My Musical Career

In 7^th grade I signed up for band and decided to try learning to play the cornet. My family moved in the middle of the school year and I never had the opportunity again, partly due to two more moves in the next 2 years. I taught myself the guitar on my mother’s Oahu, and became pretty good on the harmonica, but never achieved the virtuosity I had imagined.

In college I took one quarter of a group piano class, but then dropped that. I was a boy soprano in grade school and was chosen to perform with the all-city chorus at the end of the 6^th grade school year. I continued singing in our church choir as a tenor and even performed a few solos.

Never having taken formal music training was something I always mildly regretted. I did please myself when in my thirties I taught myself to play one hymn on my church’s Hammond organ, but could never get the foot pedaling down.

I have always been drawn to music but never had the passion to stay disciplined to learn one thing really well. I guess that makes me a sort of musical dilettante.

A “Hootenany” in Des Moines, Iowa in 1960 something

Memories of Teachers

I remember my teachers in snapshots and sound bites, as I remember my life. Mrs. Eldred, my 2^nd grade Sunday school teacher at Emmanuel Lutheran in North Minneapolis was a large woman whose favorite line was “Jesus loves you.” I don’t remember getting any hugs from her—I don’t remember getting many hugs from anybody in those years—but I felt the love in Mrs. Eldred’s class.

Mrs. Tippie I encountered in 6^th grade at John Hay School. We were all well-warned that this tall, slim, stern woman would hang any of us out of her second story classroom window by our shirt collars if we misbehaved. Somehow, I don’t remember any of us ever misbehaving. The power of a story!

The photo below looks like it is a picture of a school I attended.  Actually it is, but the building is what used to be Lincoln Junior High, now an elementary school, I believe.  In the foreground is the subject of the photo, the blacktopped playground.  This is where the grade school I attended, John Hay School, from 1st through 6th grades, used to stand.

The Rabbi

Three houses down from our apartment building at 915 Morgan was the Rabbi’s house. Almost invisible from the sidewalk because of a tall fence of bushes, it was the back yard that drew our attention. Of course, we never actually saw into it, because there was a tall wooden fence with no missing boards. We heard that that was where the Rabbi hung his kosher chickens to “bleed out”—hanging from the clothesline—every week on Thursday, in preparation for Shavis. The house was not so memorable. But the mystique of it was.

It was wartime and we all did our part!

My Poor Schwinn

I was 9 and it was a Schwinn. My stepdad Floyd put it together and gave me a lesson and turned me loose on it to ride the neighborhood. A bit wobbly but with great and courageous anticipation of riding like a Pro, I put one foot on the curb, swung the other leg over the saddle and took off. “Oh! Oh! Here comes a curb and I am heading right for it. What now?”

Curb and front wheel came together—front fork bending back—kid flying over handle bar. “My bike is ruined. My riding career over before it began.” I limped back to the apartment house and made my way to our second floor apartment, feigning as much injury as I could muster, fearing punishment but even more, disapproval of ‘kid stupid’. My stepfather took one look at the bent fork, another at ‘kid stupid’ and promptly took bike fork, heated it and bent it back into shape. He was an accomplished machinist and knew things: Smart stepdad—stupid kid. But he never said a word to let on the least disappointment.

I had that Schwinn until I went to high school, and except for one other near death experience with a Model “A” on Olsen Highway, I never hit another tree. But that is another story.

I couldn’t find a single picture of that bike, but below are a couple  of photos of our neighbors across the hall in our 4-plex.  First is the Fiterman family.  That is Marilyn in the front on the right.  We re-connected after more than 50 some years at our high school reunions.

Below are the Connors, who “took over” for the Fitermans when they moved to the “suburbs.”  I used to “babysit” for Michael.

Walking Home From the Homewood

Sometimes I would stay through a double-feature at the Homewood Theatre, or just stay through the second showing of the same movie again. Then it was the long walk home from Plymouth Avenue—after dark. Actually, it was only about three blocks, but there were monsters and evil creatures hiding behind every bush and tree, and this required extra vigilance on my part to get past the scariest places on the trip, until I got to the streetlight on “my” corner and could run the last 30 yards. But then, the front of the 4-plex where we lived was not well-lit and I had to go to the back to enter. I’m not even going to mention the back stairway leading to the basement and our 2^nd floor apartment—going to shovel coal into the furnace early in the morning is another story.

 

Above: The Backyard Gang

Below: Neighborhood Hoodlums

A Memory of Getting Ready for School

I remember a shopping trip with my mother in Minneapolis when I was in 1st or 2nd grade. This was the last chance for her to get me ready to go to school in the fall, for she was a "working" mother for all my growing up years. We had to take the streetcar to downtown, which was known in those days as "the Loop," and where the only department stores could be found.

She took me, sometimes literally dragged me, to Dayton's, Donaldson's, J.C. Penney and Sears, and whatever others sold clothing. I do not remember any details of the trip, except for the trauma (for her mostly) of her shoving me on the streetcar, watching the door close, and then running alongside it for a block to catch up, waving and screaming at the top of her lungs the whole way.

My Dog Skippy

I Knew I Loved Him

My little dog Skippy was not a thing. He was my little brother. I was an only child. Skippy came when I was 4. He was a brindle-colored Boston Terrier with a big head and large round brown eyes. He slept with me and was always there, except for the times he would “escape” and come home after rolling in dead fish down by the creek. He would be gone, sometimes for a day or two, and then would show up to take his punishment, which was usually a swat or two followed by a huge hug.

I knew—really knew—I loved him when I had to have him put down when I was 12, after a horrible fight with another dog that tore out one of his eyes. I laid in bed grieving and not eating for three days.