Minnesota Prairie Roots

FINALLY, AFTER 20 MILES, my legs have warmed to the point where I no longer complain about the cold.

Now I can actually focus on my surroundings, if only I could see more than the faint outlines of farm buildings, snow-plastered road signs and the big dipper suspended above this expanse of flat land that stretches seemingly forever. I would prefer to drive this area in daylight, with camera in tow. But…, we are on our way to a company Christmas party on Saturday evening.

“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” I ask my husband, who assures me that Dakota County Road 47 leads to Hampton and the Black Stallion.

Eventually, we reach Hampton. Stop by the church, drive several blocks, turn right, drive through downtown, past a bar with “Lucky” in its name, turn left, then right again into the Black Stallion parking lot, next to busy U.S. Highway 52.

The name of this place, Black Stallion, intrigues me. My imagination can spin a fanciful, fictional story that probably resembles nothing close to the historic reality of this place. However, I suspect that in the heyday of supper clubs, the Black Stallion likely drew a crowd of well-dressed diners on Saturday nights. Most of those supper clubs, like the Lavender Inn and the Evergreen Knoll in Faribault, Jerry’s Supper Club in Owatonna and the Cat and the Fiddle between Mankato and New Ulm, have closed. I forget later to ask a waitress about the history of this long-time eating establishment.

I forget too to look for the black stallion statue that, from atop a towering sign, has become a roadside icon here.

Inside, I hang my coat in the coat check room, a supper club nicety I’ve long forgotten. In the large room reserved for the Parts Department, Inc., Northfield (NAPA), party, I try to find a warm spot away from the blast of frigid air that sweeps in every time someone enters the restaurant.

Later, much later, we settle in at tables linked together—one group of us on one side of the room, the others on the opposite side, a round table in between. I find myself placed at the joint of two tables, my back to a red wall.

Behind that wall, laughter erupts and spoons clink against glasses. “A wedding?” I ask.

“An anniversary,” answers Kathy, whom I’ve just met and who is seated across from me next to her husband, Marv.

Beside Kathy sits Turbo. He’s a high school senior and a 130-pound wrestler, a teen with energy that matches his nickname. By the end of the evening, he and my husband, whom he calls Rudy, are planning an October trip to a cranberry fest in northern Wisconsin. They intend to camp in our hail-battered 1988 Plymouth Grand Voyager van. I’ve decided I’ll bunk out in Turbo’s Superior, Wisconsin, dorm room rather than travel with this duo. And to think this road trip talk evolved after Randy, AKA Rudy, ordered a piece of cheesecake.

“I have cranberry cheesecake in my refrigerator,” Kathy says and tells us it came from Eagle River, Wisconsin, home to an annual Cranberry Fest that includes cranberry beer, cranberry meatballs, cranberry cheesecake,  cranberry brats and more.

“Let’s go,” my husband says upon hearing “brats and beer.”

So the conversations go. We talk, in the course of the evening, about kangaroos in Australia; veterinarian school; a $400 dog bought at a campground; a trashed, foreclosed home; the difference between Bohemians and Czechoslovakians; H1N1: snowdrifts (that from a Chicago native who knew nothing of snowdrifts before moving to Northfield); closet-sized dorm rooms; losing 12 pounds in four days to meet wrestling weight; how Turbo looks just like his dad, Calvin, whom he calls Calvin and not Dad; heart health (Roger) and hip health (me); treacherous roads; forecast 40-degree temps (where did you hear this, Elaine?); frozen ponds in Florida; *snow homes; and whether Randy’s middle name is Alexander because I am drinking a Brandy Alexander.

Sometimes it’s just crazy talk. But that’s OK, because we’re laughing, enjoying each other’s company, here at the Black Stallion. Here, where the food tastes supper club good and the powder room is wall-to-stall princess pink.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

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*How do I explain “snow home?”  When I was growing up on the southwestern Minnesota prairie, rural students needed to choose a designated home to stay in should they become stranded in town during a snowstorm. This was a “snow home.”

Not just graffiti, but a poem at Sibley Lake Park.

WORDS UPON WOOD. Who wrote them? Why?

