Duane (Didge) Simonson
For the thirty years I knew him as Didge, but not until yesterday did I learn how he got that nick name. Sitting in church yesterday listening to relatives and friends pay tribute to the man we called Didge was both heart breaking and uplifting. We knew he was never going to be standing around the lakeshore shooting the bull with us any more, and at the same time we realized that he would always be with us.
Lots of people know Mille Lacs as a great fishing hole, Didge was the guy who knew the land surrounding the magnificent lake. He was a Lumberjack, log’s from Butternut, White Ash, Black Ash, Aspen, Basswood and Birch were transformed into the lumber he sold to me from the family sawmill. What he taught me about the woods forever lives in the beautiful tongue n’ groove paneling hanging in my old cabin, workshop and bunkhouse.
Didge was also a miner. He knew where to find, sand for the beach, black dirt for the lawn, and boulders for the shoreline. I can remember a few years back the lake was up and the winds were fierce, within a couple of weeks our shoreline had eroded significantly. Didge happened to stop by one weekend and within hours we were mining for big boulders at the family gravel pit. Didge knew where to find the good ones, he said “we don’t want the ugly gray ones like you see laying in farm fields, we’ll get some colorful ones”.
One thing Didge wasn’t was an electrician. He was remodeling his kitchen and needed some help with the wiring. It was an old house with a breaker box in an odd location, high in a wall of a stairwell, we set up a plank spanning a ladder and the steps. We were trying to figure out were all the wires in the overstuffed box were leading to. We were standing side-by-side on the plank when Didge grabbed a ‘hot one’, he looked at me with his eyes lit up like a couple of light bulbs, he started dancing on that plank and I thought for sure we were both going down.
Didge and I spent time together last fall after he got a new trail bike, finally I had someone to ride the back roads around Mille Lacs with. We rode about 80 miles one afternoon, through some beautiful pine forests north of Mille Lacs that I never knew existed. That was the last time I spoke to Didge.
As I said at the beginning, I didn’t learn until yesterday where Didge got his nick name. His brother Dana said it came from a highschool football coach. I didn’t follow the whole story, but the coach was asking Duane if he had done something. The coach kept asking him, “did ya do it, huh, didge ya do it, didge ya?
Yes Didge did it. He made a lasting impression on myself, Hooks, Bobbers, and many other friends from the early days around the East side of Mille Lacs.
Didge, you’re number one. Keep that number in your pocket, someday we’ll all be together again and you can light up our lives just like old times.
JAG