Memorial Day

Next to Christmas, Memorial Day was my favorite holiday. Not the least because many combatants from two recent wars and a few from the war to end all wars lived in the village and surrounding area. The memories of World War II and the Korean War were still vivid.  Almost all thirty to fifty to fifty year old males and a considerable number of females in the county were veterans of one of one of those two conflicts.  There were also a goodly number who had served or at least remembered World War I.  So the American Legion was thriving and Memorial Day was honored sincerely, a day of deep emotion and gratitude by the entire community. In the days before bingo and pull-tabs took away its soul, the American Legion saw to it that everyone wore a paper poppy on their lapel.

The one downside of Memorial Day was that school art classes devoted the entire month of May to making “Poppy Posters".  Each grade’s efforts were judged and awarded ribbons by the American Legion. The winning posters were displayed in store windows all over town. I was artistically challenged so I never had a prayer of being one of the Memorial Day poster winners.  I aspired however.

Memorial Day began with a program in the town hall, opening with the Pledge of Allegiance and generally included an invited speaker with some WWII credentials and others offering patriotic music.  It played to a packed house.  I sat impatiently through this because I knew what was to follow.  When the program concluded, the honor guard, consisting of 10-12 vets from all the services, who had managed to pour themselves into their old military uniforms, would rise from the front rows of the auditorium, shoulder arms and form rank.  They assembled on the street outside the town hall and marched to Frankie’s cadence. “Hut - Hut - Hut 2-3-4. Column right, march.” The destination was the skating rink where rows of white crosses decorated with flowers and poppies had been placed. Kids would run along side the marchers and then wait in flushed expectation as an emotional vet read the names of those killed in action during the three conflicts.  The honor guard would then fire the three rounds in the 21 gun salute to the fallen.  

Of course my mission was to recover those spent shell casings.  Unfortunately, every kid in Lowry had the same idea.  The mad rush after the honor guard had left resembled a rugby scrum. Competing with Big Time in that melee couldn’t have been worse than actual combat.  I was pretty scrawny so I was happy to come up with one or two casings with only a bloody nose or broken glasses.  One glorious year I grabbed a mis-fire that still had its red wax sealed powder intact.  I could have traded that “live blank” for twenty empty casings.  Never did though.

After the program, there was usually a big family gathering at Grandma’s house with a big meal followed by outside games with the cousins while the adults spent the entire afternoon at the dining room table "discussing things".  My grandparents had 4 sons who served in the navy during WWII and a brother in the army during WWI.  But war experiences were never discussed.  I suspect there may have been talks between 4 brothers, but regretfully, I never got first hand accounts except for reading formal war logs of the ships they were on.

I had an obsession with the Pacific theatre of WWII.  My father served on a battleship in the Pacific, but did not talk about it. But I had practically memorized his ship’s war log that chronicled the island-hopping path of the big ship. I knew Peleliu from Truk, Mindinao from Luzon. I was pretty cocky when I could wear his dress white sailor hat around town.  

Then CBS began televising the Victory at Sea episodes, which further convinced me that the Navy had single-handedly won the war on both fronts.  I was glued to the TV set on Sunday afternoon from 4:30 to 5:00 to inhale those programs. Next to Lassie, it was the best thing on TV.  Unfortunately, the nearest TV station was 130 miles away and reception was at best, “unpredictable”.  So often I watched marines assaulting Mt. Suribachi or ships attacked by kamikazes through blizzards of snow.  

Almost all the gang had fathers that were WWII vets so the army vs. navy arguments were frequent and heated.  And "playing war" was a common activity. To me infantry service, in Italy of all places, amounted to shore patrol.  I was later humbled to discover Sicily, Salerno, Anzio and Monte Cassino.  

War was glamorous.  How ignorant.

The Town

As a kid growing up in the fifties, I lived with a sense of timelessness. There was the confident assurance that tomorrow would be a carbon of today, and the serendipity in our lives were due to acts of God. For me, life would unfold very predictably. Simpler times, distant innocence.

In 1957, it is difficult to imagine a more insulated place in America than Lowry, Pope County, Minnesota, a town of roughly 250 people, positioned on the geographic boundary between lake country and prairie.  Bounded east-west and north-south by trunk highways and the Soo Line tracks on the north end of town, passing between the depot and the elevator.  Lowry had been named in honor of Thomas Lowry, the president of the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railroad Company, eventually renamed Soo Line.  I guess the Scandinavians couldn’t bear being Frenchified. The Soo Line was the town’s life-blood.

Eight miles to the east, the east-west trunk crossed a major north-south highway, and most westward bound travelers turned north or south to the lake country.  So it was rare to find someone entering the city limits who was not a known quantity.  However, in the rare event that such a thing happened, you could count on Leona to quickly spread the word.  Even the Minnesota Department of Transportation seemed to acknowledge the backwater status of Lowry, halting improvements at that eastern crossing, leaving the few westward bound travelers a narrow, shoulder-less, twisty, frequently patched and steadily deteriorating blacktop to its terminus at the North Dakota border. Apparently there were not enough fatalities - or sufficient legislative clout - to warrant improving the dangerous road.

Lowry is officially a “village”, neither seeing the need nor the benefit of incorporation and committed to operating under a weak mayor system.  Jeffersonian principles distrusting concentrated power were alive and well.  This was an agrarian society and the principal reason for the village’s existence was to service the surrounding small farms.  But in the days before the Walmarting of America, this was a bustling, self-sustaining economy.  A mercantile, two grocery stores, restaurant, two machinery dealers (red and orange), blacksmith, hardware store, butcher shop, barber shop, lumber yard, grain elevator, creamery, hatchery, four gas stations, telephone “central”, doctor, dentist, post office, tavern and the bank, all as surely dependent for their survival on the whims of mother nature as was the corn crop. Only the post office, the railroad depot and the tavern seemed to be immune to the farmers’ financial ups and downs.

And although seated on the edge of the prairie, the town was canopied with magnificent elm trees, planted by my great uncle in the 20's on every boulevard.  Unfortunately, just as there was little diversity in the population, there was little diversity in the stand of trees, so when the Dutch Elm plague hit in the 70’s & 80’s, Lowry was left pretty much with that mammoth cottonwood tree in the middle of town.

But, being ten years old and a “townie”, I had no notion of economics or history or the world beyond those twelve city blocks.  To me, Lowry and 16 major league teams defined the universe.

The surrounding farm area was cleanly divided into ethno-religious clans as if some geography god had doled out the ground. To the north were the Catholic Czechs; to the west the Swedish Lutherans; to the east and south the Norwegian Lutherans. Mixed in were a few Covenanters, Gospel Missioners and one Mormon. The same clans existed within town of course, but the separation was not so evident, except on Sunday morning when the population dispersed to its five churches. And when a fella went in search of a bride, the prospect of crossing clan or religious boundaries was as perilous as fishing in a thunderstorm.  Occasionally a daring Norwegian Lutheran boy might wed a Swedish Lutheran girl, generally over the objections of both mothers.

After the churches, the most important institution in the village was the school. The red brick, two-story edifice with two blocks of “playground” surrounding it, had four classrooms and what passed for a library.  Four teachers delivered education to roughly eighty children in grades 1 through 8. That modern novelty, kindergarten, had not yet made an appearance.  Each teacher had responsibility for two grade levels and all subject matter.  When a kid “graduated” to grade 9, he was bussed off to the county seat to “high school”.

After the schoolhouse, the most important public building was the “Town Hall”, the focus of all community events, from elections to smelt fries. The Town Hall also doubled as the firehouse and in winter the upstairs auditorium served as a sixty-foot basketball court with wooden slats over the windows to prevent glass breakage, not always successfully.

The firehouse held one ten year old fire truck plus an ancient horse drawn pumper that was still occasionally used to fight “in town” infernos. Volunteer fireman substituted back power for horsepower.  Virtually every able-bodied male within a ten-mile radius was a volunteer firemen. It was dues and perhaps as close a reminder of military operations as could be found in Lowry.

The police force consisted of one part-time town constable who also held down two other jobs. His duties were mainly to check that the business owners remembered to lock their doors after the 6 p.m. closing, and to occasionally put the fear of God into a few Halloween out-house tippers. But Lowry’s principal law and order device was the town siren.  Every day at twelve noon and each night at ten p.m., the siren’s arched whine wailed for seven seconds, signaling lunch time or time for kids to be off the streets.  Once or twice a year, the county sheriff would appear to serve a court summons to someone and once every five years or so he would inspect the crime scene at the break-in at the hardware store where half a dozen 22’s, 410’s and 12 gauges had been carried away.  We were convinced of course that the Minneapolis Mafia was behind this.  Lowry was an easy mark for these gangsters.  But crime was not a major campaign issue for Lowry politicos.

Village government was a weak mayor system with a half-dozen town councilmen – that’s councilmen, not council-persons.  Women ran the home and controlled the finances, but the running of the wheels of government was strictly a male prerogative. Council meetings normally consisted of a discussion of such weighty matters as broken sewer pipes, when to spray DDT for mosquitoes or the need to oil the streets to keep the dust down – to be followed by a stop at the tavern to write up the minutes for the Pope County Tribune and the Starbuck Times.  Once elected to office, it was difficult to shed the role. There was very little turnover on the council from election to election and few contested races. Occasionally a write-in campaign was needed to fill an office.  Most people saw that as a good thing.

