The Middlewesterner

REST IN PEACE FLOYD BOLIN

This weekend I received news from his son Stan that Floyd Bolin of Alexandria, Minnesota, died on February 24th, just three weeks shy of his ninety-ninth birthday. I interviewed Floyd at his home in Alexandria, Minnesota, in May, 2003. He was 94 years old then, slight of build, ramrod straight, a little hard of hearing, and he was 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 had, and that quick.

Some time later, after Floyd had moved from his home to an assisted living complex in Alexandria, I stopped to see him as I was passing the city on I-90. I knew his room number, but couldn't find him there. I waited in the hallway, and waited some more, then someone told me that Floyd was downstairs in the rec room. I went down there. The question is: was I gladder to see Floyd, or was he gladder to see me. He was a special man.

Floyd's was an interesting life and the world is better for his having spent some time amongst us. I'll miss his laugh, that twinkle of his eyes, the joy he seemed to take in everything.

Rest in peace, Floyd Bolin.

REST IN PEACE, MINNIE OSTERHOLT ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA

I received the sad news today

that Minnie Osterholt of Alexandria, Minnesota, died at age 94 on Monday, May 7, 2007. The funeral for Minnie will be at 11:00 a.m. on Friday, May 11, 2007 at the Our Saviours Lutheran Church in Nelson, Minnesota. Visitation will be held from 4:00-8:00 p.m. on Thursday May 10, 2007, at the Anderson Funeral Home in Alexandria, with a prayer service commencing at 7:30 p.m..

I interviewed Minnie Osterholt for my Vagabond project in 2003 when she was 90-years-old. Minnie had conducted many of the oral history interviews in the Douglas County collection, yet was modest in speaking of her accomplishments. Minnie was one of the premier Douglas County historians: she would say merely that she saw what needed doing and she did it.

Notes from my Vagabond Journal about Minnie Osterholt, February, 2003:

Minnie believes that saving the past for the future is essential, even if she can't say exactly why it's important.

Minnie belonged to the first "calf project" and exhibited at the first fairs instituted by T.A. Erickson, whom locals credit with founding 4-H. She remembers that Erickson's work was vital in helping rural youth have a better view of themselves and their accomplishments in an age when they felt inferior to their city cousins.

Minnie lived in California and New York for twenty years, working first as a nanny, then as a sales clerk in a Danish delicatessen at 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, NYC. She met her husband at the delicatessen; when he retired, the couple moved to Douglas County, to live in the house where Minnie had been born.

Minnie had always been interested in writing, had belonged to a writers' group in California ("I wrote about pioneers"), took a writing class in California, one in New York, one when she returned to Minnesota.

While it California, it might be added, Minnie sent a letter to novelist Sinclair Lewis, who was in the area on a speaking tour; she asked if they might meet long enough for Lewis to sign her copy of Arrowsmith. Lewis sent her a handwritten letter indicating that his schedule wouldn't permit such a meeting, and suggesting instead that she tuck his letter into her book.

"Didn't it take courage to write Sinclair Lewis?" I wondered. "No," Minnie said, "he was just a Minnesota boy." (And perhaps that he took the time to send her such a letter proved that he was still a Minnesota boy.)

Minnie had always been interested in local history and it was after her husband died in the late 1970s that she threw herself headlong into interviewing area residents and recording county history. Hers is quite an achievement, I think, though she won't say so.

When she speaks about living in Douglas County, Minnesota, Minnie's face shines with an intense glow: "I look out the window here, I see a hill, I know it might be a man-made hill, I see the woods behind it, this feels like home." This northern light lays on her face. Her face shines.

I think about the shine on Minnie's face, about the swell in my chest as I talked with her. I couldn't help seeing Minnie as representative of that march of generations which created the middle western world we know today. She follows pioneers who have already been laid to earth beneath the rough grasses of the plains. Minnie is part of that tromp tromp to build a better world. Looking into Minnie's eyes as she talked, I got a sense she is but a cog in the great wheel turning; in another sense, she and Opal and all of us are the great wheel itself, which is the reason we are here, to be the wheel's turning, the reason we live and love and mate and bring forth children, the whole process repeating itself in endless cycle. Death and life and death is but a turning, and there is no reason to fear or grieve or worry. With each turning the grass grows green again, the fields come to harvest, the husks and stalks get turned back to soil, children grow up and have children, grandpa dies, it is all important but none of it is any more important than any other.

That was what I was seeing in the shine of Minnie's face as she talked. The tromp of the inevitable joined with the swing of joy in one's ordinary existence. What we shall be is what we were and what we are and what we work for. The nine decades lined on Minnie's face told me it could not be otherwise.

Rest in peace, Minnie Osterholt!

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE ANDERSON ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (17)

When I interviewed George Anderson and he asked me how old I thought he was, I guessed 78. He was 88. He has had a varied and interesting life for a fellow born in small town, Iowa, the son of a minister who could preach only in Swedish. As much as he didn't like his high school experience, he got himself a college education and became a teacher, a school principal, and more. He tells us his story. My thanks to Ione Jensen and the Douglas County Historical Society for this transcription.

Vagabond: You let kids take 15 or 20 of the horses home to the farm for the winter months. I suppose it taught the kid some responsibility because he’d have to feed it and take care of it.

George: Then he could have a horse for the whole winter. And we wouldn’t have to feed that horse. Then the school, apparently, I used to take about 20 days off each year and go on different meetings. I was on the committee for our church that met for 3 days every year in New York. Then I was president of the Minnesota Resort Association and we started some clinics for the resorts. Many farmers would come in and buy a resort and they wouldn’t know the first thing about what to do. So we’d teach them. We’d put on a clinic in the spring. That went over big, so all the other resort areas started to do the same thing. So I was asked to be president of the Minnesota Resort Association for another year. I think I took off about 20 days a year with the church and the resort association.

Vagabond: Will you tell me what church you belong to?

George: Here in town, Calvary Lutheran Church. My dad was a Covenant Church preacher. He belonged to the Covenant Church.

Vagabond: How are they different than Lutheran?

George: They’re more Evangelical.

Vagabond: That was Swedish?

George: In Roseau it was all Swedish.

Vagabond: Your father was an immigrant and he had been a Covenant believer?

George: It hadn’t been called a Covenant Church in Sweden, it was called something else.

Vagabond: It was that set of particular beliefs? From the church back in Sweden.

George: Ya. But then it wasn’t called the Covenant. He was a skilled painter and when he was going to college in Chicago, he went through college and he painted pianos, varnished them. He was a highly skilled person. That’s how he got through college in Chicago.

Vagabond: You didn’t pick up that knack for tools?

George: No. My brother was a good carpenter. And our son. He works for a construction company in Minneapolis. He started out in charge of roofing and had 20 guys, and now I think he’s probably 5th in command for the whole construction company.

Vagabond: Are there other things about your life or your work that you should tell me that we haven’t talked about?

George: I’ve told you more than I thought I would tell you. My wife, she could take the horses, she ran that place in the spring.

Vagabond: When you were still in school?

George: She was a very unusual girl.

Vagabond: Anything else?

George: The greatest thing I ever did was putting through school that fella. He has the highest rating. That’s the greatest thing I ever did.

Vagabond: You’re proud of that. You did that and he did so well.

George: He wouldn’t have done it. Think of all the hundreds of others who would like to get that.

Vagabond: Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate this. This has been wonderful.

---THIS ENDS THE INTERVIEW---

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE ANDERSON ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (16)

When I interviewed George Anderson and he asked me how old I thought he was, I guessed 78. He was 88. He has had a varied and interesting life for a fellow born in small town, Iowa, the son of a minister who could preach only in Swedish. As much as he didn't like his high school experience, he got himself a college education and became a teacher, a school principal, and more. He tells us his story. My thanks to Ione Jensen and the Douglas County Historical Society for this transcription.

Vagabond: You said you offered incentives to 9th graders who didn't want to come to school. What incentives did you offer?

George: In the 9th grade, you see, they could be gone so many days. If they would come then they could have this block of time to help on the farm or whatever.

Vagabond: Was there some of that when you were principal then where farm kids were actually helping with the harvest in the fall and helping with the planting in the spring?

George: Ya.

Vagabond: Then that disappeared?

George: Now they don’t have that. They all have cars now.

Vagabond: One of the issues in Alexandria is the school bond, building a new school. It didn’t go through.

George: That’s too bad. Because now they’re going to have a hard time. They planned for a beautiful new school, a new auditorium and everything. But too many people didn’t want the increase in taxes. Another thing I used to do when I was the principal, I had the best, or least amount of absenteeism from teachers. I had a rule if the teachers wanted to go hunting for an hour in the morning, they could go, but they’d have to get a substitute for their class. Or I would take one hour from them. That was for the men teachers. I had the least turnover in teachers. They had some flexible for their lives. Some women, could take off the whole day but they’d have to get, I’d take one hour of their class and then they’d have to get another teacher to take the other hours. That went over. The morale was good. You gave them a way to be honest.

Vagabond: Let's go back and talk about the horses at your resort, if we could.

George: When we ended up, we had 70 horses. We had 20 at Sibley State Park and 20 at Carlos State Park. And 40 here. Most people don’t realize we had that many, they just don’t believe that.

Vagabond: Did you get to be a pretty good judge of horses then? You yourself?

George: No, I wasn’t.

Vagabond: Somebody else was buying the horses?

George: No, no, I could do that. We had a guy over northwest of town, he dealt in horses and had a good sense of what kind of horse we wanted. So we’d get a lot of our horses from him. And furthermore we would let a kid take a horse for all winter, a farm kid. He’d have a saddle and everything and we’d pay for all the sickness and everything. We’d farm out probably 15 or 20 horses a year.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE ANDERSON ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (15)

When I interviewed George Anderson and he asked me how old I thought he was, I guessed 78. He was 88. He has had a varied and interesting life for a fellow born in small town, Iowa, the son of a minister who could preach only in Swedish. As much as he didn't like his high school experience, he got himself a college education and became a teacher, a school principal, and more. He tells us his story. My thanks to Ione Jensen and the Douglas County Historical Society for this transcription.

Vagabond: If you have to look 25-50 years in the future, what would you see for Alexandria?

George: A much bigger city.

Vagabond: So it’s growing strongly and you see that continuing?

George: It will have to. Because several hundred houses are being built right now around.

Vagabond: Can you talk about the changes in the school from the time you started teaching in 1937 until you retired and went to Malaysia? What changed in the school during that time?

George: They couldn’t possibly have a pregnant principal. They’ve developed pretty good schools. Now you see all the newer things, like computers. Like the music department used to have probably one orchestra, now they probably have a couple, and a couple of choirs.

Vagabond: Because they have that many kids who are interested?

George: The junior high, when I was principal, our band was just as good as some of the small town bands, the junior high band.

Vagabond: What kind of a principal were you?

George: I was probably a little different. I never, I had a paddle, you know, and if a kid came in I would take that paddle and crack it over the end of the desk and I said I’m not afraid to hit you with it.

Vagabond: You’d crack it on the desk?

George: I also had a slip of paper that, I had four choices for the kid. Either we call the parents and tell them what was wrong, or they’d have to pick up papers around school afterwards or I’d call their minister. Some things like that. They’d have to choose which punishment. That worked like gold. I had no trouble.

Vagabond: And these were junior high kids?

George: When I first came here, there were about 20 9th graders that wouldn’t come to school. And I gave them incentives to come. They started coming to school.

Vagabond: They would just quit school after 8th grade?

George: Ya.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE ANDERSON ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (14)

When I interviewed George Anderson and he asked me how old I thought he was, I guessed 78. He was 88. He has had a varied and interesting life for a fellow born in small town, Iowa, the son of a minister who could preach only in Swedish. As much as he didn't like his high school experience, he got himself a college education and became a teacher, a school principal, and more. He tells us his story. My thanks to Ione Jensen and the Douglas County Historical Society for this transcription.

Vagabond: You say Alexandria is growing. Why is that?

George: I don’t know, but they are growing. You can drive out in any direction and you’ll see on a farm, a big house going up. When you came past the cemetery there, did you see some construction going on? They’re putting in a sewer system. A hundred houses are going there. On the other side of the road is another hundred houses going up. Hundreds of houses being planned.

Vagabond: Is it because this is a resort area and the people are coming from the Twin Cities and just moving in?

George: People are retiring here.

Vagabond: The quality of the people of Alexandria and this area, how would you describe their characteristics? What are they made of? Now you and your wife you said are hard working, that’s one thing. Other qualities of these people?

George: I think there are a lot of retired people and we have a number of golf courses. I think it’s not just retired people. There are a number of younger families moving here. I don’t know where they’re finding jobs because some are losing their jobs. But there’s a big store that sells all kinds of things, starts with M, and that’s coming.

Vagabond: Menards?

George: You see we have a Fleet Farm and now Menards. They’re going to knock off the small lumber yards in town for sure. But they must have studied the conditions here before a big outfit like that would move in. I see that Menards is going to be across from Fleet Farm.

Vagabond: Right. I think they like to do that. Other qualities in the people around here?

George: You see in the earlier days there were people who were Germans north of town, the Norwegians would be east of town and the Czech people would be west, and the Finns would be in different areas like that. When I first came here you could hear these languages being spoken.

Vagabond: Now you don’t?

George: No. I think there are a lot of people who come here; you see we have about 60 doctors here now.

Vagabond: So Alexandria is serving as a medical center for a large area in this part of Minnesota?

George: They come from Parkers Prairie and all over. They have to.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE ANDERSON ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (13)

When I interviewed George Anderson and he asked me how old I thought he was, I guessed 78. He was 88. He has had a varied and interesting life for a fellow born in small town, Iowa, the son of a minister who could preach only in Swedish. As much as he didn't like his high school experience, he got himself a college education and became a teacher, a school principal, and more. He tells us his story. My thanks to Ione Jensen and the Douglas County Historical Society for this transcription.

Vagabond: And your wife helped you with the horses?

George: She could saddle up ten horses by herself. You know we’d have schools come out for skip days. Well, I’d be in school and she’d have to saddle up the horses, ten horses for those kids.

Vagabond: And she could. Well, she had ridden herself before. She was a farm girl so she was made of good stock.

George: She cleaned stalls. She’s known nothing but work. Neither one of us.

Vagabond: When you retired, you had been in Malaysia, you’ve been in Papua, New Guinea. You could be anywhere in the world, you came back here. Why did you come back here?

George: We had the resort.

Vagabond: But after you lost the resort, you came back from Papua, New Guinea, why did you come back here?

George: Then I was retired.

Vagabond: You could’ve retired to Florida, California, Las Vegas or….

George: We had very good living in this house. See that whole area, it’s a skating rink in the winter time. I used to teach skating. But I never did with our daughter. She had a school and the kids would come from all over around here, just step out the door and skate. One year we had 20 people living on the place here overnight. Twenty different people for a week.

