|
952-474-7377 |
|
CLICKSTART 952-902-2014 |
|
V & S Jewelry Mound * 952-472-3233 |
|
Century Wine & Spirits On Century Blvd. * 952-401-WINE |
|
Weinzierl Jewelers |
|
Waconia 952-442-2885 |
|
Headlines and bylines |
|
Front Page Feature Story |
|
From the Editor |
|
Addie’s Drawing |
|
Letters to the Editor |
|
Victoria Moments |
|
Hook Line & Sinker |
|
Calendar of Events |
|
Click here to Advertise |
|
the Gazette |
|
Return to Home Page |
|
Order paper Gazette |
|
Notes and Quotes |
|
The Scoop at City Hall |
|
Look at Mom’s Hands |
|
Dedicated to the sunshine of truth, the moonshine of meeting deadlines, and the starshine of Victoria. |
|
8661 Deer Run Dr. * Victoria 952-443-2351 |
|
And my parents continue to dance, sometimes now around the kitchen island -- a waltz, a polka, a two-step, together, as they listen to their favorite music. Mom and Dad have been each other’s favorite dance partner for more than 70 years, having known each other since school days. Only a mile or so separated their families, and when Mom and Dad got married, their new home was also about a mile away. Dad said there was originally an old house on the farm and that he and my Grandpa Opdahl and my Uncle Junior Opdahl took that old house down board by board, pulling out every nail, and then neatly stacked the lumber to be reused to build a new house for the newlyweds. I was unaware that our family home, constructed through the winter of 1947-1948, was put up with some lumber from a previous house. My Grandpa Harold and Grandma Mary Opdahl were my mother’s parents. Said Mom, “When you go into the cubby holes upstairs, you see remnants of the old house.” There are three cubby holes upstairs, two in the north room and one in the south room. The cubby hole in the south room has a clothes chute that goes all the way to the basement where Mom does laundry, with an automatic washer and drier since the 1970’s, and where she also keeps her large freezers and shelves of canned goods. Still sitting at the kitchen table in Texas, Dad told us that Grandpa Opdahl hired a fellow by the name of Johnny Sanders to build a new house for them. Dad said that Johnny Sanders built it for $1,050 and Grandpa gave him an extra $300 or something like that. With labor and material, the total cost of the new house came to $3,500. Said Mom, “I got all new windows.” In other words, windows from the old house were not retrieved for the new house, and my mother was happy about that. They started building the new house in December of 1947. “It was cold,” said Dad, “but there was no snow so that helped.” Said Mom, “I wanted a house like Mama’s except I wanted to be able to get to the bathroom from the kitchen.” I always did think that our house resembled Grandma’s house, and now I knew why. Joe and Betty Claeys and their baby Susan Marie moved into their new home in July of 1948. The new house was wired for electricity but there was no electricity available yet in this part of the rural countryside. Said Mom, “I had three babies before we got electricity.” She said that Dad hung a gas lamp over the kitchen table, having tied and knotted it to the electrical wires hanging from the ceiling. “That gave off pretty good light,” said Dad. “We also set lanterns around the house.” He stated that electricity arrived down their gravel road in 1951.
|
|
The Victoria GAZETTE |
|
May 2014 |
|
Mom and Dad on their wedding day, May 20th, 1947, at the farm where my Grandma Opdahl made dinner for everybody. |