Dad Was a Dane

Dad was a Dane. I guess that makes me one too. I won't know exactly how much Dane until I get my results back from Ancestry.com, the test, a gift from my sister Denise. Yup, I reckon she's a Dane too.

Today December 29, 2017, several things have me thinking about threads that run through a family. First the date, my dad, Willard Roy Larsen's birthday. He would have been 79 today, had he made it passed 60, and 61 and well, you get the picture. Next the temperature, the snow, the snowplows and motor-graders, the trucks and cars slogging through the mush. And lastly, my home, Dannebrog, Danish Capital of Nebraska. How a Dane takes residence in a tiny village full of other Danes, but isn't directly related to any of them, is a story for another day, perhaps.

Like our Danish blood, cold weather, snow, bad roads and trying to travel them seems to run in my family. You see, my paternal Granddad, Alvin Carl Larsen, a second generation Danish American, drove a motor-grader for many years, near Farmingdale, South Dakota, mainly to support his ranching habit I suspect. And my dad, while completely at odds with his dad philosophically, followed a path not-completely-at-odds with that of his dad.  

After leaving home at sixteen, my dad worked ranches and broke horses in North and South Dakota, then Nevada and Utah, then back to the Plains states. In the late sixties, he and my mom, started a trucking business. Starting with one truck, hauling grain in the Dakotas, then moving to Wood River, Nebraska for better opportunities. 

I remember as a ten-year-old, making my first real money changing oil and greasing trucks in the yard of our rural place near Wood River - ten bucks a truck. And I remember the first time behind the wheel of one of those rigs too - a 1969 GMC Astro Cabover, with a 318 Detroit engine. We were bob-tailing from Grand Island back home and Dad mysteriously took the gravel roads. I was nervous, but excited when he rolled to a stop, set the air brakes and said "wanna drive?". Until this moment I never thought about how much destiny was contained in those two, OK three little words (slang contractions you know)!

I started running occasional cross-country trips with Dad in the summers between school years. Then a full summer as a tenth grader. After high school, a few classes at the Community College, a short year as a carpenter and a stint working in the office of our then 15 truck fleet, I decided to hit the road again. After a few months in training with my uncle Robb, I went solo. I remember my first solo run - swinging beef (hung on hooks from the roof of the trailer), Cho's Meat Market, 125th & Broadway, New York City, 4 AM Monday morning delivery. Talk about "nervous, but excited" - next level! Oh yeah, and it was the dead of winter. Yet another story for another day, perhaps.

The ensuing decade saw me put about a million miles on the highways and byways of this great country (and the pretty great one to the north too). A time of much nervousness and excitement, and personal growth and learning from a man for whom "quit" did not exist. He and mom taught me that if you have a bit of vision, and a willingness to work like no one else will, your dreams are within your grasp. With no handouts, not even a hand up, just working like it all depends on you and praying like it all depends on God, they made a life, and taught me to value it.

Dad was a Dane. To me that word means grit, determination and perseverance. Quite like that of the Danish settlers at Dannebrog who, with the help of the friendly Pawnee worked their way from survival to stability, not so long ago, right about the time my great grandparents were doing the same in South Dakota.

Dad was a Dane, and his dad, and his dad. And that makes me one too. So, it is once again with nervous excitement that I look toward a New Year, say "Happy Birthday Dad, I miss you every day, and I hope that I can prove out just a little of that grit you gave to me”.