Sturgeon's Law: "90% of everything is crap." Theodore Sturgeon - 1958 Byrne Johnson has extracted this material from journals and letters written by his father, Don Johnson, a pioneer to Rainy Lake on the Minnesota - Ontario border. This volume covers the years from 1936 through 1957 as he moved from the position of caretaker at a private boys' camp to caretaker and boatman for a wealthy industrialist's summer estate. In 1945 he, along with his wife and children, created a small island resort. The following year he turned over the operation of the resort to his wife, Layna, and their children and became the captain of a two story houseboat moored to shore on the Canadian side of the lake where the Minnesota and Ontario Paper Co. entertained customers, executives and their guests. His winter work involved working with pulpwood truckers and scalers at the company storage yard. It also chronicles his experiences as U.S. Coast Guard lamplighter maintaining nearly 50 miles of aids to navigation on the American side of Rainy Lake. This is a rare look at a place of great beauty off of the beaten path, much of which has since become a part of Voyageurs National Park. It is presented in the words of an extremely literate and witty man who shares his joys as well as his disappointments and bouts with melancholy. A keen observer of nature and human nature, his words are scrupulously honest. For most of these years he wrote about 100 words a day in page-a-day journals where he commented on his day's activities, his family life and often with pithy comments on the book he was reading or the movie he had just seen.
About the Author: Don A. Johnson was born in Minneapolis, MN, on April 6, 1906, the youngest of three children of Gustaf and Hilma Johnson, both immigrants from Sweden. When Don was a small child the family moved to Hibbing, MN, where his parents ran the Northern Hotel. Don graduated from Hibbing High School in 1923 and by 1926 had completed two years of junior college. In 1925 at age 19, he married Layna Cobb, then 15 years old and their first son, Buck, was born two weeks after her 16th birthday. Following a short time spent working in Detroit and eastern Pennsylvania in 1929, the small family moved to Rainy Lake on the Minnesota - Ontario border to work as a counselor and boatman for Camp Kooch-i-ching. This is a private boys' camp which had been founded on an island by Don's high school football coach, Jack Vance. The summer job turned into a year around caretaking job which lasted for seven years. Those years saw the addition of two more children, son Byrne and daughter Sally. In 1936 the family moved about a mile from the camp to a similar position at the island summer estate of a wealthy Chicago industrialist, Bror Dahlberg, where they worked for the next nine years. When the opportunity came to purchase a small island they started an American plan summer resort which they named Norway Island Camp. Karen, their fourth child was born on the island in their second summer there. This was also the year that Don was hired by the Minnesota and Ontario Paper Company to serve as captain on their new houseboat, The Mando of Rainy Lake, where customers, executives and guests were entertained for the next 21 summers. As a U.S. Coast Guard lamplighter, Don was also responsible for the aids to navigation on the American side of Rainy Lake for more than 30 years. Don was an outstanding outdoorsman, storyteller, square dancer and practical joker. He was an omnivorous reader, and although he wrote little for publication, extracts of his daily journaling of over 40 years are now being published. In his later years he got great pleasure in travel, especially the numerous trips with Layna to Mexico. At age 74 he was diagnosed with Parkinsons Disease and suffered decline until his death in 1991.