Thursday August 22, 2019

John J. Hovorka

A Backwoods Wilderness Filosopher

by Steven Reynolds

 

John J. Hovorka was born in Canby, Minnesota in 1911 to Thomas V. Hovorka, of New Prague, Minnesota, and Christine (Balata), of Rice Lake, Minnesota, joining his three-year older brother Thomas (Tom) J. Hovorka. In 1918, Christina gave birth to John and Tom’s youngest brother, Bonnament, in Canby, on July 14, 1918 and died six days later, on July 20, 1918. Against his father’s wishes, one of his mother’s five sisters took Bonnament to raise as her own, leaving ‘T.V.’ to raise John and Tom by himself.

According to the Roseau County Heritage Book, Bonnament wrote: 

“What drew T.V. Hovorka to [Palmville] is not known, other than perhaps low-cost land, and that his older brother Vendelin Hovorka proceeded him. We do know that T.V. and Vendelin disagreed on T.V.’s choice of the type of land and much banter sparked their visits. Either a lack of cash-cropping soil or preference for the animals, caused T.V. to primarily raise sheep.

In any event, due to acquisitions by T.V. and John, the property grew to 225 plus acres and served as hunting headquarters for a number of hunters. The deer harvest we know was substantial and "The Hovorka Swamp" was written up by Ron Scharra of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Tom left the farm at an early age with various jobs and farms in the Twin Cities area, and finally a farm in Shakopee. He married Florence Stemmer; they had a son and daughter, and two grandchildren.

Johnny never married and spent his entire life on the family farm in Palmville, serving several years on the Palmvile Township Board. 

Bonnament Hovorka-Heyda married Ruth A. Pond, in 1940, and had four children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.”

The Hovorkas, father and son, lived on their farm four miles west of the Palmville Township Hall, a one-room schoolhouse at the intersection of Roseau County 8 and 125, raising primarily sheep in ‘wolf country,’ where, I understood, for many years more bounties were paid in Roseau County, concerning wolf depredation, than any other county in Minnesota. (I suspect the Hovorkas ‘made a killing’.)

Johnny was different than many of his country peers, in as much as he could not only read but he wrote prolifically as well, going as far as publishing and selling subscriptions to two known pamphlets of his own creation: “The Northwest Radical,” and “The Golden Era of Liberty” that he printed on a hand-cranked mimeograph machine, using ink he made himself from kerosene and lampblack, and in which he decried capitalism and fascism, and extolled socialism -- a matter which society here took a dim view. 

  I have long written that had John Hovorka lived in an urban environment, such as Minneapolis or Saint Paul, he would’ve been melted into the populace, but living as he did in Roseau County, especially in rural Palmville Township where sheep outnumbered residents, living and dead, where many homes were still without electricity, had party-line telephones, no running water i.e., no plumbing/indoor bathrooms, where roads were poor to non-existent; churchgoers were too numerous (as were republicans), and John was neither.  

“John was a pure democrat at heart. He as too independent to ever have been happy on a Soviet collective farm, and probably put out the party line just to annoy his conservative neighbors.”--           Joe McDonnell, The Raven, Volume 2 Issue 2, 1995

 John Hovorka began publishing his 'pamphlets' as he called them, in January of 1935. He wrote all of his stories and in later years developed all his own photographs in his darkroom in his house. His penchant for local stories, reportedly almost got him killed when he took a picture of a couple someplace, who were not married to one another, leading to a threat on his life should he ever publish it. The threat apparently carried over to stopping publication of "The Northwest Radical," his original publication. Sidestepping disaster, he merely created another publication and continued following his passion, writing this announcement:

While I was looking for Anna Gulbrandson Calvert, who Hovorka mentions in this article, as " ... a famous poetess and one-time nationally known singer of Norse ballads," (I thought somewhat facetiously), when I find who, but ‘Bruce Calvert,’ who Hovorka calls one of his friends ... and an article of some length here. https://historicindianapolis.com/misc-monday-the-world-league-for-a-sane-christmas/ 

What follows is a sample of Hovorka's work: 

Johnny portrayed himself as he wished, and didn't care who knew it. He was living large in a remote area of Northwest Minnesota, like it or not.