While researching for the Memory Lane items in May from the last 125 years that ran a couple weeks ago, I came across a 1996 column I had written with the above headline. And this week I read the column by Keith Anderson, director of news for APG, parent company of the Union-Times, about high school graduates of 2020 and 2021 responding to the trials and tribulations they have faced because of the pandemic. I feel for those kids who have missed out on some things that graduates in more-normal years took for granted. I think Anderson was right in telling graduates that how they respond to their difficulties might define their lives. My hope for them is that they do respond and I feel sure that many of them will. The column below, from the same week as this week 25 years ago, tells the story of someone who responded well to his difficulty.)
There really wasn’t anything very complicated about it. And it really wasn’t something you questioned when you were a kid in the Depression years.
You got up in the morning in the 1930s, did the chores at the farm where you were boarding so you could get an education by attending high school, and then walked two miles to town.
A friend who turned 74 the other day had watched some of us younger guys (40s and 50s) working in the afternoon and then we went out to celebrate his birthday that night. And somehow the talk turned for awhile to seeking an education during the Depression.
He lived on a farm in Sherburne County and talked with his parents, telling them he wanted to get a high school education, something that wasn’t automatic in those tough times, especially in a family that numbered between 15 and 20.
The decision was made to go to Foley from his farm home halfway between between Foley and Princeton. My friend began his freshman year staying with a farm family two miles from town in the fall of 1936 and earned his keep by doing chores. The brutally cold winter of 1936-37 followed and he thought maybe the family was taking advantage of him anyway so he talked with his parents and they found him a place to stay in the town of Foley.
The new place was that of a retired farm couple and the cost was $3 a month and a “shotgun can” (about two gallons) of milk that he brought from his home farm when he visited there on weekends. The older couple had two other renters at $3 apiece. The couple had three sons farming their old farm, a hog operation. “So we had pork about every way you could have it, and potatoes and that good milk gravy,” my friend told me. “Those were tough times.”
The three renters all slept in a tiny room, two of them on a bunk bed, and to make things even more difficult for my friend, the other two were in the learning stages of playing a guitar. They’d play in that little room and it was almost impossible to study. So sometimes at night my friend would go to downtown Foley and visit the man he was renting from at his job as a night watchman, the human security system that was in place then. “I think he just liked to have company but I could also study a little bit there, too,” my friend remembered.
A few years ago at a reunion he ran into one of those boys who played the bothersome guitar music and the guitar player apologized, saying he didn’t realize that his amateur strumming was bothering my friend so much.
So that was my friend’s freshman year in high school – walking two miles one way to school in severe cold, being gone from home at such a young age and then switching to another place midway through the year, as well as making it home occasionally to see how his family was doing. The commitment of a mother and father forward-looking enough in the ’30s to let him pursue an education was a key.
The next year bus service began at Princeton High School for those in the upper grades and my friend spent the next three years riding the bus to Princeton. “And here I was just getting to know how to say about half of those Polish names in Foley,” he said with a laugh as we talked during his birthday celebration on Sunday.
It was a long bus ride in those days but my friend continued his education and was graduated from Princeton High School in 1940. And then, like many a Princeton boy in those times, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and went off to war. He still lives on the same farm in Sherburne County that he left from and returned to, both for his education and to serve his country.
There aren’t any stories like that anymore and there never will be again. “It really wasn’t so bad,” my friend Sherman Nelson told me as we talked. “You just did what you had to do.”
If nothing else, it should make us a little more appreciative of how good we have it, along with being thankful to those who went before us and helped give us the quality of life we have today.
The Twins are who they are
As was the case a week ago last Friday, the Minnesota Twins have the worst record in baseball, a few percentage points lower today than last Friday after being swept by the Chicago White Sox. (They now have competition from Colorado, which is only one percentage point ahead of the Twins.)
Mostly because of the home runs by a suddenly-productive Miguel Sano, the Twins are 3-5 the last seven days Sano’s homers contributing to all three wins. But a 3-5 record isn’t going to help the team gain on the White Sox, even though Chicago was only 4-3 in the same time span.
The record in the first quarter of the season (the second quarter began with the split in Anaheim against the Angels Thursday) pretty much reflects how the team has played. You hear statistics about them having more hard-hit balls than other teams but they’ve been very unproductive with runners in scoring position.
Last Saturday Sano hit a three-run homer to give the Twins a 5-4 win over Oakland, the only win in that series as the failure to win all but one home series this season continued. Three days later he hit three homers and drove in four runs in what became a 5-4 win over the Pale Hose. And yesterday he hit a grand slam homer in the first inning on the way to a 6-3 win in the second half of a doubleheader against the Angels. He has five homers in the last seven games and has driven in 11 runs with those home runs.
Each year, it seems, as he goes through a prolonged slump and some want to trade him or sit him down, he goes on a hot streak for a week or 10 days and the cries for getting rid of him end. Is this one of those hot streaks or will he be more consistent? (He’s hitting only .176 and has been striking out nearly every other at-bat, despite drawing a good number of walks.)
When the Twins beat Oakland 5-4 last Saturday on the strength of Sano’s three-run homer, TV analyst Roy Smalley, who I think does a good job, praised Jose Berrios, saying he “pitched well.” That comment might show where the Twins are this season because Berrios went seven innings for the first time this season and his ERA for the night was 5.14. When he won last night in Anaheim his ERA for the five innings was 5.40.
Don’t get me wrong. I like Berrios. He’s a stand-up guy, he is an outstanding fielder, and seems to be a good guy. He’s 4-2 with a 3.91 ERA and that leads all the starters. He’s a competitor, retiring the last 11 batters he faced last night after a rough start that got the Angels within one run at 4-3. But, so far, he’s not become the guy the Twins hoped/thought he would be. And to say he pitched well when his ERA for a game was 5.14 is, well, not accurate.
