In couples terms, Don and Pat Hall were the American Dream.

Don was a kid from a fairly unsuccessful farm in Starkweather, North Dakota, who nonetheless had athletic talent to burn. He got a scholarship to come to Jamestown College, in Jamestown, where he lettered in Football, Basketball, Track and Baseball for all four years, setting some records that still stand at that school.

Pat Hendrickson was, if not the homecoming queen, the girl who got the queen through English class. The daughter of Sven Hendrickson (of which see earlier), a rural pharmacist, she came to Jamestown to major in English and become a teacher.

Don and Pat met at Jamestown College in, I think, 1931. And they were married until death, indeed, parted them temporarily, about seventy years later.

Both of them went on to teach; Pat taught English, Don covered Chemistry when he wasn’t coaching. And he was a superlative coach; he led Grand Forks Central through the only undefeated regular/post-season/championship march in the history of North Dakota high school basketball (until Jamestown pulled it off a few years ago), in (I think) 1940,

They had three kids – Jan (of whom more later), Jerri and Roger.

And then – sometime around 1952 or so – Don decided to chuck it all and become a businessman. He got a franchise for Lystads Pest Control – now a division of Ecolab – in Aberdeen, South Dakota. He packed up the family and moved…

…and spent a couple years crawling around under porches on hundred-degree days chasing colonies of wasps, and decided before long to take independence a different way.

As I used to say, to the delight of my classmates and the consternation of my teachers, he “sold drugs”.

Which was a breezy, sixth-grader’s way of saying he took his chemistry degree, and spent the next twenty-odd years of his career as a traveling pharmaceutical salesman.

I got to know Grandpa when he was at the top of his game – he had a pretty rocking route going on in the seventies.

He took me on his route once – a couple of days of driving from one small-town North Dakota drug store to another. Montpelior, Gackle, Wishek, Richardton, Medina, Glen Ullen, Dickinson, and a whole bunch I’m sure I can’t remember. He was on a first-name basis with all the pharmacists and owners.

It didn’t occur to me at the time that it was his third shot at a career. That didn’t really hit me until I was into my thirties, really.

Don and Grandma were married for close to seventy years before they passed away in Arizona, about a year apart, close to 20 years ago.

More on them later.