1947
1943 Estes Park, Colorado
The coat and hat that grandma made
Greg when he came home from GermanyMy brother, Greg James Ranum was born on this day in 1940. He was the first child of Stanley Kenneth and Ella Deloris Lundberg Ranum. Greg lived in Rosewood when he was little. He lived at the once known as the store and in the house that Olaf built. Olaf's house was moved to town and remodeled.
And I remember..............
· I REMEMBER being in the barnyard in the winter and watching him ride the ponies backwards while hanging unto their tail.
· I REMEMBER the parakeet waiting for him to come down for breakfast so Chips could sit on his groomed hair and pull on the Vaseline Tonic embedded hair. I can hear the bird squawking as Greg pushed him off
· I REMEMBER when I thought I was doing him a favor by painting his bike lime green with house paint and wondered why he was so mad about it.
· I REMEMBER watching him figure skate in hockey skates at the old arena with someone named Pigeon.
· I REMEMBER the boys in the neighborhood playing hockey in the street and using clumps of snow for goals. I remember them not being happy when the cars, which honked to get them out of the way, would purposely run over their goals.
· I REMEMBER him riding behind the boat at Lake Park in a red inner tube and how fun it looked.
· I REMEMBER when Mother tried to give Grandma Ranum part of his bedroom set and how he simply took it out of her hands and said, “This is mine; I don’t want to give it away”.
· I REMEMBER chasing fire flies with him and rubbing them on my red hat hoping they would still glow on the Fourth of July.
· I REMEMBER him dancing the shag at the auditorium when no one else knew what it was.
· I REMEMBER an open arena called Central and how he never seemed to need to go into the warming house even on the coldest of days.
· I REMEMBER him pleading with Mother to buy mittens for a poor family where the children wore socks on their hands to keep warm.
· I REMEMBER all of us smoking Chesterfield cigarettes taken from the unlocked office desk.
· I REMEMBER him eating powdered Jell-O© right out of the box. He like strawberry the best.
· I REMEMBER the two of us taking the Massey Harris tractor and the wagon to pick up bales of wild hay somewhere far from the farm.
· I remember going to Winnipeg, Manitoba where he bought something called stride pants which were big in the knees and tapered at the ankle.
· I remember him getting his front teeth knocked out from a hockey puck.
· I REMEMBER when the Wenneberg kids, the Hanson boys, and Greg and I would all get on the toboggan and fly down Hanson’s hill stopping just before the river bank.
· I REMEMBER the song he taught me which he had learned at YMCA Camp.
· “I was standing on the corner
Doing no harm
Along came a policeman
And grabbed me by the arm
He took me to a little red box
And rang a little bell
Out popped a squad car
That took me to my cell
It was five o’clock in the morning
I looked upon the wall
The roaches and the bed bugs
Where playing a game of ball
The score was five to nothing
The roaches were ahead
Along came a bed bug
And knocked me out of bed.
It was six o’clock in the morning
And the guard came around
He brought me my breakfast
It weighed a half a pound
The coffee was tobacco juice
The bread was very stale
And that’s the way
They feed the bums
And the Fargo Moorhead jail
· I REMEMBER that he always slept in the bottom of the boat while walleye fishing and that he caught the most fish.
· I REMEMBER him mixing water and Vaseline Hair Tonic in the brown sink in the master bathroom, and then applying it with a comb and the mirror being spotted with residue there after.
· I REMEMBER that Dad got him ready to go fishing with friends early one morning and how disappointed Dad was when he opened the garage and saw the Chevy had been rolled. He told Dad he had gone down a steep hill too fast in Red Lake Falls. Later the two of them took the Oldsmobile to Red Lake to see where it happened. It wasn’t what really happened. Actually he got into a fight with other people his age and they rolled the car over the hill. It is the same group of guys that broke out all the windows previously.
· I REMEMBER him locking me in the air on the two seated Ferris wheel and screaming for someone to come and let me down.
· I REMEMBER the two of us walking in the woods looking for Judy Lee when she was lost during a group fishing trip.
· I REMEMBER him fuming because the cat had kittens in his dresser drawer and mother wouldn’t move them for a few days.
· I REMEMBER him picking me up with the Goliath with eight people already squeezed into the sub compact car.
· I REMEMBER going to the Six Twenty Club in Minneapolis and Greg wanted to order a full turkey dinner. Dad told him if he just wanted the meat to just order meat and if he ordered a full turkey dinner he would have to eat it all. We were there a long time as he worked on getting all the vegetables down!
