Category: Minnesota Life

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Duck and Cover

Sometime in the early 50’s, Leo Fortier’s uncle was a member of the Civil Air Patrol, so Leo knew all about enemy aircraft. He said that his uncle had an assigned time every week, where he would sit on the roof of his house and watch for enemy planes flying over. 

“The attack could come at any time, so we have to be vigilant,” Leo said.

I asked him was vigilant meant. “I don’t know, but it’s important,” he answered.

One summer day, we were out on the St. Peter’s School playground playing 500. This is a game where one guy hits fly balls to kids in the outfield. If you catch a fly ball with one hand, you get 200 points. If you use two hands, you only get 100 points. Catch the ball on one hop, 75 points. Two hops, 50 points and grounders were 25 points. If you drop a fly ball, trying to catch it one-handed, you forfeit 200 points.

The first fielder to get 500 points wins and then he gets to bat. The first batter goes to the field and the game starts over. Each person was responsible for his own score, so there was plenty of arguing over just what the real score was.

Well, on this particular afternoon, a really big plane with four propellors (two on each wing) was flying really low right over the playground. Leo told us guys (Davey Cournoyer, Carl Olson and me) that the plane was a Russian bomber and we would all be toast in the next five minutes. There was nothing we could do about it since nobody in North St. Paul had a bomb shelter.

About this time, maybe 1954, we had regular air raid drills and fire drills at school. During fire drills, we walked out of  school and crossed the street. We waited there, in front of the church, until the bell rang and we could file back into school without a word being spoken. For some reason, fire drills only occurred on nice Spring and Fall days.

The air raid drills were different. Sister Evangelista came over the loud speaker and shouted, “Air raid drill! Get under your desk immediately. Duck And Cover!”

We all jumped up, crawled under our desks with our heads facing forward and our butts in the air. We were told to lock our hands over our heads and close our eyes until we got the all clear from the loud speaker. I did everything right but I didn’t close my eyes because I could see Germaine Pierre’s white underpants straight ahead, where her uniform dress was hiked up.

The same year, there was a new house on the corner of Prosperity and Carpenter Avenues, across from the Jewish cemetery, and it was supposed to have a bomb shelter in the basement. We drove by the house every other Sunday on our way to our Grandma’s house for dinner. Every time we went by that corner, I would ask my did if we were going to get a bomb shelter. 

Dad knew better than to say no, so he would answer, “Maybe someday.”

I would ask him what food and soda pop we would have in it. “Can we invite some people to stay with us?”

“This is just for our family,” he would say.

Then I would beg him to let Leo Fortier come and stay with us. He would hear about how Leo’s uncle was in the Civil Air patrol, and he’d say, “OK. Leo can come, but that’s all.”

When I asked if Leo’s mother could join us, his answer was, “She’s the last person in the world who would get into our bomb shelter.”

By this time we were almost to our grandmother’s house and the conversation was over until the next Sunday, in two more weeks, when it started all over again.

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A Road Trip West

After two summer vacations in Minnesota, my mother was ready for something more. She wanted a road trip.

My father’s sister, Gwen, lived in Riverton, Wyoming and my father suggested a trip to see her, Uncle Neil and their family. It was an ambitious trip, with stops in the Badlands and a visit to Mount Rushmore. I had never heard of Mount Rushmore but I was happy at the thought of seeing my Aunt Gwen again. It was 1957. I had just turned thirteen and was going to high school in the fall.

In spite of having a houseful of children, Gwen wrote to my grandparents every week. She was a wonderful writer and was wickedly funny. I missed hearing from her after my grandparents died. Gwen’s letters were an early version of blogs ~ full of good news and funny anecdotes. 

In preparation for the trip, my mother fashioned a board on hinges to put in the back seat, so my brother, sister and I had room to move around. Our cooler and luggage fit under the board. We put blankets on top and added pillows and games. I brought along a lot of books to read. My mother’s intent was to keep us quiet so we wouldn’t argue with each other. I’m not sure that worked. 

My father always drove and my mother was the navigator. My father was a safe, patient driver but had no sense of direction. My mother was a wizard with a map. Without her, we might have ended up on the east coast.

