Written December 1978 for her three children. Read aloud to the club by her daughter Liz Manfredini, June 12, 2008, thirty years later.
To Leslie, and David, and Lizzy...because I thought you might want to know.
When I open a morning newspaper, read of the tragedies, the crimes, the constant government problems with money, the horrendous buildup of military hardware the world over, the ego preoccupation with life style, psychology, dangerous foods, highway devastation, world hunger, freedom of this and freedom of that movements, my mind often goes back to another generation, another world, another way of living. Although I was born in 1918, just 60 years ago, the speed and magnitude of both technological and social changes are such that they have completely transformed the world we inhabit. I feel that there was a much closer cultural relationship to my childhood and that of a youngster brought up in 1800 than between those of 60 years ago and today. More important than the technological changes themselves are the things that have occurred because of them. Per se: television is a great electronic breakthrough, but its impact on the family life of today’s children, its influence on its morals, and its changing the role of the average person into a passive viewer instead of an active doer is simply one example.
Another, to my mind equally disturbing, is the increasing mobility of the American family, almost to the point where there is only the rare and unusual case of a whole family -- grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins -- being in constant and close proximity for a continuing period of time.
With all the technical advances has the standard of living risen for most of us? I believe we ate better when I was young with unadulterated foods, simply prepared, instead of an increased emphasis on prepared foods, fast foods, false foods. Our houses were warm, and no doubt shoveling coal was an unpleasant job but it did give needed exercise to the shoveler. Clothes were made of cotton, wool or silk...ironing was taken in stride, and children changed into “play clothes” when they came home from school, saving school clothes for school, where they were expected to appear properly and sensibly clothed. All meals were taken together as a family; it would never occur to any family member not to appear at mealtime except for illness. The family was solid, secure and the ultimate unit.
Not many people grew up in North Dakota, simply because so few people lived there. We had a most demanding climate, four definable seasons, and certainly a middle-class, middle-country existence. I hope this rambling dissertation will give you at least a small insight into what was a truly wondrous childhood.
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Aunt Boo-ah’s wedding took place in the depth of winter, and is the first vivid memory I have of either family or place. Grandma and Grandpa Stinson’s house was just a small-town block away from my house. It was considerably larger and certainly more “old fashioned” than ours, which had been built in 1918. In the bitter temperatures of North Dakota we often drove the short block rather than face the ice and snow that separated the two houses.
Boo-ah was actually named Vera, but as I was the first grandchild my baby talk was eagerly adopted by the aunts and uncles and grandparents, and the given name “Vera” was seldom used the rest of her life. Aunt Vera had been educated, with emphasis on refinement, in a ladies’ finishing school in Roanoke, Virginia, majoring in china painting. She was, especially as a bride, a quite beautiful woman, with strong black hair softly swept into a chignon at the back of her head, brown eyes that could become almost Italian in their limpidity, and a fresh, lively complexion. Boo-ah was marrying a fine gentleman who became our dear Uncle Eddie, already slightly rotund and with a sparse smattering of colorless hair covering his rather round head. My first strong memory of Uncle Eddie is the way he smelled. A special lotion -- I have no idea what it was -- was as much a part of him as his skin and far more agreeable to a small child than the normal odors emanating from the other male members of the family.
The wedding, in my child’s mind, was a whirl of color, a warm crowded room, and a strong sense of happiness permeating the atmosphere. I was dressed in a splendid white dress, with white long stockings and a glorious crisp blue sash that tied in a most uncomfortable bow in the back. Whether I was part of the wedding, a flower girl or ring bearer, I don’t know.
This was the house that Grandpa had built as a wedding present for my mother and father...actually, I learned later, it was the second one, the first burning to the ground as the result of children playing with matches in the unfinished frame structure. However, the house, complete with furnishings, was a wedding present for my parents, and the fact that it was only a short block away from my grandparents was most fortuitous in my young life. I had the incredible richness of two sets of loving parents, both daily accessible and both giving to me a different sort of confidence and values.
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The house itself was typical small town, midwest architecture. The land was perhaps 75 feet in width and went from the street to the alley, which was paved, and just as much a part of my environment as any other part of the house. The house was always painted white, with a green shingle roof. Across the front was a wide porch, first without any embellishments but later with screens, then glass added to make it usable longer periods each year. As you entered through the front door you first came into a small, 6x6 foot front hall, with the obligatory radiator to the left. A coat closet was directly ahead with a full-length mirror on its door. Turning to the right you walked into the living-room, moderate in size, with a good fireplace at the far end, two high windows on either side of the mantel and one rather large window facing out onto the porch which never really allowed enough light to come in. The dining-room adjoined the living-room and was the only place we ever ate, except a lunch or two in the summer on the porch. China cabinets and a buffet, a vital part of any dining-room in those days, were filled with the family treasures, only to be brought out for company (we never used the term “guests”). The kitchen, the heart of the house, was through a swinging door to the left of the dining-room. It wasn’t large, nor was it small, and some of the great food in my life-time came out of that special room. A back porch opened out of the kitchen and onto the back yard and was generally used for storing large baking pans, extra canning jars, and the like.
Another door from the kitchen led to the “side door” and down to the basement. Finished with a cement floor, from my earliest recollection, it housed the furnace and was always a warm place to play. In later years, when I was about 15, a major change took place and the room was made into what was then called a “play room”, although the term designated adult play rather than children’s. At that time (1928) another room was partitioned off for a maid’s room. Linoleum was put down, rather uncomfortable couches suitably covered with gay fabrics, a desk for my studying, and a bar (!) of all things was installed. Fancy glasses, mostly of useless sizes, were on shelves behind this bar, but the most fascinating piece of equipment was a huge buffalo coat my father had somehow acquired, rough, smelly, it was huge and so stiff that we would stand it alone on the floor and hide in it or use it as a tent. This basement play room had high small windows rimming three walls, and when a torrential summer rain came it would flood and everyone would be recruited into mopping up -- sometimes a foot of water. And as the years went on, the small black desk became a very important part of my existence, as this is where all my studying took place -- often at 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning.
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The second floor of the house had two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a marvelous place called the cubby hole, which was directly off the landing. Here were stored suitcases and boxes of off-season clothes, Christmas boxes to be reused, and tree decorations. And here, with my friends, I would play house by the hour, setting up every imaginable play concept, changing it daily from a doll house to a school to a store...
My bedroom, shared with my sister, had two windows on the right and another over a built-in large area of drawers. My mother was constantly trying to upgrade the house, to make it “stylish”, and one of the more difficult changes was putting twin beds into this room...plus a vanity and a chest of drawers! The space was so small that there was no room between the beds, and one had to walk carefully between the bed and vanity and chest not to bump one’s shins. The furniture was all an avocado green with some gold trim, and I am sure I thought it splendid. My sister and I each had half of the drawers, and there was a continual skirmishing if one infringed on the property of the other. My bed was next to the windows, and in winter our storm windows had a small corner which could be opened. Although certainly not encouraged by my parents, I would often in winter open that small aperture and place my pillow on it. The stars were there to touch and the air was like diamonds, the snow would crunch under my fingers, and I was perhaps able to enjoy it for two or three minutes before the fierceness of the winter became too uncomfortable. Looking back, I have the feeling that for most of the winter our windows were never opened!
Mother and Daddy’s room seemed quite large to me, with a wide double bed, space for chairs as well as the regulation chests. In their closet was mother’s hope chest -- something every North Dakota bride brought to her new home. Although I have no idea what was in my mother’s at the time of marriage, it was used for storing furs and valuable woolens, as it was moth-proofed -- a so-called cedar chest.
The bathroom was fairly large and was used, of course, by all members of the family. It never occurred to any of us that another bathroom would be of any value whatsoever. My most poignant memory of that room was a day in 1927, when I was playing in the tub, and mother came up with the incredible news that Lindbergh had flown across the Atlantic and landed in Paris. And I had seen him many times!
