ORDINARY PEOPLE, THEN AND NOW

Before readers forget the very numerous Borg family, we want to get a little more instructive mileage from them and then do some comparing.

In the last article we devoted considerable space to Sylvia Borg Kjos, whose father was Leif. One of Leif's brothers was Karsten, born in Norway in 1905 and brought to America with the family in 1911. With so many children to support on a single homestead, it is no surprise that he was farmed out, literally, for four years. He was shipped to Spicer, Minnesota, where he lived and worked – we can bet on that – with his father's brother. He missed his family and was happy when he was able to return home to Montana.

Here, he and his brothers, Jorgen and Leif, took up the working of the family farm northwest of Fairview. Wheat was the primary crop, and Jorgen operated the threshing machine while Karsten and Leif busied themselves with hauling bundles and "spike pitching," which amounted to throwing extra bundles into the machine.

Making ends meet demanded working away from home at times, and the brothers did the threshing for others. One job, south of Regina, Saskatchewan, was interrupted by a snowstorm with drifts up to the tops of the shocks. The labor force pulled out in a caravan of 13 Model T's, and whenever the lead vehicle became stuck in the snow, those behind jumped out to push it through. Only in this way were they able to make a trail.

Karsten married Margaret Storvik (meaning "large creek") in 1935, and for four years they rented a farm. He hauled coal and wood to heat the house and skied across country to visit his parents back at the family place.

Perhaps epic winters like those were what sent him and Margaret to Oregon for the winter of 1939, but they were back in Montana in the spring of 1940. In the autumn of that year it was back to Minnesota – apparently, they had not heard of Florida – but in the spring of '41 Montana beckoned again, and their commuting days ended. In 1947 they purchased Margaret's parents' ranch and raised cattle and crops until retiring in 1972 and moving to Sidney.

It was not until 1954 that Karsten, Leif, and another brother born in Norway became citizens. For preparation they had studied a yellow, citizenship book. When the judge asked Karsten how many stripes our flag has, he answered "Thirteen." When next asked if it always had had 13, he answered correctly, "No, at one time it had 15." When the judge inquired how he knew that, he said, "It was in that little yellow book."

When brother Leif was quizzed in the same session as to the discoverer of America, he replied quickly, "Leif Eriksen in the year of 1000, but history says it was Christopher Columbus in the year of 1492!" Despite this note of Old Country pride, he passed.

Brother Leif, Sylvia's father, was also swift in adopting technology. When electricity arrived in 1949, he laughed happily over the power of making light with the flip of a switch. When he heard television was coming to the area, he purchased a set several months in anticipation of the station's coming on the air.

They led full lives founded on faith, love, and duty but sprinkled liberally with uncomplicated pleasures. Karsten enjoyed very much, fishing, hunting, and cutting Montana agates into jewelry. He and Margaret liked picnics in forests, and on most Sundays, she cooked for a house full of relatives. Knowledge of the Borgs, alone, suggests the house must have been overflowing at those times.

Eventually they did learn about Florida, and there were car trips there, as well as to Oregon and California and two excursions to Norway to see the places of their origin and to visit those relatives that had not come to the U.S. What would be a visit to Norway without a storm in the North Sea? (If they were living, we would recommend your asking Jane's poor parents about a wild night they spent in one. The voyage, in fact, could have abbreviated their lives.) When all the passengers were ordered below, sturdy Karsten, in the spirit of Nansen, Amundsen, and Heyerdahl, remained on deck, wrapped an arm around a pole, and photographed the storm.

He worked as a welder and machinery repairman on a son's farm, where he was often heard to remark, "It was a big job, but I did it fairly easy," and what every elder is fond of telling younger people, "When you get as old as I am, then you'll know how it is."

Karsten spent a good deal of time reading the Bible and got through it several times. In addition to the couple's attending the Assembly of God Church in Sidney, he liked hearing evangelists and watching church services on television.

One of their four children, another Lars, married and fathered two, one of them Kristen, who commissioned the painting on the crosscut saw. There, Jane captured the ranch on which Grandfather, Karsten, and Grandmother, Margaret, lived for twenty-five years.

In briefly tracing this immigrant family and a few descendants, one notices an interesting trend, which might be called a Law of Diminishing Returns: Lars and Gunda Borg produced 15 children; their son, Karsten, 4; and his son, Lars, 2. We can't fault the Montana climate for reducing fertility, for Lars and Gunda had 7 after immigrating, but the dwindling of family-size is a reality.

Of course, nowadays ranches have airplanes, hundreds of television channels, internet connections, bigger, air-conditioned and GPS-guided machines, and cell phones that work every now and then, but have the lives of ordinary ranching people changed that drastically since Karsten Borg's young manhood?

The men still need to do all farming/ranching tasks, including welding and heavy machinery repair, and the women, when not at their mates' sides, cook, clean, wash, plant, sew, and entertain families. At times it's still necessary to hire oneself out to labor on another person's land, and the husbands and wives attend church and, when able to get away, take vacations, mostly within our country's borders. They continue to enjoy fishing, hunting, and finding Indian artifacts and fossils.

We aren't acquainted with anyone that skies to visit friends or family on neighboring ranches, but we know some that walked long distances to spend weekends at home after boarding in town to attend school.

The Model T is a regular relic, probably unknown to most, but people still must push and pull each other out of snow drifts and the canyons the Road Department makes alongside some roads. When there's a dearth of snow, the County still has seen fit to provide a ration of mud to keep the roads interesting.

It seems to us that the essential, nuts and bolts of ordinary ranch life have not altered greatly since Lars and Gunda decided in 1911 to try their luck in America. The reason for this, we suspect, is that it's a good way of life, and we also observe most every day that ordinary people are always capable of extraordinary achievements.