Our trip through the Badlands was remarkable for the shear number of Burma Shave signs and advertisements for Wall Drug. My parents promised that we could stop at Wall Drug. We were so hyped-up, you would have thought we were going to Disneyland. We counted the miles to Wall Drug, getting more excited with every mile.

 

 

Finally we pulled into the dry, dusty Wall Drug parking lot, which was packed with cars. When we got inside, we were horrified to see aisles full of junky merchandise. That was all there was. We bought ice cream cones and ate them outside as we looked through chicken wire at an exhibit of snakes in a box. We got back in our car and headed for Wyoming.

I loved seeing my Aunt Gwen and Uncle Neil again but we didn’t stay long. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was because there was a uranium mine in the distance, which my parents said was full of uranium dust.

“You can play in the front yard, but don’t go in the back yard. The dust could kill you if you breathe it in.”

After three days,  my mother decided we needed to give Aunt Gwen a rest. Mom wanted us to drive up the mountain to have a picnic. So much for uranium dust! Uncle Neil told my father that when it was time to come down the mountain, he should turn off the car and coast all the way to the bottom “to save gas.” My father did just that, breaking only on the curves. My mother was terrified and screamed all the way to the bottom. We left the next day.

The trip home took us to North Platt, Nebraska, where we stopped at the Buffalo Bill Trading Post. We shook hands with Buffalo Bill Cody, Jr. (or maybe the third) and he looked just like the pictures in our history books. When we asked if we could buy something at the trading post, my mother’s answered with a swift “No. You kids have enough stuff already. We need to get going.”

The final leg of our trip was through an Indian reservation. It was the most desolate place I’d ever seen. We stopped when we saw an Indian man sitting on the side of the road, dressed in native clothes including a beautiful headdess made of feathers. We thought he must be the chief. He sat with a sign that said, “Pictures. 25 cents.” My father paid the man a quarter, grouped us children around him and snapped a picture. Our road trip was finished.

As we drove through the reservation, on our way back to Minnesota, my parents reinforced how lucky we were to live in a nice home, go to a good school, and have green grass and flowers all around us. We were ready to go home. We knew we were lucky indeed.

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My Family Goes To Duluth

After our semi-successful family vacation in Leech Lake, my mother wanted us to go somewhere else the next year. I don’t know how she found our cabin in Duluth. It was a pretty, knotty pine cabin, high on a cliff above Lake Superior. We had all the comforts of home, including an indoor toilet, and a working kitchen with running water and electricity. The cabin was remote, hidden away from other cabins in the woods. We heard sounds from the forest as we fell asleep at night. I was eleven years old.

After we unpacked our car and hauled supplies into our cabin, we were eager to check out Lake Superior, a lake so big we couldn’t see the opposite shore. We climbed down a steep path to the water below. The shore was rocky and muddy, not like the flat, sandy shore of Silver Lake, where we swam every day.

I jumped in the water and jumped right back out. The water was cold. Bitterly cold! Cold enough to turn your skin blue. I was happy to watch from the shore, but no amount of coaxing could convince me to go back in that icy water.

The highlight of our Duluth vacation was a trip to see my father’s uncle, Frank Fay, in Brainard, Minnesota. Frank ran illegal gambling operations in Florida during the winter. In the summer he moved to Brainard and ran a restaurant, The Bar Harbor, on Gull Lake and a bait store in the same location.

My dad said we were going to buy bait at Uncle Frank’s store. After we bought our worms, Frank said, “Bob, I want to show you something.” He opened a hatch in the floor and we all trooped down to the cellar, where Frank proudly showed off his casino in the basement of the bait shop.

It was about 11:00 in the morning and no one else was there. We went back upstairs and Frank took us kids behind the counter and filled our pockets with candy bars. He let us have all the coca-cola we could drink. We thought he was the coolest person we’d ever met.

Frank’s Bar Harbor restaurant was infamous. Brainard was far from the Twin Cities in the days after WWII, and the Bar Harbor was a destination for serious gamblers. Rich people with summer cabins on Gull Lake, docked their big, fancy boats and went inside for dinner and a night of gambling. Frank paid off the local authorities and ran a casino in the back room of the restaurant with slot machines, Black Jack, and Poker.

