Days Gone By (Aug. 27, 2009)

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Roberta Saulsbury and Shadow

Talk about it

Some former hungry college kids may remember Arnie and Roberta Saulsbury. Back in the 1970s he was food director at UW-River Falls and she was also employed by the food service department.

The Saulsburys raised four children — Lois (Frank) Cernohous of River Falls, Donna Kaufer of Hastings, Minn., Hal of Plymouth, Minn., and David of Colstrip, Mont.

After retiring in the 1990s, the couple moved back to River Falls. Arnie died three years ago, but Roberta, 91-years-young, still resides at Briarwood Apartments on Main Street. She shared this composition book of her mother’s from 1908 and in it is a collection of writings, hymns, poems and essays her mother found interesting. One that Roberta found humorous includes towns from this area:

A gay and handsome traveling man

Lay on a bed of pain

All hope was past, his life ebbed fast,

He ne’er would rise again.

“Have you no sweetheart fair and true?”

They whispered o’re his bed,

“Whom you would tell a last farewell?”

The young man softly said:

“There’s Ethel down at Hudson,

And Maud is in St. Paul;

There’s Lois there at Baldwin;

And Rose at River Falls;

And Somerset there’s Violet

Whom I must surely see,

And Amy, too, at Ellsworth,

Please bring them all to me.”

The watcher stared in great surprise

And then they said once more,

“And let us, pray, without delay,

The girl whom you adore;

The girl whom you have sworn to love,

And bring both wealth and fame;

Your promised wife and hope and life;

Quick, let us know her name.”

“In Chippewa there’s Bertha,

And Agnes at Eau Claire,

Amery has my Mary,

New Richmond a good share,

There’s Gracey, dear, in Glenwood,

And Pearl at Little Falls”

The young man sighed: “It’s time I died

I’ve sworn to love them all.”

Tags: days gone by, opinion, columns