Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Summer showers in the sweltering heat July 19, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:41 AM
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A hose was for more than watering the garden or cattle when I was growing up on the farm. Read on.

WITH THE CURRENT HEAT WAVE we’re experiencing in Minnesota, I’ve been thinking a lot about the weather of yesteryear. And here’s what I’ve concluded. Unless the weather impacted some major event in my life or ranked as exceptional, I really can’t specifically remember one summer to the next or one winter to the next. Fall and spring sort of get lost in the mix of seasons.

That is the reality of my long-term memory.

For me, the summers of my youth on a southwestern Minnesota crop and dairy farm were defined, not by the weather, but by playing “cowboys and Indians” (yes, I realize that is not politically correct today, but it was the reality of the 1960s), by after-chores softball games on the gravel farmyard and by evening showers with a garden hose.

Let me explain that last one. I lived for the first dozen years of my life in a cramped 1 ½-story wood-frame farmhouse with my farmer-father, my housewife-mother and four siblings. The third brother was born later, after we moved into the new house.

The old house didn’t have a bathroom. That meant we took a bath once a week, on Saturday night, in an oblong tin bath tub that my dad lugged into the kitchen. Yes, we shared bath water. And now that I consider it, given we labored in the barn daily, we must have really stunk by Saturday night.

Sometimes in the summer, when the weather was especially hot and humid, we showered. After my dad finished milking cows, he would thread the green garden hose through an open porch window outside to the east side of the house. Then, with one of us “standing guard” where the driveway forked, within a stone’s throw of the tar road, we began the process of showering.

One-by-one we took our turn standing naked on the grass, soap bar in one hand, garden hose in the other, scrubbing away the sweat and animal stench, the bits of ground feed and hay and silage, the dirt that clung between our toes.

And all the while we showered, we worried that a relative or a neighbor might turn into the farmyard or an airplane might fly overhead, as if a pilot could see us from high in the prairie sky.

So during a hot stretch like we’re experiencing right now in Minnesota, I remember those primitive summer showers on the farm. I recall, too, the single turquoise box fan we owned—the one reserved for my hardworking farmer-father who endured heat and flies as he bent to wash another udder, to attach another milking machine, all to earn money to feed his growing family.

And I think, as I sit here at my computer in my air-conditioned office just around the corner from the bathroom with the combination bathtub and shower that I have it good, darned good.

Growing up on the farm, we had one box fan similar to this one.

DO YOU HAVE summer memories like mine, or another weather-related story? Submit a comment and share.

Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Sprinkler gymnastics on the Fourth and more family fun July 7, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:57 AM
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The winning team in the bean bag toss is quite obvious.

NAME SOMETHING PEOPLE save money for.

How many times does your mom have to tell you to do something before it gets done?

Name something you write down to remember.

If you know the answers (see below) to those Family Feud style questions, then you should have been at my middle brother’s home in southwestern Minnesota on Sunday. We sparred in a brief version of this television game show with young family members competing against old, “old” being anyone 50 or older.

Settled onto our lawn chairs on the driveway in front of the garage, one member of each team stepped up to a cooler, introduced themselves and then poised with hands behind backs awaiting the question. Lacking a buzzer to buzz, we substituted a plastic gallon of cheese balls plopped upon a cooler. Slap the cheese ball lid cover first and your team plays first.

If I hadn’t been so intent on winning this game, I may have thought to take pictures of the cheese ball container slapping contestants.

However, I took plenty of photos of the earlier sprinkler gymnastics. I refrained from that activity until later, at the exact moment one gymnast grabbed the sprinkler and ran onto the patio spraying all non-participants, including my 79-year-old mom. Just before that happened, I had decided to join the sprinkler crew. Timing is everything.

When you view these sprinkler gymnastics images, you will understand why I hesitated initially to join the group. I did not want to risk a leap onto water-slicked grass. Nor did I want to appear too foolish in that YouTube video my nephew-in-law was filming.

My extended family doesn't just nilly willy run through a sprinkler. Oh, no. We make it into a game. In this case, follow the leader. Whatever the leader does, you do.

From the youngest participant at age 17 to...

...one of the oldest sprinkler gymnasts at age 50.

Ah, my extended family loves to have fun.

Later, not long after the sun set on the Minnesota prairie, out came the sparklers. More fun. More laughter. More memories.

