[OT] Insignificant Matters of No Worldwide Importance

This week, for the second time in a month, I'll be heading up to the old family hometown for a funeral. One funeral will put you in a sentimental, reminiscing mood, two in a month will send you away for a couple of days to relive good times long past. There will be a lot of old-time stories being told this Wednesday at Olson's Funeral Home in Menomonie, Wisconsin, and then seven miles to the south, at Riverview Cemetery in Downsville, as we lay my Aunt Margaret to rest. There's only one of my father's brothers and sisters left, now -- I'm becoming one of the old-timers now.

Here's the official obituary:

"Margaret E. Lemon, age 91, of Waukesha, WI passed away peacefully on Saturday, September 29, 2007.

The former Margaret Evelyn Running was born on September 28, 1916 in St. Paul, MN to the late Oscar and Emma Running. She graduated from Menomonie High School in 1933.

Margaret married Edwin Lemon on June 13, 1935 in Menomonie, WI. They moved to Milwaukee, WI in 1943, where she was employed at the First Wisconsin National Bank of Milwaukee until she retired in 1979.

Beloved wife of the late Edwin Lemon. Loving mother to Marilyn (Dick) Runkle and Ronald (Barbara) Lemon. Proud grandmother to Melanie (Rolf) Gersch, Jay Runkle, Eric (Julie) Lemon and Tori Lemon. Devoted great grandmother to Andrew, Alex and Aaron Gersch, Samantha and Ethan Runkle, and Ryan, Nathan and Zachary Lemon. Dear sister to Marlys (Lee) Drinkwine. Sisters-in-law Ermajean and Lois Running, and Delilah Wolf. Brother-in-law Bill (Barb) Pease. Further survived by many nieces and nephews and other relatives and friends.

She was preceded in death by her mother-in-law Hazel (William) Pease, brothers John and LeMoine “Buck” Running and sisters and brothers-in-law Elaine and Myron Smith and Jean and Kenneth Sorenson. Brother-in-law and sister-in-law Richard and Mariann Pease. Brothers-in-law Otto Lemon and Alfred Wolf.

Funeral services will be held at 1:00 PM Wednesday Oct. 3, 2007 at Olson Funeral Home in Menomonie, with Pastor Steve Carlson officiating. Burial will be in Riverview Cemetery in the Town of Dunn, Dunn Co., WI. Family and friends are welcome from 12:00 (Noon) on Wednesday until the time of the service at the funeral home.

To express condolences online, please visit obituaries at www.olsonfuneral.com"

Those are just words to you, but of course, between the lines there are thousands of stories and memories for me and my family. The "Edwin Lemon" you see in the obit was Aunt Margaret's husband, "Uncle Eddie," one of the all-time great characters. Always up at 3:30 or 4 am, he'd be at the back door delivering hard rolls from Sciortino's around 6 o'clock every Sunday morning. At deer hunting time, he'd be up at his customary hour, while we were all still hoping to get another couple hours' sleep, going from bedroom door to bedroom door at my Uncle Myron and Aunt Elaine's old farmhouse, banging on a fry pan with a metal spoon, yelling, "Get up, you lazy sonsabitches, let's get out in the woods." He was a heavy-equipment operator for Ed Gillen & Co. in Milwaukee, a pile-driver, and he could not speak without cussing -- it was just part of his natural character. He was an old-school cusser, unlike the amateur wannabes of today, he never need to use the F-word to cuss, he was capable of very picturesque expression while cussing, and he did it while making it sound natural and not at all mean. You don't hear people cuss like that anymore.

Like every other family member that moved from poor, rural Downsville to Milwaukee to find good work and raise a family, my dad used Eddie and Margaret's place as home base as we moved down to this area. Their house was like a second home to us for a while. They loved to drive us around and show us all the sights in the big city. That was big-time stuff to an impressionable kid like me. Even the big-city radio stations we'd hear in Eddie and Margaret's kitchen radio were magical -- instead of hearing on the local 50-Watt Menomonie station who was in the hospital last week and who played bridge at whose house, we'd hear big-city stuff -- like ads for airlines! Airlines with brand-new jet service! I can still hear the jingle as if I'm still sitting in their kitchen in 1965 -- "Northwest Orient [gong crash] [pause] Air Lines!" They drove us past the hotel where, just a couple months before, the Beatles had stayed!

See the name Marlys Drinkwine in the obit? That's my Aunt Marlys, the only remaining sibling of my dad's. She married a man named Bill Munroe, who was killed while chasing the Nazis up the boot of Italy in 1944, leaving a son, and a daughter that he never saw. Marlys later re-married to a man name Lee Drinkwine, and had a big bunch of kids. They moved around some, and in the late '60s and early '70s, they lived in a little town called Pardeeville, Wisconsin. My grandma, the Emma Running you see mentioned in the obit, once asked the long-distance operator to be connected to the Drinkwines in Pardeeville, and the operator hanged up on her, thinking it was a prank call.

The "Buck" Running you see mentioned is my dad. He had a brother named John, and sisters named Margaret, Elaine, Marlys and Jean -- all conventional names -- and then, his mother decided to name the last one LeMoine. I've been told that she never said where she got the name. They called him Buck, because his favorite movie cowboy was Buck Jones. He'll be gone 30 years now, next June 2 -- and I'll be as old as he was when he died.

The other recent funeral was for my cousin James Myron Smith, oldest son of Myron and and my dad's sister Elaine, who was known in our family for many, many years as "Jimmy," and to all his friends as "Nimzy." He was called Nimzy because his little brother couldn't say "Jimmy" when he was real little, and said Nimmy instead. It stuck, and became Nimzy over time. The little brother's real name is David, but he's known to everyone as "Spotsy." His other brothers are "Cubby" and "Dick." Believe it or not, Dick's real name is Richard -- somehow, he got the short end of the stick when the nicknames were passed out. A little 4-year-old daughter of one of Dick's friends once asked her dad why they called him Dick, because she thought he was a really nice guy, so why should they call him Dick?

Nimzy was found dead in his apartment two days after Labor day, and apparently he'd been dead for several days by that time. He had had rheumatic fever as a child, and the coroner suspects that heart damage caused by the disease contributed to a heart attack that killed him. He was only 55. Read the obits for Aunt Margaret and Nimzy at www.olsonfuneral.com.

If any of you are still reading after all this, I'll drag you a little farther down my memory lane. A little bit ago, I was thinking about how things have changed in the world since Aunt Margaret was born, and I thought of an old guy, one of Uncle Eddie's good friends, Darcy Shively. He lived near Downsville. The reason I thought of Darcy is that he drove a Ford Model A, probably from 1930 or thereabouts, until the day he became too old to drive. He'd come tooling into Downsville in that old car until, I don't know, it must have been the mid '70s or so. He was exceedingly frugal, obviously, and rumors abounded that he had a large stash of cash at his little house, making a lot of people worry for his safety. I guess no one ever caused him any trouble, though. Another character from that same time period was an old guy named "Orby," I don't know his last name, who used to drive his tractor into town. A really ancient tractor, must have been as old as Darcy's Model A. Us kids laughed at Orby because his head bobbed up and down like a bobble-head doll as he drove up the main street in Downsville to park in front of Honest John's tavern. All the local characters gathered either at Honest John's or across the street at the Loading Zone. One day, legend has it, another local citizen named Walt Brierly walked into one of the taverns, and when he was asked, "What's new?", he replied that his wife was "back at the house, having a heart attack." And she really was! Walt sized up the situation and figured he needed a drink. You do what you can, I guess.

Anyway, I have a habit of Googling everything these days, because usually it results in something truly amazing coming back. So, I Googled "Darcy Shively," and by God, back came a hit. Try it yourself, and see if it doesn't get you here:

