Mischief & Adventure - Part 2

In addition to the magnificent elms that lined the streets of Lowry, the village was home to some of the best apple trees I have ever stolen from.  [There I go, compounding the crime by ending a sentence with a preposition]  

One of the most enjoyable times of the year was apple-ripening time. We would go out foraging for the best fruit in town. Foraging was our word for grand larceny. My top three targets were Lionel MacIver, Bob Bennett and Ole Hoplin.  Of course, we could have gotten all the apples we could possibly eat, just by knocking on the door and asking, but the thrill of the pilfer made the forbidden fruit so much sweeter.  The expectation that someone might come bursting out the door made this guerrilla warfare thrilling.  Even apples from my grandparents’ tree seemed to taste better, however the guilt was terrible - made me sympathetic with Eve. It’s probably a good thing I wasn’t born Catholic. I could have confessed to theft, but I could not have honestly promised not to do it again, regardless of the required penance.  We also occasionally went after Chester Bennett’s rhubarb and seasoned it with salt, but I thought it was crazy - rhubarb was meant for pie (with plenty of sugar). I just tagged along. Gave me a stomach ache.

We were also big on combat games.  The preferred weapon for this was a rubber gun.  A rubber gun was a homemade contraption that fired strips of rubber cut from car inner tubes.  You cut out a piece of ½ plywood in the shape of an extended barrel “Buntline Special” and used heavy rubber bands (bands, not binders) cut from inner tubes to attach a snap clothespin to the handle to serve as the trigger.  Then you put one end of a looped rubber strip into the “close-pin” and stretched the loop over the end of the rubber gun, being very careful not to shoot yourself in the eye. Your weapon was now armed and you were ready to search and destroy.  This was a single shot weapon and reloading was Civil War speed. The range was about 10 feet so it required close combat, making stealth tactics mandatory and swift feet if you missed an essential survival skill in this game.

Big Time had a rubber gun about 3 feet long, giving it a range and muzzle velocity three times the rest of us.  He was also wont to tie knots in the ammunition, so when he connected he knew it by the howls of pain. (As you know, the world sees constant technology advances, particularly in weaponry) However, Big Time’s gun was notoriously dangerous to load and he received as many self inflicted wounds as he delivered. Not much of a comfort to us though.  We liked to use the woods below the school for our combat zones but we ended up losing so much ammunition, we had to switch to open space.  We spent a lot of time begging Frankie for old inner tubes to rearm, and if we could get our hands on a red inner tube we were in hog heaven – for these were much stretchier and pliable than the black, giving us greater range and safety of loading.

We were also the inventors of splat-ball, but we never capitalized on it. We were playing combat by the elevator and Utta found an abandoned bird’s nest with several eggs and decided that they would make good grenades. But the eggs were decidedly unfresh and the game ended abruptly amidst the interwoven smells of hydrogen sulfide and vomit. H2S. My first practical chemistry lesson. My mother made me shed my clothes in the back yard.

When we got bored with the confines of our little town, we launched expeditions on bikes to some outer reaches of our universe, sometimes up to 5 miles from town. One destination was the dump grounds. The dump was located on the east shore of the lovely Horse Lake. Anton lived on the hill above that lake and walked into a left hook when he asked in a hardware conversation if anyone knew why the lake was named “horse”.  “We’ll, it has the shape of a horse’s head on the north and the other end lives on the hill to the east.”

Besides ordinary garbage, people hauled whatever they could fit into their pickup trucks out there – refrigerators, furniture, scrap metal, radiators, tires...  a treasure trove for scrounging kids, albeit a bit environmentally questionable. It tended to be a bit on the fragrant side in hot weather.  One happy pastime was courtesy of a lucky kid who had a BB gun. We took turns trying to nail the occasional rodent or two.  I think the weapon was confiscated when the little brother caught a ricochet in the face.

Chippewa Creek was another explorer destination. It crossed the east-west state highway 55 under a culvert about 3 miles west of town. It was lined with trees and was a great place for our war games or floating home-made warships down the "crick" or feeble attempts at swimming. Post-excursion often required a trip to McIver’s for some calamine lotion to combat the poison ivy.

Lake Malmedal to the south was a little more ambitious one speed fat tire bike ride, mainly because of the up-and-downs of 114, with the ups predominant on the return trip. The Bjerke hill outbound & Hedlin hill inbound were killers. But Malmedal was a true lake and you could swim or even try to catch a fish. (However, serious swimming with diving boards and such was in Minnewaska or Pelican - swimming lesson tales for another day.) In '38, during the dust bowl years, Malmedal was a hay field, completely dry but refilled by a single massive downpour. I, of course, did not witness this but I have it on good authority.

