The Aquatennial Baby by Warren Park

The Aquatennial Baby
To the Old South Minneapolis Facebook page: This website seems to be an ideal place to tell a very interesting and completely true historical story. This situation happened to me when I was, I’m pretty sure, either 12 or 13 years old, in 1958 or 1959. I lived in the Kenwood neighborhood in Minneapolis at 1804 Humboldt Ave. So., two houses south of Summit Ave. and Humboldt. Just a few blocks away from me, down the side of Lowry Hill, was an outdoor stadium with bleacher seats that the city used for high school football games and other special events. This place was called Parade Stadium, located just across from where the old Guthrie Theater was built a few years later, in 1963. The name of the stadium came from the fact that in July every year, the world-famous Aquatennial Parade would get started there, and then wend its way down Wayzata Boulevard, past Dunwoody Institute, into downtown Minneapolis, where it progressed for several blocks on many of the downtown streets, for about three miles. Many of you must remember the annual Aquatennial parades with their clowns, marching bands from various high schools, and the amazing (at the time) elaborately-built floats. In July of ’58 or ’59 I decided to go see the parade by myself. My parents by then were getting tired of them, and decided I could just go on my own. My two older brothers were both in college already, and too wrapped up in their own things to care about this parade anymore. Thousands of people attended, and there was a lot of action, celebration and noise, on (probably) a Saturday afternoon. I found a place to stand right by the driveway coming out of Parade Stadium as it flowed onto Wayzata Boulevard and headed towards Hennepin Avenue. Hundreds of people lined the street right there, but I was able to find a spot that was unobstructed. Beside me, nearly elbow-to-elbow to me, was a large middle-aged woman in a solid-color tan dress. She seemed even larger than possible to me since she was also nine months pregnant. And here’s where things get kind of surreal in this time and place. I remember this quite vividly. The woman standing next to me started to act a bit uncomfortable, not because of me but because something was going on that I did not understand. Suddenly, a quiet, high-pitched cry filled the air near us. It was the cry of a baby, and it came from under her dress! The woman was just as startled as I was, and she made no sound at all until she turned to me, the one closest to her, looked me straight in the eye, and asked, "Did you hear that!?" I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. I smiled in surprise and told her, "Yes!" She called to her husband (who was about twelve feet away), and exclaimed, "The baby’s coming!" There were a lot of things about this event that I did not understand at the time. How could a baby inside the mom actually make an audible sound suddenly? Then it dawned on me that baby’s head must have been already part-way out. How could the woman not know this was about to happen? It must have been that she had already gone through enough child-bearing that her muscles were not as strong as they used to be. Have any of you ever heard of anything like this happening? Her husband was at her side in seconds and they made their way to a patch of grass right next to the closed-off Wayzata Blvd. I did not hang around any longer, and disappeared into the crowd. After about fifteen minutes, I returned to the scene from a safe distance to find the woman in the tan dress lying on the grass with people all around her, including a couple of policemen. An ambulance was on its way, and some stranger turned to me and explained, "A baby just got born, right over there!" Perhaps some of you who were around in the late 1950’s remember reading in the newspaper about this baby getting born at the Aquatennial parade. Does this ring a bell to anyone? That baby must be about 63 years old now. And I’m going on 76 and this happening still resonates in my memory. It would nice to find out who these people were/are. Anyone here know anything more? Warren Park

The Aquatennial Baby

To the Old South Minneapolis Facebook page:

This website seems to be an ideal place to tell a very interesting and completely true historical story. This situation happened to me when I was, I’m pretty sure, either 12 or 13 years old, in 1958 or 1959. I lived in the Kenwood neighborhood in Minneapolis at 1804 Humboldt Ave. So., two houses south of Summit Ave. and Humboldt. Just a few blocks away from me, down the side of Lowry Hill, was an outdoor stadium with bleacher seats that the city used for high school football games and other special events. This place was called Parade Stadium, located just across from where the old Guthrie Theater was built a few years later, in 1963. The name of the stadium came from the fact that in July every year, the world-famous Aquatennial Parade would get started there, and then wend its way down Wayzata Boulevard, past Dunwoody Institute, into downtown Minneapolis, where it progressed for several blocks on many of the downtown streets, for about three miles. Many of you must remember the annual Aquatennial parades with their clowns, marching bands from various high schools, and the amazing (at the time) elaborately-built floats.

In July of ’58 or ’59 I decided to go see the parade by myself. My parents by then were getting tired of them, and decided I could just go on my own. My two older brothers were both in college already, and too wrapped up in their own things to care about this parade anymore. Thousands of people attended, and there was a lot of action, celebration and noise, on (probably) a Saturday afternoon. I found a place to stand right by the driveway coming out of Parade Stadium as it flowed onto Wayzata Boulevard and headed towards Hennepin Avenue. Hundreds of people lined the street right there, but I was able to find a spot that was unobstructed. Beside me, nearly elbow-to-elbow to me, was a large middle-aged woman in a solid-color tan dress. She seemed even larger than possible to me since she was also nine months pregnant.

And here’s where things get kind of surreal in this time and place. I remember this quite vividly. The woman standing next to me started to act a bit uncomfortable, not because of me but because something was going on that I did not understand. Suddenly, a quiet, high-pitched cry filled the air near us. It was the cry of a baby, and it came from under her dress! The woman was just as startled as I was, and she made no sound at all until she turned to me, the one closest to her, looked me straight in the eye, and asked, "Did you hear that!?" I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. I smiled in surprise and told her, "Yes!" She called to her husband (who was about twelve feet away), and exclaimed, "The baby’s coming!"

There were a lot of things about this event that I did not understand at the time. How could a baby inside the mom actually make an audible sound suddenly? Then it dawned on me that baby’s head must have been already part-way out. How could the woman not know this was about to happen? It must have been that she had already gone through enough child-bearing that her muscles were not as strong as they used to be. Have any of you ever heard of anything like this happening?

Her husband was at her side in seconds and they made their way to a patch of grass right next to the closed-off Wayzata Blvd. I did not hang around any longer, and disappeared into the crowd. After about fifteen minutes, I returned to the scene from a safe distance to find the woman in the tan dress lying on the grass with people all around her, including a couple of policemen. An ambulance was on its way, and some stranger turned to me and explained, "A baby just got born, right over there!"

Perhaps some of you who were around in the late 1950’s remember reading in the newspaper about this baby getting born at the Aquatennial parade. Does this ring a bell to anyone? That baby must be about 63 years old now. And I’m going on 76 and this happening still resonates in my memory. It would nice to find out who these people were/are. Anyone here know anything more? Warren Park