Anoka Stories

By Douglas Rainbow

Anoka, a little town Northwest of Minneapolis, Minnesota, is central to this collection of short stories. The stories span two centuries of history, including an Indian tribe’s conflict with intruding white settlers, and a civil war veteran’s souvenir that became a family heirloom. All of the stories have elements of truth; all have elements of fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: May 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9781685624491

Douglas Rainbow

Douglas Rainbow is a retired trial lawyer who has spent a career writing. But the writing was non-fiction – trial briefs, legal memoranda, a few wills and contracts. He wrote some short stories and poetry too, but just to amuse himself and a few friends. People kept telling him, “You should be published.” So he submitted Anoka Stories for publication, lo and behold, the first publisher he contacted accepted it. He’s married, with three adult children and eight grandchildren.

Book preview

Anoka Stories

Douglas Rainbow

Austin Macauley Publishers

Anoka Stories

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Acknowledgment

Background

The Secret

The Election

The Coat

Uncle Jim’s Magic

Mr. Green’s Change

Courtroom Deportment

The Memento

Mind Power

My Dog, Fold

My Dog, Fold

The Legend of Bro and Crow

The Minervan Visitors

About the Author

Douglas Rainbow is a retired trial lawyer who has spent a career writing. But the writing was non-fiction – trial briefs, legal memoranda, a few wills and contracts. He wrote some short stories and poetry too, but just to amuse himself and a few friends. People kept telling him, You should be published. So he submitted Anoka Stories for publication, lo and behold, the first publisher he contacted accepted it. He’s married, with three adult children and eight grandchildren.

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my brother William Bud Rainbow who was successful as a football coach and successful in life. He published a book and I thought, If he can do it, so can I.

Copyright Information ©

Douglas Rainbow 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Rainbow, Douglas

Anoka Stories

ISBN 9781685624484 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781685624491 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023900408

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Acknowledgment

I acknowledge my wife, Delva, who always encouraged me and supported my efforts in every way.

Background

Anoka is a little town about twenty miles north of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Mae and Ivan Rainbow migrated north from Iowa in 1941 with their five children, Virginia, John (Jack), William (Bud), Jim, and Marilyn. Within a couple of years, they had two more children, Douglas, and Donald. They lived in Anoka.

There is no particular reason they chose to make their home in Anoka, except maybe that Hannah and Leonard Dilcher, my mother’s sister and her husband, lived there. The Dilchers were my only relatives except for an occasional visit by an aunt or uncle from Iowa.

Anoka has little claim to fame. It is the self-proclaimed Halloween Capital of the World, with a nice celebration for children. Garrison Keillor, a semi-famous writer and humorist, went to high school there, in my graduating class of 1960. A football quarterback, Duane Blaska, once held some records as a player for the University of Minnesota.

The twelve stories in this little collection are not really about Anoka. Most are not really or directly about me, either, except that Anoka, its geography, culture, schools, teachers, churches, barbers, doctors, and dentists formed me. Law school formed me too, and the army, and Minneapolis, and my wives and children, and reading. The stories are about people and events that seemed important to me at the time; and noteworthy. None of the stories is either 100% true or 100% false. I would say, in the aggregate, they’re about 50% true.

Page 12: The Secret tells the tale of a neighbor girl who exacted a cruel promise from me to keep an awful secret. It teaches the value of transparency. Obviously, the end of the story is fiction, except, perhaps, in the most metaphoric way.

Page 15: The Election is a story about a rigged election and a learning experience of growing up. Even to this day, I won’t say how much is true.

Page 21: The Coat tells Anoka is a cold place – really cold – in the winter. That may be why there is a story called The Coat. The coat defeats coldness in more than one way.

Page 24: Uncle Jim’s Magic is a story about uncle’s love and attention, even if you see him only infrequently, can have a profound formative influence.

Page 26: Mr. Green’s Change looks at the two-way street of caring and a secret of a baseball coach. People care for each other in different ways, sometimes openly and sometimes with a few secrets.

Page 35: Spading the Garden a short poem in Haiku stanzas, wrote a few days after my mother died.

Page 36: Courtroom Deportment tells the story of a divorce action decided in Anoka. The secret was that one of the parties at a temporary hearing disclosed a fact which the party later wished he had kept to himself.

Page 39: The Memento speaks to how family histories become fractured and fragmented. It is the story of a man, a family, a revolver, and a holster with a hole in it.

Page 45: Mind Power recently added to the collection, is about a secret of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald and that secret’s discovery and power.

Page 60: My Dog, Fold is a light story written as a poem. It examines the feelings some of