Category: Minnesota Life

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Murder at the Green Lantern

Uncle Johnny killed a man at the Green Lantern Saloon in St. Paul. He said it was self-defense. But it probably wasn’t.

My Irish grandmother, Irene Fay, was the oldest of six children. Her brother, Owen, died when she was twelve and he was ten years old. Her father was killed instantly in a train accident, when she was in high school. She had a painful limp, probably caused by a bone that didn’t heal properly. She had a tough life.

Grandma was a kind, serious, hard-working woman, She married my grandfather, Robert Jones, when she was seventeen and he was twenty-four. Grandpa was a studious, sober Welshman, who never drank a drop of alcohol.

Irene’s younger sister, Ruth Fay, was Grandma’s opposite. Ruth was fun-loving, friendly, exceptionally pretty and always ready for the next drink, even if it wasn’t legal.

Ruth married Johnny Quinn in the St. Paul Cathedral in 1923, three years after the start of prohibition. I can only assume it was a Roaring 20’s courtship, filled with music, dancing, and bootleg liquor. Ruthie’s hair was short, she dressed as a flapper and she loved to drive a car. Johnny was a small-built, dapper, charming Irishman. 

Ruth and Johnny moved Chicago and opened a speak-easy, in a two-story house across the street from Wrigley Field. A frequent customer was Hack Wilson, one of the best outfielders the Chicago Cubs ever had. Hack’s hitting record rivaled Babe Ruth’s. He spent so much time in Ruth and Johnny’s nightclub, he chose them to be godparents to his son. 

Johnny was a member of Chicago’s North-Siders, an Irish gang, headed by Bugsy Moran. The South-Siders, the Italian gang headed by Al Capone, were their enemies.

As a child, I loved to hear Johnny and Ruth tell stories of gangsters running out the back door of their house. I grew up hearing stories of machine guns hidden in violin cases, of people being gunned down in the streets, of crooked policemen, and gangsters “with a heart of gold.”

Feb. 14, 1929, the day of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, Johnny’s life was miraculously spared. Johnny and another man were in Detroit, on a run to get liquor from Canada, when Al Capone’s gang killed five members of the North Siders. Ruth had gone to St. Paul, to live with my grandparents, because, as she told us later, “the heat was on.” 

Ruth learned the news of the massacre on the radio, and eagerly waited to hear the names of those killed. When Johnny’s name was not on the list, she was ecstatic. “My Johnny is alive!” Three days later she got a telegram, confirming the good news.

Ruth and Johnny moved back to St. Paul, but were again the focus of prohibition-era drama. They were regular customers at the Green Lantern, a seedy, Irish saloon notorious for illegal activity. Among the regulars were Johnny and Ruth, Grandma’s sister, Margaret Hurley and her husband George, and their youngest brother, Frank Fay.

My grandmother tried to shield Grandpa from her family’s illegal activities. She hurried downstairs every morning to check the newspaper to see if any of their names were mentioned. When they were, and it happened frequently, she would carefully cut out the article before Grandpa had a chance to read the paper.

“Irene, why is there this hole in the front page of my paper?” my grandfather would ask.

“There was a coupon on the other side. I cut it out so I’d have it when I went to the store.”

The night of March 19, 1931, Uncle Johnny shot and killed Frank Ventress, a big, belligerent man who fought with Johnny and Frank earlier in the day. Johnny was convicted of second-degree murder and sent to the state prison in Stillwater, Minnesota. Until the Governor of Minnesota commuted his sentence, Ruth visited Johnny in jail every week. He was still “her Johnny” and they were always very much in love.

I wish I could tell you that Johnny and Ruth lived a straight life after he returned home, but that wouldn’t be true. Prohibition was repealed, so they needed to find another business. They bought a small dry-cleaning business in St. Paul, and set up an illegal gambling operation in the back. They ran that business until Uncle Johnny died of natural causes in 1963.

Ruth lived for fifteen more years and died in 1978. She was always the life of the party. She drank whiskey out of porcelain tea cups. She was always beautiful. Always everyone’s favorite aunt. Always a baseball fan. Always generous. Always ready with a laugh and another story. 

I was lucky to have an Aunt Ruth and Uncle Johnny in my life. Everyone should be so lucky.

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731 Delaware Avenue

As the oldest of nineteen Jones grandchildren, I was blessed. There was never any doubt that Grandpa and Grandma loved us above all else. They taught us what love looked like.

First and foremost, Grandma and Grandpa loved each other. They met in St. James, Minnesota, where Grandpa worked as a telegraph operator for the Chicago Northwestern railroad. He had recently been transferred to St. James from Chicago and lived in a boarding house run by Grandma’s aunt.

