Birdsfoot Trefoil
Mark Peihl
July 16, 2020

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Every year around this time, a low growing plant with lovely golden-yellow flowers covers the boulevards along Moorhead’s streets. You’ve probably seen it. The plant forms a thick mat, often draping gracefully over the curb and onto the street. It’s called Birdsfoot Trefoil (Lotus corniculatus), a species introduced to provide forage for livestock. In the 1950s, it briefly became a specialty crop, raised for its seeds — and Clay County was a leader in its production.
 
Birdsfoot Trefoil forms multiple inch-long seed pods radiating from the tips of its stalks. Some people think this looks like a bird’s foot. The Trefoil part of its name comes from the three leaflets on each leaf. It is a remarkably adaptable plant that is native to most of Europe, much of Asia and north Africa. One theory suggests that its initial US introduction could have come from ship ballast dumped along the Atlantic coast and the Hudson River. By the early 1930s, it was firmly established in two locations, western Oregon and eastern New York state.
 
In the early 1930s, a New York Soil Conservation Service agronomist recognized its potential value as livestock feed. He arranged for boys enrolled in the Civilian Conservation Corps to hand harvest wild seeds and had them planted in test plots. Birdsfoot Trefoil is a legume. Like alfalfa and clover, it captures nitrogen from the air and fixes it in the soil, fertilizing it. Tests showed that Birdsfoot Trefoil provided good forage, could be grown on poorly drained and alkaline soils ill-suited to alfalfa and, unlike clover, did not cause a fatal digestive disease in livestock called bloat.
 
Seeds from New York and imported from Europe were sent to test facilities around the country. In 1938, a test plot in Winona proved it could be grown in Minnesota.      
 
In 1941, newly hired Clay County Agricultural Extension Agent G. E. May began a successful program to get farmers to improve the quality of their pastures. The drought of the 1930s left many pastures in rough shape. May encouraged farmers to plow up their grasslands and replant with mixtures of grass and legumes. In 1948, a handful of Clay County farmers began planting regular test plots and incorporating Birdsfoot into their mixes. The mix did well, once it was established.
 
By 1950, there was a run on BIrdsfoot seed. Ag Agent May, in his 1950 Annual Report wrote, “About a year ago, Birdsfoot Trefoil was mentioned at every opportunity in discussing pastures. When it was learned the seed source was very limited and that it was extremely high priced, everyone’s mouth began to water, they wanted some seed. They have had several doses of ‘you can’t have it yet but wait.’”
 
Farmers in Norman County began raising Birdsfoot for seed. In 1955, they formed the Red River Valley Certified Trefoil Seed Growers Association to promote its production and establish standards for certified seed. That year, Herman Lee of Felton planted forty acres. Art and Hank Skolness of Glyndon put in several hundred. Neil Peters of Moorhead later put in eighty.
 
As a new crop, it came with a steep learning curve. The NDAC Extension Service published a how-to circular on raising Birdsfoot but it proved to be a finicky crop to produce. It required chemical weed control to get established and if harvested when it was too dry, the seed pods popped open, spilling the seeds prematurely. Herman Lee harvested his first crop in 1956 when the seeds had a fairly high moisture content. He managed to get a respectable 625 pounds per acre. Certified seed sold for $2.00 per pound in Fargo that year. He spread the seeds out on the floor of a Quonset building to dry but they over heated and much of his crop did not match the Association’s germination standard.
 
In a wet year like 1958, Birdsfoot produces a lot of foliage. It can take a long time for it to dry enough to cut properly. But by then, the pods are too dry and they pop. Neil Peters tried to make the harvest easier by spraying a defoliant on the crop. The top leaves dropped off but the seed pods popped, too. Peters lost 2/3 of his crop.

The Skolness brothers had better luck. In 1957, they told new Clay County Ag Extension Agent Ozzie Dahlenbach they expected to harvest six to seven thousand pounds of the Viking variety and twenty-five to thirty-thousand pounds of the Empire strain. Empire is a low growing cultivar best suited for grazing. Viking is a taller standing variety better for cutting as hay. Dahlenbach reported that the brothers “have put in a complete processing unit which will take care of practically all the cleaning jobs that one might run into in processing the seed.”
 
Despite the problems, in 1958, Clay County farmers raised 85% of the seed submitted for certification testing in Minnesota. But by 1959, the price of Birdsfoot Trefoil dropped by half. Though farmers continued to use it in their pastures, production for seed disappeared. After 1960, Extension Agent Dahlenbach never bothered to report BIrdsfoot Trefoil as a specialty crop in Clay County.
 
Today, Birdsfoot Trefoil is found in nearly every Minnesota county. It spreads easily and is difficult to eradicate. It’s especially problematic in virgin or restored prairie environments where its dense mat chokes out native species. The Minnesota Department of Agriculture has assessed Birdsfoot through its noxious weed regulation evaluation process and recommended that it “not be regulated to continue to allow its use in agronomic grazing systems.” However, it recommended “that people do not intentionally seed Birdsfoot Trefoil in fields adjacent to native prairie management areas and do not include Birdsfoot Trefoil in wildlife or deer seed mixes.” U of M Extension Ag Educator for Clay County, Randy Nelson told me he did not know of anyone in the county intentionally growing Birdsfoot, though there may be some out there. Various cultivars are available from regional seed houses.
 
Though it’s probably not a good idea to plant it in your yard, there are no rules against enjoying Birdsfoot Trefoil’s lovely flowers where they are. Invasive or not, they are a sure sign of early summer in Clay County.

Volunteers of a Different Kind:
Clay County on the Canadian Front of WWI
Mark Peihl
June 25, 2020

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When the U.S. entered World War 1 in April 1917, the country was swept up in a surge of volunteerism. Even here in the isolationist Midwest, thousands of young Americans lined up to assist the nation and our European allies in a variety of ways. In addition to the two million men who enlisted for military service, many women stepped up. In Clay County, they included Rose Clark from Barnesville who became a Red Cross nurse. She served in a forward hospital under fire near the front line. Francis Lamb from Moorhead was a canteen worker for the YMCA in France. Signe Lee from Moland Township signed on as a US Army nurse. Elizabeth McGregor from Hawley worked as the director of a group of nine small hospitals attending to the needs of civilians for the American Fund for French Wounded. Their stories are told in our current exhibition War, Flu & Fear: World War I and Clay County.
 
