Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

The Super Bowl entertainment fiasco February 7, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 10:26 AM
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IF YOU WATCHED the Super Bowl, what’s your opinion of the half-time entertainment?

Here’s mine: I did not get it. None of it. Not the words, not the dancing, not the message, not anything performed by the Black Eyed Peas. I couldn’t understand most of the lyrics.

I did not “get” the lead singer’s (sorry, don’t know his name) clear plastic head covering. He didn’t look too comfortable, sweating and all. I did like the group dancers’ glowing costumes. Those were cool.

I’ll admit that I know nothing about the Black Eyed Peas. I struggle, though, to define their “music” as “music.”

But then 70s era music is my music. And let me tell you, THAT was music—Chicago, Bread, the Moody Blues, Elton John, Rod Stewart…

This Black Eyed Peas stuff is not music, in my fifty-something opinion.

So…, the half-time show disappointed me, big-time. Half-time is one of the two reasons I sometimes, and I mean sometimes, watch the Super Bowl. I also, sometimes, watch the game to see the commercials. I could care less about the football.

I didn’t see every ad, but here’s my take on those: Way too many car commercials. Didn’t we just bail out the auto makers a few years ago and now they are spending millions on 30-second spots? That doesn’t sit right with me. I know, I know, there’s more to the story than that, but I’m just giving you my gut taxpayer reaction.

I don’t know why this surprises me, but I also thought too many commercials were too sexist and too violent. Can’t give you specifics because I didn’t take notes, but I recall a club and fire, weapons and long legs and…a guy ordering flowers…

My favorite commercial—monkeys running across the tops of cars with brief cases—made me chuckle. Sorry, I can’t tell you what they were advertising, so I guess that ad probably failed.

Then to top it off, Christina Aguilera messed up on the National Anthem, singing “What so proudly we watched at the twilight’s last gleaming” instead of “O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming.”

Come on. I admit, I could probably flub The Star Spangled Banner too, but I’m not a professional performer.

At least the Green Bay Packers won the game. I was rooting for them, sort of, when I wasn’t reading the newspaper, clipping coupons and falling asleep on the couch.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Thanks for the Sputnik memories, Mr. President January 27, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:56 AM
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GROWING UP on a southwestern Minnesota dairy farm back in the 1950s and 60s, in the middle of the Cold War, I didn’t know all that much about the Soviet Union, except to fear “the Russians.”

Then along came Sputnik, the Russian satellite, which made quite an impression on my impressionable young mind.

So when President Barack Obama worked Sputnik into his Tuesday night State of the Union address and stated, “This is our generation’s Sputnik moment,” something niggled in my memory.

That something would be a cat.

Just to make sure I was remembering correctly, I phoned my mom, who quickly assured me that I was right. During my childhood, we had a black-and-brown mixed barn cat called Sputnik.

“I think you kids named it after the Russian satellite,” my mom said.

She was right. My oldest brother and I, enamored with the whole space thing, had named the barn cat with the stump tail (likely sliced off by a mower in the alfalfa field) Sputnik.

I hadn’t thought about that feline in decades, until the President tripped my memory Tuesday evening while referencing Sputnik in his call for American innovation.

Then Wednesday I got caught up even more in the Russian satellite memory when I learned that the President was visiting Manitowoc in eastern Wisconsin. On September 6, 1962, a 20-pound chunk of glowing debris from Sputnik IV plummeted to earth, landing on 8th Street in Manitowoc.

This Wisconsin city celebrates that monumental event every September at Sputnikfest, complete with a Miss Space Debris Pageant, Cosmic Cake Contest, Cosmic Costume Contest, a Sputnik Re-enactment and more.

How space-age cool is that?

The President’s trip to Manitowoc was clearly well-planned and orchestrated to tie in with his Sputnik speech reference. Otherwise why would he have chosen to visit this city of 32,520 southeast of Green Bay? It’s not like he’s a Packers fan, although he received a yellow and green jersey upon his arrival.

This town on the shores of Lake Michigan is also home to several green energy plants, which Obama toured, thus reemphasizing his State of the Union directive to move forward in developing clean energy alternatives.

That all said, thank you, Mr. President, for mentioning Sputnik in your speech. I hadn’t thought about that barn cat in decades.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Cheese, cheeseheads and football November 22, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 12:30 PM
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A glimpse of shoppers walking along Pearl Street in La Crosse, Wisc., as seen from inside Cheddarheads, a cow/cheesehead crazy gift shop.

