Transcript: Millie Bowers Johnson Oral History Interview

Conducted by Ben Petry and Andy Wilhide, July 18, 2008 in Northfield, Minnesota

BP  =  Ben Petry
AW = Andy Wilhide
MJ  =  Millie Johnson

BP:  So we’ll start with your childhood.  Talk about where you were born and your birth date.

MJ:  I was born in Bell Creek, Minnesota on May 22, 1922 and I was born at home in a farm home.  I don’t remember too much about my early childhood because we moved to Faribault when I was about six years old.  So I don’t remember too much of the early childhood.  My father had left the family, so my mother and my two younger siblings, two younger brothers and I, moved into Faribault to be near my grandmother, who lived in Faribault.

BP:  And you said this was how old?

MJ:  I was six, and I had two brothers, four and two.  I didn’t see my father again until I was an adult, so my father has never been a part of my life.  I don’t know if that is too important, or not.  So we moved to Faribault and lived, rented a home right behind my grandmother’s home.  She had a wonderful big garden, so we did pretty well by moving there, and surviving pretty well with homegrown things.  My grandmother had remarried.  Her first husband had passed away and she had remarried to this Italian fellow named Dominic [Scoogler?], his name was.  [He] worked at the woolen mills in Faribault for over 25 years.  He worked there.  So it was not an easy – those were not very easy days for me, but we came through it pretty well.  My mother did get TB and she did go into a sanitarium for a while.

I was about eight at that time, eight years old.  Or ten, I think ten, because it was in 1932 when she acquired TB and had to go in to…  I do have four older siblings.  My mother was married before and they were about…the youngest was four years older than myself, and my older sister and brother more or less took care of us younger ones while my mother was in the sanitarium.  Those going-into-the-Depression days, it was a struggle in those days for us, but we managed.

BP:  Were you aware that it was a struggle as a little girl?

MJ:  I don’t think so.  I mean, we had enough to eat – you know? – and we never…we had friends, lots of friends in the neighborhood.  We lived at the end of a street in Faribault where it was just an area where there were just a lot of friends and not a lot of commotion going on, or anything.  It was the North end of Faribault. So we survived those years pretty well.  We did have to go on welfare, of course, for a while, and I remember those years.

BP:  And your mom, she never remarried?

MJ:  My mom, no and…

BP:  In those early days, anyway.

MJ:  Yeah.  No, my mom, then, was in the sanitarium for about three years and they did want to do some surgery, but it was just a fifty-fifty chance in those days of surgery that she would come through, so she opted not to have surgery.  And so she did get home from the – it was TB of the spine.  And she did get home from the sanitarium and she lived to be 88 years old.  She said, “The good Lord will take care of me,” and He did.  I never saw my mother use a cane or a walker, and so she lived a pretty good life.  She did have, you know…she was crippled a little bit from the TB, but otherwise she got around pretty well.  So she ended up…her last years were spent at the Rice County, or St. Lucas Home, [a] nursing home in Faribault.  She was there about seven years before she died.  She was a sweet, lovable lady.  I loved her very much.  So we children then grew up, went to school.  My older brothers and sisters never graduated from high school.  They took care of us younger ones.  I’m the first one to graduate from high school, and then my two younger brothers.

AW:  Before we get into school…

BP:  Yeah, we’ll get into your high school days, but we’ll stay in the childhood area just a little bit longer.

AW:  Tell me about some of the games you played.  You said there were a lot of kids in your neighborhood?

MJ:  Well, we played kick-the-can, [laughing] and then Annie-I-over, where you throw a ball over the house and it was called “Annie-I-over”.  We played hopscotch.  Marbles were a lot of fun in those days.  Of course, indoor games were checkers and we had checkers, and I don’t think monopoly was out yet, but there were games that they….

BP:  Would you play with your siblings or the neighborhood kids?

MJ:  Lots of neighborhood children, yes.  Of course, we always had ball, too.  We were at the end of the street so there was always a ball game going on of some sort.

BP:  The girls would play with the boys?

MJ:  The girls and boys would play, um hum.  We didn’t have…our home, of course, did not have indoor plumbing so we had an outhouse.  We didn’t have electricity for a while, and I still have the lamp that I carried around when I was young.  It’s on the front hall.

AW:  Do you still have that?

MJ:  I still have that.

BP:  Did you read by that lamp?

MJ:  Oh, yes.  Everything.  Yeah, um hum.

AW:  Tell us a little bit more about what kinds of activities you would do with that lamp?  Would you be…?

MJ:  Well, we liked to play school, of course, and I had some neighbor girls…and there were about three girls and a boy that would come over and we’d have this little schoolhouse.  I remember – which scares me now – we took this lamp in a closet where we had our schoolhouse – in this large closet.  I’ve been thinking how dangerous that would be right now if we’d do that, but we were very careful.  We were pretty responsible kids in those days.  I don’t know if we read a lot, read a lot of books, I don’t remember that too much, but we did play school.

BP:  Were you the teacher?

MJ:  We took turns.  [Laughing]  Yeah, we took turns.  Everybody wanted to be the teacher, of course.  You couldn’t monopolize on that, so we took turns.

AW:  Did you have a lot of girlfriends?

MJ:  I had a lot of girlfriends, yes.  They were mostly friends in the area, you know, in the school area.  I mean in our home, where we lived, around that area.  And there were more; I had special friends, of course, when we got into high school, but there were closer friends.  I went to McKinley School, which was about – oh, I suppose about six blocks from where we lived – so I didn’t have too far to walk to school.  We had an incident the first day of school from my brother, when he was in first grade.  He was supposed to wait for me after school and he didn’t, and the highway, Highway 3, which is Central Avenue in Faribault now, he went across and broke his leg; got hit by a car and had a broken leg.  So that was his first day of school.  So that was sort of a, you know, a sad thing that happened.  He recovered, of course.

BP:  What’s your first memory of school?

MJ:  Well, I had wonderful teachers and, of course, I remember because we were given milk.  We had a break where we got – I don’t know if they gave it to everybody or maybe because we were kind of listed as poor, the poorer generation – we were given a bottle of milk, a little pint of milk to drink, and that was so special for us to have that.  Had a [milk] break in school.  I think I was probably an average student.  Of course, we were always ready for recess.  We played many games outside in those days…and…what am I thinking of?  Not Ring-Around-The-Rosie, but I can’t think of the games that we played, but there were some games that we played. 

BP:  Was there a jungle gym?

MJ:  No, we didn’t have any.

BP:  In the school?

MJ:  In the school, no.

BP:  In the neighborhood either?  A park with…?

MJ:  No.  I lived on the North end of Faribault and we never really had a park.  The only park that was in Faribault in those days was Central Park, and then there was another park where they played football.  I can’t think of the name of that, but it’s over where the high school played football.  But otherwise we didn’t have many parks and that.  Central Park.

AW:  Before we keep going on the school line, what were some toys that you played with as a child?  Anything here that we see here?  There are some objects here.  Anything that you were…?

MJ:  I still have my doll downstairs in a box, but my kids, they dropped it and broke it, so it’s in pieces.  So I’ve got it in a box that says “Broken Doll.”  And I got that when I was, from my grandmother when I was eleven years old, I think.

BP:  What is it made of?

MJ:  Well, it’s a stuffed body, but the head is of that, what would you call that…

AW:  Porcelain? 

MJ:  Not porcelain; oh, I don’t know; it isn’t plastic either, but it must be a hard surface.

BP:  Can it be fixed?

MJ:  I suppose it could be fixed.  I don’t know whether….

BP:  We’ll have to look at it.

AW:  Yeah.  Did you…you got this for your birthday, or was it a special…?

MJ:  I got it for Christmas, I think, when I was about eleven years old, from my grandmother.

BP:  What did you think about it when you opened your present?

MJ:  Well, I thought it was great, because to have something new, or something special… Because in those days Christmas gifts weren’t very plentiful for us – or any gifts, I mean.  I remember that they’d have a big party at the Elk’s in Faribault for children, a Christmas Party for children and needy families, and we always went to that, and we always got one special gift, and I remember that’s special.  But otherwise, we didn’t.  Certainly not like nowadays.  We certainly didn’t get many toys.  But that was special, so that was a special, and I felt really bad when my children dropped my doll and broke the head of it.  And I always thought that they should get it fixed for me, but they never did.  So I… But that’s really the thing that I remember mostly about toys, is not having a lot.  A little wagon; we had a little wagon that was very special, I remember, that we pulled around.  Just a…

BP:  Up and down the neighborhood?

MJ:  Up and down the neighborhood.  And I think I may have gotten a doll buggy too, because I remember we had cats – we always had lots of cats – and I remember putting the cats in.  I wish I had a picture.  I dressed up a cat in clothes.  We had one cat that was special.  He’d let you put clothes on, and I’d put it in the doll buggy.  See, I didn’t take pictures in those days, so I don’t have a picture of that, but I remember…  Pets were very special.  Cats – we didn’t have a dog, but we had cats.  But otherwise, I don’t remember too many toys.

BP:  [How] did you feel when your mom was away?  How did you feel about that?  Did the other kids talk about it?

MJ:  Well, it was pretty hard for us because, you know, “Where’s your mom?” And in those days, of course, there were a lot of people, I think, probably in those days, that may have had problems like that with pneumonia and diseases that we take care of nowadays.  I don’t recall that children really were; and I was lucky that I had four older siblings to take care of [me], because I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t.  They are all gone now.  I’m the only one left in my family of seven.

AW:  Did you develop a close relationship with your grandmother?

MJ:  Yes, very close.  She lived, of course, like I say, right behind our home and she was just a really wonderful lady.  I still have a dress that belonged to my grandmother, too.

BP:  What was her name?

MJ:  Her name was Minnie, Minnie [Scoogler?].

BP:  And your mom’s name?

MJ:  My mother’s name was Amanda.

AW:  And you were saying that your grandmother had a garden where you guys got a lot of….  Can you describe the garden, and would you work in the garden?

MJ:  Oh yes, we’d help out in the garden.  The back of our house, the garden was in the back of our house, and then over on the left side was my grandmother’s house.  So it was all connected.  She had everything from…and then, of course, she had gooseberries and grapes and those things, too, so we always had those things to preserve – make preserves – and grapes.  I suppose she had the ordinary – potatoes and carrots and tomatoes and lettuce and all those things that most gardens are made up of.

BP:  So you’d help a lot.

MJ:  Yeah.  My grandmother would say, “Now, if you want some of these things, you come over here and do a little weeding in the garden.”  So we sort of took turns doing that and helping out, and…  I was asked about the washing.  Well, we had an outdoor…we had a washing machine outdoors that we used with a wringer on it.  Heat the water and then wash the clothes in that, and then wring them.  So that was our washing machine in those days.  For entertainment we had an old organ that…I don’t know where it came from, my mother’s family I guess.  So I learned to play the organ.  I didn’t take any lessons, but I still can play a little bit on the piano.  And my girls have all taken piano lessons now, so they are…  I wish I had that organ, it was just a wonderful…  So…

BP:  Would this be on weekends?