The war had raged in Europe for nearly three years before America entered the fray. American volunteers famously served as ambulance drivers in France and Italy, including future literary luminaries John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway. Some young Americans couldn’t wait to get into the fight and enlisted in the French, Canadian, or British armed forces. American aviators formed the famous Lafayette Escadrille in 1916.
                                                                                                                                                                                
We’ve identified at least twenty Clay County natives who joined foreign service. The vast majority were like Bruce Awrey. He grew up in Hawley and served a year in the Minnesota National Guard, but moved to Canada as a young man, took Canadian citizenship, and a job in Alberta. He enlisted in the Canadian Army in May 1916 and spent the war driving trains in France. Other Clay County natives went north before the war to take advantage of the Canadian version of the Homestead Act.
 
We have found, however, two Clay County men who joined the Canadian Army as US citizens. At least apparently. George Oliver Burnette claimed he was born in Glyndon in 1890 and that in December 1915, he was working in a Glyndon butcher shop. That month in Winnipeg, he signed his “Attestation Papers” (Canadian enlistment papers) in the 144th Battalion, Winnipeg Rifles. He apparently had a change of heart and on August 6, 1916, he went AWOL from Camp Hughes, Manitoba. A month later he was declared a deserter and was never seen again. It is curious that we could not find any evidence that he ever lived in Glyndon. Men went north for all sorts of reasons. He may have pulled the Glyndon identification story out of his hat.
 
The other is at least more straightforward. Arthur Alfred Buresson was the youngest of Nils and Inga Buresson’s six kids. The Norwegian immigrants moved from Illinois (where Fred, as he was known locally, was born in 1894) to a farm in Cromwell Township in 1901. In 1917, Fred tried to join the US Army but was rejected because he stuttered. In December, Fred went to a recruitment center in Minneapolis and started the Canadian enlistment process. He traveled to Montreal where doctors pronounced him fit for service despite his stutter. He fibbed a bit on his attestation papers, claiming he was born in Winnipeg. He gave his first name as “Arthur A.” and spelled his last name Bursson. He claimed that his civilian jobs were “quarryman” and “navvy.” I don’t know any quarries in Clay County where he may have worked. A navvy is a British term for someone who builds roads, canals and other transportation infrastructure.
 
He was inducted into the Internal Waters and Docks Service, part of the Royal Engineers. This was an odd and important part of the Canadian-British military. The IWD was responsible for the orderly shipment of war material from Britain, across the English Channel to France, and then onto where it was needed at the front. Much of this stuff was shipped over canal systems, hence the name.
 
The Brits built a huge shipping base at Richborough on the east coast of Kent in England. Fred was sent there in early 1918 for training. His movements are somewhat sketchy after that. According to his service record, on March 26, he was transferred to an Inland Waters and Transportation unit in France. We know he was disciplined there in July 1918 for being “improperly dressed” in town and docked three days’ pay. The IWT soldiers rarely made to the front but at some point, Fred was injured by poison gas. We don’t know when he was hurt but he was hospitalized in December, 1918 - after the Armistice.
 
In February, 1919, Fred was loaded onto the HMS Halifax for the trip home. He died at sea on March 8, from “after effects of gas poisoning.” The Canadians sent his body home to Clay County. He’s buried with a British military headstone in the Hawley Cemetery.

B.C. Sherman's Fly Net
Lisa Vedaa
June 15, 2020

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We don't see these much anymore, but our recent blog about the 1872 horse influenza epizootic reminded me of all of the wonderful horse artifacts in our collection — including this horse flynet donated by B. C. Sherman, a long-time Moorhead harness maker. The fly net is made of strips of leather tied into a net to spread across the back of a horse to provide enough movement while a horse is working to keep horse flies from landing and biting.

COVID Victory Gardens
Markus Krueger
May 12, 2020

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Reports are coming in from parts of the country where spring planting comes sooner than here: Covid-19 is causing an outbreak of vegetable garden fever. Growing your own food makes a lot of sense at a time when a trip to the grocery store has an element of risk, when our food supply chain is warning of disruptions, and when people have a lot of extra time on their hands. Growing vegetable gardens during a time of crisis is bound to remind people of the most successful home gardening campaign in our nation’s history: the Victory Gardens of the World War II.

While everybody has heard of Victory Gardens, the idea of the homefront war garden actually began with World War I Liberty Gardens. National War Garden Commission president Charles Lathrop Pack explained Liberty Gardens would “arouse the patriots of America to the importance of putting all idle land to work, to teach them how to do it, and to educate them to conserve by canning and drying all food they could not use while fresh. The idea of the ‘city farmer’ came into being.” That may be a bit of an overstatement. People in cities certainly did grow vegetable gardens before 1917, but the Liberty Gardens of WWI really produced results both here and nation-wide. The new Clay County Extension Agency helped 300 people in the county start a garden and taught 500 local women to can. These women canned 10,000 quarts and dried 5 tons of fruits and veggies. Americans canned 1.45 billion quarts of food in 1918.

Liberty Gardens also had a major effect on the development of community gardening in America, as urban residents without yards of their own shared resources, tools, and labor to cultivate large lots together. Gangs of gardeners even bullied owners of vacant lots to let them turn the “slacker land” into a garden. No such tactics were needed in Moorhead, though. Susan Lally offered 17 lots she owned just north of the courthouse to anyone looking for free gardening space. Students were encouraged to grow a school garden, and the kids at Glyndon Elementary did just that.

A generation later a Second World War called gardeners into service once more and on a greater scale. It is estimated that 1 in 3 vegetables grown in America in 1943 were grown in a home or community Victory Garden. According to county extension records, an astonishing one in nine residents of Clay County attended classes on food preservation in 1944. Those who attended classes canned 730,714 quarts and dried 455,094 pounds of fruits and veggies just in this county! And for those who needed gardening space, “The Merchants and Professional Men of Moorhead” sponsored a community garden by the courthouse and Barnesville offered free land by the fairgrounds.

I will warn you, however, that once a new gardener realizes just how delicious homegrown tomatoes are, they will find that, like the flu, vegetable garden fever returns every year.


*This article is taken from Clay County Histories, an HCSCC column published in the FM Extra.

Fargo-Moorhead Steamboat Landings, 1880s
Mark Peihl
May 4, 2020

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In the 1870s and 1880s steamboats plying the Red River tied up just two blocks south of today’s Hjemkomst Center. The waterfront was located between today’s Center Avenue and 1st Avenue North bridges. It was a very busy place 130 years ago.