Lowry proper topology is flat and flatter. This was a real problem in winter when the sledding urge struck. We could have gone down Arnold Hedlin's hill on 114, but we were not so stupid to be found sledding on a state highway. So the prime destination was Bunker Hill.  We would trek east across Smisek’s fields, tramping through the drifts, pulling our sleds and toboggans to reach that mountain. (Mary Hill was along the way and actually steeper, but didn’t have the long run of Bunker).  One problem with Bunker was the barbed wire fence at the bottom. You had to roll off your sled before it sailed into that fence. It was a long hard slog to get there, and the weary return worse, so we didn’t do this too often.

Worst case, we would slide down the snow piles created from clearing the alley behind the hardware store, or jump off Bosek’s store roof into a snow bank. But the skating rink and crack-the-whip offered stomach turning thrills more easily.

Fireworks were illegal in Minnesota, but that just made the acquisition more exciting. A couple of entrepreneurial Lowry boys with an old car would take orders and make the trip across the South Dakota line to Sisseton and return with a treasure trove of explosives, sold at a reasonable markup. I would spend some of my hoarded baseball card stash to get a few packages of Black Cats, but I never went for the big explosives, like M80’s or bottle rockets or cherry bombs.  It was a problem to hide this contraband so my folks wouldn’t learn of my foolishness.  The motto “keep your powder dry” eliminated any outside location and we didn't have a garage, so I stashed them in the space between the freezer and the wall in the back entry.

 

Some big spenders set off entire packages at once like Chinese New Year, but I hoarded my precious few for a WWII battle in Big TIme’s sandbox.  We would set up our toy soldiers in fortified locations and then lob Black Cats to simulate grenade attacks, sending the plastic figures flying. Another favorite contest was to light a cracker beneath an empty pop can and see how high it would fly.  Bragging rights to anyone who could get it to land on Bosek's roof.  

The perpetrator of these transgressions shall remain anonymous, but on occasion a firecracker found it's way into a frog's mouth and on one occasion a cherry bomb exploded in a spring fed concrete water tank to ill effect on the tank. Retribution from the hand of the father was swift and firm.

And duds - what to do with them?  Waste not, want not.  We would break them in half to expose the powder and light it and watch it sizzle - and if you had leather heels, stomp on it.  

Surprisingly, no missing appendages.

Main Street - West Side & Beyond

The Lesser Businesses - continued

Again the rude sub-heading.  Think of it like “James the Lesser”.  He was a saint.

 Main Street looking south - 40's

Gas Stations

Dingwall Tire

Pure Oil

Would you believe there were 5 service stations in Lowry? They were called gas stations but “service station” was the proper term. There was no such thing as self-service. For the price of the gas, you got your tank filled (31¢/gal), your windshield washed and the oil checked.  Frankie Koubsky's Sinclair Station bordered Highway 55 at Main St.  We would sometimes help him pump the gas, but I could never figure out where the gas cap was on some of those 50’s cars (behind the license plate). I think Deloss Thue and then Gus Klingbeil had the station on the east end of town at the junction of #11 & 55. Jim Dingwall had the station on the west-end at 55 & 114 but at some point he built Dingwall Tire & Oil farther west on 55 and the station passed to Stan Brosh, Stan's Standard - not sure of the timeline.  And Bob Bennett’s Pure Oil station was right in town, just past Molander’s to the east at the intersection of Drury & #11 on the former site of the Lowry Hotel. 

About 1921 - Lowry Hotel in the background

Lumber Yard

The Lumber Yard was on the north side of 55 at the end of Main Street.  My great-uncle Gust was the owner but it was managed by Cal with the able assistance of Bill Thompson.  At some point, it was sold to the Smith family. It had an amazing amount of lumber for a small town yard.  On either side of the long wooden shed were individual bins holding lumber of various sizes - 2x4, 2x6, 8’ plywood sheets, sheetrock, etc - and at that time a 2x4 was actually 2”x4”.  Most every kind of building material was available, from windows and doors to shingles to bags of concrete.

