Tumbleweeds Remembered

By Milt Ost

Edward Oster’s family has been planters of seeds for generations untold. But Edward feels a call to be a fisher of men.
Along with his wife, Denise, their journey takes them from the rolling Midwestern prairies to blue Mediterranean waters, from the walls of San Quentin to the walls of the Kremlin, from fire tower on mountain top to the great pyramids of Giza. They dig through history in ancient Caesarea, and marvel at the monster machines digging North Dakota Black gold.
They have people to love, a might Word to proclaim, and a Cross to hold high. Theirs is a journey of discovery and a husbanding of traditions as they remember the tumbleweeds of their youth and plant roses of hope for the future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664169890

Milt Ost

This is the final book in the TUMBLEWEEDS trilogy. Ost can now be found busily engaged in several writing projects and enjoying an active life in Albert Lea, Minnesota. ([e-mail])

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Copyright © 2021 by Milt Ost.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 04/27/2021

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Prologue

1. Challenge of Recovery

2. The Cave-in

3. Books and Euclids

4. Wedding Bells

5. Degree Done

6. Glass House on the Mountain

7. Big News in the Glass House

8. Pushing Pigskin

9. Groceries Coming

10. Buck’s Caravan

11. Ants in the House

12. Learn That Bible

13. Rubber Hits the Road

14. More Rubber, Same Road

15. Heidelberg

16. New Rooster

17. Heidelberg Redux

18. Johnstown, Lotta New Stuff

19. The Blizzard

20. Bergen

21. New Days Dawning

22. Tahiti

23. Bergen and Beyond

24. Digging Black Gold

25. Special Mission

26. Running for Gold

27. Latvia: Joy and Pain

28. Bergen the Beloved

29. The Dig

30. Green World

31. Russia, Oh, Russia

32. Sweet Home Bergen

33. Kangaroo Land

34. Pharaoh Country

35. Ah, Beloved Home

36. The Awful Pain

37. Drawing the Curtain

38. History Come to Life

39. Land of the Cossacks

40. Did You Say Irkutsk?

41. Moscow’s Secrets

42. Home of the Heart

43. Aloha

44. Sunset

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Dedication

To Sabrina, Catherine, and Deborah,

Jay, Samuel, Cora, and Kjirsten,

and their mates

Prologue

The first volume of the Tumbleweeds Trilogy focused mostly on the Oster family’s life in Russia. The second presented their life in the great American heartland, ending with the death of Eddie’s father.

Sadly, the brave pioneers of that Tumbleweed world are all gone. Many of those sturdy German-Russian immigrants now rest in quiet repose under the vast buffalo grass prairies of the Midwest. Some of their descendants have forgotten—and a few never really cared to know—the bitter struggles those courageous parents endured to make the America we so easily take for granted today.

The final volume in this multi-generational Oster journey continues with the fifth-generation son, Eddie, and his life of singular blessing, reaching around the globe.

Eddie leaves that world of his fathers. But that magnetic Tumbleweed world never left Eddie. It painted his psyche with a palate of indelible colors that would never fade.

As Eddie ventures into life, he will morph into a more formal Edward, Ed for short. But that Tumbleweed world will tint his heart for all time and reflect its ideals even in times yet to come. And that world will shadow his choices through storms and sunshine over a lifetime of service in heaven’s employ.

Tumbleweeds Remembered paints the pages of his life as he carries on the patterns implanted in his soul until he, too, will join that host resting under the same prairies, secure in the hope that this is not the end.

Challenge of Recovery

A tear rolls down Eddie’s cheek. Sitting at his simple student’s desk, he is surrounded by college dorm mates and friends all over campus, but he’s never felt more alone. Today’s his birthday. They don’t know, and if they knew, his mind says, would they care?

Last year, Denise, his girlfriend at home, had baked him a chocolate cake, surrounded it with popcorn in a large box, and shipped it to him. He celebrated with all the guys on his floor of the dorm. This year she is also in college, eight hundred miles away, and can only afford to send him a card. Telephone calls are too expensive, so she creates a special handmade wish of endearment, dabs her special scent on it, and puts it in the mail.

He kisses her card, and the smell of her in that terrible absence crushes his soul and triggers his heart to churn out the plasma of loneliness.

