5, December 2024 A Palmville Memory

Bert Palm     

    There was a light southerly wind the afternoon of December 7, 2015. Against a wonderfully blue sky, the clouds varied in shape and opacity over the black farm fields totally devoid of snow. It had been a nice day for Bert Palm’s funeral. We buried him in the Palmville Township Cemetery next to his wife Nora (Dahl), who died suddenly at their home in Roseau the year before. Bert had died on December 2nd, one day after what would have been their 65th wedding anniversary. Graveside, their oldest daughter, Diane, imagined the hereafter,   “Mom has just baked some lefse and Dad’s sitting down to a piece. He’s smiling now.”
“Yah,” I said knowing that would put a smile on Bert’s face, no fooling.

    After Nora’s passing, Bert had remained relatively independent and sociable. He often drove his car or truck to Wannaska to eat at the cafe, or went ‘uptown’ in Roseau to do errands. Finding him working in his attached garage one morning, he showed me what he was doing, then invited me into his house for coffee, where he could sit down, rather than stand, as he suffered with a form of calcium deficiency that, he told me, is somewhat rare in men. I was especially interested in that because his father, David Palm, was a brother to my grandfather, Wilhelm Palm, and his mother Ella (Berg) was a sister to my grandmother, Annie (Berg). I wondered if I was susceptible to his condition as well. As I followed him up the steps from his garage, his obvious frailty saddened me. 

Years ago: Jackie Helms-Reynolds and Bert Palm

 

    We visited about the upcoming Palm Family reunion, in June, and who might be there and who would not. I thought it may be difficult for him to attend only eight months after Nora’s death, as I recall my own dad’s anguished expression I captured of him in a photograph at a Palm Reunion in 1982, two months after my mother’s death in which it appears he’s looking for her in a crowd of familiar faces and voices.

    Bert was meticulous, an ability perfectly fitted for working on mechanical devices such clocks and watches after his retirement from farming. He learned much of what he knew about clockwork from his elder cousin, Raymond Palm (1911-2002) a watchmaker and gunsmith of some renown in Roseau County for over seventy years. In my mind's eye, I remember Bert examining small parts through an eyepiece in Raymond’s shop in Roseau as Raymond explained something. The two were usually talking at length about either guns, shooting, or varieties of hand-loaded ammunition. Family and local history was another of their mutual interests, something many of the Palms are steeped in throughout the generations.

    My friendship with Bert grew after THE RAVEN: Northwest Minnesota’s Original Art, History & Humor Journal, published a story in the Volume 5, Spring Issue, in 2000, about Palmville District 44 West, the one-room schoolhouse at the corner of Roseau County Road 8 and 125. From its beginnings in 1904 to its closure in 1946, many of the Palms including Bert and his siblings, my mother Violet Palm Reynolds and her siblings; and many others, went to school at 44 West. Bert was one of the former students who came to the schoolhouse to offer us information about it. Here are some excerpts from that issue:

 

    “My sister Verna, my brother Marvin, and I drove to school in a caboose (A caboose is a small horse-drawn sleigh with walls and a roof for shelter.) pulled by our big white horse ’Tony,’ who, during the school day, was kept in a little barn in the woods to the west of the school house,” Bert recalled.“We were taking the school teacher home one afternoon; Marvin was driving. The snow had blown and drifted much of the day, when the caboose suddenly ran up onto a hard snowdrift on just one side, the wind caught it and tipped the whole caboose over --right on the door!”

    As Bert told us the story, I tried to imagine the horse suddenly caught in stride, stopped in its tracks by the dead weight of the tipped-over caboose, then wildly trying to turn its head and look back over its shoulders; its mouth open against the bit, spewing its frenzied breath into the cold wind. 

    The caboose on its side behind it, its runners in the air, the surprised muffled voices and the sounds of physical movement inside it. Everyone inside trying to sit up somehow, wanting to get out. 

    "Marvin quickly got out through one of the front windows to steady the horse, with me close behind him. i helped Verna and the schoolteacher get out too."

     With great effort on all their parts, and of course that of the horse, they tipped the caboose back over on its runners. No one the worse for the experience.

A horse-drawn caboose similar to Bert's, minus the light.

 

    Bert and I didn’t get together very often, but our few trips were always noteworthy if only in the sense of our mutual interest in local history; he knew I was always willing to ride along on his forays, one of which was the search for a lost grave site off the Wilson Road in southwestern Palmville. We took with us a long steel rod with which we plunged down through the undergrowth in an area he thought may contain the 4-6 graves, but without having a pinpoint location, we decided our attempt was fruitless and gave it up.

Marks the spot in Palmville Township on the Wilson Road where Bert thought we might an old unmarked graveyard of up to six people. He remembered hearing about its possibility from some old timers. This page was in the Roseau County Atlas that had the copy of the 1913 atlas included in it. It looks like the spot is midway on the north east/west section line of Section 17 and the south section line of No. 8.

 

Bert just off the Wilson Road in southwestern Palmville.

 

Bert Palm witching for graves.

    Bert and I spent almost a whole day walking through the Louis & Ingegerd (Anderson) Palm’s homestead, with Frank Cwikla’s permission when he owned the property. The two were Bert’s grandparents, and my great-grandparents for whom Palmville Township was named in 1895. Bert remembered the place as a child, so I took many pictures and extensive notes as he talked. One of the things he remembered vividly was a sawmill that the Palm boys had below the barn on the river where they’d cross with the steam engine. We couldn’t find it that day; though I think I found it a few years later while canoeing that section of the river with Joe McDonnell; it looked like so many large rocks in one place from bank to bank.

The Louis and Ingegerd Palm place on the south fork of the Roseau River is no more, having been torn down in 2024. People in the lower right are Teresa McDonnell and Jackie Helms-Reynolds 'years ago.'

 

One of the things Bert remembered was a sawmill that the Palms had below the barn on the river where they’d cross with the steam engine.

    Bert saw a great many changes throughout his life of 86 years; he knew the ins and outs of it, as we all will come to know and I doubt that the ‘end of life’ was looked on any differently than being another change of life. For some it’s a relief, a saving grace, when we can shed all the stress and tensions we’ve endured. Some people take their own lives. For others, the end of life is terror, a great black hole from which there’s no escape.

   For Bert, who died in his sleep on the couch, it was just another afternoon nap dreaming of Nora.