Nationally, there have been recent discussions about
immigration and citizenship. On a local
level, here at the Sherburne History Center, in recent weeks, we have been
called upon several times to discuss immigration and ethnicity in the
county. With so much information about
immigrants in my brain, I wanted to visit one of the truly unique and valuable
oral histories we have collected about immigrants and Elk River.
Betty Belanger lived her entire life in Elk
River. She was born to Hungarian
immigrants north of Elk River. In the
household, Hungarian was the language of choice until Betty started school at
age six. Although a brief excerpt of her
longer oral history, Betty provides interesting insight into growing up in Elk
River:
I
was born on the farm with a midwife who was a Hungarian immigrant. She delivered a number of babies for the
Hungarian moms in the neighborhood. Her
name was Theresa Toth.
I
grew up on the farm and started school at age six. I fought with my parents to not make me go to
the little country school. I wanted to
go to the big city school and ride the bus.
So I did go to school in town, in Elk River at the wood frame
schoolhouse. The Handke building was
already built by the time I started school.
The senior high was over there in the new brick building and we were
still in the wood frame building. We
rode the school bus for a long time because there were only a few buses, so we
had a good one hour ride (each day).
View of Jackson Street in downtown Elk River. Some of the businesses visible include: Kemper Drug, the Bank of Elk River, the Variety Store, and Dare's. |
Downtown
Elk River was awesome back then. We knew
all the businessmen and all the businessmen knew all the citizens around
here. It was really neat. The best part of downtown Elk River was the
park. With this wonderful gazebo, we had band concerts every Thursday
night. So everybody went into town for
the free band concerts, and farmers did their shopping and listened to the
music. It was an awesome gathering of a
community.
My
mother never went to town. She never
learned English well enough to be able to communicate with the store
keepers. But my dad and brother would go
into town with the milk check and if I hollered loud enough they’d take me
along and maybe I’d get an ice cream cone.
Once
a month the milk check would come in the mail from the Princeton Milk Producers
Association then the next day he would go to the bank, he would cash the check,
make his mortgage payment, and buy groceries.
And they could go in the bar and have a beer and buy me an ice cream
cone.
My father did dairy farming, but he
also dabbled. We always had a lot of
chickens. We took the eggs into the
grocery store to sell. I can remember
going in the back room where the grocer would “candle” the eggs to make sure
they weren’t fertilized. And then the
ones that were okay he would accept and he would pay my dad for the eggs and then Dad would use that to buy groceries
with.
Betty
Belanger’s memories are rich in detail.
In discussing the business district of Elk River, she remembered a
multitude of stores and businesses. She
explained the telephone company had offices and the switchboards upstairs above
the Bank of Elk River. She remembered
the Fairway Grocery, the Federated Store, Dare’s Furniture and Funeral Home,
Andy’s Electric, The Golden Pheasant, the bowling alley and the movie theater. Like so many of the oral histories collected at
the Sherburne History Center, Betty’s memories are truly rich and valuable.
This brief excerpt provides a sense of growing up in Elk River during the late
1940s.
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