PREVIOUS CHAPTER    SECOND AGE BY CARL FRANSON            NEXT CHAPTER My Year on a Mississippi River Shanty Boat

Winter in the Shelter of the Wing Dam

Chapter 5
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A State of the Art Outhouse!

            Again it was time to take stock of our surroundings. The wing dam above us came off a low hill and looked to be at least ten feet higher and twice as long as the first one we had ducked under and left. The bank to the west was approximately six feet high, and a set of wooden steps led down it right at the end of our gangplank. At the top stood a neat summer cottage, now vacated, and to the south a well built wood shed with a few sticks of dry wood. But there was a prize: to the north and slightly nestled in a thick grove of quaking aspen stood a modern, state of the art, chick sales, outhouse. It had a modern chimney to the rear, all openings were screened, and there was a good quality door with locking hardware inside. There was a lift up hardwood seat with a matching cover, a fifty pound sack of hydrated lime with a scoop, and hanging on a string the inevitable Sears Roebuck Catalogue with just a few pages missing. We could use this, but we would repay the owner by watching his house.

            There was an access road that ended just past this property, and looking south, we could see a house above this road and on a hill. There was smoke coming from the chimney, so we knew there would be neighbors during winter. Climbing higher, we came to the railroad with a double set of tracks, and looked for a path we could take to reach the highway and then La Crescent. This we found, and with that knowledge, returned along the railroad tracks and stumbled over a large piece of coal, which we picked up and carried home. We could save that for a really cold day.

            Getting ready for town - La Crescent, Minnesota

            We intended to walk to La Crescent in the morning for buttermilk and knuckle bones (for the dog) so we wrote our letters, washed and dried clothes in the yet balmy breeze, scrubbed the now filthy dirty floor, aired out our blankets, and in general made our house ready for the winter to come. It was really shipshape by nightfall, and we felt content.

            Morning saw us trudging to a beautiful small town set among apple groves. We were carrying our five gallon milk can between us and looking for a creamery, a general store, and the Post Office.

Custom Search

            Well, our reputation had preceded us, and people stopped and wanted to talk. Some had even driven out the highway and watched our struggle to cross the river, swing past the wing dam, and then the miracle of swinging around below and coming to a stop. This, of course, was great food for our egos, and we basked in the momentary glory. Eventually we got our buttermilk, our bucket of bones and a bucket of fresh apples and vegetable. It was about a one mile hike to return.

            That night saw a lowering of temperature, and by morning a thin sheet of ice was forming on our bay. The freeze would not be long now.

            "Tell me, how in the world did you travel twenty-three miles through the worst and cruelest storm this part of the country has ever seen?"

            About ten o’clock the next day, I walked up the railroad to a path that led me directly to a sign “Daley’s Tavern” and a door which I pushed open and found a man, perhaps in his sixties, peering at me with a smile. Before I could say a word, he said, ”You’re one of the boys floating a house down the river. I’ve been watching you since you showed up across the river with your friend and your beautiful dog. But tell me, how in the world did you travel twenty-three miles through the worst and cruelest storm this part of the country has ever seen, and how did you stop when the ice was thick around you and moving fast?”

            Well, we seemed to like each other immediately. He told me to call him Daley, and he was to call me Carl. He was a bachelor living alone in the back quarters of his house and was in charge of the railroad telegraph and watering station. He had opened the tavern shortly after the repeal of prohibition for something else to do and to help a certain boredom he felt. Our conversation flowed freely back and forth, and all at once he said, “You are going to have dinner with me.” Those days, dinner was at noon. We went to the kitchen where potatoes were already boiling on a propane table top stove, and soon he had another burner going with a large, cast iron skillet in place. Into this he put four thick, center cut pork chops from a new butcher shop wrapped package, and when they were done, he made the best tasting dark brown gravy I have ever eaten. Needless to say, I ate like food was going out of style.

            A night Job

            I finally got around to telling him that I played the accordion after a fashion, and if he had a good Saturday night crowd, perhaps I could bring it up and play for whatever the cup would yield. Well, he was really enthusiastic and said,” You come at six o’clock and I’ll have supper ready. You eat while I tend bar, then I’ll eat while you tend bar.” “Heck, I don’t know how to tend bar or run a cash register,” I said. “I’ll teach you right now,” he said, and he did.

