Category: Minnesota Life

I started piano lessons with Sister Aimee when I was six years old. We lived in a duplex across the street from St. Peter Catholic Church. The convent and grade school were a few houses away. My grandparents lived upstairs.

Because we didn’t have a piano, I practiced on an old piano in the church basement, where the church custodian lived. He drank whiskey from a bottle and smelled terrible. I thought he was creepy and I tried not to think about him as I practiced my lesson, alone in the church basement.

When I was eight years old, we moved into our own home two blocks away. My Aunt Margaret gave us a piano, so I didn’t have to practice in the church basement any more.

Sister Aimee was my teacher for the next eight years. She taught only classical music. Popular music was strictly forbidden. In addition to teaching seventy children to play the piano, she also taught music at the Catholic school and directed both the church choir and the children’s choir. She put on an elaborate Christmas pageant every December and an operetta in the spring. I don’t think she ever slept, which probably accounted for her demeanor, which was nothing short of terrifying.

Sister Aimee was tall and skinny. I don’t remember ever seeing her smile. She would check the length of our fingernails before every piano lesson. If they were too long, by her standards, she would grab our hands and forcibly cut the offending nails. The sound of fingernails clicking against piano keys drove her crazy. It was not the only thing that put her over the edge.

Every spring Sister Aimee scheduled an audition at the MacPhail School of Music for all of her students over the age of eight. We were judged by highly trained classical pianists. Thinking back on it, I realize now that Sister Aimee felt that she was the one being judged. If we failed, she failed. She wasn’t going to let that happen.

All year we prepared for our spring audition. We had to memorize ten songs, in varying degrees of difficulty. We had to come to the audition wearing our best clothes, not our tacky school uniforms. By February the pressure was palpable.

Every Monday, Sister Aimee reminded me that I was one of her worst students. Then she would recite a litany of her worst pupils. “You and your brother, Madonna and James Francis, and the Tracys. All of you have lessons on Mondays, so I don’t have to think about you the rest of the week.”

What a strange teaching technique! All of this came to an end when I was in the eighth grade. It was a Monday, as usual, and I entered the piano studio with a sense of dread. The audition was less than a month away.

“What did you work on special this week?” Sister Aimee wanted to know.

“Nothing,” I replied. I meant that I had worked on all my pieces. I didn’t work on anything special. She thought I meant I had not practiced at all.

Sister Aimee went berserk. “Don’t look at me in that tone of voice,” she shouted. “Take off your glasses.”

I did as I was told. I took off my glasses and Sister Aimee slapped me across the face. Hard! And then she continued to slap me. Back and forth she slapped, until finally she caught herself and told me to go home.

My mother knew something was wrong when I came through the door. My face was red and I had been crying.

“What happened to you?” she asked.

“Sister Aimee hit me.”

“Why did she do that?”

“Because I didn’t practice anything special this week.”

When my father came home from work that night, I heard my parents talking in their room.

And then a miracle happened. My father, who rarely spoke to anyone and never used the telephone, picked up the phone and called the convent. He asked to speak to Sister Aimee.

“Sister, this is Bob Jones. Mary Lynda and Robert will not be taking piano lessons any more.” Then he hung up.

The following Saturday, my brother and I were in the car, going to meet our new piano teacher, Hod Russell. Hod was one of the very best Dixieland Jazz piano players in the Twin Cities. He was a kind and gentle man. He told my mother that my brother and I were two of his very best students. I took lessons from Hod for the next four years. I never opened another book of classical music. I never had another audition or recital. Music was my joy and my salvation.

The moral of this story is obvious: Often the worst moments of your life turn out to be the best. In my case, that has certainly been true.

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.

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.

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.”

In the late 1950’s there was a housing boom in North St. Paul. The new development, called Saratoga Hills, featured row after row of three bedroom ramblers with detached garages. There were probably fifty to one hundred houses on what had been Eddie Zick’s grandpa’s farm.

Eddie Zick was a notorious bully at Silver Lake beach. He thought it was really funny to hold someone’s head under water until that person went limp, after struggling for what seemed like ten or twenty minutes. Eddie only picked on kids who were at least 2-3 years younger and 20-30 pounds lighter. Why the lifeguards never caught him or banned him from the beach was a mystery to all of us..

