“Sture, I know you'll be a good boy at school.”
Sture nodded his head and smiled. It never occurred to him to be anything else, he could probably not even conceive of an alternative, but he listened.
Among other things, Sture was a good listener. He listened to everything and everybody. He listened to the grasses blowing, the insects buzzing. He could lie in a field and listen to the different sounds and tell without looking whether there were gnats, fleas, beetles, crickets, ants, or grasshoppers chewing the grass beside him, flies, wasps, or bees buzzing around his head.
He listened to anyone as if he really wanted to hear what was said. When he listened, one knew he not only heard the words said but understood their meaning and the feelings behind them. One felt Sture also heard a person's voice as a thing separate, a personal music, not even heard by the speaker, but heard by Sture when he listened.
Sture's dad continued: “I know you can already read better than your mother or I, but don't âstick out' in the class. Everything is so easy for you the other children might be jealous and treat you mean. You understand?”
Of course Sture understood; he also understood all the things his father was not saying, all his father's fears and his pride.
“Father, I shall be good. I want to know everything. I know I will be happy in school and I want everybody else happy, too.”
So Sture went off. As soon as he was over the first hill, out of sight from the house, he took off his shoes and shirt. He wrapped them carefully and started to run. It was five miles to the school and Sture ran the entire way. Sture liked to run; it made him feel close to the other animals. Because there was so much to be done on the farm, he never had enough time to run, but now was his chance for running: to and from school every day. He'd taken off his shirt and shoes so he wouldn't scuff his shoes or soil his shirt.
Before he reached school, Sture put on his shirt and shoes. He went inside and sat in a chair with the other young children and listened. It was a one-room schoolhouse and some of the students in front were as old as seventeen or eighteen.
The teacher was a local girl who had gone to the high school in Manawa. She was nineteen and not especially intelligent or well trained, but she was kind. She was teaching until the man she wanted to marry could find his own piece of land to farm.
At first, she did not notice the new little tow-headed boy in back. She was busy trying to manage some of the older children. She gave Sture a primer to look at because there were pictures. She also gave Sture and the two other children about his age each a piece of paper and a pencil.
“See if you can draw a picture from this book. Can you make your drawings pretty as these?”
She smiled. Sture smiled his disarming smile back at her. At first he did not know what she meant “to draw a picture.” He knew what it was to “draw water,” or for a horse to “draw” a cart or to “draw” a breath, or how to “draw” the small bow he'd made. He knew his father talked about the chimney “drawing” but he didn't know about “drawing a picture.”
He read through the simple primer several times and looked around to see the other young pupils working with their pencils and looking back and forth at the pictures in the book. Then he knew. Drawing was like making the sound of a cow by listening to the cow, only on paper, with a pencil.
Sture proceeded to make almost perfect drawings, one after another, of the pictures. Sture thought this was a wonderful idea. School was going to be even more fun than he thought. His drawings were actually superior to those in the book because most of the stories in the primer were about animals and so were the illustrations. Sture “drew” upon his constant observations of the animals to “draw” his pictures. The other little children soon saw what he was doing and stopped to watch. It was like magic the way Sture drew. He drew without hesitation as if there were some kind of invisible image already on the paper that he was tracing, copying.
When the teacher saw that the younger pupils weren't working but only staring open-mouthed at Sture, she came back to see what he was doing.
So began the schooling of Sture Modig.
The teacher quickly discovered he could do, easily, almost any task in reading or reckoning she could set. He asked to borrow several books reserved for pupils in the twelve-to fifteen-year-old range, and she willingly, but with some trepidation, agreed. Sture ran home that afternoon, barefooted, barebacked, with the books wrapped, along with his shoes, inside the rough shirt his mother had made for him. The shirt didn't get dirty because his shoes had scarcely touched the ground.
Sture immediately went out to help his father with the milking. He showed his parents the books he had been given, and since neither of them could read English well, they thought it was only natural and were glad that at last Sture was doing something normal just like any other child.
That evening after dinner, after helping his mother with the dishes, then helping his father sharpen posts for a new fence they were putting across one of the fields, Sture read his new books. He read each of them twice. One was about Ancient Greece and the conflict between Sparta and Athens. Sture was not sure with which side he felt the more sympathy. He liked the Athenians for their love of learning, but the austerity and efficiency of the Spartans appealed to him more.
The other book was an algebra book. The intricate beauty of the equations delighted him. It made him think of his feelings about how everything in nature seemed to fit.
At school, Sture quickly became assistant to the teacher. In reality, he became the teacher. He had natural patience and could help the students understand. He possessed a sixth sense for their individual minds, much like that he had for the cows and other animals.
Although he was always smiling and pleasant, even to the slowest of the students, some of the older boys became resentful. This was what Sture's father had tried to warn him about. The warning was not very necessary.
When the older boys tried to gang up on Sture in the schoolyard, they learned something new about Sture Modig. First, he was truly
modig
, brave. None of them spoke Swedish and could therefore not know this. They found out how Sture, without seeming to try, smiling all the time, could dodge like a rabbit, butt like a goat, run like a deer. If cornered he could squirm like a snake, scratch like a cat, and kick like a mule. There was no way to hurt this peculiar eight-year-old little blond boy. After a while they learned to leave him alone.
Then, in time, they joined the younger students in admiring and respecting him. It's hard to hate or hurt anyone with a smile like the young Sture Modig's. It radiated from him, let you know he saw you, knew you, felt for all your feelings.