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Our front yard was seldom used except as a passageway to the house... across the street from our house was “the little store”. I’m sure, over the years, that it had many names, many owners, but I always felt rather set up over the fact that I had my store so close. Penny candy, neighbors visiting, all the associations that made this my most important commercial contact continued all through my childhood. My family charged their groceries, and once a month my sister and I were allowed to bring the money to pay the bill across the street, and we were always rewarded with a bag of candy bars. Today I’m sure that zoning would consider a small neighborhood grocery a distinct drawback, but to a small child it was a glorious advantage.
A driveway, paved, led to a frame single car garage at the back of the lot, shared by our neighbors, the Reitons, and their garage. On our lot, huge honeysuckle trees bordered the driveway and were used by many children in various ways. If you strip the leaves off the long pliable branches you have a superb whip which would almost sing as it was whipped back and forth. The blossoms, in early summer, were so fragrant that the whole block was perfumed. But most useful of all were the red soft berries that formed during the latter part of the summer. Admonished constantly not to put them in our mouths, we used them daily for play cooking. We squished them for jam, mixed them with mud for dough, made play juices out of them, and generally kept each bit of summer clothing stained as well as our hands and legs.
The shade of the huge bushes was perfect for playing dolls underneath... and although I’m sure they never had the advantage of the expert pruner, they had the stamina to withstand the brutality of the prairie winters, coming forth each spring with their lovely shell-pink blossoms. I have been shown honey- suckle in other parts of the country that has no resemblance to what I knew... perhaps it was even wrongly named.
Cliff and Clare Reiton were our neighbors all the time I was growing up, sharing the driveway, and with children the same age as my sister and myself. My peer was a boy named John. His sister Vivian was a year older, and there was a younger daughter named after her mother, Clarabelle. The Reitons did things “differently” from my family, the Stinsons, although today the differ- ences seem vague. I have a strong feeling that Mrs. Reiton wasn’t a very good cook which, in North Dakota, was a rather severe indictment. And they were Christian Scientists! Everyone who wasn’t a Presbyterian was strange. I
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gradually became aware that there were Catholics in our town and even a Jewish family, the Rabinoviches, who ran a furniture store. But my personal environs were rather limited, and the-religious preference of the Reitons was a subject of continuing fascination for me. Clarabelle was not only a staunch member of the church but also a reader. At times I was allowed to go to Sunday school with them, and the only really strong memory I have is learning constantly that “God is Love”. This was not nearly as exciting as the lovely images that were drawn up at my Presbyterian Sunday school, with colored pictures of Jesus surrounded by beautiful small children, and saying such things as “Little children come unto me”, Christians being fed to the lions, the walls of the temples falling.
But the Reiton children were my daily playmates -- in the summer under the honeysuckles or out in the alley playing ante-ante-hi-over, which I believe was throwing a ball over the garage roofs. For years John Reiton and I had daily wrestling matches, and I’m rather ashamed to admit that until I was twelve years old I beat him...and am sure that I instigated each conflict. They were seldom in anger, generally a physical exercise, and we were always close friends as soon as they were over. For some unknown reason they always played in our yard, we never played in theirs, although they were quite similar.
The rest of the neighbors on the block were not as close friends, but were the same all through the years. It was a permanent place...no one ever moved... you knew that next year would again be the same as the last.
As I look back, there was very little social involvement among the neighbors in the sense that we know it today. When my parents entertained at dinner, it was friends from another part of town, and it was generally a tearing and wearing experience. The neighbors were visited with on the street, over the backyard hedge, in the grocery. I am sure everyone knew what everyone else was doing, but there was surprisingly little intimacy.
724 FENTON AVENUE - GRANDMA AND GRANDPA STINSON’S HOUSE
The house where Grandma and Grandpa lived was also white, with a huge kitchen and a pantry where the only running water was downstairs. A large square kitchen table was in the center of the room, and when dishes were washed, pans were filled in the pantry and brought to the table to be washed, rinsed and dried. A gay oilcloth always covered the top, and it was obviously
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the most important piece of furniture in the house. All meals, except for company, were served there, and every Friday the preparation for the week’s baking took place on that table. Bread for the week, cakes and cookies were generally baked one day each week. The stove was a gas one, with four burners and one oven that was considerably smaller than most of ours today. When Grandma made bread she kept some of the dough for rolls, and before baking she coated them with milk and dusted them with sugar. Often she made what were simply called sugar cookies...so crisp and golden and sugary that I haven’t ever tasted any better.
Almost every morning during the summer months I would get up before my family, pull on my clothes, and go up to sit outside the side door of Grandma’s house. Just as they might open a door to let in the cat, each morning they opened it and welcomed me to their breakfast table. For a while I had a special high chair that I sat in, then gradually I just joined them at the kitchen table. Each morning we would have rich, hot oatmeal with cream and brown sugar, and I would be given a cup of coffee greatly diluted with cream and with an extraordinary amount of sugar. Grandpa used to pour his hot coffee into his saucer and dip sugar cubes into it, then happily suck them...a practice I was never able to perfect.
Grandma’s basement was also a vital part of the house. Stacks of old magazines were stored there, and every Monday a flurry of activity took place as that was wash day. There were gas burners on top of which huge copper oval tubs were set to boil first thing in the morning -- one held plain water, another water with bluing added. Each had a long stick, like a broom handle, for stirring and lifting the boiling clothes. There was also a washing machine with a wringer, the machine chugging along by electricity but the wringer hand operated. There were delicious smells in that basement...and I would sit by the hour and go through the old magazines, searching for the Campbell soup ads with the Campbell kids, which I was allowed to cut out and keep. How my small and frail Grandmother lifted the water into those vast copper tubs I have no idea, nor how she emptied them. I do know that the basement was the province of women, and I don’t recall ever seeing my Grandfather or any other man down there. In the winter the washing was dried in the basement, in the summer outdoors.
Grandma’s house had four bedrooms albeit, of course, one bath. There was, when I first remember anything, a room for my great grandmother, Ada Schwartz, “Old Nang Nang”. Again, I am sure, that was the name I gave her, but I never
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heard her called anything different. Old Nang Nang was very dear to me, and was the one who took care of me when my parents were out for an evening.
She was also a great storyteller and one tale I heard many, many times, always at my request. It was of a family who had gone to visit friends some distance away in the middle of the winter. They went by sleigh, and all went well until the return trip. The father and (varying number of children), mother and grandparents were all warmly wrapped and skimming over the snow, homebound, when they heard the call of a pack of wolves! The father whipped and urged the horses to go faster and faster. But the howling wolves came closer and closer. At last they were about to attack the sled and the horses when the father grabbed a child and threw him to the wolves! Then for a short time the sleigh outran the wolves, but as soon as that child had been devoured the wolves again drew closer and closer again. And out was thrown a second child...and so the story went, the number of children depending on how long I stayed awake. Somehow or other I must have had a macabre imagination as I dearly loved that story, along with the old tale “Babes in the Woods”. A child in North Dakota had a real sense of the perils of the winters, and its terrors obviously held a deep fascination for me.
Generally, each Sunday we had dinner at Grandma’s. This would be a proper one o’clock Sunday dinner, with a roast put in the oven before church, and all the cousins, aunts and uncles gathered around. I loved these dinners, and it wasn’t until I had my own home that I understood my mother’s intense dislike of them. There was no choice...the gathering of the clan was as automatic as the sun rising in the morning. The women would help with the final food preparation, with the children and men in the parlor. After dinner came the washing up ritual, always the women, while the men were generally upstairs taking a nap. But the day didn’t end with dinner. Whatever was the main course for the big meal was always prepared in such quantities as to furnish a large sit-down leftover supper -- again with the washing up. After dinner out came the tables for games of whist. I was allowed to sit with Grandpa and observe, but as the evening wore on and I became more and more sleepy, I was put to rest on the couch just feet away from the game players. I can still close my eyes and feel the utter happiness of being with those I loved, warm, sleepy, and just barely listening to the big people’s talk...so safe.
