Author: Lynda Jones

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Ransom

Two years ago, Ernesto qualified to compete in the Mexican National Surfing Contest. He was elated. It was the second time in his life that he qualified for the tournament. The first time was more than forty years ago, when he was 21 years old. That year the tournament was canceled because the waves were not high enough for competition.  Neto went home, disappointed and disgruntled. He had trained for a year and didn’t have his moment to shine. He decided to leave Mexico and go the United States. He wanted to learn to speak English and surf the California beaches. He didn’t return to Mexico permanently for almost twenty years.

Now, at the age of sixty-two, he had a second chance to compete in the Mexican National Tournament. He had accumulated enough points in two separate spring trials to compete in the fall. He was determined to get in shape and win. He surfed throughout the spring and early summer. He was a man with a mission.

Neto called me one night in July, 2022, clearly upset. “I just got the worst news of my life,” he blurted out.

“Oh, my God, what happened?” I figured someone had died or been in a terrible accident.

“Someone broke into the warehouse and stole a lot of surfboards, including my two competition boards.”

I was relieved that no one had died. I didn’t understand that this was traumatic for Neto. Without his boards, he couldn’t compete in the national tournament. He couldn’t practice. There was no longer a reason to get in shape or even get out of bed in the morning.

Dear readers, you need to understand that surfing is Neto’s life. It is his reason for being. His passion for the ocean is what has saved him all these year. This was a major existential crisis.

Neto and the other surfers who had their boards stolen mounted a campaign to get them back. They combed the beaches and notified their friends in surfing towns up and down the Pacific Coast. They visited every surf merchant and pawn shop in town, to no avail. The boards had disappeared.

Neto learned to surf when he was thirteen years old. He was a surfing pioneer  and is easily still one of the best surfers in Mazatlán. His style is smooth and graceful. He looks like a dancer on top of the water.

Neto’s surfboard is as easily recognized as he is. It is bright blue, and 6’4″ long. He’s had it since 2010. Looking out into the ocean, seeing that blue board bobbing in the water waiting for the next big wave, everyone knows that Ernesto Flores is about to take another ride. No robber could sell or pawn that board without getting caught. But it was gone. Nowhere to be found.

Without his board, Neto became more and more depressed. He didn’t want to go to the beach. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. He started drinking again. He laughed and pretended that he was ok, but he wasn’t.

This winter, more than a year after his board was stolen, Neto stopped looking for his stolen boards and bought another board. His new board is yellow and black. It is a 7’4″ long-board. He was happy to be surfing again. His friends were happy to see him back on the beach.

Two weeks ago, the surfing community was buzzing. There were rumors that someone knew where the original stolen boards were being kept. They were still in Mazatlán, in someone’s garage. Publio, Neto’s best friend and surfing buddy, found the man with the garage. The man swore he wasn’t the person who stole the boards, but he was willing to return them ~ for a price. He wanted  Publio to be the intermediary. He didn’t want Neto to confront him in person.

Neto was willing to deal. He would do anything necessary to get his blue board back. He scraped together the ransom money and gave it to Publio. Last Tuesday night, Neto waited anxiously at Publio’s house, while his friend drove to the suspected garage. Two hours later Publio returned, the blue board strapped to the top of his silver Volkswagen station wagon. 

Neto’s board is back. So is he!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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My New Digs

Where have I been for the past six months? Obviously, not writing my blog! Instead I was working on a new project. An interesting, fascinating, huge project. I moved to new digs. Again. Here’s the true story. Nothing is changed to protect the guilty.

Last summer I knew I needed to move to a different home. I thought I would be happy living in a beautiful condo in a 55+ community. My unit was on the third floor, overlooking a golf course. What’s not to love? For me, it was everything. 

I was so desperate to move that I asked my son, Jason, to negotiate a trade ~ my beautiful condo for a filthy, mouse-infested free-standing home occupied by an extreme hoarder. If you have ever seen a show about hoarders, I assure you that this place was worse. After a whole summer of drama, the hoarder and I finally closed the deal on September 15. And then the fun began! But not before the previous owner (P.O.) filed a police report, accusing me of stealing all her things and “ruining her life.” 

