Monthly Archives: May 2017

Miami Beach in ’42: “This is the life for a soldier.”

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In the fall of 1942, our dad, Thorgel Klessen, quit his job driving a beer delivery van in SIoux Falls, SD, and enlisted in the Army. Not sure yet what year it was when he was naturalized as a US citizen, but likely in the late ’30s. (His family had been emigrés from Denmark.)

I have a bundle of letters he wrote to mom over the next two years. This is the first one.

42-11-09

Miami Beach Fla.
Nov. 8, 1942

Dear Ruth:

I am now stationed at the Normandie Hotel living like a king. I have a private room and bath. This is the life for a soldier. I am sending a card with a picture of the hotel and a circle around the window of my room.

42-normadie-s1

40 of us came here from Leavenworth, we rode in a Pullman all the way. It took from Tuesday 7 p.m. until Saturday 10 a.m. to get here, had several stops along the way. One night we stopped at Atlanta, Ga. for 4 hours. 5 of us went to watch them bowl. That’s the largest bowling alley I have ever seen, 52 alleys and they were all going. I got a picture of it and sent to Freddie at the Recreation.

It’s beautiful around here. There are 306 hotels along the beach and they are all filled with service men. They say there are 40,000 men here. From my room I can see ships of all kinds going all the time.

9:00 p.m. — all the shades are drawn and blue bulbs all around. No street lights or cars out after dark. It makes one feel lonesome with all this darkness.

We get up at 6:45 a.m. and eat at 7, 12, and 5. From then until 11 we can do what we please. Tomorrow I start with Examination for 4 days, 6 hours daily. I hope I come out as good as at Leavenworth. After that there will be 20 days of training, and then we move again, where to I don’t know.

Well, so much for the Army life. I would rather haul beer anytime, and that goes for all the rest I talk to here. There is another fellow coming in now just as wet as a duck. It rains all night and daytime is so hot, it’s just like it was at home in July.

Well, I think this will be all for tonight. Don’t raise too much hell, course I am saving mine for later. I am going to try to get back to Soo Falls when I leave here. There are only 4 schools like that in the U.S.

Good night and lots of love,
T.K.

Mom describes the 1953 atomic blast

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Looking through another box of letters in the #thingsmomsaved stash. Have to credit her sisters for saving letters as well — otherwise we wouldn’t have the ones _from_ mom sent back to Sioux Falls.

“…it was about the most awe-inspiring thing
I shall ever see, I think.”

Mushroom Cloud From Nuclear Test

This image is in the public domain, at wikipedia, under Upshot Knothole Encore.

I found the letter mom sent to her sister Dorothy describing watching an #atomicbomb go off in Nevada, at the Army’s proving grounds. Our dad witnessed more than one blast, but mom might have seen only this one. Not sure.
From her letter of May 10, 1953…

On Friday, both Kathy and I got up at 4:30, when Thorgel’s alarm went off, and we both stayed up. On the way up the mountain, we could feel it getting chillier, and when we finally got way up on the top, we found about a dozen cars parked, and we got Kathy into her snowsuit, and we donned headscarves, and walked on the footpath to the clearing on top from where we could see the blast. We were up there about 8:00, and all we knew was that it was scheduled any time between 8:00 and 8:30.

< They were on Mt. Charleston. Mom and Kat’n were with mom’s friend Joan, who had a car. Ours was at the Army base. >

We could see a few planes circling around, and the atmosphere was quite tense. We had on dark glasses, and just at 8:30 there was a terrific flash of light, and we could see a big red ball to the west, over Frenchmen’s Flats, and along beside it what looked to me like a dozen rocket flashes (I found out later they were a sort of rocket sent up at the same time to measure the height of the bomb), and then the immense white cloud rose up and mushroomed out, and it was slowly turned into rose and peach and pink, and it was about the most awe-inspiring thing I shall ever see, I think.

There was a tremendous column of dust and smoke that rose up, after it, the stem of the mushroom, and it looked as if the whole area around the flats was covered with dust. Thorgel was viewing it from the viewpoint near the area, and he said it was as if the floor of the flats had been churned into a boiling mass. They saw a big Butler building way up, tossed up into the cloud, and other things flying about. From where they were, it felt as if a hot oven suddenly opened, and they could hardly get their breath for a minute or two.

It was about four or five minutes later when we heard the sound of the blast, sort of echoing around the mountain. Then, the top of the cloud separated from the stem, and started moving along in the wind, and even though it was nearly all white, we could see where it was red with fire inside.

There wasn’t much of an ice cap on this one, probably, Thorgel said, because it was such an enormous force to this one that it was too hot for the ice to form. According to the paper, this was about 1½ to 2 times larger than any blast set off in the continental US. I guess we picked the best one to watch.

< My older sister, Kathleen, was not quite three years old when this event took place. >

Today Kathy got a piece of paper, and an envelope, and told me, “I believe I’ll write a letter to Marion and Art, and tell them that I saw the blast.” Then she marked on the paper, crumpled it up, thrust it in the envelope, licked it, and stuck on some of those gold bond stamps, fore and aft of the envelope, and Thorgel had her take it out and lay it on top of the picket fence, near the mail box. So Marion must write that she got the letter, as Kathy is sure the mailman will pick it up.

—–

This is the link to a government film made on that day, now archived at the Library of Congress:
http://stream.media.loc.gov/blogs/navcc/HouseMiddle_v1_768x432_800.mp4

May 23, 1939 • garden notes

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More from mom’s handwritten notebook…

< Below, an example of Wm. Mohr iris (1925) from Wayman’s iris catalog in 1940. >

wm-mohr-wymn40

Sunday was a beautiful day. We rode at seven — at six I was out looking at my Wm. Mohr iris, which was unfolding its first bloom. By afternoon it was clear out and it is just as lovely as the claim. I never have seen such delicate veining or such transparency on an iris before.

