Interest in presenting and documenting local history was evident at the annual meeting of the Cokato Historical Society and 125 people attended a program on ice harvesting. Donnie Johnson and Milton Mattson, who harvested and delivered ice in the 30s, told many interesting stories. Slides from the photographs that Milt Mattson had taken of the complete process from cutting to stacking the cakes in the ice house served as a visual aid to ex­plain the ice harvest. Those photographs provide a valuable resource in documenting a service that was important in the com­munity before electric refrigeration and coolers.

This is all history now but in the spring of 1947 we went farther back in history. Lois Bergman and I decided we should buy a car so we could get beyond the confines of Cokato when the weather was so nice. With a teaching salary of $280 per month we knew that the car could not be new or even recent, so we went to Harold and Rub Harkman for some suggestions. They told us of a bachelor living in town who was now too old to drive; he had a 1917 Model T Roadster that was in excellent shape. We went to meet Mr. Gust Flood and bought his car for fifty dollars. Gust had only used it to go back and forth to Stockholm to care for and harvest ginseng (a medicinal plant which he marketed in New York) which he raised on his farm in Stockholm.