Tennessen Farm

Norb Cast Stories

Mariann - The story behind this picture:

Den wrote about the garage that still stands at our place. Laabs Cheese had a factory in Phillips. Dad drove the 1950 red Ford truck (later a logging truck) and hauled milk for Laabs. 

The truck stood outside. The winters up there got very cold. Thirty degrees below zero and colder. It was a challenge to start that truck to haul milk. Laabs hired a carpenter from Greenwood, Wisconsin, to build a garage so that the milk truck would start in the winter.  Notice the big garage door the next time you drive by. 

Anyway, Norb was a toddler: the garage must have been built the summer of 1946. The construction took the entire summer.   First, a concrete floor was poured and to pour it, gravel was hauled in to level the site. Stakes were pounded into the gavel and binder twine was stretched between the stakes. That way, when concrete was poured, the floor would be level. 

Toddler Norbert, running around the construction site, tripped on the taut twine and he broke his arm. He was such a cute toddler. It was diagnosed a green twig bend. His arm was placed in a plaster cast for about six weeks.   Norb still sat in a high chair. Mom and Dad took him to Phillips to have the cast removed after six weeks and brought him back to the old place where the garage was being built. They must have gotten back around dinner time. They put Norb in his high chair to give him supper.   He cried. He wouldn’t eat. Then Mom retrieved the plaster cast that had been removed earlier. She slipped it back on Norb’s arm. Talk about a happy camper. He ate.   Isn’t it amazing that that tiny cast is now about 70 years old? Mom didn’t throw much away. 

Kristin - Is the next one going to be Mariann’s braids? Because I’ve already seen them.

Alisa - It looks like plaster - like the remnants of someone's cast. Only too clean to be a cast that was worn in accordance with a doctor's recommendations, so I'm going to make up a story: Someone broke a bone or got badly injured and went to the hospital, was treated and the bones were set and cast, and then when the injured person got home they immediately cut off part of their own cast because they didn't like the way it restricted their mobility and/or it prevented them from completing a necessary task.  Like if you broke your ankle and the cast prevented you from comfortably bending your knee, you would immediately carve it down a little so you could sit comfortably in your favorite chair, right? At least that is what I would do, so I think that's completely reasonable. -

Dennis - I found the cast cleaning out the bench area by the furnace.  I don't remember ever seeing it before.  Mariann's story is quite accurate.  I remember running through the garage with Norb, I think I had his hand, so was probably the cause of the accident.  I don't remember the high chair incident but I do remember being in the reception area when Norb walked out of the doctor’s office and the people in there reacting to this little guy with the cast on his arm.  The only other corrections to the story is the truck that Dad had at the time.  It couldn't be a 1950 for because they were not made in 1948.  It must have been another truck but I don't remember what it looked like.  The carpenter's name was Gus Lindberg, and I remember him being from Loyal, Wisconsin.