Elevator

The elevator was across the tracks to the north of the Lumber Yard.  At one point, Lowry had 3 elevator buildings, but I remember only the one. I really didn’t know what went on there, except farmers would drive to town with tractors pulling overloaded wagons, usually with corn, drive up the slope onto the big scale and dump their load into a pit. How that grain got up into the elevator proper was a mystery. Occasionally, when there was a bumper crop or issues with the railroad, the elevator filled to capacity and corn was piled on the ground waiting for railroad cars to take shipment.

Depot

The depot sat north of 55 to the west of the Lumber Yard, next to the railroad tracks as you might expect. Jim Robieson was the depot agent and had been for 40 odd years. For a good many years, the Robieson's lived in the depot with a passel of kids, but in '57 Jim and Ellen lived next door to my grandparents. 

The Lumber Yard still received much of its freight by train, but sadly, by the mid-50’s, the depot was in decline with much of the train freight traffic & mail delivery replaced by trucks, a side-effect of Eisenhower’s push to create interstate highways to facilitate the movement of military vehicles, making over-the-road trucking a viable alternative to trains. Some wag has said if railroads had defined themselves as "transportation companies", you might be booking that flight to Las Vegas on Northern Pacific Air. “Freeways” were also a boon to the tourist trade, making it possible to reach Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon by car on your 2 week vacation. There were still trains regularly passing through Lowry but mostly carrying grain.  

Creamery

The creamery was set back from Main Street on the north end against the alley splitting the Main Street blocks from Aurora. One of my “chores” was to walk to the creamery with an empty pint milk bottle and bring it back filled with whipping cream.  I can still smell the place. I didn’t think it was at all pleasant - a combination of the heat of pasteurization and the hot water wash of the concrete floors. Bud Bodeker was the creamery man I remember.

Blacksmith

Art Schlueter's blacksmith shop was on the north end of Main and it was a pretty interesting place, with a hot forge roaring and the sound of a hammer on anvil. Straightening bent plow shares, creating new parts from raw iron. Stuff straight out the the 1800’s.  But Art didn’t really like kids hanging around, and with hot metal and sparks flying, I can understand why. Wencil Kalina also had this place, but the ownership sequencing fails me.

Tavern

Dave Chan’s Cafe was a place I wasn’t supposed to know anything about. My people referred to it as the beer joint - or the tavern. However, I entered this den of iniquity (my grandmother's term) fairly frequently with Big Time to play hearts or the bowling game. The place smelled of stale 3-2 beer (Pope County was a "dry" county - a WCTU episode for another day) And guess - yup, there was an apartment above the place with stairway along the south wall. Big Time's grandmother lived there and she had an old Edison cylinder record player that you had to crank to play Rudy Vallee tunes or opera. Pretty neat, but I preferred our Hi-Fi with the modern 78 and 33 1/3 vinyl platters.

Restaurant

For my take on the Dahl House, see Episode #12

Bosek’s Store

[The photo at right shows a glimpse of Bosek's Store abutting the Dahl House to the south & the stairway to the apartment above the tavern to the north]

Henry Bosek had the small grocery next to the Dahl House. I always thought he was a quirky guy and I didn't go in there much. The building had originally been the Farmer's & Mechanic Bank which failed during the depression. Henry lived in the store and slept in the old vault.

Joe’s Meat Market

Meat Market reincarnated as a Post Office

Next to Bosek's store to the south was Joe Shermak's meat market, but everyone called it the Butcher Shop. I guess I understood in the abstract that in the back live pigs became ham and bacon and cows became hamburger and pot roast, but I never really thought about that when my mother sent me to pick up a few pork chops for Sunday dinner. I thought the best thing about the butcher shop was the popcorn machine which Joe rolled out every Saturday night.

Hardware Store

Martin Heggestad by Dave Nelson's mistake (black, but not a Buick)

Episode #8 covers Hoplin & Nelson Hardware. I've enough material for a lot more on that topic. I'll percolate on it and decide whether to inflict you.

McIver’s Store

If someone were to write the history of Lowry, (It's actually been well done. Find yourself a copy of the 1986 Lowry Centennial book) the McIver family would figure prominently. From William who built the store at the turn of the century to legendary Doc Bert McIver, and his descendants, they were pillars of the community. I have written about Howard & Mary and McIver's Store in my "Fashion" episode #13 , but here again, there's more McIver's store material waiting to be inked. Be sure to read the excellent McIver family history on the Lowrymn.com site: http://www.lowrymn.com/mciver_family.htm

The Clinic

The clinic was actually on the east side at the north end of the skating rink, technically on Florence Ave. My mother was a RN and after the war, she worked at that clinic with Dr. Maynard Nelson. But I remember it as a dentist office - a place I dreaded because of my cavity ridden teeth from my bubble gum habit. (This was well before the fluoride controversy.) The dentist was Dr. Lawrence Wright, a negro - yes, remember this was 1957. Doc Wright was the manager of the Lowry baseball club, so he was a-ok with me, outside the dental chair that is. I'm sure he experienced some racial discrimination, but I was never aware of it.  

