Memories of my friend Antone Fred “Swede” Franson

by Bob Snidow

In the spring of 1941, our parents divorced. My brother, Jerry, and I had been students at the rural Gee school. Our mother and two sisters moved to Jamesport temporarily, and lived with our grandmother, Grace Marlin, until mother could rent her own home.

Our first rental home was owned by Bill Hutch. It was located in the northern part of Jamesport. If I recall correctly, the rent was $5 a month. A short time later, Grandma Marlin moved to a home located one block west of ours.

Mother, along with me and my two young sisters, Shirley and Annabelle, lived in a three room house. Furniture was sparse. It consisted of a kitchen table and chairs, a kitchen cupboard and a four-burner oil cook stove. We had two beds, a divan and chair. But we had no heating stove, and winter was approaching.

I’d seen a heating stove through the glass window of a commercial building, but I couldn’t locate the owner or find out any information about the stove. After about the third attempt, I found the owner inside his store. This nice gentleman was Fred “Swede” Franson.

I asked about the stove. Swede told me it belonged to the local grocery store owner, Charley Moore, but he didn’t know if the stove was for sale or not.

The very next day this same man, Swede, backed up his Model T Ford truck to our front door. Along with the stove was a new stove pipe, elbows, collars, and stove pad to protect the linoleum covered floor. Swede was a strong man and somehow managed to get the heavy stove off his truck to the ground and then got the stove into the living room.

This kind-hearted gentleman made if possibly for our family to have a warm home. He never would say how he came about acquiring the stove from Charley Moore, so we always figured that Swede bought the stove along with the new stove pipe and other accessories. Swede became a good friend of our family thereafter.

His next generous gesture was to give me a pair of leather boots. They were black, with real high tops, and were a little too small. But I was so proud of the boots. I wore them to school even with my feet hurting.

Swede also built me a two wheel cart using a pair of cultivator wheels and axle. The cart box was wooden with removable end gates. It had a pair of extended handles which I could use to either push or pull the cart. I hauled every commodity in my proud cart, including groceries, corn cobs, coal, etc. I can’t recall what ever happened to the cart that I was so very proud of, but I used it for several years.

Swede was a sheep shearer by trade. He also repaired wind mills, well pumps, etc. Whenever he needed help, he would call me to go to jobs with him. Swede would climb to the top of the windmills wearing a large work belt with a rope attached which extended to the ground. When he needed tools, like blow torches, etc., I would tie the requested items to the rope, then Swede would pull them to the top of the windmill platform.

While Swede sheared sheep, I would gather up the fresh sheared wool off the ground and fill a square box which was pre-fixed with binder twine pieces. I’d tie up the wool in about 20 pound bales. These went into tall burlap bags.

These large bags were used to transport the sheared wool to the market place, which was Farmers Produce in Jamesport, where the wool was sold by the pound.

Swede was known to have sheared up to 100 head of sheep per day and earned 35 cents per head. His clothing would get real slick from handling the oily wool fleeces.

Swede brought our family an electric radio which he placed on a shelf near the ceiling of our living room. The aerial wire ran through the wall and extended to a tall board attached to the side of the house. This radio was our entertainment, especially on Saturday nights spent listing to the Grand Ole Opera.

My graduation class of 1950 went to Colorado Springs for their senior trip. Just a few days before departure, Swede approached me on the street corner and asked me if I planned on going.

My reply was “Well, I had been thinking about it.”

He pulled out his wallet and handed me a $20 bill. Now that I had a total of $20 to my name, I decided to make the trip with my other classmates. Transportation and lodging was provided by the class treasurer, so all I had to worry about was a week worth of meals. Now I had $20 to buy food with, thanks to Swede.

