Karl and Ida: The Fire

In May of 1928, tragedy struck the home of Karl and Ida.

St. Hilaire Spectator

 

Mar 15, 1928 K.T. Dalager & family were visitors Sunday at the E.H. Stephen’s home.

 

CHILDREN MEET DEATH WHEN FARM HOME BURNS

 

May 17, 1928 Trapped in their bedroom on second floor of the home, the two small daughters of Mr. and Mrs. K.T. Dalager, Katherine, age 5 and Adelaide, age 9, perished in a fire which completely destroyed the Dalager farm home five miles southeast of here shortly after midnight last Thursday, May 12th.

 

The parents were aroused about midnight by noise from downstairs and upon investigation found the incubator and wall behind it ablaze. After calling the children, the parents made an attempt to extinguish the blaze that seemingly had not gained much headway by that time. It is believed gas must have generated from the heated incubator lamp as the whole room suddenly burst into flame, driving the parents out and cutting off escape by the stairway for the children. The two boys, Horace and Vincent, managed to break a window and jumped to the ground clad only in their night clothing. Mr. Dalager made a heroic attempt to reach his daughters but was driven back by the flames that completely enveloped the interior of the house by that time.

 

Help was summoned from the Walseth house nearby and a general alarm was sounded on the farm telephone line. Help was soon at hand but too late to be of any assistance in rescuing the children or saving any of the contents of the house that burned to the ground. Position of the remains of the children found after the fire would indicate that neither had awakened and it is likely they smothered before the fire reached them.

 

Rev. M.L. Dahle assisted by Rev. Lerohl of Oklee at the Norwegian Lutheran Church here Saturday afternoon conducted funeral services for the little girls. Internment was made in the cemetery east of the village.

 

The heartfelt sympathy of the community is extended to Mr. and Mrs. Dalager in the sad loss of their little ones and their home under such heartrending circumstances.

 

Pastor Lerohl was from the Glenwood, Minn area and had officiated at Karl and Ida’s wedding. Because Oklee and St. Hilaire are not to far apart, the Lerohls visited with each other quite often.

May 17, 1928 Mr. & Mrs. J.O. Grove of Glenwood, Mrs. K. Knutson of Willmar, relatives of K.T. Dalager, arrived here Friday being called by the holocaust that occurred at the Dalager home Thursday morning. They all returned home Sunday, Mr. Dalager accompanying them to spend a short time with his relatives.

The Glenwood Herald

May 17, 1928

 

Mr. & Mrs. J.O. Grove of Glenwood and Mrs. Knute Knutson of Willmar left here last Thursday evening for Hazel, Minn., called there by Mr. Karl T. Dalager, brother of Mrs. Grove and Mrs. Knutson, on account of the burning the night before of Mr. Dalager’s farm residence where two of his children lost their lives.

 

The fire was noticed in the middle of the night and at that time it had reached such headway that Mr. and Mrs. Dalager and the two elder boys barely exited in their nightclothes. Some of them had to jump out through the windows. It is not known how the fire started except that it is thought that it may have come from an incubator that was running in the house at the time. The two children that lost their lives were: Adelaide nine years old and Kathryn four years old.

 

Funeral services were conducted on Saturday afternoon at St. Hilaire. Relatives from Hallock, Minnesota also attending were Mrs. John Brendal and Hazel Grove.

 

Karl and Ida took this especially hard for if they had cleared the house of people before trying to put out the fire, no one would have lost their lives.

 

At the time of the fire, Gladys Peterson remembered waiting along with her mother for her dad, Gabe, to return. He had gone over to the Dalager place when central had sent out the general call. Horace went to stay with the Gabe Petersons and Karl, Ida & Vincent went to Walseths. As a result of the fire my parents lost all their pictures. They had lost the house and Katherine and Adelaide but also their memories.

Hazel Dann was the teacher at the East-Side school during the 1927-28 school year, the year of that fire. Hazel remembered that Katherine was visiting school the day before the fire. Katherine and Adelaide were having so much fun and they did not want to go home. Hazel described the girls as being “sweet.” When school met again Hazel said she had a “sad group of children.” One of the hardest jobs she had was to clean out Adelaide’s desk.

My parents never talked about the fire, however, the cellar and foundation of the house was always there as I grew up. The pain of the event is evident, also, in the fact that Dad left the farm for a time to live with his sister in Battle Lake, and Mom’s hair turned from black to white in a year’s time.

