THE THREE MUSKETEERS.

Jim Jaillet, Bill Gallagher, and Al Penta call themselves the three musketeers. They met in fifth grade and remained best friends through high school. This is the first time in 14 years they've all been together. We met for a long lunch at the Skagit County Food Co-op in Mt. Vernon. Talk about timely, everyone worried about arriving on time, traffic was heavy, Al was coming from Monroe, Bill from his business meeting in Van Couver, Jim and I from  La Conner, and somehow we met in the parking lot, having all arrived at the same time.

 Jim and I have spent time with Al, and time with Bill, but not together. We are, as they say, old farts now, and much of the talk focused on aging with the conclusion that none of us feel "old", just older. And, a promise not to let another 14 years go by before another reunion. They all attended school in Revere, MA. We last met with Gallagher in New Hampshire, last summer, and Al, in Monroe, last fall. I love listening to these guys reminisce. The stories just reel out, ..."do you remember when we went to school and there were only the two of us in class because it was a big Jewish Holiday and we were the only Christians..?"  And,  "..how many miles have you ridden that bike, Al?"  "About 100,000 miles since I started seriously riding. I try for 5,000 miles a year." He is so amazing and will probably outlive all of us.
Bill showed us a recent picture of his mother at 99 years old. She'll be 100 on November 14th. The whole family will go to Florida for a big birthday party. She gave up smoking at 81, but still drives, and does her own shopping and housework.

We all talked to Bill's wife Loretta, on the phone. She's had some health problems but is doing better.  Al's girlfriend, Kim, had a last minute crisis at work, and couldn't come. She is set to retire about the first of the year. I'm very thankful to them for inspiring Jim to go to Cuba, which we have planned for Oct. 2015. Bill said he'd like to go just to see all the old cars.

They talked about another close school friend, Dolly and her partner Arthur. They were celebrating Arthur's birthday out of town when a tornado went through Revere, the first in recorded history. It took off part of her roof, broke all the windows, smashed lamps and a backyard shed disappeared and two, giant trees in her back yard felled like twigs. It swiped two more houses beyond hers then stopped and wheeled through another section of town before disappearing. Dolly is so dramatic, I can't wait to hear the story from her personally.  Dolly's house was THEE meeting place when they were teenagers. Watching Elvis's first appearance on Ed Sullivan's show, from the waist up. And, so much more. Fun years.


And, all too soon, it was time to say good-bye with a promise to meet again as soon as possible. Al will travel to Revere in September. We are so glad Bill had a business trip to the West Coast to make this reunion possible. The most important things in life, family and friends. We are thankful and fortunate to have both.

SOO HILL, DANFORTH AND A TRACTOR MODEL.

Old school chums make great guides. Bernice’s sister, Marie spent the day with us, searching for a house in Danforth where we lived and for the Soo Hill Elementary school we attended. Note:  My Michigan map does not have the little town of Soo Hill or Danforth on it. In 2006, with my brother and sister, our search failed to lead us from memory to either place.

Jim decided to stay at the farm and work on his electrical connection with Mark Patrick’s help. They were hard at it when we left.

In thirty minutes,  I was planted in front of Soo Hill Elementary school which is  outside of Escanaba. Not surprising, this was no little two-room school house. Arlene Johnson was putting up signs in front of the school and in two winks we were inside searching scrapbooks for photos.  She called her mother to ask about  personal photos-yup!  She set up a time for us to meet after she got off work. People in small towns are unbelievably helpful and friendly.

On we trod. Danforth isn’t a town, it is a place that may have been a town at some early date. Someone tried to build a business complex along the Old Danforth Road and it failed. It was on the site of an old drive-in movie lot which reminded me of taking the school bus to Soo Hill with a bedroll and a lunch box packed for dinner. With a note from our parents, the driver let us off at the drive-in where we sat on the ground and watched the “show”. Then, after a long day, the long walk home at eleven p.m. (About 5 miles.)

I knew that our house on Danforth road was located south of the Kurth farm. I found a Kurth family in the phone book. He was a relative and knew how to find it the farm. He warned me, “…the house is remodeled, the barn burned down…”  My school chum, Betty Kurth,  is married and lives in Green Bay, he couldn’t  remember her married name.  It was enough to get us to the right place. The house above with some old outbuildings in back. Albert Kurth had a dairy at this place. Older daughter, Louise Kurth, with muscles like a man, milked about 10 cows every day after school.  Betty and I shoveled a lot of manure before we could play in the hay loft.

The house I lived in no longer exists but we found the spot. It was torn down for this uninteresting new place. Me thinks we should have made this trip about 20 years ago. My most vivid memory of living here was bicycling down the highway from Kurth’s headed home. My foot slipped off the petal and hit the asphalt. It sent me and the bike cartwheeling into the air and I landed in a ditch beside the road with the bike on top of me.  Knocked unconscious, I woke up looking at a beautiful black sky filled with stars wondering why it was night-time.  I had a few scrapes and bruises, but seemed none the worse for my accident.

At 3:30 we met Arlene Johnson, left, her sister Kris Leonard in blue, and mother Theresa Johnson who raised eleven children who all attended Soo Hill Elementary. What a nice family to put themselves out to make my day.

From Mrs. Johnson’s pictures, the front of the school with she far right and six of her kids.

