550 / and, perhaps, drive a nail here and there

putterings 549 < 550 > 550a index

puttering among the books...
and, perhaps, drive a nail here and there

Elise M. Rushfeldt (1886-1973)
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other writings / non-exhaustive list

“See-Saw,” by Elise M. Rushfeldt (transcription)

Life is but a see-saw after all. Someone tilts the seesaw up toward happiness; someone at the other end lags down in the shadows. Someone accepts; someone sacrifices. It is the law of see-saw.
Ma Drury wanted to move to California, near Long Beach, where Jennie lived; now that her chickens had fluttered from the home nest and married — all married except Ethel, her deaf child. But Pa Drury loved Minnesota.
“Minnesota is all right for the young people,” Ma Drury said. “But you and me, Pa, are getting old. In California you can go out in the middle of the winter, and not feel as if the frost, like a crow, stood waiting to snap the nose and ears off of you.”
Uncomplainingly she had worked hard all her days; brought up six children. She felt as if they had earned California comfort and peaceful declining years. She had always idealized California. Her vision of it was as glowing as any real estate man's word pictures.
“Um,” murmured Pa, dryly, without looking up from his solitaire hand.
He had homesteaded in Minnesota, built his own cabin, also he had struggled with a tree-claim on the prairies. Then he had moved to town, and, assisted by Ma, had nursed an infant business to life. He knew everybody for miles around. All the farmers banked faith in Pa’s good will and credit.
“Mebbe we ought to do the kitchen over for you to make it easier. Like you said Jennie had it in her kitchen in California.” Even the kitchens in California were modern and labor-saving and wonderful, according to Ma.
But Ma shook her head at the compromise.
“And I guess we ought to put in a real furnace in place of all them stoves,” went on Pa, hopefully. California suggested heat. But he was willing to heat the house to California temperature.
“We won’t spend any more money on the house, Pa Drury. You and me are going to leave it and move to California.” Ma spoke up with the alarmed decisiveness of one whose entrance ticket to a happy playground was being questioned.
Pa sighed. It was useless to suggest more compromises. Why try for another paradise when, like Pa, you have found one that suits you?
He had not been to California. He wouldn’t waste the money. Not that he had grudged Ma the money to take her to California for two winters — not a cent of it. But he couldn’t think of spending all that money on himself for something that he was sure he wasn’t going to enjoy. He was like a fish out of water away from home.
His Elysium consisted in going to the store daily and puttering among the books, and coming to see that the clerks were giving good service, and greeting old friends. He liked to wander over to the Farmers’ and Merchants’ Elevator to see the loads of potatoes and grain come in. He had built that elevator and had readjusted a part of it to a potato cellar when the potato crops became more important than the wheat crops.
Then, when the day’s work was done, he liked to go to the rambling old house that he had built for Ma and the children, garden a little, and, perhaps, drive a nail here and there. Afterwards came one of Ma’s good hot suppers. Then a comfortable evening at home with Ma opposite and the radio turned on.
But Ma disliked the cold; considered the rambling old house a slave driver.
The next year Ethel, her last unmarried daughter, deaf from childhood, gaily and defiantly married Fred Edmonds, a young man from Minneapolis.
Pa considered: “It’s quite a responsibility for you two kids marrying like this — Ethel being deaf.”
Fred laughed. “I know I can’t do without Ethel. It isn’t a responsibility. It’s lots of fun.” The he went over to Ma and kissed her gaily. “That’s for being Ethel’s mother,” he said.
Afterwards Pa told Ma, “Young Fred has only his salary. Nothing saved ahead. But it don’t seem to worry hin none.”
“He’s a nice boy and I like him,” Ma agreed. “But it as you say: those kids don’t feel any responsibility.”
They both understood the see-saw of responsibility, someone had to take it, and bear down on his end, to balance other lightheads. Some one had to plod along heavily under the world’s work.
—
Some time later Ma suggested: “Don’t you think we better advertise the house and business for sale, Pa? ain’t as if there were any more ties holding us here.” Pa shook the stove vigorously and said something about property values going up if they but waited a bit.
“If we don’t go when we can, something’s bound to turn up so we can’t.” Ma was cryptic. She had learned something about life and wishing.
She kept him in mind of her desire in various way When they took in coal she would say, “Think what saving of fuel it would be!” When they ate oranges for breakfast she mused, “Your own oranges grow on trees in California. You can see ’em.”
She stopped talking of California briefly during th interval when Ethel's baby was born.
“I thought mebbe they raise better babies in California,” suggested Pa.
“Um, no. Couldn’t be better children than the ones brung up right here,” admitted Ma.
That was after she had returned from Minneapoli where she had gone to see that everything went right with Ethel and the baby.
“They have a nurse girl for the young one now. The named the baby Amos, after you. But they can’t afford a nurse long.”
“How’s young Fred making it?”
She was rather dubious. “Seems to me, too, that they are renting a good sized house considering the amount of Fred’s salary. It’s most as big as this and better furnished. Installment plan. But they are happy.”
Pa nodded his gray head understandingly and said some thing about the see-saw of responsibility.
Another two years went by and Ma was still talking California as urgently as before, but with not quite so much assurance. During the winter the flu had gripped her. Also her teeth had been pulled, and she was waiting for her gums to set before she got her new teeth. She said that she felt miserable and she looked it.
“Pa, ain’t you ever going to decide to go? You promised me years ago. You just got to get up gumption enough to pull up and go to California.” She said it plaintively; not so decisively as of yore.
He stirred uneasily and rattled teh newspaper. He looked at Ma over hi glasses and was moved with pity. “I’m just planning it all out in my mind, Ma figuring on how to make a good deal,” he explained gently. “That’s why I’m waitin’ round a little.”
—
Only a short time after this they received word that Ethel had her second baby, and that she wanted Ma.
“I’m glad I got my new teeth in time.” Ma felt herself hissing the words [43] through the new teeth. “But I don’t suppose Ethel and the baby would care if I came toothless.”
Ma stayed long. A postcard came now and then while the weeks dragged on. A month; two months! Still she had not come home.
Pa, missing her, had plenty of time to think. He remembered how pathetic Ma looked mumbling with toothless gums; and how many years she had been planning on California.
So he came down to action. He advertised the house for sale in the Clarion Weekly.
He did not close the deal, however, for after he had advertised the house and received the offer for his business, Pa felt tired and old and sick. He dragged himself around the house, and did not even go to the store.
Before he had time to recover, there came a special delivery letter to him.
Dear Amos: I am bringing Ethel, Fred and the two babies home me. Ethel isn’t well, and Fred is out of work. Little Amos, a mere baby still, burned himself terribly and his mother could not hear him screaming for help. That was before I came. Since then Ethel worries. She says she feels better with a responsible hearing person me around.
Can’t you find a place for young Fred in the store? He is much better qualified than the young whippersnapper of a clerk that you caught appropriating change from the cashbox.
He felt a great relief and happiness. Almost immediately his health began to mend.
Of course he could find a place for young Fred.
When Ma came home with Ethel, Fred and the babies.
He didn’t even find time to tell her about advertising the house, and the opportunity to sell the business. She discovered it for herself when she was reading the Weekly Clarion by [the] kitchen fire, and heating a milk bottle for the baby at the same time.
Then she said briskly: “Take that advertisement right out of there, Amos. How can you think of such a thing?”
“As if accused of a fault he parried: But you told me to —”
“Well,” mused Ma Drury, getting up to stir the fire and test the milk bottle. “Perhaps, when I die, St. Peter will let me go to live in California a spell. But now we’re going to be too busy. Of course Ethel and Fred will have to stay with us until the children are larger.”
Pa tried to struggle with the contentment that settled down on him. She continued briskly, “And the money for that trip to California, — an expensive proposition traveling nowadays — you’d better hand it to me, Pa, and I’ll use it for remodelling the kitchen and putting in a breakfast nook.”
“Sure now, Ma, it’s just as you say,” agreed Amos, a comfortable feeling of well-being settled down on him.
That night Ma tossed about a little restlessly, and sighed now and then in her sleep. She told herself she was merely somewhat overtired.

