No Guts, No Glory: My Life Story

No Guts,

No Glory

my life story

Clete

Ernster

Copyright © 2012 by Clete Ernster.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ISBN: 978-1-4525-5679-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-5680-2 (e)

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Balboa Press rev. date: 09/05/12

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

The Early Years

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my wife, Kathleen, who has been my wife for 68 years and has always been by my side. She is truly the love of my life.

Acknowledgements

In the past years, several of my friends have encouraged me to write a book about my life and I have been putting it off and putting it off, until finally I decided to write it last year. So, I purchased a tape recorder and some tapes and started dictating. I was well into the book with several tapes when I realized I had to find someone that was capable of taking this information from the tapes and putting it on paper. I thought for a long time and decided my secretary of my last 20 years in business was the one. Jo Beth Davis Smith had been my secretary and she knew me as well as anyone, other than my wife. Knowing me as well as she did, she could tell when I walked into the office in the morning what kind of mood I was in and she would handle calls and the day’s business accordingly. Some days I might not want to talk to many people, while other days I was ready to go. She knew me like a book. I called her and told her about my project and she was ready and willing to begin her part. I truly appreciate it. My thanks also to my son, Tim, for editing and coordination with the publisher.

* * * * *

I have enclosed in this book three letters from friends that recommended me for the Minnesota Aviation Hall of Fame; Errol John Dietze, Dr. Harold High and Judge Bennie Prause.

The Early Years

I WAS BORN ON April 11, 1923. My mother and dad owned a small 160 acre farm five miles southeast of Caledonia, Minnesota and about 10 miles west of the Mississippi River. My mother and dad’s names were Matthew P. Ernster and Matilda Ernster, normally called Matt and Tilley. I had one brother that was 2 years older than I and his name was Nick Ernster.

Things were tough and hard but fun back in those early years of the 20’s and 30’s. At that time no one in the country had any money, times were tough, but since we lived on a farm we always had plenty to eat. We were raising our own food. Mother and dad farmed approximately 140 acres of the 160, the rest was in wood lands. Their crops were corn, oats, barley, soy beans and alfalfa hay. Winters were long and very cold and summers were also very long. In the winter time it got dark between 4:30 and 5:00 in the afternoon and in the summer time it stayed daylight until 9:30 or 10 at night. So the summer days were long and the winter days were short. Those years we had terribly hard winters, lots of snow with temperatures in the 40 degrees below 0 range and it seemed like it lasted weeks on end. Snow drifts would sometimes be 10 to 15 feet high. It was almost impossible in those days to get to town when we had those harsh winters.

Sometimes the farmers would be isolated at their farms until the snow plows could get through to open the roads and sometimes that would be a week; but one of the farmers would run out of smoking tobacco or chewing tobacco or maybe coffee so they would find their way to town on horseback or however and get immediate supplies until the roads were open.

My home was a partial two story house and in those days none of the homes were insulated at all and were very cold in the winter. We had no electricity and no running water in our home on the farm. We always had to get the water from outside from the pump at the well. Of course the outdoor toilet was normally always 50 to 100 yards away from the house so you can imagine having to get up in the middle of the night to go outside through the deep snow in the winter to go to the restroom. A lot of times the door to the outdoor toilet would be left open and then there was always the Sears-Roebuck Catalog. We never had any toilet paper in those days and the catalog would always be full of snow from the door being left open. But we all managed. Indoors at night we used a kerosene lamp and for outdoor chores at night we would have a kerosene lantern.

We milked cows, sometimes 16 to 25 head, every morning and every night. In the morning we had to get up at 5am and shovel our way to the barn, where it would be very warm because all the stock stayed indoors all through the winter. The warmest place on the whole farm was in the barn. There was the animals’ heat and the second story was always filled with hay so that insulated the entire barn. One thing that was tough about milking in the winter time was that the cattle stayed in the barn for 2 – 3 months all winter and we would milk at 5:00 in the morning so we would have to get the cows up from laying down all night. When they were laying down of course their tails were in the gutter, full of manure, and when you were sitting on that three legged stool milking those cows by hand they would be slapping you in the face with their dirty nasty wet tail! That was no fun, but that’s the way it was. Before we went to breakfast we had to take the milk in the pails to the milk barn which was another building. There we would put it in the separator where we would hand turn it separating the milk from the cream. After that was done the horses had to be fed before we could go in for breakfast. Breakfast was always a big meal on the farm, one of our main meals. We never had any small meals and always ate very well with home cured bacon, sausage, homegrown potatoes, eggs from the chickens and of course mother and dad always had milk cows, beef cattle, hogs, chickens and sometimes rabbits so we always had plenty to eat.

