November 22: A Very Special Day

Across the Fence #315

It’s November 22, 2010 as I write this. Today would have been my mother’s birthday. She died 18 years ago in 1992 at the age of 73. It’s hard to believe she’s been gone that long.

I never thought about it at the time, but it must have been hard having a birthday so close to Thanksgiving and falling during the Wisconsin deer-hunting season each year. I imagine her birthday was often neglected because large, family gatherings for Thanksgiving were the norm in my younger days. Aunts, uncles, cousins, and our Hanson grandparents always gathered together for a big feast at one of our places. Thanksgiving was always a big deal.

Many years we also had wet, foggy weather like we’ve had the past couple days, called case weather for all the non-tobacco raising people. If case weather arrived on her birthday, taking down the tobacco that had been hanging and curing in the sheds, took precedence over everything except the opening morning of deer hunting. Then even the tobacco had to wait until at least the afternoon.

When I was younger and taking part in all those activities, it never occurred to me that Ma’s birthday often took second place to other events. I think Dad usually bought her a card, but that was about the extent of acknowledging her birthday. We never went out to eat, like people do now. An occasional trip to the root beer stand in the summer for a hot dog and root beer was dining out for us. Boy, how things have changed! Other than that, Ma prepared all the meals, including those on November 22nd, her birthday. It must have been depressing to have your birthday pretty much neglected, but I never heard her complain. Deer hunting and tobacco always trumped any birthday celebration.

Her birthday in 1963 was no different. Deer hunting opened the next day and Dad had left for the Hayward area with a group of friends who always hunted together. I was living at home and hauling milk at the time. I hauled two loads of milk each morning to the Westby Cooperative Creamery. That was back when farmers put the milk in cans that weighed around 80 pounds when full. I hauled about 250 cans a day during the peak milk production periods. It took seven hours a day to complete my routes and I was usually done around noon. That was hard work and I have a lot of respect for the old milk haulers.

That Friday morning, November 22, 1963, Dad had milked the cows before they left for Hayward, but I would have to clean the barn when I completed my milk route. Shortly after 12-noon I was in the barn and started hauling the manure out, while listening to WISV, the Viroqua station on the barn radio. It’s now WVRQ. Sometime between 12:30 p.m. and 1:00 p.m., programming was interrupted for a special announcement – President John F. Kennedy had been shot during a motorcade in Dallas, Texas. No other details were available at the time. I quickly finished the chores and headed for the house to see if there was anything on TV about the shootings. We could only get two stations out of La Crosse at that time, and everything was in black and white. Ma, Grandma Inga, and I were watching a CBS special report from Dallas, when Walter Cronkite came on, took off his glasses, looked up at the clock, and reported that President Kennedy had died at 1:33 p.m. (CST).

I think everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing when they first heard that historic news. I had planned to go deer hunting in our woods that afternoon, but instead watched the continuous coverage of the assassination news for the rest of the day until it was time to do chores and milk the cows that evening. After David and I finished milking we were riveted to the news coverage the rest of the evening. Continuous live coverage of the events, including the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald, continued until after Kennedy’s funeral.

It never occurred to me at the time, but Ma’s 45th birthday had been preempted by the president’s assassination. First deer hunting, case weather, tobacco, and Thanksgiving had relegated her birthday to the back seat, and then an assassination. I wonder if she even got a card or birthday cake that year—if we did have a cake she would have baked it herself—or were we all too busy with our lives and what was going on in the world to think of her?

She was always there for us, feeding us, taking care of us, and never complaining. It must have bothered her a little that her birthday often became secondary to all those other events. I thought about that today as I remembered her birthday.

When we lived in Madison, we always tried to get to the farm for her birthday and bring a cake with us. Even a great cook and baker like she was, shouldn’t have to bake her own birthday cake.

A year ago today, Tim proposed to our daughter, Amy. They were married in September. I think Ma would have liked that her granddaughter got engaged on her birthday. It makes November 22 even more special for our family.