Travel, Blow snakes and Karo syrup

The Andersons probably went by way of St Cloud, making the trip 132 miles instead of 103 miles and an hour and 49 minutes now.   

 The western hognose snake (puff adder or blow snake) is primarily diurnal. If threatened (or perceiving a threat), it may flatten its neck (much like a cobra), hiss, and make mock strikes...Although it is more common that they will flatten their heads out, some individuals may puff up, filling their throats with air. This is more common with adolescent males.

Oh yeah, I was sure this was a pull-yer-leg story, but just for fun I googled "blow snake"--and, wow, there really is/WAS such a thing.  (With snakes, you react first, talk later).  There may have been a small benefit in seeing one if it meant your friends plying you with liquor as a cure, too. "...the snake blew it's poison into his face and poisoned him" was enough, even if there was no poison.

 Wonder if the side track in Elk River ever materialized?  Who knew there were mineral springs there? Stranger things have happened; it was an age of possibilities and mineral water was mineral water, right?

 Wow, just think--Paul's wife Mary (Otremba) Hesch came here when she was 12, and now, at 57, she went to see the big ships.  Course, this may have had something to do with Math & Ted talking about going to Europe (they did the following spring), and maybe Mary wanted to see for herself whether or not the were safer now.

What an odd ad, huh?  Corn syrup was better than honey?  But maybe honey was considered poor man's sugar, where Karo was manufactured.  

This next article blew us away.  We thought "Live long and prosper" was Star Trek...but no--actually, it was used to wish a happy life to newlyweds too.

(Everything old, etc)

William Faust, Fresco Artist, and other items of note...

"William Faust spent the last week visiting his parents.  William is now a member of the firm Dunn & Faust, fresco artists and decorators, with headquarters in St Cloud.  They are now engaged in decorating a church in the northeastern part of Iowa."

It's interesting to know that there were actual firms who contracted out to paint the inside of churches.  Of course there were, but a Faust, from Pierz?  Cool.

 


A postcard Larry found online, from Neidermuhl, the village our Heschs came from in Bohemia.  Johann and Marya and their sons Paul, Mathias and Anton had left 36 years earlier, so this would have been recognizable to them.

"On the pavements of Wroclaw, Poland, at the intersection of Piłsudskiego and Świdnicka streets, Jerzy Kalina installed a total of 14 life-like statues, seven people descending into the ground on one end of the junction and seven people emerging from the ground on the adjacent corner, as a symbol of the martial law in effect from 1981 to 1983, a time when many ordinary civilians were killed and went missing, which is reflected by the descending pedestrians who disappear into the Earth, the end of the martial law being echoed by the rise of the ordinary man on the opposite side of the street". 

To me, the sculpture is more about ordinary Polish people who've been persecuted thru the ages--"going underground" when necessary, and emerging when it's safe, but always coming back.  It's a beautiful monument to the indomitable Polish spirit, I think.

How come they chose *Saskatchewan?

I found this photo on a website called  Shorpy, "The 100-year-old photo blog"    (A vintage photography blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s). 

If you click to enlarge, you'll be able to read all the info, probably the most compelling part of which was "FREE! 160 acres of Western Canada Farm lands".  No, we don't know that Joe Sand saw this particular vehicle, but I assume Canada has been advertising in Minnesota 

for more than the last 50 years.

I'm curious how this thing was used--at fairs maybe, or in parades, or did they just drive it around?

................................

*Sorry, the post title refers to Grandma's brother 

Joe Sand and his wife Antonia Poser, 

who left for Canada soon after they were married in 1908.  

Here's more about them.

Technical World in 1905

"Look out, Mercury!  You'll get a shock!"

It's fascinating to read what the newest, most exciting technologies were in 1905, and how well they were understood (or not)  by the staff writers at Technical World Magazine.  It eventually became Popular Mechanics magazine, so features that worked here were kept...i.e., a few pages of recent inventions that were published with what seems to be no skepticism whatsoever, and of  course, the pages and pages of ads for all things technical were included from the get-go.

Anyway, we're trying to figure out when cars became a fairly normal sight in Buckman.