MJ:  Well, I think probably Sundays.  My mother was a very church-going person, so we went to church a lot.  We went to church on Tuesday evening, and Friday evening, and Sundays.  Always Sunday school, and then, sometimes, Sunday evening.  So Sundays was a day that was really a church day…I mean, it was a Christian – I mean, a day that we would…and we would always have the best dinner, I think, of the week on Sundays, which – they weren’t too plentiful, but we did have good food.  Then we would, in the afternoon or the evening, we would play.  My mother could play a little bit on the organ, too, and that’s where I took it.  And then we would sing.  We’d have a little sing…

BP:  What were some of the songs that your family sang?

MJ:  Um, “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” I remember.  Have you ever heard of that?  “I Dream of Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair”, and then, of course, we sang some religious songs, too.  I think probably, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” and that was my mother’s favorite hymn, so we would sing that.  But that was – the organ – that was a special thing for us.  When I was about twelve years old, my older brother played the harmonica and he taught me how to play the harmonica, and I still play the harmonica.  So, that’s my entertainment for myself; every once in a while I’ll sit down and I play by ear.

AW:  A musical family.

MJ:  Um hum.

BP:  Those are special memories.

MJ:  Yeah, my brother played the harmonica in those days, too, and he would entertain us every once in a while with that; the older brother.  So we had, I suppose, times when it was hard-going, but we had good times, too, and we had a very loving family.  My family was a very loving family.

BP:  A little bit about school.  You’re sitting at your desk.  Do you remember what kind of desk you sat at in school?

MJ:  Oh, it was just a little…it was a wood desk with the seat attached to it.  I don’t know if I’d have any pictures, I don’t think I…

AW:  Could you open the top?

MJ:  Yeah, and the top came open.

AW:  And what was the school like where you went?

MJ:  Well, it was a typical elementary school, I guess:  Reading, Writing and Arithmetic.  I think that’s the main subjects.

AW:  Was it big, or was it small, or…?

MJ:  It was through six grades.  There was no kindergarten.  At that time there was no kindergarten, so it was just first grade through sixth.  It was – it’s been taken down now; the school in Faribault has been taken down – but it was there for many, many years at the North end of Faribault.

BP:  What was it called?

MJ:  McKinley.  McKinley School.

AW:  Was it a big brick building?

MJ:  It was a brick building, um hum

AW:  Were there any teachers that you…?

MJ:  Well, I had one teacher that was very special.  Her name was Mrs. Puffer, I remember, and she was just a…she was not a real young person.  I think our teachers…we thought they were pretty old in those days, I think.  Well, they were old compared to the teachers [today].  [Transcriber’s note:  clock chiming in background, MK whispers: Do you want me to shut that off?]

[Break in interview.]

MJ:  [Whispering] It’s a long way to go back.  [All Laughing)  Well, I remember we did have ink wells, of course.  There were ink wells, and we had those pens, you know, that you dip in, and they…but I remember the paper was always lined paper.  I mean, and wide lines.  I don’t remember a narrow-lined paper at all when I was in elementary school; it was always the wide lines.  And then you had to, of course, write the initials or write the ABC’s, or write, and we had a; in fact, I have a pin; the Palmer Method.  We did the Palmer Method, it was called, and I have a pin, a Palmer Method pin from that I received.

BP:  And how old were you when you got that?

MJ:  I think that was probably towards the end of elementary school.

AW:  What grade?

MJ:  Sixth grade.  I would think sixth grade that I received that.

AW:  Can you describe the desk again?

MJ:  Well the desk…if I could…that’s hard to remember.  It was a wood desk and it…you opened it up from the top and, like I say, they were all one piece; the chair and the desk were all one piece.  I could probably find a picture of an old school that has one, but you probably have seen those.  You probably have those, don’t you?

AW:  Were they all lined up in the classroom?

MJ:  Yes, uh huh, and then, of course, we were always in alphabetical order by our names, by our last name.  So we sat in rows.

AW:  So where did you sit?

MJ:  Well, my name was Bowers, so I was one of the first ones.  There was only “A” before me, so I suppose I sat in the second seat, the second row.

AW:  Does that mean you always had to pay attention?

MJ:  Well, I think our teachers, they were pretty strict in those days.  They really were.  I think we did pay attention.  We didn’t goof off at all in school, I don’t think.

BP:  Do you remember any goof-off sessions?  [Did] anybody goof off and get in trouble?

MJ:  Oh, there was one boy; he was kind of the trouble-maker of the class, I can remember – especially fourth grade.  This was when I was in Mrs. Puffer’s class, she was the fourth grade teacher, and I can remember Sydney, his name was – I can remember that, too – that would cause some problems, you know.  He’d try to sneak some notes, or throw some, you know, spit balls I guess you’d call them...  Crumple up and throw at somebody.  His name was Sydney.  But otherwise everybody was pretty well behaved in those days.  We minded our P’s and Q’s.  And our teachers…I mean, we had respect, a lot of respect for our teachers.  And they were awfully nice to us, so we…I can’t remember that we had any problems at all in school.

BP:  Those lessons…you felt it was a good education?

MJ:  It was a good education, yes.  It was very, yup.  I remember the janitor, we called him, of course – we all had “janitors”, now they call them something else – anyway, he was such a nice  man, he was just so friendly to all the kids and would always help them out or do something for them if they wanted it done.  So I remember him, especially.  I don’t remember his name or anything, but I remember that of my elementary school years. 

BP:  Did you go to movies at that age at all?

MJ:  I never saw a movie until I was 12 years old.  My mother – her religion was very much against movies and dances, and so I never saw a movie until I was 12, and it was – I should have written that down.  I remember the first movie I saw.

AW:  You do remember it?

MJ:  I do remember it.  I was gonna write that down sometime, but I can’t think of it now.

BP:  You went to the theater?  You and some friends?

MJ:  Yeah, with some friends, and I don’t think I told my mother about it.  I probably picked up some money someplace, you know.  In those days, like [at] about 12 years old, we could work at odd jobs, and I picked strawberries, actually, for Andrew’s Nursery in Faribault, and two cents a quart I got for picking strawberries, I remember that.  So once in a while we’d get a little money saved up.  And the theater was 10 cents then, and it was 25 [cents] for adults and 10 cents for children.  I still have some movie cards too, from the theater here in town.  Coming attractions cards. 

AW:  What kinds of movies did you see?

MJ:  I know what the movie was, “The Man On The Flying Trapeze,” was the first movie I saw.  It was…

AW:  Before we get to that, can you describe seeing your first movie?  What was it like for you?

MJ:  I liked it.  [Laughing]  I thought it was really nice to go to see a movie.  I’m trying to think of who was in it; I can just see him, but I can’t think of the name.  Yeah, it was different.  We had a wonderful theater in Faribault.  In fact, the Paradise Theater, which is now an art studio…it’s still there…

BP:  The Para…. How do you spell it?

MJ:  Paradise.

BP:  Paradise Theater.

MJ:  Paradise Theater, um hum. 

BP:  Did you sit in the front row?  Did you sit in the back?  Where did you sit?

MJ:  I suppose we sat probably right up as close as we could, I think.  I think it was two girls, another two girls and I, that…and they, I think, had gone to movies before, but I had never gone, so it was my first movie.  I think we probably sat in the front seat, the front row; I wouldn’t be surprised, but I don’t remember, of course.  That’s a long time…

BP:  Do you think that’s where your passion started; that first experience…

MJ:  I think so.  I went to movies.  I couldn’t count the number of movies I’ve seen in my life, and I have them all written down in my diary; every movie that I saw is written in my diary from 1940 to ’50.  After that, of course, I didn’t keep a diary very much after 1950, but I have every movie written down.

BP:  What did they do for you; what did movies do for you in those early days?

MJ:  Well, it was…I suppose it was just the entertainment, the seeing something on the screen that took you away from your everyday life, I think, probably.  Just seeing people act.  And of course, it was black and white movies, then, too; it was not color.  But I cannot remember the first color film I saw, but it would have been later on.

BP:  Did you cry during some of these movies?

MJ:  Well, I think so.  I think, I don’t know, doesn’t everybody at a sad movie?  I laughed at comedies too – a lot of comedies that we went to.  That actually, that’s a long time ago; I don’t remember too much about the movie itself, but I remember that that was my first movie.

BP:  Any favorite actresses in those early days?  Or actors?

MJ:  Oh, Clark Gable, of course, was always a favorite, I think, way back then, because…and “Gone With the Wind,” of course, that was one of my special favorite movies when that came out.  I can’t think of actors.  I was a western fan, more of less, western movies.  Gene Autry.  I would go to a western movie every Saturday night, I think...  Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Buck Jones, Hop-a-Long Cassidy, Tom Mix…who else?  There are more, too.  But I’d see a movie and sometimes sit through two movies.

BP:  What did you like about the westerns and cowboy movies?

MJ:  I don’t know, I loved western movies, and I liked Gene Autry.  I just thought he was…. And I finally met Gene Autry and got his autograph…when I was out in Arizona one year, watching the Angels practice in the winter.  He was part of the Angels baseball team, of course – owner.  So I did get a picture of him and his autograph, yeah.  He was always my all-time favorite.  So those are the movies that I went to, mostly.  Although I saw some good movies – others, too, but I suppose three times a week for movies in those days.  Once I got started – and this was a little later on, I mean, this was not when I was 12 years old.  I don’t remember what the entertainment was.  We always went to the fairs, of course, and those were something special – which is on right now in Faribault, the Rice County Fair.  I didn’t bowl in those days, so…

AW:  When did you start going two or three times a week; how old were you then?

MJ:  I suppose I was probably into high school at that time.

BP:  Would you go with your girlfriends, or would there be…?

MJ:  I’d go with a girl… I never dated anybody in school.  I had two special girlfriends – they are both gone now – that the three of us – “The Three Musketeers”, is what we called ourselves – that we really did everything together, from picnics to movies, to just going downtown and hanging out and meeting guys.

BP:  What were their names?

MJ:  Their names were – do you want the last name too?  Phyllis Baimokovich, which is a long name: B a i m o

AW:  v i c h, maybe?

MJ:  v i c h.  Does that sound right?

AW:  Or, k o v i c h, maybe.  Baimokovich?

MJ:  Yeah, um hum.  Actually, her name then was Phyllis Burch; her married name was Baimokovich.  Yeah, she just passed away last month.  I’ve got to send a card.  She lived in Gary, Indiana now.  The other girl was Dorothy Adams.

AW:  Did you have nicknames for each other? 

MJ:  I was always known as “Millie”, I guess, and “Do” and “Phyl”.  Millie and Dot and Phyl, I think that’s what we were called.  Yeah, we were very good friends and did everything together.

BP:  Same classes?

MJ:  No, they were one year younger than I was, so I graduated before they did.

BP:  How did the friendship start?

MJ:  I think we lived in the same area in Faribault after I moved to a different area after living in this house.  I can’t remember what year.  When I went into high school we moved over closer to – not closer to the high school, but in a different area, and that’s where these two friends lived, on the same street or up the street a ways, and that’s how I met them.  And then we became good friends all the way through high school. 

AW:  Tell us a little bit about high school; transitioning from elementary school to high school.  What was that like?

