Childhood Memories along Cooper's Main Street
memories
special images
Patty Mack and Kathy Paulsen see the Town
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We would love to hear from you. Please send comments and memories to: paulsenkathy@gmail.com or davesayer@gmail.com
Dave emails Kathy....
Your mentioning of the legendary 'Cooper Cleaners' where your
grandfather worked as a tailor really sent me back to our elementary
school days. I am sure I saw your grandfather and I know I was in the
Cleaners often I think I can image Jill's dad in there. He had a great
sense of humor. Funny I remember its smell of cleaning chemicals but I can't for the life of me invoke a clear image. Do you remember where it was along main street? Next to Model clothing? As a kid did you ever go into Tang's Bar where Oscar, Susan's dad and then Mike Mack's dad worked as bartender. I have images of both of them behind the bar which was huge, old dark wood. Boy that place was like an old West saloon with spittoons, giant jars of pickled pigs feet and pickles, tip jars and giant cigarette lighters. According to Elroy Lee my grandfather and Al Loder used to play card games in the back of Tangs every afternoon for quarters and they would play fiercely too. Elroy got a kick out of seeing these to very well off business men taking a 25 cent game so very seriously. Do you remember visiting the Lee's Milk dairy? I think our grade school class made a visit there. There was a bakery in Cooper too, who ran that?! I was crazy for their Bismarcks. My own kids laught the hardest when they heard I was a 'little fatty' during grade school.I remember trying to buy saltpeter from the druggist,
Tupper Houden in his pharmacy but he wouldn't sell it to me because he knew I was going to make gunpowder with it.Do you recall the wild Saturday nights in the summer when the farmers brought in their grain harvest to the elevators and got big checks for their grain and then they took their families shopping, deposited part of the money in the bank and drank up some of it in Tangs. The stores were open until past nine pm I remember my dad who was always a very quiet guy, came home from these long Saturday evenings so excited about how much business the bank did that night in taking in deposits. I remember the dust of the street being rilled up making the whole street scene misty with cars full of kids cruising up and down the main street and the sidewalks full of people. Remember Fred Ashby with the peanut roasting machine? This machine with the monkey was one of a kind in the entire US, we all knew.
There were so many stores! Those late nite store openings seem remarkable and unique to rural ND life! Yes, that 10 pm fire siren _was_ spooky! I remember that was the time kids had to be home or they would be arrested. It was a dire warning to all kids: go home or else. Do you remember the train which came daily to Cooper? It was called the Goose. I remember seeing often but never rode it. Did you?!
I remember Ohman's Motel. Didn't one of the brothers who was mentally handicapped hang out in front of the Motel all day long almost every day? That was a special memory too! Funny, my sister, Nicky, and brother, Scott, all gave most of our teenaged girl babysitters bad times too. I remember while being "babysat" I chased Nicky up onto the kitchen sink and I was spraying her feet with the water sprayer on the sink and the babysitter really yelling at us. Carolyn Vogt, our neighbor whose father was an extension agent, and who had a glass eye due to an accident with a Forth of July sparkler, often babysat us. Carolyn later said that we acted really badly. I think I would have punched myself out!
Yes that Stone's cafe was great. I can remember as an elementary
student aged kid, getting 25 cents from my parents and running up to
Stone's to buy a 5 cent pack of Sen-Sen then waiting impatiently in
line at that old door between Stone's and the (Strand?) theater to
watch a movie for 20 cents. On occasion I would splurge on a Brown (or Black?) Cow carmel sucker which would last the entire movie. In the winter I could remember sitting in the theater and looking down could see snow between the theater's floor boards. Remember when people would let a pop bottle roll all the noisy way down the aisle during the movie?Just take a visual walk down Cooper's main street.
Next to your folk's store was that magical place, Gorthethe's" (sp?)
then across the street a butcher shop an Joe Vallela's TV and radio.
The old hotel which burned down; did not your family eat Sunday
dinners there? I remember the stuffed ducks on the walls. Grade
school: mountains of snow in the lot across from the school, standing
in line after recess, singing really loud in the basement during choir
of the elementary school, floating Popsicle boats in the spring
run-off gutter streams around the school, climbing the snow mountains
the city service put on the lot next to the school. I have so many
clear memory flashes! So real, so paradise Cooper 50s-60s. Sadly it has almos all melted away. Flashes of a big lab dog waiting for us kids which hangs out behind the butcher shop. I long for the old Cooper hotel. And Stone's Cafe were the bad guys and some of us hung out.