<-- back to index



Don and Duane story time
-----------------------------

Able Street


Oil change woes

Dad and Duane collaborated on an oil change for Duane's '47 Plymouth.  Miscommunication happened. Dad thought Duane had put new oil in after draining out the old oil, and Duane thought Dad had.  Off Duane went down the highway.  

Duane: "That was the end of that car.  It was a beautiful car.  I didn't have it that long.  You know, Dad was such a special guy - he felt so sorry for me.   The very next day he was driving down Marshall Avenue.   He went by Webskies' Auto Salvage and spotted that '50 Plymouth in there for seventy five bucks.  He bought it for me.  He just didn't want to see me without a car.  I think back and I can't believe how nice he was."

The only thing wrong with that '50 Plymouth was that the trunk was caved in.   The previous owner, a farmer, had a mishap with it on his farm and simply brought the car to the salvage yard.  Other than that, it was like new.

Duane: "I went to the junkyard and got a trunk door.
So I had a discolored trunk - it didn't matter."


Don: "And I wrecked Dad's '53 Chevrolet.  Dad had me change the oil in the car.  I'd never done it before.  I put the new filter in and didn't get the cap back on quite right on the filter.  I was taking Duane to the truck farm to pick vegetables, and about half way there the car overheated and it conked, burned out the engine.  It was a little scary - I had to hitch hike home, got home, walked into Mom's and Dad's bedroom and said, "There's something wrong with the car."  Dad had the engine rebuilt, but it was never the same.  He finally traded it in for the '54 Olds."





Don: "We all worked at the Forum Cafeteria.  Mom worked there, Duane worked there, Audrey worked there, I worked there."

Don: "I applied at the Forum Cafeteria to make money for my college tuition.  They hired me right on the spot. I became the dish room supervisor.  I quit there in the spring of 1960 to go to Europe.  I had a job offer at the Forum - Melcher called me up to his office and told me he wanted to make me manager and told me I could make $20,000 a year.  That was a lot of money then.  I told him, "Okay I'll think about it."  I thought about it for about one day before turning it down."

Duane: "I used to help Mom out there once in a while, and boy they would get mad at me.  They had these great big heavy trays they had to carry, and I'd run over there and I'd grab it from her and I'd take it to wherever she was going.  And they let me know.. I wasn't supposed to do that.  They didn't understand.. that was my mom!"

Duane: "They wanted to make me chef there.  I just wasn't interested.  That's when I joined the navy."

Duane: "I remember how old Mom was getting, working at the Forum.  It was hard work, working for Lillian.  I was so glad when she quit there and got in at the hospital."


Don: "I remember coming home from college - and Mom wasn't there, she was working.  Mom had been home all the time when we were growing up.  It really felt strange not having her there."


Canoeing

Here's a story that's too good to not be told, though conceivably, Audrey and Pam might wish it would go away..    What were they thinking ?!!

Duane: "I remember a canoe trip I did with the girls. Before we put in at the start, I got up early in the morning like I always do, and I'm walking down this dirt road, and I walked down to the lodge.  And they had this diner and kitchen and everything.  I walked in there and they had this little kitchen with a bunch of old women...
.. b a k i n g    p i e s ..  I fell in love.  And I looked at all the natural ingredients - lemon, you name it.. everything was real!   And I thought, wow!  Went back, down the road, and I told the girls, "Breakfast is on me, we're eating breakfast down there."  And they balked at it!   They had all these plans for dried breakfast - put some powder stuff in a bowl, add water.  I said, "Fine, but, when we get back here after the canoeing, dinner's on me."  Then we did our portaging for a few days, got all done, came across the lake again, went over there, it was Monday.. saw their sign - they were closed on Mondays.   I could have died.  You know, I've never been back.   I cried, I did."



Bemidji


(Stite's is an uncommonly strong beer from back in the day.)

Don: "For a few years, when I was in my early twenties, while the ladies were shopping in Bemidji, Dad, Grandpa and I would go to the bar and Dad would buy Stite's for all three of us.  And after that, Grandpa would buy a Stite's for all three of us!  We'd walk out of that bar and we felt pretty darn good!"


