Denis Richmond
Denis Richmond remembers his mother paying 25 cents on a raffle ticket for a 50-pound bag of flour. Denis’s mother wins the 50-pound bag of flour, and they struggle to carry it up the stairs as an angry crowd of attendees walks past them. Denis and his mother get the bag of flour in the back of their car with the help of a kind Methodist man from the church down the street.
Transcript
Location: 1032 Caledonia Street
Denis Richmond: My mother went to this Church, St. James, on the Northside, and they had a raffle for a 50-pound bag of flour, which is very rare. And it cost you 25 cents for a raffle ticket, and she spent 25 cents for that ticket, and when we got home, she told my dad, and he just blew his top. “You think I’m made out of money?!” I remember him saying that. Well, she had to go to the dentist that, next week and you had to be present for the drawing. So we stop at the church after her dental work, and she had some teeth pulled, and she wasn’t feeling very good. Anyway, there was a big crowd there in the church basement, and by gosh, if she didn’t win that 50-pound bag of flour. Well, everybody was so mad at her they wouldn’t help her carry that flour up out of the basement. So I was pushing the bag, and she was pulling it up the steps. Men would walk right by, and they were mad because they didn’t win that bag of flour, and she says, “Bunch of good Catholics.” She goes, “Wouldn’t even help me.” We got it out onto the sidewalk, and her car was about 50 feet away or so. And she was gonna drag it across the concrete, which she didn’t want to do because the flour sacks were turned into shirts. And we got to the top of the steps, and this one fella come walking along, and he says, “Can I help you, Ma’am?” She says, “Yes, I got. I wanna put this in my car over there, and we can’t lift it.” This fella picked it up and carried it over and put it in the car for us, and lo’ and behold, he was a Methodist from down the street. Which the Catholics and the Methodists didn’t see eye to eye in those days. And she says, “Now there’s a good man.” but the story takes place probably around 1945, and I’m Denis Richmond. I was born in 1941 here in La Crosse, and I’ve lived here all but three years of my life.