"Wanna see the ship in my back yard?"

In the summer of 1985, a Greek freighter washed ashore on Park Point in Duluth. It was there for a couple of weeks, all lit up every night, quite a beautiful sight. Cousin Chris lived in a little place on the beach then, circled in blue ink. He had a party or two out by the ship. Ah, those were the days.

The old cat naps

Pam and Noah's old cat Lucy naps. She's no trouble at all.

The Augustins' trunk

The steamer trunk in which 28-year-old Hinrich Augustin (Grandma Sprick's dad) carried all of his possessions to America in 1881 now sits in the scrapblog editor's basement. Aunt Annette refinished it in the 1990s. The plaque she put on it tells its story. To read more about German emigration to America, go to our scrapblog reading room at www.thesprickfamilypapers.blogspot.com.

The sleeping quarters on the ship that brought the Spricks to America

These were the sleeping quarters on the Hamburg-Amerika-Line steamer Amerika; the ones on the Frisia, which brought Claus Sprick and family over in 1876, would have been identical. Looks comfy, eh?

The ship that brought the Spricks to America

Found this in Aunt Alverna's papers. These scenes were sketched in 1876 on a ship called the Frisia, auf Deutschland, and published in the Leipziger Illustrite Zeitung. That would be the steamer Claus Sprick and his family sailed to America on, and the year. See them anywhere in the sketches? (Click on the image to make it larger.)

The scrapblog editor's first editor

In this 1957 photo, the scrapblog editor went over the morning paper with her first editor, Mr. Pinky. Things were simpler then.

Nurse Marion

Aunt Marion had just completed her nurse's training at Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis (now Abbott-Northwestern) when this photo was taken. She spent many of her working years at the veterans' hospital. If she were there now, maybe the place wouldn't be having the problems it is.

A funny photo

Ah, those zany madcap 1950s wedding photographers. One had Uncle Wally point to the clock as if he were actually anxious about marrying wonderful Aunt Marion in 14 minutes. Pretty funny! Uncle Joe looks mildly amused.

What Sarah knows

Baby Sarah had the world's longest eyelashes. Though Sarah has Down syndrome, we think she always looks like she knows something the rest of us don't.

A beautiful bride and her maids

Aunt Mavis was a lovely bride, and her lovely bridesmaids included Aunt Marion. Mavis and Joe were married on Dec. 17, 1949.

Happy hatcha birthday batcha!

Cousin Jane is 51 today, though she still looks 25. Here she is as a lively tot riding a rocking-horse and at 17, looking cool and detached at a Stump-in. Jane and Pam were in the same class in school, and graduated together from Lake City High School in 1974. When Pam arrived in Minnesota after six years in U.S. Army schools, Jane saved her from instant dorkdom by informing her that when the teacher called on her, she shouldn't snap out of her seat and say, "Sir!" or "Ma'am!"

A sweet pair play hide and seek

The caption on this photo says "Chaska, 1937." Annette and Hart look pretty happy. Three years later, they would marry. We like to think that this is what they look like in heaven now (with Schnitzel and the Seths nearby, of course).

Allies and friends

In letters from South Korea after the war there, Dad/Uncle Bill spoke often and respectfully of his friend and interpreter, Na Ok-chan. Here they are in 1959. This photo makes us think of the Iraqi interpreters who risk their lives to help American soldiers and medics. May they be safe, and may the war end soon.

A child's glad play inspires a reverie

The scrapblog editor treasures these two photos of little M. Something about M.'s pure and simple joy in playing outdoors makes the scrapblog editor think of a Bible verse: Matthew 6:28-29: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." A darn good verse to remember in this era of overwork and overworry. Have we mentioned that all the cousins, with the possible exception of the scrapblog editor, work too hard? Looking back at the family photos, she often concludes that this is a family trait. Stop and smell the lilies, cousins, like our little ones do. The top photo was taken by M.'s mom, Auntie Mary, in old Uncle Irv's tangled Duluth rose bushes. The second one was taken by Grandma Alverna at the playground at Wakondiota Park (which in Lakota means "The Field Uncle Bill Set on Fire") in Old Frontenac.

