Travel travails of a registered dreamer from Duluth

  

Written by Jim Heffernan/DulthNewsTribune/08-01-2026

So, President Trump is putting his portrait on American passports now, according to media reports. Sorry Donald J., I beat you to it. I have my picture on one passport — mine. And like every picture of me ever taken, it’s not very good. Cameras hate me.

Traffic cops recoil in horror as they look at my driver’s license photo when I get picked up for speeding or other crimes and misdemeanors. But let’s move on.

I have had several interesting experiences with my passport over the years, including the first time I applied for it, a process I described here many years ago but bears repeating — just for laughs. 

We were planning our first trip to Europe so I went to the Duluth Post Office to go through the passport paces. 

Most importantly, you must prove that you are who you say you are. At the time they seemed to prefer birth certificates, so I had to go to the St. Louis County Courthouse here in Duluth to get mine. 

So up to the Civic Center courthouse I dashed, found my way to the proper desk and asked for a copy of my birth certificate. No problem; the friendly clerk located it and made a copy.

But looking it over, my birth was registered without my first name. It said Baby Boy Heffernan. I had always thought my parents, should they get a boy, were going to name me James the whole time they were expecting me. It’s an old family given name, including that of my paternal grandfather. It’s in the Bible. It’s the NAME of the English version of the Bible.

Nope, “Baby Boy” on my birth certificate. That’s in the Bible too, in Bethlehem, but not good enough for the passport people, although it could come in handy at the Pearly Gates. I had to prove I was me in some other way, they told me. Old school report cards would be okay, they suggested.

Well, I dug some up in the family archives. I found a couple from my elementary school years at Lincoln School in what was then called the West End.

I brought the report card to the passport police and it was sufficient to qualify me for a United States passport, although it was humiliating at the same time. On the old report card, in notes to my parents, the teacher had written that I was a “dreamer” and stared out the window when I should have been buckling down. No wonder I never mastered the multiplication table. 

Still, I qualified for the passport in spite of being a dreamer, and off we went to Europe a while later on a trip to see it.

Most of the border stops were routine, with officials in uniform glancing at the passport, stamping it and signaling to move on.  I have been to Europe a few more times since then, always with my passport in my pocket and experiencing different reactions in different countries. Border agents in St. Petersburg, Russia, seemed awfully stern. I must look like a spy, too.

After all of that travel across the pond, my most challenging experience with my passport was on a trip to Canada a few years ago — before the recent difficulties between the U.S. and Canada. We had shot up to International Falls on a brief car trip and decided to go over to Fort Frances, Ontario.

We had brought our passports for the trip to cross an international border and routinely passed into Canada. It was on the way back to Minnesota that we encountered the most difficult border crossing I had ever experienced, including in Russia and other European destinations.

Rolling back into Minnesota, U.S. border agents ordered us out of the car as we proffered our passports. Then they ordered us to open the car’s trunk so they could inspect our luggage. Finding nothing suspicious, they let us back into our home state., a state we had lived in all our lives.

Maybe if we’d had Trump’s picture on the passport, we’d have fared better. Trouble is he wasn’t president at the time, so it was Biden’s fault. Hmm…that has a familiar ring to it. 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

  

Local Satire: Trump eyes Isle Royale for defense, monuments...

Written By Jim Heffernan as local satire, appearing on the opinion page of TheDuluthNewsTribune/7-24-26

I was feeling drowsy as I leaned back in the recliner watching CNN news as a serious-looking correspondent announced that President Trump has renewed his drive for the United States to take over the island of Greenland.

 

The newscast was going on and on about the issue as I slipped into a slumber, right there in the recliner with the TV blaring about Trump, Greenland and Denmark…zzz…zzz.

 

As I dozed, I had an unusual dream (they’re all unusual). I dreamt that, along with wanting Greenland, Trump was seeking to take over Isle Royale in Lake Superior, although it is already part of America.

 

“Isle Royale is too close to Canada to avoid invasion from that hostile country,” the president declared, referring to our northern neighbor that was once our closest ally, and adding that the U.S. must arm Isle Royale.

