Kids in the Courthouse

By Lynette E. Simonsen

"Kids in the Courthouse is a nostalgic heartwarming story for all ages I certainly enjoyed the book and highly recommend it."
-Reviewed by Cheryl Miller for Bookmarks, SDLA, May/June 2004

" the tales are told with humor and spice, as well as deep regard for the grandparents "
-South Dakota Magazine, Nov/Dec 2003

Ever since I can remember, the Yankton County Courthouse was a second home to my brothers, sisters, the cousins, and me. The apartment in the corner of the building was just the right size for Grandma and Grandpa Bergen and their youngest daughter.

The county commissioners, who hired Grandpa as custodian, never realized his grandchildren would haunt the courthouse halls for years. Follow the escapades of the Bergen families as they create chaos in the courtroom and throw pigeon eggs off the roof. Witness the big boys' soda pop thievery and discover who broke the beloved gumball machine.

Visit small town America through the eyes of the grandchildren as they play in the courthouse and roam the streets of Yankton, South Dakota. Experience the joys and heartaches of the Bergen family as the grandchildren grow up and the grandparents grow old while living in the biggest house in town.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 6, 2003
• ISBN: 9781462078967

Lynette E. Simonsen

Lynette Simonsen lived in of Yankton, SD until her retirement in 2006. She graduated from Mount Marty College and was a law librarian at the University of South Dakota, School of Law. She has published in the South Dakota Magazine and enjoys gardening and camping. She was saddened by the 2003 demolition of Yankton County Courthouse, where her grandparents lived for over 20 years. She currently resides in Rapid City, SD amidst the beautiful Black Hills.

Book preview

KIDS IN THE

COURTHOUSE

Lynette E. Simonsen

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Lincoln Shanghai

Kids in the Courthouse

All Rights Reserved © 2003 by Lynette E. Simonsen

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

iUniverse, Inc.

For information address:

iUniverse

2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100

Lincoln, NE 68512

www.iuniverse.com

ISBN: 978-1-4620-7896-7 (ebook)

ISBN: 0-595-28148-6

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ENJOY THE RIDE

PREFACE

FICTIONAL FAMILY TREE

GRANDPA AND GRANDMA BERGEN

-1-

OUR SECOND HOME

-2-

JAILHOUSE BRIDE

-3-

BROADWAY SATURDAY NIGHTS

-4-

LESSONS FOR THE LEARNIN

-5-

OPERATION CHICKEN

-6-

DONT TELL THE SHERIFF

-7-

THE FORBIDDEN ZONES

-8-

SLEEPING OVER

-9-

A JOB FOR EACH SEASON

-10-

TO CATCH A THIEF

-11-

COURTROOM TABLE TAG

-12-

JUDGMENT DAY

-13-

FOR THE SAKE OF HISTORY

-14-

CONEY ISLAND

-15-

GREEN RIVER SUMMERS

-16-

BIG TROUBLE IN RIVER CITY

-17-

AUTUMN BLAZE

-18-

FINDING COURAGE

-19-

HUNTING NIGHTMARE

-20-

FROM PUMPKINS TO PIE

-21-

WINTERS WONDERLAND

-22-

CHRISTMAS TREE CAPER

-23-

CEDAR STREET CONNECTION

-24-

HOUSE WITH A VIEW

-25-

HEALING HEARTS

For Greg...

my brother, my friend, and guardian angel

Acknowledgements

A special thank you goes out to all who shared memories of the Yankton County Courthouse, stories from their past and personal experiences in and around the Yankton community. A sincere thank you is also extended to Caroline K. Downs for painstakingly editing my first manuscript and to friends and family who helped make this book possible.

Enjoy the Ride

Life may not be the same replayed since over time the stories fade. They are not plotted to contain hurtful scenes or private pain.

Just laugh or shed a tear or two if little clips of life ring true. A common bond, a special friend, a fleeting memory, who knows when.

It matters not who won the game, or laughed at someone else’s shame. Just take each bumpy road in stride, relax, read on, enjoy the ride.

by Lynette Simonsen

Preface

During the writing of Kids in the Courthouse questions arose concerning the people, places, and events in the manuscript. Yes, my grandparents really lived in the Yankton County Courthouse from 1946 to 1969 while my grandfather served as custodian. Conjecture has it, when coal fueled the boiler, the custodian needed to live onsite. However, at the time my grandfather was employed, the boiler had been converted to natural gas, but the apartment was still offered with the job.

