Chapter 4
Hanging out at the Used Auto Parts Store (cont’d from blog #1652)
Author: Larry Hackman
There was always something going on at Sutton’s Used Auto Parts Store, Orville Sutton always had an Idea or two up his sleeve. At the back of the store he had arranged a couple of bench type car seats that he had removed from automobiles along with a few chairs. This area of the store became the gathering place for us young fellows to listen to some of the older fellows who happened along and decided to sit down for some story telling. It also became the place to play some tricks on one another. Orville showed us how to run electrical wires from a six volt battery, through what I think was a model T coil, to a wrought iron metal chair “chairs that were used in ice cream parlors” made from a heavy gage steel wire with the round seat. Through this process the chair became charged with electricity. When someone sat down on that chair he got a stiff jolt of electricity which stood them up, fast and straight, with a few expletives flying from their mouths. We had invented the butt taser and didn’t know it.
The victims of this little prank usually described the rest of us fellows who were sitting around there laughing, as being downright terrible, and had no right to live beyond our young existence. I remember one fellow who got so involved with telling us what he thought of our immature, childish behavior, that he actually sat down again and got recharged. The bitterness that flew from that fellow’s mouth was unbelievable. It would have made a preacher blush. But, we were having the best time of our young lives, occupying the other seats and waiting for another victim to come in and sit down. The last victim, seeing someone else enter the front door of the store would soon join the seated group waiting for their chance to be blessed with a good laugh.
I also remember Isaac Belgarde coming into the used auto parts store one evening with tears in his eyes. He had received a letter from the government rejecting him as a candidate for astronaut training. Apparently he did not pass the physical and was going from business place to business place expressing his displeasure and disappointment to whomever would listen. The story around town was that he was so unhappy about not qualifying for the astronaut training that he actually quit drinking.
Isaac Belgarde was also what you would call, a pawnbroker in the area. I remember about four of us had decided to do some goose hunting and that we were short one shotgun. Not having much money we decided to see Isaac about buying a gun. My buddy bought his first shotgun for about twelve dollars. While their Isaac talked me into buying, what he said was a goose call, for four dollars. When I think of all the times I got up at four in the morning, drove out in the middle of somewhere, put out decoys, crawled around in the mud in a stubble field, on cold, wet, foggy mornings and only to discover several years later when taking apart that goose call, that wasn’t working so good anymore, to find out that it was a predator call. Yes, right there on the inside, it was printed in black letters, “PREDATOR”. I guess the joke was on me. Who would take advantage of a damn kid like that? I thought I was calling in the geese, so I could get them, and I bet the geese thought I was calling in reinforcements to get them.
A tune by C. W. McCall just came on the radio and is now playing. The song is about him and a friend taking a load of chickens down Wolf Creek Pass with a semi, with brakes that didn’t work. The semi ended up crashing into a feed store in downtown Pagosa Springs, Colorado. This reminded me of the time when I pulled a pop-up-camper over the pass with my 1982 Monte Carlo, Chevy. Yes, I was a little worried and I’m sure glad that song by C. W. McCall did not come on the radio while I was navigating my rig down that pass, as I was already sitting on pins and needles. Yes, it is a beautiful drive, and we didn’t end up in a feed store, but did end up at a camp site, at Mesa Verde National PARK, in Southwestern Colorado. Beautiful place.
I remember touring the cliff dwellings at the park, and thinking that they probably didn’t have to worry about their children wandering off, not far anyway. My three children were all younger then twelve at the time. My wife and I worried that if they wandered off, they more than likely would only wander off once, as most of the cliff dwellings fell off sharply at the entrance, and it was a long way down to the valley floor below. The Anasazi Indians who built and inhabited these dwellings usually entered and left by crawling up the cliff to the mesa above where they grew their crops, and did their hunting.
Another item that I remember well was in the museum there, where the Park Service was displaying several skeletons. According to the information provided on the one skeleton, is that it belonged to a young woman. The women’s skeleton had a hole in its forehead with a stone spear point in the hole. The information provided said the skeleton was found this way, and that her death was probably the result of, the eternal love triangle. I was thinkining that in most stories I had read about this triangle, the men usually killed each other and the woman walked away. But, maybe in this situation, the men got it right? Who knows?
