Holidays

I lean toward the curmudgeonly end of the disposition spectrum, so I find the commercialization of holidays vexing. Houses are decorated for Halloween like Christmas soon after Labor Day. Stores are open on Thanksgiving Day and the pre-Christmas Black Friday fervor, when businesses supposedly move out of the red, is to be avoided at all costs.

In '57, there were nearly as many holidays, but it seemed that each holiday's true meaning was respected. Memorial Day was to honor the fallen; the 4th of July was for celebrating Independence from the oppressive British and honoring the wisdom of the Founding Fathers; Labor Day for workers; Thanksgiving for family and giving thanks for your blessings; Christmas for celebrating the birth of Christ. 

[New Year's Eve was for toasting the year to come and New Year's Day was for football - some things haven't changed.]

Here's a compendium of my favorite holidays.

Memorial Day

A special favorite of mine - see my Memorial Day episode

Halloween

In a town of 250 it is possible to have complete coverage on Halloween. This trick-or-treater hit every house in town – less one. There was one house I never could muster up the gumption to visit. And across the tracks didn’t really count as part of town. But every place else was fair game. 

We didn’t spend much time worrying about costumes; a ghost from a sheet, a cowboy or indian, a soldier or a sailor was about the extent of our creativity. And of course, the large pillow case to haul the loot. In 1957 penny candy was nothing to sneeze at and occasionally you’d hit a Hershey Bar or a Sugar Daddy bonanza - not the miniatures, those did not yet exist.

My grandmother’s was a favored Halloween stop. She was renowned for her homemade donuts and she would dress up like a witch and hand out freshly made, still warm donuts skewered on a broomstick. It couldn't be done nowadays, the sheriff would be at your doorstep. But it was a highlight for the gang. Not so much for me since I raided her pantry on a regular basis. I tried to get John to convince his Grandmother Koudella to give out her kolachis, but no luck.

By 8 PM, when the pillowcase was getting hard to lug to the next stop. I’d spend some time swapping Bit-O-Honey for candy cigarettes and then head home, where the pillowcase was promptly confiscated by my mom. I never got into the "Trick" part of Halloween. Some of the older crowd might tip an outhouse or soap a window -  and invariably the morning would find a straw dummy hanging from the high railing of the water tower, but in general it was a pretty well behaved bunch of hoodlums in Lowry.

Gary seemed to have a gift for drama. One Halloween when it was raining, he managed to snitch a couple fireman’s coats and a lantern from the fire hall and he and a compadre stood at the 114 / 55 intersection and proceeded to stop eastbound “traffic” (maybe 3 cars) and falsely detoured them down 114 to Starbuck.

Thanksgiving

For my family, the long Thanksgiving weekend often meant a road trip down highway 71 to central Iowa, my mother’s home, with a rest stop in Estherville along the way. (I thought that town was named for my grandmother.) My mother had 4 siblings living in Iowa & 3 others living in the Twin Cities who often made the trip as well. 

It was amazing to see my normally reserved mother cackling like a hen with her sisters. My father always said - "6 sisters and not a dud among 'em". There were also 2 brothers.  

One of the Iowa sisters lived on a farm, raising .. wait for it .. corn! This was great fun for me. Although my Lowry grandfather still did some farm work on the home farm in Brandon, I rarely visited a working farm, except when I tagged along with my father on service calls, and this was usually after supper to fix a yardlight or a pump. So a trip to an Iowa farm was a kick. It was great fun prowling around the farm buildings and fields and crawling on the machinery. Here I witnessed the spectacle of slaughtering chickens - and they do indeed run around "like chickens with their heads cut off". (I wasn't quite as naive as an Iowa cousin's visiting college "city kid" roommate. The Iowa cousins had him up in the manure spreader stomping it down so they could get a full load.)

