Other writers may have electrifying visions, often induced by drugs and alcohol, but chocolate cheesecake with red wine at my monthly book club can kick start my spinning head. Rich delicacies tend to inflate my imagination as they upset my stomach. Today, dizzy and nauseo us, I’m lying in bed while images spin wildly through my mind. Undulading waves of characters present themselves, formost is Nicotine Nettie.
Even today, fifty years later, I still see her, shuffling along the sidewalks of downtown Glenwood. Nicotine Nelly’s beady black eyes shift across the cracked sidewalk of Main Street searching for discarded cigarette butts. Hoping to spy a discarded, partially smoked butt on the ground outside Dick’s Pool Hall, she bends over and picks up the smoldering stick of tobacco. Anticipating a few satisfying puffs of nicotine, her sunken cheeks suck in the enticing smoke.
As a kid I couldn’t help but stare. The wizened woman was such an anomaly. In our small town of 2500 people, mostly Scandinavians and Germans, no other woman in the community wore her greasy, long, streaked gray hair in a tight braid down the back of her body. No doubts about it, Nellie was different.
Back in the late Fifties, in rural MInnesota, our resort area was made up of hardworking farmers, carpenters, shopkeepers, truckers, mechanics, resort owners, fishermen and hunters along with a few professional lawyers, teachers, ministers and doctors. We had no blacks, no Orientals, and only a handful of Indians. Certainly, we’d never heard of Muslims, Buddists, or Scientologists! We only knew about Jews from the history books about the war. We were Catholics and Lutherans: it wasn’t kosher to date or marry out of one’s own religion.
Nellie was on her way to the jail in the middle of town. Next to the museum-like Court house where all the county’s official business was done was the red brick jail. We had three important, official looking buildings in Glenwood. Along with several spired churches, there was one central block in town housing the stately, tan Courthouse, the jail with windows of iron bars, and the Carneige library across the street.
I lived at the jail. My Dad was Sheriff Henry DeKok. In those days, the sheriff had large living quarters in the red brick building, which housed the men’s jail downstairs next to Dad’s office as well as the women’s jail upstairs. Barbie, my little sister, was born Nov 5, an election date baby, a tomboy to make up for Dad’s lack of a son. Her older sister, me, was a girl who usually had her head in a book or was playing with dolls. Mom cooked all the meals for the prisoners and her family, at least 3 meals a day along with morning, afternoon and evening coffee and sweets. She baked breads, hotdishes, cakes and cookies for us at the jail and served coffee parties to the Court House gang most forenoons and afternoons.
Back to Nellie. Most days she walked to the jail to see her son Blackie, often incarcerated behind the yellowed bars of the jail with one or two others who had a drinking problem. Dear Blackie, what a guy! He had a university education, but liquor got its hold on him early on and spoiled his future.
Outside the jail’s windows with steel bars, my pals and I stood watching Blackie, the entertainer of great athletic prowess. We were fascinated to watch him do acrobatics on the blue and white striped ticking covering the jail’s mattresses. Blackie could perform head stands, flips, backbends...he was a juggler with his body! We oohed and aahed as he performed one trick after another. He didn’t talk much. I think his talking might have scared us: we were still little kids.
Nellie didn’t talk much either. I don’t remember her speaking, but she must have shared some things with her son. There didn’t seem to be a father in the picture as he never appeared at the jail. Blackie had no other visitors that I can recall. I think he liked being with my family at the jail because he’d land in jail most Octobers to spend the holidays with us. He’d get drunk and get a three month sentence to jail. My folks invited him to share Christmas with us around our Christmas tree in the living room where Dad read the Christmas story from Luke, and we sat on the floor opening a few presents. I wonder if Mom bought socks for Blackie...or maybe cigarettes. She always said, “The guys in jail are not bad men; they just made bad choices.”
Nellie and Blackie seemed to fade from my view as I grew into a teenager. Now I wonder whatever happenned to these folks who lived somewhere in Glenwood, so different from the rest of us Scandinavians and Germans. Did they go to church? That was almost a requirement for folks who lived in my little town in the Fifties and Sixties. Sunday church was our primary social outlet, besides the Lakeside Ballroom where grown ups kicked up their heels and let off steam. Oh, how this dizzy spell bring back characters from my childhood! 868
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