Spring—when the snow melts and the frost boils ~ April 3, 1986

By David Heiller

An Easter miracle occurred last weekend.

When we left for a family get-together in Minneapolis Saturday morning, a foot of snow covered the landscape at our home in Birch Creek Township. When we returned Monday afternoon, all the snow had melted. It was like seeing a nephew you hadn’t seen in years, and suddenly he is a foot taller, with a deeper voice and stubble on his face.

Malika and Miss Emma outside 
in the small window between
"The Snow is GONE! and the mud is here!"

But what a sight on Monday. The woodpile gaped like an open wound. I located the pile of slab-wood that didn’t get stacked before our Thanksgiving storm. The bent hood of an old Ford truck emerged, plus sheets of tin for a roofing project. And those rusty band saw blades from an old sawmill were curled where I left them. Waiting.

The garden sneered at us, cornstalks and Brussels sprouts leaning this way and that. Weren’t we supposed to clean that last fall, after harvest? The front lawn showed a long winter’s use by our dog, who must have thought it a perfect pet exercise area. Time to get the rake out.

But spring is here, though the countryside doesn’t proclaim it. A pair of robins flitted in mid-air under the apple tree Monday evening and they weren’t fighting. They will nest again in the white spruce. Green will push aside brown, frogs will break into song, and roads will boil.

A little leery of the Canada 
geese in the spring.

Roads boil? If you live in Pine County, you know what I mean. Frost that is down nearly to China works its way to the surface, and spits out into frost boils. I measured one two and a half feet deep several years ago just south of our house. I’m sure older folks can top that by a lot. They look like huge boils on the face of the road. New ones jiggle when stepped on like Jello. Old ones swallow children and foreign cars. The Guinness Book of World Records doesn’t list the world’s deepest frost boil, but I would put my money on northern Pine County.

People west of Sturgeon Lake will have a closer look at them this year, with the Kettle River Bridge still closed. The old bridge on County Road 46 was removed last summer, with a new one to rise in glory three months later. But bedrock, rain, or too many cups of coffee kept it from completion. The detour roads to Moose Lake, Sturgeon Lake, or Willow River, will show us some fine frost boils. Our cars will suffer. Mechanics and front-end specialists love detour roads the way dentists love Easter and Halloween.

But before we complain too much more, we should remember what those roads must have been like not too many years ago. If you are used to blacktop, our forefathers would have been pleased with a little gravel. Many of the roads where I live are “corduroy” roads, made to stand up to frost, water, and washouts, by laying logs in place and covering them with dirt. Sometimes you can still see these logs when a grader accidentally snags one out of the road after a rain, or in the spring.

The roads were often built by local people who wanted better roads. Many contributed days of their year to work on the roads in place of paying taxes.

Sometimes the work was simply donated. O. Bernard Johnson, who grew up in Birch Creek Township, wrote about such an effort in his very interesting book, The Homesteaders.

Postmaster Charles Olson, who worked in Sturgeon Lake from 1901 to 1913, wanted to establish a rural route east of town. The route qualified, with a minimum of 24 miles in length and 100 or more patrons. But a postal inspector found the roads deplorable, and turned in a negative report. It must have been frost boil season.

Writes O. Bernard Johnson:

The rejection was a disappointment to the settlers, but they were not discouraged. Mr. Olson informed them as to the reasons why the proposal was not approved and they went to work immediately, without pay, and improved the roads of the suggested route. When the Inspector returned in the fall of the year, he was so greatly impressed with the improvements, that he approved Route No. 1. Route No. 2, running east of the village was approved later.

Johnson also tells about the muddy roads:

There is an incident, related years ago, concerning a fishing trip made by Olaf Larson to Sturgeon Lake in a two wheel cart, which in this instance was the front part of the lumber wagon: He caught several wash tubs full of fish. On the way home, near the Ten Post, due to the heavy load and depth of the mud in the road, one of the wheels of the cart gave way and all the fish slid off the cart into the mud. No record is available as to how he managed to transport the fish the rest of the distance to his home. The story, however, is true.

If you are driving through that area eight miles west of Sturgeon Lake in the next month, keep an eye out for frost boils. You may even find a few of those fish still splashing around.

The weather could be worse ~ March 7, 1996

David Heiller

With all the cold and snow we’ve had this winter, it’s nice to know that the weather can always be worse, and it HAS been worse.

I talked to Red Hansen of Askov a few weeks ago about what was the worst winter he could remember. He answered without hesitation that it was the winter of 1949-50. That winter is still listed in the Duluth newspaper as having the most snow ever, 131.6 inches. So far this year, Duluth has received 111.5 inches as of March 4.

So with another 20.1 inches, we could break that record, although I hope we don’t. (Editor’s note: We got 135.4 inches that year. The record was broken!)

