Wednesday, January 14, 2004

We’re going to go through a little history today, the frustrated history teacher that I am… I never got to teach a history class. I did finally get to teach an economics class, after a sabbatical. The won’t let me teach history, though. Maybe in my retirement they’ll let me. I could teach local or Minnesota history.

[Well, they let Brothen do it…]

Yeah.

Do we have any new faces here today? Alright, you need to come to my office after class and fill out a card.

This is how I’m going to take attendance. I’ll just be sending around an attendance sheet like this. So be sure that you sign it and pass it on. At the end of the semester, I will ask you how many days you’ve missed. So I want you, on your own, to keep track of how many days you were here and how many days you missed. I have proof if I need to question what you say as to how many days you were here. But I won’t go through and record attendance every day. That’s a waste of time. But I have learned over a period of years that there are students who are on tuition reimbursement or they are PSEO students, or the government is paying their way from military experience, and sometimes those people have to prove how many days they were in class. So if I don’t have a clue… I mean, this is college and I shouldn’t even have to take attendance. But if don’t have a clue, I can’t help them, right? So this works out quite well. You are expected to be here every day.

I got a pretty good start on your syllabus yesterday. I’m hoping to finish it tomorrow and give it to Michel. But it’s pretty much as we’ve discussed. You’ll have take-home tests, and you’ll have your project. But I’ll go over that information in more detail. And we always have that drop/add window, when students come and go. So it’s good. We’re going to take a day today to tell you about my background and personal history. Did we get everybody introduced last time? Ok.

My story starts out back in 1948. So, I guess I’ll share with you how old I am. I am willing to do that. At Minneapolis Fairview Hospital, down by the river, which is now part of the University Hospital system. And they’re planning to build a tunnel; did you know that? It will be underneath the river from the University medical campus to the Fairview campus. That’s pretty cool. So, in my lifetime, I have seen some changes there. A lot of things happened at that hospital, including my father passing away at that hospital. So that’s an interesting place.

My wife works in a hospital setting, and that’s kind of interesting. She also worked for Fairview for a while.

But I was born in 1948. I popped out of my mother as this bright little lobster thing. And neither my mom nor dad, who have jet-black hair, would claim me. For years I thought I was adopted, because my dad and mom looked Italian or Greek. I did not look like my parents. My ethnic background is Scots, Irish, English, French, and a little bit of German. My dad’s grandparents were civil war orphans, so they don’t really know what their ethnic background was. And I think, just from my gut feeling, that one of them was a northerner and one of them was a southerner, because I love the south and I love the north.

When I was born, then, in 1948, the world was a very different place than it is today. And I will bring with me to this classroom some of those…. And I will share with you some of the things that have happened in this course in my lectures along the way. It’s kind of like my way of weaving history in as we go. But I was teased while growing up that for some time that I must have been adopted. And so I actually believed that I was adopted for a number of years. It turns out that it’s not true, however. The redhead in my family was my uncle guy who truly looked much like me, and had the same hairline. Of course, I’ve only seen pictures of him as an old guy, right. The one thing that I did get from him was a 1778 coin, a silver dollar coin, that he had kept and had carried through the war.

I’m a Minneapolis native born and raised. And that’s something that I proudly claim when I give tours. In the summertime, I am a tour guide for a company called Metro Connection. So if you ever go to the Mall of America and jump on a motor coach, myself or one of my peers will take you around and introduce you to Fort Snelling and Minnehaha Falls and tell some stories. So you can see how my classrooms work, given what I do, and what I choose to do, and how I operate. My family resided in Southwest Minneapolis, so I graduated from Southwest High school in 1968. That’s a hockey school. I was a football player, but I never lettered. I gave up the dream of a high school letter sweater jacket and all of that stuff. In my senior year, I bought a season ticket for Buck Hill and became a downhill skier. Later on that transitioned into my becoming a ski patrol at Welsh Village, and I still ski to this day. I couldn’t play football to this day, could I. So, actually, I think that was a good decision. I am very proud of my daughter, Courtney, though, who has lettered at East View and who has lettered in downhill skiing. She was at a ski meet just the other day down at Buck Hill.

You will find this hard to believe, but I was a cool kid in school. My parents were always being asked to chaperone and volunteer, and they were considered cool, which is amazing that anyone would consider their parents cool. But my dad was in the advertising business, so people thought he was cool. And he would give away stuff. He had pencils and ballpoint pens. Anytime you came to visit the Mitchell’s or you came to a party at my house, everyone went home with cool stuff. And what did it say on it?

{Mitchell Advertising.}

Mitchell Advertising, of course. And, so that’s kind of the background that I grew up in. Because I’ve been exposed to a sales family…my dad called on sales managers, company presidents, and business owners and operators, I grew up thinking like a business guy. Actually, the first half of my life I was republican, but now I vote my paycheck, and I’m a democrat. But back in those days, I grew up in that republican environment.

I took a few business classes at Southwest High School. One I had was an economics by a guy whose name was Doug Hacket. And that taught me that I could do well in the business/classroom environment. I was actually nominated by him… One of the things that faculty can do for students is to sponsor them for conferences like the one that First Bank sponsored. First Bank is now called US Bank. But there were a whole bunch of us from around the state whose teacher’s thought we had a business head. And we got to go to a hotel and do an overnight, actually it was two nights.

[Where was the conference held?]

It was downtown Minneapolis at the Radisson Hotel. And Curt Carlson actually addressed the group. He was a friend of my dads, and so I went up afterwards and shook his hand. And he said, “Yeah, I know your dad, we were Shrine buddies…” But that built confidence in me. And I started to think, “Well, maybe I can do this business thing…” I was pretty sure, however, that I didn’t want to go into my dad’s family business. I saw how hard he worked and all of the stress that he was under. And so I didn’t the business was for me.

I had a brother in law who had been in the navy. He had gotten his degree from the U of M; and he was in the ROTC program, which means that you sign on, and as soon as you finish college, you have to serve in the military for two years in active duty. He was on a navy ship. Anyway, I was very impressed with him. He was the big brother that I never had, my brother-in-law. He encouraged me that I could do well in education, and that I should go to college. And he was getting his masters degree at Mankato, so I had been down there and I was comfortable there. And he encouraged me in my last senior year to really work hard at my grades to get my GPA up, so I could get into school.

I had some other business experiences and marketing experiences in high school. I was the business manager for the choir. And you might not think that that counts as marketing experience, but if the choir is going on a trip, you have to do what?

{Raise funds.}

Sell stuff, fund raise, yeah… By the way, I had a big, deep, bass, voice even in the ninth grade in choir. And when the ninth grade choir was practicing, the choir director would hear me and go, “Shoot, that kid can sing. He’s got a good voice; I want him in my choir.” So the next year, as a sophomore, I was asked to be in the Southwest High School Choir, which is the senior choir. And if any of you go to Eastview, it’s like being in their honors choir. It’s a big deal. And I know you might laugh at that, and go, “Mitchell is a choir geek!” But at Minneapolis Southwest you were cool if you were on a hockey team, or you were cool if you were in the choir. Oscar Dolly was an award winning choir director, and he took great trips in motor coaches, not school buses. So my sister had been in the choir, I wanted to be in the choir, and, fortunately, I got in early.