Grandma was a high school student when her father, an Irish immigrant, was crushed between two train cars. He was killed instantly, leaving the family devastated and without any income.

Grandma went to work for her aunt, serving breakfast and dinner before and after school. It was there that Robert and Irene met, fell in love and were married.

Robert, always a hard-worker, continued to get promoted, first to Mankato, Minnesota and then to St. Paul, where he and Irene bought a home at 731 Delaware, and raised four children ~ Margaret, Robert Jr., Shirley and Gwen. 

Life was not easy for Grandma and Grandpa. The day the stock market crashed in 1929, Grandpa came home on the street car, fell on the couch and cried. “We’ve been wiped out,” he told my father. The next day, Grandpa went back to work, determined to salvage his life. Determined that all of his children would go to college.

My mother and I lived with my grandparents after I was born. My father was in the Navy and it was not a happy time for my mother. But it was heaven for me. Can you imagine? I was a baby with two adoring grandparents and three single aunts!

My brother, Bob, was born when I was eighteen months old. My father was still in the Navy. Mom and I moved in with her parents, at their farm in North St. Paul.

Gone were the days of being taken for rides around the block in a red coaster wagon. Having my picture taken every time I smiled. Instead of being the oldest grandchild, I was buried in the middle of the pack. My cousin, Lori, had tea-parties with me, but Grandma Hunt was too busy cooking and cleaning to pay attention to most of what we did.

Grandpa Jones retired from his job at the railroad and bought a second home in the country, a small log cabin with a huge garden where he cultivated and sold prize-winning peonies. Acres of peonies in every color, ~ pink, white, deep red, and magenta. My mind’s eye of happy memories is still flooded with Grandpa’s flowers. My brother and I spent weekends and idyllic summer days at the log cabin in the woods.

Grandpa sold the cabin in the  early 1950’s. As a family, we continued to visit my grandparents every two weeks for Sunday dinner at their home on Delaware Avenue. My mother wasn’t happy with the arrangement because she couldn’t smoke at Grandma’s house. It was clear that she found those afternoons stuffy and boring.

The Joneses are quiet people. We didn’t talk much. Mostly we sat around after dinner, murmuring small talk until it was time to leave. As an extremely shy child, that was just fine with me. I loved being with Grandma and Grandpa in their quiet home filled with beautiful things.

Occasionally we played games or answered letters from Shirley and Gwen, who by then were married with large families and living far away. Bob and I played the piano and Grandma and Grandpa beamed. Sometimes Bob would sing “Goodnight, Irene” for my grandmother and she would smile with tears in her eyes.

My grandparents died young. I was in sixth grade when Grandpa died and in eighth grade when Grandma passed away. I miss them to this day but I know how lucky I was to spend time with them while they were alive. 

This weekend, as we celebrate Grandparent’s Day, I realize there is no love stronger than the love of a grandparent. Good grandparents don’t spoil their grandchildren. They just love them, with all their heart.

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Camp Hitaga

For six years, while I was in college and graduate school, I spent my summers working as a counselor at a Camp Fire Girls camp near Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

I knew I didn’t want to go home after my freshman year in St. Cloud. There were no jobs for me in North St. Paul. I would have been a lousy waitress. I wasn’t certified to be a life guard. The few businesses in town weren’t hiring. And although I passed my driver’s test, I really didn’t know how to drive a car.

Ah, ha, I thought. Maybe I can work in a summer camp? I like being outdoors. How hard can it be?

The application process was easy. Back then there were no background checks. I’m not sure I even had to submit a letter of reference. 

I was accepted almost immediately. I later learned that the director wanted counselors with a music background. She hired me to be on the nature staff, not because I knew anything about nature, but because I could play the piano.

Camp Hitaga turned out to be a good fit for me. The camp director, Noel Newell, and the culture she promoted completely transformed my life.

Noel was a kind, gentle, gracious, quiet woman. I have no idea how old she was. She had beautiful white hair, so we all assumed she must be really old. She was a music major, who ran the camp like a choir. We sang all the time. We met at the flagpole and sang patriotic songs. We sang at meals, on hikes and canoe trips, in the shower, walking along dusty paths. 

Every night, the counselors met around a campfire. We sang in harmony, accompanied by guitars. Folk music by Peter, Paul and Mary and Bob Dylan drifted from every hilltop as counselors sang their campers to sleep. After the girls were sleeping we slipped away to the kitchen, searching for ice cream and dessert left-over from dinner.