Suddenly, a river of tears erupts down his face, forcing a crushing moan out of his lungs. Without realizing it, he’s out of his chair and throws himself face down onto his bunk, wailing the spectral cry of the near-dead. Oh, dear God, how I miss the fresh smile through her eyelashes. Her bright eyes looking into my soul. Her hand kissing my cheek like a butterfly. The hurt is more than he had experienced even at the awful death of his father. His whole body quivers, shaking the sap out of his soul, oozing into a puddle on his pillow.

Mercifully, he soon falls asleep. At the edge of sleep, a diamond tear percolates up through the boiling cauldron of despair and searches for a home. Her liquid friends are legion, and in a moment they sound the call to roll. Eddie is swept into the Valley of Terror, his anchor cut loose from knowing. The eyes of his heart lose all light, and he breathes in a horror he had not known before. Across a giant swamp of nothingness, he glimpses a blurred crowd staring at him with faces of derision. Behind them rises a giant figure with long, dark hair and clad in a crimson robe. The figure opens his mouth wide and emits a roaring flood of grinding sparks. They are overlaid by an explosion of thunder that sounds like a thousand bunker-busting bombs. The earsplitting boom knocks Eddie backward, sending him tumbling across an endless darkness that is without form and void like the great Beginning. His mind bursts its bounds and explodes into unchained atoms of dust. With a sudden jerk, he wakes up.

Just then Paul returns and is stunned to see his roommate wearing the shocked look of a test-monkey on his face.

You look terrible. You see a ghost?

Worse than that.

Paul quickly recruits several neighbors, and they all drive to Roy’s Diner downtown for a cheap late-night egg sandwich.

Back in his bunk, Eddie’s mind repaints the hideous scenes he had captured. Between missing his beloved and grieving for his father, his heart is broken. For sure, thousands of people have gone through more profound grief than mine, scrolls across his mind, and endured more crushing loneliness, but this just about did me in; that was way too scary. The depth of that excruciating dream-vision would color the pages of his heart for days.

His father’s death took the stuffing out of Eddie more than he realized. His return to college was a double-edged sword: the professors and students around him treated him with deep caring, but his heart was angry. Angry at losing his father and even angrier at God.

Why, God, why did you have to take him when he was still so young and we had so much to do together? hisses through his mind. You gave him hardly half the years the Bible said a God-fearing person should get.

A night later, he is again alone and lies down on the bed. The tourniquet around his soul numbs his mind and makes him shiver. In this awful hour, the beliefs of his younger days suddenly lie crumpled on the cold floor of the dark hole into which he has descended. Clammy fingers throttle his soul, leaving his mind a foggy blank.

He bolts upright in bed, for the briefest moment unsure of where he is, suddenly discovering he is drenched in sweat.

I wonder if Mom is going through this same stuff at home? flicks across his muddled mind.

Several nights later he is stretched out again on the lower bunk, mind bouncing around like storks on steroids. Roommate Paul is out on a Friday-night date; most of the boys on the floor either out at a game, walking hand in hand with a favorite girl in the romantic early spring air of Iowa, or throwing Frisbees, and it hurts so bad he doesn’t know what to do. It feels like his world is caving in.

In all this pain, his mind bounces back to a real cave-in.

The Cave-in

Eddie’s branch of the Oster tree had cousins older than he. But he was one of the first to graduate from high school. He was smug about that fact, feeling perhaps overly self-important. But it was soon to be knocked out of him.

After high-school graduation, he landed a summer job on a pipeline construction crew in the area. They laid a two-foot-diameter pipe for miles across the rolling prairies to the west of Beulah, working seven to five-thirty, six days a week.

Draglines and backhoes had dug a trench from six to twenty-five feet deep, scarring both wheat fields and prairie for miles across the rolling country. Another crew with draglines lifted the twenty-foot pipes, lowered them into the trenches, butted them together, and positioned them on foot-high stanchions high enough off the ground so the fourth crew could weld the joints to seal them tight.

Eddie and two other young locals were hired as go-fers and slaggers. They were to run and get whatever the crew needed for tools or supplies. But their main job was to brush off all the welding slag at the joints where the crew had welded the pipes together. That meant wire-brushing the welded joints all around the pipes, often on their backs down on the ground—and after a rain, lying in mud. Dirtier jobs were hard to find.

