KIDS COSTUMED as Big Bird, Buzz Lightyear, a firefighter, cowboy, dinosaur, pig, even a cupcake, and many other characters descended on Central Avenue Saturday for the Faribault Fall Festival. What a delight to see the street crowded with costumed kids and with adults enjoying a beautiful, sunshine-drenched autumn day in our historic downtown.
The event featured not only kids’ activities and trick-or-treating, but also the Studio ARTour, fire department open house, vendor market and chili sampling.
Randy and I arrived at noon specifically to sample chili made by non-profits, businesses, candidates for public office, a church and other cooks. For $5 each, we enjoyed a tasty lunch of chili samples. But it wasn’t all about the food. Moving among chili serving stations set up on sidewalks along several blocks, I met new people, talked with friends, dodged costumed kids, all the while feeling a strong sense of community connection.
City council candidate Natalie Halverson scooped out pumpkin chili made with foods sourced in Faribault, including turkey and beans. But she also served up an opportunity for locals to jot down their answers to this question: “What are the most important qualities of an effective Faribault City Council?” That engagement impressed me.
Around the block, Nancy Greer served her beefy chili, cornbread, cheese and crackers with a pepper spread, and mini cupcakes on a festive table outside Our Place on 3rd. Like Halverson, she offered more. Greer shared mental health and suicide prevention information, handing me a flier about World Mental Health Day on October 10 and Recovery Road MN. The Recovery Road team is walking 1,776 miles to raise awareness about youth mental health and reduce the stigma.
Greer’s care, compassion, generosity and optimism—she wore a butterfly tee emblazoned with “BELIEVE in who you are”—left me feeling really good. I walked away with a business-sized card telling me “SOMETIMES YOU FORGET you’re AWESOME. SO THIS IS YOUR REMINDER.” The flip side of the card included validating words such as strength, bravery, smartness and love.
All around me I witnessed and felt the love. Families walking together. Grandparents, parents and volunteers leading, assisting or simply standing by as kids painted small pumpkins, colored cloth trick-or-treat bags, jumped in a bouncy house, launched stuffed animals toward a dinosaur, created sand and button art, and more.
Inside Runamuck Workshop, throngs of kids and adults crammed the toy store. Across the street, Books on Central was also busy. And a block to the north, the Paradise Center for the Arts teemed with art-lovers there for the Studio ARTour, gallery shows and live music.
Vendors selling everything from sweet treats to handcrafted items lined the center of Central Avenue.
I didn’t hit every aspect of the Faribault Fall Festival. But I experienced enough to feel the strong sense of community created by this event. It’s good for the heart and soul of a community to come together, to have fun, to appreciate one another, and to recognize that this city we call home is worth celebrating.
© Copyright 2026 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Destructive ice, the help of community & more August 27, 2026
Tags: commentary, community, construction, Faribault, hail, hail damage, hailstorm, Hispanics, immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Minnesota, Operation Metro Surge, opinion, storm, United States of America
IN THE FOUR-PLUS MONTHS since destructive hailstones pummeled Faribault and the surrounding area, my community has been the site of ongoing exterior construction. Drive nearly anywhere in town and you will see roofing and siding crews or newly-repaired houses.
Seven hail-damaged houses within sight of mine, including ours, have been repaired, or have yet to be fixed. That’s a lot in a single neighborhood.
Business is booming for local and out-of-town roofers and other construction companies. Local contractors can’t possibly meet the immediate demand for work.
EMPATHETIC OBSERVATIONS
But blocks from my house, an underway construction project seems a community undertaking. I know because I talked with the owner. He bought the house with the intention of fixing and flipping it. Good for him if he can improve a dilapidated house and make money by selling it.
This particular renovation caught my eye because, when I passed by, I saw a house with rafters totally exposed, loose insulation inside and workers busy sheeting. Similar work was done on our house with new sheeting laid over the existing, mostly-solid roof boards. Rafters were not exposed. I appreciate that we now have a sturdier, straighter roof.
When I saw the condition of the flip house, my first thought was “that looks worse than ours (looked).” At least on the roof. I felt instant empathy for the homeowner. So, although I don’t usually stop at construction sites, I did at this one. I felt bad for the owner.
He just happens to be Hispanic. I learned from him that the Hispanic community is deeply connected. He tapped into the strength and skills of community for his house renovation. This did not totally surprise me. I’ve seen how Hispanic/Latino communities care for one another, how they work together, how they value family, culture and community.
If not for Hispanic roofing crews, hail-damaged houses in Faribault would go mostly unrepaired. These crews work hard and fast, putting in long days, often finishing roofs in a single day.
THE VALUE OF COMMUNITY
My conversation with the flip house owner got me thinking about other communities which come together to help one another on construction endeavors. In the past, and maybe even still today, the Amish raise barns in a day. Habitat for Humanity brings volunteers together to build homes alongside professionals. Decades ago, friends came over to help shingle our roof. During this past year, volunteers rehabbed a rental house owned by my church.
And in 1967, extended family arrived at my childhood family farm to help my dad and a local carpenter build our new home with a walk-out basement. If not for helpful family, I don’t think my parents could have built new. The cost would have been out of reach. We needed a new house to replace the cramped, drafty 1 1/2-story aged farmhouse with a partial dirt cellar, no bathroom, three small bedrooms, and an oil-burning stove centered in the living room.
WORSE THAN A HAILSTORM
All of this came to mind when talking with my new Hispanic acquaintance. I praised him for improving the neighborhood by buying and fixing up a run-down home. I also told him I’m sorry for the aggressive and often illegal detainment of Hispanics, Latinos and others by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during Operation Metro Surge (and beyond) in Minnesota. That includes right here in my city.
A recent media report states that the 5,000th immigrant detainee (since November 2025) was recently flown out of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. That’s documented by a Minnesotan with boots on the ground at the airport video-taping departures of shackled detainees.
ICE has targeted Hispanic roofers. In December 2025, ICE arrived at a construction site in Chanhassen, southwest of Minneapolis, stranding two workers on a roof for hours during sub-zero temperatures resulting in hypothermia. In Bemidji in far northern Minnesota, roofing companies lost nearly all of their crews during ICE raids this summer. Many other such detainments have happened across the state and country and are ongoing.
Soon a new ICE detention center will open in a former abandoned private prison in Appleton in far western Minnesota. CoreCivic, a name familiar to anyone who has followed ICE actions, sold the prison to the federal government and is now contracted to run the detention center.
Suddenly that April hailstorm in Faribault doesn’t seem all that bad in comparison with what’s unfolding in this country. And I’m not talking only immigration. I’m also talking about government surveillance, an unnecessary war, tariffs, efforts to suppress voting rights (especially those of Black voters and of women), high gas and food prices, a failing economy and on and on. So much damage has been done to our country that will take years, if not decades, to recover, to repair the destruction hailed upon this nation.
© Copyright 2026 Audrey Kletscher Helbling