Minnesota Prairie Roots

Treasure City stops traffic along U.S. Highway 10.

Consider for a moment every souvenir shop, Dollar Store, Ben Franklin and Woolworth’s store you’ve ever shopped in your life.

Then think way beyond that, and you have Treasure City in Royalton.

Earlier this summer I briefly toured this kitschy place along U.S. Highway 10 between St. Cloud and Little Falls that advertises “Gifts, souvenirs, jewelry and snacks. Something for everyone.”

Unfortunately, I arrived only 10 minutes before closing, which left me with little time to explore a store that would take hours and hours of meandering down narrow aisles to truly see every treasure stashed here.

But I saw enough to know that any kid would love this place. Perhaps that’s why it’s become so popular with northbound vacationers. I can almost hear Mom promise: “We’ll stop at Treasure City if you kids stop fighting.”

Or the kids whine: “Mom, Dad, can we stop at Treasure City? Can we? Can we?”

Yup, it’s that kind of place, the perfect pit stop on the way to the lake cabin, the perfect way to keep kids, and parents, happy.

But I have one question: Are those $12.99 alligator heads really “Genuine American Alligator Products” from New Orleans, La., as the price tags say?

Merchandise crams nearly every inch of space in Treasure City. Click on the photo to enlarge it for a better view of the endless treasures.

Keep the little princess happy with a pastel cowgirl hat.

For the bug lovers, there are plenty of creepy crawlies.

Unique decor for a signature style.

All the pretty little ponies, just waiting for a new home.

The north end of Treasure City, next to the parking lot.

© Copyright 2009 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

This little guy seems oblivious to the activity around him as he lazes on a blanket with his International toy tractor. I waited patiently for just the right moment to capture his "not-a-care-in-the world" demeanor.

IF YOU PLOPPED me down on a bench in the middle of some crowd-drawing event, I could sit contentedly for quite some time just watching the people.

Sometimes they can be as entertaining as the entertainment.

That’s not to say I don’t appreciate whatever activity has drawn me to a location, like the Rice County Steam & Gas Engines, Inc. show in Rice County this past weekend. The rows and rows of tractors and steam and gas engines and other activities kept me plenty interested.

But so did the people.

From the arthritic old man I watched shuffle between tractor rows to the “look-at-me, I’m a John Deere guy” guy to the cute little kids, this show presented plenty of people-pleasing moments for me to photograph.

I like best of all to snap images unobserved and then, afterward, to ponder the emotions I’ve photographed.

Here are some of my favorite people shots from several hours of wandering at the Rice County Steam & Gas Engines show on Saturday.

The expression on this baby's face is precious. And so is the loving way the father holds his child as they await their turn in the tractor parade.

I like the determined look on this retired farmer's face as he passes a gigantic Rumely steam engine.

One can only imagine the thoughts fleeting through this boy's mind as he sits behind the wheel of this Co-op (I think) tractor. He seems genuinely focused to me.

And then there was this guy dressed in flamboyant John Deere clothing. I turned, saw him and quickly snapped one unforgettable image before he was gone.

© Copyright 2009 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Sailboats sit upon the waters of Lake Harriet.

Rental boats add a splash of color along the shoreline.

Decades have passed since my mom dropped me and my suitcase off at the Greyhound bus stop, a.k.a. my Uncle Harold’s gas station, and sent me packing for Minneapolis. I rode that bus 130 miles to the heart of the big city. Just a country kid, all alone.

My Aunt Rachel would pick me up at the depot and we would head to south Minneapolis, where I stayed for a week in the summer with her and Uncle Bob.

We took in the sights, sometimes catching a city bus downtown, other times biking or walking to Lake Harriet. Memories of those days with my godmother rushed back last Sunday when I picnicked at Lake Harriet with my family.

But this was not the lake I remembered. Today, the Lake Harriet area bustles with activity. From a picnic table that was practically perched on the walking and running trail, I watched a constant stream of joggers race by, their stomachs flat as washboards, their legs bulging with toned muscles. This I noticed as I scooped another spoonful of hash brown potatoes loaded with sour cream and cheese.