My Grandfather’s business was coal and ice, both vital necessities for that climate where you freeze during the long winter and roast during the torrid summers. They cut the ice from the Red River and stored it in a vast holding warehouse and covered it with sawdust. I still don’t understand why
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even those huge hulks of ice didn’t melt in the hot summer temperatures...but they seemed to last each year until the next supply was frozen. The same wagons (later trucks) could be used for ice in the summer and coal in the winter.
Grandpa was also an inventor. Two of his inventions deserve recalling. The first was a tractor, to be used in the great wheat fields of North Dakota. Apparently he not only developed a rather good machine but also sold a great many to the surrounding farmers. However, the first year that they were in use in large numbers an exceptionally dry summer developed. The tractor proved to be useless when dust got into its carburetor (or something) and the venture turned out to be a failure. Grandpa, listening perhaps to the call of an old-fashioned conscience, took his responsibility very seriously and bought back the machines or repaid every penny the farmers, his customers, had spent. This was a great deal of money for his personal financial assets to bear, but there was never a hesitation about the right thing to do. I am very proud of him.
Another invention that had, in those days, a far greater interest for my sister and me and our cousins was a soda fountain machine. In his office he had the prototype (every drug store needed them for ice cream sodas) and a great variety of flavored syrups. There was an intriguing collection of rather unclean jelly type glasses, and with very little urging Grandpa would fizz up a quite remarkable sweet concoction for any small child. Whatever came of that enterprise I don’t know...no doubt it fizzled itself out!
Grandma and Grandpa were strong thinkers and, as I look back, perhaps rather narrow ones. They subscribed to 15 newspapers from all over the country, and spent a good part of each day thoroughly going over them and clipping any point that reinforced their already concrete opinions. Among other things, they hated with sheer joy the very breath that Franklin Delano Roosevelt drew. Unions aroused their wrath, regardless of any working conditions that their members might be enduring. Government interference in any way with business was wicked and must be dealt with. And only Republicans went to heaven.
Every delivery man, milk man, guest of any sort in the house was deluged with clippings. Although they were most mild and quite gentle in their personal dealings, I’m sure the clippings spoke their real point of view more than their actual conversations. Grandpa at one point also became a devotee of Robert Ingersoll. There was a round bookcase between their two reading chairs in the living-room that neatly held several volumes, Ingersoll’s complete works. Every book had at least 20 markers, and seldom did a guest arrive, male or female, who
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uttered any sort of statement about the weather, the crops, or a national event without Grandpa immediately pulling out the right volume and unerringly turning to the proper page for Ingersoll’s ultimate opinion.
Early in my childhood Grandpa was a deacon in the Presbyterian church, and often after Sunday school I would accompany them to church. My parents seldom went, and with my grandparents I was allowed rather unusual privileges such as consuming all of the grape juice from the small glasses in front of each pew seat and being allowed to bring a story book, to be hidden behind the hymnal and read during the service.
However, at some period, Ingersoll got the best of Grandpa and his views became more important than the edicts of the church. One day, Grandpa called a gathering of all the other church deacons to his home. For some marvelous unknown reason I was allowed to be present, and the memory stands out vividly. After being served coffee and some of Grandma’s delicious cookies and cakes, Grandpa got down to business. He passed out a volume of Ingersoll to each and every deacon and commenced to attempt to convert them to his new theology. Very little was spoken after they each had read their special sections but quietly, and obviously very shaken, they silently left the room and the house. Grandpa’s organized religion had come to an end. When he died, he had requested his children to have his funeral without a minister and with designated readings from Ingersoll. The family was unable to comply, however, and poor Grandpa was properly prayed over by a proper Presbyterian minister.
Grandpa was Orangeman Irish -- tall and very handsome. He was one of 7 boys, all born in the USA. However, almost all of the others went gallivanting off all over the world, intent upon adventure and derring-do, and we seldom had word of them.
Grandma’s background was New York Dutch and very D.A.R. She came to North Dakota in a covered wagon, one of the few that included in its manifest a piano! Her social contacts were most ladylike, and again I was most fortunate to be involved quite often.
One particularly delicious memory is of afternoon affairs called “silver teas” put on by the ladies of the Eastern Star. No doubt the five- or ten-cent piece inconspicuously dropped into a silver bowl by the door went to a most worthy charity. Perhaps 25 or 30 ladies attended each affair, and chairs were stiffly lined up around the perimeter of the room. In the center was a table truly groaning with the most magnificent and caloric collection of cakes imaginable. A coffee and tea urn was at each end of the table, and well-dressed
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ladies poured as they graciously visited with each other. The culinary creations were high, several layers, with wondrous names like Lady Baltimore, Imperial Angel, Daffodil, Maple Marble, Triple Fudge...these truly were the ladies’ badges of honor, and of such fine fare were reputations made. And I was allowed to have as much as I wished!
Although a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution for most of her life and a staunch anti-Roosevelt Republican, Grandma resigned from that austere organization the same day Eleanor Roosevelt did and for the same reason -- when Marian Anderson was not allowed to sing in their Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., because she was black.
Another social activity of Grandma’s was the Ladies’ Musical Society, where various “afternoons” took place in private homes with a member at the piano and another singing or playing a stringed instrument. Life was quite simple and the pleasures quiet and relaxing.
Almost all the time Grand Forks apparently stayed the same as far as population went. Today it may be a different story, but I have the feeling no new people moved in, no one moved away, and the same number were born as died. And that figure was always 20,000, making it the second largest city in the state, just slightly smaller than its southern neighbor, Fargo. We were 67 miles from the Canadian border, with Winnipeg about 125 miles and Minneapolis, our metropolis, around 365. The roads leading out of town were straight as a die and the flat horizon stretched forever. Bismarck, the capitol, was on the other side of the state and never seemed a part of our lives.
Originally Grand Forks was built with sod houses during the 1870’s at the point where the Red River and the Red River of the North converged. The legend goes that early on the river was used for trade between the Canadian provinces and the states bordering the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, and flat boats used to ply the waters with regularity. However, one late fall heavy snow and low, low temperatures came early and the flat boats were caught there for the winter. As the cargo of one was composed almost entirely of fine Scotch whisky and brandy brought down from Canada, the winter passed very pleasantly and the crew decided that a town should be built there to commemorate such a fine beginning.
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This area of the midwest is famous wheat growing country, producing the finest of No. 1 hard durham wheat which commands internationally the best of all prices. A great many Scandinavians made up the early settlers, and the farms became large holdings almost at once. There were few trees, and one of the first things done by these stalwart people was to plant poplars, rapidly growing trees that could withstand the heavy snows and low temperatures. They provided a wind break as well as a welcome bit of green on the landscape and shade in the summer.
Like many midwest small towns, its most important street was called Main Street. Sinclair Lewis’s MAIN STREET was written only a short distance away, in a small Minnesota town called Fergus Falls, and I have always felt a deep kinship with his book.
Downtown was about a five-minute bicycle ride from my house, and from the time I had my first 2-wheeler it was my preferred method of transportation in spring, summer and fall. In winter it was walk or motor -- bikes didn’t work well in the snow. There were only a few stores I remember -- actually there weren’t too many more. The first and most important was R. B. Griffiths, a department store. It had a grocery, the best in town, with a fine meat department. On its first floor were jewelry counters, a dry goods section (run by my Uncle Harold), and most important of all, the book department. Here on three counters placed in the aisles were the children’s books...Bomba, the Jungle Boy, Nancy Drew, The Bobbsey Twins, all the serial type books that were such an important part of my early literary life. All the time I was growing up I recall the books costing $.50. That was an enormous sum of money to me, especially as the books were gobbled up often in one sitting. However, mercifully, another very dear uncle was in charge of the book department, Uncle Cleve, and as I was always most careful, he allowed me to stand by the stalls and read the books without having to buy them. I do hope so very much that I left them in their new, pristine condition, and that my hands were clean, and that I never turned back the page corners!
Upstairs in Griffiths were the fashions! All of us, young and old, knew the stock by heart. Seldom did we make a purchase but every new arrival had to be checked out personally, if only for dreams.
