20. april 2023 Louis Palm Stories: Part 3

Stories of The Louis Palms: Part 3

  As Told by Raymond Palm  1923-1937

 

   Forty years ago, Janet Strandlie, of Thief River Falls, Minnesota acted as a caregiver for a week starting on February 26, 1983 for my uncle, the late Raymond Palm of Roseau, Minnesota, who at the age of 20 became paralysed from the waist down as a result of a tree-climbing accident in 1932. Raymond became a successful jeweler, watchmaker, and gunsmith. He had an adjoining living space and shop in a house on Center Street East, in which he lived with his sister, Irene, and her husband John. Raymond ‘walked on’ in 2002 at age 91, after surviving 71 years in a wheelchair, at one point becoming a spinal cord injury survivor record holder.

 Janet writes:
   “These are Raymond’s words, written as fast as possible as he wove the tales and brought up story after story. This was done over one week in 1983.” (WW: I've composed their conversation chronologically and added historical details for family history seekers.)

   Raymond Palm said, “I remember when I was about ten or twelve years old, I walked from home (NW 1/4 Section 2 Palmville) with my dad to the Bethlehem Church (in Golden Valley Township) for a funeral (2 mi east, 3 mi south and 1.5 mi east) for an old bachelor, a Steen, a blacksmith who lived over near Skime. That wasn’t unusual that we’d walk that far for something!"

   “Another time I was maybe 15-years old, my dad had shot a deer ‘way back on a meadow west of camp, west of the Wilson Road where the grade is, (about 4-miles). Dad and I took off to haul the half of deer that was left. We got out there and saw some fresh deer track, so Dad was going to post and I was going to make a drive, but before he got to the posting place the deer came out. I shot and shot but couldn’t hit them. Oh, I had a poor gun!

   "The deer came out on Dad and he shot and got one, then we had a whole deer and a half to pull home! So we dressed it out and started hauling. We had lunch along, but that was gone ‘way before, so a couple miles from home we were getting pretty hungry. Dad took out his knife and cut off several slices of the freezing deer meat raw, and we ate it!"

   “In 1927, when Joseph Palm turned 29, he contracted polio. He became paralyzed and spent considerable time in the hospital before moving to the old Palm place to live with his mother, Ingeborg Palm, and his older brother Levi Palm. He married Anna Aasen in 1937. They lived on the farm with Levi for awhile, then moved to a farm in Grimstad."

   “About the same time, a man from Holt, Minnesota named Martin D. Davidson married a neighbor girl named Mable Lohre. Mable’s parents, John and Ostine Lohre, sold them one hundred and sixty acres in the SW corner of Section 2 in Palmville, for a nominal fee." 

The quarter adjoined Willie Palm’s quarter on the south line, just across the east-west township road to the Palmville Cemetery that was on Davidson's NE corner. Diagonally opposite it, on the SW corner was the Palmville District 44 West one-room schoolhouse. An unnamed creek entered its NW corner from the west, flowed east-northeasterly into Willie’s quarter. ‘Mickinock’ Creek (‘Mikinaak’ for snapping turtle in Ojibwemowin) entered the Davidson quarter on the south line and flowed northeast, east of Willie’s, and joined the south fork of the Roseau River a half mile west of Louis Palm’s.

   "Martin and Mable cleared a portion of the land to begin farming it. In addition, Martin found construction work off the farm for pay, constructing roads, driving a bulldozer, operating a rock crusher, and hauling gravel. Martin and Willie became good friends over the years and did a lot of hunting and trapping together."

"They hunted wolves and trapped for fur."  Willie Palm and his catch.

    “Clifford and Ervin were working down south on my homestead (Palmville Section SE 1/4 Sect 27). They had an old Essex Roadster with a Chevrolet motor and two transmissions, one forwards and one backwards, so it would really rev up. Anyway, they had driven it a ways before, then decided to go to Roseau. They got halfway, then started smelling something hot. It had flown out of gear so they had to get under it and switch the gears by hand. [Janet says: Oh this story is getting so complicated I can’t keep up!] Anyway, they had a lot of fun and adventures making one car out of several and experimenting with it!]"

   “In 1928, 19-year old Violet, Raymond’s oldest sister, left home to cook for a threshing camp crew in Osnabrock, North Dakota, where Willie and Raymond had been going out to work for two or three years. She met Guy Reynolds, from Iowa, and a year later she went to Des Moines, Iowa to be married."

   “In 1932, Grandma Ingeborg Palm died that summer, just before I got hurt. She died at home at the age of 76 years. Her sons Levi and Joe lived at home with her."

   “In 1934, Martin’s wife Mable died of cancer; she had been sick a couple years. He remained on the farm and yet worked for others, off of it too."

   “There were hunting seasons in those days, but the Palms pretty much made their own rules when it when they needed or wanted fresh meat. They never wasted any meat or never sold any. They hunted for their own use and as they needed it. Deer were often scarce in those years. All the Palm men hunted wolves and trapped for fur." (Irene had her own trapline and earned a good deal of money from it; being featured in a Roseau Times-Region/Pencer News story by Rob't Wicklund, as 'Muskrat Mary'.

   “In 1935, Irene married the widower/neighbor Martin Davidson. He had been around her a lot, hunting with her brothers and her dad, and they certainly liked him. But there was an age difference of 17 years in their ages: Irene 17, and Martin 34. Willie, especially, thought that this may not be good. However, they married and went to Des Moines on their honeymoon. It was there that Irene got so sick and she had to stay in Des Moines. Martin had to leave and go back to work. Irene took the train from Des Moines to Thief River Falls about a week later, and Martin met her there. They went out to where Martin had been working, and then in the spring came back to Palmville to his log house on the farm.

     “One day in about 1936, I was out sitting on the porch with Mother who was having another of her terrible gallstone spells, when I saw the horse take off and Clinton (about 12 years old) hanging from one of the stirrups. He had been herding cows in the field and his hat had fallen off and spooked the horse. When he tried to calm her down his foot slipped through the leather strap for the stirrup and he was dangling there. The horse took off south and west with Clinton bumping along; the horse had stepped on him too. Finally, something broke and he got loose by the corner of the thicket by where the cemetery is now.

   “When I hollered to Dad, he took off and found Clinton; he was unconscious. Dad carried him back to the house. Ma ran down to meet to him and see, even when she was so sick. They called Dr. Berge in Roseau. He came out and put six stitches in Clinton’s eye and checked him for broken bones; nothing was broken, but he had a concussion. Clinton was out of his head, off and on for a week. Pretty soon he’d talk funny, then later he’d be okay; nothing else was broke, and eventually he came out of it.

This is Dixie, the horse that Clinton was dragged by, and may have been the mare Willie wanted bred by the stallion he inquired about at the Lundquist Sale. Raymond's brother, Clifford, stands with her.

 

   “In 1937, I was along with Dad to the Lundquist Sale and a man with a stallion was there. Dad asked him to come because we had a horse we wanted to breed. He came by, stayed overnight, and in the morning Dad and him got up early. 

    “I remember Ma telling how Willie had gotten up and swatted her on the butt and kidded her about her getting up to fix breakfast. That, was their last bit of communication...