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Eager to please, Mondale not only supplied Carter with copies of his income tax returns for the past five years but also a report from his doctor describing his only ailment—a minor case of hypertension. (Carter referred the report to Kirbo's personal physician, who agreed that it did not indicate a serious problem.)
As they talked, Carter was attracted by Mondale's deep concern for social issues, a set of beliefs that reflect the hardy strain of populism and reformism that grew up in America's Northern plains. Frederick Mundal, his great-grandfather, emigrated from Norway's Sogne Fjord in 1856 to become a homesteading farmer in Minnesota. The candidate's father, Theodore Sigvaard Mondale, was a farmer and a land speculator who became a Methodist minister before being wiped out in the '20s by a series of misfortunes—including the long and financially draining illness of his first wife. Before she died in 1923, she mentioned that a good new wife for her husband would be Claribel Cowan—a strong woman with blue eyes and broad shoulders who had studied music at Northwestern University.
After a courtship conducted mainly by mail, the two were married in 1925 and in time had three sons. Clarence Mondale, 50, Fritz's older brother, is now a professor of American history at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Morton Mondale, 41, is an education official in Aberdeen, S.D. While Fritz was growing up in a succession of hard-hit towns, the family had enough money—but only barely. "We lived in houses most people wouldn't consider habitable," recalls Morton, "but I never considered myself poor."
All during those years, farmers and storekeepers in the small towns of Minnesota were going bankrupt. The Rev. Theodore Mondale fumed at what he felt were the injustices of the system, and his outrage had a lasting effect on his sons. Mondale—who is well known as a defender of the urban poor—also champions the farmer whenever he can. The Senator was further influenced by his parents' dedication to the old-fashioned virtues of hard work, frugality and compassion.
The senior Mondale had other lasting influences on his son. "He would tell us, 'You only get spanked for lying or dishonesty,' " the Senator recalls. His father discouraged his sons from using tobacco by forcing them to smoke two cigars—enough to make them wretchedly sick. Alcohol was also banned in the Mondale household. Fritz Mondale still only smokes an occasional cigar, and two Scotches amount to a bender.
In high school, Mondale was known as "Crazy Legs" for his exploits on the football field and celebrated for his rich rendition of Ol' Man River at the Elmore theater. He was an intense young man, if an indifferent student, who had formed something called the Republicrat Party while still in junior high.
To earn money to attend Macalester College in St. Paul, Mondale worked as a pea-aphid inspector for the Green Giant company in the town of Blue Earth. It was at Macalester that Mondale first got involved with Hubert Humphrey and set his career on the course that was to carry him to the vice-presidential nomination.