Transcript of Oral History Interview with Tim Kirk

Oral history interviews of the Vietnam Era Oral History Project Copyright Notice: © 2019 Minnesota Historical Society Researchers are liable for any infringement. For more information, visit www.mnhs.org/copyright. Version 3 August 20, 2018 Tim Kirk Narrator Douglas Bekke Interviewer January 15, 2018 Minneapolis, Minnesota Tim Kirk -TK Douglas Bekke -DB DB: Minnesota Historical Society, Vietnam Oral History Project, interview with Tim Kirk, in Minneapolis, Minnesota on 15 January, 2018. Tim, can you please say and spell your name? TK: My name is Tim Kirk, T-I-M K-I-R-K. DB: And your birth date? TK: 12/13/1947. DB: And your place of birth? TK: Minneapolis, Minnesota. DB: What do you know about your ancestry? Some people’s ancestors came over on the Mayflower, some came over one generation ahead of you, some are Native Americans, and they’ve been here for ten thousand years. So what do you know about your ancestry? TK: The little bit that I do know, my ancestors were originally from Scotland, and then they moved to Ireland. And then from there, they came over through Nova Scotia, across the upper part of the United States, and settled into the little town of Dayton, Minnesota, on the Mississippi River. DB: And when was that, about? Could’ve been in the 1920s, could’ve been in the— TK: No, it was in the 1800s, middle 1800s. DB: So around the Civil War, probably. TK: Right. DB: And did you have relatives that fought in the Civil War? TK: Not that I’m aware of. DB: Okay. You mentioned that you had a grandfather who served in World War I. 24 TK: Yes, my grandfather’s name was Walter Kirk. And he was an infantryman in World War I. DB: Do you know which unit he served in? Was he in the Minnesota Guard? TK: I don’t know the unit. He suffered from, they called it “shell shock” then. But what we would call now, post-traumatic stress. DB: And did you know him? TK: Yes, I knew my grandfather. DB: And what kind of—how did that experience manifest itself in your relations? Were you aware of it? What was he like? TK: He was very quiet and separated. His wife, my grandmother, died in a fire. And after that, he kind of just left on his own, and we would occasionally—every five or six years—until he became old—and then my father went and got him out in San Francisco and brought him back. And he lived in a nursing home in St. Michael, Minnesota, until he died. DB: So you didn’t really have any kind of a relationship with him? TK: We did, but except it was like I said, every five or six years we’d see him for a few weeks, or a month, or two months, and then he would be gone again. DB: Okay. And you had another relative in World War II, who was lost? TK: Yes, my mother’s only brother, James Bistodeau, was a navy pilot. He was lost over the island of Formosa, and just disappeared. His aircraft never returned. DB: Was your father in the service? TK: My father was in the Merchant Marines. DB: Did you grow up listening to these stories, or was the military an important aspect in your family? TK: Yeah, the military and the—just our country, the United States of America—was very important to my family, my grandparents, through many generations. DB: And you’re from Dayton, you said you grew up in Dayton, Minnesota. TK: Yes, that’s correct. DB: On a farm, in the town? TK: A small town. Dayton was a town of about three hundred people, located on the Mississippi River, at the junction of the Mississippi and Crow River. Just a small town, everybody knew everybody. DB: And how would you describe your economic situation growing up, was your father employed all the time? 25 TK: Yeah, my father was employed. We had very little money. I think we didn’t have a car until I was probably ten years old. DB: What did your father do? TK: He originally, when I was very small, was an ice man. He delivered ice. And then he went to work for Honeywell. He started out working on the docks at Honeywell, and eventually ended up being a general manager before his retirement. DB: And where for Honeywell, what plant? TK: He worked at several plants in Minneapolis, but Roseville was the last plant that he was general manager at. DB: And your mother, what did she do? TK: My mother was a housekeeper. At some point when I was small, she worked at Honeywell for a short period of time, but basically she was a housewife. She took care of the five kids, and then after we were grown, then she went to work for the University of Minnesota, home extension service. DB: And you had five kids in the family, where did you fit in the mix, and what was the mix? TK: There were three boys, and two girls. I have an older brother and an older sister, and a younger brother and a younger sister. I was the middle child. DB: And can you describe your home? TK: We lived in a small home, in Dayton. We had a cow and chickens and pigs. It wasn’t a farm, but we were on the edge of town, so we had our big garden, and vegetables, and did a lot of canning. DB: Your mother did the canning? TK: Yes. DB: And did the kids help out with that stuff? TK: When we got older, everybody— DB: You all pitched in? TK: We all pitched in. The boys did chores, the girls did—you know—their chores, so pretty normal. Certainly not—I don’t know if—not poverty income, but probably below middle income. DB: And the animals you had, these were not pets, this wasn’t a hobby farm, they were there to be consumed at some point? TK: Correct. We had cattle, we had a cow that we milked, produced all of our milk and butter and cheese and everything. Pigs and chickens and everything were for food, they weren’t pets. 26 DB: And how would you describe your neighborhood, the people around you? Similar circumstances? TK: Pretty much similar circumstances. You know, a lot of Dayton itself is kind of a French- Irish town. Mostly Catholic. And everybody was about the same, income-wise. DB: Did you have a lot of friends in the neighborhood, a lot of kids around to play with? TK: Yeah, there were about fifteen boys probably, that were around the same age group. We lived and played on the river pretty much all the time: lots of farm, lots of woods, and lots of islands on the river. DB: Sometimes, you hear about people today, talking about how they hover over their kids and guard them and protect them all the time. Would you say that you had a long leash? TK: We had a very long leash. However, when the leash was pulled on by Mother, by any of me or my friends, then that meant it was time to come home. DB: You better toe the line, then. TK: Yes. DB: And you talked a little bit about the things you did with your friends, you went exploring on the river, you went to check out the islands. Can you talk a little bit more about the activities that you were involved with? This is in the ‘50s. TK: Yeah, we did a lot of fishing and hunting and trapping. Just swimming and playing in the river, and in the wintertime we had snowball fights. We still explored the islands, sometimes to the dismay of our parents, because of the danger of ice on the river. But that didn’t keep us away, usually. DB: In summer, you made rafts, or did anybody have a canoe or anything? TK: We made rafts, we built small homemade boats, and we did pretty much a lot. We stretched the leash. DB: For the most part, you made your own fun. You made your own toys and equipment that you needed? TK: Right. We played baseball, you know. We had a lot of baseball we played. DB: Sandlot games, just making it up on your own? TK: Yeah. DB: And in your community, was there scouting? Were you involved in Boy Scouts? TK: There was Boy Scouts. Actually my father was a scout leader for some time, for a few years. But it never really took off as well, there were just too many other things going on. DB: School. Can you describe your grade school? 27 TK: Well, we went to a Catholic parochial grade school, up through grade eight. And then we went from there to Elk River High School, or St. Michael High School, one of the two. DB: And can you describe the school situation, did you have nuns and priests, and lay teachers? How was that experience? TK: The parochial school was all nuns. There was one nun for each two grades. And there was no nonsense in the school. The nuns were very strict, especially with the boys. DB: And what kind of a student were you? TK: I was probably, well of all of the boys—grade-wise I was a very good student, but I managed to get into mischief quite often.

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