My mother’s oldest sister was named Hulda. Mom once told me that she could remember how popular Hulda had been when she was in her late teens and early twenties. It’s easy to understand why. Hulda had one of those effervescent personalities that could reach out and make you feel like you really were special. She would smile and look you straight in the eye when she talked to you. You could feel that she was inviting you to share a good laugh with her and be a part of her world. It was easy and fun to take the bait.
With the slightest encouragement Hulda would give you the most infectious laugh. She would reach out and touch your arm, or give you a big hug and tell you how wonderful and clever you were. And when you left her company, you couldn’t help but think that perhaps you really were much more clever and wonderful than you had imagined yourself to be. Hulda really was fun to be around.
Hulda’s first marriage was to “Charlie” of the song, “Seven Fingered Charlie.” She was widowed after around ten years by the incident that is characterized in the song.
Hulda once told me that it was ultimately a blessing that Charlie had died at the time that he did because if he hadn’t, she would probably have eventually collapsed from the stress of having to actually live with him. Apparently, while Charlie was an extremely charming man, he was also a very mischievous cad. He would regularly find himself in trouble with the law. Or drunk. Or doing something illegal. Or both. Or all three. But Hulda had given her vows and made a marital commitment to Charlie. And even though the man she got was not very close to being the man she thought she was going to get, she was determined that she would stick with him, no matter what.
And so for the years that Hulda and Charlie were together, she cooked his meals and took care of things around the house as best she could. She also spent a lot of time wondering where he was and what he was doing. But even with that downside, I’m also sure that Charlie was as good a company for Hulda as she was for him. By all accounts he was as handsome and charming as anyone could be. It’s just that Charlie figured that his handsomeness and charm ought, by themselves, to be enough to get him through the nuisance of making a living and otherwise making his way through life. So Charlie sold his bootleg whiskey, got drunk with the boys, flashed his wad of money around Duluth, Minnesota and generally had a good time.
It’s just that he managed to step on a few mean toes and invade the world of some very tough people. Eventually the inevitable did happen though. One day someone found him along side the road with a crushed skull and his pockets empty. The Duluth police never did find out who had done this to Charlie. My father said they didn’t look very hard because they really didn’t want to know. It was, after all, the 1920’s and there were two very different kinds of authority in the upper Midwest. One known and one unspoken.
It took a few years after Charlie was murdered, but Hulda eventually started feeling like it might be a good idea to try marriage again. She had found another man to spend her life with, only this one was nothing like Charlie. Hulda had been very careful not to make the mistake of falling for a another guy like Charlie. Thus she married Joe, the man I knew as Uncle Joe. His given name was Joseph Dugal. A Frenchman and very much a gentleman.
He had been a successful dry-goods merchant in Duluth for many years. His first wife died relatively early in their life and left three children into the care of Joe. One of the three children died of an extended illness and fever. In those days, diseases like influenza or scarlet fever or typhoid fever were an ever present threat to find their uncaring way into your home and work their indiscriminate and cruel devastation.
By the time Hulda and Joe were married, his two remaining children were grown and on their own. Hulda and Joe moved into a little house on the side of a long, steep hill in Duluth. The house sat thirty or forty feet above the street level and there was a long staircase that one had to negotiate in order to knock on their door. The staircase had fifty or maybe sixty steps with two landings, so that you could twice rest for a minute on the way up to the house. Once there, you would be greeted by Hulda and Joe and their ready and easy smiles and friendly chatter. The neat and tidy house was filled with carefully arranged memories of their lives, both separate and together. On one corner of the sideboard in the living room sat a picture of Charlie, all smiling and handsome.
Evert morning, Monday through Saturday, Joe would make the trip down the long stairs, turn toward downtown Duluth and walk the seven blocks to the store. There he would spent the day greeting the customers, making sure his accounts were up to date and thinking about what inventory and seasonal items should be ordered so that his customers could find things that they were going to need. It was a complicated business. The store had everything from tarpaper to canning lids, pots and pans to hammers and saws. Uncle Joe enjoyed the business very much, and was very good at taking care of it. A responsibility that required ten and sometimes twelve hour days.
On Sunday morning, Uncle Joe and Hulda would come out of the house together, walk down the stairs and turn the other direction. Two blocks away was the Lutheran Church where they would spend the morning. Hulda was pleased with her life.
As much as Hulda was effervescent, Joe was delightful. I can not remember a time when he wasn’t dressed in a white shirt, suspenders, dark gray wool pants and a matching vest. And black boots that had laces to the ankle. I think they are know even today as Madison boots. Hulda was short and small; Joe wasn’t much taller or bigger. But together they could easily make the house feel complete. As they busied themselves making sure the company was comfortable and had the tea or coffee or cookies they wanted, they interacted with each other like the wheels of a clock. They were wonderful. I loved going there, even with having to negotiate those stairs in order to get to the door. The house had a unique smell that, as a young boy, I thought must be the smell of old people. In reality it was the smell of old things that had been cleaned and polished many, many times. I think this may be part of why I like old clocks so much.
Joe and Hulda each had a natural inclination to be friendly and gracious. But in retrospect it was also true that they were better together than the sum of their separate personalities. They loved each other and after years of life together, everything was better, and easier. They made each other happy and it showed. Joe’s extended family was greeted by Hulda with loving kindness, and they accepted her completely.
I often think about Hulda and the two men in her life. They couldn’t have been more different. But Hulda was exactly the same. Whether it was with Charlie or Uncle Joe, Hulda had taken her vows and made a commitment to them, to herself and to her God. She was in it for the long haul.
Marriage is never going to be easy. The notion of living happily ever after, simply isn’t real. It is not at all the way things really are. Standing at the alter and making a vow in front of God and the other witnesses, is just the first time that you make that vow. The reality is, that the way a marriage vow is honored and the only way a marriage will last, is if you think about the meaning of the vow, repeat it every day, and sometimes every minute of every day. When you feel like it and even more importantly, when you don’t.
I think that love that emanates from mutual respect is far more likely to have lasting value than love that comes from physical attraction. It is so important to choose your mate wisely and yet, most of the time it is done at a point in life where wisdom is an elusive virtue. None the less, it is better than relying on luck. But no matter what, know that unless you are faced with abuse, infidelity or abandonment, the consequences of breaking your vows are always more terrible than the consequences of keeping them. Unfortunately I speak from my own experience.
When Uncle Joe died, Hulda had him buried next to his first wife. When Hulda died, we buried her along side of Charlie.