"There are Bumps in the Road… You Gotta Learn to Get By Them"

I was born in Garretson South Dakota in 1926, April 24th, 1926, and in those days, most in a small town you were born at home, most of those small towns didn’t have hospitals, so I was born at home and… I guess it wasn’t an unhealthy thing it’s just, that’s the way they did it. I would say that I was inspired, number one by my Father. In those days you didn’t have an education; you just kinda got into a business and learned it, and he was a good retailer and he came from a family that his Dad had come from Sweden and was a farmer up by Braham Minnesota, and his Mother had come from Germany because that was when people were coming over here. He just had the incentive, he never finished high school, but he was a bright man and he just, you know, would drive ahead. I worked with him a lot and I was very impressed with him always. My Dad had a what they call a general store there, and he sold groceries in it, some hardware, I don’t know if he had any ready to wear1 really, but he might of. In 1930 we got into a really quite a severe depression in the country, and people would come and, he had a charge system that was just a little slip of paper or a little envelope that each person would have and they would sign that when they got something, and then they’d come in once a month, and they would pay their bill, and they didn’t send out statements or anything in those days. Nobody could pay their bills and so I think about 1931 or 32 he just had to close the store cause he couldn’t get by any

Fred Dahl with his siblings Betty, and Roger. (1928 & 1930)

more. We moved from there to Austin Minnesota where he became Assistant Manager of an A&P store2 which is also a grocery store, but it was a bigger grocery store there. And A&P is still around in the eastern part of the country I think, but what's called the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, and they were across the nation at that time. That's where I started school 1st and 2nd grade. Then we moved to Pipestone Minnesota because my Dad became the manager of the A&P store in Pipestone Minnesota. And we got there and that's where I started 3rd grade. And Pipestone Minnesota is an interesting town, and I really enjoyed a lot of activities there, and I liked athletics and such. I think it was when I was going to go into 7th Grade I was diagnosed with Rheumatic Fever3 at the time, not romantic fever but Rheumatic Fever (chuckles). And the doctor told me I was gonna have to be in bed for about a year, and so they put me in bed, put a cast on my left leg, which was only a cast of tape rather than just cement or something but they put a weight on the end of the leg and so my leg was up in the air. It was the right thing to do because after that I never had any problems with that leg at all, but the problem I had with it was getting back in school. That next fall I was one year behind so everybody else was in 8th grade, and I had missed the 7th grade, but in order to stay with them I had to take the courses I missed, I had taken some courses at home.

My dad had bought a store of his own and A&P closed the store that they had there so he took that store over too, so he had two grocery stores downtown, and he was at work on a Sunday which they weren’t open on Sunday but he was up there working December 7th 1941, that’s when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and I had to run up there and he wouldn’t answer the

Fred Dahl's Navy Portrait (1943)

phone on Sunday when they were up there working cause the store wasn’t open, so I had to run up and tell him what happened, and then from then on I wanted to get into the service. 
The Navy recruiter came to town once a month and I would go up and say "I want to get into the Navy", I didn’t tell my folks I was going up to see him. He told me that my eyesight wasn’t good enough to get in there and you have to have good vision and I thought “What can I do?” he said “Well I don’t know, I’ve heard that eating carrots, and drink carrot juice”, I don’t think they have carrot juice anymore but they had carrot juice at that time, “that can help your vision”. So I thought “oh ok I’ll do that”, so I ate carrots everyday, and drank carrot juice everyday. And he came once a month and I would go up and see him, he was at the courthouse, and I’d go up and see him and take the test, and I didn’t improve very much. But one thing that I noticed, he had the same chart all the time, so I just got one line and I wrote that down, looked at the next line, wrote it down, I got so I knew the whole (chuckles) the whole chart all the way down, and I hadn't taken any tests then I just said I wasn’t ready yet. He came one time and I, and this was about November and I said “I think I’m ready to take your test now, if you would like to give it to me.”, and he said “Sure let's try it.”. So I went through the thing and fortunately it was the same chart , and he said “My Gosh that carrot stuff, that’s incredible! you have regular 20/20 vision, you don’t even need your glasses”,he said “If you get your Folks’ permission, then you have to go up to Fort Snelling”.

