Last weekend here on the Years of Yore page we took a trip back to the early decades of the 20th Century. Through a book of memories by John A. Lauerer, which he titled “I Remember Fairbanks and Skibo,” published in 1994 and now out of print, it is possible to take a trip back in time.
In last weekend’s installment, John told how his parents, his older brother, and he made the journey from Bavaria, Germany, to the Arrowhead of Minnesota in 1912. As he recounts, the ocean voyage was not without its dangers.
The family settled in Fairbanks, Minnesota, located 18 miles southeast of Aurora, where John’s mother’s sister and her husband owned the town’s general store. John’s father went to work at the large Cadotte Fairbanks Sawmill.
Life for a child included watching the bustling train yard where loads of iron ore passed through on their way from mines in Ely, Tower and Soudan to the loading docks on Lake Superior, and loads of lumber left the mill also heading to points south.
The young people of Fairbanks found winters enjoyable by clearing the snow off of an area on the long, frozen Lake Cadotte for skating and hockey.