LaTullippe It Almost Was

I’ve never been a big fan of Genealogy or family trees. I tend to dismiss those infamous tall tales handed down through the generations about the ‘good old days.’ The past is the past and can’t be changed. Or so I thought.

Perhaps this laissez-faire attitude came from my own upbringing. Being raised in a single parent household, we never recognized the absence of my father. It was hardly an incentive for me to care about my own ancestry. We were poor (maybe lower middle class is a better moniker) but so were most of my friends. We had a place to call home and little else mattered.

So, it was with only mild interest that I watched my wife begin her search for our respective family trees through Ancestry.com. Sharon very quickly became immersed in the search and began tabulating ancestors on both sides of our family tree. Thus far she has researched more than 152 individuals. She was able to go back to the 1600s in Germany. The oldest person she’s found was Pierre Helle who was born in 1676. France, Germany and Canada seem to be the favorite countries of origin.

As she clicked along, some fascinating facts began to emerge.

For example, there has always been a ‘George’ Schumacher for at least eight generations back on Sharon’s side of the family. Her descendants came from a small village in Germany, no surprise there. One distant relative served in the Illinois Infantry Regiment, Company E, Unit 31.

My mother’s roots followed a much similar lineage. Her grandparents also came from another part of Germany. There was a grandfather who fought in the Civil War. He went in as a private and came out the same. But he did survive. Our assumption is that he probably got his farmland in Sterns County from the government for his time in the service. That seemed to happen to a lot of returning veterans. Most of my distant relatives come from Sterns County or nearby.

The real mystery begins with my father. As far back as I can remember there was never any mention of him in our home. Growing up, there were no pictures of him nor any references to him at extended family gatherings. It was as if he never existed. I was too young to understand the significance of his absence in my life.

I vaguely remembered that my father’s lineage was French Canadian. Beyond that… little else. He had been married once before. There was a lot of confusion about whether or not there had been a divorce or annulment with his first marriage. He married my mother but we’re not sure when. The reasons for their separation and subsequent divorce had been clouded by denial, mis-statements and confusion. About the time my mother decided to come clean, the fog of aging and miles traveled made any clear recollection of times past just a guessing game on her part.

I’ve written a play, Frenchy’s Eats, about this quagmire called my ancestry. It’s been a real challenge trying to tell their story and lineage in an informative yet entertaining way

Now, many years after my mother’s death, Sharon is finally making some headway on un-wrapping the mystery of my father. It’s been one long and arduous journey fraught with poor records, incorrect dates, family lies and purposeful misstatements to protect the innocent…or so they thought.

Stumbling back in time, we found out that the core of my ancestors settled in Quebec, Canada. Their descendants came from France. It’s probably too late to look for that French Chateau or three-story Paris walkup in my name.

One of my grandfathers was a ‘wagon loader.’ Laugh as you might, today he’d probably be working for UPS in logistics and making a nice income. Back in my college years, I used to load and unload trucks in the dead of winter. Now I know where those deft skills came from.

The French nuns at the little French school in downtown Saint Paul had a huge impact on my life even if I didn’t know it at the time. When the school was built back in the 1873 it was meant for the children of second and third generation French settlers.

By the time my sister and I started school there, our classes were a cosmopolitan smorgasbord of ethnic groups. There were Irish, Italian, German, and Spanish students. Almost all of them lived along the fringe of the downtown loop. Unlike all of our white counterparts where we lived in Highland Park, it made for some interesting playground banter.

It turns out there was a critical junction or fork in my ancestral road. The road split and one branch was named Lacombe and the other LaTulippe. The plot of flowers was on my grand-mother’s side. I never knew her but she must have been a wise woman to have chosen Lacombe. At least I didn’t have to defend myself in grade school from some bully mocking my name.

Another interesting fact was the evolution of the name LaComb. If you go far enough back there used to be an ‘e’ at the end of Lacombe. At another point, the ‘c’ became capitalized.

I was surprised to see on my birth certificate that my name was spelled: Dennis. When I asked my mother why it had been changed she had a simple explanation. She said that in first grade, the French nuns informed her that the proper spelling of my name was Denis. Mom knew better than to mess with the French nuns.

That’s okay; I’ve grown quite accustomed to Denis J. LaComb…and besides it’s not too flowery.

