Class of 1966 (Princeton High School)

Stories

There are lots of stories in and about Princeton, and those of us who attended Princeton schools. Some big, some small, some everyone knows about, some only you know about. If you have a story to share, please let your fingers do the walking, and share it with the rest of us! It doesn't have to be about Princeton, per se. Maybe it's just about you — who grew up in Princeton!

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Bad, Worse, and Terrible

I’ve been encouraged to add another story, so I will. Another stop on our summer trip earlier this month was the Hinckley Fire Museum. Cole had never been there and it had been nearly 40 years since I was there previously. Many of you know about what Wikipedia calls The Great Hinckley Fire, but did you know about the Peshtigo Fire? I thought not. I didn’t either until Cole and I passed through this Princeton-sized town in 2013 on a Michigan driving trip on the occasion of my son’s wedding in Traverse City, Michigan.

The trip had a pretty interesting beginning. We decided to take the ferry from Manitowoc, WI to Ludington, Michigan. The SS Badger is the largest car ferry to ever sail Lake Michigan and has provided a reliable shortcut across the inland sea for more than 50 years. It is the last coal-fired passenger vessel operating on the Great Lakes, and was designated a National Historic Landmark last year. In addition to passengers and automobiles and trucks, it also ferried railroad cars. It’s a big ship and quite an experience.

The ship deposited us near Traverse City and it was a great way to spend 4 hours. After the wedding, we continued north along the eastern coast of Lake Michigan past the amazing Sleeping Bear Dunes towering 260 feet above Lake Michigan. Quite a sight, and fun to run and slide down in a heap. We next toured Mackinac Island and there’s much to see there. The luxurious Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, built in 1886, is the largest summer hotel in the country, and has the largest front porch in the world (we could afford to have lunch there). Being at the critical juncture of Lakes Superior, Michigan, and Huron, Mackinac Island was the headquarters of the fur trading business in America, and the fort and museum are very interesting, as is Fort Michimillimac on the mainland (with period reenactors).

Across the amazing Mackinac Bridge (the longest suspension bridge of its kind in the Western Hemisphere) and into the U.P. (Upper Peninsula, where the Yoopers live!) and down the western shore of upper Lake Michigan brings you to the town of Peshtigo, the Peshtigo memorial park, and the adjacent Peshtigo fire museum. I must confess I had never heard of Peshtigo or its fire. If you haven’t as yet, buckle in: it’s a heller of biblical proportion.

We’ve all heard of the Great Chicago Fire. That was Bad (see the headline, above). To quote Wikipedia, "it was a conflagration that burned from Sunday, October 8, to early Tuesday, October 10, 1871. The fire killed up to 300 people, destroyed roughly 3.3 square miles of Chicago, Illinois, and left more than 100,000 residents homeless." Pretty bad indeed.

Now, to Hinckley and the Great Hinckley Fire. At the Hinckley Fire Museum (and on Wikipedia) you learn it was a conflagration in the pine forests of Minnesota in September 1894, which burned an area of at least 310 square miles including the town of Hinckley. The official death count was 418; the actual number of fatalities was likely higher. So, in terms of loss of life, that’s Worse (again, see headline above). Among its victims was Thomas Corbett, the Union soldier who killed John Wilkes Booth after Booth's assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The story of the Hinckley fire contains great bravery of one train crew that entered the burning city to pick up as many as could jam into the train cars and then back out of town at full speed, many suffering burns, and in the ensuing escape the train passed over a burning trestle! Like a movie, only deadly real. The haunting quote I remember: the final message sent by the train station’s telegraph operator (who perished in the fire): “I think I waited too long."

