Leaving Minneapolis

Flood levels being what they were Bill and I were both keeping a close watch on the stream that runs behind Art and Norma's house there in Fridley.  Not least because we were sleeping on the ground/basement floor.  I teased Norma, "It's alright for you, you're sleeping upstairs!"  The creek seemed pretty full to me, but Norma wasn't worried at all.


She later emailed me a report of a train derailment thought to be due to floods, though from the photos I didn't follow that train (ha) of thought; she never mentioned the creek rising.  The whole time I was there that saying about 'God willing and the creek don't rise' bounced around in my brain.



There may be something about that stretch of the creek that protects it.  I've always preferred older built homes to new and not just because of their architecture:  I prefer houses that have demonstrably withstood the natural disasters thrown at them over a good period of time.  I appreciate things can change, but I notice it's generally the cheap new houses that get destroyed first.




Anyhow we did our good-bye thing.  Norma kept insisting that we could stay longer, she didn't care we were going to hobnob with the other side of the family in St. Paul.  I thought it best to move on, however, partly because it wasn't fair to treat them like a hotel and also because I knew I'd not be able to concentrate on the next group of people if I was still around Norma; she is absolutely excellent company and I love her to bits.

Downtown Minneapolis

Downtown Minneapolis is probably as straight-forward as any downtown area, which is to say we'd never have managed to find anyplace but for Norma's navigation!  My Dad used to say that all one way streets went the wrong way on purpose, and I'm not sure I don't agree with him.

The visit to the Minnesota Historical Society family history library was fairly bizarre.  It reminded me first of getting on board a plane:  they require bags and coats to go into lockers, proof of identity and contact details so they can issue you a 'red card' (which has a completely different meaning here in the UK, where it signals a penalty in sports).  No pens are allowed - they give you a pencil, but cameras are OK.





Then it was like going to a restaurant, only without the excitement of going somewhere or the pleasure of good food:  once past security you choose a table with a number, tell a member of staff what you are looking for and wait for them to bring it to you...or not.  Because I wanted to verify the record of my Dad's adoption sent to me by a stranger on Ancestry.com, it was a bit tricky as the records weren't yet 100 years old. 



I think they would like to have denied me any information at all, but as I had the case number, they did provide me with the information about my Dad's original name (James Brown), the date he was admitted into Owatonna State School and the date he was adopted.  They said they didn't hold the file, it was at the Courthouse.  They couldn't really understand how I had received the information that had been sent to me.

The Quest Building

It wasn't until they gave me a form to complete (in pencil) explaining what I had sought and been given that I had an idea.  I was frustrated that I couldn't look at the same record this Camille person had been able to access.  It occurred to me that she would have completed a similar form and so I asked them to look for her in their files. 





They found her.  Apparently her ancestor had  been at Owatonna but not been adopted, so she was permitted to look at the ledger of children and she had surreptitiously snapped a photo, one without headings or footers, but a significant portion of the information.  That finally answered my question about how she got the information.  I think I also wanted them to admit she had got information she wasn't supposed to in spite of all their security measures.   We then proceeded to the Courthouse, where we discovered we actually wanted the Juvenile Courthouse.

Minneapolis City Hall

There a lady named Deb checked and said all they had was the degree of adoption and she gave me a form to complete to apply to the District Court Judge for a copy of it to be released (9 years early).  I was happy that I'd done what could be done to chase down this mystery.

This is called the "Toaster Building" - Hennepin County
Government Center

Though Spike had driven us around Minneapolis two years ago, there is nothing like walking for really seeing a place. 



Bill took the photos in this post.

Underwear on Display

Funny enough the other night Vivien and I attended the Women's Institute meeting where the speaker was an amazing 74-year-old woman named Sadie the Bra Lady.  She started maybe 40 years ago with a dress boutique that sold bras, then realised that the need for fitting expertise was a gap (is that a pun?) she could fill.  Her energy - not to mention her figure - was inspirational.


However, this is still about the holiday that we took in June.  

Does anyone else remember quilted nylon robes?

Norma was quite surprised when I told her my Dad had been adopted.  Apparently his father's family didn't know, but his mother's did.  Anyhow, I asked Norma to help me find out more so she did the navigation to get us downtown to the Minnesota Historical Society.  The family history library wasn't open until later and so we browsed the museum and found this underwear display. 

It was entirely appropriate in my mind because I grew up knowing about the Munsingwear factory in Minneapolis.   This was part of my family history, not just about underwear or the history of Minneapolis!  I increasingly find things that are relevant to my life in museums.  I must have reached that time in life, eh?

Notice how this 1920s silk Step-in skims the body, contrasting with the figure-hugging Foundette from the 1930s.  During the Roaring Twenties, short, straight cut dresses allowed young women to do without the boned corsets their Victorian-era mothers had worn.  By the 1930s, however, clingy bias-cut dresses revealed more curves and required more control.

