Sunnyside Up North: Beginnings and Beyond: A Memoir

By Lloyd Turtinen

This memoir follows the early life of Lloyd W. Turtinen. The first section describes his growing up on a small dairy in northern Minnesota and includes a series of essays on various topics associated with farm life. The next section describes his experiences and adventures at the local college. The last section is entitled the army years and includes descriptions of basic training and his work at duty stations at the Pentagon, Washington D.C and Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. There is humor and sarcasm throughout the book. Also included are a number of black and white photographs to enhance the stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098301637

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©2020 All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Print ISBN: 978-1-09830-162-0

eBook ISBN: 978-1-09830-163-7

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Farm Chores

Fun and Entertainment

School Daze

Hunting and Fishing

Potpourri

The College Years

The Army Years

Acknowledgements

I want to thank my wife Kay for her love, encouragement, help, and support for this writing project, and most importantly being part of my journey.

Preface

I was born in northern Minnesota as part of the baby boom generation. My ancestors were Finnish and Norwegian, and there was a large Finnish community in my hometown. Having been raised on a dairy farm, I was told that many Finnish children were actually born in the sauna because it was the cleanest room on the farm. I wasn’t. I was born in a hospital. It was June 1950, and it was snowing.

The original homestead sauna where my aunt was born

My dad was raised on the same farmstead and lived there until he was sixty-five years old, but I never knew him when he was young. That is because he never told me much about his younger years, barring a few select stories that I wasn’t all that interested in listening to at the time. It often seems that when we do want to listen to those stories when we are older, it’s too late. I didn’t want that to happen to my own children and grandchildren. So before my arteries harden and plaques and tangles begin to accumulate in my brain, here is what I remember. Most, if not all, is 100 percent true with maybe a little embellishment, and some of the names have been changed to protect my accomplices in some of the stupid acts of my youth.

This book chronicles my experiences during my early years on the farm through high school, college, and my subsequent military service during the Vietnam War. I have broken up the chronology into a series of sometimes-humorous short stories with themes that illuminate my first quarter century. These themes cover the spectrum from shoveling cow manure to delivering classified material in the Pentagon, Washington, DC.

For my children and grandchildren

Chapter 1

Farm Chores

Work and Eat

All meals on the farm were large. There were no lunches, brunches, or grab-a-quick-bite. The family got together to eat five times a day: breakfast, dinner, supper, and in addition, there were two coffee times: 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. Each meal was positioned around the chores. Breakfast at seven thirty was a huge meal involving food like French toast, Finnish pancakes, oatmeal, toast, bacon, pork, and of course a couple of eggs. My mother would always ask me if I wanted my eggs sunny side up. At first I didn’t like them that way but soon learned to love them. Breakfast was substantial because many chores like milking all the cows had already been done and we were hungry. But there were still many more chores to do.

The family farm truly involved all of the family. Everyone helped out, and each had specific chores to do. It might be simply helping to feed the cows when young, carrying milk, or hauling feed sacks when older. The most important thing that I learned was to be on time. My father hated tardiness and sternly let you know if you were late. Years later when I was serving in the military, I recall one time when a soldier in our platoon was late for inspection. The first sergeant barked like my dad, Where have you been? The surprised young man sheepishly stammered, What . . . what time is it? The first sergeant barked back, Do I look like a clock to you? The exchange was surprisingly similar to exchanges my dad and I had at times. And, no, that soldier was not me. But I really did learn to always be on time.

Being on time was important in many aspects of the farm chores. The expression make hay when the sun shines meant that preparing the hay followed a strict regime of cutting, raking, and baling the hay. Cows had to be milked twice a day, so coordination among workers was important.

There were many other chores to make the farm run smoothly. Besides milking the cows, we had to feed them, move them to the pasture and back again, clean manure from the barn, brush the cows, spray the cows to keep flies off of them, clip their horns, treat the cows for mastitis or minor injuries, and breed them. We also had young stock including heifers and calves that needed to be fed and watered in a separate barn that also needed to be cleaned daily. Furthermore, chickens needed to be fed and eggs, gathered. Buildings and equipment needed to be maintained and repaired. Wood needed to be gathered and split for the sauna. The list goes on and on, but each of us had our own responsibilities. We were certainly not bored, and the hard work made me both mentally and physically strong.

