3020 MERIDETH

I was sitting in my 1948 Blue Anglia. It was the same kind of car that Sir Paul McCartney used in” Give my Regards to Boardwalk. I was junior in high school. I left the car running so that I could gently move away from the curb in case the police came by. I looked at the porch where I got stung by a bee as a child. It was cold out and I could barely see with tears smearing my sight. My grandmother’s house was dark with a front porch, two stories with a big tree out front. I turned off the radio. It was KOIL or KOWH in Omaha. As I sat alone, I thought that time was a puzzle. What I wanted to happen was for time to somehow go backward.

I hope that heaven had a place for Grandma Annie and myself and everybody else. Maybe we would get along better over there.  I wanted to go back about two decades to when Grandma was alive. Her last day, she had been to the medical doctor for an annual checkup. She took the trolley downtown and into his 2nd floor MEDICAL  ARTS building. He indicated that she was in great shape for her age (somewhere in her late 70’s) and he be happy to see her next year at the same time.

She got back on the trolley, took her coat off and hung in the vestibule. She went over to the landing and decided to get something to eat from the converted ice box. There she turned around and walked up the stairs. About the 5th step, she slumped on the stair step and died. Friends and neighbors attended a service held at the mortuary. My parents minister gave the eulogy. It took me a few years to figure out that the eulogy given was one said all over the country. “Mom” is dead. Mothers meant so much to all  of us. I saw my dad cry for the first time. My Uncle Bill’s head was down. Annie appears to have passed  from this world. 

When Grandma Dode came to the front door  after I had been to a movie and let me in,  I had a funny feeling, Grandma Dode was a wonderful lady who took care of me when my parents traveled. She came over to me and put her arms around me. Grandma is dead. I was 5 years old and a part of my world collapsed. There was a picture of Jesus hanging on the wall. I was crying and shaking my fist at Jesus. Grandma Dode was trying was trying to explain to me, that Jesus was just taking her home.  That he did not  take away my grandmother.  I didn’t get the logic. Jesus takes Grandma home and I won’t see her.

So I am out in front of my grandmother’s house. I just got off a date and the young lady  lived near my grandmother’s house. So now I have 16 or 17 years and I so want to go back. I think that she was perfectly happy with the life that she has just ended. My grandfather George owned a business downtown. It was a print shop. He was George who many on the trolley thought was the greatest. He always had joke. I know so little about him except that after he died Granma took the trolley out to Forest Lawn. There was many Sunday spent that way. Annie opened up her house. Her master bedroom was cleaned out and rented by the week. Two brothers live in the front overlooking  Meredith, and the painter man lived in the back room.

Annie washed their clothes, cooked breakfast and dinner for them  and took in mending. George had left some money, but the rest of the money came from the partners who bought the building. There was

Bill Wakefield Sr. in the basement, Gustaf Wallin in the first floor along with his son Bill. Grandpa George died of a nervous condition caused by  hot lead print.  When  he could no longer go to work, Annie and my Uncle Bill laid him on the dining room table. There he slowly passed away. The nervous breakdown, it was later discovered came from the hot melting leading fumes that cooled into new letters. It was called hot type and after it started to cool, a new letter would be formed. My grandfather inhaled that junk day after day. It killed him.

So Annie went to work. She started a boarding  house, watched over 3 adult men, sewed, and raised 2 kids, my father and his brother.  Dad’s brother was a juvenile delinquent. He was driving 75 miles an hour on Fontanelle Blvd. when the police caught him. Along the way, he aged out. He raised 2 kids. The second was very retarded and he spent the rest of his life taking care of her and fixing furnaces.

At any rate, Annie worked so hard and all of her men were her flock. However, she still needed help with the Painter man. He came home drunk all the time so that Grandma had him thrown out. That was not too hard because he stayed at Grandma’s to get away from his wife who lived in another part of the city. There are flashes of those days. There were grapevines in the back, a garage, and a clothes line. Grandma quickly filled the room upstairs with her things and that was probably the last summer before she died. Something died in me.

