REMINISCENCES OF A GOOD LIFE

April 12, 1990

As I approach the age of 70, and still of apparently sound mind, it seems appropriate to set down what I recall of my past life. I am not certain that this will be of particular interest to anybody, but it might shed some light on how I lived my early days and what they were like. Possibly the members of my family will glean some knowledge of me that they did not know before.

EARLY DAYS

I was born on Oct. 28, 1920, the second child of Martin J. McGowan and Olga Wilhelmina Vieg. A daughter, Jane, was born to them before me on April 28, 1919, but she died at birth. My mother died Aug. 23, 1922, when I was about 18 months old. She was a registered nurse who contracted tuberculosis from a patient. In those days there was little that could be done for TB patients except rest and fresh air. She went to a sanitarium at Pine River, Minn., where she died.

My father and mother were married at St. Cecelia's Catholic church in South St. Anthony Park, St. Paul, May 29, 1918. My mother was what was then called a Norwegian Lutheran and a mixed marriage of this kind was frowned on in the Catholic church. My widowed grandmother, Sarah, also frowned on this marriage. In fact, it is doubtful if she approved of any of the women her sons married. It might have been some small consolation, however, that my mother converted to Catholicism before she died.

My father and his brothers, Allen and Joseph, came to Appleton from Benson and purchased The Appleton Press on Jan. 14, 1914. The first week they owned the paper they almost lost it in a fire that started from the gas flame that heated the metal pot in the Linotype machine. Joe McGowan returned to Benson to acquire the Swift County Monitor and later the Swift County News. Allen McGowan stayed on to run the Appleton paper when World War I broke out and his brothers entered military service. My grandmother was featured in news articles noting that she had five sons in service during that war.

My father spent some time in St. Paul during the war as food administrator for the state of Minnesota. In effect he was in charge of food rationing. In a bit or irony, the national head of such rationing was Herbert Hoover, later a Republican president of the United States at the time of the Great Depression. My father's participation in the military service was brief. He was sworn in only three months before the war ended. He was sent to Camp Dodge at Fort Dodge, Ia., and then was discharged. Upon his return to Appleton he was a charter member and founder of the American Legion Post in Appleton.

With my mother gone, my father, his mother and sister, Gertrude, took up residence with me in a large home on south Main street, later renamed Miles street for a veteran killed in World War II. Our house was what was called the McElligott house. By coincidence, this building was later divided into four apartments, two on each floor and one on the first floor front became Gertrude's residence until she died and was also where Betty and I and the first three children lived when we lost our previous residence. By another coincidence Betty and I made our first home in the second floor front apartment of that building.

While on the subject of housing coincidences, after my father remarried in 1934, my grandmother and aunt moved to a small home behind what was known as the Kenneth Kivley home. When Betty and I left that second floor apartment for a home we moved into that same home. Our bedroom was the room where my grandmother died.

I don't have too many memories of living in that McElligott home as a small child. I have a photo of myself walking on the sidewalk in front of that home at about age 2. I have a white suit on, high top shoes and a what might be termed a Dutch boy haircut. My uncle and godfather, F. R. "Pat" McGowan, is shown bending over and talking to me. There is another photo from this era showing me at about the age of 2 standing in the window of our Model T Ford car. Those cars didn't have front and back doors; they had one door in the middle and I am shown standing in that window.

The only playmate I can recall from that period was the little girl across the street named Dorothy Halling. She was a year older than me and later became Mrs. Robert Reed. I recall there were some big cars in the garage behind our house and we used to climb in those cars and pretend to drive them.

There is one vivid memory from that house and it relates to a formal portrait my grandmother had taken of me in the living room. I must have been about 4 years old at the time. My grandmother dressed me up in a suit with short trousers and long black stockings. The professional photographer was called in and I was placed on what would be called a library table with one leg crossed under me and the other leg hanging over the table. The triple window behind me had lace curtains for a background. I recall that once I was on the table it was discovered that one of the buttons in my trousers was open and that had to be closed before the photo was taken. That photo is still around somewhere and I hope my recollection of it coincides with the actual photo in brown tone.

The only other memory I have of this home from the early days is the day we moved out of it. I recall riding my tricycle from the McElligott house to our new home known as the Lathrop house on the hill looking down to the Pomme de Terre river. This house was known as the Lathrop house because I believe a builder by that name put it up. He left his imprint by putting a fancy letter L in the corner of each block of the sidewalk. Those letters may still be there.

FAMILY HOME

There are several memories that I have of the home where I lived all through my school years and occasionally during college years. It had two major additions put onto it during those years.

For some reason one my strongest memories pertains to the heating system. The house was heated by hot water radiators with the heat supplied by a coal furnace in the basement. The area under the front entry was a coal bin. I recall how we would order coal from the lumber yard and the truck would pull into the driveway and put a chute into a door that led to the coal bin. Then the delivery man would shovel the load by hand into the chute and down into the coal bin. Then we in turn -- usually my father -- would load a shovel of coal and shove it into the furnace. At night it was necessary to put in plenty of coal and then "bank it down," or turn down the vents in the front door so there was not too much draft and the coal would not burn too hot or too fast.

Maybe I recall this heating system because it resulted in one of the few things I did with my father. That was to carry out the ashes from the furnace. We had an old wash tub at the side of the furnace and when the fire had burned down it was necessary to shake the grates from the fire area into the bottom of the furnace to make the burnt out ashes fall to the bottom. There was a handle on the side of the furnace to work the grates back and forth and I liked to do that. When we had the wash tub full of ashes my father would take one handle and I took the other and we carried the tub of ashes outside. At first those ashes were dumped over a hillside on the north side of the house, but later after my father converted that ash dump into a beauty spot of the town with landscaping and shrubbery, we carried the ashes to the back alley.

It was a great day when that furnace was converted to oil heat with an oil burner to blow the heating flame into the furnace. The former coal bin then housed a fuel oil tank and a copper tube was run to the furnace. A trench had to be cut into the cement basement floor for the tube. Then it was a matter of having the fuel oil truck come to our driveway instead of the coal truck and fill the tank. No more ashes to carry out.

The first addition onto the house was the sun porch placed on the east side facing the yard and garden, which were my father's pride and joy. The south end of the porch was made into a small bedroom which I used when I came home periodically from college. This bedroom was later converted into a bathroom and storage room for music when my stepmother, Elizabeth, greatly expanded her piano teaching. This sun room became a bedroom for my father in his final days when he was unable to climb the stairs to his regular bedroom. That is where my father died Jan. 4, 1954, one of the few times I can recall breaking down and crying in my adult life.

The other major addition to this house was really a revamping of the entire second floor. In its original state the second floor had three bedrooms and a bath, with two small bedrooms on the west side for my grandmother and aunt Gertrude. I can't recall where my father slept, but it must have been in a room with me, a room on the north and east that was carved up strangely. The bathroom was south of my bedroom.

The house had a hipped roof and to provide more space all around the hips were removed and the roof line flattened. My grandmother and aunt moved out when my father remarried. The wall was taken out between their two bedrooms and one large master bedroom was made for my father and Elizabeth. My bedroom was squared off a bit more on the north with the expansion into the hip on that side. The bathroom was also squared off and entered from a hall. That hall led eventually into another bedroom that was built over the sun porch below when Eleanor, my half-sister, arrived. That was also the time when the branch stairway off the landing into the kitchen was removed to make the small kitchen a bit larger.

MY FATHER

I can't say that I ever really knew my father well. That was probably because we seldom did anything together. Most of our contact was when he took me with others in the family to political picnics and gatherings of the newspaper people in the old Seventh Congressional district. Otherwise he left my care to my grandmother and aunt. Apparently my care caused some friction in the family and my father just gave up and let his mother and sister handle it.

I recall one situation about a Saturday night bath. We had an electric water heater that was turned on from a switch in the kitchen whenever we needed hot water. One night when I was due for a bath -- and being a natural youngster who resisted such traditional baths -- I sneaked down that branch stairway to the kitchen and switched off the water heater. When my grandmother, aunt and father all discovered there was no hot water for my bath, they had quite a heated discussion about who was responsible. Of course I never let on I had been the culprit.

