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EVERYBODY’S DANISH - by Uncle Fred
By fred | August 16, 2008
Last week the first chapter related to my father, “Andy” this - the second chapter relates to “Mom” - memories that endured the ages.
CHAPTER (Helga Pauline Nielsen, Mom)
Mom was born January 21st at the turn of the century in the year 1900. She was born in the tiny village of Rib Lake, in the state of Wisconsin. She lived 94 years, and in those years, never did I hear her speak badly of any living person. She could be upset with someone. She would try to figure why someone would do something that she considered wrong. “They must have had a good reason,” she would say. Mom and Dad had to be a match made in heaven in that regard, both so easy going and feeling for the “other guy.” I think back that she should have been Sainted the only problem was that she was a Lutheran. Are there Lutheran Saints?
This was a tall thin lady, about 5 foot 10 inches, brown hair until it turned gray, a good soprano, she had an awful time finding shoes. Mom had long extremely narrow feet. She was always looking for shoes that would fit.
This lady had a work ethic that was hard to believe. When we had the store I will bet that for about three weeks over the Christmas Holidays that she could not have averaged more than three or four hours of sleep per night.
Mom seemed to have some type of inferiority complex, and for the life of me I can’t figure why. She was a little late getting married. She did not marry until she was twenty-three, but that is not so late. She probably could not have married sooner because of having to raise her brothers and sister.
We have a posed photo, as they did in those days, Mom in her wedding gown, standing up, and Dad sitting down all dressed to the teeth. She was beautiful, Dad got himself a beauty that didn’t know it. On the other hand Mom figured she got the catch of a lifetime. And by her standards she did, Andy was good looking, extremely outgoing, a very hard worker, striving to succeed, and friendly to everyone. If you didn’t like Andy you didn’t like anybody. I guess that was why he was always such a good salesman. Andy seldom had to ask for someone’s business, they wanted to give it to him. He did not have to sell himself to my mother.
I keep trying to think of what she did for fun, or what she did to relax. She always seemed to be happy, I really do think that her family was her entire life. Helga’s sister Nan married a brilliant fellow by the name of Carl Mitchell, an engineer, and they lived in the Chicago area, so we did not see much of them. However, Mom and Nan always stayed close by writing.
Her relationship with her brothers was extremely close. I cannot think of anything in the world that she would not have done to help her brothers or their wife’s and kids. All of her brothers followed Helga and Andy to California. As the oldest sister she had practically raised all of her brothers especially the younger one, Gerner. Not many Saturdays or Sundays would go by with out having one or all of her brothers families, over for dinner.
She did love to sing in the Olivet Lutheran church choir, she rarely missed a choir rehearsal, or a Sunday church service. She even conned me into singing in the church choir for a couple of years, during my High School years. We had an old upright piano in the house, and I can still hear her singing at the top of her high soprano voice “Down by the old mill stream, where I first met you.”
Sometimes when the family was over for dinner, all of Mom’s brothers and their wife’s. Mom would sit down at the old upright, not always tuned to perfection, piano, and get her brothers and the rest of us to sing along. All the old songs, “Down by the Old Mill Stream”, “Swanee”, and so on. My Uncle’s when properly tuned with a few beers where great singers.
Her family was fairly large, she had one sister Nan, and three brothers, Vigo, Niels, and Gerner the youngest. Her mother’s husband, Mom’s father, I guess was a nice enough guy, but one with rather loose feet. He was always quitting one job and moving someplace else. Now this had made it awful hard on his wife, my grandmother Marie, especially with the large family.
One day when he was working for a mill in the deep south something at the mill where he worked blew up, and Marie thought he was dead, he wasn’t, but she thought so. Anyway, the poor lady had a nervous breakdown and for several years had to be in a ‘home.’ Helga, my mother, as the oldest took over with the help of Vigo the next oldest of the Petersen children. Gerner the youngest said that Mom really raised him, and that she was really more of a mother to him than a sister. I was an only son, but I guess of all of my Mother’s brothers the one that seemed more of a brother than an uncle was Gerner. This was probably because we were closer in age.
I remember that Gerner was extremely resentful of his father, and really did not have much respect for him. He felt that as a father he should have been more reliable, how could he leave his five children in an orphanage? I guess I agree, but it is always easy for us to judge years later what should or should not have been.
The years in that orphanage home left an awful scar on the children. The home continuously tried to break up the five of them, wanting to send them to different foster families. My Mother with the help of the rest of the brothers and sister Nan fought tooth and nail to be together, they wouldn’t eat, cried and yelled until they finally were left alone in the home, but together. This experience is what I believe was the cement that glued the five of them together so tight — for a lifetime.
