Forest History Oral History Project Minnesota Historical Society

Clyde Jellison Narrator

John Esse Interviewer

January 30, 1976 Cohasset, Minnesota

Clyde Jellison -CJ Dorothy Jellison -DJ John Esse -JE

JE: Today is January 30th, 1976 and I am out here at Clyde Jellison’s and Clyde is a young man of eighty five years old and he built this house that has two bedrooms downstairs and three bedrooms upstairs and did a pretty fabulous job at doing it. Project

Clyde we want go back to where you were born, I believe you said you were born down in Minneapolis, is that correct? Society CJ: I was born in Minneapolis. History JE: And then tell us how about how you got from Minneapolis to Duluth and the kind of conditions that you lived in? Oral CJ: Well I can’t remember how we got from Minneapolis to Duluth, but from Duluth to Cohasset we came in a box car, and we lived in that box car about two or three weeks before dad had the house ready on the homestead. And as Historicalsoon as he got the house ready for us to move into, then we left the box car. About all that I can remember about the box car is that they used to move us back and forth from the switch jack onto the main line and we would be eating breakfast or dinner and they wouldHistory bump us and us kids would fall over in our chair. I can remember that much about the box car.

JE: Now your dad homesteaded, where exactly was that homestead Clyde?

CJ: Well up right west of the narrows on Bass Lake, it wasn’t on the lake about a quarter of a mile fromForest the lake. Minnesota

JE: Now that was homesteading land?

CJ: Yes.

JE: Okay.

CJ: That homestead.

JE: Now did he build, what kind of building did he put on there, was it a…

CJ: A log house?

JE: A log house.

CJ: That’s right.

JE: What did your dad do at, did he try to farm or…

CJ: No we never farmed very much, dad worked away from home, he was a paper hanger and a painter, and he was away from home working most of the time.

JE: So your mom really raised the family?

CJ: That’s right. Project

JE: Ya, and you had mentioned about your dad buying, what four hundred and fifty acres from T. B. Walker? Society CJ: Four hundred and fifty acres from T. B. Walker. History JE: And this land that you are on right now is part of that land?

CJ: That’s right; he bought that land for threeOral dollars an acre, when he paid T. B. Walker.

JE: Was that cutover land? Historical CJ: Yes.

JE: So it was all cleared Historyoff?

CJ: Frankly yes, there were small trees on it, but the big pine had all been cut off.

JE: What year did he buy this property?

CJ: Oh well,Forest that mustMinnesota have been around 1903 or 1904 in that neighborhood.

JE: How many people were living around here then?

CJ: Well when we came up here there were four families, Casey’s, and Mr. Casey lived at the head of the lake, Crawford’s lived on the big Island, and there was a family by the name of Sirtles who lived at the dam, and he was dam tender down at Bass Brook, and our family, that’s the fourth that lived on the lake when we first came here.

JE: Well where did you go to school then, was there a school in Cohasset that you went?

CJ: Yes.

JE: That was it.

CJ: The first schooling I got was at home, dad had hired my cousin from out west to come and teach us kids’ one winter right at the house, that’s the first schooling I got.

JE: When you look back Clyde, growing up in this area, what did you do you and your brothers and sisters as young kids? Did you go out and do a lot of trapping or...

CJ: Well we trapped and shot ducks and shot deer, and Clarence and I used to up to the lake at night and shoot Muskrats. We got ten cents apiece for them.

JE: For Muskrats? Project

CJ: Yes, That’s where I learned to shoot you say, shooting Muskrat’s just before dark, Bass Lake was just full of them. You could step from one house to the other. Society JE: Is that right? History CJ: All across from Elm Point to the Narrows in them rice beds, the houses were so thick.

JE: Bass Lake is still a pretty good duck spot,Oral how was it back then? A lot of Ducks?

CJ: Well there was millions of ducks in Bass Lake then, they killed the rice out, the DNR they have killed the rice out so the rice isn’t there andHistorical I haven’t been up in Bass Lake for years, but I don’t think there is many ducks like there used to be. Clarence and I shot twenty Mallards with three shots once. History JE: In other words they were thick.

CJ: I had a single shotgun and he had his pump, we sneaked around through the woods on the west side of the lake and come Out and the brush was so thick, he got two shots and when he pumped the gun for the third shot the shell hit a brush and stuck in the gun, and he only got two shots andForest I got one andMinnesota we picked up twenty nice great big Mallards.

JE: I got thirty ducks last year.

CJ: They were just thick all the way from the narrows down to Indian Point down there. The Indians used to camp there on Elm point and the Narrows, us kids used to go down and watch them. And I went down there once and I had a bow and arrow, and this old Bobby Dobbs, Bobby Dobbs was Chippewa chief at that time, and he said “Him no good, me make good urn.” We went back in about week and he had a bow and arrow made for me, and boy it really was a dandy, he gave me that bow and arrow. We use to shoot partridge with it. And I’ll bet you that,

Clarence is gone, but I’ll bet that Clarence and I are the only guys around this country that ever saw two drummers drumming on the same log. And we saw that, that was right up there at the point, the woods were so full of them partridge it was pitiful.

JE: Of course you know, we used to rent from you, and we use to talk about, you use to talk about the great number of deer in this area too, that there was an awful lot of deer?

