Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

They should be building snowmen, but instead they’re selling Kool-Aid March 18, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 12:49 PM
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Quinlan, left, Jazmyn and William opened a Kool-Aid stand Saturday afternoon in Faribault.

FRIENDS AND ENTEPRENEURS Quinlan and William got an early start on their summertime business, opening their Kool-Aid stand Saturday afternoon on the corner of Division Street and Prairie Avenue in Faribault.

In the first hour, the two sold eight cups of the beverage, including one to a customer who asked, “Why are you selling Kool-Aid in the middle of March?”

Quin was quick to respond. “It’s really hot outside.”

And he was right. Afternoon temperatures hovered around 80 degrees in most parts of Minnesota on St. Patrick’s Day, shattering records. The 80-degree high on March 17 marked the earliest 80-degree temperature ever recorded in the Twin Cities, according to the National Weather Service. Prior to Saturday, the earliest 80-plus degree day occurred on March 23, 1910.

Quin waits for customers at his Kool-Aid stand at a busy Faribault intersection.

A next-door garage sale helped spur sales.

No doubt, it was an ideal summer-like day to set up a Kool-Aid stand at the intersection of two busy city streets and next door to one of the season’s first garage sales.

Quin, 12, and Will, 10, along with the sometime assistance of Quin’s 12-year-old sister, Jazmyn, (she popped in for a photo and then disappeared inside the house), shouted to passersby to stop for Kool-Aid. The boys are experienced salesman having operated their beverage business last summer, once hauling in as much as $40 on a single day.

With four pitchers of Kool-Aid lined up on a table, they offered customers lime, grape, watermelon-cherry or tropical punch for a quarter a glass. Lime is the bestseller, they noted.

Last season the pair reinvested their money in the business and then spent the rest for admittance to the local Aquatic Center, at the county fair and on video games.

Quin and Will didn’t have exact plans on how to spend this season’s profits. But some of the money had already gone toward the purchase of a Hot Wheels Dodge Neon from the next-door garage sale.

With such an early opening, the boys have a long Kool-Aid season stretching before them and plenty of time to ponder how they’ll spend all their money.

Money in. Money out. The boys purchased a Hot Wheels car from the next-door garage sale.

© 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.

 

Another chapter finished in the book of parenting March 2, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 9:27 AM
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AFTER 22 YEARS of going to parent-teacher conferences, my husband and I attended our final one last night. The youngest of our three children, who is eight years younger than our eldest, graduates from high school in three months.

And to think we almost missed this notable occasion because I had not flipped the calendar from February to March yet. An ad in Thursday’s local daily newspaper alerted me of that evening’s sessions at Faribault High School.

En route to school, I mentally planned the extra words I would scrawl onto my name tag: “After 22 years, this is our final conference!”

But alas, the school did not provide name tags for parents on this occasion. What a disappointment.  Instead, I had to inform all four of our son’s teachers that they had the privilege of concluding our 22-year parent-teacher conference tenure.

It’s been a good ride. All three of our children have worked hard in school, done their best and been respectful. Teachers have always spoken highly of them.

So then you likely wonder why we have even bothered to attend conferences.

Simply put, we care. We are interested in the individuals who educate our children. We want to connect with them. We want them to know that we care.

We’ve gained insights into our children and learned about what they’re learning, because children/teens don’t always inform parents.

Parent-teacher conferences are a two-way process. We’ve always approached these meetings with the idea that we are there to glean information as much as to share it.

And now we’re done. Twenty-two years later. I’m not all misty-eyed and sad as one teacher suggested. But I’m not jumping for joy either.

I’m simply wondering how we got from crayons to calculus in the seeming blink of an eye.

IF YOU’RE A PARENT, have you attended parent-teacher conferences? What value do you find in them? How would you improve conferences if you think improvement is needed? Please share your thoughts and stories in a comment.

Likewise, if you’re a teacher, feel free to share your thoughts and insights.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Longing to skate March 1, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 10:15 PM
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My neighbor's temporary "pond."

IF I WAS 10 AGAIN, I’d slip on my winter boots and dash across the street to slide on my neighbor’s pond.

Oh, for the joy of slip-sliding across ice, free and untethered from the worry of falling.

Those thoughts flew through my mind this morning as I viewed the pond that just days ago existed only as a patch of dormant lawn, visually unappealing in the deep of the winter we haven’t had here in Minnesota.

Tuesday brought snow to most regions of our state. But here in the southeast, precipitation fell as strong, steady, relentless rain that gushed down hills, pooled along curbs and flooded basements.