Vagabond: For a class?

George: No, our relatives. They’d play broom hockey and stuff like that. We had more fun.

Vagabond: So you probably came back for family.

George: Yes.

Vagabond: One of the things I ask people about is the condition and the prospects of the small towns in rural America. What do you see for Alexandria?

George: Alexandria right now is growing tremendously.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE ANDERSON ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (12)

When I interviewed George Anderson and he asked me how old I thought he was, I guessed 78. He was 88. He has had a varied and interesting life for a fellow born in small town, Iowa, the son of a minister who could preach only in Swedish. As much as he didn't like his high school experience, he got himself a college education and became a teacher, a school principal, and more. He tells us his story. My thanks to Ione Jensen and the Douglas County Historical Society for this transcription.

Vagabond: You had talked about teaching horseback riding on the resort you had with your brother. Would you continue with that?

George: We had one college kid to teach advanced riding. Then we’d put on a show every Friday. These kids would show what they could do. What they learned. But then on Saturday night we’d put on a show where we’d have horsemen in the area, they’d come from even South Dakota and participate in barrels and stuff like that.

Vagabond: Every Saturday night in the summer?

George: Yes. There would be about 1000 people there.

Vagabond: I talked to someone at the Historical Society this afternoon who remembers back in the 1970s going there for horse things and sitting on the hill and watching.

George: It was just ideal for an arena there. We’d feature one horse lady. We’d put 13 kids on her on a three-year-old. They’d be way up on the neck. Another kid would be sitting holding onto the tail so he wouldn’t fall off. But 13 kids would be on the horse. We’d do stuff like that.

Vagabond: And people would come out and enjoy that?

George: They’d come from town and other resorts. We’d have about 1000 people there.

Vagabond: And that was free?

George: One time we tried putting a rodeo on. But then our golf guy was terrific with a bow and arrow and he’d put a lighted candle on the railing around the arena and then he’d go stand up at the top of the hill and shoot an arrow and put the candle out. We’d feature stuff like that.

Vagabond: That was what years? The 60s, 70s?

George: It went until they started building Arrowwood.

Vagabond: Which was when?

George: I think it was… I had been over in Papua, New Guinea. I’ve gone around the world three times. If you go that far, might as well just keep on going. It’s cheaper.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE ANDERSON ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (11)

When I interviewed George Anderson and he asked me how old I thought he was, I guessed 78. He was 88. He has had a varied and interesting life for a fellow born in small town, Iowa, the son of a minister who could preach only in Swedish. As much as he didn't like his high school experience, he got himself a college education and became a teacher, a school principal, and more. He tells us his story. My thanks to Ione Jensen and the Douglas County Historical Society for this transcription.

Vagabond: There would be a rush of work at the beginning and the end of the tennis lessons for Alexandria's youth?

George: They’d be lined up and we’d give them free pop afterwards. The balls would go over the net, so we’d have one guy picking up balls. It’s really organized.

Vagabond: How long has that been going on?

George: It’s been going on for I don’t know how many years. I’ve resigned from it now. I buy 800 balls every year. I have a friend who gets me these balls for ten cents a piece. I have shipped to Papua, New Guinea 343,0000 balls over the years.

Vagabond: So they’re still doing your tennis back there?

George: Oh yes. They have four courts with lights. You see it gets dark pretty much at 5 o’clock, right on the equator. So they have two of the courts that are lighted.

Vagabond: So you went to Papua, New Guinea for two years and came back here and started the tennis here, the tennis clinic?

George: I was giving lessons, I had groups of women, nurses at the hospital. I had 20 nurses for two years. Just two weeks ago we had a clinic for our doctor, he’s a Chinese doctor here. Mostly women, not too many men.

Vagabond: And you really didn’t play when you were in high school and in college?

George: I played in the service. I went to a tennis clinic in the spring of the year. They taught you how to serve and all that kind of stuff. I went for two or three years, I think.

Vagabond: Your existence is pretty much defined as a teacher and teaching science, teaching horseback riding, teaching tennis. Would you say you’re a teacher in all aspects of your life? That’s sort of your mission?

George: I’ve had two chauffered cars with kids. They come from all the other resorts. We had a water ski team.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE ANDERSON ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (10)

When I interviewed George Anderson and he asked me how old I thought he was, I guessed 78. He was 88. He has had a varied and interesting life for a fellow born in small town, Iowa, the son of a minister who could preach only in Swedish. As much as he didn't like his high school experience, he got himself a college education and became a teacher, a school principal, and more. He tells us his story. My thanks to Ione Jensen and the Douglas County Historical Society for this transcription.

Vagabond: All these classes you were involved with in Malaysia and New Guinea, were they in English?

George: Yes. They had to speak English or you’d hear all the other languages But it had to be in English.

Vagabond: Was there a problem with languages?

George: Some had a hard time. They would learn in a quick hurry.

Vagabond: Okay, so you were there for two years?

George: No. I was supposed to be in Malaysia for two years but they put this music teacher in ahead of me and he couldn’t last. So then they called me. Then we were back here for a number of years, then we lost the resort and then we volunteered to go with the Lutheran Bible Translators for two years. That’s what saved me. They were the most fabulous two years of my life. I would teach science. I had a seventh grade class for two hours and then an eighth grade class. The ten kids in the seventh grade class. Only two were from the United States. The others were from other countries. The bible translators came from all different countries. Then I taught tennis in the afternoon.

Vagabond: Did you teach yourself tennis, had you played tennis?

George: No. I don’t know how I did it. I figured out a system of so many lessons. I had mostly adults, I didn’t have too many kids. The other thing was that some of the other bible translators, they’d get up at four in the morning, with their bibles and work as translators. Then they’d be back at the bas. So then some of them started taking tennis lessons. They were ready to quit but the tennis lessons saved them. So I had solid teaching tennis all afternoon. I developed a system, how many hours they’d do and then go into an intermediate class. We use that same system here now in Alexandria. We have clinic course for all the 3rd, 4th , 5th and 6th graders. A hundred of them. They have it for one week. Then the high school coach, he improved on that. So then he’d have 100 kids each hour, the 1st graders first, then on up. There are 3-5 cities in southern Minnesota that would like to offer the lesson as we’re doing, but they can’t do it because they can’t get the help. We have about 190 people helping now. We’d get help from businesses. Get rackets to use. We’d get 15 small rackets. We’d have to issue those out. We needed a couple of guys to do that. Guys could help and be on the court. We’d have 45 guys working at the club alone. They didn’t have to work very hard, not than 10 minutes of work during the hour.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE ANDERSON ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (9)

When I interviewed George Anderson and he asked me how old I thought he was, I guessed 78. He was 88. He has had a varied and interesting life for a fellow born in small town, Iowa, the son of a minister who could preach only in Swedish. As much as he didn't like his high school experience, he got himself a college education and became a teacher, a school principal, and more. He tells us his story. My thanks to Ione Jensen and the Douglas County Historical Society for this transcription.

Vagabond: You had to quit the team-teaching experiment because it was so intense?

George: Yes. We’d each have 30 kids and in one big room. I had astronomy, I think I had meteorology, and I think theology. We’d have work sheets and we could work in groups of three or individually and they could go as fast as they could learn. We had one kid who was ready for the ninth grade after. He had about two months of this. You can’t imagine how, you could see, maybe 3-4 girls working together and then they’d come up and read. We’d pick out the poorest reader, you know. Those other kids would go back and coach that kid. By talking, the best way of learning is talking. These kids would have the one kid repeat until she got it…We'd pick out the poorest kid when they came up as a group. Then they’d go back and teach this kid.

Vagabond: They had to help.

George: They’d be talking all the time. They got all excited. You couldn’t hold them back.

Vagabond: How much do you think coming from a small community, you said you didn’t speak English, how much do you think that set you back?

George: I wouldn’t know.

Vagabond: Do you think it set you back at all?

George: I can’t feature switching from Swedish to English.

Vagabond: Your dad never learned to speak English?

George: He had difficulty.

Vagabond: Did your mother learn English?

George: Oh ya.

Vagabond: Did you continue speaking Swedish at home so you could speak to your father?

George: Ya. But I think when we’d speak English he could understand some. When we went to Malaysia and when we lost the resort, my brother had a nervous breakdown and he developed Parkinson’s Disease, then he died. I was going to the same way but then we decided to go with Lutheran Bible Translators for a couple of years. And we went to Papua, New Guinea. I was in a school and I taught in the school there and then I started tennis. I would be a teacher in the morning, a biology class and a general science class. I used the same sheets we had and the kids would go out. You could be outside and we had picnic tables. Then the teachers would wonder how my kids could sit and work. You just couldn’t keep them working. They wondering how I did that.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE ANDERSON ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (8)

When I interviewed George Anderson and he asked me how old I thought he was, I guessed 78. He was 88. He has had a varied and interesting life for a fellow born in small town, Iowa, the son of a minister who could preach only in Swedish. As much as he didn't like his high school experience, he got himself a college education and became a teacher, a school principal, and more. He tells us his story. My thanks to Ione Jensen and the Douglas County Historical Society for this transcription.

Vagabond: You haven't talked about how you met your wife.George: Back when we had the horseback riding, it wouldn’t be unusual for a group of teachers to come out for a ride at midnight. I only had 30 horses, probably 10-15 horses we’d use for a midnight ride. She’d be part of that group, as a teacher.

Vagabond: She was an Alexandria teacher?

George: No, no. She worked in a grocery store. A farm girl.

Vagabond: Oh. In Alexandria? Oh, and you were teaching riding.

George: No. We’d just go saddle up the horses. We’d have a party. Girls and boys.

Vagabond: Get together and do that?

George: It would be midnight and we’d ride around the lake.

Vagabond: How many are married as a result from that? How many other marriages resulted from those midnight rides?

George: Oh I don’t know. There were a couple of teachers who married. After about four years. Then I was called back into the service again. I went to Camp Grant and they said you shouldn’t be here. I was scheduled to go in, to Korea. Then I started getting more serious and thought it’s time to get married. Her dad was on small goat farm and he was a painter. When I first stopped by I thought he was a painter, artist, but here he was a house painter. He was a terrific guy. We used to have fun. We’d go skiing on the hills. With all the teachers, I had about ten pairs of skis on our porch. Teachers would have parties out there.

Vagabond: So you met; and you married when?

George: In 1950-1951 somewhere.

Vagabond: In the 1950s you’re saying?

George: When we came back from Malaysia, they asked me to teach for another five years. And I became a team of three teachers who individualized the instruction in an eighth grade class. It was very unusual. It wasn’t unusual for us to have 25 kids after school wanting to learn. Not because they had to It was the most fabulous thing I did was those five years. In fact, it was so difficult, three of us teachers burned out in those five years. We had to quit.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE ANDERSON ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (7)

When I interviewed George Anderson and he asked me how old I thought he was, I guessed 78. He was 88. He has had a varied and interesting life for a fellow born in small town, Iowa, the son of a minister who could preach only in Swedish. As much as he didn't like his high school experience, he got himself a college education and became a teacher, a school principal, and more. He tells us his story. My thanks to Ione Jensen and the Douglas County Historical Society for this transcription.

Vagabond: You graduated in 1936, so you worked in Alexandria's schools for 15 years?

George: You didn’t count the time I was in school did you?

Vagabond: Oh that’s right. So how old were you when you resigned from being principal? And you were principal for how long?

George: Twenty-five years in all. So then we went to Malaysia on the island of Borneo. I was the principal of a school there with 400 kids. They were all Chinese or Malaysian. I lived there for one year. I should have been there for two years but they had hired a high school teacher from a Minneapolis school, a music teacher. They tried him for one year. Then they asked me again. The morale at the school had been just terrible. So I was just there for one year.

Vagabond: Did you improve things in that year?

George: Oh yes, you bet. They’d had a teacher who would lecture to the kids. A biology teacher who would lecture to the kids. They wouldn’t do very well. So I’d have them work on worksheets. Then an English teacher did the same thing. Then the math teacher, there must have been 12-13 teachers in the school. But the younger kids in class just were bedlam, so I had to teach one course called Christianity, something like that. The whole system was under a British system. So they would take British exams. So I’d give a practice test to the kids. One kid who was really smart, I had him help me teach. I knew he was a smart kid, half Malaysian and half Chinese. So before we left, I said I should take you over to the states and put you through college. He managed to come over; he came from very poor circumstances. So I put this kid through four years of college. Then he wanted a more advanced degree and you know over there they wouldn’t even recognize the University of Minnesota. They come out of big schools there. But anyway I got him into a school at Edmonton, Canada.

Vagabond: The University of Calgary at Edmonton?

George: Yes. So he got a more advanced degree in engineering there. I put him through all the way and during the summer he would work for us. He lived with us for seven years in that way. In Minneapolis my sister housed him for nothing. Then he’d work and got his food. In Edmonton I don’t know how he did it, but he ended up buying a car for $694.

Vagabond: He had a job of some sort?

George: In engineering they design in school. Anyway, he went back to Malaysia, to his home there. Two or three years ago he became the head guy of the whole engineering department of that state, or country. He has several other people working for him. And recently he was given an honor, the highest honor you can be given as a civilian person in Malaysia. He must have been an awfully terrific guy to get that.

Vagabond: Over the years have you been in touch with the fellow from Malaysia whom you put through college?

George: He has two or three boys. Two of the boys are at the University in England.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE ANDERSON ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (6)

When I interviewed George Anderson and he asked me how old I thought he was, I guessed 78. He was 88. He has had a varied and interesting life for a fellow born in small town, Iowa, the son of a minister who could preach only in Swedish. As much as he didn't like his high school experience, he got himself a college education and became a teacher, a school principal, and more. He tells us his story. My thanks to Ione Jensen and the Douglas County Historical Society for this transcription.

Vagabond: And what were you teaching at the military flight school in Florida?

George: I taught math at a pre-flight school.

Vagabond: Getting these guys ready to learn how to fly.

George: As a math teacher to these guys who were in the first stages of learning. They went to the pre-flight school and I taught math for two years. Then I applied and became an aide to an adjutant general. I ended up being a Captain.

Vagabond: You were drafted and you ended up being a Captain?

George: I was in line to being a Major. The last job I had was the headquarters at flight training. The guys would come in, I wouldn’t even salute the Generals or anything. They were all one. I wrote up all the recommendations.

Vagabond: Let's talk about the resort you owned.

George: When we had the resort, I would teach horseback riding. It was successful. We had eight horses in a pen. I would teach kids how to ride horseback. They’d have to be in the third grade to ride.

Vagabond: So 32 kids in the morning.

George: It cost $1.50. Then we had another person who taught advanced riding and that kind of thing.

Vagabond: How did you learn horseback riding?

George: How did I? I read a book. In the meantime the superintendent asked me if I would start teaching. So I could go to school and work in the afternoon teaching riding.

