Tilda and the Gangster

I've always been a good one for telling stories. The only thing different this time, is that I'm writing it down. I suppose it's also different this time, because this is a true story. All these things in this book really did happen in my community. Sort of.

Although I now live right here in Fitjedahl, I have lived primarily among Germans. First in Wisconsin then for a brief stint in Missouri, followed by a longer stay in southern Minnesota in a town called Muenster. The Germans are a very orderly people. Lots of rules and systems. There is a right way to do everything and woe to anyone who does not know that right way.

Now I find myself among Norwegians. And this I much prefer. I am beset with a somewhat disordered nature; which did not serve me well in those locations I formerly called home.

In order to tell my tale aright, I must first explain that my father is a minister. A Lutheran pastor of Norwegian descent. Which, my being one half Norwegian, might explain some of my difficulties with the Germans. But I cannot blame them for everything.

My mother, may she rest in peace, was of unknown descent, so it is easy for me to ascribe to my maternal ancestors, the bulk of my life's difficulties. I'd feel amiss saddling any one nationality with the blame for things that have been a constant trial to myself (and I must admit, to others). I imagine my mother to have been a melting pot of America's peoples, each of whom I might blame for something within me.

I have two brothers, the older being Ernst, who is a model child. He is really a young man now, but until very recently has been a boy so it is very difficult for me to think of him otherwise. Having been besotted with Lisbeth Schultz, he stayed among the Germans when the rest of us moved up north. I am not sure whether Lisbeth is likewise besotted with Ernst. She is the daughter of Professor Schultz who is the dean at the school I would have been forced to attend had we stayed in Muenster.

My younger brother is Henry after my late mother who was Henrietta. He is still in knickers. Or would be if we were in Muenster. This far north there are no knickers, for fear of freezing the legs off all the little boys. He is not yet old enough to bear his share of the chores. Regardless of the length of his breeches, he is only good for pestering me and needing to be rescued from one variety of trouble or another.

I am somewhere in between my two brothers in age. I was twelve on my last birthday. Or so I am told. I secretly think I am a year older and that someone got mixed up at some point in my upbringing. I plan to someday write a letter to the church where I was baptized. That is in Milwaukee. It is a German church, so I don't think they would have messed up the records. Not with all their birth and baptism recording systems fully in place.

I don't quite know how my father fell in with the Germans, but he did. Someday I plan to find that out, too.

But for now we are with the Norwegians. The land here has just recently been opened for settlement. Many people here came from farms in Southern Minnesota. And others came from North Dakota. They wanted a Norwegian Lutheran pastor who was brave enough to outlast the winters. Somehow they found Papa and the rest is history. Thank goodness the Germans and their rules are also history. And that they slid into history before I completely ruined my father with my inability to follow rules. That is what they called it in Muenster. Inability to follow rules. As if I was disobedient by nature instead of just plain scatterbrained.

I even kept a special place in my diary for the expressed purpose of keeping track of all the rules and systems. When to stand and when to sit during church services and on which side of the icebox to put the milk. How to arrange a living room and how to hang clothes on a clothesline. I had to figure these things out on my own, having been left with the running of a household from an early age. But the Widow Mueller told me in no uncertain terms that my clothes were not hung correctly on the line and I would drive my poor father out of the parish with his wrinkled attire.