Editor’s note:
Each Monday, The Daily Journal will be featuring excerpts from the life journals of the late Don Johnson. Johnson and wife Layna made their home and living, year ‘round on three islands within a range of a mile and a half on Rainy Lake. They were the parents of Don “Buck” Johnson, Byrne Johnson (who presents the journals), Beryl “Sally” Jernberg and Karen Gustafson.
The Dahlberg Years installments will continue on Aug. 11

The Dahlberg Years
Summer Activities 1936 - 1945
Don Johnson Journals and Letters
Presented by Byrne Johnson
Part 8

In addition to the Dahlberg family, full-time summer residents on the island included a cook and a butler imported from Chicago or New York, and a masseur from Chicago. There were also a locally hired handy man and two cabin girls/waitresses. Bror always had a private secretary with him at the island. Unusual for the time, several of the secretaries were men.

This was not a true two month vacation for Bror Dahlberg. He loved the lake and the island but did carry on his duties as president of a major corporation from the island. Most communications were by mail with an occasional trip to town to make long distance phone calls at the telephone office and to send telegrams at the Western Union office in the Rex Hotel. On several occasions the board of directors of the Celotex and Certainteed companies met at Redcrest.

There was at that time something that later became known as the “Rainy Lake Aristocracy”. These were the estate owners on the lake who were always present at the major social events of the summer. On the U.S. side were the Dahlbergs and the Major Horace Roberts on Atsokan Island. The Canadian side had Major Roberts’s daughter Virginia and her husband, Captain Harry French, and Dr. Scheldrup from the Twin Cities. Although Ernest Oberholtzer was often at these events, it was more as a guest of the his Harvard classmate, Harry French, than as a member in his own right. Others might have qualified for the select circle but probably chose not to.

Bror Dahlberg was recognized as a hard driving, successful business man and although he did continue to function as a corporation president during the summer, he also indulged his other interests. Two things were on the schedule every day of decent weather. Around noon there would be a session on the swimming dock which included a drink of Scotch and soda and a plunge into the lake. In the afternoon almost everybody on the island would be involved in clearing dead trees and branches along the shore, so by Labor Day you would not be able to see a single brown branch along the south shore of the island. Any wood which could be used for stove wood was piled for the caretaker to pick up by car in the winter and the brush and branches too small to be useful were piled and burned. Mr. Dahlberg was always in charge, skillfully using the saw and ax, usually stripped to the waist and directing others. When he saw branches ready to go to the fire he would roar out “Swampers!” This was a call from the lumber camp days and was the signal for anyone not otherwise engaged to rush to move the debris to the flames.

Besides the grocery staples shipped up from Chicago in the spring, Redcrest was quite independent in the food department. The dairy needs of the island were met by a “rent-a-cow”. In each of the summers except one, a cow was rented from a local dairy farmer in the spring and returned in the fall. That one year the cow was purchased and stayed at the island over the winter. The Johnson family of five ballooned in weight as they tried to keep up with her output of milk. Milk, homemade butter, sour cream and brown sugar on pancakes, and cream puffs, were just some of the ways they tried to keep the cow comfortable.

A hundred chicks were ordered from Sears Roebuck each spring and raised to maturity during the summer in the chicken house. These were harvested, plucked and cooked on the days the cook had fried chicken on the menu.

As early as possible in the spring, the Johnsons planted a vegetable garden so produce was available much of the summer. Carrots, peas, onions, lettuce and cabbage were among the things grown. There was no running water anywhere near the garden, and the lake was a long ways away. The only sources of water were the rain and a pond from which the children carried water in buckets during dry spells. This pond also provided frogs for fishing bait all summer.

A few times during the summer, an evening trip to town was made to see a movie. There were three movie theaters at that time, all of them within walking distance of the city dock at the end of Second Street. An automatic stop after the movies was Jim's Eat Shop where everyone could have a sundae, a soda or a milk shake. While the young folks were enjoying one of these options, Bror Dahlberg would be eating a bowl of corn flakes which was not a common evening snack at that time.

Another reason for nighttime excursions to town was for the adults to take in some of Ranier's legendary night life. This small village at the outlet of Rainy Lake was renowned for its availability of booze and women of the evening. Many years later Ted Hall mentioned in The Rainy Lake Chronicle that the ladies, who he referred to as 'social workers', had probably saved more trees than the Sierra Club because of the amount of time that they kept the lumberjacks out of the woods. Williams's Night Club was one of the centers of this activity. One evening while the Dahlberg group was enjoying the night life, a train came across the bridge from Canada and had to stop while the cars were inspected by U.S. Customs. This happened to be a circus train, and the circus crew also stopped at the bar for a drink. After a while someone stuck his head in the door and yelled, “Hey, Rube”, which was the signal that the train was about to pull out. A few minutes after the circus left the club, a waitress came over to the Dahlberg table and said to Gilda, “Ma'm, I think your train is leaving.” Everyone, including Gilda, got a big laugh out of it.

One summer Gilda noticed that the mice were becoming quite active. She instructed Don to buy a cat on his next trip to town. He had very little use for cats in general and certainly could see no reason to spend money to buy one, so he ignored her instructions and told her that he “forgot”. This worked a few times, until finally she said something to the effect that he either return with a cat or not to bother returning at all. This did have the feeling of seriousness, but as he still saw no reason that anyone would spend money to get a cat, he decided to pick up a homeless cat in town. As he walked down the alley north of the main street businesses, several with houses of ill repute upstairs, he spotted a cat. He tried the “Here, kitty, kitty” routine. The cat seemed to sense that he didn't like cats, but after a little time it came close enough that he could reach out and grab it. As he held and petted it to calm the beast, a woman from one of the upstairs establishments opened the window, stuck her head out, and yelled, “Hey, where do you think you are going with my damned cat?” Don looked up, in all innocence, and said, “I'm just a cat lover, lady. You don't mind if I pet it, do you?” She watched until he put the cat down and left. He did get one without an attentive owner a block later and took it home to a secure job. Whatever the end of that story was, it seems likely that either when the mice or Gilda left Redcrest, the cat was taken back to town and released in its original neighborhood to find its way home to its rightful owner.

Few butlers served more than one summer at Redcrest. Without knowing much about the art of butlering it is hard to know how Adolph stacked up against the others professionally, but as a memorable character, he certainly had no equal. An Austrian who had fled Europe before the war with his Jewish wife, he arrived for the summer.

Gilda may have felt that she should learn to swim in case she really ticked someone off while she was out in a boat. In any case, she decided that if she was ever going to learn to swim, Adolph was the one to teach her. His method was to tie a large loop in a rope, put it under her arm pits and support her as she paddled along the dock. When he felt that she was making progress on her own, he would slack off on the rope and she would continue until she realized that he was not supporting her and would panic, flail her arms and go under the water. Adolph would let her stay under as long as he thought she could take it while all the time beaming a huge smile to the onlookers on the shore, including Bror. When he felt that she needed saving, he pulled on the rope and got her up on the dock. She at five feet and he at six feet two stood toe to toe as she beat him on the chest with her fists and screamed “G--damn you, Adolph, you are trying to drown me!”, to which he would reply in all innocence, “Mrs. Dahlberg, you want to learn to schwim, I am teaching you to schwim.” She would be convinced and the process was repeated. She never did learn how to schwim, but she was never thrown out of a boat, either.