{"id":85766,"date":"2023-10-05T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-05T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=85766"},"modified":"2023-10-19T10:48:33","modified_gmt":"2023-10-19T15:48:33","slug":"where-credit-is-due-grandma-bea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=85766","title":{"rendered":"Where Credit Is Due: Grandma Bea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My Grandma Bea was not an effusive woman. If there’s a stereotype of rural Scandinavians in America, it’s that they are pretty emotionally reserved, in a way that comes across as cold to some, passive-aggressive to others, and often just funny for those who get it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Example: when I was born, Dad called his mother to tell her it was a boy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“What’s his name?”, Bea asked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Mitchell”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was (so the story goes) a few seconds of silence on the line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Well, it’s not too late to change it…”, she averred, before the conversation moved on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We lived six blocks from Grandma Bea for my entire childhood. Sundays, every week, involved dinner at Grandma’s, followed by “Wild Kingdom” and “Wonderful World of Disney”. Grandma was an amazing cook, and even made lutefisk that was utterly edible and enjoyable (if only as a garnish – never an actual meal). And her lefse was the highlight of most holidays. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She died when I was 17 – and while shes didn’t talk about her childhood a lot, I learned a thing or two over the years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Bernt “Oleson” Greslie married Mary Nilson, the daughter of the postman in New Solem, Minnesota – a township that is the “suburbs” of Thief River Falls. They had four kids. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The youngest was my grandmother, Beatrice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They spoke Norwegian at home; Bea didn’t learn English until she was in third grade. Like a lot of immigrants and their children, they kept the old language at home in the new country – which, as a young language geek, used to frustrate me immensely. I wanted <\/em>Grandma to teach me Norwegian. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In retrospect, it may have been a good thing she didn’t; Berndt spoke the Tr\u00f8ndelsk dialect from the hills east of Trondheim – more or less the Appalachian accent of Norway. Still, it would have helped…well, today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The family moved to a house up in Middle River, Minnesota when Grandma was very young. As always, I don’t know a lot about her childhood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I do <\/em>know is that she had two aunts who must have been absolutely fascinating people. They were a couple of sisters who were proto-tycoons in the photography business. traveled the wilds of Minnesota and the Dakotas. starting photography studios all over the place and selling them off to new photogs. Some of those studios still exist. One that still does – thanks to a Chamber or Commerce that knows where its bread is buttered – but in any case has lived on in Minnesota lore, was the Eric Enstrom studio in Bovey \u2013 a stone\u2019s throw from Coleraine. Grandma apprenticed with Enstrom, and one day in the early \u201920s was involved in the staging, shooting, development and hand-coloring of this photo:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bea carried on as a photographer’s assistant, and then photographer, in Bovey for another 7-8 years, until one of her aunts heard that a photographer in Jamestown, North Dakota needed another photographer. And one thing led to another…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

….anyway,, we talked about that yesterday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The interesting part, to me at least, was what came 15 years later. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In June of 1942, as the grit from the dust bowl was still getting swept out of corners, and while World War 2 is at its most uncertain moment, Oscar died, leaving (as the legend goes) $50 in the bank [1]. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Bea…just kept on. She worked, as Dad described it, sixteen hours a day for the next twenty-odd years, keeping the studio going. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mommybloggers and child psychologists use the term “grit” today. Grandma Bea had grit. Forget the modern fripperies – she was tough<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I often think of Grandma Bea (not to mention the aunts who helped her get started) when I hear modern feminists – most particularly some of the Twin Cities feminist-bloggers of the 2000s – yapping about being warriors. I don’t think they’d have been able to keep up with Bea for 24 hours. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1] Of course, after inflation, $50 in 1942 would be closer to $1,000 today, but still. . <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Grandma Bea was not an effusive woman. If there’s a stereotype of rural Scandinavians in America, it’s that they are pretty emotionally reserved, in a way that comes across as cold to some, passive-aggressive to others, and often just funny for those who get it. Example: when I was born, Dad called his mother […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[454],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-wandering-line"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85766"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85955,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85766\/revisions\/85955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}