Elise M. Rushfeldt, “See-Saw,” in Farm Life 47:4 (Spencer, Indiana; April 1928) : 18, 43
State University system of Florida copy/scan (via google books) : link
same State U system of Florida copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
U Virginia copy and (cleaner) scan : link

Elise Matilda Rushfeldt (1886-1973)

her findagrave : link,
which includes an unsourced obituary [bracketed additions by jm] :
“a former teacher [and superintendent of schools, in Minnesota, ca 1913-14] and a freelance author, died Tuesday in Santa Cruz.
A native of Holly [Hawley!], Minn., she was 86. She had lived in Santa Cruz since 1959.
Miss Rushfeldt was a graduate of University of Minnesota [1911] and received her master’s degree from Columbia University...”

she is listed as an instructor in English (resigned) at Washington State University (Pullman) in June 1927 : link

Both of the author’s parents died in Los Angeles (Canoga Park), where they had moved in 1934 for Mrs. Rushfeldt’s health. Hans Ludvig Rushfeldt (1849–1942) had a store in Hawley, Minnesota. The “See-Saw” story, and also “Over Grandmother’s Patchwork Quilt” (1930) are rooted in the author’s family history and circumstances.

There is much about the Rushfeldt’s (including but not limited to an entire chapter) in
Robert A. Brekken, Journey Back To Hawley (“A history of the early years of Hawley, Minnesota, published for the centennial observance of July 1972”); (June 1972)
pdf viewable at archive.org : link

See also entry for Hans Rushfeldt in Minnesota and Its People Vol. 4 (Chicago, 1924) : 532-533 : link
where we learn something about all of the Rushfeldt children (some in California), and that Rushfeldt was a member of the Retail Hardware Merchants Association!

some other writing (from a not-exhaustive search) —

Shakespeare’s Influence on Fairy Tales
(M. A. Thesis, Columbia U ?; 1916)

An Experiment Testing the Moral Sense of Mentally Retarded
Alice Ross, Charles Wellington Robinson, Elise M. Rushfeldt (1916) ?

“Prince Fee Chooses A Wife”
The Clubwoman’s Magazine 18:10 (Cincinnati, Ohio; October 1926) : 238 : link
“Make Yourself Comfortable”
The Progressive Farmer and Farm Woman 42:44 (Carolinas-Virginia Edition, Birmingham, Alabama; October 29, 1927) :7 : link
concerns itself with modernizing the farm house, also a theme in “See-Saw.”
“Phoebe Ann Falls Into Worldliness”
Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine 86:8 (San Francisco, California; August 1928) : 281-282, 294, 300, 302 : link
“A Coffin for Anna”
The Frontier 9:3 (Missoula, Montana; March 1929) : 185-193 : link
an O. Henry Memorial Award winner, 1929 : link
“A Coffin for Enoch”
The Frontier 10:4 (Missoula, Montana; May 1930) : 291-298 : link
“Over Grandmother’s Patchwork Quilt; Wherein Patsy’s Troublesome Question Is Answered”
The Farmer’s Wife 33:5 (St. Paul, Minnesota; May 1930) : 9, 36, 37 : link

17 August 2025