Sparkler fun for the younger ones.

Combine sparklers and a slow shutter speed and you get some interesting images.

I can’t think of anywhere else I would rather celebrate Independence Day than with my extended family on the land I love most, southwestern Minnesota.

After we shoot "nice" photos, we always like to do a fun photo. I am in the back row in the grass green shirt. Can you tell which of us were teens in the 1970s? (Hint: See the symbol we're making with two fingers. You would think we could be more creative.) All family members, except me, shall remain unidentified.

HOW DID YOU CELEBRATE your Fourth of July?

HERE ARE THE TOP answers to the three questions posed at the beginning of this post:

Vacation, two times and phone numbers.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Damage suggests tornado hit Wood Lake farm July 6, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 4:30 PM
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DAN AND MARILYN SCHMIDT had just arrived for the July Fourth holiday weekend at a west central Minnesota lake when they got the phone call from their daughter, Heather Rokeh. She was calling from Marshall with news that a storm had swept through town. It was late Friday afternoon, July 1.

Dan asked about their farm 20 miles northeast of Marshall. Heather suggested that “it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have someone check it out.”

And so Heather’s sister, Amy St. Pierre, and Amy’s husband and daughter went to the farm, surveyed the damage, then called the Schmidts. The couple returned that night to inspect their Wood Lake area farm.

Every building had been damaged. Hail pounded holes in the siding on the house, where shingles and an antenna were blown off. The door of the Quonset building had been ripped away with part of the board trim speared into the ground.

Half the roof was blown off the shop, collapsing an interior wall. That wall is now being held up by two chains and a tractor until items inside can be removed and the building demolished.

Another view of the caved-in shop wall.

The exposed interior of the shop.

Trees were down or uprooted. Branches littered the farmyard. On one of the two houses on the farm site, the garage was pulled away from the house, leaving a visible gap.

Here you see light shining through the space where an attached garage was separated from the house during Friday's storm.

“A lot of these things spelled out tornado for us,” says Heather. “The twisting of the trees, things stuck in the ground and the twisted buildings all suggest tornado to us.”

Whether straight-line winds or tornado, Heather remains grateful: “We are so thankful no one was injured.”

This lean-to, connected to a hog barn, was lifted up, twisted and set back down on top of a stock chopper. The hog barn was OK, but the lean-to was deemed unsafe and removed on Saturday.

This photo shows a portion of the lean-to that was lifted and dropped onto the stock chopper pictured here.

This grain dryer was moved and it is now sitting crooked on its foundation. The cement slab foundation was cracked and cement blocks are now sitting at an angle.

IF YOUR FARM, HOME or community was damaged during the July 1 storm in southwestern Minnesota, I’d like to hear from you. Submit a comment summarizing your storm experience, the damage to your property or town, and progress toward recovery. If you have photos to share, like those above from my cousin Heather, let me know and I’ll be in touch.

Also check out my previous posts on storm damage in my hometown of Vesta and in neighboring Belview.

PHOTOS BY HEATHER ROKEH Copyright 2011

Text copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Belview pulls together after destructive storm

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 10:03 AM
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THREE MONTHS AGO Merlin and Iylene Kletscher closed on the purchase of a foreclosed house along Main Street in Belview. They plan to sell their lake home near New London and move back to Iylene’s hometown, also within 10 miles of Merlin’s hometown of Vesta.

My aunt and uncle want to be closer to family and friends and back in a small town like Belview with a population of 375.

They chose the Main Street fixer-upper, among other reasons, for all the beautiful trees on the property.

Today most of those trees are gone, toppled in a storm that swept through Belview and a wide-spread area of southwestern Minnesota late Friday afternoon. The storm ripped off roofs, took down power lines and trees, smashed grain bins and elevators and more as fierce winds roared across the flat prairie.

Merlin and Iylene Kletscher's home on the left, surrounded by downed trees.

Now Merlin and Iylene, like so many others in this area of Minnesota, are dealing with insurance companies and contractors as they clean up and repair their homes and businesses.

“The new chimney we had installed is leaning,” my uncle says. “The new shingles are missing ridge caps. We have broken windows and torn screens, etc.” The couple had just installed new windows in their home and made other major improvements.

