Cedar Rapids stories....oh so many stories! And, summers at the lake...just too much fun!

During our time in Cedar Rapids, I made a couple of friends who were good pals during our elementary school years. One was Peggy (Margaret) Crissman, whose family lived across the street from us. Peggy and I had a lot of fun time together, pretending the way pre-teenagers might. We probably had pretty active imaginations, as I recall that we each had a 'beautiful' identity of ourselves in our minds...seeing ourselves as very attractive young women with long, flowing hair and nice figures, and of course, we came from families with lots of money! Peggy and I wore jeans nearly all the time, and it was a good thing because we spent a lot of time sitting in the two fruit trees in her back yard. Her yard was an excellent place for fantasy. There was a stairway that led up to the apartment at the back of their upstairs. That apartment was where Peggy's grandmother lived. Now, Grandma Bains was a bit of a pain, but she didn't bother us when we were playing out back. But, when she was within earshot of either of us, she rebuked us if she heard us say a 'by-word' (any word that could be construed to be a version of a known swear word, such as darn, dang, shoot, geeze, gosh, etc.) Holy Cow! We had to watch our language around Grandma Bains! Grandma Bains would have been good at sharia law... Weirdly enough, Grandma Bains got married late in her life, and I remember how silly she seemed getting ready for the wedding. She bought some frilly nightwear, and I really couldn't imagine her 'primping' to go to bed with a new husband...but jolly good on her anyway! I guess it's almost never to late to fall in love...

Underneath the stairway to the upstairs apartment hung a long rope swing. You can imagine that was a whole lot of fun...as long as you didn't get going too high and bang into the steps! 

Peggy and I would pretend to go out to the make-believe 'corral' in the yard, back near the alley, and pretend to let all of our beautiful horses out into the yard. Then, we would climb up into the apple tree, sit on our own chosen perches, and pick which of our gorgeous horses we would ride that day. Of course, in true 'Roy Rodgers' style, we would jump down from our perch right onto the back of our chosen mount! Now, it seems strange to me how real I could make all of that make-believe seem back then. At my present age, I have trouble pretending almost anything...a lot of my life is a bit too 'real' now...

Peggy and I spent hours playing back there, and sometimes we had our mutual friend, Buffy Whitesel (her real name was Rachel, but she didn't like that, so insisted we call her 'Buffy') come to spend part of the day with us. Buffy's family had moved to Iowa from Pennsylvania because her father got a job working at the Amana company. Peggy and I often marveled at some of the colloquial language Buffy used that she had adopted in her native Pennsylvania...words such as soda rather than pop, crick rather than creek, dungarees rather than jeans, etc. Our own version of 'culture shock,' I guess. I don't remember Buffy joining our fantasy play, but we all had a good time together at other things anyway.

Additionally, sometimes Peggy's brother Larry would come into the back yard, but he mostly liked to tease us, so we didn't let him stay long before Peggy would call to her mother to 'make Larry leave us alone!' (One time I remember Larry told us he would swallow the head of an ant if we would give him a penny! He didn't want to swallow the whole ant, because it might crawl back up his throat! We didn't give him any pennies, if I recall!) Peggy also had a sister named Carol. She was older and much too 'grown-up' to get involved in our play.

I remember one summer, the Crissmans had the idea to have an outdoor fair/circus. We put it on in their driveway next to their house, and I remember a lemonade stand, popcorn stand, and some clown costumes and dog acts. It was really fun to plan and stage that day's activities. I don't know if we had a lot of neighborhood kids come, or not, but it was a fun day in my memory.