I sold so much choir candy, that the next year they elected me business manager. And I didn’t even run for the job. I didn’t even know it was available. But when the vote was taken, I had the majority of the votes. And so I became the business manager, which I did for two or three years. We introduced multi-jacketed records, when before they just had handmade jacket covers. And this time we had one professionally printed, professionally photographed. I introduced the concept of consignment sales. So it wasn’t just you selling to your neighbors. We had stands at Lund’s, and Southdale, and a bunch of stores. Now, what does this cost the retailer? Nothing. You take 50 records, you put them on display, and then you owe me for what’s gone. It was great. What happened to our income that year? It skyrocketed. You get recognized if you pack in performance. So, now, I was sponsored and endorsed by the choirmaster. He thinks I’m wonderful, he’s telling good stories about me, which is good, because on the flip side of all of this, I had some kind of bad things on my record, and I used to get into trouble and get into a lot of fights.

I’m a dyslectic chap; that was figured out when I was in the fourth grade. In the third grade, I had a teacher, Ms. Mains, who stuck me in the corner. So, much like, back here, we could take this poor gale, turn her around, make her face the wall, put a divider in front of her, give her a bunch of stuff to play with, and then we would have our class, while she’d be doing her own assignments back there. Was that a good thing? Well, I thought it was a good thing. I’m like, “Mom, I got my own desk.” And she said, “What do you mean you got your own desk?” I said, “Well, I sit in the corner, and I have my own desk.” Well, when she heard that she went ballistic. She marched right over to the school; she marched right into the classroom, took a look at what was going on in the corner, and said to the teacher, Ms. Mains, who everyone hated, and said, “How dare you put my son in the corner! I’m talking to the principle.” So she pounded on the desk. Do you get action in life if you take responsibility, or if your parents do? So, fortunately, they recognized my problem, they got me out of there, I went to a special school. I’m one of those special school kids. And I was cool then, because a Yellow Taxicab picked me up everyday. Later on, I became a Yellow Taxi driver because of that.

But I went to this special school and they actually conquered my learning disability, and taught me to read and write and do things. So, here I am with a college degree. It’s a miracle, it really is. In grade school what would happen is we would do stuff on the board and the kids would tease me. So don’t be teasing me about my board work, ok? I might punch you. What happens when kids tease you about stuff? I was big, I was bigger… And after I was held back, I was even bigger yet than all the other kids. I got in lots of fights. I used to beat the ship out of kids. I had a reputation for being a bad mean-ass. I was one of those who would walk around school going, “We be bad… Don’t mess with Mitchell.” My kids love to hear that story and they love to laugh at it. They don’t think it’s true, but it really is. But once you pound a few kids, you kind of get a reputation, and that’s how it goes.

Well, when they send you to the special school, it’s kind of like prison. Now, you’ve got all the bad kids from every Minneapolis public school and you put them in one playground, what happens in that first couple of weeks of school? You duke it out, you look to see what’s the pecking order. It’s just like prison. Who’s in charge here? Well, I found myself in the midst of some pretty tough kids. And, fortunately, I could run fast, and I had a few fights, but I tried to avoid them as much as possible. Actually, when recess time came, I found a way to do a project inside the building as often as I could, because what was going on in the playground was kind of scary. Even though they had like 10 adults out there, you could get absolutely beaten up in like 3 seconds, while two other kids were shielding the supervisor. That’s how it was. Well, anyway, they mainlined me back into my normal class group, except I was one year, now, behind. So my best friend in the whole world were the Hirsh’s, and Jack and Bill Hirsh, they were brothers, and I was in the younger brother’s class now. I started off with the older brother, and he graduated in the class of 67. By the way, their dad went on to become a big shot at deluxe check, and that’s whom I used as a personal reference for many years. Ultimately, his last job title was vice president of personnel for Deluxe Check. That is a big and very successful company. Is that nice to have as a personal reference? You bet.

Anyway, we get back into the fifth grade where I had this teacher named Ms. Parish. And, by the way, at that point, I thought about becoming a teacher, because she was a wonderful teacher. And I thought this was a good thing to do with your life. She wasn’t as good as she was good looking. I mean, she was just gorgeous, beautiful dark hair, a southern gale, talked with a southern accent. And I would melt in the classroom. She would say, “Rusty, are you ok?” And I’d go, “Yes, Ms. Parish…” I so did not want to disappoint her that I was like the best kid ever. She couldn’t believe it, because when she saw my file, she must have thought about the tough time she was going to have with me. But I was just so good.

Anyway, I did learn some things and I moved forward and went into the sixth grade. I had another good teacher, there, Ms. Ripley, who really prepared me to go on to junior high. And Minneapolis Southwest was a junior high/senior high combined. By the way, what happens when you leave grade school and move on to junior high? It’s a whole other bunch of fights again, right? Because your reputation from grade school goes with you, and so now all of the tough kids have to fight it out. And fortunately it was a combined school, so there was only one fight. There was only one set of fights, if you will, in the seventh grade, and then it was done. I hung with the tough kids. Later on, I was glad that I left that crowd, because most of them are now dead. I was glad that I had a friend who got me out of that group.

So getting an A in choir was a big deal. Getting an A in choir really helped my GPA. I ended up at Minneapolis Southwest with a 2.85 GPA. Nothing to brag about, right? But it was critical, because in 1968 what was going on?

[The war]

The Vietnam War… And what happened if you didn’t have a 2.5 grade point average? You went to Vietnam, yeah…. You had to have a 2.5 GPA to get into Mankato State or any of the other state schools, and more for the private schools and the U of M. So if you didn’t have a good GPA, you went to Vietnam. One of the reasons they had so many drug problems in Vietnam is because they had all of these affected dropouts there, people who weren’t very well educated. Now, I would not have done well in Vietnam, ok. Imagine this dyslectic kid in boot camp, “Ok, Mitchell, it’s right-left, right-left, turn…” Well, do you think I could have done that? When they are doing the rifle thing and going, “No, Rusty, you use your right hand to hold, and….” You know, my coordination skills were not that good. I would have been in trouble. Friends of mine, whom went to Vietnam, said, “No, no, no, Mitchell, you would have died. Not because of the enemy, but because of your buddies, because you’re a loud son of a bitch. And they would have killed you; they would have put a bullet in your head, because you would have given the position away.” So I got teased this morning by one of my daughter’s friends who’s in an English class in 201, she heard me the other day and said that she heard half of my lecture, Rusty. So I’m still a loud sob. But they would have been going, “Incoming!” And I would have been going “What, where man? Fireworks? Cool…” I wouldn’t have done well in Vietnam. So I’m here today partly to tell you that it pays to do well in school. Thank you Gary for inspiring me to turn my grades around; thank you Oscar Dolly for giving me that chance.

I took stage crew classes, which later on helped me at Mankato. And I turned my act around, and I got my grades squared away, and I did well when I entered Mankato.

While I was at Mankato, I chose an econ core and social studies major. The concentration was secondary education, and so I would have a degree and be able to teach at a high school level. And that turned out to be a pretty good program. My brother-in-law, Gary, had been involved in a program down there, where he lived in the old president’s mansion. It was really a cool house, right off the old campus downtown, which now houses senior citizens and some of my retired faculty live in that complex. But it was a big mansion that had been abandoned. They fixed it up for foreign students. Because if you’re a foreign student coming to Mankato State, at Christmas break, Thanksgiving, and Easter, you had nowhere to go. And the dorms are closed, because they do maintenance during those times. So the dorms were closed; they literally kicked them out. Well, they didn’t want to go to a hotel, so they put them up in this property. And, so for a number of Easters, Thanksgivings, and Christmases, that’s where we would go. And we would sit at this huge table with 48…at one point there were 48 foreign students plus my family at this table. It was the most incredible international and cultural experience ever. And, then, we would sit and talk until 3 in the morning. No one wanted to go to bed, because my dad was a very stimulating person, and so was Gary. These students died for any chance to have conversational stuff and to learn about how the real business world works. So I had some very good experiences in Mankato. And I felt at home there; I felt comfortable. My brother-in-law, by the way, wrote his masters thesis on my father’s business and industry. That was kind of interesting. I should bring that in some day or put it in the archives.

I did well at Mankato; I took all those teacher prep classes, but my brother-in-law also said to take every business class that you can. So my first quarter at Mankato State, I took 17 credits. And they would council you to take only 15, but I took 17, I had a full load. And I ended up, that first quarter, with a 3.85 GPA. I took intro to business in a theater full of people and got an A. “I can do this!” I said. And I just continued to do it. I wasn’t going to let them wash me out. That worked out pretty good. I didn’t know it at the time how valuable that minor in business would be, but it was that minor in business that later on got me into the U of M. It also helped me in my dad’s business. And I had no intention of going into his business, but it helped. So sometimes getting more than one degree can pay off. And I never officially completed that minor. I was like one or two courses short. But I was able to pick those courses up at the U of M quite quickly and then move that forward.

I did my student teaching at George Washington High School in St. Paul. I was very naïve at the time. I wanted to change the ghetto. I wanted to go in and help inner city schools. And at that time, right off of Rice Street, George Washington was one of those schools. It was a combination of the Rice Street Gang, if you will, the brewery worker kids from Hamm’s, and the black neighborhood. So it was a hot school. I remember one day the assistant principle…I’m looking out the window going, “What is Mr. Funk doing out there?” He was taking a gun out of a kid’s hand, a loaded gun. He walked up to him and said, “I know you and I know your mom and dad; this isn’t the right thing to be doing; you’re going to give me the gun.” And he was so positive and supportive; he told the kid that we’re going to take care of this, don’t worry about it. But he grabbed the gun. I mean, he could have easily died. And I said, “That’s the bravest thing I have ever seen…” And he says, “No, you have to do that kind of thing when you’re in this neighborhood. What would happen if that gun was in school and one of these kids got hurt? What would happen if that kid had used that gun on himself? I had to take it away from him.” It really was an eye-opener. But I really found out that I was really naïve. It’s nice to have big thoughts and big plans, but my changing how the inner city worked…well, that probably wasn’t going to happen.

In 1972, all of those people trying to stay out of Vietnam went to college. What did they choose? They chose education, because it was an easy major, and it was; I have to admit that it was. So in 1972 I found myself struggling looking for a job. Now, had Mankato sold me a bill of goods? Yeah, and you have to be aware of this. You have to do your own research; you have to see what the job market really is on the outside. But when I asked the counseling office, “Am I going to get a teaching job?” They said, “Don’t worry about it. Everyone who completes their student teaching and gets a passing grade and a good reference, we place in a teaching job. We’ve never had one student yet that we didn’t place. If your teachers are saying, privately, this student should not teach then we can’t help you. But if you come away with a positive recommendation and if you have gone through the coursework, we have always placed every single one.” Which was indeed true. But did they know that there was this big bubble of people and not enough jobs? Of course they knew. Did they tell anyone? No, and I think that was unethical for them to do that.

So in 1972, here I am with a degree and I had applied for a job, and I would call up at the personnel office at the district and ask, “How many people are applying for this job in social studies?” And they would say, “Oh, about 68 people…” And I would ask, “What’s the likelihood of my getting that job? Especially being that it’s my first year and I don’t have any experience?” Well, it was pretty slim. I applied for jobs in Alaska; I applied for jobs on the Indian reservation, we looked at joining the Peace Corps. We came this close to going to Africa—this close—we got our shots and everything. All we had to do was to actually show up at the camp, where they did the language and the culture training. And, by the way, to do our paper work, we had to go through the protesting that was going on at the federal building. And people threw crap at me saying, “Traitor, you flipping traitor!” They didn’t have a clue as to why I was going in there or what I was doing. But they must have thought that I was going in to sign up for the military or something. That whole period was very real for me.

I was there, at Mankato, when we had war protests. I was a disk jockey for the radio station, which was one of the things I did for fun, and I got to hold the microphone for Jane Fonda when she gave one of her most memorable speeches. Now, that was an experience. I was about six feet from her. But that was an exciting time. Back to the teaching thing…we applied, my wife had gone to the U of M, and she had gotten her degree in elementary education. She had a kindergarten endorsement and a science minor. And I kept teasing her saying, “You know, there aren’t any kindergarten science teachers. What’s the deal?” Well, she ended up landing a job with the St. Paul School System when they launched a magnet school, a center for excellence in environmental and science education. The first one was the Chelsea Elementary School then it moved to Webster where it still is today. But she got locked into a job; she had the right credentials and I share that with you, because having that extra piece is critical, which I didn’t have. People would interview me and say, “Wow, you’re really going to be a great teacher. Can you coach?” And I’d say, “No, I’m not qualified; I didn’t take any of the coaching certification stuff… I can coach downhill skiing, do you have a ski team?” And they’d say, “No…” Edina had a team, but they couldn’t hire me because I wasn’t certified as a downhill instructor or downhill coach. It was tough… They asked me if I could do driver’s ed. I mean, you could see that these guys were reaching to figure out a way to give me a job, right. And I said, “Well, I can’t do drivers education.” And they asked, “Well, what can you do?” And I said, “Well, I can direct a choir…” And they said, “Well, we already have a choir director.” Then I said, “I could be in charge of the stage crew…” Anyway, the bottom line is that I could not get a teaching job. That was the first time in my life that I could not get a job.

