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EVERYBODY’S DANISH by Uncle Fred
By fred | August 22, 2008
O. K. Gang, here is the third chapter of my family book. Hope you enjoy it.
Uncle Fred
CHAPTER (The Democrats!)
I really do not remember politics coming up very often. Oh, there was the politics of the Danish Hall, and maybe who was to be the president of the Danish Brotherhood Lodge, but national politics I do not remember any one ever having much discussion about that. Why? – what was to argue about? They were all Democrats, so why argue!
The subject came up when I was in my teens – I was taking some type of government class in High School. I remember we were sitting at the dinner table, and I asked Dad whom he was going to vote for. “Roosevelt, of course,” Dad said.
I asked, “Why?”
That really got Dad going, “The working man didn’t have much of a chance before Roosevelt and the Democrats were elected to run things. All the rich guys made the money.”
The stories started to come out, about the early days. He hired on to the railroad. They were extending another rail line across the mid-west. He said the labor in those days, was usually all the foreign immigrants coming into the United States of which he was one.
The foreman and all the bosses would swear at the workers. Cussing them out, and calling them “dumb Swede’s, dumb Krauts, shanty Irish, dumb Irish, micks, dumb Chinks,” and so forth. Andy said if you were from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Finland, you were in the “dumb Swede,” or “dumb thick headed, square head” category. If you were from Germany, Austria, Belgium, or any other area like that, you were in the “dumb Kraut” category. Irish, Scotch were usually in the “dumb Irish” group. And anyone from any part of the orient, it did not matter if you were Japanese, Korean, Chinese, you were all “dumb Chinks!” The French and the Spanish were the “dumb Spicks.” And of course, the hard working Italians were the “Wops, and the Jewish guys we “Kik’s.” Now Dad said that one thing he learned in America was it was not what you called some one, but how you said it that counted.
Andy said he had several close friends working on that railroad, one was a German and one was a Chinese guy. They all lived together, and all spoke the English language, even if it was not exactly the “Kings English.” He said he soon learned that you could call a friend a “no good son-of-a-bitch” when he won a poker hand from you. You were friends. The same words spoken by someone that was mad at you had a completely different meaning. They could be fighting words!
In Denmark they had things a little different, if you were a regular fellow, a friend, a fellow worker, or a member of the family, you would refer to them as ‘Du’. (‘Du’ was like saying ‘you’.) Now if you talked to someone that was in authority, or someone you did not know that was a person of wealth, or position, or Royalty you used the word ‘De’. (‘De’ was also the word ‘You’, but a person of respect, it had a different meaning altogether.) The learning of the English language, especially the English language spoken in the Western United States was something else. The use of the words ‘dumb Swede’ when used by the railroad foremen certainly were not words of respect. Dad said it would be like they were talking to a piece of dirt, like you were nothing but an animal.
A ‘son of a bitch’ could be a friend or an enemy – it just depended on how you said it. With a smile on your face you could call a buddy a ‘dumb Chink,’ or a ‘dumb Kraut,’ and they were still your friends, or you could call him the same thing in another tone of voice and you had a deadly enemy. These things had to be learned by the immigrants, and learned fast. In the West of those days it could be life or death, to know, or not to know, how you talked to another person.
The work was six days a week, and at least ten hours a day in all kinds of weather, mostly boiling sun. Lifting heavy steel rails, pounding in spikes, a real killer of a job. On the days off there was usually no town to go to, nothing but miles of empty wilderness in every direction.
Now the railroad was smart. In the first place you got very low wages, and in the second place the only place to spend the money was the company stores. These stores the railroad brought along and set up as the line moved forward. So if you wanted anything from a beer to a pair of pants, you went to the company store.
There was no place else, period. If you ever heard the name ‘robber barons’ the railroad owners were properly named according to my father Andy. Not only would all your wages be gone after paying for the bare necessaries of life but you would usually be in heavy debt to the company store within a short time. The railroads figured by overcharging and keeping their employees in debt that they could keep their workers.
Finally my father and several of his friends decided they would have to leave. There was no way out. It was like being in prison. When they got near a town they would have to just sneak away, this they finally did. This may not sound so bad in this day and age but to my father and his friends it was awful. That they would actually walk away from owing money, not giving the boss at least a few weeks notice, was something that he or his friends would not normally do.
