We Remember Summers in St. Louis Park Artwork

Park Bench Perspectives

Park Bench Perspectives is a conversation-driven podcast about making sense of the world without pretending to have all the answers. Hosted by Carlos Figueroa and Michael Hammer, two childhood friends who grew up in St Louis Park, MN =.

Each episode feels like sitting down on a park bench—no scripts, no hot takes for the sake of it—just thoughtful discussion, honest questions, and a willingness to challenge assumptions.
It’s not about being right. It’s about thinking better.

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Park Bench Perspectives

We Remember Summers in St. Louis Park

May 19, 2026 • Carlos & Hammer • Season 1 • Episode 12

0:00 | 40:29

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St. Louis Park Summertime Perspectives (and the “Bare Ass Pool” Story)

Carlos Figueroa and Mike Hammer talk on Park Bench Perspectives about May leading into summer in St. Louis Park, recalling elementary track meets (relays, sack races), a tougher era of safety (asphalt playgrounds, no bike helmets, lawn jarts), and the start of summer baseball with Little League drafts, uniforms, opening day, and a memorable visit from a Japanese Little League team whose disciplined play and submarine pitching were intimidating. They reminisce about the last day of school paper-throwing chaos, summer park programs with the “green box” of games (four square, capture the flag, Knox hockey), neighborhood mischief, Cub Scout paper drives and liability fears, exploring marshland, and local traffic changes advocated by “Disco Dave Hammer.” They also cover the rec center pool, beaches and cabins, teen driving and partying stories, and invite listeners to share St. Louis Park trivia—jokingly titling the episode “Bare Ass Pool” after discussion of nude swim classes in earlier decades.

00:00 May Bench Banter
01:07 School Track Meet Memories
02:13 Dangerous Games and No Helmets
04:13 Little League Draft Days
05:32 Japanese Team Showdown
08:05 Last Day School Chaos
10:53 Summer Parks and Green Box
12:01 First Kisses and Window Breaking
14:44 Neighborhood Games and Lawsuits
16:49 Cub Scouts Paper Drive Hustle
19:16 Cub Scouts and Summers
19:28 Neighborhood Exploring Tales
20:19 Phone Book Anderson Joke
20:37 Hampshire Road Changes
22:02 Snowballs and Speeders
22:53 Highway Frogger Food Runs
23:43 Mark Globus Memories
25:09 Rec Center Pool Days
28:50 Beaches Falls and Cabins
30:01 Boy Scout Camp Mischief
31:06 Road Trips and Teen Years
33:24 Driving Drinking Concert Chaos
35:58 Podcast Wrap and Call In
37:44 Bare Ass Pool Trivia
39:10 Bench Season Goodbye

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SPEAKER_05 0:32

How are you doing, Mike Hammer? Carlos Figueroa, it's good to see you on the perspective bench again.

SPEAKER_04 0:40

It's Park Bench Perspectives. And we are, it is now May. Just after May Day, right? May. May. May-ish. It's somewhere in May. And what what May have summer? What come what May? Yeah. But when we really worried about when summer was coming was when we were in elementary school. Because this time of year, you know the number of days left of school is going down very much.

SPEAKER_05 1:09

Quit back a second. May I got short. It's not a October, November. Interesting. Yeah. It's just what we call this month. May.

unknown 1:19

Right.

SPEAKER_05 1:20

Got nothing else. We used them all up on the other months. May. It'll be May and go.

SPEAKER_04 1:24

One syllable, that's it. You know what? June, same thing.

SPEAKER_05 1:26

Yeah. But June is at least a different name because May is like, may I have summer? May I go to the park? But may I not go to school in the summer?

SPEAKER_04 1:38

So what there was something else that I don't know if it exists today that was huge for us that we would get right before we got let out for summer. And what was that, my camera?

SPEAKER_05 1:49

That was the track meet, the sports event, the and it still goes on. They are much more creative. They're much more. We did the 50-yard dash, the in in whatever clothes we were wearing to school.

SPEAKER_04 2:00

We didn't have the three-legged hop. I don't remember that. I remember relay races and jumps and jump potato sack jumping race.

SPEAKER_05 2:09

That was true. We listen to the common man. He brings it up all the time. Potato sack racing where you had to put yourself in the potato sack.

SPEAKER_04 2:15

Okay, yeah, okay. That never happened in St. Louis Park when we were growing up.

SPEAKER_05 2:19

Yes, it did.

SPEAKER_04 2:20

No, it did not. Yes, it did. Where was I? Was I eating maybe I was eating the potatoes and then notice the sack. Are you seriously? So that was part of that. I remember the track meet. Really? Because I I remember I won a ribbon or two.

SPEAKER_05 2:34

Yeah. There was your second, third, and after that. Back in the day where you didn't get a participation ribbon, if you were in the top three, you get nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

SPEAKER_04 2:44

And too bad there wasn't javelin throwing that. Oh yeah, that's what we need. Javelin throwing. We can't even handle jarts. We're gonna give it a longer handle for a longer.

SPEAKER_05 2:53

How did that ever become really dangerous without the intent? Jar long jarts. It went through his chest, yeah. Doesn't it go up and come down at uh uh like a slow pitched softball? I threw it at him really hard.

