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A few more Mom and Dad memories by Roger


Kay's Baby Ruth candy bar story reminded me of one of my own:


On one of Mom's and my shopping trips in Bemidji, when I was four or five, Mom had bought me a candy bar.  For some reason, when it was half-eaten, I set it down on a merchandise rack on the second floor of a department store (I'm sure it was J.C. Penney's), then forgot I had done it until Mom and I were a few blocks away (near the meat market).  I told Mom, and she offered to buy me another one.  But I was sentimentally attached to the one I'd left at Penney's, and told her in a sad little voice that I wanted the one I'd left there.  Mom immediately agreed to walk with me all those blocks back to Penney's to retrieve it, and it was still there waiting for me.


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Mom and I had another understanding when I was about three.   I was able to go number two by myself, but not able to wipe myself.   I remember so clearly how I would always go up to Mom when I had to go, and would say to her with dead seriousness, "Mommm.. I have to go potty, so when I call, you come, okay?"   Those were always my exact words.   She always said, so reasurringly, "Okay."




A favorite sound from my childhood was the sound of Mom washing clothes in the laundry room while I was playing or lounging in the basement.  Just the thought of her moving about, being happily productive, taking care of things for us, making those wonderfully reassuring sounds with the machines and the faucets.


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I always loved shopping with Mom in Bemidji when I was little.  It was a magical thing.  During Mom's final years, it was always good to go with her to stay a couple nights with Don and Ellie at Joe's Lodge not far from Bemidji. Mom and I always went into downtown Bemidji those years for a shopping trip.  The only store left in the downtown area was Ben Franklin.  Good enough.  We always shopped the dollar aisle there, and browsed the entire store.  We always bought a jigsaw puzzle there as well.  My favorite jigsaw puzzle we bought there was the one of Lucy, Ricky, Fred and Ethel driving over the Brooklyn Bridge as they were leaving for California.




On one of Mom's and my visits to Bemidji (it was in 2002), she and I went to a play at the Paul Bunyan Playhouse in downtown Bemidji.   It was an excellent romantic comedy of manners appropriately set in 1939.




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Dad told me about a neighbor of Grandpa Max and Grandma Lucy who frequently came over to the farm house for coffee when Dad was a little boy.  At each visit, over the course of a few visits, he would say to Dad as they sat at the table, "Eat (such and such), it'll grow hair on your chest."

Finally, on one visit, after saying that same sentence again to Dad, he said to Dad, "Did I ever show you the hair on my chest?" Of course, Dad so "No." So the man said, "Okay, I'll show you." He took his shirt off and showed Dad his bare chest.  It was completely devoid of hair with the exception of a single hair growing out of a mole.  He said to Dad, "There's the hair on my chest."




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