Seasons

My favorite season up north was winter, perhaps because it lasted the longest. From the middle of October to the middle of April, cold air swept down from the Arctic, freezing the ground and water while leaving a blanket of snow. Sometimes it was bitter cold, down to 45° below zero. Lake-effect snow from Lake Superior was dumped in huge amounts on the landscape. This made for a lot of extra work on the farm. Snow had to be moved and water pipes often froze, but the cows still needed to be fed and milked. Nevertheless, I felt so alive as the bitter cold tried to intimidate me. But I fought back and made peace with it. Winter’s beauty was unmatched with any other season. When you are alone in the woods in winter, it’s like everything is sleeping and it’s just you and the peacefulness. I recall that sometimes as early as Halloween we would be skating on a frozen snowless lake. We skated completely across the lake without ever turning. Winter sports were very popular with the majority of kids whose ancestors had immigrated from Norway, Finland, and Sweden.

In contrast, the next longest season was summer, defined as between mid-June and mid-August. This was the period when we could swim in the lakes and when hay was made and grain was harvested. We picked raspberries, juneberries, gooseberries, and blueberries at various times. We fished in the lakes and rivers. Also, the cows got to go outside during this period.

Spring and fall were short transition periods. Beautiful in their own right but interspersed with periods of heavy rain, sleet, and even snow in late May or early June. What chores needed to be done and what games we could play was unique for each season.

My First Tractor

My earliest recollection of helping out on the farm was with my John Deere pedal tractor. I was about three years old and loved that little tractor. It was just like my dad’s tractor, only a bit smaller. One day I hooked up my wagon to it, threw some grass and sand into it, and headed off across the hayfield. Now most three-year-olds don’t inform their parents about their plans, and I didn’t either. But being quite headstrong, I wanted to be a farmer too. I had no idea where I was going, but I was driving my tractor and that was fun. They told me that I was found about half a mile away at the edge of the hayfield. Before being found, there was some frantic searching on the farm premises for me. My extraordinary feat for my age set the stage for other adventures as a farm boy in northern Minnesota. I had arrived.

My little John Deere pedal tractor

Driving Tractors

I drove a tractor long before I drove a car. As soon as I could reach the pedals, I learned how to use a clutch and shift gears. Soon I was hauling wagons full of hay bales and pulling machinery to help out on the farm. I hadn’t yet reached age twelve. As I got older, I gained more responsibility for more serious jobs. The most dangerous and craziest job was pulling a load of hay up the Big Hill. The Big Hill was part of Turtinen Road, a remnant of a previous glaciation period thousands of years ago. My dad showed me how to make it up the hill driving the Farmall H tractor while pulling a fully loaded (ninety-five bales) hay wagon. In fifth gear, the tractor would go about twenty miles per hour. I would approach the bottom of the hill at full speed and begin climbing. About halfway up the hill, the tractor would begin laboring and I would have to rapidly shift down into fourth gear. Not doing so would stall the tractor and I would end up going backward down the hill. That never happened because I was terrified. Sometimes I had to double-clutch because the gears weren’t synchronized. But each time I made it up that hill, I felt an enormous accomplishment.

The Farmall M shown in this photo was the larger version to the Farmall H. My brother and sister are standing by the tractor.

I also got to drive green John Deere diesel tractors when I got older. The last one had eight forward speeds and three reverse speeds, power steering, and brakes. It was like driving a luxury car although I still hadn’t driven a car yet. Everything was easier with this tractor, and I still recall the joy of driving these tractors and pulling machinery on the farm.

Pulling Machinery

It was cool being a kid on the farm. You got to do things that city kids couldn’t, like run farm machinery. As I explained earlier, as soon as my feet could hit the pedals, I could drive. This was important to my dad. Sometimes he needed an extra driver to move the tractor or drive the truck to the garage or to pull one of the farm implements. My favorite implement was the hay conditioner. After cutting the two-foot-tall alfalfa or mixture of different grasses like broom, the hay was run through a series of rollers to crimp and break the stems, releasing the juices and thus drying the hay faster. Sometimes the rollers would get plugged and I would have to cut the grasses free with a special knife. Once the hay dried after about twenty-four hours, I raked it into loose rows with a special rake also pulled behind the tractor to further dry the hay.

In the sixties, we started observing seagulls move inland from Lake Superior. They would follow me when I was raking hay. Initially I wondered what they were doing until I saw a gull snatch a mouse as it ran out from under the hay. Seagulls are very adaptable, and here they had found a