MJ:  Well, other than I never…well, I’m trying to think of things.  I was just an average student, I guess.  In fact, I had one teacher that – I was so quiet – that she called me her quiet little mouse.   I probably looked like a little mouse, too, because I had more freckles, I think, than anybody in the class when I was in ninth grade, and I was just – you know – mousy-colored hair and… I wasn’t the most attractive person when I was in school.  Anyway, I was an average student and I was involved in the high school choir.  One of the special times for me with the high school choir was…Jessie Guard was our choir instructor – what do you call it, instructor?  Director, choir director – and she was a good friend of F. Melius Christiansen, who was the choir director of the St. Olaf Choir.  She brought us over there one time and we got to sing with the St. Olaf Choir under the direction of F. Melius Christiansen, and that was one of the all-time special things of my life in high school, of my days in high school.

AW:  What kind of subjects did you like?

MJ:  I liked English and artwork, and I have done some artwork, too – some watercolor and some art paintings.  I think my English teacher, Mrs. Carver, was a very favorite of mine, too.  And I liked home economics.  I wasn’t very good at some of the things.  I never did turn out to be a very good seamstress, but we had to sew and we had to cook.  In those days, home economics. was a required subject, so we had to take a cooking class and a sewing class.  So that was required, and it was a favorite – especially the cooking was a favorite.  I never was very good at math and algebra – I think I got my worst score in school in algebra.  I don’t know why, I think it was not required; I think it was a selective subject, but I don’t know why I took it.  And history was not very…I wasn’t very fond of history.  And now I turn on…now with all of this history that I’m doing, it’s amazing that I wasn’t involved in more history.  [Laughing]

AW:  Do you remember a lot of homework?

MJ: Oh, yes, there was always homework.  We had a lot of homework, and it was something that we really attended to, evenings, before we…and my mother was always one that said, “Now you get your homework done before you…”  And, of course, we never had electricity in the first apartment that we moved into.  I remember we didn’t have a radio; I couldn’t hear a radio.  Of course we didn’t have T.V., we had radios then.  I remember my brother living about eight blocks away and I’d go over and listen to his radio, I think, if I wanted to hear a good radio program.  But otherwise, roller skating – I loved to go roller skating.  I didn’t bowl at all in those years, but they had a roller skating rink in Faribault.

BP:  Would this be a Saturday thing for you?

MJ:  It would probably be Saturday, or maybe Friday night, something like that.  The evenings, too, so I think maybe Friday night or Saturday night.  Usually Saturday nights I went to the movies, so I suppose it was Friday night I’d go roller skating.

AW:  Did you keep your roller skates?

MJ:  No, I…

AW:  Or did you rent them there?  Did you have your own pair, or did you rent them?

MJ:  You’d rent them there, but I did have my own pair and I thought I still had them; I don’t know where they went to.  Maybe they are downstairs someplace.  Because this one friend moved to a different part of Faribault and so we would roller skate over to her house in the evening, way across town.  So I did a lot of roller skating around the town in those days, too.  That was kinda fun.

BP:  Would you say the boys were kind of shy?

MJ:  I think, probably – boys and gals in those days.  It seemed like there were a lot of girls’ groups together and the boys would all hang out together, and I was never with a group that hung out with the boys very much, I mean…  Although there were a couple of fellas I remember.  There was one that was a good roller skater and I remember that I really would have liked to have roller skated with him, and I did get a chance to do that before I gave up my roller skating.  That was an all-time thrill, I think, when he asked me to roller skate one night.  But otherwise there wasn’t anybody.  There were, you know, crushes.  I mean, you’ve probably had crushes on guys when you were in high school.  There was one fellow that looked like the movie actor, Nelson Eddy.  Remember Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald?  That was another favorite of mine for movies.  They played together in movies – many movies.  And he looked like Nelson Eddy, and I thought, “Oh, he’s so handsome!”  But he never looked at me sideways, so I guess that didn’t…  So anyway, that was my…so I never, really –  other than having a few crushes in high school – I never dated anybody.

BP:  Did you guys gather at a soda fountain or anything like that?

MJ:  We had a place called Wimpy’s Pantry in Faribault, and the Boston Café where we would go have Cherry Cokes, and I don’t know if we ever…they didn’t have French fries, I don’t think, in those days.  Cherry Cokes were a favorite of ours at the Boston Café.  The Boston Café was sort of a place to go after the movies, you know, if you were going to have some lunch or something to drink.  That was a hangout in Faribault.

BP:  Was there a jukebox and pinball machines?

MJ:  Oh, yes.

AW:  Can you describe the inside?

MJ:  Oh, the jukeboxes, of course, were these great big, fancy…and I think it was 10 cents…10 cents to play a tune, I’m pretty sure.  Some of the places later on, and I don’t remember just where, would have them on the…if it was a booth there would be a little one there that you could put the money in, you know, and play from the juke box, but I think that was a little later on.  I don’t recall that at the Boston Café anyway, there was just one big jukebox.  And I don’t believe there was a dance – you know, sometimes they’d have a little dance area, but I don’t believe there was.  I think it was just a café, and a place to go and listen to good music. 

BP:  What would be playing?

MJ:  Oh, some of the songs… Isn’t it funny?  You’re asking me to go back a long ways. 

AW:  What kinds of songs, or what kind of music?

MJ:  Well, it wasn’t the type of music we hear today, that’s for sure.  It would be, I suppose, songs of the ‘40s.  I’m trying to think of them.  “The Hit Parade”, you know, things that were on “The Hit Parade”.  This was another thing that I did.  When we did get a radio, that was one of my favorite programs, was “The Hit Parade,” and “Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour” would be on.  It was an amateur program that would be on the radio.  And those were the two things that I…..  And then they used to have a little theater on, “Times Square,” and they’d have that on the radio, and have a play, you know, a live play.  I’m trying to think of the music in those days.

AW:  Was it swing music, or was it…?

MJ:  Yeah, it was Big Band music mostly.  I really loved the Big Band music.  And then, of course, when the war came along, it was songs from the war like the Andrews Sisters, “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree”, “Sentimental Journey”, I’m trying to think of these songs.  I’ve got them listed.  I could find that, too.

BP:  So you guys would sit at the booth and you girls would sit together, and the boys would be on another side, there?

AW:  Oh, yeah, sometimes they’d come over and chat awhile, but it seemed like…there were some girls, of course, that had boyfriends, too, I mean, in my classes, I think.  Some that were a little more popular than others.  Are you familiar with the name Bruce Smith?  He was a year ahead of me in school.  And he was, of course, everybody’s idol.  And he was the only one that got the Heisman [football trophy] from the University of Minnesota and went on to make a movie.  I have pictures of him in that book, in fact.  In that photo album where the movies start; photos of him making the movie [Editor’s note: “Smith of Minnesota”.  He played football for Faribault High School, and we went to – a bunch of us girls went to a football game.  I don’t know, I suppose there were girls and guys, and I got to ride home with Bruce Smith in the car.  I remember that.  He was in the car that I got to ride home in, and I thought, “Oh, man, what a wonderful thing to have happen,” because he was just a really neat guy and everybody thought he was, you know, “the cat’s meow”, so to speak.

BP:  Were you in the back, or were you in the front seat?

MJ:  I think I was in the front seat, I think.  I think he – I don’t remember who was driving.  I think he was driving.  I think he was the driver, and then we got to ride.  Somebody was in the middle.  I’m sure I was on the outside.  But anyway, I got to ride home with him.  And I’ve got that in my diary, written down.

BP:  So a few sideways glances over…

MJ:  Yeah.  [All laugh]  And then, of course, I did know him later on.  I got to meet him later on, because when my husband and I were first married, our apartment was downtown in Northfield.  We had an apartment, and Bruce Smith and Gib Dapper, a friend of his, had a sports store right down below us.  So I did get to know him later on, too.  And now I’ve met his grandchildren.  His wife, I think is – no, it’s the Dappers that I’ve met their…not Bruce.  He’s been passed away quite a while.  But the Dapper family was from Faribault, too.  Gib Dapper, he was called.  He and Bruce had this sports store together, and we lived above it in an apartment in downtown Northfield.  And now the Dappers live in Faribault and the grandparents have passed away, but the grandchildren, I’ve met a couple of the granddaughters because I present…  Oh, this is another story.  I go over to the technical school in Faribault and give the awards for my sister-in-law every year – pass out the endowment awards.  And the two Dapper girls were recipients of the endowment awards.  So I knew their grandfather when he was in Northfield and had the store, so this is the connection there. 

BP:  It’s a great story.

MJ:  Yeah, it’s really a fun…I mean it was one of those special times, that’s for sure.

AW:  You mentioned a diary.  Can you tell us when you started keeping it, and what did you write about?

MJ:  Well, I started in 1938.  I was still two years in high school when I…and as I went through it, I went through it before I; that’s where I sort of wrote down, jotted down all these things from my diary, you know, that I was gonna tell when I was interviewed.  In those early years, of course, it was, “nothing exciting tonight,” or something like that, that’s about all I had written in there.  Or, “stayed home all evening,” or “did my homework and went to bed early.”  That’s about all I had in those first years, I think.  But after high school there were things written in there that I…of course, I had a crush on a special guy, you know, and I’ve got so much of him in there that I just don’t…! [Laughing].

BP:  This was after high school?

MJ:  This was after high school, yeah.  He was from Northfield.  He’s passed away now, too, but I really had a crush on him so a lot of these little excerpts are about him.  He got engaged to somebody else and I had to write all about that in my diary, and all that stuff, you know.  It’s pretty personal, the diary is, so I don’t know if I’d want anybody to…  But anyway, I don’t want anybody to know that I cared about somebody else from Northfield, so I better not talk too much about that.  What else did you want to…?

BP:  As an 18-year-old, what did you have planned for your future, when you got out of school?

AW:  When you got out of high school, what did you think?

MJ:  Well, I loved artwork.  If I could have afforded it and had the money, I would have gone to either some sort of art school or beauty school.  That’s another thing, when I was young – oh, about 10, 12 years old – I loved to do hair, and I’d fix the hair of all the little girls in the neighborhood.  Do their hair.  And I just sort of had a passion for that.  But of course, you needed money in those days to do those things.  So those are things I’d have liked to have done.  Gone to art school.  Right after high school I took a first aid course and worked for the nurse at the high school.  That was my first job, and she would go around to all the elementary schools, you know, and check the children, and so forth, and I’d go along with her.  They used to give Mantoux tests in those days.  If you’ve ever heard of those, they are for TB.  They were very important, I guess, that people had Mantoux tests.  And so I’d go around with the nurse and we would do that.  I’d help her out, you know.  So I did that for about…that was in ’41, end of ’40 and ’41, and I bought – with my brother’s help I bought a 1929 Model A Ford to run around in, and he taught me how to drive it.  You didn’t have to have Driver’s Education or anything, so my older brother taught me how to drive it.  Paid $50.00 for it.  I borrowed some money from him and bought this car.  So I did a lot of running around in that car, moved to Northfield, Kenyon and a few other places.  I wish I still…I don’t even have a picture of it.  Isn’t that funny?  I never took pictures in those days, so I don’t have a picture of it.  But I do remember that we had quite some good times with the car.

BP:  What were you doing when you heard about Pearl Harbor?  Where were you?