And the bikers—couples on tandem bikes, serious riders in their tight shorts, families—nothing at all like Rae and I on our old bikes. My daughter, Amber, who lives in south Minneapolis, warned us several times to “watch for bikers.”  She really didn’t want one of us wiped out by a whizzing bike due to our inattentiveness.

She knows me too well. I found plenty of distractions, most noticeably the jetliners roaring overhead every few minutes. I have this thing about low-flying jets. I really don’t like them, a dislike that traces back to several Air Force fighters flying so low over my childhood farm that I instinctively dived under the B Farmall tractor.

The whole time we were picnicking, I was trying to block out those incredibly low, sound-deafening jets.

After lunch we meandered toward the Lake Harriet Bandshell, which temporarily distracted me from all those planes. Inside the bandshell, a couple practiced the tango, or was it salsa? I can’t remember which.

The lake side of the Lake Harriet Bandshell.

A couple dances upon the stage of the bandshell.

And then I looked down, to an unexpected surprise. Poetry upon bricks in front of the bandshell. Rather than the typical names and dates stamped upon bricks as a fundraiser, there were poetic phrases:

These words I pondered as we walked along the water’s edge, as sailboats sat silent upon the lake, as ducks spread ripples swirling across the water, as another airliner roared overhead.

© Copyright 2009 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

The first-ever 1938 Minneapolis Moline UDLX, one luxury tractor with an enclosed cab.

Inside the cab of the rare Minneapolis Moline UDLX, a comfort tractor that even includes a radio, that box behind the steering wheel.

“If I owned your tractor,” I tell Dennis, “I would have to live in it.”

And that’s the truth. His 1938 Minneapolis Moline UDLX would fetch $140,000 – $160,000 at public auction, Dennis tells me.

Ah, yeah, that’s worth more than my house, I think.

But then Dennis’ Minneapolis Moline is only one of 150. And with serial number 310001X, it was the very first production comfort cab tractor ever built. That’s as in the first one to roll off the production line.

Dennis, who has owned his tractor for six years after buying it at an auction in Iowa, says Minneapolis Moline began manufacturing the UDLX in June 1938, but stopped production in December. No one was buying the tractors because of the $2,200 cost, he explains. A typical tractor of that size sold for $800 in 1938.

And farmers were a bit skeptical about needing the comfort of a cab and luxury features like a cigar lighter, sun visor, radio, seating for two and a dome light.

The 5-speed transmission with high range allows the tractor, which I think resembles a car more than a tractor, to travel up to 40 mph.

“Farm during the day, drive to town at night,” a sign on Dennis’ tractor reads.

Just imagine a bachelor farmer picking up his girl for a night out on the town in a Minneapolis Moline UDLX…

NOTE: I saw Dennis’ rare 1938 Minneapolis Moline UDLX at the Rice County Steam & Gas Engines, Inc. show, which ends on Sunday, September 6. Gates open at 7 a.m. and close at 5:30 p.m. at the show grounds just south of Dundas (Northfield) along Minnesota Highway 3. Watch for more photo blogs from this event.

Signage on the Minneapolis Moline UDLX.

© Copyright 2009 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Slices of Dan and Jan's homemade pizza.

The pizzas are baked for 3 - 5 minutes in this 700-degree outdoor brick oven.

“You’ve come a long way since the days of meat and potatoes,” I tell Jan as she slides another pizza into the outdoor brick oven.

“And vegetables,” she adds, meaning the side vegetable dish that always accompanied the mainstay meat and spuds.

We laugh, sharing the bond of former farm girls who grew up on meat and potatoes.

I have been watching Jan and her husband, Dan, for quite some time now as they work together in their Northfield backyard. Dan prepares the pizzas, rolling homemade crusts and then topping them with a variety of meats and vegetables and cheeses.

Chicken ranch pizza with chunky chicken, ranch dressing, Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce and bacon, my personal favorite. Fresh tomato and basil. Shrimp. Pepperoni.

We—Parts Department Inc., Northfield (NAPA) employees and their families—are gathered here for a pizza party, an end of summer celebration. As the sun sinks, Dan and Jan are still making pizzas. They began hours ago.

But those of us here cannot seem to get enough of these delicious, thin-crust homemade pizzas baked at 700 degrees for three to five minutes in the outdoor brick oven. I eat more pizza than I think I’ve ever eaten in my life.

But this is darned good pizza.

Dan and Jan know how to cook.

We’ve been to their house many times for their home-cooked food. Last winter they made barbequed ribs in the brick oven and served those along with crab legs at a company party. They’ve also baked turkeys and bread outdoors.

The interior oven temperature remains unaffected by the air temperature, Dan says. If it’s 20 degrees below zero outside, it’s still 700 degrees inside the brick oven.

“How did you learn how to cook in this?” I ask.

Dan laughs, admits to a few disasters, like the first time he placed the pizza on a pizza pan inside the oven. That failed. The pizza goes directly onto a rack in the oven, not on a pan.

After watching the couple expertly make pizzas and after sampling more pieces than I should have, I concluded that if Dan and Jan ever leave the auto parts business, they could successfully open Dan & Jan’s Pizzeria.

Dan prepares a pizza crust at his backyard work station.

Dan prefers to use sliced, rather than shredded, mozzarella cheese atop his homemade pizzas.

© Copyright 2009 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

“Excuse me, but is there a bathroom around that I can use?” I ask two women sitting on a bench outside the fenced Kenyon Municipal Swimming Pool.

I figure there’s one in the bathhouse, but I’m not sure I should use it and I really don’t want to use the porta-potty across the park.

“Yeah, there’s one by the pool,” one woman points.

“Thank you,” I say, after asking about the location of the bathroom entry.

As I round the corner of the changing house, I abruptly stop. There, just down the hill from the pool and next to the boarded ice skating rink site, is a bike corral.

The bike parking lot, next to the pool and ice rink.

I’ve never seen anything like this bike parking area—bright orange snow fencing fastened to a rectangle of fence posts. Inside are two bikes secured in a rack, three bikes simply dropped upon the worn grass and two bikes leaning on their kick stands.

“BIKE PARKING,” the sign reads.

And to think that I would have missed this quirky small-town bike parking lot if I had been willing to pee in a porta-potty.

A sign indicates that this fenced parking space is reserved for bikes only near the Kenyon pool.

© Copyright 2009 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Morgan Grain & Feed, located in Morgan on the southwestern Minnesota prairie.

I feel badly because somewhere during the process of putting together a feature package on country grain elevators for the fall issue of Minnesota Moments, a photo of Morgan Grain & Feed was omitted.

And then when I blogged about the magazine elevator stories several days ago and posted additional elevator pictures that didn’t make print, I couldn’t find my photos from Morgan.

The reason is simple. I have too many folders of pictures. And sometimes if I have only one or two images of something, those photos end up buried somewhere. Today I discovered the Morgan Grain & Feed shots in a file labeled “travel.”

That was after I thought I had searched everywhere a few days ago, finally concluding that I had inadvertently deleted the images.

So to Morgan Grain and Feed, this blog is for you because you’re too important to the Redwood County economy to be forgotten.

© Copyright 2009 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

The Twiehoffs' pickup truck sits outside their produce-filled pole shed in eastern Faribault.

Old-fashioned gladiolus are a mainstay at Twiehoff Gardens.

Perhaps it is the down-home goodness of the folks who run the place. Or maybe it’s the unpretentious way fresh fruits and vegetables and other merchandise are displayed in the no-frills pole shed. Whatever, the specific reason, simply put, I love Twiehoff Gardens along St. Paul Road in Faribault.

This is the kind of place where fresh means fresh.

Dried dirt still clings to freshly-dug potatoes and to the papery skins of onions. Sweet corn, picked from the field that morning, fills wooden crates. Gladiolus come clipped from a garden that lies only yards from the shed. Apples are from the orchard across the road.

