By Dick Haslach of Shoreview
In 1943, when I was six, we rented a small cabin at Claysons Resort on East Horseshoe Lake, near Cross Lake. It was a two-room cabin with a kitchen and bedroom. There were no glass windows, just screens, with shutters on the outside. We would put a board up to hold the shutters open for air.
A year or two later, we returned to the area but no cabin was available. So we went to Morning Side Resort on Pelquin Lake and rented a cabin there. The water was really low on Pelquin. There was a sand island in the lake to the south, a wooden walkway to the island, and a dock where they kept boats. The boat rental came with the cabin.
There was a huge storm while we were there. The waves were so high it washed all the boats and dock over the sand bar to the main shoreline. When the storm was over everyone got together to help get the boats out of the backwater and put back on the lake.
In 1946, my dad (Harold) wanted to go fishing and Pelquin was too rough. So he asked a guy if there was a smaller lake he could go fishing at. The guy said go out to County Road 3, go north a half mile, and there would be a driveway on the right side. He said there is a guy on the lake there that may let you fish. So my dad went and asked the guy (Paul Widkey) if he could use his boat and go fishing. The lake was called Sandbar (now called Horseshoe). He caught some of the biggest sunfish he’d ever seen that day. And that is the lake that they are still on today.
Dad said he never knew there was a lake there. So when Paul wanted to sell two lots for $400 with 200 feet of lakeshore, dad bought both of them.
Later that year, dad went over on St. Anthony in St. Paul and tore down two garages. I helped him. He took the lumber from the garages home and cut it up to build the cabin. He pre-cut everything. He went to Montgomery Wards and bought 22 single windows for $2 each (they looked like storm windows, all discontinued). He made all the window frames from home. Finally, he bought roof shingles and had everything ready to build.
He met a guy who had a semi-truck. The guy was going to Brainerd to haul lumber up to a neighbor who lived a mile north of our property. He agreed to drop off our lumber and materials in that neighbor’s yard. Dad knew a guy from St. Paul named “Rudiger” and it was his mother’s house where the lumber was dropped off. There was one cabin on the North side of our lake (Horseshoe Lake), their name was Shells; another cabin was two doors south of our cabin, that was Widkeys; and the third cabin was in the bay south of our cabin, he was related to Widkeys. There was also a house on County Road 3. He had a road that went to the bay, and he rented boats by Horseshoe Road. The road was put in after we built.
Dad was ready to build in the spring/early summer of 1947. I was nine years old.
We got ready to come up for two weeks. We had the 40 Mercury with a trailer on and loaded the trailer with a 12 x 14 army tent, a big toolbox, two cots to sleep on, a 3/4 bed spring, blankets, pillows, a two-burner kerosene stove, pots and pans, shovels, axes, buck saw, a two-man saw, cement box, an outhouse he had cut that was ready to nail together, and some groceries. On top of the car he had an extension and step ladder, and a carrier rack on the back of the car with a big cooler, which had all the refrigerator foods. We also had a stainless-steel water pail and dippers for drinking. How he got all that stuff in and on the car is beyond me. We left home at 6:30 a.m. and it took us three hours and 45 minutes to get to the cabin.
The first thing we did was pull out a 200-foot tape measure to see what lots were ours. We had to figure out how to get in because there were so many trees and we had to cut brush down to make a driveway. We ended up going around trees halfway between the lake and the road. There was a small area with no trees or brush and that’s where we pitched the tent. Dad dug a hole for the outhouse and set it up ready to use and then he put the picnic table together. Now we had a cozy place.
The next morning everyone started cleaning brush. Dad hired a guy to dig the basement and would come the next day. While waiting for him we went to check on the lumber materials. We got two buckets of water from the neighbor for drinking and bought a quart of milk. We then stopped and saw a guy named Don White to see if he would help dad put the footings in. After the basement was dug, Don set up forms for footings. We found out the hole wasn’t deep enough, so we went down the road three miles to a neighboring farmer (Dobbins) who let us use his team of horses. While dad ran the team of horses and dug the hole deeper, the horses spooked and ran into a tree that broke the yolk between the horses. Dad wired it together with a 2 x 4 and took the horses and wagon back to the farmer. He apologized to the farmer and the farmer said it was OK.