MJ:  I was at home.  I think it was on a Sunday; I remember it was on a Sunday.  We had been to church that day.  Was it Sunday evening, or was it in the morning when we heard?  It was in the afternoon, I think – wasn’t it? – Because I was home, and I remember my mother just really crying.  Because I had a brother who was 16 and 17 in those days – I mean then, when that happened.  No, I was 21 when that happened, so I had a 19-year-old and a 17-year-old brother and my mother was worried, she was really worried when she heard that.  So I think that I remember her being so upset more than…and you know, I think we all were sad when we heard what was happening.  I don’t remember very much after that except that I think we knew… That’s when I started writing about all the boys going.  I have all those articles about the Faribault [boys] taking off for the service in the National Guard. I think it was National Guard that left.

BP:  So the town was emptying out.

MJ:  Yes it was.  It really was.  That next year made a change and then it was…  Of course, then I went from working for the school nurse, I took this course in architecture and riveting to go up to…in ’42 was when I worked up at Holman Field.  It was the WPA.  That’s why I think President Roosevelt was such – he’s the one that started the WPA, Workman’s Progress Administration, I think it was called, where people were given jobs – and it was just the greatest thing, I think, to happen in those days.  I had the opportunity to take this course in Architectural Drawing to become a riveter.  So my girlfriend in Faribault – this is another.  She, without my knowledge – I knew her from high school; we weren’t very close, but I knew her from high school – she signed up for this, too, and then, also, Dorothy Adams signed up, my close friend.  There were four of us, and then a girl from Albert Lea.  We were four of us that were sent down to Austin, Minnesota, put up in the Grand Hotel, they put us in the Grand Hotel in one huge room where all four of us stayed, in this huge room.  We had to go to classes at the high school.  They had classes, and we would go from about eight to noon, nine to noon, I think, and then we’d have lunch, and I think they were very nice.  I think they gave us lunch at the high school, if I’m not mistaken, and then we’d go back to class from one to three, and then we were off – we were through for the day, and so we had a fun time in Austin.  We went to the [Terp?] Ballroom – all their Big Band music.  So this was about eight weeks; this course was eight to ten weeks, I think, in Austin.  And of course, riding back home by bus because we had no car at that time.  My car was long gone, that old Ford.  So we would take the bus, my girlfriend and I, back and forth to Faribault.  Well, one of my girlfriends, Dorothy, decided she just didn’t like it.  She didn’t like this drawing and stuff and so she said, “I’m dropping out.”  So she dropped out and went to work for Hormel.  Hormel’s Meat Plant.  And she was there, I think, for 30 years.  So she lived in Austin all that time.  So there were three of us, then, that finished the course.  I don’t know what happened to the one gal that was from Waseca – I think she was from – but my friend, Corky, and I – she’s one of my bowling members – finished, and we went up to Holman Field and applied for the job of riveter.  She and I.  Just the two of us.

BP:  And the company you were working for?  Northwest?

MJ:  Well, it was through Northwest Airlines that we put our application in, but we worked at Holman Field.  So I think I started there in…I think it was about 1943, early 1943.

AW:  I’m going to get some coffee, would you like some?

BP:  Do you want to take a break?

MJ:  Would you?  Yeah.

[Break in interview.]

BP:  I think we’re on again.  Where did we leave off?

MJ:  I think we left off where I started at Holman Field.  And that was in February of ’43 that I started.  [I] had applied at Northwest Airlines and started work at Holman Field.  My girlfriend, Corky and I, lived with her aunt in Minneapolis off Lake Street and rode the streetcar to work.  We had three different shifts; two weeks of 8-4, two weeks of 4-12 and two weeks of 12-8, which we called the graveyard shift.  So we just rode back and forth to…I mean, on the streetcar.  Those were wonderful.  I wish they had streetcars – they were wonderful.  They really were.  And for entertainment we probably…I think we went to a lot of movies in those days, or the Prom Ballroom.  Some of the theaters, there were good entertainers, I think.  I’m trying to think.  I think the Andrews Sisters were there entertaining, and also Big Bands…Woody Herman…

BP:  So you saw the Andrews Sisters?

MJ:  We saw the Andrews Sisters, um hum.  They had live entertainment in those days at some of the theaters downtown.

BP:  What was it like to see the Andrews Sisters?

MJ:  Oh, it was great, because we heard their songs, you know, over the war years, we were beginning to hear all those wonderful songs.  I loved the Andrews Sisters.  They were great.  I was going to tell you, we made about – the salary we made was about $50.00 a week, which was a good salary in those days, it was pretty good.  But after they took out – oh, they took out for war bonds, and they took out for Social Security, victory checks – a number of checks – it ended up about $42.00 a week that we had. 

BP:  And what did you do with your money?

MJ:  Well, kind of put it away.  We were fortunate that we didn’t have to pay any room rent, I mean, because we stayed with my friend’s aunt and she was so happy to have us.  Her husband was up in Alaska doing some work for the government and she had two little girls.  So we stayed there rent-free, but we contributed to groceries and that sort of thing, so we did help her out, I’m sure.  She’s still living, by the way.  She lives over in Menomonee, Wisconsin and was just over here a while ago.  So it’s so wonderful to see her again, and she’s over 90 years old, but she’s just in great health.  So we talk about those days every once in a while when we lived there.

BP:  What was a typical day like at work?

MJ:  Well, if I can remember.  We had – it was so funny, all the new workers got broken in by having to go to the Parts Department to pick up a part, and I remember this because; and I don’t know what they called, what they said it was for.  So we gals, you know, we’d go down and pick up this part for, or we’d ask for it and they’d all laugh.  The guys that were in the Parts Department would say, “We don’t have any of those right now.”  Well, it turned out it was the tube, the relief tube that was on the plane [laughing] and that’s the part of it.  So that was their joke on us, you know.  The crew chief thought that was a big joke to “break in” the girls.  So that was what the part was that they had told us to pick up.  That was one of the things that I remember happening.  We didn’t do a lot of using the rivet gun, but we did a lot of putting in rivets and spacing, you know, and more of the architectural work than we did the actual use of the guns.  They would fly them in – pilots would fly them in and then they’d stay around for a day or two until these were finished, and then they’d fly them out again.

Well, I did have a date with one of the pilots one night.  I even remember I wrote down, we saw the movie, “Air Force”, of all things.  And then we used to go to the roller derby.  We used to have those in those days.  We really enjoyed that, going to the roller derby.  So that was kind of our entertainment in those days.  Mostly movies and shows, theater shows, and things like the roller derby.  Because usually, when we’d get home after work, a person is really – we really didn’t care to go out very much unless it was a time that we worked the afternoon shift.  So the time that we worked was the most important for us to be doing anything.

AW:  Can you describe a little bit what it was like to move from Faribault to Minneapolis?

MJ:  Well, yes.  I was living; my girlfriend had moved to Northfield then and I was living in Faribault.  And she said, “Now, you get on the bus,” she said, “and I’m gonna get on in Northfield and we’ll apply up at Northwest Airlines.”  Well, I tell you, I was petrified because I was a follower.  I was not a leader at all, I was a follower, and if she had not gotten on the bus in Northfield, I would have not gone.  I would have gotten off because I was that scared to go anywhere by myself.  But she got on, and so we went together and we applied up at the airlines.  But that was so funny because I was really very timid.

AW:  What were some of your first impressions of Minneapolis?

MJ:  I thought…of course, we always thought Minneapolis was huge.  And when I think now, of course, it’s amazing how we would ride the streetcar.  We lived about eight blocks from the streetcar line – you know, where we got on and got off.  And at 12:00 at night we’d get off and walk home and never think anything of it in those days, and feel pretty safe.  But I loved the streetcars and thought that was great.  In the morning shift it took about maybe 20 minutes to half an hour to go from – we lived in Minneapolis and of course Holman Field is in St. Paul.  It took probably close to half an hour, so we’d get a good chance to have a little snooze, too, before we got there. 

AW:  Did you like living in a bigger city?

MJ:  Well, I was there for about a year, is about all I worked up there.  I liked it.  I liked the things that were…the activities, and the shows, and the things like that.  But otherwise, I don’t know, I didn’t really.  I think I would have been happier in a smaller town.  That’s why, I guess, I went to a smaller town.  So that was…I think it was in the fall that I had my appendix out, so I left the airlines for a while and had an appendectomy in Faribault and then after three weeks went back to the airlines again; back to work again.  But at about the end of 1943 it started slowing down up there.  I think they probably had all the equipment in the planes that they needed.  So my girlfriend and I then decided to come to Northfield.

BP:  What was the ratio of men to women at the plant?

MJ:  We always had, there were crew chiefs of course, were all men.  I would say probably; I think a crew probably was about six; I would say maybe two gals and four guys.  I think it was maybe less than half, 40 percent probably were the women.

AW:  Were you close with the other women workers?

MJ:  Oh, yeah, we’d get together every once in a while for…we’d have a coffee break, of course, and we’d get together.  I kept in touch with a few of them for a while – six months, maybe, or so – and then you sort of meet new friends and [I] moved to Northfield, and so I didn’t keep in touch with any of them that I…but…

BP:  How about war news?  While you were working, and on breaks and lunches, did people talk about losing a brother and things like that?

MJ:  Yeah, there were people that talked about their service brothers, you know, brothers in the service.  Mostly, there weren’t too many women in those days that were in.  Although I have a niece who was a WAVE, she was in the WAVES.  But there were some that…but we never really – we were there – worked pretty  much with the same crew most of the time and then went home and that was it.  So we never really mingled a lot except for maybe a coffee break once in a while.  I don’t recall even getting together afterwards or anything with the people there. 

BP:  Newsletters, was that a big deal at the plant?

MJ:  I don’t recall that there was any.  There certainly wasn’t anything put out from the plant itself that I know of – any type of news.  I don’t recall that at all.  It was very…a lot of security, of course, because we had badges with our picture on it that we had to wear [or we] couldn’t get in.

BP:  Did you ever follow the planes that you fixed?

MJ:  No, but some of the girls put their names and addresses right under the steering apparatus or something, they’d stick in a name.  I wonder if any of them ever heard from anybody or not, I don’t know.  No, we never did follow.  They ended up, of course, in Tucson, Arizona where that picture was taken.  The Pima Air [& Space] Museum in Tucson where we went for 14 winters, we visited Pima Air Museum quite a few times because all these old planes, all the junk is out there, it’s just a [unclear – sounds like “fought ‘em”].  And that’s where that picture of me was taken standing next to the B-29 – B-24.

BP:  So, mainly B-24s.

MJ:  Mainly B-24s, um hum. 

AW:  That’s what you worked on?

MJ:  Um hum, yeah. 

AW:  Was the work hard?  Was it…?

MJ:  Well, it was.  Yeah, it was.  You had to be pretty accurate – I mean to get these rivets in there – and we had to be pretty nimble.  I never could do it now, that’s for sure.  [Phone ringing in background.]

[Break in interview.]

BP:  Should we talk about the work real quick?

AW:  So you were describing some of the work – that you had to be really accurate.

MJ:  Yes, we really had to.  That’s why the architectural drawing that we took was pretty complete, because of exact places where we had to put rivets, and they were marked, of course.  And so we had to be pretty nimble with the fingers.  But we never heard any complaints and everything evidently must have worked out because those planes were used in the war, you know.  They went overseas with the gun turrets, so I think they say the B-24 was one of the best bombing planes that they had.

