Fresh- Waterworld (Minnesota W/O)
Written: Feb 05 '04 (Updated Feb 05 '04)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: A well-written and informative history of the lake
Cons: no index, but that's it
The Bottom Line: Minnesota has the dubious honor of being the Icebox of the Nation these days.
|
|
|
| ed_grover's Full Review: Once Upon a Lake : a History of Lake Minnetonka an... |
When Stephen_Murray e-mailed me to remind me that his Minnesota W/O would take place on February 7th, he asked if I had any personal aversions to his home state. I assumed that that was because I'm from Wisconsin and there is a legendary feud between the Green Bay Packers and the Minnesota Vikings. I said that I wasn't an avid sport's fan with a grudge, so there was no reason for me to refuse; I eagerly started looking for suitable subject matter.
Originally, I wanted to follow a lead on Mahala Dutton Douglas, the woman Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas thought was the inspiration for the Carl Van Vechten's Tattooed Countess. She was the wife of Walter Douglas, one of the heirs of Quaker Oats, and a millionaire in his own right.
It seems that in 1906, Walter married Mahala Dutton Benedict of Cedar Rapids, Iowa as his second wife. They moved to Minneapolis, where Walter enlarged his substantial fortune by getting into the linseed oil business. He built his lady wife a spectacular French Renaissance palace on the shores of Lake Minnetonka called Walden. In 1911-12, they made a trip to Europe to search for furnishings for their new home. For their return trip, they boarded the maiden voyage of the Titanic at Cherbourg. When the ship hit an iceberg it went down; Walter put his wife in a lifeboat and stayed behind. Here's a link to the Titanic Disaster: http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/bio/p/1st/douglas_wd2.shtml
It was here that my plans for any link to Mahala and The Tattooed Countess stopped cold. I looked up Lake Minnetonka on Google hoping to find something about the Douglas mansion and found this book: Once Upon A Lake: The Story of Minnetonka And Its Peoples. The book was written by a converted Minnesotan, Thelma Jones, librarian of the Wayzata Branch of the Hennepin County Library.
I wasn't expecting much from what I thought was going to be a "happy hands at home" effort. When I began reading I found a well-written series of stories in which the author put the very words the historical figures back into their mouths as they told their stories in chapters of not more than ten pages at the most. It was a pleasant and easy read.
Wayzata was one of the first towns settled on the shores of this rather substantial glacial lake. The main line of the Northern Pacific Railroad ran through it and that helped bring in the first tourists from St. Louis, Chicago and points east and south; the tracks ran right down the main drag. When the good citizens of Wayzata finally got them removed in the late 1870s, the owner of the railroad had everything shifted 10 miles out of town to the shores of the lake. He left them and their fancy hotels all but stranded.
Sorry, I got ahead of myself. The book covers the period from the earliest geological formations of the lake through the time the land was inhabited by the Dakota Indians. The first whites to see the lake were four young boys who found it by accident in 1822. The earliest settlers arrived in around 1838 and the stories continue right up through the end of the century. All the people come alive from the earliset settlers to Indian Joe, who searched for drowned bodies at night after one of the steamers had blown up, to Jesse James and his gang when they made a social call at the farm of twenty-year old Martha Baier's father.
At age 90, Martha Baier Spandel thought fondly of how on August 25th of 1877, she put on her prettiest dotted-Swiss dress and wandered down to the creek where these handsome young men were washing up in the stream. She stayed to have bread and sausage and to laugh and talk to Jesse James, his bother Frank and a number of other outlaws who were on their way to Northfield and the most celebrated bank robbery of their time. No one knew a thing until it was all over.
But first we get a recounting of the geography and geology of the region. I'm sure Minnesota has a multitude of fresh water lakes left over from the Ice Age, just like Wisconsin does. It borders the Mississippi River like we do and we both our states share parts of Lake Superior with Canada. We find out how the unnamed lake came to have the name it does. The book tells us it may have come from mi-ni-tan-ka (a place spread over with water) or mde-tan-ka (a large or great lake). Whatever its derivation, it came out Minnetonka . . .and it sounded pretty, and the people in charge thought it was appropriate, too. Forests of oak, elm and maple surrounded the sparkling waters.
Some of the names given to settlements were disputed and some were changed again and again. Wayzata became Wayzata City and went back to Wayzata, "a derivative of Waziah, an aspect of the Great Mystery that purified the earth and dwelt in the north." There were pronunciation problems, too. The current residents call their town Y-zetta, possibly after the way a beloved train conductor pronounced it long ago.
