Childhood Memories along Cooper's Main Street
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Ell recalls
The main street of Cooperstown had everything to do with my early impressions of people outside my own family. Not only did we shop there, but we lived on main street and both my parents worked along those three blocks. My first recollections of main street center on the grocery stores where we shopped on Saturday nights. I especially remember the people behind the counters and the hubbub of the streets. Red Owl had Eddie Zutter and Del Baird and C and D Market has Perry Haaland and Fritz Holland. A smaller store across from Red Owl had a lady I associate with Ann Thime and Lillie Simenson, but I don’t think I remember her name. . We always stopped at the Public Library which was in the basement of the Security Bank. Mrs. C. P. Dahl worked there and it was where I learned to read at the age of 5 or so. My mom and dad always took out books and so did Tiina and I.
We didn’t have much money in those days, but on Saturday night we would get a few pennies, or if we were lucky, a nickel so we could buy candy. Most of the grocery stores carried penny candy then. I remember once I needed a new pair of shoes, probably to go to school for the first time, and mom took me into Larson’s Department Store where, later, Howden’s was. Mr. Larson measured my feet and brought out some really brown shoes that I was too small to realize were ugly. My mother had asked for sturdy shoes that wouldn’t fall apart. We bought the shoes and, sure enough, they didn’t fall apart. In the summer, the high school band played in the main intersection of main street and Fred, the popcorn man was always out there too in front of Red Owl. People would just stand by cars and talk. It seemed like there were crowds of people everywhere. Some of the women would have their hair in pin curls with a scarf over their heads because the next day was Sunday and everybody would need to look nice for church.
On almost every weekend when I was a child we would go to the movies at the Strand Theater. The Tang’s owned it then. Mrs. Tang sold tickets in the little booth at the front of the theater. I always thought she was such a beautiful women; it was no wonder she owned a window into Hollywood. It didn’t cost us much to get in in those days. Mom and Dad would take us usually on Sunday afternoon. I would always have to use the rest room which was in the back of Stones café next door. I’m sure there was a steady stream of people coming into Stones from the movies next door. Sometime Nellie Stone would be in the back kitchen area making pies in the bad light of her little baking area. She would be rolling out the crusts on the hoosier cabinet in that little room. The movie theater was also where Santa Claus would come at Christmas time with bags of hard candy mix for every child. Now that was the first time I saw a real Santa Claus with a red suit and the beard and everything. I wonder who was in the suit in those years? Later as I got older, the movies were still important to us. We went to every one, except Elmer Gantry, which Mom had heard was not for teenagers. The theater would show cartoons and a newsreel before the feature film. My parents would watch the newsreels with rapt attention. Much of the news was what was happening in Europe and that was of great interest to them. I saw many of the classics in that theater: Gone with the wind, all the Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis films, Francis the talking mule and Abbot and Costello movies. I had my favorite actors and actresses: June Allison and Tony Curtis were favorites. Later, I saw all the Elvis movies there. The theater had a baby’s crying room upstairs so that children who were being disruptive could be taken upstairs.
On Saturday nights our last stop of the evening would be the locker plant behind C & D Market. It had rows and rows of frozen food lockers and it was extremely cold in there. It seems to me the person who worked there was a Seim and later Maynard Norgaard. I would always ask to go with Dad as he dug out the frozen meat and other goods we had stored there. Once I was standing next to the drawer while it was pulled out to full extension about level with my face and I decided to stick out my tongue. Well, it froze instantly to the open drawer. I knew Dad would be done soon and he would start to close the drawer so I knew I either had to rip my tongue off the metal drawer or have it be ripped off for me. What a dilemma! I picked action and tore my tongue off the metal side. Needless to say, I never did it again and remember it well to this day.
