I was recently sent this personal historical accounting by Arlen Svare, from my Becker County home community in Detroit Lakes MN whom I first met on June 16, 2015 while visiting him and his wife Lillian in their home at the suggestion of my sister Verla (Mrs. Jon Hochstetler). Arlen and Lillian’s ministry began in St Paul at Bethel College where he met and married Lillian, graduated form college and seminary, and together served congregations across MN, Alaska, and WA retiring in the county of his birth. Arlen is an accomplished storyteller and conducted many such storytelling seminars in churches and conferences during his career.
Quoting from the book’s Forward, He modestly states his model was “Jesus Christ who went everywhere telling stories. He spoke of “a certain man had 100 sheep…. ” and “a certain woman had 10 coins…” He spoke of farmers , merchants, investment bankers, , noblemen, soldiers, clothiers, religious officials, tax specialists, among others. He used such metaphors as plants, rocks, food, birds, animals and fish. He used parables, allegories, hyperbole, and hypothetical situations.
In a word, Jesus was a master story-teller and all from everyday life! It naturally follows that we who are entrusted with sharing Scriptures with others ought to also find it imperative to illustrate and draw parallel applications. In writing of my experiences, many of which I used in sermons as illustrative material, I have insisted upon true stories, as accurate as my memory can provide. Perhaps the only entertaining result will be the viewing of God’s mysterious ways in the steering of a young man born June 28, 1929 through the vagaries of a depression, drought, war, and the acquiring of an education in a time of enormous transition and adventurous change.
Two Jersey Ladies
My father was a farmer though he didn’t own a farm. It was the time of the depression of 1929-39 when jobs were scarce but work was available…but for very little pay. So he was a “tenant farmer”, working farms for widows whose husbands had passed on.
But he yearned for a farm of his own. Due to a generous and considerate farmer for whom he worked near Vergas, Minnesota my father accumulated enough money to purchase 160 acres in the northern part of the state….raw land with mostly trees and brush but with one redeeming feature – it had a meadow. Moving two abandoned buildings onto the property furnished him with what would eventually become a home and barn . It was a particularly adventurous time for me, aged eleven, since Dad would send me to Northome, thirteen miles north, for lumber and supplies, driving our 1938 Ford sedan! People said they couldn’t see me over the steering wheel!
For an eleven year old boy, this was all an exciting development. We had no near neighbors. Each one was more than a mile of wall-to-wall trackless forest, from us, and each day observing Ruffed Grouse and White Tailed Deer. We weren’t too surprised to see bear tracks on the ground near the barn. I loved to explore, but from now on I explored with a compass in possession. East? Many miles of unoccupied forest land. West? At least 3 miles of primitive land. Only our two neighbors, one north and the other south, would form a buffer against becoming lost. It was wonderful!
But there is a cloud on every horizon, we learned. Our cloud came as a virtual cloud, singing and stinging! Mosquitoes! They arrived in the early evening and stayed all night! No, nothing can be perfect!
It is at this point that I introduce you to the Two Jersey Ladies. Dad bought them from an elder of the local small church. His rationale was simply this: along with the other six cows he had bought, the Jersey breed would typically milk a richer cream content to their milk and enhance the cream check that sustained our family weekly. Hence, the two “Jersey ladies” came onto the scene. He bought them from a man named John. John was a liar and a cheat. His last name will not be declared since my father felt that God alone should deal with the injustice.
John totally misrepresented the two cows. He affirmed they were good milkers and mild of nature. They would yield good calves and father’s herd would increase. None of it was true! We named the one “Curly horns” because of the obvious severe curvature of her horns. She was cantankerous, bullying the other cows and possessive of the water tank. We named the other Jersey cow “Three Teater” because, as we soon learned, she milked only out of three of the usual four teats. Oh yes, it hung there as it should, but was a withered appendage of no use to dairyman or calf. She was of a placid enough nature, but was such a fussy eater that the hay she left uneaten, the other cows happily ate up entirely. To add insult to injury, neither cow ever came into season to be bred. We concluded they were simply too old. My father silently endured his bitter disappointment!
Please backtrack with me two years earlier than this event. My father and mother came dramatically into a trust relationship with Jesus Christ, and into a fellowship of believers that was hospitable, kind and warm hearted. It transformed them both and their marriage became so improved that they soon had a little daughter!
I recall how they would sing hymns together, soprano and alto (or whatever harmonized) and sometimes they would ask me, then a little boy, to sing along with them and harmonize. It was a wonderful season of our home life!
