 |
 t was common at that time for people who
lived out in the country to board their children with folks who lived in town during the school year. I used to have
a friend who came into town from out on the farm where he lived to go to high school. In the fall of the year, when
school was starting, his dad would bring him in the wagon with a half of a hog. When they butchered, they saved half a
hog to give us for his board and room. We had that every winter. He was my age, though he was about three grades
ahead of me in school. He was a real smart guy. I think he graduated when he was fifteen. We always had a good
time together. He had a talent for mechanics. I picked up a lot of stuff from him. He took an old radio one time
and rewired it and got it to work. He used to putz around with things of that nature.
Once in awhile I'd go out on the farm and stay with him. That was an
experience, too, because they had a feather tick and oh, that was the most comfortable thing! This was a quilt stuffed with goose
feathers -- it was super warm and light weight. They had a chicken that we called the "Crazy Rooster." He had many
crazy antics that amused us kids such as running at us instead of away when we went to catch him. They also had a bull
calf that we used to ride. When we were riding him and came to a fence we would hold the bottom wire of the fence up and
the calf would slide under the fence. As he became a full-grown animal they were never able to keep him in a fence.
My friend's name was Raymond Von Ruden, but everyone knew him
as "Shakespeare" and later "Shake" for short. He got this name because he often quoted poems. Most of his poems and
quote were from the book, Captain Billy's Whiz Bang. This was a publication put out by Captain Billy Fosset
and a forerunner of Fosset Publications. Captain Billy was from Brainard, Minnesota. The publication consisted
mostly of dirty jokes and parodies of famous poems, such as "Maud Muller." It went like this:
"Maud Muller with artful charm,
pulled turnips on her old man's farm.
Her gown a dream in orchid tones,
set old Sy back a hundred bones."
Ray's ambition was to become an aeronautical engineer. Those were the beginning
days of aviation and he could see the possibilities. But he never could get enough money to go to the university or to
engineer's school. His dad was a good mechanic and they always had innovations on the farm. They had a little machine shop
there. In later years, when I was gone, he developed a hydraulic pump and he ran a saw off this pump, from the power
take-off of the tractor. It was intended for foresters and people who were cutting down trees. It was really a kind of
forerunner of the chain saw, except that it was a circle saw, and a portable arrangement that took off the tractor. He
developed that and sold it very widely. Eventually, he had a manufacturing business in town. He worked on other developments,
too. People who knew him knew he was good. If they wanted something made that hadn't been invented, he'd make it for them.
He made some of the first ice augers for ice fishing. He made a dispenser for cement trucks, the portable units, and
various other little gadgets. We had quite a good relationship. He was in my sister Alvina's
class and he was a brilliant guy.
After I left Claremont, I used to see Raymond occasionally, but we didn't
stay very close. His company is still in existence and is still a prosperous operation. It's called Von Ruden
Manufacturing, and is located in Owatonna now.
I remember my first airplane ride quite vividly. There used to be
barnstormers around. Those were fellows who owned an airplane and in order to support their sport they would fly from
town to town and give rides. Sometimes they would travel in pairs and they'd fly over the town and perform acrobatics of some
kind. They'd fly up high and dive down in a spiral, and do various tricks to get attention. Then they'd land in a
field outside of town and people would flock out there to see them. An airplane in those days was a great curiosity. My
first ride was in a Curtis Robin plane from a little airport in Owatonna. That was a big event. I was 16 and I went
up in a two-seater. That was a big thrill and I enjoyed it.
I've always been fascinated by the history of aviation. The most interesting
autobiography I've ever read was by Glen Curtis who was a pioneer of flight. He originated the Curtis Wright
Aircraft Company. He started out manufacturing motorcycle engines and then went to aircraft engines and then on to producing
aircraft. He was also a friend of Alexander Graham Bell, the telephone inventor. Based on a suggestion by
Bell, the two of them worked out the system of ailerons. Ailerons consist of a flap in the wings which cause the plan to
turn. The planes the Wright brothers flew didn't have ailerons. They warped the wings by a system of pulleys to make the
plane turn.
Aviation made great advances when I was young. Lindbergh flying across the
ocean was a big event in our lives. That was in 1927, so I was about 13 years old at the time. Songs like Lucky
Lindy came out afterwards which were very popular. People were talking about it a lot, and it was on the news.
There was always something new happening. After the Atlantic crossing of Lindbergh, there was another character who
couldn't get a permit to fly the Atlantic. So he took off from New York and said he was going to fly to Los Angeles.
Instead, he went to Ireland. When he landed, he said, "Is this Los Angeles?" They called him "Wrong way Corrigan."
That became a common phrase people used when someone did something the wrong way.
We all knew about Amelia Earhart and her adventures. They often
showed her in newsreels at the theaters. I remember seeing a newsreel of her flying an autogyro in Texas. I think the
autogyro was a forerunner of the helicopter. It was a plane that had rotors like a helicopter except that it had no
power on it. The lift came from the forward motion of the plane as the rotors rotated and lifted the plane. It had a
conventional engine and propeller in the front.
