Day 4

We pulled into Mahnomen mid-morning. The sun was out but it was early enough that the air was crisp instead of stifling. This town was much larger than Pisek and was located near the White Earth Reservation.

 

We began by driving down Main Street, where both Doc’s office and the Bastyr and Rumreich General Store had been. We parked and walked to the place where the General Store had been and were greeted with an empty space and orange construction fencing.

 We later learned that, six months before, a couple left a space heater running while they went out, and the building burned to the ground in the middle of the night. It was disappointing to hear that we missed the store by just six months, but we hoped we would have more luck with the other buildings. As we were standing there, a man walked up to us and asked if we could use some help. He was from the historical society and worked at the hardware store just a few doors down. Apparently, news of the visitors in town had spread quickly, and everyone was interested to see what we were doing in Mahnomen.

The man from the hardware store was very friendly, and he pointed us toward Doc’s old office on the corner. We were glad to see it was still standing, but it looked like no one had set foot inside for a few months. 

We decided to drive by what was Doc’s house and see if we had better luck. We did not. In fact, Doc’s house may have been the most disappointing part of the trip. The house was overgrown, boarded-up, and abandoned. When we came back later in the day, we found the doors hanging open and sleeping bags clogging the entryway. Wallet-sized school pictures of kids from eight to eighteen appeared on the floor. Broken glass, cigarette butts, and gaping pill bottles carpeted every room. It smelled like sweat and rot and spoiled food. Dust swirled out from holes made in the graffitied walls. My dad made the mistake of opening the refrigerator door. It became abundantly clear that the milk and other food inside had been left for many months. We were not sure how many people had been living in the house, but we did see it had not been taken care of. 

Hoping for some good news, my dad, Aunt Mary, and I went to the courthouse in search of the unknown address of Frank W. Rumreich’s house, while Aunt Donna and the boys grabbed a snack at the Red Apple Café. We searched through giant volumes of land records, and finally found something promising.

 We decided to walk over to the part of town where we suspected Frank W. had lived. The lots were now populated by houses on both sides. We did not find any houses that looked similar to the picture, so we decided to cut through a yard and look on the other side of the block. Miraculously, we turned around and saw the house in the picture. There was now a tree in the front yard and the porch had been enclosed, but it was definitely the same house.

 In true Rumreich fashion, we marched up to the door and knocked. A cautious-looking woman peered out at us as my dad explained why we were in Mahnomen and our interest in her house. She recognized the name Rumreich from the house records, and warily agreed to show us around the house. As we talked with her and saw more of the house, she seemed to warm up to us and relax a little bit more. After we had been given the entire tour, her husband, the Sheriff, pulled into the driveway and started talking with us. Aunt Donna and the boys came over, too, and we got to have the tour a second time! We were told a few stories by the owners of the house. We learned that Frank W. did not build the house, as we had thought. He bought it from the original owner a few years after it was built, and became the first resident on the block. The most historically interesting story was that the front door in our picture of the house had come from the family’s tar-paper shack, and had still been there when the current owners moved in. It had become warped over time, so they gave it to the wife’s sister and she repurposed it into a picture frame with the original glass. The French doors in the entryway were also original, as well as the bannister on the staircase. The end of the bannister even still had the dent made by the head of a cousin as he failed to tackle George Rumreich. The owners knew this because George had come to see the house once or twice and told them what he could remember. He explained to them that the dark spot in his closet was the result of his occasional confusion about the location of the outhouse in the middle of the night.

The "dark spot"

We toured the Mahnomen Historical Society Museum and spotted many pictures of Rumreichs. We saw the large banner advertising the John K. Rumreich farm implements store, and Aunt Mary was happy to pick up a few postcards with photographs of the old town. 

After a quick lunch and a stop to buy wild rice, our next stop was the cemetery. We found John K. Rumreich’s grave along with Cyril and Erhard (Doc). Interestingly enough, we even spotted a “Marlow,” though not a Rumreich. Just like the Pisek cemetery, it was serene. I was surprised that Kyle was so interested in seeing the graves of all the Rumreichs. I agree that it is pretty cool to see so many ancestors buried in one place. 

Our final stop before dinner was the historic County Fairgrounds, which are a registered national historic landmark. Doc Rumreich was responsible for many of the buildings on the ground, and we eagerly compared the old picture we had to what we could see.

 We finished up our day in Mahnomen by having an all-you-can-eat fish fry at the Red Apple Café and retiring to our hotel to play a few rounds of sheepshead, fueled by licorice snaps, of course.