The Kandi Express, a publication of the Kandiyohi County Minnesota historical society.
Starting on page 11:

THE ACCENT WAS ON HUMOR

By Rosanne B. Giencke

The Cunard ocean liner eased into New York harbor. From the foredeck, where surged its cargo of emigrant passengers, avid gazes marked the Statue of Liberty. It was a moment of unendurable emotion. Even the stalwart among them could not, ultimately, check the flow of tears. The tears were born of mingled reactions: the joy of journey’s end made bittersweet by the finality of cherished ties severed.

Ahead — a 27-acre dot in the bustling bay — lay Ellis Island: threshold to America. It was also, in this year 1923 (the second year of the stringent new immigration quotas) detainment center for denied entries, who faced immediate deportment.

Aboard the transport was the Jewish emigrant family Chargo. They were Ukranian Jews, a mother and four children. After nine years of separation from the other half of their refugee family in America, jubilant now at the impending reunion.

Sixteen-year old Morris was consumed with awe. America at last! There could have been no greater suspense had the gates to the Garden of Eden suddenly swung open. He knew, from Kiev shoptalk, that the United States was a land of incalculable wealth. Streets paved with gold; this he believed implicitly. In America too you could hang up your jacket and walk off, confident that you could come back a week later and. still find it, untouched by a citizenry honest as it was rich.

The Chargos were bound for Minnesota. There in a city called St. Paul the family would be reunited. Morris was only seven when he had last seen his father. Time had not dimmed the memory of that patriarchal full-bearded figure, nor his father’s quiet piety. Nine years it had been since his father had walked out of their Ukranian village. With Europe erupting into WWI he had taken his two older sons–fleeing conscription in the Czar’s army–to haven in America. They were long unable to make contact. For some time Morris’ mother had been a widow in all but name. Now soon the Chargos would again be altogether!

Sisters Freda, Rose and Esther embraced in heartfelt relief. The passage was over! Around them stamped their younger brother, unrestrained as a mad Cossack. The three clucked in fond exasperation. It was time Father took charge of that young man!

At Ellis Island the Chargos were channeled through the clearance lines. Morris wore saber cuts as testimonials to boyhood confrontations with Russian Revolutionary factions. But those wounds, deep and slashing as they had been, were nothing compared to the blow that was to fall.

Because of tight immigration limits, Freda and Rose, both over 18 and unemployed, were denied entry. The family group was stupefied. They looked blankly at each other, not daring to accept the enormity of the situation. To some so far. Together. Only to be wrested apart at the eleventh hour when the happy ending was figuratively in sight. Sick at heart the two girls allowed themselves to be directed to detention quarters, there to await their ship to Europe. America’s welcome had become a nightmare of farewell.

(The family maintained faithful correspondence with the sistesr for the next two decades. Then came the 1941 Nazi invasion of Kiev. Then silence. The two were among 200 Chargo relatives assumed dead in the ensuing holocaust.)

The mother — and by virtue of their age, — Esther and Morris were allowed American entry. Aboard the train to Minnesota Chargo had his first taste of both bananas and wieners. With bread and cheese these comprised the bagged Victuals, distributed to each one, that was their sustenance to St. Paul. A fellow passenger kindly demonstrated how bananas had first to be peeled to be eaten.

As a new American, Chargo was the archetypical greenhorn. His English was minimal. Three months of night school comprised his entire formal education. He became the perennial jobseeker.

He drifted between St. Paul and Chicago where lived his married oldest sister. He was young and broke and rode the rails. Dodging railroad detectives, abashed by the hardened hobos, he harbored constantly the gnawing fear of discovery and subsequent deportment.

Life straightened around when he met Sophie Gary, daughter of a Minneapolis grocer and butcher. Their courtship advanced steadily from first dances and ice cream parlor dates. His future father-in-law literally launched Chargo’s career as a produce man. He bought a truck which he put at Chargo’s disposal and assigned to him the collection of eggs and live chickens for his business.

Chargo’s collection territory grew. Eventually his area went west as far as the South Dakota line. It was a fair business. But essential to its expansion was a central collection point between Aberdeen and the Twin Cities. The plausible spot was Willmar. So to Willmar moved the Chargo newlyweds. In 1933 the Willmar Produce Company was established. For the next forty years the Chargos called Willmar home.

Over the years Chargo became something of a public figure with his radio capers and seven-piece dance band.  Well known in the area he was even– briefly, as perpetrator of a 1949 internationally publicized radio hoax– one of its most controversial residents!

He became a radio personality quite by accident. Station KWLM was then in its infancy. Studios were in the City Auditorium, a 1936 WPA project, on 6th Street. One of its earliest commercial customers was Chargo’s Willmar Produce Company which sponsored a weekly half hour program of old-time music. Its program of polkas, waltzes, and “a schottische or two” had a wide following and was sandwiched a little business advertising. These were Iive-band country sounds. The material of wedding dances.  The music of farmers and laborers and railroaders, many of whom were no more than a generation or two removed from the Old World. The program, in those days of live radio audiences, drew rapt numbers to the third-floor studios.

