Nelson hits 100 after life on farm

Mervin Nelson has taken the advice of a woman named Ebby Halliday – and he doesn’t even know it.

Halliday, who was born in 1911 and was known as the “First Lady of Real Estate,” offered this advice on her 101^st birthday: Don’t smoke, don’t drink, and don’t retire.

Well, two out of three isn’t bad.

“I smoked a little before I was married,” Nelson said, “but then my wife said, ‘I don’t want my kids smoking.’ So I quit.”

“I never drank, though; I was kind of a teetotaler, I guess,” he said. “Not too many of them around.”

And retire?

“I was a farmer all my life. I was still combining corn when I was 95,” said Nelson, who will turn 100 today.

His son, Brian Nelson, confirmed it.

“He combined my 700-800 acres of corn for me that year, when he was 95.”

Of course, things are a little different now: “When I first started, I picked by hand,” Mervin said.

He was born – literally – and raised on a farm near Walnut, Iowa, on Feb. 22, 1923.

“I was born in Mom and Dad’s farmhouse,” Nelson said. “I was delivered by my mom’s older sister. She was pretty special. She took care of older people all her life, but she delivered me.”

He played basketball and baseball at Audubon High School, and farmed with his family in Iowa until 1945, when they moved to a farm north of Blooming Prairie.

“Land was a little cheaper, so we moved here,” Nelson said.

About 10 years after moving to Minnesota, he met Berniece Duken, “from the little town of Brownsdale.” Brian urged his father to talk about how the two met.

“Well, she was in nurse’s training in Rochester,” Mervin said of the woman everyone called “Bernie.”

His son jumped in: “And he had his fingers caught in a corn picker, and they had to take two of his fingers off – and she was one of your nurses, right?”

“No, I had them off way before that,” Nelson said.

He went on to say he’d been working alone when the accident happened, “but my dad was hauling corn in and heard me hollering. He came over and shut it off.”

The picker took all the skin off, though the fingers remained attached.

Doctors in Owatonna removed the index and middle finger of his right hand, “bandaged it up and sent me home,” Nelson said.

Brian looked surprised.

“Oh, I always thought that was how you met her,” he said.

The real story seemed private, as Mervin flashed his ever-present smile.

“There was always lots of girls in Rochester,” he said. “Some of us would go over there, and I just kind of happened to meet her – but I already had my fingers off when I met her.”

The pair married in December 1957 and had three sons, raising them on the family farm north of Blooming Prairie. She finished her nursing degree, but stayed home with the boys until they were in junior high.

Bernie eventually went back to work and became one of the first RNs hired at Prairie Manor Care Center.

Meanwhile, Nelson farmed about 500 acres and raised more than 100 head of pigs.

“That’s pretty small, nowadays,” he said.

The couple were married nearly 60 years before Bernie’s death in 2017.

Brian revisited the corn-picking accident.

“So, were you 30, do you think? Five years before you got married?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Nelson said, laughing, “because I remember my mom was afraid I wouldn’t get a wife. If I’d done this now … and really, not that long ago, the (Mayo) Clinic told me they could do a lot for this yet.”

So is he right-handed?

“I was,” he said, still laughing. “I pretty much eat with my left hand now. I write with my right hand, but I don’t know if you can read it or not.”

His sense of humor and positive attitude are never-failing, said Lois Nelson, Mervin’s daughter-in-law.

“He still drives his car; he’s always happy and smiling,” she said. “He’s just a gem.”

Still, he’s had his share of sorrow, losing not only his wife, but a son in 2009 and a grandson in 2019.

He contracted COVID and was quarantined, “but I really wasn’t sick with it. In the past, I’ve had colds a lot worse than COVID.”

The corn picker accident wasn’t his only traumatic injury, either. He fell down the stairs at his farmhouse, breaking his neck.

“He always had his phone in his pocket – except when he fell,” Lois Nelson said. “But he got himself up and called Brian, who was out in the machine shed.”

Mervin knew it was bad: “I didn’t know the damage, but I told Brian, ‘I’ve got to go see a doctor. I don’t know what I did, but it needs to be checked out.’”

Once again, he went to Owatonna, where the doctors quickly transferred him to Rochester.

“So I got my second helicopter ride ever,” Nelson said.

The first? “The celebration of Blooming Prairie,” he said of his flight during one of the city’s annual July Fourth activities.

His particular injury, doctors told the family, often “either kills people or paralyzes them,” Brian Nelson said.

“I could still walk, but I wasn’t supposed to, I guess,” Mervin said. “I had a neck brace for 12 weeks, and I just healed finally.”

He spent a few weeks at Prairie Manor, doing therapy, then transitioned to Heather Haus.

“I knew I couldn’t keep staying out at the farm,” he said. “It was hard out there.”

So, after more than 75 years north of town, Nelson decided to stay in town.

“All I do is walk to the table and eat my meals with … let’s see now … 14 ladies,” he said. “I’m the only man in the whole place here. They’re a pretty good bunch; I get along with all of them.”

Nelson will be the man of the hour at a small gathering on his birthday; Brian and Lois will be there, as will his youngest son, Bruce, and his wife Amy, and his daughter-in-law Rozann. He has six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Nelson has just one wish, he said: “Just to keep walking around.”

He’s in good health and uses a cane but said “sometimes I cheat and walk without it.”

In a world that looks very little like it did 100 years ago, Nelson continues to find the positive.

“It’s altogether different from when I was growing up to what it is now,” he said. “When I was growing up, we didn’t have any money. That’s the reason I was born out at the farm, I guess – but I never remember going hungry in my life.”