When I went on a Boundary Waters canoe trip as a teenager, we would just dip a water jug into the lake water and drink it without boiling or purifying it -- ick! Kool-aid nor cocoa could mask the taste of lake water and thankfully, no one got sick from water-born parasites.
As teens, we could hardly wait to have our first pop (as Kansans call it) in over a week. We paid our token 50 cents or so and waited in line for Dorothy to hand out root beer from an old Coca-Cola lift-top cooler. Although she had no electricity, the pop was kept cold by a solid block of ice in the cooler. We learned that in the winter, men from the nearest town would cut these blocks of ice right out of the lake. Dorothy covered the blocks with saw dust and stored them in a cool dug-out so they could keep her root beer cold all summer long.
We had been promised that a real treat was coming in the way of having root beer from some lady who lived in the middle of the BWCA. After a hard day of paddling into the wind as we headed westward on long Knife Lake that makes up the U.S.-Canadian border, we came upon a small island. It had the first semi- permanent structures we had seen for days. As we hiked onto the island, there were mounded root gardens lined by fences created from brightly painted canoe paddles signed by various scouts troops, church groups, families, and others who had stopped at this special place. We had arrived at Dorothy Molter's summer place. She was affectionately known throughout these parts as "The Root Beer Lady."
As teens, we could hardly wait to have our first pop (as Kansans call it) in over a week. We paid our token 50 cents or so and waited in line for Dorothy to hand out root beer from an old Coca-Cola lift-top cooler. Although she had no electricity, the pop was kept cold by a solid block of ice in the cooler. We learned that in the winter, men from the nearest town would cut these blocks of ice right out of the lake. Dorothy covered the blocks with saw dust and stored them in a cool dug-out so they could keep her root beer cold all summer long.
Dorothy handed out her root beer that was put into old Dr. Pepper, 7Up, Nehi and Coca-Cola bottles and sealed (?) with rusty and dented metal bottle tops. A funny story was that everyone else got these typical bottles, but the one she handed to me was a "Polly-Wog Cola" bottle. Because I had never seen my first name on anything, everyone told me to go ask her if I could keep the bottle. When I finally got enough courage to do so, she abruptly said, "No!", and took the bottle that I had only half finished!
What I remember about her root beer was that it was a bit darker and maybe more syrupy than regular root beer, but the taste was basically the same. The hard thing for teenagers was that it wasn't carbonated like pop was -- so it was more like root beer kool-aid.
The second photo is of part of our group at Dorothy's (I'm not in the photo), but you can see the red Coca-Cola cooler by the shed.
On the website for the Dorothy Molter Museum, I read that she lived on Isle of Pines on Knife Lake for over 56 years and served as many as 7,000 people a year. Maybe I understand now why she needed to keep using her Polly-Wog Cola bottle instead of giving it away to me!
P.S. -- Several years ago, I sighted another Polly-Wog Cola bottle in a small ice cream shop in Taylors Falls. It was the only one they had, so they wouldn't part with it either!
1 comment:
I'd forgotten about going to The Root Beer Lady's until I read your post! That was fun. I don't remember her taking the Poly-wog bottle away from you, but I do remember the sign that read "kwicherbelliakin" (or some similar spelling.)
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