CJ: Yes there was.

JE: An awful lot of game?

CJ: Yes, lots of deer. I’ll bet you right now, take this, I won’t go to the southern part of the state because I don’t know nothing about that, but this northeastern part, I’ll bet you we had fifty deer years ago to where we haven’t got one today.

JE: Right. Project

CJ: It’s pitiful the way they are shooting the game off, we haven’t got any deer left; they go out and count the deer. Well hell I can count the stars, you can’t tell me I am wrong because you don’t know how many there is. Society

JE: Yup, right. History

CJ: That’s the same with the deer, when they get done counting the deer they don’t know a bit more than when they started. The Federal FishOral and Wildlife Service are just the same, that should be done away with, and it’s just a waste of the tax payers’ money. They count the ducks when they leave Louisiana down there where they wintered and all the way up north, when they get up there they don’t know a thing more than they didHistorical when they started.

JE: What was your dad’s name Clyde? History CJ: My dad’s name?

JE: Ya.

CJ: Jessie L. Jellison. ForestMinnesota JE: Jessie, and your mother’s name?

CJ: Eldora.

JE: Eldora.

CJ: Eldora Fuller before she was married.

JE: How did they happen, why did they come up here anyway?

CJ: Well, how does everybody move, I don’t, I couldn’t really tell you, I remember Ma always saying when they lived in the cities there were times when they didn’t have really enough to eat. And after they came up here there never was a time that we were hungry. I can remember back as far as I can remember and we always had enough to eat, and you couldn’t drive her out of this country.

JE: She really fell in love with it?

CJ: Yes, we always had plenty up here, where they got it, God I don’t know, I often think about it. But of course there was plenty of deer and moose and ducks and partridge, and game, rabbits and all that stuff that we could live on. Dad and I come down the lake one day in June and we saw five moose and eight deer feeding along the shore of the lake.

JE: What, do you remember some of the names of names of the IndiansProject Clyde that were in this tribe that stayed over here on Bass Lake?

CJ: Indians names? Society JE: Ya. Do you remember any of those? History CJ: Nope, I can’t remember, I don’t think I knew a name of an Indian aside from Mrs. Casey.

JE: What kind of buildings did they live in?Oral

CJ: Well wigwams, covered with bark, a teepee like that and all covered with birch bark. There used to be a birch ridge up there and they used Historicalto go up there and there was birch that big around and they would peel the bark off of them birch.

JE: The big birch, ya? History

CJ: For canoes. One day Clarence and I went up to Elm Point and the Indians had left, and there was a whole big row of that big birch bark, and all we thought boy that is good to start fires with, so we took it home and never thought anything about it you know. When dad come he said, “Where did you get that birch bark boy.” I got it up by Elm Point, the Indians left it there. He said “youForest take that rightMinnesota straight back and put it right where you got it.”

JE: Because they were probably going to use it over…

CJ: Well I didn’t think anything, so we took it back across the lake and a couple of days here three canoe loads come from the shore, they had been over on Shoal Lake picking rice and went back to Elm Point. And the next day we went up and the Indians were gone and so was the birch bark.

JE: Well they really lived off of the land then?

CJ: Yes. That’s right.

JE: Riceing and hunting.

CJ: They used to come down the Mississippi River, now where they come from was up the river somewhere, I couldn’t tell you, but then they would paddle up Bass Brook into Bass Lake and go up the lake. And then when they went back home they portaged from Bass Lake over into Deer Lake, and went down Deer River to the Mississippi and back home.

JE: How did they ever make it through a winter up here, I mean living in one of those things you would think it would be kind of cold wouldn’t it?

CJ: They didn’t stay here in the winter time. Project JE: They didn’t?

CJ: No, they left after they come here to pick rice in the fall and then went back wherever they come from, I couldn’t really tell you, I suppose up around Bena or IngerSociety or up in that Indian Country somewhere. History Now did T. B. Walker when we look back on the fantastic amount of logging that he did in this area, did he ever come up here Clyde? Did old man Walker I couldn’t tell you, not that I know off, I think that he had been here before weOral came here. The big pine had all been cut off before we came here. There was big timber on the west side of Bass Lake, big cedar and big spruce, and some big pine, but the big stuff, this place right here just covered with big pine, four feet in diameter and the stumps were still here all overHistorical the place.

JE: Ya. History CJ: That was the first timber that was here. Now they talk about habitat for deer, there was an old man Sleeper that lived on the west side of Bass Lake years ago, I was about ten years old, and Clarence and I used to go over there and talk to him. He had big white whiskers, long whiskers clear down here. He had been a market hunter before, but he said to make any money market hunting you had to go out and shoot eight or ten deer a day, and he said you can’t do that anymore.Forest Well what theMinnesota deer lived on in the days when there was nothing but pine here.

JE: Ya, ya.

CJ: I talked to Milt Stenlund, now I don’t know the man at all, got nothing against him, but there was a piece in the paper that I didn’t understand and I called him up and asked him about it. We got to talking about one thing and another and I said, “Well what did the deer do back in the 1900s?” He said, “Oh there were no deer here in the 1900s.” I said, “Listen mister don’t try to choke that stuff down me, I was here in the 1900s and the woods was full of deer.”

