Neighborhood Influences

FROM WHERE I SIT      Neighborhood Influences             March 17, 2014  P.D. Spilseth

BUDDY, my friendly Beagle, and I have been taking walks most days around our neighborhood.  It’s noisy and crowded with lumber and cement trucks; vans and pickups are roaring down the road and parked along our narrow street.    There’s constant hammering and sawing at the three new houses rapidly rising, like Jack’s beanstalk.

My neighborhood is changing.  When we moved here in 1980, there was a wide assortment of cabins, large older homes in need of restoration, lake houses and a few modern homes.  Neighbors welcomed us with smiles, freshly baked pies and invitated us to their homes.  Early on we got to know most everyone in the neighborhood.  Dogs and little kids are always magnets to meet neighbors.

New residents say that they’ve found it too expensive to restore the older homes; it’s cheaper and more efficient to build new structures with updated electrical wiring, efficient windows, furnaces and air conditionning.  The latest look on the Point is large homes with fat pillars adorning expansive entrances.  I haven’t seen any screened in porches on these newer homes...just wait until the mosquitos arrive and buzz their open porches! 

Former cabins and grand, historic homes that gave Casco Point such character have been demolished.  One of the few remaining boat houses has been removed.  We still have the Grand Hotel, a former fisherman’s lodge with room numbers above the door and a lovely Victorian lake house, with a wide, screened in porch, next door to our home.  Further down the Point, three lake homes, built in the late 1800’s, are set high on a hill with sprawling lawns leading to the water.  They’re built like farm houses, tall, narrow and painted a pristine white.  As bigger, new homes are built, property values will rise, but taxes will also climb.  It’s not cheap to live on the water, but we lake lovers would have a hard time moving elsewhere.

Growing up in the jail, when Dad was Pope County sheriff, I knew almost everyone in every house in my neighborhood.   They knew me too, and kept an eye on me and my sister.   In Glenwood, we had older homes with wooden staircases and bannisters, a rooming house, stately two story homes with green shutters, stores with apartments above and small bungelows.  Many houses had front porches that were screened in, perfect for visiting with neighbors walking by.  Everyone was friendly: we knew where we could borrow a cup of sugar or a pound of butter.

Mama and Papa Stevens lived across the street from the jail, on Green Street, a convenient refuge for my little sister Barbie when she felt slighted and decided to run away from home.  She’d pack a little suitcase with her underwear and PJ’s , stick her comforting thumb in her mouth, grab Daisy Mae (the jail watch dog) and run to the Stevens’ house.  Regina and Earl would comfort her with cookies and milk at their kitchen table and telephone Mom to say Barbie was fine.  Daisy and Ike, Earl’s English bulldog, would sit at their feet hoping for crumbs from the table.

Next door to the Stevens house was Mrs. Peterson’s quiet home with the entrance porch where she usually sat.  She’d survey the passing parade of people coming to the library down the street, to the red brick Lutheran church to the North, or to the courthouse and jail across the street.  Mom taught her daughters that it was important to visit the elderly, like the widowed, sickly Mrs. Peterson who was lonely for company.  After school several times a week, Mom sent me over to the Peterson home to “visit” with her on the porch and suck on lemon drops, my reward in the glass candy jar.  We must have been at least 70 years apart with little in common, but we sat across from one another, me in a rocker, she resting on a lounge.  I gave her the latest school news and jail gossip.

From our kitchen window, we could see Earl and LaVanche Solvie’s garden with the tall tomato plants, onions, carrots and raseberry bushes.  Mr. Solvie was an avid gardener;  La Vanche worked at the Courthouse in Social Services.  They were often at Mom’s kitchen table, along with the Courthouse gang, for coffee and sweets at 10AM and 3PM.  Next door to the Solvie’s was Pearl, a widow, and her daughter. Next door was another Solvie family.  Vera and her daughter were my source of play clothes, full-skirted tulle bridesmaids’ dresses, veils and hats.  

Across the street was another elderly widow Mrs. Nyhammer, who rented rooms to young teachers in Glenwood.   Barb Kranch, sister Barbie’s second grade teacher, and teacher-roommate Maureen lived in rooms upstairs.  Walking home from school, Mom would yell to Miss Kranch, “Yahoo, got time for a cup of coffee?”   They would visit, drink coffee from china cups and munch on Mom’s latest batch of cookies, still warm from the oven.  Next door to Mrs. Nyhammer, was the Moens’ two-story home, which was sold to the Leafs, whose two little kids I babysat.  Mr. Leaf was my English teacher at the high school.

Up the street and down the block were lots of kids to play with. The Kvale girls, JoRae, red-headeds Rosalie and Muriel lived across the street from the Zimma house where we gathered to play dolls in Jeannie’s playhouse.  Across the alley lived the Graves girls, Wallace Ogdahl and her brother Bill.  The Ogdahls had a candy drawer in their kitchen filled with treats for kids in the neighborhood.  Across the street and up the block lived the Femrites with Mary, Sophie, Margaret, Sylvia, Joann and their two tall, handsome, older brothers Eddie and Arnie.  Also on Green Street were three more girls, whose folks owned Dick’s Recreation downtown, where I learned to play pool.  On the corner lived my best pal Luania Lewis, her little brother Johnny, and older sisters who taught us all we knew about the “facts of life.”

LIfe is different today: not better or worse, just different.  When I was growing up, mothers stayed at home to raise their kids, bake cookies, sew clothes, and do household chores.  Neighbors knew if kids were misbehaving or not.  KIds could walk or bike to their neighborhood friends and feel safe.  Unsupervised, we played in the woods by the ski chalet, built tree houses, rode our bicycles to the beach, the tennis courts and ball diamonds.  When the whistle blew at noon, six and ten, we knew to dash home for meals and bed at 10. 

Today, especially in a larger city, often people don’t know who lives next door or down the block.  It seems that people are more concerned with privacy, or they simply don’t have time to interact with neighbors.  Parents are more concerned about their kids’ safety, kidnappings and child molesters.  Many mothers work outside their homes, and stay at home dads are becoming more common.  Kids are closely supervised in day cares and are driven to lessons for music, sports, language, art... 

Neighborhoods are changing, but they’re still the best place for adults and kids to meet friends.  I love to see neighbors gathering together to enjoy a summer afternoon or families sledding on a winter day.  What could be better than kids sprawling on the lawn    picking dandelions, braiding into golden crowns and searching for four leaf clovers?    Remember how we knew they would bring good luck?  1259 words