I remember one time when I was about 7 years old, and I had gone over to play at Peggy's house. Her Grandma Bains wanted us to walk over to the drugstore and to the mail drop on the corner on the other side of my block, across the street. She gave us a letter and 3 cents which was intended to buy a stamp. Well, at ages 7 and 6, we were not all that familiar with the need for postage when you mailed a letter. So, I suggested to Peggy that the pennies were probably for a treat at the drugstore for us, a reward for doing the errand. We went into Hladke's Drug Store and stood for several minutes oogling the big assortment of penny candies...black licorice pipes, Scotty dogs, mustaches...red wax lips...candy cigarettes (wouldn't have Grandma Bains had a fit???)...caramel 'Slo-pokes'....many-layered all-day candies (hard as a rock, but they lasted a very long time if you sucked slowly)...Tootsie Rolls...Chuckles...Jujubes...and on and on... We finally decided on three candies that had more than one piece in their packages so we could share each one, and we headed back to Peggy's house, dropping the letter into the mailbox on the way (no stamp on it...!) Well, it wasn't long and we were found out. The letter came back since it had no postage, and did we ever get a 'dressing down' from Grandma Bains! I think she blamed me for the error, and thought I was 'stealing' the postage money for our candy. But, in truth, I really didn't understand that those pennies were for postage. It was the first time I had ever been involved in mailing anything, and Peggy didn't know any better than I did that the letter needed a stamp! 

Peggy's father was a well-respected lawyer in Cedar Rapids. Their family had owned a large bit of land in a newer development area, and sold it. It seems to me that perhaps some of the streets in that development were named after members of their family. I will have to get out a map of Cedar Rapids and see if that was true. They had lots of 'connections' in town, and sometimes I was invited over and was allowed to join in with some of their social gatherings. I remember that Carol Crissman was an usher for the Cedar Rapids Indians (baseball team...farm team for the Cleveland Indians). She dressed up in a costume representing an Indian maiden when she was scheduled to usher. Sometimes Peggy and I could go out to the baseball park when she went, which was always quite awhile ahead of the evening's game. We could get autographs of our favorite team players, and I always had a childish crush on one or another of them. I especially remember Rocky Calavito, and of course, the great Bob Feller. Wish I had kept some of those autographs. I could make an appearance on 'Antiques Roadshow!' I remember one dinner where I was a guest, and that evening a few of the players were invited to eat. Wow! Sitting at a dining table with cute guys who were getting their names known in the baseball world...what an experience! (But, I was too young to fully appreciate it, of course...just excited to see these 'famous' people!)

The Crissmans were kind people. I remember that they had a cleaning lady who had numbers tatooed on her arm. At the time, I didn't know about the concentration camps during World War II, but this lady was always very serious and never smiled. She was also quite thin, but a lot of people were thinner in those days (on the cusp of sugar-in-everything processed foods, I guess...) Anyway, this lady interested me, and I wish I had known more of her story, because I'm pretty sure it was hair-raising, and horrific.

One time when I was at the Crissmans after dinner, they had invited some doctors and their wives for dinner, and the evening was spent showing slides and discussing various ailments. I was rather shocked at some of the pictures I saw that evening. I think the grown-ups had forgotten how young and naive two little girls might be. It was an introduction to some of the many awful maladies that befall humans, and I really don't even want to remember some of those images. I think many of them have found cures or the people didn't live. In any case, now at my current age, any frailties I may have don't hold a candle to some of the nasty stuff from which a person can suffer. I am always grateful when I realize how fortunate I have been to have pretty good health!

Another weird experience I remember from knowing the Crissman family was when the man who set Coe College auditorium on fire was released from prison after he had served his sentence. Apparently, Mr. Crissman had been the attorney who prosecuted that trial, and the man had a grudge. The Crissmans began receiving threats written on toilet paper in the mailbox fastened to the wall next to their front door on the porch of their house! For awhile, I was not allowed to go over and play, and I don't think Peggy was allowed outside at all. Finally, that man was caught and put back into jail, and the crisis was over. Talk about reality!

Also, living in a city has lots of benefits, but it also has lots of activities of concern. My sister Margaret had a friend who lived just a few blocks away from our house. This friend worked down town and took the bus home from work after dark at night. She always got off the bus at the stop a couple of blocks up Bever Avenue from 17th Street. Well, some man had been watching her and knew her pattern. One night she got off the bus on the corner of 19th Street and Bever Avenue, and started walking toward her home. There were bushes on that corner next to the bus stop, and this evil man was hiding in the bushes when she got off the bus. After the bus pulled away, he jumped out and stabbed this girl several times in the chest and in the back. I don't know why he did it, and she didn't die, but after that I would always be scared as I ran across the street from Peggy's house to our house after dark. I didn't feel safe until I got the storm door open and got into the house. 