We went back to Duluth and spent the rest of the week, full of questions about Uncle Frank. I think my brother, especially, wanted to grow up to be just like him. We didn’t think of Uncle Frank as a crook and a gambler, although surely he was that. We thought of him as a generous man with a quick laugh and a love for children.

As I look back on our week in Duluth, I smile when I think of the connection between my brother and my Dad’s uncle. Both men are generous, gregarious and kind.

The gambling gene runs deep in my family. Uncle Frank enjoyed running casinos, albeit outside the law. For years Bob was part of a group of men who owned race horses. Every summer we went to Canterbury Park to bet on the horses. But Uncle Frank’s true legacy is that he knew how to have fun and how to spread happiness to everyone around him. Bob is just like him.

 

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A Family Vacation

 

My family was lucky! We were able  to take family summer vacations. Often we would rent a cabin in one of the rural areas in Northern Minnesota for a week. I didn’t know any other families who were as fortunate as we were.

My father had two weeks of vacation each year. We spent one week going to places in Minnesota with cabins, fishing and swimming. My mother spent days packing for these trips. We had fishing poles and worms. We brought our own food and coolers full of ice. My parents always planned to leave North St. Paul by 8:00, but usually we weren’t ready until almost noon. 

The first time we vacationed “up north,” we went to Leech Lake in Walker, Minnesota. My brother vividly remembers our Leech Lake vacation. So do I. He remembers that before we climbed into the car my mother said, “Now you kids better be good. Your father paid $45.00 for this week’s vacation.”

Walker is about 3 1/2 hours from St. Paul, on today’s highways and in today’s cars. My father was driving a 1947 Chevy.  I can only imagine how long the trip took back in 1952.

Our knotty-pine cabin was charming, surrounded by woods with a view of the lake from our front window. There was a picnic table outside and the lake had a raft with a diving board. There was a row boat on the shore ~ perfect for fishing trips on the lake.

We were excited. At first we didn’t notice the pump in the kitchen, where my mother was cooking. Obviously, our cabin didn’t have water in the kitchen but we did have an indoor toilet. No bathtub, though. That’s what swimming was for. We were ready for a week full of fun.

The first morning my Dad said he would take my brother fishing. Bob had a new fishing lure that looked like a small frog and he was eager to use it. My mother stood on the shore with my sister and me waving goodby.

My Dad took the oars. “Bring home some fish for dinner,” my Mom shouted. “Stay away from the loons.” 

Dad rowed the boat to the middle of the lake and decided that was a good place to stop and fish. Bob threw the first cast and the hook landed right in my father’s cheek. Bob was horrified as he saw his new frog lure firmly planted in the blood that was slowly dripping down Dad’s face. There was nothing to do but turn the boat around and row back to the cabin so my Mom could remove the hook. My Dad opened his first bottle of beer of the day.

Usually in the afternoon we’d go to a small grocery store up the road from our cabin. There we would buy supplies and ice cream cones. Often we’d be allowed to play shuffleboard and pinball in the back room.  One day we took a trip to Lake Bemidji, where we saw the giant statue of Paul Bunyan and Babe, his blue ox. At night we’d play cards until it was time to go to sleep.

Our family trip to Leech Lake was memorable for a lot of reasons. I remember playing in the lake’s cold water. I remember swimming to the raft and jumping off the diving board. But mostly I remember the leeches. They were everywhere! I’m sure I screamed the first time I came out of the water, my arms and legs covered in leeches.

My mother told me to stop screaming. My father quietly came and pulled all the leeches off my skin. Then, in a moment of sadistic pleasure, Dad put the leeches on the hot rocks surrounding the lake and we watched them fry like strips of bacon. 

 

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How My Father Quit Smoking

What is the first things you think of when you think of your parents? My thoughts are of Grain Belt beer and Chesterfield cigarettes.

As a pharmacist, Dad worked long hours. He often closed the store at 10:00 p.m. We were happy on those nights when he was home by 6:00. He worked every other weekend, with no days off in between. 

On the nights when Dad didn’t need to stay late at the drug store, he stopped at North Liquor Store in North St. Paul on his way home. There he would buy cases of Grain Belt Premium in white bottles and cartons of Chesterfield cigarettes. I can only imagine how good that beer tasted after working long hours. How much he enjoyed those cigarettes!