As a child living in the country, the other time main street was important to me was during the spring “play day” as it was called. All the children from the one room schools in the county would come into Cooperstown and have a parade and compete in track events and other fun stuff. I attended Kingsley township school about 2 miles from our house on Goplen’s farm. It was great! We marched down main street for the parade. I remember being dressed up as Jill with my only first grade classmate Dale Clemons as Jack. We had a bucket and brown paper with mercurochrome signifying a broken crown.
My relationship with main street changed when my mother went to work in Cooper. She worked in the building across the street from C & D Market. I started school in Cooper and would come to the office where the car was parked so she and Tiina and I could go home. School was out at 4 and she didn’t get off work until 5 so I had some time to either play with friends or go to the nearby Gorseths store and look at all the wonderful things there like paper dolls, toys of all kinds., candy, and cosmetics. What a wonder all those things were! I couldn’t afford any of them, but I looked and pretended just the same. Once I wanted to get my mother a birthday present. My father gave me 50 cents and I scoured the main street stores for something appropriate. I ended up in the J.C. Penny’s store that later housed the Johnson’s store and later yet, Ann Adams womens shop and the hardware store. The clerk in the store was Mary Campbell , the fifth grade teacher at the elementary school. Penny’s had pneumatic tubes that the clerks used to send up money from customers and receive back change. They seemed like magic. Most of the merchandise in those days was kept behind the counter so the clerk had to get the boxes of items and show them to you. I asked to see hankies and she pulled the box from the shelf behind her. I selected a hankie with bright red flowers which in retrospect, my mother probably would not have liked at all. It was 50 cents. The stores were about to close and I couldn’t make up my mind but finally said I would take it. I was shocked to discover that the final sales price included tax which I did not have. I remember walking out of the store with the hankie, but I don’t know who came up with the tax money. I’m sure it was the clerk. It was the first purchase I made on my own except for penny candy.
We moved from Goplen’s farm into Cooperstown when I was 9 years old. I was in fourth grade. We rented a two bedroom apartment over the dry cleaners which was next to the Windsor hotel. What an exciting place for a girl who had lived on the farm! We had a main street view from our living room. Across the street was Tang’s Recreation, Sandvik’s shoe repair, and a building that was in later years a laundromat, but when we moved there it was the Johnson’s café, a short-lived enterprise run by, (surprise), the Johnson’s who lived above Sjoldens’s insurance agency next to Howdens. The family had twin daughters, Darlene and Marlene, who went to school with us for a short time. The café didn’t make it for very long. I never ate there, and from my perspective from across the street not many others did either. Occasionally, I would be sent to get a shoe fixed at Sandvik’s. I was always scared of Mr. Sandvik because he had a wooden leg and limped. He was always kind to me, but he always smelled of what I later found out was liquor.
Tang’s was a mystery to me, but I did get glimpses into the dark recesses of the bar occasionally. Late at night there were loud voices sometimes that woke us up when patrons left after last call. Lee’s dairy operation was across the street from where the bowling alley was to be built and was an interesting place for a child. The windows in the front office were large and it was possible to see into the back were the milk was processed. The smell in the building was unmistakable. The floors were always wet with hoses and water running everywhere. The office had a cooler and a freezer which had dixie cups and other treats for children. I believe it cost 5 cents for a dixie cup and that was more than I had most times as a small child, so trips to the diary were made along with a parent. I do remember helping Nancy Lee deliver milk with Andy Hagle driving the big milk truck. The apartment we lived in had a back stair down to the alley. From there I could see the cooks in the Windsor Hotel kitchen. They had a large fan that blew greasy smelling smoke out into the alley so that the stairs were always bathed in the kitchen smells of the Windsor Hotel. We would go next door occasionally, walk through the lobby and exit out the other door. The café and the lobby were connected on the inside and I remember the lobby being dark, filled with dark colored furniture and a phone booth, the only one I had ever seen. The café was a popular gathering spot for older high school girls and sometimes they would tolerate us sitting in the booth with them while they snacked on cinnamon rolls and coffee. Some would smoke cigarettes which was in our minds very cool. The Windsor Hotel was also the bus stop when Cooperstown had bus service to Fargo and other points. I remember taking the bus to Fargo once. Fred Oakley drove the bus. I remember he was wearing a uniform that looked so official.