In 1957, “The Town”, albeit a backwater, was thriving and bubbling with optimism.

That 10 Year Old

Looking back through life’s lens at that 10-year-old boy of 1957, he is still recognizable.  Perhaps a combination of Nordic genes, first-born male and insulated small town life - or just fate produces this archetype.   What do you think the problem is, dad?  Heredity or environment?  

His basic characteristics remain;  introverted, and at age 10, truly shy, but over time, with great effort and some trembling, transformable into a temporary extrovert, as later Myers-Briggs results confirm.  (It has always seemed unfair to be so fated. Extroverts suck the life-blood from you and flourish, and we, with no obvious recourse, go into seclusion to restore our depleted batteries. It is some small consolation to know that the commissions of those future sales reps were largely dependent on the skills of we future engineers.  It’s not all bad - see Susan Cain’s Ted Talk http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts)

Handicapped by his high myopia, he is somewhat timid and destined to always attempt to achieve, driven by fear of failure or disapproval.  (I think if I could rewind, I would study less, work less and enjoy moments more.  I hope for time to put those tenets into practice.  I’m working on it.  I’ve got the “work less” covered.)

But at age 10, future trials were out-of-sight, out-of-mind.  Life was good and the world was not a scary place.  That skinny, socially awkward 10 year old was not at all out-of-place in the little town of Lowry.  This profile was the norm, albeit most not so frail, and life was happily predictable.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but in my youth I was a gang member.   

gang n [M.E. ; A.S.] an organized group of youths from the same neighborhood banded together for social reasons.

a.k.a.  a bunch of hoodlums up to no good. At least in our own minds, that sounded right.

We never thought of ourselves as “organized” however.  We did have an undisputed leader but he just emerged because he had the talent for it and we were a bunch of willing followers.  He was an impressive idea man, throwing out a good mix of mischievous schemes to keep the troops energized. But his great talent was assigning “handles” to gang members.

We called them nicknames and our leader was the dispenser of these tags, except for his own. We affectionately tagged him “Tubba”.  Tubba liked his food. The gang had Mucka, Utta, Tonto, King, Dubshay, Engie, Speed, Butch and Big Time. I was “Hoppy” (after Hopalong Cassidy - the cowboy, not the Lion.  This perhaps stemmed from a picture of me, dressed up in a cowboy outfit, complete with hat, six gun and a fringed shirt - see episode 1).  I felt rooked with such a common handle, but it surely could have been worse - luckily, no one saw the bathtub pictures. Our handles gave us freedom to create a new and separate identity for ourselves, and made us more sinister and exciting – or so we thought.  Sinister was nothing to be sneezed at in Lowry.

In Lowry, nicknames were common, and not just for kids.  Or maybe they just persisted into adulthood.  But it seemed to be only a guy thing.  No woman I knew had a nickname, other than the unimaginative standards – Maggie, Sally, Dort, Tina ...  I always thought a nickname would have been welcomed by all the Leonas, Mabels, Esthers and Hilmas we had in town. But not so.  There were some classics on the male side: Wimpy who never uttered a spoken word that I ever heard; Fluke & Spook who liked their beer; Slim, who was not; Bumpy, who earned that nickname honestly; Bubby, no clue on where that came from; Goose; an assortment of Buds, Punkys and Juniors.  

The gang’s sole purpose was entertainment.  We had our staples of course – baseball, basketball, football and hockey.  But the true reason we cherished gang membership was the group mischievous activities (more on this in a later episode).  The gang members were a cross-section of the community and I don’t think any of us thought about status, religion, or ethnic background.  We just wanted to have fun.

I suppose there was some parallel universe where the girls in town lived, but I only collided with it at church or in the schoolroom.  Their lives were as mysterious and foreign to me as Angkor Wat.

The Fifties

The Fifties

It is fashionable for boomers to claim they are a “child of the 60’s”, a trigger for whatever stereotypes you happen to hold on that tempestuous time.  And, although I qualify as a boomer, I identify more closely with the 50’s, the decade when my value system was formed.   Read David Halberstam’s “The Fifties” and you would be convinced that decade was filled with constant turmoil and anxiety:  Korean War, McCarthy hearings, Polio epidemic, Cold War, Suez Crisis, Hungarian Revolution, Little Rock, Sputnik, H-Bomb, Elvis.  But for me, the 50’s were idyllic, and I was blissfully unaware of a world outside of Pope County, except for what I read in the Weekly Reader and the Minneapolis Star Sunday Peach Section.

Nowadays, large Midwestern cities are home to multitudes of small town migrants.  Those of us who grew up in small town America in the fifties and eventually wound up in big cities, have an enduring longing for the now distant innocence of that time.  Our parents had come of age in the Great Depression, faced and conquered Hitler and the Japanese Empire, and through those experiences - perhaps in spite of them - brought a resolve that would build thriving small towns all across the nation.