One of the sweet memories that mother told Shirley in later years was that Katherine and Adelaide had run down to the barn to say “good night” to their dad before they went to bed on the night of the fire.

Karl and Ida: Vincent’s school pranks and watermelon defense

When school started the fall of 1932, the St. Hilaire school sent out a bus which consisted of a box on the back of a truck which Ed Enge drove. When Ed had let off the last kid, he would drop the box off in the ditch and pick it up the next morning. Ed was a trucker and needed his truck to earn a living. There was no heat in the box but it offered protection from the weather and the ride was not too long.

Vincent’s classmates in St. Hilaire were Merle Rolland, Vivian Lindquist, Donna Brink, Rufus Olson, Isabel Rosendahl, Aradell Olson, & Jim Bainbridge. Jim was really Vincent’s best friend but after high school the Bainbridges moved to Iowa and Vincent hasn’t heard from him since. Jim had some kind of paralysis that caused him to limp.

Vivian Lindquist was always interested in Vincent but the interest was not mutual. One day Vincent put a mouse in Vivian’s lunch box. This did not go over very well and Vivian’s brother Vernon settled the score when he beat Vincent up. Vince was not hurt and Vivian still liked him.

The superintendent when Vincent was in high school was Mr. Reiersgord. The principal was Miss Bernice Anderson. Marguerite Dahle, Pastor M. L. Dalhe’s daughter was a high school teacher. Vince said he would be sent to the superintendent’s office for shooting spitballs. Mr. Reiersgord was Vince’s friend and he wasn’t too hard on him. They would talk for a while after which Vince was told to go back to his seat and get to work. Mr. Reiersgord also directed the band that went to the state fair the fall of 1935. Vincent played the trombone in the band. Vince’s good friend Jim Bainbridge was also in the band. Vince remembered walking around the state fair grounds with dark glasses on. They heard some old ladies comment that it was too bad that those nice fellows were blind. The boys had the word ‘band’ on their shirt some place and the ladies had read it as ‘blind’. Vince was also in the senior class play and he said he played the part of the town ‘bum.’ He said he was very good at it because of all his experience! Vince also remembered his French class. The teacher always had them exchange paper and correct them after a test. As a result, they would leave their papers blank and when they corrected them, they would fill in the correct answers. They all got through the class but none of them learned a word of French. One of the teachers would always give tests on Monday morning because he lived it up on the weekend and wasn’t able to do much Monday mornings. This was Mr. Al Figenskau. Other teachers Vincent remembered were Bertha Hasted (English), Ruth Lee (Math) and Betty McCracker (junior and senior English).

In high school Vincent did not play football or basketball because he always had to get home for chores. However, he was able to play in the band. One time Vince got a bee sting on his upper lip. It really swelled up. This was especially bad at this time because the band was supposed to play some kind of concert. He said he was able to play anyway.

Vincent didn’t like to milk cows so he carried feed and water to the cows and calves. He claimed that this is the reason he has big hands.

There was a fellow near Plummer who raised ponies. Every year Dad would keep a stud pony during the winter. It didn’t cost anything except the feed. In this way there were always ponies around and some of the mares would be with foal by spring. Vince loved to ride so there were always ponies to ride. Jerry, the pony I rode a lot, must have been one of the last of these ponies. Vincent’s main recreation during the summers was to ride around on a pony, carrying a rifle shooting rabbits. etc. Vincent earned money to buy his first 22 rifle by selling salve and other stuff like that to the neighbors.

Every winter, dad would haul cream to the creamery in St. Hilaire once a week. Some times Vince would ride with and go walking around the creamery seeing all the big machinery with the electrical panels on the wall and this always fascinated him. He was pretty small at this time but this interest was surely one of the reasons he went into the electrical business.