Red made these remarks about the winter of 1949-50.

“That winter we had so much snow, it would take a week to get a road cleared, then you’d no sooner get it cleared off than it would fill back in again, and it would take another week before you could get a plow in there to clear a township road out.

“The snow was much deeper, and it moved with the wind. We lived north of town 2½ miles out in the old Stovring home [across from the Harald Stottrup and Harold Jensen farms]. To get to work I had to walk. I ended up walking on snowshoes cross country.”

QUESTION: “Was that uphill both ways, Red?” Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Tell on.

“Pretty near a month on snowshoes. Sleeping in the post office at night when we couldn’t get home. The last train was 6:30 in the evening, and we sorted mail until seven. And then get the backpack on and the snowshoes on and go cross country through the woods to get home. Get home about 8 o’clock. That was a little tough going. Ι would say I was in pretty good shape when spring came.

“Same thing in the morning, we had to be in here by 8 o’clock. We’d leave home by 6:30 with a backpack on, then down through the woods, through the pine trees. But what was worse was Hedda was sitting out there with the two kids. One night Becky got pneumonia. We ended up with the county plow at midnight, plowing out there with a doctor. That time I took the family out with the snowplow. Becky had about a 104 fever. So it was a rough winter.

“When they finally got the plow in there, it kept building up and building up and building up on the sides. We ended up walking on top of the high ridge of the piled up snow, in other words over the ditch. We walked on the telephone wires. They were under the snow, under our feet. You can figure out how high the snow was.

“There was a guy named Jorgensen that had a telephone. We had to help him in the spring. He had so much damage with the snow, poles down, wires down, we all pitched in and helped to get the line back out to our place. We walked down the road and pulled the wire backwards, peeling it out of the packed up snow and ice. Then they came out and put it up on poles again.”

“Winter was a little bit different. Now we have tall trees, a lot of woods. At that time there was small, short brush, and that snow would move for miles and miles and miles and pile up. The drifting was worse.

Red and Hedda.

“The last time we got plowed out, I started walking in the morning and I got to Highway 23, and here came Arild Frederiksen with his 2½ ton Army GMC with a V-plow in front. He could make maybe 15 feet, hit the snow real hard, and there he would stop. We met him out there, and we started shoveling this opening that a vee plow could get into to break the drift loose. Otherwise he would hit it and stop. I think we started shoveling about 7 o’clock out there on the highway, and there was eight of us by the time we got to my place, and that would be 2½ miles east. By evening, by 4 or 4:30, we had gotten that far, shoveling ahead of the plow.

“That worries you, when you’ve got family sitting out like that. I was lying in the post office [one night], couldn’t get home. Telephone rang around 11:30 at night. It was Hedda. She said the oil burner had gone out. So figured it was a carburetor that was dirty. So Ι told her how to shut the oil off the big tank, where to find my tools. I the telephone was right around the corner from the stove. I told her step by step; screw by screw, how to take that carburetor apart, lay it all out on the floor and clean it, then step by step I told her how to put it back in again screw by screw. Got the whole thing put together again, opened up the big valve on the tank, opened up the valve of the stove. Ι said, ‘Now throw a match in there.’ It took hold. Ι suppose it was 1:30 before she got back to bed again.

“Problems at that time you kind of took with grain of salt. We were used to them as kids. Βυt today, it’s a different story. It doesn’t take much to make people say, ‘O.K., shut the door and stay home.’ But we didn’t. We had to get to work.

“We’re softer. We’re used to better things. At that time, so it would snow, the car didn’t go, you walked. What are you going to do today? If the car doesn’t go, you’re not going to walk. Βut those days we walked. Pat the car on the hood when you walked by it and then walked to town.

“I used to crank on that old Model A, and it wouldn’t start. It stood outside of course. I’d crank on it until I couldn’t stand to crank anymore. Then I’d pull the crank out and hit it on the hood and throw the crank in the car an. start walking. But I had to get one lick in on old Model A.

Red had one vivid winter memory from when he was a kid living 1½ miles west of Askov with his folks, where he lives now.

“Many times, 11:00, 11:30 at night, mother dad and I would be out there shoveling so we could get to work in the morning. That was kind of nice. The moon would be shining, nice crisp night. You could hear the owls, and the shadows from the moonlight on the snow. We’d go there, and shovel for an hour, not a word being said side by side. Take your time, not rush It was a feeling of companionship. You’d get down the the highway finally, O.K., then you could get to` work in the morning. I’ve thought about that many times, the three of us out there shoveling.

“Yeah, times are a little different.”

Well said, Red.

