Country Club at the Jail

FROM WHERE I SIT    COUNTRY CLUB AT THE JAIL      FEB. 25, 2014  

PAT DeKok SPILSETH

Winter months in Minnesota can be mighty gray, icy and frigid.  Today the windchill is a chilling-12 and snow is predicted.  More shoveling and achey bodies are forecast.  Hardy residents have to cope with power failures, freezing pipes and dark afternoons leading us to eat more carbs and calorie-laden sweets, which put on added pounds.  It’s not an easy life to live through a MInnesota winter!

Those things weren’t a problem for me when I was growing up.   Kids loved snow days, vacations from school that gave us time to build snowmen, build and crawl through snow forts and flop backwards into soft snow piles, fanning our arms to make snow angels.  I loved trudging through drifts to the ice skating rink at the old football field near my home at the jail.  Toasty warmth at the rink’s warming hut welcomed red-cheeked skaters and dried our dripping, icicled mittens on the wood stove as we pulled each other’s skates to prevent foot cramping.  Trees were coved with white hoarfrost; fluffy flakes floated in the gray skies.  Though power lines might be down, a wood stove or fireplace would keep us toasty warm. 

Blizzards invigorated us.  Big snows meant sledding, freezing at fishing holes on the lake and rolling giant balls of snow into chunky snowmen with carrot noses and eyes of stones.  On thin, wooden skiis, we attacked the steep, ungroomed hills at the Chalet.  Some fearsome, daring souls scaled hundreds of tiny steps that led up to the top of two treacherous ski jumps, flew down the icy slides ( some daredevils even somersaulted), and land at the finish line with a wave.  What a thrill!

Some might think that being without power for endless hours is similar to being in jail.  But that wasn’t the scene at our jail when Dad was sheriff of Pope County.  Jail was a retreat for some folks who didn’t have much family or friends or a place to call home.  Our jail was “family together time” especially in the snowy winter when we lived at the red brick jail on a hill with the Court House downtown.

The men behind bars at the jail seemed content to be warm.   Mom made homemade soups, sidepork and roast beef dinners with mashed potatoes and treated them to coffee and sweets three times a day.   She spoiled them; they loved it and sent Christmas cards to her for years after their sentences were fulfilled.  Blackie and Paul never complained; they read, slept and enjoyed Mom’s cooking.  Life was pretty sweet at the jail.

Drinking a second cup of coffee, I look outdoors at the floating flakes drifting across my windows.  I remember Paul and his gifts of charm, his dance lessons and the laughter my family enjoyed that winter he spent with us.  

Paul was a unique guy, different from anyone I’d met.  Compliments were rare at my home.  After all, we were Norwegians and Dutch.  Neither nationality favored flowery words, especially compliments that every teenage girl needs so desperately.  When Paul came into our lives, he took care of that void. He made the women in our house feel beautiful.  My little sister Barbie followed Paul around the house like a lap dog.  He had charmed Mom into letting him out of the Bullpen to redecorate the kitchen with green leaves and pink flower stencils above the maple cupboards.  It was more difficult to charm the self-conscious, acne-faced teenager with curly hair.  I’d lower my eyes and blush whenever Paul addressed me.  

Paul celebrated life even while he was our incarcerated guest at the jail.  He made a hand-lettered sign, “Paul’s Country Club, Admission 30 days” and hung it on his cell wall.  He had thrity days left of Judge Dietz’s sentence to sit in his cell with a thin mattress and stacks of paperback Western tales.   Paul thought of oodles of ideas to get out of his cell.  He was a very busy, inventive guy who knew how to charm most anyone.  He managed to con Mom into redecorating her kitchen and faithfully attended Saturday night church services in Dad’s office, courtesy of Pastor Kramer and his accordian playing wife from the Assembly of God church in town.  

He told us that when he was a dance instructor with the Arthur Murray Dance Studio in downtown Minneapolis, his schedule was completely full of patrons wanting him to instruct them in dance moves.  His smoldering, brown eyes, trim body and fawning charm were a ticket to romance with each woman who paid for his muscular arms to encircle them as they danced.  He whirled them around the dance flook, dipping them low to conclude each dance...his moves left women breathless.

I totally believed his stories, loving his tales of romance, especially when he twirled me around the waxed linoleum floor of our kitchen.  What girl wouldn’t have been thrilled?  He was sooooo smooth.   However, unfortunately, his many charms got Paul into trouble.  When he danced his way in and out of women’s lives, he forgot about legalizing his numerous marriages and divorces.  Endless dancing was Paul’s life and his downfall.  The law caught up to his bad checks and marriages to several women at the same time.   What a charmer he was!

Those days at the jail in the late Fifties and early Sixties had some of the worst ice storms in history.  Roads were snow covered and icy with several inches packing the highways.   Only bundled snowplow drivers squinting against the flying snow were able to bypass the roads.  Numbing winds howled; blizzard conditions blew us back into our houses to warm up by steaming radiators, drink hot coffee and feast on cinnamon rolls just out of the oven.  

Mom reveled in her kitchen, beautifully decorated by our inmate friend Paul.  Frosty days produced yeasty sweet rolls, chocolate chip cookies and her famous Devils’ Food cake with fudge frosting.  We coped with winter’s chill just fine back then.  Kids enjoyed a day or two off from school, and adults had some idle time to sit and sip coffee in Mom’s china cups.  1042 words