I bought that Steinbeck book just before our trip last Summer to the Black Hills. It was one of several I meant to read as we traveled but didn’t get round to it. It was wonderful family trip and Claudia and I were reminded of it again when we read One Summer America 1927 by Bill Bryson. Calvin Coolidge took the White House with him that summer and roughed it in the Black Hills announcing that he would not run for reelection.
He’d spent the following summer, his last as President, fishing the Brule River and making Superior High School his HQs. By the way, did I ever tell you a junior high school kid threw me over his shoulders at that old building when I was substitute teaching?
Ah, by I digress. This post was meant to be about Charles Bell at least in passing.
Charlie Bell was a decent guy maybe a little too decent for politics. He ran twice for Mayor and making the mistake (in my humble opinion) of not dirtying himself first by becoming a City Councilor to get the hang of politics.
Politics isn’t for dilettantes. Its a tough business. Reading through my email makes that clear. People have problems and politicians are supposed to solve them even when they are insoluble like a chunk of plastic in water.
In 1999 Charlie was the leader in rallying voters to pass a $19 million referendum to rebuild Denfeld’s PSS Public School Stadium and fix up the now Red Plan demolished Ordean Stadium. We’re still paying the bonds of on that BTW. It was a pretty easy sell and may have given Charlie a little too much confidence to run for Mayor a short time later.
Charlie was no stranger to politics or the Duluth Schools. His Dad was a Duluth School Board member representing Bayview Heights. I’ve forgotten exactly what happened but he had a falling out with other Board members and they decided to get rid of him by giving his slice of Duluth to the Proctor School System. Ever since then Bayview Heights children have been part of the Proctor Schools. Their parents vote in Duluth municipal elections and Proctor School Board elections. Would that I could get them back. Instead Proctor now sends busses into Duluth to relieve us of our excess children.
I guess its a good thing they can take our overflow because the brilliant planners and demographers of the Red Plan have given us brand spanking new schools that will be overcrowded in three years.
Charles Bell was in the Funeral Business when I first came to town. He and his brother sold their interests to a national franchise chain many years ago and Charlie branched out in other directions. Charlie learned to be caring and solicitous dealing with people in deep grief in the family business.
I had two brushes with the mortuary business outside of funerals as a kid. I took a mini class in college that dealt with dying and death and we visited a mortuary in Mankato which at the time had one customer laying at rest. A little later in my college career my fraternity had a get together with a sorority from nearby Gustavus Adolphus College. I ended up meeting the President of a now defunct sorority nicknamed the Fleas.
She had a wonderful and peppy personality and I asked her out on a date. Her Father was a mortician and she was studying mortuary science in preparation to join him in business. Having grown up in the family business she was quite comfortable with her plans, enthusiastic even. I wish I could say that it was the twelve mile distance between our campuses that kept me from asking her out on a second date but I don’t think that was the case.