Vagabond: So you started teaching math at the school here in Alexandria?

George: No, I had a general science class. Just as a sideline. Teachers used to stand in the hallways in the afternoon and I’d have two teachers who would come to my room who were social studies teachers. One was the wife of a teacher, so in May, we started talking and they said 'How's it going?' And I said "Oh. I just hate this time of the year." They said 'Why?' I said, 'Don’t you just take the number of pages in your book and divide it by the number of days in school?' I said 'I’m on the index now.' I said 'It’s so boring, I just can’t hardly stand it.' Then the superintendent called me in and said I shouldn’t do that. I wasn’t even using a textbook. After two years there they asked if I’d be the principal. Then I was the principal there until I had five more years to teach. When I resigned the job as principal, I went as a missionary to Malaysia.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE ANDERSON ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (5)

When I interviewed George Anderson and he asked me how old I thought he was, I guessed 78. He was 88. He has had a varied and interesting life for a fellow born in small town, Iowa, the son of a minister who could preach only in Swedish. As much as he didn't like his high school experience, he got himself a college education and became a teacher, a school principal, and more. He tells us his story. My thanks to Ione Jensen and the Douglas County Historical Society for this transcription.

George: After three years teaching in Benson, I went to Rochester, Minnesota. Rochester was rated as one of the top ten schools in the United States. And I got a job there. The superintendent in Benson came in and observed me two times while I was there. But the 2nd year in Rochester I got drafted in October. Otherwise I loved it in Rochester.

Vagabond: And what school was that in Rochester?

George: It was the junior high school in Rochester, Minnesota.

Vagabond: Where the Mayo Clinic is? And you got drafted in 1941-42?

George: This was before the war. I had to go in 1941. I just loved it in Rochester.

Vagabond: Can you talk about your years in the service?

George: Yes. But at Rochester I got interested in figure skating. I was going to become a teacher of figure skating. So I got to a first test in figure skating, and I passed it. Then I got drafted. Then I had to go to Camp Randall. Then to Las Vegas. My first job was security. Some of the doctors there realized I was a teacher of science and asked if I would help in the sick and wounded office. I had to write everything, you know. Fill in everything. Before I knew it I was a staff sergeant.

Vagabond: In a hospital unit?

George: No, this was in the gunnery school. But then I was attached to the hospital, too. So then I applied to go to some school, I think after about six or seven months. They sent me to a school in Florida. Then I became a teacher of a pre-flight school there for two years. Then I went to a General School in Washington. Numerous courses over the years. I was in for six years. About the fourth or fifth year I was sent to the headquarters for flying training command. I got a job there writing up recommendations and stuff like that. I wrote a Christmas letter for General Arnold for two years. All kinds of stuff, like if somebody had a kid complaining or kicked out, I’d have to write to the parents about it. That was my job. I lived in an apartment, until I was no longer in the service.

Vagabond: You didn’t have to live on the base? But you were still in the Army?

George: Yes. But we lived in an apartment.

Vagabond: You were in the hospital in Las Vegas and then you went to the flight school in Florida?

George: Then I had become a teacher.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE ANDERSON ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (4)

When I interviewed George Anderson and he asked me how old I thought he was, I guessed 78. He was 88. He has had a varied and interesting life for a fellow born in small town, Iowa, the son of a minister who could preach only in Swedish. As much as he didn't like his high school experience, he got himself a college education and became a teacher, a school principal, and more. He tells us his story. My thanks to Ione Jensen and the Douglas County Historical Society for this transcription.

Vagabond: What school were you teaching at, teaching five courses?

George: Evansville, Minnesota. Then I had to teach Sunday School, too.

Vagabond: Well, they must have asked you for that?

George: Ya. But then I couldn’t leave, unless I went for Thanksgiving or a teacher’s meeting, or Christmas and Easter.

Vagabond: Because of the Sunday School teaching?

George: No, the superintendent had rules that you couldn’t leave. I lived there in a room in a house.

Vagabond: How long did you teach in Evansville?

George: I taught there one year and then I got a job to teach in Benson, that’s west of town here. I started out teaching 8th grade math. That’s all. This was interesting in a way, too. I came there, and the head janitor at the school said, you’ll never make it. Because the year before the 8th grade class had 40 boys in it. Five of them had just returned from reform school and they had three teachers who couldn’t make it. Even the coach couldn’t make it. And here I was starting out looking like a kid, almost. So then the first day I had the kids fill in their names. They had those seats that fold back. Five rows, eight to a row. So when I took the papers up in front and asked for them to read the names off again. One of the names was John Dillinger. Quite a bit of snickering went on. The second one was Roy McGinnis. The third was Ty Chewy. I can’t remember what the 4th one was. But in the very back row, in the last seat, was Al Capone. I went back there and I hit the kid and I said so you’re Al Capone? He said "ya." I hit him again. He said "ya." I hit him again. He did it five time until he didn’t do it. I walked back up to the front of the room and it was absolutely quiet. The year before there were five teachers who had no control. That’s how I got control of those kids. I would never hit a kid but I felt it was absolutely necessary.

Vagabond: So did they straighten out and tell you who they were?

George: A little bit. The one kid sort of became a pretty good friend.

Vagabond: Al Capone?

George: Yes. I taught there for 3 years in Benson. One year I taught science and I had a brilliant kid. But he was a problem in school. He was a smart aleck. He wouldn’t do things. When we were studying about electricity, I said why don’t you tell the kids about what electricity is? For three days he lectured to the kids and then performed experiments. Those kids were just nuts about the guy, so I used him a lot.

To be continued....

VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE ANDERSON ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (3)

When I interviewed George Anderson and he asked me how old I thought he was, I guessed 78. He was 88. He has had a varied and interesting life for a fellow born in small town, Iowa, the son of a minister who could preach only in Swedish. As much as he didn't like his high school experience, he got himself a college education and became a teacher, a school principal, and more. He tells us his story. My thanks to Ione Jensen and the Douglas County Historical Society for this transcription.

George: Our family didn’t have much money so I went through the University on $100 a year. I would take a streetcar to school and have a sandwich and that’s all I would have. After a day at the University I would stay and go to the library and do all my studies and then I’d ride home with the janitor because we were just two blocks from him. So that’s how I went through the University. I didn’t even go to a football game. I wasn’t really happy. All my friends were outside of school.

Vagabond: You didn’t make friends at the University?

George: No. Because I had to study, you know. I didn’t go to anything, couldn’t afford to go.

Vagabond: What did you study then?

George: I was going to be an endomologist at first. I studied science to be a teacher.

Vagabond: A high school teacher? And you graduated?

George: I graduated and then I got a job in Evansville, Minnesota. Teaching five subjects. Latin, chemistry, biology, general science, one other. I had to teach five subjects.

Vagabond: Were you qualified to teach Latin?

George: No.

Vagabond: Had you taken Latin?

George: No.

Vagabond: How did you teach Latin?

George: Oh wait. I had Latin in high school.

Vagabond: So you were teaching Latin based on your high school experience?

George: I had chemistry at the University and I taught chemistry through senior high. I had to teach five subjects like that. I coached baseball and basketball. They didn’t even have a gym you know. I didn’t even know what a basketball was, really. There I was coaching. It was in the town hall so you couldn’t shoot high because the ceiling was low. So the scores were always 6 to 3 or something, never went over 10.

Vagabond: And the other teams were the same?

George: Ya. You couldn’t take a long shot, you’d have to try to make it in or get a free throw or something.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE ANDERSON ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (2)

When I interviewed George Anderson and he asked me how old I thought he was, I guessed 78. He was 88. He has had a varied and interesting life for a fellow born in small town, Iowa, the son of a minister who could preach only in Swedish. As much as he didn't like his high school experience, he got himself a college education and became a teacher, a school principal, and more. He tells us his story. My thanks to Ione Jensen and the Douglas County Historical Society for this transcription.

Vagabond: Did you go from room to room looking for your classes?

George: Oh no, I found out. I suppose somebody helped me. I was to go to a geometry class and the geometry teacher says, you don’t seem to know algebra very good. She says, I’d like to help you. She was an older teacher. For about six weeks I went after school and she helped me learn algebra. Otherwise I didn’t know the first thing. The algebra teacher in Roseau had been the superintendent and he didn’t know the first thing about algebra.

Vagabond: And you came to this big school not knowing very much?

George: I didn’t like it very much. In fact, I hated high school. I was very small. At the University I only weighed 117 pounds. When this teacher was helping me with this algebra, they put me in an advanced woodworking class. So I got into a wood turning class. I didn’t know what to do.The teacher came and asked me one day, you need a chisel and I didn’t even want to chisel. So then the teacher came back and said, it needs sharpening. Well, I didn’t know where the sharpener was. I didn’t know anything like that at all. Pretty soon he says, you’re about as dumb as you look. That was it. It was impossible for me, with teachers like that. Then my geometry teacher was something else. Another teacher taught me some other subject. Then I got into an English class and the teacher there had her hair pulled like an old Grecian urn, you know. I hated that class.

Vagabond: So you didn’t like woodworking and you didn’t like writing poems.

George: But then I got into a class studying Shakespeare and I just loved that class. An interesting teacher. Then I got into an advanced algebra class. So I liked that fortunately. It wasn’t a very pleasant experience for the three years in high school there.

Vagabond: Do you think it was partly coming from a small town?

George: Well no. I had no friends. My friends were in the other school. I didn’t like high school one bit.

Vagabond: Did you like college when you went to college?

George: Yes. Then I went to the University and we lived about three miles from the University. When I went I had to take sub-freshman English because I didn’t know English very good. But I took German and, of course, being a Swede I got A’s in German. Real easy for me.

Vagabond: Is Swedish and German close enough that you can pick up on it?

George: Yes.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE ANDERSON ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (1)

When I interviewed George Anderson and he asked me how old I thought he was, I guessed 78. He was 88. He has had a varied and interesting life for a fellow born in small town, Iowa, the son of a minister who could preach only in Swedish. As much as he didn't like his high school experience, he got himself a college education and became a teacher, a school principal, and more. He tells us his story. My thanks to Ione Jensen and the Douglas County Historical Society for this transcription.

Vagabond: We are interviewing George Anderson in his home on Lake Darling in Alexandria, Minnesota. Two things I know about George are that he’s been involved in the Darling Dude Ranch, which has become the Arrowwood Lodge; and that he was the principal of the schools here for some time. He has assured me there is more than that. So we will start with where you were born and raised and how you got to Alexandria.

George: I was born in Lanyon, Iowa and my father was a minister of the church in Lanyon. Then we moved from there to Roseau, Minnesota and he became the pastor of a church there.

Vagabond: Was that when pastors did two years and then moved and did two more years?

George: No. My father and mother were both born in Sweden, so we talked Swedish. My father preached only in Swedish. So up in Roseau then, we got there and I was started in the 2nd grade up there. I had just learned English. I had started learning English in school. So we lived in Roseville until I was about a sophomore in high school. I finished the 9th grade in the Roseau School. Then we moved to Minneapolis and my father couldn’t speak English, so he had to quit preaching. I had an older sister who lived in Minneapolis and she was a secretary for a very prominent attorney. She helped us find a house and so forth and we rented out rooms. We didn’t have very much money at that time.

Vagabond: What years were those?

George: I graduated from the University in 1936, so....

Vagabond: 1929, 1930, right in there?

George: Yes.

Vagabond: The start of the depression?

George: Yes. We never did have very much money. I went through the 9th grade in Roseau, then we moved to Minneapolis, in northeast Minneapolis, Edison High School. That was a huge school, thousands of kids. It was three stories high. I was in the 10th grade. So they didn’t have an orientation program, so the first day of school, I looked at my program. I was supposed to go to room 312, a study hall. So I started running around on first floor looking for 312. Then the second floor, until I came to the 3rd floor, 312. Of course, I was naïve, you know. Then the second day I realized that 312 was on 3rd floor.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH FLOYD BOLIN OF ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (19)

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.

Floyd: I changed everything in that plant. It was topsy-turvy, the machinery was, they couldn’t have got it worse if it had fallen out of the sky and started working the way it fell down. I call it the walkin'-est, talkin'-est place in town. They had no arrangement for machinery so that you could work together. They would walk kitty corner to the place and, of course, when you walk by another one you talk a little bit. I squared that all up. All the material that came in was moved the least amount of distance. Everything would come in and be characterized in bins so that you could take it and start it around. And it began to go. The Bellanca Aircraft today, there’s nobody else making one quite like that. They’re made for business flying; a business craft. The Bellanca is the Cadillac of that. Bellanca, whom I finally met and visited with, is a very fine man. I’ll tell you a little thing about his ingenuity. When he designed that aircraft, he designed it in such a way that every exposed surface, you know they had to have struts, braces and axle for the wheels. All of those parts were designed in air foil shape so they carried their own weight in the air. A sharp guy.

Vagabond: Who owns the Bellanca Aircraft Company in Alexandria now?

Floyd: Now it’s a group of financial men. It finally wound up with a group of wealthy Texas people. They finally took it over from us. It took money to operate and we put in a lot of money but we got it back. They took it over and ran it and I understand, the last I heard now, it’s some other big outfit that owns it. They’ve got enough airplanes, 300 close to 400 airplanes out. They don’t want to lose that aircraft.

Vagabond: If they have an airplane to make, they make an airplane, otherwise they make parts for the 300 that are flying?

Floyd: That’s right. When they had time they would work on the next airplane. So maybe make 2 airplanes a year or something like that, outside of furnishing parts.

Vagabond: Where is that located?

Floyd: Well, the last I knew, down in the southwestern United States somewhere. They moved their facilities around.

Vagabond: It’s not in Alexandria?

Floyd: Not in Alexandria anymore. But it was here up until just recently. So the Bellanca Aircraft, I think there’s enough, as long as someone is wealthy enough to keep it going, eventually I think it will probably lose its supply house. But somebody in the future will be making parts for them.

Vagabond: Well, I’m tired. Thank you very much for the interview. This is wonderful stuff.

End of interview....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH FLOYD BOLIN OF ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (18)

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 said there was a plane manufacturing plant here?

Floyd: I was in the dairy business enough so that I was pretty well known by that time. There was about four or five other businessmen in town that were the top guys - Orrie Olson, Paul Anderson, Oscar Englund, the oil man down there, Otto Tessmer. Then there was one other guy. About five guys. We were sort of the nucleus of Main Street. I was one of them together with the rest of the guys. We would meet together, we had an organization in town. When this aircraft company came, two boys who were in the service in World War II, they were wide awake guys. The one was Don Petterson and the other was the son of the auctioneer out here. Anyway, they came back all excited, and came uptown and told this group of five that "Here’s an opportunity available for the City of Alexandria. The franchise, the inventory and the whole works for the Bellanca Aircraft Company is up for sale."

