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OwenChristensen
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# Posted: 26 May 2013 07:38am - Edited by: OwenChristensen
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Lets post scans of old childhood pictures or tell a interesting story from that time period of our lives.
This was me and my little second cousin in 1966, I was 16. The shack is our cabin on the same land where my place is now. It was a little farm house that my dad moved in from miles away. We had just planted 240,000 pine trees six years earlier, the little tree just in front of the pickup is one of them. . I have since tore down that old shack and built new.
this is 1966
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those same trees today
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cabingal3
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# Posted: 26 May 2013 11:24pm
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Gosh Owen.thats a great photo.love the shack as u call it.i look at it as a wonderful looking homey place.great pics and stories.
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silverwaterlady
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# Posted: 27 May 2013 01:22am - Edited by: silverwaterlady
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This is a photo of my Husband taken at the logging camp he lived in with his Mother. She was the cook. He is holding a rabbit he trapped. He lived there two winters in about 1945. He was homeschooled. His sister would bring his lessons via horse drawn sleigh on Saturdays. He would complete all his schoolwork on Monday and Tuesday and than spend the rest of the week trapping and hunting with the one shot per day his mother gave him for his 22! He would send his furs to The Hudson's Bay Trading Post. He made enough money to buy a bike.
One night he and the loggers were eating dinner when he heard a scampering outside he had not used his one shot that day and jumped up from the table grabbed his 22 and ran out the cabin door. He didn't see anything and sadly returned to the dinner table. Everyone around the table was unusually quiet. Thinking he was in big trouble with Mom he looked down at his plate. She said "Donnie do you know what you just did?" He said "Yes Mom I'm sorry". She said "I don't think you know what you did,look down at your foot". He looked down and saw that he had his moms fresh baked pie all over his shoe! In his haste he had run out the door stepping into the pies she had set on the door step to cool. The cabin erupted in laughter and this story became one of the famous logging camp stories.
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OwenChristensen
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# Posted: 27 May 2013 06:26am
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That's a neat story. My grandma was a cook in a camp also. Logging history, don't get me started. I love it.
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hattie
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# Posted: 28 May 2013 10:55am
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silverwaterlady - that is a GREAT story! *LOL*
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trollbridge
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# Posted: 28 May 2013 12:04pm
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 Hmmmm...do they have to be cabin related??? Lol 
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Martian
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# Posted: 28 May 2013 01:14pm
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Quoting: trollbridge Hmmmm...do they have to be cabin related??? Lol
It didn't say cabin related; so to test the waters.....
As a kid of 6, in 1956, I wasn't old enough to drive the tractor; that was my brother's job. He was 9. No, my job was to be there to get help if he got injured. After all, there wasn't much to keep him from falling off that old tractor. Mostly he pulled a Brushhog type mower keeping the weeds down on our parents 300 acre cattle farm, but there were times he'd get to pull a disc around the hayfield. I thought he had the greatest job in the world, but mine sucked. We'd be out at the pasture, as we called it, from early morning until late evening, five days a week. With my mother's permission, I started saddling up her cow horse, and passed the time on horseback. Eventually, I became bored, and looked for a way to spice things up.
There were a lot of jackrabbits in that part of Texas back then, and since my brother was making the weeds 6" tall, they were easy to spot. So, I decided to start chasing them. The thing about riding a cow horse is they anticipate the target animal's moves...you better anticipate the cow horse's moves or you might end up on the ground! Me and old Shorty got really good at herding jackrabbits! He could cut on a dime, and I was like a monkey strapped to his back. We'd zig and zag at a full gallop across the pasture. It was a blast!
I'd been playing this game for a couple of weeks when it came time to round up the cows. Mom saddles up Shorty, and she, my brother, and my dad ride out to gather the herd and drive them to the pens where I wait to slam the gate behind them. There's always one or two yearlings that try to make a break for it, and that's where the good cow horse earns his keep. Well, one of the yearling steers decides to make a run for it right in front of my mother. She spurs Shorty and they take off after the steer. My mother was an excellent rider, and that's a good thing because as they approach the steer, a rabbit jumps up. She's thinking Shorty is going to turn in on the steer, but he's thinking "RABBIT!" and off he goes... completely forgetting about the steer. My mother had leaned for his turn to the steer which put her really off balance for his turn in the opposite direction!