One of only about two occasions when I felt close to my father occurred in my bedroom in that house. I was 13 years old at the time and I was working or doing something at the desk in my room -- the same desk which I recently saw in Maureen's house -- when my father came into the room and lay down on the bed. I could see this was going to be a serious discussion. This was when he announced to me that he was planning to get married.

I guess I knew he had been seeing the school music teacher, Elizabeth Kelly, who had been my music teacher in the third and fourth grades, but the idea of marriage had never occurred to me. Here was another occasion when I broke down and cried for I thought he was abandoning me and leaving. Not having had much contact with him, that seemed a natural first assumption. I cried out and asked what was going to happen to me. He assured me I was to be part of this new family, but it would be my doting aunt and grandmother who would be leaving. This was when they took up residence in that little Kivley house which later became the first house for Betty and me and our first three.

The wedding came in June, 1934, and I felt like the proverbial fifth wheel on that occasion, sort of like an unwanted guest. I was on display for my new stepmother's family and friends and most uncomfortable. It was a most difficult adjustment for both Elizabeth and me and it took many years for us to appreciate each other. I don't know on what occasion much later that I learned Elizabeth had suffered through my excessive laundry. During my high school years I liked to dress well and had a clean shirt every day. It didn't occur to me at the time that this made more work for Elizabeth and somehow somewhere she commented on having to iron half a dozen shirts a week.

But I was being selfish about all this. What really happened was that my father finally had some good years in his second marriage. He was entitled to that after some unhappy earlier years. He had lost his first child at birth and his wife a few years later and then was left with me, an infant, to care for. His life with his mother and sister was not a standard home life, so he busied himself with his newspaper work, where he was one of the most outstanding newspaper men of the state. He was also very active in politics and became the political "boss" of the area. When there were political jobs to be passed out in the area, it had to be cleared with him. He managed to get his sister named postmaster when such jobs were political plums, a job she held for 17 diligent years. He was thus assured she had financial security. He was a charter member of the American Legion and president of the golf club.

On one occasion some downtown business men decided some new blood was needed in the city government. So they put up a slate of three, two for councilmen, including my father, and one for mayor. Of the three, only my father was elected. He served one three-year term during when he put his green thumb to work and converted a run-down slum part of town along the river into the beautiful Riverview Park. He was head of the Parks committee and also was instrumental in decorating an area at the south entry to town and the park in front of the armory. He may also have used his influence to get federal funds to build a basic airport and was instrumental in getting WPA (Work Projects Administration) funds to build a bath house on the river for what was then the swimming area.

All of this activity kept him busy and away from home a great deal. But after his marriage he was home more, entertained at home with bridge clubs and Elizabeth was a great hostess and made a lovely home for him, something he did not have before. It was more of a natural home life for him, even if he was caught in the middle between me and Elizabeth, who he knew weren't in complete harmony. He had really earned some of this better home life and for that I was most thankful for him.

There were only a few other times when we did things together. I recall once going to the Dayton store in Minneapolis and persuading him to buy me a model airplane. When we took it home I could not put it together. My father was not good at these things and he made a valiant attempt to put together all the balsa pieces, soaking and bending and then gluing the fabric. It finally conquered him and became too much. He gave up in disgust and the plane was never finished.

POLITICS

He did start to take me to political picnics when I was about 10 years old. I recall one held north of Appleton when John Van Dyke, the Democratic candidate for governor, was the speaker. In those days there were three political parties in the state, the Democrats, Republicans and Farmer-Laborites. The Democrats were a distinct minority among the three and were split even further, the so-called regulars and the rumpers, really just two groups of Irishmen feuding. The Reagan-Moonan faction made up the rumpers or the rump faction, the dissidents. My father affiliated with the party regulars aligned with the national party organization. Joseph Wolf was the national committeeman from Minnesota and all the political patronage came through him. My father was affiliated with Wolf and thus was able to pass out the jobs in his area, though he wasn't able to get any plums for himself. There was one time when he wanted to be head of the Veterans Administration in Minnesota but he didn't get it. In high school he took me to state Democratic political conventions and pointed out the solid people and the ones who were just there to get something. They also went to the conventions of the other parties trying to get something from them.