And in some spots, like the low-lying lot that dips between two neighbors’ property, the rainwater just kept pouring in, creating a pond.

That water’s frozen now, and, as I gaze out my window, I’m tempted, oh, so tempted, to pull on my chunky and practical Northwest Territory boots and race over to skate upon the ice. Except that the ice likely descends no more than a half inch.

I cannot risk it, risk the falling , the plunging into ice water, to relive youthful moments of skating across corn field-stubbled ponds in buckle overshoes.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

A Saturday afternoon sampling chili & more at the mall February 25, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:22 PM
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The Faribo West Mall, just off Interstate 35 and Minnesota State Highway 60 in Faribault.

FROM FIERY PEPPER HOT to cinnamon sweet to overpowered by tomatoes, chilies served at the Faribo West Mall’s Saturday afternoon Chili Contest offered enough variety to satisfy any taste.

My husband and I paid $1 each for a plastic spoon with which to sample the 16 chilies like those offered by Kristen Langmeier and her daughter Hannah Plath. Serving side by side, Kristen said she was competing against her husband, Jeff. Hannah scooped up her dad’s “very spicy” no-bean chili laced with bacon and grilled steak. Kristen ladled her “regular spicy” chili infused with beer.

Faribault residents Hannah Plath, left, and her mom, Kristen Langmeier, served two types of chili. Entries were judged on taste and presentation by celebrity judges. The dining public simply chose one favorite.

Celebrity judges Rice County Sheriff Troy Dunn, left, Faribault Mayor John Jasinski and President of the Faribault Area Chamber of Commerce & Tourism Kymn Anderson sample the chili.

At another table, a former Texan removed the seeds from the jalapenos to quell the heat in his no-bean chili. He noted that in Texas you don’t add beans to chili.

But there were plenty of beans in the Minnesota chilies along with a variety of meats from ground pork to turkey to chicken, beef and more.

Once we’d tried the chilies, in between watching performances by the Joy of Dance Academy II dancers, Randy and I wandered the mall. That’s exactly what contest organizers hoped—that diners would also explore businesses housed in the shopping center.

Dancers performed outside the mall's main tenant, JC Penney.

Young dancers watch an older, more experienced dancer perform.

I’ll be honest here. I rarely get beyond the mall’s anchor store, JC Penney on the north end, or the Salvation Army on the opposite end.

Everything in between seems mostly a changing landscape of empty space and retail stores that come and go, with a few businesses, like Maurices, that have been around for awhile.

Organizers of the Chili Contest, which benefited the Faribault Food Shelf, were aiming to dispel the belief among locals that “there’s nothing at the mall.” The recent closure of the mall’s movie theater, the only one in Faribault, prompted discussion around town about the mall’s future within the community.

I’m here to report that, yes, the Faribo West Mall definitely has plenty of empty space for tenants. But it also has many businesses, albeit businesses that weren’t particularly busy when we toured at mid-afternoon Saturday.

I was delighted to discover this shop crammed with collectibles. Note: It's not open every day.

I loved the colors in this vintage clock at Terry's shop.

Yet, I was pleasantly surprised to discover a shop like Terry’s Curiosities and Collectables (sic) which has been in the mall for three years (who knew?) and sells everything from clothing to collectibles to sports cards and more. It’s a place I’ll return to.

A snippet of the mall's "Freedom Shrine."

And how could I have failed to notice the “Freedom Shrine” along a mall wall featuring framed copies of the U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence and more? It’s been there since 1983, a year after I moved to town, for gosh sakes.

That’s the problem. All too often we fail to notice and appreciate what we have. So let me show you more of what the Faribo West Mall offers rather than lamenting what it’s missing.

More mall businesses.

Bella's, a cozy shop, sells these vivid shoes, helps with party planning and more.

Reading a newspaper while waiting at the mall barbershop.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

If you take away my microwave… February 24, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:25 AM
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HAVE YOU EVER read Laura Numeroff’s children’s picture books, If You Give a Pig a Pancake or If You Give a Mouse a Cookie?

The storylines basically follow the premise that if you give someone something, they’ll want something else. Or one thing leads to another. For example, the mouse in Numeroff’s story asks for milk with his cookie then wants to look in a mirror and see if he has a milk mustache, etc. The pig needs syrup with his pancake, but gets so sticky he wants a bath, with bubbles, etc.

See how that works?

Now let’s apply that to my life, with this story:

My microwave oven, useful for cooking & experiments.

If your 18-year-old son hauls your microwave oven to his Advanced Chemistry class so he can measure the speed of light by melting marshmallows, you will need to find another way to prepare your morning oatmeal, or choose another food for breakfast.