Because I am innately curious, I wonder, often, about many things.

I wonder about the words gracefully written upon the wooden railing of a public dock at Sibley Lake Park in Pequot Lakes this summer. We had stopped there for a picnic, eaten inside a shelter where a group of women were gathered for bible study. I felt intrusive, listening to their intimate prayers.

So when we finished our sandwiches and our chips and our one-serving pudding cups, we wandered toward the lake, my husband, son and I, down the steep hillside of steps. There at the bottom, two men angled the waters. We engaged in small talk.

None of them noticed the words, none of them except me. Live WELL. Laugh OFTEN. Love ALWAYS. And then in strong, uppercase letters, as if added as a postscript by another writer, the word DIE.

Was the writer angry? Spurned by a lover? Depressed?

I wonder about these words, this poetry written upon wood at water’s edge.

Beautiful Sibley Lake in Pequot Lakes, August 2009.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

This week's virtual Friday flower is a rose from the Lyndale Park Rose Garden near Lake Harriet in south Minneapolis. My Aunt Rae took me here when I visited her in my younger days. I returned to the garden for the first time in years this past August.

AFTER A HOLIDAY BREAK, Minnesota Prairie Roots virtual Friday flowers returns this week.

I already had two individuals selected for this honor when a third popped out at me Thursday morning from the editorial section of the  Faribault Daily News. The name should be familiar as I wrote about Tom Dominick in my December 18 Friday flowers post. Then, Tom and his wife received a monetary gift from a stranger while shopping at Walmart. It was a holiday boost the couple, who are raising their grandchildren, needed.

Let’s fast foreword now to Christmas Eve, when the Dominicks again received a generous gift from an anonymous Christmas angel. But this time, Tom decided another person needed the present more than his family. “Someone we know is dealing with multiple tragedies and sadness this holiday season; so from one heart to another, in your honor we’ve shared your love and kindness,” Tom wrote, describing how he paid it forward.

Because of his generous spirit, Tom has been selected as a recipient of January 8 Minnesota Prairie Roots virtual Friday flowers, a rose.

The second rose goes to my Aunt Rachel, who is recovering from recent knee replacement surgery in her Arkansas home. Rae has had a rough go of it and still isn’t feeling all that great.

I can relate somewhat, because I underwent total hip replacement 19 months ago. Although I didn’t face the same post-op issues as my aunt, I know that it takes time to regain strength and mobility. So, Rae, if you’re wondering whether you will ever ditch that walker, you will.

The final rose goes to my cousin Dawn from Morgan, who made this one memorable Christmas. She is the mastermind, following in her mother’s footsteps, behind a unique gift I received shortly before Christmas. Under the guise of Annie Mary Twente’s ghost (see my December 23 post), Dawn sent me a plastic toy mouse that poops candy and squeaks “Merry Christmas!” or “Merry Christmouse!,” depending on who is listening.

This little gag gift garnered more guffaws than anything as my family holed up together for several days during the Christmas snowstorm. My son even went so far as to place Chris Mouse on my chair before we sat down to supper one evening. That was nearly the end of Chris as I didn’t look before I sat and sent the screeching rodent skittering onto the dining room floor.

Thank you, Dawn, for bringing unexpected laughter to my family on Christmas. Like Tom Dominick, I may just pay the deed forward.

Chris Mouse caused quite a stir at my house this Christmas.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Minnesota Highway 30, which we drove last Friday, is closed today due to white-out conditions. When this photo was shot a week ago, snow was blowing and drifting across the highway.

TRAVELING LAST WEEK through Watonwan, Cottonwood and Redwood counties was enough to jog my memory of just how brutal winters can be on the southwestern Minnesota prairie where I grew up.

Fierce winds whip snow across open fields and across roadways, hardening into glacial-like ridges. I was thankful last Friday that snow wasn’t falling too as we were driving Minnesota Highways 60 and 30, or we would have been in trouble. You don’t want to find yourself in the middle of nowhere, in white-out conditions, in temperatures that are in the sub-zero range.

That was a week ago.