When Grandma and Grandpa would go up north to visit family, she always brought back a brown paper grocery bag or two full of nylon strips, usually in black and white, but one year in a bright orange. I've told you all about this before - probably several times. I'd forgotten the name of the factory, though, until now. 

The "New Look" introduced by Christian Dior in the 1940s emphasized a cinched waist and an hourglass figure.  As a result, corsets made a comeback... After glamourous Lana Turner wore a form-fiting corset in 1952's The Merry Widow, the nickname stuck. Legend has it that Turner found her version (not made by Vassarette) uncomfortable. "I am telling you," she is said to have proclaimed, "the merry widow was designed by a man. A woman would never do that to another woman."

 Anyhow we wandered around looking at old underwear to pass the time. 

I love the old fashioned adverts and of course most of this is from that 'inter-war period'.

Munsingwear made undergarments for everyone, not just women.  We saw plenty of these numbers on display at the State School.




It was this circular knitting machine that revolutionised the Munsingwear factory. The machines were made in the US between 1920 and 1939 and were part of what was called a 'vertical factory', meaning they did every step from raw material to finished product. This is in contrast to the way mills worked in Britain, where each had its special part of the entire process.  How do I know this?  From watching history programmes on the BBC...

Reminds me of an outsized overlock machine (serger).

Bill often remarks on the wide infinite variety of things I can get interested in...  I'm not always sure he means it as a compliment!

Crafting with Norma - Magazine Butterflies

One of my favourite things about Norma is that she loves crafting like I do.  You might or might not remember Denise's fuzzy flip flops made with eyelash yarn.  And Norma had coat hangers made just the same way my Grandma made them - it was like coming home seeing those on my first visit!


This year she was making butterflies out of magazine pages.  Talk about a woman after my own heart!  And they are dead simple to make. 

It seemed rather dark in the house, so I've gone to the front porch,
natural light being best for photos.  But of course, where there
is light, there are also shadows. 

What you need:

- patterns to trace for the top (a square, basically) and the bottom (sort of lip shaped - see below) 

This shows you the relative size of the 'lips' to the square

Except that the 'lips' go at the 'bottom' or what Norma has
labelled the 'buns' when it is assembled.

- a black felt tip marker (preferably one that dries pretty quick, else you'll have black fingers; ask me how I know)

- some black chenille pipe cleaners (I found them on ebay pretty easy)

- magazine pages without writing on them, just pictures, the colours don't really matter that much, so long as you think they go together in a butterfly sort of way

These lovely ladies were in the 2001 issue of Eve magazine.

So you might gather, correctly, that I still have quite a few
magazines hanging around here. 

What you do:

- trace the pattern on your magazine page with the black marker - this gives a nicely defined edge to the wings - and cut them out




- fold the top (square) in half on the diagonal
- pleat first one half of the top working from the first fold to the end and then pleat the second half the same way
- repeat for the bottom piece (the 'lips) - fold diagonally, pleating the top and bottom from the centre fold

This is the bottom section pleated first, but you get the idea.
 Folding in half and pleating half at a time matters, according to the sewing ladies
whose butterflies didn't work the first time.

- cut about a 3-3.5 inch length of black pipe cleaner for the antennae - possibly 4 inches if making a larger butterfly

These patterns Norma gave me have been traced and cut
so many times the square is no longer square and
the bottom piece is also off centre.  But they still work.

- with the curved bit at the bottom, put the middle of the two pleated pieces together and twist the pipe cleaner around the narrow centre

- turn the ends of the pipe cleaner at an angle for antennae

- spread the pleated bit a little to show the wings

Start to finish less than 10 minutes!

Dead easy, like I said.  Norma was making them as decorations for her son's wedding the following week.  She had attached a bunch to her wrought iron screen by the stair well and another bunch of small ones to each of the silk flowers in an arrangement on her coffee table.  It was amazing how effective they were, these simple little things made with old magazines.





The ladies at the sewing group all wanted to have patterns because they had nieces or grandchildren who would enjoy this.  Bill's eldest daughter, Helen, runs a Brownie group and she thought this would be good for them as well.





I hope at some point to share some photos with Norma to show her what she started!

Fridley Parade

You don't want to know how many hundreds of photos Bill and I took between us of this parade to celebrate the existence of Fridley, MN.

Bill absolutely adores parades. He thinks of them as being practically the life and soul of small town America though he does recognise that sometimes big cities have them as well. I'm not sure where we fit Fridley in, as I would call it a suburb of Minneapolis.

I think it's the way that small towns drag out every scrap of personality to display that really gets him.