AW:  Did you have a uniform of some kind?

MJ:  Coveralls.  Yeah, those coveralls that I had on in the picture.

BP:  That picture that you have there, that was taken…

AW:  When was that taken?

BP:  …in front of…at home, or was this going to work?

MJ:  That was taken at the place where I lived, up in the Cities.  And of course, I didn’t have my hair tied up, you see.  We tied it up.

AW:  Do you still have your coveralls?

MJ:  No.  I wish I did.

BP:  We have Northwest coveralls in the collection of Northwest Airlines.

AW:  Do you have your badge?

MJ:  They made us turn that in.

AW:  Did you have a toolbox or anything?

MJ:  Nope.  Everything was supplied when we got there. 

AW:  So when did you stop working?

MJ:  At the end of 1943 my girlfriend said, “Let’s go to Northfield.”  She said, “I have friends living in Northfield.”  At that time my mother had moved in with my grandmother, so I didn’t really have my mother to worry too much about.  My grandmother, she was in fairly good health, too, at that time.  So they moved in together, and so I thought, “Well, I don’t have to go back to Faribault for that reason.

So we moved to Northfield, and my girlfriend had really good friends living here in Northfield who had two sons in the service, and two daughters.  They were good friends of hers, the girls, and then both of the fellows were in the service. They had gone into the service.  The mother was a widow, and she was just a wonderful lady, and she said, “You two come and live with me.”  And so then we moved in with her and it was right downtown – right by the Post Office in downtown Northfield, she had an apartment.  Then I got my first job, which was at a jewelry store.  Their name was Knutson, and Betty Knutson worked at the jewelry store and she said, Millie, I’ll get you a job there.  So she got me a job at the jewelry store and my friend Corky got a job at Carleton College.  So we started our first jobs in Northfield, then, in 1943 – end of 1943.

BP:  Or ’46.

AW:  No, ’43.

MJ:  ’43.

BP:  Oh, ’43.

MJ:  Yeah.  This was in ’43 that I was up at the airlines, until the end of ’43.  So my first job as then at [Elmenson’s?] Jewelry Store.  I started bowling then in 1944; that was my first bowling…and that’s when I made my best score, 253, was in…

AW:  Was that your first game?

MJ:  No, not the first game, but it was during that year of bowling that I made the 253.

BP:  Wow!

AW:  Why did you start bowling?

MJ:  Well, this place where we lived was right across from the bowling alley.  The bowling alley at that time – it’s out on Highway 3 now, but at that time it was right downtown where “The Northfield News” is, and right across the street was this apartment building that I lived in.  So it was a matter of walking across the street and throwing a few balls.  I just started by doing that and then we formed a team, all galfriends of mine that I knew real well.  So that’s how I got started with the bowling, was just by walking across the street to the bowling alley.

BP: It’s pretty addictive.

MJ:  Yes, it was.  I really loved it, too.  I liked to bowl.  And so the first team that we bowled for was Mayer’s Beauty Shop, and then of course all the other teams came later on.  I don’t think I’ve got those in order or anything.  It’s on that.  I think all the information about that is on that article out of the news.

BP:  What about the shoes and the bag.  When did you buy those?

MJ:  Those were about in 1949, I think it was the year that Percy and I were married.  And that’s when I got the ball, too.  He gave me the ball and he said, “You better get a bag, too – a ball and a bag.”  So I think that was one of his gifts for me when we were married, right after we were married.  So I’d say ’49 was when…

AW:  How did you meet Percy?

MJ:  I met him after the war in Northfield.  He played for the Northfield baseball team and that’s what we did in the summers, it seemed like – a group of us would all get together and go to the baseball game.  And that’s where I met him, was at the baseball game.  He played many years for the Northfield Knights baseball team.  And then, of course, after the games we’d all go to – well, it’s called “Grundy’s” now, but it was the corner bar, or one of the local clubs, and had beer afterwards.  And that’s how I met him.  That was in 1946 – ’45 – right after the war, ’45.  So we went together quite a long time before we married in ’49. 

AW:  Back to bowling.  It’s become such a big part of your life.  Can you describe what it was like during the ‘50s – why you kept going, and what was it about it that you really enjoyed?

MJ:  Well, I don’t know.  It was Tuesday night league.  We bowled early one week; late the next.  We had two times.  We had ten teams, so we had a pretty good turn-out.  And there were five on a team.  Now I’m bowling with two on a team in an afternoon league that we only have six teams; or five teams.  That’s all we can get together.  So I think a lot of people took an interest in bowling.  Of course, it wasn’t a new bowling alley when I started, but then in about ten years, I think…must have been ten years…at least ten years, I bowled in the old alley and then they went off to the new bowling alley on Highway 3, south of Northfield.  I just loved the sport.  I just really loved it.  And it was something to do every Tuesday night.  And just meeting all these different gals.  I mean there was a hospital team, so it was gals from the hospital that were nurses and worked at the hospital.  And then there was, oh, a team from maybe one of the local restaurants downtown that got a team together.  And so there were many different – you met a lot of different people that way.  So it was fun.  My sister-in-law bowled, too.  Percy’s sister bowled on a team too, so she’s in one of those pictures. 

BP:  So after you would gather and talk.

MJ:  Yes, and we’d have a banquet every year, of course, and then we’d – there was a group of us that always went out after the banquet.  We’d go someplace locally, either to Faribault or one of the nightclubs down there someplace.  So we always…not every Tuesday night, because in those early days I had babies to come home to.  And I was lucky that I had a husband that would take care of them, you know.  When I did go bowling, he took care.  And then, later on, I got sitters, too, but it was still, those early years, I don’t think we went out too much after bowling.  The later years we did.  We’d go out almost every time we bowled, we’d go someplace afterwards.  Either for pie and ice cream, or pie and coffee, or maybe to the local VFW or someplace like that.

BP:  Would you say you saw billboards or advertisements for bowling in those early years?  Something that just made it popular?  What sparked this interest in bowling at that time?

MJ:  Of course, there had been bowling, you know, before I started, I’m sure.  I don’t know when they…I don’t recall.  They’re doing more advertising now for the bowling alley than they ever did then, because now they’re having a hard time getting people.  You know, it’s really slowed down.  They don’t even have people out there bowling at all.  And getting a team together is even a hard thing to do nowadays.  So I don’t know that they even had to advertise in any way or anything.

BP:  It was just popular.

MJ:  It was just a popular sport.  Between baseball on Sundays and bowling during the week, I think that was it, probably.  There wasn’t the activity going on with sports through the colleges that there is now, either.  I’m sure there were college games probably on weekends, like on Saturdays, but otherwise I don’t think there was a lot of sports, and not a lot of young people involved in sports like they are nowadays, where we older parents would be having free time rather than to be going to sports, attending things.

AW:  Do you think it was popular because people liked having friends and joining groups, and do you think that was one of the reasons, the social aspect of bowling?  Is that what made it popular?

MJ:  Well, I think so.  I think it was just a friendly getting together with people and groups, and this was ladies, of course, all ladies, you see, too.  So there were ten teams and five on a team.  That’s fifty gals getting together on a Tuesday night, so it was a lot of activity.

AW:  Did you join anything else during the 1950s or ‘60s?  Any other groups?  Any bridge groups or…

MJ:  I played bridge; I was in a bridge club.  I played golf.  I took some golf lessons from one of our local older fellows that is well known in town.  His name was John Westerlund.  I don’t know if you’ve every heard of Johnnie Western; he’s a singer, a western singer that is quite popular now.  This is his father, who was a very good golfer and taught – gave lessons.  So I took some lessons.  That was, I would say, probably in about 1945, ’46 that I started, and I did golf for 25 years.  [I] played golf for 25 years and then I gave it up. [I] thought I’d stay with the bowling.

AW:  Do you have any of your golf clubs or anything like that?

MJ:  You know, I sold them at a garage sale and they were Patty Berg clubs.  I wish I could… and I sold them for $5.00 for the bag and the clubs.  I sold them to the next door neighbor and I had often wondered if I could just go over and ask if I could buy them back, if she still had them.  Just a young fellow and he said, oh, I think I’ll start playing golf.  But I don’t know whether he ever did or not, but that’s where…  And you know, like, my kids, they make me kind of mad because they’re the ones that say, “Get rid of this, Mom, you don’t want this.  You’re not going to play golf anymore, why not get rid of the golf clubs?”  And so I sold them for $5.00.  But they were Patty Berg and now you just hear that she passed away a little while ago and I thought, “Oh,” then kind of nice to….  In fact, her name is in this.  Isn’t it in there? 

AW:  Yep.

MJ:  I bought that book, yeah.

AW:  Did you keep any… Do you have any images of you playing bridge, or any mementos from the bridge club?

MJ:  Oh, I suppose I do, but I don’t know where they’d be.  I never thought about that.  Yeah, we had a good bridge club then.  I think most of them have passed away now.  I think I’m probably the only one.  There’s one other gal that is left.

BP:  What did you like about bridge?

MJ:  I didn’t like it, to tell you the truth.  I really just enjoyed the getting together with these friends, you know.  They were different friends from the bowling friends.  So I just enjoyed getting together and they were all mothers, and so sometimes we’d even bring our little babies to the bridge party and let the babies play and then we’d play bridge.  So it was more or less a different group of ladies that were good friends.  But I was never a good bridge player and some of them got so they were really good and didn’t appreciate somebody that didn’t concentrate on the bridge.  So I quit after a few years.  The bridge club really sort of folded up after some of the ladies got sick and passed away.  So I just quit the bridge.

AW:  Did a lot of people play bridge?

MJ:  There’s a lot of people that play bridge right now, I’m sure.  The Senior Center has…three times a week they play cards at the Senior Center, and I’m sure there’s bridge and all other games that they play.  But I belong to 31-club now, and there are just about eight of us gals that decided we’d start a little card club going and we meet; in fact I’m meeting this afternoon.  I told her I’d be late in getting there, so. 

BP:  We only have a few more questions.

AW:  Yeah.  Let’s talk about kids and babies, and starting a family, and things like that.  So, how many children did you have and when were they born?

MJ:  Four.  I had four.  David was born – he is the oldest, and he was born in 1950.  He never married.  David lives in Mankato.  He works for Gander Mountain.  He graduated from Mankato State – it wasn’t Mankato State then – with a Phys. Ed. Degree, but never pursued it to the point that he went into teaching or anything, so he works for Gander Mountain.  He’s been there for a number of years.

Then there’s Dawn, and Dawn is married and lives in…my daughter Dawn was born in 1954.  She lives in Stewartville.  She works for the Mayo Clinic.  She’s a social director in the Obstetrics Department at Mayo.  Her husband, Larry, teaches Phys. Ed. in the elementary school in Stewartville, and they have three sons who are all married now, and one son has two children. 

Then there’s Julie.  Julie was born in December of ’55.  And that’s when I got my diamond ring.  I’ll have to tell you about that.  When Percy…  Anyway, she was born in 1955.  She and her husband live in South Lake, Texas, which is near Dallas.  John is with IBM, he’s a representative for IBM and Julie teaches pre-school.  They have two children:  Anne is 21 and works for a printing company in Dallas, Mark is 18 and is going to start Trinity College this fall. 

