Double Clutch and Hidden Talents

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.

Shameful Heritage

The 1959 Gang - Photo Credit: Jerry Hoffman

I don’t know if it’s a trait peculiar to Minnesotans or if other folks around the country play the same mind game. It’s wrapped up in seemingly innocent innocuous questions upon first meeting someone new. Coy and clever they’re not, probing they are. More on that a bit later.

I have a theory that where we grew up and how says so much about who we’ve become later in life.

Probably more so than the schools attended, degree earned or current mailing address again.  I’ve put a scalpel to that question in past blogs such as ‘In the Company of Old Men’ and ‘The Final Tabulation. Even a trip back in time to ‘Something for Judy’ attempted to pry open the bones of past lives and my formative years.

There was a popular saying after World War One. “Once they’ve been to old Paris, they’ll never go back to the farm again.” Yet deep down I think they were still rural folks despite their exposure to the greater world around them.

Sharon is proud of her rural upbringing and farming heritage. For several years she attended the proverbial one-room school house and had to walk, winter and summer, down a gravel road to get there.

Sharon as a child with her parents

A younger Sharon in a corn field

At a recent luncheon of Cretin High School alumni, I also got the impression that it didn’t really matter if we were raised on the East Side, the West Side or middle-class communities in-between.

Cretin Scrapbook

We all attended Cretin in the late fifties. It wasn’t SPA or St. Thomas but it wasn’t just any old school either. I knew where I fit in back then but that doesn’t matter anymore. Cretin was a special place back then and that’s all that really mattered.

My mother with her parents on the farm

The same can be said of my Mother and her relatives. I always had the distinct impression that my relatives from outstate Minnesota (St. Martin, Melrose and Sterns County) embraced the fact that they were not from the cities. They were proud of their rural heritage and never hesitated to criticize ‘those city folks’ for their lack of understanding of one issue or another.

But not everyone feels the same way about social class and boundaries. Stepping outside of that cloak of unwritten social boundaries has always raised the eyebrows of some folks. Sharon’s mother experienced it in my blog ‘The Girl with Seven Suede Jackets.’ In my novel ‘Love in the A Shau’ the protagonist, Daniel, is confronted by his mother who warns him not to attempt moving outside of his social-economic upbringing. ‘They aren’t our kind of people’ she warns him. Daniel’s mother knows her place as did my mother even though it was a self-imposed boundary.

I’ve thought about a book I’ll probably never write. It would be entitled: ‘Growing up at Randolph and Hamline.”

Randolph & Hamline - Photo Credit: Jerry Hoffman

The Old Gang - Photo Credit: Jerry Hoffman

High School Dance - Photo Credit:  Jerry Hoffman

There are literally hundreds of stories out there of young people growing up in my neighborhood in the Fifties. It was solid middle class, religious, traditional and on the cusp of radical change as the loaming clouds of the Sixties formed just over the horizon. We all knew where we came from. It wasn’t Edina or Minnetonka but it wasn’t a poor part of town either.

Now about those seemingly off-the-cuff innocent questions meant to solidify social connections. ‘Where do you live’ is a fair question if you haven’t seen them in the neighborhood. ‘Where did you go to school’ is about as stealthy a question as a well-aimed sniper’s bullet. We all know what you’re getting at there! I think it is basic human nature in all its frailty that tempts us to compare where other folks grew up and where they went to school with our own upbringing. It is foolish and questionable and is never guaranteed to lead to a solid conclusion. But we do it anyway.

Rich people like to believe that pedigree says it all. Just as cash doesn’t equate to class so to being born to the ‘right people’ simply means one had options and opportunities not available to the rest of us. And that’s about it. I don’t think it is uniquely American to assume that those with financial resources are a level above the rest of us. They just think they are. And given their preponderance for divorce, alcoholism, drug-abuse, and infidelity, I’d hardly say those are role models for us to follow.

Cretin class of 1961 - 50th Class Reunion

All of which swings around one hundred and eighty degrees to my Cretin classmates of the class of 1961. Whether we were aware of our social-economic-intellectual ranking was back then I’ll never know. I’m guessing most of us knew it at one level or another. Yet there was that sharing experience of high school with all of its drama, trauma and a plethora of emotions lumped in-between. It was what it was; the good, the bad and the wonderful (of course, unrecognized at the time.)