JE: Did you ever work in a logging camp Clyde?

CJ: Work in a logging camp?

JE: Ya.

CJ: Well I, yes I worked in the logging camp for old Pat Kenney, he logged up across the lake, Bass Lake here.

JE: Was it a very big camp, or was it a small one?

CJ: Well it wasn’t a big camp, I thought it was a big outfit but it wasn’t a big outfit, they put in cedar and tamarack ties. The smaller stuff that the big loggers left you sees.

JE: I was talking to a fellow just the other day, I was talking to Bill Marshall, and he said that you knew a place where an old steam hauler had gone into a peat bog?Project Do you remember where that is?

CJ: What? Society JE: An old steam hauler, went into a peat bog, he said, Bill Marshall said that you knew where that old engine is? History

CJ: Yes!! Yes!! I know where it is, I don’t know if it’s there or not. Old Sandy Bear, he told me that was in there, he said he knew that thisOral locomotive, it was a locomotive went through the bridge, it’s in there. Well I know the bridge is broken down, when we first move down here that bridge come across that sink hole and there was a place twenty five or thirty feet where the bridge had been smashed down. And I imagineHistorical that’s where the thing went through.

JE: What bridge is that? History CJ: Well it’s right up the road here. I shouldn’t tell you where it is you might go up there and dig it out.

JE: Well were going to try to, were going to try and see if it’s there, and were going to try and put some rods and see if we can find out if that engine is there or not. Because if it is down there it is goingForest to be prettyMinnesota well preserved, you know if there isn’t any oxygen getting at it.

CJ: That’s right; it would be just the way it went in there.

JE: Right. Now was that a big one? Was that a big engine?

CJ: How could I tell you?

JE: I mean did the fella’s say it was or…

CJ: It was a logging train and it used this road number 62 out here that used to be a railroad grade.

JE: Oh.

CJ: It used to run from Cohasset up here about three miles I guess and they hauled logs and dumped them into the Mississippi River. And I believe they used to call that the old Itasca.

JE: Okay.

CJ: Joyce was the head of that outfit, Dave Joyce up here.

JE: Dave Joyce.

CJ: Ya, he was the head of that outfit years ago. Project JE: Now did you ever meet Joyce at all?

CJ: I worked for Joyce. Society JE: You worked for him? History CJ: Yes, I helped build his place up there when he first started, Joyce to come and help me put siding on the building every morning, he would come out and work an hour or so and help me and then he would say well let’s go in and Oralhave a cup of coffee Clyde, and we would go in and have a cup of coffee and he had a room there just full of guns and fishing tackle that he bought all over the country everywhere. He didn’t use them at all, he just put them up on the wall and just to have them to show that’s all. Historical

JE: Now that’s the place of the old Joyce Estate isn’t it? History CJ: That’s the Joyce Estates.

JE: And you were building on that?

CJ: I worked on the buildings when it first started there. Old Ed Hoim was the carpenter foreman. Forest Minnesota

JE: Oh Ed Hoim.

CJ: A good man, he was the foreman there for that place, he built that.

JE: In that logging camp, did you stay over the winter in that camp Clyde?

CJ: No, I stayed at home, Wild Wood Lodge.

JE: Okay.

CJ: I walked back and forth night and morning.

JE: Now on that lodge over here, when was that lodge built? The Wild Wood Lodge?

CJ: When was it built?

JE: Ya.

CJ: Must have been right around 1904 or ‘05. Dad got the timbers out of the government dam, when they rebuilt the government dam. Six by ten, six by twelve and six by eighteen fir timber. And he got them, he knew the man at the dam and he got them timber, now I don’t know if he paid anything for them or not I couldn’t tell you, but he got the timbers there and hauled them home and he stacked them on edge to build the house. That house burned down. I was working up in the woods south of Deer River for old John Snyder one winter andProject that house burned down. Clarence and ma was home, and we lost practically everything we had, Clarence threw the guns out the window and a few things that they could handle, and he tried to put the fire out but he couldn’t, and he threw the guns out and some of the stuff and the rest of everything was burned. A pile of stuff. Society

JE: Were there many tourists that came up in 1904 andHistory stayed at your place, or was that a fishing camp or a duck hunting camp?

CJ: No, I can’t remember that anybody cameOral there to Wild Wood Lodge much, they finally before I left there, Clarence had a couple of cabins to rent out in the summer time for fishermen.

JE: Why did you call it Wild Wood Lodge? A Historicallodge would seem like it would be a place for tourists, was there a reason to call it a lodge?

CJ: Well that’s beside theHistory point, I really didn’t have anything to do with that, Clarence my brother he is the one that named it Wild Wood Lodge.

JE: Oh.

CJ: I think he was quite a hand pattern after somebody else. And I think he got that from somebodyForest else, becauseMinnesota his log cabin camp over there now, he got that from Becker up at North Star Lake. Becker had a log cabin camp up there and I think that’s where Clarence got that, for his name down here.

JE: What people do you remember of the old timers around here? When we go back to the early 1900s, were there any other homesteaders that came up into this area?

