It was a fly year. It was hot and humid, and the flies were sticky. Flies were left, right and center. I’d finished a gig of telling stories at a fair. People had been milling about, but now there was a lull. Feeling peckish, I procured a malt and looked for shade. I found it where wooden cable spools acted as tables and looked like the yo-yos of a fee-fi-fo-fum-sized giant. … [Read more...]
Peering at the Past Pioneers Lived, Survived by Ingenuity
At night in bed, asthma sufferer Henry Christian Bunge, Sr. sought relief from severe coughing by taking hold of a rope that he had attached to an overhead beam and lifted himself into a sitting position. Life as a southeast Minnesota pioneer during the last half of the 1800s called for as much ingenuity as possible. Success depended on self-sufficiency. Doctors were scarce, … [Read more...]
Fry Me to the Moon Where No Two Snow Cones are Alike
I slipped the surly bonds of the unfair and leaped like a graceful gazelle onto the county fairgrounds. It was fairly fabulous. People, lights, music and the racket of the carnival. There were fewer people than at an average Taylor Swift concert, but there was a sound carried by the fair air that reverberated as if a thousand people were standing in a corner and yelling … [Read more...]
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Summer is a time of opening things up and getting light on everything. I love the smell of fresh air that comes with summer. Unless I’m hauling a load of manure... I think that would be called ripe. As a kid, I remember my mom reading books to me of stories from the “olden days” when they would bring out all the rugs, hang them on the clothes line and pound them until they … [Read more...]
Peering at the Past Stinky fish, chicken livers and nightcrawlers
Part two of a series About 1950, some Rushford students received permission to be a couple of hours late to school, so at the break of dawn, mostly men and boys could be at nearby streams, hoping to catch the first trout of the season. It was the fishing opener, the opening day of trout season. The Minnesota Governor’s Fishing Opener has been a time-honored tradition in … [Read more...]
A goodly Heritage
Last month I wrote you about a true story that happened on our farm. This story has been taken from the book Tales from Heritage Farm by Randall and Wenda Grabau. The main characters are two young children, a homemaking mom, a German shepherd named Sam and a little bird. We left the story as one little girl came running into the farmhouse kitchen yelling to her mother. … [Read more...]
I Stay By the Cart and Guard the Oatmeal
I was traipsing down the magically delicious aisles of a grocery store. That’s the breakfast cereal aisle. I used to like breakfast cereals with things like a frogman in the box. “They swim... They dive... They surface... All by themselves!” There were three U.S. Navy Frogmen available in boxes of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes: an obstacles scout, a … [Read more...]
Peering at the Past Catching Fish with Your Feet
Part one of a series Maybe on the bank of a river, smaller stream or a slough (rhyming with flew), there was the thrill of the pursuit and the later savoring of the flavor. It could involve a family, a couple of buddies or just one person. When growing up on a farm in the 1940s and 1950s, fishing was one of the few enjoyable activities for which there was time and also … [Read more...]
How firm a foundation…
By Pastor Mark Woodward Maple Leaf Parish Churches: Spring Valley: Faith, Cherry Grove, Fountain, Preston (and Lenora) A long time ago I was doing some work at the old church in Lenora. As many of you know, the historic Lenora Church has been a labor of love for me over the years. While working in the yard, my shovel struck a buried rock about a foot under the ground. … [Read more...]
Peering at the Past Bayonet threat: “Say you’re a Yankee!”
Horses needed rest after about 10 miles of pulling a stagecoach. In Houston County, the Lorette House was either the first or the last stop for a stream of stagecoaches traveling between La Crosse and St. Paul, following what later became County Highway 25. When white settlers arrived in the mid-1900s, a stagecoach was the only public transportation and safer than traveling … [Read more...]