So what about Peshtigo? This was Terrible (last reference to the headline). As Wikipedia states, "the Peshtigo Fire was a forest fire that took place on October 8, 1871. It was the deadliest fire in recorded history, with estimated deaths of around 1,500 people, and possibly as many as 2,500. By the time it was over, 1,875 square miles of forest had been consumed, an area approximately twice the size of Rhode Island. Twelve communities were destroyed." More than 350 bodies were buried in a mass grave (at the museum site) primarily because so many had died that no one remained alive who could identify all the bodies. Survivors reported that the firestorm generated a fire whirl (described as a tornado) that threw rail cars and houses into the air. A fire also consumed the southern half of Door County, which led some to believe the fire jumped some 10-12 miles of Green Bay. I say if this hellstorm can generate its own wind and weather, as all firestorms do, I say it can toss embers 10 or 12 miles away.

Both the Hinckley Fire and the Peshtigo Fire were worse than the Chicago fire, and both had the same basic origin — and suffered conditions we’ll never see again, thank goodness. In both cases, the fires followed prolonged droughts. In both cases, the fire was fueled by slash left behind by logging the Big Woods of Minnesota and Wisconsin. Slash is all the branches and leaves left behind after trimming them off the trees. It’s what’s left over in transforming a tree into a log. Slash was all over northern MN and WI in the late 1800’s. It was a recipe for disaster; a super dry tinderbox. These firestorms — generating superheated flames of at least 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, advancing on winds of 110 miles per hour or stronger — were actually studied by our military in World War 2 as it relates to the firebombing done by Allied Forces in Germany and Japan.

So, why doesn’t anyone know about the worst fire in recorded history? Did you notice the date? (Writer hits “pause” here for the reader to catch up) It occurred on the same day as the Great Chicago Fire and guess what got all the press? Yup. Media bias way back when! Things only get reported that the reporters want to report on, and this is a great example. Peshtigo rated hardly a mention and all any of us know about the date of October 8, 1871 is the Chicago fire, even though 5 to 8 times more people perished in and around Peshtigo that day.

The scale of the fire was immense: A survivor described one house lifted from its foundation, then thrown through the air a hundred feet before it detonated midflight and sent strips of flaming wood flying like shrapnel. Flames were about 1,000 feet high and the miles-wide blaze moved at incredible speed. People could only run for the Peshtigo River. Some died of asphyxiation. Others ignited like Roman candles as they ran. Eyewitness accounts tell of children flashing into flame, as their mothers tried to hurry them into the water. One man went mad when he found that the burning wife he thought he'd dragged to river was a stranger.

It literally was hell on earth. If you’re ever in Peshtigo, stop, look, and listen to the fire story. It's a story you'll never forget.

Columbus Finished Last!

My summer vacation report on my “discovery” of the source of the Mississippi may have been a bit of fiction, but just the opposite occurred during my visit to Alexandria a few days later. This is where I discovered the Arnold Dahle tribute on the wall, but what I discovered the next day really surprised me. Our whole lives, we’ve been aware of the famous/infamous Kensington Runestone which was discovered, supposedly, in Kensington, MN, a bit west of Alexandria. Going to the museum there, my ingoing assumption was that the stone is a fake. That’s what you heard — a hoax, inscribed by its "discoverer." Soon after it was shown to the world by Olof Ohman in 1898, it was thought to be too impossible to believe. So the stone languished in infamy and this Swedish immigrant farmer and his family were disgraced. He said he found it on his farm, and that he didn’t carve it himself. A detail lending to the credence of his story is his insistence on the stone’s authenticity, which came at great cost to his family: two of his children committed suicide for all the abuse directed toward them, and the third left Minnesota and never returned. On his deathbed, Ohman insisted he found the stone. His story, stuck in deep commitment, held firm throughout his life.

Has anything changed since the early 1900’s? Several things have happened in recent years: “new” history of the Vikings has surfaced, and the latest technology sheds light on details of the stone. First, we now know the Vikings reached North America way before Columbus. They made steady progress around the world, in fact. Their trading and plundering reached as far south as North Africa, southeast to present day Iran, and eastward well into Russia. In fact, it was the Rus Vikings who settled there, actually giving Russia its name. They settled Iceland in 874, Greenland in 986 and — as of the discovery in 1960 in present day Nova Scotia — we now have archaeologic evidence of their settlement of what they called “Vinland” in the year 1000. Come forward in time a few centuries and you can see how Vikings who set sail further west of Greenland would easily have made the short jaunt to Hudson Bay, via the Hudson Strait, directly across a short stretch of water from the western part of Greenland. You may consult your globe or world map at this point.

