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A Boys Story - The Adventures of Charles Kent: Back Home

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               A lot had changed over the summer while I was gone. Colleen had gotten a part-time job at the Riverview Roller Rink on North Avenue on the east end of the viaduct. I had gone with her a few times earlier with her friends to watch them skate on the big wooden floor. There was a powerful pipe organ that was played while everyone skates and guards to see that everyone went with the flow and followed the rules. The announcer would call …"couples skate" … “all skate” … “Ladies skate” … “everyone skate slow”. Sometimes they would open up the sides of the building and music would pour out across the Milwaukee River.             Here is where Colleen met Bill, he was an assistant manager at the East movie theatre on the corner next to the streetcar terminal on Murray.             My parents still weren’t too happy with me after the bang sticks in Sparta so I tried extra hard to stay out of trouble. I told my dad that sometimes I got bored, so my parents bought me s
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A Boys Story - The Adventures of Charles Kent: PortageTrip

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One summer my parents arranged for me to visit grandma Arn in Portage for the whole summer including Fourth of July and the Columbia County fair. I got to ride the Hiawatha train too, JOY!  Hiawatha Train 1940's I was very excited my heart nearly busted with happiness. I could see my grandmother, my aunts, my uncles and lotsa cousins … it was going to be a swell summer. About a week after school was out for the summer, it was time to catch the Milwaukee Road Hiawatha. I had told my Friends that I was taking the trip and promised to send them penny postcards. My uncle, Howard Heberlein was called, "Spider". He was a conductor on the Hiawatha and dad and I watched for him as the huge light gray, orange and black slipped past us steaming into the depot with head lights flashing as the huge iron wheels, taller than a man, slow down and stopped. Uncle spider was a tall man with a great smile and friendly laugh. He was hanging out of the first passenger car swinging on a bar an
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