Interview with Alice Moore

Interviewed on July 23, 2001

Interviewed by Jennifer Jordan of the Minnesota Historical Society

Exhibit Alice Moore - AM Jennifer Jordan - JJ

AM: I'm Alice Mae Moore ... Anderson. I used to be an Anderson.House I was born at 668 Duluth A venue in St. Paul and I've lived on the East Side most of my life.

JJ: How old are you now? Open AM: Seventy-seven. I've been married fifty-three years. Society Project JJ: Why did you choose to stay on the East Side of St. Paul? Society AM: I was born on the East Side. My mom had eight kids. My father worked for the Griffin Wheel and he died at forty-one years old. My motherHistory was aHistorical widow at thirty-one with seven and a halfkids. She was pregnant. Oral I lived over by Ames SchoolHistorical one time, too. I can remember sitting in the hallway by the principal's office. Her name was Mrs. Bertch. We called her "Old Lady Bertch." We were a poor family. I don't know why we were eating sandwiches out in the hall, but she started screaming at us. That did it for us. We just didn't like her atMinnesota all, but we had to go to school.

Then where did we move from there? I really can't remember. I know I lived on Bates Avenue and I lived whereMinnesota the mining built all those houses over on-was it?-Farquar... Whirlpool. We lived in there. Now I'm sitting here in this neighborhood. I'm all by myself. I'm not afraid to go to bed at night. I'm not scared. I don't go walking out at night, but I'm not afraid here. I never have been.

JJ: When did you move to this house on Suburban [A venue]?

AM: It was seven years ago, maybe eight now. My husband was gone. At one time, we lived down on Larpenteur A venue. I have a girlfriend I've known for sixty-five years. She lives over on Geranium [A venue]. We could walk all the way around Lake Phalen, her and I would. No problems. No things to scare you or anything like that.

I don't know whether anybody remembers back at the Roxy Theater on Seventh Street. We got into the show for a nickel, a nickel!

JJ: What type of shows did they have then?

AM: I can't really remember, but my mother let us go. We had to earn everything we had. I don't know if anybody remembers Luis's Sanitary Bakery on Seventh Street when I was going to high school. Out of eight kids, I'm the only one that graduated from high school.

JJ: What high school did you go to? Exhibit . AM: Mechanic Arts. I started there when I was young. Then we moved back to the East Side again and I walked from the East Side to Mechanic Arts every day, andHouse walked home across the Seventh Street Bridge. But I wanted to go to school there and there was nobody going to stop me. At that time, my mother had eight kids and we were on what they called ADC, Aid to Dependent Children. My mother got sixty-five dollars a month and had to pay the rent and buy the groceries. They kind of frowned on your wanting to go school. They wanted youOpen to go to work. My first job I had at FOK, Farwell, Ozmun & Kirk, as a typist. I earned nine dollars and three centsSociety a week. Look at the wages now. Project

JJ: I know. What went on at that business?Society

AM: Paints and furniture. They were right downHistory onHistorical Kellogg Boulevard. I worked there and then I got married. I had my son. My son was baptized at Peace Evangelical Church on Forest [Street] and Reaney [Avenue]. I was married there too. HistoricalOral JJ: Your husband, did he work in the area?

AM: My husband worked for ArmourMinnesota and then he worked for a tire shop after he came home from the service. He was a farm boy. He lived up in Menahga, Minnesota.

This neighborhoodMinnesota is exceptionally quiet. In fact, you get bored sitting here.

JJ: What job did your husband do at Armour?

AM: I really don't know. He was just a kid himself. See, I started going with my husband when I was thirteen years old. I was engaged to him when I was fifteen and I married him when I was nineteen and I had my first baby when I was twenty-one.

JJ: Wow. AM: How about that?

JJ: That's a long time.

AM: We went steady for a long, long, long time.

JJ: Why did he move to St. Paul from the farm?

AM: I really don't know. His mom and dad were separated too. They were from Missouri. His mother worked at Armour, so that's probably why he got his job at Armour. We had a tough life, but we managed it. Every time I get another credit card advertisement in the mail, I say, "That is everybody's downfalL.credit cards." I have them and when I get them in themail.Irip them up and throw them away. If I don't have the money, I don't have it. I learned to liveExhibit that way.

JJ: Did your parents always live in St. Paul?

