Memories
Presentation to the Annandale History Club
1994
Don Johnson

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Donald B. Johnson (1921-2001) said he lived through tough times and good times. Don Johnson grew up in French Lake Township seven miles from Cokato and nine miles from Annandale. His parents' farm was located 3 1/2 miles south of French Lake on County Road 3 and one mile east. Don finished 8th grade at Birch Lake School, but wasn't able to go to high school because there were no school buses and because of the Great Depression. Birch Lake School was open 1874-1971, and the schoolhouse is now a residence. Birch Lake School was named for a lake on the west side of County Road 3 that was drained for farm land many years ago. 

Don remembered that in 1936 there was a stretch of over 40 days below zero. The water pipes from the well to the barn froze up even though they were six feet underground. They had to run a hose to get water to the cattle in the barn. A neighbor, Frank Lundeen, had a Model A Ford and kept it out by Birch Lake School on County Road 3. They would take the horses out to the road, leave them in Peter Hill's barn, and take Lundeen's Model A into Cokato for groceries and mail. The mailman had a Model T snowmobile, and it had to be very bad before he couldn't make the mail delivery.

In 1936 Don went to confirmation classes at North Crow River Church in Knapp. In the winter he took horses. There was a horse barn at the church, and they could feed the horses and put horse blankets on them. In the summer he rode a bicycle to confirmation class. Don said his dad gave him 25 cents when they went to Annandale for the Fourth of July. Ice cream and pop were five cents and a ride was ten cents. Because of the hard times, Don couldn't help but feel guilty spending that 25 cents.

French Lake Township didn't have a snow plow until 1941. When the roads became impassable, they made roads in the fields with a narrow sleigh with a walking plow along the runner. When they got to a snow bank, they had to shovel. When they drove across the field roads, they could hear the chains hitting the fenders. The Johnsons had a Model T, and when it didn't start they harnessed up a horse to pull it until it started. 

Before Model Ts had windows, they had side curtains. The windshield wipers were hand operated. One time Don went with his parents into town to trade eggs for groceries. They drove a 1924 open Model T. Don had a 15-dozen egg case along side of him. His dad turned the wheel to avoid some road machinery that swerved. They drove out in a meadow and the eggs ended up on top of his mother. His dad had a cousin in town, so they went there and his mother took a shower and borrowed some clothes. There were no eggs left to trade for groceries, so they had to charge them. 

Don's first job as a kid was greasing windmills. He got 25 cents for that. He hauled ice one summer from May 1 to October 1. He delivered to 115 ice boxes north of Cokato and 110 ice boxes south of Cokato. He got $60 per month and worked 12-14 hours every day, and he said people envied him for his job. Sometimes muddy roads added another two to three hours to his route, and then he had to explain to the customers why he was late. 

Don had a Model A truck with a feed grinder. He made $20 to $25 a day, and half of it went for gas to run the machine.

On Monday, November 11, 1940, the day of the Armistice Day storm, Don was asked to help Ervin Lundeen haul some cattle down to the cities. They left with two trucks, and half way between Howard Lake and Cokato they turned back because of poor visibility. Lundeen lived about a mile from Cokato. They put the cattle in the barn. There were cows, calves, sheep and pigs all together. There was only hay in the barn to feed them. When the weather let up a little on Wednesday, they skied to the elevator in Cokato and each carried back a half a sack of corn cobs and a half a sack of oats on their backs. They made two trips. They didn't complete their trip to the cities until Thursday.

During the Armistice Day storm Don's folks wondered how he was and he wondered how they were doing. Few people had phones, and those that did found that the lines were down. A farmer northwest of Cokato had 5,000 turkeys out in a field, and Don said he and Ervin Lundeen were crazy enough to go out there to help him One of them had to drive and the other walked along the road so they didn't go in the ditch. They took turns. Travel of any sort was perilous. They saved some turkeys, but many birds were lost.

