Transcript of Oral History Interview with Dave Jansen

Oral history interviews of the Vietnam Era Oral History Project Copyright Notice: © 2019 Minnesota Historical Society Researchers are liable for any infringement. For more information, visit www.mnhs.org/copyright. Version 3 August 20, 2018 David Jansen Narrator Douglas Bekke Interviewer April 16, 2018 Bemidji, Minnesota Douglas Bekke —DB David Jansen —DJ DB: Minnesota Historical Society Vietnam Oral History Project interview with Dave Jansen. In Bemidji Minnesota on 16 April 2018. Mr. Jansen can you please say and spell your name? DJ: David L. Jansen. D-a-v-i-d L J-a-n-s-e-n. DB: And your birthdate? DJ: I was born October 30, 1949. DB: And where were you born? DJ: I was born here, in Bemidji. DB: Okay. DJ: The old Lutheran hospital. DB: Okay. And what do you know about your ancestry? DJ: I know that both — on my father’s side, my grandmother and grandfather both came from Holland and settled in Stearns County — where the land is flat like Holland. And on my mother’s side, French and German. DB: Did you know your grandparents? DJ: I did. I knew all of them. DB: And did they influence your life? Did you have good relations with them? DJ: My grandfather on my maternal side lived up here when I was a child so I spent a lot time with them — a lot of fishing. And hunting, and — my grandfather on my dad’s side was well 30 educated and had a library in his home. He had a farm, but he didn’t do much farm work. His kids did it and — hired people DB: That was in Stearns County? DJ: Right. And other than that I guess I’d like to know more but — I have a old newspaper from Holland when my grandfather went back to visit. Actually it’s from Brooten, MN and it describes his trip. And I have some of his books that are in Dutch that I’ve kept. DB: And did you spend a lot of time on that farm? In Stearns County? DJ: I did stay there in the summer usually for a couple weeks every year and did a lot of help with bailing and picking rocks — that kind of thing. And yeah, I enjoyed my time on both farms. DB: Did you have a lot of cousins that you were playing with — or working with? DJ: Well, I did. My — DB: Or brothers and sisters? DJ: I have one brother and one sister — both younger. But I had a lot of cousins. My dad’s — had fourteen siblings and my mom had seven, so. I think counted once up 150-some cousins, so. DB: Very big family. DJ: Right. I’ve lost track of most of them now. One was killed in Vietnam. DB: And we’ll talk about that when we get into Vietnam. DJ: Okay. DB: Yeah — yeah. Did you have — did you have particular memories of working with them or playing with them on the farms? Or up here in Bemidji? Hunting? Fishing? DJ: I have a lot of good memories — there’s little lakes that my grandfather took me to that I still go to and I took my kids to. And I hunted deer in some of the same places that my grandfather took me hunting. My mom was the oldest in her family so her younger brothers weren’t that much older than me. So I was close to them and they took me hunting a lot and fishing. DB: So you developed a passion early on for the outdoors? DJ: I did. My father really wasn’t outdoors — he wasn’t really outdoorsy. He — he preferred to build things with his hands and read. I guess I do those things too, but — DB: A carpenter? That kind of work or welding? 31 DJ: Yeah, he liked building picnic tables and he built toy furniture for my sister when she was little. Made it look just like the real thing, only miniature. And he was a hard worker, but he just really didn’t care for hunting. When he was a boy it was during the Depression and they hunted rabbits a lot. One of his friends — a neighbor boy — was shot and killed on a hunting trip and I think that probably had something to do with why my dad didn’t like hunting very much. DB: And your grandmother’s — did you have a lot of contact with them? DJ: I did. I was very close with my maternal grandmother especially. Oh because I stayed up here a lot in the summers and — in Blackduck, they lived on a farm in Blackduck. I was very close to her — she was actually my godmother as well as my grandmother. Both of my grandmothers made all their homemade bread and canned everything from the garden — kind of a lifestyle that’s gone now, but (laughs). DB: Yeah, yeah. Did you have electricity? Indoor plumbing and everything up here when you’d visit? A lot of that didn’t come in until — sometimes even in the mid-50s. DJ: At both of my grandparents — when I was younger — they both had outdoor pumps and outhouses. And then as I grew older over the years my grandparents in Stearns County had a bathroom put into their home. My grandparents here moved from the farm into the town of Blackduck where they did have indoor plumbing. They bought the theatre in Blackduck — the movie theatre. And — so then they had plumbing and all the modern conveniences. DB: Did you — did you ever work at the theatre? Of did you just — DJ: I did — I helped clean and I sold popcorn, that kind of thing when I was up here. DB: Make a little money? DJ: Yeah, not much though (Both laugh). Actually — oh I forgot what I was gonna say, but — DB: Working in the theatre — making popcorn — DJ: Yeah, my uncle ran the — he was the projectionist and that was in the old days with the big arch-light. They’d have two projectors and the film would — there’d be a mark on the film and that was time to start the other projector, so they’d phase — so there wouldn’t be a break in the movie. They had a — in the theatre then they had a what they called a cry room. It was a room where parents could take children that were making too much noise and disturbing the other — the other patrons. But I don’t think they exists anymore anywhere. They even had one in the church back then too. DJ: So I was baptized in Blackduck and I spent more time there than I did in the Stearns County farm. But— I was close with all my grandparents. They all passed away after Vietnam. 32 DB: Were you baptized Lutheran? Catholic — DJ: Catholic. DB: Catholic, okay. DJ: Right, yeah. DB: And — and your mother? Did you have a good, close relationship with your mother? DJ: My mother is still alive. She’s eighty-seven and she lives in elderly apartments in Bemidji, which used to be the Lutheran hospital where I was born. They converted it in the last few years to other apartments. DB: Any — and — and maybe you already mentioned this but where did your parents live? Did they live in town? Or did they live — they lived in Stearns County? DJ: They both lived in Stearns County when they met, but my mother moved up and stayed in Blackduck with my grandparents when she was pregnant and my father was looking for work in the Twin Cities. So they both grew up on farms but they — like a lot of that generation moved to the Cities and got better jobs — DB: So did you grow up in Minneapolis? DJ: I actually grew up in Inver Grove Heights. DB: Okay. DJ: Just south of uh South St. Paul and St. Paul. And at that time it was a rural area. DB: Wasn’t a — dense suburb yet? DJ: No, it wasn’t — we actually raised sheep and chickens and had a — DB: Kind of a hobby farm? DJ: A hobby farm right. DB: And what did your dad do? DJ: My dad was a — he was a meat cutter — a butcher for Swift and Company. DB: In South St. Paul? DJ: In South St. Paul. And my mom worked at West Publishing, where they published the law books and the Congressional record and so forth. 33 DB: And what do you remember from school — from grade school? DJ: Well, grade school was small. The principle was also the sixth grade teacher — they didn’t have separate principles back then. It was a good school. It was called Salem Hills. And it was fairly new because that area was just starting to grow from farms to more family housing. DB: One classroom per grade — pretty much? DJ: One — yeah one per grade. And I remember that — I wasn’t the best athlete so I didn’t get picked for teams very often, but — DB: Let’s stay in grade school a little bit. DJ: Oh, that’s what I mean (laughs) — DB: Oh, okay you mean grade school — DJ: At lunch time, they’d play football or something — but I enjoyed doing it anyways. Had fun and I made a friend there in third grade that is still a really close friend. See him regularly and we eventually married sisters.

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