Bicycling to Duluth 1950

1950 Recollections: from the book Sailing to Lake Superior, 2020.

“Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.” Mark Twain

Seventy years ago the world was a different place before TV and Internet. Bustling Duluth/Superior was the second largest seaport in America and serviced by 9 railroads.

Ron Hartman and his grandchildren Torie and Corbin Peterson, 2001.
Ron was my neighbor and best friend from my childhood.

Bicycling to Duluth – I was ten years old in 1950

On a frigid blustery December morning at the head of the Great Lakes, Duluth-Superior was unseasonably snow-less, bleakly gray and dismally stark.

Superior is not a beautiful city, but a city surrounded by beauty.

Looking for a new frontier with my youthful enthusiasm spiriting me on, and a bicycle to propel me, I connected with my neighborhood pal, Ron Hartman, who delighted in adventure.

We were on a lark, it would take us where the wind blew and the fickle finger of fate steered.

Reflecting on memories inspired by stories of pioneers who first peopled this virgin country motivated my insightful prospective.

The bone chilling unrelenting wind storm known as the Siberian Express blasting out of the Canadian tundra did not dissuade our youthful enthusiasm, and we bicycled on.

While passing the stately old mansion a few blocks away from home that was the city orphanage, Ron and I thankful in our good fortune, we were free to roam.

The Superior Children’s Home, overlooked Superior’s bay on East 2^nd St. The Victorian-era mansion was built by Martin Pattison in the late 1800’s. When Martin Pattison’s widow Grace left Superior in 1920, she left her mansion with the express purpose of a children’s home. The mansion is now a museum.

Superior also had another children’s home off North 28^th street in a place known as hobo jungle. St. Joseph’s Orphan Home was completed in 1917 and operated by the Catholic Church.

Ron and I had friends and schoolmates residing in the homes who couldn’t even begin to dream of the lark we were free to pursue.

These affection starved kids became good friends, and they were easy to like but it was also easy to see that their situations were hopeless even though they tried to give such an optimistic outlook.

Our bike route continued west through Superior’s old Central Park neighborhood. This was the city’s

first up-scale neighborhood with ginger-bread adorned 1880s vintage mansions. They were constructed by cash-flush East Coast entrepreneurs whose fortunes came from depleting the area’s natural resources. The World War II cash infusion still had momentum, but it didn’t buy house paint for the old mansions. Depression era austerity mentality was a hard thing to leave behind.

Our spirits were up and the idea of biking across the harbor to distant Duluth that loomed ahead on the hills of Lake Superior’s north shore spurred us on.

Another mile across Superior’s flatland found us in the north of the city where Northern Brewery was actively producing beer, emitting steam and aromas from its tall smoke stack.

The Northern Brewing Company was another early memory of the downtown. I still remember many trips to the loading dock around the back of the brewery next to the railroad tracks with my mother. This is where a case of beer could be purchased for 85 cents. The beer was in the tall-necked returnable bottles and the beer boxes were made of wood. It was a busy place. I believe that the number one amusement in Wisconsin was drinking, and this was where the price was right and the product excellent.

Next we were in the poorest part of town and passed several government housing projects, over numerous railroad crossings on our way to Connors Point.

Leaving the city’s north end on a two lane road, which was also the main interstate highway, we meandered west around the low wetlands area of Howard’s Pocket that separated Duluth-Superior Bay by a lengthy sandbar.

In 1950 Howard’s Pocket was the home of a shipyard that five years earlier frantically produced battleships twenty-four hours a day for America’s war effort. Now they were back to maintenance of the Great Lakes freighter fleet that transported grain from the Dakotas, iron ore from Minnesota, and coal from Pennsylvania. A lock was built in 1855 allowing large freighters to pass that connected Lake Superior to all Great Lakes shipping and the recently built Erie Barge Canal in New York State.

Superior was full of contradictions and paradoxes that perplexed my young mind. At ten years of age I hadn’t perceived of what whore houses and gambling dens were all about but our seaport city was filled with them and ironically churches abounded. My dad used to say: “if you want to find a hypocrite you have to go to church.”

Next we pedaled on to Connor’s Point. A word about Connor’s Point; Connor’s Point is a sand spit barrier within the Duluth/Superior harbor at the entrance to the St. Louis River that forms the border between Wisconsin and Minnesota. At the end of this sand spit is Rice Point in Duluth, Minnesota.