Getting perspective from distances traveled by the Vikings, we see that it’s about 1,000 miles from Scandinavia to Iceland. They did that. It’s less than 500 miles from there to Greenland. They did that, too. The North America-hugging route Leif Eriksson took to Vinland (Nova Scotia) was 2,000 miles! His route is traced on the globe sitting in front of me. And he sailed right past the mouth of the Hudson Strait Bay to get there. They knew where Hudson Bay was in the year 1000, so it’s not too hard to imagine these restless wanderers venturing into Hudson Bay to see what they could find.

So it’s roughly 1,500 miles of fairly easy sailing from Greenland to and across the inland sea of Hudson Bay to one of its principal rivers, the Nelson River. What do you do then? At some point, the Vikings went upriver in smaller craft. To Lake Winnipeg; only about 250 miles. And what flows into Lake Winnipeg? The Red River, which has its source at Lake Traverse (at Minnesota’s “bump,” the state’s furthest western point), only about another 250 miles or so from Winnipeg. So, given the great distances that these Vikings traveled, it seems like it wouldn’t be that much trouble — given several hundred years to get the job done — to reach the Minnesota prairie. And Kensington? It’s only about 30 miles east of Lake Traverse. A day’s walk.

So, what does the stone say? It says that there are 30 of us in the group. 20 went on a fishing trip one day north of here and returned to find the other 10 all bloody and dead. Next is a reference to Christianity (that is consistent; the Vikings embraced Christianity centuries before). It goes on to say there are another 10 men waiting by the "inland sea" 14 days journey from this point. (This is Hudson Bay, 500 miles to the north). And the inscription finishes with the year: 1362. You can read more in a Google search or the Wikipedia entry.

Undoubtedly, the 10 were killed by Native Americans. What about “14 days north” to Hudson Bay? Easy for these guys. Much later, in the 1800’s, Voyageurs were traversing our north woods waterways as far as 60 miles a day and that includes some portaging and heavy, heavy packs of furs. The voyageurs paddled hard from sunup to sunset. Probably the Vikings worked that hard, too. The Vikings would only need to do about 40 miles a day to traverse the water route to Hudson Bay from Lake Traverse. That’s walking speed (3 mph) on rivers all flowing northward (downstream) to Hudson Bay. Easy. They left their big ship there, and they went on the rivers in smaller boats. The story makes sense, distance-wise and location-wise.

What about the runes themselves? Do they hold up under scrutiny? It turns out that the answer could very well be “yes” in two ways: One, the latest geological examination equipment is able to gauge the weathering in the “scratches” of the runes, and it indicates that multiple centuries of time have passed since their inscription. Second, the reference books published and available to Scandinavian immigrants (and they had them) featured Viking runes of a type that evolved later in time than what the particular style of the runes (alphabet characters) was in the 1300’s. All languages change over time, and we know ourselves how different the English language from, say, Shakespeare’s time is from our own: practically unrecognizable to us today.

If Olof Ohman carved the stone in 1898, he would have had to have known about the style of runes used in 1362. It is generally recognized that this was not available knowledge at the time. It is only in more recent years that closer study reveals these nuances. Also, micro 3D imagery of the stone itself validates the fine points of the runic consistency as to how these characters were formed and used at that time (an X with a curved end and a dot beside it being different than just an X or just a curved X, etc.).

What was a big “aha!” to me was learning that the route to Minnesota was not the more lengthy St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, but rather the readily accessible Hudson Bay (from Greenland) and the easy river trip through Lake Winnipeg to Lake Traverse, just a day’s walk from Kensington. It all makes make sense, particularly when you consider the Vikings had 362 years time to “get ‘er done” from the time they are known to have settled in Nova Scotia in the year 1000.

– General timing? Check. The Vikings were already “in the hood” in Greenland, not that far away.

– Route? Check. Easy passage through Hudson Bay and southward in good sized rivers in smaller boats.

– Known explorers? Check. The Vikings were all over this sail-and-discover thing for hundreds of years.

– Discovery story? Check. Olof Ohman and his family paid a steep price for saying he found the stone.

– Runic authenticity? Check. They say the runes are authentic to the 1300’s and that by the time the late 1800’s came around, the old style of runes were lost in time and couldn’t have been inscribed as they were by anyone living at that time.

Other supporting facts? There are also Viking iron artifacts that have been discovered throughout the midwest over time (axes, etc.). They are on display at the museum. And? Well, there’s the very interesting Lewis and Clark journal. They were pretty freaked out by the Mandan Indians, and knew instinctively that many of them were of white origin. Blue eyes, green eyes, and blonde and brunette hair with unmistakable European features. Hmmm. Man does not live by bread alone...

So — needless to say — I was surprised by what I found. I was expecting to find a “pet rock” in Alexandria, and recent evidence suggests the stone may be genuine. No one knows with absolute certainty about all this, but it all makes a good deal of sense, and if you’re ever in Alexandria, stop in at the Runestone Museum to see the Runestone and see what you think. As a part of the display, also take a look at the 2/3 scale Viking (ocean-going) ship built by and given to the museum by the Smithsonian Museum (shown above, with that Viking-looking guy standing beside it).

And, actually that’s not all this museum has to offer. It actually is one of the finer small town museums in the country. They have an excellent natural history display, a fine Native American crafts display, an ancient archaeology display, a World War 2 section, pioneer life exhibits, and an outdoor group of buildings of American pioneer vintage (log cabins, stage coach station, school house, etc.). Set aside as much as 4 hours for this museum. And, if that weren’t enough, next door to this museum is the Legacy of The Lakes museum. This is a Smithsonian-class museum of million dollar vintage boats (Chris-Crafts, Gar-Wood, and more), and historical displays of fishing, resorting, and speed boating, and the how-it-happened story of Minnesota being the go-to summertime destination for folks all over the country before the advent of air conditioning. Lots to see here.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it! Mike Heymer

Was I there?

At our class reunion, Tim Metcalf surprised me by remembering something I have absolutely no recollection of. He said that at the beginning of one of the summers following our high school graduation, he and I went knocking on the door of some tool and die shop somewhere west of Princeton. He apparently thought we were both going to work there and the shop foreman asked Tim first if he's like to start working there right away as a summer job. He said yes, and then — apparently — I said no.

Tim was bummed because he hated that job all summer, and he thought that — since misery loves company — he'd at least have someone to be in it together with. I either worked at Fingerhut that summer, or I worked for Ratzlaff Logging that summer; I don't remember which.

I discovered how much that experience burned into Tim's memory in his telling of it at the reunion. For me, it's like I sent my dutiful robot along with him that day; I have no recollection. Anyway, the good news is that Tim hated tool and die work so much he went into veterinary medicine and never looked back.

And to think he owed that all to me....

Mike Heymer

Our Many Class Reunions!

We've had a number of class reunions for our class over the years. After checking in with our Reunion Coordinator For Life (that would be Jean [Bartz] Jackson), we've compiled the complete Official List. It is:

5 Year Reunion (1971): Held at The Farm Supper Club, west on old Hwy. 95 in the pines on the north side of the road, across from Edmonds. It burned down many years ago.

10 Year Reunion (1976): Held at the old Legion Club, which is now the VFW.

20 Year Reunion (1986): Held at the new Legion Club, which later became Steven’s Restaurant, and is now The Friendly Buffalo. John Kostanshek’s band, Johnny Jupiter & The Jets, played.

