It’s odd that memories can be retained without being in the forefront of one’s brain. The article in the December issue of Hillside by my friend, Bruce Elving, triggered some long forgotten memories of growing up in the good old central hillside back in the ‘30s and ‘40s.
There were a group of us fellows that used to play around together in the neighborhood of Seventh Avenue East and Eighth Street, where I grew up. We would play baseball in the alleys between Seventh and Eighth streets and also in the alley between Eighth Street and Ninth Street. On the pavement of one of the alleys we had painted lines denoting the base lines, and used garage structures as bases. Many times a person would hit a ball over a garage and the outfield would have to go and chase it. I don’t know why we didn’t walk a few blocks and use the playground at Grant School, but I suppose it was too far to walk, as most of the gamers were of the “pick-up” type: if there were enough guys around, we played ball.
Back in the ‘40’s, the noisy old wooden electric street cars ran on Seventh Avenue from Seventh Street to Ninth Street, right in front of our house. Sometimes, for fun, we would put pennies on the steel tracks just to see how flat they would become after a street car passed over them. Later on, during the mid’40s, propane powered buses replaced the street cars, but followed the same east Eighth Street route, which eventually terminated next to Woodland Avenue.
There were numerous grocery stores in the area back then before the supermarkets evolved. For example, grocery stores were located on corners of east Seventh Street and Eighth Avenue East; Sixth Avenue East and Seventh Street; Sixth Avenue east and Ninth Street; Ninth Street and Eight Avenue East; on Seventh Avenue east just above the alley between Seventh and Eighth Street; and on the corner of Seventh Avenue east and Eighth Street, right across the street from our house. This store was run by Pete Nossum and another fellow named Wick. The store was under than name, Nossum & Wick, for years, finally being renamed Persgard for a number of years. It eventually became Whole Foods Co-op, which is now located on east Fourth Street. All the stores were mom & pop operations, but a few had butcher shops. I recall watching meat being wrapped, using string from a cone of string attached to the ceiling and brown wrapping paper taken from large rolls situated at the end of the counter. As kids, we used to play ‘iron tag’ in front of the Nossum & Wick store, as there were a lot of iron grates and sewer covers in front of the store. One person would be ‘it’, and the others would try to run from one iron pieces to the other without being tagged. We also played a game called ‘eenie-eenie eye over’, which consisted of having people on each side of a building, out of sight of the other side, and hollering the ‘eenie-eenie eye over’ slogan as we threw the ball over the building and the other side would try to catch the ball as it came over. If caught, that person could run around the building and tag someone with the ball who then would be on their side to better catch the next ball.
Back in the days before instant messaging and ipods, if we wanted a playmate, we would go over to their house and stand outside and just yell their name. Most of the time, they heard you calling, but, occasionally, we would have to ring the door bell. Many Saturday mornings we spent with friends either playing Monopoly or some other game, or perhaps listening to the radio. Some Saturdays we would go to a movie theater downtown to catch the latest movie serial, along with the regular feature. The cost was 10 cents for a long time, but it ev3eventually went up, as I recall, to the 12 cent level. I think the war had something to do with the price increase.
During the winter, after a snowstorm, I would take a snow shovel and go around the neighborhood and ask if I could shovel homeowners’ sidewalks. The going rate, depending on the size of the sidewalk, was between 10 to 25 cents. I also had to shovel our own sidewalk, which was rather long as we lived on a corner lot. Snow also brought out the desire among some of us to build a small ski jump in a vacant lot situated on Ninth Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues East. It wasn’t much, but it taught me that I was not a jumper, and haven’t jumped since, although my wife and I do cross-country skiing up north. She is also an accomplished downhill skier, another thing I do not attempt.
Winter also prompted my family to take a toboggan and go up to Chester Bowl, where they had several toboggan runs starting near Kenwood Avenue. The runs were usually icy, and the rides would always be pretty fast. There were snow banks on the sides, so you couldn’t run wild and go off the track. I would also go ice skating at the Grant School rink, which was located on Eleventh Street and east of Grant School. There was also a warming house where you would change into your skates. As children, we never did sled in the streets, but would often go to the Grant School grounds and slide on the small hill north of the school just below Eleventh Street.
As a child, I used to walk to Grant School through grade six, then to a long-gone Franklin Junior High, which was located on Sixth Street between Fourth and Fifth Avenues East, for my seventh grade. The school was very old when I attended it, and I can recall the floors being slanted and being somewhat chilly during the winter. I then went to Washington Junior High for the eighth and ninth grades, winding up at deer old Central High for my high school grades. I always, except for very inclement weather, walked to all the schools. Many a time I walked along east Fourth Street, remembering some of the stores along the street. Bridgemans, Schrader Drug, several food markets, a jewelry store, which had a Western Union clock that I always checked my watch against, Larsons’ barber shop, a hamburger joint, a radio repair store (Mast Radio Repair?), a few bars, and many others whose names I can no longer recall. One name, however, is still on Fourth Street at the same address: Daugherty’s.
There is a small creek running down the hillside between Seventh and Eighth Avenues east. As kids, we quite often would climb down into the ravine and play around, maybe exploring the culverts under the various streets that the creek would pass through. I recall one time I fell on a rock and got a deep gash in my right kwee, and, to this day, I still have the scar as a remembrance.
As a child, I had the usual amount of childhood diseases, such as chicken pox, measles, mumps, and so on. In those days, the Health Department would come around and tack a sign near your front door denoting the disease inside the household. I still recall the chicken pos sign with red lettering.
There was a fire hall for engine number 7 located at Seventh Avenue East and Ninth Street. We would often hear the siren on the fire truck as it traveled down the hill responding to a fire alarm. At that time, it was also a polling place to cast votes. I recall walking up with my parents to vote using a big lever-operated machine with a heavy curtain that was pulled around to insure privacy during voting.
There was a Hartman Bakery located in the west end. One of their drivers, named Ray, used to deliver fresh break to the neighborhood stores mentioned earlier. Somehow, he and I struck up a moderate friendship over time which led to me riding in his truck from time to time, a 1939 Chevy panel, while he was delivering and I would help him on his route. I would tell my Mother that I was going, so she wouldn’t worry. I still can recall the wonderful odor of all the fresh bread being carried in the truck!
Another pass time we had as kids was to sit on sidewalk steps over on Sixth Avenue East and try to name all the cars that passed by. Back then, it was rather easy to name the makes of cars, as they were a lot more distinctive than they are today. It was a game to see who could correctly name the most cars in a given time period.
This ends my recollections of growing up on Central Hillside during the 1930s and 1940s. I moved away from Duluth in the fall of 1952 to Minneapolis to attend electronic school (now Dunwoody) after spending two years at the old campus of UMD. I was trained in electronics, did some TV repair, spent two years in Chicago with Motorola, but moved back to Bloomington in 1966 due to the distance involved with our parents and their grandchildren. I spent 21 years with Control Data and was a project engineer for one of their clients in England. I have been retired since 1988 and spend considerable time in the summer at our cabin near Alborn. WE celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary while in Australia this past November.
John Ebeling (wife: Ira)
9209 Vincent Avenue South
Bloomington, MN 55431-2157
952-888-0816
ijebeling@aol.com
