The woods of North Central Minnesota: transfixing

Statue of "Lucette" ("travelingtwosome" image)

I find no evidence today of the existence of the Oshawa Store. It was a humble convenience store and lounge in a remote place. It was in one of my favorite places: the "north woods." More accurately it was the woods of North Central Minnesota where the wind gushes through the trees to produce a sound you cannot hear in West Central Minnesota.
The Oshawa Store had a jukebox where you might hear Lorne Greene's "Ringo." This was the 1960s. A layer of sadness hung over that decade: daily we'd hear reports on the Vietnam war.
A rustic, personable couple ran the Oshawa store. My father had rapport with them. We'd show up on our annual hunting visit and they'd cheerily call Dad "Professor." I remember they actively promoted the campaign of George Wallace for president in 1968. "Stand up for America," the flyers read. I sensed no racism on the part of these people - I think their enthusiasm sprang from a tea party-ish type of place, to use a more contemporary term.
Wallace had his independent campaign that really drew substantial support. As a naive junior high kid I couldn't see the whole picture with Wallace, as I couldn't fully understand the cultural factors that produced in him real racism. He'd call it "state's rights." He was the Donald Trump of his day as he could really reach out as a populist from a lectern. I had flashbacks to Wallace as Trump gained momentum in his campaign.
Our family had strong connections to North Central Minnesota. My mother is from there, from Brainerd, and my father taught at Brainerd High School before joining the Navy for World War II. We had a nice lake place on Gull Lake near Nisswa for a time. As a young man my father had a small racing boat. I heard the story about how he raced a float plane as it was accelerating to take off. Can you picture him doing that? He was quite into boating in general. This he did on the "Gull Lake chain." We have home movie footage taken by friend of the family Ruth Schiel-Closson. Wow, I have to wonder how much that lake place would be worth today! I imagine we split our time between Nisswa and St. Paul because my father taught at the U of M St. Paul School of Agriculture which, as a school of ag, had a half-year calendar. My father had income as a choral music composer - I never asked him how much that was.
Dad liked renewing his familiarity with the "north woods" for hunting season. Skip Sherstad always wondered why we couldn't just go "slug hunting" for deer around here in the Morris MN area. We had these nice "corn fed" deer. But the north woods with its roar of the wind in the trees had intangibles. Being out in the woods seemed to separate you from the gritty real world on the outside. There I was with my 30/06 bolt action rifle. I never got a deer in my Minnesota hunting. I did get a couple when Dad and I went to Wyoming, the Sundance area, a couple years. I developed a feeling of futility looking for deer around my Minnesota deer stand. But I greatly enjoyed just being in that environment. I remember we parked our car by a lookout tower which became a hub for the red or orange-clad deer hunting crowd.

North woods symbol: the raven

I have fond memories of the small towns in the area like Hackensack, named for the New Jersey city. And, Backus, Pine River, Nevis and Park Rapids. In the Park Rapids area we hunted with Ted Long, once of the old West Central School of Agriculture in Morris. When thinking of that Park Rapids venture I remember the raven birds. I was transfixed by those very large birds, like a very large crow, that seemed to rule along the endless treetops of that land. The fascinating raven inhabits the roughly one-third northeast section of Minnesota. It has a shaggy beard of feathers on the chin and throat. Look for a large wedge-shaped tail. It is a non-migrator to partial migrator. It is large enough to consume small animals. I remember well its call: a low, raspy sound. The raven is rather like the royalty of the north woods. Perhaps it exudes charm because we can sense it is among the smartest of birds. It performs aerial acrobatics and makes long swooping dives. It scavenges with crows and gulls. These birds are known to follow wolf packs around to pick up scraps and pick at bones of a kill. Another source of charm: it mates for life and uses the same nest site for many years.
You can sense I'm more of a nature lover than a hunter. Eventually my father "converted" and decided he wanted to "live and let live."
We made more than one trip north to hunt partridge. You'd walk along and then hear the booming sound of a partridge taking off. But deer? I found them to be elusive. Skip was right: the odds for our success would have been greater around here in Morris. But I wouldn't trade the entrancing effect of the north woods for anything.
There was a guy named Bartell who lived down the road from the Oshawa Store. He lived most humbly in one of those tar paper shacks. My father looked forward to talking with him each year.
State Highway 371 takes you into Hackensack. Wasn't there a "PDQ Bach" tune called "O Little Town of Hackensack?" This rustic town is on the eastern shore of Birch Lake. Pleasant Lake and Ten Mile Lake are also in the area. The Paul Bunyan State Trail passes through the town on the east shore of Birch Lake. I was there long before an iconic statue got erected, not of Paul Bunyan but of his significant other! "Lucette Diana Kensack" has watched over the town since 1991. She faces town on the shores of Birch Lake. A little quirk of the statue - perhaps charming, perhaps not - is that it looks like Lucette is hiding something under her dress! The locals of Hackensack came up with her name in a contest. Streetlight banners declare her as Paul Bunyan's sweetheart.
Oh, but there has been controversy due to the decision to have a "Paul Jr." next to her! Controversy because, were Paul and Lucette married? How quaint to chew over this. How quaint to chew over whether the couple was "living in sin." Mercy! Someone at the Hackensack Chamber of Commerce eventually "found" a marriage license. A story developed that the two got married in 1838! A tourist could buy a copy of the marriage license for $2. Ah, those ingenious tourist town people.
Dad and I were in the hunter class of tourists. The air would be so cleaned out in the fall. You could walk through the woods and appreciate the grandeur of it all without being overrun by bugs and weeds. Today Hackensack is fairly close to Northern Lights Casino. Gambling was totally morally taboo in Minnesota when I was a kid. We gradually got over that, getting our toe in the water with "raffles" and "poker runs." The camel's nose was in the tent, and before long the camel went amok. No moral conflictedness now.
The Lucette statue stands 17 feet tall. The original "Paul Jr." may have been removed, to cater to the puritanical types, but it was replaced by a chainsaw sculpture near the mom. I had a good college friend from Pine River, Janice.
My home was in the magnificent prairie of West Central Minnesota. But I relished the trips that Dad and I took to the entrancing "north woods" of Minnesota. The hunting was an afterthought for me. My hunting days are over. As the raven would say, "nevermore."
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com