AM: I think my mother and dad were from Red Wing, at least myHouse mother was. Where they met or how they met, I do not know. One ofmy brother's ex-wives has the family Bible, but she won't give it up. Open JJ: Oh, no. Society AM: My son's birth is the last entry in that Bible. I don'tProject want to keep it; I just want to see it, but I have gotten it yet. So ... Society I wanted to go to college. Welfare says, "No,History no, no, no, no. You go out. You get ajob." When I got that nine dollars and three cents a week, half of thatHistorical went to my mother and half the welfare took away from her. They just lowered her payment. I don't know how my mother survived. I don't. And there's not one bad kid in the family.Oral We didn't get into trouble. When my rna laid down the law, you'd better obey. SheHistorical was a good mother. Yes. Sometimes, we were hungry, but we managed.

JJ: Was the high school that you wentMinnesota to a vocational school?

AM: No.Minnesota Mechanic Arts was a regular high school. I think they tore it down. It's up by the Vocational School. I even have my report cards. I couldn't go through graduation because that one year they wore evening gown. My mom couldn't skimp up enough to get me a cap and gown, so I didn't graduate with the class. I was already working, so I just went back and got my diploma. That was it. I always regretted it, but what else could you do? .

When my granddaughter graduates from high school, she's going to have her. . .if I'm still around. She just graduated from grade school.

I've had a good life. I get lonely. ..

JJ: What are some of your most vivid memories about growing up on the East Side of St. Paul?

AM: We lived on Bates Avenue. Swede Hollow was down below. Right on the end of that street, all the kids in the neighborhood got together and that's where we played baseball, girls and boys.

JJ: All right!

AM: Another memory is my mother sitting on the porch holding my son in her arms. My brother, Leo, was over in Germany during the war and she was sitting there singing, "Uncle Leo is coming home. Uncle Leo is coming home." That's all she could think of was my brother. He didn't get home in time for her funeral. He never did. No. No.

I had a lot of boyfriends. We didn't get to go many places. We did things together,Exhibit the kids in the neighborhood. We didn't have roller skates like the kids do now or bicycles or anything like that. . JJ: Do you remember some ofthe other social places that the kids in the neighborhood would go to? House AM: We went mainly to church. I don't remember any places we could go to. We did a lot of walking. No, there wasn't places like that. Open JJ: Were most of the people in your church from the area, from your neighborhood? Society AM: Oh, evidently, yes. It's been a good many years. OfProject course, that Reverend Krueger ... we called his wife "Aunt Kate." She taught me how to cook. I babysat her kids. You know what they say about a minister's kids? They're little hellionsSociety and they were.

[laughter] HistoryHistorical

AM: We lived above Backer Fuel, upstairs. HistoricalOral One time when we lived on Bates Avenue ... I worked for Villaume Box and Lumber and I'd come home from work at two o'clock in the morning. How trusting a mother can be. She'd put the key to the house up above the door jam onMinnesota the outside. We'd come home and we'd reach up there and get the key, unlock the door, and go in. Now that's how safe we felt and we were the last house on the corner too and an empty lot next to us. One night, it was back in the streetcar days ... Oh, I wish we had streetcarsMinnesota again. I was coming home from work. I'd catch the one o'clock lineup. The streetcar conductor, if there was somebody else getting off the streetcar at the same time I was, he took them on another block or two and then let them off. I'd get in the middle of the street and run like crazy for home.

JJ: What did you do at your job until one o'clock in the morning? What type of work did you do there?

AM: I was building gliders. It was during the war. 11: Could you tell me more about that job?

AM: Well, I worked from five to two-thirty in the morning or one-thirty. We'd sand down the gliders, the wings. We had what they called the tack table and you'd put little tacks ... They glued the seams together. That was a long time ago, girl. I don't even remember how long I worked there, a long time, but you're young and you can handle that stuff.

11: I can't imagine working until two in the morning. Do you remember some of your coworkers from that job?

AM: No, not from there. No, I don't remember any of them.

J J: You said your brother went away to Germany during the war? Exhibit

AM: He was in Germany, yes. He was in the Signal Corps. My oldest brother Perry didn't qualify. My brother Dick was a lieutenant of some sort. He was married and away from home. My rna worried about them. My two brothers were married back then, butHouse my brother Leo wasn't.

11: How old was Leo at that time? Open AM: I don't know. He was drafted, so he must have been old enough. Society I lived in Texas for two and a half years when my husbandProject was in the service. Back and forth we'd go. We had to save our allotment money soSociety we could come home to visit and then when my husband was sent overseas, I had just passed my Civil Service test. I was going to get a job on the base and my husband's CO told him to send me home.History I didn't know I was pregnant at the time. That's how naive I was. So I came home and he was sent overseas.Historical He was in China and Burma and India.

