My ethnicity and ancestry have been declared in previous posts; the Norwegian and Swedish essays constituting a sort of prelude to the time when my grandparents show up on the scene. Now I’ll step into the decades of my life from the 1900s to the 2020s that include me, a family member, and/or my home base of Koochiching County, Minnesota.

Decades, the blog series, is intended to cover the years from 1900 until I stop writing in 2029 or thereabouts. The 10-year spans/decades will proceed as follows: 1900-1909, 1910-1919 and so on, up to sometime in this decade of 2020-2029. I do not even appear in person on this extended scene until the last year of the fourth decade of the twentieth century—and now we’re in the third decade of the twenty-first.

Writing this, I marvel that I am old enough to consider almost 100 years, a century, of a family and a place that began linking two continents, and now includes cultures spanning much of the world. And I despair of this knowledge also since it places my life near its end!

You may wonder why I choose to begin the main body of my story in 1900, the first decade of the twentieth century when grandma Magnhild had already arrived late in the 1800s, and my father would not arrive in the United States until 1910. But, you see, Koochiching County was the home of my formative years and therefore a sort of main character in Decades. Also, because of a book, I can share its story beginning in the decade my grandfather Torgus arrived there. (So very many of the things in my life have happened because of a book. You’ll see as we go along.)

The Book Tale: Thirty plus years ago, I was briefly living back Minnesota after a number of years in New Mexico and, among other endeavors, deep into one of my several attempts to become a serious writer. It involved writing a mystery story set in northern Minnesota. As would any good writer at that time, I began at a library, looking for books that could offer authentic historical and geographical background for the occasional murder I intended to include (details for the murders to be garnered from my already growing Nordic Noir library!).

Long story short, I found Koochiching by historian Hiram M. Drache; Koochiching County being not only where I grew up, on land still in our family, but also the likely setting for part my mystery, Bitter Sanctuary, (a title you may not use because it’s a great one, and perhaps I’ll still write the book). I read Koochiching with fascination and pleasure and, when preparing to leave Minnesota, I stopped at the library to return the book and find out where I could perhaps buy a copy. The librarian, after a bit of research, informed me she had no record of the book being part of their collection and said I should just keep it. I’ve included this to convince you I did not steal this fine, well-written and quite worn book sitting next to me on my desk.

Another aside: I feel such sorrow when imagining the approach of a bookless world. I will always bring this up as long as reading and writing remain among my manageable skills. Books have figuratively (indeed, almost literally) saved my life—reading being my solace in the worst of times (and my pleasure in the best of times!) My great-grandchildren will probably have no clue of what I mean when I say reading has been what has gotten me through depression, anxiety, fear, sleeplessness, being broke, jobless, lonely and so on and so forth. What will be their substitute?

A first full essay will be based on Drache’s Koochiching which begins by reviewing the happenings of the region before 1900s, but primarily focuses on the decade between 1900 and 1909. Fortunately, Drache also wrote a follow-up history covering the years in Koochiching County and immediate surrounding territory from 1910 up until 1939, the years between my 7-year-old father’s arrival and my birth. (This volume, Taming the Wilderness, I could order from a used/rare book website, and it’s a brand-new copy.)

My home was bottom left, continuing southwest past Northome and right on the border with Itasca County.

Personal observations, memories related to this time, related documents or historical date from other sources will be included here and there in essays, as pertinent to olden times or for my pleasure. My writing for Decades will all be in essay form; an essay being, according to Webster’s, “an analytic or interpretative literary composition usually dealing with its subject from a limited or personal point of view.” I included the definition just to refresh memories of oldish people who have not been ‘assigned’ a college essay for a very long time, and to introduce the word ‘essay’ to youngsters of the AI generation who will have no idea what I’m talking about.

And…since this essay has turned out to be another introduction to Decades, I’ll close with yet one more explanatory paragraph. I want ‘writer’ to be chiseled into the imaginary gravestones on my non-existent grave. Therefore, it is my intention to make my last literary effort brilliant or at least semi-fascinating reading for a range of interests, well-researched when appropriate, carefully edited, and with not one single sentence of AI slop. I want it to be something my great-grandchildren and/or current readers will dip into from time to time, on-line or in blog-book form. Truth be told, my biggest hope is that I will have fun and satisfaction in telling these small stories from an ordinary, but nevertheless most interesting life, lived over a long time and in a variety of locations. And that it will keep my brain from over-mushiness; after all, it is the kind of activity that all the advisors advise super-agers (!) to follow.

P.S. Sometimes though, I wonder why on earth this is considered a desirable project when I might be happier simply watching reruns of all 30 or 40 seasons of Silent Witness for the remainder of my life. It’s a reasonable question isn’t it?