http://www.rootsweb.com/~widunn/obits-O1.htm

Darcy is mentioned in the obituary for his brother, Gilbert. But in this long list of obituaries, there's a lot of my history, too. There's Mrs. Stanley Borm, long-time Downsville resident. Her husband worked at a stone quarry south of town, source of "Dunnville Sandstone" (Google that, too, and learn about the fabulous Dunnville Cutstone Company), and he also founded and ran the "Empire in Pine Museum," which was in the Odd Fellows' Hall, right across the street from where they lived. Stanley's father, Fred, ran a lumber mill that provided material for a lot of the local houses -- I know that because, when I was a kid, I'd lie in the bed I always used at my aunt's farmhouse, and from there as I looked up, on the bottom of the upper frame of the window sash, I could see a stencil: "Fred Borm Lumber Downsville." Stanley's son, Bill, mentioned in the obit, was my dad's best friend when he was a kid, and was my godfather. He died in 1989, and is buried in the other cemetery at Downsville. My grandpa used to tell stories about when the first radio set arrived in Downsville. The owner would bring it to the Odd Fellows' Hall, and string up an antenna wire all around the building, and people would come from all over to sit and listen to the Grand Ole Opry on WSM and the National Barn dance on WLS. When I was a kid, they'd stretch a bed sheet up between two poles out behind the Odd Fellows' Hall and show western movies on nice summer evenings, complete with old cartoons first, too.

Scroll down to Ingvald E. Hanson, my Uncle "Inky." Uncle Inky was bald as a cue ball, and a really nice old guy. We used to visit him and Aunt Ella in St. Paul, and from his back yard, I could watch trains passing by on the Great Northern railroad he used to work on. Aunt Ella was my dad's mother's sister. Inky was also my dad's father's (Oscar Hans Running's) cousin. Cousins married sisters, in a double wedding on New Year's Eve, 1915. My family's name was originally Hanson, but when they came to America, Inky's dad kept the name Hanson, and Oscar's dad switched over to Running, because there were too damned many Hansons around. "Running" is an Anglicized version of the name of the family farm in Tyldal, Norway, where they all came from. I don't have the characters required to spell it correctly, but it was approximately "Ronningen."

Then scroll down to Emma A. Bjornson Running, my dad's mother. She was little, wiry, scrappy and tough. Her favorite expression was, "You betcha." It was an all-purpose phrase for her, just like the Germans in Milwaukee used to use "aina." Her husband, Oscar, had a wry sense of humor, and she'd get right after him after he'd make a wise crack, swatting him and calling him, "You big dummy!" as he laughed and ducked. She was known far and wide for her chocolate cake, and her pot roast. I remember their little house in Downsville, top to bottom, detail for detail. When you walked in, you immediately smelled two things -- strong, black coffee, from a stove-top percolator that was always going -- and mothballs. Once or twice a year, the whole family would gather there for a big supper of lutefisk. At the time, 35 or 40 years ago, eating a little bit of lutefisk "for old time's sake" was a torture worse than death for me, I'd gag at the mere thought of it -- but I'd give an awful lot to be able to go back and sit there with all those long-gone folks and eat some now, as their minds filled with memories of the old days and the old timers who taught them to eat that god-forsaken codfish.

A ways farther down the list is Oscar H. Running, my grandpa. He was a big guy, a foreman of a crew of gandy dancers on the Milwaukee Road's Chippewa Division. He loved his grandkids, called them all his knuckleheads, just like I call my kids my knuckleheads now. Of course, his grandkids all loved him dearly, too. If you read his obit, you might note that my dad is missing from the list of survivors. Grandpa really took losing his youngest child hard, he was never the same after that. He seemed to give up, and he died less than a year after my dad died. The last time I saw Grandpa, I took him for a drive out in the country and we looked at a bunch of places around Downsville and Menomonie that held a lot of memories for him. We stopped at the cheese factory in Eau Galle and bought some stinky cheese -- he loved Limburger -- and as we drove around, we listened to that radio station in Faribault, Minnesota that played all polkas -- KDHL, 920 AM. He loved the "old-time music." We had a big ol' time that day. I wonder if KDHL still plays polkas.

Maybe we'll talk about that on Wednesday, and if it's a nice day, we'll walk around Riverview Cemetery in Downsville, and reminisce -- many, if not most, of the people I've mentioned are buried there, along with many more family members -- and the BS will get pretty deep, with any luck. There'll be a lot of laughs, a lot of tears, and I'll come away being just a little closer to being one of the old-timers in the family.

Well, I guess you sonsabitches get out here -- thanks for riding along! Tell you what, do me a favor -- some time very soon, get together with a bunch of your relatives and keep the old family memories alive, tell all the old stories, make your kids listen, eat some stinky cheese and lutefisk. Give 'em all a big ol' bear hug.
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