From Where I Sit

By Pat Spilseth, Columnist

I’ve been having the worst time coming up with an idea for a column this week…but then I remembered. It’s about time for my favorite inmates to return to Dad’s jail after drinking too much booze.

In my imagination I could almost see the drunk guys being led by Police Chief Kettells or another cop to Dad’s office for their fall vacation in our jail. It’s the same thing every year…time for our favorite guys to “go off the wagon” and wander back to the jail for their repeated monthly stay. They always enjoyed mom’s delicious free meals and a warm bed.

In Dad’s jail the prisoners we housed were unlike anyone I knew. I grew up in Glenwood, a little village of mostly Scandinavians and Bohemians: most were tall, quiet and hard-working. No one wanted to stand out as different. It was important to “fit in” with modesty and no bragging. Don’t get a “big head” was regularly preached to kids by our parents.

Surely the guys sentenced to our jail had lived different lives than my neighbors on Green Street, like Mama and Papa Stevens, our adopted grandma and grandpa. Nor were they anything like Mrs. Peterson, our elderly, widowed neighbor lady whom Mom suggested was lonely…I should visit weekly on her porch, where she fed me lemon drops. Next to the Lutheran church across from the jail were the Solvies, who worked at the courthouse and were avid gardeners. My buddy Wendy Schaub’s family lived in an upstairs apartment across the street from the Courthouse. She and I liked to ride our bikes down the alley to play pool in the back room at Dick’s Recreation. Guys from the jail knew us and taught Wendy and me how to shoot pool.

Certainly the guys who spent time in jail were nothing like Mom’s teasing, laughing brothers nor Dad’s Dutch relatives in Brooten, who went to church three times on Sundays. I understood why Dad, who wasn’t big on attending church, was considered the “black sheep” of his family. He told me why would I go to church three times on Sundays? Just listen the first time!

Life in jail seemed so easy. The men in their cells didn’t have to do anything but enjoy a smoke, sit in their cells reading the tattered stacks of Zane Gray western paperbacks and brag about their escapades. In jail they were well taken care of: Mom made homemade meals of soup or roasts and potatoes for them three times a day, plus morning and afternoon coffee and cookies. Dad told them when to wake up for breakfast, go to court, turn out the lights…they were like a kid whose parent took care of them. Regular people, not those relaxing in jail, had responsibilities like household expenses, car maintenance, jobs and families to care for.

Memories of Blackie remain strongest in my mind. I never understood why everyone in town called the Indian Blackie, rather than his real name, which I never heard. That would not be politically acceptable today! Mom and Dad referred to Blackie when they pointed out the importance of a good education. Blackie had earned a college education but had wasted it, according to the folks. Drinking was his downfall. He didn’t have a job. In those days there wasn’t treatment for alcoholism, just jail.

Blackie was an avid exerciser who would flop his bed’s thin mattresses on the hard metal floor of the jail and start doing flips, backbends and headstands. Meanwhile, my friends and I would be mesmerized, standing and watching his performance at the barred windows of the jail right next to our kitchen entrance door. He only had one visitor that I ever saw, his mother who was known in the community as Nicotine Nelly. I never knew where she lived or if Blackie had a dad in the area. There were just the two of them, never with other people. I wonder what brought them to Glenwood…

Blackie and his mom were the only Indians I knew in our community. I think Nicotine Nelly got her nickname from the guys shooting pool and drinking beer in the smoky rooms of Dick’s Recreation on Main Street downtown. As they sat on their stools checking the action outside the pool room’s windows, they couldn’t help but spy Nelly with her long braids and cigarette. In our little town she stood out from other women.

Nicotine Nelly was a different character: she would troll the streets of downtown picking up cigarette butts from the sidewalk. Always alone, this wizened little woman with long, gray-black braids never looked anyone in the face: her shaded, black eyes were always searching the sidewalk for those tiny treasures she’d pick up to inhale and savor the pleasure as curling smoke drifted above her head.

Next week would you like to meet a few other characters we enjoyed at the jail? How about handsome, charming Paul, the dancing decorator and the mesmerizing minister who conducted services in Dad’s office at the jail? Let me know…

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To contact Pat, email: pat.spilseth@gmail.com.