Jack Paar, was the favorite late night, TV show at this time period (late 50’s and early 60’s) when I was hanging out at Sutton’s Used Auto Parts Store. Every Friday and Saturday night after The Jack Paar Show was over the Sutton family would fill their coffee cups and would move from the living space in the back of the store, to out into the business section of the store.
They would gather around the counter with the lights out, near the large plate glass windows, and glass door that made up the front of the store. They would sit there in the dark and watch the people come out of the bar across the street. Some were heading for the restaurant for something to eat before heading home, and some were just heading for their vehicles and heading out.
This was the time period when the Canadians from across the border would come down on our side of the border for a good time. Back in them days, women were not allowed to drink alcohol or even go into the bars up in Canada. So the Canadians couples would come down to the American side of the border, to have some fun together. The towns along the border all profited from this and had many bars and restaurants that were ready and willing to serve them.
The Canadian women not being use to consuming alcohol, would put on some good shows on Main Street. I remember the Suttons talking and laughing about some of the shenanigans that took place after the bars closed. I being a young feller at this time, was home in bed before I wanted to be, and so never got to partake in observing what all went on during these occasions. Although, I listened intently to the stories that were told the next day, about women dancing on car hoods, and having a great time on Main Street, Dunseith, North Dakota. I will leave the rest to your imaginations. I’m sure they will be better then what actually happened, or what I can remember. Maybe?
Oh, I bet some of you are curious about how the big goose hunt went? While as you know! We got all prepared the day before by getting shotguns, ammo and planning where we were going to go. We did get up early the next morning. Drove in the dark out to Lord’s Lake. Found our spot, where we all settled down waiting for daybreak and the fly off. The fly off is when the geese fly off the lake to go feed in the fields, and of course all of us hunters are all hoping that when they leave the lake that they are going to fly over us, and fly low enough, so that we can reach out and touch them, with some shotgun lead. Well, the worst thing that could happen, happened. The sun rose big and bright, and not a cloud in the sky. A beautiful day. A good day to be outside and alive, but not a good day for goose hunting. The geese either stayed on the lake or flew so high that you couldn’t reach them with a long tom, (long barreled shotgun). My experience is that the best time to hunt is when the weather is ugly. I mean nasty with clouds, mists of rain, cold, windy and just downright ugly. Not fitten to be outside for man nor beast.
We stayed in our spot trying to stay under cover and hoping for that one dumb goose, that didn’t attend, or pay attention in goose survival training the night before. But , after several hours and no geese to get us excited we all made our way back to the vehicle, and after having some coffee, and listening to, what seemed like millions of geese on that lake, talking and laughing at us. We decided to drive around and hope we could get under some geese, that way. We circled that entire lake but there were no geese flying off that refuge. They were just content to stay on that lake and sun bathe and honk away their time and ours.
Around noon, we decided to pull into the shade of a tree grove on the north side of the lake and have lunch. Always the best part of any hunt, was having lunch out in the wide open country side, telling old hunting stories.
While sitting there enjoying our coffee and sandwiches and listening to the geese just over the hill to the south of us, and them sounding like they were laughing at us, a couple of the fellows decided that we weren’t going get any geese unless some extra ordinary action was taken. It wasn’t long before they grabbed their shotguns and headed through that grove of trees and over the hill to the lake. They weren’t about to let them geese sit over on that refuge lake having fun and laughing at them, and get away with it. After all, we were from Dunseith.
No sooner had those two boys disappeared over that hill, when a pickup drove up? The fellow in that pickup got out and came over to us, and questioned why we were there, and explained that we were on refuge property. We told him that we had just pulled up to have lunch in the shade of these trees. He immediately invited us to leave, like right now. We of course agreed with the Game Warden and left immediately. He did not follow us. Apparently that was his spot to have lunch also.