On the bus to Colorado Springs, I sat with my good friend Mary Margaret Eads. She said she owed me $4.50 for gas for her car and wanted to pay her bill. Her parents, Roger (Pod) and Edith Eads were lenient about allowing their daughter to drive the family car around town. It was a 1949 Ford, which never stopped rolling after she had picked up her friends, Neva Wheeler and Dixie Lee Pliley. This account receivable – added to my $20 Swede money – gave me a grand total of $24.50. I made it work for a week.

While I was in high school, I missed a ball thrown to me and accidently broke a window in the janitor’s quarters. I was told by the school officials that I would have to replace the broken glass. Not knowing where and how I was going to get this mission completed, I went to my good friend Swede.

I asked him if he had any pieces of glass. He asked me what dimension I needed. He began to measure and then stopped and asked me why I needed it. I told him it was to replace one I broke at school. Then he asked me if any one else ever broke out any windows at school and did they have to replace the glass.

My answer was “Yes” to the first question and “No” to the second. Swede quit measuring the glass and said, “You come and go with me.”

We were headed for the café where one of the teachers always ate his supper at this very hour. Swede jumped on this teacher. He informed the teacher that whenever the other kid who accidently broke a glass paid for the replacement, at that time I would replace the one I broke but not until the other party had replaced his.

This scared me out of my skin — but I never did hear any more about replacing the broken glass. Swede liked all kids and would not allow any child to be taken advantage of.

In the summer of 1961, we had a flood in most of Daviess County. The waters were high and did lots of damage. The U.S. government owned some grain bins (2,000 bushel) located near Gallatin. The bins got two feet of water in them. The government elected to sell the bins as is, where is.

Duck Snyder, our state representative for Daviess County, purchased one of the grain bins and asked Swede to get the bin to his farm located east of Jamesport.

Mr. Snyder told Swede to hire someone to help dismantle the bin and re-construct it out on his farm.

This task took us seven days to mix concrete, pour the round footing and lay con-blox to erect the bin on.

After we finished, Mr. Snyder came to inspect his grain bin. He was very satisfied with his bin; however, when he asked Swede how much he owed him, Swede told him it was $5 per day for seven days: $35 for Swede and the same amount for me.

Mr. Snyder said, “You surely don’t charge $5 per day for the kid do you?”

Swede informed Mr. Snyder that the kid did a good job and had most certainly earned the same wage. He then paid us each $35, the most money I had ever had at any one time.

Swede became a regular visitor at our home on Sunday afternoons. He would come to our place and bring hamburger, buns and oftentimes ice cream. Mother would make gravy after frying the hamburger. This was a real treat for us.

Later in Swede’s life, he sold his two old buildings to the city of Jamesport and purchased a small home located just north of the city park. In due time, he sold that small residence and moved into an elderly lady’s home as a paid boarder.

The lady’s name was Myrtle Wells. By this time, Swede had only a limited social security income, and most of that went to pay his board bill.

Later, Swede came to Gallatin to see me. He left me $300 and said the money was to bury him with. I put his $300 into a savings account and when he died not too long after, the savings had earned $19, making a total of $319 available for his funeral service and burial.

Apparently, he had previously informed the Oris Roberson funeral home of his final plans. I received a telephone call from the funeral home regarding his death.

At the time, I was attending a bank meeting at the Lake of the Ozarks. I came home, got one of my suits, white shirt and necktie and took the clothes to the funeral home. I told Oris Roberson that I wanted a less expensive casket, but did want Swede put into a good vault with a top plate. I made arrangements for a burial plot in the I.O.O.F Cemetery in Jamesport. His total funeral expense was a little less than $1,000. Geraldine and I paid the difference.

We visit his grave and take flowers each Memorial Day.

I once asked Swede how he located in Jamesport. He told me he was riding a freight train and it came through Jamesport. He jumped off the train and ended up living there the rest of his life.

My two young sisters gave Swede the nickname of Phobee as they always addressed him by this name.

The only personal effects Swede owned at his death were an old hand bag, a hair clipper and his old homemade walking cane. I still have the cane as a memory of Swede, along with lots of other fond memories of this kind gentleman.