In the classroom, before the year was out, Sture was helping even the oldest of the students. He seemed to have a special skill in finding the stumbling blocks to learning for each individual and making the problem clear.
Miss Henderson, his teacher, stayed on. Her beau had found a proper piece of land, had bought it, and was building a barn on it, but she decided to stay another year at the school, mostly to see what would happen with Sture. She decided she'd wait until her fiancé had built the house and it was furnished.
At home, Sture became more and more interested in mechanical things. He managed to rig a crude pump run by a simple windmill to bring water from the well up to the kitchen. He worked out a system of gate latches between fields that were easily opened by a man but could not be budged by a cow. Earlier, they had only used a piece of wire wrapped around the posts. This took time to unwind, open, then rewind.
In the barn, he built a primitive forge and began making simple utensils and tools for the farm. It was there he designed the plow that made it possible for him to do plowing despite his light weight.
The plow his father used was pulled by a horse or mule and was an ordinary plowshare cutting into the ground and turning it over on the moldboard. It was attached to a pair of handles. This plow took considerable strength and skill to manage. It had to be forced into the ground, using the animal's strength to pull it through, and at the same time had to be kept straight. Sture had previously tried many times to plow so he could help his father with this most strenuous work, but it was impossible.
On his forge in the barn, he fashioned and tempered a new kind of blade. It was shaped like an upside-down T, a winged blade. The crossbar of the T was so angled it cut naturally into the earth by the pulling force of a mule or horse. Once down there, it tended to stay down and turned the earth up in two natural easy curls.
Sture then designed and carved plow handles, modeled on his father's but to his own size and longer to give him more leverage.
When he attached this new plow to a mule, it worked perfectly. With a minimum of downward pressure he got the blade into the soil, then, leaning on the handles and with the help of the winged blade under the earth, he could keep it down and at the same time it had less tendency to tip or turn.
Sture's father couldn't believe his eyes when one Saturday morning he woke to find the upper part of the south pasture already plowed. Sture had wakened at three in the morning and gone out to plow so he could surprise his father with the new invention. Sture was twelve years old now, and though not particularly large, was very strong for his age.
Sture next enlarged and improved his windmill to generate electricity. None of the other farms outside Manawa had electricity. Sture pounded out his vanes on his tiny forge, then read electricity manuals until he could wind a small electric generator with copper wire. It was enough to provide a dim, flickering light in the barn and in the kitchen. He gave this to his mother and father as a birthday gift to them on his own thirteenth birthday.
At about this time, Miss Henderson, Sture's teacher, realized there was nothing more for Sture to learn from her. She applied for his admission to the high school, where she herself had gone, in Manawa, fifteen miles away. She included samples of his work and, despite his age, Sture was accepted.
It was a hard decision for Sture's parents. They were so dependent upon him for everything, not only his incredible skills and willingness, joy in work, but his light spirit. However, they knew it would be a terrible waste not to give Sture every opportunity to be part of the great American dream; he had to go to
gymnasium
, high school. It was something beyond their wildest imaginings for themselves.
Sture insisted he could go to the high school and not miss more than an hour's work each day on the farm. His only request was for a bicycle. His parents couldn't refuse this. The farm was so much more prosperous owing to his constant contribution and effort, they must afford it.
Sture walked the more than thirty miles to Oshkosh, on Lake Winnebago, where there would be a chance to buy a bicycle.
This is the year 1908, and in Oshkosh, Sture sees his first automobile. He chases it down the street just to hear it, see it, smell it. The miracle of its running by itself, without a cow, mule, or horse pulling it, fascinates him. He's heard about automobiles but never seen one.
He also finds a bicycle shop. He spends all the afternoon watching bicycles being repaired, seeing the various types, different kinds of tires, steering systems. The men who run the shop begin to be a bit annoyed by this young boy standing around, watching their every move.
One of them goes over to Sture.
“Hey, you kid! What're you hangin' aroun' here for? What d'ya want, anyhow? You've been moping outside this shop all day. This ain't no circus, ya know.”
Sture smiles his all-caring smile at him. He's tried to be careful but he knows that, just like any animal, a man, if he's watched too long, too closely, will become skittish.
“I would like to buy a bicycle but I want to look and see what kinds there are to buy.”
“You know we're not giving them away, young fella. These bicycles cost a lot of money.”
“Yes, I know. But I think I can pay. I only want to learn about them
before
I buy.”
“You see that bicycle there?”
The man points to a black two-wheel, wheels-same-size, chain-driven-rear-wheel, pneumatic-tire bike leaning against the wall. It isn't new but has been recently repaired and refurbished.
“That there bicycle costs twelve dollars. You wanna buy it, kid?”
Sture walks over to the bicycle and looks carefully at the machine. He fingers the chain, pushes on the rubber of the tires, takes hold of the handlebars, and shakes to check the rigidity of the frame.
The man has gotten the attention of his fellow workers. It's late summer and they're mostly in sleeveless undershirts, stained with sweat and grease. He nods his head and winks at the other workers.
“But, kid, if you got the cash, I think we could let you have that there bicycle for only eleven dollars and fifty cents!”
The man is convinced the boy only wants to hang around as so many boys do.
Sture is examining that bicycle as if it's a cow or a sick calf. With his fingers he's running all over it, checking the bolted and welded joints, sighting down the length of it for any torque or warp.