SPEAKER_04 3:09

Oh, so have you ever touched your head? You know those little softbars?

SPEAKER_05 3:13

And so it wasn't the jarts that were dangerous, you just wanted to wipe that person out.

SPEAKER_04 3:18

Well, I I think the fact that jarts existed is a sign that physics education in the United States has failed us all. Because it was pretty obvious.

SPEAKER_05 3:29

Dodgeball was great. Yes, but nobody dies in dodging. No, no, no. There were some serious parts of your body can get hit and hurt really bad. Yeah. Face, other places. Yeah. That's why you gotta always hold the ball and use it defensively. Yes. Well, that's too what we talked about. The playgrounds were asphalt. The jungle gyms were on asphalt. Yes. All that was, you fell off, it's just robotcam with life.

SPEAKER_04 3:55

You know what? Mom will slap some cure chrome on that bad boy, and we'll just put straight mercury on it. That'll fix it. We didn't wear helmets with our bikes, and I have nothing against them out. No, no helmets, no lights. I was told not to fall down. Yeah. And if I do a tuck and roll, touch your head. Yeah, and once again, I am not saying that helmets are stupid. I'm saying we were stupid. Okay. So we didn't know any different, right? This is the world that we grew up in. Right, wrong, or indifferent. I still think it's funny that my ex-wife, ex-wife number two, for those keeping score at home, uh, was born actually in California. And after at two weeks, her parents moved back to Minnesota, and apparently she just lay right on the dash the whole trip.

SPEAKER_05 4:38

There are no seatbelts in the back seat. We're like, they're stuck, they're lost back there. Don't hit anything. Sit backwards in the station wagon looking out where you've been.

SPEAKER_04 4:47

But so summertime, obviously, it starts before school's out, but baseball. You get your start of baseball happening right before the end.

SPEAKER_05 4:55

The draft, there was the draft like in Little League and Cubball, you kind of this is your neighbor to play on the team, and your dad was coaching, this and that. But then little league, you get there's a draft, and I think it was fantasy football for the dads.

SPEAKER_04 5:09

I really think it was. I think it was fantasy for the sports for the dads. And then once again, there was to make it easier on parents, like if they were siblings, usually the siblings would end up on the same team, and it a coach and a son would end up together. And a lot of times people would want to get a coach because it's like, okay, oh, their kid's really good. We get the coach, we get the dad. I'm the only one where, oh, let's get the kid, and then we get the dad as the coach. Yeah, I was the opposite.

SPEAKER_05 5:37

Your dad was gracious enough to always pick me. Basically, he told me, I said, if I don't get him, I'm not coaching. Well, your son is Carlos, I don't care. I get him too, and shut up. He's hands off. But yeah, then we found out what team the team, and then you got your uniforms. Yep. And then opening day ceremonies.

SPEAKER_04 6:00

Opening day, all the games. Oh, yeah. That was that. Do you remember when the Japanese came? That was something else. I when I was cleaning out my dad's house.

SPEAKER_05 6:10

Not like to bomb us, but to play us some baseball.

SPEAKER_04 6:12

Yeah, yeah. I'm not talking wow, wow, wow. That was that was a slow one on that one, but boys, it was a nuclear bomb, if you will, that you dropped on that. No, the Japanese Little League team came to St. Louis Park to play a couple of teams, and I they played our All-Star team, I think, our 12-year-old Larstar team, and they gave gifts and they gave my dad a kimono, which I can tell you, having thrown it away into the dumpster when I cleaned out their house, was still in the original packaging. Uh, I don't have to have the visual image of a mom and dad getting their freak on in the kimono.

SPEAKER_05 6:46

I remember even the best of our players on that team, yeah, at the Craig Bright Race attack. Yeah, the really good hitters. Yeah, they were like, because they usually walked up and hit anything. I don't care. I'm good. They walk, I remember them coming back going, yeah, because they were throwing the submarine pitch. Yep. It started from the ground and went up, and it was like, and they the routine was like military.

SPEAKER_04 7:10

And it was Oh, and honestly, I've never seen anything as intimidating in my life as them doing infield practice. Yeah, they have four balls going, and then boom, boom. I will tell you, in that game, this is not a lie, I was two for two. Oh. I came very let's see the tape close to getting thrown out at first by the right fielder. Oh. But if you remember Park National Little League's major leagues, like from the fence to first base is not that freaking far.

SPEAKER_05 7:40

I coached because even like in Legion and Babe Ruth, I had a center fielder that played shallow, and he'd throw them out from center. Yeah. He just was just basically a gun ball out the middle, somebody runs slow. Because he thought they had a hit.

SPEAKER_04 7:54

Yeah, exactly. Yep, and it yeah, it happens all the time.

SPEAKER_05 7:56

They, yeah, they it's I guess they had to have a good routine because if we said, hey, let's go to Japan and play some ball, and they're like, what are you gonna do with special? Nothing. We're just gonna be us.

SPEAKER_04 8:09

We got our that opens up a whole lot of can of worms. I don't think we're gonna want to go, so I will just ignore that.

SPEAKER_05 8:14

Yeah, did you see? I still have my all-star shirt from Park National Little League.

