Tag: Bob Jones

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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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Remembering The Boys Of Summer

When I was growing up in the 1950’s, we lived across the street from St. Peter’s Catholic School and playground. There were a lot of boys around my age who liked to play baseball and by late morning, we usually had six or eight kids ready to play ball. 

Leo Fortier was not available until after 11:00. Leo’s dad worked for the post office and had to get up at 4:30 in the morning. Leo’s mother, on the other hand, was a night owl. She made Leo stay up every night until midnight, watching the Jack Parr show. Leo would tell us the next day everything that Hermione Gingold or Charlie Weaver said. We couldn’t have cared less.

Since we only had three or four kids on a side, we had local rules to make the games competitive. Any hits to right field was an out. Each team had a pitcher, a shortstop and a left fielder. Since there was no first baseman, if a fielder threw the ball to the pitcher before the runner got to first base, the hitter was out. This was known as “Pitcher’s Hand Out.”

The batting team supplied the catcher and also the back-up catcher. The playground was higher than the street, and if the catcher missed the ball it would roll down the hill about a quarter of a block.

There was always a lot of arguing about balls and strikes, and if the pitcher caught the ball before the batter got to first. Did the catcher drop the ball on purpose when there was a play at home plate? The arguments were endless.

St. Peter’s had a baseball team and it was usually pretty good. Tryouts were during Holy Week (Easter vacation) and in 1956, I tried out for the outfield. Since I was a short, skinny sixth grader, a slow runner with a weak throwing arm, and seldom caught a fly ball that was right to me, I didn’t make the team that year.

The next year, 1957, I tried out again. I was still short and skinny, slow with a weak arm, but now I could catch most of the fly balls that were hit right to me. That was not enough. I didn’t make the team that year, either.

North St. Paul had a summer league. The St. Peter’s team was the Dodgers. The local American Legion Club sponsored the Braves, and I decided to try out for the Braves. I didn’t make that team, either, because my father was not a member of the American Legion.

Hy Ettle was the Braves coach. He told us kids who didn’t make the team that we should come to all the practices and if someone quit, we could get his uniform and be on the team. Hy was a local realtor so he was able to call practices during the day. These were usually on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, at 1:00.

We would all ride our bikes down to the field behind Main Street and be waiting for Hy at 1:00. Hy never showed up for these practices, so we would then jump back on our bikes and ride up the alley to the American Legion Hall. We went in the back door and there was Hy, sitting at the bar with a shot and a beer in front of him.

“Oh,” he said. “Is it 1:00 already? The gear is in the trunk of my Cadillac. Take it to the field. I’ll be down in a half hour. If I don’t get there, just leave everything and I’ll pick it up on my way home.”

After the third game of season, Craig Longfellow didn’t show up. Hy said to me, “Do you know where Longfellow lives?”

“Sure,”  I said.

“Looks like he quit. Go over there and pick up his uniform. You’re on the team.”

Our pitcher that year was Don Arlich. He was a big left-hander who could throw the ball harder than anyone in town. He had a curve ball that no one could hit, and he hit the ball a mile. We won every game until he left for New York and the Boy Scout Jamboree. Mike O’Reilly was the catcher and he went to New York, too.

That left my friend, Leo Fortier, as the catcher, and I was the defensive replacement in right field in the last innings. Hy Ettle had a rule that if one of your parents came to the game, you would get to play.

Leo was short like me. He was fat, while I was skinny, but he could still run faster and throw the ball farther than I could. But he still couldn’t throw the ball from home to second base if a runner was stealing the base. The plan was for him to throw the ball back to the pitcher, who would then turn and throw to the short-stop for the out. It never worked. The runner was always safe.

In one of our games, there was a pop-up behind home plate. Leo flipped his mask off and started running to catch the ball. Unfortunately, he stepped  into his mask and fell flat on his face.

Hy told Leo, “ Next time this happens, stand up and find where the ball is, then throw your mask the other way and go catch the ball.”

Luckily, Leo had another chance in the next game. He stood up, saw the ball, but in his haste he threw off his glove and stood there with his mask on.

We didn’t win a single game when Don Arlich was gone. When he came back for the last few games of the season. Mike O’Reilly had quit and another kid got his uniform. Leo was a permanent replacement as catcher. He came back to the bench after every inning with tears streaming down his cheeks, his left hand all red and swollen from catching Don’s fastball and curve.

In 1958, now in the eighth grade, I finally made the St. Peter’s baseball team. Leo Fortier never played baseball after seventh grade. He concentrated on golf and tennis. I haven’t seen him for over fifty years, but I understand that he is realtor, much like our coach, Hy Ettle.                                                         ~Bob Jones

Bob Jones is a retired dentist. He still plays softball in the Roseville Senior Softball League. He has played on a team every year since 1962. Bob is still short, but not skinny any more. He still roams in right field. He’s still a slow runner with a bad arm, but he catches most of the fly balls that are hit right to him. 

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Here Comes Santa Claus

Christmas in Minnesota was a mixed-bag. Although my childhood seemed normal at the time, now as an adult, I’m not so sure.

My parents had two different approaches to Christmas. My mother didn’t like Christmas at all, for very good reasons. Every year she told us kids the same stories of her childhood in an attempt, I suppose, to make us appreciate “how good we had it.” 

Mom grew up poor, on a farm with six older brothers, including identical twins, who teased her unmercifully. On Christmas Eve, the twins would go outside with their shotguns telling my mother they were going to shoot Santa Claus out of the sky.

“Here he comes,” Len would shout, as my mother cowered in the living room.

Bang! Bang!!  

“We got him!” Ray would yell. And they stomped off the porch and ran into the yard, pretending to search the bushes for Santa’s body, while my mother sobbed in my grandmother’s arms. From then on, my mother never trusted Christmas.

My father, on the other hand, grew up in a middle class, suburban family. He loved Christmas. He loved buying and wrapping presents, He loved sending and receiving Christmas cards. And, most of all, he loved Christmas music. 

Dad was such fun at Christmas. I can still see him hanging giant silver snowflakes from the ceiling in the living room, to the chagrin of my mother who didn’t want people to focus their attention on the ceiling before she had a chance to wash it. Dad patiently hung tinsel on the tree, one strand at a time, while the rest of us “helped” by tossing handfuls of tinsel at the tree, hoping it would land on the branches.

We always celebrated Christmas Eve with my mother’s family ~ Grandma Hunt, Aunt Fran and my cousin Lori. Occasionally we would go to Aunt Fran’s house for dinner, but usually my mother made a big dinner for all of us before we opened gifts and went to bed.

One year Aunt Fran said she was bringing “the baby Jesus” to our house for dinner. We didn’t know what to expect, but I was hoping for a real baby. Instead, Aunt Fran showed up with a young Black man, Elija, who had just been released from prison. I had never seen a Black person before in snow-white Minnesota of the 1950’s. The man was quiet and pleasant. I wonder what he thought of us. We never saw him again.

I remember gifts I got as a child, mostly dolls and ice skates, coloring books and art supplies. The best gift of all, however, was the year my father came home from work on Christmas Eve, with a kitten in his pocket. The kitten was crying outside the drug store when my father locked up for the night. Dad didn’t have the heart to leave the kitten there, meowing in the snow, so he brought him home. Because Dad had already left the store (and, of course, no one had a cell phone back then) my mother was as surprised as we were. I’m not sure she was pleased.

The best Christmas memory, the one I will never forget, however, is the year Santa Claus actually came to our house on Christmas Eve and delivered our toys early, before we had to go to bed. 

As Santa turned to go out the door, my Dad said, “Santa, do you have time for a shot and a beer before you go?”

“I sure do, Bob,” said Santa, as he sat down at our kitchen table. 

Dad opened two bottles of Grain Belt and poured a shot of bourbon for both of them. So much for milk and cookies. Ho Ho Ho! It was a very Merry Christmas, Indeed.