25 Year Reunion (1991): Held at the VFW Club, which was previously the old Legion Club. Mike Heymer’s band, Mid-Life Crisis, played.

40 Year Reunion (2006): Held at the VFW Club. This was an adjunct to an all-class reunion.

45 Year Reunion (2011): Held at Steven’s Restaurant, which was formerly the new Legion Club, and is now The Friendly Buffalo.

50 Year Reunion (2016): Held at The Friendly Buffalo, formerly Steven’s Restaurant, and originally the new Legion Club.

Ahhhh.... It's good to have people remind you of what your memories are, ain't it?

Our Veterans

A big story for our class was the military service given by a great number of our classmates. We acknowledge and thank each living classmate — and the families of each deceased classmate who served — for providing “Honest and Faithful Service” to our country, the United States of America.

Those who served:

Richard Becker Army
Ron Bergeson Army

John Bergman* Army

Duane Blank Army

Dennis Cook Army

Alan Deglmann Air Force

Mike Deglman Army

Jim Edmonds Navy
Mike Evenski Army
Jeff Foote Army

Reuben Fordahl* Army

Duane Gates Army National Guard

James Gerth Army

Phil Gerth Navy

Garry Gray Army

Merlin Holland Army

Jack Holland Marines

Pete Jacobs Army

Dick Jones Army

Frank Kosloski Army

John Kostanshek Army

Albert Krona* Navy

Dennis Leider Army

Gary Mason Army

Dave Meyer Army

Dick Miller* Army National Guard

Chuck Mitchell* Army

Stephan Nelson* Marines

Tim O'Donnell Navy

Mike Pearson Army

Dennis Rau* Navy

Steve Robideau Army

George Sanford Army

Steve Stay* Air Force

Bill Steadman* Air Force

John Taylor Navy

Pete Taylor* Air Force

Russ Unger Marines
Rich Wallace Air Force

Roger Wergin Navy

Ron Whitcomb Army

Allan Whiteoak Air Force

Phil Wicktor Army

Jim Winter Army

Leeroy Zeroth Army

Larry Ziebarth Army

*Deceased

We also thank any other classmates who served but have been omitted here. Please let us know of your service.

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The Most-Moved Class

In the beginning, there was only one Princeton school — for all grades. The big brick building in the center of town. Our class started in that school in first grade and later attended the new elementary school when it was completed, allowing us to spend the last half of first grade, and grades 2 through 4 there. That's all the new elementary school accomodated at that time, before it was expanded later. Though we, as first graders, had no real knowledge or awareness of it at the time, the significance of the moment was that our class was the very last class to have attended a Princeton school that was an all-grades school (1-12). The old brick building is now apartments.

We returned to the old school for fifth grade, during which time the new elementary school was added onto to accomodate grades 5 and 6. So, we returned to the new wing of the elementary school for sixth grade. Maxed out once again in the new digs, we returned to the old school for the third time, completing grades 7 through 11 there.

Sometime into the beginning of our senior year a new high school was completed and we spent most of our senior year there, making our class the most-moved class ever!

Mike Heymer

J.K. Heymer Blinds

At some point in my elementary school years in the old brick school building, I became aware of the fact that all the big windows in the building were equipped with J.K. Heymer Co. wooden slat venetian blinds. My great uncle Karl owned a venetian blind company in Minneapolis at the time, and I was pretty impressed that his blinds were on every window in my school. I imagine they were replaced years ago.

Mike Heymer

The Art of Paul Bunyan Tales

The greatest outdoorsman who ever lived was Paul Bunyan and the tall stories invented by fisherman and hunters to this day can never equal Paul’s stories. To brush up on your tall tale story telling, let’s revisit a few of the big guy’s greatest accomplishments. Once you’re up to speed with that, you’ll be able to conjure up — in a big way — just exactly how that golf shot landed in the cup. Like all stories, it started at the beginning…

Old-time loggers recall the excitement of Paul's birth when it took five giant storks, working in relays, to deliver Paul to his parents. And what a baby Paul was; it took a whole herd of cows to keep his milk bottle filled.