And weather permitting, we cousins always played touch football on the huge front yard of that farmhouse - sort of like Hyannis Port. And after the traditional turkey feast came the traditional NFL game - always Green Bay Packers vs. Detroit Lions - Tobin Rote vs. Bobby Layne. I was a Packer fan (don't spread that around) until they traded Tobin to Detroit and that Bart guy took over at QB. Then the Vikings arrived in Minnesota in '61 and that started 50+ years of agony. And after the left-over evening meal, the cousins tried to teach me how to play Euchre, but that was a hopeless cause.

Christmas

For me, Santa Claus and a fire truck are inextricably bound. In my world, Santa always arrived very publicly, not slinking down chimneys in the middle of the night. His arrival was also very predictable. He always appeared the Saturday before Christmas at 2:00 p.m. on Main Street Lowry, installed atop the hose-bed of the Lowry Fire Department’s pumper. It didn’t bother me that Santa’s helpers were people I recognized. I figured he just enlisted people as he went from place to place.  

The fruits of his visit were also very predictable. Every kid lining Main Street received a paper sack filled mostly with peanuts in the shell, an apple, one piece of ribbon candy, a few pieces of hard candy and one chocolate covered cream filled candy in for ballast. Santa didn’t have time to listen to requests, but we managed to slip him notes with a wish list gleaned from the Sears Roebuck catalog.  I tried - Dear Santa, Foto-Electric football - look on page 291. Strangely, Santa had a slight resemblance to Bob Chan.

waiting for dish washers

Christmas Eve included an afternoon church service and then hauling packages to Grandma's or Uncle Oliver's in Glenwood, with all the local Hoplins joining and occasionally distant cousins as well. There was the interminable meal with the delicious aromas and all the Scandinavian delicacies I would later come to appreciate. And once that ordeal was over, the punishing wait until the dishes were washed. Uffda. 

The tree was draped with tinsel, lit with boiling hot bubbler bulbs and buried under packages. But with all the people gathered, the wait for something with your name on it was torture. Generally the yield was 3 packages: one toy, one book, one article of clothing. In 1957, I got a Daisy air rifle - literally an air rifle, no BB's. But, wow. The next day, when it was well below zero, I took it outside and the plastic stock promptly broke off. No super glue or duct tape then - never could get it properly reattached. Other memorable years - an Erector Set and one bonanza year a Lionel Train set.

And then, Dec 26th and the reality of a frigid week of hardware inventory. Uffda. See the Hoplin & Nelson episode.

New Year's Eve, New Year's Day

Gloating Iowans

New Year's Eve was often at Uncle Bud's. The cousins usually played Rummy, Sorry, Caroms, Parcheesi, Chutes & Ladders, Cootie, Chinese Checkers or Monopoly (I liked Go To the Head of the Class, but it wasn't the popular choice) until midnight when we had a glass of eggnog mixed with 7-Up, blew on a kazoo for a minute and then packed up for home. I didn't pay much attention to what the adults were doing.

New Year's Day was for college football, and for me that meant the Rose Bowl. I was a big Big 10 fan and it was the Rose Bowl or nothing for the Big 10. There were no "Consolation Bowls" in those days. The Big 10 champion always played the Pac 8 champion, and in my beloved Minnesota Gophers were frequently a Big 10 contender. Believe it. In 1956, Minnesota was a top 10 team and lost only 1 game - shoutout by Iowa Hawkeyes (in Memorial Stadium no less). Iowa went on to win the 1957 Rose Bowl easily. Boy did we hear about it from the Iowa relatives. The Gophers did ultimately reach the Rose Bowl in '61 & '62, but not since and with the NCAA playoff in place, not likely again.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

In the spirit of the season, Distant Innocence is taking it off. Returning in 2015.

W.C.T.U.

I do not remember the Gospel Hall revival meetings, but during the 30’s and 40’s and I believe into the 50’s, Lowry was a hub for these gatherings. Each summer the Lowry Plymouth Brethren organized a week long Bible Conference and people from around the state and beyond made the trek to Lowry for the event.  