SPEAKER_04 8:20

I have a photo of it, but I threw it in the dumpster. I I it doesn't fit anymore. I I had it. I took a photo of it, but ultimately I did not keep it. There's a lot of things I ended up tossing that I wish I'd have kept. I think I talked about my dad's fungo bat, but yeah, the fungo bat. Once again, it's summertime. School is over. What did we used to do after when the final bell rang?

SPEAKER_05 8:42

Oh, you ran out of class and they let you because now they would probably be like lawsuits. And you saved your paper for the last month. Yes. All the sheets of paper, the homework, and you threw them in class, you ran down the hall and threw them. It was paper everywhere. Yep, it was gas. And the janitors nobody cared.

unknown 9:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 9:01

It was kind of like better than littering outside. And I remember if you stuck around long enough, and I was right across the school, I'd go back, the big brooms, remember those broom doors six feet long? Yep.

SPEAKER_04 9:11

Janitors just doing the whole hallway.

SPEAKER_05 9:13

And and they were pushing it down, and then at one hallway in Elliott where the kind of went down to the dungeon. Yep, yep. They just pushed them all down there, and I was right by where the janitor's office was, and then I think they shoveled them up.

SPEAKER_04 9:24

I will tell you this: the reason the teachers didn't care having ex-wife number two was also a teacher, is because they're gonna get their drink on as fast as possible once you little bastards are out of the building. Because they need to drink. That actually would be if I did ever have a child, I would have gifted, I would have pre-gifted alcohol to the teacher in advance.

SPEAKER_05 9:43

Yeah, you when we grew up, parents were not encouraged to go to the school. Just leave your kid at the door and then pick them up afterward and let them get on the bus. Nowadays, that the school we get free work out of the parents.

SPEAKER_04 9:57

That stuff all happened after me, where they're like going, oh no, this is my schedule.

SPEAKER_05 10:01

It was funny because I work nights at the bar and I'd work nights, and so I'd be home during the day at 10 if I wasn't doing my second job. But I many times went and ate lunch with my kids at the table with other other kids, and just come in, sit around, and chit-chat. And it was funny, and I remember one time there's a guy named Carlos, and I thought it was another dad at the table. He was a sixth grader. You were a you were bigger than the kid most of our kids.

SPEAKER_04 10:29

I don't put this large of a large human being at a young age.

SPEAKER_05 10:34

And this one, and I looked at them like, oh, somebody else's dad, it turned around as a kid. And I'm like, wow, his back was like three feet across. But I went to school, and they didn't have a problem with me going there and eating lunch having fun and helping out.

SPEAKER_04 10:47

My dad tells a great story of the youngest Peterson brother. Was that David? Yes. Him at the my dad. I had moved on to Babe Ruth, but my dad continued to work with Park National Little League, and he says that draft he's at David Peterson and said, I'm you're with the nine-year-olds, you're not supposed to be here. And he goes, I am nine, and my dad goes, Oh my god. Yeah. Because my dad was looking up to him.

SPEAKER_05 11:08

They were a tall family.

SPEAKER_04 11:09

They came by it honestly.

SPEAKER_05 11:10

Mike, who was a year older than us, was the shortest of the bunch, and he was like 6'6. Exactly. But my David was my brother's age. Yeah, he was they were so let's go back. So what did we look forward to doing?

SPEAKER_04 11:23

Yeah, well, it would be A sleeping in a little bit, but I don't know that was that huge until I became a teenager. But I think just writing up. Sugar cereals. Sugar cereals, okay.

SPEAKER_05 11:35

Sugar smacks, sugar cracks.

SPEAKER_04 11:36

Sugar sets, sugar smacks, sugar comb puffs. Honeycomb hideout. I remember us. I remember playing baseball behind the water treatment facility there on Cedar Lake Road. I remember going down to the Lily Fields during the day and playing a pickup games there.

SPEAKER_05 11:53

Yeah, we touched it as much pitchers, and it was fun. We do it at Elliott, but one thing that happened pretty much a week after is the summer program. Yeah, the summer, yep, you were back to school, the parks, and they had a little green box. Yep. Knox hockey. Yes. Four squares. And you could take it home with you.

SPEAKER_04 12:10

You had to get on the list and it's a good thing. Yes, and then you could take it home with you in a knox hockey at home. It was the greatest thing ever.

SPEAKER_05 12:16

And for me, considering I was right across the street, that was a short walk.

SPEAKER_04 12:21

I'm trying to remember how old we were now. I'm gonna tell, I remember being at that St. Louis Park thing, right there at Elliott across the street, and you were there, and I was there. And I'm not gonna say the guy's name, but just so you know who it is, it's the guy who talked you into breaking all the windows at the school. Oh, yeah. He was talking about French kissing and describing what it was. And I don't know, I must have been 10 or 11, but I just sat there in awe of the entire concept and did not really believe that it people would do such a thing.

SPEAKER_05 12:53

Interesting. Yeah, I that girl's how old were you when you first kissed a girl? Third grade.

SPEAKER_04 13:03

Really? Yeah. Like kiss.

SPEAKER_05 13:07

I pack kiss, I don't know. You just kind of close your eyes, lean in.