Upon leaving our spot in the shade, we began wondering, where in the hell, are our two buddies, and how in the hell, were we going to locate them before that Game Warden discovered them or would come driving.
We drove onto the gravel road along the east edge of the refuge and stopped and scoured the north shore of the lake. We could not see anyone along that north shore. When all of a sudden, my buddy driving shouted, there they are, and way out in the middle of the lake on a grass covered embankment that stretched from the North shore of the lake to the South shore of the lake, a couple of heads were sticking up above the tall grass. Apparently those two guys were practicing the low crawl, getting ready to do the low crawl through them sawdust pits at Ft. Lewis, Washington, I suppose. You guys in the service remember having to crawl them pits over and over again until no one could not move, and if you happen to stick up your butt , a Drill Sergeant would stomp it down with his boot, and a lot of choice words. They were the days.
That embankment across the East end of that lake must have been the remains of an old road or something. Anyway those two fellows did the low crawl on that embankment across the entire lake to the south shore. We watched them from our location and timed our arrival on the road at the time with their arrival. They jumped from the grass in the road ditch into the vehicle and we were gone. No, they didn’t even get a shot off at them geese. Did the Game Warden know what happened? We never had a clue! Maybe he still sits somewhere in his retirement years thinking back, about the time he made two boys from Dunseith low crawl, across Lords Lake. We didn’t get any geese, but we did knock down a couple of upland birds on the way back home.
The Sutton family shut down there, Used Auto Parts Store and moved from Dunseith, ND back to their farm North East of Rolla in 1959. The automobiles were being built better and with people having more money, there came less demand for used auto parts. We occasionally visited the Sutton Family, and wrote letters back and forth for several years, but as time went on, we all went our separate ways, with an occasional meeting here and there along the way to reminisce and laugh about old times. It has now been at least 40 plus years since we have seen each other. How fast time flies, when you are having fun.
Larry Hackman
Chapter
Hanging Out at the Used Auto Parts Store
AUTHOR: Larry M. Hackman
New Years Eve
Henry Hackman class of (65) and I, were having a discussion one evening awhile back. It was right after I submitted that last story about New Years Eve, to Gary. We were trying to remember when the last New Year’s Eve dance was held in the City of Dunseith for young people. We came up with Dec. 31, 1958. The reason we remember this date was because a young lady froze her feet that night while walking back into town with only a pair of high heeled shoes to protect her feet from the cold. Now we think it was a New Years Eve dance, It could have been Prom Night as everyone of the young ladies and gentlemen were dressed to the nines and as we all know it can storm on a given date in North Dakota. The dance would have been in the old City Hall that burned down in the sixties.
The evening started out fairly decent, the weather was cooperating for the big dance. The young men were all decked out in their suits and ties, the young women were in there prettiest dresses and high heels. In particular, I remember the dresses the young ladies were wearing. Some of the dresses were very different. Some were shaped like balloons and some were called sacks and they were of every color and shape. Apparently the fashions were changing at this time or maybe it was just that my hormones were beginning to pop and I was beginning to notice girls. I was all of eleven years old at the time, but approaching 12 fast if you what I mean. There was a lot of excitement as the young men and women went hustling and bustling around town getting ready and getting together for the big dance.
The reason Henry and I were so aware of what was going on, was that, at this period of our lives we were hanging out in the evenings, up on Main St. at Orville Sutton’s, Used Auto Parts & Repair business that was located in the building across the street from the Crystal Café. This building was previously known as Richards Variety Store, and after that as Suttons Used Auto Parts Store, After Suttons the store became Berg’s Electric and eventually became Joe Morinville’s Grocery Store. Mr. & Mrs. Sutton (Orville and Mildred) actually lived in the back of the store with four of their five daughters, Joyce, the twins, Janice and Janet and the youngest girl, Gayle during the school months. During the summer when there was no school the family would live on their farm. Their oldest daughter Eileen was in college at the time, and their son, Roger lived on their farm located about halfway between, St. John and Hansboro, ND with his grandparents. Henry worked on this farm for Mr. Sutton for a couple of summers.
