A fireman for the railroad?  "Yes," he replied.  "I shoveled coal into the firebox.  I shoveled many tons of coal, I tell you."
Then he bought a grocery store in Butterfield that burned down after six months.  Explained Lloyd, "The café next door had a stove fire, we think, and that put me out of business."
The family moved to Rake, Iowa, where he worked in a locker plant, killing cattle and hogs and chickens and processing them for the freezer.
In 1956, he started selling auto-mobiles in Blue Earth, Minnesota, and hung in there until 1960.
Then he worked at a packing plant in Windom, Minnesota, where he killed cattle, skinned and quartered them, and sent them out in semi-truckloads.  At the packing plant he hurt his arm and had to give up that job.
In 1964 it was back to Blue Earth and selling cars again.
In 1965 he sold cars in Waconia at the Ford dealership for two years.  Then he sold cars at Jordan Ford for two years, and then at Shakopee Ford for about a year.
For a change of pace around 1970, Lloyd bought a restaurant located at State Highway 7 and Vinehill Road called Smack's Café.  "It was a family restaurant," he said.  "I worked at that place 18 hours a day for three straight years and then I gave it up.  I had a partner and the two of us did the work of five people.  That's the way it was.  Burger King bought it from us, then the city or the state bought it from them to build up that intersection."
In 1974 Riba Josephine, his wife of 32 years and the mother of his seven children, died of cancer.  It was not an easy time for the family, but if you got enough heart and soul, you can manage to get through most anything.  Lloyd turned to selling real estate for the next six years for M.B. Hagen, until 1979.
Then he went back to selling cars for another year at the Willmar Ford dealer until it went out of business.  In 1981 he went back to Waconia Ford. 
Why did Lloyd hop from job to job so much?  "It always seemed like there were no challenges left after a while, so I wanted to go someplace else," he replied.  "But I would say that there is no car dealer where I couldn't go back and work there again.  We always stayed on good terms."
Finally, in 1982, he found that job that would give him some roots and longevity.  He bought a franchise with Conklin Products.  "I was a distributor until 1995, when I couldn't climb anymore," said Lloyd, referring in particular to the roofing sealer he applied to leaking flat roofs in Victoria and else-where.
So at the age of 75 Lloyd retired, in a manner of speaking.  He kept working during the summers mowing golf courses at Shadow Brooke, then Island View, then Dahlgreen.  Today, at the age of 84, he's thinking about a golf course in Arizona, one that he doesn't have to mow.
Now if we all back up a moment to 1980, when Lloyd was selling cars in Willmar, Minnesota, we'll discover how he got connected to little Susie, the best cook in the whole wide world who also happened to look good in summer shorts and a tank top.

When Susie was born on May 28^th, 1940, the second of four girls, she was given the name Kathleen.  But, alas, con-fusion resulted in the rhythm and rhyming of Kathleen and sister Darleen, so Kathleen became known as Susie by everyone, including her mother!
Susie's parents, Hazel and Harry Stroming, lived at Minnesota Lake, a small town in southern Minnesota.  Her dad was a policeman at Minnesota Lake for 23 years.  Her mother worked at a chicken factory in nearby Wells.
Susie said that she's always been a people person, which is one of the reasons she enjoyed her job at the drug store during high school.  She also worked as a waitress.
Susie graduated from Minnesota Lake High School in 1957 and married that same year.  She and Clarence moved up to Pine City in 1958 where they farmed for ten years and had four children, two boys and two girls.
"They were big farmers," said Susie.  "I worked hard on the farm.  I never quit canning until I had 1,000 quarts canned.  I canned chicken and beef and deer.  I loved cooking.  I still love it.  I put lots of things in the freezer too."
Not only was Susie cooking and can-ning for her husband and four children; she was also feeding and caring for many other little ones.  "All my life I've taken care of somebody," she said matter of factly.  "My friend had five little kids and she was dying of cancer, so her husband brought those kids to my house at the farm every day.  I potty trained them and everything."
Susie also mentioned that when her own mother died at an early age, her youngest sister was only nine years old.  "I was 16 and I tried to raise her," she said, "but then when I got married at 18 and had four kids of my own, it got pretty hard, so some friends from Wells took my sister and raised her."
When Susie's youngest child was in first grade, in about 1972, she went to work for five years in a nursing home in Pine City and became a Certified Nursing Assistant.  Then she worked another five years in that capacity in a Rush City nursing home.
In 1979 Susie moved to Willmar where she worked at the Jennie O' Turkey factory.  "I cut meat off the breast bones," she explained.  "I hated every minute of it."
"That same year I got a call from Rice Memorial Hospital in Willmar," she continued, "but working the three different shifts with kids at home was no fun so I went to work at Kindlehope in Willmar.  I was a dietary technician there.  I cooked two meals a day for 26 people, retarded young adults.  I loved it!"
About that time Susie was checking the car dealerships in Willmar for the best deal on a car for her daughter.  It was 1980.  "We went to the Ford dealership last," she said, "and Lloyd was the one helping me.  He said he didn't have anything at the time within my money range, but he took my number and said he'd get back to me.  He asked a lot of questions and he said he knew everything about my life in fifteen minutes …
"The funny thing was, he came out to our place to check on the car all the time.  My daughter finally said, 'Mom, he's not coming to see the car.'"
Lloyd and Susie dated for two years and married on January 2^nd, 1982, in Springfield, Missouri, which is just north of Branson.  Then they took a six-week honeymoon to Arizona.
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