MAY 20, 2024 – (Cont.) Fred and Ruth had two small house dogs—a Corgi (I believe) named Bambi, and Chico, which, as you can tell from the name, was a Chihuahua—and three kids: Tom, Julie, and Sara.
Tom was the oldest—way older than my oldest sister. He was well into grown-up status by the time I was even aware of him. Over the decades that followed, he would reside sporadically at the house, and when he did, he kept to himself. I do remember him passing briefly in and out of a conversation occasionally when we happened to be visiting, but he would disappear as tacitly as he’d appeared.
He had several memorable traits: 1. A “cauliflower ear,” which Mother explained was from Tom’s days as a high school wrestler; 2. A slow, deliberate gait by which he lifted his feet a bit higher than normal, as if walking over a wet lawn that needed mowing—a trait exhibited by Fred, I noticed; and 3. Parking his big old two-door Olds directly under the street light opposite our house and a few feet beyond the Moore’s property line, and after parking, alighting from the vehicle and walking slowly around the entire car as if conducting a “post-flight” check of an aircraft. I thought Tom was odd, and I know I wasn’t the only one to think so.
Ruth and Fred’s next child, Julie, was a few years younger than Tom but still years older than my oldest sister. Julie was attractive and spoken about with favor by her parents. Her boyfriend Alan lived in a neighboring town closer to Minneapolis, and from mid-afternoon until well into darkness his dark burgundy 1955 Customline Ford sedan was a daily fixture in front of the Moore house. Eventually Alan and Julie got married—to no one’s surprise—and divorced, to my surprise, given how much I’d seen Alan’s car parked across the street.
Sara, or “Sara Jane,” as she was sometimes called during our grade school days, was a classmate and close friend of my sister Elsa. Both Sara and Elsa were among the “cool kids” in middle (junior high) school, which meant that during the summer all the “cool boys,” most of whom resided on the other side of the Rum River, would hang out in front of Moores’ house. I think they hung out there for two reasons: Moores’ yard and house was nicer than ours (especially given that Moores had a “professional” groundskeeper—Dad wasn’t about to pay me to mow our own lawn or edge along our curb, driveway, and sidewalk); moreover (so to speak), Elsa was usually either practicing her violin or away at summer music “camps.”
Given that I was Elsa’s brother, however, I enjoyed a certain level of respectability among the “cool crowd,” which is to say, they actually talked to me amiably. Many of them had younger siblings in my class, and accordingly, I acquired a modicum of “coolness” among my peers since I was accepted by the “cool crowd” three years ahead of my class.
Because of Moores’ affluence and since Sara didn’t need to share anything with her older siblings, she was envied sometimes by my sisters and me.
Worse, on at least one occasion we thought she committed a seriously unbecoming breach of etiquette. The scene was the dining room of our house one exceptionally rare evening when Mother and Dad had invited Ruth and Fred over for some dessert. Sara came too to share in the strawberry shortcake. Whereas my sisters and I addressed Ruth as “Mrs. Moore,” Sara kept calling Mother by her first name. We Nilsson kids were scandalized. After the Moores had left and the front door was closed, we took turns excoriating Sara in absentia for her offense. What shocked me even more, however, was that neither Mother nor Dad thought anything of it. While we expressed our shock, they shrugged their shoulders.
In the end, Sara turned out just fine, and she and Elsa remain good friends. (Cont.)
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
