Publisher’s Perspective

By Tim Douglass, Publisher of the Pope County Tribune

The “Movie in the Park” featuring Sandlot brought back some memories of my childhood.

I guess I’m labeled as a baby boomer, but we didn’t pay much attention to generational labels when I was growing up.  We were too busy standing in line for milk, or lunch, or vaccinations.  While at school, it seemed we were always standing in some line, waiting our turn for something.

In my rural, southwestern Minnesota town, a full-sized school bus could go around a one-mile section, (the distance only rural people know in acres), and the bus would be nearly full–lots of kids on four or five farms.

As a town kid, I walked a couple of blocks if I wanted to catch the bus.  There were dozens of kids on that corner each morning waiting for the bus.  We stood in line to get on to make the six or seven-block trip to school.

My brothers and I rarely took the bus.  Although we lived on the opposite side of town from the elementary school, we either biked or walked the eight or nine blocks to school.   It made our escape (no lines) after school that much more controllable and pleasant.  We usually detoured downtown (about three blocks) to the Dime Store if we had a nickel or a dime or even a few pennies.  Yep, you could get something even if you had a few pennies.   There were lots of candy pieces that cost just a penny.  An example you ask?  A tootsie roll, a piece of taffy or a square of Bazooka Bubble Gum, which came with a little comic inside.

We didn’t have screen time, of course, unless you had parents that let you watch one of the two channels you could get on television.  We were able to watch a CBS affiliate out of Sioux Falls, So Dak. and one out of Mankato, Minn.  Sometimes we could get ABC, but I can’t remember where that came from.  There was a big box on the top of the television set where you turned the dial to northeast or west to get a “fairly good picture.”  There was nothing south, except Iowa. There were only a few programs worth watching for a kid and most of those came on Saturday mornings.

That was winter activity, however.  In the summer, we were out the door by 8 a.m. on Saturday’s rounding up enough kids for a baseball game.  We had a flimsy backstop at the city park, but no fences or real bases.  No adults and no umpires.  A home run hit the roof of the shelter house in the air or at least 15 feet in the trees that surrounded the shelter house.  That was a good poke from homeplate.  The 15-feet-high rule was an endless debate and often ended in intense arguments and was usually proncounced a ground-rule double.

We placed extra gloves along the base paths for bases.  A baseball was important but plentiful.  Most of us who played possessed at least one baseball so we could play catch at home.  I realize that sounds a lot like the movie Sandlot, but just about every small town in the 60s had a group of boys who played unsupervised ball almost every day throughout the summer.  When it came time for structured baseball in leagues we called PeeWees, or Midgets, we were ready and got to play on a real diamond with real bases.  The coach had a bag of balls and a bag of bats, so we didn’t have to rely on a neighbor to bring his new bat.  You waited in line to get a team assignment.  We waited again, oldest to youngest, for a chance to play.

Another summer activity once you made it to junior high was walking beans or detasseling corn.  We lined up at city hall to sign up for the work.   Then we lined up each morning and waited for buses to take us to nearby bean fields to pull weeds.   It was a social event, of sorts.  We didn’t get rich, but you had enough to hang around town and drop a few coins into a pinball machine or buy some decent candy, or baseball cards at the Dime Store.  And, the laundry mat in town featured a pop bottle machine where you could get the treasured “cream soda” for a dime.  I believe that jumped to 15 cents when I was in eighth grade, and I’m sure that was for a 10-ounce bottle.

By the way, if you grew up in my hometown, you knew that a section (a square mile) consisted of 640 acres.  A quarter section—a 160-acre farm was typical.  Now it’s what is called a hobby farm or a private place to hunt.