A 1963 Christmas Memory: I Got Boots. Larry Got the Car.

John F. Kennedy was assassinated November 22, 1963.

I was five years old. I do not know if I actually remember that day. Based on Mom and Dad's stories, I picture myself in our small front room on 14 ½ Street South in Fargo, North Dakota. We were watching one of the 3 ½ channels on our black and white Zenith. NBC, ABC, and CBS broadcasted from 6 or 7 a.m. to midnight --- with Danny’s future father-in-law Marv Bossart anchoring the NBC-WDAY News every night --- and Prairie Public Television was on for just a few hours a day.

While Mom never watched much TV, according to her on that day, it was the last thing on her mind because she was sick with a painful sinus infection. Mom recalled that on that day, her neighbor and good friend Geraldine Forrester ran across the street and said, “Phyllis! Turn on the TV—the president’s been shot!”

Less than an hour later, Mom watched in disbelief as CBS newscaster Walter Cronkite tearfully announced Kennedy’s death in Dallas.

Connie, Larry, Monica and I were there with her. Teddy and Danny were in school. Perhaps my imagination has merged memories and stories, but I recollect that a couple of us laid on a green, yellow red, and blue plaid plastic woven cot, and a couple of us sprawled on the brown couch which along with a few errant colorful marbles, sat upon the beige rug covering the hardwood floor. I imagine all of us were oblivious to the terrible news, but we probably noticed that Mom was crying because Mom hardly ever teared up except in laughter when we had wet diaper fights. Yes, wet diaper fights. In retelling the dirty diaper fights over the years, Mom always said we just watered down clean diapers to chase unknowing siblings around, but I have a feeling as nasty as it sounds, not all Stoa kids played by those non-golden rules.

That day in 1963 was five decades away from the invention of smart devices. Communication was much different then.

As a matter of fact, our Detroit Lakes cottage—which the family bought in 1933 and sold in 2018—did not have a party line telephone until Grandpa Ted and Grandma Marguerite Stoa put it in the summer of 1965 when Mom was pregnant with Jon, and Dad was away in Oregon getting his first of two master’s degrees. I’m not sure if the phone was ever needed for an emergency, but I remember we kids listening in on neighbors’ calls and giggling until the riled neighbor, Grandma or Mom caught us. Whoops.

Picture: Dad in 1954, clowning around on the Detroit Lakes cottage porch that he, Grandpa, Grandma and Aunt Marjorie Stoa helped Cousin Art Kunert build from rocks they gathered by rowboat from the bluff on the lake.

Mom first visited the cottage in the summer of 1952, when she was dating Dad. Mom said Grandma was proud of the double-seated outhouse built in the 1930s by President Franklin Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corp. But when Teddy was born in 1955, Grandma decided to add the modern convenience of an indoor toilet.

“We have a baby now,” Grandma decreed. “It’s time to improve this place.”

Since she first persuaded Grandpa to buy the cottage in the early 1930s, Grandma was never at a loss for ideas on how to improve the place. In fact, she went door to door across White Clover Beach in the 1930s or 1940s, getting people to sign a petition to bring electricity to the cottages.

Figure 3: Mom in 1954, pumping water in the Detroit Lakes cottage kitchen.

“I remember when I first went down to the cottage. Your Dad, Aunt Marjorie, and Grandpa and Grandma thought the little cottage was great. And your Grandma was uncommonly proud of that outhouse. I just stared at the outhouse at the top of the hill. I’d grown up with those and I was not excited to use one again,” Mom recalled. “But we had many, many good years there.” (Yes, Angie—Mom was referring to the cottage, not the outhouse.)

For a number of years beyond Teddy’s birth however, we had a water pump in the tiny cottage kitchen. It looked like the outdoor pump that belonged to our neighbors, the Hedlands. Their pump sprang from the ground a few feet from our kitchen door. I remember hauling buckets of water from Hedland’s pump for Grandma to prime our indoor plumbing when we opened the cottage in early June (every Stoa kid remembers hauling his or her share of buckets of water).

Although Detroit Lakes’ water was still crystal blue and clean—Dad often fondly recalled in the 1930s and 40s when he was able to see 30 feet deep to the sandy bottom—there were times in the 1960s that Mom and Dad required us to bathe. When summoned to suds up, we did so sitting unceremoniously in the kitchen sink. Mom, Dad, and ever-ready carpenter old Mr. Ralph Fisher did not add a shower in the cottage until 1981—the summer after Grandpa Bernerd Quigley died and left mom a little money.

But back to November 1963. With no cell phone or texting there was no way for Mom to get in touch with Dad in his classroom to tell him about the assassination of the 35th President of the United States.

Although Mom had her hands full taking care of six squirrely and sticky kids, Dad has his hands full too because that fateful day was the same day that their 1954 Pontiac died.

We would not get another car until March 7, 1964 on Larry’s fourth birthday. Mom and Dad told Larry that our brand spanking new turquoise Dodge station wagon—with seat belts only for the front bench seat and a dog seat in the third row for the lucky 2-3 kids—was his birthday gift.

Our parents’ well-intentioned birthday sham caused many fights over the years. All of his older siblings—especially me I think—tried to tell “Larry-Bear” that of course he didn’t own a car at the barely-beyond-diaper-stage age of four and that obviously he had been duped by his parents. But Larry was stubborn—some still successfully argue—slow—and he could not be convinced otherwise.