I had learned of Bellanca when I went I went to aircraft school. Bellance was a hero already when I was going to school way back then in the 20s. He was the guy that invented the Bellanca. He was like others starting up from scratch and when the war came along he had a plant in Delaware, Ohio, that’s where he was building his aircraft. During the war, I don’t know what you would call this, many private aircraft manufacturing was stopped. He had all that going business and when the war was over all his men had scattered to the wind and he was by then an old man. He just simply offered the franchise. Those two boys discovered it somehow. They came running into Alex here and looked us guys up and said this franchise of Bellanca Aircraft is available. They said "You guys should take that over and bring it to Alexandria." So we owe it to those two boys that had the foresight to see that and bring the news to Alex.

We had a meeting on it, did some research on it, and we said we’ll take it. Together with another fellow who knew something about aircraft. We got together and formed a little corporation and bought the thing and brought it to Alex.

Vagabond: And it’s still operating today? Where is it?

Floyd: Still operating today. It had all kinds of problems. That’s where I came into the picture. These four or five guys, we were the nucleus of that company because we each put in $2500 a piece to buy this franchise. I think there were five of us. We had these meetings up in the Farmers National Bank, and we depended on them to run the factory. They had a man in town here that came, he was an old guy who had flew an airplane. That was all the experience that he had. But they made him manager of the plant. He didn’t know much about that. They started it and then immediately they started coming running to us guys again for payroll. You know they didn’t make any money in the beginning. First they had to have one ready to sell. That took them way too long. Now the thing grew from guys that I was involved with. We had to start ponying up payroll.

Well, this went on until we had to draw the line. What would we do about that. I was already with the investment company then and I was the only one who could stop and do something else. So I called my supervisor and told him we’ve got a problem with Bellanca Aircraft here. He asked me if I would take it over and I told him I would do it if I could take a leave of absence but hang on to my territory. I asked for a leave of absence. They want me to go in there and take over the plant. He said, "More power to you." The investment company already had a Bellanca Aircraft and they wanted protection of that. He said, "Sure, I know you can handle it. You go ahead and get that thing going." They liked that aircraft. So I went in and took over.

It was atrocious. It was the awfullest thing that you ever saw as far as layout. Organization was nil. Something just had to be done. So I had a meeting with the boys and told them what I found. I said "We need to get somebody to run it or something." So we started looking around and my friend Paul Anderson, who knew me very well, said "I guess Floyd’s going to have to do it." I called the company I worked for that night. We were at the that table up there, 9 o’clock in the evening. I called the president of the company. I said, "We ran into a snag here with this aircraft company. I’m with the group of fellows who are responsible for the aircraft company. Can I get a leave of absence, because they want me to take over?"

That was in 1964, and I was in there for six months. What an improvement. I stepped on toes of big shots from the cities but I just cleaned house.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH FLOYD BOLIN OF ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (17)

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: Now when did Dutch Girl Dairy come to an end, and why?

Floyd: Well, it was because the big companies got bigger and bigger. They would come into a town, especially Land O Lakes. They went into the processing of milk, too. They would come with a big semi and set up a dealer in town to handle their milk. The first thing they would do, they’d go to a town where they could see they could cut the price and then put someone out of business. They just did that in all the towns. They killed all the dairies in town except me. I was about the only one between me and some guys in the southern part of the state. One that lasted a little while longer was up north. I was the last one to go out. I sold my business, between the milk plant and all I came out smelling like a rose. Because I had the top outfit.

Vagabond: Who did you sell to?

Floyd: A fellow by the name of Larson. He was just a step ahead of Land O Lakes. Larson from Stillwater. He saw what they were doing and he was an old dairy man and he got mad. He saw what they were doing. They would just go into a town and kill the small dairies. He would find out where they were dealing and would go to the guy there and tell him that I’ll give you so and so for your place. That would prevent Land O Lakes from being able to cut the price. He sort of stepped in as a good guy. He did the same thing here with me. He came in here and said, I’ll pay you so and so. I told him, how about my men? I don’t want my men to lose the work. They were all friends of mine. He said, we can handle that. That’s what they were doing, they were consolidating. There was another dairy here in town, that I helped start. I had too much business to begin with. I gave him parts of my route even and got him going. A fellow by the name of Erickson. So this guy Larson, he bought both of them and as a go-between us and Land O Lakes Creamery, then they bought from him, and between them they worked out a deal where all of us could get paid a reasonable price, so that we wound up without losing our shirts. He was known as a competitor of Land O Lakes.

Vagabond: So he was getting big enough to deal with Land O Lakes?

Floyd: He stopped this business of Land O Lakes; they were a bunch of rascals. He fixed it so we got a reasonable price for our life’s work. It was inevitable that was the way it was going to go.

Vagabond: What year was that? 1958?

Floyd: Ya, 1958 is when I got out. I was okay. I sold and I had the building left. Larson, if it hadn’t been for him I would have lost my shirt to Land O Lakes. They had no mercy at all.

Vagabond: You’ve come to the end of the dairy business. What did you do after that? Did you retire then in 1958?

Floyd: No. I went to work for an investment company. The State Bond and Mortgage Company. I went on a crusade. Now that’s another segment of my life that I’m very proud of. It was a miserable thing because it involved a clash of philosophy to a certain extent. Called State Bond and Mortgage Company. A very, very solid, honest group of people that helped people save money. The insurance companies were gung-ho sell you insurance and they always talked about the savings that you had in there. Actually they sold savings in their sales as much as they did insurance. In fact, they put a lot of stress on that. But the irony of it is, if you try to save your money by the way of insurance, you risk losing it for your beneficiary. They have billions of dollars sewed up in the United States, in insurance policies sold as savings and insurance. Their way of doing it was that they would charge you about $27 to $30 a thousand for insurance coverage. In the beginning you had, the first day, you had that coverage for that money. But what happened was they took the bulk of that money and put it into cash value in the insurance.

There are ways of having insurance without risking your capital. The insurance company called on me and the man that taught me how to do it, they called on him and did the same thing to him. They came to me when I was in the dairy business here, doing well, and sold me insurance for $35,000. I owed over $75,000. That’s all I could afford. It cost over $700 a year. Well, I didn’t know the difference, you know. So here comes this guy from New Ulm and started talking to me. At first I almost threw him out. I didn’t want any more salesmen. He said I’ve got a story to tell you. He said your insurance is not the type of thing you think it is. He said our company is in the savings investment business. We will sell you together with a self-completion insurance policy along side of it but we will not tie up your principal in the savings plan. Now ordinary insurance like "20 pay life" is one of the most popular. A 20 year endowment plan. It’s been sold to millions in this country. You pay at a lower age when you start out, 20 years old or older. You could get it for $20 a thousand, between $20 and $30. It would cost you for $10,000 about $270 a year, depending on your age. Now then they said you had $10,000 of insurance. The first day you did, but then you had a higher price on that first thousand. As you went along, the settlement outside of what they call a dividend, which was about maybe 2-3% on the cash value that was in there, they kept as a cash value and that built up inside the insurance policy. But when you died that was not paid out separate from the face amount. Say you bought a 20 pay life insurance policy, an endowment policy, 20 year endowment. It would cost you $175 a year. It would cost over $100 a year anyway for a 20 year endowment. So you paid in, but in case of death, your family would get $10,000. They get it the first day, they get it the last day. The insurance costs only about

$3 a thousand for them to furnish, but the endowment costs more than that. A 20 pay life policy costs $27 a year. An endowment policy costs a lot more than that. But it didn’t make any difference on the settlement. If it was a $10,000 policy, that’s what they got until they had what they called a dividend in there, this cash value built up over and above the insurance. That would build up and that would become cash value. So if you got some of that in there, you would get the face of the policy plus what that cash value was. You wouldn’t get it in case you died, they kept all except the dividend on that. So when you got up to the end of a 20 year endowment, it was all your money in there. There was no insurance at all at the last. So if you died, the only insurance you had was the difference between the cash value and the face amount of the policy. Which was already your money. So at the very end you wound up paying the same premium for the last years of that policy and you probably didn’t have more than $100 of it as insurance. It’s the biggest graft that every hit the world.

Vagabond: So you started working for State Bond and Savings Company.

Floyd: With the idea of exposing this to the public. Telling the story of life insurance. A very, very difficult thing to do because people had respect for the insurance companies. They had been at it for years and years and praised themselves to the point where you believe you must never touch an insurance policy. It’s sacred. I went in there and I told them, "You’ve got to get rid of this thing. This is robbing your wife and kids." They would get mad at me because they thought I was just another rabble rousing-salesman. So I taught this for 30 years, I gave them my life, teaching the people of the territory I had how not to buy life insurance. Also to see to it that you could buy life insurance for a $1 a year for a $1000 when you were a youngster, instead of paying $3300. The graft was astronomical. I became a thorn in the side of the insurance companies. They tried everything in the world to stop me. They were going to have me arrested, and do this and that to me. But I didn’t pay attention to them at all. I went right ahead and told people, "You are robbing the wife and children." That’s what they were doing. To this day the insurance companies still doing it if they can get by with it. It’s unbelievable.

Vagabond: So this investment work is what you retired from?

Floyd: For 30 years I did that, and then I retired.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH FLOYD BOLIN OF ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (16)

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: Let's go back to 1939. You’re starting the plant. It’s your first building. When did you start hiring employees and putting milk through?

Floyd: In the first place, I started out with a young man by the name of Carl Johnson, that I had hired and got acquainted with when I was at the boys camp. See I did the hiring and firing there, too, as manager of the whole thing. The working operations was my job. The boss didn’t want anything to do with that part. He had all these boys to take care of. That was his job. I, of course, had lived here all my life, and knew who all those guys were. Carl Johnson he worked for me for 22 years, in different projects of mine. Then when I didn’t operate the dairy any more, I financed him after that to run his own business. I bought a franchise for A&W Rootbeer. I financed him on that. He and I were buddies like that until he died. That was a wonderful relationship. When he first started, I took him right out from his family's kitchen table and brought him over to our place to live. He boarded and roomed at our house, no wages to begin with at all, just like my son.

Vagabond: What stage was this with the milk? In 1939, and he’s working with you, living with you, no wages, like your son.

Floyd: He lived there as family. When we started in that old place, I hired him and a couple of other boys who grew up east of town here, as the business grew and I needed help.

Vagabond: So you were pasteurizing milk. When did you start doing cottage cheese, ice cream?

Floyd: Well, I always bought that. A company called Old Home supplied us with cottage cheese and they were the best in the state. I bought that in great big containers. I think it was 125 pounds or something like that. They would ship that up here. It came by Raymond Brothers Freight. They would ship me - I had a standing order, and I could call if I run out.

Vagabond: Then you packaged that in smaller containers?

Floyd: Eventually I bought a filling machine for handling cottage cheese, but first we did it by hand.

Vagabond: So you were doing milk and cottage cheese, which you bought in bulk and put into containers.

Floyd: It was much more economical to buy it wholesale in large containers. We put it into a machine that would measure out and fill these containers. That worked just fine.

Vagabond: Did you also buy ice cream or did you make ice cream?

Floyd: I finally made ice cream. I bought out an outfit that made ice cream.

Vagabond: Was that in the old building or the new building?

Floyd: That was after we got into the new building.

Vagabond: So that would be after 1946.

Floyd: We had an outfit with a large holding bin that was refrigerated and connected to an upright affair where you made the ice cream. We made the ice cream. I bought the mix from Old Home. They did that for companies. It was quite common throughout the country. These ice cream places made ice cream and froze it for retail.

Vagabond: So - pasteurized milk, cottage cheese, ice cream. Did you do any butter?

Floyd: We bought the butter from Parkers Prairie Creamery.

Vagabond: And sold Parkers PrairieCreamery butter here?

Floyd: They sold it to us and we had a markup of a few cents a pound. I want to tell you about this ice cream business. That was quite a thing. We had our own name to use, Dutch Girl Dairy. We used a brand name for everything. The Parkers Prairie Creamery printed them up in our name. Dutch Girl Dairy Butter. The ice cream cartons, everything said "Dutch Girl Dairy." So we were known as the Dutch Girl Dairy and I have a sign yet. In those days neon signs were quite the thing. I had built in the shape of a milk bottle and mounted it up hanging on the building, right angle to the building, so the people driving up could see that great big milk bottle. It was an advertiser. I moved it from the old building over to this one that you see standing here. That was a trademark in this town, because it was so unique and so indicative of what the business was.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH FLOYD BOLIN OF ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (15)

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: Who was the banker who had faith in you when you were building up your dairy?

Floyd: Tony Snyderhan. He had only a limited amount he could loan me - $25,000 was their maximum to my class of credit. He could only give me $25,000 legally. I needed much more than that. I needed over $50,000. So he arranged for me and protected me through a St. Paul bank and I got the other $25,000. Then I got $600 from my dad. I scratched up enough so that I could start and get this building built. That was the beginning of the Dutch Girl Dairy really seriously. I built this building then. That I drew the plans for, exactly the way I wanted. I did it because prior to that and probably years later to those in the old method. Dairy methods were noted for being labor-intensive. They were tough to work with; there was a lot of lifting and lugging and everything. I could see that wouldn’t be good so I designed this plant to go on wheels. It was the first one in the United States, that I know of. I had a dolly built that would hold four stacks of milk bottles and roll on hard rubber wheels. Then I raised all the machinery so that my whole operation would accommodate the dollies.

I designed and had built a transport tank to haul the milk in. I had that built on the rear end of a truck, and put a tank on it to transport milk in. I bought milk from the Parkers Prairie Creamery and hauled it down here. Now I had this tank going and I got this plant going. But eventually I had to have a bigger tank. Business expanded rapidly when I got into this building. So then I had to design another tank I had to work with the people to get what I wanted. They were wonderful, the people that helped me. They were able to work out what I needed into a two-compartment tank. They put it on a U.S. Government search light trailer, so that it could be low. It had 12x24 tires on it, four of them, tandem, single tandems on the side. It was light enough I could have the 2200 gallon two-compartment tank to transport my bulk from Parkers Prairie. That was back when I had a use for wholesale distribution and also picking up, distributing to the towns between here and Parkers Prairie. They would pick up the milk and fill my tanker. Parkers Prairie Creamery had access to what you would call grade A milk.

So now I’m equipped with a brand new building, with all the facilities, glazed tile walls, the whole west wall was glass block and everything sanitary. I passed every requirement. The working operation was, as I say, on wheels. No carrying. When they came out of the truck, the cases would just drop the cases right on the dollies, five high on each. We used tickets in those days. You had to get the tickets off the bottom.