Initially, in the 1860s, steamers hauled furs from Canada to Georgetown, thirteen miles north of Moorhead, where they were transferred to Red River ox carts destined for St. Paul. Trade goods went north along the same route.

Railroads reached the Red River in 1871 and Fargo-Moorhead popped up. The faster and more efficient trains put the carts out of business but gave steamboats a boost. Lots more stuff was shipped to and from Canada.

In 1878 rails reached Winnipeg. Like the carts before them, it looked as if the boats would disappear, too. But steamboat owners took on a new task, carrying farmers’ wheat from isolated riverside grain storage elevators to rail heads like Fargo and Moorhead. From 1878 to 1888 steamboats carried wheat to facilities on both the Fargo and Moorhead riverbanks. The accompanying illustrations are from this period.

The Grandin Steamboat Line shipped wheat from the Grandin brothers’ huge bonanza farm near Halstad, Minnesota to their elevator on the Fargo bank. They had one boat, the J. L. Grandin. On the Moorhead side, brothers Charles and Henry Alsop built facilities for loading wheat and milling lumber. They had two steamboats, the side-wheeler Pluck and the H. W. Alsop, the finest boat to ever ply the Red.

Both companies struggled for a few years but eventually the railroads won out. In 1883 the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway built a branch north from Moorhead along the Red to Halstad. The next year the St. P., M & M Railway bought the Alsops’ two steamboats. The railroad continued to ship through the Fargo-Moorhead facilities for a few years but with the completion of a railroad line south of Moorhead to Wolverton in fall 1887, the end was near. In May 1888, the former Alsop boats left Fargo-Moorhead for Grand Forks and the Grandins permanently docked the J. L. Grandin.

Local steam boating came to an end.

The Horse Flu of 1872 Comes to Clay County, Minnesota
Davin Wait
April 22, 2020

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Life in the early years of Clay County, Minnesota, was far more dangerous than it is today. Tuberculosis, typhoid fever, and cholera confronted the limitations of public health, sanitation, and science in the 19th century. From 1872 to 1900, that spelled out a life expectancy of roughly 48 years and cemeteries where half of the community’s graves belonged to children 12 years old and younger. A quarter of them belonged to children younger than 12 months. It meant that Clay County families in the 19th century faced an infant mortality rate of 160.4 (number of infant deaths per 1,000 live births — the global high today is Afghanistan's 110.6). And if we look to the destruction of Native American populations that coincided with the expansion of Europe and the United States into the Americas — an estimated 90% population loss from pre-Columbian levels that reached its nadir in 1900 — we see an even more sobering look.

However, the first true epidemic in Clay County’s history wasn’t really even an epidemic at all. It was a novel flu virus that local residents suffered only indirectly. It was the Great Epizootic, otherwise known as the Horse Flu of 1872, and it effectively ground America’s local, horse-driven economies to a halt.
 
Horses experience influenza much like humans, so the Great Epizootic brought symptoms including runny nose and eyes, cough, fever, weakness, and chills to nearly all of the horses, donkeys, and mules in North America. The disease was first identified near Toronto at the end of September in 1872. Professor Andrew Smith of the Ontario Veterinary College believed the disease originated among pastured horses fifteen miles north of the city. By Friday, October 4, nearly all of the horses in Toronto’s streetcar and livery stables were sick. Two and a half weeks later it reached Boston and New York City. On Thursday, October 24, it was in Chicago. By the end of November, it was reported in St. Paul, Des Moines, New Orleans, Atlanta, and most of the cities between. An ill-timed shipment of horses destined for Governor Francisco Ceballos y Vargas brought the disease to Cuba. The isolation and landscape of Nicaragua finally stopped it just short of South America in September of 1873, an entire year after it had popped up in the Canadian countryside.

In an 1874 report issued to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Cornell veterinarian Dr. James Law estimated that 80-99% of horses, mules, and donkeys in North America had been struck by the disease. Roughly 1-2% of them died, with some urban areas reporting equine mortality up to 10%.

It touched down in the Red River Valley in December, 1872, where it was first reported by Glyndon’s Red River Gazette the day after Christmas:

The horse disease has finally reached this place and Moorhead. So many of the stage horses on the line between Fort Garry and Breckenridge are sick, that the stages between Moorhead and Breckenridge have been taken off entirely, and from Moorhead to Fort Garry fiery untamed oxen careen over the prairie with the mail at the rate of a mile and half an hour. The McDonald brothers, of Glyndon, started last Tuesday from Moorhead with five teams loaded with tea for Fort Garry, but their teams were taken sick on the road, and after getting as far as Frog Point, they were compelled to give up the trip, and put their horses under treatment. One of the brothers remained to take care of the teams, and the other two took Foot and Walker’s line back to Glyndon. The only case of epizootic we have heard of yet in Glyndon is that of one of Hendrick’s ponies, which now exhibits all the symptoms, but in a mild form.

While recent research from Dr. Michael Worobey at Arizona State University has connected the Great Epizootic of 1872 to the novel H1N1 strain of influenza that wreaked havoc around the globe during World War I, in its own time the disease was primarily an economic and technological disaster. Though much of the United States had already adopted steam engines, railroads, and telegraphs, draft animals like horses and mules were still vital to the American economy. Agriculture, transportation, and communication very much depended on the health of these animals. When the flu struck, local economies ground to a standstill for weeks at a time as laborers confronted the inadequacies of human power compared to horsepower. One of the most striking examples of this occurred in Boston, where a massive, two-day fire beginning on November 9 took shape in the absence of the horsepower necessary to pull the fire departments’ engines. Louis Sullivan, a student at MIT at the time of the fire, recalled a fire engine arriving too late to a burning warehouse: "The people at curbside waited, but still no firemen came. Fire engulfed the warehouse, then its roof and floors collapsed. Finally a fire engine arrived, too late. Men, not horses, pulled the apparatus." The city lost 776 buildings over 65 acres of land and nearly $75 million in property value.

As epidemics (or epizootics) often do, the devastation of the Horse Flu of 1872 prompted a revitalized effort toward social and technological innovation. Here on the edge of the frontier, railroads and settlement immediately changed the landscape and ecology. Innovation in healthcare and medicine came, as well, it just moved a little slower.

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Want to learn more about the Horse Flu of 1872 in Clay County?