Groovy, baby

Remember the Spirograph? As kids, cousins Pam and Cathy Miller loved their Spirograph, and made these designs to send to Uncle Bill in Vietnam in 1967.

One fine gymnast

Princessa H. is a high-flying gymnast, which doesn't explain why the photographer sat her on the cold gym floor in this photo. By the way, when we figure out how to do it, we'll post a mini-video of H.'s cartwheel-rich dance routine to "The Pink Panther."

One fine athlete

When Countessa M. plays basketball with her relatives, she politely gives them a chance now and then. She's very, very good at basketball. M., who plays for the Centennial High School Cougars, may well be the best Miller athlete ever. She's also a gazelle-like runner, and excels at the absolutely-terrifying-to-watch high jump. Oh my gosh! as M. would say.

A walk in the smoky, stony hills

The smoke from distant forest fires lay thick in the curvaceous valleys of central Glacier National Park when Pam, Noah and Alverna took a long hike from a trailhead along the Going to the Sun Highway in August 1994. Alverna took this photo.

Bigfoot sighted in Frontenac!

Scrapblog senior investigative correspondent Uncle Joe sent us this news bulletin tonight, and we can hardly contain our excitement. A website called www.bigfootencounters.com, which fairly solemnly and unsensationally reports Bigfoot sightings, just posted this: "Minnesota, March 2007: Witness writes in about a sighting in Frontenac, in Goodhue County, Minnesota, of an upright walking skinny 'bear' observed nosing underneath snow-covered pine trees. Afraid, the witness left the area." Some witness! A Sprick cousin would have gone right up to greet Mr. Bigfoot and interviewed him and gotten his picture! Our senior investigative correspondent adds this astute context and analysis: "There have been verified sightings in the area of three bears during the past deer hunting season in Savage Coulee, although the person reporting the Bigfoot sighting swears it was not a bear -- and he was not smoking or drinking anything at the time of the sighting. We will continue to monitor the situation -- and will keep a camera handy." This is scrapblog journalism at its best. In gratitude, we are tripling our senior investigative correspondent's pay.

Noah in his element

Noah watches only educational television, as you can see from the TV screen behind him. Do'oh! Those are his friends J.T. and John-Michael at right.

Gawk, yes; greet, no

The scrapblog editor was out to dinner tonight at chic A Rebours in downtown St. Paul with her close personal famous celebrity author friend Laurie Hertzel and looked up to see the fellow pictured to the right at the table next to them. The scrapblog editor had her camera in her purse and was tempted to jump up and take Mr. Keillor's picture and "greet" him. But she remembered the infamous Miller family incident where Alverna saw Dan Rather at Cathy's Georgetown University Law School graduation and the Millers had to sit on her to keep her from trotting over and "greeting" him. We assume Garrison wanted to "greet" us too, especially given Laurie's fame, all of which she owes to the scrapblog editor, by the way, but he was too polite to do so.

Caption contest?

Cousin Tuk forwarded us this whimsical photo of his esteemed parents playing 500, which they do extremely well. That's Uncle John in the festive hat, and Aunt Katie in the magical poufy hair. The other couple looks very nice, but we'd bet some money they didn't win this card game.

Don't forget to visit our scrapblog reading room

Remember, there's now a sister blog to this one, www.thesprickfamilypapers.blogspot.com, that stores longer documents and literature. Think of it as the scrapblog's fab new reading room.

Uncle Bill, in Vietnam, gets a play-by-play

Cousin Chris wrote this live-action letter to his dad in Vietnam in 1967. Note the nugget of news about cousin Sammy buried amid all that sports talk.

Report from the home front: Janie as Jesus??

Cousin Janie was a controversial star in this letter cousin Chris wrote to Uncle Bill in Vietnam in 1967. We sure wish we had a photo to go with this one.

Family history, kid-style

Junior historian Noah drew this family tree when he was about 8 years old. We're at a loss to explain the presence of Uncle Chris on the chart, although we think it's an interesting likeness.

