Our house at 711 Parkway Drive. St. Paul MN

 

and then in 1944 HOME OWNERSHIP

and the move to 711 Parkway Drive, source: 1944 St. Paul City Directory

  

 







My best friend was Robin Prigge.  He lived directly across the street.  We spent much of our time together either playing at his house or mine.  There was a vacant lot near his house with a tree where we had a tree house.  It also had a dump where we often found old medicine bottles.  His father was William and he was a book-keeper at a printing business.  His mother was Emma, and he had a younger brother Roger, who didn't play with us, but made it into some of the photos.

 

Emma Prigge with her boys Robin and Roger



Robin was about 10 months older and a better climber and a little faster.  One of the stories, I still enjoy telling, was the rare day I won a race from the front walk to the back door.  The only problem was that I  slammed so hard into the cement blocks next to the back door that I broke my arm.  I spent the next month, or so, in one of those big plaster casts with the cloth sling, that was either an emblem of courage or stupidity. 

 

One of my other memories of the house has to do with the day I got stuck up in a fork of the large pine that still graces that front yard.  It was either the Fire Department or the Power and Light Co. that was called to extricate me. Even after we ,moved out of the neighborhood Robin and I would often get together on Saturdays. We took turns biking to one or the other's house and then spent the day roaming the neighborhood, often checking out Como Park which was new to both of us. The route we took was via a winding and hilly Wheelock Parkway, a little over 3 miles. Sometimes I could make it up the Wheelock hill, sometimes I couldn't but since we road alone he never saw me walking. My bike was a black Monarch with saddle bags. His, as I remember was a Schwinn.

 

Gradually we lost touch with each other as he made other friends and I made friends in my new neighborhood. Looking through Ancestry I discovered that Emma gave birth to another son, Mark Emmett Prigge  in 1947. 

 Robin went to High School at Concordia Academy on Syndicate and then on to College at Augustana in Minneapolis.  He must have been quite the hockey player as he shows up on both those school's teams.  

Robin Prigge class picture

Robin married Kathleen Lois Carlston in 1962.  Their last listed residence is in Lino Lakes, Minnesota

His parents have both passed on and are buried in Elmhurst Cemetery not far from the house that we moved to on Parkview Ave. 

 " The Photographs are like diaries and scrap-books I've kept since childhood. I'm trying with the camera to hold on and to understand my own feelings and experiences. But the photographs are also a way of looking outside myself to see how other people face the losses of everyday, ordinary life." Charles Hagen quoting photographer Margaret Sartor in the Fall 1996 issue of Doubletake.