Sinclair Lewis' Boyhood Home Tells A Story
When you walk into the two-story, wood-frame house on Sinclair
Lewis Avenue, you leave behind the modern world of microwave ovens,
wall to wall carpeting and double-car garages. Instead you experience
the turn-of-the-century lifestyle o
fa man
who later became on of America's greatest story tellers and social
critic. The boyhood home of Sinclair Lewis is filled with historic
memorabillia and stories of a creative young man, who's life was
filled with books, mischief and adventure.
Among the fine parlor furniture, the rustic cookstove and the good doctor, xxxx Lewis' roll top desk, you learn of an awkward young boy's life.
"Much of what you read in Sinclair Lewis' books occurred in this house," says tour guide Joyce Lyng.
The ladies literature readings Lewis wrote about in Main
Street were held by his step-mother in the Lewis parlor. The
graphic descriptions of medical emergencies in Arrowsmith
were played out on the front porch as patients rushed to see Lewis'
father. Local stories have it, young Red Lewis had to bury amputated
limbs in the back yard.
The Lewis home was the center of social life in the in Sauk Centre
which was a frontier town in the 1890s made up of New England
Yankees and Northern Europeans. Lewis listened closely to the
voices he heard and often mimic his parent's guests with his friends.
Lewis' father came to town with a wagon filled with books and
later helped get a library built in Sauk Centre. Surrounded by
so many books, it was only natural Lewis would grow up an avid
reader. He couldn't put a good book down.
When he had to cut wood in the backyard he would prop a book in
a tree to catch a quick paragraph betwen chops. His stern father
would often scold him for reading when he should be working. A
small carriage house served as a hide away for young Lewis. Here
he kept a diary and a small collection of short stories. Lewis'step-grandfather,
a Civil War veteran would tell him stories of war and far off
places. From his bedroom window, overlooking the carriage house,
Lewis would gaze at Sauk Lake and recreate great armies forming
on the shoreline, navel battles at sea and imagine distant lands
he would one day visit.
From these boyhood imaginings came America's first Nobel Prize
winner for literature and one of the best selling authors of the
Jazz Age of the Roaring 20's.