Despite all of that damage to a house he and Iylene have worked so hard to restore, my uncle doesn’t seem at all discouraged. Rather, he praises Belview’s reaction to the storm: “Belview is amazing in that the people just pull together…I can’t say enough good things about the fire department and city employees and council. While we were there, trucks, tractors, 4-wheelers, payloaders, backhoes and pickups went by our house about one every 30 seconds pulling trees, debris or branches to the MPCA-approved burn site on the northeast edge of town.”

It seems the city was prepared for a natural disaster such as Friday’s storm. Log onto the city website and you’ll find a “CONSUMER ALERT: SUMMER STORM SEASON” posted by City Clerk Lori Ryer on May 24 encouraging residents to prepare for summer storms.

Entering Belview from Sacred Heart at 9 a.m. on July 2.

The city of Belview's water department building.

The ferocity of Friday’s storm is impressive. “Our neighbor across the street in Belview said that during the height of the storm, he couldn’t see his mother’s house right next door!” Merlin shares. “Chad Krinke (next door neighbor and relative) said two inches of rain fell in 20 minutes—he called us about a half hour after it hit, giving a report on our house damage. The city was blocked off, so no one could get in unless they had specific ties to someone in the city.”

Trees blocked the street north of the Belview City Park.

Jerry Hagen's house, across the street from Merlin and Iylene's home in a July 2 photo.

Residents of Parkview Home, next to the city park, were evacuated Friday night. This photo shows the nursing home and mini golf in the park. The rubber roof of the nursing home was peeled off during the storm.

Storm damage at the home of the Rev. Daniel Faugstad family.

Damage along South Main Street.

Another tree toppled onto a house.

More residential storm damage in Belview.

Merlin also reports that a farmer just west of nearby Vesta (my hometown) recorded a high wind speed of 110 mph on his wind velocity meter during the storm. I have not yet confirmed that information. Vesta was also hard hit by the storm. Click here to read that story and view photos of the damage.

The damaged bins and elevator at Meadowland Farmers Elevator in Vesta.

Neighboring Belview and Vesta are only two of the many, many small towns in southwestern Minnesota hit by Friday’s storms. I expect that hundreds of farm places were also ravaged. For the most part, the disaster has not been covered by metro media and that bothers me—a lot.

IF YOU LIVE in southwestern Minnesota and were impacted by the storm, please submit a comment telling me about your personal experiences (where were you/did you seek shelter/what was the storm like, etc.), damage to your property or town, and recovery progress. I am also looking for photos to publish, so contact me via a comment and I will follow-up by emailing you.

PHOTOS COURTESY of Merlin and Iylene Kletscher

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

An unlikely solution to the Minnesota government shutdown July 5, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 12:15 PM
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MY EXTENDED FAMILY likes to have fun, so we plotted this weekend to overthrow the Minnesota state government. Not to worry. We are all talk and no action.

But we definitely have ideas about who could run the state given the current legislature and governor can’t seem to handle the task of agreeing on a budget. That would be us. (Yes, the general feeling was a definite frustration with the current state government shutdown.)

Therefore, in a discussion that spiraled into hilarity, we overthrew the governor and put all of our people in place, most of us choosing to head up a state department based on our interests and experiences.

We also agreed that one of our first subversive, defiant acts would be to clamber onto the golden horses atop the state Capitol.

The golden horses and chariot atop the Minnesota State Capitol.

I’m heading up communications, a job I’m uncertain I can handle because I’ve been instructed to deliver only a positive spin on every bit of state government news.

The educators in the family were appointed to the Department of Education, the daycare provider to the Department of Health and Human Services. My eldest brother, by age default, became the new governor.

The outdoor-loving summer parks worker now manages the Department of Natural Resources. He’s always wanted to hunt alligators, so he’s bringing alligators to Minnesota.

Then the newly-appointed finance director, a family member pursuing an accounting degree, suggested that rather than return the alligators to Florida in the winter, we move them into the sewer system. We readily embraced that idea.

We didn’t debate the cost of an alligator hunting license.

But there may have been an unspoken agreement to lock current Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton and the legislators in a room with a contingent of angry, jaw-snapping alligators Minnesotans.