If you opt for sugary cereal, then you’ll break your personal commitment to consume oatmeal each morning because your Uncle John, who eats oatmeal daily, told you doing so lowers cholesterol.

You’ll also derail your plan to a healthier and slimmer you.

By skipping the oatmeal, which you have found satisfyingly filling, you will find yourself reaching for a mid-morning snack. And, if you reach for a mid-morning snack…

See how that storyline goes? And all because of an Advanced Chemistry experiment.

I’m all about education, but if I don’t get my microwave back soon, I’ll…

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Broken hearts February 22, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:58 AM
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A dorm at NDSU, photographed during my campus visit last Friday.

FOUR YOUNG WOMEN die in a traffic accident along a snowy stretch of Interstate 94 in central Minnesota on Monday afternoon.

The news breaks your heart. How can it not?

Early Tuesday morning I published a post about a recent visit to the campus of North Dakota State University in Fargo, the destination for these women returning after a long holiday weekend.

I knew of the accident when I published the post. But I did not know then the names of the victims or their status as NDSU freshmen.

Jordan Playle, Danielle Renninger, Lauren Peterson and Megan Sample—three of them roommates—all from the Twin Cities metro area, are gone.

Students and staff on the campus I walked just days ago grieve.

Parents and siblings and other family members mourn.

Friends and high school classmates face the very real and tough reality of death.

And those of us parents who have sent our children off to college think about how many times we’ve hugged our kids goodbye, waved to them as they drove away and expected them to arrive, without incident, back at their dorms or apartments.

It is the kind of day when you want to circle your family close around you, wrap them in your arms and tell them how very much you love them.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

“Ted from Owatonna” honored for his firefighting efforts February 14, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 11:05 PM
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“I HAVE A NEW-FOUND appreciation for what you guys do,” Ted Leon of Owatonna told members of the Faribault Professional Fire Fighters Local 665 Tuesday evening.

It’s the type of comment I’ve come to expect from Ted, who five months earlier stopped on a Saturday afternoon to extinguish a deck fire at my neighbor’s house. He’s not one to call attention to himself or his actions.

Ted Leon, originally known only as "Ted from Owatonna" extinguishes a fire on and under my neighbor's deck with water from a garden hose around 4 p.m. on Saturday, September 10, 2011.

But on Valentine’s Day evening, the spotlight centered on Ted as he received a Certificate of Recognition from the City of Faribault in a formal presentation before a City Council meeting and then afterward an Emergency Action Award from the firefighters during a casual gathering at the fire hall.

Faribault Mayor John Jasinski reads the city's Certificate of Recognition as Ted Leon, Director of Fire and Emergency Management Joe Berg and Jon Bolster of the fire department look on.

Kristin Klocek, left, and her daughter Kayleigh gather with Ted and Kathryn Leon and sons Jack and Thomas at the informal presentation in the fire hall by union president Ed Hoisington, right.

Ted Leon receives his award from the local firefighters union. This type of award is also given occasionally to those who assist at motor vehicle crashes. An award for helping at a fire was last given a year ago to Xcel Energy, Todd Rost of the fire department said.

It was there in the fire station, surrounded by his family, my neighbors and members of the fire department, that Ted expressed his gratitude to firefighters, recognizing the difficulty of their work. He shared, for the first time, how his heart was racing at the scene of the September 10, 2011, deck fire and for hours afterward.

That admission from Ted surprised me given his calm demeanor while fighting the flames. He spotted the blaze while driving on Willow Street, pulled over, instructed his wife, Kathryn, to call 911 and stay in the van with their three sons, and then ran toward the fire.

Kathryn told me Tuesday that the emergency call was actually made by a young man who also stopped. She locked eyes with him and he indicated he had contacted emergency personnel. The fire department arrived within minutes.

Alerted to the blaze by my teenage son, I grabbed my camera and raced barefoot across the street, reaching Kevin and Kristin Klocek’s home just as Ted was pulling a garden hose toward the burning deck.

He remembers focusing on putting out the fire. I remember screaming for my neighbors to get out of their house. Ted and I didn’t communicate. But if we had, I would have learned that he had already leapt through heat and flames to bang on the front door, alerting Kristin and her young daughter, Kayleigh, of the fire.

The City of Faribault, in the Certificate of Recognition, thanked this citizen firefighter, in part, with these words: “Your quick actions ensured the occupants of the home got out safely and the damage to the home remained minimal.”

Exactly.

I, too, thanked Ted Leon—again—Tuesday evening.

