Untitled Document

Lori or Cathy, in top left column of newsletter, please include links to Country Store for new REM doll puzzle and to REM DVD on-line promo with these graphics
• DollPuzzleBoxSM.jpg for REM doll puzzle with link: NEW! Doll Puzzle from Cover of Reminisce

• bday2c-zuelsdorff.jpg goes next to my intro (there’s also two links within the intro)

• With “Life in Sausalito…” story, these photos and captions:
Sausalito_1.jpg with caption: Wes (left), Verona and Stan Glassgow in 1939 Sausalito
Sausalito_2.jpg with caption: Stan Glassgow, in 1940, with Gate Theatre and Baldwin’s candy store sign in background
Sausalito_4.jpg with caption: Hills of Sausalito
Sausalito_5.jpg with caption: Mid-1930s Sausalito

• Carlsonhome-1.tif goes with the “When the Carlsons Raised the Roof” story with this caption: The Carlson home, after the addition.

• BudgetGardenSecrets.JPG with ad info of same name. Also here’s link to Country Store for “Budget Garden Secrets” — http://www.countrystorecatalog.com:80/productDetail.asp?SID=&REFURL=&txtproductId=37476&txtKeyword=garden&CatText=&SubCatText=&absPage=1&shopperid=XT1J00KVHM7G9GUNMFTS5D1UBKCU4UA2

• Photo by William B. Johnson — embedded in Word document — use with poem if we can.

• Trivia Answer Link to this answer: We purposely didn’t include the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese as a clue, since it would have given away the correct answer of 1941.

Spring may be a bit stubborn about paying you a visit in your neck of the woods, so we’re sending you this colorful postcard greeting (right) courtesy of Reminisce reader Shirley Zuelsdorff. You can just smell the sweet scent of clover!

Still not thinking spring? Check out the special offer from the folks at Backyard Living magazine. They have tons of inexpensive ideas on how to beautify your own piece of paradise in their new book Budget Garden Secrets. Just click use this link to get more information below.

Have friends who may enjoy a trip down Memory Lane? Feel free to forward this newsletter to them. If this newsletter was forwarded to you and you’d like a monthly copy of your own, just use this link to sign up yourself. And think spring!

Life in Sausalito was a Boy’s Dream

In June of 1937, my family moved from Cedar Rapids, Iowa to Sausalito, California. My father had gone ahead of us, and my mother, sister, brother and I rode the train to San Francisco.

Grandma Nellie Glassgow met us at the train station, and we rode a streetcar to the ferry building, where we got on the ferry to ride over to Sausalito.

This was all very exciting for a 6-year-old boy such as me, but the best was yet to come. Grandma Nellie owned Baldwin’s candy store in downtown Sausalito, and I couldn’t wait to get there. I was not disappointed. The store had everything—candy cases filled with penny candy, a soda fountain, magazine racks with all the latest comic books, and booths to sit in. It was all we could ask for.

Baldwin’s enjoyed a terrific business prior to May of 1937, when the Golden Gate Bridge was opened to traffic. The bridge gave the driving public a direct route to all that San Francisco had to offer. A few months after the opening, the auto ferry stopped running.

The candy store had to rely on the local people and the Gate Theatre patrons for its business. Moviegoers would buy candy, gum and cigarettes, while popcorn was sold at the theater.

All three of us kids delivered San Francisco’s morning newspapers. My older sister, Verona, got a job delivering the Examiner, and I had to go with her. Soon, I started delivering the Chronicle, and we traveled the same route. A year or two later, my brother, Wesley, took over Verona’s route.

The Marin Hills, above Sausalito, presented a real challenge for a 7- or 8-year-old carrying 75 to 100 newspapers in a bag over the shoulder. The job paid $7 a month, and it took me about 6 months to save enough to buy a bicycle. With my bag of papers slung on the back of the bike, I’d push the bike to the top of a hill and deliver the papers while riding downhill.

Sausalito was almost a picture-perfect place to grow up. There was fishing and swimming in San Francisco Bay, passenger ferry rides to the big city and walks across the Golden Gate Bridge.

Then, in 1939, the San Francisco Exposition came to the area. In reality, it was a mini world’s fair. I can’t remember how many times I took the China Clipper over to Yerba Buena, or Treasure Island, to see the fair, but it was a lot. The island is now home to a naval base.

The beginning of the end of my life in Sausalito came in 1941. Business at the candy store fell to almost nothing, and it was sold in 1942. My family moved about 5 miles away, to Tamalpais Valley.

My mother became ill and died in 1943, and my brother joined the Merchant Marine. My sister had her own life by then, and my father could no longer take care of me, so I was sent back to the Midwest to live with relatives.

However, I have returned to Sausalito several times over the years, and it always brings back many memories.

When the Carlsons Raised the Roof

In 1943, my parents, Carl and Marguerite Carlson, purchased a two-bedroom, one-and-a-half-story house in St. Paul, Minnesota for $3,300.

By 1953, there were six children—five girls, one boy—in that two-bedroom home. My brother, Ken, had a bed in the upstairs hallway. The three older girls, Marlyss, Carol and Nancy, shared the only upstairs bedroom, and it had a sloped ceiling. They were able to fit one twin bed and one double bed in that room.

The term 6-year crib was a reality in our home. My younger sister, Jan, and I slept in cribs in our parents’ bedroom until we were 5 and 7 years old. The bedroom was not like the master bedrooms of today, so it was very cozy.

At the time I was born, our grandmother and great-aunt had moved into our three-season front porch until they could arrange other housing.