Cousin JoAnne

Cousin JoAnne Schmidt, the daughter of Florence Sprick Schmidt Bye and Chuck Schmidt, lives in her childhood home on Highway 61 south of Red Wing, Minn. JoAnne, has the best practical skills, the best manners and the best hair of any of the cousins. With her Aunt Emma Sprick Krocial and Grandma Maria Augustine Sprick in 1960 or 1961.

As a 1-year-old in 1961.

In 1972, at age 12.

Cooling her toes up north with Aunts Anna and Emma.

'Dear Sweet Dad': A letter that said it all

From June 1967 to June 1968, the Miller family held its breath, waiting for CWO William A. Miller to return from Vietnam (he was gone for several months before that too, in training). The Miller kids wrote to him often. First-grader Cathy's letters were especially poignant. Here's one. We'll post more Vietnam-era letters on our auxiliary archives blog over time.

Aunt Alverna cuts up

Mom/Aunt Alverna had a great sense of humor. In this photo from the late 1940s in West Germany, she mugged for the camera in what the back of the photo says was an imitation of her friend Jerry Frankel.

Requiem for a patch of forest

We were dismayed this week to hear from our Old Frontenac neighbor Casey Gardner that the patch of beautiful parkland forest that rose just south of "the field" (Wakandiota Park, known to the cousins as The Park Uncle Bill Set on Fire) in Old Frontenac has been hacked down. As best as we can make out, the Florence Township Heritage Commission hired Albers Farm & Forest, a Red Wing company that will not be getting any Sprick family business in the next century, to do some pruning and clearing, and the slash-and-destroy commenced. An anonymous family member walked the area several times, took these photos of the slash area and stacked old-growth cherry and basswood logs (which, not coincidentally, are worth a lot of money) and quietly tipped the Red Wing Republican Eagle off, resulting in the story below. The good news is, the maples that border cousin Dan's property were spared. The little trail Alverna kept clear that goes up to Dan's place and the fire ring in the woods are littered with slash, though. Please consider going to the Republican Eagle's website and adding your comments on this situation. (You'll see a few familiar signatures there already.) To do so, click here and scroll to the bottom of the story. Here's a copy of the story, which doesn't have quite enough detail about who made money off this little business to suit the crusty old scrapblog editor and her senior investigative staff: Frontenac beautification turns ugly By Ginger Holm, contributor Red Wing Republican Eagle March 23, 2007 Frontenac residents expressed great disappointment and concern Tuesday over a tree harvesting project gone wrong. About a year ago, Florence Township Heritage Preservation Commission began working on a plan to to rejuvenate Frontenac’s Wakondiota and Valhalla parks. “We were trying to improve our parks by getting rid of the dead and damaged vegetation, and intrusive species — especially buckthorns — and to preserve the parks for future generations.” said Bill Flies, chair of the commission. Buckthorns are an invasive shrub. Once established, they can crowd out native shrubs and herbs and can alter water tables.

Speaking to the Town Hall crowd, Flies explained the need to manage the plant growth in the parks.

“This was not a management plan,” Kristen Eide-Tollefson said. “That’s not what happened here.”

“I watched the loggers from my house,” said a man sitting in the back of the room. ”They didn’t just cut the marked trees. They cut all the trees.”

Parks had been ignored

According to the management plan, the parks have been ignored for decades and are in need of cleanup that will improve accessibility and create healthier, more attractive parks.

Local residents were given opportunities to voice concerns and share ideas during the planning process. Many residents were hoping to improve their views of the landscape along the river.

A plan was finally approved in September 2006. The appropriate permits were obtained, Flies said.

Albers Farm and Forest was contracted to harvest the marked trees and work was scheduled to begin March 13.

The trouble began when the logging firm, subcontracted through Albers, began work a day early. No one from the Florence Township Heritage Preservation Commission was present to supervise the job.

On March 13, Flies and Clay Ruggles, a Florence Township supervisor, noticed that more trees had been cut than were marked. They also noticed that the skidder, a type of tractor equipped with a grapple used for hauling logs, had damaged new growth.

They immediately notified Albers to correct the problem. Albers management met with the logging crew, and changes were implemented.

The crew finished Wakondiota Park on March 18.

