Jean Ruzicka
Park Rapids Enterprise
Park Rapids, Minnesota
January 31, 2009
Dear Daddy Web site documents Great Depression experience
The primitive cabin in Crow Wing Lake Township was not what the family expected - but they made the best of their new home, spending three summers here before reluctantly returning to the metro. (Submitted photo)
In her 80s, Martha Linsley bought a small typewriter from Montgomery Ward, taught herself to type and transcribed hundreds of letters she and her children and her husband wrote to one another during the Great Depression.
The near daily correspondence - from a farm near Nevis where Martha and children Ruth, 9, and John, 7, lived - to Minneapolis - where James supported the family as a streetcar conductor – is now the subject of a Web site, www.deardaddy.com.
When Martha Linsley began transcribing the 700-plus letters, she sent them off to Ruth – married and living in Ohio.
Martha was concerned the letters written on cheap pencil tablets, would become illegible in the attic heat, “destroying words that memorialized a vital time in our family’s experience,” Ruth Linsley Forman explained.
“Reading each installment stirred intense emotions and forgotten memories, which I began to write in my journal,” Ruth said. “It evolved into an obsession to document our two-year odyssey – beyond the letters – complete with historical references, details and personal insights.”
Ruth died in 2004 and daughter Lucy Jeanne, who resides in Washington State, took on the project, aided by four generations of family members who’ve “pooled our creativity and specialties.
“We decided to begin with a Web site so we could have control over its destiny – rather than sitting around waiting for rejection letters from publishers – as my mother did,” Lucy states.
Photos, letters, Ruth’s memoirs of the adventure and children’s drawings comprise “Dear Daddy: The Farm Letters” – a work in progress, but now ready for the unveiling.
An intro to ag
The engaging narrative penned by Ruth recounts the family’s challenges of dealing with the Great Depression while living in a small, primitive cabin in the Crow Wing Lake Township from June 1932 to August 1934.
Hubbard County resident Dena Bliss DeVore, 85, remembers their arrival well.
The city kids intrigued the small student population in the one-room Vokes School, she recalled. (John, who would later become a Nobel-nominated astro-physicist, was considered a troublemaker.)
Ruth found Dena’s duties of milking the cows and feeding the pigs “fascinating.” Dena’s chores precluded after-school play, so the Linsleys often headed over to the Bliss residence. where they got a first-hand view of pig butchering, Dena said.
The Linsley family purchased the property in early 1929, “a time of prosperity.” They’d originally planned to leave metro life behind and “live off the land.”
But the stock market crash later that year postponed the move.
“In the face of catastrophic unemployment, my father could not give up his job, which was our family’s sole source of income,” Ruth wrote. “We needed his earnings to develop the farm.”
Ruth’s parents decided their only option was “to have James continue working for the streetcar company in Minneapolis, while Mother, John and I lived on the farm, and began to establish our homestead.
“So the Greek scholar city girl (Martha had graduated from the University of Minnesota with a master’s level education in Greek and Latin) would live in a remote cabin with us - and the country-boy farmer (with an eighth grade education) would work in the city - alone.”
Lure of the land
James Linsley wanted to “pass on farming lore” to his children. But the possibility of a streetcar conductor - who earned 50 cents an hour - buying a farm seemed remote.
That is, unless the family considered heading north. They were aware of the “notorious record-low temperatures” for which northern Minnesota is famous. “But looking at a number of scenarios, my father concluded that the brutal conditions might actually be an advantage,” Ruth wrote. “A farm could be within their financial reach…” and “ a hard country life was better than enduring endless days in the noisy congested city, working a job he hated.”
In 1929, the Linsleys spotted an ad for a 160-acre farm near Park Rapids. The seller, it said, would accept an urban home as a down payment. In addition to acreage, the ad listed “a house, a barn, and other outbuildings.”
Mortgage payments would be small enough so they could start their farming operation gradually, while renting out land to neighboring farmers. There were about 60 acres of pine trees, which could be sold as timber for additional income, while they were getting established.
It seemed like the perfect opportunity, Ruth recalled.
“My parents quickly wrote to the agent listed, Mr. Prettyman, from Wadena, a small town, a few miles from the property. Not long after, he drove down to the Twin Cities to meet with them.