Of all the Uncles Vigo and Gerner were my favorites. Gerner was always around, he was one hell of a roll model for a young man. He was the handsomest guy, yet very gentle, smart and always looked at things from the viewpoint of his nephew. He may not have always agreed with the views and stuff I would pull as a kid but he never ‘blew his cool.’ He would very quietly and logically explain why I was wrong, or why I should not do something. He knew how to make kid stuff, helped me with model airplanes and boats. How many Uncles or relatives would do that kind of stuff? How could I not love the guy. Uncle Vigo was the most serious, especially after the death of his first wife. When he was mining gold for years he stayed with us for most of the winter, and I really looked forward to it. Asking Mom when Uncle Vigo would be coming. She always said, “Vigo will come when the snow starts.” Uncle Vigo would come into my room and sit on my bed and discuss grown up stuff with me like I was a grown man, ask my opinion of things. Uncle Vigo was a guy I looked up to so much, if I was involved in some boat or airplane model problem he would spend hours helping me. I remember once we would at the kitchen table and the three of us, Uncle Vigo, Uncle Gerner and I were hard at it trying to get the paper on the wings of the model plane, Mom looked in and said, “Who’s having the most fun?”
When Grandma Marie finally recovered, she and he husband separated.
When we had the store Mom did it all, waited on customers, cleaned, did all the cooking for the store and this was a lot. Grandma Marie took care of the house Mom did the store. The store was especially busy at Christmas when every Dane, Swede, and Norwegian in Southern California made their annual visit to Lundsing & Company, for years the only Scandinavian food store in the city of Los Angeles.
During the Christmas holiday season we are talking about making thousands of pounds of stuff that had to be made in the store kitchen. Danish Sausage (medispolse), Swedish Potato Sausage (Potatis corve), Danish Liver Pate’ (Liverposte), Danish rolled breast of lamb (Rullepolse), Pork Headcheese (Sylta) and she made the very best. No extra fat was used, only the best meat was purchased.
I remember helping in the kitchen, I have to think the worse was the darn Rullepolse, which is a rolled breast of mutton or lamb lunch meat. I understand a few Danes make it out of Pork. We made the real Rullepolse out of mutton or lamb.
Dad would go to the downtown area of Los Angeles where the big Grand Central Market was and get the meat. He would get the mutton breasts at an awful good price. The butchers at Grand Central Market could sell the rest of the mutton very easy, the breast portion with all those bones, and only thin strips of real meat was hard for them to sell. He would come back with the one ton panel truck loaded with heavy paper boxes of mutton breasts.
Now comes the real work, you first have to cut all those little bones out, all the rib bones had to go. I remember my hands had tiny cuts all over from nicks with the very sharp knife. Then you had to sprinkle the spices, salt peter, salt, etc., into the rib flanks, and roll them up. Then you had to actually sew the raw mutton-flanks up with a large needle and heavy thread, then the whole hunk of meat had to be tied up with a heavy cotton cord. All this so the meat would stay sowed and intact while the meat was cooked later. For hours and hours while you were cutting away the small rib bones and rolling the breasts up, the spices and salt is getting into those little cuts on your hands. We tried gloves and it just didn’t work.
After all this the darn Rullepolse had to be cooked for hours, then cooled, then put in a press to get the fat and juice out of them. Finally, they were stored in barrels of salt water for about a month. The salt water had to be changed daily.
It is no wonder that few stores in America will fool with this. Rullepolse just takes too damn much labor to make. Then when sold you had to slice it extra thin for the customers. I was not a big fan of Rullepolse, a total pain in the ass, to my way of thinking, maybe because of all the trouble making it. It seems to have a funny “sandy greasy” taste. The Danes love the stuff. As a young man that spent hundreds of hours making it, all I can say is enjoy it, but forget me - if it wasn’t that I had to help Mom I would not have touched Rullepolse in a thousand years.
A Danish Open Faced Sandwich of buttered pumpernickel bread and Rullepolse, with maybe a thin sliced piece of Pickled Beet on the top will send most Danes into ecstasy.
The damn Rullepolse should have been sold for an awful lot of money after all that work, but it wasn’t. Mom figured the cost of the meat, a few dollars for spices, and darn little for labor, then a small profit. No wonder we sold so much.
Years later, a friend of ours, a Swedish fellow by the name of Bert Olson, started a Scandinavian Delicatessen. His Danish wife made Rullepolse for his store. Bert was a real businessman and when he added the costs of labor to making Rullepolse, the price was at least eight dollars a pound or more, and this is when a dollar was a dollar, like the price of gas was .40 cents a gallon. He was right on this, but again Mom was always so worried that ‘if’ it were too high the Dane’s would not buy it. With hindsight I can say, “So what,” but she was the boss then.
