KinSource - Tale of the Week - First 1913 Lake Visitors, Now Jail Guests

KinSource

Minnesota Tales

The Minneapolis Journal, March 14, 1913, page 10

FIRST 1913 LAKE VISITORS, NOW JAIL GUESTS,
TELL HOW THEY LIVED LIKE KINGS IN 'CLOSED' COTTAGES

Tony Engenberg and Bill Funk, the first guests to arrive from the south for the Lake Minnetonka season, who took the Nash and Baltuff cottages at St. Albans Bay for an indefinite period, after looking over the attractions of the Webster and Matchan cottages at St. Albans Bay and the Atkinson and Kibbie cottages at Solberg's Point, are back in Minneapolis from a short visit in Osseo, and have taken rooms for the present in the Otto F. Langum apartments on the fifth floor of the county courthouse. Both feel, they said today, that they opened the lake season a little early and they are very confortable, they said, in their present steam-heated quarters, where for a time at least they expect to remain.

"I came up from the south," said Funk. "I had been painting the church steeple at Henderson, Minn., and then went to Sioux City and Jackson, Neb., where I worked. When spring began to come on I started north and dropped off a freight near Wayzata where I met Engenberg, who was working in a section gang. We looked over some of the cottages at the lake. The Nash place looked good to us, but the Baltuff house had a talking machine in it. We could not decide, so we used both."

Engenberg said he met Funk at the lake and they looked around for quarters.

"There was a big cook stove in the Nash house," he said, "and it looked good to us. I got some eggs and there was flour and coffee and sugar in the Baltuff place and we got along all right. The best thing about it was the pancakes. There was a big package of some kind of pancake flour and we hopped to it. We would get up a big fire and mix up the stuff and I would slap them on top of the stove and they certainly were good.

Those Pleasant Evenings.

"The best place to spend the evening was in the other house where that talking and singing machine was. After we got some pancakes under our belts we would go over and sit down and smoke and turn on the juice and listen to that singing, and it certainly was great. We never meant any harm.

"We stuck around there quite a while. I don't know how long. But the ice commenced to get soft and the people began to kind of snoop around and one day Funk said: 'Some day some of these people will be coming out. Let's beat it.'

"We went down to Osseo. No, we didn't notify anybody. We just beat it out. We heard there was a section job down at Osseo but after the pancakes and the fine time we had, that section job didn't look very good. We figured it was too cold and people would not come out to the lake for a while yet, and we came back."

Sheriff Otto Langum said a broken pane and the appearance of one of the men with a bandaged hand led to suspicion.

"One thing about this place," said Funk, "is that we don't have to cook our meals."