“We don’t ever recall a sarcastic argument,” said Charlie Thor, 103, at a table in Harmony River Living Center. His daughters and in-laws were trickling in as Connie Dallmann, his oldest, fetched his wife Harriet, 100. “I met her at the Calhoun Auditorium in Minneapolis.”
Charlie and Harriet celebrated their 76th wedding anniversary Dec. 19 with family. Daughters Connie, Lorelie and Rosanna served deserts, joked and told family stories around the table.
After making it in time for cake, Harriet was asked what she thought of Charlie after meeting him.
“She probably won’t tell you what she really felt,” he said. “You can’t use that kind of language in the newspaper.”
Harret said she first put him to a test. When Charlie had asked if he could take her home, Harriet had told him he would have to take her five girlfriends as well.
“After he said he’d do it, I thought, ‘He’s all right,’” she said.
So they went on some dates. Charlie said Harriet’s mother liked him because he always ate her grilled cheese sandwiches.
“It was like feeding a stray dog,” he said. “She liked that I liked her sandwiches. But in a situation like that, it’s not the sandwiches you’re interested in.”
That was about 77 years ago. After a year of knowing each other, Charlie worked on a neighbor’s farm and used the paycheck to buy an engagement ring.
“It was so cold (on our wedding day) that when she came down the church steps, her flowers froze,” he said.
“Dad told me that when you get married, girls don’t look at you anymore, but girls didn’t look at him before, either,” Connie said.
The couple moved from Stillwater to a farm in the Cosmos area in 1961 and made a living from the land. Charlie and his brother farmed 1,040 acres, he said, a skill they’d learned at an early age after spending three months in a university farm class.
“(Harriet and I) saw the sun rise and set, and that was our day on the farm,” he said.
In 1965, Charlie and his brother sold the farm, and Charlie and Harriet moved to a 19-acre plot south of Hutchinson. They founded Custom Made Equipment in Hutchinson, where Charlie welded and repaired farm equipment.
Charlie also started making mounted snowblowers for tractors. More farmers began requesting them, which led to his receiving a 1967 award from the Inventors Congress in Redwood Falls.
Charlie sold the shop and retired at age 94.
The couple had four children. Their son, Vernon, owns an airline equipment business in Oslo, Norway, and married there.
Heritage is a point of pride in the Thor family. Charlie is 100 percent Swedish, born to Swedish immigrants, and Harriet is 100 percent Norwegian, they said.
Harriet’s Norwegian heritage, Charlie said, is part of what makes her such a great partner.
“If my mother ever saw me with a girl, she was always critical,” Charlie said.
But not of Harriet.
Harriet was asked the secret to having a long marriage.
“Throw the word ‘fight’ out and the fight with it,” she said.
After 76 successful years, Charlie and Harriet observed their Christmas-anniversary tradition: simply being with family.
“I’ve told many people,” Charlie said. “Harriet was the best partner I could have found.”
