LITMIR.BIZ

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      My parents grew up in rural Alberta farm country—

      Dad in Irma and Mom in Kinsella—but my grandparents

      were pioneers in the truest sense of the word. My

      father’s parents came from Norway and homesteaded

      in South Dakota and Minnesota before heading up to

      Alberta. Their name was originally Nielsen, but there

      were so many other Nielsens in Minnesota, the mail

      kept getting mixed up. So my grandfather, Nikolai Tobias

      Mathias, changed it to Fluevog, which was inspired by

      the name of the tiny hamlet back in Norway where the

      family came from. There’s also a little lake up in Alberta,

      near where my grandparents homesteaded, called

      Fluevog Lake. I never met my father’s folks, though I

      wish I had. They died back in the 1930s when my dad

      was in his twenties; my dad always told me his mother,

      Gina, died first, and then his father died of heartache.

      My grandfather was tender-hearted, and I think I’m that

      way myself.

      On my mother’s side, they were Dutch and German

      with a bit of Irish thrown into the mix. When he was

      just eight years old, my grandfather, Ben Wachter, drove

      horses and mules along the Oregon Trail all the way up

      to Wilbur, Washington. He eventually became a farmer

      in Alberta and worked building the railways. He was

      truly a pioneer. My grandma, Clara, was a big, imposing

      woman who came from St. Louis, Missouri, and after

      she married Ben, she stayed home to look after the

      house and family. When we were kids, we’d go on lots of

      road trips to the farm. It had no running water or paved

      roads, but tons and tons of bugs. It was as natural as

      can be. In summer, it would get so hot when we were

      driving, we’d cook chuckwagon dinners on the manifold.

      At Christmas, it would be too cold to drive to church,

      so we’d go out with the horse and sleigh.

      My parents met skating one day back in Alberta.

      Sigurd was seven years older than Ruth, and both

      were ready to marry; in the end, they had fifty-four

      mostly happy years together. My mom was a good

      cook, generous host, talented seamstress and bit of a

      poet. My dad was a great mechanic and really smart, so

      smart that during the Second World War, he was sent

      A (very) young John Fluevog

      discovers his love of cars in his

      dad’s garage, where Sigurd sold

      cute Hillmans from England.

      1951

      My grandparents were

      pioneers in the truest

      sense of the word.

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