But when we moved to northern Minnesota, claimed our farm and began attending the local church, my father no longer sang in church. Busy as we were, I never questioned it then, but since then realized that something had made a detrimental impact on him… specifically the betrayal by John, the church’s elder. One more thing: my father, who never showed a vindictive bone in his body, would never refer to John with his real name– sadly, he always referred to him as “Judas”……! The name stuck….at least in our household.
.For example: my father and I loved deer hunting. It was the only form of recreational activity he ever joined with me upon, whereas I also loved hunting, fishing, trapping and ice house decoy fishing. It was when we were hunting together west of our home that, one day toward evening, he didn’t appear at our agreed upon meeting point. It had become pitch dark at about nine o’clock when he came out of the woods. He explained, “I became lost for a while, and almost ended up at Judas’ fence line.”
As we have stated, we had eight cows to milk morning and night. Four were mine and four were his. I noticed quite soon that the cows began to look upon me as their calf…or at least as a kind person who relieved them of the pressure of a full udder twice a day. I noticed one day, while in a particular hurry to finish milking, that my cow was leaning away from me as I rapidly milked away. I suddenly realized I was hurting her with my hurried milking process! I eased up immediately and felt her against my shoulder relaxing once again into her usual posture. She didn’t kick at me or step away from me…. just quietly leaned away from the discomfort.
We heard of an old couple that had a Holstein cow for sale. She was a very large black and white cow with no horns and an obvious “I mean business” way about her. Dad bought her and when I came home from school I soon saw that here was a cow with a different personality. She soon demonstrated her strength and size among the rest of our little herd and the two Jersey Ladies were promptly removed from the pecking order and placed at the very bottom in rank! She became my cow to milk. What a challenge! She had enormous teats. I could only fit my hand around the bottom half of their length but I soon realized I had a wonderful milk producer on my hands. Most days I milked two full pails morning and evening! We became good friends. But she was tricky and had a sense of humor. When I needed to step between her and the next cow in the stanchions she would move against me and pin me against the stomach of the next cow! I would be trapped there and as much as I might struggle, couldn’t extricate myself from between those two cows. I would pummel and push with hands and knees, but to no avail. It was my dad who gave me the solution. He suggested that I carry a pliers in my pliers pocket of the overalls I wore, and work my hand down between the cows and seize it and pinch the tricky cow’s skin with the pliers. It worked wondrously! She sprang away from me so suddenly that I could barely keep my feet!
She had another personality trait. She had never known the experience of a farm dog in her life. She couldn’t imagine a dog was anything but an enemy, apparently, so that when she took up residence with us she never would accept our friendly amiable dog. We permitted him in the barn while we milked and none of the cows paid the slightest attention to him as he moved up and down the aisle behind them. All except my large Holstein cow. She watched her chance and if the dog came too close to her back end she would kick out at him. Now that did not really do any harm – the dog ducked and the cow missed, time and again. But when one is milking that cow and it happens….I would feel the muscle tense in her thigh, quickly pull the milk pail aside and, if quick enough, be out of the way for the kick. I noticed that the cow never kicked outward and back, but rather straight back. She was deliberately careful not to kick in such a way that I would be struck. She was obviously very conscious of my presence tucked practically under her as I milked her. I was never harmed by that cow in any way. She was careful for my safety, even in her enmity of our dog!
My father never did quit singing but he reserved his singing to the barn as he milked. I was surprised at his memory of the lyrics of the old hymns, but also of some lively songs from his youth. I especially enjoyed the Norwegian songs he still remembered. But once again I noticed an interesting behavior by our cows as we milked them. They would become quiet in their chewing of hay and stand with their heads and ears cocked to hear him sing. They obviously enjoyed it! And the most amusing and fascinating thing came about a bit later.
We kept our calves in the same area, across the aisle from the cows, and since we separated cream from the milk to sell we had the remaining milk to use to feed pigs and calves. So there was usually a half dozen calves of different ages together in a pen, anxiously waiting for their issue of milk. Shortly after dad began to sing the calves would quit their agitating and anxiety for their milk and stand still, all looking intently at my father, a length of the barn away from them. This continued for several days until, one day, one of the calves stretched his neck out, formed his mouth into a perfect “O”, and began to bellow with a varying up and down scale. Dad and I laughed so hard we could hardly milk our cow. But each time my father would begin singing again, the calf would join in. Soon other calves began to do the same and we had a deafening chorus on our hands! It became such a novelty that when visitors or relatives came to visit we hurriedly took them to the barn to show off our “Singing Calves”!