Traces of Old Saint Paul

Facebook hosts hundreds of group pages, mostly centered on a specific topic or area of interest. An old friend turned me on to the Old Saint Paul group page on Facebook a long time ago. That group page provides an almost daily stream of pictures of old buildings, family photos, personal mementos and other images centered around old Saint Paul. More often than not, the images are followed by comments about growing up in the old city of yesteryear.

Granted, one has to be careful not to linger in the past for too long. It’s a common trap oldsters fall into when contemplating a shortening horizon and a lengthening rearview mirror. Yet a reflective stroll down memory lane is a wonderful way of encapsulating so many of the emotions that formed, directed and ultimately created the person one is today. I am a product of old Saint Paul as much as I am a survivor of my agrarian Catholic upbringing and a direct reflection of my Mother’s insatiable appetite for achievement despite the obstacles placed in front of her.

Photo credit: Minnesota Historical Society

What I like most about the Old Saint Paul Facebook page is the trigger it snaps in my brain every time I come across an old photo from my period of living there. It’s amazing how one old black and white photograph of downtown, an intersection, a school or an event can unleash a torrent of emotions swirling through my brain, unearthing a zillion little memory pops that bring back the sights and sounds and smells and youthful mind-trappings of a kid growing up there.

Another plaintiff to the cause is a guy from California who posted regularly on the page about his experiences growing up in my old neighborhood. Walter Jack Savage is like me in many ways and yet we took very different pathways to our adulthood. He has a large and enthusiastic following on Facebook. His posts seem to generate a lot of genuine heartfelt reflections from his followers.

Photo credit: Minnesota Historical Society

The Old Saint Paul Facebook page is a reflection of the culture, values, mores and hang-ups of that era back in the 50’s. It is, at once, hope for the future, a safe environment growing up, downtown movie palaces, neighborhood theaters, unattainable dream cars, streetcar trolleys, buses and the Schmidt brewery on West Seventh Street. It is also a glimpse of an old downtown core slowly dying out before a newer version came along.

I have tried to capture what I remember of my youth growing up in Saint Paul in several blogs:  Retracing Cobblestone Steps, Growing up Catholic, and On the Corner of Fairview and Summit. Growing up there was a story of many perspectives, a Rashomon of secrets, lies, distortions, joy and confusion. A single parent trying her best. Three individuals living under one roof. A swirling cascade of impressions that slipped through and around my brain with just a few getting snagged on the shores of my memory bank.

My journey really began on Smith Avenue, moved to a six plex apartment building nearby and finally our home on Randolph Avenue. Then from 1949 through 1957 it was a daily ride, first on streetcars then buses, down to Saint Louis Grade School.

Photo credit: Minnesota Historical Society

Photo credit: Minnesota Historical Society

Photo credit: Minnesota Historical Society

Photo credit: Minnesota Historical Society

Over the years I witnessed the ever evolving, shifting, changing facades that were West Seventh Street, the old Schmidt Brewery, Seven Corners and a litany of buildings crumbling and growing along that fabled corridor. It was a downtown of W.T. Grant where we caught the ride home each afternoon at 3:15 and theaters each of which came with their own kind of memory.

Photo credit: Minnesota Historical Society

Photo credit: Minnesota Historical Society

The Randolph Theater for its twelve cent Saturday Matinees, Same with the St. Clair Theater. The Paramount where I saw ‘The Guns of Navarone’ and the Orpheum for Saturday night dates with my first love. The Riviera for its movies after school and the Tower and Strand for their old black and white reels and scary patrons lurking in the lobby. Finally the Grandview for its ‘Carry On’ British series and a burgeoning love of foreign films that has stayed with me to this day.

Then it all came to a crashing halt on May 31st, 1961.  That Sunday afternoon ended my eight years of a paper route, obligatory mass on Sunday, excuses for going downtown and a shift toward that Western horizon and college.

After that, old Saint Paul was a place to avoid and a fading memory of times past replaced by hopes for the future. The downtown core evolved and changed and gradually morphed into another layer of new buildings, new hopes for the future, energized worker bees and queen bees intent on creating a new core of energy and activities in that cluster of buildings along the river.

I returned to downtown Saint Paul in the late eighties for several years then shifted once again into another life of free-lance work and real estate investments. By then the memories had faded enough that only the good ones rose to the surface and the bad ones sank to the bottom; still present but layered over by better ones of today.