The crew were mostly from out-of-state, all 4-H’ers: Hard Working, Hard Eating, Hard Swearing, Hard Fighting, and tended to look at the young, local hires as measly pups. Raw jokes and pokes and gestures were the order of the day. Many a time Eddie gritted his teeth, stomach churning, and wanted to react, but knew the consequences would not be good for either party, most assuredly not for himself.

One day began like most others, but soon choked them with dust as another strong Dakota northwester moved in. Eddie was on his back on the bottom of a pipe, the other slagger kneeling on the other side. Suddenly a few clods of dirt bounced down off the trench wall. Nothing unusual; happened all the time. But then a few more cascaded down, and suddenly the friend screamed, Get up, get up!

Eddie sprang up just as the trench walls gave way and pinned them up to their chests in sand. The scream could only mean one thing, and in moments the nearest crew was in the trench with them, hand clawing sand from their chests to let them breathe. You okay, kid?

T-think so, Eddie stammered, feeling his lunch heading upward.

In moments the nearest backhoe rumbled in and by hour’s end they had freed the young prisoners who were still white as ghosts.

Several of the crew were clucking, trying to ease the boys’ fear with funny comments. Sure glad, Eddie joined in, that the sand kinda dried out my wet pants down there.

Books and Euclids

Dragging out of bed, Eddie crosses to his desk and sits down to write Denise. But tonight writing is a chore. Somehow he can’t tell her how angry he is at God right now—even as he can’t tell anyone at school. After all he is going to be a minister. How can a minister be angry at God, and still be an honest minister? keeps writhing around in his mind. I’m nothing but a cheap cheat! Thoughts of faith will not come, nor thoughts of love. His mind is out of control, like a murder of crows around new road-kill.

For a moment his mind goes back to that glorious Christmas Eve when he slipped the engagement ring on Denise’s finger.

Before she could say anything, Eddie looked into her eyes and softly asked, I know we’ve talked about this but, sweetheart, are you really sure you want to be a preacher’s wife? They live in kind of a birdcage, you know.

Well, I think so. But I remember how many preachers’ wives seem so old and frumpy. And they hardly ever smile, like they’re always sad.

"Yeah, I know, sweetie, but as pretty as you are, and organized, you’ll never be frumpy. And I’ll sure try to make you happy and have fun together as long as we live. Promise."

Then it’s a yes.

Fortunately, a few minutes later several floor mates came and asked him to come play ping-pong in the game room.

Meanwhile, Dr. Tillmanns, his German professor, had talked him into doing some volunteer instruction, teaching German to first and fifth graders in the public school system, and the bright smiles of those enthusiastic youngsters brought healing as well. A number of them made cards for him when he returned to the classroom, and that loving care lifted his heart to renewed strength. Wow, he told Paul several days later, I had no idea so many people cared what happened to me.

These years in college would be the worst of Eddie’s life. The loneliness of being without his girl plus the grief of losing his father remained as strings of albatross around his neck. And yet, despite the pain, he had the joy of wonderful roommates, a host of caring classmates, and excellent professors leading stimulating classes that made the days bearable.

42917.png

Summertime also brought back the good fortune of again being hired to drive a Euclid earth-moving truck, building the Garrison Dam. It also returned him to the great American Labor Movement as a card-carrying member of the Teamsters’ Union where he was thankful for the courageous men and women who had fought earlier battles for better wages and safer work conditions.

On the jobsite, his previous Euclid foreman liked his work and was glad to have him back as a driver. I gotta tell you, Eddie couldn’t help himself, "in ’53 at the dam closure ceremony, you remember President Eisenhower came out here.

Well, my girlfriend’s dad was a real strong Republican, so I told him I’d take him and his wife and my girl up here to see Ike. We got up at the crack of dawn, got here early, and got seats in the second row. Afterward we crowded up and he and I got to shake Ike’s hand.

You scored some points that day, kid.

Now, one trip on the Euclid and Eddie was back in the routine: thirty-nine tons of dirt and a whiff of diesel smoke each trip around. Hotter than Hades in a cab with no air-conditioning. Nonstop loading and dumping all day long. But just don’t forget for a minute, this is putting me through college!