 

Trump also pointed out that Isle Royale is actually part of Michigan, “which makes no sense at all.” He said Michiganders don’t appreciate Isle Royale as much as they should with “that goofy gander governor Gretchen.” He was referring to Gov. Gretchen Wittmer, a Democrat.

 

My dream went on with Trump declaring that, “We’ve got to change the name of Isle Royale. What’s with this Royale business? We’re not a kingdom with royalty running the country, although we probably should with me as king.” He did not suggest a new name although aides indicated he might favor Redland.

 

In my dream — even as CNN continued with real news in the background — Trump asserted that “we should build a bridge connecting the island to Minnesota. Now people have to get there by boat. We need to build a bridge so people can drive over there and see the wolves and moose in action,” he went on. “They have ducks and geese too, don’t they?

 

“At the end of the bridge, which would only cost several hundred million dollars, we should build an arch to greet visitors,” the president continued. He suggested it be shaped like a huge tree but taller — around 200 feet high. “It would have a wide opening at the bottom visitors could drive their cars through like those redwoods in California.”

 

He suggested it should be called the Arc de Treetop. “Or maybe Trumptop.”

 

Asked if the huge bridge and monument might diminish the wilderness nature of the island, Trump retorted with a question: “Where’s the money in wilderness?”

 

He suggested that a huge hotel be built on the island to accommodate visitors who “don’t want to sleep on the ground in tents. Who does that anyway? A bunch of democrat environmental cases,” he remarked, answering his own question.

 

As I slept on, more news unfolded on the TV that I somehow absorbed even though I was slumbering but started to regain wakefulness. They were reporting something about the new Air Force One and in my dream, I was on the plane with members of the news media who always travel with the president.

 

A reporter asked him about acquiring Greenland and he said that, yes, the United States had to have Greenland to protect the country from China and Russia, but that we also must arm Isle Royale to protect the nation from Canada.

 

“We’ll build an airport up there well stocked with fighter aircraft,” he asserted.

 

“What about the moose and wolves?” asked a reporter.

 

“I don’t know about moose, but I’m very familiar with wolves,” he said. “Ever hear of Jeffrey Epstein?”

 

Then suddenly I was awakened by the sound of thunder outside the house, with tornado-like wind, rain pouring down flooding a nearby creek and tennis ball size hail bouncing off the roof. What a relief.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

Happy B-day America; let’s not blow it (up)...

Photo source: MPR/ Remembering
Dululth's Infamous 1988 fireworks explosion/07-04-18

Written By Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/7-4-26

 So, we’re 250 years old today. America, that is. Pretty old by American standards, not very old by European standards and those of some other civilizations.

 

And not really very old by MY standards. Here’s why:

 

My paternal grandfather — pay attention here — MY (there goes that upper case again) grandfather was 21 years old when America celebrated its centennial in 1876. He was born in 1855.  There were people around then whose lives overlapped with George Washington’s (he died in 1799), and that grandfather lived long enough to see me as a baby. Yes, I was once a baby like so many others.

 

My other grandparents were a bit younger, all born in Europe around the time of America’s 100th birthday. Their countries of origin — Sweden and Germany (that older grandfather was an Irishman from Canada) — had been around for a millennium or so, but these immigrants ended up in the United States, and Duluth, when the country was just over a century old. Ancient history? Not very. Greece has ancient history.

 

Of course, I’m no kid. America was only 163 years old when I was born in Duluth on the cusp of World War II. You can count on your fingers to figure out my age, but you’ll need a lot of fingers.

 

So we’re a young-old country.

 

Like so many other Americans, over the years my family celebrated the Fourth of July with appropriate exuberance. Flag hanging on the porch, picnic food prepared in the kitchen and placed in a wicker basket, gathering with relatives for a feast, a parade (Moose Lake, near our family cabin, always had one), kids’ rides at their carnival in the park, fireworks after sundown. America a year older.