Unique about this school was a central staircase with one classroom to the left and another to the right. In the center was a tiny library. Kindergarten through 4th grade had the only bathroom.  Then 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th graders  had the room on the right. The cafeteria was in the basement. We were served wonderful home-cooked meals by Mary Bink. Teachers at that time Mrs. Gleick, and Mrs. Carlson. The Johnson family agreed with me that Mrs. Gleick was mean and should never have taught school.

We returned to the farm where I wanted a picture with a tractor like my paternal grandfather’s.

This is the newest tractor, only four years old.

Well, this is fun. I’ve decided to become a tractor model. Whoo, whoo.
My blog got interrupted this morning and I wanted to revamp a bit of how Bernice and I got together again after over 60 years of separation.
I blogged this when she, her sister, another neighbor, Pat Robinson and her husband Richard, visited me in Murphys in 2009. When our house burned to the ground, we literally had only the clothes on our backs and we spent one night with Bernice’s family and the next day, we were put up in a two room shack called the “Warmuth’s Place.”
I made First Communion there. My dad fumigated the chicken coop, screened the openings, and the boys and my uncle Marvin, who was living with us slept in the coop. Sister Dawn and I slept in the small kitchen, my folks in the only bedroom. Thankfully, short-lived. From there to Robinette’s camp. And from there to Kingsford, MI. where my dad got work at the Kingsford Ford Plant. (Now Kingsford Charcoal.)
The point is, once we moved from the area, I never saw Bernice and neighbor Pat Robinson again.  During the computer age, Pat found somebody who knew where my brother was, called him, got my phone number, and the deed was done. They came to Murphys for a visit and I sent them all home with gold we had panned from a dry creek. We had a lot of fun. That blog was Sept. of 2009.

MARINETTE TO BARK RIVER, MI. THROUGH SMALL TOWN AMERICA.

Yesterday, with the pall of the Peshtigo fire in my brain, I forgot to post we had found  my maternal grandmother's house in Marinette. A frustrating search.  Again, one we made easily in 2006 and failed to record. (That was before I was a blogger and had a digital camera.) The house front had changed. I spoke to several neighbors but these old houses are now mostly cheap rentals for young people with kids. My grandmother, who had 12  children, moved here after my grandfather died. She bought the house with money she won from suing the company over his death. My mother was born in Marinette but never lived in this house. As the oldest, she and three sisters were married and gone by that time. I particularly cherish one family wedding at this house when I was about 10 years old. My uncles pushed the couch and lamps against the wall and taught me how to polka and waltz on the smooth hardwood floor so I could dance at my Uncle Veronon's wedding. My grandma carried her money in a pouch around her neck and when we were little, she would send us to the Delgoff's Grocery for something and allow us to spend a penny of the change.

All those children. It still boggles my mind. My grandmother was only 4 feet 9 and a half inches tall  with a tiny waist my dad would demonstrate by encircling her waist with his  hands. My grandmother on the left with her daughter, my aunt Marietta on the right about 1950.

Our journey took us through farmland,  from Marinette &  Menominee to Bark River, to visit a childhood friend. Marinette & Menominee are twin cities perched on opposite banks of the  Menominee River from each other. During the war, we had to color our margarine because the state of Wisconsin, a strong dairy state, refused to allow "colored" margarine to look like butter.  U.S. highway 41 is dotted with small towns  the names of which brought back more memories. Auggie Schultz's bar in Schaffer where I tasted pop and potato chips for the first time. Stephenson, where an aunt and Uncle once lived. Powers, Wells, Ingolls, Wallace where once stood Lime Kilns my great grandfather built.  Dagget, Carney, Spalding, all remind me of someone my dad bought piglets from or hunted with or peeled pulp with or helped him on the farm.  Nadeau where my paternal great-grandparents settled in the "Belgiantown"  part of Nadeau after coming here from Leige, Belgium  through Ellis Island.

My brothers Bill, Dan, Norman and myself in front of one of the lime kilns my great-grandfather built. He came as a specialist in this type of kiln. My great-grandmother, who was pregnant,  made the trip alone after the baby was born. (It died.)  She traveled with trunks of household goods with four children, one of them blind. She spoke not a word of English, but she carried a sign that said Nadeau, Wisconsin. I would have been terrified to make such a journey.

We arrived at my friend Bernice Patrick's farm in late afternoon. Bernice was widowed 7 years ago and her son runs the farm. She works at a local casino and we got there before she got off work.

This interesting old house, a log house with chinking, was lathed over at one time. It stands on her property. Double click it for a better view.

The weather wimp checks the thermometer. One of the hottest days of the year, it turned out. And, the humidity made it pretty miserable. We sat outside playing with the cat and eating apples from her orchard and watching the bulls in one pasture.

When Bernice gets home from her job at the Island Indian Casino, about seven miles up the road, she likes to take off her shoes and relax. We took off our shoes and cooled off in the house and looked at pictures before supper.

Bernice's graduation photo.

Her sister, Marie, who was my sister's age. The Cousineau family were our neighbors and school chums when we burned out in 1948. The bus dropped us off from school and this is what was left of our house:

.

.

It was because of this fire that Bernice, Marie  and I met again at my home in Murphys, over 60 years later. More on that tomorrow.