On the way home from the class reunion, we could see that autumn is approaching in the north woods. Rose hip jam, anyone?
Autumn also means deer season. Want to buy a deer stand?
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We saw a number of things on the way home that are listed in Roadside America. Meet St. Urho, who supposedly drove the grasshoppers from Finland. I say supposedly because the whole thing was the creation of Sulo Havumaki, a psychology professor at Bemidji State College (now Bemidji State University). My mother, a first-grade teacher, took a continuing ed course from him in the 1960s. I remember her telling my dad and I how entertaining he was and how he had created a whole legend about a fictional Finnish saint. This statue stands in Menahga. (I had to steal the photo from Roadside America; I forgot to take a picture of him myself.)
In Nevis we saw the world's largest tiger muskie. What a thrill. Or maybe not.
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In Akeley there was Paul Bunyan:
Paul is holding his hand down low so you can sit in it (if you dare; imagine being goosed by Paul).
Everybody loves Paul and Babe:
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Truly the high point of the trip for Smokey, though, was in Proctor, just north of Duluth. Back in the heyday of the Mesabi iron range, Proctor was a big rail center through which the ore trains passed on their way to Duluth harbor, where the ore was transferred to ore boats (remember The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald?) that took it to the steel mills in Gary, Indiana and to Cleveland.
Smokey is a big fan of trains.
I tended to look at it more like a massive, very complicated sculpture full of intriguing abstract shapes and unusual textures.
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Smokey explained a lot of the machinery to me. This particular engine holds a number of records for tonnage hauled.
But my favorite image was this one.
I call it "Sgt. Schulz's Hat, With Handle."