My renovation began by moving mountains of P.O.’s possessions. She took some things with her ~ a full Pod plus two U-Haul trailers full of things. What was left behind filled eighteen roll-off dumpsters. Ramón, who had no front teeth, oversaw a crew of ten skinny men, who worked tirelessly for six days filling dumpsters. Every time they thought they had cleared another room in my home, they opened a closet and found a mountain of smelly worthless possessions oozing out onto the floor.

My neighbors were overjoyed that someone new was moving in and that P.O. was moving out. They sat outside in small groups on their lawns and watched the action. They cheered when another dumpster rolled down the street. By the fourth day they were drinking champagne and toasting the dumpster drivers, as yet another dumpster lumbered down the street.

I bought the house, sight unseen because it was not possible for anyone to get past the front door, including an inspector who deemed the house, “the worse (he) had even seen.” When the last dumpster roared away, I was finally able to see the inside of my new home. I was overjoyed. It needed a lot of work and smelled terrible, but it was clearly a diamond in the rough. 

Some people rescue children. Some rescue the environment. I guess I rescue houses. I used more than thirty-five vendors in all. They were kind, funny, incredibly skilled tradesmen. They worked well together and sang while they worked. The put in long hours, and often came on Saturdays to finish a project. They were my loyal friends. I could never have moved into my new home without them. I am forever grateful for every one of them.

My story has a happy ending. I spent four months and a considerable amount of money rehabilitating my new home. It’s now beautiful and no longer smells of urine.

I love my new neighborhood and I have great neighbors. I rented the upstairs of my home to a delightful couple from Columbia. I feel like I am back in Mexico, sharing my large kitchen and living with friends from another country. I know I am lucky, indeed.

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Small Town 4th of July

The 4th of July was an all-town celebration in North St. Paul, a town that covered one square mile when I lived there. Early in the morning, while my parents were drinking multiple cups of coffee and smoking cigarettes, we kids washed out bikes and decorated them with crepe paper. We wove crepe paper through the spokes and tied streamers onto the handle bars. The boys put playing cards on clothespins and pinned them to their wheels. As they rode up and down the block, the noise from the playing cards sounded like motorcycles. Or at least the boys thought they did. We didn’t organize an actual parade. We just rode up and down the street, until our parents were moving and something more exciting happened.

One year, when I was about six years old, there was an actual parade down main street. The parade included the North St. Paul High School marching band, a group of men from the VFW and the American Legion, and a convertible from Thornton Motors with Miss North St. Paul waving from her perch in the back. Because my Uncle Bob Hunt worked for Thornton Motors, he arranged for me to ride next to Miss North St. Paul. I wore a white dress and a silk sash that dubbed me “Junior Miss North St. Paul.” The parade route was short, so my reign lasted only about ten minutes.

The parade also featured a float made by the Silver Lake Store. Because Leo Fortier’s uncle owned the store, Leo got to ride in the back of the float. He wore a straw hat and dangled a paper fish from the end of stick, pretending he was fishing. My brother Bob and other neighborhood boys, walked beside the float, along the parade route that stretched three blocks from the VFW club to Sandberg’s Mortuary. Bob remembers being exhausted by the time the parade was finished.

The family picnic began at lunch time. Before Highway 36 cut the town in half, the picnic was held in a large, beautiful park next to the railroad tracks. Later, the picnic moved to Silver Lake, where if you went early in the day you could snag a picnic table. My mother packed a lunch of potato salad, jello, coleslaw, chips and brownies. Men from the American Legion grilled hamburgers for sale in the park. Our cooler was filled with soda for the kids and lots of beer for the adults.

Sometimes my Aunt Fran and my grandmother joined us at the picnic table. Adults visited with one another while we swam, chased each other in the sand, and probably argued over trivial matters.

VFW members sold raffle tickets, as they walked through the crowd of families. Hal Norgard stood up in the back of a truck, and in his booming basketball-coach voice, announced the winners of the hourly drawings. At about 3:00 the Bald Eagle Water-Ski club put on a spectacular show of beautiful girls in modest one-piece bathing suits, performing all sorts of amazing tricks on water-skis. Since we didn’t know anyone with a boat, I never learned to water-ski. Given my athletic ability, it’s probably just as well.

As the sun went down, we pulled out a bucket of worms and tried fishing off one of the docks until it was time for fireworks. Huge, loud, booming, once-a-year fireworks! Maybe they pale by comparison to today’s pyrotechnics, but to us they were absolutely magical.