I bought a second-hand washer down in Minneapolis, from a dairy that was expanding. We put the loaded carts in there and a man stood at the washer, he would just pull those loaded carts over, set them six at a time on a tray, and they’d go through the washer, come out and go on a conveyor through the wall to where the fellow who was the filler stood. The bottles were filled automatically and came off the line and he would take that cart and the cases and slide them through an opening in the wall. There was a minimum of exchange from outside air to inside air. It passed all the requirements. Then the milk went right around into the cooler. The northwest corner of the milk plant was the cooler, and the whole back end was the work place. As these case loads were put into the cooler, they went in from the south and they went out the same kind of door on the north and got loaded into the trucks. On wheels all the time. No lifting or dragging around. All they did was set the bottles in there. It worked perfect. My trucks were back in the back-end there, at the end of the line for loading.

I built two icemakers. One would provide the cold water for cooling, that was a monster. It was really built. The second was a plate cooler built to my specifications, to hold ice for the trucks into forms. I had them built, I drew out the plans to my specifications. Then I built cooler cabinets into the milk trucks. You buy these milk trucks, but they were just open on the side. I had the side racks in there made into coolers. It was a double-cooler. My foreman and I did these things, built these things. I had a wonderful foreman. I insulated boxes on both sides of these milk trucks. I had a wonderful refrigerator man in town who helped me design all that stuff, how to build ice into separate pans. Now these separate pans were built the same size and shape that would fit the same rack as the filled bottle cage. So at the top I had this shallow space about that big and then I had the things that make tin cans. I had the water built in with a hose connection there; when the truck went through they came in and they would refill these with water, if you needed it. You had to put new water in everyday. If there was any ice left, of course that would stay in the pan. So now when the truck was loaded up with milk, the driver would come out to where we had a winch up that would lift the lid up; he would load the top shelf that we built racks in. In that top narrow space were the two pans, about that long each one, the same width as a milk case, two and a half feet long, about four and a half to five inches deep. They were full of water and they froze up overnight in this freezer box out there. So when the truck was loaded with milk he just pulled forward and put in two of those pans on each side of the truck, these boxes that we built by hand. So now I had refrigerated delivery, first one in the whole state. I did all that stuff myself. Never had any trouble with sour milk. We delivered it to the house ice cold.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH FLOYD BOLIN OF ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (14)

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: So you’re trying to start, you were going to use the electronic system to pasteurize your milk, you can’t use it. How were you going to pasteurize your milk?

Floyd: I did more research into companies that were doing pasteurizing. I heard of a guy by the name of Barrett that had invented a pasteurizing machine that will pasteurize milk and leave it with good flavor. So I went to that outfit, a brand new outfit and they were going to sell this Barrett pasteurizer. It worked. It was a three-layer thing. It was an outer tank, a shell, then an inner tank which was of ordinary steel, and then it had stainless steel liner. The last two inner layers were approximately 3/8 of an inch apart, set one inside the other. The stainless steel tank was inside there. Then at the bottom they had a reservoir of a body of water, which they would heat with steam. It takes a boiler and all that. You force steam into this body of water and then there’s a pump connected there. That would pump that water, not boiling, not steaming, but it would start at the bottom and force it up through ½ inch of water going up the sides of that inner tank. Down here where the bulk of the milk was standing, that’s where the hottest milk was. It didn’t put any of that cooked flavor into the milk. This smart guy figured out a way that you could heat milk very rapidly in a thin layer.

Vagabond: You found a pasteurizer that did not impart bad flavor to the milk, which was one of the requirements you had for the dairy that you were starting. At what point did you have a dairy company? When did you have employees? When were you putting pipes together at a building to make a dairy?

Floyd: I got all this information put together. The company that I was going to deal with was called the Dairy Supply Company of Minneapolis. They were the guys that had the agency for this Barrett pasteurizer. I could see now that I was on track for what I was looking for. I still had a connection with Herman at the time.

Vagabond: And you said he would work for you.

Floyd: And it turned out that he wasn’t able to do that. Now I had to venture out alone. So I had to go for financing elsewhere other than through his aunt. I heard of a guy that loaned out money. I went to him and told him what my plan was, like what I was kind of telling you here. This is an opportunity now. The town needs it, desperately it needs it. I said, "I see an opportunity here but I have no money. I can get a little bit from my dad, he said he could part with about $600. So I have a start with $600."

"Well," he said, "you need more than that. You have to have a building." I had already found a building, just an old ramshackle building, but it was in a proper location, so that we could have a retail establishment on Hawthorne Street here in downtown. There are strict regulations to having a processing plant, state requirements. So I fixed up the whole front end of it to qualify. I got all the specs that were needed so that I could qualify to have this pasteurizing plant on Hawthorne street and operate out of that. In the back-end we put up our own ice from the lakes around here for refrigeration. What we did with that for refrigeration; we sawed ice into blocks, hauled it into town and covered it with sawdust. We hauled from Wadena. A good friend of mine in the refrigeration business told me how to build a sweetwater system. We built a system above my walk-in cooler to build ice. In the first place we took it from the lake but we would push those big chunks up and carry them up a stepladder and dump them into a 55 gallon drum and we used a sprinkler head off a can that you water your vegetables with to sprinkle over this broken ice. Then that flowed over what was called a surface cooler. So when we were cooling the milk that had been pasteurized, that had to come down from being held at 130 degrees for 30 minutes.

Our family business grew and grew to the point where I had to put up a building. So I purchased this property in 1944 with the intent of eventually building a plant there. And I did. I bought this big warehouse on the corner which had places for apartments in it. Immediately I remodeled it into an apartment house. So I got rental units in it. I had this space here big enough for a larger plant and I could drive around it for loading and unloading. I had a local retail outlet at the front of it. So I got that building and finished it. I almost went broke though. It took $64,000 to finish that building at that time and I was up to my ears and almost lost it. They were going to send the guys in and take over. But my good banker friend, he saw the opportunity that I was fighting for and realized that this was going to be a success. He had faith in me.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH FLOYD BOLIN OF ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (13)

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: So you started work at Mohawk Aircraft and two hours later the president of the company came in and said he was closing the company?

Floyd: I was out of a job, my aircraft job. That ended my aircraft career right there.

Vagabond: You came back to the farm in Alexandria?

Floyd: I had to start over again. But I did get this ride to Chicago. I came back from that and I came back to the farm. In those days for a young farm kid to have gotten that trip, it’s almost like an astronaut now going to the moon and back. People said, my gosh, did you fly to Chicago and back in an airplane. It was two different kinds. I went down in an airplane called a Mohawk something and that was a seven-place aircraft. That’s when that guy pulled that strut off the airplane. It was a pretty good size airplane, seven-place, you know. I spent some days in Chicago and when I come back I come back in a Tri-motor Ford which also was a special thrill. That was a brand new thing in those days. I flew back in a snow storm. Landed in the Twin Cities and no place to go but the farm again.

Then I went to work for my milk man. We lived east of town here and I was getting milk from a farmer delivering his own milk. That’s how he disposed of his milk.

Vagabond: So he had a wagon route that he delivered milk for?

Floyd: To the bigger homes. Oh ya. This begins a new phase in my life. He said, I would like to have you work for me with the idea of going into a pasteurizing plant. Because he knows from being in the milk business, what was in the air, there was a real need for a pasteurizing plant in Alex, in addition to North American Creamery, which already was pasteurizing milk. They were doing it in the old fashioned method that gave pasteurized milk a cooked flavor. People didn’t like it. So they bought all the raw milk that was coming into town. So I grabbed on the idea. I said I’ll take it. He said "I’ll give you 10% of all my business if you’ll come and work for me. We’ll go into this pasteurizing business." This went on and on. It had to be done quick or we wouldn’t have that advantage, having that starting spot. So I kept after him and said "We’ve got to get going or we’ll lose it, Herman." That was the fellow's name, Herman Swenson. I was getting anxious, I knew it was tense.

He had an aunt who worked for 1st National Bank here in town and I went to her, unbeknownst to Herman, to inquire why I couldn’t get Herman to stir on this thing. I told her what the plan was and why I went to work with Herman and everything, and that I couldn’t get Herman to move on it. "Well," she said, "Herman can’t do anything with this business. He is so deep in debt, there’s no way he could take on a venture like you’re talking about."

Vagabond: Ahhhhh, the truth comes out.

Floyd: I said, "Oh, my God." Well, of course, I could go back to my carpenter work, but I saw an opportunity. The next day I went to work for Herman as usual and I brought up the subject. I said, "I know now why you’re having a problem. I talked to your aunt. She said that you are not financially able to swing something like this."

I said "Herman, what would you think if I went ahead with this thing? If I can swing it and get it going, you come and work for me and I’ll buy your production off the farm or you work for me, one of the two." He agreed to that. So then I proceeded. In the meantime I had done some research on this and it does take a lot of research where to begin, how much you can do in time. Finally when I saw what I was going to do I went down to the Cities and I researched what was going on. At that time, nobody had a process for pasteurizing milk other than the old simple way of heating water at the top of a tank with a steam line coming in, heat the milk to a pasteurizing temperature, 133 degrees, that’s pasteurizing, and hold it for 30 minutes. That’s the way they were pasteurizing milk in those days. I knew that wouldn’t do any good to start up another one of them.

Vagabond: Because of the cooked taste of the milk?

Floyd: On account of taste. That’s why there was so much raw milk being sold. So then I had to go into a whole new phase of research to find out if there was anybody who had a better way to pasteurize milk so that it would taste like milk. Believe it or not, I went down to the dairy supplier people in Minneapolis; there was two in Minneapolis and St. Paul that supplied to the dairy industry. Through them I found out there was somebody who had discovered that they could heat milk by electric, similar to what we call microwave now. They called it something else then. This company was right in the middle of their research, and they were gung-ho to go into the pasteurization business with this electronic heat, which was based on the same as what we have now in microwave. That’s it. I’m going to have the first of that. I had to bide my time. I worked with those guys, kept track. They had problems. hey weren’t able to heat milk in a large volume, that’s not the same as putting a batch into a microwave. They thought by this method of electronic heat they could develop a passageway large enough to qualify for the industrial production of pasteurized milk. They did experimental work on it but it was only partially successful. They could not reach all of the molecules in the body of milk that was going through this system. So it didn’t quality as a pasteurization system. So I just gave up on it right away.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH FLOYD BOLIN OF ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (12)

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.

Floyd: The houses in the Noonan Addition were just being built. The landscaper was the one preparing the ground and getting the surveyors. They did make mistakes. They didn’t start high enough, so when I got through with my work, I didn’t have enough elevation for the last house to drain properly. I had to develop a saucer-shaped yard for that last house to drain out at one corner, to get under the curb instead of over. To get the water off of that lot. That was a mistake on the part of the original architectural setting of the high point level, to come out with enough drop for each house to hit that 7th Avenue. That became a problem for me when I was doing the finals, when the houses were actually being set there. There was no drop left.

Vagabond: You were basically in a hole.

Floyd: They had these levels for each house set and when they come down to the end there wasn’t enough drainage left for that last house. So I had to make a special to drain on the inside of what would be their property and go underneath and come out under the curb. It was a little technical problem, bothersome. It doesn’t drain in the winter-time when it freezes. It’s always been kind of a sore spot. So I worked on that all the way through the whole project.

Vagabond: So, you worked at Camp Carlos and then worked for Phil J. Noonan developing houses. So we’re in 1936-1937, then in 1939 you start the dairy?

Floyd: Okay. Things were through at the boys camp. When I was through with Phil Noonan, he didn’t have anything more for me to do. Anyway when he didn’t have anything more for me to do, I told Phil "I think I’m going to head for the Twin Cities and see what I can find there for work." I said "Would you be kind enough to write me some kind of a letter of recommendation." "Sure," he said. I’ve got that letter of recommendation here. I’ll have to find for you. It’s unbelievable what that man wrote for me. I was almost embarrassed, you know, with what he said in that letter, to live up to that.

Vagabond: Pretty high praise?

Floyd: I never used it though. I wish I could put my hands on it right now. It was embarrassing what he said. But I never did use it.

Vagabond: What did you do then between the end of your work with Noonan Addition and starting the dairy?

Floyd: Then I went to the Cities and got this job with Swedish Hospital and then to the Calhoun Beach Club. I took a course in aviation. I was going to head for aviation, you see. But I worked on these other projects in the day time when I went to school, night school. When I was through with the course at Dunwoody and I got the highest marks there and they gave me this free ride to Chicago and back. Then I went back to construction. I was working at the Calhoun Beach Club at the time, and all of a sudden there was a big ringer called up and somebody came and contacted me on the job and wanted me to come and take this call. Well, it was the Mohawk Aircraft Company calling for me to come to work for them. So that was my first job coming up with aircraft.

Vagabond: Where was Mohawk?

Floyd: They were a fledgling company and they had a beautiful aircraft design. Some guy that had limited finances but he had this beautiful idea of an executive type aircraft, not necessarily for the Jennies and stuff like that, that was for the ordinary pilot. But he had designed an executive type aircraft called the Mohawk Pinto. It turned out that our Bellanca here in town was designed somewhat after the Mohawk Pinto. That company started building that aircraft. Like many companies in those days the plane industry was tough.

They had a tragedy happen. That Mohawk Pinto was a beautiful aircraft, right today if you want to see how it looked, go and look at a Bellanca that is still being built out of Alexandria, that I was involved in later on. When they build a new aircraft and it’s put on the market, they have to go through tests. Speed Holmen, I don’t know if you know that name or not, his family was famous in those days. He was the test pilot for the Northwest United States here for aircraft being built. He was the guy that test flew them. It was quite a thing because you’d have to bail out if it don’t work. You see a test pilot in those days, testing these aircraft, one of the tests was to deliberately put it in a spin, are you familiar with that? Okay, an experienced pilot could get it out of a spin. If you get into a spin, it takes a professional, you usually go down and meet your Waterloo if you can’t get it out of that spin, you’re going down.

So this aircraft, the Pinto, as pretty as it was, it had some deficiency in its aerodynamics so when Speed put this into a deliberate spin, it wouldn’t come out. He always had altitude enough so you could bail out if you had to. He had to. So he bailed out, crashed the airplane. I had just started working, in fact, it was my very first day of getting my station to work at Mohawk Aircraft Company. When they notified me about the job at the aircraft company, I quit the construction company at Calhoun Beach Club and went to work for them. This was on a Tuesday morning and the foreman there got me positioned where I would be working and I got started in my position and I worked probably an hour or so and pretty soon the bells, buzzer went off. It was two or three different sounds that alerted everybody.

Out comes this guy dressed in a military attire; he was the guy that had founded the Mohawk Aircraft Company. He announced to us that he had sad news for us. He said when Holmen tested our aircraft yesterday, it failed coming out of a spin and he had to ditch it. So our Pinto is gone, our test plane. We’ll have to shut down for now. e are preparing to call you back as soon as we get everything squared around. Well, it never happened because they didn’t have the finances to re-establish themselves.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH FLOYD BOLIN OF ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (11)

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....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH FLOYD BOLIN OF ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (10)

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.