Another event that took place when I was very young was the death of
President Warren G. Harding in 1923. I remember that so clearly. He died suddenly while in office. It
happened in a famous hotel in San Francisco which survived the great San Francisco earthquake. (I believe it
is still standing.) Years later, I read about his presidency, and found that he was a sad president. He was taken
advantage of by a bunch of politicians who put him in office, and he felt betrayed by all of them. They worked him for a fool
and used him to promote their agenda which ended up in the Teapot Dome scandal. Of course, I didn't realize all this at the
time as I was just a youngster.
 here was another fellow what was a very good
friend of mine during my high school years. His name was Elroy Wasser, but we called him "Bing" because he like to
sing a lot and that was the era when Bing Crosby was popular on the radio. Bing was a neighbor boy. Eddie Moser
was another friend who lived just back of us. He was a little bit older and in Alvina's
class at school.
Bing was very interested in music and he got me interested in it, too. His
sister played the piano, so we'd all get together and sing. I must have been terrible at it because I can hardly sing a
note now. But we'd lead various groups of singers. We travelled by car to the school basketball games and sang on the way there
and on the way back. One of the popular songs of the day was When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain, a Kate Smith
song. They were making a lot of Broadway muscials into movies then so we sang songs from the movies. One was called
A Broadway Melody, and another was Lilac Time.
We bought all the sheet music from the popular musicals of the day. Bing
and I learned all the words, and there were dozens of songs so we must have had good memories. We got together at Bing's
house. The Wassers didn't have a mother, and we kids had a tendency to hang out at their place. There was a phonograph there
and quite a few records, but that wasn't a big influence. The radio was a bigger attraction. We all listened to
Kate Smith and Bing Crosby. There was another singer by the name of Morton Downey whose son recently had a
popular TV show. The Lucky Strike Hour was very big then, and Eddie Fisher was a popular singer. I always
felt badly that his marriage to Elizabeth Taylor didn't work out. I thought his voice was very romantic. We had much
more sentimental music then, and I think that was more my style. Eddie Fisher was popular during WWII and a few years
after the war. This was during the big band era. Others from that time who we enjoyed on the radio were Meridith Wilson,
Eddie Cantor, and George Burns and Gracie Allen to name just a few.
We went as a group to dances at various ballrooms around the area. There was
one at Rochester and a couple in Owatonna that we liked. The popular band of the day was Bobby Riggs, a guy who played a
really hot sax. I don't think I was much of a dancer, but we had fun doing it, whatever we did.
had a lot of friends in high school. When
we were younger we always ganged together and roamed around town in the evenings getting into trouble. When I was in grade
school, we always hung around the school yard. A bunch of us guys called ourselves "the dirty dozen." Once there was a
great big four by four in the school yard used as a standard for the volley ball net. We picked that up and started bumping the
bark off the trees with it. It was just something to do. We used it for a battering ram. We were going around to each tree and
caused quite a bit of damage. A neighbor came by and saw us and made us stop. He took our names and turned them in to
the authorities. So we had a little trial in front of the Justice of the Peace which was held in the barber shop. We
were sentenced to stay in our own yard except during school hours. That was our punishment. We couldn't get together
anymore. That was just for one year. But we always got together every evening downtown by the school house and fooled around.
My sister Louise was a year younger than
I, and we went to school together. We were often in the same grade because it was a small school, and they combined some
of the grades. I wasn't a very good student, and I often leaned on her to help me. In those days, you were expected to
participate in a certain number of contests where you gave dramatic readings and there was always a school play. I always
seemed to do well in those things even though I didn't put much effort into it. Louise was my coach and would prompt me.
She also gave readings very well herself. Louise was a very expressive person. We had the class play every year at
Claremont High School and both of us were in it. They used the talent from the whole high school for that.
At Claremont, at most there would be 25 in a class. There was just one
building. First and second grade were together in one room, second and third in another, and so forth. The high school was
in a big assembly room with three little classrooms that you went to. A lot of kids rode horses to school or drove a car.
As time went on, of course, we paired off with girls and we had a gang of
kids in high school who would get together in each others' homes on Saturdays and Sundays in the evenings. Sometimes we'd
play cards, like bridge, and smoke cigarettes. I had a cigarette machine. During the Depression cigarettes were a nickel
a pack, and that was too much money. For a nickel we could get a package of toabcco that would make about ten packs of
cigarettes. I'd bring this machine to the party with me and we'd sit and smoke and make cigarettes. I'll never forget one
time in the winter, we were snowed in. It was a terrible snowstorm, and everything was blocked. Nobody could get to
school. That was just glorious. This gang of kids were all from the neighborhood so we didn't have to worry about the
snow; we could walk from one place to the next. So we had a good time. Once in awhile we'd pitch in ten cents each and I'd
go down to Ma Marsolik and get a half pint of alcohol. We'd drink that and dance and have fun.
One time we got some chickens from a George Doughty's house. We
took the chickens from his house and butchered them and had a fry at my house. Later I took some chickens from our house and
brought them back to his house. I think our folks knew what we were doing, but they didn't care. We had boys and girls,
but nobody was paired off. We were all together just having fun. Not that you didn't have your favorite girls -- there were
some you liked better than others.
We still get together every five years with people from Claremont School.
Instead of having class reunions, we have school reunions. I think there were about 15 kids in my graduating class.
In my freshman class there might have been 25 or 30. They used to drop out along the line. In those days kids weren't
very interested and didn't care about completing school.
|