Later, sometime in the 1960s, the 4th of July picnic became an Ice Cream Social in August. My Dad’s Dixieland band, the Polar Bearcats, played for the crowd from a platform in the park, as the Ladies Auxiliary sold ice cream cones. By August the lake had turned green from algae and “dog days” had arrived. Gone was the smell of hamburgers on the grill. I was in college and working at Camp Hitaga in Iowa, so I missed the party. I still love watching fireworks, and remembering the fun we had growing up. Like most things, the 4th of July will never be as much fun again.

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The Mango Wars

There were two huge mango trees in my Mazatlán courtyard. They were a source of welcome shade throughout the year and wonderful, fragrant blossoms beginning in January. By spring the trees were heavy with delicious sweet mangoes. Thousands of mangoes! More mangoes than one person could eat or even dispose of without a plan.

But Neto had a plan. He hung a sign on the door that said, “Free Mangoes!” and invited anyone walking down the street to ring the doorbell, come inside and help themselves. I didn’t realize that Mona and José, my next door neighbors, wouldn’t like what I was doing.

 

First Mona pleaded with me to ban the neighborhood children from coming into the courtyard. She wanted me to put mangoes in bags and hand them out the door, as if it were Halloween.

That way, she reasoned, no one would know what my courtyard looked like. Her exact words were, “You don’t know what you are doing. These kids are bad. They are surfers!”

Mona told me that even the police were angry with me for opening my courtyard to children coming from the beach. When I told her that I would be careful but I intended to continue to give away free mangoes, I thought she would explode.

Later that day, Neto and his best friend, Publio, were up on the rooftop picking mangoes when José came to the open window that overlooked my house. He started screaming at Neto. “You are looking in my window! Stop looking at me! Stop looking at me”

José picked up a fallen mango and pitched it right at Publio’s head so hard it could have killed him. Luckily, José, an old and unsteady pitcher, missed. Publio, who is generally very passive, said that if he’d gotten hit he would have just started pitching mangoes right back at the old fool. And by that time, Publio had an arsenal of more than sixty mangoes at his disposal.

I wish I had used that opportunity to tell those two busybodies to close up their windows and they wouldn’t have to worry about people looking in or climbing through the windows to rob them. Of course, then they couldn’t watch what I was doing, either.

Soon whole families were at my door, holding plastic bags. Word spread throughout the neighborhood about our ripe, juicy, free mangoes. We brought the families inside, and turned on the music. There was dancing and laughter in the courtyard. There was a party goin’ on! 

One Saturday, after a week-long Mango Fiesta, my doorbell rang about 2:00 in the afternoon. I opened the door to find two uniformed policemen standing there. I remembered what Mona said and figured they were there to arrest me or, at least, warn me about the dangers of opening my door to children. 

Before I could say anything, one of the policemen pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket and asked, “Are you still giving away free mangoes?”

“Por supuesto! Of course!” I said. “Here use this ladder to get on the roof and pick all the mangoes you’d like.”

“And,” I added with a smile, “Come back any time.”

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Mona and José

In September, 2004, I wanted to move to Mexico. It was an impulsive decision on my part and I never regretted it. I flew to Mazatlán and talked to a realtor. I asked him to show me homes for sale in El Centro, the downtown section of Mazatlán. The first place I saw was a huge house, owned by Mona Felton and her husband, José Fuentevilla. The home took up an entire city block.

“Only half the house is for sale,” the realtor explained. “It used to be where the servants lived and worked. Mona and José have run into financial problems and need to sell this part of their home. They are going to continue to live in the main house.”

The realtor opened the door marked 222 Circunvalacion. My eyes popped. The home was at least one hundred years old. The servants left long ago. There were huge mango trees in the courtyard and banana trees it the back. It looked as if the patio hadn’t been swept in months. As soon as I saw it, I wanted to put a fountain in the middle. I wanted to make this big house my own. 

I bought the home eight months later. Jose and Mona became my neighbors in an on-again-off-again friendship. I learned that Mona was from a very old, very influential Mazatlán family. The Feltons were early entrepreneurs from England. They established the water system, the lumberyard and a technical college. They ran for political office and usually won. 

Mona met José on a trip to Spain, when she was a young woman. They fell in love and were married, much to the dismay of her aristocratic family who did not approve of Jose’s dark skin. I found José to be very charming ~ except when he wasn’t. The same was true for Mona.

One of the first weeks after I moved in, Mona invited me to go to dinner with her in the Zona Dorado ~ the Golden Zone. Zona Dorado is the tourist part of town, known for its multi-story condos and fancy restaurants on the beach.

Mona picked me up in her white Chevy Blazer. The car lurched as she sped away down the street. Her eyes were everywhere except on the road. As I reached to put on my seatbelt, Mona grabbed my arm. “Please don’t put that on,” she said. “People will think I’m a bad driver.”

Over the course of the five years I lived in Mazatlán, I had many encounters with José and Mona. One of the first was when Neto and I realized that someone was stealing our water.

ME: “Neto, why is our water bill so high? Does everyone pay this much for water.”

NETO: “This bill can’t be right. We’re paying as much for water as a whole block of people.”

AHA!! Neto search the back patio. He looked behind the banana trees and saw a water pipe going from our hook-up straight into José’s kitchen. He cut the pipe and capped it off.

ME: “Are you going to say anything to José?”

NETO: “No. He’ll figure it out.”

José and Mona kept a pack of fancy dogs on their second floor balcony, overlooking our patio. I never saw the dogs but they barked constantly. There must have been five or six of them. No one ever walked the dogs outside. I assumed they were “rooftop dogs” ~ a common practice in Mexico of keeping dogs on the roof. They are considered guard dogs and are not treated as pets. I asked Mona about them,

“Mona, why do you have so many guard dogs on your balcony?”

“Oh, those aren’t guard dogs. Those are my breeding dogs. They are very expensive. I sell their puppies for extra money.”

I hated those dogs. With their constant barking, they didn’t give me a minute’s worth of peace.

One day I noticed that we had a bunch of mice running around our courtyard. I talked to Neto.

“Neto, is there anything we can do about all these mice? They are all over the courtyard and I really don’t want them in the house.”

“Sure. I can get some mouse poison. If we don’t stop them now, they will be in the kitchen by tomorrow.”

Neto put mouse poison in the courtyard. Before they died, the mice went crazy. They ran up our mango trees and into Jose’s balcony, where the dogs were barking as usual. The dogs chased the mice and ate them.

The next day, I saw Mona at the tortilla shop across the street. She looked terrible.

What´s happened, Mona?”

“All my dogs got sick and died. Now I don’t have any dogs to breed. I don’t have any more puppies to sell.”

“Do you know how they died?”

“No. I came outside when I didn’t hear them barking. That’s when I found them. They were all dead.”

I didn’t say any more. I didn’t expect to kill Mona’s dogs when I poisoned the mice. I felt guilty when I realized that I was happy not to hear their constant barking.

I asked Neto, “Should I tell Mona that we are responsible for her dogs dying?”

“No,” he answered. “She won’t figure it out.”

One of my last conversations with José was in 2008, when I returned to Mazatlán after cancer surgery. 

“Where have you been? Neto has been here without you all summer.”

“Oh, José. I’ve been recovering from cancer surgery. I’ve been really sick.”

Then José told me that he’d been diagnosed with cancer, too. “But my doctor told me about a cure.”

“Really? What?”

“Every morning, I pee in a pitcher. I mix my urine with fresh orange juice and drink it. It doesn’t taste bad. It’s going to save my life.”

Last year I learned that José died of prostate cancer. He and Mona were my friends. He was a good guy. I wish his doctor’s cure had worked for him. I hope he died knowing that I was happy to be his neighbor..

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The Talent Contest

I’m not sure whose idea it was for my brother and me to enter the talent contest. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t mine.

I was in eighth grade and Bob was in seventh. My mother pointed out a notice in the Ramsey County Review:

TALENT CONTEST FOR CHILDREN AGES SIX TO THIRTEEN. PRIZE IS $10.00!

$10.00 back in 1956 was a lot of money. It is equivalent to $100 today. 

“You kids should enter the contest,” my mother said. “I think you would win.”

