Doings of Dudley Doolittle - INDEX to stories

Index of Doings of Dudley Doolittle stories by John M. Grimsrud

Doings of Dudley Doolittle: This is the name I will use in the sometimes hilarious, outrageous, or cynical short stories posted monthly on https://bingsbuzz.blogspot.com/

A fictitious name will be used in most of the stories. It is there to protect the identity of the guilty.

These true stories are over half a century old or more.

 1. Cowboy Wannabe

 2. Adventures - St. Augustine, Florida

 3. Keg of Beer - St. Augustine, Florida

 4. Captain George Tappin: A True Story

 5. Guckin: A True Story

 6. Dad's Story

 7. Strength of Hercules

 8. Persistence Pays

 9.Luperios...Or Flying with Armando

10. Friends

11. My Norse Connection

12. Ben's Beer Bomb

John Grimsrud's author's page

Doings of Dudley Doolittle 8th Edition Persistence Pays...Or Dudley did it Again

Doings of Dudley Doolittle: This is the name I use in the sometimes hilarious, outrageous, or cynical short stories posted monthly.

A fictitious name will be used in most of the stories. It is there to protect the identity of the guilty.

These true stories are over half a century old or more.

PERSISTENCE PAYS…OR DUDLEY DID IT AGAIN!

Back in the nineteen sixties my friend Dudley took a truck driving job at the Superior Fiber Board plant in Superior, Wisconsin, while he was awaiting his two year stint in the navy to begin. The job wasn’t too complicated, it consisted of driving a dump truck filled with trimmings of fiberboard from the factory to the dump some five miles away, tipping up the box, dumping it as close to the fire as possible, and returning with the empty truck.

As Dudley was making one of his routine trips to the dump one day, he went through his usual procedure, but the fiberboard refused to slide out. Being the clever chap that he was he merely pulled ahead, then backed up and slammed on the brakes to dislodge the cargo…whoops! The load didn’t come out…the front of the truck instead began to raise high in the air, higher and higher, and finally back into the fire it all went…yes it all burned up and Dudley was off to the Navy.

The story doesn’t end here, in fact the plot thickens.

Yes, two years later Dudley was back at the Fiberboard plant and demanding his old job. They refused and Dudley, being a persistent Irishman that knew his rights, went to the proper government agency to put the pressure on management.

Reinstated on his job Dudley made his first trip to the dump. Did his usual routine, and lo and behold his cargo stuck again…Dudley knew exactly what to do, and he did it…yes the unthinkable.

Link to INDEX of Dudley Doolittle Stories

John Grimsrud's Author's Page

Minimalism: What is it?

What minimalists have in common:
   The “enough is enough” moment
   A desire to live with less
   Making the decision to change
           Courtney Carver

Forty-four years ago Jane and I set sail on our home-built sailboat. We sold everything that would not go aboard. We sailed across distant horizons where the wind blew us, when the spirit moved us, and the price was right.
Sailing away was like leaping off a tall building, it might have seemed like the right thing to do at the time but once airborne our fate was sealed, and no matter how much remorse we might have had turning back was not an option.
Living out of the sea and off the land and foraging for food became a thrilling way of life.
We wrote four books covering these precious years: Sailing Beyond Lake Superior (our inspiration and motivation that made it happen,) Sailing the Sea Islands and Sailing the Florida Keys (our bicycling and boating adventure,) Sailing to St Augustine, (what we did to survive the economic rollercoaster rides.)
Like our favorite German author Herman Hesse so aptly put it when he described the Magic Theater: “Not for everybody.”
We became minimalists before minimalism was coined.
Attempting to leave the world a better place than we found it, we strive to make a positive environmental impact.
A final thought:
WHEN ASSETS BECOME A LIABILITY
Youthful dreams and aspirations whet your appetite for the unlimited acquisition of material things, and buying something shiny becomes irresistible because heaping more worldly positions on your pile is justified as asset building.
In your twilight years after you have played with your toys and time has removed their glittery luster those youthful assets become burdensome liabilities.

