(On November 11, 2009, I videotaped my uncle, Eric RP Olsen telling stories about his life in Marquette, Michigan. This post is but a segment of this recording and in Eric Olsen's own words.)
I
have learned that if I become a success it’s because of my parents.
I
was born on July 17, 1939 to Emil and Edna Olsen. My dad came to this country from Norway on a
whaling vessel when he was 14-years-old back in the days when kids worked. On his second voyage on the Whaler he got
sick and they put him off in New York City and he ended up on Ellis Island,
recovered and made his way to Minnesota and from there to Chicago where he met
my mother. Dad sailed for years on
barges on the Great Lakes.
In
1918, everyone had the flu and this killed an awful lot of people. Dad quit his job on the Great Lakes as a
skipper to come home to take care of the family.
I
had four brothers - Clayton, who died of diphtheria at two-years-old, Donald,
Richard who retired as a skipper on the Great Lakes ... who became a pilot on the Great Lakes, Russell who had nothing to do with the water. My brother Don (the Barefoot Norwegian's father) was raised his first couple years on board a ship - back
then you could be on these vessels. He
walked the decks of these Great Lakes freighters where my mother was a cook and
my father a chief engineer. When Donald
was about three-years-old he got off the vessel and had to learn to walk all
over again. As he got older he still
didn’t walk very well. He had walked
decks too long. I also had two sisters - Janice and Betty.
I
was born just before the start of WWII and it was 4-5 years before I got
acquainted with my brothers. My sister
Betty was a different matter. My mother
became sick and lost her eye sight for a short period of time after I was born
so Betty quit school and took over raising me. My first remembrance of her was that she was like my mother, she took
care of me.
My
father worked at the Cliff Dow Chemical Company for a short period of time so
we had a company house down in the Furnace location in Marquette. It was quite a life. My favorite memory of growing up in the
furnace location was the start of my life of crime. My friend Paulie Pringle and I were about
three-years-old and we use to go lay under the porch. When the women put the milk bottles on the
porches, Paulie and I would take our cut of the money in the bottles. Then we would head up to the north end tavern
where they sold these little packages of six cookies for 3 cents apiece. We would spend all our money on these
cookies. I’m sure Paulie talked me into
it - it just doesn’t seem like a thing I would do, but I did.
We
moved from there out to the farm in Big Bay where dad got a job with the Ford
plant and got back into his old field of engineering. He was the operating engineer at the plant
and kept the steam engines running.
We
lived on the farm for a short time and there are a lot of memories there. I was about four-years-old and I remember my
mother being a wonderful person - to me she was a saint and took good care of us. But she had one failing – she loved to play
poker. We lived in the country and were
20 miles from the nearest town and a mile from the nearest neighbor. My aunt and uncle, Dupra, owned a
place up the road and they use to sponsor a poker game once a week and my
mother would go play. My younger
sister and I would have to traipse along with her.
One
day we were coming back home and there was something in a cherry tree right
behind the house. My mother did the
lady-like thing and went in and got the shotgun. I held the flashlight and she shot what she
thought was a bear, and thank God it wasn’t my dad up there. It was a porcupine. We washed it out and the next
morning we had some rather suspicious meat on the table, which I am sure was
porcupine.
After about six months we got a company house.
Living
in the Upper Peninsula we ate some strange things. Porcupine, never ate a skunk, but we had
muskrat because my father trapped these and we regularly ate and loved
them. He use to shoot geese and I didn’t
like eating a goose because I hated to clean them. We lived on wild game and it was amazing –
everything from snapping turtles to venison.
Some people say it was a terrible way to live but I learned to really
appreciate a good beef steak now, or even a poor beef steak.
After
living on the farm for a while my dad got a company house in Big Bay. I remember the
day we arrived in Big Bay - every kid in town was in the front yard. Dad had been there for six months living in a
little shack down in a place called Squaw Beach. He made every kid in town a sling shot and
sling, like David used to shoot Goliath. My dad was unusual in that he could use a sling and was good with
it. Every kid in town had a sling in his
back pocket along with a sling shot. The
kids were all just waiting because they knew I must have been something special
to have a father like dad. Those were
some wonderful, formative years and I was learning things that I never realized
would come in handy later in my life.
The
first thing I remember my dad doing is taking me with him on his trap line when
I was about six-years-old because I was interested in that. He came home and had half a dozen muskrats
and he said “you watch me trap enough you should know how to do this.”
So, I started setting my own traps in a ditch
around the Ford plant – a place I could walk to. The first year I caught about 30 muskrats and
that’s when they brought in $2.50 to $3.00 apiece. I was the best paid first grader. The other kids were living on a quarter
allowance, if they got an allowance. Some of these people never saw a quarter, or a beef steak. But I was making pretty good money
trapping.
Now
my mother was a very frugal person and when I got my first check from Sears and
Roebuck of $18.75 I had to buy a darn war bond. This continued for many years and even in high school I was buying bonds. The benefit of this story as when I
bought my first car I cashed in bonds and paid for it. Mom had that in mind when she made me buy
these bonds.
Those were interesting days
and Big Bay was an interesting place.