Then there’s Jean.  Jean is the art director for Johnson Plastics in Minneapolis, and she has been there for a number of years.  She’s the artist in our family.  She’s the one that did those portraits over there of Percy and I, and the photo over there.  She does a number of things.  Anyway, she is married and her husband works for Aaron Carlson architectural firm, and they have two children.  Allison just turned 29 years old; she is [in North Carolina?] at the University of New Hampshire and she will be getting her Ph.D. sometime this year.  She’s been in college since 1997 when she graduated from high school.  She went to Luther College and Michigan State and now at the University of New Hampshire.  She’s a wonderful girl.  She’s into research.  She’s actually going to get her degree in Sociology, but she loves research, so she’s going to be doing that.  And then her brother, Jesse, graduated from Jamestown, North Dakota and is going into police work.  He has applied all over…Minneapolis, St. Paul.  He went to the academy, too and has applied all over Minneapolis, all the suburbs, and has not been able to get a job.  So he did get a job with Aaron Carlson architectural firm that he really has a good job there and they’ve given him a promotion, so I think he’s going to quit pursuing the police work and continue with that.  He and his girlfriend have a daughter, that’s their daughter, Olivia.

AW:  That’s great.  Tell us a little bit about when you had the children.  Where did you have them?

MJ:  Percy and I were married in 1949 at St. John’s Church; I was going to tell you, when Percy asked me to marry him he was at the Mobil gas station – was managing the Mobil gas station – and I was working for Serge Electric.  I was working for an electric company.  We had appliances and so forth downtown.  And of course, money was a little scarce in those days, and you got married without really thinking, wow, where we going to live, what are we going to do.  Anyway, he said when he asked me to marry him – he asked if I wanted a ring or a refrigerator.  I took the refrigerator.  And I have a picture of the Crosley refrigerator that I…

AW:  That is perfect!

MJ:  And somebody would say to me, “Well, where did you get the refrigerator?”  And I said, “Well, I worked for this appliance store and they had refrigerators, so I probably got it for a good discount.”  So I got the Crosley refrigerator.  And then, in ’55, when Julie was born – she was born December 1st – at Christmas then he gave me the diamond ring.  So it was that many years later that I got it.  And so that was always kind of a good story, I think.

BP:  So you were at the beginning of all this “boom”, with appliances and people wanting to furnish their homes…

MJ:  Yeah, it was, and you know, in those days you didn’t think about buying a house when you got married.  You just thought, “If we find a good rental spot,” that’s about the best.  Because in the gas station he was managing – a Mobile gas station – and, you know, gas was five gallons for a dollar in those days, I think, about that.  And I think he made two cents on a gallon that was sold, or something like that, you know, and so wages, you know, weren’t that…  I made 25 dollars a week at the electric shop. 

AW:  Were many people coming in to buy new things, new appliances?

MJ:  Oh, yeah.  Actually, it was called Serge Electric, because we also sold Serge milkers.  In those times they [had] just came out with a milking machine, and this was the Serge Milking Machine, so we had people coming in.  Then, in the back of the store [where] I worked was a little radio shop that another fellow had.  So he fixed radios and repaired things like that.  So I worked in there as kind of the clerk for all these guys.  I mean there were four fellows that owned the shop.  And so I went from taking things into the radio shop to selling what they called inflations for Serge.  They were called “inflations” – they were what hooked onto the cow, I mean, and then hooked up to the machine.  They called them inflations.  They were kind of a rubber thing, you know, I suppose, and they had to be replaced once in a while, so people would come in and buy those.

AW:  Did they sell home appliances in this store?

MJ:  Yes, we sold refrigerators, and stoves, and not any washing machines.  I think it was mostly refrigerators and stoves and some radios, and that sort of thing, too.

AW:  Any mixers? 

MJ:  And small appliances.  A lot of small appliances.

AW:  Were people buying those, or were they generally buying refrigerators – the bigger appliances?

MJ:  Oh, people were buying, yeah.  A lot of times people were giving them as gifts, I think a lot of times.  I don’t remember what they looked like in those days.  I think I still have my mixer, hand mixer that I bought there at that time.

AW:  Did you buy that with your own money, or did you, kind of for the house…?

MJ:  For the house.  And we lived above the sports store downtown in an apartment, in a back apartment.  It was hot; no air conditioning in those days, you know, and it was really warm.  But we had a living room, and a bedroom, and a little dining area, and a kitchen all kind of in one huge room.  And we had a…oh, what’s the name of that washer – spin washer?   Oh, what was the name…?   I know Hoover made them, too…

AW:  You can just describe how it worked. 

MJ:  Yeah, you washed at one side, and then spin the clothes on the other side.

AW:  A ringer washer?

MJ:  No, it had a spin cycle in it, where you’d wash the clothes and then put them in the spin cycle; it was all in one machine.  I can’t think of the name.  But anyway, we had this tiny little kitchen and every time we’d wash clothes, when we’d put them in the spin dryer we’d have to hang onto it so it wouldn’t roll around the whole kitchen because it was on rollers and all.  And then Percy was working at the Mobile gas station in those days, wearing white coveralls, so I’d wash those white coveralls in that washer and try to spin them out in that dryer.

BP:  This was an older washer?

MJ:  No, it was one of the newer ones that were made in those days, and I can’t think of the name of it.  It just came out in those days as a new, I suppose maybe in one of catalogs they might have some pictures of them, I don’t know.

BP:  Did you find it in a catalog, or did you find it at the store?

MJ:  I think we had it at the; no, we didn’t sell washers at the store.  I don’t know where it came from.  We probably bought it used.  Lots of times you’d look through the papers and found used appliances, too, in those days.

AW:  How did these appliances change your daily routine [of] taking care of the house, or cleaning house?  How did these appliances change that?

MJ:  Well, at that time we – when we were first married, of course, we didn’t have any children, and so I didn’t have that [responsibility], but I was still working, I still worked for a while – not too long; as soon as my son was born then I quit working, but I was still working.  I think everybody in those days had pretty much the same situation.  Lots of people lived in apartments, maybe upstairs where they had to share a bathroom with someone downstairs.  We, luckily, had our own bathroom in this apartment, but the people that lived there before that were St. Olaf students.  I still have the sign.  They had their name on a little sign outside the door.  When we were going to rent it, when they were leaving, they changed the sign so it said “Millie and Percy” on it – on this little sign that was hanging outside the door.

AW:  Did it make things easier than when you were younger and having to do the daily chores?

MJ:  I think so. I think we accepted…well, you know, we had T.V. then because we sold – well, no we didn’t sell TV’s at the store, but we had a TV.  It was just coming out, so we had a TV in our store for people to look at.

BP:  Was that your first…?

MJ:  That was the first, uh huh.  And then when we got married we did get a black and white TV so we did have a TV.

BP:  You bought it from Serge?

MJ:  No, because they didn’t – I don’t know where we got it.  They didn’t sell TV’s, they just had one to look at in the store.

AW:  What kinds of shows did you watch?

MJ:  Well, of course, it was Steve Allen, it was Arthur Godfrey…I’m trying to think of some of the other shows that first came out.  A lot of game shows.  That’s about the only ones I can remember.

AW:  What kinds of shows did your kids watch?

MJ:  Well, they, of course, watched “Sesame Street;” of course that was a favorite when that came out, and then “Bonanza” was a favorite for the family.  That was on Sunday night.  I remember we’d make hamburgers and beans and we’d all go in the living room and sit around and watch “Bonanza.”  That was kind of a family gathering for that show. 

BP:  Was wrestling popular?

MJ:  I don’t know, I never did watch it; I don’t know whether it was or not in those days.  It probably was, but I never watched it.

BP:  What was your first impression when you got the TV home? 

MJ:  You mean the first TV?

AW:  Your thoughts about it.

MJ:  Well, like anybody else, wondering how a picture could come out of it.  After listening to the radio for many, many years, you are just…it’s really something, hard to understand, how this is going to come through the – you know, that’s how you see a picture.  You used to go to movies and see it on a screen, but to see it on a [television set], it was just… well it was kind of fun, it was a thrill, really, to see that.  We had…the TV was a big console model with a screen about this big around, so we’d have to sit pretty close to watch it.

BP:  A little screen.

MJ:  Yeah, but it was fun. 

AW:  Do you have any pictures of the TV?  Or any pictures of the TV and your family?  Where was it in the house?

MJ:  It was in the living room, and I suppose I probably would have that in one of my photo albums downstairs.  I probably would have a picture of that.  I don’t know whether I did or not.  We sold a lot, then of course we bought our store in 1964 and sold  a lot of TV’s and had a repair man in town, so we repaired old TV’s and would sell them on Crazy Days, you know, put them out on the sidewalk and sell them for used.  [There were] a lot of consoles in those days.  Downstairs I had the TV taken out of the cherry cabinet and I had shelves put in it, and so I still have that downstairs, and I have it as a cabinet, but it was a TV at one time.  So we sold a lot of cabinet TV’s to people – I mean as used TV’s –  that probably took them apart and used them for something else, because they were beautiful, beautiful cabinets in that day.

But I did – when Jean…I have to tell you about my [daughter].  I taught Sunday School for 30 years at St. John’s Church.  I started when Jean was three – my youngest daughter, when she was three years old, and that was in 1960.   From 1960 to 1990 I taught the 3-year-old class Sunday school.  That was very rewarding for me.  And now, actually, towards the last, I had children of some of those that I had [in class].  Every once in a while I’ll hear from some of the people that were in my Sunday school class.  In fact, last Sunday, two weeks ago, I was asked to present a lighted candle to a young fellow at his baby’s baptism, that I had had in my Sunday school class when he was three years old.  So that was really an honor for me to do that, and that was just a rewarding experience, teaching Sunday school for all those years.  One of the really funny things: in the first few years there was this little boy that – I think it was one of the first years that I taught – that called me “Mrs. Jesus”.  And he would not say “Mrs. Johnson”.  I was “Mrs. Jesus” all the time that he was there at the Sunday school.  So that is one of the interesting things of my life.

Now, as far as organizations that I belong to, I still belong to the Historical Society and the Senior Center.  I go for water aerobics three times a week to the Senior Center.  I deliver Meals on Wheels and I work at the Bloodmobile once in a while when I’m asked to work there.  So these are the volunteer things that I do now-days to keep me busy.  And they do keep me busy.  Plus the old Trondhjem Church is out west of town.  It’s where Percy’s grandparents are buried in the cemetery.  They were some of the founders of this church.  And they built a new church on Highway 19, out near Lonsdale and they were going to tear down the old church.  Well, a group of people got together and decided to keep the old church, to preserve it, and we have now preserved it back to the way it looked in 1895.  If you ever get a chance, you should go out and see that because we’ve had people from the History Center, I think, come down.  Well John Lundell comes down, you know, twice a month and helps us.  We’re restoring all the… he’s probably told you about that; we’re restoring all the photographs.  So I’m getting involved in that, too.  And I do all the publicity for all their things that are going on.  We’re having an ice cream social now on July 27th and so I do all the publicity.

