One dark night just outside Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, a fire started inside the Pølse Viking Soul Food Sausage plant and in a blink it exploded into massive flames.
The alarm went out to all the fire departments from miles around.
When the volunteer Mist County Fire Fighters appeared on the scene, the Pølse Sausage Company president Ollie Thorgils rushed to the fire chief Sven Floki and said, ‘All of our secret formulas are in the vault in the center of the plant.
They must be saved and I will give $50,000 to the fire department that brings them out intact.’
But the roaring flames held the firefighters off.
Soon more fire departments from surrounding towns had to be called in as the situation became desperate.
As the firemen arrived, Ollie Thorgils, the sausage factory president shouted out that the offer was now $100,000 to the fire department who could bring out the company’s secret files.
From a distance, a lone siren was heard as another fire truck came into sight.
It was the nearby St. Olaf rural township volunteer fire department composed mainly of Norwegians over the age of 65.
To everyone’s amazement, the little run-down fire engine, operated by these Norwegians, passed all the newer sleek engines parked outside the plant and drove straight into the middle of the inferno.
Outside, the other firemen watched as the Norwegian old timers jumped off and began to fight the fire with a performance and effort never seen before.
Within a short time, the St. Olaf old-timers had extinguished the fire and saved the secret formulas.
The grateful Ollie Thorgils, joyfully announced that for such a superhuman feat he was upping the reward to $200,000, and walked over to personally thank each of the brave, though aging, Norwegian firefighters.
The local TV news reporters rushed in after capturing the event on film asking, ‘What are you going to do with all that money?’
‘Vell,’ said Gunnar Morten, the 70-year-old fire chief, ‘…..da furst thing vee gonna do is fix da brakes on dat focking truck!’