Today, a dangerous winter storm rages across the southwestern corner of Minnesota. Nearly every roadway, including the interstate, is closed and snowplows have been pulled off the roads.

Winds are pushing the feather-light snow onto highways and county roads, forming rock-hard drifts that make travel impossible. Semis and cars are stuck, stopped right there in traffic lanes, trapped in impassable snowdrifts.

This is the reality of wind and snow on the Minnesota prairie.

The southwestern Minnesota prairie, in the summer, is a place of remarkable beauty. I took this photo several years ago near Walnut Grove, the childhood home of author Laura Ingalls Wilder.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

The glass on the left is correctly printed with a pied piper on the 11th day of Christmas. The other glass, however, places a piper on the 10th day instead of a leaping lord.

A drummer is accurately printed on the 12th day of Christmas glass on the left. The glass on the right incorrectly showcases a leaping lord.

YESTERDAY WOULD HAVE been the time to write a post about Epiphany, the day the wise men brought gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh to the baby Jesus. But I got sidetracked by other topics and writing book reviews for Minnesota Moments magazine, including a review of Garrison Keillor’s Life among the Lutherans.

That reminds me of Sunday morning, when I was sitting in Trinity Lutheran Church listening to the sermon, which started with something like “This is the 10^th day of Christmas, you know, 10 lords a leaping.”

Now that statement got me sidetracked right away as my mind momentarily diverted to the 12 days of Christmas glasses stashed in my kitchen cupboard and in three boxes somewhere in my home.

I’m sorry, Pastor Kinne, but I wondered at that moment what type of artwork graces the 10^th day glass in my collection. I looked this morning, expecting to see a lord a leaping. Instead, there stood a stately man blowing on a musical instrument, which I can’t identify because I don’t know my musical instruments. But this image still didn’t seem right to me.

So I further examined the 10^th day glass, did a bit of googling and discovered, horror of horrors, a mistake. The 10th glass in my collection reads: “The tenth day of Christmas my true love sent to me ten pipers piping.” According to several websites and Pastor Kinne, it should be10 lords a leaping. The leaping lords are on my 12^th glass, which should have 12 drummers drumming. But a drummer graces the ninth glass, which should be nine ladies dancing. What a mixed up mess.

But back to that sermon. My thoughts then meandered to my good fortune in finding 12 days of Christmas glasses for my three kids, who were already arguing over who would get my collection some day. I never realized they cared so much about holiday glasses that I received 30-plus years ago from Al Egesdahl of Egesdahl Funeral Home and Furniture Store in Gaylord.

One holiday season, Al marched across the street to The Gaylord Hub, where I worked as a newspaper reporter and photographer, and plopped down a cardboard box crammed with those dozen 12 days of Christmas glasses. I’m not sure why Al gave me those glasses. Maybe he was just being a good neighbor. Minnesota Nice. Or maybe, now that I know the truth, he was simply trying to dump misprinted holiday glasses on an unsuspecting 22-year-old.

That doesn’t matter really as these glasses became a family treasure. Eventually, each of my kids acquired 12 days of Christmas glasses. Miranda found hers first at a garage sale. Last year I discovered a set for Amber at a Faribault antique store that was going out of business. And then, this past summer, I bought the final set for $2 at a garage sale. Guess what my son got for Christmas?

All of this I was thinking as the Lutheran pastor talked about Epiphany and how the wise men’s gifts connect to Christ’s three roles as prophet, priest and king. As a prophet, Christ foretold of his death, represented by myrrh, an embalming fluid. Frankincense tied in with Jesus’ duty as a priest, a mediator between God and us, making the ultimate sacrifice for our atonement.  And, finally, the gold, obviously, relates to his position as a king, ruler over all.

Considering the thousands of sermons I’ve listened to through the years, I’m surprised I had never heard this explanation. Or maybe, just maybe, my mind had wandered to 10 lords a leaping. Or was it 10 pipers piping?

A dancing lady is printed correctly on the drinking glass to the left for the ninth day of Christmas. The glass to the right is wrong with a drummer depicted on the ninth day.

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DID YOU KNOW THAT in Latin American cultures, kids get the bulk of their Christmas gifts on January 6, Epiphany, rather than on Christmas?