June 25, 2016 copyright John M. Grimsrud

Peoples Drug Store, Superior, Wisconsin

Photo: John A. Grimsrud, owner Peoples Drug Store, Superior, Wisconsin, and John M. Grimsrud standing in front of the Upjohn Company exhibit, Disneyland, California, 1967.

My first recollections of Peoples Drug Store – Superior, Wisconsin

1943: I waited in my Dad’s maroon 1940 Oldsmobile fastback across the street from the Peoples Drug Store at the corner of Belknap and Baxter.

Dad and Art Haugen, his partner in the East End Drug Store, were in the process of closing a purchase deal with O. B. Olson, owner and builder of the Peoples Drug.

I don’t know the exact time of year, but there was no snow on the ground. Summers in Superior were so short that we jokingly hoped summer would come on Sunday. 

When I was a child my dad told me a story about Peoples Drug Store in the Roaring Twenties.

Dad was sixteen years old in 1924 while America was riding the speculative economical rollercoaster fueled by post WWI industrial expansion.

Prohibition had the country swilling clandestine boot-leg booze in gangster controlled speak-easies.

Hyper-active 138 pound Dad was self-motivated at an early age. He had three newspaper delivery routes at the same time employing a helper.  He mopped floors and did janitor work before school mornings at Peoples Drug, and repaired bicycles in his spare time.

Early one morning Dad was slipping his key into the door at Peoples Drug Store to begin his janitor job when a big long car screeched up to the curb, stopped, and three machine-gun wielding men scrambled out.

Dad was pushed inside and forcefully ordered to open the safe at gunpoint. He nervously told the menacing gangsters his only duty was to mop the floors and carry out the trash. He didn’t know the combination to the safe.

These Al Capone type gangsters were in a big hurry and luckily only locked Dad in the basement coal room instead of blasting him to bits.

In the pitch-blackness of the coal room Dad’s thoughts quickly turned to the idea of escape. He felt his way around in the blackness and found the coal shoot leading from the coal room to the street.

This would be his escape route.

Dad then stealthily crept up the coal shoot and carefully pried open its little door. As he cautiously peered out he was terrified. He was looking down the barrel of a machinegun.  Dad thought that his heart would explode. He gingerly lowered the little door with a trembling hand.

The gangsters grabbed what they could quickly pick up items of value, breaking into the narcotics drawer, and then sped away with a sack full of Parker fountain pens and lots of drugs.

Dad said that the incident didn’t bother him for about a week and then suddenly flashbacks would startle him out of a sound sleep with sweaty terrifying anxiety.

Dad went on to get his pharmacist license and eventually became the owner of the Peoples Drug Store by the early 1940’s buying it from O. B. Olson, the original owner.

The gangsters were apprehended a few weeks later and one of the things that helped convict them were all of those expensive Parker fountain pens.

Peoples Drug Store had an ornate soda fountain/lunch counter featuring hamburgers that were greases to kill. My favorite soda fountain beverage at the lunch counter was the 5¢ Coca Cola that came in several flavors all made from extracts known as phosphates, the charged water was added. Cherry flavor with a dash of chocolate was sensational.

I started working at Peoples Drug Store when I was fourteen, cleaning shelves, washing bottles, washing windows, shoveling/sweeping the side walk and burning garbage.

At sixteen years old I started waiting on customers, stocking shelves and doing the inventory. When I got my drivers license I did deliveries and got to know a lot of people in the five years I worked there.

The Drug store had three full time pharmacists, Bob Cleary, Bud Dice and my dad. At the time there were fourteen Drug Stores in Superior and none were chain operated. 

The grand opening of Peoples Drug Store was on May 17, 1924.  Ralph Carter was the general contractor of the building and all the brick was supplied by Northern Supply & Fuel Company and the lumber by Campbell Lumber Company. Peoples had 

an "up-to-the-minute" soda fountain and on opening day gave away souvenirs to everyone visiting the store - candy for the ladies, a puzzle toy for the children and cigars for the men. The drug store is still in business in the same building at 1124 Belknap Street.[i]

---

[i] Superior Public Library Facebook post, Nov. 20, 2014.

