Bill Norman
by Ron Nachbor
When I was a small child (somewhere under three) our next door neighbor was an elderly man named Bill Norman. At the time he was a retired Herman farmer and he and his wife are probably the first of Herman's individuals that I remember at all. He was an interesting man whose house was heady with the smell of pipe smoke and his windows were full of African Violets in cans. His house was a long white house, in need of paint, with only three rooms; a kitchen at the back, a long room that served as a living room/bedroom and an enclosed front porch. The house seemed to be a kind of cross between a bunk house and a trailer house. The lot wasn't particularly wide and it had an old shed at the rear that was a combination woodshed and outhouse.
This house with its elderly occupants was a pleasant place to go, as a two-year-old child, and an easy one. My mother could watch me as I toddled across the yard to see Bill and I spent many hours sitting on his front step smelling the pipe smoke as it wafted out his front door. He was a pleasant old man and he didn't care, at all, that I sat there on his step.
Bill Norman died when I was just a little child but he has always been fascinating to me because he was an old man that certainly had a long history in the area. I was never old enough to ask him about that history. I have kept a photograph of Bill and his wife, to this day, because he seems, somehow, like a part of my Herman heritage that I never wanted to give up. Youth holds many memories but some of my earliest are that pipe smoke and the purple of those velvety violets planted in old coffee cans. His home still stands and whenever I pass it I still have memories of Bill Norman -- my oldest memory of Herman, Minnesota.
To Mr. Norman I dedicate these stories of Herman's people as I remember them.
To read more of Ron's stories click on any or all of the names below.
Nels H. Nelson
George Leigh and Earl Newberger
Dr. and Mrs. Walter Smedley
Clarence Andrews