Now enough time has passed that only the old photographs can trigger my memory bubbles of that period in my life. I guess I have Old Saint Paul to thank for that.

Growing Up Catholic

Growing up Catholic in Old Saint Paul was simply a part of who I was, and in some very strange way, who I still am today. The label isn’t there and never will be. Nor the accouterments of pomp and ceremony that some Catholics still cling to. I’ve graduated from that part of my life but am still grateful for the experience.

Memories cloaked around vestments of gold and silver are hard to erase. Seven-Thirty mass every morning before school began. Altar boy duties on Sunday at the Eleven O’clock mass.  Routine, mind-numbing religion class for the malleable mind. All of my teachers were draped in black; the nuns in grade school and the Christian Brothers in high school. Even in college, there would be an occasional religious figure at the head of the classroom. That was simply the way it was back in the fifties and sixties.

None of this is surprising when one considers my background growing up. My mother had a sixth grade education and yet was wise to the ways of the big city. Despite coming from a farming background, she somehow understood the value of an education and was thrilled that my sister and I were able to attend St. Louis Grade School, the ‘little French’ school downtown Saint Paul.

There was trauma and drama in our family that escaped me at four and five years of age. Our father left us destitute and then died after an absence of several years. There had been a divorce, an annulment of their marriage and a family left homeless for a period of time. That probably explains why my mother faithfully attended novena at St. Louis Church every Monday afternoon for the rest of her life. I assume it was payback to God for surviving that mess and it seemed to work.

We moved from a duplex then through a period of homelessness in the boiler room of an apartment building. Then we lived in another rundown apartment building until finally my mother built a real home in Highland Park with the help of her brother.

My sister and I graduated from streetcars with wicker seats to buses on our daily ride to downtown Saint Paul. It was a daily rush out the door, jammed into a crowded bus and ‘don’t you dare sit down if an old person was still standing.’ The evil eye from either my Mother or the cranky senior was enough to get me back on my feet again.

There would be the occasional foray to Woolworths for a nickel coke amid bins of (shocking) ladies underwear on sale. The Golden Rule had dime malts but who could afford that? On a rare occasion we might venture to the Riviera or Paramount Theater for an afternoon movie after school. The one spot I fondly remember treading through was Saint Paul Book and Stationary with its tables piled high with books and clerks who got very uncomfortable with kids handling their merchandise.

The religious propaganda I was fed at St. Louis Grade School and Cretin High School never challenged me to think for myself. It was a rote-routine of religious teachings and lessons that never challenged alternate facts or feelings. A few religious classes at St. Thomas College reversed that trend and got me thinking about fairness and justice for all. The drama of the Sixties certainly played a key role in my self-examination and questioning of all that I had been told and taught.

Working since Seventh Grade and growing up hungry (not in the literal sense) gave me the foundation for a successful career in television and writing. Those stern penguins in black force-fed me their religious principles and values. And it seemed to stick.

I went from Questioning Catholic to Cafeteria Catholic, and after the Neumann Center on the U of M campus, to a Christian in spirit with no discernable religious label to hang on to. Yet I am eternally grateful for the values and standards of the Catholic faith that I had been exposed to for sixteen years in Old Saint Paul. It was my Mother’s religion. It wasn’t mine. Yet I have held fast to those basic tenants of fairness and justice and equality for all.

No one has a corner on the God market, not the Catholics nor the Jews or any other faiths of our time. But the Catholic environment of my old community clothed me with an attitude of basic decency and acceptance of all kinds of people that remains to this day. I want to pass that legacy on to my grandchildren.

I can thank Old Saint Paul for that.

On the Road Again

It’s my first long distance bike ride of the season and the season is almost over.

My normal routine of long bike rides was upended this summer by play practice, acting, and finally the production of my own play ‘Riot at Sage Corner.’ I sprinted to freedom the morning after our cast party.

Long distance bike riding, or in reality, meandering - is soul-searching at its finest. It’s yoga on wheels and meditation in the saddle. It’s a rediscovery of past haunts, mis-spent youth, lost love and between the sign posts… myself.  I’m alone with my recollections, dreams, passions and ever-present tape recorder to capture those fleeting thoughts that sometimes go in one ear and get stuck there.