It is also important to realize the stories in this book are fictional. Set in the 1960s, about forty years ago, it is impossible to attribute individual actions or words to one person or another. The stories surrounding the incidents and events described here are purely fictionalized and will not be found in any newspaper or history books. Perhaps this novel may be considered a tribute to my grandparents who cared for the Magnificent Temple of Justice for twenty-three years.

The names of the family, their friends, the county employees, and other characters are totally contrived. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased is coincidental. To assist in following the antics of the children, their parents, and grandparents, a fictional family tree is provided for the reader’s benefit following this introduction.

Lastly, the reader will travel with the characters up and down the streets of Yankton, visiting local businesses, parks, and schools. In an attempt to provide a bit of historical perspective, the names of these businesses and locations are as accurate as memory permits. Consequently, citizens new to the vicinity may not recognize the 1960s era businesses since many no longer exist. Such was the fate of the Yankton County Courthouse whose demolition was scheduled shortly after this book’s completion.

Fictional Family Tree

Grandpa and Grandma Bergen

I. Olivia & Gordon

Jimmy

Janet

Jerry

Amanda

Melanie

II. Nellie and Emery

Ellen

Danny

Monica

Randy

Faith

Wendy

III. Marion and Douglas

Jackie

Kim

Loralee

IV. Joanna and Richard

Josh Jenny

-1-

Our Second Home

Joanna watched me spread chunky peanut butter and grape jelly on one piece of bread. I layered butter, mayonnaise, sliced dill pickles, and chopped radishes on the other slice. To complete my original recipe sandwich, I squirted mustard all over the radishes. I chose these ingredients from a long list of my favorite foods, hoping to build today’s winning Dagwood sandwich. After smashing the two pieces of bread together, I took a bite and pretended to enjoy every mouth watering swallow.

Normally, I didn’t eat all these foods together, but this was a contest of guts to see who could survive the worst combination of ingredients. The only good part of the meal was the Wonder Bread on which we piled any variety of food we thought our stomachs could handle. We were limited in our selection only by the groceries Grandma had on the pantry shelves and in the icebox.

If I ate mine, according to the rules of the unnamed game, Joanna had to eat one just like it. I finished every bite of my unappetizing lunch and dared her to eat one, too. She finished making her version of the same and took a small bite.. .slowly, very slowly she chewed. As I watched Joanna, my stomach turned. Saliva collected in my cheeks and I began gagging uncontrollably. I threw open the door of the pantry, dashed through the kitchen, raced around the corner to the washroom, and puked in the garbage can beside the back door.

Joanna followed me, laughing all the way. She picked up a napkin from the table and spit her first bite of the sandwich into it. That’s the worst Dagwood sandwich you ever invented, she choked as she spoke.

Grandma entered the kitchen ready for trouble. No doubt she heard me up-chucking in the washroom. She noticed the open pantry door and the food scattered all over the counter inside.

I’ve told you girls a hundred times not to make those awful sandwiches, she scolded. You’re old enough to know better. And besides that, you’re wasting food. Just think of all the poor people in China who don’t have enough to eat.

Do you want to send this sandwich over there? Joanna asked as she paused over the garbage can before depositing her copy-cat concoction. She got away with her smart-aleck crack only because Grandma was her mother. I washed my face as Grandma finished her lecture.

Don’t ever let me catch you doing it again. Take the garbage can out to the alley and dump it in the trash barrel. Before you bring it back to the kitchen, wash it out in the boiler room.

Grandma left as abruptly as she entered. We knew she meant what she said so we quickly cleaned up our pantry-mess and headed outside with the garbage can to avoid further confrontation.

It was the last time Grandma let us make Dagwood-dare sandwiches in the pantry and the last time I ate dill pickles for years. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the last time we got into trouble at Grandma and Grandpa’s. It was inevitable since we had the entire courthouse at our disposal.