CJ: Well I don’t know, Crawford’s took up the island as a homesteader after they bought it, they lived on the island there, and there was Jim Crawford and John Crawford Viney Crawford and Ray Crawford. Well they all got married and Jim lived here for a long time and I knew Jim well,

Ray Crawford married Jill Carter, they called him Sliver in them days, he was a tall man and he logged on the west side of Bass Lake. There was lots of big cedar over there to the Weller’s spur and all that stuff was hauled out to Weller’s spur and shipped away. The big pine as I say had all been taken out.

JE: Cut out, ya. Who were some of the others, were there any people in that direction that homesteaded?

CJ: No, that was all pretty wild, there was nobody that lived east of here at all. Nobody lived between here and Lesarge’s and Gravell’s, lived on Shoal Lake over here. Now that was the only two families between here and thirty eight back in them days. Everybody else has moved in since. This road wasn’t in here until oh I can’t remember what year that was. My brother and I blew all the stumps out of this road here, all these roads in the township, clear out here. There was just nothing but a trail through the woods, a regular mud hole.

JE: I can believe that, there are some awfully low spots in there. Project

CJ: Well it was a start you see.

JE: Ya. Society

CJ: All these roads around was the same way you mightHistory say, dad and Clarence and I took up the ties out of the railroad from Wild Wood Lodge down to the foot of the lake, the rails had been taken up but the ties were still in the road, and we took the ties up and then we had a road from the foot of the lake that cut across through Oralthe woods to the government dam to go to the Rapids with a team and horses, that’s the way we went.

That’s the way you went. Well when they got thatHistorical highway number 2 built out of Grand Rapids west, or was that always a pretty good trail from Grand Rapids to Deer River. Highway 2 come through there as far back as I can remember. It has been changed a little bit, but the road you could always drive downHistory there from Cohasset to the Rapids, as far back as I can remember, and that’s about all I can say about it.

JE: That was, was that mostly a road for horse travel?

CJ: Ya. ForestMinnesota JE: Ya.

CJ: Well the first automobiles when they first come they used to travel on 2, of course that was later. We run a Ford through the lake up at Bass Lake one day. I bought an old Model T from Dorothy’s dad, O. E. Jones, it didn’t have no top on it, I fixed it up and it run good. So we cut some cedar up on the east side of Bass Lake and left our camp stove there, so when the lake froze over in the fall I said to Clarence my brother, “Let’s go up and get our camp stove.” The ice was glare there was no snow on it, but the lake was froze good here and around the foot of the lake, so we started out and got up above Elm Point and just about this side of the little island

and I looked ahead and I could see where the ice had come up like this. Well I was going too fast to turn around; I knew that so I said to him, “There is an open hole ahead watch out.” I said, “Maybe we can jump across this.” We hit that place and it was just like a stone wall, stopped and there we sit in the lake. The Ford started to go down so jumped out of the seat and up on the back and jumped over to good solid ice and down went the Ford. We have got a picture of that where we pulled it out of the lake.

JE: Was it any good anymore?

CJ: Oh yes, I fixed it up.

JE: And she ran again huh?

CJ: It still runs for years after that.

JE: When did you marry Dorothy then? Project

DJ: 1927 I guess. September the 21st 1927.

CJ: September 21st 1927. Society

JE: Was her family around here then? History

CJ: Yup. Oral JE: Where they old homesteader family too?

CJ: No, they moved up here from Brainerd. In Historical1923, the fall of 1923.

DJ: 1923. History JE: I guess that’s the worst move they ever made.

CJ: Well when you look back where there many fellas that were doing any logging, where there any fellas around Clyde that came, went up to the camps and would come back in the summer, or in Spring time? Do you know of any old lumber jacks that went up to the pine country up north? ForestMinnesota JE: Oh, he’s got a sawmill.

CJ: Well Clarence and I had a mill, a sawmill at Wild Wood Lodge. Dad had bought the sawmill before he died, but he never got around to set it up, so after he died, why we grew up a little older and we set the sawmill up, and we sawed lumber there for quite a few years.

JE: Well who did you sell that too?

CJ: Anybody that come after it, we sold it as fast as we could get it out, I picked up all the dead heads in Bass Lake, all around the shore and there was quite a few logs.

JE: I’ll bet there was, ya.

CJ: There were quite a few logs that were left there. Years ago the lake was full of logs all summer long, that’s smaller logs now that wasn’t the big pine country, but it was the loggers that put in after the big pine had been cut, and we sawed them dead heads and then people would bring logs and we would just saw their lumber for them. And then we could go out and buy a little stump- age here and there. We could buy, old Ed Remer in the Rapids, you could buy timber from him anyplace, and it didn’t matter who it belonged to or anything else.

JE: Now these logs that were in this lake, this Bass Lake, they would go down what, Bass Brook then?

CJ: Ya. Project

JE: And then down to the…

CJ: Down to the Mississippi and then to Minneapolis. Society

JE: Ya. I suppose, did you saw cedar out here or wasHistory it mostly pine or popple or what.

CJ: Pine and spruce. Oral JE: Pine and Spruce.

CJ: Ya. Historical

JE: Okay History CJ: The cedar all went for posts and poles.

JE: They went out of this country too then?

CJ: They went to the, after my time they went out to Wellers Spur. ForestMinnesota JE: Well how long did you have the sawmill here?