Bob and I had been playing duets for years. My father had recently brought home a book of Latin duets with very complicated rhythms. Bob and I had a lot of fun plowing through the duets. Bob played the accompaniment because he had a better sense of rhythm than I did. I played the melody because my fingers were faster. (And often more accurate. Just sayin’.)

We entered the contest and squabbled about what song to play. It was between Perfidia and Tico-Tico. Tico-Tico was faster, but we usually played it so fast we were completely out of control. We probably played Perfidia too fast, too, but at least we knew we could get through it in front of an audience.

Bob and I practiced our duet every day. We argued about who was making the most mistakes. We speculated on how many people might be in the audience and if people we knew would be our competition. Mostly we dreamed of what we could do with the award money if we actually won.

The day of the talent show, Dad drove us to North High School, The show was going to be on the stage located at one end of the gymnasium. Folding chairs were set up in rows for the audience. Someone from the newspaper was in back, handing out programs. 

Bob wore a suit jacket and I wore my best dress. My parents, my sister, and Grandma Hunt were in the audience. I glanced at the program and saw that we were the last act of the day. No one else was playing the piano.

Other acts included a young magician, a girl who sang You Are My Sunshine, and a variety of other acts that included tap dancing, cartwheels, and twirling batons. As I watched the performers, my heart sank. I was certain Bob and I hadn’t practiced enough. What if my fingers slipped on the keys? What if one of us lost our place in the music? What if I couldn’t turn the page fast enough? 

When it was our turn, Bob went to the side of the stage to help the announcer pull the piano onstage. It was an old, dusty upright piano. As soon as Bob gave it a shove, one of the legs fell off. The leg was mainly decorative and didn’t really support the weight of the heavy piano but the audience didn’t know that. 

The audience gasped. Bob kicked the fallen leg across the stage. The announcer retrieved the leg and propped it back the piano. We sat down on the piano bench, looked at each other, opened the book and started to play. Somehow we made it through Perfidia without a mistake.

We stood up, bowed and took our place on the chairs with the other acts as we waited for the judge’s decision.

“The winner of the 1958 North St. Paul First Annual Talent Contest is …. Mary Lynda and Robert Jones!” 

We won!

Bob and I walked across the stage and accepted a small trophy and a check for $10.00. It was my first and last talent contest. It is still a thrilling moment to remember. I wonder if we would have won if the piano leg hadn’t fallen off.

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Peonies

The official flower of the Jones family is the peony. Just kidding. But if we had an official flower, it would definitely be a peony.

After retiring from the Northern Pacific railroad, my grandfather, Robert Jones, bought a small log cabin in West St. Paul where he began growing peonies. Acres and acres of beautiful peonies.

Grandpa Jones cultivated new species. He entered them in local and national peony shows. He and my grandmother sold bunches of flowers and whole peony bushes to people who stopped by his cabin. He became renown throughout the country and was a prominent member of the Minnesota Peony Society. I’m sure that many of his peonies are still growing throughout Minnesota and are in full bloom as I write this story.

Sometimes my brother and I were sent to the cabin for a week in the summer to help Grandpa work in the peony gardens. There were flowers of every color ~ pink, red, white, and magenta. It’s what Heaven must look like, with just a few angels floating around on clouds for special effects. Our job was to sit in the wheelbarrow, on top of weeds and debris that Grandpa dumped onto the trash pile away from the house. We laughed when the ride was over and we were dumped in the trash pile along with the weeds.

The cabin was tiny, with just a living room and one bedroom on the main floor. In the basement there was a small kitchen and the only bathroom. The steps from the bedroom to the bathroom were steep ~ too steep to navigate at night. If we needed to use the bathroom, we peed in a coffee can, which my grandmother carefully emptied the next morning.

My grandparents had only one narrow bunk bed in the bedroom. Grandpa slept in the top bunk with my brother, Bob. There was no railing on the bed, but Grandpa’s body kept him safely next to the wall. I slept with Grandma on the bottom bunk.

One night Bob and I went to sleep early. When it was time for her to come to bed, Grandma changed into her nightgown and was kneeling beside the bed, saying her nightly prayers, just as Bob rolled over and fell on top of her.  In my Catholic family, it was considered a miracle. Grandma’s prayers saved his life.