It was before such a studio audience that Chargo stepped one December evening. What better way to personalize company-sponsored Christmas greetings than to deliver the greeting himself! Chargo had never before been on the air. It was with fluttering heart that he advanced to the microphone. Inwardly he praised his outward composure, his flawless delivery.

Mortified he stood awash in laughter. The audience was convulsed. Vast chuckles. Paroxyms of laughter. Sounds to shatter the ear — and the ego.

Chargo virtually crept home. There exation and bewilderment reduced him to tears. His humiliation was complete. The studio audience and scores of home listeners were holding their sides with laughter. At him. At his Ukranian accent. That accent which he honestly thought he had jettisoned..

The sincerely worded Christmas message had been received like so much slapstick. Tomorrow how could he face the world? What naivete to stand up and let his dialect make of him a public buffoon!

But the audience ate it up. And wanted more. Those whose own pronunciation was marked by an Irish brogue or carried a Scandinavian twist or Dutch or German empathized with him over the betrayal of his own Ukranian accent.

For others enjoyment, was in the accent itself. Words like “women” becoming in Chargo’s pronouncements, “vimmen … “with” emerging as “vit … “ But his appeal transcended dialect. Here was a naturally humorous man.

Chargo took to hosting the company broadcast. His script was his own painstaking work. His dialect and mannerisms were the makings of a country humorists No matter what he said, the audience laughed.

With stiletto–thin mustache and the native grace of a trapeze artist.  Chargo parleyed an exoticism foreign to the some- what insular setting of Kandiyohi County. That was part of his folksy charm.

He began to collect jokes and devised his own for fillers between the dedications and musical numbers that comprised the program format. He had already fund of stories and spotlighted area peopIe.

The catch program introduction plugged Chargo as “Your Choreboy . . . your egg-eating . . . milk-drinking . . . butter-smearing…. your cow’s best friend.” This slogan was directed to the farmers, his prospective customers in the listening audience.  The name Choreboy caught on.  It was as the Choreboy that Chargo headed up the program’s dance band the Royal Scandinavians.

Over the years members of the popular area band included Rudy Helgeson, drummer and singer since age six.  Accordianists pianists Art Rigstad and Harry Forsman.   Albert Boutin on the slide trombone, Oscar Larson with his bass horn, saxophonist Ernie Galloway, trumpeter Joe Strohfelder.  Fiddlers Oliver Saggedal (one of five fiddlin’ brothers from Sunburg) and Frank Topel from near Renville.  Pianists Mrs. Robert (Evelyn) Johnson and Mrs. Clifford (Marian) Riqstad.  They were railroad men. Farmers. Shopowners. Housewives.   Laborers. United by a love of music.

And out in front would be Chargo himself.  Playing with professional aplomb one instrument after another. Fiddle. Saxophone. Accordian. Trumpet. And in so doing pulled one the greatest acting stunts of the century. For Chargo was, in actuality, unable to read a note of music or play a single instrument. He simply … coolly . . . and methodically mimed the dextrous motions of his back-up band. So agile was his performance that his musical deficiency went generally undetected!

A frequent guest on Chargo’s radio program was Bob Keating whose rich Irish tenor gained him longtime sponsorship of his own program over KWLM. He brought listening audiences to misty evocation over such sentimental favorites as “Falway Bay,” “Little Town in the Ould Country Down,” “That Old Irish Mother of Mine” and “Rose of Tralee.” Songs which spoke powerfully of mother and home.

It was on a:Chargo program that Bob Keating soloed for a New London farm wedding miles away. The event attracted nationwide publicity. This unique arrangement evolved when Chargo learned of an engaged area couple whose small home wedding was going to be without either vocalist or pianist. Chargo obtained the services of Keating and area pianist Harold Swenson for the nuptial broadcast. The wedding and Chargo’s broadcast radio program got underway simultaneously. The bride, whose home radio set was tuned into KWLM on Chargo directives was thus treated to the traditional airs of the wedding march. And with a sizeable radio audience as silent well wishers! A couple of weeks later the delighted newlyweds engaged Chargo’s band for their wedding dance!

The Chargo dance band was in some demand. There were many area bookings and they appeared as far afield as Swanville in Morrison County and  Odessa near the South Dakota line.

One memorable radio program was broadcast from Maynard in adjacent Chippewa County. Chargo and his band were there on their regular KWLM timespot to make a live radio event out of a firemen’s fundraising dance. Since there was no phone in the old movie house, where the dance was to be held, a radio communications hookup had been devised using the garage next door.

Chargo and KWLM announcer Earl Henton had been broadcasting live for some time when an obviously upset engineer Vern Baumgartner approached them.

“I’ve got bad news for you guys.- For the last forty minutes we’ve been off the air.”