The clinic did double duty as Doctor Lee made the trek from Glenwood in his T-Bird a couple days a week to apply his gentle healing touch.



What did I miss?

Main Street - East Side

The Lesser Businesses - Part 1

I know, the sub-title is rude.  But when you’re 10 and you have the run of a hardware store, it’s hard to put any business in the same league. Sure, people need groceries and underwear and check blanks but, c'mon…

By the way …

I would be happy to accept guest posts on any of the Lowry businesses from someone with better knowledge of them.  Just send your “episode” to me at ussbb62@gmail.com and I will post it under your byline. Or use the comment form at the bottom to share your recollections or provide additions and corrections.

Main Street east side - 1957

Main Street ran from the Town Hall on the south to the Elevator on the north, although when it crossed 55, it seemed a little less "main".  The southern extremis was east/west County #11, a.k.a. Cherry St., which crossed Main between the Town Hall, McIver's & the Bank, a corner location perhaps matched by Broadway & 42nd St. South of the Town Hall, the street was called Florence Ave, which terminated at Arnold Hedlin's corn field.  

[In ‘57, we lived on Drury Ave - of "muffin man" fame. Highway 114 through town was officially Aurora Ave.  Drury, Florence & Aurora - strange name choices. Where did they come from?

The East Side

I always wondered why each and every east side business was brick while almost every building on the west side, including the hardware, was wooden. Sort of upper east side lording over the lower west side. But as with most mysteries, there is a simple explanation. The east side was completely rebuilt after the great fire of 1911 destroyed it - and prudently, in brick.

From the Duluth News-Tribune
LOWRY BUSINESS HOUSES BURN. 
Duluth News-Tribune, Tuesday, November 7, 1911

LOWRY, Minn., Nov. 6.-Four business houses and one residence were destroyed by fire late last night. The loss is estimated at about $35,000. The fire originated in the Lowry Mercantile company's store and spread to the buildings occupied by the John Hagstrom Implement company, Lowry Drug company and Smith & Celander Harness company. A residence in the rear of the drug store also was destroyed. The flames raged for several hours before they were brought under control.

From The Northwestern Druggist, December 1911:

One of the quickest business developments ever made, was done by druggist C.C. Middents, of Lowry. A fire destroyed his entire business and the next day he was selling drugs again. New fixtures and stock have been placed in his store building.

IHC Implement

Slightly later

About to be torched

Molander’s International Harvester implement dealership was a block east of Main Street on Cherry. Like numerous other Lowry businesses it had 2nd floor apartments to augment the business income. Utta lived there. I think Bud did a lot of parts and repair business with an occasional machinery sale, usually something used. 

The marquis item was the Farmall tractor.  Farm equipment in our end of Pope County was predominantly red, with a bit of orange thrown in.  Usually the shop floor was strewn with parts from a disassembled tractor or combine or whatever. I understood how all those parts got on the floor, but I was amazed, and still am, that someone could actually figure out what was wrong and put the puzzle back together - and actually have it run. I didn’t get my father’s “handy” gene.

Allis Chalmers Implement

WC

What I remember across from the bank on the southeast corner was Wencil Kalina's Allis Chalmer's dealership. Orange stuff for the WC and WD aficionados. (Warren Nelson had an auto repair shop at this location prior to that, but I'm not sure when the switch happened.) Wencil also had the blacksmith shop at one point, so my timelines may be fouled up. But to think that a town of 250 had 2 implement dealers is pretty amazing. Nowadays, it's like high schools - one per county - maybe.

Bank

Bank & Barber Shop

Lowry State Bank was on the corner of Main Street & County #11, kitty-corner from the fire hall. It was a bit cramped with 2 teller stations, a small office and the big vault in the back. LSB survived some Great Depression "bank holidays", in fact assuming the assets and debts of the Farmer's & Merchant Bank down the street when that bank went under. (Two banks in Lowry!) LSB's conservatism was a legacy of the terrible 30's. Case in point, my father’s application for a $8000 home loan in 1953 was rejected by Iver Engebretson as a bad risk. 

