School days for my
sister Barbara and me began with kindergarten at Loring grade school. In those
days it was assumed that our house was in Minneapolis, since Victory Memorial
Park extended as far as our front yard with no separation in between. But about
three years after we started at Loring, a road was cut between our house and
the park property, which put us completely in Robbinsdale and made it necessary
for us to leave Loring and transfer to Twin Lake Grade School outside the city
limits. That was OK; it was an excellent little school with great teachers. We
got a good background in the 3 Rs and had transportation by bus.
When the time came, we
attended Robbinsdale High School—a great school, scholastically and sports-wise
and a solid school without the social issues that many schools have today. I
started in 1939; Barbara was one year behind me. For an education, Robbinsdale
was said to be one of the best high schools in Minnesota. It was run by two
very fine men, Principal E. J. Cooper and Vice Principal Milo Mielke. They had
been with the school since 1937 when the first senior high opened. They were
strict but kind.
The kids who went to Robbinsdale were good also. They were
down-to-earth, grounded, and most of them interested in getting an education. A
lot of them were from the surrounding farm communities and had good work ethics
from having to get up early to do chores around the farm.
For fun we had dances
at school periodically, a school play every year, and in the spring we had the
Cotton Ball, at which each girl was supposed to wear a cotton dress to the
dance. And of course we had a prom at the end of the year. All sports were
played and the football team had a championship in the Lake District.
The most fun for me in
school was being in the band. I played baritone horn, second chair to Ricky
Hosterman. We played and marched at football games, parades and at many other
occasions. The Robbinsdale band was one of the first high school bands to march
in different formations. One of our band members who went on to play in the
famous Robbinsdale City Band was Sheldon Lewis, playing trumpet.
In the summer between
my freshman and sophomore years, band director Orville Aftreth called a band
practice. Before the band practice, I washed my hair and put it up in pin
curls, as we did in the ‘40s, thinking that it would dry on the long bicycle
trip up Lake Drive to school, and I could take it down and comb it when I got
there and it would look nice. I covered my hair with a kerchief tied at the top
of my head in the style of Aunt Jemima in her picture on the pancake mix
packages. I put on my white cotton blouse, brown and white checked cotton
dirndl skirt with many gathers at the waist, and saddle shoes and hopped on my
bike.
When I got to school
and entered the door to the band room, bassoon player Harry Hendrickson was at
the door. As soon as he set eyes on me he hollered out loudly “Mammy!” This
nickname continued until graduation day in 1942. And the next year when Barbara
started Robbinsdale as a freshman, the band kids started calling her “Little
Mammy.” That lasted until the end of the year when she transferred to Patrick
Henry High for her sophomore year. She wanted to transfer so she could go to
school with her long-time best girlfriend at Henry.
In my senior year our band participated in a regional band
contest in Duluth. We were bused to Duluth and stayed at the Duluth Hotel. The
girls’ rooms were all on one floor and the boys’ rooms on another. After
getting settled, all the girls gathered in one room before going to dinner. We
were talking and laughing when there was a knock on the door. It was three boys
from the band. We were not supposed to have boys in our rooms but they were
very nice, well-liked boys so we let them in and enjoyed talking with them.
After a while there was another knock on the door. The room fell silent. What
if it was Mr. Aftreth! The boys immediately got up and filed into the bathroom,
shut the door, stepped into the bathtub and stood behind the fully extended
shower curtain. We answered the door. It was our chaperone, one of the female
teachers at school. She said she was just checking to see if everything was all
right. She came in for a minute and left. Whew! We let the boys out of the
bathroom and they left after giving the chaperone ample time to get far away.
But soon it was time for dinner and we re-joined them in the dining room.
We got a No.2 rating in
the band contest, which was pretty good, and we all got our band letters at the
end of the year.
Kay Hanson and Mary
Herman were my best girlfriends in school. Mary lived on a farm in Hamel but it
was too far away to do things together after school. I was a bridesmaid at her
wedding to Willis Kohnen, though, and we were life-long friends. Kay, the
daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Victor Hanson, lived right in town. She also was in
the band, playing clarinet. The Hansons owned a restaurant in Robbinsdale where
Mrs. Hanson would make hamburgers for Kay and me when I was visiting.
One year Kay and I went
to see the fireworks on the 4th of July at North Commons Park. While we were
there we met two nice boys, Ronnie Bistodeau and Don Fox, and got acquainted
with them. They drove us home to my house. They came in and we all were in the
living room talking when Barbara walked in. She was totally flabbergasted and
thrilled because there sat Ronnie Bistodeau, the lead cheerleader at North High
football games, right there in her own home! She had often admired him at the
North games but had never met him. It was like a miracle! The attraction was
mutual and they began dating. The next year when Barbara was going steady with
Ronnie at age 15, she went to the North games and got to carry around the
megaphone at football games that Ronnie used for the cheers. They were married
on February 12,1947, producing five lovely children. Little did Kay and I know
that we had brought home Barbara’s future husband! I began dating Don Fox and
he was my escort at one of the school proms.
Note about our guest writer: After graduating from Robbinsdale High
School in 1942, Lorraine Meyer Leavell attended the University of Minnesota one
year, then attended the Minnesota School of Business and graduated in 1945 to
begin a secretarial career. In December of 1946 she seized the opportunity to
go to Germany to work as a Civil Service stenographer for the Office of the
Chief Engineer in the occupation of Germany in Frankfurt and Heidelberg. In
December, 1949 Lorraine returned to Minneapolis and began working as a
secretary to a German scientist in the Research & Development Dept. of
Pillsbury Mills. After five years she moved to Houston, Texas and worked as a
secretary at an oil company. In 1959 she passed the CPS exam and became a
Certified Professional Secretary. Lorraine married Jim Leavell in 1960. She worked
in an executive secretarial capacity in Houston until she retired in 1991.
In the ‘70s a friend in
Houston took Lorraine fishing in Galveston Bay and she became hooked on
saltwater fishing. In the ‘80s she headed a fishing club for kids called the
National Youth Fishing Club of Houston. She organized monthly fishing trips for
them. Continually researching places for them to fish, Lorraine found over 100
good sites, both in freshwater lakes to the north and in the saltwater bays and
Gulf of Mexico surf to the south, all within 120 miles of downtown Houston. She
compiled the locations into a guidebook to help folks who wanted to go fishing
but didn’t know where to go and didn’t have a boat. Following retirement,
Lorraine self-published the guidebook entitled Family Fishing Holes and sold it in Houston sporting goods stores.
Lorraine was accepted as a member of the Texas Outdoor Writers Association. At
one of their annual meetings she was presented with Bass Pro Shops’ Pass It On
Award for outstanding achievement in promoting our outdoor heritage. After 14
years of publishing the book, thoroughly updating each of its eight new
editions each time it sold out, it became too much work for just one person. So
Lorraine reluctantly ended publication in 2005. But she still fishes, and
enjoys gardening, too!
Barbara Meyer Bistodeau