Small Town Boy

By Anna Mae Burke and Robert L. Burke

SMALL TOWN BOY is the story of growing up in the small towns of
Bayfi eld, WI and Ovid, Michigan in the 1930s and 1940s, told through
a series of stories about the towns and their people, as lived by Robert, and
told to Anna Mae.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479761081

Anna Mae Burke

Anna Mae Walsh Burke was born in New York City to Irish immigrant parents. She began creating stories at the age of seven, has a number of poems, two plays and sixteen books published and has won several prizes for her writing. She lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with her husband, Robert ,who is also a writer. They have two children and four grandchildren. Currently she is writing a trilogy, Winds of War, set during the Civil War.

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Copyright © 2013 by Robert L. Burke & Anna Mae Burke.

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CONTENTS

Coming To America

The Lake And The Hills

Madeline Island

Winter Clothing

The Mittens

The School Bus

Skiing In Bayfield

The War

The Coming Of The Germans

When The Horses Got Loose

Surprise Dishes

The Doctors

The Flood

Ice Cream

Radio Programs And The Saturday Serials

Ken And The Mink Ranch

The Bicycle

Hunting Deer

Grandfather And The Deer

Grandfather And The Deer In The House

Grandfather And The Deer Chasing Dogs

Sport

Ginger

Catching Mink

The Party Line

The Veterinarian

Evelyn

After The Divorce

Moving To Ovid

The Hardware Store

The Toy Fair

The Boat Yard

My Mother The Musician

The Churches

Bob Elliot

Doyle

The Artist

My First Girlfriend

Sally

The Motorcycle

The Last Chapter

TO MY FAMILY

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BOBBY ON HIS HORSE

COMING TO AMERICA

When I was growing up n the 1930’s and 1940’s, Bayfield, Wisconsin was a small town. As was written on the sign that greeted visitors entering the town, permanent residents numbered 1200. The last time I visited the sign indicated there were only 700 people living there. Of course there are the tourists in the summer who come to sail the waters of Lake Superior, but they aren’t Bayfielders. I don’t count them. The weather in Bayfield is primarily one season, Winter. The few days of Summer, which are much enjoyed by everyone, aren’t enough to warm the Lake. Lake Superior is the largest body of natural water in the world, but don’t fall in. It is very cold at any time of year. My growing up in Bayfield began with my immigrant grandparents coming to America.

When my Norwegian grandfather, Ole Bakke, came to the United States in 1905, he came through Galveston rather than New York as most immigrants did. Ole’s brother was already settled there, and my grandfather followed his brother’s path to Texas. He had left his wife in Lillihammer, Norway, so that he could have a life prepared for her when she came to America. Yes, Lillihammer is where the Winter Olympics were held some years ago. My family, who have never visited Norway, were delighted to see images of the town where our ancestors had originally come from, on our television.

At the time he arrived, Norwegians followed a patronymic system, whereby a son took the first name of his father and added ‘son’ to it, creating a new last name for his own family My grandfather would have been Ole Olson when he boarded the boat from Norway. When he went through immigration, he realized how many men named Olson had come in ahead of him, just that day, so he took the name of the farm where he had been working. It was Bakke. The new name must have been a surprise to my grandmother when she received his letter telling her she was now Helga Bakke.

My grandfather was a tease, and this story was a favorite of everyone in the family except my grandmother. When my grandfather went to meet my grandmother at the boat from Norway, he brought with him a Negro cowboy who was a great friend of his. My grandmother had never seen a Negro before and was shocked by the color of the man’s skin. She asked my grandfather about it, and he told her that his friend was a white man when he came to the ranch years before, but the Texas sun had turned him his present color. He warned her that it would happen to them as well. I’m certain he eventually explained the truth to her, but I’m not certain she ever forgave him.

My Norwegian grandparents had five children while they lived in Texas, three boys, Elling, Lauman, and John, and two girls, Helga and Jennie. One of those boys was my father, Lauman. Although they found the heat unbearable, they stayed in Texas until one afternoon, my grandmother went into the room where her youngest child was asleep in his crib and found a rattlesnake on the floor of the children’s bedroom. She grabbed the baby from the crib and ran from the room, slamming the door behind her, trapping the snake. Although the snake was quickly eliminated, my grandmother was more determined than ever to leave Texas.

My grandparents decided to go to Northern Wisconsin at the urging of my grandmother’s sister, Minnie Halversen.

The government had passed laws aimed at settling various parts of the country. The government would give forty acres and a mule to those people who agreed to settle a certain plot of land. They had to build a house, live in that house, and develop the forty acre plot within five years from receiving the land grant.

The land my grandparents choose was in a small valley with a pond and a creek that drained into Lake Superior, which was a mile to the North. It seemed ideal, but unfortunately, the ground was sandy and not good for growing things. This fact would always haunt them as they tried to prosper.

You may have noticed that my name is ‘Burke’ not Bakke. Burke is the English translation of Bakke, both names meaning the hillside or the fortified place. I anglicized my name about 40 years ago, tired of the mis-pronunciation.

My mother’s German ancestors came from near Heidelberg in Germany around 1815. It is believed they were the pacifists and came to avoid conscription into the army. Their name was Siepes which roughly translates to ironworker in English. They entered through Philadelphia, and made their way to the beautiful countryside of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.

The land there was rich and able to produce excellent crops, but the Siepes were not farmers. They continued their trade of iron working and made their living as blacksmiths in the town of McGaheyville, Virginia. They rented their home and did not buy any land there.

In 1859, worried about the war they could see coming between the North and the South, they decided to go to North Dakota, except for the two oldest sons who stayed with their elderly parents. You might have visions of the family traveling West in a Conestoga wagon, but in fact they caught a train in Philadelphia.

The first army to sweep through McGaheyville, conscripted Archibald, the eldest and his next youngest brother as blacksmiths. When they had a chance, they deserted and went home. The next Army which came through also conscripted them as blacksmiths, and once more they eventually ran away again.

I have a cousin, named Robert Siepe, whom I only discovered existed about twenty years ago. He has a daughter named Roberta while I am Robert with a son named Robert. I assume ‘Robert’ is a family name. He has done extensive research on the matter, and he says our ancestors were the only two men to desert both sides during the Civil War.

When visiting Gettysburg, I was able to get certificates that the Siepe brothers had served in the Union Army. I must try to get certificates from the Army of the Confederacy, although it is not necessarily prudent to hang all four certificates side by side on the wall. It would certainly bring about some interesting and possibly heated discussions.

My mother, Myrtle Olson, was born in a soddy in North Dakota, and was one of the descendants of Archibald.

I do not know much about my mother’s father, as he died quite young. I do know he moved to the Bayfield area with his wife, Annie May. A curious incident occurred when my daughter was born. We named her Anna Mae after her mother. When my grandmother heard her great-granddaughter’s name she became excited.

‘They named her after me," she exclaimed. My mother didn’t have the heart to tell her she was named after her own mother. It was a coincidence that both my wife and my grandmother had the same first name, although the names were spelled a little differently.

Although my parents lived in a regular house in Bayfield, my mother was