My mother, before she married daddy, worked as a bookkeeper for the store. Just down the street was the George Bray Co. store, which sold only ladies’ clothes. George and his beautiful wife Marguerite were my parents’ closest friends. George’s ancestry was French, although far removed, and that
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lent a great deal of glamor to a dear man with a paunch and a lisp. It was George Bray who gave me my first job, in his store, and eventually took me on buying trips with him to Chicago.
Herbergers was the other store of consequence. Somehow I would equate them today as Griffiths-Fredericks, Herbergers-Nordstrom. Our family, although friends of the Herbergers, seldom patronized it.
Another important part of my downtown life was the Bud’s Corner Cigar Store. Here the magazines were sold, and the boxes of Whitman’s chocolates. And here were made what must be the most delicious milk shakes in the world.
Another business, although one couldn’t really call it a store, was Jim the Popcorn Man’s wagon on Fourth Street. Here nightly during the warm summer evenings, after a short auto ride and a stop to watch the evening Empire Builder train come in, we would park and Dad would get four bags of Jim’s wonderfully delicious popcorn, dripping with real butter and hot off the popper. During the depression Dad sold a car to Jim who, unable to pay in dollars, traded Dad a lifetime supply of popcorn. We were the richer.
Dad’s business, from the time I can remember, was a Chevrolet dealership. His was, off and on with the Ford agency, the largest in the area, and he sold not only cars but trucks to the farmers as far away as Canada and about 50 miles in all directions. His big repair shop was run by a great hulk of a man called George Wavra, who must have been close to a mechanical genius, as people would buy their cars year after year from Dad because they knew the service was so great. There were two huge cranes going the length of the shop on a track, and the mechanics would lift me up to the hook of one end, using it as a swing seat, give me a ride from one end of the shop to the other.
The only other place of major importance downtown was the library, an Andrew Carnegie endowed brick building that I enjoyed and used to the fullest. The children’s books were in the basement, and included bound volumes of St. Nicholas magazines printed during World War I which had a wild fascination for me. They were gory, prejudiced and vividly illustrated with atrocities being done to Belgian children and horror pictures of wicked Huns. I pored over them time after time. Each Saturday morning there was a story hour, and every day the library was a warm and welcoming place for a small girl to visit.
The public park in my life was called Riverside...only three blocks or so from our house, on the banks of the Red River. In the park were great old oak trees, several picnic benches, swings and slides. Several times during the
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summer the whole family would gather for a Sunday picnic, with tables piled high with delicious summer treats -- great roast chickens, fried chickens, cold roast beef, homemade baked beans, potato salad with homemade dressing, sliced tomatoes, warm from the garden, little green onions as small as a knitting needle, huge vats of tart real lemonade, loaves of homemade breads and creamy butter, homemade ice cream still in the machine, and cakes, cakes, cakes! All the family would share in the richness and all would help in the preparation. NO paper plates then...real tablecloths, napkins and glasses. The men and boys would play a game of catch ball, the children play on the swings, and the women visit. The hum of summer insects would be music in the air...somehow by the river the water seemed to cool the temperatures off. The days were drowsy and lazy...just as summer should be.
Our house wasn’t on the wrong side of the tracks but it wasn’t on the right side of town either. I soon learned that socially the place to live in Grand Forks was the South Side. From a visual standpoint I still don’t understand why as the North Side, or my side, was really rather lovelier. However, that is where the big houses were and where the Grand Forks Herald wrote of the doings of the ladies in their Society pages. Eventually all of my close friends lived on the South Side, and I spent a great many bicycle hours between the two areas.
Industrially our town had two major businesses, the first the grain elevator, run by George Brown, a great friend of Daddy’s. Here the farmers brought their grain for storage before shipping the world over. The second plant was the sugar beet factory, sugar beets being the area’s second most important crop. In later years potatoes made their impact on the agricultural scene, with a large and successful potato chip plant being built, but that was after I had left.
The University of North Dakota, almost as old as the town itself, was on the northern edge of the city but always remained an enclave unto itself as far as our family was concerned, and most of our town and gown seldom mixed socially - why, with that small population, I’ll never know or understand.
We might as well have been at the North Pole weatherwise. Christmas was a gloriously important part of our lives. There was no wondering if there would be snow at Christmas -- it was as sure as life itself.
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Christmas Eve at our house was a mixed blessing. During the afternoon Dad always had a Christmas party for the men at the shop, with a big lunch, lots of alcohol, a turkey and, in good years, a bonus check for each of the men. The spirit of that party always took over and generally my Dad came home a bit to the wind, which was undoing to Mother. We also, for some strange reason, had two dreadful menus on Christmas Eve -- lutefisk for Mother, a ritual Scandinavian holiday dish, and boiled pigs’ feet for Dad. Neither of them were of the slightest appeal to my sister or me and were never served at any other meals. However, the house at that time of the year was bulging with every imaginable cookie and holiday treat. Darkness came at 3:30 or earlier, and after dinner we would all begin the great task of dressing for the great outdoors and the valiant 5-minute walk one block away with gifts for the grandparents. On went the socks to be worn over the shoes, the leggings, the extra sweater, the boots, the coats, scarves and mittens. So heavily clothed we moved like robots, we stood in the front hall till all four of us were assembled and safely clothed. Once outside, the great prairie winter took over. I know it must have snowed at least once or twice, but every memory I have of Christmas Eve is of a gloriously clear night, alight with stars, and one very special Christmas star always there leading us to Grandma’s house. The snow was so hard and crisp one could hear the crunch a block away. Our noses immediately became cold and we stuffed them deep down into our warm scarves. And before we knew it we were there, and there was the whole business of taking off all the clothes, steaming in the warm hallway, snow melting in great pools on the rugs, and happy calls of Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas! This night was adult present time, and it never occurred to us children to wish it otherwise... for our time was the next morning and this was just extra joys to be shared.
After the gifts were opened and loved and caressed, again came the time for food. Special fruit cakes, candies, so many kinds of cookies we only saw at Christmas, nuts, raisins, apples and oranges entirely covered the table. We never stayed too long on this very special eve because our own tree awaited us at home. There was always another very special Christmas custom that came to be very dear to each and every one of us -- listening to the old Atwater Kent radio that stood beside Dad’s chair for the midnight singing of Silent Night by the great mezzo-soprano Madame Schumann-Heink. First she would sing all three verses in English and then, very softly, came the German words “Stille Nacht”, and somehow or other that was the emotional highpoint of that very special night for me.
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We had a personal family story about Madame Schumann-Heink. In 1918 she made a concert appearance in Grand Forks, although this is hard to believe. She had developed a tremendous mystique for her work with our soldiers during World War I, without giving up her support and love for her own boys in Germany. As I was born in March 1918, this is all a tale handed down by Mother and Daddy. The story goes that the great lady was out walking one fine summer’s day (there was little else to do, I might add, in the prairie metropolis) and came to my carriage, leaned down to pat the “baby” and was slightly bitten by the family airedale dog who was watching the buggy a bit too carefully. Apparently no real harm was done...and the story had a happy ending, with Madame making friends with the dog and my family having their only claim to musical fame.
One particular Christmas Eve stands out above all others. The four of us had made the arctic trek to Grandma’s house, walking in the crunchy white snow and checking out to see that the stars were in their proper Christmas Eve place. But, when we arrived back home, the most marvelous surprise! A beautiful dog house, a miniature reproduction of our house, was under the tree, with a six-weeks old Boston terrier puppy snoozing on some soft pillows inside its door. Perhaps I was 7 or 8 years old -- Darlyne would have been 18 months younger -- but it was a perfect age for such a wonderful new addition to our family. Over the door of the house was the name “Chevy”, which couldn’t have been more appropriate as the house had been lovingly built by the men in Dad’s Chevrolet shop as a gift for us children.