Before that, I had created jobs and had been able to start my own businesses. I never had a problem making money. I worked for Jewel T when I was in college. But I always had jobs. It was a real eye opener for me. So that next year, when my wife worked for St. Paul, I did substitute teaching for Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Edina. And I did these 3 districts thinking that if I worked for three separate districts, at least one of those sub dispatchers would become my friend and I’d get some work. It turns out that all 3 of them became my friends and I got a lot of work. By the way, is that a good introduction to becoming a teacher? How many of you were piss poor and nasty to subs? Yeah, a few of you… It’s not a good thing. I had a history teach at Mankato, professor Damiglio, who cared enough about me and my career to actually invite me to his home to have dinner with his family, they had 13 kids. Nine of those were his and four were his wife’s. They had met as professors at the college. Anyway, he had told me, “You are going to be a good teacher.” By the way, he was also the one who said to tell your whole life story the first day of class to every class, because you have a disability and you need to share that. So, if you have a disability of any kind, come talk to me; come to my office. I appreciate that, and we can get you help; we can get you into the learning lab, and we can get you the right facilities that you need. I had a study _____ only assigned to graduate students at Mankato, because I couldn’t study in the dorm. I only read 10 pages an hour. Fortunately my comprehension was good. But I needed that. I said to every professor, “If you cannot read my work, I will read it to you, because you can’t judge me on my writing, reading, and spelling. This is a college class, you have to judge me on what I know.” I knew the material, and that really was critical. Well, anyway, he knew that I would be a good teacher. And he said, “Do not take a sub assignment. Hold out for a real job.” He knew that it would be a bad experience for me. When you’re a sub teacher, you see every burnt out teacher in the system. Who calls in for the most sub days? The people who hate their students, they hate teaching. They were brought into the system, early on, for benefits, and now they are locked into that, and they can’t leave. It’s like I can’t leave. I wanted to leave this year, but they won’t let me leave. Rusty, you have to stay until retirement. Plus, if you leave early, you get less in your retirement. So you’re locked in.

So I saw some of the worst teachers. I saw teachers who said, “I don’t care what you do with those little flak-offs.” And I said, “What? These are beautiful people…” But they would say, “No, they’re assholes!” So all of a sudden I started to realize that high school was like prison. It’s like that school that I was in earlier, you know. You’re forced to be in there. But I had some bad experiences. Fortunately, I would tell students, if there wasn’t a lesson plan, history lessons. Even though it was a girl’s gymnastics class, we would do history lessons. And I would talk to them about the Russian, German, and Japanese educational systems, and how lucky they were. And I enjoyed it. Whether I helped anyone along the way, I don’t have a clue. But I did make some money.

I worked that year in the Edina Towers as a caretaker, an assistant caretaker. Now, I had watched the building go up. My wife and I had driven by there, because it was right on the way from my home to get to Mankato, right by Fairview Southdale, it was an 18 story high rise. As I saw it go up I thought that they are going to need someone to help care for that property. And thought that I could sell myself a job there. And I had wanted to buy a snowplow and do snow plowing. And I thought Edina would be a good place to do snow plowing. I started a company called Rusty’s Service Company. It was my first real company. Previous to that I had owned a snow blower and had done snow blowing jobs and whatnot. So I still had the snow blower that I could throw into the back of the truck. I could start cars in the Southdale parking lot, because if I had an apartment overlooking the Southdale lot, I could see who had their hoods up, then I could rush over there, before they even called AAA, and start their car. It had an indoor heated garage, so I could keep the battery pack, which was a wooden box with 3 batteries in it, in my apartment, and then I would run down, put it in my warm truck, and I would start cars. By the way, you can make $25 to $100 for each car start. One lady paid me $100 and gave me a $100 tip. She had one of those pink Cadillac. What do you think she sold?

{Mary Kay}

Right, but she was so thrilled that I had arrived there immediately, she was wearing a pink fur coat, and I said, “It’s going to cost $100 to start your car.” She gave me another $100 bill as a tip and said, “I have a meeting with 38 of my subs, and I have to be there. You saved my but. Thank you.” And she gave me her card and said, “Here’s if your wife ever wants to sell Mary Kay.” But anyway, that was my business exposure.

I sold myself on that job. I told the guy, You know, my dad and I snuck in here when it was under construction, and he had some questions. The first thing he noticed was that there was only one electrical meter for the whole building. So each apartment would be rented with utilities included. So if I get a free apartment I also get free utilities. The only thing I had to pay for was my phone. So that little thought was lodged in my head for about a year or two. My dad noticed that there was no equipment up on the roof to clean the windows. The building was 18 stories, and he said that these people are not going to wash their windows. We went down to one of the apartments and noticed that these were track windows. They were huge; they were like 6 feet panels that were 4 feet wide. So you’d get an 8-foot panel, with the two panels, with a beautiful view of Edina or whatever. He said that these people will not want to wash their own windows. So I came in and I said, “I’ll bet that people are bitching about the windows…” And the gale said, “How do you know that?” And I said, “Well, my dad and I snuck in and he kind of mentioned that.” And she said, “I’m going to introduce you to the manager. He’ll be really impressed, because we’ve been looking for somebody to wash these windows. Our maintenance guy won’t do it, because it’s not in his union contract, and he’s got a bad back. These things weigh a ton.” And I said, “I would love to do that. I have a company card that I will give you, Rusty’s Service Company, I will clean windows in your building and I will do it dirt cheep.” Because I knew that I would get extra work from these people after cleaning their windows, right? They would have me do other odd jobs. So, I said, “All I’m asking for is a free apartment. I want to have an indoor parking garage for my car and my wife’s car…” I knew they had an excess of parking, “I want to have privileges to use the guest room for whenever I have guests come from out of town, as long as you don’t have it booked out. If you do have it booked out then, of course, I will back out. Or, if my guest is there, and you have a need for it, I will back out. But if it’s open, I want to be able to swim in the pool, use the whirlpool and all that stuff.” And they were like, “Well, yeah, ok. But what we really need, though, is part time security guy, because our maintenance guy is also our security guy. And he lives in the building, but he needs a break now and then. He and his wife need to go on vacation. Would you be willing to fill in on a Friday or a Saturday or while they are on vacation?” And I said, “Well, absolutely.” And she said, “Are you qualified to do that?” And I said, “Well, I could pass any security clearance. I’m as squeaky clean as they come. Talk to my pastor at church; talk to my choir director. I was in the church choir and the Southwest High School choir. Here’s the director of Deluxe Check personnel, he’ll tell you I’m good.” So they hired me. The bottom line is, what did that do for my equity? I didn’t pay any rent for that first year that my wife and I were married. By the way, we took money that we were going to spend on rent and bought a honeymoon trip to Europe. In 1968 I left Southwest High School and instead of taking my money for college, I took that money and went to Europe. I took a whole summer and I rode the Eurail Pass. I think that one summer’s trip was worth two years of college education. By the way, I was going to go with a friend but at the last minute he backed out, so I went alone. It was a great maturing experience.