 

Not a lot of talk about the birth of a nation, which is why we all had gathered. Oh, we held all those truths of the founders to be self-evident and got on with feasting and having fun on the Fourth.

 

This year is different, of course. America is two and a half centuries old and deserves to be honored despite certain shortcomings in our society that also are self-evident. Most of us know what they are.

 

Whew, sounds like I’m getting serious. Well, try this.

 

One Fourth of July celebration in Duluth stands out from all the rest. Ever since Duluth started hosting fireworks displays on its Bayfront, our family has attended. The tradition was started by the late Mayor Ben Boo in the late 1960s or early ‘70s and it has lasted all these years — Boo’s enduring legacy. Before then Duluth was a nothingburger on July 4. 

 

We always went to the fireworks as our children were growing up, year after year, throughout their early childhoods, teen and college years, extending into early adulthood before they married and started families and developed their own traditions here and elsewhere.

 

After so many years viewing fireworks at Bayfront shortly after sundown on Independence Day, they tend to run together in one’s memory. Spectacular displays of sprays of lights flashing high in the dark sky above our heads, the sounds of explosions on the ground as the rockets are catapulted into the firmament, huge crowds of onlookers.

 

We always watched from the same place, a grassy hillside not far from The Depot. Great spot, no longer there.

 

But one Fourth display does not blend in the memory with the rest: The year the whole kit and caboodle exploded on the ground almost immediately after the display started. It was July 4, 1988. The explosion was deafening, the conflagration on the ground as the fireworks all went off at once, spectacular, yet frightening for most viewers, especially those up close.

 

Hundreds of viewers close to the explosion fled. My family largely stayed put — we were far enough away. But we wondered if we should flee.

 

After the explosion everything went dark and ominously quiet for a few moments before the wail of emergency vehicle sirens pierced the air.  No one knew the extent of the damage or if viewers were injured or even killed. What about the workers who’d set them off? How could anybody up that close survive?

 

Fortunately, everyone did. There were no serious injuries or burns. A few viewers complained about small burning fragments drifting in the air, but no serious damage resulted from that.

 

Some 10,000 spectators, give or take, left the greater Bayfront area that night 38 years ago with an eternal memory of that spectacular, if ominous, fireworks explosion. As with me, it will never be forgotten.

 

Now here we are again celebrating Independence Day, this time on its 250th anniversary. Let’s hope it’s a safe one.

 

Happy Semiquincentennial America! Whew…long word. Absolutely supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org 

Pope Leo off to good start says old Lutheran...

Pope Leo XIV, official portrait

 Written by Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/6-6-26

 I like Pope Leo XIV, and I’m a lifelong Lutheran. Brought up in Lutheran Sunday School a long time ago, I was always wary of anything pope related. Most Lutherans were.

 

Furthermore, I was kind of scared of the first pope I was ever aware of, Pius XII. He was pope during World War II and after and showed up in movie newsreels a lot being carried around the Vatican on the shoulders of Swiss Guards in gaily colored outfits. This was before the popemobile.

 

Skinny Pope Pius XII looked very grim and, besides, he was the No. 1 Roman Catholic and I was a Lutheran child in an era when American Catholics and Lutherans (as well as other protestants) did not get along that well. Blessedly, things have changed quite a bit in recent years; we’ve become more ecumenical. Also “ecuwomenical.”

 

Still, as a non-Roman Catholic I didn’t pay too much attention to popes over the years. You hear about them on the news, Popes Francis, Benedict, kindly old John XXIII, John Paul, others, but it doesn’t mean too much to a protestant. I remember thinking when Pope Benedict was in office that perhaps his Vatican cook would ask him for his breakfast preference thusly: “Eggs, Benedict?”

 

But enough about recent popes. My favorite Pope Leo, until the current one, was 11 Leos before him, Pope Leo III. He was pope in medieval times, also known as the Middle Ages. Pope Leo III looms large in world history because he was the pope who crowned Charlemagne Holy Roman Emperor ruling much of Western Europe in the late 800s.

 

This stuck with me after studying as much history in college as possible to avoid classes in math and science. 