I WENT TO THE GROCERY store Sunday to purchase some last minute food for Thanksgiving dinner, including cheese for pre-meal snacking. My extended family prefers to extend their stomachs before indulging in a turkey dinner with trimmings.

Because they are an adventuresome bunch, I grabbed mango and tomato basil cheeses from Henning’s Wisconsin Cheese and Eden Vale’s black peppercorn smoked Gouda and cranberry white cheddar.

My husband questioned some of my selections, but I didn’t waver except for also choosing the “Best of class 2007” Colby from Henning’s. My family is not the safe American, Velveeta, plain old cheddar type of cheese-eaters. We prefer jazzed-up cheeses.

I’m also serving St. Pete’s Select blue cheese from Faribault Dairy Company, a subsidiary of Swiss Valley Farms. My husband and I, and two of my dinner-guest brothers, love that creamy, premium blue cheese, aged in the sandstone caves of my community.

All of this cheese writing this morning reminds me of my second eldest, who is currently traveling through Wisconsin on her way to find an apartment. She just landed a job in the Appleton area.

We’ve been teasing her about living in Wisconsin and becoming a cheese connoisseur, although I don’t know why given she attended college in La Crosse.

I suggested that she carry a cheese cutter lest Wisconsin officials stop her at the border. We even discussed whether the door into her apartment will unlock via a cheese cutter rather than a key.

Oh, yes, we’re a silly bunch, aren’t we?

My family has nothing against Wisconsin; we kind of like that state and Wisconsin cheese.

But don’t expect my daughter to become a cheesehead. She’s been asked several times whether she will now become a Green Bay Packers fan. The answer is a resounding “NO!” Like me, she is not a sports person. But, if she was, I suppose she might consider switching her allegiance from the Vikings to the Packers.

I’ve heard, and my daughter has probably heard too, that the Vikings aren’t doing very well this season. Is that true? Like I said, we could care less about sports…

Maybe my daughter should have purchased one of these cheesehead hats from Cheddarheads in downtown La Crosse. They were showcased in an old bathtub painted like a Holstein when I was there in May.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

The football-playing gnomes of New Ulm August 31, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:12 AM
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Gnomes line a section of boulevard along S. Broadway Street in New Ulm.

IF YOU’RE ZIPPING along Broadway Street in New Ulm, you might not notice the gnomes strategically lining a stretch of boulevard turf between South Sixth and Seventh Streets. Or if you do spot them, you might wonder, “What the heck was that?” And you’d likely keep right on driving.

But not me. I stopped to check out the gnomes on a recent visit to this German city that seems overrun with these curious little legendary elfins that supposedly live in the depths of the earth and hoard treasures.

The Broadway gnomes aren’t your ordinary gnomes, although at least half of them appear to be treasure-hoarders. More on that later.

Rather, these elfins comprise two football teams—the Minnesota Vikings and their archrival, The Green Bay Packers.

The Minnesota Vikings and The Green Bay Packers play football on a stretch of artificial turf along Broadway.

The creator of this curious football game has distinguished the teams by draping gnomes in purple capes and in green and gold capes. The Vikings sport homemade “helmets” that are more blue hats with tacked on horns than purple helmets. And The Packers appear to be wearing sponges, AKA protective cheese slices, atop their helmet-less heads.

But, hey, I give this sports artist an “A” for creating an original and durable work of roadside art.

This isn’t exactly the safest place to play football, though, I quickly learn as I crouched to take photos just feet away from the heavy traffic. One topple or misstep and I’d find myself sidelined with an injury, or worse.

I see a few tackled, injured, or maybe just wind-blown, Packers lying on the turf. A medic is even carting one off the field. I wonder if, occasionally, a Wisconsinite walks by and covertly knocks over a Vikings gnome. Come to think of it, I didn’t check to see if the football players are secured in place.

An injured Green Bay Packers gnome is carted off the field.

But of one fact I’m certain, these green-and-yellow outfitted football-playing gnomes remain true to their hoarding nature. They’re guarding their treasure, keeping the Vince Lombardi trophy away from the Scandinavian gnomes in this German city.

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AT THE END of the football field, I discovered this sign: “To mow or not to mow, that is the question. Whats the answer?”

A homeowner makes a statement along a New Ulm boulevard.

Is the sign designer making a literal statement about mowing grass here? (I wouldn’t feel safe mowing this close-to-the-busy-busy-roadway boulevard.)

Or is the writer making a statement about the need for a new open-air football stadium with real grass versus artificial turf?

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THEN, COINCIDENTALLY (or not), just around the corner from the Broadway football field, I spied this (team?) bus.

The Schell's beer bus was parked near Broadway Stadium.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling