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Minneapolis, Minnesota
My memories of growing up in our family home at 4125 Columbus
Avenue in Minneapolis are fuzzy in my early years. With the help of
my diary that I began keeping in 1933, recollections from that year
flood over my mind. Many are just bits and pieces, or vignettes.
Some of the earliest memories include seeing my Mother ill in
bed, in the living room. Because of Mother’s illness when I was
four years old I was sent to Republic, Michigan, taken there by Aunt
Pearl (George’s wife) on an overnight sleeping train. I stayed
there about nine months. Dad hired a nurse to come in and take care
of Mother. My memory is that Mother had a nervous breakdown. By
the fall of 1924, I was back home and going to kindergarten at
Bancroft School (38th Street and 14th
Avenue). Grades one through six were divided into “B” and “A”.
At the end of the second grade, the teacher suggested, and my
parents agreed, I could “skip” 3B, and go to 3A. My 3A teacher
taught me “long division”, which was a skill taught in 3B. Other
than that I don’t remember any other extra help.
The walk to Bancroft was about one mile in distance. I walked
there in the morning, home for lunch, returned to school and walked
home after school. During severely cold weather in the winter, the
students were allowed to bring a lunch to school. We ate sitting on
the gym floor with our backs to the walls. The supervising teacher
was surprised, I could tell by her facial expression, when she
pulled out the hard-to-remove cork in my Thermos bottle. My Mother
had put in a special treat for me. Ginger Ale! In my lunch was
also a Hershey bar given to me by my Father when I stopped at the
drugstore on my way to school in the morning. That was really
something special also.
During the cold winter days, sister and I wore long underwear.
To put stockings on over it, one needed to fold over any excess
fabric at the ankle and hold on there as the stocking was pulled
over it. Done correctly, the leg of the underwear didn’t ride up.
Oh, how I envied Grace Strom, who lived across 38th St.
from Bancroft. She didn’t have to wear long underwear. I could
tell that by looking at her smooth stockings with no telltale lump
at the ankle.
Our cold weather clothing would have included buckled black
rubber overshoes, a wool coat, wool knit mittens (doubled up) and
wool knit cap. When the wool mittens got damp, a distinctive odor
arose from them.
Mother’s health was fragile in the 1920’s. My father would make
a chocolate-malted milk at the soda fountain at the store each
afternoon. I was sent down the alley to 41st Street
across Chicago Avenue to get Mother’s treat. As a reward, I was
given just a taste of the malted milk. That was delightful!
At night as Marcella and I lay in our beds, my mother would play
the piano. “Nola” was one of her favorites. Mother’s fingers just
flew over the piano keys as she played.
As I grew older, on evenings when Dad worked until 11 o’clock, I
would climb into bed with my Mother and I read magazines. I enjoyed
those special times.
I began piano lessons at age seven with Marie Tollahaug, who
lived about a half block away on Columbus Avenue. I was expected to
practice one hour a day. Mother’s piano, an upright one, was
purchased by her when she was teaching in Detroit before her
marriage to Dad. In later years the upright piano was replaced by a
spinet piano. Following Marie Tollahaug as a piano teacher, I went
to Hazel Aamodt in the McPhail School of Music, on LaSalle Avenue
and 11th Street. She was also a “dramatic” teacher.
Marcella also went to Mrs. Aamodt for her piano and “dramatic”
lessons. My sister and I were in a joint recital one evening at
McPhail. We opened and closed the program with duets, and played
solo pieces of piano music during the middle portion. I can
remember my panic before going onstage, sure that I would forget the
music, which I had committed to memory. However, we both made it
through the program sufficiently well to have a polite applause.
During the early years of the piano lessons, Mother also took
Marcella and me to dancing lessons. I faintly remember taking tap
dance and ballet lessons.
One of the memories of the early years was going down town, many
times in the Chicago Avenue streetcar, to Dayton’s to shop with
Mother. During one of those shopping trips, Marcella and I became
separated from her. We stood outside Dayton’s on the corner of 8th
and Nicollet, crying for our mother. A policeman was there with
us. That memory is truly a “peep-hole” to the past, with nothing
before or after it. The trauma of the situation of two little girls
being separated from their mother probably caused the memory to
linger on.
Mother and Dad loved to go fishing. Memories of the early
fishing trips include those to Lake Winnibigoshish and to Federal
Dam. Early on Dad would go out on “Winnie” in a large motorized
boat and transfer to one of the trailing small rowboats at the
fishing area. The series of small boats were then pulled by the
larger boat for trolling purposes. On returning from one such trip,
Dad was pale and shaken by the really rough trip on the very large
lake. While fishing at Federal Dam, I remember losing my hold on my
fishing rod. Suddenly it had popped out of my hand. Fortunately
one of the numerous other fishermen there snagged my pole and reeled
it in within a few minutes. I was greatly relieved, and hung on to
my pole with a tighter grip. In later years, I went with Mom and
Dad on day trips to Mille Lacs Lake to fish from a fairly large
launch. Because the lake was treacherous when storms or even winds
came up, my parents preferred the relative safety of a large launch
compared to a rowboat with a motor. We usually went up there in
late May. About three days after our return, the left side of my
face broke out in small blisters. The Doctor’s diagnosis was
“poison oak” sensitivity. That reaction began about 1937. As a
sub-note to that, my face broke out after hanging our hunting
clothes to air on the clothesline in 1950.
As a child, I loved to read. While in Bryant Junior High School
(age 11-14), I read every book in the school library on the age of
knighthood. My next reading choice was westerns, preferable Zane
Grey books. In Central High School, I read “Ivanhoe” for
recreational reading. The next year it was required reading for an
English literature class, so I read it again.
When I have reflected back on my childhood years, I have come to
the conclusion that my father, at times, treated me like a
first-born son. As a little girl, I was left in the care of my
father working in his drugstore, while Mother was downtown
shopping. Dad would give me a board, nails and a hammer in the back
room of the store, to entertain myself. When I was in my early
teens, Dad and I would go down to the basement on Sunday afternoons
and shoot his .22 rifle at a target on a mattress on the far wall of
the basement. On my 21st birthday, my parents gave me a
.22 rifle as a gift. During my first years at the University of
Minnesota I went to the Armory on Monday afternoons for rifle
shooting practice. I had always “known” that I would go to the U of
M after graduation from High School. But I didn’t really know what,
at age 16, I wanted to do vocationally. I considered teaching
kindergarten or becoming a medical technician, but was given a
strong “nudge” by my father to go into the College of Pharmacy.
During the summers of age 16 through 19, I worked side by side in
the drugstore with my father. He had installed a Taylor two and a
half gallon ice cream machine and the necessary freezer.
Getting high grades in High School was no problem, so I was
unprepared for the hard realities of competition and studying at the
University. While in High School, I had never taken Chemistry. My
elective choices had included Physics and Botany, but no Biology or
Chemistry. I well remember my first weekly test in General
Inorganic Chemistry, during my first week at the U of M. The
previous evening I had worked at my father’s drugstore because
Marcella didn’t feel well. I went into the test totally unprepared
but felt I could pull it off as I had done so easily in High
School. However, the test was not easy and I soon realized I was in
way over my head. When the test asked for the symbol for ammonia, I
put down “Am”. After grading the test, Miss Cohen, our chemistry
professor, called me into her office. “Miss Jackson”, she said,
continuing, “You will never graduate from the University.” referring
to my total failure on the test. Evidently that statement was like
a challenge to me, and I’ve always liked challenges. Well, I would
show her that I could make it. I regret now that I didn’t return to
talk to Miss Cohen after I graduated (at age 20) from the U of M.
She did me a huge favor by stimulating me to work harder. |