Now all this is happening about 50 yards from the pens; so most of the work of gathering the herd had already been done. But, when one goes, they all go, and the whole herd scatters while my mother is struggling to regain her balance, and get Shorty, who is in a dead run after the rabbit, turned back to the cows. I knew my days of chasing rabbits were over.
The next three years with no rabbit chasing had a profound effect on my life. I still spent my days being there just in case, but I began to read instead of ride. Reading opened a whole new world of adventure beyond being a jackrabbit cowboy. Then I became old enough to drive the tractor, and learned how good I'd had it as a "kid'.
Tom
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naturelover66
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# Posted: 28 May 2013 06:35pm
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Loved your stories Tom and Silverwaterlady... 
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OwenChristensen
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# Posted: 28 May 2013 07:29pm
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those are good. I know all too well when a cutting horse takes a hard turn when you're thinking something else, can you say head in gate?
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Smawgunner
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# Posted: 28 May 2013 08:11pm
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....I got bad grades in 6th grade. I was going to run away and build a cabin by the river. Got down there, tried to throw some logs together and gave up after 15 minutes only to return home and take my licks
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trollbridge
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# Posted: 31 May 2013 05:55pm
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This isn't a story, but more of a memory.
I grew up in the suburbs of Kansas City. Summers were hot, and at that time kids ran free all over the neighborhood from morning until evening. Wondering if anybody else remembers the ice cream truck tooling around in their neighborhoods? Those little tiny trucks that played the little jingle and had pictures of all the treats displayed all over? Such a fond memory! We would hear it way off in the distance, and stop playing to listen. If the sound was getting closer we would rush home to beg for money and then run down the streets, dimes in hand, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from!
Are those days gone, or are those cute little trucks still roaming the streets in some lucky place?
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OwenChristensen
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# Posted: 31 May 2013 06:40pm
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I was twelve. Dad had just moved the old farm house to our land. The same land I now have. We lived 75 miles away in Duluth. Dad said it would be ok if me and my cousin of the same age, stayed be ourselves and finished planting the last 20,000 pine seedlings by hand. The first 200,000 were planted with a tractor and pull behind planter. Ted, my cousin of the same age, and I had our horses and a bunch of canned goods. No one near us by miles, we planted and hunted, we took off on a twenty mile horse trip. It took a couple days. We stayed overnight in a thunderstorm under the Kettle River bridge. The next day we made it to an abandoned RR. depot. We brought our horses right into the lobby. We were wet, cold and tired, so we slept right on our horses, and ate cold Dinty Morse stew, chunks of lard and all. After a few hours there we headed out for a nice lake. We swam with our horses, ate blueberries and then headed back to the cabin. No one ever knew we were gone.
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trollbridge
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# Posted: 31 May 2013 06:49pm
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That's awesome! The kettle river bridge at 12...I would have been too scared!
Cold Dinty Moore....chunks of lard and all!!!! OMG...that's ridiculously funny and gross all at the same time!!!!
No ice cream truck?!?
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OwenChristensen
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# Posted: 31 May 2013 11:22pm
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No just blueberries. When we got back to work planting trees, we got a ton of tick on us each day. Because it was all tall grass at that time. We put a hundred of the buggers in an envelope, flagged down the mailman and send them to my aunt in the Twin Cities. When we got home we laughed as we had to ask how she like our letter. She said it was empty, did we forget the letter? Oops! Sorry whoever.
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ShabinNo5
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# Posted: 1 Jun 2013 08:05am
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We still have an Ice Cream truck that wonders the streets of Lino Lakes. For some reason our grand-daughter can sleep though a thunder storm, but wakes up to the ice cream bell in a few seconds
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trollbridge
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# Posted: 1 Jun 2013 09:43am - Edited by: trollbridge
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Seriously? Lino Lakes has an ice cream truck?? That's awesome! We moved to Wayzata when I was 9 1/2 and I never saw one again until 2001 when one came jingling along at the beach in Florida. I was like "OMG! Stop that truck!" We all had to get an ice cream treat...like it or not! Lol...as if! I bought everybody ice cream and it just tickled my insides to have that experience again! Kids were like " You're so weird, Mom!" But ya know, not a one turned down their treat Cost a bit more than it did during the 60's though-would have been a lot of dimes!
