I remember the time I turned 21 and thought sitting at a bar was a rite of passage. Since then I’ve concluded it was a waste of time and money. However, one sight in most any of those bars lingers in my memory: the Hamm’s Beer sign cycling around and around as it proclaimed its beer came From the Land of Sky Blue Waters. The scenery revealed a beautiful lake setting, but where was it filmed, maybe The Lake of the Woods or some lake in Canada. Nope, it was Big Turtle Lake near Bigfork, MN, and we recently spent a weekend there at the Arcadia Resort where it’s a part of their history.
We didn’t go there because of the advertisement. It’s where our son’s family rents a cabin for a week, and they wanted us to join them. The scenery up close and personal surpasses the revolving panorama in those bars. The owner of the resort told me the resort has been around since 1922 and the photographs for the commercials were done in the late 1950s and early 60s.
To get there we turned a corner at the spot called Talmoon where two businesses stood. One, a c-store, the other a bar called Hayslips Corner, touted as “an oasis in the north woods.” Their outdoor sign advertised it being the oldest bar in Minnesota, but a little searching found one in St. Paul also claims the title.
Weekend trips usually uncover some interesting little stories and when we drove to Bigfork Sunday morning to attend church, the name on one road sign caught my eye - Jack the Horse Lake. Surely somebody had immortalized a favorite horse by naming the lake after him. It needed further research though, and it turns out my first guess was wrong. Here’s the story.
The name derives from that time of heavy logging in the area when the trees standing near this particular lakeside were being cut and skidded to a mill. What must have been a Paul Bunyan-esque logger named Jack D. McDonald worked on a crew that pushed themselves and their horses to finish the day’s work before winter darkness set in. Their loaded sled proved too great a burden to pull for one of the horses which collapsed and died. The men unharnessed the animal and Jack stepped into the traces to pull a share of the load. Apparently they made it into camp, whereby the man has become forever known as Jack the Horse. Tall tales have been known to originate in that part of the country, so I won’t vouch for its veracity.
When our stay ended at the lake, we drove home through Bemidji and stopped at the Bemidji Woolen Mills where the woolen fabrics are very nice but pricey. Beside it stood a rather nondescript restaurant sporting the name “Minnesota Nice.” Being the noon hour, we decided to check it out. We walked into what must be the favorite cafe in town for the middle-aged crowd because it was full of them. We fit right in. Passing on the burgers featuring such choices as “Uff Dah Original” and “Uff Dah dats hot,” we settled on a fried chicken special that tasted like Mom used to make. When they say you can’t judge a book by its cover, neither can you judge a cafe by its storefront.
Back home a half-finished book waited to be read, a biography of William L. Shirer who wrote the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. This book by Steve Wick, The Long Night, includes many of Shirer’s thoughts, such as “The number of sincere, intelligent Germans who take in every lie they’re told is appalling,” and “They never debated moral issues when self-interests were involved,” and the “Nazis had begun an assault on newspapers across the country.” It was an interesting period of history. The visit to the lake offered some new perspectives and a brief escape from the dire history I’m reading in that book.
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