All the wrapped presents were under the tree by Christmas Eve, although never a one was opened until Christmas morning. Our stockings were hung on the fireplace screen (always our own “long stockings”, never store bought ones) and a fine supper of cookies and milk laid out for Santa Claus. We also never went down to the tree in the morning before our parents, who would call up to us, “Now is the time -- Merry Christmas!”
The morning was spent in the rapture of opening presents and playing with them on the floor until breakfast time...then the telephone calls began, to grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins, telling of the glories under our tree and asking what wonderful presents were under theirs.
About two o’clock in the afternoon we again headed to Grandma’s for Christmas dinner. Everyone had a new dress and we would carry with us our most cherished toys, usually a doll and often a book or two. All the female relatives helped with the dinner, the men sitting in the parlor talking and
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taking furtive trips to the basement for what I know now as the place they might have a drink. No liquor was allowed at Grandma’s house -- to her knowledge! We always had a Christmas turkey with all the trimmings and, glory of glories, as the oldest grandchild I alone of the children was allowed to sit at the “big” table. All of the cousins and my sister Darlyne were relegated to the small table in the parlor. Looking back, among the culinary holiday treats that I relished most were olives and celery in a special dish. How commonplace such fare has become to our jaded palates.
Just like the long Sundays, the evening often ended up with a whist game, and there was always the “left-over” supper. Family was so important in my young life that I never realized there were other social opportunities -- certainly I never needed them.
From the first of June onward summer could be marvelous or as brutal as the winter. During the prosperous years from 1920 to 1928 I seem to recall nothing but the lazy, fragrant warm days and often warm nights. The evening drives I mentioned were important because one didn’t drive for sheer pleasure in the winter. However, the years from 1929 onward saw the beginning of the great drought, when the temperatures soared over 100 for days on end and cruel hot winds blew constantly day in and day out and there was no rain to speak of for several years. Even as children we were miserable, and we seldom left the house on the worst days without a handkerchief tied over our faces so we wouldn’t breathe in the awful dust. In the living-room Mother kept a fan going on a wash tub filled with a huge block of ice to try and lower the temperature and increase the humidity.
Although we were never hungry, the Great Depression was a ghastly and daily part of our lives. No one could afford to buy a car, yet General Motors kept sending them unordered to my father to sell. As Grand Forks was the trading area for a large farming community, when the crops wouldn’t grow there was no other business to take its place. I remember well a Sunday dinner that the family had with Aunt Vera and Uncle Eddie, rather unexpected. Vera sent out to a little grocery store for spareribs for all of us...and they cost 5¢ a pound!
Our relatives on my mother’s side, the O’Tooles, were a large family who lived on a wheat farm, huge, about 40 miles away, close to a village called Crystal. They had 7 marvelous children, each and every one musical and valedictorian of their small high school class. During this dreadful period of
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drought that marvelous farm couldn’t produce even enough to feed them, and they would have to come to town to find food to exist.
The moment World War II started, the rains came. The ground, even though much of the top soil had blown away in the harsh winds, had literally laid fallow for all those years and the first year produced the finest wheat crop in its history. A family that had been suffering from hunger actually became close to millionaires within a couple of years, with the high yield of the field and the wartime high price paid for the crops.
But back to childhood summer holidays. There were three vacation areas that all of our part of North Dakota enjoyed -- Bemidji, Minnesota, Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, and Lac du Bonnet, where the road ended in Canada’s Manitoba. In the early years it was either Bemidji or Detroit Lakes. We would rent a cottage, generally around the Fourth of July, and Mother and Darlyne and I would spend several weeks there. Dad would “commute” on weekends or during the week if the temperature was really hot. The lakes abounded with a delicious fish called Walleyed Pike, which Mother would lightly dust with flour and quickly sauté (we called it fry). Farms around provided Golden Bantam corn never picked until we went for it just before dinner, tomatoes so flavorful they would perfume the kitchen, little green onions, crisp tiny beans, little new potatoes, and blueberries from the woods around, which the children would pick daily.
These were lazy days, mostly spent playing in the water, sometimes out fishing with Daddy. Generally my friends’ families would also have taken a cottage nearby and it was, to me, a perfect summer holiday. I can’t recall being bored and I can’t remember doing anything special that required equipment, chauffeuring, or parental involvement. Tennis, golf, lessons in any sport were something completely foreign to our needs. I believe we always had our bicycles with us, which was all the transportation needed.
I learned to drive quite young, perhaps 12 or 13. A driver’s license simply meant paying a quarter at city hall and being given a sheet of paper. One quite naughty thing I did, perhaps when I was about 13 or 14, was to gather my closest friends (I remember particularly Helen Oppegard and Audrey Larkin and Mary Jean McFadden) and take off in the car for Duluth, Minnesota. Now Duluth was about 120 miles from Bemidji. It was a city of about 100,000 people, a Great Lakes port, and no place for a group of adolescent kids who had about two dollars among them and less judgment. What I had in mind was a dinner at a restaurant, The Flame, that served marvelous barbequed spareribs. I had had them once before and couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth.
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During the whole automotive trip I don’t believe it occurred to any of us that we were being incredibly thoughtless and that our parents might be worried sick. When we arrived back, about 10 o’clock at night, completely satisfied with a fine meal of spareribs under our belt, we stopped first at, I believe, Audrey’s house to deliver and soon gathered the storm we were in for. Such a word bruising I had from the Larkins, and Audrey was firmly spanked right in front of the headlights. The same story unfolded as I dropped off Helen Oppegard, complete with spanking -- and Mary Jean. I then had just a few doors to drive to my own reception which, I might add, was even of a hotter nature. Furious, and rightly so, my parents gave me the walloping of my young life. I should mention that we were all dressed in shorts, without a sweater to our name, and wearing the most wretched sneakers. How did they ever let us into the restaurant? How did we pay for four dinners? It was the depression, of course, and any customer was a godsend!
The only drawback I recall to either of these vacation lakes was the plentitude of bloodsuckers. These are quite nasty, slimy creatures often up to three inches long, and they would attach themselves to any piece of flesh they came in contact with. As they sucked out the blood they would grow larger and more repulsive to look at, but you never felt them. Sometimes we would have five and six on our bodies at one time. This was never a drawback to any of the children, however, and we used to keep the necessary remedy on the edge of the dock...salt. If you sprinkled some on the slimy beast he would curl up and drop off. Incidentally, these are the same type of bloodsuckers that 17th and 18th century surgeons used for many cures, and I’m sure they had no real danger for any of us.
On the Fourth of July at the lake, morning began very early. There were no rules about firecrackers, and the beaches were a great place to make the most heady types of artillery. We would hoard tin cans for weeks, fill them with sand, and put a great cherry bomb underneath with just the wick protruding. Punk seemed to work very well in those days (I can never keep it lit today), and its own peculiar fragrance was with us the whole holiday. Other firecrackers dearly beloved by all of us children were the little tiny ones that came attached to each other and when lit would scurry across the ground with marvelous popping sounds. You had to be very alert as you never knew what direction they would head. The larger the firecrackers the bigger the bang, but we mostly liked the very smallest.
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At night the parents would put on the big display...facing out over the lake. The skyrockets and Roman candles were beautiful but never as exciting as the big bangs we set up ourselves.
Lac du Bonnet was a different type of holiday but memorable in its own way. The relatives of my father on the Canadian side were the Leslies, Geordie and String, and they had one son, Marval, who was just a few months short of Darlyne’s age. They had a wonderful log house, huge and splendid, really quite elegant, on the Winnipeg River, which was as wide as our lakes at that point. There was also a guest house where we stayed, and the first and best sauna I have ever seen.
An enormous and productive vegetable garden provided the most wonderful meals for us all, huge affairs such as I have never seen since. Across the river each night were strung lines with fish hooks, and each morning several 7 to 10 pound sturgeon were there to be cleaned and served for breakfast. This, I was told, was illegal, making it taste even more delicious as all of the sturgeon were the property of the crown! I remember breakfast after breakfast with two huge platters at either end of the long shiny table loaded with local thick-sliced bacon, slices of ham, piles of little homemade sausages, and the marvelous sturgeon, blueberry hotcakes, mountains of eggs, cinnamon rolls hot from the oven and so rich and sticky we all needed baths. The breakfasts were not only culinary treats but a time of long and wonderful conversations.
