Spare ribs were called machine gun bullets. He made it fun for a child to be in the store. bill always greeted me with Mary Lynn bumped her chin and couldn’t get up in the morning. From the time I was very little mother would send me to the store with a list. Some of you may have called the operator from Walt’s store and said, “Mary can you find my mom?” My first job was as an operator from 7 until school started and many times after school until closing at 8.

The office was a stand alone building that had been a power plant. Dad and Louis Stickelberger replaced the poles and restrung the wires as the coop imploded and the town needed telephone service. The telephone company was started by a coop and a storm in the early thirties took down most of the poles. New cars came in on the train until 1958 when Safratowich ordered a station wagon and the first car carrier delivered it to the garage. The garage became incorporated with Haskin and my uncle Claus as investors. Nelson died of bad boot leg liquor and Spencer moved to Rock Lake. My father was trained as a mechanic in WWI, when he returned he along with August Nelson and Earl Spencer purchased the Peterson garage. Dad was a carpenter and helped build many of the barns in the area 1913-1916. About the same time the cafe burned and the men spent nights rebuilding the cafe next to Kellers Bar. That August my brother Dale was stricken with Polio.

My parents Hilding and Hazel Carlson lived in a small house known at the time as the Simon house and now as Janice and John Hagers. This has been a delight to read the comments and see the names that were so important to me. So much for technology in our neck of the woods. I believe Bronald (sp?) Thompson ran the elevator for years, others before him – can’t recall the name of the guy who was in the south elevator for a long time…no, not Buckskin! Seeing color TV for the first time at the barbershop was disappointing – they (who was the barber?) just bought a screen cover that was coated in three colored stripes that went over the screen – same old snowy picture with dumb colored stripes laid over. And I believe Jens Nielsen might have butchered cattle in the small building behind Sullivan’s grocery, but seems like it might have been someone else – just remember going in to watch the action. Jim and Edith Wallace’s dad and Lawrence Keller worked on the railroad section crew, can’t remember who else but remember the cream cans sitting on the rail station platform early in the morning waiting to ship out on the train, very early in my life. Ever and Alta Hanson ran the telephone office at one time, if I recall correctly – Alta, actually.

Dave erickson esmond nd