SPEAKER_04 13:11

So you consider that your first kiss.

SPEAKER_05 13:13

The first kiss that wasn't going anywhere else with that kiss.

SPEAKER_04 13:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 13:17

The intentions of that kiss wasn't to go anywhere else.

SPEAKER_04 13:20

I mean, my my first kiss when I was when I was 13, and I may have had the desire, but at no I I would there was no planning. There was no, okay, now this base, let's go to the next base. There was not that level of strategy brought to the action by young Carlos at 13. Who had his first kiss too? How deep is your love by the Bee Gees. Shout out to Karen. Good song.

SPEAKER_05 13:40

Oh, I get it. But back to the windows. That wasn't a thing I looked forward to doing in the summer, but I was talking that those glass block windows that were at the lower level around the side, that they were replacing them. And they needed them to be broken anyhow. So you were helping. And I was helping, and we were throwing rocks, and we were breaking them pretty good. And I remember being in my yard where we golf from my front yard. Todd always brings this up. Trying to hit the window, the regular windows at the school, golfing from my front yard. Oh, we missed. Missed another one.

SPEAKER_04 14:18

Oh, I have visions of Animal House. Hooked it. Shit.

SPEAKER_05 14:22

Hooked it. Oh, funny.

unknown 14:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:24

Actually, we're gonna earn. I click the explicit label for every podcast just because I don't want to have to worry about if I swore and I'm not gonna edit it. But this is the first one I think that that deserves the explicit label.

SPEAKER_05 14:37

That was another thing growing up too. When you could say those words and get away with them. But okay, so the school activity thing going across the street. That was big. The big green box. And if you wanted to not play kickball or whatever, you could they had some arts and crafts. And they always had a guy and a girl from my cute, yes, you went every day. Yes. And if the guy was really cool, it was awesome. God, she's cute. But he's a but he's cool.

SPEAKER_04 15:06

I used to love playing that. Was it called Four Square? Four Square. I used to love Four Square, kickball. Eight Square, 16 square. When we do Capture the Flag. In that little that that section, if you think back, that was the very front, the very front facing Cedar Lake Road of Elliott, that little enclave, which I look at pictures now and go, there's no room there, but to me it was our capture the flag space.

SPEAKER_05 15:29

And there was a sunlight, and on each side there was bushes. You could hide the flag in the bushes. So it wasn't easy just to grab it. You had to figure out which bush it was in and then grab it.

SPEAKER_04 15:38

And yeah, that was the and we knew everybody, my cousins. The Garcias were there, the Cheetahs were there. God, what was the name of the kid? A Bobby who broke his leg on the drive. Bobby Decker. Bobby Decker lived right there. Bobby Decker, the healers, the Stone Kings. Yep. Steve someone we brought up before, Steve Fulkin. Falken. The Da Vinci Stolls. What was the name of the newspaper people? The uh the Knowles, the Butts.

SPEAKER_05 16:08

The Butts, there was a lot of them.

SPEAKER_04 16:09

Um, the Carpenters, the um, the uh Oh, uh Cecil Johnson was our neighbor, uh uh teacher at uh St. Louis Park High School. Yes, and then I remember my dad always thought that little Peter Rakovich was gonna turn out to be the biggest juvenile delinquent the world ever seen. But he was a great athlete, though. He was very athletic. And I only say this because he did a silly four-year-old child thing. My dad did not think the kid was a criminal. I'm totally joking. I'm glad he turned out to be the great athlete. And sorry I said that, I shouldn't have.

SPEAKER_05 16:39

No, but it was.

SPEAKER_04 16:40

He was a bit mischief. He was mischievous, like in a Dennis the Menace sort of way, not in a cruel way. Not in a Ted Bundy way, no.

SPEAKER_05 16:48

I remember though, that's the first time I ever really heard the term voyeur, because they had that front, the tree in the front yard that was a great climbing tree.

SPEAKER_04 16:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 16:57

And the dad wouldn't want us to go up there because of a lawsuit. Yeah, what's a lawsuit? And then they put an ice rink in the backyard. And it seemed big, yeah, but St. Louis Park backyards weren't that big, but he had wood around it and a light up there. But we all had to sign, have our parents sign waivers. And I was like, huh. And right next door, yeah, at the Wald's house, was the best house for kick the kick. And and their neighbors were older and they didn't like us running through the yards.

SPEAKER_04 17:20

My first lawyer's story, I'm gonna tell you real quick, because my dad, so I went to sign up for Cub Scouts. I don't know what we were maybe 10, 11 years old when we signed up for Cub Scouts.

SPEAKER_05 17:29

Earlier than that, because my other time you were Boy Scouts, but go ahead, seven, eight, and whatever.

SPEAKER_04 17:33

So we I go to Elliott, the library, they're gonna talk about Cub Scouts, and it they talk my dad into being the Scoutmaster to run the thing. And so one of the things that you did if you were a Cub Scout back in the day, is you would do a paper route or not a paper route, uh, a paper recycling. Paper drive. You would go collect all the paper and then semi, they drop it off at the school, yeah, and then you would collect all this paper from people long before recycling bins, and somehow Cub Scouts would make money from this. There's this kid named Bobby who broke his leg falling off the truck, right? And my dad, you know, they come talk to the powers that be come talk to my dad and go, we have insurance for this, but no, as the scoutmaster, you can be sued. And my dad, somehow that never got mentioned in the pep talk. So my dad goes to the family saying, I'm really sorry this happened. I've heard you can sue me. I don't know what to do. Or and they're like, Oh, we're not gonna sue you. Our kids are cluts. He breaks stuff all the time. Don't worry about that.

SPEAKER_05 18:35

Girl Scouts got to sell cookies, and we went pandering for paper. Pandering for paper.

SPEAKER_04 18:43

We had to sell, no, that was basketball. We had peanuts. Remember, we had to go pander.

SPEAKER_05 18:47

Yeah, we have all your paper.

SPEAKER_04 18:49

Almost like give us all your paper. So you say you see you're saying that they set the girls out of for victory.

SPEAKER_05 18:54

I think it's to sell cookies. Who doesn't like I think I'll have a cookie. When's the last time? Yeah, but who doesn't want to get rid of paper? I think I'm gonna go collect their paper. I think I'll have a cookie.

SPEAKER_04 19:02

There's a little bit of a different tone there, but here's the thing people don't realize. You kids today. Anybody our age does realize this. Do you know what generated a shit ton of paper? Those damn phone books they'd bring you every year.

SPEAKER_05 19:16

That's a lot of paper. A lot. Later on, here's the irony. Later on, at the up in high school and stuff, we deliver phone books to raise money. Yes. So we're like, okay, when you get a little older, you're gonna create the opportunity for the younger kids to collect those phone books and then make money on the backside. Yeah. You're like this genius. Somebody is thinking this through, somebody's getting rich, and it ain't me. Yeah. The phone books were you looking at that like Stanley Ja.

SPEAKER_04 19:44

And I honestly, and here's where my memory sucks, right? So I have no recollection. Was Cub Scouts year-round?

SPEAKER_05 19:52

I think they took the summers off because they're doing summer stuff. They coincided with Joy Cub Scouts, you had the meetings at school at the beginning.

SPEAKER_04 19:59

I have we've talked about it before, but one of the big things that I remember of my childhood is playing pickup football with you and Kenny and Doug and my cousin Nelson. So I remember that, and then going there. I have a memory that that there was a park at the end of my street, 18th Street, that kind of Hampshire goes down uh and then winds around as 18th Street, and it kind of does a U to Cedar Lake Road. It close to the where Elliot was would come down Hampshire where Mike was raised, and then the U would take you out near the railroad tracks.

SPEAKER_02 20:32

Yep, up by Dakota.

SPEAKER_04 20:36

But past that there's marshland, and there I felt like there was like an abandoned house and stuff that we just did a lot of ex it to me right now. I'm like there's not that much land there, but I also felt like we did lots of exploring back in there.

SPEAKER_05 20:49

Lots of exploring. Funny part about the phone book, though, real quick, Joe.

unknown 20:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 20:53

Stanley used to always, Stanley Garfinker used to always see. You know why there's so many Andersons in the phone book?

SPEAKER_04 21:00

Because Anderson. Why?

SPEAKER_05 21:03

Because they all have phones.

SPEAKER_04 21:04

Ah, but um boom.

SPEAKER_05 21:06

But that that going down there and behind the Lincoln dealership. Yes, there was just marshland and there was stuff to do.

SPEAKER_04 21:15

And now, Mike Hammer, let me ask you this question. See if you know the answer. Hampshire Avenue used to be able to go all the way to the service road at 394. What happened?

SPEAKER_05 21:27

Well, there was a stoplight that got across Highway 122 right there.

SPEAKER_04 21:32

Yeah. So some citizens. Disco Dave Hammer. Led by Merrill candidate Dave Hammer.

SPEAKER_05 21:40

Yeah, Dave Hammer that wanna do two things he did. One was he got the stoplights, the school lights, put in at Cedar Lake Road where they crossed there because he didn't want to have to carry the blood soaking body of the child.

SPEAKER_04 21:58

Oh, use that argument smart.

SPEAKER_05 22:00

Pretty good. I remember he seeing it and hearing that, and someone else brought up. So those school lights, just the red and yellow, stopped. And then because there were some bars down at the end of uh across that side of Highway 12 and on the other side, yeah, and people would shoot straight up ham. Yep. They would use it to cut through. And it was a thoroughfare.

SPEAKER_04 22:19

Yeah. And once again. He had kids and he didn't want any kids to get hit by cars.

SPEAKER_05 22:24

And I guess, and I didn't pay attention, but I guess enough cars went by fast because as you get older, you notice a car speeding down the street. You're like, oh, you're like the old man, you're running on your own. Or as Kenny's dad used to do it. This was classic. Kenny Benning lived right across the street from you and Ronnie. And he was a fair, but he was Grizzly Adams. He was fair, but he was like Intimidating. If you do something wrong, there's a consequence. And he would make some snowballs and put them up the step there. And if you came racing by, and I remember happening a couple times, threw a snowball at the car and the car stopped. And he was big at that time. He was 26 feet, 220, 240. Burly beard. And they would stop and they'd get out and he'd go down the stairs or down a sill, and they'd go, oh, and they jump back in their car. We're gone.

