Coming home, the oxen almost sank into the morass, but he managed to get them through, plow his land and sow his seed.

In time Sakri Nikkari began to possess a modest property, and the assessor came to estimate his holdings : a tax bill for all of 47c arrived in due course, but Sakri, who knew not a word of

Blowers baseball team in 1915: Ivar Putikka, John Roiko, Harry Anderson,
Arthur Mattie_ Emil Mattie and Frank Anderson.

English, understood nothing of the demand. The delinquency was noted in due time, and the sheriff was dispatched from the county seat to collect the money. The sheriff travelled 70 miles by train to New York Mills, and there he hired a span of horses to take him on to his destination. When he arrived in Blowers the road came to an end, and the sheriff had to stop at Henry Pelto's farm to ask the way. Upon learning what had brought the sheriff so far, to a land beyond God's back, and to a destination still 5 miles beyond, at the end of a swampland path, Pelto assured the sheriff that Nikkari would surely have paid his taxes if ht had understood that he owed them, and to save the sheriff a 10-mile walk through the swamps, Pelto paid his neighbor's tax bill.

In Blowers, too, the Finns gradually assumed positions of responsibility in the community, and soon it was possible to note,

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