Part Five: Ice and Fire

On Palm Sunday Eve of 1971, mom drove toward home on a dark stretch of road in eastern Iowa that had scant lane markings and even less directional signage. U.S. Highway 218 was typical of the narrow paths of crumbling asphalt that was the rural trunk highway system of the day.

The Minnesota North Stars were playing the Philadelphia Flyers in the regular season finale, and mom was messing with the AM radio dial in a futile attempt to keep announcer Al Shaver tuned in - just in case Ted Harris would get into a scrap. Shaver called hockey fights like it was Ali vs. Frazier.

The ‘68 Ford Falcon station wagon was loaded with kids, but no seat belts, and bounced up and down the hills at speeds beyond posted limits as it grabbed the road’s uneven edges that

jerked the car to, and fro, and whoa! Three of us sat in back, clenching the front seat with fears that mom was falling asleep and we’d all soon be plunging into the deep dark woods. Sister Jenny up front finally asked mom if she was OK and could she please slow down or stop for a while.

“What!?” Mom blew off our concern. “Oh, honey... I’m not falling asleep. I thought you were all listening to the game. We’re fine!”

Not much later, an Iowa trooper would provide the pause Jenny had requested. After pulling over, mom put the paralyzing fear of God into each of us with a point of her finger and an

unmistakable command: “Not a God-damned word,” she said.

The Trooper was polite, but stern. “License and registration, please, ma’am.”

“I don’t have a license, officer. My house just burned.”

He went compassionate. “Oh, my. I’m sorry to hear that ma’am. What brings you to Iowa?”

“I’m taking the kids to my parents’ in Illinois. We don’t know what we’re going to do.”

“I understand,” the Trooper nodded. “Would you please slow it down. We don’t need another tragedy on our hands.”

“Yes, officer. I certainly will.”

The Trooper flashed his light through the car at faces that were still petrified by mom’s directive. We must have looked like a modern-day version of the Joads. “Uh, well, God Bless

you folks,” he said to mom with a mixed look of admiration and pity.

After he left, Jenny said, “Mom, your license didn’t burn in the fire.” Her license expired in 1961 but Mom never bothered to renew.

“I didn’t lie, honey. I told him I don’t have a license.”

Three weeks earlier, Mother Nature had sent an Advance Team to Burnsville to see if it was ready for Spring, but the State’s high school hockey tournament was approaching, and the boys were still playing boot hockey on soggy rinks and driveways.

Our playground squads would assume names of traditional hockey powers like the Broncos of International Falls, the Governors of St. Paul Johnson, the Minneapolis Southwest Indians, or the small but mighty Roseau Rams whose school of 350 kids brought a disproportionate amount of hockey talent down from the Canadian border almost every year.

Neighborhood buddy Duke Boeser’s dad, Lyle, had called Pop to see if I could skip school with the Boeser boys to watch one of the nation’s premiere prep tournaments on TV. Pop had

played in the ‘48 tourney for St. Louis Park and was fully in favor of the truancy. On ‘Tourney Thursday’ we’d play more hockey on our knees in carpeted hallways with cut-off hockey sticks and puck-balls made of toilet paper wrapped in black hockey tape. Many of us haven’t gone to school or worked on Tourney Thursday ever since.

On Tuesday the 9th, as Duke and I sat in a fourth-grade classroom at Edward D. Neill Elementary, our heads spun to the window - as if catching a glimpse at a speeding fire truck

would give us insight into the emergency-in-progress.

“I’d laugh if that was my house,” I said with a cynical crack.

Duke shook his head with a ‘shame on you’ look. “Don’t even say that,” he said.

Within 24 hours, my brother, five sisters and I were picking through clothing the neighborhood had hurriedly gathered at the school gymnasium, so we’d have something to wear. I didn’t laugh about the house fire, but never cried, either.

Our parents were steadfast in keeping our lives as functional as possible. They made it seem as if a house burning was part of the natural order, like crashing on your bike, or getting caught out in the rain. You get up and lick your wounds, you change your clothes, you scramble for food and shelter. That’s life.

By Saturday, the Edina Hornets had won their 2nd state championship in three years and were on their way to becoming the most envied high school in the state of Minnesota. I don’t

recall who won the carpet battles of Boeser’s basement.

The family scattered for a few weeks, a few stayed with our faux cousins, the McChesneys, with whom we once shared back yards in Bloomington cul-de-sacs, and we spent some time

in rooms at the Fair Oaks Motor Hotel in Minneapolis – a property owned by family friend, W. R. Frank.

On April 3rd, that day before Palm Sunday, while mom took four of us to Illinois, the three oldest kids remained behind to help Pop with the family’s four restaurants that our parents had purchased from International Multifoods.

On a larger stage, Richard Nixon was president and still very popular at the time. His Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was a few months old, and he was pursuing “Peace with Honor” to end the bloody Cold War quagmire in a place called Vietnam – or ‘French IndoChina’ by the colonizers who were being kicked out of southeast Asia.

In ’71 Nixon prepared for “The Week that Changed the World,” an historic trip to see China’s communist dictator, Mao Tse Tung, and open the gates of trade. Mao had closed China to the world in 1949, but the Commie knew a good thing when he saw it. The impact of the presidential visit continues to redefine the World Order some 50 years later.

As one of the fastest and most accurate typists in the DC steno pool in the early ‘50s, mom typed for then Vice President Nixon and former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. I still have the

autographed lithograph of the Capitol building he gave to Mom as a thank you gift. It’s smoke-stained and still has a faint smell of smoldered ruins.