Then Eddie was transferred to the mechanic section and put on the Heavy Equipment Transport crew. That meant driving one of the big thirty-two-wheel flatbed semi-trucks to move bulldozers, scrapers, electric shovels, and other large equipment around on the dam site. After several days of training, he mastered the art of backing that rig into tight situations, but shifting gears was another art.

The truck had a two-speed rear axle, which meant two separate gear-shifting handles to maneuver at the same time. And that meant two hands to shift and another for the steering wheel. But he had only two. The trick was to put his left arm through the spokes of the steering wheel and then use both arms to simultaneously work the shifting handles, while double-clutching the foot pedal at the same time.

His biggest scare came while hauling a DC-3 bulldozer out of the spillway pit. When he got to the top, he shifted gears. But he forgot that the long trailer behind him had not yet made it up, and in shifting, the gears didn’t mesh. The truck stopped and began going backward, down the incline of the pit. Eddie slammed on every braking system in the large rig, but it wasn’t enough. The load was too heavy. The brakes couldn’t hold. As the truck rolled backward down the two-hundred-yard incline below the spillway gates, terror struck Eddie’s mind. He saw his heavy load crashing into machines, toppling tall cranes, and sending screaming bodies flying through the air in every direction.

Thankfully, before it picked up more speed, he was able to turn the truck sideways and stop the descent. Thankfully as well, he had properly chained the big bulldozer well and tightly, and it did not tip off the flatbed. For several minutes Eddie sat, scared out of his mind and shaking all over. Workers in the pit below looked up, bewildered by the strange scene, but were soon back at work. Finally, breathing a prayer of thanks, he wiped his brow and started back up to finish the haul.

Problem with the otherwise excellent job was, to get to work, he and his workmates had to cross the Missouri River, which in turn meant losing an hour with the time change. That in turn meant getting up at 4:00 a.m. to get to work on time: not an impossible task, except he stayed out late too many nights on dates with Denise.

Mother became worried. You ought to stay home more and get some sleep. You’re going to have an accident yet.

She’s too old to remember what it’s like, he thought while he replied, Yeah, yeah, don’t worry, I’m fine!

42919.png

Too soon summer was over. College was as lonesome as ever, but Eddie found himself buried in activity. He had been elected as homecoming chairman and as president of both the junior class and the concert band. Along with those responsibilities, he taught a college Bible study class each Sunday in church and worked weekend nights frying fatty hamburgers and egg sandwiches in a downtown grease spot. Keeping his grades up meant using his time wisely, and with a good roommate, caring friends, and steady letters from Denise, they kept his sanity intact. There was no time for long pity-parties of lonesomeness, even though it hung over him like a never-ending nebulous cloud.

42922.png

School ended. Summer again put him on a Euclid earth-moving truck at the Garrison Dam, which was to become one of the largest earth-filled dams in the world. Eighty large Euclids working two shifts every day would haul 66,000,000 cubic yards of earth into the embankment across the Missouri River, and create a lake a hundred eighty miles long and fifteen hundred miles around. North Dakota’s glaciated river bluffs and expansive prairies would never be the same again, neither for displaced Native Americans and local residents nor for hundreds of thousands of tourists to come.

Since work on the dam was nearing completion, the foreman split Eddie’s time between the Euclid and his previous work driving a 32-wheel flatbed truck hauling heavy equipment wherever needed in construction. This time around, he was wiser in pulling loads out of the inclined pits.

Between working and courting, Eddie found time to play on the Beulah Miners independent baseball team. During the season, an African-American traveling team came through the area and scheduled a game with the Miners. Their star was Satchell Paige, who was between things and doing a short traveling stint.

Eddie’s family, like their neighbors, did not follow sports on the radio, so he knew nothing of Paige’s exploits or fame. But one of his Miner teammates had pitched in the minor leagues for a time, and knew all about him. Even though Paige was old by this time and well past his prime, the teammate told the Miners, He was really, really good. Black or white, he was one of the best.

Eddie was batting lead-off, and was sure Paige would throw a fastball down the middle to this young white pup, to start out ahead. He guessed right, and nailed a ground ball past the shortstop for a hit. Unfortunately, Paige got serious after that, and the Miners were only able to get one more hit the entire game, losing to the Black House of David 12-0.

Wedding Bells

But by far the most exciting part of summer for Eddie and Denise was their wedding, and a honeymoon in the Black Hills. Those days were times of sacred wonder for the new couple.

