Chuck Dowdle tells Crookston's history from a firsthand perspective
Jun. 22—CROOKSTON, Minn. — Chuck Dowdle has close to 100 stories from his childhood in Crookston to tell, including ones about rats, a rampaging elephant and a visit from Santa. Though he lives in California now, he still thinks of his youth in the small Minnesota town.
It's a childhood he said differs from the kinds modern children experience.
"You can think of today," he said. "How many kids could write 70 firsthand experiences that they were either an eyewitness to or they were involved in?"
The stories aren't just stored away in his memory, but on paper, too. Dowdle wrote more than 70 articles about his youth for the Crookston Daily Times over the course of a year and a half, until he ran out of things to write about, he said. He now sells them packaged together as a book, titled "Remembering Crookston: A Minnesota Memoir," which he sells online.
Dowdle sent the first story to the Times to see what would happen, which led to the newspaper publishing it and asking for more. He wrote the first segment sometime after 1988, when he retired and was living in Santa Rosa, California. He now resides in Cambria, California.
Two of his more popular stories, he said, are "Rats!" and "Santa's Matinee." "Rats!" follows his first Saturday working at Duval's Meat Market in 1938, when he was 10. He came with his boss to the dump to throw out the entrails from the market, which were met with a swarm of rats.
"It was feeding time, and the RATS knew it," he wrote. "They must have scented the guts because they moved in a frenzied, frantic, flowing brown blanket over the ground in our direction. I began getting goose bumps all over my body when Russ yelled, 'Let's feed them, Charlie, before they eat us alive!' I took him seriously and began helping him dump those barrels fast. The RATS ate ravenously! They seemed to bury themselves in the animal entrails."
His other popular story, "Santa's Matinee," is about a visit from Santa Claus to Crookston's show house, the Grand, where he handed out candy and treats to children following an afternoon of watching movies.
"The 1930s may have been filled with hard times for families, but you really had to hand it to Crookston's adults; they knew how to lift up the spirits of their children," Dowdle wrote.
Dowdle's other stories vary from upbeat to gloomy, including one about a circus he went to when he was 7 with his father. On June 6, 1935, an elephant charged into the tent, injuring and killing multiple people, including a child named Margaret Ann Francis. Dowdle said Francis' brother wrote to him, saying he hadn't known what really happened to his sister until he read the story.
"I thought, 'wow, that's something,'" Dowdle said.
To be able to provide a firsthand history of the time period in which he grew up pleases Dowdle. It's different from the straightforward facts of a history textbook.
"It's a pleasure to be able to do it," he said. "I've read history, but history is sort of dry as far as I'm concerned — a lot of times because you don't get the feeling of a person who has actually been there and done that."
Dowdle still writes, and has other published books. One is an educational book called "California Kids Can Read and Write! Student-Centered Reading and Writing Programs for All Ages," and the other, "Twin Lights," is an exploration by Dowdle on what might have happened if his premature twin sons had lived past infancy and been his only children. He is also writing a play called "Life Is a Meeting," which he said will be published in the summer.
At age 96, Dowdle said he's happy to have his mind intact to be able to still create.
"I'm just glad I still have my memory and still have my marbles and am able to think and remember and imagine and choose," he said.
