A one pound plug
Floyd started working the gas station on the south end of town after his father had a stroke. In the first days of electrification, they had the switch to the Mantua street light system in their house. How cool would that have been?
“On Saturdays in the spring, I went with Grandpa to the dry farm, mostly to repair fences damaged by sheep coming off the summer range or by heavy snow. We went by horse and buggy. He had a fine buggy and a good trotting horse to carry him around. He was a good horseman, and liked to drive, and you would would never know he was a cripple.
Grandpa never learned to talk in English. He was strictly a Dane. Most people in Mantua understood Danish, and many spoke it. He and I could carry on a rapid fire conversation, me talking in English, and he talking in Danish. We both understood the other perfectly.
Meda Jeppesen, who had the general store and post office, understood Danish perfectly, but she had a sister, Evelyn, who couldn’t. She was worried about what to do if Rasmus (my grandfather) came in. Meda told her that was easy. “When he comes in, just cut him a pound plug of horseshoe tobacco, and he’ll be content until someone comes in and can understand him.
Grandpa walked with a crutch and cane, homemade out of maple wood. He could barely move one foot ahead of the other, but he moved. He had been trapped in a brush fire and badly burned, but still carried on.
One day we got to the store just at mail time, and there were quite a number of men there. Grandpa left me in the buggy to hold cap, his pet horse, while we slowly made his way into the store. They wouldn’t sell tobacco to kids, so I knew one of the reasons he went into the store.
Evelyn was there alone, and he asked for fifty cents worth of staples (used for repairing fences). Evelyn promptly went over and cut off a pound of horseshoe tobacco and handed it to him. It was a good joke. All the men laughed and clapped, but to Grandpa, it was a terrible insult. He left the tobacco on the counter and came charging for the buggy faster than I had ever seen him move.
His face was livid, and the men were still laughing, and he hadn’t bought anything from the store. Almost jumping into the buggy, he grabbed the lines and the buggy whip, cursing the horse and madly whipping him. We lit out for the farm on a dead run. When we neared the top of the lane, Cap was white with lather, and Grandpa kept saying, “No one makes a damn fool of a Rasmus.” I was scared but finally blurted out, “Grandpa, you mustn’t kill Cap. You’ll never be able to walk home.” Then I cried. He slowed the horse to a walk but kept mumbling, “No one laughs at Rasmus.”
This was a day of great change for Grandpa. When we got back-we didn’t do any work at the farm-just checked to see if any cows had got in through the fence-he laid what was lefr of his old plug of tobacco over the wood house door, swearing not even tobacco would make a fool of him. Each time he went through the door, he leaned on his crutch, reached up and got the tobacco, and looking longingly at it, asked, “Are you the boss, or is Rasmus?”
He chewed maple bark and choke cherry limbs for days, but he never took another chew of tobacco.
That plug of tobacco was all dried up, but still over the door when he died years later. It was a ling time before he went back to the store, and then he stayed out in the buggy while I did the shopping.
