The seamier side The early 1900’s in Koochiching bring to mind the migration of settlers; how hard they labored, how they managed just to survive overcoming the many challenges and thrive in difficult conditions. It seems unlikely that there would be a seamy side but historians have offered a perspective that included gambling, liquor issues and though unseemly, prostitution.
ABOUT HISTORY Today’s different social media types allow for no end of pros and cons and leads to much protracted discussion. Not be out done, the social life in the Koochiching frontier had its own diversions.
Joe’s ruminations V In the winter Joe’s Canadian neighbors would travel the river on the ice and their horses had sleigh bells on them, he related that you could year them coming for miles He remembered there were quite a few horses and cutters across the river, and they had robes and foot warmers. Saturday nights was when you could hear the bells as they were on their way to town or a dance at a school house, he added that on his side of the River for years no one had horses.
Joe and his brother Russel bought an upright Stickney gasoline engine, a feed grinder and a saw rig. The engine had two flywheels one on each side; it was started by turning them. The gentleman they bought it from showed then how it started and other details about how it ran. Note: the boys nor their dad knew nothing about engines. So, one day they got everything lined up to grind feed and they couldn’t get it to start. They discussed the why and after working on it half of the day they decided to go and get the man they bought it from.
Joe Mannausau was 16 and wanted to buy a bicycle. One morning he got up early and walked to Loman He asked for a job at Camp Six where they sorted logs for the pulp mill in International Falls but was told he was too young by the camp foreman, as he sat mulling the over rejection the foreman returned asking if he would hoe and weed their garden, he jumped at it.
Joe Mannausau During Joe’s introduction to school, most schools only taught up to the eighth grade and according to him, that was as far as most kids got and anyone that went on had to go to a larger community, find a place to stay and pay board and room. For many it was unaffordable.
Mr. Joe Mannausau’s ruminations More Mister Joe euphemisms, adventures, and commentary: His dad hewed timber in the mines on the Iron Range when they were opening up; he earned 98 cents a day.
Mister Joe Mannausau II Mister Joe was appreciative when real horsepower was replaced by tractors, cars, trucks, boat motors and other gasoline contrivances, but in his later years he wondered aloud if all the new mechanical things were taking the place of real manpower, leaving no work for a man to make a living. Joe philosophized that we are enjoying paradise now and not thinking of what it is going to be for the young folks that will be taking our place after we are gone.
Ol’ Joe Mannausau He was always Mr. Joe, but for the rest of us it seemed incongruous that he was ever any age other than he was.
Birchdale, 1949 “If” - the biggest short word there is was proved to be true in the Birchdale area when it was reported on May 7, 1949, that the railroad had chosen a north route and not on the south side of the Rainy River by International Falls Daily Journal. It was thought, hoped and reported that “if” it had been built as once planned that Birchdale would undoubtedly have been one of the chief towns of the county instead of just a small community.