Marion Gunderson Art (and the Farmer's Daughter)

Fall semester classes at Iowa State University begin Monday, August 22, 2011. Grandson Jackson starts kindergarten the same day.

Pictured below is my mother Marion Abbott with seven of her class-of-1937 Ogden, Utah, “High School class mates before going to college, fall 1937.” Mother attended Iowa State College*, which was the alma mater of her parents.

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Mother (Marion Abbott Gunderson) is behind the steering wheel in this photo. While I know Mother had a car to drive during at least her senior year of high school, I don't know if the car in this photo belonged to her or to someone else. According to Mother's handwriting at the upper right, this photo was taken in 1937 and appeared in an Ogden (Utah) Standard-Examiner newspaper. I don't think the writing along the bottom is Mother's, but I could be wrong. I believe the names written at the bottom are, left to right: "Marilyn Eccles, Maren Eccles, Mary Lou Humphries, Betty Hopkins, Dougie Douglas, Shirley Evans, Ruth Young, Abby (Marion) Abbott." (Click on photo once or twice to enlarge.)

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In this 2-minute audio clip recorded in 1981, Mother and her lifelong best friend Betty Dix talk about “driving around” while they were in high school in the 1930s. In the clip, Mother’s is the first voice heard, then Betty’s softer voice.

Although she’s not in the photo (above), Betty Dix** was Mother’s best friend almost from birth. Both were in the Ogden, Utah, class of 1937. Before Mother and Betty were born in 1919, not only were their parents friends, but Betty’s and Mother’s grandparents had been friends.

Betty Dix Kirley, late 1980s. Betty passed away in October 1999.

A 1920 photo*** of Mother and Betty when they were infants is included in this 1999 letter from Betty to Mother. The letter arrived in time for Mother’s 80th birthday celebration.

A 1991 photo of Betty includes (l to r) Mother, Mary Deane Wagner (a cousin of my dad’s), Betty and my dad playing cards (bridge?) during the weekend of my mom’s and dad’s 50th wedding anniversary celebration.

Betty, a victim of cancer, died in early October of 1999, just a month after sending her letter to Mother.

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*now Iowa State University

**Betty later married a man with the last name of Kirley. After they divorced, her name remained Betty Dix Kirley, but I always refer to her as “Betty Dix.”

***Mother as an infant is at left in the photo with the dark hair; Betty is at the right with lighter hair. The photo is at the bottom of the letter, requiring scrolling to view it.

(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)

I have a couple of things I’m wanting to post. However, they aren’t put together yet and Bill and I have family with us through Thursday. Hmmm…write a post or spend time with family. Family wins! I’ll post again sometime over the weekend. Unless, of course, I post sooner!

Last weekend Bill and I stopped in Alta, Iowa. There we saw this steam engine (at the bottom of this post) that, in its day, powered a threshing machine.

This was one of my Great-Uncle Art Gunderson's steam engine oilers. (Click on photo to enlarge.)

In a previous post, I told about the two steam engine crankshaft oilers that my dad, Deane Gunderson, gave to me. These oilers are from the steam engine owned* in the early 1900s by my Great-Uncle Art Gunderson (who, by the way, was a captain of the University of Iowa football team). One of those oilers is pictured at left.

In the foreground of the first photo (below), a brass and glass steam engine crankshaft oiler (similar to mine) is visible. Just behind it, you can see the top of another oiler on the other side of the engine. Silly me always thought there was just one oiler per steam engine. Now I realize there was more than one area on a steam engine that needed to be oiled; therefore the steam engines had multiple oilers.

John Wiegman, a friendly Rolfe native born in 1928, wrote the following in his book titled Three to the Hill: Growing up in Iowa 1928-1946. This excerpt is from his two-page chapter titled “The Threshing Run.”

Late July and early August—the very hottest time of the Iowa summer—was oat harvesting time. The reaping, threshing, and hay-stacking operation during an oats harvest was extremely labor intensive. The threshing machine itself was a shared piece of equipment, fired with wood and coal—a noisy, hot steam-breathing beast of a machine that required constant oil injections to keep it running.

Two paragraphs later John wrote, “But labor and machinery weren’t the only things that were shared on the threshing run.” Click here to read the two pages of John’s memories regarding threshing. At the same link is the cover of Three to the Hill as well as John’s foreword.**

I hope to have more to report about threshing after I go to Albert City’s August 12-14, 2011,  Threshermen and Collectors Show.

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At least two of the steam engine oilers are seen here. One is in the foreground and is made of brass and glass. Just the brass top of another oiler is seen in the background. (Click on photo to enlarge.)

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(Click on photo to enlarge.)

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This is where the operator would stand to put wood or coal into the steam engine receptacle. The steam subsequently produced would drive the piston which would, in turn, drive the pulley which was connected via a belt to the thresher. The belt transferred the power from the steam engine to the thresher. Drats that I didn't get a photo of the pulley. Maybe this weekend... (Click on photo to enlarge.)

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(Click on photo to enlarge.)

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*I recently read the transcript of my Great-Aunt Martha’s early-1980s oral history. She said the “threshing machine” was owned by C.L. Gunderson (my great-grandfather) and that C.L.’s son (Martha’s brother), Arthur, “ran it” and “was given the profits earned from the threshing machine.”

