WHEN I NOTICED THIS SCENE in a residential neighborhood along a busy street in Owatonna, I laughed. I can’t pinpoint the precise reason. Perhaps it was the juxtaposition of winter (the snow-covered yard) and summer (the motorhome and thoughts of camping).
Or perhaps I laughed because the camper covering reminds me of a Paul Bunyan-sized sleeping bag.
When laughter erupts unexpectedly, I accept it. Laughter is a gift.
© Copyright 2016 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
IS THIS WARNING COMMON in hotels? Because I don’t stay in hotels all that often—maybe once a year—I’m uncertain.
Apparently theft is a problem at this particular Winona hotel, although I cannot imagine why anyone would steal any of the items on the list.
There’s a Target right next door with comparable or lower prices.
© Copyright 2016 Minnesota Prairie Roots
A dairy farm along Highway 14/61 south of La Crosse. It appears, though, that this barn no longer houses cows.
I’VE LEARNED A LOT about Wisconsin in the five years since my second daughter moved to Appleton on the eastern side of the state.
I’ve learned that Wisconsinites are crazy about the Green Bay Packers. If you want to travel with minimal traffic through Wisconsin, drive while a Packers game is on. Most everybody will be holed up at home/a friend’s house or gathered in a bar watching the football game in their Packers’ green and gold.
I’ve also learned that Wisconsin residents love their beer and brats as noted by all the bars and signs advertising Brat Fries. Grocery stores even sell brat buns dyed Packers’ green and gold.
And then there’s the cheese. Oh, yes. Wisconsinites love their cheese. Big time. You can even find football and cow shaped cheeses.
This state is known as America’s Dairyland. According to the Wisconsin Dairy Producers Milk Marketing Board’s 2014 data, Wisconsin produces 13.5 percent of the country’s milk and 25.4 percent of the cheese. That comes from 1,271,000 cows housed on 10,290 licensed dairy farms.
Apparently New York dairy farmers who resettled in southern Wisconsin in the 1840s and 1850s propelled this region into cheese-making. New York was, at the time, the leading dairy producer. Today this East Coast state remains the third top dairy state behind California and Wisconsin.
As someone who grew up on a family dairy farm—in southwestern Minnesota—I value the dairy industry. Pass the cheese, please.
© Copyright 2015 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
THE NEWSPAPER IN MY COMMUNITY runs a mystery photo every Saturday. Readers are invited to identity and name the location of the place in the image. If correct, their names will be entered in a drawing for $100 in Faribault Chamber bucks at the end of the year. I’ve participated only once. I’m just not that interested in challenging my brain to identify some place in town.
But maybe you like brain teasers. So I’m challenging you to name the items in the two photos that follow. These are both at my home and are two of four items/appliances which broke within 10 days. Whoever said things happen in threes was wrong.
PHOTO A: Why don’t they build these like they once did? This is the third one we have installed since moving into our home in 1984. The one in my mom’s house was original to the 1950s rambler and was still working in 2014.
PHOTO B: This object may or may not be familiar to you, depending on your sense of humor.
Identify these objects and you will know what we had to replace in addition to a microwave and a dehumidifier.
Try not to cheat and peek at the answers. If I knew how to turn this print upside down, I would.
ANSWERS:
Photo A shows the top of our leaky gas water heater. I entered the laundry room on a recent morning to find water spreading across the floor. I phoned the husband at work. It was only 7:15. What a lovely way to start his day. Upon his arrival home much later and after supper, we headed to the local hardware store which had exactly two gas water heaters and no one on staff who knew anything about them. Randy surmised we needed the taller one. I disagreed and suggested we return home to measure. Nope. So the taller version was loaded into our van and unloaded onto the driveway. Guess what? I was right. Eventually, with the correct size purchased, it was then time to wrestle the old water heater out of the basement and the new one into the basement. No one was injured in the process. At 8:40 p.m., the husband announced that the old pipes were not long enough as the new model differed slightly from the old. The hardware store was closed by then. Because my husband desired a hot shower after a hard day of work, we then drove to a Big Box retailer in a neighboring town for those pipes. By 11:30 p.m., he had hot water and a shower.
Photo B is an improvised door handle to replace the one that fell off in my hand one morning, leaving me locked outside. Fortunately, my son was home to let me back inside. Then, what to do. I called the husband. Again. Are you seeing a pattern here? Hey, I am not mechanically inclined or good at solving problems like this. He advised that I find a screw driver and remove the broken handle and slip wire through the holes where the handle was once secured. I did. But apparently I do not know how to twist wire as the wire broke loose, leaving me once again stranded on the back steps. The son let me back inside and retwisted the wire. It held. For the past week we have been using this wire handle, appropriately dubbed (by the husband) as a Redneck Door Handle.