            On my return to the house, Clarence had various savory pots and pans going while he was studying some notes and preparing to get busy writing something again. We were settled in, and that was a really good feeling.

            It was cold again that night; the ice was about an inch thick by morning. We decided to don our back packs, take our saw and ax, walk down the railroad a few blocks, then cross over a frozen back water to an island, where we could see the top of a dead oak tree from the house, our object being to find a supply of dry wood.

             Just call me Gus

            As we approached our tree, we heard a man already sawing wood and when he spied us, now close, he said, “Well, hello, the two boys from the river. I’m ----ski (here he pronounced a long and difficult name). Just call me Gus.” A Polish immigrant, he was a U.S. soldier with one leg gone but was handling his problem very well with the aid of a strapped-on peg. He, too, had watched us through binoculars every day since our appearance on the opposite shore. Noting our saw and ax he said, “Boys, there’s real good wood in this tree, enough for both of us for all winter. And when we have all these branches cleaned up, I’ll bring my two man crosscut saw and we’ll take the trunk down.”

When we started to saw, he laughed, handed his saw to us, and when it cut through the wood like a hot knife through soft butter, offered to sharpen ours so it would cut like his. What a wonderful person. He had a sled with perhaps one hundred pounds of wood loaded and lashed on. We loaded our packs, and carrying our tools, helped pull his sled to and over the railroad tracks to the bottom of the hill, where we left our loads and helped him up the hill to his house with his. His wife was a buxom, vigorous, fairly heavy boned woman with large, friendly eyes. And of course we just had to stop and have coffee and a huge piece of apple pie, and of course we just had to take home a bag of apples from barrels packed in the basement, and of course we just had to come visit soon to play cards. And, of course, we became good friends and did thoroughly enjoy many spirited card games.

Robin Hoods of the rails

Leaving our ax as well as our saw for sharpening, we retrieved our packs of wood and returned home along the railroad, where we located two more chunks of coal. We were already loaded so returned and picked them up after dumping our wood.

One time I discussed the mystery of the coal lumps along the railroad tracks with Daley. He had an astute knowledge of many things. He explained that there were may men “riding the roads”, so to speak, who were unemployed, restless, looking for work, traveling from place to place more or less aimlessly. They were called different names: bums, hobos, knights of the road, etc. A hatred of the railroad and the wealth it represented was a common cause to share with each other, therefore when they rode aboard a coal car through an area populated by poor or working type people, they would become Robin Hoods and take from the rich and give to the poor. His analysis was probably not too far from the truth.

First night on the job

It had been dark about one and a half hours when I showed up at Daley’s that Saturday night with my accordion. Already a few beer guzzlers were at the bar and animated conversation had started. Dinner was ready, and so was I. Daley stayed with me for at least a half hour, until I became more familiar with the bar-tending. It was so simple: lean the mug under the spigot, check for a rising bead or head, and serve with a bit of foam spilling over the side. Calculate the charge, collect, and punch into the cash register. People came here not only for beer but also for conversation, and to let their hair down and have a good time. They talked lively about mundane things, told jokes, sometimes ribald, laughed much and then turned to singing. This seemed to be the usual progression of events. The singing was my cue to go into action with the accordion, and almost at once the dancing began, and foot stomping and hooting added to the merriment.

This first night was a good one. Everyone, including me, had a good time, and my cup yielded a couple of dollars. I left my instrument there and walked home under a bright starry sky, my shoes crunching in a light snow that had come down early that afternoon. It was extremely cold and the warmth of our house from the banked fire was welcome to my tingling nose and ears.

Winter Wood Harvesting with Gus

Winter was now fully upon us, and cold prevailed night and day. The last of the ice floes had been immobilized, and they now lay snug and tight against each other, glued together by the hands of Jack Frost. Each day the ice would grow thicker and thicker as the water’s heat was sucked away by the frigid air.

With the cold, our heating stove developed a ravenous appetite which lasted twenty-four hours a day. Now we made arrangements with Gus to fell our huge oak tree on the island. Carrying our lunch, a bucket of coffee, and our tools, we arrived to find him already there with a fire going a short distance away. He had brought steel wedges, a twelve pound maul (now heating by the fire, so they would not shatter in the cold) and his long crosscut two-man saw. It took up most of an hour to bring this ghastly dead skeleton down with a splintering crash. Now we fell upon the carcass with ax, saw, wedge, and maul and steadily built up a pile of stove ready wood. Using the long crosscut we began slicing neat twelve inch thick rounds from the butt end and split these with the maul. All in all, when we returned to the fire for our sandwiches and coffee, we were pleased with the wood already made up, and the huge amount yet to go.