When the month of August arrived we saw a change in our herd. One cow carried a cowbell and we could usually determine their conduct by listening to the bell. If it was rhythmical in its ringing the cows were grazing placidly. If it was quiet, quite likely they were laying chewing their cud. If it was jangling loudly, quite possibly something was harassing them and we needed to investigate. When August arrived we heard more and more of the jangling sound, but it was for another reason. The cows were so viciously attacked by deer flies, horse flies and mosquitoes that they retreated to the heavy brush areas to try to escape the torment. At times the insect attacks would become so severe that they threw their tails in the air and bellowing all the time, galloped for the barn, standing in a circle around the barn door waiting to be permitted to enter, still bellowing continuously. It was such a pitiful scene. We opened the door and the cows immediately went to their stalls. We then threw them some hay, knowing they had not fed by grazing, and sprayed over their backs with DDT, now a strongly forbidden product but highly effective. The cows stood with their eyes closed, nodding off in sleep, finally relieved of their excruciating torment.
Then the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor! It changed our lives completely. My father was then 40 years old, entirely liable to be called into the armed services by the Selective Service Board. What would we do? Two of my mother’s brothers, my uncles, were called, one to the Army and one to the Navy. Several other brothers lived in Seattle and informed us that there was any number of good paying jobs that would put my father into the “war work” status and preclude them being drafted into the service. Many farmers were excluded because we also needed farm produce for the war effort, but our farm did not produce enough to qualify. My parents decided that my dad would proceed to the Seattle area and get a job, find housing and send for my mother and his daughter. They would leave me with a family to finish my first year of high school.
Soon after my father arrived he found a job building housing for the Army bases scattered over the area. His area was Port Orchard, Washington, across the Bremerton Bay from the Bremerton Shipyards. The change in climate was apparently too severe of a shock….my mother got a message that he had pneumonia and that she had better come soon to help him with his health.
Nearly three miles away from our farm lived a large family named the Bolstads. We didn’t know them very well but my mother contacted them and asked them if they would simply move into our home and take over the farm as it stands, caring for the animals and accepting the cream check and other benefits that may result.. They accepted and immediately I found myself living with an old couple near my high school and my mother and sister were gone out west.
My dad recovered his health and they soon found housing and in the course of time I joined them out west. It resulted in another vastly different but exciting adventure that will occupy another short story sometime.
As time passed and the war was finally over, my family returned to their farm and I returned to finish high school. The Bolstads, with our heartfelt thanks, moved back to their farm. My parents commented repeatedly how well they had taken care of everything. Nothing was missing or out of place. The animals were well cared for and it was almost like we had never left. The Bolstads hold a high place in our estimation from that very day. But the west had made its mark on my parents and the farm now revealed itself much more clearly as a futile endeavor, so my parents decided to hold an auction, sell everything and move back to the Seattle area.
An auction was a new thing to me. I had never even seen one in my life. I even have the auction bill and am astonished at the scarcity of items on that bill offered for auction. We didn’t have much, but we didn’t know it. The only items of household goods that my parents kept was a two wheeled trailer and whatever furniture they could pile on it. I even sold my beloved .22 rifle! When it came up for bids the auctioneer turned to me and asked if it was in good operating order. I offered to demonstrate but a loud chorus of “NO!” from the bidders ended that offer!
As the auctioneer was selling the livestock I noticed my father had stopped what he was doing and began to run toward the crowd as it gathered around the auctioneer. He held up his hand and stopped the auction. I was startled and wondered what was going on. As I ran to be close enough to hear, I saw something that made an impression on me for my entire life. The “Jersey ladies” were being sold and the auctioneer, as was his duty, was exclaiming their purebred “worth”, and the bids were climbing higher and higher. My father stopped the bidding and told the bidders the truth about those cows. They were poor milkers, cantankerous in nature and never came into season to breed. The bidding started over and didn’t reach half way to the original bids. I learned that my father, even though he was moving permanently from the area, would not permit his neighbors to be cheated by bidding too high for animals misrepresented!
I don’t know what became of our Two Jersey Ladies. Somebody bought them at that auction and I suspect they were immediately shipped to the never-never land. The only cow I hated to see sold was my friend, the big black and white Holstein.
The “Jersey Ladies”, however, served a wonderful purpose, however. They showed me a father who was honest even when it hurt!”
Merlin writing now. Arlen graciously gave me one of his dwindling supply of 312 page books titled “Adventures of a Lifetime: Jesus said “Come, follow me…. ” after that historic visit and actually, I just may be talked into loaning it for you to enjoy. No, it is not available on Audible or Kindle, yet that is.
Blessings as you go forth today inspired by Arlen & Lillian’s faithfulness… and his fathers demonstration of honesty for lifetimes and generations to come!! …. Merlin