There, how did you do? Did you guess hot water heater and Redneck Door Handle? If so, award yourself an “A” and then explain to me why nothing lasts anymore.
© Copyright 2015 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
WHEN THE SON WAS HOME from Boston for holiday break, my husband and I took him downtown Faribault one evening for our favorite local pizza served at the Signature Bar & Grill.
He hopped out of the van across the street from the restaurant and promptly pulled out his cell phone, aiming it at the front window of Ron’s Pawn Shop. He was laughing.
“Golds, diamonds and guns,” he read aloud. I paused, looked. He laughed. Again.
How often had I gone by Ron’s Pawn Shop and never really noticed the signage my college son found entertaining and amusing? Too often.
It proved an important lesson to pay more attention to that which I pass often, but don’t always see.
© Copyright 2015 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
SEVERAL YEARS AGO, before my son-in-law married my daughter, I gifted him with How to Talk Minnesotan by Howard Mohr. It’s a rather humorous, but truthful, volume of Minnesota Speak.
The original version of How to Talk Minnesotan was published in the 1980s. This is the version I’ve read.
I thought Marc might need a Minnesota “dictionary” given he grew up in California, where bars are drinking establishments and not also a sweet treat baked in a cake pan. And, yes, he now lives in Minnesota with his wife, my eldest.
Having ever only traveled as far west as one mile into Wyoming, never down South and to the East Coast only once, during college, I am mostly unfamiliar with regional differences in dialect.
Apparently we Minnesotans draw out our “o”s and possess a distinct accent. No, not like the “sure, ya betcha” voices of Fargo.
The son noted this on his recent arrival home from Boston for holiday break. “Listen to yourselves,” he advised his dad and me.
Apparently friends at Tufts University have ribbed him about his incorrect pronunciations of “bag” and “sorry.”
Before my son transferred to the East Coast college from North Dakota State University in, yes, Fargo, two years ago, I phoned the Tufts financial aid office. The woman who answered had a Boston accent so strong that I could not understand her. I requested that she please slow down. If ever there was an accent…
An updated version published in 2013 by Penguin Books.
Continuing along his Minnesota differences theme, the son noted also that we use the word “supper” to reference our evening meal. My husband and I explained that this is a carry-over from our rural backgrounds. The noon meal was dinner. Lunch was served at 3 p.m. to the men in the field and a “little lunch” around midnight, when you had company (aka visitors). Supper was served either before or after the evening milking.
After nearly 60 years of identifying meals as breakfast, dinner, lunch, supper and a little lunch, we’re not going to change our dining terminology.
That brings us to after meal clean-up. As the 20-year-old and I were doing dishes after supper (not dinner) recently, he noted that, “You know they don’t wash dishes like this in Boston.”
I paused mid swirl of dishrag upon plate, confused. “What do you mean? That everyone has a dishwasher?”
He shot me that c’mon Mom look youth sometimes reserve for parents, then explained. Rather than filling the sink with water, each item is washed individually with a squirt of soap under running water.
“Makes no sense to me and seems mighty wasteful of water and dish soap,” I chided. “Are you sure that isn’t just a college kid thing rather than a Boston thing?”
He didn’t respond.
© Copyright 2015 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
SEE SPOT RUN.
When I learned to read, I read about Dick, Jane and Sally and their dog, Spot. Plus their cat, Puff, and Sally’s teddy bear, Tim. And let’s not forget Mother and Father.
See Dick run. See Jane run. See Sally run. Did they ever walk?
Such were the exciting words printed upon the pages of my classroom primers.
So when I spot a “See Spot Run” sign along Wisconsin State Highway 21 near Omro, I think of learning to read, not canine services.
But it’s a clever connection, isn’t it? Would you understand this stand-alone sign or would you, like me, have to Google “See Spot Run” to understand?
Then there’s the most amusing of all signs further along the highway. It advertises diesel sandwiches at JB Sales with locations in Arkdale and Necedah. I’m certain the sign maker didn’t intend for the message to be read as “diesel sandwiches.” But that’s how my brain reads the words.
I’m still puzzling over another sign, this for Silvercryst, a fine dining establishment along Silver Lake near Wautoma that boasts GR8 steaks. Why wouldn’t you just spell out “great?” Because the sign is supposed to resemble a license plate apparently.
There are lots of cheese sellers in Wisconsin vying for local and tourism dollars. So you have to make yourself stand out. And one cheese sign in particular, in Omro, catches my eye. Because of the cows.
Finally, you can’t travel Wisconsin without noticing an abundance of fireworks signs. There’s nothing too special about this Highway 21 sign, except the advertising of Demo Night on June 20. Is this demo deal common for fireworks places in Wisconsin? Tell me. I’m from Minnesota.