Dad hated the so-called, ‘railroad robber barons.’ The fact that they exploited the immigrants, worked them like dogs, overcharged them at the company stores, to keep them in debt to the railroad so they could not quit, was enough to make that very mild mannered guy very ‘pissed off’ just talking about it.
He said that most of those foreign immigrants the Irish, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians Germans, French, Chinese, Jews, Japanese, and Koreans have now made sure that their children were educated. The kids are now getting into positions of power and business, and getting the good jobs. The mass labor group of his generation has now trained themselves to be the bosses. Their employees hopefully will not be treated as many of the employers of the old days treated folks.
Dad always felt a close relationship to the black folks that had been kept in such poor conditions in the South, never given a real chance. When he related these stories it was at the beginning of the time that companies started using the Mexican people coming across the border from Mexico. The Mexicans are just as Dad and his foreign friends were, from poor families, willing to work hard – looking for a place to raise their families to a better life.
The Mexican then was a major source for all the hard labor jobs. Jobs in the fields, railroads, the cleaning and so forth were mainly the domain of the poor black people and the Mexican immigrants – unfortunately this is still true, especially in the border-states.
Dad was right in his forecast, as of this writing the Mexican’s are slowly making inroads in pulling themselves up from just manual labor and educating their children. The Blacks are slowly educating their kids. Hopefully in another 50 years it will be as Andy predicted, with everyone having the same chance at the American dream, no matter what your race, color, religion. If you are honest, work hard, everyone should have the chance to play with the same deck of cards as the next guy or gal.
The steel mills were another pet peeve of my father. The mills were like something out of hell. Blasting heat with workers working until they dropped, there was no Union, you worked 10 to 12 hours a day, many times six days a week for a living. Jobs were not that plentiful so if there was nothing else, you worked for the mill, and every spare second you were not working, you looked for work doing anything someplace else was better than the hell of the steel mills.
According to Dad the Unions did not have a fighting chance to really get decent wages for the workers until the Democrats and Mr. Roosevelt came in with what was then called the ‘New Deal!’
In the mid-1920’s my father went into one of his first business ventures. He and another Danish guy purchased a small dairy, in the little town of Orville, California. The partner was the dairyman and Dad ran the delivery route, selling milk, butter and eggs from house to house. He said he had a horse drawn truck to start with.
Business was good they seemed to be getting over the hump, and starting to make money. Dad was always a good salesmen and the route was getting bigger and bigger. He built a gas station store and a small auto court to rent rooms. He was adding more and more customers every day. Then came the crash of 29 – money was very tight, people out of work, one big mess!
The big Arden Creamery came in and set up routes, they gave the customers one pound of butter free with every two quarts of milk purchased. Loyal customers said, “Andy, we have to buy from them, we can’t afford not to.” The only choice Dad and his partner had was to join Arden and sell all their milk to them at a cheap wholesale price.
The delivery route was gone, taken over by the big guys. There was not enough left for the two partners to make a living. Dad said it would be a struggle for one family, much less for two. Dad knew very little about actually running the dairy. He lost everything, the gas station/store and the auto court – he saved only a few hundred dollars, shook his partners hand and wished him luck. He packed Mom and his three-year old son (me) in an old model-T car Mom and he owned and headed south for the then very long trip (no freeways) to Los Angeles.
He got himself a job as an ice-man and again started to make good money. In those days with no electric refrigerator, everyone had an ice-man that took care of bring a block of ice into your house and setting it in the top shelf of your refrigerator at least once a week. In the hot summer you may need two deliveries a week.
Again Dad was good with people and soon had developed a large delivery route. He would leave the house at five A M to get to the ice house and get the truck loaded first before the other drivers came in, this way, especially in the summer, he could take out two loads. This is not work for weaklings hauling a fifty or hundred pound huge square of ice with ice tongs and balancing it on your back climbing to a second or third story apartment was work, very hard work.
I remember that he tried to wear gloves but that did not seem to work. His hands were very heavily callused, and from the hard work the skin on his hand would sometimes crack down to the bone. It would be almost impossible for him to get then to heal when he had to work so hard every day.
