>By Teri Ong
My connections to the state of Minnesota go way back. I lived there from September 1963 to December 1974. But before that, my grandmother and aunt lived in Duluth. They moved there in the 1950’s so my aunt, who had a Ph.D. in physical education and kinesiology, could teach at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.
My Aunt Mary was a unique person. Besides having a doctoral degree (which was unusual for women in that era), she was into p.e. and fitness long before it was the “in” thing. When we would visit her house, we would eat and drink all sorts of healthy things made more attractive by the addition of red cellophane straws in the juice or real cream in the blueberries, etc. Grammy’s enormous salt-free date sugar cookies needed no additions.
Aunt Mary also provided lots of fresh air and sunshine. At least once there was a sawed-off appliance box in the back yard, full of fine white Lake Superior beach sand. Grammy supplied the aluminum jello molds and old spoons for hours of sandbox fun. Their house was in a little neighborhood off the main road with an undeveloped green belt on the other side of the street. It was the perfect place to roller skate on the sidewalk and pick wildflowers in the “woods.” When it got too foggy or drizzly, as it can in Duluth, we moved indoors to skate in the basement or to explore the wonders of Grammy’s sewing and crocheting catch-alls, even though it meant I would miss the comforting sound of the distant fog horn.
Grammy had an old wooden firkin sitting next to her chair which was full of bright balls of cotton crochet thread and large rolls of strips of scrap fabric that she crocheted into rugs using a large wooden hook. Often, the scrap fabric came from the discarded uniform ladies’ swimming suits from the university. One of Grammy’s button boxes was full of the metal buckles that came off of the shoulder straps; we would pretend they were money. She also kept a box of chalky pink peppermint tablets and chalky white wintergreen tablets nearby. Yum!
1509 Waverly in 1959
My grandmother’s house was the most elegant place I had ever been. It did not have the air of “starter home” stamped upon it, as my own home did in those early days. The inside always seemed cool and dim. The windows seemed long and narrow and elegantly draped. The sofa had brocade upholstery, and a little chair with an oval back sat in the corner by the built in bookcases. The chair was upholstered with a dark green fabric and the wood frame around the back was ornately carved– fit for a princess!
The dining room had a mahogany gate-legged table which was great for making tents with “hidey-holes.” Around the table were some slightly mismatched Duncan Fyfe chairs with cane seats. The china hutch was full of old china and glassware. But the kitchen was even better! It had a built in breakfast nook with booth-style seats and a chrome-edged table just like in the diners on TV.
In the left-hand corner of the living room was a short stairway that went up to a landing. Beyond the landing, the stairway disappeared up to the right. Near the top was a little door in the wall with a glass doorknob– the mysterious laundry chute, which came out two stories below, right next to the wringer washing machine and bucket of homemade soap.
Across the hallway at the top of the stairs was my grandmother’s bedroom with the old-fashioned wallpaper and the wall sconces that had been converted from being gas lamps. Even the electrical switches were special and quaint; push the top button in– lights go on; push the bottom button in– lights go off. I can’t remember for certain, but the impression I had of her room was one of coolness. I think she had shades of blue along with her antique bedroom furniture which had been crafted by some earlier member of her husband’s family. You know the type of set I mean– a bed with a very high headboard and footboard, a marble-topped dresser with a 3/4 length mirror and little drawers on each side of it, and a very old commode cupboard with a marble washstand top.
1509 Waverly in 2009
The bathroom was all white with the little hexagonal ceramic tiles on the floor and larger white tiles on the walls. Oh, the geometry I learned because of those tiles! While I was taking a bath, I would try to put various shapes around sections of tile in my mind. I could make parallel lines and I could make diagonal lines, but I could never make perfect squares no matter what I tried. My grandfather had been a chemistry teacher, and the bathroom cupboard was full of ancient containers that exuded ancient odors– witch-hazel, camphor oil, boric acid, yellow oxide of mercury, Unguentine. I liked Grammy’s little box of Cashmere Bouquet powder the best.
I usually got to sleep on a cot in my aunt’s study, just around the corner from the laundry chute. It was sunny and yellow with a white framed French door that looked out on a balcony that was really the roof of the back porch (a little mud room off the kitchen). I always thought it would be so romantic to go directly outdoors from the upstairs. However, the porch roof was not deemed structurally sound enough for human occupancy, and I was never allowed to open the doors. That room had great impact on my entire life; the cot where I laid at night was placed in front of an old-fashioned glass-doored bookcase with my aunt’s neat and tidy complete set of “The Yale Shakespeare.” Each annotated play was individually bound in a royal blue cloth cover. At age six and seven, I already felt the aesthetic lure of Shakespeare that would change but never lessen as I matured.
The yard was full of platform bird feeders. It was there that I first remember seeing cardinals and bluejays and rose-breasted grosbeaks up close. The yard also had exotically named flowers such as “bleeding hearts” and yellow “lady slippers” which fascinated me. They were just like the ones in the photographic picture book my aunt had given me called “Fairy Church in the Woods.”