As the oldest child, my job every morning was to fix the coffee in the percolator, turn on the stove, and make sure the coffee was ready for my mother when she got up. I was probably about seven or eight years old. I liked being responsible. I especially enjoyed being the first person to get up in my house. School started with Mass at 8:15. 

My other early morning task was to put the empty beer bottles back in the case and clean the ashtrays that were overflowing with cigarette butts. It wasn’t hard. I liked counting the number of beer bottles before I put them away. Twelve beer bottles and two ashtrays were usually waiting for me as I tidied up the living room, checked on the coffee, and told my mother it was time to wake up.

I had graduated from school and was living in Denver, when my mother called to tell me that she and Dad had “quit everything.” No more beer. No more cigarettes. 

“What happened? How can you do that?” I asked.

“Dad went to the doctor and the doctor told him he was worried about his liver.”

When Dad came home and told Mom the doctor said he had to stop drinking, my mother said that if he couldn’t drink, she wouldn’t drink any more either.

“But if we have to stop drinking, we have to stop smoking, too. The two go together. I can’t imagine not having a drink if I’m still smoking,” she announced.

My father wasn’t all-in on the decision to stop smoking. The next night my mother said that she was going to go to a six-week class to help her quit.

“That’s good,” said my Dad. “But I’m going to stay right here and keep smoking while you are in class.”

After six weeks my mother came home. She was no longer smoking, but my Dad was smoking as much as ever.

“Ok, that’s it,” my mother told him. “I can’t be around people who are smoking, so you have to quit now, too.” And so, just like that, he did.

My father, who was almost six-feet tall, never weighed more than 145 pounds during his Grain Belt and Chesterfield days. When he quit those habits, he started making bundt cakes and gained thirty pounds. 

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God Bless The Cowgirls

Hearing aids are a staple in my family. Nearly all of us need them.  How do you know when it’s time? Here is a story my brother, Bob, told me.  He swears it’s true.

Bob was a dentist in downtown St. Paul for forty years. Forty years of hearing his dental drill constantly buzzing in his ear. At least fifteen years of asking his wife, Sandy, to repeat herself because he couldn’t quite catch what she was saying. His girls began to raise their voices to a low shout, in order to have a conversation with him.

A few years ago, Bob and Sandy were invited to the wedding of a close friend. The bride, a native of Alaska, wanted a “cowboy wedding.” The cake was topped with a cowboy bride and groom. Flowers were placed in mason jars on the tables. The music was loud and there was laughter, clinking glasses, and plenty of dancing.

Some of the guests dressed for the occasion in cowboy clothes but Bob and Sandy were dressed as they normally would for a wedding. They don’t own any cowboy clothes.

Suddenly Sandy spotted a friend, the mother of the bride.

Sandy turned to Bob and said, “Here comes Diane. She had her boobs done.”

“Really?” my brother answered. “That’s news to me. Why did she have her boobs done?  I thought they looked fine the way they were.”

“Bob! I didn’t say she had her boobs done.” Sandy shouted above the noise. “I said, Here comes Diann with her boots on!”

Bob made an appointment with an audiologist the following Monday.

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A Graduate School Adventure

I played clarinet in the North St. Paul High School Band. But I was never very good at it.

I played clarinet for a year as a student at St. Cloud State College. I wasn’t any better, so I stopped after my freshman year. 

I was a good piano player, but pianos are not mobile. I wanted an instrument I could carry with me. 

As a camp counselor for four college summers, I loved sitting around a campfire after dinner singing camp songs, accompanied by excellent musicians playing guitars. 

“Maybe I could learn to play the guitar,” I mused.

After college, I came to Denver to go to graduate school. It was exhilarating to live that far from home. My parents weren’t as excited as I was. They worried about me being in a big city. They personally picked my first Denver home ~ St. Rose Residence, in Downtown Denver.

St. Rose Residence was a large, secure, brick building operated by nuns near downtown, on what is now the Auraria Campus. It was a Catholic home for young women who had come to the Denver to work and go to school. I don’t remember much, except that there was a chapel and a 10:00 p.m. curfew.