Paul grew so fast that one week after being born, he had to wear his father's clothes. A lumber wagon, drawn by a team of oxen, was Paul's baby carriage and by the time Paul was one year old, his clothing was so large he had to use the wagon wheels for buttons. He also was extremely fast. He could turn off a light and then jump into his bed before the room got dark. Only the great outdoors was big enough to accommodate Paul, and it was natural that he should become the World's Greatest Lumberjack.

In the year of the 'Blue Snow' when it was so cold the geese flew backward, Paul found a baby ox in the snow. It was so cold, the ox and snow was blue. After Paul took him home and warmed him, his color stayed blue. Paul named him Babe. Like Paul, Babe grew fast. One night, Paul left him in a small building with the other animals. The next morning, the barn was gone and so was Babe. Paul searched everywhere for the animal. He found Babe calmly eating grass in a valley, with the barn still on top of his back. Soon, Babe hauled the huge camp tank wagon which was used to pave the winter logging roads with ice. When it sprang a leak one day, it created Lake Itasca south of Bemidji and the overflow trickled down to New Orleans to form the Mississippi River. But perhaps Babe's biggest job was pulling the kinks out of crooked logging roads.

That brings us to the time when it was so cold in Bemidji, it was called the 'Year of Two Winters'. The snow was so deep, Paul had to dig down to find the trees. It got so cold, the boiling coffee froze so fast it was still hot when frozen.

The loggers let their beards grow full length that year and soon had to tuck them in their boots to keep from tripping. In the spring, Paul cut the beards with a large scythe, stacked them like hay and sold them for making mattresses.

During the 'Year of Two Winters', it was so cold at the camp on Lake Bemidji, words froze in mid-air. When the words thawed out in the spring, there was a huge roar of conversation heard 600 miles away in Chicago.

Paul's camp crew is deserving of mention. There was Sourdough Sam, the camp cook, for instance. He made flapjacks on a griddle so big it had to be greased by skaters with slabs of bacon tied to their feet. The table where the men ate was so long that a server usually drove to one end of the table and stayed the night. The server drove back in the morning, with a fresh load of food. Once, when a load of pork and beans, pulled by a team of oxen, went through the ice of Lake Bemidji, Sam had huge fires built along the shore and boiled the lake to make soup. All that winter, he fed the loggers bean soup with an ox-tail flavor.

Johnny Inkslinger, the camp bookkeeper, invented the fountain pen by running a hose from a barrel of ink to his pen. He saved five barrels of ink one summer by not dotting his "i's" or crossing his "t's".

Finally, there was Sport-the-Reversible dog. One of the loggers accidentally cut this camp pet in two with an ax. In his haste to sew him up, the logger stitched Sport's hindquarters on upside down. This didn't hinder Sport who ran on his front legs until they were tired, then he flipped over and ran on his back legs.

That’s a good start! Maybe you’re inspired to tell your own tall tale!

Freedom Is Not Free

If United We Stand keeps us aware,
Of how it feels to be free,
Then united we must be,
To keep us all free.
Freedom for all throughout the land,
Comes only when united we stand.

Freedom for so many people is held so dear,
Freedom cannot be taken off the shelf,
Once or twice a year.
Many have had to pay the dues.
Freedom is not free.
Freedom comes with a giant "I owe you."

Freedom is not free.
We have taken it for granted for so many years.
Remember this, that freedom is not free.
It takes blood, sweat, and tears.

— By Allan Whiteoak, USAF Master Sergeant, Ret.

Brief History of Princeton

The City of Princeton, MN's website contains a brief history of our town. You can go to it by clicking here.

Pictured here is The original City Hall, Police Department, Fire Station, and Water Tower. No longer standing.

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