Stories by Roger (from the "additions" page)
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Don's trick

The correct way to fall dead

A few more memories - Roger

More sibling tales

Mom's Bible gift -- a story.

Mom's book of riddles

Three Mom stories

Story number four

The hairdo

Duane and Grandpa Fred

Grandpa and Audrey

More Paulson driveway


Roger's initial contribution to the Stories section:
                               
Nine little stories                                    
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1. 

It was in the mid-1960s that a vehicle ran a red light and plowed into the bus Dad was driving.  Dad was injured and, among other things, lost 80 percent use of his right arm, permanently. 

In those days, the buses had manual steering.  It took plenty of strength in both arms to handle it. 

He was barred from bus driving indefinitely, and he hired out to American Building Maintenance as a night janitor.  He quickly became a foreman, and ran the all-night crew at the Fridley Target store.  (Donald and Duane both worked at least one night on that crew with Dad, and will attest to Dad's supreme performance on that job.  They couldn't match him.)

After some years, American Building Maintenance lost the Fridley Target contract, and they assigned Dad to a crew elsewhere, and not as foreman.  I think it was Dad's very first night with that crew that he quit that job in the middle of the shift.  He was disgusted at their short-cut method of floor maintenance, had tried to get the foreman to do it right, and of course the foreman didn't relent. 

So Dad arrived home in the middle of the night, and crawled into bed with Mom. 

Years later, Mom or Dad, or both, told me the
entire conversation:


Mom - "What are you doing home?"

Dad - "I quit my job."

Mom - "What are you going to do?"

Dad - "Get a good night's sleep."


First thing the next morning, Dad went down to the bus company and told the supervisor that his right arm had essentially recovered and that he wanted to drive bus. 

The supervisor, well aware that the company doctor had concluded that the injury was permanent and that Dad could not drive bus again, told Dad so, and
firmly told Dad that the company was not interested. 

Dad was in his ultra determined and ultra assertive mode.  He was without a job, and now had a serious black mark on his job resume to go along with that, having walked off his job without giving notice. 

Dad insisted that the supervisor let him take a bus out for a demonstration with the supervisor on board.  The supervisor said it was not going to happen.   Dad would not relent.   Dad told me that he pressed the supervisor at length, very hard.  Dad simply was not going to take no for an answer. 

Out they went. 

Dad told me that he then performed the biggest fake-out of his life (with the still manual steering).  He grasped the steering wheel with the hand of his worthless right arm.  With his powerful left arm alone, he steered the bus flawlessly through traffic, pretending for all he was worth that his right arm was sharing the workload. 

The supervisor said, "Irv, that was great.  Report for work as soon as you want."

Dad lost no seniority while he had been off the job.  He was immediatley working the day shift, with his pick of plum routes. 

While he had been away from bus driving, the drivers' pay had jumped way up through negotiations.  Soon, for the first time in their lives, Mom and Dad had more money than they could spend. 

Dad's high standards and strong will sure paid off for him and Mom. 

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2. 

In 1977, a year after I returned home from Colorado, I took the Scrabble board down from a closet shelf one evening and asked Mom if she'd like to play a game.  I don't recall whether Mom had ever played Scrabble.  I hadn't played it since I was a child. 

We sat down at the kitchen table early in the evening to play it.  Did we ever enjoy it.  I don't recall which of us asked the other if they would like to play another game, but the other one said, "Sure!"

We then more or less took turns asking that question. 

After the sun came up, Dad got up to go to work.  There sat Mom and I at the kitchen table, still playing Scrabble, just as we were when he went to bed the previous night. 

After Dad left for work, and after we finished that game, I assumed that was it. 

Mom said, "Another game?"

Roger - "Sure!"

(And then that was the last game.)


Epilogue:

It probably won't surprise you to learn that I dominated Mom in those games that night.  When it was over, Mom and I joked that I'd "creamed" her. 

Well, Mom sure honed her skills that night.  And a couple days later she challenged Pam to a game.  Pam hadn't played Scrabble since her childhood.  When I got home from work that day, Mom was sitting at the kitchen table and her eyes were dancing.  She told me that she had played a game of Scrabble with Pam.  She then leaned forward towards me, smiling, and after a slight pause, brought her fist down on the table and said, "and I CREAMED HER!"


Postscript:

Soon, everybody was creaming everybody.

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3. 

When I was in the ninth grade, I considered myself a very good chess player.  After all, Ted Novak was the smartest kid in our class (so smart, that he already knew he was going to go to law school, and he did), and I had beaten Ted 6 games out of 10. 