The coffee shop is a welcome sight of iron riders and rail thin runners. These mostly white middle-age athletes are gearing up for several races this fall.  They’re early morning vagabonds who need their cup of Joe to kick-start each day. It’s an eclectic group of support crew, racers, runners and neighborhood hangers-on gathered together to taste the first bite of dawn and forthcoming self-induced punishment. I’m here to look and marvel and suppress my envy.

There are also a lot of runners out training for the Twin Cities Marathon. The Tour de France wannabes haven’t yet begun to cluster around my coffee shop before their race down Summit Avenue. Today it’s only the hardcore diehards or marginally insane who are out exercising this frosty morning.

After they leave I’ll begin my Saturday morning meanderings through the Twin Cities. There won’t be an agenda or route to follow. My imagination and ever elusive recollections of times past will point me in some direction. Crossing the bridge, I see the U of M rowing club is out before barges crowd the waterways.

It used to be that during the summer months I’d take long bike rides to peruse my old haunts for changes or as a way to recap old memories still lingering there. But something happened late last summer that altered that perception.

Surprisingly it wasn’t the old haunts that had changed. Instead it was something that clicked differently inside my head that time around. I came to the sobering realization that not only were the old places gone but now they were relegated to the dust bins of history.

The Twin Cities had become a wasteland of relics from my past. A time long forgotten except in black and white photos and old vinyl recordings. Time has that tendency to erase most vestiges of a period and in its place leave only vapid memory vapors that drift in and out of our consciousness from time to time.

The changes were all around me but I didn’t see it until last fall.

Much like another blog At the corner of Fairview and Summit, this ride will take me past a lot of my old haunts and a retracing of my other lives. Most of those old places are now generations apart from where I am today. But they still bring back a boatload of memories, most of them good and a few very poignant.

It’s so early on Summit Avenue, the governor is still asleep. My first romantic breakup after Sunday mass took place just down the block. At this point in my third and last marathon I was pretty much a walking, jogging zombie; each step as painful as the last. I worked briefly for the Catholic Archdiocese in the James J. Hill Mansion. Sharden Productions, Inc. and related real estate ventures were conceived in those oak-paneled halls.

The Little French Church is now surrounded by high-rise apartments and light rail tracks. For me it was eight years of Catholic education. Daily mass because we had to and public transportation before it became hip. Does anyone remember the street cars which came before buses?

I moved with public television down to Lowertown when it was still empty warehouses and parking lots. Now it’s a hip thriving ‘happening’ place for millennials. Nearby the Mississippi River has long been a magnet for the land-locked before Laguna Beach and the PCH fueled my own latent surfer’s imagination.

    

Melanie’s home is just two blocks off of my old paper route. Here the latest rage is teardowns and larger homes because the neighborhood has gotten so hot. Who knew? Fifty years ago we couldn’t wait to ‘get out of Dodge.’ Now they’re flocking back to raise their families in my old backyard.

There’s something about this place that still draws me back even in the chill of early fall. And it has nothing to do with the images that corporate and government Minnesota want to paint for outsiders.

Forget about what the PR hacks are saying or the Chamber of Commerce’s latest spiel about the glories of living in Minnesota. Forget our professional (subsidized) sports teams or even dare I say, Garrison Keller’s Prairie Home Companion as a folksy homespun version of Grandma’s tales of yesteryear.

      

Instead I’m talking about a culture of intrinsic family values, a creed of hard work and an unapologetic pride in being from here. They say our cold weather leaves just the strong of heart behind. I touched on this in my blog: Going Home Again. Whether it’s true or not, it is a moniker I subscribe to.

I don’t think I’ll be retracing my old bike routes anymore. It won’t be because of bad memories. Rather the absence of visible landmarks makes it harder to reconcile memories with recollection, nostalgia with history and reality with a reflective glance at my past. It’s a gravel road that has been paved over.

Yet time is on my side. I still get to look back through old photographs in awe and amazement at what once was while still listening to those old familiar musical refrains. I’m still reliving so much that others can’t or won’t see or feel themselves.

Come next spring, new adventures wait. Charlotte, my youngest granddaughter, is now a two-wheeler like her brother. Perhaps I can enlist them as my posse and together we can discover new routes and adventures around the Twin Cities. I’ll be a younger man then and hopefully still eager to blaze new memory trails for that younger generation.

