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 By Jason Whitney
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| A typical start for Bent Clausen’s day might find him greeting visitors at Olsen’s Danish Village Bakery while sipping his morning coffee. Clausen jokes that he can always spot the Danish tourists. “99% of the time I’m right. But sometimes they will be German or Dutch.” Irrepressibly jolly by nature, Clausen comes to town purely to meet with friends and to socialize. “You should be the official greeter,” Bent Olsen once joked. “He’s an ambassador’s ambassador,” remarked Erik Christianson of Christianson Financial Services. “He’s the glue that keeps a lot of people connected.” The Clausen family is a visible reminder throughout the community of the value of the Santa Ynez Valley’s Danish heritage. These days Clausen drives carriages in parades and weddings, a skill he learned as a boy in Denmark, but over the past two decades he played a more active part in major community organizations. He served as chairperson on Solvang’s Danish Days committee in 1984, the same year daughter Linda was the official Danish Maid. He did a stint as chief for the Vikings of Solvang, and he remains an active and loyal member of this philanthropic local nonprofit organization that provides help for the medical needs of local individuals, families, and health care organizations while celebrating Danish heritage. He is a founder and former president of the Solvang Breakfast Rotary, further embodying the Santa Ynez Valley’s spirit of giving back to the community. Clausen started life in the tiny island village of Fejo in Denmark as the son of a fisherman. His father steered him away from the rough work at sea, so Bent took jobs on small neighboring farms. “We learned to be self-sufficient,” he recalls. When he was 14, Clausen began a rigorous four-year apprenticeship in butchery. These were the days before refrigeration and band saws; all meat was skinned to perfection, split with a long-bladed axe, and delivered door to door via horse carriage. While delivering meats to the houses in his village, Clausen developed a love of horse and buggy driving which remains to this day. He’s a regular fixture driving his horse and carriage entry in local parades and adds to the festivities by bringing his rig and offering rides at Los Olivos community events. He’s often hired to drive a bride and groom who want to arrive or leave via horse and buggy at local weddings. As a young man Clausen left his tiny island for Denmark’s mainland, ending up in Copenhagen, where he joined a rowing club. He qualified for one of the two fastest boats in Denmark and began seriously training in hopes of representing Denmark at the 1960 Olympic Games. “I went at it 100%. No smoking. No drinking.” When the club leader got married and quit the boat to concentrate on his new family, Clausen’s dream was stopped cold. Four months later the leader changed his mind, but the great boat had already broken up, and the crew had dispersed to places far and wide. With his Olympic dreams in tatters, when Clausen heard stories about his sister’s exciting new life in Canada he decided to set off for the New World. One day on the street near the Empress Hotel in Victoria British Columbia, he struck up a conversation with another Dane, Neils “Banker” Nielsen. Both Nielsen and Clausen were sporting crewjackets with the emblems of their Danish rowing clubs, and they soon became close friends. They took English classes by day and socialized in the evenings. Clausen’s sister held a costume party, and then beautiful, blond Anne-Lise walked through the doors wearing a silver cape, velvet pants, and carrying a long cigarette holder. She caught Clausen’s attention. “Something inside me said, ‘I’m going to marry that girl.’” It was a whirlwind courtship: he proposed at a dance one Thursday and they were married at the local church the following Saturday.  The newlyweds settled happily into life in Picture Creek Alberta, until a day in the dead of winter, (“it was 35 degrees below zero” Clausen recalls) when his old friend “Banker” Nielsen, now living in Los Angeles called. “He said, ‘we’re going to the beach tomorrow. You should come down here,’” remembers Clausen. “I said, ‘get me a job and I’ll come.’” Nielsen did get him a job—preparing meats at the famous Scandia Restaurant. Culture shock set in quickly for Bent, Anna-Lise and their two young children who found life in Los Angeles too different from the small town life and fresh, clean northern air of Alberta. A short time after settling in Los Angeles, the Clausen family drove up the coast to visit Arne and Gerda Larsen who they had first met several years earlier at English class in Victoria. The beauty and charm of the Larsen’s Danish-American community in Solvang made an indelible impression upon the Clausens. A few months later they bought a house in Santa Ynez from a friendly local contractor whose client had backed out of the deal. The contractor eagerly accepted what cash Clausen happened to have in his pocket that day for a down payment, and the Clausens left Los Angeles for life in the Santa Ynez Valley. Clausen was pleased when he finally got a job in the Valley, working his trade as a butcher for Roger Nielsen in the meat department at Nielsen’s Market, until Roger fired him for refusing to sell meat to a customer who complained about some pork loins he had cut. Clausen and Nielsen joke about the incident today. “He brags that he’s the only one who ever fired Bent Clausen,” he laughs. “I tell him if he hadn’t fired me I would never have gotten to where I am today.” By 1968, the Clausen’s three children, Brenda, Linda and Brian, had developed a passion for horsemanship and were entering local competitions. The family needed more space for horse corrals so they moved to Los Olivos where there was also room for Clausen’s custom meat business. All three Clausen children graduated from Santa Ynez High. Linda went to Texas A&M on a volleyball scholarship and now lives in Sanger, California, with Clausen’s three grandchildren, Cassandra, Denny and Blake, and her husband, Mike, who is a produce broker. Brenda graduated from Cal-Poly with a degree in business administration, worked at Nordstrom 13 years, and is now a career salesperson in Orange County. Brian lives in Los Olivos; he was a wrestler at Santa Ynez, had a modeling career, and eventually learned his father’s trade. “I’d seen dad butcher so many times, and I just started doing it too.” As Bent’s slaughtering and processing expanded, he added a front window to their downtown Los Olivos location, and he and Anne-Lise began selling ice cream, coffee and sandwiches. Wildly popular with locals, the deli added tables and chairs and became Clausen’s Old-Fashioned Deli, where the poor boy sandwich with red cabbage and melted jack cheese was a favorite. When Clausen received an offer in 1989, he sold the deli and he and Anne-Lise settled down to semi-retirement. A short time later Anne-Lise suffered a fatal heart attack while working in her garden. They had been married 37 years. “It was an enormous funeral,” Brian remembers. “People kept coming and telling me what a ray of sunshine she had been in their lives.” It was a tragic time for Clausen, compounded when his house caught fire during the holiday season and burned to the ground. Brian kept Clausen busy by involving him in a new business selling gourmet Danish sausage made from an ancient recipe passed down from Bent’s mother to restaurants and groceries around the Valley. A few years later they lost their lease, closed the business and Bent Clausen officially retired from the meat business. These days Clausen breeds Jack Russell terriers, fox terriers and pigeons. He also loves to cook. Every year he donates a feast at his home to various charities, one of which sold to a group of four judges last year for $1600. Fellow Dane Paul Hanberg says his favorite Clausen dish is the delicious roast pork loin called flaeskestej, where the rind is left on the pork, scored and beautifully decorated. While Danish cultural traditions and foods have easily survived transplantation to the Santa Ynez Valley, nearly all Danes from Denmark agree that the summer climate here takes some getting used to. In 1972, fed up with the heat, Clausen abruptly moved his family from Los Olivos to a pristine ranch in Canada. It didn’t last. Clausen recalls one winter day in Canada. “I looked at my family and they were all crying. I said, ‘Friday we’re leaving.’” They returned to the Valley that week. “I said to myself, okay Bent Clausen, you are going to make up your mind to tolerate this climate.” He has never since complained of the heat, he claims. |
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Copyright 2005, Inside Santa Ynez Valley Magazine, All Rights Reserved |
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