“Where the coffee’s hot, the lakes are cold, and all the children are above average.” — Serving the Chain since 1897.
Arvid Paulson, 1937–2026
First Lutheran was full Saturday for Arvid Paulson’s service, and the sweet-corn stand on County 12 kept the schedule he would have kept — open at the usual hour, dark for two hours, and back at it by one, with the honor box where he left it.
The corn was picked at six Saturday morning, as it has been on August Saturdays since 1966, and the stand on County 12 opened at the usual hour with Dale Paulson working the hayrack and his brother Kenneth carrying flats up from the truck. At eleven they hung a piece of cardboard on the post — BACK AT ONE — and drove into town in their good clothes for their father’s funeral.
First Lutheran was full. The Rev. Karl Lindholm, who has buried a good share of this town and married a fair number of it, kept the service to the length Arvid would have tolerated and said the thing everyone had been circling all week: that a man who sells sweet corn on the honor system for sixty summers is making a daily statement about his neighbors, and that the statement was, on the whole, borne out. Janet Ruud read from Ecclesiastes. The congregation sang “How Great Thou Art,” loudly, the way it does when it is trying to hold something up.
The grandchildren spoke briefly and mostly about the honor box — the coffee can with the slot cut in the lid, emptied each evening into a Folgers can in the kitchen, never once counted at the stand, and the source of the line the family has been hearing back from strangers all week: I know where everybody lives. Kenneth said his father meant it as a joke about half the time. Lunch followed in the basement, the Ladies’ Aid presiding, ham and buns and eleven varieties of bar, and the line for the guest book stayed long enough that Donna Skoglund quietly started a second one.
In Brief · Elsewhere in No. 32
Second Avenue. Sixty-one guesses sealed in an envelope; the canvas comes off Saturday at two, knot permitting. →
Thursday. The band plays the actual lawn at 7; 141 chairs pledged; the Perseids follow at eleven. →
City hall. Comment closes Tuesday the 18th at 4:30. The file bought a second drawer and half-filled it. →
The fairgrounds. Eight days out: the schedule, the record barn, and a new shady spot nobody will notice until Saturday. →
Big Pelican. Both juveniles fly daily now. Greta has opened a page at the back of the log titled LEAVING. →
Post 162. A four-run lead went the way they go. One home date left, Friday, for four seniors. →
“A gentleman does not read another man’s list. He does not need to.”
— M. Aakre, on the letters page, declining the notebook
Arvid Paulson, 1937–2026
First Lutheran was full Saturday for Arvid Paulson’s service, and the sweet-corn stand on County 12 kept the schedule he would have kept — open at the usual hour, dark for two hours, and back at it by one, with the honor box where he left it.
Read the full story →Four Days Out
The brewery opens Saturday at 2 p.m. The Klatch sealed its list of name guesses Friday and surrendered it to the Daybreak’s coffee tin; it will be opened at the bar, in public, immediately after the canvas comes off.
Read the full story →Rec Department
Friday’s rescheduled first showing drew the biggest crowd in the series’ history, ran without a single mechanical failure, and was interrupted only once — by a meteor that arrived four nights early.
Read the full story →The Hagen Pasture
Written comment on the eighteen-lot plat closes at the clerk’s window Tuesday, August 18. The furniture conversation Donna Skoglund said she was not ready to have has been had, and resolved by purchase.
Read the full story →County Fair · Aug. 19–23
A record 412 entries arrive at the grounds next week. The schedule is set, the barn is full, the scale is certified, and the fair board has added one small thing it expects nobody to notice until they need it.
Read the full story →Thursday Night
The lawn concert that spent smoke week indoors goes back outdoors Thursday at 7 p.m., with a program Director Moe describes as “short on purpose” and a meteor shower scheduled to peak a few hours later.
Read the full story →The Fishing Report
Tim Brevik on mid-August: walleye holding deep and biting early, panfish moving out of the shallows, one more report from the Bass Lake file, and the first honest hint that the year is turning.
Read the full story →The Loons of Big Pelican
Two weeks after the second flight, Big Pelican’s young loons are airborne most mornings and ranging farther each week. Greta Solberg has started a page in the back of the notebook she has titled, without elaboration, “Leaving.”
Read the full story →Post 162 Legion Baseball
A four-run lead went the way four-run leads go on a Tuesday in August. The season closes Friday under the working light, with the seniors playing their last home game in a Misquah uniform.
Read the full story →Pike Football
Fall practice opens next week with twenty-nine out, a schedule finally posted, and a head coach who has been informed the copier is now working and does not intend to discuss it.
Read the full story →Our View
A coffee can with a slot in the lid sat on a hayrack on County 12 for sixty summers and was never once counted at the stand. It is worth asking what exactly was being trusted.
Read the full story →Letters to the Editor
M. Aakre of Loon Lake responds to last week’s correspondence and to a certain item in the classifieds.
Read the full story →Letters to the Editor
D. Holstad of Misquah proposes that the town has gotten something out of the canvas that it will not get out of the sign.
Read the full story →The Klatch · Profile
Yvette Boone came from Edina to run a bank in a town of 3,916. Twelve months later she can name the seven lakes in order of depth, has stopped scheduling anything on the Opener, and has developed opinions about a covered sign.
Read the full story →The Klatch · From Eunice
Eunice on the week the canning stops being social: the sealed envelope, the jars that are not being discussed, a funeral lunch that fed the whole town, and the moment every August when the tables stop telling each other things.
Read the full story →Schools
Class lists were mailed from the district office Friday afternoon, three weeks before the first bell. Kindergarten enrollment is up to thirty-one, and the Oakview kindergarten teacher has already been to see her room.
Read the full story →The Library
With the summer reading finale set for Friday, August 28, the library has extended the animal ladder past its top tier, ordered more ice cream than last year, and received a telephone call about penmanship.
Read the full story →