Before the arrival of Europeans, Connor’s Point was a seasonal Indian settlement in a virgin pine forest on a crystal clear river teaming with an abundance of fish. The first rustic buildings were trading posts built by French voyagers.

History had nearly stood still here at this “Head of the Great Lakes” for thousands of years until 1870 when the Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad first arrived in Duluth linking the Great Lakes with the Mississippi River at St. Paul.

The trans-continental rail from St. Paul to Washington State came next in 1893. This made Duluth-Superior a transportation link between the Atlantic and Pacific in the geographic center of the North American continent.

Gold rush mentality hyped by explosive expansion and speculation fueled a massive influx of eager European immigrants with glorious illusions.

Connor’s Point developed Detroit Pier for marine commerce. Several businesses sprung up including saw mills and a small residential neighborhood.

A few unpainted buildings still remained as a testimony to those boom times before railroads and steamships when Connor’s Point, Superior’s first settlement, was the only trading outpost at the terminus of Lake Superior on the western end of the Great Lakes. Freight docks and lumber mills would soon be built and operating to full capacity at that very spot. The Duluth-Superior Bridge Company, backed by the Great Northern Railway built a bridge connecting Connor’s Point in Wisconsin to Rice's Point in Minnesota. The completed bridge was dedicated in April of 1897.

One building still stubbornly standing on Conner’s Point in 1950 was the Grimsrud Meat Market, the first grocery store in Superior, Wisconsin.

This is where my grandfather Christ and his brother Hans went to work for their older brother Martin upon their arrival from Norway. At that time the timber baron, Weyerhaeuser, the clear-cut king of the logging industry, had recently arrived. Eventually the Grimsrud Meat Market moved to 1306 North 5th St. in Superior’s North End.

Our bicycle ride along the Duluth-Superior harbor was unsurpassed for its impressive scenery even on this bleak snow less winter day.

Ron Hartman and I continued our bicycle ride on to the 1897 era Interstate Bridge. We were each prepared to pay the 5¢ bicycle toll, though we had to walk our bikes most of the way across because of traffic.

Nowadays five cents, then known as a nickel doesn’t seem like a lot of money, but when I was a kid you could buy for a nickel any of the following: a newspaper, five U. S. postcards, three second-class postage stamps, a soft drink, a candy bar, an ice cream cone, a refillable cup of coffee, a pack of Kool-Aid, use of a pay phone, or a bowl of rice in a Chinese restaurant. I would push a hand powered lawn mower half a day for 25¢ back then.

Bicycling to Duluth in my youth was like striking off into a foreign country.

This end of Duluth at Rice's Point on Garfield Avenue was at the foot of the Interstate Bridge. Here was as hardscrabble a place as could be imagined in America. It conjured up mental images of post-war bombed out East Bloc countries. We saw tar paper shanties and ragged tattered children this freezing morning toting burlap sacks scrounging bits of coal dropped from steam locomotives along the railroad tracks so they could heat their humble shanties. These were mostly Indian kids pushed to the bottom rung of society’s social strata. A hundred years earlier these once proud people were the custodians of a pristine virgin forest and crystal clear waters teaming with nature’s abundance.

Back to our bicycle journey into Duluth’s down and out waterfront that boasted “where sail meets rail” in 1950.

The only retail business on Garfield Avenue was Goldfine’s Trading Post, a relic of the past. It was housed in an old bare bones three-story wooden warehouse building with a railroad loading dock dating from another era. Goldfine’s truly was a trading post. Farmers brought in their hay bales, live stock, or anything of value as currency to buy farm supplies and furniture.

From there we had two choices for getting into the downtown business district, continue on Garfield Avenue to Superior Street or take a short cut on Railroad Street. Either way we would enter downtown in the skid-row Bowery district. We took Railroad Street. This route directly through a huge railroad switching yard was an absolute nightmare in an automobile. On a bicycle crossing hundreds of rails at various intersecting angles among switch engine locomotives and freight cars gliding off in all directions and no defined rail crossings was a terrifying experience for ten-year old's.

