By Eilene Lyon
Lloyd Richard Halse (1902-1957)
Lloyd was the fourth of eleven children in the Guy and Mabel Halse family. He had no children, but took younger brother Al under his wing like a son. He twice married the same woman, Berdyne Ulven (1901-1998), but it was not a close relationship. Lloyd preferred the company of Al and Al’s wife, Shirley.
Lloyd liked to borrow their car. Once he drove it into a ditch and said nothing, though it wouldn’t drive straight afterward. Another time he disappeared for a week.
Lloyd had a dairy farm, an ice cream business, a slaughterhouse, and a meat cold storage locker business. The 600 lockers were important in a day when people did not have home freezers.
When serving as the Clear Lake, South Dakota, mayor, Lloyd helped get a new water system for the town. After his death, part of his property became the municipal airport.
Myricopia 
Lloyd sounds like he was quite an enterprising fellow, although I wouldn’t have loaned him my car. My home had a freezer locker business as well, which my mother used.
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He seemed to be pretty successful in business. Al expanded to add a grocery. They also had some other things going on. Al’s son ran the grocery in Clear Lake for many years. I can’t imagine how much the energy costs for 600 freezers would be!
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Neither can I!
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I/we forget how novel it was to be able to store anything in a freezer. I like all that this man did, but mostly that he had an ice cream business.
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I imagine keeping that many freezers going cost a lot of money. A funny story I found in the papers was that the man who brought the lockers up from Sioux Falls had to go to court for running a commercial transportation business without a license!
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He sounds like quite the character.
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I’ll bet he was a hoot! He actually had some political aspirations. He ran for the state senate, too.
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I wonder why he chose to marry the same woman twice, although they weren’t close! People are so intriguing.
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It is a mystery, for sure!
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Enterprising, but perhaps emotionally distant? Relationship with his wife, disappearing, not owning up to damaging the car – all a bit strange!
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I probably overstated the disappearing part, but your analysis is probably correct.
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I remember when I was young we rented a freezer locker downtown. We had a refrigerator freezer at home, but I guess the freezer wasn’t big enough? I doubt the freezer locker is still in business.
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It was primarily rented out for when people bought a side of beef and needed something bigger.
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I remember going there with my mom to get frozen blackberries she had picked in the summer. She used them for pies all year long.
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Must have picked an awful lot of berries!
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That’s what I was thinking! Although my grandparents hunted deer and my dad caught salmon so it could have been used for that, too.
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Seems logical. I think there are still meat lockers for hunters, but not many.
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👍🏼
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Lloyd sounds like a fun guy!
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I think maybe I wouldn’t let him do the driving, though!
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Well Lloyd sounds a wee bit odd, but he was an enterprising businessman – that’s for sure. I liked the tidbit about Napoleon pulling the Clear Lake Dairy Truck and he needed no driver to steer him on his route.
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Except the time someone drove around with a leaking bag of grain and Napoleon followed that instead!
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Now I could see that distraction making Napoleon go astray. 🙂
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We all have something along those lines.😉
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People like Loyd are why I don’t loan my things! Haha.
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I had to wonder if he even bothered to ask first!
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That’s a good question!
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Lloyd was a different cat. But I mean . . you marry the same person twice and you ain’t even that into it? Yeah, a very different cat.
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I think you would really have to call that “settling”!! Twice.
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Seriously!
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I’d be a bit upset about the disappearing for a week.
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He may have told them where he was going, but he did inconvenience everyone!
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Yikes!
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What a colorful guy! Are these family stories that have been passed down? And how is related to you (if he is)?
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This series of Halse relatives are my father’s aunts and uncles. The personal bits were shared with me by great-aunt Shirley.
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How wonderful!
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It was so good that I got to meet her.
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Wow – he led quite the life. Definitely a free spirit!! Interesting note about his marriages…I wonder how she felt about him.
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That is something I don’t know. Berdyne joined the B’nai faith, moved to Norway and died there.
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