· I REMEMBER when he protected me from the dog that used to jump on me on the way home from third grade. It seemed like he always had a hockey stick and his skates around his neck. The dog knocked me down and Greg whacked him with his stick. That was the last time the dog jumped on me. The owners saw the ‘check’ and called Dad. Greg explained he was just defending his sister.
· I REMEMBER when his front bridge broke. He said it was when he was playing hockey. What really happened is he had a match book stuck in them and someone tried to take it breaking the bridge.
· I REMEMBER when he wrapped his ’59 Oldsmobile around a pole in Sauk Center and how Mother didn’t want me to go get him. I went anyway.
· I REMEMBER him ‘storing’ crab apples in a tackle box in the loft of the barn on Oakland Park Road.
· I REMEMBER him standing on a tree over the lake and swinging on a rope to land in the water at YMCA camp near Lake Park.
· I REMEMBER wondering why he let the steer out of the barn when he knew he shouldn’t be untied. Greg called the steer EL FONZ Z Bull, the rest of us called him Old Hickory. After the steer got out, Greg jumped on a pony and tried to round him up. The more he tried, the more the steer evaded him. When Dad saw what was happening he told Greg to stop chasing him. We got Hickory back in the barn with a pail of oats; he was 100 pounds lighter.
· I REMEMBER the two of us deciding to play Monopoly© only for it to end in a fight and tossing everything into the box. Each time we made the decision to play the game we would have to sort the money first. We made up the rules as we went. It generally turned into a race horse sort of game. It always ended in a fight. Always.
· I remember lying on the floor listening to Hopalong Cassidy records and following along in the book. I remember we were supposed to turn the page when you heard the ding. Greg knew the records by heart and played all the parts, including the ding. The side kick, Dusty would sing:
I am just a cowboy
With neither aim nor goal
I need a pal to lean upon
To teach me right from wrong
He can ride and shoot
And he’s plenty smart to boot
That’s Hopalong Cassidy.
· I REMEMBER the parakeet waiting for him to come down for breakfast so Chips could sit on his groomed hair and pull on the Vaseline Tonic embedded hair. I can hear the bird squawking as Greg pushed him off
· I REMEMBER when I thought I was doing him a favor by painting his bike lime green with house paint and wondered why he was so mad about it.
· I REMEMBER watching him figure skate in hockey skates at the old arena with someone named Pigeon.
· I REMEMBER the boys in the neighborhood playing hockey in the street and using clumps of snow for goals. I remember them not being happy when the cars, which honked to get them out of the way, would purposely run over their goals.
· I REMEMBER him riding behind the boat at Lake Park in a red inner tube and how fun it looked.
· I REMEMBER when Mother tried to give Grandma Ranum part of his bedroom set and how he simply took it out of her hands and said, “This is mine; I don’t want to give it away”.
· I REMEMBER chasing fire flies with him and rubbing them on my red hat hoping they would still glow on the Fourth of July.
· I REMEMBER him dancing the shag at the auditorium when no one else knew what it was.
· I REMEMBER an open arena called Central and how he never seemed to need to go into the warming house even on the coldest of days.
· I REMEMBER him pleading with Mother to buy mittens for a poor family where the children wore socks on their hands to keep warm.
· I REMEMBER all of us smoking Chesterfield cigarettes taken from the unlocked office desk.
· I REMEMBER him eating powdered Jell-O© right out of the box. He like strawberry the best.
· I REMEMBER the two of us taking the Massey Harris tractor and the wagon to pick up bales of wild hay somewhere far from the farm.
· I remember going to Winnipeg, Manitoba where he bought something called stride pants which were big in the knees and tapered at the ankle.
· I remember him getting his front teeth knocked out from a hockey puck.
· I REMEMBER when the Wenneberg kids, the Hanson boys, and Greg and I would all get on the toboggan and fly down Hanson’s hill stopping just before the river bank.
· I REMEMBER the song he taught me which he had learned at YMCA Camp.
· “I was standing on the corner
Doing no harm
Along came a policeman
And grabbed me by the arm
He took me to a little red box
And rang a little bell
Out popped a squad car
That took me to my cell
It was five o’clock in the morning
I looked upon the wall
The roaches and the bed bugs
Where playing a game of ball
The score was five to nothing
The roaches were ahead
Along came a bed bug
And knocked me out of bed.
It was six o’clock in the morning
And the guard came around
He brought me my breakfast
It weighed a half a pound
The coffee was tobacco juice
The bread was very stale
And that’s the way
They feed the bums
And the Fargo Moorhead jail
· I REMEMBER that he always slept in the bottom of the boat while walleye fishing and that he caught the most fish.