Lowry Gospel Hall

The Plymouth Brethren are a fundamentalist Christian Protestant sect characterized by extreme simplicity of belief and living. The "Plymouth" stems from origins in Plymouth, England. (Garrison Keillor grew up “Brethren”, which is perhaps why he chose radio over television.) The assemblies meet in a "Gospel Hall", emphasizing that the church is not a building, but rather the assembly of individuals, called out by God to be His people. The Plymouth Brethren are unusual in refusing a denominational name; they do not generally refer to themselves as "Plymouth Brethren," nor do they regard themselves as a denomination, citing I Corinthians 3:4, where Paul scolds believers for dividing themselves into groups. Thus there is no headquarters, no minister, no formal membership. Each local assembly is independent, linked with other assemblies by a common heritage and emphasis on the primacy of the weekly Breaking of Bread service.

For the summer bible meetings, teachers from both the U.S. and Canada came to Lowry and people from around Minnesota and beyond traveled for the spiritual uplift. Quite remarkable, particularly in the depression era. One itinerant missionary was Carl Armerding, who became a professor at Wheaton College in Illinois, and where his son Hudson was later the college president. From his obituary: "He was a striking man, very tall and erect. He loved to preach, especially the Psalms. You could pick up the different moods of the different writers of the Psalms, which were originally written as songs. He made the Psalms live. You could almost hear the authors singing."   

One Duluth attendee's childhood memory of these meetings: "We did not go on vacations during the summer except that once a year we would pile into the car and drive to Lowry to attend the Christian conference held in that small town every summer. Mother and Daddy loved this time of teaching and fellowship with other Christians."

The Pine River branch of of the Hoplin clan occasionally made the trip. My Pine River cousin remembers her family staying above McIver’s store. Visitors were housed all over Lowry. Anyone with a vacant room let it out for 50 cents a night. Both the schoolhouse and the post office were used to bunk people. The meetings were held in the Town Hall and meals were served at the Gospel Hall, with Olga Dingwall and Florence Dahl doing the cooking. My aunt remembers mountains of doughnuts being made by Grandma Esther for the event. On the final day of the meetings, the attendees would gather on the street between McIver’s Store and the Town Hall for a hymn sing. I’m told there were some great voices. 

(Some irreverent Lowry-ites referred to the meetings as the “mating meetings”, as a number of matches were made amongst the attendees.)  

Note:  I hope someone with more knowledge of these Bible meetings will share.

4 Hoplins here (Add as a comment if you can identify people)

I was raised Lutheran so I don't ever remember attending a Gospel Hall meeting, but my grandmother would take my Twin Cities Convenanter cousins to Gospel Hall Sunday School when they visited Lowry. On one occasion, being asked to look up a verse in Leviticus and fumbling around the New Testament, they were asked if they attended Sunday School at home. "Of course".  "Do you study the Bible?"  "Oh, no. We have Sunday School books." That did not go over well. And then, "Do you know any Bible verses?".  "Oh yes. Jesus wept". That went over even less well.

The Brethren doctrines profess utmost strictness: disapproval of all forms of entertainment, including dancing, cinema, theaters and gambling, with taverns and alcohol being especially singled out for ire. This contributed to the formation of a strong chapter of the W.C.T.U. (Woman’s Christian Temperance Union) in Lowry.  My grandmother attended the Gospel Hall and was a stalwart of the WCTU.  

Lowry sits near the northwestern boundary of Pope County and some thirty years after the repeal of Prohibition, it was still a “dry county”, which in practical terms means 3.2 beer was the only alcoholic beverage that could legally be sold. To get schnapps or even “strong” beer, you had to go to a “wet” county - drive northwest to the Douglas County line and slip into the Kensington city liquor store or northeast to Forada where there was a bar.

Every election year the heathen element at the county seat managed to garner enough signatures to put a referendum on the ballot to turn the county wet. They had dollar signs in their eyes over the prospect of municipal liquor store profits that were being siphoned off by Grant and Douglas counties. But they never really comprehended where political power resided. Pulpits bristled with rhetoric on demon rum and the WCTU blanketed the county with flyers claiming a vote for this referendum was sanctioning sin. 

