Folk Art Carver Story

[chad austin]

I heard an interesting story from my dad on thanksgiving and I thought I would share as it is an interesting one.

My dad has always talked about how my grandparents were poor and always bouncing from house to house but the other night put it into perspective for me as I never got to know them.

In early 1950 my grandparents were very poor immigrant squatters living on the iron range and my dad was about 1-2 years old. They happened upon a house on Balsam Lake,(about 45 minutes to an hr north of Grand Rapids) and proceeded to live in this house for 7 years without any questions asked, my grandfather made a living trapping and running a makeshift sawmill that would later take one of his eyes(a sliver from a log running through the mill pierced his eye and when he was brought to the hospital in Grand Rapids they said it was too close to his brain to operate and the sliver eventually rotted/worked it's way out). Sometime around 1960-61 a knock at the front door was answered by my grandpa, the man at the door says "who the h3ll are you?" My grandpa replies in a thick Norwegian accent "who the h3ll are you?"

The man at the door replies "my name is Fred Lexow and I own this house, now who the h3ll are you?" So after Fred realized they had actually kept the house up and had done some repairs that needed to be done, he allowed them to stay there 1-2 months until they bought their own place on lower balsam lake.

Fred Lexow lived in Bovey MN. and had went to his "cabin to dry out for a while"

Just a neat story I thought I would share.

Fred Lexow, my dad and my grandparents got to be very good friends for the next 10 yrs. until he past away in 1971. Google his name and check out some of his decoy carvings.

[bassNspear]

cool story!