A few months earlier on my way to school one morning I had a nightmare experience. My father had always admonished me to get off my bicycle and walk it across railroad tracks. On this particular day I dismounted and as I was halfway across a train whistle blasted. I looked up and panicked when I saw a steam locomotive bearing down on me. I fumbled the bicycle, and a pedal got stuck between the tracks. The engineer frantically blasted his whistle. It was too late to halt the rapidly rolling train. I pulled and jerked the bike, and at the last second I stepped clear just in time to see that locomotive rumbling by while the engineer shook his fist at me in frustration. I am sure that the engineer shared the same recurring nightmare with me.

Those massive steam locomotives, in the eye of a ten year old, are intimidating in the extreme. The adrenaline rushing, heart pounding incident removed all thoughts of the arctic cold temperatures.

Duluth was not a bicycle friendly place, as we soon found out. Gigantic electric powered buses connected to overhead cables that sparked and snapped along seemed to play bumper tag with the motorists. Everybody was in a hurry looking for nearly non-existent parking places.

We found a lunch spot at Joe Huey’s Chinese restaurant on Lake Avenue in the heart of the downtown business district. Our pocket change was limited, but 5¢ would buy a large bowl of rice, and we could help ourselves to all the soy sauce we could tolerate. It was salted to kill, but we were hungry kids.

Window shopping and cruising the streets of Duluth on that winter day on our bicycles lost much of its appeal with the tundra temperatures and wind blasting. On warmer days our bicycle adventure trip to Duluth would be repeated many times in the coming years.

When Ron and I decided to return to Superior, a sickening realization came over us when we discovered that we didn’t have enough money for our return bridge toll.

We didn’t have the courage to attempt walking our bicycles across the frozen bay. It could be a very dangerous endeavor because near the bridge center span the river current flowed swiftly and thin ice is unforgiving.

Ron had an idea, and we didn’t have many options at this point. We stood at the bridge approach and Ron said that we could walk our bicycles up the narrow sidewalk in the wrong direction to the middle of the bridge and cross over to the other side at a service area in the center, avoiding the toll taker and then continue in the correct direction off the bridge. We could stand around and freeze to death or take our chances on the questionable ice. It was time for action; away we went, safely crossing the bridge to Connor’s Point.

Elvina Martinsen, a Norwegian immigrant living in the Duluth-Superior area in 1889 described taking a horse drawn trolley from Superior to Duluth and crossing the bay by ferryboat. The fare was ten cents.

Prior to 1897, ferryboats connected the two cities. The ferryboats did not run in winter, but as soon as the bay froze over people crossed on the ice. *

What a treasure trove of wonderful memories I have of Ron Hartman, my best friend from my childhood.

These everlasting recollections are priceless...thank you Ron!

*Note: That bay ice was harvested by sawing in large blocks, stored with wood shavings as insulation that kept it through the summer months and was used to cool perishable foods. Residential “ice boxes”, using this ice were still in use in Superior when I was a child until 1950.

Photo of Ron Hartman courtesy to his daughter Kelly Peterson.

We had a Dream - Half a century of Honeymoon

December 20^th, 1969, our wedding day.

By the way: We didn’t get married on the shortest day of the year but the longest night.

We had a dream:

We were going where the wind blows, when the spirit moved us, and the price was right!

A half century later on December 20th 2019 our ongoing honeymoon continues.

Here is a synopsis from our book Sailing Beyond Lake Superior: Travels of Dursmirg.

When my father died in 1969, I thought about life and where it was going, realizing the most important person was Jane. I would marry her. When I asked she responded, “I suppose so.” I said, “You suppose so?”

On Jane’s lunch hour we drove to Carlton, Minnesota, a 17-mile trip in minutes. We filled out papers, paid a $5.00 fee and waited five days. They gave us two big bags of groceries. We had been together five years and found this humorous. Within an hour I had Jane back at her job.

Our secret was safe. Little did we know!

The rest of the story: The reporter from the Pine Knot, a weekly paper in Cloquet, Minnesota, gathered marriage information just after we received our license and went to press that afternoon. Jane’s friend picked up the paper and phoned her parents eighty miles away in Cloverland, Wisconsin.

The plot thickens!

A couple of hours later Judy’s parents got together with Jane’s parents for dinner.

The beans were spilled!

Five days later, we were back to Carlton and Judge Nordstrom’s house. He was a sprightly 85 year old and surprised us with an offer. He had to send our marriage document to the state, he could give us a copy with any date to show the family and friends. We amusingly declined.