When I first thanked him, at the scene of the fire, I knew him only as “Ted from Owatonna.” He didn’t give me his last name that day, when I questioned his identity as he was about to drive away. But he was found anyway, round-about via a blog post I published on the fire. Bob Collins of Minnesota Public Radio picked up the story in his online NewsCut column. Then The Owatonna People’s Press and The Faribault Daily News published front page stories and photos I had taken, which led to the discovery of Ted Leon.

Ted told me Tuesday he’s not one to draw attention to himself, explaining why he didn’t give me his last name on that day we first met, the day of the fire. He was in a hurry, too, on that September afternoon to get to services at Divine Mercy Catholic Church about a mile away.

He wasn’t in any particular hurry Tuesday evening, posing for photos, but also taking time to thank the firefighters. That’s typical Ted, deflecting the spotlight away from himself..

When an alarm sounded at the fire hall as we were visiting on Tuesday, I advised Ted, “You better get going.” He didn’t miss a beat.

“I’m retired,” he quipped.

Kathryn, who earlier said everything happened so quickly at the September fire that she didn’t have time to worry about Ted, simply rolled her eyes and laughed.

The certificate Ted received from the City of Faribault.

TO READ MY September 10, 2011, blog post about the fire, click here.

To read yet another post about the day Ted was found, click here.

© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Sweet Valentine’s Day memories from the Minnesota prairie

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:06 AM
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An American Greetings valentine from my husband, 1987.

DINNER OUT. Chocolate and roses.

What are your expectations of Valentine’s Day?

After nearly 30 years of marriage, I typically hold no visions of a day celebrated in a big, splashy way. Usually I’ll receive a card, perhaps a bag of Hershey’s kisses and an extra kiss or two from the man I love. He usually reserves flowers for the times when I least expect flowers—when my spirit needs uplifting. I love that about my husband, how he occasionally surprises me with a simple bouquet. This year he surprised me with flowers two days before Valentine’s Day.

February 14, for me, means mostly memories, sweet, sweet memories of childhood years exchanging valentines. The anticipation and preparation for the day nearly equaled the exuberance of the annual Valentine’s Day party at Vesta Elementary School during the 1960s.

At home on our prairie farm, my siblings and I thumbed through over-sized books of valentines at the kitchen table, choosing, then punching hearts from pages, glitter sparkling across our fingers, clinging to the oilcloth or swirling toward the dingy linoleum like a sprinkling of fairy dust.

It was, if anything, magical.

There were no thin, wispy, cartoon or celebrity valentines pulled from boxes. Those would come years later in the modernization of valentines, a mass production move that diminished the romance, the charm, the personal connection that comes only from the precise punching of hearts from paper.

A Brittney Spears valentine my son received 11 years ago from his classmate Vanessa.

We hand-picked conversation candy hearts for classmates, pondering the message we wanted, or did not want, to send. Sometimes we simply taped a single stick of Juicy Fruit or Black Jack gum to the back of a valentine. Canary yellow and bright blue amid all that red and pink.

When all the names were scrawled across valentines, all the names checked from a list, all sugary treats parceled out, all the glitter swept from the kitchen floor, we awaited the morning of the party.

Meanwhile in the classroom, we’d create valentine boxes, creasing white paper around shoeboxes before dipping our fingers into tall jars of thick white paste to adhere the paper and then decorate it with red and pink construction paper hearts.

I remember the challenge of drawing the perfect hearts, of first folding a piece of white scrap paper and then penciling the half-shape of a heart before cutting, then tracing the pattern onto construction paper, cutting again and, finally, pasting.

If shoeboxes were in short supply, which they often were in our house (we didn’t get new shoes all that often), we crafted white paper into valentine bags to tape to our desks.

A valentine my son received from his grandparents probably a decade ago.

With Valentine’s Day excitement came a certain sense of apprehension, first of safely transporting the greeting cards on the bus to school and then opening the valentines distributed by classmates.

Would we get an unwanted lovey, dovey message? Had we chosen the right messages for the right classmates?

Today I have no remembrance of boys who broke my heart on Valentine’s Day. Nor do I remember details of a party that likely involved nothing more than distributing and opening valentines.

Rather, I remember hearts and glitter and clustering around the kitchen table. I remember peeling thick white paste from my fingers and the chalky texture and taste of candy hearts and the delight of unwrapping a stick of gum, then sliding and folding it into my mouth in a burst of juicy flavor.

Those are my memories on this day of chocolate and flowers and love.

WHAT ARE YOURS?

© Copyright text 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling