From Where I Sit

By Pat Spilseth, Columnist

As snowflakes float past my windows, my mind drifts back to when I was a kid at Christmastime in the fifties. Dad was sheriff of Pope County and our family lived at the jail. Usually, when the snowflakes came at the holiday, we could count on seeing our “regulars,” Blackie and Pretty Boy.

Maybe our repeat jail guests enjoyed sitting in our living room around the Christmas tree with my folks, little sister Barbie and me. Maybe they liked hearing Dad read the Christmas story from the Book of Luke in the Bible. Perhaps they wanted to see the TV show we always watched after opening presents, Lawrence Welk with those sweetly singing Lennon Singers and Myron Floren on the accordion.

Of course, Mom’s holiday meal of Capon chicken, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberries and lefse was a big treat for all of us. In their cells, the guys ate Christmas dinner on jail dishes, black and white metal dishes, with Mom’s Christmas napkins on their trays. They weren’t invited to our holiday table set with hobnail glasses and china on Mom’s Christmas tablecloth with sequined snowflakes. Dad swore that he ate sequins all year long.

The BIG reason they couldn’t sit at the fancy dining room table was because each of us got to sip a thimble full of Mogen David wine from tiny glasses mom brought out once a year.

One year we had an unexpected visitor. It wasn’t Santa Claus, but it may as well have been. Paul was almost as good as Santa. Paul had a few bad habits: he bounced checks. He also bounced from wife to wife and forgot to divorce the first or second wife before he hitched up with the third or fourth. I’ve forgotten how many wives he had.

I was only a young teen, but even now, years later, I can understand why women fell for “the Charmer”…his smile would melt any gal’s heart. Even Dad liked Paul. He fit right in with the other prisoners lounging on their cell bunks, reading that endless pile of Zane Gray paperbacks. Those stories of romantic cowboys panning for gold and riding into the sunset were a great escape for the guys.

Paul offered to “redecorate” Mom’s kitchen during his jail visit. He’d climb the ladder to stencil pink flowers, green leaves and stems, creating a border pattern near the ceiling. Paul took work breaks when Barbie and I came home from school. That was dance time! Feeling the beat, Paul would waltz us around the kitchen table, singing a tune, holding us in his arms. Looking back, was that really the way it was? Or is my memory only wishful thinking?

Mom enjoyed smiling Paul working in her kitchen as she prepared those daily homemade meals for the family and the prisoners. Who wouldn’t enjoy meals at the jail? In addition to round steak and roasts, the prisoners were indulged with mom’s famous chocolate cake with the fudge frosting, her date filled butter cookies, spice cake, peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies. Most days the courthouse gang attended her morning and afternoon coffee parties around the kitchen table. We always had a full house of guests. Mom loved it…she did smile and say “I wish I had a nickel for every cup of coffee I pour!”

Another year my folks decided to be responsible for Elmer, a prisoner paroled to us from the State Penitentiary in Stillwater. He’d been in the Pen because of a burglary charge. Elmer became a member of our family. As Mom said, repeatedly, he must have fallen into bad company. Turns out that’s exactly the way it was. After he had served his parole, Elmer returned to Nebraska and his former partners in crime who continued to work the system. A few years later, Elmer was killed in a high-speed chase and shootout after an armed burglary.

Elmer was as good as an uncle. One Christmas he sat around the Christmas tree with our family as we opened presents from Santa. Two tiny packages appeared, for sister Barbie and me. Elmer had gone shopping and found jeweled necklaces for us. Rhinestones surrounded a blue heart for me, a red heart for Barbie.

At the Pen, Elmer had made Mom a tooled leather purse; Dad got a tooled belt. I think Barbie and I got little leather belts, but that’s a faded memory. Elmer himself was the best gift for us.

Lots of folks seemed to get a bit crazy during holiday time. Usually, the problem was too much booze. Then Dad would get a call from the weary wife to come get her deranged husband and cart him off to jail. Or there would be trouble at one of the bars downtown or out in the county. Hunting and traffic accidents often occurred: too much liquor was often the cause. One freezing winter morning Dad got called out in the county to check a parked car that had remained in the same spot overnight. The caller said there was a body in the car: it hadn’t moved. Dad opened the car door, and a blast of cold, very pungent air, hit him. Thank goodness the guy had drunk so much booze that his overnight sleep in the car didn’t kill him. He was pickled! He was our jail guest for a few nights.

Tis’ the season once again, and I’m wondering what happened to our holiday “regulars.” Blackie, Paul and Pretty Boy remain fond memories. Today, things have changed for jailed prisoners. Incarcerated folks don’t have the Christmas blessings they enjoyed at our jail back in the fifties.

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