After the Democrats and Farmer Laborites merged into one DFL party I became secretary of the party in Swift county, a post I held for 19 years. Shortly after, when the Progressive third party was formed nationally, led by my father's closest friend, former Gov. Elmer Benson, we parted with Benson and his allies when they tried to take the DFL party en masse into the Progressive party. We talked it over and decided to stay with the regular DFL group.

James Youngdale was the DFL party chairman and was aligned with the Progressive party. I was the party secretary. When it came time for the county convention at the courthouse in Benson, Youngdale called the convention to order and was immediately challenged. The convention split into two groups and two conventions were held at the same time in the court room and both elected slates of delegates.

I had offered to drive Elmer Benson to the convention that night because his wife, Frances, was away and I knew he didn't like to drive. He agreed but before we left, his wife came home and drove us to Benson. After the convention split and our meeting finished first, I waited for Benson, to return home, but Mrs. Benson made so many nasty remarks that I felt I couldn't ride home with them. I went to my uncle, Joe McGowan, in Benson and asked if he would drive me half way home and Betty came to meet me at Danvers and drive me the rest of the way. Mrs. Benson also made it clear I should return a typewriter I had borrowed from them. I did so the following morning but Elmer laughed it off. It didn't make any real strains in our relations with him, but it took Frances a long time to heal from that incident.

My father once made the suggestion that I should run for Congress, but I felt I wasn't quite ready. Then after he died and I was elected to the legislature, I wished he had been there to see that day. Then the occasion came up when I did consider running for congress. The seat was open and Alec Olson, who was the state senator for our district when I was in the House, asked if I was planning to run. I felt I had to make up my mind whether or not I wanted to make a career of politics or stay with the newspaper business. Politics being an uncertain life and with a growing family, I made the decision to stay with newspapers. Olson was elected for a while, but became infected with "Potomac Fever," a malady that afflicts those who stay in Washington too long or become too imbued with their own stature. Olson started to bring the message back from Washington and tell the farmers of the district what they must do instead of listening to what they wanted and carrying that message to Washington. The farmers soon became disenchanted with Olson and turned him out. I feel I could have won that seat at the time but it is perhaps just as well I didn't try for it. I began working for my father on The Appleton Press when I was about 12 years old. There was no thought of child labor laws in those days or in that newspaper. I was just helping out in the family.

THE PRESS

I was fascinated with the place at an earlier age. At about age 8 I used to go there on Saturday mornings because that was the day the metal slugs that made up the printed word were dumped down a chute into the basement, shoveled into a large melting pot and melted down to a liquid state. Then the printer's devil, who in those days was Stanley Iverson, scooped the liquid out of the melting pot and poured it into molds that were called pigs. These pigs, in turn, were dropped into the melting pot of the Linotype machine to begin the process all over again.

My first job there was to feed the large single sheets into the newspaper press. I was tall for my age and could stand up at the side of the press, riffle the sheets to get air under them and then slide the sheets down into position for the grippers on the press to take the sheets away and print one side. That put four pages of the paper on one side after which the sheets had to be collected again, turned over and put on top of the press to go through again for the other four pages. This was a tedious process but a precise one. If the sheet wasn't in place on time it would print on what was called the tympan, or packing sheet on the press cylinder, rather than on the sheet. This required a stop to wash off the imprint. After all this it perhaps was not surprising that when I became owner and publisher of the paper I installed an automatic sheet feeder on the press, thus saving one person to perform other tasks.

As can be seen, this produced an eight page section which had to be folded. The second time through the press the sheet came out onto a folding machine paced at the end of the press, called an Omaha folder. A series of fiber tapes guided the sheets through various levels where overhead blades forced the sheets through rollers that folded the paper into quarter sheet size. As the paper grew it was sometimes desired to have a 10-page or 12-page section. This required a press run that would put two-page or four-page imprints on the full size sheets, which would then be cut apart. To handle them an additional reed board was placed over the folder and another person would feed these additional sheets in as the full size sheet came into the folder. Occasionally we tried 14-page sections which required two feed boards over the folder with two people there, plus the one feeding in the full size sheets. There were many problems with this arrangement and many stops to clean out the folder. When we went to 16 pages all that required was two simple eight-page sections which were hand inserted at a side table.

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