As a result of these new homes, there was an influx of new kids at St. Peter’s school. Some families moved from North St. Paul to similar developments in Maplewood and Oakdale, so our class pretty much stayed at 45 students ~ 17 boys and 28 girls.

There is a saying in education that a new kid in school is either instantly the most popular kid in the class, or they become invisible. Invisible was the case for Judy Mederholtz and Jean Tabalish. Penny Sauro and Terry Dixon, on the other hand, were now #1 in the eyes of all of us who had been classmates since first grade.

Penny started St. Pater’s in the fall of 1957. We were in the eighth grade. Our teacher, Sister Esther, called every one by their proper name. Johnny Noye was John. I was Robert. Tommy Sindelar was Thomas. Keith Schouveler was still Keith and Gary Mogren was still Gary.

Sister Esther insisted on calling Penny Sauro, “Pen-a-lope” which sounded like Antelope. Everyone would laugh when Penny corrected her, “My name is Pen-nel-o-pee.” Sister Esther told us that when she was a little girl, the heroine in her favorite book was named Pen-a-lope and she was sure she was right. This whole thing went on for several weeks.

“Pen-a-lope.”

“My name is Pen-el-o-pee.” Everybody laughs.

Finally Sister Esther, never admitting defeat, started calling her Penny.

This wasn’t the only reason Penny Sauro was the most popular girl in our class. Penny was truly beautiful, easily the prettiest girl in the room and also physically the most mature (if you know what I mean.) She didn’t take any s__t from anyone, including Sister Esther.

“You are as bold as a brass monkey, Miss Sauro,” Sister constantly scolded.

Terry Dixon also joined our class in late fall or early winter. He was Terrance, not Terry. He was also physically more mature than most of us and wore his hair in a long duck-tail. All the girls were in love with him from the first day he walked into class.

Keith Shouveller told everyone that he was going to “beat the crap” out of Terry at noon recess that first day. But Terry weasled out of that, telling Keith he was “a lover. Not a fighter.” Keith was still the toughest guy in class.

School was over at 3:00 p.m. each day. One day Terry’s mom picked him up at 2:15 for a doctor’s appointment. We found out that Terry wasn’t going to the doctor, but to Channel 5 TV, so he could be on the “Take Five” show that came on every school day at 4:00. It was St. Paul’s version of American Bandstand.

The boys had to wear a coat and tie. The girls wore a dress or skirt and blouse. We all hustled home after school to watch the program. There was Terry in the middle of it all, dancing with all the pretty older girls. You had to be in high school to get on the program and Terry told them he went to North High, not St. Peter’s. He looked like a high school student and it wasn’t a problem. It was the first time we heard the song, “Tequilla.”

Sister Esther and none of the other nuns watched the show that day. Terry was a hero and no one was ever the wiser.

That spring, the eighth grade class got to elect the May Crowning Queen. It was the biggest event of the year. The eighth grade class assembled in the shape of a rosary and marched across the street and into the church. We all sang  special hymns:

“Bring flowers of the fairest….”

“Immaculate Mary, our hearts are on fire…”

Father O’Reilly held benediction and the May Crowning Queen, in a pure white dress and veil, climbed on a ladder and placed a crown of spring flowers on the head of the Virgin Mary statue. From first grade on, every girl hoped that when she got to be in the eighth grade, she would be the May Crowning Queen. As the girls got older, they realized that it helped to be tall.

The week before the first Sunday in May, 1958, Sister Esther handed out the ballots. Every one in the class voted for Penny Sauro. We eagerly waited for the end of the school day to hear Sister announce the winner. At the appointed time, Sister Esther said, “now boys and girls, listen up. The winner of the election for this year’s May Crowning Queen is ~ Jane Adams.”

Nobody clapped. We were stunned.

Everybody whispered, “Did you vote for Jane?”

“Are you kidding? I voted for Penny.”

“So did I!”

That Sunday the May Crowning went off as usual. The hymns were sung. Benediction was performed. And Jane Adams crowned the Blessed Virgin statue with flowers.

Nobody’s parents called the school or the parish office. Most kids never told their parents, but we talked about it on the playground for weeks. In the end, Sister Esther won.

After high school Jane Adams joined the Sisters of St. Francis and became a nun. Eventually she left the convent and was married. She raised a family on the shores of Silver Lake, right across from the swimming beach.