My Jane was so very pretty. Excitedly she couldn’t decide which hand to put the ring on.

We had no plans for the day and drove to Duluth. Lunch was at a nice restaurant on the hilltop. It was an extraordinary day. Being together with my wife having lunch and looking over expansive Lake Superior, a frozen, snow covered vista that extended out beyond the eastern horizon. This was the route we would take on our soon to be completed 46 foot yacht.

My father had just died so we decided it best to have a get-together with friends and celebrate our wedding quietly. That evening we had a house full, and Jane cooked dinner.

Incredibly as long as we were keeping our secret, the family was keeping it too.

Time passed and Jane and I were sure we had kept our secret to ourselves.

We planned a nine-day honeymoon trip to Mexico City and Acapulco over Easter Week. I won the all expense paid five-star trip from a company I was doing business with. Our reasoning for Mexico was we would never revisit. Amazingly our home has became Yucatan in Mexico.

Before leaving on our trip, we thought it advisable to inform Jane’s parents of our marriage.

After dinner at Jane’s parent’s home, I told the group I had something important. Jane’s father said, “No, I have something to tell.” He couldn’t help chuckling while telling his story.

A happy man is a man who marries the girl he loves.

An even happier man is the man who loves the woman he married!

The half century of years from 1969 to 2019 have been an ongoing adventure for our tour group of two that generated four sailing books, two Yucatan travel books, several blogs, and a web site.

As I was lamenting the rapidly passing years, Jane said to me, “Be happy for what you have got.” and I replied “Yes, and what I have had.”

Our books on Amazon.

Anzio: Italy and the Battle for Rome,1944 by Lloyd Clark

Book Review - Five Stars

Anzio, a little known quiet coastal town that marked a turning point of WWII, got caught in the cross hairs of time.

My uncle Lawrence Grimsrud, rifle in hand, somehow survived this deadliest of allied landings but sustained mental scars that plagued him his entire life.

This moving story helped me put a human face on this blood bath.

Excerpts:
Anzio had gained a reputation for being one of the most dangerous places on earth. Troops arrived not expecting ever to leave.


The war correspondent Eric Sevareid entered the town soon after it had fallen and was shocked by the utter destruction that he found there. There was no longer any pattern to the streets, merely broken walls, brick dust and thousands of spent cartridge cases. In the wake of the tumult Cisterna had taken on an eerie stillness. Sevareid wrote: In the little park the palm trees lay blackened and uprooted. Over them a shining white victory statue stood erect on a pedestal. It was the figure of a woman holding aloft a torch in a gesture of triumph. Though her marble head and her torch were gone, in its present attitude of shocked surprise the statue seemed the only vital, living thing within the town.
Operation Overlord was to be the beginning of the end of the war against Germany for the Western Allies, not Operation Diadem. The price of this pyrrhic Italian victory had been too high, with 44,000 Fifteenth Army Group casualties since 11 May, whilst a large proportion of Tenth Army had managed to escape to fight another day. Rome had always been of limited military value, and few people, apart from Mark Clark and the Italians, got overly excited about its capture. For most, Allies and German alike, the events of 5 June were to merely usher in a new phase of the war in Italy. In a remarkable case of strategic myopia, Clark had been blinded by the Eternal City.

From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs

BOOK REVIEW-FIVE STARS
From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs by Andrew Weil

Defining, describing, analyzing, cautioning, and comparing a wide spectrum of drugs along with many substances not normally considered as drugs. Fascinating, informative, and well written, everybody needs to be aware and this book delivers the message.
Excerpts:
Our purpose is not to encourage or discourage the use of any drug but rather to help people learn to live in a world where drugs exist and not get hurt by them.



We pay a high price today for our rejection of natural medicines in favor of potent chemicals. The tendency of pharmacologists and doctors to regard more potent drugs as better drugs encourages the use of dangerous derivatives of plants, when often the milder, natural originals would do as well.



It is clear that drug laws have done nothing to discourage people from becoming addicts. There are more addicts than ever, and the kinds of addiction are worse than before those laws were passed. The prohibition of opiates has spawned an ugly criminal underworld, given rise to powerful drug warlords, and led to the widespread corruption of public officials. Campaigns to stamp out heroin, while popular with politicians, have invariably had the opposite of their intended effect, ultimately causing more heroin to enter the world market, not less.

Rez Life: An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life by David Treuer

BOOK REVIEW-Five Stars
Rez Life: An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life by David Treuer
America’s ruthless history of “Manifest Destiny” with land free for the taking with Winchester repeating arms was unquestionably out and out genocide. This malevolent greed had no limit and was sold to the public as their inalienable right over savages.
This must read book is an honest look at America outside the bubble.
Excerpts:
I think it is safe to say that many Ojibwe would go back to using wooden spears and birch bark canoes if non-Natives simply fished with cane poles from shore, with bits of pork rind on the end of their hooks, only as far west as the Ohio River.



Tom Shingobee has in his possession a grocery receipt totaling seventeen dollars that his father had to settle by signing over his 160-acre farm. During World War I, when many of the men were away fighting in Europe, the timber stands were cut down by large timber outfits. One man remembers coming home to his beloved forests only to find a desert of slash and brush and not a tree in sight for miles.



In all, during the forty-seven years the Dawes Act was on the books (the Indian Reorganization Act, passed in 1934, officially stopped allotment but did not formally rescind the policy), Native Americans lost more than 90 million acres of tribal lands, about two-thirds of the lands held by Indians when the Dawes Act was passed; Indians lost, roughly, land that equals the size of the state of California. Ninety thousand Native Americans were left landless and largely homeless. The problems of this kind of landlessness were felt well into the 1970s and are still felt today. During that time, many Indian families were found to be living in cars, under porches, and crammed eight and sometimes ten to a room in dilapidated shacks across the country.

Travel complications 2019

Jane and John, Palma de Majorca, May, 2019

First let me say, everybody has problems.

My youthful frugality has served me well and has seen me through some troubling times.

I had a plan to finish my last two years of school that required saving money, which I did. Without complicating the story, somebody beat me to the money leaving me desperate. My dear old dad extended me enough to carry me through if I was extremely frugal and worked after school and weekends.

He set an example for me. As a young man my dad had developed three newspaper routes, cleaned a drug store before high school every morning, and repaired bicycles in his spare time. He walked five miles a day to save a nickel bus fare to get his pharmacy degree...my dad was no stranger to frugality.

When I finished my school I paid dad back in full...I know that he would have forgiven the debt, but I knew that this was a point of trustworthiness and honor. We both were happy. I then went on to pay off my house mortgage only making bank interest payments on while finishing school. By paying ahead on the mortgage I made my last mortgage payment at age 28, owned my home, car, and business, never again needing to feed bankers. Thank you Dad!

Being debt free the rest of my life set me free to fulfill my dreams and see me through two devastating economic collapses without being foreclosed upon. Frugality was resumed!

Four years ago I went to the doctor with a urinary infection and came away with problems: walking in and coming out crippled. Thirty days of the antibiotic Cipro left me with tendinitis, painful leg spasms, and sudden onset instability from low blood pressure. I still had my urinary infection which I resolved myself. Trust in the Mexican government social security medical system was gone.

This led to a long and tedious recovery that has not been 100%, the tendinitis could be lasting. A special diet, daily full body massages, plus walking with trekking sticks was imperative.

I longed to bicycle again, but that was looking impossible.

Eventually I discovered I could use my small folding bicycle as a walker for daily therapy. After two months I put the seat low and tried getting on...this was very difficult. Next I tried pushing with my feet. Eventually I was able to get my feet on the pedals...I had some colossal crashes. After a month my instability still held me back. My persistence story continues.

Today I ride my bicycle every day...it is limited to quiet streets on relatively level ground. Getting started is difficult, and it is imperative to dismount to cross busy intersections.

To this day I can not step up or down a curb without a hand rail or my little bicycle used as a walker. Standing in line for five minutes is painful and my limit. I am thankful for what I can do and always think of my dear old friend George Tappin, who on his deathbed said to me, “John, I would give anything if I could just walk out that door”.

This year we planned a Europe trip to Madrid, Palma de Majorca, and northern Germany/Netherlands. Our health was the number one consideration. Jane’s blood pressure and asthma had to be under control. She has done heroic measures over the years of diet, exercise, and radically reducing medications by strict adherence to diet, not imbibing corporate prepared foods plus low salt and sugar. Our ecologically friendly home and surroundings are virtually chemical free and that includes insecticides.