CJ: Well let’s see, we run it, when we started, now I, in 1917, 1917, the spring of 1916 we hauled logs across the lake in May 17th. Well I went to the service the fall of seventeen and we must have started the mill I would say roughly right around 1914, maybe before that. 1912 probably, it was 1912 we started the mill, and we run the mill up until Dorothy and I got married, I left home, well then the mill quit, it never run after that. There is a piece that Rockwell wrote about the mill, now I wasn’t here at that time, I was in the service.

JE: Okay.

CJ: On Pughole Lake.

JE: Was he a homesteader over there Clyde or....

CJ: Well I couldn’t tell you if he homesteaded or not, he was there as long and as far back as I can remember, we got to going up there and he lived all by himself in an old log camp, there was a camp there just out, oh it was a big log building and he lived there. Of course he was all alone and he wanted us boys to come up there and we would shoot partridge on the way up, we had single shcttwen, two, that’s all we had to shoot. We would shoot forty or fifty partridge on the way up and back. If a partridge jumped out on the road and went into the brush we never bothered with that at all, just shot the one’s that sit in the road. And we used to go up and stay overnight with Sherm Hill. We camped there at, huh, can’t think of the name of that crick now, well anyway it was on the Joyce Estates right where Joyce’s house is now, we camped there one fall and got nine deer, four of us. We had to get a team from old man Kerr;Project he lived right up the road here. He had a team of Bronco’s and he told me when I got the team, we took our outfit up there and then I brought the team back and then I walked back up there and he said now don’t try to hold them horses, let them go. Because one of them is a bucking bronco. He said if he starts bucking there is nothing that you can do. Well that’s okay we didn’t haveSociety a bit of trouble, went up there and brought the team back and I walked back, so Bill Sears, one of the guys, there was four of us he walked down Co get the team and took itHistory up there and we loaded all our outfit on, we had our camping outfit and nine deer in the wagon, and we had to come up a hill there at Moore Lake, that was a pretty steep grade. And I told him, “Now I says Bill let them horses just gallop right up that hill, and don’t hold themOral at all.” Well he knew how to drive a team, no he hold them back you know and just about to the top of the hill and they stopped and he couldn’t get that horse to go. He whaled him and he whaled him, and I said, “Well your just wasting your time, don’t hit that horse no more, we have gotHistorical to do something else. So we didn’t have a chain or a rope or anything and I got the bright idea, we had two haulers with ropes on them and of course they wasn’t on the horses you see, taken the halters off and put the bridles on, I said, “Well get them haulers youHistory unhook the team and get them out to the end of the pole, and we’ll hook them halter ropes to the end of the pole and into the whipple tree, that’s our only chance.” So that’s what we done, hooked out there and got the horses hooked up the rope, and you know them horses just started to pull that wagon right up without a bit of trouble at all.

JE: I’ll be darn. ForestMinnesota CJ: And got it just about ready to go and the rope broke and back the wagon went. Well the tongue turned around and backed the wagon against a big popple tree, and if it hadn’t have been for that it had gone down into the lake.

JE: Oh for crying out loud.

CJ: But the tongue swung around and it backed the wagon against a big popple tree.

JE: Now Clyde, did your mother can that deer meat?

CJ: Huh?

JE: Did your mother can all that deer meat?

CJ: Well she canned a lot of it, in the fall of the year we didn’t have to can it.

JE: Ya.

CJ: Just freeze it up and leave it for winter. Well of course Rockwell had some of that meat, and we gave Haley, we stayed, oh ya Haley come along that night and said, “Well come on down to my place boys and stay, we’ll bring the oxen up in the morning and pull it up over the hill.” So that’s what we done, we went down to Haley’s we wasn’t far north of Haley’s and stayed overnight with him and took the oxen up in the morning and pulled us home. We gave him one deer. Project

JE: What was fishing like around here? Were there quite a few fish or?

CJ: Oh yes, there was lots of fish in the lakes. Society

JE: Did you spear in the spring time mostly? History

CJ: That’s the only time I ever fished, I would go down to the crick and get a couple of walleye’s, that’s the only way I ever fishedOral in my life. I never went out and fished with an open line.

JE: About the bridge making, ya, right. Historical

CJ: Well I don’t know, when I started, after we was married, must have been twenty seven and twenty eight in the thirties.History

DJ: It was in the thirties I think.

CJ: Ya, I built quite a few bridges for the county.

JE: Oh isForest that right? Minnesota

Yes.

JE: I didn’t know that?

CJ: Some of them are still in use; I built some and repaired some. I built the Moose Crick Bridge up here at Deer Lake, the Moose Crick and I built the Lampson Bridge across the Bigfork River up out of Effie, and I built a bridge the other side of Bigfork, across a little crick there, I can’t remember what they called that. And we built the Homer Hellum Bridge, and we built a bridge

across Bear River. And I built a bridge or two down east of the Rapids, Goodland country down in there.

JE: What kind of poles did you use for that, were they mostly cedar?

CJ: Piling, treated piling.

JE: Treated piling?