Ever since I can remember, the Yankton County Courthouse was a second home to my brothers and sisters, all the cousins, and me. The two-bedroom apartment in the southwest corner of the courthouse was just the right size for Grandma and Grandpa and their youngest daughter, Joanna.

Blonde, blue-eyed, Joanna was more like a sister than an aunt. She was only two years older than me and played with us grandkids all the time. Aunt Joanna had her own friends, too. Joan lived two blocks south of the courthouse. We thought she was lucky because she seemed rich and lived down by the river in a beautiful white house with like-new furniture. Nancy Ann lived above Dreyer’s Creamery, half a block north of the courthouse. Living over an ice cream shop means you’re pretty lucky, too. But Joanna was the luckiest girl in Yankton because she lived in the biggest house in town, the three-story county courthouse.

Grandma and Grandpa Bergen lived in the courthouse since before Joanna was born. After the dirty-thirties, they moved from a farm by the Jamesville Colony north of town into a small house in Yankton. Grandpa worked at odd jobs for a while, anything to make a living for his wife and daughters. When FDR set up the Works Progress Administration

(WPA.), he worked for the state building roads, highways, and bridges around Yankton.

One December day in 1945, his number two daughter, Nellie, rushed home from high school and told him the county was looking for a new janitor to take care of the courthouse. He knew it beat shoveling gravel and cement all day long, so he applied. A few weeks later, he moved his three girls and pregnant wife into the first floor apartment reserved for the courthouse custodian. The following May, Joanna was born, the first in a long line of children destined to inhabit and haunt the courthouse halls for many, many years to come.

The Bergen’s new home was only two blocks north of the Missouri River. It stood three stories high and had a hundred thirty-five windows (which I counted on several occasions). It was by far the tallest structure in Yankton and nick-named the Magnificent Temple of Justice, by local citizens. But to me, the courthouse was just plain brown.

After getting booted out of the pantry, Joanna decided to walk down to Joan’s house. I washed up a few dishes in the washroom before joining Grandma in her bedroom. She was hemming up a new dress. My littlest sister, Wendy, was just waking up from a much needed nap. The rest of my younger brothers and sisters were at the free Saturday movie at the Dakota Theatre. Mom and Dad hated working on Saturdays but the extra money came in handy with six children to feed and clothe.

Grandma poured us each a glass of milk to go with the chocolate chip cookies already on the kitchen table. She poured herself a cup of coffee from the pot perking on the stove. Wendy needed a little face cleaning after eating her cookie, but did pretty well with the milk. At age five, she was getting independent and decided she wanted to go outside to play—right now!

After Grandma finished her coffee, we headed for the back yard by way of the boiler room. Grandma stopped to pick up a hoe and a spade. She handed me a sack of flower bulbs. They looked dead to me. Wendy grasped her Raggedy Ann doll under one arm and followed us out the back door of the courthouse, more commonly called the boiler room door.

As Grandma hoed a few weeds and dug holes along the back wall of the courthouse, I watched Wendy play with Raggedy in the sandbox. It was really a sand tire. A very large tractor tire was filled half-full with sand to make a perfectly round sandbox. I backed up a few steps and leaned against the jail, looking up at the courthouse in front of me. The clock in the bell-tower chimed four o’clock and I thought the movie should be over by now. Mom worked till five and said she’d pick us all up on her way home.

Ellen, come plant these gladiola bulbs for me, Grandma called. After getting instructions about which end was up, I crawled on my hands and knees, put one bulb in each hole, and covered each one with dirt. Grandma finished digging holes with the spade and started pulling weeds around the climbing roses on the trellis near the corner of the courthouse.

Wendy wandered back and forth between Grandma and the sandbox. She began whimpering and rubbed her head. Grandma, I got hit in the head, she whined.

I saw a sticky mess in her hair and guessed a bird got her. She ran to Grandma for sympathy. Then something hit my hand and splattered on the ground. It stung for a few seconds then felt warm and slimy. At first I thought it was a piece of flying dirt from Grandma’s frantic hoeing. But she was more than ten feet away, cleaning off Wendy’s head with her handkerchief. I looked up searching for birds, only to get hit again, square in the forehead. I couldn’t see with the gooey stuff running in my eyes but I guessed what was happening.

