Memories of a pioneer child - Fred Larson's story

And, finally, today I'm posting the last part of my Uncle Fred Larson's story.  He must have started rambling a little, or else the recorder started leaving out parts.  It gets a little sketchy in places.  And I think I am going to leave out a couple parts, especially the part about someone shooting someone else at the blacksmith.  Too many names mentioned!

One of my friends commented that it starts to sound like a Little House on the Prairie story with all the talk of "ma" and "pa," but this all took place very soon after that Laura Ingalls Wilder time period.  And, by the way, my mother was born in Stockholm, Wisconsin, on the Mississippi River right near where the first book, Little House in the Big Woods took place. I'm surrounded by pioneers ancestors!

Taken in 1938 at my grandparents 50th wedding anniversary - Fred is the tall man in the back.  When I'm going through pictures and trying to figure out who people are, I can always start with Fred who is the tallest.  He never married and ran the farm where we're now living until the late 1960's.  My father, who is the youngest, is on the far right.  Carl Larson, the first non-native child born here, is to his left.

So here's the last of the story - any comments I make will be in [brackets].

Pat Hines had a swell dock over in Orienta [the township to the west of Port Wing]. He was logging over there. There was a railroad track ran down to the dock. He had a stone quarry where the power plant is.  Everyone was supposed to clear up a little bit around their homestead and seed in rye or wheat. The cows would be brought into the Orienta dock on a stone scow. (The people were happy in those days although they didn't have a  dollar. The first winter  we were here, we had the cow under the bed—canned milk, that is. And navy beans. And we ran out of flour. All we had was venison and rabbit. Couldn't make pancakes.)

(WE SHOULD ALSO  ASK FRED  TO DRAW A MAP SHOWING THE LOCATION  OF THE  VARIOUS LUMBER CAMPS.)

Charlie Franson used to have oxen.

The first schoolhouse was up by the Twin Falls [now a park in town]. Then the school moved into next to the creamery. That later became the town hall. I started school there. The first passenger boat I remember was the Barker; then there was the America and the Ploughboy.

The fishing industry. There were the Booth fisheries. Tugs mostly. No engines. Some fellows from Two Harbors used to come over with sailboats. There was a little short Norwegian captain, called Pickanute. Real name was Peterson. Pickanute—he'd say that, meaning pick them—the  fish—out of the nets. Chaffee, DeVrie, and Peterson, in that order, used to be in charge of the dock. Orienta was quite a place once. Four saloons, sidewalks on both sides of the river, stores, hotel, church, school. Now, she's dead. Two hundred fifty men on the payroll.

     (WE SHOULD ASK SOMEONE TO DRAW A MAP OF ORIENTA AS IT USED TO BE.)

In the early logging days, they wouldn’t look at a spruce or a balsam—just white pine.

The lumber company had the first hardware store.

Eric Johnson had the first radio, and possibly the first car.

The farmers used to send out cedar fenceposts; they paved the streets in Duluth with posts in those days. They lasted a long time. [And that's why they used to refer to some roads as "cordoroy" roads - they would be ribbed and bumpy like cordoroy.  Port Wing had log/cordoroy roads down in the slough/swampy low areas before you get to Lake Superior.]

There used to be a lot of fire in the slashings [places that had been logged off] around here. The first few years, that's all we did was try to save our buildings. Summer after summer that's all we did—try to save our homes. There were no screens on the smokestacks of the logging trains; they were setting fires all the time in the slashings.

We used to wear buckskin clothes all the time. There were Indians used to come down here from Red Cliff [over by Bayfield] every summer. The menfolks would pick blueberries. They'd dry them on racks. Then the menfolks would go up the river where there was a natural salt-lick above Harry Andersons. They had scaffolds up there in the trees. They'd sit up there and shoot deer and then run them down in canoes down to the point where the women would take care of them. The menfolk would then tan the deerhides. We used to bring hides down there to the Indians and they would tan them. Mother would then make our clothes by hand.  Moccasins, pants, jaokets everything.  You couldn't wear them out.    And when they got a little wet they got so cracked. Tough. Mother used to wash for one of the logging camps.

So that's the end.  If you got this far, thanks for persevering!