Become an HCSCC member and dig into our Summer 2020 newsletter!

Join HCSCC Programming Director Markus Krueger for a brief video tour of HCSCC's local exhibition, "War, Flu, & Fear: World War I and Clay County." The exhibition explores Clay County's experiences during a time marked by global war, disease, and paranoia.

It's a sobering look at perhaps Clay County's darkest hour, but brighter and better years followed.

Walter and Karin Krueger in the 1952-53 Polio Epidemic
Markus Krueger
March 26, 2020

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I remember when I was not yet ten, my grandpa and grandma, Walter and Karin Krueger, wrote up their life stories. They kept working on it until grandpa’s was 80 pages and grandma’s was 122. Everyone take note: this is the best possible gift anyone can give to their loved ones. As I read the pages, in their words, I remember their stories and I hear their voices. My feisty grandma Karin had the Scandinavian accent so often imitated when poking fun at Minnesotans. Walter’s voice cannot be imitated. In 1952, polio deadened his speaking muscles. In time, he trained different muscles in his throat to move and contract and vibrate with the breath he could muster from the quarter of a lung that still functioned. His voice was raspy, deep, kind of (but not exactly) like what you hear coming out of an old fast foot drive-thru intercom. You and I cannot make the same noises.

He was athletic as a young man growing up in Fargo. Not after 1952. Actually, I take that back. Every little thing he did required athleticism. Polio deadened his leg muscles, so he learned to walk by locking his legs straight and propelling himself forward using some still-living ankle muscles on the tops of his feet. All of his children and grandchildren associate him with his crutches. They were with him always, almost extensions of himself. He could not move without them and yet he could practically juggle with them. Years after his death, as several of his descendants were talking about how we have his crutches or pieces of them as mementos of him, my dad pointed out how much his father hated his crutches. But what Walt Krueger saw as a symbol of his disability, those who knew him saw as symbols of his adaptability and tenacity. Or maybe we just like them because they remind us of him. Heck, he’s probably the reason I wear so much plaid.

He was a quiet man, perhaps since talking could be difficult for him and those who did not know him could often not understand him. We listened carefully when he spoke because if he chose to say it, it must be worth listening to. That, and what he said was usually smart – he was, after all, an industrial chemist for 3M responsible for inventions like the reflective lettering you see on highway signs and, also, the tape on disposable diapers.

But as I get older, what I admire most about Walt Krueger is his patience. And the reason I admire him for his patience is because he was not by nature a patient man. In fact, I think he spent much of his life frustrated, irritated and exasperated. Frustrated that the McDonald’s drive-thru guy can’t understand his order. Irritated that he’s trying not to get toppled over by his grandkids who are running around like crazy people. Exasperated that he wants to go inside a building but the steps leading to the door each look ten feet tall. Patience was forced upon him. He could not scream out, or jump up and down in a tantrum, or physically overpower a misbehaving kid, or go for a run to let off some steam. He handled obstacle after obstacle quietly, persistently, using his engineer’s mind to adapt the world to himself and retraining his body to do tasks that everyone else takes for granted…or, as I often saw him deal with obstacles, scowl, roll his eyes, and hrumph as if saying to himself “let it go. It’s not worth the effort.” When I feel impatient, I look to Walt Krueger’s example for strength. 
The following paragraphs are excerpts from the unpublished memoirs of Karin and Walter Krueger describing the Polio Epidemic of 1952-53.
 
Walter Krueger: When I had been at 3M for a year I went for a vacation to Wisconsin. Karin’s Aunt Evelyn Bonin and family were at Antigo and we stayed with them for a few days. We stopped at Duluth on the way home and left Ray [their young son] with Karin’s folks. We came home to St. Paul and went to visit the Walker Art Center. We were going to go back to Duluth on Sunday to retrieve Ray and settle back into our routine. It was not to be. I awoke Sunday morning feeling queasy and wondered if it was something I’d eaten the previous evening. I went to bring in the paper and found it difficult to coordinate. I felt a growing panic as I realized something was wrong. I called Dr. Sekhon and was distressed to find my voice didn’t work very well. I awakened Karin and she tried to arrange transportation to Anchor Hospital. I vaguely remember stumbling into Anchor Hospital supported by Karin and our neighbor, John Dowdall. Neither cabs, ambulance or police would handle such a high risk passenger as a suspected polio patient. It had much the same respect, or even greater, than the fear now associated with AIDS. [note: this was written at the height of the AIDS epidemic in 1990.]

I remember lying on the gurney awaiting the outcome of the analysis of the spinal tap. It is impossible for me to separate real memory from hallucinations for the days or even weeks that followed. 1952-3 was the last epidemic year for polio due to the development of effective serums for immunization. That year the patient load was heavy and staffs were strained to the breaking point trying to cope. Karin was there all day every day serving as a private nurse to supplement the overworked staff. My condition deteriorated to the point that it was recommended that I be put in an “iron lung.” I felt that going into the lung was a one way trip so for the sake of my morale they elected to delay that move for as long as possible. I did manage to escape that. I was unable to swallow and was fed through a tube down my nose. Speech was virtually unintelligible. Leg movement was gone and my arms were too weak to hold up a comic book. Hot pack sessions and exercise therapy became the highlights of the day. Eating was the goal to achieve to graduate from Anchor to Sheltering Arms where convalescent therapy would begin. The head doctor was a pompous politician with a bright, irrelevant remark for everyone. His two assistants were both hard working young doctors but one was all business and as impersonal as a rock. The other was as compassionate as he was conscientious; a literal lifesaver.

Eventually I did arrive at Sheltering Arms. A nurse named “Donney” took care of our ward; she reminded me very much of my Aunt Alma. Dr. Wallace Cole was a distinguished gentleman with a lot of empathy for his patients. As strength came back to my arms I started to relearn to walk. This was a precarious adventure on legs that would lock but otherwise had little response. Just getting up from a wheel chair was a gymnastic feat of no mean proportion. For a time I envied a fellow whose legs worked great but whose arms and hands were useless. I soon grew to appreciate that getting there was no use if you couldn’t do anything when you got there.

I was sustained all through this trial by Karin’s faithful daily appearance and support. I was determined to resume my career and support my family. The suspicion that I might never regain the use of my legs or swallow was slow to dawn and emotional adjustment came gradually. I took Karin’s presence for granted without regard for the effort and sacrifice she made in riding a chain of busses across town twice a day. Her dad brought Ray to St. Paul and he baby sat all day while Karin was with me.

