304 Drury Avenue

This week I have a guest blogger and a change from the 1957 theme.  The following description of the Ole Hoplin residence on Drury Ave is based upon my father's (Glenn Hoplin) reminiscences for a "Hoplin Family History" I put together in 2007.  True to form, you will find an enormous amount of technical detail in the descriptions, unlike any family history document you have ever read, I suspect. The author was notorious for his curiosity, particularly about mechanical apparati.  This was dictated from memory.  I share it here with you. 

[Editor note: in 1927, the Hoplins were living in the "Axel Erickson" house, 336 Drury Ave.] 

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At this point, it became apparent that the family had outgrown their home – and apparently didn’t know how to stop the growth – so decided to build a large Swedish style home.  It was the “Roaring Twenties” and conditions seemed favorable to invest in the home and retire a mortgage in ten years.  Financing was through a promissory note for $4500 in the favor of Peter and Martin Sogaaden, who lived on a farm north of Lowry.

[Editor note: the Sogaaden's received few payments during the 30's and the note was not completely paid off until after the war]


336 Drury Ave was rented to the Axel Erickson family throughout the depression years.

Donald, Glenn, Gertrude & Caroline Middents, Elise, Oliver 

The new home at 304 Drury Avenue was designed to serve both as a residence and funeral home.

[Editor note:  The basement held the preparation rooms and frequently funeral services were held in the living room, followed by a procession to the church and the burial. During the cold winters and frozen ground, it was not uncommon for Esther to have several coffins in her basement.]

Construction began in the fall of 1927 with several siblings symbolically putting shovels to the earth for the basement.  Elmer and Bernard Erickson from Starbuck were the carpenters.  They were excellent craftsmen in a day where all construction was with hand-tools. 

Work progressed through the winter of 1928.  Dad did the electrical, plumbing and heating.  I remember helping dad pull wire through the holes in the joist in which porcelain tubes had been inserted.  There was a square hole opening in the floor framed for the chimney.  I was backing up and fell through the hole to the basement.  Luckily, the hole was also used to sweep the building sawdust and board ends to the basement, so the landing was fairly soft.  There have been some question how this event has adversely affected the faller’s future behavior.

When the home was built, another building with the same design was built below the house next to the alley.  It housed the 1923 Overland, hay and straw for the cow.  The cow was housed in a lean-to to the east of this building.  It had one stall with a stanchion, manure gutter and a concrete floor.  The “barn” was at some point sold and moved to a location on the NP hill in Glenwood west of Highway 29.  During the summer after the sweet corn had been harvested, we would go to the garden and cut the corn stalks for feed for the cow.  During this time, it seemed mother (Esther) did much of the milking.  When the cow needed “replacement”, dad traded with Chester Bennett – an early battery radio for a cow.

In rural Minnesota of 1928, radio was in its infancy and long outdoor antennas were necessary to get reception.  In the new house, a wire for antenna connection was installed to every room in the house for future radio use.  None was ever used.

The house was equipped with indoor plumbing. A half-bath was located on the first floor with room for a sewing machine.  In the upstairs, there was a full bath with a 4 ½’ cast iron tub with shower under the window.  Toilets on both floors were case silent flush one piece closets – state of the art in the day. There were four bedrooms on the upper floor and a large linen closet over the stairway in the hall.  Each bedroom had a closet in the corner with a sloping ceiling.  The rooms had full 8’ ceilings and maple floors.  The south bedroom was Uncle Dave’s.  It was rather restricted.  The north bedroom was Grandpa Carl’s, also fairly restricted.  The southwest bedroom was occupied by mother and dad and the smaller children.  The northwest bedroom housed the boys of the family.