I will keep this brief …nearly twenty years ago Jane had a heart attack, her wonderful doctor got her on a strict diet that enabled her to get off all of her medications while controlling her weight, and she was cross country bicycling within two weeks...at a sensible rate. She later needed glaucoma medications that she eventually developed an allergic reaction to. Luckily the one eliminated did not cause any eye complications, but blood pressure needed controlling.

Jane was at the IMSS Mexican social security medical clinic for her yearly vaccinations, and they took her blood pressure. It was too high, they gave her medication and asked when the last time her doctor tested her. The doctor never tested her though Jane had visited monthly. The IMSS director made a schedule for Jane to get daily blood pressure evaluations. Jane’s doctor prescribed three asthma medications. Amazingly Jane’s asthma became severe and her blood pressure erratic. Jane in desperation made an appointment with her private doctor. Her doctor heard her coughing in the waiting room, and when she came in told her that the problem of high blood pressure was caused by her cough and an infection. Then her private doctor saw Jane’s medications prescribed by IMSS and discovered all three of them induced coughing complications. He prescribed a blood pressure medicine to be taken only when needed. This was the answer and Jane’s health miraculously improved, and we both were feeling great.

We were happy and our Europe trip plans could be put back on schedule.

Two more health calamities occurred. The first was the blood pressure medicine bought for our three month Europe trip turned out to be a fake, and Jane nearly had a stroke due to spiked blood pressure. Thankfully our dear friend Helga in Germany got Jane good medicine and that problem was put behind us. The next problem was a mysterious fluke. Briefly: When we were disembarking our flight at Palma de Majorca we noticed a baggage handler give our folding bicycles flying lessons complete with crash landings. Jane’s sprocket was badly bent, but I had the ability to bend it back into alignment. Less than a week later we were biking in Germany, and I took a colossal crash, broke my bicycle helmet and received a brain concussion. My sprocket was also broken but the chain guard has splintered and formed a hook that snatched my bike pants into the sprocket and sent me flying. The reason this didn’t happen at Palma de Majorca was that  I wore short biking pants when bike there.

A note: Our Dahon folding bicycles made eight trans Atlantic crossing and miraculously survived brutal handling, this was the crowning punishment. They are still rolling with us.

Hein Zenker

"The Goddess of opportunity may give us a chance only once in our lifetime; we couldn’t afford to miss it. With thirty-odd years of age, the time was right. We (my wife and I) built ourselves a boat – not very big; 20 feet – and off we were on the greatest adventure anyone could hope to experience."  Hein Zenker



We received word yesterday that an old friend of ours, Hein Zenker, passed away on October 19, 2019.  Our friendship with Hein and his wife Siggi goes back many years.  Siggi passed away two years ago.  Now they are both gone, but many wonderful memories of our times with them remain. We are honored to have had them as friends.  RIP Hein and Siggi.

Siggi and Hein Zenker on Thlaloca Dos signed our logbook on February 15, 1976, while Dursmirg was anchored at Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, Florida.

Without a doubt, the nicest looking boat to pull in and anchor at Boot Key anchorage was Thlaloca Dos. This precision built sailboat was sailed by the saltiest sailors of the group, Hein and Siggi Zenker. However, they were unassuming and immediately very much a part of our dropout anchorage community. They fit in to it naturally. In no time at all, they struck up friendships with all of the boaters in the harbor.

Hein Zenker on Thlaloca Dos and Bubba Schill aboard his Jaeger hit it off like life long friends and soon discovered that they both had something in common. Both served their country during World War II, but ironically they had been on opposing sides, Bubba in the American Navy and Hein in Germany’s Merchant Marine. They were each victims of geography and political leaders that had whipped the world into a monumental state of hate and terror. The chemistry that Bubba and Hein felt for each other was one that I am sure could only have been conveyed by the indelible scars left on their youthful souls and then carried throughout their lives.

Hein and Siggi could look at the world and especially this little collection of social outcasts that made up the Boot Key anchorage with empathy because they had both survived World War II Germany from within and gone on to fulfill a dream that took more determination, dedication, and forceful self-motivation than I had ever seen.

As a matter of fact, with only a couple of exceptions, all of the live aboard boaters that made up Boot Key anchorage back in the mid 1970s did not come to boating with financial backing and each carried their own load in life.