But what happened to our equity during that year? My wife is making her teaching salary; her benefits are paid through group health… What are we doing? We’re putting every penny in the bank—every single penny. Any money I made from my service firm went into the bank… And, yeah, I had to make payments on my truck; but before that year was over did I have that truck paid for? You bet I did. I owned that truck free and clear. I took out a loan, but I was able to pay that loan off ahead! Is that critical, to pay things off ahead? Absolutely. By the way, that establishes what? Good credit. Thank you, brother-in-law, Gary who helped steer me in the right direction. By the way, I didn’t make any money in the snow plowing business. Every penny I made plowing snow, went to the Dodge garage, because I couldn’t fix anything. I asked my friend, who was making a fortune, the Konke brothers, how do you make so much money? He plowed the Southdale lot. He said that one brother does the landscaping, one brother does the snowplowing, and one brother does the maintenance of everything, the three brothers. That’s how they do it. They don’t pay union rates at the Dodge garage, because snowplowing is really hard on vehicles. By the way, I did have one mishap. I was plowing a guy’s driveway, and the neighbor shows up. Well, he wasn’t there a minute ago; where did he come from? It was 4 in the morning. No one is supposed to come home at 4 in the morning! He had probably been out drinking right…I don’t know, but his car was parked kind of cockeyed, so that’s what it might have been. But I had this Lavern steel bumper on the back, nice square steel bumper. I just creased and poked out his little keyhole in the back of his Cadillac. It was so clean there wasn’t even a crease in the sheet metal. But that little thing was in there, and I’m going, “Oh, shit, I’ve got to fish that out…” So I rang the doorbell and I gave them my business card, and we exchanged insurance information. What do you think my insurance company said the minute they found out I was doing commercial work? You don’t have commercial insurance. What do you think happened to the rate? It went way up, particularly being that I was now telling my agent about an accident, which I didn’t claim. I mean, I paid the man out of pocket. By the way, it cost $468 to replace that little piece. That’s a lot of snowplowed driveways, right that went down the tube that morning, and simply because I wasn’t looking in the rear view mirror for anyone.

{How did you end up cleaning those windows…I was just curious…18 stories, how did you do it?}

You take the windows, which are like many of the modern windows in homes today, it’s on a sliding track, and you push it up and pull it in. Then you drop it down to the floor. And then you clean both sides and you put it back in.

{Oh, you cleaned inside and out.}

Yes, inside and out. People had no way to clean… People could clean their own windows on the inside, particularly if they had maids…and many of them had cleaning services. Those cleaning service people would not take that window apart. For one thing, they didn’t know how it worked, and they were too heavy. It was an engineering design flaw that my dad had recognized.

{They didn’t have pressure washers at the time?}

You can use a pressure washer 18 stories high. And management said that it was right in your contract that you were responsible for window cleaning inside and out. Most people didn’t think about it when they signed the contract. But they had a lot of bitching about that. So I was an angel when I showed up.

By the way, partly why I tell that story is it is not necessarily what you know but who you know. While I was cleaning this guy’s window, I’m looking around going, “Hey, there’s a bunch of broadcast trophies all over this guys apartment.” Anyway, this was one of the richest radio guys in the state.

{Why did he live in an apartment?}

He lived in an apartment, because all he did was run his business. He didn’t have time for a home. And his wife, by the way, was at all the fancy functions. She gave away more money than I’ll ever make in my life. But Edina Towers was a crème de la crème address and it still is. The guy who started Burnet Realty lived there. And I asked him the same thing, “What the hell are you renting for? You’re teaching people that they have to own a home and not to piss money down the rat hole of rent. What are you doing here?” And he says, “I run my business. I don’t have time to maintain a home.” He says, “If this had been a condo, I would have bought it. But it wasn’t, and I liked the address.” By the way, later on, he became a client, and I sold him a lot of ad specialties for real estate people. My brother-in-law was in real estate; I learned about real estate, and liked what I had to say. But I wouldn’t have had an entry into his office unless he knew me, right? “Oh, you’re the window guy! Oh yeah, the battery thing. And didn’t you get shut down, because you didn’t have the right permit?” Well, that’s right. Because at the time people were over charging cars, because they had these big electronic chargers that are pull start, and they would fry electronic systems. So you would pull in with your Cadillac and $3,000 of computer stuff would go haywire. So they had to implement a permit…. Well, I wasn’t going to pay that. So I quit doing that at some point. But I would tell people that I didn’t have a permit, but if you want me to do it, you can slip $100 in my glove box while I’m not looking, and I’ll do it as a good neighbor thing for you. It was kind of unofficial where I never got any receipts or anything.

While I was there, I met this guy; and his name was Harold Writenburg. Harold Writenburg was a wonderful man. He owned a company called La Bell’s…has anybody ever heard of La Bell’s? I’m dating myself. Actually, he had relatives that were in the fur business, but La Bell’s was like a catalog display room, and they had retail show rooms, and they had stores that were as big as K Mart stores. They had like 8 of them around the Twin Cities. But, mainly, they were a phone solicitation, like Fingerhut, and catalog business. And, later on, he and I did some business, and I learned some things about one of our suppliers, Cross Pen, from him. But he had a kid that…I think he was divorced at the time or separated from his wife. So the kid would come every now and then, and he would ask me if I would play pool with the kid, or teach him how swim, or whatever. So, I would spend time with his kid, and he and I got to be pretty good friends. Later on, that gave me a client, when I ended up in the ad business that I could go see, and he’d go “Are you struggling, Mitchell? Are you kind of struggling, here?” And I’d go, “Sir, I hate to admit it, but I haven’t written an order in 3 weeks.” And he’d go, “Well…ok, we might be able to do something, here.” It was a sympathy kind of thing, you know. But do people do business with people that they like? Yeah.

So, sometimes it’s the experiences that you set yourself up with, later on, will have ways of paying off. And that’s why I want to explain all of that. After a year of doing that, and I didn’t make much money…my wife was making more money that next year. My dad approached me and said, “Will you go into the ad specialty business. I think you’re kind of wasting your talents here.” And I said, “Dad, I really didn’t want to go into your business. I know I sold some stuff for you for a couple of summers. I could do it, but…” Then he said, “I’ll tell you what, I’ll put you on a draw; I’ll give you $250 a week; you have to earn commissions against that…” And he said, “When it’s all done, if you owe me money, I might be able to forgive some of that dept if you should happen to bomb.” But he said, “In the meantime, you’ll be able to have some respect with your wife and earn almost as much money, and pay the bills and all of that stuff; and you’ll be able to get out of that Edina Towers thing.” And I said, “But I don’t know that I want to get out of that Edina Towers thing…”

But one day my wife came home with my Mustang, I had a 1965 Mustang that I had gotten when I was in high school, and I took it to fill it up with gas, and you could see through the floorboards. So it was getting dangerous. I mean, it was getting to the point where she could have an accident, or she might even catch her foot trying to accelerate or something. And I said, “We have to get rid of this car.” So we talked a little bit about the drive. She had to drive from Edina to St. Paul everyday. Well, she would come home on some days like a zombie. She’d be sitting there, and I would go, “Are you ok?” And she’d go, “I had a bad day, Rusty, I have 36 kids in my class, and these are cute little kids, but…” So imagine how draining that is to teach the first grade and kindergarten. Well, anyway, she would get in that car, and she would turn on the radio station, and she would go into automatic pilot until she would pull into that heated garage at the Edina Towers. She would walk into the elevator, walk up, put her briefcase down, sit down on the sofa, and just stare at the wall. And I’m like, “You know, there’s something wrong, here…” And one day, she admitted that she was afraid, because she would drive all the way from St. Paul to home and not remember anything. And I’d say, “Well, don’t you remember turning? How did you get on to the cross-town? Did you get off on France, did you get off on Penn, or did you get off on Xerxes?” And she had no clue. Is that scary?