Another time when I was walking to school with some neighbors (I lived just two blocks from Johnson Elementary, which was where I attended school). A dark-colored car pulled up at the crosswalk going across Bever Avenue, and a man leaned across the front seat of the car and asked us if we wanted a ride to school. He said he had some candy for us. OMG! Even at that young age, I was freaked out, and we all ran as fast as we could run to get away from that car. The guy didn't follow us. I classify his type as similar to a window-peeker...a lot of bravado, but not a lot of courage. But, getting into a car with him would have been a terribly bad idea...we all know about that kind of case today, with many young children disappeared, and never found again, or found dead in some wooded area. 

Peggy, Buffy and I loved to ride our bicycles. I don't think our parents had any qualms about us riding up to Bever Park and exploring the woods, looking at the animals in their zoo, or playing on the playground equipment. They should have had...  One time when we three girls were walking our bicycles along a path in the wooded area of the park, a man came out from behind a tree and exposed himself to us. We knew enough to be shocked and scared, and we got right on our bikes and got out of there in a hurry. Ick...

Another time when I was walking home from junior high after school, a car started to follow me. (I attended Franklin Junior High School which was about 17 blocks from our house, and it was a long walk, but I didn't mind walking in those days, when the weather was nice.) This car kept going around the blocks and slowing way down as he approached me, but he didn't stop and he didn't talk to me. I felt very threatened, though, and every time he went past I would run as long as I had the breath to run, trying to get home as quickly as possible. I finally changed my route, went through a couple of alleys, and got home and inside. I was very frightened, and went around and locked all the doors (back then, people most often did not lock their houses during the day), and I pulled the curtains shut. I did watch out the window through a small crack at the side of one curtain, and that car drove past our house a couple of times, and then didn't come back. I think the driver had lost track of where I went, and he gave up. I remember being very scared for a couple of hours because that day my folks had gone away somewhere for the day. Finally, when they came home, I relaxed. I don't think I told my mother at all about these incidents, which was a big mistake. We were never told much about being wary of strangers. If there were incidents with children involving sex offenders, it was not talked about and we did not know about them. But, I always had a sense of worry when any man seemed to be looking at me too much, or going the same way I was going. I suppose it is some kind of 'sixth sense' that young children may have. But, obviously not enough of them have it finely tuned, or there would be fewer child snatchings. The lure of puppies, kittens, candy or other treats sometimes make kids forget their natural discomfort around strangers. It's a problem...

Before we left Cedar Rapids, I had been attending junior high school and realized that since my parents were not wealthy, and I was not particularly beautiful, and I was not a cheerleader or in a popular group of kids, I was just sort of an unimportant part of the crowd. I did have some good friends, and we hung out together. Also, a boy in my class was paying some attention to me, and I sort of had a crush on him, too. That boy was Bob Drexler. His father was a professor at Coe College. One time at school, a quartet of boys sang to our homeroom class. The song they sang was 'The Bells of St. Mary's.' During the song, Bob Drexler looked and smiled at me most of the time, and I was smitten. Here are the lyrics...

The bells of St. Mary's
Ah! hear they are calling
The young loves, the true loves
Who come from the sea

And so, my beloved
When red leaves are falling
The love bells shall ring out
Ring out for you and me 

The bells of St. Mary's
At sweet even time
Shall call me, beloved
To come to your side

And out in the valley
In sound of the sea
I know you'll be waiting
Yes, waiting for me 

At the porch of St. Mary's
I'll wait there for you
In your soft wedding dress
With its ribbons of blue

In the church of St. Mary's
Sweet voices shall sing
For you and me dearest
The wedding bells ring

OMG! Teenagers are all in trouble! Those darned hormones...

Anyway, just before my folks left for Minnesota the summer when we moved to Toledo, my friend Nancy Cook invited me over to her house (her parents both worked), and she also invited Bob Drexler over. He and I spent the afternoon dancing and kissing in her basement to the music on her record player. (I don't know where Nancy went...) But, he didn't drive, and neither did I, so that romance sort of came to an abrupt end when we moved...

Here's where we spent our summers at Potato Lake. What a wonderful and relaxing place to spend time! 

The cabins after they were enlarged and repainted.

