This Day in History

On Tap

Compiled by Jean Lundquist

Labor Day celebrated in Mankato

Sept. 1, 1902

Labor Day was first celebrated in New York City Sept. 5, 1882. By 1902, Mankato was ready to celebrate Labor Day “in a manner fitting to the day” and on a larger scale than had been attempted here.

Labor Unions in the area had only been recognized the year before. Nine labor unions, including a stone cutters union from Kasota, joined in a fiveblock-long parade headed to Sibley Park for a program. Stonecutters wore their aprons, carpenters sported overalls, painters wore white suits and carried yardsticks, and Teamsters drove their teams.

At Sibley Park, speakers credited the unions with obtaining reasonable working hours, safer working conditions and ending child labor. Unions also were credited for making workingmen better housed, better fed, better clothed and better educated than their predecessors.

Bullet whizzes through girl

Sept. 7, 1959

Half a mile east of Mankato, young Sandra Decker was playing on her father’s farm near a grove where her father was cutting wood.

She was playing with her siblings, when she suddenly fell to her knees. She was taken by her father to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Mankato where it was determined that a bullet had passed through the right side of her chest without hitting a vital organ, vessel or bone.

Several people in the area had seen three boys, later determined to be 12 and 13 years old, walking into a cornfield with rifles.

After a plea went out via radio for anyone who had been shooting in the area to contact the sheriff, parents brought the three boys in. Two had been carrying air rifles, but the third had apparently taken his father’s rifle without permission, along with some .22 long cartridge bullets.

The boys said they had been shooting at birds and trees.

Sandra Decker survived, and the boys were turned over to juvenile authorities.

Malathion spraying damages cars

Sept. 10, 1983

Likely nobody likes mosquitoes, and many Mankato residents were likely happy when the Minnesota Department of Health sent some Air Force C-123s overhead with malathion that not only killed the mosquitoes, but also honeybees.

But owners of General Motors vehicles were a little less happy when it was noticed that spots the size of a ballpoint pen tip appeared the day after the spray hit them.

A spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Health said the damage didn’t only occur in Mankato but had been reported in St. Cloud and East Grand Forks. GM vehicles were affected, he said, because of the type of paint used, which takes up to a year to cure.

Light-colored vehicles were more affected than dark ones, and the longer the malathion stayed on the paint, the more apparent it became. He blamed the contractor for not having “the correct size droplet coming out of the (sprayer) nozzle.”

Coffee Hag revisiting its roots

Sept. 17, 2007

One of Mankato’s first modern coffee shops, The Coffee Hag, began serving coffee in 1992. It had switched owners at least once before Jenn Melby bought the shop in 2007.

Melby said at the time that she had gotten her musical start by playing at The Coffee Hag as part of Sister Gin and wanted to take the shop back to where it began.

That meant offering clear glasses for coffee drinks, vegetarian food, showings of a new local artist each month, poetry slams, tarot readings, and an open stage to feature local talent.

Thirty years on, The Coffee Hag is still a successful business in Old Town.