Published: April 11, 2008 10:46 am            

Back Roads: Stories and shadows

Originally published in the April 4, 2008, print edition.

Stearns County Road 157 from Albany to Freeport isn’t really a “Back Road,” paralleling, as it does, I-94.

But it is the road the Greyhound traveled when it served all the farm towns between Osakis and St. Cloud. In the 1960s you could ride the train and watch traffic on 156 and the farmers laboring in their fields. The train and the bus and, earlier, the ox carts, stopped in Freeport.

You can too. You can leave your mode of transportation and walk into the bar and supper club at Ackie’s Pioneer Inn. The Inn’s been there since 1880. Ed T. Atkinson has only been there for 27 years.

“I bought this place when I was 22,” he said. “I needed a job so I bought one.”

A bartender who says things like this likely has a few stories to spin. You can nurse a beer — or soda — stare up at the stuffed bass on the wall, and wait.

“Back in the’70s and ’80s all the bars were packed,” Ed said. “By noon we had two bartenders. Nowadays the farmers don’t have to come to town. The delivery truck goes to them and they bank online. In 1984 a drink was 75 cents. I made more profit that year than in 2004 when drinks were $2.75.”

While you’re ruminating on the economics of drink prices and German farmers enjoying a roast beef sandwich and a Grain Belt, Ed may launch another yarn.

“He sat at that table right over there,” Ed said.

“Who?”

“Keillor! Garrison Keillor. He drank here when he was in college. That’s where he got the Side Track Tap idea for his radio show. Years later came back with that big director. What’s his name?”

“Spielberg?”

“Yah. They said are you going to make us sign something. I said no. They said that’s good. We’d leave if you were.”

Look into the back room of Ackies. It’s dark. Keillor is nodding off over his drink. There are pool tables. Is it the cantina at Mos Eisley on the planet Tatooine? Is that Luke Skywalker playing pool with Chewbacca? Or is it merely shadows?

Now go upstairs, to old Pioneer Inn room eight. There is a library with a lot more stories. It’s Freeport’s only library. If you leave a book, Ed will let you take one. Be careful on the stairs, though. They are narrow and dark.

        

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