I was allowed to go home for a few days at Christmas time. I was down to 110 pounds and looked like a Belsen or Auschwitz survivor. I came down with Pneumonia and only Dr. Sekhon’s valiant effort got me into Bethesda Hospital instead of being returned to Anchor. The battle to breath was to become a regular event for several years. At least once each spring and fall I’d catch a cold that often turned into pneumonia. I pleaded to remain at home for these bouts because the regimen at the hospital wasn’t in synch with my needs.

Good intentioned dieticians never seemed able to understand the difference between chewing and swallowing. I couldn’t make them believe that hamburger and mashed potatoes were among the hardest things to swallow. Again Dr. Sekhon cooperated but he always worried that I might need special equipment only available at the hospital.

I started back to work half days but it was the coming and going that was the most difficult. Soon I was going full time. MY coworkers were very supportive. When I was just beginning to recover they took up a collection for me at the lab that gave us a savings account of $700.00. I have always been grateful to 3M they took back this person with one year’s service and hardly able to walk. Many of my ward mates at the hospital were facing trying to start new careers because their old jobs were now beyond their abilities.
 
Karin Emberg Krueger: Sunday morning Walt got up to get the paper and discovered he was very weak and dizzy.  He went to bed while I called Dr. Sekhon.  He told me to get Walt to Anchor Hospital.  When I mentioned polio neither cabs nor police would come near us.  So I ran to the neighbors and found most of them were at church.  Clarence Etter backed away from me in horror; Carol Anne was about due and he was afraid.  John Dowdall was in the back yard and when he learned of the problem immediately offered his help -dear, dear man!  Between us we dragged Walt to John's car and we went to Anchor.  The whole afternoon passed before we got the diagnosis of polio confirmed.  I signed two papers; one for a tracheotomy and the other for an Iron Lung.  Then they sent me home with John.

At dawn the next morning I got a call to come as quickly as I could because Walt was dying.  The cab came so soon I was buttoning skirt and blouse as I ran down the stairs to the cab.  We sped to the hospital only to be told that the immediate crisis was past.  After a short 20 minutes with him they sent me home again under a two-week quarantine.  A week later Walt had another crisis - he'd had a fever of 105 for days. The paralysis was total in both legs and his arms, though movable, were too weak to hold anything.  He couldn't swallow and his speech was undecipherable grunts or groans.  He was fed through a tube down his nose after his veins collapsed so IV needles wouldn't penetrate them.  I found his room vacant and in near panic sought a nurse.  Down the hall two nurses’ aides stood chatting about nail polish colors beside a gurney with a dead body draped in a white sheet.  I didn't think it was Walt but was too afraid to ask.  Then a nurse I came to like very much came over to me and said Walt had been moved to another room.  My fear was not without basis as three people had died that week.  While I was still quarantined Walt's coworkers came to the house one noon and presented a savings book with $720.00 on deposit.  They also washed all the windows and put up the storm windows but declined to touch any of the sandwiches I prepared for them. 

The neighbors were supportive in leaving food for me; the bell would ring and I'd go to the door to find a casserole or something in a dish on the porch.  They'd give a friendly wave and chat a bit from twenty or more feet away.  Polio was greatly feared like the plagues of the middle ages - or the worst fears of AIDs today.  After two weeks I finally was asked to come to the hospital as a volunteer to supplement the overworked all volunteer nursing staff.  Like them I put in very busy twelve hour days.  Squeezing oranges was a never ending chore that filled any otherwise idle moments.  There was only one part time physical therapist for a whole floor of patients and I helped exercise three patients and occasionally hot packed them and others.  I didn't drive and it was a long hour and a half bus ride with a transfer downtown to get to and from the hospital.  I left home at 10:30 AM and got back at 1:30 AM.  This was complicated by the fact that I am especially vulnerable to motion sickness when pregnant.  I waited until Walt had been hospitalized seven weeks before telling him or our folks that I was pregnant.  Walt was very pleased and took it as further incentive to recover and take care of his growing family.  My father was pleased but concerned; mother was anxious but both were quick to assure me of their support.  Walt's folks heard the news with deadly silence.  Dad Krueger viewed this as a serious complication of an already tragic situation in which his only son was desperately ill.  He was overwhelmed by the fate that had struck his wife and now his son.

The onset of the paralysis was swift and dramatic; the recovery was painfully slow and hesitant.  The ability to speak more intelligibly came gradually but proved very frustrating for both Walt and the nurses.  I was frequently the only one able to decipher his attempts to be understood.  Other physical achievements came heartbreakingly slowly.  I shall never forget the jubilation as I danced in the hall with Dr. Kunder the evening Walt managed to wiggle a toe.  And then I leaned against the wall and slowly sank to the floor sobbing in despair that that was all he could do.  I was joined on the floor by my favorite night nurse and the doctor.  Being able to swallow was set as a criterion for being able to transfer to Sheltering Arms, the rehab hospital.  This seemed a hopeless goal and only a blatant stretching of the truth allowed the transfer to be made.

The atmosphere at Sheltering Arms was completely different.  Here the accent was on rehabilitation and recovery instead of simple survival.  The ward contained a wide spectrum of disabilities and ages.  One negative aspect was that it took another two transfers on the bus to get there and took correspondingly longer to make the trip.  Dr. Cole was a pleasant, sympathetic man who seemed genuinely interested in his patients as had Dr. Kunder.  They stood in sharp contrast to Dr. McCarthy at Anchor Hospital who was never available, was coldly detached and, I now realize, was afraid of catching polio.

I went home to Proctor on my birthday to retrieve Ray.  Mom had to stay there to take care of the goats and chickens and Dad came back with me to care for the baby while I was at the hospital.  That evening my water broke and Dr. Sekhon came right over.  The house grew colder and neither Dad nor Sekhon had any idea what to do to get the furnace going again.  They hit it off magnificently and chatted through the night.  The next morning John Dowdall came over and replaced a blown fuse; the house got warm.  Happily, I did not miscarry.

Dad and I trimmed the tree in happy anticipation of Walt coming home for the first time at Christmas.  Bill Jordan and Bob Kochendorfer built a ramp at the side stairs for his wheelchair.  He weighed 110 pounds and looked like someone out of a concentration camp.  It was a bitter sweet holiday.  Walt's folks joined Dad, Ray and me for the occasion.

