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 Robert C. Hanson Narrator Douglas Bekke Interviewer January 26, 2018 Barnum, Minnesota Robert Hanson -RH Douglas Bekke -DB DB: Minnesota Historical Society Vietnam Oral History Project interview with Robert Hanson in Barnum, Minnesota on 26 January, 2018. Mr. Hanson can you please say and spell your name? RH: My name is Robert C. Hanson. That’s R-O-B-E-R-T, C for Clyde, my father’s name. Hanson H-A-N-S-O-N. DB: And your date and place of birth? RH: Seven May 1937 in Wausau, Wisconsin. DB: And what do you know about your ancestry? RH: My ancestry is pretty much European, with overtones of Danish and German. DB: And when did they immigrate to the United States? RH: In the 1880s for the most part although I did have a German relative that came over during the Civil War era, about 1865, 1866. DB: They came over after the Civil War then? RH: They did not fight in the Civil War. DB: Did you know your grandparents or great grandparents? RH: Oh very definitely. DB: And what kind of activities did you have with them and did they influence your life? RH: There were five children in my family and during the summer time I used to spend the summer with my Hanson grandparents, who also lived in Wausau. Whereas as my sister, one of my sisters – my oldest sister stayed with our Ahlman family grandparents up in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. DB: And what kind of things did you do with them? 32 RH: My grandmother was very interested in educating me. She always took me – my grandfather worked on a railroad so she had – we always had railroad tickets. They carried me on their railroad pass until I was 25 years old, so we always used to take trips at least once a summer we’d go to Chicago and she would take me to the museums down in Chicago and we’d go to a Cubs game because she was a big, big sports fan. She loved the Cubs and the Green Bay Packers, but she just wanted me to be educated and encouraged me to read, encouraged me to make things and she was – she was very, very proactive in that regard. DB: And she was successful? RH: I think so. I still read at least three books a month and you know, after I retired I became a teacher and I taught industrial ed and math so. I built half this house were sitting in and so I think so. DB: You’re industrious? RH: Yeah I’m industrious. DB: And your grandfather, do you have many memories of him? RH: Oh I certainly do. He would take me to baseball games and he was a big bear of a guy. He was – he became a qualified engineer on a Chicago Northwestern in 1917 and the seniority was so strict and so full on that particular railroad that he didn’t even get an engineer’s slot until 1950s. He was a fireman the whole time and he used to shovel coal. He would stop his switching engine right in the middle of Wausau and I would ride my bike down to a pre-agreed spot and I’d jump up in the switch engine and sit there while he switched trains – while he switched cars back and forth. It was wonderful. All the little kids would be sitting in the car watching and pointing at me while I’d look at them. DB: You were a big shot? RH: I was a big shot (Laughter). DB: So you were born in 1937. Do you have memories of World War II and things that were going on? RH: I certainly do. The men and women that fought in World War II were my heroes. And we had relatives that went in. I had a second cousin who was – who went into the navy and tried to get his pilot’s wings and he washed out and so he went into the air force and became a navigator and was in the 8th Air Force over in England during World War II. And I had another second cousin who was a WAVE. But no direct family in the service at the time. But we watched, you know, the news. Watched the news – listened to the radio and read the papers and stuff and it was a very patriotic time and very patriotic city. I remember we even had air raid warning where we had to go in the house and duck and cover and that kind of stuff. And they were very, very proactive to the military and to supporting them. DB: Talked about a lot in school? RH: We did, we did we had. We sold the little stamps, the war-saving stamps and we brought in tin cans and things like that I distinctly remember. DB: Scrap drives? 33 RH: Scrap drives. DB: And do you know how your parents met? RH: My dad graduated from high school, it was during the depression. He tried to get into University of Wisconsin. We’d had some relatives, second or third away from close relatives, and he even slept in the hallway, tried to get in to the University of Wisconsin and couldn’t. So he came back and he started working for my grandfather Ahlman who was an electrical contractor, one of the first ones around there. And my mother was, of course, his daughter and they became close friends shall we say. And he had been a boy scout, he’d never – never was an eagle scout he was one rank under that but he was sitting around boy scout headquarters one day when the phone rang and it was the Minnesota Mining Company, which had an office in Wausau, and they said, We’ve got a job opening and we would like to offer it to a boy scout and we’re looking for one of your better people and offer him a start and if he works out we’ll give him a job. And my dad said, “We’ll send our best guy to you.” And hung up and walked right over there and he worked for the Minnesota Mining Company for 45 years after that. DB: And what did your mother do? RH: My mother was a homemaker. DB: Okay. And can you describe your home growing up? RH: My earliest recollections were – I was about four years old and I was sitting on the stoop. We had a rental on West Street in Wausau and there was right in back of the fence was a railroad switching line and my grandfather used to ride by and he’d toot the whistle every time he rode by, but my dad built a house along with a few other people to help him and he built it on 917 Broadway in Wausau and it’s still there, I’ve been to it several times. In a little bungalow house that was fortunately close to the airport and that kind of warped and changed me for the rest of my life because I became fascinated by airplanes, I really did. And when I finally grew to the point where I could ride a bicycle and stuff like that I used to ride to the airport every once in a while just to watch the by planes fly, they were wonderful. DB: And as – your mother being a homemaker, did she keep a garden? RH: We had a garden all the time, yeah. DB: Was it an essential for eating or was it something that was just done on the side? Supplemental? RH: It was pretty much – I would say it added to the family but it was not a subsistence thing, you know, we didn’t – she canned and did all that other stuff but we had relatives that were farmers and we got – and we would buy vegetables and my grandmother the same way, that was a big, big activity during the summer time was you know, canning cherries and canning pickles and doing all that kind of thing. It was typical homemaking in the 30s and 40s there’s no question about it. DB: And you describe your home situation as urban in Wausau it wasn’t —? RH: Yeah. The town was, at that time, probably about 20,000 people. DB: But you weren’t in the country outside of Wausau? 34 RH: No we were on the edge of it. DB: On the edge? RH: Yeah. DB: Okay. Did you get involved in hunting or any of that living on the edge? Did you go out in the woods? RH: I always ran out in the fields and it was close to the Wisconsin River and my dad told me to stay away from it and that’s like a red flag, oh I’m going down there. And I did a lot of times and he caught me a couple times and was very unhappy about it. DB: Worried about you drowning or just a generally unsafe place? RH: Yeah, just worried about it period because there was also, what we called the poor farm, which was I guess kind of a welfare building up at the end of Sturgeon Eddy there where that – I don’t know if indigent people went there or I don’t have a feeling for what the qualification was for the people that stayed there but he was a little worried about them anyway.