One of the garden products that were always a favorite with the family was watermelon. These watermelons were also a favorite of a lot of the young boys in the neighborhood. Many mornings the family would find the remains of what had happened the night before. One time Vincent figured how to solve this problem. He slept upstairs in the room that faced west toward the garden. He got a battery, a light, a switch and some other materials. He strung a string on pulleys around the water melon patch and up to his room. When the string was tripped it turned a switch on which turned on the light and activated a motor that pulled a string to fire his shotgun. To his surprise, it worked. In the middle of the night, a few days later, the shotgun fired. Vince got up and looked out the window and saw a guy heading for the fence. He rolled over the fence and was gone. Vince thought it was Delford Stephens. I remember dad trying something like this. He put twine around the patch and attached this to some tin cans in his bedroom. I am not sure how successful this method was. Another time Vince had gathered the melons in and put them in the basement on a shelf. However, the shelf was not strong enough and it broke down and so did the melons. They were having some group there, perhaps Luther League, so they served watermelons to all.

When Vince was young, the land ‘up north’ was loaded with prairie chickens. Dad hayed that land. In the winter when they went to get a load of hay up north they would also take the shot gun along and get a couple of prairie chickens. This was before the fire. Mother would bake the prairie chickens and the family would really enjoy them. There were also partridge in the woods. Vince would take a salt shaker and a potato and go out and shoot a partridge, cook it along with a potato and have a good meal in the woods. At that time most of the land west and north of the buildings was wooded. This was where the family got their stove wood for the year. I remember every year Dave Johnson would come over with a saw rig, powered by a model T or model Ford engine, and saw wood for us.

Vincent remembered an interesting incident with the double barreled shotgun when he was quite young. One Sunday morning there was a crow making a lot of noise. It was sitting in the willows by the slough that was near the house. He got up, put two shells in the double barreled shotgun and went to the slough to shoot this crow. He aimed the gun and pulled both triggers. This knocked him on his butt and the crow flew away unharmed.

Speaking about shotguns and their use, the kitchen door of the farmhouse had a small hole in it that had been patched by stuffing a small cork into it. This hole was made when a shotgun was accidentally discharged through the door. I do not know if it was Horace or Vincent who was holding the gun.

St. Hilaire Spectator

Dec. 23, 1937 Mr. & Mrs. Karl Dalager & family, Mr. & Mrs. Herman Sandberg and children, Mr. & Mrs. Adrian Anderson, Erling, Phoebe & Mayme Anderson were Sunday dinner guests at the Harry Winter home in St. Hilaire.

Karl and Ida: The Depression and other hard times

The depression was difficult on the farm but by working hard they always had enough to eat and to feed their cattle.  Mother always said that they did not have a lot of food or a great variety but they never were hungry.  To get enough hay, KT and the two older boys cut hay on a quarter of land two miles north and hauled it home during the winter.  He also cut cordwood and sold it to the St. Hilaire Creamery and school.  Grasshoppers were bad during the 30’s.  Neighbors would get together; mix a grasshopper poison made of sawdust, wheat brand, and arsenic and spread it on the fields by hand.    

Gladys Peterson remembered an incident that occurred during the drought and depression years of the thirties.  A man came to the door of the Peterson house asking for food.  None of the Peterson men were home so Josie said she would bring some food out.  About this time my dad, Karl Dalager, came to pick up the mail.  Josie asked him to come in so she could ask the stranger into the kitchen to eat.  This man was carrying a big suitcase so that made it a little scary.  When he came in to eat he set the suitcase by the door so he could keep an eye on it.  He probably had all his worldly possessions in that suitcase.  More of these men on the move stopped at the Miller Petersons rather than our place because their place was closer to the road.  Gladys remembered one sleeping on the edge of the road when they came home from school.  They were very quiet when they walked by him.  Gladys was in grade school at the time so it was in the mid 1920’s.  I remember these homeless men coming by our place.  They would ask for food and mother would give them something to eat.  Many times she asked them to split wood or carry water.  This would be about 1933 as I can remember it.  When asked about the depression, mother would say it wasn’t too bad.  They were always warm and had plenty of milk, meat, eggs and garden vegetables.

The following story was told by John (Jack) Winter, the son of Harry and Salma Winter when Jack and Jim Dalager were having lunch after Jack’s mother’s funeral at Calvary Lutheran Church, St. Hilaire, Minn. on Sept. 23, 1983.

During the hard times of the depression years, people often came to homes in town or country asking for food.  Once when someone came to Pastor Dahle’s home and asked for food Mrs. Dahle said she didn’t have any food but she had a quarter that she gave to the man.  She did this and then prayed that the Lord would provide. 

Later in the day there was a knock on the door and there was K.T. Dalager.  He had brought a bag of potatoes and a side of beef.  The Lord does lead and provide.