© Copyright 2014 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Wayne Wenzel in the back workshop/office area of Dad’s Good Stuff.
CALL HIM A CHARACTER or the ultimate BS-er or, simply, a man of quick wit. Whichever, Wayne Wenzel truly is all of these.
Dad’s Good Stuff is located on a corner of Broadway in downtown New Richland, Minnesota, south of Waseca.
And to locals, this proprietor of Dad’s Good Stuff, a long ago hardware store age-defined by worn wood floors and a wainscot ceiling, Wayne is much more.
You can get duplicate keys made here.
He’s the key maker, paint salesman, furniture refinisher, window and screen repairman and peddler of all things old in New Richland.
Lots and lots and lots of merchandise.
Poke around here long enough in the stashes of aged merchandise that create for narrow, barely-passable aisles, and you will find something you need.
A stack of colorful Fiestaware awaits a buyer.
Wayne’s store holds some wonderful antique furniture including the Murphy bed folded against the wall behind the white table.
Plenty of collectibles here.
Wayne will open the door of the oven here and show you the “pies” he made. Fake, of course.
Pottery for sale.
From Red Wing chicken feeders to Pyrex casseroles, to a Murphy bed, vintage calendars, Fiestaware, John Deere collectible toy tractors and lots lots more, Wayne’s store is packed with good stuff. That is if you are into antiques and collectibles. Or need paint or paint supplies. Or a key. Or a piece of furniture refinished. Or…a bit of bull.
Wayne likely adheres to this sign.
Throughout the building, tacked on walls and tucked into displays, signs showcase Wayne’s humor. Under a “Complaint Department—Push Button for Service” sign, this jokester has affixed a doctored mousetrap with a button.
High on a wall, Wayne informs shoppers: “This Wagon Tonng Was on the First Wells Fargo Stagecoatch that Came Thru N. R. and Latter Robbed by the James Brothers Frank & Jessy James.”
Now, if you believe that, you’ll believe that Wayne once won the Waseca County Spelling Bee.
My favorite of all Wayne’s signs.
But remark to this jovial man about the handprinted “Our Surveillance.” warning posted next to a portrait of Christ peering downward, and his mood shifts. “He’s been good to us,” Wayne says, suddenly serious.
And I know he’s thinking of his son who died of a heart attack five years ago.
“They say time heals,” he’s told me earlier, his eyes watering. I listen and reassure Wayne that it’s OK to talk about Troy, to cry, that time doesn’t really heal. I wonder then how much pain this barrel-chested man hides behind his humor. The moment passes and he’s back at it, dishing out bull.
I’ve only just met Wayne. But he’s made me laugh more than I’ve laughed in a long time. That is his gift to the community of New Richland, to those who stop by Dad’s Good Stuff for paint or keys or collectibles or BS. Laughter. The good stuff.
BONUS PHOTOS:
Be sure to sign the guestbook next to this horse lamp when you walk in the front door.
Admire the aged wood floors.
Be careful what you touch. The varnish on this trunk was still drying when I visited. Table saws are set up about mid-way through the store for Wayne’s woodworking projects.
These, Wayne tells me, are his “computer files,” handwritten cards detailing customers’ paint purchases.
FYI: Current hours at Dad’s Good Stuff are from 8 a.m. – 4 p.m. Monday – Thursday, from 8 a.m. – noon Friday and Saturday, and Sundays by appointment. I’d suggest calling ahead (507-465-8551) if you’re traveling from any distance to shop here. Tell Wayne I sent you.
Check back for another post from New Richland.
© Copyright 2014 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
OCCASIONALLY SOMETHING in an ad catches my eye and amuses me.
Read the ad directly under the 135 Garage Sales banner.
Take the Estate Sale on Sixth Avenue Southwest in Faribault.
Now let’s say I want to buy a John Deere collectible for my husband or perhaps that mink coat.
How am I supposed to pay for my purchases?
No checks, cash or credit cards are accepted.
So that leaves, uh, what? Bartering?
One of the dogs spotted in a truck at the alpaca expo. Photo edited to make the dog more visible through the side passenger window.
EXITING OUR VAN at the Four Seasons Centre in Owatonna recently to attend the Minnesota Alpaca Expo, my husband and I did a double take.
An alpaca appeared to be seated in a Ford Excursion hitched to a livestock trailer.
But, no, that couldn’t possibly be.
And it wasn’t. Upon closer inspection, we discovered two shaggy dogs (sorry, I don’t know breeds) inside the SUV.
An alpaca.
From a distance, though, they look remarkably similar to alpacas.
Now lest you are concerned that these canines were in danger and we should have phoned animal control, not to worry. Windows were open and temps were in the low sixties.
They did not appear to be in any distress. Just confusing folks like us with their shaggy locks…
Copyright 2014 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
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