The days were spent swimming, making ginger beer, picking blueberries, and having a glorious time simply doing nothing in a lovely timeless way. After dinner, always another gargantuan feast, we would all go to the sauna, where a fire was built each afternoon at four o’clock in its great stone stove. Three tiers of benches lined three walls of the shed, and wooden pails of water were placed at close intervals on the benches. As children we would generally sit on the lower benches, where the temperature might only reach 160 degrees, but the older you were the higher you went, with the top temperature often 212 degrees. After a sufficient time of self baking we would leave the sauna, jump into the adjacent river, which seemed warm as a bath, swim for a few short minutes, and fall into bed for the most luxurious hours of sleep I have ever known. We were so fortunate to have such kind and friendly relatives who asked us year after year to this North woods paradise.
In addition to the idyllic everyday life we led at Lac du Bonnet, I had several opportunities of flying with a famous bush pilot up to the gold mines
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in the north. As I previously mentioned, Lac du Bonnet was where the road ended. Everything north in the tundra could only be reached by small planes that landed on the water. Les Brown, a good friend of my parents and the Leslies, had a bush pilot business bringing in supplies to the mines scattered sparsely over this vast wasteland. His claim to fame was twofold...he was the legendary pilot who shot down Baron von Richtofen during World War I, and he and his wife made the first Canadian coast-to-coast airplane flight. A quiet but ofttimes gay man, he would often ask if I would enjoy being tucked in with the strange cargo he was flying North...yes, yes, yes...and I would be seated between iron pipes and oranges, flour and mosquito netting, barrels of gasoline and oil, everything imaginable. These were tremendously exciting trips for me, and how I loved the feeling of the plane rushing wildly over the water for its takeoff. No one had a speed boat in those days, of course.
The little town of Lac du Bonnet was mostly populated with Finns, hence the saunas. Ofttimes on a Saturday night there would be a party in town and we would all go, young and old. I remember well one giant of a man who would dance with me by placing me on his feet (a bit like riding a horse, with feet in stirrups) and doing a wild and exhausting schottische or reel.
HALLOWE’EN
It is my considered opinion that Hallowe’en “ain’t what it used to be”! In those days it was a special time eagerly looked forward to by every child almost with a “get even with the adults” approach. The weather could be snowy, and it was always cold. We would run in packs, and I’m afraid the damage we did was quite extensive though never expensive. Obviously the few outhouses that were still in the neighborhood never had a chance. Over they went the minute darkness arrived. Next came the poor garbage cans. Except for those forward-thinking individuals who hauled their trash cans into the house, all were bodily lifted and the contents dumped on a porch, after which the cans were gathered together to make a road blockade. Although I remember no sort of leadership, each and every one of us, boys and girls together, went efficiently about our self-appointed tasks as though we had had weeks of rehearsal. No one was in costume -- mittens and scarves were far more practical. There was little shouting, all these heinous deeds were done with a minimum of noise until we started rolling the garbage cans into the street. The police, of course, would be called, but as the same activities were taking place in every block in town there was little they could do about it. Upon their arrival we would scatter, then as soon as they left we would immediately regroup. We had a vile and
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simple mechanism for soaping outdoor windows -- I am sorry to say I can’t remember just how it was made, but I now realize that removing soap from windows in a land where the temperature did not rise above freezing until late April was a particularly horrendous thing to do. The next day was sorting out day for the garbage cans, cleaning of front porches, reperching the outhouses. I’m sure from the adults there was a sigh of relief that that holiday was now 364 days away.
One of the truths that maturity seems to really make clear is that everything, but everything, is relative. And that certainly goes for outdoor sports. In Seattle, a zero temperature would induce sheer trauma...plants would be given up for lost, fingers and toes would be frostbitten, and generally winter sports would come to a halt. In North Dakota a zero temperature was a celebrated warming trend! Our winters were too long, there was almost always a killing frost by the end of September, and the ice didn’t break in the rivers until the end of April. So obviously we were acclimated, or to be more accurate, we were dressed for the weather. Long underwear was automatic, and we all wore what were called “snow pants” that were pulled on over the various other layers of our clothing. Next came heavy wool socks that went over the shoes and then, over them, the overshoes. They were generally of the four-buckle type, zippers at first unknown and then proving not very good, as the ice froze between the ligaments and they were impossible to work. On the top half of our bodies a lined and interlined full-length coat -- we never had jackets. A very warm woolen cap with ear muffs underneath was securely anchored on by a heavy scarf that then was wrapped several times around our neck and allowed us to keep both our nose and mouth covered. In a short time a heavy frost would accumulate on the outside of the scarf, making it stiff and uncomfortable. And mittens, a problem of the utmost seriousness, were always on a length of braided yarn that went through our sleeves so they would hang down when they weren’t covering our hands. One layer of mittens was insufficient, two not quite adequate, and three would keep us warm but give us absolutely useless appendages for hands. It was a problem that never had a comfortable solution. Once dressed, out we would go...and this was every day, except in a blizzard, which was too life threatening for children to be abroad.
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Sledding on the old-fashioned sleds was always with us. The slightest incline, with that gloriously packed snow, made an ideal run. At times we would be taken to the park, where toboggan runs had been smoothed out, and often -- many times a week -- we would skate at night. The park department had a rink -- the ice was a bit rutty, I’m sure, and the temperatures terrifying and ridiculous. We would skate for about 10 minutes and then go into the warming hut, where we had put our skates on and which had a great oil drum stove, red hot and heavenly. Because skating allowed only one pair of heavy socks, it was our feet that gave out first. To warm up without removing the skates was about a 20-minute affair, so it was 10 minutes on the rink, 20 in the warming hut for the whole evening. But we loved it, and every child skated. Incidentally, no one I knew had figure skates...we all had hockey skates but never saw a puck or hockey stick. We generally skated in pairs, hands crossed, just as in a Hans Brinker picture.
Cross country skiing was another rather lovely winter activity. The rivers, of course were frozen solid, and we would put a pack on our backs with some sort of lunch (the sandwiches would be frozen solid) and take off down the river. No skill was required, and the scenery in the pristine white snow was very beautiful. I recall several times trying to build a fire but never successfully. To find a dry spot was impossible, and even though you could knock the snow off the branches, they were frozen and wet through.
At one of the parks there was a splendid ski jump. I never knew anyone personally who used it, but great and famous figures used to come from the world over for competitions. You could depend on the weather in North Dakota! Once I climbed to the top -- a terrifying experience -- and tried to imagine what it would be like leaping over the edge far out into nowhere. The trip down was as much adventure as I could cope with.
Winter meant a complete dependence on parents for driving us to friends’ houses, to town to the movie, even to the skating rink. One simply didn’t walk alone in those temperatures, and the driving was just a part of every parents’ life.
Daddy...
And there was a fine figure of a man. He was handsome, tall, dark, with great brown eyes that had lashes which should have been given only to women. He was a man who loved adventure, made friends easily and kept them, and who was
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the softest touch any daughter ever had! Before I can remember, the story goes that he raced motorcycles at Indianapolis, and I’m sure that is true because he had an all-consuming love of motors, how fast they could go, what paces they could be put through. He had one of the first airplanes in North Dakota -- this was in the era of Charles Lindbergh and Carl Ben Eilson -- and the fact Dad’s name was Eddie Stinson was important. The major large (tri-motor) commercial plane of the day was a Stinson, and another Eddie Stinson was one of the more famous barnstormers. Dad’s first plane often provided the first and (generally) the last airplane ride for many of Grand Forks’ residents. He would take them up, fly upside down, fly so low over our chimney (or theirs) that he could holler down, “Be home in a few minutes,” and generally terrify, with very good reason, every passenger who flew with him. I flew at the controls sitting on his lap many times. There was one memorable Air Show on a fine summer Sunday I shall never forget. There were some of our nation’s most famous pilots doing all sorts of death-defying tricks in their tiny, rickety biplanes. Mother, Darlyne and I were sitting on our car fender watching the excitement in the sky when we noticed Dad’s plane, just outside of the perimeter of the main show, not part of it but doing everything the pros were doing! As they started landing so did Dad, but unable to come down in the smoothed out path through the wheat field he landed 100 yards or so to the left, near the farmer’s house, gently letting his wings tip an adjoining outhouse which gracefully slid over, revealing a most disgruntled and unhappy man seated on one of the round holes, too undone to even rise and pull up his pants. Dad and the plane were in top condition, but it soon became apparent that his wisest action was to take to the air again at once, which he did!