It’s true, as my daughter Miranda discovered last year while living in Argentina.

On the night of January 5, kids leave water and grass outside for the camels. The next morning the food and drink have disappeared, replaced by presents. Children believe that wise men come on camels bearing gifts for Dia de los reyes, Three Kings Day, the 12^th day of Christmas, Epiphany.

Now I like that custom, which is certainly more biblical than our Santa Claus. It keeps the focus on the true meaning of Christmas, the birth of Christ.

But I wonder. Could we possibly convince all those good Lutheran Sunday School students that camels would trek across the snow to deliver gifts? And where, exactly, would snowbound Minnesota kids find grass for the camels in January?

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

A sampling of the many Christmas photo cards my family received, including an annual photo of my friend Ron's dog, Bailey, decked out for the season.

COME JANUARY, I start feeling older, and not just because the calendar has flipped to a new year.

It’s all those Christmas card photos that put me in an aging funk. I mean, toddlers are now college graduates, for gosh sakes. High school friends are grandmas. My cousins’ kids are having babies.

And I’m in denial. Whenever I send holiday photos, I include only my three children, not my husband and me. Perhaps that’s not the smartest move on my part. Can you imagine the surprise when I finally decide to mail a complete family photo. “Who’s that?” my far-away acquaintances will ask as they furrow their brows and study the unfamiliar woman seated next to the familiar kids. “Is that Audrey?”

Then there’s my friend Ron, who every Christmas sends a photo of his dog, Bailey. If I saw Bailey walking down the street, I’m pretty sure I would recognize her. But Ron? I suppose I could assume that he’s the guy holding Bailey’s leash.

This holiday season brought more creative photo cards than ever to my mailbox as people turn to snapfish.com and shutterfly.com. As much as I enjoy the variety of pictures in these photo collages, some senders erred in choosing distant images of their families. When I need to pull out a magnifying glass to view friends or family with pencil-eraser-size heads, well… Maybe it’s just my aging eyes.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Hand-molded candies, crafted by my sister Lanae, her daughter, Tara, and Tara's husband, Andy.

“HOW DID YOU MAKE these?” I ask my sister Lanae as I admire the individual candies she’s included in a package of holiday treats for my family.

“I used a mold,” she answers. “And I’m not making them again.”

I am almost sorry I asked, so emphatic is Lanae in her reply.

Later, when I pilfer through the contents of the large gift bag, I understand exactly how much time and effort my sister has invested in making this assortment of delectable goodies for extended family members. Her beautifully-packaged foods and wine rival anything Martha Stewart could create.

But that’s no surprise to me. My floral designer sister has a flair for design and color and presentation. And she’s truly outdone herself this time with homemade wine, sweet relish, cut-out cookies, puppy chow, Chex party mix, caramel corn, bounce (that’s fruit-flavored vodka) and those hand-molded truffles. Lanae’s daughter, Tara, and Tara’s husband, Andy, helped with the candies and cookies.

I feel like a decadent, over-indulgent, spoiled-rotten queen when I even think about consuming these treats.

And perhaps that’s exactly as Lanae intended—that we should all feel just a little bit pampered, a little bit indulged, a little bit spoiled, but most of all, loved.

These beautifully-packaged snowflake cut-out cookies are almost too lovely to eat.

Lanae made jars of sweet relish from the bounty of summer.

Lanae and her husband, Dale, have gotten into wine-making and often share their wines with family.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Our frosty garage window, just a few days ago. I strive (struggle) to find the beauty in winter.

IT’S SO COLD in Minnesota that…

…my husband wore long johns under his dress pants to church this morning.

…coats crackle.

…car tires crunch on snowy roads.

…my mom leaves the door under her kitchen sink open so the pipes won’t freeze.

…you warm up the car for 15 minutes to drive a mile.

…houses emit occasional, boisterous cracking sounds.

…I took my jeans out of an icy closet to warm for an hour this morning before putting them on.

…our furnaces run way too much and too long, resulting in dry, itchy skin and, worse yet, higher than normal heating bills.

…ice fisherman smile because the lakes are “making ice.”

