Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 15

iZ5 Minneapolis Tribune Monday July 271981 3B outhern ffairimieirs make'stubborn' recovery State vTJ 't trsv 4 fi' By Dennis J. McGrath Staff Writer Minnesota Lake, Minn. There is an eerie look to southern Minnesota. Spread throughout soybean fields are dozens, sometimes hundreds, of withering corn stalks. Etched against the flat horizon, they resemble scarecrows.

The odd scenery Is the result of farmers' attempts to salvage something, anything, from a disastrous summer. They are trying to rebound from a storm that pelted them and their crops with pea-sized hall and brought winds as strong as 90 m.p.h. down from the Minnesota River Valley. The hall damaged more than 1.5 million acres of crops, mostly corn and soybeans, In 11 counties. The dollar value of those crops, as reported In county applications for federal disaster designation, was $289.9 million, and five counties In the storm's path have yet to apply for aid.

The total loss could be as much as $450 million, or more than a quarter of the total net income Minnesota farmers received in 1979, the latest year for which figures are available. The full extent of the damage won't be known until the crop is harvested. And although it is believed to be the single most destructive storm In the state's history, farmers seem to be making a stubborn recovery. Arland Gregor, for example, lost virtually everything. His farm southwest of Minnesota Lake was directly in the storm's path.

When It was over the fields that had been green with corn and soybeans were black and muddy. The corn stalks were slashed and knocked to the ground, the bushy soybean plants shredded to tiny, bare stems. But within a week Gregor had replanted 900 acres, mostly with soybeans, because they require a shorter growing season than corn. On many farms the plants had broken ground within 48 hours because of the warm and humid weather. Now the fields look lush again.

"The farmers are said Carroll Rock, statistician in charge of the Minnesota Crop Reporting Service. "They know the capacity of the soil and what It can do. They didn't ust sit around and cry about the damage. The total loss looked devastating right away. And there's a loss.

No question about that But It's not as bad as it looked at the time." "A lot of corn (on the fringes of the storm) made a surprising recovery," added Frank O'Connor, agricultural program specialist for the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, which oversees disaster relief. That's the reason behind the scarecrowlike corn dotting the fields. Those stalks slipped through the tillage and planting equipment when soybeans were being planted In the destroyed corn fields. Staff Photos by Donald Black Arland Gregor, with sons Miles, center, and Mark walked through a flooded soybean field. Gregor planted beans In the field after hail ruined a corn crop.

who were hailed out are pegging him to plant corn (that includes their hopes for what little money fixed costs such as rent and machin-they will pull In on the replanted soy- ery) and $375 an acre to plant soybeans. They are sitting and watching beans that were destroyed, Gregor a race between the maturing soy- had to shell out another $39 an acre beans and the first killing frost to put new seed in the ground. 1 1 "If we get a frost around the first And for all the extra costs he'll prob-part of September, my harvest will ably receive less than half his nor-be zero," Gregor said the other day mal revenue. He didn't have hail into his farmhouse. "But If I get by 'til surance because of the cost and he the first of October, then I'll have a figures that when the disaster pay-15-20-bushel-an-acre potential (on ments come in after harvest they'll soybean fields)." only cover the replanting costs.

That's less than half his normal har- "It'll take three years to fully recov- vest. Across most of the rest of the er from this," Gregor said, storm's path, agricultural experts say the same thing as Gregor; Farmers Harlan Marble can't wait that long. were able to get an early-maturing This was supposed to be the first 1- 9 ft soybean crop back in the ground, but year of recovery from last year, at best it will produce half a crop. when two hail storms wiped out 95 percent of his crop. In this June's "What we need now is more sun- storm Marble lost crops, windows in shine," Gregor said, looking out at his house, his machine shed and the clouds and approaching rain.

"If equipment, we get some good sunshine and some good rain In August we can produce "I'm living off what the wife and soybeans, but all that teeters on kids make from babysitting," Marble when we get the frost" said. "A while back I had a lot of machinery and land almost paid for. No matter when the frost hits, Gre- Now it's mortgaged to the full gor already has given up hope of amount." breaking even this year. Marble said that his net worth is "I'm optimistic enough that I hope to about $200,000, but that because his keep the operation Intact" he said, debt load on Jan. 1, 1982, will be but I'm not saying I'm going to make $500,000, his banker will lend him any money.

