Memory Lane
Featuring John Solheim
By Shiloh Appel
On an average summer day when John Solheim was a boy, he could be found out on the South Dakota prairie hunting gophers with his brother or friends.
"If a kid had a 22 rifle, he was pretty hot stuff," said Solheim. "We would go hunting with whoever was ready. You had a rifle, a jack knife in your pocket, and a box of shells, and you hunted gophers. The County paid you two cents a tail, so you had to take the tail and sell it to the county treasurer. A kid hunted gophers, you see, to subsidize his pocket money."
Born in 1920 on a farm northwest of Frankfort, Solheim lived through the depression years and knows first-hand what it means to be innovative and have a "survival mentality."
"If I recall, there had been a little crop in 1933," said Solheim. "It was the year prohibition was repealed. In other words, you could drink whiskey and beer legally. In 1934, the crop didn't come out of the ground, it was that dry. I believe — and someone may question this — that 1936 was the year the grasshoppers ate everything that was green. The payoff was the chickens ate the grasshoppers. You didn't have any money for food, but you didn't need any, because the chickens lived on grasshoppers. Nobody had any money for sophisticated chicken feed. They just turned them out in the morning and they ate grasshoppers all day long.The end result was a real fancy-eating chicken in the frying pan."
Solheim said that 1938 was the first year in the 1930's in which a measurable crop grew, but there was no market for it.
"The market was absolutely dead for grains in this neck of the woods," said Solheim.
In the meantime, Solheim spent many days helping out on the farm with his younger brother. During threshing season, the boys would work from sun-up to sun-down for about a dollar and a half to two dollars a day, and always looked forward to mealtime.
"Supper and dinner was a topic of conversation among threshers," said Solheim. "If the housewife fed well, which most did, that was good, because these people at the dinner table, they worked terrible hard."
Solheim also has memories of the major dust storms that whipped through the region in those days, as many his age do. He recalls a particularly bad one that blackened the sky in 1935.
"A storm came up in the middle of the morning, and my brother and I went to Sunday School," said Solheim. "Well, anyhow, we returned home about noon-like and the storm was really cranked up and there was a huge black cloud. The sky was absolutely black. We had a habit of having a chicken for Sunday dinner and our mother had the plates on the table and, of course, it was full of dust. She said, 'Wipe the table off, turn the plates over and we are going to eat.' That was all that was said. I think she was frightened to no end, I'm sure. We lit the lamps at noon so we could eat, and the dirt sifted through the windows."
In another dust storm, Solheim remembers looking for his father in the midst of the blowing dirt.
"Our dad was planting south of our barn. As I walked out to talk to him, I had a heck of a time finding him. The wind was really blowing and it was blackish. He says, 'Go in the barn and put some hay in the mangers, because I am going to be through here in a minute. I am going to make one more round. He said, 'Be careful when you light the lantern, because it is getting dark.' A lantern in the barn, see, was like a firecracker. You gotta watch it," said Solheim. "Anyhow, I finished my chores and went out and was going to tell him I was through and I could hear the sound of the machine. The drill. Suddenly, it stopped. I didn't hear nothing, and so I hollered 'Pa!' And he said, 'yea?' He was standing right beside me. It was that dark, you see."
Truly, 1935 was a memorable year for Solheim, as he said he also started high school that same year "without a nickel."
"There was only a nickel difference between those who had money and those who didn't," said Solheim. "Once in awhile, you would have a dollar or two for school needs, but most of the time you didn't have any because there wasn't any."
After attending school at the city school for the first four years, Solheim said the laws were changed and he and his brother were assigned to a country school for the next four years.
"At one time, my brother and I went to the school out on the highway known as the Brink school. The building is still there. If you will notice, it is on North side of the road, and it is an obvious schoolhouse," said Solheim.
After graduating from high school, Solheim worked for Redfield's JC Penney in the shoe department.
"All kids, when they [started] work, were shoe people," said Solheim. "Most sales in the later '30's were under a dollar."
Looking back, Solheim said that the best men's shoe in the store was $5.95.
"They have been out of the market place for years, because today they would be hundreds of dollars," said Solheim. "It was a quality shoe, a fantastic piece of workmanship."
the best work shoe in the store was only four dollars. But the variety didn't stop there. Solheim sold infant shoes, "kiddie" shoes, running shoes, shoes for teens and "correction shoes."
"The correction shoes had corrective behaviors built into them," said Solheim.
During his years in sales, Solheim recognized the needs of the time.
"Fashion items were hardly around because the need was the important thing," said Solheim. "One of the popular items for a lady's sale was a coat, because the cars didn't have heaters. When mama come to town and she didn't have a coat, she would just get so darn cold, so she just wouldn't show up. She stayed at home. The coat was an item of suppertime conversation for the housewife."
After his time at JC Penney, Solheim served for 45 months in the military during the war years. He then married Alma at Trinity Lutheran Church in Jefferson City, Missouri on January 29, 1946. Alma and John had two daughters together.
(After Alma passed away, Solheim later married Vanetta in November of 1976.)
Meanwhile, Solheim worked for a men's clothing store on Redfield's main street where the American Legion is located now. The store was owned by a man by the name of Kenny.
" I went over to Kenny's in 1950," said Solheim. "I worked for him for twelve years and had a great time there. They were great people. Absolutely tremendous people to work with."
Kenny mentored John Solheim and taught him how to run a successful business, and Solheim opened his own store, "The V Store," across the street, in 1962.
"We were partners," said Solheim. "Did we have a lot of fancy paperwork? No. We said if we got two dollars or three dollars at the end of the year, we would spend one and each get a dollar."
The Solheims ran the V Store for more than 20 years and enjoyed positive relationships with all neighboring businesses.
"Not many people can say that, because difficulty prevails," says Solheim. "But the thing is, the best thing in the neighborhood is the people that are here. Everything else is not really important, but it is the people that puts it together. It has been for years, and it will continue to be so."
Today, at 97, Solheim is perhaps more than ever an important thread in the fabric that makes up the "people of Redfield." After spending about seven or eight summers working as a curator at the Redfield museum, Solheim is often the go-to person for those interested in Redfield's history.
For those who would like to visit with Solheim, he can often be found at Leo's Good Food on Redfield's Main Street.
