Recollections: Nancy

A classmate of mine from LaMoure has been writing short stories and sending them for me to read, and I didn’t know about them until today.  I will have lots of reading and deleting to do.   I am beginning those things today at the library where help is still within reach.

Yesterday was June 2, which was my grandfather’s 145th birthday.  He was born in Iowa in 1881.   His name was Charles Carl Paulson.   He was from a family of 12.   He worked on the railroad there and got married.   In about 1904 his brother Herman moved to Adrian, ND to farm.   He invited Charles to take the farm across the road from him, so Charles and his wife Marie packed their belongings and mules into a train and rode it to Adrian in LaMoure County.  Their third child, my mother Vivian was just a few months old when they arrived in Adrian in 1907.   Charles eventually quit farming and started selling cars and building roads.

In 1928 when my dad Albert Hurley entered the family by marrying Vivian, Charles taught him the ropes of road building.   Charles moved to LaMoure and got elected sheriff.   He and another man traded off as sheriff and treasurer for many years.   Yesterday our son Luke and his wife Johanna had a son they named Hunter Lucas Erickson.   I was glad the baby arrived on my grandpa’s birthday.

Dick, another few details of Grandpa Paulson.  As sheriff of LaMoure County, he would deputize his kids at times.  His sons Lester and Cleo were athletes whose football training served them well when chasing and tackling an offender running through the corn rows or whatever.  He’d deputize my mother or one of her sisters when he needed to drive a woman to the mental hospital in Jamestown.  He deputized my dad when he needed him to scare a man who claimed to be paralyzed into admitting he’d killed his sister at the farm where they lived.