DISCLAIMER: The above story represents my version of the family political discussion and may not be representative of all family members. However, I am the Director of Communications here at Minnesota Prairie Roots. Therefore I am free to spin this story however I wish.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Storm rips through my hometown of Vesta July 2, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:21 AM
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WHENEVER ONE of my siblings calls saying, “I just want you to know Mom is OK, but…,” I prepare myself mentally for her latest health crises.

But Friday evening when my sister Lanae reached me via cell phone while my husband and I were en route to a party near Nerstrand Big Woods State Park, the news was totally unexpected.

My hometown of Vesta in Redwood County in southwestern Minnesota had been struck by straight-line winds.

While my mom’s house—once the retirement home of my paternal grandparents—had gone apparently unscathed, other structures in town were damaged. But at least my mother and aunts and uncles and a niece were safe.

In my sister’s early report, which came second-hand via relatives in the area, she shared that half the roof was ripped off our home church, St. John’s Lutheran. Hours later, after arriving home from the party, I found photos in my email in-box of the storm’s destruction. I nearly broke down and cried when I saw my home church with the partially missing roof.

St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Vesta with the roof half ripped off during the Friday evening storm.

The images also showed damage to the grain elevator and bins in Vesta and trees down on the home place half a mile from town.

Damage to one of the grain bins at the local elevator.

The grain elevator complex, the visual defining landmark in the farming community of Vesta, was ravaged by winds. You'll see the damage near the top of the old grain elevator.

A close-up of the damage wrought upon the old elevator.

Another shot showing some of the debris and damage at the elevator complex.

The wind toppled trees on the farm where I grew up a half mile south of Vesta.

During that phone conversation with my sister, as my husband and I drove along the gravel road toward the gathering with friends, I wanted nothing more than to turn around, pack our suitcase and drive to Vesta 2 ½ hours away.

That’s exactly how I felt more than three decades ago when I lived in Gaylord and the farm where I grew up was hit by a tornado, taking down a silo and tossing grain wagons around the field.

But on this Friday evening, with storms rolling in from the west, I knew this was not practical. I would need to rely on my siblings to keep me informed. My middle brother, who lives in Lamberton some 25 miles away, was on his way to Vesta. I called my two daughters to tell them about the storm.

I wanted so much, though, to also speak with my mom. I needed the comfort of hearing her voice. I wanted to learn about her storm experience. But the phone lines were down in Vesta. Even though Mom owns a cell phone, I doubt she remembers how to use it. She’s never quite adjusted to technology.

And so now it’s Saturday morning and I am exhausted after a night of tossing and turning. Storms do that to me.

Thoughts of my home church—where I was married and attended the funerals of my father, Grandma Kletscher, Grandpa Bode and Uncle Mike—churned through my mind. I worried about where congregants will worship, whether the interior of the church was damaged, if the church, my home church, can be repaired.

I hope today to get some answers and, if I do, I’ll pass that information along to you.

I’ll also share images I shot last night of the storm clouds hanging dark and ominous over the farm site where we gathered with friends for an early Fourth of July celebration.

Nature provided the fireworks—lightning bolt after lightning bolt zig-zagging horizontally across the forbidding sky for hours. Except for some wind and rain, our area escaped the storm that ravaged Vesta and Marshall and other communities to the west.

IF YOU HAVE STORM stories to share from last evening, please submit a comment. KLGR Radio in Redwood Falls is this morning reporting winds of up to 100 mph in Redwood County and the sightings of possible funnel clouds. Click here to read that news report.

FOR THOSE OF YOU UNFAMILIAR with southwestern Minnesota, Vesta sits along State Highway 19 half way between Redwood Falls and Marshall.

Photos courtesy of Brian and Vicki.

©  Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

A native Minnesotan reports from flooded Minot June 23, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 9:02 AM
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MY BROTHER-IN-LAW, Neil, lives in Minot.

But he ranks as one of the lucky residents of this North Dakota city. His house lies outside—albeit less than a mile away—and several hundred feet above the flood zone.

Yet, this Air Force man and Minnesota native isn’t sitting idly by because his home has not been threatened. He’s pitching in to help those who face the reality of losing their houses in the worst flooding since 1969.

In an e-mail I received from Neil early this morning, he shares information, insights and, yes, even advice about the current situation—which he terms “exhausting and discouraging”—in his adopted hometown. The overwhelmed Souris River in Minot is expected to crest on Sunday, some five feet higher than any previous flood stage in recorded history for the area, Neil says. The old record was set in 1881, before Minot was founded.

