Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
MAY 17, 2024 – (Cont.) I don’t know why, but after a couple of years the Kuhlmeys moved. Maybe it was because the lilac bush refused to surrender, even after having been burned at the stake by Mr. Kuhlmey. Replacing the Kulmeys were the Walchessens, by far the most interesting of our successors, mainly because …
MAY 16, 2024 – (Cont.) The third set of neighbors to occupy our old house next door were the Kuhlmeys—Mr. and Mrs., their grown son who’d been on his own before the Kuhlmeys move-in, and their very young son. Our family had very little interaction with these people, largely because they seemed to have little …
MAY 15, 2024 – (Cont.) Taking the place of the Schippers was Mrs. Gage, a widow of my grandparents’ vintage, and her son Dick. I’ve forgotten what he did for a living, if I ever knew in the first place. What I remember, however, is that he wore a suit to work and always flashed …
MAY 11, 2024 – During moving day in August 1961, our family became next door neighbors of ourselves. A year or two before, my parents had purchased the adjacent vacant lot from our neighbor Dr. Spurzem a few doors down and spent months planning their dream home. I remember well the process. Late into the …
MAY 10, 2024 – Next to the Holland cottage was the Violet compound occupying the sweeping rounded corner where the west end of Rice Street and the south end of Levee Avenue blended together. As the maxim of real estate valuation goes, “location, location, location.” Though the lot was across the street from the Mississippi, …
MAY 9, 2024 – Next door (upstream along the Mississippi River) to Caines lived the Moores. The parents, Fred and Ruth, were smart, sharp, kind, cultured, and civic minded, and from my perspective, their impressive house and yard reflected their well-deserved reputation as pillars of the community. I’ll save them for last. For now, I’ll …
MAY 8, 2024 – (Cont.) On warm weather afternoons Bill would stroll down the driveway to retrieve the mail. Hanging from a crosspiece was a wooden square bearing the family name below a silhouetted hunter, gun raised toward silhouetted ducks flying across the top of square. If Bill wasn’t an avid worker, he was an …
MAY 7, 2024 – (Cont.) Caines also owned two Labradors—a black and a yellow. Back in those days dogs enjoyed far more freedom than is the case today. Stormy, the black Lab, wandered freely, at least in our immediate section of the neighborhood. He never took a bite out of my lip, but his size …
MAY 6, 2024 – Next door to Bob Ehlen lived the Caines—Bill and Molly and their three kids—whose grounds and household were as scruffy and unorganized as Bob Ehlen’s were well manicured and buttoned-down. Our old house at Rice and Green faced the Caine chaos, which was perpetually in session. The center of their three-ring …
MAY 4, 2024 – Before we moved to our new house at 505 Rice from our old house next door at the corner of Green and Rice, I hung out a lot right there at the corner street sign. I remember well the day a few weeks short of first grade when I figured out …
APRIL 27, 2024 – (Cont.) Dr. Borrud, his wife Shirley and their three daughters—Lori, Aleta, and Becky—replaced the Spurzems in the Tudor house. The stolid Norwegian doctor, a founding member of the American Academy of Family Medicine, was just 10 days older than my dad. Recruited to the (modern) clinic on Main Street at the …
APRIL 26, 2024 – We live in the Age of Opinion, or more precisely, the Age of Cacophonous Opinion—informed, uninformed and misinformed; often in one-off unorganized bursts, sometimes in regular outrages devoured by legions of subscribers gathered by a common algorithm; scattered to the crosswinds of social media yet occasionally framed according to logic and …
APRIL 25, 2024 – Often I experience highly symbolic dreams. Perhaps the most symbolic occurred 27 years ago during a particularly stressful period at work. In that dream I found myself in a game of pickle-in-the-middle—playing the role of pickle. The other two players were my boss, with whom in reality I’d long been tangling, …
APRIL 24, 2024 – Dr. and Mary Spurzem lived in the elegant authentic appearing Tudor house—with a slate roof, brick-and-timber facing and lots of dormers—next to Gladys and Charlie. Spurzems were quite a lot older than my parents. From the days of my earliest memories, I’d wanted to see the inside of the house, but …
APRIL 23, 2024 – Next door to the Benzians lived Harlan Thurston and his wife, and next to them, Harlan’s brother, Clayton and his wife and son, Gladys and Charlie. If I was ever inside Harlan’s house, it would’ve been ever so briefly—seconds, maybe—and in the company of my mother in connection with some fund-raising …
APRIL 22, 2024 – In a sleek, elegant, modern, low-profile house with a well-maintained lawn that swept down to the Mississippi River lived the Benzians—Dick and Margaret and their three sons, Peter, John, and Stephen. From the street, the house was all but hidden by trees that separated the dwelling from the open half of …
APRIL 21, 2024 – Replacing the Tobins were the Joslyns—Warren, the dad, a realtor and jazz trombone player; Audrey, the mom, who was always well attired and perfectly even-keeled and had some part-time job outside the home, and the four boys: Mark, in Nina’s class; Dave, two years ahead of me; Jim, two years behind …
APRIL 20, 2024 – The next family to move into the Perkins’ old house on Rice Street were the Tobins. Mr. Tobin was a traveling salesman of whom sightings were extremely rare. He drove the family’s nice car, I remember—a late model Mercury—while his easy-going wife Mickey was stuck with an ancient green Ford. I …
APRIL 19, 2024 – In the enormous house on the other side of the Ridge (Roecker, Fenwick, Snyder) house first lived—during my life on Rice—the Perkins, followed by the Tobins, and the Joslyns. I spent lots of time in the house, especially under the Joslyn regime, since they had four sons, three of whom were …
APRIL 18, 2024 – (Cont.) The next fall, Bobby and I, along with other neighborhood boys, had stepped up our game substantially. In addition to various forms of football and baseball, we were now playing war on a regular basis. I didn’t yet know much about WWII. (Dad had a permanent deferral based on his …
APRIL 17, 2024 – (Cont.) In retrospect I’m interested in the origins of my own personality traits, good and bad; or if not the origins necessarily, perhaps their first manifestations. On the plus side, I’d always had a modicum of empathy for my peers. If another kid got hurt or dissed or bullied, no matter …
APRIL 16, 2024 – (Cont.) Over the two or three years during which we chummed around, Bobby and I alternated between being good friends and not-so-good friends. Perhaps it was boredom that bred contempt or just the opposite—with no one else to play with, we decided to make the best of time with the one …
APRIL 15, 2024 – After the Fenwicks moved out, the Snyders moved in at 443 Rice—the parents, Ivan and Dorothy, the son David, who was a year ahead of my oldest sister, then Jane, in Elsa’s class, Beth, a year older than me, and Bobby, who was two grades behind me. Bobby and I spent …
APRIL 14, 2024 – After the Ridges moved to St. Cloud, their old house was occupied in succession by the Roeckers, the Fenwicks, and the Snyders. As mentioned in the Introduction to this series, The Neighbors, a while after acquiring their airplane, our friends the Roeckers moved to the other side of town. That made …
APRIL 13, 2024 – (Cont.)The house next door to Johnsons changed hands three time from 1954, the time we moved to the neighborhood, to 1968, when I flew the coop for boarding school, later college, then the world. When we moved to Rice Street, the Ridges—Will and Ginna, Becky, Johnny and three years later, Tommy—occupied …