11: How long was he overseas?Historical Oral AM: I was six weeks pregnant with my son and he was, say, six, eight months old when he came home. He was an MP [Military Policeman]. Minnesota 11: When you came back to Minnesota with your son, where did you live then? Minnesota AM: When I came home when I was pregnant?

11: Yes.

AM: I lived on Bates Avenue with my mother. I stayed with my mother.

J J: Do you remember what year that was?

AM: Well, let's see. Glen was born in 1945. My son just turned fifty-seven years old. JJ: Does he still live in the area now?

AM: He lives in Shoreview. We had a house out there. We lived there for thirty years. We bought a half-acre of land, ten dollars down and ten dollars a month. Where do you get away with that nowadays? They want it all right there. It was a cow pasture. My husband built the house himself. In fact, my husband built two houses.

JJ: Where is the other house that he built?

AM: It was right next door. We had a big one and a little one.

When he got sick with lead poisoning, that was the beginning of his troubles. Exhibit JJ: We have a lot of questions about the ethnic makeup of the neighborhood. Do you remember where your neighbors were from or anything about the people you used to liye ... ?

AM: When I was a kid? House

JJ: Yes. Open AM: No, that I don't know. We didn't discuss those things. We just got along. Yes. Society JJ: What do you remember about Swede Hollow? Project

AM: We couldn't go down there. That wasSociety a no-no. We weren't allowed down there. I don't know what was going on down there, but my mother forbid us and that was it. When rna said, "No," we knew she meant no. I've been curious about Historyit. YouHistorical know, you read it in the paper and I've thought about it. My girlfriend Gertrude and I talk about it lots of times. Oral It was kind of funny ... HerHistorical and I, when we moved to Arizona, we kind oflost track of one another. When we came home here after my husband died, I had a box of anniversary cards on our twenty­ fifth anniversary and I said to my son, "I think I'm going to throw them away." He said, "Oh, Ma, why don't you sit down and read them?"Minnesota So I sat here at the kitchen table right where you're sitting now reading them away and I found my girlfriend's number. I called her at seven-thirty in the morning andMinnesota we sat and talked for two hours, just her and I. JJ: How did you meet her?

AM: I've known her since I was a kid. We've known one another for sixty-five years and we still talk on the phone every day.

J J: Where does she live now?

AM: She lives over on Geranium. We lived at the bottom of the hill and she lived at the top and all you had to do was walk down the 'street and there we were. So we were together all the time, her and 1. I love people. I like to be around people. I have sisters that back off people; not me. I like to be with people.

11: Where are you in the sibling lineup?

AM: I had three older brothers and an older sister, older than me. Then I have three sisters younger than me. All that's left is three of us out of eight kids.

11: The three youngest?

AM: No. I'm the oldest girl and my sister Faye and my sister Dodie. We're right in line. I'm seventy-seven. We're all in our seventies; let's put it that way. I remember exactly. My youngest sister died of diabetes. My oldest brother had a stroke. My two other brothersExhibit died of heart attacks. My sister Marie died of something on the operating table, something with her stomach. My mother died of a stroke too. Otherwise, there's just us left.

11: Do all of you live in St. Paul? House

AM: My sister Dodie-her name is Dorothy; we call her Dodie-lives about four miles from me. My sister Faye lives over off Rice Street. My sister DodieOpen is the only one with a husband.

I have a real nice neighbor across the street from me. We have a signalSociety between the two of us. In don't pick up my morning paper in the morning, she's onProject the phone, "Alice, are you all right?" So that's kind of nice to know. But then they goSociety to Arizona for the winter, so then I really am lonesome. 11: Are most ofthe people in this area older people or are they a lot of [unclear] here? HistoryHistorical AM: No, there's younger ones and there's older ones. There's a lot of senior citizens, really. I know when my legs were good and I could Oralwalk, I was walking down the street here because my doctor is right here on the comer. That'sHistorical what I like about the neighborhood. I was walking down there and the people right on the comer hadn't shoveled their sidewalks. I have a maintenance man and he better be here the first thing in the morning and get that snow plowed out for the school kids. I was trying to get over the bank and theMinnesota mailman helped me over the bank. When I got through with the doctor, I came home and I reported these people. I thought, everybody else has to do their things. The seniorMinnesota citizens are the ones that got out and did it! Just like when you go to the store, who puts them carts back? The senior citizens. The young people just give them a shove and away they go.