The next morning Don returned and he and dad put in all the footings. A truck pulled up really early with sand, cement, and blocks. They had a 50-gallon drum and we kids had to haul water from the lake to fill the drum. Dad mixed all the cement by hand in a cement box. When he put the cement in the wheelbarrow, he couldn’t push it because the metal wheel would sink in the sand. Using a piece of fire hose, he cut it open and wrapped it around the wheel, using wire to hold it on. Then it worked in the sand. Dad hauled the cement over to the forms and dumped it while Don leveled it. It took half a day just to mix the cement for the forms.
The next day, Don came back and they started to put cement blocks up. Dad mixed the mortar by hand and carried all the cement blocks over to Don so he could put the wall up. It took a little over one day to put the cement walls up. That afternoon we went to the Pine River sawmill and dad bought the 8 x 8 beams that went across the basement to hold the floor joists up. We also bought the joists and sheeting. That was the only new lumber he bought – all the rest was from old garages we tore down.
By the end of the second week, we had the cabin built. All the roofing was on, and all the window and door frames were in. Then he just stuck the windows into the frames and secured them with boards.
We took the tent down and packed up and went home. Dad was on a two-week vacation, and the cabin was completely closed in.
For several years we would come back up whenever dad had a few days off and work on the cabin.
Next door, we dug a basement and put in a well, where we went to get water. They didn’t close the basement in for two years, but once they did, that’s where they lived for a couple years. We would carry water 200 feet to our place the next summer. That’s when we started to stay in the cabin. We had two beds, a table, and chairs. Someone gave dad a stove, so he converted it into a LP gas and put it in the kitchen. Someone also gave him a kitchen sink, so he hung it on the kitchen wall. We had a five-gallon pail under the drain to catch the water. When it filled, we took it outside to dump.
For the ice in the icebox (refrigerator), we built an icehouse to store the ice in the summertime. We used old sawdust (since it worked the best) from Robinson’s Store to pack around the ice to preserve it. Ted Robinson was wounded in the war, and lost one eye, lost one arm from his elbow down, and lost two fingers on the other side. He was quite the man and sold many things in his little store.
That winter Dad got an ice saw and cut the ice from the lake. Us kids had to pull the sled with ice on it until we had about 40 ice blocks. Dad would put two ice blocks in the cement box and put one block on the sled and hooked it onto the cement box. We had a long rope to hook onto the car and he’d pull it to the icehouse. We packed saw dust around the ice, and the ice lasted until about July.
We put electricity in about 1951. That same summer Art Dahlm (dad’s uncle) visited for a week. They talked about adding on a bedroom. Art said, “Let’s go get the lumber and do it.” So they went and got cement blocks and lumber. They put the cement blocks up and built a 10 x 15 bedroom, and had it done and closed in within the week before Art went back home.
By 1955 the cabin was complete.
He added a cement/stone wall towards the lake in 1956-1957. He had a dump truck deliver a load of big rock and he split every rock by hand, using a sledgehammer to split it. He mixed his own cement and put the wall in. He put the furnace in about 1970.
My parents would come up every time dad had a few days off work. Dad bought the 1967 station wagon and each time they came up it would be filled with food, clothing, and supplies. In 1969, dad retired from the St. Paul Fire Department, and they would stay longer at the cabin.
In 1998 I built the porch. Mom always wanted a porch. She enjoyed it a lot. Every time I came up I would help Dad around the cabin.
In 2002, Mom died at the age of 95. I brought dad up a few times after and he said he didn’t want to come up anymore. He missed mom too much. Too many memories. In 2010, dad died at the age of 103. I then took over the cabin. But before dad passed, I had built a 2.5 car garage and remodeled the whole cabin, inside and outside. I built new kitchen cupboards and had a new stone wall put in towards the lake. We used the same rock dad split so many years ago. I also put in the sprinkling system, did landscaping, and had a new well put in. We had a cement wall put in, in front of the basement garage.
There was a lot of hard work and love put into working on the cabin. How we love that cabin and the area. It’s so relaxing there. We hope to have the cabin in the family for many years.