Grandpa’s most famous peony was a soft pink, double show peony, the Shirley Jones Peony (Seedling # P127) named for his daughter, Shirley. For her wedding, Aunt Shirley carried a lovely small bouquet of white flowers. The pink peonies named in her honor were on the altar and throughout the church.

Bob and I were in Aunt Shirley’s wedding. I think we were four and five years old. People commented on the beautiful bride and all the gorgeous flowers.

Most of the guests also murmured as my brother walked down the aisle sporting a big black eye. It was my fault. The day before the wedding, we were chasing each other around the yard. I came through the front door first and slammed the screen door shut, right in Bob’s face. It was too late to get another flower girl and ring-bearer. The wedding went on, as planned, 

Grandpa sold the cabin sometime in the early 1950’s. After my grandparents died in 1954 and 1956, my Aunt Margaret and Uncle Pat moved into their home at 731 Delaware Avenue. Grandpa’s office was still  in the basement of the home.

I loved going to the basement and seeing Grandpa’s big ledgers, where he kept careful records of all the flowers he owned and sold. One whole wall was covered with ribbons ~ white, red, and blue ribbons with the year they were awarded in the Minnesota Peony Show. And right in the middle were the biggest ribbons of all: the purple Best of Show ribbons

Robert and Irene Jones, two quiet people who raised children and flowers, left their mark throughout Minnesota with their gentle spirits and their beautiful peonies.

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An Accident

When I was five years old, I fell out of a moving car speeding down the road one summer afternoon. I still have a scar in my right eyebrow and on my elbow. This is what I remember. I might have some of the details wrong. I never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon. My mother and her friend, Jo Scanlon, decided to take my brother and I for a picnic at Tanners Lake, in nearby Oakdale Township. Bobby was three years old and would turn four in November. My mother was probably pregnant with my sister, but we didn’t know that at the time. No one used the “p” word back then. And there were no prohibitions against cigarettes or alcohol when someone was “expecting.”

Jo Scanlon and my mother were good friends from high school. That summer they were both twenty-six years old. Jo, an unmarried secretary working at 3-M, was short and trim. Her hair was reddish-brown and her face was covered with freckles. Jo and my mother gave each other “perms,” so their hair would be fashionably curly. 

My mother packed a picnic lunch, including plenty of beer, and Jo picked us up in her car. Tanners Lake was on private property and we paid a fee to go to the beach. The day started off badly when crows noticed that my mother had painted Bobby’s toenails a bright red. He screamed as the crows pecked at his feet.

“Here, cover your feet with sand and they will leave you alone,” my mother said. She and Jo went back to sitting on the picnic blanket, smoking and drinking as they sunned themselves at the water’s edge.

Bobby and I played in the water all afternoon until suddenly my mother announced, “Quick. We need to go home. Your father is getting off work soon. We need to get home before he does.”

As my mother hurried to pack up our picnic lunch, Jo went to a nearby stand to buy us a bag of popcorn to share on the way home. We piled into the back seat and Jo took off. The adults were laughing as Jo turned a corner at a high rate of speed. I bumped against the door handle, which wasn’t locked, and fell out on the ground. Popcorn scattered all over the back seat.

“Stop the car!” my mother yelled. “Lynda fell out.”

A woman, who lived nearby, saw what happened and ran toward us with a towel in her hand. My forehead was bleeding badly.

“Here take this towel. You need to take your little girl to St. John’s Hospital. Go right away.”

My mother held me on her lap as Jo raced to the hospital. Meanwhile, my mother was yelling at Bobby. She accused him of pushing me against the door, but that’s not what happened. The door was not locked and I fell out. It was as simple as that. Both Bobby and I were crying, not knowing what was going to happen next.

As we passed Seventh Avenue, Jo saw my father’s car leaving the drug store where he worked. She frantically honked on the horn, but my father never saw us as we sped past him, on our way to the hospital.  

My mother used a pay phone to call my grandparents, who lived upstairs from us. She told Grandma to watch for Dad and tell him to come right down to the hospital. The gash in my eyebrow needed stitching. My elbow was bleeding, but not broken.

 

Dad arrived about thirty minutes later. He told my mother and Jo to take Bobby home. “I’ll stay with Lynda and call you later.”

I was in the hospital for a couple of days. Dad visited me every day. He brought me comic books and candy bars from the drug store. My best friend, Betty Lennon, heard about the accident and her family sent me a telegram. Meanwhile, Bobby was grounded and not allowed to play with his friends until I came home.

