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.