Uncle Ray

My uncle had heart valve replacement surgery, so cousins, this ones for you.

According to my grandmother, both sides of the family wanted Ray and Katherine to get together.  Finally, in my grandmother's opinion, God intervened.  Katherine's family's cabin was hit by a falling tree and someone was needed to repair the porch.  Naturally, Ray was called in.  He was already related through his brother's marriage to Norma, and he was a journeyman carpenter.

In Fresno, it's so hot in the summer that having a cabin in the mountains makes life almost bearable, being able to get out of the heat.  But the family wanted Ray and Katherine to get together so badly, that they toughed it out in sweltering Fresno just to let them be alone as Ray fixed the porch. 

They got to know each other, and were finally engaged during Thanksgiving week of 1959.  They were married between Christmas and New Years of that year.

Down on the Farm

Mads Nielsen was a farmer and a dairyman.  In the morning he would milk his cows then go to the Danish Creamery dairy in Fresno for his day job.  Then he'd come home in the night and repeat.  If he didn't have the money for gas, he would have to ride his bicycle.  He relied on an old wind up alarm clock to get him up on time.  One time when my grandfather, Donald Nielsen, was little, he disassembled the alarm clock to see how it ran.  They couldn't afford to replace it and had to guess at the time so Mads could get to work on time. 

Dinner couldn't be held until after the cows were milked.  One Thanksgiving, your great great grandmother, Marie Laugesen Nielsen, was late coming into dinner.  When the family went to check on her out in the barn they found that a cow had stepped on her and she couldn't push her off, leaving her trapped.

I've been working on the railroad

James Knight Rogers, my great grandfather, was a conductor brakeman on the railroad.  He worked out of the CALWA railyards, which was also where he lived, so he was often able to go home every night.  Often, when a train went onto a siding, the engineer and brakeman had to wait for a switchman to come out to the yards to uncouple the train.  Given that this could take a while, and James was anxious to go home, very often he would uncouple the train himself.  While he was perfectly capable of the work, it was against union rules.  When he was eventually found out, he was told he would have to file paperwork to collect all the back pay.  He didn't want the back pay, but it was union rules.  He gave the paperwork to my grandmother, Billee Rogers, to fill out, promising her the money just to get the paperwork done and out of what little hair he had.

The Formica Table

In December1947,  my grandmother moved home to Fresno where she and my grandfather bought their first home together on East Iowa St.  Being that this was still shortly after WWII, and with all the GI's coming home and setting up housekeeping, household good were in short supply.  My grandmother had her heart set on getting a formica table for her dining room.  She went to a Jewish store in Fresno somewhere where they actually had one in stock.  My grandmother was quoted an outrageously high price, but she was so happy to have found one that she gladly paid it.  The storekeeper delivered the table the same day.  Billee later realized that, since the shop keeper was Jewish, she was supposed to bargain with him which was why she was quoted such a high price to begin with, and why the shop keeper delivered it for her for free.  The table came with them to their final home in Concord.  It was given to my aunt and uncle in 1968 when they married.  Then, when they no longer wanted the table when they moved in 1972 Billee took it back and gave it to my parents who kept it until Pat threw it away finally in 2001.