I Googled Sauk Centre history this week.
I learned that the Minnesota Historical Society’s website has back issues of our town’s Sauk Centre Herald — and an impressive set of records connected with the Sauk Centre Home School for Girls,1 AKA Minnesota Correctional Facility-Sauk Centre.
Focusing on conventional publications, government officials, and their institutions, has some merit.
But so does remembering what happened when schoolkids found a skunk in a woodpile.
A literal skunk in an actual woodpile.
Bringing Explosives to School: Cultural and Historical Context
My wife’s mother remembered a time when some kids saw a skunk outside their school. This was a one-room schoolhouse near Osakis: a few miles down the road, on the other side of West Union.2
I’m not clear on exactly what the year was, but it was back when this schoolhouse had a wood-burning heater and a woodpile outside, stacked against one wall.
A woodpile which, on this occasion, contained a skunk.
Some kids, again, had noticed the skunk. They decided, correctly, that the skunk’s presence near their school was a potential threat.
Maybe the kids saw the skunk situation as urgent, but decided that it didn’t warrant bothering an adult. It wasn’t the best decision, but let’s remember: they were kids.
An obvious solution might have been to shoot the skunk. Boys, at least, routinely took rifles to school with them so they could do some hunting on the way home.
Obvious, perhaps, but not a viable option. The skunk had barricaded itself in the woodpile. And they couldn’t spook it out.
So one of them went home: returning with dynamite, a fuse and a blasting cap. These days, that might have made national headlines, followed by a Congressional investigation.
Back then, it was kids using stump-removal tech without permission.
The one who’d brought dynamite set the charge. Everyone backed off to a safe distance.
When the smoke cleared, the skunk was gone.
So was the wood pile.
Along with much of the schoolhouse’s paint on that side.
Nobody was hurt. Startled, yes, but not hurt.
The kids who’d seen a skunk and picked the dynamite option faced consequences: which including cleaning and repainting that side of the school. And then, life went on.
Justice, Responsibilities, and Making Sense
I don’t miss ‘the good old days’.
My memory’s too good, and I’ve studied too much history to imagine that we had a golden age in my youth, or a utopian Camelot somewhere in our more distant past — or, for that matter, to fear that we’re doomed to decline, decay, despair, and dishpan hands.
That said, I think having those schoolkids clean and paint the wall they’d damaged was a good idea.
I see it as an example of commutative justice, since they were restoring property they’d damaged: their community’s one-room schoolhouse.
Instead of maundering on about justice, mutual obligations, and all that, I’ll just say that balancing the rights and responsibilities of individuals and communities is a good idea.
That’s my personal opinion.
More to the point, that’s what the Church says:
“Justice: The cardinal moral virtue which consists in the constant and firm will to give their due to God and to neighbor (1807). Original justice refers to the state of holiness in which God created our first parents (375). Commutative justice, which obliges respect for the rights of the other, is required by the seventh commandment; it is distinguished from legal justice, which concerns what the citizen owes to the community, and distributive justice, which regulates what the community owes its citizens in proportion to their contributions and needs (2411) See Social Justice.”
(Glossary, Catechism)
I’ll admit that I look at the woodpile incident through the eyes of a city boy whose parents both spent significant parts of their early years on farms. The same is true of my wife. Her mother grew up on a farm near Osakis, her father on a farm near Sauk Centre.
Maybe that accounts for my lack of horror and revulsion at the thought of technology that’s not found in an office. Then again, maybe not. And that’s another topic.
Finally, the usual links:
- Family stories
- “A Crate of Oranges”
(February 1, 2025) - “A Dog Named Ulysses”
(January 4, 2025) - “Damp Farmland, an Accident, and Accepting Good News”
(December 21, 2024) - “Elijah’s Cup: a Reminder, a Tradition, and a Memory”
(December 7, 2024) - “Sledding With My Dad: Good Memories”
(June 22, 2024)
- “A Crate of Oranges”
- Justice, myths and history
- “Pax Romana: Good Times, Remembered”
(April 22, 2023) - “My Church in Sauk Centre, Minnesota: Vandalized”
(September 24, 2022) - “A Roman Founding Myth and Aeneas, Action Hero”
(May 28, 2022) - “Learning From History: It’s an Option”
(May 7, 2022) - “Wheat, Tares, Fear of the Lord and Working on Wisdom”
(December 19, 2020)
- “Pax Romana: Good Times, Remembered”
1 Another part of our history:
- Wikipedia
- Minnesota Home School for Girls at Sauk Centre
State Prisons: Historical Inmate Records
Gale Family Library, Minnesota Historical Society - Minnesota Home School for Girls is on the National Register of Historic Places, Brookdale Cemetery isn’t
- “Good Intentions” (May 12, 2017)
Today I learned about a racial idiom. Honestly, I feel refreshed about learning it in the public quiet that this site has right now, because as much as I value awareness, I believe that sacrificing hope for the sake of awareness is not a good idea.
That aside, Sauk Centre in the 1930s looks like how I’d expect an average American urban area to be at that time. As for that literal skunk in the woodpile, I feel like the way that that was dealt with might inspire a cartoon, maybe one starring Pepe Le Pew.
Pepe Le Pew!! Yes – that would be a good choice!