We had brought our corrugated iron sheet, made up into a toboggan shape with pulling ropes attached, and we now loaded this with three to four hundred pounds of wood. There was about six inches of snow on the ground and only a short, downhill pull to the bay, where we could pull over the ice directly to our house. It was yet early, so we worked another couple of hours slicing off rounds and splitting them up. It was very stimulating working in close harmony together in this honest labor, in the silence of the forest where the ring of the ax or the bite of the saw was clear, distinct and clean.

Gus did not want to skid wood home that day, and we had no trouble with our load, which we stacked neatly on the porch. Our sleep was great but we awoke with sore muscles, not being accustomed to such labor.     

 An air of Independance

Our days now consisted of reading, writing, and on clear days, fetching after wood. About once a week we went to La Crescent for mail, buttermilk and large knuckle bones which we said were for the dog, but which we actually cracked for the rich marrow. I was eating more and more at Daley’s on his invitation. My music continued on Saturday nights. The crowd was larger, and the cup sometimes yielded as much as five dollars. In addition there was about four hours of cleanup required on Sunday morning, so I became a Sunday morning swamper. My first morning with the first sweep up there were over five dollars laying on the floor: dimes, quarters, dollar bills dropped by the happy, careless patrons. Daley said, “That’s yours.” This additional income (one time it was over twenty-five dollars) swelled our nest egg and gave us a degree of independence.

Clarence had completed some poetry and needed to return to St. Paul to confer with a writers’ guild he belonged to, and to make a round of his publishers to try and sell some of his work. He left the middle part of December, and it was past the middle of January when he returned. He did have some luck, though, and now had a small monthly income for the next two years.

A mere speck on this ice cub one mile wide and five hundred miles        long, but nevertheless part of it

Meanwhile, I was spending more and more time at Daley’s, and our home fires ran out of fuel, and the sand cooled down and was cold. The water beneath our house now froze solid around the barrels, and we were one with and in the river, a mere speck on this ice cub one mile wide and five hundred miles long, but nevertheless part of it.

Our floor consisted of two inch planking, with one layer of tar paper and then three quarter inch fir flooring. This was hardly enough to keep the icy cold out, so our feet were freezing all of the time. Our four side windows were single pane with no storm windows, so we folded the bedspreads from the upper bunks to fit the two rear ones and tucked them into a tight fit. We lost half our light by doing so. We carted home huge amounts of corrugated cardboard and placed it under our bunks and all mattresses. We also placed a few layers on the floor between our bunks, when tacked a spare Army blanket over it in place of a rug. Also, we tacked cardboard over the front and rear doors, both sides. The only place warm for our feet was the sandbox.

No More Cold Feet

One day we had walked to La Crosse and saw some felt boots being advertised in the J.C. Penney store window. They sure looked good, so we each purchased a pair and they turned out to be absolutely great. No more cold feet.

Our Friend Jack

Now, what about Jack during this winter time? Every once in a while he would come on the house, look around and greet us profusely, then leave and vanish into the dusk. His usual time to come was just before dusk. We knew he kept close track of us because of his footsteps on the bank above us and around the cabin. On clear days one or both of us would take the twenty-two rifle and hunt either our wood island or go way across the frozen river and hunt the Wisconsin shore. His tracks would be everywhere, and we once found a bloody spot and a rabbit’s ear among them.

Crocus-a surprise sign of spring

In this manner, January and February passed, and the middle of March began with a measly hint of spring to come. Even the snow began to look warm, tired, and ready to quit its job. The river was still in a deep sleep, though a subtle change was taking place, in that the whip cracking sound of real cold ice was replaced by more of a mushy soft rumble. A few crows appeared. With the first of April a warm period arrived, and there was much speculation as to what day the ice would break up and leave. First, though, in sunny spots the snow yielded up its BTU’s and became water, where crocuses suddenly appeared and blossomed. Ice along the shore began to melt, and soon we had a six inch border of water, where carp poked their heads out to look around, and we speared them at will. When carp are taken at this time from the almost frozen water and smoked, they are excellent to eat, firm and tasty. As soon as the water warms they become inedible to most people.

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