Henry remembers on one occasion while Orville and he were touring the fields, they noticed that water was flowing from a pipe sticking out of ground. The flowing water from the artesian well had made a pond around the pipe and was spreading across the field. Orville turned to Henry and said, “That it was his job, to stop the flow of water coming from that pipe”. If they couldn’t stop the water, they would never be able to farm that portion of the field. Henry said, when they got back to the farm, he immediately went to look for something that he could cap that pipe with. He went through the shop, the barn, the junk pile and everyplace he could think of to look. He said as he walked through the farm yard looking, that his eyes would always lock onto a shovel that was leaning up against the front of the barn.
He would look at that shovel, and think, that the handle of that shovel looked to be the right diameter to plug that pipe. I’m thinking; while he is telling me this story that since we grew up in the trees and brush of the Turtle Mountains, which is purity much a wood culture, that he was thinking of a wood type plug, don’t you?
It was a few days later he said when Orville and he were walking across the farm yard, when Orville happen to notice that the shovel, leaning up against the front of the barn didn’t look quite right. He asked Henry, what happened to that shovel? Henry replied that he had sawed off the handle to plug that artesian well out in the field. Henry said Orville just kind of smiled, and shook his head, and kept on walking. Henry said it was probably not the correct way, but he thought he had done a purity good job for a twelve year old kid. Henry said, a piece of that shovel handle and a sledge hammer, purity much shut that artesian down, and the field eventually became dry enough to plow.
Several of us young fellows about town hung out at Suttons store while they were in town. It all started with Nina Sutton the Grandmother to the Sutton children. She moved in and operated the store during the summer months while the family was back on the farm.
Orville had made the back part of the store suitable for living quarters and had built shelving and bins in the vacant front portion of the store, and stalked them with used auto parts and left his mother in charge for the summer to sell the parts and run the store. Nina lived in the back portion of the building.
One day while walking Main Street a few of us boys decided to go in and check out the new business in town. This short round lady with silver hair was sitting at the class counter that was located just inside the front door reading the newspaper. She looked up from her newspaper and greeted us with a big smile and of course wanted to know who we were and where we lived. The friendly lady asked us if we would like to play a game of marbles. We, being bored on this bright sunny day and glad to be inside out of the sun, where it was cool, jumped at the chance to do something different. She invited us back into her living quarters and sat us down at her dining room table. She went around a corner and came back with a painted sheet of plywood, some marbles, and dies and laid them out on the table. She asked if we had ever seen or played this game of marbles before, and of course none of us ever had. Nina’s board was set up for a maximum of four players and could be played by just two players and there were no short cuts, you had to travel around the entire board, by placing your marbles in the indentions drilled in a pattern to follow on the board with your colored marbles. The game is now marketed under the name aggravation and has several short cuts that can be taken by the players as they move their marbles around the pattern on the board. Nina instructed us where to place the marbles on the drilled indentions in the face of the homemade board game. She informed us of the rules of the game and the object of the game. The object was to move your four marbles around the board from your home location to the finish line or home base located in front of each player. You shook the die and moved that number of spaces on the board, if someone’s marble was on the space where you landed you sent that marble back to its home space. We were having fun and she enjoyed playing the game with us. It soon became the thing to do that summer of 1957; if we couldn’t find anything else to do we would go play marbles with Nina. Aggravation is still a fun game to play and to be enjoyed by all. I still have a copy of Nina’s board game that I made back in the 60’s but now we usually play the manufactured version as six players can sit down and enjoy the game all at once.
Nina was always glad to see us, and she was soon telling us about her travels. She showed us little bottles with water, explaining which one was from the Pacific Ocean and the other from the Atlantic Ocean, and had us notice the difference in the amount of salt that had settled to the bottom of each bottle. No, I don’t remember which ocean contains more salt. She had us put these large sea shells up to our ears and listen to the roar of the ocean. Yes, I know. How did they get the ocean in there, anyway? We all enjoyed our time with her and also got to know the other members of her family and enjoyed our time with them also. Besides playing marbles and card games we were soon accompanying Orville down to shanty town where he had a couple of lots with junked out automobiles, where we would get parts and take them back to the store. There were a lot of car bodies, engines and other metal laying around on them lots.