She had to get up early…well, I had to get up early. So she got up with me, and she was off to school. So I said, “No, we’re moving to St. Paul.” So we moved into an apartment in St. Paul called the La Blanc Apartments. Does anyone live there or know that? It’s in between Western and Rice and Larpenture. So it’s kind of a…

{That’s a bad neighborhood…}

Yeah, I called it ghetto zone C. And I don’t want to get into trouble or have anyone be mad or upset with me, but ghetto zone A, in those days, was considered Dale and Selby area, right by the capital and all of that. Ghetto zone B was that same corridor heading north where the railroad tracks are. And then ghetto zone C was from the railroad tracks up to Larpenter. And then past Larpenter, it’s suburb, right, where it was pretty nice. But it’s kind of an industrial area. That’s where Hart Ski Headquarters used to be. But it was kind of a tough place. It was pretty close to where I did my student teaching, and I knew some people there.

Well, anyway, we moved in there. And she had a friend who lived there, and her friend’s husband and I hit it off pretty well. We had become pretty good friends. He had worked for Robert Paul…he still does, we should go and check with Robert Paul and see if he still works there.

[Isn’t that an employment firm?]

No, Robert Paul TV… There might be an employment firm.

[Oh, ok, right across the street from that strip mall on Larpenter.]

They have a pretty nice store, where he was working as the manager. Anyway, he was working in the store that was on University and Snelling. And, so, I was into advertising and sales, and we had something in common, and we could talk. So, we thought, we’ll move in there. It was a bad experience. It got me out of my neighborhood. And we joked about being in the hood, with your homies. But when I left the Minneapolis Southwest area, I was like a duck out of water. Remember when Jessie got into big trouble? He talked about St. Paul and how all the streets were mixed up and you don’t know where you’re going… Well, that’s how I felt. And Jessie went to Roosevelt and he felt kind of the same. Minneapolis is nice, neat, and well organized, but St. Paul is kind of a mess. But I was a cab driver in Minneapolis, so I knew, well, except for the presidents, that’s the only thing that’s complicated in Minneapolis, up in the Northeast. But, remember, I was a history guy, so I know all the presidents. So I never got lost. But St. Paul is like, the east side, the west side… How come South St. Paul is here and West St. Paul is here, and it was a problem.

I got depressed…I truly became depressed. My dad said, “Oh, we’re going to have the St. Paul office of Mitchell Advertising Inc…” A dream he had had for many years. He took out an ad in the St. Paul Yellow Pages, just a little one with my name and phone number was listed there. I had two lines coming into the apartment. And so, it was a big deal now. By the way, he had made president of Mitchell Advertising when I was in college, as a way of transferring ownership of the business. So there was nowhere for me to go, right? There was no ladder to climb other than my having to sell, right? So he said, “I’ll turn over the Hamm’s account to you.” And I’m like, “Well, gee, dad, thanks a lot, but they’re not buying can openers anymore.” My dad had a line of bottle openers, and he made a ton of money calling on all the breweries. I grew up in breweries. That’s why I want to go to Summit for one of the club meetings. I used to hang out in the parking lot at Grain Belt and then I would go on the tours, and my dad would come back and wonder where I was. I used to leave a note on the steering column saying, “Dad, there were a bunch of people, so I followed them. I think it’s a tour…” What was I hoping for? Free beer, right… I was hoping they wouldn’t card me.

Anyway, I said, “But dad, we now have pop-tops, and they don’t need to buy bottle openers anymore…” So it’s kind of bad timing, right? And he said, “Well, I knew that, that’s one of the reasons why I’m turning over the account. But they’ve got this new guy, a college graduate, and he and I can’t talk for shit! And I’m not getting any business, so let’s see if you can turn it around.” So I went and talked to the guy, and we kind of hit it off. And I thought, “Wow, I’ve got the Hamm’s beer account…” By the way, they were a big brewery back then; they were one of America’s smaller big breweries back then. The only other account that I landed was Joe’s Sporting Goods. And Joe’s is still a good success story of mine. I sold him hanger grip ski boot carriers and some pens and some other things. But one of my students, a guy by the name of Jim Rouser…has anyone in here worked for Joe’s? You’ve been to Joe’s… He just opened a new store. I can’t wait to get some video footage of that as a success story. But Jim Rouser was in my class just like you guys are. And we get to this part of the story and he goes, “That was my dad!” And then I say, “Your dad saved my life!” He would give me an order when I couldn’t get any.

Well, it turns out that I went to the wrong school. Did I go to St. Thomas? No. Everyone in St. Paul went to what? St. Thomas. There’s a brotherhood in St. Paul. People don’t know about it, but it is true, there is a brotherhood. And many of them went to St. Thomas Academy and then went to St. Thomas and… Some of them went to the U of M, but how many went to Mankato? Well, my roommate was a St. Paul guy from Mankato. I went to Dale and I said, “Dale, I really need an order. My mom and dad are calling me everyday going, ‘did you sell something today?’ And sooner or later, I have to say yes.” And he said, “Well, I’ll give you an order.” And I said, “Well, can you give me an order two or three times a year?” And he says, “Well, maybe once a year…” He bought 100 pens…big flipping deal. I wanted to say that to him, but I had to be nice, because when you’re in sales, you have to be nice. I’m like, “Dale, can’t you see that it says: minimum order 250?” He goes, “Yeah, but my old man will only pop for 100 pens. And I told him that you’d give us the 250 price at 100.” Well, there goes half my commission, so… But I did get an order. And went on to say, “But I know you need some business, so go and see my buddy across the street. He’s a banker.” So I went to see that guy. And that guy gave me a bunch of business over time. Because every time I would go to see Dale, and then Dale and I would just sit and have coffee. Sometimes I was there with the other Maytag guys for hours. You know how they show them in the commercials, they don’t do anything, and they’d just sit around and drink coffee. Well, I used to sit with them and drink coffee. It’s true, they don’t do anything, but, hopefully, they had a few installations from time to time.

