My New Neighborhood

My new neighborhood is Maxton Falls, the setting of my recently published e-book.

Long ago I inherited my sister Karen's collection of Nancy Drew.  She graduated from H.S. when I was in second grade and is the youngest of my three sisters.  Her N.D. mysteries stayed behind after she left home. And I couldn't wait to be able to read them.  In the early 60s I discovered another series with heroine Trixie Belden.  Last year I donated most of my Trixie Belden collection to a thrift store in Cambridge, MN where Mom lives and where my Belden tomes have lived.  I saved the first two of the series as mementos - the covers of these shown below:

 

Trixie and her girlfriend Honey are the girlfriends shown on the covers.  Their neighborhood included the nearby town of Sleepyside.

Jade and Nettie are my girlfriend detectives. I'm happily working on their next adventure.

WINTER - SILVER BAY - 1962

CHEERS TO ALL,

SOME PHOTOS TODAY.  THESE WERE SHOT AT MY HOUSE ON BANKS BOULEVARD IN SILVER BAY.


MY NEIGHBOR IS HELPING WITH A SNOW PERSON.  BELOW THAT A VIEW ACROSS BANKS TOWARDS OUTER DRIVE - I THINK THE CAR MUST BE OUR 1952 FORD.  THAT NEXT SPRING WE BOUGHT MY FAMILY'S FIRST NEW CAR - A 1962 CHEVY BEL AIR.   THE THIRD SHOT SHOWS OUR BACK YARD - A VERY STEEP BANK INDEED - I WONDER HOW MY DAD EVER MANAGED TO MOW! 

Children's Theatre in the Campton Gym

Oh, how I wish I had a photo or program from the first play I ever saw.  It was in the Campton Gym where, even before the dance recital on its stage (written about in a previous blog), I experienced a production of PINOCCHIO.  For me, a life-changing event.

During that school year, 1956-57, most students beyond 6^th grade attended classes in houses on Bell Circle.  Seniors (and perhaps juniors also?) rode the bus to the high school in Two Harbors. Kelley High was not yet finished.  And yet, in the midst of what must have been a challenging teaching experience, someone began a drama club and produced a children’s play. I don’t know how or where PINOCCHIO was advertised.  I don’t remember hearing anything about it in class.  Just that one afternoon Daddy drove me to Campton School to “see a play about Pinocchio.”

We sat down on steel folding chairs set in rows on the polished, wood floor facing the stage—on the end of the gym nearest the kindergarten classroom.  I think music played on a phonograph to one side of the gym.  After a few minutes, the lights in the audience faded.  The gold pleated drapes were still shining as they parted in the center and moved slowly to each side.  Geppetto’s workshop stood there before me.

Perhaps there weren’t any boys interested in the Drama Club. A girl named Francine Williams played Pinocchio’s creator and father, Geppetto. The following Sunday I was thrilled to recognize the actress when I was leaving my church after Sunday school.  She was walking toward the church for the morning service.  She was with her mother, later my high school Home Ec teacher.  I stared at Francine as we passed each other on the cement walkway.  I wish I dared say something about her wonderful performance.

Last month I was in London for vacation, with a two-day side-trip to Stratford-upon-Avon.  Walking down Stratford’s Chapel Street I passed a group of uniformed boys— probably students of the old, prestigious King Edward VI grammar school which is right in the middle of town.  Seeing these boys I couldn’t help but think how different it would be to attend school in a village with all that history about you.  A quick check on the internet tells me that the original charter of Stratford-upon-Avon dates from 1196.  What a different perspective it must be to grow up in a village with all those Shakespearean reminders around than in a brand new town like Silver Bay.

In Stratford we saw two plays. One was a new children’s play titled ROBIN HOOD'S HEART with Marion as a funny, swashbuckling heroine.  Parents and grandparents in the audience probably all worried that the production might occasionally be too gruesome for young people.  I know I did.  But the children in the audience laughed at the slapstick, cheered the hero and heroine, and booed enthusiastically at dastardly King John and the evil Nottingham sheriff. Some girls that looked about twelve wept at the end when Robin and Marion, on trapeze, gazed at each other with rapt fairy tale true love.  And I remember how I also cried in the gym of Campton School in Silver Bay as Pinocchio and Geppetto were reunited, and Pinocchio became a real boy.  A life-changing event.  My journey to Shakespeare’s home town began that day, when Daddy took me to see that play about Pinocchio.

Narta Ramberg and her Pen Pals

In the past few weeks blog visitors from Europe and Asia prompted me to open a shoebox of memorabilia that includes letters from my childhood's foreign pen pals.

In March of 1961 President Kennedy, by executive order,  established the Peace Corps.  The Corps was authorized by Congress on September 22, 1961.  

I read about the Peace Corps at school in the Weekly Reader.  In the midst of the Cold War the idea of promoting world peace and friendship - Kennedy's words about the purpose of the Peace Corps - seemed a good idea.  But I had just turned 10 - too young to join. However, somehow I read about "Children's Plea for Peace" an organization based at the World Affairs Center at the University of Minnesota.  At least part of the Center's mission was uniting children around the world through letter-writing. Soon I had two foreign pals, a girl from London, England, and a boy from from Accra, Ghana. 

