-
Courtship
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
COURTSHIP [44.192.53.34] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:32 GMT) 1f HAVE NOW TOLD you about my folks and my husband's folks, Jland all the old people from Norway. Now I am going back and tell you about the young folks and the fun they had in their youth, and their struggles in settling down. There were no shows or circuses, or anything much to amuse young people in those days, so about the only thing we could do to have fun was to dance. And I mean dancing. The young people these days don't dance; they kick, and jump up and down. We danced. There were some families that tried to introduce games, such as Snap-and-Ketchum, Spin the Platter, and another one called the ~ngagement Ring. It had a little verse that we sang in NorwegIan : I have aring I let it wander From one to another, And now it is tied And thrown away. Some person had to stand in the middle and guess who had the ring. It was very much like Button, Button, Who's Got the Button ? Some soft boys liked to play Post Office, but I never cared about it; neither did the rest. Nothing came up to dancing. Mother did not approve of it, and Father told me that the only thing I ever did to grieve him was to go to these dances. Even though it made them sad, I could not resist, and besides I never could see the sin in It. Not the way we danced. Those square dances, waltzes, schottisches, hop waltzes, polkas (both runaway and heel-and-toe), and moneymusk -they were all so much fun! I just loved to dance them all, but I did not have a chance at it very many years. I was married when only nineteen and a half, and that was the end of it. John was no dancer himself-we girls said he danced like a bear on its hind legs-and he had such a jealous disposition that he could not bear to see another man touch me. So in order to live in peace with him, I had to cut out the most fun I ever had in my life. Therefore , I will give a warning to any young person that happens to 141 read this: Never marry anyone so entirely different in disposition. John was happy as long as I was by his side, but I missed my fun. John was about five years older than I. One reason he was so against dancing was that he had been very wild himself up to the time he was nineteen. Tone was a very devout Christian and she prayed earnestly that he would give up his drinking and dancing. He loved her so much that he finally promised he would, and he never broke that promise. He never danced again, and we never had liquor in our house in all our lives. I was only sixteen, however, and he was over twenty when we started to go together, and you can see he was already past what I loved the best from the very start. My only salvation was that he went away to work on the log drive in the spring, and on the boat each summer with his Uncle Ole Oleson, and would not come back until the rivers froze over in the fall. I really had a fling while he was gone. Sometimes when I forget how old I am, I wish some of those good old days were back again! I enjoyed everything so. Everything was fun. Women did not have to work half as hard as they do now, or worry about keeping up with the Joneses. Instead of having about twenty different outfits to wear, as they do now, we got along with a couple of calico dresses for everyday, and a nextbest one for going to call on a neighbor, or to town to sell eggs and butter. If we had two others besides for church and parties, we considered it a great plenty. Some of those best dresses we put a lot of work on. Some had nine ruffles on the skirt. The waists were always rather plain and tight-fitting. Believe me, we had pretty shapes in those days, too, because we wore corsets even for everyday , and our figures did not spread as in these days. On these best dresses, we always...