On we go to that 1822 discovery by four boys who followed a creek to a waterfall about two-and-a-half miles from Fort Snelling. From there we read about early settlers and their stories. When they came and they found woods with trees growing so close one could barely pass through them. As the forest was cleared the settlers discovered Indian mounds when they broke the ground with their plows. This is an interesting few chapters and we quickly get the idea that the author, although proud of these settlers, was as dismayed as the Dakota were by "the man who wore a hat."
They came from the East Coast after arriving from Europe and settling there for a while. Some of the settlers stopped a generation or so in Ohio or Indiana. There was loneliness, homesickness and especially for the women, anxiety. Letters were few and far between. These were no trivial matters as delivery was slow to uncertain, and postage, ink and paper meant spending their precious cash.
The men and boys chopped down trees, made logs and built one-room cabins, many with dirt floors and no chinking between the logs. Strange skitterings and scratchings by wild animals frightened them at night. The women and girls had to make the clothes by hand out of whatever there was. They ate meals made of salt pork and cornmeal. The women put their children to bed so they could wash their one set of clothing. More children appeared yearly, and then there were the deaths and graves had to be dug in the frozen ground.
They traveled miles to visit neighbors and some form of work sparked the visits. They pooled their food, talked and exchanged information eagerly. At night there might be dancing if someone brought a fiddle or could sing. Afterwards they went back home through the dark woods satisfied. Each of the chapters like "The Lady From Ireland: Mary Matilda Westlake 181-1894" or "The Man With The Hook-Bill Knife" tell the story of an individual, their trials and sometimes their successes. In "The Murmuring Woman," we find out about Lydia Ferguson an educated woman who came from the east against her better wishes. "For forty-one years she had been neither an easterner nor a Minnesotan, but a dweller in a shadowy limbo, an exile."
The stories continue and progress is made. Many fine hotels spring up and the tourists arrived by the Iron Cornucopia, the train that brought in the tourists. Along with the tourists come the three-card Monte men to take away their money. On the lake there were all manner of river steamboats; some had been dismantled into three pieces and brought in by wagon to be reassembled. Invariably the boilers exploded because the crews raced each other to see who get anywhere the fastest. Boat parts and engines were brought up to the surface (after the dead were cleared away) and joined together to make hybrid steamboats that in their time blew up and killed more people.
It's a lively read and the final chapter covers the glory period of 1880 where five young voices speak up to tell "what it was like." We hear about wonderful excursions, picnics in the woods and views of sailboats "sweeping forward in a lovely ballet." There were also some spectacular fires that reduced some of the grander hotels to nothing but ashes and bedsprings. After that, everything dwindled to a halt and vanished. All that was left was domesticity, "substantial, devoted and tame"; except for the ghosts!
Enter Walter and Mahala Douglas: Walter and his wife were comparative newcomers to Minnesota with their arrival in the early part of the 1900s. There's a tiny reference to Mahala in the preface of the book. No names are mentioned, but if you knew what happened to them you could easily put two and two together.
"A glamorous woman, widowed by the Titanic, surrounded by servants from India, Ireland, Italy and Sweden, inconsolably refused all suitors in her Minnesota Renaissance palace above one of the lake's bays . . . "
Actually, Mahala returned to Minneapolis where she resumed her role in society. She was a talented and enthusiastic writer and published a collection of stories and poems in 1932. The last poem in the book is a haunting account of the Titanic disaster. You can read it at: http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/exhibit/titanicpoem.shtml
She grandly entertained Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas when Gertrude made her "return" Grand Tour of the USA in 1934. They were delighted with the blue and silver dinning room, a room that Alice B. described as being banked from floor to ceiling with rare blue orchids.
I think Thelma Jones has done a first-rate job of bringing the past of Lake Minnetonka and her people to life even if, as she herself says, ". . . she could not even make an orange-crate out of an orange-crate." The only fault I could find with the book was that there is no index at the back. (Ross and Haines, Minnesota 1957 – First Edition, no ISBN listed)
Ed Grover – February 7, 2004
Here's an earlier Minnesota review: http://www.epinions.com/content_48569290372
Stephen also made an observation that no one had yet indicated they were going to write about the work of his favorite Minnesota native, himself. Well, I already did that ages ago.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
ed_grover
|
 - Top 500 |
|
Member: Ed Grover
Location: Milwaukee, WI
Reviews written: 332
Trusted by: 401 members
About Me:
Ed's last words for Epinions members and links to tributes are on his page.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.