safe everyone and please vote.
“Life is easier than you would think. All that is necessary is to accept the impossible, do without the indispensable, and bear the intolerable.” Kathleen Norris
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