Floyd: We built that tennis court to standard. It was good enough for professional use. Level and all that. I did that. They were happy with that and then the next project was sloping, cutting away. I borrowed the equipment from this farmer. I hauled rock from the lake and I had a motorcycle with a sidecar and I hauled all those rocks. I took the body off and put a box on there and drove up and down the lakeshore of Lake Carlos. There’s a lot of beautiful rock in Carlos. I would gather all the stones to build that fireplace. I had a friend who was a stonemason who worked in our community. He built that fireplace.

I guess I jumped the gun a little bit here. The boss wanted a cabin for himself and his wife to be built. He wanted it with the bedroom system and a main room for an office. I said would you like to have a fireplace in it? He said I sure would. I have this friend who is a stone mason and you like things that are nice and if you want to talk to Mr. Noonan and see if he would consider that. It was high class stuff. They agreed immediately. He built this beautiful fireplace for them, I don’t know if it’s still there. But anyway, it was two-room cabin that I built. The south end was a bedroom. The north end was all for meetings and the fireplace faced that way. But we had a vent so we could put in a heating stove and we built it so that I can use it for my winter quarters. So then we pup in a stove. I found a stove for him, one of the finest heating stoves that was ever built. It was a Finn structure, very efficient heat. And of course we had a lot of wood around there to feed that. Now we had a cabin and a place for all this work to be done.

One thing after another came along. Heinie wanted a running track. He wanted that down along a peat swamp beside the lake. I said "I don’t know. It depends on the depth of what’s down there. If there’s too much peat, it might be a problem." So I went down there investigated to see how far it was to firm ground. It worked, but it was a lot of work. And I asked him, "Are you permitted to have the help of your boys?" He said "It’s a toss up whether we can use them." If a contractor were to do all that work, the kids wouldn’t be allowed near it and they wouldn’t learn anything from it. But he had his system, "We’re here to train boys." The only thing we had for training was what was already in the hopper - a rifle range, an archery range, hiking, and an exercise program for the kids. Hiking and stuff like that. But they didn’t have work projects of any kind.

"Well," I said, "if you’re permitted to let the boys get in on this, they could get some hands-on work. Because of all the things you want done here involves labor. If you'd have to have it done by contract, that would be very expensive and the kids would have to be held at bay. They would not be allowed to get in the way."

We made it a completely self-contained plan. I was able to handle the situation. I became the contractor, so to speak. Then I would have the boys work with me. So now this boys camp, the Camp Carlos Boys Camp became one of the best tech school camps in the whole northwest, and maybe in the United States. We don’t know anybody who had that kind of a set up, where they all worked all phases of expansion of the camp.

So Heinie was gung-ho for that. The boys he was training came out of there. Because I was managing these things and doing all these expansions in the camp, there were no contractors around. These boys were hands-on with all of those projects.

I built another cabin, I built that office cabin for Heinie, then the tennis court and the running track, all with the help of the boys. We all worked together but I was the boss. I was sort of the contractor.

So this went on and the boys just loved it, and the counselors just loved it. This man Peterson that I was talking about, as we progressed through the years there, he was awed and couldn’t figure out how a young squirt like me could be doing this. He was a very humble man and had worked places; and here I was much younger than he, and I did all these things. I’ll go back to what I had talked about before, the bringing up - my dad had instilled a confidence in me already. To me it came natural, I just did what they asked me to do.

Vagabond: Now you were involved in airplanes, as well. You studied aviation? You were interested in airplanes?

Floyd: When I went to the cities to work, my plan was to take a job wherever I could get it, so that I could take a course in aviation.

Vagabond: So you were working construction and you wanted to go to school in aviation?

Floyd: A night school. The school was put on by an outfit called Universal Airlines. They needed people in the aircraft business. It was in the early progression of aircraft. Universal Airlines was an airline but they couldn’t get the people they wanted. It was hard to build their business as fast as the demand was, so they instigated the Universal Airline deal with the Dunwoody Institute. Together with Dunwoody Institute’s experience in teaching and gathering the personnel required, they developed an aircraft course at Dunwoody and I entered that.

Vagabond: A night school?

Floyd: A night school. At that time I was just interested in airplanes. I had been making models at home and things like that. I had made up my mind I was going to go into aircraft, it was going to be my career. So when I heard of this I just gung-ho went down there and applied and went to school there. Lo and behold, when graduation time came I had the highest mark in the school. I won a trip to Chicago by aircraft. Man alive, that was like being an astronaut in those days so as far as my home people were concerned. I won this prize to Chicago, never been in Chicago before. Not only that, we flew through inclement weather which was exciting. When I went to aircraft school that was really serious stuff. The aircraft industry is much more intensely dependent on reliable workmanship, reliable machinery and stuff, and there was going to be no cheap labor or shoddy workmanship. Everything had to be aircraft quality. That was instilled in us very seriously when we went to school. You don’t want to have anything that might develop trouble. I got this free ride to Chicago; when we flew in this aircraft, this aircraft was stored in this big hangar and they had an old tractor that had an old jump clutch and all of a sudden they go. This guy was towing the aircraft out that we were going to fly back from Chicago in. And he had it hitched to the strut, the tail strut, he let in the clutch and it yanked it and broke it off. He broke the strut off. That’s the one we were going to fly home in. I just got after him, that’s bad business. I didn’t know if I wanted to fly back in that airplane now. They got some real craftsmen over there and they got it fixed up. I got an example of what we had been taught. You don’t hitch up with an old tractor on the strut of an airplane and tow it. So I read him the riot act right off the bat. It went over okay.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH FLOYD BOLIN OF ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (9)

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: So you've gotten a shop where you can work on boats for Heinie Brock. You've just hired the son of the fellow who owned the carriage shed where you're going to be working. You've got 12-14 row boats to recondition. You've made yourself a steam mechanism, to steam the wood for bending the ribs for the repairs.

Floyd: We got that all set up and went to work on it and Mr. Brock would bring the boats over in succession and we would repair them. As we got two boats ready, we would paint them and finish them so they could be used. And after proper enough drying time, we would notify him that we had two boats ready. Then he would come and pick the boats up. That was at the other end of the lake. The lake was several miles long. He would tow them behind his speed boat. It was kind of fun. An incident there when he took off with the first two boats, he was a speeder himself and he’d throw the anchor, the first anchor in the boat he was pulling. He took off like he likes to go and the first thing he did was flip the boats. You have to hitch low on the bow and you gotta have a little weight in there to keep it from throwing itself. You can’t go at any speed. So he learned that real quick.

Vagabond: You mean he dumped the boat he was driving?

Floyd: No, the boats he was pulling. You can’t tow a boat fast, an empty boat. If you do any towing, you have to load it properly, about 2/3 to the back of the boat to get stability. He learned that real quick. He being the rusher that he was, he flipped the one right off the bat. We got that settled. This went on through the summer, fixing these boats.

Vagabond: What did he pay you?

Floyd: That comes in the next episode here. When I was done and all the boats were delivered, then I went over to the camp to settle with him. I had to work out a price schedule of what I had done. I’m sure I gave him a good price. I didn’t know about high pricing in those days. So I got it settled and he asked "Now what are you going to do?" "Well, I’m a carpenter," I said, "I do custom work wherever I can get the work." He said, "How would you like to come over and work for us?" I said "What kind of work do you have for me to do?" He said "We need a grounds man here, somebody to run everything but the boys. I’m a professional coach/trainer." He had been at the University of Minnesota. He said "I want to be free to do my job, if I can get someone who will run the camp for me. From what I hear you might be able to handle that." He said "Are you interested?" I said "Ya, I would be interested."

I don’t remember if we settled on a wage or anything, I can’t remember that. But I went to work for the boys camp then. It turned out I happened to be the guy that he hired because of the fact that I could take over and do all the things that camp was in need of. It needed a lot of things. It needed new cabins, expansion work. It needed a tennis court. It needed a running track. It needed a cyclone fence. It needed all of these otherwise contractual jobs done. I was able to say yes to these things, but it was a learning process for me, too. But I had enough background, enough basic training to tackle the new things that came and work it out for myself.

One of the first things required of me was an extra cabin. They were in dire need of that. He had borrowed all the money with a big loan to get the camp and now when it came to improvements like another cabin, that was a new batch of money. So he had to go to his money supplier, L.J. Noonan, to tell him what his problem was: "I need a new cabin and do you suppose we could get financing for that?" It so happened that I had worked for Noonan before and he knew some of my ability. Heinie was going to contract the work on the cabin. Noonan said "Ask Floyd and see if he’ll do it for you." And so Heinie asked me, "Can you build me a cabin?" I had the other cabins for a pattern, you know. Cabins with so many bunks in them. It was just a matter of building this one like that one. That’s the first project I did for him, other than running the camp. It came out fine and I built him another cabin.

I went on. They needed a tennis court pretty bad. It was a boys camp and it was also all these cohorts of his from the University of Minnesota. They were the counselors for the boys. They wanted something more advanced so they could make use of it too. So they wanted this tennis court. The location for it happened to be in a clay, rock filled side hill. And he asked me, "Can you build me a tennis court?" "Well," I said, "I don’t want to say yes, but get me the specs. You provide the specs and then I’ll let you know." He did that. I took him up on it. I happened to have an acquaintance with the fellow across the road, a farmer up there who was also in road maintenance for the township. He had equipment similar to what I would need to excavate this hill. I made a deal with him to use his equipment, which involved a breakup bottom plow and a slusher and a patrol blade. It was a horse drawn patrol but I made a temporary short tongue system on it so that I could pull it with a Chevy truck that he had. The man I had hired to help me was probably the best hired man anybody could have. He was a good working man, just a down-to-earth guy who wanted to do everything right for you. He was a fine Christian man. His name was Ernest Peterson. He was just ideal as a working man’s mate. He and I were just like that.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH FLOYD BOLIN OF ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA, MAY, 2003 - (8)

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: So you think you finished the beach club job, went back to the farm and started at the boat works?

Floyd: That was the sequence. That came because I had a boat model of my own and I was interested in boating and stuff. So I guess I went there and applied and I got a job there.

Vagabond: What did you do then for them? Building boats?

Floyd: I was in the ribbing section of the boat building business.

Vagabond: So you were bending wood?

Floyd: Ya We were two men working; the boat was in stages. It started with first the basic frame. They were called jigs for the rib section. There was the stern, the keel was put on that. All were clamped solidly. The contour ribs were put in. I think there was five ribs, what they call contour ribs. Then that was just enough to hold the frame together. Then that was transferred over to what they call the ribbing form. Then that was clamped to that. That was my station, to put those ribs in between the master ribs they had put on up in that main jig. So, it was a partner job.

Vagabond: Two people.

Floyd: We had a separate boiler there and we would steam a rib and then we would grab it and quickly pull it out and press it down into the bottom center of the boat and nailed it in there, into the keel. Then you formed it, squeezed it down quickly, while the rib was still in pliable condition. Quickly got it nailed in to hold it for wherever it was going to be. One at a time you did that. They were marked where you would put them.

Vagabond: They were pre-cut for you and what you had to do was steam and bend them and put them in place?

Floyd: Yes, and that was quite a process. It took dexterity to quickly do it because they would stiffen up. You had to be quick with your hammer. Prior to doing that we had nails started, the boat came to us upside down. Then we set these starter nails and then we turned that boat over on our jig and clamped it there. When we started ribbing and stapling between those main rigs that they had done, then the boat was standing right side up. We would press them down in there. There was a certain set of nails that we had to pull because the contour of the boat had to be followed and done quickly because the wood hardened up. We got up to basic nails and they had worked that out before that, which ones they were. They were set in the body. Before that boat was turned over, we had set nails in all the holes. It first was marked and drilled. It was like prickly porcupine.

Vagabond: Just waiting to put the nails in the wood.

Floyd: First we’d mark the place with lines where the ribs were going to be, then we’d set nails and drilled. Every rib had a nail in it. That was the ribbers job. We got all those nails set in there and just gently set them in so they stayed. Then we turned the whole boat over. Now we started putting those hot ribs in there and drive the first set of nails. You had to have all those nails set, you got used to it. When you started pounding the nails in, the rest of the nails didn’t fall out. That’s the way it went. We would start on a certain place on the boat and we would gradually fill that gap between those starter ribs. Those nails were in there. Some of them would drop out but we got used to it and knew how hard to hit the nails. You could have them sticking out on the inside of the boat. That’s how the ribs were put in. That was quite a job. You had to reach way underneath and hammer. And you don’t want to make hammer marks on that boat either.

I can remember, I had a fellow by the name Nels Chrisopherson as my working partner, and he was quite a bit older than I. I would kid him a lot. Once in a while he would miss, and get a hammer mark but you had to kind of fix that. Once Nels missed pretty bad. I said "Oh my gosh Nels, I saw your hammer come up through." He almost believed it. I’ll never forget that. It was quite a family, that boat building business.

Alexandria Boat Works was the first boats built together with Little Falls. They were the two places in Minnesota to build boats. I don’t know exactly who claims the first start but they were kind of rivals. Little Falls Boat Works and Alexandria Boat Works. And I worked there for a couple three summers. It was a seasonal job. And I took other jobs. I helped to start, in fact, I drove some of the first nails in the Garden Center in Alexandria. Different places.

My brother was out at the Blake Hotel and the Blake Hotel was run by a guy by the name of A.J. Debeaux, a very prominent businessman. In fact, he was among an elite group in Alexandria. There was another family, the Noonan Family and the Ahl Family and the Debeaux Family all together. They were the elites here. My brother got a job in the Blake Hotel, they hired seasonal workers, too. Both women and men. My brother happened to be one of the men for the summer. He was working at things and Heinie Brock, who became my boss for four years, was visiting with A.J. Debeaux. Heinie Brock’s wife and A.J. Debeaux’s daughter were college mates. That’s how Heinie Brock happened to be out there at the Blake Hotel. This is the beginning of my history, a very important part of my life. My brother was working for A.J. Debeaux. His boss and Heinie Brock were standing there where my brother had some particular job he was doing and was in earshot of these people.

My brother heard what they were talking about. A.J. Debeaux was crating in or selling 12-14 row boats for brand new ones from the Alexandria Boat Works. He said "Heinie, you probably could use those boats. You’ll need a lot of boats for those kids you have there at Camp Carlos." He said "I’ll sell them to you cheap, you can have them at a good price." Heinie said he was up to his ears in debt already and had no cash at all. He was in deep with L.J. Noonan in town here, who was a great friend of mine. My brother hearing this, that Heinie needed a guy who could handle boats, spoke up and got permission to break into their conversation. He was just a livery man there. He said "I’ve got a brother who works on boats. Maybe you might contact him."

So it then became a search for me and he found me and asked what I could do, if I would take those boats, if I could handle the restoration of those boats. I said "I’ll have to look it over." So I went over there and checked it out. Being that it was in my line of work, I said "I don’t have a shop or anything." I didn’t want to say no and I didn’t want to say yes yet. I said, "Give me a few days."