With no car for the entire winter, each day Dad walked a snowy mile to and from Agassiz Junior High School where he taught math. And if they couldn’t wait until Saturday to borrow one of Grandpa and Grandma’s cars to drive to the store, Mom or Dad trudged—one time pulling an old wooden sled—to the Red Owl grocery store a few blocks away to get food for our family of eight.

For those of you who don’t remember our original home on 14 ½ Street before the Ralph Fisher 1972 addition and 1982 remodel, it was a small shoebox-shaped house that busted at the seams in 1963 holding six kids or food to feed six kids for a week. But not both. So Mom and Dad made daily trips to the store.

A year or so later, Mom won a brand new Red Radio Flyer wagon full of groceries from a Red Owl contest on or near Monica’s birthday. And yes, they told Monica that the wagon was her birthday gift.

Like her big brother before her, Monica fell for the old birthday ruse, but we didn’t seem to have as many fights with Monica over her gift than with Larry over his. Was it because a blue Dodge station wagon was worth more on the open market than a Red Radio Flyer wagon? Or was it because at any time we wanted, we could get our hands on a wagon, trike, tractor, and bike that next-door neighbor and friend Diane Stigen so generously shared. Your call.

A few years ago, I asked Mom to defend—I mean explain—how she could pull the wool over her darling children’s big blue eyes with lavish but fake birthday gifts. “You did what you had to do,” Mom offered with a sniff and a shrug. “Get over it.”

As I said, memories surrounding that day in late November 1963 are built from stories that Mom and Dad told us over the years, and that we in turn have built upon when retelling Stoa stories. But I have a vivid Christmas memory of Mom on a special night less than one month later from that day.

As a growing 5-year-old, my toes surpassed the soles of my winter boots that December. The fact was—my old black rubber and unlined boots were hand me downs from Danny. And who knows, he probably received them from Teddy.

Truth be told, Mom didn’t really notice the boy boots on her oldest daughter. Hmmm. But she had begun to notice that the boots were too small every time she tried to yank them over my shiny, doctor-prescribed black leather shoes.

Figure 4: Me with my brothers Danny and Teddy in 1959. I wasn't lying about the hand me downs. Check out my boots. You can imagine I grew out of them by 1963.

After tussling through a particularly tough cold weather prep episode with me (think of the scene from 1983’s “A Christmas Story” where Randy looks like a tick about to pop), Mom decided it was time for me to get new boots.

That night after dinner and still with no car, Mom decided she and I would make the trek to the big downtown department store.

It was a very cold December night about a week before Christmas. Although the Minnesota born and raised Charles Schulz wouldn’t debut his “Charlie Brown Christmas” until two Decembers later, his scene where Charlie and Linus walk on the crunchy snow on the beautiful, cloudless, deeply blue, starry night is exactly the type of night I remember. In lock-step like Charlie Brown and Linus, Mom and I walked out the front door and down the driveway, turned left at the sidewalk, and marched past Schones’ house toward Adsero’s house on the corner. From there we turned left and we were off on our adventure.

It was such a special night!

Not only was I going to be getting something new, I was on my adventure with Mom. By myself. Just Mom and me.

We walked two blocks in the direction of Lewis and Clark—the Stoa kids’ kindergarten alma mater—to wait on a street corner for the city bus to take us downtown Fargo to J.C. Penney on Broadway.

As we walked, I held Mom’s hand with excitement and to feel safe in the dark. I could see our breath in the crystal cold air. I could hear the Styrofoam-sounding crunch of hard snow with each step. A tough wind cut through my wool coat and stung my face a bit, but I didn’t care; I was toasty with excitement.

I don’t remember everything about being in the old J.C. Penney store, but here’s what I do remember. The shoe department was in the back of the store. There was a nice man with big polished shoes who showed us a small selection of white and black boots. He measured my feet. My socks got a little wet and cold as I stepped in accumulating water from the snow melting off my old boots on to the marble and wooden floors.

That’s the kind of stuff you notice when you’re short, shy and five.

I remember I chose with Mom’s help, a pair of white rubber boots that zipped in front and had a gorgeous waft of short, fake fur across the top to keep out most snow that I would pick up from intentionally running through all the snow banks that hadn’t frozen to the point of being icy, impenetrable Fargo Mountains. My boot fur matched the white fur collar of my black wool coat. My outfit was jauntily topped of with a red woolen cap adorned with the latest in 1960s style plastic circles knitted into the cap.

Soon, Mom purchased my boots and we exited the store. We crossed the street to wait in the breath-snatching cold and watched traffic flow lightly up and down Broadway. As our family did each year, most people were driving slowly to look at the Christmas scene in the front window of Herbst department store. It looked much like the opening scenes from 1947’s “The Bishop’s Wife” and again, 1983’s “A Christmas Story.”

After a bit, our bus rolled up, we climbed aboard and rode back to the edge of South Fargo. At that point in time, it was pretty much farmland past 18th Avenue South and certainly nothing but farmland one block West of Lewis and Clark all the way to Sheyenne Street in West Fargo.

I looked down at my feet for most of the homeward trek, not able to take my eyes off my new galoshes. When we reached home, Mom and I swept in through the front door, riding a rush of frozen vapors rolling across the front room rug.

I’m pretty sure Connie and Larry gathered around to admire my new boots. Monica was probably playing on the floor, having been pushed over by a faster-moving, older sibling. And Dad had probably tethered Teddy, Danny, and a living room lamp to the kitchen table so that he could grill the boys—I mean help them—with their homework.

It was an unforgettable night out with Mom.

The End.

Well. Wait.

Wait just a dang minute.

Gosh darn it.

As I think about it now…

I just got boots.

Larry got the car!