Discription of Dankeyland [1958]

Advance [description of Donkeyland, the family in 1958]. We moved there in 1958, when I first saw it, the house my grandfather purchased for $7000. Dollars, it looked big from the outside, and was bigger even more so in the inside; an old Victorian home built around the turn of the century, old man Beck had died, and we were moving in. When I say we, I mean, my brother Mike, me Dennis, my mother Elsie, and my grandfather Tony, or Anton. Grandpa was an old Russian, from the Baltic area, born in 1891, came over to America in 1916, fought in WWI, and married, had eight children, my mother being the second to the oldest, Ann.
There are about thirty characters I will be talking about in these sketches, all are real, their last names somewhat changed, altered for legal purposes, but like it or not, it was as it was back then, as I say it.

Cayuga street absorbed two streets, and then it ran into Mississippi Street, it ran East and west. Mississippi Street, ran North and South, on the other end of Cayuga, was Jackson Street, and across the street was the long, very long Cemetery, Oakland Cemetery.
Beside us was a large empty lot, perhaps the space of five homes at one time, and a hill, we all called Indians Hill. On the other side of the empty lot was where my mothers boyfriend lived, they both worked at Swift’s Meat Packing Plant, in South St. Paul, his name was Earnest Brandt.
Behind our house was old Rice School, and down the block from Rice School, was the old Jew’s grocery store, small, but most were small back then; a legacy now gone.
To the side of our houses, on the embankment, for the empty lot was what you might call the valley, or plateau, were old Man Stanley’s house, and his wife [both retired; the old man [born around 1893] would die in 1960, and the woman [born around the turn of the century], would at 93-years old, in the 1990s].
In the years to follow, in the mid 60s, they started building a bridge over Mississippi, in the process, under the bridge, where the railroad was, its trains, yard and tracks, was now a large mud hole, our swimming hole.
Across the street on Cayuga from our house was where Roger and his family lived, in back of him was a foundry called Structural Steel, the whole neighborhood would work three at one time or anther, as each person turned 18-years old. Behind and to the south of Rogers house was the train yard, where they’d come in, and hook up with other trains and then deliver their load.
Alongside Mr. Stanley’s house was Lormer’s house, and up the block, on the second part of Cayuga Street, was where the Lund’s lived. In back of our house, on the block there was where Steve [Reno] lived. And down a few blocks, towards Mississippi, on a hill was were Sid lived. Jack Tashney, and his brother lived all the way down Jackson Street, at the end of the Cemetery.