My brother later told me, “It was one of the worst days of my life. I spent two days just walking around the dirt in our backyard. I didn’t know if you were ok. I wanted to be in an accident, too. I wanted someone to send me a telegram.”

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Silver Lake Store

I grew up in a small town in Minnesota during the 1940’s and 50’s. Children of that era were raised in a parental style that is best described as “benign neglect.” 

My family lived in the lower half of a duplex. My grandparents, my mother’s parents, lived upstairs. We didn’t have a car or a television. We had indoor plumbing but no bathtub. We took our baths in a big wash tub, filled with hot water from a tea kettle heated on a wood stove. My mother and grandmother washed clothes in that same washtub and hung them on a clothesline in our backyard. We had a telephone, with multiple families sharing the same line. My mother listened to news on the radio all day long. I remember it as a time of great joy and tremendous freedom. 

Looking back on it, no wonder mothers didn’t have time to entertain their children. No wonder we were told, “You kids go outside to play. I’ll call outside for you when it’s time to come home.”

There were not many girls in my neighborhood, so I mostly hung out with my brother and his friends ~ Leo Fortier, Davey Cournoyer, and Carl Olson. At least once a day my mother sent me to the Silver Lake Store, about a block away, with a note and some money to buy whatever she needed ~ a can of coffee, a package of Kool-Aid, maybe milk or a box of Jello. A pack of cigarettes was also often on the list. Occasionally, Mom would let me spend a penny or two on penny candy.

My favorite candies were root beer barrels. At two for a penny, they were a bargain. My brother and I were always hunting for pennies dropped in the dirt or behind couch cushions, so we could buy candy that cost more than one penny ~ wax lips for me and baseball cards for him.

One day, Bob, Davey Cournoyer, Leo Fortier and I were especially bored and looking for something to do. One of us suggested forming a club. We wanted to call it the Be Bad Club. We were tired of being good and we wanted to see how it felt to do something bad. I was about seven years old and the boys were all six. As the oldest, I should have known better but it sounded like fun.

We hatched a plan to walk into Silver Lake Store and throw all the bread on the floor. When the owner saw what we were doing, he yelled at us and we ran out the door. We raced down the alley to Leo’s backyard, laughing all the way.

Later, we couldn’t think of any other bad things to do so we formed the Be Good Club. The Korean War had just started. We considered ourselves practically angelic as we knocked on people’s doors and asked them if they wanted us to tell them about the war. Most people just shook their heads and said, “No! Go find something else to do.”

When I was eight years old, we moved to a new home, about two blocks away from my grandparents. Our new home had a bathroom with a bathtub. My mother had a wringer washing machine in the basement. She spent all day Mondays washing clothes and hanging them on the clothesline by the side of our house. On Tuesdays, she ironed. It’s what most mothers did. When I was nine years old my father bought a car and later we got a television.

During the summer, my brother and I continued to roam the neighborhood, often the two blocks between our new house and my grandmother’s house, where we used to live. My brother rounded up his friends to play baseball in the open field next door. I helped my mother do the laundry and I learned to iron. My mother sent me on errands to Silver Lake Store at least once a day. I loved it.

One day Dad came home from work with a canister and asked me to take it to the store. The canister was meant for people to donate money to help people with cerebral palsy. I needed to ask the owner if it was ok to put the canister next to the cash register in his store. I was horrified. I was so painfully shy, I was later diagnosed as an “elective mute.” I could talk to people my age, but never to an adult.

I was terrified at the thought of actually having to speak to the owner. I had been coming to the store daily for years, but for all those years I just handed the owner my list and he filled my order. The day I took the canister to the store, I wanted to talk but I couldn’t find the words to say out loud. I came home with the empty canister and told my Dad that the owner said “No.” I felt terrible. I went to confession and told the priest that I lied to my father. 

A couple of weeks later, we were out for a drive when we saw a young man struggling to cross the street. He was on crutches and he shuffled his way across the street. 

“What’s the matter with that guy?” my brother asked.

“He has cerebral palsy,” Dad answered. 

To this day, I wish I had been able to talk to the owner of the Silver Lake Store. I wish I could have done something to help the man on crutches, trying to cross the road in front of our car.

