 "Marge and Vern
would often come over and spend the weekend with us. As I mentioned earlier,
Vern was the greatest non-producer I ever met in my life, but he was a very
resourceful and handy guy when it came to doing things. . . .
Anyway, they came to see us when I was working nights at Firestone.
"One time he came over with
Marge and dropped her off at the house, then he came down to the shop to
pick me up. He came in while I was changing clothes in the store basement,
and he noticed a big merchandise display stored down there. He looked at that,
and he said, 'Boy, you could make a good ping pong table out of that. I wonder
if they would give you that display.' So I asked the boss if I could have
it, and he said, 'Sure, take it and get it out of there.' So we took that
and made the nicest ping pong table out of it. We had quite a sizable basement
in our house, and we set it up there. We proceeded to have ping pong
tournaments every weekend. Many times we'd play until daylight. Vern was
the type of guy that if he was winning, he wanted to rib you and laugh and
have fun, but if he started losing, it wasn't fun anymore. Of course, I
had never played ping pong before, and he had played quite a bit. So he
beat me at first. He was really having a wonderful time razzing me. Then,
as time went on, I became better and better. When I started beating him,
it wasn't funny anymore.
"We had another cousin in
town, Joe Stimler, and his wife, Red.
They would come over and join us in the ping pong tournaments. We all made
our own fun and recreation. On our first anniversary, Dorothy and I celebrated
by getting two nickel beers. They had nickel beer at the grocery store.
Then we listened to our new radio. That was our big celebration, and we
enjoyed it."
from "Gram and Gramps," by Don Kampa
(1997) pp. 74-76.
"We were closer to our
friends when we lived in St. Paul than we had been in Minneapolis. Some
friends would come over now and then to play cards or socialize. Our cousins
Joe and Red Stimler lived in St. Paul
and they would come to visit. Some Swedish people who were friends of Dorothy's from
when she was working lived on a farm over in Wisconsin. They had us over there
for a few weekends. I relished the farm food. That was great, as I recall.
They had apple trees. We'd come home loaded with apples."
Ibid., p. 79.
"After leaving Claremont,
I wasn't involved with any sports until I came back to St. Paul from
Milwaukee. My cousin Joe Stimler was
interested in pheasant hunting, and he kept asking me to go with him. Finally
I wrote to my brother Ed who had my
dad's old double-barreled shotgun and
asked if he would send me the gun. He did, and that's the one I used.
Joe and I went pheasant hunting up around
the St. Cloud area. It was my first real taste of hunting. I was a
confirmed hunter after that."
Ibid., p. 171.
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