All this talk of cows reminds me of the Red Owl there in Williston, back in 1980.
When I was a kid my mother always took us shopping on Tuesday mornings to the Red Owl in New Brighton. And by the way, I’ll get to why I associate cows with the Red Owl in just a moment.
As I was saying, my dad would take off work from Aarone’s Bar and Grill, where he poured suds, every Tuesday morning, to take mom and us kids to the Red Owl ' for the weekly grocery run. My mother bought groceries only once a week. She would be aghast at the way my beloved and I do our shopping today. It’s pretty much whatever comes to mind each day . . . we go shopping. If we want organic sweet potatoes for instance, or I crave a cheddar/jalapeno bagel, we stop at the store for it. Whether it’s on our shopping list or not. I personally don’t feel guilty about this. And I'm sure my beloved is not biting her nails over it. But my mother was raised during a sterner time. During the Great Depression. Every penny had to be carefully delegated. There was no room and no money for buying a bagel on a whim. Or even a postage stamp.
But getting back to the Red Owl in New Brighton. I remember they had a gigantic hand cranked coffee mill. It was painted fire engine red and it seemed to my midget eyes to loom up at least two stories in front of me. I dearly wanted my mother to buy some coffee beans so she would turn that giant wheel to grind them. I imagined the machine would emit a groaning chorus of “Yo heave ho” in a deep Russian bass. But she only bought Folger’s in a can. Or was it Hills Brother’s? (My dad made Mom get Hills Brother’s. She didn’t drink coffee, since she joined the Church in 1962. We taught everyone in the small communities within 100 miles of us about the fact that we didn’t drink alcohol or coffee or smoke cigarettes. North Dakota is like that. Farmers are all spread out. Everyone is related somehow or other. We went to the Red Owl in Stanley when I was growing up. It was 7 miles from us, as opposed to the 65 miles to Williston where our meeting house was. When we moved closer to Williston by moving to Tioga, the store there was the “Piggly Wiggly”. By that time new ownerships were taking over and the first oil boom was a bad memory. The next oil boom was gearing up and happened in 1983-88.)
The other thing I remember about shopping with Mom at the “Red Owl” is the vast array of gumball machines. They not only dispensed candy but also little plastic or latex trinkets in a clear plastic egg. I always wanted to get one of the clear plastic eggs that had a green latex skeleton in it. When the gumball machine finally spit it out and I opened it, the smell of that cheap Japanese latex made me gag!
But getting back to the Williston Red Owl. That place was wonderful to me, because you could buy a pre-cut packaged slice of steak (here we have the link to cows and “Red Owl”), and they would grill it for you right there. I loved eating my dinner there with a side of potato salad. A carton of chocolate milk. And a package of Hostess Suzy-Q’s.
And that leads us, patient readers, to the subject of my weight.
Today (2022) I am proud to say I am under 300Lbs. This only happened because of the help and faith of my beloved. When I was a child I was referred to as “beanpole”. I was so thin because I was such a picky eater. But once I got back from my mission to Thailand, I ate so voraciously that my weight ballooned. I could not fit into any of my clothes. I was determined to lose weight. And I did. When I enrolled in the Brown Institute of Broadcasting I would walk there and back everyday. It was 6 miles one way. So I was walking 12 miles each day Monday through Friday. And that took the pounds off during the 6 month course. I also gave up things like mashed potatoes and gravy, and Suzy-Q’s.
When I got to Williston I still had to walk or ride my bike everywhere. So that gave me some exercise. But not enough. Those steak dinners at the Red Owl and my serious Hostess relapse, started putting the pounds back on my slender frame. And I have struggled with my weight ever since.
But I don't much care for Hostess products anymore -- I'd rather have sour pickle or a juicy anjou pear for dessert anytime.
My dad was always a fat man. He looked and acted like W.C. Fields in his later years. He never worried about his weight. It did not bother him. Back then, bartenders were supposed to be fat. You couldn’t trust a skinny bartender. When my mother was mad at him, she would refer to him as “you fat toad on a stove.”
********************************
(I’ve known a few bartenders in my life but they weren’t fat. They were regular ladies that worked for my parents. And now it comes out. 1964 Dad bought the bar in Ross. Mom and Dad with 7 kids moved in and set up housekeeping in the top part of the Hilltop Bar. The upstairs used to be the motel part. New owner, new face to the business. It was now our house. A set of steel cabinets and a sink were put in one of the rooms for a kitchen. A wall was removed to be the living room next to the kitchen. As you came up the stairs the first door on the left was the boys room. The door on the right was the bathroom and laundry room. Then the next two rooms had been opened up for the kitchen and living room. The last door on the left was for my parents and was also the only way to get to the girls room. We lived in that apartment situation for 11 years. Added to our family were the next four children. 11 years. 11 children. And so many prayers that were very strange. I remember hearing Mom tell God that we don’t drink or smoke and we don’t want to teach others to do that but if people want to do that please let them come here where friends meet. Mom was a strong woman. She taught us the lessons for the children’s Primary each week for those 11 years. She taught us each to sing and also to sing together. We had piano lessons in Stanley from her High School piano teacher Sibyll MacDonald. I remember 6:30 AM mornings practicing on the piano in the bar. There were 5 of us who were up that early. The bus came at 8 so there was enough time for three a day to practice. There was no way to practice after school like normal people. I remember going to sleep many nights listening to Mom’s piano music as she played and the people in the bar would sing and dance. Some guys would even play guitar with her. Sunday mornings were strange too. We cleaned the bar before we held church.
The bottom of the building was a Cafe if you entered the building on the north. And a bar if you entered the building on the east or west. And how did we access our house you ask? There was a shed to the north of the east bar entrance and we went in there. You could go in and then up the stairs or across the landing to the kitchen of the cafe. For a couple years Mom tried to run the cafe and keep up with the family but it got to be too much. She did experience a miscarriage of a baby during that time. So the cafe was closed in our house and that opened up an opportunity for one of Dad’s cousins to put a cafe in the little store in town. It was good for a time. It also opened up an area for more sleeping rooms! Two bunk beds in the boys room. A double bed, a single bed and a crib in the girls room. I got the first bedroom downstairs after the cafe closed.
Back to the bartenders. Ida, Belinda, Mom and Bonnie all ran the bar. Dad would work mornings sometimes too. He got work with the garage down the hill and then Mom took over the mornings until she had babies. Then for a couple months she would be home and soon she would be back at work in the mornings. Ida was a cousin of Dad’s. Ida had two kids and I babysat them sometimes. Belinda was from Syria. There was a whole settlement of Syrians in our area. The older people all spoke the strange language to my ears. The kids were friendly and I was glad they were my friends during high school. They knew the pain of ridicule and sometimes it was nice to have someone to commiserate with. Bonnie was another of Dad’s cousins. Bonnie had 5 kids. Her husband died of cancer a year after we got to Ross. They and a couple kids that were the same age as my brother and me. When I say “cousin” you should understand that in North Dakota we can know our 3rd and 4th and even 5th cousins. That’s the kind of cousins that Bonnie and Ida were.)
