Catch up Series Image Albums 2020 #2

This album is called 

Scanned Postcards: The Johnson Boys

   Curtis Johnson (1927-1999) was my neighbor. He committed suicide. He was a bachelor farmer who, with his three bachelor brothers, farmed a few hundred acres off and on as sobriety allowed. They were known for their playful antics, and for the fact they were good people, although alcoholics by and large. They weren't mean-spirited individuals nor stupid, but were considered unfortunate because they could've done better for themselves if they could've only limited their intake of beer.

   
Curtis and his older brother Elmer were World War II veterans. Elmer received a Purple Heart when he froze his feet in the Ardennes Offensive, otherwise known as The Battle of The Bulge in January of 1945. He talked to me about it sometimes when he was in his dregs. He said he prayed that if he'd get home alive, he'd never leave it again -- and he never did. By the time he was in his 70s, he couldn't walk very well. He didn't trust his feet or legs to get him where he wanted to go anymore. 

   
Elmer would just hole up in his little four room house a mile or so south of my mailbox all winter, relying on his nephew Ed and his family to take him places or deliver groceries to him. He wasn't poor; he could afford the basics and his own few expenses. He was happy enough just staying home; talking on the telephone, reading or watching TV. Sometimes I'd visit when he was feeling up to it; he was always courteous. He and Curtis were the first neighbors to visit me when I moved to the farm. They knew all my relatives, many of them all their lives, so I had an 'in' right off the bat. We had some fun.

   
Curtis reminded me of Colonel Sanders, the Kentucky Fried Chicken guy, with his head of white curly hair, mustache and goatee. He usually had a smile on his face and some joke to tell. He enlisted in the Navy just after the war and spent time in Occupied Japan. So it was that at least some of  'The Johnson Boys' had gotten out to see the world. 

  
Curtis liked to cook and had a big garden. He smoked meats and fish in one or two homemade smokehouses; one he made from an old refrigerator. It was black inside from all his projects and had a deep rich smoke smell to it. I remember a little smoke-dried Northern pike he had above the frame of his well-pump / smokehouse door that had been there for years, stiff as a hammer handle -- which, by the way, is a nickname for little 'jacks' or small Northern pike.

   
Curtis had a friend named Delmer Roseen (1924-1992) whom he had known since they were boyhood friends. I don't think Delmer served in WWII, because he was exempt as a farmer. Why Elmer had to go, I don't know, except he was the oldest of the family and there were other brothers left to farm; Delmer was an only child.
   
Delmer drowned in a tragic accident while in Curtis's company one evening in 1992. Curtis had just taken a photo of Delmore standing near a gigantic whirlpool, below a field-crossing culvert, when Curtis turned away to put his camera back in his truck, and then when he turned back, he discovered Delmer was gone. 
    
It was said Delmore may have suffered a seizure, as he had been experiencing them periodically for a month previously, and had fallen into the whirlpool and drowned. 
   
Curtis was devastated and it is thought he took his own life seven years later almost to the day of Delmore's death because of the loss of his great friend. Curtis shot himself --twice-- once in his heart, and once in his head, outside his little mobile home while sitting on the porch, knowing someone would readily find him there. There was no note. His nephew Ed came and told me of the news before I heard it from someone else.
   
Where Curtis lived was an early homestead farm just across the road from me, that his dad had begun in 1898. The family had lived there since then, and judging by the old vehicles and agricultural equipment laying about the place, in the woods and cow pastures, they hadn't thrown anything away since -- or if they had, it wasn't thrown far. 
   
I had written a memorial about Delmore after his death that was well-received and had enabled me to become a closer friend to his family and friends. I was gifted, among other things, privy to a day-long walk-through of the estate, such as it was, before the farmland, buildings, and their contents were literally plowed under never to be seen nor recognized as such again.
   
Years afterward, I wrote the story, "Homestead Walk Through Time," in Volume 9 Issue 1, of  THE RAVEN: Northwest Minnesota's Original Art, History & Humor Journal, in 2006. Here is an excerpt:
   
"I found a small black cloth purse, stuffed with postcards all tied tightly together with string, in the bottom box its compressed condition hopefully preserving its contents. I had laid it aside to take home with me as Ed had said I could take anything I wanted. 
   
I wondered what the postcards looked like and if I could get the damp cards separated without tearing them apart. What long-lost memories may they provoke one day? What did they say? What was I doing rummaging about in this old tumble-down shack? Maybe all the mold spores had gone to my head . . ."
   
Following, are scans of some of those postcards: 

 

Keep Your Fortune in Hand