Walt came home for several more short visits and then he got pneumonia.  Everyone was appalled and wondered how he could possibly survive.  Until then all contagious patients had to go to Anchor.  Walt told me he’d die if he had to go back there.  I begged Sekhon to intercede and admit Walt to Bethesda.  He did.  He spent a month there and was given wonderful care.  Then it was back to Sheltering Arms.  The guys in his ward formed a most supportive group; they’d kid each other unmercifully and the humor was frequently ribald.  Walt has written about some of his friendships.  I'll only say I was very happy to have him there and to watch him slowly regain his health.  We contributed to the entertainment when the physical therapist showed me how to exercise Walt.  By then I was very pregnant and I needed to straddle Walt over his knees.  This was done in the open ward amid catcalls, laughter and a profusion of suggestive remarks; they had a wonderful time!  Of course, we went along with it too.

Before Walt left Sheltering Arms, Dr. Cole called me in, sat me down and gently told me some terrible news.  He said Walt had been so damaged by the polio that he lacked the ability to fight disease and probably wouldn't live beyond a year.  Dr. Cole felt Walt's recovery from pneumonia had been miraculous.  I needed to share this news with my mother; she had been a nurse and I was sure would take the news in her calm, matter of fact way.  We didn't tell my Dad or Walt’s folks because we knew it would devastate them.  I didn't want Walt to know; he'd fought so hard to live.  Only when Walt had survived to retirement age could I tell him that dark prognosis.  The doctor proved to be only half right; Walt did get pneumonia every spring and fall for many years until the pneumonia shot became available about five years before he retired.  Walt adamantly refused to go to the hospital; we had oxygen, antibiotics and lots of TLC, but Dr. Sekhon was quick to point out that in case of heart problems or other emergency he’d be better off in the hospital.  Walt countered that his schedule was in conflict with the hospital’s and the diet at home was more compatible to his needs.  With great trepidation I sided with Walt because I loved him and I knew it was his strong will that kept him alive.  But it was very stressful and I worried a lot about whether it was the right thing to do.
It was not easy to provide the care Walt needed.  Therapy exercises required an uninterrupted hour and a half twice each day.  Ray was about 20 months old and had been the star of the show; it was difficult for him to share me with this stranger.  The exercises were impossible to perform with Ray in the room.  How I wished for a fenced in yard that summer because Ray had a passion for taking off into the hills with his dog, Teddy.  My mother reminded me of how she kept Eddie and me safe at the lake; I tied a long rope around the maple tree and fastened one end to the dog and the other end to Ray.  They were happy and I knew they were safe.

Walt had resolved to get back to work before our daughter was born.  He succeeded!  He was to return to work for half days but the most difficult part was the getting there and the return trip home so he was back on a full time schedule very quickly.  At first his supervisor, Emil Grieshaber, who lived a block away from us would drive him to and from work.  Walt's Dad had hand controls installed in the car so he could regain some independence.  After all those countless hours of waiting for and riding busses I was very eager to learn to drive.  Walt taught me.  I took over the task of getting him to and from work until he got a special parking place close enough that he could manage on his own.
 
Walter and Karin Krueger lived happily ever after.

Unearthing the Forgotten Flu: Spanish Flu in Clay County
Davin Wait
March 1, 2018
-additional research by Mark Peihl & Pamela Burkhardt

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There’s something of a local legend here about Concordia College’s fall quarantine in 1918. The story goes that Concordia’s President J.A. Aasgaard closed the perimeter on October 8, and as a result Concordia’s student body was largely spared from the horrifying pandemic that followed: the 1918 H1N1 influenza pandemic better known as La Grippe or Spanish Flu.

A November issue of the campus newspaper The Crescent noted the quarantine's success and observed the following: “It is evident that our students are so abnormally healthy that even the ‘Flu’ germ shuns them.” The only recorded campus death also seemed to reinforce the wisdom of the decision. Apparently a female student broke quarantine and went home. She contracted the disease at some point during her trip and died shortly thereafter. Erling Rolfsrud included the story in his Cobber Chronicle (1966) without sharing his source and Carroll Engelhardt repeated the story in On Firm Foundation Grounded (1991).
 
The consensus among scientists and Spanish Flu historians today would support Aasgaard’s choice. Quarantine was about the best available recourse. But, assuming the quarantine was executed as ordered and recorded, it was still probably lifted too early to have made a significant impact on the community’s overall health. The perimeter was opened the same day another Moorhead woman, Esther Anstrup (23), died from the flu. Three additional Moorhead residents, all in their 20s, would die from the flu that month and twenty-nine more people would die in the county after November 7 — when the quarantine was lifted — as the flu moved through smaller towns and rural areas. Twenty-six more would die in December.

By the end of May 1919, Clay County had lost 151 people.  

In other words, Concordia may have weathered the storm, but that was more likely due to the peculiarities of Spanish Influenza than an effective quarantine. That is, Spanish Influenza found its most vulnerable hosts in people usually unscathed by influenza: healthy people in their 20s and 30s (just a little older than most college students). In fact, this was one of the clear and more horrifying markers of the disease. Recent work in flu genomics is beginning to explain this peculiarity, as well — but first some history.

*  *  *  *  *

Spanish Influenza had arrived in Minnesota at the end of September, just as the Meuse-Argonne offensive was taking form overseas. The US Surgeon General announced it on September 25 after several Army recruits temporarily housed on the University of Minnesota campus fell ill, but it had broken out at a military funeral in Wells, Minnesota, a week earlier. Walter Paulson was being buried. He’d died of pneumonia serving in the Navy. His brother, Private Raymond Paulson, was among the group watching him go in the ground. Within weeks Raymond, his sister Anna, and the presiding Reverend C.W. Gilman were also dead.
 
Locals here would have first heard about the flu in news reports about military casualties. When it was apparent the disease was moving through America, some of our area newspapers would note its westward path as it moved toward us in Minnesota. This allowed people in the Red River Valley some time to prepare, but these stories were also lost in war headlines, a mid-term election, a Minnesota wildfire, and yet another liberty loan drive. Even so, not long after its presence was announced in Minnesota, Moorhead Normal School postponed the fall semester.