I try to do as much for myself as I can. The trouble is I had to go get in trouble. I fell. I had eye surgery. I had my left eye done. I had an infection, stayed in the hospital for a week with that. I came home and now my girlfriend Gertrude stayed here a whole week with me. I had to put eight drops in my eyes every two hours. She did that for me. She stayed and lived with me. We had fun. We have a lot ofmemories. This was cataract surgery. My son said, "Ma, you better go get the other one done." I was having a tough time driving. So I went and got the other one done. Fine. I did real good. She used a new procedure on me. I got up. Two mornings later, I couldn't walk. I could not walk. I'm crawling from door jam to ... Me, I have to have my coffee in the morning. There's no two ways about it. So I thought, now, what is wrong? Then I called the paramedics. They came here. They were two young boys. "Oh, you're not critical enough to take to the hospital. I've got one with a heart attack ... " or something. I said, "Okay, go ahead." He said, "We'll call you an ambulance." So they called me an ambulance. I did get to the hospital and, here, the bottom had dropped out of my potassium. It just wrecked all my muscles. I never realized that stuff could do that to you. I'd had a physical before. Even the doctor couldn't figure out. .. He says, "I gave you a physical. It was just fine."

I quit eating when my husband died. I just quit eating. I lost twenty-two pounds. It's no fun to eat by yourself. I tried going out and eating by myself, but I don't like that either. It's hard to sit there, you know.

JJ: Do you ever make it back to some of your old neighborhood? Exhibit AM: Gertrude and I went for a ride one time. She's a good driver. She's a year older than me. I'm a lousy driver. When she took me by 668 Duluth, I said, "Gertrude, that don't even look like the same house we lived in," what I could remember being born ... TheHouse one I could remember was on Stillwater Road. Ames School was up here. There was a railroad tracks in there someplace and then a big house over there with a porch, a big porch, and my sister Faye laying in a buggy there. Why I remember that, I don't know. Open JJ: Did that house look the same? Society Project AM: That house is gone. Society JJ: What did you think had changed about the house on Duluth? HistoryHistorical AM: I just figured it would be something else and it wasn't. It was a beautiful home. It was small, narrow, and stuck in there, but it lookedOral like a nice place. I don't know whether you know where Dean School is? Historical

JJ: No. Minnesota AM: I went to Dean School out there, up to the fifth grade. That's all they had was up to fifth grade.

These areMinnesota funny things. It was a big house we lived in and we had a great big potbellied stove in the dining room. My mother had a cook stove out in the kitchen. That's what she cooked on. You didn't have all this fancy stuff. This one time my oldest brother found some tires and he was going to bum the tires in there. I thought he was going to set the house on fire.

When we lived on Stillwater, that was back when you wore long socks, long underwear. You kids probably don't even know what the darned things are. I was dressing behind the stove and I back into the stove! You don't think I didn't hurt for a long time. I liked that house on East Seventh Street there. We had a big hill to slide down in the wintertime on a piece of cardboard or whatever. I remember we had elderberry bushes in the backyard. My mother always planted a garden and she could make the best elderberry pie. Oh, wow! My mom was a good cook. She really was. I liked that house there. That was big. There was eight of us kids in there. We didn't just have a bedroom. There would be beds lined up along the wall, the girls in one room and the boys in the other. We had it nice when we were kids. My mom was good to us. She was a good mother.

JJ: How many stories was that house?

AM: I think it was two stories.

JJ: Do you know if it's still there now? Exhibit

AM: I really don't know. I was trying to think ofthe address. I think it was 1.452 East Seventh. A Larson family lived across the street from us. They had, what I'd call, money at that time. I can remember I went somewhere with them. We got into a car accidentHouse and I got hurt. But I don't remember how badly hurt I was or anything like that. I know I had to stay home from school for a week. Open JJ: It must have been pretty bad for you to stay home from school. Society Project AM: Yes. Then you had doctors that came to the house. They don't do those things nowadays. Society I still like my East Side. [unclear] sitting here. I've got a doctor there. I've got a store there. I've got Sun Ray [Shopping Center] right there for whatHistory I want to do. I have a maintenance man that comes here. He does my lawn and shovels my snow, becauseHistorical I can't do it. When my husband was in the hospital, a couple oftimes, I had to come home and mow the lawn. I would be dragging, because I'm down at that hospital at nine o'clock inOral the morning and I would leave there at three-thirty to beat the traffic home and then I'd mowHistorical lawn. See, that's why I just didn't care whether I ate or not. I didn't have time. Sometimes when I was at the hospital, I'd order a salad or go down and get a salad. Otherwise, then he'd be home for a while and then he'd be in the hospital again. Then he'd be home for a while ... two years back and forth,Minnesota back and forth. The day before he died, he got up that one morning and he said, "You know, Ma ... " He called me Ma. "You know what I was doing? I was saying theMinnesota Twenty-Third Psalm." The next day he died right in the bathroom. So that's something that's really stuck with me. But I had a good marriage. I've got good kids. My son is as good as gold. I've got pictures of my kids right here.