But anyway, the bank business picked up a little bit. Joe’s had given me some business, but St. Paul was a horrible experience for me. At the time, Hamm’s had made a commitment, a decision. And it was a bad marketing decision. They decided that they were going to have the Grizzly Adams/grizzly bear look. And if you go back through their old packaging, you’ll see some of this stuff. It’s pretty classic. How many of you have seen the repeats of the Grizzly Adams TV show. There was a grizzly Adams guy who had a trained bear and he lived in the woods and went on adventures and whatnot. He was a neat guy—a big guy! And he had a full beard and he had this bear. Well, they decided that this would be a great image. The first Hamm’s bear was a cartoon character, right? “\From the land of sky-blue waters…\waters…\comes the…\” They had a great slogan created by Calvin Mathoon. The Calvin Mathoon people gave them this cartoon character for about $100,000. So they owned it all of these years, and basically for free, because it paid for itself the first month, didn’t it. Now, they’ve got this guy, and he’s a personal guy, and he can go to the sportsman’s show, and he could do some stuff that the Hamm’s cartoon couldn’t. But he required a paycheck didn’t he. He signed a great contract. He had a really good agent. And the contract said, “You will pay me for every likeness and reproduction of my image.” Something my daughter would sign in a modeling contract, right? If she were ever to appear on TV, I would make sure that that was included in her contract. It’s like the Target kid…man, has he done well. We watched him, by the way, from when he didn’t have any work to now, where you can’t book him. He does really well; the kid with the big glasses that’s been on some of these Target commercials.

Anyway, this Hamm’s bear guy had a great contract. He talked them into putting him on TV commercials, and they would pay him. That was fine. Then he talked them into doing cardboard cutouts in the liquor stores. Well, that was fine, right? It was related to the TV commercial. Then he talked them into putting his likeness onto the bear bottle and beer can. And Hamm’s went away from years of tradition. So, now, people didn’t know the bear in the store when they saw it in the case. But this was stupid; it really was stupid. But this guy made a fortune. Then he talked them into being on the six-pack, the twelve packs, and the twenty-four packs. So everything that came out of Hamm’s had his likeness, including all of the ad specialty items, which were virtually none, because they were spending all their money on this guy’s salary, right? So how much business was I getting? None. I made very little. We did a few things, but, really, very little. My dad used to write 2 or 3 thousand dollars per month out of that account. Of course, a lot of that were bottle openers, which they’re not doing now.

So, what’s this big account that I’m getting? It’s really nothing. By the way, Hamm’s, later on, went into the toilet. Olympia Brewery bought it…well, actually Hugh Blight bought it first, and they were a liquor company. They didn’t know anything about the brewery business. They were going to use the brewery to produce beer/pop liquor/pop, of which several are now famous like the clear Zimma, the clear malt beverage. There are several of those on the market now. So they were just a little bit ahead of their time. And they invested all of this money, but didn’t see any profit from it. Well, then it was sold to Olympia. Well, Hamm’s had their brewing water, but Olympia had their brewing water. So what’s the deal? People saw that as phony, because now it’s brewed in St. Paul. And we actually have the best brewing water in the world. Did you know that? It’s ancient water that was laid down before the time of the dinosaurs. It comes from a very deep artesian well. It is prehistoric water that we use for Summit Brewing, Schmidt Brewing. Actually this aquifer runs from about Grain Belt, which was my dad’s biggest single account, all the way down to La Cross, where there’s a huge…

[Is that the Prairie Dushane aquifer?]

It’s something like that. One of my friends, who’s into the water studies, explained it to me. It’s pretty cool. But, anyway, that whole thing bombed. Here I am not getting much business; I’m getting pretty depressed by now. I hate St. Paul…

When you get on a downward spiral, it’s pretty scary, isn’t it? Because one negative thing seems to lead to another. Now my mom is calling me on the phone and saying, “Hi, Rusty, how are you doing. Are you having a good day? I’m glad I caught you at home.” And I’d be going, “Yeah, mom, I was out this morning…” Well, I lied. And you feel so bad when you lie to your mom. And I know you might all think that’s funny. But I was brought up to respect my parents and… So, she would say, “Oh, you were out this morning…” And I would say, “Yeah, I was out this morning…” Well, I would get up with my wife, send her off to school, then I’d go run and come back and go to bed, where I would sleep till noon or one, or whatever. Then I would go out and make a few calls.

I was driving my dad’s old car. It was this huge big, old Pontiac. It had 426 cubic inches. He always bought the dealer’s demo cars, the one’s that were loaded with everything on them. But he was a big guy, so the seat was all sunken in… When I got it, it had 220,000 miles on it. Because when you’re in sales, you crank-out a lot of miles. But, anyway, I had this crappy, old, beat up, car. It looked good; it had power windows and all of that, but it was eating me alive with the poor gas mileage. By the way, by then, gas prices had gone through the roof. And I’m not making any money. Actually, I’m spending more money than I’m making. I had one account in St. Paul, a banker who always wanted me to take him to strip clubs. And then I would feel bad, because I went to a strip club that day. And my wife would ask, “Well, what did you do today?” And I’d go, “Well, nothing…I took a client to lunch.” And she would ask, “Oh, what was that all about?” And I’d say, “Oh, we just went to some place on University.” I couldn’t tell her about it. And, of course, did he ever buy one thing? He never bought one thing. He was just stringing me along, he was just using me. Pretty soon, I learned my dad’s rule was right: you only do breakfast meetings, because breakfast only costs you a couple of bucks, right? You never do lunch. And you certainly never do dinner unless it’s a really good account. Then it’s justified. And you only do it after you’ve gotten the business, right?

Anyway, I was depressed. I got up one morning, and there was a bum lying next to my car. And he was passed out. Now, at this time, I’m doing ski patrol down at Welsh, right? So I know that I have to take care of this poor person. But I have an appointment in Minneapolis, which is a long drive, with one of my high school buddy’s dad, who finally agreed to see me. And I’m like, shit, buddy, I have to get out of there, you know—wake up! But he wouldn’t move. So I rolled him over and I found that it was soaked from a broken bottle of wine. So he’s soaked from wine and he’s vomited all over himself. And I’m like, “Oh, come on…I’ve got to see a guy today. Now I have to go and wash my hands!” But I finally got him rolled over a bit. And I had to go. By the way, he had chosen my car, because it was warm. I had come in very late the previous night; I had been with some friends of mine at the Classic Car in St. Louis Park, which was a long drive from St. Paul. And that car, with it’s huge engine was warm. Some snow had been coming down, and he saw that there was some melting going on on the hood. So he took some cardboard and he kind of enclosed himself around the front tire. If I had not seen him…If he hadn’t been sober enough to be on the driver’s side, I would have backed out of there and I would have killed him. I would have crushed his head. That car had tires this wide, and I would have driven right over his head, because his head was right under the tire.

Anyway, I rolled him over; and then it dawned on me that he was now on the wrong side of my neighbor’s car. And so I had to write a note stating that “there is a bum on the passenger’s side. Call the cops; don’t drive away, you might hurt him.” And this guy was a medical rep; he sold toothbrushes and called on dentists and whatnot. He was a neat guy. Anyway, I left a note for him, and he was grateful, because he came about 20 minutes later. Anyway, he called the apartment manager, and they dragged the guy away, and no one was hurt.

As I’m driving away, I’m thinking, “I’ve got to get out of this rat hole. I am in a bad neighborhood; this is a bad place…” I’m depressed, I’m lying to my mom, I’m sleeping all day… I’ve got to get back into the real world. So I told my wife we should start looking. Well, she didn’t want to go back, she didn’t want a long drive. She wanted to look for something on Summit to fix up, like some old house, and rent out the rooms. But at least we started looking, and that made me feel a little better. Until, about two weeks later, I was running early that morning, and I ran by this guy’s apartment, and all of a sudden, this other guy comes out, with a sawed-off shotgun, backwards. He was going, “Mother funk, mother funk, mother funk!” And I turned around, and I knew this guy, because I had seen him around a number of mornings. He was an albino Native American. He had white hair and pink eyes. He was a very unique looking individual. So I kind of new what was going on there, and I was between this guy and his car, right? And he’s got this shot gun. So, all of a sudden, I’m like…I get behind this tree in my little running suit and my Nike shoes. And I’m just kind of hanging there by the tree. And no shots were fired; the guy got into his car and he sped off. But I thought, “Oh, my God, my neighborhood drug-deal gone bad… This is not where I need to be…” So we had to get the heck out of there.

So, I realized that I really hit the bottom, there. And my sales weren’t there, and whatnot. At that point, things started to turn around, and we got back on to an upward spiral…well, maybe and maybe not.

The neighbor next door to my mom and dad had gotten to know me while I was painting the house before I went to Europe. So one of the ways I paid for my trip to Europe with my wife, just before the wedding, was to paint my dad’s house. He went out and got 3 bids, and he said to me, “I will give you the dollar amount of the highest bid, if you paint the house.” And I said, “Wow, great!” And he had a 3-story house; it was right off the street, which actually made it a 4-story house with the basement. And it was a high roof with some peaks that over looked Lake Harriet Park. It was a beautiful home. It was a big home, a duplex, with my dad’s office in the basement. So there were a lot of windows to paint, and I said, “Yeah, I’ll do it.” But he paid me something like $3,000 to paint the house. Anyway, while I was painting the back side of the house, this little old lady, whom my dad literally hated, and she hated my dad as well, would come out and talk to me. She was this little Italian lady who came on the ship with the steamer trunk, probably sailed just before or after the Titanic. They established themselves in America; her husband had a wrot iron business and they did decorative ironwork. But she was lonely, and she would come out and chat with me while I was painting. And she thought that I was the nicest boy. Now, you have to remember, I had beautiful, flaming, gorgeous red hair back then. And back then, it was kind of long, and kind of hip looking. It wasn’t too long to offend my customers…I had a nice, tight, little beard. But I was a pretty good-looking guy back then. I don’t know what happened over the years, but…. Anyway, she liked me and she talked to me. She hated my dad, and she blamed my dad for every stick that ended up in her yard, because the tree that bordered our property was ¾ on our lot. It was one of those trees that had actually grown through. And any stick that ended up in her yard was our fault. So she would pick up the sticks from her yard, curse in Italian, and I don’t know what she was saying, and throw the sticks back into our yard. And then if she ever saw my dad, she would point at him, because it was his entire fault.

But anyway, she had told her daughter that if anything should happen to her, that she wanted me to have the first chance to buy this house. Now, you’re a realtor, so you sell it to him with a good commission, but you give Rusty the first chance to buy it. So all of a sudden we’re looking at houses on Summit, and all of a sudden I get this call and it’s this lady. And she says, “Do you remember me?” And I said, “Yeah, your mom lived next door, etc.” Then she said that her mom had passed away. And I said, “Wow, I’m really sorry to hear that…” And she said, “Well, she wanted you to have that house.” And I said, “Well, I can’t afford that house…” She said, “No, we only want $50,000, and that’s not a lot. You know that house is worth more than that.” And I said, “Well, it’s not like my dad’s house…” And she goes, “Yeah, your dad’s house is a lot nicer, but it gets $100 a month rent from upstairs.” And I’m like, “Oh, so it’s an income property… Maybe we should talk.” So my dad said, “I’ll be partners with you at 60/40; I’ll own 60 percent, and I’ll get the rental income from upstairs, and you can get the rental income from your basement office. You move back here, and then you will have the whole basement to work out of. You can print some stuff…” I was printing t-shirts back then. So that’s what we did. And we moved out of the La Blanc Apartments, which I called the La Blah Apartments. They were all white. It was a French Colonial. If you’ve ever seen the building, it’s probably still all white. It had white carpet, white walls, white sinks, white appliances, and white cabinets, white cupboards—everything was white. It was horrible. You can imagine why I was depressed, right. And we had orange furniture that we had painted with some cheep paint. But it was a two bedroom apartment, and I did have my little office.

One of the windows faced the railroad tracks. And the trains would come; and at a certain point, they would turn just enough to shine their bright lights into our bedroom. So ultimately I had a relative of mine who lived in Las Vegas. And I said, you work nights and sleep days…how do you do it? And she said, “Tinfoil, that’s how you do it.” So we foiled the window, and that would help to keep the light out, anyway. I had duct taped the tinfoil to the window. But then I couldn’t see out of the window, and it was like a tomb. But those guys would come by and they would do the horn. Has anyone ever been awoken by a train horn at 4 in the morning? One night I came home, I was probably too wasted to drive, and that was a stupid decision…but I had a few drinks with my friends in Minneapolis, and I had driven back. And I’m sure that just hit the bed and passed out. But forty minutes later, because I looked at the time I had went to bed that morning, this train comes by and does the horn and woke me up. I literally started right out of bed—I mean, I jumped right out of bed. Maybe I thought the train was coming through the window. I think they used to go by and get their kicks out of waking people up. I realize there might have been a dog on the track or bums, but there weren’t any intersections in that whole area. So there seemed to be no reason for that train to do its horn other than to be mean. So I was glad to leave.

Once I got back into the neighborhood, what happened? I was calling on friends, I’m seeing people in Edina; I’m back seeing the guy from Burnet Realty, who I got to know at the Edina Towers. I go to the Edina Towers office manager and say, “Whom can I call on? Give me one name—give me two names!” Well, would she give me leads? Yeah, and I’d call them up and say, “So and so gave me your name and phone number; and you used to live at the Edina Towers, and I was the property caretaker and manager there…” And then we’d talk about the building and whatnot. “Well, I’m selling ad specialties, and…” Anyway, that would give me an in, it would give me a chance to walk in the door.

We’re almost out of time, aren’t we? So, anyway, things got better… That was about my second year with the ad specialty business. So let’s remember where we’re at with the story, because I want to finish it on Wednesday. On Wednesday we’ll continue about the good years of making money with Mitchell Advertising.