CJ: Ya, I had a pile driver, we drove the piling and Cut them off. I think the biggest job I ever got, and in a way it kind of barred me, John had a mill at John Mills, he is the owner of Mills Lumber Co., was until he died. He had a mill at and moved down at Keunner, Wyoming, and he wanted me to out there and put up the building for that sawmill, build the whole thing. And we left, that was in 56 I believe and we left here in March right around the eighteenth day of March, and I had a little cabin that I built on my truck to stay in out there, we was out seven miles from town so we had to have a place to stay. And we drove out there John comeProject down from and we went out where the sawmill was, he showed me where he wanted the sawmill and he said, “We’ll build it sixty feet wide and four hundred and fifty feet long.”

JE: Wow. Society

CJ: He said, “We’ll send the materials down from to Historyyou, you hire your men, keep track of your payroll and track of everything and send your time into the Rapids yard and they will send you your money.” And he went off and left me. I had that whole thing to do. Oral JE: That’s a big job, that’s a big outfit, four hundred feet long, and sixty feet wide.

CJ: Well they brought the machinery down fromHistorical and all the material I needed and we put up the building and set all the machinery, got it all ready to run and we went back I don’t know how many times and we built on to the mill, and built a plainer shed, and put in a couple of big planers. Built a dry kiln. History

JE: Put it all up for him, you built the whole thing.

CJ: He died before we got the mill done, he didn’t live to see it finished.

JE: Ya, youForest built bridges,Minnesota you built quite a few bridges before you built the one on Moose Crick didn’t you?

DJ: Oh yes yes. That was one of the last ones. Ya, this was thirty seven when you built the bridge on Moose Crick, I have got it in here, and, then in ‘38 when you bid on those four bridges with him, ah you bid on five bridges. In 38, that was when you were building the Wilcox house too.

CJ: We built that Scenic Highway Bridge over in the Scenic Highway, across Prairie River. That’s one that they said that we couldn’t do, the guys from Hibbing. Time was a factor in the

bid and we put in thirty days time and the guys from Hibbing that bid on the bridge they told the county board, he says, “they can’t do it in thirty days, that is just impossible to build that bridge in thirty days.” And I was building a little cabin out on the lake for John McMann, he used to be county treasure, county treasure or auditor or which, treasure I think. And John come out there and he said “Clyde you get busy and you get up on Prairie River, they say we can’t build that, and they told the county board and the highway engineer if they build that bridge in thirty days I will buy the town board a supper.” And John just stepped in the office at the office at the time and they said to him, “Mills, how about this? What’s his name said you can’t build that bridge in thirty days, if you do well he will buy us a supper.” Well John said the only thing” I can tell you if we don’t build it in thirty days I’ll have to buy the supper.” So that was it. So I got busy and twenty eight days after we moved onto that job we walked off away from it, the bridge was done.

JE: Did he buy the supper?

CJ: They bought the supper, I think John and this guy from Hibbing, he was a contractor over, I think they went into together and bought the supper. Harry Lesuer wasProject the Highway Engineer at that time. We built that Office Bridge to across the Bigfork River, that’s the one we had a little trouble with.

DJ: Well we didn’t have any telephone; we didn’t have any way to contactSociety him when he was working on the bridge at Prairie River. He was there for about three weeks and the Engineer would come down the rapids and then he would call meHistory and ask if everything was alright at home and then he would go back the next morning and he would tell Clyde see that is the only way we had of communicating. There was no telephone. Oral CJ: We built that office bridge, that was a pretty big bridge, and there was a guy up there that was causing trouble, he wanted to be inspector on that job and Floyd Madsen was the assistant Highway Engineer, and he was the inspector. SoHistorical this guy went and got the county board up there, they said the bridge would go out the first spring. And Harry Lesure was up there and a whole bunch come up there one morning and I knew there was something wrong, I didn’t know anything about this at all,History but I said there is something going on around here, whatever it is I know. Pretty soon they called me up there. Harry Lesure says, “Clyde have you got a set of plans for this bridge?” I said, “Yes.” He says, “Are you following those plans?” Well I said, “Absolutely” I says, “Uh huh” that’s all he said. He said “how many piling have you driven that the inspector hasn’t been on the job?” Well I said, “that piling right there,” I pointed to the piling. “The wind started to blow and it was getting dark and we had the piling in the leads and we were alreadyForest to startMinnesota driving and it was getting dark and snowing to beat the band,” and Floyd says, “Clyde you drive that piling down the same as this one here and tie here up for the night, I am going to start for home.” “Uh huh.” That’s all he said. They picked up their paraphernalia and beat it. Well Madsen told me the whole story afterwards, this guy wanted to be inspector and he was the guy causing the trouble, and he started this story he said. The County Commissioner Pederson used to be county commissioner, and was one of the commissioners at that time, and he was from Bigfork.

JE: Ya.

CJ: The bridge is still in there.

JE: Still in there?

CJ: Ya, it never moved a drop.

JE: How did you get to meet Dorothy?

CJ: Well her folks bought a piece of land from my mother over there, by Wild Wood Lodge, right next to Wild Wood Lodge.

DJ: No, that was long after we were married. When we came up here

JE: Ya that’s right you lived over in the McMann place.