SPEAKER_04 23:12

We're gone. Oh my goodness. We could probably do an entire episode on Ron. Interesting cat. Interesting cat.

SPEAKER_05 23:19

He allowed us quick saying, Junior. What are you doing, Junior?

SPEAKER_04 23:24

So I recall you and I have talked about uh we would play a little bit of Frogger to get across the Highway 12 to get over to the Burger King.

SPEAKER_02 23:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:32

There used to be an Arthur Treacher's over there, but I don't think that was a big deal for us. I think Burger King was the go-to place.

SPEAKER_05 23:38

Anytime they and I do fish, yeah, but people that don't like fish say it smells fishy. Yeah. Do you ever go to Burger King and says it smells hamburger-y here? Smells like sticky. So I think we were kind of like the going to someplace to buy fish was like not worth it. And you could smell, there's a definite smell there. So we would the French fries were golden.

SPEAKER_04 24:04

Lupiant right across the street on Saturdays, on occasion, would have hot dogs and would always have popcorn. Go and pretend we're gonna look at shout out here to one of our classmates, Mark Globus, because I still remember, I remember the weirdest shit. I apologize, people, but I remember weird shit. When we were in second or first grade, Mark Globus to me was a TV star because he was on a commercial and it was like my grandma and grandpa bought a car at Anderson Cadillac, and they when yada yada yada, and there's little five or six-year-old Mark. And so I remember that famous TV, almost mare.

SPEAKER_05 24:42

I remember in fifth grade, and he just got contacts. I was in the bathtub when he was in there trying to put him up in the first day. Oh, and I'm looking at him and I'm going, and I'm like as much pain watching him going, you're gonna stick that in your eyes? Yeah, they told me this is what I was supposed to do. They showed me at the place, I'm like going, good looking.

SPEAKER_04 25:04

It's hard as hell, man. I contacts when you put in brand new contacts for the first several hours, it's amazing, but after that, it just sucks.

SPEAKER_05 25:13

Yeah, I did it only during the Halloween stores, and then they were bad contacts. So who knows what happened to the quality of the house.

SPEAKER_04 25:20

So we've established, Mike, that you are the more adventurous of us. So, what other things would you do in summer when you weren't with Weenie Carlos and you would I know that you used to ride the rails and you used to used to climb the railroad?

SPEAKER_05 25:34

We want to get you out of the house, stick our hand in the house because you're the first one with central air, and it was like, wow, it's cold in there. But the rec center. Yes, the rec center, that pool, they had a high, they had a diving pool, they had a oh, that was just when you could go from the regular, and that was a large pool. To me, it seemed like it was the size of a football field, but it was a big pool, and then the diving pool, when you could you A, when you could have the guts to go up on the high dive and jump off, and you couldn't stand there and think about it. No, because you had people waiting. There was 15 people behind you, and a lot of them are big, most of them are bigger than you, and then when you had the guts to dive off it, and I always had that fear, the edge of the pool, the far edge, yeah. I'm gonna hit I'm gonna hit that. And then you watch other people, you're not getting close. But remember the one thing that was always a pain every hour, they had a search for drowned people.

SPEAKER_02 26:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 26:25

Everybody out of the pool and searching, you're like, can how about do it once every few hours? And then in the meantime, say, everybody have the buddy system, keep an eye on exactly if you can't find if your buddies at the bottom of the pool for over a minute, raise your hand to cause a commotion.

SPEAKER_04 26:42

I would imagine, and here's uh one of these a thought that has didn't occur to me because I don't have kids. But I have to imagine a huge part of water parks is making sure that somebody doesn't run off with somebody's child.

SPEAKER_05 26:55

We never thought of it then, because nobody that was a possibility. And two, what was the other thing that you couldn't do at the pool? Pee. Half the pool people in the pool, P. But what did you get yelled at by the lifeguards a lot? No blanking. Splashing. No, you could splash. But when you weren't in the pool, you were on the deck.

SPEAKER_04 27:19

No diving. No running. No running.

SPEAKER_05 27:22

No running. And you see it anytime you see if you watch uh the sandlot or whatever, no running. No running. No running. No running. The whistle will go, no, and I'm like, even Windy Peppercorn? Windy peppercorn. Oh yeah. Must have been a certain period of time where everybody's got to the pool and ran around it. Yeah. And it was chaos, and everybody's slipping and falling. Like it. Well, you can slip and fall. I can slip and fall running in the grass or running in the pavement.

SPEAKER_04 27:45

I don't recall ever seeking employment in these things, but I have to believe being like a lifeguard at the rec center was a higher quality status job than being the summer program director for the rec center. Or do you think they're equivalent?

SPEAKER_05 28:01

I think you get to be in a swimsuit at a pool all day. You get to be in a pen in the in the cold days? Yeah, on really hot days. You watch Changer Things just came out, and Billy. Billy Billy Billy had some advantages. And I don't know how many, how many. I don't remember seeing a lot of moms like that at the pool.

