The hook: An old tale retold
By Joe Legueri
HTF Contributor
There were several murderers and serial killers who were active in Minnesota and Wisconsin during the middle part of the 20th century. Perhaps you remember these three cases.
Ed Gein, an insane killer, was active in Wisconsin during the 1950s. When authorities searched Gein’s house they found that he had been making things out of human body parts. Gein was sentenced to life imprisonment which he spent in a mental institution.
In the 1960s, on Minnesota’s West Range, several adolescents were killed while they were necking in the car at night. Police couldn’t figure out how they could have died of multiple, deep puncture wounds. The killer was never captured. He just seemed to disappear.
Then in the 1970s, Jeffrey Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys in Wisconsin. What he did to them after he murdered them is not even fit to print. Dahmer was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was later beaten to death by another inmate.
The newspapers were full of sensational stories about these killers. However, I was not the least bit interested in any of these insane killers because during the 1950s and 1960s I had more important things to do. Galloping adolescence had come upon me.
On a cold January evening in 1960, like many another adolescent, I sensed a need for a little nookie. So I called a girl that I was interested in and asked her if she wanted to go to Pete’s café for a malt. She readily agreed.
We drank our malts and socialized with the other boppers who were at the café. Just before we finished our malts, I looked her right in the eye and asked her if she’d like to go to Blueberry Hill with me and do a little snaking. Blueberry Hill was Nashwauk’s trysting place for young lovers.
She thought it over for a full minute. Then she said, “That’s fine with me as long as you don’t get carried away and turn into a Fayzor.”
“I promise you that I won’t turn into a Fayzor,” I said. “I just want to do a little necking.”
So I graciously opened the door for her and we got into my dad’s 1957 Ford station wagon. We drove to Blueberry Hill and I positioned the car so that the exhaust was blowing away from the vehicle, not underneath it. That way we wouldn’t get asphyxiated. Then I turned the radio
on to WEBC. We started snaking almost immediately. Somehow the music seemed to enhance the pleasure of the snaking.
After an hour, the windows were all fogged up and the snaking was getting pretty hot and heavy in the front seat. Just then, the Shirelle’s song “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” played on the radio. We stopped snaking for a minute to listen to it. Then she asked me, “How about you? What do you think? Is what we’re doing now a “lasting treasure” or is it “only a moment’s pleasure”?
“I don’t know about things like that,” I said. Then I put my arms around her and we started snaking to the music again. I was just trying to think of a way to get her into the station wagon’s back-back so we could do some spooning. There just wasn’t enough room for that in the front seat. But just then I could feel her tense up just a bit. So I opened my eyes.
There, printed on the fogged up passenger side window was the word “STOP.”
“You can’t mean it,” I said.
“I do mean it; and you promised,” she said. “You’re turning into a Fayzor.”
“Geeze Louise,” I said. “What’s a man to do? Okay then, I’ll take you home.”
I cleaned a spot so I could see through the windshield, put the Ford-O-Matic transmission into D, and sped away from Blueberry Hill. I brought the girl home, assured her that I was not mad, gave her a kiss, and went home. I drove to the alley in back of the house and parked the station wagon in front of the garage.
The next morning my dad got up to go to work. He took his lunch bucket and walked back to the station wagon. Two minutes later, he came charging through the back door.
“Where in the hell did you get this, Joey?”
“What is that?” I asked.
“It looks like a hook that those guys wear after they have lost their hand or arm,” he said. “Look how the straps are broken, and look how sharp the hook is.”
“Honest, Dad,” I said. “I’ve never seen the thing before in my life. Where’d you find it?”
“It was hanging from the passenger side rear door handle of the station wagon,” he said.
Joe Legueri is a retired teacher who lives and writes in rural Gilbert, MN.