Moving on in Life

When I got home and settled [after the war] I did want to go to the University of Minnesota, and when I went there to apply they said “that’s just fine”, and I had, I had seen all of the Western part of the United States which I’d never been to before you know what in those days you were lucky to get out of your state. And all the mountains and the forests and they just fascinated me, and they still fascinate me today when I see these trees, these beautiful trees just as they are today. And so I decided I guess what I would like to do is to go into forestry. So when I went to the University I told them I wanted to go into forestry school and they said “that’s fine”. I took some tests and they were fine and so then I got into forestry school.  I just did the first year in forestry and we had about 2,000 graduates that year, that had been there prior to that, and of those 2,000 graduates less than 100 got a job in forestry. I thought “oooh I can’t do this (chuckles), this option is not for me, I gotta be able to get a job when I get out”. So then I decided to drop out of forestry and got into business school but I had to make up a lot of classes that I didn’t have and so I had to go to summer school for 3 summers to get caught up with the rest of the people, and then I graduated in uh, I started in 1946, graduated in 1950 with the people that also had come then. And I had good grades in class so I thought “Well I want one of the better jobs” because by the time I graduated I had met my wife, Lee and we had a boy, Rick. We just had expenses that were gonna have to have, and the average job in those days was about $185 a month that you got payed. So I wanted at least $200 a month, and there was only few that were there, jobs that were available at that time. The first job I had was at Kickernick, and I thought “Oh I think that’s a cereal company, I know that because that’s part of Kellogg's or something like that you know Kickernick” and so I went and applied for the job and that was $200 dollars a month and it was a sales, oh they wanted you to travel around the United States and what they sold was women's lingerie, I thought “oh I’m not gonna get involved in the women’s lingerie” but the only other job I could get was about $180 a month. She made me take the job, my wife did, so I took it and I wound up traveling the whole United States by train cause they didn’t like to have you fly, that was a little more dangerous in those days and our President didn’t like the flying thing so I covered the whole United States for quite a while then became assistant sales manager then I became sales manager, selling lingerie (chuckles). 

My wife she never went to college, but she had the same education I had cause she studied everything that I had, every book, she never went to college but she was a bright, bright lady, and she just knew everything, she probably got better grades than I got, she would just study those books all  of the time. And she wanted me to go to get involved in a business where she could get involved in it too, and I thought “oh man I don’t know”. The most important thing was getting the kids educated cause we were married 4 years we had 3 boys. We moved to Northfield and bought a house down there, she started working for the department store down there, and I just thought “well I might as well, we can try it” and we had saved enough money for the kids to get through college and I wasn’t sure that this was gonna work at all and, but my golly I gotta tell you she had a talent. We got involved in it we opened one store in Northfield and remolded a whole store that we rented. When she died she was only 60 years old I think when she died, and we had at that time

The Dahl House was a women's clothing company started by Fred Dahl and his first wife Leona

between 30 and 40 stores in Minnesota Iowa and Wisconsin, we were just starting into North Dakota and South Dakota. But after when she passed away it just kind of collapsed, I mean, it was her talent that we missed also myself I just missed her so bad that I just couldn’t do it anymore. Most of the stores we sold to Christopher and Baines and some of them are still there you know, and they had been the Dahl House4.

I would say the biggest obstacle was, well probably loosing my wife that’s a tremendous loss you know, especially when you operate as a team, and you're just together all the time. And I think it is a big important thing that if you have an obstacle the important thing is to face it, and you know nothing ever runs smooth, no matter what you’re doing, and it’s just there are bumps in the road and you gotta accept those and you gotta learn how to get by them and so far, I've done a good job I think. Now Marlene, she’s been a really blessing for me right now and just she’s a wonderful wonderful lady. We just, we seem to get along really well, we’ve been married 13 years now and we still haven’t had an argument so I’m not sure about it, I don’t quite understand that but (chuckles) it’s alright I guess. I think that the biggest lesson that I learned through life, from life, and continue to be learning it is never look back. Things can happen and it can ruin your life and you can just look back and just stay on it so much and you know you can’t just get away from them but I think those things happen and when they happen it’s not necessarily your fault but they happen, and it’s part of life, and you gotta look forward and be positive and try to charge ahead is the way I feel. They say there’s 3 parts of life, the beginning and there’s the life and the end and everybody has all 3 of those and uh some of them have longer areas, and times than others.  

This story was facilitated by Andrew Budenske, and Diana Avalos.

Footnotes:

1: Ready to Wear: Factory made clothing, made in standardized sizes. Ready to Wear is sold in a variety of stores all across the world.

2: A&P Store: The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P) is a chain of supermarket stores, the first store opened in 1912. Today they are known for groceries and liqour, and are mostly found in the Eastern United States. The company used to be nation wide but started closing stores around the 1930's, and recently announced the closing of several stores in the Eastern United States.

3: Rheumatic Fever: Rheumatic Fever is an inflammatory disease that can involve the heart, skin, brain, and joints. Bed rest is the traditional treatment for Rheumatic Fever.

4: The Dahl House: A clothing store started by Fred and Leona Dahl in Northfield MN. The company expanded into 5 midwestern states, and primarily sold women's ready to wear clothing.