**Posted with permission from John Wiegman.

(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s home page.)

Friday night, August 5th, Bill and I attended the Sioux City Explorers‘ minor league baseball game. The Explorers are in the Central Division of the American Association of Independent Professional Baseball. (You can read about the history of the Association here.)

The Explorers lost to the Wichita Wingnuts by a score of 3-5. Even though “our” team (“our” only because it’s an Iowa team) lost, we still had a great time. We had first-row seats just a hair to the third base side of home.

Friday night was the first time I experimented with a dSLR camera to take action shots of a sport event. While the net behind home plate protected us from foul balls, it also provided a challenge for taking photos. For my first time out, I’m pleased with the photos, and with what I learned regarding action shots.

According to umpire Lance Vaughn, in the following series of photos Sioux City’s #5 Ryan Priddy was “out.” This was after the umpire apparently called Priddy “safe.” You can imagine the uproar by the crowd (a very sparse crowd) after the final ruling.

The second photo shows the edge of the catcher’s glove about waist-high just to the left of the umpire. It seems unlikely that the runner was tagged in time. The article at this link reports the umpire said Priddy never touched home plate. Hmmm.

Last summer Bill and I went on our own mini-baseball tour, watching four minor league teams in as many evenings. While we had a fun, relaxed time Friday night watching the Explorers, between last summer and this summer, the atmosphere of the Burlington Bees remains our favorite.

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Sioux City's #5 Ryan Priddy is sliding into home. Click on photo to enlarge.

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The catcher's glove is about waist-high just to the left of the umpire's torso (i.e., between his shirt and his elbow). The umpire ruled Priddy was "out" saying he never touched home plate. Click once on photo to enlarge. Twice to enlarge even more.

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The Sioux City runner's torso is over home plate. Click on photo to enlarge.

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Photo info for all three photos is as follows. Shutter: 1/1600; aperture: f/2.0; focal length: 135mm; ISO: 3200. I first focused on home plate. Then, before the play, I switched from auto-focus to manual so as to maintain the same focus throughout the anticipated play at home.

(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)

The photos below are of Bill Shimon’s (my husband) July 23 and 24, 1976, wheat harvest. The location is Section 23, Roosevelt Township, Pocahontas County, Iowa*.

Growing wheat in northwest Iowa was, and still is, very unusual. With corn prices recently surpassing wheat prices, I thought it a perfect time to tell about Bill’s 35-years-ago wheat crop.

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The audio at the links immediately below explains the photos better than the captions do.

Part I audio (6 minutes): Where and why Bill raised wheat, how it was marketed and to where it was transported, why oats are not grown as much as in earlier years, and a summary regarding different kinds of wheat.

Part II audio (5 minutes): A description of the operation in Photo #2, below, and an explanation of the machinery Bill used, including his own engineering.

Part III audio (4.5 minutes): The moisture content, test weight and yield of Bill’s 1976 wheat crop, as well as a brief discussion regarding protein in wheat.

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Bill got his start in farming at the age of 12 or 13 years (about 10 years before these photos were taken) when he, along with one of his brothers, first rented farmland.

At the time of the photos below, Bill was 23 years old and involved in a farming operation with his dad and brothers. Subsequently, Bill had his own farming operation until 1985 when he embarked on his farm management career**.

I hope you’ll listen to and enjoy the audio. I know that some of the photos below are a bit redundant, but I’m posting all of them for the sake of posterity.

Clicking on any of the photos will enlarge them.

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Bill is swathing (windrowing) wheat with a swather. The swather cut the wheat leaving a stubble of about 6" to 9". The swather then placed the rest of the wheat plant on top of the stubble in an approximately 3'- or 4'-wide row called a swath.

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Photo #2: The operation in this photo is described by Bill in the "Part #2" audio segment. The camera is "looking" west.

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Between the stubble at the bottom of this photo and the swather is a swath.

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To the left of the combine is a swath. The swather is at the far left.

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The combine is moving toward the camera and is picking up a swath. The swather is at the left.

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Bill's second-to-the-youngest brother Tom is pictured. As is still the norm, the moving combine dumped the grain into the also-moving wagons, i.e., on-the-go.

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The pickup that picked up the swath is the kind of nubby looking thing at the lower left of this photo. Because the swath is only 3' or 4' wide, the outer portions (ends) of the much wider bean head (technically called a grain platform) were not involved in this wheat process. The pickup picked up the swath and fed the swath through the middle of the bean head (which is at the far left just behind/above the auger in this photo) and into the combine. In this photo you can also see, to the right of the pickup, the round hydraulic motor. Bill engineered the attachment of the hydraulic motor to the pickup. This photo is a very atypical scene, since almost always the combine dumped grain into the wagon while both were on-the-go, instead of both being stationary as in this photo of Bill's brother, Mike.

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L to R: Bill, Mike (Bill's next-younger brother) and I (Louise) are having lunch in the field.

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*This location of this wheat field is between the towns of Rolfe and Pocahontas in northwest Iowa.

