Grandma Lill's house somehow became the locus of weekend visitors and any and all relatives seemed to appear, particularly her sister Carrie and her husband Si. Si was short for Silas. Carrie and Si lived in La Crosse.
A window dresser just puts items for sale onto mannequins or improvised displays in the windows along the sidewalks and adjusts the lighting and other features. Si went in and applied for the job and got it. He told me it changed his life forever. He took to it like a duck to water! Not only did he knock the job right out of the ball park, but he soon was being sought after to decorate the city light poles for Christmas.
Soon after that he was decorating the streets of other nearby towns and started up his own business, Nelson Flag and Display, in south La Crosse. This shop became one of the most wonderful places for a young kid to roam around in. There were scores of tables and counters with hundreds of bins full of all kinds of little decorative objects--flags, ribbons, pins, ornaments of all types, little objects for decorating tables, windows, or even yards, almost like a toy factory.
Si said that falling into this career was the second most important miracle that ever happened to him.
The first, he told me, in a most serious tone, was Carrie Nottestad, his wife. He had met and fallen in love with Grandma Lill's sister and had no idea of how he might pull himself up out of his boyhood and become someone capable of commandeering her affection, and the Doerflingers job and subsequent career provided the twin miracles he needed.
By the time I came onto the scene, Carrie and Si were older and kind of like another Lill and Lee. Their son Ron and my Uncle John were dealing with college and the military but both had worked for Si in his business of decorating town streets.
Lill and Carrie loved one another very much and Carrie and Si were an automatic guest at their house for anything that went on. Other Hanson and Nottestad siblings would visit them a lot, but nowhere near as often as Carrie and Si. Likewise, if we had occasion to go to La Crosse, we never did so without spending an afternoon at their house.
I was always a little bored at Carrie and Si's house. The adults chattered endlessly, catching one another up on all the news gleaned from letters each had received from other relatives. Carrie would drag out this medium sized brown wicker basket containing dozens of domino-like blocks. They might have been majong tiles or something like that. They could be stacked up to make structures, or lined up to knock each other down in long, curvy rows, in a chain reaction.
She also had a container of smooth river stones collected from different places. Grandma Lill also collected stones from places she and Lee went, so perhaps it had some connection to their childhood.
After an hour of this, however, I would get kind of bored, and would sometimes nap on the rug while the adults shared news. There were no computers or internet in those days and telephone calls outside one's own town were expensive. Everyone communicated with their loved ones by writing letters. Grandma Lill would have several letters in her purse, which she would either read aloud, if there were multiple people present, or simply pass on to Carrie. These letters would often be eight or ten handwritten pages.
Aunt Carrie had a laser-like glance that penetrated right into you. She also had no filter; she said what was on her mind. If you needed a haircut, she bored her intense blue eyes into you and said, "what do you want to look like a girl for?"
Unlike Grandma Lill, who could rule the roost but was amenable to cajoling around and negotiating with at times, Aunt Carrie was unapologetically strong minded. She called the shots. Uncle Si kind of laughed his way through each day, never angered by her zeal or fading in his devotion to her. He got to go to the Bodega, downtown, for coffee clutch with his buddies in the morning and went fishing on the Mississippi River if it didn't interfere with her plans. It seemed to me that he happily deferred all other decisions to her and I never heard, nor heard of, any instance where he criticized or lamented her. Si didn't seem to have a negative bone in his entire body and everyone loved him.
For all her bossiness, Great Aunt Carrie, or Aunt Key, as she was nicknamed, was an extremely loving person and all her energies always went toward the betterment of someone or something. It's just that she wasn't afraid to speak out if anyone deviated from the correct path to achieving that betterment. She was a generous and wonderful woman.
I will later mention Aunt Key and Christmas together because she had so much influence on it, but any time she visited, she immediately sized up the work situation that Grandma Lill was embroiled in. Lill, of course, would have preempted nearly all tasks that needed to be done, but there was always something--a little stack of utensils that had been used for baking but had not yet been cleaned up and put away; a floor that needed one more mopping; or a big pan of carrots or potatoes that needed to be peeled.
After the meal, Lill would suggest that everyone go into the living or dining room and talk, but Aunt Key would not have it. They could talk while they did the dishes together and cleaned up all the kitchen. In those days, the women did the housework and it was unusual, but not unheard of for the men to pitch in. I remember my Uncle John helping Grandma Lill by drying dishes and putting them away.
Grandpa Lee liked Uncle Si a lot and they would sit and talk about baseball. I think that Grandpa Lee was a New York Yankee fan. Si loved the Milwaukee Braves, and later the Milwaukee Brewers. He would always have the TV on if there was a game.
I can remember Grandpa Lee smoking his pipe and watching a baseball game with Si. The team they were rooting for was ahead perhaps by one run, but the other team was at bat with two or three men on base. The batter hit a home run and Grandpa Lee commented with disgust, "well, he pitched his way out of that jam."
My mother loved Aunt Key, of course, but was a little disdainful of her, probably because Aunt Key could not be fooled by the usual palaver. While growing up, my mother and her siblings engaged in the usual number of chicaneries and probably gave Grandma Lill a fair number of snowjob explanations, which Aunt Key would naturally see right through and tip her off about. My mom would not have appreciated that extra scrutiny.
My mom was not one to be bossed around. Being a maverick, she would resist any authoritarian impingements on principle alone. She also did not like criticism, even if constructive, as though she were locked permanently at age sixteen. It was just the way she was. I may have inherited and/or learned some of this from her.
Nonetheless, Aunt Key and Uncle Si were occasionally around and always welcome; and they were always good to me.
I loved them very much and remember the afternoon visits to La Crosse to see them. I believe that I supposed to be named after Aunt Carrie. My dad did not approve of the name so changed it to Terry.
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