A Little History Lesson

First of all I want to thank Yankee Chick for nominating me for the Excellent Blog award. Thanks so much, Friend, I am honored. There you go giving this ole Swede a big head again!! I truly need to start writing more often than I have been lately, but it seems the days run short of hours and I just don't get everything done that's on my daily list. I'll try to do better, I promise.



I've always intended to give you a bit of history of the little town where I grew up and still live - not in - but just a wee bit out of in the country. It's got some interesting history if you're into that kind of thing.

The area is made up of people mostly of German descent. If you trace family histories back, all the German immigrants who settled in the area came from one area in Germany and were all related - brothers, mostly. So you can imagine by now, several generations later, what an intertwined mess (almost incestuous) of third, fourth and fifth cousins there are that make up the population of the little village and the surrounding farm area. So then you ask, what's someone from ScandiHOOvian descent doing living in this thickly populated German community? Just call me an immigrant in my own way. I'm not sure my father truly knew what he was in for when he settled in a community where everyone was related to everyone else. But that's another story.

The village started to take shape back in 1875 when the railroad came through and was named after a man who was a Minnesota state senator at that time. It didn't take many years before the little town became a large shipping point for all the potato growers in the surrounding area. We were quite a metropolis back then, and the town consisted of 3 general stores, a hardware store, whose business has grown so large since that point that his grandsons now have built 6 huge hardware/sporting goods stores throughout the upper midwest that give Cabela's competition, a meat market, a bank, 2 very large grain elevators, 4 potato warehouses, a blacksmith shop, a lumberyard, a harness and shoe shop, 2 hotels, a school, post office, candy store and a barber shop. Just for your information we now have 2 bars, a post office and a little general store. Quite a come down, huh?




I find this next picture quite interesting. The farmers are lined up waiting to load their potatoes into the railroad cars, but the interesting thing is the coat the guy in the center of the picture is wearing. It's made from a buffalo hide.



Now if you've read my blog for even a short period of time you're familiar with The Watering Hole. Before the Watering Hole was the Watering Hole it was a bank. Below is a picture of the back door of the building shortly after it was first built. Note the bars on the window to the left. The building was built in 1906 and closed in 1929 when lots of banks failed. It was sold in 1937, remodeled and then opened as The Watering Hole and has been a bar ever since. It's gone through several remodelings and additions through the years, but the original brick building is still the same.

Here's another shot of the front of the building when it was still a bank. Right next door is The Candy Store, which eventually turned into a bar too. Guess there's more money in beer than in candy (snicker).

The first school was built in 1882, had only one room and was also used as a church and Sunday school. There was one teacher who had up to 60 students when everyone attended. A bigger, two room school was built in 1909, and two teachers taught 1st through 8th grade. If you continued with school after the 8th grade you had to be bussed into the city 10 miles away. Ten miles isn't far in this day and age, but back then in the days of Model T's and the horse and buggy it was quite a feat to do that twice a day.

Below is the school I attended. This school was used until 1958 when it was torn down and a tennis court put in. The tennis court is now gone and a new fire station sits in the location.

I was at the fire station the other day, working out on their equipment. When I left I went out the back door, which is where the school playground used to be, and my mind flashed back to those days when we used to play softball during recess. The fence is still there - you know the one - when you hit it over the fence it was an automatic home run. Across the fence was where Babe lived - a very scary person to all of us grade schoolers. I'll tell you about him next time.

I also want to tell you about the Community Club and the INFAMOUS Key Club.

Stay tuned for the next episode - that is if you like this kind of stuff.

Later - Lena