Lake Superior's Fall Storms

And Superior has a harder fate in store for many of those who take the last ill-fated trip of the season. Sailors dread it more than the tragedy of dense snowstorms, when they run upon the rocks, for even there hope does not die; they dread it more than the fierce, sledge-hammer wash of Erie in a storm; more than the fearful dash for port in Lake Michigan, where ports are few; and this fate is the fate of "the little ice devils"-—those masses of ice which freeze upon a ship until she is weighted beyond control. In these days of late navigation—days of fierce battles with snow, ice, and wind, days of death and destruction as they are never known upon the salt seas—is material for a generation of writers; unnumbered stories of true mystery, true romance, and true tragedy, which, if fed to the nation in popular form, would be of immeasurable value to lovers of the literature of adventure. The Great Lakes by James Oliver Curwood, 1908.

The Superior, Wisconsin/Minnesota Point Entry and lighthouse pictured in calm weather.

Fall storm, Superior, Wisconsin, November 1968.

During the fall season on Lake Superior it is a common occurrence to have at least one very violent storm on Lake Superior, but one storm I witnessed was exceptional.

My father, Jane, and I drove out late this Sunday afternoon onto a narrow finger of land known as Wisconsin Point.

We went to see just what the raging lake would be like when whipped into an anger fury by a full gale force wind.

While parking the car, the shuddering wind blasted us with sand and icy pelting spray that coupled to make a deafening roar.

We watched the sixty foot tall lighthouse on the east jetty completely buried in crashing seas…a sight beyond belief.

There were four people trapped inside the lighthouse structure and several days would pass before they could leave their imprisonment.

The approach to that lighthouse had been constructed of huge boulders the size of small houses, and the mammoth waves crashing into and over them scattered the rocks about like so many pebbles on the beach.

If this sounds bad, you will not believe the sickening horror we felt as the next chain of events unfolded.

Out on the lake and headed into port was an eight-hundred foot Great Lakes iron ore freighter with the full brunt of that savage storm sweeping it along on a path of no return. As large and as powerful as this ship was, it was no match for the killer storm.

With the wind on the ship’s stern, it was impossible for the crew to turn their ship into the wind. Their fate was sealed. They had no other choice but to run the inlet.

What we witnessed next made our hearts nearly stop. We held our breath as we watched a huge wave break under the stern of this mighty ship. It lifted the stern and sent the ship into a broach position that turned it beam to the sea. The power and force unleashed by the giant wave took all control out of the hands of the crew. Their fate rested with Mother Nature while the ship washed out of control sideways towards the inlet with its rock jetties.

In the blink of an eye it was over. The massive vessel had gone surfing sideways through the outer and inner jetties, and then into the safety of the harbor.

For those aboard that got to stare the Grim Reaper squarely in the eye, that blink of the eye must have felt like an eternity.

After reading terrifying storm stories and witnessing the gale force storm at Superior's inlet, Jane and I still went on to fulfill our dream and ventured out there onto Lake Superior confronting the mighty Gitche Gumme.

I had a Dream – Dursmirg is born.

In 1972 our 46-foot sailing dreamboat Dursmirg was launched and Jane and I sailed away from Superior, Wisconsin, to the salty sea.

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, serving as a geologist on the 1820 Lewis Cass expedition to establish the source of the Mississippi River, traversed the Great Lakes 152 years before the maiden voyage of our Dursmirg.

Schoolcraft’s 1820 stagecoach and birch bark canoe adventure from New York to the western terminus of Lake Superior was before the completion of the Erie Barge Canal.

Schoolcraft wrote the account of his epic expedition in his book Narrative journal of travels through the northwestern regions of the United States...performed as a member of the expedition under Governor Cass in the year 1820, Albany: E. & E. Hosford, 1821.