AW:  So, for some of these volunteer organizations, why did you choose to join these?

MJ:  Well, I guess I was asked, probably.  I don’t know.  Percy…

AW:  Do you find it rewarding?

MJ:  Well, I have certain friends.  For instance for Meals on Wheels I go to the retirement home and to the assisted living apartments, some of them, and I have three friends that are there, so I get to visit with my friends when I do that.  The Bloodmobile, I don’t know…I started doing that – just working in the Canteen, of course – and I started that, oh, about fifteen years ago.  They don’t always call me, but when they need somebody…  They are in town maybe two or three times a year at different places where the Red Cross comes down and has that.  So they call me if they need someone, so I do that.  It’s just a matter of helping out, I guess.

BP:  You also meet with your classmates, your high school classmates?

MJ:  We have a class reunion.  I have a photo album of my class reunion, too, since we met in 1960 for the first time and then we’d meet every five years and now it’s every year.  We meet every year in Faribault.  So I keep a photo album of that.  I have photo albums.  I belong to the Aquacize group, or this water aerobics [group] – for twenty years I have been doing that, so I have pictures of twenty years of our group that’s gone for that, and then the bowling, and then the class reunions, and then I have a VFW too, I do books for the VFW.

BP:  Talk about that a little bit, the VFW.

MJ:  Well, I’ve been a past president.  I was president of the Auxiliary in ’63 and ’64.  I’m very involved in anything that is going on down there, I mean, that we have.  Of course we have things like steak fry every second Friday of the month, and we have smorgasbords and we have membership dinners, and then it’s through the VFW that I’m doing the Meals on Wheels.  We volunteer for Meals on Wheels.  We meet for coffee every Thursday morning – for rolls and coffee.  It started with about 15 or 20, and it’s up to 50 men and women, gals and guys that meet.  So we have that really good group.  We have a – for 30 years we’ve had a kiddie parade on Jesse James Days and I’ve been a clown for over 25 years in the kiddie parade.

AW:  Do you enjoy that?

MJ:  That’s really been fun.

BP:  I saw the picture, that’s nice. 

MJ:  So we really have done, you know…That’s one of the things that has been fun for the VFW.  And then I have a photo album, too.  I’ve kept photo albums of their 50th, that’s where I got that out of, that 50th celebration that we had, I have the whole photo album of events that took place during that time.

BP:  What was this day like for you?  This is the…

AW:  50th anniversary.

MJ:   Yeah, that was the 50th anniversary of the….

AW:  What was that like for you?

MJ:  Oh, that was so much fun.  And it was such a great; we had that park down there all with bands playing music from that.  And then Dianne Evans was sort of on charge of it.  She lived in Northfield; she’s moved away now, but she’d lived in Northfield and she was a Nurse in the Viet Nam War and she’s the one that got the Memorial started in Washington, D.C. for the Vietnam nursing.  So we went out to that, too.  When they had the dedication of that, my husband and I went to that.  But it was just a great celebration; the big parade, there was something going on at the park all the time. On the bandstand there was a group that imitated the Andrews Sisters, and then Dianne Evans…Oh, and then they had a flyover of a B-25 and Percy got to ride.  He got to go up in that and fly over.  So it was the best, I think, celebration we’ve ever had in Northfield.  It was just great. 

BP:  And these are friends from Northfield?

AW:  Yeah, describe that picture.

BP:  Yes.  This is Evie Truax and ….

MJ:  Yeah, these are...This is [Jessie Lindbergh?] and Evie Truax.  They were both in…now [Jessie?] worked out in California, in one of the war plants out there.  I don’t know just what Evie did, but the three of us did something in the line of…and they had, I don’t know what this…“Home front, we fed the world,”

BP:  Well, probably farming and…

MJ:  Oh, yeah, that’s what it was, yeah.  We had all kinds of things in there.  I just took this page out.  I could show you the rest.

BP:  That’s a nice photograph.  I didn’t even see the box.  That was a big day.

MJ:   Oh that picture is of all the veterans marching down the street – any veteran that wanted to be in it.  And now, of course, we have a new Veteran’s Park over here, Memorial Park, where we have paver blocks and it’s a beautiful park where we have our Memorial Day celebration.  That’s another thing I do for the VFW, every Memorial Day, and I don’t know if I have a picture of that right here… We have a celebration at the park, and we have markers for every veteran that has passed away this past year, and they set up markers and then I print the names of all the deceased.  There were 50 this year from this Northfield area; 50 veterans that have passed away.  So I’ve done that for over 20 years, too.  So that’s one way I help with the VFW.

AW:  Now, during this whole time you’ve been bowling.  So can you just say a few words about how long you’ve been bowling and how many years?

MJ:  Well, I started bowling in 1944.  I lived across the street so I started walking to the bowling alley and just thought it was sort of fun to do.  I heard there was a team starting up – there were some other gals that were interested.  In fact, I think I talked the other gals into joining this team, and bowled until…well, I’m still bowling.  So that’s when I started, in 1944.  I have missed one year in 64 years, and that was just the year that my husband passed away.  I had to have some carpal tunnel surgery and it was on the right hand, and so I thought I’d better take off one year.  So that’s the only year I’ve missed.  I would have my babies in between and maybe bowl for a couple of months anyway, and then go have the babies.  So I started in 1944.

AW:  And we have a few more questions about the babies…Did you have the babies in a hospital?  Did you…?

MJ:  All my children were born in the hospital, um hum, Northfield Hospital.

AW:  And you were telling us the story earlier about a friend you met when you were…

MJ:  Yes, this friend of mine, Phyllis [Factsfog?], her name is, was in, we shared a room in the hospital. In those days you didn’t have a private room, you shared a room. My daughter was born on March 20, 1957 and her daughter, Karen, was born March 22, 1957.  And we just became really good friends in the hospital and we just… Every birthday of our children – it was my youngest child, and then she had another little boy after that, so she had another child; this was her oldest and my youngest – so every birthday party, at Christmas time, any holidays, we’d get together.  She and her husband and two children did not have any other relatives in Northfield, so it seemed like we were kind of family oriented, too.

AW:  Was Percy there when you were having the children?  Was he in the hospital room?

MJ:  No, they didn’t…. Well, they had a waiting room in those days.  I don’t think any of the fellows went in for the birth.  When it was over with, the doctor came and told them.  Yeah, he was there for all four of my births, when they were born.

AW:  Did he ever say anything about waiting in the waiting room, or…?

MJ:  No, not that I remember?

AW:  Did they smoke cigars, then? 

MJ:  I don’t remember them getting out cigars, either.  They all smoked cigarettes, of course in those days, everybody did.  I didn’t.  I never smoked, so that’s one thing I never had to give up.  But anyway, no, I can remember he was really pleased when David was born because it was a boy, the first.  And I remember the doctor saying, “Well, here’s the first one of your baseball team.”  So I remember he was happy about that.  But otherwise they were pretty routine births.

AW:  Ben, here, has some objects that you found.  If you could tell us a little bit about this red…

MJ:  That’s what I wore after Jean was born.  After the hospital we could wear a robe; I thought it was a bed jacket, but it is a little bit longer.

BP:  And this is the only one you saved?

MJ:  That’s the only one that I saved, uh huh.

BP:  Is there a reason you saved it?

MJ:  Well, I don’t know why.  I just found it; I had a cedar chest downstairs and that’s where I found all this stuff, you know.  I’ve got things…

AW:  How long did you get to stay in the hospital after you had the baby?

MJ:  Six days…six days or seven days.  I think, let’s see…which one of them had measles when I was in the hospital?  One of the older children, so I think I stayed a little later.  I think all three of the older ones had measles when Jean was born, so I stayed a little big longer before I took her home, but she did get them.

AW:  Okay, so you wore this robe.  Did you wear this maternity blouse?

MJ:  Yes, I wore that, uh huh.  And then those were Jean’s mittens and a couple of little dresses.  These…[rustling sounds]

AW:  We can get them.

MJ:  The other things that are on the chair, I was going to tell you what…

BP:  She was born in what month again, [your daughter] Jean?

AW:  March.

BP:  March?

MJ:  She was born in March of 1957, March 20th. 

BP:   Are these things that were given to her?

MJ:  Yes, they were hers.  Yes, uh huh.

AW:  By who?

MJ:  A good friend of mine.  In fact, they were done by the lady that I lived with in the apartment.

AW: Was that common?  Were they handmade?

MJ:  They are handmade, yes.  In those days, I think [they] were, yeah.

BP:  Baby gifts.

MJ:  Yeah, baby gifts.  These are…they were embroidered by my sister.  Do you know what they are?

AW:  Well, I have a cheat sheet here, but Ben, do you know what they are?

BP:  No.

MJ:  We had wire hangers in those days, every coat hanger was a wire hanger, and these, of course now you buy the hanger. 

BP:  Oh, I see it opens.

MJ:  These are to put over the…

AW:  Hanger covers.  Beautiful embroidery.

MJ:  Yeah, I thought those were pretty neat, so that’s something I saved.

AW:  So what are these now?

MJ:  These are dresses that Jean wore when she was a baby.

BP:  It’s all nice.

AW:  Did you make clothes for your children?

MJ:  I never could sew.  I was not a seamstress.  No, I have a daughter who really can sew.  Julie does.  She sews a lot of things.

AW:   Where did you get your clothes for your kids?

MJ:  Bought ‘em.

BP:  This in particular.  What about this one?

MJ:  Well, I don’t know if that was given to me by somebody, or…  That’s pretty well worn.

BP:  Does she have pictures in that?

MJ:  I don’t think so, no.  I’m trying to think if I had a picture of her in the green one.  I could try to find her baby book and see if…

AW:  That would be nice to see.  Did you get baby clothes as gifts and then did you buy them?

MJ:  Most of them, yeah.  I still have all the lists of shower gifts that I received.  I saved the cards and everything, but I don’t know what; I don’t remember buying.  The gifts, I don’t remember if they were hand made.  I think most of them were store-bought clothes in those days.

AW:  Where would you buy them?

MJ:  We had a children’s store here in town, “Kids on Division” it was called, in Perman’s, and then Perman’s Clothing Store and then a children’s store with it.  I think a lot of clothes probably were bought there.  Or maybe a lot of them were sent for in catalogs.  We sent for a lot of clothes out of catalogs in those days, too.  I remember my – the first gifts that I gave my children, I have written down the prices I paid for the little dresses and everything that I probably ordered out of a catalog, you know, $2.95 or something.  I saved all of that, too – with the bills from the hospital, I mean, what it cost in the hospital in those days.  $187.00, I think, or something like that.  Isn’t that something?

AW:  When you gave the gifts, what kind of gifts would you give?  Were they toys or were they dresses?

MJ:  I think probably in those days we gave little undershirts, little gowns, and even probably diapers, or something like that.  They were cloth diapers in those days; they were not disposable diapers.  So I think those were things that were given as gifts probably.  More practical things, maybe.  A little…they called them “receiving blankets”.  Quite a few of those.

AW:  And when you bought gifts for your kids, what did you buy them?

MJ:  Well, you mean as birthdays, and things?

AW:  Yeah.

MJ:  Things that they needed.  Maybe a toy or something, but mostly clothes, I think.  Something special in the line of clothes.  I think clothes were given as gifts a lot in those days, probably more so than other things.