SPEAKER_04 28:19

And we kind of looking. See, here's the here's my dad. Anybody that knew my dad, he let's just say he had an appreciation for the female form. You like that? So when I was like seven or eight playing the sports early, and Johnny or Susie was like, oh my dad go, oh, the one with the sexy mom. I'm like, Dad, no, no, these are moms. Moms aren't sexy. Shut up.

SPEAKER_05 28:41

Yeah, the I think never was a life card, but I I think it could get kind of boring. Because all you gotta do is blow you gotta be the killjoy. Yeah. Blow your whistle. Stop it. Don't do that. You can't do that. Stop running. Go over here. Stop.

SPEAKER_04 28:54

And the thing is, it's like one of the things I like about if I have a bad day, nobody dies. You have a bad day, someone's dead.

SPEAKER_05 29:02

We lost another. This too. I get it. Sometimes you got to an age where your parents could just drop you off. Part of it is hey, parents, parent your kids. Keep an eye on them. Don't back to keeping them alive, even at the pool.

SPEAKER_04 29:15

See, back then though, they didn't think like that. It was what? It's it's 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are?

SPEAKER_05 29:21

Another fun thing in the summer was getting to go to the beach, like Harriet Beach. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 29:26

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_05 29:26

Medicine Lake. Medicine Lake was a cool one because you didn't want the beaches that were Harriet was cold. It was a spring fed. So it was a chillier lake. Calhoun was halfway through summer, it was green. You didn't want to go there. But Medicine Lake wasn't a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 29:42

Yeah, Medicine Lake was one of the lakes we would go to for the beach. I remember that.

SPEAKER_05 29:46

And it was a gradual.

SPEAKER_04 29:47

Yep. Yep.

SPEAKER_05 29:48

And it was sandy. It was it that was um and then the falls, the mini Haha Falls, going there.

SPEAKER_04 29:54

Yep. That was almost like a regular field trip thing. With the parents.

SPEAKER_05 29:59

The parents would go and the mom would sit there and they'd bring back when you had a picnic.

SPEAKER_04 30:03

We'd usually spend some time up at a friend's or my dad's friend's cabin. So we'd spend some cabin time. If you're in Minnesota, you spend some time at the at a cabin.

SPEAKER_05 30:12

We went to a certain cabin resort, the same one every year, and and that was fun, except my dad loved to fish and he wasn't a very fun fisherman, but he's really good at it.

SPEAKER_04 30:23

And uh he just tried to not surprising once again. People that are listening will see the big differences in personality between the two of us. I never went to a summer camp. Did you go to summer camps and who sponsored?

SPEAKER_05 30:37

I was a Boy Scout camp a couple times.

SPEAKER_04 30:39

Okay. I never participated in Boy Scouts because I knew that it involved camping. Me and Kenny went one or two years. Yeah. Were you a Webelo? I wasn't even a Webelo. I quit before we belows.

SPEAKER_05 30:53

I don't know what level it was, but I remember we were like sixth grade, went to a camp and it was a day camp, so we got on the bus and the memory I have of that camp was we locked people in the porta potties with sticks. So they because there was a latch on it. That was the island.

SPEAKER_04 31:08

That was my summer camp experience.

SPEAKER_05 31:12

You had to have a buddy who would guard it when you were there, or you were getting locked in.

SPEAKER_04 31:18

Once again, thank you for validating the decision I made at 12 not to pursue a boy scout camp. Because that doesn't sound very fun. But to me, it was the movie Little Darling. You meet the girl or the boy of your dreams at summer camp.

SPEAKER_05 31:30

Yeah, no, this was too young. This was I remember we got in canoes and I don't know if we had to wear probably had to wear life jackets back then.

SPEAKER_04 31:37

It was no, did you did the Hammers ever do the summer traditional summer road trip? We went out to Arizona and California a couple times.

SPEAKER_05 31:46

We just go up to Glenwood on Lake Minawasca and go to the Cavender. Okay. Sometimes it was twice if things were good at the old Northwestern belt, and dad wanted to fish more than one week, but then when they got divorced, that ended, and then it was then by the time you get to 12, 13, 40 days. Baseball got serious, and if you were good enough, you played on the all-star team, and then went to August, and you keep going through play, and then football would start, and then it was basketball camp.

SPEAKER_04 32:11

And then we start getting to the age of somewhere 13, 14, 15, where uh you do not want your parents to be part of any of your social life. Any free time where you're not in school or sports, you want to pursue other things and not hang out with them.

SPEAKER_05 32:27

And not go with your family and your siblings, even though you I have a lot of memories with my brother and my sister. My sister more because she was two years older than me. But I remember a lot of times when you're on vacation, that was your confidant, that was your whatever. When Marty came on, so Marty was five and a half years younger than me, and seven and a half years younger than so to us, to me and Michelle, Marty was more of a toy. Yeah, she and her friends would dress them up and stuff. We for Christmas, my mom would buy him Christmas presents and wrap them, and me and my sister, like when she was working nights or whatever, and we were watching them, we'd shut the door, we'd open the presents, play with his toys, then put them back in the box, rewrap them.

SPEAKER_04 33:09

Oh god. That was fun. Not having had siblings, I don't have a voice in those things, other than I do recall my dad and my aunt talking, and they were both in their 70s at the time, about something that happened when my dad was a child, and I could tell my dad is still really pissed off about it.

