The title of this story should have been, "A Tribute to Gilbert Olsen, " but the title also fits the most unforgettable person in Griggs County. He did live in Griggs County - half way between Binford and Jessie, right on the shore of Long Lake, and I worked for him one winter and spring around the year of 1926.
Each one is asked to identify himself as material is sent to the Griggs County Heritage book.
I suppose most of the people keenly interested in the heritage of said county knew, or knew about, my brother, F. A. Helland. Selma and Rudy on the committee are, of course, my sister and brother. I have been living on the West Coast since 1937. When I worked for Gilbert Olson (and I have to call him Gilbert Olsen. it seems disrespectful to call him Mr. Olsen. There have been hundreds, and, at present, many Mr. Olsens but I only knew one Gilbert Olsen, and I must call him that).
From Gilbert Olsen's place across the range of hills to our home place was not very far and many times on Sunday I would walk for a visit. I have always despised slovenliness and waste, and on my way home and back I noticed road-working equipment laying rusting by the side of the road since the last year's roadwork. Gilbert was a county supervisor or officer of some kind, and I asked him, "Why is this not taken care of?" He questioned me as to location and number of pieces and what it was. Then he went directly to the phone and called someone, and I heard him say, "This must be taken care of at once! The party he talked to must have asked him, "Who told you?" He answered, "A responsible party saw them and then told me."
When I heard myself referred to as a responsible party that was just what I needed to help me grow in stature right at that time. The other thing that the word "responsible party" did, it crushed the notion I had always had that older folks were rather stupid. Now here was an older man who recognized me as a responsible party. That proved that he was a man among men and I NEVER FORGOT it.
Another time he told me something that has had more of an influence on me than anything I can think of. He asked me one day, "What is your goal and motto, Sig?" I said, "I don't have any." He said, "You should have." So, of course, I asked him, "What is yours?" He said, "My motto is to take care of what I have and not what I'm going to get." Right then I took that as my motto also never dreaming of the benefits that I would reap from this motto, and the countless times I have seen the benefits the motto could have had on others beside myself.
Then I asked, "What IS your goal?" And I attribute a great percentage of the success in my life to this goal I accepted that day.
He told me this story:
A successful businessman needed a boy to run errands and put an ad in the window, "Boy Wanted." In the several applications he always asked the boys, "What is your goal?" This one boy said, "The same as yours, sir." And how do you know what my goal is, Boy? He answered, "It is tacked to your door. It is spelled, P U S H. " That boy was hired." That is my goal," Gilbert Olsen said. "I grabbed that goal at once also. And as the years have gone by I have never regretted it."
And so I am glad to send in this tribute to Gilbert Olsen. The only thing I could hold against him is that he had a thick head of snow-white hair and here I am only bald headed. - Sig Helland
Source: Griggs County History 1879 - 1976 Page 179