Musings Over a Country School
& Churchyard I
do have a deeper connection to that schoolhouse, and that's because
one of the great colleagues who taught with me at Science, Russel (Russ)
Kastelle, went to school there. A little before he retired, Russ asked
me to edit his memoir about growing up in the Aastad community, many
members of which went to school in that very schoolhouse. And the life
Russ’ parents grew up in was much more rigorous than anything
modern farm kids might imagine.
uploaded to web html 09-11-2021
My route from Breckenridge to
one of my favorite lakes, Ten Mile, by way of Doran Minn., always took
me past a little abandoned country school house which sat at the junction
of county roads 1, and 112. And each time I've passed it, lines from
Whittier's lovely poem, “In School Days,” sprang to mind:
“Still sits the old school house by the road/ A ragged beggar
sunning; /Around it still the sumac growl And blackberry vines are running.”
Just this year a tragic thing happened to that school-house: it was
torn down and now that historic monument to the many fine lives
who schooled there is nothing more than the comer acre of a corn field.
A trip to Fergus by horse and buggy or sleigh took the better part of
a day. And each school day somebody had to get to that school ahead
of the kids to get the fire going in the potbellied stove to get
the place warmed up so kids could leam. If you can get a copy of that
memoir or find it on line, it is a fascinating read about the
life and times of those hard-working farmers. I got to know Russ personally
earlier because we needed a surveyor for our land and his obituary points
out several of the huge projects he helped survey such as the dam at
Garrison N.D. and the Oahe dam at Pierre S.D.
Re-reading Russ’ obituary of July, 2021, I was astonished at the
huge number of accomplishments he achieved, but one that stands out
was the mention that he saved a fellow paratrooper whose chute had failed
to open. Russ held on to him until they both hit the ground, bruised
but alive. In my book that makes Russ a genuine hero.
The centerpiece of the Aastad community is the lovely white church with
a churchyard (cemetery) on both sides of it. That church was the only
surviving one of three, targeted by a drunken kid who went on a church-buming
rampage several years ago. I really believe God had a hand in protecting
that beautiful symbol of generations of hard-working Norwegians who
toiled and suffered and bled to farm those hilly fields.
The Kastelle farm is just a couple of miles west of that church, and
Russ and his wife, Darlene are buried on the sunset side of that church.
Russ‘ step-son, Eric Greenquist, is still active in the Breckenridge
community, teaching martial arts such as Tai Quan Do, and he was a very
memorable student for me back, not in the “dear dead days beyond
recall,” but in the good old low-tech times “when every
day brought forth a noble chance,/ and every chance brought forth a
noble knight.” Such a knight was Russ Kastelle, a man able to
succeed at any task he set his mind to.
Gene Pinkney - 8/ 1 7/2 1 - For The Daily News