Anny Ahlbom—she taught us how to live, how to die ~ June 20, 1985

David Heiller

I didn’t have the good fortune of knowing Anny Ahlbom very well. I met her one early spring afternoon in 1982, while working as a magazine and insurance salesman. She asked me right into her home six miles west of Rutledge. We drank coffee and ate apple cake. The 90-year-old lady led me through the house, showing off the paintings and carvings done by her late husband, John. She played the piano and sang and danced with me, a total stranger. She gave me a pair of mittens which she had knit, and a set of woolen wrist bands, then took my mittens with a promise to knit the hole in one of the thumbs.

I didn’t have a chance to sell her anything, and by the time I left two hours later, I didn’t want to.

When you enter Anny’s old house, the work of John Ahlbom overpowers you. Practically everything is hand done, starting with the rock exterior walls. Walls inside are painted floor to ceiling with murals of forests, horses, lakes. Figurines of men and animals, carved out of wood, stand in every corner. The stone fireplace, the 10-foot plastered archway that looks like marble with its colored mortar, the curved, wooden cupboards on the corner, are all the work of an artist, John Ahlbom.

Indeed, John deserves a story in himself. His works are scattered everywhere in Pine County. From the painting of Dr. William Ehmke at the Willow River High School library, to the life-size painting of Jesus Christ at United Methodist Church in Finlayson, from the brick fireplace at the American Legion Hall in Askov to the fireplace at Cassidy’s Restaurant in Hinckley.

But while John left physical tributes to behold, Anny left something equally valuable—a special personality that was partly from the Old Country and mostly from Anny herself.

She and John came from Sweden in 1914, and were married in Pine City that year. “I didn’t understand a thing the justice of the peace was saying,” Anny had said about the ceremony. In fact, the story has it that John coached Anny on the words “I do” over and over. When the time finally came, he told her, “Say yah, say yah!” They had to borrow $2.50 for the license. For their honeymoon, they took a rowboat trip on the Snake River in Pine City.

They moved around for several years, living for a time at the corner where Dwight Dietz now lives. At first, they stayed in a tent insulated with hay. John and Anny would take the bowl of bread dough to bed with them, so that it would rise during the night for the next day’s food. It was at that site about 1916 that the baby twins of John’s brother died. They are buried on the birch knoll to the east of the Dietz farm.

After several moves, John and Anny settled to stay six miles west of Rutledge. There, John built his “Kingdom of the Woods,” as some people called it. They raised five children: Claude, Roy, Alice, Astrid, and Johnny. Claude died when he was 17, in 1933. A frozen pile of sawdust that he was tunneling into collapsed. John, coming home from work, discovered his dead son when he saw the feet sticking out of the pile. Alice died in 1960.

Anny was a vital part of life in the area. She gave birth to all her children at home except the youngest, Johnny, in 1933. He was a breech baby, so they called for Dr. Ehmke and met him in a November blizzard in Rutledge. Anny brought many other children into the world too. She served as midwife for the Romanowski family next door, helping with the births of Agnes, Paul, Bernice, Mary, Marsella, Edwin, and John. Ed now farms that place, and his two sons, Randy and Ronnie, called Anny “Grandma.” She called them her grandsons.

Army’s kindness extended to others. She would make soup during the depression and take it across the road at noon time to the country school, Rhine Lake District 51. She and John also boarded teachers for the school for more than 20 years.

Anny and John also danced well. They won numerous mazurka and waltz contests in the area. Anny told me once, “Men used to whisper in my ear, ‘I love to dance with you.’” I could imagine it.

They loved each other, and weren’t afraid to tell others. John used to talk of the time Anny wanted to go to an auction sale, yet wanted a big supper that evening. So she fixed a chicken and put it in the oven. She carried a bowl of bread dough with her to the auction, and held it in her arms to rise while she watched the sale. When she returned home, the chicken was done, and the bread was ready for the oven.

“You can appreciate a woman like that,” John had said of Anny.

Anny and John also played jokes on one another. One time, Anny told John that the Romanowskis needed help moving a big bed. John went over, and they didn’t know what he was talking about. He came back, and called out “Anny” in such a voice that made Anny smile and hide. She was in a bedroom, scrubbing the floor, so crawled under the bed. John spied her feet protruding, dragged her out, then dunked her head in the bucket of scrub water.

Anny’s greatest loves were gardens and flowers. She would never throw a flower bulb away. In the winter, 200 plants would sit in the house. Son-in-law Basil Serfin remembers the time the flowers needed watering, and Anny ordered him out with the sprinkling can, even though it was raining. She raised gardens big enough for 12 people.

She also worked with her hands. Rug making was her specialty. Her rug loom is now on display at the Pine County Historical Museum in Askov. She would also demonstrate weaving on another loom at the museum.

There’s much more one could say about “Anny-in-the-woods,” as she signed her letters. I think her health was the most remarkable, and a reflection of the wholesome life she led. Anny didn’t even have a doctor. She’d had surgery in 1966, then saw a doctor for a yearly checkup after that. Finally she quit even those once-a-year visits.

