The newspaper clipping is yellow and brittle, but it brings back a happy memory from the early years of my career at the Pioneer Press/Dispatch.
There I am, younger and thinner in a 1964 photo, appearing to fly high above the state Capitol after being sent skyward by the 16 red-jacketed members of the St. Paul Athletic Club who tossed the Winter Carnival Bouncing Girls during the Grande Day Parade.
“Write a first-hand account of what it feels like when those girls are tossed in the blanket,” one of my bosses ordered in a terse memo. Although the assignment seemed a little scary, it was also the kind of reporting that convinced me I had a dream job (and I still think so, more than 40 years later).
In my being-a-Bouncing-Girl story, probably published in the next day’s newspaper, I recall how cold it was in the Capitol Approach area when the parade was forming and how the Athletic Club guys said “we got Steve Allen up in the air, so I guess we’ll be able to get you up, too.” (Comedian Allen had been the celebrity guest at the previous year’s Carnival.)
I don’t remember climbing onto the big, red canvas “blanket,” but my story says I sat in the very center, legs crossed and hands on the canvas.
“Now, when I say three, you give a little push with your hands and raise off the blanket,” ordered Harold Theiston, the Athletic Club’s athletic director. On his count of “three,” I was high above the heads of the bouncers, arms and legs thrown out as I had been told to do.
“One bounce only lasts a few seconds,” I wrote, “but in the clear, frosty air it seemed I hung there for minutes. Thanks to the careful and experienced bouncers, who stretch the canvas taut, landing is easy — just a gentle plop.”
That ended my 10-minute career as a Bouncing Girl, although the picture of me taken by staff photographer Ted Strasser appeared (me, unidentified) on the front page of a national newspaper; I think it was the Christian Science Monitor, but I can’t find the clip.
Through the years, I accumulated many Winter Carnival memories as a reporter and editor.
As I rummaged through old boxes in the basement, looking for the Bouncing Girl clip, I found a picture of me with the Vulcans. I’m standing on a table (in a really cute satin-ish white blazer that I wish I had saved), getting ready to host what I think was the first Carnival celebrity brunch or lunch. Our file doesn’t mention this event, but I think the guest was Julie London, the sexy singer who made “Cry Me a River” popular.
In the Women’s Department, where I was editor for more than a decade, we were responsible for doing the first interview with the new Queen of Snows, usually accompanied by a picture of her eating breakfast in bed in the St. Paul Hotel the morning after her coronation. These were nice young women, and it was a fun assignment.
In this day of television and other electronic distractions, it’s hard for young people to imagine how important the Queen of Snows coronation was to St. Paulites. Carnival-goers filled the auditorium, and the young woman who received the crown became a celebrity.
One year, I used my press credentials to get backstage after the coronation, so my 4-year-old niece could meet the new queen. Niece Leslie is grown up now, a master’s degree social worker living in New York state, but I still remember the awe on her face when she met the queen, who was wearing her tiara and a long white dress.
Huge audiences also gathered to see celebrities who did their shows during the Carnival in the ’60s and ’70s, including Ed Sullivan, Dinah Shore and Steve Allen.
Allen’s travails during the ’63 Carnival became legend in the Pioneer Press/Dispatch newsroom.
The comedian, who was broadcasting his show from the Carnival, agreed to crawl through a hole in the ice of White Bear Lake.
Wearing a too-small wetsuit, he slid into the hole, thrashed around and emerged from the water, eager to get back to the waiting van for a trip to dry clothes. Two men ushered him into the van but he was almost blind without his glasses and didn’t recognize them.
After a long, cold and bumpy trip, the van stopped at a home where a lot of people were gathered in the living room. Allen asked to use the bathroom, so he could get into his clothes.
But there were no clothes. Or his eyeglasses.
Meanwhile, the Winter Carnival people were desperately searching for their lost celebrity. Turns out a woman who had wanted Allen to attend her cocktail party had virtually kidnapped him, and her guests thought Allen was being a pain in the butt because he didn’t mingle.
Allen explained all this in 1984, when he was in St. Paul briefly, admitting, “I’ve gotten a lot of laughs telling the story since then. But it wasn’t very funny at the time.”
After years of covering Carnival events, I’ve always thought of our annual celebration as a mix of hometown pride and silliness. That was brought home to me years ago, during a fancy Carnival dinner in the Landmark Center Cortile, when one of the Winds shot off his fake gun and a rubber chicken dropped from the high ceiling. The out-of-towner sitting next to me in those pre-cell phone days was astonished.
“My wife is not going to believe this,” he said as he watched the naked fowl hurtle to the floor. I just shrugged and turned back to my dinner. It was, after all, a Carnival event.
Mary Ann Grossmann can be reached at 651-228-5574.
Copyright 2009 Pioneer Press.
