I interviewed Floyd Bolin at his home in Alexandria, Minnesota, in May, 2003. He was 94 years old at the time, slight of build, ramrod straight, a little hard of hearing, and funny. I was a few minutes early when I arrived for the first of my two interview sessions with him. I rang the doorbell and got no answer. I knocked loudly and got no answer. The door was not locked so I opened it and called Floyd's name and got no answer. I stepped into the house a couple of steps, far enough to see Floyd in the living room, tipped back in his recliner, a blanket on his lap, his eyes closed, an alarm clock on the blanket. "Floyd," I said, "it's Tom Montag." Floyd opened his eyes, looked at me, looked at his alarm clock, and said, "Tom, you're a few minutes early. You'll have to go away and come back at 4:00 p.m." That's the sense of humor Floyd has, and that quick. My thanks to Ione Jensen and the Douglas County Historical Society for this transcription.
Vagabond: You were going to do aircraft work for your career but you didn’t?
Floyd: When I got through with that schooling, there wasn’t a job right away. So when I came back I went to work on construction.
Vagabond: You went on to Lake Carlos as the manager building these things, that’s in the early 30s.
Floyd: My work at Camp Carlos was a 4 year stretch. It was the best thing that could ever happened to me. It was my graduate tech school. I had to do everything. All of those projects that came up, and that included building a water system. Building that water system, including a pumping system from the lake and I had to build the foundation, footings for the columns, build the tower for the tank, and I assembled the tank and elevated it up with the help of these boys. They saw all this happening. I built that from scratch. I designed the tower. It required quite a bit of lumber, 4x6 and 2x12s. Stuff like that to hold 2200 gallons of water. Which was quite a bit. I designed that all. I was a buyer for the boys camp and I had a pad in the brand new Pontiac he had. I wrote my plans as I was driving back and forth. Do my design work as I was driving. Take notes and put away. One thing led to another, the tank was a major operation. The water system, it was in the drought years. I didn’t know right away how he could do this. In the background we had this man, Phil Noonan, to finance. So instead of them contracting, they gave it to me because old Phil Noonan knew me, I had worked for him a little bit before that. So he would just, Heinie, my boss would go to Mr. Noonan and tell him that he needed this to run the boys camp. He said ask Floyd if he’ll do it for you. That’s all it was. Phil would turn him over to me. I would say yes, a little reluctantly. I said you have to give me a little time. He was satisfied with that. Phil Noonan observed what I was doing at the boys camp and so when he started with his project of building 37-38 homes, the Noonan Addition, he asked me to come and work for him there. So then I worked as a carpenter first and then the job got big. They had an outfit from St. Paul, called Hovan-Olson; they were a large estate developer. They were the ones that would lay out the grounds, design work. Phil Noonan was quite a thinking man himself. He purchased a whole area of town. He wanted at least one solid block on both sides of the street, to be his houses, brand new ones. So what he did, he went in there and purchased, propositioned these home owners. He’d tell them what his plan was and he was careful about it, he didn’t scare them. He provided for them. He said he wanted to buy their house and "If you want this house to live in, I’ll move it. I’ll buy a lot, you pick a lot and I’ll put it there for you." That’s what he did. He got everyone to agree. Because he paid them well and they were better off when they were done with this proposition.
Vagabond: So he moved every one of those houses off of that block on both sides?
Floyd: He put them in different places in town and got them all settled in their new home at his expense. That’s quite a thing. After the houses were out of the way, that’s when he got a hold of me to come over and work for him. Then it became a crew that he had to have. The other one was moving people. Nothing much could happen except he had pay to have these houses moved out of the way. When work started, he hired a guy, an outfit called Hovan-Olson landscaping company. He hired them to come and plan what he had going. That got that all done and when they were ready to go, they sent a guy up here to manage that. He worked alone for a while but found out he needed assistance so Phil gave me to him. So I became his assistant, managing the lay of the land and the landscaping.
To be continued....
I grew up in a "Noonan" home... in fact it was his daughter Patsy's house. They sure knew how to build beautiful houses. I live now kitty corner from where I grew up with Phil Noonan's foot prints in the side walk
Posted by: stacy pasch | October 03, 2005 at 12:47 AM