Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

A mother’s perspective on the Amy Senser hit-and-run case May 8, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:09 AM
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YOU NEVER FORGET. That day. That defining moment when your world stops and panic sears your soul.

My moment occurred six years ago, the morning my then 12-year-old son was struck by a car while crossing the street to his school bus stop within a block of our Faribault home.

May 12, 2006. The day I became all too familiar with the term “hit-and-run driver.”

At approximately 7:40 a.m. a blue 4-door car, possibly a Chevrolet Cavalier or Corsica, struck my boy whose body slammed into the side and/or front of the vehicle, somersaulted through the air and landed alongside the street.

The driver never stopped. Nor has the driver ever been found.

Fortunately my son suffered only minor injuries, although we do not know what the long-term impact will be on his physical health as he ages.

And what about that driver? Why did he/she fail to stop? It is the question which occasionally still haunts me, which early on angered me. It is the question which led me to ask a local philanthropist and the head of the local bus company to contribute money toward a $1,000 reward (which BTW has expired as has the statue of limitations on the hit-and-run).

Why did the driver of the car fail to stop after hitting my child?

I don’t ask myself that question all that often anymore, except around the anniversary date or when I hear of a hit-and-run. Like the case of Amy Senser, wife of former Minnesota Viking Joe Senser, convicted last week in the August 2011 hit-and-run death of Anousone Phanthavong. She was found guilty of leaving the scene of the accident and failure to promptly report an accident, both felonies, and of misdemeanor careless driving.

Ten days after the accident, Amy Senser finally admitted that she was the driver of the vehicle. Senser maintained during her trial, however, that she thought she hit a construction barrel or a pothole around 11 p.m. on that fateful night. Instead, she struck Phanthavong who had pulled to the side of an interstate exit ramp when his car ran out of gas. He was filling the car’s gas tank when he was hit and killed. By a hit-and-run driver. Amy Senser. Who thought she hit a construction barrel or pothole?

Early on in the investigation into my son’s 2006 hit-and-run, local police investigators maintained that the driver of the car fled because he/she had something to hide: driving drunk, driving without a license, driving without insurance, prior conviction…

Six years ago I couldn’t fathom those as “good enough” reasons to drive away from a child you’d just slammed into with your car. I still can’t justify those excuses. As the years have passed and I’ve heard of more and more hit-and-runs, I’ve come to believe the police theory that the driver in my son’s case had something significant to hide.

Yet, I will never, never understand how anyone, in good conscience, can strike someone with their vehicle and then simply drive away. Drive. Away.

#

SEVERAL YEARS AFTER my son’s hit-and-run, I wrote a poem about the incident and eventually entered it into The Jackpine Writers’ Bloc annual writing competition. “Hit-and-Run” subsequently earned an honorable mention in poetry and published in 2010 in The Talking Stick, Volume 19, Forgotten Roads. That book title seems so appropriate.

My poem focuses on my emotional reaction, making this poem especially powerful.

#

Hit-and-Run

In that moment, I know,
as the rivulets of water course down my body,
as I step from the tub
dripping puddles onto the linoleum,
that the sirens wail
for you,
my boy, my only son.

You, who tossed your backpack
over your bony shoulders,
then hurried
toward the street,
toward the bus stop.

While I showered,
you crossed carelessly,
your fragile body bouncing
off the car
you had not seen,
flailing in a somersault,
landing hard on the pavement.
Sirens scream, and I know.

Panic grips,
holds tight my heart,
my very soul,
as I race from the bathroom,
wrapped in a bath towel,
stand immobile,
watching the pulsating red lights
of the police car
angled on the street,
blocking the path to you.

#

ANYONE WITH INFORMATION on the May 12, 2006, hit-and-run case involving my son should contact the Faribault Police Department or Crime Stoppers of Minnesota at 1-800-222-8477. A local investigator told me a year ago that the case remains open and that police will follow up on any tips and leads.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Fancy, fancy food at a baby shower April 20, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:26 AM
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In the background, an aunt-to-be, the grandmother-to-be and the mother-to-be enjoy a little lunch before gift-opening at a family baby shower.

LEAVE IT TO MY CREATIVE SISTER, Lanae, and her equally creative daughter, Tara, to create fancy food which, when photographed, could grace the pages of a food magazine.

No wonder they asked me to simply bring veggies and dip to a baby shower Saturday afternoon for my nephew’s wife, Adrienne. I possess neither the knowledge, skills or talent to pull together a Martha Stewart-like spread, although I suppose I could be taught.

Just look at these dainty and lovely foods. Pretty fancy fare for someone like me who admits that cooking is not her forte.

The mother-to-be, Adrienne, poses for photos before we eat from this sumptuous spread of chicken salad and deli ham sandwiches; bacon-cheese filled phyllo shells; fruit pizza; teddy grahams with fruit dip; cupcakes; chocolate mousse; vegetables and dip; pickles; and homemade mints.

I pulled out my notebook at one point during food preparations and joked that I would be taking notes for future reference. I didn’t. Rather, I will rely on photos to guide me when I am in the position someday as the baby shower food planner.

For this Saturday afternoon, I was quite content to allow the creative mother/daughter team to pull out their pastry bags and their dip mixes, their chocolate shavings and chives spears and more to craft morsels that were almost too pretty to eat.

The mother-to-be was impressed. Who wouldn’t be?

A cheesy bacon mix was piped into each phyllo shell and then topped with a grape tomato, a snip of bacon and a spear of chives. So colorful and absolutely delicious. You cannot eat only one of these.

A triple berry fruit dip mix was piped onto these mini plates for dipping teddy grahams. So cute.

Perfect yellow cupcakes with a layer of raspberry under the frosting, topped with adorable elephant graphics.

After all in attendance ooohed and ahhhhhed over the food and over foamy punch in which a rubber ducky floated, we also discussed pregnancy weight gain and birth weights and the sex of the unborn baby in the 3-D ultrasound images that were passed around. There was also talk about cute babies and ugly babies and whether the unborn child would have “Kletscher ears,” meaning ears that aren’t exactly tiny and head-hugging.

The punch, made to resemble soapy bathwater, includes ginger ale, blue Kool-Aid and pineapple sherbet to form the "bubbles." I may have missed an ingredient in this punch prepared by Vicki.

We laughed and savored each others’ company and the joy that always comes in anticipating the arrival of a new family member. I fully expect that when we gather again, after the birth in mid June, we’ll sit with open arms, each of us awaiting our turn to hold the baby, the precious, precious baby.

With only two months to go until her son/daughter arrives, Adrienne opens gifts.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Celebrating the 80th birthday of a remarkable woman April 17, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:48 AM
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My mother, Arlene, at her 80th birthday party.

THEY TRAVELED FROM AS far away as Arkansas to rural southwestern Minnesota to celebrate the life of an incredible woman.

They came from nursing homes and farms, retirement communities and apartment buildings. They came from the house two doors down and from several blocks away.

All ages—from 11 months to 100 years old—came to celebrate the 80th birthday of a remarkable woman.

The youngest guest, 11-month-old Sophia.

The oldest guest, my mom's aunt Gladys who recently turned 100.

She’s done nothing particularly remarkable in the sense of worldly accomplishments. But she—my mother—is kind and sweet and good. She’s lived a simple life, content as a wife, mother and grandmother and as an avid volunteer.

On Sunday afternoon, in the community hall of the place she’s called home for nearly 60 years, family and friends gathered to honor her. When I stood there surveying the crowd, my emotions threatened to spill into tears as I realized how much my mother is cherished.

Guests plate up food at the birthday celebration in the Vesta Community Hall.

She is one of the strongest, kindest women I know, someone who seldom speaks ill of another and who, on more than one occasion, has given her grown children this sage advice: “Never talk about anyone else’s children (in a negative way), because you never know what your own children may do.”

Many times I have considered those words of wisdom, opting not to repeat negative comments but rather choosing to uplift a young person in praise. My mother taught me to see the good in people.

She taught me to love God and family, to put them first. Above all.

My youngest, left, and my oldest with their grandma. My middle daughter, who lives in eastern Wisconsin, was unable to attend the birthday party.

She has shown me the definition of “strong” in the face of many health challenges. We nearly lost her more than 30 years ago to a viral infection of her heart. Later she would undergo open heart surgery to replace a leaky heart valve. She battled breast cancer. In recent years, when she nearly died again, the medical staff shared their amazement at how, surrounded by her children and other family members, she rallied to live.

My mother is determined—to live life to the fullest. Each Monday morning she still gathers with friends at the cafe for coffee. And, up until recently, she enrolled in senior college classes at a nearby university. She still volunteers at church whenever she can, although she finally gave up her role as head of the Funeral Committee. She attends a monthly craft club. Every month she visited the bookmobile when it stopped on Main Street, until bookmobile service to Vesta was ended in a cost-cutting move. She is an avid reader.

She doesn’t cook much anymore, but instead often eats her noon meal at the Vesta Cafe. When Mom tells me in a phone call that she’s eaten four times at the cafe in one week, I reassure her that’s OK. She can dine out in the company of others, getting a balanced meal for less than $5. She deserves it. Lord knows she spent enough decades cooking for her six children and her farmer-husband.

This is the woman we celebrated on Sunday, this remarkable woman who has blessed my life beyond measure as my mother.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Tornado threat ends my mom’s 80th birthday party April 16, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 9:18 AM
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“EVERYBODY, MAY I HAVE your attention, please. There’s been a tornado warning issued for Lyon County. So if you would like to leave, you may want to do so now.”

With that announcement from my middle brother, guests celebrating at an 80th birthday party open house for my mother on Sunday afternoon in the Vesta Community Hall scattered, scurrying to their vehicles as gray clouds threatened in the neighboring county to the west.

Some of the guests gathered in the Vesta Community Hall for my mom's 80th birthday party.

It had been a weekend of severe weather, with tornadoes devastating parts of Oklahoma, Kansas and Iowa, killing five. Now the remnants of that powerful storm were moving into southwestern Minnesota.

Everyone at the party—except a cousin who joked that maybe my brother was pulling a ruse to get guests to leave—was taking the news with serious concern in a community which last July was struck by devastating 90 – 100 mph winds. Others in attendance live on farms that were hit by a tornado in that same 2011 storm system. And at least one guest was from St. Peter, devastated in a 1998 tornado.

My brother’s announcement around 3:30 p.m. brought an abrupt end to a gathering of several hundred in the old community hall in a town of around 300, where, if you had to seek immediate shelter, you would need to flee to homes or huddle in bathrooms at the hall. All guests chose to leave, some plotting routes home based on the approaching storm.

One—my eldest daughter—would later find herself in the heart of the fast-moving storm as she drove along U.S. Highway 212 back to Minneapolis. My youngest brother, who also typically drives 212, back to Woodbury, changed his route after seeing a wall cloud to the north and being advised by a policeman at a Redwood Falls gas station to follow Minnesota Highway 19. That would keep him to the south of the storm.

My husband and I, along with our son, left Vesta perhaps an hour later than our daughter, with my youngest brother probably a half hour behind her.

We had no idea they were driving toward the storm. Until we switched on the radio to a New Ulm station which, for the next hour, broadcast repeated tornado warnings for the Brownton area, a small town along U.S. Highway 212. At the first announcement, I realized our eldest may be precisely in the path of the tornado.

With sporadic cell phone coverage, it took me awhile to reach and warn her of her of the impending danger.

Eventually we connected. My daughter was fully aware, having seen a wall cloud and driven through hail. She didn’t know if she had passed Browntown; she had just driven by Glencoe. Unable to find a road map anywhere in our van, I tried to visualize the string of communities along U.S. 212. I told her I thought she was east of Brownton. Later, after stopping at a New Ulm gas station to view a Minnesota map, I confirmed her location to the east of the storm.

Then there was my youngest brother to worry about, again, as another tornado warning had been issued, this one for Sibley County. Highway 19 would take him right into that county. Fortunately, that storm would stay some five miles to the north of his route. I didn’t even try to phone him again as I knew he was listening to the radio and was alert to the situation.

And so the 2 1/2-hour drive back to Faribault for us progressed as we listened to several radio stations, catching the latest weather updates, our eyes shifting often to the north, to those dark, dark skies under which our loved ones were traveling.

When our daughter phoned to say she’d nearly reached her Minneapolis home, I finally relaxed and the radio was switched off as we drove into heavy rain under dark, but not foreboding, clouds.

Looking to the north as we drove east back to Faribault.

On U.S. Highway 14 near Nicollet, just to the south of Sibley County.

FYI: I have not checked many media outlets yet to determine whether any of the areas in the tornado warning areas experienced tornado touch-downs. However, from initial reports I heard last night, Minnesota came out relatively unscathed. Tornado sirens never did sound in my hometown of Vesta. But still, we were prepared with the warning just to the west in next-door Lyon County.

Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

In which we travel to Wisconsin and make paper April 9, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 3:20 PM
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WHO WOULD HAVE thought that making paper could be so much fun for a bunch of grown-ups?

Not me.

But making paper at The Paper Discovery Center in Appleton, Wisconsin, on Saturday proved so much fun for our family that I declared, “I could really get into this paper making.”

At that moment my 18-year-old son, Mr. Logical Scientist-Math Guy, clarified: “Technically we did not make paper.”

He would be right. We did not transform a tree into paper. Rather, we recycled the Sunday comics and other paper into new paper.

And here is how we did it with the assistance of two patient and friendly young missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who volunteer at the discovery center.

First, peruse the paper samples to determine what type of paper you would like to make. Ideally, you (your daughter) should drink your (her) coffee before coming to The Paper Discovery Center. But, if you (your daughter) are (is) fortunate enough, the nice lady at the front desk will allow you (your daughter) inside with your (her) coffee as long as you (she) promise (s) to keep a lid on it (the coffee cup, that is).

After you have torn your selected papers into postage stamp size pieces, drop the paper into the blender and add water, about three-fourths of the blue cup shown here.

Here you can add condiments (that's what I call them) like glitter and pressed flowers to the mix before blending in an ancient blender. A garage sale blender would work great for this part of the paper making. On the left is one of the patient paper making volunteer instructors. That's my husband waiting his turn.

Next, pour the blended paper pulp into a screen inside a wooden form and immerse in water. Here's where you get to dip your fingers into the pulpy water and swish everything together.

Evenly ease the forms from the water to reveal your paper. Remove the forms and sponge excess moisture off.

Move to the next table and lay an absorbent sheet of paper (can't recall the name, but it starts with a "c") on top of your paper. Put a board on top and press. The idea is too absorb even more water. Repeat several times.

Pull back the absorbent paper to reveal the recycled paper you've made. But you're not done yet. Next, move to a contraption that exerts 2,000 pounds of pressure onto the paper, binding the fibers. After that, move to a machine that applies heat to the paper. Keep your fingers out of both.

Finally, pose for a photo with the paper you've just created.

HAVE YOU EVER MADE paper like this? I’d like to hear, especially if you’ve made your own forms, etc. This may just be an art I’d like to try at home.

PLEASE CHECK BACK for another post from The Paper Discovery Center in Appleton, Wisconsin.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

My Easter in a single snapshot

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:32 AM
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HOLIDAYS ARE MEANT to be celebrated with family. I know that’s not always possible as distance separates many of us from loved ones.

But this Easter my husband and I spent the weekend with our three grown children at our second daughter’s Appleton, Wisconsin, apartment, a five-plus hour drive from our southeastern Minnesota home.

It was, as the four of us traveling there in our family van would conclude, “a long, weary journey,” made longer by the beginning of road construction season.

But it was worth the detour, the traffic, the $3.939/gallon gas in Appleton, the fierce wind, the dust storm in potato land near Coloma, the tumbleweeds and small branches flying across the interstate at Tomah…. so worth the drive for all five of us to be together.

We laughed and teased. Dined and worshiped together. We built family memories.

I could write hundreds of words to sum up the weekend. But the image below, although technically of low quality, best tells it all. This single, blurred shot captures what only minutes earlier I had attempted to get in posed pictures. The three are viewing those posed frames on my oldest daughter’s camera. Just look at the trio with my husband in the background. You can almost feel the love, can’t you?

I had no time to adjust my camera or frame this image. I saw the moment and snapped the shutter button. Perfect.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

An April Fool’s Day legend April 1, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 10:09 AM
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TWENTY-TWO YEARS AGO on March 30, 1990, my cousin Jeff married Janet at the St. Louis County Courthouse in Duluth, MN. It was a small affair with only Janet’s daughters, Heidi and Amber, attending.

Jeff, who hadn’t even told his parents he was dating Janet, shared the news via a printed announcement that proclaimed “And four shall become a family.”

To say Jeff’s parents were surprised would be an understatement. Shocked would be more accurate.

As the story goes, my uncle apparently paled upon reading the news of the marriage and my aunt reacted by picking up the phone. First she called her daughter to see if she knew anything of the unexpected marriage. Dawn didn’t.

Then Marilyn phoned the Floodwood school where Jeff was teaching. I’ll let Jeff tell the story from here. And remember, this was 1990, in the days before telephones in classrooms, so Jeff was pulled out of class to take the call from his mother.

There I sat, the secretary at her desk to my right, the principal at his desk in his office to my left, both just feet away, overhearing one side of this awkward conversation about my recent wedding.

Mom, of course, had many questions—about Janet, about Heidi and Amber, about planning a wedding reception. Well, I was able to calm Mom down enough to tell her to look at the back of the card and remember what day it was, or what day had just passed.

That would be April Fool’s Day. On the back, the new groom had written: “rehcstelk ffej morf gniteerg sloof lirpa na.”

From right to left, Jeff’s message read: “an april fools greeting from jeff kletscher.”

Yes, my creative cousin had just pulled off one of the best family April Fool’s Day jokes ever, the stuff of legends. His marriage to a northwoods bride was pure fiction.

My cousin Dawn, with the help of daughter Megan, made two beautiful anniversary cakes for her brother. My Uncle Wally and Aunt Janice made and decorated the other cake with the beanie baby bears.

Twenty years after that fake marriage, we celebrated Jeff and Janet’s 20th wedding anniversary at the annual Kletscher family reunion in 2010. We decorated the shelterhouse at the park with anniversary banners, crepe paper and tissue paper bells. Relatives came bearing gifts. And there were even three anniversary cakes to celebrate the occasion.

CAN ANYONE out there top Jeff’s April Fool’s Day prank? I’d like to hear. (BTW, my cousin is still single.)

April Fool’s jokes during my childhood consisted of these:

Your toast is burning!

The bus is here!

The cows are out!

I know. Not at all creative.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Making mints, not quite like the masters, in March March 26, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 12:01 PM
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IT WAS TEMPTING, mighty tempting, to pinch off a snippet of dough and roll it between my palms into the shape of a skinny squiggly snake.

But…, instead, I had to, like the others, abide by the rules and turn out molded hearts and roses, butterflies and shells, doves and rabbits…

It is what our aunts and mother, experts in the art of mint-making, would expect. For decades, these women have crafted homemade mints from cream cheese and powdered sugar for special family occasions like graduations, confirmations, weddings, bridal and baby showers, and birthdays.

A new generation of mint-makers crafted mints Saturday afternoon on my sister Lanae's deck. I took a break (that's my empty chair in the front) to photograph the event. Can you believe this is March in Minnesota?

Saturday afternoon nine family members—none of whom were my aunts or my mother—gathered at my sister Lanae’s Waseca home to carry on the tradition of mint-making. Just to be clear, this was a one-time deal since we were preparing the mints for my mom’s upcoming 80th birthday party. We figured she shouldn’t have to make mints for her own party.

We just hope the professional mint-makers aren’t too harsh in judging our mints because, well, quality control ranked below the fun factor during our mint-making session.

For example, my oldest niece claimed that some of the roses I molded resembled snowflakes. But the teacher in her, not wanting to criticize too much, said how nice that snowflakes are each unique. Uh, huh. Even I understood that remark. She wasn’t exactly awarding a star for superior mint-making.

My 10-year-old niece, the youngest of the mint-makers, pushes the powdered sugar/cream cheese dough into a mold. She's mixing colors. Don't you love her nail polish?

Expressing ourselves with multi-colored mints which will now need to air-dry for about five days.

Even the guys, AKA my husband on the left, and my middle brother, made mints.

I suppose you could say we weren’t stellar students. We did not follow the masters’ examples precisely, choosing to exercise our artistic freedom by molding multi-colored mints. “What will the aunts say?” we asked each other, barely masking our laughter.

At one point, someone suggested dipping a mint in salt, rather than sugar, just to shake things up a bit with the experienced mint-makers. But we decided not to rattle the masters too much.

If you’re among those attending my mom’s birthday party open house, enjoy the mints. And remember, these were not made by the master mint-makers.

Do you spot any snowflakes among these roses? I didn't think so.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Tom at the organ March 7, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:41 AM
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My father-in-law, Tom, at the used Lowrey organ he purchased a few years ago.

THE CONSOLE LIGHTS UP like a Christmas tree or the Vegas strip or a carnival midway as my father-in-law settles onto the bench of his Lowrey organ and flips switches.

I’ve asked Tom to play a tune or two during a brief visit at his St. Cloud apartment.

He’s taking organ lessons. I find that particularly admirable given he’s 81. Not that he’s a musical novice. Tom isn’t. He once played an accordion and piano and even an organ and tuned and repaired pianos. He typically plays music by ear, including on this occasion.

Playing the organ, with his artificial hand, left, and his real hand.

Hank Williams’ “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and “Somewhere My Love,” from the movie “Doctor Zhivago” flow from the keys like music at a supper club all sugary and sweet and smooth. We should be dining in the dark corner of a long ago Saturday night destination, backs pressed against walls pasted with flocked red wallpaper, slicing our serrated knives through pink steaks and sipping our whiskey sours.

But instead, we are cramped into a tiny apartment among a hodgepodge of doll and angel collectibles, beer steins and toy tractors, and a clutter of miscellaneous knickknacks. We’re sipping water in a room flooded with light.

The organ takes up considerable space in the tiny apartment.

In the corner, my step mother-in-law pauses from circling words in a word search book to listen to the organ music, until, finally, she requests that the music stop.

We leave her there, with her words, as we descend several floors to my father-in-law’s art studio, a corner in the basement community room. Just over from a cluster of outdated exercise bicycles, Tom has stashed frames he’s recycling for his own art. Finished and in-progress works lean against each other and we file through them—elk in the mountains, loons, raccoons…

Threshing on the home place, a painting by my father-in-law. While growing up here, Tom already played organ.

He unrolls a scroll onto a table, revealing a sketch of the home place near St. Anthony, North Dakota. His second oldest daughter wants a painting of the farm where Tom grew up with his parents, Alfred and Rosa, and siblings, then later lived with his bride.

My husband studies the drawing, points out the summer kitchen and the creek, the details he remembers of Sunnybrook Farm, the place he called home until moving with his parents to central Minnesota in the early 1960s.

In moments like this, I begin to glimpse the history and the roots of this family I married into 30 years ago.

And in moments like photographing my father-in-law at the organ and in sifting through his paintings, I see the artistic side of this man. The man who once attended Catholic boarding school and worked the land and lost his left hand to a corn chopper in 1967, but never lost his desire, or ability, to pursue his passion to create music and art.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Remembering Dad March 4, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 10:33 PM
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My dad was proud of the new grove he planted on our farm south of Vesta in May 1973.

HE TAUGHT ME to respect and love the land.

He taught me to respect and love God.

He taught me to respect and love family.

He taught me the value of hard work.

He was my father.

And today, March 4, would have been his 81st birthday.

I miss him.

Dad farmed, in the early years with a John Deere and Farmall and IH tractors and later with a Ford. (Photo by Lanae Kletscher Feser)

Dad farmed, in the early years with a John Deere, Farmall and IH, and later with a Ford.

I'd never seen this image until yesterday. It captures a rare quite moment of solitude/contemplation/a break from farm work as my dad pets Fritz, our farm dog, in June 1989.

My dad takes a break from farm chores to pet Fritz in this June 1980 photo.