The end of the 50's was a traumatic time for LSB and the town, a period that included a murder - suicide and the FBI arrest of an embezzler - tales for another day. Stability returned in '59 when the Morks moved to town.

I had my very own LSB savings account complete with a little brown leather-covered passbook showing deposits and withdrawals - and the pennies of accrued interest.  The money I received for my birthday went into this account - after the Sunday School tithe of course.  I always went to Maggie McIver's teller window.  

When I was to get my new 24” Schwinn from the hardware store, my parents, to teach me the value of money, had me go to the bank by myself and withdraw the $39 from my savings account - out of the $50 or so balance - and take the hard cash over to the hardware and pay Martin. (He might have given me a break on the price.) Not sure I learned the intended lesson. Seemed like a fabulous use of the money to me. And I'm pretty sure the bank called my home to verify before they handed over that wad to a kid.

Barber Shop

To the north of the bank was Lee’s Barber shop and Lucille’s Beauty Parlor.  Although I didn’t get a haircut from Lee until later in my life, I liked going to the barber shop. There was always some interesting conversation going on and they didn’t really tone it down when a kid was present. Lots of joking in that small space. There was a big mirror on the wall, a brass spittoon next to the door for the copenhagen crowd and the single, old barber chair in the middle. 

Lee kept his whisk brush in his back pocket and when he was solidly engaged in conversation with the guy in the chair, I honed my pickpocket skills, so when he reached for the brush - nada.  Gave me and the waiting customers a few giggles and then Lee whisked me out the door. 

The beauty parlor was in the back, walled off from the barber shop proper. I peeked around the corner to Lucille’s space and there were two Twilight Zone contraptions encasing the heads of a couple women.  And, whew, what an aroma!  Better living through chemistry. If that was what it took to be beautiful, I was glad I was born male.

Hatchery

Next to the Barber Shop was Sig Rykhus' hatchery. The hatchery shipped baby “H&N Nick Chicks” all over Minnesota and the Dakotas. It was a huge operation. The hatchery took up half the block, expanding to engulf all the former business buildings between the barber and the telephone company. 

Once in a great while, I went in there with Pete to witness hatches. The chicks were cute - the poultry type, that is - but, the place stunk. Once again confirming a farming life was not for me. Too many smells.

Telephone Office

Moving north, next to the hatchery was Iver Femrite's telephone central.  In ‘57, telephone connections were made by real humans - operators. Leona & Inez split the shifts. You’d pick up the phone and hear “Number, please?”.  I was usually calling the hardware: “2, please”;  (Joe Shermak beat the hardware out for #1, maybe inherited from Jack Johnson) or home from the hardware - “74, please”; or my grandmother: “35, please”; or Marian: “22, please”.  (If you are a Lowryite, I'll bet you remember your number.) If we were calling for my dad, Leona would sometimes report, “I just saw him walk down to the restaurant, do you want me to ring there?”  The operators had a good view up and down Main Street out their window. And - this is becoming repetitious - there was an apartment in the building. Quitneys lived there.

Grocery

Next the Telephone Central, was Ray Vrooman’s Grocery.  Three short aisles of the basic food groups: fruit, breakfast cereal, peanut butter and jelly, a cooler on the north wall for meat, milk and dairy and a freezer for the ice cream - and candy and baseball cards on the checkout counter. One of 3 grocery stores in that little village.

Post Office

The Post Office, to the north, shared a wall with Vrooman’s and the entry ways were side-by-side. There was no door to door mail delivery in town, so mid-afternoon it was a lively place with folks converging to pick up their mail.  A chance to visit and perhaps a continued conversation over coffee at the Dahl House.  People were letter writers back then, so the contents of your mailbox actually could be interesting. My mother was constantly writing to her Iowa sisters.

I once ordered a Cleveland Indians baseball cap from an ad in the back of Sport Magazine and every day I went to the Post Office looking for that package. Took about 6 weeks, seemed like 6 years. 

I am the proud owner of the column of solid brass Lowry mailboxes pictured at right - which if you look closely includes our Box 89 with key. My father salvaged a couple from the burning pile, when they were upgrading to boxes with combination locks. I'm afraid the rest were consumed.

Beyond the post office, there was an empty lot and a gravel street heading east. This lot once held a thriving flour mill - The Lowry Roller Mills.  Lowry Leader Flour was renowned, but a flour dust explosion and fire in the late 30’s ended that. The mill was not rebuilt.

Mill ashes - 1937

To be continued ...