Then the first cases in Fargo-Moorhead were reported Friday, October 4. On Monday, October 7, infant Selma Johanna Hanson died in Moorhead. She was the first flu casualty in the county. The following day three more women joined her – Maria Letigia Altobelli (28), Ella Anderson (45), and Annie Jane Schilling (25). Moorhead’s city council banned public gatherings and closed schools. On Wednesday, with 2,500 cases reported in Fargo-Moorhead-Dilworth, Concordia closed its perimeter and continued with business as usual – the best they could – within the confines. When they opened those perimeters a month later, they had no idea that the disease would eat at our community for another 15 months.

In Clay County, 174 people died from the flu or flu-related diseases. The population at the time numbered about 21,000 (0.8% of the population died from the flu or flu-related disease). Moorhead lost 68 people (1.2% of the population), Hawley lost 12 people (2.8%), Barnesville and Dilworth lost 10 people (.66% and 1.25%, respectively), and Ulen lost 8 people (1.3%). Outside of the transportation and population centers of Moorhead and Dilworth, the communities of Goose Prairie, Ulen, and Highland Grove townships were particularly hit hard (24 deaths total), but Hawley Township wasn’t far behind (16 deaths). Barnesville’s flu deaths were evenly scattered throughout the pandemic and didn’t begin until October 16.

When the flu fatalities are mapped, it’s fairly clear that the disease made its landing in Fargo-Moorhead-Dilworth, and probably by rail. Many in these communities worked on or with the railroads, including the heavily trafficked Northern Pacific Railway station in Dilworth. The first 15 flu-related deaths of Clay County occurred in Moorhead and Dilworth. The Italian population of Moorhead and Dilworth suffered early and disproportionately, too. Five of the first fifteen deaths appear to have struck Italians. Ethnic and class isolation at the time may explain it. Sex didn’t appear to be a factor: death rates among men and women were about the same.

However, pregnancy was markedly more dangerous than usual. A definitive number doesn’t exist, but medical historian John M. Barry cites studies that put the global fatality rate among infected pregnant women between 23-71%. About 40% of Clay County’s deaths were young adult women, miscarriages, and stillbirths. Little Selma Hanson, the first influenza casualty here, was followed four days later by her mother Rachel (21). At the end of November, Agnes Wilinski was stillborn in Moorhead. Two days later her mother Hattie (26) followed. In March of 1919, Medalia Stockwell (25) died of flu and pneumonia along with the child she was carrying.

Dilworth suffered its 10 fatalities all in the last three weeks of October – though it should be noted that deaths after those first two weeks, even among people in rural areas, were more likely to occur in Fargo-Moorhead hospitals. Dilworth only had one Red Cross nurse, Louise Christensen, and a few volunteers. On October 19, Christensen wrote to her supervisor, “We are very, very busy, have 24 patients in hospital now. Have dismissed about 15, two have died, and perhaps one or two died last night.” Her estimate would have included Louise Rae (45), who had died October 18. Dilworth counted four more deaths in the following ten days.

Though Ulen, Barnesville, Hitterdal, Hawley, and Glyndon closed their schools and banned or limited public gatherings from early October through early November, the disease still spread to more isolated, rural areas. The first rural deaths began in Morken Township on October 14 and Barnesville and Skree Township on October 16. Like the northeastern corner of the county near Ulen, southeastern Skree and Parke townships near Rollag suffered a disproportionate number of flu-related deaths (6 and 4, respectively). Ulen registered its first death on October 18 – even though J.T. Johnson reported that same day from Ulen to the Moorhead Daily News that there was little illness there. Another Ulen death followed on Halloween. The Ulen-Hitterdal area would see 20 more that year.

Hawley held out for a while. Perry Pederson (30) lost his battle on October 25 and an infant, Clarice Aune, died on November 25. There were several deaths in neighboring rural townships, suggesting attempts at quarantine and home care, but December would bring a deadly winter for Hawley. Twelve villagers would die from the flu by May 18, 1919. Ten others would die in the four townships surrounding it (Hawley, Cromwell, Highland Grove, and Eglon). The region was spared from the second wave that began late December, 1919.

The southwestern corner of the county suffered several losses as well, beginning in Holy Cross Township on October 29 with Lynn Peterson (25). Another followed there on November 6, bringing a relatively high concentration of November deaths. Overall, Holy Cross registered 5 deaths during the pandemic, Alliance 3, Elmwood 2, and Kurtz 1. That region suffered during both waves, ending with Valine Larson’s death on February 19, 1920, at the age of 29.

Georgetown appears to have fared well. Though the village reported infection, and census records show a notable population dip in 1920 (likely attributed to war displacement and Prohibition-inspired urban migration), only one death was registered there during the pandemic: Wells Bristol (56), near the very end, on February 24, 1920. The four townships surrounding Georgetown registered only three deaths (2 in Morken and 1 in Kragnes). The old trading post seems to have been isolated enough to withstand the disease.

The final flu casualty in the county occurred on February 29. Leap Day. A child born in Parke Township died only several hours later.

*  *  *  *  *

The result of the prolonged tragedy has been measured in a few sobering ways. There were probably more than 500 million global infections in just under two years (between 25-35% of the population). Though a large majority of those infected experienced nothing more than a few sleepy days of cough and fever, there were probably 50-100 million global deaths (compare this to the 17 million casualties of World War I). This amounted to 2.5-5% of the global population. Much of the developed world lost around 2% of their populations. Fatality rates in underdeveloped countries, particularly those in Asia, were much higher.

Despite similar infection rates, Americans were relatively immune at 675,000 deaths (0.655% of the population), with some wide disparities. For example, a Metropolitan Life Insurance Company study of Americans aged 25 to 45 found that 3.26% of industrial workers and 6% of coal miners died. Life expectancy in the U.S. dropped 12 years in 1918.

In Minnesota, an estimated 250,000 were infected and nearly 12,000 died (0.5% of the state population). More than half of Minnesota’s 3,700 war casualties suffered flu-related deaths (2,300, or 62%). In November of 1918, deaths in the state outnumbered births for the first time.

Clay County endured at least 174 deaths in a population of 21,000 (some were undoubtedly uncounted and/or unreported) during the pandemic's first 18 months. The average age of those who died in Clay County was 26.3 years. Using the life expectancy in the U.S. before the war (about 51 years), that means we lost about 4,333 years of human life in Clay County. Of the 64 Clay County residents who died in the military, 29 died from flu-related illnesses – bringing Clay County’s total flu casualties to 203 people. Our total years lost in the county was closer to 5,000. We lost a lot of life.