Agitate - Educate - Legislate

The WCTU was organized in the USA in 1874 and quickly became a national organization, and despite the image as a gospel temperance group, it was sectarian and campaigned for "national prohibition, woman suffrage, scientific temperance instruction in the schools, better working conditions for labor, anti-polygamy laws, Americanization, and a variety of other reforms”. It is the oldest voluntary woman's organization in continuous existence in the world.

The WCTU standard is “moderation in all things healthful and total abstinence in all things harmful” - Xenophon's definition of Temperance, 2500 years ago.

On the county referendum issue, the women of the WCTU controlled the family vote, their obedient husbands and any other relative that expected to remain in good graces. So the Pope County referendum continually went down in defeat, forcing the covert trips to Douglas county.

Lowry did have one tavern, referred to as the “beer joint”. Big Time’s dad was the tavern keeper and when I was feeling especially brave, I’d join him to play the pin ball style bowling machine in the tavern. This was leading edge pinball technology and playing it in a den of iniquity was exciting. I always checked the street for parents or grandparents before slinking in, taking a deep breath against the smell of stale beer.

Since grandmother was a plenipotentiary of the local WCTU chapter, inevitably, I was enlisted in the grassroots door to door blitz to combat the evil, delivering leaflets to every house in Lowry, including across the tracks. It was not nearly as fun as covering the town on Halloween. I was not a reluctant recruit however, convinced that if I would take one sip of spirits, I’d be hooked and spend my life sitting in a parked car drinking rum out of paper bag. So I went door to door handing out leaflets and savaging imbibers.  

Grandma was a saint, but she really did a number on me on behalf of the WCTU. I did not fail to notice, however, that we had a jug of Mogen David under the sink at home "for medicinal purposes". And then there was the time I joyously announced to Grandma that we had a six-pack of beer in our fridge. I don’t think I won any points with my father that day. And I seem to recall that Grandma’s brother kept a bottle of brandy in his room so as to “cut the phlegm”.

So, I leave you with words to live by, "everything in moderation, including moderation".

The Lowry News

“Living in a small town...is like living in a large family of rather uncongenial relations. Sometimes it’s fun, and sometimes it’s perfectly awful, but it’s always good for you. People in large towns are like only-children.” 

― Joyce Dennys

"The nice part about living in a small town is that when you don't know what you're doing, someone else surely does."  Unknown


"There isn't much to be seen in a small town, but what you hear makes up for it"  Unknown

If you choose to live in a small town like Lowry, you need to come to terms with living in a fish bowl. Everybody knows everybody and everybody's business.

Tracking what others are up to is a small town pastime. When directed at kids, this is generally positive, at work to keep you on the straight and narrow. It is like having a town-full of aunts and uncles hovering over you, some kindly, some not. I think of it as "benevolent concern". 

Nevertheless, missteps always seemed to make the prayer circuit at warp speed. If an oath crossed your lips or you fired a rock at a street light, likely as not your folks would know within the hour. You knew you were in trouble when you walked in the door and the first words were, "I heard you were ...". Smothering, but it was also nice to know that when you fell in the well, there would be someone there to pull you out.

But benevolent concern is a whisker away from old-fashioned nosiness. By 1957, the party-line "rubberneck" source had been squelched by private lines from Lowry Telephone Co., so only Leona or Inez were privy. But Ladies Aid, Sewing Circles, the coffee hour in the church basement were all good places to pick up the latest "news" and the 2:30 daily mail call at the post office was a must. A stop by the hardware store, morning and afternoon coffee at the cafe or an evening at the tavern often produced a good yield. The bank - not so much.

But the canonical source source of information was the Pope County Tribune. The PCT came out on Thursday's and featured the ever popular "Lowry News". Every region of Pope County had a correspondent: Sedan, Grove Lake, Lowry, Farwell, Starbuck, Terrace, Long Beach, Gilchrest, Ben Wade, Nora, Lake Reno. 