Some were world-class sailors and others couldn’t even tie a nautical knot, but one common thread bound us together and that was that we all were in this boating life for the adventure and freedom of sailing over distant horizons.

Oh, by the way!

In the world of strange coincidences, this next little story unfolded:

Back in St. Augustine, Florida, in the spring of 1973, after Jane and I had just spent our first winter living aboard Dursmirg, which we anchored for some time in Matanzas Bay near the St. Augustine City Yacht Pier, we met a young man living aboard a small sailboat. That spring we were the only two boats anchored in Matanzas Bay. We thought the longhaired hippie looking young man was strange because of his profession, which we had never heard of before. He was a computer programmer who daily commuted to Jacksonville to work, leaving his boat Thlaloca anchored in the bay.

The thing we did not realize at the time was the significance of that little boat with its strange name.

We would later learn the incredible story of the vessel’s monumental maritime achievement plus become close friends with the very people that actually built the boat and then went on to sail it into world history. The builders were Hein and Siggi Zenker and their historical feat was to sail their 20-foot Thlaloca around the world. It was the smallest vessel to do so at the time.

Hein and Siggi started building their little 20-foot sailboat in Iron Bridge, Ontario, Canada, and finished it in California where they launched it to begin the Australian leg of their round the world cruise. Siggi later told Jane and me that that trip was 95% misery. When I asked Hein about his navigational skills, he said that he did not have any at the time, but that he figured he would have plenty of time to study and besides he also figured that he could not possibly miss anything as large as the continent of Australia.

Reviewed by John M. Grimsrud

West! Sail West, Man! Around the World in Twenty Feet

By Hein Zenker

This is a story about real people that not only dreamed the impossible dream but also lived it to the fullest. The husband and wife team of Hein and Siggi Zenker tell their extraordinary story in riveting first person fashion that will leave the reader enthralled.

Jane and I became good friends and neighbors to these real life adventurers that did as we did and put the work-a-day world behind them, built their own boat, and sailed away. They did it ten years before we began our voyage of Dursmirg.

We are deeply impressed by their book and happen to know that the stories of their adventures within are very true but cannot fully relate the dynamics of their powerful free spirits.

To us, they are the kind of people that make the world a better place and knowing them has forever added to our hope that dreams are there to be lived.

Apathy scuttles many a dream boat.

A couple of quotes from the book:

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checked by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”

“Crouched deep in the cockpit, I remained there for a long time and observed the foaming seas and listened to the howling gale. And for the x-time, I pondered why apparently sane people venture into this mess repeatedly.”

“Are we the only dreamers? Blinded in believing we are at home in an element, which in reality is out to destroy us, by forces we are unable to control nor understand. Fortunately “dreamers” are optimists who do not cease believing in their power to prevail-like the man in the cartoon, floating on a raft in the middle of the ocean, catching wind in a net.”

I rank this book with the best of the best sea stories I have ever read, need I say more?

Dance Between Flames: Berlin Between the Wars by Alton Gill

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS

Berliners were a divided lot, the idle rich were totally oblivious to the world collapsing around them and the under privileged were priced out of everything by run away inflation that would cost Germany and the world dearly under the thousand year Third Rich that only lasted twelve years.


Excerpts:

Six weeks into 1919, Kessler noted: “I was hauled off by acquaintances to a place where you can dance until dawn. There are hundreds like it in Berlin now. The best description of this second phase of the revolution...is “dancing on a volcano”
Greater Berlin had fewer than 100,000 inhabitants. The rises in population were due less to births than to migration, as people came to the industrial centre from the land to seek better work. There is an old saying that most true Berliners actually come from Silesia, but city records show that the majority then came from the province of Brandenburg. By 1925, the total population of Greater Berlin had reached four million.



Inflation run away destabilized confidence in anything government
The day of Rathena’s murder, the mark stood at 300 to the dollar. By 6 July the rate was 450. The middle classes, those who had savings, trembled. Patriotic, though misguided, investment in War Loans during the First World War had cost many families their futures. Now, what remained seemed threatened with being wiped out along with any faith in received values, ethical, material or moral. By the middle of January 1923 the mark stood at 10,000 against the dollar; by the end of the month, 50,000. At this point the State Bank intervened and forced the rate down, but it could not stem the tide for long. By May the mark was down again, to 70,000 to the dollar: by the end of June it was 150,000. By August the dollar stood at 1 million marks, and the banks were issuing 46 billion marks a day. By the end of September, the rate had risen to 160 million. The Ullstein newspaper presses were commandeered to print money. The figures on banknotes were overprinted as million mark notes became billion mark notes. Currency in circulation rose to 44 trillion marks. The government was accused of deliberately allowing inflation to skyrocket in order to avoid repaying foreign debts and reparations at par value.