[Editor note:  The new house held Ole & Esther, 7 children, grandfather Carl, and brother Dave Nelson. Grandfather Nils died in '27 before the house was completed]

The house had a large kitchen, originally with a coal and wood cooking stove.  A range boiler in the corner connected water to the range which produced warm water to the fixtures, provided there was a fire in the range.  A wood box was built along the east basement stairwell.  It had a bin on rollers that could be rolled out to put wood in the stove.  An opening on the opposite side of the stairway wall had a door that allowed passing wood from the wood box to the kitchen from the stairway.  Later, through the Christmas gift from of Uncle Dave, mother received a five-burner kerosene fired Perfection kitchen range.  The range had one giant burner and two normal size cook top burners.  The other two burners were under the waist high oven to the right.  Again, state of the art in its day. [Editor note:  With the loss of the wood stove, Esther wondered how in the world she could regulate the heat.]  This new equipment caused a new problem – no hot water – as the range and the range boiler were removed.  The range boiler was moved to the basement and a circulating coil was installed in the steam heating boiler.  Additionally,  a laundry stove with a water front that could be fired up to heat water in the summer.  A copper water boiler sat on the range to boil clothes.  The new range of course required a fuel supply.  A fifty gallon barrel was buried east of the backdoor steps with a 2” fill pipe to the surface.  (Bob Bennett Sr would keep the barrel full by transferring fuel in 5 gallon buckets.  He had a counter on the back of his truck compartment that he advanced with each bucket fill, much like a baseball umpire’s balls and strikes indicator, except it counted by fives.)  A pipe was installed into the basement below the basement steps with a faucet to fill the glass fuel tank for the stove.  These stoves had cylindrical wicks that had to be trimmed and replaced when they had been burned.  

The laundry was located in the southwest corner of the basement with a floor drain quite deep in the sloping floor.  A “double tub Dexter” wash machine – also a gift from Uncle Dave – had two tubs with agitators in each and a wringer in between.  Two additional tubs for bluing and rinsing were along side the double tubs.

An electric water heater was installed when NSP offered an off peak rate for water heating – 6 cents per kw.  This eliminated the laundry stove circulating coil in the steam boiler and the range boiler storage tank.

The downstairs rooms had 9’ ceilings.  All the downstairs floors were oak, including the kitchen.  The walls were wood lath and sand float plaster finish, except the kitchen and the baths, which had smooth plaster. The kitchen had a built-in ironing board on the west wall, which folded down after opening the door.  An electric outlet was provided high up so as not to interfere with the ironing process.  Mrs. Ortendahl would come and iron.  There was a period when the electric bill got to be $3/mo so in an effort to lower it, a gasoline fired iron was acquired.  This was an iron with a small tank for fuel and a valve for pumping air into the tank and pressurizing the fuel.  The generator had to be heated by opening the valve and allowing raw gasoline to enter a cup below the generator.  The gasoline was ignited and allowed to burn until most of it was consumed, at which time the valve was opened and gasoline would enter the hot generator and become vapor and burn in the burner with a blue flame.  The size of the flame was controlled by the needle valve below the tank.  After a few flare-ups, it was decided the savings too small to justify the hazard.

Esther always dressed the kids in white pants, dresses & shirts for Sunday.  All had to be ironed.  Mrs. Ortendahl was paid $1 for her effort, regardless of the number of hours.  She always apologized for taking the money.  The Ortendahl family, with 5 children, lived in the house now known as the “Hollenbecks”.  The family survived the depression working WPA projects and Mrs. Ortendahl was the prime bread-winner for the family.  For several years, mother and Mrs. Ortendahl would spend several days baking lefse for Christmas.  In this small kitchen, they peeled the potatoes, mixed and rolled with flour and baked them over a wood fired range.  The temperatures in the kitchen became rather warm, but the lefse was “super good”.  Much of it was given away during the Christmas season.

The new house had an entry to the north which had a space for a small ice box on the east wall.  An ice water drain was provided out that wall.  Ice was delivered several times a week by Minnewaska Ice Co. from Glenwood.  An ice purchase book was provided for a fee, and the ice man would punch out the numbers for the ice delivered until it was all punched out – time to purchase another book.  The ice man smoked cigars so it was evident when he was delivering ice.  Ice deliveries were discontinued in late fall through the winter and the north entry, which had no heat, became the cold storage space.  Usually in late fall, dad would buy a hog and a ¼ beef.  It was butchered and stored in a box on the back steps.  It was kept frozen by air temperature.  The meat was cut in chunks and stored unwrapped.  Sometimes a pick ax was needed to separate the chunks. [Editor note:  I remember the north entrance as the room Esther stored her baked goods - conveniently for pilfering grandchildren]

The house was equipped with a central heating system, a one pipe steam system with cast iron radiators in each room.  The boiler was in the basement below the steps.  It was hand-fired with coal from a bin in the basement.  Coal was delivered and shoveled through a coal chute on the east side of the house.  Usually the dray man would water down the coal to keep the dust from infiltrating the basement, however at times coal dust would cover the basement floor – a real mess.  