SPEAKER_05 33:29

My sister was always cool. She's a big sister, but we always got she was cool.

SPEAKER_04 33:33

And I remember your your sister had kept the house filled with cute friends, so Aiden, thank you, Michelle.

SPEAKER_05 33:39

That but there's when she got a license and drove, she wasn't a big fan. Not that she hated driving, she just like I'm 14 and she's letting me drive to school because I had to drive both of us 14, 15. And she you can drive. I'm like, I'll drive. And pick up Jason Clues on the way, and um like there was a time you would just go for drives.

SPEAKER_04 33:58

But no dust, no, we're just driving around, smoking cigarettes or whatever, and drinking beer, or just what do you want to do? I don't know. I want to go around the lakes, sure. Going down to the lakes with the cooler, or if you got like a six-pack of beer, slitz malt liquor, and you took the was it at Lake Harriet, or was it pregaming Neil Young? But I remember Brian making a steak, and he was so excited he was making a steak, and then realized he didn't have any utensils to eat the steak with.

SPEAKER_05 34:26

I believe that was that the Met Stadium pregaming Neil Young.

SPEAKER_04 34:33

He was nobody was more proud of there than he was, and then the realization hit that he didn't like eight hours before the show. Oh, yeah. But it but I remember that'll make our concert injuries one if you ever agree to do it. That was that was the interesting thing. I lit myself on fire at that show. Yeah, yeah. And it took a long time for me to react to the fact that I was on fire.

SPEAKER_05 34:58

It took us a while to realize that maybe we should not watch him do that. And we weren't going, oh dumbass. We were like, Carlos is on fire, and then I remember altered state of mind going.

SPEAKER_04 35:13

So you remember how big my hair was. Yeah, he had big hair. I I cannot remember whose apartment was, but it was some one of those people that, as a senior or whatever, got a got an apartment, which was not an uncommon thing for doing an 18 to get an apartment, and it was right there as those ones right at the very end of Hampshire Avenue by the railroad tracks, right? One of those ones. And so we're sitting there, and why I think someone just moved in because there wasn't any furniture. There was about 15 of us, and we were sitting around in a circle, kind of passing a bowl around, as you did, and we only had matches for some reason, and uh, and it was one of those little stone pipes, yeah. And I spilled the contents and leaned over, and then at the same time, the person next to me just was holding the lit match, thinking that I was going to, and the match goes into my hair, and my hair starts to go up like this, and a room full of 15 people, 14 of them are pointing at me with their mouth open, but no one's saying anything. And then it seemed like a long time, and then people start hitting my head. Is that a your Michael Jackson moment? That was my Michael Jackson moment, but I wasn't getting paid millions of dollars to make a commercial at the time. By the way, kids, don't do drugs. Don't do all of them, don't do save some for us. Save some for us, for others. All right, Mike Hammer. We tried to talk St. Louis Park summertime as best we could, but a lot of time we talk about stuff that's interesting to us. Anything that hope they enjoyed the ride.

SPEAKER_05 36:39

Uh anything else? I don't know. We'll do this again.

SPEAKER_04 36:42

Hey, listen. No one's paying us to listen to this, so it's fun for us. We would love you to give us some comment and feedback. We really are looking for folks to put on the air. Everybody I talk to about coming on the air is a little nervous. Trust me, every single person that has done a podcast with me and with us says, Wow, that went fast. And wow, that sounded so much better than I thought it was going to. So don't be shy. Uh, I promise people full editorial control. If after they listen to what was recorded, they do not like it, we won't show it. So send us, hit that fan mail button, send us a voicemail, shoot us a message, let us know that you would like to be on the show and talk about your neighborhood.

SPEAKER_05 37:28

It's the people that you meet when you're walking down the street. Never mind. Yeah. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 37:34

Well, no, Mike, I feel like you really laid down the way that I have been thinking about this podcast is that we grew up in a very for us at the young age, the world was small. The world was it was a very it was a very small bubble when as our biking and cars and our bubble got bigger, but the center of our bubble was always St. Louis Park, Minnesota. And it's best place to grow up. It holds such a special place in my heart. I really think it is a special place.

SPEAKER_05 38:05

We had fun.

SPEAKER_04 38:06

And so we do want to talk about St. Louis Park. We do want to talk about other areas of St. Louis Park. I do want to hear trivia, things that I don't know, things that happened. We were the Northsiders, and there were certain places on the South Ciders that let me give you an example, just because it's strange to me. Apparently, in the 60s and 70s, it was commonplace to train boys to swim nude. Westwood. Yeah, it was Westwood, but this was common nationwide because I remember an episode of Eight Is Enough, where young Nicholas was being trained to swim by his father, and he's wait a minute, everybody's naked. What the hell is going on here? So it's anybody that happened before us. Yeah, we were like, we got told by the gym teachers, you're lucky now you wear swimsuits and but if you experience that, once again, I am not suggesting there was anything nefarious about it, it just was a different way of doing things, but it is alien to my experience, so I want to hear about that. I want to hear to me, I grew up with Highway 18 and Highway 12, and they will always be Highway 18 and Highway 12 in my life.