Chapter 26

April 1964, two months later

The olive drab Plymouth pulled into the Olson & Dad, Inc., parking lot at mid-morning. A grim faced major got out of the passenger seat carrying a canvas briefcase and headed for the office door. He was followed by his driver and associate, a staff sergeant. They appeared to be about the same age and their uniforms were crisp.

They went into the office, removed their hats, and approached Betty, the receptionist and payroll secretary, “Hello, I’m Major Dungey. We need to speak with Mr. or Mrs. Karl Olson. Are they here?”

She was not used to army brass standing by her desk and was impressed with their uniforms and military demeanor. It never dawned on her why two army men would be visiting.

“Hi. Ah, Karl—Mr. Olson—went with the trucker to Polarcat. He won’t be back ’til day after tomorrow,” Betty said. “Olga—Mrs. Olson—is out in the shop. I’ll go find ’er. Can I tell her what this is about?”

“Just tell her we need to speak with her, please,” Dungey said.

Betty got up and walked to the production area. Knowing the two army men would be watching her, she gave a little extra sway to her backside.

Olga

Betty came up to me in the shop and interrupted my conversation with Mike while he was repairing a drill press. “Olga, two army men are in the office and wanna talk to you. Sounds important. One of ’em’s gotta lot of brass on him.”

My heart almost stopped. “Oh, dear God . . . please no.” I ran to the office. “I’m Olga Olson, what’s wrong? Is it my boy?”

“Hello, ma’am. This is Sergeant Thortsensen and I’m Major Dungey. We’re with the Army Quartermaster Procurement Office.”

I put my hand on Betty’s desk to steady myself. My heart started to beat again, and I felt the color return to my face. They didn’t seem to realize what I was going through.

The major said, “We’re here to conduct an unannounced inspection of your operation. We need to know if your firm can qualify to be added to the bidder’s list for making a new army entrenching tool. Your application says your firm made the prototypes, but that doesn’t mean anything when it comes to mass producing what we need.”

“Well, welcome,” I said. “But I didn’t know we applied to be on any such list.”

“Someone from here did or we wouldn’t be here. Can we find a place to talk?” Dungey asked. He seemed to be in a hurry to get the visit over with. He probably was not excited to have drawn this assignment to a Podunk little town and small manufacturer.

I pointed the way to our small break room. “Ya, go through that door and have a seat. I’ll put on a fresh pot of coffee. Then I’d like to have a couple of our guys join us. Is that okay?”

“Whatever you need to do,” Dungey said impatiently.

After I poured their coffee and introduced Mike and Utoft, Major Dungey began to ask questions from an official looking checklist he took out of his briefcase. Mike was covered with grease and oil from helping repair the fork lift, but Utoft looked his usual well-kept self.

I was still a little shook up that the military was here and sorry there hadn’t been a warning about them coming. I would have worn something better than my baggy house dress, and I certainly would have fixed my hair some way other than just in a bun.

“Okay, I need to confirm how many employees you have. I’m not sure the application information is correct.”

“Well, it varies,” I said. “Right now we have forty-one full time. Mike here thinks we need to add three more, and we have between twelve to fifteen part time, depending on the work load.”

“That’s all?”

“Ya.”

“How many facilities do you have? It says on your application you only have one. How can that be?”

“Facilities? Ah, you mean—ah, oh no—I mean yes, just this one plant.”

“Only one.” He made a note on his list.

“I need to see your lost-time injury file.”

“Don’t have one,” I said.

“What do you mean? Don’t you keep a file on that?”

“I would if we ever had some bad injuries. You can check with Federated Insurance. We’ve never had one.” I raised my chin a bit. His attitude was starting to tick me off.

“Unbelievable. Good.” The major nodded as he looked at his list. “What union are your employees associated with?”

“None. Our people voted that down. Twice,” Mike said.

“Oh, is that so? Hard to believe. All right. How many minorities do you have employed?”

“No one under twenty-one works in the plant,” I said. “We do have some younger gals in the office.”

Utoft leaned over and whispered in my ear. “He means other races, Olga, not how old people are.”

Embarrassed, I tried to make a joke of it. “Well, Mike here, he’s Irish. The only thing he ever did right was to sire my wonderful future daughter-in-law.”

The major didn’t smile.

“Our best welder is a Sioux Indian from Shakopee,” Mike said. “We call ’im Chief. He’s a real artist with a torch. Karl set him up in a corner of the shop so he could work on his metal sculptures in his off time.”

“It’s very disrespectful to call a Native American, ‘Chief,’” Thorstensen said.

“Well, hell, that’s what he wants to be called. He signs his art that way,” Mike retorted. “You should see his wife. She’s the most beautiful woman—other than my wife, daughter, and Olga, of course—that I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

“Ya, we sponsored her in the Mrs. Minnesota pageant two years ago,” I said. “She came in third. She’s pretty shy. She has the stuff to strut, but she wouldn’t do it like the fancy ladies she was up against. For the talent part, she displayed her Indian bead work on clothes she made.”

“Enough of that.” Dungey held up his hand. “Is he the only minority you employ?”

“Well, if you count part-timers, we have two Mexicans,” Mike said.

“You mean Chicanos. Why are they only part-time?” Thorstensen asked with a scowl.

“Rita and Jose Sanchez—they call themselves Mexican, by the way—they’re Shumacher Farms’ hired hands,” Mike said. “They live in Shu’s uncle’s house. They work here three days a week in the winter and full time on the farm in the summer. They’re a couple of our best part-timers. We have a lot of part time farmers here in the winter, and the same with teachers in the summer. What the hell’s wrong with that?”

