In couples terms, Don and Pat Hall were the American Dream. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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, <\/p>\n\n\n\n
They had three kids – Jan (of whom more later), Jerri and Roger. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
…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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As I used to say, to the delight of my classmates and the consternation of my teachers, he “sold drugs”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
More on them later. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[454],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-wandering-line"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85768"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86177,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85768\/revisions\/86177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}