Of course, as you've probably guessed, I asked Dad to play a game with me.  He had never played chess, and I had to explain the goal of the game and show him how each piece moved. 

It was a rout from the get go.  I was taking several minutes for each move.  Throughout the game, Dad sat there saying, "Come on, move." He kept getting up to get another cup of coffee while he waited for me to move.  The moment I made a move, he would immediately make his move.  Just like that.  He creamed me. 

I never asked him to play another game. 


Postscript:

We eventually learned from Dad's navy letters to Mom that in fact he had played chess in the navy, which was 25 years prior to our game in 1969.   That rapscallion!

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4. 

As everyone knows, Mom was a great and smart worker.  She knew she was the best at what she did at the Forum Cafeteria.  When Unity hospital was formed and scheduled to open in 1966, Mom applied there, though with trepidation. 

She told me years later that she had been apprehensive about working alongside real professional hospital kitchen staff.  She wasn't sure she would measure up. 

Right. 

I'm pretty sure that it was before the first day was over, that her concerns were reversed: How on earth was she going to cope with all this inferior (at least to her) kitchen help?

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5. 

They don't make bus drivers like Dad any more.  In fact, I'm not sure they ever did, other than Dad himself. 

When I was about six or seven, I rode the bus with him one day, all day long, on his route.  Most drivers didn't call out the approaching street names to the passengers.  Dad sang the street names to his passengers.  It was like a chant - plenty of pitch change in the course of a single street name being sung out. 

He would make fun conversation with anyone - enjoyed teasing his riders. 

Audrey and I (and I think Pam mentioned it too) used to say that we thought Dad would have made a great college professor.  He not only had the brains, he also had the soulful personality and "the look".  He could have taught any subject and seemed at home with it. 

Clearly, he excelled at English.  He knew big words, he knew when to use them; and especially when writing, he formed sophisticated sentences.  (See the Portland letters, written at age 24.)   With an eighth grade education. 

As kids, us younger three saw Dad display his artistic talents with sketching as well as with his yard projects.  The only artwork of Dad's in existence is the one on the south inside wall of the garage - a simple painting of a waiter with a serving tray.

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6. 

Mom had the most wonderfully silly and charming night-time dreams, which she would relate to me.  Sadly, other than bits and pieces, I've forgotten all but one of them. 

That one I remember in full. 

From the mid 1990s onwards, there was a lumber pile sitting way at the back of Mom's back yard.  Mom never ventured back there, as she had long been too aged to have any interest in exploring the yard.  It was in the early 2000s that she had this dream:

She found herself standing at one end of the lumber pile.  Sitting on a board at the end of the pile were two mice, husband and wife.  Mom told me that those mice were very cute, just like mice in the cartoons. 

The Mrs mouse said to the Mr mouse, "This sure is a nice little home we have here."

Mr mouse said, "Yes, and tonight I'll sneak into the house and get us some food."

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7. 

Here's a story Dad told me more than once:

When he was a youngster, he, Vernon, a very young Jack, and grandpa Max were working on something amongst the sheds, where there sat a horse wagon.  Jack had crawled under the wagon.  Max suddenly noticed some sort of rodent creature under the wagon.  Max was so alarmed that he got tongue tied.  He yelled at Jack, "Get under! .. From out! ..
The wagon! .... Awaaay!"

I can see Dad repeating it to himself over and over again that day, working it into his long term memory. 

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8. 

It was sometime around 1980 that Mom and Dad were having lunch at Sambo's restaurant in Fridley.  A very elderly man had been eyeing Mom from across the room.  He finally came up to Mom and said, "Are you a Paulson girl?"

The man had had only a passing acquaintence with Fred in Bemidji nearly sixty years earlier when Mom and Vera were little girls.  But his memory of the unique look of Mom and Vera had stuck with him. 

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small note:

I think Queen Elizabeth looks like Mom, and that she did when she was young as well.  Mom thought so too, and would say, "there I am!" to the image on the television screen. 

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9. 

Sometime in the late 1970s, Mom and Dad began walking together to Northtown Mall.  They took that walk many times, and they took the bus home.  It's a 2 1/4 mile walk one way, nearly an hour of walking.  The long stretch going up Monroe St is over a mile. 

One day when I was driving up Monroe, I saw them walking.  I've also many times pictured them walking that long long stretch of Monroe.  I've wondered what they talked about on those long walks.  Even if they walked mostly in silence, it's still a heartening and endearing memory. 

If they did walk mostly in silence, I imagine each of them reflecting on the long road they had traveled together to get them to that day. 




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