Time flies when you’re having fun. I’m not having so much fun these days, but time flew anyway and somehow I didn’t get a chance to write a column appropriate to the Fourth of July. Fortunately, my high school pal Pastor Rolfe Sven Johnstad came to my rescue, and I say better late than never.

Last night I re-read Rolfe’s book “Where Everyone Matters,” an informal history of his hometown, Pigeon Falls. It’s a charming book that talks about almost every inhabitant in a town of 200. He includes a history of his family and also reprints a poem written by his great-grandad who migrated from Norway in the 1860s and whose family finally settled in Pigeon Falls. His name was Iver Iversen Jaastad, his wife Kristi Torbjornsdatter Ystenaes. I hadn’t read the book because Rolfe published it in Norwegian (the only Norse words I know are unprintable!) Upon re-examination, I discovered that Rolfe included an English translation by the eminent Norwegian-American historians Martin Ruud and Theodore Blegen.

I was struck by the translation of this poem because it seemed appropriate to the month in which we spend Independence Day. So take a look: BLICK TILBAGE TIL NORGE (“NORWAY: A RETROSPECT”) On wings of fancy my spirit oft return to Norway, for there still dwell the memories of my childhood; thither my thoughts ever go back. There sleep father and mother, and their fathers before them; there sleep in the cool of the grave my two brothers who died in their youth. It isn’t that I want to go back, for this is no jeremiad; it is only that I love still the land of my people. And now and then dreams come to me, and in them I seem to see and to speak with those with whom I played in my boyhood, with whom I clambered over hill and dales, Ever higher, to catch new vistas; for the childish mind is eager for wonders, and all unconscious of the perils of the way. Don’t imagine that you will leave all troubles behind you if you come to America. I wonder, indeed, what you will think of it. If you are rich, you had better not come, for very likely you will sacrifice the greater to gain the less. No, better stay at home, live happily and prosperously in the familiar circle. Nor you of good birth; you, too, may take a tumble, and find that no one here is going to dou his hat to you. Mark my word, if you give up your ancestral farm, stake all, and come over here, you will find that I spoke the truth. But you who gain a precarious living high upon the mountains, dragging home on your bent back a little wretched provender for your cow, And you who live in a little hut washed by the waves of ocean, sharing with many mouths a crust of dry bread, and often suer dire need; Who catch a little fish on the almost fished-out banks, so that, when you return, soaked with spray, your children crowd around your empty boat, You, I think, will miss Norway less; for the soil is more fertile here, and it is easier to make a living. Now that, at least, is my opinion. Many will feel that I am exaggerating; but I will vouch for the truth of it, and you, my friend, may depend upon it. Or as our Statue of Liberty says: “Give me your tired, your poor, and your hungry!”