 

While many years — make that decades — have passed, certain events in ancient history are retained in fond memory. I came to understand that the reign of Charlemagne had a profound effect on subsequent western European history, but it seemed to me, his descendants who followed him into European royalty were, well, political correctness aside, insensitively described in physical terms that were not considered that attractive.

 

One of them was known as Charles the Fat. Always sensitive about gaining weight, I was particularly drawn to accounts of Charles the Fat’s exploits, most of which I have now forgotten. I guess he is best known for being fat.

 

Same with Charles the Bald. He became a ruler too, in spite of hair issues that have lasted in recorded history for millennia. I’m not that happy with my own hair loss, but it will soon be forgotten when I am forgotten. I hope.

 

Then there was Louis the Stammerer, son of Charles the Bald. Boy, Thanksgiving Dinner must have been a riot in that family. Many readers know I kid a lot in this space, but I am not making up these names. You can Google them.

 

Also, I don’t mean to cast aspersions on readers who might be overweight, might be bald and might have speaking difficulties, especially some 1,000-plus years since these people existed. But they existed. It’s history.

 

I ran into my first pope, Pius XII, again as an adult when I visited the Vatican on a tourist trip. Walking into St. Peter’s Basilica, there he was pictured in a huge mural dominating an entire wall. Explaining my familiarity with him from early life newsreels to trip companions, I think I came off as James the Stammerer.

 

It was on that trip that we also visited the Sistine Chapel where Michelangelo’s dramatic fresco of the Creation of Adam dominates the ceiling. I had a stiff neck, so it was difficult to fully appreciate the dramatic portrayal of God, but I could see enough that God looked pretty much the way I’d always pictured him, despite being a lifelong Lutheran. Great beard.

 

We have Pope Rex Harrison to thank for that dramatic fresco. Oops, that was the movie. O, the agony and the ecstasy of it all. 

 

I wish Pope Leo XIV well. He’s started out strong with his AI encyclical that has frightened Silicon Valley. As for me, I’m frightened BY Silicon Valley.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org. 

The way we were when we bought gas...

Historic cartoon in Fresno Bee, 1812

Written by Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune opinion page/5-27-26 

 When the price of gasoline hit $4.50 a gallon recently ($6.50 in California) it caused me to reflect on the history of gas prices I have experienced in my rather long life. You’ll see how long.

 

When I started driving in the mid-1950s, a gallon of gas at the pump was about 25 cents (for regular) and 28 cents for (ethyl). Ethyl was “premium” and not Lucille Ball’s TV friend.

 

My family had a cabin on a lake near Moose Lake and when I went there, I’d stop at an Erickson station (later Holiday) near the Duluth Ore Docks and order a buck’s worth of regular. That was plenty to get me to the cabin.

 

Besides the prices of gas, there have been drastic changes in the way gas stations operated. For one thing, they were called “service stations,” because a stop at one could involve more than a buck’s worth of gas.

 

Also called “filling stations” they were manned by men (all men) who were known as “pump jockeys.” These men wore the uniforms of their brand — Standard, Pure, Mobil, Texaco, Phillips 66, Mileage, Clark, Erickson, Cities Service and others. Many of their uniforms were topped with leathery bow ties, and, of course, special caps, often military style, identifying the brand they represented.

 

In the process, no driver EVER filled his or her own tank at a service station.  Most drivers wouldn’t know how. Drivers would pull into the driveway alongside the row of pumps and a pump jockey would dash out of the building and approach the driver, still seated behind the wheel.

 

Speaking through the open window, the driver would order the kind and amount of gas (“Gimme a buck’s worth of regular.” or “Fill her up with ethyl.”) and the pump jockey would grab the hose from the proper pump and begin filling the tank. As the process unfolded, the pump jockey would dash to the front of the car and wash the windshield without asking if the driver wanted the service.

 

When the gas order was complete, and the windshield cleaned, the pump jockey, before collecting the money, would ask if the driver needed any other services. These other services might be open the hood and check the oil, or get down with a tire gauge and check the tires. If a tire or two was low on air, the jockey would grab the air hose and bring them up to where they belonged.