Having Rullepolse may have not been a bad idea as I look back, because we were the only store in Southern California in those days that sold it. Danes came from San Diego, Fresno, Santa Barbara, Las Vegas, and every place you could think of came in just to get this awful stuff. They also left the store with bags full of a lot of stuff besides Rullepolse, fish, Danish cheese, etc.
I love most Danish food, but not Rullepolse, such a bitch to make. The Norwegians have the craziest stuff to eat of all the Scandinavians but the Danes are a close second on some food items. I only worked after school, and weekends, poor Mom spent three or four days a week in the store kitchen. Fortunately the “big” Rullepolse “season” was only around the Christmas Holidays the one part of Christmas that her young son did not enjoy.
The reason I keep thinking of that small store kitchen and all the work we did in it is probably because Mom was in it. While working with her I could tell her everything that was going on. School, my buddies, girls, football, my successes and yes my failures, all my hopes and dreams. Mom was a good listener, always supportive. In that little kitchen with the huge pots boiling away and both of us working so hard a wonderful bond was formed. I will never forget her working so hard, but never so hard that she could not listen to my childish fears, and hopes.
A member of the family that loved Mom working in the store kitchen was my buddy, our cat, ‘Kitty.’ He would smell all those lovely things cooking, and scratch on the back door of the store kitchen, if that didn’t work he would start to yell. The yelling would get louder and louder until someone woke up in the kitchen and realized that we had a starving cat that had not been fed for maybe two hours letting us know about it.
Of course, the very favorite of Kitty was Danish Liverposte - made from Pork liver. The liver is ground up and mixed with chopped onions, and spices, then put in loaf baking pans and set in the oven. Once the smell of the Liverposte baking would hit the air outside through the vent, it would be no more than three or four minutes before Kitty would be at the kitchen door yelling for his share. Mom and I would sometimes think about it and watch the clock to see how fast Kitty would react.
I remember Mom opening the door and say, “Kitty, you just have to wait until the Liverposte is finished baking and I will give you some.” Now Kitty was not long on waiting. That word did not fit in his cat dictionary. He would keep yelling, and complaining, until usually Mom or I, would have to go into the store and get a slice of cheese, or ham to calm him down. He would never leave the kitchen door until it was done baking. He would remain curled up by the door until he got his dish of warm Liverposte.
Why, did he get to 16 pounds? Guess! There was no dinner hour for Kitty, hungry go yell at Grandma, the store was built right in front of the house so Kitty could hit up Grandma in the house and Mom at the store kitchen, only a stroll away. That cat had found heaven on earth! That cat never saw the inside of a cat food can. He would never have eaten that stuff on a bet. He was a part of the family and ate what we ate—or better.
We always talked to the cat like we would to one another. Never seemed strange, he always seemed to understand. If he was sleeping at the foot of my bed and I needed more room, I would just say “Kitty, move over.” And he would. I never figured that Kitty would not understand.
There were a few things about Mom that were a pain in the neck, one was being a health nut. Cod-liver oil every day was one. (Try a spoon full every morning and see how it burps up hours later with that lovely fish taste) She was always reading some weird doctor books. I guess a lot of it came from when she was a kid, having to take over raising all her brothers and sister, money was very tight, you did not go to a doctor only as a last resort.
Another thing, when I was a little guy I like to think I was generally a good kid, but I did get into trouble every so often, just like everyone else. Mom would then tell me that if I were not a good-boy she would get the stick that was over the doorsill. (In those days the inside doors in all the houses had a sill over the doors, and sometimes all around the top of the inside walls) I never did see that stick, but it was her threat. One day when I grew big enough I got up on a chair and stood on it, reached over the sill and found that for years Mom had been conning me. There was no stick!
Mom had another fault -she would believe anybody that could keep a straight face. If it was in writing, or someone told her something it had to be the truth, why would anyone knowingly lie? Dad was easy going, but had been through the mill a few times and realized that everyone and everything, was not always as advertised. Pop would say that sometimes people ‘stretch’ the true a little. My mother was always handing out money, food, and such to anyone with any kind of a hard luck story. I am sure that some deserved it, but many did not.
She contributed to every church fund, foreign mission, etc., and the amazing thing was that the more she contributed the more and bigger requests for funds she received, Dad never corrected her. However once I remember him saying “Helga, I know a lot of people in the world need help, but we can’t help them all, you are just going to have to pick a few you feel need it the most.” I believe that this too was from her youth - she now had a few dollars and wanted to share with those that didn’t
NEXT WEEK, CHAPTER ON WHY DAD WAS A DEMOCRAT
Topics: THIS & THAT from Uncle Fred |