History Behind the Victory Flagpole - A childs view of Camden - Behind the Victory Flagpole — A child’s view of Camden

My memories of growing up in the Camden area are all happy ones. The whole area felt welcoming and safe.

My mother would send me to the grocery store on 42nd and Fremont at a very early age—perhaps 5 or 6. I crossed the street at 43rd, walked down the alley and crossed 42nd and Fremont. No one worried about possible dangers in that long alley, and there was very little traffic on the roads. I remember one time my mother gave me 12 cents for a large loaf of Holsum white bread. I gave the clerk my order and a dime and two pennies. She took the dime, handed me a loaf and gave me back the two pennies. My mother sent me right back with the bread and the two cents. I was to be given the large loaf—l and l\2 lbs. for 12 cents, not the small one pound loaf for 10 cents. Surely I could see the one pound loaf was a very poor buy!

I was only sent to the store for last minute necessities. My mother would phone in her weekly orders (to the same grocer). She would describe the vegetables she wanted—a large firm head of lettuce, e.g. She would leave the door unlocked for the delivery boy. He would put the groceries on the kitchen table (where there was a quarter tip for him) and put whatever needed to be chilled in the refrigerator. Pretty easy, painless grocery shopping, and no impulse buying!

In all the time I attended Minneapolis Public Schools, (kindergarten through 12th grade), the schools never closed. I remember walking down the middle of Fremont Ave. to Hamilton School as a kindergartener with snow piled way above my head on either side of the road, bundled in snowsuit, mittens, hat and two scarves (one over my mouth and nose). My dad had walked that route alone to Hamilton grade school, and there was very little traffic, so no one worried about me, and I felt confident and capable and trusted to be able to take care of myself.

Note: Our guest writer was mentioned in the Aug. 2011 issue of the Camden News in the article titled, “The Bohanon Houses.” This is where she grew up, at 43rd and Emerson Ave. N., along with her brother, John Campbell, and her parents Lloyd and Isobel Bohanon. After graduating from Hamilton and Patrick Henry Schools, she attended Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado and earned a degree in teaching. She then went back to Minneapolis and taught at the John Hay School near 6th Ave. N. This was in the early 1950s and John Hay School was like today’s middle schools and attended by advanced students. A few years later she married Albert Strand and they moved to Novato in Marin County, California. This was north of San Francisco and there she taught at Lincoln School, which was in Petaluma County, about eight  miles from where she lived. It was a very old school and celebrated its 100th birthday while she was there. This job of teaching was quite challenging because it was done in a one-room schoolhouse, and she had to teach grades 1 through 6. The next family move was to the Denver area where Louise taught part-time at Adam County School, Dist. 1. She taught there for 18 years, and the reason for her part-time employment was that she did not speak fluent Spanish, which was a state requirement for full-time teachers. At present her family lives in a Denver suburb, where they have lived for 38 years, but have been lucky enough to come back to Minnesota yearly to visit their relatives in Camden. Information supplied by Eila Spriesterbach Miller for Barbara Meyer Bistodeau.