52 Ancestors: #10 Three Different Ways of Getting Around - The Welte Way
It’s great to know how
our ancestors traveled from one place to another, and I know that this is the
case for all generations. In the first example, family gatherings brought
everyone together and before cars and trucks, there was “horsepower.” The next
example is that having a nice car said much about how successful a man was in
order to provide for his family and to be respected in the community. Lastly, it
was not always about getting to a destination that mattered, but the
interesting story about “who was driving what” that made for a good laugh.
My grandfather, William
Welte, was an early homesteader in the northern Minnesota area of Bigfork. Here is a picture of the William Welte Rivernook Farm and the
house in the middle of the picture where my dad grew up. In 1913, it looks like
there was a family gathering or a holiday that brought everyone to the farm. The
horses in the picture were, of course, one of the ways to get from Point A to
Point B in the early days. I tell my grandchildren that there were no cars and
that horses were very important to each family. The horses are covered with "fly covers" because with the
northern Minnesota heat and humidity, the horses needed extra protection
against big deer flies, horse flies, and mosquitos. Their eyes opened wide when I
told them how big those insects get and that they really bite!
The next picture is William’s 1923 Willys Overland touring car. My uncle, Harold, pictured here
as the eldest of William’s boys, sitting on the running board, had written on
the border of the photo that this car was a “Red Bird” touring car with “maroon
buff top Red wheels, 4 cyl” and the car was a Model 92 which boasted a “…rich Mandalay
maroon finish, khaki top, nickel trimmings…” according to an old postcard. His
dad, William, who was a very influential person in the Bigfork, Minnesota area, died about six years later.
The Welte bus, driven
by William, was another example of how important each vehicle was to transport
children to the area schoolhouses in and around the Bigfork area. It even looks
like him in the driver’s seat! But William was not the only one who drove that
old bus. My own dad, Irving, had a frightening experience according to the
story that his mother told me. My dad had turned up missing and she couldn’t
find him anywhere. There was a river behind the Rivernook Farm and a wooden
pile bridge that connected one piece of farm land to another. She pointed to
the remaining pilings in the river of where the bridge used to be located and
she said the next thing she knew, she saw the bus coming across the bridge. She
knew that it wasn’t her husband, William, because he was in the house. She saw
the bus slowly and gingerly cross the bridge at a slow speed, and she had a
suspicious feeling that she knew who was driving the vehicle. It was my dad! He
was about 7 years old and she figured out very quickly that he had to have a
little help with reaching all of the controls. He had put a wooden block on
the accelerator pedal so that he could push it down and drive the bus over the
bridge. He did quite well, but he did get into trouble for it and he never did
it again!
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