My Norsk Roots

That would be my Dad.  His full name was Elmer Eugene Kalvig and was often labeled as Jr., although he didn’t share the same middle name as his father.  Norwegians have strong naming conventions that gave way to free choice after settling in America.  There is a slight trend in our family between Dad, his father, and me.  Dad got his first name from his father, but with a different middle name.  I got my father’s middle name, but with a different first name.  I don’t know if his given name or the label Jr. had anything to do with it, but apparently as a young boy he had such blond hair that everyone started calling him “Swede” and the nickname stuck for the rest of his life.

Dad was a construction guy, following the family business, which included different aspects of building things.  Not just homes, but also roads and sidewalks.  He grew up in the very small town of Kanawha, Iowa.  As usually happens in small towns, there are lots of jobs to be done and only so many people to do it.  While living there, in addition to construction he was also part of law enforcement and co-owner with his parents and some siblings of a restaurant and a dry goods store.  After marrying, he soon moved to Des Moines for a better chance to earn more money to support a growing family.  He followed his younger brother Al to focus on hanging drywall.  That is tough work and many move on to something else after a decade or so, but he was still ‘rocking’ well into his 40s.

He was born in 1926, so lived through the effects of the Depression through most of his childhood.  Pearl Harbor happened when he was 15, so when he was old enough he joined the Navy, following his father’s service in WWI as well as other family members who were not career military, but did their duty during times of war.  He was stationed in Long Beach, California as part of the Seabees, the Navy’s ‘construction firm’, so it was a good fit.  Because of his age, he ended his service still in Long Beach because the war ended before he could be deployed overseas.  So back to the small town life.

By 30 he was still single and I wonder if his parents were concerned if he would ever settle down to family life.  His baby sister Elaine was an elementary school teacher in town and became friends with another teacher new to town.  This led to Dad meeting and falling in love with Mom.  As we were going through some of her mementos after her death, we found a cute letter from him to his Mom saying  he was hoping she wouldn’t be too mad, but he had become engaged.  It is one of those little gems that gives insight to people that often don’t speak much of their emotions.

Enough of his life story.  There are two things about Dad that stand out to me as defining who he was.  The first is his hobby.  All my growing years my impression of Dad was he was always working hard and exhausted when he got home.  Even our tradition of going for a ride in the car was usually for him to check out where his next job would be.  When his body started giving out from work rigors he took up woodcarving.  After a life of working with his hands, I guess being a guard left a need to get his hands on something.  Until this, I never remembered him having any kind of hobby.  He went through the usual ‘apprenticeship’ steps of making a chain of links carved from a single block of wood, followed by a cage trapping a free floating ball inside.  Then he moved on to animal figures.  Here is my favorite that he carved and gifted to me.

The thing that to me most defines Dad is that he always had a twinkle in his eye.  It was hard to tell if he was holding in a secret or had some thoughts of boyhood mischief, but that twinkle was always there.  He had his times of frustration and other darker feelings, but that twinkle always came back.  When it was most apparent was when he was holding an infant, his favorite thing to do.  Anytime there was a baby around, it wasn’t long before Dad had the baby in his arms.   He was a baby whisperer when it came to dealing with them being fussy; he had the magic touch to calm them and get them to sleep.  This did come with limits, however.  When they got to the point where they could walk and especially talk (back), he was pretty much done.  It was on to the next baby.  Forever my image of him will be with a baby in his arms.  That was just who he was.