My dad happened to have a good friend who lived on Le Homme Dieu and I needed a lakeshore place to do this. You need equipment when you’re going to do a project like 12-14 boats. I went down and talked to my dad’s friend who lived on the lake and he had a son, about the time to enter the labor force, maybe 16 years old. His name was Alan Young. So I said "I have a project offered to me and I need a place to work. I see your old shed is empty and I think it would probably work as a shop for me. Would you consider me moving into that empty shed if I hire your son Alan to work for me?"

"Well," he said, "that sounds like a pretty good deal." He had a hungry boy at home who needed a job. So he said, "Sure go ahead." So I proceeded to make some equipment. There I had to have a steaming outfit so I built a special little tank and steam and all that. Alan and I went to work on these boats."

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH FLOYD BOLIN OF ALEXANDIA, MINNESOTA, MAY, 2003 - (7)

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: Let's continue talking and focus on your work life, the highlight of which was establishing the dairy in Alexandria and operating that for many years. We can start with your experience with boats and airplanes. You’re a very mechanical person and we talked about that. You were interested in boats and you were interested in airplanes. Some of the highlights of that.

Floyd: Well, the dairy operation was toward the end of my real activities. I founded it in 1939. And it lasted until 1958. So that was the biggest of things, personal things. This is the last big thing. Are you satisfied that we’re starting up here?

Vagabond: Let’s talk a little about Alexandria Boat Works, working on boats.

Floyd: My father taught me a lot of things. Discipline was a good thing that I recall growing up at home. We talked about graduating from grade school out of the 7th grade. In those days, most agricultural people didn’t get any further than 8th grade schooling. They were naturally working people. They wanted to get into the workforce as soon as possible, even though they were young. And they did. They started out in the world, some at 12 years old. This was the feeling that I had, too. I knew that I wouldn’t be going to further schooling. So it would be that I would enter the labor field. Well that started off at home, because of the fact that my dad saw the gift that I had and he actually gave me time off to do that work. I did them from home. Ate my meals there and everything. So in a way I felt a little embarrassed that maybe he favored me.

Vagabond: You did work at the boat works, you did work at Camp Carlos in the early 1930s and you worked on boats there?

Floyd: I worked in the Twin Cities with heavy contractors in the late 20s. I think that was my first major move away from the farm, going by myself.

Vagabond: To the Twin Cities in construction work?

Floyd: I worked on the Calhoun Beach Club and Swedish Hospital. Those were the two main buildings I worked on with the contractor. That was really enlightening and a help to me. I don't want it to sound like I'm bragging.

Vagabond: I understand that.

Floyd: When I went to work for this construction company they didn’t take on equipment, they put me on first. These farm boys, they wanted them. The first job I got was at Swedish Hospital to work on the smoke stack. Whoever the architect was or the planner erred with the foundation. This great big smoke stack was about 12-14 feet in diameter, and the foundation that it stood on had to be very stable. They had neglected to put the brick ledge in there. It was missing all the way around this thing. Now the only thing was to chisel that out by hand and that’s the job I got to start with.

Vagabond: Chiseling out the foundation?

Floyd: Just around that brick ledge, where the bricks are supposed to lay. It was a stinker of a job. It was a man-killer. They knew these farm kids were tough so they knew who to pick. Not me personally, but the just loved it when they asked where you were from when you asked for a job. If you were a farm boy, no question. Out in the boonies, that’s where I was born and raised. Alexandria, actually Nelson, grew up on a farm. Anyway, I chiseled that brick layer around that entire foundation by hand. And that’s how I got my start there. That gave me a reputation right away, because I didn’t quit, I kept on until I was done.

Vagabond: And you did a good job?

Floyd: I did a good job. So after that the foremen and these people had their eyes open. They don’t say much but they know what’s going on. I advanced almost right away into a little better positions on the second building at Swedish Hospital. Then the contractor had another project at the Calhoun Beach Club. There again they needed certain guys like myself that had some leadership value, to do basic beginning heavy duty stuff. The first job I got there was to excavate for the footings. Now that Calhoun Beach Club, remarkably so, stands on sand and on deep pilings. The sand goes down a long way in that area. They drove the pilings. At first they built cribs and that’s where I came in. We excavated the crib, about 10-12 feet square. In that, water and pumps were going all the time, so we could work there. We held that water down below knee boots level so that we could work in there. Then when we got that all done, they drove pilings in as tight as they could fit them in. Huge long things. As I recall, they were 25-40 feet long. They drove them down until they wouldn’t go any more. In the meantime, we working fellows had to go down and keep them cut off. They had to be cut at floor level of this big pit. So then we had to go down there and we would saw them off. Then they would put in more and so on until they were done. The last one we cut off and they lifted that out with a hoist. That was quite a project. Then I went from there to carpenter supply man. There was a sawyer on the job and he was a Scandinavian, by the way. It was fun for me because I was fresh from the Swedish-speaking folks. We could converse in Swedish. He gave me orders you know. I took the orders from the carpenters in the different divisions and delivered it to him. I would write it out and give him the orders and then deliver the orders, too. So that was my job there. That’s the way it went with Swedish Hospital and Calhoun Beach Club. I’m rambling now.

Vagabond: That’s okay. We did not talk about this. So this was your real first job off of the farm. Now how do we get back to Alexandria?

Floyd: I have to think of what year it was. Oh, I think I came back probably to help on the farm. I’m not so sure. It’s been hanging in my mind for many years but it’s harder to catch it now. Home, that’s the one thing about a farm boy, when he entered the working world, he had a haven on that farm. We had an advantage. A lot of times, of course I suppose city kids go back to the city, too. When we were out of a job, we just went home.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERVIEW WITH FLOYD BOLIN OF ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (6)

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: Now how is it that I don’t see any knife marks on the chain you carved?

Floyd: That’s the part that’s difficult to make it a finished product. I had to go to the dentist to get tiny little bits of sandpaper. So I got a handful of that from the dentist and I’d get in there and work, holding it with my fingers in a certain way. It takes a certain kind of person do that. The patience, it just takes weeks and weeks of spare time to do that. And to get it into what you’d call mechanical excellence. That was in 1935. The next winter I had the same situation; I had spare time, I had a little work to do but I had time. I’ve always had an admiration for walnut. So I thought I’ll make one out of walnut and go down in size. Now when you handle this just like I do, very carefully. Look at it. Get good light. You should get that in the light so you can see. That walnut, the reason it’s only one length, I was only proving to myself that I could make a link of that size. That’s 3/8 of an inch, I think. That divides into three and what you’ve got left, you have to have room for the link connecting system. The same with the ball. It’s all, if you’ll notice there, that all the things are done precise. The pillars are beveled in the corners, a pyramid on the top, and very difficult to do.

Vagabond: The inscriptions are symmetrical.

Floyd: Finished. It’s very difficult when you get into dimensions like that. I’m going down some more.

Vagabond: This is 1936.

Floyd: I showed you this one and I showed you that one. Oh my God. Has someone done me dirt again? Oh my God. Oh no, here. Camp Carlos 1937. That’s the last one I carved. I don’t dare let anyone get their hands on them. That’s maple, and some of our own wood pile. A piece of maple that my dad had. He had a lot of lumber laying around. That was a quarter of an inch square. I was trying to make one at one-eighth, but you see you have to have it absolutely symmetrical because if you don’t, you’re not going to come out making links. The tolerance is so little. You’ve got to have it absolutely square. So when you’re coming around from either side, you’re going to wind up that much wood to work with. Now that one, I have to say myself, it was tough. To hang on to that knife and remember this is hard maple, and you’ve got to whittle away. And when you hold those links like that, you see how little room you’ve got in there to work?

Vagabond: So you were cutting with the very point of the knife blade?

Floyd: I finally had to make my own. The dentist had very good steel in things so I bummed some off of the dentist. There’s the one I did the most work with. I held that tight so I had a hand hold. But it’s broken now, too. It banged around. Like taking a darning needle and making a blade out of a darning needle, that’s what it amounted to.

Vagabond: A good grade of steel.

Floyd: Good steel. That’s how I was able to whittle that small dimension. I guess that’s the end of the chain story. Except that I’m going to show you a story. Read that little story.

Vagabond: The Rademacher Forges.

Floyd: That’s a museum of mechanical things by guys who did things like I did.

Vagabond: So Johann Erick Sundeen, 1845-1915, a smith nicknamed Sundeen of the Gab, was a famous character in Eskilstuna at the end of the century. Many stories are told of his brawling in the streets and of his numerous controversies with the custodians of the peace. Sundeen of the Gab accounts for his inability to answer to the demands of society in a small pamphlet, his so-called memoirs published in 1901 for the benefit of a temperance order. When a child he was given bread dipped in corn brandy to still his hunger. In spite of his irregular manner of living, Johann Erick Sundeen was a highly skilled craftsman. Proof of his skill, the chain of marvelous workmanship, a magic cable with a loose link which he made at the beginning of the century. Even in his lifetime this became one of the principal sites of the Rademacher Forges. This souvenir is a copy of his masterpiece, a chain on the scale of 1 to 2, whereas Sundeen’s masterpiece is comprised of lengths wrought in one piece. The copy has to be made in a similar way with open rings.

Floyd: Ya, that hangs on a post from ceiling to floor. You can play with it. People that come to the museum can lift that and actually touch it. The chain, here is a chain that they sell in Sweden, to show how that works. It hangs there and you can make it go around. I don’t know if I can make it go around. Sometimes I can do it on the first try, sometimes it takes more than the first try. There are four places where you can make it go. No, it didn’t go on that one. I’ll try the other ring. And it didn’t go. Now I’ll try those two sides. I’ll try the other side of these two here. There it went. See. Take this in your left hand, or are you a right-hander?

Vagabond: I’m left-handed.

Floyd: Then you do it the other way. Just on the very base of that link now. Now you raise and lower this link.

Vagabond: This link?

Floyd: See. You raised and lowered that and one length went down to the bottom. Now when you get tired of that, you drop everything and you start over. And then you mix it up. Then you can start it again.

Vagabond: How did he do that?

Floyd: Only he that knows. He invented this from scratch. Nobody can figure it out. I don’t know how in the world he got the idea or what. Now you just shake it up. Take it and try to start it yourself.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERIVEW WITH FLOYD BOLIN OF ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (5)

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: We have to get you from your teenage years to your adult working life now. When did you get to the boat works, how did you get to founding the dairy in Alexandria?

Floyd: Well, you’ve got a lot of questions. I’m going to have to go for the dairy, that was the big thing in my life. On the farm there was times in the seasons when there wasn’t much to do because of the weather and in the winter time there was leisure time. We did cut our own wood. My dad always contracted pieces of timber that we would cut, timber for the next year and haul it home, saw it and all that stuff, split it and pile it up. So we had a lot of chores that my dad had us do. There was times when there wasn’t much to do. So I was a dreamer. I would sit there and just look out the window and he’d say why aren’t you doing something? Then I’d kind of wake up and say what should I do? He said, out there is a wood pile and in that wood pile is a lot of nice basswood. He said why don’t you whittle a chain. Why do that? That would be something for you to do. It was a challenge to me. And I think this would be the time to show you that chain.

Vagabond: Do you have the first chain?

Floyd: A series of chains came over a period of many, many years. I will show you. Now I’m going to have you sit in such a way that you can’t see what I’m doing. Let’s sit on the davenport. Pull that thing out and we’ll both sit on it. I will sit over here. Now here’s my first failed chain failed. It’s hard to work with wood like this, basswood. To complete the whole chain without breaking it is very, very difficult. It’s one of the hazards of making chains. You can do it alright but just a little too much pressure at the wrong place and it will break. You can see that. So I keep these pieces for that purpose.

Vagabond: It’s a lesson for you, to remind you?

Floyd: Well, and for other people. I don’t know if very many have tried it. Here is the first successful chain I made.

Vagabond: Is that basswood?

Floyd: Yes, that’s basswood and it’s dated. I put that date in many years later. But I figured it out, it was 1923 when I did it. So you can see that’s cleaner there. But that’s the date, the winter that I made that chain. And my dad was satisfied. He said, when you make the chain, don’t cheat. The word cheat is fruft in Swedish. You mustn’t cheat and make it like the dog chain. You see it’s easy to make a scrawny chain, you know, with lots of room in the links. I’ve seen other people’s chains. They think, boy I whittled a chain. But there’s nothing to it if you cheat and make one that has a lot of room in it, so you can get at things. When you hold that together, you see how little room there is there.

Vagabond: It’s like log chain.

Floyd: You’ve gotta dig that wood out of there and finally get it to loosen up and all those positions that are in there. It’s really a toughie. I still say that. Now I’m going into this. These are two knives that I made myself.

Vagabond: For this carving?

Floyd: I found it hard. I had a pen knife that I did the first one with. But my dad bought me for a Christmas present that I made this chain with. But a pen knife was not small enough. This is the one that does the work.

Vagabond: It’s less than half an inch long, coming to a point out of the knife handle.

Floyd: You’ve got a lot of grip here. This is tool steel that I bought from an business man who lived right within this same half block, about 150 feet from here. Bought the steel from him, that’s tool steel. It can hold a very good edge. Then I made the handles, both are from seasoned maple out of the wood pile. That’s ash there. This is maple. Those rivets that I used are harness rivets out of my dad’s harness room.

Vagabond: When did you make these?

Floyd: This was in the early 1920s.

Vagabond: So the chain that I saw, where you were successful, you used these knives to carve with?

Floyd: This is the one I used to make most of it. I think I did this because I thought I was going to have an advantage when I whittled 4 holes in there. But, like I say, there’s times when this came in handy. And I forged this myself.

Vagabond: To band it and turn it, twist it a little bit?

Floyd: You make it a certain color red hot and then you dip it in oil to temper it, the right kind of temper for this fine type of steel. So those I made myself. Now I’m going to show you my first successful, that is my professional. I got a job many years later, now this was 1923, I think the date is on there.

Vagabond: February.

Floyd: In the early 30s I got a job at a place, a boys camp here on Lake Carlos. I had spare time and I had a bunch of horses to take care of and stuff and I stayed there in the wintertime. I batched it out there. So I did a lot of reading, of course, but I thought, gee whiz, now’s the time I could really make a nice chain. So I whittled this one out. Now that is lemon wood. What prompted me to do the chain: the boys camp had bow and arrow training for the boys as one of the main trainings they had. And this was a broken bow laying there and I just knew that was very good wood. So I fashioned it into squares that I wanted. Now, this is divided into three. When you make a chain you always do something that divides easily into three because there’s three parts. So that is my first professional chain. You can see I have the dates down there.

Vagabond: 1935, Camp Carlos.

