This Couple’s Celebration Of A Lifetime
It’s November. Hans Fabricius has felled selected trees on his own land and cut, split and stacked wood that will fire the basement furnace to keep the home on Harrison Flats snug against coming winter winds. This past summer he dug post holes, mended fences, sprayed hawk weed, cut, baled and sold 9,000 bales of prime alfalfa hay.
Unusual? Yes. On Sunday, Hans will celebrate his 98th birthday. Minnie, his wife of 62 years, will be on hand, along with their daughter, Wilma Mason, son-in-law, Bill, and an assortment of friends and neighbors.
Much has changed in the 65 years since Hans and his brother bought 250 acres of cut-over land above Lake Coeur d’Alene for $2,500. At that time, stumps 5 feet across remained among standing, lesser trees. The lumber company that logged the quarter section didn’t bother with the smaller stuff. “Timber companies would cut it all today without hesitation,” says Hans. “Even so they took a million board feet off this land.”
After the early death of his brother, Hans became sole owner of the property and cleared the remaining trees for farming. Horses and dynamite did the job. Hans sold the timber but not for lumber. Four-foot lengths went to fire the boilers of the passenger-carrying steamboats of Lake Coeur d’Alene’s Red Collar Line.
Looking back, Hans sees the practice as wasteful.
“The fireman would open the firebox door of the Georgie Oaks, throw in a log, close the door, grab another log, open the door and throw it in. All the way down the lake. Black smoke boiled out of the stacks,” he said.
Minnie, who grew up in a house that still stands on the tip of Harlow point, across the Coeur d’Alene River from Harrison, says, as a child, she had a little saw and cut small logs to sell to the steamers at the Harrison docks.
Hans brought electricity into the house in 1927, followed by water in 1939. If you happen to be in Minnie’s kitchen when she is clearing the table to wash dishes you will see a habit that is a carry-over from the days when water didn’t gush from a faucet. She scrapes each plate and wipes it almost clean with a paper napkin, saving choice tidbits for the barn cats. A silent lesson in conservation.
Change has rolled across the flats as gradually and deliberately as the seasons. As a boy, Hans delivered milk for his Danish immigrant father. The senior Fabricius pastured cattle on the delta of the Coeur d’Alene River, land now under water as a result of the Washington Water Power dam at Post Falls. Back then, for 5 cents a quart, Hans or his father ladled milk from cans slung from a wooden shoulder yoke into a customer’s smaller container.
Roads are better. Hans and Minnie used to make a weekly trip to St. Maries over the precipitous Hell’s Gulch road to buy supplies and sell the cream for butter from the twelve cows they milked twice a day. “We stopped that after the third cream separator wore out,” says Minnie with satisfaction.
Other things have changed too. “We were what you would call a diversified farm,” says Hans. “We had 150 chickens, grain, hogs, dairy and beef cattle, seven horses - a garden.”
Now, the wheat fields rest in the soil bank, the garden is smaller and the chicken flock has shrunk to several venerable, “pet” hens who lay a few eggs. A year ago, Hans sold the last of the cattle. He says he misses them, but Minnie is glad he doesn’t have to go down to the pasture to feed them on icy mornings.
What remains the same? Hans and Minnie enjoy their family and friends and continuing to live on the land where they have spent their lives. They laugh and accept change, welcoming new people who move to the Flats.
They also welcome modern conveniences - the electric range, the microwave, the bread machine - that share the spotless kitchen with the wood cook stove, and Minnie’s mother’s oak “kitchen queen.” Hans and Minnie now make the weekly trip to St. Maries in a new, fire-engine red pickup.
How do they feel about their long lives?
Hans says, “I think so much has happened in our lifetime, more changes than in all the centuries that went before. It’s been a wonderful period.”
Minnie agrees, “I think we’ve had the golden years.”
MEMO: Jeri McCroskey, a free-lance writer and antique collector, lives with her husband at Carlin Bay. Panhandle Pieces is shared among four North Idaho writers.