(Lydia Bjorklund dealt the Lowry News. She had trouble with the Robieson & Gunness names.)

Lowry News from the Pope County Tribune  June 6, 1957

350 people attended the open house at the McIver Clinic from 7-9 PM Saturday. Served refreshments in the Legion room by the commercial club and Legion auxiliary.  Dr. Letson, Dr. Kolp and Dr. Good were present to be introduced to the guests.  Many beautiful flowers were sent complimentary to the new clinic by friends and organizations.

Mr. & Mrs. A.R. Anderson and C.R. Anderson spent the weekend with Mr. & Mrs. Ed Ithner at Cass Lake.

Mr. & Mrs. Lynn Lundin and family and Ruth Hoplin of Minneapolis spent the weekend with their parents, the Ole Hoplins.

Mr. & Mrs. H.F. Engebretson drove to Blue Earth Saturday and spent the weekend with Dr. and Mrs. Hagebak.  Martha Engebretson, who has taught at Blue Earth the past year, returned with them.

High school graduation from Sunday School department was held at St. Paul’s Sunday, June 2. Graduates were Ronald Bjokne, Ronald Chan, Merlin Heggestad, Paul Quitney and John Stavem.

Mr. & Mrs. Wencil Trousil visited with Mr. & Mrs. Frank Koudella Sunday afternoon and in the evening Mr. & Mrs. Frank Benesh and Mr. & Mrs. Iver Femrite visited them.

Paul Engebretson of Gustavus Adolphus college at St. Peter came home for a week and will return for summer school.

Mr. & Mrs. James Anderson and family of Minneapolis are spending a week with her parents, the Ole Hoplins.

Mrs. Lionell McIver, Lydia Bjorklund and Mrs. Emma Moberg were lunch guests with Mrs. Carl B. Johnson Sunday.

Mr. & Mrs. Signer Rykhus, Mary and Paul, Mrs. Ed Sell and Mrs. Sigurd Bjerke spent Sunday and Monday of last week at Westbrook, Minn, attending the funeral of Mrs. Anton Huset, Mr. Rykhus’ aunt.

Mr. & Mrs. John Erickson and John and Daniel Erickson of Minneapolis visited their parents, the Axel Ericksons, over the weekend.

Mr. & Mrs Max Bunker of Brainerd were house guests with Lena Mae Hardy from Wednesday to Sunday.

Mrs. Earl Morrison of Glenwood was a luncheon guest with Lena Mae Hardy on Friday.

Mr. & Mrs Chester W. Bennett, Paul and Jimmy, Mr. & Mrs. Glenn Bennett and Cynthia, Mr. & Mrs. George Harvey, Susan and Bruce, Mr & Mrs. Clifford Mortenson, Carol and Margaret, Mr. & Mrs. Chester H. Bennett and Sharon, Mr. & Mrs Stewart Benson, Larry and Louise were dinner guests of Mr. & Mrs. Johnny Braaten at Farwell.

Harold Heggestad is home from Boston, Mass where he attends Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Harry Bjorklund of St. Louis Park spent the weekend with his parents, the Alfred Bjorklunds.

Mr. & Mrs. Leo Smedstad and Mrs. Oscar Pladson and Paul of Brandon visited with Hilda Hagstrom Sunday afternoon.

Mr. & Mrs. Richard Loren, Mrs. Esther Dahlgren and Amy Loren visited one evening at the Edwin Larson home.

That's the news from Lake Malmedal - all the news that's fit to print. But then, what we'd really like is the news that's not fit to print.

The Rink

In the winter the “rink” was a mecca for kids of all ages. The skating rink is a sunken area smack in the middle of town about half the size of a football field, conveniently located right next to the clinic. It was constructed during the Great Depression as a WPA project together with the warming house with its native stone chimney. Thank you FDR.