Floyd: And you see the beveled edges and the mitered corners and you see the pyramid tops. Very difficult to do.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERIVEW WITH FLOYD BOLIN OF ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (4)

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: And your reputation as a mechanic got around the community?

Floyd: That sort of expanded. While I was still home on the farm, my dad excused me when there was jobs that would come. So I grew up sort of with an advantage over the rest of my family because of that. You see, I was still eating off the same table at home and I could go out there and earn some money for myself. In a way I feel a little guilty of probably having an advantage for that. The rest of my family all did well. Anyway we grew up as a very close knit family. My dad was a wonderful father. He fathered us five kids and the oldest one was a girl and after her grade schooling was over with, at age 14, she became the housekeeper. In the meantime when we were all there my father had the ladies that would come to care for us. He hired women but he never got romantic with any of them, never married. He was just a one-woman man, that’s it. y mother was the one and that’s it and that’s the way it went. I know he had opportunities to marry. It kills me. I had a happy married life for 57 years and I can understand his feelings. I was given the opportunity to develop mechanical skills; my dad would let me take these jobs. I would go out and fix and I grew to the point where I was repairing tractors. Bigger machinery and if something went wrong, they would call me out. It just grew by itself. When there were things to build, I would build things. My dad needed a machine shed, so I managed the job of building a machine shed. We built a new granary after we had a fire there.

Vagabond: How old were you at that point?

Floyd: I was in my teens somewhere.

Vagabond: And you oversaw the building of the granary without a drawing?

Floyd: Oh ya. I saw how they were made and it didn’t take me long to figure out how to do it. It just came natural to me. I had almost a guilty feeling of having the advantage over my brothers, but my brothers they do okay, too. They did well.

Vagabond: You got to be how old when you stopped schooling?

Floyd: That’s a good question because when graduation for the 8th grade took place at the age of 15, I was in the 7th grade and I asked the teacher, can I take an exam, you know for fun? She said sure. So she provided me with the same examination papers as the 8th graders. So I took it and I passed it. So I passed the 8th grade exam when I was in 7th grade. Well, that gave me some freedom, you know. My dad wouldn’t let me quit school. He said you better have some more grammar and arithmetic. That’s what they called it in those days. He said you better go. I went to school half days for the next school session and graduated again.

Vagabond: The rest of the students would stay in school in the afternoon and you would go home? Go work on the farm or your projects?

Floyd: I went half days for the last of my schooling.

Vagabond: Do you think that was a wise choice? To put you back in school for that additional time?

Floyd: Ya, to get that grammar and arithmetic, which I should have had more of, I found out. I found that out late in life. I had trouble with language.

Vagabond: So you were a teenager, you were fixing the community's mechanical problems? They called you; you went to fix a tractor or a machine?

Floyd: I was above average in that category. But, of course, I showed my brother everything, that wasn’t so good, too.

Vagabond: Like what?

Floyd: I was pretty mischievous. I don’t want to go into detail too much on that. I would get rambunctious. I give it to my dad, too, you know.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERIVEW WITH FLOYD BOLIN OF ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (3)

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: How did your father meet your mother?

Floyd: That was through another family from where my mother grew up. Their names were Johnson. Her name was Hilda Johnson, a very beautiful woman. They were very distant cousins. It was about 1898 when they were married. My mother took sick when the last son, my brother Reuben was born. She had a hard life. Everybody had a hard life. She worked, had the family bang, bang, just like that. When my brother Reuben was born some complications took place and she had to go to Fergus Falls. There she met the misfortune of being scalded to death.

Vagabond: How did that happen?

Floyd: A neglectful nurse was giving her a bath and she turned the water on and walked away for something and forgot about the water running on her. It was hot, too hot for her. That was right after childbirth with my youngest brother. So then my dad being a loyal man, he didn’t remarry. He hired many women who went through our family, hired ladies, at least three or four, to take care of the kids. All of the kids. But my dad weathered it all and had a good sense of humor and raised us kids. But that influence of dialect came from that other side. We grew up in that dialect. Actually more of what you’d call Dalmal, that’s the deepest dialect in Sweden. I have to give you a little information about that. The irony of it is that my Uncle Pete on the Linger side settled corner to corner on that land over there. The Linger family who had that beautiful dialect and his nephew John Bolin, my father, got married and got this land over here. They both had families but they were a little bit older, a generation on the Linger side, but they socialized with us, they invited us because we were younger and Mrs. Linger, I remember how she fed us. She just forced us to eat until we were about to bust. And Arvid and Ted were the boys and they came over and visited with us because we were boys in the family and so it was a close relationship. But that dialect were both direct opposite as far as us kids were concerned. My dad’s dialect always stayed nice. But my mother, she was on the guttural side. She was of that same group of people that came from Dalproda. He married Hilda Johnson. And mother, as you probably understand, the mother in the family is the one with the social schedule. So that us kids associated with that group of kids; we got the wrong dialect. But we played together. And, of course my being the blabberbox, you know, and talking like I did, it was with a horrible accent. I can remember my cousin Arvid. We were just talking privately, he would go like this when I was talking, and just show his displeasure. He made no bones about it. I’ll never forget that as long as I live.

Vagabond: When did you learn English?

Floyd: Well, that came a little late. When my dad first took us to school, I knew very little English. I knew much more Swedish than English. They couldn’t make me understand. The teacher asked me if I had been vaccinated. The word vaccinated didn’t ring a bell with me but the word vacsola means to make change and it sounded like she asked me if knew if I could make change. So I said ya, ya, and she looked at me and couldn’t find any mark that showed I had any vaccination of any kind. It took a little talking there between the teacher and me to figure that out. I thought she wanted to know if I could make change. That’s my first days in school. The highlight of my first day in school.

Vagabond: Let's talk about your mechanical abilities then, which served you well through your life.

Floyd: My dad had ingenuity. Most people grew up that way in those days because it was a necessity to fend for yourself. I think more people grew up with some self-made education in those days than they do now.

Vagabond: You're suggesting that a lot of people in the old days had more self-reliance because they had to take care of themselves, they figured things out?

Floyd: Ya, that was an advantage for the rest of your life. It gave you a better chance to make it in life than the kids do now. Because we had much more of that basic self-reliance. It came natural. Now they’re coddled with every kind of convenience and all that kind of stuff. I see that because I grew up in the old and I see the new. I’ve lived a long time. I like to bring that out. But you know how it is, people like to stick with what they’ve got.

Vagabond: So how did your mechanical ability manifest itself? You worked in a boat works?

Floyd: I have to go back to when I was still home. My dad saw, he began to see those things, that when I had a chance to do things, I did them. He saw this developing, so he gave me, always turned over the things that needed to be done. It became my job, so I became the son in the family who took that up and became kind of a second father. I was just born to do it. So I built things, I did things, and whenever there was anything difficult to fix, I could fix the machinery. Farming is an education in itself. I grew up learning how to use my hands and my mind right there on the farm. My dad taught us all the same way, but I benefited the most because I was the middle one in the bunch of five kids. I grew up to be the mechanic. I then became the bicycle fixer, the community mechanic. It grew and grew until I was fixing tractors and cars. I had tools and I traveled around and fixed things, especially Model T automobiles. They gave a lot of trouble with the band system, the transmission system and most people didn’t have expertise, so I had a lot of work that came to me because I could do these things.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERIVEW WITH FLOYD BOLIN OF ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (2)

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: Didn’t your grandfather bring your grandmother to America?

Floyd: She never got here. In the beginning, she didn’t want to come to America, but she did follow her betrothed, which was my granddad. When they got to New York, Immigration questioned them. This girl had no papers or anything. Anyway, it was a problem - she was not permitted to enter America. She was forced to go back to Sweden. And this was a real tragedy because they had these two boys, my dad and uncle. So then my great-uncle John and my grandfather Pete took those two boys, my dad and Pete, and dropped them off with the Eastlund family. The Eastlunds were on the mother’s side of my dad's family. The Eastlunds were, see my grandmother’s name would have been Eastlund.

Vagabond: Did your father’s mother ever get here?

Floyd: No.

Vagabond: Never came to America? Was sent back?

Floyd: That was a sad story. She had these two boys.

Vagabond: Your dad’s mother’s name was Anna Eastlund and she was turned back?

Floyd: Yes, they had these children, my dad and her. My grandfather and her, had my father and my uncle Pete, ages 5 and 2 ½. Now they left Sweden and went on a sailing boat trip across the ocean, which took from three to four weeks in those days. You can imagine who bore the brunt of caring for two bawling kids. Grampa Pete, he probably was up running around on deck and mingling with people, and she was down in the steerage in the bottom of the boat tending to those kids. So by the time they got to America, she didn’t want to come in the first place. The kids were screaming and bawling and the immigration people were upset, too, with that commotion and sent her back. They said we can’t accept her. But the kids stayed. Grampa took the kids, his name was Pete Bolin in those days. So now she was forced to go back to Sweden in her shape.

Vagabond: Do you know what happened to her?

Floyd: She made it back to Sweden but by the time she got there, she had a full-blown nervous breakdown. She was put into a home and lived 10 years in there. They treated those people like animals in a cage, so to speak. My wife and I visited Sweden on three or four times. I had a cousin that lived there, a 2^nd or 3^rd cousin, and he knew all about this. We found out a lot of history very late about the family and how it went. It could have been very good if things would have worked out. The way they treated her, she was never a free woman after that. She’s buried in a pauper's grave and they keep adding to that every 25 years. I don’t know how many there are now. I know where the grave is. It’s a pretty sad story. But anyway, this is how it all happened. She went back and then my grandfather Pete, the Kaalbech family and the Eastlund family were here already out at Carlos. So he brought my dad and my uncle Pete then, took the boys and dropped them off at the Eastlund place south of Carlos. Then they took care of them, they were only 5 and maybe a year and a half between them. My dad and uncle Pete they dropped off at the Eastlund place. And the Eastlund family brought them up.

Vagabond: Raised them to adulthood?

Floyd: Raised them to the time, when in those days, you left home as soon as you could do something. Both my dad and Uncle Pete left the Eastlunds at about 11 and 12 years old and hit the world.

Vagabond: They went to work on a farm?

Floyd: Ya. My dad began a trade, he got a job in a sawmill, Palmer’s Sawmill and Uncle Pete he just went out in the world. Actually wound up in Alaska. That was his country for the rest of his life. He never did come back to this country. He was the older of the two, I guess. But he was here and visited our family in the 40s. The family was split in that way when they came here. The Bolin family, that’s all that came of us. They were illegitimate sons of Grampa Pete.

Vagabond: Let's talk about your mechanical abilities. You said your father had mechanical abilities and worked in the sawmill. Talk about your mechanical abilities.

Floyd: My dad worked in the sawmill, he had good character, he was a good man. At a very young age, he was able to borrow money to buy this farm, which my brother still lives on now. He borrowed money from a guy by the name of Wretling, and another one. It was 85 acres of land and he went to farming. So then he was still single then.

To be continued....

A VAGABOND INTERIVEW WITH FLOYD BOLIN OF ALEXANDRIA, MINNESOTA MAY, 2003 - (1)

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: We’re interviewing Floyd Bolin in his home on Irving Street in Alexandria, Minnesota on May 21, 2003. I think Floyd has had an interesting life cobbling together all sorts of pieces of equipment to do whatever needed to be done. We will get into some of that. We’ll start with his family history, his life story, the condition of the small town, the character of the people in this interview. Let’s start with your family history. How did you get here?

Floyd: My father was born in Sweden. My grandfather was from the east side of Sweden and my grandmother happened to be from the west side and actually in Sweden that divides the best dialect from the worst. My father’s was a nice refined diction. He didn't stay there very long where they had the more refined diction, but he never did acquire that dialect my mother had. She came from that other side of Sweden.

Vagabond: With the harsher sounding language.

Floyd: You had the language at the best and the worst in that family of ours. But actually at home the harsher one took over because the mother in the family usually is the one who engineers association. So I became a guttural speaker from when I was little.

Vagabond: Now, where were you born?

Floyd: I was born in Alexandria in a home, on the farm where people were born by midwife in those days. This wife of an uncle of my dad’s, she was a midwife for the community. She was the attendant for my birth.

Vagabond: Why did your parents come to America?

Floyd: Well, my father came in 1895 and my mother was born here. She came with that other family, the Johnson party. The Johnson family where my mother was became connected more with Nelson, the little town of Nelson and Alexandria. It was just on the other side of Lake Geneva out here. But my dad, he was south of Carlos two and a half miles.

Vagabond: Where the farm was?

Floyd: Where the Linger family was, his uncle.

Vagabond: Now you call it the Linger family and yet your name is Bolin.

Floyd: You see actually our name in Sweden was Kaalbech. That’s on the cemetery markers in Sweden. That’s on my father’s side. Where my grandmother was that was, let’s see now. How to explain that. Their name was Johnson.

Vagabond: Now, some in the family are called Lingers and some are Bolins?

Floyd: I think we should step back a little there, because there was two of that family that came here together, Pete and Lars. Now they went to the immigration service in Sweden and reported to them and got their papers for immigration. When they brought this, they asked them what the name was. Well, the name was Kaalbech but in those days, you probably already know, they would change their name when they came to America. Most of them did. That happened because there were so many Andersons, Petersons, Olsons, and Johnsons there. So they began to change their name. Our name didn’t need changing but they did it anyway. Because it was kind of the style to change the names. And I wish to this day they would have kept the name the way it was on the markers there, Kaalbech. A nice name. I haven’t found it any phone book anywhere in this country. We would have had an exclusive. Of course, in a way, we did anyway. There weren’t very many Bolins but there are lots of them now. I don’t know if that was a derivative of Bolin or not. But you see, now I have to go back to when my grandfather Pete and his brother Lars. Pete and Lars came together. When they came to sitting down and getting ready to go to America, they wanted to take that name Bolinger. Well, they just wanted to change the name. The immigration service informed them that Bolinger was not available, because it was a commercial name, and it still is to this day. They’re a big manufacturing concern. They had a copyright to that name. So then they said, what are we going to do? One of them got the wise idea to divide the name – one wold take Linger and the other would take the first part and be Bolin. So my grandfather got the front end, Bolin, and my dad’s uncle got the back end, Linger. The two men came over together, side by side, needing to acquire some land. One was Linger and one was Bolin.

Vagabond: Brothers with different names. Okay, now that was in which township then? Up towards Carlos?

Floyd: Carlos Township.

Vagabond: And they farmed there. And your father was born there?

Floyd: No, he was born in Sweden. When my grandfather Pete and Lars immigrated.

Vagabond: And your father had already been born?

Floyd: He was born over there but it was not a marriage; it was one of those quickies that go on to this day in Sweden. Sweden, I think, invented that. They were pretty friendly over there. So both of Pete’s kids were born out of wedlock. One was named John, that was my dad, and the other was Peter.

Vagabond: They came with him to America?

Floyd: They came with my grandfather Pete.

To be continued....