I interviewed Floyd Bolin at his home in Alexandria, Minnesota, in May, 2003. He was 94 years old at the time, slight of build, ramrod straight, a little hard of hearing, and funny. I was a few minutes early when I arrived for the first of my two interview sessions with him. I rang the doorbell and got no answer. I knocked loudly and got no answer. The door was not locked so I opened it and called Floyd's name and got no answer. I stepped into the house a couple of steps, far enough to see Floyd in the living room, tipped back in his recliner, a blanket on his lap, his eyes closed, an alarm clock on the blanket. "Floyd," I said, "it's Tom Montag." Floyd opened his eyes, looked at me, looked at his alarm clock, and said, "Tom, you're a few minutes early. You'll have to go away and come back at 4:00 p.m." That's the sense of humor Floyd has, and that quick. My thanks to Ione Jensen and the Douglas County Historical Society for this transcription.
Vagabond: How did your father meet your mother?
Floyd: That was through another family from where my mother grew up. Their names were Johnson. Her name was Hilda Johnson, a very beautiful woman. They were very distant cousins. It was about 1898 when they were married. My mother took sick when the last son, my brother Reuben was born. She had a hard life. Everybody had a hard life. She worked, had the family bang, bang, just like that. When my brother Reuben was born some complications took place and she had to go to Fergus Falls. There she met the misfortune of being scalded to death.
Vagabond: How did that happen?
Floyd: A neglectful nurse was giving her a bath and she turned the water on and walked away for something and forgot about the water running on her. It was hot, too hot for her. That was right after childbirth with my youngest brother. So then my dad being a loyal man, he didn’t remarry. He hired many women who went through our family, hired ladies, at least three or four, to take care of the kids. All of the kids. But my dad weathered it all and had a good sense of humor and raised us kids. But that influence of dialect came from that other side. We grew up in that dialect. Actually more of what you’d call Dalmal, that’s the deepest dialect in Sweden. I have to give you a little information about that. The irony of it is that my Uncle Pete on the Linger side settled corner to corner on that land over there. The Linger family who had that beautiful dialect and his nephew John Bolin, my father, got married and got this land over here. They both had families but they were a little bit older, a generation on the Linger side, but they socialized with us, they invited us because we were younger and Mrs. Linger, I remember how she fed us. She just forced us to eat until we were about to bust. And Arvid and Ted were the boys and they came over and visited with us because we were boys in the family and so it was a close relationship. But that dialect were both direct opposite as far as us kids were concerned. My dad’s dialect always stayed nice. But my mother, she was on the guttural side. She was of that same group of people that came from Dalproda. He married Hilda Johnson. And mother, as you probably understand, the mother in the family is the one with the social schedule. So that us kids associated with that group of kids; we got the wrong dialect. But we played together. And, of course my being the blabberbox, you know, and talking like I did, it was with a horrible accent. I can remember my cousin Arvid. We were just talking privately, he would go like this when I was talking, and just show his displeasure. He made no bones about it. I’ll never forget that as long as I live.
Vagabond: When did you learn English?
Floyd: Well, that came a little late. When my dad first took us to school, I knew very little English. I knew much more Swedish than English. They couldn’t make me understand. The teacher asked me if I had been vaccinated. The word vaccinated didn’t ring a bell with me but the word vacsola means to make change and it sounded like she asked me if knew if I could make change. So I said ya, ya, and she looked at me and couldn’t find any mark that showed I had any vaccination of any kind. It took a little talking there between the teacher and me to figure that out. I thought she wanted to know if I could make change. That’s my first days in school. The highlight of my first day in school.
Vagabond: Let's talk about your mechanical abilities then, which served you well through your life.
Floyd: My dad had ingenuity. Most people grew up that way in those days because it was a necessity to fend for yourself. I think more people grew up with some self-made education in those days than they do now.
Vagabond: You're suggesting that a lot of people in the old days had more self-reliance because they had to take care of themselves, they figured things out?
Floyd: Ya, that was an advantage for the rest of your life. It gave you a better chance to make it in life than the kids do now. Because we had much more of that basic self-reliance. It came natural. Now they’re coddled with every kind of convenience and all that kind of stuff. I see that because I grew up in the old and I see the new. I’ve lived a long time. I like to bring that out. But you know how it is, people like to stick with what they’ve got.
Vagabond: So how did your mechanical ability manifest itself? You worked in a boat works?
Floyd: I have to go back to when I was still home. My dad saw, he began to see those things, that when I had a chance to do things, I did them. He saw this developing, so he gave me, always turned over the things that needed to be done. It became my job, so I became the son in the family who took that up and became kind of a second father. I was just born to do it. So I built things, I did things, and whenever there was anything difficult to fix, I could fix the machinery. Farming is an education in itself. I grew up learning how to use my hands and my mind right there on the farm. My dad taught us all the same way, but I benefited the most because I was the middle one in the bunch of five kids. I grew up to be the mechanic. I then became the bicycle fixer, the community mechanic. It grew and grew until I was fixing tractors and cars. I had tools and I traveled around and fixed things, especially Model T automobiles. They gave a lot of trouble with the band system, the transmission system and most people didn’t have expertise, so I had a lot of work that came to me because I could do these things.
To be continued....
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