I had a tiny room, with a crucifix on one wall and a very small closet. Men were not allowed inside the building. My parents drove me to Denver and helped me settle in. My father insisted I bring my clarinet and, as a parting gift, he gave me a tear-gas canister hidden inside a small pen. 

“Be careful when you go outside,” Dad told me. “Especially if you are downtown. Always keep this with you in your pocket. You never know when you are going to need it.” 

My class was composed of 100 social work students from all over the U.S. This was in the mid ’60s, during the War on Poverty, and we all had full scholarships. My tuition was fully paid, plus I had a $200/month stipend for living expenses. In today’s dollars that is about $1700.00/month ~ more than enough for rent and food. 

There were ten young, single students in my class. Everyone else was older and married. They lived in married student housing. They were, by far, more serious than the rest of us. They didn’t have nearly as much fun.

We single students were young and carefree. We often didn’t go to class. Instead, we met for coffee and talked endlessly about skiing. If we needed extra money, we went to the local blood bank and sold our blood for $10.00. Lift tickets at Winter Park cost $8.00 for a whole day.

I don’t remember much about my classes, maybe because I missed so many of them. They were mainly lectures about Freudian theory taught by teachers who seemed awfully old.

I do remember parties every weekend, going to jazz concerts in Five Points, and getting home after curfew. The nuns were happy when I told them I was leaving and renting a basement apartment near D.U.

But before I moved out, I decided to find a teacher and take guitar lessons. I was in luck. The first violinist for the Denver Symphony was accepting students. He was a wonderful German man and a good teacher. He taught in a tiny studio at the top of one of the downtown buildings. I sold him my clarinet in exchange for a nice guitar. Alas, I wasn’t any better on guitar than I was on clarinet. The strings hurt my fingers and I wasn’t diligent about practicing.

My guitar classes came to an abrupt end one night in November. It was cold outside and I had my tear-gas pen in my coat pocket. I entered the room and took off my coat. Immediately my teacher started to tear up. Soon my eyes were burning and watering, too.

“What did you do?” My teacher demanded. “I can’t see! I am blind!!  I have a concert tonight.”

“I’m sorry. I think my tear gas pen just exploded.”

“Why did you shoot me with tear gas?”

What could I say? I apologized profusely and backed out of the room. I never returned. I took my coat to a dry cleaner and explained that the white powder in my pocket was tear gas. I told them to please be careful. I never carried tear gas, or tried to play a guitar, again.

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My Encounter With A Bear

Here is another story from long ago. A story that I haven’t told very many people. 

It was August, 1964. I had spent another wonderful summer living in the woods of eastern Iowa. working as a camp counselor at Camp Hitaga. It was an idyllic experience ~ with great friends, horses, a swimming pool, and canoeing on the river. I was stationed in the nature cabin although, in truth, I knew very little about nature. I was there because I knew even less about horses and canoeing. 

At the end of the season every year a few counselors traveled to Ely, Minnesota, at the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area for five days of camping and canoeing.

I talked my way onto the upcoming trip because my family was willing to host the group at my house in North St. Paul, about halfway between Cedar Rapids and Ely. I had never canoed before but I loved being outdoors. I was excited about being part of the group.

There were six of us, all together. My friend, Jymie, who spent the summer operating the camp store was also part of the trip. She had never been canoeing either. Luckily, the other four counselors knew what they were doing. They were experienced canoeists and had taken this trip before. They were strong and hardy. They knew about scientific phenomenon like weather and currents. Most importantly, they knew how to read a map.

Our first stop was to find an outfitter in Ely to sell us enough food to last the entire time we would be away. We rented three large canoes, a big tent, and six sleeping bags. The outfitter drove us to the drop off point. We climbed into our canoes and paddled out into the water.

The Boundary Waters is a series of lakes, along the Minnesota-Canada border. Canoeist paddle from lake to lake, and portage (carry) their canoes and equipment along trails that go from one lake to another. Portaging is hard work. Although the trails are well marked, sometimes they are long and steep.

A few counselors were able to put a canoe on their shoulders, and meander down the path. Jymie and I, both skinny back then, usually carried bags of equipment. Often it took several trips, back and forth along the path before we were able to drop our canoes back in the water and paddle for an hour or more before it was time to either portage again, or stop and set up camp for the night. 

