1939: Walter McHugh sold his restaurant at 29 Depot St. E. to Frank Trappani in May 1939. Trappani’s beer license was taken away in July 1939 for selling to minors, and the FBI and the Secret Service also investigated him. He had a suspicious-looking fire in August, and he sold the building to the Askeroth brothers in October 1939 before skipping town. He was later charged and jailed for counterfeiting.
1941: One morning, in May 1941, three men walked into the Bye-Way bar at the junction of highways 12 and 22. Waitress Beatrice Sweeney had just opened the doors for the day’s business. The men told Beatrice that they were from the sheriff’s office and were there to confiscate the three slot machines that Alden Bye had in the place. Slots had been outlawed at the time in Meeker County. The men calmly picked the slots up, heavily full of money, and carried them out to their truck, where two more men sat waiting. Thinking this all looked very suspicious, Beatrice called Meeker County Sheriff Albert Earley to confirm the confiscation, which he didn’t. Earley tracked the five men down and arrested them in Willmar. Of course, Alden got fined anyway and lost his three slot machines.
1943-1946: In May 1943, my neighbor Pete Lindberg, who had a well drilling business in the Forties and Fifties, was working on a well pit for the Farmer’s Produce. There was an accident and Pete lost most of his thumb. Two of his other fingers were crushed. Despite this handicap, Pete could still play his fiddle, and play it quite well. He had a little group called the Old-Time Fiddlers and they would practice in Pete’s porch while neighbor kids like me stood on his lawn and watched. In May 1944, the Youth Center, which had been in Watson Hall (above the old Coast To Coast store at 221 N. Sibley) was moved to the old fire hall on Second St. W. Ed and Ray McGraw bought the building but not the business from Kenneth C. Watson in May 1944. In May 1946, H. J. Roy added The Igloo to his bakery’s basement at 307 N. Sibley. He sold ice cream sundaes and cones down there and advertised that he had 40 different ice cream dishes. Harold Harding bought the building at 24 Second St. W. in May 1946 for his Harding Quality Dry Cleaners to share the building with Ed “Eeks” Nelson, who had moved his sign painting shop into the rear in 1945.
In the mid-1940s, there was a spot in the alley in front of the old county jail and behind Janousek’s restaurant that kept sinking, causing a dip in the road. The city crew kept filling it in with more dirt, making the alley very uneven. Finally in May 1949, they decided to have a road grader level off the uneven alley. When the grader got to the place where the ground kept sinking, it uncovered a grave marker or headstone. On it was simply the name “Nisse” and the dates “1825 – 1889”. (It probably was Carl Nisse, born in Germany on Oct. 16, 1825, and died in McLeod County on Dec. 31, 1889.) Was this the only tombstone? Had there been a graveyard at this location at one time? The city crew never bothered to find out, leaving well enough alone. It was probably a discarded marker from the marble works that William Grono Jr. owned in the area in the late 1800s.
1950-1952: President Harry S. Truman, probably asleep, sped through town at 2 in the morning in his train car on the way east to Minneapolis on May 14, 1950. In May 1952, Sylvester “Spotty” Loehr’s A&W drive-in was moved out on east Highway 12, about where Taco John’s is today. Pioneer lumberman Hugo Esbjornsson had a grand house at 703 Sibley Av. S., which he built in 1880. In 1954, he sold it to the First Evangelical Lutheran Church. They wanted it for a building site for their present church. Hugo had a certain period of time to move the house off the property. As the deadline approached, and Hugo hadn’t done anything, he was given some warnings. Suddenly, in the wee morning hours of May 27, 1955, the house mysteriously caught on fire. After investigation, Hugo was arrested for arson. Somehow, he got out of it, but the insurance company wouldn’t pay him for the house.