 

Under those circumstances, then he would show up at the driver’s side window to be paid — maybe $5 for a full tank of gas, no charge for the service. And no tipping — ever.

 

But occasionally there were limits. I was riding with a friend one time and he was out of cigarettes. Just about everybody smoked in those days, especially teenage boys who weren’t out for sports. It was a chilly, rainy evening shortly after dark and my friend pulled into a station on Central Entrance.

 

The pump jockey darted from inside his building wearing rain gear and approached the driver’s window, asking for an order. He got one:

 

“I’ll take a package of Marlboros,” my friend said.

 

The jockey looked at him scornfully and said, “You Xyz##XXY,” as he turned on his heel and returned to the comfort of his station.

 

As I said, there were limits.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

Parking meter loss leads to very bad dream...

Written By Jim Heffernan for TheDuluthNewsTribune/May 2, 2026

I admit I was worried as I drove my aging white SUV toward downtown Duluth. I’d heard that they’d junked all the parking meters and somehow hooked parking regulation up to so-called smartphones. 

I’m not so smart on my smartphone. Oh, I can check the outside temperature and answer it if somebody calls, but I don’t text stuff. I don’t use the keyboard at all — my fingers are too fat. I’ve always had fat fingers, much to my chagrin in junior high school. I’m over it now. The chagrin.

So, when I read in this newspaper that the city is now controlling parking downtown with cell phone QR codes instead of parking meters, I pondered: What the devil is a QR code? Looking it up, I learned it’s “a machine-readable code consisting of an array of black and white squares, typically used for storing URLs or other information for reading by the camera on a smartphone.” Oh, is that all. I enjoy storing URLs, especially on weekends when the sun is shining. Yeah, right.

But I was still feeling plenty nervous venturing onto parking meter-less Superior Street in my SUV last month.

I had to park to pick up my taxes from the guy who can figure them out. I’m not so hot on taxes either. But where to park? How to pay with no meters? Would I get a ticket? How much do they fine you these days? Last time I paid a parking ticket they cost $2. That was sometime in the last century.

These were my thoughts as I rumbled on wondering if my muffler was shot. Jeez, I’m thinking, if I can’t park, I can’t get my taxes and send them in on time. I could get arrested by the IRS and sent up the river for an undetermined amount of time or even be deported to Mexico, although I like their food in spite of being a (half) Scandinavian hotshot from Doolut.

I determined that the taxes were more important than a potential parking ticket, so I decided I’d just pull into an angle parking place and take my chances. Alighting from my vehicle, I noticed a nearby small metal box about waist high atop a pole and decided to check it out.

What a relief!  A new style parking meter that covered the whole block. It had a keyboard featuring numbers 1 through 10 and the entire alphabet A through Z. Now I was getting somewhere. There were instructions at the top indicating what you should do before inserting coins in the slots at the bottom.

I can do that, I figured, perusing the instructions. First, they told me to put in my license plate number. Made sense. That’s how they’d know which car was which once I got to the stage where I was to put money in. So, I punched in my plate number JIM8O6 (not my actual plate number or my locker number at the Family Sauna) and moved on to the next instruction.

Next, they told me to put in my date of birth, which I willingly did. That got rejected with the message that I am too old to be driving. Hmm. Moving on, the gizmo told me to punch in my Social Security number, my weight, my height, my shoe size and educational attainment — choose 12 years, 14 years, 16 years, graduate school level (up to 20), and degrees such as B.A., M.A. PhD, MD, DDS, DM&IR, Etc.

No problemo. I don’t mind spreading my Social Security number around the globe. It can lead to some interesting e-mails from needy rich guys in Nigeria who need help accessing their money.

Yawn…I was getting drowsy writing this. Suddenly ZZZs and then a dream: 

In the dream after I punched in all of the requested information, the parking box told me to insert a gold coin with President Trump’s image on it. I didn’t have one on me so I darted into a nearby bank, putting my hand in my jacket pocket with the index finger pointing like a gun. I ordered a teller to give me a Trump coin because I didn’t want to over park in my spot with no meter. She smiled and pressed a button and a loud noise rang throughout the bank lobby, scaring customers. There were three.

