25 Years Ago - 1985

This issue, February 14, of the Staples World marks the beginning of its 96th continuous year of publication. The paper was started in the new village of Presto (Staples) in 1890 with the village attorney, Andrew J. Clark as the paper’s founder. He called the paper “The Presto Change.”

Wi n - ners from Staples at Aitkin Speech Tournam ent last Saturday were Keith Drake, Renee Des Marais and Scott Gardner.

50 Years Ago - 1960

$10,000 remains to be raised in the community to assure immediate construction of the building to house the Ringer Staples Company. To date 360 business firms and individuals have purchased stock in the corporation.

Mark Evans, SHS band director and Les Dehlin, SHS choir reported today that their fund raising concert netted a profit of $588. Which the students are donating to the Ringer Staples building fund drive.

Members of the Staples Fire Department were called to the stockyards west of Staples last Friday about 12:15 p.m. to extinguish the fire at the home occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Olaf Sather. According to Earle Black, Staples Fire Chief, the cause was a chimney fire.

REMINISCENCES: My husband has done this to me twice now. Tuesday evenings are our “date nights” and that means I don’t cook. We sit and talk over bills (typical topic for all good dates) and how we spent the day while enjoying someone else’s cooking. We also talk about the column I prepare every Tuesday morning. So twice now he has said to me, “No, you’re wrong, I heard it this way,” when obviously, I had heard it another way. Last Tuesday he said, “It was a locomotive that went off the trestle bridge at Hayden. They never found it in the mud. What’s this about a barge.”

I’m beginning to think that all the people my age had fathers and grandfathers who worked for the Northern Pacific and that they spent a lot of time around the water cooler or their favorite watering hole. For instance, I was crazy-go-nuts happy with a response from a classmate named Susan Yuzer Robinson. I believe her father was a “rail.“ She was a beautiful girl (a point of envy) and nice too - but, she emailed the legend the way she heard it as, “an engine going off the trestle in Hayden and disappearing. That’s the lake I had always heard had quicksand.” So, maybe…her father worked with my husband’s father on the NP!

My son Steve told me last weekend about Greg Leifermann’s Staples History class when he was in 8th grade. He said that Greg had quashed the myth that an engine had gone off the rails on the pier at Dower. I should hope so because there were no rails on that pier - ever. The rails at Dower were near the main line where they are now, the Dower Siding by the stockyards. The pump at the start of the pier sucked water from the center of the lake and sent it down a pipeline into town where the railroad maintained its own towers for “watering” the steam engines. The route of the pipeline is in fact, the Dower Lake Road, established when they constructed the pipeline.

There were many responses to my roller rink at Batcher’s Opera Hall story as well as the Dower and Hayden phenomenon. Where’s there smoke…? This is the reminisce column but this time I’m going to share someone else’s memories and hope you enjoy them as much as I did. Thank you Vernon Drake for bringing them to me. You bumped the third in my series to next week.

Vern told me he went to Batcher’s roller rink and was learning to skate with a girl who fell down tripping him in the process. All the oncoming skaters fell on him. His second attempt was a long time later when he had healed. He said it was hot and they used to open the windows to the north. When he attempted to stop, a skill he had not mastered yet, he flung out his arms catching the frames of the windows with his hands while his upper body, neck and face were out the window overlooking the sidewalk below.

I will share his other bits with you in the future but, Vern wants to know if anyone remembers “a traveling magician who hypnotized a lady during the day, and had her sleeping on a bed in the front window of Huff’s furniture store on main street so that everyone could see her. They would then take her to the theatre and wake her up during their show?” Thanks again, Vern, I just love it. Call 218 894-3742 or email stevenmargo77@ msn.com.