“I’m sure he had no actual pictures of the property, but described the land and outbuildings in glowing real estate jargon,” Ruth wrote. “When he left, Mr. Prettyman took the title to their home as the down payment, and we moved into a rented house in Minneapolis.
“Trusting and naive, my parents had disregarded a basic rule - see the property before buying it,” Ruth wrote.
“A year went by before any of us saw our newly-acquired farm. But finally, in the summer of 1931, we eagerly drove up to inspect our future homestead,” Ruth recalled.
‘A shocking reality’
“John and I had heard nothing about the buildings, but had seen enough Midwestern farmhouses to know what to expect - a roomy two-story structure with white siding and a spacious front or side porch (or maybe both), probably a porch swing, and a big yard to play in,” Ruth said.
But that was a typical house in the southern Corn Belt area.
“Neither of my parents gave any hint about their feelings or personal reaction when we first saw the property. But John and I were certainly not prepared for the shocking reality of the buildings before us,” Ruth recalled.
“The setting itself was picturesque, just as Mr. Prettyman had described - a clearing in a thick grove of pine trees near the road. But our ‘farmhouse’ was a one-room shack about 15 feet square with a narrow lean-to addition along the back.
“The siding on the main part was weathered gray - with no trace of paint. No front porch. No swing. Tarpaper covering the addition had torn away in many places, revealing gaps in the boards. Wall surfaces on both sections consisted of a single layer of mismatched wood, with peek-through spaces. On the inside we could see the vertical two-by-four joists,” Ruth said.
“The flooring was rough pine boards. A trap-door in the main room gave access to a short ladder, leading down to a small dug-out cellar. There was no foundation, just a rock at each corner, on which the building rested. The space underneath was open to the wind. Empty window-frames welcomed weather and insects, while mice and chipmunks scurried in and out of the gaping back doorway.
“This was to be our future shelter from summer storms and winter blizzards when we moved in the next year...”
A walk from Park Rapids
The journal continues with the moving day, settling in – and her father’s return to Minneapolis. The letters began the next day – reciprocated with boxes of fresh produce, household supplies such as soap, books from the streetcar company’s library - and letters.
“No doubt we received more mail than anyone else on the Nevis route,” Ruth wrote. “Our mailman hardly ever passed without stopping, either to leave a letter or package, or - when our red mailbox flag was raised - to pick up our letters.
“We seldom chatted with him, but from the care he took to make sure our packages of food arrived safely, even in the most extreme weather, it appeared that he took a special protective interest in our family.”
The chronicle moves through the seasons, the family spending three summers at the cabin before moving back to Minneapolis.
The site holds descriptions of “adjusting to the new routine” and “making the cabin cozy.”
Chapter 24 tells the story of James’ return via train to spend Christmas with his family – with no means of transportation to the cabin - located 14 miles from Park Rapids.
Determined to reunite with his wife and children, he set out on foot. Fortunately, he was dressed for the weather, wearing a sheepskin coat, knee high boots, and fur cap with earflaps.
He strapped an army blanket, rolled up with presents, over his shoulder. Armed with a flashlight to guide him through the darkness, he set off on the journey, telephone poles his only guide.
He stopped at a barn at 2 a.m. to remove snow from his boots. He rested, warmed by the animals, then set off on the last miles to the cabin.
A balloon payment mortgage and federal funds that didn’t materialize led to the move back to the metro, Lucy said.
“They were taken for a ride by the mortgage company,” she said.
In making the property trade, the lender had valued the Minneapolis house at half its worth.
“My grandfather gave up his dream.”
Best time of their lives
At this point, 14 of the 34 chapters are complete, with a deadline goal of the end of March, Lucy said.
“In addition to the rest of the letters and chapters, we will have recipes they sent each other and a complete bibliography of all of the books they read out loud,” she said. “A page will feature our Web team, from my 85-year-old father - who has worked hundreds of hours - to my two brothers, my oldest son, and my history-buff teenage grandsons.”
“This is not a mere compilation of letters,” she said. “It’s a story of the people, the simplicity of life” in the Great Depression.
Lucy, who grew up with her mother’s “stories on the farm” is now sharing them with the world.
Grandmother Martha and Uncle John considered their short time on the farm to be “the happiest times of their lives.”