AW:  I kind of asked that because you had mentioned in your growing up you didn’t have very many toys, necessarily.  So did you start buying more toys for your kids?

MJ:  Well, I think our kids did get a lot of toys.  I can remember a lot of the put-together things that Percy would be doing the night before.

AW:  Like what?

MJ:  Well, like a… What am I trying to think of?  Furniture, this play furniture.  We had a room in our house that we had as a playroom.  And I remember the year that the girls, you know, three of them – I had three of them under three, so, you know, when they grew up they played a lot together, and they loved to play house, so we gave them this refrigerator [and] stove that you had to put together.  It was cardboard, but you had to fold it all together.  I can remember Percy putting that together the night before, or hopefully a couple nights before Christmas.  I can’t remember some of the other things, but there always were toys that you had to assemble in those days. 

BP:  What did you think about the Baby Boom period?  Most of your friends were having four and five kids.  Were most of your friends having…?

MJ:  Just the natural thing to do, I guess.  I think most of my friends probably had between three and four children – the friends that I associated with in those days, the bridge club and so forth.  Although I think they were probably more like three.  I think I was probably the only one who had four.

AW:  Did the kids play together, your friends’ kids and your kids?

MJ:  Oh. Yes.  Yeah.  And we had moved to another place by that time when the kids were growing up.  It was on Division Street, South Division, and that was our first house that we bought.  It was in 1954 we bought that house.  And so our children – until 1962 when we moved out into the country, we had a front porch where the kids would all assemble and play, and there were lots of neighborhood kids.  Lots of them.  Those were the days when we had milk delivered in the bottle with the little cap on top, if you remember.  You don’t remember, but I remember.  So they had lots of playmates.  And then our son, he found some boys around the neighborhood, too.  He got a little tired of his three sisters every once in a while, but he did find some playmates.

AW:  Did you ever go on family trips?

MJ:  We always promised our kids we’d go to Disneyland, but we never did.  We never got…  The only place we ever got was Como Park.  That’s about the farthest we got, is to Como Park.  We did have a relative, my husband’s sister owned a cabin up at Detroit Lakes, on Pickerel Lake, so most every summer we would pile in the car and go up there for maybe three or four days.

BP:  What kind of car?

MJ:  We had a Pontiac…  What was it?   I don’t know what year it was, I think it was about a ’54, ’55 Pontiac, I think in those days.  Station wagon.

AW:  What did it look like?

MJ:  Oh.  Well, it…  I can’t remember too much, except I think it had a wood thing across the side of it.  Didn’t it?  I probably have some pictures of that someplace too, but I don’t know where.

BP:  Did you see a lot of those?  A lot of station wagons?

MJ:  I think that was the “in” thing in those days, was for people to have station wagons, and you only had one car, so you’d pile the whole family in when you’d go anywhere.  In fact, it wasn’t until later on that my husband had a truck.  He just had the one car, you know, until we…then we bought that Packard, of course, and he had that.

AW:  So when you’re driving up North, what was it like – If you could describe [it]…?

MJ:  Well, it was…we loved going up and seeing the northern country.  It was a nice lake that my sister-in-law was on.  We had lots of good times there, but it was fun.  One time we decided to take the train up, which was really great.  So we took all the kids on the train and went up to Detroit Lakes, and then my sister-in-law came in and picked us up at the train depot there.  So they enjoyed that very much.  So those trips were about the longest trips we took with our children because my husband had the Mobile gas station and it was a matter of every-other weekend he had to work, so we never got very far.

AW:  What kinds of activities would you do in Detroit Lakes?

MJ:  You mean in the…?  Oh, we played games.  And the trailer, the cabin – you mean up there? – did not have running water, did not have electricity.  So we had to carry water, of course, from the main resort, which was about maybe half a mile away, and we’d have to carry water from there, or pick it up in the car and then drive.  Then we’d have to pick up lake water from down at the lake and heat…  [We] had a gas refrigerator because we didn’t have electricity, so we had a gas refrigerator and [head?] lamps and that sort of thing.  I have a whole photo album of our pictures at the lake.  I put together a photo album of all our cabin pictures.

AW:  What did you guys do during the day?

MJ:  Well, in the water, of course, and then there was a pontoon, so we’d go out on that; an old pontoon that I painted one time.  It was just wood slats.  It was wood slats with a fence around it, and so it really needed a painting.  So one time when we were up there I got some paint and painted the whole thing. 

AW:  Did you go swimming?

MJ:  Swimming.

BP:  Fishing?

MJ:  And fishing, yeah, we did some fishing.  The children loved it because they loved to swim.  And of course, we always made them wear life vests because it was deep where you jump off the dock.  It was pretty deep.  So we made them wear vests.  I’ve got lots of pictures of them in the water, and I took a lot of movies in those days, too, of course, so there’s movies with that old camera.

AW:  So you really enjoyed going to movies, and then you got a chance to start taking your own movies.  What was that like?

MJ:  Right.  Well, that was really fun.  But everybody says, “You’re not in the movies.”  And I said “No,” because I was always taking them.  When we had the store and they came out with the video camera, the first one, you had to plug it in to the…it had a long cord, you couldn’t hook it up with the VCR, you know, it was separate.  So I had this long cord to drag around, but I had a long cord that I’d…  So I got pictures of my grandchildren when they were babies.  It was about the year…they were born in 1980 – no, they were born in ’79 – so that was about the year that I started taking this video.  I have all that on tapes, too.  Except the last few years, I have a video camera now that has quit working on me, so the last few years I still have about 20 tapes like this from the camera that haven’t been recorded.  So I’ll let my family take care of that if they want it.  It’s all family.  I designate “family” and…  I took a lot of movies out in Tucson, Arizona when we went every winter.  We went to different places, Mount Lemmon and Cabino Canyon, and so I’ve taken a lot of video.  Boxes of it.

BP:  We’ve got one more question for you.  We’ve taken up a lot of your time.  Your generation has been called “the Greatest Generation”.  What do you think about that, and do you think your generation is “the greatest”?

MJ:  Well, other than the war, I think it was the greatest generation.  I really think that people were happy with what they had, and I think that people got along.  There was a lot more compatibility – I mean, people just enjoying what they had and enjoying each other than there is now.  There seems to be so much rivalry between, you know, just between different positions in life, or different stages of life, and I just think that…I really think it was a great…think it’s a good name to call it “the Greatest Generation”, because we enjoyed life with little.  I mean, we didn’t have much, but we enjoyed what we had, and we really…there may have been some  people that wanted more, but I don’t know that there were a lot of people that wanted more than what they had, that were always trying to find something better.

But it was a sad time too, because of the war and because of all of our…my husband lost a brother in the war.  He’s buried in Florence, Italy.  So there were some sad situations there with family, too.  But I really do…we had fun.  I mean, it was a fun time.  We went out and…  When I think, you know, of doing things, having fun and the things that you did to have fun, where  now – of course, I shouldn’t compare with now-days, because it’s so different now with the vandalism, and so much that goes on now, that are supposed to be fun.  I don’t know, I don’t understand that.  But we had fun; it was a fun time, and happy.

No, I really enjoyed those years, and bringing up my children.  I was a stay-at-home mom until my husband – until we bought the store.  You know we had the appliance store in 1964, and then the two of us ran the store – the two of us, for 18 years, we were at the store.  Had a helper to help my husband deliver merchandise, but otherwise the two of us ran the store.  Those were good days, too.  We worked hard.  In fact, when we bought the business my husband wanted to take, to take it back.  I mean, he wanted to not go through with the sale – with the deal – because he was so worried that we weren’t going to make a go of it, and I talked him into it.  We ended up with a wonderful business.  Yeah, we did.  So those were good days, too, in the ‘60’s, but I think those years were good years.  I really do.  And I have been so thankful that I have been around so long that I can talk about those things and still remember those things.  Because sometimes at 86 you don’t remember a lot of that; and there are some things that I don’t remember, too, but those were good years.  I enjoyed being a mother.  I enjoyed my children.  Getting them off to school… I can remember their first days of school.  David was in Cub Scouts, and the girls were in Girl Scouts, and they were in activities, too.  Not as many as now, but they were in a lot of activities.  And they’ve all turned out so well; I’ve been so proud of them, and my grandchildren, too.  We struggled to get our four children through college, but we managed to get them all through college.  Dave went to Mankato State; Dawn at Moorhead State; Julie at Luther College, and Jean at St. Paul Association of Arts.

AW:  Did Percy go through college?

MJ:  He went one year at Augsburg and then…

AW:  You had a class for working at the plant, but did you go to college? 

MJ:  No.  No.

AW:&nbnbsp; So your kids were the first ones.

MJ:  Um hum, my family’s first ones.  Yeah.

BP:  How about your first home; did Percy use the G.I. Bill?

MJ:  No, in those days, you know, you get a little loan from the bank and then we bought this home from…his name was Roy Jones, and he’d come into the station and bought gas from us for his trucks.  He had a construction building, and it was kind of a pay-as-you-go.  I mean, he’d buy the gas and we’d make the payments on the house, and we got it paid for that way.  That’s about…yeah…with a little loan and paying off, you know, making payments.  Yeah.  And then I remember we paid $14,500 for that home, which is a nice home.  It’s on Division Street now.  That was in ’54, and then we sold it in 1961 and bought the house out in the country; this great big house which at one time was attached to another home and it was a nightclub at one time.  So you know how many…this home was just a huge house.  It had five bedrooms upstairs and, I think, somebody said that they remember playing as a band there when it was a nightclub, so there’s a lot of history in that big house that we had.  I think we bought that for something like $18,000.00, for three-and-a-half acres and the house.  So we made a little money on that when we sold it in 1974 – or ’84.  We sold it in ’84.  It’s been sold twice, the house has – I mean, we sold it, and then it’s been resold again.

AW:  There’s a lot of history in that house.

MJ:  Yeah, a lot of history, yeah.  We got to go over there and go through it just now.  The people who were selling it now, I know them real well and they said, “Oh, come over.”  So Jean and I went over and went through the house from the – a lot of the things are still the same as when we lived in there, you know.  They had kept some wallpaper on the downstairs in the bathroom was the same, and so it was… Yeah, it’s a beautiful home.  And these were…we found these up in the attic.

AW:  Beautiful stained glass.

MJ:  They had been taken out of eight – there were eight of them.  They had been taken out of the bay windows at the house when we…we didn’t find them for about five years we lived there, and here they were covered with dust up in the attic.  So we had four of them put into this frame and sold the other four.  It’s something we’ll always treasure having.

AW:  Well, before we end is there anything else you’d like to add?

MJ:  No, I don’t think that I’ve…  I think I’ve pretty well covered everything, haven’t I?  You know more about me than I know myself, I think, now.  And there’s a lot more that I had written in here, I’m sure.

AW:  Well, thank you again for talking with us.

BP:  Yes, thank you very much.

MJ:  I bet you’re hungry.  I should have certainly given you something to eat.

AW:  I bet you’re hungry!  You’ve had to do the most…

MJ:  No, I’m doing fine. 

AW:  Okay, we’ll take a look now maybe at some of these objects.

[End of interview.]