The streets in Duluth either run parallel with the lake shore like a system of terraces, or they rise up steeply from the lake shore inland, like in San Francisco on a smaller scale. One time we had attended a parade on one of those lake shore streets but had parked the car several blocks up (literally). My little sister, then very little, got separated from our party in the press of people going back to their cars. It was one of those sheer panic moments that live in family lore. I knew I would never see my sister again and began to cry bitterly. My mother only rubbed it in a little, for her own parental purposes; “You think about how much you’d miss her the next time you have a fight!” Really, she was thinking, “How will I ever tell Stan if something has happened to her?!” My father was at home working.
Somehow she had worked her way back up to the car before any of us went there to check. The lady who lived in the house above where we had parked had seen Debi and taken protective custody. She came out to meet us when she saw our obvious distress, and asked if we were looking for a little blond girl. I learned the meaning of “joy and rapture” at that moment.
Grammy at Lake Superior– 1959
There were always “tailgate” picnics; I think we must have visited every state park and every “wayside” picnic table along the North Shore. There was no place on earth in my childhood with more romance; evocative names and places such as Enger Tower on Skyline Drive to Castle Danger, Gooseberry Falls, Knife River, and Split Rock Lighthouse delighted my childish imagination. In the days before car seats and seat belts, I would eagerly take my place on top of a red and white tin bread box in the middle of the front seat. The box doubled as a picnic basket and booster seat.
My aunt had attained the highest level of achievement possible in the Campfire Girls. When we went on some of our picnic outings, we were treated to such gourmet delights as “corn fritter” pancakes, fried kernel corn, and mock angel food cake (made with sweetened condensed milk, bread chunks, and coconut!)– all cooked over an open fire, of course. Nothing ever tastes as good as hot picnic food on a cold day outdoors.
Our most memorable venue for one of these al fresco adventures was a place along the North Shore which we dubbed, “The flat rocks.” “The flat rocks” was not an official wayside stop on the scenic route; it was a little off the main road and had to be reached by a little dirt path that went down to the shore. It was a wonderful spot to play, and you could build your fire right on top of the rocks! Unfortunately, the unofficial nature of the spot made it hard for us to find it again later in life.
Sometimes we would see an in-bound ore boat or freighter when we would be out driving or picnicking on the North Shore. Then
Baxter and Katie at Lake Superior– 2009
it would be an exciting race to see if we could make it back to Canal Point before the boat made it, so we could see the remarkable lift bridge go all the way up and watch the enormous ships go by at what seemed like arms’ length. Often we would make a special trip to see the more exotic-looking foreign ships go through. All of the comings and goings, which were many in those days, were listed in the newspaper. Our canal visits almost invariably ended with a soft-serve ice cream cone, often dipped in chocolate or butterscotch coating. We didn’t care so much about health and fitness after the heat of the chase!
Very few things from my childhood live so vividly in my memory as my sojourns in Duluth.
Someone has said, “You can’t put your foot in the same river twice.” I understand that you cannot go back to the way things were, but you can go sit on the river bank and admire the old vantage points.
We then went on up the North Shore, being careful to avoid the by-pass route to Two Harbors. I knew that we had a better chance of finding what we were looking for if we stayed as close as possible to Lake Superior. A few miles beyond the most populous tourist spots north of Duluth, I saw a road marker for Stony Point Drive. That sounded somewhat promising. We drove down a dirt lane, getting closer and closer to the lake all the while. There it was– the spot on the shore known in family lore as “The flat rocks.” We had a wonderful picnic there, and my
three youngest children got to skip rocks into the lake from the tops of the big flat boulders I had clamored over 47 or 48 years before.
This summer we made another pilgrimage to find Grammy and Aunt Mary’s old house. Mom did not remember the address, but she knew that it was within a short walk of the U.M.D. campus. I did not remember a precise address either, but the name Waverly surfaced from my subconscious (probably engraved there by addressing notes by hand during the days when each letter took effort). My brother printed us maps off the internet of the neighborhoods around the university. I determined that if there was a “Waverly” anything anywhere near the school, we would start there. I also knew that we were looking for a secluded street with a green belt between it and the main road.
My excitement grew when I looked at the maps and found a two-block long bit of “Waverly Avenue” adjacent to the UMD campus. As we turned the corner onto Waverly, it took me only seconds to shout, “That’s it!” I recognized the houses on either side as the ones where we had played with the neighbor children and where we had gone to tea with an elderly friend of my grandmother. I recognized Grammy’s front porch. I recognized the “woods” across the street. The scale of everything seemed much smaller than it had when I was seven, but it was all still there.
I hopped out of the car to take pictures. A beefy young man was walking toward the house. My husband explained, “She used to stay there when she was a child.”
The young man said, “Oh, that’s interesting. I live there now with a bunch of other guys from the football team.”
That explained the vinyl swimming pool, beer bottles, and banners in the back yard.
I didn’t ask to go in. I wanted to keep my “elegant” memories.
But for any of you family members who might want to go back and get a view from the old vantage points, the address of Grammy’s house is 1509 Waverly Drive; just go up Woodland Avenue and turn left on West St. Marie Street and left again on Waverly Ave. And Stony Point Drive is a little ways south of Knife River on the scenic route. Specifically, it is north of street address #5750 and south of #5878. It’s a circle drive, so if you are going too fast to turn the first time you see the sign, you can always turn the second time. But if you get to Knife River, you’ve passed “The flat rocks.”
So long for now. I’m away on a Nostalgia Trip– Wish you were here!