**I had several paragraphs written telling about Bill as a farm manager. However, my enthusiasm regarding how he interacts with the land, his clients and his farm operators sounded kind of gushy. I’ll just say that his work ethic and management style involve getting his hands dirty…a lot.

(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)

Central Iowa Perry  Des Moines

(If you click on only one photo in this post, I suggest it be the second one. Of course, I hope you’ll click on all of them!)

This fawn was in our backyard yesterday. The lens I typically have attached to my camera for spontaneous shoots is my 24-105mm lens. How lucky I was yesterday, when Bill told me to hurry outside to see this fawn, that I already had my 135mm lens with 1.4x extender attached, ready to go.

I think I wish the wildflowers (in the first photo) in the background were a little more in focus. Or, maybe not. Either way, I love the combination of Bill’s wildflowers and this fawn.

In the second photo I like the close-up detail of the fawn’s “eyelashes.” Clicking on any of the images will magnify the detail. None of these images have been cropped.

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In the first thumbnail (below) I think the fawn is trying to use its tongue to get rid of a fly.

The fawn is to the west of our house when it is running away and has its hind legs in the air (below). The neighbor across the road had just hollered a “Hi, Bill!” without knowing I was taking photos. The fawn was startled and ran into the cornfield (in the last thumbnail) which is to the southwest of our home. This is the same cornfield I posted about on May 18, 2011, and June 29, 2011.

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Photo Shutter and Aperture Information

IMG_4434 (wildflowers) and IMG_4537 (close-up): shutter speed 1/400; aperture f/9.0

IMG_4344 (fly-tongue): shutter speed 1/500; aperture f/10.0

IMG_4586 (trotting): shutter speed 1/400, aperture f/9.0

IMG_4640 (turning back to look): shutter speed 1/500, aperture f/7.1

IMG_4674 (tail and hind legs up) and IMG_4709 (cornfield): shutter speed 1/400, aperture f/7.1

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Next up (unless something seems more pressing): Mother’s 1949 watercolors and the 1948-49 Rolfe school yearbook.

(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)

This was daughter Katie's view today as she was biking on the trail between Redfield and Linden, Iowa. At almost 5:00 PM and about a half-hour's drive from these cows, Bill's and my thermometer says 96 degrees. (These cows want you to click on this image so they can see you better.)

(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)

I’ll get going with a new post soon after July 22nd, if not before. Bill and I have construction taking place where we live. The construction plus other commitments are requiring attention lately. Also, I’ve spent time trying to locate bread crumbs leading to more of Mother’s (Marion Gunderson) watercolors. I wonder if that process is likened to working on genealogy leads, often coming up with few results per time spent but when there are results, it’s like buried treasure was found.

Soon I want to post the Rolfe 1948-49 high school yearbook along with images of watercolors painted by Mother during that same time frame. All of those ’48-’49 watercolor images are already posted on this blog. I just think it is fun to take a look at them from a different perspective: alongside the yearbook photos from the same era.

I’ll “see” you soon with another post.

(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)

I’m excited to know of the dates for the Rolfe, Iowa, 2013 Sesquicentennial. Maybe the dates have been set for some time; today I became aware of the dates by looking at the blog of Rolfe Betterment, Inc. (RBI). Wow, the celebration begins exactly two years from today! I’m looking forward to it.

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(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)

In a previous post I wrote about the first time I remember setting eyes on eighth-grader Bill (to whom I’ve now been married for almost 36 years). The year was 1967. The setting was the Des Moines Township school gym.

Loel Diggs graduated from DMT in 1956. Around the time of my post, Loel sent to me the first three images below, all relating to DMT.

In the title of the first image, “Hum-Po” refers to Humboldt County and Pocahontas County.

The second photo is of Loel’s DMT letter. The third is of a sew-on patch Loel received.

Loel is sixth from the left and was the starting center for the team. (Click on photo to enlarge.)

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Loel received this letter while attending high school at the Des Moines Township school.

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This is a sew-on patch Loel received while in high school.

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The following article* is from the February 5, 1955, Laurens Sun. 1955 was the year Loel was a junior in high school at DMT, so a year before the article at the top of this post was published. According to the two articles, Loel’s team’s conference record went from 7-7 in 1955 to a perfect 10-0 in 1956. Loel and I are wondering if perhaps between the 1955 season and 1956 season there became fewer teams in the conference, resulting in fewer conference games.

This article is from the February 5, 1955, Laurens Sun. The listing of teams indicates that there were eight teams in the Hum-Po Conference in 1955. From the article at the top of this post, it appears that, with a DMT 1956 conference champion record of 10-0, there might have been fewer (six) teams in the conference in 1956. (Click on image to enlarge text.)

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*I found this article online via the Laurens (Iowa) Public Library’s web site. The Laurens library had the Laurens newspapers digitized in the same manner in which the Rolfe library is having 101 years of Rolfe newspapers digitized. The multi-step process of digitizing the Rolfe newspapers and getting them online is moving s-l-o-w-l-y. I guess the saying “A watched pot never boils,” is fitting here. One thing for sure…the wait will be worth it.

(Click here to go to Louise Gunderson Shimon’s blog’s home page.)