The most frequent victims of the Spanish Influenza pandemic were those between 25-35 years old. Many medical researchers have attributed this peculiarity to the strong immune systems of the inflicted. Apparently too strong. When cells in the human body are threatened by pathogens like the Spanish Influenza virus, their first defenses are interferons, cytokine proteins that communicate the need for defense to nearby cells. White blood cells (or leukocytes) follow, disarming/killing/consuming these invaders and infected or dead cells. As you can imagine, all of this activity wreaks havoc on tissues, leaving them inflamed and the host fevered. Inflammation is even part of the defense: if more blood is delivered to the site of infection, more leukocytes are available to fight.

But when that defense is moving too strong in too concentrated of an area, it damages necessary human tissues in what’s called a ‘cytokine storm’ (the war analogy here might be friendly fire or total annihilation). Spanish Influenza triggered these cytokine storms and left a battlefield in the lungs, spaces now filled with liquid and dead tissues and offering little respiration or defense. In fatal cases, the flu killed by hypoxia. In other words, people drowned to death in their own fluids. This is why several fatalities were marked by what was called “heliotrope cyanosis,” a bluing of the skin from oxygen deprivation.

However, dangers lay ahead even for those who were able to shake the flu virus. When other pathogens — like Streptococcus Pneumoniae — that would otherwise be routinely destroyed in the upper respiratory system came upon this battlefield, they were be able to stroll right through it to the deeper tissues of the lower lungs. The secondary infections that followed flu infection, typically viral and bacterial pneumonia, are widely believed to have killed more people than the flu itself.

*  *  *  *  *

Given the impact of the pandemic and the continued threat we face from influenza, scientists are still searching for answers. Consensus is out on the question of locating the outbreak’s “spill-over event” or “patient zero.” There was so much movement on this planet at the time, it’s an almost impossible task. Some point to a 1916 English outbreak of “Purulent Bronchitis.” Others to a 1917 outbreak in France, possibly carried to the Western Front by the Chinese Labor Corps. The strongest case seems to point to Haskell County, Kansas, where a rural outbreak moved to the Army’s nearby Camp Funston and filled the hospital and barracks with sick soldiers in March, 1918. As journalist and historian Laura Spinney puts it, about the only real consensus is that this was a deadly pandemic that picked up its name because neutral Spain was the only place journalists were willing to report on it.

However, the abandoned Ph.D. of a Swedish virology student at the University of Iowa in 1951 has recently become a touchstone moment in better understanding the Spanish Influenza. Johan Hultin was looking for a dissertation idea when a guest lecturer offhandedly remarked that someone should travel north and find a frozen (preserved) sample of Spanish Influenza in the North American permafrost. Hultin accepted the challenge, flew to Alaska, found two destroyed graveyards, trekked 6 miles through soggy tundra, and came to a third at Brevig Mission. Here the flu had killed 72 people. All but three children. But the graveyard looked promising.

After consulting the village’s matriarch and council, Hultin was given permission to dig through the mass grave that had been filled thirty-three years prior. He promised that the villagers’ sacrifice would help prevent the tragedy again. He found his sample six feet down, frozen, and took it back to Iowa. Then, after several tests, he ran out of tissues. The sample was gone and he abandoned his Ph.D. After some time off he returned to earn an M.D.

Forty five years later, Jeffrey Taubenberger at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology was making waves in the world of virology. He’d sequenced segments of Spanish Infleunza that had been preserved in the National Tissue Repository, but he’d encountered the same problem: not enough tissues. Fortunately, Hultin was still cued into the medical world and he reached out to Taubenberger. With the Institute’s funding, Hultin returned to Brevig Mission in August, 1997, to conduct a second excavation. The village had known of his previous attempt and the village matriarch was the granddaughter of the woman he’d appealed to in 1951. Once again, the council gave him permission; and, once again, Hultin found his sample. He took a larger piece.

In 2005, the full genome was sequenced, including that of the virus’s important surface H- and N- glycoproteins (Hemagglutinen and Neuraminidase are the flu’s primary weapons in both entering and leaving human cells; the proteins' different strains are identified with numbers). Taubenberger and his team determined that Spanish Influenza, an H1N1 virus, was likely the progenitor of current human and swine influenza A strains (H1N1 and H3N2), as well as the extinct H2N2 virus that circulated in the 1950s and ‘60s. They also confirmed earlier hypotheses that the pathogen had made a zoonotic leap, mutating from an animal strain and spilling over into the human population. This was valuable information, of course, but many didn’t see a smoking gun. Still not much to explain the pandemic’s origin or virulence.

Then, over the last decade, Dr. Michael Worobey took the problem from a different perspective. Instead of searching within the flu’s genome, he set it beside other flu genomes to determine its rate of mutation and isolate the divergences or branches on its phylogenetic tree. His process, using “molecular clocks” and thousands of flu gene sequences, is leading to a new understanding of the flu, particularly in understanding the importance of childhood exposure and immunities. The 1918 H1N1 flu had been so lethal to 20- and 30-year olds because their early exposures had been to a flu of markedly different surface proteins: H3N8. Other demographics, like teens and older adults, had some defense following their childhood exposure to an H1N8 flu.

As elderly Americans at the time had grown up with a separate H1N1 flu, they had in many ways already fought the battle.

-Davin Wait, HCSCC
-additional research by Mark Peihl, HCSCC

Cliff Hitterdal & the Meuse-Argonne
Markus Krueger & Davin Wait
October 1, 2018

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This fall marks 100 years since maybe the most despairing months in Clay County history. Certainly the deadliest. Most Clay County soldiers were just landing on the battlefields of France in September of 1918, and they were landing just in time for the deadliest battle in American history: the Meuse-Argonne Offensive of World War I. More than one million American troops took part in the offensive, though it's now perhaps best known as the battle that made "Sergeant" Alvin York famous. Sadly, this is also the "deadliest" battle in American history because more than 26,000 American troops died on the field. Those that escaped the gunfire, gas, and shells had another adversary, as well: the new H1N1 "Spanish" Flu that was sweeping across the globe. The pandemic was coursing through the trenches of Europe at the time, and it reached Minnesota the same week the Meuse-Argonne Offensive was launched in France.

This short video offers an insider view of September 26, 1918, when Hitterdal, MN, native Cliff Hitterdal took part in the first morning of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. He was wounded two days later. The interview was conducted in 1976 and, yes, you can tell Cliff is a Midwestern boy and the son of Norwegian immigrants.