I put my hand on Mike’s arm again. “You should see their oldest boy, Richy, play baseball,” I said. “He stays overnight with us when he has Saturday practices and Sunday games. Karl gave ’im the nickname BP for Border Patrol . . . nothing gets by him. He’s the best shortstop our town team ever had. Now he stitches BP on the side of all his caps.”

Thorstensen rolled his eyes and muttered something that sounded like “racist.” Then he said, “Don’t you have any other races employed?”

“Other races?” Mike said. “Like which ones? The only people that live within twenty miles of here are Krauts and Towheads, ’cept me of course, the lone Mick, the Chief, and Shu’s Mexicans. What do you expect us to do, import some Chinamen and guys from the Congo, or maybe some of them English sonsabithches or commie Ruskies?”

I put my hand on Mike’s arm again.

The major tried to keep a business-like demeanor, but he also seemed anxious to get the meeting over with. He musta thought the meeting was a waste of time. He didn’t continue down his checklist. “That about wraps it up. Thank you for your time.” He stood, and Thorstensen followed his lead.

I glanced at Utoft and Mike. It was obvious we had failed their short test.

“Just a minute,” Utoft said. “Anything on the list of yours about the percentage of women employed or female ownership?” His voice mirrored his disgust. “Aren’t they what you people would call a minority?”

The two army gentlemen stopped and turned to look at Utoft.

“Olga here is one-third owner of this place. Counting part-timers, about thirty percent of her employees are women,” Utoft said with a stern look. I guess army uniforms didn’t intimidate him. The rest of us followed his lead.

I said, “I’m surprised you didn’t want to see the production area. You could eat off the floor back there. You didn’t ask to see any of the stuff we make and you didn’t ask for our customers’ phone numbers so you could ask them if they’re satisfied with our work.”

Mike said, “Why don’t you talk to some of our employees, see how they like working here?”

I said, “Seems you guys are more interested in what people are instead of who they are. I don’t know if we want or need your business. Our other customers don’t feel the need to tell us how to run our own company. They judge us on the quality, value, and on-time delivery of our products,” I took a deep breath to settle down. “We do things right or we lose their business. It’s called competition. We’re plenty busy anyway. Our son must have made the application to do business with the government without telling us. I’ll let him know the whole thing was a waste of time.”

The major rubbed his chin.

Mike asked, “Aren’t you the guys who are buying those hundred-dollar hammers and those two-hundred-dollar toilet seats? I’ll tell you what, this outfit wouldn’t screw the taxpayers like that.”

The major was shifting his weight from side to side, and his face got redder at every comment.

Utoft asked, “Sir, do you happen to know who designed the new entrench­ing tool?”

“No, I don’t. Does it matter?”

Utoft nodded toward me. “Her son designed it. He’s the founder and part owner of this company.”

The major looked past us. “So why isn’t he here?”

“Because he was drafted. He’s in the army . . .Vietnam.”

The major’s face went slack. He looked at the floor for a moment, then motioned for Thorstensen to sit back down at the pinkish Formica table.

Shu

We made it a point to have lunch with Pope at least once a month. This time the group was made up of MK, Ozzie, Trudy, and me. We were at the Steak and Ale on I-494. Pope was there alone.

“Of course things could be better,” Pope said, replying to MK’s question about Ursula. “But, I think she is making progress. She is home most of the time now and the doctors believe they have configured the proper combina­tion of drugs to keep her functional.”

MK reached out and held Pope’s arm. “You dear man, you have the patience of a saint. Describe ‘functional.’”

“Well, if you observed her, you would be able to tell immediately that she is heavily drugged. She has large pupils and she is lethargic. She does not have the best hygiene nor care how she dresses, but her rages are under control. She agreed to go to mass with me the other day.” Pope ran his hand through his hair. “Please, can we talk about something else? Ozzie, where’s Barb?”

“She’s a marketing maniac. Man, is she into it. Today she has appoint­ments with feature writers for two different newspapers. She wants to convince ’em our concept and grand opening are worth a story. She’d have been here but the appointments were hard to get in the first place, and she was worried they might cancel if she tried to reschedule.” He handed an envelope to Pope. “Here, she wanted me to give you this card for Ursula.”

“Thank her for me. That was very thoughtful of her.”

MK said, “Ozzie, you’ve got a great partner in her. Lucky you.”

“Man, don’t I know it,” Ozzie said.

MK said, “Shu, I hear you guys are building another turkey building. Gonna corner the market pretty soon?”

“Ya, but Trudy convinced the rest of us this would be our last new turkey building,” I said, patting Trudy on the shoulder. “She thinks, and we all agree, we shouldn’t put all our eggs in one turkey basket. We’re gonna go into raising high quality beef cattle in addition to turkeys.”

“Tell ’em about your dad,” Trudy said.

“Oh, yeah, Ma and him are in Arizona—Apache Junction—for a month with his brother. It’s the first real vacation they’ve ever had. He told me before they left if it weren’t for me pushing to quit that damn dairy business and go with minimum tillage they wouldn’t have been able to go. Damned if he didn’t give me a little hug. I don’t remember ever gettin’ one from him before.” I felt kinda stupid when I had to wipe away a tear at the Steak and Ale. To change the subject I asked MK, “So what do you hear from your soldier boy?”

“He’s enjoying his assignment as much as circumstances will allow. He likes the people he’s instructing and says it’s a beautiful country. While he’s teaching them how to run the equipment, they’re building a short air strip for small planes and short take-off cargo planes. It’s near a little place called Chu Lai, which is near a town called DaNang. Some of the other advisors in his outfit are helping improve the port facilities in DaNang. It’s just a little fishing village.”

Trudy asked, “Are you gonna be able to see him before he gets out?”

“We’ve written back and forth about maybe meeting in Guam or the Philippines if he gets a leave,” MK said. “Sure hope that works out.”

Of course, she did not know about Mai Hue Quy.