Owen,
That is just sick!!!!! Ha ha ha...your aunt was so lucky they got away...a little turd you where!! Ticks creep me out...they like me way, way, too, too much-sick little blood suckers! Can't mention where I found a tick once.........even though that would be a story!  Last weekend I found one deer tick and one wood tick...yuuuck.....still makes me feel buggy!
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OwenChristensen
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# Posted: 1 Jun 2013 12:38pm
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I'll bet that mailman wondered how they jumped onto his car.
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trollbridge
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# Posted: 1 Jun 2013 08:29pm
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Um, yeah!
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exsailor
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# Posted: 3 Jun 2013 12:05pm
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There is one that still drives through my neighborhood. It is a welcome treat after working on a car in the driveway during the summer heat. I guess kids never really grow up.
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trollbridge
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# Posted: 3 Jun 2013 12:42pm
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 Oooh...you are sooo lucky!! Life would be a bore if we had to really grow up, wouldn't it???!
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TheCabinCalls
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# Posted: 4 Jun 2013 01:15pm
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There are so many great memories of the cabin of yesteryear...
- The first glance across lake mille lacs on the narrow highway
- The last turn onto the dusty lane
- The tree canopy and wildlife checking us out
- Playing kick the can in the hot sun
- Playing ghost in the grave yard at night
- Playing cards on the screened porch while loons and tree frogs filled the night with their music
- Waking up at 6 in the morning before the fog lifted to head out to the far side of the lake to fish
- The sound of a 9.9 motor and the boat skimming the water. My dads hair blowing in the wind. It was too noisy to talk, but we communicated...
- Taking the row boat out (then getting stuck because of shifting storm winds)
- Wandering through the woods thinking that I was the first to set foot in this area
- First pocket knife and cutting limbs and marshmallow sticks
- Taking a trip into town. General store; leeches, ice cream and minnows
- Catching crawdads in the shallows
- Cleaning fish in the fish house. The work, smell and night stillness
- Outhouse trips in the dark
- Pumping water in the morning, the smell of bacon for breakfast
We didn't have digital cameras back then so I will have to locate and scan in the images...
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silverwaterlady
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# Posted: 4 Jun 2013 02:46pm - Edited by: silverwaterlady
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Here is a fun and quite interesting memory from my childhood. Bet you've never seen anything quite like this:
The garage my Dad built in the late 1950's with the help of my Grandfather and Uncle. It was the most unique garage it had a turntable in the floor. Dad would pull his car into the garage. Get out and push a button that would activate the turntable and turn the car facing out!
When we were kids we would stand on the turntable and flick the switch. It was fun. I'll never forget the time a UPS driver saw the car spinning around in the garage. He just stood there was his mouth open, speechless! LOL!
The garage floor turntable
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trollbridge
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# Posted: 4 Jun 2013 03:23pm - Edited by: trollbridge
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SWL....that is too cool! Your father sounds like quite the man my dad would have loved that.
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trollbridge
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# Posted: 4 Jun 2013 03:32pm
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Thecabincalls,
When I was a kid we use to camp at the KOA in Garrison. I have fond memories of going fishing on Lake Mille Lacs. I remember going to the little candy and ice cream shoppe in town...is that the same one you speak of getting ice cream at? I wonder if it is still there? I also remember going to church in town. I remember the priest at that time being very kind. I wonder if the KOA is still there? The lake was always so choppy and full of whitecaps!
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countryred
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# Posted: 4 Jun 2013 04:10pm
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One of my fondness memories as a kid was cooking hotdogs with my dad. We would check our trap lines or trotlines, depending on the season. We would build a fire on top of the bluff overlooking the river.
As a kid, getting to build the fire, listening to the cedar limbs pop and crack was pretty cool.