Soon guards and cops showed up in my dream placing handcuffs on my wrists behind my back, causing me to wonder how I was going to eat lunch. And then there was the problem of picking up my taxes and getting them mailed by April 15. And how could I sign the tax forms with my hands handcuffed behind me? My doze was becoming a night…er… daymare.

When my nose hit the keyboard I had been typing on, I suddenly woke up. What a dream, but it was no dream that the parking meters are gone. Used to be two bits for 10 minutes and done. Done is right.

Oh, and what about my taxes? They got sent in but I’m starting to smell tacos.

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org. 

When ya gotta go, ya gotta go...

Portrait at about 102-103
(Wikipedia)

Written by By Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/April 4, 2026

 I’ve been around Duluth for a long, long time — dipping a teensy-weensy toe in the final weeks of the 1930s and an old toe in the 2020s. That’s parts of 10 decades, although I’m not 100 years old…yet. I’ve seen a lot of Duluth history, much of which has understandably, even deservedly, been lost on younger generations of Duluthians.

 

Take Albert Woolson, for instance. Some local folks today likely never heard of him. He was the last surviving member of the Union Army during the Civil War. He lived here and died in Duluth in 1956 at the age of 107 or 109 — nobody was ever quite sure of his exact age. He was young when he served, doing duty as a drummer boy.

 

For a time back then he was probably Duluth’s most famous person. Coincidentally, he was a Central Hillside neighbor of today’s most famous ex-Duluthian, Bob Dylan. When Bob was a child, his family, the Zimmermans, lived a few doors away from the aged Woolson. 

 

I saw Woolson a few times in his final years. He visited old Lincoln Junior High School for Memorial Day assemblies a couple of times when I was a pupil. The principal presented him with a box of cigars in appreciation. He also was feted in Superior Street parades late in his life, always wearing a dark suit coat, festooned with various medals, and a military-style cap.

 

Why all this now? A few weeks ago, in this newspaper’s Bygones column an item from way back in 1956 reported that Woolson smoked a few cigars while being treated in St. Luke’s Hospital for lung congestion. Nothing like a good cigar to treat lung congestion, I always say. The celebrated centenarian died later that year.

 

Whenever I am reminded of Albert Woolson, I am also reminded of a story once told me by an older friend in the Duluth news media that I think of whenever I pass by the statue of Woolson outside the St. Louis County Depot in downtown Duluth, depicting him as an old man seated with a cane in his hand.

 

Here is that story as I recall it being told to me (the historical perspective is mine):

 

It was an election year, and, as usual, American politics was a main subject in the 1956 news. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was running for a second term. Democrats would re-nominate Adlai E. Stevenson, former governor of Illinois, to challenge Eisenhower as he had four years earlier and, of course, lost. His running mate would be Sen. Estes Kefauver (pronounced KEE -foffer or kee-FOFFER, take your pick), a prominent Tennessee politician who was strong on fighting organized crime.

 

Seeking support on the campaign trail, Kefauver came to Duluth where he was warmly greeted by local Democrats who came up with a bright campaign idea: Bring Kefauver to the hospital to visit the last survivor of the Union Army in the Civil War, demonstrating the candidate’s deep respect and concern for this great American veteran and so on and so forth blah, blah, blah. Bring the press and never mind that Kefauver represented a Confederacy state.

 

They brought the press — the newspaper, TV, radio, all they could muster, including the reporter who passed this story on — and assembled in the hospital hallway to document the visit of this esteemed U.S. senator-cum maybe U.S. vice president with the ailing centenarian and last Union army veteran of the war between the states.

 

Unfortunately, Woolson, very hard of hearing, apparently was not aware of exactly who was coming to visit, or if he knew at all that a visit was imminent. When the moment arrived, Senator Kefauver entered the Woolson hospital room, local Democrats and members of the press watching nearby.