So that’s the situation facing this city, where some 12,000 residents, more than a quarter of the population, have been evacuated and where, says Neil, dikes in several neighborhoods were breached on Wednesday.

Neil has assisted two families in exiting the city.

He writes: “I helped a lady from our church on Monday night as she moved everything either to the second floor or attic. What didn’t go upstairs went into a horse trailer that her brother brought in from out of town late that night. She seemed to take things in stride. Her house was also flooded in ’69 (before it was her house), but came through it okay. It’s extremely well built, nearly 100 years old. This lady trusts that God will provide for her needs, even if her house washes down the river.”

Neil next joined efforts to help his boss’s family. His boss is deployed to Afghanistan.

“I lost track of how many people were there to help them,” Neil writes. “We also helped them three weeks ago, when we moved everything out of their sopping wet basement to the upper floor and garage. Because of the shortage of time allowed to evacuate, we left almost everything there that time. Because of the expected height of the floodwaters and the advance preparation time, we decided to clear everything out of their house this time.”

Yet, Neil continues, “There were easily several pickup loads of stuff that we left behind simply because there wasn’t enough time/energy/resources to move it all.”

At this point my brother-in-law pauses and suggests that we all re-evaluate our possessions, deciding what we really need and what we don’t. “Go through your house and garage and get rid of anything that you haven’t laid eyes on or used in the past three years.” He intends to do exactly that at his Minot home, which is currently on the market; he’s been reassigned to an Air Force base in Missouri.

When Neil and his wife, who is already in Missouri, purchased their house several years ago, they purposely stayed away from the flood zone. “A contractor that we spoke to before buying a house told us the down sides of several locations in this town. One specific neighborhood that he told us to steer clear of is the exact one that we helped my boss’s family move out of; he told us that he wouldn’t even consider building a house down there because the whole area was under water in the flood of ’69,” Neil says.

And then my brother-in-law adds this final statement: “Dikes give people a false sense of security.  No one presently living in this town will ever doubt that again!”

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

A chocolate cake tradition of love June 22, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:58 AM
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Homemade chocolate Crazy Cake frosted with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting.

THEY RAVED ABOUT the moistness of the cake. And three of them—all guys—forked up a second slice of the chocolate cake I’d made from scratch.

I almost said, “Ummm, guys, it’s the women who should have a second piece.” But I let them be, passing the cake pan around the table, plating more cake.

This is one moist, delicious chocolate cake.

Then, because I couldn’t help myself, I shared the story about this cake. They needed to hear it, to understand that they weren’t eating just any old cake but cake made from a special recipe.

This Crazy Cake, aka Wacky Cake, is the chocolate cake of my youth, the one my mom made every time she baked a birthday cake, I told my friends.

“We didn’t have much money, didn’t get birthday presents,” I explained as my friends savored each bite of chocolate cake. “So our birthday present was the cake, an animal cake my mom made.

She would pull out her cake book and let us pick the animal shape we wanted for our birthday cake—a lion, a horse, a duck, an elephant…”

“My mom had a book like that too,” my friend Jackie chimed in.

Mari, on the other end of the table, nodded her head. Likewise, her mother had a booklet that provided instructions for transforming round cakes and square cakes and oblong cakes into animal shapes.

By cutting the cake and decorating it with various candies and frosting, my mom transformed a plain chocolate cake in to a special animal-shaped birthday cake.

Those birthday cakes were magical. I never missed the birthday presents, never even knew I should receive gifts, because I had that cake, that special, special chocolate animal-shaped cake.

When I became a mother, I continued the tradition with my children. While I didn’t have an animal cake book, I had my imagination. I made a snowman, Garfield, Piglet, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, a horse (that looked more like a cow than an equine)…

Unlike me, my children got birthday presents, plenty of them. But I would like to think that the one they will remember is the annual gift of an animal-shaped birthday cake, a gift, really, passed down from their grandmother.

For in the passing down of that tradition, I’m honoring their grandma, my mom, who taught me that birthdays are not about prettily wrapped presents, but about love. And that love, for me, will always be symbolized by homemade chocolate Crazy Cake.

