Limiting our focus to Beebe’s clients in Fargo-Moorhead would tell a very different story. But, in the era before automobile dominance, it’s an error to minimize the railroads’ influence on business social life. How many “frequent traveler” miles did Beebe accumulate? Was he on familiar terms with the conductors?

Beebe’s professional connections across southern North Dakota depended on the N.P. It’s “half” of the state’s market area accounts for twenty-nine commissions; the Great Northern across the north, just two. The same is true on the Northern Pacific eastward toward Duluth: Wadena<17.3mi>Staples<28mi>Brainerd (the distances are mileage between stations) alone account for sixteen, and a radial scattering of dependent communities for fifteen more. Isaac Hazlett’s cluster of projects are part of that pattern.

Each client is an opportunity for the architect to be consequential. Some clients can be the same. Beebe was fortunate to meet Hazlett, a merchant who relocated to the central part of Minnesota in the 90s, where he met William Baumbach, J. J. Meyer and Frank B. Coon. Their long-standing friendship brought Beebe at least eight commissions, possibly eleven. They were modest projects, yes, but consequential for their communities.

The largest were business blocks in Staples and Wadena. The “Phoenix Block” in Wadena justified its name: the first Phoenix burned in 1888; its 1890 replacement also burned, making way for Beebe’s 1901 design, a distinguished Classical Revival scheme, two stores on the ground floor and professional offices above. [Meyer’s bank was in an older building nearby.] A series of small banks spun out from there to Bertha, Henning, Randall, and Verndale established by the Hazlett-Meyer-Coon collaboration. Hazlett and Baumbach built Beebe-design lake cottages nearby.

“A few figs from thistles…”

by Howard A. Tabor

“R.I.P.”

If you think these abbreviate the phrase “Rest in Peace” or its Latin origin “requiescat in pacem,” you’d be wrong.

Probably the strangest memorial at The Shades, Agincourt’s non-sectarian burial ground, is a full-size, cast bronze shovel — technically a pointed digger. It appears to be leaning against a nearby tree, rather than firmly anchored in the ground. A closer look reveals an inscription on the shovel’s blade: “NEIL KLIEN–1909-1961. We were there at his beginning. He was there at our end.” Klien had been the cemetery’s sexton for twenty-eight years.

Orphaned in high school during the Depression and earning the label “melancholic loner”, he may have been a poor choice for grave digger. But the tragic deaths of his adoptive parents tainted public perception of Klien’s circumstances; the job might have relieved a measure of community guilt. So, for twenty-eight years, he dug our graves. Then, nearly fifty years later, a nasty storm toppled several headstones and a mystery ensued.

Concealed on the stone’s underside, a handwritten inscription in red lead seemed an editorial comment on the grave’s occupant, a prominent banker: the appropriately prominent chunk of granite was, it suggested, “hard as the banker’s heart, but smaller than his ego”. It became a clandestine “hobby” to look for other such private editorials. The collection is more interesting than it is large. And it hardly merits becoming a book — or does it?

Was Juvenal Juvenile?

For two reasons, the epithets have been attributed to Neil Klien: first, they date from his tenure as sexton, and he was in the best position to these these time capsules for whatever circumstance might reveal them. With few exceptions, they range between cynical and sardonic, critical observations on the lives of those interred below. And as a collection, they’re not in league with Hemingway’s “Six-word Novels” or Felix Fénéon’s “Novels in Three Lines”. Juvenal’s satires come to mind (from a class I vaguely recall as an undergraduate). But as shards of our local history, there is nothing quite like them.

• For an accountant and amateur photographer who died in 1922 but whose headstone wasn’t set for more than a decade, the inscription reflects rumors of the time which suggested his wife had arranged the explosion that took his life:

Some images are just too good to pass by. Such is the image of a very typical single-family house of 1908—or at least the photo carries that date. As an RPPC (real-photo postcard, for those new to the game) chances are this is the only print, or, perhaps fewer than a dozen for family and friends. I’ll wager there’s a darkroom in the basement or a shack in the backyard. The explosive nature of photographic chemicals led to more than a few personal tragedies.

This sort of (I’d call it) “Italianate” style house could be found anywhere between the Appalachians and the Rockies, a slight variation on the Prairie Foursquare or “Corn-Belt Box”. “The handwritten “Springer” on the lower left corner could be the street but is more likely the family name. So, I’ve queried the internet for female given names circa during the 1880s, about the time that lady on the front steps was born. Eventually, the Springer family will be properly represented in the Agincourt community but for the time being allow me to introduce Alma (Mrs Carl) Springer (née Mahler).

Oh, and BTW, the card was priced well outside my budget, so I hope it finds a safe home. Just not mine.

Alma gets around.