E ALPHONSO OLDS FAMILY

As told by Frank E. Olds.

            I was born in Spring Valley, Minnesota, Fillmore County in 1895.  Somewhere along about 1898 three families came up in covered wagons.  They came through Minneapolis, Brainerd, and Gull Lake and settled in Pequot or stayed one winter on Long Lake, east of Pequot.  Then Dad moved to Mission.  This is where the Big Pine emptied into the Mississippi.  My Dad worked in a saw mill.  After being there a short time the Olds family moved out to a logging camp about three miles east of Outing.

            Weyerhouser had just finished their logging operations that spring.   It was called Camp Three, and the family moved into what had been their office.  Sometime later another family, the Shaffers, moved into another building in the camp.

            Soon after this the Elder Olds homesteaded on what was called Cedar Swamp Corner, which was towards what is now LeMay Township.

            Here they acquired a team of oxen and went rather heavy into the logging business.  When I was twelve years old, I went to sawing in the woods with my oldest brother.  We were only three brothers that came here, the rest were born at Pequot or on this homestead.  My brother and I were regular cutters.  After I was twelve we didn’t get to school very much.  At first we had no school, but later they built a school house on the corner at the top of what was called “Half Mile Hill”.

            Our work was cut out for us, cutting timber and more timber which was landed on Third Guide Lake and the Reservoir.  The logs then were driven down the Moose River to Boyd & Young’s Spur at the mill where they found ready sale.

            My older brothers were Alvin and Elvin, then myself, then Mae, Burl and the youngest was Jimmie, in that order.  My father came from the southern part of the state and my Mother came from Indiana, her maiden name being Goldsbury.  Her parents had settled near what used to be Mission and had quite a farm there.  My grandfather later moved to Pequot and lived to be 90 years old.

            All of us Olds boys had nicknames.  They gave me the title of “Babe,” and I don’t know how I ever got that name.  Elvin was always known as “Pussy” all his life, and Alvin’s moniker was “Snieder”.  Lots of people, or most everybody, never knew us by any other names.

            About some of the older settlers:  There was a tote road going west of Boyd’s Ranch, and about two miles west of there, lived Frank LeMay, from whom LeMay Township got its name.  Near him also lived Jimmie Hennessy.  Jimmy was the number one cook in the logging camps.  He tells that Jimmie could whip up a meal for the lumberjacks quicker than any cook he had ever seen, male or female.  He was a short squatty man about as wide as he was tall.

            Not so far from Frank LeMay’s was a schoolhouse, one of the first in those parts, known as Boyd’s school.  The tote road then went on to what was later the Newlon Harrington place, and went on from there to the John Guilden’s.

            A Shaffer family moved into Camp Three, and about the same time Old Man or Mr. Harrison moved into the camp.  He had a daughter, Eve, and a son, Bill.  All three were hunting right west of Egg Lake, and Old Man Harrison got shot there.  At that time there was no such thing as hunters having to wear red.  He had a knapsack on his back,

where he’d carry his lunch and whatever he wanted.  It was white and a man named Eaton mistook him for a deer and killed him.  Shot in the back.  Eaton had just been married and nearly went out of his mind.  Some of these Eatons were in the lumber business in Crosby.  After their father was killed the Harrison son and daughter pulled out from Camp Three.

            The Shaffers then bought this place, and the Elder Shaffer built a beautiful log cabin and really fixed up the place.

            Art Chinvert had a contract to build the county road west of Swatara.  Just how far this contract called for, I can’t recall, but they worked on part of the road.

            Frank Chinvert (no relation to Art) carried mail on the Star Route from Outing to Swatara for years and lived a few miles east of Outing.  His wife died from a heart attack while chasing a cow.  Frank passed away a number of years later.           

            After we were married, I worked on the State Highway and bought the Newlon Harrington homestead, which was west of the George Harrington homestead, just over the county line.  We lived there a number of years and then moved to Shovel Lake. 

I later got a job in the mine at Calumet and moved there, where my first wife passed away.  Later, when I reached 65, and was retired, I bought a house out of Outing and lived alone until I married Mrs. Emily Scot a few years ago.