The failures this year have been on the mound, in the field, and at the plate. In last Friday’s loss to Oakland the Twins didn’t score in the third inning when they had two runners on and no outs, and then in the seventh went 0-for-3 with runners on first and third, with no outs, and didn’t score. OK, that’s only one game but it’s been happening all year. And on the pitching side when you see former Twins such as Trevor May with the Mets (2-1, 2.81 ERA) and Rich Hill (3-1. 3.89, 9 strikeouts in one game against the Yankees in six innings) with the Rays doing well, you wonder why they were jettisoned.
That makes one draw the conclusion, after 40-plus games, that, at least so far, that’s who this year’s team is. That doesn’t preclude a hot streak or two happening in the next 119 games, nor does it mean they absolutely have no chance to contend this season.
But for now, the Twins have played like the worst team in baseball. And three wins in six days didn’t mean much, even if Sano did get hot. Maybe getting Byron Buxton and Alex Kirilloff back – if that happens, as seems possible – will help.
PRINCETON SPORTS MEMORIES
June 2, 1961 – Princeton placed third in the District 16 golf tournament as Jerry Sandberg (79) in third place and Bob Bukoskey (85) in fifth place advanced to the Region Four tournament.
May 26, 1966 – Twelve PHS girls, supervised by Gail Sundahl, traveled to Coon Rapids to participate in a track meet. (It was not an official sport at that time.) Sophomore Linda Hammons won the broad jump . . . Elk River beat Princeton 4-1 in what turned out to be the Rum River title game in baseball, both teams undefeated at that point.
June 2, 1971 – The PHS track team placed third in Region Four, high jumper Ken Top winning that event and Mark Blaske (100-yard dash) and Art Carter (440-yard dash in a school-record time of :50.1) also advancing to state . . .Trailing 7-2 in the eighth inning at Elk River, the Princeton town baseball team scored 10 runs in the last two innings for a 12-10 win as Denny Minks got the win in relief of Ron Deglmann who struck out nine in the first six innings.
June 2, 1976 – Dan Johnson won the 440 (49.6) at the section meet and Jim Bowden was second in the 880 (1:59.2) as both advanced to the state meet. Johnson was the first Rum River Conference athlete to run under 50 seconds in the 440 . . . Eighth grader Wanda Zabel ran a 12:0 100-yard dash to win in the subregion.
May 28, 1981 – Steve Wankel pitched a five-hitter in a 6-0 shutout of Milaca in subregion baseball . . . Doug Burns won the 1,600 and 3,200 in subregion track, running the last two laps of the 3,200 in 66 and 64 seconds. Sophomore Jim Michael won the 800 and was second in the 400.
May 29, 1986 – Judy Bornholdt and Karen Bromberg placed second and third, as ninth-graders, in the section golf tournament and advanced to state . . . Ward Thompson won the long jump (21’7″), 100 (:11.2) and 200 (:22.9) in the subregion track meet.
May 30, 1991 – With Rachel Brown pitching a no-hitter earlier in the section tournament, Princeton beat Proctor in the section title game and advanced to the state softball tournament . . . Mark Freitag won the 100, 200, 400 and long jump in the Rum River Conference track meet and, for the third straight year, Kris Bottema won the shot put and discus.
May 30, 1996 – Lu Schwochert and Jami Sternquist qualified for the state golf tournament, the third such trip for Schwochert . . . Jesse Zimmer drove in four runs and Justin Priess pitched a one-hit 10-0 shutout over Chisago Lakes in subsection baseball.
May 24, 2001 – Kaitlin Smith was second in the discus, third in the 1600, fourth in the shot put and fifth in the 400 at the conference track meet, and Erin Reilly won the triple jump . . . Paul Gibbs was second in the 100 and 400, and third in the 200 at the conference track meet, while Matt Anderson was third in the high jump at 6’4″, a personal best . . . The PHS baseball team (11-6, 7-3 in the Rum River), placed second in the Rum with a 6-2 win over Sauk Rapids and then beat Duluth Denfeld 3-2 behind the pitching of Luke Bakken as catcher Karl Larsen threw out three runners on the bases. Brent Julson got the win over Sauk Rapids.
May 25, 2006 – The boys golf team placed fifth in the Mississippi 8 Conference meet as Drew Dufner had a 76, Alex Osowski a 77 and Taylor Murphy a 79 . . . PHS senior Scott Roehl was chosen to play in the state all-star baseball series in June. He hit .451 in the regular season, led in RBIs with 20 and had a 3-3 record as a pitcher with a 1.37 ERA . . . Brittaney Thorsett won the pole vault and Katie Loberg the high jump at the conference track meet.
May 26, 2011 – Dylan Hass and Jadyn Bonasera earned all-conference honors at the conference track meet. Hass was third in the 110 hurdles, third in the 300 hurdles and second in the high jump. Bonasera won the discus and was third in the shot put. Carl Wold got honorable mention for the boys and Caitlin Reeves, Maddie Wood, Katie Bialka, Ashley Urman and Amanda Groebner made honorable mention for the girls.
May 26, 2016 – The PHS baseball team (7-13, 4-8 in the M8) beat North Branch 3-0 behind the two-hit pitching of Sam Larson . . . The final 18-hole round of Mississippi 8 girls golf was rained out. Bri Dorr ended up earning honorable mention in the conference . . .The boys tennis team (7-12, 6-3 in the M8) beat Heritage Christian 6-1 to end the regular season.
(Dorr is the former editor of the Princeton Eagle (2 years) and Princeton Union-Eagle (31 years), and has written about sports in the area for the past 54 years.)