Ecole
St. Louis School, St. Paul, Minnesota
Opening:
I
now conduct the reader
into the little time period just before I moving onto Donkeyland, and to the
locality on the banks of the Mississippi, and at the foot of a cave. The least
of things often becomes the greater of memorable events in one’s life, or later
recollections, so I shall tell you about some idlers, tricksters and so forth!
…
Mike Reassert and I, we were both full of
trust and confidence with one another. It was remarkable, we were like Huck
Finn and Tom Sawyer, in those far-off days, now what I call those far-off
youthful days, along the Mississippi cliffs, just below the city proper of St.
Paul, Minnesota, how about ‘Youthful times along the Mississippi.’ We met each other in a Catholic elementary
school, around 1956, and would remain
friends, until I was about fifteen, then we seemed to go our own ways, and lose
track of one another. The school was located at Tenth and Cedar Streets, in St.
Paul, called Ecole St. Louis. A little French school, built in 1886, and
demolished for a parking lot in 1960. It had a red brick structure, and was
adjacent to the church I attended, and studied to be an altar boy. Some 130-children attended
that native limestone building consisting of two stories. The top story was of
a slate mansard roof. We lived at 109 East Arch Street, until we moved to what
ended up being called ‘Donkeyland’ at 186 Cayuga Street, in the summer of 1958.
Mike and I, we climbed those bluffs in
the mid-1950s, a considerable distance up and down the Mississippi River Front
to visit the caves; not miles in extent, but rather blocks. Some of those upper
cleft caves were dug out during the Civil War times, they had iron doors on
them still; it was where they kept the munitions, so I heard. They were long
and narrow and lofty caves in the upper strata of the clefts, with long
passages.
The cliffs were of sandstone, and easy to
make, reaching and stretching hands and feet from hole to hole carved into the
sandstone, by other climbers, perhaps as old as the days before they built for
Snelling, where in the early 1800s, thereabouts.
The larger caves were river level, one
being so huge, a boy of our age, such as we were in those years (10 to 12-years
of age), could get lost in them; dodging the half starved to death bates flying
low and high and roughly overhead, as if local. We found on many occasions city
drunkards sleeping off a hangover inside those lower caves. I swear—fingers and
toes not crossed—the mouth of this one cave was as big as Moby Dick’s yawn,
stretched as far as it could go.
I knew Mike well, for years I knew his
every thought before he even knew he was going act
upon them, “Let’s kick the bums in the feet,” he’d say, just to attract their
attention. And we’d both do it, wake one up, startle him some, kick a little
sand in his nose that would attract him right quick, to enhance his temper. The
caves were an uncanny place to contain a sport such as this, but we did our
best because we wanted the scare, the thrill, the fast run; Mike of course more
devious than I, I think, but I went along with it, to a certain degree.
We
often found cylinder like objects, writings on them, as if they were drafts
from the newspaper, the St. Paul, Pioneer Press.
We never stayed too long, eventually loafers
and rowdies would appear, ruffians dragging one another along, with a bottle of
whiskey in hand. Matter of fact one day,
Mike had an irreverence thought: he found a brown half-pint whiskey bottle, it
was empty, and he peed in it filled it more than half way and wanted me to do
the same fill it completely, which was half the mission! and I had but a drop to
offer, he gave it to a poor dried out looking drunk, and right after he took a
gulp of it, figuring out what it really was he hollered to the high heavens at
Mike and me, swearing and cussing and jumping up and down and then he and his
fellow comrades started to chase us, and like the Lone Ranger and his sidekick,
Tonto, we jumped on our bikes and hightailed it out of there, to beyond the
sunset (figuratively speaking—this was not the kind of hero I had in mind in my
dreams), and all the shadows that
ran after us, trying to hang us as if we were outlaws and in Dodge City, as in the weekly series “Gun
Smoke”; we were hidden in the dim lighted path of a nowhere shack in the
backyard of an old dilapidated wooden structure! Of course once within the downtown part of the city again, we were
walled in on all sides, like a forest, but it wasn’t hard to escape if indeed
we had to, we were seasoned in escaping, plus, the bums never mingled among the
more sane inhabitants of the city, and we knew this.
It
seemed to us, along the Mississippi the air was always crisp, with freshness,
especially in the mornings, while the dew lifted from the river. When the day
became more heated and more sticky like, it became also more dangerous, the cat
size, fat rats, came out of the lower ways of the clefts, to breath the fresher
air, and it got to over 105 at times in the cemented heart of the city of St.
Paul, so hot one could cook an egg on the sidewalk, and they even showed that
on television once.
I had no ill luck with the monster rats,
although one time, three reddish haired rats tried to corner me, but I escaped
backwards towards the river, throwing stones that only seemed to bounce off
their backs. As I mentioned, there were three of them, this one time, I was liken
to a delicious Twinkie filled with sweet cream to them: I was cowering at their
approaching. It was as if they intended
an entire family to feast on me. And I bet I would have tasted good! But again
I escaped, before they leaped.
Then off, Mike and I went to find
someone’s garden that had rhubarb in it, I loved rhubarb, and especially
rhubarb pie, and then next someone’s green apple tree, we were like raiders,
some days.
Mike lived in the inner circle of the
city, I lived some three miles or so, away; as years passed, by and by we’d
meet, until about twelve, thereafter once at fifteen, and that would be the
last I’d see of him. We had attended St. Louis School, on 10th and
Cedar Streets, in downtown St. Paul, in those early years, 1954 to 1957,
although our friendship started about 1956. They tore the school down in 1960.
He was a good lad to have as a friend, and always meant well, and was full of
juice and vitality. He was also precarious, taking risks, uncertain, and poor.
This is just a reflective pause, to think out the facts, should he ever read
this story.
This is all part of my education, I look
back with the most satisfaction.
During those years with Mike I learned
to smoke fairly well, a bad habit I’d keep for twenty-years. We’d put our
change together, buy cigarette packs, of Lucky Strike, or Camels, or Pall Mall,
in the Walgreens stores, or Woolworths, or Grants. Run in and out before the
manager caught us, and run over to the Emporium, and Mike would press all the
buttons in the elevator, and when someone would get on, they’d see all the
floor buttons lit up, lit up on the side wall of the elevator, and that person
would look at me and Mike, and I wanted to say, it was Mike’s doings, but I had
to hold back my laughing, and once he or she got off, we bust out with
amusement.
I suppose you could say I was a little
more characterless than Mike, he was always more daring, spunkier, but I was
for me, spirited enough. Perchance I was more like Huck Finn, and Mike was more
like Tom Sawyer. Neither one of us
noticed, nor if we did, didn’t say so, that we didn’t have much charity for one
another’s defects—we didn’t think we had
any, we just lived
life without any of its trials and tribulations bothering us, and we lived on
the edge, at an instantaneous impulse. Our life and adventures together
were—which I led with Mike, and there are many more—were full of charm and so
are the memories of them yet.
No: 1031/2-18-2014 / Reedited,
and revised 7-2015