Henton and Chargo blinked in dismay. To start over now: the thought was actual pain. At their feet was a growing mound of scrap paper: jokes and promotional ads discarded with each reading. Of one accord the two dropped to their knees scooping up the scraps-into sweaty palms. Frantically they sorted them for immediate re-use. And having only groans for the reported cause of transmission failure. Someone, it seemed, had driven inside the adjacent garage and unwittingly knocked out the essential cable!

Chargo went to lengths to ingratiate himself with his radio audience. He sprinkled his Christmas broadcasts with greetings in Norwegian, Swedish, German — even Spanish, acquired for the benefit of area migrant farm workers! He rehearsed his Norwegian with egg patron George Vikse, a Norwegian himself who farmed on the Little Crow Trail north of Willmar. Good friends – “we’d sit and chew the rag” recalls Vikse — Chargo also learned from him the Norwegian swinging game “Skal,” much in demand at local dances.

But Chargo is best remembered for his Circus Animal Excape, his celebrated radio hoax of February 1949.  Guffaws of laughter still accompany retellings of that infamous episode which turned Willmar upside down. Listeners were led to believe that tigers and lions, escaped ‘from a supposed Willmar circus train wreck, now stalked city streets. His story purely a figment of his imagination acquired unintentional authenticity when the fire siren just happened to sound at this time! An armed citizenry gathered.   Hysteric parents went in search of their children. KWLM, prompted by an incensed police captain, went to some pains to point out in repeated radio announcements, that the earlier “news report” had been nothing more than an extemporaneous Chargo scenario. By then the story of the circus animal hoax had flashed coast to coast. It was picked up as a banner headline by the San Diego Union, in whose city the Ringling Brothers circus wintered. The incident has been regularly revived in local and Twin Cities papers and can be reviewed on page 278 of the 1970 Centennial History of Kandiyohi County.

The Chargos joined J.J. Rivkin and Jack Harris the greengrocer as Willmar’s third Jewish family. Chargo was active in the community. A Chamber of Commerce member, a life member of Eagles, Elks, Legion, Mason, Shriners, Forty et Eight. Only occasionally did he have to dodge friendly proselyting attempts.

One ecumenical friendship was born of a nocturnal battle of nerves. Late one day, in from Minneapolis, Chargo’s truck got behind a poky old Ford. Twice Chargo tried to pass. The Ford doggedly held its place. Chargo shrugged, gave up. The next morning the local Catholic priest paid him a call. The octogenarian pastor of Willmar’s St. Mary’s, Father Patrick Kenny, was there to ‘fess up. He was culpaple for last night’s irascible driving! The two grew toward friendship. the Irish-born priest, well traveled and something of a scholar, was ironically the only man in Willmar with whom Chargo could converse in Hebrew! A mordant wit, Father Kenny appreciated the homespun flavor of Chargo humor. Chargo dropped off eggs and chickens at the Catholic parish house and — an avid fisherman — favored Father Kenny with fresh fish. In turn Father Kenny took to dropping in on his Jewish charge, checking that he was regularly attending synagogue in the Twin Cities.

Chargo’s program gave air time to what today we call public service messages.

His radio boosts for polio funds led to chairmanship of the Kandiyohi County polio chapter. In 1953, in a then innovative move, he organized a fundraising auction for the March of Dimes. Harlan Peterson was auctioneer for the January sale, held at the Willmar Sales Barn on East Hwy 12. Farmers brought cattle, hogs, chickens, and turkeys to be auctioned off and Businessmen their  merchandise.  Bidding was lively with a crowd of 700 and some $3500 was deposited in the polio chapter fund that day.

The Chargo business was orginally located on Pacific Avenue, under the First Street bridge. The company, owned by son Edward since Chargos retirement in 1973, has long had a Gorton Avenue address.

Through WWII and for some years after Chargo’s Willmar Produce company was barely solvent. “There was always just enough to pay the Bills, support the children” Chargo recalls. He dealt in furs and scrap. (The firm specializes today in new steel and industrial tools and supplies.)

Chargo also paid by the pound for rags. During eras of depressed farm economy many a housewife earned her nest money from selling the family’s clothing descards to Chargo.

“Morrie” and Sophie, married 50 years this coming June, are parents of three children. Edward and wife Roberta are residents of Willmar.  Daughter Joan and younger son Harvey live in Golden Valley. The Chargos have been Hopkins residents since 1974. For the past five years, Chargo’s puckish wit has served to good credit in the wards of Mt. Sinai Hospital where he is a volunteer.

Chargo, his mustache still a pencil etch, his hair only faintly salt-and-pepper, clearly has had the last laugh. The man whose brothers fled Russian conscription proudly gave WWII service in the American air force . . . and his sons in the Korean War. The man who could not read a note of music has two sons . . . and now two grandsons . . . who are gifted trumpet players. For the man who unleashed fictional circus tigers and lions in Willmar streets . . . life has unquestionably been a circus!