With great joy I remember several times going to fields to watch other such air shows, especially when Charles Lindbergh was one of the stunt pilots. The airplane in those days to me was like an outer space vehicle is to a young person today. It had been invented, but it was adventurous, dangerous, and hopelessly thrilling to watch. Daddy had three planes in all. The first was taken out one night by two friends, without Dad’s permission, and they were both killed -- a deep tragedy. His second went up in smoke when the hangar where all the area planes were caught fire. Of course, in neither instance was there any insurance. The third plane was purchased without my mother’s knowledge, and when she found out she gave father an ultimatum. The plane was to go, or she would!
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Dad’s consuming interest in things that flew or went fast was fortunate and natural as his business lifetime was spent as an automobile dealer and his working days never far from the smell of grease and oil and gasoline. The business was a good one except during the years of the depression, and then it was worse than bad. However, the fact that his shop (repairs) was considered the best in the area brought people who couldn’t buy new trucks to have the old ones repaired, and somehow or other the business eked out a small amount of money during those hard times.
How Dad loved to eat! He would go into a restaurant and practically tour it, leaning over each diner’s plate, sniffing their food, and then spending far more time on the menu and ordering than he did on the actual consumption of his food. He actually ate rather moderately, but throughout his life he was absolutely intrigued with whatever was to be put in that discerning stomach. He had special sources for meat in particular, and would think nothing of driving 350 miles to buy some specially aged and marbled beef. He drove Mother crazy, never cooking with her but never being out of tasting distance when she was cooking dinner. And he was appreciative. Everyone in town had heard him boast he’d married the best cook in the whole state of North Dakota -- and he had!
Dad never played games with us when we were children but he was never for a moment out of our lives. He was home for lunch and for an early dinner, and after the evening meal he would take us in the car or we would all spend the evening together in the living-room. Dad was a great reader, but his taste was peculiarly his own -- newspapers and magazines with stories of the wild west. These publications came out weekly, several of them, and were all purchased at Bud’s Cigar Store. The paper was rough and dull like a very thick newsprint, and the illustrations were black and white except for the cover, which was always a scene of great and gory violence in total color.
Daddy was an extremely warm and loving man, showing his affection unashamedly with great hugs and kisses to each of us and Mother. He was the idol of his parents, and I so often think of their great good fortune in having their only son with them all their lives and so much a part of their lives.
Skipping ahead several years...when my Leslie was about 3 months old (her birthday is November 4th), Dad couldn’t stand the fact that the relatives in Grand Forks hadn’t seen this first miraculous grandchild, and nothing would do but he would come to Kansas City to fetch the both of us. This was one of the worst periods of World War II, public transport was out of the question,
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and down he drove to Kansas City, where we were living, plucked the two of us up in his car and started back. I’ll never know where the rationed gasoline coupons came from. It was in the height of the winter and we ran into a killer blizzard. Through some truly incredible driving Dad made it into Fargo, a short 78 miles from home. Just stopping there instead of continuing on tells of the magnitude of the storm, but stop we did, in a hotel. The next morning we read and heard that all the roads were blocked, literally hundreds were believed dead along the highways where their cars had stalled because of the snow plugging up the exhaust pipes, and warnings for everyone not to move from wherever they were. At 8:30 a.m. we, however, were on our way, driving through completely impassable roads, seeing the cars along the road, and simply busting our way through to Mother and home. Dad was surely a supremely fine driver... I’m sure no one else could possibly have made it, but there we were, safe and sound, by 3:00 in the afternoon, with the new baby for all the relatives to take in their arms and forget, for a few lovely days, the fact that a ghastly war was with us.
Mother... She was always Mama to us...Mother sounds far too formidable for this lovely, beautiful, warm woman. Her hair was softly curled and truly golden, her eyes blue, and her figure slight. Mama never learned how to just sit down, or take a nap, or curl up in a chair with a good book. Mama was a doer. Her house was immaculate, floors literally clean enough to eat off of, but there was never the dangerous sort of tidiness that spoiled a good life. Sunday papers could be on the floor (for a while), toys spread about, sewing projects encouraged. But basic cleanliness was a fetish. Dishes were done before another pleasure, beds were made first thing in the morning, food prepared for any number of unexpected guests, windows shone and floors were polished.
And how she could cook! Her specialty, for any gathering or party, was a fairy-light angel food cake made with 14 fresh egg whites, whipped by hand. It seems now to me that she never made a failure of anything in the kitchen. Her cookies were masterpieces and her roasts memorable. Her cooking was simple and, although she had a hand-written cookbook compiled of recipes of friends, I can’t remember her using any other printed book.
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Mother loved clothes, perhaps too much, as it became a problem during the depression when there was no money to buy such frivolities. But she did look oh, so beautiful in them, and her particular circle of friends were equally fascinated with dressing themselves and, I would guess, were quite competitive. Her other consuming interest was furnishings for our home. With two furniture stores in town, and I’m certain a most limited selection, it often came down to wanting “simply a change”. Before any purchase was actually made at least 6 months would pass, with many, many visits to the furniture store and a gradual wearing down of the automatic resistance of my father, who never really liked change and would have much preferred to put the money into a fine prime rib of beef. Of such things were their many small quarrels made of, although I’m afraid I took them far too seriously as a child.
Mother also found a challenge in dressing Darlyne and myself, and as the financial times became more and more desperate this was often difficult. We generally had “good” dresses that were both different and similar. Darlyne was always a beautiful child, with deep brown eyes, soft dark curly hair, and a feminine mien about her. I’m afraid I was freckled, red-headed, and considered -- rightly -- to be the neighborhood tomboy. As we were just 18 months apart, there was often a strong sibling rivalry, no doubt due to my innate aggressiveness and Darlyne’s fragility. She was desperately ill twice, once with pneumonia so severe that the doctors had given up hope. Mrs. Reiton, our next door Christian Scientist, was called in as a last resort on a traumatic evening when her (Darlyne’s) fever was at its height -- 106°! Some marvelous healing must have taken place, as some time during the long night the fever broke and her recovery began. So severe had been her illness that all her lovely hair fell out. She was bald. Of necessity she was wrapped, figuratively, in cotton wool for a long time, as I sailed through the same period with nothing worse than a skinned knee or a bee sting. My only major illness was a bad case of chicken pox, which brought its own rewards. We were quarantined! We had to be fumigated! The whole household had to move out for a day to a hotel while the city came in and burned some horrid smelling disinfectant in the house to banish all the germs. In those days when you were quarantined, the city tacked a very noticeable sign on the front door of your house, stating no one was to enter except the immediate family as there was contagious disease inside. I had often seen such signs on other houses and felt that finally we had come up in the world with our very own sign on the
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door. If a family was unable to care for a sick person with a contagious disease there was always the alternative “pest house”, a rather pleasant brick cottage on the outskirts of town that presented endless fascination to a young child. On our nightly summer drives we used to request Daddy to drive by it while we stared, almost falling out of the car window, in our eagerness to try to see its infected inhabitants.