            The west road was just a wagon trail meandering around from Outing due east, near Morrison Lake, winding through the woods near Egg Lake on the east, near Otter Lake, south of Lake McKenna, and skirting east of it before joining the tote road going east.  I made my first trip to Swatara after the Heath Brothers, Art and Earl, had put up a small store that is still standing, but is now vacant.  The Heath Brothers were real young then, having been just married.  Frank Trepanier also had a small store.

            We hauled logs to Boyd & Young’s Spur where they had a mill.  They also had a building, quite a large one that had an office in one end, the only part that was heated.  The main part was a huge grocery and hardware warehouse.  You would come into the office and tell Ace Young what you wanted.  He’d take your order and then put on his coat and cap and mittens to load up your order.  Everything was sold in quantity.  They didn’t even have a scale.  Flour was sold by the 100 pound sack, the same for sugar.  All other items were sold by the box or the case.  That’s the way people bought their supplies, so that not too many trips were made.  This warehouse was probably the coldest spot in that part of the county.  At this location they also had a logging camp with its bunkhouses and cook shack.

            The railroad at Hill City went into operation soon after the Soo Line came to Swatara.  I had quite an experience when quite young.  My brother, Pussy, and I walked to Hill City and made contact at the hotel with the “haying boss,” asking him for a job.  We were given a job and told to be at the roundhouse the next morning at a certain time.  We stayed there that night and boarded the train the next morning.  We got on that old rig, it had some cars on it, and it was quite an experience, with it swaying from side to side, snaking its way through the woods until we got out to the hay camp.  They said that they wanted a stacker.  I didn’t know anything about stacking, but I told then I did and went to work.

This was the Big Meadow along the Willow River.  I suppose we put up hay for the logging camps.  After finishing that job we walked back across country and came out somewhere at Hay Point.  We were just kids, but needed work, and, Oh Boy, we got a dollar a day for ten hours!  That was real money.  For working on the County roads we got ten cents an hour, Art Chinvert being the contractor.  Our jobs were swinging a grub hoe or axe, grubbing out stumps.  Brushing and blasting, all hard work.  Art built a lot of roads, made a lot of money, but most of it went for booze as fast as he got it.

            Liquor establishments sent out catalogs and price lists.  You could order anything your heart desired and they would ship it out express, or later parcel post.  Pussy and I used to stay in Swatara a lot, when we put in the telephone lines.  I remember there was a guy from Hill City, Tom Hughes, who ran a sort of jitney from Hill City to Swatara and return. 

Anyway, some bootleggers from Hill City had a huge trunk shipped down from Duluth to Swatara loaded and packed full of booze and whiskey.  It was unloaded on the depot platform and somebody got wise or somehow figured it was liquor and whoever was to have received it took off and got away.  They broke it open and sure enough it was loaded with quart bottles and you should have seen those guys taking off with all they could carry by the armfuls.  They made for the woods, stashing them away.  In no time they cleaned out all that was in the trunk, and if you ever saw a drunken outfit it was them for the next two days.

            George Franks had a homestead about across from the old Horsewood place.  He later moved to the John Gulden place on Lake McKenna.  They were relatives.  George Franks had a barber shop and pool hall in Swatara, and later got a job and worked in Calumet.  At one time they boarded drivers or “River Pigs” of Boyd & Young’s drive.  They had a bunkhouse next to the lakeshore.

            We were also on drives for Boyd and Young, which would start at Third Guide where the landing was, and where there was a dam.  They would be let through that dam and floated to the dam at McKenna.  It took stamina jumping from log to log, but moving ties was worse, as they would sink unless you really kept them moving.

            One time, when quite young, we came to the Buttrick place while hunting, and passed the time of day with Bruce Buttrick.  I had quite a reputation at being a crackshot   with a rifle.  One thing led to another and Bruce asked, “How can you shoot like that?”  I told him, “It takes practice and I’ll show you.  You see that chicken over there?  If you want to be a crackshot, never bother to take aim, just pull up”.  Just then I pulled the trigger and blew the chicken all to pieces.  Much to the surprise of Bruce Buttrick.