Being on the nature staff allowed me to be outside all day. There were two of us on the staff plus a head counselor, who was a real biology major. We worked in a small cabin, filled with plants and animals ~ including an eight-foot bull snake that terrified me. I led nature hikes in the forest, where we identified plants, met for early morning bird hikes (supplied with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches) and late night star-gazing lessons.

The picture at the top of this page is of three campers building a bird bath. I don’t know whose idea that was. Probably not mine. I always learned far more than I taught.

One day, on a hike to the mail box, there were cows in the field next to the road. And one bull. There was mating going on but I was so clueless, I didn’t know what was happening. 

One of the campers asked, “What are they doing?”

“I’m not sure,” I answered. “I guess they are playing a game. It looks like they are having fun.”

I loved they campers and the other counselors. I’ve lost touch with all of them, except for one fine woman, a previous camper with whom I’ve shared a lifetime of friendship.

It was an idyllic time for me. I went from being a very shy, completely non-athletic young woman to someone who enjoyed social encounters and being physically active.

I spent every minute soaking up sunshine, in the company of like-minded women who were smart, funny, creative and energetic. Because this was the early 60’s, most of us went on to teach school and raise families. 

Noel guided us with a gentle hand, even though none of us were as quiet and well-behaved as she would have liked. She recognized that each of us had something special to offer, something that made us worthy, something that made us capable of being leaders of this new generation.

I never went back home again.

 

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Sister Kathleen

People ask me where I learned to write. I tell them, “In Sister Kathleen’s classroom at St. Peter School.”

Sister Kathleen, my seventh grade teacher, didn’t just teach me to write. She taught all sixty-six of us to write that year ~ 1955.

We were World War II babies. Not officially Baby Boomers but a huge class, nonetheless. I can still see the classroom. Six rows across, eleven desks deep. The tallest students in the back. The most troublesome ones in the front. My desk was somewhere in the middle.

Sister Kathleen, a tall, skinny, Franciscan nun, was one of the older teachers ~ maybe forty years old ~ and 100% Irish. A lot of the nuns who lived in the convent were Irish. Unlike some of the more dour, German nuns, the Irish nuns were funny and smart, dedicated, creative teachers. They taught us to square dance and do an Irish  jig. They let us play Bingo. They went ice skating on the playground, wearing their habits late a night, when they thought no one could see them. 

St. Patrick’s Day was the biggest holiday of the year at St. Peter School. It was the only day we were allowed to come to school in something other than our uniforms, as long as we were wearing green. There were treats in the cafeteria and a dance after school. 

Looking back, Sister Kathleen was a remarkable teacher. She taught a love of learning, especially history and geography, to all of us. She divided us into reading groups. I was lucky. I was in a group of (mostly girls) who didn’t require much instruction. I’m sure there were groups  (mostly boys) who required all the resources she could muster. 

Like the rest of the Irish nuns, Sister Kathleen was known for her quick temper. Disaster struck whenever Sister Evangelista, the principal, called her into the hallway for a meeting. Sister Kathleen put her finger to her lips as she left the room, admonishing us to be quiet and keep working while she talked with Sister Superior. 

Good behavior lasted less than five minutes. Of course, we didn’t keep working. Of course, we didn’t keep quiet. Soon the classroom was total chaos. The bolder girls flirted with the popular boys, who mostly shouted to each other across the room. The bravest boys got out of their seats and yelled out the windows. We knew what was coming but we didn’t care. For that moment in time, in our seventh-grade minds, it seemed worth it.

In an instant, the classroom door flew open, Sister Kathleen ~ her face bright red, her hands shaking, her veil whooshing behind her. She walked to the front of the class, picked up a piece of chalk and wrote in giant letters: 2000 WORDS ON RESPECT (or obedience, or trustworthiness, or whatever popped into her head) BEFORE YOU GO HOME TONIGHT. ON YOUR KNEES!! WITH PERFECT HANDWRITING AND SPELLING. NO REPEATING!

We scrambled to get notebooks and pencils out of our desks. We dropped to our knees ~ much easier for the boys, after all, because they wore long pants. We girls knelt on bare knees, which only made me more determined to write faster and in my best handwriting.

These “writing lessons” happened at least once a week. My mother got used to me coming home from school late and merely asked, “What did you write about today?”

I know a lot of people have horrible memories of going to Catholic school. I felt sorry for boys who were often in trouble and were physically punished for what they did. 

But for me, a girl who was extremely shy and wanted to avoid the spotlight at all cost, a girl who loved school and who especially loved to read, it was a good experience. I learned to write.