Chocolate Crazy Cake

3 cups flour

2 cups white sugar

½ cup cocoa

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking soda

Mix the dry ingredients together and then stir in:

¾ cup salad (vegetable) oil

2 cups cold water

2 Tablespoons vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla

Pour into a 9 x 13-inch cake pan and bake at 350 degrees for 35 – 40 minutes.

When the cake is cool, whip up a bowl of this creamy Chocolate Buttercream Frosting.

When cool, frost with:

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

6 Tablespoons butter, softened

½ cup cocoa

2 2/3 cups powdered sugar

1/3 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

Cream butter in a small mixing bowl. Then add the cocoa and powdered sugar alternately with the milk, beating to a spreading consistency. You may need to add an additional tablespoon of milk. Blend in vanilla. Spread on cake. Makes about two cups of frosting.

The recipe yields two cups of heavenly, finger-licking-good frosting.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Recipes from The Cook’s Special, 1973, St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, Vesta, Minnesota, and Hershey’s Easy-Does-It Recipe #10

 

Fencing June 10, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:57 AM
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This is the first section of fencing, nearest the house, that I stained.

IT’S DONE, PEOPLE. Done. Done. Done.

Last Saturday, with the assistance of my I-finally-have-time-to-help-you husband, I finished staining the 10 lattice-topped fence panels that enclose our backyard. Please note that I use the singular “I” here rather than the plural “we.” This project belonged primarily to “me.”

It didn’t start out that way. Originally, I was supposed to stain the panels nearest the house using foam and bristle brushes. Then Randy was supposed to spray the remaining panels with a handy dandy cheap air-pumped sprayer we picked up at a big box store.

From the get-go, I did not think the sprayer system was a good idea. I was concerned about overspray (stain drifting onto flowers, plants, the lawn, the house, the neighbor’s fence, skin, eyeglasses, clothing…). I also doubted a sprayer would provide even coverage. Would the stain truly adhere to wood when misted, rather than brushed, on?

However, Randy remained determined that he could spray the panels, thereby saving me hours and hours and hours of labor. Nice thought from a man who claims, “I’m always thinking of you, dear. It’s my job to keep you happy.” Oh, so sweet…

Sometimes simply going along with a plan works better than arguing with one’s spouse. OK, I admit, I protested several times, telling Randy that since he really didn’t have the time to stain when the weather was cooperating, I would continue brushing. I might also have mentioned a few times that I didn’t think spraying the stain would work.

Finally, I was down to the last four panels, the ones nowhere near the house and thus safe to spray.

The last of the 10 panels that were stained.

But as sometimes happens in marriages, Randy and I experienced a communication break-down. He wanted me to stain the last panel, the one embedded in wild raspberry bushes. Having already battled wayward ferns, a floppy bleeding heart bush, heat and a sliver in my finger, I was in no mood for his chastising words: “You should have painted that panel by the raspberries.”

I burst into tears and suggested that he should be grateful for all I had done and that I had no intention of dealing with thorny raspberry bushes. So I didn’t.

Wild raspberry bushes grow along one side of the last panel next to the woods.

Several days later he cut away the prickly branches closest to the fence before laying down plastic, filling the plastic spray tank with stain and spraying.

As predicted by me, the spray process failed. Picture a Holstein cow (that’s a black-and-white spotted cow for you non-agricultural people). Not how I want my fence to look. The nozzle clogged. This was not working.

I wanted to say, “I told you so.” But, instead, I mentioned that an apology would be accepted regarding his earlier criticism of my staining with a brush when I should have/could have waited for him to spray all of the panels (his words, not mine) in an hour with the sprayer.

“I wake up every morning apologizing,” Randy responded.

Did I tell you that my husband is also a funny guy? He makes me laugh.

In the end, he worked on one side of the fence while I stained on the other. We finished the three panels as a team.

As for that sprayer, Randy poured out the stain, cleaned the tank with paint thinner, then placed the unit in the original box. “We’ll sell it at a garage sale,” he said.

As you can see in this image, the fence panels are beginning to come apart. This is the third time we have stained the fence. It was last stained in 2005. I was extremely ill with whooping cough during that summer of staining, meaning I didn't have to stain the fence. I expect we'll put up a new fence before we stain this once again.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

When the power goes out June 7, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:50 AM
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WHEN THE POWER goes out on a Monday evening, say at exactly 6:50 p.m., on one of the first oppressively hot days of a Minnesota summer, what do you do?

