Eileen and Larry Somers

Jeanne's story: Once when I was in high school and a bunch of my friends TPd our house, mom insisted that I collect all the "perfectly good" toilet paper and put paper grocery sacks of it in the bathroom. She took away the rolls of TP until we had used all the outdoor stuff first. She hated wastefulness!

Told by Tom as told to him by Larry: Grandpa paid Al and Dad fifty cents per rat to kill rats in the barn. That was a lot of money back then! That's how much damage they could do. So Dad and Al got busy and soon rid the barn of rats. But the boys wanted more money, so they went to friends and neighbors barns and killed more rats, bringing them home for the bounty. Unbeknownst to grandpa, he was paying to rid the entire neighborhood of rats!

Told by Tom as told by our dad: Grandma Somers had chickens and the neighbors had chickens, but didn't fence them in. The neighbors' chickens ate the meal put out for grandma's chickens. So grandma lamented to dad about feeding the neighbors' chickens all the time. Dad asked for extra eggs from grandma and said he would take care of it. The neighbor boy was a friend of his and when dad went the next morning to gather eggs, he was pulling two or three eggs out of each nest. He commented to his friend, "These chickens are very prolific!" The boy went home and told his mom and the next day, the neighbors put up a fence.

Told by Tom: Grandma Somers wanted a rock garden in her yard. (According to our mom, going to St. Quentin back in the day was like going into the wild, wild, west with dirt everywhere. There were no flowers, no trees, no grass. Our grandma liked beauty and had the only house with greenery.) Dad didn't really want to build a rock garden, but he wanted to make his mom happy. He told grandma that he was going fishing with his brothers and then he had to go to work. He would pick up some rocks in the stream and put them in the trunk of his car. He got home from fishing and grandma had had a load of rock dumped off in the yard, but dad had to go to work. So grandma had our Uncle Al make her the rock garden. Uncle Al didn't care, and grandma knew it. She knew Larry would do a more careful job, so when she saw him again she asked him to come out and look at the job Al did. She asked dad, "So what do you think?" Dad didn't want to work on it, so he said, "I think h...

Mom was frustrated with me (Tom) for Lord knows what. She was trying not to swear, but she said "You big ass!" I took it and changed my name to Ubigass Somers for a while, which she did not appreciate. People do not like to have their words turned against them. One time, Christine, Samantha, and I went down to Florida to spend time with mom and dad. Mom was trying to be the good hostess and kept apologizing for the temperature - that it was so cold out. We were coming from Minnesota in the winter, and even though the wind was blowing it felt like 70 degrees. When the wind stopped blowing, it was hot. The girls wanted to go swimming. Mom said, "Make sure they put some shit on so they don't get burnt." (She intended "sunscreen" with that.) I went along with it and said, "Girls, make sure you put some shit on so you don't get burnt." "Yes, Dad.We'll put some shit on." While driving to Canada, our route took us past "La...

(Told by Louise; typed by Jeanne) In Duluth, we were stopped at a light and we all yelled, "Chinese Fire Drill!" The doors flew open. We got out, ran around the car, dad yelling at us to get back in the car. We were laughing like hyenas. We got back in, the light changed, and we drove off. It was hilarious. Mom and the kids were all laughing, but dad was pi**ed and afraid we'd get in trouble. He didn't understand. (This was when Ann lived in Duluth; either late 70s or early 80s.) (Added by Jeanne:) Part of the fun of being with mom was that unpredictability. She could be very law-abiding and correct . . . or completely lawless and crazy! (Louise:) She loved to get her money's worth. At the movie theater, she would plot out the end and start times of movies. She would pay for the first one, then casually walk into the second one for free. She was a juvenile delinquent at heart. I think she even got Sister Josette to sneak into a movie!

As I've gotten more of my parents' papers to sort through and recycle or shred, I sometimes think about having some "time capsule" moments. This piece of paper in my dad's writing is one of them. It says "I would like to learn an effective method of studying that will enable me to retain knowledge and help me to compete with other students in the years to come. I would like to learn efficient reading, note taking, also how to better concentrate upon the things that I do." This was when he was taking classes at Normandale Community College after he retired. It was before his hands started getting so shaky. It was before he lost his vision to macular degeneration. It also brings to mind his stories of school in Canada. He only "went through the eighth grade" but told us that he had learned all the curriculum through the tenth grade because of the one-room school house model. He loved to tell stories about going to night classes at "...