The Pine Pulse... There’s no place like a new home

Talk about it

A welcoming whirlwind. That pretty accurately sums up my first week as editor of The Pine Journal. Being from the Twin Cities originally, I can’t call this area home, at least not yet.

In fact, the only experience I’ve ever had in Cloquet included a fun visit to the Bentleyville holiday lights show, and a trip to Sammy’s Pizza to fuel up beforehand, in December of 2005.

However, several experiences occurred in just this first week that made it begin to feel like home.

First, my parents, who live in the Twin Cities, called me even before I started working at the paper to give me a hot tip on a story. “Cloquet needs a new fire truck,” they said, citing a story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The story discussed a Gov. Pawlenty proposal to increase local aid to cities, but put a lid on tax increases. It even featured a photo of Cloquet Fire Chief James Langenbrunner with the aging fire truck. And although I hadn’t officially started my new job yet, I had made a tour around the county with Wendy Johnson a few days prior, and our full tour of the Fire Department included meeting the chief and checking out all the trucks, including the old-school one. So when my parents told me about it, it already seemed old-hat.

Then with my first story about the Oldenburg house in Carlton, I got a dose of Carlton County history, and much to my surprise I found that the name Baumann has some historical significance there.

Pouring over the stack of historical documents, I read that the land on which the Henry C. Oldenburg home sits was purchased from none-other-than an Edward Baumann, which was part of something called Baumann’s Addition.

Now other than that revelation, I have no idea who this Edward Baumann was, but I don’t run across Baumann spelled in this way too often, and I sure wouldn’t mind if I was related to him – considering he clearly owned this beautiful land, according to a Vidette newspaper story published on March 10, 1894.

Even if it turns out I’m not related, it was nice to see a familiar name in my research in a slightly unfamiliar place. And with all the nice people I’ve met so far, just seeing some of their friendly faces for the second time now tells me I’ve come to the right place.

Pine Journal Editor Lisa Baumann can be contacted at: lbaumann@pinejournal.com.