There’s nothing glitzy about merchandising. Onions in a weathered trailer. Piles of fresh beans and cucumbers tossed in cardboard boxes. Tiny pumpkins on a shelf. Sweet corn displayed in old wooden crates. Crude, hand-lettered signs listing products and prices. Glads stuck in recycled, water-filled plastic buckets scattered around the cement floor.

Everything here speaks to wholesomeness, to an appreciation of the earth, to the Twiehoffs, who tend the land, reap the harvest.

There’s nothing fancy about this place. Nothing at all. And that’s exactly how I like it.

Bags of birdseed are always available.

Squash awaits customers.

Summer squash by the box full.

A homemade sign indicates the produce available.

© Copyright 2009 by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Based on a letter to the editor that I read today in The Faribault Daily News, I fear that one of my greatest childhood fears may be coming to fruition.

Val of Faribault wrote: “I thought I was seeing things, but I am sure I saw something in the sky last Saturday that looked like an orange flame. This was about 9 p.m., and I was driving south on Willow. After a few minutes it disappeared behind the clouds, and it never reappeared. Did anyone else see this, or am I slowly losing it?”

Could this, I wonder, be a UFO with green aliens aboard, sent from Mars to scoop up unsuspecting earthlings?

That image of UFOs run amok in the night skies remains vividly imprinted upon my memory. I recall riding in the backseat of the car after a visit to my grandpa’s house in Redwood Falls, looking out the window at the pitch black sky, wondering exactly what I might see.

This came at the height of the UFO craze and talk of aliens and little green men.

Val saw none of this. But I still have to wonder if…

And my fear seems somewhat justified, since I live along Willow Street.

Judy Ostrowski applies henna art at Depot Park in Kenyon.

My earliest knowledge of tattoos traces back to Easter, when my siblings and I stamped our arms with the temporary tattoos found in egg dying kits. My mom warned us not to tattoo ourselves before Easter morning church services. But we didn’t always listen.

My earliest contact with gypsies came one childhood Halloween, when I chose a gypsy face mask at the Ben Franklin store for my costume. Dressed in a peasant blouse and a colorful old skirt and with the alluring plastic face of a gypsy woman, I felt transformed.

All those past experiences flitted through my thoughts when I saw Judy Ostrowski of Minneapolis in her traveling (in my mind) tent at the Kenyon Rose Fest. She looked quite exotic in her vibrant dress and wrap-around golden head wear. Rather like a gypsy, I concluded.

So I stopped at her Mehndi Moon tent to see what wares this gypsy woman had brought to town. Judy was peddling Judy O’s hats. “Everyone in Minnesota needs a hat,” she tells me.

And she had come with jewelry.

And tattoos. Judy is a henna tattoo and body art artist.

So while my husband stood in line for turtle donuts, mini-donuts drizzled with caramel and chocolate and sprinkled with nuts, I circled the gypsy woman’s tent, photographing her as reddish-brown dye flowed from a small bottle onto the forearm of a young woman.

Her art, Judy tells me, is intuitive.

I should have asked more questions of this artist who had come to a small southeastern Minnesota town with her tent and talents. But turtle donuts beckoned.

Some of Judy's work, created intuitively.

Judy O's hats, in my opinion, speak to the gypsy spirit.

To learn more about henna tattoos, read “Mehndi: The Art of Henna,” by my writer/friend Lisa M. Bolt Simons of Faribault and published in the fall issue of Midwest Mix Magazine. Lisa actually got henna tattoos.

You can download this free-distribution southern Minnesota arts magazine from the website.

I had the privilege of writing two stories for the debut issue this summer and several more pieces for the fall issue. Those include two book reviews, a feature on the release of my favorite Betsy-Tacy books (the high school ones) as Harper Perennial Modern Classics and a brief piece on a northern Minnesota-based writing opportunity.

You’ll find plenty of other interesting stories and photos in Midwest Mix Magazine that focus on the arts in southern Minnesota.

© Copyright 2009 Audrey Kletscher Helbling