I have published our epic voyage in the four volumes of Travels of Dursmirg.  All are available in paperback and digital editions worldwide.

• Sailing Beyond Lake Superior
• Sailing the Sea Islands
• Sailing the Florida Keys
• Sailing to St. Augustine

Coming soon:

• Sailing to Lake Superior: A Trip Down Memory Lane

Sailing Beyond Lake Superior

Idle minds may lead to strange and interesting outcomes:

When I was twelve years old I got the plans from a Popular Mechanics magazine for an eight-foot racing hydroplane. I had saved my money and bought the two sheets of quarter inch plywood and the few boards that the plans required.    That winter in my folk’s basement, with nothing but hand tools and determination, the little boat took shape. Early the next spring just after the ice went out of Lake Nebagamon I carried the new creation to the water and in it went! Not only did it float, it didn’t even leak! It was wonderful to say the least…it was just like a living thing that I had created with my own hands.

Launching of my second home built dreamboat, 1952, at age 12; an inspiration for bigger and better things. Read Sailing Beyond Lake Superior, one of four volumes in my Sailing series, and discover the story of my first dreamboat.

Many a dreamboat is scuttled by procrastination.

FALL STORM AT THE SUPERIOR, WISCONSIN INLET November, 1968

FALL STORM AT THE SUPERIOR, WISCONSIN INLET November, 1968

The Superior, Wisconsin/Minnesota Point inlet and lighthouse pictured in calm weather;
Note; the following short story goes with this photo because of its geographical location.
It is a common occurrence to have at least one very violent storm in this season on Lake Superior but this one was exceptional.

Jane and I along with my father, who was living with us at the time, drove out late this Sunday afternoon onto a narrow finger of land known as Wisconsin Point.
We went to see just what the raging lake would be like whipped into a frenzy by almost one-hundred mile per hour winds.
While we parked our car the wind sent shudders of blasting sand mixed with icy pelting spray that coupled to make a deafening roar.
The sight was beyond our belief while we watched the sixty foot tall lighthouse tower on the east jetty completely buried in crashing seas.
There were four people trapped inside the lighthouse structure and several days would pass before they could leave their imprisonment.
The approach to that lighthouse had been constructed of huge boulders the size of small houses and those mammoth waves crashing into and over them actually scattered the rocks about like so many pebbles on the beach.
If this sounds bad you will not believe the sickening horror we felt as the next chain of events unfolded.
There we saw out on the lake and headed into port was an eight-hundred foot great lakes iron ore freighter with the full brunt of that savage storm sweeping it along on a path of no return. As large and as powerful as this ship was it was no match for the killer storm.
With the wind on their stern it would be utterly impossible for the crew to turn their ship into the wind and their fate was sealed. They had no other choice but to run the inlet.
What we witnessed next made our hearts nearly stop. We held our breaths and watched a super huge wave break under the stern lifting this mighty ship and sending it into a broach position which then turned it beam to the sea.
The power and force unleashed here took all control out of the hands of the crew. Their fate rested with Mother Nature while the ship washed out of control sideways.
In the blink of an eye it was over. The massive vessel had gone surfing sideways through the outer and inner jetties and then into the safety of the harbor.
For those aboard that got to stair the Grim Reaper squarely in the eye that blink of the eye must have felt like an eternity.
After witnessing this assume event Jane and I still went on and ventured out there onto Lake Superior to confront the mighty Gitchi Gami big sea waters. 
In 1972 Jane and I set sail away from Superior, Wisconsin aboard our home designed and built 46 foot sailing vessel Dursmirg. We crossed the Great Lakes, Erie Barge Canal and Hudson River to New York where we turned south to begin many years of ambitious adventures
We have written and published the four volume story of that escapade entitled, Travels of Dursmirg.

