Hilda and the B.V.M.

Another flashback from my childhood...skip this entry if you prefer not to be dragged down memory lane again...

Here's what our house on Huron Avenue looks like now, in 2009. It's not much different in the front than it was in the 50's, but there is at least one addition to the back of the house. You can see that there is a dumpster in the driveway (this photo taken in June) so maybe there's another add-on in the works. I loved this house and can remember the interior floor plan and the 1950's decor in detail.

Hilda Fenstermacher lived in the house next door to us when I was a kid. Her last name is very German, but she was Norwegian (until she got married, apparently!).
She was a widow, the great aunt of some friends of mine, an absolutely sweet and kind woman, and a great neighbor.

Hilda didn't mind that the neighborhood kids wanted to play on her driveway day and night. Hers was concrete and most of us had gravel driveways, so she had the right surface for playing hopscotch and bouncing balls. I remember a lot about the inside of her house, too, especially the kitchen. Hilda loved kids. She had a special fondness for my little sister and always invited her in to help bake. Hilda made a mean gooseberry pie, scrumptious ginger cookies, and was the lefse champ of the neighborhood (don't tell Gladys Lundby!). I have a vivid memory of watching Hilda teach Mary Jo when to take lefse off the griddle so it was done to perfection.

Hilda's back yard should be made into a shrine. That's where my brother Mark and his friend Bobbi Esklund saw the Virgin Mary appear in the sky over a row of pine trees. Mark, being a good Catholic boy, knew the Virgin Mary did these things now and then to shake up the secular world. Bobbi was Lutheran so she didn't have to believe what she was seeing, and I don't if she did or not. I just wish Hilda had been looking out the window at the time to verify the miracle, although as a Protestant she could have denied the existence of the vision, too. As it stands, I have to take Mark's word for it.