Notes from Barb

Notes from Barb: Introduction

My father had two sisters, Barbara and Mitzi. They lived in Duluth and Two Harbors on the shore of Lake Superior. Mitzi moved to Omaha and, a bit later, Dad moved there, too. Barb stayed in Duluth.

Barb was an artist and an athlete. A more smooth and graceful swimmer is hard to imagine. She painted landscapes, mostly in oils. She did rosemaling. She did beautiful, artistic wood-burning. She sculpted. And she wrote.

Barb and husband Bill lived on Park Point with daughter PerryAnn and son Mark. While living on the Point, she wrote occasional newletter articles called "Notes from Barb". I have copies of a few of those articles. They provide a peek into times past in the Duluth area and I'd like to share them with you. With three exceptions, I don't know when these articles were written.

The first one to share is entitled "The North Shore".

The North Shore

The North Shore is the most beautiful spot in the whole United States! That is a statement my father believed whole-heartedly and he never missed a chance to press the point. In fact he sought out opportunities by going to places tourists were and welcoming them to "his" domain. He'd talk with then trying to get them to admit that this was indeed the place to be. (He should have worked for the C. of C.) If he got an opinion to the contrary, he'd grumble for days at their lack of appreciation of beauty or their "just plain stupidity." Here's one comment that, while it disagreed with his opinion, he never-the-less enjoyed: There was a young fellow from the Dakotas who said he did not think much of the view around here . . . every which way he tried to look, trees got in the way!

And then there was the wheat farmer, also from the Dakotas, who said that Lake Superior couldn't hold a candle to the view of a ripe wheat field, - that in a breeze, the wheat waved just like the water on the lake here, except that it was golden rather than blue. "Then you DO think the lake is pretty?" my dad insisted. "Yah, but all you can do with the lake is drink it, and a wheat field is money in the bank and so is really prettier!"

A farmer from Iowa said that he had been told so much about how gorgeous this drive up the shore was supposed to be but HE was very disappointed. He had driven all the way up to Canada and back and had not seen one decent looking farm on the whole trip!

Once the folks asked a neighbor to come with them for a picnic up the shore. The neighbor said, "No thank you. I've already seen it!" (Blasphemy! She'd SEEN it? When? In the afternoon an a clear day? At sunset? During a Northeaster? Good Grief, the fool says she has seen it?) And, another couple had the audicity to decline a similar invitation with "What's there to do up the shore except sit on a pile of rocks and look at a lot of water?" These two remarks lived forever in infamy . . . he could never forgive them.

My brother, his wife, Dot, and three year old son, Fred, came up from Omaha for a vacation trip. First, they spent a few days visiting Grandma Hartman, Fred's first visit with his grandma. Then they went up the shore and got a cabin up the Gunflint. Dot sent my brother to town to get some groceries. She asked little Fred if he'd like to go along and see Grand Marais. Sure! So when my brother and Fred returned from Grand Marais, Dot asked Fred how he like Grand Marais. "We never even went to her house", he answered. (Ed note: I thought they said we were going to visit Grandma Ray!)

Have you hard the one about the boy who asked his father where all these rocks came from?  And the father said, "Son, the Glacier brought them." "Where is the Glacier now, Dad?", the boy asked. "It's gone back for more rocks!"