Orville told me on one of these trips that if I wanted to make some money that he would give me a dollar for every engine that I tore apart. Man that sounded good to me. That was a lot of money back then. Every night after school I would run home change clothes, grab a crescent wrench, pliers and a screw driver and head down to shanty town. Never did get a whole engine torn down. I suppose my mother was happy that I finally gave up on becoming rich tearing engines apart. The engines in them days were covered with grease and when you got near them, it wasn’t long before you were covered with grease. When you think back, it makes you wonder what mom thought. What the hell next?
Orville was an interesting guy to hang out with! He always had something on his mind. One time he brought out his 45 caliber target pistol. It had a grip designed to fit his hand, way too big for my hand. He asked if I wanted to shoot it, why of course I wanted to shoot it. I hadn’t played cowboys with them toy pistols and caps for nothing in my younger years. He leaned a block of wood up in front of old Seid Kadry’s outhouse, and said that was the target. Seid Kadry owned operated the Pool Hall just across the empty lot, south of Sutton’s Store. The outhouse located about 20 feet behind the Pool Hall, was one building with two doors. It was a duplex. I suppose they were a his and a hers? But, I don’t remember any signs being posted on the doors and I don’t remember any hers ever going back there. Then again, it really didn’t matter as both had a bench with the same size viewing hole cut into the top. I’m sure most people went in, closed the door, looked in the hole and thought or said the same thing, before sitting down to do their business and reading the Sears and Roebuck Catalog. I don’t think there was a catalog in them outhouses neither; I think you were on your own. Life was tough back in them days.
Orville backed me up about 30’ from that target we had placed up against the outhouse and handed me the pistol and told me to go for it. I held the pistol straight out in front of me in my right hand sighting through the sights at the block of wood, and slowly squeezed the trigger as he instructed me. Bang! The gun fired, my arm bent back and the gun smacked me in the forehead. Orville, damn near died laughing, and in between choking and laughing, asked me if I wanted to try that again. This time he suggested that I should try holding the gun with both hands. I didn’t think so; I didn’t need to be smacked in the head again. I guess you could say I was a fast learner.
Thinking back now, it probably wasn’t a good place to be target shooting; didn’t Bill Evans’s Hardware have their propane tanks stored on a platform located on the south side of them outhouses? You don’t think he was siphoning natural gas from them outhouses to fill those tanks, do you? I don’t remember seeing any hoses running from under them outhouses to them tanks. No, I don’t have a clue as what size load Orville had in that pistol, all I remember is my head hurt and I didn’t shoot it again. I suppose it was a teaching moment, anyway, I did learn something.
Orville grew small grains on his farm east of St. John and never ran any cattle. So, he was always looking for something to occupy his time during the off season. He at one time started a movie theatre in St, John, started a paving Service out west, and had started an Excavation Business at Rolla, ND. He wasn’t afraid to try anything. Orville decided to start a Taxi Service in Dunseith, and run it out of his residence and Auto Parts Store.
Orville Sutton, his son Roger, and a fellow from Canada traveled to New York to a Taxi Cab auction and purchased five used 1957 bright yellow Ford Taxi Cabs. They each drove a vehicle and towed a vehicle back to Dunseith from New York City. The Canadian fellow took two of the Taxis up to Canada and Orville kept three of them. Orville sold one and used two for his Taxi business in Dunseith. Most of his customers were people that worked at the Sand Haven. So, he to be ready to go whenever there was a shift change.
It was the next morning after the big dance that everyone became aware that one of the high school girls had frozen her feet. Her folks were in the store talking to Orville about getting him to take their daughter to see a doctor. Apparently her and her boyfriend had driven out west of town to do whatever boys and girls do out west of Dunseith in the dark. Anyway, the car had become stuck or stalled on them. They had to walk back into town. It was cold and the wind was whipping the snow around, it had begun to storm. I don’t recall how far the young couple had to walk before they were picked up by another young couple and taken to their homes.
