Its all in the Past
Its All in the Past by Lizabeth Lincoln
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ISBN-13# 979-8430895846
Lizabeth Lincoln is the tenth child, in the Blazevic family, and they lived in New Duluth, MN. She writes about her childhood, in the 1930s and 1940s, with clamp-on roller skates, picking berries, sleigh riding on the gravel road, the different games they played, bus fare to downtown was 5 cent, movies were 9 cents, they were the only family within four or five blocks to have a phone and many more memories.
Her mother made wool braided rugs, tended the cow, chickens, gardens, cut hay with a scythe, along with everything else concerning running a household. They had the cow until the city said people couldn't have livestock in town.
Her father worked many jobs and he always wanted the latest, good quality, things, i.e., a mangle, Easy washer, the best refrigerator.
They used food and gas ration coupons during the war, she tells of the shortages and her mother made sheets out of flour sacks. There were many children in the Blazevic family, so she was only 6 years old when her oldest brother left for the army in 1942.
The Duluth history, especially New Duluth and Gary, tells of the town, the St. Louis River, the names of the grocery stores, drugstores and beer joint, her father worked for Fitger's Brewery, drafts horses dragging sheds down Commonwealth Avenue to the river, the different schools the children went to, how she got to school and what the schools were like.
When their family changed, in 1945, they stayed in New Duluth, but then moved to St. Louis River Road and then to a farm in Brookston, MN. Lizabeth Lincoln has a lot of stories about the people living in Brookston, how big the town was and what buildings were there, the Great Northern Railroad, railroad housing, what it was like to go to school there and how hard it was living on the farm. She met Billy when she lived there.
Lizabeth left Brookston, took a bus to Minneapolis and got a job as a homemaker's assistant. She went back to Brookston to visit. Her mother demanded she stay, but she moved to Duluth and went to St. Jean's High School. She worked as a soda jerk.
Lizabeth told Billy, many times, not to see her, but he persisted for two years. He pleaded with her to marry him. He had a job waiting in Chicago. She was 17, with a half year left of school. She decided she could finish school in Chicago. They married. He changed.
Lizabeth and Billy went to Chicago, Minneapolis, Duluth, Brookston and back to Chicago so many times she loses track of which times things happened. One day her life changed and she went back to Brookston, alone, with her three children in 1959.
Lizabeth's first marriage, second marriage, children, divorce, her return to Duluth, having multiple jobs, her travels, learning how to paint, create stain glass and everything in between tells what she did, for her and her children, to make it.