Ramsey County History – Spring 2014: “Growing Up in St. Paul: Mike Sanchelli Remembers Swede Hollow”

Growing Up in St. Paul: Mike Sanchelli Remembers Swede Hollow
Edited by Steven C. Trimble

This article is drawn from Mike Sanchelli’s first-person (1915–2003) reminiscences of life in Swede Hollow during the 1920s and ‘30s. The Sanchelli’s first home in Swede Hollow cost $20 plus $20 a year for rent of the land, which was collected twice a year by the land owner. Sanchelli describes a charmed life of simple survival and happy times in Swede Hollow. His father, Antonio (1884–1960) was a railroad laborer who had emigrated from Benevento, Italy with his wife Antoinette (1889–1961). The family raised chickens, rabbits and they even had a pig they butchered. Mike’s father crushed grapes with his feet for winemaking, and they lived on cabbage “five times a week.” Their playgrounds were the railroad tracks and the dump. Sanchelli attended high school at Lincoln School and was bilingual, speaking Italian and English. During the Great Depression, Mike’s father used to sweep up the remains on the floor of rail cars to bring food home for his family. Sanchelli later served in the US. Army in the Southwest Pacific in World War II, then returned to St. Paul where he worked as a clerk for over thirty years.
PDF of Trimble article