The high school girl with just high heeled shoes on had frozen her feet and needed to go see a doctor. If you have frozen any part of your body before you know that the freezing part is tolerable it’s the thawing out part of the frozen area of the body that is miserable and painful. It is worse than the worst tooth ache you have ever had. I am speaking from experience and if you have grown up in North Dakota, I’m willing to bet that you have frozen some part of your body before and know exactly what I am talking about and so I can imagine the pain that this girl was going through during the night. The girl’s dad wanted to hire Mr. Sutton, who ran a Taxi service from his used auto parts store, to take her to a doctor. Mr. Sutton, wanted to help them out, but due to the storm the night before, nothing was moving, the roads were all blocked. Orville made some calls and found that the State Highway Dept. was on its way to open up the main highway through town and up to the Sand Haven, “The State Hospital”.
As everyone waited and watched through the large plate glass windows in the front of the store, the State snow plows blew through town opening up Main Street and the highway up to the state hospital. The State Highway Dept. always opened the road to the State Hospital first in the area because they knew the people up there had to pull a long shift whenever there was a big storm that blocked the roads, as no one could get there to relieve them and they couldn’t get home anyway, even if they wanted too. They knew that the people at the hospital were tired and wanting to get home to their families.
The only problem now was to get out the taxi, as Orville had put it in the garage for the night to keep it from getting buried under the heavy snow fall and so it would start when he needed it. Automobiles were temper mental back in them days. They didn’t start to well when it was cold and the batteries didn’t have the cranking power that they do now.
The girl and her dad had trudged through the deep snow up to Suttons Store and the girl was still in a awful lot of pain. The Sutton family were doing all they could to make the father and daughter comfortable. Orville had called the city and asked when they were going to be able to open up the side streets and the alley behind his business, informing the city employee of his predicament and the young ladies problem. He was told that the equipment to open streets would get there as soon as they could, but they were also having problems due to the amount of snow that fell and that had been blown into large drifts by the wind. The large drifts were slowing them down and taking up a lot of their time, and so it was going to be awhile before they would be able to get the alley behind Orville’s Store open.
It was around noon when looking through the front window of the store, someone noticed that across the street sat Glen Johnson’s new Mercury in front of the Garden Tap. Apparently he was able to get out and get to the bar to do the Sunday cleaning. The bars were not open Sundays back in them days. Orville pulled on his parka and headed across the street to the bar. It wasn’t long before he returned with the keys to the car. The girl, her dad and Orville were off to see the doctor. The girl was given some medication by the doctor to ease the pain and told that her feet would be fine. She was allowed to return to her home. She was a very lucky girl.
I remember that I had been admitted to the Rolette Hospital with bronchial pneumonia. They put me in a room that was just south of the main street entrance to the old two story wood structure that was the original hospital. There were five beds in that room. I was situated so I could lie in my bed and see the activity on the street in front of the hospital through the large window. Across the room from me and off to the side of that window and facing me, lay Earl Myer. I don’t recall what Earl was in the hospital for but I did enjoy his company. The reason I’m telling you this story is that there was another fellow from Dunseith in the hospital at the time. He would come by, about twice a day to visit with Earl. I also knew this fellow from Dunseith. His name was either DaCeedie or Chick-a mish. I know these two fellows are different people and I always did mix up the two. Anyway, one of these guys had frozen their toes on both feet and was in the hospital in Rolette with Earl and me. His hospital room was located to the west of us in the new part of the hospital, but he would often come by and visit with Earl. Earl and I would look at each other and grin because we could hear him coming to visit us. His frozen toes had dried up and they would rattle on the tile floors when he walked. Earl would always raze him about not being able to ever sneak up on anyone ever again. The rest of his feet from the toes back were wrapped with bandages. Eventually the doctors removed his toes and then he would just appear in our doorway unannounced. He would surprise us and then we all have a good laugh, because he didn’t have his rattles anymore.