Yet at this stage of the game it doesn’t matter anymore. Most of us are still around. Other classmates haven’t been so lucky. Most of us would admit to having had a good life and in the end, little else matters. ‘Been there, done that’ or ‘didn’t do that’ is no longer the competing sword of inquiry.

‘Nice to see you again’ is a more honest equation for our lives than anything else.

Doing the Wabasha Shuffle

I’ve been doing the Wabasha shuffle for 40 plus years now. It started out when I was captivated by this brilliant blond from work with a worldly view of life and as well as a vivacious personality. She had been raised on a farm down south and I thought it would be interesting to visit that foreign environment.

Gradually the Wabasha shuffle matured into weekend visits to her parents farm, then their home in town and finally now to the nursing home where her father is residing with his Alzheimers disease. Her mother still lives in town and pretends she’s on her own. Yet it’s only because of weekly visits by her children and daily visits by town folk that she is able to live out her illusion of independence.

A farm in the family wasn’t what I thought it would be. When the kids were small, I had this idyllic vision of “Dick and Jane visit Grandpa’s Farm.”

Unfortunately reality painted quite a different picture. Grandpa was still a working farmer and had no time for little kids running behind his tractor. So Melanie spent her time trying to catch feral farm cats (good luck with that) and Brian wandered through the barn, finding hiding places up in the lofts.

Nothing much has changed in Wabasha as is often the case in small town America. But like so many others before me, I’ve shifted and changed and morphed into different personalities as the sands of time carried me from one career to the next and one lifestyle to another.

To the town folk of Wabasha, I’ve always been ‘one of them city boys.’ I stopped trying to make inroads into their conversations a long time ago. Farmers regarded me with even more suspicion because of my city ties. Imagine their collective consternation when one of their own married a big city fella.

On our last visit to Wabasha, even my uniform of the day was wrong. I was wearing my trail running shoes, jeans I hadn’t worn in six months, a black t-shirt that read’ I love SF,’ my Galway jacket and a baseball cap with ‘writer’ inscribed on it. Little did I know that the real uniform of the day was boots and jeans, sweatshirts (Twins led the Vikings with the U.S. Army coming up a solid third) cammie jackets and baseball caps (again the Twins were leading the Vikings)

So often going back home means going back in time. But as Bob Dylan famously said there is ‘no direction home.’ Sadly, it can’t be done. The time capsule that is Wabasha, Minnesota is replicated across the country. Returning there to capture what once was is like trying to catch the wind (apologies to Donovan). It hasn’t changed but we have and there in lies the dilemma.

I have a friend who is flying in from the East Coast to attend her 50^th high school reunion

in southwestern Minnesota. I think most people go to high school reunions to show off their lives in thinly veiled ways. It’s a game of “Look at who I married. Here is a picture of my handsome children and my beautiful grandchildren.” My friend became part of the East Coast academic/intellectia consortium of successful professionals. It’s probably a safe assumption that not all of her high school classmates have reached that same pinnacle of professional success. It can make for some awkward moments amid the social pleasantries and forced chatter of a reunion.

I’m guessing she will come to realize what I did at my own 50^th reunion. After fifties years apart, I had little if anything in common with my classmates. While I carried my accouterments of success in my head, it never came up. Men are that way. In theCompany of Old Men pretty much describes that scene. It was fascinating, enlightening, a little bit sad and a little bit funny. It brought back a few fond memories but mostly it brought out a sly smile and wonderment that I had actually survived the trauma and confusion of those teen years.

Now after a second season in Palm Springs, returning to Minnesota to do the Wabasha shuffle is once again part of my summer agenda. And yet it is still pretty much the same soundtrack in terms of ‘been there before, don’t want to go back there again.’ But, of course, we must for the in-laws. It’s all part of shared marital responsibilities.

So I smile and make pleasant faces and try very hard to care about the price of grocery store staples and bloated government programs and all those issues paramount to small town America. Those foreign environments on the coast are never discussed and focus is always given to matters that really count like spring crops and fall harvests.  It’s still a foreign environment I rarely inhabit and must strive hard to make it work for me. I left all that behind when I moved away from home.

I’ll leave my Zen back in the desert for the summer and try to forge an understanding of small town America back here in Minnesota. I’m willing to step back in time but never enough to get lost there.