FHPC decided the heavy equipment used by loggers in Wakondiota was not suitable for the rolling terrain in Valhalla Park. To prevent further problems, Flies met with Albers management on Monday to terminate the cutting effective Tuesday.

How could it happen?

Residents at Tuesday night’s meeting wondered how this could have happened. One man asked why there was no one to supervise the logging crew.

Flies explained that they simply didn’t have enough volunteers. “Everyone on this board has other commitments,” he said.

Then a man in the back asked, “How do you plan on getting enough volunteers for the cleanup when you can’t even get enough to supervise the harvesting project?”

Flies agreed the shortage of volunteers has contributed to the problem, then gesturing toward the attendees, he added, “But now that so many people are interested in the project, maybe we will have more volunteers.”

His response was not well accepted.

“I object to being connected to this situation,” Eide-Tollefson said. “I agree it would be great to have more help, but to harvest trees to pay for removal of buckthorns or vistas — to harvest some of our best trees — economically, I don’t understand this.”

Many in attendance seemed to agree with Eide-Tollefson’s views. Others, like Jan Bruce, preferred to look ahead.

“We can point fingers all day,” Bruce said. “But the fact is we all have to work together to find a way to clean this mess up and move beyond it.”

Then Bruce offered a suggestion to bring in a wood chipper to deal with the debris and to spread the wood chips on the path.

“I think we pursued it with all the correct plans of getting rid of the dead and diseased trees and the right kind of species, but as the contractors came in, more was cut than what was marked,” Flies said.

“We made corrections to limit the damage and now we need to work together to get the job done right.”

Recent comments

I'd like to see the Republican Eagle investigate this matter further. Those were beautiful trees, and Old Frontenac is a treasure. Pamela M 03/24/2007 12:59 AM Excellent coverage of a story that needed to be told to avoid others being duped by an unscrupulous logger. Elmer S 03/23/2007 7:20 PM

The Frontenac duck

We wish we knew exactly where the mysterious Old Frontenac duck came from (we think it was an Uncle Gus special), and where it went (we believe Aunt Alverna gave it away when she moved to a smaller place in Lake City). Oh, how the cousins' kids loved that duck. Here Noah plays on it during a stay with his grandparents in 1992. Not too strangely, Noah never wanted to come home after staying with Pipe and Dom. Think they put enough toys out for him? But of course, the duck was the best.

A young son's sorrow, long ago

Uncle Bill/Dad wrote this poem at age 13, when his father, Clyde Clifton Miller, was killed in a freak accident in 1938 in their hometown, Winston-Salem, N.C. Michael Northrup read it at Dad's funeral in 1996. Dad wrote this in his "Grandfather Remembers" book: My father was an automobile salesman, Texaco filling station operator and contractor. When I was thirteen years of age, he was killed in an accident involving a truck he was driving and a Greyhound bus driven by a mechanic who was making a test run. The brakes on the Greyhound failed and the bus ran head-on into my dad's truck. He died shortly thereafter in the hospital without ever regaining consciousness. My mother [Mamie Louella Jackson Miller] had never worked outside the home, and the responsibility of the family fell on her and on [his older half-sister] Norma, and then the rest of us. Norma had graduated from high school already and I worked after school, Saturdays and summers in a grocery store. When a settlement was made with Greyhound, we received $60 per month till the last of us, Marilyn, graduated from high school.

One heckuva good-looking aunt and uncle

Church directory photos are usually dreadful, but not Aunt Mavis and Uncle Joe's. Are they a handsome pair, or what?

Museum quality

If you visit the Goodhue County Historical Society museum in Red Wing, Minn., you may see a few items that seem familiar that family member donated to the museum. Among them will be Aunt Annette's Depression glass and a military display created by Uncle Bill.

Lovely love letters

Way in the bottom of the ancient family trunk, we found the letters below, written by Aunt Annette to her young husband, Harter Kulseth, who was fighting in Europe. (They were married on Nov. 30, 1940, just two weeks after the Armistice Day blizzard buried Minnesota.) They are so sweet, just like Annette and Hart were. (To make them easier to read, click on them.)