GOING TO WEIGELWOOD

My mother packed my things into a 1954 Oldsmobile. It was blue and white along with family friend JoAnn Donovan. JoAnn  had been visiting friends and we had a 500 mile trip to Park Rapids, Minnesota. There were 3 state legislators (Nebraska has a unicameral or no upper house) for its legislators. The three men sat in the front and JoAnn,on one right back seat,  a ton of fishing junk in the middle and I was behind the driver. It was beginning to mist so we had a job to do. Now there is I-29 and other good roads. As a guess, we went up what is now I-29, through Sioux City over through Pipestone and striaight up through Sauk Centre. I read Sinclair Lewis’ MAIN STREET my freshman year and I fell in love witrh small towns. “Red Lewis” was not kind to the town at the time, but I yearned to know the name of the manager of super and gift shops that one sees in a community. Oh I knew some, but not like that . Finally, we got to Park Rapids.

In the middle of all this, the mist turned turned to rain and then to a complete storm. Now, the fellow in the middle was good and a pretty sharp legislator. On shot gun, was a fellow from Lincoln who was really sharp. I assumed that he was in the professions. Those big syllable words that I knew, but never used for fear of getting beat up, knew the lay of the land. I don’t know his party but he was sharp. I wished that I could spend housrs listening to what he thought of the world. However, this was a fishig trip. Further, once JoAnn and I were dropped off. The three were heading to Canada.

I have my last evaluation for the driver. We were in his car and he was driving. He drove with one hand of the driving wheel  and the second with an open car of beer. I tried to get through all the junk to sneek a peak at the speedometer. Most of the time, it was some where between 75 and above. He loved his beeR because it kept him alert. At 12 years old, I didn’t think that drining and driving went reall well together. However I had some friends who disagreed. One thing that I did learn at that age was sometimes people older than you know something more than you do. On the other hand, there are lost causes. So I figured  that i had to figure out if they were jerks and then go from there. My driver was a jerk and yet had the capacity to write legislative bills for the state. Or did he? I think that at that time. representation was based on geography. So if a tiny populated area from a huge sandhill county had the same power as a member from the large cities in Lincoln and Omaha.  I think that was legal gerrymandering. Explain to someone from another country the  about the electoral college. At any rate, we got through the night guided by an alcoholic, a car full of junk and people, gliding on two lane highways where the car is a micro distance from the wet cement. We nearly hit somebody, but the driver dismissed the whole thing.

Maxine (Mrs, Donovan) greet us. It was early dawn. Shje heldped me to bed  I said my prayers and slept in. You can see Two Inlets on a state map. Weigelwood had a large lodge and 10 cabins. The other resorts on the lake including Brookside, Woestes, Cone Cove and Gould’s Hearts Delight. I loved to take a Johnson motor with boat and go from one side of the lake to the other. There was a special spot where the sandyon the beach reached into the forest and then way back into the woods.

When I got up, I cleaned the fish house, drove the Jeep with Dick throughout the resort and picked up the garbage. After we had the jeep filled we headed for the dump. In the midst of the woods and hidden from the tourist was a great big dump. There was one old car that I thought what it would look like new at the car dealershiiiip.

Dick would sometimes drive up to a cabin lane and on to a farm. We used to run through clouds and clods of dirt. There a  females and their young and we kept our distance and they appeared to knowthat we were okay. Then Dick turned and looked at me frantically. “Bull” he headed somewhere and I followed Diick, and the bull followed me. We survived.

Minnesota is Garison Keiller country. He was not famous yet, but he and others remarked  that Minnesota was winter and non-winter region of the country. I lived in Brookings South Dakota years later and the leafs started turning brown after Labor Day.

When it got cold it was time to leave and I always made my journey around the lake to say good bye.

Minneapolis got out around the middle of June and Park Rapids and Fuller Fish Market was packed. So was Wimpy’s and Schmeaders.Then half the town left and Park Rapids became another place although I have only been told that. When I hear a motor boat in the distance, It is as if I was hearing it from a cabin on the lake.