Silver Lake Store was never the same for me again.

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Lobo

The years I spent in Mazatlan, running a home for snowbirds, are some of my fondest memories. The people I met were fun and funny,  thoughtful and kind. Some of them became my friends for life. With one exception. Because I can’t use his real name, I’ll call him Lobo.

The last summer I lived in Mazatlan, I was ready to sell my place and return to the U.S. I needed someone to house-sit while I was away. Someone who would sweep the courtyard every day and make sure the kitchen was clean. Two of my guests recommended Lobo. They met him at church and were impressed by his demeanor and intelligence. According to them, Lobo was an attorney with two daughters living in the U.S. He was a tennis player and a Spanish-speaker. He was about my same age. I thought Lobo was the person I was looking for.

I met with Lobo and explained his responsibilities. I had him sign a rental agreement that stated that he could use the guest quarters, but that the owner’s side of the home would be locked. I would not charge him rent as long as he lived up to our agreement.

Lobo had free rein in the kitchen, but my telephone was off-limits. Lobo pushed me to let him use my office but I held firm. I told him that a friend would be checking my home on a regular basis, to see if everything was ok.

I was back in Colorado for only a few weeks when i started receiving emails. Everything was not ok! Lobo was not sweeping the courtyard, which was now full of mango leaves. Lobo was seen urinating on the front door when he came home drunk at night. The neighbor complained that Lobo often walked around the courtyard totally naked, in full view of the neighbor’s young grandchildren. Lobo needed to go.

I called Neto and asked him to meet me at the airport to help me evict Lobo. When we arrived , Lobo was not yet home. We found a set of lock picks on the kitchen counter. The door to my office was wide open. We swept the courtyard, which was ankle deep in dead mango leaves, and cleaned the kitchen while we waited for Lobo to come home. He was surprised and not happy to see us.

When I told Lobo we were there to evict him, he went crazy. He bellowed like a bull. He pounded his fist on the kitchen counter and started spewing lawyer talk. He said he wasn’t leaving and we couldn’t make him. He grabbed the telephone off my desk and started running down the courtyard toward his room. Neto ran right behind him. When I told Lobo to stop, he threw the telephone at me, hitting my upper arm with full force.

Neto was a super-hero. He’s the most athletic man I know. His nickname is “Chanfles” because of the powerful left kick that was his trademark when he played soccer as a kid. Neto’s famous left kick landed square on Lobo’s testicles. Lobo fell to his knees and whimpered like a baby. We told Lobo to start packing. We were going to find a lawyer.

We returned with a lawyer and Lobo was still screaming. He hadn’t packed anything. We called the police, who arrived and said we needed to go before a judge. The police put Lobo in their car. Neto and I went in the lawyer’s car and we were off to see the judge.

Lobo sat quietly in the corner of the courtroom. The judge immediately pointed at Neto and said, “What has this guy done?” The lawyer said nothing. Neto explained that he was not the criminal. He was the owner. The criminal was the old man sitting quietly in the corner. We needed the judge to sign an order to evict him. Lobo responded that Neto had kicked him in the balls and he wanted to press charges. He offered to show his bruised balls to the judge, who declined to take a look.

The judge ruled in our favor and everybody trooped back to our house: Me and Neto, the lawyer, the policemen and Lobo. The police told Lobo to start packing. For forty-five minutes nothing happened.. The lawyer said he couldn’t do anything. Finally one of the younger policemen told Lobo he had five more minutes to get in the car. They would drop him off at a hotel up the street.

The young policeman then turned to us and asked if the room was now available to rent. He would like to live there. He would love to be our house-sitter. 

Lobo climbed into the back of the police car, looked at me and said, “Nos vemos.” (See you later.)

I replied, “Vete al Diablo.” (Go to Hell)

The lawyer approached us and said we owed him $1000.00. U.S.

I replied, “Besame el culo.” (Kiss my ass.) I was barely a Spanish-speaker but it’s always a good idea to learn the bad words first.

I still google Lobo’s name from time to time. He’s now living in a fancy retirement community in Florida, where he regularly terrorizes the residents with his obnoxious behavior. He recently spent six weeks in jail for impersonating a lawyer. I was lucky to get rid of him with only a bruise on my arm.