Yeah, it'd be well after publicity stunts like this happened in Michigan, but still before 1927 or so, since that's when Mom said she learned to drive, at the age of 12.  She talked, too, about being in a car accident when she was still a teenager--someone named Zupfer smacked into her in Buckman, and her left upper arm ached sometimes because of it....it was her "Zupfer Arm" all her life.  So, there were other cars around by then...

 THIS is the scientific method we use to date stuff in Hesch history, see?

I didn't realize that the Duluth Aerial bridge was built 106 years ago.  Reading the article, I think the writer didn't understand the concept of a lift bridge, or how ships could pass under it--it's referred to as a ferry bridge, and that "this method of crossing streams would gain popularity in America".  The writer spouted gibberish for more than a page!  Whew...lol

OK, here's what Wikipedia has to say about the Duluth lift bridge:

Several different transportation methods were tried, though they were complicated by the weather.  Ferries could work in the summer, but ice caused problems in colder months. A swinging footbridge was used, but was considered rather rickety and unsafe......

....New plans were later drawn up for a structure that would ferry people from one side to the other. This type of span, which is known variously as an aerial transfer, ferry, or transporter bridge......

When it was completed in 1905, the Aerial Bridge's gondola had a capacity of 60 short tons...and could carry 350 people plus wagons, streetcars or automobiles. A trip across the canal took about one minute, and the ferry car moved across once every five minutes during busy times of the day.  However, a growing population on Minnesota Point, a greater demand for cars, and an increase in tourism soon meant that the bridge's capacity was being stretched to the limit.

The Aerial Lift Bridge dominates the Canal Park skyline. (2005)

A remodeling was planned that would remove the gondola and incorporate a lifting platform into the structure.....Reconstruction began in 1929.  In order to ensure that tall ships could still pass under the bridge, the top span had to be raised to accommodate the new deck when raised. The support columns on either side were also modified so that they could hold new counterweights to balance the weight of the lifting portion. The new bridge first lifted for a vessel on March 29, 1930.

The bridge can be raised to its full height in about 3 minutes, and goes up 25 to 30 times daily during busy parts of the shipping season. The span is about 390 feet, or 120 meters. As ships pass, there is a customary horn-blowing sequence which is copied back. Long-short-long-short means to raise the bridge, and Long-short-short is a friendly salute.

 I still think the Technical World writer didn't have a clue...lol

Telephony from Technical World Magazine, 1905

The old magazines at Internet Archives are endlessly fascinating to me.  They give us a picture of the world then, as technology was developing and new products were introduced for future benefit.  (Technical World also offered lots of ads for patent lawyers, natch).  

Below, there's a reference to "Tesla", as tho everyone would know who that was.  He was Nicola Tesla, and look!  He predicted the cel phone, in 1905!  

That particular issue has quite a long article about telephone technicalities--it ought to be fascinating to a few of you!

Did Mohimonts cross the pond?

Ahhh, old newspapers ARE a goldmine!  We found a few references to an Alfred Mohimont, who got into a bit of trouble in New York at the turn of the last century.  Evidently, he married in 1904 and again in 1905...to different women.  He'd committed his first wife on their wedding night because she "became insane", and tried to throw herself from a third story window.... 

Now, we don't KNOW that this man was related to Grandma Elizabeth Sand (Hesch)'s grandmother Angelique Mohimont, but the name is fairly unusual, and the time-frame is right. 

By the way, the article  under the cartoon basically says the same thing as the clearer article (right).

(left) This was also from November 1905. It made a sensational story, and that sold newspapers then as well as now.

The St Paul Daily Globe

The Library of Congress website is fascinating. It has an online division called Chronicling America, a collection of early newspapers from across the nation. Of course, it's searchable, so I tried "The Globe Newspaper, St Paul, Mn" and found that the newspaper folded in 1905.

Evidently, there was a problem as early as 1893:(NYTimes).... but by 1905, the publishers gave up.

This piece was part of an article that day chronicling reactions from other newspapers around the state:
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But Larry and I have formed our own opinions of the Globe over time...lol...and the other newspapers were just being 'nice' there. The Globe seemed to love sensational stories, but went out of business well before THIS story ended:

(The Daily Globe, Oct 7, 1902)

22 days