CJ: No the fall we came up here we lived in the Jones house over there,Project it isn’t there anymore. Where Troops live now, that old log house of theirs and my dad rented that and we lived there six months, and that’s how we got acquainted with his sister, she lived across the crick and then his mother lived down at Wild Wood Lodge. But he wasn’t here at that time. Well then in the spring we moved to Blackberry, my dad went on a farm down there weSociety could do nothing here, it was just a place to move to when we come up here. Then the next spring then he come back from, he went west that winter, and the next spring whenHistory he come back why we had gotten acquainted with him here that winter while he was gone, why they came down to our place, brought his mother down there to see my mother. And he kind of liked to come to our place or other and that’s how it comes. Well then I Oralworked out, I worked over in Marble, we went together for two years pretnier you know before we were married. But I would never marry anybody that drank or smoked, and I had to be sure that he wasn’t going to drink or smoke. Historical JE: Biggest mistake she ever made I bet.

DJ: Ya, I guess so. No. History

CJ: Well we had our first in 1927 that was the crazy days you know.

JE: Ya, I’ll bet you did.

CJ: I heardForest her motherMinnesota tell one of their friends once, this was after we were married) I don’t know how long, but anyway, she said, “I don’t have to worry about Dorothy at all,” she told Ethel Ess that.

JE: Did you ever chew tobacco?

DJ: He never chewed anything.

JE: Never Chewed, never chewed?

DJ: If he ever did…

CJ: I don’t and don’t smoke, I never drank in my life, I only had one guy get mad at me over in France, a little Jew sergeant, the four of us walked into a wine joint, that’s practically all there was there a house of prostitution and wine joint, that’s all there was for a guy to go into, and Joe Wheeler and I and this sergeant and another fellow, and I can’t think of this other guys name, who it was, but we walked in and sit down to a beer joint and sit down to a table and he ordered beer. I said, “Well don’t order any for me I don’t drink.” “Well you will drink tonight with us.” “No I don’t think I’ll drink tonight, I just don’t drink.” And he kept at it and kept at it, and finally, and I was pretty hot headed too in them days, I have cooled off a lot in my later years. I said, “Let’s you and I go outside and settle this, I don’t drink.” And then Joe Wheeler he spoke up and said, “Let the rest of us drink our beer and leave Clyde alone, he don’t drink.” Well the little Jew sergeant found out I had a guy on my side and he shut up you see?

JE: Ya. Project

CJ: So we got up and walked out and Joe and I walked down the street together and Joe said, “What kind of a guy is that anyway.” Well I said, “I think he’s crazy, I don’t drink and that’s all there is to it. I don’t care how much you drink or how much anybodySociety else drinks, I just don’t drink, and that’s all.” We was in a wine joint one night and I’ll bet there was five hundred soldiers there, and this Maki he was a miner from Colorado,History he was a fine man when he was sober, but you get him where he could get booze and that was it. He stepped into that joint one night and he hollered out, I sit down with a fella from Minneapolis, the Red, we called him Red, and he was a big Swede guy, fine fellow. WeOral sit down there and he got a glass of what did he call it, Cherry Brandy, whatever that it, he got a glass of Cherry Brandy and he said, “Well Clyde I would like to buy you something but I know you don’t drink,” so he says, I said, “That’s okay you go ahead and get your Cherry Brandy or whateverHistorical it is,” and Maki stepped in the door and he says, “Clyde I would give everything in this world that I own if I could do like you do.” One of the guys looked up you know and looked over at me and I said, “Well Maki let me tell you something; believe it or notHistory I don’t care.” I said, “Why don’t you sit down and drink a glass of beer.” And I said, “if you don’t think you can go home with just one glass, okay you take the second glass and when you take the second glass get up and go home, because you know just as well as I do, and if you don’t that somebody will carry you home and put you to bed.” And we done it lots of times, not only with him but lots of other guys. And they used to say to me, “Well Clyde how can you do that when you don’t drink yourself? Well I said, “I feel sorry for them guys, andForest I really do.”Minnesota Right today anybody that can’t leave beer and whiskey alone and gets drunk, I feel sorry for them.

JE: Your all through there on that one?

DJ: I just shut it off.

JE: Okay. It was just about finished, is yours?

CJ: Ya, just about.

JE: Are there any stories Clyde that you would like to tell about, any incidents that happened that seemed to be outstanding?

CJ: I can’t think of anything that would interest anybody else, I don’t know.

JE: How often did you get to Grand Rapids when you lived out here?

CJ: You mean years ago?

JE: Ya, when you were a young fellow? Did you get to town very much?

CJ: Not very much, not until after we got automobiles, in 1918. I don’t know when the first cars come, I can’t remember back, pretty early. We had a 1918 Ford, but we didn’t get to town very often. Project

JE: Do you remember what Grand Rapids was like when you first went into town?

CJ: Well there wasn’t too much difference that it is now. Pretty muchSociety the same layout of buildings wasn’t it? History JE: Yes, pretty much the same and new buildings have gone up of course but otherwise I can’t see too much difference. Oral CJ: Did they have, when you first went into Grand Rapids did they have places to hook the horses up to, little posts alongside the streets there? Historical JE: Yup, ya, livery stables, and they had places where they could tie the horses up to the posts.

CJ: Who was the blacksmithHistory here in Grand Rapids, I am trying to think of his name?

JE: Betz?

CJ: Betz, and then there was a, who owned the big livery stables, that’s, well it would be across from the first National Bank, there was a big livery stable in there, harness maker, what the heck was his name?Forest Minnesota

JE: Wasn’t that Litchke?