Our parents decided to add on two bedrooms to the upstairs. I recently ran across the plans and expenses for this addition. When they filed the plans, in 1951, our dad indicated that building supplies were limited or restricted in the post-World War II era. That may be why the addition was not built until 1953.

Our uncle, a carpenter, helped with the roughing-in of the addition, and Dad and Mom did most of the finishing.

Dad didn’t like heights, so the roof and siding must have been quite a challenge for him. One day, when he was working on the roof, there was this small voice saying, “Hi, Daddy!” Imagine his surprise when he turned to find my younger sister at the top of the extension ladder. He somehow kept his calm, went over to her and talked her down the ladder. To this day, she does not like to climb ladders and can’t imagine how she managed it way back then.

Our grandfather was a railroad man, and he had salvaged some windows for use in these rooms. They were metal and had screens and storms. One of the storms had “Kilroy rode here” etched into the metal.

These two additional bedrooms were put to good use. There was one more addition to the family, in 1957, when our second brother, Paul, was born. By then, the three oldest siblings had married and moved out.

Our parents sold this house for under $20,000, in 1972, and retired to their lake home.

The family that purchased the house still lives there. It would be interesting to see the changes they’ve made to the house. I wonder if they made as many as my parents did over the 30 years it was our family home.

Joe Louis Put Some Punch in Patriotism

It wasn’t that I saw Joe Louis in person, or that I saw Joe Louis box, or even that I saw Joe Louis win. It was seeing how Joe Louis won.

As a preteen in the middle of World War II, I knew what it meant for him to be world heavyweight champion. It meant that he was the toughest fighter on the face of the Earth, king of the hill, master over all comers, victor against the odds, winner-take-all. And so, when older brother Lu asked, “Wanna go to the Joe Louis fight?” My answer was a rhetorical, “Who wouldn’t?”

At the time, Joe was a sergeant in the Army with a job different from, though not less important than, that of other GI Joes. He was serving his country, not in a front-line foxhole fighting foreigners but, stateside, matching wits and fists with compatriot pretenders, defenders and dead-enders in the fundraising ring. The civilian price of admittance: an $18.75 war bond.

But how was a 12-year-old like me going to come up with a wad of money like that? The answer: by buying 25¢ U.S. Treasury savings stamps, sweated out and paid for one at a time by salvaging hand-gathered scraps of neighborhood tin, tires and newsprint. Luckily, we kids had advance notice on our side, plus motivation: the chance to see for ourselves the footwork and lightning hands that had bested Germany’s Max Schmeling and America’s Billy Conn.

Elbowing our way up and into the fan-packed upper reaches of the Buffalo Auditorium, we settled ourselves into our first-come, first-seated places. There we waited, ate peanuts, waited, drank pop, waited, made predictions and waited some more for the preliminary bouts to end and for the main event to begin. All the while, I wondered to myself—and to everyone else around me—when is this fight gonna start?

Finally, the hour arrived and Joe Louis came into view. Looking huge alongside his mere-mortal escorts, the champ created his own parade down the long center aisle.

Climbing into his corner of the floodlighted ring, “The Brown Bomber” shed his silken robe. Joe touched gloves with then no-name Johnny Davis. At the bell, the two circled around each other a while, took turns sparring, probed at arm’s length once or twice and danced a bob and a weave.

Then, within the life of a Sylvania flashbulb, the clash was over, as Sgt. Louis abruptly dispatched his victim to the canvas…8, 9, 10 and out. Elapsed time in the ring: 1 minute, 5 seconds.

The precision of Joe’s jabs, however, made up for our letdown over the brevity of the bout.

Joe’s patriotism extended to the war effort, where he raised multiple millions of dollars. When asked once, “How can you, as a member of a maltreated minority, devote yourself to the war against our enemies?” He replied, “There’s lot of things wrong with America, but Hitler ain’t the one to fix it.”

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The Church with Nobody in It

The countryside was lush and green,
But what I saw was a very sad scene.
A little country church stood all alone,
A relic of happy times long gone.

It was only a little wood frame building
With no fancy trim or ornate gilding.
There was such disrepair I could see right through
The sides of the building and the belfry, too.

The boards were black and falling apart.
Seeing such a sight really tore my heart.
I thought of the people who once worshiped there;
They came from all directions to gather for prayer.

The bell called all who heard to come and bring
Humble hearts and happy voices to join and sing
Praises to God, our Savior and our Lord,
And to offer petitions to the One Whom they adored.

There were happy times within that setting,
Baptisms, confirmations and beautiful weddings.
There surely were times of sadness, too,
For loved ones who passed on to life anew.

Sermons were preached from God’s Holy Word.
Hearts and lives were changed by what was heard.
Now, the church has nobody in it.
If I had the money, I’d buy it in a minute.

I’d shore up those walls about to fall in.
I’d replace that bell so it could call in
The people nearby who all need to hear
The Word of God preached throughout the year.

It has served God’s purpose; now perhaps it’s best
To let time take its toll, and let it come to rest
On Christ’s promise: “My church always will be,
Not only in a building, but in fellowship with Me.”

Over the Back Fence

My dad, “Casey” Prichard, came from a long line of southern storytellers, living the majority of his 91 years in Iowa, where he and Mother raised us four kids.

One anecdote had to do with the longevity of my parents’ marriage—just shy of 70 years when death did, indeed, part them for a few weeks. Someone would ask my father, “How do you make a marriage last for such a long, long time?”

Dad would respond with the comment that he and Mother had come to an agreement early in their marriage. If either one of them ever decided that they wanted out of the marriage, all that was necessary was for that person to leave…but they had to take the kids with them!

Time Capsule Trivia