Ma, Bertha, the eldest daughter, has told me how clever and innovative he was.

Viola, the baby, was only a few weeks old when he took her to her Aunt Helena Golberg's farm near Walcott. It was the dead of winter and North Dakota cold was all around. He fashioned a cover for the grain tank on runners, and some ingenious way of keeping it warm, heated rocks, I've heard, under the cover, and the baby arrived snug and warm, in Bertha's arms.

Shortly after Andrina died, he bought a bolt of cotton material and said, " Bertha, sew the girls some dresses". Ma knew nothing about sewing and had no patterns. There were five girls younger than she to sew for, and of course, herself. 5o, she rolled out the cloth on the dresses ! I would like to have seen those dresses. Bertha developed floor, each one laid down with arms outstretched and lo and behold, into a good seamstress in later years.

The years of the depression were rough and all those years, grandpa brought potatos to his children (the ones who lived in town and couldn't grow enough for their winter's supply). At butchering time, he came with a supply of packaged meat and in the North Dakota winter, no freezer was needed to keep it frozen. As I recall, it was stashed away in the "shanty", outside entrance to the kitchen door.

I'm sure Grandpa Karl had no money, to speak of, but he shared what food he had with his needy childrren's families.

Back to the days after my father, Tolof Dybdahl, died in the 1918 Flu epidemic, I was sometimes sent to the farm to stay with Grandpa and the younger ones: Amanda, Virgie, Clarence and Lillian. At noontime he would come in from the fields and have his dinner which was the big meal of the day. After eating, he would go upstairs and stretch out on the bare floor, and I would go with him. There was an open register to the upstairs from below to allow heat to go above in the wintertime; unfortunately, the sounds of the kitchen workers doing the dinner dishes would come up through the round register. I'll bet I was as popular as the "7 year itch" yelling down through the register (a smart 4 or 5 year old), "you girls are going to have to be quiet, we're trying to sleep up here!"! He would chuckle, knowing how that would go, downstairs.

When I was a teenager, 13 or so, I was allowed to go to the country to visit the aunts and uncles, but Ma would say: "Pa, keep an eye on her!" He took his assignment seriously. If I was at Clarence and Mildred Berg's, and we went to a barn dance, he would hear of it and bright and early the next morning, here would come Grandpa Berg to take me to his farm (where no one went to dances). I would look at Mildred and Clarence, imploringly and they would come and get me during the week, saying they needed me to care for their children, while they tended to their other work. So, off I'd go, then Friday or Saturday night, off to another barn dance and Grandpa would hear of it, early morning he'd be there to get me again. He kept an eye on me !

He was quick to evaluate, ahead of his time, I'd say, in his interests, which included movie cameras, phonograph and his mode of transportation, call it a modern day camper. He fashioned it himself. A flat bed behind a Ford roadster seat, covered over, with sleeping and cooking accomodations inside, a home on wheels. Primitive, but it served him well.

He never married again. Kept his nose to the grindstone and took care of his obligations. Evidently he never forgot his wife, Andrina. In later years, while ill in the hospital, many of the relatives came to see him. He looked up, out of a semi-comotose state and saw my sister, Janice, who must have looked like his wife Andrina. and he said "Andrina"!

A gentleman and a great man. Karl Berg - not many like him.