Anyone who hadn’t left by 1933, he said, was de facto a Nazi.



While offering all the attractions of the earlier youth movements, these Nazi organizations also indoctrinated children and turned them against rebellious or controversial parents.

Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy by Nicolas E. Reynolds

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS

A turning point in history marked by wars, changing political alliances with greedy go for the jugular power grabs.
One of the very best history oriented books. This is about real people radically changing the world.

Excerpts:
Regler saw his duty as maintaining the morale of the troops and working with the civilian population. In 1938 he would boast of saving priceless paintings from destruction and transporting women and children to safety from villages where battles were raging. He was most likely sincere when he said that it was up to the commissars “to halt the cruelties . . . on both sides.” It felt good to be waging the good fight again: for him the winds of “heroic Spain” were blowing away the “stink of Moscow.” He watched “the good Russia” come onto the scene, but worried that “the diabolical Russia” might not be far behind.



Alexander Orlov, the NKVD chief who ran the secret war in Spain for Stalin and made time to entertain Hemingway. National Archives, College Park. Orlov may have gone on to facilitate Hemingway’s visit to Alfambra, the town where he spent the four days in the fall of 1937 with communist guerrillas. They in turn allowed him to witness the attack on the Nationalist train that would drive the plot of his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls.
August 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb and overturned America’s monopoly on super-weapons. A few months later, mainland China fell to the communists. Mao and Chou were now in charge, and Chiang had to make do with ruling the offshore island of Taiwan. In 1950 Stalinist North Korea invaded noncommunist South Korea, starting a war that would last into 1953. At home, the Red Scare intensified when Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin launched a witch hunt for communists that made HUAC’s work seem careful and professional.



Castro already knew how to charm a crowd, and spoke a “clumsy but clear” language some called “fidelenglish.” While in the United States, he literally reached out to anyone who came near him and calmly answered most questions put to him. Staying away from anti-imperialist rhetoric, he adeptly sidestepped questions about communists in his movement. During a speech from the bandstand in Central Park, Castro was eloquent but vague about his core political values: humanism and democracy. The only discordant notes came when he met with officials like Vice President Richard Nixon, who lectured him about the dangers of communism.

Hitler's Swedes: A History of the Swedish Volunteers in the Waffen-SS by Lars T.Larsson

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS

Swedish neutrality during WWII was not 100% and changed with political ups and downs.

Revelations of little known political happenings are the theme of the book, and I found it interesting and informative.
Excerpts:
Swedish neutrality was not accepted by all it citizens. There were, in addition to those who politically opposed the government’s policy, thousands more who decided to voluntarily participate in the war. Indeed, thousands of volunteers perpetuated the legacy of those who fought in the First World War, Finnish Civil War, Estonian War of independence and Spanish Civil War.



The war turned in the Allies’ favor in 1943. It was in August of that year that German leave trains were denied passage over Swedish territory. Swedish governmental support for the Western Allies commenced not long afterwards when secret espionage and sabotage bases were permitted to be established along the shared border with Norway.



Sweden had trade agreements with both Germany and the Western Allies during the war. Supplying, amongst other raw materials, immense quantities of ball-bearings and iron ore,
It is a common misconception of post-war literature to hold the Division up as an example of a Pre-NATO pan-European division fighting communism. The fact is that throughout its almost five-year service primarily consisted of German personnel. For example, its total complement consisted of approximately 1,500 foreign volunteers and 18,000 ethnic Germans in summer 1941.



Mikhail Gorbachev was present too, clinging to office as president of the Soviet Union and general secretary of the Communist Party. One month later, Gorbachev survived in office only because Yeltsin climbed onto a tank in Moscow and faced down an attempted army-KGB coup. By December 1991, Gorbachev was gone. The Central Committee of the Communist Party was dissolved. Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, the Baltic states, and other former Soviet republics had proclaimed their independence. In relative peace, seventy-four years of Communist rule in Russia had come to an end.