Duane: "When Grandpa had the coupe with the rumble seat, I used to lie in the back - they had a big shelf up there by the window and I used to lie back there.  That was my spot.  I remember how slow Grandpa drove all the way to town.  Then the ladies would go shopping and Grandpa headed for the bar!  He didn't get that much time to drink at home!"


Don: "Grandpa always had a bottle of blackberry brandy up in his cupboard at the nursing home.  When Grandpa and I were playing checkers, he would say, "Don, are you ready for a shot of blackberry brandy?"   He'd go up and get the bottle and pour a shot for each of us."

Don: "The nursing home used to give beer to the residents of the nursing home on Wednesday afternoons. When I was taking classes for my masters degree in Bemidji, Grandpa said, "Don, come on over and we'll have a beer together."   I got there and they wouldn't serve beer to me because I wasn't a resident.  Grandpa said, "No matter, I've got some beer in the frig at the nurses station."  So we still got to have our beer together."



South Minneapolis (Snelling Avenue)


Duane: "When we lived on Snelling Avenue, I went out and stole vegetables from the neighbor's garden and tried to sell them at the local grocery store.  The grocer knew who I was and he called Mom.  I got in trouble."

Don: "You were only in the first grade."

Duane: "I was in kindergarten!   I was a year before kindergarten when we moved in there."





Duane: "There's a certain spoon that I kept for years and years and years.  When we lived there, we rented to two guys upstairs.  One of the guys was named Duane, and he gave me a spoon.  And I kept that spoon for years and years, and we called it the Duane spoon.  We had a black family right next door.  The guy used to pull me around in his little red wagon.   Mom used to get very nervous about that."

Don: "Charles was his name.  He was a sixth grader."

Duane: "We heated with coal.  And they had a coal chute that went down to the furnace.  I used to slide down it. Mom used to get so mad at me because my clothes would get full of coal dust."


Don: "I took a color crayon to the couch in the living room on Snelling Avenue, drew pictures all over it.   Mom got so angry.  She said, "Who drew the pictures on the couch?"   Nobody would admit to it.  Mom said, "I'll give a dime to anyone who admits to it."  I confessed to it. She sent me upstairs without supper that night.  I got my dime."





Bronson Drive


Duane: "We ripped apart quite a few garages for lumber while Dad was building the house on Bronson Drive.  I remember helping Dad haul bricks home from a salvage site with that little two wheeled trailer."

Don: "They came from a house in south Minneapolis. They were tearing out their foundation, made out of bricks.  Every day, Duane, Kay and I had to go out where the bricks were laying in our yard and we had to chip off all the old concrete from the bricks."





Rice Creek

Duane: "I made the trek through the swamp, through the woods, to get down to Rice Creek so many times.. all the way from Bronson Drive, through the pole yards.  We always went to Boot Island.   It wasn't really an island. It was a long peninsula, shaped like a boot.  We always called it Boot Island.   Of course the wooden steps leading down to it weren't there back then."


Trips downtown

Duane: "One thing I can't believe is the freedom Mom and Dad gave us kids.  We'd take off on our own, head down County Road H2, take the bus to downtown Minneapolis, spend all day up and down Hennepin Avenue."

Don: "Mom gave us kids a twenty dollar bill to take downtown to pay for our dinner.  We ate at the Chinese restaraunt at ninth and Hennepin.  The waiter at the Chinese restaraunt looked at that and said, "A twenty dollar bill!   What are you doing with a twenty dollar bill?! Back in the fifties, that was a lot of money for three little kids to have.   He couldn't imagine that we'd have that much money on us!"





Duane: "I rode my bike a lot, to Spring Lake and all over."

Don: "Played cops and robbers, sling-shots."

Duane: "Kick the can at night.  We made sling-shots."

Don: "We'd find just the right branch with the right fork in it."

