Some of the Adventures:

Toboggan run, location unknown, ca. 1900. 
Minnesota Historical Society Photograph Collection, Location No. GV3.77 r24

"Experimenting with homemade equipment was a part of winter fun. We put together barrel-stave sleds and toboggans. The staves we scrounged from broken barrels at the dump on the river at Twenty-sixth, or we found busted barrels behind grocery stores or butcher shops. Lots of stock was shipped in barrels — sugar, vinegar, apples and other fruit, and pickled and salted fish. Many of these barrels were made in cooperages right on the north side."

Melvin Frank, "In North Minneapolis: Sawmill City Boyhood," Minnesota History (winter 1980).

Marble game, Logan Park, Minneapolis; Elim Swedish Baptist Church in the background, ca. 1925. 
Minnesota Historical Society Photograph Collection, Location no. GV5.13 r4 Negative no. 62593

"Marbles was the game for early spring.... As soon as the snow was off the sidewalks and the cement was warm enough for a boy to sit on without freezing his hinder, we had the games going."

Melvin Frank, "In North Minneapolis: Sawmill City Boyhood," Minnesota History (winter 1980).
 

Van Buren School students playing baseball, St. Paul, ca. 1910. 
Minnesota Historical Society Photograph Collection, Location No. GV3.11 p87, Negative No. 33635

"In summer, baseball was the thing. It was a regular event to get a game of 'scrub' going. Or we chose up sides for team games. Since the park was only three blocks away, our Sixth Street bunch could hurry off to Farview at the drop of a suggestion.

Occasionally, 'Rube' Schauer, a pitcher for the Minneapolis Millers who lived near the park, showed up to give us kids some pointers. I recall that I was catching one Saturday morning when Ol' Rube took the mound. I had never seen such a curve or drop before! I looked with awe as his curveball followed the end of the swinging bat in its arc...."

Melvin Frank, "In North Minneapolis: Sawmill City Boyhood," Minnesota History (winter 1980).

Map of Melvin's neighborhood, Northwest Minneapolis, from "In North Minneapolis: Sawmill City Boyhood." 
Created by Alan Ominsky for the Minnesota Historical Society. From Minnesota History 47/4: Winter, 1980, p. 144.

"... first on Washington Avenue between Lowry and Thirty-third avenues North. My father, Arthur Albert Frank, began work as the operator of the Twin City Rapid Transit Company's power substation on Lowry and Third Street."

Melvin Frank, "In North Minneapolis: Sawmill City Boyhood," Minnesota History (winter 1980).