She was a simple farm girl who always seemed to have a new car while her brothers were still riding tractors. She could play at least four musical instruments and once owned a thriving restaurant. Not too shabby considering her sixth-grade education, stringent social and religious norms always trying to hold her back, and distain for anyone trying to be different. It’s quite a legacy I knew little about until a cache of old black and whites peeled away one more mysterious layer of this person; I was never able to call Mom.
I’ve been working on a new play about my parent’s early years; long before I was even a glance across the dance room floor. Part of my research was studying a ten-page handwritten bio my mother wrote not long before she passed. In it, she chronicled sketchy minuet glimpses into her upbringing on a farm outside of St. Cloud, Minnesota.
Over the years, my mother would occasionally let slip some comment
about her upbringing. She was much closer to her father than her step-mother.
She was the youngest and spoiled by her father whom she adored. She loved to
travel and couldn’t wait to escape her life on the farm for the big cities of
Minneapolis and Saint Paul.
The handwritten bio, really a jumble of streaming thoughts, was the only tangible, written history my mother left my sister and I before she died. Ten pages, single spaced, documenting a lifetime of hard work, unbroken faith in her God, loss, rejection, betrayal, and heartbreak.
But there were many gaps in that brief bio which I discovered when my sister shared some old photographs Mom had given her just before her passing. We both knew that our mother and father had, early in their marriage, started a restaurant called ‘Frenchy’s Eats’ near downtown Saint Paul. It folded after six months when financial challenges and health issues crippled their abilities to manage it. But there was more.
Only once or twice over her lifetime did our mother ever mention that she used to own a plethora of cars in her youth. She never made mention of her being in a band or her many countrywide travels, usually alone.
My mother grew up a beautiful and ambitious young woman. The Twin Cities of Saint Paul and Minneapolis proved irresistible to Hilde when she cautiously toe-stepped away from home for the first time. She was hungry enough to break free of the life-choking reins of farm work by testing herself in the cities. But with just a sixth-grade education, the only work she could get was housekeeping for wealthy clients, odd jobs as a seamstress and cooking. She became a maid on Summit Avenue. Not quite Downton Abby but close.
Despite the occasional homelessness, abject poverty, and lack of support from relatives, my mother soldered on, and with the help of one brother, actually built her own house in a tony neighborhood in town.
There were clues in those pictures…in the clothes, mannerisms, posture, location and a hundred other enounce that spoke volumes about the woman that gave me life. By reading into them with the inquisitiveness of a writer and a curiosity of past traits passed down to me, there are answers (unconfirmed, of course) in what those pictures were saying.
So, without being clinically antiseptic, I began to study the clues some unknown photographer presented to me. There were stories in those images that said so much and yet revealed so little. I did my surgical inspection without the benefit of that brief written journal pasted down from my mother. I was also cognizant of her reluctance to recognize that part of her past life.
So, who was this woman that was a part of my life and yet someone I never really knew? She was buying and swapping automobiles when they were the newest craze and playing in a band when most women were relegated to stay in the audience. So, I studied the cars, her clothes, her girlfriends, and hints of the life she was leading.
The cars varied but most were new and shiny. She and her girlfriends loved to dress up and go out to town in their new chariot. I have only the vague recollection of her commenting once that her brother took her new car out and ran into a tree when he came home drunk. She never forgave him for that.
We knew our mother loved to dance and frequented the dance halls in both Cities. In fact, that was where she met her future second husband. What we didn’t know is that she had been in a band herself. It was the Noll (her maiden name) Family Band and it had gigs around the area. Pictures revealed that she could play at least three, if not more, musical instruments. Who knew?
My grandfather, Martin Noll, died seven years before I was born. That’s really a shame. It’s obvious from Mom’s comments, both verbal and written, that he was a tremendous influence on her young life. I’m guessing he would have been one hell of an influence on me had he lived long enough.
While I’ve never been a ‘car guy,’ I have always loved music. I’d love to hone my skills as a song writer someday. Thanks, Mom, for that dream; hope I can make you proud someday.