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 hose first years
back in St. Paul were filled with acivities. I think St. Paul was where Dorothy was
always the happiest. When we moved back, we made a lot of friends at PTA and she got to know
various neighborhood women. There was Fran Dunlop, Jean Thompson, Joy Shier and
Jean Van Hoven. They were a very nice group of women and they always had fun together.
They played bridge and that sort of thing. Fran was Roy Dunlop's wife, and he was a
newspaper columnist for the Pioneer Press. There were also the Dions, the Martins, and the
Woods. Dorothy became active in the Leage of Women Voters which is where she met the Thompsons
and the Woods.
Dort was feeling very well by then. I think most
of her earlier problems were from being discontented with the kind of life we led and the people
we met.
Our first vacation was really a second honeymoon.
The first place outside of Minnesota where Dorothy and I decided to go for a vacation was Miami,
Florida. After working hard building up the business, we thought we needed and deserved some recreation
and relaxation. Business was good and we were happy and pleased about it. Everything was falling
into place at that time. So we left someone in charge and went to Miami for a few days. It turned
out to be a happy, carefree time, probably one of the best times we ever had together. All we
did was load on the beach and go to a show once in awhile, and completely relax. That was a
great experience. The big event in the evenings was to go to dinner. Then we bummed around.
We didn't do much of anything, but it was a tremendously happy time for us.
 orothy loved associating
with the neighbors and her bridge group. She made close firends wherever she went. In addition
to those I mentioned above, there was Goldie Hudgins in Omaha, Marie Holzinger and
Dorothy Smith, and of course many others. She was very particular about her friends.
She could overlook many things about people, but she couldn't abide falseness or phoniness. She could spot
a phony without any trouble.
All of thse new people from the neighborhood and
the PTA were new friends for both of us. Most of the friends that Dorothy had before we moved had
scattered. The husbands and wives in this group of people got together socially quite often. We
used to have parties and dance and generally have a lot of fun. The wives, of course, were the planners
and they got the husbands together and we had a good time. There were football parties and New
Year's Eve parties and that sort of thing. We met at one anothers' houses.
This seems like a good point to mention that the
music of the times was important to Dorothy and me all thoughout our lives. A lot of the music we
enjoyed was dance music. We played it on our hi-fi while we relaxed around the house, and music
always reminds me of the times we had together. (I think that it might be nice if the readers of
this book played some of this music while they were reading. It would help them to feel the spirit
of our times.) We listened to Montevani, Andre Kostelanez, Herb Alpert, Perry Como,
Nat King Cole, Frankie Carl, and Mitch Miller, to name a few. Some of the
songs we liked were Strauss waltzes, Stardust, Sugar Blues, Rambling Rose, songs from Porgy and
Bess, and The Music Man.
We didn't dance a lot, but we loved to listen. Our
dancing was mostly at the house parties with the friends I mentioned above. Out at the golf club
we danced occasionally, but not too often. We'd go out to dinner with Leo Holzinger and Marie
once in awhile and then we danced. Dick and Jean Glumak were usually along, too.
I confess my weakness was that I couldn't dance and
have a gay old time unless I was drinking. I always felt guilty about it. I felt I should know
better because of my dad, and my father-in-law. I didn't get mean or rambunctious. They used to
say I was funny. I suppose it was the only way I could really let myself go.
Dorothy and Stuart Smith were one couple from that
group who I wanted to say a little about. They were very good friends of ours over the years.
We met them when Joanie was at Como school and we became involved
with some of her school activities. Stuart, who we called "Smitty," was the manager of the St. Paul
Auditorium and he was in charge of conventions. He and I became friends and we played golf together
as partners. Smitty was a good golfer, but his wife was terrible. The harder she tried, the worse
she got. He was the kind of guy who always encouraged her anyway. My wife always said, "Well,
Dorothy Smith can't count." Besides golfing together, he and I went on vacations in northern
Minnesota quite often.
In his later years, Smitty had rather hard times before
he retired. They offered him the job of over-all manager at the Auditorium but he turned it down
because he was too close to retirement. Then they put in someone who he felt wasn't as qualified, so
it was hard for him to work under him. There was friction between the two and it got to the point
where Smitty quit. It was really unfortunate, as the minor incident that provoked it shouldn't
hae had such serious consequences. They had a convention of the Midland Co-Op people and the
meeting went extra long. The food and drink concessions were closing because it was late, and Smitty
thought they should stay open for the convenience of the people attending the convention. So he
took some of his own people and put them to work in some concessions in order to serve the convention.
He was censured for that, and he was very proud and that hurt him a lot. As a result, he felt very
low, and resigned, retiring early at age 62. The people from the Midland Co-Op and a lot of
others who had had conventions there over the years got together and threw a big party for him.
He received all kinds of wonderful gifts. He said afterwards, "If I knew they felt that way about me,
I wouldn't have quit." Smitty eventually got Alzheimer's disease and was in the hospital for a year
or two before he died.
Quite a few of my brothers and sisters had moved
out to the San Francisco Bay area by the time we came back to St. Paul, but we socialized
with my sister Martha and her husband John
over the years.
We had family picnics with Sis and John and went to
Mineral Springs in Owatonna every Memorial Day. Our folks are buried there. Sis and I always
got along well. We have similar ideas on a lot of things.
John was a very stable fellow.
He always was concerned about the kids. He took good care of them and was almost more of a mother
to them than a father. I remember one funny story he used to tell about himself, which shows a little
bit about the kind of guy he was. He said he always rode the 28th Avenue streetcar to work
which he caught right outside of his back door. Every morning, before work, he always wrapped the
garbage in a neat package and tied it with a string because he was a meticulous person. Then he
would put it in the garbage on his way out the door. One day, he had his lunch in the same kind
of package. He dumped the lunch and took the garbage on the streetcar. When he realized what he had
done, he tried to leave it there, but somebody called him back and said, "Hey, Mister, you left
your package." That was the kind of guy he was. So conscientious and meticulous that he wrapped
up the garbage very neatly. He was also a tremendous worker. He was an electrician and always
made top money. Everyone admired and liked John. Martha worked for Minnesota Bearing Company
for years. They got along fine.
Their children are
Janet and Jack. Jack turned out to be
a computer whiz. I think he recently retired from the computer company he was with in Minneapolis.
He had an important position with them and was very successful. Janet has been quite successful in
business, too. She had her own company that did consulting work with businesses, and has recently
started a new company.
My other brothers and sisters had children about the same
age and they got together a lot. We saw more of Sis and John because they were here in the area.
When we were living in St. Paul on Nevada Avenue
the Lokans were our neighbors. They had three little girls, and they hung around at our place a lot
after school. I was like a second father to those kids. Their dad, who was a medical doctor, was never
home to do anything with them.
One of the things they loved to do was ride with
me to the dump. That was a big deal. In those days you didn't have trash collection. You had to take
a company truck and the kids would want to ride in the back of the truck and they'd pile in on top of
the trash. At that time they were dumping on the fairgrounds where the parking lot is now.
We always took those kids along to any special event.
We went to the fair and to the circus. It was quite an experience to be entertaining all those
little girls. We had a good time with those kids. Later on, as Joanie
got older, she had more friends and they always seemed to hang out at our house. There were two
girls, Janet LeClair and Anita Stifer, who were Joanie's friends from high school, and
the three of them still are friends.
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