Anny’s daughter, Astrid, and her husband, Basil, moved in with Anny two years ago. Astrid took over the cooking, and Anny began spending more time in the lawn chair than in the garden. She became weaker and weaker over the past six months, and began losing weight.

Astrid and Basil took Anny to Mercy Hospital on Thursday, June 6. Anny didn’t want any drugs, or intravenous feeding. No intervention.

“They said ‘It looks like she wants to go, and let’s not hinder it.’ A wonderful way to go,” Basil said. “The body just quit,” her son Roy said.

At 8:30 Monday morning, June 10, Astrid and Basil watched Anny die.

“She just went to sleep. Very painless,” Basil said. “She accepted everybody as they were, strangers and friends alike,” Astrid said.

“And in the end, showed us how to die,” Basil added.

Even in death, the joy of Anny’s life came forth. Anny used to tease that if she raised one finger while she lay in the coffin, that meant she wanted a peanut butter sandwich.

“And we had peanut butter and bread ready,” Basil joked.

She also asked Myrtle Romanowski to place a rose in her hands, to cover up the gnarls of 93 years of life. That wish was granted—Mrs. Romanowski placed the flower there.

I have a feeling that rose is still growing and alive, and that Anny is, too.

Old photo shows a much different river ~ July 20, 2005

David Heiller

Mom and I were looking through some old photos a couple of month ago. They were from the Schnick farm in about 1920. Most showed scenes and people. There were several pictures of women in white on a picnic on one of the bluffs.

Unfortunately, I only have a photocopied
 version of this photo.I would love to have an "actual"
 image, if any one from the area 
has one that they would be willing to share.

Then the photographer, probably Ben Schnick, did a very good thing and turned his camera toward the Mississippi River and took the picture shown here.

It is taken from the bluff just to the north of Shellhorn Road. You can see the railroad track parallel to it.

What’s amazing to me is how different the river looks. For one thing the main channel, known as Raft Channel, hugs the Minnesota shore then jogs to the east around a big spit of land in front of where Valeree Green now lives.

That whole stretch of river with all its timber and islands and sloughs is now pretty much an open expanse of water thanks to Lock and Dam number eight at Genoa, Wisconsin.

That dam and 28 others were built as part of the Nine-Foot Channel Project. Most were built in the 1930s. The Genoa dam was built from 1934-1937. When the photo was taken, the Main Channel was kept at a depth  of six feet as Congress authorized in 1907. This act authorized 2,000 additional wing dams, dredging, and dams at locks at Keokuk and LeClaire, Iowa.

This was taken in 2006. David looking at the 
Mississippi. It is unfortunate that I can not
 remember exactly which hike we took this on, but i 
do know that it is in the same
 general vicinity of the original.

When the locks and dams were constructed, the water rose and the lower ends of each pool were inundated. The beautiful bottomland shown in this photo disappeared. I remember my Uncle Donny telling me that the Genoa dam took away a good chunk of Heiller farmland, which is barely visible in the upper right hand part of this photo. He wasn’t real happy about that. It wasn’t great farmland, being susceptible to flooding, but it timber and hayfields and pasture.

I bet people like Donny were upset with the project for recreational and aesthetic reasons too. When I see photos like this, I want to hop in the canoe and go fish and explore. The river was more like a wilderness then. Imagine the Reno Bottoms extending all the way up and down the river. That’s what it was like.

Calvin R. Fremling gives an excellent account of this (and much more) in his book, Immortal River. “Prior to the inundation in the 1934-1940 period, the river bottoms were primarily wooded islands separated by deep, running sloughs.

Hundreds of small lakes and ponds were scattered through the wooded bottoms. Bay meadows and small farming operations, mainly haying and grazing occupied some areas on larger islands,” he writes at the start of a chapter called “The Glory Years.”

Some good things, beside improved commerce, did come out of the damming of the river, Fremling says. One thing I like is that it converted ownership from private to public. “In an era when ‘no trespassing’ signs were becoming increasingly prevalent, it made the lands available, in perpetuity, for public use,” Fremling notes. Anyone who uses the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge can be thankful for that.

The Nine-Foot Channel Project also controlled flooding, and enhanced the opportunities for recreational boating. It increased more fish-food organisms and more fish because the river’s surface had increased exposure to the sun’s energy.

This is just some of the great information in Fremling’s excellent book. It’s like a Bible of river history, geology, and science. I couldn’t recommend a book more highly.

But I’ll still reminisce about a river I never knew, one my great-uncle Ben captured so many years ago. I know, time marches on, progress is good, people are starving in China, blah blah, blah. But we should remember that we lost a tremendous resource right in our front yard when the river was dammed.