SUNDAY AFTERNOONS

My mother and father took me to Sunday school at the Benson Presbyterian Church. After church, we headed to grandma Annie. She had a large Sunday supper and my dad with his coat and fedora and  my mother with red outfits enjoyed the afternoon at Grandmas. My father drove an Oldsmobile say 1948

it was all blue, 4 door and fastback. The interior was a brown courderoy and the panel up front, called the dash board was chrone and polished wood.  The back windows, you could hardly see out, but it gave a feeling of comfort. I felt like I was in a tank and we were heading to one of the most important  places in the world.

Grandma didn’t go to church. Her mother had a nervous breakdown and tried to kill Annie. Running from her mother who had a knife in her hand was enogh to scare anyone. Her mother was sent to a rest home for the mentally ill on the far west side of town. The rest cure generally meant a great deal of sleep, excercise, colonics, and some mild form of a downer. Annies mom  was there for about two years. When she was let out, she became a lay preacher and would give sermons among the poor. She became overly zealous in her sermons and my grandma had to listen to them all. She had too much and could not get near a church. I was alarmed. To get to heaven, you had to go to church. However, grandma was the exception. That broad band became larger and larger to where I became a conservative universalist.

Other than church, most of the kids at school were Jews or Protestants. As I grew older, I became closer to Conservative and Reform Judiaism . I remember when Brenda Katzman got beat up as a Jew who killed Jesus. The other girl was mean and goyish. Before Junior high, I figured that you have to be a Chritian or there is trouble. I also knew that overnight millions of people changed religions to stay alive through out the centuries.

Incidentally, Christian were not only ones to persecute. Other groups were killing each other as well aswell. What the Jews meant to me was courage. They knew that live is so precious, I remember being on the Jungle Jim, and thinking to myself that the person in front of me had an uncle that died in the ovens in Germany perhaps 9 or 10 years earlier. I found that it was an honor to go to bar mitzvakah or bat mitzvik. I could not go to the ceremony, but to the celebration afterward with a yamake on my head.

LOUIES

If you wanted the best price on vegetables, you went to Louies. It started as a ma&pas and as the little stores died off, Louie survived. I love to watch Louie drive home from work.  It was abut a block and half from his super market, but the joy was watching him drive his gray 1949 Packard. It was gray and big as a boat. Louie was short, so here was a little man in this big cruiser.

One summer day, a very nice lady was standing out on the corner. She said that Louies had the best of everything. She also wanted to know if I wanted to win a gold fish. I told her that a win like that was great. She said that all one  had to do was to this one church up in Benson. There would be a meeting and  the individual that went to all the meetings and win with a lottery like ticket, got the gold. My buddies and I thought that was a great deal, not just a good one.

For about 2 months, every Wednesday after school, my friends and I would go to this church. There we sang hymns. Most of those songs, I knew the words. Further, most of the kids came from Lutheran, and related Protestant churches. I qualified, but there were not any  Catholics or Jews. There was one Unitarian and he was not there.

At the end of the sessions, I was invited to the back of the basement storage room of some kind. There was a lady sitting on some boxes, yelling and hooting. She did not  dance, but she moaned and groaned. She was probably in her 60’s or 70’s. She was trying to get out of something like a invisible net that surrounded her.  As she cried out  I was shaking inside. I was asked a series of questions about my relations to Jesus. I said yes to all the questions. Then a lady with a bowl of water, dipped her hand into it and held it to my head. Then it was over.

I left the building in shock. I was terrified, but I tried to hide it. I could now go to heaven. I wanted to go to heaven, but I could not see my grandma or my other relatives. My Jewish, Catholic..or any friend.

Jesus took my grandma and now he was going to take me. I discovered later that Jesus was probably not the Jesus that was painted in 1945 and was spread throughout the world. This picture, Mary’s child had blue eyes, light brown hair, and was tall and muscular. He was more likely 5 feet 5″ light brown person of color or tan, brown eyes and long hair. He was soft spoken and had incredible power. Scholars argueabout who gets to live with him. At any rate, some say my grandma, my Jewish friends, in fact almost everyone sooner or later gets to be with him.  You pay your dues and go ahead. Jesus is on most peoples’ side and the contradiction that is that is built into that. Moses, Mohammed, Lao-tsu, Confucius, Krishna, and Buhdda. I hope he likes me to be with him right away.

He even likes Louie.