…even the hardiest Minnesotans wonder why they live here.

…we would welcome zero degrees as a heat wave.

Minnesota Prairie Roots readers, I would love to post your responses to “It’s so cold in Minnesota that…” Send me your comments.

The outdoor air temperature at my house in Faribault, Minnesota, registered minus 26.1 degrees at 7 a.m. on Sunday, January 3.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Snow drifts across Minnesota Highway 30 New Year's Day morning as we drive west toward Westbrook.

IT’S NEW YEAR’S DAY morning, and we are westbound on Minnesota Highway 30, driving past Darfur, Jeffers and Storden on our way to Westbrook on a journey that is taking longer than usual.

Earlier, icy roads altered our planned shortcut along Watonwan County Road 3. About a block down the glazed roadway, we turn around and head back to Minnesota Highway 60 that takes us further south to St. James, where I lived nearly 30 years ago.

As we drive, the wind whips snow across the four lanes of highway in this place of flat, wide open spaces. My mind flashes back to the winter of 1982, when I lived in St. James and was trying to plan my May wedding. Endless snowstorms stranded me in town on weekends and I wondered if I would ever see my fiancé in Faribault, let alone plan our wedding.

Now here I am, 27 years later, sitting beside the man who became my husband, trying to recall exactly how to get through St. James to highway 30. You would think I could remember the streets in this community, but I don’t. And I’m not exactly watching the road signs.

Instead, I am gawking at the downtown businesses. “Oh, look, they still have a Pamida,” I say. I would stop if we had time and it wasn’t so darned cold. But we don’t have time and I really don’t feel like leaving the relative warmth of the car.

Then we are in the heart of downtown. “I wonder if that movie theater’s still open.” And then I see the theater where my husband, Randy, and I saw the first Indiana Jones movie.

Randy laughs and together we remember the second floor theater with a ceiling so low that part of the movie played on the ceiling. I would stop if we had time and it wasn’t so darned cold.

Then we are driving past the park and the lake and I am pretty sure we are going the wrong direction. We are, because we have been too busy reminiscing. But it’s been fun, and soon we are turned around and headed the right way, west and north out of town to highway 30.

Snow blows and hardens in drifts across the roadway.

Now we are cruising along, bucking the drifts of snow that are edging onto our traffic lane on this endless highway. All around us, white stretches as far as we can see—acres and acres and acres of snowy fields broken only by the occasional farm place and those towns, Darfur, Jeffers and Storden.

In the passenger seat of the car, my legs are getting cold as the wind seeps through the metal and glass. Trips like this remind me just how fierce winters on the prairie can be. Just last week, a woman died in southwestern Minnesota after her vehicle became stuck in the snow and, instead of staying in her car, she tried to walk to a nearby highway for help.

As a prairie native, I am cognizant of winter weather dangers and wish we had a cell phone, although those don’t always work here, in what my kids term “the middle of nowhere.”

There is beauty in this winter landscape, especially in the evergreens iced with snow.

But we are getting closer now to our destination, my brother Doug and sister-in-law Twilia’s house in Westbrook, for a family holiday gathering postponed a week because of a winter storm.

We marvel at the many evergreen trees whose boughs weigh heavy with snow. We worry about the many pheasants foraging for food along the sides of the highway. We see the power of the wind in the rapidly-turning blades of windmills near Storden.

Clusters of windmills near Storden dwarf farm places and cast whirring shadows across highway 30.

We grumble about the cold later, when we leave my brother’s that evening and then again when we wake up at 9 a.m. Saturday morning at my Mom’s house in Vesta, 30 miles further north. The outside temperature is 25 degrees below zero.

We wonder Saturday afternoon whether our car will start. It does, after two cranks. Whew.

And then, after a weekend with family on the bone-chilling cold prairie, we are driving back east, toward Faribault, altering our route again because of icy Brown County roads.

Tonight we are home, snuggled in our house, under our wool and fleece blankets. I am writing. Randy is watching the news.

“What’s the forecast?” I ask.

“Lows in the minus 20s tonight. It might get above zero tomorrow,” he says, hopeful.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling