The Letter Edged in Black

Last night on Dr. Isern’s Facetime show - The Willow Creek Folk School, Plainsfolk - he sang and discussed a few of the old-time songs, heritage songs. First off came “The Letter Edged in Black.” It’s a generation or two older than I am, but my mother told me one time that receiving one meant bad news, usually the death of a person close to the sender. The memory of how I came to be in possession of the sheet music for it has started to blur, but it was given to me by Freda Hoy who cooked at the Sheldon school. She and I must have talked about it. There have been different versions of the song and the lyrics below state Wilf Carter wrote them. But they must go back further than that. I have a couple Wilf Carter albums; I don’t think his version is as old as the one by Hattie Nevada.

I was standing by the window yesterday morning,

Without a thought of worry or of care,

When I saw the postman coming up the pathway,

With such a happy look and jolly air.

[Chorus]

As I heard the postman whistling yester morning,

Coming down the pathway with his pack,

Oh he little knew the sorrow that he brought me

When he handed me that letter edged in black.

Oh, he rang the bell and whistled while he waited,

And then he said "Good morning to you, Jack."

But he little knew the sorrow that he brought me

When he handed me that letter edged in black.

With trembling hand I took the letter from him,

I broke the seal and this is what it said:

"Come home, my boy, your dear old father wants you!

Come home, my boy, your dear old mother's dead!"

"The last words that your mother ever uttered 

'Tell my boy I want him to come back,'

My eyes are blurred, my poor old heart is breaking,

For I'm writing you this letter edged in black."

I bow my head in sorrow and in silence,

The sunshine of my life it all has fled,

Since the postman brought that letter yester morning

Saying,"Come home, my boy, your dear old mother's dead!:"

"Those angry words, I wish I'd never spoken,

You know I never meant them, don't you, Jack?

May the angels bear me witness, I am asking

Your forgiveness in this letter edged in black."

Snorri

Some of us who are of a certain age remember a man in Ransom County named Snorri Thorfinnson. It so happened he was featured for a ten-minute segment on Dr. Tom Isern’s weekly facebook streaming program: facebook.com/plainsfolk. In retirement Snorri kept active in the county; I remember him speaking to my 4-H club one time. I think he may have been one of those responsible for constructing the large Viking statue that stands on a hill overlooking Fort Ransom. Isern read that portion of his book Pacing Dakota where he talks about Snorri. Interesting. For those who missed the show, it and previous shows can still be found on the Plains Folk site.

Sod House Near Strasburg, ND

When I saw these pictures posted by Michael Miller, NDSU libraries, the wheels started turning. One of my brothers-in-law, Duane Schwab, was raised in this house near Strasburg, ND, and by looking at it you’d never guess that it is a sodhouse. My wife has visited the place with her sisters and Duane’s mother and remarked upon coming home how nice it is. It’s been sided on the exterior with finished walls inside, all of which made for a cozy home.
This is a good example of how old-timers found the wherewithal to wrest a living and proper shelter from the prairie with their bare hands and sweating brows. It’s an old dwelling, but doesn’t show much sign of sagging or deterioration. Cool in the summer and warm in the winter? I think so.
Today, about the only thing similar can be found in some straw-bale construction. It’s more of a fad with some conservation minded folks and no large movements towards the style is known to me. But the first pioneers had no choice but to use sod as their main ingredient in building shelter.

Charley Retzlaff

FORGET COVID AND POLITICS FOR A MINUTE (I wrote this a few years back)

The heyday of boxing in this writer’s estimation centers around the time and career of Joe Louis. He and his contemporaries filled the sport pages with stories of boxing glory. Contemporaries included familiar names like Max Schmeling, Max Baer, “Two Ton” Tony , Jersey Joe Walcott, Ezzard Charles, Rocky Marciano, and Charley Retzlaff … Who’s Charley Retzlaff?

Charley Retzlaff tallied a good heavyweight record, but the memory of the man and that one bout has been receding into an ever-darkening past. In North Dakota, his claim to fame is best known from the time he fought Joe Louis in the Chicago Stadium on January 17, 1936.

The Fargo Forum started carrying items prior to the fight, and one article posted three large pictures of him working with his cattle. The headline stated “Rancher Retzlaff, Preparing for Louis Fight, January 17, Shows He Can Do a Few Things Around North Dakota Farm.” That farmstead still stands today, just south of Leonard, ND.

Local sports writers pulled for Retzlaff but never gave him much of a chance against “The Brown Bomber.” Along the way, Charley acquired a ring alias, too, “The Dakota Dynamiter.” One sports writer described him as being a tall, thin-chested, bruising hitter with a cutting right hand. boxrec.com, a website of boxing records, verifies that he was a hard-hitter when he scored 70.13% KO’s in 77 professional bouts.

Retzlaff was courted by the young Joe Louis as a potential opponent, but Charley didn’t bite on the first offer of $600 to meet him in the ring. Deciding to wait for a better opportunity, it came with that headline bout in 1936, said to have sold enough tickets to fill the Chicago Stadium. Good news for Retzlaff fans never came because of the resounding defeat he suffered. Charley was knocked down and out in the first round after one minute and twenty-five seconds. He can be seen gamely trying to engage Louis, but making a terrible mistake, he tried to hit Louis with a long-distance left. Louis took the opening to hit him hard with his left. The fight ended with Louis pummeling him with a flurry of hard punches. Here’s where Jimmy Dean could have sung, “And a crashin’ blow from a huge right hand…” By the way, if you want to see the fight, search for the Retzlaff-Louis match on Youtube.

It proved to be smart for Retzlaff when he held out for more money. The fight grossed $67,826 and gave him 17.5% of the gate receipts, $11,869.67. Soon after, Charley left Chicago, sore and bruised, to go home to his wife and farm near Leonard. As fate would have it, insult was added to injury. He had caught a ride with a fellow who had to turn back due to a snow-blocked road, leaving Charley to walk the final five miles through the drifts. He went on to fight three more times, won two by KO’s and earned a draw on the third and final fight of his career.

Reorganizing

I needed to bring some order to the corner I call an office; my bookcases were a mess with no logical order to book arrangement. It was good to handle each book again, because whenever I do the ideas start flowing. So it was when I came to one written by Stephen Ambrose, his Band of Brothers. These “brothers” made up E Company, 506th Regiment, 101 Airborne, a company that fought in World War II from the invasion of Normandy all the way through the war to being the first soldiers to enter Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest.

I’m not sure who hung the name on this company, but whoever it was found it in Act IV, Scene III of Shakespeare's "Henry V.” In it the title character prods his outnumbered British troops against the French at Agincourt in 1415: "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;/For he today that sheds his blood with me/Shall be my brother ... “

Our community history books inform me one member of this group, Myron Ranney, lived in Sheldon where his father, Russ Ranney, was editor/publisher of The Sheldon Progress. Of course, being born in 1942, I did not know him, but he was a friend and classmate with several people I did know well.

In one of my searches in the archives of The Progress, I copied a short piece that Russ wrote on August 20, 1942 about his son’s joining the army. “A letter came this morning from my son, Myron,  saying he has volunteered for the paratroop division of the army. Myron is 19 and a former student of the University of North Dakota. The letter brought a lump to my throat and made it hard for me to go to work. He was not forced to go. But he loves his country greater than his own security.”

Russ Ranney is at rest in the Sheldon cemetery where one restless afternoon I felt a yearning to drive with camera in hand to take some pictures. On his weathered gravemarker was inscribed the dates of his time on earth - February 23, 1892 to September 2, 1947. Obviously he lived long enough to see his son return from the war.

Myron participated successfully and of note in one small action Lt. Dick Winters ordered. Because the company’s parachute jump behind Utah Beach caused them to get widely scattered, Winters could find only thirteen of his men to attack and destroy German artillery pieces that were firing on the beach where American forces were landing. The enveloping maneuver that he ordered is said to be studied yet at West Point as an example of an assault on a fixed position. Without trying to explain the situation, it can be simply said that Ranney and one other man successfully attacked the German’s right flank and helped shut the large guns down. One source quotes Winters as saying that Ranney was one of “Easy Company’s killers who instinctively understood the intricacies of battle.”

So these thoughts are what happened when I reorganized my book collection. The Stephen Ambrose book Band of Brothers will live on, as will the books written by others in the company. Without the wartime experiences they’ve recorded, the stories surrounding residents named Ranney who once lived in my hometown would not have gained my attention to take a second look. Now I must get back to my duties reviewing books for the Western Writers of America. One has been on my desk for a few days.

What Are You Reading?

What is anybody reading nowadays? I’m mentioning one here that might interest some. “News of the World” by Paulette Jiles tells a story of a man in post-Civil War days who travels through Texas reading newspaper articles to audiences hungry for news. He is the one who informs them that the 15th Amendment grants African American men the right to vote. 

     Enter a ten-year-old white girl who’d been captured by Kiowa Indians six years previously and raised as one of their own but who bounty hunters have recaptured. The girl gets pawned off on the news reader who must tolerate three weeks with the girl as he fulfills his promise to return her home to her real parents. 

     Upon first opening the book I noticed she does not use quotation marks, much like Cormac McCarthy. One gets over that quirk easily and can continue reading a satisfying story. And I repeat the opening line - what is anybody reading nowadays?