The Sundays I Remember
I saw my cousin last week. It was a good visit and it made me feel the way I used to after a Sunday years ago. Back home in the 70s, we had a rotation of Sunday destinations that included a variety of family members. Cousins, Aunts, Uncles, Grandmas and one living Grandpa. I could just talk about these visits alone, but I want to present a more holistic view of Sunday.
Sunday on a dairy farm is special because it was on the one day we didn’t milk the cows. Nope. We always milked the cows. It was an activity which rivaled sunrise and sunset in its consistency. However, on Sunday the cows were milked with more urgency so our family could go to church.
Church for me was inspirational because the pastors were so strong and intelligent. Pastor Ralph Hofrenning preached strength and belief in God as a daily presence. Pastor K David Gabrielson’s approach was more scholarly. His arrival was perfectly timed to my entry into confirmation. They were a powerful duo and left me ready for the following week and ready for a Sunday afternoon off. Sundays were often spent at Grandma Nelson’s place or Grandma and Grandpa Zavoral’s. Grandma Nelson was a tiny, powerful woman who exuded caring but did not suffer fools. Grandma and Grandpa Zavoral typically had a very busy household and it seemed like there was always a cousin staying overnight. Uncle Jack lived with Grandma Nelson and usually sent home a few “Popular Mechanics” magazines with me.
A trip up north to Roseau was a rare outing. The focus of these trips were two of my aunts. It was either my dad’s sister, Kelly Flaten, or my mother’s sister, Gladys Janzen. You might think we would visit both families in one trip, however there were several miles between them and we needed to socialize quickly as we had a schedule to keep with a group of 36 Holstein cows.
My dad’s cousin was Herb Swenson. Herb and Joyce are gone now but their daughter Kaylynn is responsible for my love of bumper pool.
Herb would let me drive one of their Heald Superbronc ATVs too. Ironically, Herb sold me my first 4 wheeler about thirty years later.
So that is a sampling of Sunday afternoons in the 70s. It was a time of shared food carried in carefully “burped” Tupperware containers, Kool-Aid and softball. It was a time when a skilled storyteller was a valued resource and 4 pm meant cards and maybe a little beer, unless you needed to go home and milk the cows.
Sundays were the time that you truly relaxed. While we were physically active, our minds slipped into neutral without immediate concern of work. Good work ethic is a valued human characteristic however it can go from valued life skill to an idol which becomes a barrier to all that is important.
So what’s important; your faith, your family, your peace of mind? Sunday shouldn’t be a day of dread as you anticipate a return to work on Monday. It should be a day when you can turn down the noise of life so you can hear the whisper of God and the words of the ones you love. Those are the Sundays I remember.