Not only had Jymie and I never been canoeing, we had never camped before. Setting up camp meant putting up the tent, building a fire, and deciding what to cook for dinner.  After dinner we tied our cooking utensils and remaining food in waterproof bags, and hung them high in the trees so bears couldn’t reach them. We hadn’t seen any bears while we were canoeing, but one counselor pointed out a pile of bear poop along the trail as we were setting up camp. We knew we had to be careful.

We bedded down for the night, snug in our tent and our sleeping bags. About midnight, we heard a horrible racket outside. 

“It’s a bear,” someone whispered.

“What’s it doing?” I asked.

“Shhh… I think it found our food.”

And then we heard rustling outside our tent. Accompanied by heavy breathing. Heavy bear breathing! The bear was right outside our tent, brushing up against our sleeping bags  as it circled the tent.

As a group, six young women stopped breathing. I was terrified. The bear was right outside. It looked in the window of the tent and took a long look at us before finally ambling off into the woods. 

The next morning we checked for damages. The bear had eaten everything we had. It ate whole loaves of bread. It ripped open a can of peas, and guzzled it down. The bear ate our eggs, cans of tomato paste, and opened packages of pasta. Everything was gone! Coffee and sugar. Oatmeal and lunch meat. There was nothing left.

One of the experienced counselors knew there was a small frontier store somewhere along our route. We stopped another group of canoeists to ask for directions. We had enough money with us to buy more supplies ~ mostly bread and peanut butter. Maybe a package of cookies.

From then on, we tied our provisions even higher in the trees. We continued our trip, grateful to be back on the water. And now, more than sixty-five years later, I am especially grateful that I am here to tell you the story of how I survived. How I was almost eaten by a bear.

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Jason Turns Forty-Eight

This week is Jason’s 48th birthday. I love remembering the day he was born. He was such a tiny baby, the doctor assumed he was going to be a girl. This was before the days of ultra-sound or amniocentesis. Back in 1973, no one knew what color to paint the nursery or knit the baby blankets until the baby was born. I was happy to have a girl. But when the doctor announced that he was a little boy, I was over the moon. I remember thinking, “another little boy in blue jeans” and laughing out loud at the thought of having two little boys to love.

That was also back in the day when mothers got to stay in the hospital for a long time after the baby was born. Jason and I hung out at St. Joseph’s Hospital for five days before we agreed to go home. In the meantime, Jim took care of Garth and together they painted the nursery blue.

More than anything, Jason has always been outgoing, cheerful, patient and kind. He makes friends quickly and still has many of his friends from high school. He’s a great dad to Devon, Tyler, Connor and Max. And to Kirby, their turtle, and Polaris, their dog.

Jason loves animals. When he was nine years old, he spent the first six weeks of summer vacation trying to grow tadpoles in a jar at home. Unfortunately, they all died (croaked?) before we left for Minnesota to pick up Garth. As soon as we got to my parents’ house, I realized that Jason was still thinking mostly about frogs. Every bait store we went into, he stood longingly over the frogs. When we went to my uncle’s cabin, Jason tried to catch frogs that lived by the dock. One morning I got up and overheard him calling all the pet stores in St. Paul to find out if they had frogs and how much they cost.

In one of those moves that mothers always regret, I agreed we could buy a frog, on the condition that he take good care of it. Jason took excellent care of it. And also of the salamander my cousin’s daughter found for him just before we left for Colorado.. 

We drove back to Denver with the frog and the salamander in an ice cream carton in the back seat. Jason took care of his frog then, and he took care of it later when the salamander ate the frog’s foot off. He called my dad to find out what kind of medicine he should put on the wound. He carefully rubbed an antibiotic on the frog’s front foot twice a day for a week until the infection was gone and the frog could again climb out of his terrarium every time the lid was left slightly ajar.

Next to his family, his friends, and his pets, Jason’s the greatest love is sports. When he was nine, he was addicted to watching All-Star Wrestling and the Roller Derby. He knew the life stories of the Road Warriors, the Fabulous Freebirds and Moon Dog Spot. Each week he could hardly wait to see if Gwen Miller would body-check Georgia Hasse over the railing and then stomp on her with her roller skates.

