Growing up Rich in a Poor Family, Volume 2: 13 New Childhood Memories from the Great Depression

By Doris Hermundstad Liffrig and Melissa Gordon

In sharing memories of her humble childhood, Doris Hermundstad Liffrig reminds us that material possessions and creature comforts are not necessary for a happy home.

Growing Up Rich in a Poor Family teaches the human reality that excess does not equal happiness, bringing a basic Gospel voice that is delightfully hopeful. In bringing a lesson about choices, imagination, and creativity through the story of her own childhood, Doris invites children into truth and wholeness of being. She gives loving and wise awareness to children, parents and grandparents who can know that growing up rich is a perspective of heart.

-Msgr. James P. Shea

President, University of Mary

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475996173

Doris Hermundstad Liffrig

Doris Hermundstad Liffrig is a mother of eight, grandmother of 31, and great grandmother of a dozen and counting. Throughout her life as a mother and caregiver, Doris has expressed herself creatively through writing and music. She wrote a weekly newspaper column for years and recently published an autobiography titled, I’m Strong. I Can Make It, which chronicles her experiences as a child of a Norwegian immigrant growing up on the unforgiving North Dakota plains. In writing her autobiography, Doris penned a number of short stories about her childhood. These stories are the inspiration for her second book, Growing Up Rich in a Poor Family. Through these stories, Doris hopes to help children today better understand the humble roots of their ancestors and the struggles people endured in developing this country. Most importantly, she hopes readers might realize the joy children of yesteryear found without the toys, electronics and scheduled activities that define modern-day childhood. Doris and her husband of 60 years, Duane, have lived in North Dakota their whole lives, but for a brief stint in Alabama in the Army . They reside in Bismarck and fill their lives with reading, writing, daily mass and ongoing service to family and friends.

Book preview

Growing Up

Rich in a

Poor Family,

Volume 2

13 New Childhood Memories

from the Great Depression

DORIS HERMUNDSTAD LIFFRIG

Illustrated by Melissa Gordon

iUniverse LLC

Bloomington

Growing Up Rich in a Poor Family, Volume 2

13 New Childhood Memories from the Great Depression

Copyright © 2013 by Doris Hermundstad Liffrig.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-9616-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-9617-3 (ebk)

iUniverse rev. date: 07/16/2013

Illustrations © Melissa Gordon 2013

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

A New Beginning

Mama! Our House Stinks.

Boopie

Doris, Get the Dish Towel. Quick!

Doris vs the Rooster

Toothaches or Dentists?

A Quarter’s Worth of Truth

Selling Popcorn

The Spitzi Mailbox

The Annual School Picnic

The Sad Demise of the Velvet Jacket

The Water Witch

Good Morning! This is Kfyr—Bismarck

Editor’s Note

Glossary Of Terms

I thank fate

for having made me born poor.

Poverty taught me

the true value

of the gifts useful to life.

—Anonymous

This book is dedicated

to my thirty-one grandchildren,

seventeen great-grandchildren, and those yet

in the planning stages . . .

Acknowledgments

Thanks to my husband, Duane, my eight grown children and countless grown grandchildren for their interest in the completion of Volume II.

A special thanks to my grandson Matt Kaul and my daughter Julie Fedorchak, professionals in their fields of writing and literature, for volunteering to edit Volume II. I also want to recognize my grand daughter Elizabeth Fedorchak, my cover consultant. Your encouragement and confidence have made a difference.

-Grandma Dorie

For Julia, my inspiration

Mom, my motivation,

And Bob, my foundation.

-Melissa

Preface

The stories I am sharing in Growing Up Rich in a Poor Family are memories I have from growing up during the Great Depression of the 1930s. I hope these stories will bridge a gap of understanding between my generation, my children, and our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Having only one toy is unheard of in today’s world, but it forced children seventy-five years ago to be creative and frugal. One box of eight crayons had to last a year. How many times I recall coloring a pretty paper napkin, being ever so careful not to tear it. Or tracing a picture from a book or magazine in the window and then coloring it.

We lived on a farm on the prairies of western North Dakota, where years went by without rain, the dust blew day and night, Russian thistles served as Christmas trees, and bony cows were sold for lack of feed. I can close my eyes today and see my father sitting on the step of the windmill by the pump on summer evenings, with little hope that the clouds rolling by would produce rain.

My family consisted of my parents Olga and John; my two brothers, Jerold and Orin; and me. These childhood experiences impacted and influenced my entire life. Looking back, I realize how difficult our lives were, but I wouldn’t exchange my humble beginnings for anything.

I had a wonderful time in my own private world of make-believe. I treasured Betsy, my naked doll and only toy. She and I shared many hours of fun and togetherness. As you read these stories, I hope you, too, will gain a better understanding of the day-to-day struggle that was necessary to survive the Great Depression and the community life that knit the neighbors together as family. It is in so doing that we live the future.

A New Beginning

John Hermundstad was an immigrant from the Valdres Valley, on the other side of the world in Norway. He was the youngest boy of nine children. As he grew up, John didn’t see a bright future for himself in Norway. His family farm was too small to support him and his three older brothers. John dreamed of moving to America, where land and opportunity were abundant.

But his family did not want him to leave. John’s older brother, Andres, had gone to America several years later and died of diphtheria. John’s family didn’t want to go through that again.

Nonetheless, in 1904, when John was eighteen he and two friends, Helge and Chris, left on the Christiana, which made frequent trips from