· I REMEMBER him mixing water and Vaseline Hair Tonic in the brown sink in the master bathroom, and then applying it with a comb and the mirror being spotted with residue there after.
· I REMEMBER that Dad got him ready to go fishing with friends early one morning and how disappointed Dad was when he opened the garage and saw the Chevy had been rolled. He told Dad he had gone down a steep hill too fast in Red Lake Falls. Later the two of them took the Oldsmobile to Red Lake to see where it happened. It wasn’t what really happened. Actually he got into a fight with other people his age and they rolled the car over the hill. It is the same group of guys that broke out all the windows previously.
· I REMEMBER him locking me in the air on the two seated Ferris wheel and screaming for someone to come and let me down.
· I REMEMBER the two of us walking in the woods looking for Judy Lee when she was lost during a group fishing trip.
· I REMEMBER him fuming because the cat had kittens in his dresser drawer and mother wouldn’t move them for a few days.
· I REMEMBER him picking me up with the Goliath with eight people already squeezed into the sub compact car.
· I REMEMBER going to the Six Twenty Club in Minneapolis and Greg wanted to order a full turkey dinner. Dad told him if he just wanted the meat to just order meat and if he ordered a full turkey dinner he would have to eat it all. We were there a long time as he worked on getting all the vegetables down!
· I REMEMBER when he protected me from the dog that used to jump on me on the way home from third grade. It seemed like he always had a hockey stick and his skates around his neck. The dog knocked me down and Greg whacked him with his stick. That was the last time the dog jumped on me. The owners saw the ‘check’ and called Dad. Greg explained he was just defending his sister.
· I REMEMBER when his front bridge broke. He said it was when he was playing hockey. What really happened is he had a match book stuck in them and someone tried to take it breaking the bridge.
· I REMEMBER when he wrapped his ’59 Oldsmobile around a pole in Sauk Center and how Mother didn’t want me to go get him. I went anyway.
· I REMEMBER him ‘storing’ crab apples in a tackle box in the loft of the barn on Oakland Park Road.
· I REMEMBER him standing on a tree over the lake and swinging on a rope to land in the water at YMCA camp near Lake Park.
· I REMEMBER wondering why he let the steer out of the barn when he knew he shouldn’t be untied. Greg called the steer EL FONZ Z Bull, the rest of us called him Old Hickory. After the steer got out, Greg jumped on a pony and tried to round him up. The more he tried, the more the steer evaded him. When Dad saw what was happening he told Greg to stop chasing him. We got Hickory back in the barn with a pail of oats; he was 100 pounds lighter.
· I REMEMBER the two of us deciding to play Monopoly© only for it to end in a fight and tossing everything into the box. Each time we made the decision to play the game we would have to sort the money first. We made up the rules as we went. It generally turned into a race horse sort of game. It always ended in a fight. Always.
· I remember lying on the floor listening to Hopalong Cassidy records and following along in the book. I remember we were supposed to turn the page when you heard the ding. Greg knew the records by heart and played all the parts, including the ding. The side kick, Dusty would sing:
I am just a cowboy
With neither aim nor goal
I need a pal to lean upon
To teach me right from wrong
He can ride and shoot
And he’s plenty smart to boot
That’s Hopalong Cassidy.
· I REMEMBER he had a pony named Babe on Oakland Park Road. She was a dark brown Welsh, or under 50” at the shoulder. She was always looking for greener grass. Greg always had to go get her. I rode her once; she took me under the trees and brushed me off.
· I REMEMBER when the piano was sold and the space was replaced by a two piece Danish Modern HIFI. It was placed in the living room to get maximum enjoyment from the music. It had woofers and tweeters. When we went to Larson’s music to get long playing records, (33 1/3) we bought three. Glenn Miller for Mother and Dad, Platters, and Peter Gunn. Now,Peter Gunn was a suave, sophisticated, hep to the jive, groovin' to the oh-so-cool jazzbo-beat, PETER GUNN was like nothing ever seen before on television or anywhere else, really. He was a new kind of eye. While other dicks hung out in rundown offices, swilling rotgut, living hand to mouth, loners till the end, cloaked in rumpled trench coats and angst, Gunn hung out at Mother's, a swank jazz club, wearing his Ivy League finest, pitching woo at his best gal, singer Edie Hart, drinking nothing more than an occasional tasteful martini. The music was written by Henry Mancini.
· I REMEMBER him carving paratrooper boots on my plaster of Paris sculpture of a laughing fat man.
Gregory James Ranum
October 18, 1940 February 14, 2002