The warming house was walled with wooden benches and a wood-coal stove in the middle. The warming house oozed the smell of wood smoke, sweat, wet and singed wool and was open every night of the week and all day Saturday - and Sundays after church and dinner. The stove was faithfully stoked by Ed Flynn and served to warm frostbitten appendages, since there was never a weather reason that kept us off the rink. 

Around December 1st, when the temperatures were right and the winds were calm, the fire department would flood the rink for the skating pleasure of the community – a scientific, several day process to assure smooth and durable ice, each evening laying down a layer of ice when the temperature was to drop into the teens. Too cold or warm produced bad ice. But, invariably, flooding would form some air pockets which collapsed into potholes, hazards resulting in head over tea-kettle crashes. The only solution for ice issues was the fire hose - Zamboni was an unknown term. Pretty remarkable how well that large ice surface was maintained.

Crack the whip

pom pom pull away or pump pump pull away?

Standing next to the warming house was a yard light casting a 30-foot arc of light, not quite reaching into the far corners of the rink - but the dark helped us avoid being tagged in full rink pump-pump-pull-away games. This tag game consisted of two teams, offense and defense. Initially the defense was a single person, but grew with each tagged person until offense was down to one. "Pump-pump-pullaway--come away or I'll pull you away". Or crack-the-whip. I wasn't strong enough to take the "crack" role and I tried to avoid being the end of the whip as that fate was a nose dive to the ice or a launch into a snowbank. I was a pretty good skater - on figure skates. Hockey skates were a rarity. But my ankles were weak so I tended to skate on the inside edges, so no Olympic hopeful I. But I was generally one of the last few skaters tagged, just before everyone ganged up on quick skating Bobby Dingwall.

This was Minnesota winter so snowfall was a regular happening. The warming house had a couple 4-foot wide 2-handle shovels for clearing snow from the ice. This work had a clear reward so it was something we did much more willingly than clear our own sidewalks at home. We vied for the job - if the snowfall wasn't too heavy. Skating behind this shovel and barreling the snow into the bank was pretty fun. In small town Lowry, you took your thrills where you could get them.

The rink was usually divided into halves – the north end was for the pickup hockey games with goals set up with a couple chunks of firewood and the south-end for the pleasure skaters. Evenings, the entire rink was often devoted to tag or crack the whip or skating circles around each other. Once in a great while, usually on a Sunday night - after some masterful coercion and organizing (usually by the Engebretson boys) - the entire rink was co-opted for a full rink hockey game late in the evening. "Hockey Night in Lowry" drew a crowd. The goalie was a brave soul – no padding, gloves or mask or special stick. So pucks off the shins – or higher - were tear-jerking. These games were for the “big kids”. I was just a spectator, but I loved watching it and listening to the carving sound of skates on ice. And a few curses.

Each fall the hardware store would lay in a stock of ice skates, hockey sticks and pucks. There was not much profit margin since Uncle Dave didn’t want to deny kids the opportunity to skate.  There were some pretty good deals for some families with a bunch of kids.

We loved to play hockey. Of course, we knew next to nothing about hockey rules. Offside was a football term; icing was on a cake. We were essentially playing basketball rules. But what a conglomeration of characters. Some sliding around in boots; some in figure skates; a few in hockey skates and a couple with speed skates; some with a stick without a blade in lieu of a real hockey stick. And the goalie screaming “No Raising!”  (We had to take turns at goalie as it was the rare kid who would willingly stop a puck off the ice). We could not have imagined the spectacle that the Minnesota State Hockey Tournament would become. In 1957, the NHL had but six teams, all east of Minnesota, and hockey as an organized high school sport was mainly played in the northern Minnesota Iron Range region plus a few St. Paul City schools - Eveleth, International Falls, Roseau & St. Paul Johnson dominant.

And ... the rink was a popular date night location. The price was right and a spooning couple could skate to the dark northwest corner of the rink. The beginning of an education for me - filed away for future reference.

But the rink was not just a winter recreation site. In spring, summer and fall, it served as baseball and football field. Soccer? Never heard of it.