A Depression era Nelson Family portrait on their farm in Painted Woods, North Dakota in 1935. left to right: My grandmother Clara Amelia (Nelson) Erickson and my father Ernest Anders Erickson at fourteen years old, with great-grandmother Gertrude "Gerda" (Miljander) Nelson, uncle Anton Tony Nelson and great-grandfather Anders Nelson stand for the photograph at their farm.

Between the farming, hunting and fishing the family ate well. Everyone worked hard and did their part and from all the tales they told me, life was good. Growing up on the Great Plains back then was an unique time for my father. After the war his thoughts began to turn west. Upon completing his degrees at the University of Colorado he moved back to Bismarck then to Minneapolis. By the early 1950s my dad moved out to California to work for Lockheed Aircraft.

My grandmother Clara often said as I was growing up if she never ate venison (deer meat) again, it would not be long enough. She would say "gamey" about the taste of the deer steaks and make a funny face. I always smiled and wondered as a boy what it tasted like. My grandfather would say he liked it. So it went.

Many of the men on both sides of the Nelson & Erickson family worked in the Dakota mines in the off-season. Some took handy-man jobs, one worked in roadhouses as a musician. You did what you had to do to get by and provide for the family. It seems they all did it without too much of a complaint. In the end they did okay.