Mom used to worry a lot about him, and every night she would soak his hands and put some ointment on, then bandage them as well as she could. When he had a really bad day and his back was aching, she would fill the tub in the bathroom up with hot water, and Epson salts. She would make sure he stayed in the tub for at least a half-hour. It did seem to help.
They saved up a small amount and were able to purchase an old house in Compton, California. Compton was and is a small town right next to Los Angeles. I would guess it is all part of the big sprawling Los Angeles now.
After making the down payment we were so broke that Dad rented the house, and we lived in the garage. He made a deal with the renter that we would be able to use the bathroom. We lived in that garage for over a year, until we could afford to move into the main house.
This was post depression time – money was very hard to come by. Jobs were impossible to find. I can just dimly remember poor folks coming to the door of the house an asking for food or work to pay you for giving them food. Mom and Dad fed a lot of folk down on their luck. They were not so well off, but Dad said, “We have a roof over our heads, food, and work, we should be thankful for that.”
We finally were able to fix the house up and sell it, and purchase a small home in Lynwood, California another small suburb of Los Angeles. The ice plant where Dad got his ice to sell was in Los Angeles, and his delivery route was the Westlake Park area of downtown Los Angeles so we could not move too far away.
All his stories of the “old days” and how tough life was before, during, and right after the 1929 crash, are probably what turned Andy and most of the immigrants of his period into Democrats. When Roosevelt came in with his ‘New Deal,’ the Unions got their chance to organize the large mills, railroads, and manufactures. The trickle down of money to little guys like Dad was also very real.
Andy said, “When Roosevelt, and the Unions forced big business to give decent wages, and decent hours, people then had money to spent. With a couple of days off, they had time to spend the money they made.” “How could it not be good?” he said. “With folks now buying cars, refrigerators, radios, having money to go someplace for a decent vacation, big business got it all back by selling more.” “People like us with a little business have customers that now have the money to afford something a little special.”
Dad and his friends voted the straight Democratic ticket. If the name had a “D” in front of it, it got their votes, period. It did not matter who in the hell it was he or she got the vote. He voted every election from the time he was naturalized as a citizen until he passed away.
I have to admit he convinced his son. I have a lot of friends that are Republicans, true and blue Republicans. My best buddy and life long friend, and brother-in-law Jack is a Republican. I have told him once or twice that he may be left as fish bait on one our fishing trips in the Puget Sound if he does not shut up on trying to sell me on being a Republican.
The Democrats are not perfect, long from it, but every time I even think of maybe voting for a Republican I look at their record. The Democrats get in and they fight for clean water, forests to leave our kids, aid to poor folks, health care for our citizens and old folks, a helping hand for the immigrants. The Republicans get in and they want to take away all of these benefits, get rid of the Unions, and keep wages down.
Most folks when they get a little money forget their roots. They go on the “I’ve got mine, to hell with every one else! Let them take care of themselves!” Most of these guys had parents or grandparents that desperately needed that helping hand. When Roosevelt came in they got it, and they never forgot it.
Their kids and their grand kids should remember, and not be so greedy. Taxes– we should be damn glad all of us can afford a good life and ‘pay’ taxes. Billions of folks in the world would love to have our lives and certainly not begrudge the government tax money. I don’t either! A Democratic person on any election ticket has to be a real bastard, before I won’t vote for him.
The day the Republicans start doing something constructive about the water we drink and the air we breath, the schools our children go to I may think about being a Republican. When they make sure folks have proper health care, take care of our old folks that have worked hard all their lives, making sure folks get good pay for their hard work, our kids getting a good public education, and so on and so forth. That is the day I and my wife and children will vote Republican. Not before!
Every time the Republicans get in, it’s take away this, reduce that, everything our parents and we have fought for. The “I’ve got mine, to hell with everyone else,” is not the way our forefathers would think. Giving a break to folks that are down, need a break, a helping-hand – that is what the old Danes and my Father would applaud. I agree, the Democrats may not be perfect but they are a heck of a lot better than any Republican administration I have ever seen, and at my age of almost eighty that is a lot.
NOTE: Next week the chapter will be about my Dad’s - with the help of some family members - attempt to make beer in the cellar of our home, and the aging of wine, stay tuned – some sad lesson learned! Uncle Fred
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