One time we caught just a possum. We quickly dispatched him with a .22 short to the head and laid him in back of the car. While driving home, it turned out that Mr possum wasn't dead,just temporarily knocked out. He was crawling up the backseat headed our way. I was about 7-8 years old and was yelling at dad to pull over.
A bigger gun took him out but still to this day I remember how tough those possums are.
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OwenChristensen
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# Posted: 4 Jun 2013 06:34pm
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A turntable roundhouse! Wow. That is cool.
Good stories.
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cottonpicker
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# Posted: 6 Aug 2013 11:45am
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A possum will play "POSSUM" on you.
As a teenager I shot a possum out of a tree with a 12 gauge shot gun.
Too heavy to carry around so I deposited him at the base of the tree.
2 hours later I returned to retrieve him only to find NO possum!!!
That sucker done played "POSSUM" on me (& saved his life).
Another of many hard lessons learned in a country boy's life.
COTTON PICKER
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PatrickH
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# Posted: 7 Aug 2013 07:41am
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My parents split when we where young so we would spend summers in MT on a mountain with my dad. I was around 10 I think and they had built a rope swing out back,basically a tree on the edge of a dropoff (maybe 10 feet) with a rope tied to the branch a stick to hold onto as you swing over the dropoff.this was fun for a while then we started throwing people around to speed it up. Then we invented the twist swing. I would hold on and my two brothers would grab my feet and twist me and throw me out and you would spin as you went around the dropoff. Then they really twisted me knots on top of nots in the rope threw me out the rope untwisted hard and snapped me off and threw me midflight landed on my face knocked me out (they said i bounced) woke up and couldnt catch my breath one brothers yelling hold my breathe the others telling me to take a deep breathe I thought I broke my nose my entire forehead swelled and was bleeding my stepmom who was a nurse says you'll be alright just walk it off. Yeah right just look at me now.
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Gary O
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# Posted: 11 Dec 2014 10:23am - Edited by: Gary O
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As far back as I can recall is year one I think, maybe year two.
Not much inside time.
Played in the front yard.
Wasn't much of a 'yard'.
Basically a place to park a car or two and some weeds and fir trees...and dirt.
Man, I loved playing in the dirt.
Had a dog, but seems the chickens were around me most.
A lot, really
They don't pet well
Got pecked a couple times.
Hurts
Funny what you get used to.
Native residents dubbed me 'Poops with Chickens'
Thing is, chickens don't make the best of pets, since they generly end up on the dinner table....and eggs tend to come outta their hind end at the oddest times.
I remember one spring day. I was up the hill at gramma's.
We were in her back yard
She was gathering up these chickens
Only she wasn't petting them
She was twirling them above her head like they were lariats, then a flick of her wrist and their body would go a sailin', heads popped off.
Fascinating
Scary fascinating
Things is, them headless chickens would take off on the dead run, jumpin', flyin', runnin'.....nowhere...sometimes at me.
An there was gramma.
Sweet, pillowy armed gramma, a bucket of blind eyed chicken heads on one side of her chair, and a pile of feathers all over the place.
Chicken carcasses strewn about the back yard.
Kept an eye on gramma a while after that.
Things went back to normal.
I'd see her hangin' laundry out as usual, hummin' a hymn, them massive upper arms all draped an flappin' like she was bat gramma, preparing for take off.
Gotta eat, I learned.
An gramma?
Massacring my feathered friends was nuthin' personal, turns out.
Just production
at home.
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Jim in NB
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# Posted: 12 Dec 2014 06:22am
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When I was about three or four my older brother and the neighbours son were lighting matches and throwing in the ashtray in the neighbours cottage. I wanted to do it too but they wouldn't let me. They left and left the matches behind .... I grabbed them and went out behind the cottage and started lighting them - threw one into the old outhouse they had converted in the boat motor and gas storage shed ... created a great big fire. The shit sure hit the fan ... people running and screaming. I was sent back to our cottage and passed my Dad on the way by ... all he said was when he got back he was going to burn my fingers. Anyways once things settled down they figured out what had happened and I think all I got was a talking too about not playing with matches ... I have no idea what happened to Bob and Jim! So many stories from the cottage as a kid ... The picture is of me that summer.
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