In Search of the "Old Country"

Written by John M. (Bing) Grimsrud
                                                                     
In many ways, it seems like a very long time ago and in many ways, it was.
I still have an indelible mental image of Grandpa Christ, “C.C.” Grimsrud, leaning back in his big gray stuffed easy chair after dinner with a far-off look in his eyes as he spoke of the “Old Country”.
The “Old Country”?
My young interest was perked and my curiosity was stirred as my mind searched for answers.
Where was this “Old Country”?
What was this “Old Country”?
Who lived in this “Old Country”?
Though the questions went unanswered, they remained alive and my curiosity haunted my dreams throughout my life.
By and by Grandpa passed away but that seed of curiosity he planted continued to live on in my mind until one day when I was a middle-aged person I just had to find out about the “Old Country”.
How ironic it all is now looking back over those years. As I write these words, I realize that I am now at the age of 70, older than Grandpa Christ was when he perked my curiosity back in the early 1940s with his talk about the “Old Country”.
My first trip to the “Old Country” happened back in 1983. I had the time and money so all I lacked were the contacts.
A second cousin of mine named Dee Braverman had contacted me in her search for Grimsrud family information while researching the family tree. I was surprised how very little I actually knew about the family history. However, in corresponding with Dee, she put me in contact with the Grimsruds in the “Old Country”.
Next I sent off a letter to Kari Hoven, who I had met when she visited in America and spent one year in 1948 with Grimsrud relatives in the Superior, Wisconsin area.
Kari turned out to be the very best person to correspond with because of her incredible aptitude to recall names, people, places and dates, plus she has an incredibly exuberant enthusiasm. (I was amazed at the family resemblance that Kari had to my father…they could have been twins.)
It turned out that Kari remembered me, my parents and every detail of her visit to America, (the “New Country”), in vivid details. She still had a photo of my little brother and me from her 1948 visit.
My wife Jane and I spent six weeks in Norway in 1983 and got to hear countless stories told by my relatives who Kari made sure we had the opportunity to meet. We were with different group’s morning, noon and night, every day and the quantity of coffee and open-faced Norwegian sandwiches we consumed was unfathomable. We took notes, kept a logbook and took photos of nearly everyone we met and their homes.
The ocean and the distance that separated the “Old Country” and the New Country in those days after Grandpa Christ left were more than enormous. Consider this, I was the very first of all of my grandfather’s direct descendants to make a trip back to the “Old Country”. Grandpa Christ left in 1896 and it wasn’t until 1983 that I set foot upon the rock bound coast of Norway, the “Old Country”.