Perhaps I’ll cross trails with some old memory haunts yet undiscovered.

That wouldn’t be a bad thing either.

Something For Judy

Judy, Denis, & Marlene

I’m told we played a lot together when I was a young pup. She was a bit older than me but very cute and wore a chin-hugging cap probably in style at the time. It wasn’t the best of neighborhoods and we didn’t live in the nicest of houses but it was home and she lived next door.

Mother, Marlene, and I

Looking for Bugs

Denis & Marlene at the Pacific ocean

Of course, I remember absolutely nothing about that period in my life. In fact, if it hadn’t been for an old photo of my grade school that I posted on a Facebook group page I never would have known Judy existed or was my first play date.

Denis & Marlene on Exchange Street in St. Paul

Mom & I

Turns out, Judy was only in my life for a very brief period of time…none of it remembered by either my sister or I. Then my mother took us and moved a couple of blocks away. Judy disappeared for another seventy years until one photo rekindled an avalanche of memories…on her part. If it weren’t for a couple of old cracked black and whites, this cyber reunion would have ever taken place.

Old Saint Paul Facebook Group

‘Old Saint Paul’ is an interesting Facebook group page. Every day people post old photos of  buildings, relatives, childhood memories, documents, etc. It’s where people gather to rekindle memories of a time and place long since removed from our collective consciousness. It’s a stroll back in time and for many of us a journey back to our youth and all of those memories stored there.

The reunion between Judy and myself took place innocently enough…and quite by accident. Someone on that aforementioned ‘Old Saint Paul’ Facebook page had commented one day about a downtown school that used to be part of St. Louis Catholic Church years ago. I knew the school well. I went there for eight years. So did my sister. But at the time of the posting I was in Sedona and couldn’t comment or share a photo of my school.  I promptly forgot about the message and went out seeking heights to climb and vortexes to cavort about.

St. Louis Grade School | Downtown St, Paul

8th Grade Graduation

Weeks later a similar Facebook comment came up again and I decided to post the one photo I had of my old grade school. That one posting brought a plethora of responses, over a hundred plus at last count. One of the people responding mentioned the fact that she might have known me and wondered if I once lived on Smith Avenue with my sister and mother. She said her name was Judyth but back then it was Judy.

I scoured a batch of old photos I kept tucked away in an old shoe box. To my great surprise I came across several photos of my sister and me with another young girl. My mother had scratched on the back of those three photos: ‘Marlene, Denis and our neighbor Judy.’ I couldn’t believe that after seventy plus years I had encountered the real Judy in the photographs.

I put those three photos on ‘Old Saint Paul’ and got a plethora of positive reactions.

Mother, Marlene, Denis, & Judy

The house on Smith Avenue was the second place we lived in near downtown Saint Paul. I was all of three-years-old and my sister two. Judy lived next door and was about five or six. She said her mother liked my family and allowed her to play with us. I assume we spent plenty of time across the street at the Smith Avenue playground.

All of that is gone now, replaced by a huge hospital complex, one Burger King and several surviving houses facing reclamation.

I still haven’t met Judy in person and I’m not sure if I ever will. Like two ships passing in the cyber night, we played together for a brief period in our lives then were separated for another lifetime. It was a brief poignant exchange of vapid memories held together by fading photographs.

Out of that flurry of viewer’s comments came one from St. Paul’s own self-described house detective. Jim Savach. Jim wanted to know more about the house where I spent that time. I had no answers for him but I did have an old photo of my parent’s small lunch shop.

Frenchy's Eats | Saint Paul, MN | circa 1940s | My Parents' Diner on West 7th St

Frenchy’s Eats was a small neighborhood diner just a couple of blocks away from our house on Smith Avenue. It was my parent’s first and only entrepreneurial venture and it didn’t go well. Mom claimed that the help always gave some of the food away and Dad drank most of the profits away.

What really happened back in the early 40’s to those two kids standing on that porch as well as that tiny diner is forever lost in the absence of any oral history that could have been passed down from my mother’s generation to ours. It never was.

So if it weren’t for Judy and her keen mind and solid memory I probably never would have known about my first play date or the time I spent in the shadow of Saint Paul’s past on Smith Avenue.