LETS PLAY JACKS

A great place to play jacks on a warm summer afternoon was on Grandma Mae's front porch which was on the east side of the house away from the blazing sun. Most porches were rough, hers was smooth. Another favorite place was on Julie's front porch, it was painted and made it smooth.

Julie had a big family including two older sisters who were great jack players and even better trainers. If the four of us played, the older girls generally won. We played after supper and after the dishes were done and the Lone Ranger was over on the radio. After the sisters finished, Julie and I would finish.

Our jack sets were 12 in with a little red rubber ball. Although the most common game was tossing the jacks in the air and picking them up first by ones, then two at a time, until the person who was it, picked up all of the jacks at one time. That was hard to do, as you still had to toss the jacks in the air rather than lay them down in a clump. A miss was called when the player was not successful at picking up the confirmed number of jacks. When it was your turn again, you started at the number you missed on.

Other variations remembered were pigs in a pen and double bounce. In pigs in a pen, the player made a little cove using their hand with the pinkie next to the concrete. One would push the number of jacks into the pen. The other, double bounce was hard to do with a little rubber ball but watch out if you were using a golf ball that would really bounce--if you could control it is something else.

The game is hundreds of years old, I will need a hundred years to figure out what children used for a rubber ball. I have no trouble with the impression of ancestors using rocks or bones for the jacks but what about the ball?

The picture of the jacks shows them as plastic. Ours were shaped the same way but made of metal. When they were purchased, they were bright and shining and generally red or blue but after a few rounds, the paint fell off. Used jacks were grey with specks of color.

I must be a jack! I am grey with specks of color

Happy rubber ball bouncing!

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JAEME LYNN

Her mother, Rachel took this photograph while they were on holiday.

Jaeme Lynn was born on this day in 1998. She is a bright child with lots of talent.

Her aura is yellow. Yellows are the sunniest, happiest and most childlike personalities in the color-spectrum. "All I want to do is have some fun!" is a song which is a wonderful representation of Yellows and shows their easy going, light and sunny character. These playful people have a wonderful sense of humor. They love to laugh and intimately enjoy life from many different angles. They advocate relaxation, the pure joy of life and live spontaneously. They are always reminding other people to not take life too seriously and to always look on the bright side. Life and work should both be enjoyed.

Take a tip from her!

Happy Birthday, Jaeme

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MEMORIES

It is on this day, April 30, a year ago that Ella Steinhauer died.

She is, through my eyes, an unforgettable woman.

A former Mother-on-law, turned friend in the last decade of her life, she had a spirit about her for capturing you into her circle. If there, you wanted to stay there.

A listener

A talker

A teacher

A friend

A hostess

A landlady

A comforter

A hugger

A story teller

A believer

A forgiver

A sister

A mother

A grand mother

A great grandmother

A friend

She was an example of wisdom and insight. Most of us who knew her, remember her daily in some way.

Cherished memories

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MARBLES

I wonder if Grandpa Benhard ever played marbles? I wonder if my dad did. Was I first generation?

When you are in grade school and it is spring, the fun of being outside at recess includes playing marbles. Although generally thought of as a pastime for boys, whereas jump rope and hopscotch was for girls. It didn't seem to be a problem for me to cross the line. I only needed a boy with marbles to teach me.

And so it was R who taught me how to shoot the marbles out of the circle with his pure glass ruby red shooter.

The idea was for each player to present the same amount of marbles into the center of the circle. So, R, being gracious, put in 12-six for me and six for him. He also loaned me his pure royal blue shooter.

Like the Romans or the Egyptians before us, we played until all the marbles were out of the circle. R. took his marbles after every game. They were, after all, his property.

One Saturday when we went to town, I spent 25% of my allowance and bought a bag of marbles at Ben Franklin. The teaching was over, it was time to play the game.

Another week of school days came and went and R. got some of my marbles. I watched how he knuckled the marble to shoot it, then practiced at home in the carpeted living room. The pure-see though marbles, which were smaller, were harder to hit, I thought of investing something with a smaller target. I had by passed them because of the expense.

Three new rules had been enforced since I started this phase of my life;

1. Do not drop the marbles one by one off the up stairs landing of the oak stair way thinking the marbles would roll into the open closet door.

2. Do not leave marbles on the carpet, they hurt when your shoeless parent's step on them.

3. If mother had to pick them up, they were goners.

And so R. and I continued to play and I started to win. The World of Marbles came to a halt one day when all R. had left was his two pure shooters. I would trade him 6 marbles for his shooter. He kept his favorite, the ruby one, until, alas, he traded that in too and 'rented' the shooter to continue play.

The ruby shooter got lost in the snow on the playground at Northrop School. I had learned to play. The fun part of it for me was over. R. was out of marbles. When he looked in my desk without permission, I hurt his hand when I slammed the lid down on it.

There is a Nash-Finch coffee can in the basement on a shelf in the coal room. It is full of marbles and shooters. They are Tom's. He probably won them off some girl in Sabin, MN when he was in elementary school.

Life isn't always fair, even in marbles.

Poor R.

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JUMP ROPE

When spring came to the Northrop School grounds, the long ropes came out of storage and the girls, generally in threes or fours, found places on the sidewalk in front of the school to skip rope. The caution was to keep the rope out of the mud next to the sidewalk.

It was a good time in life for all of us, jump rope was something everyone seemed to know how to do and those school ropes were just heavy enough to have that perfect cadence as it looped over and around the jumper tapping the sidewalk as the jumper skipped to such poetry as:

Cinderella, dressed in yellow
went upstairs to kiss a 'fella
made a mistake
and kissed a snake
how many doctors
did it take?