Here’s a recap of my 4 ½ hours without electricity.

Finish a late grilled chicken supper with the husband and teenage son, followed by the routine clearing of the table, washing dishes (there’s a reason I don’t own a dishwasher) and then taking out the garbage, which is typically the husband’s job, but he is mowing the lawn.

Notice that the under-sink garbage container reeks and is growing black something-or-other. Scrub off the unknown black growth and blast the garbage can with disinfectant.

Sweep the kitchen floor.

Pretty routine so far, right?

Water the plants on the patio.

Now what? Can’t get on the computer to check email or work on chapter one of the book you are editing.

Grab the stack of invoices and statements from the local lumber yard and try to figure out whether you’ve been billed and/or credited properly for materials purchased for the house project that has been a stressful, six-month undertaking. Mutter a few words that cannot be printed here.

Ask the son where his father has disappeared to and then spot him across the street talking to the neighbors, whom we’ve never met. Observe other neighbors outdoors, including those next door, who have stepped outside for a smoke. Apparently when the power goes out, smoking in a closed-up, without air conditioning, house becomes intolerable, or perhaps suffocating.

Grab a book and a notebook to read and take notes on a book you are reviewing for a magazine. In the fading light of day, that plan lasts through two pages.

Text the daughter in Wisconsin, who doesn’t text back.

Join the husband who decides, around 9 p.m., that a tour of the town is necessary to determine the source and extent of the power outage. A few blocks away, several Xcel Energy trucks ring an electrical substation.

This electrical substation near the viaduct in Faribault was the apparent location of Monday evening's power outage. I took this photo in March, as the city prepared for spring flooding.

Through-out downtown, street lights are dark,  store fronts lit. Figure that one out. Temporary stop signs replace non-functioning stoplights along Minnesota Highway 60, the main drag through Faribault. A grocery store, gas station and fast food restaurant stand dark and shuttered.

Realize that driving along unlit city streets ranks as unsafe given pedestrians and bikers think you can see them, but you can’t. No encounters. Just a realization that a city without street lights and with darkened homes and businesses appears eerie and dangerous. Wonder what strangers to Faribault think of driving into a darkened city.

Return home. Finally accept that power likely will not be restored for awhile. Light candles. Dig out the camping lantern, which hasn’t seen a tent in decades and serves as the primary light source during electrical outages.

Ask the teen, who has been reading a book all evening and who is lounging on the living room floor, to find some news on his cell phone. Still don’t understand how he can listen to the radio on his cell. No news found. However, he tunes into classical music and tries to convince his father to listen to Beethoven and Bach at work rather than classical rock. Son is working in his dad’s automotive machine shop for the summer. Dad isn’t convinced. Suggest a compromise—morning with the Moody Blues, afternoon with Beethoven.

Question the boy more about first day back at work, whether he’s been welcomed. Yeah. Encourage more conversation because usually the teen has head buried in the computer and such opportunities are rare. Learn that he lunched at the picnic table behind the automotive store. Ask whether conditions have improved in the outdoor dining area. Nope. Still a dumpster and trailer and scrap metal pile next to the picnic table. Suggest the boss give me a decorating budget to spruce up the place. Ain’t gonna happen. Son says he and Dad should bring lawn chairs.

Phone Xcel Energy for the second time. Hear that power should be back on by 11 p.m. It is 10:30 p.m. Earlier recording stated lights on at 8:50 p.m. Don’t believe smooth-talking woman. Decide to head to bed.

But, first, join son for star gazing in backyard. Listen to him complain about light pollution. Find the Big Dipper when he asks. Thinks parents cannot find it, are dumb. Suggest he take star gazing chart to southwestern Minnesota. He requests one night worldwide when all lights are turned off. Tell him that won’t happen. Looting. Other crimes.

Advise him to lock door and turn off lantern when done sky watching. Candles extinguished earlier. Off to bed. Just drifting off. Door rattles. Teen clomps. Wide awake. Power back on: 11:15 p.m.

ACCORDING TO AN ONLINE Faribault Daily News article, 2,700 homes were without power in northern Faribault, stretching to Cannon City Township. The apparent cause of the outage was a failure at a regional substation.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling