Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Reflecting on 9/11, eleven years later September 11, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:52 AM
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My then 8-year-old son drew this picture of a plane aimed for the twin towers a year after 9/11 for a school religion assignment. He was a third grader in a Christian school at the time and needed to think of a time when it was hard to trust God by drawing a photo illustrating that time. To this day, this drawing by my boy illustrates to me how deeply 9/11 impacted even the youngest among us.

IF I WAS IN MY HOMETOWN today I would visit the cemetery just outside of Vesta, to the north along the gravel road and atop the lone hill which rises ever so slightly in a sea of ripening corn and soybean fields.

I’d walk the rows until I found the gravestones of the Kletschers, mostly clumped together, close still even in death.

I’d pause at the tombstones of my paternal great grandparents and grandparents, my father and then, finally, my Uncle Mike, the bachelor uncle who was like a second father to me and my five siblings. He lived the next farm over, farmed with our father and joined us for everyday meals and holidays. His inherent curiosity is a trait I possess.

Uncle Mike died on September 5, 2011, and was buried just days before 9/11.

Today thousands will visit graves of those who lost their lives on that horrific day 11 years ago when our nation was attacked by terrorists.

My uncle had never, as far as I know, been to New York or Washington D.C. or Pennsylvania, never traveled much. He stuck close to the prairie, close to the farm, close to the land he cherished with the depth of love only a farmer can possess.

I miss him and grieve his death with a depth of grief that comes only from loving someone deeply.

Today, on this the 11th anniversary of 9/11, countless family and friends and co-workers and others will grieve with a depth that comes from loving deeply. They may grieve privately or at public ceremonies marking the date nearly 3,000 innocent individuals lost their lives.

Some will travel to that field in Stonycreek Township in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, where the passengers of Flight 93 fought back against those who would terrorize this nation.

It is the one place I can most relate to in the whole horribleness of this American tragedy because my roots reach deep into the land. Flight 93 crashed in a field near Shanksville, a rural community of 250 in the Laurel Mountains of western Pennsylvania with a population 100 less than my Minnesota hometown.

None of this diminishes the significant impact made upon me by the terrorist-directed planes slamming into the twin towers or the destruction wreaked upon the Pentagon in urban settings.

But big cities—even though I’ve been to New York once in my life many decades ago while in college—are unfamiliar terrain, skyscrapers as foreign to me as a silo to a city-dweller.

A lone plane crashing into a field, plowing into the earth, that I understand.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Gathering with my in-laws, and a few out-laws August 25, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:16 AM
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MY HUSBAND AND I recently traveled to Santiago. Not Chile. Minnesota.

There we gathered on a 2 ½-acre parcel of land in Sherburne County northeast of Becker to reconnect with family for what will become an annual summer reunion of the Tom and Betty Helbling family.

The rural Buckman home where my husband grew up after his family moved from St. Anthony, N. D. The farm place was sold after Randy’s mother died and his father remarried. We drove past the home place en route to the reunion last Saturday. It’s changed with the house resided, the barn roof sagging.

Betty, my husband’s mother, died nearly 19 years ago at the age of 59. And, as anyone who has lost a mother too early in life knows, maintaining family ties after that takes extra effort.

Thanks mostly to Randy’s sisters, his family (seven remaining siblings and their families and his dad and stepmother) has continued to gather each Christmas as able.

My eldest daughter, Amber, and great niece, Meghan. Some family members slept in tents, others inside the house and yet others were close enough to drive home and return the next morning.  Three extended family members also traveled from Center City, North Dakota, for the reunion.

But, as years passed and nieces and nephews married and had children, the family has reached a size where we can no longer all fit under one roof on a snowy Minnesota holiday. Thus the shift was made, just this year, to a summer reunion.

It’s a good change—no more worrying about snowstorms or icy roads—which should allow others, besides those with big enough houses, to host the reunion. Randy and I will take our turn eventually, but perhaps not for awhile as the reunion likely will fall on the same date as the son’s college move-in, like it did this year. And activities and noise will be more limited by our location on a small lot in a small city with neighbors right next door.

My brother-in-law, Jerry (in his out-law t-shirt), and my nephew’s wife, Heidi, tossed bean bags after supper.

Niece Kristina and Corey hosted this year’s gathering on a picture perfect Saturday, except for evening rainfall which forced us into the garage. But there were no complaints about the much-needed moisture.

My brother-in-law, Roger, is a the target for balls aimed by his granddaughter, Kiera.

My brother-in-law, Marty, took a spin on the bike and wiped out before I ran in the house and grabbed my camera.

Instead, there was laughter and reminiscing; plenty of smart talk; memories shared and made; quick zips around the yard on a mini motorcycle; bean bag tossing; ball throwing to the dogs and at grandpa; LEGO building; and cuddling the newest family member, three-week-old Kate.

And then the announcement: We’ll gain more family members in 2013 with the expected birth of two babies, plus the baby due in November of this year.

My niece, Jocelyn, with her three-week-old daughter Kate, the newest member of the Helbling family.

My mother-in-law Betty would be happy, oh, so happy to know her family is still growing and still gathering.

So sad to see the barn caving in on the former Helbling farm south of Buckman.

I have many wonderful memories of family gatherings at the Helbling home place.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

My thoughts written on day two as an empty nester August 20, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:57 AM
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“YOU SHOULD CARRY ME across the threshold,” I suggested as I waited on the back stoop for him to unlock the door.

He inserted the key into the lock, then turned and looked at me. “It’s like starting over, isn’t it?”

And so a new phase begins in our lives. At this precise moment I am not embracing it, this becoming an empty nester after 26 ½ years of children under our roof.

I am sad and tired and exhausted from lack of sleep and am a bit of an emotional mess. How did my husband and I, 30 years married, arrive, snap, just like that, at this point of coming full circle back to only the two of us?

The son, moving into his dorm room at North Dakota State University.

Saturday morning we delivered our 18-year-old and his van full of belongings to the second floor of Johnson Hall at North Dakota State University in Fargo. (Or, more accurately, the energetic NDSU move-in crew carried everything from the lawn, down the sidewalk, up the stairs and to our son’s corner room at the tunnel end of a hallway.)

Leaving Fargo late Saturday morning, 285 miles from our Faribault home.

As cliché as it sounds, this truly marked for me a bittersweet moment of mixed emotions—realizing I’d done my part to raise our boy and now I had to trust him to make it on his own in a town, at a school,  5 ½ hours away.

I don’t care how many children you’ve left at college—and I’ve already seen my daughters, 26 and 24, through four years of post-secondary education and entry into the workforce—it is not easy to leave your kids, these children you’ve nourished and loved and held and cherished for 18 years. Not easy at all.

I’ve even been known to say, “I should have locked you kids in the basement and not let you go anywhere.”

Of course, I don’t mean that. I wouldn’t want any of my children to feel afraid or insecure or unable to set out on their own because I selfishly desired to keep them close. I have raised them to be strong, independent, venturesome adults.

When my eldest announced during her first semester of college that she would be going on a mission trip to Paraguay during spring break, I may have used that “should have locked you in the basement” phrase in the same breath as asking, “Where the heck is Paraguay?”

Then when her sister, several years later, said that she would be studying abroad in Argentina for fall semester, I muttered, “…should have locked you in the basement.”

When the son decided to join his high school Spanish class on a spring break trip to Spain, I mumbled to myself “…locked you in the basement.”

Humor helps when you are parenting, in those times when you don’t want your child to realize just how difficult it is to let go. I doubt, though, that I’ve ever totally fooled my three.

I am proud of myself, though, for never leaving a college dorm room in tears. I can be strong when I need to be, when my child needs me to be.

But I cried twice in the weeks before the son’s college departure date and he assured me, “Mom, it’s OK to be sad.” He was right.

My sons’ empty bed, which caused me to break down upon my arrival home Sunday afternoon.

And then I cried on Sunday, upon our arrival home from that weekend journey to Fargo. I walked into my boy’s upstairs bedroom and saw the rumpled sheets, his matted white teddy bear…and reality struck me. He’s gone.

I walked downstairs, told my husband I’d had my sad moment. Then I broke down and cried, deep wrenching sobs, and Randy wrapped his arms around me and held me.

Perhaps tomorrow he will carry me across the threshold.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

The bride wore a white silk organza gown August 17, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 9:01 AM
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A newspaper account of my aunt and uncle’s wedding 50 years ago is tacked onto a tree at their recent anniversary party.

The bride was escorted to the altar by her father. Her gown of white silk organza with chapel train had a row of satin bows down one side of the skirt. Her veil was attached to a small pearl crown and she carried a bouquet of white roses, pompons and a large aster with ivy.

Her attendants were attired in green faille dresses with attached overskirts and carried cascade arrangements of yellow pompons.

Fifty years have passed since that description from my godmother’s wedding published in The Redwood Falls Gazette. Lovely, isn’t it? Silk and satin and cascading bouquets.

A bridal party photo from Aunt Rae and Uncle Bob’s August 18, 1962, wedding. I’m the flower girl.

I wish I remembered that day, even a moment of it. But I don’t. I was only five, almost six, when my Aunt Rachel married Robert, who would become my Uncle Bob. A black-and-white photograph from August 18, 1962, clearly shows me in my short, pouffy flower girl dress, positioned in front of the groomsmen. I stood all prim and proper, and I assume well-behaved, in my shiny white patent leather shoes and lace-trimmed anklets. My white-gloved hands clench a starched, be-ribboned crocheted lace basket of fresh flowers.

If only I remembered the bespectacled girl who a year earlier wore a patch across her wandering lazy eye and later underwent surgery to correct her vision. But I don’t. Not even the flower girl dress, which my mom saved for 50 years, evokes any memories.

My flower girl dress, minus the petticoats, was hung in the screened porch during the anniversary party.

All of that aside, I thought my Aunt Rae would appreciate seeing the flower girl dress at a recent gathering in south Minneapolis to celebrate her and Uncle Bob’s 50th wedding anniversary. She did, barely believing I still had the dress. Surely she knows her oldest sister, my mom, saves everything, doesn’t she?

But did my aunt save her beautiful white silk organza bridal gown? Much to my dismay and that of a young woman whose middle name is Rachel, no. Rae gave her wedding dress to charity before moving from Minneapolis to her retirement home in Arkansas. I won’t explain the reasons, but suffice to say they are legitimate.

That leads me to wonder, how many of you married women out there still have your wedding dresses? My $80 off-the-rack dress hangs in the back of my bedroom closet. I possess no illusions that either of my daughters will ever want to wear it and that’s just fine by me.

Justin (my cousin) and Amy’s daughter Alison passed around chocolates during the anniversary celebration.

But give it another 20-plus years, and perhaps a family member will read this description of my bridal gown and ask, “Do you still have your wedding dress?”

The bride’s gown was of old fashioned style with stand-up collar, lace ruffling forming a V front neckline, long sheer sleeves and flounce skirt with lace trim. Her veil was held in place by a laurel wreath headpiece of yellow sweetheart roses and baby’s breath.

My beloved Aunt Rachel visits with guests.

Family and friends of Rae and Bob gathered in their daughter’s south Minneapolis backyard on a recent steamy Sunday for a picnic dinner to celebrate 50 years of marriage.

That’s my Uncle Bob, in the middle in the dark shirt, visiting with friends.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

In southern Minnesota: “An old-time mission festival out in the woods” August 7, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:45 AM
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A sign marks the mission festival site at Marquardt’s Grove where cattle gates to the pasture are opened to allow entry. That’s the dry bed of Bull Run Creek on the left.

AT 8 A.M. SUNDAY, Harold Krienke swung his truck into Marquardt’s Grove some 10 miles south of Janesville to help set up for the annual mission festival in the woods near his country church, Immanuel Lutheran.

It was then he spotted the large black cat with the long tail edging dried up Bull Run Creek some 100 feet from the site where worshipers would gather 2 ½ hours later. “It wasn’t a house cat,” Krienke laughs. The cat—perhaps a panther, some speculate—didn’t scare him; it had been seen previously in the area.

Krienke’s animal encounter certainly wasn’t the first, and won’t be the last, at this mission festival held for the past 75 years in a five-acre wooded section of a 70-acre pasture where cattle still graze days before the event. Last year several head of cattle busted through an electric fence and charged across the creek toward the worship site. Another time horses caused a bit of trouble. No harm done, though, as the wayward animals were chased away.

Len Marquardt, who owns the woodlot and pasture, previously owned by his father, Alfred, and Alfred’s father, Gustav, before him, takes it all in stride. A few wandering animals won’t stop him from continuing the tradition of three generations of his family hosting the long-time festival of Freedom Church, as it is commonly known (referencing its location in Freedom Township), and the past two years in conjunction with Trinity Lutheran Church, Wilton Township, also known as the Wilton Church.

An overview of the worship site with the Freedom Band seated on the stage and the audience seated on plank benches and lawn chairs on the hillside. Freedom and Trinity Pastor Glenn Korb is standing at the makeshift altar.

Len’s heart and soul are committed to what he defines as “an old-time mission festival out in the woods.”

That definition seems apt for this event which, many Freedom members estimate, has been ongoing for a century. In the early days, area farmers took turns hosting the annual summer mission festival. The outdoor worship service has always been held around the same time of year, initially chosen, Len says, because the wheat harvest would have just been completed and farmers would have had more money to donate to the church.

Offerings are collected in ice cream buckets at the mission festival.

Money, though, has never been the focus of the festival although a collection is taken. Rather, the purpose is to “help people to focus on missions,” says Len, who several years ago accompanied his daughter, Julie, and others on a mission trip to Nicaragua. It changed him and he now takes personally the words “Here am I, send me” from the hymn “Hark! the Voice of Jesus Crying.” Julie, now a third-year student at Concordia University in Seward, Nebraska, followed up with a mission trip to Hong Kong and is now considering a career as a missionary.

“I think we need to be a church in mission,” Len says as he explains the purpose of the mission fest on his family’s property. The natural setting of farm fields, open pasture and woods, with a cool breeze stirring oak leaves and raising goosebumps on Sunday morning, connected worshipers to the message delivered by the Rev. Dr. Robert Holst, retired president of Concordia University, St. Paul, and a former missionary to Papua, New Guinea.

The Rev. Dr. Robert Holst delivered a message on missions and afterward answered questions about his missionary service in New Guinea. Len Marquardt says the congregation has never had trouble finding a guest pastor as they savor participating in an “old-time mission festival out in the woods.”

As Rev. Holst spoke of his experiences in his sermon, “Global Missions: International Love,” worshipers, sitting among the trees, could easily imagine the primitive ways of the New Guinea people, their belief in spirits, their sacrifice of pigs, their mistrust and misunderstandings and lack of knowledge about God and the challenges the pastor faced in telling them about Christ.

Foreign missions seemed as close as a thought away for attendees like Jeanette Schoenfeld of Wilton Church who enjoys the mission fest because, she says, “It’s like they do in Africa,” worshiping outdoors.

Baby Jaci sits with her dad, Mike, and brother, Bales, during the worship service.

Len Marquardt and others, including his sister, Sally Hodge, appreciate, too, the traditions they are passing from family to family through generations of mission festivals. As Sally samples a vinegary, potato-green bean dish prepared for the mission fest potluck, she glances back to kids racing up the wooded hillside. “I remember tromping up the hills, tromping up the trails, building wood forts…talk about history and family and pleasure in knowing each other…” Sally says as she glances across the table at friend and fellow parishioner Davin Quiram.

All ages, and several generations of families, attended the mission fest on Sunday.

Sally Hodge sings in the choir and usually plays in the band. But this year she didn’t make the practices so was unable to join the Freedom Band. She lives just up the hill from Marquardt’s Grove and grew up on the other side of “just up the hill.”

Davin, like Sally a life-long member of Freedom, concurs as the two reminisce and remember the rare treat of soda pop from the mission fest pop and candy stand, which Davin will later man. The friends don’t recall specific mission speakers or messages from their childhood days, only those racing through the woods and gulping pop memories.

Davin, though, is quick to rattle off the areas of ministry covered by mission speakers in the past 10 years: American Indians, Hispanic, college, Japanese and such.

An elderly man turns to a hymn in the old pocket-size songbook that’s been used for decades.

While guest speakers change from year to year, the music remains constant with worshipers singing hymns from the pocket-size Mission Hymns Suitable for Mission Festivals and Similar Gatherings (out of print for 80 years).

Likewise, the Freedom Band, the church band comprised of Freedom members and others from the area and in existence for an estimated 80 years, uses the same familiar music books such as The Church Band Book—Choral Melodies of the Lutheran church for Military Band by A. Grimm, published in 1919 by Antigo Publishing Co., and a handwritten book of music transposed from a hymnal for the band.

The Freedom Band and some of its handwritten music.

The Freedom Band has always played at the mission fest and other area mission events in years gone by. At any time, 5 – 7 members of Sally’s family, the Marquardts, may be playing in the band—all on the trumpet but for one on the sax.

Gemma Lin returned to the mission fest, one year after her baptism there in 2011.

Part of mission fest also includes the occasional outdoor baptism. Sally’s father, Alfred, born in 1911, was baptized at the Freedom Mission Festival. Last year, a century later, two-month-old Gemma Lin of Mankato was baptized in Marquardt’s Grove and her great uncle was baptized the night before at Freedom Church. Aleta Lin, Gemma’s mom, treasures her daughter’s unique baptism and the story of that baptism which will always be a part of family history. She hopes Gemma will, through the years, continue to attend mission fest, a life-long tradition for Aleta, a life-long member of Freedom Church.

A bible lies on the floor of the stage where the band played and the preachers preached.

For those outside of Freedom, memories of past mission fests also come quickly. Such festivals were once a staple among rural congregations as a time to worship God in the outdoors, to socialize afterward at a potluck dinner and even meet future spouses.

Worshipers line up for a potluck dinner after the worship service.

Guest pastor Holst opened his message by reminiscing about the mission fests of his youth, recalling the washtubs full of soda pop—root beer, 7-UP and Orange Crush—set out by the youth group. He also remembered the ball games between fathers and children.

On Sunday there were no ball games or kids racing for a rare treat of pop. But plenty of kids—from babies to teens—settled onto temporary wood plank benches and lawn chairs or upon blankets or in car seats on the same ground in Marquardt’s Grove that has, for generations, served as an outdoor house of worship on one Sunday in August.

The vintage mini songbook lying on planks and the mission site in the background.

FYI: Check back for an additional post featuring mission fest photos and for a separate photo essay of Freedom Church.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Let’s study action verbs today August 1, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:20 AM
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I KNOW. I KNOW. You already are thinking you do not want to read this post. After all, you have no interest in grammar or the eight parts of speech.

Or maybe you love language, like me, and wonder what I could possibly teach you.

Perhaps I can’t teach you anything. But I can show you, via a series of photos, how kids define “fun.”

I’ve also labeled each image with an appropriate action verb followed by a definition pulled not from a dictionary or online source, but from my creative brain. Who says some grammar guru can tell me exactly how to define a word?

Twirl: To spin a boy around and around until an adult suggests you stop or the kid may puke up the potluck lunch he just ate at the family reunion.

Swing: To move your arms in such a way as to imitate hitting one out of the ballpark.

Run: To launch or propel one’s body forward at a rapid pace in an effort to get as much candy as possible because, uh, like you want to be the winner and scoop up the most candy.

Grab: To reach out and grasp handfuls of candy as fast as you can.

Hoard: To scoop a large quantity of candy into your hands, protecting your pile with your body, until an adult notices and advises you that you must share.

Gather:  To pick up and fill your hands to overflowing with candy.

Stash: To pull the cap from your head and use it to corral all of the candy you’ve plucked from the grass.

FYI: These images were taken at the Kletscher family reunion held this past weekend at the park in my hometown of Vesta. To read an additional family reunion post with many fun photos, click here.

Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Memories shared, memories made at a rural Minnesota family reunion July 31, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:43 AM
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Old-fashioned games like a gunny sack race, a three-legged race, and running with eggs on a spoon have been popular activities at recent Kletscher family reunions.

MY COUSIN LYNN doesn’t realize it, I’m sure. But when she repeated to me several times at this past weekend’s Kletscher family reunion that we need to keep this going, that not all families are like ours, gathering every year, remaining connected, sharing memories of the past, I knew that she was absolutely right.

The reunion originated many, many years ago as an annual summer picnic for descendants of Rudolph and Mathilda Kletscher, my great grandparents. As their son Henry’s family grew, a reunion for the family of Henry and Ida, my grandparents, was established.

In my 55 years of life, I bet I’ve missed only a handful of Kletscher reunions. It’s that important to me to attend this yearly gathering  in my hometown of Vesta. These aunts and uncles and cousins (and my grandparents, long ago deceased) were very much a part of my life when I was growing up as we all lived in close proximity to one another.

Saturday evening, circled around a campfire in the Vesta City Park, we shared memories of the many, many times our family celebrated birthdays and anniversaries. While the uncles clustered around card tables to swig beer and play cards so many decades ago and the aunts visited, we cousins raced in the dark shadows of farm yards in raucous games of “Starlight, Moonlight.” And then, when the wooden crate of pop bottles was pulled out, we swarmed to grab the rare treat of bubbly beverages.

Such were our memories (some best kept within the family) shared as darkness settled upon the prairie. Campfire flames flared and sparked while conversation ebbed and flowed as only it can in the comfortable familiarity of family.

Despite the feelings of closeness evoked at a reunion, the reality is that we are connected now primarily by memories and blood, not by the intertwining of our lives today. For the most part, we’ve moved away from the prairie and see each other only at the reunion or at the funerals of family members.

Several years ago, my sister Lanae and I decided we needed to infuse new energy into the reunion if we were to keep the next generation interested in remaining connected. That meant offering activities which would create memories. And so we, and other family members, have planned games. This year was no exception.

The cupcake walk, a popular activity two years ago, was brought back.

Elle, one happy little girl with a cupcake. She’s also an excellent hula hooper.

Already we can see our hard work and efforts effecting a change. The younger generation wants to come to the reunion now as opposed to “having” to tag along with mom and dad and being bored to death because “there’s nothing to do.”

I need only see the excitement in the faces of my cousins’ kids and grandkids’ and the smiles on my cousins’ faces to realize we’re on to something with offering organized activities. These descendants of Henry and Ida Kletscher are bonding and building memories.

It didn’t take much persuading to get the young adults participating in the Tacky Tourist Relay, helping each other slip into Hawaiian garb and more during our Hawaiian Luau themed reunion.

Perhaps 15 – 20 years from now they will circle around a campfire in the Vesta park remembering those gunny sack races or the time they hula hooped or Audrey insisting they join in the Tacky Tourist Relay Race.

Teams compete in the Tacky Tourist Relay.

I hope they will smile at the memories and realize how very blessed they are to be part of a family that has loved one another for generations.

Even my generation (OK, they’re a wee bit younger than me) formed a Tacky Tourist Relay team.

My sister Lanae and cousin Kirt assist each other in the hula hoop competition. I’m pretty certain they did not win.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

In which I meet Wilson, a member of the fun-loving Schrot family July 25, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:21 AM
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JIM SCHROT WORRIES about his relative, Wilson Schrot. After all, Jim caught Wilson attempting to steal gas from the gas barrel at Jim’s rural Faribault home last Thursday evening.

Jamie, Jim’s grown and married daughter, figures Wilson simply ran out of gas for his lawnmower and decided to help himself. She appears willing to overlook Wilson’s latest antic.

“He (Wilson) gets into a lot of trouble,” Jim says. The two don’t elaborate, but say Wilson shows up in the most unexpected of places at the most unexpected of times.

Jamie once discovered Wilson inside her tent, curled up in her bed. He’s climbed into family-owned tractors and trucks, but stopped short of stealing them.

Not that he could. Wilson, you see, is a dummy. You know, a mannequin.

See Wilson Schrot sitting there in the front passenger seat of Jim’s 1940 Ford. (I noticed several dummies in the storefront window behind the car. Wilson’s friends, perhaps, keeping a watchful eye on him?)

The Schrot family has, for the past several years, embraced Wilson and his shenanigans, ever since a cousin dragged him home from somewhere. No one seems to remember details. Or at least they weren’t sharing that information with me when I first spotted Wilson in the front passenger seat of Jim’s 1940 Ford at last Friday evening’s Faribault Car Cruise Night.

My first photo of Wilson, taken shortly before Jamie showed up to snap pictures with her cell phone.

I was photographing the Hawaiian shirt clad dummy with the blonde mullet wig when Jamie showed up to snap photos of him, too. I engaged her in conversation and that’s when I was introduced to Wilson, named after the volleyball in the Tom Hanks’ film, Cast Away.

Not that Wilson is a castaway. I mean, Jim didn’t abandon Wilson after he caught him trying to steal gas. Instead, he brought him to the car show in an apparent half-hearted attempt to find a date for Wilson.

But, Jim admits, “He doesn’t get too many chicks because of his mullet.”

Jim and Jamie suggest Wilson switch out his hair piece—he has several—to improve his appearance and likelihood of landing a date.

I’m not sure Wilson needs the Schrots help, though. He seems to draw plenty of attention on his own. An unidentified man backing his classic car into the space next to Jim’s Ford asked Wilson, “I’m not getting too close to your car, am I?” Then he noticed that the freckled Wilson with the duct taped arm was a dummy. “I’m glad no one was there to hear me.”

Jim reposed Wilson, who recently had carpal tunnel surgery (thus the duct tape), so the story goes.

The Schrot family has given Wilson a life, even going so far as to establish a Facebook page for him. Ask Jamie if she set up Wilson’s Facebook account and her quick, snipped response of “maybe” is enough to tell you she did.

Based on Wilson’s Facebook page—the public part that I can read because I’m not on Facebook—he is a country boy who likes his beer. He also likes singer Johnny Cash; the movie, The Adventures of Bob & Doug McKenzie: Strange Brew; the book, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell; and the tv show, Richard Bacon’s Beer & Pizza Club. He also enjoys the sport of beer darts.

Wilson certainly keeps the extended Schrot family entertained, laughing, making up stories and plotting his next adventure.

It is the stories, Jamie says, which make the whole Wilson gig fun, if not crazy. For example, when Wilson was caught trying to steal that gas, Jamie got the story rolling about his lawnmower running out of gas.

Ask if their family is kind of crazy and Jamie shoots back: “Everybody else is crazy, but we’re normal.”

Uh-huh, Jamie. What’s that story about the time Wilson was dismembered at a party, or as Jim corrects, a “social gathering?”

Meet Jim Schrot, not to be confused with Wilson. I first spotted Jim in September 2009 at the Rice County Steam and Gas Engine show and dubbed him the flamboyant John Deere guy. It fits. See why this family embraces the likes of Wilson Schrot.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Oh, baby, are these people really my relatives? July 8, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 10:21 AM
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Sweet baby Hank, 11 days old.

HANK MET THE RELATIVES recently. And even though he was only 11 days old then, he definitely had an opinion.

“You’re all looking at my t-shirt, but can’t you see my left foot is stuck? Dad?”

Or perhaps it was the opinion of a certain aunt, who shall remain nameless.

For the most part, though, my great nephew kicked back and took everything in stride—

Just a sampling of the family members who welcomed Hank, including his great grandma, my mom.

…all the cooing, the attention, the shuffling from one relative to the next…

These boots, a gift from a great aunt and uncle and cousins, upped the cuteness level.

…even the modeling of adorable patriotic boots.

Not quite a fist.

Hank kept his long fingers curled…

This was the most endearing thing to watch, little Hank tipping his head toward his mother when she spoke.

and a watchful eye on his mother, just in case.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Memories of a boy who loved fireflies June 30, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 9:06 AM
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A plaque marks the entry to Justin’s Memory Garden.

I NEVER IMAGINED, when I published a post here on June 16 about the Memory Garden which honors my nephew Justin, that you, dear readers, would so fervently embrace a sculpture from that garden.

But I suppose my enthusiasm for the little boy holding a jar of fireflies ignited in the words I wrote.

Now, because of that story and accompanying photos, five more gardens—four in southeastern Minnesota and one at a Colorado hospital—will become homes for the little boy.

My husband, Randy, and Little Justin on the back steps before I moved Justin to a spot on the patio by the brilliant pink wave petunias.

He’s already in my backyard, my Little Justin, as Justin’s uncle, my husband, calls the garden sculpture.

Every evening as darkness settles in, the fireflies in the jar begin to glow, reminding me of my nephew who died too soon of Hodgkin’s disease 11 years ago at the age of 19.

Fireflies glow in the sculpture I recently purchased in memory of my nephew Justin.

Says his mother, Vivian:

Justin liked watching fireflies, especially when sitting at a bonfire. He loved looking at the stars and he loved Christmas tree lights, especially blue ones. He would often holler, “Mom/Dad, come and look at the sunset,” or the rainbow, or “there’s a shooting star.”

He didn’t want us to plant a tree in a particular spot because it would ruin the sightline for the sunsets—we never have planted one there.

Though we never talked about it specifically, he enjoyed light, from the heavens, in various forms.

And so, when the mother of the boy who loved light and fireflies and the heavens, saw the “Lightning Bugs with Boy” sculpture in a brochure the day before Mother’s Day, she felt moved to purchase it for Justin’s Memory Garden.

“As I’ve gotten older, I follow those instincts more readily,” Vivian says.

It is the first sculpture she’s purchased for the garden that honors her son. The other garden art—a plaque, dove, angel and birth bath—have come from friends as have most of the plants.

That, she says, makes it a true Memory Garden.

If you’re one of the gardeners who has purchased/is purchasing a Little Justin, hold close this story and imagine the little boy who loved light and is now living in the light.

A close-up of my Little Justin’s endearing face.

FYI: Vivian and I both ordered our “Lightning Bugs with Boy” sculptures from our local True Value hardware stores, hers in Morris, mine in Faribault. My sculpture had to be shipped in from Oregon. The product cannot be ordered online from True Value, but if you would like to view it, click here.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling