April 26, eighty-five years ago, was a lovely spring Saturday: fresh breeze, sunny skies, temps in the low seventies. South Minneapolis was alive with shoppers on errands, bed sheets dancing from backyard clotheslines, streetcars racing by with open windows, baseball in the park, jump rope on the sidewalk, and the promise of possibility filling the air.

My grandparents were married on this day. I found this marriage license application listing in the Minneapolis Morning Tribune from April 20, 1941:

While searching for a wedding announcement that I never found, I came across this rental listing from March 27, 1941, for the address listed for Grandpa:

The 1941 city directory also lists Grandpa at this address. I don’t know if they lived here together, but I can definitely picture the newlyweds in the modernized upper duplex south of Lake Street, with a private entrance and a gas stove. Was this the place where Grandma struggled to perfect her pie crust? Grandma told me that when they were first married, Grandpa would tackle her pie with a knife and fork, all the while exclaiming how delicious it was. She knew it was tough and almost inedible. But then she discovered lard and flaky pie crust would become one of her signature items.

Everything changed later in the year when the US entered WWII after the December 7th attack on Pearl Harbor. Grandpa wanted to enlist, but the Army didn’t want him, and by 1942, Grandma and Grandpa were living with her family at 1329 E. 22nd St. Grandma and Grandpa would move about fifteen times in the next twenty years. Still, their home was always the place for holiday gatherings and where family came when they needed a place to stay.

Today I think about my grandparents on their special April day eighty-five years ago.