 

Woolson looked up at the approaching visitor and said, “Thank heaven you’re here doctor, I haven’t had a bowel movement in three days.”

 

Kefauver’s and the press’ reaction were not reported to me (nor was it reported to the pubic), and Woolson lasted only a few more months. He was given a huge funeral in the National Guard Armory on London Road, with special written condolences from President Eisenhower, who regretted he could not attend. Of course.

 

Today, as I occasionally walk by the statue of a seated Woolson outside the Depot in downtown Duluth, I reflect on that old hospital visit story and wonder what exactly it is he is sitting on. Three days can cause quite an explosion.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org. 

The life and times of Bomba the Jungle Boy...

Bomba the Jungle Boy,1949 movie/source: Wikipedia

Written By Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/3-7-26

 When actor Johnny Weissmuller, the first sound-movie Tarzan, got too old and corpulent to continue playing the loincloth-wearing Lord of the Jungle, the studio cast the boy who played his son “Boy” (the boy’s name was Boy) in the lead role in a new jungle-based film franchise called “Bomba the Jungle Boy.”

That was where the Boys were.

 

Boy was portrayed by young actor Johnny Sheffield, who grew up in the film jungle with Tarzan and wife Jane, and who added the chimp Cheeta to the family for chump change. But by the late 1940s-early ‘50s Boy was a strapping youth who could handle jungle evil doers and swing from trees, swim with crocodiles and befriend elephants and chimpanzees, just like Tarzan had done. Welcome to the world of Bomba, his new name.

 

I guess there were half a dozen or so Bomba the Jungle Boy movies, and I was watching one of them on a hospital maternity ward TV when my daughter was born. This was in the ‘70s just before the era when prospective fathers were allowed in the delivery room to accompany their wives as they laboriously produced their child. 

 

So, after spending several hours before the big birthing moment with my wife as she endured the pains of impending delivery known as “labor,” when the water had broken and the child was about to come, the hospital staff wheeled her into the delivery room and shunted me off to wait in the TV room with a couple of other expectant fathers and Bomba the Jungle Boy on the TV screen.

 

This is a pretty nervous time for the expectant father but a lot easier than the role of the expectant mother. So, I leaned back in a TV room chair and watched the redoubtable Bomba do his stuff to fight jungle evils in darkest Africa or maybe on a Hollywood studio back lot — most likely the latter.

Then suddenly there was an interruption. “You are the father of a baby girl,” a smiling nurse said as she beckoned me into a nearby room where the new mother and our newborn daughter, wrapped in swaddling cloths, were waiting. I won’t go into describing that wonderful, touching moment. So many have been through it. It’s true love at first sight.

 

But what about Bomba the Jungle Boy? Not that I cared, but the baby’s arrival interrupted my watching it in the fathers’ TV room and despite the passage of time (try five decades) I never forgot what I was doing when I found out I was a father.

 

Segue now to the present, to the middle of a recent night. Sleepless around 4 a.m. (it happens), I rolled out of bed and made my way to the living room television, tuned it into Turner Classic Movies and there, at long last, was Bomba the Jungle Boy, the first time I’d seen him since the birth of our daughter.

 

I can’t be sure it was the same movie (there were several Bomba movies), but it brought back the memory of that day so long ago. Over the years I have often told this story — that I remember watching a Bomba the Jungle Boy movie when I first became a father. It impressed no one.

 

But I find it fun to revive Bomba this way.  We’re a couple of generations beyond Bomba and Tarzan and that whole era when Hollywood shoveled superficial nonsense adventure into the theaters of pre-TV America, films to be picked up decades later and shown on TV in the middle of the night.

 

I’m not sure my daughter, the girl born to us that day, is aware of this tale. She’ll be able to read it now. She got a brother almost three years later (they still weren’t inviting fathers into the delivery room) so I repaired to the maternity ward TV room again. His arrival was less dramatic— no Bomba the Jungle Boy, no lions or tigers or bears. (What? There are no bears in Africa? Oh my.)

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.