By August of 1974, Mr. Nixon would leave the White House for lying and covering up an operation that spied on his opponents at the Watergate hotel. The scandal, and disgraceful

resignation of a president who was as strategically savvy as any in our history, shook confidence in the good ol’ USA to its core.

Japanese manufacturers were beginning to make automobiles that were superior to those coming out of our Motor City, and riots in Ohio, Mississippi, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts combined with public disgust over Vietnam to plant seeds of doubt and self-loathing along with the perception that the ‘World’s Melting Pot’ couldn’t boil the

nation’s rotten eggs of corruption and bigotry.

Despite the tumultuous times, life went on with a sense of normalcy in many homes. Ours wasn’t one of them. We made it safely to Illinois, but back home, the Cruelest Month had more ill winds for Pop. He was the only one in the house as it burned and had managed to escape by jumping off the second-floor deck into the snow with shaving cream on

his face, one suit and a box of birth certificates in his arms.

A construction worker from the half-built house behind ours ran up to Pop and said, “Hey mister, your house is on fire!”

As Pop plodded barefoot through the snow in a robe, he said, “No shit, Sherlock.”

Days later, he had borrowed Grams’ Buick while my sister Chell drove his Ford to and from the restaurants. A thief broke into the Buick and stole his suit while, almost simultaneously,

Chell was in an accident that totaled the Ford.

Needless to say, by Mom’s birthday on April 17th, the complications of lodging and transportation could have put a damper on the day. She shared the date with close family

friend, Dorothy Graw, one-time Queen for a Day in Australia, and one of several female friends of powerful personality who augmented my upbringing in an atmosphere where women were anchors and icons.

The personalities persisted through the complications at their birthday celebration that year. Mom, Dorothy and their iced-tea klatch, like Nixon, extended an olive branch to a communist by toasting Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, whose birthday was the day before. Unlike Nixon’s initiative, their toast would be tongue-in-cheek and conclude with, “the miserable bastard” followed by howls of laughter that were synonymous with gatherings of Mom and her friends.

The weather fluctuated from freezing to balmy in April that year as my cronies and I played on. We weren’t ready to put away the hockey sticks. The North Stars had upset the St. Louis Blues in the first round of the NHL playoffs and would face hockey’s most legendary team – the Montreal Canadiens, or ‘Les Habitants’ to French Canadians.

For our band of buddies who would eventually be known as ‘The Dogs,’ this would extend hockey season a couple more weeks until ‘The Habs’ bumped the Stars in game six on April 29th. We’d accept the late arrival of Spring, drop the sticks and gloves, and pick up the bats and balls to embrace another of life’s cycles.

On the AM radio dial, the top song in March of ‘71 was “One Bad Apple” by Michael and the Jackson Five. This gave way to “Just my Imagination,” by the Temptations, and Three Dog Night’s, “Joy to the World” – all the boys and girls – before Don McLean’s epic song and poem, “American Pie”, would take the top spot later that year.

For the Rex and Patricia Pickett household, 1971 would be the year the music, but not the spirit, would die. From March 9th forward, my parents would be consumed by a half decade

of daily battles against forces of life that would include a judicial battle over the house fire, economic uncertainty that caused people to stop spending $3.95 for all-you-can-eat meals at our restaurants, and – not the least of which – a cancer diagnosis in Mom.

Our parents, with help from the oldest girls, shielded the youngest of us from the constant uncertainty. Laughter and joy was often self-deprecating, but always present. I doubt they had much time to contemplate those whose lives were more challenging than ours, but based on the philosophies they ingrained in us, I know they were aware.

They continued to teach compassion and demonstrate contempt for bigotry. If mom heard one of us parrot the overt prejudices of the day, she’d issue a “fear of God” warning like the

one she gave in the Ford Falcon. She’d remind us that not only were condescending thoughts toward others philosophically wrong, in our household, they may be hazardous to one’s

physical health.

As she took us on that Easter pilgrimage to the farm, the entire nation was driving Chevys to their Levies in attempts to re-imagine the good times of the once just and righteous nation

that re-financed the globe after World War II.

Pop was tougher than most, but he would agree that mom was the glue. During the trials of the early ‘70s, he had to be hospitalized for exhaustion – quite a feat for a Naval Academy

Marine. As Mom fought cancer, she guarded the fort, rallied the troops, and ran the business until his return.

The Joads in the movie version of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath come to mind again when I think of my parents and those years. The final scene summarizes the lives of millions of people who miraculously endured an era of far greater and more widespread challenge: the Dust Bowl and Great Depression.

In the scene, Pa tells Ma how she was the one who kept the family together during the toughest times, and says, “...we shore takin’ a beatin’, Ma.”

Ma chuckles. “I know. Maybe that makes us tough. Rich fellas come up an’ they die, an’ their kids ain’t no good, an’ they die out. But we keep a-comin’. We’re the people that live. Can’t nobody wipe us out. Can’t nobody lick us. We’ll go on forever, Pa. We’re the people.”

Hockey tournaments will be played each year, the ice will melt and flow into the following season. New songs, genres, and tech platforms will emerge to the chagrin of those being replaced. Political division will endure, and every step of progress will be sliced in half by a perpetual pendulum blade.

And as long as the Sun continues to rise, ‘The People’ will keep a-comin’.