by Peter Razor
I learned basic electrical theory and practice in Korea, and, as a civilian, I studied electricity on my own. I became an electronic technician, journeyman electrician, and hobbied in ham radio for decades. Along the way, I raised three children, Tom, the oldest, Kathy, and Janice the youngest. All three are married and have given me six grandchildren.
The prejudice I encountered all my life compelled me to investigate my heritage, to discover why it seemed so terrible to so many. I studied Indian culture, my roots and, contrary to what I heard as a child, found it beautiful. I learned from reading Frances Densmore’s Chippewa Customs that my great-grandmother, Mrs. Frank Razer of the White Earth Reservation, was well known for her beadwork.
When reading could take me no further, I began talking to tribal elders, learning about traditional customs directly from them. I enrolled as a member of the Fond du Lac Band of Ojibwa, where I learned to dance and participated regularly in powwows. With the guidance of elders and extensive reading, I learned to make traditional garments and musical instruments—from deer-toe jingles and turtle-shell rattles to large drums built from hollowed-out cottonwood stumps.
I felt I finally was reconnecting with my roots, until, one day, my daughter Kathy asked me about trying to find relatives on the reservation. She had graduated from the University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire by then, but she had never met my parents and seldom heard them discussed. The explanation involved my abandonment, the State School, those awful days on the farm. It was hard for me to resurrect those old memories.
Over the years, Kathy occasionally asked about the State School and we talked. I made a list of memories and worked them into a rough sequence. One long day we made call after call trying to find my long-lost friend from my State School days, Dale Cole. We first found Don Cole, Dale’s older brother who still practices law in Montana. Don was fifteen when the family broke up and went straight into farm placement. He directed us to Layton, Utah, where Dale and Faye Cole live. Dale and I renewed a friendship severed nearly fifty years before. Now, the Coles and I spend every winter together in the same town in Arizona and talk often throughout the year.
Janice called State Child Services in St. Paul to see about my childhood records and went with me to get them. Kathy and her husband, Jim Gilles, a schoolteacher who has a deep interest in literature, encouraged me to keep writing and were dependable sounding boards, offering advice as I progressed. I had most of the facts, but I wanted my children and grandchildren to understand what it was like for me then as well—how I talked, what I was thinking. I added dialogue and tried to bring each scene to life, as though I were reliving that childhood.
The State School was closed in 1945. Today only a few of the cottages remain, and the Main Building has been transformed into the Owatonna State School Museum. When I went there to visit, I found among their collections an old 16-millimeter film shot there in 1930s. I sent a copy to Dale and got one for myself. I didn’t expect much from it, but I thought we could at least have some shared relic of our childhoods.
When I watched the video, however, I saw one little boy who looked different from the others in the nursery. The mannerisms were familiar, and the face of that little boy looked like my daughters when they were young. To be certain, I asked my daughter Janice to watch the film. I didn’t tell her of my suspicions; I just watched. When that boy came on the screen, she began to cry, and I knew for sure it was me. That grainy film of myself and one group shot of all the boys at the State School, taken in 1938, are the only childhood pictures I have.
Other than the Main Building and the scattered remaining cottages, the only physical reminder of the early days of the State School is the child cemetery. Nearly two hundred children lie there; some have headstones, but most have only a wooden cross bearing a name. In 1994 the Lutheran Brotherhood placed a guardian angel at the corner of the cemetery to keep watch over the children. I consider myself lucky not to be among those buried there. I finished out my adolescence with the Klugs, who showed me a different life. I went fishing, hunting, swimming, and learned at last what it meant to be boy, without fear of abuse. When I turned eighteen, I went out on my own, into the world.
One of the first things I did with my newfound freedom was to seek out my brother Arnold. I have a photograph of the two of us together taken near Bruce Crossing in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It was a clear, early winter day, so we posed outside in front of the barn on the farm where he was working. We each have one arm wrapped around the other’s shoulder, but my head is tilted away and there is a wide space between us. And it would only widen. He was already drinking, and it was impossible to establish a real relationship with him. Soon I returned to the Twin Cities to look for work. What I see most when I look at that photo now is the hard years ahead, the difficulty I would encounter trying to find out who I was and where I came from. My children have been my joy, and they have saved me. Seeing them grow into happy, healthy adults has helped ease the pain of my childhood, but nothing can ever erase the memories.
I’m still haunted by those seventeen years.
While the Locust Slept was designed and set in type at the Minnesota Historical Society Press by Will Powers and printed by Friesens, Altona, Manitoba. The typeface is Kepler, designed by Robert Slimbach.