JJ: Do you remember how your family moved from one house to the other?

AM: No, I haven't the faintest idea how we did it.

JJ: It sounds like it would be quite a process. AM: To be honest, I really don't know how we did it. There were no cars in our family. My one brother had a motorcycle. My mother would get so mad at him. No, to be honest, I do not know how we moved. That's something to think about.

I can remember when I went to have my son baptized. My mother-in-law lived on Eleventh Street right across by the police station. I walked down Eleventh Street down to Seventh Street and took the Hazel Park Streetcar and I went out in eighteen inches of snow on the ground and I had my son baptized. His godfather was in the Philippines. His father was in China. I wouldn't go anywhere else to church, so I'd get on that streetcar.

J J: Did the streetcars run every day?

AM: Yes. The only time I remember them not running ... A lot of people rememberExhibit the big storm that we had. I can't th~nk of when it was. It was a holiday of some sort [Armistice Day, 1941]. Ihad never missed a day of school, never. I was out there standing over there on the comer at Seventh Street and whatever that other street was, waiting. He didn't come and he didn't come. Finally, I went back home. The streetcars weren't even running that day. House

JJ: Was it a snowstorm? Open AM: Oh! it was a big one. What was it? It wasn't Decoration Day. What's November 10th, 11 th? Society What holiday is it? Project JJ: Columbus Day is in October. I don't knowSociety what's in November. AM: I always [unclear] the Decoration Day Storm. HistoryHistorical . JJ: Did the whole city shut down that day? Oral AM: I don't think they reallyHistorical did, but as far as my little world was concerned, it did. I didn't like that. I missed that day and then we were in a streetcar accident and I missed another day. But I got perfect attendance because I had excuses for that. Minnesota JJ: What happened in the streetcar accident? Minnesota AM: I don't know what it was. I was going to get off the streetcar. They had these gates that kind of folded and this car came up and knocked the gates off and knocked me on my butt.

JJ: Oh, no.

AM: I don't think I was very badly hurt or anything. It just shook me up. We had to go to court. I had to be a witness and all this and that. Then the judge signed my slip for school.

JJ : [laughter] You had an excuse. -.

"

AM: Right; I did. I never wanted to miss. I thought I did pretty good when I think back. My granddaughter just gets [unclear] school in all that cold wind and all that.

It's been a good life.

JJ: It sounds like you've done all sorts of things while you worked, while you were employed.

AM: Oh, yes. I was at FOK and then I worked at Villaume Box and Lumber. That's where we made the gliders. I worked at Brown and Bigelow as a drill press operator during the war. My last job here, I worked for Gross-Given Manufacturing for twenty-five years.

11: What did you do there? Exhibit AM: I was an inspector. We made cigarette machines. I worked there for twenty-five years, yes. I retired on my sixty-second birthday.

JJ: Were there a lot of women employees at the places that you Houseworked?

AM: Oh, yes, still are. My girlfriend Nancy, who comes out here once in a while, is still there. She's been there thirty years. She's the same age as myOpen son. You did a variety ofjobs, you know. It was a fun job. You came home dirty. We got good pay. Society JJ: What schools did your son go to? Project Society AM: My son went to Moundsview and then he graduated from the "U" [University of Minnesota]. My daughter didn't like school. She didn't likeHistory school at all. But she had so many health problems from the time she was eleven years old. She had herHistorical thyroid removed when she was eleven. They didn't get enough of it so when she was sixteen, it grew back and they had to redo it. In the process, she got diabetes and she hated that worseOral than anything. Then she died at just forty-four years old from what they call keto acidosis.Historical That's when the blood sugar goes so sky-high and she had a major heart attack. We were living in Arizona; she's buried in Arizona. She always said to me, "Ma, don't you ever take me back to Minnesota again. I don't like it there." There's a picture ofher right there. That's my bulletin board. Minnesota

JJ: Everyone'sMinnesota refrigerator is. AM: Right.

JJ: I can't think of any other questions to ask you so I'm going to go ahead and turn this off.

[End of the Interview]

Transcribed by: Beverly A. Hennes Hermes Transcribing and Research Service 12617 Fairgreen Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55124-8213 (952) 953-0730 [email protected]