The “Old Stone Church,” Kenyon, Minnesota. Photo: Lars Walker.



[The book is coming out soon. I promise. We’re that close. ljw]

THE PRESENT

CHAPTER II THE HAUGEANS



They established Anderson & Co., Inc. of Epsom, Minnesota that summer, manufacturers (then) of the Anderson Viking Separator and (eventually) of the Anderson Reaper and the Anderson Traction Engine, first steam then gasoline. The year was 1900, a good round number for our lives to pivot on. I celebrated my eighth birthday on Sunday, September 30.

It was a cool, fine morning. I remember the pinch of my knickerbockers below the knees, and the scraping of the hard brush Mother used on my hair. One of my most enduring impressions of childhood is how much everything hurt. Being young was like being an unhealed wound.

I’m going to take you to church with us now. I know that’s bad manners. But if you’ve come this far and want to know what our lives were like, you need to understand about our church.

There’s a fine book called Mama’s Bank Account, later made into a play called “I Remember Mama,” about a Norwegian immigrant family in San Francisco. I enjoyed that book, but one thing that rang false for me was that it almost never mentioned church. Now that family may not have been Haugeans like us, but you can’t tell me that the church wasn’t the heart of their community. There were a few Norwegians who came to this country to get away from the church, and never crossed a sanctuary threshold. But even for them, I think, the church was a presence of substance, like the kitchen stove.

Papa and Fred harnessed Flossie and Daisy, our matched Morgans, to the wagon, and Mother shooed Sophie and me out. Bestefar and Sophie and Fred and I sat on boards placed athwart the wagon box while Papa drove, Mother sitting beside him. We rolled about two miles down the dirt road to a T intersection with the road that ran above Troll Valley, the wooded shallow valley of the Zumbro River. Nidaros Church was at the top of the T, with the falling ground and woods behind it.

This wasn’t the new Nidaros Church in town, of course (nor yet the third structure we put up on the town lot in 1926). This was the old stone church, hand-built by my grandfather and other local farmers back in 1868 out of native limestone. You can visit it today—it’s still there—a simple, rectangular yellow stone building with a tiny narthex and no steeple. Inside, darkness and cool (nobody cared to fire up the barrel stove just off the center aisle on such a fine morning) and light from six tall windows. All the men sat on the left side of the aisle and all the women, girls, and unconfirmed boys on the right (a primitive custom, I won’t deny it. But the men take a lot less interest in church since we got rid of it). There was a dark, painted altar and rail in front, a wooden baptismal font that matched them, and forward and to the right the tall pulpit occupied by Pastor Aase (pronounced “OH-seh”) one Sunday in three. Ours was a three-point parish, so we had to share him.

People think of Lutherans as the next thing to Roman Catholics, which always puzzled me until I found out how most Lutherans worship. I never heard of such a thing as a liturgy until I went to college, and the chanting and responses made me feel as if I’d been rudely deposited in the Middle Ages. It took me time to develop a tolerance for them, and frankly I still prefer a simple service with hymns and Bible reading and preaching and an offering, and maybe a vocal solo by a nervous lady who’s been told she’s obliged to use the talent God gave her, but doesn’t know how to handle the embarrassing compliments afterwards. It’s a matter of taste, though (as today’s church leaders keep telling us while they labor to abolish all tastes but one).

It was a layman’s Sunday that day, and my grandfather’s turn to lead. We sang hymn number 559 from Landstad’s Hymnal, “Den Store Hvide Flok”:

Den store hvide Flok vi se,

Som tusind Berge fuld af Sne,

Med Skov omkring av Palmesving,

For Thronen, hvo er de?

Det er den Helteskare, som

Af hin den Store Trængsel kom,

Og har sig toed I Lammets Blod,

Til Himlens Helligdom…

(That great, white host we see,

Like a thousand mountains full of snow,

With forests of swinging palm-branches around,

Before the throne, who are they?

They are the band of heroes, who

Through the Great Tribulation came,

And have washed themselves in the Blood of the Lamb

Unto the sanctuary of Heaven…)

After the sermon hymn Bestefar rose from the chair behind the font and stepped to the lectern, as was appropriate for a layman. He had his big Bible in his hands, shaking slightly (from his palsy, not from fear. I never knew a man less nervous in front of a crowd). He read:

“And if thy hand offend thee, cut if off; it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched; where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thy foot offend thee, cut if off; it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched; where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out; it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire; where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”

That’s Mark 9:43-48. He read it in Norwegian, but I put it in the King James to give you the feel of it. Our Norwegian Bible was similarly antique.

Bestefar led us in prayer and began his talk. He had a voice in the middle range, melodious but loud enough when he got going. He was of middle height and thick-set, with thinning white hair combed sideways, a soup-strainer mustache, and deceptively mild blue eyes. He had a roundish face. He wore a plain black suit with a wing collar. The pastor would have worn much the same thing—we Haugeans respect our clergy, but we see no reason why they should parade their status. “I’m a preacher. That’s my calling,” Pastor Aase would say, “just the same as if I were a farmer or a shoemaker. Don’t anybody get the idea that I can pray better than you, or love my neighbor better than you. If you’re looking for somebody to shift those duties off onto, don’t come to me.”

Bestefar told the story (for the hundredth time) of Hans Nielsen Hauge, the founder of what you’d probably call our sect. Hauge (properly pronounced “HOW-gheh,” though most people say “HOW-ghee” nowadays) was a self-educated layman of the farmer class who began preaching in Norway around the turn of the 19th Century. He was arrested for leading religious meetings without being ordained (a crime at the time) and spent ten years in a jail cell, ruining his health and ending his public activity. But he was far from a failure. Not only did his preaching spark a long-lasting religious revival, it led to social revolution.

The Haugeans in Norway never abandoned the state church. Once in this country, though, we established our own denominations, to be rid forever (we thought) of the tyranny of bishops.

During the course of the sermon Fred reached sideways into the small of my back and delivered a sharp poke with his thumb. I jerked and flailed at him. Mother reached over (as unconfirmed boys we sat on the women’s side) and took hold of my ear. “Sit still!”

But when Fred grew tired of tormenting me I almost missed the diversion it offered. I sat fidgeting, studying the wood grain in the pew in front of us, imagining I saw elongated faces in it, wondering how anyone could endure to sit in church like this forever and ever, which was what I supposed Heaven must be like. But the grownups didn’t seem to mind, so it must have been one of those tastes they acquired, like coffee and matrimony. Once the laymen got going, their services always lasted at least two hours.