Mother was a highly competent housekeeper, but she generally had the assistance, as did most of our friends, of a “hired girl”, paid, I’m sure a pittance. These were the daughters of the Norwegian farmers, spoke with a broad Norwegian accent and were sent to the houses in town to learn how things were done in America. They were superb help, would stay 2 or 3 years, and then marry, either to a farmer lad or a city boy. Today in Grand Forks a good many of the so-called top social leaders were once hired girls, and their children have been well educated and now are living all over the United States. There was no social stigma whatsoever after the girl left the house, but when she was staying with a family she kept to herself, and I now know must have been very lonely.
Mama was half Norwegian, half Swedish. When I was growing up this, in itself, was considered a major drawback socially. Not until I was married and away from Grand Forks did I realize my utter stupidity in not learning more about my Scandinavian relatives’ backgrounds or appreciating their wonderful customs and foods. I learned early that Mother was not considered socially equal to my father’s family at the time they were married, simply because of her European-born parents. The fact that she no doubt was the most beautiful woman in town soon mitigated that problem and, as I gradually came to realize, she was also one of the smartest and wisest persons in my life.
Grandpa came from Sweden, Grandma Bundlie from Norway. They were from very poor areas, farming lands where just raising enough food to take care of themselves was very difficult. Grandpa was a widower with 8 children when the two met on the ship bringing them and other immigrants to the United States. Grandma was a young girl of 17. As with most Scandinavians before they began their trek westward, they spent a short period of time in Brooklyn, where there were thousands of Scandinavian immigrants already. A romance bloomed on shipboard between these two, and they were married shortly after their arrival in America. When they started west their first residential stop was in Wisconsin, where Grandpa Bundlie set up a small general store. I would like to
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be able to say that with hard work and an innate business sense there soon was a series of stores and great prosperity. It was never like that for them -- simply hard work and many, many children. In addition to the brood that Grandpa had already sired, they had 9 more! This was really two families, and the first ones were old enough so when I was even very young most of them had left the nest. They did quite well, one becoming mayor of St. Paul, others successful in business. But I never knew them as part of our family. Mother’s brothers and sisters were a different matter. Arthur, Cleveland, Leslie, Dora, Lyda, Dewey, Minna were the ones that settled close to home and were “family”. Uncle Cleve and Aunt Dora lived directly across from Grandma and Grandpa Stinson and had three children with whom we often played. Lois was the oldest, a lovely child, the delight of her father. Sadly, she died when she was about eight from pneumonia. I shall never forget her father after the funeral, completely distraught, holding his head in his hands and sitting on the basement stairs silently weeping. The boys were just enough younger so that they were never regular playmates. It was Aunt Lyda, a warm, stout, lovely woman who lived on the farm near Crystal, whom we often visited.
Mother and Daddy, though often quite vocal in their disagreements, were, I feel, completely in love until their deaths. Families in North Dakota were forever, and I was blessed to grow up in the wondrous security of that knowledge.
Uncle Eddie...
Perhaps most families have an “Uncle Eddie” but I doubt it. Married to Daddy’s sister Boo-ah, devoted (perhaps too much so) to his pretty blonde daughter Helen, Uncle Eddie was the great excitement in my life. I’m sure he never had a wrinkle in his suit or a mark on his stiff white collar or a smudge on his pink plump face. He was congenitally immaculate. His interests were made for children’s glee. He would often awaken my sister and me in the late night, with a box of Whitman’s children’s chocolates for each of us. It was Uncle Eddie who plotted the course of Ringling Brothers Circus as it wound its way to Grand Forks each year. He would stop by our house at four or five in the morning, by pre-arrangement, and pick me up to go out to watch the great tents being put up and to gaze with awe at the cook tent where the workers would be fed unbelievable quantities of most delicious smelling foods. We would stand, hand in hand, year after year, as the roustabouts would take their heavy sledge hammers, start chanting a wonderful and melodic sound as they stood in a circle around the tent, which was flat on the ground, and take
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rapid turns pounding the stakes until they were firmly in the ground. We would watch then as the elephants were put into use pushing and pulling the huge center poles into position and letting the great expanses of canvas rise to the sky. It was with Uncle Eddie that we had front-row places to watch the circus parade later in the morning as it wound its way down Main Street, and finally after the big day was over, to watch the same roustabouts take down the tents and put the animals into their gaily decorated cages, with the elephants pulling the cages onto the train platforms with great dexterity.
Uncle Eddie was also a vaudeville addict. Once or twice we were allowed to attend a performance with him, but generally my knowledge comes from his very colorful descriptions of each act.
Uncle Eddie was also a great jokester, or trick player. This endeared him to us children but was the bane of our adult community. During the depression when his current business was selling Pontiacs (he had that dealership in direct competition to Daddy), he would inveigle a prospective client out for a demonstration ride on the flat straight roads of the county. Bringing the speed up to its maximum, perhaps 80 miles an hour, he would then pick up a newspaper, place it over the steering wheel, take his hands off the wheel and commence to read aloud. It was a sure and certain way to do away with any sale!
But in most ways he was a born salesman. He travelled for years on the road, span tales of his customers with deep affection and, if it hadn’t been for that blasted depression would have had a most rewarding lifetime doing what he loved best.
I went to grade school in the same building as my father did. Most of the teachers had not only taught Daddy but had, at one time or another, boarded at Grandma’s. When I was married, several of them were still about and sent me wedding presents. They were not persons apart from my life, someone whom I would see for nine months of one year and never hear from again, but important people to me. They were deeply respected, all women, all unmarried, and I firmly believe all dedicated and fine teachers.
My first grade teacher, Ava Garber, lived a short distance from us. Her sister Lizzy was my third grade teacher. There were three girls and one son. I never knew their parents; Grace, the one daughter who was not a teacher, kept house for all four of them as not one ever married. Their house was on the
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river, large and pleasant, and they all took part in the social life of our neighborhood.
Miss Hendrixson was my fourth grade teacher and made the strongest impression on me of all of these fine women. She couldn’t have been over four feet six, always had a mop of yellow-white hair, and was quite crippled, walking with a swaying limp. But what a teacher. It was in the fourth grade that we began to study geography in earnest, and for each continent we had to make a topographical map out of salt and flour and heaven knows what. To this day I am incapable of neatness in such a project, and Miss Hendrixson not only demanded pristine maps but wouldn’t let you progress further until yours was perfect. Her other major contribution to my early learning was on the evils of extravagance. Each of the ruled papers we used for daily assignments was written on properly, then the paper was turned 45 degrees and we had to write over the other lines. It must have been a nightmare for her to correct.
Also, there was never any need of report cards (we had them, of course) as there was a constant reporting going on between the teachers and members of my family. I cannot remember an instance when the teacher was wrong. Somehow or other, looking back, that was reassuring too.
This is the way it was...growing up in a small town, surrounded by people I knew loved me, with my recreation in my own hands, my problems those of everyone else, with doors that had no keys and windows never locked, with a knowledge that the land gave and took away and had a direct relationship to my own prosperity, and with a sense that as a young American success was always possible, even probable, that the seasons and the weather were a vital part of my existence, and that tomorrow would always come. It was a blessed childhood, and how I would love to bequeath the same unending tranquility and security and simple happiness to my children and theirs...and theirs.
Dorothea Stinson Checkley December 1978
Darlyne
Mama Ruth
Papa Ed
Grandma Stinson
Grandma & Grandpa Stinson
20 Fenton Avenue
Children Have Reunion on Father’s Birthday
FOUR SONS AND FOUR DAUGHTERS of Ingebright Bundle (center) got together on Thanksgiving day to celebrate their father’s ninety-fifth birthday. With their children and grandchildren, they spent Thanksgiving day at the Ed Stinson home, 1800 Lewis boulevard. F. C. Bundle and Mrs. Edward J. Dunlap of Cleveland, Ohio, sit on the arms of their father’s chair. Standing are: from the left, Leslie H. Bundle and Mrs. C. K. Spears both of Minneapolis, H. W. Bundle, Mrs. Stinson, Mrs. T. Edward O’Toole of Crystal and George Bundle of Waseca, Minn. (Lee Evanson Photos.)
WITH THE HOUSE full of guests for the day, Mrs. Stinson sits down for a quiet chat with her father.