This photo was taken seven years before Henry Ford produced his first automobile in 1903. It was a transitionary time between horse and the industrial age of steam power.
The above photo was taken in 1896 in Superior, Wisconsin, at a studio on Conner’s Point then known as West Superior. Left is Christ “C.C.” Grimsrud b.1879, my grandfather.  Next is Louis the (adopted stepson of Martin Grimsrud b.1862) and Hans Grimsrud b.1877 and the older brother of C.C. Grimsrud. Christ, Hans and Martin were all brothers born in Norway who immigrated to America before 1895.
The era was referred to as “the golden age of bicycles”. My grandfather Christ, on the left, had a Victor bicycle, the first with pneumatic tires that were glued onto lightweight wooden rims. Hundreds of firms were competing in this intense market of high demand where the typical bicycle was selling for $100.00.
The bicycle in the center is equipped with a carbide lamp, the same type used by miners.
Inspirations and motivations that drove my Norwegian ancestors to take that leap into the strange new world leaving behind family, friends, home and inheritance were many and individual.
In the history of humankind this immigration was an unprecedented phenomena and nothing quite like it had ever happened before. Previously the human condition was a victim of their geography. But now the option of escape flung open a new door of opportunity.  
Dazzling stories of limitless fertile lands across the sea in far off America, free for the taking, lit up the imaginations of the young Scandinavians who had never even remotely dared to dream such a dream before. Their Viking spirit had come alive.
These were the first days of the industrial revolution when the might of steam power opened new horizons and lifted the burden from men’s shoulders and sped them across oceans and continents. The world would never be the same again.
The American frontier of those years was anything but a utopian environment. A violent civil war exploded in 1861 and the next year the American government offered every immigrant 160 acres of surveyed land while the native Indians were massacring the new settlers in Minnesota and the Dakota Territory. These were not good times for America and in 1879, the year my grandfather was born in Norway, a great economic depression struck America.
As an added incentive to immigrate, Sweden began in 1860 to enact policies toward Norway restricting their sovereignty that caused enough political strife to ultimately dissolve their union and in 1905 Norway was declared an independent kingdom.  
In spite of the many horrible hardships these new immigrants would face in their new country, they kept coming in larger and larger numbers year after year. At the same time the Dakota Territory embarked on a land boom that would last from 1879 until 1920. The convergence of these extraordinary circumstances captivated an entire generation caught in the crosshairs of time.
Here I can speak for my family because they were part of this monumental and irreversible happening that sent a nation’s eager and daring young people to a far off land saying a permanent goodbye to family, friends and home.  
The stories were many and the reasons for leaving were underscored with powerful motivating forces that in the end would result in a torrent of immigration that would ultimately find more Norwegians in Minnesota than in Norway.
Some of the stories ended in brilliant successes built on hard work and determination others fizzled away on bad land farms but the good stories and the bad all held fascinating human interest of a time in human history like none other and my family was a part of it all.
Here is an observation and quote from George Grimsrud of Janesville, Wisconsin. “Norwegians are tough, they live a long time, and there isn't much land [in Norway].”
In addition to the fact that there isn’t much land in Norway that is productive enough to support a family, the reality is that in a family of thirteen children like my grandfather’s, only one would inherit the farm. The rest would have to do the best they were able and the incentive to depart became a very powerful and motivating force.
Martin Grimsrud, born December 2, 1862 on the Grimsrud farm at Skoger, Norway, was the second child and first son of thirteen so he was, according to the custom of the time, the one to inherit the farm.
We can only guess now what inspired and drove Martin to leave the certainty and security of his home to make a totally new beginning in a strange and far off land that held out only one promise, and that was opportunity. Well, he wasn’t the only one to leave but he gave up more than most. Martin was driven beyond the distant horizon by the spark of his Viking ancestry.
To those that picked up the challenge and executed their dreams their fate was all but sealed. Like leaping from a tall building, at the moment it might have seemed like the right thing to do but once air-borne, no matter how strong the pangs of remorse might have been, the outcome was hopelessly irreversible.  
So it would be with these Viking spirited immigrants chasing their dreams across the oceans to America’s wild and unsettled frontiers.
Martin was not the first Grimsrud of our family to immigrate to America.  An uncle of Martin, Anders Grimsrud, born in 1839 and the fourth child of Peder Christophersen (Grimsrud) and his mother Anne Beathe Andersdatter Skot of Dalen immigrated to America in 1869 along with his wife Karen Antonette Christonsdatter Grytebakke.
Evidently Anders had a powerful influence on his nephew Martin who then came to Atwater, Minnesota, in America and then became established and went on to assist many of his 12 brothers and sisters to immigrate to America. Martin first settled in Minnesota in Dane County and next in Pope County. He later moved on to Superior, Wisconsin where he married Randi Hoff.

 Above, the first grocery store in Superior, Wisconsin, located on Conner’s Point and built by Martin Grimsrud, my grandfather’s oldest brother. The store was featured on page 29 in the publication Eye of the Northwest by Frank A. Flower, printed in 1889.  
My grandfather, Christ C.C. Grimsrud the tenth child of those thirteen, owes his opportunities in America to his older brother Martin who not only helped him to immigrate but taught him the meat market business and even helped him to go into his own private business.
Martin Grimsrud was one of the success stories. He had a dynamic life, was a successful businessman, became active in the local government and had a good family.

©2010 John M. Grimsrud


To read more about the golden age of bicycles, I recommend The Lost Cyclist by David V. Herlihy.