(Count until skipper misses)

OR

Not last night but the night before
24 robbers came knocking at my door,
as I ran out, (run out of rope), they ran in, (jump back in)
[they] knocked me on the head with a rolling pin

OR

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn around,
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, touch the ground
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, show your shoe
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, that will do!
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, go upstairs-
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, say your prayers

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn out the lights-
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, say good-night!

The children jump rope while they sing this rhyme, they act out the actions as the words come up in the rhyme. An example: when they say go upstairs, the child pretends to climb the stairs.

AND

Red Hot Pepper
in the pot.
Gotta get over
what the leaders got

(Count and speed up the rope until the jumper misses)

Although the counting was done for the number of jumps, there was never a tally kept. You were either a good skipper or not. There didn't seem to be any in between. There were also good rope twirlers and bad rope twirlers. Those who kept the rope slapping the sidewalk and those that lifted the rope to make you miss. Interesting, isn't it, that the twirlers that lifted the rope got banned from the serious rope jumpers. Why? Because it was considered unsportsmanlike.

Have you skipped today?

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HOPSCOTCH

There were two kinds of hopscotch played at school and on the sidewalks near our homes. As an adult, my daughter and her friends played rock hopscotch on a permanent 'board' in the garage. When the garage was remodeled to expand the living area of the house, the big question was do you have to cover the hopscotch board?

Shown in the photo are three silver haired ladies. The one that is at play is carrying her purse! Could that be three Amigos who played together in grade school?

The board shown was known as variation of rock hopscotch. The boards we made on sidewalks were made of two (xx), and numbered 1-8. If we had no chalk to mark the squares, we used a rock to make the faint pattern. If it was at school, we could get chalk from a teacher. In new neighborhoods, a piece of plaster board , at a house building job site, did fine because between the heavy paper, was a chalk like substance. Rocks were plentiful; the favorites were pieces of granite found by the railroad tracks.

The other kind, where we used a ball, which we rolled to the square, was also to eight and looked like (++). The best ball was a tennis ball. The worst? Golf ball because it rolled to fast or a play ground ball which was too big.

HOW TO PLAY

The first player stands behind the starting line to toss her or his marker in square 1.

Hop over square 1 to square 2 and then continue hopping to square 8, turn around, and hop back again. Pause in square 2 to pick up
the marker, hop in square 1, and out.

Then continue by tossing the stone in square 2. All hopping is done on one foot unless the hopscotch design is such that two squares are side-by-side. Then two feet can be placed down with one in each square.

A player must always hop over any square where a maker has been placed.

A player is out if the marker fails to land in the proper square

The hopper steps on a line

The hopper looses balance when bending over to pick up the marker
and puts a second hand or foot down

The hopper goes into a square where a marker is

Or if a player puts two feet down in a single box.

The player puts the marker in the square where he or she will resume playing on the next turn, and the next player begins.

I wonder if grandma every made the board in the dirt?

It feels like hopscotch season, wanna play?

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THE NEIGHBORHOOD GROCERY STORE

Although we know the people of New Solum first walked to St. Hilaire and carried flour home on their backs, we do know that later, as discussed in a earlier post, they did have a find grocery store for many years.

Today I would like you to think about the market in your neighborhood. You know the one I am talking about, it is the place your mother sent you for something or you went for a candy bar or a cold soda, (pop).

I was telling Shirley about a market I found in Thief River Falls only because my grandparents bought and remodeled a house near there. The Mom and Pop Stores were everywhere. If you lived in an established neighborhood, there was probably one within a block or two.


From 1018 North Main, it was just a few doors down to Noper's where Greg stole candy and the owners put it on the charge.

Across from the Zion Lutheran Church, where a florist is now, there was a market. The candy Greg brought home was bought with his Sunday School offering but he told my parents he got candy for being good. That was owned by Solheim. Later it would be razed and a furniture store which sold Early American would be built.

From Oakland Park Road, there was River side Grocery where the groceries were bought over the phone and delivered. How different is that than me ordering ours on the computer and having them delivered in the dead of a snowy, cold winter day?

On Arnold Ave the closest place was Sustad's, later to be Flom's. I went there often for a frozen treat when I stayed with Grandma Mae.

On Kneale Avenue, there was Third Street Grocery. It was just off the boulevard on Kneale Avenue.

St. Paul Grocery is where Frank went. It also had the biggest icicle in town.

Danny's was on First Street near Kendall Avenue. That later became Liden's Lefse. Mother walked to Danny's every day to buy cigarettes for the day. She said that gave her some exercise and she smoked less if she only bought enough for one day. She also was known to smoke a lot of butts!

On Eighth Street, there was a bigger market on the corner of 8th St and Main Avenue it was called Froseth's.

Certainly I have missed several. What I could never understand is how these markets could survive selling candy bars, rotting bananas, and pop. Was the merchandise delivered or did the owner's go to a bigger store and buy the products? Most did not have fresh meat, although Riverside Grocery did. I only know that because I was in there and it smelled of animal fat and rotting potatoes. Milk and dairy products were delivered to homes.

If you look at the old phone directories in the library, you will see how many markets there were downtown TRF before the trend to go to the neighborhood began. Not only food, but meat markets as well.

Did they live on the property? We know they did in Rosewood. How much did they have to sell in product to make the rent and utilities. Was the mark up greater than 33% as it was in the early sixties?

On Eighth Street farther east, their was Eighth Street Grocery.

First Street had a market near the bridge.

The name of the market by by grandparents house remains unnamed. It was a brown stucco building with awnings and steps. Does anyone know?

We gotta eat, right?

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