Jason wrestled in middle school and played baseball from the time he was seven until he was out of  high school. Being the youngest and smallest member of the team, Jason didn’t get to play a lot, but he never lost his enthusiasm for center field.

My most telling story about Jason, however, happened when he was in first grade and learning how rough the real world can he. He came home one night with a story about Dearmon, a boy in his class, who cried every morning. Finally, in exasperation, the teacher called a class meeting. Dearmon sobbed through the meeting and finally blurted out that he had no friends. He never had anyone to sit with at lunch or play with on the playground. Dearmon knew that absolutely no one in school liked him. At that point, Kiki, a most sympathetic and tactful girl, put her arm around Dearmon, looked anxiously around the room, and then told him, with much relief, he could stop crying ~ because Jason liked him.

Happy Birthday, Jason. Thank you for forty-eight wonderful years!

 

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How I Learned To Read

I was six years old when I walked into Sister Doyle’s first grade classroom. It was my first year at St. Peter’s School. The school, a big brick building with lots of windows, was on the corner of a busy street, two houses down from where my family lived.

Kindergarten was a long six blocks away. I walked with my best friend, Betty Ann Lennon, holding hands all the way. I was short and extremely shy. Betty Ann was tall and brave. Walking to school made me feel a little braver, too. 

While kindergarten was mostly devoted to listening to the teacher read stories to us, taking a nap, and going outside to play, first grade was serious business.

Sister Doyle had sixty-four students in her classroom, sitting eight students to a table. Sister was small and pretty. She smiled all the time but, to us,  she seemed very old. Looking back, I think she had recently graduated from the Franciscan convent. She had probably just turned twenty-one.

The first day of class, Sister Doyle asked us to stand up by our desk and say our name. “My name is Mary Lynda Jones,” I whispered. 

The boy sitting next to me, jumped up with a swagger and announced, “My name is Dennis, zip up your barn door, Kelly.” The class laughed. Sister Doyle did not. We weren’t in kindergarten any more.

None of us learned to read in kindergarten. Nobody did. None of us learned to read at home. Nobody did. We didn’t have books at home and we didn’t go to a library. We were little kids. We played outside. My Dad read comic books to us, but it never occurred to me that I could learn to read, too, until I got to first grade.

The second day of school, Sister Doyle told us we were going to learn to read. She promised that all sixty-four of us would be reading by the end of the year. I still remember the magic of it.

Every day Sister Doyle read us a story about another letter and the sound it made. It was the Sesame Street approach before Sesame Street. I still remember the letter M. A monkey told us that the letter M said, “Mmmmm. The sound you make when something taste really good. Mmmmm, milk.  Mmmm, macaroni.”

At the end of the story, we sat at our table for thirty minutes with a plain piece of paper in front of us and a big bucket of crayons to share. We practiced drawing the letter M. We drew pictures of all the words we could think of that started with Mmm.

It worked. All sixty-four of us learned to read, except maybe Charles Gott. For months I thought his name was Child of God. Charles often came to school with no lunch. When I told my mother, she started packing an extra sandwich in my lunch bag to give to Charles. Because Charles couldn’t remember all the letters of the alphabet, he got to stay in first grade another year and listen to Sister Doyle’s stories all over again. 

My only other memory of first grade is that when a child broke a rule, Sister Doyle would take her paper punch and punch a hole in the paper he or she was working on. Parents and Sister Evangelista, the Principal, could look at the child’s paper and know they did something bad.

I got in trouble only once the entire time I was in school and it was in Sister Doyle’s class. We were coloring pictures of snow. I was using a crayon to color each dot of snow. Sister Doyle thought she heard someone knock on the door. When she went to answer the door, no one was there. She turned to us and asked who had been knocking on their desk so loud that it sounded like someone knocking on our door. 

Mark Robertson, a boy at my table, raised his hand and said, “Sister, it was Mary Lynda. She’s coloring her snow so loud it sounds like someone is knocking on the door.”

I was mortified. I’m sure I started to cry. Sister Doyle came to me and explained to the class that this time she wouldn’t punch a hole in my paper. Instead, she took out a straight pin, and pricked a tiny hole in the upper corner of my paper. I learned my lesson. 

But most of all, I learned to read.