Watching the traffic go by on main street did not last long for my sister and me because out mother proclaimed it off limits to hang our heads out the window or even stand by the windows looking out. She said it wasn’t very seemly to always be watching the constant movement of traffic, but of course, we did it anyway while she wasn’t looking. The apartment itself was cosy, but smelled of the cleaning fluids used in the dry cleaning process. Dick Engebret owned the cleaners at that time doing most of the heavy duty cleaning out in a little shed in the alley out back, but the smell still permeated upstairs. We lived there until I was about to start 7th grade. One of the wonderful benefits of that apartment was its proximity to the ice skating rink on the corner across from the bank where the Johnnson’s store would be constructed. We could see the ice and warming shack from our windows which was ideal for parental oversight of our activities. I would go skating virtually every night and on the weekends.
My parents often questioned my lengthy stays in the warming shack. They surmised that I was less interested in skating and more interested in sitting around with other kids in the shack. How true! Other frequent skating rink visitors as I recall were the Soma girls, the Ronnnigen family who lived half a block down, Doug Edland, Blair Cussons and many others. Dad supervised the shack one winter and Oscar Hogie was there at least one year. The main street apartment was wonderful for it’s access to stores downtown. I’m sure I wore out my welcome at many as I visited to see what was new. I loved Claire Wright’s furniture store especially and, of course, Howden’s. They had clothes, record albums, candy and all sorts of wonderful stuff. I still have the stuffed frog I couldn’t live without one Christmas. Almklov’s had cosmetics and gift items I never tired of looking at.
Mom worked in the ASCS office which was in the present library building so she has an easy walk to work as well. It wasn’t long after we moved out that the Windsor Hotel and the adjacent cleaners building burned down. I remember going downtown during the fire and watching from across the street as our former home burned down. I can’t remember what caused the fire, but I always thought it had something to do with all that grease in the kitchen. After we moved from main street, my visits were fewer, but the Stone’s Café and the Strand theater were a part of my life until I graduated. Maxine’s store was an important stop as was the Johnson’s store.
When we lived on a farmstead owned by Arnold Sola just a mile from Cooper, we raised many vegetables for our own use. The garden was prolific there and Mother was careful to plant all the vegetables we might need in the course of a year. We also raised them for 4-H projects as well as having hogs. Once in a while, she didn’t have time to freeze or can vegetables so she would send us into town with bags of green beans to sell to the Johnson’s store. They had a grocery section in the store that had been Penny’s. I hated to have to walk into the store peddling green beans, but Erick Berdahl, the owner of the store would buy them gladly.
During those years, my dad worked at Main Motors as an accountant. Reynold Retzlaff and Everett Aarestad owned the business at that time. I remember going here after school to get a ride home if I didn’t want to ride the bus. Oliver Kjoermo was the parts man and was always there. One year all the kids of the employees were invited to help with the annual inventory of parts. We had a great time crawling through the rows of parts bins even on top of shelving units that had very old parts on them. It was fun for us and we earned a little spending money. I still love the smell of a car dealership. Later my father would give me spending money if I helped him with filing. I would spend Saturday morning filing papers for him.
The bowling alley was built on main street when I was probably about 11 or 12. It was a wonderful spot to gather or just cruise by in the car. The pool tables were an attraction even into my high school years as we played pool to pass the time. Main street was the heart of Cooperstown and I certainly feel a fondness for the stores that still remain to this day. Cruising up and down the street honking the horn at other cars and just endlessly circling the area was one of the main social events for kids in the town. I remember the police constable, Michael Lentsch, who walked the streets late at night testing to see if all the store owners had locked their doors. He sat in his car on the corner by Almklov’s Pharmacy.