Houston and Fillmore Counties were thriving in the mid-to-late 1800s, greatly due to the transformation of transportation by the railroad – except for the two county seats, Caledonia and Preston. The early Minnesota railroads, built between 1862 and 1870, began in the eastern counties and generally expanded westward as did the settlements. These lines reached from the … [Read more...]

“A young man never feels so much at a loss what to do, as when he takes his girl to a picnic, a big ant crawls down her back and begins to bite her just above the belt, and she begins to scream for help.” This quip was published in the Caledonia Journal in September 1879. Percival “Perk” Steffen, who owned that newspaper for 36 years (1922 to 1958), at some point, decided to … [Read more...]

Hubert wasn’t a bachelor farmer. Hubert was a bachelor physical education teacher. He’d never married. He was too busy watching “Wheel of Fortune,” which always made him feel smarter than the contestants. He surprised everyone when, at age 59, he married a woman nearly 20 years his junior. A year into the marriage, Hubert bought an old motorhome held together by … [Read more...]

Second of a two-part series He was a farmer, school custodian and school bus driver, but driving had nothing to do with the 40 passenger school bus (minus its roof) ending up in his living room or what had been his living room only moments before. It was 8:50 p.m. soon after nightfall. Farming a half-mile west of Houston, Aldis Gordon was back at his two-and-a-half-story … [Read more...]

We have too much or not enough, depending upon our viewpoint and our situation. That applies to most things. A friend uses the email closing, “I wish you enough.” That’s a good wish, but we’d still want more or less. A good reader wrote me about his ravenous rabbits. Their numbers had exploded in his neighborhood, and he was thinking of hiring a fox or two. There … [Read more...]