Stories by Esther Bakke

How I Got My Driver’s License, edited by RuthAnn Wilson

Esther Flugstad Bakke — 1932

I began learning to drive when I was fifteen. My father and mother both wanted me to learn to drive so that I could take mother to visit Grandpa and Grandma Olson and Aunt Martina on Sunday afternoons. Father wanted it so he could take a nap Sunday afternoon. He worked hard during the week. And besides, he was terribly bored listening to women-talk at Grandma Olson’s. Grandpa Olson was very deaf. 

I hated it.

We had a Dodge Touring car. The gearshift transmission was stiff and hard to turn. I wasn’t strong enough to do it quietly nor did I have the needed expertise.  This was before the invention of the automatic transmission. Every time I ground the gears, Father would let out a very loud and very disapproving “Harr—umph”.   He was proud of his car. He had bought it new and kept it in tiptop condition. He was adept with machinery. He had no trouble understanding the concept of gasoline compression and how it worked. An insult to his prized car was almost a personal affront.

When I turned sixteen (in March 1929), father decided that I ought to have a driver’s license. A law that drivers must be licensed and been passed a year or so earlier, but left no means of enforcing it unless the local authorities chose to do so… to which they took very haphazardly. Boys who had been driving tractors on the farm since they were nine of ten didn’t even bother with a license.

But Father was a stickler for obeying the law. He filled out the proper license application form, including a total of the actual miles I had driven, and mailed it in.  Father, being meticulously honest, painstakingly figured out to the nearest half-mile that I had driven all of seventy-seven and one-half miles!

But the form was returned! I needed to have had the driving experience of a minimum one hundred miles. I was told to go in and have a driver’s test. So Father took me to the courthouse in Viroqua where official matters like driver’s licenses were handled. He went into the Sheriff’s office and told him that he wanted a driver’s license for his daughter.

“Where is she?” the sheriff asked.

“She’s out in the car”, Father replied. 

It was a hot July day. The sheriff was sitting as close to the open window as he could. No air conditioning yet in those days. He looked at the shimmering hear waves across the lawn. No way was he giving up the comparative coolness of his office.

He looked again and saw that there was a live body out there.

“Well, tell her to be a little careful at first… That will be twenty-five cents,” he added, and signed my driver’s license.

When Grandma Moved the Woodpile By Moonlight, edited by RuthAnn Wilson

Esther Bakke — 1998

Grandpa Martin Bakke once made the remark to a friend, “Anna isn’t a woman. She’s a mule.”

This was in no way meant to be derogatory. He meant she was stronger than most women, and also tenacious, determined and possibly a bit stubborn. He might have been bragging a little, too. Not everyone had a wife like that.

Martin himself was not strong. Before his marriage, he worked in sawmills in La Crosse, When he wrote home to his family in Norway, he had often complained that working with the huge logs was hard work.

It was Grandma Anna’s turn to entertain the Avalanche Ladies Aid. It was a small group of neighbors and they met in one another’s homes. Everyone hosting it put forth their best efforts.

It was winter. Grandpa Marin had put a woodpile strategically placed directly in the front of the door leading into the dining room where the wood-burning stove stood. “Handy,” he thought, “what was wrong with that?” Everyone knew what woodpiles were for.

“Not so,” thought Grandma. She was not going to have her guests walk around a messy, dirty woodpile to get into HER home!

Before her marriage, she had worked in the household of the wealthy Mons Anderson in La Crosse, known as the “Merchant Prince”. She had learned much and her quick mind had absorbed the niceties there. She would have a nice home, too, she was determined. 

She nagged at Grandpa for days that he and the boys must remove this eyesore. He ignored her, which he often did when he encountered an untenable position. Besides, the boys were busy stripping tobacco. It was important to get the tobacco to market as soon as possible. It was the cash crop that paid the taxes on the farm.

Finally came the evening before the Ladies Aid meeting. Everything else was ready. Fresh bread, cakes and cookies were in the adjacent summer kitchen. Floors had been scoured; everything dusted, and the rooms all polished to a gleam. BUT – there was that ugly woodpile! Grandma was frustrated and thoroughly angry. Everyone else had gone to bed.

It was late, and the moon was bright. Grandma took matters into her own hands. She put on her sweater, along with a warm burst of determination, and she moved that woodpile, chunk after heavy chunk, around the corner to the back side of the house. Problem solved, and now the ladies could walk directly into Grandma’s welcoming front door.

When Grandpa went outdoors the next morning, did he smile, just a little bit, into his mustache? We’ll never know, will we?