Mother’s Buto bloomed; also its first venture, and the flower was very large for such a small plant.

< Buto was an iris variety from H.P. Sass, introduced in the mid 1920s. >
buto-2a

Today my first Talisman bloomed, and I can’t describe what a lovely blend of apricot and violet it is. Screen Shot 2017-05-19 at 5.33.36 PM

< Source of Talisman image: https://garden.org/plants/photo/290357/ >

We had a sprinkle of rain and during the night and early morning the wind whipped around so that we picked the Wm. Mohr and Talisman to save them and put them in the black vase.

I think they would win a prize at any flower show. I just wonder if any other people in Sioux Falls have such lovely iris as we have.

I can’t wait for the iris catalogs to start to come. Mother said only tonight that Schreiner’s should come pretty quick. I want to get some more iris from them this year as I had such good luck with the others they sent me.

I’m afraid the Carl Salbach iris mother got was too tender for this climate, or else we had an unusually severe winter for iris in 1937.

I believe all of our new iris have bloomed that will, this season Rialgar and Mrs. Valerie West, out by the big stones, are almost too small to bloom. I’ll have to give them some Vigaro to make them strong for next year.

Sunday I weeded in the garden a while and dug dandelions while Marion worked on the north rose hedge, but it was too hot to do much.

So far I haven’t found any leaves on my mulberry trees but they look green at the bottom and Marion says not to worry. At least our silver leaf maples are all doing fine.

Mother is delighted to find that her mountain ask tree has come up from the roots and is growing fine. She knew the honey locust was flourishing but thought the end had come for the mountain ash. The grasshoppers did kill the vitex (??) and the other two shrubs she planted by the Chinese elms, though.

We put our some arsenic grasshopper bait Saturday when the baby hoppers were hatching so thick. It’s poisonous, so Gael < their dog > had to be kept on a leash but Pop says it killed quantities of hoppers. That will give us a brief respite for things to grow strong in before the big ones start to fly here from away.

 

90 (!) varieties of iris!!

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I complied a list from my mom’s notes and her mother’s notes. Between 1936 and 1942 they had planted 90 different varieties of iris in one of the gardens around their house.

I knew they had a lot — way more than mom ever had after the old family property was sold — but this diversity is incredible to me.

Here’s a list, with a few that I questioned — not sure of the handwriting. They came from several different growers/catalogs. Gradually, I hope to find pictures and documentation for these. There are quite a few old/vintage iris catalogs viewable online now. The’ve been digitized into PDF form.

1. Albatross

2. Alta California

3. Ambassadeur

4. Aphrodite

5. Apricot Glow

6. Bagdad (sic)

7. Beau Sabreur

8. Betty Nuthall

9. Black Midget

10. Blackasmoor

11. Blue Banner

12. Blue Velvet

13. Bronze Beacon

14. Buto

15. Cardinal

16. Coerulea

17. Coquette

18. Coronation

19. Crystal Beauty

20. Dauntless

21. Debonair

22. Depute Nomblot (??)

23. Dina

24. Dream

25. Duke of York

26. Edith Robson

27. Elizabeth Huntington (Mrs. ??)

28. Euphony

29. Evensong

30. Fra Angelica

31. Frieda Mohr

32. Gleam

33. Glee

34. Gobelin Red

35. Gold Imperial

36. Gold Top

37. Gorgeous

38. Grace Sturdevant

39. Harbor Lights

40. Imperator

41. Indian Chief

42. Inspiration

43. Japanesque

44. Jubilee

45. Lady Winsome

46. Lord of June

47. Magna Blanca

48. Magnifica

49. Marmora

50. Mary Elizabeth

51. Midwest

52. Mildred Presby

53. Mme. Chereau

54. Mrs. Marion Cran

55. Mrs. Valerie West

56. Morning Splendor

57. Neola

58. No-We-Ta

59. Paradise

60. Persia

61. Picador

62. Pluie d’Or

63. Pongee

64. Pres. Pilkington

65. Prospero

66. Qua (??) Zua (??)

67. Quaker Lady

68. Rameses

69. Rapture

70. Rheintraube

71. Rheingauperle

72. Rialgar

73. Rosex

74. Royal

75. Rubeo

76. Sacramento

77. San  Diego

78. Shah Jehan

79. Shirval

80. Sunol

81. Susan Bliss

82. Symphony

83. Taj Mahal

84. Talisman

85. Thais

86. The Black Douglas

87. True Charm

88. Wasaga

89. Wedgewood

90. Wm. Mohr

Written by Marion in 1954

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Mom’s sister, Marion Elizabeth Davie Serr, was six years older than she was. In 1954, when I my uncle Art was transferred from Sioux Falls to St. Paul, he and Marion relocated there. This was a hard move for her, not only leaving behind her family, but also leaving the house that they had build next door to my grandparents. Marion married Art in 1949, so they had not lived in her new house very long.

 

“Going Away”

And now we move away —
Reluctantly we cast many a backward glance at home and friends we leave.

Perhaps we’d grown to love our little rut too well,
Perhaps we loved out little rut too dearly and so must learn
That we move ever onward,
And that we must relinquish
Things we hold dear
To grow in new directions as the Lord wills
Who watches over all.

 

 

The day I wake to find myself in glory
The music of the spheres will sound for me;
The light that shimmers like a morn in springtime
And garden’s fragrance all about will be.

But when a shining person comes to meet me,
A gentle and a holy form I’ll see
As my dear Mother gives me loving welcome
Then Heaven truly will be home for me.