A Sawmill and a Small Home on Falk’s Farm

There came a time in perhaps about 1918, when an elderly bachelor in St. Mathias Township lay dying. He owned 160 acres of wooded land that was located just south of Brainerd and to the east of Fort Ripley. The property had an operating sawmill and a few outbuildings on it. When the bachelor died, his will was read and great excitement accrued. The will decreed that it was his wish that his property and everything on it should be bequeathed to the poorest family in the township. The determination of who that family might be was left to the discretion of the township elders. They met and conferred, and finally announced that the very poorest of the poor—and there were many poor then—was the Dan Guild family. Floyd and Clarence, who by then were teenagers of fourteen and sixteen years, (considered men already in those days) were very excited about this inheritance because it meant they would all fare better immediately and well into the future, if not forever. They could not believe their luck. Indeed, they had all been saved from their pitiless poverty by mere fortune. Olive was ecstatic but predicted, “Dan will ruin it, somehow.” At this time, Bessie, Floyd and Clarence’s natural sister had already left home to marry Ira Ringering, who had just returned from World War I. Floyd’s other natural sister, Pearl, had passed away from diphtheria at age 16 a year before. Dan took title and ownership of his windfall inheritance. As there was no residence on the property, Dan and Olive moved, with Floyd and Clarence, into the granary on the property. You can imagine trying to turn a windowless granary into a residential household. They sealed up the open slat-work to make it livable in the winter and just camped out inside. A large sawmill, which was elaborate and fitted to many applications, had been included in the inherited property list, and would have been available to run. No one remembers if Dan attempted to operate it at that time or not, but he definitely knew how to. One day, not long after their good fortune, around 1918, Dan decided to mortgage the land for $800 to buy 8 cows to start a dairy herd. A poor farmer by everyone’s account, his herd failed to produce a profit, and Dan soon defaulted on the loan and the bank gave a notice of foreclosure, which stated that because Dan had missed on one regular payment the bank had the option to foreclose on the loan and confiscate his property. Unfortunately, the bank no longer trusted Dan to pay and foreclosed, immediately. Floyd and his brother Clarence wanted to cut the birch trees on that land (there were more trees on those 160 acres than could ever be cut according to Arnie Guild) and sell them for their pulp to pay off the mortgage, but Dan refused saying, “Those gul darn trees have been there for umpteen years and I will not now nor will I ever cut them down.” Floyd and Clarence tried to convince him to no avail. They were so disappointed and disgusted with their father’s folly and arbitrariness that they threatened to leave home. But he was stubborn, stubborn, stubborn, stubborn. He just said, “The trees stay. You go ahead and go if you don’t like it.” And they did. Dan lost everything to the bank for want of $200—the farm, the land, the trees, even the cows, and sadly, his sons. After he had squandered everything but the sawmill, he asked permission to build a small house (as a squatter) on Harold Falk’s large farm on St. Mathias Road in return for sawing Falk’s cleared-timber logs into boards. Falk obliged him. Letting people live on their land was a basic kindness people showed the poor in those days. The large sawmill was capable of sawing up to 36-inch diameter logs into boards. He used the sawdust from the sawmill operation to pack and preserve ice blocks cut from a frozen lake on Falk’s property in the winter until summer, when he sold it. The 103 acre farm (still owned by Marvin Falk in 2001) had a large portion of Round Lake on it and two fish-filled rivers running through it. The house Dan built was a small, two-story, tar-paper-covered building of the plainest construction, with one large room up and one large room down. This is the house Iris, Merlin, and Bernie remember. Living and sleeping quarters were separated by tarpaulins hung from ropes. There was also a good-sized barn built for cows and pigs sometime after the house was built.