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| Emma Shaver good at bowling, bookkeeping and spelling |
By: MAGGIE LEE, Staff Writer
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Posted: Friday, July 10, 2009 9:00 pm
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A person about whom I have great memories is Emma Shaver. I can’t remember when or how I met her, but our friendship took some unusual turns.
I was never any good at bowling, but Emma was an enthusiastic bowler and kept it up until she was 88, the age I am now. I did try and it might be that we met when Emma and her husband were operating Vic’s Varsity Bowl and Emma started Coffee Leagues for women bowlers.
Emma, whose maiden name was Carlson, was born on Dec. 29, 1907, on the family farm in Todd County. She grew up in tough financial times and needed to work hard on the family farm. She therefore dropped out of the school (at Browerville) but she spent the rest of her life educating herself. She was better at spelling than most people and her grammar was excellent. She learned bookkeeping on the job as a young person.
On Dec. 2, 1936, she married Victor Shaver. They farmed near Mankato, later at Good Thunder and finally near St. Clair. It was in 1957 that they sold the farm and bought the bowling alley in Northfield. The business was at 115 W. Fifth St., which in 1965 became the home of the Northfield News.
Emma did not enjoy “retirement” and was easily persuaded to return to the building and become bookkeeper, proofreader and receptionist at the newspaper.
She was not happy about leaving Northfield, but in 1970 Vic wanted to move to St. Cloud to assist two of their sons who had started a glass company. Emma couldn’t find a job up there at first and was very unhappy with the inactivity.
All of a sudden I gave her something to do. Plans I had made to vacation in the Black Hills had fallen through and I asked Emma to go with me. Because of poor peripheral vision, I had given up driving by that time, but Emma was an excellent driver. Vic encouraged her to go, so off we went and we had a great time.
On our way to the Hills, I had made a motel reservation at a half-way point because it would be on a Friday night. But since we were to return at the middle of a week, I didn’t think a reservation would be necessary. What I didn’t realize was that it was harvest time in South Dakota and that there were huge threshing crews there from out of state. Every hotel and motel was full.
We kept driving until we were exhausted. We finally stopped at a motel that had a “no vacancy” sign out, but there was an attached restaurant and I thought someone on the staff might know about an obscure hotel. Well, they found us a tourist room in a private home.
It proved to be a tiny room, but we were thankful for it and slept soundly. Before we got to bed, the woman whose house we were in asked if we would like breakfast there. We said we were eager to get an early start, so could eat at that restaurant at the motel. She reminded us that all those harvest people would be eating there, so we said okay if we could eat at 7 a.m.
Well, it got to be ten minutes before 7 and I hadn’t heard any sound in the house. I thought the woman had overslept. But all of a sudden, she was at our door announcing that breakfast was on the table. And so it was — bacon and eggs, hot cereal, fruit, muffins, coffee. How on earth did she do that, we wanted to know. Well, for years she had operated that little restaurant by the motel.
I suggested some time on that trip that since Emma couldn’t find a job, maybe she could open a gift shop. Most everywhere could use another one of those, I thought. It was then that I learned something I had never suspected. Emma did not like knickknacks at all and would not enjoy doing such a thing. How could good friends be so different, I wondered. Way back then my cat figurine collection was about to knickknack me out of my home!
Emma did find work as a bookkeeper. Then during the summer of 1976 the couple’s children — one daughter and three sons — decided, for a variety of reasons, to stage a celebration of Emma and Vic’s 40th wedding anniversary during the summer rather than on the actual date in December. Many friends attended from the various places the Shavers had lived, bringing much happiness to the couple. The summer celebration proved to be a wonderful move as in November Vic began to feel ill and it was discovered that he was suffering from the advanced stages of cancer in the lungs and other organs. Although he had not felt ill, doctors told him that the cancers had obviously been developing for a year.
All of the children were home for Thanksgiving, finding Vic still very active. But the following week he became ill, entered the hospital in a forenoon and died the afternoon of the following day, Dec. 1, 1976 — the day before the actual wedding anniversary.
Emma continued to work until 1992. In 1995, she moved back to Northfield, residing at Parkview East. I remember that I was so delighted that she could attend my 80th birthday celebration in January of 2001 at the Northfield Historical Society. She was able to sit next to me and sometime during the afternoon, something funny happened and our picture was taken while I was laughing. That was the picture the News chose to print. I found out later from Emma’s daughter that Emma feared I would not like the picture because my mouth was open very, very wide. I told Allene, “My mouth is always open!”
The next September Emma moved to Three Links Care Center and she died on April 28, 2002, at the age of 94. The Shavers are buried in St. Cloud.
—Reach Maggie Lee at 645-1119. |
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