Their souls reaching down to the deep and being blended into one brought them to the edge of mystery they found astounding.

Sweetheart, this is the happiest time of my whole life, Eddie said softly to Denise as they were enjoying the majestic scenery of the Hills.

Her beautiful smile and cuddly nestling against him affirmed her reply, And you’ve made me the happiest girl in the whole world.

Their joy in those precious days was deeper than anything they could have imagined. Getting to know each other in a whole new way, sharing their hearts in total commitment, focusing totally on each other without any outside responsibilities led them to a soul-deepening exhilaration they could never have dreamed of. Never had their hearts felt more safe, nor ever more blessed.

That is, except for one little glitch: they signed up for a Jeep tour into the rough Black Hills high country. It turned out to be four-wheel-steep and rough enough to bounce them off their seats. When they returned to their car, Eddie reached for his billfold and it was gone. That little piece of folded leather contained every bit of money they had. When he rushed back to the tour shack, the driver said, I’ll take you back up and we’ll drive slow, but I doubt we’ll find it.

Before they got on the Jeep, the driver took a good look under the seats and suddenly shouted, Hey, just found somebody’s billfold here.

Boy, Eddie told Denise when they got back to the car, that would have left us high and dry, and changed everything.

Somebody was sure looking out for us on that one, she replied.

Eddie’s mother had given them a hundred-dollar bill for a wedding present, and that gift paid every bit of their expenses for the week in the Black Hills and returned them home with twenty-seven cents in Eddie’s pocket. When they got home, Eddie emptied his pockets. Hey, that was kinda close, he sighed with a grin.

Degree Done

Summer flew by and it was time to load the Hudson with all their earthly belongings for the trek to Iowa, he to return for his final year of college, she to her new job teaching fourth grade in nearby Clarksville, Iowa.

In the spring, Eddie had purchased a used trailer house in Waterloo, and now it was waiting for them at the Wartburg College trailer court. Several other newly wedded neighbor couples met them and moving in was quickly finished.

One of their early visitors was Ola Abadu, a previous floor mate of Eddie’s in the dorm. Ola came from Nigeria, where his chieftain father had three wives. Ola was the nineteenth of twenty-three children, and told many a hair-raising story about that unique family life.

Ola’s skin was pure jet black, and he used that color to develop a special little stunt. At night he’d wear dark clothes and stand invisible at the side of the dorm. When students came casually walking by, he’d suddenly step out and give a little grunt, scaring the living daylights out of many an unsuspecting collegian. After his hearty laugh, they’d do a stuttering laugh with him but quickly walk away shaking. They took to calling him, Spook, and he enjoyed it.

Ola also had an interesting Nigerian friend, Joe, who was a track mate of Eddie’s.

I always have to laugh, Eddie told Ola, when I think of Joe. At our track meets he would totally bamboozle the other team by doing his warm-ups walking on his hands down the whole length of the football field inside the track.

I remember that. Ola laughed as well, showing pearly whites.

"They’d stop everything and stand there with their mouths hanging open, and he’d come walking back shrugging his shoulders, like Doesn’t everyone do that?"

Eddie’s solid job over the summer together with Denise’s teaching contract of $2,400 for the year provided the money for his school and their living expenses, so they looked forward to a wonderful year. It also allowed Eddie to participate in track again and to take twenty-one credit-hours of classes. It was an overload, but he audited several classes and enjoyed them without tests and papers.

There were no phones in the trailer court, except one in the central laundry shack. Then early one morning, after Denise had left for school, someone came running to their trailer, Eddie, call for you from the sheriff.

Eddie’s heart sank as he raced to the phone. There’s been an accident. It looks like your wife is all right, but she asked you to come. After getting directions, Eddie borrowed a car from a neighbor and sped to the scene.

Earlier, there had been heavy fog and a semi-truck tangled with Denise, throwing her car into the ditch and wrecking it. Eddie’s heart sank. Oh, dear God, don’t let it be.

In a moment, the sheriff stepped out of his car and Eddie saw Denise crying in his squad car. She seems to be all right, the sheriff told him and motioned him to the car.

He ran over and held her tight: Are you hurt?

I don’t think so, she sobbed, but I don’t know. It all happened so fast.

Come on. Let’s run to the hospital and have them check you out.

"No, I’m all