Grandma saw the egg-shell crack as it struck my head. She backed up a few steps and looked up to catch a glimpse of the culprits on the roof. In her loudest squeaky voice she yelled, You boys are in trouble now. Get down before Grandpa comes up there after you.

She picked up Wendy and we all headed into the courthouse. We met Grandpa coming down the hall. Pa, go get the boys off the roof, Grandma ordered. I don’t know which ones are up there but they’re throwing pigeon eggs off again.

Danny and Randy spent the rest of the afternoon pulling weeds around Grandma’s flowers. Grandpa attached the hose to the faucet on the Broadway side of the courthouse. He put a spray nozzle on the end and let me water Grandma’s flowers and newly planted bulbs. I anxiously waited for Mom’s arrival to see if my brothers would get into any more trouble for going up on the roof. Then I remembered the pantry episode and decided to keep my mouth shut.

I dragged the hose as far as it reached around three sides of the building, enjoying the serenity of watering, and daydreaming at the same time.

Grandma’s flower garden surrounded the courthouse. Tulips, day lilies, and tiger lilies bloomed under the sheriff’s windows. A cascading spirea bush blossomed on both sides of the busy Broadway entrance and more bridal wreath spanned the entire width of the courthouse on both side of the main entrance. It was a glorious springtime spectacle.

Wherever there was no bush, Grandma Bergen planted snapdragons and daisies, multi-colored zinnias and chrysanthemums. The fragrance of lilacs laced the air each spring beside the alley entrance. Grandma’s personal touch created a rainbow of color for the citizens of Yankton to admire around the otherwise plain brownstone building on the corner of Broadway and Main Street.

Broadway was really U. S. Highway 81. It crossed the Missouri River over the Meridian Bridge, the most unique bridge in the whole world, we thought. In the twenties, the town adopted the nickname of Bridge City. At first, the bottom deck was intended to be a railroad bridge but I don’t ever remember trains crossing it. Dad said cars and trucks both used the upper deck for years before the lower deck was finished.

The cars must have been extremely small when the bridge was constructed because two-way traffic crossed over it between South Dakota and Nebraska. Today, cars use the bottom deck to go to Nebraska and come back to South Dakota on the top deck. For a long time, when I was pretty little, we had to pay a toll of ten cents each time we crossed the bridge to help pay for upkeep. We used to pay the toll-just to cross it-not because we wanted to go to Nebraska. We didn’t even know anybody who lived in Nebraska.

If we grandkids happened to be visiting Grandpa and Grandma when the bridge’s long shrill whistle blew, we raced down to the riverbank by the water plant to watch the biggest show in town. One part of the Meridian Bridge rose to allow over-sized barges and boats with tall smoke stacks to pass underneath. The bridge didn’t rise at a slant like the newer ones do. Instead, one whole section (both decks) lifted straight up, parallel to the rest of the bridge and the river below.

We never saw any cars or trucks drive off the edge of the bridge when it was raised, but we enjoyed watching anyway. It probably took about twenty minutes to elevate the bridge, two minutes for the barge to go under it, and twenty more minutes to lower it.

After the excitement was over, we threw rocks in the river for a while then sauntered back to the courthouse where Grandma patiently awaited our safe return. Sometimes she sent Grandpa to look for us if we took too long getting back. But if we saw Grandpa coming, before he saw us, we hid from him and sneaked back to the courthouse through the alley. We stayed in the back yard until we saw Grandpa walk by on the sidewalk between the jail and the courthouse. We ran out to surprise him, pretending we were looking for him instead of him looking for us.

One of our favorite businesses was straight across Main Street, Moore’s Korner Post. The candy counter was at least twenty feet long and the penny bubble gum was always fresh. My best friend, Katie, was the second luckiest girl in town because her mom and dad owned the Korner Post. Sometimes her mom gave us a free piece of licorice or bubble gum but we didn’t tell the rest of our friends, my brothers and sisters, or the cousins. Katie’s mom said it was our secret. We figured it was because she’d run out of candy if she gave it away free to all my relatives.

The Stetson Hotel was located kitty-corner from the courthouse. Its coffee shop and cafe were on first floor but the grandkids were not allowed inside. Our parents warned us that strangers stayed at hotels and we were instructed to