Duane: "And red rubber tire tubes were the best.   We would be in the fort that we built out in back, a double story thing.  We shot acorns at each other.  Kay was shooting at me and I was shooting at her.  And I hit her - right in the head.  Almost knocked her out."

Dad was not happy.





Duane: "We played softball right in our yard.  We had two acres.  We played right by the side of the house.   The girls played too.  Kay was good!"


Don: "We played 'chicken base bounce out', 'pom pom pull away', football.. "

Duane: "Late at night it was 'kick the can'."

Don: "We used to play a lot of hide and go seek at night."

Duane: "We did that especially when Ron and Shirley came over."

Don: "We were at the Arsenal when we got food poisoning from the rice pudding.  I was in the fourth grade with Shirley, and the fourth graders got the worst of it.  We got the stuff that was in the bottom of the pot."

Duane: "I didn't eat any of it, so I didn't get sick. Roger Thomas loved rice pudding.  Darwin Nelson, Jim Anderson, myself and a couple others didn't like rice pudding.  We gave it all to Roger Thomas.  He ate it all. He almost died!  We can laugh now."

Don: "Remember the first time we went to district six school?  We took the bus there, and on the way back home we felt that the bus didn't turn in the right direction.  So we got off at old Highway 10, at the gas station there, and we walked all the way home from there."


How did Mom spend her days at Bronson Drive when the kids were out of school for the summer?

Don: "We got up and had breakfast and then we took off!"

Duane: "She did laundry a lot.."

Don: "She would heat up water on the stove for laundry."

Duane: "You and I would fill the tub with the hot water."

Duane: "We had a fuel oil furnace in what we called the utility room, where I tried to burn the house down. I lit the fuel oil furnace one morning.  I'd spilled fuel oil.  I took a farmer's match.. and go to light it.. and booosh!  Good thing Elmer Mustonen was home.  He came running over with a fire extinguisher."


Don: "We would take five gallon pails and go out where Dad had three 55 gallon drums filled with fuel oil, and haul our pails back to the house."

Duane: "I used to shovel the path out to the outhouse. The banks were way up there, and I was way down here. Don and Kay and I shoveled so much.  We shoveled all the way down to the street to get Dad out so he could go to work."



Don: "Remember the time we got caught up on the roof of the new Spring Lake Park high school?   I had the motorcycle, you were riding on the back.  We rode up to the high school they were building.  They had a ladder up to the roof and we climbed up to the roof. The constable caught us."

Duane: "You don't realize what a good time you had until you get older, and Bronson Drive was really good."

Duane: "I used to put up one brick with a plank.  Then I'd put up two bricks with a plank, and just keep going and going and going, and I'd ride my bike over it, until I had so many bricks stacked up that they wouldn't stand up straight."

Duane: "I can go right across the street and I'm in the woods where I have my tree fort.  I used to climb trees over there like crazy.  We had one downed tree over there, a huge tree.. I called that my fort.  I used to spend a lot of time there by myself.  Also, if you went back further, you'd be in the tall grass.  I used to spend time there."





Duane: "Remember what we did on Sunday mornings after we got out of church?   Over to Mustonen's!  Hop a long Cassidy!"

Don: "That was Saturday afternoons."   Duane: "Oh I thought Hop a long Cassidy was Sunday."

Don: "The Mustonen's liked having us over.  We'd go there and watch Hop a long Cassidy, Tom Mix, The Lone Ranger."

Duane: "We'd go over there on Friday nights with Dad and watch the fights.  I remember the advertising more than the fights - Hamm's the beer refreshing!"

Duane: "We got the Sylvania in 1952.  We had a big screen TV!   A big 17 inch!   I remember the test pattern before Howdy Doody came on."

Don: "Channel four on Friday nights - Laurel and Hardy, and if you stayed up late enough, you got to watch Topper."


Duane: "You know what my favorite game was on Bronson Drive?   Caroms.  We played caroms a lot. We played Monopoly a lot too.  Don always won."

Roger: "Don was always the banker!"

Duane: "Don was always the banker!   He was very strict."

<-- back to index