            In order to be good at anything you have to work at it and never give up.  At that time, we could buy a Winchester pump .22 for about $12.00 or less and you could buy .22 cartridges at $1.25 for a case of 500.  I used to wear out one of them .22 rifles a year.  I used to practice like this, which was to raise the gun from a down position and when it came in line with the target, pull the trigger and keep both eyes open.  I used to go out along Third Guide where posts or logs were piled, maybe 20 feet away.  I’d start at one end on a dog trot, firing the gun at those log ends emptying it.  I kept this up for years and I got so that I could snap up the gun and kill a rabbit a fair distance away every time.  I got so whenever I got sight of a deer, when he made his first long jump, I had him.  Especially when I was trailing one and expecting him.

            At that time a good part of our living came off the land.  When we needed meat, I was the member of the family that was the deer hunter.  I was expected to supply the

meat.  We didn’t have too much to do with, so we made our own bullets and loaded them.  I never carried more than four or five bullets at the most.

            I remember Phil Chinvert spent a lot of time hunting and he always came out with the expression, “A deer can’t smell you.”  I knew very well that they could.  He was the owner of a Model T.   As it got cold that fall, our two families needed to get their winter supply of meat, and a good place to get them was on the clover field at that particular time of the year.  At this time we drove a bog at one end.  Just below that bog was another field owned by someone else, I forget who.  Phil and I hunted together a lot, and as was said, he maintained a deer couldn’t smell, so I choose to go against the wind and that first night I shot three deer, so the next night the wind was in the opposite direction, so I went the other way and I got three more.                       

            Another time I saw three deer and shot all three right under the chin.  It was hard for Phil to believe, so I showed him on a stump, now when you pull the trigger, never hesitate.  Aim then pull the trigger, it will just be an accident if you hit anything.

            So, he bought himself plenty of ammunition.  He’d throw a tin can down the road and keep shooting.  He kept this up for a year and by then he could hit anything he had a mind to.

            One time before I was fifteen years old I came up to the Jenkins place and put my gun down, and started talking to Claude Jenkins.  He said he wanted to shoot off my gun.  I told him, “Don’t you do it as it’s a 44-40 and bullets are hard to come by, as we have to reload them and only have a few”.  He insisted he wanted to shoot it and again he was warned not to.  By this time he had the gun.  Swinging it around, it went off.  The bullet hit me high on the right chest and went down at an angle coming out about an inch and a half from the back bone, on the way passing through the lung.  It made quite a large hole.  You know, I let a yell out of me and made a dive up a couple of steps for the kitchen door.  His mother, Mrs. Jenkins, was right there, and she was a heavy-set women.  I ran into her and fell to the floor.  It was hunting season and there were several hunters there. They put me on a couch, figuring I was a goner right then.  Talking among them they were sure I was done for.  They tried to get a doctor as another hunter had been shot near Outing.  But they had taken the wounded hunter to Brainerd and the doctor had gone with him.  There was a quack doctor at Cross Lake, but it was a long way to get him.  I had an uncle, an Englishman who had been a nurse in the English Army and he came there.  He poured some Peroxide through the wound.  You know about everybody in that day, in the spring of the year, would take a case knife and a gallon pail to a landing and fill the pail with pine pitch.  This was used for about everything to heal sores, wounds, wire cuts on horses, and even used to seal jugs, bottles, jars, etc.when canning fruits and various foods.  After they cleaned out the wound they covered it with pine pitch and bandaged it up.

            They took me home on a sled and I was in bed just a month.  I got over it completely.  When the Doctor got there six days after the accident, he looked at me and said, “I don’t see anything I can do.”  No matter if it were man or beast if you put pine pitch on it it would draw out all impurities and heal up perfectly.  There are still times when it bothers me.  While working in the mines, periodically, they gave us check-ups and x-rays, and they’d tell me I’d had T.B. some time or other and it had healed, and they’d get sort of shook up when I told them it was bullet holes.

            Claude Jenkins went just wild and would have shot himself if they wouldn’t have taken all guns away from him and kept careful watch for a time.  He’s been dead for some time.