We're going to take a money to sow next year's crop not loss this year." a cent more. 1 Harlan Marble stood in a soybean field near Good Thunder, Minn. The field has been wiped out two years in a row. Now Gregor and the other farmers In addition to the $382 an acre it cost Crops continued on page 10B Little Falls man, 88, yoost plays accordion, or yokes I if 1 1 1 Troubled economy affects refugees Associated Press Minnesotans opened their arms to Southeast Asian refugees when they first began arriving several years ago. But the times and the economy have brought changes, officials say.

Resettlement agencies say they are having problems finding sponsors for the new immigrants. The administration of President Reagan is threatening to cut programs used by the refugees, and undercurrents of hostility are present. "When it gets down to the nitty-gritty, we're Just like everyone else," said the head of a resettlement agency. "We have an open social service system. But with diminishing dollars, reality has begun to hit." Word of the changed outlook for the Asians is being sent back in letters to the refugees' relatives in camps in Thailand, where some of the Vietnamese Hmong tribesmen and Laotians have waited years to be resettled.

Asians continued on page 4B cents. "If you're going to put me in the paper be sure to put in there that the Bible says there shouldn't be no such a thing as Daylight Saving Time. I read the Bible from the start to the back and I know it yoost as good as a preacher, I guess. The Bible says the sun shall rule the heavens. The big my-yority of the people is against Daylight Savings Time.

Don't you think?" Mattson also had some criticism for women wearing pants, telling them that the Bible says they shouldn't dress like men. But when the women start complaining about his preaching he shifts gears and starts playing music again. A dance tune slides to a stop and Mattson rests his hands on top of his instrument's bellows to ask a final riddle: "Why is life like a deck of cards? "Because when you're In love, It's hearts. When you're engaged, it's diamonds. When you're married, it's clubs.

And when you die, it's spades." "I think we're all in clubs," a woman laughs. The women drift off, leaving Mattson alone as the bellows wheeze and he starts another tune. By Nick Coleman Staff Writer Little Falls, Minn. "Oh, the Irish and the Dutch don't amount to very much." Or so rhymed Theodor Gustaf Matt-son the other day after a woman had asked him to "play something Irish on your squeezebox." "I'm Svede," he said proudly in a thick Swedish accent "I play Svedlsh valtzes, Svedish polkas I play the Yenny Lind Polka. Oh, and a few schottisches." Mattson, who tells anyone who stops that he Is 88, is a familiar figure in Little Falls.

For one thing, he hauled rubbish there for 42 years before retiring in 1959. But mostly he is known for playing his accordion on Little Falls sidewalks, collecting a few quarters and nickels as he plays and regaling passing ladies with somewhat risque "yokes" and riddles. "Do you remember when the ladies wore them hobbled skirts?" Mattson asked a group of women who had stopped to hear him during Little Falls' Crazy Days celebration. "Well, here's one I wrote about those skirts that goes to the tune of 'Casey Joins': "Come all you rounders if you want to flirt here comes a lady in a hobbled skirt; tied at the bottom and tied at the top; she looks like a wienie In the butcher shop." Mattson sang another verse, which lamented that although the skirt was very pretty, "you can't get it up above her knees." By that point, Rita Casura of St. Paul was asking Mattson if "you're sure you're not Irish." Mattson, undaunted, tried another one.

"Did you hear about the fella what got caught in the haystack with his sister-in-law?" Mattson asked, Ing to shake with laughter. The punchline that followed left the women groaning, and there were several pointed requests for Mattson to return to playing his two-row button accordion. He obliged with a somewhat slow version of "Red Wing" and the women seemed satisfied. Mattson was born in Willmar, in 1892 and grew up on a North Dakota farm until crop failures forced his family off the farm and to the Little Falls area In about 1915. That's about the time Mattson got the tattered derby to wear in an old-timers' parade.

He's still wearing it "I was in the draft in the first world war but I got the war flu and I got deaf from it, so I didn't pass to go into the war. But I can see pretty good yet. At Crazy Days or the Fourth of July Celebration whenever they have some special doings in town then I like to play my button accordion and tell my yokes to the ladies. "I hauled rubbish for 42 years without accident or violation. I never had no accident or violation with my truck.

I used to haul big piles of ashes, tin cans, and tike that for 25 i 4 1 A Tribune State Minneapolis (6 1 2) 372-4542 News Bureaus Rochester 708 Marquette Bank Building (507)288-1417 Duluth 817 Medical Arts Building (218)727-7344 Staff Photo by Nick Coleman Theodor Mattson: "I'm Svede. I play Svedlsh valtzes, Svedlsh polkas I play the Yenny Llnd Polka. Oh, and a few schottisches.".