Train station. Red Wing, Minnesota.
In 1959 both Alaska and Hawaii were finally granted statehood, and my mother decided to take my 2 sisters and I on a train ride from our home in Minneapolis down to Red Wing in Goodhue County. The two events have no bearing on each other that I know of, but history has a strange way of getting tangled up in even the most mundane lives -- and I've wondered if the national euphoria felt by the nation at this completion of a great pioneering work (or highway robbery, as some revisionist historians have it) didn't rub off a little on mom, making her a bit more hopeful that the trip she was contemplating would not end in a complete shambles. She wanted to visit the pottery stores which made the town famous among the artsy-craftsy set, and since she had a firm prejudice against babysitters in her home we children had to come along willy-nilly. I remember she was looking for a large ceramic sauerkraut crock -- not to ferment cabbage in, but to set out on the front porch with cattails poking out of it.
She planned the trip well in advance, asking her friends Jean Brandt and Rose Ciatti to come along as well. When they both backed out at the last minute, her sunny demeanor became somewhat tarnished, and her inborn Cassandra tendencies began to emerge.
"Oh Jean!" I well remember her crying into the phone on our kitchen wall, "you mean I'll have to keep an eye on the kids all by myself? I was hoping you'd help out to keep them from . . . " here she glanced my way, not in a very friendly manner, and apparently modified her words "from becoming bored." When she hung up she released a gusty sigh. She took another long, considering look at me -- and it was as if I could see right into her mind.
"Is this little brakmaker going to cost me a fortune in broken pottery?" I could hear her think. For I was a known felon when it came to stacking tea cups perilously high, until they fell in a smash like the walls of Jericho. I also liked to throw the good dinner plates up in the air and catch them behind my back as I had seen Fatty Arbuckle do in an old silent film.
Dad egged her on, the fat toad.
"You mean to take them kids down on the train all that way? I dunno what you're thinking of, Ev. They'll drive you crazy and get lost and fall in the river or somethin'." Thanks for that vote of confidence, father dear.
On the appointed day mom got us all dressed up as if we were going to Mass. Back when Eisenhower ran things, going on a trip meant dressing up -- not throwing on some dirty jeans and grabbing a grubby backpack. My navy blue dress pants were way too short -- I was beginning to sprout up like bindweed and there hadn't been time to buy new ones. My tan Buster Browns were buffed to a fare-thee-well. It was considered 'cute' for boys to wear bright argyle socks back then, and so I had on a pair that screamed at the eyes. My white shirt had about a pound of starch invested in it so the collar felt like sandpaper. I had mislaid my belt somewhere, so was obliged to wear galluses with monkeys on them. The hated red bow tie was wound around my throat, and I took along a green hairy sport coat that apparently was made of dyed twine. If mom had stuck a fez on my head I could have passed for a Munchkin from the Land of Oz.
We took a taxi to the train station downtown. Steam and diesel fumes swirled about us as we boarded the Great Northern car to stow our baggage overhead and settle into the threadbare velvet seats with bright white doily antimacassars draped over each one.
With a juddering crash we got underway, sailing past the Mississippi and endless fields of corn and wheat. At that age I was not much of a plein air enthusiast, so quickly grew bored. I wandered up and down the train car aisle, sticking my nose into where it didn't belong, ruffling some old biddies who were jealously guarding their copies of the Ladies Home Journal from prying eyes.
Then I discovered the water cooler at the end of the car, with the paper cone dispenser. I'd never seen anything like it before. Marveling at the great ingenuity it took to invent such a wonder, I began pulling them out one by one until I had nearly fifty -- at which point some officious conductor intruded on my study and gruffly told me to return to my seat. I took the paper cones with me.
As my sisters and I argued and shrieked over ownership of the paper cones, grabbing each other by the arm and fending off blows like prize fighters, my mother sadly shook her head. Calamity was approaching fast, her body language clearly indicated. She managed to keep her temper, tranquilizing us with a bag of CornNuts. She must have had that bag in her purse since before her honeymoon, since the kernels were nearly impossible to grind and chew -- it was like eating gravel. And let me just here state for the record that Sue Ellen unfairly wound up with all of the paper cones in her sole possession -- out of which she made coolie hats for her damn collection of Barbie dolls. That's when it began to dawn on me that girls get the best of everything. I haven't much changed my mind since.
When we arrived in Red Wing and got off the train, mom huddled us together for an anxious pep talk. We were not to talk to strangers, wander off, and especially NOT TOUCH ANY OF THE PRETTY THINGS IN THE SHOPS.
She said this all in a chipper, upbeat voice -- but her eyes betrayed her. They were already deeply sunken in despair. There was no way our clumsy little hands could be kept from fragile and expensive boneware. She and dad would have to get a second mortgage on the house to pay off the imminent damages.
I suppose you're preparing yourself now to read all about our slapstick shennanigans in the pottery shops -- and laugh yourself sick at the immense amount of damage done by myself and siblings.
Well, fuhgeddaboudit. We behaved ourselves just fine. I became fascinated by the jolly Toby mugs on display. But I could read the price tags, so didn't bother to ask if I could have one. I had to wait another fifty years until I found one at the Provo Deseret Industries store -- in the exact image of W.C. Fields. I use it to keep pencils in.
Mom got her sauerkraut crock and we had grilled cheese sandwiches with french fries for lunch -- then got back on the train and came home without further incident.
The neighborhood ladies were waiting for mom as soon as we got back. They were licking their lips to hear about the disaster. What had those fiendish Torkildson children done now? When mom told them the trip had been peaceful and productive and the riot squad had not been called out even once, they were thoroughly disappointed and trooped back to their homes in a squalid, heavy-handed manner.
I don't think mom ever got over that trip. For once in her harried life everything had gone as planned. For a lapsed Catholic with a deep tint of Calvinism, this was a crime that would have to be paid for in the future. And it's certain that never again did the Torkildson children travel so quietly and behave so well when the family went on vacations or just out to Anoka for Halloween pumpkins. Just a sampling:
I got my index finger stuck in the ashtray that was built into the back of the front seat -- dad had to drive to the nearest auto mechanic so he could take it to pieces to free my digit, and charge dad an unholy amount.
I had captured a bumblebee in a glass jar and surreptitiously brought it along on a drive out to Aunt Ruby's in Edina. It was raining, the windows were up, and I decided to open the jar to see how my new pet was getting along. The rest I will leave to the reader's imagination.
And there was the time my dumb sister Sue Ellen dared me to squirt a long stream of mustard into my mouth and swallow it while we were at a drive-in out in New Brighton. I took the dare, waiting until we were just a block from home to spew it all back up again. Sisters are really dumb, you know that?
