Carroll Rasch

Jobs that mattered:

Harvest Worker East of Minot and in Dunn County.
Minot Daily News delivery on Saturday.

Minot Municipal Auditorium highlights: In-door Rodeo, Shrine Circus - I am guessing I am the only guy in the Class who has shoveled elephant poop.- Ice Capades/Holliday on Ice, being very nice to the chorus girls, up close with the OLD Harlem Globe Trotters, Ray Charles, four of us getting full body slam against the concrete block wall for surprising the Secret Service during Nixon Campaign visit in 1960 (Hey, we had keys.)...Peeking at the "Great Man" with the side of my face pressed on the wall. Thanks to Charles Stenerson for these great memories and unusual skills. A Roy Robinson physics exam brought it to an end: a midnight call to help with a crew clean-up of a particularly nasty event in the Armory gym, showing up like a good employee and seeing it was an all night job due to spilled booze, trashed bathrooms and projectile vomiting. I rifled my mop up into the rafters and walked out. "I have a physics exam tomorrow."

Kinney Shoes in Minot I was their man in woman's flats and worked with Jan Cooper. I learned two valuable lessons: how to help a woman on with a shoe without touching her ankle and, that sometimes people are not looking for shoes but for a smile, attention, kindness and a chance to flirt with an 18 year old guy in a tie.

Super Value on North Second Street. Lyle Odland got me in and it led to four happy years of learning the grocery trade. Super Value taught well. But, the store went down with Norm Larson and all of his problems.

Piggly Wiggly near the State Fair Grounds and worked with Jerry Pratt, Susan Walters and Sandy Mikkelson.

Night Shift at United Buckingham Trucking Company where I was one of Sy Hubrig's Teamsters - a real experience about the world as it really works.

Minot High School Faculty (English 11): an amazing year with Don Dietrich, Roy Robinson, John Anderson, Harley Weros, Paul Ristevedt, Lyle Fogel, Archie Pederson, Wayne Sanstead in the second floor, segregated, pipe smoke filled MEN'S Faculty Lounge overlooking the Carnegie Library...Seeing Mrs. Gehring, Miss Schroeder, Jack Allison, Merritt Christianson at work; finding out I was still a little physically "on guard" around Gary Leslie since my experience with him in Gym in Junior High; becoming Wayne Sanstead's assistant debate coach and all of the adventures that brought; Having my first alcoholic drink. (We would run down the stairs on Friday and almost beat the students off the campus as we jogged down to the Clarence Parker Lounge where English teacher John Bailey would lay out the lesson plan for this Friday evening: blindfolding me and making me identify five bourbons before I could leave and teaching me the difference between "sipping whiskey" and the others. Long faculty fishing trips to Charging Eagle Bay or putting a dozen boats into the Missouri River below the tail race and just floating down into the wilderness between the Dam and Stanton and setting up a large camp in the cottonwoods near the center of the Ghosts of the Mandan. I loved that job but was drawn toward Graduate School and the brighter lights of Minneapolis-St. Paul where I had heard of the scholarship of David Noble and the temptations of Hennepin Avenue. I did not see the strike coming.

Fridley High School Faculty (US History, Economics,Debate) A very uncomfortable and angry job in a very paternalistic district. I left for full time study in the U of M History Department.

University of Minnesota Graduate School in History. Grader and TA for David Noble, intense two years in which I learned that there were three thousand of us (American Historical Assn. Convention, Washington DC, 1968) looking for 700 jobs. Great grades, foggy future, never wanting to become a gypsy faculty member, PhDs driving cabs, etc. North Dakota practicality setting in and bridges slowly rebuilt to Public Secondary Education with lots of substitute teaching. I had time because my remaining seminars met in the evenings in the living rooms of professors.

Richfield High School Faculty (English 11, 12, Shakespeare, Writing, American History, Anthropology. God I loved that place and job. I was there during the Golden Age. There were over three thousand students in three grades and NO COACHING ("What do you want me to coach?" "We didn't hire you to coach. We want you to Teach.) Richfield was suburb built by Veterans of WWII and Korea and the values they represented. Hockey, Basketball, Baseball and Football teams almost always in or on the edge of State Tournaments. It was a cauldron of future Division III and I coaches and famed (in Minnesota) high school coaches. It was assumed by the administration that we were good at what we did i.e. no paternalism. It was the best of places in the best of Public Education times. Minnesota Liberalism was throwing money at Education. Over the years, I had taken to skiing... fast and hard.. and became the Women's Downhill/Slalom coach. We were in the State Tournament every year. (That says far more about the girls and their skiing than about my coaching. I was brilliant at bringing out the hot chocolate from the snow bank, where I had hidden it, at just the right time during Conference and Sectional competitions. They were and, I am sure, still are wonderful.

Alexander Construction: Domestic circumstances demanded that I have a second job or die in the snow. My brilliant and lovely Demi Moore look alike student teacher took control of my life for 48 hours and found me an apartment (she was the rental hostess.), got my rent reduced as building supervisor and unlimited spaghetti dinners. I needed to moonlight a second job. I joined Alexander Construction, which in its glory days had gained large government contracts to build SAC bases in places like the Azores, done Watkins Glen Race Course, sections of the New Jersey Turnpike as it retreated back to its home base in Minneapolis: summer and evenings for seven years doing contract control, aiding in bidding, office drudge, creating records for cost control in street and highway construction. I learned a lot from a very good teacher who did not care that I did not have a business or engineering degree. He was company treasurer and business manager. Our boss, whose name was on all of the equipment, used a new Porche 911 each year as his company car. A huge dust cloud somewhere out in the gravel pits meant that he was pedal down and doing donuts.

Rosemount High School Faculty: Humanities, Literature, A.P. European History. What can I say about this job? It was heads down and working like Hell for 25 years. I taught only what I loved eventually. Created courses, worked with some great outside scholars and authors (Burton Raffel, Robert Dana, Harry Levin, a great English teacher from Harvard, Lowry Pei, Kenneth Ebel (who had gone up the cliffs at Point du Hoc with the Rangers),
Retired after 38 years. I now miss the noise and energy of the students. I miss taking groups to Europe during the summer for 35 days on Art, Architecture, History trips and meeting some fine people there. (London, Paris, Florence, Rome, Venice, Barcelona, Madrid, Toledo, Seville and ... the beach. Too many impending and spirit crushingly sad events required my presence to go on with my job. I was four years past retirement. I made the final decision in twelve minutes in the summer of 2004 after I had brought home my last Europe scholars. I inventoried the books, put up the maps, wrote my name on the board, sat back with my feet up... and called two seniors, rented a u-haul and packed up about a thousand personal books, sent in a short notice of intention to retire, tried not to look back, attended to family business and flew back and forth among New York City, Minneapolis and Minot in my VW R32 for 50,000 miles.

After 2004 we rented apartments in Paris twice in different years and one in Rome for extended stays.

"The Howler" of 1960-61: Sasquatch on North Hill.

Election night in the lower level of the YMCA, watching a fashion show put on by the senior girls. There was a catwalk and, all of the fashionable stores had provided clothes. Guys standing at the back, wowed by the beauty and also crowded near one guy who had a transistor radio against his ear, relaying the vote count. I remember it was a long night and the election was determined by Chicago and Texas much to the disgust of Walter Cronkite in the wee hours. I also remember how stunning Roxanne was.

Paul, Matti and me in my dad's yellow and white 1959 Ford Galaxie 500.

Choosing teams at "The Highlands" when Paul Pederson and Scott Hoopes were designated Captains. The angst was palpable.

Naked swimming in that damned, soup warm, undersized pool in the North Gym/Auditorium/Running Track/basketball court/Natatorium.... Jeeze. BUT, one of the most interesting spaces I have ever seen in a public school.

The biggest Jock Itch outbreak ever seen among the A Squad football players when I was (maybe) in Grade 9 or 10. Someone remarked that it turned out to be a good thing that we were not allowed to use the Varsity washing machines. We had to take our gear home to be washed. We had thought it had been discrimination against the B Squad and Reserves. It turned out to be the itchy finger of God passing over us to put the scratch on the Varsity.

A classmate being violently disciplined in Miss Porth's English 9 class.

The NEW world of learning: Leaving Sunnyside behind and waking up in Mr. Guy Way's Geography Class. He demonstrated the orbit of the planets around one of the glass globe chandeliers with a Toledo steel Spanish sword as his pointer. His description spread outward and elaborated incrementally until he had recreated all of the motion of the Universe. He was always natty and perfect in diction and dress. After dropping my pencil several times during a test, his perfect, thin soled, tan, leather shoes appeared in my right peripheral vision. One shoe gently pressed down on my hand and with distinct, clipped clarity he said, "Mr. Rasch; if you drop that pencil one more time I will grrrrrrind your fingers into the floor." I wasn't in Kansas any more and I loved it.

Experiencing Mr. Roy Robinson making us all feel brilliant.

Elementary School: The Great Flutophone Disaster of 1954.

Baseball (softball?) games between Mrs. Schaeffer's 6th grade class and Mr. Youngbeck's class. We crushed them under the leadership of Paul Pederson. (I felt bad that Carolyn Feldner was in Mr. Youngbeck's class but, VICTORY always trumps LOVE... chuckle. (not really)