CJ: Litchke that’s right, ya that’s right.

JE: Otto Litchke.

CJ: He must have had most of the business in town, he was…

JE: I notice in the back of the old newspapers of 1903 he had a big advertisement every day about his harness shop.

CJ: Pug Litchke was in the legislature.

JE: Oh was he?

CJ: That was his son.

JE: Oh.

CJ: He’s the guy that got this conservation department, he told me once he said, and “You have to get it out of politics, put it in the hands of an administrator.” I said, “Well Pug that’s the worst thing you can do on man, then what have you got, a dictatorship, it panned out just exactly the way I told him,” that’s the worst thing they could have done. Any time you give one man authority your asking for trouble. Project

JE: Yup, yup.

CJ: It’s got to be right now, so it’s the crookedest outfit in the State ofSociety Minnesota, bar none.

DJ: Clyde you didn’t tell about the early days in CohassetHistory when you

JE: Ya, ya. Oral CJ: The early days in Cohasset down there, you didn’t tell anything about that, when Blanche taught school down there. His sister was the second school teacher in Cohasset. Historical JE: Oh is that right?

And the pail factory. History

JE: Oh ya. And who was the first post master and things like that, he knows all that.

DJ: Well like I say I can’t think of everything you know. Go ahead.

CJ: He knowsForest the earlyMinnesota settlers in Cohasset and the first Post Master.

JE: Who was the Post Master over there?

DJ: The first one, you knew who he was.

CJ: Ya, I know, that’s it I knew him well, can’t think of his name, Henry, he gave us fifty dollars to buy a new dry belt for the mill, just handed it right out.

JE: Now your sister was the Henry Terrier, Henry Terrier, that’s his name. Now if he was the first, No, Crawther was the first Post Master, he went west out where Blanche lives, Henry Crawther, he was the first Post Master in Cohasset.

Well there was a big pail factory in Cohasset?

CJ: Yup.

JE: Who ran that Clyde?

CJ: Well, let’s see his name I can’t remember.

JE: Where was that pail factory located?

CJ: Well right up on the river west of Cohasset, right along the river bank, right up there where Motter got a machine shop now. Project

JE: Oh ya.

CJ: That’s right close to where the pail factory was. Society

JE: Now they made pails for Minneapolis or St. PaulHistory or some firm or…

CJ: Almost all over the country. Oral JE: Oh.

CJ: Wooden pails, Roy Stokes was chief engineerHistorical there.

JE: Was Cohasset larger than it is now or smaller? History CJ: Yes, yes.

JE: It was bigger huh?

CJ: Yes, full of lumberjacks. ForestMinnesota JE: Full of lumberjacks.

CJ: When my sister was teaching there in Cohasset, they used to have a Christmas Tree there at the, old Tom Cook use to run a hotel there and they had a big hotel there and the lumber jacks, oh probably a couple hundred of them would be there and Blanche would have a big Christmas Tree about twenty feet high, if the ceiling was that high, it ran clear to the ceiling. And Clarence and I use to sing, my brother and I were pretty good singers, everybody must have thought we was because that was all, and we would sing songs to these lumber jacks and we would sing a song and then they would clap us back, and we would have to sing it over or sing another one.

Well Blanche would tell us what songs to sing, “Hang up the babies stocking” that was one of them. I remember part of that now, and then old Santie Claus, we sang that, and oh a lot of songs and then we would sing gospel hymns, and they would just keep clapping us back and keep us singing there. They had lots of money and enjoyed it. You see the lumber jacks worked out in the woods all the time.

JE: Was Cohasset kind of a wild place or was it a tame place?

CJ: Well I don’t think it was so wild, I can’t remember too much about what things went on, they had saloons there yes, but I don’t think it was such a wild place. The Mississippi River was full of logs all summer long, couldn’t get up there in a boat at all.

JE: Is that right?

CJ: For quite a few years after that. Project JE: I’ll be darned.

CJ: They all went to Minneapolis you see, down the river. Society JE: Uh huh. You were talking before about a wannigan, now do you know how to make a wannigan? History

CJ: Yes. Oral JE: Do you know how it was made?

CJ: Yes. Historical

JE: Now did the men stay right on that wannigan when they drove down the river, that’s where they slept I imagine a numberHistory of them.

CJ: They slept and ate on there.

JE: Slept and ate. How did they make the wannigan water tight? Did they pitch it or what?

CJ: WellForest they had a, itMinnesota was built out of pike, the bottom, the boat part. What they used, I suppose they used Oakum in the joints; they fixed the joints to keep it from leaking and then built the front, the framework up. Then they had what they called the headworks, well this headworks was a, oh I don’t know maybe I’ll say roughly twenty feet square and in the center of it they had a caption they called it, and they had a lever on that caption, a big pole and they would take their line and anchor out, however long their anchor line was, we will say three or four hundred feet, and they would drop that overboard and the guys would get on this lever and walk around like that and wind that up, that would pull, the headworks was fastened to the boom of logs, and would pull the boom of logs up to where the anchor was.

JE: Then they would start all over again huh?

CJ: And then they would start all over and take the anchor ahead and that’s the way they moved the logs down the lake lots of times.

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Society History

Oral Historical History

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