Note: The 1940 Armistice Day Blizzard was particularly dangerous because of the total lack of warning. An unseasonably warm day quickly turned deadly by late afternoon. Snowfall measured 27 inches in Collegeville, Minnesota, winds were recorded from 50-80 miles per hour, snow drifts measured as deep as 20 feet in Willmar, and temperatures dropped 50 degrees in parts of Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. In total 154 people died. There were 49 storm-related deaths in Minnesota. The blizzard lasted 60 hours. By November 12, the storm had cut a 1,000 mile path across the middle of the country. In addition to sinking three freighters and two small boats on Lake Michigan and causing a train wreck in Watkins, Minnesota, which killed an engineer and fireman, the death toll to duck hunters was devastating. The Armistice Day Blizzard changed the way storms are forecast.

Since 1919 Armistice Day commemorated the end of WWI (November 11, 1918). It was changed to Veterans Day in 1954 to honor all United States veterans. 

Don took his army physical on February 11, 1946. He was 4-F because he had rheumatic fever when he was eight years old. There were no materials available for electrical work, so he drove livestock, cut ice and did any kind of work he could find. Later he was approved for limited service, but wasn't called. 

There was no electricity in their area until 1946. Earlier, a man came to their house and said that someday everyone would have electricity. He said that they could pump water, milk cows, and shave with electricity, and someday they could sit in their living room and watch the Yankees play baseball in New York. When he left, Don's father, Albert Johnson, said, "How dumb does he think we farmers are?" His father lived to see the Yankees play ball on television, but not in color.

Entertainment was listening to a crystal set which needed earphones. Everyone had to be really quiet to hear it. Radio was a major source of entertainment and information from 1925 until about 1950 (called the Golden Age of Radio). Later the Johnsons bought a loudspeaker radio, a Coronado from the Gamble's Store. It had a B, C and a 2 volt battery that they needed to take to Cokato once a month to charge up, which cost 25 cents. Don was always interested in electricity and wiring, but he said that there were no materials for wiring. He decided to find a way to recharge radio batteries. He took a steering sector from an old Model T. It had little spider gears. One shaft would go around one time and the other would go around nine times. He made a coupler and put a Chevrolet generator on the steering wheel "deal." He hewed a propeller from a 2x6 or 2x8 six-foot long board, balanced it up, and made a stand for it. First Don put the contraption on top of the house. When the wind blew, it sounded like a train going through the house. His folks said he couldn't have it on the house, so he put it on top of the barn. It was enough to run six volt lights in the house, and he charged up batteries for all the neighbors. Then Don and a cousin started wiring houses and barns, until they were stopped because they didn't have licenses. Don went to work for Holm Brothers in Dassel to put in the time necessary to obtain an electrician's license.

When Don and his wife Lorraine moved to the Annandale area in 1955, Bill Kiehn was the only other electrician in the area. Don worked at Holm Brothers and got his Master B license right after the war, and in 1946 started wiring houses and barns. The REA brought electricity to rural areas, and there were many farms that needed to be wired. In 1960 he got his Master A license and started Don Johnson Electric of Annandale. He was farming all this time as well, and he joked that the electrician business paid the bills so he could continue farming. He taught a lot of people who worked for him and taught his sons, Carmon (1955-1982) and Tom, the trade. Don looked around the room and said, "I think I did some wiring for every one of you at one time or another." His son Tom owns the business now [in1994], and Don occasionally helps him. Don's brother Russell is also an electrician. 

Don said languages were easy for him, and he said he should have gone to school to study languages. He could speak Swedish, Finnish and Spanish. He said that he dated a Finnish girl for 3 1/2 years and learned to speak the language. When he was young, not many of the Swedish kids could speak Swedish, but most of the Finnish kids could speak Finn. He learned to speak Spanish during the war when he worked at the canning factory. One of the Mexican workers picking sweet corn wanted to learn English and Don wanted to learn to speak Spanish, so they taught each other. 

Don said he drove the Cokato Museum's 1923 Model T Coupe in several Annandale Fourth of July parades. The Model T was once owned by Gust Akerlund, long-time Cokato photographer. Don owned five Model Ts. He paid $12.50 for a 1937 Model T, drove it many miles, and sold it for $125 for scrap during the war. He said he should have kept it. Don is called upon to speak Swedish with some of the Cokato Museum's older visitors from Sweden. He said that all the younger Swedish visitors speak English. Don has a great sense of humor and he told many funny jokes during his presentation to the Annandale History Club. 

Excerpts taken from Don Johnson's 1994 tape recorded presentation.
Secretary, Annandale History Club (2009)