The kitchen had wall cabinets along the north wall with a high back kitchen sink in the middle with a drain board to the right.  A cast iron radiator under the sink provided heat for the kitchen.  There was running water and a drain – without a slop bucket!  Water pressure was provided by two Myers shallow well pumps located on an elevated concrete platform in the northwest corner of the basement.  In the basement, there were two huge concrete cisterns that went all the way from the west to east along the north basement wall.  The cisterns were as wide as the house 28’ long, by 10’ wide by 8’ deep.  [Editor note:  This is 2240 cubic ft of water – or more than 16000 gallons which would weigh more than 60 tons.  I wonder if these cisterns were ever completely full?].  The inside wall of the cistern was about 10 in from the basement wall.  The south wall of the cistern was poured concrete as was the top, which was about 3’ below the floor joists.  A 30” square opening was provided for access for cleaning and also to shovel snow into the cistern.  The cisterns were dug about 3’ below the basement floor with concrete partitions separating the two.  Rain water was diverted into these cisterns.   

One of the pumps took suction from a shallow well made with a post-hole auger and lined with 6” cement tile.  The well was approximately 24’ deep.  This was to provide water for drinking, toilets etc.  The well proved to be inadequate and was discontinued.  The cisterns also proved not to supply enough water, especially in winter. A small stock tank was purchased and a wood cover and a conductor pipe for discharging the water from the tank to the cistern.  The stock tank was loaded on the store pickup and water hauled from the creamery nearly every Saturday to supply the water necessary.    

The chassis was purchased from Happy Hagstrom, who operated a garage directly across the street from the hardware store.  The body was from another source and was called the “St. Paul cab”.  The cab and the sides of the pickup were one piece, so when it was loaded the doors wouldn’t stay closed.  It had disc wheels – a selling point for its day – and windshield wipers that operated from a track under the visor – and were electrically operated an improvement over the hand-operated wipers of the past.  It had a six cylinder engine that wouldn’t start when the temperatures were in the zero-range.  It had a starter as well as a crank, and we used both mechanisms to try to get to start in cold weather.  In extreme temperatures, we resorted to blow torches on the manifolds and oil pan to get it going.   By 1938, there was municipal water, but in order to keep the plumbing operational in a house with 11 people, water had to be hauled to fill the cisterns. 


Every Saturday, Glenn hauled water from the creamery.  The stock tank had a 2” discharge pope with a gate valve.  The stock tank sat on railroad ties to give clearance.  The water was discharged into the cisterns through a 3” pipe on the west side of the house (as the picture shows).  There was a second pipe on the east side of the house.  The water was very hard.  Chemicals were tried to soften the water, but failed and a water softener was installed.  In the spring water would be hauled from ditches where the culverts had frozen and water had backed up.  For this process, water had to be transferred to the tank by buckets.  Drinking water was carried from the Middent’s residence (kitty-corner across the street). Claude had a deep well with a hand pump off the basement.  

[Editor note:  Photo is Glenn Hoplin driving the Hoplin & Nelson 1930 Chevrolet pickup - probably around 1934 or 1935.  Notice - no houses between the Hoplin residence and the Hagstrom home.] 

This is the second pickup truck I remember.  The first was a Model T with an open cab.   On one occasion, Uncle Dave Nelson was driving with Glenn & Bud as passengers.  The streets had just been graveled and Dave hit a loose patch and Buddy bounced out.  About a block further, I said “We lost Buddy”.  Dave hadn’t noticed, but turned around quickly and found Buddy sitting on a pile of gravel crying.  Dave wondered why I waited a block before saying anything.  Bud wasn’t hurt, just upset because he lost his ride.

... to be continued