When I was still in grade school and spent my summers at the cabins, my cousin and I had a routine we usually followed each day. First thing after we got up, we were to make our beds. Then we would eat breakfast, and then sweep the sand off of the cement walkway and patio outside the cabin (I lived with my Uncle Herbert and Aunt Rachel in their cabin, unless my folks came up to the lake, in which case, I lived in our cabin. Levenick's cabin was connected to my folks' cabin by a cement sidewalk.) After we had finished getting the sand away from the door and off the walkways, we had 'homework' to do. Linda's weak subject in elementary school was language arts. She tended to reverse some of her letters and short words such as 'saw' and 'was.' She may have had a bit of dyslexia, but we didn't know that then. My weakest subject was math (I hated, and still do hate...word problems...) So, good old Uncle Herbert (elementary school principal during the winters in Des Moines), always had workbooks for each of us, and before we could play, we had to do a page in our workbooks. At the time, I didn't appreciate that job, but I know now it was good for us, and probably taught us something about perseverance. In any case, we did our workbook pages, and then we got a Tootsie Pop and were allowed to go play. We had a 'turning bar' between two pine trees and that was a fun thing to do. We also liked to play down by the water, or if it was warm enough, we could go swimming. The lake was shallow for quite a long way out from our cabins, so it was a good place for kids to swim. Later on, our fathers made us a raft built of lumber and set on four empty oil barrels which kept it afloat. It was anchored by a chain to a couple of cement blocks in about five feet of water, so we could row or swim out to it, and lay out there, enjoying the sun (little did I know I would pay for my sun-burned nose later in life...when we are young, we feel infallible, and don't let worries about too much sun concern us...) When there would be strong wind storms on the lake, sometimes the raft would pull its anchor a long way from 'home.' I remember going in the motor boat a few times to find the raft, and pull it back home.

Linda was not as much an outdoors person as I was, so I don't know what she did when I was playing in the woods along the lake shore (our parents owned all the lake shore from the location of our cabins all the way to the Fishhook River, which was at the end of the lake. You can see the distance in the above photo...quite a lot of shoreline. Eventually, one or two of the lots were sold, and that broke up the straight line to the river. But, it was still plenty of empty woods for a kid to play in...)

There would be storms that blew in, usually from the northwest, and we could see them coming across the lake. Sometimes in the evenings, when we had a thunderstorm, often the electricity would go out, and then Aunt Rachel got out the kerosene lamps, and I remember her reading some good literature to us at those times. One of my favorite books that she introduced me to was 'A Lantern in her Hand' by Bess Streeter Aldrich. Weirdly enough, when I moved to Kanawha, Iowa later in my life, a lady in Britt, just north of Kanawha, was related to Bess Streeter Aldrich. Her name was Joyce Streeter. Small world, huh?

Other times, when Linda and I were stuck in the cabin because of rainy weather (northern Minnesota has plenty of rainy weather...), we would work on our 'movie star' scrapbooks. My aunt and uncle enjoyed going to the movies, and with two movie theaters in Park Rapids at that time, and with each of them having two movies a week during the summer, we went to the movies quite often. Movies seemed to be much better quality back then. Perhaps it was because television had not taken over the entertainment business, or perhaps it was much less expensive to make good movies then. I don't know, but it seems that now it is rare to have a highly recommended movie make its appearance at area theaters. Too bad...it is a fun entertainment. I suppose it is also way too easy to watch movies at home, with blue-ray and inexpensive DVDs coming out all the time. Unfortunately, part of the charm of going to the movies was the going! Now, we just stay in our sweats and lay around on the couch or in our recliners. There is no 'event' to watching a movie anymore. I miss that...

My uncle shared ownership of the town's Ben Franklin store with his sister and her husband, and when he was in Minnesota in the summer, he would help out with the book work at the store. We often went to town with him, and often ate dinner in town, and quite often also went to a movie after dinner. So, Linda and I got quite interested in movie stars, and of course, at that time, movies were popular entertainment and there were tons of magazines with photos of the stars in them. Our scrapbooks featured our favorite movie stars and photos about them. I loved the movie 'Bird of Paradise' about Hawaii, and collected photos of the actors in that film - Debra Paget, Jeff Chandler and Louis Jordan. We spent hours and hours pasting photos into our books, and we loved it. 

More stories to come...some you might even enjoy!