Jim and Mary on their wedding day in 1947.

Jim

by Ben Keillor, son

Dora and her son Jim.

James William Keillor was my pops. He saw Mary Amies riding past the farm, hair flying in the breeze, and decided she would make a good wife. He was 37. She was 17. An earlier relationship in his 20s had ended with a “Dear Jim” letter. He was farming with his mother, Grandma Keillor, at the time. She wanted no part of this union and moved out to live with a daughter.

Farming was a mixture of dairy and strawberry growing. Some chickens were usually around. Never any hogs. He and mom had four kids, two boys and two girls: Jim and me, Rebecca and Dorcas, the youngest. Mom had mental problems and was frequently institutionalized in the Anoka State Hospital for nine months to a year at a time. Grandma Keillor would come and watch over the kids in mom’s absence. Dorcas was sent to live with Uncle Lawrence and Aunt Fran.

About 1958, Dad went to work at the state hospital in Anoka doing janitorial work and cooking for the large patient population. His gravies were always a hit. He needed more money than the farm brought in. He would milk the cows before work in the morning, and Jim and I would milk at night. We used a barn that Uncle Ally said was, “A hundred years old, a hundred years ago.” Dad was always sketching plans for a new barn. I came home after school one day in 1965 and he was excited. The power line was going to go through the farm and he would have enough money to start a new barn. We started cutting trees down in the woods to get sawed into planks for the new barn. It was a long process. We were still building in 1969.

We always had morning Bible reading. One morning he and brother Jim got in an argument about what to believe about the Old Testament reading that day. Pops started getting chest pains and had a massive heart attack later that morning. He lasted a couple days until July 31, 1969. He was 59. He never did see the barn get finished.

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Pops was the bagger on the threshing crew when he was younger. Back in those days the guy with the threshing machine was paid 25 percent of the crop for the use of his thresher. One in four bags were yours. If the bagger made your bags bigger, you took home more grain. The landowner and the thresher owner had to vote on a bagger. He had to be strong enough to throw bags full of grain all day. He had to fill every bag the same. (It would have been nice to have a platform scale to weigh the bags, but a scale would just get in the way.) Pops filled every bag the same. And he pronounced it “thrashing,” as in “the boys need a good thrashing.”

Pops had his fears. They were rooted in his younger days. He had three huge ones. He and his cousins were swimming in the Rum River when Joe Loucks drowned. Pops was the last one on the human chain the teenagers formed to save Joe. Pops disappeared from view and almost drowned, but they lost Joe. He forbade his kids from going over their heads in lakes and pools. We couldn’t swim out to the diving raft at the lake.

After his family house burned down from a chimney fire, and the family was dispersed to live with friends and relatives, he was scared of a house fire. When it got really dry in the summer, he plowed a furrow around the farmhouse to save it from any fire advances. Once we camped out with the Smith boys. Pops forbid us from having a campfire. The neighbor boy thought that was dumb and made a fire. About midnight Pops came back through the woods and hollered at us all the way home.

Lastly, he was afraid of tornados after the Hunts lost their home in the tornado of 1942. We would be over playing at Uncle Jerry and Aunt Jo’s home, and it would get all green and still. He’d call Aunt Jo. “Send the kids home.” It was a half mile walk. She offered to shelter us in her basement. That basement isn’t good enough, he’d tell his sister. “Send ‘em home.” We spent a lot of time in the basement. He would have died if he knew I watched the Champlin tornado of 1984 on TV on the show floor of Thomas Pontiac and simultaneously out the window. Awesome! Most of his fears died with him but why didn’t his brothers and sisters have the same fears? Who knows? Cousins?

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When we needed strawberry boxes for our crop, we used to stop at the Elk River box factory. Quart boxes were four cents each. Pints were three cents. We had no use for pint boxes. We sold the berries to the grocery stores, three quarts for a dollar. Dad would walk into the store with a flat of berries on his arm while we kids waited in the car. Folks would peek in our windows. “How’s much are your berries? OK, I’ll take a quart.” We had made a 35-cent sale, but we had broken up a case of 12. Oh well, half the time pops came back without making a sale anyway.

But about the box factory, it’s still there. Back then, I would go up to the front door. The old lady who lived there put on her reading glasses, looked at the price list on the refrigerator door, looked again and said, “Pints are nine cents each. How many do you want?” I needed a couple of dozen. She got out her Casio calculator and charged me $2.16. Then she had me wait while her hubby walked under the clothesline out to an old shed out back. They sawed their own lumber for the lath that made the boxes. I was never invited into the old shed. It took him about 20 minutes to make the boxes while I waited. Just another sale. That fresh wood smelled good.

Looking back I often wonder, what was I thinking at various times in my life. The day I got drafted as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War was one of those times. I didn’t have anything against the Vietnamese. I didn’t know any of them at that time. I didn’t feel like shooting any of them. Other than that I didn’t have any real strong feelings. Pops thought we should just declare victory and come home. He was gone before my induction, though. Nixon ruled the draftees didn’t have to serve in Vietnam against their wishes. So there was that. And he was gone before I got home.

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I was raking hay the afternoon of August 1, 1970. The rake was borrowed. The tractor was a 1939 F-14 with a top speed of 3 1/2 mph. Aunt Eleanor was waiting at the end of the field. I stopped and throttled the tractor real low. (It started hard when it was hot, so I didn't want to crank it by hand.) She hopped up on the draw bar and said, "Are you ok?" I said I was. Pops (her brother) had died the afternoon before. There was a possibility of rain. I wanted to get the hay up dry.

There was a lot to do. Get up hay. Make funeral arrangements. Figure out life. Then it hit me. It wasn't the end of the world if the hay got wet. It was a lousy second cutting. Pops didn't want it wet. He wanted the bales bunched in the field until they bleached out in the sun. Moving forward, that wasn't going to happen. He was gone. It didn't make sense. Just like using horses for field work. Not going to happen.

When my spouse died, I realized how I loaded the dish washer didn't matter. She cleaned out the refrigerator. I hated to. I missed that.

Life went on. Martin Lehn bailed the hay. Uncle Lawrence helped with funeral arrangements. Local brothers dug the grave. The half finished barn got finished Amish style. Brandon cleaned out the refrigerator.

Leave some love behind. That's a good way to finish.