After breakfast we normally had to go out and finish the rest of our chores one of which was to water the horses. If they were to be used that day they had to be harnessed and ready for a day’s work. Of course in the summer time they would be ready to go right after daylight to do the farm work all the way from the plowing to the cultivating, to the planting and the harvesting. In those days everything was done by work horses. My dad had the finest horses that could be found. They were Belgian, heavy duty, large horses. He was very proud of them and should have been. At the County Fair each year he would enter them in the Horse Pulling Contest to pull against other horses just to see how strong they were and he won many a ribbon doing that.

We had other animals that had to be fed as well, hogs, chickens, then we had to clean the hog pen, and it was usually a twice a day job, early in the morning and after 4 or 5 in the afternoon. And this had to be done every day – there was no such thing as a day off.

My grandparents on my dad’s side were Nick Ernster and his wife and on mother’s side it was Phillip Schwabach and his wife. All four of them migrated to the United States from Luxemburg, Germany. I grew up in a very strong Catholic family. Every Saturday night we would go to confession and on Sunday morning we would always go to mass and communion. In the winter time when the roads were almost impassable, we would go to church with the horses and sleigh. In the Spring when the roads were passable we would go by buggy, but we always went to church.

Harvest time was a real fun time. We had no tractor so everything was done by horses. Fields were plowed and cultivated by horses, and crops were brought in by horses. Four or five farmers would all come and help bring in the shocks of grain to the thrash machine and the same also when it was time to fill the silos with corn. Every farmer had his day. One day at our farm, the next day at another’s farm until everyone’s harvest was in the barn or the grainery. Everyone had a good time and the wives of the thrashing crew would join the home where the thrashing was being done and help do all the cooking for the thrashing crew. Normally by 10 o’clock it would be sandwiches and hot coffee; at noon the big dinner and in the afternoon around 4 we would again have sandwiches and coffee. We would work 12 to 14 hours a day and then at night when we finished right before dark we would have a big supper and then everyone went home to their own respective farm and do their chores, milk their cows, feed their animals and whatever they had to do. Those were really fun times watching everyone helping each other. When things had to be done and done in a hurry mother would work in the field right alongside of my dad. In Minnesota the growing season is very short so when crops had to be put in the ground it had to be done quickly so that the corn would be ripe by the time the first freeze came. That’s why everyone had to pitch in and everyone worked hard and that’s the way it was in the 20’s and 30’s.

Usually during the peak time of the season of harvest dad and mother would hire a hired man. He would be paid a dollar a day, plus room and board. We worked from 5:00 am in the morning until 9:30 or 10 o’clock at night and help was plentiful. There were lots of people looking for jobs and they were always hard working young men; anything for a dollar a day. Today that seems unreal, but that’s the way it was.

People in southeastern Minnesota, whether they were Catholic or whatever denomination, took their religion very seriously. I know that we grew up as a good Catholic family and sometimes when the crops would be running late maybe because of heavy rain or whatever we had to get special dispensation from the priest to be able to work on Sunday. Otherwise, no one worked in the fields on Sunday. Many times when the snow was deep we would have to go to town in a horse drawn sleigh. I remember going to Christmas Midnight Mass and my mother and dad would put Nick and I in the bottom of the sleigh box and cover us up with buffalo robes and we would go to Caledonia to St. Peter’s Catholic Church for midnight mass. Then after mass we would come back home to the cold, cold house on the farm. It was a 5 mile trip each way.

Chapter Two

My Early Days

BACK IN THE days of the depression in the 30’s and 40’s I had several close friends; mainly from the Welscher family which consisted of their five children, Rosemary, Burt, Milton, Maynard and Mary Ann. They lived about ½ mile from us and in the summer time when the days were long after the chores we would get together and play softball, cricket or kick the can until dark. In the winter