I was amazed at the advertising opportunities, though I have deliberately not shown you the

The Police cars
The Boy Scouts
The 4-H banner
The Girl Scouts banner
The Shriners with their little cars and funny hats
The red and yellow fire trucks
VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars)
The Grand Marshal
The Mayor
The County Commissioner
The Historical Society (at least they had a brass band)
Candidates for State Representative
The 2011 Aquatennial Captain and Princess
An adverts for Dairy Queen, an insurance agent, Pet Taxi,
The Coon Rapids beauty queen, the K-9 police unit,
Fridley Community Theatre showing Anything Goes
The Lions Club
The Zurah Legion of Honor
Miss Robbinsdale
Beauty Queens from East Bethel
Maple River Marching Band, Fairmont High School Band, Fridley Dance Team,
or a bunch of really fat old men on fat motorcycles who enjoyed roaring back and forth and really held up the show. I'm jaded, I'll admit.


Art came down on his riding mower to avoid walking very far. Apparently this is the second year he's done this and he got all the usual comments asking if he was going to cut their grass.



I must admit that running slightly late Bill, Norma and I piled into the car to drive part of the way before walking down to find a spot.

It began with a 5k race. Bill was sad not to have known else he would have joined in. I suspect he would have done well...it's called 'pothunting'.




Their son Spike had been invovled in some way with one of the bands' costumes or flag routine



or something but beyond that I'm pretty certain Art and Norma



sat through practically the entire parade for Bill's benefit.




We were well impressed with the Twin Cities Unicycle Club.


That's not a skill that's very common any more.



I doubt it ever was.

I have to admit to being the first to say 'uncle'.



I was getting cold and I'd decided Fridley had more politicians and business people



than I wanted to know about. Also all the neighbouring areas seemed to have sent their bands, so I just didn't see an end to it. Still, after all this, we practically had to drag Bill back to the car. Isn't he cute?

Ethnic Food and Family

Our last evening with Norma and Art we went to a Mexican restaurant. I think we'd originally headed for a Chinese, but it was shut for vacation or refurbishment or something, so we went here instead. It was so colourful in there I couldn't resist snapping a picture or two.


When we got home we sat around and talked. Norma told me some of what she remembered about her Grandma Clara's cooking. It only lately occurred to me that she and I both had Grandma Clara's. She talked about things like homemade noodles and dumplings, soups and cooking with bacon grease. I remember saving bacon grease in a tin can back in the old days. Can't imagine doing that now, for health reasons, of course; couldn't here even if wanted to, the bacon has water in it, not grease. English bacon is nice enough, but in the States I think we'd call it ham, not bacon by any means.

In another conversation, we talked about the ideas of nationality and ethnicity. I think living in the US -- particularly if one doesn't t travel abroad much and get asked the questions "In what country were you born?" "Of what country are you a citizen?" it is easy take American nationality as an obvious fact and find it more interesting to talk about one's ancestral heritage. In a place as multi-cultural as Minneapolis, people seem to be very aware of their roots and Norma obviously identifies strongly with being of German descent; as did my Grandparents and my Dad.

Growing up I came to think that one had to be black or Hispanic to have 'ethnicity' and always thought of mine as 'vanilla -- plain, boring, white, vanilla'. The cultural dictionary online, however, defines ethnicity as

Identity with or membership in a particular racial, national, or cultural group and observance of that group's customs, beliefs, and language.

So, I just need to start baking Irish soda bread, making wieners and sauerkraut and eating Swiss cheese; I'm pretty sure some sort of dirndl skirt and white ruffled blouse would work for all three...

Seriously, hearing about Norma's memories of her Grandma was great. I later came to realise how much I'd missed out because my Grandma Clara was pretty much senile by the time I was 12. I'm thinking I'll be pestering Norma for some recipes; we might even come up with our own Grandma Clara's Recipe Book!

Crafting at Norma's

I think it was the first evening we were at Norma's and Art's when she offered the use of her washer and dryer, an excellent idea after we'd been on the road for a week. On the clothes rack beside her dryer I spotted a hanger that looked just like this


except that the black parts were a lovely shade of rose pink (and the white parts didn't look like they'd spent years in a dusty attic...).


I instantly felt as though I was at Grandma's house: these are the very hangers she taught me to make. And it has been commented that I have a thing about hangers, which is true enough. During Spike's tour of Minneapolis, he dropped the name that struck a chord for me; the source of the nylon strips was Munsingwear Vassarette!

Anyhow, I commented enthusiastically about this hanger to Norma and, seeing as how I was interested in crafty things, she pulled out a pair of thongs that Denise, her eldest, had made. I definitely wanted to know how they were made so I could show them to the sewing group ladies; Nora and Ruby are always working with this funny yarn and giving me the tag ends when they are done.

Bless her, Denise decided I needed a pair to take home and show the ladies. She is obviously a busy person but these are quick to make: she crocheted them in a few minutes during her time at the open house the next day!


I may not get so many tag ends of the fuzzy yarn after the sewing ladies have seen these!