Post-World War II Middle Americans had just experienced first-hand the power of a nation mobilizing and of being an essential part of that whole. The American “can-do” attitude was alive and well. Add the not insignificant advantage of an intact and roaring industrial base and workforce ready to convert to peacetime production, and you have a formula for boom times.  The country had come out of its isolationist past and emerged as the world power. There was a clear expectation that America would produce a better world.  And underlying it all, was an unspoken determination that their children would have it better than they.  And although accumulation of wealth was not a prime focus, there was an inherent belief in a correlation between prosperity and personal character.  God would reward the just and punish the wicked.

The World War II generation arrived home with the sense of joy to have survived, pride of accomplishment, but also a sense of time lost.  It was time to get on with life.  The focus was on family, church and community while never questioning the inherent goodness of their country. Our parents provided a breeding ground, literally and figuratively, for vibrant and thriving communities. They embodied the ethic of hard work, personal sacrifice and a willingness, if not a calling, to work together.  Pride and patriotism were real and the flag was not yet a co-opted symbol. Rather, their flag was sacred, a symbol of the sacrifices made by the generations of men and women like them and its raising brought unembarrassed tears to their eyes.

Throw my grandparent’s generation into the mix - survivors of the Great War and the Great Depression and you have the ingredients for a culture of amazing resiliency and a will to succeed.  It was an alignment of circumstances and actors never before seen in US history.

The boomer generation had the greatest opportunities in world history presented to us on a platter. Good homes, two-parent households, caring extended families, unprecedented education opportunities, peace and prosperity.  But I would submit that the boomer generation ranks on par with the US presidents of the 1840’s:  Tyler, Polk, Fillmore.  Great promise, small return.

Perhaps affluence and easy life deprived us of a needed character building struggle.  Perhaps Captain Kangaroo and Howdy Doody warped our developing minds. Maybe Dr. Spock is to blame. Perhaps assassinations and Vietnam that shook our faith and seeded cynicism into our souls.  Or perhaps, it was just the fate of following the “greatest generation”.  As an unknown sage mused, “The first generation - my grandparents - establishes the groundwork, the second - my parents - builds it to success, and the third - umm - pisses it away.”   Whatever the cause, my generation followed Peter, Paul & Mary from “I’ve Got a Hammer” and “Blowin in the Wind” to “El Salvador” and “The Great Mandella”.

This series of episodes to follow will be an unapologetic nostalgic trip back to 1957 through the eyes of a 10-year-old boy. It is a quest to rediscover that optimism and revisit that distant innocence.

Some names and places will be changed to protect the innocent and the guilty and content errors are mea culpa.  All opinions expressed herein are entirely my own.

Bonus slideshow:  “Lost in the Fifties”.  If you of the proper age, this will be entirely familiar.

Invitation

I know my foibles and they are legion.  But, having attained a certain age, I have an urge to record my story, as if it were captivating or extraordinary, which of course it is not.  The urge is limited,  focused only on the year 1957.  

I recently was given the book “Write the Story of Your Life” by my “great” aunt, which seems like a clarion call to act on my impulse.  I know that if common sense ruled, I should stop at this point and issue the shortest memoir in world history, but the urge to write, if only for the amusement of those near and dear, defies logic.  

Quite sensibly, most people avoid memoirs like a plague.  Maudlin, saccharine, self consumed, self-serving and most of all, boring.  You, the reader, should expect no less from me.  But if you chose to read, know that I will try not to fall into the historian’s trap and alter the record for my benefit, although that temptation is strong.  But fear not, I have proven that I can resist most anything - except temptation.

I am calling this “Distant Innocence” and I have decided to create it as a series of blog posts, this age’s lazy and ubiquitous publication process - that decision alone may secure its just fate - but also because the likelihood of finding a real publisher stresses probability theory.  

I intend to rely only on my own recollections of that distant 10 year old boy so there should be no expectation that this will be factual.  Perhaps this can become a dialog so you’all can correct my mis-remembering and add your own recollections, although there are a limited number of you who can recall 1957, so I my musings may go unchallenged.

As you certainly know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, so to try to avoid that descent, I am instituting a self-imposed deadline for bi-monthly* episodes.   Hold me to it.  Or not.

If this holds no interest to you or you have quit reading somewhere above, you need to do nothing. You will hear no more of this from me.  If, on the other hand, you are wondering what’s so special about 1957, opt-in.  You can opt-out at any time - I won’t be offended.  If all goes well, you can at least expect a few chuckles at my expense.   I ask for no more.

*  ”bi-monthly” is a carefully chosen word - does it mean twice a month or every other month?