Above is the postcard I received after my pen pal request.  The date on card is 31August 1962.
Alas, I think I only exchanged letter for a year or two.  Probably stopped writing once I began junior high school.


Still, on the odd chance that someone reading my blog knows or has known these two youngsters of the 1960s, I include my nickname at the time - Narta  - as well as the names of my childhood pen friends:

  Celia Richards  of London, England 
  Richard Amable of Accra, Ghana

More about pen pals in future.

Our Dog Pebbles

What's a neighborhood without a dog?  In our case - same with many neighbors - our houses are built on hills - and there are no yards, just slopes covered with ivy or more drought resistant plants.

So - a lot of dog walking in our streets.  Imagine the miles per year when you walk a dog three times a day.  

Pebbles is our second dog.  She was probably 4 when we adopted her from Pets for Friends in Sun Valley.

Pebbles has shared our lives for nearly 10 years.  And it's taking me a long time to put together the story of her past life which, I slowly realized, included years with a circus clown named Beppo.

 

One Reason I Love the Beatles

In early January, 1964, someone tapped on Mr. Zinter's math classroom door to deliver a message from the school office.  My mother had called the school to ask if I could be excused early.  My eighty-three-years-old grandfather was in the hospital.  

Mom and I packed the car and we picked up Daddy at the gate of Reserve Mining when he got off work at three that afternoon.  We drove down to Minneapolis, stopping only for gas. During most of the trip I was squeezed in the front seat of our 1962 Chevy Bel Air between my parents, but I couldn’t seem to get warm.

Between my grandparents’ house and Deaconess Hospital Mom pulled into the parking lot of a Minneapolis Red Owl Supermarket.  There was a payphone on the pavement just outside the store.  I stayed in the car while Mom and Daddy tried to contact one of Mom’s sisters, my grandma or the hospital.
It was a cold winter night. The key was left in the ignition so the heater would stay on.
I turned on the radio and fiddled with the knob for a clear signal.  The station I found was playing a song that I had never heard before.  I stared at the radio.  What was this music? The deejay answered my question as the soon as the final chord ended.  He said it was I Want to Hold Your Hand.  He said it was by a British band, the Beatles.

Grandpa died in his room at Deaconess Hospital the afternoon after we arrived.  His funeral was several days later.

I never saw my Grandma, a stoic Dane, cry at the hospital, at her home, or at the mortuary.  At Deaconess Hospital A nurse whispered to my Aunt Florence that Grandma’s poise and self-control made her “just like Jackie Kennedy.” President Kennedy's assassination had occurred less than two months earlier.  

At Grandma’s house, when I was by myself, I would switch on my celery-green Sears Silvertone transistor radio, aching until I heard the Beatles sing that song again.

"Let's Twist Again" - Silver Bay's Malt Shop, 1961-63

Until the Malt Shop moved in, the brick, split-level Norshor building was home to professionals. As I recall it, the credit union took up the greater part of its square footage.  The town’s lawyer and optometrist had offices in the Norshor.  Also my dentist. Occasionally, the building boasted a beauty parlor.

No need for these small business persons to worry that non-client young people were going to clog their hallways.  Instead of going in the main entrance that faced Outer Drive, a sign directed all Malt Shoppers to a side door. From that entry we walked down a half-flight of stairs to the partly underground, lower floor of the building.

A wall divided the Malt Shop into two halves.  Both rooms were floored, as was the rest of the building, in twelve-inch vinyl in swirled toffee and white. First you entered the room that had the soda fountain and a long counter with stools that were against the wall that bisected the space. There were also tables and chairs in the room, but Denise and I usually sat at the counter as we’d done at the Carmel House (in previous blog)

Denise and I, fifth-graders, gave up our Carmel House sundaes when the malt shop opened. On our first visit Denise recommended a strawberry phosphate — flavored syrup with charged water, and that became my usual.  If we heard one of our songs coming through the doorway of the other adjoining room, we downed our fizzy concoctions like thirsty fishermen with a cooler of cold ones.     

A quarter in the juke box bought three songs.  If I still had a quarter after buying my phosphate, I would pick Dion’s “The Wanderer, “Travelin’ Man” by Ricky Nelson and something with twist or twistin’ in the title. 

The teens on the dance floor had more change in their pockets than those of us still in grade school. They kept the music going. Before long one of them would  select Chubby Checker’s “Limbo Rock.”   Two kids would pick up a broom that was always nearby and hold it horizontally, ever lower, above the floor.  Kelley High students didn’t even object when Campton kids joined the limbo line and took our turn bending underneath. “How low can you go…?”  In my case not too low, and was quickly eliminated.  I preferred to “…twist again like we did last summer.”

The Malt Shop in the Norshor Building closed about two years after it had opened.  A second malt shop on Outer Drive, newly-constructed, one-room affair was built next to the outdoor skating rink mostly as a hang-out for people to warm up and order a bowl of chili or a cup of cocoa.

I rarely visited this new place. With its windows overlooking the rink, it was bright on a sunny day.  On gloomy days, or at night, it was lit-up by overhead fluorescent. There wasn’t a whit of danger – not like the dim dance floor of the Norshor basement.